thumbnails for Marisol Brook

Water is a repeating theme in the Grey’s story; drowning, falling into water, reborn from water, etc, and that’s the symbol I wanted to play with in the illustration. From those thumbnails, I started working this direction:

preliminary sketch for Marisol Brook

However, after working on this piece for a while, I felt it was losing its connection to the story. It’s a cool image and I’ll keep it filed for future use, but to connect it to what Grey had written, I felt I should switch it up a bit. So I did this:

a second preliminary sketch for Marisol Brook

As this version progressed I didn’t like all the horizontals so I took the layer with the red figure, rotated it, resized it, copied multiple versions across the page and played with creating variation in the pattern. (Like Jon Schindehette noted: “…folks that work digitally are more apt to skip [thumbnails] in their process. I found that observation to be quite interesting, and wonder if it has something to do with the fact that most digital artists feel like they can always “make changes”. Yep. Guilty as charged.)

Marisol Brook in Progress

There, I’d finally found my direction. So the real work begins:

Marisol Brook in progress

This part goes on for quite some time. “Finished” is such a subjective word, a teasing balancing act between overworked and not-quite-there. At the end, finding that point usually involves ignoring the image for a while as I work on other stuff, coming back to peek at it intermittently, make more notes, make small changes, leave it again, etc, until I’m satisfied that yes, indeed, it is “finished”

Final illustration for The Ballad of Marisol Brook. Written by Sarah Grey, published at Lightspeed Magazine

******

So there you go. A glimpse into my process. Speaking of process, here are some notebooks and sketchbooks from famous authors, arists, and visionaries (because I love that kind of stuff).  Also, here’s some more about thumbnails by Dan Dos Santos (because I really need to work on those.)

One word is urgency. It hits us while we sleep; we wake in a stupor, not quite understanding why that sentence begs to be written right now, at 3:44 am, while outside the world rests in a few hours of reprieve. Another word is ephemeral. We don’t write that sentence, we don’t let that story take shape, and it is gone, only tasted for a few seconds. But we live in regret of its passing.

In December, my friend Mike Alexander, who began submitting stories for publication in 1980, the year I was born, who finally made his first sale in 2010, the year I met him at Clarion West, passes away. I’ve known him for two and a half years, and during that time he sells story after story, has been named by Gordon Van Gelder as an up-and-coming writer to watch, and has been nothing but a kind, generous, and self-effacing man. He once got up in arms about the processed ingredients in my vegan deli slices, but other than that, I’ve never seen him angry or bitter. The last time I see him is in November, a month before he passes. I don’t want to write about him in the past tense, will always write about him in the present, forever in the moment, forever with us.

It is now May, six months after Mike has walked out of his body and up to the moon. Since April 15, the day of the Boston Marathon bombings, my grandfather (I call him Papa) has suffered multiple strokes that have landed him in a rehab facility in Bryan, Texas. I leave Seattle for a weekend when I find out a branch of his carotid artery is 100% blocked and there’s nothing they can do to remove it.

My grandfather is 84 years old. A decade ago, he walked off a heart attack in the jungles of Costa Rica. Last Thanksgiving, he walked a one-mile fun walk with my family at a Turkey Trot. The Thanksgiving before that, he took me out to my grandparents’ massive backyard to go turtle hunting. He is always, always, always on the move. He’s written several books about amphibians and reptiles. There’s even a Wikipedia page about him. He’s left-handed like me, has a PhD, has actual species of creatures named after him, and he’s had multiple strokes, and now has very little mobility in his right side.

When my dad and I arrive, it is 5:00 pm, so we walk into the cafeteria where my Papa is having dinner. He’s in a wheelchair, a sky-blue cardigan draped around his shoulders, and there’s a blueberry muffin on his plate. He tries to give it to my Grandma, but she gives most of it back to him. He shows us that he can lift his right arm six inches, which is worlds of improvement from a few days before. Dad rubs Papa’s back to relieve the pain of sitting in a wheelchair. Papa leans forward while Dad works at his muscles. Papa rolls his head from side to side and groans a little.

Later, Grandma forgets we’ve had dinner. She is 83 years old and doesn’t want to eat the snacks my mom has brought her because she doesn’t want to get fat. Grandma has low-blood pressure, and she, who once stood six-feet tall, leans into me, now the same height as my five-foot-eight.

A few days later, a former classmate’s father and grandmother perish in tornadoes that strike Texas, not an hour from my parents’ house. I seethe with the hole that begins to burn through me, the knowledge that death, the final unraveling frame of life, is all happening right now and there is nothing I can do to stop it.

To clear my head, I swim a few laps, do a headstand, go for a jog. Work on an essay about making the impossibility of fantasy a possibility in our world. I pull a muscle or tendon when I stay in a triangle pose too long. I will turn 33 in 13 days, and this is my life.

Nobody is burning out. It’s one little snap at a time, one little tendon pull, too much sugar or meat or alcohol or too little salt, too much attention paid to everyone else.

My Papa pulls at my cardigan, says he likes it. Tells me I should give my boyfriend Lucas a ring, says to tell Lucas to marry me. Says what happened to him, his strokes, can happen to anyone.

Back in Seattle a week later, Lucas and I sit beneath a gnarled tree in the afternoon sun. We drink coffee and Italian sodas and try to soak in a symphony of songbirds. A composer sits down at our table with his dog, who lets loose a stream of urine almost as soon as he sits down. He tells us he left Los Angeles because he didn’t want to be gentrified.

“You’re going to croak,” he says, looking at me. “Don’t ask for permission because they’re not going to give it to you.” Better to be who you are than who they tell you to be.

He is 22 years older than me, the age of my parents, of my father, who shaves my grandfather’s beard, wipes food from the right side of his mouth, and always asks if he can help any of the others whose weakened limbs prevent them from opening their half-pints of milk, from spooning their soup into their mouths.

Don’t ask for permission. A few years ago I felt my words had dishonored me, been part of something inside myself always destined to go rogue, to never answer a direct question directly. Part of something forever transgressive, my ability to write one sentence, then follow it with another, then another, no matter how wrong or sorrowful or regretful it made me feel. And in that way I learned to write about rape, incest, abortion, all wrapped up in the secret loves we have for each other, our fears that the mark of tragedy makes us untouchable, unlovable, unable to even fathom a touch of freedom. Body, a word we later learn to name “taboo.”

I have days, weeks, years left of my life, yet I’m forever touched by the knowledge that the meter is running. I work on my novel, I put it away. My Papa will probably never go back to Costa Rica, and I don’t know if my Grandma will be able to remember my sister’s baby when it is born in June. They are my past, my present, my future. I think of Mike, how his family and loved ones gave us that last chance to write to him, how I thought there had better be stars, how I didn’t know he’d left until the next day, when a crazy man began to yell at me about a government conspiracy hiding on the moon.

“Mike,” I thought, “you’ve left so soon.”

I have been a writer since I was able to pick up a pen. As a baby I ripped pages out of my mother’s books; as a child I loved my fairy tales so much I took them into the bathtub, destroying them when my clumsy fingers lost their grip and gave the books a good dunking. Words, like my family, have been my past, present, future, even when they violate me, cross a line I can never uncross. Nobody ever gave me permission, but I never asked. Nobody ever told me I couldn’t do this, except myself, every time I rediscovered that impulse to veer off course and say too much, to expose taboo and offer a new name for it.

I try to avoid writing about my personal life. Never want to say too much, give anyone or anything too much power in knowing me too well. But time, my body, my Papa’s body, my Grandma’s mind, the composer’s dog’s bladder, there’s only so much before we lose the fight and something else takes the wheel. It can take you 30 years to hit your stride before your body decides you’ve had enough. It can happen tomorrow. But the fact that life can be an unbearably raw, open wound also means there’s a possibility of healing, however slow, however scarred. But if you shut the door on the words too early, give up in the face of cancer, of stroke, of dementia, of fear, the stars destined to come from your pen may well turn to dust.

So I will let my pen transgress. In the face of life rolling up the welcome mat ever so slowly, I give myself permission to say all of these wrong things, to give them a voice. Because there’s no going back, whether my thoughts appear on the page or in our lived world. And the truth is, they’re the same. Maybe we all know this. That’s the wound of writing. Someone out there will see your words as truth, even if in your mind you’ve made it all up. We all come from the same raw materials, after all.

The past, the present, the future – it’s always happening, right here, on the page. In this moment, I am with all of my loved ones, hoping to keep them forever safe in the company of my words. At least here I have the power to grant myself permission to love, to mourn, to be with them even as they transform into our beloved stars.

There are a number of good reasons why you should listen to your fellow writers—you can learn from their experiences, many know what they’re talking about when it comes to writing skills and the publishing world, and if you like their work you’ll know where to find more of it. Those are all valid, direct benefits from listening to your peers.

But that’s not what this article is about.

No, sometimes, you really should not listen to your peers.

First, writers love to tell other writers how to write. Overall, this is a good thing, but it’s hard to sort fact (or accepted style guides) from opinion. If you read a lot of writing advice you’ll discover that there’s often contradictory information out there, and some that’s outright bad (I’m not naming names, and please don’t go to my blog…). Beginning writers are often the worst offenders, probably because of the you must blog! attitude, and what better topic than writing about writing?

But there’s reasons to be skeptical. Just because something works for one writer—even a very successful one—doesn’t mean it’s right for you. Find the sources that ring true to you and listen to them. Develop your own skills and practices that keep you producing. Occasionally listen to dissenting views, see if there’s something to it, and forget it quickly when it doesn’t pan out.

The bigger point of this article is envy.

In certain ways, writers are like gamblers—when a gambler wins, everyone hears about their big payday. Likewise, writers toot their own horns when it comes to their publishing successes. Some writers are prolific, and good, and publish frequently—and they often announce new sales. We all tweet out a congrats, and cheer them on, and do it again for the next writer friend a few hours later. Everyone is selling something, somewhere, and we’re all happy for all of them.

But some of us have other thoughts, too. Dark thoughts, maybe even hateful thoughts. That should have been me, these thoughts whisper. Or they’re not that great, I could do that. Sometimes these thoughts take aim at your own abilities. I’m crap, they say, or worse—give up now.

The first kinds of thoughts are competitive, though in a negative way. Sure, when you get down to it, writing is competitive—there are only so many spaces in a magazine or anthology, and each publisher will only publish so many books in a given year. But the real competition is not with each other, but with ourselves—to do better, you need to write better than you have in the past.

The second kinds of thoughts are defeatist—self-doubt will keep you from doing things. Too much of these, and you’re done. Hang up your writer’s hat, and start asking people if they like fries with that.

I could go on about how to work through this—you will need to, it only benefits you—because there will always be someone better than you. Someone will always sell more, earn more, produce more—except for one person, and this article isn’t for them anyway. This is how the word “better” works.

But there’s another easy option that brings me back to my overall point—don’t listen to your peers. You don’t have to know what hundreds of writers have done in a given day. Ignore the “new sale!” announcements or the #amwriting wordcount updates. Limit the amount of time you spend on social media outlets.

Writers write—a lot. They tweet, they post, they blog. All. The. Time. You don’t have to read everything, and in fact you don’t have to read anything. Sometimes it’s just good for your own productivity to tune it all out. Focus on your own efforts first. Take whole days—or weeks—away. Really, you won’t miss much.

(Also remember that those who do sell a lot still get a lot of rejections—just like gamblers who never talk about all of the money they’ve lost, writers rarely talk about how often a story is rejected, how many times they’ve submitted to a particular magazine, or their sale-to-rejection ratio. But that’s a different article…)

So there you have it—don’t listen to your peers. At least, don’t listen to them all of time, and maybe even most of the time. Of course, this applies to me, too—hell, you probably shouldn’t listen to the advice in this article. Really, stop reading now.

That’s better.

If you aren’t familiar with the event, BEA is basically the biggest publishing trade fair in the States. It’s 3 days of packing out the heinous Javit’s Center and talking to publishers, bloggers, librarians and other professionals during the day, and making the rounds of publisher parties and bars in the evening.

New York and I have an…exciting history. Every time I go there, I end up with Stories To Tell*. More accurately, stories that make people who have stories to tell look at me and wonder how I haven’t died yet. Anyways, I’m hoping that this year is much better.

I’ll be there to run the SFWA table and hold signings with some amazing authors. Check out the schedule, and if you’ll be there, come and say hi!

Thursday
1:30: James Sutter
2:00: Michael Martinez
2:30: Jeri Smith-Ready

3:30: Alethea Kontis
4:00 Laura Anne Gilman

Friday
11:00: Sarah Beth Durst
11:30: Shelly Reuben

1:30: Doug Molitor
2:00: Leanna Renee Hieber
2:30: Patrick Matthews

3:30: Jim Hines
4:00: Karen Heuler

Saturday
12:00: SFWA Reading
1:00: Diana Gabaldon

Wish us luck!

*The current highlight** is the cabby who couldn’t figure out where I needed him to take me. We drove around the Bronx for about an hour, stopping to ask people at stoplights for directions. This is, by the way, at about 3am, after a day that started at 9am, included a convention day, an event, a dinner, drinking, Ray Bradbury’s death, a radio show ABOUT Ray Bradbury, and seeing Ground Zero for the first time.

I finally got in a yelling match with the driver and made him let me out on some random street. I called the guy I was dating, told him what was going on, and asked him to pull up Google Maps and get me back home. We had a very long talk about safety later…which is another common theme in my life.

**Followed closely by the time I had a connecting flight through Atlanta and our plane fishtailed on the icy runway.

Where are you going after this project? What comes after this novel, transmedia project, comic book, radio drama, non-fiction collection?

And where do you want to go next?

Maintaining a healthy booklife takes more than producing quality work and hitting your deadlines. Regularly take stock of your career to this moment. Observing the directions your completed projects can take you. If something brings you a feeling of dissatisfaction, examine that critically. Were you unhappy with the last book because it felt rushed? Did you co-author a project with someone you weren’t well-suited to work for? Dissatisfaction can tell us a lot, not only about what we don’t want to repeat, but what we want to pursue.

If you’re not sure about where you want to go next with your booklife, taking a moment can help you pick a direction. If you just finished a mystery novel but want to experiment with a new genre, maybe it’s time to try that science-fiction story you’ve had in the back of your head for the past few years. Experimenting with genre and form is good for you as a writer, even if those projects are never published. Finishing a project provides that meditative moment to assess your feelings and goals.

If you started a publishing career as a horror writer but want to switch to non-fiction, nothing says you can’t. But it’s helpful to determine why you want to make the switch. Are you dissatisfied with horror? With the type of horror you’ve written? Or did you hit a place where your urge to tell horror stories has been satiated?

Determining the genre and form of our next work is one component of taking stock. But the moment isn’t complete until we assess our goals from here. Every writer has their own unique career path. No one is the next King, Plath, Poe, Gaiman, Spillane. But if your goal is to achieve a widespread audience, your path after you take stock is different from someone who wants to publish only with a small press. If you’re working against what you thought were your goals, step back and look at your actions. If you’re self-sabotaging, you have to find the root and pull it out.

If you’ve changed interests or direction without realizing it, that’ll impact your booklife. It’s better to realize that and account for it, then let that change create unwanted complications. You might be afraid that if you dramatically change direction now, your audience won’t follow you. And that’s perfectly valid, because some are all of your audience may not make that change with you. Write books that make you unhappy for an audience you want to appease, or switch directions and see what happens next?

Taking stock isn’t about self-examination you’re going to ignore. It’s about consistent, regular assessment of you and your goals. Self-knowledge is a key to a healthy booklife. You don’t have to wait till the book is complete to sit down, and figure out where you’re going next.

In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I’ve been turning over in my mind ever since. “Whenever you feel like criticizing any one,” he told me, “just remember that all the people in this world haven’t had the advantages that you’ve had.” — The Great Gatsby

Another day, another crisis in publishing. Feels like that sometimes, anyway. Authors behaving badly, publishers behaving badly, fans behaving badly, event organizers behaving badly. There’s always something to blog about.

Sometimes the issues seem pretty clear-cut. An author has said some vile thing at someone else, publicly. Or a publisher isn’t paying their authors. Or an agent has absconded to Tahiti and now the IRS is making some phone calls. Whatever it is, there’s typically more than one side to the story. And when you’re an observer, it can be easier to see all the sides to the story, as you read blogs and tweets and facebook posts and watch the story unfold.

But obviously not everybody’s an observer. The crisis has to come from somewhere. There are often many parties involved, with several sides to take. And when you’re in the middle of a crisis that is directly impacting you, it can be difficult to see any viewpoint other than your own.

I would venture to say one of the more important characteristics for a writer to have is empathy. The ability to understand how someone without your particular background, beliefs, and attributes might react to something, and how the situation might appear to them, is critical in writing rich and varied characters. For instance, if you are white, and you have a black character in your story, it behooves you to be able to understand how race can impact one’s experiences and shape one’s character and judgement. Otherwise you’re likely to write stock characters, cliches that don’t reflect anyone’s actual experiences.

Which is why I find myself sometimes surprised by the lack of empathy in some of these kerfuffles, especially from writers. I’m surprised that people find it difficult to understand that the circumstances they find themselves in are not universal, and that others may hold differing opinions as a result.

Say an issue came up where there was what appeared to be an obvious moral high ground. Stand tall, do what’s right, perhaps take a bit of a hit for it, but you know in the end you did the right thing. Sure. That’s a fine opinion to hold. Moral high ground is a good place to be. And sometimes the opposite of the moral high ground is getting a cheque, and how great are you for sacrificing money in the name of what’s right? That’s great. I’m sincerely glad you’re able to stand tall on that issue.

But when you’re documenting your stance on the issue, consider including judgement of others in that statement. Not everybody has that same luxury. Most people, I’d wager, would like to remain on the moral high ground, but that can be challenging when a cheque means food on the table, or back-taxes paid, or finally getting to handle that costly medical procedure. Are they horrible and morally unsound simply because they took the money out of sheer necessity? Not everybody has had the same advantages that you’ve had.

I certainly understand that if you’re caught up in your own concerns it can occasionally be difficult to see the other side. But that’s what we as writers are challenged to do — to see viewpoints beyond our own. And we should challenge ourselves to really consider the experience of others. So the next time you’re putting your two cents in on the newest kerfuffle, take a breather before you post, and consider what the other side is seeing.

Recently, at the writers’ workshop I teach, we spent the afternoon discussing the ways characterization intersects with plot, particularly where conflict is concerned. After all, conflict moves story, but characters must have some element within themselves that makes them willing to engage in the conflict at hand… the hero’s quest, yadda yadda. At some point, early on, I made the very basic statement: as a writer it is your job to figure out what your character wants, then don’t let them have it. Because once they do, the story is over (so all right, let them have it at the end. That’s what makes it the end.)

Recently I’ve been thinking about what that means when you have an ensemble cast instead of a single protagonist. In the Western Fictioneers series Wolf Creek (by the multitudinous, multifaceted, and multifarious Ford Fargo), for example, every volume has about two dozen potential protagonists to draw from, each one with very different goals and desires/ How do we as a writing team, and I as an editor, keep them all from getting what they want, ever? It’s a sobering thought, at least from my end.

I’ve been thinking about some of the great western ensemble casts of bygone years. Deadwood had a magnificent ensemble cast. The network frustrated the desires of all the characters, and the audience as well, by canceling the show in the middle of a storyline. That’s clearly not the way to go.

The other greatest ensemble cast, in my opinion, was Gunsmoke (with plenty of other contenders). Most of the members of that ensemble had simple desires. Festus seemed to want a carefree life, and Chester a work-free one. Those desires are easily frustrated. Doc wanted to keep people from dying –in a place like Dodge City (at least on television), the frustration of that particular desire was guaranteed.

Which left the main protagonists, Matt Dillon and Miss Kitty. Matt wanted to be a lawman, and Kitty wanted to get married. Matt could not accede to Kitty’s desire, at least in his own mind, and hold on to his –considering it unfair to get married when he could be killed any day. I think that, really, he just didn’t want to be married. So Kitty never got what she wanted, and one suspects Matt was not able to fully enjoy his own life for the guilt he must have felt… and the story continued for about twenty years, with both of them stuck somewhere between vague contentment and unacknowledged sadness. Which was god for the show, really, because the tension between them remained, over and above the tension of each episode’s outlaw gang or Indian raid. And it was all very much between-the-lines, almost subliminal.

But, as I said, in Wolf Creek we have almost two dozen main characters. It would be nice if we could pair them off, a la Matt and Miss Kitty, so that their desires cancel one another out –maybe there’s a way to do that, I’ll have to give it some further thought.

I suppose I should begin by looking closer at the two characters I “run” –Black Seminole scout Charley Blackfeather and Marshal Samuel Horace Gardner. The two are about as different as night and day.

Charley is a remarkably complex man, with remarkably simple desires. He wants his universe to have balance. It is a major tenet of his, and his people’s, spirituality. If anything disturbs that balance it needs to be rectified. If there’s one fictional place your peace of mind can be jacked up, it’s Wolf Creek –check. This puts Charley in a similar situation as Doc Adams (and Doc Logan, in our series) –the one thing that most defines him is constantly going to be challenged as long as he is in that environment. It would be like being a housekeeper in a frat house.

Sam Gardner, on the other hand, is different. The one thing that defines him, that drove him from his Illinois home and keeps him in rowdy places like Wolf Creek, is his desire –his compulsive need –for action. He bores very easily. This makes Wolf Creek the kind of place he would thrive. It also makes for some very witty dialogue –but not much tension. I find myself digging a littelr deeper for the personality quirk that would cause discontent for the marshal in our rough-and-ready environs. And I think, in our most recent efforts (including some that have yet to see print, but will), I have found it.

Sam Gardner, in addition to craving action, craves respect. Not the sort of respect the corrupt mayor or crime boss of the town have, respect for his unique abilities. And that is already causing him some discontent in Wolf Creek. If he is successful at his job, and cleans up the town, there’ll be nothing for him to do. Not that there’s much danger of that; Sam is a prodigious gunman, but cleaning up Wolf Creek is a tall order indeed –the more he tries, the worse things seem to get. And that’s all well and good so far as things remaining exciting, but it is also causing people around town –and elsewhere –to doubt Sam’s abilities. So the marshal is I a Catch-22 of his own making, that is just going to get progressively worse. How long can that continue? I’m not sure –I guess we’ll have to ride along and see.

You can see things begin to unravel for Sam in Wolf Creek 4: The Taylor County War, out now.

It’s a funny thing about writers. Sometimes, when we go about our life’s activities, especially if those activities involve worthwhile charities or causes, we forget about the wellspring of contributions we have access to as authors. Those contributions include both our own well-honed talents and those of the network of colleagues most of us are connected to.

In my day job, I am a history professor at Tennessee Tech University, specializing in Native American Indian history. In that capacity, last year I was asked to serve on the board of directors of a new project: the Standing Stone American Indian Cultural Center. At the time, it existed only as a concept: a center located in the Upper Cumberland region of Tennessee, which in the colonial and pre-contact area had been a trade and diplomacy crossroads of sorts between several different tribes, that would eventually house a museum, an educational program offering various classes to the public, and fund indigenous cultural events and –someday –perhaps fund one or more scholarships to nearby TTU for American Indian students.

We’ve come a long way in a year, but we have a lot further to go. Most of all, we need to find funding –we had hoped to procure grants and so forth, but the continuing economy doldrums have dried up many of the sources we could normally have turned to. We have been brainstorming ways to reach potential donors who might be able to help –we tossed around ideas about fundraisers and outreach activities. That’s when it hit me.

I’m a writer. I write westerns. Lots of my friends write westerns.

Westerns are often about Indians.

Why not a fund-raising short story collection?

So I put out the word –and am putting it out now.

I will be overseeing the publication of Tales from Indian Country, under the aegis of Standing Stone American Indian Cultural Center (SSAICC). Authors are being asked to donate a story (keeping their own rights to said story, other than for this publication) –either an original tale or a previously published one they have the rights to –featuring American Indian protagonists and/or Indian themes. We do ask that they be well researched for cultural accuracy. There are no minimum word counts, though there is a 10,000 max. All royalties (beyond printing fees and other costs) will go to the SSAICC. The book will be available in both paperback and digital; if there is enough interest from writers, there may be more than one volume. With the potential long shelf life of books in this new digital age of ours, there is a chance our anthology (or anthologies) will continue to benefit the center as it grows (with the understanding that, if SSAICC should dissolve, the royalties would be diverted to a similar Native American Indian educational project.)

I would never have considered the possibility of editing such a volume if I had not spent the past year editing Western Fictioneers’ Wolf Creek series (and by the way, the fourth book in that series –The Taylor County War- just came out). Several of my colleagues from that series have already offered to pitch in for Tales from Indian Country. Like me, they are delighted to have a chance to use their unique skills for a greater good.

I encourage you to also think of ways to use your fearsome and formidable powers for some noble cause. And, if you write about Indians, or have done so, please consider pitching in to our cause, as well. You can email me at tdsmith at tntech dot edu for details. You can also learn more about SSAICC –including just what the “Standing Stone” of the title refers to. You might also want to check out the SSAICC Facebook page (or make direct financial contributions to their Fundrazr page).

I recently read an article which took the time to compile a series of tweets between Lupe Fiasco and Talib Kweli, discussing the prevalence of violent and abusive lyrics in rap and hip-hop (instigated by a recent song by Rick Ross that contains a glorification of date rape). While their conversation applies specifically to rap/hip-hop, it’s a subject I hear discussed heatedly, in waves: artistic responsibility, or the lack thereof.

Art is never divorced of its context. The art you create is informed by your life experience, by the world you live in, the language(s) you speak, and, importantly, the art you yourself have consumed. In my opinion, this is a good thing, and the greater variety of voices and backgrounds we can bring to the table, the more varied and wonderful our art will be. But unfortunately, some people come from toxic environments of varying categories, consume toxic art of varying degrees, and they either do not have the ability or do not take the time to examine these things for their flaws. Instead of critiquing their context and art, their art will at best present them without comment, at worst celebrate them.

It’s really inevitable, there will be art that doesn’t examine context. Art that degrades instead of uplifts. Art that abuses and hurts instead of empowers and cares. Is this art a symptom of the negative things in the world we live in, or a cause? And what do we as fellow artists do when confronted by this art?

The first question, asking whether hurtful art is a symptom or a disease, well, I feel like it oversimplifies the issue, demands that art as a collected body be only one thing for all of us. Art is both a symptom of our context and a cause of it. Repeatedly, in books, television, film, we see people of color as villains, as sacrifices, as helpers, as secondary characters, never as heroes. We see the tragic gay romance, if we see one at all. We’re lucky if we see a disabled character.

People learn from stories. We have fairy tales to pass down our learned cautionary tales. It’s how we gain insight into the experiences of others. How we learn where we “fit” in the world. And if we see these persistent messages of the inferiority of specific people based on traits they were born to rather than the content of their character, and if we refuse to examine these messages, we are more likely to act them out in reality.

If we truly believe that people should be judged based not on their gender, sexual preference, skin color, or dis/ability, then it behooves us to examine our art. Writing, painting, photography, film, any medium we use to convey our thoughts to the world at large, we should understand how these things fit in a greater context, and what our use of them says about our beliefs.

So what do we do when we see this art? More importantly, what do we do when it’s pointed out that our art failed to be aware of the negative aspects of the context it emerged from?

We as a community of artists really have three choices here. One, we can ignore these transgressions, perhaps out of apathy, or indifference, or a tired hope it will go away. Two, we can shun these artists, reject them entirely. Or three, we can engage them on their craft, thoughtfully critique them, and attempt to work with them on being more aware of their art and the context it is in.

I’m sure you can guess where I stand on this one.

It’s of course optimistic to say that we can engage artists on their hurtful art. It’s a fact that many of them will not be able to see past their own context, or will simply not care to. And it’s even more optimistic to think that when we as creators are confronted about the failures of our art, that we will be able to respond graciously and thoughtfully. But optimistic as this may be, it’s something we should strive towards, in the effort of making art that challenges, art that confronts the negative, art that investigates our world and reveals it for what it is.

And what if my aim is not for great art? you ask. What if I just want to entertain? Well, in that case, how do you expect to entertain when your art is hurtful? How do you expect to bring a pleasant distraction when your art uncritically reflects these painful realities? Even in entertaining, it behooves you to be critical. It behooves you to examine your art. Like the unexamined life is not worth living, unexamined art is not worth creating.

i09.com’s basic run-down of the situation.

The Locus write-up.

An open letter from Nightshade owner Jeremy Lassen.

Some information on Start Publishing.

Agent Andrew Zack unpacks more of the issues.

The Night Shade Writers of America: An agent’s perspective

Nightshade Books: What Went Wrong

Michael Stackpole’s take on why he won’t be signing the new deal.

Kameron Hurley’s take.

Tobias Buckell has an excellent write-up.

Nathan Hall has some excerpts from NSB letters.

Cat Rambo examines some of the problems faced by the parties in this deal.

Phil Foglio’s perspective.

SkyHorse defends itself.

Jason Sanford weighs in.

Theresa Frohock’s post.

Our best wishes are with the people tied up in this deal. It’s never fun, and never a good thing for the industry when a company goes under.

If you know of any good links we missed, please feel free to post them in the comments.