New Counter-Tops

What I’ve been doing this week, cutting down surplused lab tables to make new butcher block kitchen counters:

The kitchen before, overview:

On the left you can just see the edge of the breakfast bar. Center, the desk. Right the dishwasher counter. Note that the last does not come all the way to the trim and that the ledge shelf is a different wood and has no end cap.

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After, overview. Unfortunately taken from a slightly different angle, but more features will show in the close ups.

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During, pre-oiling, you can see that the dishwasher counter comes over to the trim here and the end capping as well as the uniform construction:

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This is what the lab tables looked like:

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Dishwasher before:

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After:

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Unoiled:

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Halfway there:

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Old breakfast bar (oak plank)

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New (unoiled) You can’t see much difference—mainly the 45 instead of rounded edges—but it’s really night and day:

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Old desk (white Formica, bleah):

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New (w00t!):

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I still need to do the two tiny counters and cut down and build the sink counter, though that won’t get installed till late October. Still, since these are all actual oiled cutting blocks we’ve more than doubled the working area of the kitchen.

 

(Originally published on the Wyrdsmiths blog Aug 31 2009, and original comments may be found there. Reposted and reedited as part of the reblogging project)

Julie and Julia (Movie Review)

I went and saw Julie and Julia with my now on sabbatical wife yesterday. We biked up to the theater and got in about two minutes into the movie, thus possibly missing something. Overall it was a fun sweet movie.

The thing I liked the most about it was it got the little moments of publishing exactly right: The hit in the gut as you prepare to open what you’re sure is going to be the umpteenth rejection for something you love. The sheer jubilation of an acceptance or seeing that first book. The little happy spurt from fan response.

Yay for all that.

The thing I liked the least about it was the perpetuation of the stereotypes of the neurotic, self-absorbed, and/or clueless writer: It had the “I’m not a writer if I’m not published” freakout. The complete clueless wild-ass-guess about typical advances. The complete lack of clue on figuring out how to deal with publishers ahead of time. Etc.

Now, those stereotypes work because an awful lot of writers are subject to one or another of them, and a lot of writers do learn about business the hard way by signing bad contracts or doing stupid things with their careers, or totally relying on the Cinderella faerie godmother mode of success to whack them upside the head with the publishing stick. At the same time it has never been easier to learn how not to do those things. There are a million and one resources on the web for learning about the business of writing and understanding what is and is not likely to happen.

Someday I would like to see an aspiring writer who has done their homework and who understands what they’re getting into portrayed on the big screen. I think it would be simply lovely to see some story about the writing life that didn’t rely on the same old conflicts and stresses.

Which is not to say that I didn’t like the movie—I did, quite a lot, actually—just that it didn’t cover a lot of new ground.

(Originally published on the Wyrdsmiths blog Aug 29 2009, and original comments may be found there. Reposted and reedited as part of the reblogging project)

Friday Cat Blogging

Ah man, is it Friday again?

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Damned paparazzi.

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I was napping here…

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I was cleaning myself in an indelicate fashion.

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Hell, I’m not even a cat…

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I have a plan!

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Soon, thumb-monkey, soon!

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Thanks to Matt Kuchta for the art and Neil Gaiman for the extra furballs.

Retro Friday Cat Blogging

You don’t seriously expect me to pose, do you?

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Look, even I get tired of the camera sometimes
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Lazer cat hates ragweed season.

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You have found my secret lair, now I must burn you with my eyes.

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Cuteness overload.

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Hey, Tahoe cats look kind of funny…

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(Originally published on the Wyrdsmiths blog Aug 21 2009, and original comments may be found there. Reposted and reedited as part of the reblogging project)

A Part, Yet Apart

So, I’ve been thinking about the science fiction convention experience and wondering if I’m alone in my relationship with cons or whether it’s something more general to writers attempting to make their way up the pro ladder. Because, as a professional genre writer I find that I feel both a part of the convention community and apart from it.

It has not always been this way for me. I am a 3rd generation fan, my mother and grandmother were part of the effort to save the original Star Trek series and somewhere around here I have a typewritten note from the series producers thanking them for their efforts, along with a black and white publicity photo. OTOH, they were not convention going fans. It wasn’t until I was 15 that I first went to a convention, the old MiniCon, when it was huge.

I had a blast. And for about a decade I went to MiniCon every year. Then, for various reasons I stopped going. It was about the same time that I got really serious about my writing and decided to make a career of it, but the two events were largely unrelated. Then for maybe 6-8 years I didn’t attend a con. I finally started going to conventions again in my early 30s with WisCon, which I first went to for the combined allure of a writer heavy convention and a feminist/academic convention. Since my wife is an academic who does research on women in science from within the physics department she now chairs, it made for a great twofer.

Because WisCon is much more professional and academically oriented than MiniCon was, it took me a number of years to notice how my relationship with conventions had changed. It wasn’t until I started going to MarsCon and CONvergence in the Twin Cities that it really hit home.

I used to go to cons as a fan/actor and make costume/clothes changes every couple of hours. I never went to panels. I always went to parties. I wanted to make a certain kind of splash and I often did. I certainly gave the concom people reason to roll their eyes at me on occasion, like when I was playing in the pool in 30 pounds of chainmail or sliding down the steel slope between the escalators. I felt completely immersed in the experience and as though I was surrounded by my people.

When I returned to the convention scene I did so in professional clothes (I even wore a suit coat from time to time, though I draw the line at ties). I attended and was on tons of panels, mostly about writing. I rarely went to parties. I went out of my way to not stress out the concom folks. I was shooting for a very different kind of splash.

Now, some of that is simply that I did an enormous amount of growing up between the two phases of my convention-going, but a lot of it had to do with my changed relationship to the genre. I no longer saw the creators of the various f&sf media as people apart from me, people whose job it was to entertain me. I had come to think of them as my peers and, in ever growing numbers, my friends. Andre Norton was no longer ANDRE NORTON! She was someone I shared an agent with. Instead of seeing NEIL GAIMAN, I see someone I’ve had tea with. The concom was no longer a mysterious entity whose radar it was best to keep off of. Rather, the people running the convention are long time friends and  acquaintances.

At the same time I’ve grown closer to the people making things run at conventions and the creators of the field, I’ve grown more distant from the general population of fans. That’s partially because you interact differently with someone who is a fan of yours than you do with someone with whom your primary point of commonality is a shared fandom of someone else, and partially because knowing more creators and more about the process makes me much more reluctant to indulge in some of the more nasty sorts of criticism I once might have made. It’s not so much that I don’t have strong opinions about whether I like something or not as that I’m much more reluctant to think of my taste as being the same thing as good taste or to claim that there is one true standard of quality. Again, a lot of that is simply growing up, but not all of it.

So, while I find that I go to many more conventions than I used to and that I still love the experience I have in some ways stepped out of my old role as a part of the clan and into a new one that holds me at least a little bit apart from the clan. It’s role that I am proud to have assumed, but it is not always a comfortable one.

(Originally published on the SFNovelists blog Aug 2009, and original comments may be found there. Reposted and reedited as part of the reblogging project)

Retro Friday Cat Blogging + Bits of Travel Zen

Five little kitties all in a row

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No, I wasn’t licking your toothbrush, why do you ask?

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You…again?

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I’z ready for my closeup!

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What do you mean I no fitz in box?

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I’z not fat, I’z big furred.

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Kitty-made bio-hazard symbol? You decide:

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Now that’s what I call heavy reading.

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“I, for one, welcome our new robot overlords…”

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(Originally published on the Wyrdsmiths blog Aug 7 2009, and original comments may be found there. Reposted and reedited as part of the reblogging project)

You’re kidding, right?

At Tor, there is a discussion of an anthology titled “The Mammoth Book of Mindblowing Science Fiction” that includes not a single female author or author of color. The discussion include links to an outstanding post by Angry Black Woman on the same subject. As a straight white male science fiction and fantasy author (SWMSF&FA for short) I can’t begin to tell you how much it pisses me off to see anthologies populated entirely by white male science fiction and fantasy authors. More than that, I am utterly appalled by the reflexive (some might say kneejerk) defense of such things. Take for example the one by Paul Di Filippo which the Angry Black Woman takes apart so beautifully in her post. It makes me want to turn in my SWMSF&FA union card. Oh, and footnote 29 in the Angry Black Woman’s post is made of awesome.

(Originally published on the Wyrdsmiths blog Aug 7 2009, and original comments may be found there. Reposted and reedited as part of the reblogging project)

Smart Things From Aug 4/5 2009

2014 ETA: I don’t normally reblog Smart Things posts, preferring to just add them to the Smart Things Page but this one has considerable commentary.

Nola J. Moore saying smart things about collaboration.

Michael Damian Thomas saying smart things about in-group slapfights, a post triggered by this smart post on the same subject by Cristalia.

John Scalzi saying smart things about making the time to write. I’m not wholly in agreement with him on this one, but I think his is one good way to look at the issue.

Justine Larbalestier saying smart things about how you judge your own success. She picked up the topic from Maureen Johnson’s excellent post on not judging your success by the numbers.

This last pair hits a tender spot for me right at the moment in that I’m feeling a little bit stalled as I wrap up WebMage without yet having sold any of the other books that I’ve written. I have high hopes for several of the series I’ve got out on submission at the moment, including the one that I hope will be continuing my relationship with Ace and Penguin, but none of that has happened yet and books that I was sure would have sold years ago are still hanging in space. Don’t get me wrong, I’m delighted with the quality of work I’m doing for WebMage and simply having books in print and the opportunity to write more is a huge privilege, but some days I still feel that I’m hitting a wall. I’ve written several books now that are simply better than the ones I’ve currently got in print and it’s sometimes very frustrating to know that they haven’t yet seen the light of day in any significant way.

Of course, hitting a wall and then hitting it again and again as many times as it takes until it falls is a pretty good description of how this business works in general. It’s just that sometimes the bruises that generates weigh more heavily on the mind, and for me this is one of those times. Which makes what Justine and Maureen have to say all the more important for me personally at the moment.

2014 ETA and August 5th as well:

First the smart things follow up: By coincidence* there are a bunch of folks talking about time and persistence and writing and sacrifice this week, not just Scalzi. Via Jay lake**: calendula_witch on practice, the Boston Globe’s article on Grit, and one of Jay’s own older posts on psychotic persistence. Also, over at the Death Pixies, Robbie Knutson on procrastination.

Next up, J. Steven York with a very smart post on agents.

Dean Wesley Smith has a smart new entry in his life without series on the catastrophic results that would follow the sudden*** destruction of copyright.

Finally, Agent Kristin Nelson has an interesting post on treating writing as a business, that I find to be both good advice on some levels and something I violently disagree with on some levels. The discussion in the comments is something I want to watch, which is a good part of why I’m linking it here. In particular, the poster who points out how very little control a writer has over the big things and in their career and the people arguing with them on the basis of believing the myth**** of self-promotion as panacea for success.

*It’s actually probably the case that given the size of the internet and the number of writers out there blogging that there are always quite a few talking about this and the coincidence comes in at people I’m aware of talking about this level.

**Who talks about it as well.

***Big emphasis on the sudden there.

****And yes, I do think it’s a myth that self-promotion***** can have that much impact. I know too many stories of self-promotion that failed and of books that were not self-promoted that did fantastically. I’d love to know how much self-promotion J.K. Rowling did on the Harry Potter books in the first year or two, and especially whether her publisher did a big promotion push before they started to hit or only really pushed her out on the interview and signing trail once they got going.

*****As opposed to publisher driven promotion, which is a very different animal that with a budget and publicist attached.

(Originally published on the Wyrdsmiths blog Aug 4 and Aug 5, 2009 and original comments may be found there. Reposted and reedited as part of the reblogging project)