Less of Her by I. Verse

I'm really glad you're here! I hope you stay around.

I'll be here so long as I'm still typing with two fingers. But once I make that leap to three ... boy howdy. I just may have the confidence by then to finish a novel or twelve, publish them and become famous.

Baby steps, small index-finger sized baby steps.

[McCamy_Taylor]

Re: you should only write what you know, I would like to present into evidence...

Molly Bloom (James Joyce)

Guitar and Milkman (Toni Morrison)

The entire life's works of William Faulkner, Virginia Woolf, D.H. Lawrence.

And every speculative fiction writer who has ever written 1) about space travel 2) from the point of view of an alien 3) a vampire story 4) a tale about a sentient sword 5) time travel 6) zombies 7) ghosts. Indeed, the whole point of speculative fiction is speculating what things would be like if they were very, very different.

Now, you can make a case that male focused pornography about lesbians being less than realistic. The same is true of female focused pornography about gay males. Gay men often object to the way that women portray gay men in their porn, just as gay women object to the way that men portray gay women in their porn. No problem, there are plenty of gay men who write about gay men and gay women who write about gay women.

Re: is it porn on not, I would like to paraphrase. I can't define porn but I know what it is when I read it.l And "Less Of Her" was not porn, anymore than "Ulysses" or "Naked Lunch" are porn---though both were prosecuted in the U.S.

[Lester Curtis]

And every speculative fiction writer who has ever written 1) about space travel 2) from the point of view of an alien 3) a vampire story 4) a tale about a sentient sword 5) time travel 6) zombies 7) ghosts. Indeed, the whole point of speculative fiction is speculating what things would be like if they were very, very different.

When you think about it a little, "speculative fiction" need not be limited to SF, fantasy, and horror . . . do you suppose that Agatha Christy murdered someone (or had ANY involvement in a murder) for each of those books she wrote? Did Zane Gray spend thousands of miles on horseback, slinging lead? Might as well include historical novels, too, since much of the dialog is made up, if not a lot of the action.

If nobody ever wrote anything but what they knew, most public libraries would be about the size of my kitchen.

If nobody ever wrote anything but what they knew, most public libraries would be about the size of my kitchen.

In a nutshell, we re really don't know anything at all?

Rude.

[Lester Curtis]

If nobody ever wrote anything but what they knew, most public libraries would be about the size of my kitchen.

In a nutshell, we re really don't know anything at all?

Rude.

No. Maybe exaggerating a bit, but take out all the fiction, and how much is left? Oh -- and take out all but a handful of the movies, while you're at it.

The entire life's works of William Faulkner, Virginia Woolf, D.H. Lawrence.

And every speculative fiction writer who has ever written 1) about space travel 2) from the point of view of an alien 3) a vampire story 4) a tale about a sentient sword 5) time travel 6) zombies 7) ghosts. Indeed, the whole point of speculative fiction is speculating what things would be like if they were very, very different.

People, you're missing the point. Write what you know is: taking your environment, siphening it through your brain, and about it. Sergio's story about dogs in this month's webzine came about because of his love for dogs.
William Faulkner wrote about people he knew in the county he grew up in (see the FACTS below)
William Cuthbert Faulkner (born Falkner, September 25, 1897 – July 6, 1962) was an American writer and Nobel Prize laureate from Oxford, Mississippi. Faulkner worked in a variety of media; he wrote novels, short stories, a play, poetry, essays and screenplays during his career. He is primarily known and acclaimed for his novels and short stories, many of which are set in the fictional Yoknapatawpha County, a setting Faulkner created based on Lafayette County, where he spent most of his life, and Holly Springs/Marshall County.[1] Faulkner wrote what he knew!!!

Anne Rice began writing about vampires because her daughter died and she wanted to envision a world where her daughter could still be alive, although dead. Anne Rice wrote about her pain - she wrote what she knew!!!

The truly great authors write what they know - whether it's the 1940s plains, with mass migrations of people heading towards California and a 'brave new land' - or sci fi writers who are geniuses, and can see the future due to intensive research (Arthur C Clarke). Great authors write about what they know - Shelley wrote Frankenstein because of a nightmare she had - she had lived through the experience in her mind. She wrote what she knew!!! Inspiration can come from anywhere - but it's important for us as writers to remain true to what we know.

The Time Machine, written by HG Wells had the following inspiration: The story reflects Wells's own socialist political views, his view on life and abundance, and the contemporary angst about industrial relations. It is also influenced by Ray Lankester's theories about social degeneration.[3] Other science fiction works of the period, including Edward Bellamy's Looking Backward and the later Metropolis, dealt with similar themes. Wells wrote what he knew!

Bottom,

In all honesty, we could bicker back and forth all day long 'till the North Koreans become the new super power. There are great examples from both sides detailing What you know and What you don't know. The fact of the matter is, the basic purpose of writing a fictional story, in my own opinion, is to entertain. Entertain, entertain, entertain.

Verse accomplished that goal. He entertained his audience and that's all that really matters. The personal fact that you hate men writing about women and lesbian sex scenes that never happened shouldn't cloud the fact that Verse entertained his audience.

If he were writing a Non Fiction story involving lesbians, a kiss and a tentacle, then sure... your argument is valid.

But he didn't. He wrote a fictional story. Fiction. Made up.

Mayhaps you're right and mayaps you aren't. The truth is, we could be putting our time and efforts into commenting on other stories instead of having a spaztastic love fest about this one.

my 2 cents

If one has loved
or
one has lost in love there,
there is the experience to draw from.
If one has never loved but desired,
then there is the experience to use.
To be alive , to think, to feel and ponder,
and then to speculate and argue.
there is the writer.

Go home everybody, go write.

[McCamy_Taylor]

Faulkner wrote from the point of view of women, Blacks and even the mentally challenged. What did Billy know (in real life) about being Benjamin? Nothing. But Benjamin's voice was the one that allowed him to start The Sound and the Fury---a love poem to a sister (the little girl in the pear tree with the dirty underwear) he never had. And since he never had a sister, what did he know about the brother and sister incest that dominated the second part of the book?

We write what we know...but we also write what we want...and we write what we fear....and we write to reshape the world...and we write for money...and we write for love (like Rimbaud)...and sometimes we just write because we have to.

The essential story behind "Less of Her" is very real, very pertinent to this moment. We live in a time when both men and women but predominantly women will spend their money getting plastic surgery...and then will drink and smoke themselves into the grave. Almost every actress in Hollywood is growing an Abe Lincoln chin because they are all on human growth hormone in a desperate attempt to hold back the aging process---even though the stuff will cause cancer to go wild. Almost every young actress in Asia has had her eyelids "fixed" and her lips plumped. Tummies get "tucked", you can hardly see a natural breast in movies anymore. I can only imagine what men think when they are having sex with a woman for the first time and they feel the rock hard lumps that stand up straight by themselves when she is lying down. As a physician, I have examined plenty of them, and they are freaky. Even the women who do not get plastic surgery deform their feet in spiked shoes and wear under-wire bras and paint their face like geishas.

I am a woman, and I find it scary. If I was the female protagonist of the story and my girl friend was getting pieces chopped off, I would be disturbed, too---the same way I am when real life women mutilate themselves aspiring towards an inhuman aesthetic ideal.

[McCamy_Taylor]

Oh, and are we getting close to the record number of posts about a story?

What

is

the

record?

Story record is: Cleopatra by E. S. Strout - total posts 60 (December 2010)

Poetry record is: The Mischievous Troll by Mark Edgemon 148 (October 2009)


Yes, controversy is an attention getter...territory in which I am personally unfamiliar.

I was a bindlestiff myself for quite a spell. I worked in the same country that the story is laid in. The characters are composites to a certain extent. Lennie was a real person. He's in an insane asylum in California right now. I worked alongside him for many weeks. He didn't kill a girl. He killed a ranch foreman. Got sore because the boss had fired his pal and stuck a pitchfork right through his stomach. I hate to tell you how many times I saw him do it. We couldn't stop him until it was too late.

John Steinbeck, interview by The New York Times, 1937

This was my original point: characters work best when they are actually part of an author's environment - not just a stick character. Steinback wrote the character of Lennie with someone in mind, someone who moved him, forced him to write about it.

I too think Verse's tale is a good one - as far as the basic plot. I'm not interested in the story from a cosmetic perspective as much as people selling kidneys for cash, and the like. It's a good tale, I think it could have been better, however - as far as the characters - which is why I commented on it.

In every story I write, I know the characters - they are people in my environment. When I meet a character I consider myself very lucky indeed.

[Lester Curtis]

Oh, and are we getting close to the record number of posts about a story?

If it weren't for topic drift, it wouldn't even be close . . .

[Wormtongue]

Oh, and are we getting close to the record number of posts about a story?

If it weren't for topic drift, it wouldn't even be close . . .

Hey! Topic drift counts, dagnabbit! Some of our most interesting conversations are totally off topic!

[Wormtongue]

Better not submit my Zombie BDSM story here then.

Whyever not? I can see that one being HILARIOUS!

Oh, and I believe you are a small Jack Russell terrier.

Better not submit my Zombie BDSM story here then.

Whyever not? I can see that one being HILARIOUS!

It's really, really not.

Synopsis:
Bridgitte seems like the male fantasy of a perfect woman; Hot, blonde, French, sex obsessed and wildly uninhibited. Wade gets little sympathy from his friends when he explains that the relationship isn't all it seems, that his social life is slipping away. It's clear that he has to leave Bridgitte before things go too far but he isn't prepared for what his mad, demented lover is willing to do, the lengths she will go to, to keep her man.

Erotic Horror - small 'e' big 'H'. 100% lesbian and tentacle free.

I was a bindlestiff myself for quite a spell. I worked in the same country that the story is laid in. The characters are composites to a certain extent. Lennie was a real person. He's in an insane asylum in California right now. I worked alongside him for many weeks. He didn't kill a girl. He killed a ranch foreman. Got sore because the boss had fired his pal and stuck a pitchfork right through his stomach. I hate to tell you how many times I saw him do it. We couldn't stop him until it was too late.

John Steinbeck, interview by The New York Times, 1937

This was my original point: characters work best when they are actually part of an author's environment - not just a stick character.

Allow me to enter into the game of quotes. Here's one from Joseph Conrad; from the autor's note on his novel 'The Secret Agent':

As to the personages whom the absolute necessity of the case--Mrs Verloc's case--brings out in front of the London background, from them, too, I obtained those little satisfactions which really count for so much against the mass of oppressive doubts that haunt so persistently every attempt at creative work. For instance, of Mr Vladimir himself (who was fair game for a caricatural presentation) I was gratified to hear that an experienced man of the world had said "that Conrad must have been in touch with that sphere or else has an excellent intuition of things", because Mr Vladimir was "not only possible in detail but quite right in essentials". Then a visitor from America informed me that all sorts of revolutionary refugees in New York would have it that the book was written by somebody who knew a lot about them. This seemed to me a very high compliment, considering that, as a matter of hard fact, I had seen even less of their kind than the omniscient friend who gave me the first suggestion for the novel.

So it would seem Joseph Conrad had crafted believable characters from intuition rather than from acquaintance.

[McCamy_Taylor]

In every story I write, I know the characters

Me, too. Except I "know" them the only way any of us "knows" anything---through my own perspective. My characters are actually parts of me, much the same way that characters in dreams are actually part of the dreamer. I choose to set that Part of me in an exotic location or time or situation in order to better understand the Part by seeing how it responds to changed circumstances. One of the important changed circumstances is a gender change. Male authors strive to understand their female characters and females work hard on their male characters, as a way to move beyond societal norms of what constitutes self.

[Lester Curtis]

In every story I write, I know the characters

Me, too. Except I "know" them the only way any of us "knows" anything---through my own perspective. My characters are actually parts of me, much the same way that characters in dreams are actually part of the dreamer. I choose to set that Part of me in an exotic location or time or situation in order to better understand the Part by seeing how it responds to changed circumstances. One of the important changed circumstances is a gender change. Male authors strive to understand their female characters and females work hard on their male characters, as a way to move beyond societal norms of what constitutes self.

Nicely stated!

[TaoPhoenix]

Okay, I've been quiet lately, but I shall help towards the push to the reply record!

I picked up on some examples of "write what you know" changing half way through. No one "knows" time machines, or vampires, or Frankenstein's monster, or nanobots or ... stuff. So then the next followup is that those stories create emotional concepts around the literary devices. Real Life is in many ways boring because stuff just happens the way your particular life morphed into the ways things happen. One colossal point of fiction in my view is that you can darn near take absolutely anything, and anyone, in any time, in any world, and sometimes in other galaxies.

So since we don't "know" all those exotic people and things and places, we're either empathically or allegorically extrapolating the results (depending upon whether the story plays "straight up" or is more of a "hidden commentary".) So that means that a writer can create any emotion on the page that he/she/(it!) wants, and provided it has a few basic mechanics, voila! (Melodramatic intone) This Piece Of Writing Has Become A Story.

So then most commentary descends into "the Author has decided to present These Emotions and These Experiences. Do I find them insightful or not?" We only have "two and a half genders" so the combinations of romantic experiences aren't that high. So given (to be cautious) an entire country's population, are we really saying that we can't locate two women for whom this story rings true! There is a deep difference between "The ______ Experience", in All Important Capital Letters, and "an experience". (Concept partially borrowed from a French Class 20+ years ago.) So that is why the notion of "Authentic" is tricky, because that implies holding up to A Standard That Shall Not Be Deviated From.

There's elements of Turing Tests here. For the same reason many important writers took male pen names, sure you can't "be a Vampire", so then all that matters is "was the result insightful".

Okay, I've been quiet lately, but I shall help towards the push to the reply record!

I picked up on some examples of "write what you know" changing half way through. No one "knows" time machines, or vampires, or Frankenstein's monster, or nanobots or ... stuff. So then the next followup is that those stories create emotional concepts around the literary devices. Real Life is in many ways boring because stuff just happens the way your particular life morphed into the ways things happen. One colossal point of fiction in my view is that you can darn near take absolutely anything, and anyone, in any time, in any world, and sometimes in other galaxies.

So since we don't "know" all those exotic people and things and places, we're either empathically or allegorically extrapolating the results (depending upon whether the story plays "straight up" or is more of a "hidden commentary".) So that means that a writer can create any emotion on the page that he/she/(it!) wants, and provided it has a few basic mechanics, voila! (Melodramatic intone) This Piece Of Writing Has Become A Story.

So then most commentary descends into "the Author has decided to present These Emotions and These Experiences. Do I find them insightful or not?" We only have "two and a half genders" so the combinations of romantic experiences aren't that high. So given (to be cautious) an entire country's population, are we really saying that we can't locate two women for whom this story rings true! There is a deep difference between "The ______ Experience", in All Important Capital Letters, and "an experience". (Concept partially borrowed from a French Class 20+ years ago.) So that is why the notion of "Authentic" is tricky, because that implies holding up to A Standard That Shall Not Be Deviated From.

There's elements of Turing Tests here. For the same reason many important writers took male pen names, sure you can't "be a Vampire", so then all that matters is "was the result insightful".

Holy-Lactose-Tolerant-Cow, Batman! Once I got through all the big words, which completely discombobulated my brain housing group, I sat back and thought: "Now that right thur is an awesome response!"

[TaoPhoenix]

Holy-Lactose-Tolerant-Cow, Batman! Once I got through all the big words, which completely discombobulated my brain housing group, I sat back and thought: "Now that right thur is an awesome response!"

Awww, thanks. But it still makes me a little sad that my notes produce that kind of response. : (

Awww, thanks. But it still makes me a little sad that my notes produce that kind of response. : (

You're a super intelligent guy! When writing non fiction, write how you think. I don't think Einstein worried nights about public perception (or he would have chosen a hair stylist).

[Robert_Moriyama]

Awww, thanks. But it still makes me a little sad that my notes produce that kind of response. : (

You're a super intelligent guy! When writing non fiction, write how you think. I don't think Einstein worried nights about public perception (or he would have chosen a hair stylist).

But then who would Don King (Google him, ya lousy kids) have used as a role model?

You're a super intelligent guy! When writing non fiction, write how you think. I don't think Einstein worried nights about public perception (or he would have chosen a hair stylist).

But then who would Don King (Google him, ya lousy kids) have used as a role model?

Okay, here is a brilliant response...a response that happens once in a mayan calender. Are you ready?

Instead of "Googling" Don King - how about "Yahoo" Serious? http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-z4eD5plJZLY/U ... erious.jpg

Pretty fly for a white boy!

You're a super intelligent guy! When writing non fiction, write how you think. I don't think Einstein worried nights about public perception (or he would have chosen a hair stylist).

But then who would Don King (Google him, ya lousy kids) have used as a role model?

Okay, here is a brilliant response...a response that happens once in a mayan calender. Are you ready?

Instead of "Googling" Don King - how about "Yahoo" Serious? http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-z4eD5plJZLY/U ... erious.jpg

Pretty fly for a white boy!

F Don King! He ruined what could have been the greatest heavyweight boxer of all time!