Over at Luna Station Quarterly today, you can read my thoughts on when it's worth considering using a PR firm to market your writing. Link here.
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If you've ever wondered about the business and contract arrangements involved in working with an illustrator or artist (usually for a picture book or magazine article), you may be interested in my ON THE BOOKS column at the Luna Station Quarterly blog this month. Link here.
I have a column up at Luna Station Quarterly today explaining some of the ins and outs of trademark law in the context of book titles and book series. A link is here. One of the reasons I wrote the column was that I think there's a lot of misunderstanding in the writing and publishing community about what a trademark is, along with what can and can't be trademarked, and what it means to register (as opposed to own) a trademark. I've tried to explain those concepts clearly in the column. The trademark issues in relation to book titles/series has been in the news, and the blogosphere, a lot recently because of the April 2018 trademark registration granted to romance author Faleena Hopkins over the term "Cocky" as a registered mark for her series about the "Cocker Brothers". (Bottom line - you can't own or register a TM for a book title, but you can sometimes register a mark in relation to a series where the mark is clearly operating as a source identifier for the series. The fact that something is registered does not mean that the registration is valid, and this particular registration is currently being challenged by a number of people and organizations.) At the beginning of June, a NY court handed down a decision about the mark. There's been a LOT of misunderstanding about that decision and it has been misquoted in a number of places. It is definitely good news for people concerned about the registration of the Cocky mark, but the court did NOT say that the mark was not valid, nor did it cancel the mark's registration. The court DID say that the mark was a "weak mark" at best and that other authors using "Cocky" in single book titles was unlikely to confuse purchasers of romance books (consumer confusion is the basis of trademark infringement law which is why that last point is important.) The Guardian has a nice summary of what the case actually held here. The upshot is that the mark is still registered to Hopkins and that the cancellation petitions are still proceeding and will be decided in due course by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). However, in the meantime, authors who write books with "Cocky" in their titles can take some comfort in the fact that they have a strong argument that they're not infringing Hopkins' mark, assuming the mark to be valid, which is another thing that the courts have not yet decided definitively. I hope this helps to clarify some of the misunderstandings out there in the blogosphere. Trademark law is actually not that difficult compared with, say, copyright law. But the use of marks for book series, particularly marks that aren't all that distinctive, is one of those little corners of trademark law that can be a little confusing for folks who don't know a lot about trademark law. If you do want a basic primer on some of the key issues that arise in this space, have a look at my column and/or to the blog post I quote there written by a TM expert. Hopefully all this info is at least a little bit helpful. For anyone interested in recent moves to include "morality clauses" in book publishing (and agenting) contracts, you may want to check out my blog post for the Authors Alliance today. Link here.
I recently had the good fortune to interview Henry Turner, author of the recently released YA suspense novel, HIDING, which I very much enjoyed. When I asked Henry about his writing process and the book (particularly how novel writing compares to working in film which he also does!), here's what he had to say ... JL: Thank you so much for the opportunity to read HIDING which I thoroughly enjoyed. Without giving too much away, what gave you the idea for this book? HT: Hiding in the basement of the house I grew up in – hearing people come down to do laundry or something and knowing they didn’t know I could hear and see them. That, combined with what I learned about the tragic life outcomes of certain kids I went to school with, who when I knew them as teens seemed to have everything. JL: The bulk of the story – almost all of it – is really a monologue from the main character directed to the reader. It’s pretty much all internal thought directed at a fictional “you” (the reader), other than glimpses into past scenes the protagonist shares with us. What were the main challenges of writing in this way? What are some of the benefits of this form of storytelling? HT: When you are in a mind you can go anywhere. Anywhere memory goes. Scene changes can be instantaneous, rapid as a flipbook, and remain coherent. And his thoughts directed to the reader could potentially become the reader’s thoughts. A present moment is consistently maintained, interpolated with memories and ideas. There is a planned interplay of thought and action; a balance. As he advances through the house, his thoughts advance, develop and change, until the truth comes out. JL: The jacket flap describes this book as having a “slow burn of tension” building to a “sudden shock that changes everything” which, I think, is a very apt description of the story. I’ve always found as a reader and a writer in the YA space that it’s very difficult to start with a “slow burn” because much of the collected wisdom about younger readers is that they want action from the first page. Do you think this is true? How do you go about engaging your readers from page one with a “slow burn” as opposed to a big bang? HT: I feel they will be engaged reading about a teen who is much like themselves. A real teen dealing with his life, the empty time on his hands, his real life problems, his struggle to maintain a positive image of himself in a neighborhood that does not recognize or value him. The whole point is that he has the strength to maintain a positive self-image despite how he perceives he is treated by others. The story describes his many ways of maintaining that private sense of personal value – all of which he calls hiding. This story describes his real life without using melodramatic techniques to drive the action. JL: You’ve worked in both film and fiction writing. What are the main differences for you as a storyteller between these two forms? HT: In film you can’t show thought. You can imply thought – but unless you have a narration, the thought remains non-specific and could be misinterpreted. Only through showing the spatial relationships of a character to other characters or environment can you project ideas about inner feelings, and you always have to rely on facial expressions – everything is outer; physical. Otherwise, the character has to literally say what she or he feels. In a book, thought takes over. Action has different emphasis – it relates back to feelings. Books describe inner life and the relationship of events to inner life; films depict outer life and the relationship of events to outer life. I can describe a car accident in a story. I can even use sentence fragments to convey the push and pull and jump and skip of what happens, pulling the mind across the page. But it’s not at all like a film of two cars ramming head on and exploding in flame. The written description we think about and construct mentally; the film we simply experience. Words engage; images stun. JL: As a storyteller (either in film or fiction) do you find that you’re more of a planner/outliner, or do you start with a character and let him or her take you where they want to go? How did you approach the creation of your protagonist in HIDING? HT: Character dictates everything, generates everything. It’s often hard to remember this at the start, when a scene or set piece grabs the imagination. Ultimately, every scene must grow the character. Thanks so much for your time and your thoughts, Henry! And thanks for sharing HIDING with us. One of my favorite things is to discover new books by new authors who I love and it’s even better when those authors agree to talk to me about their writing! I was thrilled last year to discover AN EXCESS MALE, an intriguing and unusual dystopia set in a futuristic China, and written by author Maggie Shen King. The book made it on to a number of awards lists and was roundly lauded as a remarkable debut novel. See some of its many accolades here. Not only is Maggie an amazing writer, but she’s a truly generous person with her time and thoughts. When I asked her about her book and her writing process, here’s what she had to say … JL: First of all, let me say how much I loved AN EXCESS MALE. I read a lot of sci-fi and dystopia, but have never read anything quite like this book. What gave you the original idea for the story? MK: The idea came to me about five years ago from a newspaper article on gender imbalance in China. The One Child Policy and the cultural preference for sons had given birth to 30 million men who will not be able to find wives. Lasting nearly 40 years, the policy has become one of the longest lasting and largest scaled social engineering experiments of all time. And the massive gender imbalance was not the policy’s only unintended consequence. It messed up the composition of the country’s population; there will soon be insufficient working adults to support the incoming surge of retirees. It created a huge underclass of unregistered illegals consisting of illegitimate or second-born girls whose parents could not afford to pay the fines to document them. It fostered a system for bribery and embezzlement. The One Child Policy was a case where reality was stranger than anything fiction could dream up. JL: The book switches between the points of view of a number of different characters, and also shifts from first to third person between several characters. How did you decide on the voices you wanted to share and the decisions whether to present them in first versus third person point of view? MK: I explored the initial story concept by writing a twist on the marriage plot with a male protagonist at its center and a government that has called upon its families to demonstrate patriotism by taking on additional husbands. This book started as a short story—the current first chapter without the scene at the Ministry of Defense. I wanted the central character to be a typical “excess” male, a less educated man who finally saved up enough dowry to qualify for marriage in his mid forties. For Husband One and Two in the family he was seeking to join, I chose men without financial constraints, but who for other crucial reasons wanted or needed to share a wife. And finally, I made the wife in this polyandrous marriage young, naïve, and a product of the times—the offspring of greedy daughter breeders. Initially, I told the stories of three of the four main characters through the first person perspective. I felt that Husband Two’s temperament kept him one step removed in most interpersonal transactions and that the third person viewpoint, being also one step removed, served that purpose better. After reading the first few chapters, my writing group found the existence of so many first person viewpoints somewhat stifling. Since the story was a marriage plot, I kept the potential marital couple in first person and changed Husband One to third. JL: Several of the main characters are incredibly nuanced and complex men trying to cope in almost impossible societal and personal situations. In particular, you've included male characters attempting to cope with very gendered societal roles and also with intellectual disabilities (for want of a better term). What were the main challenges for you as an author in creating characters struggling with these particular issues? MK: I love characters with mighty struggles. Their situations are meaty, full of conflict and built-in drama. I think it is important to master some very concrete details of their struggle and understand their point of view. It is important to show characters, faults and all. Their situations on their own often elicit much reader sympathy. They become complex, full-fledged characters when writers show not just their courage and fight, but also the ways in which they are selfish and weak. JL: The book also takes on the idea of very non-conventional family structures. What was your inspiration for setting up the society in this way, and what were the main challenges you faced, or aspects you enjoyed, about imagining a society where families might consist of multiple husbands, or parents, and how those roles would play out within the families? MK: Traditionally, Chinese people lived in multi-generational households. In addition, wealthier men often housed multiple wives under one roof. In poorer parts of rural China, families that did not want to divide a piece of land between brothers or families that needed additional farmhands sometimes asked the women to take on another husband. Both polygamy and polyandry were practiced. In Chinese television and film, these complex relationships were often fraught with palace-level intrigue. Wives jockeyed ruthlessly for position while children mastered power dynamics at an early age and became experts at currying favor. In my novel, I was interested in exploring the fundamental and everyday realities of one such family. By pitting it against an authoritarian state, my hope was that its members would find the humanity in each other, unite out of both necessity and affection, and ultimately discover the true meaning of family. JL: While the book is clearly science fiction, it's very grounded in contemporary realities about societal issues and governmental policies involving the way we treat each other as humans. Did you feel you were writing to a "theme" or with a "message" or did the inclusion of these issues arise organically from the narrative as you wrote? MK: I thought I was writing a marriage plot when I first began. I did not work with an outline, did not quite know where the book was going, and the story kept getting darker and darker. At one point, my brilliant writing group informed me that I was writing speculative dystopian fiction and had me scratching my head and desperately rereading the classics in the genre. All this is to say that for me, writing is very much a process of discovery. There is a subconscious element to it that defies the logic of outlines. I try to get out of the way of the story and allow it to unfold as organically as possible. Of course, my personal sensibilities cannot help but infiltrate the narrative. Science fiction is a lens through which to process the world, and I try as much as possible to illustrate issues through story action, to present both sides of matters, and let readers arrive at their own conclusions. JL: What are you working on now? MK: The more I learn about the One Child Policy, the more I am haunted by another set of its victims—girls whose hukou, or household registration, were saved for a younger brother. These girls, called heihaizi, or shadow or ghost children, are undocumented, illegal, and nonexistent in the eyes of the law, one of the policy’s unintended consequences I mentioned earlier. They have no rights to health care, education, or legal protection. They cannot legally ride public transportation, marry, obtain or inherit property, or have children. I've been exploring this subject as a possible next novel. You can read my short story here: https://maggieshenking.com/companion-story-invite/ Thanks so much for sharing your time and work with the readers here. We’re looking forward to reading your future work! I have a new blog column up today at Luna Station Quarterly giving an intro for authors to the law of defamation. Those of you who write about real people may be interested in taking a look. Available here.
If you have questions about using trademarks that belong to other people in your creative writing, you might want to check out the first post in my new ON THE BOOKS column for Luna Station Quarterly. It debuted this month and I started out talking about trademarks. Link here.
I've been talking to a lot of folks recently about copyright and fair use; while it's a difficult topic to get a handle on in the abstract, I did recently write this blog post for Savvy Authors which may help with the basics.
When I was a student in the M.F.A. program in Writing for Children and Young Adults at Vermont College of Fine Arts, I unfortunately never had the opportunity to work directly with author and artist extraordinaire, Louise Hawes, who writes in so many different genres, and is so wise about writing, it makes my head spin. But that didn’t stop me from asking her for an interview for the blog. Here’s what she said when I asked her the questions I’ve most wanted to ask about her work and her teaching since I first met her …
JL: You've written almost 20 books for children and young adults spanning various genres. Which genres do you find the most challenging, and why? LH: For me, it’s less a question of “genre,” Jacqui, than of the nature of each project. As an example, my picture storybook set in ancient Egypt, Muti’s Necklace, is, as you’d expect, only a few thousand words long. Yet it’s based on nearly two years of research into Egyptian culture in general, and the Egyptian short story in particular. Who says picture books are “easy” to write?! In contrast, Rosey in the Present Tense, because it’s a contemporary novel grown from personal experience, essentially wrote itself. It involves the death of a loved one, and though I removed myself from the direct pain I’d suffered only a year before (my protagonist is a teen, and male), the story was already there, just needing to find its way out. So the entire book? Probably took a few months to write! (Not fun months, mind you, but necessary, cathartic, and I’ve heard, helpful to others who are struggling with similar heartaches.) JL: Of all your books, I think my favorite is Black Pearls: A Faerie Strand which is a collection of short stories that are retellings of classic fairylands from, shall we say, unusual perspectives. Where did the idea for this book come from and how is writing a short story collection different from writing a novel? LH: Thanks, I love this book, too. Let me start with your question about how I came to write it: I teach in an MFA program (more on that below), and because publishing goes through cycles in which different genres are favored, there were a few years there, where every other new writer was working on myths, folk stories, or fairy tales. What perplexed and confounded me was that too many of these writers focused on the story structure, but abandoned characterization almost entirely. When I asked these students why their characters felt less real than their stories, why they lacked individuality (a princess is a princess is a princess), the response was almost always, “Oh, well, this is a fairy tale. It’s universal!” Of course, what this meant is that they had overlooked the alchemy of fiction—the process whereby the more specific and individual a story and its characters are, the more it “lives” on the page and the more universal its appeal. I wrote Black Pearls as a demonstration of this alchemy. I hope it is! As for the difference between a short story and a novel? The “short” answer is that a story usually focuses on one turning point in a life, rather than a chain of events that includes backstory, rising action, and resolution. For me, the short form actually empowers readers more than a novel does, since it allows them to supply much of the backstory and resolution themselves. (For more of my take on short fiction, you can always check out my recorded lecture here: http://louisehawes.com/shop-talk/the-short-story-a-boat-in-a.html.) JL: Much of your fiction writing seems to be inspired by other art forms (for example, The Vanishing Point and its focus on painting; The Language of Stars and its focus on poetry). Do you consciously seek inspiration in art forms outside narrative fiction? Do you think a broader appreciation of creativity in all its forms can impact a writer's process and, if so, in what ways? LH: Yes! Creativity is everywhere. It’s a giant river with tributaries leading off in countless, fascinating directions: for instance, I’ve always written poetry, just not necessarily for publication. I usually write a poem as an emotional touchstone for every chapter in my novels—it’s another form of free writing. Oh, and I was a mediocre actor before I became a published writer; that brief career still serves me in dialogue, blocking out scenes, and public readings. I’ve had a sculpture studio, and I also love to paint. I used to belittle these wide-ranging interests by calling myself a dilettante. But then one day, I looked up the root of that word: it’s delight. So now I don’t accuse myself of dabbling. I’m simply finding delight at every turn! And no, I don’t consciously look for ways to connect fiction to other art forms, but I’m always involved with art of all kinds. Sometimes I’ll set up an easel and move from a painting to whatever I’m writing. One opens the other, inspires the other, plays with the other. I was raised in a family where art was loved madly. We painted, wrote, drew, played the piano (or like me danced to music). My three sisters and I still conduct creativity workshops all over the world—we call them “Playshops” because they require no artistic preparation or background, yet participants “play” with writing, painting, voice, and movement. (https://www.facebook.com/foursistersplay/) JL: You've been teaching writing for some years now, including at Vermont College of Fine Arts. What's the most common piece of advice or feedback you find yourself giving to students? What's the most important thing you believe a new writer should keep in mind? LH: Over the last ten years, my answer to this question hasn’t changed. I helped found the MFA in Writing for Children and Young Adults program at Vermont, and like everyone on our faculty, I take an active part in reading applications from potential students. Sadly, during the last decade I’ve watched the overall quality of our student applications drop. That doesn’t mean we don’t still get standout writing samples, stories that make us excited to meet and work with the authors. But it does mean that the average level of language and craftsmanship has declined. Why? Because while our applicants are more familiar with marketing and genre niches than they’ve ever been, they are actually reading less. They want to publish, but they don’t want to read! What’s wrong with this picture? If you love something, you can’t love it half way. If you want to make books, then you have to read them. To find out what makes scenes work (and doesn’t); to learn who’s doing what you hope to, and how. Read to grow your writer’s mind and heart. Read because it keeps you curious and open. Read because it will change your writing and your life! Thanks so much for sharing your thoughts with us, Louise! Happy writing!! |
Book Blog
I love to read books and chat with other authors and artists about their work. Here's where I share my thoughts about writing (the craft and business/legal aspects of the writing life) and my interviews with other authors. Feel free to visit and add comments anytime! Archives
August 2018
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