First Cup of Coffee - October 3, 2018

Talking today about 3rd vs 1st person POV and why asking readers which they prefer won't work. Also a bit about Rebecca Solnit and mansplaining. I've received copy edits of THE ARROWS OF THE HEART so we're looking good for launch, Houston!

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Good morning everyone. Today is October 3rd, a Wednesday. And it is what 8 39 in the morning. A very soggy morning here in Santa Fe. Which is hooray! We Rosa, I'm sorry for the uh disparaging remarks I heaped upon her name. She came through. Um she came through like a champ, and we got 0.81 inches yesterday and 0.69 inches since midnight. So that is totally awesome. Uh, and that's a lot for us, considering that we get 8 to 12 inches a year. Um, getting 0.8 nearly an inch, and I can vouch that that was like in two hours. That was really something. Um I put a video up on Facebook for those of you who follow me on Facebook. Uh, you can find me there under Jeff E. Kennedy. It's I think pretty easy as I'm like the only one. There can't be only one. Um, which sounded like a Schwarzenegger accent, right? Instead of um well, Christopher, not Christopher Walken. No, Lambert, Christopher Lambert, Jesus. Okay, all right, getting my neurons straight now. Um I'm totally distracted by thinking of young Christopher Lambert, uh, who always did it for me, where you know Christopher Walken is cool, but um not so much in the Smaxi department. So anyway, that was a lot of rain for us, and it's kind of cool because we have the flat roofs here, and we have we don't have gutters, we have canales, which are sort of um it's like a straight spout that comes off the side of the flat roof. So when we get a big rain like that, it uh pours in a like huge gout, a fountain of water off the roof. I the crows got a little overwhelmed by the rain. I think they're getting their act together now. We're definitely going out front because it is soggy. I'm staying undercover. Even under the portal here, there's uh little bits of flowers and leaves and all sorts of detritus. Um that was that was a nice little ooh, and the cushions are wet. Oh, we'll see how long I last. Mmm, that tastes good though. And it's very beautiful across the valley because all of that moisture has created fog, and so the humidity in the air magnifies everything, so the Ortiz Mountains look particularly big, and so does Sendia, and their tops are all shrouded in clouds and fog. We still have a fair amount of clouds in the sky today. We're not supposed to get much more rain, but the way the climate here works, a lot of times, if we have this much moisture in the ground, it'll just start raining again. And we sort of get into this cycle, which is a most welcome cycle. Um thank you for sending all of this ocean air. I'm very sorry, Julie Fine, that you did not get your rain in San Diego as you had hoped. Um, she did comment to me on Facebook and I I was unfeeling and said that it was all mine. Mine, all mine. But I do sympathize with them wanting the rain. Usually it's us looking at other people's rain videos and being envious. So we got rain, and in other good news, I also got copy edits for the arrows of the heart. Woohoo! Yay! So, yes, that's what I'm doing today. I should be able to get that turned around today, barring I shouldn't brag too much on that because if she comes up with big stuff that I have to fix, I might run out of brain before I run out of stuff to fix. But we'll see. If all goes well, I will get that done today, and then I think I will we'll see. We'll see what that takes me and how much brain that takes. But I think I'm gonna take off either tomorrow or Friday and get ready to have a garage sale on Saturday. Maybe I'll do it on Friday afternoon too. Depends on how ambitious I'm feeling. But we have so much stuff we have to get rid of, and it just needs to get done. I've been procrastinating for so long. That's the sound of Jackson trying to jailbreak. Come back. You're not going anywhere. He's a little restless because he was inside all day pretty much yesterday. Yep, today's gonna be a cat wrangling day, I can tell. But it's also muddy. I don't know why he wants to go that far and stay on the rocks here. Well, I do know he's all interested to check out his territory after being deprived. Silly cat. So anyway, garage sale. It's funny because I was messaging with my friend, my local friend Miga Mulrie, and we were talking about we really want to go see the wife. I mentioned that before. No, I never did get to go see it last weekend. You know, I'm so funny, I always think I'm gonna go do stuff, and then I end up not wanting to leave the house. Um, but you know, it was really beautiful weather too, and I didn't really want to go be in a movie theater. So I haven't gone yet, and besides, I wanted to go with Megan, and she couldn't go. So we're trying to find a time to go see it. And I told her I was contemplating having this garage sale on Saturday, and she said uh she praised my ambition and said that she always thinks that she should do a yard sale, and then she ends up just doing big brothers, big sisters, and the dump. And it's like, yeah, I understand that. I understand that. Come on back. I'm not going out into that muddy field with you, putty. Here, I should see if I can get a picture of this so you guys can see. That'd be a good picture for today. Here he is. Alright. Yeah, there you go. And I think we kept recording. Yes, we did. Here he comes back. Woo! He goes running, running, running, and he's gonna run the other way and see how that does. Oops. That snapped it off. Now I have to get in the mud because that snapped his harness. He hit the end so hard. Hi, putty tat. Yeah, come here. That was lucky he didn't notice he didn't break off. The harness has those safety catches, you know, so that if anything bad happens, if I'm not standing right here, it will snap so he doesn't get hurt. But sometimes that doesn't work to my advantage. And now my running shoes are all muddy, so I guess he got his way. Car going by. He's feisty this morning. My tea is back on the porch, Jackson. He doesn't care, he so doesn't care. He is full of vim and vigor today. So anyway, that's my whole thing. That's fascinating, right, about the garage sale. Um, you know, those I remember in my youth, in my misspent youth, that it seemed like I could put together a garage sale on pretty quick notice. Uh, and maybe it's because this one involves an enormous garage clean out that it feels like a bigger deal. I think I could get it ready in a day. Um and I could make David help me, but those are his good driving days, so I might just do it by myself, and then I will reward myself with going to go see the wife. On Sunday I do get to go do a cool thing, which is to see Rebecca Solnet. Um Megan's publisher, Radius Books, is sponsoring an event with Rebecca Solnet on Sunday afternoon. Uh she's worked on a book that's a gorgeous coffee table book, which is kind of what Radius does. They do sort of um art and photography books. And the uh we're walking back towards the house, and now he's taking off running again. We might successfully make it back to my London fog yet. So the book is called something like The Drowned River, and it's about Colorado River and Lake Powell, Grand Canyon, all of those things. I've got the book because Megan gave it to me for my birthday. That's the great thing about having a friend who works for a publisher who makes fabulous coffee table books, is you get fabulous coffee table books for gifts. So, at any rate, Rebecca Solnet, if you guys don't know, is the one who coined the term mansplaining. Um there's a great article about it, but she had written a book and she was at a party, and a man asked her what her interests were or what she was working on, and she said she was interested in this topic, which I don't recall. And he proceeded to tell her all about that topic. And her friend, he was saying, Oh, yes, there's there's a great book about out about that. Now you should go read it, and proceed to tell her about this book and what was in it. And her friend was like, Um, this is the person who wrote that book. That you're literally talking to the expert on this topic, and the man didn't listen and continued to explain all of the things to her that were in the book that she wrote. So um the a great origin story for the term mansplaining, and yeah, I'm very interested to meet her. So that'll be the the Sunday afternoon treat, and maybe I can combine it with going to see the wife, or maybe Megan and I will find a uh common time to go. So then the other thing I was going to tell you guys is that I saw this is kind of the the first person, third person thing. I saw someone on Facebook yesterday. Um it was shared by a friend of mine who is uh a newbie-ish writer, and she shared the poll by her friend asking, which do you prefer in romance, first person or third person? Point of views. Points of view, POVs. And that was all that was in the poll, was the the two options. And I nearly commented, but then I thought I didn't need to be weighing in necessarily. Um because for me the answer is it depends, and it it's both. I I really wanted to say why can't it be both? Now that I've got Jackson such a way I have to drink some of my tea and catch up here. So, you know, there's a reason why, first of all, why scientific surveys are done by people who've really studied it, because you have to be careful not to pose questions in ways that predispose the answer. So right away, and of obviously this is not a scientific poll, and I'm probably making more of it than there should be, but my friend had shared it saying that she was very interested in the results, and I wanted to say, well, don't be, because you're gonna get crappy results. Because first of all, it assumes that you do have a preference, um, and it doesn't allow you to uh say both. Um and then the thing is too, I mean, all of that aside, I don't think that readers actually know what they prefer every time. And um those of you who are readers out there, I know you're you're sitting up straight and glaring at me. Um but some of you, and you know who you are, uh have a definite preference to not read first person, but you will read it from some authors. And I know this because you've said, but I'll read your books because I often write in first person. What's going on there a lot of the time is that I try I came inside because my butt was getting wet. Aren't you glad I shared that with you? Um the thing is, is first person done badly is excruciating. And a lot of authors who attempt first person don't necessarily have the chops to do it yet. And they don't realize um what it takes. And I know that I've I mentioned, I think I mentioned here before, but there was this advice going around on an author loop about, you know, that one way to write deep third or deep third point of person point of view is um when it feels like you're in. You know, I've it's as opposed to you know, if you think of um the point of view as being like the camera lens, uh deep third person moves it so that it's like right next to their head. You're still seeing their face a little bit, but you're like as close to them as possible. Whereas a more distance distant third person would have, you know, like the camera sweeping over the panorama and so forth. Um the more the most distant point of view would be uh no, I can't think of the word. I'm not thinking my words today. Um it would be when you have multiple P.O.Bs or an omniscient narrator. That's what I was looking for, omnipresent, an omniscient narrator, a narrator who knows everything that's going on. That's sort of the most distant you can get. So this person who had adv and I've seen this advice in other places too, where they said, well, the best way to write deep third person is just to write the whole thing in first person and then change the pronouns. And I I do think I mentioned this before because Evergreen said something to me about it. Um it's it's brutally bad advice because and it's part of why people write first person badly, because first person isn't just deep third person with different pronouns, it's an entirely different way of writing. Um and you have to be a very deft writer, that sounds self-congratulatory. Uh, I should change that. Um you have to be a practiced writer, maybe, to write first person well, because in first person, obviously the person who is reading the story, the reader, can only know what the first person narrator knows. You don't get to back that camera out and show what other people are thinking and doing. You can only see through that person's eyes. And so if that isn't done well, and by that I mean that person has to observe things and you have to find ways for that person to notice things without thinking about them, so that the reader can be aware of stuff and say, Oh, wait, he's trying to tell her this thing and she's not listening. And for me, that's what's really fun to play with in first person, because of course we all live our lives in first person point of view, right? That's that's all we get. And even though we project ourselves into third person, um, we're still projecting. So it's fun to play with those times when you are know you're not communicating well with someone and you kind of have to backtrack and think about and replay their words and hear what they were saying instead of what you were thinking, what you were planning to say next. Don't you know, I mean, we all do that, that's bad listening, but you know, we we're basic instead of listening to what the other person is saying, we're waiting for them to be done talking so that we can say this thing that we're planning to say next. And you can do that in first person. You can have them be thinking about what they're gonna say next while the other person is talking, but still feed to the reader what your person is hearing, but not having them process it. Did that make sense? That was probably very convoluted and layered, but hopefully you understand why I'm saying. So, anyway, that's part of what makes first person difficult to write. You also have to create the character without outside input. You can't have um somebody else in the story giving you clues about the person, not directly anyway, you know, and you can't have them saying, um, you know, she was like this, this, you know, she was a long, tall drink of water. You know, instead you have to have people say things to your person and have them react to it. Um and but you know, we all have that experience too, where people tell you stuff about yourself and you decide whether or not you think that's true. You know, people say, Oh, well, you know, you're unusually tall for a woman. And you think, well, geez, I'm only five six. That's not unusually tall. It's because I usually wear four-inch heels, and that's the reason they think that. So those are things you can play with in first person. So, anyway, I can tell you right now that the results of that poll will be that they'll get a vast preference for third-person point of view and romance. And that's because people think that they don't like first person point of view, uh, even though they might. And I mean, I think that's uh maybe there's no end. I I think that's what it's going to be. Uh, when people do like first person point of view, it takes them by surprise. Uh so instead, and and a lot of times people forget if they if they love a book, their favorite romances, they forget what point of view it's written in. And I've seen people say that, you know, that they went back to such and so book and realized that it was written in first person and they didn't realize it because or they didn't remember it because they got so involved in the book. So it might be more interesting to ask Um, which is your favorite romance, or which are your ten favorite romances, and then look and see what point of view they're written in. And I bet you'd get very different results. So that's my my rant for the day on point of view. And I will, I think, get to work now. Um, get this book out. Looks like we should be fine for Tuesday release, so there should be much rejoicing there. I hope you all have a wonderful day. I hope if you want rain, you will get it. Even in San Diego. I see there's another hurricane coming. Maybe you'll get that one. Um all of you take care, and I will talk to you tomorrow. Bye bye.