theferrett

During Clarion, I coined the phrase “busking on the wrong corner” to describe the phenomenon of “entertaining writing that doesn’t serve the story.” It’s the reason writers have to  kill their darlings.  It’s the trap that stops a lot of good writers from making the transition to great.

“Busking” is the practice of playing in public spaces for donations – you know, that guy playing the guitar, his guitar case open before him, full of scattered singles and quarters.  Buskers are often some of the most talented musicians.  But the buskers’ art is also partially a knowledge of where the crowds are.

You can sing your fucking heart out on a corner where there’s no foot traffic.  If you’re really good, you might make a few bucks.  But if you’re really good and really smart, you’ll position yourself near the subway where people are pouring out by the hundreds as rush hour ends, a place where even a mediocre musician can clean up.  Part of your strength is not just the raw force of your musicianship, but knowing where to place that skill so it’s maximized with silver rains of spare change.

Writers (me included, oh so included) are often putting their talents to use on the wrong corner.  This chapter is brilliant writing, it’s got great characterization, it’s exciting.  But underneath, the scene is at odds with what the story is trying to do, and what you’ll wind up with is a great scene that advances the story in the wrong ways.

Lemme give you the real-life example: the lead character of the novel I’m plotting right now, Autumn Akeley, is a taxidermist.  In the beginning of the book, Autumn is deep in the woods on a rumor, searching for the Hulk.

Why the Hulk, you ask?  Because she’s not just any taxidermist – she makes wild viral videos online parodying recent movies in order to drive business to her online taxidermy shop.  Autumn’s latest planned video (“The Bearvengers”) needs a gigantic, light-skinned animal she can dye green to play the part of the Hulk.  Autumn does not kill animals for her entertainment (she takes the death of any creature very seriously), but she just got a tip from a hunter that there’s a decaying grizzly in the woods she might be able to use.  She tracks it down with her friend Karla and examines the corpse – it’s a little too moldy for her liking, but it has very light fur.  She thinks she can salvage it.

Then a shot rings out across the forest: there are poachers in the woods.  As someone who hates to see an animal killed senselessly, she does not take lightly to poachers.  She sets off to investigate, starting the chain of events that sets up the novel….

…Now, that’s a pretty good scene.  It’s got an interesting character doing something we’ve never seen done before in a book, it displays her odd compulsions, it allows us to watch her work (if you have a character with an odd profession, people love to see the fine details), and for a short intro it’ll do quite nicely.

And yet we are busking badly here.  Why?

Because this novel is about Autumn’s friendship with Karla.

Okay, unfair, I didn’t tell you that – but the whole point of the novel is that a new man in town with a shadowy past begins to romance Karla, causing a rift when Autumn discovers the man’s past as a serial killer.  And this scene, while good in a vacuum, utterly fails to set up the dynamics of Karla and Autumn and their friendship.  In fact, you’d be excused for forgetting the existence of Karla in this summary, because while we can put in some nice dialogue and characterization to set up Karla’s character, the underlying structure of the scene is not about her at all.

This is a great scene for a novel featuring bold Autumn Akeley, bold adventurer.  It’s a terrible scene for Autumn and Karla’s big fight – especially since the next scene involves Autumn tracking down poachers, which has even less to do with their friendship.  And if you’re not a careful writer, you’ll think this is an awesome scene because it’s got it all – humor, good characterization, a quick hook to action – without realizing that it’s an awesome scene that’s structurally at odds with what you want to do in the long run.  It doesn’t set up the things that need to be established.

It’s a good scene in isolation.  In context, it’s a darling that needs to be killed… Or at least dramatically changed so that Karla does something so interesting here that the scene metamorphosizes away from Autumn’s search for the Hulk and into an expression of how Autumn and Karla couldn’t get along without each other.

The point I’m making here is that had I written that chapter, I’d have been very proud.  It’d be a nice, 1,500 word opener that would grab the reader, full of lovely details and fun stuff.

And then I’d have to place it into my trash folder, because ultimately it doesn’t do what it needs to, then hunt for the right scene to write.

Cross-posted from Ferrett's Real Blog.

bradhicks

The commandos herded the men into a school and the women and children into a church. The violence began before dawn. One of the soldiers, César Ibañez, heard the screams of girls begging for help. Several soldiers watched as Lt. César Adán Rosales Batres raped a girl in front of her family. Following their superior officer, other commandos started raping girls and women. ...

The commandos brought the villagers one by one to the center of the hamlet, near a dry well about 40 feet deep. Favio Pinzón Jerez, the squad's cook, and other soldiers reassured the captives that everything would be all right. They were going to be vaccinated. It was a routine health precaution, nothing to worry about.

Commando Gilberto Jordán drew first blood. He carried a baby to the well and hurled it to its death. Jordán wept as he killed the infant. Yet he and another soldier, Manuel Pop Sun, kept throwing children down the well.

The commandos blindfolded the adults and made them kneel, one at a time. They interrogated them about the rifles, aliases, guerrilla leaders. When the villagers protested that they knew nothing, soldiers hit them on the head with a metal sledgehammer. Then they threw them into the well. ... By the end of the afternoon, the well overflowed with corpses.

theferrett

I’ve been quiet here as I’ve been slogging through the usual Seasonal Depression, but I did post two essays over at FetLife (TheFacebookforkinksters) that you may be curious about:  “Depression. Fucking. Depression.”, which deals with how depression affects my sex life, and “Ropeweasels,” which deals with the issue of me being tied up. (There’s also “Fireplay and Me,” an oddly poetic musing on setting women aflame, which I don’t think I linked here but maybe I did.)

In addition, my humor essay “So I’m Going To Become A Dom” may be my most popular essay ever, with 612 comments and 965 loves.  I guess it’s all about the specificity.

Cross-posted from Ferrett's Real Blog.

theferrett

Back in The Day, when I had infinite people reading me on LiveJournal, I’d post an entry and the comments exploded.  I’d hit “post,” and five minutes later I’d have fifteen comments.

Now, I make a big ol’ important post and sometimes I don’t get a comment for half an hour.  That used to unnerve me – is this a bad entry? Did I say something wrong? – until I realized what was happening.  English LiveJournal is slowly dying.

What used to happen was that the LJ friends page was like Twitter or Facebook now – so constant a stream of data that you just refreshed your friends’ page and wham, new entries.  Maybe you didn’t check it twenty times a day like I did, but the friends page was a ritual where my latest entry popped up in real time.  I was a part of the info-stream.

As LJ use has declined, though, the traffic patterns have changed for me.  People no longer read my blog as part of a daily pulse; it’s in their RSS feeds, or bookmarked separately, or they wait for me to post the interesting links to Twitter (since I don’t Tweet-spam every post).  I still get roughly the same number of comments, but as opposed to arriving in one explosive comment-dump, they now arrive scattered over the course of two days, like late passengers departing a red-eye connection.  I’m read at their convenience, not the convenience of LJ.

This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it is a little weird.  Some days I post a SRS ENTRY and then wait until I get one comment just to ensure someone’s listening.  By the time I get out of the tub, I have like three comments, which used to be the sign of an entry falling on its face.  Now, I’m patient; the user feedback will arrive in due course.

If you write it, they will come.

Cross-posted from Ferrett's Real Blog.

theferrett

The Seasonal Affective Disorder is really fucking with me this year.  I’m on medications, which helps, but not really.

See, the Paxil means that it’s not slamming me for ten days.  I’m feeling okay for a day at a time, and then the SAD slips in and WHAM.  The whole afternoon vanishes because I’m just sitting here crying and breaking down and I don’t know what to do.

With the old SAD, it sucked, but I got used to it.  A constant suck was horrid, but I could adjust, keep working, get everything done.  This is a horror show where I’m okay, I’m okay, then suddenly I’m through the trap door.  And I can’t handle this.

I’m struggling harder now that it’s lessened.  I honestly don’t know what to do.  And I guess maybe that’s not what a blog is for, but I try to chronicle my existence and today I was about to get back to work and then I was all like, “I shouldn’t be trying to sell The Upterlife.  I’m reading Saladin’s book, it’s so much better, I’m an awful writer, no agents are interested anyway and it’s just going to be a long slow haul to the inevitable stop of my talent, yes I lucked out once with the Nebulas but this book isn’t it and it sucks and I should just toss it away and hope the next one is better and oh God why am I bothering it takes so much fucking effort just to get anything halfway decent.”

How can I work like that?  When I’m just assaulted by ghosts?

Cross-posted from Ferrett's Real Blog.

theferrett

So I’m 30,000 words into a new novel, and this weekend I realized that I have to throw out everything except for the first 600 words.  The last two months of work?  Completely erased.  Hit “Delete” and kiss that effort goodbye.

Normally there’s something to be scavenged from a manuscript collapse, but this is a total implosion.  My protagonist used to be a harried, frightened nerd, prone to punching when cornered; in this new novel she will become a nerd-king, the kind of super-popular high-school kid that has yet to realize that she’s peaking and that things have already begun to slope downwards.  The villain in my old book was a charming, well-meaning rogue; now he’s a sneering killer who’s only masquerading as human.  I’m reducing everything to such rubble that there’s nothing I can retain.

Such an exciting failure.

Failing is a good thing in writing; it means you’re taking risks.  But furthermore, it indicates you’re skilled enough to recognize that you’re writing something flawed.  Which is a sign of growth to be cherished.

A few years back, I would have looked at the scenes I’d written and said, “But those are good scenes!”  And indeed, they are; some of them are touching and beautiful and honest in a way that I’d never been capable of before.  There’s a scene where my protagonist faces down her reclusive, immature father to have to justify her expulsion from school – which was one of the subtlest and truest things I’ve ever written.  There was a lot of good stuff in that 30k, personal high-water marks.

Yet the novel as a whole wasn’t up to snuff, with character largely revealed through interminable interior monologues and backstory instead of action.  The fact that I recognized that was a sign of how far I’d come.  And figuring out how to fix it involved a combination of using every tool I’d developed as a writer and having the boldness to go, “No, this can’t be massaged back into position.”

Now, I’m trying a new technique: I’ve never outlined a novel before.  I’ve only written the scene that comes next, hoping my internal searchlight would find the correct path.  But in outlining, I’m having to use all sorts of techniques stolen from the theater – the three-act structure, internal versus external challenges, ensuring that character is revealed through action, explicitly raising the stakes with every chapter – and that’s a sweaty workout.

I’m learning so many new things that I feel revitalized.  This novel doesn’t feel like a slog any more, but a mountain to be climbed.  It’s tough, but there’s a certain masochistic satisfaction I’m deriving, a brisk slap to the face.

To which I say to you, dear readers, is that there are mundane failures and exciting ones.  The mundane failures you can’t learn from, you just did the same thing all over again.  But the exciting ones are the ones where you can break yourself and then reforge your shattered forearms into adamantium claw-laden superpowers.

What I encourage you to do is to fail big.  Write to the edge of your limits.  And when you realize you can’t pull off this tricky story you’re halfway through, don’t get depressed; take it as a sign that you’re recognizing flaws even if you don’t know how to correct them yet.  Writing’s full of invisible pitfalls where you think it’s brilliant, but your readers are unsatisfied.  Just understanding that something doesn’t work is a major accomplishment, one you should congratulate yourself for.

What’s important is not this story.  It’s your overall skill level.  And a failed story can teach you far more than that easy sale.

Today, I’m taking the first step in spending at least a month outlining my novel chapter by chapter.  Maybe it won’t work.  But I’ll learn, and if this collapses then it’ll be such a glorious failure that I’ll be harvesting new talent from the ruins.  Celebrate with me, people.  Go blast a story of your own.

Cross-posted from Ferrett's Real Blog.

theferrett

If you haven’t been paying attention, my wife Gini has committed herself to a mad project: riding 150 miles in two days to help fight Multiple Sclerosis.  She’s doing this because of her grandfather – read her touching essay on the topic - and because a friend of ours in town, Patti, has MS.

I wish you all could meet Patti, and if you live in Cleveland, you probably have.  Patti’s one of the sunniest, wittiest, cleverest women around, so much so that you occasionally have to remind yourself, “Oh, right, she has a disease that is stripping the motor functions from her body.”  She has good days and bad days, but retains her sense of humor.  Amazon.com once issued me an email that said, “People who liked [GINI JUDD] also liked [PATTI].”

As a way to fight this evil, Patti’s husband Mike has created the “Patti’s Paladins” biking group, which pedals out to a lighthouse once a year in a gruelling display of physical fitness.  Well, it’s not that hard for Mike, who is so fit that they literally had to give him amphetamines before surgery because his resting heart rate is below what a normal human’s heart rate is while sedated.  This, I believe, officially makes Mike a superhero.

Gini, however, was starting from scratch.  She wants to do this.  She’s been getting on her bike every day, pushing herself so hard she trembles the next day, reporting in: “Ten miles.”  “Fifteen miles.”  “Twenty, but I had to take a break.”  She’s up to forty-one miles, a three-and-a-half-hour sweatfest that left her wrecked, but she is determined to make it to the lighthouse.  For Patti.  For herself.  For all other sufferers of MS.

What she needs is sponsors.  Many, many sponsors.  As she says, “10 cents a mile is only $15 out of your pocket for 150 miles of my effort. Of course a dollar a mile would be quite lovely, but any pledge is money going straight to an important and worthy cause.”  So I would strongly request, if you can, to give some cash to my wife, who is straining her healthy legs and lungs and heart for those whose legs and lungs and hearts are slowly deteriorating.

It’s a good cause.  Help her, audience.  You’re her only hope.

Cross-posted from Ferrett's Real Blog.

theferrett

As someone who’s starting to get requests for autographs, I have to admit they puzzle me.  I’m not sure what an autograph is supposed to represent.

I mean, let me tell you that I have the entire Sandman trade paperback series scattered throughout my basement, a series I quite enjoyed.  I was also lucky enough to spend a week in Neil Gaiman’s company at Clarion.  And my friends routinely ask: “Why in God’s name didn’t you have him sign your books?”

I didn’t see a point.  Either I know Neil enough well enough to have him wave “hullo” to me at conventions, or I don’t.  If I know him that well, the signature is superfluous.  And if I don’t, well…

…there’s another author who I also spent a week learning from.  When the workshop was over, so was our relationship.  I’ve seen him/her at conventions at least six times since then, and despite a happy wave s/he has never acknowledged me once.  The single time I attempted to start up a conversation with him/her made it painfully obvious that s/he had bigger fish to fry than me.  Which is fine!  Not every teacher/student relationship needs to end in a happy acquaintanceship.  I paid my money, and got my value; series ended.

But I could have had his/her signature on a book, too.  It would have been a cold, sad thing, a timestamp to say, “We interacted here.”  Yet if that person doesn’t want to interact with me now, then what does that signature prove?  A mere co-location in time and space, coupled with a societal obligation to scrawl their name on a page.  That’s really not that much.

Yet despite the difference in our post-workshop interactions, both Neil and Unnamed Author would be a signature in a book.  And if the autograph is that useless in measuring how I know them, why have it?

Don’t get me wrong, I’ve asked for autographs myself, mostly as an excuse to make feeble conversation with someone I admired.  That’s something I understand, that need to have some reason to approach your Big Damn Writing Hero.  And it’s certainly a thrill to have a memory that you met someone whose writing helped to shape who you are.  Here’s the evidence that you had thirty seconds in the presence of your hero!  Wonderful.  What a way to stimulate fond reminiscences.  Because good authors will not just sign your books – they’ll look you in the eyes, ask a question, establish a brief connection so that for a moment, you feel like they were aware of your presence and let you take that home with the book and their name in it.

The autographs themselves, however, are just this weird dross.  An afterthought.  I’m always puzzled by people who show off their autographed books proudly, as if the signature was worthwhile in and of itself.  And there are autograph-hounds who patrol conventions, looking to get signature after signature, just plopping the book down in front of you as though this was some onerous task they have to get through.  “Just sign there, don’t make it out to anyone,” they say, thumbing to the right place, valuing your scribbled name over the potential time of interacting with you, then half-turning away before you’re even done.

I don’t get it.  I’m not bashing it – hey, if it makes you happy, it’s two seconds of my time, I can do it all day.  I just don’t get the idea that a signature is worthy in and of itself.  I’m the sort of person who’s of the opinion that an autograph isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on – what matters is the moments you have with people, commemorative or not.

Thinking the ink is more important than the smile just strikes me as being very, very odd.

Cross-posted from Ferrett's Real Blog.

theferrett

Most of my friends’ list has gone justifiably apeshit over author Seanan McGuire.  And why not?  Seanan’s got the list of skills it takes to acquire a maddened fan following: a monstrous and engaging imagination.  A deft hand at devising interesting characters.  And the ability to write so fast she can write three different series simultaneously, so every few months see more Seanany goodness delivered straight to your bookshelf.

But there’s a new kid on the block who, I think, also has what it takes to acquire her own rabid fan following.  Her first book in a much longer urban fantasy series, Nightshifted, has been published today.  If you’re smart, you’ll get in on the ground floor.

That woman is one Cassie Alexander, whose debut novel is available for a mere $7.99.  It’s the kind of book that made my bathtub run cold, as I read in the tub and usually get out before I run out of hot water.  But no, Nightshifted kept my ass in cold water, because I wanted to know what happened next.

The hookiness of Nightshifted is evident just in the description:

Nursing school prepared Edie Spence for a lot of things. Burn victims? No problem. Severed limbs? Piece of cake. Vampires? No way in hell. But as the newest nurse on Y4, the secret ward hidden in the bowels of County Hospital, Edie has her hands full with every paranormal patient you can imagine — from vamps and were-things to zombies and beyond…

What I liked about Nightshifted was that we have an imperfect protagonist.  Edie’s prone to having unsafe sex as a way of burning off steam, is too overprotective of her junkie little brother, and her attention occasionally flags when she’s been working an eighteen-hour shift.  She’s not a superhero but a genuine nurse, her flaws balanced out by a kind compassion that lets her connect with the monsters who have wound up within her ward.  The whole plot revolves around her willingness to do the right thing, even at a cost to her own life and soul – which makes her not super, but an actual goddamned hero.

Even the inevitable romantic triangle feels fresh, mainly because one of the romantic leads is a firefighting zombie, who’s one of the more unique takes on zombies I’ve seen recently.  He’s a sexy zombie who is still clearly dead, which is something you don’t see that often.

The biggest problem I had with Nightshifted, honestly, was that at times it felt too packed with interesting things.  Cassie’s dazzling imagination is on full display here, from debates on the proper tranquilizers to use on shapeshifters to the hinted origins of the shadow-monster puppeteers of Y4, to OH HEY HERE’S ANOTHER THING WE DON’T QUITE HAVE TIME TO GET INTO.  I know that this will all be explored in future series, but there were several moments where I was like, “Wait!  I hardly got to know you, and… Oh, you’re gone.”  Which is a strength, I suppose, since most books don’t even have one concept I want to see explored further, but still.

In any case, this is a book well worth reading, because Cassie’s driven.  She’s writing a book every six months, and if you liked this I happen to know there’s two more coming down the pike.  And today is her book birthday, a very important day to a first-time author… So if you’re interested, I’d buy Nightshifted now and help out someone who’s just starting out her career.

It’ll be worth it.  Cassie’s going places.

Cross-posted from Ferrett's Real Blog.

theferrett

Whenever I saw the Oscar losers saying “It’s an honor to be nominated,” I always envisioned gritted teeth and gut-roiling fury.  I mean, you just had your chance at the brass ring, and you came that close!  How could you be cheerful?

Yet I was grinning like a damn fool when I lost to Geoff Ryman.  As were all the other losers I talked to.  We had our pins, and our certificates, and our name immortalized in history, and the experience of being catapulted onto a much larger stage.

Who the hell could be upset?  There’s now one word that’s guaranteed to be in our obituary, and that word is “Nebula.”  We’ve made it.

It’s cool.

And it’s a weird bond; I spent the weekend hanging with my fellow nominees Jake Kerr, Rachel Swirsky, Katherine Sparrow, and Geoff Ryman – and there wasn’t an ounce of competition in there. It felt like an odd sort of club, one that contained only six people in the whole world, a once-in-a-lifetime bond: 2012 Novelette Nebula Nominee.  No one else will ever know what this is like.  We did lunch, we chatted in bars, we appeared on panels, we discussed our chances, and not once was there a bit of snark or anger.

(I met other nominee Charlie Jane Anders briefly after the ceremony, who seemed absolutely wonderful, but alas we got no time to hang and chill.  I hope to rectify this at a future event.)

I felt blessed to be in the company of such beautiful people.  I’d have been happy for any of them to have won.  And the man I was rooting the most for, my wonderful and compassionate
Clarion teacher Geoff Ryman, who had me sobbing on the airplane on the way to Clarion because his book Was is one of the most heartbreaking things I’ve ever read?  Well, he won.  And when he walked back to his seat, I leapt out of mine to shake his hand and grin and pump the fist for him.  Because if there’s a man who possesses a cool grace and an ability to write straight to the vulnerable centers of the heart, it’s Geoff.

The weekend itself was a helter-skelter of events, and I’ll probably be posting anecdotes for the rest of the week, but here’s the ones I remember in a sleepy Monday muddle.

This Is The Panel That Never Ends…. It Just Goes On And On, My Friends….
Yes, there’s the irony of a panel on pacing going forty minutes overtime.  But there was no panel following us – and when you have such a fascinating topic as “How to get the rhythm of a story right,” and such fascinating panelists as Tom Crosshill, Rachel Swirsky, and Nancy Fulda (Nebula nominees all!), moderated by the vivacious radio host and Big Damn Author Ellen Kushner, you get a ton of feedback.

This panel was so good the audience didn’t leave.  It was like Writing 301, a bunch of advanced techniques we all used to figure out how to get the pacing of a story right – and our approaches were all so different, there was a lot of varying discussion as to how to nail it.  So we talked, and talked, and when at 2:15 we finally called the panel to a halt, half the audience walked up and kept the ball rolling.  Rachel Swirsky had to leave, but thankfully noted childrens’ author R.J. Anderson took her place, and next thing you know we had a long discussion on how to handle critiques.

It was really amazing.  My friend Ruby took a video of the “official” panel on her smartphone, and I hope it’s usable.  I’d love for you to see it.

Meet My Signing Buddy, Franny
The author signing was a first for me, since as an author of short stories I’ve never had anything I could expect anyone to sign.  You can buy books in the dealers’ room…. but if you want me to sign your copy of Asimov’s, you need to remember to bring it with you.  And frankly, I’m not that big.

But thankfully, Nancy Fulda created a Nebula Awards Weekend book with one of my stories in it, and so people could buy a book to sign.  So I sat at a small table.

Next to me was someone I didn’t know, so we introduced ourselves, and it was a woman called Franny Billingsley – who was remarkably fun to talk to!  She was a children’s author but it was her first sci-fi con, so I explained what this “Clarion workshop” was and she told me about what YA conventions were like, and it was a remarkably warm way of passing the time.

Even better, since I knew more people here, when they came to see me, I could go, “And do you know Franny?” and then all of us got into a discussion together.  So by the time I went to wander the floor and get my book signed, I left a merry discussion of writers.

Which was oddly convivial.  For now and forevermore, Franny will be my book-signing buddy, the two of us at the table as readers sporadically came up, book in hand, to ask for signatures.

And only later did I discover that Franny was so modest she didn’t even note that she was up, you know, for the National Book Award.

What a wonderful person.

The Night Before
There was a Nebula nominees reception the night before, where we were to be honored.  I didn’t quite know what that meant, but hey!  This would only happen once.  So I went.

What they didn’t tell us (which was a shame, because several of the nominees – including Charlie Jane – had wandered off) was that the reception was where John Scalzi would present you with your official Nebula nominee certificate and your pin, and then you’d be taken off for photos.

That’s when it became real.

Up until then, a part of my mind had been going, “Oh, no, this will be a mistake, they’ll probably take it away from you.”  But as I walked up to the podium and Scalzi handed me the blue folder with the silver stars, I opened it up and saw my name.  This was no dream.  This was my life, my blessed life.

I couldn’t stop smiling.

The Night Of
So for the Nebulas, I had to dress up.  And my lovely wife Gini helped me into my monkey suit:

Note the Nebula pin – which is a lot thinner and more losable than I’d have thought – and my Star Wars tie.  I kept telling people all evening that it was my TIE fighter.

Nobody laughed.

My wife, however, looked fucking stellar.  She kept joking that her job at the Nebulas was to be my arm candy, and oh boy was she:

When I got there, I was happily surprised to see Neil Gaiman, who was a last-minute addition.  And Neil, who’d been with me during my reformatary stages at Clarion, drew me into a warm hug that went on for longer than I thought and said, “Bubbeleh!”  He’s surprisingly, endearingly, proud of me.

When he said “Bubbeleh,” it felt like I was being welcomed to the next level.  That all of this hard work I’ve put into writing – the hours wandering in the garden figuring out the next scene, the endless rejections, the workshops and cons I travelled to – had finally paid off.  And that was a lovely thing to see.

Some pros told me, serenely, “You’ll be back.”  I don’t share their confidence.  For me, I struck lightning once.  But the fact that I made it once is enough, and that won’t stop me.  Because you know what real writing fucking is?

Jon Walter Williams held a three-hour intensive lecture on plotting and structure.  And when I looked around the room of twenty people, at least four of us had been nominated for a Nebula.  Here we were, being given one of the biggest honors in the field… and all of us had said, “No, there’s so much more work to do.”

That’s how you get to a Nebula.  I got here.  You can, too.  Because Neil told me, “You just need to write.”  And that’s what I did.

Now you.

Cross-posted from Ferrett's Real Blog.

bart_calendar

What Did Bieber Tell GQ Is His Favorite Song?

View Answers

Vogue by Madonna
7 (12.5%)
Born This Way by Lady Ga Ga
14 (25.0%)
One by Metallica
14 (25.0%)
In The Name Of Love by U2
15 (26.8%)
Sultans Of Swing by Dire Straits
6 (10.7%)

bart_calendar

Which Type Of Non American English Speaking Girl Would You Least Want To Piss Off?

View Answers

A Irish Lass
7 (19.4%)
A Scottish Babe
14 (38.9%)
A Welsh Lady
2 (5.6%)
A Scouse
7 (19.4%)
An Essex Girl
6 (16.7%)

theferrett

All comments are, as usual, screened.  But let's do this, again, to entertain me on the road:

Tell me a secret.  Something you've been wanting to tell me, something you've been wanting to get off your chest, something you need to tell someone.  If you want me to respond to you personally, let me know and I will; otherwise, it will remain something between you and me.

theferrett

So I’ll be leaving for the Nebulas today, and as such will be driving for eight hours in what is sure to be a cataclysmally boring car ride.  So I’ll comment-whore and ask y’all some questions to stir discussion:

This first one’s courtesy of fellow nominee Rachel Swirsky, who asked:

What illegal thing would you do if you could get away with it? (No violent crimes, please.  That’s icky.)

I like that one, because it encourages you to both get creative, and the “no violence” means that no idiot is caught making threats on the Internet.  Though I suspect the answers will be a depressing “I KIN SMOKES DRUGS.”  Which, you know, granted, but not exactly with the fun-making discussionwise.

Likewise, this second one’s courtesy of fellow nominee me, who asks:

If you could demand I do any one thing for myself, what would you have me do? 

The reason I say “for myself” is otherwise I’ll be spammed with a zillion “You should totally read my book/plug my CD/dance for my amusement!” comments, which aren’t nearly as interesting as you think.  But I’d be curious to see what, given the knowledge you have of me through my writings, what sorts of things you think I should do to make my life better.  Or worse.

Cross-posted from Ferrett's Real Blog.

theferrett

My Uncle Tommy’s blood didn’t clot very well, a disease known as hemophilia, so blood pooled up in his joints.  It ate away his cartilage.  Near the end of his life, when he moved his elbow, you could hear the bones rubbing against each other whisper-thin, like two dry crackers ground together.

So he walked slow.

So I walked slow.

To this day, Gini tells me I amble glacially – because I’m used to quietly keeping Tommy’s pace, not wanting to upset him.  Oh, I could have jogged on ahead; not that Tommy would have been devastated, as I was basically his son and he would have forgiven me the world.

But he had enough reminders that he was broken and frail.  He didn’t need another one from me.  So I crept at his pace, which only got slower as the years went by, and we passed the time as two humans.

This is what you do when you have a friend who’s disabled.

Let’s be blatantly honest and say that having disabled friends is often an inconvenience verging on annoyance.  They can’t get up stairs.  They cancel at the last minute because of unpredictable sicknesses.  There’s more planning to be find the right restaurant because of their diet.

If you think it’s an inconvenience to you, imagine how it feels to them.

Every day, the world wakes up and punches your pals in the fucking face, telling them “Hey, you know all those things you want to do?  You can’t.”

You can choose to be one of those blows.  Or you can be understanding and loving and help them to live a better life.

It’s that fucking simple.

They live in a smaller world because of something they don’t have control over.  I think a good friend will take that into account, and tread that fine line between “Yes, it’s an inconvenience and you may not always be able to come along” with a lot of love and understanding and bold attempts to make room for your friend because yes, they have a condition and it deserves to be accommodated whenever possible.

Because when you are that sick, you notice the way people cancel plans with you.  The way they quietly stop inviting you to parties.  The way you don’t defend them when other, healthier people, complain that they shouldn’t have to deal with your issues.

They’re sick, not stupid, and they feel their excision from your life as keenly as a cut.  One more cut in a life filled with them.

I’m not saying I was saccharine-sweet to Tommy.  I acknowledged the difficulty of his disabledness from time to time, because we were loving humans and that means being honest.  But I never made a big deal about the way we had to get to concerts half an hour early so he could get to his seat, or how we had to stay an hour late because the crowds might bump him too hard.

Instead, I used that extra time to talk to him, companionably walking at his cane-pace, as friends.  He must have noticed that his hyperactive teenaged nephew was walking slow.

But for a time, he had the ability to live his life as though nothing was wrong with him. And that was the greatest gift I could give him.

Cross-posted from Ferrett's Real Blog.