Mark L. Van Name's Blog, page 194
September 28, 2012
It's not your fault
I email and talk with a lot of people who, like me, are survivors of various forms of abuse and assault. Some, like me, survived childhood beatings, usually lots of them, by adults charged with their care. Others survived rape, often in childhood by their fathers.
All of them--all of us--grapple with a world that doesn't want to hear their stories, because as long as we don't talk, others can pretend there is no problem. All of us grapple with variations on guilt: Why me? What did I do to deserve this?
I have no answers for most of the complex issues we all face, but I can answer these issues of guilt. The answer is simple: It's not your fault.
It's not your fault.
Resolutions are almost never as simple as what movies show, but this scene is still a powerful reminder to me of this lesson that we all need to learn.
To all of those trying to sleep tonight, fighting their demons, fighting their memories, hiding the guilt that is not theirs, dealing with the pain that they never deserved, I say again,
It's not your fault.
All of them--all of us--grapple with a world that doesn't want to hear their stories, because as long as we don't talk, others can pretend there is no problem. All of us grapple with variations on guilt: Why me? What did I do to deserve this?
I have no answers for most of the complex issues we all face, but I can answer these issues of guilt. The answer is simple: It's not your fault.
It's not your fault.
Resolutions are almost never as simple as what movies show, but this scene is still a powerful reminder to me of this lesson that we all need to learn.
To all of those trying to sleep tonight, fighting their demons, fighting their memories, hiding the guilt that is not theirs, dealing with the pain that they never deserved, I say again,
It's not your fault.
September 27, 2012
Why I write
In a comment on
I answered this question at length in
So, Deb, the even shorter answer to your question is, yes.
Is the fiction something you feel you have to write and get out there?This question boils down to, why do I write?
I answered this question at length in
So, Deb, the even shorter answer to your question is, yes.
September 26, 2012
1987
Today's entry is the one-thousand-nine-hundred-eighty-seventh post on this blog, so
I attended my third Sycamore Hill conference that year, but I had not sold a story since May of 1982. I really shouldn't have been allowed in the door, but as one of the organizers, it was a perq of the job. I was learning at the conference, and I made many friends, though almost none who will come up to me at a con today and say hi, but I was also freezing up and not writing much. That said, "Burning Up," the story I wrote for that year's event, ultimately sold (after I rewrote it, of course) and appeared in When the Music's Over, a Greenpeace benefit anthology that Lew Shiner edited.
On the article writing front, Bill Catchings and I had definitely ramped up our freelance business, because 43 bylines of ours appeared in computer magazines that year.
I was also consulting, a business that led me to Toronto three times in 1987. The last time, I moved to Toronto the Sunday after Thanksgiving and lived there for three straight weeks. The job was tense, and the hours were horrific, but I loved the city and became close, at least while I was there, with some of my co-workers. I still love Toronto and look forward to returning there on October 31 for World Fantasy Con.
I also traveled to the U.K. for the first time that year for the Conspiracy '87 WorldCon in Brighton. I quite loved England, and I still do. I also gained a phrase there that taught me a lot, a phrase I still use frequently: imaginative concentration. Geoff Ryman used it in a speech about writing, and it resonated immediately with me. When as a writer you maintain high imaginative concentration, you are in the fictional world, really seeing and feeling and tasting and smelling it, so that telling details are readily available; you just report what you experience. When your imaginative concentration flags, you start reaching for descriptions, relying on cliches, and so on.
Finally, by 1987 I no longer harbored any hope that I would set afire the world of fiction. Instead, I hung onto fiction like a man tied to a boat in a storm, terrified that the only fate worse than being beaten to death by the boat was drowning as I watched it recede in the distance.
I attended my third Sycamore Hill conference that year, but I had not sold a story since May of 1982. I really shouldn't have been allowed in the door, but as one of the organizers, it was a perq of the job. I was learning at the conference, and I made many friends, though almost none who will come up to me at a con today and say hi, but I was also freezing up and not writing much. That said, "Burning Up," the story I wrote for that year's event, ultimately sold (after I rewrote it, of course) and appeared in When the Music's Over, a Greenpeace benefit anthology that Lew Shiner edited.
On the article writing front, Bill Catchings and I had definitely ramped up our freelance business, because 43 bylines of ours appeared in computer magazines that year.
I was also consulting, a business that led me to Toronto three times in 1987. The last time, I moved to Toronto the Sunday after Thanksgiving and lived there for three straight weeks. The job was tense, and the hours were horrific, but I loved the city and became close, at least while I was there, with some of my co-workers. I still love Toronto and look forward to returning there on October 31 for World Fantasy Con.
I also traveled to the U.K. for the first time that year for the Conspiracy '87 WorldCon in Brighton. I quite loved England, and I still do. I also gained a phrase there that taught me a lot, a phrase I still use frequently: imaginative concentration. Geoff Ryman used it in a speech about writing, and it resonated immediately with me. When as a writer you maintain high imaginative concentration, you are in the fictional world, really seeing and feeling and tasting and smelling it, so that telling details are readily available; you just report what you experience. When your imaginative concentration flags, you start reaching for descriptions, relying on cliches, and so on.
Finally, by 1987 I no longer harbored any hope that I would set afire the world of fiction. Instead, I hung onto fiction like a man tied to a boat in a storm, terrified that the only fate worse than being beaten to death by the boat was drowning as I watched it recede in the distance.
September 25, 2012
Babel
is the name of the new Mumford and Sons album, the deluxe edition of which arrived today. I can't wait to listen to it a few times. I loved their first album, so my hopes are high for this one.
To warm you up, here's a single from this new release. Enjoy.
To warm you up, here's a single from this new release. Enjoy.
September 24, 2012
1985
This entry is the one-thousand-nine-hundred-eighty-fifth post on this blog. Recently, the entry numbers have looked more and more like years to me as they have marched closer to the present. For no more reason than that, every now and then I'm going to use the occasion of one of these posts to mention a few writing-related events in my life that occurred in the corresponding year.
In 1985,
With John Kessel and Greg Frost, held the first Sycamore Hill Writers' Conference at my house. For good and for bad, it and the ensuing SycHills were hugely formative experiences in my writing.First started becoming friends with Dave and Jo Drake and thus began a friendship that has lasted to this day and that has taught me a lot about both writing and the writing business. Earlier tonight, we and others celebrated Dave's birthday at a small dinner.Turned 30, a development that took me out of young-gun territory and that also hit me hard with my first huge failure; I had vowed to retire by the time I was thirty.Watched as my first professional short story sale, "My Sister, My Self," which was published the previous year, failed to gain any award attention whatsoever. I had thought I'd set the writing world on fire, but it didn't really notice me. I've had to relearn that lesson every year since then. That story, by the way, was the first Jon Moore tale. Went to Europe for the first time, an experience that, predictably, changed me forever and that provided writing fodder I'm still using. Published my first computer-related article, "Three-Part Harmony," in the November 26 issue of PC Week. My co-author on that article was Bill Catchings, with whom I've co-written roughly a thousand assignments with many more total headlines. Bill remains my business partner to this day.First visited Australia and New Zealand, another trip that permanently altered me. A great many other important events occurred in my life that year, of course, but just looking at this list makes me see now, for the first time, how big this one was in my writing career--and in my life.
In 1985,
With John Kessel and Greg Frost, held the first Sycamore Hill Writers' Conference at my house. For good and for bad, it and the ensuing SycHills were hugely formative experiences in my writing.First started becoming friends with Dave and Jo Drake and thus began a friendship that has lasted to this day and that has taught me a lot about both writing and the writing business. Earlier tonight, we and others celebrated Dave's birthday at a small dinner.Turned 30, a development that took me out of young-gun territory and that also hit me hard with my first huge failure; I had vowed to retire by the time I was thirty.Watched as my first professional short story sale, "My Sister, My Self," which was published the previous year, failed to gain any award attention whatsoever. I had thought I'd set the writing world on fire, but it didn't really notice me. I've had to relearn that lesson every year since then. That story, by the way, was the first Jon Moore tale. Went to Europe for the first time, an experience that, predictably, changed me forever and that provided writing fodder I'm still using. Published my first computer-related article, "Three-Part Harmony," in the November 26 issue of PC Week. My co-author on that article was Bill Catchings, with whom I've co-written roughly a thousand assignments with many more total headlines. Bill remains my business partner to this day.First visited Australia and New Zealand, another trip that permanently altered me. A great many other important events occurred in my life that year, of course, but just looking at this list makes me see now, for the first time, how big this one was in my writing career--and in my life.
September 23, 2012
Dredd 3D
is another of those movies that you will enjoy only if you are in its target audience. It is a honey badger of a film: it gives not a single fuck about acting, plot logic, physics, or any of the normal concerns you might reasonably ask a movie to address. No, Dredd exists to show us Karl Urban (well, his chin) and Olivia Thirlby (dyed blonde; what's up with that?) stalking through floor after floor of a giant high-rise and killing bad guy after bad guy while the Big Boss, Ma-Ma (the funky spelling lets you know that, hey, wow, this is the future) gets freakier and freakier.
Actually, to be more accurate, Dredd 3D exists to show us all of that in 3D, so that when Dredd blows a hole in a drug user's face, we don't just see the hole, we see bits of jaw and tooth and skin and a shitload of blood flying toward our glasses-covered eyes.
At this point, you should already know if you're in this movie's target audience. If you're not, no worries; I'm sure you can always stream A Room With a View (which, I must admit, I loved) on Netflix.
Me? They had me at bullet through the face.
Of course, I'd have paid just to watch Lena Headey chew the scenery as Ma-Ma.
Putting up with Karl Urban was merely another price I was willing to pay.
If you are the type of person for this movie, do not miss it on the big screen in 3D. You won't for a moment confuse it with a genuinely good film, or one that makes any sort of sense, but you will have a good time.
(By the way, I feel obliged to note that you will even have enough of a good time to at least cut its creators some slack for how much they seemed to have stolen from the awesome The Raid: Redemption. To be fair to the Dredd folks, I don't know which movie came first, but the plot scaffolding is strong enough to support these two films and more in the future--as I'm sure it will.)
Actually, to be more accurate, Dredd 3D exists to show us all of that in 3D, so that when Dredd blows a hole in a drug user's face, we don't just see the hole, we see bits of jaw and tooth and skin and a shitload of blood flying toward our glasses-covered eyes.
At this point, you should already know if you're in this movie's target audience. If you're not, no worries; I'm sure you can always stream A Room With a View (which, I must admit, I loved) on Netflix.
Me? They had me at bullet through the face.
Of course, I'd have paid just to watch Lena Headey chew the scenery as Ma-Ma.
Putting up with Karl Urban was merely another price I was willing to pay.
If you are the type of person for this movie, do not miss it on the big screen in 3D. You won't for a moment confuse it with a genuinely good film, or one that makes any sort of sense, but you will have a good time.
(By the way, I feel obliged to note that you will even have enough of a good time to at least cut its creators some slack for how much they seemed to have stolen from the awesome The Raid: Redemption. To be fair to the Dredd folks, I don't know which movie came first, but the plot scaffolding is strong enough to support these two films and more in the future--as I'm sure it will.)
September 22, 2012
The Unchained Tour
When I heard a while back that The Unchained Tour was coming to Chapel Hill, I knew I wanted to go. I love the idea behind it: a group of storytellers get on a bus, drive for nine days to a bunch of cities, one each day, and in each tell stories, just people talking on stage, in support of storytelling and local-sourcing of everything--books, produce, restaurants, you name it.
The show looked even better when I learned that in addition to Peter Aguero, Dawn Fraser, George Dawes Green, and Edgar Oliver, Neil Gaiman would be performing. I wanted to see him, but I would have happily gone if he had not been on the bus. Of course, when word leaked that he was, our show--and I suspect others--turned into Neil Gaiman events. To his great credit, he didn't mention it on any of his social media outlets until they needed to make sure some shows sold out, and he took his turn as an equal, one among many. Nothing he could do, though, could stop everyone in line around us from referring to it as "a Neil Gaiman reading," "a Neil Gaiman thing," and so on. So it goes.
My hope is that after having seen this show, all those people will support the tour when it next comes near them--even though it won't have Gaiman. All the storytellers were at least good and frequently excellent. My favorite was Peter Aguero, who acted as MC and told two very good stories, his second being my pick for best of the night.
The tour is over now, but it will be back. If it comes near you, do not miss it.
And, because several folks have already asked me, yes, hell yes, I would get on that bus for nine days. I'd be thrilled to do it.
They won't ask me, of course, but hell yeah, I'd do it.
The show looked even better when I learned that in addition to Peter Aguero, Dawn Fraser, George Dawes Green, and Edgar Oliver, Neil Gaiman would be performing. I wanted to see him, but I would have happily gone if he had not been on the bus. Of course, when word leaked that he was, our show--and I suspect others--turned into Neil Gaiman events. To his great credit, he didn't mention it on any of his social media outlets until they needed to make sure some shows sold out, and he took his turn as an equal, one among many. Nothing he could do, though, could stop everyone in line around us from referring to it as "a Neil Gaiman reading," "a Neil Gaiman thing," and so on. So it goes.
My hope is that after having seen this show, all those people will support the tour when it next comes near them--even though it won't have Gaiman. All the storytellers were at least good and frequently excellent. My favorite was Peter Aguero, who acted as MC and told two very good stories, his second being my pick for best of the night.
The tour is over now, but it will be back. If it comes near you, do not miss it.
And, because several folks have already asked me, yes, hell yes, I would get on that bus for nine days. I'd be thrilled to do it.
They won't ask me, of course, but hell yeah, I'd do it.
September 21, 2012
The last 10 songs I played
Folks periodically ask what I listen to while I write, and the answer is inevitably that my mixes are random and hard to predict. That said, certain songs tend to stay in rotation for a while, and some become fixtures in my writing playlists for months at a time.
As a sample, the last ten songs I played before I turned off the music earlier tonight were the following:
"Lonely Boy," The Black Keys "Howl," The Gaslight Anthem"Man on the Moon," R.E.M."We Belong Here," Stephen Kellogg & the Sixers"Breathing Underwater," Metric"Anna Sun," Walk the Moon"Dark Clay," Levi Weaver"This Is Why We Fight," The Decemberists"Stay Young, Go Dancing," Death Cab for Cutie"Maybe It's Over," Jon McLaughlin
Nothing too surprising here, plenty of tunes I've blogged before, a wide range of emotions, kind of a comfort mix, for whatever that's worth.
As a sample, the last ten songs I played before I turned off the music earlier tonight were the following:
"Lonely Boy," The Black Keys "Howl," The Gaslight Anthem"Man on the Moon," R.E.M."We Belong Here," Stephen Kellogg & the Sixers"Breathing Underwater," Metric"Anna Sun," Walk the Moon"Dark Clay," Levi Weaver"This Is Why We Fight," The Decemberists"Stay Young, Go Dancing," Death Cab for Cutie"Maybe It's Over," Jon McLaughlin
Nothing too surprising here, plenty of tunes I've blogged before, a wide range of emotions, kind of a comfort mix, for whatever that's worth.
September 20, 2012
Very late at night
Though I've set the time stamp of this post to say 11:59 p.m. Thursday, because this is Thursday's blog entry, I'm actually writing it a bit after five in the morning. I consider this still Thursday because I haven't gone to bed yet; the day is still here for me.
At this time of night, I have to avoid shopping online. Everything looks good, presumably because my will is weaker and my emotions on the surface and I'm generally a bit stupider than I should be. Past shopping episodes at similar hours have netted me, among other things, a sneakerphone, a seven-year subscription to Rolling Stone, and a pirate shirt.
Which is why I will now shut down my browser and go to bed.
At this time of night, I have to avoid shopping online. Everything looks good, presumably because my will is weaker and my emotions on the surface and I'm generally a bit stupider than I should be. Past shopping episodes at similar hours have netted me, among other things, a sneakerphone, a seven-year subscription to Rolling Stone, and a pirate shirt.
Which is why I will now shut down my browser and go to bed.
September 19, 2012
The Gaslight Anthem's "Howl"
Sometimes a song is just the right thing.
This is one of those times.
This is one of those times.
