Whatever

Workshop Fracas

Posted on July 26, 2003    Posted by John Scalzi

This is interesting to me: Gene Wolfe, the noted fantasy writer, was the author-in-residence at the Odyssey Fantasy Writers Workshop earlier this month. As Wolfe began his critiques, some of the members of the workshop were apparently taken aback at his style and his bluntness; after a few days of this, one of the workshop members submitted a letter to Wolfe complaining about his style. Wolfe’s response to the letter was to pack up and leave. Wolfe tells his side of the story here; workshop member Sarah Totten provides her point of view here, and here’s another perspective, from workshop member Natalia Lincoln.

I should note that coloring this commentary is my personal aversion to the workshop concept, which has more to do with my own personality than it does the relative value of sitting around talking about your writing with other writers. For some people it works. On my end — and this is my raging egotism here — I’d rather spend my time putting my work in front of people who are going to pay me for my work, than pay to have people read it. We can talk about the value of workshops in becoming a better writer, whatever that means, but being that I write for a living, I’m more interested in becoming a commercial writer, and unfortunately commentary on my writing from a bunch of other unpublished writers is of little utility in that regard. Being a better writer is something of a moot point, since if you’re not a commercial writer to some extent, very few people will know whether your writing is any good or not.

(This snotty attitude toward writing is not new by any stretch of the imagination; I believe I’ve mentioned before that while I was in college, I refused to participate in “roundtable” paper criticisms with other students on the grounds that they, as students, weren’t qualified to critique my papers, and I, for my part, wasn’t going to do the TA’s job for him unless I got paid, too. My TA got back at me by giving every paper I wrote a C+, but the joke was on him in that I didn’t care about my grades, and I grew up to become a professional writer. Ha! Ha, I say!)

But of course it works the other way, too — were I an unpublished writer, any comments I could give other writers would be of questionable utility, since my experience with being published would be minimal. I could offer my thoughts as a reader, but then, so could any literate person. So, to get back to the workshop thing, I don’t see what the value is in paying a couple grand to have a bunch of readers read my work. I could get that done for free (look what you’re doing right now).

Now, at this point in my life, I’d be willing to participate in a workshop environment because I’m on the other end of the stick — I’ve been a professional writer for 15 years, I’ve published (or will have published) a number of books, and I’ve also been a commercial editor, charged with buying and then editing submissions from writers. In other words, I now have a level of experience that means that when I make a comment or suggestion regarding the writer’s work, it would have some practical, real world value. I wouldn’t feel like a total ass telling an aspiring writer what I thought were the pluses and minuses of the work. This is professional pride in action: I’ve been around the block a few times now. I know whereof I speak. Mostly.

So, in short: Workshops — eh. I’d go for the pros and their comments. Everything else is group-huggy self-affirmation.

Alas for the people at the Odyssey Workshop, many of them seem to have gone for the group-huggy self-affirmation rather than the useful aspect of having their work read and commented upon by a professional — and to have the exposure to how a professional writer approaches the work, and how the professional world approaches writing as well. One of the most interesting and telling comments came from Ms. Totter, who wrote in her journal about Odyssey, after first being exposed to Wolfe and his critical style: “Since when did writing become a competitive sport? We’re supposed to be fostering camaraderie here, not cutthroat one-upmanship.”

Anyone who believes professional writing is not a competitive sport needs to take a field trip to any of the major publishing houses and take a long loving look at the slush pile. Professional writing is intensely competitive. I’ll trot out my favorite personal example here: When I was editing that humor area on America Online lo those many years ago, I had 20 open spaces a month to fill with submissions. I got, on average, 1000 submissions a month. This means that for every piece I accepted, I rejected 49, which is (if my spotty math holds up) a 98% rejection rate. And when you consider that after the first couple of months, more than half of my available slots went to people I worked with before and knew could provide me quality material, the real world rejection rate for someone sending me something blind was 99+%. It was substantially easier to get into Harvard than to place work with me.

In fact, the sports analogy is an interestingly sound one when it comes to publishing (especially book publishing). Each major publisher is like a major league baseball team, which has a certain number of slots to fill on its playing card every year and a certain amount of money to spend to fill those slots. The all-stars are few and get the most money, and the rest of the holes are filled with utility players just happy to be in the game instead of having to lift appliances for a living (which one am I? Are you kidding? I know what I got for an advance. Right now, I’m a utility infielder all the way. I just hope I can help the team, and God willing, everything will work out).

Every year, some potentially exciting new players get picked up, some underperforming old players get dropped. Some have Hall of Fame careers. Some go back to their day jobs and are glad they at least got into The Show. Writing is a business as well as everything else it is, and if you’re going to go pro, you have to perform. Someone is ready to take your place in the publisher’s lineup if you don’t. Competition is built in. Maybe it’s not fair, but the real world isn’t like t-ball, where everybody gets to bat.

As for camaraderie, I think it’s a great idea: I know other writers, I like other writers. I like seeing other writers I know succeed. But ultimately it’s not what professional writing’s about, any more than great dugout camaraderie is the point of a professional baseball team. The Detroit Tigers could very well have the most self-affirming dugout in the major leagues, but the fans would probably rather the players hated each other’s guts and won 100 games. A writer’s audience cares about what’s on the page; the professional writer’s job is to give the readers a reason to care (and hopefully to care with their wallets and charge cards). No amount of group hugging will matter if your writing doesn’t sell itself.

Ms. Lincoln, in describing her reaction to Mr. Wolfe’s critique wrote: “Wolfe’s critique didn’t give me anything the rest of the class couldn’t deliver, only more tactfully.” Ms. Lincoln, with no disrespect to her follow workshoppers, is probably wrong on this: Mr. Wolfe has published a couple dozen novels across four decades, as well as innumerable short stories over a longer span of time, many of which have been nominated for (and on several occasion have won) the various top SF/F awards. This means he has an excellent combination of overall writing skill and commercial savvy; no one gets continuously published over four decades if he doesn’t know what he’s doing in both departments.

Writing skill doesn’t necessarily imply teaching skill, however. But in this case Mr. Wolfe has taken part in workshops at Clarions East and West and at Florida Atlantic University, and taught creative writing at Columbia University. So all the way around, Wolfe has the personal and professional experience to provide useful criticism, in a way that the others in the workshop almost certainly could not (otherwise they wouldn’t be there).

Wolfe’s crime, as far as I can see, was to provide criticism in a manner not to the liking of the workshop members. And this is where I, both as a professional writer and as a professional critic, have to ask: So? Is it the instructor’s job to be liked, or is it his job to provide useful information? When I was in high school, I remember telling one of my teachers one day that I thought his classes would go more successfully if he tried connecting with the students in a way that was more on their level.

He tried it the next day, and whether he was intentionally mocking me or merely making a sincere attempt, I couldn’t say. But I can say it was probably the most deeply embarrassing experience I had as a student, in that I suggested something that was so obviously ill-suited to the man. It was also the first time I realized that teachers who don’t teach us the way we think we want to be taught aren’t always bad teachers. Maybe the way they teach in itself is a lesson. I can’t say that I became a better student in that particular class, but I do know I paid more attention to how my teacher tried to teach me.

And maybe that’s what Wolfe was doing, too. Wolfe’s critical style was by all accounts confrontational, comparative and deeply subjective, to which I say: Welcome to criticism. Constructive criticism doesn’t have to be “nice”; it can be abrupt and offensive. Criticism can shock you out of your complacency and remind you that the world is not in fact a cozy circle of workshop buddies. I’m not Wolfe, so I can’t say what he was thinking, but I do know that the real world of writing is confrontational (unless you think rejection is a passive act), comparative (in that editors always have something else in the pile to go with instead of your piece) and deeply subjective (editors like some things more than others).

This may have been these workshop writers’ first exposure to this point of view, but if they intend to be professional writers it won’t be their last, guaranteed. It could be that Wolfe wanted them to get an idea of what they’d be getting into for the next few decades of their lives. Those who couldn’t hack Wolfe getting into their faces about their writing might want to rethink their plans. In which case they might want to thank Wolfe for helping them bail out early.

Had I been in Wolfe’s shoes, I would not have quit. I would have gone into that classroom and told them (those who would listen) that if they thought he was being rough, that they should just wait until their first batch of book reviews rolled in. The professional writing life is not for people who need to be affirmed. It’s 98% rejection on a good day.

Writers also need to learn to stand their ground in the face of withering criticism. If your response to being slagged is to run away and write whiny letters about how your critic was unfair, man, are you ever in the wrong line of work. If you believe in your work, you fire back and you give as good as you get. You take your fight to your critic and make him or her back up the criticism. When your critics have a point, you learn and you move on. But when you think you’re right, you argue it, tooth and nail, and you win or die trying.

Maybe Wolfe was trying to see if anyone in his group of writers would fight back. In her reportage, Ms. Lincoln prides herself on not losing her cool in the face of a barrage of criticism. I think she got it all wrong — I think she should have blasted back and made Wolfe explain his points. For all his experience, in the end he’s just a man, not a burning bush. His word is not law. For all his experience, he could be full of crap. I can’t speak for Wolfe, quite obviously, but if I unleashed a barrage of criticism and the response was a prissy, passive-aggressive letter of complaint, I could see how leaving might appear to be a viable option as well. I wouldn’t leave — but I could see thinking about it.

Wolfe wrote: “Whatever rumor may say, the fault was entirely mine. It was my job to communicate with the students. I tried to, but I failed.” He is bearing too much of the burden on his shoulders. Like my high school teacher, he taught his material in a way he knew worked, not in a way that was comfortable for his students. Students are not passive vessels; they have to meet their teachers halfway. It doesn’t sound like these students made much of an effort. If this is their Odyssey, they’re stuck eating lotuses, preferring a pleasant fiction to the harder road of writing — and defending their writing — in the real world.

Update: Ms. Lincoln posts a followup here.

Update 2: Harlan Ellison, among others, offers commentary in Locus Online’s Letters Page.

Update 3: Ellison again, on his own site, getting the full story from the Odyssey coordinator. You’ll need to scroll down to the entry dated “Saturday, July 26 2003 15:43:5.” The fracas seems to be primarily the work of one person, presuming to speak for the entire class, when in fact he spoke only for himself. The class has also likewise since written a letter of apology to Wolfe, which was nice of them. Ellison also has some comments about the Workshop format as it exists today, which I think are consonant to what I’ve written above (although Ellison, of course, allows himself to be more pungent).

Another Review of “Universe”

Posted on July 24, 2003    Posted by John Scalzi

Another positive review of The Rough Guide to the Universe, this one from New Scientist, a British science magazine. It’s always nice when people whose job it is to know about this stuff say you’re doing a good job. Here’s the entire review, and if you don’t want to click through, allow me to excerpt:

“Once again, Rough Guides have successfully turned their hand to an alternative project… those stepping out with their first cosmos-bound Inter-rail pass will find what to look for and where to find it. This has always been the Rough Guide ethos, and it will serve budding star travellers as well as it did me on my first visit to the Cyclades.”

Yay, I say.

Fight Music

Posted on July 24, 2003    Posted by John Scalzi      2 Comments

It’s been awhile since I inflicted some of my music on you all, so here you go (you’ll need a Real Audio player to listen to it, if you don’t already have one on your computer). It’s very loud and and is best described as music to have a bullet-time fight by. Enjoy.

Difficult

Posted on July 23, 2003    Posted by John Scalzi      7 Comments

I’d like to leave you all with the impression that my child is so pleasantly spirited that we never ever have to suppress the urge to wring her adorable little neck, but alas, I cannot. Our child, like every four-year-old you’ll ever meet, is perfectly capable of being a raging butthead when it suits her to be so. The picture to the right is one of those moments, in which Athena is doing her level best to press her mother’s buttons and is in fact doing a pretty good job of it.

I’d like to say that she doesn’t press my button with equal facility, but aside from being a lie, it would get me in trouble with Krissy because it would be insinuating that I’m a more together parent than she is. And then I’d get the same look that she’s currently giving Athena. That’s a scary look and unlike Athena (who as you can see is practicing her own glare), I have enough experience with that look to want to run and hide. It’s not that I’m scared of my wife. I just know that she has the potential to make me scared of her.

The funny thing about our difficult child is that she is kind of amusing, as long as she’s not being specifically difficult towards you. Truth be told, I really don’t know why Krissy didn’t punch me out as I was taking this picture, since she was trying to make a serious point to Athena about something and here I was giggling as I snapped pictures of them going at it with my digital camera. But on the other hand, there have been times when I’ve been doing the same thing as Krissy is trying to do here and been aware of Krissy standing behind Athena’s shoulder trying hard not to bust up. So we’re sort of even on these things.

Objectively speaking, Athena’s difficulty is not disturbingly frequent nor terribly high. She’s incredibly stubborn and often moody, but she doesn’t break things, or hurl objects, or stab stuffed animals or anything of that nature. It’s not to say that when she’s difficult, she’s not difficult, merely not unhinged. She’s smart enough to know that there are some boundaries that are not to be crossed without repercussion, although of course she’ll tromp right over them, just to dare us to do something. Yeah, we’ll have fun when she’s a teenager. At least our personal property will stay in the correct number of pieces. And she gives every indication of getting over stuff quickly. There are worse ways for the kid to be.

BuyMusic.com — a Review

Posted on July 22, 2003    Posted by John Scalzi      13 Comments

So, being that I’m not a member of the Mac tribe, and am unlikely to become so anytime soon, I was thrilled that Buy.com has started BuyMusic.com today. It’s an iTunes-like service which features something on the order of 300,000 downloadable songs, all available for those of us of the Windows persuasion — indeed, since the files are all in the Windows Media format, it’s not available to Mac users at all (they already have iTunes, so they’re probably not crying). You can download individual tracks for prices ranging from 79 cents to 99 cents, and albums starting at $7.99, although newer albums get into the $12.99 range and above, which is probably indicative of the music companies’ desire for you to go out and actually buy the disc. Like iTunes, you don’t need to subscribe — you can buy stuff a la carte. So I did.

My initial impressions are that the service is adequate-to-good with a lot of space to improve. To begin with, I found the restrictions on the site kind of annoying for me specifically: BuyMusic.com can only be accessed with Microsoft’s IE browser. Since my default browser is Mozilla’s Firebird, this is something of a hassle, but this is probably not an issue for the 96% of you who use IE as your default browser.

My second problem is that for some reason BuyMusic.com is under the impression that my IP address is from out of the country, which it is not, unless Ohio seceded from the rest of the US overnight. I suspect this has something to do with my satellite modem. But as BuyMusic.com does not allow people from outside the US and Canada to download music, the site wouldn’t let me buy anything initially. My workaround for this was to connect with my dial-up AOL connection through the purchasing process, thereby providing the site with a onshore IP address, and then switch off AOL when I came to the download page in order to use the broadband connection I have through the satellite. It’s pointless and stupid, but isn’t that just life for you. I’d be interested to know if any other satellite and/or broadband users have the same problem.

BuyMusic.com’s music selection is interestingly spotty, although that’s not entirely unexpected at this point. The selections are largely confined to major labels for now, and many of the major artists aren’t represented, or if they are, it’s just some of their work. U2, for example, is limited to their last full album (All That You Can’t Leave Behind) and their “Greatest Hits” collections; there are no tracks from the Beatles or the Stones. Obscure bands are likewise somewhat randomly represented: Spandau Ballet and Haircut 100, for example, get only a track of an 80s compilation, whereas the equally one-hiterrific When in Rome has an entire album for download. At this point it’s hit and miss as to what you’ll find.

Rather more of a drawback is that some albums advertised for sale either aren’t downloadable as full albums (only selected tracks available for download) or aren’t downloadable at all. I purchased Depeche Mode’s 81-85 singles collection for download and wasn’t provided any download page at all. This is a real big issue, obviously; nothing’s going to irritate customers more than paying for an album that they then can’t download (I sent a note to the help desk, which theoretically at least will deal with the issue within one working day. We’ll see).

Each .wma file is encoded at 128Kbps, which presumably provides CD equivalent quality music, although I found the music replication to be variable, even within albums themselves. For example, Barenaked Ladies’ “The Old Apartment” for their greatest hits package sounds just peachy, but “Pinch Me,” from the same album, sounds statically sibilant in that way that .wma files often do (.wma files in my experience have a real problem with higher frequencies).

Each track also has varying amounts of digital rights management restrictions encoded into them, relating to the number of computers the file can be downloaded onto, how many transfers to portable players it allows, and how many times the track can be burned onto a CD. Newer tracks typically more restricted than older tracks: “Woman in Chains,” a 12-year-old track from Tears for Fears that I downloaded, for example, offers unlimited burning and transfers, but can only be downloaded onto one computer; the Barenaked Ladies album tracks allow you to download them onto three computers and make unlimited file transfers, but you can only burn the track to CD three times. Clearly these restrictions are of nominal concern to anyone with minimal technical knowledge and/or a desire to burn the track more than the number of allotted times, but it serves the purpose of keeping casual listeners tied down, and that’s fine.

The download process itself is pretty simple (it’s like downloading any software from the net), although when you download an entire album, you have to download it track by track instead of having an option to have the whole thing downloaded as one file. This is a kind of work-intensive, especially if the album has a lot of tracks (the Barenaked Ladies disc had 19 tracks).

I thought the design of the BuyMusic.com site itself was pretty kludgy, in that it’s not at all easy to do any real browsing for tracks. If you’ve got a specific band or track in mind, the search function finds it (if it’s there), but otherwise it’s a hard slog through lots of screen to find interesting stuff.

Right out of the gate, I give BuyMusic.com a C all the way around: The music collection is adequate but could be larger and definitely needs indie artists, the UI is tolerable but needs improvement, and the music files themselves are generally okay but of inconsistent quality. The good news here is that I suspect this is only the first such store for Windows users: iTunes will have a Windows version later, and if Amazon, et al., don’t start doing this stuff soon, I’ll eat my hat. In the meantime, this is a serviceable but not spectacular way to do the right thing and actually pay for music online.

Envy

Posted on July 22, 2003    Posted by John Scalzi      8 Comments

Here’s an interesting article by the former girlfriend of Jonathan Franzen, the now-famous writer of The Corrections, and of other books I haven’t read but which I am told are very good (and not just because Oprah thinks so). It’s mostly about her observing herself observing her ex-boyfriend’s literary fame, which is a matter of personal import since she is herself a writer, and simply put, it’s not usually a very good thing when the person who you are with does the same thing you do and does better (in terms of finances and fame) than you do. This is especially true of writers, who live much of their lives internally and therefore have more time (and ability of expression) to stew and envy and plot and pick.

One should never generalize about these things, but I personally think that a real good recipe for misery would be two writers in a romantic relationship with each other. Others may disagree: They may say that a spouse who writes understands what you’re going through, might be able to offer perspective and guidance and assistance, and all that happy crap. But as valuable as those things might be, there’s another far more detrimental dynamic, which is that unless they are writing wholly disparate things — say, one writes fiction and one writes science textbooks, and neither has the ambition to dabble in the other’s area — two writers under the same roof are always competing with each other, for the cleverest lines, the most sales, for the most raw talent.

And what’s more, the happy couple are competing with each other in a medium that encourages the author to digest the minutiae of personal life and disgorge it onto the page. The two authors will soon be feeding on each other for material, and if that isn’t incestuous and recursive enough, when one of them becomes more successful than the other, the other will hate them for it. Not all — some writers are secure enough in what they’re doing (or relish their indie cred enough) that they don’t see the success of their spouse or lover as a negative commentary on their own work. I even know a couple. But, shall we say, they’re remarkably secure people in a field filled with twitchy types.

One of the things that I have always been relieved about regarding my own marriage is that Krissy and I have no cause to compete on a professional level. She has no ambitions to write for a living, and I have no desire to do what she does, and that leaves the both of us to be wholeheartedly supportive of each other without even the slightest hint of envy or unhappiness. I want my wife to be madly successful, and she me. If she manages one day to become a VP or CEO, I’m not going to sit around wondering if I should be at the same place in my own career; if I write a bestselling book one day, she’s not going to wonder why I was doing so well when her book of short stories was being remaindered. Marriage is work enough without having to define your success relative to your spouse.

Success is a funny thing anyway, especially for creative types. You have to train yourself not to begrudge it to others, and indeed to want others to succeed in your field. Writers are supremely passive-aggressive (again part and parcel of that whole spending too much time in your own head thing), and it’s an effort not to wonder what someone else’s success means for your own or your own lack thereof. Eventually you have to realize that success is not a zero-sum game (well, technically it is, because there’s a finite number of publishers with a finite amount of resources, publishing a finite amount of books every year — but all those numbers are large enough that for the individual author, the point is moot). Despite what you may think, the success of others is not a referendum on you.

Eventually you realize there’s a positive value in the success of others, especially if you know them or are connected to them in some way. I am tickled six kinds of pink that Pamie’s book has been flying off the shelves and that my friend Naomi’s fantasy series has been so well received. I know Cory Doctrow only through the “Six Degrees of Separation” group-hug that’s known as the blog world, but I feel invested in the fine performance of his novel because it’s proof that you can put your work online and people will still choose to shell out for it in traditional form. Everyone who succeeds shows that success is possible; I’ve also found that those who have success usually want their friends to succeed as well. I know in my own case that I can name a couple of writers who I can’t wait to be “next” — I want them in the same club I’m in because I like being with my friends.

But I’ll also note I’m not married to any of these people, and although I like to think of myself as genially secure in the success of these other writers, I’m also pleased not to be in a position where I have to worry about how my dealing with their success affects our mortgage and children. As I said, romantic relations are complicated enough. The possibility of envying the success of the one you love shouldn’t be a part of it. I’m glad in my case it’s not.

A Good Bad Day

Posted on July 17, 2003    Posted by John Scalzi      20 Comments

Today was in many respects a remarkably crappy day, easily the worst I’ve had for the year, and I expect it’s the topper for what has been not one of my best weeks on record. The bad news hit early enough in the day that I had something of an adrenaline rush by the time I usually drive Athena off to day care, and it put me in a depressed enough mood that I realized that any chance of getting any substantive work done had pretty much gone right out the window. The prediction for the day had me sitting in front of the computer screen all day long, glowering sullenly and uselessly and occasionally repressing the urge to take a hammer to something expensive.

So I went with plan B: When Athena woke up, I told her that she wasn’t going to go to school today. And then she and I spent nearly the entire day playing. We went shopping for a new computer game for her, and also bought a ball. Then we came home and played “tag ball” in which you play tag, but with a ball (it’s good for hand-eye coordination. Honest). We ate fast food. We had cookies. We watched (in no particular order) Spongebob Squarepants, the Powerpuff Girls, and Courage the Cowardly Dog.

We talked about stuff: She wanted to know why there were seasons, and I told her. She wanted to know what flowers were for, so I told her. She wanted to know why it was so cold on Pluto, and I told her. I also gave her a representation of the diameter of Jupiter, using her new ball and my own body (which was, conveniently, to scale if the ball represented earth). She played with chalk while I took pictures. And I told her a lot that I loved her.

And it worked, because today was in many respects a remarkably good day. I realize that many of you parents out there don’t have the option, as I have, of deciding that a particular day is going to be Screw It All And Play With Your Kid Day, but if you do have that option, you should take it (or simply call in sick). It’s not a cure-all for your various problems, but it’s nice to spend the day in someone else’s world, especially someone whose day revolves around finding new and exciting ways to plug into what the world has to offer.

At one point in the day, Athena told me that when she grew up, she was going to play all the time. I imagine today would have been very much like a day in that life. It’s a nice life to visit. I can’t stay in it — work calls, I’m too much of a grown-up to ignore it for long, and anyway I like to work — but a day in the life is enough if it’s done right. Athena and I did it right. I’m glad we did.

I Want

Posted on July 15, 2003    Posted by John Scalzi      23 Comments

Thanks to high winds and storms, my power is flickering on and off, and so is my attention span for work. So I’m going to take a few minutes to talk about the things I want, and not in that holistic, wishing-for-world-peace-and-harmony way. No, I’m talking about physical things I want. It’s all about my materialism.

Because, why not admit it? I’m materialistic. I better be, since I’ve got a house full of crap, and if I pretended like it didn’t matter to me in my extreme Dali Lama-ness, the rest of the world would be fully justified in slapping around my hypocritical ass. I don’t think I like having stuff to such a degree that it runs my life — I don’t sit around with the nagging fear that someone somewhere has neater toys than I. Also, I shop at Wal-Mart and Meijer and Target (an artifact of living out in the middle of nowhere), and it’s hard to get all precious about possessions that are spurted out into the universe in the mighty torrents required to satisfy a discount retailer’s gaping maw.

So: I don’t live and die by what I have. But by the same token, sometimes it’s just neat to have stuff, and right at this moment there’s some neat stuff I just want to have. What kind of neat stuff? This kind of neat stuff:

1. A Tablet PC. And specifically, a Toshiba Portege 3505 Tablet PC. Three reasons. One, my current laptop shows all the signs of a death rattle, including random, inexplicable overheating, and that’s my cue to start looking for something a little less prone to heat death. Two, it has a lot of features I can use, including built-in WiFi, which will let me wander around the house and do work, which will be useful in the next couple of months when I have both a couple of books to top off and a wife who would prefer I don’t spend 20 hours a day cooped up in the same room, away from her and normal family life. At least with a tablet PC I can interact with her while typing up stuff. Three, because tablet PCs are the bomb. They’re like living in the future! And if I can’t have a rocket car to the moon, this would be a nice stopgap.

2. A Palm Tungsten C. This is also the bomb, as it has nearly the same processing specifications as my computer two computers back, and that’s just cool. It also critically has a tiny little keyboard, which is (pardon the pun here) key for me. My handwriting is awful, and if I had to use it to communicate I would probably starve to death.

I have little or no use for a Tungsten C — hell, I already have a Palm Pilot that’s been sitting in its cradle for so long that it’s got dust on it, but let’s note here that the title of this entry is not “I Need” but “I Want.” Want, as many a moral philosopher and/or thief will tell you, often has very little to do with need. Although I’m sure if I got one, I would find something to do with it. I’m just creative that way. And at about $500, I’d feel the financial duty to do so.

3. A Honda Element. After 12 years, my piece of crap 1989 white Ford Escort (pony!) is so close to death that you can hear the motor grinding through the Kubler-Ross stages, and I’m pretty sure we’ve come to “acceptance,” which means it’s time to look at something new. I am inexplicably drawn to the Honda Element. I’m aware it looks like a Tonka Toy, but that just triggers the irony button in me, so that’s not bad (especially if I could get this in Tonka Yellow. That would be sweet).

It also has some practical assets which appeal to me. First, the inside is rubberized, so you can hose it down, which is cool because I’m a slob and that would be an efficient way to deslobify the car; second, the thing is configurable to carry stuff or people, and that’s useful since there’s three of us and a large dog; third, it’s pretty cheap (the model I want is about $20K) which is good for me since, as I clearly admitted with my note about shopping at Wal-Mart, I’m not one of those people who worries about status through possessions. It’s also a Honda, which means I can drive it for at least the next twelve years and reasonably expect it to run. Yes, I’m the car industry’s worst nightmare: I buy cheap and I drive it into the ground. Hey guys: At least I’m thinking of buying new.

Living as I do in the sticks you might think that I would be inclined to buy American, so as not to get egged by the patriots what live near me. But Honda has a big-ass factory in the nearby town of Troy (my brother-in-law works there, even), so Hondas get a pass. Also, we currently tool around in Suzuki Sidekick and no one gives us any crap, because that just wouldn’t be neighborly.

So these are the things I want at the moment. The reason I’m thinking about things that I want is that I’m waiting to hear about a thing. If I get it, I’ll be able to get one or more of these things. If I don’t, then I probably won’t. Since I’m still waiting to hear about the thing, the acquisition mode in my brain is having a full-out war against the economically prudent mode of my brain, which will only end when either this thing happens or it doesn’t. It’s really distracting; it’s one of the reasons, aside from the flickering electricity, I’m having a hard time focusing. No, I can’t give you any more details than that.

In the meantime: I want, I want, I want. Poor, poor, pitiful me.

Strippers With Swords

Posted on July 15, 2003    Posted by John Scalzi      10 Comments

All right, I’m officially a science fiction writer (I’ve got the SFWA membership to prove it) so let me just say this: Please God, never let me have a book cover whose images would be equally at home airbrushed onto a van. This fervent prayer came to me while I was looking at this, a cover for the Science Fiction Book Club catalogue I got in the mail (not the regular catalogue but the one they send to get you to join).

In it, as you can see, strippers from the Kitty Kat bar unsheathe their weapons and do battle with orcs. We know these women are brilliant fighters because while the orcs are all compactly and heavily armored, our gals feel confident wearing flowing, flimsy robes which conveniently ventilate in the ass and breast regions. They are so good, in fact, that they don’t even bother looking at the enemy which they are slaughtering in its vile dozens; instead, their gaze is affixed upon you, as if to say, yes, it’s vitally important that we skewer these vile creatures in order to acquire the Orb of Thangulzon, thereby allowing the anointed King of The Many Globes to return to Gingdor Castle and once again rule all breeds justly and fairly. But what we really want to do is service each other while you watch and then jump your scrawny, pale 14-year-old bones. After all, that is the dream of all strippers-turned-fantasy heroines. They’re just pneumatic with desire.

This is not be read as a slam on Luis Royo, the artist who provided this bit of nonsense to the SFBC. Royo is a fine artist, if you go for this sort of thing; in the genre of “improbably clad people with weaponry,” he’s on the tier just below Boris Vallejo. The fact SFBC, in its infinite wisdom, determined that this graphic would be just the thing to suck in new members indicates that someone somewhere thinks this sort of thing is popular, which means that it probably is. I know enough to know that when I was 14, I would have sensed this picture’s ridiculousness, yet at the same time I’d still want to have sex with the brunette one, so there you have it.

Be that as it may, I wouldn’t want this, or something thematically like it to grace the cover of one of my books. Neither I nor writers other than the most very successful have control of these sorts of things. We can make suggestions but the publishers sign off on the artwork, and you have to trust them, because it’s their job to know how to sell these books. But in my dream world, my cover artwork is clean, visually arresting, contextually appropriate, and devoid of random boobies and ass shots. SF/Fantasy is full of fanservice shots; let the geeks go elsewhere for that. Give me something I’m not going to be embarrassed to show to my mother-in-law.

That still leaves a lot of latitude — my mother-in-law is not a prude or anything. But it does leave out strippers with swords. I’m good with that.

Music!

Posted on July 14, 2003    Posted by John Scalzi      3 Comments

New review up at IndieCrit. If you don’t go, you won’t know what you’re missing. And wouldn’t that be sad?

Radio Appearance Update

Posted on July 14, 2003    Posted by John Scalzi      7 Comments

Here’s the latest on my appearance today on Calgary talk radio station CHQR: It’ll be at 4:30 Eastern (1:30 Pacific), and you can tune in from the Internet by going to the radio station’s home page. Here’s the link.

I promise to be entertaining. Or your money back.

Radio Appearance

Posted on July 13, 2003    Posted by John Scalzi      2 Comments

Wanna hear me blather? I’ll be on Canadian radio Monday, July 14 at 1:00 pm Mountain (that’s 3pm Eastern, Noon Pacific) on CHQR, a talk radio station in Calgary — at least, that’s where I think I’ll be chatting; I’m still awaiting the final details. I’ll be presumably talking about The Book of the Dumb, which is mildly odd since it’s not even come out yet. But hey, who am I to turn down publicity?

You don’t need to be in Calgary to hear me blather — the station has an Internet feed as well. Here’s another link to their home page, just in case you missed the first one.

I don’t know if it’ll just be me and the show host, or if they’re taking listener questions or what. All I know is I’m supposed to be on. Drop in by, it’ll be fun.

Zukezilla

Posted on July 13, 2003    Posted by John Scalzi      10 Comments

Okay, kids, quiz time. What is the thing in Krissy’s hand? No, not the bowl. The thing in the other hand:

a) The egg of a still-extant, newly discovered dinosaur species discovered in the creek behind my house, henceforth known as the Scalzisaurus Rex;

b) A seedpod of the Body Snatchers we’ve been growing in the garden;

c) The biggest damn zucchini you ever did see.

The answer is c), although who could blame you if you picked one of the other two? That’s just a big-ass zuke. Krissy’s father, who hauled it up, said that he’s seen ones that are longer, but this one’s a record breaker in terms of monstrous girth. And look at it in scale with Athena; it’s like a big green ovoid vegetable younger sibling. Incidentally, no, it’s not emanating a radioactive and/or mystical glow; I just put in a surrounding Photoshop halo in order to make sure it didn’t blend in to the miniature cherry tree behind it.

This is just a representative sample of what we’ve got going down in the garden this year. All that extra rain may have caused massive flooding and property damage all around us, but on the flip side, it seems to have enriched our soil as if the sky were weeping vitamin-packed raindrops or something. Everything else in the garden is also growing just swimmingly (no pun intended) although not to the same gargantuan size of Zukezilla here.

Are we having Megazuke embalmed or encased in bronze? Don’t be silly. It’s just a vegetable. We split it with Krissy’s parents; they’re going to make legions of zucchini pancakes while Krissy is going to make a bakery’s worth of zucchini bread. And I’m going to eat it all! You see how the balance of work is played out here.

Maybe You WOULD Like Him When He’s Angry

Posted on July 8, 2003    Posted by John Scalzi      4 Comments

This is tremendously amusing. Also not safe for work, unless you won’t get in trouble for a picture of a green plush phallus on your computer. In which case, you’ve got a nice place to work. Enjoy it.

IndieCrit has Returned

Posted on July 8, 2003    Posted by John Scalzi

I’ve ended my IndieCrit sabbatical; a new review is up, and there’ll be a couple more this week as well. Go on over.

The Scalzi River is Back

Posted on July 7, 2003    Posted by John Scalzi      3 Comments

We’ve been having a mess of rain here the last few days — two massive thunderstorms in the last four hours alone, including one that knocked off the power for a few minutes — and the oversaturation of the ground means that the Scalzi River has made a return appearance. The Scalzi River shows up when the creek that runs parallel to my property line overflows and skips off its track. When that happens the excess water curls around my property and heads toward the larger Harris Creek across the road by way of a drainage ditch at the front of my property. The picture above is the Scalzi River at its headwaters: This area is normally dry. You’ll note that Krissy’s garden is in danger of getting swamped. Below is a shot of the river as it heads toward the edge of the property, the better to swamp my neighbors’ access road:

The good news is that barring any additional rain, the Scalzi river will drain itself out in the space of a few hours. The bad news is that more rain is coming. It’s going to be a very long, squishy week.

Random Thoughts

Posted on July 7, 2003    Posted by John Scalzi      5 Comments

As part of my jumble-minded, occasionally-updating self, here are a few random thoughts, notes and comments for you.

* Part of the reason I’m planning to slack off here is that I’m putting th gas down on the book projects, particularly Book of the Dumb, for which I have the goal of basically doubling my daily output. The reason for this? None, except I like the idea of not panicking at deadline time (also, at the time of the deadline, I’ll be in Toronto on vacation, and I’d actually like to enjoy my vacation). So far, so good. Fortunately, the world is helping by continuing to be a place where stupidity runs rampant in the streets. I can’t tell you how useful this is.

* One of the great pleasures of writing a novel (for me, anyway), is watching how the details of a story change from what you originally imagined them to be, partly out of the need to make the world more interesting to the reader.

For example: In the novel I’m writing, I planned to have my main character meet up with a secondary character, who provides him with an important piece of information. This same character would later have an incident that involved his cat, or more accurately, a cat left with him by an ex-girlfriend. But as I’m writing about my main character traveling to meet this other character, I have to flesh out details about the neighborhood in which this other character lives. I decide to make it exceptionally dog friendly.

Poof, out goes the cat and in comes a dog — an Akita, specifically, because I’m fond of the breed. This in itself leads to a cascade of subtle changes to the texture of the novel, and opens up some opportunities in other places that I simply wasn’t expecting.

This is neat stuff for me; I’m like any reader in that I like to be surprised by what I read, even if I’m also writing it at the same time. A lot of the pleasure I get out of watching the book twist and turn of its volition is something that’s denied to you as a reader, of course. But I think you (should you read the book) will get the pleasure of a book that’s fun to read because it’s been fun to write. That’s the plan, anyway.

* Tangential to writing and thinking, Patrick Nielsen Hayden, my editor at Tor, quotes his wife and fellow editor/thinker/swell human Teresa on the subject of the state of humanity. Teresa writes:

“My own personal theory is that this is the very dawn of the world. We’re hardly more than an eyeblink away from the fall of Troy, and scarcely an interglaciation removed from the Altamira cave painters. We live in extremely interesting ancient times.”

This is a pretty resonant idea to me, and it certainly makes me feel better when I think about how simian I think some people are in their mental processes. My only regret is that I won’t live to see modern times, which is something I’m keen to experience. I don’t write science fiction just because it allows me to make stuff up in my head instead of having to research — I also write it because I want to see what the next couple of thousand years will be like.

I also like the idea I’m an atavistic throwback. Makes me feel better about my numerous personal flaws.

* July 4: It was wet. As was July 5, July 6 and, if the weatherman is correct, so will be Julys 7-11 inclusive. The weekend was actually marked by massive thunderstorms and high winds, so nature provided fireworks to compensate for the ones that didn’t go off. Which was awfully nice of nature, I suppose.

I read somewhere that 92% of Americans consider themselves “patriotic,” but that what “patriotic” means varies wildly from person to person. I don’t know about that. The definition of “patriotic” is typically the same, i.e., “However I think people should think about America.” This is why nine out of ten people can think they’re patriotic, but also probably think that patriotic people are in minority. And I suppose that’s true enough anyway. I do happen to think I’m pretty patriotic, or at the very least I wouldn’t want to live anywhere else but here. But I don’t think a lot of people who think themselves “patriotic” would think I’m as patriotic as they are.

* I flummoxed an evangelist at the door yesterday, which I found pretty amusing. This nice older lady rang the doorbell, complimented me on my daylilies (which I thought were daffodils, but which are apparently not), and identified herself and her sect. “We believe in fellowship with people of all faiths, and no doubt you have your own religion,” she said.

“Actually, I don’t,” I said. “I’m agnostic.”

“Oh,” she said, and then seemed slightly dazed. I had clearly knocked her off her prepared spiel, which was predicated on me agreeing with and identifying my own religious impulse; even atheists have a religious impulse, it’s just a negative one. With an agnostic, you get no traction. Sensing we had come to an impasse, I politely excused myself and went back into the house.

This is of course an embodiment of rural America, which is that everyone out in these here parts has faith of some sort or another. I don’t know how true it is, since most of my immediate neighbors seem to sleep in on Sunday instead of hauling themselves into church, but it’s persistent. This may make me the official town heathen. I can live with that.

My Museum

Posted on July 3, 2003    Posted by John Scalzi      5 Comments

A Los Angeles Times story about the Raymond Alf Museum, located at my high school (it’s the only fully accredited paleontology facility at a high school, which is pretty nifty). I’m pleased to say that fossils I’ve found are stored there.

On Second Thought

Posted on July 2, 2003    Posted by John Scalzi      3 Comments

Remember what I said about taking August off? Scratch that. I’m actually going to take July off.

Well, maybe not the entire month. But probably a lot of it — there may be several days between updates. There’s just stuff I need to be doing.

So there you have it. From now through August 1, checking in daily will probably not be necessary; a couple times a week should do you just fine.

Have fun with July. Try not to blow yourselves up on Friday, okay?

Buy Pamie’s Book

Posted on July 1, 2003    Posted by John Scalzi      4 Comments

Pamie doesn’t need my help, but I’m going to help anyway: You should go buy her book Why Girls Are Weird, the cover of which I will now show you:

Today is its first official day of release. You should get it because it’s funny, because it’s well-written, because it’s full of that whole 21st Century 20-something frisson you dig so much, and because Pamie puts me in the acknowledgments by saying “John Scalzi, it’s your turn.” This sounds like I’m next in line for assassination or something along that line, but it’s more of a “get your novel published and join the club” sort of thing. Which is really sweet and, as it happens, largely temporally correct, since my novel’s coming out next year.

Unless Pamie does mean to assassinate me. She always did have that covert look about her.