Month: October 2023

Writing is a sort of madness. Undoubtedly. Or at least it is as I’ve experienced it and as a lot of my mentees, friends and associates practice it.

There is danger in dreams. Every human myth records that. The danger of the dream, like a deep ocean. You can get sucked into the dream and never find your way out. You can confuse your dreams for reality. You can suck others into your dreams too.

The Victorians weren’t entirely wrong that fiction is dangerous. Yes, yes, I know. It’s fashionable to make fun of the idea that novels made young ladies silly and immoral. And, as far as it goes, it is silly. Young ladies were — and are, like all humans — naturally silly and immoral. It’s just that the novels — of the time — didn’t provide any bulwark (ah) against that. Attempts to do so, hilariously, created the moralistic, annoying books my grandmother read in her childhood and adolescence (And I did too, because they were still kicking around, and no book is safe from my reading it. Even if they were so predictable they made me giggle, and even if in the end they gave you the moral in straight forward words, in case you had forgotten.)

Those novels, the moralistic ones, were not really dangerous, for the main reason that they were not really immersive. You could see the characters’ being manipulated by wires. You could see as each movement was prescribed by the author. It’s hard to forget someone is lecturing you, as they’re in full Karen mode, nose in the air and none of their characters breaks mold or experiences anything startling.

To an extent this is what the leftist mind-set has done to fiction once more. Because they are in their own way as “moralistic” as any Victorian, following received wisdom from a Victorian, even if some of the applications would make that old lecher and grifter Marx blench. But more on that anon.

The fascinating thing in the link that Steve keeps putting in comments, and which I saw first in my fan discussion group with direct link from Twitter: Hot take: Fictional characters can’t consent because they don’t have ‘agency’. (link) is that it goes way beyond the divine madness of writers. And is self-contradictory, which leads me believe that the person who posted it is trolling for attention.

Though heaven knows, I’ve at times assumed the same about other leftist shibboleths, like the idea that people who tan can’t be racist, because blah blah power relationships, (ignoring that in many countries people who tan are in fact in power. In fact, people, I saw my first blond at the age of 6. Scared the heck out of me. I thought he was a plastic doll come to life. I had nightmares.), or the idea that only women can be harrassed/raped, because men are just so darn persuasive, or the idea that a 120 lb woman can physically beat a 300lb guy who is neither paralyzed nor tied down. All of these are on the face of it so patently absurd that they can’t be believed, entertained, or even thought of for more than two minutes without evoking belly laugh. Unless they’re religious pronouncements, which of course they are, and therefore immune from examination.

Here’s the thing, and please keep in mind as I type this there are writers trying to scale my house walls to stop me, since I’m about to give away a trade secret. (Okay, that’s a slight exaggeration, but it is a trade secret.)

I know you’ve heard writers in conferences and workshops telling you they create their characters piece by piece, assemble them like a puzzle, “fire” them if they’re not working, etc.

They very well might. Or they might be lying like people who dream for you wholesale would do. Or they might be lying to themselves because the truth is uncomfortable to anyone trying to stay sane.

I don’t hide from anyone — because frankly I believe in telling the truth — that I am a gateway writer. I get the stories pretty much wholesale from my subconscious. (Well, I sleep better thinking it’s my subconscious and not some sort of portal in my head that beams in the events of some alternate universe.) Now, 90% of the time, this is not as effortless as it sounds. It really isn’t. Because I get the whole thing in a bolus. What the character believes and his life and death battle, and also what he ate for breakfast on his third birthday and what his favorite toy was, and how he had this deep talk with his friend when he was ten. And I don’t get the words. Most of the time when “block” it’s not lack of story. It’s lack of distance, to clean up the mess that dropped in my head. Or being too tired to think of words. (Today there is a blinding headache added to it.)

Note 90% of the time. Have I got the story words and all dictated to me? Sure. Couple of times. One of them is A Few Good Men. I was typing at the limit of my not inconsiderable speed, and I saw about a page ahead of what I was writing. It must count as one of the most unnerving experiences of my lifetime, since I didn’t know how the story would continue, or if it would, or if it would suddenly leave me halfway through. Worse: I didn’t know where it was going. Would it devolve into something unutterably senseless? Would it have a conclusion I didn’t like?

Look, I only wrote it at all because it was coming out at speed. if I didn’t like it, it was 2 weeks of my life, not a year. I could put it in a drawer and refuse to admit I’d done it. Or burn it, so that the boys didn’t get brilliant ideas after I was dead. (I think I have, at this point, destroyed all copies of my first ever written novel, but heaven knows. I keep finding others when I least expect it. So I’ve told them I’ll haunt them if they publish it. On the good (?) side, my notebook of poems — 8 to 25 years of age — seems to have disappeared in the multiple moves. It’s probably a good thing, yes?) But it turned out I liked the book. Though if I had to do it again, I’d probably have called it something else. But hey. I never get titles, ever, and was struck by the punniness of it all. It happens.

However, there’s the other books. I’m not going to pretend that when I got the call to write –work for hire– Plain Jane (the story of Henry VIII’s queen, Jane Seymour) I was seized by sudden inspiration, or had the creature come into my mind and dictate.

I wrote it because children needed shoes and school books, and we were paying two mortgages in the middle of a house-move.

But here’s the thing, as I found a POV that allowed me to write it, having done the research, I HAD TO BELIEVE THE CHARACTER ‘Existed’. I had to believe in the character’s and the story’s intrinsic truth, and I had to let it escape my total control.

Because writing is like playing chess with yourself. As you turn the board, you have to forget you created it all, so it works.

And — in my opinion. I know writers who say they don’t do this. They’re writers. Lying is always an option — I have to let the creations escape my control a little, or none of it is worth anything. (Ah. And now you know. G-d is a pantser.)

Now, the level of control the characters’ and story has depends on how it came to me, and how driven it is. When it’s fully driven, a thing with a life of its own…. well, weird stuff happens. Like the character balks me. “I wouldn’t do that” is the basic description, though mind you, it’s not words most of the time, just a feeling of utter wrongness. You can force the character, but if you do the character dies, and you’re skin-suiting it, and the book becomes horrible or worse, dies. And sometimes it’s a lot of characters.

It used to confuse Dan when he came home and I told him I’d had a terrible day at the office (down the hall) because the characters wouldn’t and I had to find what they would do that worked. I think he understands it better now.

However, I think all of us at some level must believe the character exists somewhere, to make it seem real to others. Secure your dream-magic-mask, before applying it to anyone else.

Which is why the hot take that it’s immoral to make your characters have sex they didn’t consent to is both terrifying and hilarious.

It means you’re required to think of the characters as their own people, self-actuated, with some sort of free will. Because otherwise you’re being accused of violating the consent of puppets.

But if they’re self-actuated, and have free will, you can’t make them do what they don’t want to, because frankly it’s way too much work to force it.

So this hot take is simultaneously crazier than the average writer, and completely incoherent in application.

Either the characters are alive elsewhere — I call it character world — and you’re just telling their story, or they’re not alive at all, in which case…. well, my socks don’t consent to be worn. My blanket doesn’t consent to be washed. Objects can’t consent, even if they’re mind objects.

I can tell you it’s almost impossible to force into sex characters who just don’t wanna or aren’t there yet. (This once led me to send a note to an editor who was demanding more and more explicit sex in a book — no, not Baen — that said “Look, I can force half a page of generalities, but if you want more, you’ll have to write it yourself.” …. which didn’t do wonders for my career with that house.)

I’m still assuming the whole thing is a massive troll. However, having seen 4chan trolls, like “Free bleeding” be taken absolutely in earnest on the left, there is no telling this won’t be.

I anticipate in some giggling the trad pub — because it will be — books being published with statements that the characters have been interrogated and consented. (And to my friends at Baen, yes, it would be hilarious if you guys do it, though I’d just put something blanket on the website. Or not. I remember that storm of stupid from the left about the bar. Eh.)

However if the left buys into this, they will finish completing, sideways and backwards, their transformation into the Victorian moralists they claimed to despise for so long.

Their objections to the male gaze, their contempt for anything that isn’t useful to their Marxist religion, their belief in the superiority of their beliefs and evangelical fervor to the “benighted” communities, which in their case seems to be anyone having fun. (We won’t wear pants, even if they make us, so there.)

They are the new Victorians. And unlike the originals ones, which at least had a clear view of humans and their behavior, they’re as delusional and insane as a hedgehog on mescaline.

I guess first as tragedy, then as farce.

On with the motley.

*I am in fact staying away from current events, yes, because just screaming incoherently how angry I am does nothing. I’ve come close to that in my instapundit stints, for which I must beg your indulgence. Yes, it will get worse before it gets better. Like Heinlein refusing to read current events during WWII (If I remember he only read month-old newspapers) I’m just trying to keep a small sliver of sanity, so I can clean the house, and cook, and yes, write without standing in the middle of the street screaming. Bear with me, therefore for a week or so. I’ll return to the fray. I can’t help myself. It’s just a little time to catch my breath. (And yes, I’m fairly sure that Steve keeps posting that link to distract me from the serious stuff ;) I’m onto him. ) – SAH*

Son of Silvercon was full of interesting talk and cross-conversations, and conversations that mutated and changed and became now serious, now funny. — Talk was ongoing, wherever people from the con gathered. In fact because I often forgot the numbers of the rooms we were supposed to be in, I just followed the constant, babbling brook of voices — Funny things happened, like when I mentioned that every few years my blood pressure plumets and I end up in the hospital. This happens to my dad too, so it must be genetic. M. C. A. Hogarth said that I came from a line of fainting goats Caitlin Walsh (the artist who did Odd Magics) drew me like this:

They weren’t actually making fun of me, as such, it was just that all throw away lines were cartoonified, since Caitlin has a drawing problem: she can’t stop doing it. So this was the only con with a continuous stream of funny drawings. At one point all of Holly Frost’s family became lions. Adorable lions who still looked like themselves, but also lions in Caitlin’s drawings.

Anyway, in a sudden serious turn, as we were sitting around and I mentioned the fastest and the slowest books I’ve ever written, and had to confess I’ve written a book in 3 days. (Though 2 weeks is more or less average. It’s the silence in between.) M. C. A. suggested that perhaps the silences are because I refuse to write a series that’s been nagging at me for 45 years, because I’m still trying to write saleable, or to market, even the market has changed.

Which is funny since, as I told Dave Butler, my main reason to remain indie right now, is that I want to finally write all the books that have waited this long, instead of subsuming them and writing whatever the house wants/needs instead.

But old habits die hard, and when you’ve worked all your life to fit in, and do the next book, it’s hard to break out of the frame of mind.

Is it what is depressing me? I don’t know. Heaven knows I’ve had plenty of other reasons to be depressed this year. Mostly deaths. I find a lot of us seem to be afflicted with a lot of deaths of family and friends, and yes, pets, in this last year. It would be easy to say it’s the time of life, but seriously, half of the deaths were of babies, either human or animal, or of young people.

Anyway– It is a possibility. Partly because — and this took me a time to explain — the series that is demanding to be written is also “dangerous” in many ways.

No, look, it’s not going to blow up. It is not — unlike The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress say — a blue print for revolution.

But it is dangerous for the perception of me among my readers. Like this: These days The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress would be dangerous for a writer’s reputation. While it is a love letter to America and the American revolution, it has all this plural line marriage stuff, and a bunch of things about how the marriage (Manny’s) was interracial.

People these days have become hardened. Okay, the left has been for a long time. But the right is hardening too. And I get it. Dear Lord, I get it. Because we’re so tired of being lectured. It’s hard to come across a female — or gay — character and not immediately ask the lecture on oppression and the finger wagging. So we flinch away, and we find excuses not to read on. “The writer has gone woke” or– “This person is now obviously leftist. I was wrong.” Or–

When in fact, a lot of SF worlds are just weird. If done right, science fiction is weird, and will have things that perhaps we know don’t work in the “real world” (Line Marriages) but might who knows work in other times and places and under special circumstances, because that’s what science fiction is all about: mind-experiments about the weird, the unusual and the edge situations. (No, I don’t think it would work, but Heinlein clearly thought so, and for the duration of the novel he SELLS it, which is the point.)

M. C. A. said that artists shouldn’t be tame. That something about us or our works should always make people a little uncomfortable.

Now, I disagree with the words in that previous sentence, but I don’t think that’s precisely what she meant. Yeah, okay, I’m going to quibble with the idea that I’m an artist. She is, but I’m basically a craftswoman, like someone who does cross-stitch (which I used to do) or paints rocks or something. In fact the process by which I make books is much like the process by which I make crafts, from the idea that won’t go away, till sitting down and actually doing it. But I’ll concede that what I call it might not be what others call it. Perhaps it’s all the same and artist or craftsman is just a different name for it.

However I really think what she means isn’t uncomfortable, precisely. Or I hope it isn’t. Look, “uncomfortable” is what the left keeps pursuing. Afflict the comfortable” and all that. You know? Pour epater les bourgeois.

I don’t think that’s what M. C. A. does or I do. Or aim for. It’s more that we will do surprising things. Because we’re individuals. If we are not afraid of our own minds, afraid of saying/doing something that will get us cancelled, or whatever, the way our minds work, as people who like creating worlds, will naturally bring up one or two details or ways of putting things together that no one has thought of. Or at least not thought of that way and not recently. Or at least it just seems to happen naturally to me, and I suspect to her.

I mean, it’s not that we’re aiming to make people uncomfortable, or even surprise them, but that it’s guaranteed almost one thing per book will be “well, I’ve never seen that used THAT way.” And sometimes, sure, it will make people uncomfortable, though only because we live in diminished times. In the old days, or at least from my reading of a lot of pulp SF I surmise, making SF/F readers uncomfortable was normal. Not uncomfortable in the sense of being shocked, but in the sense of “Well, that’s an interesting idea, even if it offends me” or just in the sense of stretching your mind in a way you haven’t done before. Surprise them, might be closer, because there was often delight in it too.

Which brought me around by a weird way to some advice I got when I was first starting out and that I heartily disagreed with. “Reach for the third ending.” You know, you’re writing the story, and an ending presents itself, discard that. Then there’s another obvious ending, and you discard that too. And you reach for the third ending because that will surprise people.

The reason I disagreed with it, is that it often surprised everyone by not making any sense whatsoever, or simply by being the stupidest thing imaginable. Also because there is no particular virtue in balking the reader of the anticipated ending.

That’s when I realized that by then — 35 years ago — the minds of traditional science fiction houses were already closed enough that you really couldn’t write something intrinsically surprising just by virtue of being, well, different. That would be bound to offend one of the many shibboleths of the left, the received wisdom that must not be questioned, and which if accidentally shaken might send you to the hell of the quietly cancelled.

But people remembered when there used to be excitement and surprise, and they felt something was missing and that they should not expect all of it. Hence “reach for the third ending.” (It’s noteworthy that Baen never pushed for this, and while somewhat limited, in the sense you always are when interacting with the people that sell the stuff (ask software developers sometime) they are the most open-minded of houses, so there were other ways to surprise.)

I often say that things feel fraught because we are finally, after almost a century, fighting back. In the same way, now that we are finally able to fly solo?

Don’t reach for the third ending. Don’t reach for anything. Just let you, yourself, guide what you write, in all its profound weirdness.

If we have to re-teach people that not all books with female characters are going to lecture them, or that you can have a gay character without endorsing Marxism, or for that matter that some weird sort of social experiment in your book might not be something you endorse, let alone dream of, so be it.

We’ll teach by doing it.

Only the stultifying boredom of leftist science fiction is truly verboten. Not because it is in fact forbidden, but because you’ll fall asleep halfway through.

If you’re a writer (or a reader) go forth: Read, write, and be not afraid.

I know I promised to be fully on today, but my house is covered in cat litter, and everything smells bad and needs cleaning.

I’m going to post kitten pics, and let you ooh and ahhh. I’ll write a post tomorrow, promise.

Patience by the Balloonatic

My sister-in-law used to tell us about how she struggled after her first son was born. She was having trouble keeping up with everything, and so she began to pray for patience. When her son was 14 months old she gave birth to twins. The moral of the story is that when your pray for patience, God sends you something to teach you patience.

As a “crafty” person, who likes to work on things like cross-stitch or home-made blankets, and major home renovations, I often have people comment on how much patience I have. I laugh and tell them that it’s not patience, but impatience. If I had patience, I would be taking my time. Instead, I am impatient and work hard to get it done because I want to finish this project so that I can move on to the next. One of my theme songs is definitely Queen’s “I Want it All.” I want it all, and I want it now. I don’t want to have to wait. I don’t want to be patient. This is one reason I didn’t like being a manager at  work. It’s hard to take the time to show someone how to do the job correctly and so much easier and quicker just to do it yourself.

And yet now, as a parent, I see the need for patience. As my son struggles with his homework, is it really going to help him if I get impatient that he doesn’t understand and just give him the answer? What does he end up learning that way? Isn’t it better to slow down and break up a problem into steps and guide him into finding the answer himself? I had one of my proudest moments this year when I was asking him if he was done his homework yet, and instead of asking me for help, he said no, he was trying to find a way to expand his answer and it was going to take a bit longer. And then after years of trying to show him how to change from a one sentence answer with all the facts to get it over and done with to  instead breaking up his points into multiple sentences to give a complete answer, he finally got it and did it on his own. He came home and told me that his teacher said that she was going to use his assignment as an example for future classes.

And yes, while I tend to think of myself as an impatient person, someone who doesn’t easily put up with stupidity, and someone who tends to speed because I want to get from point A to point B as quickly as possible, that really isn’t the full picture. This is the time of year where I slow down to admire the beauty of the fall weather and the gorgeous panoply of green, yellow, orange and red in the trees that line the highways. And when I’m working on my house, I don’t rush and do a sloppy job just to get it done. I actually have learned to take my time to do it right because I really don’t want to have to do it over again.

Patience isn’t something that comes easily to most people. I’m sure I’m not alone in my struggles with it. We look at the world around us and we wonder how long do we need to wait before things improve? How long can we put up with the craziness around us? Patience isn’t easy to come by, and yet it is necessary. How many times has there been something in the news where people jumped to immediate conclusions instead of following the 48 hour rule? Often, after those two days the media narrative falls apart. Sometimes, as with recent events, we find that it is even worse than we had imagined it would be. There are those in this world, however, who want us to jump to conclusions and to actions without patience, without taking the time to consider the consequences and to look at all of the possibilities. They want us to be hasty and make foolish mistakes instead of careful consideration and planning for what we need to do and what can go wrong.

It’s like working on a home renovation project. If you just start working on something and rushing through to get it done, you will likely have to do it over again in the future. And what could have been a quick and simple job if you had taken the time to plan and prepare ends up taking a lot longer with multiple trips to the hardware store to get that tool you needed or that missing part that you didn’t find ahead of time. It would have been better to be a little patient and remember the 6 P’s: Prior Planning Prevents Piss Poor Perfomance. Right now, when it feels like the world is falling apart around us and we need to take action, any action, just to be doing something, let’s stop instead and be patient. Let’s think, let’s plan, let’s get all the facts and be prepared. This time, let’s do it right.

It occurs to me I up and disappeared without much warning, here or my serializing substack, or my newsletter, or Patreon, or instapundit or– well ANYWHERE.

I was at a convention in Las Vegas NV. Since there were noises being made about masks on planes, and I’m all out of patience, we drove. In fact, we’re still on the road, and will be till the wee hours of Wednesday.

The convention? Son of Silvercon. It was an inaugural convention, and things went wrong. Don’t they always? But despite being tiny, it was very good, and now I’m very tired, but not depressed. This despite the fact that three NAMED quails, either escaped or were stolen while we were away. (I’m inclined to stolen, because one of them had a deformity that precluded flying.) And yes, one of them was the very sweet Deposed King. I’m kind of bummed, but not spiraling, so….

VERY tired, though. Extremely tired. Between con and… um…. let’s see, we left at 8 this morning, got here at 10 and hit the road at 7 tomorrow…. yeah.

See you on Wednesday, okay? I’m going to bed.

Neener neener I got our hostess! Also her husband!

Ok, actually they tried to steal my son, but he has college classes. But still. (I think they’d give him back after he ate them out of house and home.)

Son of Silvercon is a lovely, friendly little convention, and you all should consider booking yourselves into it next July.

Someone who shall remain husband has turned this into “the man who traveled in elephants” type of trip. Turns out stopping to see the world’s largest ball of twine and such slows a trip down to a crawl.

I will try to post tomorrow, but if I fail…

Look, I’m hoping this is Arab braggadocio. However those of you in large, soft-target type of places, and those of you obviously identifiable as Jewish, kindly watch your six tomorrow, please. https://hotair.com/david-strom/2023/10/11/a-worldwide-terror-spree-this-friday-n583948

To paraphrase, in a completely different context the ending of another Heinlein story: It’s already been a bad week. We don’t want to lose YOU. (Also, no free kittens. They have homes. And we have at least one backup.)

On the serious side, guys, mind yourselves and those you care for. It’s been a bad year. And though I’m 90% sure it’s nonsense, it matches my nightmares too closely, and there’s that large open border.

Be not afraid, but be careful.

Yesterday was a very weird day, complicated by not sleeping more than about 2h the night before. So I was doing the strangest things. Today I need to get some stuff done. But if I can I’ll write a post this afternoon.