Man vs. Nature?

Jean-Michel, who is the eldest son of sea-explorer legend Jacques Cousteau, told reporters that he thought Irwin, in his "Crocodile Hunter" shows and beyond, would "interfere with nature, jump on animals, grab them...It appeals to a lot of people, but I think it's very misleading. You don't touch nature, you just look at it. And that's why I'm still alive." (Jean-Michel also said that he found the death "unfortunate" and said he had "a lot of respect" for Irwin.)*

Well, I have a lot of respect for Cousteau (really, that's not sarcastic), but that statement of his is really a piece of work. Honestly, how do you not touch nature?

OK, obviously he did not mean that literally. I'm sure the man walks on grass just like the rest of us; he doesn't just look at it. But he does invoke an idea that I've always had a problem with: that "man" is separate from "nature". That "nature" is this pristine, holy thing that is sullied by any contact with "man".

Of course the reason Steve Irwin was so popular was that he did jump on animals and wrestle with them. I hate nature shows as a general rule; I find them unbelievably dull. Voice-over and a locked down camera, ugh. But Irwin got in there, got involved. (To be honest, I enjoy the Kratt brothers as well. They don't get in there as much as Steve, but they do get genuinely excited when they find cool animals. And genuine excitement is quite infectious). Man and animal, both part of nature, working out a way to live together and share the same space. That was Irwin's mission statement, wasn't it? It wasn't look from a distance, admire the untouched beauty, feel guilt for how you've sullied it with your need for civilization. It was working for a compromise, looking for ways to keep sharks off of beaches so that people could swim without getting bitten, but that didn't kill the sharks in the process. It was forward-looking and always positive. Which was why I liked Steve.

I think this idea of not touching nature is a really bad one. I think it's one of the reasons so many people actively hate environmentalists. They tend to treat humans as intruders when we are, after all, a part of the ecosystem too. Yes, we've been given the gift of reason, and we should use it to find ways to meet our needs that cause the least amount of damage to the world around us, but the idea that we shouldn't touch stuff.... well clearly, it rubs me the wrong way.

My vote for the worst book ever: Ishmael by Daniel Quinn, in which a talking gorilla (ugh) advocates a return to hunting/gathering over agriculture. Because what would make the world a better place is high infant mortality and getting rid of those artists and scientists and all the other specialized careers that come from one man acquiring enough food to support more than just himself.

What the environmental movement needs, in my opinion, is more guys like Jared Diamond, who are looking for ways to balance the needs of the environment with the needs of industry. He has his critics, some feel he compromises too much, but I like him. He is not a zealot, and that's sadly all too rare. His books are well worth the read.

Another book I just read also touches on this man and nature debate. It's this one:



It's about what the Western Hemisphere was really like before Columbus came. History is one of those areas where I feel my public school education really let me down, so I've been digging up interesting books like this when I can find them so I can fill in the gaps. My impression from my school days was that North America was sparsely populated, no real cities, and was all wild, only lightly touched or untouched by man. (I also thought Squanto was a fictional character. I'm a bit ashamed about that one. In my defense, he is a highly fictionalized historical figure; I think I can be forgiven).

This book is well worth reading in its entirety. Suffice it to say my school days' assumptions were wrong in all respects (although I did actually know some of this before reading 1491, because I've been reading Jared Diamond's books which make a lot of the same points). The book goes into depth on what different Indian groups were doing to use nature to meet their needs. Most interesting for me were those in Amazonia, who couldn't grow fields of grain so they cultivated groves of nut and fruit trees. Once they were all wiped out by smallpox, nothing was left but the trees. Which in the middle of a rain forest don't really scream "civilization" to the casual observer, such as the first white explorers.

My point is, popular imagery aside, the Indians did not see themselves as apart from nature, and they didn't think nature was just for looking at. They touched it and used it. Because that's what people do.

* Disclaimer: From what I've read, it seems Jean Michel's problem wasn't with Irwin so much as it was with his nephew Philippe Cousteau, who worked with Irwin. Apparently the Cousteau family is quite a divisive and combative bunch. Someone should make a sitcom. Nah, it could never be as good as The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou.

Still no joy for Duckie

I already own this movie, but I was tricked into buying it again.

Let's back up a bit. Like many of my generation, I adore John Hughes movies, and Pretty in Pink is the best of the lot as far as I'm concerned. Everytime I slept over at my best friend's house, we would rent this movie. Honestly, every single time. I still know it by heart (you'd think it was The Empire Strikes Back or something). My friend was a compulsive magazine reader; she read all the entertainment magazines and was always my friend-in-the-know. She was the one who told me that originally the movie ended with Andie and Duckie together, and the book tie-in, the crappy novelization had this original Duckie gets the girl ending. This was back in the days before the Internet, of course. This sort of info is readily available on any movie with two clicks and a Google, but back then it was like she told me she knew where the Holy Grail was.

I was in my 20s before I found a copy of the crappy novelization in a used book store (and even a decade later it was still like I'd found the Holy Grail, I'm sad to say. I was embarrassingly excited).

So it's been 20 years now that I've been longing to see this ending. I know it exists, I've read the novel version but I want to see the actual celluloid! So when I was at the Best Buy last week (buying Stars Wars Lego II for the boys) and I saw a new release of Pretty in Pink called the "Everything's Duckie Edition" which promised "The Original Ending: The Last Dance". At last! At last I would see the Duckie ending!

Or not. It's not actually there. It's just the cast reminiscing about shooting that first ending and then going back for reshoots. I was robbed!

To be honest, though, Andie ending up with Duckie doesn't work. The Blane ending was definitely the way to go. I think I felt as strongly as I did about it back in the day because it wasn't the Andie character I identified with in the movie; it was Duckie. Andie was cold and aloof (and into fashion, something I've never carried much about myself). Duckie was just Duckie, himself take it or leave it. I didn't want them to end up together because it was the right choice for Andie; I just wanted Duckie to get the girl. But like I said, it doesn't work. And it's all in that little scene between Duckie and Andie's dad. Andie and Duckie together would just be her parents all over again; one person feeling all of the love and affection for two.

The ending from the theatrical release is better for Duckie anyway. He makes the choice to step back and let Andie go. I wished it could have ended there. But someone felt they had to throw him a bone, so we get the ridiculous Kristy Swanson cameo (called "Duckette" in the credits). Is this the sort of girl Duckie would be attracted to, Duckie the pathological individualist? This is his follow-up for Andie? A richie? No way. He needs a girl with flare, with a sense of self.

Of course it helps to imagine her in her other theatrical persona: Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Now there's a girl for Duckie.

My Summer Vacation...

...thank god it's over. OK, it wasn't that bad, considering not a single thing went off as planned. The boys, for instance, we're very well behaved on their first long trip in the car.

The drive from Minneapolis to Chicago was nice - at first. We left after rush hour and stopped at our favorite rest stop in Menomonie, WI for sandwiches (it's on the way to Chippewa Falls, which we are compelled to visit the last weekend of every July). It started spitting rain while we ate, which was OK since the picnic tables were under little pavilions. Not an hour later the rain had increased to the point where seeing the car in front of us was a challenge, particularly if it was actually a truck in front of us, spraying up a dense curtain of water. Did I mention the freeway was down to one lane for road construction? Well, it was.

Still, we got to Chicago without incident and found our hotel. I had made the reservations over the internet, and not being familiar with Chicago, I picked the hotel pretty much at random (as close to the Field Museum as we could get so we wouldn't have to drive on the freeway to get there, then the cheapest I could find). We were in a little cluster of hotels that service the Midway Airport. A nice little oasis, and our hotel was very well run, clean with very friendly and helpful staff. But to get there we had to drive through what I can only hope is the pit of Chicago. (It actually wasn't until we were leaving on Thursday morning that I actually saw parts of Chicago that were clean and well kept).

The next day was Field Museum Day. Our non-refundable, non-exchangable tickets were only good between 9:30-10 a.m. Mapquest directions said it'd take about 12 minutes to get there from our hotel. We gave ourselves an hour so we could get there early, no stress. It took almost exactly an hour to get there, and it was the very opposite of no stress, as my eldest puked all over himself in the back seat (whether from nerves or a side effect of my husband's techniques for driving stick in stop-and-go traffic, who can say?)

So now it's already 9:30, we don't know where we are or where we can get a pair of pants and be back in less than 30 minutes (because he didn't lean forward to aim for the floor: it was all over his jacket and his pants and his seat. And by the way hotel laundry service for a pair of pants and a jacket is $20, FYI). So we cleaned him up as best we could in the restroom and got in line. Because those tickets were 100 nonrefundable dollars.

Now it could just be my pathological optimism talking, but this actually worked out well for us. It was very crowded throughout the entire exhibit, but when someone in your party still smells a bit like vomit, people generally choose to give you a bit more room. So we got to see everything, and it was very, very cool. Egypt, and specifically Egypt circa the time Akhenaten was in power (Tut's predecessor) was one of the settings for novel #2, so I've done a lot of reading on this time period. Enough to where I actually recognized a lot of the artifacts. Aidan and Oliver were interested as well, which is cool since it wasn't really geared for children. Oliver did, however, get freaked out by a massive stone head, part of a long-lost statue of Akhenaten, which was set up high so it sort of loomed over you in one room. I can't hardly blame him, he was one scary guy (and his daughters are even more alien-looking; the theory is that the whole family had some bizarre inbreeding-related disease). This isn't a picture of that head, but just to give you an idea:

I can definitely see why he was freaked out. But then he was also freaked out by Sue the T. Rex in the lobby. And the stuffed gorillas. And the animatronic bugs in the Underground Adventure...

They were both very good in the clearly not-meant-for-kids Tut exhibit. And the Field Museum had other exhibits on Egypt that were kid-oriented. You could touch stuff and interact with things (like using a shaduf to pour water into an irrigation canal, or trying to pull a massive block of stone using ropes and a wood sledge). It was a nice museum, but we didn't stay long on account of the puke smell one of us was still stewing in. We did get a big Tut T-shirt that covered most of the big spots. And I, of course, bought the museum book with photos of all the artifacts (plus a CD of the audio tour narrated by Omar Sharif, a nice bonus since we hadn't paid for that option with our exhibit tickets). And the book was written by Zahi Hawass. Not "foreword by" not "introduction by", written by. (Completely off topic, but my similar book on the Viking exhibit which spawned the ideas for my WIP has a foreword by Hillary Rodham Clinton. I have no idea why. That book has some terrific contributors, especially in the Greenland section, which of course is the most-referenced part of my book. But who hears "Viking" and thinks "Hillary"? It's just bizarre).

In case some of you are saying, "Who the hell is Zahi Hawass?", I assure you if you've ever watched a doc about Egypt on the Discovery Channel, or the History Channel, or any other channel, I guarantee you've seen Zahi Hawass:

So that covers day one of our vacation. Day two was less eventful. The Shedd Aquarium was amazing (no one puked, but Oliver was freaked out by the giant sperm whales that hung from the ceiling in the food court and the giant octopus on the ceiling of the gift shop). It still rained all day, so we never got to go to the sculpture garden or any parks or even just walk along Lake Michigan. When you're travelling with a high-energy 5-year-old, this is more than a little disappointing. We resorted to letting them watch Pokeman because it was the only kid's show on the hotel TV (formerly a forbidden show, but all their friends watch it). They were both very excited and sat quietly and colored in their notebooks while they watched it (our hotel room was actually one big bed plus a fold-out couch, which was cool because that meant during the long evenings stuck in doors we could sit on a couch and had a coffee table to draw and play on rather than trying to make do with two beds). (We also had a microwave and a little fridge, so we could cook frozen dinners rather than eat out. Did I mention the hotel was great?).

It quit raining on Thursday, the day we drove back. We decided to take the highways through downtown so they could see the Sears Tower (or as Oliver calls it, the Serious Tower, which is taller than the Vampire State Building). They got a lot of looks at it; there was road construction and it took over an hour to get from one freeway to the next. But they were really geeked to see it since it had been in clouds, mist, and fog every other time we'd come downtown. They never did get a good look at Lake Michigan, though. There wasn't enough cash left to park anywhere, so we had to let it go.

The drive back through Wisconsin was beautiful. The leaves were just starting to turn (in a few more weeks they'll be spectacular; memo to self, next trip to Chicago will be in October).

But we had to make one last stop on the way home, at Best Buy. The Star Wars: Lego Game II just came out. If you've spoken to my sons recently, this is a fact you are already very well aware of.

That's why they were so well behaved on vacation and during the long car rides. Bribery.

On pottery

I love a good DVD commentary track. Most are a waste of time, but a few are full of insights into the storytelling process. Robert Rodriguez consistently gives good audio. On one DVD (one of the Spy Kids movies, but I'm not sure which), he told this story:

On the first day of a college pottery class, the professor announced that half the class would be graded on quantity while the other half would be graded on quality. Some of the students would be required to make fifty clay pots by the end of the semester. Students who made all fifty would receive an A, those who made forty would receive a B, and so on. The other students only had to make one clay pot, but everything about it had to be perfect. The lesson lay in the fact that the highest quality pots inevitably came from the students who were to be graded on quantity. These students learned from their mistakes, and had enough practical experience that the pots they made kept getting better and better. The students who were graded on quality tended to over-think their designs, and without the practice required to gain the skill, could not produce a high quality pot.

I've thought about that story a lot since I first heard it. I suspect he's right, and yet I'm very bad with letting things go. I'm very much the type to fuss with one pot endlessly rather than make a bunch of pots. Lots of writers advise writing a short story or novel chapter a week (which frankly blows me a way; I could never be that prolific. Not with the paying job and the homescholing, anyway). These writers have various ways of saying why one should do this, but it boils down to what Rodriguez says: it's all about the practical experience and skills that are only gained from output. The bigger your output, the more you learn.

The way I figure it, the slow workers might learn in 40 pots what the fast ones learn in 50 (maybe), but the fast ones do those 50 in less than half the time the slow ones spend on 40. I know some writers who were devestated when their first novel didn't sell. It's tough, because you put so much into it, but at the same time, it's tough - how can you expect to get it right on the very first try?

I spent 5 years on my last novel, which I've never tried to sell (or the one that came before it, for that matter). It was a great learning experience, and the novel I'm working on now is going much faster because of what I learned from writing that one. I had originally intended to revisit that old one when the new one was done, but the more distant I get from it the less I want to. So I'm scrapping it for parts (the characters were cool, if I say so myself).

So yeah, I think Rodriquez is right, but I'm still a futzer. What are you gonna do?

Good-bye, Steve Irwin

You've probably already heard the news, that Steve is gone. It doesn't seem quite right, with all the dangerous animals he's handled (or wrestled), that he was brought low by a stingray. This is not an aggressive animal; it only has that stinger to avoid being stepped on. If it had stung him anywhere else, he'd still be with us. Just an inch either way would have hit a rib (I'm sure it was the actual puncturing of his heart more than the venom that killed him).

The world of wildlife conservation has lost a great hero, but I don't think that matters as much as his kids losing their father. Anyone who's ever watched his shows can tell you: he loved animals, but nowhere near as much as he loved his family.

He will be missed. Heck, I miss him already.

Arrested Development

When I say I never watch television, this is of course not entirely true. During the (all too) few hours a week I get to spend with my husband when neither of us are working and the boys are in bed, we usually watch something together. It's a bit more social than reading in the same room (mostly because someone won't stop talking, and the constant interruptions make me.... well, let's just say anti-social).

But we never really watch shows on TV. Mostly this is because we have vastly different tastes, but my work schedule in particular is too erratic to ever be able to be there same night, same time to catch the next episode of anything.

Then God created TV on DVD. This is in fact where I discovered Buffy and Angel. Firefly I did watch live. Which brings me to the other reason I don't watch TV - the shows I like always get axed. Which brings me to the show I wanted to discuss: the also-axed ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT.

This show is brilliant. I'm impressed with the casting, for crying out loud. Henry Winkler as a closeted gay lawyer? Brilliant. Liza Minelli as a woman suffering from vertigo? I don't think I've ever liked her in anything, but she's brilliant in this. And Ron Howard as the narrator? Who doesn't love little Opie Cunningham?

But of course, being me, what I love most is the writing. Yeah, it's funny, but what slays me is the structure of the thing. It's clearly guided by one man's vision, plotted out with season-long and series-long arcs, complete with foreshadowing, set-up, and closure.

Most sit-coms fail to do any of those things. Stuff happens. Next week, more stuff happens, but it's like last week is already forgotten. As much as I loved FRIENDS, it always bugged me how Chandler and Ross could still be portrayed as geeks/losers when they were bedding a different woman every other episode. Any real geek can tell you, they don't get laid quite that much. In defense of FRIENDS, they did near the end use the absurdness of their collective history for humor. I loved FRIENDS, the jokes were great. But there was never any arc there, any grand plan for where it was all going.

Of course that's the point of a sit-com. You're supposed to catch this or that episode, and everything you need to know about the characters is contained in the theme song to catch the new viewers up. I'm sure part of why ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT never caught on was that you really had to see every episode in order to appreciate it (which brings us back to TV on DVD, the perfect format).

One of the longest-running arguments in writing circles is whether or not one should write an outline before starting to write a novel. Writers arguing for one point of view or another can come up with all sorts of arguments for why there way is the right way (and in the case of some egos, the only way). But I think whichever way the writer writes, with or without an outline, reflects their feelings about structure in what they take in, reading or TV or movies. I happen to like highly-structured things. Have you ever seen the outlines Joyce used to write ULYSSES? Good God, on my best day nothing I do will ever approach that level of structure. One of the argument against outlining is it's more "realistic" to write without one. When you get up in the morning, you don't know what's going to happen. A writer shouldn't know what's going to happen either.

This is half a thought, I'm afraid, as dinner must be made. Suffice it to say, I don't like the word "realistic" applied to my writing style or my reading preferences.

Quick post with pics

I don't have the mental energy for a real post today, but I do have a bunch of pics I've been meaning to put up here, sort of a follow up to the whole series of patio posts. The first one is a bit gruesome (once you know what you're looking at). The deck was very spongy when Quin tore it apart (although that's not why we pulled it out - the reason was to improve the water drainage so it would flow out into the yard and not into the house). Once it was gone, the carpenter ants that had been infiltrating it for years moved into the house. About a week after the Orkin guy came the ants started falling out of the overhang under the sliding glass door. I'm glad they went outside to die in great twitching piles, and I'm not thinking about how many corpses are stacked up in my walls. *shudder*




For this one, you need to compare to the before picture I took (the third one I posted here). I told you we had mutant grass; those tracks are completely gone. (Well there was some seeding involved, but not much, really).

The last pic is of the patio itself, plus the patch that used to be patio but is now dirt. Do you see the diagonal line in the dirt? Everything on the house-side of that line is actually dirt mixed with concrete and angled to drain away from the house. That's going to stay dirt with paving stones and some sort of rock garden type thing. Perhaps you can tell by my vagueness, this is my husband's project. But I've been promised a bench under the arbor vitae so I can sit in the shade and write.

The bake sale was a success!

I told you all a week or so ago about my fellow writer EJ and his quest to sell stories to get his car back from the bank. Now the good news is in: he made his deadline with some cash to spare (which will come in handy for the other hoops they're making him jump through - sheesh, bureaucrats). Anyway, click over to his web page and check out the big grin on his face. That just makes it all worthwhile, doesn't it?

And special thanks to those of you who bought some of my stories (which, as it turns out, was more than just my Mom)!

Now I'm back to work. I'm on a run of 2000+ words a day, which is huge for me. I hope I don't jinx it by mentioning it.

EDIT: I updated my Zokuto meter over on the sidebar there, and since I was already messing with the template I updated all my links. There are a lot of cool blogs there; I invite you to click around a little.

I Gave my Daughter Movie Fame

ROBERT: What kind of stories have you been writing lately? Adventure? Romance? Teaching school?
NOVALYNE: I write down conversations I hear in my journal for practice. Sometimes I try a confession.
ROBERT: You got a lot to confess?
NOVALYNE: It depends, whether I write about what I do or what I think about doing. You know what, though? It still all gets sent back.
ROBERT: What was your last one about?
NOVALYNE: It’s a little hard to explain. It was called “I Gave my Daughter Movie Fame”.
ROBERT: (laughs too loudly) What’d you say?
NOVALYNE: It’s for the confessions. Aren’t those stories always a little bizarre?
ROBERT: (laughs) What’s it called?
NOVALYNE: “I Gave my Daughter Movie Fame”.
ROBERT: Really? And what’s it about? (laughs)
NOVALYNE: I’m not going to tell you until you stop laughing at me.
ROBERT: (stops laughing, motions for her to go on)
NOVALYNE: A woman has an illegitimate child, a daughter. The child is adopted by her aunt, but the mother can’t give her up, so she keeps helping her in secret, and…
ROBERT: (laughs softly) What? (keeps laughing)
NOVALYNE: Eventually she helps her become a movie star.
ROBERT: (laughs softly)
NOVALYNE: Very famous.
ROBERT: (laughs louder)
NOVALYNE: (laughing too) Stop laughing. It’s not that silly, is it?
ROBERT: Don’t pay attention to me. I don’t know a thing about illegitimate daughters or movie fame.
NOVALYNE: Well, it seemed like a good idea at the time. Well, I haven’t seen any giant snakes or big-busted naked women frolicking through the West Texas hills lately.
ROBERT: Oh, but I have. You look more closely next time.

(later)

NOVALYNE: I try to write about people with ordinary problems. Real people.
ROBERT: Now that’s where we’re different. I write about another age. Another way of life. Man struggling to survive. That’s my formula.
NOVALYNE: Well, you know those tiny farmhouses we passed on the way out? Those are the people I want to write about.
ROBERT: Not me. I can’t write about men who toil long on a farm, get drunk, beat up a wife who can’t fight back. Uh-uh, I can’t write about hate like that.
NOVALYNE: Well just cause you’re poor and you work hard don’t mean you’re hateful.
ROBERT: You’ve lived a sheltered life. You don’t know these people out here; I do.
NOVALYNE: Well, your stories sell, so people must want to read about muscle men who wrestle monsters and girls in skimpy dresses who don’t do a darn thing but sit around and watch.
ROBERT: (scoffs) You stick with me, girl. I’ll teach you about writing. And men.


Raise your hand if you know what that's from. Anyone? Anyone? It's from a criminally underappreciated film called The Whole Wide World. The ROBERT in question is Robert E. Howard, creator of Conan and Red Sonja (played to perfection by Vincent D'Onofrio). NOVALYNE is Novalyne Price, a schoolteacher who wants to be a writer (Renee Zellwegger, after her splash in Jerry Maguire but well before Bridget Jones).

This movie should be required viewing for any spec-fic writer that ever has to mix with the other kind of writer, the kind that writes about ordinary people with ordinary problems. There's a huge gap in understanding there, and it's for me the toughest part of dealing with other writers. They can't understand why you feel compelled to write about things that are impossible, and you can't understand why they feel compelled to write about things that are so implausible. "I Gave my Daughter Movie Fame" actually sounds readable to me. No child abuse or domestic strife or brave struggles against diseases. For me, those are the sorts of things I'm reading to get away from.

I took a creative writing class in high school with a friend of mine who only read books if they were based on a true story, so I became aware of this gulf between writers fairly early on. We would trade what we were working on, and neither of us could come up with anything to say. She couldn't grasp my need to create entire worlds that don't exist, and I couldn't see her need to write about things that didn't show me anything new. We made lousy critique partners, that's for sure.

I still occasionally have to read and comment on stories like these. I still never know what to say. I have a few more social skills than Robert E. Howard, I know I can't just laugh my ass off (especially since I'm writing these comments. LOL with a grinning smiley? Don't think so). And I know the writing is good, there is really nothing I can point at to the writer and say "fix this". It's a conundrum, not at all relieved when I read their comments on my work; clearly they struggle with the same inability to find anything to say. It's worse for me; there are more of them and they all enthuse over each other's work. I'm the only one scratching my head, moaning to myself that it wasn't really about anything.

All I can say is thank god for my spec-fic writing group. Finally I get to critique the cool stuff.

Yeah, what he said

George R. R. Martin has been taking flack for some things he said on his LiveJournal (things which I mostly agreed with). Now he's come back with more words that just ring really true with me. Like:

I want the right to do stupid, hazardous, self-destructive stuff as well; to drink absinthe, smoke pot, smoke tobacco, drive my car without the seatbelt, bungee jump off bridges, watch porn, order my eggs sunny-side up and my hamburgers rare, have unprotected sex, drink unpasteurized milk. I have only done a few of those things, actually (I will leave it to you to figure out which ones), and most I would never consider -- but I SHOULD have the right to do all of them. The choice should be mine, not yours, and not the government's. Giving individuals a CHOICE in how we live is our lives is the essence of freedom, I think.

And shouldn't ordinary law-abiding people have the basic, fundamental right not to be treated like goddamned criminals everywhere they go?

It's all worth a read. Click here.

Two master writers talking shop

Worked way too late last night. Stayed up even later reading this really cool thing in the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. There is a new biography coming out on the writer James Tiptree, Jr., one of my sci-fi faves. For those not in the know, James Tiptree, Jr. was a sci-fi writer who won many Hugos and Nebulas but was a complete recluse. No one ever saw him. The reason for this was that Tiptree was actually a pseudonym used by Alice Sheldon. She was no ordinary woman, either. If she had never been a writer, hers would still be a biography I'd want to read (here's a Wikipedia article about her to give you a taste of what I mean, although it doesn't say as much as it ought to about her pre-writing life).

Now Ursula K. LeGuin is my absolute fave sci-fi writer, and I knew she had corresponded with Tiptree for many years thinking he was a man. To tie in with the release of the biography, FSF has printed a selection of their correspondence. If you're like me, nothing is cooler than two writers talking shop, especially two writers like these. I couldn't stop reading. If you're remotely into either of these writers, you really should check it out.

What's up with SFWA?

So, RWA (Romance Writers of America) just had their annual convention a few weeks ago. It's always a huge event, and many writers I know were there and had a terrific time. But do you know what makes RWA great in my eyes? It's not the convention (no one has more conventions than sci-fi, after all); it's their inclusiveness.

Pop quiz: How many publications do you need to join RWA? 1? 3? How do they define a "qualified market" for these publications? Well, let's check their website:

RWA welcomes new members. You need not be a published author to join Romance Writers of America; only seriously pursuing a career in the romance fiction.

Well, isn't that interesting? But maybe that's just RWA, though, that makes the commitment to culitvating new talent, to helping people get their start. Maybe it's a chick thing. Women helping women, in that Ya-Ya sisterhood kind of way. I mean, surely the Horror Writers Assocation (HWA) isn't so open to the unwashed masses:

HWA's active (voting) members are all published professional writers of horror. But you needn't be an established professional writer to join HWA. Your demonstrated intention to become a professional writer is all that's required to join HWA at the Affiliate level, because we know the first professional-level sale is often the hardest.

Oh. You can see where I'm going with, but here's MWA, Mystery Writers of America:

Affiliate members are writers of crime/mystery/suspense fiction who are not yet professionally published, and others with an interest in the genre, including unpaid reviewers.

Or SCBWI (Society of Childrens Books Writers and Illustrators):

Associate Membership is open to unpublished writers and illustrators of children’s literature or media, and those with a general enthusiasm for the field. Writers or illustrators who have been published in markets other than children's literature (but not in children's literature) would be considered Associate Members.

Some call it associate, some call it affiliate, but all these groups reach out to include new writers. Which is cool. But SFWA doesn't do this. Oh, they have an associate level. It's this:

To become an Associate member of SFWA, applicants must demonstrate:
One Paid Sale of prose fiction (such as short stories) to a Qualifying Professional Market, paid at the rate of 5c/word or higher (3c/word before 1/1/2004), minimum $75.

And those key phrases "Paid Sale" and "Qualifying Professional Market" are very stringently defined. You can't publish just anywhere, they have a short list of what markets count. I read most of those magazines. With the exception of the Writers of the Future anthology, which is by definition all new writers, you'll be lucky to find more than one story by a new writer in any of them. Not that I blame the magazines; I'd rather read the new Gene Wolfe short than something from a writer I've never heard of. But why does SFWA set the bar so discouragingly high?

This juicy quote comes from elsewhere on their website:

If you don't have enough sf/f fiction credits to get you into SFWA, SFWA membership would be of very little (if any) value to you.

Which frankly sounds a little elitist and snotty. How does SFWA differ from every other writers' organization, that there is no place for newbies? I don't know.

I've heard talk that sci-fi sales are declining and have been for more than a decade. Most booksellers when asked to name their favorite sci-fi novels name books that are all 15+ years old. Are these two things related? Maybe not. But what if they are?

My new addiction

When I decided to take this whole writing thing seriously, I needed to find ways to carve out the time to write every day. The first thing I gave up was television. Not much loss there. I still watch episodes of shows like Buffy, Angel, or Lost when they come out on DVD while I'm treading the mill, but aside from that it's just an hour of Adult Swim on Sunday nights and basketball when it's on (and I usually do something else like knit at the same time).

The second thing I gave up was video games. This one was actually harder, and it's the thing that still calls to me when I'm struggling with the words. Lara Croft beckons. I remember that I never did play Final Fantasy Tactics all the way to the end. Or Baldur's Gate, for that matter. Then I hear about cool games like the Sims, and I long for more hours in the day.

But mostly I keep those urges under control. Until last week...

As you all know, I homeschool my boys. I'm currently in a tricky phase where Oliver has started doing real school, but Aidan is not quite capable of working independently. I feel like Aidan is missing out on things I'd like to be doing with him but can't because there isn't enough time in the day. I wish he could do things without me, but how I can I make sure he's progressing with something if I'm not monitoring him?

Enter Rosetta Stone. This is the foreign language program that's pretty much universally hailed to be the best in homeschooling circles. To actually buy the program is over $200, but I recently found out that with a library card you can get it for free from the library's web page. It's considered a reference material. Now, Aidan has been learning Latin, which he loves but which happens to be very time consuming and is generally the thing we are most likely not to get to on a given day. It's a shame because he loves it, and yet it's not likely to appear on his standardized tests, hence the leaving it for last if at all. I decided to check out the Rosetta Stone Latin, to see if it was at a level he could do on his own.

First I did a few lessons in Latin, and they were perfect for Aidan. But I soon forgot that's what I was even there for. It was so addictive, just clicking on pictures, saying things out loud to yourself, and before you know it you've learned a bunch of Latin. It was like a video game, really. But I've already taught myself enough Latin to already know everything that Rosetta Stone has to offer. Not much fun there for me.

But look, there's Chinese! I never progressed far with Chinese. I tried an audio tape series that worked the same way as Rosetta Stone, no phrases to memorize, you learn words by figuring out what's being said just like a child learns his native language, etc. It was good, but I'm not an audio learner, I'm a visual learner. Rosetta Stone, with the added visual element of seeing the words written, is perfect for me.

After four lessons in Chinese I remember that I don't really have a reason to learn Chinese (aside from it's just cool). So I looked at what other languages they offer. I've been working on Icelandic lately since it's the closest to Old Norse (see how cleverly I disguise my addiction as "novel research"?). No Icelandic on Rosetta Stone. No Norwegian either. But they do have Swedish, which is a lot like Icelandic (kind of like French is a lot like Spanish).

So it's a week later and I've done about fifteen lessons in Swedish. Which I don't really need, since I decided not to use foreign phrases in the novel, and I'll most likely never travel to Sweden. And yet I can't stop. But there is an upside. It's become my writing reward. My goal for a long time has been to write at least 1000 words a day. Now, when I get my 1000 words done, I let myself learn some Swedish.

Yep, I'm one sad little puppy.

Like a bake sale, but with stories!

My fellow Backspacer EJ is going through some tough times. As he says on his blog:

Hunter S. Thompson said that when the going gets weird, the weird turn pro. Well, I’m not sure how pro this is but trying to sell 1500 stories in 20 days is probably a pretty weird thing to try.
Let me explain.
Stress kills. It’s pretty good at knocking you on your ass, too. I hit the stress wall a year ago and it wasn’t pretty. I ended up losing my job and going on disability. Since then I’ve been struggling to keep things afloat, juggling credit card payments, a mortgage on a house that refuses to sell, rent and a car payment. The credit cards are long gone and by now my credit rating is sub-zero. My retirement account is gone. The house will likely be lost. And five days ago Exchange Bank took my car.
I can’t be without a car. I have doctors to see, therapy to go to, shopping to do and the transit system in this town is all but non-existent.
My first reaction was to roll over, give it up. I’ve been struggling for a year now, why keep it up? I’m tired. I can’t go on. Then I decided no, I’m not going to do that. I’m a writer. Writing is a struggle. I’m damned if I’m going to let them beat me without some kind of fight. So I came up with an idea. A weird idea. Maybe an idea that won’t work. But at least it was something. I decided I would try and sell 1500 stories at $2.00 a piece. Why 1500? Because I need to raise $3000.00 to get my car back. I may not be able to find 1500 stories but that’s what I’m aiming for. I hope to have a paypal account set up by the end of the day for story purchases.
But I don’t have, and couldn’t possibly write, 1500 stories in time. So I ran the idea by my friends at Backspace, the best damn writers group on the Internet and the response, I have to be honest, made me cry. I’ve been receiving stories all day and hope to start posting them by the end of the day.
I need the help of bloggers as well to make this happen. I need the word to spread. Please, mention what I’m trying to do on your blog with a link back to this post.
And thank you. Win or lose, at least I’ve tried.

So if you're a writer, send EJ a story. I know you have one or two in a drawer; we all do.

I've been without a car once myself, for a blessedly short period of time, but that short time was enough to show me how impossible it is to get by without one. You may not know EJ but I do, and the man deserves the helping hand. I'm giving him three of my stories myself. And he's not just asking for a handout; he's selling something worth having. I like to think of it as a bake sale without all the fattening cake (although one of the stories I'm contributing just happens to be about a cake...). And I know the other writers contributing to this project. Take it from me, $2 a story from writers like these is a steal.

For more info, click over to his blog: Only on Sunday.

Update: The stories are going up here: 1500 stories - 20 days.

It's just too hot

We're on the third day in a row over 100 degrees. Which is fine if you happen to live in Albuquerque, but sucks in Minnesota. I'm not a fan of heat myself. When it's cold, you can always put on more layers, but when it's hot...

For the last few days I've been wearing pretty much the same outfit: an athletic bra and a super airy, floaty skirt. The skirts were on clearance at Target for $4 a piece, so I bought a couple in different colors. They're so light I can pack the whole thing into my fist. Very comfortable. On the downside, being that they were on the clearance rack the only size choices were way too big and way too small. I went with too big, figuring that was actually an advantage anyway. I break out in rashes in the heat if my clothes rub on my skin at all, so too big was a good thing.

I was making lunch yesterday (or trying to; all of our bread had molded even though it had been in the freezer since I bought it. Preservative free, there is a downside. Luckily, I keep a wide stock of tortillas and pitas). I looked up to see Aidan staring at me in a look that can only be described as abject horror. Now they've both been freaking out, having to look at my belly for days on end, but I sensed this was something new.

"What?" I ask, looking at myself.

"Mom! I can see your underwear!"

This from the boy who is currently wearing only his underwear. As is his brother. And his father.

"And I see your underwear too. What's the problem?"

"Mom, yours've got little pink flowers on them."

It's supposed to storm all day tomorrow and then be in the 70s on Wednesday. Sounds like bliss.

Have you ever read a review so harsh, you just had to see the movie?

No one is liking M. Night Shyamalan's new movie Lady in the Water. I even think it looks lame, and I'm a big M. Night fan. Then I read Roger Ebert's brilliant review. Now I have to see this movie (not in theaters, on DVD; I'm not nuts).

Ebert says: "There will be no mystery, no discovery, here -- everything is going to be explained and explained and explained in the most banal, literalistic fashion. No show. Just tell." Wow, I didn't even know that was possible in a movie. Leastwise not outside of some of the fine films they did on MST3K where the filmmaker lost the soundtrack and replaced all the dialogue with voiceover.

But my fave is when he says: "It's a movie that insists on the importance of fairy-tale mythology and storytelling that doesn't respect the integrity of mythology or know how to tell a story...Were I the late Joseph Campbell, who devoted his life to exploring how myths are not arbitrary shaggy dog stories but speak to the hunger for meaning deep within our species, I would will my spirit to return from the Land of the Dead, raise my hollowed body from my grave, and pelt this movie with rotten lotuses."

Man, I gotta see this movie! It sounds like a complete train wreck.

I'm a gangsta!

The Evil Editor had this link to a web site that translates any webpage into "jive". I couldn't resist. Here's my Bloomsday post, a la Snoop Dogg:

Today is June 16, n tizzle makes it Bloomsday bitch ass nigga. W-H-to-tha-izzat, you may be ask'n, is a Bloomsday? Well, James Joyce wrote a novel called Ulysses W-H-to-tha-izzich follows tha wander'n of one Leopold Bloom around Dublin on June 16, 1904 cuz its a doggy dog world. This novel has many very devoted fans who baller in pubs around tha world every Jizzle 16 ta celebrate Bloomsday by drink'n Guiness n ballin' tha book out loud ta each gangsta (man, I neva git invited ta tha coo` parties) . Throw yo guns in the motherfuckin air.

Now Ulysses is hands-down mah absolute favorite bizzy of all time. But it's also a book that many thugz start n jizzle cizzay finish , chill yo. It's a lot of wizzork, n unless it's yo sort of th'n, it's not wizzorth tha wizzle with my forty-fo' mag. I git tizzy . You gotta check dis shit out yo. It's jizzust so much My Sort of Spendin'. Someone at Backspace recently asked me why I like it so mizzle so sit back relax new jacks get smacked. I hadn't really thought `bout it before, not in tha sort of way thiznat I could articulate it anyway like a motha fucka. So it tizzle me a while ta come up wit mah response puttin tha smack down.

I think Joyce would be proud, don't you? I'm definitely going to find ways to work "I can articulate like a motha fucka" in converstion. But my fave is what it did to my Joss quote at the top of my page:

Every time somebody opens they grill they have an opportunity ta do one of two th'n—connect or divide. Some thugz inherently divide, n some thugz inherently connect . Boo-Yaa! Connect'n is tha most important doggy stylin' n actually an eazy thing ta do. I try ta makes a connection wit someone every time I rap ta them, coz a connection can be made. People can be treated wit respect so show some love niggaz. I'm shocked tizzle there is so many thugz thizzat live ta divide . Its just anotha homocide. - Joss Whedon

Yeah, boyz!

Precision, not accuracy

I took statistics in college twice. (Not intentionally, some credits just didn't translate over between getting the Associate in Arts and getting the Associate in Applied Science). I remember the little diagrams both teachers drew to explain the difference between precision and accuracy:

Precision (the bottome one) is hitting the same mark over and over, but the mark can be anywhere. Accuracy is the special kind of precision that involves actually hitting the bullseye.

My writing career has precision but not accuracy.

I'm looking at my latest Quarter-finalist from Writers of the Future (Tale of a Fox, for those familiar with my shorts, i.e. Backspacers). (Hi, Backspacers!) Quarter-Finalist means it falls in the top 10-15% of all their submissions. It also means the slush reader got all of the way through to the end of the story but it didn't make it into the Semi-Finalist or Finalist stacks. It is supposed to be good news, and it was terribly exciting the first time it happened. But this is the fourth or fifth time I've made quarter-finals. There's no way to tell if I'm getting any closer, which is quite frustrating. I'm also grumpy since my husband crashed our computer right after I mailed the submission out, and as much as I was sure I was religiously backing up to my jump drive and to the second computer (which he is forbidden to touch), neither had the most recent version of this story on it, the one with the revisions I did that I'm sure were quite kick-ass but are completely gone from my memory now.

So Joss, why do you write these strong female characters?

I'm hoping this will work, I've never actually done anything this tricky with the blog before. If it does work, this is an awesome speech given by my hero, Joss Whedon, which is well worth listening to. It's typical Joss, funny and poignant and deeply serious all in a blow.

Yes, all these books are for me

So I got done with work insanely early last Saturday. This almost never happens; I'm usually typing like a mad woman until past 7 (not writing, typing; this is the day job). But through a strange cluster of unpredictable events, there I was with no work to do and time on my hands. So Quin and I took the boys to the Mall of America. This is their Mecca. Not the MOA, but what lies within it, near its very heart: the Lego store.

Me? I'm not so much a Lego fan, and the store is always crowded (comes from only having 3 stores in the entire US, I think), so while Quin roamed the aisles with the boys I slipped away to the Barnes & Noble. Roaming an actual, non-virtual bookstore is a rare treat for me, I only get to do it about twice a year (and one of those times will inevitably be Christmas - ugh).

I headed straight for the graphic novel section and loaded up on Hellboys, Hellblazers (also known as Constantine), Samurai Champloo manga, and a book about Sandman. As I'm making my way to the register it occurs to me my stack is awfully testosteroney, and I'm in the mood for something a little girly too. So I head to general fiction and find this book: Cheating at Solitaire by Ally Carter. Ally is a fellow Backspacer, so I've been seeing this cover for months. I always thought it looked interesting. I tend not to like most things specifically geared towards women, but I had a sense that this might fall into the little subcategory of women things which I like.

Boy, was I ever right. I enjoyed this book immensely (I finished it in an evening and an afternoon; had I not had to work the next morning I could have easily sat up all night finishing it). It's smart and funny, and Julia, the main character, feels like a real woman. I like reading about a woman who doesn't feel like she needs a man to complete her life; it's refreshing. All of the secondary characters are well written as well; I particularly liked "the Georgias", three old women, two named Georgia and one a former Miss Georgia. But as a writer, I'm particularly impressed with the way she writes scenes. Nothing ends to soon, nothing goes on too long. The scene crafting here is just perfect. I'll be reading this one more than once.

I know I usually only recommend fantasy and sci-fi books here, but I'm going to break from tradition and recommend this one, because it's just that good.