And a Merry Christmas tomorrow for all who celebrate it, and the very best of whatever seasonal cheer you most desire for all of those who celebrate other things, or at other seasons, or not at all.
Tag: adventures in the writing life
Writing for Joe’s Beer Money
The idea that creators of popular fiction are writing for “Joe’s beer money”* is an often derided concept, but in my opinion it shouldn’t be.
For one thing, the fact that Joe is reading for pleasure at all should be celebrated, not sneered at. Elitists might be surprised at what Joe sometimes picks – it isn’t just thrillers and soft-core porn. I remember stopping for coffee for once at a truck stop that had, in addition to the usual snack foods and sundries, a wire spinner rack filled with audio book rentals for pick-up-and-drop-off . One of the more well-worn items on the rack was an audio book of Homer’s Iliad.
For another thing, writing for Joe’s beer money is demanding work. Joe doesn’t make so much money that he wants to finish a book feeling like he threw away some of it on a thing he didn’t enjoy. (And let me say right here that Joe is just as capable as anyone else of acknowledging different values of enjoyment. See Homer’s Iliad, above) Furthermore, Joe is honest: He’s not going to pretend he liked your book just to impress his friends and co-workers. But if he does like it, he will read your next one, and probably the one after that.
Also – oddly enough, the cost of a mass-market paperback novel and the cost of a six-pack of ordinary beer have stayed roughly equivalent at least since the 1970’s, which is about the time when I started keeping track. (Of paperback prices, at any rate. I had to go to the internet for the beer data.) Trade paperbacks are more in line with the cost of imported and craft beers; and it’s entirely possible that part of the controversy over how much an e-book should cost is also a disagreement over whether an e-book is more like a six-pack of Budweiser or a six-pack of some five-star brewpub’s signature XXX Strong Ale.
*The original quote is often attributed to science fiction writer Jerry Pournelle.
Things You Figure Out about the Past
…if you live in a cold climate and are stingy with your heating (as we have always been, first because we were heating with a wood furnace, and willingness to put up with lower interior temperatures directly correlates with unwillingness to move large heavy logs from woodpile to furnace several times a day for an entire winter; and second because when we finally got tired of heaving logs around we dropped back to the electric baseboard heat, which is like burning dollar bills to keep warm):
- Footstools weren’t just ornamental. They were to keep your feet off the cold floor, so that what warmth you could pull around yourself didn’t leak out through the soles of your shoes.
- Shawls and caps and fingerless gloves weren’t just fashion statements. They kept the drafts off the back of your neck, and kept heat from leaking out through the palms of your hands and the top of your head.
- Lapdogs weren’t just frivolous pets. They were self-propelled organic personal space heaters for people who could afford the cost of feeding an otherwise unproductive household critter. (Cats and small terriers could also fulfill the “space heater” function, but escaped the “silly rich woman’s toy” stigma by also catching household vermin.)
Giving Thanks
Things I’m thankful for, as a writer:
- The word-processor/printer combination, a wonder of modern technology that’s eliminated so much of the sheer physical drudgery of turning a story into submittable text. There are probably writers out there, these days, who never had to wrestle with an electric – or worse, a manual – typewriter and a ream of 20-pound bond paper and a bottle of white-out, making mental calculations all the while as to exactly how many corrections they could get away with on the finished page before having to trash it and start over. I do not miss those days at all; as soon as I could afford the tech, I was there.
- The internet, which in addition to supplying us with distractions such as cat pictures and “Which Classic Dessert Are You?” quizzes, also brings the resources of great museums and research libraries to our homes and offices. Books and pictures that we would otherwise have needed to drive for miles just to take a look at, are now ours for the click of a mouse, as is expert advice on everything from high fashion to horsemanship.
- The e-book revolution, which bids fair to do for reading in this century what the paperback revolution did for it in the last one.
- And, of course, all the friends and colleagues and readers (including, of course, you) who are a source of kindness and good company in what is, of necessity, a mostly solitary occupation.
A Writer’s Mind is a Strange, Strange Place
Last night I dreamed I was at a science fiction convention, and was trying (as one does) to juggle prepping for my final panel of the con, packing up and checking out before the hotel deadline, and finding my co-author to make certain that he had all of his packing done so that I didn’t have to do it for him in a tearing hurry and risk losing something crucial.
Which would have made for a simple, if boring, dream, except for the point where I suddenly discovered that I had left all my clothes someplace else — as is usually the case with such dreams, my mind didn’t supply a further explanation, just bam! naked — and had to make my way back to my hotel room on the eleventh floor, and presumably to some new clothes, with nothing to preserve my modesty but a large crockpot which I was carrying in front of me like a shield.
No, my mind didn’t supply an explanation for the crockpot, either.
And did I mention the elevator was being wonky? It kept dropping me off at every floor but #11, no matter what button I pushed, including the floor which was full of actors and musicians rehearsing a musical based on the life of Theodore Roosevelt.
And while it may or may not say something about my subconscious, it definitely says something about my sense of priorities that during the whole dream, my main worry wasn’t the lack of clothes or the looming check-out time, but whether or not I had prepped adequately for that final panel.
You Should Probably Go Read This
Especially if you’re active, or intend or hope to be active, in the greater science fiction/fantasy writing community: sf writer Laura J. Mixon (aka Morgan J. Locke) provides an exhaustive investigation and analysis of the work – if that’s the appropriate word – of a “new, young” writer who turns out to be a well-known internet troll with a long-term record of personal attacks and community destruction.
(No, I’m not giving that person’s name(s) here; I have no desire to give them any more Googlejuice, or to set myself up as a target for somebody to punch full of holes. But the blog post at the link will provide.)
As far as writing advice and philosophy go, two associated points that are more directly in line with the concerns of this blog:
First, this person’s personality and their pattern of bad behavior do not stop them from being a good writer. Even a cursory look at the history of world literature should suffice to demonstrate that the gift of being a good writer and the gift of being a good person come in two separate baskets, and it doesn’t always happen that an individual gets handed both.
Second, it behooves all of us to be careful and charitable about what we say to and about our readers and our colleagues, because the field is close-knit (not to say incestuous), and the same faces will keep turning up around us in different contexts as the years go by. And these days, the internet is forever; somebody will always have saved the emails/kept the screencaps, and the truth, however embarrassing or inconvenient, eventually will out.
Where I’m Going to be This Weekend
I’m going to be at the La Belle Winery in Amherst, New Hampshire, participating in a short fiction slam with other former students and instructors of the Odyssey Writer’s Workshop. (Jim Macdonald and I were guest instructors there, once upon a time.)
I’ve never participated in a slam before (group readings at conventions and the like, yes, but that was within the tribe, as it were) and certainly never one at a winery.
This should be fun. If you’re in or around Amherst NH this weekend with $25 burning a hole in your pocket ($15 if you’re a student; $10 if you’re a teenager), you might think of stopping by.
Farewell to the Island
The Viable Paradise workshop is over for another year. We had writing and music and pancakes and jellyfish and a sky full of stars. (Also, if you were me, lobster tacos at the Lookout restaurant, and I just have to say, that was one of the best things I’ve ever tasted done to a lobster.)
The photo, by the way, is of the Gay Head Lighthouse on the Cliffs of Aquinnah — one of the five lighthouses on the island. (The others are East Chop, West Chop, Edgartown, and Cape Pogue.) It’s called “Gay Head” because the headland there is a multi-hued clay cliff. Obligatory literature reference: The harpooneer Tashtego, in Moby-Dick, was a Native American from Gay Head.
If you wanted to apply to VP this year and couldn’t make it, next year’s applications open on 1 January 2015.
Busy busy busy
If posting is kind of sparse for a week or so, it’ll because Jim Macdonald and I are down on Martha’s Vineyard, where we’ll be teaching at the Viable Paradise sf/fantasy writer’s workshop.
As usual, we expect to learn as much as we teach. There’s something about hanging out with a bunch of fellow writers and talking about technique and craft and what Edward Gorey so aptly referred to as “the unspeakable horror of the literary life” that works that way.
This One Brings Up Some Interesting Ideas
A blog post over here, by author Erica Smith, about the ever-present tension in historical fiction/historical romance writing between historical accuracy and reader entertainment. Do follow the outbound links; they lead to yet more discussion and commentary by other writers in the field.
It’s an ongoing matter of contention, apparently, and (to my eye, at least) yet another angle on an old argument. Classical tabletop wargamers used to (and for all I know, still do) debate for hours about the relative virtues of simulation and playability – the more accurate the simulation in a particular scenario, the less evenly-balanced the game. Likewise, back in the days when I was active in the Society for Creative Anachronism, the “fun versus authenticity” debates were a staple of the local discourse.
I’m a big fan of fun and playability, as a general rule (otherwise, I’d never have been able to watch the historical flashbacks in Buffy and Angel with a straight face); but I’m also a fan of historical fiction and romance played according to the strict rules of the game, which includes taking into account the fact that people in the past were not men and women just like us only in funny costumes.
I suppose it’s kind of liking both authentic, straight-from-the-source Italian cooking and the spaghetti-and-meatballs your born-and-raised-in-the-heart-of-Texas mother used to make at home. Which one you want on a particular day depends a lot upon how you feel at the time . . . and they’re both of them good, too, just as long as you remember that they’re not the same thing.
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