Category: Musing

Your $x (whatever your reason for it) is not some fragile vase that is going to shatter the second you $y. It is as strong as you decide it is, and the boundaries are where you set them.
I’m sure that this is obvious to other people, but it is not obvious to me: it’s okay if I’m not perfect. Really, it is. My writing is not some fragile vase that is going to shatter the second I split an infinitive.

It’s an interesting post — the way I read it, it’s about paralyzing yourself with the fear that you’re going to fail.

Here’s a post I wrote back in 2001.

Part of reason that I’m not more involved in ‘traditional’ creative writing is that I’m comfortable with what I’m doing already: I’m good at it. I’m starting to realize, though, that sometimes you need to do things you suck at.

Failing is the thing we fear, but failing the only way we change; it’s absolutely natural. School teaches us to fear failure — by extension, we learn to fear change.

I don’t know that I have a whole lot to add to those two quoted passaged, even after this much time has passed.

I’m working my way down the road one dangerously comfortable rest area at a time, trying to reach places I’ve never been before, doing things that, if you’d asked me five years ago, I would have been entirely unsure about.

Things that I will, without doubt, fail at the first time.

I hate that, but at the same time, it’s my favorite part.

The more new things we try — the more we step outside our comfort zone — the more inherently creative we become.

John Scalzi on why many adult science-fiction and fantasy authors are missing out on the best sci-fi and fantasy being written today.

Last week, the top 50 YA SF/F bestsellers outsold the top 100 adult SF/F bestsellers (adult SF and F are separate lists) by two to one. So 50 YA titles are selling twice as much as 100 adult SF/F titles. The bestselling YA fantasy book last week (not a Harry Potter book) outsold the bestselling adult fantasy book by nearly four to one; the bestselling YA science fiction title sold three copies for every two copies of the chart-topping adult SF title. And as a final kick in the teeth, YA SF/F is amply represented at top of the general bestselling charts of YA book sales, whereas adult SF/F struggles to get onto the general bestselling adult fiction charts at all.
That serious adult science fiction/fantasy readers don’t seem to know any of this is a) a feature of the opaque nature of book sales, in which no one publicly talks about actual units sold and b) a feature of the apparent short-sightedness of adult sf/f readers, who are missing a genuine literary revolution in their genre because the YA section is a blank spot on the map to them, if not to everyone else. “Here there be dragons” has been replaced by “Here there be pre-teens” or something of the sort. This attitude is especially puzzling when you consider how many SF/F readers got their start with books like the Heinlein juvies, the fantasies of Susan Cooper and John Christopher and Madeleine L’Engle and so on.
I’ve said it before and I’m sure I’ll say it again: The most significant SF writer right now is Scott Westerfeld, whom it seems most adult science fiction fans still have not read and indeed barely know exists. In a sane world, Westerfeld would be a hero to adult science fiction readers, because he’s pretty much single-handedly flown the flag for science fiction to teenagers, thus saving the genre’s bacon for another 20 years. But: He’s YA. So he doesn’t count.

In my local group of reading-friends, one of the most voracious of readers has few if any qualms about picked up, devouring, and sharing out many YA titles. Most, however, have probably never even looked twice at (or heard of) Pretties/Uglies — I have heard of them only because Kate specializes in YA and middle-grade fiction, and adores the series… I’m ashamed to admit I haven’t read them myself.
Yet.
Pretty sad, considering the kinds of stories I write.

I am a language nerd. Although I agree with Steven King’s assertion that any word you have to stop and look up in the thesaurus is the wrong word for whatever you’re writing, I really do love the way words fit together and the kind of lyrical wonder they can create when they’re strung together in pretty way (or — less pretty but more impressive — stacked up like a Jenga block).
It’s that kind of haphazard, teetering construction that I’m thinking about today.
One of the truisms of English lit that gets tossed around is that at the time that Shakespeare was writing, the English language was approximately one-fifth the size that it is today. One of the reasons that ol’ Will and his compatriots were notorious neologists (Shakespeare is credited with the invention of anywhere from 500 to 1700 new words, many still in common use today) was simply because they kept reaching for tools that not only weren’t there, but hadn’t been invented yet. The same is true of certain phrases and expressions.
What fascinates me is that I get to see a similar kind of lingual evolution on a day to day basis with my daughter. Granted, she is not (yet) Shakespeare, but she does face the same challenges faced by anyone trying to communicate in that era; a limited set of words from which to choose. In some cases, she points or otherwise indicates what she’s trying to say; in others, she uses the wrong words in hopes of (I think) being understood anyway.
But in others, she pulls a jenga block from the bottom of the stack, and moves it to the top of the tower. This leaves gaps, to be sure, but she gets to a place she might not otherwise have achieved, and in ways that expand both her understanding and mine.
Example: a few weeks month ago, she and I were lazing about the house on a Saturday. Actually, *I* was lazing, and Kaylee was restless and wanted to something — anything — more interesting. She was bored.
The problem was, she didn’t know the word ‘bored.’ For all she knew, the word for what she felt right then didn’t exist. (It didn’t exist in Shakespeare’s time either, and wouldn’t for almost 200 years.)
So, with this unnamed feeling, Kaylee came to me.

“Daddy?”
“Yes, Kaylee?”
“I’m… sad.”
“You’re sad?”
“Yes, I’m sad… and tired.”
“Ohh, that doesn’t sound good.”
“Yes. I’m sad, and I’m tired… and I want to DO something.”

Sad, and tired, and I want to do something; three linguistic jenga blocks stacked one on top of the next to reach bored. I understood her meaning perfectly, because it was a true and accurate summation of everything she was feeling right then; and far more informative than the single word.
I wonder, sometimes, if all the extra tools we have to work with in the language-as-it-exists-today make us better able to communicate, or actually prevent us from exercising some of our creative and analytic muscles.

Vocabulary Words We Learned by Playing Dungeons & Dragons.

As I ponder this, I have to share a simple fact — for all that I rarely play DnD (and honestly liked the original redbox rules more than the 3rd edition), that game and others written by Gary led me to some of the most enjoyable moments in my life, bar none. He was an inspiration and a muse and someone who, if nothing else, encouraged my creativity and imagination and gave me a space in which to dream.
Every day (and for the last twenty-seven years), I play games directly descended from his creations, or play around with them in my mind; he was to gaming what Tolkien was to fantasy: a recreation of the genre, a defining touchstone to which all descendants are, favorably or not, either compared or contrasted.
My family has always very supportive of whatever kind of creative activities I wanted to dive into (even when it involved hours and hours of tinkering with ‘that damn game’ in high school), but Gary was family too, of a sort; a kind of great-uncle I only spoke to via wordy, typed letters — gruff and sometimes off-putting, but the sole adult who went beyond ‘supportive’ said ‘let me show you how *I* create things.’
Appropriately, he will be mourned and missed.

I’ve been doing a lot of work on the back end of this site, and while it feels to ME as though I’ve been doing my due diligence on the entry-writing front, I realized today that from everyone else’s point of view, I’ve been disappointingly silent. Let me fix that.
I’d like to talk about happiness, and just to be doubly pedantic, I’ll start with a quote

There is a time for being ahead,
a time for being behind;
a time for being in motion,
a time for being at rest;
a time for being vigorous,
a time for being exhausted;
a time for being safe,
a time for being in danger.
– Lao Tzu, Tao te Ching, verse 29

A couple years ago, I found myself in a hell of a situation; at the bottom of a pretty deep hole I’d both dug and climbed into, and most of the trouble came from one bad habit that affected most everything I did —
I was expending tremendous effort avoiding things that (as I saw it) were taking time away from the ‘good’ and ‘fun’ things I wanted to do instead.
The abject stupidity of the situation was that these distractions were, in fact, core parts of my life; not only that, but elements that I’d actually gone to great lengths to include in my life. Shopping for groceries, working on the lawn, shampooing the carpet, walking the dogs, doing dishes, doing laundry, just straightening up and dusting — what I realized (slowly) is that these aren’t chores to be avoided — they’re some of the many ways you get to spend time with your family and friends. They are how you take care of the life you tried so hard to build in the first place; push them away and and you’re pushing your life away.
I’d like to think I’m getting to a point where I remember that you have to embrace the things to which you have, over the course of your life, committed your time — take them on, take them over, and find the good in them. From pushing your (possibly screaming) child in a grocery cart, cooking a messy breakfast on a Sunday morning, to re-sodding your sodding yard…
That’s you. That’s the life you built. That’s where your happiness is.

---

Now, am I happy all the time? Of course not. Kate will confirm that, if nothing else, I’m a real bear to be around when I first get home from work in the afternoon; I don’t know if it’s low blood sugar or bad traffic or what, but when I walk in the door it’s all I can do not to actually growl at people. (I’m much better after I’ve had dinner, though, so maybe it is partly a diet thing. Hmm.)
BUT, I’ve improved my mood in a more general way by taking that attitude of ’embrace the life you’ve made’ and expanding it to sort of accept the things that happen, even if you didn’t expect them to happen.
And by “accept” I mean “roll with it” not “lie down and take it”; I’m not suggesting that if someone steals you car, you should smile and say “Oh, I’m sure whoever took it needed it more than me.” By all means you should contact police, file reports, and do everything you can to get your car back, but do it with a smile. If you can’t manage that, try a smirk. If you can’t manage that, at least do everything you can not to be a twisted ball of impotent rage.
Twisted balls of impotent rage get headaches and have back problems. They don’t sleep well. Avoid that.

“Life is a series of natural and spontaneous changes. Don’t resist them – that only creates sorrow. Let reality be reality. Let things flow naturally forward in whatever way they like.” – Lao Tzu

Here’s an example from my current day-to-day.
I’m in the market for a new job. I’m employed, but it’s a contract situation and the company I’m with has a set limit on how long a contract employee can stay with them before we have to spend some quality time apart, and I’ll pass that limit in a month or so. So I’ve got my little feelers out, and sending out resumes, and having phone calls with various recruiters and what have you. It’s not a great job market right now, but it’s not exactly a wasteland, either.
This would be (and sometimes still is) a typical time for me to get stressed and depressed and angry. I mean, look at the timing: it’s all going to come to a head right around the time of the wedding, where I should really and truly have OTHER THINGS ON MY MIND, right?
Then I get a conversation like the one this morning:
Recruiter: “Hi Doyce, we have a job for you. These are the requirements.”
Me: “Wow. If you reformat it, that could be my resume.”
Recruiter: “Really? You have experience with all these platforms and products?”
Me: “Yep. And then some.”
Recruiter: “Great. How about you send me your payscale and current location and a few other things?”
Me: [Does so. The job is in Michigan, so I note in my location that relocation is not an option. I boldface that part, and note that I can travel back and forth a bit, depending on pay, to meet with people who need to meet me, but again, relocation is not an option.]
[phone rings a few minutes later]
Recruiter: “Hi Doyce. We think your perfect for the job, and the payscale is definitely doable.”
Me: “Great.”
Recruiter: “Your start time is very good for us. The position is 8 to 5 out in [Location], Michican.”
Me: “If you check the message I sent you a few minutes ago, you notice that I mentioned that relocating is not an option.”
Recruiter: “You can’t work out there for five days a week and fly home on the weekends?”
Me: “No. I don’t normally like getting into personal details of this nature, but I’m a parent and I have obligations that don’t allow me to be gone that long on a regular basis.”
Recruiter: [Insert a number of suggestions that amount to “but can’t you do it anyway?”]
Me: “No. Sorry, it sounds like a great position, but no.”
(The poor recruiter is, I think, so used to people who are so desperate to find a job that they will agree to anything that they truly do not know what to say when someone says “sorry, that won’t work for me.” They should babysit a toddler a few nights a week — that would help.)
[About an hour passes.]
[Phone rings.]
Recruiter: “Hi Doyce. I talked with my manager…”
Me: “Yes?”
Recruiter: “We decided it would be possible for us to raise the pay rate to [20% increase], if you can work full time, on site.”
Me: “Oh. I’m sorry, I thought you might be calling to tell me that an remote work arrangement was possible. The pay you’re offering is…”
Recruiter: “Tempting?”
Me: “No… I’m sorry, it’s not at all tempting, because what you’re asking for is simply impossible. I was going to say it was a very kind compliment.”
Recruiter: “… Doyce, can you help me understand how we can make a remote working arrangement function?”
Me: “Actually, I’m going to turn that question around a bit. I’ve looked at the job requirements and know the work well enough to know I can do it from here. The job itself mentions working with ‘virtually no supervision’ in — and this is an interesting choice of words — ‘an ambiguous environment.’ Can you tell me anything about the job that really requires the applicant work on-site, full-time, other than ‘that’s what is normally done?'”
No. No they couldn’t.
We said our goodbyes. They’ve called back twice to raise their offer. It’s getting more and more difficult to keep the chuckle out of my voice when I tell them that the pay is not the problem, nor is it the solution. (Though it does annoy me that they were clearly low-balling the initial offer by a considerable sum.)
The thing is, I think you have to find this kind of thing funny. You have to breathe through it when the conversation gets to be too repetitive. You have to accept that this is the way that life is going right now, and if you are going to live your life, than this is it — this is your life, good or bad, difficult or easy.
And if everything went exactly the way you planned, you wouldn’t have anything to write about.