anna katherine

In a recent post I talked about the smell of cigarette smoke being used a description. Smell is actually an incredibly evocative sense for me, and I love reading it and working with it in my own writing. Readers of Salt and Silver may remember that our main character Allie spends a lot of time talking about what things smell like. For example:

I open my eyes when I feel Roxie’s hand on me. I know it’s her. I can smell her the way I can smell demons and Ryan. The way I can smell Amanda (vodka and a slowly rotting liver and the Dr. Pepper-flavored lip gloss she used for years because I gave it to her); the way I can smell Stan (stale makeup and stale sex that never quite washes off and the burned plastic smell of a perflectly executed wallride on a really top of the line skateboard); the way I can smell the diner (bleach, pancakes, pot roast, blood); the way I smelled the dead underneath Bath & Body Works (blood, blood, copper, iron, blood, and horrible horrible flowers).

For me, describing the smell of something can bring a level of realism to an otherwise fantastical narrative — it can be a way of giving the reader an entrance into something they’ve never experienced (and in the case of demons, probably never will). It can also be an immediately accessible universal, if you want to play around with those — almost everyone knows what burning wood smells like, or the smell of the air after a thunderstorm. If you need to do a quick description to catch the reader up, throwing in a universal scent can get you where you need to go quickly and with a bit of panache.

Explore your own senses beyond just the visual — scent, texture, hot/cold/wet/dry, sounds, pressure… Then see how it can be applied to your writing to create something interesting and evocative for your reader.

Here’s an excellent blog post on a similar subject: Read React Review‘s “Smells Like Romance Spirit: On the super noses of our heroines and heroes.” Allie has a psychic nose! That is my only excuse.

Author crazies — we all have them. Fears and worries that — as artists, craftsmen, and business people — drive us a peculiar kind of nuts. One of the biggest crazies, though, is the thought, “I’m the only one thinking this.” One by one we’ll be taking those thoughts out of the back of our brains and showcasing just how universal they are. In this entry, Anna talks about impostor syndrome.

Kat and I wrote Salt and Silver in six weeks. Then we had a week for editing and a week to review the copyedit and a week to review the proofs. It’s true that we were editing right through the proof stage — part of that is because we knew we could, and part of it is because we hadn’t had enough time to properly write and get feedback. (That’s why there’s a huge plot hole in Salt and Silver, although I am told by readers that they consider it a feature rather than a flaw. To each her own, I guess!)

We’ve been writing the sequel for almost two years. Kat had a baby, I moved across the country, a lot of other life happened. But we know what it’s about. We know who the characters are. We know what the ~~artistic theme~~ is. We know what our creepy-cool twist is, and what makes it all sexy, and what the romance trope we’re turning on its head is. We know the characters’ voices.

Yet we’ve been writing and rewriting and rewriting the same 20,000 words for almost two years. First we wrote it in the first person POV of the hero. Then in limited third person POV for just the heroine, then just the hero, then swapping back and forth. At some point in between there, we changed the plot — twice.

We’ve finally settled on first person from the heroine’s POV — and we’ve got the plot pretty worked out — so now it’s time for us to buckle down and write. Kat’s already done a lot; I’m working on it now. Since she sent me the file, I’ve written five short stories (between two and six thousand words each), edited almost eight hundred thousand words of other people’s work, watched both seasons of Fringe (twice!), both seasons of Southland, Nigella Lawson’s entire oeuvre, and read several million words of novels, nonfiction, fanfic, blog posts… Oh, yeah, and I write two blog posts every day (sometimes three!).

The book’s file sits on my desktop, and I look at it every day. Sometimes I even click on it, open it, write a word or two. Then I am gripped by a paralyzing fear and I close it again.

After all, if Kat and I ever do finish this book, it will be completely obvious to everyone that Salt and Silver was a fluke, that I am not a writer, that I am holding back Kat’s literary genius, and that my computer should be taken away for the good of everyone. Or, almost worse than being a bad writer… it will be discovered that I am a mediocre writer. Not the worst, not the best, always missing that one something that makes characters come alive on the page.

This is, of course, ridiculous. I know I am a good writer. I know there are people who enjoy my writing, that it works on a fundamental level. I know that I can put together an excellent sentence, a compelling scene. I know that I know what my real flaws as a writer are (plot, as anyone who’s read my solo stuff can tell you!), just as I know that sometimes I can actually make my work stronger by writing my flaws into it. I know that Kat will fix whatever missteps I make, just as I fix hers — no ego, no bullshit; I have her back and she has mine.

But I can’t really convince myself of all this. I still sit in front of my computer and think, “Kat should write this book by herself so that I don’t ruin it.”

How to get around this? I still don’t know. I am still paralyzed by these thoughts of my perceived inadequacies. Even telling myself that I am writing my parts of this book for Kat, who loves my writing (as I love hers) doesn’t help.

Friday night, though, as I did my daily staring at the file on my desktop, I thought about when I started writing original fiction again. I’d stopped writing fiction in 2000, when I started working in publishing — and didn’t go back to it until after I’d left my full time job for freelancing. (In between, I wrote hundreds of thousands of words of fanfic, which I found — and continue to find — deeply satisfying.)

In March 2007, one of my friends thought I wasn’t writing enough (fanfic) for her entertainment and she offered to pay me a dollar to write her a one hundred thousand word science fiction novel — “the crappiest science fiction novel you can,” is what she said to me. I wrote 25,000 words of what eventually became Salt and Silver, and the responses of the people I sent it to were wildly varied. Some, like Kat (and the friend for whom I wrote it), really liked it. Others told me that the protagonist (proto-Allie, then completely unnamed) was “unlikeable” — and some other words I won’t reprint.

The response that tickled me the most, though, was from one of my mentors, who pinged me on IM to say, “Great googly mooglies, you really can write.”

When I read those words, I got a rush of wonderful warm sparkly happiness — and reading them now, remembering how good it felt to impress this person whose opinion I thought (and continue to think) very highly of… well, that’s awesome. It makes me feel awesome. It makes me feel like I can do anything.

I also went back and read a bunch of old emails Kat and I exchanged while writing and editing Salt and Silver — that was intensely fun, and rereading those emails reminded me of that. It reminded me that I love writing stuff she’s going to read, because she loves reading it — and the more I write, the more she’s going to write, and I love reading what she writes. It’s a symbiotic relationship of total awesome — and if I don’t write, I don’t get to participate in it.

Finally, I thought about all the other times I thought that if I did something, people would see me for the impostor that I am. Things like taking that job in publishing in the first place, and starting an imprint at age twenty-three, and doing a photo essay for my undergraduate thesis, and working with the expensive, professional audio/visual equipment in college. Learning Greek. Writing articles about the publishing industry, negotiating contracts for hundreds of thousands of dollars, deciding which books should be published. Baking a soufflé. Sewing a quilt, competing in a cartwheel competition, knitting a sweater, partitioning a hard drive using DOS commands.

I don’t know that I’d agree that “the best way out is always through,” or that the only way to handle fear is to stand up to it and bring it into the light of day — but the old adages seem to hold true in this case. The more I write, the better I feel, the easier it is to keep writing, the less I feel like I’m faking it and someone’s gonna call me on it.

All I can do is keep saying, “I can do this” — and then do it.

Author crazies — we all have them. Fears and worries that — as artists, craftsmen, and business people — drive us a peculiar kind of nuts. One of the biggest crazies, though, is the thought, “I’m the only one thinking this.” One by one we’ll be taking those thoughts out of the back of our brains and showcasing just how universal they are. And to highlight this, Kat starts us off with a discussion of what every author fears — or at least, she thinks every one does…

A comedian goes onstage and starts a routine.  Let’s say she’s got two choices:

1) She starts an anecdote that the audience can relate to on a universal level (i.e., something that anyone in the audience might be familiar with, either personally or through someone they know) — the humor comes out of exploring this universal concept, sometimes from a new or personal angle.

2) She starts with an anecdote that is, on the face, supposed to be universal, but instead is so deeply particular (and often disturbing) that the humor first comes from the audience realizing that the comedian’s “universal” experience is actually just her own, sometimes embarrassing one — and then again from watching the comedian realizing that her “universal” is anything but.

That second option can be funny in a comedy routine, but it’s something that I worry about all the time: What if I’m trying to describe something I think everyone can relate to, but instead it just shows how weird I am?

Here’s an off-the-cuff example: I happen to love the smell of cigarettes and cigars. I don’t smoke, but I’m happy to inhale and sigh dreamily if someone happens to be smoking near me. I know I’m not in the majority, though, so it’s important for me to remember when it’s appropriate to use the scent of cigarette smoke as a description.

I mean a couple of things when I say “appropriate” — obviously no one out there can tell me what I can and can’t write (though in reality, I have to keep in mind my editor, the copyeditor, the proofreader, and a few thousand readers…), but if I’m in the business of creating an experience in the audience’s mind, then writing something confusing or jolting isn’t going to help me. An unusual description can be appropriate when using it to highlight a character; it can be inappropriate when setting a scene using a third-person omniscient narrator to evoke a particular image in a reader’s mind.

Examples!

Good idea for a general positive-smoke description: Early morning, and the air was thick with fog and wet-wood campfire smoke.

Bad idea for a general handsome/yummy description: He leaned forward, the sweet smell of an early morning cigarette still fresh on his clothes.

In modern Western society these days, smelling like cigarette smoke isn’t going to be seen as a positive — in fact, without further description, the poor character might be immediately labeled as a bit untrustworthy, or deceptive. I find it hot, but my reader probably won’t.

This whole “hot or not” issue can get particularly awkward in romance, where the author is explicitly trying to induce a state of arousal in the reader. (Um, right? That’s what we’re all doing… aren’t we?) A particular description could be absolutely perfect for a vast number of readers, and completely horrible for the rest — as authors, we can’t know what’s going to work. We have some ideas — these days, for instance, a dubious-consent sex scene isn’t necessarily going to be something the majority of readers are going to find attractive as a major romantic jumping off point. But other times, our “universals” may just be whatever floats our own boat, and it’ll be a hit-or-miss proposition for any readers out there (who may then judge us for it. “This author likes dubious consent! GROSS.”).

For me, there’s a difference between knowing that you’re using a maybe-not-universal, and not realizing that your “universal” description is anything but.

My author crazy about universal descriptions: I can’t tell if what I’m describing is actually going to be universally understood! And what if someone thinks I’m weird for thinking it is? This haunts me as I write, and can be a big writing blocker — here’s my process to get beyond it:

1. Who cares if it’s not universal? It’ll probably work for somebody, and that somebody will be very, very happy.
2. Okay, I care that’s it’s not universal. Double-check whatever the problem phrase is with a trusted beta reader.
3. What if the beta reader is just as weird as me? Go back to not caring.
4. Not caring still doesn’t work. Fine. Recast the description to be a bit more universal.
5. I don’t want to give up my beautiful prose! That thing with the cigarette smoke really works. Is there a way I can recast the scene to make it clear that the smoke is supposed to be attractive? Well, if I make it a judgment call on the part of the female character, and maybe tie it in to some memory… maybe having to do with a past relationship that ended badly? But was worth the heartache? Hm…

And the next thing I know, maybe I’ve got a more rounded character and a better setup for my plot. This crazy might have a positive spin to it.

…or maybe not! Such is the power of the author crazies. Is there a description you’ve stumbled over that didn’t fit the bill? Did you write something that someone else choked over? Everyone’s a little mad here — join in!

As an editor, I have always been really concerned with whether or not the readers would be able to hold a picture of each character in their minds. I stand pretty opposed to the trope of looking in a mirror or comparisons to celebrities to describe the characters (Wow, she thought, standing in front of the full length mirror in her bedroom. I look exactly like Jennifer Hudson, except I have a chin dimple! We could be twins!), but I support working their physical characteristics into the text somehow.

As an author, it was much less important to me! At the time of writing the story, I was much more concerned with getting across the characters’ personalities. What do I care what people think they look like?

(Kat and I did, though, have extremely specific pictures of the characters in our heads. We are method writers; we know who is queer and who is not; we know who is a person of color and who is white; we know who went to college and who did not bother; we know all!)

Readers know what Allie looks like because she’s on the cover of the book. (Actually, her skin is less pale in the book than on the cover! But, yeah, she’s white, with darkish hair, and wears a pendant with the Seal of Solomon on it. She’s not anywhere near as thin as the woman on the cover of the book, though.)

When I wrote the novella we ultimately based Salt and Silver on, I had a very specific picture in my head of the character of Ryan. I knew exactly what he looked like, down to the glint in his eye. Yet nowhere in the book is he concretely described for the reader!

I did a search for the phrases “Ryan’s eyes” and “his eyes” to see if we ever even described them. Ryan closes his eyes, and rolls his eyes, and there’s sympathy in them at one point, and later in the story they are sad, hot, lost, uncertain, and filled with something Allie’s never seen before.

(Okay, now I am laughing. I would like to do this with every book I’ve ever read! I actually both love and hate books in which eyes do amazing things, like crawl across the room and bore into people’s souls and jump from one person to another. Just picture a pair of eyes jumping around, and you will never read a scene like that the same way again!)

Anyway, his eyes are “hooded and dark” and have “tiny lines crinkling the corners” — but most of the time? Most of the time Ryan has pulled his Stetson down over his eyes so they are hidden.

We don’t describe his hair. We don’t describe his skin. We mention that he’s taller than Allie, but not how much taller — but we do say he’s shorter than Owen. We describe his scars more than his looks (and, come on, that’s pretty hot!).

Maybe this is a shortcoming, but I don’t think so. I don’t think so because it means that someone can read the book and picture whoever they want in the role of Ryan — Jensen Ackles or Taye Diggs. Or John Cho. Or Sendhil Ramamurthy, or Kirk Acevedo. Or whoever!

And that is awesome.

We’ve said this before, but if you review Salt and Silver on your blog (or someone else’s), please let us know! We’d love to link to your review from our site.

And here’s our newest review! This one comes from Aja, who can be found at livejournal (with a mirror at dreamwidth).

Salt & Silver is hellbent on giving you dark social satire with your demonslaying. In addition to populating the book with a host of complex, dark, memorable characters of all sociocultural backgrounds [...] the authors have gone one further and taken us on a taut, well-paced journey straight from our privilege zones directly into Hell; and, you guys, Hell is New York City, with all its excess and oblivion and disconnection from reality on display in horrific, compelling beauty. more…

Phew! Horrific, compelling beauty, huh? Wait until she gets the sequel about the vampires…