Clocks slay time … time is dead as long as it is being clicked off by little wheels; only when the clock stops does time come to life. ~ William Faulkner

Hi there, my name is Jay and I’m a writer. I thought that it would be best to start this guest blog off with a simple introduction and that seemed quite apt. Except that isn’t quite true. You see if I was to tell you what I am – and being honest – ‘writer’ would come some way down the list of things. First and foremost I am a husband, to the beautiful Carole, and father, to my two wonderful boys: Mackenzie and Nathaniel. After that I am a worker, for which I travel about 90 miles a day and put in about 45 hours a week. I teach two martial art classes a week. I’m a regular co-host and contributor on a weekly radio show. I’m part of the Northern Ireland Rare Disease Partnership, where I do social media work and try to raise awareness of issues facing people with rare diseases. Oh yes, and I write.

I occasionally like to sleep as well.

There are the lucky few who are able to put the ‘writer’ tag at the top of the parts that make their sum, so to speak. The ones who have worked hard, and caught a break or two, and now write full-time, for a living. Then there are the others – the ones like me – who are writers after everything else has been taken care off. The ones who grab whatever time they can to sit down in front of the keyboard and knock out the words that have been swimming in their heads whilst everything else is going on.

You see I might put everything else that I do, that I am, before the ‘writer’ part but I can honestly say that I go to sleep thinking about words, plots and characters; I wake up thinking about protagonists, antagonists and even tritagonists … though, admittedly, when it gets that far I have to do something as my mind gets far too crowded! I have notepads in my workbag, in my martial arts bag, in my jacket pockets even. I have electronic notes on my phone, on my email, on my laptop and on my PC. I have notes that never make it out of my head to anywhere else.

Because, even when I don’t have time to write – when I am busy being a husband, a father, an employee, a teacher, an advocate or any of the other things that fill my life – I am thinking about the words that are yet to come.

I used to think that the adage of a writer having to write each and every day, to set a word count and hit it no matter what, was the right thing to do; that without doing so you weren’t a writer. I used to feel frustrated if I couldn’t meet the word counts I had set myself, or wasn’t able to sit down for a solid couple of hours each and every day, and write. I used to feel guilty when I did take those hours, each and every day, because I could hear my children playing outside, or missed a social engagement with my friends. It got to the point where I was making excuses about what I was doing:

“Do you want to come to the cinema tonight, Jay?”

“No thanks, I’ve got a meeting in the morning to prepare for.”

“Did you get a chance to read that report last night, Jay?”

“No, actually, I went to the cinema with some friends.”

I’d actually done some research into men who go to any lengths when having an affair. They lie to everyone around them in order to fill whatever part of them it was that wanted to be with someone else. Eventually they even began to lie to themselves about what was going on, perhaps believing their own untruths.

And, just like a mistress, writing became my own guilty secret. Rendezvous with the laptop at 1am in the morning when everyone else was asleep; the notepad taken out, discreetly, and words fumbled between the tedium of project updates; a text message, or email, sent to myself in the middle of the night, hoping that my wife wouldn’t wake up with the glare of the phone as I sent my other love another furtive ‘quickie’.

To meet the spurious targets I had set myself, in order to satisfy myself that I was still a writer; I entered into an illicit affair with my Muse.

And then I caught myself on. I realised that it wasn’t something real, something tangible, I had with my Muse anymore but, instead, furtive moments in the dead of the night where neither of us were ever truly satisfied. I wasn’t living up to Her expectations at all: I wasn’t going the distance for her, in terms of time or words.

… yeah, I know, it happens to everyone and She was quite understanding about it really but one’s masculine ego does take a bashing the first time, in the middle of the night with the sheets wrapped around you, you can’t finish what you started.*

Something had to give and, finally, it did.

My ego.

I realised that I don’t have to write one thousand words a day, each and every day. I realised that I don’t have to try to ‘fit in’ my writing amongst everything else and try to keep up the pretence that I am a writer above everything else. As long as I write, to the best of my ability, each and every time that I can, then that is all that truly matters because, after all, a satisfying fifteen minutes is better than a wasted hour.

So, at the end of the day I am a husband, a father, a worker, a teacher and many other things too. Amongst them all – the parts of my sum – I am a writer. My family accepts that, and supports it, as do I.

My Muse is still happy to tease me, to call me at all hours of the night and day but, ultimately, knows that I will always be Hers, no matter how much time I get to spend with Her; She no longer watches the clock.

As long as I continue to write for Her, of course.

And I will.

– Jay

*I was talking about a short story, you filthy minded people! ;)

A First Reader inhabits the inner circle of your creative space; he or she is separate enough from you to have a fresh perspective and honest enough to actually give it.  He or she knows your ticks, tricks, and hang-ups.  You have a history together—a history that is not all cheese puffs and roses—and you are still speaking to each other despite or even because of that history.

I have two First Readers—my wife who is a professor of religious studies at Wofford College and John Jeter who is a novelist, memoirist, and co-owner of a music venue in Greenville, SC.  Both of my First Readers have an uncanny ability to look at a tangled ball of prose and see the threads of meaning, to stare chaos in the eye and she what that chaos aspires to be some day.  Both are damn good editors, great writers, and even better friends.

John and I met a few years ago when I interviewed him about his then newly published novel, The Plunder Room.  Instead of a straight ahead interview, John and I sat at The Handlebar and talked about writing and writers, music and the music business, and indulged in our mutual fondness for moderately inappropriate humor.  I left with four and a half hours of tape for an 800-word column and a new friend.

The other morning, John and I found ourselves at our respective computers at the same time.  John was still buzzing from having just turned in the “final final draft” of his memoir Rockin’ a Hard Place and I was struggling with writing about First Readers.  So, I did what I do in a pinch—what journalists do when they have a topic and a deadline—I asked someone else some questions about the topic.

This is the first time John and I have talked about reading each others work.  It’s usually just something we do—something that starts with “Help!” in the subject line or “Hey, you got a minute to read something?”  But there’s more to it than that.

Why read someone else’s work?

John Jeter:  Because he asked. No, really. Like Dos Equis’ Most Interesting Man In The World, I don’t often read what someone else asks me to read, but when I do, it’s usually because I either like the person who asks me (and I really like to help those folks I happen to like a lot) or I find that his subject or piece is compelling—preferably both. Generally, I find that the person who asks genuinely wants what I may have to say and seeks a perspective that he perhaps hadn’t considered during or after his writing.

What is your editorial approach when reading a friend’s writing?

John Jeter:  The first thing I do is try my hardest to keep from ripping the entire thing apart without first reading it all the way through, and then I try to keep from rewriting it the way I would have written it because, of course, I would have written it much better, though the story wasn’t mine to begin with and I may, in fact, have limited knowledge about the subject matter, even though the writer who asked me to read his piece suspected that perhaps I did.

In any event, I actually do read the piece all the way through first and try to take mental notes on the places where I stop or the places where I flinch or the places that I would just cut out all together. I also keep a sharp eye for the “babies,” those flashy bits (or stretches) of precious prose that scream out: “Look at what a brilliant writer I am!”

As soon as I’ve made those notes mentally, I then go back and try to give a lot of thought to the writer’s original intention and voice, and then try to guide him back to those things. In other words: The distance between the head (and/or heart) and the fingers is often as far apart as the Sun is from Pluto, which isn’t even a planet anymore. My job, then, is to figure out a way to close the gap. As an outside observer invited in, I can often see what the writer’s brain is doing and what his fingers did, and, again, with a more-objective perspective, I can determine where the artistic spaceship went adrift and try to act as Ground Control to get the damn thing pointed in the direction the pilot originally wanted to fly.

That said, once I read the piece, get a feel for voice and intent, and decide once and for all what the writer’s real message, theme and structure are, I work to show that a little nudge here, a little push there, a little extra boost here and there might make a difference in the power and quality of the project.

Is it easier or harder to read something written by someone you know?

John Jeter:  I prefer to read something by someone I know. I also prefer to read something by someone who knows me and knows me really well. If I wind up being too heavy-handed with a piece and have this sense that the entire thing should be rewritten top to bottom, I prefer to be working with someone I can say that to honestly. And if I do actually want to entirely rejigger the piece, but my friend would rather keep it the way it is—despite how bad I think it might be—I would rather that he has the freedom to tell me he appreciates my edits, etc., but doesn’t happen to agree with any of them. Honest friendship makes for honest editing. At least, that’s how I feel about it.

Would you rather get edits from a friend or an editor you don’t know?

John Jeter:  I tend to think of editors as friends, so I’m not sure that an editor who buys or wants to work on a project of mine isn’t already a friend, if that makes any sense.

Here’s where that comes from: I came up in newspapers. Writing one or two or even three stories a day on deadline required some fast thinking and quick writing, and then just turning all those words over to a city editor, who then turned them all over to a copy editor. These were all colleagues, people I respected, trusted and appreciated. Most of them were terribly smart, often a lot smarter and, usually, more accomplished, talented or experienced than I was. I worked to make them friends, too, as much as they were colleagues. That way, I could assure myself that they treated me and my output with discretion and some amount of generosity, because nobody wants to truly piss off a friend. Most editors, especially the best ones, the ones who also want to be a friend of the writer, prefer to be constructive, not paragraph-shredders.

All in all, what are the pros and cons of having a “first reader”? 

John Jeter:  My wife has almost always been my first reader; that is, outside the newspaper business and in my life as a professional writer. The pros are that she’s generous and honest, never mind that she’s immensely capable, talented and damned good at editing. The cons are that she’s right just about all the time, and that can be either humbling or humiliating, depending on my mood.

I prefer to have a first reader I know rather than one I don’t. I recently had a “first reader” that was given to me by an editor, a first reader I didn’t and still don’t know and have never met. I didn’t have any idea of the reader’s credibility, but since my editor was the one who decided on that person, well, I felt okay about the judgment(s) that went into my work. At the same time, I knew I could also simply disregard that person’s comments. But that kind of speaks to my point: If you’re sleeping with your first reader and she happens to be right all the time, you kind of understand that credibility’s already a given.

Lastly, what do you look for in a “first reader”?

John Jeter:  Great looks, a nice body . . . Actually, in some seriousness, I prefer a first reader who’s like the writer I would someday like to be: a reader/editor with a generosity of spirit whose purpose isn’t so much to serve the writer’s ego as it is to serve the story. Once the story is served, the writer’s ego gets served, too. The process usually doesn’t work so well when both parties – reader and writer – go at it the other way around. So my first reader needs to care about the story as much as she cares about me, but with the generosity of spirit that communicates this one truth: I care about you enough to make you want to produce the very best story you can, and if I (we) can do that, why, you’ll wind up feeling pretty good, too. That’s a good first reader.

In fact, I wouldn’t dare file a story to any of them with “awesome” in it, except as a joke (or if I were really, really tired). Besides, the editors I work with know me well enough to know that “awesome” isn’t a word I’d use. That kind of familiarity is … well, it’s awesome!

Sure, there have been editors I didn’t get along with for various reasons.

Sometimes an editor wants something very specific, but doesn’t articulate exactly what it is that he or she wants. Freelance writer and designer Will Hindmarch calls this the “bring me a rock” scenario. It goes something like this:

Editor: “Bring me a rock.”

Writer: “Here’s a rock. I found it just for you!”

Editor: “I want a different rock.”

Writer: “Here’s another rock. Isn’t it wonderful?”

Editor: “Not that rock. Bring me a rock.”

Writer: “???”

Sometimes editor states very clearly what he or she wants and I don’t really listen.

Editor: “Bring me a rock.”

Writer: “Here’s that fish you wanted! Isn’t it neat?”

The latter example is all my fault. I can own that. And I also own a drawer (actually, a digital file folder) full of fish that have yet to find a place to swim. Want one? I’m giving them away free of charge.

I know the rules, the dos and don’ts of the writer/editor relationship. I’ve written about those rules and taught them in classes. I’ve even followed them (most of the time) since my first newspaper job over twenty years ago.

I’ve also broken just about every one of the rules and tried my darndest to learn from my mistakes.

Some of us, however, are slower learners than others. Being life-long learners, sometimes, has more to do with how slowly we learn than with the infinite scope of our curiosity.

The best thing about the editors I work with (other than their patience) is that every last one of them calls me on my BS and, for the most part, doesn’t hold that very same BS against me.

And that is so, so awesome.

I admit it: sometimes I blow deadlines or turn stories in so close to the print run that the editors involved have no time even to copy edit them. Sometimes I forget to update my editors or I drop completely off the grid. Sometimes I need to be re-angled multiple times. Sometimes my stories are, shall we say, structurally unsound, organizationally baffling, epically confounding. And I get wordy, especially when I’m tired. If I have too little to do, I procrastinate. I pitch stories impulsively. Heck, I even space out on sending in the invoices. And, let’s just face it: my comma usage is definitely not awesome.

I don’t do these things all the time, but for most editors once is enough. I should know better. I should do better. I should be a better writing professional.

That’s what an editor does. Pushes us to be better writers. Demands our best and deserves to get it.

Writers need editors. And I don’t just mean aspiring and new writers. Every writer. Each and every one of us needs editors.

Editors pull us out of our own heads, gives us fresh perspectives on our work while it’s still growing. Editors help us see with fresh eyes. They inspire us, have faith in us. They lend us their skill and the benefit of their experience. They teach us to be better writers … if we listen, if we keep our eyes and ears and egos open to what they have to offer.

How could we not love someone whose job it is to help make what we’ve written better?

Do I have an idealized view of editors? Maybe. Do I have an idealized view of the editors I work with? Not at all. They are human, every last one of them. They are imperfect. They get cranky. Annoyed. That’s all part of the give and take, the human interaction, the creative process.

Editors are awesome. And we writers should treat them as such. We should open up a document file or pull out a pen and some paper this very moment and write them some of the cleanest, smoothest, most on-topic copy we’ve ever written. Flesh it out. Develop it. Dig deep and push past clichés.

When we have something worthy, we should send it in early, receive edits as though they were birthday gifts, revise as though possessed by a higher being, and file glorious final drafts.

I’m not being sarcastic, here. I’m not kidding. These people play a vital role in what we do as writers. We should treat them as accordingly.

This is writer Nisi Shawl’s last post for Booklifenow, and I hope you’ll join me in thanking her for her great posts, this one included. Nisi is the co-author of Writing the Other, with Cynthia Ward, who will be contributing a last post later this week. I’m very grateful to both of them for such thoughtful and useful words. – Jeff

A subscriber to the Carl Brandon Society list serve asked for specific criticisms of the Spinrave recently published in Asimov’s SF Magazine. That is work. Just reading it is an effort, let alone trying to translate into something resembling sense. Hence my response below to the request for “specific criticism”:

“Okay, I would take the time to analyze the article if someone paid me for it. My rate is $50/hour.

“As a sort of free sample, I’ll say I agree essentially with (another poster to the list serve): consider the source. The source being Norman Spinrad, who not only doesn’t know anything about the subject upon which he bloviates for page upon page, but who seems to be inordinately proud of his ignorance. Norman is like this. My short response: tldr.

“I will also add that his positioning of Mike Resnick, a very good writer, as an African writer, is so insanely disorienting as to induce vomiting. And comparing him to Octavia E. Butler, who never, as far as I am aware, ever claimed to be an African writer, is an action on a par with opening a chest full of tokens and rummaging around blindfolded in it, and pulling one out at random to toss onto the hearth of rhetoric.”

The subscriber requesting explication declined my help. He thought my fee was too high—though another poster advised me to double it—and made do with the numerous other posts available on the subject.

Among them we find N.K. Jemisin, who deals with one specific point. It takes her 500 words, not counting her contributions to the post’s comment threads. Imagine if she had attempted to render the entire Spinrave comprehensible. How many short stories and/or novels of hers would we be doing without while she whacked her way through his thorny densenesses?

My offer stands.

Ante Spinrave, I expected to devote the whole of this final guest post for Booklife to analyzing a panel I recently pulled off at Radcon, an SF convention held in Eastern Washington. The panel was titled “Writing and Racial Identity.” Besides myself the participants were Eileen Gunn, Alma Alexander, and Bobbie Benton-Hull. Here’s the description I gave programming:

“What does your race have to do with what you write? Depending on your race, are certain topics forbidden to you? Obligatory? None of the above? If your race matters, how do you know what it is? By what people see when they look at you, or by what you know of your genetic background? By your cultural upbringing? By what you write?”

We had a grandly civil hour-long discussion about how our racial identities did and did not contribute to what we wrote, did and did not determine what we wrote, about how we dealt with others’ expectations of us as writers based on what they knew and/or assumed about our racial identities, how we constructed those identities for ourselves with our writing and in other ways. I loved that we spoke as equals, according each other and the subject all due and appropriate respect.

Because it is a complex subject, one that deserves careful thought.

One white panelist related a classroom encounter with Faulkner in which her instructor held up this famous white male’s avoidance of a black female character’s interior life as an ideal to emulate; to write some things she has written, the panelist has had to unlearn what she’d been taught. Another spoke movingly of the ethnic and religious distinctions that formed the core of her upbringing in Central Europe. I wondered aloud if my difficulty placing stories with white protagonists was due to editors wanting “more black for their buck;” that felt risky to me, since one of the field’s top editors sat in the audience’s front row, not five feet from my face.

Our fourth panelist had been raised as an American Indian and spent her life knowing absolutely that this was who and what she was. Then she discovered through genetic testing that her biological heritage is a mix European and Sub-Saharan African. No American Indian. She still struggled with integrating this knowledge at the time of the panel, framing her thoughts on her identity as a question, referencing a female character in the movie “Dances with Wolves.”

It was all most interesting to me. Way more interesting than the Spinrave. In my description and in my moderation I had aimed to show that race is an issue that affects writers of all backgrounds, all races, that racial identity is labile, is inflected by more than one sort of information, and in turn has complex and complicating effects on what we say, how we say it, who we say it to….We touched on each of these subjects with a sure touch, though in some instances only a brief one. There’s so much to talk about.

There are so many smart people to include in the discussion. I want to hold this panel again someday soon. Maybe at WisCon? The panel will give its participants and our audience much to think about. And they will think, and do research, and speak carefully. And it will make sense.

In the meantime, check out this essay by Shawl on “Appropriate Cultural Appropriation.

For some of us, the attractions of another’s culture can hardly be overrated. Within the context of speculative fiction’s reputation as “escapist” literature, getting away from one’s own traditions and background may seem like a good idea. Surely to find that much-prized “sensawunda” sought by genre afficionados, we must leave behind what British fantasist Lord Dunsany called “the fields we know?”

But what if the realms beyond these fields are populated? One person’s terra incognita is another’s home. What are we to make of the denizens of these exotic lands? And what will they make of us, tramping through their yam patches in search of the ineffable, and frightening their flocks with our exclamations over their chimeric beauty?

To collapse the metaphor, readers looking for something “different” in fantastic fiction, and authors who attempt to supply them with it, often turn to mythologies, religions, and philosophies outside the dominant Western paradigm. Then, not too surprisingly, people who practice these religions or espouse these philosophies or descend from those who constructed these mythologies object. Their culture, they complain, is being misrepresented, defaced, devalued, messed with. Stolen. Often, said culture is the only resource remaining after colonialization has removed all precious metals from the ground, or the ground from under its former inhabitants feet, or, as in the case of the African slave trade, when it has assumed ownership of those feet themselves.

Nisi Shawl and Cynthia Ward are guestblogging here on Booklifenow all this week. Their book Writing the Other is a remarkable exploration of character, situation, and perception. It’s a recommended text in Booklife – JeffV

Cynthia and I want to begin our joint stint as guest bloggers here by sharing an excerpt from Writing the Other: A Practical Approach, the book we wrote together based on the workshop we co-teach. The excerpt will help you get into the spirit of our upcoming posts, which are going to riff on related topics

First, we’ll define a couple of the terms we use:

The unmarked state—Possessing demographic characteristics considered “unremarkable” by the dominant culture.

ROAARS—This is an acronym we created to talk about a group of differences from the unmarked state that are, in this culture, considered to be deeply significant differences. These differences are: Race, (sexual) Orientation, Age, Ability, Religion, Sex.

Keep those concepts in mind as you read the book excerpt below. – Nisi Shawl

Parallax: Who is Looking at Whom?

Parallax is an astronomical concept that we’ve adapted to literary usage. The original idea can best be illustrated by performing a short, easy experiment.

Gaze at an object some distance away. If you’re indoors, look for something across the room from where you sit or stand: a picture on a wall, or a book on a shelf, perhaps. If you’re outside, choose an object in the middle distance: a tree, or a building not too far off, rather than a mountain, for instance. Hold one finger up so that it covers whatever it is you’re looking at. Now close your left eye. Open it again and close your right. Does your finger seem to shift in relation to the object you picked? That’s because of a shift in parallax. The slight change in the perspective from your left to your right eye results in an apparent change in the position of what you’re looking at. And the perceptual change is larger when you’re looking at something closer to your eyes—your finger—than something more distant—the picture or book in the background.

In terms of “Writing the Other,” slight shifts in your viewpoint characters’ positions vis-à-vis the unmarked state will change how they look at the world, at themselves, and at the concept of the unmarked state.

In fact, in addition to the dominant culture’s version of the unmarked state, each of us carries around our private take on what is “normal.” This definition adheres much more closely to our own specific characteristics.

Sometimes people apply this definition so inappropriately it’s almost funny. When Nisi first came to Seattle, she hired a cab driver to take her around to all the places she was considering renting. The driver was a white male with long, slicked back hair. He looked like he weighed 80 to 100 pounds more than she did. A crucifix dangled from his rearview mirror. Over the course of the afternoon they spent together, he advised Nisi as to what parts of town she should avoid: the Central District, for instance, an historically black neighborhood. As for Capitol Hill, known for its unconventionally clothed and behaved inhabitants—“You don’t even want to know what they get up to around there,” the driver claimed, referring, probably, to the prevalence of same-sex couples.

Remember, Nisi is black, and has slept with other women. So why would this man expect her to be uncomfortable in these neighborhoods? Well, because he was uncomfortable there. Obviously Nisi was just like him, because she was a good person: she’d been polite to him, laughed at his jokes, and conformed in plenty of other ways to his expectations of how a good person acts. He had, in the words of linguist MJ Hardman, conferred “honorary whiteness” on Nisi (personal communication).

Depending on their immediate context, your characters may perform similar mental acrobatics when thinking of those they come in contact with—or when thinking of themselves. They may identify with the dominant unmarked state though lacking its characteristics, or they may reject it—conditionally and partially, or without reserve. They may be conscious of privileges they lack or possess due to their ROAARS traits.

In the 1980s, Cynthia read a story in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. The title of it escapes her, but she will never forget the actual story. It may be the most astonishing work of fiction she’s ever read—although not for a good reason. The flaw she finds so memorable is a flaw that illuminates parallax.

The story was set in Maine. The protagonist was a straight Maine lobsterman. His best friend was a gay male bed-and-breakfast owner who’d moved up to Maine from New York. As she read, Cynthia spluttered with ever-increasing incredulity. Finally, she shouted aloud: “A Maine lobsterman would never be best friends with a New Yorker!”

***

That’s all for now. If you’d like to find out why Cynthia, who identifies as a Mainer, felt so affronted by the idea of a lobsterman from her home state befriending a New Yorker, you’ll want to read the rest of the book. It came out from Aqueduct Press in 2005 and is still available online from the publisher and other online booksellers.

Here’s more about both writers…

Nisi Shawl’s story collection Filter House won the 2008 James Tiptree, Jr. Award and was nominated for a 2009 World Fantasy Award. She received a second 2009 World Fantasy Award nomination for her novella “Good Boy.” Shawl is the coeditor, with Dr. Rebecca Holden, of Strange Matings: Science Fiction, Feminism, African American Voices, and Octavia E. Butler (forthcoming). Her reviews and essays appear in the Seattle Times and Ms. Magazine, and she has contributed to Women in Science Fiction and Fantasy and The Encyclopedia of Themes in Science Fiction. A former speaker at Duke University, Stanford University, Smith College, and the University of Washington, Shawl is a founding member of the Carl Brandon Society and serves on the Board of Directors of the Clarion West Writers Workshop, which she attended in 1992.

Cynthia Ward was born in Oklahoma and lived in Maine, Spain, Germany, the San Francisco Bay Area, Seattle, and Tucson before moving to the Los Angeles area. She has sold stories to Asimov’s SF Magazine, Sword & Sorceress XXIV, and other anthologies and magazines. Her reviews appear regularly in Fantasy Magazine and SciFiWire.com and irregularly in other websites and publications. She is completing her first novel, a futuristic mystery tentatively titled The Stone Rain. Ward will be participating in the Tucson Festival of Books at the University of Arizona next weekend (March 13-14).

Writing the Other is based on Shawl and Ward’s critically acclaimed diversity writing workshop Writing the Other: Bridging Cultural Differences for Successful Fiction .

Back to our regularly scheduled programming… I left my favorite observations for last. I live in the Puget Sound area, so the fact that I’m a huge fan of Apolo Ohno should come as no surprise. I do appreciate a golden child whenever he or she does come along (complete with awesome attitude), so I must also confess a fondness for snowboarder Shawn White. How can we not live in awe of these two Olympians? Here is what I took away from each of them over the last couple of weeks.  

◊ Find your sanctuary. 

Who doesn’t admire Shawn White’s personal half-pipe situation? He made the decision to keep his edge by investing in a remote training facility he customized for his own needs, and clearly it paid off for him. He pulled out and perfected brand-new snowboarding tricks at this year’s Olympic games that no one could even imagine doing until last week. 

Okay, I’m not suggesting that we all go buy multi-million dollar writing labs in Antarctica that we have to visit via a private helicopter service. Let’s face it, who has the coin for that? 

But I am suggesting that, if you don’t have a good place to write regularly, you should consider finding one. Often that means taking ownership of one corner of your house, but it can also mean claiming a period of time in which you ask your friends and family to leave you alone. Sanctuary is not only about locating a designated physical space, but about finding the inner space you need to sit comfortably in your creative zone. This should include the careful consideration of your personal time and energy. 

I have a sign I picked up while on Broadway a couple of years ago. It says “Quiet on the set.” Originally I hung it on my office door handle to indicate to my family that I was recording a podcast file. And they understood that to mean I needed for people to honor my need for silence and stop barging in on my session. Now I use that “Quiet on the set” sign as an indication that I am not available because I am writing. (I also use it to mark when I’m meditating.) 

I don’t hang it out there for 8 hours at a time; usually I use the sign for up to an hour’s worth of time composing new work, but only when I know there will be people in the house. It works. 

Another thing that works for me when I write “offsite” (usually in a local coffee house) is the use of earbuds while I’m writing. I don’t even listen to music; I find music too intellectually stimulating when I write. But I wear the earbuds anyway, to send out the signal to folks in my small town that I’m not available for chatter. Where I live, you can’t throw a rock without hitting someone you know, so the chances are high you’ll run into a friend or colleague or neighbor every time you leave the house. The earbud strategy works as well. 

It’s not a selfish or bad thing to ask for sanctuary; it’s perhaps the one tool that will allow you to keep writing when conditions don’t otherwise permit it. But you have to have the nerve to insist on it. And remember, you do not need permission to take time for yourself. 

The cost of my investment? An $8 souvenir and a pair of earbuds attached to either my phone or my laptop. No, it’s not a Shawn White multiplex, but it’ll do. And it does. 

◊ Stay classy (with a nod to spec-fic writer Jay Lake, who frequently uses this term in his tweets!). 

"Apolo Ohno's speed skates" by Mark Pellegrini (2008)

Okay, I don’t know about you, but I’m pretty sure US speed skater Apolo Ohno didn’t push that other guy down in the 500-meter race last Friday night. It looked to me like he was pulling his hand away from the hip of the Canadian racer when that skater lost his blade edge and slid into the padded wall. Physics 1010 suggests that, if you’re pulling your hand away from something, you really can’t simultaneously push against it… Unless you’re superhuman, I suppose. And maybe Ohno is… 

But when Ohno crossed the finish line in second place, you could see it in his eyes: this race is not over yet. It’s because he’s learned over more than a decade of competitive racing that the sport is subjective, people will fall and mess it up for all the other skaters, and playing dirty may or may not have anything to do with it. 

When the reporter from NBC asked him about it later, he was honest: he thought it was a bad call. But did he whine and complain that the Canadian judge was playing favorites? No. He ultimately said, laughing, “I just need to skate faster!” 

How cool is that?

Remember the Tonya Harding-Nancy Kerrigan scandal from the 1994 Winter Olympic Games at Lillehammer? I could see why viewers might hold a bad opinion about Harding; she behaved pretty immaturely and, when the truth came out about the conspiracy to assault Kerrigan, that sealed the deal. It’s widely agreed: Harding performed an unforgivable act of corruption.

But if you recall, Nancy Kerrigan wasn’t especially classy about taking her silver medal that year, either. At the awards podium, she didn’t show an appropriate amount of honor and respect to Oksana Baiul, who she clearly felt took “her” gold. 

Sorry Nancy, but this is not the attitude of a superhero.

Miss Kerrigan, take note: Last week, Canadian figure skater Joannie Rochette’s mother died before Joannie’d had a chance to take the ice. Rochette went on to skate her personal best and took away a bronze. Now that’s what I call gracious and classy to the end. 

How does this pertain to writers? 

If you see a writer you don’t admire winning a prize, you should still give them credit and move on. The awarding of prizes, like the adjudication of short track speed skating, is subjective. Sometimes the rulings will be fair, sometimes they won’t. Coming out publicly with your displeasure gives the appearance of sour grapes, but even more importantly, it doesn’t make it more likely that you’ll publish your work in that venue or others now or in the future. 

I’ve seen writers tear down other writers in this way and it’s so painful to watch. Listen, if you’re bitter enough, and you make your bitterness public enough, editors may even avoid working with you. Remember, they read everything… including the boards on the web. 

The truth is that sometimes judges do call a fair match and if you’re surprised, it might be because you, as a writer, are not open-minded or sophisticated enough in your craft and process to see that there are many, many ways to do something right.  And sometimes, as Ohno points out, that’s just the breaks of the game. There’s also the very real possibility that our work is really not as good as that of the writers we dislike. Who among us are that objective about our own work? I’d guess close to 0%. 

You could mire yourself in criticism of other writers, slander contests, pass judgment on the judges themselves… or you could use the unfavorable outcome as your motivation to do your personal best next time. What did Ohno do? He shed the loss, focused his energy on the following relay, and assisted his team in bringing home a bronze medal. What did Rochette do? She pushed through the pain and performed for all the right reasons, without using her grief as a crutch. 

Now that’s staying classy. 

Thank you so much for reading. Don’t miss out on my previous posts this week, as well! TGIF, 

Tamara  

Everything I’ve learned about writing this year I’ve relearned by watching the Olympics [series Part One] 

Everything I’ve learned about writing this year I’ve relearned by watching the Olympics [series Part Two] 

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Tamara Kaye Sellman Tamara Kaye Sellman is director of Writer’s Rainbow Literary Services. 

 Photo credits: Images used in this post are the property of Tamara Sellman or have been licensed for blogging use under the public domain or the Creative Commons.

◊ Expect to earn your medals every time.

Snowboarder Lindsey Jacobellis kinda blew it in Torino. She hotdogged her way to a second place in women’s snowboard cross when she had the gold medal practically around her neck on that last slope.

Jacobellis has had to live that down for the last 4 years and went to Vancouver hoping to redeem herself. It didn’t quite happen: this year, she DQ’d in prelims and had to duke it out for 4^th place, even though her odds of taking home a medal were just as certain as they had been in 2006.

I’m not judging. It’s gotta be tough to perform in such a public mainstream arena because, frankly, if you fail, everybody knows about it. Even people from the mainstream, who really don’t know the bigger score in such a specialty sport. For Jacobellis, it’s her 2009 first place ranking in World Cup ladies snowcross that folks overlook while calling attention to her failure in 2010.

Writers have it slightly better: if they fail, usually they just get rejected and no one but the writer and the prospective publisher are the wiser. Still, failure can be self-destructive. There isn’t a writer alive who has been rejected who doesn’t see “No” as evidence of failure.

But failure isn’t always what it looks like. Sometimes a good writer doesn’t fail so much as they lose to another–usually better–writer in competition for the same publishing real estate.  As an editor, I’ve had to reject perfectly successful stories from good authors because other authors have already beaten them to the punch. It’s unfair and editors hate to have to send good writing away, but it happens.

The bigger, more common reality, however, is not the tragic story of the near-miss, but this: just because you have published one manuscript does not guarantee that you will publish all of your manuscripts. Every time you submit your work, you enter it into conditions which you can’t completely predict or control. Just because you may have landed your work with one publisher doesn’t mean you’re going to walk into a publishing house in the future and sign the dotted line with your next manuscript without first submitting your new work to intense scrutiny. Your next manuscript, and the one after that, and so forth, will have to earn its way and survive on its own every time.

That’s not to say there aren’t some conditions you can control: your effort to make your manuscript the best ever, your careful consideration of markets, your voice and style are things you can focus on to improve the success rate of an individual piece sent out into the world to find its place.

But there are always going to be conditions you can’t control: the competition, the amount of space available for work like yours, the practical needs of an editor that go beyond the value of a well-written manuscript. The sooner you make your peace with this reality, the better.

Lindsey Jacobellis didn’t fall out of the snowboard cross universe because she failed at the Olympics, after all. She just didn’t win that particular race in Vancouver, just as you will not publish every single manuscript you submit to that particular publication. What to do? Keep going and remember, you win some, you lose some.

◊ Sometimes you have to ski blind.

German sisters Susanne and Maria Riesch had big hopes of sharing the podium this year in alpine skiing. Maria took the gold, while Susanne ended up in a collision that cost her the chance to join her sister.

Susanne’s “failure” mirrored the “failures” of many other world-class skiers at this year’s Olympics. Deteriorating slope conditions and visibility issues were a major contributing factor for many, with luck being a larger-than-usual part of the equation. It’s risky business, skiing when you can’t see ten feet in front of you.

But anything worth doing requires an assumption of risk, and those who take the chance–though they are likely to fail big–are also likely to win big.

So it goes with writing. It’s important for writers to stretch their skill sets beyond what they know they can accomplish. Leading a successful writing life is not only about publishing every piece you’ve ever written. After doing this a while, you can find yourself in a rut on the safe path, where you risk parodying yourself. Writers who dare risk to stretch their skills also take a chance at failing big. 

Chicago mystery author Sarah Paretsky ventured from her VI Warshawski series to write Ghost Country, a magical realist departure which, though it received high acclaim, did not seem to go over well with her established readers. She took a risk and lost some readers, but found others. For instance, I had not read a single of her mysteries before I read Ghost Country, and I found I really liked her street-level feminist narrative style. I’d read Paretsky again. No doubt Paretsky learned some things about herself as a writer in the bargain, things that may have improved her VI Warshawski series.

I have my own–though far more humble–experience with taking risks with my writing. I took one summer off from my writing group and wrote a weird story I couldn’t categorize (I learned later it was magical realism). I took it to my writing group in the fall; they hated it (except for the one fan of magical realism). But I blindly stuck to my guns and sent it out into the universe anyway. It became the first short story I ever published, and it earned me a Pushcart prize nomination and Rosebud magazine’s accolade as one of their best published stories for that year. Who knew? Not me. I was “writing blind,” but the reward I took away was all I needed to keep going, to keep writing even when a rejection from one of my favorite magazines came only a couple of weeks after I’d found a home for that first oddball story.

Remembering that risks can often lead to great rewards can be motivation enough for writers. And don’t forget; you’re less likely to break a leg while trying something new! Even if you don’t succeed right out of the gate, you’ll still have more opportunities to turn your luck around. The Riesch sisters will compete again for the shared podium, Sara Paretsky continues to be successful, whether writing mysteries or something else entirely, and I’ve published more than one piece of writing since that fateful day in 1996, so take heart: assuming risk may not guarantee success but it will guarantee opportunity.

Coming Friday: “Find your sanctuary” and “Stay classy.” See you then! 

Tamara 

Everything I’ve learned about writing this year I’ve relearned by watching the Olympics [series Part One]

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Tamara Kaye Sellman Tamara Kaye Sellman is director of Writer’s Rainbow Literary Services. 

 Photo credits: Images used in this post are the property of Tamara Sellman or have been licensed for blogging use under the public domain or the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.

Anticipating the content of my posts this week has been rather challenging: there’s so much to write about! But it came to me on Saturday as I realized my interest in the Olympics was beginning to wane. 

I’d seen all I needed to see of curling, short track speed skating, downhill, bobsled, snowcross and the like. But the Olympics always linger in my mind long after the network has packed up its cameras and talking heads and returned to regularly scheduled programming. 

Witnessing (live or on TV) the prowess of the world’s athletes is always inspiring to me. I grew up in a sports household (baseball, basketball, track and field, gymnastics, soccer, football, softball, volleyball, tennis have all been played with regularity by at least one member of my immediate family), so I’m already in the practice of appreciating the work that goes into excelling at sports. 

But the world’s finest athletes perform with a caliber and grace that takes human experience beyond what it means to be fit or a sound competitor. These are the titans of the modern day, and like the titans of the past, the masses can’t help but idolize them as the demi-gods they truly are. 

This week, I offer the series, “Everything I’ve learned about writing this year I’ve relearned by watching the Olympics” in three parts. As writers, we have cobbled together our own hopes and dreams for becoming the future titans of the literary world. We have much to learn from athletes, and this Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, I’ll give examples that show how writers can learn from the trials of Olympians.

Today I’ll talk about discipline and perseverance. 

◊ Say no to say yes. 

"Madrid Snowzone" by Saliendo del Cajón (2007)

Every single Olympian had to set aside large chunks of their life in order to prepare for competition, often relocating to train at a facility far from home. They also made the conscious choice to give up certain things, like favorite foods or TV or seeing their family, in order to do so. 

Writers have it a little bit better than that: they don’t have to leave behind their entire family for months on end to go to a special facility to write. Granted, writers may take a week off here or there and go on a writing retreat. But they can also opt for a home office or a coffeehouse or the daily commute on the train to achieve their dreams and return to home’s comforts every day. 

There are some things writers need to give up in order to have a writing life, though: time and energy. Novels don’t finish themselves, after all. A hockey player may need to skate sprints or block pucks repeatedly for hours; so will a writer need to put her butt in the chair and write as much and as best as she can. Some days, it will come easily; other days, the work will be excruciating. The rule is, for both the athlete and the writer, to keep going. Discipline and focus are the tools that empower folks to say no in order to say yes. 

Next week, if you are almost done with a short story first draft, say no to that Oscar party (and set your DVR) so you can say yes to finishing the draft.  Got a batch of revisions you need to complete by Friday, but you don’t have time? Make it a priority anyway: cancel the book club you were going to visit midweek to cull time to implement your manuscript’s changes. Get up early to revise your manuscript on your day off. Take your work out in the sun with you, should good weather happen for you this week. 

Keep your eyes on the prize and don’t let things that really don’t matter get in the way. You can watch the Oscars later; you can send your reading comments ahead of time to the book group; you can get your work done and enjoy the sun. This is how success happens: by setting priorities, staying focused, and being flexible. It all starts with saying no and meaning it. 

◊ Remember that not everyone will appreciate what you do. 

"Curling stones on rink with visible pebble" by Felix (2007)

I fell in love with curling while watching the 2002 Olympics in Park City. I still love its strategy and precision, the dedicated teamwork, the sport’s intellectual nuances. 

No, curling’s athletes may not be rock-solid muscle machines, but they perform with amazing finesse, possess hawk-like vision, and show more dedication to their dreams than many people I know. Still, they get a lot of flak from the press for not appearing to be rock-solid muscle machines. 

Why? Because it’s hard to understand curling’s challenges just by watching. You can’t see the benefit of training in their bodies, though it’s there. Badminton, marksmanship, golf, and ping pong are also difficult sports, but they don’t necessarily get the same respect from the viewing audience that skiers and runners and swimmers do. 

But curlers and marksmen and ping pong players and golfers and badminton teams don’t really give a hoot about what the audience thinks. To have fans cheering for them is merely the icing on the cake; ultimately, these kinds of athletes are not doing it for the fans, they’re doing it because they have well-tuned skills and want to compete with the best of the best. 

This bodes true for writers as well: poets of rhyming verse, experimental prose aficionados, bloggers, folks who bend genre, children’s authors, short story writers, citizen journalists, and many, many others. How many times have you heard a nonwriter say, “Well, I could’ve written that!” Except that they didn’t. Because, really, they can’t. They have no real idea how hard it is to do what these writers do. So writers who vary from the popular, bestselling forms may have to endure a lot of judgment from people who really don’t know better. 

It’s not easy to write anything, whether it’s a bestselling novel or popular genre or flash fiction or a villanelle. It’s even hard to write a bad manuscript! But it’s even harder to write well when the culture around you doesn’t truly appreciate your chosen form. 

You have to find a way, like the curlers, to slough that off. The way to do that is to hang out with like-minded others, honor the leaders in your chosen form and genre, stay focused on what it is you want to accomplish, study from the masters at every opportunity, and then give it your level best. You may never find a huge fan base for what you write, but just as there are fans for curling, there will be fans for what you have to say as well. 

Coming Wednesday: “Expect to earn your medals every time” and “Sometimes you have to ski blind.” See you then!

Tamara

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Tamara Kaye Sellman

Tamara Kaye Sellman is director of Writer’s Rainbow Literary Services. 

Photo credits:Images used in this post are the property of Tamara Sellman or have been licensed for blogging use under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.