Tag: nicola griffith

Gone from the game

In case anyone was wondering, this is why I love her. One of the many reasons. I love that we feel the same way about what we do: this urge to tell a story so well that it takes you, heart and mind and body, so that you are inside the story and it’s inside you, and you become each other for a while. And perhaps when you put the words away, some small scrap of the story lives on inside you.

I love that Nicola speaks so fiercely of her work, and I love that I am feeling so fierce about mine these days. That I have given myself to it in a whole new way. And even so, even with all that re-found passion and the tidal wave of change it has brought into my life, I have still been struggling with a thing….

Here’s a story. Last year, when Dangerous Space was released, I had occasion to spend time in a bar with one of SF’s pre-eminent critics, someone whose conversation I’ve enjoyed over the years and whose professional skills I have always respected. This person told me they were reading the collection and considering it for review, but had noticed that most of the stories had been published previously. That’s right, I said.

Well, said the critic, that’s not much to show for 20 years, is it?

I answered politely that I hoped quality counted for more than quantity. But I was hurt, and I was rattled. And ultimately there was no review from this critic, so perhaps I gave the wrong answer.

And since then I have been chewing on this, trying to understand the helplessness and the anger and defensiveness that I felt. Who cares what this person thinks? Well, clearly I cared. And what I have come to believe is that it’s not about this person specifically — it’s about my certain knowledge that a lot of people feel this way about writing, or any other creative and/or professional pursuit. Many people will believe that the worth of my collection is diminished by the ratio of old to new work, and that my worth as a writer is best measured by my churn rate. That quality is only important in concert with quantity.

This is a game that I can never win. Many writers can — they produce good work very quickly, and all props and happiness to them. I think it’s a good thing they can do that. But why does this have to be a zero-sum game? If it’s good they do that, why must it therefore be bad that I do not?

Eleanor Roosevelt said No one can make you feel inferior without your consent. And she was right. But withdrawing that consent is not as easy as stamping one’s foot and saying Stop diminishing me right now! It is a process, and I have been processing.

And today I read Nicola’s post, and I felt the cumulative rush of all the moments of good work I have done in 20 years. Every time I wrote a sentence and felt it ring true. Every time I felt a character come a little more to life within me and on the page. Every time I’ve read the stories or the novel and bam, I’m back in worlds and characters that I love, fictions that vibrate with some of the deepest real things within me, things that I’ve managed to transmute into stories that make other people vibrate in turn.

And you know what? This is where I want to play. Consider me gone from the other fucking game. I will do my best to write everything I want to write, as best I can, and I hope I make a boatload of money. But none of that is the measure of my worth. My worth as a writer is measured by what I write. End of story.

As I’ve said recently, it’s huge for me to be a writer, and I am in charge of how I feel about that. And here’s how I feel: in 20 years, I have said things that only I can say, and other people have heard them, felt them, shared them. I have burned, and I still do. I have done well, and I still do. I have found my own way here, in my own time, and it’s been a marvel. I’m looking forward to doing better and burning harder the next 20 years. I intend, as Nicola does, to reach so far inside you that you’ll have to dig me out with a spoon.

And anyone who doesn’t think that’s much to show for 20 years can go fuck themselves.

2007 Nicola interview

Word just in that KUOW (a Seattle NPR affiliate station) will re-broadcast Nicola’s 2007 interview about self-defense and Always. The interview airs as part of the Sound Focus program on Tuesday 5 August, 2 PM – 3 PM Pacific Time.

You can listen live online or (I believe) download a podcast after the show.

It’s a good interview (well, I would say that, wouldn’t I? But it’s true!)

Open mic at Enter the Octopus

Litblogger extraordinaire Matt Staggs at Enter the Octopus has thrown his site open to writers and is currently orchestrating a sort of ecstatic whirlwind of posts, links, musings, you name it… the sort of thing that you can just keep checking in on and find something new and maybe unexpected. It’s a lovely, generous idea and a lot of writers are jumping into the pool over there.

Go check it out, it’s a lot of fun. And be sure to look for this entry from Nicola!

Oops, more of a zebra

So it turns out that the Freestyle Horse video that Iraved about the other day is actually a Nike viral marketing video.

I remember the first time I got taken by a scammer on the street for $5 because he was “out of gas.” That was in the 80’s in Chicago. He got me talking, he affiliated, he got the five bucks. I didn’t find out until weeks later that this kind of thing was starting to happen a lot. I actually got red-faced when I heard about it, because I felt so stupid. I felt like a rube.

The nice thing is, it takes more than that to make me feel stupid these days. I like this video. I think it’s way cool that someone made it. I like what it says about the power and strength and ability of young women. In other words, I like the story it tells. And I really do always want to stay open to story, even if it puts me at a disadvantage sometimes (that $5…).

Does this mean we should always accept “the validity” of other’s stories? Always be willing to embrace the story as a good thing, on its own terms? Oh my goodness, no. Every one of us should have her bullshit detector turned way, way up on the human interaction level. The guy who insists on helping you take your groceries upstairs to your apartment because he’s on his way up to see his buddy down the hall — and who calls you paranoid when you say no — that guy is maybe not a nice guy. That guy is maybe testing you. Every human has firsthand experience of the harm of being open to a story.

As a culture we teach other to be nice, defuse conflict, avoid giving offense. And then we turn around and teach each other that being credulous or gullible in any way is basically a failing and a fault, and you get what you deserve for being an idiot. Pretty mixed message — be open, be supportive and accessible, and then take the blame when those choices lead you to a bad scene. And so we make each other feel stupid for falling for anything, in order to teach each other not to fall for the wrong things.

I think it would be better to teach each other to better recognize the wrong things when they come along, you know?

Critical thinking skills can help with that. Books like The Gift of Fear by Gavin de Becker or Always by Nicola Griffith can help. And it would be cool if we stopped assuming that violence was an appropriate consequence for inexperience or poor judgment.

Hmm… I seem to have traveled far from Nike. Let me wander back again. I now know the greater truth of the video, which is that it’s a deliberate story someone is telling me to make me like their brand a little better. And you know, it’s a good story. I’m still open to it.

Queer Universes

Nicola and I have a new joint essay called “War Machine, Time Machine” just published in Queer Universes: Sexualities in Science Fiction, edited by Wendy Gay Pearson, Veronica Hollinger and Joan Gordon.

Queer Universes is an academic publication from Liverpool University Press. We ourselves are not academic (smile), but we do a great job in irreverent footnotes. You’ll see.

Here’s a little excerpt of one of my parts of the essay:

I despise conscious theme, the great battering ram on the literary war machine. It subverts story. It renders characters nearly non-dimensional. It makes for some truly terrible dialogue. Good writers smile a polite ‘no’ when the theme tray is passed around, and instead allow theme to emerge from a well-told story about people who engage us because their choices, fears and hopes seem real, even if they are as strange to us as the surface of Pluto.
 
It’s vital for people who live outside of the dominant culture to find themselves reflected in positive ways within that culture. When those images don’t exist, we create them. It’s important and essential. But the goal should be to expand the boundaries of art, not establish new and increasingly granular rules and categories (never-het-dykes, bears, BDSM femmes, Log Cabin leathermen…) by which to label one another. I want people to write stories about strong women, people of colour, people of varied sexual orientation or physical condition, in order to make space in the cultural discussion for such people — not to set up a gay and lesbian table in the corner, as my stepbrother’s first wife did at their wedding reception so ‘Nicola and I would have people to talk to.’
 
— From the essay “War Machine, Time Machine” by Nicola Griffith and Kelley Eskridge, in Queer Universes.

As much as I like myself and Nicola, I don’t think our essay alone is necessarily worth $85 (especially since we will regain the right to re-publish it on our websites early next year). But if you’re at all interested in queer theory, gender theory, and the expression of LGBTI etc. experience in speculative fiction, then there’s a lot in this book that will appeal. Please encourage your local library to order a copy — the editors would appreciate it, and so would we.

Congratulations to Wendy, Veronica and Joan, and thanks for including us.

Twenty years

Twenty years ago today, I met Nicola Griffith. Since then, we have drunk a hundred thousand beers, a million cups of tea, never run out of conversation, made excellent friends, had excellent adventures. Twenty years of helping each other do her best work, live her best life, be her best self. Today we celebrate.

Nicola & Kelley 2007

Honey, this one’s for you: Crystal – Fleetwood Mac

Do you always trust your first initial feeling?
Special knowledge holds true, bears believing.
 
I turned around
And the water was closing all around like a glove.
Like the love that had finally finally found me.
Then I knew.
And the crystalline knowledge of you
Drove me through the mountain.
Through the crystal-like clear water fountain.
Drove me like a magnet
To the sea.
 
How the faces of love have changed,
Turning the pages.
And I have changed
Oh, but you, you remain ageless.
 
I turned around
And the water was closing all around like a glove.
Like the love that had finally finally found me.
Then I knew
In the crystalline knowledge of you.
Drove me through the mountain.
Through the crystal-like clear water fountain.
Drove me like a magnet
To the sea.
 
“Crystal” – written by Stevie Nicks, performed by Fleetwood Mac

Nicola’s reading on video

In May, Nicola appeared at Hugo House in Seattle, reading two excerpts from her memoir And Now We Are Going to Have a Party (which, in case I haven’t said it loud or often enough, just won the Lambda Literary Award).

Thanks to the generosity of Nicola’s publisher Payseur and Schmidt, and the excellent skills of the filmmaker David (whose last name I hope to learn someday so I can credit him properly) Wulzen, both readings are on video. Watch below, or follow this link to Payseur and Schmidt.

See for yourself why an evening with Nicola is one of the best ways on the planet to spend some time. Enjoy!

Part One: No Pants Griffith

Part Two: Father Lucy

Nicola won the Lammy!

Last night, Nicola won the Lambda Literary Foundation Award for women’s memoir. It was a lovely event at the Silver Screen Theatre in the Pacific Design Center in LA, attended by many of the best queer writers in the world.

Nicola was awesome. She gave a heartfelt, moving speech that clearly touched the audience. And it was absolutely terrific to see so many people approach her with such genuine admiration and good wishes. A grand evening.

Or, as I love to say, my sweetie rocks!

Congratulations to all the winners and nominees. Thank you to the organizers who worked so hard to put the event together. And thanks especially to all the people with whom we had great conversations and from whom we felt such goodwill.

Swang! Oh my word!

Nicola has once again been asked to explain why on god’s green earth she used the word swang in a novel.

And I am compelled by a force greater than sweetie solidarity (okay, actually I asked her if she minded and she said no) to say out loud on the internet that I told her the raised eyebrows and headshakes would rain down upon her forever if she said swang. Everyone will think you made a mistake, I said. You’ll be talking about swang for the rest of your life.

Well, I’m not wrong so far, am I? (wicked laughter….)

Language is a funny old thing. I just know that the words I grew up with are the “right” words, the same way Nicola knows that her words are right. And they are, and they aren’t… Who am I to tell her that her words are wrong? Not my place. But really what I was trying to tell her was that it was wrong in context. Wrong for Americans.

Well, she said in a charming and reasonable tone, I’m not an American.

But you’re in America.

So?

So, indeed. She’s right. I’d much rather she was appropriate to herself than appropriate to American culture. And she’ll be a wee bit surprised when she reads this, because it’s not what she thought I was going to say. (Ha! 20 years and counting, and I can still surprise my sweetie every once in a while.)

And so I say: I’m glad you swang your bad self, Nicola. And to all the ‘Murricans out there who might be inclined to write her about it in the future — get over it. It’s her word. She used it. End of story.

Oh, and while I’m here — in 1988, at Clarion, I wrote a story called “Somewhere Down the Diamondback Road” (recently republished in Dangerous Space). In the first paragraph of that story, I used the word carapace in a way that makes Nicola absolutely crazy. Every once in a while it still comes up. That’s wrong, she says, shaking her head.

No, it ain’t (grin).