Monthly Archives: August 2010

Why I’m a bad writer and a P.R. nightmare

I am a bad writer and a P.R. marketing/advertising nightmare, depending on your perspective.

Flat out, I do not write m/m fiction,  but some of my work is in the gay fiction genre, and I don’t write enough sex scenes (according to some). I don’t focus my stories around sex. Sure there are writers who can create believable characters and situations and ALSO include copious sex scenes, but my stories which feature it are about gay life, love and relationship as I’ve personally experienced or observed and that’s what I aim them to be. They are about love and real people. Sex might be mentioned, and it is an eventual reality for most people who are in love and accept each other, or their mutual needs, in some way. But I don’t write a story simply to focus on the cleverness or detailed nature of the sex scenes. I get the distinct feeling that many m/m readers or those who think anything with gay characters in it has to have lots of sex to really be “authentic” or that’s what it’s going to include.

I think too many people confuse gay fiction with erotica and/or  m/m romance or fiction. That gay fiction is going to be about sex or focussed on sex, which is why, in the first place, I have an issue with people automatically slapping a “gay” or “m/m” label or characterization on a story because it has gay or bisexual characters in it, or the central romance might be between those characters although there are several other things going on in the story besides the relationship and especially more than sex.

Why is it people assume if it’s a book or story with gay characters it is going to heavily rely on or involve sex? Why do they think graphic details need to be used? While answering an opinion question on an anime/manga board a couple of years ago, the question being “why do so many females love yaoi”, I got bashed and fumed at because of my answer which was, “Like many who are on the ‘outside looking in’ as it were, many are fascinated by seeing or reading what they themselves do not or could not do. It’s like a peep/freak show for them. I seldom if ever read/view something just for sex, especially gay sex, because if I wanted to see that I’d simply put mirrors on my ceiling. It’s no particular thrill, and I am much more interested in relatial dynamics, emotional conflicts and resolutions.

Most readers, or so I’ve been told by publishers, who are seeking gay “romance” or fiction are actually seeking erotica. If your story doesn’t have “heavy” content, then you are going to be received tepid at best.  I received a complaint because I didn’t have enough sex content “Good story, but not enough sex!”,  but I refuse to add it “just because”. “Mainstream” won’t often take a story, especially a short story because it has male protagonists in a possible romantic situation together or especially if it has sex in it if you are not a “well known name”. Talk about conundrum!

What this suggests to me about m/m readers in general, is that they still by majority see gay males, gay relationships, as only being about sex, or primarily so. They want to get their titillating kicks but if a story is a really a romance, in the classic sense, where characterization and story is foremost, not so much. I take it as a badge of honour that I remain true to my stories, my characters, myself.

To me gay romance or fiction is not just a “side point” or for that matter even a great hobby or desire…or obsession. It’s my life. It’s what I live everyday. Sure, some readers, like any other genre, from spy thrillers to sci-fi, are seeking escapism. They want a vista to temporarily escape from their own life and look into another’s, some are seeking reading to turn them on and make them fantasize sex further, a type of sex they have never experienced or more exactly: never can. If they are females, straight or gay, seeking to know “gay” sex between men, they cannot have it even if they are proficient with a strap-on and have willing “bottoms”.

Maybe they’re just wanting a sexy slice for amusement, and at the very real risk of alienating some readers, but hell I’m being honest, I don’t feel many consider the emotions behind it. These are characters in a book true, but they are based on real life, in my writing anyway, real situations I’ve endured or been a part of. BUT for those only seeking sex, I say, more power to them, and have no objection to them finding what they want. There’s plenty of it out there.

We are a “cabinet of curiosities”.

I write my stories and I am in them. The struggles, the agonies, the joys and pain of what I’ve endured or experienced. Not to say other writers don’t include that, because they do, but when I read a writer saying, “I got tired of writing about m/f so I thought I’d write about m/m and use my imagination”, I think that belittles what gays really experience, especially when what they write is mostly about sex as if we are ravenous beasts only concerned about fucking, that every expression or phrase someone says, everything we see we will twist into a sexual innuendo. And there’s always a current of resentment in the waters, in a way. You have some gay or bisexual writers who don’t like or won’t read female written m/m works, or at least they are reluctant to.

If you’re gay and male and a writer and you’re “with” or published by a certain house many of which are female based and run, and that’s the majority of the writers on staff, if you don’t play the pretty and helpfully to answer their questions of lurid details so they can “work them in.” If you don’t laugh at their jokes or questions which often border an attitude so stereotypical and demeaning for gays you are seen as anti-social and spiritless, well…I choose to be PERCEIVED anti-social.

Although I’ve written stories with more graphic sexual content, in answering an email query as to why I don’t include more….some stories, some characters need it, it is what they are, or the setting, but with some others, the tone and mood….it is not necessary.

Although I’ve been an editor far longer than a submitting and published author, I see exactly why someone like me might be considered a bad m/m fiction writer. It’s because I don’t, won’t and refuse to write to suit some readers or publishing houses’ demands. It just reminds me of the people who love the media frenzy over celebrities. They just want more and more salacious details. When someone doesn’t produce or allow them, then they are disliked or deemed difficult. If they don’t “play” along.

It’s not arrogance the reason I do it, nor condescension, it’s just that my characters and the situations they find themselves in are part of my life. They project some aspect of it. Just like I won’t dance and pose for pics in general at a pow-wow from the a person who wants to take a momento away from a “real live red Indian”! Sorry, that’s how it looks to me with some readers. I won’t submit to the typing and include more sex just to be popular, get accepted, and have more stories published. My sales will be dented since I don’t “play pretty” but if I fell in to that, it would be not just losing what I am, who I am, but it would be a betrayal of myself and what I believe in.

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Counting Coup With a Pen-Online Life

Many people are somewhat familiar with the term “counting coup” whether they read about it in a history book, saw a program on television or it was referenced in a film. It was when some tribes of Native Americans gave a display of courage and daring, to swoop in and tap an enemy with their coup stick and ride away. It was more satisfying than simply killing someone, easy enough to do from afar with a bow and arrow, but counting coup was cunning cleverness which boosted your pride and made for many stories to tell around the fireside.

Incidentally, it was also what got many a warrior killed initially before they discovered the deadly intentions of European invaders, the lack of understanding of purpose and meaning.

Counting coup wasn’t something just merely to do, a challenge or test: it was an urge, a necessity. There is something inside that makes you compelled to do so, and with a whoop and a cry, you were off! It’s like an itch you simply must scratch, but it’s also psychological energy that needs releasing. It’s both humour and sport, yet serious in it’s intent. Sometimes I feel the overwhelming urge to do so when something has struck me as perplexing, or silly or annoying. Tap it to see if it’s real or are they friggin’ serious.

It’s a fair question, and someone wished to know how my Native American heritage jived so well with some aspects of German society and culture.

For one: waste nothing, whether it’s energy, words, the last little sliver of soap or those plastic bottles, and several hundred other items. Let me inject here Native American ancestors, because some modern Natives can be as unconcerned with recycling and the environment as any other group of Americans. My friend Rosebud Lakota Lady is rather religious about it, as am I, because she developed the insistence on it after living in the Netherlands for several years.

Also, the succinctness of expression attracted me, comforted me, the honesty of emotion, of feelings. The way I think of it is this: among a tribe, a number of people lodged in a relatively small area, voices raised in anger can be heard easier, any slight left festering and covered with “polite” words while the heart is still angry can make for deeply infected wounds that can fiercely erupt.

Such acts or behaviour is dangerous to the people as a whole. No false faces. No polite passing words. No “Just thought I’d tell you’s” with a smile that turns to a sneer behind your back, or which is discussed derogatorily with others later. This can set person against person, family against family eventually. Again, nothing a “group living” society can tolerate if they wish to survive against pressures and outside competition for resources.

Similarly in Germany, among the people I’ve met, lived with, come to know, and it is really very general and there are rare exceptions: if someone doesn’t like something, they say so or you at least question it with an open face which awaits an answer and further rational discussion. If they don’t like something about you negatively affecting them, that you can change, they say so. If you’ve done something to inadvertently offend them or more specifically bother them, not so much as offend, they will tell you. You get it taken care of straight away. You don’t make excuses, you don’t give “nice-nasty” looks, and you certainly don’t talk about people behind their backs without being willing to recount the whole conversation or have them right there.

I can appreciate that. That’s how you keep unnecessary rifts from being formed. That’s how to you remain honest and true to yourself, as well as respecting the other person. You expect them to also tell you when you’ve done something wrong, or something they didn’t like. It’s mutual. Or you try to be. Nothing’s perfect to be sure. You make a point not to be easily offended, but if something bothers you, you consider it your obligation to galactic peace to mention it in order to have it settled as soon as possible.

That is highly opposite to the way many Americans and English speakers function. Subterfuge seems to be the rule of the day to my observation. “Nice-nasty” is a way of life. The slighting remarks, double endentres. Passive-agressive. Or the aggressive style in the first place, the cleverly worded insults, testing you. If you back down, you’re considered a coward, unequal. If you rise to the bait, you’re immature and to be fully scoffed at. If you try to question or explain anything, you are being defensive. To me it is behavior which evidences anti-social ills and something deeply wrong. I avoid it. It’s a strange illness for which there is no cure, and I don’t want to catch it.

In general I state what I think. In stating what I think or believe or will accept, it’s fully open to questions. Some people get immediately upset by that, make assumptions, snap judgements on my disposition. How very wrong and self-limiting that is! No, everyone will not get along, but I find there’s no reason to be so quick to dismiss another.

I always have questions but I’ve learned in some societies, questions to some mean challenge, aggression, doubt. They don’t even consider the question is being asked because more information is sought. It is not an effort to undermine them. Again, that’s such a strange concept to me. I am called confrontational because I ask questions, or I am called “hysterical” (which is as physically and psychologically far from me as me can get LOL) because I am passionate about some topics and I fully express myself.

If someone does irritate me, I let them know in no uncertain terms. To state it is necessary for me to then relieve myself of it. I don’t hold grudges. Also, I am at times fullly willing to “let something go” as not worth the effort to address. I can live with not knowing some things, and if I feel someone is being unreasonable or rude, I just won’t talk to them.

I take each instance as it comes, however, each interaction. Very different than a certain type that are all too often the preponderance on forum boards whatever kind they are, if they are native English speakers that is.

Just the same, I have a very distinct irreverent streak. My need to count coup resurfaces. In all honesty it sometimes makes me feel like the lone Klingon on a shipful of mostly genteel members of the Federation; or “Wind in his hair” from Dances with Wolves standing atop the bluff calling out his name. It makes me want to dance, that’s the easiest way of putting.

Forget all the pretension and postures, the little verbal digs and “high-handed” little comments people make. Life is too short to be bothered by those who are too full of themselves, their own thoughts, and little whatever-you-wanna-to-call’ems. Way too short for me to waste my thoughts, or time or honesty and good will either. The conflict is what they imagine, because it’s simply not there from my end. I’d rather have a beer at a garten and a long, slow extremely detailed conversation and become friends, or give them a whack on a head and ride off laughing.

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A Painful Break-up, A Sutra and Dashboard Confessional

I am not Buddist, nor any religion for that matter and never will be, but I have a very clear sense of belief and a willingness to accept the positive messages for me, whatever their source.

This was one really changed my life for the good. A sutra, I don’t remember the number and name although I had it once. It followed a time when I was agonized by regrets as a long-time relationship exploded into a conflagration which blazed through the whole state in which I lived and worked. With not only embarassment and humiliation for my former partner and I, it was a stunning revelation for both his and my family. Maybe it was the near death experience I had in 2002, when your life flashes before your eyes.

Just sharing it along. It can mean different things to different people. It gave me an infinite freedom, and I literally sank to my knees in thanks when I understood what it meant for me. I felt reborn and nothing in the past mattered anymore. No longer did I suffer the sheer agony of repetitive thoughts. To so many things, I could rip them up as if they were paper and toss them to the winds. I determined to let nothing and no one ever get me down again. Sure, I have hard times still, difficulties, helpless pains but they cannot and do not bring me down in the same way. I will never allow anyone to have that hold over me again, even myself.

“The one who is very attached to the cave of the body,
that one finds detachment very difficult. Those who
constantly crave for pleasure are hard to liberate and
certainly cannot be liberated by others, only by
themselves. Sometimes it is only death that brings a
realization of endings, and then the sensual person,
deeply immersed in the body, will shout: “What will
happen to me after death?

The way toward liberation is to train yourself to live
in the present without any wanting to become anything.
Give up becoming this or that, live without cravings,
and experience this present moment with full
attention, then you will not cringe at death nor seek
for repeated birth.”

And if it is “your time to go”, then this:

“When it comes time to die, be not like those whose hearts are filled with the fear of death, so when their time comes they weep and pray for a little more time to live their lives over again in a different way. Sing your death song, and die like a hero going home.” –Chief Aupumut, Mohican 1725

The modern twist on this lyrics by Dashboard Confessional. Good stuff.

“Vindicated”

“Hope dangles on a string
Like slow spinning redemption
Winding in and winding out
The shine of it has caught my eye

And roped me in
So mesmerizing, so hypnotizing
I am captivated

[Chorus]
I am Vindicated
I am selfish
I am wrong
I am right
I swear I’m right
I swear I knew it all along

And I am flawed
But I am cleaning up so well
I am seeing in me now the things you swore you saw yourself

So clear
Like the diamond in your ring
Cut to mirror your intentions
Oversized and overwhelmed
The shine of which has caught my eye
And rendered me so isolated, so motivated
I am certain now that

[Chorus]

So turn
Up the corners of your lips
Part them and feel my finger tips
Trace the moment, fall forever
Defense is paper thin
Just one touch and I’d be in
Too deep now to ever swim against the current
So let me slip away…

Slight hope
It dangles on a string
Like slow spinning redemption…”

I am flawed. I accept that. I can be happy just the same somehow.

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