The tired myth of the "Mary Sue"

Today, I'd like to discuss a notion that's been on my mind for a while now: the concept of the "Mary Sue" and why writers need to just let it go. I'd been trying to wait for a good opportunity to appropriately soapbox, but then I figured, there's no better place to soapbox than one's own blog. And yes, I look at the visitor statistics, so I know people are seeing this. Time for another essayrant (new portmanteau I just invented).

As someone who regrettably grew up doing a lot of writing networking over the Internet (I feel like no one should ever spend their youth doing any sort of networking over the Internet), I was quickly exposed to the world of fanfiction, and the world of people who read and discuss fanfiction. Both are equally terrifying in their own ways.

Fanfiction is exactly what it claims to be: original fiction pieces written by fans of a fictional work, purely for fun (or sometimes more for social clout in the fan community). There is no quality control much like independent publishing. I have read some very, very good fanfiction by talented writers that could easily be turned into licensed novels. I have also read some fanfiction that would only make the publishing cut with a lot of editing and much more skill development on the part of the writer.

But you know what? In fanfiction, an amateur labor of love for something you're emotionally invested in, writing skill doesn't actually matter all that much, in my opinion. What I really think is a bigger problem is when other fans read said fanfiction and proceed to critically tear it apart unsolicited--or worse, publicly denounce it and make fun of it. And nowhere have I seen more of this than attacks on what are perceived as "Mary Sues"--or, to put the issue in its real light, character shaming.

Six Things Indie Authors Should Actually (Probably) Never Do

This post is going to be a bit rantier than usual, but as I've reflected on my best and my most stressful times as an independent author, I've realized that there were some key activities that stressed me out tremendously--but that I was told were absolutely necessary to "make it big" in what is, let's face it, a completely insane and unpredictable market where success is never guaranteed.

So I've composed this list as an attempt to help my fellow indie authors who may be feeling as stressed and confused as I once was. If anything on this list sticks out to you as something that's causing you a lot of grief, you may want to seriously reexamine how much good it's actually doing you. 

And if you skim this list and just think "What a load of rubbish! All of these things work great for me!", read number six and all will be made clear. (Hence the "probably" part of the post title.)

Miscellany

First off, as you've probably noticed, the blog has a new look! I just felt like changing things up a bit and experimenting with a new color scheme. I also wanted the graphic design to better represent what my work is all about.

Also, the About page now has a FAQ section, because those are generally useful, and I realized there are some questions I actually get asked quite frequently.

I wanted to take a quick moment to address the infrequent updates lately. I've had a lot going on IRL and just haven't had much time or energy for drawing or writing. Things have settled down a bit now, so I'm hoping to be able to get back to being a little more creative going forward. 

I've also still been trying to sort out some of the career thoughts I discussed in this post. Marketing and overall trying to get my books noticed was just way, way too stressful, like the kind of stress that causes health problems and makes it very obvious that you need to immediately stop what you're doing. I'm still trying to figure out where to go from here without compromising my health again, but I think my passion for storytelling is an important part of who I am, and it's something that I worked very hard to acquire the skillset for, so I want to embrace it and make it my contribution to the world. I appreciate the support of my readers and followers who have the ability to spread their enthusiasm for my work and help me feel like what I'm doing is worthwhile.

Finally, for anyone who's interested, I made some rather extensive revisions to Worth Searching For, specifically most of the scenes involving Terra's and Isengrim's friendship. This is the second time I've revised the story, and while I felt the last revision was a drastic improvement over the original that (rather unfortunately) was the version that got into the Neopian Times, a short while ago I looked at it again and felt that I could do a better job of portraying their evolving interpersonal dynamic, playing up Terra's strengths, and exploring and explaining Isengrim's complicated psychology.

In this version, I wanted to make it clear that Terra gets caught up in a tough situation, but with her wisdom, far-sightedness, and compassion, she's quick to understand that Isengrim is the one who really needs saving. The two are able to connect over the fact that Terra is also a social reject, so she empathizes with Isengrim's Werelupe pack, knowing how it feels to be shunned for being different.

On Isengrim's part, I hopefully made it clear that from the beginning he feels conflicted about his actions and his attitude toward his new owner. His past experiences with other people have made him feel like he cannot trust Terra, but her brave and selfless actions, as well as her unconditional kindness toward him and the other Werelupes, quickly endear her to him despite his best attempts to deny it. When he hurts her feelings during the feast, he decides that he's had enough of his own poor behavior.

I think this version also better shows that after their pivotal conversation, the two become fast friends and truly care for each other not out of force of circumstance, but because they genuinely enjoy each other's personalities and enjoy taking care of each other. As I said, this part of the plot is extremely complicated, but I think these latest revisions handle it much more realistically and satisfactorily. I probably bit off far more than I could chew with wanting to write a story redeeming Isengrim, but I just felt like it needed to happen, even if my first attempts at the details were a little clumsy. He's become a fantastic part of the main cast, though, so I regret nothing. 

(Also, if you like my Neopets work, I've got another story coming to the blog soon, so keep an eye out for that!)

Author Thoughts: Marketing (or lack thereof)

As I'm between projects right now, I thought maybe I would take some time to discuss authorly topics that have been on my mind lately, in the hopes that what I have to say might help my fellow authors and aspiring authors. I'm sure my opinions won't be for everyone, but maybe they'll mean something to someone who really needs it. I've had some unusual experiences as a professional author, and maybe there are a few other folks like me out there who need to feel validated.

Today I want to talk about marketing, and why I don't do it. I used to try. Check the "opinions" tag for my series of blog posts about why it didn't work well for me. My miserable experiences with marketing also helped launch me on the path to discovering that not only was marketing not one of my strong suits, but I also just plain do not want to market my work. Some of what I have to say here may be repetitive of some of what I've said in those previous posts, but I feel that it's well worth reiterating.

(Please note that if you are an author who is finding fulfillment in marketing, this post is not meant to criticize how you run your career. This post is for those of us who do not have your skillset, find marketing a horrible experience, and wonder if there's any alternative for the modern independent author. So if you're sitting there reading this like "but marketing has done wonders for my books!" then probably this post isn't for you.)

(This post is also expressly not for people who concern themselves with making a living off of their books. I'm grateful to be in a position where I do not need to write for a living, so I don't have to pay attention to how much money my books are making. This post is for people who have the means to write for the sake of writing, but I'll talk a little bit more about that later.)

10 Myths About Being an Author I'd Like to Bust

When it comes to my authorial career (or lack thereof), this past year has been a tremendous learning experience. I'm sorry to say it's largely been an experience in finding out what doesn't work. But, like any good scientist*, I was open to possibilities and decided I would at least try some things to see if they made any positive difference. The lack of desired results was a highly informative result in itself. I can now definitively say I know what I don't want to do as an author, and I can also pass this information along to other authors, indie and otherwise, to prevent them from learning certain things the hard way.

*I am not a professional scientist, just a huge nerd.

You can read my series of long-winded essays over this past year to get a feel for what I've been trying to figure out and the sorts of trouble I got myself into. Suffice to say here that trying to follow "advice", "best practices", etc. for authors, which I gleaned from books, online articles, and personal correspondence with other well-meaning authors, not only did not get me an increase in sales, but plunged me into a bout of horrendous stress-related health issues. My life lacked joy and fulfillment, ironically as I was striving to find joy and fulfillment in my work. It felt like the harder I tried to get my career to where I thought it should be in order to have a meaningful life, the worse things got and the more meaningless my life felt.

Finally I came to the point where I had to admit to myself that all of this just was not working at all. I unloaded 95% of what I had accumulated in my fruitless quest to advance my career, and immediately found myself happier and less stressed. And I vowed to do things as a writer my way and listen to what God and my body were telling me, rather than listen to a million voices on the Internet who don't know me, don't particularly care about my overall well-being, and are imperfect humans who can just be plain incorrect.

As a disclaimer--if you actually enjoy doing any of the below-mentioned items, and/or find that they are really helping you in what you want out of your career, that's awesome. I'm really happy for you. But these are all things that just gave me an immense amount of stress and health issues, so I firmly believe they are not a "must" for every author, and do not even guarantee more readers/sales/whatever. Every author, every artist reserves the right to create and share their work in a way that is healthy for them. It's not worth making more money off your work if most of those funds are going toward medical bills for problems caused by overstress in the pursuit of making more money. Make sense?

Okay, let's dive on in.

The Confidence Game

I've had a lot of writing-related stuff on my mind lately, as you can probably tell from all the essays. I've been sharing a lot of it on the blog because I'm hoping it will help other writers. Being an author can be an emotionally and psychologically complex experience. I hope that what I have to say will help writers in their journey of understanding how they relate to their work and their audience.

Recent occurrences have led me to the realization that I have been chronically stressed about my writing because I have been lacking confidence in my abilities as a writer. And I'm not okay with this, because at its core I love writing, and I don't think God gave me these creative talents as a source of stress; I think He wants me to fully enjoy what is supposed to be an enjoyable process. Laborious, yes, but enjoyable, not anxiety-inducing.

Career thoughts

I've had lots of thoughts running through my head lately. I'm sitting here typing this in the hopes that it will help someone else. Feeling stuck and confused in a career you thought you really wanted is never a fun feeling. I'm going to share what's working for me, and maybe it'll help you, too.

The past six months or so have been an interesting journey. As you may have noticed from previous posts, there's a lot I've been trying to figure out about my literary career and the "business" side of my writer's journey.

After enduring intense stress, hitting a lot of dead ends, and generally feeling a large amount of strain and turmoil, I've reached a very important conclusion:

I don't have a literary career. There is no business side to my writing.

It's all about the art.

Networking thoughts

I had a panic attack yesterday morning. I went to sleep at 11, then woke up at 1:30 am feeling completely awful all over, and wondered how my life had gotten so stressful. Two hours and a lot of prayer and introspection later, I finally figured it out and figured out what needed to change, and as soon as I acted on my decision, the panic subsided and I was able to get back to sleep.

What follows are some thoughts and feelings on what I feel was a really bad turn in my writing career, and why I am changing direction right now. I'm writing this in the hopes that you will learn from it. I'm disabling comments on this post because I really don't care to know what anyone thinks of this. I'm sharing my feelings not because I care what other people think of me, but in an attempt to help others who may be starting to venture where I did. Pull up and pull out, now. You're worth more than that. Have respect for yourself and for your work.

I also apologize if you read this and feel like I am referencing you directly. If you are reading this blog, you are most likely not one of the people who caused me so much grief and pain these past few months. The people I am referring to - most of whom I have only had brief contact with - would likely never think to look at my blog, because they're too wrapped up in their own little worlds to have any interest in anything I'm doing that isn't benefiting them.

Thoughts on accepting critical feedback/reviews

See this essay for some follow-up thoughts on this topic.

After my musings on being on the critic's end of things, and after having gotten more book reviews than usual over the course of a book tour, I've been doing some thinking about how it feels to be on the receiving end of critical feedback. I'd previously written a post about it in a Goodreads group, and then followed it up with another post the other day. So I thought I'd share the contents of both posts here and expand on their ideas a bit.

More thoughts on constructive criticism

The art of giving good literary feedback has still been the object of my study and ponderings lately, and after I wrote yesterday's post I found myself with more that I wanted to say and explore! So rather than edit the previous post and basically make it twice as long as before, I figured a part 2 was in order. In this post, I'll be talking about more ways to exercise tact when giving feedback.

Thoughts on constructive criticism

(This blog post is adapted from something I wrote in a group on Goodreads. It focuses mainly on giving con-crit, because receiving it could be a whole other essay in and of itself.)

As I network with other writers, I've been trying to find ways to give constructive criticism in a way that is honest and fair, but doesn't contribute to the writer feeling crummy about their work and discouraged. I think it's an important topic.

When I was younger, I thought giving constructive criticism was pretty straightforward: all you had to do was tell somebody everything that was wrong with their writing so they would know what to fix. Right?

BZZZT. NO. WRONG.

NaNoWriMo update... kinda!

More accurately, I'm not doing it anymore! And you know what, I'm happy about that!

I'm going through a lot right now, and really the last thing I needed was to put even more pressure on myself doing something that takes a lot of work and stress even in a good month. I thought I could get away with being a workaholic, but today my health said otherwise, so I said "Okay, health, I'm sorry, let's sit and binge-watch The Sky at Night instead."

In all seriousness, please, nobody else push yourself too hard like that. Listen to your body's stress signals. 50,000 words in a month is not worth a health breakdown.

I will put all my cards on the table here--I actually have not been a big fan of NaNoWriMo. I know plenty of people love it, and I'm happy for them, but for me it's just too much pressure. I only did it two other times in my life. Once was in college because someone I knew wouldn't leave me alone about it. That is a very bad reason to do anything, FYI. That was an extremely stressful month of my life, because NaNo + college = NO. I am really surprised I made it through that month without any health issues, but I was young and thought I was invincible. 

The second time I did a NaNo was actually in July (a JulNo), and while it was still a lot of hard work, I didn't really have anything going on that month so it wasn't as stressful.

But this time around, no. Just no. Triple no. Putting another very stressful thing on my plate when I was already stressed out was stupid.

So I'm writing this blog post not only as a cautionary tale to you, good readers, but also to reassure myself that I will never do another NaNo as long as I live pinky promise. I love writing. It doesn't have to be stressful. I don't need to put pressure on myself or be even more of a workaholic than I already am. 

From now on, I work at my own pace. And I take care of myself.

Anyhow, don't worry, I am definitely going to keep working on the manuscript for Earthkeepers--when I feel up to it again! It's at 38,000 words right now and it's starting to get really exciting! You can take a look at my Facebook page for daily updates and teasers about where I am in the plot!

Take care, everybody! Take a load off and give yourself plenty of TLC! You deserve it!