Andrea Phillips's Blog, page 18

Letting Myself Go

I have begun a, how do you say, an ART PROJECT. It's called "Letting Myself Go," and it's conducted through a series of eBay auctions. The project is an examination of possession and identity -- how the things we own shape our ideas of who we are, or who we could be.

I'll be selling unused things that I've held onto long past any reasonable period, in some cases for decades. They're things that I've outgrown as a person, things that I'll never become, things that I never was in the first place.

You can follow along on Pinterest if you're interested. The first item will be going up very shortly.

A History of the Future in 100 Objects

If you aren't already familiar with Adrian Hon, you should be. This game designer and entrepreneur is one of the creators of the hit fitness game Zombies, Run! but that's on top of being a neuroscientist, a newspaper columnist, a TED speaker, and one of my co-podcasters on The Cultures. (More on that soon!)

I had the pleasure of helping to edit Adrian's latest project, A History of the Future in 100 Objects. It is by turns inspiring, frightening, thought-provoking, and touching. And its vision of the future is so clear and convincing that ever since I've read it, I see news articles daily in which his predictions are close to coming true, and sooner than I ever would have thought. Naturally, I asked Adrian if he'd do a Q&A over here at DeusXM to tell all of you a little more about this fascinating project.

For readers who don't know much about the project yet, can you talk a little bit about what History of the Future in 100 Objects is, and how it came about?

 My direct inspiration for the book was "A History of the World in 100 Objects", a radio series produced by the British Museum and BBC Radio 4. It told the story of human history, from 40,000 years ago to the present day, through a hundred objects chosen from the British Museum's collection, with each object being presented in a 10 minute radio programme.

Shortly through the series, I realised that this format would be perfect for exploring the future, as it could ground futuristic concepts in a tangible physical object. I've always been interested in the future ever since I was very young, reading science fiction by Clarke and Asimov, and I've continued that interest through school and university, where I studied neuroscience, and into my ten years of experience as a game designer and CEO.

 I knew people in the publishing industry so I definitely had the route of shopping the idea to an agent or a publisher, but I'm on the record as saying that I think authors should explore self-publishing more (I wrote a blog post called "The Death of Publishers" about which the head of Macmillan said "I disagree with everything he says but you should still read it") — so I decided that it would be more interesting to self-publish.

However, I still wanted to know if people thought the idea was good, so I went to Kickstarter in early 2011 to raise $2500 for a short print run and to pay for various bits and pieces. I raised almost double that amount and crucially established that people wanted to read such a book. Naively, I thought I could write the whole thing in a year. Of course, it turned out that writing 100 short stories while having a very demanding day job *and* also writing a column for The Telegraph was not easy, so it ended up taking two and a half years instead... 

The History is well-grounded in real and developing technology and the ways that people have adapted to new technology in the past. Did you have multiple views of the future fighting for supremacy, or was it really one clear vision to describe?

The book presents a single coherent world, but just like in our world, there's great variability between different places and between different people. That meant that I had a lot of flexibility in exploring different kinds of futures in different countries, or ultimately, planets and habitats. Still, it probably would've been much easier if I had fewer objects to write about!

 What do you think is the wildest prediction you're making? The safest?

The wildest: Probably 'Cepheid Variable', which is a story about AI communication with aliens via a Cepheid Variable star whose pulse-period has been modified by neutrinos. There's a lot in that story and I don't seriously think it would actually happen — but it's certainly a lot of fun to think about, plus it let me explore some ideas about conspiracy theories and the future of programming!

The safest: There are several very safe objects! One of the safest is '50% Unemployment', where I talk about the future of work. It's very clear to many thinkers and economists that the increasing rate of automation will eliminate a huge number of full-time, permanent jobs. It says a lot about our culture that this is not a cause for rejoicing.

Is there anything you really believed before you started writing, but that you changed your mind on during the process as you did further research?

About the objects or about the process of writing? I did quite a bit of reading about energy usage, and realised that it's going to take an awful lot longer to transition away from fossil fuels to renewable energy. It took us about a hundred years to go from wood and coal to oil, and it may take another hundred years to diversify beyond that. Thankfully that process is well underway right now, but the problem is that we're still going to see significant global warming anyway.

This was an enormous project, and took you over two years to complete. What's next for you as an independent creator? Do you have more to say about the future, or have you said everything you needed to say right now?

I have plenty more to say about the future and I'm looking forward to saying it in a more straightforward way! But I don't anticipate that being my next major project. I still have a reasonable amount of work I need to do on publicising the book, and then I want to take a break. I have a lot of ideas for non-writing projects that I want to think about, many of which are addressed in the book in various ways. I'm certain I'll return to writing properly at some point though.

The complete History is available on Amazon and Gumroad, but you can also read excerpts right now for free.

Lucy in Cold, Hard Numbers: Part 2

(The first part of this post is available here.)

Continuing my campaign of aggressive transparency, let's carry on with sharing Lucy Smokeheart sales numbers, shall we?

To recap: in May and June, I sold a combined 38 episodes for 99 cents each, 1 subscription at $9.99, and gave away 5 episodes for free, in addition to the 251 Kickstarter backers. That brought my total post-Kickstarter take from the series to $21 precisely.

During July and August, I released episodes 3 and 4, in both cases around the middle of the month. Here's how they did:

July
iBooks: 3
Amazon: 13
Gumroad subscriptions: 1
Gumroad single episodes: 1
Freebies given: 110 

Total take: $17.07

August
B&N: 1
Amazon: 30
Gumroad subscriptions: 2
Gumroad single episodes: 1
Freebies given: 1 

Total take: $32.10*

*This is slightly inflated, because I've added in £1.04 to the sum without converting it to dollars, but I figure it's close enough.

I have run a couple of KDP free promotions in this period, and they don't seem to do much for Lucy Smokeheart, to be honest. You're supposed to see a halo effect where copies given away boost sales of later installments -- but in the few days after a Lucy freebie sale, I've seen basically no movement in the other episodes, and in fact a significant number of my sales are from the first episode alone. This could indicate that the first episode isn't compelling enough to actually sell anyone on reading further. Unpleasant if true, but it's definitely something that bears looking at.

What else do these numbers show us? Well, the series appears to be gradually gaining inertia -- each month is reporting more sales than the last, which is nice, even if it is mostly the first episode selling. I'm still not getting rich, but I do quite like the upward trajectory going on here. $6, $10, $17, $32 -- why, at this rate of growth, my advisors (by which I mean my actuary husband) projects it could hit several hundred dollars a month in month 12! Definitely nothing to sneeze at!

...Just one snag -- September's been a bad, bad month, so that rate of growth definitely hasn't continued. But I'll share that chapter in another month or two, once the totals are in. Until next time!

Ten Ways to Make Newcomers Feel Welcome at a Con

A few days ago I wrote some criticism about Worldcon, closed social groups, and how intimidating the experience was. It occurs to me that managing group behaviors and lowering barriers to entry are, how do you say, part of my freaking job. So it behooves me to offer a bunch of potential solutions, right?

And no, none of them is "make Worldcon a for-profit endeavor like Dragon Con." Let's not be silly.

1. A greeter/buddy program. Per comments in the original Worldcon post. This idea is to get experienced and friendly volunteers willing to hang around at the registration desk. When a first-timer shows up, it's the greeter's job to show the ropes, explain lingo, answer questions. Even better: enough volunteers that the greeter can wander off with a new person for a while, make some initial introductions, maybe invite the new fan to lunch, and check on them periodically during the event to make sure they're doing OK. At a small con, you don't even need an explicit program for this so much as people who recognize it's important to do it -- in fact I consciously try to do this thing for people I don't know at a place like ARGfest, where I am that old-timer who knows everybody.

2. A mixer event specifically for newcomers and conrunners. ...and make sure to explicitly invite new fans to this event. This actually solves two problems -- the isolation/barrier to entry problem for a solo first-time congoer, and the problem of how to funnel people into volunteering and in general get more labor to make a con go. Take the people at the very top and the people at the very beginning and have them rub elbows. Make a point for the veterans to mingle with the new people, and not just each other; see this as a (gentle!) recruiting opportunity. Meanwhile, new people make friends on the inside, and start to get a sense of belonging. And conrunners get a sense of what's going through the heads of new people, which can otherwise be tricky if you've been in a community for a long time. Alas, it doesn't help the person with a day pass, and since it would be an evening event it doesn't solve the problem of one or two really lonely and scary days at first.

3. Get out of the hotel rooms at night. This one is probably pie-in-the-sky for reasons of tradition and budget, but I also see it as deadly important if you're serious about lowering social barriers to entry. There's a real disconnect between how hotel rooms are perceived in culture and how they're used at Worldcon (and I assume other SF cons.) Hotel rooms are understood to be private spaces. They are bedrooms. They're places you go for privacy and intimacy. Telling a first-time congoer to go to a hotel room for a social event is intimidating and scary. They do not know whether or not to expect a murdersex painorgy. After-hours social events are much more welcoming in bars, restaurants, lobbies, parks -- spaces understood to be public already. 

4. Make a room in the convention for stragglers. ...but definitely not a hotel room, like the consuite, for the reasons detailed above. This would be a room in the con proper for people to go when they're lost and at a loose end and in the mood to meet new people. There should be rules about how to behave -- making sure to say hello and introduce yourself to people coming in, most notably -- so you don't just wind up with closed social groups inside of this room, which would defeat the whole purpose. Its existence should be widely publicized.

5. An icebreaker game. Games are not my solution to everything, but games can be a solution to lots of things, and this is one of them! At registration, give people several of a $THING. (Name tags in the most boring interation, but it can be skinned with pictures, collectible cards, whatever.) The point of the game is to collect as many unique varieties of these cards as possible. (I'm not stopping the post to design the whole game, I know the rules don't quite add up yet, but we could totally make it work.) Offer a reward. Smart players will focus on people who look a little lost and alone, and the interaction required to get someone's tag or card might just result in a more lasting friendship. Or at least acquaintanceship! Added bonus: this has 'sponsorship opportunity' written alllll over it.

6. Bind groups of newcomers together. A variation on idea 1 up there, but introducing first-timers to other first-timers, which has its pros and cons. At the registration desk, make a waiting area for people who would like to be assigned a group. When a critical mass has been achieved, say 8 or 10 people, everyone exchanges contact information, makes plans, and in general vows to stick together. I have some logistical doubts on this one -- registration happens very gradually, from what I saw, and you're not really giving the first-timers an incentive to stick together, but it's easy to implement, at least. It's possible this could be tweaked into something more functional.

7. Communal meals. Eating lunch or dinner by yourself (when you don't want to) is a sad, sad thing. Something like a Worldcon is much too big to say "OK, let's everyone meet at Taco Heaven at 7pm for dinner." Instead, you could say: "Everyone who wants to join a mixed group going out to lunch meet in the lobby in front of the Starbucks at 6:30, and we'll figure it from there." Then the whole group organizes itself into manageable chunks by, say, what they feel like eating, and goes from there. Have a volunteer there to triage and make sure nobody too shy to speak up gets left out.

8. Check on stragglers. Another variation on idea 1 up there. Have a team of volunteers whose function is to wander the halls looking for people who look lost or alone or confused. (As opposed to volunteers walking the halls waiting to be flagged down.) The volunteer should proactively see if anyone needs help -- not just finding where a panel is, but maybe being introduced to someone to hang out with for a while. This relies on there being people around to be introduced to... but it was my experience that the people who had been around for a while knew half the con, so this may not actually be an issue. I think there might be some of this going on already, actually, but it's worth seeing of there is more that could be done.

9. A visual signal. This one might also be hard to implement. Make some sort of visual indicator that someone is interested in meeting other people, and be sure to explain it to newcomers at the registration desk -- and offer one of whatever the signal is. Don't position it as an emergency I-am-lonely emergency flare, because then nobody would want to use it. This can't be a badge ribbon! It has to be much more visible and distinctive than that -- you should be able to spot it from across the room. Deelyboppers? An LED badge? The second half of this, of course, is to make sure people go out of their way to say hello to the people wearing the signal. Fortunately, fandom is absolutely full of gregarious and warm people, so I'm confident that wouldn't be an unsurmountable problem.

10. Give intro-to-the-con information immediately at registration. If you're doing any of this stuff, you have to make sure the people who need to know about this stuff know about it. There were a couple of "So it's your first Worldcon" panel sessions... but honestly the moment to give the information is at the first point of contact, at the registration desk, before people have had too much time to start to feel confused or left out. Best case: have someone explain out loud while handing over the badge. Also include a printed flyer or easy-reference card on bright paper explaining how a first-time congoer can meet people and get the most out of the efforts aimed at them. Even a proposed agenda for first-timers, filled in already with mixers and meetups. And make sure the information isn't buried deep in the registration materials -- let's be honest, most people aren't going to look that carefully at the stuff the desk hands over, so you have to go out of your way to make it hard-to-impossible to overlook.

Why SF/F Fandom is Important to Me

I had a very interesting childhood. I grew up as an Air Force dependent with a chaotic family situation. So for the first couple of decades of my life, everything was always new and changing. I've attended twenty-one schools. Probably lived in that many houses. 

That river of new experiences and places and people has enriched me when it comes to lived experience, and very definitely shaped me into the person I am today. (A person I'm pretty glad to be.) In some ways, it was a gift. 

But growing up like that wasn't easy or pleasant. Not… exactly. Would it be overblown to say that sci-fi saved me? 

***

When I was a kid, I was really bad at people.

I didn't understand them, I didn't know how to talk to them, I didn't know how to get people to like me. And so people didn't like me (or at least the only people who mattered — other kids). I think I was the proverbial easy target, always trying too hard. Too smart, too goody-two-shoes, too sensitive. Eventually I'd feel like I had the hang of a place, understood its ebb and tide and even knew the social cues and subculture of the group. And then it was time to move on.

The first boy who ever asked me out did it on my last day at that particular school. (And you know, I still worry whether that left any scars on him, the part where I stared and mumbled something indistinct and then he never saw me again.)

Just a week before that, my worst tormenter had turned to me in class and said, wonderingly, that I was actually pretty OK, and she didn't know why she'd ever disliked me. So it went.

Some few years before, when I went to my first school dance, some other girls squished three wads of chewed-up gum into my hair while cooing and telling me how beautiful it was, how blonde and curly and soft. I didn't know them. 

That was people. Books were a hell of a lot easier.

***

At almost every phase of my life I can tell you what I was reading. They were that important to me. I couldn't tell you who my teachers were, who my classmates were, but the books! I never forgot the books.

First it was the Chronicles of Narnia when I was seven, and sneaking into the kitchen after bedtime to make myself toast with marmalade because Tumnus had served it and I wanted to know what it tasted like. (Though I didn't get to try ginger beer until my honeymoon, some twenty years later.) Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and its sequel, the Great Glass Elevator, an SF book if ever there was. 

That was followed shortly by the Dragonsinger Pern books. (Not long after, my mom gave up and started feeding me her adult SF/F. I was a voracious reader and she couldn't keep me in books otherwise. Now I have my own voracious reader, and I sympathize.)

It wasn't all science fiction, not to begin with. I swept through every horsey book in the library, Ballet Shoes, books about Egyptology. But there was also Have Spacesuit, Will Travel and Podkayne of Mars; the Tripods series; Madeleine L'Engle. By the end of fifth grade I'd read any given school library dry. And then it was on with my mother's collection, full steam ahead. World's Best SF. Dangerous Visions. Chronicles of Amber. The Stainless Steel Rat.

In the long lunch hours of 6th grade, I read Lord of the Rings in the dimmed library while other kids watched movies. Then Foundation and Darkover. Asimov's Robot series, Fahrenheit 451. Thieves World and Wild Cards. 

I went through my storied ElfQuest obsession, reading and re-reading, and writing endless reams of the most appalling kind of self-insertion fanfic. David Eddings and the Dragonlance books. Ringworld. Douglas Adams.

There was the long, lonely summer after I moved to Florida, just before 9th grade. The summer spent in a neighborhood with no other kids and no way to meet any. Then it was Unicorn Variations, again and again, the book that taught me about writing. After, there was William Gibson, Mercedes Lackey, Robert Jordan. The rest of the Heinlein backlist. Terry Pratchett and Sheri Tepper. My very own subscription to the science fiction bookclub.

In my early 20s, working at an ad agency in Manhattan for the staggering sum of $20K a year, it was Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars series, the Hyperion cycle, Dune, Brin's Uplift series. I found Tim Powers and Neal Stephenson. Books were the burning hole in my budget, my only vice and my only luxury.

I am made of words. 

***

Why science fiction and fantasy novels? It could've been romance, I guess. It could've been mysteries. Sometimes it was, in fact, but I always came back to SF/F. The worlds I read about were comfortably unfamiliar, the problems so very different from my own. Escapism. Yes. Escaping as far as I could; reading about solvable problems and quests. They were a comfort when my own problems looked so intractable.  

The books I read were also a quiet Batsignal to other kids who maybe liked the same things I did and maybe wanted to be friends. Once in a while it would even work.

And if nobody responded to that Batsignal, it didn't really matter. I could still spend some time somewhere else, somewhere with narrative justice and heroism and logic. Somewhere with hope or inspiration, or sometimes problems worse than my own. I didn't want to live in another world; I did live in another world, as much and as long as I could. I read in class instead of listening. I read in bed with a flashlight instead of sleeping. 

It might be a coincidence that I read much less now as an adult, now that I make a decent living, now that I have a happy marriage and a community and, how do you say, stability. 

It might not be a coincidence.

***

This is just to say that the community of people who identify primarily as fans of written science fiction are my people. Before I had Dragon Age and Phoenix Wright and Katamari Damacy, before even Ultima and Carmen Sandiego, deep in my bones there were books. There will always be books.

And so when I criticize Worldcon as a place that makes me feel like an outsider, this is because it is a shock and betrayal to be on the outside. SF/F fandom was the one place I was supposed to fit without effort, the community where I always thought I knew the secret handshakes and shibboleths. But it turns out that just doing the reading wasn't quite enough.

How to Hustle Gracefully in a Creative Career

Friends, Romans, countrymen, today we're going to talk about something crucially important if you want to make a living from your art: your hustle. Hustle! I love that word. It's getting something you want through forceful action. It's a con or a swindle -- getting people to give you money when they might not be so inclined on their own. Hustle is working hard to find or make opportunities, and then riding them for all they're worth.

Obscurity is the second-biggest obstacle to having a great creative career. (The biggest one is knowing your craft well enough to do solid work when the clock is ticking.) I'm addressing two separate audiences here -- freelancers and independent creators. The same general rules apply to each group, believe it or not. The only real difference is one of scale. In one case, your money comes from a relatively small group of people, your clients (or investors, I suppose.) In the other, you're dealing with a wider audience -- your readership or viewership, your fans, one might even say.

In both cases, you're trying to get people to give you money for stuff you make. How do you do this thing? Dale Carnegie told you lo these 77 years gone by. Win friends and influence people.

In Social Situations, Don't 'Network.' Just Make Friends. You know how they say it's not what you know, it's who you know? That's only part of the equation. Forging good relationships with lots of people is the secret key to successful self-promotion. Be friendly, but don't be a shark. If you approach someone with the sole intent of using your contact with them as a stepping-stone to get things that you want, you're not going to make a very good impression. People can tell when you want something from them and you aren't really interested in them as people. And you know what? Nobody likes feeling that way.

On the other hand, friends are sometimes favorably disposed to make introductions, put in a good word... and even buy your stuff. If you're faced with a choice between buying a book by someone you think is a great person and someone you think is terrible, all else being equal, odds are you're going with the one you like. Make people like you by being a friend to them, not a huckster with nothing but a quick sale on the brain. Good self-promotion is a long game.

Give to Your Community. So how do you make friends? You act like a good friend to someone (or, ideally, to everyone). As Chuck Wendig might say, be a fountain, not a drain. In your interactions with people, don't focus exclusively on what you can get out of the deal. Hell, don't focus on it at all. Instead think about what you can do to give more to your audience, your industry, your colleagues. Share what you know. Pass on referrals and introduce people who you think would love to work together. Make freebies for your fans out of love. Volunteer for the stuff you think someone should be doing. Give give give.

This is where you start a blog and share your secrets or your expriences. This is where you volunteer to speak at conferences, or submit to festivals, or whatever the equivalent is in your community. Do so to genuinely share, and not to gain a platform for your case studies and thinly-veiled marketing materials.

This spirit of generosity makes your community a better place to be. And on a more cunning and calculating level, it makes people notice you and what you have going on. Making the world a better place for other artists and freelancers is a great way to build social capital. There's no downside to having people subtly feel like they owe you one, you know? 

On Social Media, Be a Person, Not A Brand. Marketing-speak has alas infiltrated a lot of our cultural discourse, and even influences how we behave toward other people online. Successful self-promotion in the internet age isn't about intentional branding or marketing, though. It's about being human.  

If you're checking out someone's Twitter account and all they ever do is post links to industry-relevant lists of top five tips, or buy links to their own books, or subscribe links for their email newsletter... that might be a pretty solid 'brand,' but so what? That person is not making human connections. That person is not interested in a two-way give-and-take relationship over social media. That person is being a brand and not a person. It's self-promotion run amuck, and ultimately won't get you very far; nobody likes a relentless sales pitch.

Absolutely curate and filter the stuff you put out on the internets! But don't filter out you. The stuff about your work and your hustle and your business should be only a small fraction of what you do online. Be vulnerable and funny and admit mistakes and when other people talk to you, listen to them. Even if they aren't someone you think can help your career! You know how you can tell who's a jerk by how they treat waitstaff? Yeah, you can tell who's a jerk on social media by how they treat people who don't have as many followers. And yeah, people notice.

When You're Actively Selling, Don't Ever Put Anyone on the Spot. Never, ever put anyone in a position where they have to tell you no directly to your face. There is a world of difference between sending an email to a potential client saying, "Do you have any work for me right now?" and "By the way, I'm looking for projects, mind passing on my name if you hear of anything?" Likewise, there is a world of difference between an open tweet "My book is out today! Buy it at LINK!" and "@hey_specific_buddy My book is out today! Buy it at LINK!"

Again, this is all about making sure nobody feels like you're using them. Nobody likes to feel like all they are to you is an income stream. It's not even that hard to avoid.

Don't Be Shy! Just Be Aware of Context. So sure, if people are going to hire you or buy your stuff, at some point they need to know you're on the market, and the only way they'll know is if you tell it to them. This is the actual hustling part that you have to work at. To be a successful self-promoter, you should send out the odd email to potential clients saying you're on the market. You should send out the tweet with a buy link on launch day. If you're having drinks at a bar, probably a point will come up in conversation where you share what you do, and you absolutely can say "I'm an $ARTIST, hey, it would be awesome to work with you sometime/I have a book out/I'm going on tour."

And then as a follow-up... just leave it alone. Maybe the person you've met will ask a few follow-up questions, but it's absolutely not up to you to extend that part of the conversation.

Look. If you're talking to a hiring agent, a record exec, an acquiring editor, a potential fan, they already know what you want from them. You really don't need to spell it out. 

There is a time for the hard sell. That's in a context specifically designated for it. If you're in a pitch meeting, yeah, talk about how awesome you are. If you're sending out a newsletter that people have signed up for on purpose, hells yes load it up with buy links and your best sales pitch. If you've snagged a great business card, go ahead and follow that up with a shiny email about how glad you are to have met and how you'd love to get something together sometime. Just don't be douchey about it. Don't leave someone under the impression that your sole interest in them is what they can do to fatten up your wallet.

But Don't Be Scared, Either. Self-promotion is scary and hard. A lot of people hate to do it. Hell, I hate to do it. It's kind of a necessary evil. Nobody can buy your stuff or hire you if they don't know you exist, which means getting out there, making friends, engaging in a community, making sure people know you have something to offer.

But as long as you don't go crazy with it, as long as you show restraint and respect, as long as you're not entering a weird transactional twilight zone where people are only as good to you as their potential to get you revenue, then a little bit of promotion goes a long, long way. 

A Creator's Guide: A Short Update

It's been just a bit over a year since the launch of A Creator's Guide to Transmedia Storytelling. Naturally time and technology have moved on, so I thought I'd take a minute to think about what's happened since then, and whether I have anything new to say.

As it turns out, I do.

Tumblr is Amazing and Facebook is Terrible

I didn't give a lot of time to specific platforms in the Guide, preferring mostly to talk about general rules for how to use a social tool. They're always changing; better to know how to critically examine a platform and decide how to use it for yourself.

But the social media landscape has changed in some very particular ways, and I'd like to address that a bit.

First: Tumblr is amazing. I wasn't very familiar with it yet when I wrote the Guide -- you could argue I'm still not -- but the way that fan communities develop and propagate on Tumblr is absolutely phenomenal. Tumblr is where people go to love things. And you want people to love you, right?

To a creator, I would say: Make yourself as Tumblr-friendly as possible. Make an account. Post art in various stages of completion. Share fan art and fanfic and inside jokes. Engage with the community -- not necessarily inside of your fictional world, but as the creator of your fictional world. You can put characters and in-story elements on Tumblr, but it takes a light touch and isn't the best use of the platform; it's fundamentally not in tune with how people interact with Tumblr.

On the other hand: Facebook has become a less and less useful tool to a creator. At this point I'd say it's close to worthless. Various policies have long made Facebook an iffy proposition... but in recent months it's become clear that even if someone likes or friends you, they may never see the bulk of what you post unless you pony up some steep cash. If your audience isn't likely to see what you put on Facebook, you're just wasting time, energy, and money by having a presence there at all. Don't bother.

Social Media is Not for Plot

There was a time when I felt that advancing plot through live action on social media was a good idea. I no longer believe this. The reason: volume.

As social media platforms has been more and more widely adopted, the average number of people any given person has friended of followed has climbed ever higher. That means the stream of updates going by is faster and faster. Which means it's very easy for any one update to be lost in the shuffle. And that means your fantastic, tight, tense action sequence may vanish into the ether, never viewed by man, woman, or child.

You don't want that. Better to stick to social media for what it does best... extras. Social media is still brilliant for characterization and for interaction. Use it to add depth and complexity to your characters. Use it as a place to let your audience and characters talk to each other. Use it for your non-load-bearing story elements; the decoration, not the stuff that holds the roof up.

The exception to this is if you know for a fact you already have a very highly engaged and attentive audience, and you've told them exactly when to be paying attention (or you can count on them to update one another later on.) But this is very strictly an advanced and late-stages move, not something you can get away with out of the gate. Be cautious. Be realistic.

The Lizzie Bennet Diaries

I've long been predicting the onset of a transmedia "web series++," as I've been calling it: a web series with light transmedia elements that deepen the experience at a fairly low cost, and requiring a fairly low engagement. That project finally arrived in the guise of a modern-day adapatation of Pride & Prejudice, The Lizzie Bennet Diaries.

I urge all of you to become familiar with the project -- I wish I could've written it up in the Guide. It's one of the landmark new structures of our day, and I expect a lot more along the same general lines, though likely with only varying degrees of success. And it won an Emmy, so that's nice, too.

Going Forward with A Creator's Guide

It's back-to-school season which means I'm seeing a spike in sales of the Guide -- thanks bunches! I really appreciate it! Please do reach out and let me know how you're using it; I'm absolutely tickled at the variety of schools and courses who have found it a useful resource.

I'm also starting to get back-to-school invitations to Skype into classes to speak. I did a lot of that last year and was flattered to be asked, but it played havoc on my schedule. And this year, on top of client work, I'm juggling production of Lucy Smokeheart while trying to break into genre print publishing... so my schedule is a little intense.

So... go ahead and ask if you'd like me to pop into your class on Skype? But please don't be mad if I say no. I don't love you any less, I promise.

I've also been asked if I'm planning on writing a new edition or companion to the Guide. The answer is no. I think I've said about all I have to say in the Guide. I could probably produce a companion volume with worksheets and what-have-you. But honestly I think it would encourage a formulaic result for people who use it, it would inhibit creativity in the space, and I'd only be doing it for the money and not because I thought it would be a contribution to the art.

I do not want to be That Girl. There may one day be a new edition of the Guide... but as this post shows, I don't have a lot of new stuff to say. So for now, we're cool.

The Inevitable Graying of Worldcon

So I was at Worldcon this weekend to do a few things -- hustle up a new agent, make friends, maybe sell a couple of people on the wonders of Lucy Smokeheart, and in general start connecting with professionals in genre as I expand my career into new directions.

Chuck Wendig has just written a post about The Worldcon Youth Problem. I saw some of that with my own eyes -- while waiting in line for the Hugos to open, a pair of gentlemen in front of me were talking with not-even-thinly-veiled contempt about 'media fandom,' as though it weren't possible to like books and movies and games all at the same time. But they're right -- those people aren't real fans in the sense that they don't belong to the Fandom Culture that is rooted in print zines and written letters. The culture that effectively owns and operates Worldcon. And more to the point: those people (and by that I mean people like me) aren't quite welcome there. Tumblr isn't fandom. Apparently.

This is related to the Fake Geek Girl problem -- a tribe of people who feel they should have authority over who does and doesn't get to be included in their tribe. Suggesting that to be a true fan of SF/F, first you must read the Holy Trinity of Heinlein, Clarke and Asimov is... let's just say it's a little old-fashioned.

In our Sunday episode of The Cultures, I talked about how Worldcon is an incredibly intimidating event for a newcomer to come into. Speaking here as a game designer, this is a structural problem with Worldcon (and other cons like it) as a fan-run event.

Fan-run cons are a recipe for creating events that increasingly and over time favor the long-timers and become closed social groups. It's not inevitable, but preventing it requires a certain mindful attention. 

Worldcon rewards people with social status for volunteering; the people who volunteer get to Be Somebody in the community. (Thus prioritizing people who have the relative privilege to spend that time on volunteer works and not, say, a second and third job, which is kind of a class issue with fandom and a whole other ball of wax. ...Let's pin that for another time.)

The more time you've put in, the more relative credibility and authority you're likely to have. Which means the more influence you're likely to have on programming. And if you're a fan programming a thing for other fans, prrrrrobably you're going to heavily salt the show with stuff that you're interested in. The stuff that you're comfortable with. The stuff that is like the stuff you're used to, and not so much the stuff that you're not personally into. Over time, there will be a trend for homogeneity. There will be a trend for what worked last time. And since it's all run by committees... a trend to not rock the boat.

These fans who run the show are amazing and dedicated people, and what they do is frankly exceptional. They are in the trenches together being shelled. It's by no means an easy job. (I was rooming with a dear friend from high school who does this stuff herself, and let me tell you, she was working her tail off while I was in the bar.)  As a result, the people who run the show (and shows like it) become very close-knit. This is a perfectly natural and human thing.

Have you ever tried to come into a close-knit group of people for the first time? Where they've all known each other for ten, twenty, even thirty years? They have their own language (smof, concom, fannish) and their own in-jokes and traditions (badge ribbons). No matter if they are the most welcoming group in the world, it's going to be super hard to feel like you really belong there.

If I hadn't gone in knowing Chuck Wendig and a couple of peeps from Twitter -- if I had been twentysomething me, kind of awkward and very shy and mustering up what courage I had to buy a day pass -- I'd have a miserable time. Hell, I did basically that to go to a con in White Plains around fifteen years ago and got so little out of it that I never went back to a con until I started getting speaking invitations. And honestly, the first day or two at Worldcon were really, really hard for me and I really questioned whether going had been a good decision. 

In the case of Worldcon in particular, this is magnified by the fact that very much of Worldcon is devoted to the running of Worldcon. Bid parties, committee meetings, voting. This is all perfectly impenetrable to someone who doesn't already know and doesn't have someone to explain it all to them. The only real entry point to Worldcon is to go with someone who can introduce you around. And that just isn't enough.

Dragon*Con is a commercially run event. They know damn well they have to make it as welcoming as possible to young people, new people, anyone who isn't already included in their social network of friends-of-friends. They have a commercial interest in reaching more than a limited circle of old friends from back in the day.

They know you have to invite people in by baiting the hook with stuff they love already, and not just stuff you love. Once you invite them in, though, you can introduce them to new things and old traditions alike. People come to cons to celebrate things that they love -- but you know what? If you can get them in the door, they can also discover new things to love.

So this is something Worldcon and the very particular fannish culture that runs it needs to do some soul-searching about. Are you OK being a closed social group for people who like the same things that you liked twenty, thirty years ago, or who are good friends with someone who does? Or do want this thing to survive and thrive into another generation, maybe even one that also likes games and comics and movies?

Because you can't have both.

Fashion, Fake Geek Girls, and WorldCon

Let me preface this by saying this has been an extraordinarily difficult post to write. The terror is completely out of proportion to the actual magnitude of the topic; and that tells me there's something deep and significant here, and that it is manifestly important to talk about despite any deep-seated terror over what light it casts me in.

See, here's the problem. I'm going to WorldCon this year, and I am freaking right the hell out about what to wear.

This may strike you as a petty, shallow kind of thing to be wasting my precious mental energies upon. Frankly I agree with that. I'd rather be channeling all of this mind-juice into plotting and writing, or at least hustling up a project for the fall. But... it's killer important.

Fashion is a language -- a way of telling other people what kind of person you are. Not everybody is fluent at speaking that language, but saying the wrong thing can nonetheless have consequences. (Don't believe me? Show up to your next job interview in a swimsuit, or an elephant costume.)

I'm not going to WorldCon just to make friends and have a good time (though that is of course an awesome side effect I'm looking forward to a lot.) I'm trying to map out the lay of the land in professional SF/F publishing, and, you know, maybe lay the foundations for a career in writing genre my own self. If I strike the wrong tone to the wrong person, if I wear something that subtly signals that I just don't belong to the varied tribes of fandom, that could have long-term negative ramifications for my career.

So what to wear? This is what I'd wear to an ordinary conference. Because I've been to conferences before, of course. Tons! I've done so much speaking in the last few years! I'm an old hand! Naturally I've developed a general look I tend to stick to.

The message I'm trying to send at most conferences is "creative professional." I want to seem competent, authoritative, creative, reliable, and a little fun or quirky (but not too much.)

Clothes: Dark boot-cut jeans and a dressy top. (Sometimes a dress, but for the purposes of this post let's not get into that right now.) Another time of year (or if the A/C were on) I'd add a jacket.

Accessories: Wedding and engagement rings; a statement necklace (or sometimes a scarf.) Another day I might wear bracelets.

Shoes: Closed-toe oxblood t-straps with a stacked wooden heel.

Makeup: Dramatic eye make-up (black liquid eyeliner winged out at the corners), but everything else tending toward fresh and natural.

Hair: Down, loose and curly.

This outfit is walking a lot of lines. Attractive and feminine... but not too much. Not too businesslike, not too casual. Put together but not "trying too hard." 

This outfit is all wrong for WorldCon.

WorldCon is primarily a fan event and not a professional networking event -- and I'm going as a fan and not as a part of programming, so bringing the polished-professional look would be presumptuous and out of place. It's weirdly too formal, like showing up in a tux to the company barbeque.

There's a cultural factor at play, too. This outfit was developed for fitting in among marketing and entertainment media professionals and making them feel like I am one of them. But when it comes to geek fandom, there's nothing here that shows that I belong. 

And yeah, that opens me up to accusations of being a fake geek girl who doesn't belong at a place like WorldCon. But... what you wear is important even interacting with people who aren't territorial and kinda sexist. Quietly signaling with clothes that you're the same kind of person is important to making people feel comfortable with you. And if people don't feel comfortable with you, even if they can't quite pin down why, it's going to be a lot harder to make friends.

 I know how to do "geek girl," of course. Or at least the way I used to do it. Here the look we're after is a studied rejection of whatever is on-trend in the mainstream, with a few subtle markers of geek pride worked in to taste.

Clothes: Straight-leg jeans and a boy-cut t-shirt showing affiliation with a geek-credible entity, be it a tech preference, a fandom you belong to, or maybe a geek-culture inside joke.

Accessories: Wedding ring and pewter earrings in the shape of battle axes with tiny red stones set in them. (No jewelry is also acceptable.)

Shoes: Purple Chucks. (Not yet adequately scuffed up. They're new, so sue me.)

Makeup: Minimal to none.

Hair: A loose pony-tail. Low upkeep, eh.

So with this outfit I'd fit into WorldCon just fine. In fact, I speculate I'd fit in so well I'd be nearly invisible -- perfect camouflage. This is about how I dressed when I was 19, though at the time I'd have worn the t-shirts a couple of sizes too big.

This outfit is very nearly gender-neutral, and would probably stave off a lot of the fake-geek-girl stuff by that virtue alone. Androgyny is a kind of defense. And if I may be so bold: this outfit is not particularly flattering on me; it seems to me being too pretty is one of the things that can bring on that fake-geek-girl accusation.

I expect there will be tons of women (and men!) at WorldCon rocking variations on exactly this. 

There are other more feminine geek-acceptable looks out there; I'm not quite prepared to write a dissertation on geek subculture fashion -- in fact I'd be poorly positioned to do so -- but in general you're looking at longer skirts in lightweight fabrics, lots of patterns, motifs reminiscent of New Age or inspired by traditional Indian or Chinese attire, or perhaps references to period attire, like lacing or exposed corsetry.

Of course there's outright cosplay, too, which is another topic entirely.

But the problem in my case is: This isn't really who I am now, and it hasn't been in fifteen years or more.

 So why not just... be myself?!

Here's an outfit I'd wear on a weekend, to meet a friend for coffee, etc. This is me in my natural habitat, so to speak.

Clothes: A short polka-dot chambray dress buttoned up the front and black stretch leggings.

Accessories: None but my wedding ring. Another day I might wear chunky earrings.

Shoes: Tall wedge sandals.

Makeup: Dramatic! Black liquid eyeliner winged out and blazing red lipstick.

Hair: Twisted up and clipped on each side Swedish-style.

Part of my journey into feminism has included an outright embracing of the extremely feminine. Where once I shied away from feminine gender markers like pink or ruffles or lace, now I've turned into a regular girly girl. 

I love this outfit. Probably you can tell this from the expression on my face. 

The problem with this outfit is that it is too much. Too feminine, too bold, too short, too slutty, too too too. 

Take that bright red lipstick as an example. I love it; it makes me feel powerful and brave and in control of my destiny. I have at least half a dozen equally bright lipsticks. But I've worn a shocking crimson lip color even to an event like SXSW and noticed a subtle difference in how people treat me -- not making eye contact in the halls and sidewalks where they did before, not making small talk in lines. And that's among a group where saying someone pays attention to fashion isn't kind of an insult... in the way that it sort of is in geek spaces.

So I can be myself, sure. In a perfect world I would be myself and it wouldn't matter, because we're all too evolved to judge someone based on what they wear.

But we're all still monkeys. Of course we're going to judge people on what they wear. So the question is: how to balance what makes me feel good against what will be context-appropriate and send signals that will make people feel like I'm one of them?

This isn't just an issue that affects women, of course. Men, too, can suffer a sartorial misfire. A gentleman who wears sweats and a football jersey to WorldCon... also might not be immediately welcomed with loving kindness. A gentleman in a power suit. Worse: the guy who shows up in his hip-hop finest, or a sharp sherwani. Geek spaces are male-dominated. But they're even more white-dominated.

And the worst part of all of this is that even acknowledging that this is something I'm concerned about, something I'm wasting a lot of my time thinking about enough to write this damn essay, opens me up to criticism. I've already shown myself to be the wrong kind of girl, the kind who thinks fashion is something worth thinking about. Not a geek at all.

And this is one of the ugly double-binds of patriarchy. A woman is supposed to be pretty, because there's no value to an ugly woman... but not too pretty because then she's at best shallow and brainless, and at worst a whore. You can't pay attention to fashion or vanity because the only kind of person who does is not a person worth knowing. But you can't not pay attention, either.

It sucks and it's not fair and I've written over 1500 words about what to freaking wear to a conference. And at the end of the day it just shouldn't matter.

...But it does.

Diesel Reboot

I've been pretty quiet about what I've been up to so far this year, aside from a few oblique references on Twitter to 'scripts' (still keeping that a secret) and 'fashion clients.' But the time has come for me to talk a little more about some of that fashion work!

Earlier this year, I had the pleasure of helping Moving Image & Content to create the Diesel Reboot project. It's a deceptively simple thing: the Diesel Reboot Tumblr assigns missions; an audience submits entries; eventually, a few are selected for special treatment — for example, printed in The New York Times.

This could have gone so, so wrong. It could have felt like any other user-generated content project, asking an audience to do spec design work for a questionable payoff.  It could have felt exploitative. I am bursting with pride when I say it is carefully designed to not be that ugly thing. Here are a few reasons why:

1. No promises. This isn't that predatory "make some ads for us" garbage because… when the missions started, nobody knew they'd ever go anywhere but Tumblr. It was very important to me that the community form around the pure idea of sharing creativity, rather than gambling or competing for a specific reward. 

2. The focus is on connection, not on content. The quality of submissions is absolutely blow-your-head-off incredible. Light years beyond what I ever expected. But the focus the whole time has been on forging links between members of a community — and Diesel artistic director Nicola Formichetti is himself a member of the community. If we've done our job right (and it looks like yes), many of those new connections will persist forever.

3. The brand shares the spotlight. Diesel is a part of the community, and acting as a curator — but the Reboot isn't fundamentally about Diesel. Another team, another day, another project would have tried to make the brand the main focus, which would have led participants to feel like they were being used. Diesel is shining light on creators, and not inserting itself into the conversation where it doesn't belong — none of the missions require Diesel clothing or a Diesel logo, for example.

It's a pure and beautiful thing. A community whose seed is simply: let's make art together. I really couldn't be more proud.