Friday is ready to start writing the next book!
This has been a weird week. Over the weekend, we discovered that the basement freezer had gotten unplugged. Weeks ago. We don’t use it much, and the seal kept most of the smell inside, but once my wife opened it … yeah. This may or may not be the cause of my son getting sick and missing school all week.
When I haven’t been cleaning out the grossness or taking care of the boy, I’ve been working on the final (I hope) revisions on Revisionary [Amazon | B&N | Indiebound]. I’m happy to say I got that wrapped up today. I’m going to go through everything one more time tomorrow, and then it’s back to the editor, and I’ll be able to get back to Project Bob.
Despite everything, I’ve gotten a lot of writing-type work done. But I’m noticing that the full-time writing schedule seems to make it a little harder to blog, which I hadn’t expected. I think I’m starting to figure out why, though.
Blogging is a different kind of writing, and for me, it’s been a shorter-term kind of writing. It’s something I do when I have a half hour of free time. (Sometimes that half hour stretches out beyond what I’d expected, but that’s another issue.)
Writing at home, I’ve got longer stretches of time, and the priority for those blocks of time has always been the fiction. There’s also the pressure of my deadline for getting those revisions turned around.
It’s weird. Before, those small windows of time didn’t work well for me to write fiction, so blogging was the natural fit. By going full-time as a writer, I seem to have minimized those blogging windows. I did not expect that.
It’s one more thing to sort out with the schedule going forward. But in the meantime, yay for finishing up another book!!!
Let’s start with some context:
Basically, Maynard believes that “those who recognize achievement in science fiction and fantasy (SF/F) have lost sight of the core question to be answered when evaluating a work in the genre: ‘Does it tell a good story?'” So he proposed a new award to recognize storytelling, with rules allowing a Judging Committee to “disqualify any work [up to three per category] they find to have an emphasis on other than telling a good SF/F story.”
I’m all for stepping up to create an award to fill a perceived gap. Maynard’s proposal led to a lot of discussion and debate, as well as a fair amount of criticism, particularly criticism of the proposed “trust levels” required to vote, and the Judging Committee’s role in arbitrarily disqualifying stories with the wrong emphasis. In the comments, Cat Valente proposed awards based on aspects of storytelling — best ending, best twist, best villain, etc.
There was more back-and-forth. Maynard commented, “I really do feel like the cool kids have swooped in and taken away my accomplishment,” and later, “Cat’s category list is unavailable. The cool kids took it away from the nerds.” Maynard went on to explain what he meant by cool kids in fandom:
Fandom has its nerds and its cool kids, too. The cool kids get invited to Worldcon parties and get nominated for Hugos (except this year, obviously). The cool kids get GoH invitations to cons. The cool kids have people squeeing over them whenever fans gather.
Both Valente and Erin pushed back against the Cool Kids/Nerd divide (linked above).
###
I think we’ve all seen some of what Maynard’s describing. Drop Neil Gaiman into a convention, and you get the rock star effect. People swarm Gaiman to the point that he can’t just enjoy a convention anymore. Or look at people like Seanan McGuire or Larry Correia, who get invited to be guests of honor at various conventions where they’re recognized and celebrated and, well, honored. We can all think of someone who, if we find out they’re at an event, we immediately perk up and say, “Oh, cool!”
But it’s not because of some high school nonsense, splitting people into cool kids and nerds. (Or Eloi and Morlocks, or whatever other disparaging labels are being used this week.) It’s because people like McGuire and Correia created art that other people really, really liked. And that’s awesome. Yay, art!
Jay Maynard is also known as Tron Guy. Because of the costume he created, he’s been on Jimmy Kimmel Live, South Park, and Tosh.0. That’s awesome too. Yay, art! But he feels like he’s one of the nerds, not one of the cool kids.
We’ve all felt out of place at a convention, or stood there wishing we could be part of a conversation without knowing how to join in. We’ve felt, like Maynard, that we were stuck at the nerds’ table, looking longingly across the cafeteria bar to where the Cool Kids of SF/F are hanging out. We’ve felt awkward and out-of-place, we’ve said exactly the wrong thing at the wrong time, and we’ve felt like a complete ass.
That’s not about whether you’re a nerd or a cool kid. That’s part of being human.
Side note – is it me, or does Anakin look a lot like Heath Ledger as the Joker in that pic?
I get that a lot of us struggled growing up. We felt excluded, and we envied those who were more popular, more successful, more comfortable with themselves and their friends. Most of us continue to struggle. It’s part of being human. But this whole “Nerds vs. Cool Kids” thing is bullshit. It’s the same artificial and simplistic us vs. them, left vs. right, puppy vs. anti-puppy, Hero vs. Villain garbage that’s been poisoning people for ages.
There will always be small-minded people trying to divide the world into Us and Them. Some of these folks have found that dispensing poison earns them attention and followers.
That doesn’t mean the rest of us have to drink it.
Cat Valente is nerdy as hell. The last time I saw her, she was wearing a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle backpack. Which was also awesome. She is nerd and cool kid and fan and celebrity.
So is Jay Maynard. Maybe not in the same way or at the same times or in the exact same proportions, but really, how boring would that be?
I hope Maynard and others find a way to remove the poison from themselves, and from their interactions with others.
Friday is running a bit late today…
Best American Poetry 2015 has become, in the words of editor Sherman Alexie, a “damn mess.”
Of the seventy-five poets included in BAP this year, the one at the heart of the mess is Michael Derrick Hudson, who submitted his poem “The Bees, the Flowers, Jesus, Ancient Tigers, Poseidon, Adam and Eve” using the pseudonym Yi-Fen Chou. The poem had been rejected 40 times when Hudson submitted under his own name. It was rejected nine more times when submitted by “Chou,” before being accepted by Prairie Schooner, and later by Alexie for Best American Poetry.
Alexie’s post about the controversy is here.
This opens up a lot of questions and anger that will probably sound familiar to folks who’ve been following debates about the Hugo awards and the SF/F genre in general.
1. Quality vs. Identity. First and foremost is whether this shows people are choosing work based not on quality, but on race and other aspects of identity. Is it really about quotas and checklists, as certain people have argued?
Two of Alexie’s statements are worth highlighting here.
The question or quality vs. identity isn’t a mutually exclusive one. This goes back to the false idea that calls for diversity are somehow inherently incompatible with a focus on quality. My reading of what Alexie says in his statement is that Hudson’s pseudonym helped him in the first round of reading, as Alexie was sorting through several thousand poems. But in the end, Alexie made his final decisions based on the quality of the work, selecting 75 poems he loved.
2. Okay, fine, whatever. But would Hudson have gotten in under his own name? This is what a lot of people really want to argue, and I don’t think it’s a question anyone can answer. Hudson’s poem was good enough to be included in BAP. But is there another “good enough” poem that got knocked out of contention because of Hudson’s pseudonym and Alexie’s nepotism?
“…in putting Yi-Fen Chou in the ‘maybe’ and ‘yes’ piles, I did something amorphous. I helped a total stranger because of racial nepotism. I was practicing a form of literary justice that can look like injustice from a different angle. And vice versa.”
Hudson said he deliberately used a Chinese pseudonym to increase his chances of getting published. His poem was rejected 40 times under his name, but only 9 times under “Yi-Fen Chou,” which proves … very little, really. Maybe one of those 40 markets would have accepted the poem under his pseudonym. Maybe that 50th market would have rejected Michael Hudson. But given the way writing and submitting work, we’d need a much larger sample size to reach any conclusions.
We know Alexie paid more attention to and was more amenable to the poem because of that pseudonym. We can’t know whether that was a deciding factor in the poem’s inclusion, though it’s certainly possible.
3. Isn’t Hudson doing the same thing Alice Sheldon did when she wrote as James Tiptree Jr?
Sheldon adopted a male pseudonym in a field with an ongoing, systemic bias against women.
Before I go further, I should note that I’m not an expert on the American poetry market, or on poetry in general. But in order to equate Hudson and Sheldon here, you’d have to demonstrate that an equivalent ongoing, systemic bias against white men exists in the field of poetry. I suspect Hudson believes that, based on his statements. Alexie’s comments suggest otherwise:
“I carefully studied each year’s edition of BAP and was highly critical of the aesthetic range (Okay, there had to be more than two great poems published last year written in meter and/or rhyme.), cultural and racial representation (I can’t believe there are only 8 poets of color in this edition.), gender equality (What is this? The Golf Club at Augusta?), and nepotism (Did those guest editors really choose, like, sixty-six of their former students?).”
I know I’ve seen no evidence of systemic bias against white writers in the SF/F field, and I’m highly skeptical such a bias exists in poetry. What I have seen, and what I suspect may be playing out here, is that people who have historically been given preference, advantages, and privilege, soon come to assume such things are their due. The loss of those institutional advantages is seen not as movement toward fairness and equality, but as unfairly privileging “the other.”
Alexie talks about the rules he set for himself when editing BAP. I think one of those rules is worth closer examination here:
“I will pay close attention to the poets and poems that have been underrepresented in the past. So that means I will carefully look for great poems by women and people of color. And for great poems by younger, less established poets. And for great poems by older poets who haven’t been previously lauded. And for great poems that use rhyme, meter, and traditional forms.”
As editor, Alexie was deliberately paying closer attention to underrepresented poets. This is the opposite of the situation Alice Sheldon found herself in, writing in a field that was (and in many respects, continues to be) overrepresented by men. So no, I don’t think you can justify comparing Mr. Hudson to Alice Sheldon and others like her.
4. Conclusion. I suspect this sort of thing is to some extent inevitable. There are systemic inequities in our society. There’s also an effort to push back against inequity. After generations of imbalance, we come to see imbalance as the norm, and equality is perceived as an attack against those of us in those historically advantaged positions. The loss of privilege is mistaken as discrimination.
Sherman Alexie got taken in by what he describes as “colonial theft.” He also created what he believes to be “the most diverse set of poems in Best American Poetry‘s history.”
I don’t have any easy answers here, but as our genres continue to acknowledge and push back against discrimination and exclusion, I suspect we’re going to see more people like Hudson, and more situations like this one.
I strongly recommend reading Alexie’s entire post.
Today was the first day of school for the kids, and the first day for me being home on my own as a full-time writer dude. I was terribly shocked to discover that things did not go exactly as planned. There were missed buses at both ends of the day, and I ended up going back to bed and sleeping later than I intended. Then at lunch, I started watching Mad Max: Fury Road, and had a little trouble pulling myself away from that.
But I still got butt in chair and made it through close to 10,000 words of revision work on Revisionary.
I’ve also discovered that the 10-hour/week job I’m hoping to pick up probably won’t happen for a few more weeks. On one level, that’s annoying. On another, well, it’s ten more hours of freedom for the next week or two!
I’m really looking forward to getting Revisionary done and turned back in, and getting back to work on Project Bob and several other ideas.
Lessons learned so far:
This all still feels weird, like I’m on vacation or something. This isn’t work; it’s what I did on my days off from work!
I definitely think I could get used to it.
Chuck Wendig‘s novel Aftermath [Amazon | B&N | Indiebound] came out on Friday, and while I haven’t read it yet, I’m author enough to admit I’m envious as hell. Chuck got to write the canonical follow-up to Return of the Jedi. How cool is that? The only thing I can think of that might come close is if someone approached me to write the official LEGO Goblin Quest video game.
(Side note: LEGO folks, please hit me up on that!)
To nobody’s surprise, the book is one of the top sellers at Amazon, and has already gathered more than 160 reviews over there.
Funny thing about those reviews, though. Almost half of them are one-star.
What the heck? Did Wendig follow through with his threat to make Jar-Jar and C3PO into Sith lords? Did he introduce sparkling vampire Ewoks? Did he give a character a Swiss Army Lightsaber?
Now, there’s nothing wrong with one-star reviews. Heck, if your book never gets panned, it probably means you’re not reaching a broad enough audience. Not everyone is going to like your work, and that’s okay. Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations and all that, if you’ll forgive the genre crossing.
But half of the reviews? I had to know more. So I started reading.
One of the very first one-star reviews has nothing to do with the book. “[P]ublisher when you drop the price to $9.99 where it belongs — you will then earn a FAIR REVIEW for a FAIR PRICE.” While I sympathize and even agree with the reviewer’s complaint here, I wish Amazon had a way to distinguish between reviews complaining about the author’s story and reviews complaining about other things like price, cover, etc.
The third one-star doesn’t hold back:
“This book includes 3 gay characters that feel so forced into the story. Disney is stuffing diversity down our throats and it’s taking me out of my suspension of believe because it feels forced. I myself am a minority but when I read star Wars I don’t want to be thinking about racial consciousness or sexual idenitity. I also don’t like the inclusion of so many gay charcters becuase my personal opinion is that homosexuality is not normal; sodomy is not normal and I am tired of the liberal media trying to make me accept this lifestyle.” (Source)
Oh, dear. A galaxy that includes countless species and droids and races acknowledged the existence of homosexuality? WHAT WERE THEY THINKING? Can we PLEASE get back to giant slugs with a fetish for other species, green muppets, blue elephant people, and giant walking carpets? You know, characters who are normal.
Well, maybe this ignorant bigot is an exception. Let’s look at some of the other one-star reviews.
All righty then. So some people are pissed off about Wendig getting teh gay in their Star Wars. Got it.
Other reviews complain about the writing style. Aftermath is written in first person and present tense. Nerdist.com had the following to say about the prose:
“If you’re a fan of Wendig’s writing style, you’ll be happy to know it’s present here. His narration style for this novel is different and won’t be everyone’s cup of tea, but I like the urgency of it. The tone is snappy but not short, if that makes sense. Each sentence, each description of action, each joke — it all hits you right between the eyes in the exciting head rush sort of way. No space is wasted, and we dive deep inside the inner workings of our lead characters.”
Fair enough.
There’s a third batch of complaints from people who are angry at Disney and angry that the expanded universe Star Wars novels are officially not canon, and are not being continued. Author pointed to the Star Wars Books Facebook Page, which is full of comments like:
Looking back at the Amazon reviews, you see a lot of people mourning for Timothy Zahn and the expanded universe. One reviewer sums it up thusly: “Disney already kind of did their slap with tossing the EU that kept the franchise going all these decades.”
So from everything I’m seeing, Aftermath‘s barrage of one-star reviews are primarily coming from three camps:
I have no sympathy for group #1. Group #2 … that’s frustrating. I get that you’ve invested a lot in those stories, and that’s awesome. It really is. I would have loved to see Thrawn and Mara Jade show up in Star Wars VII. But the decision to go in another direction isn’t a Death Star blast to your childhood or anything like that.
For group #3, if you bounced that hard off of Wendig’s style, then yeah, that sucks. Wendig knew he was taking a risk there, and sometimes risks fail. Some readers seem to really love the way he wrote it. Others hate it. Fair enough.
Did I say I was envious of Wendig? The widespread publicity and success of this book has put him in some ugly crossfire, a good chunk of which has very little to do with his writing. Every published book comes with the potential for negativity, but Aftermath brings it to a whole new level. In all honesty, it’s a little frightening to watch.
But none of it changes my thoughts about wanting to write a Star Wars novel of my own. I might rethink my plan to do it in second-person future tense, though…
Hope everyone’s enjoying the last day of summer vacation. (You know, depending on your local school district’s schedule and whether or not you care about the K-12 school year and all that stuff…)
Just spent an hour on the phone with my editor, talking about Revisionary [Amazon | B&N | Mysterious Galaxy]. For the next two weeks, I’ll be setting Project Bob aside in order to address several pages worth of notes.
The good news is that she liked the book, and I don’t have to rip the whole thing up and start again from scratch. (I’ve never actually had to do that, but the irrational fear is always there…)
I’m feeling pretty good about our conversation. Almost all of her comments and feedback felt less like “you suck!” and more like “hey, here’s a way to make this better/more clear/more interesting,” which is how it’s supposed to work, but writer-brain sometimes gets stuck on the “you suck!” piece.
So assuming no unexpected crises, in two weeks or so I should be done with this book (with the exception of page proofs). There’s a good chance this will be the last Magic ex Libris book, at least for a while. It’s also my last book written as a full-time state employee. It’s a bit of a turning point in more ways than one.
And that raises a Very Important Question – if this does end up being the last Magic ex Libris book, how the heck am I going to bring Smudge into whatever I start working on next?
So far, this full-time writer thing has been … weird.
Several people warned me that it would take a while to catch up on sleep, and they weren’t wrong. I’ve been sleeping in a bit and feeling surprisingly tired in the evenings. I’ve even crashed for the occasional nap.
I’ve gotten a bit of writing done, roughly at the same pace I’d been doing before. (I’m up to 11K words on Project Bob.) I’ve also started chipping away at various chores and errands and home maintenance things. Part of my brain is grumbling that I haven’t made more progress on the new book, but I’m trying to cut myself some slack this first week. This is a recovery and transition time.
It’s also the last week before the kids go back to school. Starting next week, I’ll be alone from the time I wake up until mid-afternoon when I head out to pick up my daughter. I suspect that will make a big difference when it comes to being able to focus on writing, or whatever else I need to work on.
Without the structure of the day job, I’m working on putting together my own schedule. I’m hoping my days will look something like this:
There could be evening writing work as needed, and weekends as well, but if this works out, it means I’m getting 3-4 hours of writing time every day before stopping to make dinner.
I’m also planning to start exercising again in the evenings. I started with 20 minutes on the exercise bike last night. If I can get back into the habit, it will help the depression, the diabetes, and just get me back into better shape overall.
Other things I need to figure out:
It all feels a bit surreal right now, and it will be another week before I start to have anything approaching “normal” full-time writer days.
But I already feel more rested and less stressed than I did a week ago. So far, so good!
