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LaurieAnne
Unity Member
Post Number:
1166
Registered: 12-2001
Rating: 
Votes: 1 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, January 19, 2004 - 07:27 am: |   |
...and losing your touch.
Or at least losing the reins on your ideas.
I have maintained a love affair with one particular author for a very long time. Well, a love affair with this author's writing, that is. This author writes under 3 different names dependent upon the time and type of the tale.
I first read a book by Amanda Quick (her first pseudonym) almost 15 years ago. The title? RAVISHED. I now can name every single book written under this name, and I owned (until a relative carelessly loaned out my collection) every one of them, proudly. All of these books are historical romances, and very well written so that you fall in love with the characters: gasp when they gasp, cry when they cry, and laugh your butt off when they fall in a mud puddle. She has written approximately 20-25 novels under this name.
Another pseudonym of hers is Jayne Ann Krentz. These are contemporary romances, and while they are not necessarily my cup of tea, those that I have read were of the same quality as her Quick novels. There are between 18 & 20 novels currently available under this title.
The 3rd pseudonym has the first name of Jayne, though the last name escapes me currently. She has written 3 books thus far under this name.
Last night, I curled up at the beginning of the football game with SILVER LININGS, written under the name of Jayne Ann Krentz. It was extremely easy to feel SOME compassion for the lead female in this particular novel. However, not COMPLETELY. And the male character was this chauvinistic machismo creep who had determined that he was marrying her, and that it was obvious that she needed his protection, and blah blah blah (puke, gag)....
In short, I was absolutely NOT impressed.
I hadn't read any of the more recent works by this author because I could see the style slowly sliding away as I progressed through some of her works about 4 years ago. I was at the store yesterday morning hunting for something--ANYTHING--to read so that I could relax when I saw this one, and 3 other titles on the shelf. The back cover blurb sounded interesting enough to hold me for a few hours while I casually leafed the 350 pages, so I bought it.
But is there possibly such a thing as writing so much that you've lost your passion and luster for the novel? All of these nearly 50 books written by Mrs. Krentz have been written and released sometime in the last 15 years. I don't know about you, but to me, that sounds as if she is sitting at her processor nearly 24/7/365. You may get writer's block by life getting in the way, but what happens when life has left you sitting still?
What say you?
Is there such as thing as writing too much?
Would you consider it as merely writing to a formula?
Perhaps she lost her interest in the character and merely had a contract to fulfill?
'Tis thought-provoking to say the least.
LA
www.authorsinkbooks.com
LaurieAnne
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Jennifer Lynn
Wisdom Member
Post Number:
979
Registered: 03-2002
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, January 19, 2004 - 08:59 am: | |
Writing the passion out of her work perhaps? OR maybe her publisher is just demanding too much too fast. Then there's that whole problem with NY dictating the types of novels their writers are to write.
Not too long ago I read an article about Dara Joy, a reasonably successful paranormal romance author who started having trouble with Dorchester. She refused to buckle under the pressure and is currently publisher-less.
Dunno.. just thinking out loud.
Jenn |
Kevin P. Grover
Unity Member
Post Number:
1022
Registered: 03-2002
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, January 19, 2004 - 09:15 am: | |
I've noticed that same thing in certain authors, and have also had it pointed out to me by others as well.
I have a friend who used to read Tom Clancy religiously. After Red Rabbit was released, he told me that it almost seemed as though Clancy wasn't writing it, but that it almost read as though someone else had written it. He told me that the characters weren't quite the way that Clancy used to portray them, and that most of the recent releases had so much technical detail that the stories have seemed to migrate from the characters to the gadgets and such.
It's quite possible that many authors do, in fact, get bored with their characters over time, but feel obligated to their readers who keep expecting the author to keep a general storyline going.
Stephen Coonts is another one that has drifted. The "Grafton" series of novels (Flight of the Intruder, et al) have really lost focus on things. It seems that keeping the character going has resulted in becoming more boring and relaxed than they used to be.
This is one reason why I am hesitant about writing the third installment of the Strike series. A lot of people have asked if I was going to write it, especially because of the way that I left Strike Swiftly hanging at the end. I would like to, but I won't write a storyline for the characters that I don't feel does justice to them, or the story. It's not fair to me as an author, it's not fair to the characters, and it's certainly not fair to the readers.
Maybe that's one reason why I started Mists of Memories a couple of years ago, and also why I put it on hold. Yes, I had a lot of things going on that precluded my finishing it, but delaying was also because I didn't want to feel obligated to getting it done and out. Over the past couple of weeks, I have literally busted my backside to get formatting, editing, and cover art projects completed so that I am essentially 6-8 months ahead of myself. I've actually gotten myself into starting up on it again, and actually added two more chapters to it (in addition to commissioning one of the best cover artists I know on it as well). Maybe, if things work out, I can have it completed by summertime.
Anyway, I can really agree with the prospect of an author losing either touch or interest in their writing. Perhaps that's the mark of the truly good authors...they can continue to write about what they like, and don't feel as though they have to force it. They continue to write to entertain and enjoy the stories themselves, which truly translates into enjoyment for the readers.
www.winterwolfpublishing.com |
Claudia Turner VanLydegraf
Mindsight Moderator
Post Number:
795
Registered: 06-2002
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, January 19, 2004 - 10:18 am: | |
I have at one or more times stated the same things about Clive Cussler, and a few other authors that I mostly enjoy reading. But I guess it could be that there are contract pushes to wrangle with and when an author gets paid big bucks for a book, sometimes they just pump one out to satisfy the company, not them selves or more importantly, not the readers.
Claudia |
William R. Park, Sr.
Awareness Member
Post Number:
4
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, January 19, 2004 - 10:27 am: | |
What about Robert Ludlum, one of my favorite authors? He passed away three years ago...and still publishing new books. A ghost writter, no doubt (no pun intended). The publisher's using Ludlum's story ideas, or rough manuscripts, and riding on the author's coattails with collaborators. They still show his large photo on the back, with no reference to his passing. Rather cheesey, I'd say. At least give the man credit and be honest with his readers. And like Clansy's Red Rabbit(which I agree with Kevin), Ludlum's photo is familiar, but the voice just isn't the same. It's a voice of an imposter. |
Dennis Collins
Mindsight Moderator
Post Number:
480
Registered: 06-2002
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, January 19, 2004 - 12:00 pm: | |
It may have begun with James Patterson but...
A hot topic at one of the conferences that I attended was the fact that MANY top authors are now using aspiring writers to do their work for them. The rumor at the time was that Tom Clancy had joined that group of "non-writers," and about a year later Red Rabbit was released.
My dad was in the music business his entire life and told me that one of his friends had written a song and couldn't get a music publisher to even look at it. He eventually sold it to Irving Berlin (who bought hundreds of songs) for $25 and it was in the music stores within six months and it had been recorded.
Writing seems to be very closely related to another profession that is considered pretty old. |
Gloria Marlow
Wisdom Member
Post Number:
534
Registered: 04-2002
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, January 19, 2004 - 12:25 pm: | |
I've noticed that, too, about some authors...especially those that write under several different names. Along with that, I've noticed a trend that bothers me to no end: the adding of characters from previous books to the current book. The books aren't a series exactly, it's not like they need to conclude anything that happened in the previous book. The reappearing characters aren't even main characters in the new book, they're just there. Why? When a book is done, let it be done. Let the characters fade away into the memory of the reader as people they once knew. Why bring them back and back and back. One book is their story. In the next book, they are the happy newlyweds, possibly the expectant/new parents, or maybe that can wait until the next book. Then, eventually, they are the benevolent middle-aged couple who help every one by dispensing advice...It's as if the writer can't let go of the characters she created...or possibly can't create new ones in their stead.
I don't know. There are quite a few authors who I used to love reading and I've quit because they aren't the same any more. The ones who remain the same, who write something new and different everytime, yet still keep that same style or voice that makes them special are the ones who don't have a new book released every six months. Instead, I am impatiently waiting for a new book from them. Deborah Smith is one of those...I've found less than ten books by her, yet each of them are unique and really, really goood.
I do think there is writing too much, or maybe it is writing to a formula too much. It's just like anything else, too much guidelines, rules, etc, takes the joy out of it. And with artistic things, I suppose it kills the creativity. I mean, really, if you take art for example, there are few "rules" that govern actual gifted artists. Yet, writers, no matter how much talent they have, are expected to create with limits on their creativity. I mean, honestly, writing is as unique to the individual doing it as painting is, maybe more so because often artists are painting things that actually exist, while writers are creating things and people that don't. Anyway, I don't think it's normal for artists to be told that they have to try to follow certain guidelines, etc. as writers are. The size of their canvas and their talent is what limits them. With writing, there are far too many middlemen with their ideas of what should and shouldn't be allowed. And, I suppose all of that is necessary in a way, but in another way, it just destroys the freedom writers need to keep their creativity alive.
If you don't think people can run out of ideas or write too much, just turn on a soap opera... good grief, how many times can a person die and their family be surprised when they reappear ten years later, how many times can someone get amnesia, how many times can the same woman be locked in a cage by a maniac? Of course, they're all writing to a formula, too and they're dealing with the same characters they've dealt with for twenty years. Basically, their hands are tied.
I think that is what has happened to a lot of writers. |
Dennis Collins
Mindsight Moderator
Post Number:
481
Registered: 06-2002
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, January 19, 2004 - 03:39 pm: | |
Well... She started it...
I guess I'm guilty of considering retreads. I write a series so my primary trio of characters will naturally appear in every episode. However...
I stuck a couple of "test characters" in book two, just so I could see the reaction. If there's enough interest, they'll be back.
The first one is "Harley Charlie" a Chippewa/Delaware ex-marine who runs an electrical contracting business in Michigan's upper peninsula. He's well over six feet tall, long black hair and classic chiseled Native American features. He rides a Harley and is an active competitor in martial arts tournaments. I think he's an interesting, likable guy. He's loyal and resourceful.
Then there's Ruby, the forty something bar waitress who has become McCoy's romantic interest. She's a very strong and classy woman. Lost her husband in Nam and has made her way without complaining ever since. Independent and intelligent and very much a realist. |
Gloria Marlow
Wisdom Member
Post Number:
535
Registered: 04-2002
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, January 19, 2004 - 05:02 pm: | |
Yours are different...they're part of a series...I would think there would quite often be the same characters in each series...just like a series television show...maybe they don't show up in each book, maybe they do...but that's expected. It would be odd for your recurring characters to be in the same place and always have new people around them.
What I'm talking about is books that have absolutely no other thing in common...half the time they aren't even in the same country...the author gives you just enough info in such a way that you go "oh wait, I vaguely remember that book." I always find myself trying to do one of two things 1. remember the book and whether I liked it or 2. find the book on my bookshelf. But it takes me out of the story and sends me in another direction. It's like they don't belong in these people's lives. They have their own life and they need to get back to it. Now, Jude Deveraux wrote a lot of her books about the same two families, sometimes in different countries, different eras, whatever, but it works because you expect it...You recognize at least one of the main characters as part of the Montgomery or Taggert clan. Then, when the cousins or ancestors or whatever are mentioned or show up in the book, you know why. They add history or depth or something to the story.
What I'm talking about may be completely singular to romance novels...I don't know. An example: Remember Happy Days...Everyone knew that Laverne and Shirley was a spinoff of it. So when the characters every once in a while showed up on the other show or when the same characters showed up in each show (if that ever happened), you didn't think "what are they doing here?" There was a reason. However, if all of sudden Aunt Bee, Andy, Barney Fife and the whole Mayberry gang showed up on Happy Daysas the whole Mayberry gang, then you would think, "hey, what the heck are they doing here?" I mean, yeah, Ron Howard starred in two of the shows and appeared in the other, but that doesn't make all three of them have anything to do with each other, plotwise.
Am I making sense?
I don't have a problem with authors doing a series and it's my opinion "retreading" needs to be done in a series...I would think keeping characters going in a series would require you to really give them some depth and reason for being.
What I'm talking about, for example, is you writing a novel set, let's say in South Africa that has nothing whatsoever to do with McCoy. Say it's a love story about a young African girl and a pirate, who knows. Then, they go to this house and you have McCoy and Ruby there to dispense some romantic advice to them on how to save their love (and you give enough info that anyone who's read the McCoy series recognizes them both). Okay, maybe the girl and her pirate needed somebody to give them some advice, but why was it people from a book that had nothing to do with this one? Wasn't there anyone in their town/country that could have helped them out?
I'm rambling, I know.... |
LaurieAnne
Unity Member
Post Number:
1167
Registered: 12-2001
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, January 19, 2004 - 08:15 pm: | |
Gloria,
Good point considering soap operas. In my short-lived television viewing history, I was addicted to only 1 soap opera: Santa Barbara. And true to the above mentioned, Cruz and whatever the heck the chick's name was both were repeatedly "killed" and "returned from the dead". Not to mention how many times they fell in love with other people, only to discover that what they thought was love was displaced from their "true" blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Soap opera's (in ONLY my patheticly humble opinion) require absolutely NO talent for their script writers.
The particular writer of whom I spoke above did not ever rehash her characters in her historicals, but she rehashed her scene repeatedly. It would appear, according to the grade and placement of most historicals on the shelves, that all the romances occured in merely 2 places: London or a southern plantation. Are we to believe that our imaginations have been stifled such that love cannot be found elsewhere? I read one particular novel that was set in the wild west with stage coaches and long journeys by horseback. This was not labeled an historical. It was labeled a Western Romance. Is not the era of the west an era of our history? How about the Civil War period? Is that not history?
What about all of the time spans that fall BETWEEN the past and the future? An historical can fall in the roaring 20's. Is that not history? What about the realm of Mesopotamia? What about South America?
This list can be endless. There is so much potential out there. One must CREATE the passion in the reader. Use the gift of words to weave a spell for the audience drawing them deeply into the realm you want them to see.
*********************
I seem to have set off on another tangent. My mind has been working overtime this weekend. I don't know what has caused this resurgence, but I have so much running through my head that I have difficulty putting into words all of my thoughts. I even managed to blunder my thoughts into an AMAZING sales tactic that I merely call "BLIND FAITH" which I would love to be able to share with everyone, but it is a visual tactic that engages the audience's curiosity to the point of amazement, and it also includes an exercise in serious creative thought.
For some untold reason, my mind has started cranking out thoughts of creative marketing, and even possibly something along the creative writing line. I don't know that I have done anything different with my schedule to spur this change, but I am not going to question.
*********************
Retreading...in a series, it is fine. However, I do agree that to toss in a character simply because (a)the author could not release his/her hold on the creation or (b)the author is using the "cameo" to relive his/her success from the tale in which the character appeared or (c)whatever other reasoning may be held within the author's own mind, confuses your audience. And no matter who says what, writers write to be read. Preferably WIDELY read.
I have used retreading to some degree in THE SCORPION AGENCY SERIES. But again, it is a series about an independent intelligence agency. The agency does not maintain thousands of agents. It barely maintains 200. One extremely minor character in each book becomes the lead in the next, meanwhile, the leads from the prior drop into minor positions. It makes sense in that setting.
However, if I were to take one of my agents and throw them into a romance or fantasy, I would confuse any loyal readers. (Especially in the case of the fantasy.)
*********************
Goodness, but I have rambled.
Hmmm...makes me wonder if it is linked to the boss giving me 1 week to come up with 4 ideas to grow circulation while pointing out that we had a 10% revenue growth last year while he pushed me to exceed, just for my department. LOL.
Whatever the reason, I am taking advantage of the roaring thoughts and making all the notes that I possibly can.
LA
www.authorsinkbooks.com
LaurieAnne
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Dennis Collins
Mindsight Moderator
Post Number:
484
Registered: 06-2002
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, January 19, 2004 - 08:40 pm: | |
No LA....
THIS is "BLIND FAITH"
 |
LaurieAnne
Unity Member
Post Number:
1169
Registered: 12-2001
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, January 19, 2004 - 08:51 pm: | |
I almost thought that would be another snow picture. LOL.
Thank goodness it wasn't. Saw enough of that stuff while delivering this weekend.
LA
LaurieAnne
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