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The Pecman

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  1. As far as honest-to-God real gay literature out there, I'd point to John Rechy as being one of the most important authors still writing. A great introduction to Rechy's work is the new collection Beneath the Skin: The Collected Essays, which I just finished reading this week. This is strictly his non-fiction work; his fiction, including the classic City of Night and The Sexual Outlaw, are landmark works. Be warned they're very hardcore and often downbeat, but nonetheless extremely powerful and realistic. Another one that blew me away the first time I read it was Patricia Nell Warren's classic Front Runner, which was published more than 30 years ago. I didn't discover it until about 1980, but I found it an inspiring, fantastic book. I'm totally pissed-off that it still hasn't been made into a feature film.
  2. I could've posted my (lengthy) reply to the guy, but suffice it to say, I sympathized with him. I told him nobody's a bigger geek than me (especially back in the 80s), and getting the nerve to go to snazzy LA hot spots and bars was tough. Even worse when you don't exactly look like the member of a boyband or have the physique of a model. Funny, though, the guy I wound up with was just another geek like myself. :) Neither of us had been out for very long, and we've been pretty comfortable together for over 20 years now (with some expected ups and downs). It seemed like kind of a big deal when it first happened, but looking back, it was like falling off a log -- natural and predictable, and we were instantly comfortable with each other. The bottom line is that relationships are hard, and it takes a lotta courage and effort to go out and make new friends, have dates, have sex, and make longterm commitments. But you can't get discouraged, and you also gotta know that everybody's got the right to find happiness in their lives. I encouraged the reader not to give up, and (using my own example), told him that if an idiot like myself could finally hook up with a compatible guy, anybody can. If you wanna talk privately about this in email, feel free to talk to me. I don't claim to have all the answers, but I can at least point you to places where you can get them, and give you my two cents on life in general.
  3. Oh, I dunno. To me, that's what maps and the Internet are for. Just figure out the location, make a few phone calls, and you can pepper in enough details to make the story real. As one example: in my story Jagged Angel, I set the first two chapters in Phoenix, Arizona, a city I've only visited for about two hours. About one hour of free Internet research got me some city maps, names of streets, neighborhoods, freeways, and schools, and I was able to stir all that in just here and there, enough to at least give readers the flavor of what the city was like. The two boys in the story's open could mention the names of real schools, I could have them journey down real streets, and to me, it gave it that much more verisimilitude. Maybe I'm obsessive-compuslive, but I also go to the trouble of mentioning a specific date and getting the day right; little things like that piss me off when I read a novel, and they say "Christmas of 1992 was on a Sunday," when I know damn well it was on a Friday. Sure, it's a trivial point, but I believe it all adds up in the end. I wrote those first chapters of Angel when we had a horrendous heatwave here in LA, and our air conditioning was busted, so it was about 95 degrees in my office when I did most of that writing. I believe this is called "suffering for your art." :) But that accounts for the emphasis on temperature in the first part of the story. Last comment: I seem to recall no less than Isaac Asimov once saying, "I don't have to have visited outer space in order to write about it." Asimov's classic SF tales certainly make you feel you've been in space and on other planets, and his descriptions are vivid enough, you feel like you know the story's location very well. That's all I'm getting at -- that if you leave out those details, whether the location is real or imaginary, the story's impact is greatly reduced. To never mention the city or give us details about it is lazy writing, period.
  4. You and I have had this disagreement before, W (if you don't mind me using your first initial), but I think King is still capable of being a very fine writer. I'd point to the recent Dreamcatcher (2001) as an example that King's skills haven't quite deserted him. Also, anybody who can crank out masterpieces like Carrie, 'Salem's Lot, The Shining, and The Stand ain't exactly a hack. Lesser works like It, Shawshank Redemption and Green Mile are pretty damned good, even though they may not quite be classics. But I started really disliking some of his stuff like Cujo, Christine, Pet Sematary, and several others from the 1980s and early 1990s (when King admits he started having a big problem with drugs and alcohol, which he mentions in his book On Writing). I found all of those to be terribly disappointing. Still, given that the guy has -- what? -- 40 best-selling novels, I'd say at least a half-dozen of them are bona fide classics. As far as I'm concerned, none of us are worthy of even sharpening King's pencils. To me, King does fall under the category of "Master Storyteller," as do few contemporary authors.
  5. Oh yeah, definitely. If there's any master storytellers out there, raise up your hands. <after a short pause> Yeah, I thought so. At best, we're just a group of somewhat-talented amateurs. I made a pretty good living for about 20 years writing over a thousand published article as a professional writer, for a dozen different newsstand magazines, but I still put myself solely in the "amateur" class in fiction. But just because I'm an amateur writer now doesn't mean I can't try to do my work in a professional manner. Multiple 1st-person POV is a very difficult, cluttered approach at best, and I've rarely seen it done. Again, Card warns against it at great length in his book, and it's clear he knows what he's talking about.
  6. I'm confused. In re-reading this statement, I get the feeling that we have different opinions about what 1st person POV and 3rd person POV are. In 1st person POV fiction, a story is being told completely by one character, totally through his or her eyes. Everything that happens, every event, is filtered through that person's brain. Just one person, like an autobiographical tale: "This is what happened to me." The only thoughts the reader can hear are those of this one character. Everything that happens in the story has to be seen or heard by this one character; otherwise, they have to find out about it second-hand. In 3rd person omniscient POV, an unseen narrator is telling the story, and we can hear the thoughts or spoken words of any character in any scene. This way, the reader can know, for example, who the murderer is -- we can go inside the murderer's head and find out why and whom he killed, and then move over to a scene with a detective where he picks up clues that will ultimately lead him to the killer. The reader can know many things that the lead character(s) don't know. We can also know when a character is lying. The author can also exclude this information, and deliberately not show the thoughts of other characters except when necessary -- something I had to learn through painful lessons with the 1st draft of Jagged Angel. Each technique has its own pros and cons, but for most stories, I think 3rd person is probably more appropriate for mainstream fiction. Orson Scott Card, in the book I cited above, makes a very good case that any story originally told in 1st person can be rewritten to 3rd with some effort. There's no question, though, that some of the greatest books in literature have been done completely in 1st person. I was just talking to a friend about To Kill a Mockingbird, a book I've probably read 50 times, and it's told solely from the point of a 10 year-old girl. (There's also a prominant gay character in the book, based on the author's friendship with Truman Capote, but it's a subtlety you have to look for.) I think there are stories where one point of view is more appropriate than the other. But I think there's always pros and cons you have to weigh, and it's not always a straightforward choice. Read the Orson Scott Card book I recommended, and tell me what you think.
  7. I just got this email from a reader, and I found it so sad (assuming what he says is true), I thought I'd share it with you guys here: ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Ok, I'm writing this email in bits at a time to try and be sure hotmail doesn't eat what I write. Basically, ages and ages ago, 20 years ago, I politely informed my parents I had always been gay. I have been thrown out of my own family ever since with no given option of coming back. I live alone, and am still a virgin at 37, something I freely admit to people. I have never had a boyfriend because I have no idea where to start getting one, simply. Its also because while I genuinely love beautiful men, I am also TERRIFIED of them! Seriously, I've learned not to compliment their looks or anything because if they are straight, HOO boy, you are not seen as complimentary no matter how polite you are and risk getting severely pounded. The possibility of rape (a lot of guys seem to get wildly ferocious when they want their sex) has had me keep distance too. So yes, I am shy & timid. I also don't go to bars or things because those are boring grown-up-style stuff to me: I'd always prefer a fair or bookstore, I'm a quiet person. But it does make it tough to know where to start. Anyway, around 2000 when I had a working computer, I thought, let's see what happens if I try an online gay dating service. I'm sure you can imagine that I learned real quick about all the insincerity on the web as a result. And the chat rooms with all their "let's have sex one way or another" attitude. But after 2 years, one person I'll call Scott actually struck up a conversation with me and offered me his phone number. I kept telling myself I was being stupid for calling this number out of the blue. Well, surprise! This guy just wanted to visit. He wasn't looking for a date at the moment but just thought I'd be nice to visit with while cooking dinner. And we did. He also told me half jokingly "Of course, I know you won't call back after this. They never do, always same old thing on there, sex sex sex. If someone calls back more than 3 times, then I'll believe he's nice, lol." It was a nice call. Seriously, and then as I called back to visit during the next 3 weeks, he finally said "ok, I believe you, you're a nice guy." He actually invited me to meet me at a Dennys. That Dennys was usually crowded and so I went while taking my cell just in case. And he showed up. Oh wow, I wish I could describe how beautiful he was. I mean, he could have been a model, and the prettiest blue eyes with soft lashes. I later found out he worked out a lot. Tanned. Do you understand what I mean when I say I was so in awe of his unexpected beauty that I did NOT get all turned on? That's how I reacted. As he introduced himself I just stared in awe. Then I turned my head away and knew I was blushing and said "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to stare, it's just.. that you're so beautiful." He blushed & said "why, thank you." First time I ever got to hear such a response from a man & know it was directed at me. We had a nice casual dinner, he was fun, light & funny to talk to, & very polite even though something about him seemed cautious. He told me that the last time he had ever had a boyfriend, his boyfriend would get really abusive and one time when Scott had had enough & said "I'm leaving" and started to go, suddenly a chair came flying at his head, & next thing he knew he was waking up in a hospital bed. He had shut down his heart ever since & only had what he called "glorified sex buddies". Afterward he drove me to his place so we could continue to talk in private. Actually we both drove, I was invited to follow him. We sat in his living room on a couch & visited casually about pretty much anything. Then finally it was late & he said he had better turn in for the night as he had to work next morning. I said "Okay. I should too. I'll see you later?" as I went to the door. He stood but he just had this shocked look on his face. At first I asked if I did something wrong. And he finally says "You didn't try to seduce me. You didn't touch me. You didn't even try to get my shirt up." I was a little scared & said "uh... You wanted me to?" He said "No, I didn't. That's just it. Everybody treats me like a side of beef & then leaves. I get so tired of people drooling over me all the time & acting shallow. You don't want to have sex with me?" I swallowed & said no. He goes "I don't get it. But you like my looks." I said "of course I do. You're a very beautiful man." and he was, and extremely masculine. He said "Then why didn't you try anything?" I stammered, "I respect you too much as a human being. I mean, what sort of person would I be if I took advantage of you like that? I'd be no better than your last boyfriend." He looked at me a minute then walked up to me & smiled then said "David, that's the most wonderful thing I've ever had anyone say to me." He then lifted my chin with his finger & said "You're very sweet. Thank you." And he kissed my cheek and said goodnight. I called him the next few nights and he always seemed so happy to hear from me. I met with him one other time at his place, and it was sort of funny but he said, "This world is so screwed up as it is. How did you manage to stay so innocent? I almost actually start to feel a bit guilty for not giving anything physically to you, I mean you're sure you don't want ANYTHING?" I blushed & said "You said you weren't interested in another boyfriend at the moment, so no, not right now. Well there is one thing I admit I would like." He asked "what's that?" I said "Well, if it's ever ok, I would like to be held." He went "That's ALL? Here, I can do that for you right now!" And he took me in his arms on the couch and let me cuddle in his arms. I never knew a muscled male could feel cuddly and soft like that but he did. I saw he had the most serene smile on his face, and I grew embarrassed when I realized I had whimpered with pleasure. He softly chuckled at that. After a long time of that I was going and he just smiled at me & said "You are amazing, you know that. It's a shame." I asked "What do you mean?" he paused and said "Never mind, I'll explain later." Well I found out the next night when I called, he sounded wistful & sad, then speaking slowly he said "uh... David, there's something I need to tell you. You see, a year ago I began to plan a permanent move to Europe. Before we met this month, I had spent that year arranging & paying for everything and my job and all. I'm leaving in three weeks. I never expected to meet someone like you at the last minute like this.. And I'm really sorry." I was in shock. He said "I was bored and had just been looking for others to shoot the breeze with while I waited for the moving. And I certainly didn't want more sex, please don't get the wrong idea. But I didn't think I'd meet someone like you David, you are wonderful, affectionate, compassionate and I - well, I'm falling in love with you and I find myself wanting to marry you. If I let myself do that, it will ruin things, but at the same time I feel awful leaving you because I didn't mean to hurt you. And it also makes me feel I dont deserve you for doing this to you. I just can't handle the situation. I need to leave and I'm saying goodbye before I do more damage." By that point I was in tears and begging him to please at least stay in contact with me, that I was willing to accept his being long distance. Suddenly he was in tears himself and wept "Please David, please don't make this harder than it is. Please forgive me. I love you. Goodbye." and that was the last I ever heard of him. All further tries to contact him didn't work, when I tried going to his place he was never there. Eventually it was emptied. I sobbed for days. Lots of times I would just start crying over any little thing as my heart was broken. And now it's 2005. I have no computer now & doubt I would use that dating thing now if I tried. But life has felt so dead after him. I suppose I should be mad at him, but I'm not. I still love him & forgive him. But I don't know how I'll ever meet someone like that again, even though I was left high and dry I still think he was wonderful. :-( --------------------------------------------------------------------- So that was his email. I gave the reader some advice -- see a shrink, get over it, accept that the person he met was probably screwed-up with his own problems, and this was one of those things just not meant to be. I also told him it was never too late to finally accept who he was and to try to find some happiness in his life, and all it takes is the courage to take that one step. But it still got me thinking. I thought the content was appropriate for this section, and just thought I'd share it. I also recently worked on the trailers for the real 40 Year-Old Virgin movie (which I never saw, but the scenes I worked on with Steve Carrell were very funny), and the parallels just struck me as ironic and amusing, as well as very sad. A gay version of this film is probably easier to imagine than most people think.
  8. Ah, but that can be a good thing. Ernest Hemingway was known for writing very sparse, almost-terse novels, and are a model of showing how you can omit all the fat from a story and still have lots of meat, good characters, and compelling plotlines. Not having a good imagination is a big problem! But I believe writing is a skill like anything else, and even if you know going in that you're never going to become another Stephen King or JK Rowling, you can still become at least a good journeyman wordsmith (which is how I'd characterize myself). I spent many years writing technical articles and reviews, and it was always a chore to take dull, boring factual information and try to make it interesting. Only in the last five years (after all the magazines I wrote for went out of business) did I turn my attention to fiction. My friends who've read my stuff have been bowled-over by the fact that my previous work was very nuts-and-bolts, concerned totally with technology and the inner workings of everything from computers to DVD players. But my fiction turned out to be far more emotional, much more about human feeling and experiences than anything else. One told me, "it's like you've hidden this secret identity for years," which I took as a compliment. I guess what I discovered in the writing process is that maybe what's in my subconcious is going to bubble up no matter what I do, and you might find the same thing. And even if your skills don't lend themselves to writing long novels, there's a fine art in knowing how to write entertaining short stories. Hell, even I haven't attempted to do a short story, because most of the ideas I've had are too broad. My bottom-line advice would be to read the references I gave in the Gay Writing Tips piece. I'll repost that here, and you can pick up the books that interest you. Those will provide infinitely better advice than anything anybody can tell you in a brief message on a bulletin board like this.
  9. I agree to a point. But the fact remains that I'm hard-pressed to think of a single memorable novel that doesn't tell me exactly when and where it takes place. My mind keeps taking me back to the beginning of Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho (which started as a fine novel before it was a movie), where they not only tell you you're in Phoenix, Arizona, but it tells you exactly what time of day it is, as a title. I was always struck by that, and my gut feeling is that anything the writer can do to make the story more real is a good thing. So far, none of you have come up with a reason as to why omitting the details of the location (or time) is a good thing. In both my novels (here on the website), I touched on street names, local landmarks, and all the other details that I felt added to the story I was trying to tell. If you've read either of them, I hope you'll agree with that. That having been said: when I was editing Keith Mystery's stuff, he and I got into some knock-down drag-out discussions in email on how much "local color" is too much. My joke with him was, he kept trying to tell "the history of Boston and the surrounding area," which he'd sneak in whenever his characters were driving around the old neighborhood. What he did was still done very well; I just felt it worked better cut down by 2/3.
  10. I had an interesting discussion with another writer in Email recently, and I think it's something worth debating here. This author wrote a fairly-decent story, which -- aside from my usual complaints that the story's pace was too slow and doesn't get to the point fast enough -- was very well-done, with interesting situations and well-drawn characters. What I didn't like was its lack of location or a specific time. We have no idea what city or state (or even country) in which the story takes place, nor do we know *when* the story takes place. His excuse was, if he leaves the name of the city blank, the reader is free to imagine his or her own place instead and identify with the story better. He also didn't feel that the specific time was necessary, although it's obvious from the context that it's sometime in the last 5-6 years (presence of cellphones, DVD players, etc.). I couldn't disagree more. All of the published authors I read and enjoy the most -- among them Stephen King, J.K. Rowling, Anne Rice, and a score of others -- devote pages and pages to inciteful descriptions of the precise time and location in their stories. Establishing the setting is an extremely important part of fiction; it makes the story more real, and helps the reader visualize the surroundings much more vividly. In this story, we have no real mental image of what the high school looks like, or what most of the various characters' homes look like. We know the lead character's boyfriend lives in a nasty part of town, we know it's up some stairs and only has a couple of rooms, but that at least gives us some clues. Everything else is a cypher. The key to me is to use as many of the senses as possible when establishing the setting, so the reader can see, smell, feel, and otherwise sense the place. I'm not saying this has to be done in a long or tedious way. Just two or three sentences, inserted a couple of times here and there, makes all the difference in the world. If you doubt me, read these two books: SCENE & STRUCTURE by Jack Bickham Writers Digest Books (ISBN #0898799066) and SETTING How to Create and Sustain a Sharp Sense of Time and Place in Your Fiction also by Jack Bickham Writers Digest Books (ISBN #0898796350) Either book, particularly the latter, will make a far better case than I ever could as to the importance of establishing when and where the story takes place. Bickham's point of view is that to NOT do it is simply lazy at best and a disservice to the reader at worst. He presents many examples of what works and what doesn't, and I think 90% of what he has to say is right on the money. Don't get me wrong; I think there are cases where the setting is not important or even appropriate, particularly in short stories -- I'm thinking particularly of fantasy or science fiction, where the uncertainty of the location or time might be the point of the story, like in Harlan Ellison's famous "I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream." But I think giving the reader a thumbnail sketch of exactly where and when the story takes place is absolutely mandatory in a lengthy character-driven novel. With my own work, I see these stories like little movies, and I feel honor-bound to put as much detail as I can in them, as long as it doesn't get in the way of the plot or the characters. But that's just my opinion. What's the consensus out there?
  11. I don't buy that. To me, there's 1st person POV, and there's 3rd person omniscient; there is no inbetween, in my opinion. To me, the choice is simple: if you need to tell a story solely through one character's eyes, you go for 1st person. The problem is, you can never know what's going on outside this character's own world, either in terms of story or other characters. (And I don't buy multiple 1st person POV stories, which to me are total amateurville except in the hands of master storytellers, which omits all of us.) If you need to tell a story where you can show the thoughts and actions of different people, even those far away from your lead character, go with 3rd person. Orson Scott Card, in his excellent book Characters and Viewpoint (Elements of Fiction Writing), goes into this in great detail. He proves in several examples that it's possible to tell almost any story in 3rd person, but admits (as do some of the others in this conversation) that writing in 3rd person is more difficult to master. There are other books on writing that make the same point, but none do it better than Card. I strongly encourage all budding writers to read this book. If I can offer some suggestions: Jagged Angel was the first (and so far, the only) 3rd person POV story I've written. I found it was important not to get inside the heads of multiple characters in one scene, because it gets very complicated, very quickly. I only showed other people's thoughts at a scene transition, usually when the lead character entered or exited the room, so the reader could then understand the other character's point of view. The other great thing that 3rd person does is that it allows the author to comment directly on the events of his or her own story, in the role of the "unseen narrator." This gives you the ability to set up the mood and feel of each scene, using language far more articulate and, well, poetic than your characters. Think of the unseen narrator as like a camera that can instantly crane up or dissolve to any other location -- something you can't do in 1st person, where you're stuck with just one character. I'm currently writing a story for which I did decide that 1st person POV was appropriate. But in this case, it's a time-travel situation where we have a modern-day teenager confronted with the events of 150 years ago. I felt in this case, the "fish out of water" plot would be better appreciated by readers if we saw things totally from a modern point of view. Getting into the head of a character in 1865 is too much of a stretch, for a story that already stretches credibility. I figure this keeps things much more simple.
  12. I agree with Graeme above. The problem with stories like this (IMHO) is that they tend to run out of steam at some point. To me, before you begin writing any story, you have to ask yourself: what's the point of this story? What am I trying to say here? All the famous writing textbooks emphasize the importance of having a theme, or at least an underlying message or purpose for the story. They advise that if you have trouble summing up your entire story in one or two sentences, then you have a problem. I had to mull over it for awhile, but I came up with an easy one for Jagged Angel: "Honesty is the best policy." Trite and simple, but it pretty much sums up the story. The lead character's life goes to hell and back, basically because he can't come to terms with being gay. Once he accepts it, his life goes a lot easier. The theme was more complex for Groovy Kind of Love: first, "True love is worth all the risks," and secondly, "you've got to find a way to carry on, no matter how hard life gets." Again simplistic, but it boils down everything to one sentence (two in the case of the latter). The lead character there realizes at the end that even if he had known the love of his life was doomed, he would have loved him as best he could, for as long as he could. Make the most of what you have, as long as you have it. The problem I see with serials is that they wander all over the map, to the point where you don't know who the characters are, what the focus of the story is, and really what the central plot is. The old line, "don't bore us -- get to the chorus" comes to mind. I know there's an audience for soap operas, but I don't think they work in story form. At least, I have yet to find a long continuing story that's held my interest. (Under the Hoodster's story Perry & Jesse comes closest, and has some interesting moments and characters, but even that sometimes tends to ramble too much for me.) I say, if you're going to tackle a project like this, consider doing it as a series of connected novels, like the Harry Potter stories, Anne Rice's vampire tales, Ian Fleming's James Bond novels, or J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings. Each of those books works individually as well as being part of a longer work, and I think that approach is far better than a long "serialized" story that seemingly has no end in sight. TV shows are in a separate category, because each episode can stand alone. Of course, there's always the danger for those who missed a previous show, and have no way to make any sense of the existing characters and conflicts. West Wing juggles these elements very well, and I find you can miss a few episodes of this show and still dive back in and have no problem following what's going on. I've never experienced that with a long serialized novel, especially one on the Net.
  13. I've actually *worked* on Six Feet Under on several occasions, but I have yet to see a single finished show. The last piece I saw was a gay couple who were adopting a kid, but that was a few months ago. I agree, it's a good show, but there's already so much stuff I don't have time to watch on TV as it is. I have a Tivo stacked up with about 200+ hours of crap I haven't had time to see yet... I missed most of Lost because I was out of the country for several months last year, but hope to catch up on the series via the DVDs that just came out. But I always made time for QAF, just because of what it represented to me, and also because of how well it was done as a TV show. I'm still blown away (no pun intended) by the fact that Gale Harold ("Brian" in the show) is 100% straight. He deserves two Emmys for "The Best Impersonation of a Gay Man in the History of TV." :)
  14. Just caught the final episode of this Showtime TV series tonight. As I feared, they kind of went out with a whimper and not a bang. A few loose ends were left dangling -- will Justin find happiness and success in the NY art world, or will he return to Pittsburgh? -- while other elements were dealt with fairly realistically: Brian and Justin call off their impending marriage when they realize they're both doing it for the wrong reasons, and the girls leave town for gay-friendlier Toronto. Despite my nitpicks, I really enjoyed watching this show over the last five years, particularly in that it was one of the very few honest portrayals of gay life on American TV. My partner and I have frequently wondered out loud, "man, what would our lives have been if we could've grown up and watched a show like this as teenagers?" But times are different now; one hopes it's better and more tolerant in some ways, though certainly more stressful in others. QAF premiered at a strange time in my life. Both my parents passed away within six months of each other, plus my career went through some changes as all the magazines I used to write for dried up and blew away. Only a few months after the show premiered, I got inspired to write my first novel, and I'm convinced I might not have had the courage and inspiration to sit down and try it, had QAF not existed. Anyway, here's a virtual toast, a glass of a petite Merlow, to the creators of this terrific show. Even when QAF failed to live up to expectations, I for one am glad the show was around. The characters were very real and vivid to me, and I'll truly miss seeing them every week in new stories. I hope the positive effect the show had on the world -- especially here in the U.S. -- will last a long time.
  15. Wow! Great response by WriteByMyself. I couldn't have said it better myself -- excellent job. The only thing I have to add is that there are still kids getting harrassed for being gay (or even thought of as gay) in school. Don't tell me gay people are accepted everywhere, because it just ain't true. Hell, I work in the entertainment business here in LA, and I still occasionally hear anti-gay crap from people I encounter at work. When it's appropriate, I tell them I don't appreciate stuff like that, but it's not always possible to take a stance. Quick example: I worked for years on many animated shows for Hanna-Barbera and Ruby-Spears in the 1980s. Once, a producer and a writer were lamenting about network censorship and other problems while I was working on their show. One quipped, "the network wants us to have positive role models for every minority in this show! They even want GAY role models, for god's sake! How could we put those in this show?" They laughed about that for a few moments. During a lull in the conversation, I piped up with, "well, maybe the gay kids watching the show need role models, too." The room got very quiet after that, and I went back to putting the show together for air. We got a long way to go before gay people are accepted 100% in all parts of society. I figure we're at where blacks were in civil liberty, circa 1962. We got miles to go before we can say, "free at last, free at last, great god amighty, free at last."
  16. Hey, James, I'm on the road to the same thing. My opthamologist says I have "slightly high" pressure in both eyes, and may eventually develop glaucoma. But he told me there's drops you can use and even an operation that can get it back to normal in most cases. Not a big deal, at least according to him. Here's hoping you only have a mild case... Speaking of eyesight, I'm one of the morons who went out and got Lasik eye surgery a few years ago, and lemme tell you: this crap ain't perfected, not by a long shot. I went from being horribly nearsighted to slightly farsighted, so I still have to wear closeup glasses to read or use computers. My eyes are also a lot more sensitive than they used to be. The good news is, I can get along without glasses about 90% of the time (like at the gym in the shower); the bad news is, the doctors lie to you as to what the risks are, and how good your eyes can be. Watch out for this. Check out LasikDisasters.com and see what can go wrong.
  17. I was told by a friend of mine who recently published a book through Houghton-Miflin that they have five different people read through the galleys over a weekend to weed out every last typo before it's sent off to the printers. And even then, you still see professionally-published books today with typos. That almost never happened in the 1960s or 1970s. I blame a lack of education and care, and it's a sad sign of the times. I think I saw a typo in the American edition of Harry Potter book 5, but I think it was just an omitted period. The current book has no typos, but it does have a ton of run-on sentences and weird grammar. Too many Britishisms for me, and I'm usually immune to that stuff.
  18. I think what you said at the very beginning of this thread is the most important comment. There's a bad tendency to overuse italics and other typographic elements in writing, and all the books on writing that I've read have stressed that "less is more." That having been said, I use italics for about four different things: 1) to clear up any ambiguity in dialog (as infrequently as possible): "She told me there was no there there." 2) for internal thoughts or unspoken dialog: That's odd, I thought. He's not wearing any pants. 3) for titles of books, movies, or TV shows: I put down my paperback of Hound of the Baskervilles and raced downstairs. and 4) for the (rare) foreign phrase stirred into the dialog: "Yeah," I mused. "He caught us in flagrante delicto. We couldn't get our clothes on fast enough." Beyond that, I think using italics or bold starts looking too much like a "hey! notice me!" thing.
  19. Because I've worked in TV for so long, I tend to think of stories as being divided up by commercials (or at least places where commercials would be). Granted, this makes the work episodic by nature, but I don't think it necessarily detracts from the entertainment. I just finished reading the new Harry Potter book, and it used similar cliffhangers throughout to keep the interest going. I have no problem with that, as long as it's not used to excess. Generally, what I've tried to do is end chapters at a resolution of an event. That way, it doesn't so much end at a cliffhanger, but instead ends when the problem (or situation) is resolved. In a TV situation, you'd obviously move the commercial position earlier, to force viewers to stay tuned to find out what happens. Bottom line, I don't think a cliffhanger distracts from the work at all, as long as the climax of each chapter has a point, and it doesn't come across as being forced or obvious. If the cliffhanger prevents the story from being boring, even better.
  20. And if you want a T-shirt to freak people out with, check this out: http://www.tshirthell.com I thought the one "on sleeping with frat boys" was fairly cool. Too bad they didn't have the two T-shirts I always admired from Queer as Folk: "God Made Me Gay," and "Nobody Knows I'm Gay."
  21. No. Not to me, anyway. Our only obligation is to write entertaining stories at the limits of our abilities. Some criticized the drug use in my story Jagged Angel (including the Dude, who was initially put off by it), but I felt to avoid mentioning the drugs wouldn't be true to the story, because it reflects what's actually going on in California high schools (particularly in sports). As far as I'm concerned, I barely touched on drugs in terms of how serious a problem it is. My gut feeling is that I didn't glorify it -- I just showed that it existed, kids do it, and in some cases, it fucks them up. But at the same time, my personal beliefs are that drugs are wrong for me, yet I think most of them should be legalized. I think a lot of stuff like drugs falls into the "victimless crime" category, and I think the U.S. would be a lot better off to legalize all soft drugs and go after the real problems we have. But putting heavy anti-drug, anti-smoking, or anti-drinking moral messages in fiction (or movies or TV shows) is total bullshit to me. To me, it's preachy, it talks down to the audience, and it's condescending. It also pretends that the writer's opinion is the only one that matters, and I don't buy that either. To me, I think people have to make up their own minds. As long as they don't hurt other people doing what they do, I say they should have the freedom to do it -- within reason. (That doesn't permit opening up a crystal meth lab next door, or selling crack to elementary school kids on playgrounds.)
  22. I was a reader long before I tried to write anything. The first time I had an inkling that I could write was when I took a junior college-level writing class (when I was a freshman), got hit with a pop quiz, and wrote an essay on a book I had never read before. The next day, the teacher handed back our papers and gave me a C+ with the comment: "It's clear to me that you didn't read the material, but you did such a good job faking it, I gave you a C+. You've got some talent; you should be writing more." I spent the next 20 years having two simultaneous careers -- one in LA working on bad movies & TV shows, and one as a technical writer for various magazines. I also began to read Net fiction in the early 1990s, but was astounded by the relative lack of good material. When I did run into the rare good erotic gay stories, they often shared several common elements: 1) there was a solid plot there, beyond just the sex and relationships 2) the story veered off into directions I couldn't predict, holding my interest and keeping me surprised and wanting to read more 3) the characters grow and change as the story progresses, so that by the end, it's clear to see they're very different people by the conclusion 4) the stories were full of conflict -- not necessarily violence or arguments, but real drama that came out of the situation, and not something contrived, thrown in for effect. (You may not always like what I write, but I guarantee you, it ain't gonna be boring.) and 5) there was an element of poignancy, maybe a sense of loss. I found the stories that stuck in my head were often those that weren't necessarily flat-out depressing, but at least left you with a sense of wistfulness at the end. With both my novels, Groovy Kind of Love and Jagged Angel, I strived to get all of the above into my own work. It took many months of work, along with advice from friends and fellow writers (some of whom are here on Awesomedude), to edit the stories to the point where I was satisfied with them. So, cutting to the chase, my advice is: see if you can distill what elements attract you in those stories written by others. Make a list, and dissect the stories to see how the author achieved those results. Then, come up with an original story idea and write it, bearing in mind the story and character points you want to make.
  23. Gee, I kind of did that over a year ago with my How to Write Gay Fiction piece sometime back. The problem with books like Strunk & White and the style guides is that they're as dull as goddamned dishwater. They don't really apply so much to the creative writer as they do to writers in general, particularly English students writing term papers. To me, books like these aren't specific enough to help those of us who are here, trying to write fiction. That having been said: a good dictionary and a good style guide (and even S&W) do belong on the shelf of any writer. At the same time, they're not the types of books that compel me to pull them out and re-read them. The ones I cited in my article, though, are far more instructive, more entertaining, and more useful, plus they hold up well if you read them more than once. To me, knowing how to spell and knowing basic grammar are given. The hard stuff is gaining the skill to construct a plot that makes sense and creating characters that grab the reader's attention.
  24. Gee, call me crazy (and many do), but I don't see any comments posted above that directly relate you to or your work at all. Blue just posted a general question about the reasons for having negative themes in gay stories. I see no problem with having a discussion on something like this, and it seems like a reasonable topic to me. Hell, I have all kinds of ongoing negative themes in my stories, beyond the usual "gay harrassment," including murder, blackmail, drug abuse, violent car wrecks (several), and the death of literally dozens of characters. But I see no reason to get "weary" having to discuss anything, and it's not a question of defending your choices as a writer. If you don't want to participate, that's cool. But don't slam the whole discussion because it makes you "tired."
  25. Sure there is. But if a story is all sweetness and light, there's no adversity for the hero to overcome. Without conflict and drama, you don't have an interesting story. You wind with a very bland series of events where nothing really happens, where everything is happy and beautiful all the time. As nice as that might be to experience, it's not pleasant to read. That's an ongoing critique of mine with a lot of amateur fiction on the net. Granted, that doesn't mean every piece of gay fiction has to have extreme emotional roller-coasters where the hero is perched on the ledge of disaster, ready to commit suicide at a moment's notice. I think a balance can be made so that things don't go too crazy. BTW, Blue, if you want to practice what you preach, show us something you've written. I think you've got a good head on your shoulders and some good ideas, and I'd like to see what you say be put into practice. Instead of telling us you'd like to see more positive stories, WRITE one and show us exactly what you mean. One last point: I was recently reminded why I get so turned off by a lot of gay "literature" out there, even among such highly-acclaimed authors as Armistead Maupin and Gore Vidal. I recently bought and read a few classic collections of gay fiction published over the last 40-50 years, but was appalled by the overwhelming negative tone of most of the stories. Many of them ended with the hero on the verge of suicide, or (literally) dissolving into death as the story concludes. Others were just terribly downbeat and depressing, either with the hero rejected by his lover, or the lover dying, or otherwise getting rejected, without a single optimistic note. (The recent acclaimed novella Brokeback Mountain suffers from the same problem; well-written, but uplifting it ain't.)
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