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Jim Hines is holding his annual fund raiser for rape crisis centers. You want to get in on the action.

Support rape crisis centers and enter to win an advance copy of The Snow Queen’s Shadow, by Jim C. Hines.

This week I am blessed with two Viable Paradise interviews in my mail box. The first of these is with Steve Buchheit, a writer with a social conscious as well as an excellent sense of noir. Welcome, Steve!

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Tamago: When did you first realize you wanted to be a writer?

Steve: My standard answer is that I got serious about writing a decade ago, but that’s not the whole story. Progressing forward I also am looking back over my life to see the influences and strains of story that I’m putting into my work. My earliest memory of writing is buying a Kodak Brownie at the Gibbsboro School white elephant sale for a dollar. My parents were still together so we had money to buy rolls of film and I started telling stories through the camera. I wrote poetry through high school, but mostly to impress girls. In college I had the option of skipping English classes. Instead I minored in Creative Writing with my writing focus in poetry, but the literature side had a distinct genre bent (my senior paper was on the concepts of God through the writings of Arthur C. Clarke). While I was traveling for Ernst & Young, I tried writing a pastiche of Steven Brust which utterly failed because I didn’t have the fire in me. Then about a decade ago I started writing an homage to Glenn Cook and that book kicked my tuchus. That was my come to Jesus moment. I still want to go back and finish that book, but I don’t know that I’m completely ready for it.

I took some continuing ed classes at that point and was blessed to have two highly influential instructors. I realized at that time that I had no clue how to tell a story. So I downshifted into short stories to strengthen my skills (note to new writers, short stories and novels have very little in common, but knowing how to tell a story transcends both).

So, while I now realize I’ve been writing and telling stories all my life, it’s really only been a decade since I’ve been serious about it.

Tamago: Do you feel you have a genre as a writer?

Steve: I don’t think I have one standard genre. When I started writing short fiction, I wrote SF, because that’s what I read a lot of in the short form. When I started experimenting with fantasy I found my writer’s voice became stronger. And when I hit into dark fantasy I could feel the energy flowing into the keyboard. I keep trying experiments into other genres, but it all seems to flow back into fantasy of some sort. The first story I had accepted by a paying market (signed the contract, still haven’t been printed, it’s a long story) started out as an attempt at literary fiction, but somehow in the middle turned into the Cthulhu horror. I jettisoned the majority of the literary work and focused in on the horror. And that’s what sold. I’m sure there’s a positive feedback lesson in there somewhere.

Continue reading “VP Profile #10: Steve Buchheit”

For some background on the discussion centering around Jacqueline Howett and the critique of her grammar, I need to refer you to Rachel Swirsky and Shalanna.

As I see it, besides Howett’s inappropriate and unfortunate response, which has been discussed in great detail in many other places, there are two issues that have been raised. The first is whether knowing grammar makes you more intelligent, and a better writer. The second is questioning the knowledge of youth today and its superiority or inferiority to the previous generations. I choose to tackle the second point first, because I need to use it to frame the first point.

Please read Rachel’s post now, if you haven’t yet. You know, I was so pleased to see someone write up so well the same kind of discussion that I’ve been having at faculty meetings and retreats for a very long time. I am SO tired of the idea that students now are inferior to students of previous times. This comes from so many instructors, and I sometimes wonder if the problem isn’t the students, but the older generation.

Rachel does a great job of tracing worthless new generation syndrome back to the ancient Greeks. The latest example I’ve had of this was a critique of eReaders from a speech teacher. She was recommending a seminar on the sunset of the paper book, and wanted to hold a seminar/reading circle that basically said that the Internet had curtailed the ability of its generation of users from thinking deeply.

Congratulations, if you’re reading this, by the way, you shallow thinker, you!

She had an expert book to back her up. The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains by Nicholas Carr. That reading circle is actually going on at our college right now. When called to task by other peers, the speech teacher suggested that what made this argument plausible was that she liked books, and her students seemed more shallow to her. Gotta love that anecdotal evidence from a biased party!

Anywhoo, two things came up in the discussion: One instructor (not me!) suggested that we were just this side of not being able to convince our students that we were the most out of touch dinosaurs (which says nothing about the claims of the book, or those no good youngsters!). The other thing was that myself and my friend Olga suggested that an adaption to a differing kind of media/medium did not mean that the person using the new literacy was inferior to the person using the previous literacy. Rather, the literacy and the perception of the world was different, not superior or inferior. We went on to talk about the advent of the book versus the oral tradition, the advent of television and so on.

And while the division in the resulting discussion was not generational entirely, it looked like there were many instructors who decided that today’s students had less rigor than yesterday’s students, and that we had let our academic standards go to crap, etc, etc, etc.

I don’t think so.

Continue reading “Gate Keeping in the Academic World: Part 1”

Patience has been a theme I have returned to at the Tamago, time and time again. My natural inclination is not to be patient. I hate waiting. I have grappled with “there is a season–turn, turn, turn” all my life.

Like a fool, I decided to pursue writing seriously. Listen up, Writer-me-of-the-past! You think that you can become patient, but you have no idea of the monumental task in front of you.

The publishing industry measures getting things done in measurements of epochs. Say you have a story accepted, and you are waiting on edits. That could take a long time? Three months? Try longer. A year? Maybe longer. Say you have a submission out. How long could that take? I know authors who have heard from slush piles 2 or more years later.

There are two things that will affect how long you feel you’re waiting. Of course, you are anxious for feedback about your efforts. In your case, Writer-me, the waiting is worse than the rejection. Of course you want feedback in your ethnocentric universe. You spent kaboodles of time on your work. The other thing is that you will mistakenly measure the speed of the publishing turtle by the the speed of your job. Even in a job like yours, Writer-me, where things take time, they don’t take this much time.

Forget all you know or think you know about patience. The only way you will survive this gig is to truly let your project go, and move onto the next thing. For the first few attempts, you will only be half-hearted in this effort. However, after you get to know other writers who are productive and are going through the insane waiting as well, it becomes progressively easier. It becomes cool to work on the next thing, and you will learn patience and letting go.

The other thing that will really assist you with the waiting is to assess your goals. This is the bus analogy I coined over breakfast one morning in Vegas hanging out with Miranda Suri. Different writers get off at different stops. It’s all good. For example, my goal now (and some day in the future, Writer-me) is to write a book good enough that an agent will love it. (Yes, marry it, or at least set it up in a long term relationship in a New York penthouse.) That means I have to be patient about learning a whole new style of writing.

This will come about, Writer-me, only after you’ve gotten past some ego issues (which may be another one of these entries). What this means is you will be on the bus probably after a lot of people have gotten off, and the the lights have come on, and most of the vinyl benches are clear.

Where are the other writers? Some of them got off earlier, because they weren’t wild about being on the bus. Others liked the nice little small press stop, and decided it was a good place to be (I got off there for a while, and it is!). Some have gotten off at other agent stops. Or at the commercial stop. Or at the phenomena stop (I hear that’s a great place, but the restaurants in the neighborhood are lousy!) At the indie stop. At the self-publish stop. On and on.

Do you see a theme? There’s so much waiting involved, and so many different ways to play the game, the question is do you want to do this? Really? As I mentioned in another entry, petty crime will get you results much sooner. The waiting really does get easier as you practice more, and the longer you stay on the bus. You will master it.

Now you can move on up to a monastery in Tibet and work out that life is an illusion. Or you can keep writing.

Next lesson: The world is full of good, talented writers, and what that really means for your career.

I planned for my next entry to be the next installment in the Claudius villain series, but some things need explaining to the well-meaning respondents, more than just a quick reply to a comment. No, I don’t intend for this to become a main topic here. This journal will still be largely about writing.

With that in mind, if this is not something you want to read more about, here’s a strategic cut. We’ll return to regular programming soon.

Continue reading “Clearing the Air on Weight Loss”

It’s not my birthday.

At first, when you begin to age, things are pretty superficial. My hair is mighty gray. I dye it. I have crow’s feet and shadows under my eyes. I have permanent laugh lines around my mouth. Well, at least I’ve been a happy person.

And then, the muscle aches begin. Plantar fasciitis. That bad knee you shot in college running. Lower back pain. At first you visit the doctor and try to see about it, but as you hit your late 30s, the doctor begins to tell you sage things like, “live with it” and “here are some stretches”.

My acid reflux disease was NOT a normal part of my aging process. I had a medical side effect. It could be said that the allergic reaction I was countermanding was due to aging. As I have become older, I have become allergic to penicillin, probably due to overuse, and dust mites.

You might remember last year when I undertook with Bryon an attempt to reform my health. Our plan was to eat right and work out on the Wii. As of today, Bryon has lost some 30 pounds. He looks great. He has some aches and pains, but overall, his health has markedly improved. A few months ago I talked to my doctor about how I wasn’t losing weight in spite of my changed eating habits and increased working out. She said as long as you’re doing the healthy things, well, that’s the best you can hope for.

And I was okay with that for a while. But I’ve always thought that if I dug a little deeper, I could do better. So, I did. And I didn’t. I actually gained weight steadily over the weekend, after 4 days of little food, healthy eating, and an attempt that was worthy of my Weight Watchers times.

I…am going to be fat in my old age. Unless I want to kick my food down to control freak levels, I am going to be overweight. Obese, actually. This year (my Wii-aversary is in 5 days) I gained six pounds. I shudder to think what I would have gained if I hadn’t been working out.

Of course I have trouble with that.

Continue reading “Welcome to 45…for Real”

I’ve started and deleted the beginning of this series of posts for a long time. Often I do my best thinking once I’ve dropped Bryon off on my commute across town, and I’ll have the occasional thought about something that I wish someone had told me when I started pursuing writing seriously. So, I’m framing a series of entries that address some of those thoughts about things I would tell myself if the me-of-now could talk to, say, the me of a variety of earlier times.

These entries aren’t meant to be advice or steps or anything like that. It’s just stuff that I wish I’d known. I doubt I’d even believe some of these things, but I could look back and say, “Oh yeah. I knew that” if someone had told me this.

The first thing I’d talk to myself about is this: ripeness.

Continue reading “What I Wish I’d Known as a New Writer: Ripeness”

Here are a couple more links Japanese charity.

Genre for Japan

Kidlit for Japan