Vandermeer on the Internet
Worldly advice from someone very aware of reality: (6) Understand the negative aspects of the internet and manage your behavior accordingly. Negative aspects of the internet and our electronic lives include: being trained in Pavlovian fashion to check our email every five seconds, having our Instant Messenger up 24-7, and writing on laptops where we can be interrupted at any moment. Some of these aspects of (post)modern life affect our attention span. Others turn perfectly viable tactics into an unsupportable and detrimental overall strategy. In all things, balance is required. As a writer, I feel the greatest dangers of the internet are (1) equating the constant appearance of new information and new correspondence with a requirement to immediately reply/be instantly available and (2) the constant, daily loss of uninterrupted time not only to write but to think about writing. Many writers and others who depend on the internet find themselves controlled by their involvement with the electronic world, without even realizing it. They still think they are in charge, but they are not: their tactics have become their strategy. If this addiction were an addiction to, for example, alcohol, the results would be obvious and the reaction of friends and society corrective. But when it comes to the internet, we’re nearly all addicted, and we receive so much instant gratification without understanding or monitoring the attendant dangers that we often do not even realize what we may have lost. Thank you for making me painfully aware of my own addictions (so says the man who is writing this at 1:28 AM to be posted at 9:30 AM on the same day). (Don’t click the read more, there isn’t any more after this!)
Small Font Sizes: Good or Evil?
I have a problem with small font sizes in printed books. I probably am not the only one too. For me, small font sizes pose a big of a dilemma. You see, when I read, I like to feel like I have accomplished a good chunk of reading after an hour. But when the print is so tiny, I don’t get that satisfaction. Instead, and hour means I’ve read twenty pages (give or take five page). And it doesn’t feel good at all. I also read slower when a book has a small font size, because my eyesight isn’t the greatest in the first place and because it’s a lot harder to get into the flow when the words are itty bitty.Now, I fully understand the reason for small font sizes, or I think I do. A good chunk of monstrous novels (those beasts crossing the 800 page mark) have small font sizes and it makes a lot of sense. Imagine if those 800 page books used a typical size (10 point perhaps?). They’d probably be too big for a paperback now wouldn’t they? I imagine it saves paper and money for the publisher too, even in the case of books that aren’t enormous. So, maybe I should ask writers to stop writing big books. No, I couldn’t do that. As much as I don’t like small font sizes, I do enjoy the books that use them. I can’t help that a lot of the classic science fiction titles have small font sizes, but are also terrific reads. I also can’t help it that people write enormous fantasy novels that I enjoy that have small font sizes.I guess this all means I just have to deal with it, or buy a Kindle to solve the problem. Somehow I think “dealing with it” will be the order of the day.Does anyone else have an issue with small font sizes? (Don’t click the read more, there isn’t any more after this!)
Confused About Journalism
Forgive me if I rant out of pure ignorance, but I came across an article on Jeff Vandermeer’s blog that has me a bit baffled. First, my assumption is that journalism, by and large, is about telling stories. Not fictional ones, but real ones in a way to convey information that paints, at least to some extent, a picture of what really happened. When journalists talk about literature, it tends to be a little different: usually you might consider them to be like semi-critics of the literary genre in the sense that they make insightful investigations into aspects of literature (even when they are idiotic investigations). So, when someone writes an article about some aspect of literature I expect to see not only some sort of presentation of the facts in a semi-story form, but some intelligent conversation on whatever it is the journalist is writing about. But then I saw this article and I am completely and utterly confused. It’s about constructed languages within fiction (primarily SF and F). While I appreciate that the author (one Karen Sandstrom) has laid out the information very clearly, I find it baffling why this article fails to do anything remotely journalistic. It’s not attempting to paint a picture of any sort, even a boringly historical one, nor is it attempting to make any sort of attempt to engage the material behind simply pointing out what most of us probably know already (yes, we know that Tolkien wrote his own bloody languages for his books). All of us who have read Lewis Carol’s work are aware that he made up a lot of words, some of which are in common language. So instead of trying to give us an interesting article about the subject, Sandstrom has done what Wikipedia is incapable of doing: laid out the information in plain sight to be read like information tablets or little High School index cards. I don’t get it. I have looked and reread the entire thing four times over in the last ten minutes trying to understand what it is Sandstrom is trying to do. I thought maybe I had missed a moment where it declared that her article is nothing more than a quick response to some other article, perhaps in the same vein as a Letter to the Editor. But I see no such signs. The article is pointless. Is there something I’m missing? Has journalism changed so drastically? Or is this just one lame article that happens to be on an interesting subject, but fails to do anything interesting with it?
Anticipation Station
I’m biting my nails off right now. Lindsey decided it would be a good idea to remind me that my story is still in the Writers of the Future Contest, Second Quarter, and also decided to mention that the honorable mentions (or most of them) are up, which means the contest is coming to a close. Why is that a problem? Well, first off, I have no idea how they deal with the semi-finals and finals, since I’ve never been there. Do they call you at the same time as the honorable mentions? Or is it right before posting? What?I’m going nuts right now because I have a feeling my story didn’t place at all, but because I don’t know for certain I have the desperate desire to know. I don’t mind losing. Really, I don’t. What I hate is realizing that some people already know their fates and I haven’t a clue. It’s…insanity. (Don’t click the read more, there isn’t any more after this!) P.S.: This is in no way an attack on the WOTF folks. They can’t really help how it works and I’m not saying they need to do a better job. They’re doing it fine. I’m just impatient.
Guest Post: When Can I Call Myself a Writer?
I used to think of myself as a writer, but not so much anymore. I don’t know when this shift occurred, but I think it’s when I left a career that had “writer” in the title. I graduated from college, more years ago than I’d like to admit, with a degree in Journalism. With that handy-dandy piece of paper I called myself a writer and proceeded to tell anyone who would listen that I was a writer in pursuit of a writing career. And for awhile that worked. I worked at a newspaper as a freelance writer for awhile. But since that was such a poor paying job I ended up in the advertising department selling space to anyone who’d pay our meagre fee. That got old fast and it wasn’t long before I was on the job hunt again. Luckily I landed a job on a TV show as an Associate Producer. Now that was a job with a title that made it sound far grander than it was. Mostly I was a glorified assistant who very occasionally got to write script for some of the on-air segments. For the most part I really liked that job, but I’m afraid I wasn’t good at handling the office politics that cropped up in the Hollywood shark bowl, so I washed out of that job before too long. I could have stayed in Hollywood and continued to give it a go, I even had job offers, but my brief stint convinced me that I wasn’t cut out for that world. As you can see, the further along I got in my career path, the further away I got from my earlier intentions to be a writer. After I returned to Northern California from Hollywood I got a teaching credential because the I needed to do something and without more experience, it was virtually impossible to get work at any of the local TV stations. And as you might expect, teaching elementary school isn’t a career in writing. I’ve since had kids and done the stay-at-home mom thing, which really put the final nails in the coffin of my dead writing career. For years I really didn’t put pen-to-paper (or fingers on a keyboard). I did the job of raising my kids, with hobbies like crochet thrown in for good measure. And then I discovered blogging. Oddly it was the California housing market that opened my eyes to the world of blogging. My husband and I had been wanting to buy a house for what seemed like forever, but housing prices just got crazier and crazier. In my search for information that would explain the insanity I stumbled across a blog about the San Francisco housing market (Patrick.net if you’re interested) and before long I realized what a little community develops among certain blogs. I blogged on that site for about a year before finally thinking, hey, maybe I can do this too… The first blog I set up was very journalistic in nature and I had all kinds of notions that I would rekindle my journalism career through blogging. Unfortunately, I didn’t have time for the type of blog I set up. It was way too time intensive for something that didn’t pay. So then I set up my little sci-fi/fantasy blog and lo-and-behold, a small community developed. What was really surprising to me was how many writers I ended up meeting through my blog. I suppose many of us blog because we do have a connection to the written word. I bet there are more aspiring writers among the blogging community than many other cross-sections of society. Or maybe we just like the idea that someone out there might be interested in what we have to say. So a strange thing happened while I was creating a blog. I started to write again. Stewart Sternberg, who authors the blog House of Sternberg, has, in the past, put up “writing assignments” for anyone who chooses to participate. They were usually flash fiction, usually about 1000 words, that could be on any topic. Some would have a suspense theme while others would require us to write from the perspective of an animal. And in a small way, this was a real eye opener for me. I had never really given myself the chance to write that much fiction; I didn’t think I would be that good at it. But a strange thing happened, people told me I wasn’t half bad. Imagine that. But I still hesitate to call myself a writer. I haven’t written the great-American-novel yet and I’m not sure I ever will. I write on my blog(s) mostly and I dabble in fiction when I have the time. A lot of people say that “writers write” and if you’re not writing all the time you can’t consider yourself a proper writer. There should be this overwhelming drive, they say, to write anything, to call yourself a writer. Is this true? Are most writers driven my a uncontrollable urge to write? Is it like the stereotype of the near-crazy writer hunched over his keyboard, tortured over every word, yet still driven to to write? I kind of hope not. I prefer to write in a sane state of mind. Anyway. Maybe I won’t consider myself a proper writer until I write something with some heft to it. But knowing me, I still won’t think it counts until I actually sell it for publication. So what about the other writers out there? Do you have any special criteria for considering yourself a writer?
Today Has Been…Special
I have been one heck of a trooper today. I set a lofty goal of 2,000 words a day, with an amendment that stated that if I was writing an essay or doing something school related I would be able to sidestep the writing, since my entire life and success depends on being able to hold a job that can pay off the student loans and otherwise give me a livelihood that will sustain me and keep me from going nuts and working at Burger King. Partially the point of going to school is to educate myself in things I don’t already know, which is working, and partially to secure a decent job that will, hopefully, make me happy. Now, of course I’d love to be one of those nice folks who write for a living, but I think a part of me knows that such things will never happen, and I can live with that. All writers should, by the way, because most writers never get to that point. Even some of the huge names in the field right now are barely scrounging from all the work they put into writing. John Scalzi is not rich by a long shot and is quite generous in sharing his financials (which, while much better than I have ever made in my short life, is certainly not the greatest income considering he works his butt off writing fiction and other stuff).Okay, that aside, I’ve been a trooper because I started the day feeling generally like crap, for no apparent reason, and with my mind attempting to contemplate what exactly I was going to do with the story currently entitled “To Paint Lords Green”, a fantasy short set in the same general world as “Irlgem”. I sat around talking to the girlfriend and came to the conclusion that whatever I was doing with that story wasn’t going to work the way I had intended and the idea I was working with was going to turn into something too large for my tastes (I wanted a story under 5,000 words, and that just wasn’t going to happen).So I spent hours feeling sort of horrible and then I had a spark of random inspiration and started writing this new SF story currently called “Interstellar Realty”. I don’t think that will be the final title, but it’s a humor piece and I’m loving it. It took a while to get through because there is something about humor for me that requires a little more in the thought process. Jokes are somewhat difficult to write I think, especially if you don’t want to come off sounding like one of the very few SF writers who tell jokes in their stories. So, it is now after eight in the evening and I have officially written 2,752 words, 49 of which were in “To Pain Lords Green” (yes, I counted those).Is “Interstellar Realty” finished? Nope. Is it close? I think so. It’s technically at a good closing point, but I want to write a little more to provide a better ending to it. One thing I learned about a story I wrote a while ago was that the ending left people a little unsatisfied, which was difficult to change and still is (I think I’ve figured it out though, so I may be writing that very soon). Basically I want the story to end on a high-note, which won’t be much more than 500 words I think. I could probably cram it into 300 without losing much. It all depends what bizarre stuff pops in my head. Just so you know, “Interstellar Realty” is basically a comedy piece about futuristic realty companies in a galaxy where humans have moved to other planets and the like (there are aliens thrown into the mix). It’s also a commentary on customer support services, which we all have probably had to deal with. I won’t say much more than that though, because it might ruin the story.Now, the story “Life of Jordan” that I’m working on is written. It comes in at around 17,600 words, which is 600 over the limits for Writers of the Future, so I have to trim it down. It’s not edited at the moment, but in a very raw state. Part of that is because I want to go through it, with help from the rather brilliant and writing conscious girlfriend (yes, she gives honest advice and sometimes it ticks me off, but she’s more often right than wrong about things related to writing), and find all the bits that really shouldn’t be there and drop them out now before doing the real edit (typos, sentence structure, etc.). The premise of that story is one where the world has fallen due to global warming and small, walled and guarded cities have sprung up and genetic manipulation has been used to alter children so they are homosexual to prevent overcrowding, leaving heterosexual people, in such communities, to be considered dangerous (and illegal). I’ve enjoyed writing it because it does deal with some interesting conflicts in today’s society and it does spring up the idea of what we might one day do to solve our population problems.So, that’s where it all stands, basically. I’m doing a lot of writing and hopefully by the end of the next week I will have two more stories polished and ready to go out (“Life of Jordan” to Writers of the Future and “Interstellar Realty” to…somewhere). Exciting. Now I’m exhausted, so I’m going to go read and clear my head. Somewhere in there I’ll eat food.