Wren Handman's Blog, page 6

How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Submission Process

I was in an English class once and someone quoted an author who said something to the effective of : writing is a painful ordeal that one only undertakes if driven by demons, and I just thought… Honey, you’re doing it wrong.

I love writing. When I go for too long without writing, I get grumpy and miserable. Life starts to feel harder; I go through vague, melancholic depression. There are times when I really think writing is the point of it all, and I wonder how people who don’t have a creative release handle those insidious, creeping, maudlin thoughts. Maybe people who don’t write don’t have them, I don’t know! All I know is, writing is a playground. An adventure. A joy.

Then, on the other hand, there are submissions…

Submissions suck. They’re exhausting, if you’re doing it right they’re nearly constant, and every single time your boundless optimism and enthusiasm (which you must have, or how would you muster the energy to continue to submit?) is balanced against your utter certainty that the process is pointless and rigged against you and there is no point to anything and you will die upublished. (Even after you’ve been published, you continue to have that thought, since you’re sort of used to it and it feels familiar. Then you remind yourself it’s already too late for that and think HA!)

So how do you continue to feed the flames of optimism and enthusiasm when you’re tired and you just want to give up? My answer is, write more. Write the thing you love so much that you think everyone else will HAVE to love it too. Put all of your energy into that, and send it out into the world. And if that energy doesn’t get you anywhere, if you hit a wall, if you start to doubt your love? Take a break. Go back to an old project. Dust it off and fall in love with it again, so much that you think everyone else will HAVE to love it too. Put all of your energy into it, and send it out into the world.

Learn to love the submission process by learning to love your work. Then it isn’t so much of a struggle to polish something, to send it out into the world. Because at the end of it all, there’s always another project to love. And that?

Is pretty incredible.

Quarks

Last night I had them all. Words stacked like paper cups, each fitting perfectly into the one above. Puzzle pieces make a picture, but a stack of cups makes a good party, and I would have been witty and wise – just mysterious enough to keep you interested, just interesting enough to keep you by my side.

The world never fits together that way. It’s man that demands sense, as if the world owes it to us for one thing to follow the next. Physics agrees, at least. Actions must have reactions, cause must have effect. Up and down, top and bottom, charm and strange. Of course the flavour of quarks are largely another human convention, as if the quarks lie down at night and taste each other. But who are we to say they feel no desire? Perhaps charm and strange the two parts we find in every relationship, and the high energy collision that spawns them is the two of us, fighting over who shall be which.

This morning the words are gone. Cups lie scattered on every surface, like fallen petals after a storm. Dropped chips and empty bottles, someone’s shoe without a pair. I gave my words away last night, and even the memory of them I gave to the god of drink. I wanted them for you, but I never know quite what it is that you want.

Just because there will be a reaction doesn’t mean that you can predict it. Quarks are never found in isolation – to understand them you must observe the action of the group. Yet when I am alone I am clever, kind, unconditional. If you knew me when I was alone you would love me. Is it my fault that such a state is unobservable? That science has not yet been able to answer the question of what we are when no one is watching?

 

 

Image courtesy of Jimmy Musto, who has made his work available for free on the website Unsplash.

Remembering Stanley Handman

During World War II, my grandfather was one of thousands of Quebec men who enlisted to fight overseas, a position that was especially important to him as a proud Jewish man. His first assignment was with the Victoria Rifles, but he transferred to the Royal Canadian Regiment so that he could ship overseas.

Officially, he was the first Canadian soldier to land in North Africa, as he was the first one to step foot off the boat. All of the soldiers were required to wear their dress uniforms that day, and for Canadians, that meant heavy wool coats on top of long-sleeved wool uniforms. They waited until the last possible minute to get dressed – but there was a delay, and the boat ended up waiting several hours to dock. In the sweltering heat of North Africa, the metal ship was an oven. My grandfather took one step off the boat, swayed like a palm tree, and promptly fell over.

Later, he sent dispatches from the front back to the Montreal Star, and ended the war as a full-time correspondent for the armed forces’ publication, The Maple Leaf. He would never talk about his experiences in the war – especially those of the Italian campaign. Instead he told his grandchildren to read “And No Birds Sang,” by Farley Mowat. “That was my war,” he told us. No need to say it all again.

He is remembered with love.

Tales of the Stop Interview

At the end of September, Silverstring Media released Tales of the Stop, an anthology of short stories set in the world of Azrael’s Stop. It features stories from ten different authors about the various people that visited the Stop during the course of Azrael’s Stop, and one of those stories was written by yours truly.

Lucas Johnson, creator of Azrael’s Stop and editor of the anthology, decided to ask each of the authors a few questions about why they  joined him in this experimental journey. I was the first, and spoke to Johnson about my contribution, the story This, At Least, Is My Story.

Lucas: What attracted you to Azrael’s Stop that led you to writing a story for Tales?

Wren: Writing fiction is an incredibly solitary activity, but I think one of the things that inspires many writers (certainly something that inspires me) is reading or watching something really amazing and thinking, ‘I want to be part of that; I want to DO that.’ Usually we can only achieve that in a very metaphorical sense. We can write our own TV show because we love watching TV; we can write our own book because we adore reading. But getting to dive into someone else’s world, to play in the fantastical boundaries of another person’s imagination, is a really exciting extension of that drive that’s pushing us all.

Lucas: Have you ever written content for pre-existing settings before? What was it like to do so now?

Wren: This is my first experience writing fiction in a pre-existing setting. I have done work on a very collaborative TV show whose world mostly existed before I got there, so it isn’t the first time I’ve worked with clay that’s already been fired, so to speak.

I think the biggest challenge with a project like this is the terror of not living up to what came before! You have this incredible thing to work with, and you don’t want to twist it out of shape; but you also want to bring new colours and dimensions to it, so it’s a tricky line to walk.

Lucas: How did you choose what to write about for your story? How much was it affected by the existing Azrael’s Stop story or world?

Wren: I really wanted to do something that was unique, and that the other writers involved in the project wouldn’t already have thought of. So when I read the setting package that you had given me, I was sort of looking for the blank space — the stories that were hinted at but not quite told, the shadows behind the words. I wanted it to be very much a product of what was there, but not obvious.

Lucas: Your story uses really interesting POV and stylistic writing. Why did you choose to write it like that?

Wren: One of the most exciting things about Azrael’s Stop, to me, is it’s experimental storytelling. It isn’t just about ‘here’s some fiction, there you go.’ It weaves together music, fiction, Twitter stories; it plays with form and length. So I knew that I would be able to do something here that maybe wouldn’t be allowed in a more traditional setting, and that got me really excited. To be honest the form came quite quickly from the idea of the Void, of that erasure. What would the world be like if we lost our sense of time, our ability to distinguish the ‘now’ from the ‘then’? That was a fascinating question to me, and I couldn’t wait to try it out.

You can read it and the others in Tales of the Stop. It, Azrael’s Stop, and the official soundtrack that accompanies it are available now for digital download. [And you can read more about the project at Chuck Wendig’s blog, here.]

Get all three in all available formats and for a bundled discount price at the Silverstring Media store or itch.io, or get them at:

Azrael’s Stop: Amazon | B&N | iBooks | Kobo

Tales of the Stop: Amazon | B&N | iBooks | Kobo

Azrael’s Stop Official Soundtrack: iTunes | CDBaby | Amazon

Can You Read Something For Me?

As a writer you often get asked by people, usually friends (but often acquaintances), if you’ll read their work. Usually when someone says “read,” what they actually mean is “critique.” They want feedback, guidance, or help. Often, they want to be told not to give up, that they can do this crazy hard frustrating beautiful thing that they’re trying to do.

I’ve read a lot of articles about why you should never ever ever ever ever ever ask a writer friend to read your work. There was this expletive laden one that went around a few years ago. There are also some more measured, thoughtful essays that are basically saying the same thing: this is a job, and we get paid for jobs. I charge people to edit their work, and I am paid quite well to do it. Every hour I spend reading and editing your work is an hour I’m not working on my own projects. It’s a huge imposition, and unless you would feel comfortable, say, asking to crash on my couch with 24 hours notice, you shouldn’t be asking me to edit your manuscript.

You know what I say to that? Fuck off.

This isn’t an easy business to be in. It’s creative, it’s soul-consuming, and it’s often lonely. None of us do this on our own, and we’ve all been in that place where we need a little guiding light. We have a responsibility to help each other, and it’s a privilege to have reached the place where others can look up to you, and you can reach down and help lift someone a little further up. I remember every single person who I have turned to over the years. I remember the terror of getting up the courage to ask for help, the nail-biting wait about whether they’ll say yes or no, the incandescent joy when they agree to look it over. I remember every bit of feedback and critique I was given; notes about writing memories into stories, about casting possibilities in stage plays, about un-“Disney-fying” an action movie.

You know what else I remember? I remember every person who said yes, they’d be happy to – and then didn’t. I remember every time I turned over a precious piece of myself and got only resounding silence in reply. I remember every time I haunted my computer, waiting for an email that never came.

That second article I linked to makes one good point. Sometimes, you’re just too busy. You shouldn’t have to feel guilty for saying no, and I get that it must be frustrating to be constantly bombarded for requests. I’ve never been approached by a stranger or a fan and asked for help, for instance – but I wouldn’t tell strangers and fans never to give it a shot. You know why? Because maybe that’s the day when you’re between projects, and you have an hour to donate to a good cause. Maybe you recognize something in that stranger that you saw in yourself, and you think you have something worthwhile to say to them.

You know what the difference is between mentoring and working for free? Semantics. I’m very firmly against being taken advantage of, and I think the currennt movement in the arts away from free labour is a long time coming. The whole lie of “exposure” as payment is horrifying, and giving away your work because its “for a good cause” or “for a non profit” should never expected or assumed. But it should be done, now and then, and that’s what agreeing to read a friend’s work is: it’s a pro-bono case. It’s a donation to charity. It’s the right thing to do.

If you’re asking an author for help, remember that you’re asking for a favour – but authors, remember that everyone needs a favour, now and then. Give new writers a break. Give new writers a hand. Give back what you know you got at some point in your career.

And for god’s sake, stop saying yes and then not doing it!!!!!! (seriously. it’s mean.)

Fantasy Casting Call – Command the Tides!

One of the best parts of writing a book is imagining all of the people who populate it: their piercing eyes, their mysterious smiles, the careful tilt of their heads when they’re slowly falling in love.

And one of the best parts of dreaming about your book being turned into a movie or a television show is getting to decide which hunky, dreamy, and versatile actors would step into those skins. Remember how exciting it was when Harry Potter hit the screens, and every single character was exactly how we had imagined them all? Remember how disappointed we all were in the new James Bond (but he’s blond!, we shouted) until we saw how wonderfully he could act, and then we all fell in love?

So of course, if you asked me who I had in mind for the characters in my book, I would rattle off names without thinking twice. But you know what’s even more fun than rattling off names? Showing you pictures!

Taya

Taya is described as having black hair, brown eyes, and tanned-dark skin. She’s fierce, proud, confident, and a little bit scrappy. She doesn’t think of herself as a great beauty because she doesn’t ascribe to the beauty standards of her culture – but she takes people’s breath away.

Lindsey Morgan has proven with her role on The 100 that she can portray all of those attributes. While she butches it up on the small screen with her slicked-back ponytails and cargo pants, this photo proves she can be softly beautiful, but with that fire in her eyes that defines Taya.

Of course, we’d have to dye her hair black, but look at those amazing eyes!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Darren

For someone who spends so much time front-and-center in Taya’s fantasies, we don’t get a lot of description of Darren. We hear about his perfect blue eyes, just exactly the color of the sky reflecting in the sea; but other than that, Darren is all about personality. It’s about his charming smile with that hint of mischief in it; about his sculpted arms from hours of hauling ropes on a ship; and we can imagine a sheen of stubble across his laughing jaw.

So call me distracted by the perfect crinkles at the corners of this bright smile, but I would definitely cast Joe Dempsie (most recently from Game of Thrones stardom) as one of my two leading men. We know that he has the acting chops to pull off this complicated role; at times brooding, at times brilliantly fun, and always at the center of Taya’s world and thoughts.

I know I would think about him as I fell asleep!

 

 

 

Jeremy

Unlike Darren, Jeremy is described to a tee: his blond hair, just a little bit wavy; his dark stormy eyes, so intense, staring right through you; his square jaw, rough-hewn but regal. As soon as a friend sent me a picture of Sam Heughan before he got his Outlander redhead makeover, I knew he was perfect (and that wasn’t just because I was melting into a puddle remembering that scene where he whispered Gaelic into Claire’s ear… …)

When he was younger he was blond, and when he was older he had a beard, but we were having trouble finding a picture of him with both. Finally I tracked one down and sent it to her. “What about this one?” I asked. She would have given me a confused look if we weren’t having this entire conversation over messenger. Instead she said, “I do love Jamie Bamber, but isn’t he a bit old?”

I looked at the picture again, and then messaged her a second time: “That’s not the same person?” I asked.

Apparently I am really bad at facial recognition. But I would be happy to have either of these desperately dreamy dudes sweeping Taya off her feet as Jeremy.

Except I would definitely give Jamie Bamber a hair brush first. Did he put his fingers in a light socket at the office??

 

 

 

David

The first thing we ever learn about David is his deep, baritone voice. Though I never describe his chin in one way or the other, I definitely picture him with a thick, dark beard. Everything about David is deep, dark, and warm – like a warm quiet night beside a crackling fire. He’s the kind of man you would want to carry you through a frosted winter night in the encircling protection of his arm. Though he’s still young there’s a wisdom about him that makes you feel like he’s older, and the kindness in his eyes never fades.

I know he’s been in a lot of other movies, but Kellan Lutz will always be Hercules to me; and though he usually sports a clean-shaved jaw, I think you can agree that he rocks the bearded look. I can’t remember what his voice sounded like, to be honest, but I’m sure he could deepen it to pull off David’s rumbling bass, and I know we would all be cheering when he caught Taya in his arms as she plummeted from a second story window (how she gets into that predicament I’ll leave you to discover for yourself!)

 

 

 

 

Ryan

The man of mystery himself, Ryan was by far the hardest to cast. He’s the kind of man who you would never think to look at twice, and with our looks obsessed culture, there aren’t many Hollywood actors who fall into that category! Ben Lloyd-Hughes certainly isn’t hard to look at, but I have the feeling he could fade into the background if he wanted to; and with a little grizzle on his cheeks and the right clothes, I think he could fade into the character of Ryan with no trouble at all.

 

 

 

Princess Nicola

The Sephrian princess is really the daughter of a Duke, not a King, but she wears her royalty like a coat of armour, looking down on her subjects with a smile that feels a little too set. Blonde, thin, corseted, and perfect, she is everything that Taya has never wanted to be… until she stands in Nicola’s shadow, and wonders if maybe she should have been trying at least a little.

I have to give some props to my Canadian compatriots. Laura Vandervoort would look stunning in a silk and brocade gown, don’t you think? And that chin is just made for playing royalty.

 

 

 

 

Leanne

The daughter of rebel fighters, Leanne is dark skinned, with tight braids and a desperate yearning not be left behind – which Taya not only understands, but deeply shares. As soon as I wrote her I thought of who I would want to play her – and Shanola Hampton was the obvious answer.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Annelle

Taya’s best friend (and did we mention casual love?), Annette is all sweetness, light, and charm. She’s a little bundle of adorable propriety, and I can’t think of anyone better to play her than the enchanting Amanda Seyfriend, who proved in Les Miserables that she could be as fragile as glass, with the sweet soft voice of a hummingbird.

 

 

 

 

King Octarion

We may not love him, but we sure do love to hate him – Darren’s evil uncle is a classic villain, grasping for power and then unsure what to do with the power he has. But Octarion is also a father; and a husband. You can’t help but wonder… who might he have been, if he hadn’t chosen this dark path?

Luke Evans, from The Hobbit fame, would make quite the brooding King.

 

 

Misty Morning Ferry

The ferry leaves in the morning. My bag is packed, sitting by the front door. The curtains are drawn, but I don’t need to see out the window to know what’s there. On the horizon my islands disappear into misty mountains, sea and sky fading into beautiful deep grey between them.

I haven’t decided if I will stay or go.

She came to me yesterday, full of promises and absolution. I wanted to tell her it wasn’t myself I couldn’t forgive; but the words got lost somewhere between love and hate. When I look in the mirror all I see are her eyes, and the view from my window has never been clear. Glass is the enemy. All it gives me are memories, but I know the past. It’s the future I can’t quite grasp.

I cannot imagine my life in a place other than this. I will not know myself if I stay.

The sun is dropping closer to the horizon line. I can tell by the way the light changes inside, shadows pooling around the cup of tea in my hands. Steam rises from it, identical to the mist slowly disappearing outside. My bag is already packed, but her words are hooked through my skin, barbed and pleading. The whistle blows in my mind, and I watch myself walking the path down to the docks. In my imagination I don’t glance behind; in my day dreams she doesn’t come to see if I will go. If she’s there I might not have the courage. If she isn’t, I might not have a reason.

How to Survive at Sea – The Dangers

Welcome to the final p art of my series, How to Survive at Sea: A Stage Crew’s Guide. Click here to see last week’s post, or click here to jump to the first in the series.

The Dangers at Sea

I leave you now with a warning about life at sea – there are many dangers lurking for the unwary and unprepared. When people think of dangers at sea, they think of sharks and storms. But dangers on a cruise ship can often be a little harder to see coming, and just as dangerous when they hit. (Also one time there was a hurricane warning and the officers wouldn’t tell anyone on the ship but someone heard it on a radio and everyone was hiding their lifejackets under their work stations so they would be ready in case the ship went down.)

1) Don’t Drink the Water. A common adage you hear when visiting foreign countries, the same can be said of a cruise ship. Sometimes the water in the passenger areas is okay, but even then, if you don’t have a hardy constitution, it’s best to avoid it.

2) Know When to Hold ‘Em, Know When To Fold ‘Em. I’ve mentioned before how confusing the rules on the ship can be in reference to which ones to follow and which ones to break. For most, it’s a bit of an exercise in gambling. For instance, it’s very much against the rules to eat in your cabin. But they give you a fridge. Technically this is so that you can store food which you’ll take down to the mess to eat, but no one does that. This is a rule that you can safely put in the “ignore” category, and go pop yourself some popcorn.

3) Riding the Rails. A trickier one? Passenger elevators are technically off- limits. The only person who cares is the Hotel General Manager, but if she catches you, it’s an official written warning. Usually not worth it just to avoid walking ten steps further down to the (admittedly smelly) crew elevators.

4) High-heeled Shoes. While high-heels have a wealth of dangers even on land, they get more complicated at sea. For instance, wearing them on the open deck while it’s raining could lead to a spill right over the edge of the ship, instead of just falling on your face. But more specifically, there are “serapid tracks” on the stage, five-inch deep grooves that are almost exactly the same size as a stiletto heel. More than one hapless guest entertainer has had to be rescued by stage crew while wearing these shoes to perform.

5) Crabs. No explanations necessary.

6) Norovirus. Almost unheard of in Canada and the United States, norovirus is a very common problem in many countries around the world, and also on cruise ships. It gives you vomiting and diarrhoea, and you catch it from contact with someone who has it. So you can stop it by frequent hand-washing, hand-sanitizing, and generally never touching anything, ever. There’s a norovirus hit squad number, and if you suspect someone of having it, you can turn them in. Just like Harper’s plan for barbaric cultural practices!

Seeing the World

Of course, the very best part of my job was getting to travel the world. However, there are times when the job doesn’t actually accommodate the best part of it. For instance, when we get a new cast, they spend the days rehearsing, and that can make it very hard to get out to the ports. Also, our emergency duties mean that someone always has to stay on the ship, and if it’s your turn, that can be you. Finally, when you first join the ship, you need to leave the US and then return in order to get the immigration documents you need to go ashore. One co-worker was once stuck on the ship for three weeks straight because he joined the cruise while they were still in the US.

That being said, there are some fantastic opportunities to see some beautiful places. From train-rides into the Alaskan mountains to snorkelling in a fish-sanctuary in Honolulu, I have been blessed with some indescribable experiences. Here are my top five.

Starbucks in Juneau. Internet is very expensive on the ship, and when we leave, we often forget that we’re in breathtaking places. Instead, we look for the nearest place that will give us the quickest free wireless internet, and we hunker down for a long session of Skype with the family or Facebook picture hunting.


Starbucks in Catalina. Internet is very expensive on the ship, and when we leave, we often forget that we’re in breathtaking places. Instead, we look for the nearest place that will give us the quickest free wireless internet, and we hunker down for a long session of Skype with the family or Facebook picture hunting.


IHOP in San Francisco.  Internet is very expensive on the ship, and when we leave, we often forget that we’re in breathtaking places. Instead, we look for the nearest place that will give us the quickest free wireless internet, and we hunker down for a long session of Skype with the family or Facebook picture hunting. Plus, great food!


Starbucks in Honolulu.  Internet is very expensive on the ship, and when we leave, we often forget that we’re in breathtaking places. Instead, we look for the nearest place that will give us the quickest free wireless internet, and we hunker down for a long session of Skype with the family or Facebook picture hunting.


Starbucks in Ensenada.  Internet is very expensive on the ship, and when we leave, we often forget that we’re in breathtaking places. Instead, we look for the nearest place that will give us the quickest free wireless internet, and we hunker down for a long session of Skype with the family or Facebook picture hunting.

Well, friends, family, and casual acquaintances, I hope that you’ve learned a thing or two about life on the open seas. I know that in the short time I worked on a cruise ship I gained a veritable wealth of experience (literal wealth, possibly, when this guide becomes a best-selling Amazon e-book and I am vaulted into the halls of Oprah fame) and a host of unique factoids. I’ve fought with the interesting food on board, laughed with the interesting people, and worked more hours than are legal in most countries (but we weren’t in a country!) At the end of the day, I had a grand adventure, and if I haven’t scared you off… maybe someday you’ll have one, too.

How to Survive at Sea – The Rest is Prison

Welcome to p art nine of my series, How to Survive at Sea: A Stage Crew’s Guide. Click here to see last week’s post, or click here to jump to the first in the series.

The Rest is Like Prison

Cruise ships run on a sort of weird pseudo-military/sleep-away camp mentality. The hierarchy is strict, the uniforms are ugly, and the schedule is punishing. You’re told when to wake up, when to go to sleep, when to eat your meals and when to take your leisure hours. You also share a teeny tiny space with a person randomly selected for you, and I imagine living in a cabin is a lot like living in a prison cell.

From roommates who talked in their sleep to roommates who fall out of bed screaming that the ceiling is collapsing (coughthatwasmecough), I heard a lot of horror stories about the people you were sometimes forced to bunk with. Being a good roommate on the sea is pretty much the same as on land – open communication and a positive attitude. But being roommates on the open seas has downsides that roomies on land don’t generally bring. For instance, you don’t have any say in who you bunk with. Maybe you love your coworker Maya, but they make you stay with Sarah, who makes you want to claw your eyes out. You can change rooms as long as all four roommates are fine with the switch (and couples did this a lot, since sharing space with someone of the opposite sex was forbidden).

We had some rules in our cabin to try and help make the teeny tiny living quarters a little more liveable. Of course there was the first-in rule: whoever got there first got the bottom bunk. Even if the other person fell out of bed and hurt their side and was on drugs and had a hard time clambering up the ladder to bed. Rules are important, okay guys? We also had a no-men in the cabin rule, which was actually good. Bringing guys home is a challenge that I should have addressed in the section about hooking up on cruise ships, but suffice it to say that there was a giant pink shoe in the props lock-up that got a lot of after-hours attention from the dancers…

Rules that might have helped us would have involved turning the TV off when both people have gone to sleep, because despite what you seem to think it does not make a good “white noise” machine. Or no playing music when your other roommate is already playing music even though it works because you annoy her enough that she turns hers off. (Yeah, I had some great roommates…)

Another part of working a cruise ship that everyone hated was emergency duty. Every time we were in port, one person from each department had to stay on the ship in case of an emergency. Our department combined that with the crappy duties no one wanted to do, including getting up at 6am and changing the lights from “night mode” to “day mode” all around the ship. Luckily, you were allowed to sell your emergency duties to other crew members. The cost of that would depend on how good the port was. When you were in Alaska someone would take it off your hands for $20. But trying to get out of duty in Honolulu? Good luck finding a buyer for less than $60.

But there are perks at sea, too – or at least my coworkers managed to find their way out of some challenging situations. For instance, you can:

1) Sleep with the cruise director. Any senior officer will do, but the cruise director was the head of my particular totem pole. Perks of this tactic include access to the officer’s laundry, sleeping in a cabin on deck 11 (hello windows! hello bathtub! hello room service!), and easier access to restaurants and dining areas (come right in, Mr.Smith! We have a table near the window for you!)

2) Befriend the bar staff. A common sentiment on cruise ships seems to be “if we’re drunk enough, we won’t notice anything else!” Those bartenders will make that single a double, or keep the metal curtain up a few minutes after closing time for their special friends.

3) Bribe the Shore Excursion Staff. One of the greatest parts of the job, in theory, was going on cheap tours as a passenger chaperone. However, the system for choosing who gets picked as a chaperone was vague, and seemed to involve how well the staff knew you and liked you. So buying them chocolates, knowing their names, and asking about their children helped you go snorkelling in Hawaii, chopping trees in Alaska, and whale watching in California.

4) Get in with the mafia. The “Filipino Mafia” where a real thing. While these people don’t chop off toes or launder money, if you want something, they can get it. They’re insular and organised, but they can be nice to outsiders who are nice to them. They provide illegal chickens and cakes for cabin parties, know where to get all the best equipment backstage, and always keep an eye on you around and about the ship. It’s likely that some of your coworkers are part of the mafia, so try to be polite to everyone, just in case.

5) Be a terrible roommate. Solo cabins are very hard to come by – officers each get their own cabin, but even our senior supervisor and lighting technicians have to share. However, the ship tries very hard to only bunk people of the same department together, since we all have such divergent schedules. So sometimes, it just shakes down that someone in a particular department will wind up with a solo cabin, and everyone wants it to be them. One strategy for getting a solo cabin is being such a bad roommate that no one will agree to live with you, and in despair the company gives you your own place. One drummer I knew would complain if you smoked, complain if you chewed gum to cover the smell of the smoke, complain if you snored, complain if you listened to music, complain, complain, complain. He’s still waiting for his solo cabin, but the chances seem better every day.

 

Join us next week for the FINAL installment of How to Survive at Sea, where we’ll be talking about the dangers at sea and the many places I got to visit.

How to Survive at Sea – The Sex is Like College

Welcome to p art eight of my series, How to Survive at Sea: A Stage Crew’s Guide. Click here to see last week’s post, or click here to jump to the first in the series.

The Sex is Like College

Remember when you were in college, and life was an endless rotating panorama of wild drunken parties and sleeping with strangers? Or, if you’re me, reading a lot of books and not having sex with anyone. Anyway, the point is, cruise ships are an alcohol-fueled party punctuated by eighteen hours of exhausting work. And like everything else on a cruiseship, the attitude towards alcohol is confusing and contradictory.

The crew bar is open every night from sometime around I think eight p.m. until sometime around I think three a.m. (I was very rarely there at either opening or closing; I was also one of the only ones who wasn’t). It serves alcohol for the staggering high high price of $2 for a beer, $1 for a shot, or $3 for a highball. Oh and you don’t need to bring cash – all you have to do is write down your employee number and sign a piece of paper. The money is automatically deducted from your next paycheque (which is how all purchases on ship are done). As you can imagine, most people spent every second of their leisure time plastered out of their head. There was a drummer on one of the ships who spent his entire monthly paycheque on alcohol. And we were paid well. I can only assume he was a superhero who had been hit by gamma rays and required alcohol to live. That or he was buying rounds for every pretty dancer, and since we did dance shows there was a constant rotating stream of gorgeous dancers.

So, okay. A booze cruise isn’t that surprising. What is surprising?

Being drunk was a fireable offense.

And people actually got fired for it. There were lots of rules on the ship, and one of the hardest parts was figuring out which ones to follow, which ones to ignore, and which ones to pretend to follow but secretly everyone was breaking them and no one cared. Drinking too much fell into the weird fourth category: everyone was doing it and no one cared unless you got caught in a way they couldn’t ignore, and then they fired you. Staggering through the halls at 2 a.m.? You’ll get a smile and wave from the security guards. Hanging over the ship’s rail singing love songs into the wind? You’ll probably be breathalyzed. Someone I knew got so drunk he slept through a mandatory security drill. He was put off the boat the next morning. (At port. Relax, there were no keel-haulings!) But another friend of mine was friends with the security guards, so when he got caught making out with a passenger, the guard just begged him to go back to his cabin or he would have to report him.

Oh yeah, that’s the other thing. Everyone was having sex with everyone unless they were a passenger, and then you could be fired for staring lovingly into their eyes. Okay, that’s probably an exaggeration, but there were very strict rules about contact with passengers. Don’t have contact with passengers. Unless of course you’re a member of a Caribbean soul band, in which case you’re pretty much a high-class prostitute. (For real. There was a group of five musicians on the ship I was on. All of them were married, and all of them slept with passengers all the time. They were encouraged to “mingle” in the evenings, and considering how well-known it was that they were sleeping around, I find it hard to believe their boss didn’t know. But that was part of the ‘experience,’ so everyone looked the other way.)

The people who seemed to be having the most fun having college style sex were the gay men. I remember my Filipino coworkers explaining to me in painstaking detail that in their culture it was normal for guys to hold hands, so if I saw them doing that I shouldn’t assume they were gay because they weren’t and they needed to make that very clear. Then they quickly added that of course being gay was ‘ok here.’ There were a lot of guys from really traditional (ie homophobic) countries who got onboard and were confronted with basically Western value-sets, and the freedom that brought was pretty incredible. My coworker pretty much cleaned up (though he does have dimples and is blond, so he probably cleans up in Canada too) (is it just me, or is cleans up a really weird euphemism for having a lot of sex?), and one of my best memories is grinding with one of the male dancers at a gay club in San Francisco while the guys who worked in the kitchen avoided eye contact with shipmates and danced with the locals.

One day a coworker of mine got really, really drunk and made out on the dance floor with another girl. A week or so later the two of us were hanging out (also drinking… see a theme?), and we kissed. She asked how I knew she was gay and I said, um, because you made out with that girl last week? She didn’t remember doing it (now that is DRUNK), but mused that she supposed she didn’t have to hide it here the way she did at home. It was the first time in her life she had ever been open about her sexuality.

Not that the cruise ship was a magical wonderland of tolerance and acceptance. You still had the same old shit – my boss warned me that my new roommate was bisexual so I should “watch out for her,” and the male dancers mocked one of the girls for getting a ‘lesbian’ hair cut (I told her that my ex had the same cut but she was bi, and she thought that was the greatest thing ever; she rocked her bisexual haircut so proudly everyone stopped teasing her); but overall, and considering how bad the sexism and racism were – it was pretty damn cool.

 

Join me next week to learn about what it’s like living in an ‘apartment’ the size of your cubicle at work.