Elinor Zimmerman
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5/27/2015 0 Comments

What makes me put down a Novel

I'm lucky to get to read a ton of books. I don't mind a clumsy phrase or a cliche, but there are some things I rarely wade through. A short list of recent reasons I quit reading specific books:
1. Racism, sexism, ablism, transmisogyny, rape culture, etc. and/or general kyriarchy that isn't addressed appropriately by anybody. If a would-be sympathetic character says something troubling and everyone treats this like it's fine, I'm worried. You have about twenty pages after someone says something messed up before I decide your characters are terrible and give up on your book.
1a. "Othering" your characters of color and/or making your historically oppressed characters flat tokens. Also, making shit up about cultures and people who actually exist, especially if it's a culture you have no personal experience with.
2. Rape and sexual assault and physical abuse to move along a plot, without dealing with the lasting effects. Don't have a character's stepdad try to molest her just to get her out of the house and then ignore it for most of the book. Don't have a character be abused just so your main character can provide comfort or solve a mystery. I will literally throw that book across the room. (This does not work as well when I read ebooks).
3. I always click on the author's "connect with me" link in the ebook. If the author writes romance and calls romance "inherently vapid" and talks about he's above the genre he writes/the other writers in his genre, I won't read that book. Respect your genre, respect your fellow writers.
4. The phrase "heaving chests" on repeat in a love scene that also uses the word "turgid." I tried and I couldn't. I'm sorry.

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5/25/2015 0 Comments

Two Months of Tumblr Use...

All I do with it is look at pictures of beautiful women. Which is the point, I guess.

In other news, I have 10,000 words left until I finish a first draft of my novel.
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    Elinor

    A queer femme, writing romance and smut.

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