Finding the voice

Since I'm currently teaching two classes for young adult writers I'm inundated with teen energy and I'm blown away by how much these kids know that I didn't learn for decades. One thing they seem to have a great grasp of is the "voice" of a piece of fiction. Now why should that come easier for these young writers than for my older students? I'm wondering--and I'm serious about this--if it's because their world, though they know so much and are so sophisticated in many ways, is still a narrower, shallower place than the one a middle-aged woman like me lives in.

For example: As I finish this trilogy, I'm also going over the copyedits for Book II (AIRS AND GRACES)and I'm fussing with the voice. I have to work to get the voice even throughout these fantasies, and it's a very different voice than I use for sf, or for sf short stories. I have too many voices to choose between!

I wonder, also, if writers who spend their entire working lives writing in one world realize how lucky they are? It's like those opera singers who sing five or six roles over and over, all over the world, and make exponentially more money than a comprimario singer like myself, who typically has to learn a new role every few months in order to keep working. Oh, to repeat a role! To delve into the nuances and mine the possibilities!

But then, I'm never bored.

Wrapping a trilogy

Finishing the last book of a trilogy feels a bit like it must feel to wrap a movie. All the threads that started in ALL the books need to wind up, and the character issues need to pay off. It's my plan that this third book (Airs of Night and Sea) will really be the end of the trilogy, so I don't want to leave plot issues unresolved or big questions unanswered. It makes me envy George R. R. Martin just a teensy bit . . . so much more room to make everything work out.

And what a surprise, when I thought I was almost done, to find that the ending I had planned just didn't feel right. I couldn't make it work with the character I had committed to, with the plot as it unfolded, with a slightly left-over issue . . . so I have to write one more chapter and insert it before the end.

Thank goodness for the Redmond Riters and their sage advice! I'd hate to have to handle this without collegial input. If any of the Bloglet readers have advice, I'm open to that, too!

Misogyn is alive and well in America

Why should the fact that a blouse of Hillary Clinton's revealed a tiny (according to the report) bit of cleavage be of any import at all to a political blogger? Tim Graham found a mention of the aforesaid blouse by a Washington Post fashion reporter--fashion, mind you--worthy of an entire column. It's here, if your stomach is strong enough: http://newsbusters.org/blogs/tim-graham/2007/07/20/washpost-fashionista-hillary-showing-cleavage-no-one-wants-see

But perhaps you'll just take my word for it. It's revolting. The right is so terrified of Senator Clinton that they fasten on her clothes as grounds for objection. Now suppose she sobbed her way through a speech on the Senate floor, the way Boehner did? They'd have a heyday with that, I imagine, all about hormones and feminine weakness and blah blah blah.

These folks think that Islam is mysognistic, I know, because they say so. I fail to see that they're any different.

Bye-bye to sci-fi?

Amy Biancolli of the Houston Chronicle has written an extensive and authoritative article on the current state of science fiction. She writes like a fan, which is fabulous, and she knows her sf history.

I especially liked this: "Call it what you will, but great science fiction can be cosmic or minimalist, outward-looking or inward. It expands or contracts, pushing humanity into the farthest reaches of space or reducing it to cinders."

Pretty great stuff. She also points out the mainstream novels that purport to present great new ideas that are--to the sf fans--old as the hills. It's worth reading! http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/movies/323863_scifi17.html

Writing as protest

This is now officially a Republican war: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/huff-wires/20070718/us-iraq/ I've talked to far too many mothers whose children have been irrevocably changed by what they've seen and suffered while in combat for a bunch of old men who ducked their own service.

I don't know what a writer can do. I wish my story "Absalom's Mother" could reach more than the already converted. But then, perhaps it's writerly hubris that makes us think what we write makes any difference at all.

Letting someone else fight your battles

A Washington Post reporter told Chris Matthews today on Hardball that a news video showing a young man (31) accosting Cindy Sheehan on the street, badgering her to say what will happen in Iraq if we pull out, and shrieking things about how awful Saddam was, was only a partial of the clip. He described what the reporter asked the guy after Sheehan was gone. The reporter evidently said, "Why don't you serve if you think it's so important?" The young guy says, "They don't want me, I'm 31." And the reporter said, "They're taking guys at 40. There's a recruiting station down the street. Let's go!" And the 31-year-old said no, that his job was to stay home and make money to support the war.

In the times I've been part of a group of demonstrators, the people who flip us off are invariably--and I mean that literally--invariably young men of service age. What's that about? Young men who could be in the armed forces are flipping off middle-aged women because they oppose war. Go figure.You can see the video if you like at http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3036697/

And while I'm at it, why is it that conservatives like Lindsey Graham are growing more and more shrill with every day that passes? Getting desperate, I guess. A 22% approval rating will do that for you.

Write a Book This Summer!

My writing class for teens began Saturday at Bellevue Community College. Twelve handsome, smart young people gathered (one was missing, must track down) and did writing exercises, discussed story structure and manuscript format, did more writing exercises, discussed critique process and demonstrated that they already have a very good grasp of this. Each spoke eloquently and enthusiastically about their planned summer project of writing a book!

Have no fear, friends and colleagues. If this dozen kids is any sign at all, the future is in good hands.

And . . . bonus feature: at least half of them want to write fantasy and science fiction. There's even a hard sf writer budding in this garden of riches!

So who's a lucky teacher?

Why is Bush's approval rating so high?

According to the newest Gallup poll, Bush's approval rating is now at 29%, a new low. What I want to know is why it's that high? Read on:

WASHINGTON, July 10 — Former Surgeon General Richard H. Carmona told a Congressional panel Tuesday that top Bush administration officials repeatedly tried to weaken or suppress important public health reports because of political considerations.

The administration, Dr. Carmona said, would not allow him to speak or issue reports about stem cells, emergency contraception, sex education, or prison, mental and global health issues. Top officials delayed for years and tried to “water down” a landmark report on secondhand smoke, he said. Released last year, the report concluded that even brief exposure to cigarette smoke could cause immediate harm.

Dr. Carmona said he was ordered to mention President Bush three times on every page of his speeches. He also said he was asked to make speeches to support Republican political candidates and to attend political briefings.
And administration officials even discouraged him from attending the Special Olympics because, he said, of that charitable organization’s longtime ties to a “prominent family” that he refused to name.

“I was specifically told by a senior person, ‘Why would you want to help those people?’ ” Dr. Carmona said.

The Special Olympics is one of the nation’s premier charitable organizations to benefit disabled people, and the Kennedys have long been deeply involved in it.

The future of hard science fiction

Conventional wisdom in publishing today (numbers being awfully hard to argue with) is that the day of hard sf is gone, the readers now desiring mostly fantasy and vampire fiction. However, if the hard sf panels at Readercon on the last day of the convention are anything to judge by, there's still a lively and dauntingly well-informed readership for real science fiction. Carl Frederick's lecture on what's new in physics was packed, and then the two hard sf panels I was privileged to be part of were also well attended and vibrant with interest, questions, and a lot of answers. I confess, some of it goes over my head. But I loved it just the same.Especially fun was the listing of hard sciences we don't always see in sf--although there were some entertaining examples of things like mineralogy and climatology. My own offering, of course, was musicology, and there seems to be lots of science to support that addition. I was on these panels, so I couldn't take notes for the Bloglet, which is kind of a shame. The information flowed so fast I could barely keep up. I came home fired up to write what I love, and not worry too much about where the audience is!Readercon, in short, is added to the Don't Miss list for science fiction conventions, along with Potlatch, World Fantasy, and Armadillocon.

Readercon panel report

POLITICAL BELIEFS AND FICTION! Wonderful topic. Karen Joy Fowler, Paolo Bacigalupi, David Edelman, John Kessel, James Morrow, Lucius Shepard. Aside from the luminary names on the panel, it was a stimulating discussion. Fowler was slightly apologetic about the lack of political content in THE JANE AUSTEN BOOK CLUB, and said that she feels part of the book's success (having come out post-9/11) was because of that lack. Paolo mentioned his story "Small Offerings", one of the stories in FUTURESHOCKS that I particularly liked, which is about genetic disasters caused by pollution. John Kessel mentioned his story "A Clean Escape", which was written as a critique of the Reagan administration, and has been adapted for TV (ABC, 8/4/07) to take on the Bush administration with almost no changes.(I wish they had all read my own story, from FAST FORWARD, "Absalom's Mother", my anti-draft piece.)Audience question: can a novel succeed both as a political statement and a work of art? Answer of the panel: it must.Morrow's question: why are we not out in the streets protesting the rape of our constitution? My personal answer (kept private) is that I have been, of course, for all the good it may or may not have done.Morrow again: Great irony in what is essentially a theocratic administration, the Bush White House, trying and hoping to establish a secular government in Iraq.This was a hot panel, and I loved it.THE MEGAVERSE, THE LANDSCAPE, AND THE ANTHROPIC AND HOLOGRAPHIC PRINCIPLES. Carl Frederick, physicist.Whew. This was so dense and full of information that a good half of it just went over my head. I did learn, though, what the megaverse and those other words are, inasmuch as I was capable of understanding it. I loved hearing a physicist call string theory "lunatic", and I liked getting a handle on the idea of "pocket universes", which has to do with Gooth's (sp?) idea that different cosmological constants will exist in different universes inside the megaverse. The cosmological constant, as I understand it, is identified with the energy fluctuation int he vacuum. Without it, we won't have a universe. The anthropic principle (the idea that the universe is the very best it can possibly be, an idea propounded by creationists) says that the tiniest change in the cosmological constant would cause our universe to fail, and us not to exist. The extrapolation, by creationists, would be that the universe was created with us, human beings, in mind. Very controversial idea. It was also interesting to hear Dr. Frederick give the ages of the great physicists of the day, because it is evidently no longer the case that they're all very young.PROMISCUOUS THEORY OF STORY STRUCTURE: John Clute, John Crowley, James Morrow, and Erik Van.I couldn't possibly summarize. You had to be there!

It's all about books

Wow, these people read BOOKS. I knew I was at a different sort of con (my favorite type) when I saw that the sign outside the room we usually refer to as the Dealers' Room actually reads "Bookshop". There are so many booksellers in that room, and so very many books, it's almost overwhelming.The attendees at this convention read like a Who's Who of speculative fiction. Paul Park, Karen Joy Fowler, James Morrow, John Crowley, and on and on and on. But the most fascinating thing is that, in discussions, no one gets a free pass. Names don't matter. Ideas do.I was on a panel called "The Singularity Needs Women", with James Morrow, Kathryn Cramer, Victoria McManus, and Elizabeth Bear. Discussion ranged from gender blurring to whether or not we would want bodies after the Singularity, and simply exist in cyberspace, and somehow, strange as it sounds, it all made sense. SF struggles these days, of course, to be weird enough to even quality as speculative. It may be one reason some of us have turned to an internal rather than an external landscape.Cool, isn't it?

Report from Readercon

I'm in Burlington, Mass., for my first Readercon, which began last night with a bang--a panel which was more of a free-for-all discussion about what books have made the deepest impression on these passionate readers. It went on for an hour and a half, and was still in full swing when I (after traveling across the country) gave up and went to bed. The list includes the great science fiction and fantasy books we all have either devoured or meant to devour, and the authors read like a list of superstars: Crowley, Wolfe, Delaney, Wilhelm, and so forth. Interestingly, the list didn't include any recent books. It tended to be classics, like A CANTICLE FOR LEIBOWITZ, one of my own all-time favorites. Conclusion: Readercon is just as advertised, a convening of people, both writers and readers, who are devoted to science fiction as a field of literature. This should be a joy. More later.