blog – Page 69 – Kelley Eskridge

Warriors

Thank you, Admiral Jamie Barnett. (And thanks to my mum for the link).

No ranting today (readers breathe sigh of relief…). Just bemusement and a bit of sadness that we still all have to have these conversations.

I was really struck by the phrase “gay and lesbian warriors.” Warrior is such a powerful word, a powerful thing to be. We idealize warriors in our culture, and they also frighten us. Warriors can be scary people. But we make so many movies about them — tell so many stories that explore the experience of the warrior — because when it comes right down to it, we want the most frightening, brutally skilled, strong, strategic people on our side. We want them in the woods when the bear opens its frightening mouth. We want them in the alley when the gun comes out of the darkness. We want them on fields of battle half a world away.

And these days we also need them to be articulate, compassionate, culturally aware, self-controlled. It’s a lot to ask. Seems like we’d want all the folks we can get who are willing and able to take it on.

Here’s a brief report on the hearing itself.

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!

Ranty rant rant about publishing

Over on Ask Nicola there’s a discussion about some of the cold hard economic truths about being a fiction writer. I wandered over and entered the discussion with two comments (so far): one fairly brief, and one blog-post-sized arm-waving rant. Here’s a teaser:

But they wants to be writers, precious, they do, and they believe that the only way to be a real writer is that someone should give them a guaranteed living wage before anyone even knows if they can shift the freight or not.

Me, I think the way to be a real writer is to really write and be really read by real readers. Call me a radical…

— from a discussion on Ask Nicola

I was in a place. But apart from the possible entertainment value, I think you’ll find that Nicola’s post has provoked an interesting discussion, with some down-home truths about the state of being a writer these days. If you’re interested in a little peek behind the curtain, head over there and read the post and discussion. And join in if you’re inclined, either here or there.

One thing I have long wished is that more writers, editors, marketers, publicists and publishers would be willing to share details about advances, marketing investments, how print runs are determined, what constitutes a good versus bad return from the publisher’s perspective. Et cetera. Most writers (the part of the industry I know best) are unwilling to share details about money because… well, because talking about “salary” in American culture is rude, or something.

One of the most interesting experiences I had teaching Clarion West last year was spending a couple of hours one evening talking with students about my take on publishing, including the breakdown of how the money works and the general economics of being a writer. I think it was depressing for them, which I regretted, but it’s important for people to know how these things work for most of us.

Recently, a writer of my acquaintance got a first book deal — 2 books for $70,000. That makes most new writers’ eyes light up with oh, if only… and of course getting paid to write is not a Bad Thing at all, it’s Good Good Good. But do the math.

Please note, the writer in question hasn’t discussed the money structure with me. I’m making this up based on how it generally works in publishing.

The advance of $70K is split between two books. So, $35K per book.

Those sums are further split into a schedule of payments — some on signing, most on acceptance of the final manuscript, and a small sum on publication. Let’s say $10K on signing, $20K on acceptance, $5K on publication.

Each of those payments is subject to agent’s commission right off the top — normally 15%. The agent actually gets your check, takes her commission, and sends you the rest. So now our first $10K is down to $8,500. That amount is subject to federal and state income taxes, federal social security tax, and Medicare. Since writers are self-employed, we must pay the employer’s contribution to social security as well as the employee’s — which means that social security alone is a 7.5% hit instead of 3.75%. Depending on how much money you expect to make from writing in a year, you estimate the total tax hit from 15% to 40%. That’s an additional $1,275 to $3,400 that’s gone from your $8,500.

Being self-employed, the writer is expected to pay estimated tax on a quarterly basis, so that money really does go right back out the door, which further reduces your cash flow.

Repeat these calculations for each scheduled payment.

And then look at the schedule. Maybe the first book of that two-book deal was basically already finished when the contract was signed. That’s good. It means that it’s possible the writer got the two big payments in the same calendar year — $30K, which after commission and, I dunno, 28% tax, comes to $18,360.

But the writer has to write the entire second book from scratch. Even if the writer begins that book the day the agent calls and says We have a deal, it is unlikely that there will be an acceptance payment (which for the second book might be along the lines of $25 or $30K, since there is no signing payment) for at least 12 months, and that’s if everything goes amazingly well. More likely, it will be 15-18 months before the next money rolls in. And if the first book doesn’t sell enough copies to earn out the first $35K advance, there will be no royalty money for the author.

And suddenly the $70,000 deal, as good as it is for a new writer in today’s market, doesn’t exactly make a person want to run out and quit her day job. Because after that contract is fulfilled, the two books published, it all starts again — the three chapters and outline, the delay while the agent and editor read and consider, the negotiations, the contract being drawn up. From the moment you send your agent the proposal for your next book, it can take 3, 6, 9 months to get an actual contract and a signing payment.

Is this unfair? No, of course not. It’s a stupid model that benefits very, very few people in the long term, but it’s only “unfair” if one believes that publishing owes one a living. I gave up believing that a long time ago.

Still, it is a broken model. And there’s a new day coming. I can’t wait.

The Dark Knight

So. Finally, after all the hype and the waiting, I’ve seen The Dark Knight. I’ll be seeing it again, and may have more to say about it after a more careful viewing, but here’s my gut response:

Awesome movie.

It did things I really didn’t expect, and what I expected was done so well as to be nearly seamless (no such thing as a perfect movie…) For me, this film comes closest to the essence and impact of Frank Miller‘s graphic novel. It’s not all a big party in Gotham, you know? Things happen to people.

It’s not so easy to balance the psychological exploration of what comes when people encounter a monster and find a little of themselves looking out of the eyes of chaos, and the blow-it-up fast-moving fun of a summer movie. But that’s what you get in The Dark Knight, and the ultimate coolness of this film is that you don’t get it in alternate jangling layers, but in an integrated structure that brings you deeper and deeper in, gradually, the way good wine changes as it breathes.

The writing… well, new benchmark for me, for sure. Lots there to learn from about structure, plotting, economy of exposition, showing versus telling, pacing…. And the direction and the performances lift the marvelous words to the place story always wants to go, into the realm of Well, it couldn’t have been any other way than this.

And then there is Heath Ledger, whose performance is absolutely fearless. Never mind the fences — he is swinging for the moon every second on screen, and damn near making it. Brilliant, riveting work, just electric. He found his way into a place that most actors don’t go with their villains — absolute joy. Not the movie cliche of capering gleeful inhuman evil, but the very human abandonment to that which we can no longer resist. In one scene, the Joker says I am an agent of chaos. He’s not kidding: but when he says chaos, he doesn’t mean that it doesn’t matter what happens — he means that whatever happens is Nothing But Good. Nothing But Joy. All outcomes equally compelling, equally desired, equally embraced. The difference between the monster and the heroes is that the monster has a pure super-oxygenated joy in whatever the next moment brings.

The next time I write story — screenplay, fiction, whatever — I will think of Heath Ledger and hope to be as fierce and as fearless, to write with the same tight balancing act of skill and abandon, the controlled recklessness, the what the fuck of it all.

So. Wow.

And the audience behaved beautifully. The popcorn was fresh. And I wore my special movie t-shirt:
(Click on the image to enlarge — but be warned, it’s called “Spoilt” for a reason…)

It was a good afternoon.

Sit down, be quiet, behave

Since I am going to see The Dark Knight today —

(brief pause for moment of total fangirl squee)

— this seems very timely.

I would love to have a secret science fiction ray gun that I can zap people with in the movie audience who are talking, texting, taking phone calls (!), and otherwise behaving badly. This ray gun would instantly tattoo on their foreheads — in neon — well…. let me tell you a story.

When I was in grammar school, the teachers’ favorite disciplinary tool for low-level offenses was assigning misbehaving students 10 sets of multiplication tables (“multies,” where a single set was “0x0=0” all the way through “9×9=81”), or 50 lines, which meant writing out an assigned sentence that many times in really good penmanship. Multies were easy — most of the kids in my class would get ahead on sets of multies when we were bored and keep them in reserve. But you could never get ahead on lines because the teachers made them up on the spot.

The one I remember most came from Mrs. Atkins, my sixth grade teacher, who was really annoyed one day and sent the entire class home to write:

I have been thoughtless, selfish and rude: therefore I must write this tedious sentence 50 times.

I would have the secret science fiction ray gun tattoo a variant of this: I have been thoughtless, selfish and rude, and need to learn that the world is not my living room.

Or, as I like to say, don’t be an asshole. An extreme response to someone disturbing a really good movie? I think not.

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.

Story people

Writers are the people who tell stories. Who do you think readers are?

Barbara Sanchez

Hi Barbara,

I think we are all story people.

I think we — writers and readers and those of us who are both — are all people who want stories. I think we respond so strongly to certain stories because in some way we are those stories; or we want to become them; or we fear becoming them. They speak to us of our own hopes, joys, risks, griefs, our compromises and our stubborness, our will and our failures of will. Or they show people just like us being heroes, larger than life, bigger and brighter, burning in ways we would like to burn if only we could.

And some of us are moved to make our own stories. I don’t know about other writers, but I write the stories that in some way I want to live, or hope to never live. I bring up stories from places of great yearning and ecstasy and fear. Sometimes those things are expressed quietly, sometimes at full volume, but even the gentle stories come from places that are full of storms.

Is it better to make one’s own stories? Nope, just a different way to live in the heart of one’s own imagination. Because whether we write our own work or read someone else’s, that’s what we’re doing — living the story, bringing it inside us and making it our particular and individual own. The act of reading is an act of creation, as surely as writing is. In the end, we are all telling the story to ourselves.

—————
You can start your own conversation now or anytime — just use the “Want to talk?” link on the sidebar.

More blah-blah: new comment management

At Jennifer’s suggestion (thanks, Jennifer), I’ve added some ways for you to more easily track comments.

If you are interested in following comments on a specific post, click on that post title. At the bottom of the post is the comments box, and at the very bottom you’ll see a checkbox that offers to update you by email whenever anyone comments on that particular post. You don’t have to leave a comment yourself to activate this update feature — there’s room for lurkers too (grin).

If you want to add the comments feed to your feedreader (such as Bloglines), you’ll find a new Comments Feed icon on the navigation bar at the top of every page of the website. It’s the little right-hand orange icon. If you don’t know what a feedreader or feed aggregator is, then you probably don’t use one. Back slowly away from this paragraph and go on to the next one.

If you want to receive a daily email update of every new comment, no matter what post, you can sign up for an email subscription using the convenient box on the sidebar under the “Recent Comments” section (“Get all comments by email”). Or use this link. This update works exactly the same way as the email subscription to posts.

I hope this will make it easier for people to stay involved in conversations or topics that interest them.

Please let me know if you have any problems or questions!

Administrative blah-blah about email subscriptions

If you subscribe to this blog by email, please be aware:

A number of people lately have been confused by the email format, and have thought that they were commenting on a post by replying to the email. And then, of course, they wonder where their comment went (and sometimes they get grumpy!). I hate confusing readers and making people grumpy by accident (I would always rather it was intentional).

So as of today, your email is coming from a slightly different address (updates@kelleyeskridge.com). This is a no-humans-here address (or an autorespond black-hole address, if you want to get technical). If you want to respond to a blog post, please do so by clicking the title link in the email update. It will take you to the post on the website, and you can make your comment there.

If you’d like to start a different conversation, please use the Talk to me now link on the blog sidebar.

If you need/want to contact me privately, use my primary email address if you have it or use contact[at]kelleyeskridge[dot]com.

If you do reply to the update email, you’ll get an automatic message back that explains all this again.

And if you’re thinking Huh, I didn’t know I could get updates by email, I want that!, then use the convenient “get new posts by email” sign-up box on either the blog sidebar or the home page.

I now return you to whatever you were doing before you stopped for this (and maybe you feel like it’s a minute of your life you can never get back, but thanks for reading).