Eleanor Arnason's Blog, page 17

Being a Writer # 2

A writers list that I belong to is having a discussion about networking and self-promotion. It's well known that publishers do very little promotion of most books. The big guys only promote the books they expect to be best sellers. The independent presses simply do not have the resources for promotion. So it's up to the author.

There are two problems. One is that many writers are introverts and do not like networking and self-promotion. Among other things, it feels pushy and obnoxious to be always talking about your work.

The second problem is, it isn't clear that self-promotion works. It seems to in a handful of cases. But when authors get together, they talk about all the things that don't work. Forget about having postcards and bookmarks and refrigerator magnets made. They do nothing. Appearances at bookstores might work a bit, but organizing your own tour is difficult; and it's always a drag when three people show up for a reading, all of them relatives.

I am thinking of making business cards, which I do need, with the cover of Hidden Folk (my latest book) on one side. I have e-editions of my first three novels, all long out of print, coming out from Aqueduct Press. I'm thinking of having bookmarks made to publicize them. I am serious in saying I don't think bookmarks work, but I like bookmarks. They are useful. Business cards and bookmarks celebrate my publications and help me remember that I am, in fact, an author.

Maybe I will do this, and maybe I won't. I do need the business cards.

I don't enjoy readings or signing and don't go looking for them, though I will do them, if asked to.

(One big rule in self-promotion is, do what you enjoy. If most of it doesn't work, then have fun.)

I maintain this blog so people can find me on the Internet. I once lost a sale to Harper's, because the person who wanted to buy a poem of mine couldn't find me. Never again. I've made a handful of sales because people could find the blog and the email address associated with it. I've gotten a few pieces of fan mail. That is all to the good.

If you have a blog, you need to keep it more or less up to date. People won't revisit a blog, if the last entry was two years ago. They may suspect you are dead or in a nursing home. So I try to post every week or so. I try to make the entries entertaining, though I do not have John Scalzi's gift for chat at all.

Blogs are supposed to be out-of-date as methods of promotion. We are all supposed to tweet. I will stick with my blog, thank you. My natural length seems to be novelettes or novellas, and the same goes for posting. I like room to say what I want to say.

I do facebook, because I enjoy facebook. I haven't gone out looking for facebook friends, so I have only 700. Almost all of them are members of the science fiction community: writers, editors, publishers, critics, reviewers, fans. This is because most of my social life revolves around writing and science fiction. I treasure the handful of facebook friends who are not in the community. They remind me that there is a larger world.

Most of the time, I don't push my writing on facebook. Instead, I talk about the weather, what I've done during the day. Trivial material. There are also photos of Iceland and cute animals from around the world. I usually link to at least one political article a day, though I try to limit these, since so much news is unhappy-making.

Always pushing your career makes you seem, well, pushy or a narcissist.

I go to local conventions and to Wiscon, in order to meet with friends. I do panels, because I enjoy doing panels, and they get me a free membership. Once in a long while, I go to out-of-the-region cons. I belong to a couple of e=mail lists, one made up of SF writers, the other made up of feminists in the SFF community.

I do a column for Strange Horizons six times a year. I took me a long time to get in the swing of writing those, but I have now written three columns ahead, because they were fun to write: one about Chinese detective stories, one about Ghost in the Shell and one about vanishing pieces of SF history.

I have probably written most of this entry before, because writers are always mulling over self-promotion.

Being a Writer

Lyda Morehouse has a post on the Wyrdsmith's blog about the dark side of being a writer. Scroll down a bit to find the post.

For most writers, writing is a lot of hard work, often while holding a day job to pay the rent; and the return is dubious. Even most published writers don't make a living. There is always the fear, if you are midlist, that you will become unpublishable. The publishers aren't making enough money from your books. You aren't breaking out. You will never (it seems) become a best seller. The publishers will drop you.

If you are published by independent presses, then it's almost certain that you won't make a living.

I suspect most people go into writing in the hopes of becoming famous and financially comfortable, maybe even a little bit rich. At least doing well enough to quit the day job. So, what do you do when you realize it isn't happening?

I think you think about why you write.

There is love of craft. There is love of telling stories. There is the pleasure of whatever praise you get. Sometimes, you touch people. They write and say your work meant something to them, made them happy, helped them through a rough time.

For me, writing is a way to cope with a world that often seems way too dark. It's full of unmaking -- governments that don't work, infrastructure that is crumbling, wars that destroy nations, neglect that destroys individuals. So I make something. I try to make it funny and hopeful.

In my community, the SFF community, being a writer counts for something, which is another reason to write. You get to be on panels. You get free memberships to cons. People even sometimes ask for autographs.

So, it's worth it. But check out Lyda's post.

Vanishing Women

I'm thinking through the question about why women and minorities prior to 2014 have vanished from the popular history of SFF.

Patrick suggests it's because people don't read enough and don't know the history of the field. This is possible.

Part of the reason may be -- it's more dramatic if women and minorities suddenly appear, rather than becoming slowly more numerous over decades. It makes the new writers seem more radical and heroic. They have smashed down barriers and suddenly broken through! Before them there was nothing except a vast wasteland of straight, white, male writers. Now, they are here! Ta-ta!

Most of the writers who are being vanished from SFF history are women, and this brings up another couple of issues. I've been hearing from mid-career women writers who feel they are having a lot more trouble than male writers of a comparable age. The women say they feel they are being pushed to the side to make way for younger, more attractive, cooler young women. The men continue to get attention, even if they are no longer young -- and maybe never were good looking.

This would be comparable to Hollywood, when male actors can play leads for decades, but women actors (most of them) are finished when they look past 35.

Someone in the discussion (a guy) asked if this problem in SFF was related to the general problem of women being ignored as they age. The women in the discussion said definitely yes.

I suspect we need a Third Wave of Feminism in the SF community. This time there are a lot of aging women writers and critics and fans, so this time we need to address prejudice against elder women.

Addendum to the Chopped Chicken Liver

Lyda Morehouse and I are discussing proposing a panel on the writers -- especially women writers -- who have been disappeared from the current version of SF history, which says the field was a vast wasteland of straight, white, male writers until 2014.

Obviously, our oxen have been gored, and the best response -- I think -- is to start a discussion.

Our current plan is to propose the panel idea to CONvergence.

Update

I haven't posted for the better part of a month. What is there to say? I am still proofreading -- at this point, the last of the three out-of-print novels which Aqueduct Press will be publishing in e-versions. This project has taken way too long, which is mostly my fault.

Other than that, we are having a mild winter with little snow. I would sooner have a cold winter with lots more snow, but I am stuck with what we have.

Patrick and I had a wonderful dinner with a couple of friends last night, then we went grocery shopping for a few essentials, and I picked up a small orchid in the grocery store. My sister-in-law gave me an orchid for a present the Christmas before last. (I have mentioned it before.) It has bloomed twice so far, but is not blooming now. So I wanted another orchid. This one has deep pink centers and pale green petals. Four blooms and four buds. I hope it does well.

The hoya has nine clusters of flower buds and almost ready to bloom. We have a vase full of cut flowers -- bright yellow poms with green centers. Flowers help in the winter, especially a mild, gray winter with little snow.

Proofreading and Writing Essays

I am now proofing Daughter of the Bear King, my third novel, for the second time. Aqueduct has decided to bring it out next in e-version, after The Sword Smith. When I went over Daughter the first time, having not looked at it for years, I was not impressed by it. Though I noticed that a lot of scenes stuck with me after. Now it looks fine. The same book, two different moods.

You should never listen to an author about his or her work. On the good days, it's a masterpiece. On the bad days, it belongs in a landfill. Actually, I never think my work belongs in a landfill. Instead, I notice all the things that need fixing. I am very much restraining myself re fixing. The book is what it is. It belongs to another era, and it should remain in that previous era.

It occurred to me that my rant about getting disappeared from SF history (see below on Junot Diaz) could be toned down and turned into a Strange Horizons essay, though I will have to do some more research.

The backlash against the Second Wave of Feminism started in the 1980s (the Reagan era) with Cyberpunk. The Cyberpunk writers were almost all men, at least at first, and some were openly contemptuous of the 70s women writers. There were still women writing in the 1980s and producing good work. LeGuin, Judith Moffett and Joan Slonczewski all wrote long, slow eco-feminist novels, as did I: Always Coming Home, Pennterra, Door into Ocean and A Woman of the Iron People. Pat Cadigan, Lois Bujold and Melissa Scott all began writing in the 1980s and kept on, though Scott took a long break from publishing in the early 21st century. Pat Cadigan was just about the only women in the first generation of Cyberpunkers. Scott wrote at least one novel, Trouble and her Friends, which is Cyberpunk.

I think of the 1990s as the decade when space opera made a comeback. Most of these authors were men. Bujold writes military space opera -- though what her books are really about is how many different forms humanity can take: clones, quaddies, the eight foot tall soldier Taura, the very short Miles Vorkosigan with his long history of disability, his seriously overweight twin brother Mark, the eerily beautiful Cetagandans, the all-male society of Athos...

The Noughts are when I lose a good sense of science fiction, though I think it's the period when writers of color began to be more numerous and visible.

In any case, a person who wasn't paying attention might miss the Second Wave of Feminism.

The New Book with Cup and Marmalade

The book and a jar of Tiptree marmalade, my current favorite variety. The photo also contains a cup by the potter Rachael Hoffman Dachelet.

Me and the New Book

To the right, above my shoulder, you can see a few tentacles belonging to Daisy my plush octopus, soon to star in her own story.

What Am I, Chopped Chicken Liver?

I'm not alone in noting the irony that a genre like sf, historically obsessed with alterity, should have so much trouble with actual people of color and women and LGBT peoples. But when one understands the degree to which nearly all our genres are haunted by, and have drawn a lot of their meanings, materials, and structures from the traumatic Big Bang of colonialism and its attendant matrixes of power (coloniality) - irony strikes one as the least of our problems.
Alien invasions, natives, slavery, colonies, genocide, racial system, savages, technological superiority, forerunner races and the ruins they leave behind, travel between worlds, breeding programs, superpowered whites, mechanized regimes that work humans to death, human/alien hybrids, lost worlds—all have their roots in the traumas of colonialism.

-- Junot Diaz

Well, yes. but... I have been writing SF about women for more than 40 years, as have many women SF writers. (Remember when the Second Wave of Feminism hit SF? Remember when Theodore Sturgeon said all the good new writers in the 1970s were women, except for James Tiptree Jr?) My second novel, begun 40 years ago and published about 30 years ago, has a lesbian protagonist. My third novel, a fantasy published about 30 years ago, has a main character (not the only main character, but the only male main character) who is black, as well as an entire black civilization. My fourth novel, published 24 years ago, has an Asian American (PoC) protagonist. My fifth novel, published 22 years ago, has two main characters, one a Hispanic woman and the other a gay man. I have been writing stories about an entirely gay alien culture for more than 20 years. I am not the only writer who has dealt with women, GLBT characters and people of color. Remember Melissa Scott? Remember Judith Tarr? How about Suzy Charnas? How about Joanna Russ? Nalo Hopkinson's first novel came out 17 years ago. (I am skipping over Butler, Delany and LeGuin because everyone knows about them.) The current new, improved history of science fiction has disappeared my entire generation of women writers, plus a bunch of writers who were prematurely GLBT or PoC.

Yes, SF has been too white and too male, but a whole lot of us have been chipping away at this problem for decades. And we're gone out of history.

New Post

I am falling behind. No posts for a week. What can I say? Our hoya is now blooming -- clusters of pale pink flowers. The weather is gray, dreary and rainy. I've been wrapping presents and watching Ghost in the Shell, an amazing Japanese anime TV series.

I finished a final read through of The Sword Smith, and it should come out in e-book version before year end. It's my first novel, out of print for years. Going back over it, I was pleasantly surprised. It's pretty good. Not so bad, as we say in Minnesota. It could be worse. Next I move on to two more out-of-print novels, due out (also in e-versions) early next year. After that, I return to the long, long delayed sequel to Ring of Swords. My goal is to have it finished in 2015. Aqueduct Press is buying a collection of stories about the hwarhath, the aliens in Ring of Swords. Sometime next year, I will get editorial comments on that and need to make changes and proof.

So, a busy next year. Which is not so bad.