I make things with words
Copying over from FB for archival and ease-of-referencing purposes. Disappointed by the Sturm und drang in response to the challenge Tempest made to read more diverse works this year. So pardon the tone and occasional sarcasm of the following, because it’s keeping me from …
I find myself, in general, having less and less patience with people who can’t be bothered to learn the most basic things about the business, or who think that they’re entitled to make other people do the work for them.
There’s so much information available, and it’s so much easier to find than my contact info. Type “how do I get an agent” into Google, you’ll have resources for days. Try “how to publish a book”. “How not to get screwed by a publisher/agent/whatever”. Do. Your. Research.
Writing is an incredibly hard business. Even if you’re just doing it as a hobby, hoping to publish a few stories here and there, it’s fucking exhausting, heartbreaking, debilitating work. You have to know about everything from marketing to legal rights. Even if you have an agent, you have to know as much as any small business owner, just to keep the framework in place to be a writer…and then you have to know how to write on top of that.
And it’s doable, obviously. There are people who make a living at it. Some of them even make a good living. But you know what, those are the people who do their research, who stay on top of their industry, and who have a work ethic to end all work ethics.
Even people who have day jobs besides writing have to know all of that, it’s just a little less imperative to stay *that* on top of it because you have a fall-back plan. But that work ethic? That knowledge of your industry and your place in it? Still there. It takes an incredible amount of discipline to write AND maintain a day job, and most of those writers have families to maintain, too.
So here’s the thing, if you want to be a writer. Don’t email a large professional organization demanding that they find you an agent, or that they publish you, or that they read your book and give you feedback. Don’t go to your writer friends and demand that they tell you how to do things (we’re usually happy to answer questions, but those damn sure better be things you can’t find in our blogs or websites or Writer Beware or SFWA.org or whatever), or that they introduce you to their agent or friends or editors. Don’t think that you’re going to walk in and be an immediate success, because you have as much chance of that as of winning the lottery.
Don’t come into this business thinking that you’ve got all the answers, without even looking at the problems. Don’t trample over the people around and below you in an effort to come to the notice of those above you, because it’s more obvious than you think, and this is a very small industry with a very long memory. Don’t look at the professionals, the superstars, or the successes as notches on a belt, because we notice that, too. Don’t backstab or gossip or screw or harass or use your peers and colleagues, because, again, small industry, long memory, too little sleep and absolutely no tolerance for poison. We’re all struggling to make it, and to get better, but the people who will really succeed in this industry are the ones who are as willing to boost others as to ask to be boosted.
Don’t expect everyone to lay down a red carpet because you have the most amazing book you’ve ever read. Because guess what: I can list twenty authors off the top of my head who have *amazing* books that haven’t sold. Some have been trunked, some are in rewrite hell, others have been self-published, some have been put aside to write something else in the hopes it will sell.
Do come into this business with an open mind and an obsessive need to learn. Do come in with an attitude of generosity and the willingness, the *need* to help those around you. Come in with a desire to know the people in the trenches with you. Come into this industry with a genuine desire to make it better, but know your own shit before you try to fix the constipation of others (that’s totally how that old saying goes, right?). Listen. Learn. Have an insatiable desire to improve your own knowledge and to give that knowledge back. Understand that no one owes you anything, that you have to demonstrate a willingness to pull your weight.
Work hard. Research endlessly. Read your colleagues. Know your path. Know your strengths and weaknesses. Be willing to ask for help, but make sure you’ve already done what you can for yourself. Be willing to help others, and to keep an eye out for those who aren’t able to ask for help. Be ready to admit when you’re wrong, to change your career at the drop of a hat, but be ready to dig your teeth and hooves and claws in and hold the course until you can’t hold it anymore. Be willing to learn when to hold that ground and when to gracefully give way. Educate yourself, and share that education with others.
It’s a hard road, and if you aren’t willing to do the work, you’ll wash or burn or blow out of the industry sooner or later.
And remember: Google is your friend. Don’t give me an excuse to send you to this amazing site.
I don’t like New Year’s Resolutions. It’s so…arbitrary. If I’m going to do something, I’m not waiting for a certain date (usually), which is why I tend to either make a lot of my resolutions in November (when the summer madness slows down a little) …
This year’s Nebula Awards nomination period is now open. Just…just wait for me to process this. I *swear* I’m still mopping up from the 2014 award season…OH WAIT I AM. Anyways! Back to the grind, but first… From November 15 to February 15, Active and …
Repost of a FB discussion
Due to multiple interactions that lead me to believe that some people do not understand how internet etiquette works, we’re going to cover some internet manners, specifically re: FB posts and Twitter.
I’ve been Very Sternly Told in the past that setting my statuses to ‘public’ meant that everyone on the internet was allowed to come in and say what they pleased, no matter how much mud they tracked in with them, or how many fellow guests they assaulted. (Of course, that particular person blocked me about an hour later, which was lovely and saved me some effort).
Leaving aside the entitlement and rudeness, here’s a refresher on what a public status equates to in real-world terms.
A public status is like a public party at, say, a bar. Sure, it’s open to the public. Anyone is, in theory, welcome to come in. It is still being run by someone, and by entering, one agrees to abide by the standards and rules of the owner. Breaking those rules–or the rules of the township/country/etc–is grounds for that person to be asked to leave. If they fail to comply, the owner is within their right to compel that person to leave.
That’s putting it a bit simply–it’s not as easy to know what the rules are on someone’s particular page, unless posted–but it’s a pretty good standard. Even when rules aren’t posted, it’s common courtesy to not go around kicking fellow patrons in the shins, and if someone asks you to stop hammering your opinion in their face, you stop hammering your opinion in their face.
I am, in a sense, the manager of a party on my social media feeds, and by publicly posting, I’m inviting other people to come have fun. But just like every big Purgatory or book launch I’ve worked/managed/set up, if someone’s a disruptive presence, it’s not only my right to show them to the door, it is my responsibility, if they’re causing other people problems.
This goes for everyone: public posting does not mean public property. If someone is bothering you, you have the right to block them. End of subject. *Your* page is *your* page. It’s your party.
You equally have the right to go to someone else’s party and tell them that they’re doing it wrong, and they’re an awful person, etc, but that person then has the right to boot your ass to the door.
And although I’m a very open, cheerful tyrant, the number of people I’ve blocked or unfriended over disagreements is minimal, because I do like debate and discourse and argument.
But I have been seeing a lot of bad behavior, recently, and I will be getting a bit more liberal with my fire, especially on public threads. Just think of me as the Patrician of Ankh-Morpork, when it comes to my spaces.
Any questions?
The following is a soup of resources, links, and advice, so I apologize. Organizing it and providing more narrative structure would be a small novella, at least. Disclaimer: I am not a police officer, nor do I work officially for any government organization. This is …
We’ve been getting some great reviews for War Stories, but the one that worried me the most came out the best, and completely made my week. When you’re telling stories about a specific group of people–in this case, the military–being reviewed by that group is …
Note on recent media coverage of the issues in gaming…
Blaming this on ‘male virgin nerds’ is not only discriminatory, but flat-out deadly. Most of the people we dealt with when this issue cropped up in publishing were adult men with lives, significant others, families, etc. The most public face of Gamer Gate is Adam Baldwin, a successful actor and public figure in the extreme right-wing community. Both of the long-term harassers who personally stalked me were married, middle-aged, and extremely ‘normal’.
The stereotype of the angry male virgin takes focus away from the real problem:
This isn’t just men. It isn’t just virgins. It isn’t just nerds. It’s an endemic cultural problem that ranges from micro-producers in publishing and gaming to titans of corporate business and industry. It’s not a nerd problem, it’s a human problem.
Getting a date/partner/wife is not, despite cultural conditioning, your boss battle. Being in a relationship doesn’t automatically make you a good person, and being a virgin doesn’t mean that you’re a socially-wasted loser. But it’s spun that way, and perpetrates the image. Women get in relationships with bad people–and some women are the bad people, too.
Women aren’t the loot. We aren’t that thing you get when you level up. We’re not in some castle, we’re right in the trenches next to you, fighting the trolls and building the goddamned castle. Some of us are the trolls, the voices fighting to keep everything the way it is. We’re human, we’re imperfect, and we’re as weird and diverse and flawed as men.
We get spoiled, here in the creative fields, because everything’s a pressure-cooker. Because we all know each other, when there’s a rotten egg, it gets noticed a lot sooner. The pressure may take a while to build up, but when it does, it exposes everyone in the industry–as well as their ‘ripple-effect’ communities–to the problem.
This has its downsides. Everything looks like an apocalypse when it affects everyone you know. Long-time friendships, working relationships, and even romantic and family relationships can be destroyed.
On the upside, because it is such a pressure-cooker, we tend to have accelerated timelines. What might take years in the world at large can rise, mature, collapse, and evolve within weeks or months in a creative industry. Because we can see most or all of the effects, we’re able to create a more cohesive picture and work more effectively to mitigate damage and fallout.
But it’s still focused within the industry, with few ripples to the world at large. Again, the downside of that is that we can have some really progressive, awesome things happen without much notice from the world at large.
In a way, GamerGate may be the best possible thing to happen to the culture wars. It’s exposing the severity of the harassment that women face from colleagues, consumers, and media. It’s bringing out the fringes, and exposing their lunacy. And the women who are standing up to talk about it are taking their lives in their hands, but they’re also blazing a trail for other women.
Because this started in publishing, some years ago, and now it’s in gaming. If you look at some of the most vocal support for the game designers at the heart of the storm, it’s from SF authors and figures, because we’ve been there. We don’t have the ‘well, but’ issues, because we’ve lived out this timeline, and we know what will happen.
Once it’s done with gaming, it will move into the next industry, and SF and gaming will need to through their support behind those people. We’re the ground floor in a cultural evolution that isn’t just feminism–LGBTQ, POC, and progressive men are being targeted, too, and stepping up to help shape a better future.
It will ripple out from here, and the chances are that it will get a lot worse before it gets better.
But ascribing it to ‘angry male nerd virgins’ hamstrings that big-picture view. Look at the issues going on in Ferguson right now, or the women recently killed or assaulted for refusing men’s advances (both single women and the college group), the political movements to take away a woman’s most basic rights to health and safety, the rise of visible, nasty racism and prejudice across the country.
We’re making ground-breaking strides in human rights, and as we’ve seen in our microcosm of gaming and publishing, that’s bringing out the dinosaurs, dinosaurs with big, infected teeth and a lot of fear. There’s a mob mentality right now, a nebulous ‘us vs them’ that’s taking a lot of forms.
What’s going on in video games is template for what will likely happen on a world-wide scale in the next decade or so, and a trigger point for people rallying to fight hatred, fear, and bigotry.
But as long as it’s just ‘angry virgin nerds’, we’re still being sequestered in our little corner, and leaving everyone else able to stand back, gasping and pointing at the social amoebas squabbling over a girl in their corner.
Because that’s what the majority of the national reporting is coming down to: it’s the nerds. It’s the virgins. It’s the people who don’t have any social graces, who can be sort of forgotten because they’re just the weirdos who dress up on weekends or play hours of video games rather than being out partying on the weekends.
Nerd is the new chic. It’s also the new cultural catalyst for progressive social evolution.
But only if we stop blaming the issues on girl-problems.
(Seriously, I can’t believe I had to write that last sentence, because that’s SO WHAT THIS IS! “Oh, he can’t get a date, he’s a loser/he’s a loser, so he can’t get a date, but I’ve got a girlfriend/wife/whatever, so I’m not part of the problem’. DO BETTER, PEOPLE.)
Image by Ursula Vernon. I’ve written several thousand words over the past week and a half about the harassment and violence that is endemic against women in the industry. I’ve mentioned the VD (I refuse to even use his full name) issue we fought in …