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I’m working on the new novel, revising the structure again, based on a very good seminar I saw at Convergence via Lou Anders called Screen Writing for Novelists. I learned a lot and it gave me a lot of ideas, and tomorrow morning while Bryon is revising curriculum at work, I intend to squirrel myself away to a book shop and do some writing. Just like during the semester.

I find myself wondering why I should write this book. Now, I’m not looking for succor. I will write this book. I’ve got all the excellent bells and whistles. Themes, what it means, what the characters mean to each other, what I hope the reader will take away. It’s all there.

And…you know, that’s…writing a book. Which is an activity I primarily do for a good time. And…seeking a good time is sort of strangely hollow at the moment. I…had a massage today with the husband for the anniversary. That was nice, but you know, it felt superfluous.

As a matter of fact, the only thing that I’ve done the last few days that didn’t feel superfluous was taking the cats to the vet. That felt purposeful and needful, even though our poor dear Sekhmet was pretty much tortured this time around. BTW, she’s on kitty prozac now. We’ll see how that goes.

So, here’s a culture shock I didn’t anticipate but should have. Rather than feeling angry about the injustice of the country I visited, I feel like my life is soft and lacks purpose. No, really, that’s what it feels like. We aren’t kidding anyone here. The trade offs of my soft, cushy life with its focus on intellectual endeavor are many, but I’m on the ground here and not doing anyone any good. Except Bryon, who is happy to have me home and loves me enough to make a life with me.

Life is about enjoyment as much as purpose. I will smile and carry on until the culture shock fades and I’m back in my own life again. I will feel thankful that I have a life where I can write books and exchange ideas and be well-treated. I don’t want to live in a world where my only movements are dictated by my survival, in spite of what this must sound like. And I know that teaching is my purpose. Writing is my artistic endeavor, but I am all about getting students to think about the world around them.

Still, it was nice to build something and feel how much it mattered. You don’t get that every day, and it’s made quite an impression.

I…guess I got taught. Which is like getting served.

Right now I am a stranger in a strange land, and that land is my own life. Since my own life seems alien to me, I’m not sure I need to be imagining another layer of existence on top of this one. Right now, my fiction feels like the most trivial thing in all of creation, and it’s strange to be going through the motions of doing something I usually love so much, because I usually love it so much.

Your art is safe. Another side effect of this experience has taught me that answers to the meaning of life can be found in all sorts of places. That’s the straw I’m clutching at to see me through this. Perhaps the question I’m trying to figure out in my culture shock, what is the worth of this life I live, perhaps that’s what I should be writing about.

Eh. Go read something less emo. Scalzi’s in a dress and Hines is making player cards. Nothing to see here but maybe jagged existentialism.

Friday. In the United States. Not at a convention. Well, THAT was interesting. Pretty soft. I went to see a movie, sitting in an incredibly cushy seat. I had pizza. I rode in MY OWN CAR.

Reverse culture shock is always an interesting phenomena. Some of you may remember my incredible bitterness upon returning from Russia. I was pretty harsh on my friends at that time, and I lost about 25 pounds because of food issues, because I believed I was part of the problem of world hunger. I still am, by the way, but I’m not as angry as I was, and whatever my flaws, I always eat mindfully.

Ahem. I’m not in that same space after Vietnam, although one of my students is. He’s having a hard time adjusting to the idea that any of us here have real problems after visiting Agent Orange Orphans and feeding one who couldn’t feed himself. He said that he was upset with a friend who was complaining to him about her boyfriend, and he told her to suck it up, that she had no problems and he didn’t feel sorry for her at all. I told him that it was natural for him to feel like that, but to go easy on his friend, because she hadn’t had his experiences.

Travel is both a blessing and a curse, yes?

***

I’m doing well upon this return. To my way of thinking, the students and the instructors did a great deal to right a wrong on this trip. We improved conditions students at a middle school. We avoided a corrupt bureaucracy and directly did things ourselves, but at the same time we were helped by Vietnamese laborers (we had a crew of 3 to help us with the methods of labor we had to use) and teachers and administrators who admired that we could do in five days what it make take them all summer to do with limited resources.

It was hard coming home from the perspective that now I no longer feel that I am doing active good in the world with my hands. Of course, I know that teaching does something positive and changes the world. But there is nothing quite like planting rocks on a dirt floor with your bare hands to make you feel you are actually doing something concrete (no pun intended. Okay. Pun intended.) I felt solid, useful, and tough. I proved to myself that I *could* do that sort of thing. And definitely, I can push myself and succeed, even while working around an arthritic knee.

Last week, I was a bit busy getting ready for the convention and getting over bronchitis and jet lag, so I didn’t really think about it. But this week, I’ve been thinking about it a lot. I met the students for their presentations on Tuesday. I read their journals. I wrote my instructor evaluation. How could I not think about what the trip meant?

***

Here I am on the computer talking about this. The privilege I have in using this technology to talk to you about anything on the computer, the leisure I have in time that is not involved in survival (finding and preparing food, washing my clothes by hand, doing anything I want to do by hard, physical labor), the money that I have, the time to think, all these are non-existent in Tra Vinh, except in perhaps the rarest of households. My first world life with its first world problems and first world advantages means I’m here.

Privilege, lately, has been spotlighted in many Internet discussions in the SF community, what some people think about others, and what some people feel they are entitled to have at the expense of the rights of others. I wish I could find a way to get us to start empathetically thinking about the world around us. Maybe, if a few more of us were interested, I could get you to come and dig dirt with me and paint classrooms side by side with a small Vietnamese construction crew and Vietnamese middle school teachers, students from Singapore and Canada and Australia and the United States, and even a kid who walked off the street after an accident with his scooter, after our nursing student fixed his open sore wound. And we all did this on equal footing to make life better for the kids who went to the school.

You might feel like I’m breaking into a chorus of “Kumbaya”. Well, I’ll tell you what. Cynicism isn’t sexy. And maybe altruism is the new black (as in fashion). I can only wish you such a good experience on your own terms, one that really makes you think about the fabric of the universe.

***

In other news, if you need help, I can get you into a rambutan now. Also mangosteen, jack fruit, lychee, dragonfruite and dragon eyes. You don’t need any safe breaking tools,surprisingly. When my supermarket gets mangosteen back in, I am so there.

What you see above is pretty much my view of Vietnam. For six intensive days, a squad of around 25 students and five teachers revamped classrooms for Vietnamese students in Tra Vinh, one of the poorest areas of the country.

Under the watchful eye of Uncle Ho, whose picture was in every classroom, we ripped up old tiles, dug out dirt, laid rock, covered it with cement and tile, scrapped the rooms, and repainted the walls and the shutters. Pretty glamorous, right?

Continue reading “What Was Vietnam Like?”

Hello Everyone.

I returned from Vietnam on Saturday. That was quite the experience. Twenty students and five instructors gutted three classrooms and a hallway, and we rebuilt said area with the strength of our backs and shovels. It was a grueling six days, but I feel like I don’t have to worry that I’m losing my edge anymore. I kept up with everyone, sweat and all. We did a good thing (TM).

As is common with many groups, we shared a cold. Mine went from being a manageable sore throat and sniffle to bronchitis in the course of a day. Susceptible was the word the doctor used when I got back. Fear not. It’s not almost pneumonia kind. It’s over the line from sinusitis kind. If I keep resting and taking my meds, I’ll be just fine.

No, I don’t like bronchitis as my new hobby, and yes, I will be doing my best to avoid it as much as I can in the future.

***

So, while I have seen many films (can you say 16 hour flight each way?) and read many books (can you say end of day after construction collapse?) since you last saw me, I have done very little writing. Before the construction started, I did a lot of planning and plotting. And, next week, once I feel better and have some more time, I will continue on from where I left off.

***

This weekend, I will be at Convergence in Minneapolis. I have 3 panels each day at 5 pm (Plotting, the (Spy Fi) Avengers, and Modern Retellings of Fairy Tales on Thursday, Friday and Saturday respectively; and I’m part of the Broad Universe reading at 3:30 on Saturday. Please come and see me do my thing.

Photos? Yes. But don’t expect beautiful Vietnam photos. Expect service learning photos.

As you know, I’m off to Vietnam. Well, you know it if you’ve been reading this journal at all. When I return, there will be pictures and commentary. Slowly, mind you, because I’ve been doing some thinking.

In 2002, I began my Live Journal. I did so full of trepidation. Would the Internet become too much of a time sink for me? Would it become my replacement for writing? Well, no, as it turns out. It really takes me not too much time to whip out an entry for the things I want to talk about, and generally, I don’t seem to have a problem finding things to talk about. I didn’t get sucked into Facebook, and I avoided Twitter until all my Viable Paradise class showed up there. Then Twitter was unavoidable. I also look in at Codex, look at yahoo news, check a writer email account, and look at Dreamwidth. That’s my Internet day. On an intricate article day, it can be about 3 hours, but it’s usually an hour and half. Similarly, if I have a day at work when I can’t check the Internet, catching up can take all my morning.

Things…must change. A lot of my Internet interaction has become ritualized, but what I am doing is old-fashioned. I need to take some time to get away from Live Journal, for example. It’s a dying platform that is not at all attractive or useful. I go there because there are still old friends I read, and new people, but in the end, how many people’s journals do I read who know me, or who I really know? That’s some wasted time for me and them.

I don’t need to be going to Codex as often as I do. The crowd at Codex is a swell crowd, but I don’t need to be checking in every day. I don’t publish short stories, and the novelists there are few. Why? I suspect they might be writing novels? (Actually, I notice that with notable exceptions, people writing novels are rarely goofing around on the computer. Entries usually are a couple of times a week in their blogs if that. They are not frequent fliers on the message boards I frequent.)

So…here’s what I’m thinking.

1.I’ll get off Live Journal. I know there are ways to subscribe to the journals of friends I want to without being in the Live Journal community. My friend Chris mentioned something called Feedly, and I’m sure I can ask Mark about alternatives.

2. I’m only going to read a few journals. Certainly, people I actually know, and people I kind of know who are talking about things that interest me, and what I need to be researching for the writing.

3. I will NOT be coming on line during a given day unless I have reached my writing goals for the day, and reached my workout and food goals for the day. There. There’s some prioritizing for you. My knee hurts. My story is in second place of my computer stuff. Really. No, really. Since I have a full time job and an excellent relationship, these are the things that I must/want to prioritize. Numbers 3 and 4 gotta be fitness and writing (note the order. Writing does not get to keep happening if you don’t take care of yourself.)

4. With the exception of Twitter. WHEN I’m writing. I have found that I like being on Twitter when I write. I pull quotes from my work, and make complaints and ask questions about the characters, and it adds to the experience. Plus I think it’s an interesting way to have an “online presence” and a “platform.” Bleah.

5. I’m also not giving up my weekly chat with a good friend who lives out east, or our writer’s conferences on Thursday. These both help with the writing.

6. Overall, I’m not giving up much, except for TIME devoted to the INTERNET endeavor. I need to get away from every day time on line. If I spent this time working on my story every day, I suspect my writing would be deeper. If I spent this time working out every day, I suspect my knee would be happier. I should be able to write an entry at least once a week. Similarly, I should be able to check into Codex periodically, and read my friend’s journals periodically.

***

You know, someone once said that the artist’s enemy is obscurity. I believe now that the artist’s enemy is procrastination. I am writing, but I’m not getting the result I want yet. Which, by the way, is not to get published. It’s to produce a damned good readable body of work, which incidentally may or may not get published. Also, I’m tired of having the health problems which result from me being overweight. I am not a healthy fat person. If I were, those priorities would be different.

And you know, I need to reshuffle my life so those two things, which are more important than the time I spend on the Internet, are front and center. I can’t do anything about the job that I haven’t already done. I want the marriage to stay as good as it is. So, always, that’s the core of my life. But I want to reshuffle what I’m doing with my free time.

Also up for a change this year? I suppose, once I get this Internet routine adjusted to, I should start updating my tech. First my laptop (I suspect I’d best have a new one ready to go by next summer, as we’re on the second hard drive now), and then my phone. But you know, thinking long term.

***

So, goodbye for now. With the exception of typing out notes to the husband on the Nook to say I’m alive, no one will hear from me again until June 29th. Try not to miss me or my amusing anecdotes. I am sure my absence will be covered pleasantly by pictures of cats in overalls or something.

And then, when I get back, less of me. BUT maybe more of my material to read.

Have a safe and happy June. I will be working hard and I’ll try not to come back with malaria.

Author’s note: This was the most comprehensive panel on this subject I’ve been on, and also the one where every participant took every option seriously. Shout out to the panelists for a great job!

Moderator: Wesley Chu
Sarah Carless
Bob Crum
Jesi Lean Ryan
James Frenkel

Moderator Wesley asked about the state of publishing currently.

Jim: Publishing is very exciting. Ebooks impact paper sales.
Jim talked about Tor’s model of sharing ebooks.
Mentioned that where publishing is taking more of a beating is mass market paper back distribution

Sarah: She’s a digital book seller. From a global perspective, she is finding that ebooks are helping borders to fall. they are also opening doors and opportunity.

Jesi: She was once published by a small press, and now self-publishes. She did not have a good experience with her small press, but she learned a lot. For her second book, she decided to do it herself.
One of the things that helps Jesi is that she has an MBA in marketing.
Distribution is her biggest hang up.
If you are going into self-publishing, go in with your eyes open. It’s a lot of work.

There are pros and cons to every approach.
The panel shared a handout of the pros and cons to 5 entry points

Print books aren’t dead.
There is a fragmentation of the industry.
Specialization and niche markets (ie Vinyl is making a comeback!)

Pricing models are a mess right now.

One of the benefits and curses of the ebook is that there is access to more literature.
It’s tough to get to the good stuff and find the good stuff.
Self publishing needs quality control.

Distribution is the largest problem for an Indie Publisher.

You can do what a major publisher does, but you have to spend A LOT of time and money doing it.

Self publishers need a business plan.
The self publishing gold rush is over.

As with traditional publishing, the cream rises to the top.

An agent helps with the business plan if you go a more traditional route.
Questions of consulting a subject matter expert versus the agent taking their cut.

How much control does an author have?
In traditional publishing, little control.
Frenkel disagrees with this. Author has last words on edit.
But he agrees. No control on cover.

In epublishing, you need to be both passionate and dispassionate about your product.
Be willing to listen to others.
You get to do everything.

How do you establish prices?
Traditional looks what competition is doing.
Indie: Perception from audience about value of book based on price.

Some discussion about reselling ebooks as used ebooks
Some discussion about library ebooks.

Traditional publishing has marketing support for author. First books are often supported. There is enthusiasm .

Have you thought about your author platform? Social media plan?
Obscurity s your enemy.
Some authors do less social media and they do suffer.

The indie author has own website. There’s an ecommerce store front. Facebook is a given, as is soliciting Amazon reviews.

A discussion on the effectiveness of various social media.

Panelists: Mary Robinette Kowal (moderator), Vylar Kaftan, Jo Walton, Amy Butler Greenfield, Delia Sherman

Vylar’s Recap from Last Year
Where do you go to get sources for historical fantasy?
How do you find sources?
How do you deal with problematic perspectives on race and gender?
When do you stop researching and start writing?

Amy stays with facts when she writes non-fiction.
In fiction, she researches deeply. She also looks at the literature and primary materials of the period.
Once she hears voices, she limits research.
If her manuscript stops cold, she will return to research.
She fills in small gaps as she goes.

Delia writes and researches at the same time.
She reads social history, novels, and memoirs.
Delia says there is never a point where you stop researching.

Vylar says she researches fifty percent first. Then she drafts.
When she discovers what she doesn’t know, she’ll research minimally throughout (10 percent).
Researches forty percent at the end.

Jo writes in a place she’s already familiar with, so she never leaves blanks as she goes.
She usually has already been reading general research for what she’s writing.

Mary researches ahead of time. She does broad research for what she’s writing. for about a month. She writes quickly and fills in details later. She will stop when she hits plot or character trouble.

Continue reading “Wiscon: It’s Actually Quite Hard to Rip a Bodice Part 2”

At Wiscon, I took in a few readings. Let’s talk about them.

Oxford Comma Bonfire: The readers were Vylar Kaftan, Nancy Hightower, Michael Underwood and LaShawn Wanak. Vylar read an upcoming story from the Mayhem and Glitter anthology. Nancy read a short about an artist creating a pathological disease from his work, LaShawn read an amazing piece about the divine driving those who had seen angels mad, and Michael read a piece from his new novel Celebromancy. I enjoyed all the readings, and Michael was such a performer that he has agreed to give me an interview about his technique.

Monsters, Magic, Mayhem, and Mothers: Also New York: Christopher Barzak, Kristin Livdahl, and M. Rickhart. Lots of good stories here as well. It’s no secret that I’m a Barzak fan, and his story, also coming in Glitter and Mayhem was a riff on the twelve dancing princesses. I am finding that my memory fails me about the other two stories, which is inexcusable, but is testimony more to my recent schedule than there quality.

Compass Reading: Catherine Schaff-Stump, Alex Jennings, David Engelstad, and Anna LaForge. No point in talking about my own reading, but my three partners in crime read some interesting things. David and Anna both presented a very different kind of high fantasy each, and Alex read from Peaches! his high concept YA that I’m on the look out for as soon as it comes out.

***

There were a lot of other excellent readings that I’d wish I’d gotten to. It’s really one of the strengths of the convention.

Around my topsy turvy day yesterday, I did have time to write about three Tamago entries, but between the lines, my husband stopped by and surprised me with roses, and a trip out to our favorite pizza place for lunch. We had a Zookie, which is a cookie sundae, for my birthday, and I figured, you know, I might only have 52 more years, so I should sneak that in. ;P

It was great. I think I like the Granite City Cookie a bit more, because of the toffee chewiness with the chocolate, but they really are two different critters. Accepting the weight gain, I moved on.

Until today, when, between a meeting about college student support reform (take that, noun phrases!) and another one, the last Vietnam meeting with students before we go, my boss Allison thought that since I had a birthday yesterday, and Lorna, who is substituting for Sharon this week, has one today, that we should have little mini-cakes from the New Pioneer Co-op, known for particularly delicious cakes. There was a raspberry cheesecake and a lemon chiffon raspberry cake, both of which were delicately decorated and presented, and which I didn’t feel I could say no to. So, I took one for the team there. Mmmm, but not helping. Well, I’ll accept that weight gain and move on too. Let’s think of the current me as Rubenesque.

Bryon and I are going out for Italian tonight. It was my plan to have creme brulee, but I think I’ll just stick to the seafood spaghetti. I’m actually kind of full.

Looking forward to two weeks of hard labor, small portions, and healthy food in Singapore and Vietnam, if for no other reason than the last two days.

***

So, I have spent most of my day tracking down a few last Vietnam facts, like time differences, phone numbers for the hotels we’d be staying at and so on. However, the coolest thing that happened to me today? Behold the awesome power of the Internet.

Below, read about Hulk Hercules in Russia. I didn’t even know Hulk Hercules was in Russia!

Continue reading “Topsy Turvy Days and Surprise from Russia”

I’ve got just enough time at the end of my day to tell you, yes you, about Viable Paradise.

First of all, you must understand that Viable Paradise is when I understood that the world took my writing seriously. Secondly, it’s when I met an awesome group of people who came together during the week in a way that would cement life time bonds. Thirdly, it was my only chance ever to see glow in the dark jellyfish.

Listen, I plugged Taos Toolbox, and that was great, but first, before you climb the mountain, you need to ride the ferry. Go to Martha’s Vineyard and find out that there are people who think you can tell a story.

Trust me. You’ll be mates with the students on twitter forever. Also, you’ll get to witness the ongoing battle between two of the volunteers who support you on sugar versus health food. These people not only feed you, they’ve been you, man!

So, is this for you?
Go look and see.