One Angry Monkey

There’s one key issue which dungeon-masters everywhere seem unable to agree on — the use of profanity in fantasy novels. For some reason people like to think of medieval society as this pristine environment where the innocent inhabitants are unsullied by the concept of swearing, let alone the reality of it.

Uh. WTF?

This has to be influenced, at least in part, by Lord of the Rings. Tolkein created this world where people just didn’t seem to swear. Hell, some of them randomly burst out into cheerful, life-affirming song whether you wanted them to or not. And to some extent that was a valid approach. I mean, come on. Gandalf stands defiant before the balrog. He raises his staff above his head then then slams it down, screaming, “Get fucked!” It would detract a little from the mood.

There were places where it may have been more fitting. If I, like Frodo, had some little freak bite my finger off, I’d be swearing at it even as it fell to its death in a pit of lava. Later on, as I lay dying on the side of Mount Doom, I’d probably turn to my faithful companion and say, “Jeez, we’re kind of fucked now aren’t we?” Yeah, I’d make a bad hobbit.

I am human though, so I might be a bit more qualified to comment on the siege of Minas Tirith. Huge orc army coming. Elephants (oliphaunts, whatever) with big spiky things attached to their already spiky tusks stomping along, decimating all the little horse riders who keep coming for whatever reason. “Fuck that,” I’d say, and find myself a softer target. I’m in the city. Chunks of stone the size of the elephants’ heads are raining down on me. “Oh, shit.” Apparently I’m not a good human either. What can you do?

People seem to have developed this unrealistic idea of what people spoke like in the past. The reality is, our current profanities are some of the oldest words in our language. Society has developed this pathological fear of swearing and the political-correctness revolution has only made matters worse. There are so many words we just can’t use these days. It’s now the f-word (or f-bomb if you’re American and have a yearning to make yourself sound like a complete and utter dipshit to the rest of the world), the other f-word, the n-word, the s-word, the b-word and the c-word. There are more than that of course but I’m getting tired of typing *-word.

Funnier still are the people who just kind of jumble up the letters. I saw a sentence including the word cnut. At first I assumed it was a typo. Apparently not. Apparently swapping 2 letters makes a word acceptable to the puritanical censors out there. Fair enough. But I’m calling people who p-word me off sea-nuts from now on.

The whole idea is ridiculous. Singling out fantasy as the one genre where swearing should never happen? Why not censor everyone, I say. Someone should go and tell Stephen King not to use swear words in his books. Sell tickets — I think that’d be a conversation worth watching.

Making a blanket rule that swearing shouldn’t be used at all in a particular genre is just not realistic. I’ll take my swearing out if artists who focus on fantasy images stop drawing female elf-warriors in revealing armour with their tits half popping out, how’s that?

What a fucking lot of bullshit.

In response to a request from Young Boobs that I write a blog post, here I am. There’s actually a very good reason why I don’t update very often. I don’t have a very interesting life. If I only update when something interesting happens then I look more interesting than I am. See how that works? I don’t mind though. I’m flattered that she wants me to update more often.

You see most of my life revolves around writing in some way. Whether it’s researching something I need to know about, writing new stuff for my current work-in-progress (henceforth called WIP because I’m lazy) or editing the last one, generally what I do involves sitting on my arse, not leaving the house. Except for the odd trip to the library.

So. Update. Um. I’ve just started my first pass of the manuscript I finished a few weeks ago. I’d been fiddling with it off and on, mostly tinkering with the prologue. I couldn’t get it right. I’ve got rather a lot of versions of that damned prologue. I’m considering a ritual burning. So the other day a daring ploy occurred to me. Instead of fluffing around with it endlessly, perhaps I should just ditch it. I didn’t like that idea because I hate throwing anything out, but today I finally got up the courage and did it. I’ve been re-working chapter 1 and it’s polishing up fairly well. It’s far from perfect but it’s better than it was and that’s all you can really ask from an edit.

Other than that, the only highlight of the day was the phone call I got from my favourite book store telling me the book I’d ordered had arrived. That’s actually more exciting for the Man of the House since it’s a book I ordered on his behalf. He doesn’t read all that much, you see, and I think that if I’m going to be a writer I need a partner who reads, even if it’s just the one book, over and over again.

Anyway, it just suddenly got really cold in my “office”. I’d turn the heater on but it smells like burning hair. That’s it from me.

I’ve spent hours recently staring at a wretchedly blank screen. I’ve passed 100,000 words on my monsterpiece and now that I’m on the home stretch I have a cramp in my leg. Yeah, I know, baseball analogies only work if you like baseball. But whatever, it’s my blog. Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve been doing a fair bit of thinking over the past few weeks. I know, I know, I should be careful with that. Don’t want to strain myself. I’ve gotten nowhere with it either. My mind is excellent at dragging me around in circles. Funny that, the rest of me has a stellar sense of direction.

I’m going to make a confession. I’m a fantasy nut. I love fantasy. I love it because it’s in a different world. When something doesn’t sound right, it doesn’t matter to me. It’s not supposed to be right. It’s a brave new world, baby. I don’t get the urge to run to my computer and google anything just to see whether it is right or not. I kind of like science fiction as well, as long as it’s well done. I loved (and I mean loved) Joss Whedon’s series Firefly and the associated movie, Serenity. It was magnificent. It was entertaining. It didn’t revolve around matter / anti-matter fluctuations in the warp drive. Best of all, I have no idea how the ship worked, or how fast it could take them from A to B. Do you know what I do know? I know the characters and the story. Read the rest of this entry »

Well as it turns out I perhaps shouldn’t have quit my day job. Somehow I got it into my head this evening (don’t ask me how) that there was no point in being a writer if I didn’t use my powers for good. In this case, romancing the Man of the House. My weapon of choice? Haiku.

For those who don’t know and can’t be bothered clicking on the link, it’s a Japanese style of poetry. The only real rule is the structure. The first line has to be five syllables, the second seven and the third five again.

I fired up the instant message program I use to get his attention whenever I want it. We’re at opposite ends of the house, you see, and when he’s TF2ing it up with his headphones on I could be on fire and he wouldn’t realise. Anyway. Fire up the program and type in the first thing that pops into my head which seems to fit the profile.

Pale from lack of sun
Your skin never sees daylight
Love you anyway

How sweet. Lucky I’m more of a prose kind of girl.

Sometimes it pays to step back and take a good, long look at things. It’s like the old saying, “You can’t see the forest for the trees”. Except that in this case it’s more like “You can’t see the forest for your deep, unshakable belief that it’s just not there”. That’s a frequent problem for me but it seems that, of late, it’s been getting worse. I’ve been spending so much time looking at where I’m not I forget to look back and check out how far I’ve come. So this evening’s post is all about that. You’ve been warned. Read the rest of this entry »

You know, I look at the people I’ve met over the past few months, the authors especially, and I find myself asking, did they doubt themselves? I don’t mean the surface doubt that I think everyone experiences at some point, am I doing the right job, am I marrying the right person, does my bum look big in these pants? I mean the kind of deep, serious self-doubt where you ask yourself, what am I thinking?

When I was at school I always did best at maths and science because in those subjects there’s a right answer and a wrong answer. But in English I was about the worst student in my class. Everything was open to interpretation, and my interpretation was always wrong. There was no black or white. Hell, sometimes it didn’t even look like there was dark and light grey. I hated it. I wished I’d decided to keep doing biology even though I hated the idea of dissecting things. And yet now here I am. Trying to become one of the indirect reasons for my high school torment. Read the rest of this entry »