THE PARANORMAL EQUATION

This past semester, I had the good fortune to design and teach a college seminar on vampires in film, literature, and folklore. I learned a lot (and also made some less encouraging observations concerning today’s young people and their sad lack of intellectual whimsy and imagination), but one thing that stuck out in my research is the constant academic insistence that vampires in stories have to stand for something else.

In other words, many scholars say that Dracula isn’t really about a creepy dude in a castle who likes to feast on blood and comes to London to find a fresh supply. It’s really about 19^th-century England’s collective anxiety about women’s rights, homosexuality, heterosexuality, immigration, orthodox religion, Darwinism, economics, history, travel, and the list goes on and on. I have to admit, I could identify with some of my students when they rolled their eyes and asked, “do the people who write this junk actually believe this or are they just trying to get published?” I suspect in some cases, that might be true—the old edict “publish or perish” still holds true, and the simple fact is that there isn’t as much left to write about as there was 50 years ago in the field of English lit.

On the other hand, there’s no doubt in my mind that anything authors write is washed in their own cultural currents, though perhaps in some cases the process is subconscious. This question nags at me when I write paranormal romance, too. Am I just telling a good story to entertain readers, or does the stuff I write contain hidden clues to my (or perhaps my readers’) fears, fetishes, or hang-ups, erotic or otherwise?

It’s not just vampires that factor into the equation. Werewolves may stand for something, too, though I admit I haven’t done as much research into the literature of lycanthropy. The English professor in me could speculate that turning into an animal is at some level a rejection of our human constraints and perhaps an attempt to reconnect with nature, or our baser natures. In contrast, vampires (at least the post-Dracula kind) are uber-civilized, dazzling potential victims with their quaint antiquated manners, material goods, and castles. They are cut off from nature in a way werewolves aren’t, since they are generally an “indoor” species, whereas werewolves stalk the woods. Also, these days, actual sex with a vampire is fairly common in erotic romance, whereas encounters with weres in their shifted form are still considered controversial, though they can be published with warnings.

It all makes for some interesting speculation. In the end, though, vampires and werewolves are still considered appropriate material for popular fiction rather than “deep” literary efforts (though there are a few exceptions, like The Historian). This just reminds the writer side of me that most people don’t spend time thinking about the abstract equations suggested by the books they read (“Hmmm…what does this vampire represent in terms of my own cultural anxieties?”). They just like a good story with intriguing characters and lots of cliffhangers. I think that’s why I enjoy writing paranormals, too. Unlike churning out long academic treatises, it never gets boring.

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GO, SPEED WRITER, GO!

by Cassandra Pierce

A friend of mine, who is usually working on a novel or two of her own, really floored me the other day by sighing wistfully and saying, “I wish I could write as fast as you do.”

I admit I was completely caught off guard. When I do sit down for a serious writing session (usually when a deadline is looming, like now), I spend half the time at my computer castigating myself for my sloth. To some extent, speed is relative. The rough-rough draft of HEIRS TO DARKISLE, consisting of approximately 40,000 words, took 45 days to complete, but the second draft (90,000 words, 15,000 of which I eventually cut) took about 8 months to revise. The initial idea was born as an ebook about eighteen months later.

So I do manage to produce pages…and chapters…and eventually, stories, essays, and books. Like most writers, though, I wish I could complete more pages, more chapters, and more books, and all at a much faster pace. Everyone probably remembers looking down in shame when some snarky English teacher trumpeted the fact that Voltaire penned his classic satire Candide in three days (it’s probably a myth, but then again they didn’t have cable TV or the Net to distract them in the 18^th century).

I admit I’ve been tempted by those splashy Web ads that promise “a publishable book in 30 days,” only to dig deeper and discover that they’re not all they’re cracked up to be, mostly because their definitions of “book” and “publish” are not the same as most people’s. I did buy at least three books with that same “30 days” promise in the title (much cheaper and more realistic than the web-based lessons). I’ve also tried novel-writing software, which provides all kinds of spreadsheets and plot wheels and character cards, among other toys, for the aspiring writer to tinker with. Thank goodness for free demos—some of those programs cost hundreds of dollars!

And the result? I had modest success, and plenty of fun, with some of these tools, though I never completed a novel-length manuscript using any of them (much less the next Candide). I don’t write any faster. Even the “first draft in thirty days” book gave me only partial success, since my first draft took me 45 days. In the end, I always go back to what works best for me: a pad of regular blank paper, a word-processing program (just the plain screen, no bells and whistles), and a couple of reference books (Word Menu is a favorite). I did realize one thing, though. In the beginning stages, it’s all about word count.

Most everyone who writes has probably heard about NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month for the uninitiated). It’s a sort of contest to produce 50,000 words in 30 days (November is the official month, but there’s nothing to stop anyone from doing it privately at any time). What it boils down to is writing 1,667 every day, and doubling that for every day missed. I didn’t sign up for the contest, but I did try to keep that pace on my own for a while. As you can see from my second paragraph, I didn’t quite make it, technically speaking. I got stressed out. But I did produce words, and pages, and drafts. I also conquered my fear of the blank page or screen. Knowing I had to reach a certain word count freed me from caring whether what I wrote was pitch-perfect, something that has always held me back. Revision is a whole different topic, obviously. But generating something to revise in the first place is the key.

All this leads me to believe there really is no magic trick that will boost one’s writing productivity (besides, anyone who discovers one would be crazy to share it with her competition). Maybe, in time, I will learn to whip out a draft that needs minimal revision in a month or less. For now, I’ll just have to keep plugging along at my own pace and suffering the pain that results when the words just won’t come. What I now know is that I don’t need to spend time and money on special (and in some cases overpriced) computer programs or gimmicky, misleading writing e-courses in order to be productive. It’s still all about planning, drafting, and most of all revising. I’ve accepted the fact that I just need to sit at the computer, put on some mood music (New Age or instrumental movie soundtracks work well for me), and pound out whatever I can in however many days I can.

I’m still not totally immune to the promise of a quick fix, however. I bought and loaded voice recognition software on my computer, thinking I could dictate future novels as I play out the scenes in my head. I haven’t really gotten into it yet (too much performance anxiety and too many hilariously misinterpreted words on the screen), but I’m going to keep trying. One thing I know for sure: I’ll have to keep the windows closed when I get to the hot parts of the story. Don’t want to give my neighbors the wrong idea about what’s going on in my bedroom!