Nicola Griffith's Blog, page 118

Words matter: creating culture, saving lives

The Lambda Literary Awards were presented last night. It sounds like a wonderful evening. There's a write-up, including a full list of the winners, here.

I took part in it, from the other coast, via Twitter, following the official LLF account, @LambdaLiterary (run last night by @annericefights, a former student of mine), Cecilia Tan (@ceciliatan, wonderful writer and editor of erotica), Sassafras Lowrey (@sassafraslowrey, another great writer), and Charlotte Abbott (@charabbott, who edited The Blue Place--yes, it's a small world...)

Anyway, for me some of the best moments were quotes from honorees:
@ceciliatan: Kate Millett: "I thought I was the only lesbian besides Sappho. And now we're like a nation!", accepting Pioneer Award

@charabbott: "This award matters to me more than any other recognition I could have" - Armistead Maupin, accepting Pioneer Award

@sassafraslowrey: "We're opening up the world to each other and testifying about out lives" Armistead Maupin

@sassafraslowrey: "We all have someone further down the line from us that reaches out to us... " Armistead Maupin

@sassafraslowrey: "there was a moment when all we had was our words to each other " Armistead Maupin

@ceciliatan: "We're all so connected to each other. This revolution was led by writers." -Armistead Maupin

@charabbott: Justin Torres so inspiring about his LLF fellowship & how it helped him become a confident writer as young gay man.

@LambdaLiterary: "Books told me I wasn't alone in the world." Rahul Mehta

@LambdaLiterary: "#LGBT writing saved my life." - Kate Clinton

They all come down to the same thing: writers need community--and writers create wider community; we create culture. Books save lives. Queer books save queer lives.

So, if you're wondering, this is why I spend so much time talking about the Lambda Literary Foundation and Clarion West. Thank you to everyone who reads, who writes, who supports both. Words matter.

Ways writers benefit from Clarion West's Write-a-thon

Clarion West (CW), the best speculative fiction writing workshop in the world, is gearing up for another six-week workshop, in which eighteen students from around the world come to Seattle and are taught by the best writing minds of the genre. They are also gearing up for the Write-a-thon (Wat).

The Wat is a kind of shadow workshop. Hundreds of writers set their own private goals and commit to focussing on their own writing in step with and in support of the main workshop. Each of these Wat participants then seeks sponsorship from their family and friends. That money goes to CW, which uses it wisely* to safeguard the education of future f/sf writers.

A group of generous patrons have offered to give CW $2000 if 200 or more writers sign up for the Wat by June 16th.

As of five minutes ago, CW has 77 writers signed up. Some are big names, at the top of their game. Some are taking their first tentative steps on the path to a writing career. This year will be a banner year: CW are going all-out with support for the Write-a-thon, support for writers. You will be part of a community.**

On CW's website, and on Facebook, Nisi Shawl posted "Five Tips For a Great Write-a-thon," which I'm reproducing here (with permission) along with my comments:

Five Steps to a Great Write-a-thon

1. Set your Write-a-thon goals.
You goal could be writing 500 words a day, or one story per week, or completing a work that’s been languishing in your laptop for months. Or all of the above. We’ve had writers take advantage of the Write-a-thon to submit stories or get a brand new writing project underway.

Last year Kelley wrote 41 stories in 41 days (you can read them all here). This is what's euphemistically called a 'stretch goal.' That is, it will just about kill you. Or, to paraphrase Bilbo Baggins, make you feel like butter spread thin over too much bread. But it also makes you feel like you're flying, that you can do no wordly wrong, that--just possibly, just for a while--you are god. But most people choose something more realistic: revising one old story a week to make it fit for publication; writing on new story in its entirety; writing the first act of a screenplay; polishing a collection--of stories, of poems; making the final push on the novel that's almost there.

2. Decide how you want to involve your donors.
Involving donors can be as simple as telling your friends to visit your Write-a-thon page and see what you’re up to. It’s completely your choice how to handle this. Kelley Eskridge and some others posted weekly updates on their Write-a-thon progress on their webpages or Facebook walls. A few writers have upped the ante by offering character-naming rights for donations of a certain level or above; Pamela Rentz and Karen G. Anderson offered to match donations; we’ve also had a few writers host fundraising events and readings. 

This is where you can get really creative: you can use the involvement of donors as personal/private encouragement, a will-steeler, or you use it as a very public goad: a blinding light shone on you and your practice. Last year, Kelley chose the very public, highwire act of get the prompt, write the piece, post the piece, comment on the piece (read her comments here)--all in one day. Every day. For six weeks in a row. Not everyone has to do that. Go take a look at some of the public pages of this year's participants and see what they're planning.

3. Create your CW profile page.
Here’s where you’ll first tell people about your goals and any special incentives you have for donors. Plus you get to post a short excerpt from your published writing or a work in process. And a photo! Probably your photo, but it could be an avatar or other image significant to your work. You’ll be able to update the profile page during the Write-a-thon, though changes may take a couple of days to get published. You can also include a link on the profile page so people can follow your progress on your blog, website, or Facebook page. 

This is your dagger in the table, your public declaration. You can make it as fancy as you like (a jewelled poniard), or as plain and efficient (a slaughter seax), but you have to stab the table for all the world to see. You have to commit.

4. Tell people about your Write-a-thon goals.
We hope you’ll tell people about the Write-a-thon early and often. You can send folks email, talk about it on your blog or Facebook page — or, if you’re shy, just point people at the Write-a-thon main page where they can see the whole list of Write-a-thon participants. Wondering what to say? Take a look at our Write-a-thon page for the Write-a-thon facts and figures and the overall Write-a-thon goal. The bottom line is that the money raised in the Write-a-thon is what enables us to hold next year’s workshop.

What Kelley did was post her work every single day, along with commentary. And I boosted the signal right here. And we both tweeted and Facebooked ourselves blue in the face. It worked. Kelley raised over $2,500 for Clarion West: to help emerging f/sf writers of the future. Kelley and I love this genre. We know you do, too. Share the love. It brings in $$...

5. Start writing!
And isn’t that really what it’s all about?

This is, of course, the point: to write, to encourage writing, to offer support to all those who write, or might one day write, in our wonderful genre.

Kelley and I got our start in the Clarion system. It's one of the reasons we work so hard to support it: it works.

So if you've been thinking about maybe giving it a try, now is the time: go sign up.
-------
* Kelley is the Chair of the Board. So I know, for sure, that the ship is well-steered. But even if she got abducted by aliens tomorrow, CW is in safe hands. I've met just about everyone involved: it's a very, very strong and stable and smart organisation. (There again, if there are aliens running around abducting people, I expect we'd have other things to worry about...)
** This year, there will be weekly Tweetchats (look for the #writeathon hashtag, time and day TBD) where participants can ask questions of an experienced writer, or just share their own progress. This year, the sign-up process has been simplified and streamlined. This year, the Write-a-thon is a big priority for the whole organisation. There are people on Twitter and Facebook ready to answer your questions. You are not alone.

Perbs in bloom

Well, I meant to write a meaty review of Superior for today but instead lost myself in watching the bees zuzz in and out of the perbs (potted herbs) on the back deck. Tomorrow. Or, y'know, maybe Tuesday...

Superior

Last year I blogged about a movie about a 12-year old boy with MS who turns into an adult superhero, Superior.

Well, the book is out. I ripped off the plastic cover this morning and after a quick glance, I'm mildly hopeful.

I plan to read it over the weekend and report back

Anyone out there read it yet?

Still a native of science fiction

From: Anonymous
I'm delighted to hear [that I will be co-Guest of Honour at Westercon 66], it would be interesting. But I'm puzzled. You haven't written sci fi in years, and in your writings you have mentioned not reading sci fi since your mid 30's. So I'm wondering why you would be interested in this at this point in your career?

I no longer subscribe to genre magazines, it's true. I no longer troll the sf section at University Bookstore. But I do still read the occasional short sf online, and when a friend writes a novel, I read that. Also, I get sent a lot of books--anthologies, collections, novellas and novels--to read for blurbs. So, yeah, I still read science fiction and fantasy.

I still write it, too. My most recent short fiction, published a couple of years ago, was a Hugo and Locus Award nominee a couple of years ago, and was reprinted in several Year's Best anthologies.

I also write about it quite a lot. See "Taking the Russ Pledge". See my 3-part interview with Brit Mandelo. See my contribution to Science Fiction Studies' symposium on sexuality in science fiction.

So although my most recent work isn't sf, I am, to paraphrase William Gibson, still a native of science fiction, and though I'm not longer a resident, I do go back to the Auld Country from time to time.

A few years ago I wrote an essay that sums up how I feel about the genre:

Identity and SF: Story as Science and Fiction

Scientific theory and fiction are both narrative, stories we tell to make sense of the world. Whether we're talking equation or plot, the story is orderly and elegant and leads to a definite conclusion. Both can be terribly exciting. Both can change our lives.

I was nine was I realised I wanted to be a white-coated scientist who saved the world. I was nine when I read my first science fiction novel. I don't think this is a coincidence, though it took me a long time to understand that.

For one thing, I had no idea that the book I'd just read, The Colors of Space, an American paperback, was science fiction. I had no idea that people divided books into something called genres. In my world, there were two kinds of books: ones I could reach on the library shelves, and ones I couldn't. My reading was utterly indiscriminate. For example, another book I read at nine was Gibbon's History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, dragged home volume by volume. But my hands-down favourite at that time wasn't a library book, it was an encyclopaedia sampler.

When my parents were first married, my father, to make ends meet (they had five children in rapid succession), sold encyclopaediae door-to-door at the weekends. Long after he'd stopped having to do that, he kept the sampler. I loved that book. Bound in black leather, it had gold-edged pages and the most fabulous articles and illustrations--artists' impressions of the moon or Mars or a black hole. It was state-of-the-art 1950s, samples of articles on everything from pastry to particle physics. I would read that book on Saturday mornings, lying on my stomach on my bedroom carpet. Those pages were my Aladdin's Cave. I read entirely at random. Looking back, probably the thing that hooked me irrevocably was that almost every article was incomplete: they finished mid-paragraph, often mid-sentence. I knew, reading that black sampler, that there was more, that the story always continued, out there somewhere, in the big wide world.

One Saturday morning when I was nine, I read the most gobsmacking thing of my life: everything in the world was built of something called atoms. They were tiny and invisible and made mainly of nothing. If you could crush all the nothing out of the Empire State Building, it would be the size of a cherry pit but weigh...well, whatever the empire state building weighs. I clapped the book shut, astonished, leapt to my feet and thundered downstairs. In the kitchen, where my mother was cooking a big fried breakfast for seven, I announced my incredible discovery. She said, "How interesting. Pass the eggs." I blinked. "But Mum! Atoms! The Empire State Building! A cherry pit!" And she said, again (probably with a bit of an edge), "Yes. Very interesting. Pass the eggs." So I passed the eggs, and wondered briefly if my mother might be an alien. (Unlike many of my other friends it never occurred to me to wonder if I might be adopted: too many sisters with features just like mine. Understanding of some of the laws of genetics was inescapable.)

I spent the rest of that weekend in a daze, resting my hand on the yellow formica of the kitchen table while everyone ate their bacon and eggs, wondering why my hand didn't melt into the table. They were both mainly nothing, after all. What else in the world wasn't what it seemed? What other wonders were waiting for me to stumble over them?

About a month later, I was helping my mother clean the local church hall where she ran a nursery school during the week, and under a bench I found a book with a lurid red and yellow cover: The Colors of Space. (Until two weeks ago, I didn't know the author was Marion Zimmer Bradley. I could easily have found out anytime in the last few years, but I didn't. Not checking on memory is one of my superstitious behaviours. I also don't take photos of special occasions or keep a journal. I don't like freezing things in place. I prefer fluidity, possibility. However, before I sat down to write this essay, I went to Amazon.com, looked up the book, and ordered it. When it arrived, I was delighted by the lurid red and yellow cover, then amused when I realised it explained something that puzzled my friends a dozen years ago. My first novel,Ammonite, was published in 1993. The first edition had a truly cheesy red and yellow cover with a spaceship front and centre. No one could understand why I wasn't upset but, clearly, I was drawing fond associations with my nine year-old self, remembering another ugly paperback. When I've finished writing this, I'll re-read it...)

I don't remember a thing about the story or the characters, only that it was about aliens (aha, I thought, imagining my mum) and the discovery of a new colour. That night, lying in bed, I nearly burst my brain trying to imagine a new colour, just as in my teens I would drive myself to the brink of insanity (not so hard, really, when a teenager) trying to imagine infinity.

At some point we moved to a new house--we were always moving--and the black leather encyclopaedia sampler disappeared. By this time I had discovered Asimov and Frank Herbert and a collection of '50s SF anthologies with introductions that banged on the SF drum and introduced me to the notion of genre. I was hooked. Through these stories, far more than through any school lessons, science came alive for me: surface tension (Blish's "Surface Tension"), ecology (Herbert's Dune), multi-dimensions (Heinlein's "And He Built a Crooked House"), politics (just about anything by Asimov). Science became my religion. I stopped day-dreaming about taking gold in the Olympics and started thinking about changing the world. I didn't fret over minor details such as which discipline to choose--who cared whether it was physics or chemistry or maths or biology that ended up saving humanity?

That was the beauty of being twelve, and then thirteen. I didn't have to deal with reality. I didn't have to ignore with scorn the messy inexactness of zoology in order to devote myself to the purity of maths or to the measurability of chemistry. Watching a bird, considering Newton's laws, learning about the tides of history seemed equally important. I wanted it all. The world sparkled. Einstein's photoelectric effect, a spoof proving one equals two, Popper's swans and Pavlov's dogs: I fell in love with each in turn, depending on what class I was in. (Funnily enough, I never much liked any of my science teachers; they never liked me, either.) I tried on future identities: discovering an anti-grav drive; feeding all those starving children in fly-buzzed parts of the world; finally pinpointing the location of Atlantis.

At the same time, I was busy being a teenager. I tried on here-and-now identities: short hair or long? Hippie or punk? Beat poet in black or sweet-faced thing in pastels? Judas Priest or David Bowie? Monty Python or Star Trek?

An American SF editor, David Hartwell, has said that the golden age of SF is twelve. He has a point. The essence of being twelve, and of science fiction, is potential. They are both all about hopes and dreams and possibilities, intense curiosity aroused by the knowledge that there's so much out there yet to be known. As we get older and do fewer things and fewer things for the first time, that sense of potential diminishes. The open door starts to close--just like the anterior fontanelle of an infant's skull.

Reading good fiction, particularly good SF, keeps the adolescent sense of possibility jacked wide open. A sense of possibility maintains plasticity, it keeps us able to see what's out there. Without this sense of possibility, we see only what we expect.

Someone who runs on the same beach at dawn every day for two years gets used to certain things: being alone, the hiss and suck of the waves, the boulder that juts from the rock pool at the point where she leaps the rill, the cry of the gulls, the smell of seaweed, all in tones of grey and blue. So there you are one morning, running along, cruising on autopilot, using the non-slippery part of the boulder to give you a boost as you jump over the rill, listening unconsciously to the gulls squabbling over something at the water line. You're thinking about breakfast, or the sex you had last night; you're humming that music everyone's been listening to the last week; you're wrestling with some knotty problem for which you have the glimmerings of a solution. There's a dead body on the beach. You run right past it: you literally don't see it.

It's counterintuitive, but it happens all the time: the white-faced driver staring at the tricycle crushed under his front wheel, "I just didn't see him, officer." The microbiologist who skips past the Petri dish in a batch of sixty cultures with that curiously empty ring, that lack of growth, in the centre. The homeowner who returns to his condo and doesn't see the broken window, the muddy footprints leading to the closet and the suitcase full of valuables lying open on the bed. Every day, during our various routines, the movie of what we expect plays on the back of our eyelids while our brain goes on holiday. How many times do we got out of the car at the office and realise we don't remember a thing about the journey?

Reading SF, the over-riding value of which is the new, keeps our reticular activating systems primed: we expect everything and anything. And if we expect, we can see. If we see, we try find an explanation. We form a hypothesis. We test it. We learn. We tell a story.

A science fiction story not only excites us about the world, it excites us about ourselves, how we fit within the systems that govern our universe, and excites us, paradoxically, about our potential to change the world. The best SF is, in a sense, about love: loving the world and our place within it so much that we make the effort to make a difference. But science fiction changes more than the world, more than our place in the world, it changes us. Science fiction has changed the discourse on what it means to be human. It introduced us to the notion that the nature of body and mind are mutable through tall tales of human cloning, prosthetics, genetic engineering. What would people look like today without prosthetics (contact lenses, artificial hips and knees, pacemakers and stents, dentures), cosmetic surgery, gene therapy? The more we change our story of ourselves, the more we change.

Which brings me full circle to the idea of fixing memory. I don't like taking photographs or keeping a journal because, on some level, it stops me learning about myself. If I freeze an image permanently, I can't revisit it and recast it, I can't retell the story. I believe in story. Without it we don't learn, we don't grow, we don't re-examine what is known to be known. I believe in science fiction stories, I believe in scientific theories. I read a novel about the fragility of the Y chromosome, or a text on the myth and mystery of the constant, phi, and both make me stop and think: Oh. My. God. Each blows me away. Puts a shimmer around my day. Lightens my step. Urges me to turn an eager face to the possibilities of tomorrow.

Originally published in SciFi in the Mind's Eye: Reading Science Through Science Fiction, ed. Margret Grebowicz (Open Court, 2007).

In which I wear yellow pants

I just got these old, old photos (I was twenty-one) by email this morning from a Facebook friend (thanks, Margot). I don't know where we were playing, but I think possibly upstairs at the Wellington, aka The Welly (@giveitsomewelly). But if anyone recognises it, please let me know.

Note the cigarettes. And the yellow trousers. If you'd asked me yesterday if I'd ever, in my life, possessed a pair of yellow pants I would have denied it. Wow, who knew...





But obviously I was into bright colours. See, for example, YouTube video here and here of me in pink trousers. (Though if you're interested in the music, I recommend just listening--the sound is much, much better.)

Pink and yellow. I'm not sure my self-image will survive this...

MS drugs and reality

This question came in a comment to a recent post. My answer is long enough to need a post of its own.

From: Saving Sylvia Plath

I am curious - do you ever think that your MS might not have progressed to SPMS had you taken a DMD? I recognize that many folks fail on some of the drugs, the interferon drugs are notoriously brutal. Why not Copaxone? Why not LDN? Anyway - I do like your blog and think you've got a fantastic writing voice - just wondering if those little doubts about not taking the drugs ever creep in

I assume that by DMD you mean disease-modifying drug, not a term that's used much here in the US. Here, injectables such as Betaseron and Tysabri are usually referred to as immuno-modulatory drugs.

I've tried most of them--Betaseron, Copaxone, Rebif--plus one immuno-suppressive, Novantrone.

All of them except Copaxone made me unwell--the Novantrone very much so, with the bonus of extreme weight loss, total crash of blood counts (with attendant rescue shots which made my marrow swell: pain you wouldn't believe), and loss of taste for over a year. Copaxone didn't make me ill, but it gave me unpleasant injection-site reactions. Even twelve years later there are chunks missing from my belly, arms, thighs, etc. where the adipose tissue is ruined. More to the point, Copaxone didn't stop me progressing from relapsing-remitting MS (RMS) to secondary-progressive MS (SPMS).

I'm now on LDN and have been for four years. (I've talked about this here here.)

Now I'm paying attention to my diet. I keep promising to talk about it, and I will, but to reduce the last few years' thinking to a single blog post is daunting; I keep putting it off.

For now, in sum: no, I don't believe DMD would have changed anything for me, because they're interrupting the wrong part of the MS cycle. I've fixed my diet, and now I want something--a perfectly tailored statin or fibrate or something yet-to-be-discovered--that will correct my lipid metabolism. Meanwhile I'm doing my best to keep in balance what I can while I wait for science to catch up to what is now known to be known about MS.

I watch so many people get diagnosed with MS, get prescribed these vile drugs and go through the agonies of the damned. And for most people, most of the time, they don't work. For example, here's the conclusion of the Cochrane study on Copaxone: "The data showed no beneficial effects on disease progression in both MS forms, a slight beneficial effect in the reduction of risk of relapses in RRMS patients and no benefits in PMS patients." For many of us, the drugs are actively harmful. And they cost a fortune. We take them, we keep trying to take them, despite the pain, unpleasantness, uselessness, and expense because we are pressured into them by our medical advisors, who tell us if we don't we'll end up crippled and it'll be all our fault. By our family and friends, who say, Yes, I know it hurts, but What If... And by the endless advertising in MS publications.

I don't take DMDs because, in my experience, I think they suck. Instead, I've modified my diet and I take an inexpensive (less than $40 a month), off-label oral medication that has improved my quality of life beyond measure. Do I still have MS? Oh, yes. There's no magic cure--though now, I believe, for those in the very early stages there is prevention.

What do forensic anthropologists do?

This nifty video will tell you. Yes, it's in French. Don't worry about it. Just go along for the ride and it'll show you everything you need to know. (Thanks, Angélique.)

AIDS QUILT Touch

My friend, Anne Balsamo, is coordinating an important project that needs your help: 
From the Kickstarter info:

The AIDS Memorial Quilt is an unique work of international ARTS ACTIVISM that reflects the worldwide scope and personal impact of the AIDS pandemic. Comprised of more than 48,000 individual PANELS that commemorate more than 91,000 names, the size of the physical QUILT measures more than 1.3 million square feet.  It is the largest LIVING MEMORIAL of its kind in the world. 

The year 2012 marks the 25th anniversary of the creation of the Quilt. In June 2012, the Quilt will be featured at the Smithsonian Folklife Festival in Washington DC.  In July 2012, Quilt will be laid out—in its entirety--on the Mall of Washington for the first time since 1996. It will take four days (July 21-25) to display all 48,000 panels.  These events are part of the Quilt 2012 program sponsored by the NAMES Project Foundation—the non-profit organization that maintains and displays the Quilt.

We know that not everyone who has an interest in the AIDS Memorial QUILT can make the trip to Washington, DC this summer.  Moreover, the entire QUILT has grown so large that all the panels cannot physically be shown at once.  If the entire quilt was laid out, it would cover more the 29 acres of land; it would take a visitor more than 33 days to view every panel—spending only 1 minute at each panel.   

We have designed a mobile web app called AIDS QUILT TOUCH that enables people to SEARCH for a specific NAME on a panel and to CONTRIBUTE comments to a Digital Guest Book. For visitors in Washington DC this summer, this application will ALSO enable them to LOCATE the display of a specific panel when it is laid out on the National Mall.

Please consider contributing to the Kickstarter project.

GoH GoH GoH!

I'm delighted to announce that Kelley and I have agreed to be next year's joint Author Guests of Honor at the West Coast's most venerable f/sf convention, Westercon 66, Sacramento, July 4-7.

We'll probably be there a day early and leave a day late--because we're maximum extraction people: we intend to squeeze every drop of delight from the experience.

We'll do readings, hold forth in the bar, be on panels, relax in the bar, do interviews, go back to the bar, do all kind of other stuff TBD (run a workshop? talk about social media? teach arm wrestling? go dancing?), as well as--you guessed it--ending up in the bar. And the con suite. And Opening Ceremonies. And, y'know, everywhere it's possible for us to be.

It will be a blast. Kelley and I both love to talk about writing: the joy, the business, the pitfalls, and so on. So mark your calendars. Join us and the other fantastic guests next summer in Sacramento, at Westercon, the 66th of its name.