Acknowledging the Cost

Man, I'm going to regret writing this. But here goes.

Sooner or later, we all have to take a turn defending the status quo. And it sucks.

Sooner or later, something (or someone) crucial to our value system is implicated in a disaster or a tragedy, and we have to take a turn in the cognitive hot seat, saying "well, let's not be hasty here - you can't use this as an excuse to XYZ - the *real* problem is ABC."

Nobody likes to be in the hot seat. Nobody likes to be put on the defensive. And in moments like those, our brains actually, literally defend our worldview harder than ever. We double down as instinctively as a pill-bug rolling up under a three-year-old's inquisitive poking. It's what we're neurologically wired to do.

Today a white guy with a shitload of guns is in the spotlight, and the right is on the defensive. Eventually there'll be another ISIS attack, and the left will take its turn.

But y'all - the thing I wish we could ALL do? (Besides hold hands and sing kumbaya.) Is understand that when we say "well, hang on - you can't just up and ban these people/things - that would be a betrayal of the greatness America stands for" - what everyone on the other side of the fence hears is "and that's why we have to let this keep happening."

Guns are a constitutional American right - and that's why we have to let this keep happening.
Immigration is what this country was founded on - and that's why we have to let this keep happening.
The free market is an essential cornerstone of our democracy - and that's why we have to let this keep happening.

Any time you try to deflect criticism of your thing (that you are deeply invested in) over to some other thing (that you are not invested in), without offering any specific, meaningful skin-in-the-game plan of action, your statement always ends with the unspoken "and that's why we have to let this keep happening."

(Example du jour: "it's not guns, it's mental illness" - but I'll wager the percentage of the people saying that who have personally called, written, and/or voted to advocate for improved access to mental health care is slim at best. The left-side equivalent is probably "it's not Muslims, it's radical Islamic terror" - which rarely comes with a solution more nuanced than "pull out of the Middle East and hope that in twenty or thirty years everybody will have settled down and stopped hating us.")
And that's why your argument wins no converts.

I wish our neural wiring would allow us to straight-up admit our feelings this way. I wish we could psychologically afford to stand up and say "I accept this blood as the cost of doing business." I mean shit, maybe we can. We've long since done it with cars. Being an automotive society means that there WILL continue to be fatal accidents, DUI manslaughter, kids forgotten in hot cars, and cars/trucks used as weapons of terror... but the only way to completely prevent those deaths is to stop driving, and we are not willing to do that.

That does not mean we're bad people. It means we've weighed up the pros and cons, and accepted a certain number of auto fatalities as the cost of doing business. We'll happily do what we can to *minimize* that cost (what company doesn't want to reduce its operating overhead?) - but only so long as it doesn't impede the business itself.

So when your goal is to vent, to commiserate with the other people on your team, to express your feelings - absolutely go for it. No criticism here.

But whenever it's your turn in the hot seat, and you feel obliged to defend the value/importance of your thing to the unpersuaded world at large, your efforts will be so much more fruitful if you start by acknowledging its cost.

A Brief Moral Meditation

At times like this, when emotions are running high and our national jimmies are thoroughly rustled, I find it worthwhile to ask: "What is is the hardest, bravest thing I could do right now?"

That is sometimes a hard question to answer. Chances are that this thing, whatever it is, will not win you easy backpats from other people on your team. It will not be cathartic or gratifying to even contemplate. It will almost certainly involve some kind of cost or risk to a vulnerable part of your identity. And it will be impossible to discover this thing while you are here in the midst of the public-opinion maelstrom.

So the next time you have a chance to be alone with your thoughts, I encourage you to meditate on what your bravest, most self-challenging act might be. It's okay if you can't bring yourself to attempt it right now. (I'm right there with you - sharp enough to know what I should be doing, chicken enough to not be doing it.) But knowing better - *hypothesizing* better - is the first, most critical step to doing better.

And telling other people how to act and feel isn't working.

Living at One Minute to Midnight: A How-To Guide for the Whelmed

I haven't posted much of anything about politics, for a whole tiresome list of reasons. But I am foremost a student of humans and human emotions, and I'm seeing a *lot* of my favorite humans getting fried by the bug-zapper that is our news right now. So if you are feeling burnt and crispy, here is something to think about.

Whenever you are involved in something significantly larger than yourself - a club or group, a company, a family, a nation - it is essential to understand your role. If your job with your company is to get and keep clients, then that is what you do. You pay attention to marketing and budgets insofar as they touch your own work, but you don't stay up all night worrying about the 401ks. That's someone else's job.

The problem with the intersection of politics and social media is that nobody is handing you a clearly-defined role. And without that, it's easy to think you are supposed to do everything. Every outrage that comes across your virtual desk is somehow your responsibility. Every worthy call to action has to be acted on, every objectionable comment replied to, every feed fed. And that is too much, y'all. No wonder we are getting overwhelmed and dropping out.

But nobody is going to come over to your desk and dump half your virtual inbox in the trash on your behalf. You are going to have to decide for yourself what is and isn't your responsibility. Right now, I can see two ways of organizing your give-a-damns:

1. Filter by cause. Let's say you are all about minority rights, healthcare, and gun control. Those aren't just issues you have opinions about - they are the three hills you are willing to die on. So you go to the mat for *those causes specifically* - you call, you march, you research, you debate - and let everything else pass you by. Climate change is somebody else's job. Economic issues are somebody else's job. You are fighting in the Pacific theater, and you can not worry about Europe.

2. Filter by role. You know, a medic does not do the job of a sniper. If somebody needs some killing, don't call the medic. Conversely, the medic does not sign on to treat only a certain kind of soldier. They will use their specific skillset on *everyone* they can, to the absolute best of their ability. Maybe that's you. Maybe you have zero stomach for Facebook arguments, but you will gladly call your representatives and give them hell at the town hall meetings. Good! Appoint yourself the legislative muscle of the movement, and leave the diplomacy and debate to someone else. Or maybe you can't blow up phones and streets, but you are a rational, persuasive *boss*. Good! Be an outpost of reason and kindness here on the virtual frontier - help people understand each other, dig up the facts and figures that are getting buried under the hyperpartisan headlines, and add to the ranks of the thoughtful and enlightened. (God knows we need it.)

Regardless, y'all: it is essential, now more than ever, that we tap our individual talents and strengths, and trust our fellow-humans to do likewise. Don't do the things that hurt you. Don't let yourself get so tired and frazzled that you pass on the hurt to other people. This may be a war, but you are not the only soldier - and nothing proves that you have smart, sustainable passion for a cause like a list of ten other things you gave up to pursue it.

No Longer At Ease

Well, it's not quite official yet: as I type, I'm sitting in seat 22F, watching Tom Cruise get the stuffing knocked out of him by Russian heavies on an 8" screen. But if you're reading this, it's safe to say that after three weeks, eight flights, four time zones, and more wonderful people than I can count, my grandiose gallivanting is finally over, and I'm home again.

I'm really, really glad I got to do that.

I really, really should not have done that.

But let me back up.

I spent the weekend at World Fantasy Con in Saratoga Springs, New York. Getting there was an adventure in itself, but I'm so glad I got to go: WFC is the first "all-pro" convention I've attended, and spending a weekend at what feels like the ends of the earth, stuck in with a few hundred of your peers, is a real experience.

I'm calling it "Still Life in Hilton Bathroom: How To Tell Your Roomie Had a Great Night."

I got to sit in on some TERRIFIC readings – truly, you don't know how badly you need psychic elephant-men, wind-tunnel aerial knife-fights, or grade-school taxidermists until you finally get some – and meet wonderful new people and have tremendous conversations. There were shenanigans and shoe-hunting expeditions and the most lavish ice cream bar I've ever seen.

And this guy. THIS FRICKIN' GUY.

Then on Friday night, a funny thing happened.

There was an "all-call" mass autograph session, which if you ask me, is a really great idea: they just filled up a ballroom with tables and chairs and invited everyone who wanted to (not just the people on programming!) to find a seat and sign their books.

And boy, it was the best kind of bedlam. I had never seen so many people rushing around with armfuls of books – not comics, but actual honest-to-god novels to be signed. It was glorious!

Look at it! Isn't it the most stupendous sight?

It was also kind of a mess: since it was open seating, there was no alphabetical order – no order of any kind. You had to cruise the aisles one at a time, angling to try to get a glimpse of the little printed name-cards – not an easy feat with people clumped up and queuing in front of the tables. After I'd looked and looked and still couldn't find the author I wanted (one of the guests of honor, no less!), I decided to go find a staffer who might be able to direct me.

That's when I realized that I hadn't seen any staffers. No volunteers at all – not one in the entire weekend.

They were there, of course. Handing out packets at the registration desk, flashing five-minute signs at the panels, setting table tents between each of the readings. But they weren't marked at all: no vests or shirts or colored badges. Just the same street-wear (okay, nerd-shirt-wear) as the rest of us. If you weren't actively watching them at work, they were invisible.

And that's when it hit me: what would I do if there were an actual problem? Forget missing out on an autograph – what if I got the bad touch, or watched it happen to someone else? What if there were a fight, or a theft, or a creeper?

Look again: which of these people do you go to for help?

Graceful segue goes here.

One of the readings I went to was Mike Underwood's. Well, tried to go to: I showed up, along with a few other people. Mike never did. That was unusual: we knew he was at the con, and he's not one to flake on a gig.

When I caught up to him later and gave him grief about it, I found out what I would have known days ago, if I'd been paying literally any attention to the digi-sphere: he'd declined his programming as a matter of principle – as a way of protesting WFC's disaster of a harassment non-policy.

And like... I did know about that. I wasn't so completely up myself that I hadn't learned about the controversy. But I'm ashamed to say that it wasn't until that moment in the autograph hall that I actually felt it: that it finally occurred to me that I might not be in a safe place.

I'm not proud of that. I don't like to think of myself as a person whose empathy doesn't extend past her own nose, whose concerns stop at the boundaries of her own experience. I've been doing this convention thing for two years now – more than enough time to catch wise to the serious, pervasive behavior issues that have long festered in our backyard.

Reminders of which were literally spelled out for us this weekend.

And I wonder if it's easier to dismiss those issues when it's "just us". Just us pros, or just us fans, or just us girls, or just us anything. It's easy to drop your guard around people you've known since forever, easy to forget the duty of care we accept when we undertake stewardship and hospitality. Much harder to see your community's potential for causing harm and distress, especially when you yourself have such generous intentions, and have benefited so much from the generosity of others. And downright impossible to know who's missing – who you're missing out on – because you were so caught up in the camaraderie that you neglected to take on any accountability for your guests' well-being.

I'm not sure what the right answer is for those of us on the attending side of the table. There's not a firm consensus, even among the leading lights of our community: John Scalzi has implemented a standing boycott of conventions that fail on this front, while Kameron Hurley has critiqued this approach as unfeasible if not blatantly counterproductive.

Regardless: I know what the ancient Greeks said about hosts who disregarded their sacred duties. I know we can work harder and do better. And with all my '90s-kid heart, I know I wanna be like Mike.

Retweeting is Not Enough

Well, this really hasn't been a banner week for race relations in America.

Marissa Alexander took a plea bargain to avoid a potential 60-year prison sentence for firing a warning shot when her estranged husband assaulted her.  Daniel "Lemony Snicket" Handler thought it would be funny to make watermelon jokes when presenting Jacqueline Woodson with the National Book Award.  Tamir Rice, a twelve-year-old boy, was killed by police who mistook his toy gun for the real thing.  And then, of course, a St. Louis County grand jury made the statistically exceptional decision not to indict Darren Wilson for the shooting of Mike Brown.  EDIT: And manslaughter charges have just been dropped for the officer who killed 7-year-old Aiyana Jones during a botched police raid. 

So really what I should be saying is, this has been a god-awful week for black people in America.

I should mention that my Twitter feed blows up pretty reliably for every social shitstorm: Wendy Davis' filibuster, the Israel-Gaza conflict, #YesAllWomen, GamerGate, and so on.  And thanks to the magic of the retweet function, it's an eye-opening education every time: I get to hear from the most amazing, eclectic assortment of people - folks I never heard of or would have known to follow - because their voices have been signal-boosted around the world.

I don't tend to say anything myself.  Partly because I find social media tediously stressful whenever I use it as anything besides a newspaper.  Partly because Author Training School teaches you to play nice and get along, because the Internet is forever and the world is watching.  And partly because I'm either worried about appropriating victimhood within a group I belong to (for example, what right do I have to shout about sexual harassment when I've never been sexually harassed?), or else - as this week, when it's about a group I *don't* belong to - anxious not to speak out of turn.

We feel that a lot, don't we?  Whenever we are members of the dominant/majority group, there is always that urge not to be seen as insensitive, bigoted, or tone-deaf.  Maybe you don't want to be attacked for saying the wrong thing.  Maybe you don't feel qualified to render an opinion.  Maybe you are worried about speaking over the voices of the people who are most affected by the issue at hand.  Regardless, in this age of "like", "share", and "retweet", it is easier than ever before to let a one-click "yeah, what s/he said" do the talking for you.


But the National Book Award foul-up last week let me hear a really interesting case against that.  Here, let me re-blog-tweet it for you (and then advertise this post on Facebook for a veritable turducken of media incest):

(Please note that I have curated this page above - for the unabridged version, I recommend following @djolder himself.)

It's a hell of a proposition, isn't it?  Maybe it's just surprising to me because I've steeped for such a long time in the 'Hippocratic' school of social activism: don't tone-police, don't concern-troll, don't speak for, over, or above marginalized voices, and definitely, definitely don't make your feelings their problem.  "First, do no harm" sounds good until it turns into doing nothing, which is actually harmful.

But at the same time, this conversation up here was also a big relief to read, because it says so explicitly what maybe I should have realized a long time ago.

That EVERYbody struggles with this stuff, first of all.

That getting it wrong is as inevitable as it is survivable, secondly.

And most importantly, like... you know, doing the right thing is not like making a box of mac 'n cheese.  There is no such thing as a clear, unvarying, universal set of instructions to follow.  Doing the right thing is uncomfortable, messy, and different every time, because the issue at hand is different every time.  In fact, the only place where consistency seems to congregate is in the act of doing the *wrong* thing - that is, in saying little and doing nothing.  Maybe consistency itself is at the root of the problem, via those pattern-hungry urges we have to make everything fit into a reliable narrative - to treat everything we experience according to the same set of four-legs-good/two-legs-bad mental protocols.

So from here on out, I aim to do a better job of speaking up.  And here is my first exhortation: resist the pattern-spiders, people.  Fight them as hard as you can.

Love the NRA?  Ask yourself where their open-carry fervor went when Tamir Rice and John Crawford were shot for even appearing to exercise their 2nd-amendment rights.

Think this Ferguson mess would be better if we'd voted in more Democrats?  Gotta deal with the fact that the prosecutor on the Darren Wilson case (not to mention the state governor and the president) is a Democrat.

Big on men's rights?  Can't sit this one out: the overwhelming number of black boys and men who are incarcerated or killed by police, *especially* for appearing 'threatening', makes the problem of gender profiling incredibly clear.

Feminist at heart?  Definitely can't sit this one out: not only does a movement advocating equality for everyone need to stand up when it's men's turn on the institutional chopping block, but it also has to acknowledge that those deaths and convictions above are still being perpetuated by white feminine finger-pointing.

I'll stop here, because snark is unbecoming, and you wonderful people have almost-certainly done more than I have (which is again, shamefully close to nothing.)  But you get my point: we are biologically programmed to look for patterns, build a worldview around them, and then sort out everything we encounter in a way that fits that vision.  Making changes to that framework - demolishing bits we've realized were wrong, making new additions, remodelling the existing parts to fit together in a different way - is uncomfortable, messy, and different every time.

...you know, kind of like doing the right thing.

Anyway, I'm going to do a long-overdue right thing, chip in for Ferguson, and get me one of Daniel José Older's books.  Good luck in your own striving for rightness, y'all: it's a hell of a challenge, but one we can't afford to sit out on.


"The worlds within and without the Veil of Color are changing, and changing rapidly, but not at the same rate, not in the same way; and this must produce a peculiar wrenching of the soul, a peculiar sense of doubt and bewilderment."

Artificial Barriers to Entry, Part III: Astroturf and Rocket Ships

(Very-belatedly continued from Part I and Part II!)

All right, sports-fans - here is a fun fact.

Between 1928 and 1972, India won 7 out of 10 Olympic gold medals in field hockey.
Between 1976 to 2012, India won 1 out of 10.

Quickly, Robin - to the history books!  What caused this abrupt decades-long crash from a country that dominated this sport for half a century?  War?  Military coup?  Michael Phelps?

No, as The Atlantic reports.

...in 1976, the Olympics switched from natural turf to synthetic, which is far more expensive. All the Indian players who practiced on fields and grass patches were learning skills no longer suited to international competition, and only the communities with the money and will to build a synthetic field could train viable contenders. India has won only a single field hockey medal in the 40 years since it last competed on natural turf, priced out of a sport that had once brought it so much Olympic glory.

Not in the budget for the Hyderabad YMCA.

This story is unquestionably about money, which we talked a lot about in Part II.  But I also think it makes a good bridge to what I'd like to look at today: namely, how similar practices in the publishing industry end up likewise passively excluding entire groups of people.

So let's say you've trained up to the top of your authorial game.  You put in the 10 years of practice, wrote your million words of crap.  What you have in your hands is a gold-star manuscript: fresh, gripping, original, and immaculately edited.  With a spring in your step and a flutter in your heart, you decide to start querying agents.  What happens next?

Well, if you're like my one friend, you get a pile of effusive, glowing rejections, gushing about how much they love the story but "have no idea where they'd send it" because the one publisher they'd normally submit to "already bought their lesbian novel for the year."  (Which is a hell of a thing, considering your story is a straight-up thriller.)

If you're like my other friend, you shelve your dreams of a Mesoamerican fantasy that celebrates your origins, because Big Publishing is only interested if your book is loaded with gold and skin and feathers and the blood of human sacrifices.

If you're like my third friend, you sit quietly with your fresh fiction and your budding blog, and wonder whether you should even show your face on the Internet at all.

And actually, I'd like to stop and showcase her for a moment, because hers is a voice I don't think we hear very often. With her gracious permission, please say hello (again!) to my good buddy Shay E. Dee:

I hugely encourage you to watch her whole video, because she's warm and fun and real (and braver than I am, with her fearless vlogging self!), but also because her message is much bigger and broader than this little snippet I've transcribed here:

Even if you're looking just for an agent – you do tend to go around, and you will find, generally speaking, that there are a lot of fair [i.e. white] people in the publishing industry.  I don't know if it means anything, but you do sit down and question what that even means, and because of that, you then question whether you even fit in there – if you should even be doing that.
...
I'm sure agents out there don't really care, that they just want a book to represent and sell and make billions. I'm sure color doesn't really come into it. But then, if it doesn't, then... why is it like that?

And I just can't even tell you guys how hard I think we need to be listening, here.  Shay isn't Daniel José Older or N.K. Jemisin or Junot Diaz or any one of the hundreds of lesser-known writers who have hit the Straight White Wall of the literary world face-first and made it their mission to help break it down.  Shay is just starting out.  So when she speaks, what you're hearing is the voice of a writer who's brand-new - so new she hasn't even seriously started querying yet - and already wondering if she's not supposed to be here.

And that is a damned shame.  (She's not wrong, either - if you haven't been to a writers conference lately, scope out the AAR directory.  It won't take you long to see the pattern.)

So why IS it like that?  Why is it that decades after the Civil Rights movement, the Stonewall Riots, the ADA act, Cesar Chavez, Oprah Winfrey, and Captain Planet, that the traditional publishing industry is still so very... traditional?  Didn't we get the memo from Sesame Street and the Super Friends?  Shouldn't we have our demographic crap straight by now?

Well, here is a thought.  (Which will be illustrated through the sci-fi/fantasy facet of the publishing industry, since that's the one I know best.  Relevant fact: the Hugos are the SFF equivalent of the Oscars, given every year to a broad swath of authors, artists, editors, and other spec-fic publishing pros.  The statue is a suggestively-shaped rocket ship instead of a naked golden ubermensch, because that's how we roll.)

Observation I:  traditional publishing is something of a closed loop.  Authors are also agents.  Editors are also authors.  From what I've seen of the business so far, it's fairly rare to find someone who only wears a single hat - and rarer still to find someone who's never worked outside their current role.

WorldCon 1956 - New York.  Arthur C. Clarke, Isaac Asimov and others in attendance.
Segregation is the law of the land.
Photo from fanac.org

Observation II:  this closed loop is also a relatively small one.  Go to half a dozen conferences and conventions in your state, and I guarantee you will see the same people over and over and over again.  And this effect can only be a million times more potent in New York, still the Dyson Sphere of the American publishing industry.

WorldCon 1978 - Phoenix.  George R.R. Martin's first novel nominated for a Hugo.
Segregation over; indoor smoking still the norm.
Photo from fanac.org

Observation III:  this small, closed loop also makes it very, very easy to "hire from within."  Whether that's editors taking a preferential look at a short story submission they received from an author they met at a room party or an agent taking on an intern who was recommended to them over lunch with colleagues, there are a huge number of job openings and opportunities that never leave this tiny, enormously social world.

WorldCon 1992 - Orlando.  Bill Clinton newly elected; ADA act is two years old.
Isaac Asimov died earlier in the year, but won a Hugo anyway.
Photo from fanac.org

Observation IV:  it's human nature to want to work with people who "get you".  Editors buy stories that agree with their vision of what good fiction looks like - which are more likely to be written by authors who share their vision of what the world looks like - who are more likely to have cultural and political kinship with the agents and editors who ultimately pick them up.  This is not necessarily a product of active, hateful prejudice.  This is an ingrained tendency that flourishes in an enormously subjective industry - with hugely discriminatory results.

(And I wish like hell that I could use this spot to post a clip of Hank Hill hiring a fellow white guy who comments on his Dallas Cowboys calendar over a Hispanic woman who couldn't pick Troy Aikman out of a lineup.  Go take 20 minutes to watch the "Junkie Business" episode of King of the Hill - it's a classic.)

Worldcon 2013 - San Antonio.  Women are well-represented at the Hugos this year:
Seanan McGuire, Mary Robinette Kowal, Elizabeth Bear, and others are honored.
Photo from demotix.com

And so we end up here: with a WorldCon 2013 group photo that's almost as monochromatic as its 1956 counterpart.

But the other thing I want to emphasize with all these pictures is how little torch-passing has actually happened in these 57 years.  See that 1956 picture up top?  Robert Silverberg won a Hugo that year for Most Promising New Author.  Wanna know who did stand-up at WorldCon 2013?  Yes indeedily. 

And the young lady smoking in the 1978 photo is Teresa Nielsen Hayden, who's now a consulting editor at Tor Books (a Big Publisher for us spec-fic folks.)  Did you know that she was excommunicated from her church for supporting the 1980 Equal Rights Amendment for women?  I didn't until I sat down to write this post, and yet her story and her photo up there illustrate these two points perfectly:

1.  If it feels like the face of publishing hasn't changed since the Mad Men days, it's because in many cases we are still literally looking at the same faces.

2.  Older faces don't necessarily mean older ideas - but it's worth remembering that they did grow up in a world with different social norms and expectations, and that can still be reflected in the stories they choose to write, the books they choose to publish, and the people they choose to work with.

"Good job, Tex," you may here reply. "It's taken you 640 words to define 'good ol' boys club.'"

I know, right?!  I thought that was pretty damned efficient of me!  (Trust me: if brevity is the soul of wit, then we epic fantasy writers are its ever-churning lower intestine.)

But here's the thing, guys: this thing, this glacially slow passing of the industry baton?  This is not just a temporary inconvenience.  This is not just Tiger Woods feeling conspicuous at the country club.  This really has, is having, and will continue to have a huge impact on whose voices we hear, and how loudly they have to scream to be heard.  I'd like to look at that next time - because the more people know about these professional herd instincts of ours and their consequences, the better-equipped we all are to help move things in a better direction.  (Optimism, Annie - I promise it's coming!)


If you could eat at Luly's with one of the following, would it be A) Jesus, B) Muhammad, or C) Golda Meir?

Artificial Barriers to Entry, Part II: The Inescapable Catass Factor

(Continued from Part I!)

Let me confess something right here: every time the Olympics come on, and the athletes march and the flags fly and the national anthems swell, I catch myself getting misty-eyed.  "My God!" I think.  "This is it: a true meritocracy.  A magical land where prejudice doesn't exist, equality prevails, and everyone is judged solely by their athletic ability."

It's not, of course.  I mean, let's be clear: the athletes work damned hard and deserve every bit of their glory.  But behind just about every one of them is a family who could afford to (or went into debt in order to) have a parent become their kid's full-time coach, hire private lessons, travel around for national competitions, shell out for snow-gliders and polo-vaults and whatever other equipment their sport requires.  At the very least, that's a family who could afford to have a child focus exclusively on their sport, even at the risk of failure or permanent injury.  You can't do that when you need every able body either working a job or training for one.

Not in training for Tokyo 2020

And it's a similar story for writing.  No, the equipment's not massively expensive, and it's not like you're going to be washed up and stove in if you don't make it by the time you're thirty (thank God!)  But in a way, it's a parallel problem: whereas Olympians do their intensive training during childhood and adolescence (when Mom and Dad would be supporting them regardless), writers aren't usually publishable until well after they've become adults, often with jobs and families of their own.   That complicates the learning curve considerably.

And money IS a factor.  We cultivate the Hemingway Mystique of a lone writer banging away at an Underwood under the glare of a single naked lightbulb, armed with nothing but a ream of paper and his genius.  But the reality is that the people who could afford to drop $300 or $500 or $700 on DFWcon last weekend came away from the conference with a hell of an advantage - not only in what they learned about their craft, but in the connections they made with publishing professionals and other writers.  In academia, it's the kids who can afford private tutoring and test prep classes who get ahead.  For the athletes, top-tier coaches and training camps.  No, you can't skip the 10,000-hour time investment - but money is a powerful catalyst that can speed things up considerably.

Well, and so?  Everybody else can still get there, right?  They just have to take longer and work harder, that's all.

But that's just it.  Time itself is a commodity, as anyone raising kids or working double shifts knows excruciatingly well.  In athletics or academics or other arenas where it's death or glory by the age of 12, 18, 25, that permanently excludes people who don't have extra years to put towards their Eye of the Tiger montage.  Even with a gig like writing (where there is no ticking clock or game-over screen), that still means that people we should be hearing from at 25 or 30 or 40 don't make it until they're 50, 65, or indeed ever, because they give up in despair after decades of spinning their wheels.

In online gaming, there is a term - catassing - whose origin is a story in itself, but which basically refers to the act of devoting all your time to the game, steamrolling other players whose jobs and lives and commitments mean that they're simply unable to compete with someone who can play literally 18 hours a day.  The Oatmeal has chronicled this well. 

So what happens when you catass writing?  Can it even be done?  

Well, Jim C. Hines has done a fantastic survey charting authors' average time to publication, and the factors that seemed to shorten or lengthen their path.  From my limited and anecdotal experience, I've certainly seen some writers improve much more quickly than others.  Maybe Person A can learn in 10,000 hours what Person B will learn in 80,000 hours, and Person C just won't learn ever.  (There is a PERFECT metaphor for this, by the way, but the magic system in Final Fantasy 6 is not nearly the cultural touchstone that I wish it were.)

And oh, how I wish it were!

Still, even if every writer on the planet needed just 10,000 hours flat to get the skill portion down, people who can afford to practice for four or six or eight hours a day would still get there ahead of everybody who's waking up at 5 AM to get in 60 magical minutes of writing before they have to get the kids ready for school.   And whether we're talking college admissions, Olympic glory, or the Great American Novel, these two things - time, and its interchangeable counterpart, money - are the two biggest obstacles to just about any competitive endeavor you can name.  Talent is a big factor, yes.  So is timing and luck.  But whenever there are more willing and baseline-capable applicants than there are places for them, the people who are first to get chairs when the music stops are almost always the ones with the most time to invest in getting them. 

(Touching back on Part I: this is why I don't see Twitter and the rest of social media as a universal equalizer.  It still requires a time investment and a commitment, especially if you're doing it with any degree of effectiveness, and that's still constraining or excluding people who don't have that kind of room in their schedule.  I guarantee I would not be spending 6+ hours on this week's blog series if I were still trying to work a 50-hour-a-week desk job.)

"So, what?" you might ask at this point.  "The people with the most time and money win, and that's that?"

The evidence says no!  I mean, Margaret Mitchell made it (a wealthy, pedigreed Southern belle and childless stay-at-home wife who devoted three years to writing Gone With the Wind), but so did Frederick Douglass (who taught himself to read, escaped slavery, and went on to become one of the most accomplished preachers, writers, and political activists in American history).  Hell, so did J.K. Rowling.  So did Octavia Butler.  So did Sherman Alexie.  We have far too many phenomenal hard-scrabble success stories in our canon to believe that the cause is hopeless for anyone who doesn't have a trust fund and an MFA.

But here is what I'm driving at.  It is really, really easy to get discouraged in this business.  It is even easier when it seems like all your writer-buddies are beating you.  Easier still when you keep hearing that "real writers write every day" - that they write amazing books AND do eleven kinds of social media AND read all the latest in their genre AND do boatloads of research AND keep up with all the industry trends AND AND AND. After awhile, it all swirls together in this toxic Martha Stewart soup - you know, the one that makes Harriet Homemaker feel like garbage because she can't keep up with the rich lady making soap molds in her fake TV kitchen.

Well, at least we hope that's soap.

And speaking as one of the Margaret Mitchell types, I guess what I'm trying to express is that

A) a lot of that "real writers _____" business has been propagated by people who are talking out of their silk-lined hats (please listen to Ann Bauer if you have ANY doubt about this), and

B) how quickly you progress compared to your writer-buddies may have VERY little to do with your talent - or theirs.

And although you can't control whether or how successfully anyone else catasses their way to fame and fortune, I sincerely hope you can avoid feeling like an ass yourself.  If it's taking you longer to get there, it doesn't mean you're not talented, not committed, or not trying hard enough.  It doesn't mean you won't make it.  It does mean that you might have a longer, harder row to hoe.  And I really hope you won't give up - because the harder it is to get let in to whatever club you're aiming for, the likelier it is that they are desperately short on people like you.

There is one more thing I want to say, actually - about how all these obstacles and limiting factors affect our industry even after writers show up to the table with well-written, original stories finished in hand.  Let's do that on Friday.  In the meantime, I would be really interested to hear your take on this stuff here.  What would you say have been the biggest limiting factors on your progress as a writer?  Are there others we haven't considered here?

--For one brief moment, victory was within our grasp.
--And then the game started.

Artificial Barriers to Entry, Part I: Twitter, the SAT, and Peanuts

It's become something of a spring tradition.  Every year, a few weeks before DFWcon, I watch my Facebook feed fill with writers testing out pitches and business cards, and my Twitter followers list blossom with egg icons - aspiring writers acquiescing to the Social Media Mandate.  I love it.

But I know a lot of people don't.  And I admit that sometimes I'm one of them.  Being around real live earth-persons makes me feel like a million bucks - it's the biggest thrill, honestly - but email and Twitter and Facebook and blogging easily reduce me to tears.  I know I'm not alone in that.  "Why do we have to do this social media garbage?" cries that reliable wailing and gnashing of teeth.  "This has NOTHING to do with the quality of my writing, but agents keep saying they won't even consider me if I don't do it!"

This is an almost perfect echo of what I hear in my day job (well, night job), doing test prep classes for high school students.  "Why do I have to take the SAT?" the little darlings keen in frustration.  "This has NOTHING to do with how much I know, but colleges won't even consider me if I don't do it!"

And you know, I think these two mournful choruses really share the same origin.  A hundred years ago, the SAT and ACT didn't exist, and social media was in its dots-and-dashes infancy.  (Though Face-book was not unknown.)  You got your book out to the world the good old-fashioned way: by sending your manuscript to a publisher.  And as for getting into college - well, what could be easier than sitting your Greek and Latin exams, producing your certificate of good moral character, and waiting for your acceptance letter?

Sounds like a simpler, friendlier time, doesn't it?

Well, here is a question: did you ever see Charlie Brown's All-Stars?  It's a Peanuts special from the '60s, and the short story is this: Charlie Brown has the chance to get his baseball team real uniforms, and entry into a real league, and (naturally) jumps at the chance - until he's told that the league doesn't allow girls or dogs.  If he wants his team to go pro, he's going to have to ditch some of his teammates.

Who don't always appreciate his managerial style.

And it seems to me that the academic and publishing worlds of old were much the same way: it is easy to miss them today, because it's easy to forget that they were very exclusive realms.  And part of the reason why writers and students today are having to jump so many extra hurdles is because there are so very many MORE of us now than there used to be - because now girls and dogs and gays and minorities and blue-collar people and pink-collar people and no-collar people have entered the good ol' boys' ring, stiffening the competition for what are still a limited number of top-choice seats.

And when there are 50,000 people applying for 1,000 places, you do have some extra work to do in whittling them down.  It's not enough anymore to just toss out the ones with rotten grades or lousy spelling.  That still leaves 20,000 solid competitors.  So you have to start looking at other things.  Throw out everyone who doesn't do extracurriculars.  Then put in a standardized test, and axe everyone who fails it.  What does that leave, 5,000?  Okay, new rule: we want to see volunteer work.  Tell them to start clothing the hungry and feeding the naked and neutering shelter-puppies on the weekends, or they're out.  And if too many students start making it through all those hoops, I promise you that they will invent a new one, or make the existing ones even smaller.

Which isn't to say that the hoops are all completely arbitrary.  For example, a successful writer is going to have to be able to sell themselves and their book - so it's reasonable to see whether and how they've made a start on that. 

"So, Tex," you may now resentfully sigh, "you're saying that the New World Order is good and right and just, and Twitter is the price we pay for diversity and freedom."

Not at ALL, my hypothetical friend - not at all, and I will tell you why.  But let me pause here for the moment, and resume on Wednesday.

In the meantime, here is a question: for those of you with skin in either game (publishing or college admissions), what do you reckon we could do to level the playing field?  How can we more fairly assess the applicants - or should we quit squabbling over who gets a piece and focus instead on enlarging the pie?

 
So they have one man on first, but if they think they can beat us, they'd better try. 
 ...
I hate it when they try.

The Long, Dark Night of the Teeth

It started on Wednesday, with an achy, not-too-bad kind of pain on the left side of my upper jaw.  I thought it might be a sinus issue.

It got worse yesterday, and I was lucky enough to get an on-the-spot appointment with my dentist, who confirmed that no, actually, the root canal I had a few years back has gotten re-infected.  Better handle up on that ASAP.

Tomorrow (today), I have a 9:00 appointment with an endodontist to re-do the root canal.  But in the meantime, I'm up and blogging in the middle of the night, nursing a pain that the drugs can't even touch.

So here is a thought.  Wouldn't it be a different world if we could actually feel other people's pain?  Like, on an individual level, how many of the people that today will be dismissed by their doctors for "psychosomatic" (read: imaginary) distress would get real help?  And on a societal level, how much more quickly could we progress if we could actually feel the mental anguish of our fellow sapiens?  How fast would bigotry crumble if the average person KNEW the kind of pain that comes from having to live in a body that doesn't match your gender, or trying to suppress a sexuality that will get you shamed, fired, hurt, or killed? 

Maybe it would be a utopia of compassion and understanding.  But then you have to think about how that would change our manners.  Like, it's already bad form to go into the office when you're sick, because somebody else might catch what you've got.  How much worse would it be if you showed up KNOWING you'd inflict your pain on your co-workers as soon as you walked in the door?  And does the person who walks onto a crowded subway on the verge of a nervous breakdown become a commuter, or a terrorist? 

So there'd have to be social coping mechanisms.  It might become polite to shut yourself in at home when you're miserable, so you don't wound every random stranger you pass in the street.  Certainly you'd be expected to medicate yourself.  The chronic, severe, and untreatable kinds of pain might even require you to kill yourself.  So in the longer, Darwinian run of things, the people who survive and prosper would be those who are the least prone to pain themselves - mental or physical - and those who are the least affected by the pain of others...aka the bullies.

On the balance, maybe it's best that we stay over here in Earth 616.  It's not perfect - not by a long shot - but I like the idea of living in a world aligned to the virtue of striving to understand other people's feelings, rather than the necessity of scrambling to escape them.  (And on a selfish, vocational note, a good story is basically empathy in a can anyhow.)

All right.  It's 7:00AM.  Two more hours to go.  I can make it.  But it's a really good thing that I don't know where to score drugs on lower Greenville.

Oh, I’m in pain! I think this is what pain feels like!

Slow and Squeezy, or, A Tale of Two Ponies

Sorry it's been so long, you guys.  I've been really squished lately.

Y'know, it feels pretty good to break into this whole semi-pro gig.  ("Pro" in that people are paying me to make with the fictional writings, "semi" in that such largesse isn't yet enough to live on.)  But one of the things that continues to bum me out is that I am

so

damn.

slow.

Like really.  An amazing pace for me is writing 300 words an hour.  If I have to stop and look things up or hit a hard part, that number goes way down.  It is hard to feel good about that when your Twitter feed is full of people belting out 800 or 1000 words in an hour and then skipping off to bake cookies.

So you start trying to justify it to yourself.  Well, I'm slow because I'm actually writing WELL, you see.  This is what it takes to get that masterpiece-osity that I got complimented on that one time.  It's a tortoise-and-hare scenario.  Slow and steady wins the publishing contract.  

But then you think about all the years you spent being the slowest one in gym class, too, and how you weren't actually running "better" or "deeper" than anyone else - you were just miserably crap at running.  And how a lot of the people who can write like gangbusters are actually turning out really excellent work.  And how the tortoise is completely screwed if the hare doesn't slack off.

So if speed has no reliable correlation to quality, then you either have to figure out how to pick up the pace somehow, or else accept that you just have a really god-awful slow mental metabolism, and will have to work twice as hard as the average person to get the same results.  Not an enticing prospect if you're as insecure and lazy as I am.

You know what's really cheered me up, though?

Ponies.

Specifically, these ponies:

from mlp.wikia.com

I know, right!  They're like a dashing equestian barbership duet!

See, in the hallowed canon of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic don't you judge me, I swear to God, these guys are the Flim-Flam brothers.  They show up in an episode called "The Super Speedy Cider Squeezy 6000." Spoilers here follow.

Anyway, so these guys ride into town on the aforementioned Squeezy - a huge rolling contraption that automatically turns apples into tasty cider.  This does not bode well for the Apple family, whose homemade cider business is far too slow to keep up with local demand.

(You know you're in trouble when the Monsanto reps have their own catchy theme song.)

Things proceed as you might expect: a winner-take-all contest is set up, pitting the Flim-Flam brothers' super-modern machinery against the good old-fashioned methods of the Sweet Apple Acres team.  And of course, it's a kid's cartoon, so it follows a somewhat familiar plotline: the brothers actually win the contest, but the slop their machine turns out is so vile that they're run out of town on a rail, and goodness and decency and hat-waving old-timeyness carry the day. 

Here's what I like about it, though: the machine is superior in every measurable way.  It's not only enormously faster than old-fashioned horsepower, but also has a perfect quality-control sensor that weeds out rotten apples.  The Flim-Flam brothers lose not because their method is inferior, but because they turn off the quality control mechanism, turning rotten apples and garbage into cider in a last-ditch effort to produce more raw product and win the contest.

By now you see where I'm going with this.  At the end of the day, it's not about slow versus fast, or old versus new.  It's about whose integrity will buckle when the going gets rough, and whose won't.

And I can still win on that front.

So hopefully I can get back to regular blogging again in real short order (there is so much cool new stuff I am DYING to show you, believe me!)  But if I don't, it's because I'm still sorting the apples and turning the crank - hopefully with tasty-delicious results!


I have learned the meaning of self-loathing, and it is writing a sentence that you know is sloppy and starting another sentence.

The Armikrog Dilemma

Once upon a time, I was a child.

And in my childhood, there was a game.  It was called The Neverhood.

And this game was phenomenal.

Our hero, Klaymen, wakes up alone in a deserted world, and must solve puzzles and brave strange dangers to discover what happened to this abandoned paradise.  It's cool and weird and wonderful, with a colorful world (not as empty as it seems!), characters that sear themselves into your brain-engrams, and a story that goes eight miles deep.  And if there's one reason why it's my favorite game of all time, I'd have to lean on my previous post to explain it.  There's love and passion and one-of-a-kind creativity pressed into every clay thumbprint. It is unique, irreplaceable, a point-and-click platypus: accept no substitutes, because there aren't any.

Sadly, The Neverhood didn't sell well.  It's long out of print now, and so old that most computers can't even run it.  EA have been sitting on the rights for fifteen years, stoically disinclined to either sell them or develop a new game.

Then came Kickstarter.

And then came Armikrog.

"What's this?" said I, when it first hit my radar.  "Doug TenNapel, storied creator of The Neverhood and Earthworm Jim, is making a new game?  And he needs my help to do it?!  Quickly, kitten - dredge the couch for quarters!"

Let me tell you, friends - I salivated over the Kickstarter page.  I pored over every pencil sketch.  I watched this trailer too many times to count.

I have not pledged to this project.

Y'know, a lot has changed since The Neverhood came out in 1996.  What I know now, and what I couldn't have known then, is that Doug TenNapel is not only a brilliant, fantastically talented artist, but also a person with personal views I find appalling, and - here's the crux - a penchant for shouting those views from the e-rooftops.  MostlyRetro covers the specifics pretty well, but the AV Club's also done an excellent writeup.  Short story: while I would never advocate actively silencing him, I can't buy from this guy anymore.

"But Tex!" the kid in me says. "It's not like he's the man in charge - he's just the designer the studio hired!  And what about all those other perfectly nice wonderful people the studio ALSO hired?  When you go to a movie, do you think not a single one of those million and five people in the credits gives money to causes you find objectionable?  Come on, it's not like he's the CEO of a huge multinational corporation - any money he donates to Fear the Queers Inc. because of this project is going to be negligible at most.  And if you don't use your dollars to help prove that there's still a market for great games like these, how will they ever get made?"

My inner child can be a real punk sometimes.  Moreover, the super-annoying thing about being an adult is that you're old enough not only to know what's bad for you - cookies, all-nighters, methamphetamines - but also to have acquired some idea of what's bad for other people.  The alternative is saying, "don't worry, cherished friends and neighbors - I stand by you and support your fight for equality.  Except when I really want a new video game.  Or a fried chicken sandwich."  (And no matter which side of that fence you're on, I think we can all agree that selling your principles for a toy is poor form indeed.)

"Wow, Tex," you may be saying to yourself at this point, "this sure is a long-ass post for what basically amounts to patting yourself on the back.  And if you're so sure this guy doesn't deserve funding or a platform, why have you just spent 500 words showcasing his game?"

Well, three reasons:

1.  Armikrog and The Neverhood ARE interesting and special, and the more people are exposed to them, the more readily they can seek out and support projects LIKE these from people who aren't TenNapel.

2.  There are worthy conversations to be had, especially in this community, about separating art from artist and how the Internet has changed our ability to keep our idols safely up on their pedestals where we can't hear them.

and 3.  If you choose not to support this project, it ought to be because you've made a reasoned decision about it, and not because you never even heard of the damn thing.  (For one thing, it's worthy of notice, and for another, it's harder for people to claim censorship and oppression when everybody has seen and discussed the subject and THEN turned away.)

Anyway, the Kickstarter's still got a couple of days left, and I'll be interested to see how it turns out.  In the meantime, somebody tell me I'm not alone - when's the last time you regretfully stuffed money back in your wallet?

After many years' journey, Hoborg returned and was ready to build "The Everhood," a neighborhood that would last forever... so long as nothing went wrong.