Glenda Larke

Here’s another photo from our last weekend – this one taken on the road to Mt Kinabalu.

My copy edit of The Shadow of Tyr is done. One copy has gone off to HarperCollins Voyager Oz, the other to Orbit UK where the editors have not yet read it. (I am always awed by the fact that publishers buy books before they are written – wow, that’s faith for you.)

I love doing copy edits – and I will talk about that tomorrow or at the weekend in a post How I Write a Novel (6).

And so I now have time to get back to finishing the third book, The Song of the Shiver Barrens. Yay!

Prepare for another rant.

It is illegal to do any open burning in Malaysia. Of course, something being illegal here means very little. It certainly doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll end up fined or jailed. Red lights are – for example – only for motorists, not for pedestrians or motorbikes. And even with cars, it’s optional if there’s not much traffic. Just stand by a set of lights on a quiet Sunday afternoon if you don’t believe me.

‘One way’ street signs have no meaning whatsoever for motorcyclists. In Bandar Baru Bangi, you don’t even have to have a licence to ride a motorbike. Hell, you don’t even have to be big enough to see over the handlebars – and you can take your little sister standing up in front of you and don’t forget little bro – he can hang on behind. You’ve seen Dad do it, so why can’t you, too? Even though you are only twelve. And Dad would never dream of wearing his crash helmet when he goes to the mosque on Fridays. Someone might pinch it while he’s praying.
Besides, a helmet is a pest when there’s a songkok or some other supposedly Islamic headgear on your head. Anyway, God is not going to kill you on your way to prayer and leave your family without an income, is He?

You can protect tigers all you want, but catch a man with one in his frig, and he’ll shrug and say “I didn’t put it there and I know nothing about it” – and he gets a gentle tap on the wrist by the magistrate who’s probably just tried a child molest case and can’t see that a tiger matters one whit. The worst thing that happens to the poacher is the tiger is confiscated. All that lovely money down the drain. Never mind, he can go back and get another. And another and another.

Taxes get paid only by those on salaries who therefore can’t work out a way to run away from them. We start young, showing our kids how to ignore the law. We paint the maximum speed on the back of trucks and buses, just to show how much contempt people have for that law. Dad takes the kids fishing in the lake and sets up next to the sign that says “No Fishing, by order”. Malaysia boleh, you see.

Fishing trawlers cover their boat number and openly trawl close to the coast (not allowed) because catches elsewhere are low. They don’t care that they damage the coastal growth of sea grass. I’ve seen that myself off the coasts of Perak and Johor. Other fishermen poison fish with cyanide and bomb reefs. Take a look at Banggi Island if you don’t believe me. And be very careful about eating fish in Sabah. They can misjudge the amount of cyanide. I could go on and on, just about the things I have seen myself.

I know how insidious this culture of contempt is – I’ve succumbed at times. I’ve done illegal U-turns, I’ve gone birdwatching (lots of times actually) in forest areas that have signs prohibiting entry. And yet I would never dream of doing it in my country of birth where there would be a penalty. We learn from example, you see.

Here in Malaysia, we carefully raise generation after generation of youngsters who have absolutely no respect for the law and we wonder why they end up drug addicts, or in jail, or prone to road rage.

We took these photographs over the weekend along the road between KK and the Kinabalu National Park. The fires – and there was more than one – are not accidental. They are burning the land deliberately to rid the earth of tropical rainforest. You can see some of those burnt patches in the second photo. Rainforest that could, with careful management, give future generations a living are being trashed on impossibly steep slopes. Just think what happens to the thin topsoil the moment it rains.

Why do they do this? To plant a crop of pineapples. Or hill padi. In three years, the hillside is abandoned because the soil is useless. And they find another slope, another patch of the world’s most glorious biodiversity to destroy forever in exchange for three years of a pittance of an income. The rainforest does not grow back. The hills are a patchwork of weeds now.

Tomorrow I’ll talk about who I blame. And it’s not the farmer.

Thanks everyone for the comments on the post below…I am replying here. I know which photo to send out of those three, for sure – but the general feeling seems to be that one ought to get photos done professionally with all the blemishes removed and edges softened and…

So I thought about it.

Here’s the same photo very amateurishly softened and glowed and with half the wrinkles and most of the age spots magically banished to the photo-blemish graveyard of the cyberworld. (Took me all of 30 secs to do this).

But is it me?

I am the product of a life in the sun – the first 15 years of which was spent without the benefit of sun screen. (Unfortunate result: three skin cancers). I am the product of my years. I’ve had kids and I’ve breastfed them. I am greying and my hair is thinning, and I rarely wear much makeup – if any – and you are more likely to see me sweatily lugging a huge telescope and tripod through mangrove mud, than dressed in Westwood, teetering on a pair of Jimmy Choo’s, clutching a handbag bought in Paris. I have wrinkles and age spots and arthritis. Things droop and wobble.

I’m not proud of any of that – any more than I am proud of being my age or being short or born blue-eyed. I’m not ashamed of any of it, either. It’s just what I am, much of it beyond my control. I really don’t have much say in the number of years I have been around…!

If I get a professional to photoshop the real weatherbeaten me into oblivion for publicity purposes, aren’t I subscribing to the same principles that lie behind this artificial world of airbrushed supermodels and botoxed celebrities that I so loathe for its despising of what is normal and healthy and real? People do get old. Things happen during the process. It doesn’t make us ugly or in need of cosmetic surgery to correct the “faults”. They are not faults!

No amount of lighting and airbrushing is going to make me a better writer – and my books are not going to be one whit more entertaining because of it. And I doubt that a pretty pix will sell a single book anyway…I am sure most of you agree with that. So why should I lie? Why should I buy into the fiction that growing old and not looking perfect is somehow wrong and in need of correction?

(And btw, if you saw me out in the tropical heat of the rainforest with the sweat dripping off the end of my nose in a reality shot, then I would look even worse!
And about now, you have all begun to realise why I named this blog “Tropic Temper” – Yep, I can rant with the best of ’em.)

So here’s what I have decided. I shall send the untouched photo to the marketing dept and let them make the choice. Yeah, at heart, I am just a cowardly writer who likes to pass the buck…

And thanks all, for your input. It was appreciated! You’re a great bunch of people. And I have no idea why my b & w photo at the top of the blog keeps blinking in and out of reality.

I had my first two novels published without even being aware that there were such people as beta readers. Oh, one or two family members had read the books, or versions of them – but my family members are far too kind to be beta readers (or far too wise).

The only real feedback I had was from my agent and editors. I am wiser now: I know there are wonderful people out there who actually like reading books in progress and providing the feedback that helps you to make it a better book.

This was especially valuable when I was writing “The Shadow of Tyr” recently (to be published in January). For a time, the book just would not go right. And I couldn’t work out what was wrong. A couple of my beta readers came along and put their finger on the problems – to the extent that when I finally showed the MS to my editor and agent, they both asked, Huh? So what was the problem? And my copyeditor said the book was “truly magic“!

So here’s to my beta readers – you rock.

Here are a number of things that a writer must remember about this process:

• As an author, you MUST divorce yourself from your work – a crit of your book that says, “Hey this is crap. I found it boring and repetitive,” is not a description of you. You have asked for critical feedback; when you get it, swallow your pride and accept it. Don’t ever then sit down and write back a long justification of your work and why your beta reader is wrong. If you do, you’ve just lost yourself a beta reader and made yourself look ridiculous.

• Choose your beta readers carefully. I am told there are some destructive people (usually unpublished and embittered) out there who like nothing better than to tear other people down. I haven’t actually suffered from this myself, but I have heard of other authors who have. You need someone who can tell you what it was that was wrong, and why – (but not necessarily how to fix it – that is your job, although they may be able to help you, especially if they are fellow writers). Any beta reader who attacks you, not your work, needs to be discarded immediately.

• Choose beta readers who are familiar with the genre and who read widely. That way, they lnow what they are talking about. They know bad when they see it.

• Here’s what should happen. Your beta reader says: I thought Chapter 12 dragged. There was too much telling, not enough action. Too much boring dialogue. By the end, I was yawning. Now you, as author, know that there is a lot of valuable info in Chap 12 that the reader must be told – it’s now up to you to work out how to make it more palatable. A really superb beta reader might make a suggestion: Why don’t you pep this up by having Tom there, asking silly questions and Alice losing her temper… but don’t expect a beta reader to give you the solution. All they should do is tell you what doesn’t work for them and why.

• Should you always take notice of the advice? Not necessarily. Beta readers can be wrong. They can even say contradictory things. But generally, if you have chosen them wisely, it pays to think very, very carefully about what they say. If two of them say the same thing, then you know you should really sit up and take notice!

• Different beta readers are good at different things. That’s why it’s great to have a few of them. Some are plot hole finders. Others go after lousy grammar. Others home in on continuity mistakes. Some just look at the bigger picture. Bless them all.

• So where do you find a beta reader? I am exceedingly lucky that one of my book group who lives a couple of streets away is also a sff fan and an editor – she is invaluable. She is a treasure. But she is also a working girl, and it is cheeky to ask someone who does this sort of thing for a living to do it for free! So we have an understanding – she does it to the degree that it is still fun for her. The moment she is pressed for time or it starts to be a chore, she’s gotta stop and say, Sorry. Not this time. And that’s always the way it should be, even with someone who is not in the industry.

My other beta readers, I found through the internet. I belong to a message board over at Voyager Australia, and I met authors and readers there who volunteered. Some of them are fellow authors – and they are wonderful. They are also enormously busy people, and it can be an imposition to ask them to do something as time-consuming as this. One is a bookseller. One a copyeditor. One a writer and editor, with her own unpublished books on the burner. One of them I still have never met.

And they all rock. I am eternally grateful to everyone of them. And I have done beta reading for many of them, in turn.

• If you are an unpublished writer and want a published writer to beta read for you, you should probably forget it. Unless they are a good friend, it is unlikely to happen. Most authors don’t have time, and are especially reluctant to help people they don’t know for fear of later being accused of pinching their ideas.

And this pix has nothing to do with beta readers. It’s just a water monitor that lives around our apartment block – and it is 5′ long – a metre and a half. Click on it for a good look.

The regular Sunday “style and grammar” post.

Is it: He’s coming too or He’s coming, too
I don’t want one either or I don’t want one, either

The answer on this one is actually quite simple. You can please yourself.
There are no set rules, at least none that are applied regularly today. [Some people will try to make rules, but they don’t seem to work very well.] Just do what you think suits the situation.

Jim has a ball, so Mary wanted one too!

I think that works without the comma. But there’s nothing wrong if you put one in.

Jim worked in accounting at the time, but he had another job, too. He was a barman at night.

I like that better with a comma.

There is one case where the comma is used more often than not, and that is when the “too” is in the middle of the sentence.

Michael used to go sailing every Sunday, and his son went with him. His daughter, too, when she was old enough.

Inevitably, when I get a copyedit back from the publisher, I find she has inserted more commas than I originally put in. I usually leave them there. I figure that a copyeditor – while perhaps not the actual god of punctuation and grammar – does come close, and tends to know more than I do about what is best!

So don’t fuss too much about this one. No editor is going to toss your work across the room because you did or did not insert a comma before “too”.

That’s all I have time for this week – I have a copyedit that has to be completed and sent back to Australia …