A Writer’s Life

I love quotes, particularly ones which have entered the English language; but what I love even more are misquotes. You learn a lot about history and language, and it’s fun finding out where they’ve come from. I did a post before on famous movie misquotes, so these are some of my favourites from literature.

5) “Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears.”
William Shakespeare (Julius Caesar).
Actual quote: The quote from Shakespeare’s play is correct, but it’s often incorrectly attributed to Julius Caesar; it’s Mark Antony who says it, delivering his eulogy after Caesar’s assassination by Brutus and the conspirators.

4) “I must go down to the sea again.”
John Masefield (Sea Fever).
Actual quote: The original version of Sea Fever read “I must down to the seas again” but in later editions was changed to either “go” or “sea” or both.

3) “Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.”
William Congreve (The Mourning Bride).
Actual quote: The quote comes from the closing line of Act III: “Heav’n has no rage, like love to hatred turn’d/Nor hell a fury, like a woman scorn’d.” The first line of Act I is also often misquoted: “Musick has charms to soothe a savage breast” (not beast).

2) “Water, water, everywhere, but not a drop to drink.”
Samuel Taylor Coleridge (The Rime of the Ancient Mariner).
Actual quote: The line from Coleridge’s poem should read “Water, water everywhere, nor any drop to drink.” It is also apparently one of the most plagiarised lines, in one competition alone featuring in more than 200 submissions.

1) “Elementary, my dear Watson.”
Arthur Conan Doyle (Sherlock Holmes).
Actual quote: Although Holmes often used “elementary“, the phrase “Elementary, my dear Watson” doesn’t appear in any of Conan Doyle’s stories; the closest is an exchange in The Adventure Of The Crooked Man: “Excellent!” I cried “Elementary.” said he. Its first appearance is at the end of the 1929 film, The Return of Sherlock Holmes.

It was my birthday yesterday. I don’t like my birthday much; it just feels like a reminder of another year gone and what I’ve got to look forward to for another year. Still, it was nice to spend a few hours with my family, and I’m putting some money together with savings to get a new camera.

I had one interesting surprise, though. I received a reply from the Turkish Embassy about the Wordpress ban. I wasn’t expecting one at all (I thought they would just ignore it) and while it’s a carefully worded reply, there are a couple of interesting things in it. I’ve uploaded the letter to Flickr if anyone wants to have a look and I’ll quote a few sections below.

This was the first thing I noticed:

“However, after consulting with the telecommunication services provider Türk Telekom, it has been established that technically it is impossible just to ban several blogs hosted by ‘wordpress.com domain’. Therefore, the ban had to be applied to the whole site.”

I’m almost positive that’s wrong. Technically impossible? It should be a simple matter for Türk Telekom and other ISPs to distinguish between Wordpress and individual blogs; if they mean people would just open new blogs, they can just add them to the list as they find them. Blocking access to 1.3 million blogs to stop just a handful is just crazy. And it’s not stopping people from seeing them anyway - they can just go to Wordprexy.

This was the second thing:

“We would also like to inform you that, those bloggers who have directly been affected by the ban placed on ‘Wordpress.com’ can apply to Turkish courts in order to revoke the decision of 17 August 2007.”

At first I thought they meant just Turkish bloggers but it seems they mean all bloggers affected, which is good; they know the ban impacts people from all over the world. It seems that my letter has already been forwarded on so there’s not much point doing another, but I wonder if there might be a case for making a joint statement from users of Wordpress to coincide with the November 1 court sitting? It might carry more weight coming from a large number of people and it could even be co-ordinated with MidEast Youth’s petition.

So that’s the letter. I was surprised to get a reply at all and I think it was a reasonable response, if a cautious one. It’s ironic, though, that it came the same week that Iran blocked access to Google and Gmail. What a world we live in.

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I’m not enjoying writing at the moment. I don’t know if I’d call it writer’s block but I can’t work out where to go with Shards at the moment. It’s been a year since I finished the first draft and I’m still doing rewrites. The main stumbling block’s been getting my head around some of the themes, but recently there’s been another problem. The direction of the story has changed a lot and it’s causing a conflict for me with two of the characters.

They were going to be my star-crossed lovers, to borrow Shakespeare’s phrase, but in rewriting it their story has become less of the focus. Now I’m not sure where to go with it. The romance is still there but it’s not as important; I could cut it out, but the story would still lose something. Or I could keep going with it, but I’m worried it might seem exploitative… like the only reason it’s there is to follow formula.

Maybe I’m making too much of it, but I don’t want it to be one of those books where the dynamic just doesn’t feel right… particularly the sex. We’ve all read those books which seem hollow or have sex for sex’s sake; if you’ve read I Am Charlotte Simmons by Tom Wolfe you’ll know what I mean, and I still don’t know what Robert J. Sawyer was trying to do in Humans (a human and a neanderthal, WTF?). Writing sex scenes always makes me uncomfortable but the challenge is finding an aspect in the scene that affects the greater story… without the preceding scenes here, I’m not sure I can.

Anyway, while I’m working that out, it’s brought up an interesting topic. We’re a highly sexualised society, but we still rarely seem at ease with our sexuality. We watch sexy movies, read juicy novels, but do we talk about sex itself? Perhaps amongst our closest friends, but beyond that it’s usually awkward and behind closed doors; likewise we’re still uncomfortable with public displays of affection. It’s strange that sex can be seen as such a commercial entity, yet still remain something of a taboo as well. So when does marketing sex go too far? When does it become gratuitous?

I’m not sure myself. I was trying to think earlier of books/writers I’ve read that have used good sex scenes and I can’t think of many. Maybe Evanovich’s Stephanie Plum series, Bear’s Darwin’s Radio… Bret Easton Ellis and Neil Gaiman for giving scenes an interesting dynamic. And of course DH Lawrence. But overall I don’t think many writers write sex scenes that well or realistically. Most scenes seem to be either lyrical and wafty or anatomical and overly detailed. I know Laurel K. Hamilton’s are dull and don’t interest me much; in a vampire novel, that’s not a good thing. There’s even an award for it - The Literary Review Bad Sex in Fiction Award.

A lot of sex scenes seem distant and it’s strange really that they’re presented in such a detached way; sex is such a natural part of our lives, you’d think writers would want to explore it in a more satisfactory and natural way. But maybe a realistic sex scene is almost impossible to write because it’s something words can’t adequately describe; it destroys the illusion, the feeling. A sex scene can be funny, awkward, escapist, but can it be interesting if it’s made to seem too real? Perhaps not; then it just becomes voyeurism.

I’m not sure I’d agree that writers include sex scenes purely for saleability or formula, though; I’m sure some do, but I’d hope that most still consider it a part of the story and the development of the characters. For that matter, I’m yet to see evidence that you need to have sex in a book for it to be marketable; for any books that don’t sell, it probably has more to do with plot and pace than whether or not the characters shagged on page 180.

There’s been a lot of fuss made over David Duchovny’s new series Californication recently and that sort of plays into this as well. Californication is an adult sex comedy, something of a throw-back to the ’70s movies like Shampoo, and it’s been garnering criticism for its content; one columnist went so far as to call network executives pornographers, while some conservative groups are calling for a boycott of sponsors who advertise during episodes. Personally I find the controversy bizarre. Certainly Californication is not to everyone’s taste, but I don’t see what the networks have done wrong; over here it’s on at an adult-only time and each episode has an M/MA rating. It’s not for children and no-one’s suggesting it is; it’s probably not even appropriate for some adults. But we’re a democracy, aren’t we? If you don’t like a show, turn it off - seems like the ultimate form of free choice to me. What I’ve seen of Californication is actually quite interesting; yes, there’s sex and drugs and nudity, but beneath it is a story about a lost man trying to get his family back. The writing’s sharp and at least it’s something other than reality TV for a change.

Californication definitely markets itself on its adult content, but I don’t think it crosses the line in to exploiting it. This website, though, has to cross that line. It’s for a German company that has created a new cosmetic fragrance for men called Vulva Original. It’s marketed as “the erotic, intimate scent of an irresistible woman… a beguiling vaginal scent”. Um, what? This has to be the most bizarre product I have ever heard of. Just who would be interested in a product like that? And for the love of God, why? It would almost be funny if it wasn’t so gross.

But it’s an example of how an entire industry has evolved around our fascination with sex. Some of it is part of a healthy sexual appetite, but then you get something like this or the rise in pornography; you could argue that it doesn’t hurt anyone but look at Maddison Gabriel being named the face of Gold Coast Fashion Week - she’s just twelve. It sexualises her to adults and surely must be going to mess with her head later on. But it creates publicity and so it’s achieved everything the organisers wanted.

And that brings us back to this idea of marketing sex. As a culture we’re fascinated by sex, so it’s inevitable that that fascination would be exploited. The simple truth is sex sells and companies, writers, directors, musicians use it for marketability. The real question is how far is too far? Something like Californication is pushing the boundaries; I think something like Vulva Original has gone way past them.

For writers, though, I think it’s fairly simple: if you aim for the characters and story to change though the scene, you’ve done your job. And I guess that’s what I’m trying to do with Shards… so I’ll probably keep those scenes. Now I’ll just have to go back and finish it!

What Type of Writer Should You Be?

Another fun quiz over at Blogthings. I must admit, I was expecting more of an SF or slipstream response… but ah well, who am I to argue? I’m a poet as well.

Site of the Week (17/9/07)
Faqqly
Rating:

Faqqly is a social networking site with a difference. Unlike other sites which focus more on how you present yourself than getting to know other users, Faqqly is all about creating your own questions page (FAQ) that people can comment on. Set up a list of topics and other users can drop by to ask questions about anything they want - your life, interests, what you’re reading, etc. It’s a bit like the reverse of Twitter; instead of you saying what you’re doing now, other people ask you, and the subjects are much broader. You can even strike up an ongoing dialogue about various issues and topics, exploring them in great depth.

Faqqly was founded by then 20-year-old UCLA senior David Liu, whose goal was to build a collaborative website based on real life community interaction. The social dynamic is definitely the strongest part of Faqqly, but its ease of use is also impressive. Setting up your questions page is as simple as editing your profile and adding the topics you’re interested in. People ask questions by typing in the ask box, and there are hourly questions of the moment to ensure updates are frequent.

Faqqly’s main drawback is the flipside of its being a community site; the level of interaction depends on the kinds of questions people ask. Questions like what are you doing? or what movie did you see? are a good introduction but won’t lead to much of an ongoing dialogue; questions revolving around social issues or specialist knowledge are more likely to form a dialogue but aren’t the kinds of questions most people are going to ask. Like anything, the conversation is only as interesting as what the users bring to it.

Whether Faqqly will be a long-term success is difficult to know, but it’s an interesting social experiment and one that’s definitely worth checking out.