Robin D. Laws's Blog, page 114

Korad: Polling Lus

Vote in the poll below to determine the most notable facts about life in Korad's central and least urban province, Lus. Contributor's imaginations were clearly seized by the small cadre of intelligent apes who benevolently rule its sole city, Apewood. We're a little low on cultural detail for the people, as opposed to cool local color, but that's the collaborative process for you.

View Poll: Defining Lus

Smothering Concern

Bought a new printer the other week. The plastic wrap that swaddled it came marked with a pair of infographic-style warnings:



I like how "don't smother yourself with this" and "don't smother babies with this" are two separate categories of warning, each requiring its own distinct icon. Let's stay specific, people!

The Birds

The updated archive is here!

Where Bad Writing Advice Comes From

The biggest obstacle confronting writers who already possess the talent, sensibility, and discipline required to do good work is the eternal battle against self-doubt. Quality writing depends on the ability to oscillate between creative and critical thinking. Creative to get the material on the page in the first place, critical to shape and improve it during rewrites. Yet all too often the critical overwhelms the creative, leading to the rabbit hole of obsessive, non-improving revision. Or worse, the dread paralysis we know as writer's block. One way to allow self-appraisal to curdle into self-laceration is to privilege outside pronouncements over your own judgment.

A goodly chunk of writing advice unwittingly falls into that category. What is often couched as sharply etched tough love can screw with your judgment, especially when your brain is currently casting about for ways to undermine you.

Writing advice can adopt a harshly declarative or unnecessarily categorical tone for a couple of reasons. Most obviously, there's a big audience for writing advice, which is more entertaining to read when it's punchy and unequivocal.

Another less apparent reason is that it's often written out of frustration with willfully clueless would-be writers who don't have the above-mentioned qualities and are unlikely to ever acquire them. The clumsily confrontational cover letters and howler-strewn prose of the strictly aspirational writer provide perfect bad examples for a "don't do this" list.

The extreme cases are memorable, but they're at best unready for real help. Notes warning you to avoid insulting your prospective publisher or submitting unproofed first drafts don't reach the people who stand to benefit from them.

When deciding whether to let a piece of advice to take up residence in your personal rule book, look for practical tips that make good work better. Distrust flagellations and exhortations. Even when they make good points, the emotional charge behind them may do more to mystify the process and overfeed your voice of doubt than to spur you to a new breakthrough.

Be sure, above all, that the advice you're taking on board isn't a case of the writer spreading his or her self-doubt to others. That stuff's contagious, man.

Korad: Defining Lus

Last week's poll chose a plague of slaughter worms as the cause of the catastrophe that emanated from the Oldtown mines to a crippling blow to the province of Barle. In the interest of moving forward, I took the liberty of adding a few lines to the description. These tell us how the trouble could have started in the mines, and why they've been sealed up. Here's the entry for the Korad setting bible:

Twenty years ago, however, Barle suffered a catastrophic setback, triggered by an incident in the Oldtown mine. Miners there were infected by horrible parasites called slaughter worms. These small parasites crawl under the skin of living beings, infecting their minds with an irresistible urge to kill. As the infection progresses, the brain is devoured, the victim becoming less and less capable of reason, and more and more violent. Worm-eggs are laid in the mouth of the victim, and spread by bites. Magicians from the Wyrdward wove a spell to end the plague. As it offered no ongoing protection against new outbreaks, the mines have been sealed, to prevent additional infections.

Now it's time to spitball ideas for the next of our regions, Lus. Occupying a central position on our key continent, it is home to a number of terrains and vegetation types, but only one city. This place is unusual: it's ruled by gracious, tree-dwelling intelligent apes. The province's main inhabitants, we've already established, are humans. They're similar enough to be regarded as a single group by outsiders. They're mostly non-urban. They might live on the northern beaches, the jungle, the plains, the foothills, or all of the above.

In the comments below, propose something important about Lusite history, or its customs, values, and present-day situation. Keep your idea brief, so I can fit it into next week's poll—let's say 12 words or less. One idea per commenter. Pitch standalone ideas rather than building on someone else's proposal. Get them in before early Monday evening (eastern time.) Then we'll vote, and the most popular ideas will go into the Lus entry in the Korad setting bible.

Hamlet's Hit Points Nominated For Origins Award

I am pleased to report that Hamlet's Hit Points has been nominated for an Origins Award in the Best Game Related Publication category. Response to this labor of love continues to exceed my wildest expectations.

Among the other formidable nominees is Family Games: The 100 Best, to which I contributed one of the eponymous one hundred essays. One might say that 1% of me is at odds with 100% of me. If I didn't know better, I might find this rich in metaphorical resonance.

But seriously folks: much gratitude to the nominating retailers for adding the book to this year's impressive list of games and game products.

The Birds

The updated archive is here!

Whoever Smelt It

During my stay in Madison, the Muskrat Overlord himself, John Kovalic, stepped up to lavishly supplement the already embracing hosting performed by the Oddcon team.

I politicked him out early on, during our Friday walking tour of beautiful downtown Madison, extracting from him his take on the ongoing Wisconsin ructions. John wanted to show me the interior of the capitol building, for which he maintains a loving architectural appreciation. However, when we found access confined to one entrance with a metal detector station, we declined to harsh our mellows with a round of free patdowns. Hilarity nonetheless ensued, as we read the long list of comically specific prohibitions posted on an easel ahead of the station. Restricted items included crock pots, vuvuzelas, and "animals/snakes."

Saturday, with the justly earned glee of a man who has found the perfect attraction for out-of-town guests, John squired Will and Sarah Hindmarch, Kenneth Hite, and me to the ultimate Wisconsin experience—a fundraising smelt fry held by the North Bristol Gun Range. In a peculiar act of underselling, John billed this event to your Humble Canadian Narrator without mentioning the "gun range" part. (There are gun ranges in rural Ontario, but they aren't central hubs of the community the way this one so clearly was.) Happy diners packed the joint and spilled out onto the surrounding grounds, buzzing in shared smeltic anticipation.

As we waited, John introduced us to his initiators into the smelt cult, including Brett Myers, co-designer of Nanuk, and @sweaternine, whose last name I failed to retain, on account of a beverage shortly to be described. The assemblage talked comparative film festivals and watched kids play Frisbee with skeet targets. The sound of gunfire, off in the distance, was undoubtedly laid on for the edification of visiting Ontarians.

The smelt, battered, deep-fried and eaten in their entirety, more than lived up to their billing. The profundity of the fried chicken, and a potato side hovering ineluctably in a state between mash and hash brown, with a cheese and cereal topping, turned it up to the proverbial eleven. If this weren't too much unalloyed pleasure for one son of the silverbirch to assimilate, our fearless muskrat leader thrust into my hand the requisite beverage of the Wisconsin smelt fry, a brandy-old fashioned (sweet.) This confluence of brandy (generously poured), cherry syrup and 7-Up, served with not one but two maraschinos, lulls the drinker into a sugar-sweet false security, only to whack him upside the back of the head with the alcohol stick. When a second of these love bombs appeared in my hand, I had no choice but to comply with its demands, all the while wondering if I was still going to be impaired when the time for my speech rolled around. (To jump ahead to the exciting conclusion: I did recover in time, but only just.)

After the speech (described in a previous installment), I rendezvoused with the gaming cadre at the Radisson bar. John visibly labored to screen out the political panel show that broke out between Ken and myself. A subsequent playtest of his new game design soon ameliorated his discomfort. I feel free to make only two observations. One, I smell mainstream hit. Two, I won.

The gustation continued on the Sunday after the con, when a team of eaters including Bill Bodden, Monica Valentinelli, Matt McElroy, and Jason Blair repaired to Muskrat Manor to descend on a repast rounded up from a mostly takeout BBQ joint called Smoky Jon's.

Throughout the weekend, a building excitement had murmured through my assembled colleagues upon news of a shocking new Robin development: I recently became a beer liker. So recently that I haven't even yet assimilated the differences between your pilsners and your ales and your Peruvian skipping lagers. The words "tasting flight" had been quickly mooted, and now the parade of Wisconsin's finest craft beers materialized. The uniformly fine results confirmed, as if there were any doubt, the trustworthiness and general good character of Mr. Kovalic. Topping off the procession, like Santa at the end of a Christmas parade, was a serving of GuldenDraak, a simply astounding dessert beer. Had I been exposed to this supernal nectar earlier in life, my beer epiphany might not have been so long in coming.

I mean, great company makes everything taste better. Maybe it was all an illusion, and it was only the rare chance to congregate with so many far-flung homies that made the smelt, old-fashioneds, pulled pork and draconic ale taste like a 9th level Wish spell.

But somehow I don't think so.

Oddcon

I was too busy enjoying OddCon (or Odyssey Con, as it is formally known) to find the time to blog it while it was happening. It's a cozy 360 attendee affair held in the mellow Midwestern bosom of Madison, WI. OddCon structures itself as a traditional intimate-scale F/SF convention—albeit one where most of the organizers happen to be avid gamers as well. Accordingly I found myself participating in both events you'd expect at a hobby gaming con show, and literary-style activities, like a guest of honor speech and a fiction reading.

Wily Oddconners demonstrated their flair for dramatic tension by faking out fearful panelists. At start time, speakers would outnumber the audience. Then about two to three minutes in, as if in the blink of an eye, the rooms would fill. I took part in the two surefire panels that pack 'em in at gaming cons: GM Troubleshooting and State of the Hobby Gaming Industry. Also two panels ably moderated by Monica Valentinelli: Exploring Indie Press and Cthulhu In Games and Media. For the latter event, held on Sunday, we dragooned surprise guest star Kenneth Hite into service. He was rested, primed and ready to roll, in contrast with the rest of the Sunday-punchy participants. Ken expounded with his usual wit and brilliance, again proving the merits of the "invite Robin to your con, get extra luminaries for free" program.

For the state of hobby gaming panel, I joined able moderator Bill Bodden, boon colleague Matt Forbeck, and John Jackson Miller. This was my first time meeting John, with whom I share a mystical connection from a previous career detour—his run on Iron Man followed my brief stint. John, now a stalwart of Star Wars comics and novels, brought to bear battle tales from his days as a journalist covering the CCG boom.

Speech-wise, my fellow guests of honor, the effervescent J. V. Jones and erudite Sarah Monette made themselves hard acts to follow. After an anecdote about her first big speech, in which she had to go on immediately after Buzz Aldrin, she taught the gathered Wisconsinites a lesson in Scouse. Sarah used Steven King's Misery as a throughline for her exploration of the writer's process and the need to love and accept the type of work your sensibility suits you for. My piece was a series of jokes cleverly disguised as an observation on ebook pricing. The text only really works in performance. However it was videotaped and, audio gods willing, may eventually rear its head on YouTube.

For my reading a tight cadre of early-morning loyalists were subjected to the horrors of my contribution to the upcoming Shotguns v. Cthulhu anthology.

In between these program-book activities I was overwhelmingly well treated. Thanks to the Oddcon co-chairs and crew for inviting me to their community-minded, thoughtful, low-stress show.

Tomorrow: more travel tales in Oddcon After Hours: The Eatening, the Drinkening and the Talkening

Doing the Madison

Lawns bristle with recall signs. They're talking state supreme court recount ballots in the coffee shop. I must be in beautiful Madison, WI, home to Oddcon, smelt, and political polarization—not necessarily in that order.

I blew into town early yesterday afternoon. Ably tour-guided by Bill Bodden, I checked out the Chazen Museum of Art, a university-affiliated gallery housing a three-floor collection spanning the history of Western art. An expansion now underway will allow them to show their non-Western holdings.

The current exhibit pulls together a collection of Russian religious icons, the core of which was assembled by a donor who served as US ambassador to the USSR during the late 30s. As fascinating as the pieces themselves is their ideological and symbological journey through ages and empires. Their aesthetic originated in the Byzantium, the medieval continuance of the Roman Empire. It traveled through conquest and convergence to Russia, where it survived long past Constantinople's various falls. In the 18th century its religious imagery infused itself with imperial dreams of Russian exceptionalism. After the Revolution, they were muscled out by a rival propaganda system, removed from their places of honor to museums. When Papa Joe Stalin found himself short of cash, he sold them off to representatives of the enemy empire. As the originals ran out, the Soviets commissioned more, literally antiquating them through forged aging methods. And now, thanks to an ambassador's generosity, they live in Wisconsin, expressing the ideology of art scholarship.

Then to a lovely dinner with con organizers, where elbows were rubbed with fellow Guests of Honor Sarah Monette and J. V. Jones. I also finally got to meet Alex Bledsoe, who contributes a crisply written story featuring his hardboiled swordsman Eddie LaCrosse to the second volume of Stone Skin Press' The New Hero. Much raccoon lore was exchanged, a topic to which I was able to apply long years of Torontonian experience. The assemblage also talked Atlantis, explanations for flood mythology, the prodigious drinking capacity of the old-school publishing industry, and pranks played by horses.

My first panel occurs this evening. In the meantime, I have a lunch appointment with a certain King of the Muskrats. Updates to follow.