After five hours in Photoshop and a hell of a lot of eyestrain, Shinji Kato from NIHILISM:

(click the image for full-size)

Tablet-drawn, mixture of styles. I’m experimenting a bit so the styles aren’t blending together quite right yet, but I figure with some practice I’ll be able to get it straight.

This version of Shinji is 18, a senior in high school. I feel like there’s something a little wrong with me for drawing a high school student who looks like that.

Those of you familiar with Shinji probably find him a bit odd looking, since his hair’s shorter and inverted: silver on black instead of black on silver. He’s also more solidly built (well, anything’s more solid than my old spider-leg art style) and darker, somewhere around the appropriate color for a tanned Japanese boy instead of the death-pale color he used to be. Just as the concept had to evolve to be viable as a YA novel, so did the characters.

Those of you not familiar with Shinji, well…you have no idea what I’m talking about?

I…need to go do something that doesn’t involve my eyes and the computer. I’d wanted to try a drawing of Roman and another of Ken, but I’m all blurry and eyesore. So…later.

I’ve written two posts and then deleted the drafts because they weren’t quite right, weren’t really things I felt like discussing here…or they seemed preachy without any real point. I haven’t been blogging much because really, there’s only so many times that you can hear “I’m working on X story, I had problems with X story, I fixed them / I moved on to Y story when I got stuck.” So I’ve only been blogging when I feel I have something worth saying, and for the past week most of what I’ve had to say about writing, querying, etc. has been things I prefer to keep to myself. So…I guess, just for the sake of posting once this week, I’ll just pop on a vague status update in listy-list form:

• Haven’t missed a day on the 1k a day challenge yet.
• Discovered this may not be the best for my writing process, as forcing it is a good way to kill a story. Live and learn. Hitting the goal of 1,000 words doesn’t make them stink any less when all those words are trash. Eau de Literary Roadkill.
• Revived NIHILISM in story form. Go ahead and groan, Sihaya and Indikaze. SHINJI THE ANGSTBUNNY LIVES.
• Started watching Sita Sings the Blues, which has amazing animation and music.
• Got a few more partial requests on SHADOW’S BREATH.
• Got a few rejections, too. Either nice personal notes saying it’s a good story, I’m a good writer, but it’s not for them…or the usual “dear author” form letters. Onward and upward.
• Told my doubts they can kiss my shiny metal ass, and figured I can try to write a better story while waiting to see if an agent will pick up SHADOW’S BREATH.
• …though I also finished chapter one of SHADOW’S VOICE. Not working on that seriously, though. Sell SB first, then worry about the sequel. Although Roman is now popping up in my dreams. In Cabo. With the Kingpin. Yes, from Marvel comics. You really don’t want to know.
• Got really sick of hearing a thousand contradictory, argumentative predictions on the future of publishing. Also, the Apple tablet. Sweet honking baby jesus.
• Made some shiny new writer friends on Twitter. The large majority of them are batshit insane. That’s okay. I fit right in.
• Got a few good nibbles on editorial jobs; response so far has been positive. Looking good. And behaving myself in public while I try to get a foot in the door. Which means I probably shouldn’t be calling people batshit insane.
• Took a stab at writing a classic romance novel.
• Failed spectacularly and hilariously. I’m a little rusty on what goes where when there’s a woman involved.
• Realized drab, blow-by-blow lists like this are dull as hell.
• Signed off.

Guilty not-so-secret confession: I love romance novels. I started reading them as a boy, when they were my only outlet to secretly explore certain things that confused the hell out of me. As an adult I have a little-indulged soft spot for romance, and adore a smart, engaging romance novel with a good mixture of conflict, wit, heart-warming moments, and of course the steamy pages that make romance novels what they are. In my later years I’ve grown a bit more discerning about what makes it onto my shelf of favorites, though; it’s not enough for the books to have lavish descriptions of period dress and a swarthy, broad-shouldered, swoon-worthy hero. I need characters I like, relationships I can understand, love scenes that don’t make me snortgiggle at the euphemisms (or if they do, it’s with that sort of charming self-awareness that many exhibit), and plots that won’t unravel with the simple question of, “Well, why didn’t you just tell him that like a normal person would, saving this entire intricate mess from happening?”

So lately I’ve been rereading some old favorites, as well as exploring a few new titles from the authors of said favorites. Some are modern, some are historical, some are the classic bodice-rippers, but in a large number of them I’m noticing a disturbing trend:

Controlling, domineering, irrational men with very few redeeming traits. They’re insensitive, bullheaded, temperamental, impossible to talk to with any level of honesty, misogynistic, arrogant to the point of self-delusion, sadistic, prone to using physical force to get their way, borderline (and often outright) cruel, difficult to reason with once they’ve made a conclusion, and generally in some position of authority over the heroine’s life and well-being – whether placed there by others, rank, an unfortunate and perilous situation, or themselves. These traits, while superficially infuriating to the heroine, in the end only serve to endear him to her as signs of what a man he is, a true man’s man, an uncompromising force of nature who will protect her and eventually give her many fat babies. And naturally his flaws are forgivable because he’s handsome as the devil and the most amazing lover on earth, and he knows it.

I get the lesson: love isn’t perfect, but it can pave the way for accepting a few character flaws in your mate. And I’m aware that all these traits can exist to some measure in real men, in a variety of concentrations and combinations. And I’m aware that many women (and men) have different tastes in what makes a man attractive. But seeing all these traits combined to such extremes that they make an unappealing caricature of a dominating man-child, I have to ask…

Is this really what women want in a fantasy man?

Wow, has it really been a week since I posted? Feels like an eternity. I just haven’t had anything worth saying – but today, something caught my eye. On Twitter, I follow a user who’s basically nothing more than a feed of all the writing and editing jobs posted to Craigslist in every major city. And as a flood of posts rushed by, I saw this:

Seek Literary Agent (World)

“What?” thought I. “Surely this can’t be right.”

So I clicked. I clicked, and stared in blank amazement – for yes, it was exactly what it seemed.

Seek Literary Agent (World)

Ivy League Latino writer with completed works seeks Literary representation. First Novel is written in the style of Magical Realism; screenplay, television pilot and stage plays are part of the package. There is one short film written in Spanish, as well as a stage play in same. Let’s break into the huge Hispanic literary market. All works have copyrights, and are in professional format.

* Location: World
* it’s NOT ok to contact this poster with services or other commercial interests
* Compensation: 50% of First Sale, standard fee after

Oh. Oh, lawdy.

Don’t do this.

The scary thing is, this isn’t the first time I’ve seen something like this.

Flat, plain fact: you will not find your agent on Craigslist. Finding an agent isn’t like finding a hookup with someone with compatible fetishes (really? You like to do what with guacamole?), or even like finding a normal 9-5 job. Agents don’t trawl Craigslist looking for new clients; they don’t have time. Anyone on Craigslist claiming to be an agent is either a scammer, a troll, or someone who thought being a literary agent would be “fun,” styled themselves as one, and then went looking for clients despite having no experience, no industry contacts, no plan, and no way of getting their unfortunate clients a deal*.

Agents don’t come to you. You go to them.

They’re too busy handling business for existing clients, dealing with interns, attending conferences, and slogging through the slush of query letters, partials, and manuscripts from potential clients – and when they’re done with that they’re generally off having personal lives, not poking around Craigslist looking for your brand of genius. Don’t expect them to do the work for you. Look up agents who rep your market; resources like AgentQuery, QueryTracker, and the Publisher’s Marketplace are invaluable. Send properly-pitched query letters, according to their instructions; if you don’t know how to write a good query letter, Google is your friend. Find out what kind of writers’ conferences host events suiting your market, attend them, and arrange for face-to-face pitch sessions there.

Take the time to do your research and learn how this business works. Don’t think you’re just going to fling yourself out there, and agents will come running.

Especially when “out there” is Craigslist, where you’re basically painting a target on your back and saying “Screw with me; I’m gullible and lazy, and expect someone else to make my career happen for me.” You’re more likely to find a three-way with a goat** and a purple speckled alien from the planet Grarrwron than to find a legitimate agent.

*There is one exception to this. Once I saw a legitimate agency posting to Craigslist, looking to expand from nonfiction into fiction titles and seeking authors with completed manuscripts. It set off my warnings so strongly that I checked with Victoria Strauss over at Writer Beware, and she confirmed that despite the odd practice, they were indeed legit. Bizarre, and very much not the norm.

**Goats are becoming a trend around here lately. Anyone else find that disturbing?

Last night on Twitter, a friend compared restructuring her novel to climbing Everest without gear or a guide. My response?

“People have lived on Everest without modern technology, climbing pitons, nylon rope, or expensive cold-weather gear. If people can survive on Everest with fires, huts, and goat skins, you can make this novel work.”

Fortunately she was smart enough to get what I was driving at despite my muddled analogy, and dove into her goatskin hut to get some work done. But the conversation left me thinking, during my usual bout of late-night insomnia:

Books were once scratched out in cuneiform on clay tablets, each word a painstaking labor, each page heavier than an entire hardcover book. Parchment and ink were probably a miraculous invention to the Babylonians and Assyrians, and still light-years behind typewriters we now consider primitive. For centuries our written literature was transcribed entirely by hand, with archaic tools; it may have been time-consuming, may have been difficult, but they got it done. Here we sit surrounded by high-end computers, specialized word processors, plotting and diagramming programs, printers that can spew out a dozen copies of a manuscript in a fraction of the time a Benedictine monk might have spent copying a single page by hand. Research tools are only a click away, with the internet instantly delivering information to save us the month-long trek by ass donkey to look up one Latin phrase in an obscure, crumbling book stashed somewhere in the Carpathian mountains.

So why the hell do we turn writing into such a difficult process?

Maybe we’ve made it too easy. Maybe without the dedication required of more traditional forms of transcription, we’ve lost the discipline and patience necessary to the art of writing. Maybe it’s time to climb our personal Everests without the thousands of dollars in specialized gear and the rescue helicopter hovering overhead – and maybe with the shiny, distracting toys taken away, we’ll learn how to work with our words rather than struggling against them and making the process more difficult than it has to be.

So step away from the internet. Close Facebook. Close Photoshop. Close that game. Close your e-mail. Close Wikipedia, too (what are you doing fact-checking there, anyway?). If you’re not inclined to write by hand, then close everything that isn’t just you and your words. No shiny plotting tools; no easy outlining programs; no fancy fonts and formats. Just you, the words, and an empty page.

And wrap yourself in your goatskins to just write.

Lately I’ve seen a rash of writers with the idea that they don’t have to perfect their book as much as possible – because surely when they’re discovered, agents and editors will recognize the potential for greatness and fix the flaws in their book. What? Rejected? But why?

Yet if they do get a critique with their rejection, rather than being grateful they whine because while the agent or editor told them what was wrong, they weren’t given explicit, line-by-line instructions on how to fix it or what they wanted in place of the problem areas. Why? Why didn’t the agent/editor/etc. tell them what to do to make their book great, so they could go on to become the darlings of the publishing world?

News flash: because that’s not their job.

Agents and editors don’t fix mediocre books. They hone and sharpen already-good books. If they tell you there’s a problem, it’s up to you to fix it. When they give you a critique, it’s not a guidebook that you follow letter by letter: swap characters A and B, change this letter, that color. It’s an open-ended ticket, a road with many directions, and it’s up to you to have the talent and the maturity as a writer to decide which path to take. Your critique will tell you the problem; your ingenuity and hard work will uncover the solution.

Will it be the right solution? That depends on how good a writer you are. Agents and editors can give you guidance, can catch your mistakes…but it’s your job to know how to improve your book. It’s your job to use that guidance, to not shirk change, to know your craft well enough to take flaws and turn them into answers. Whether you seek an agent or take other routes to publication, you’ll never find your way if you embark with the idea that your book is “good enough” because someone else will whip it into shape.

Your book is like your child. You wouldn’t expect someone else to raise your children for you, to teach them the values you want them to possess, to show them right from wrong. So don’t expect agents, editors, or even critique partners to fix your book, or to nanny you through fixing it yourself.

Thank them for pointing you in the right direction, and then take responsibility and nurture your book to maturity on your own.

Irrefutable fact: what you do on the internet can affect your life. Spouses have found evidence of marital infidelity on Facebook; people have been fired for things they said on blogs; friendships have ruptured over tweets; and on a more specific front, agents have passed over writers because they found blogs, Twitter posts, MySpace journals, and the like badmouthing agents and publishers, demonstrating overall diva-ish behavior that bodes ill for working with them, or just showing off their crazypants. The crazypants they wear on their heads to hide the tinfoil hats that keep the aliens out. By the way, the aliens are the subject of their next book. It’ll be all about the probes. No one understands their genius, and the publishers are all secret pawns of the aliens who are trying to keep Mr. or Ms. Crazypants from telling the world the truth. Zardoz has spoken.

You get the idea.

At this point you can no longer assume that the internet grants true anonymity, or that your internet life can somehow remain separate from your real life. We live in a digitally connected world where screen names are now tied to photographs, business is conducted over e-mail, IP addresses can be traced, and one part of building an audience is becoming known in online venues and maintaining an identifiable presence.

So when doing that…how much do you hold back?

I hold back a hell of a lot. I keep a lot of my personal life and frustrations out of this blog, because I don’t want the world at large to know my private business. My insecurities, moments of doubt, and worries over rejection are just that: mine. No one wants to listen to whining about that crap. I curb most of my fouler language; I want to publish YA novels, and it’s generally not a good thing if YA writers are slinging the F-bomb about. I barely mention work, partially due to a non-disclosure agreement and partially because I learned my lesson about being indiscreet with work a long, long time ago. Political rants – well, sometimes I post those, but tend to keep them to myself more often than not simply because they aren’t very interesting. I’m neither radical left nor radical right, and with my tendency to overthink everything and try to see all perspectives, it’d make for pages of political reasoning posts that no one wants to read. The only things that’ll get me to flare up are gay rights or rabid, hurtful intolerance of any kind.

Thoughts on the publishing industry? I’d say I curb those, but there’s really not much to curb. It is what it is, and frankly energy is better spent trying to work with the machine and joining the effort to correct its flaws rather than railing against it.

At the same time, I don’t hold everything back. I’m gay and love my boyfriend very much, and I don’t care who knows it or who has a problem with it. I’m a sarcastic asshole, and I think everyone knows I make little attempt to hide that – no matter how I might try to hide how squishy I am underneath. Western centrism in fiction, the dearth of accepted minority main characters, and token stereotypes of exotic/ethnic characters bug the hell out of me, but don’t stop me from enjoying a good book no matter the race of the characters. I have an unholy love for weirdly-flavored martinis, and if anyone takes issue with a legal adult having a drink on weekends (YA writer or not), they can unwad their damned panties. I’m an atheist, and have spoken freely about the fact that while I have no problem with any organized religion as long as they don’t advocate harm to others, my lack of faith is my choice – and I expect my choice to be respected as much as I respect others’ choice to believe whatever they believe in. My family and I haven’t gotten along in the past and I’m having typical comedic problems integrating with my boyfriend’s family, and it’s not a big deal who knows it. Everyone has family problems of some sort, and I feel it helps me identify with people I meet online to know we share that common bond of familial frustration on one level or another. It’s a very human experience, a very relatable experience, and one I don’t mind sharing with others as long as that sharing doesn’t delve into any private things.

These are the things I keep to myself, and these are the things I place out in the open as part of my public persona. While part of having an online presence (and part of being an adult) is knowing when to speak and when to shut the hell up, and while discretion is the better part of valor…at some point you have to add some color and life lest you become just another faceless screen name with no voice and no lasting impression on anyone.

For the sake of online professionalism sometimes you have to hold back even when you don’t have anything really crazy to hide. Sometimes you have to play it safe, until you’ve felt out your place and know how to find the balance between speaking your mind and saying things that you’re afraid will come back to bite you in the ass later.

But at what point does holding back strip you of all personality, until you’re playing it so safe that there’s no reason for anyone to give a damn at all?