Via Galleycat, today we learn that bestselling author Lionel Shriver doubts the value of an MFA degree, even thought she has one herself (and from Columbia, to boot):

I can’t say that I regret it exactly…  But I sometimes feel in retrospect that I should have gotten a proper education in something like history, something substantive.  If I’m going to be honest, what I really needed in my early 20s was an audience; I wasn’t developed enough as a writer to be publishing.  So I couldn’t achieve that audience through getting short stories in The New Yorker…

So it is not a dumb thing for me to do.  And therefore I can’t really tell other people who were in a similar situation and have a similar need to have people read their work that they shouldn’t do it.  But it does have a kind of indulgent, middle-class gestalt.  The grim truth is that most people who get MFAs will not go on to be professional writers and therefore when I’ve been on the other side of it and occasionally taught creative writing, I felt a little bit guilty because so many of the people that you should be encouraging, because there’s no point to it if you’re not encouraging, are not going to make it.

This is an interesting perspective to me on a couple of grounds. The obvious one is that I share Ms. Shriver’s ambivalence about writing MFAs; they’re not necessary to be a published writer or author, and they take up time that a budding writer could be using  gathering experience in other aspects of the world outside of safely cloistered academia. For myself, in my last year of college, I never considered going on from there into an MFA program; I wanted to get out there and get an actual writing job, because a) the thought of someone paying me to write had its appeal, b) if I went into an MFA program I’d still have to get a job anyway, so why not just get a job and keep the money for myself.

But then, I’ve also always had a wide blue-collar streak to my writing ethos — writing is work and a job, not (just) an art and a calling — which was undoubtedly fueled by the fact that so many of my early writing idols were newspapermen and/or science fiction writers, many if not most of whom simply got out there and wrote for a living, rather than taking the time to take a degree in it. Anyone who knows me knows I take very nearly as much pride in the fact I earn a living writing as I do in the works I write, and that I don’t scorn the writer whose work pays for the roof over her head or the food on her table, even if the writing itself will never win a literary award. Given this, it’s not entirely surprising I find an MFA optional at best and a somewhat frivolous expenditure of time and money at worst (especially if, like Shriver, all you really want is an audience). Naturally, your mileage may vary on this opinion.

So there’s perhaps some measure of irony — if not to say bald contradiction — for me to note that even though I share Shriver’s ambivalence on the value of a writing MFA, I disagree with her ambivalence (or more accurately, guilt) about the value of teaching writing to people even if the majority of the people you teach don’t go on to be professional writers. Indeed, I think her feeling guilty about it is a little silly.

Why? Because that’s not her problem. Her problem is to teach well; everything else is on the student and up to forces mostly beyond the control of either of them. Shriner is almost certainly correct that most people in MFA programs will not become professional writers. Nor will most people who go to writing workshops, or take undergraduate Creative Writing degrees, or show up at the Learning Annex for a six-hour crash course, or whatever. They might not become pro writers because they’re not good enough. They might not because there’s a recession going on. They might not because the particular sort of thing they like to write is obscure and has no commercial market. They might not because they decide there’s something else they want to do more. They might not because they never intended to, they just wanted to learn for their own pleasure (it happens). They might not because on the way home from class, they fall down a manhole and are eaten by the CHUDs. Lots of things could occur that could keep these prospective writers from going pro.

And none of it is anything Shriner (or anyone who teaches, writing or otherwise) has to worry their head about. Their gig is handing out tools; what the students do with the tools is up to them. And the tools in themselves have value – that is to say there’s a value to learning that extends beyond the rather limited gauge of what that learning will do for you in a direct commercial fashion. You know, I have a degree in philosophy: Should my teachers feel even a little bit guilty that I am not a professional philosopher? I don’t suspect they do feel guilty, and if they do they shouldn’t. The degree has been useful to me in other ways.

So, again, the interesting conundrum of someone offering genuine value by teaching in a program of debatable value for the student. But perhaps not so much a conundrum if you remember these are two different things, and if you grant that the student is capable of making an informed choice about the program and what they’re really getting out of it at the end of the day. That makes things a lot simpler, it does. And a lot less guilt inducing.

It is:

Hey, because of travel and other non-stare-at-teh-Intarweebs commitments, my posting schedule here for the next couple of weeks is likely to be light and/or the postings will be short. I know! Real life! How dare it intrude on your Web meanderings! But that’s just how it is sometimes, man. You just have to find the inner fortitude to deal with it. I believe in you.

If you are in or around the area of Toronto, this is a reminder that I will be amongst you on Friday, because I am doing an appearance at the Merril Collection of the Toronto Public Library. More specifically, I will be appearing at 7:00 P.M. in the Merril Collection reading room, 3rd floor, 239 College Street, Lillian Smith Branch of the Toronto Public Library.

And what will I be doing when I appear? Oh, you know. Some singing, some dancing, and hosting special guest appearances by M*A*S*H’s Gary Burghoff, Shields and Yarnell, and, of course, Charo. Between us we will re-enact the Star Wars Christmas Special in its entirety! Or, in the event of cancellation by my special guests, I suppose I’ll maybe I’ll do my usual thing of standing up there and blathering on until people tell me to shut up and just sign their books, which is why people came out in the first place. Either way it should be fun.

So come on out and see me. Attendance is free but seats will fill up fast, so get there early. Remember that the first three rows of seats will get wet! So bring a tarp (note: you will not need to bring a tarp (note: he’s lying, you totally will (note: shut up, man, I’m not Gallagher (note: No, but you, like, spit a lot when you talk (note: I do not (note: he totally does (note: I will now strangle you (note: *choke*))))))))

See you there.

On account it’s my lovely wife’s birthday weekend, and guess what? I’m going to spend time with her. See you Monday.

Well, I’m certainly dragging my ass around; the Friday Afternoon Ennui hit about 10 am and I’ve been useless ever since. So here are a couple of links for you to check out.

Plastic Axe: My friend and former Official PlayStation Magazine editor Joe Rybicki has started this blog focused on what’s hot and happening with music games like Rock Band and Guitar Hero, keeping you up to date on the latest editions and downloadable content while making it fun to read. And it is fun to read — I read it every day and I haven’t bought a music game since Dance Dance Revolution. So go over there right this very instant and check it out.

The Weekend Assignment: Those of you who remember my tenure at AOL Journals will recall that every week I gave people a writing assignment to do over the weekend, called (fittingly enough!) The Weekend Assignment. When I left AOL Journals, Karen Funk Blocher took up the task, and now she and fellow former AOLer Carly are keeping it alive at its own dedicated blog. If you’re looking for a little weekend inspiration when it comes to blogging, this is the place to go.

There, that should keep you busy for now. I know how you like being busy.

Here you go.

Of course, it’s just like a Socialist to say Obama’s not a Socialist! They’re covering for him! Like Socialists do.

Arguably the single worst child’s birthday party idea in the history of man.

Warning: Not Safe For Coulrophobics. Or pretty much anyone else. But especially them.

Oh, Google it, people. On the other hand, if you are Coulrophobic, you probably already know what it means. All too well.

(Hat tip: Heather McLane)

First, for context, this press release, from Orbit (US), the science fiction arm of publisher Hachette:

Orbit, the Science Fiction and Fantasy imprint of Hachette Book Group, announces a digital short fiction publishing program launching later this year.

Orbit (US) has offered to publish digital editions of all original short fiction written by its authors. The digital editions will be distributed widely through major retail channels, for reading on a variety of devices. Authors will be paid a royalty for each story sold, rather than the flat fee more common in the short story market.

If I were an Orbit author, or were otherwise approached about or interested in participating, here are the questions I would want answered before I would consider the program:

1. Will there be an advance on the proposed royalty, equivalent to at least the minimum professional rate required by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (five cents a word), or will the proposed royalty be the only compensation offered?

2. What is the royalty? How does this royalty compare to what the author could receive if he or she worked directly with the major electronic text retailers to release the work, as is possible?

3. When will this royalty be paid? Will it be accessible on demand, or on the customary schedule of royalty disbursement for publishers (i.e., semiannually or annually, depending on contract), or on some other schedule?

4. Aside from publication, what other services will Orbit/Hachette offer to the author? Will the author’s work be edited and copy-edited by Orbit/Hachette prior to publication, or will the onus be on the author to provide such services? Would Orbit/Hachette exercise editorial judgment and refuse to publish work it found to be unsuitable and/or unprofessional?

5. Will these short stories be offered with DRM attached to them? If so, and if the author chooses, may the story be distributed without DRM?

6. What rights/holdbacks will Orbit/Hachette require of the author? Will this be a non-exclusive publication or will the author be enjoined from finding alternate and additional publication for some term of time? If so, what length of time would that be?

7. Will participation in this program be expected of Orbit authors? Will Orbit/Hachette in any way penalize authors who do not participate?

8. What sort of promotional program will Orbit/Hachette offer for this effort? Will it be ongoing or only an early push?

There are the questions which come up off the top of my head when I think about this particular press release; I’m sure if I thought about it longer there would be others as well.

As I don’t know the answers to any of these questions, I’ll refrain from saying anything about this particular proposed program until I do. However, in a very general sense I can say that proposing writers offer up work uncompensated save for rosy promises of back-end glory is something one shouldn’t tolerate in poorly-funded start-ups done in apartment living rooms. If such a thing were proposed from, say, an arm of the second-largest publisher on the planet, itself an arm of a huge multinational corporation with roughly ten billion dollars in revenue and $180 million in profit in 2009, it should be tolerated even less.

I’d also say, in a very general sense, that most writers are in a position of needing to be paid for their work sooner than later, because most writers don’t make a whole lot of money doing what they do. Today is Tax Day here in the U.S. and even as you read this I suspect a fair number of writers are looking at the checks they have to write to Uncle Sam (not to mention state and local authorities) and wishing they had maybe a little more to get through the rest of the month. I don’t suspect any of them at the moment would be thrilled at the idea of taking no money now for an uncertain amount of money at some unspecified point in the future, were such a thing proposed to them regarding their work.

Basically, I’m hoping that Orbit thought this idea through, and that the program will offer immediate benefits for writers, making them happy and paid, sooner than later. I look forward to hearing more about it, and hopefully having those above questions answered. Soon.

Update, 11:07 am: Tim Holman, Publisher of Orbit, responds in comments.

Update, 2:00 pm: Mr. Holman returns in comments with additional details about the program. One significant point: It’s likely to be royalty-only payment.

Over at AMC’s FilmCritic.com site, I’ve put up a list of directors who made great science fiction films — without being known in the industry as “science fiction directors.” Who is in this rare breed? Some bigger names than you might think. Take a look, and if you have any thoughts on the column — or any directors to add — drop them in the comments there.

Which is not the title of my upcoming novel featuring space travel and cooking. It’s me musing on this article in the New York Times, about why a significant number of people dislike the taste of cilantro, associating it with the taste of soap or something worse. This makes me sad for those people, because I really like the taste of cilantro. But then, most of the time that I consume cilantro it’s in my wife’s salsa, which is excellent all around, or it’s in Thai food, which is a cuisine I am insensibly in love with, so I’m eating it with other things I really like. Maybe if everyone who hates cilantro would just have some of my wife’s salsa, this gap could be closed.

Anyway, this is me wondering about your position on cilantro. Do you love it? Hate it? Are studiously indifferent about it? Have no idea what it is because it’s used on anything real Americans eat? Satisfy my culinary curiosity, if you would.

You folks found out about Fuzzy Nation a week ago and it was sold to a publisher pretty rapidly after that, so from an outside point of view it looks like things went pretty quickly. But behind the scenes this process took months and months to happen, and it simply would not have gotten done had not my fiction agent, Ethan Ellenberg, made the effort to make it happen.

I very literally sprung Nation on Ethan unawares, during a period in which I was supposed to be working on something else — there was a phone call that went something like this: “Hey, you know how I said I was writing something new? Well, it’s kind of a reboot of someone else’s book and most of the series is under copyright and I haven’t actually gotten permission to do it and it’s possible some fans will burn me for blasphemy, what do you think?” — and he would have been fully within his rights to be exasperated with me for wasting my time (and his). But he did the opposite: He read it, was enthusiastic about it, and then went to work on it, contacting the right people and methodically unraveling the issues of rights and licenses. It was a lot of work, in point of fact, and if it had been left to me it wouldn’t have gotten done.

It’s a shibboleth of the writing trade that you need to get an agent, but sometimes from the outside of the trade it’s not clear what advantages an agent provides. The Fuzzy Nation process to me exemplifies the advantages a good agent brings to the table: getting behind a client’s work, knowing the right people to talk to about it, having the persistence to get a deal done, strategizing next steps, bringing the work to the right publisher and getting the right deal for the client. I had always been impressed with Ethan’s work on my behalf before this deal, but this deal made me realize I was genuinely lucky to have him as my agent.

I’ve already thanked Ethan privately for his work on Fuzzy Nation, but I think it’s not out of line to let you all know about it too. I’ve mentioned before that for as solitary as writers are supposed to be in their work, if we want to be published we end up depending on the competence of a lot of other people. This is another example of that fact.

Well, that’s sorted, then: This is your official notice that Fuzzy Nation has been sold to Tor Books, which tentatively will publish the novel in about a year, more or less, give or take. I’m deeply pleased to have the book find a home with Tor, which has published all my novel-length fiction to date, and which is filled with excellent people who have been a delight to work with. I’m very happy to be working with them again.

Yes, I know: A year is a long time to wait. Just remember that between now and then Tor will also be releasing its version of METAtropolis, so if you hadn’t had a chance to catch up with that Hugo-nominated anthology featuring me, Elizabeth Bear, Tobias Buckell, Jay Lake and Karl Schroeder, you’re in for some good reading there. Beyond that I can assure that between now and the release of Fuzzy Nation, I have at least a couple of surprises in store for you. No, I won’t tell you what they are. That’s why they’re called “surprises.” But suffice to say I plan on giving you things to peruse. For your pleasure. ‘Cause I love you, man. Yes I do.

Now, someone go off and update my Wikipedia page, would you? Thanks.

Here you go.

Bradford pears. Not particularly hardy. But pretty right about now.

Done yours yet?

Ours were done in March (yay! Accountant!) and we owed (boo! Taxes!) but we figured we might so we had budgeted for it (yay! Foresight!) and for the quarterly estimated payment which we also had to send in (boo! Taxes!).

I’m not one who thinks taxes are inherently evil or that I am egregiously overtaxed — they’re not and I’m not — but when I look at how much we send off on a year-to-year basis I understand how others feel those things. Because, damn. It’s a non-trivial sum. But then, I do like my roads and public schools and libraries and fighter jets. So there it is.

Anyway, how are yours coming along?

I’ve been not at all surprised to see a wide range of reaction to the announcement of Fuzzy Nation, both here and elsewhere online, and ranging from squeeful enthusiasm to “WTF?”-level confusion and irritation. When you decide to write another version of a work that’s firmly secured in the science fiction literary canon, you should be ready for the response to be all over the board. This is one of the reasons I took the rather substantial amount of time required to get the sign-off of the right holders of the Fuzzy books still under copyright; I wanted to be sure that on that fundamental level, I wasn’t seen as an interloper.

Of course, fans are rights holders in a different way, and will have their individual positions on the matter, as they should, and do. I expect this wide range of opinion on the value/wisdom of Fuzzy Nation will continue well past the point of the book’s publication. I think this is good thing, personally, and as the writer of Nation I think what I’ve written is in itself good enough to handle intense fan scrutiny, positive and negative both.

One thing I should make clear, however, is what Fuzzy Nation is not. It is not a “respectful” retelling of the Fuzzy tale, for values of “respectful” meaning “overly cautious.” Nation retains some characters, elements and the overall plot of Piper’s book, but after that, things change, and sometimes they’ve changed quite a lot. Which is as I think it should be; there’s already one Little Fuzzy out there, and there’s no point going over it note for note. There have to be variations of the theme, and Nation needs to find (and I think, does find) the balance between being evocative of the original while bringing new things to the telling. It’s an interesting challenge, from a writing point of view.

Likewise, Fuzzy Nation is not my attempt to channel H. Beam Piper; that would be stupid of me. I think Piper and I share some points of style, in no small part due to the fact that I admire how he writes and as a young writer held up his writing as a guidepost for how I’d want my own style to be. But any similarities in our style are balanced by our overall differences as people and writers, and the fact that 2010 and 1962 are, shall we say, rather different years in all sorts of ways. I could have tried to write like Piper, but that would be a parlor trick, not one I’d be interested in sustaining over the course of a novel, nor one I think anyone would have been interested in reading.

So if these are things Fuzzy Nation are not, then what is Fuzzy Nation? Simply put: My version of a story I love, done as my own talents allow. Whether it’s an awesome cover version or simply literary karaoke will be for others to decide. But this is a story that bears more than one telling, and I’m happy with the version I’ve told. I can’t wait for you to read it.