May 14 2012

Are You a Critic, or Are You a Writer?

As usual, I have been having myself a good laugh at other’s expense over on the website that hosts a huge chunk of my works. I have been reading the very over-the-top argument and certified rant regarding a certain newly Hollywood popularized trilogy. To put it bluntly, aside from the writer of said rant going on about how badly written the books are, the originator of the post apparently also insists upon picking apart the entire symbolism of the storyline. This whole jaunt into critiques has me once again shaking my head and wanting to make a few points in regards to not only writers, but readers as well as critics who insist upon putting their two cents worth into the unraveling of a storyline.

First I would like to point out that the originator of the post/rant has made two very common mistakes in the critiquing process that most critics make but that every critic should have better sense than to make in the first place. In critiquing, the rules are simple, and I have pointed these out on many a post in regards to the matter.  The rules that have been broken that the poster in the rant I am referring to are as follows:

1.  Attempting to pick apart the symbolism in a storyline that you did not write. 

Here is how this works.  Unless the author specifically details every single aspect of the symbolism in a novel/storyline, he who did not write the novel is only guessing. Don’t guess. You can debate and discuss amongst yourselves all you want, but to openly try to tell others what the symbolism actually is in the story is not only incredibly presumptuous, but shows your lack of experience as a writer if you are one, and your lack of intelligence as a critic if you are just an avid reader. By doing this you have also simultaneously broken another very important rule when it comes to critiquing a story:

2.  Do not presume to know what the author is thinking or where the author is going with a storyline. 

Again, unless an author sits down and spells out every single last detail, no one will ever know every single last secret to the symbolism in a storyline. Chances are there is even symbolism in the work that the author was not even trying to make and are just happy coincidences. Many times over there is symbolism and references that readers will –think- the author was trying to make when he/she had no intentions of making such symbolism in the storyline in the first place.  To be brutally honest, you are not the author, so stop acting like you know what he/she was getting at, what the symbolism is all about, and what the author was or was not trying to accomplish.    

Critics and readers are notorious for trying to figure out what an author was getting at, trying to accomplish, and trying to unravel all the intricate symbolism of a story. Writers naturally want to do this because we have very curious minds and want to try to spread everything out into a neat little line. Again, debating such things are fine; I often enjoy myself a good debate with other authors on what was being conveyed in novels that I have read. It’s a good intellectual exercise to see what others think about certain storylines, to see how writers can read the same novel and find so many different aspects in the symbolism.  Where writers should tread lightly, however, is when they get so full of themselves that they think they actually know what the author was thinking. 

It is when we stop looking at storylines as authors and begin to try to analyze every single detail that we forget what it means to be a writer, to create the storylines and weave the intricate web that will have others trying to figure out what we were thinking at the time and what we are trying to convey with specific scenes and characters. In the end, writers should either be critics or writers, but never both.  Because it is when we stop writing as storytellers and begin writing as critics and editors that we lose not only our creativity, but the respect we have gained as a purveyor of creative literature.

Apr 11 2012

Overworked, Underpaid, Underappreciated: The New American Dream

Overworked, Underpaid, Underappreciated:

The New American Dream

 

Part I:  Laments of a Former Housewife

Like most people of my generation, I grew up watching wholesome American shows like “Leave it to Beaver” and “The Brady Bunch,” shows that portrayed a husband who was the bread-winner and a wife who took care of the house and had time to actually raise her children. The husband had little more than a high-school diploma and a few college courses under his belt, mostly just a ‘certificate of completion’ for some vocational studies.  The only people who had anything above an Associate Degree were the doctors and lawyers.  The men could graduate from high school at the age of 18, spend a year to eighteen months in college, and have a decent paying entry-level position in a corporate business by the time they were old enough to drink alcohol.  By his mid-twenties he had worked his way up the corporate ladder and is now making enough money to afford a wife, two family vehicles, a two-story home with a white picket fence in a lovely suburb, all on his own and without a second income.

Some say this was just Hollywood glamour, but after speaking with countless people over the last few months, I have come to realize that the lifestyle portrayed by “Leave it to Beaver” actually was the normal American life for a huge chunk of the population.  The man earned enough money without any type of special degree to afford a nice home, a decent vehicle, put food on the table and clothes on his children’s backs, and the wife was able to stay at home and raise her own children and be there in the afternoons when they got home from school to help them with their homework and listen to their problems.  They were not so busy trying to work and make enough money to make ends meet that they could not listen to what their children were trying to tell them was wrong in their lives, or that they were having trouble with their homework or a teacher or a bully at school.  Back then, a man could easily provide for his family and both parents were there for their children when they were needed. They were not so preoccupied with trying to pay their $2000/month mortgage on their run-down 900 square foot mistake that they could not take out an hour a day to help their kids with their homework. They did not stay up half the night worrying how they were going to put food on the table or wonder when their home was going to get foreclosed on or which utility was going to be cut off next or if the bank would send someone to repossess their car. Single parents were not teaching their children how to live off the welfare system and filling their heads full of nonsense about how they were owed everything in life and should not have to work for it.  Families were just that, families, with a wife and a husband and kids. They worked hard, were taught manners and the value of a dollar. They had time to discuss world issues and took pride in their jobs.

I feel that I was somehow lied to as a child, allowed to have my head filled with a dream that no longer exists.  I always felt that a woman working should have been a choice that she could make, not a necessity that our worn-out economy has forced upon us.  A two-income family should not be the norm, a necessity to make ends meet, the only way that a family can keep food on the table.  And if two incomes are brought into a household, it should not take both incomes just to keep a roof over your head and food on the table.

Two incomes should denote excessiveness, the $250,000 home and BMW sitting in the driveway, not a 75-year-old house full of termites and water damage and two fifteen-year old cars that are barely working and children dressed in rummage sale clothes. Yet this is exactly what the American dream, and the American population, has been reduced to.  Two people working a full-time job and sometimes even a part-time job, just to keep marked-down clearance meat in their children’s stomachs, rummage sale clothes on their backs, the electricity on so they don’t freeze to death in the winter, and a car that may or may not crank when they get in it to go to their job in the morning.

In days gone by, the American dream was to get married, buy a home, have children, and retire by the age of 55 and spend the next ten to twenty years of your twilight years touring the country and seeing all the wonders that you put off to care for and raise your family. These days marriage is something that is avoided at all costs, children are seen as a popularized accessory rather than a family member, and home is wherever the rent is cheapest this month.  People are once again being forced to be nomads, wandering around their cities or states looking for a job that pays well enough to keep food on the table and what passes as a home these days.  In the seventies, a good babysitter was your very responsible seventeen year old next-door neighbor who would watch your kids all weekend to earn enough money to buy a few movie tickets and popcorn and maybe pizza beforehand.  Now having someone watch your children is big business, and with any big business comes corruption and many plans on how to screw the little guy out of their hard-earned money but no real plan on how they can make their business successful with legitimate business practices.

For all intents and purposes, the American Dream is changing, and perhaps not for the better.

 

Up next:  Part II; The New American Dream: Corporate Corruption & Personal Bankruptcy

Apr 9 2012

More on Critiques of the Written Word

 

As authors who pour our hearts, soul, blood, sweat, and tears into our art form, we do not take well to criticism … of any type.  After all, no one likes to hear that someone does not like something that they not only put so much time, energy, and effort into, but basically put a part of themselves into as well.  And let’s face it, even constructive criticism is still negative no matter how nice you try to be about it.  So with this thought as my basis I decided to expand on criticism of the written word.

First off, I would have to say that the single most important thing to remember as a critic, and as a reader of a story, is that your dislike of a story for any reason aside from grammatical and spelling issues is your fault, not the author’s. And even the grammatical and spelling issues cannot be laid fully at the feet of the author as authors are, after all, only human, as are their editors and proofreaders, and no amount of spell checks and all the editors in the world will ever catch 100% of grammatical and spelling errors.  So, if you do not like a story, it is neither a reflection of the author’s ability to write nor their ability to be a good story teller. The dislike of the story rests solely on the reader.  Unless you come across 300 pages of text-speak,  a never-ending wall of text, or something that looks like it was typed by a five-year-old and no one even gave it so much as a courtesy proof-read, anything else (writing style, storyline, genre, etc) that you say about a story is your opinion and as such has absolutely no merit and should never be used as a basis for a critique.

With this thought in mind, allow me to expand.  When it comes to critiques, do not second-guess an author or assume that you know where a story is going. You are not the author; you do not know what drives the characters, the storyline, or the author’s reasoning behind events.  It is insulting and disrespectful to assume you know more about the storyline than the author.  As I have said so many times before, do not assume that you know how to write another person’s storyline better than the originator of that storyline.

Do not question an author’s writing style.  I have said this so many times on so many blogs and articles that it is getting redundant, yet I am still getting ‘critiques’ on my writing style.  An author’s style is their trademark; it is what sets them apart from all the tens of thousands of other authors on this planet.  If you are going to critique an author’s style, the heart of what makes an author unique, then stop. Don’t bother wasting your time because the last thing an author is going to do, is willing to do, or should ever be asked to do is change that part of them that makes them their own unique writer.  If you don’t ‘get’ an author’s style or do not like it, then either deal with it or don’t read it, but don’t criticize it.

Also, do not assume that you have the right as a reader to demand changes to an author’s storyline or their style. You can make suggestions, but since it is the author’s creation and their copyrights that we are being given privy to, it is ultimately their choice as to the style and storyline of the work at hand.  Again, just because you think it would have been better if the storyline had went in another direction does not give you the right to demand that an author change it, or even bring the suggestion up.  Again, this goes back to assuming that you know what an author is thinking or where they intend to go with a storyline.  For all you know, some insignificant character or point in a storyline could be picked up ten novels down the road.  So stop assuming and just go with it, or don’t read it, but don’t bring it up.

And perhaps the most important rule in providing critiques is to always, always keep in mind that there is an actual person behind these stories and novels.  The authors have created something special to them, put down a piece of themselves, and are allowing us the privilege to take part in something very close to their hearts.  To criticize their work, even when you are trying to help them, is to criticize the person behind the work.  Always think of how it would make you feel to hear your critique regarding something that you spent so much time on. Authors are not faceless entities or some pseudonym printed on the cover of a story; we are living, breathing human beings with real emotions. To trash an author’s work is to trash the author, and last time I checked, if this happened in the real world, chances are it would result in black eyes, broken noses, and a restraining order.

Feb 25 2012

Akito, The Dark Flame

The following is an excerpt from a work in progress.  “Akito, The Dark Flame” is part of the Before the Sun Rises series and introduces a character that will have a large part in the third novel from the same series, a novel called Blood’s Embrace.  This story tells the tale of how Akito becomes a vampire and a bit of his tragic past.  *Please note this story has not went through any proofreading or editing phases.

 

Akito, The Dark Flame

a Before the Sun Rises story

by Nicola C. Matthews

 

“Eddie, if you do not concentrate, you will not be able to control all of that Chakra,” Stealth looked sternly at his young charge, seeing the young man’s brow furrowed in obvious pain.

Eddie slung his head slightly, trying to dislodge the brown curls which had stuck to his forehead.  He succeeded in causing more of the loose waves to stick to his sweat-soaked skin.  He grimaced, his eyebrows nearly meeting in the middle as his brow furrowed even more.

“I’m …. trying,” he grunted, his bare chest heaving heavily as he struggled to breath.

The veins in his arms were standing out against the well-defined muscles.  His arms were outstretched, his wrists together and his hands making a mirrored “C” formation, the classic cup for which even now the tiny ball of energy was flicking inside of his fingers.

Eddie hissed slightly as he let the breath out that he had been subconsciously holding, his knees bending slightly.

“Good, Eddie, very good.  Don’t forget to breathe.”  Stealth walked slowly around Eddie as the young teenager stood in the middle of the dojo, the black pants of his gi pooling slightly around his bare feet.

Stealth stopped just to the side of his student, eyeing the small ball of energy critically.  “Carefully now, I want you to concentrate really hard, make the ball more compact.  The trick to making your Chakra more effective is to condense it within itself.”

Stealth got closer, his black eyes nearly level with the flickering ball of green energy held within Eddie’s hands.  The ball grew slightly, becoming brighter.  Eddie heaved in a giant breath of air, his body beginning to shake with the exertion of trying to keep so much life-force balled up in such a tight restraint.

“Good.  Now, focus that energy, let it slip past your fingertips, let it flow out, but keep it connected to your inner self.  If you don’t keep it connected-“

Stealth’s words were cut off as the green ball of fire shot past Eddie’s fingers and careened around the room.

“Keep it under control, Eddie,” Stealth warned, stepping back quickly as the green ball flew past his head, nearly singeing the long black hair that was tied neatly back in a long braid.  “Keep it connected, Eddie, concentrate.”

“I’m trying!” Eddie screamed in frustration.  In that single instant his concentration was lost, and the ball of fire grew to triple its original size, the Chakra coming unbound from itself and smashing into the opposite wall.

The entire side of the dojo exploded outward, sending bits of wood and debris out into the street.  A few people screamed as they quickly took cover from the flying splinters of bamboo.

“Fuck!” Eddie hissed under his breath as he swiped his arm across his forehead, the sweat causing the loose curls to curl up tighter around his hairline.  “Sorry about that, Stealth.  I’ll fix it in the morning.”  Eddie looked around the dojo, grimacing at the various holes riddling the training area.  “And the rest, too.”  He gave his master a lop-sided grin before collapsing onto the floor, picking up the bottle of water a few feet away.

“You are getting better,” Stealth said, taking note of the various sized holes in his dojo.  “Notice how much smaller the holes have gotten over the past few months.”

The two of them looked around the training area, the various holes and repairs making the place look more like a war zone than a place for training in the martial arts.

Eddie leaned forward to look out the three foot round hole his Chakra had just made in the south wall, seeing the double garage door of the motor shop next door caved in on itself.  “You think old man Kiminick will notice?” he asked with a laugh.

Stealth moved silently around the large room, replacing the various weapons in their respective stands.  “I think my bank account will notice when I get the repair bill next week.”

Eddie snickered slightly, chugging down the last few swallows of water.  “So how come you know all about this Chakra stuff but I’ve never seen you form so much as a single spark of energy?” the nineteen year old asked as he pulled on the white shirt of his gi.  “If you know so much about it then you have to be able to control your own Chakra, right?”  Eddie glanced over at Stealth as he gathered his shoulder-length brown curls into a pony tail.

“We’ve been over this, Eddie,” Stealth said to him as he picked up a broom and tossed it over to his student.  Eddie caught the instrument with ease, immediately starting to sweep the floor of the large room.  “Chakra comes from the living energy within and around us.  Vampires are dead, therefore we do not have any Chakra to control.”

Eddie snorted, his brown eyes rolling skyward.  “Yeah, that’s what you keep saying, Master Stealth.  But I don’t buy it.”  Eddie propped his arms up on the handle of the broom as he looked over at the vampire a few feet away.  “Chakra is just energy, and energy is never really lost, it just gets transferred, rearranged if you will.  So dead or not, you still have some type of energy flowing through your body because if you didn’t, you wouldn’t be up walking around.”

Stealth sighed.  He was tired of having this argument with his young pupil.  They had been going over this same scenario for the better part of four years now.  Eddie was convinced that Stealth’s lack of Chakra was the result of some mental block.  Stealth, however, had not been able to make so much as a single spark from his Chakra ever since his sire, LeeLee, had embraced him all those years ago.  He had always been taught that Chakra was a living energy, and since the vampire body was no longer technically living, he would never have use of his Chakra again.  He had taken his trainers at their word.  But now, in this new scientific age, his young charge was determined to prove that his Master’s life force was still lingering deep inside of him somewhere, just waiting to be unleashed once again.

Eddie laughed softly.  He knew his Master was having that internal battle again.  He wanted so much to believe that he had not really lost his Chakra, but at the same time, if it could be proven that Stealth’s own masters had been wrong in this one aspect of his training, what else had they been wrong about?  If he began questioning all those decades of training, his entire belief system could come crashing in on itself.  Stealth was nothing if not a stickler for the rules that governed his life and the Council.  To know that they had been wrong on something so fundamental in his training would mean the end of everything that made sense in his life.

“Relax, Master,” Eddie told him as he went back to sweeping the floor.  “Even if you could somehow unlock your Chakra again, it doesn’t mean that the Council has been wrong about everything.”  Eddie glanced over to where Stealth was once again hanging weapons against the wall.  “Trust me,” Eddie said quietly, “just because you find out that someone has lied to you your whole life doesn’t mean you have to give up and wallow in self-pity.”

Stealth smiled at the words of wisdom from someone so young.  Eddie, above all the others whom he had been charged with over the years, knew all too well about not giving up in the face of great odds.

“You are right, my young apprentice,” he said as he moved towards the door.  “Enough training for one night.  You have worked hard these past few months and deserve a nice break.”  Stealth stopped long enough to pull his shoes onto his feet.  “Let us go down to the L and L for a few drinks.”

Eddie’s head popped up at the mention of one of the roughest vampire hang-outs in Abyss.  “Really?” he asked, almost holding his breath as he waited for Stealth to begin laughing at his own joke.  But Stealth didn’t start laughing, only stood waiting by the door.  “You are really going to take me to a vampire nightclub?”  He stood still for a split second before sprinting over to the door and pulling his own shoes onto his feet.

“But you’ve always said I was too young and inexperienced to be trusted in such places.”  Eddie looked over at his Master, thinking that this whole thing had to surely be a joke.

“And why not?” Stealth asked as he ushered his young charge out the door.  “You are never going to learn what it means to be a vampire assassin if you do not get your hands dirty once in a while.”

 

*******************************************************************************

Feb 22 2012

Yes, I’m Still Alive … Barely

I know it has been ages since I’ve made any blog posts, or story posts, or given any type of update on what’s going on in the wide, wonderful world of Nicola.  I’ve been busy, too busy perhaps, and also sick for a few weeks as well.  I’m still trapped in my Evil Day Job (that thing that pays the bills but does not involve writing so it is EVIL by any means) and am still putting finishing touches on the new website on top of still trying to write.  More updates will come out shortly, so please be patient.  In the meantime, does anyone know of a good job in Mississippi? I’m about ready to jump off the 5th floor of my current employer’s building!  😉