K. Tempest Bradford's Blog, page 16

My November Writing Residency Starts Now! (+ Events)

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As previously mentioned, I am the writer-in-residence at Surel’s Place this month. My residency officially starts on the 6th, but I slipped in yesterday so I could get settled while the local artist pop-up shop event is happening. I’m already in love with this house and I know I’m going to get a bunch of work done while I’m here. And since I spent the last month researching, my creative well is super full. I’m ready for this.

While I’m here in Idaho I’m taking part in a few events.

Workshop: Crafting Characters Who Aren’t Like You

When: Saturday, November 18th 1:00pm–4:00pm

Where: Surel’s Place, Garden City, ID

$10 Registration Fee, click here for Full Description and Tickets (There are scholarships available, just email info@surelsplace.org)

Reading: Pyramids and Punk

When: Thursday, November 30th

Where: Surel’s Place, Garden City, ID

Free and open to the public

Doors at 6:30pm | 7pm reading, Q&A follows

On Friday, December 1 I’m reading as part of Garden City’s First Friday events, details to come.

I’m also working with the local NaNoWriMo community liaison to do a write-in here at the residency house. If you’re local and part of NaNo, that information will be posted on the local board. 

Originality 9: Investing in Art

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In this episode Aleen and I talk about how artists go about getting support for their endeavors. Not just selling their stuff, but getting people to invest in them via crowdfunding, patronage, and the like. This is a topic near and dear to my heart, obviously, as I’m currently supported in part by folks on Patreon. However, I put off doing that for almost a year because I was afraid to ask for that support and didn’t feel I deserved it. We talk about that and more.

Click here to listen or click here to subscribe!

And I’d love to hear from other writers, artists, musicians, and creatives about how you put yourself out there for investiture.

Originality episodes 7 & 8 with S. J. Tucker

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Our first two-part episode! I interviewed musician S. J. Tucker and the conversation was so rich and full of awesome that we split the discussion of it in two.

Episode 7, Will the Universe Take Care of Me?, is about how Sooj came to be a vagabond musician who made her living almost exclusively from her artistic talents. Episode 8, A Song-Shaped Butterfly Net, is all about collaboration. Both episodes feature snippets of her songs, which you will love, and the show notes have many links to where you can hear more and buy her stuff.

You can click the links above to download the individual episodes or you can click here and subscribe and get all the episodes!

Physicists Might Be Jerks and Other Things I Learned While Researching Egypt

For the past 3 weeks I’ve been holed up in the library at Rosicrucian Park, a magnificent place that is also home to the Rosicrucian Egyptian Museum, one of my favorite museums in the country. I needed to do some deep research for the novel I’m writing, and I figured this particular research library would be an excellent place to do just that. I was not disappointed.

One of the great things about researching there is that they have several older Egyptology books, some dating to the early 1900s (oh man… I typed that like it was some old timey century ago but that’s literally the century I was born in… ack). One of the interesting things I discovered as I went through some of these older books is that the paradigms of Egyptology that I’m used to encountering in books written in the past 40 years or so are not the paradigms that have always existed. Some scholars at the beginning of everything had different–and sometimes more interesting–ideas about ancient Egyptian culture that have fallen away. Some have fallen away due to more finds and better understanding of the language. But some seem to have dissipated for no good reason. I find it all fascinating.

One aspect of the shifting paradigms is shifting ideas about how advanced or primitive the ancient Egyptians were compared to the ancient Greeks or Romans or even modern peoples, for whatever value of modern one is talking about. I found varying views on the types of tools and simple machines the Egyptians must have had for them to have built massive monuments and temples of multi-ton granite stones, varying views on how sophisticated their knowledge of astronomy was, and varying views on the meaning of their mythologies. So much to take in!

One particular aspect of this caught my eye while researching, which I wanted to share with you. That is the supposed mystery of how Egyptians were able to move such large stones.

A few years ago some physicists published a paper called “Sliding Friction on Wet and Dry Sand,” which proved that one needed less force to pull a heavy object over wet sand than dry sand. The way science journalists got everyone’s attention when reporting on this somewhat boring topic is with headlines like “The surprisingly simple way Egyptians moved massive pyramid stones without modern technology” and “Solved! How Ancient Egyptians Moved Massive Pyramid Stones.” First of all, nothing in this research paper proves anything about pyramid stones, but clickbait headlines gotta clickbait, right?

Anyway, the reason why most people remember these articles is because of this:

It has long been believed that Egyptians used wooden sleds to haul the stone, but until now it hasn’t been entirely understood how they overcame the problem of friction. … “The Egyptians… placed the heavy objects on a sledge that workers pulled over the sand. Research … revealed that the Egyptians probably made the desert sand in front of the sledge wet.”

…

Adding more evidence to the conclusion that Egyptians used water is a wall painting in the tomb of Djehutihotep. A splash of orange and gray, it appears to show a person standing at the front of a massive sledge, pouring water onto the sand just in front of the progressing sled. What this man was doing has been a matter of great debate and discussion.

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Bonn [one of the researchers] wrote in an e-mail to The Post. “In fact, Egyptologists had been interpreting the water as part of a purification ritual, and had never sought a scientific explanation…”

When I first read this my thought was: Ugh, typical Egyptologists/archaeologists, assuming something practical is ritualistic. Cuz, well, this happens often.

But then.

As I was going through older books, I came across that picture of the pulling of the giant stone statue several times, and every single time I did, the author explained the picture or captioned it with something along the lines of: Workers pulling granite statue of the pharaoh while someone pours water on the sand to help make moving it easier.

Um. But wait. I thought that “Egyptologists had been interpreting the water as part of a purification ritual, and had never sought a scientific explanation.”

HMM.

Either the early Egyptologists were smarter than the ones that came later about these things or maybe, just maybe, the physicist who gave that quote doesn’t know what the hell he’s fucking talking about and/or made it seem like the people in a different scientific discipline than he is were being stupid.

Quite honestly, it could be either or both.

I want to run over all those articles about this thing with a giant CITATION NEEDED stamp.

Science journalism has so much to answer for.

At any rate, I am very grateful for the opportunity to spend time reading these older books and widening my understanding of ancient Egyptian culture as well as some of the people who were formative to Egyptology. This research trip was made possible by the folks who support me via Patreon, and I am so, so appreciative of them! They’ve put up with a lot of lag from me, but next month I’ll be able to get back on track and start sending them chapters again.

If you would like to read more about my research finds, I’ve been blogging about them on Patreon for all patrons. I have a few more research posts coming this week. If you’re interested in seeing them, click on over!

New Class: 6 Week Writing Inclusive Fiction

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For folks who haven’t heard, our new 6 week class is open for registration! It starts August 25th and is designed to be accessible to folks who live around the world and also to writers with disabilities that make it difficult to attend our live class weekend intensives.

This will likely be the last multi-week class of the year, though Nisi and I will likely do a weekend intensive and maybe a week intensive before the year ends.

Key details below, full details on the class page.

Writers often wonder and worry about if it is possible to write characters whose gender, sexual orientation, religion, racial heritage, or other aspect of identity differs from their own. Many authors are afraid to try even though it is possible to do so sensitively and convincingly. In this six-week course, authors Nisi Shawl and K. Tempest Bradford delve into this tricky skill through a combination of readings, videos, discussions, and writing exercises in a safe, supportive atmosphere. The class is appropriate for all writers (fiction, plays, comics, screenplays) from all backgrounds and any skill level.

You can enroll below, but if you cannot afford all or part of the class fee, scroll down for information on scholarships and sliding scale fee registration.

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Attending Class, Schedule, Time Commitment

Instruction begins Thursday August 25 and ends Sunday, October 8, 2017. The course does not have set meeting times. You can access class material and discussion and participate in class at any time, day or night, from anywhere in the world as long as you have an Internet connection. All class discussion will take place in a private online forum and all class work done on Google Drive.

The minimum time commitment per week will be six to eight hours. Lectures are posted to the class forum on weekends, discussions will happen throughout the week, homework exercises are timed and take 20 minutes or less to complete with two exceptions. Homework is due on weekends.

In addition to the lectures, videos, and other classwork, students are also expected to participate in forum discussions. Just as with the course work, they can be accessed at times that fit the students’ schedules.

In addition to forum discussions, both instructors will be available for one-on-one video chats during virtual office hours and every other week there will be an optional live chat on Google Hangouts.

Accessibility and Technical Requirements

The class takes place in an online forum or web space that is designed for accessibility. In addition, lessons and instructor essays are all available through Google Drive. Some class material will be in the form of video lectures. Each has closed captions and a text transcript is available for all. Live chats and Office Hours take place via Google Hangout (text or video chat, depending on student needs). The class mailing list will be through Google Groups. All of these services are accessible to students using screen readers.

During registration we will ask about your accessibility needs. If you have questions about potential needs, or if there are any other ways we can make a class accessible for you, please contact us before registering and we’ll answer within 24 hours.

Other than a computer, the only other technical requirement for the class is a Google account. If you don’t have one, you can create a free one just for this class.

Available Spots, Payment Plans, and Scholarship Opportunities

There are 30 spots available for open enrollment. We have several options for writers who wish to take the class but need financial flexibility.

If you can pay for the class but need to pay in installments we have payment plans available. Requirements:

You must be able to pay $100 to secure your spot in the class.
You must be able to pay in full by September 1, 2017.

If you meet these two criteria, please email writingtheother+pplan@gmail.com to register.

If you can afford to pay for part but not all of the class, we have Pay What You Can Afford enrollment. Under this plan you can pay any amount, but we do request that you pay at least $50. To register, please email writingtheother+pwyca@gmail.com with the amount that you can afford (you may also split this into two or more payments).

We also have a Sentient Squid Scholarship fund for writers who do not have the financial means to pay for this class. We encourage all writers who fit the criteria to apply. We have a broad definition of financial need that ranges from writers who do not have the money at all to writers who have the funds but can’t afford to use them for a writing class. Please don’t hesitate to apply wherever you exist on that spectrum. (Still not sure whether you should apply? Read this post.)

We’ve set aside one scholarship spot specifically for students who identify as POC or Native, though we do not limit the number of scholarships we’ll give to POC or Native applicants.

To apply, send an email to writingtheother+squid@gmail.com with the subject WtO 6 Week Scholarship Applicant, and include in the body:

A brief (300 or fewer words) statement of financial need
A brief (500 or fewer words) description of a work or works in progress that you hope the class will help you write.
A writing sample of 1000 or fewer words. This can be an excerpt from a longer work or flash fiction, from something published or unpublished, as long as it represents what you feel is your best work.
If you identify as a Person of Color, Native American, or First Nations, you may indicate that if you wish (it’s not a requirement).

Deadline: 11:59PM Pacific August 16th. We will notify all applicants of their standing by August 21st. If you have any questions, please use our contact form to ask!

Click Here For More Details or To Register

ORIGINality #6 – Engage the Hashtagery!

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In this episode we talk to author Dan Moren, a tech journalist turned SF novel writer. …waitaminit…

It’s funny because I don'[t think Dan and I have ever met even though we really should have, given how much of our careers cross the streams. We’ll both be at WorldCon in Helsinki, though, where we will see each other across a room, go WAIT WE HAVE MET OMG and spend the rest of the con going around like we’ve been buds since forever.

Until then, you can enjoy the conversation Aleen and I have about him, his autographing skills, and other important creativity-related issues.

As always, you can listen to the episode below, or go to the show page to listen, download, or subscribe. You can also become a RelayFM member there and support the show!

Listen

ORIGINality #5 – 73 Million Blank Notebooks

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It’s the Bullet Journal episode! Yep, we’re all about the BuJo here, except I try not to use the word “bujo” because… well… bujo.

I’ve had kind of a rocky relationship with the whole concept of bullet journaling, but, as I talk about in this episode, once I found an article that explained them in a way that made me feel like I could use and benefit from the system, I got into it. And it helped me find a use for the 73 million blank notebooks I have lying around. Hopefully this episode will do the same for those of you who’ve considered a bullet journal but get intimidated out of trying it by Instagram.

You can listen to or download the episode here, or you can listen below. But if you subscribe you’ll get each new episode in your podcatcher automatically. And if you become a RelayFM member you get extra cool stuff.

Listen

An Open Letter To My Facebook Followers

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Dear folks who follow me on Facebook,

I am super done with this bullshit social network.

The other day I got put into 24 hour FB jail because of a thing I shared. I can’t remember if it was an article or a status with pictures, but the thing was about a dude who messaged a woman via OKCupid and became abusive because the woman did not respond to him or, when she did, did not respond in the manner he wanted. So she created a post with screenshots of his words and his profile. Facebook says this is against their community guidelines and cut me off.

There may be a conversation to be had about whether that post or the guidelines around it are appropriate. But what strikes me is that time and again I’ve seen how FB doesn’t protect marginalized or minority folks from cishet white dudes when they attack, but have punished women and POC when they share screenshots of those same attacks. The way their community guidelines are set up means they will readily punish stuff like I posted but pages that literally say all Jews are evil and part of a global conspiracy continue on even though they’ve been repeatedly reported. I also notice that Facebook continues with the ridiculous Real Name policy even though it specifically hurts vulnerable groups, such as trans people, political dissidents, activists, people escaping abusive situations, and more[1].

Plus there’s all the crap that goes on with fake news, how they refuse to address this in a meaningful way, how the algorithm works against creators and folks who want to share their personal projects, and overall just keeps people from seeing all the folks they want to see.

It’s just become a cesspool in here. A cesspool with some very lovely pool partiers around, mind.

By that I mean you.

I connect with so many of you through Facebook. I truly enjoy the conversations, and keeping up with your lives, and seeing your thoughtful shares of links. And if that was 90% of my experience on Facebook I would stay. But it’s not. So, I am slowly edging toward the EXIT.

I’m not leaving completely. For one, I know I will be cut off from many people if I do that. I also know that easing people over to new platforms will take some time. And I will have to wean myself from my habitual checking of FB every time I have a moment of boredom or procrastination.

I am going to make a major change to how I use Facebook.

Step 1: I will no longer post much on my regular profile/wall. I’ll auto-post links to new stuff going on with my projects, and I will sometimes share something or make an original post, but I’m mostly leaving the traditional way of interacting via Facebook behind.

Step 2: I’m going to use my Group more. For those who don’t know, I have a Group on FB called Tempest in a Teapot. It started as a way for people who wanted to be sure they saw posts about my podcast and Patreon and other projects to do so. Groups have a few extra abilities in FB, such as sending notifications for EVERY post, so you don’t miss them. I’m now going to use the Group as my primary way to interact on Facebook. That is where I’ll share things, post statuses, all that. So if you want to keep following me on Facebook, join the group. Right now I am letting anyone in who asks. Which leads to…

Step 3: I’m going to aggressively protect and moderate my space. This is a thing missing from Facebook that we used to have when we were mostly on blogs and such. Groups give admins the ability to moderate posts and comments, if need be. I will not be shy about booting people from the group if they act out. It’ll be harder for them to stalk my posts if they’re booted and blocked. And there will be far fewer drive-by comments from people unconnected to me.

Step 4: I’m going to spend more time posting in spaces that are less toxic. More blog posts here (and linkspams, cuz I do love sharing), more journaling with friends over on Dreamwidth, more having conversations in Google Hangouts, in Slack, via text[2]. I’ll also shift most of my general social networking over to Twitter. Yes, Twitter is also a problem for different reasons. However, it doesn’t have all the same problems (the algorithm deciding what you see, some news sources given priority, real name policies, etc.), and so I’m willing to shift my energy there for now.

There are other steps after this, but I’ll talk about them later. What’s the bottom line for you, my follower on Facebook? I’ll break it down for you.

If you want to keep following me and seeing my social media shares, join the Tempest in a Teapot Group or follow me on Twitter.

Follow my blog posts. Yes, there’s about to be more of them. I have an RSS feed or you can subscribe to alerts for new posts via email (check the right sidebar).

Follow me on Patreon. If you’re already a member of that platform, you can follow my posts even if you don’t pledge. You’ll just see the public ones.

Every week for the next little while I will remind people about this post and these bullet points.

And if you’d like to join me in leaving Facebook in the dust, I’m posting several how to guides on that process on Medium.

Footnotes

I’ve chronicled a bunch of what I’ve seen an read about in a post with the extremely apropos title It’s Time To Abandon Facebook.
P. S. Friends, close friends, those I love dearly: Please, please, please slide opn over and tell me your most preferred method of communicating either one-on-one or in small groups. I’m bad at communication but I want so badly to just spend time talking with y’all and having great conversation. So tell me how to make that happen. Invite me to your Slacks. Add me to your hangout groups. I am ready.

ORIGINality #4 and Writing Exercises

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Another episode of ORIGINality is out! This one is just Aleen and myself, and we talk about the role of practice in creative endeavors. I talk in depth about how I have not seen practice emphasized in creative writing the way it was when I learned music and the way I see it valued in other arts like drawing or dance. And yet, I come across students in every class who lament that they aren’t that good at describing setting or dialogue or writing action. To that I say: if you know you’re not good at it, then why don’t you practice?

To that end, I started a new thing on my Patreon: writing exercises. All patrons get a new writing exercise each week that’s meant to be done every day. Each will be about developing some particular skill. I encourage patrons to share the exercises with each other, but you don’t have to.

Patrons who want feedback from me on their exercises can get it if they are contributing on the Learn You Some level. All patrons can ask the other folks in the community for feedback if they want.

The idea is to have a 10 – 20 minute chunk of your day devoted to writing that is just about building a skill and not contributing to your wordcount. Not all words need to be designed to be read. You can create things just for the purpose of trying out new stuff.

Listen to me go on about this in the podcast below, or subscribe so you can listen in your favorite podcatcher.

A Place For Commentary on Cultural Appropriation

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Today NPR published my piece on why “Cultural Appropriation Is, In Fact, Indefensible.” I was inspired to write this article by a recent NYTimes op-ed on the matter that floored me with how the writer misunderstood the topic, conflated it with other issues, and in general did not take into consideration or seem to know about any of the many articles and posts and books that already exist talking about cultural appropriation. It’s frustrating because that often seems to be the case. That’s why my piece has so many links to so many other essays as well as to resources.

It’s been a while since I submitted a piece to NPR, and so I didn’t know that they no longer have comments (I did do a little cheer when I saw). However, some folks are super not okay with not being able to scroll to the bottom and tell me how wrong I am! And thus my Twitter mentions, the Inbox on the Writing the Other account, and comments on unrelated posts here are full of folks offering me their thoughts.

Since this is the case, I thought a post giving folks the opportunity to scratch that itch was in order. Ta da! However, since this is my blog, I have rules, and you’ll have to be bound by them.

First time commenters are always moderated.

If you’ve never participated in discussion here, then your comment will not appear below automatically. It goes into a queue, and an admin has to rescue it from the queue. Since many folks who will rush here to argue with me do not often do so in good faith and/or can’t resist wallowing in racism or misogyny as they type, I will not be looking at the mod queue, someone else will. They will let your comment out if it doesn’t have those issues. If it does, they’ll delete it and I won’t see your words.

Side Note: Someone is moderating the email address my contact form goes to as well, so I won’t see anything deemed to be mired in bigotry there, either.

Before you argue with me about cultural appropriation, read all the links.

I put a ton of links in that piece for a reason. Cultural appropriation is a complex topic that can’t be 100% covered in one 1000 word essay. So I gave all readers the opportunity to delve deeper into it via other great essays. Click every link in that piece and read what’s behind it and click all the links in those pieces as well. Only then should you come here to ask questions or make objections.

“But I don’t have time to read all that!” you might say. “I have a life to lead!” Okay. But if you don’t have time to read up on the subject you don’t have time to argue with me about it. Go do something, anything, else.

Don’t argue with me on points I haven’t made.

If you see something in those links that you want to fight about, fight about it with the person who wrote the article. The person who made that point. Not with me. I’m not the avatar of all people who have written about cultural appropriation ever. Don’t expect me to answer for them.

If you can follow these guidelines, you can submit a comment. I look forward to hearing from you!

Top Image: “Shared or Stolen: An Examination of Cultural Appropriation” by Shannon Wright. Find more of her work on her website, twitter, and instagram.