Category: writing

DBAA, round 2

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about why it’s important not to be an asshole. And because sometimes the Universe provides its own object lessons, here’s another really good reason not to be an asshole, especially if you’re a writer: because the Writing Pond is really really small, and if you swim like an asshole, the Internet Will Ridicule You.

You can bet dollars to donuts that this person’s name is spreading among agents and editors faster than grease on a griddle (golly, I seem to find myself in a Southern mood today). If this person ever gets published, it’ll be a miracle. It really does matter how you behave, you know? People talk about it.

There is absolutely no percentage in behaving like this person did. Professional rejection happens all the time. Agents say no. Fiction editors and Hollywood script readers dismiss your months or years of work with no more than It’s not really right for us (if they’re having a polite day). If you do get published, critics and amazon reviewers and random bloggers say mean stuff about your writing and sometimes about you. It’s no fucking fun, precious, and we doesn’t like it, no. But if we’re smart, we never never never presses the send key on those special emails….

New review and interview

The Short Review reviews Dangerous Space.

They’ve also posted an interview which, as my editor at Aqueduct has pointed out, does not mention the word “gender” a single time. I get the impression she thinks this is a miracle for me. But in fact it’s not all about gender, really. Sometimes it’s about sex other things.

Enjoy.

What Sparrow says

I’ve just re-read Bone Dance by Emma Bull. This is an old favorite of mine, because of the lovely writing and the really cool characters — people I’d love to meet (well, except the creepy ones) — and the very compelling Sparrow whose voice leads us through it all. And I love it because it’s a novel of identity and hope and connection. I am sure, re-reading it this week, that it influenced Solitaire.

Sparrow says:

There is a whole class of answers to life’s big questions that, when examined closely, proves to be nothing but another set of questions. I now know my origins, body and soul. That’s like knowing that magnetic tape is iron oxide particles bonded to plastic film. Wonderful — now, what’s it for? What does it do?
 
It does, I suppose, what it has to do. It does what it loves to do, or what needs doing. It helps others do the same. So I do that. And sometimes (….) I can feel it, very close: the power and clarity and brilliance, the strength and lightness, that I had once in a dream, a dream of dancing, a hoodoo dream.
 
–from Bone Dance by Emma Bull

I love this idea that the goal is to do what we love to, and to do what needs doing. I understand both of those. I think one without the other is a path to superficiality and isolation and numbness — the death of the “best self” through complete disregard for others or through the bitterness that comes from regarding others always to the cost of oneself.

Power and clarity and brilliance, strength and lightness. When I imagine my best self, these are things I hope to be.

So thanks again, Emma. Dreams of dancing, dreams of flying, dreams of self discovered and finally embraced — those are good dreams, awake or asleep.

Don’t be an asshole

Thank you, Nicola, for pointing me toward this post from agent Nathan Bransford about why writers shouldn’t be assholes.

This is so true. And it syncs up with what I’m doing with Humans At Work (and as an update, the site is in development now and I’m hoping to launch in June). Working with people who are jerks is No Fun, and it’s getting to the point where it’s not necessary either — there are a lot of writers in the world (and sales reps and customer service clerks and executives and produce managers and… well, you get the point), and people in the position to give us work are less likely to do so if they think we don’t know how to play nicely.

Success these days is not just about having talent for one’s work. Certainly as important — perhaps more so, in terms of career if not art — is the talent for effective relationship. I know without doubt that it’s made an enormous difference in my career path so far. I am pretty sure I wouldn’t have the chance to break into screenwriting without it. I know it helped with Solitaire. And I’d argue that it’s necessary for art as well. But that’s because I write what I do — I couldn’t very well work at character-based fiction if I didn’t constantly strive to experience and understand the nuances of human relationships.

I remember walking along a busy street in downtown Chicago one day. One car cut off another in traffic — the bumpers nearly came to blows — and then both cars had to stop for a red light just in front of me.

The driver of the rear car — man, 30’s, business suit — leaped out. Slammed the door. Threw open his trunk. And took out a golf club. He held it the way you do when your target is not the little white ball, but the back of someone’s skull…

The driver of the front car scrambled out of his car (bad strategic move, but hey, I’m guessing it was a new situation for him). Also a man, 30’s, business suit.

Golf Club Man chased Jerk Driver Man around his own car at least twice, shouting Don’t! (shake the club) be! (shake the club) an asshole! (shake the club).

Then the light turned green and all the drivers behind them, who were watching in fascination as if it were live TV, started honking. So the two guys got in their cars and drove away.

I don’t know about Jerk Driver Man, but Golf Club Man certainly got my attention. And I think he was absolutely right. Seems like the price of being a jerk comes when you least expect it (that golf club) and sometimes when you don’t even know it — the opportunities you never get because of the backchannel opinions of you that you never hear, but that determine who wants to work with you and who doesn’t.

The lesson I’m learning right now (waves to executive producer) is that it’s really important not to be an asshole just because I am grumpy. I think it’s easy for artists to think it’s okay to have “artistic temperament” (shorthand for I get to act like a yob because I’m all special and stuff). Note to all those folks: go off in the corner and have a sad drink in memory of the good old days. And then get back to work and play nice, because it’s becoming a jerks-not-welcome-world. I can’t wait.

A story of Dublin

I’ve just posted my favorite story of Dublin over at the @U2 blog. Enjoy.

For those who don’t know, I’m a staff writer for @U2, the world’s #1 independent U2 website. I’m wicked proud of the work done by the entire @U2 staff, and I count my personal essays, articles, interviews and reviews for the site as some of my best work. If you’re interested, you can find links at the bottom of my essays page, or search the @U2 site.

Tiptree Award and Honor List

I’m delighted to announce that my novella “Dangerous Space” is a Tiptree Honor List selection for 2007.

Thanks very much to the Tiptree Jury for their consideration and support, and to Aqueduct Press for publishing Dangerous Space and giving me a chance to write the story that comes closest (so far) to how I feel about music.

Congratulations to Sarah Hall, winner of the Tiptree Award for her novel The Carhullan Army.

Read all the details here.

Story is real

True confession time: although I’m often billed as a science fiction writer, there’s actually very little science that engages me beyond either the practical (Does it make my life better? Or If it’s broken, how do I fix it?) or the aesthetic (Meteor showers are pretty!). I have never been fascinated by science for its own sake. It is human experience that interests me, and it’s true that much of human experience is grounded in, or informed by, science — in particular, how we respond to our own biology (gender, sex, illness, dying, fear, memory…). Each practically-identical biological human mechanism — and in spite of our individual genome patterns we are 99.9% the same — is also a particular person with our own thoughts and feelings and responses, our own unique set of experiences. We are essentially the same, and a huge part of that sameness is that we hunger to be different and are yet so often terrified by difference in others. We are souls who drive, and driven by, the most complex wetware that we know of in the universe… now that’s interesting.

And so in spite of my general disregard for scientific discoveries, I am in love with the idea of mirror neurons.

Mirror neurons fire in our brains when we perform an action or when we see someone else performing an action. Mirror neurons help us assign meaning to other people’s behavior. I see you and I know what your actions mean, because in my brain there is no neuronal difference between you doing a thing and me doing it myself. It feels the same to my brain.

I know what it means when you look at me with rage or hurt or bedroom eyes — because the same neurons fire when I look that way at you. I know that look. I see you pick up a baseball bat and shift your grip, heft it in that certain way, and I know the only thing you’re planning to knock out of the park is me. I know when a baseball bat turns into a weapon — and there, you know exactly what I’m talking about, don’t you? Because even reading a description of an action, if it is accurately and specific, fires your mirror neurons.

There are lots of theories now that mirror neurons are the basis of empathy, and that they are instrumental in acquiring language. But what they mean to me as a storyteller is that I really can show you what’s happening instead of having to always tell you.

And now I know why story works. I know why words on a page or pixels on a screen can make me feel such deep joy or sadness, can make me tremble with fear or wonder. Because when story in any medium is done right, it really does come to life inside us. For an instant, we live the story. It’s real.

And I know something else: I know why I am a writer. I know why I took an acting degree that I was so clearly at the time unsuited for. I know why I dance. I know why I sing along with U2 at the concerts.

Because story is real. When I write, when I act, when I sing in the car, when I am brave or stubborn enough to keep at it until I have been as specific and honest as I can be in the creation — when I get the story right — it fires all those fabulous mirror neurons, and those moments of story are just as real to my brain as if I were actually doing them. I am watching my life drop down an elevator shaft; I am a rock star; I am fighting for my life or struggling with love or having amazing sex or holding my breath at the immensity of some moment of everyday life in which, suddenly, everything has changed…

In his blurb for Dangerous Space, Matt Ruff refers to “emotions this raw.” I’ve always liked (and been grateful for) that, because it comes closest to my own ideas about what I love in story, and what I strive for in the stories I tell. I don’t give a fuck about Big Ideas. I am all about Big Feelings. Not necessarily big experiences — although I like those too — but the way that the large and the small of life can make us feel, and what we do because of or in spite of those feelings.

I’ve said that I write because I want to make people feel those things. To make difference accessible to readers — behavior and feelings that they might not otherwise choose in their own lives. To open a mainline into someone else’s personal truth. But that’s not it, or at least not the most important part. I do it because I want (or need) to feel those things myself, in ways that don’t necessarily involve actual experience. I won’t ever be a rock star, but I want the physical and psychic blast of 20,000 people singing my song to me. I don’t want people I love to die, but I respond so violently to grief in stories that it’s like I am practicing or preparing as best I can for the day when it will grab me by the throat and shake me. I can’t be an astronaut (that science thing…) but I want to see my world suspended in a deep dark universe of wonders.

And I can. We all can. We’re not limited by our own lives, by our own choices. We can live other lives and other choices too, and that’s not just an intellectual concept. It’s real. It’s as real to your brain as your last banana muffin on a warm Sunday morning, or how your sunglasses make you feel hip even when you’re just pumping gas, or the smile yesterday from that beautiful stranger on the train, or the heartstopping second before you say I love you to someone new.

And there. I just told you four little stories, and perhaps one of them was real to you. Perhaps for a second you were there. Really there.

Story is real. It makes me want to shout or dance or cry or go hug someone from the sheer joy of being human. Every story you love, whether it’s Frodo and Sam, or Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin, or Buffy, whether it’s Shakespeare or Calvin and Hobbes, is alive and real in the amazing space inside you.

Get online, writer dudes

I love it when something can make fun of the two major kinds of writing I do at the same time (thanks, Gwenda).

But of course it’s not all funny, is it? The best comedy never is — there’s always that little nugget of truth at the core, like biting down on a piece of tinfoil inside a brownie.

I don’t think reading is dead. At all. But publishing… well, not dead, maybe not even dying, but changing for sure. Kassia Krozser talks about this at Booksquare, and I think it’s required reading for new writers and for all the established writers who think their only job is to write books. Because publishers will not make writers successful these days. They don’t know how. The people who make writers successful are readers. And so writers (and other artists) must go where the audience is.

Screenwriting, though… I’m probably not experienced enough to have an opinion, but I do, and here it is. Publishing books does not (necessarily) make writers successful. Getting movies made does (generally) makes screenwriters successful. Spot the difference.

So I’m thinking a lot about writing books and writing movies, and my place in both. What are my definitions of success? Does it matter if I achieve that success? And so on.

One thing I know that matters is to stay connected with people who love books and movies. I like doing that — readings, blogging, interviews, book groups, general conversation — and that’s lucky for me, because I think it’s more and more expected. Writers have to be more than words on a page these days.

The writer is not more important than the work. But people expect to see the writer, too. Novelists and movie people are the most direct and public storytellers we have in this culture where seemingly everyone has a public persona of some kind: Facebook, MySpace, a LiveJournal, a blog, member of email lists or online groups. Public storytelling is becoming an integral part of that online experience. That’s a much more varied and participative definition of art.

Is that a good thing? I dunno. And it doesn’t matter: it’s what’s happening. I’m not saying Robin Hobb is wrong about the pitfalls: I just think she’s spitting into the wind.

More musings to come.

Support your local library

Last weekend, I participated in the King County Library System Foundation Literary Lions Gala to raise money for the county library system.

What a great event — very nicely managed, kind and courteous staff and volunteers, interesting speakers who didn’t speak too long, and a flattering focus on writers (most of us blinking like little owls in the glare of the attention). The wine flowed freely and the food was excellent, which is not so easy when you are serving a three-course meal to 300 people on the main floor of a public library.

I was struck by several things:

The event was set up to treat the “performers” (writers, speakers, etc.) very humanely. We arrived early and ate our dinner in a separate room (same food, same wine). Then we were released into the wild to mingle for 30 minutes with the patrons before their dinner was served (I took the path of long-term wisdom at that point and switched to water, on the assumption that they didn’t want me to be too entertaining…). During the patrons’ dinner, each writer joined a pre-assigned table for salad, another for the entree, and a final table for dessert and coffee (which we got to eat along with the big kids). That meant we each got to engage with 25 or so patrons. After the speeches, there was more circulating, book-buying, etc. with Young People In Black roaming the crowd with trays of champagne and chocolates.

I was there to perform. I was the dinner entertainment for book-loving, widely-read people who paid $150 a plate, or $2,500 a table, to eat chicken cordon bleu with “real writers.” The skill with which the event was managed made it much easier for me to do my part. And they had name tags with magnets on them so no one’s clothes got mangled. And I got a free copy of Tim Egan’s The Worst Hard Time. And a pretty maroon ribbon that said “Author”!

Hanging out with other writers is a real crap shoot. I’ve written before about the hierarchical pee-up-the-wall behavior that can happen when you get more than one writer in a room (see the little story at the end of that post). And I’m really not interested in spending conversational time with people whose primary need is to figure out whether they are above or below me on the success / prestige / who’s-your-publisher / how-important-are-you ladder. Especially given that Tim Egan is in the room, and he clearly wins whatever contest we’re running here, so everyone else is simply getting spun up on whether they get to stand on letter “D” or letter “J” in the alphabet line. For Christ’s sake, are we grownups?

Tonight was no exception. The first people I met were Writer and Writer’s Wife. He wouldn’t talk to me. His wife asked me what I had published. A novel and a short story collection, I said. Her next question, delivered with the satisfied smile of someone who already knows the answer and has figured out where you fit in her spectrum, was, “I see. Well, have you been at your craft long?”

I refrained from saying something ugly like Go patronize someone dumber than you, and just said, Why yes, about 20 years.

In the immortal words of Arlo Guthrie, Then they all moved away from me on the bench.

I think what puzzles people is that I will answer the questions but not play the game. Apparently, I am supposed to be embarrassed, ashamed or somehow diminished by the fact that I have not published as much as someone else, or that they have sold more books, or that I know their name but they don’t know mine. Apparently, I am supposed to accept that these issues of career are inextricably linked to the worth of my work and to my self-esteem as a writer. I should at least have the good grace to explain at length in conciliatory tones exactly why I’m not keeping up with the Writerjoneses, as some of the writers at the event did (completely unsolicited) with me. Apparently, this is part of the throat-baring that helps us accord each other the proper number of points so that we know who to talk up or down to. Or something.

I find the whole thing both quite funny and extremely sad. What a way to live. The fact is, I’m wicked proud of my work, and I feel no need to explain what I do with my time when I’m not out promoting something new. But it’s irritating as hell to have that be the basis for social interaction at these things.

Happily, not all writers are like this. I had a particularly interesting talk with Nancy Horan, whose book is doing very well, and who couldn’t be nicer to hang with at an event. I also met Kevin Horan, a photographer and photojournalist, who was kind enough to go take a look at my book in the bookseller’s area so he could find me again and talk to me about it. Nice people. And we never once talked about who could pee higher. Who cares? It’s a big, big wall, there’s room for everyone to pee up, down or sideways if they want.

It doesn’t matter what we read. Nancy Pearl, who emceed the event, said something that struck me so strongly I had to find her afterwards and thank her. She told a story about a group recently where she mentioned Sunshine by Robin McKinley, and a teenage girl in the back of the room gasped audibly and said, “Have you read that book? It’s my favorite book in the whole world!” And Nancy Pearl was able to enthuse with her about what they liked about the book. The point was that she wasn’t telling the girl what she “should” read — she was telling her that anything she read and loved was good. We talked afterwards about what a crime it is to puncture someone’s joy in a book just because you don’t think it’s “good enough” or “real literature.” Book snobs should all go to the moon and leave the job of promoting reading to people who actually think that reading is a lifelong adventure, not a barometer of social worth.

Reading isn’t dead. Tim Egan said so in his speech (he did a nice job and was very funny about politics, including pointing out that Rudy Guiliani spent 60 million dollars to win one delegate). But I know it’s true because of the patrons at the event. It was a treat to spend time at the tables with people who care so much about reading that they are willing to pony up for the library so that other people can read too. It was cool to see the plans for so many new libraries in the next few years — one of the new libraries will have apartments over it and a coffee shop next door! How cool is that, living over the library? It was wonderful to hear so many “library stories” from patrons — how libraries had changed their lives, or a library book had affected their career choice.

And I forget sometimes how many people are curious about writers. I enjoyed answering questions, telling stories, and hearing their stories in return. I enjoyed being reminded that what I do matters sometimes to some people. That there are moments when it’s important. That it’s not just about me, it’s about the power of story in human experience, and that I am fucking blessed to get to be a part of that.

Libraries matter. They are repositories of story and knowledge. They are havens for kids and adults. They build community. They offer the lifeline of books to anyone, for free. Libraries are good. And I am very glad that I got to help support some.