Modern Felicity

Sold a story, sold a story, sold a stooooory just now...

2010-01-07T16:56:06Z

Yesterday afternoon my notifier popped up in the corner of my desktop to tell me I'd gotten an email from Electric Velocipede. "Ah, that'll be my rejection," I said to myself.

Wrong!

The editor of Electric Velocipede would like to accept my story "Night's Slow Poison." I'm extremely pleased.

My Clarion West peeps might remember it as my Week 3 story, "Spacecrawl." My non-Clarion West peeps won't remember--because they weren't there--that during Week 1, two classmates turned in stories titled "Crawlspace." This was a complete coincidence, but very amusing. Another classmate joked that we should all turn in stories called "Spacecrawl." Two of us did--S. Hutson Blount's sold some time ago to Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine, under a slightly altered title. And now mine finally has a home--a lovely one. It's a story that, for various reasons, I'm irrationally extra-fond of, and I've been really hoping to place it somewhere cool. And now I have!

Mithras is the reason for the season!

2009-12-21T13:54:53Z

Happy Solstice!

In past years we've had steak, and bloody bulls to drink, and pulled out the origami tauroctony. This year we're going low-key. I spent the week subbing at the middle school cafeteria and don't feel like elaborate preparations. Besides, in all the office-building and packing and unpacking office things, I can only find the snake and the scorpion.

Today is also the sixth day of Squidmas, when Cthulhu leaves gifts for the Leckie children each night in the tentacles of the Christmas Squid.

I wish everyone a lovely Birthday of the Unconquered Sun, or whatever other holiday you may celebrate.

ann_leckie @ 2009-12-20T12:32:00

2009-12-20T18:32:18Z

Wow, so, um. A lot of people have suddenly appeared on my f-list! Hello! I’m happy to see all of you.

I have, as it happens, lots of thoughts about writing, but I usually assume that no one is particularly interested in them, or that they're not sufficiently interesting or original to post about. Maybe that isn't the case.

Or maybe it is--who knows? But now that I've hit my regular blogs and cleared slush and have no real excuse not to work on my current project, nattering about writing instead seems so very, very tempting...

So. You know, by the way, or you should, so I'm telling you, that anything I write here is my own speculation and opinion. Every writer is going to be different, have different methods, different strengths and weaknesses, different histories, and all that affects how we think about writing, and how we actually write. So if I say something that contradicts your experience or beliefs...well, I can't really speak to anything but my own experiences and beliefs, and don't intend to invalidate anyone else's, so long as they're working for you.

I think that how we think about writing actually does affect how we write. I think it matters, what advice and metaphors we use and pass on to other writers. Some are of the "it works for me but not for you, okay" variety, but some, I think, are pernicious. I've got a list of them, in fact.

First on the list--The Muse.

On one level, the problems with The Muse are obvious--how many would-be writers have you met who want to write someday, fully intend to write someday! But they're waiting to be inspired.

Yeah, uh-huh. And I'm waiting to win the Lottery. Put your butt in the chair and your fingers on the keyboard and stop waiting for Greek deities to visit you. 'Cause like Heracles says in the story, the gods help those who help themselves.

But I think it's a problematic metaphor even when you've gotten past that point. The Muse externalizes the creative process. When you invoke her you're invoking an outside agency whose attention is chancy at best. The truth is, though, that all that stuff on the page came from your very own brain.

Your very own brain is, of course, a tricky mechanism. Some folks can make it cough up material pretty easily and regularly. Some have to resort to odd tricks to make it perform--but it's all you. Metaphors can be a way to trick your mind into doing things you might not have direct conscious control over--this works on a physical level, certainly, as I learned when I took voice lessons in college. "Imagine," said my teacher one day, "that as you sing your voice is spinning, spinning, spinning out from your forehead." Uh...huh...wha?

Here's the thing--it worked. And I notice, as I recall those lessons, that she never told me to imagine my voice wasn't my own, or that an outside agency had granted me the desire or ability to sing.

I also notice that the odd images involved working with my own body. They were eminently hackable--what would happen if I spun my voice out of some other part of my head?--where an appeal to an external agency would not be.

I think writing is kind of the same, for a lot of us. We learn tricks that trigger our brains to give us what we want. If you think of those tricks as hacking your subconscious, the process is more or less transparent and alterable. You can experiment, you can try different things. But if you're imagining a Muse, an outside inspiration that "just comes" or sometimes just doesn't come, what can you do, when you want it and it's not there? Sacrifice a goat?

I'm quite sure some writers have no problem with this--they recognize that they're merely personifying an internal mental process, they can make it work and their "Muse" delivers regularly enough for them, and they have no need or desire to tweak the process. But...that won't be everyone. I don't think it's most of us, by a long shot.

And "The Muse" is a metaphor that's only actually helpful once you understand how it really works, which is btw a common feature of things on my list of "writing advice/common wisdom Ann doesn't like." These things are like koans--understanding them is a species of writerly enlightenment. But unlike the stereotypical koan, they're not ostensibly incomprehensible or contradictory, and the surface version of their meanings can lead new writers in unhelpful directions.

On its face, "inspiration/The Muse" implies that art is only made by those who are inspired to do so, who are chosen by whatever ineffable force out there taps an artist on her artistic shoulder and says, "You!"

And see, I don't think it's like that. I don't think some people are "born" to be writers while others aren't. Yeah, teaching fiction writing is a dicey thing, and yeah, some people are better at it than others. Talent exists--but talent only gives you your starting point. (Since I've already brought Aesop into it, I'll toss out the Tortoise and the Hare for your consideration.) And writing talent isn't one single thing--it's entirely possible to have particular gifts that make up for lacks in other areas. The question isn't "do I have talent?" The question is, "am I willing to do the work it takes to get to where I want to be?" The answer might be yes or it might be no--that's up to you.

If you take your feeling of inspiration, your desire to be an artist, your motivation to put words on the page, and the ease with which those words flow out of your fingers, to be a sign of your ordination as an artist, you get...well, you get Anne Rice, only usually without the sales to make up for it. Or, frankly, anything even half as readable as Interview with the Vampire.

And if you don't feel inspired? If it feels like work, hard work? That model leaves you wondering if that's just a sign that you're not "meant" to write. It can stop you in your tracks, freeze you up solid, when really all you needed to do was put one foot in front of the other to win the race.

For both those reasons, I don't think it's a good idea to use that particular metaphor for the creative process, or at least, not to use it when giving advice to young writers. I would advocate, instead, discussing the metaphor, because it's so unavoidably common. Discussing why some people find it helpful, why it might not be, unfolding it so that a writer knows what she's ingesting, if she decides to take it for herself. So that she can take the bits of it she needs and leave the rest off, when the extra bits might have made her development more difficult than it needed to be.

ann_leckie @ 2009-12-08T10:18:00

2009-12-08T16:18:48Z

So, yesterday I said that if you want to “work your way up” as a writer, the thing to do was aim high and “write better.”

shweta_narayan pointed out--correctly--that I’d oversimplified the issue of “writing better.” There’s a whole long and complicated history behind what anyone says when they say a story is “good.” It’s easy to get trapped into seeing only the conclusion that we’ve come to, and not exactly how we reached it.

The topic interests me very much, what is it we mean, when we say, “that’s a good story.” What is at work when I look at a story I don’t like but I can see it’s good? (Does that happen very often? How does that work?) Most importantly, how do I make my own work “good” in a way that will make an editor sit up and pay attention?

When I say “write better” I mean two things. One--the most "obvious" part, the most susceptible to "objective" judgment--is the technical end. This only starts with things like spelling, punctuation, and grammar. It moves up into clarity of meaning, finesse in construction of sentences so they don't just mean what you want them to mean but are also well-made, and command of a range of different styles of sentence construction, so as to have a wide range of technical effects at your disposal. It also includes an understanding of how different sorts of stories work, and how to use that knowledge in your own stories.

You're asking, perhaps, how you improve those things in your own writing? Since I urged you to, yesterday?

The answer isn't simple. And my answering is complicated by the fact that I'm working on all those things myself. I suspect any writer who's serious about her work is--I think, like the proverbial shark, when an artist stops swimming she dies.

So I can only really tell you what I find works for me, and it may work for you or it may not.

Here's what I do--when I perceive that my work needs something I don' t have the toolkit for, I find an author who has what I want, and I read her work until I can't cram any more of it into my brain. I try to keep in mind, while I'm reading, what it is that I'm trying to learn from that writer, so I can see it and try to figure out how she did it. I have also typed out scenes, and in one case a whole novel that I greatly admired. I learned a lot, doing that.

Half the battle is recognizing that you need something, of course. I try to cultivate a sort of double-mind, one that fully expects rejections, that knows I'm not perfect, that I have big weaknesses and lots of things to learn, but also that believes strongly enough in my work to send it out and continue to send it out. This isn't always easy--a couple of rejections on the wrong day can tip me off balance and it can take a bit to recover--but so far it works fairly well.

I also found one particular book extremely helpful and influential. I suspect it hit me at just the right point of my development, and maybe it won't be so useful to you, but I will mention it anyway. I re-read John Gardner's The Art of Fiction and also On Becoming a Novelist every year or so, and I recommend them both highly. I don't agree with everything he says. When he talks about moral fiction....well, that's a big and messy digression. But Art of Fiction was the first writing book that, when I finished it, I felt like, "Oh, okay, yes, I can do this!" And there are plenty of things that he says in those books that I didn't understand when I first read them, but now make an awful lot of sense. If you haven't already, give Gardner a spin and see if he's helpful to you.

By the way, one of the things he says, I'm pretty sure it's in Novelist, is that when he gave exercises to his students, his ideal was that each assignment be something that was potentially publishable, or a piece of something potentially publishable. Because he felt that if your aim was to be a great writer--he assumes this is your aim, if you're reading either book--then you ought to begin by attempting to be a great writer. He felt that a student should begin by aiming at what they actually wanted to hit. Because that's how you learn to be what you want to be. If you practice at being less than that, you will become good at being less than that.

Aim high.

Anyway. That's actually the "easy" part of "write better." I mean, it's a lot of work. But you can break it down in steps and take those steps, and you will improve technically as a writer. I promise. I don't promise this means lots of sales to F&SF, understand, but just improving your technical abilities, particularly the more "advanced" ones, will greatly increase your chances of getting past the slush reader at the venues you're aiming for. Whatever those are. Because they're not the same for all of us.

The next part is messy and complicated. It's tied in to so many other issues. So it might come out kind of sprawling and digressive.

The other half of "write better" is something that, when I talk to myself, I usually call "honesty" and sometimes "ambition." Or maybe those are two separate things that are hooked together in my mind.

And keep in mind, I'm mostly talking about my own process, my own musings about art, my own psychological quirks and methods for dealing with them. I am not speaking universally--I'm sure--I know, actually, names are coming to mind--fantastic writers who would completely disagree with me about much of what I'm about to say.

By ambition, I mean something like this--there is no such thing as "just a story." Any story you write is important, deserves the absolute best effort you can give it, the most painstaking attention to detail. Even if it's silly and lighthearted--the story may be silly and light, but your composition of it is serious as death. It will be positively the best silly, lighthearted story you can possibly produce at that point in your life.

Come on, you're aiming high, right? You want to be good. Like, really good.

Now, for me, sometimes this "it's all high stakes" is so nerve wracking that it can be a tremendous relief to work on something that isn't high stakes. I've done that. And even sold the results. But it wasn't work that I found....satisfying, the way I find the higher stakes stuff. And for myself--well, the chances of my getting rich and famous off this are pretty damn low. And--connected issue I don’t have space for just here, can of worms lurking in the background--I'm never, ever going to be able to write stuff that pleases everyone. So, I satisfy myself. I want to write things that I will be proud of. Yeah, yeah, part of being proud of it is having readers say they like it--but part of it is knowing I did my absolute best, and achieved the effect I was after.

There's another half to "ambition." Often, in slush, I'll read a story that...that seems like the author had a great image or idea, and immediately sat down and tossed off a quickie story featuring it. I'm not sure how to describe what I'm talking about. If you've read slush, you probably know what I mean.

Here's a pretty image--I bought coffee this morning at the university library, and got a brand shining new, straight-from-the-bank-and-barely-touched-by-human-hands penny in my change. They're so shiny at first! Even when you leave old pennies in lemon juice and salt overnight, they don't look so bright as they do at the very first. I had a thought--throwing a handful of new pennies into a fountain that swim off as bright, shining fish. Pretty!

Now. I could sit down and write a story about...um, a woman who keeps a school of fish in her pocket disguised as pennies. And she tosses them in a fountain at the mall and they swim around and...uh...I know! She gets distracted and has to leave, and at night they drain the fountain and give the penny fish to the accounting department to deposit, and they're given out as change all over the city, and...uh...some child somewhere (perhaps we opened with that child asking mom for a fish and she'd said no) puts one in a glass of water and has a pretty fish! And their mom says, "Where did you get that??" The end.

Okay. That's five minutes work, there. Writing it might take a couple of hours. And you know what? Every single slush reader would bounce it right back to me. Unless somehow the language was so pretty that it obscured the total lack of content.

I see lots of stories like that in slush. A writer has an interesting image or idea, but they don't sit down and really think about what there is to get out of that idea, how to really use it. They just toss off two or three thousand words of "here's my idea I had" and send it out.

You want, in my opinion, to really stop and think hard about your ideas. Why do they interest you so much? Is there something resonant there, some question it raises for you? What if you combine it with some other idea or image? Really dig into it, really engage with it, interrogate it, pull it apart. Turn it backwards and inside out. If it's worth working with it'll stand up to that sort of treatment, even reward you. And remember, there's no such thing as "just a story" so that's no excuse for tossing off two thousand inconsequential words about penny fish without really putting any thought or work into it. Because any two thousand words you send out are going to be the best you can possibly produce at that point in your writing career.

Not only will you be much happier with your results, but you will also be much less likely to get bounced because your ideas are cliché, or because they're just like everything else in the mailbox that day. Once you're done, that story is going to be something only you could have written, something unique.

By the way, slushing is a very educational activity, and I strongly urge any aspiring writers who haven't done it already to keep an ear to the ground for opportunities. I hear Strange Horizons is looking for someone just now.

Which brings me to "honesty." Sometimes your most compelling ideas lead...somewhere you don't really want to go. You don't want to write the logical conclusion of what you've set up, now you've realized what that really is. You discover something horrible really ought to happen onstage and...ugh. Or you want a character to do something and discover that, as you've written her, she wouldn't actually say that, or do that. You want a happy ending, but it's not heading that way! Or you want a tragedy, but somehow it's not happening.

Or there's a particular kind of story that you think might have a better chance of selling, and you're pretty sure you can learn to write that sort of thing, but really what you want to write about is this other sort of thing.

And maybe not a lot of editors are interested in what you really want to write. What then?

Well, then you have choices to make, don't you. Sometimes it's an easy fix--go back and tweak your character! Figure out where in the story things took the wrong turn and change that!

Sometimes it's not. Sometimes you have to grit your teeth and read, say, detailed first person accounts of castrations. (There are things I really didn't want to know and now I do....)

And sometimes you have to decide if you want to write the kind of story you think will be more likely to sell, or the story that you're actually finding it's in you to write. Now, I'm in favor of writing the story as you have it, the one that's "true" whether you can sell it or not. But I also admit to sadness when a story like that doesn't sell, goes through submission after submission and keeps coming back to me. And in the end it's your choice as a writer, as an artist, how you want to handle that. Heck, if you can really get to the point where the pros routinely take what you send them, my hat is off to you, however you got there. I doubt the folks who do routinely sell to the pros got to that point by writing stories they didn't honestly believe in, but that's just my suspicion. I have no proof of that.

Which leads me to the can of worms. You can do all of this--become technically brilliant, write ambitiously and utterly honestly--and not sell to any of the big three, not ever win a Hugo. Never make enough to live on with your writing. Never become famous. Because editors do have different tastes, different cultural backgrounds and expectations, different aims for their magazines. Different things that grab them or fail to engage them. Different ideal audiences. I can not guarantee you that if you "write better" you will sell to the big guys.

I can, however, almost certainly guarantee that you will no longer be routinely bounced by slushers. Sure, you will sometimes--but you'll sometimes get rejections that say things like, "Wow, this was close but not quite. Send more." And possibly--maybe even likely--there'll be a semipro out there--or a new pro-level startup--with an editor who's hankering for just what you have to give her.

Aim high. Believe in what you're doing. Write better.

______

I'm not using the penny fish idea, by the way, so if it hooks you, go with it. It's not my sort of thing, and anyway I'd start by, say, researching coins and metals and goldfish and minnows and references to different sorts of fish in various myths, and in the end would turn out something that bore almost no resemblance to my starting point. So, it's yours if you want to make it yours.

ann_leckie @ 2009-12-07T10:43:00

2009-12-07T16:41:26Z

So, the scuffle-du-jour is Scalzi's scolding of Black Matrix Press for offering writers one fifth of a cent per word--while launching four magazines at the same time, magazines that cost ten dollars an issue.

Part of the conversation is about whether or not it's worth it for a writer to submit to markets that pay less than SFWA pro rates--that would be five cents a word.

Now, if you want my personal advice, you want to consider two--maybe three--things when deciding whether to submit somewhere. You, as a writer, want money, yes, of course, and you also want eyeballs. You want people to read your work. Usually--not always, but usually--the money is a good indicator of the actual number of readers a particular venue has. There are a few zines where this doesn't match up, where token payments go along with "lots of people read this" and/or the "maybe" third--"this zine has a good critical reputation." Token payment doesn't necessarily mean nobody reads it or it's not worth being published there. Knowing which places those are--well, that requires paying attention to the field, doesn't it? Gotta do your homework.

Which leads me to the thing I actually want to talk about today. Everytime this sort of conversation comes up, someone--often several someones!--argue that newbie writers have to sub to low-paying, tiny markets because that's how you get credits to put in your cover letter, and that's what makes an editor actually pay attention to your story.

No. NO! This is wrong. This is so wrong, I'm not sure the English language is able to express just how wrong it is.

Look, I read slush. Here's the bottom line: The thing that makes an editor pay attention to your story is a kick-ass story. Period. The End. It doesn't matter if you have good credits, or any credits at all.

Now, it's true if you have good credits you can sometimes jump the slushreader. It's true that if you have good credits, an editor will start reading with the expectation that what she's about to read is not, in fact, going to be the sort of headdesky slush that gives the slushpile its name and reputation--a reputation, I might add, that is thoroughly deserved.

But its also true--I am telling you this on my honor, I swear this is absolute truth--that if the slush reader rejected you, jumping the slush reader would not have helped you. I swear it. If JJA rejects you, over at F&SF, I swear to you on my sainted grandmother's grave, Gordon would have done the same if he'd seen your story.

And it is absolutely true that if your story totally rocks, if it's compelling, the editor will sit up and take notice. She will pay attention. Whether you have credits or not. No, really. The editor does not actually care about your credits. She cares about the story.

Now, as I said, "good" credits will lead an editor to expect, before she ever starts reading, that your story is at least going to be readable. This will give you a little leeway--maybe a bit more patience with a slow or otherwise dubious start.

But just any old random credits? Will not help you. In fact--and I hesitate to say this, but I'm going to be very honest here--there are credits that can have the opposite effect.

No, I'm not going to tell you what they are. Some of them are just personal to me, zines that might pay decently or have a good reputation, but I have rarely been bowled over by what I've read there. Others...well. When I read a cover letter that tells me the author was published in "Fairly Reputable Journal of Stories Ann Doesn't Like" and/or "Tiny Zine That Pays Nothing and Ann Doesn't Really Like Anything They've Published" I find myself not quite so enthusiastic about reading the sub. And when a cover letter claims credits from ten to twenty small zines and maybe I've heard of one of them*...I am not particularly impressed.

Those credits will not get you a better shot with the editor. They just won't.

Now, I read every story anyway. Because that's what the job is all about. And I pass up the stuff that needs to be passed up, no matter what. Credits are irrelevant.

There is no point in submitting to a tiny market for no pay just to get a credit you can put in a cover letter. That credit is useless to you. If you are being relentlessly rejected by well-regarded publications, it's not because you have "no credits," it's because you need to step up your game. Seriously.

There's a slim chance that you're consistently being bounced by the slushreader because you are a genius who is ahead of your time, or because the sort of thing you do just isn't in style even though your work is utterly brilliant.

There's also a slim chance that you could jump out of an airplane with no parachute and survive.

Where's the smart money?

Aim high. Those 4-the-luv markets aren't your first stepping stone on the way to the pros. If the pros are what you're aiming for then for pete's sake, aim for the pros.

That said. When you run out of high-pay, high-reputation places to send your story, by all means, move down the line. Myself, I'd rather get ten dollars for a story than nothing at all. Though of course I'd rather get ten dollars from somewhere that I know people read, and I personally don't submit to places that as far as I can tell don't have readers to speak of. Your personal cutoff may be different, and that's fine. I'm not here to tell you who to submit to, and who not to submit to.

I'm just telling you, if you're submitting somewhere only because you think it's necessary to have some credit, any credit! on a cover letter, that any credit at all that you can scrape up will make an editor pay more attention to your story, you're absolutely dead wrong. The credits that will give you a (slight) edge are precisely those professional markets you're trying (and failing) to impress. And no credit in the world will make up for writing that isn't up to standard.

Don't worry about credits. Just write better.

*I troll ralan and duotrope just like every other writer. I pay attention to the conversations going on in the community. I know what stories, and what publications, people are talking about, and hence reading. If I haven't heard of it, chances are not many people are reading it. This is not an infallible rule--but it's held up well over time.

Years Best!

2009-12-05T15:28:02Z

So, y'all know that my story "The God of Au" is in The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy 2009 Edition, right? It'll be out, I'm told, sometime this month.

But what you almost certainly do not know--but will when I tell you right now--is that my story "The Endangered Camp," which was in Clockwork Phoenix 2, is going to be in The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy 2010 Edition.

Yes, I'm pleased with myself today. Why do you ask?

Arkfall!

2009-12-02T21:07:51Z

So, if you're a member of SFWA, you can read Carolyn Ives Gilman's novella "Arkfall" by going here:

http://www.sfwa.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=44&t=827

You have to sign in.

Go read it, O SFWAns of my Flist!

Obligatory Nebula Post Part III

2009-12-01T00:59:18Z

Thanks to the generosity of editor Mike Allen, if you're an active member of SFWA, you can read Clockwork Phoenix 2 for free. Head on over to the message boards at sfwa.org and check it out.

There's also lots of other amazing and wonderful fiction available there for members to read. Which is what I'm going to do right now.

Obligatory Nebula Post Part II

2009-11-17T13:25:24Z

This is where I tell you what I'm nominating. I don't actually have the full list just yet, and will post when I do, but.

Everyone should read Carolyn Ives Gilman's "Arkfall," which is awesome and was published in the September 2008 issue of Fantasy & Science Fiction. Or, if you have trouble finding that, it also appeared in Years Best SF 14. I stink at summing things up, but it's adventury and wonderful, and you should read it.

I'll post the rest of my list when I have it, I am still pondering and reading.

Obligatory Nebula Post

2009-11-16T22:47:10Z

I have no expectations of being nominated for a Nebula, honestly, and didn't plan to post. But I've found that I'm glad to read other writers lists of what's eligible for Nebula nomination--it's hard for me to remember what I read this year--year and a half?--let alone what I've read and liked that's eligible, and at this point I can recc things, so it's really helpful for me to have the lists people are making. And also it lets me check out cool stories I haven't seen yet.

So. Things I've written that appear to be eligible for nomination:

"Marsh Gods", at Strange Horizons (July 7, 2008)

"The Nalendar" in ASIM #36 (August, 2008) This is available as a podcast as well.

"The Endangered Camp" in Clockwork Phoenix 2

If you haven't checked any of those out, by all means do.

Oh, Long Awaited

2009-11-06T20:03:48Z

So, back a while ago I sold a story to Realms of Fantasy. And then, before my story could be published, Realms folded.

I bided my time. I knew that either I'd be notified that my story was released or else the reversion clause would kick in. It was only a matter of which came first. I'd already been paid, which was a plus, but really what I had wanted was that publication! Ah, well, that's life.

Then, much to my delighted surprise, Realms was resurrected! So my time-biding became much more satisfying.

And now the end of my wait is in sight!

My story "The Unknown God" will be in the February issue of Realms of Fantasy, available in fine bookstores starting, Mr. Cohen says, sometime in December.

ann_leckie @ 2009-11-05T11:03:00

2009-11-05T17:06:40Z

Well, I wrote a while, and now my brain is crying, “Break time!” So the next logical thing to do is mop the kitchen floor and scrub the toilet.

Uh huh.

So, instead, I’m going to peeve mildly. This is not inspired by any one particular event, it’s a piling up thing. Because I hear it all the time. In the cafeteria kitchen a co-worker will start singing, and someone else will pretend distress at the horrible sound. Or someone will start singing along with the radio and then stop, and say something like, “Oh, how terrible I sound, I can't sing at all.” Or it comes time to sing something, like Happy Birthday or a holiday song, and people feel the need to apologize for their horrible singing voices.

Maybe it’s a product of my own musical interests--I don’t think it is, I think my interests are more a product of my already existing experiences and attitudes--but this just bugs me. It’s pleasant to hear someone sing happily while they work. It’s a very natural thing to do, and it makes me smile. Even back in college, when Jerry the Dishwasher had a tendency to get a single line stuck in his head and would sing it over and over as he swept the kitchen. “Down in the West Texas town of El Paso, duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh.” Brief pause. “Down in the West Texas town of El Paso..." Or the radio ad jingles. "For a hole in your roof or a whole new roof...for a hole in your roof or a..." Not a great intellect, Jerry, and not a great singer. But it was hard to be too critical. You knew when he was singing that he was in a sunny mood, and it's easier to have a good day when the people around you are in a good mood themselves.

And all those people who say, "Oh, I can't sing"? Ninety-nine point nine percent of them are just flat out wrong. Sure, most people won't be onstage singing opera any time soon, but nearly everyone I've heard sing can at least carry a tune. Most of us aren't virtuosic chefs, and yet, when it comes time to make dinner, we don't say "Oh, I can't cook" and avoid cooking, or apologize for burdening the world with food. No, we fix our supper and by and large enjoy it. It ain't cordon bleu, but it tastes pleasant and it's filling and nutritious and no one is hung up about it. The rare person who feels compelled to apologize for the imperfections of a perfectly good meal to the folks sitting around the table are generally regarded as insecure or perhaps eccentric perfectionists. I know one person who does this, and I've never heard anyone chime in with a "You're right, this is horrible, for pete's sake stop cooking!"

But I routinely hear that sort of comment about singing.

Now, there are times when singing is inappropriate. Not all workplaces are like industrial kitchens, and some folks work jobs that require a sort of concentration and quiet that lots of spontaneous song would disrupt--but even then, I'd bet that it's more a matter of staying away from the top-of-the-lungs, we-can-hear-you-two-offices-away range. I'm not advocating loud public singing in every single setting no matter what. But singing is, I wholeheartedly believe, good for you. Please, when someone near you begins to sing (assuming it's not an inappropriate occasion for it), don't give them the reflexive "Aargh, stop!" When you sing, don't apologize! Don't tell the world that your voice is horrible, because it almost certainly isn't. Sing! The world can always use more singing.

Things that made me smile today

2009-09-15T15:48:27Z

This one was a half-bitter smile:

Sexual Assault Prevention Tips Guaranteed to Work (via james_nicoll)

When I saw the title of the post, I was fully prepared to bang my head repeatedly against my keyboard, but was very pleasantly surprised.

This next link, though, is a full-on, unadulterated dose of cute:

The Marshmallow Test

ann_leckie @ 2009-09-12T16:01:00

2009-09-12T21:06:35Z

Busy busy busy, but hopefully at the end of it I'll have my very own office in the basement. I am covered in paint. Paint that, when I opened the can, looked exactly like melted chocolate. It looks like it's going to dry into the color on the paint chip, which is good, because I'm not sure how much work I could do surrounded by walls that look deliciously edible.

Anyway. I'm a few days behind on this, but.

Fantasy Book Critic is giving away copies of Clockwork Phoenix 2. You know, the fabulous anthology that contains my story "The Endangered Camp."

You can also read Saladin Ahmed's story "Hooves and the Hovel of Abdel Jameela" online for free.

Change of Topc

2009-08-31T21:37:41Z

So I've been going to the library every day, because there's some semi-construction stuff going on at home. Every day I walk past a shelf full of art history books, and say to myself sternly, "You're here to write, not read."

Today I decided I needed to read. Biology. Got off the elevator, walked past the art history books, saw the book that had been whispering to me each day as I passed it. The Art of the Hittites.

I'm only human!

I spent four hours reading about the Hittites. You know the Hittites! Ramses II fought a big battle with them, the Battle of Kadesh. He snatched victory from the jaws of defeat, and commemorated the event in a bucketload of sculpture in his Ramasseum. Except, what he really did was snatch defeat from the jaws of an utter freaking rout--you can't tell from the carvings in the Ramasseum, but the Hittites won that battle. For a long time people assumed Ramses' spin was historical fact, until they found the Hittite copy of the ensuing treaty.

I knew about that before I started reading. But I did learn all kinds of interesting new things. I am not (mostly) going to write about them just now. Instead, I'm going to mention some weird stuff about this book.

It doesn't have a copyright or publication date on it that I can find, but an old slip in the front for stamping due dates has a single date stamped on it. The year is 1969. It says it was translated, though not when, and for various reasons, I presume it was translated from German, though I could easily be wrong about that. There was a lot of really cool information, interspersed with very weird assumptions. Hittite written in heiroglyphs (it was also sometimes written in a cuneiform script) must have been popular with illiterate Hittites, because it was pictures! (It sounds slightly less boneheaded in the original, but that's the implication, no matter how you slice it.) After the battle of Kadesh, Ramases married the daughter of the Hittite king and made her his principal wife (inspired of course by her beauty and the goodness of his heart, not because he had to or anything!) and Egyptian sources talk about how beautiful she was, and so maybe she was blond! The Hittites had a lot of contacts with the East but they were really Westerners, because duh, they were Indo-Europeans, and they weren't all savage and decadent like those freaking Assyrians! (Me: Book, you don't really mean that, do you? Book: Here, let me say the same thing again in the next paragraph, in slightly different words!)

And this, which was a combination of cool and odd. Hattusili (I did not note down his number, there were several Hittite kings of that name, but wikipedia tells me he was Hattusili I) had appointed his nephew Labarna his heir, but changed his mind and made his grandson Mursili the crown prince.

As he [Hattusili] is trying to justify himself before the Assembly of Nobles he describes the conditions in his family in great detail. From these frank and unrestrained words...

Frank and unrestrained? Hello? No king worth the name ever spoke frankly and unrestrainedly to the Assembly of Nobles, most especially not while he was trying to justify himself. Most especially not while trying to justify disinheriting the heir the same Assembly had likely approved of earlier. Each bit of speech might be strictly true, the quotes might be verbatim, but frank and unrestrained? I don't think so.

And I'd lay money the quotes are verbatim, they have that ring of truth to them. Here's the text as I found it in Art of the Hittites.

The young Labarna I had proclaimed to you, saying, "He shall sit upon the throne." I, the king, called him by son, embraced him, exalted him, and cared for him continually. But he showed himself a youth not fit to be seen; he shed no tears, he showed no pity, he was cold and heartless. I, the king, summoned him to my couch and said, "Well. No one will in future bring up the child of his sister as his foster son." The word of the king he has not laid to heart, but the word of his mother, the serpent, he has laid to heart....Enough! He is my son no more! Then his mother bellowed like an ox. "They have torn asunder the womb in my living body! They have ruined him and you will kill him!" But have I, the king, done him any evil? ... Behold, I have given my son Labarna a house! I have given him arable land in plenty, sheep in plenty I have given him. Let him now eat and drink. So long as he is good he may come up to the city but if he come forward as a troublemaker then he shall not come up but shall remain in his house.

Frank and unrestrained? That speech is carefully planned, even when he's accurately quoting. That serpent, his sister? She's playing the distressed mother card, oh yes, and Hattusili knows it. Which is why he doesn't just report what she says (and I bet she did say what he says she says, likely lots of other people heard it and it has, as I said, a ring of reality to it), he makes sure to mention she bellowed like an ox rather, than, say, something a trifle more flattering or sympathetic. Hattusili is playing the betrayed uncle and wringing every bit out of it he can--he and his sister are two peas in a pod, they are. "Mean to him? I've given him lots of presents! Of course, if he starts trouble I might be forced to exile him or something....I'm just a good-hearted old man! Wouldn't hurt a fly!" Uh huh.

"Frank and unrestrained" my Aunt Fanny.

ann_leckie @ 2009-08-28T20:41:00

2009-08-29T02:17:13Z

Go read this: The Joy of English Grammar

Speaking of joy. Not!

So, this project I'm working on came to a point where I said to myself, "Self," I said, "at this point, this project would be greatly facilitated if you had a better grounding in, among other things, human physiology." And I agreed, and responded, "Good point, self, and you know what? The library has probably got some books you can read to bone up on the subject." So I hit my library's website and requested a few things, including Physiology Demystified: A Self-Teaching Guide by Dr. Dale Layman.

I'm in an odd place with biology. I grew up in a household where glycogen synthesis was a routine topic of dinner conversation. To this day, when someone cuts into a steak and says, "Look at all that blood!" I have to exert effort to avoid saying, "That's not blood, it's myoglobin." I have an odd store of bits and pieces of knowledge. But I have forgotten just as much basic high school biology as the next person. And besides, it's not glycogen synthesis I need to read about.

So I got my email today that the books had reached my branch, and I went to pick them up. Got home, made a cup of tea, sat down on the couch, and opened Physiology Demystified. Here's how it starts:

Hello there! Who am I? Why, I am your host. They call me Professor Joe, the Talking Skeleton! I have been selected as your guide for this book, PHYSIOLOGY DEMYSTIFIED. I am here to give you a basic, "bare bones" introduction to what happens in The Place Below Your Skin!

Right. I close the book, look at the call number. No J in front, so it's not a juvenile. I look at the back copy. It insists that this book will be a fun and painless way to learn about physiology. I note to myself that those first few sentences were neither fun nor painless. Of course, I don't find studying such things painful or dull, frankly, but I know a lot of people do find science of various sorts intimidating, and take no offense at attempts to persuade them otherwise.

I made another attempt to co-exist with Professor Joe, but found it too painful to get past that first paragraph. I started opening the book randomly to see if maybe it was worth skipping ahead, or forging through and offering the pain up for the souls in Purgatory.

"So, what's the big deal about maintaining homeostasis of blood calcium ion concentration, Professor Joe?", the untutored mind may be prodded to ask.

That punctuation is not a typo, btw. Or, you know, not my typo.

A stimulus (STIM-you-lus) is literally "prod" or "goad." (Picture a long stick that pokes or prods the body.) In general, a stimulus is a detectable change in the body's internal or external environment. "What detects this change?" the curious reader may well ask. The answer is: a sensory receptor (ree-SEP-ter).

The only reason he doesn't give you pronunciation for internal or external is, he provided that helpful information ten pages back. I am not joking. I wish I were. Paging through, I do see that there's a lot of information there, including two whole chapters that address the particular issues I'm interested in. But I just can't read this book. I'd rather bang my head against a wall for a day or two.

Time to try the next book.

In Which I Am Interviewed

2009-06-24T11:44:12Z

I got interviewed by Jordan Castillo Price of Packing Heat! Listen here.

ann_leckie @ 2009-06-19T15:28:00

2009-06-19T20:52:15Z

Been a while since I posted!

Wiscon was fabulous, even more fabulous than usual and therefore insanely exhausting. Met zillions of people I wanted to meet, and met zillions of people I hadn't known I wanted to meet until I met them, talked to zillions of people I had met before but wanted to see again. Bought the rest of the Marq'ssan Cycle from Aqueduct, along with a stack of other books. Sang Sacred Harp and had free, second-hand clothes thrust upon me. Did panels. Ate at the fabulous Tibetan place twice. Rode the magical gold elevator to that sacred precinct that is the Governor's Club. Finally kept a two year old promise to take Paidhi Girl to the noodle place. Walked down to the lake so my traveling companions could watch boats and throw stones in the water. Talked to more people. Sunday after supper I went up to my room intending to rest a few moments and essentially collapsed until Monday morning. Drove home. Got up and went to work the next day. Boy was I glad when the school year was done.

In other news, Clockwork Phoenix 2 will be officially out July 1. But Amazon and Barnes and Noble say they have it in stock. Publishers Weekly gave Clockwork Phoenix 2 a starred review recently. One of those "16 wonderfully evocative, well-written tales" is my story "The Endangered Camp."

Wiscon Schedule

2009-05-05T19:39:32Z

I can haz panels at Wiscon!

TYRANNOSAURS IN F–14S!!!! Fri 9:00 - 10:15PM Conference 5

Vicki Rosenzweig, E. Cabell Hankinson Gathman, Keffy R.M. Kehrli, Ann Leckie
"This is so cool!" "This is so stupid." How can a book or a show or a movie be incredibly awesome to half of the audience and incredibly dumb to the other half? Does turning everything up to eleven automatically mean risking total failure? What separates the gleefully over–the–top fun of, say, Hot Fuzz, from the cliche–ridden kitsch of Snakes on a Plane? And how can you tell if something you're working on is only awesome to you? Is it all just subjective, or can awesomeness be deconstructed and quantified?

So You Want to Be Published? Are You Your Own Biggest Roadblock? Sat 8:30 - 9:45AM Wisconsin

Liz L. Gorinsky, Lori Devoti, Ann Leckie, Jack McDevitt, Jordan Castillo Price
Is it possible you are doing something to keep yourself from selling? Come discuss what we do that keeps us from writing, submitting and ultimately selling—or selling again.

What Gender Is Your Roomba? Sat 10:30 - 11:45PM Assembly

Heidi Waterhouse, Hari Mirchi, Ann Leckie, Madeleine Robins
Why do so many robots and androids have a gender? Is this phenomenon more prevalent in fiction or reality? Was this always the case, or has it changed since the appearance of the first real and fictional robots? Is it all about the name, the voice, the looks, the attachments? Is it different across cultures? Does an otherwise genderless robot 'default' to male? Find out what pronoun you should be using to talk about your Roomba.

The SignOut Mon 11:30AM - 12:45PM Capitol/Wisconsin

*****
This is the first year I've been able to stay for the Sign Out. Every year previously I'm up with the sun and on the bus back home.

Happy Belated IPSTP Day!

2009-04-24T13:09:21Z

Whoops, missed the day.

I haven't got anything new, but I do have "Footprints." I sold it to Postcards From Hell: The First Thirteen a while back. It's one of my few very short pieces.

Footprints
by Ann Leckie

The ground was a soft, springy mat of blue-gray mosslike something. Cooper's boots left shapeless dents. He could poke a finger into it, and make a hole that closed over immediately. And he could push a torn and empty ration carton down into it and it would slowly re-emerge full, as though it had never been opened. It was unnerving. But it had kept him alive.

"How far?" he asked the little girl walking beside him. He'd asked before.

"A long way," she said, and smiled and tilted her head, blond curls swinging. He'd found her the day after the crash, sitting on the endless blue-gray plain, tattered Mr. Bear in her lap. When he'd asked her name, she had frowned, not understanding. She couldn't possibly be human, and why she appeared to him as she did, or was able to communicate with him, Cooper didn't know. But he was grateful--she had taught him about the moss. He might have starved otherwise.

"Tell me about the tooth fairy again," she said, eyes wide.

"He'll lie again," said Mr. Bear. One button eye hung precariously from a worn thread.

The damn bear. Or not, just like the girl wasn't a girl. They were the only beings he'd encountered since his crash-landing. It felt like he'd walked halfway around the planet with them.

He turned, even though he knew there was no way to gauge the distance he'd walked. Behind him were the dents their feet made, except... "There's only one set."

"Of teeth?" asked the little girl, stopping as he stopped.

"Of footprints." The double set only stretched back a few yards and then suddenly were a single track. "But..." His own seemed to disappear.

"I want to hear about the tooth fairy," the girl insisted. "Does she have wings? Does she wear a pink dress and ballerina shoes?"

"There's no tooth fairy," said Mr. Bear. "We pulled out every last one, and none of them grew back."

The little girl held the bear in front of her, arms straight. "They did."

"Not the way he said. And no coins either." It hung motionless in her grip. "I liked the screaming, though."

Cooper had found the bear unnerving from the moment it had first spoken. He ignored it. "Listen, honey, I really need to contact my people. I need to tell them where I am."

"We know," she said. "We're taking you."

"It just seems like it's an awfully long way."

"It is an awfully long way." She tucked the bear under her arm head first and started off again.

"I'm hungry again," said Mr. Bear, upside down and backwards.

Cooper caught up with them in a few long strides. "What does Mr. Bear eat?" he asked.

She put her hand in his. "Does the tooth fairy have a pony?"

"A sparkly pony with long, pink hair," said Cooper. "And lots of teeth."

The little girl laughed. "I like you. You're funny."

"And delicious," said Mr. Bear.

ann_leckie @ 2009-03-06T07:25:00

2009-03-06T13:58:57Z

I'm a very small fish, in the SF world. I don't expect my opinion to mean much. For that reason, I've delayed commenting on the drama that keeps lurching up out of its shallow grave. For that reason, and partly because my non-internet life has been...stressful.

I've seen a few people say things like, "Well, there was bad behavior on all sides, so my position is the morally unassailable refusal to take a position, because I'm so above that." I say--screw that crap. It makes me think of people who say things like, "Well, the left is no better than the right! I mean, there's Michael Moore!" As though one Michael Moore equaled Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh and Michelle Malkin and...

And as if a few bad actors outweighed the rightness of an argument. As if a few lost tempers in comments--I have seen no actual flames in original posts by, say, coffeeandink--was the moral equivalent of institutionalized racism. Or outing someone and exposing them to danger, despite being told what it is you're doing. Or deliberately directing readers to malware instead of the actual evidence of your behavior.

And as if that's not just one more variant of the tone argument. "You're not being nice enough. If you were, then I'd deign to listen to what you're saying." Like the school bully telling you he'll stop slugging you if you ask him politely. Somehow, it always turns out that he won't believe he's really hurting you if you're not yelling. And when you yell, why, he'd listen to your request to not be beaten ever so much more attentively if you were only polite about it.

Folks, racism is wrong. Which these days everyone knows, or at least says. But if you're saying to yourself, "But I'm not racist!" then you are part of the problem. If you are speaking or acting in a racist manner, the purity of your intentions is meaningless. The purity of your intentions becomes malice, when you refuse to acknowledge even the possibility that you've done wrong. Whether you meant to do wrong or not. And when I say "you" I also mean "I." Because I'm a white girl raised in this culture, and I fuck up sometimes.

The current iteration of The Undead has left me disheartened. The astonishingly malicious behavior exhibited by a few professionals in this field is appalling. I find such behavior entirely unacceptable, and am horrified to be even tangentially associated with it.

Sol Invictus, people, a little introspection! A pause to consider the mere possibility of your possibly being in the wrong, here.

ann_leckie @ 2008-12-20T12:02:00

2008-12-20T18:37:06Z

The Birthday of the Unconquered Sun is upon us, and I guess it's time for the year in review. I've seen a few folks doing it over the last week or two, but I figured I'd wait until I'd gotten whatever replies I was likely to get before 2009 arrives.

So. Stories published this year:

"The God of Au" in Helix (and also Transcriptase)

"Clickweed" in A Field Guide to Surreal Botany. (Aweseome book trailer here)

"Marsh Gods" in Strange Horizons

"The Nalendar" in Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine #36

"Needle and Thread" (with Rachel Swirsky) in Lonestar Stories

"Bury the Dead" at Podcastle

And, by the way, several of my published stories are available at AnthologyBuilder.

Stories that sold this year but have not yet appeared:

"The Endangered Camp" sold to Clockwork Phoenix 2

"The Unkown God" sold to Realms of Fantasy

"The Sad History of the Tearless Onion" Which actually sold before this year, but supposedly it will run at Podcastle early next year.

I'm down to three stories in inventory. Which is making me twitchy, but it also makes me twitchy to not be working on the novel, so there you go. It's one or the other.

Sale

2008-12-15T22:29:09Z

For reasons that are probably obvious to regular readers of this journal, "The Endangered Camp" (my postapocalyptic dinosaur story from week 5 of Clarion West) never ran on Helix.

I just got an email informing me that it's been accepted for Clockwork Phoenix 2. I'm very pleased. The first Clockwork Phoenix was pretty cool, and I'm kind of excited to be in the next one.

Squeeage!

2008-12-04T17:19:32Z

So, yesterday I got an email saying Rich Horton would like to put my story "The God of Au" in Fantasy: The Best of the Year 2009 Edition.

Woohoo! And surfing around in the past day or so, I see I'm in good company--Jay Lake, Beth Bernobich, and Mary Robinette Kowal are in the TOC as well. Awesome.

Then today, I read Mr. Horton's review of "Needle and Thread," a story Rachel Swirsky and I wrote together and that was published in last quarter's Lone Star Stories:

I also enjoyed Ann Leckie and Rachel Swirsky's "Needle and Thread", about a dressmaker charged to make a gown to turn a princess beautiful--but such magic is illegal. And, perhaps, wasted--the prince is not so interested in beauty. The characters are well done, the idea clever, but it flattens into a somewhat conventional morality fairy tale; not quite what I've come to expect from either of these excellent new writers. Still, it does what it aims to do quite well.

Excellent new writers! Did ya catch that part?

As for the "conventional morality tale" part, well, all I can say is, it's a fair cop.

!!!!!!!

2008-11-05T03:04:11Z

!!!!!!!!!!!!

I've been afraid to say it. I'm still afraid to jinx it.

!!!!!!!!!