Slice of PIE: In Terms of My Writing, “Just What AM I Most Passionate About?”

NOT using the Programme Guide of the 2020 World Science Fiction Convention, ConZEALAND (The First Virtual World Science Fiction Convention; to which I be unable to go (until I retire from education – which I now have!)), I WOULD jump off, jump on, rail against, and shamelessly agree with the BRIEF DESCRIPTION given in the pdf copy of the Program Guide. But not today. This explanation is reserved for when I dash “off topic”, sometimes reviewing movies, sometimes reviewing books, and other times taking up the spirit of a blog an old friend of mine used to keep called THE RANTING ROOM…

As an exercise in getting to know a casual friend of mine better, we’ve been exchanging questions and observations with each other. I’d asked about his interest in three seemingly unrelated sports, one IN high school, the other two after he graduated from high school. To my un-sports-interested-eyed, they seemed completely disconnected! Competitive swimming, flag football, and curling…

After he answered my query he sent one of his own. I’d forgotten that one of things that had drawn us together when he was a student on my “list” – as a counselor, we were assigned students by grade level, and as he was a homeschooled “kid”, my fellow counselors deferred to me as we’d homeschooled both of our kids for a period of time -- was an interest in writing...

We found out we had quite a few other things in common, and recently we reconnected. So one of his response questions was about my writing. I responded by sharing the four “worlds” I write in, then he asked the following:

“Wow, this is awesome! I think it’s the coolest when you have stories like example 3 above where you have a well-crafted universe and can continue deeper into it with multiple stories. Obviously a similar sci-fi vibe to each of these... where did that inspiration stem from? Was it something you read as a kid that changed your interest in reading and writing? Was it the science background? Just what you are most passionate about?”

I was startled by that last question – and it was made all the more disconcerting because my last two submissions to my favorite magazine, ANALOG Science Fiction and Fact, have been rejected.

So that I do this in a logical stream, let me answer each of the separate questions:

Where did that inspiration stem from? Was it something you read as a kid that changed your interest in reading and writing?
The inspiration has come from the people I’ve read since Louis Slobodkin in SPACESHIP UNDER THE APPLE TREE and Eleanor Cameron in WONDERFUL FLIGHT TO THE MUSHROOM PLANET entered my life in sixth grade. That was the year I discovered science fiction. Those two books drew me in and led me down the path to Robert A Heinlein, Andre Norton, Madeleine L’Engle, Murray Leinster, and finally to the stories that launched me into the life of a writer, John Christopher’s WHITE MOUNTAIN books, THE WHITE MOUNTAINS, CITY OF GOLD AND LEAD, and POOL OF FIRE. These were hard books to read because Humans had been enslaved by aliens and technologically batter back to the 1930s.

When I finished those books, I didn’t want them to end, so I started writing my own stories. Predictably for a 12 year old, they were pretty BAD!

Was it the science background?

Of course! I was crap a sports because I was a tubby little twit with a mouth. My one venture into sports was ‘cause Dad made me. Remember, this was in the time when if you were rotten, the coach told you so and let the rest of the kids do it, too. We didn’t HAVE feelings in sports. So, I spent my one summer playing baseball on a team of 8 and 9-year-olds in LEFT field…

I didn’t discover science until junior high, and then I was hooked…NOT GOOD, mind you. I was no Einstein and was scared to death of Physics. I loved biology. That led to more science fiction reading, and eventually a bachelor’s degree in biology education. I was a teacher and I finally had the tools to HELP other kids not have a wretched school experience. I also learned to keep science FUN! That helped me in my writing, though I didn’t get my first SF story published until early in the 90’s.

Just what you are most passionate about?
So, we arrive at the startling question I’ve been thinking about since I read it this morning (Thanks a lot, Mr. J Stiglicz!) – what IS it that I’m most passionate about?

First thing I’m passionate about is what I spent most of my adult career doing: teaching science. All of the stories I write have a firm FOUNDATION in science; most of them push past the established and into the speculative. But, as in ANALOG Science Fiction and Fact, I work to keep it realistic, if not real.

Second thing is FUN! I usually can’t write “funny” science fiction, but my characters can have a sense of humor. I love to laugh, and I often made my students laugh. I work to make my readers laugh – though I sometimes lapse into too much seriousness; and maybe that’s what’s been wrong lately. A couple of stories in ANALOG had funny bits in them; the characters laughed and so (I hope) the reader laughed. Then I go too serious. I’m NOT a serious person; at least not all the time. I like to make people laugh; I like to laugh. THAT has to change back!

Third thing though, is that I work to write about equity. I will be the first to admit that I’m a big, old, fat, white guy; inheritor of every privilege known to Humanity. But I typically don’t write from that perspective. Again, and again, and again, I will turn people to WRITING THE OTHER: A Practical Approach by Nisi Shawl and Cynthia Ward. They say that someone like me CAN write characters who are NOT like me. There are ways to do it, considerations to make, and sensitivity to be grown and cultivated. But it CAN and HAS TO be done. (See my essay here for more detail: https://faithandsciencefiction.blogspot.com/2020/07/possibly-irritating-essay-its-mistake.html)

All writing is metaphor, science fiction and fantasy more than any other genre. There ARE no Vulcans from the planet Vulcan…but there ARE biracial Humans and they have to build a shell around “themselves” that can only rarely be lowered. I am privileged and I can be whoever I want to be and there’s no one who can effectively criticize me. But a lesbian woman does NOT have that freedom. So, you can write about difficult issues in SF. A universe I created is split between the Empire of Man, and the Confluence of Humanity. In the Empire, you are NOT Human unless you have 65% Original Human DNA (as compared to the original Human Genome Project’s 2003 database.) If you are LESS, then you aren’t Human.

The Confluence of Humanity rose up to counter that; and for THEM, no amount of genetic engineering will make you anything less than FULLY HUMAN…unless of course, you happen to be a giant, hollow manta ray who was designed from another Human’s DNA to be a living ambulance in the skies of a gas giant…then WHO WILL TREAT YOU AS ANYTHING BUT A MONSTER AND AN ALIEN?

So in answer to JS’s question, “So what are you most passionate about?” I say three things: teaching science, fun with science and with life, and lastly, I can ask hard questions and I am free to explore what it’s like to be Other. When I don’t understand, I ASK. (Sometime ask me what happened on the Cinco de Mayo when I had become the sponsor for the Hispanic Culture Club the first semester I was a temporary counselor…)

Now you know, but equally importantly, NOW I KNOW WHAT I’M PASSIONATE ABOUT.

(PS – I’m also passionate about the fact that Jesus Christ is my Lord and Savior…but that’s something I only share with those who are close to me, though…ask me someday about the eulogy I was asked to read at the side of a friend of mine who couldn’t read it during her father’s funeral…)

Image: https://futureofworking.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/what-are-you-passionate-about.jpg

WRITING ADVICE: Short Stories – Advice and Observation #22: Eleanor Arnason “& Me”

In this feature, I’ll be looking at “advice” for writing short stories – not from me, but from other short story writers. In speculative fiction, “short” has very carefully delineated categories: “The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America specifies word lengths for each category of its Nebula award categories by word count; Novel 40,000 words or over; Novella 17,500 to 39,999 words; Novelette 7,500 to 17,499 words; Short story under 7,500 words.”

I’m going to use advice from people who, in addition to writing novels, have also spent plenty of time “interning” with short stories. While most of them are speculative fiction writers, I’ll also be looking at plain, old, effective short story writers. The advice will be in the form of one or several quotes off of which I’ll jump and connect it with my own writing experience. While I don’t write full-time, nor do I make enough money with my writing to live off of it...neither do most of the professional writers...someone pays for and publishes ten percent of what I write. When I started this blog, that was NOT true, so I may have reached a point where my own advice is reasonably good. We shall see as I work to increase my writing output and sales! As always, your comments are welcome!

Without further ado, short story observations by Eleanor Arnason – with a few from myself…

While I’ve never met Eleanor Arnason face-to-face, I both live in the same city that she does and I saw her speak at MiniCon 23 in 1988, a science fiction convention held over Easter weekend every year for the past 55 years.

“First off, is that I also love writing short, as does Arneson: “…[I] like the shortness of short fiction, and the fact that—written well—it can have a density and tightness that’s hard to get in a novel. It’s hard to write a flawless novel, (though Jane Austen managed in Pride and Prejudice.) But you can write a close to flawless short story.” She continues this theme elsewhere: “[I]switched over to writing short stories, novelettes and novellas [and] I wrote in series…So was I right to switch to short fiction? Maybe not [but] I really like the novelette and novella lengths. They are long enough to have richness and complexity, but not so long that I get tired of writing.”

I’ve found that more and more often, my SF falls into the “longer short story length” what’s called “novelettes” (7500-19,000 words), and “novellas”(10,000 to 40,000 words). In particular, the novelette. The reason? I’m not sure, but it seems like I need that many words to make my characters live. I’ve managed with short shorts, or flash fiction. I’ve even managed Nanofiction (https://nanoism.net/stories/736/), but it’s most comfortable for me around nine thousand words. MY problem is that I’m not consistent enough to push that on a magazine very often. ANALOG is good with it, but I need something SHORTER to break into ASIMOV’S, F&SF, and CLARKESWORLD. So, that SHOULD be my goal.

What does Arneson write ABOUT? The shorter the story, the more important getting this right is, “A lot of my fiction is about social stereotypes and characters who don’t fit into the roles they are assigned by society…My characters want to be something they can’t be in their society, because of their gender…I give them tolerable lives. There is enough suffering in the world. [Other stories]are about people who get in difficult situations which are often supernatural and struggle to get out of the situations and get on with their lives…[both kinds of stories are about] the struggle to have one’s own life…trying to make a decent life in spite the rules of one’s society and the weight of the past…”

Oddly, I just stumbled across a post I made here in 2021 where I was forced to answer a question a friend of mine asked, “Just what are most passionate about?” That led me to a few themes I find in my writing: I’m passionate about what I spent most of my adult career doing: teaching science; FUN! I usually can’t write “funny” science fiction, but my characters can have a sense of humor; I work to write about equity. I will be the first to admit that I’m a big, old, fat, white guy; inheritor of every privilege known to Humanity. But I typically don’t write from that perspective. Those are things I hope people find in my stories.

In a very recent interview with Lyda Morehouse, Arneson said, “Maybe we need to talk about why one writes…I have always told stories. I told stories to my kid brother before I could read and write. Back then, I think I was motivated simply by my love of stories. Over time, I learned more and more about the techniques of writing, and a lot of fiction I used to enjoy became painful to read, because it was badly written. And I became more and more aware of how difficult writing can be. Not always. Sometimes I write stories that rush out and are a pleasure all the way.”

I’m in a tough position because things I believe about the spiritual world aren’t acceptable to many writers, in particular science fiction writers. As a science teacher for 40 years, I understand that science is all about “proving”. But there are some sciences that have become respectable WITHOUT being able to prove anything – exobiology is one. It’s the study of life that’s not on Earth. The problem there should be obvious. We haven’t FOUND any life off Earth. They’ve solved the problem! They’ve changed the degree to ASTRObiology; they dodge the definition by giving it thus: “[We can’t yet point to the exact time, conditions and mechanisms when organic matter first went from nonliving to living…basic questions remain unanswered about the long-term adaptation of living organisms to other environments. For example, we do not know what the effect will be of living for years on Mars…Astrobiology addresses all these compelling mysteries by embracing the study of the origin, evolution, distribution and future of life in the universe…addressing three fundamental questions: How does life begin and evolve? Is there life beyond Earth and, if so, how can we detect it? What is the future of life on Earth and in the universe…Politics, science, personalities and serendipity all contributed to the creation and success of what is now called astrobiology as a field of inquiry.”

I’ve read about and written about and even TAUGHT about aliens for decades! I have a huge desire to BELIEVE in life off Earth. But there is ABSOLUTELY NO EVIDENCE THAT LIFE EXISTS ANYWHERE BUT ON EARTH. Despite Hollywood prattling on about how if we were all there is, it would a terrible waste of space – that’s just aesthetics, not science.

“Science fiction and fantasy have the appeal of strangeness, and of course science and technology are enormously important in science fiction.” In an interview with Lyda Morehouse, on February 20, 2023, Arneson said, “One of the deep defects in science fiction -- you see this with hard science fiction writers all the time -- is that someone will set a story five hundred years in the future, and their science is absolutely the science of the moment. Well, if you go back five hundred years in our culture, that takes you to 1500. You've missed Newton…Science evolves much too rapidly, at least in technological society…The basic premise in that story is that a) aliens are not going to formulate science the same way we do, and b) in two hundred years we're going to have very different science. It's one of these things that drive me crazy about hard SF. These guys take great pride in the fact that their science is absolutely true right now even though their story is set five hundred or a thousand years in the future. I just don't buy it. They're wrong.”

Strong words from a strong woman! I hope I can write science fiction as well as she does someday!

References: https://eleanorarnason.com/2021/11/writing/
https://locusmag.com/2016/09/eleanor-arnason-unfolding/
https://eleanorarnason.com/2018/05/this-website-3/
https://www.uncannymagazine.com/article/interview-eleanor-arnason/
http://strangehorizons.com/non-fiction/articles/interview-eleanor-arnason/
https://faithandsciencefiction.blogspot.com/search?q=What+am+I+most+passionate+about – What am I most passionate about?
Image: https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhK6miXJMTMNyB3kzq-r6I2LVCTZJj0CDS0dPV2Qapl6e9rZPuHx2u5QKcKT1QGeDg1_tPMv-lpnuSr_eiBjwPXmex9mcgtuH2-SUtZEpGWV0_HdtJQelVt5K69NulJBUqNju5GNjHgQibXsIo4NeWpTOj4ai85jCRjMHOtwtkqshzxFvZPUSjXZNq6=s320

WRITING ADVICE: Short Stories – Advice and Observation #10: Octavia Butler “& Me”

In this feature, I’ll be looking at “advice” for writing short stories – not from me, but from other short story writers. In speculative fiction, “short” has very carefully delineated categories: “The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America specifies word lengths for each category of its Nebula award categories by word count; Novel 40,000 words or over; Novella 17,500 to 39,999 words; Novelette 7,500 to 17,499 words; Short story under 7,500 words.”

I’m going to use advice from people who, in addition to writing novels, have also spent plenty of time “interning” with short stories. While most of them are speculative fiction writers, I’ll also be looking at plain, old, effective short story writers. The advice will be in the form of one or several quotes off of which I’ll jump and connect it with my own writing experience. While I don’t write full-time, nor do I make enough money with my writing to live off of it...neither do most of the professional writers...someone pays for and publishes ten percent of what I write. When I started this blog, that was NOT true, so I may have reached a point where my own advice is reasonably good. We shall see! Hemingway’s quote above will now remain unchanged as I work to increase my writing output and sales! As always, your comments are welcome!

Without further ado, short story observations by – with a few from myself…

“Her fresh approach to what some might consider a nonliterary genre framed serious and often controversial topics through a literary lens. Tackling subjects such as power, race, gender, sexuality, religion, economic and social status, the environment, and humanity, Butler combined the tropes of science fiction and fantasy with a tightly rendered and entertaining prose style.” – Natalie Russel, Assistant Curator of Literary Collections; The Huntington: Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens

“‘The one thing that I and my main characters never do when contemplating the future is to give up hope.’”(Huntington)

I have been writing like this ever since I started writing. In fact, I recently wrote about how I think that the point of view of much science fiction has change from generally positive futures, to darker, grimmer futures. Again, I wrote about it here: https://faithandsciencefiction.blogspot.com/2021/07/possibly-irritating-essays-science.html

“For Butler, writing was first and foremost about telling a good story. Challenged by writer’s block and self-doubt, she kept at it, finding in renewed efforts the ultimate path to success. Butler’s relatable, flawed, passionate characters help us question ourselves and see our place in the world with more clarity.” (Huntington)

Maybe part of my problem lately is that my characters aren’t relatable. OK…I just thought of one character is so consistently unpleasant, I’m wondering what I created him out of. Oh, that’s right…I created him out of MYSELF. Hmmm, I think there may be both food for thought and a path back to where I usually am.

“Any optimism that Butler felt about her writing as she returned from Clarion evaporated as The Last Dangerous Visions—the book that was supposed to make her career—languished, and her subsequent stories accumulated rejection after rejection. At times she felt like the only thing that Clarion had gotten her was additional debt, as she struggled to pay back the loans she had undertaken from friends and family to attend the workshop in the first place. Her letters from this period to her Clarion friends evince a preoccupation with the sales side of the business: who is selling, who isn’t...” (Gerry Canavan, Octavia E. Butler)

WHOA! I SO GET THIS!!! It’s where I am right now. I haven’t sold anything for the past two years. I continually go back to “What am I doing wrong? Have I lost any modicum of skill or talent I’ve gained for the past forty years?” I was feeling stupid feeling that way, but I find here that Octavia Butler had similar pangs and misgivings.

“‘When I began writing science fiction,’ Butler once told an interviewer, ‘when I began reading, heck, I wasn't in any of this stuff I read. [. . . ] The only black people you found were occasional characters or characters who were so feeble-witted that they couldn't manage anything, anyway. I wrote myself in, since I'm me and I'm here and I'm writing.’ Butler’s act of writing herself in transformed the science fiction genre in ways that are still being felt today.”

While it’s impossible for me to feel this way, being a bofwhig (my personal acronym for “big, old, fat, white guy”) I had every advantage and opportunity presented to me, I CAN read, talk to people, and learn. A YA novel I wrote was based on behaviors and thoughts some of my students had at Cooper while I was teaching. For one of the drafts, I had a friend of my daughter’s, a son of Somalian immigrants and a poet in his own right, read the story and offer up excellent commentary and advice – virtually all of which I incorporated into the book (which was subbed by my agent 17 times, was in the top 25 of the old AMAZON novel-search contest, and garnered some interest). But the writing on certain walls never allowed it to be picked; though I’m hoping to learn more from a book I wrote about a year ago: https://faithandsciencefiction.blogspot.com/2020/07/possibly-irritating-essay-its-mistake.html

“Writing for publication may be both the easiest and the hardest thing you’ll ever do. Learning the rules — if they can be called rules — is the easy part. Following them, turning them into regular habits, is an ongoing struggle.”

Here are the rules:

1. Read widely both the stuff you want to write and HOW to write better.

2. Writing is communication. You need other people to let you know whether you’re communicating what you think you are and whether you’re doing it in ways that are not only accessible and entertaining, but as compelling as you can make them.

3. Write. Write every day. Write whether you feel like writing or not.

4. Revise your writing until it’s as good as you can make it.

5. Submit your work for publication. First research the markets that interest you. Seek out and study the books or magazines of publishers to whom you want to sell.

6. Forget inspiration. Habit will help you finish and polish your stories. Inspiration won’t. Habit is persistence and practice.

7. Forget talent. If you have it, fine. Use it. If you don’t have it, it doesn’t matter. As habit is more dependable than inspiration, continued learning is more dependable than talent.

8. Don’t worry about imagination. You have all the imagination you need, and all the reading, journaling, writing, and learning you will be doing will stimulate it. Play with your ideas. Have fun with them.

9. Persist.

What does ANY of this have to do with me?

Octavia Butler is everything I’m not: a woman, black, famous, experienced, wise, and incredibly smart. All I have to fall back on is #9, which is to persist.

I KNOW I’ve written stuff good enough to get into ANALOG, STUPEFYING STORIES, CAST OF WONDERS, and other science fiction venues. I’m not being published right now, but maybe (MAYBE!) I’m in a learning phase. Maybe I’ve finally reached a point where I can either sink or start to swim like an Olympian (this is being written during the 2020 Summer Olympics Which Are Actually Being Held In 2021)!

There are amazing swimmers this year, and the first ever coed relay team ABSOLUTELY DISPLAYED HOW THE STRENGTHS OF MEN AND WOMEN CAN COMPLEMENT EACH OTHER! No shock there, but to see it so clearly displayed was incredible!

Once again, I’ve learned things I didn’t know I did that I may be learning better as I read and reread the advice, articles, and books of Octavia Butler.

References: http://media.huntington.org/uploadedfiles/Files/PDFs/Octavia_E_Butler_Gallery-Guide.pdf, https://pdfcoffee.com/conversations-with-octavia-butlerpdf-5-pdf-free.html, https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5406/j.ctt1hfr05s, https://www.writerswrite.co.za/octavia-e-butlers-writing-advice/, https://apilgriminnarnia.com/2018/03/26/rules-of-sf-writing/
Image: https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/41JNnybcihL._SX331_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg

POSSIBLY IRRITATING ESSAY: Lamentations, (St. John and More) for My Local Barnes & Noble

The Barnes & Noble I’ve worked at for the past six years closed on June 13, 2009.

Some writer reading this will cheer at the appearance of cracks in the façade of one bibliolithic giant. Others will shrug and say that B&N is just getting what it deserves for killing the independents. Still others will gather round their Kindles to beat their chests and shout, “Paper is dead! Long live the ebook!”

But I am here to say that an Asimovian intellect was snuffed out in a neighborhood that could ill afford to lose an more positrons. Sandwiched between a food court and Famous Footwear and Lenscrafters and a line up featuring Firestone Tires, Pearle Vision, MacDonald’s, Wendy’s, IHOP, Applebee’s and Meineke Muffler; B&N was the only place you could buy something besides the latest James Patterson, TIME magazine or The National Enquirer from anything but a grocery store rack.

The neighborhood is now brain dead and it’s all B&N’s fault.

And your fault.

And my fault.

I’m not going to belabor the point of guilt except to point out that intellect will die where it is not nurtured. The neighborhood of the mall that held “my” B&N is diverse and made up largely of welfare to middle middle class blue-collar families who hold service jobs and often teeter on the sharp edge of a paycheck-to-paycheck existence.

Even so, my B&N sold books. Not-so-many CDs and DVDs because the corporate prices were obviously too high and there was Best Buy a few blocks away. We sold not-too-much food – for obvious reasons – and only a bit of coffee because there were Starbucks, Caribou, Burger King and McCafé within walking distance. No, this store sold BOOKS. We sold them well enough to keep the store open for seven years despite the fact that over that same seven-year period, the mall died. Mervyn’s was the first main-line store to vacate its massive block of space. Others followed: Victoria’s Secret; Bed, Bath and Beyond; Hot Topic; Old Navy; the Pretzel Factory and JC Penny moved out until it was just Sears and B&N anchoring the once busy mall.

After Macy's on the far end closed its doors, B&N gave up the ghost and announced it was closing as well. There was no protest, no editorials, and no “save-the-mall” campaign. Customers sniffed, said they were sad and added, “I’m not surprised.” It’s interesting to note that the previous comment was race-independent. Why were the diverse people of such a diverse community “not surprised” that this intellectual icon was jumping ship like rats off the Lusitania? Some even commented that they were surprised it had lasted as long as it did.

Why? I believe that the answer is that those who love the written word had chosen – and regularly DO choose – to pull away from those who do not care about the written word. They retreat rather than become missionaries of the written word.

We disciples of the written word might borrow the lessons of Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century Christian missionaries. Instead of pulling back when the heathen pressed close, the Church sent more missionaries. Those who were not called to the front lines sent money to support those who were. The men, women and children on location assessed the needs of the people they were called to serve and established hospitals, clinics, schools, dug freshwater wells, introduced new agricultural techniques and established libraries after codifying spoken languages. Only after they had helped increase the quality of life did they turn to the spiritual message that shaped their own lives and drove them. Of COURSE there were abuses! But most missionaries didn’t make the mistake many non-Christians make in accusing them of destroying cultures: they didn’t assume that the indigenes were stupid and unaware of what they were doing when they accepted the missionary’s God.

When we see bookstores in poor neighborhoods, instead of “tsking” and wondering why anyone would put a store “there”, we might make an effort to patronize the store and support literacy efforts in nearby schools, clubs, libraries and youth groups. Instead of fearing for our lives if we were to be “caught out in the dark” at “that” store, we might go on line and check the crime stats for “that” store and the one we regularly go to at The Nice Mall – we might be vindicated or stunned depending on our viewpoint.

I suppose then, that this might be a call to mission, a “God call”, so to speak, for those of us who read the written word in whatever form – paper, Kindle, online, text or twitter. It is a call to take up our reading material, to “go and make readers of all nations, bibliotizing them in the name of whatever writers you are passionate about, teaching them to absorb all that they can: and lo, books (in some way, shape or form) are with you, even unto the end of the age.” (With apologies to St. Matthew, Chapter 28, verses 19-20)