1. What does the fox say? Not all that big a secret, actually. It barks. Squeakily. Just in case you really were wondering.

2. The world is full of adorable owl art. In the wild, owls are fierce, silent predators who crush small woodland creatures with their deadly … feet. I find it fun to try to reconcile these two things.

3. Why doesn’t anyone ever name a raven Lenore? All those ravens out there named Poe and Edgar and Nevermore, you’d think someone would name their raven Lenore. Changes the whole meaning of the poem, if you start naming ravens Lenore.

Mirrored from Janni Lee Simner / Desert Dispatches.

Sharon Lee has been publishing for more than three decades, both on her own and with her collaborator and husband Steve Miller. Today she talks about the dangers of letting others tell us whether or not we have a career — and, perhaps more importantly, of assuming we’re alone when they do.

I’ve wanted to be a writer — specifically, a fiction writer — for as long as I can remember.  I don’t know why.  Possibly because stories gave me such very great pleasure as a small child. Also, I noticed that my mother was never angry when she was reading me a story; so I might have thought there was some magic involved.

Possibly, it was because, as I grew older, I realized that, in stories at least, things came out as they ought.

Possibly, I was just never really fit for any other kind of work.

Whatever, take it as given:  I have always wanted to tell stories.

I started writing for publication in March of 1972.  By which I mean that I first submitted a story I had written to a magazine in March of 1972.

My first pro sale — to Amazing Stories — was in November 1979.

In 1980, fellow writer Steve Miller and I married; and in 1983 we began collaborating.

In 1984, we wrote our first novel together; it was published in 1988; and two more quickly after it — later in 1988, and in 1989.

After which, we ascended to publishing nirvana on a rosy cloud of pulp paper, where we’ve dwelt these long years since, breathing the rarefied air of success, sipping milk and honey from a silvered glass. . .

Er, no.

What happened then, having published three mass market originals with Del Rey is that. . .

. . . we were told that our books had not garnered sufficient numbers; and that we had no career.

Now, it would have been bad enough, to only have been cut loose from our publisher for “bad numbers.”  But this “no career” business — that really twisted the tail of a discouraging situation.

I stopped writing.  I felt like I had cheated, somehow; that I was a pretender, not a writer at all; that my books weren’t — had never been — real.

Like I wasn’t real.

So . . . a period of unrealness ensued; I withdrew from most of my writer-friends — being a pretender, you see — and tried to take up a . . . not-writing life, with a not-writing job, and not-writing . . . hobbies.

Sad truth told; I wasn’t very good at not-writing.  Before I knew it, my clerk job at the local newspaper turned into a copy editing gig, and my experience there got me a side job as a reporter for another paper.  Even if I was an imposter as a science fiction writer, my skills were in demand for non-fiction.  I began to feel. . .a little. . .more real.

So much more real, in fact, that, at home, I started sneaking to the computer — back in those days before the internet — and writing little bits of . . . things.  Vignettes.  Description.  Snatches of dialogue.  Proto-stories.

Until, one day, without quite meaning to — I wrote an entire short story.

I didn’t send it out.  I mean, I wasn’t crazy; I knew perfectly well that I had no career.  Despite which, I wrote another short story . . . and another one.

Then I wrote a mystery novel, and, well . . . I began, quietly, to submit.  Little things, you know; small stories that nobody would notice.

I didn’t sell anything.  Not under my byline, or under the Lee-and-Miller byline.

By then, though, I’d gotten together the moxie to open a file and start typing a novel in the universe Steve and I had created.  I showed it to a friend — one of the two writers I still kept in contact with — and she made some suggestions.

One of her suggestions was that I submit the manuscript for publication.

Which, after a great deal of soul-seaching, I did.

It didn’t sell.

I’d like to say that I didn’t care, but that wouldn’t be true.  I did care, a lot.  More, I believed in the stories and in our universe; and I knew that they had a readership.

Now hold it right there, you’re saying.  I thought the publisher cut you loose because your books hadn’t sold.  Suddenly, they had a readership?  How did that happen?

Well . . . we became aware of our books’ readership because Steve had started a computer bulletin board, called Circular Logic.  And Circular Logic was part of FidoNet (this is all pre-internet, now), and, well, we started to get messages from people in far-flung places, like North Carolina, and Japan, and California, and Finland. . .asking if we were the Steve Miller, the Sharon Lee, who had written Agent of Change/Conflict of Honors/Carpe Diem.

And they wanted to know when the next book was coming out.

So, yeah; I knew we had a readership.  It was getting to them that was the problem.

None of the publishers wanted to take on a broken series, which is what we had, at that point.  And we didn’t want to start over with a new series.  We had things we wanted to say; a vision that we wanted to pursue.  We liked the Liaden Universe® just fine.

The clamor for something new from those readers who had found us was reaching a crescendo, so Steve did the only logical thing:  He started a small press, SRM Publisher, for the sole purpose of publishing a chapbook containing a couple of our stories that hadn’t sold, and selling them to our readers.

That was supposed to be a one-shot; it wasn’t.  For fifteen years, SRM published Liaden short stories, and distributed them to readers by mail.

That was, if not the turning point, then certainly a major intersection in our road as writers.  People wanted our work.

We weren’t alone.

After that . . . no, our pumpkin didn’t magically turn into a coach.  But we did eventually find a publisher who not only re-published our first three novels, but also the novels I-and-we had written during what amounted to nine years wandering the dark: Four complete novels in our Liaden Universe®, and one more outlined.  Seven books at once.

We didn’t feel like imposters anymore; and we worked with that publisher for eight years — eleven novels and an anthology — until events overtook them and they crashed, messily, leaving us once again teetering on the edge of Publishing Death.

This time, though, it was easier for us.

For one thing, we knew that this situation, though of kind of Epic on the Catastrophe Scale, was not our fault.  We had a career; we were not false writers; we had been doing very well for the house, and for ourselves, before the crash.

More importantly, this time, we had two things that we had lacked before:

We had readers . . .

. . . and we had a way to reach them — the internet.

Not to put too fine a point on it; this time, we didn’t get depressed.

We got angry.

And we formed a plan.

Far from quitting writing, we decided to write more; to write, in fact, an original novel in our universe and publish it to the internet, for free, one chapter at a time.  The only catch was that the next chapter would have to earn $300 in donations before we would released.

Not too long after we began the Fledgling project, our agent sold two books that had been circulating, in proposal, to Baen.

When the web-novel was completed, Baen purchased it, along with its surprise sequel, Saltation; and then offered contract for another novel.  And more novels, after that.

As of this writing, Steve and I have done nine novels with Baen; I’ve done three fantasies; and we have a contract for five more titles.  Every single novel ever written in the Liaden Universe® is available, in print, as ebooks, and as audiobooks.

. . .

Having now told this story, of having come back from the dead twice, I’m not certain what lessons you — or I — ought to take from it.

That, as Anne McCaffrey told me, many years later, sometimes it takes a book or a series a long time to find its “legs”?

That being proactive is better than being inactive?

Follow your vision, and rewards will follow?

That story will out; no matter what?

That we’re none of us alone?

. . . I think, that last.  If I had it to do over again, I hope that I wouldn’t hide from my colleagues when disaster struck.  Knowing that you’re not alone; that others have gone through similar rough patches and Epic Disasters, is . . . priceless, really.

Thanks for listening.

Sharon Lee has been married to her first husband for more than half her lifetime; she is a friend to cats, a member of the National Carousel Association, and oversees the dubious investment schemes of an improbable number of stuffed animals. Despite having been born in a year of the dragon, Sharon is an introvert. She lives in Maine because she likes it there. In fact, she likes it so much that she has written five novels set in Maine; mysteries Barnburner and Gunshy, and three contemporary fantasies: Carousel Tides, Carousel Sun, and Carousel Seas (available 2015).

With the aforementioned first husband, Steve Miller, Sharon has written twenty-one novels of science fiction and fantasy — many of them set in the Liaden Universe® — and numerous short stories. She has occasionally worked as an advertising copywriter, a reporter, copy editor, photographer, book reviewer, and secretary. She was for three years Executive Director of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, Inc., and was subsequently elected vice president and then president of that organization.

Previous Writing for the Long Haul Posts

- Betty G. Birney on always challenging ourselves
- Nora Raleigh Baskin on making deals with the writing gods
- Sean Williams on unpredictability and luck
- Deborah J. Ross on writing through crisis
- Sharon Shinn on managing time
- Marge Pellegrino on feeding the restless yearning to write
- Sarah Zettel on embracing ignorance and writing your passions
- Uma Krishnaswami on honoring unreasonable exuberance
- Jennifer J. Stewart on finding community and support
- Sherwood Smith on keeping inspiration alive
- Mette Ivie Harrison on defining success
- Jeffrey J. Mariotte on why we write
- Judith Tarr on reinventing ourselves
- Kathi Appelt on the power of story
- Cynthia Leitich Smith on balancing business and creativity

Mirrored from Janni Lee Simner / Desert Dispatches.

For the new year, I’ve lowered the ebook price of Tiernay West, Professional Adventurer. Check it out at:

- Antigone Books, Mostly Books, Changing Hands, Mysterious Galaxy, and most other independent bookstores
- Kobo
- Smashwords
- Barnes and Noble
- Amazon

And if you’ve already read Tiernay West, Professional Adventurer (under either this title or as Secret of the Three Treasures) and were inclined to leave a review of the ebook edition at your site of choice, I’d be most grateful!

Mirrored from Janni Lee Simner / Desert Dispatches.

Books Read in 2013:

1. The Planet Savers, Marion Zimmer Bradley (start of a Darkover reread that I never quite finished)
2. Arrow, R.J. Anderson
3. Sword of Aldones, Marion Zimmer Bradley
4. White Fur Flying, Patricia MacLaughlan
5. Doll Bones, Holly Black (adored this book about the changing–and not so changing–role of pretend games as we grow up)
6. The Bloody Sun (1964 edition), Marion Zimmer Bradley
7. Eye of the Storm, Kate Messner (quite liked this dystopic story of a superstorm-plagued future)
8. Star of Danger, Marion Zimmer Bradley
9. Winds of Darkover, Marion Zimmer Bradley
10. Spell Bound, Rachel Hawkins
11. The Desert Cries: A Season of Flash Floods in a Dry Land, Craig Childs
12. Mirage, Jenn Reese (really digging this series, too)
13. The One and Only Ivan, Katherine Applegate (well written, but why do we tell so many kids’ stories about mothers who die and the heroic fathers who take their place and so few stories about mothers who live and are heroic?)
14. Wolves, Boys, and Other Things that Might Kill Me, Kristin Chandler
15. Make Way for Dyamonde Daniel, Nikki Grimes
16. Planet Middle School, Nikki Grimes
17. Life After Theft, Aprilynne Pike (my favorite of hers so far)
18. Hereville: How Mirka Met a Meteorite, Barry Deutsch
19. Where the Mountain Meets the Moon, Grace Lin (lovely; why did it take me so long to read this?)
20. Dark Sons, Nikki Grimes
21. Hapax, A.E. Stallings
22. The Book of Three, Lloyd Alexander (speaking of things it took me awfully long to read for the first time)
23. The Black Cauldron, Lloyd Alexander
24. Owly Volume 1: The Way Home and The Bitytersweet Summer, Andy Runton
25.The Castle of Llyr, Lloyd Alexander
26. Serafina’s Promise, Ann E. Burg
27. Olives, A.E. Stallings
28. Jumping Off Swings, Jo Knowles
29. Heritage of Hastur, Marion Zimmer Bradley
30. The Rose Throne, Mette Ivie Harrison (interesting look at transgender issues through the metaphoric lens of men’s and women’s magic)
31. Nowhere Girl, A.J. Paquette
32. The Death of Yorik Mortwell, Stephen Messer (Stephen Messer’s books have this nicely Diana Wynne Jones-ish edge to them)
33. The Lucy Variations, Sara Zarr (a look at art and doing what you love and keeping loving/remembering why you love it)
34. Taran Wanderer, Lloyd Alexander
35. The Shape of Desire, Sharon Shinn (in which unconditional love for dangerous supernatural creatures gets a bit more of critical a look than usual)
36. The True Blue Scouts of Sugar Man Swamp, Kathi Appelt (delightful–but you already knew that, right?)
37. Written in Stone, Rosanne Parry (a well-handled look at whaling in native cultures, among other things)
38. Wesley the Owl, Stacey O’Brien (enjoyed this book, but later heard–and began realizing–that as a guide to what owls are like, it may be … less than reliable)
39. The Alton Gift, Marion Zimmer Bradley and Deborah Ross (Lew Alton’s search for redemption was the most interesting part of this book for me)
40. The High King, Lloyd Alexander
41. Still Life With Shapeshifter, Sharon Shinn
42. Tiger Lily, Jody Lynn Anderson
43. Tim Star Cecil Castellucci (read this one early; look for it in February!)
44. Killer of Enemies, Joseph Bruchac (Apache heroine in a post-apocalyptic future that holds echoes of her people’s stories–loved this one, too)
45. Alex and Me, Irene Pepperberg (the story of Alex the parrot–I don’t know whether I’m more intrigued by his learning the concept of “none” or sort of learning the concept of “sorry,” both on his own–but a fascinating read all around)
46. How to Say Goodbye in Robot, Natalie Sandiford
47. Cat Girl’s Day Off, Kimberly Pauley (hugely fun read about a girl who, in a family of magical genuises, thinks she’s failure because she can “only” talk to cats)
48. Fangirl, Rainbow Rowell (found the protag frustrating the first half of this book and adored her the second half enough to be glad I’d read it anyway)
49. William Shakespeare’s Star Wars, Ian Doescher (best read aloud)
In Progress: How to Flirt with a Naked Werewolf, Molly Harper

May your 2014 be filled with stories, joy, and light!

Mirrored from Janni Lee Simner / Desert Dispatches.

That is, Disney’s (loose) retelling of The Snow Queen:

- It passed the Bechdel test within the first five minutes–in the opening post-credits song
- It replaced the traditional wedding scene with a coronation scene–one where a female character doesn’t need to get married to claim power
- The acknowledgement that first love isn’t always true love
- The acknowledgement that there’s more than one kind of world-altering love in the first place
- The fate of the world hinging on the relationship between two women–two sisters

The dynamics of magic and power and how to work with (and fail to work with) and control them were fascinating, too, and played interestingly to some of my own fictional concerns, so I loved that as well.
 

 
Ursula Vernon has more spoilery thoughts about Frozen here, to do with the dynamics of women and magic and the keeping of power that also resonate strongly for me.

Mirrored from Janni Lee Simner / Desert Dispatches.

Emmy-award winning writer Betty G. Birney has had highly successful careers as an advertising copywriter, children’s television writer, and writer of children’s books. She joins the long haul series to talk about one thing each of these careers has taught her in turn: the need to never stop challenging ourselves.

It’s Up to You to Challenge Yourself

When I was seven, I loved books so much, I knew I wanted to be a writer and decided to give it a try. I wrote Teddy Bear in the Woods, illustrated it, stapled it together, gave it to my parents and announced, “I’m going to be a writer.” I never changed my mind.

Throughout my growing up, I was praised for my stories and poems, and in college, I got “A”s on essay after essay. When Sister Deborah, the head of the English department, called me in her office. I was sure she was going to commend me. I was shocked when she said, “I think we’ve established that you can write an A essay. Don’t you think it’s time you starting finding more challenging topics?”

Busted! I knew she was right, and I began to dig deeper. It wasn’t enough to please my professors. I had to challenge myself in order to grow.

Throughout my subsequent career as an advertising copywriter, I discovered that success didn’t mean coming up with ideas that pleased the client. I had to dig deeper to give them more than they expected.

I switched careers and for over 20 years, I wrote hundreds of live-action and animated children’s television shows. It was often a struggle to please the networks and producers and please myself as well. I was rewarded with numerous awards, including an Emmy and a Writer’s Guild award.

But I still wanted to write books, and I knew I wanted to write children’s books. It wasn’t easy to switch to writing narrative fiction after writing in script format so long, but I finally sold a couple of picture books. Success–right?

Wrong! After those two books, it was nine years before I sold another book.  Nine years of writing, submitting, selling nada. One day, I realized that it was time for me to start fresh, to kick it up a notch, to challenge myself. My work had to be stronger, smarter, and fresher. When I made those changes, I got an agent and sold two middle grade novels, The World According to Humphrey and The Seven Wonders of Sassafras Springs to two different publishers within four months of each other.

Humphrey turned into a successful series. Book 10, Secrets According to Humphrey, comes out soon and there will be more. I’ve finally got it made–right?

Wrong! The biggest challenge in writing a series is to make each story fresh and original -and that intensifies with each new book.

The second challenge is to find time to experiment with new ideas. This has proven to be the most difficult creative hurdle, because every time I’m rolling along on something new, the deadline for another Humphrey pops up and I have to write that one now.

There are also external pressures to write something just like what I’ve written before, while my heart yearns to break out–and I will! Because the secret of writing for the long haul is to challenge yourself to aim higher on every level, time and time again. Sometimes I forget, but luckily, Sister Deborah’s words are still in my head, if I choose to listen.

Betty G. Birney’s According to Humphrey series has been on 24 state lists, won seven state awards, three Children’s Crown Awards and a Christopher Award in the U.S. as well as receiving numerous honors in the U.K. Book 10, Secrets According to Humphrey, comes out January 2, 2014, and there will be more. She is also the author of The Seven Wonders of Sassafras Springs and The Princess and the Peabodys. In addition, she’s written episodes for numerous children’s television shows. Awards for her television work include an Emmy, three Humanitas Prizes and a Writers Guild of America Award. Born in St. Louis, Missouri, Betty now lives in Los Angeles with her husband.

Previous Writing for the Long Haul Posts

- Nora Raleigh Baskin on making deals with the writing gods
- Sean Williams on unpredictability and luck
- Deborah J. Ross on writing through crisis
- Sharon Shinn on managing time
- Marge Pellegrino on feeding the restless yearning to write
- Sarah Zettel on embracing ignorance and writing your passions
- Uma Krishnaswami on honoring unreasonable exuberance
- Jennifer J. Stewart on finding community and support
- Sherwood Smith on keeping inspiration alive
- Mette Ivie Harrison on defining success
- Jeffrey J. Mariotte on why we write
- Judith Tarr on reinventing ourselves
- Kathi Appelt on the power of story
- Cynthia Leitich Smith on balancing business and creativity

Mirrored from Janni Lee Simner / Desert Dispatches.

 
The Writing for the Long Haul series is on vacation this week. See you next Monday!
 

Previous Writing for the Long Haul Posts

- Nora Raleigh Baskin on making deals with the writing gods
- Sean Williams on unpredictability and luck
- Deborah J. Ross on writing through crisis
- Sharon Shinn on managing time
- Marge Pellegrino on feeding the restless yearning to write
- Sarah Zettel on embracing ignorance and writing your passions
- Uma Krishnaswami on honoring unreasonable exuberance
- Jennifer J. Stewart on finding community and support
- Sherwood Smith on keeping inspiration alive
- Mette Ivie Harrison on defining success
- Jeffrey J. Mariotte on why we write
- Judith Tarr on reinventing ourselves
- Kathi Appelt on the power of story
- Cynthia Leitich Smith on balancing business and creativity

Mirrored from Janni Lee Simner / Desert Dispatches.

Mirrored from Janni Lee Simner / Desert Dispatches.

Over the past twelve years middle grade and young adult writer Nora Raleigh Baskin has published nearly a dozen books. Today she joins the long haul series to talk about something most writers never stop hoping for, no matter how long their careers: just One More Book.

Advice to myself

I wanted to be published so badly. I could taste it. Or rather, I couldn’t. I couldn’t taste it. I couldn’t even see it. I could imagine it, but I couldn’t see it.

I wanted it more than almost anything in my life at the time and I knew it wasn’t a sure thing, by any stretch. I was the downer in my SCBWI critique group. I was the one that made sure no one forgot that we could all be doing this forever and never make it.

“There’s no guarantee,” I would say, just in case anyone had forgotten. “It’s not like you stand in line until your turn comes up.”

They practically kicked me out.

And I was the one at the NJ SCBWI who spoke up when one of our guest speakers, a NY editor, told his eager audience that we shouldn’t be writing to be published. We should do it just because we love it.

“I doubt you would say that to a room full of men,” I countered. “Would you tell a class of medical students they should just be doing it for the love of being a doctor?”

Nothing to do with my outspokenness (I don’t think) or my negativity but I wouldn’t be published for nine years. Five years of writing adult short fiction and sending it off to The Atlantic and The Paris Review (whatever was I thinking?) and then five more writing for children. I made all sorts of secret promises to the forces that be. One of those bargains with the universe was that if I could only publish one novel I would never ask for anything else. Ever again.

Just one.

Just this one.

Please, let me just publish once.
Then in 2000, I sold my first novel to Little, Brown and for a while I kept my word to myself. I felt completely validated. This was enough. More than enough. Just sitting at my son’s basketball game, high up in the bleachers, completely anonymous, my manuscript bought but a year from publication, I was content within myself. Now I was truly a writer.

Then, the inevitable. I just wanted to be able to write a second book. One more. Just to prove to myself that it wasn’t a fluke. That I wasn’t a fraud and fake. Just a second book. Two published books. Two books, that’s all I ask.

I struggled with that second book, for all the reasons of self-doubt and insecurity I just outlined. And then I met Patricia Reilly Giff who assured me that me the second book is always the hardest. She understood completely and validated my fears. I published my second book in 2003.

It’s 2013. I have ten published novels. Subway Love will be my 11th in May, 2014 and every time, I am terrified. I’m terrified I can never do it again. I will run out of ideas. I’ll be too old. My brain will rot. I won’t sell enough and no one will offer me a contract again. I’ll get such bad reviews no one will want to publish me again. It really was a fluke after all. I am fraud and fake and it’s just a matter of time before everyone figures it out.

Still, I keep writing.

And keep making my deals with the writing gods:

Just keep me in it for the long haul and I won’t ask for anything else.

Just let me keep writing because I love to write.

I find peace when I write. I find meaning in my life. I feel validated and alive. So–

Let me sell, at least well enough, to stay in good favor with my publishers which is something I have no control over. Let me remember what I do have control over: To always be appreciative. Always listen the advice of my agents. Listen the suggestions of my editors because after the shock and ego-busting of seeing all those comments and marks it’s just a process. It’s all in the process.
Always be grateful. Don’t be a pain in the ass. Remember to accept the business of my business and know that the marketing people and the publicity people are doing the best they can. They have many, many titles and the work they do is often not seen or obvious. Thank everyone. This is a privilege not a right. Handle bad reviews graciously. Handle good reviews graciously.

Then I put everything and everyone else out of my head and try, once again, to write the best book I possibly can.

Nora Raleigh Baskin started writing in the 5th grade and never stopped either telling stories or believing in the power of words. In 2010 her novel Anything But Typical won the Schneider Family Book Award along with numerous other honors. Her most recent books, the young adult Surfacing and the middle grade Runt were both published this year, and her next, Subway Love, will be out in 2014.

Previous Writing for the Long Haul Posts

- Sean Williams on unpredictability and luck
- Deborah J. Ross on writing through crisis
- Sharon Shinn on managing time
- Marge Pellegrino on feeding the restless yearning to write
- Sarah Zettel on embracing ignorance and writing your passions
- Uma Krishnaswami on honoring unreasonable exuberance
- Jennifer J. Stewart on finding community and support
- Sherwood Smith on keeping inspiration alive
- Mette Ivie Harrison on defining success
- Jeffrey J. Mariotte on why we write
- Judith Tarr on reinventing ourselves
- Kathi Appelt on the power of story
- Cynthia Leitich Smith on balancing business and creativity

Mirrored from Janni Lee Simner / Desert Dispatches.

Because over on facebook friends have been doing this (some tagging me, some just leaving it for anyone who wants to join in), and because apparently once I start talking about books that have touched my life, I go on at more length than facebook is comfortable with. (Facebook’s definition of TMI having nothing to do with content and everything to do with number of characters.)

In your status line (hah!) list 10 novels that have stayed with you in some way. Don’t take more than a few minutes and don’t think too hard. They don’t have to be “right” or “great” books, just the ones that have touched you.”

1. A Swiftly Tilting Planet, Madeleine L’Engle (Can see the book’s flaws now, but still love its sense of hope that the awful things that haven’t happened don’t have to happen)

2. A Wrinkle in Time, Madeleine L’Engle (Because I was Meg, and also because I needed to know there were Calvins in the world)

3. Arm of the Starfish, Madeleine L’Engle (“It’s the fall of the sparrow I care about. But who’s the sparrow? We run into problems there, too.”)

4. The Blue Sword, Robin McKinley (Because Harimad-sol)

5. The Empire Strikes Back novelization (This was my entry into the Star Wars universe, a lifetime love of SFF, and a whole lot of fanfiction that helped me become the writer I am)

6. Feed, M. T. Anderson (Most depressing book I ever … not sure loved is the right word here. But.)

7. Eye of the Heron, Ursula K. Le Guin (Shifted my understanding of non-violence and what it really is)

8. Tam Lin, Pamela Dean (Because I argued and argued with this book, and the results of those arguments have informed my own work)

9. Moonheart, Charles de Lint (Part of my introduction to urban fantasy)

10. War for the Oaks, Emma Bull (The other part of my introduction to urban fantasy)

Mirrored from Janni Lee Simner / Desert Dispatches.

Best-selling science fiction author Sean Williams published his first novel in the mid-90s and has been writing steadily ever since. Today he joins the long haul series to talk about the unpredictability of every new book–and about the role of luck in long-term writing careers.

This year is one of great significance to me. Half a lifetime ago–that is, exactly half my life–I dropped out of university to pursue a career as a writer, not knowing whether I’d fail utterly or succeed beyond my wildest dreams. I dreamed of the latter, hoped for something in the middle, and planned for the former. If I hadn’t sold a book within ten years, I promised myself, I would give up and go back to my studies. (Economics–ugh. That was a massive incentive.)

As I write this, 23 years and 38 published novels later, I’m sitting in London waiting for my new book (Twinmaker) to come out. It’s had great press, marvelous covers and endorsements, publisher support beyond all expectations, but still I’m nervous. This book could easily tank–it’s happened before. It could go ballistic–that’s happened too. I dream of the latter, hope for something in the middle, and plan for the former. Whatever happens, I probably won’t starve.

Mind you, I’ve come close–in the Western, First World sense of having to get a day job to pay the bills. It might sound absurd that anyone would consider this a tragedy, but I spent ten years working shitty part-time jobs in order to build up a career in publishing so I could do nothing but write novels full-time. And when I did go full-time, everything went just as it was supposed to, at first: six-figure income, numerous awards, a Locus recommendation, titles on the New York Times bestseller list, invites to festivals . . . Then came the crash. Suddenly I was writing just as hard as I ever had but earning much, much less, barely enough to service my credit card and tax debts, let alone live the high life. How did that happen? I’m still not sure. The Australian dollar got stronger and US advances didn’t go up to compensate: that was definitely part of it. When most of your income is pinned to the antics of a foreign currency, you’re vulnerable to market forces far beyond your control. But that wasn’t the whole story. I felt that there had to be a reason why things were suddenly so crappy. Something I could fix, and fast–before I developed scurvy or rickets or went insane in some appropriately Gothic way. Or declared the exercise a failure and went back to university.
Eventually, through hard experience (and listening to other writers), I realized that the secret of my sudden lack of success probably wasn’t a bad agent, or a bad publisher, or even bad writing. It was bad luck. Sometimes books tap into the zeitgeist, or they don’t. Sometimes books stand out among a sea of other covers, or they don’t. Sometimes Oprah loves them, or she doesn’t (disclosure: Oprah has never even noticed my books). These aren’t things you can plan for. These are effects you can’t cause.  It’s just plain luck, good and bad.

If you look at a graph of my income from 1990 to 2000, it shows an almost perfect hyperbolic curve upwards, then after 2001 a straight line down. I’m still reeling from the shock of that sudden turn. There’s no formula to explain it and no way to prevent it from happening again. There was just an ongoing slog in the hope of creeping back up to where I had once been, praying for the opposite kind of luck to come my way. Eventually it did, after a long, hard slog, and I was able to eat properly again. And now I know to ignore the graph and avoid any kind of complacency.

What’s that old saying? “The harder I work, the luckier I get.” There’s some truth to that–but no one ever tells you that the luck goes both ways. Publish 38 novels in 17 years and some of them are bound to do well, but some of them are bound to do badly as well. There’s no way to avoid it, even if you’re a massive bestseller (which I am not). You might be lucky enough to sell six million copies in one year, then only three million the next. That’s a huge drop. You feel it just as much as if you divide the numbers by a thousand, because luck is a relative thing. Up is up. Down is down.

In my case it wasn’t the worst possible luck. I was still selling books; I was still being published. The internal devil’s advocate said: So what if I had to work like a slave to earn little more than minimum wage? I remained in a position that most writers dreamed of at the beginning of their careers. What right did I have to complain?

Everyone whose career takes a dive is allowed to complain, I think–although never to readers, since it’s right and proper that they should care little about your suffering so long as the books keep coming. Complaining to other writers might lead you to coping strategies or support networks that will guide you through the tough years, but it won’t change actually anything. It didn’t change anything for me, as I slaved away for years, earning less than I had as a student despite writing three books a year. The only antidote to bad luck is good luck, and the only way to get that is keep rolling the dice.

It’s a natural law that careers go up and down. When I started out, up was the only way my career could go. Now, it could go either way, which is the curse of being even remotely successful. As I type this in London, just days away from rolling the dice for the 39th time, I know it’s entirely out of my hands. All I can do is sit back and watch, and hope, and know that if it doesn’t work this time, maybe it will next time, or the time after, or . . .

#1 New York Times bestselling Sean Williams lives with his family in Adelaide, South Australia. He’s written some books–thirty-nine at last count–including the Philip K. Dick-nominated Saturn Returns, several Star Wars novels and the Troubletwister series with Garth Nix. Twinmaker, the first in a new YA SF series that takes his love affair with the matter transmitter to a whole new level, was released this November, shortly after he wrote this post. You can find some related short stories over at Lightspeed.

Previous Writing for the Long Haul Posts

- Deborah J. Ross on writing through crisis
- Sharon Shinn on managing time
- Marge Pellegrino on feeding the restless yearning to write
- Sarah Zettel on embracing ignorance and writing your passions
- Uma Krishnaswami on honoring unreasonable exuberance
- Jennifer J. Stewart on finding community and support
- Sherwood Smith on keeping inspiration alive
- Mette Ivie Harrison on defining success
- Jeffrey J. Mariotte on why we write
- Judith Tarr on reinventing ourselves
- Kathi Appelt on the power of story
- Cynthia Leitich Smith on balancing business and creativity

Mirrored from Janni Lee Simner / Desert Dispatches.

I still need to make it out to see Catching Fire (I have, of course, long since read it), but I sound this article on Peeta playing the functional role of movie girlfriend kind of interesting.

What makes me sad is that Hollywood has such generally rigidly defined gender roles that this makes sense, as it doesn’t in the real world, where we can all play all the parts. But if we have to have rigidly defined Hollywood gender roles, it’s nice to see them at least being subverted sometimes.

This also got me to thinking about how I’d always been Team Gale. This is a little odd, for me, because I tend to like the good boys, and Peeta is solidly my usual type.

Except that Katniss is a lot like Gale, so they meet as true partners instead of having Katniss being weak in the presence of Gale’s strength. (In the books, at least. I don’t yet know what their relationship is like in the second movie.) If Katniss were a different sort of female character, Gale as a male character would irritate me no end. But she isn’t, so instead of a strong guy looking out for a less-strong woman we get a true partnership among two strong-in-the-same-ways people who are very much alike. This is what I love about their relationship, that partnership.

And even when (spoiler) Katniss and Gale ultimately fall apart as a couple in the books, it isn’t because of their differences. It’s because they remain alike, only Gale ultimately takes their shared strength-that-is-also-weakness in a different direction than Katniss does.

It may be that more than having a soft spot for good boys, I have a soft spot for relationships that are I’ve-got-your-back partnerships (in whatever way, physical or emotional or a mix of the two, that the particular characters involved do this), and that good boy relationships are the ones that most often go there.

Or maybe, of course, it’s both/either of those things, with a large amount of “depends on the individual story” mixed in.

Mirrored from Janni Lee Simner / Desert Dispatches.

My very first professional sale, back in the early 90s, was to one of Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Darkover anthologies, Leroni of Darkover. After I sent my story, “Cherilly’s Law,” out, I spent three months walking home from my first day job on my lunch hour to check the mail for a response.

When the contract to publish my story arrived, it arrived without a cover letter, and I just stared at it for a while, not sure I was understanding it right: that my story really would be appearing in an anthology that would be in a book on bookstore shelves.

That sale told me that maybe, just maybe, I could do this writing thing professionally after all, and the knowledge that I’d sold a story once helped push me to continue trying to sell, too. When the anthology came out, I carried it with me for weeks. I still have a battered copy that opens right to the page where my story was, because I broke the spine doing so over and over again.

So I was thrilled to be invited to contribute to a new Darkover collection, Stars of Darkover, edited by Deborah J. Ross and Elisabeth Waters and coming out this spring. Returning to Darkover after two decades was a chance to explore how much both my take on the world and my own writing had changed in that time. I kept thinking that you can’t go home again, but also that you can, and especially that ways in which both these things could be true at once was fascinating.

You can see the full Stars of Darkover contents here. My story, “All the Branching Paths,” gives voice to Elaine Montray-Aldaran, a character who is deeply influential but never seen in the original Darkover books. “All the Branching Paths” takes place during the years after Elaine’s father returns to Terra and brings a young Darkovan exchange student, Kennard Alton, home with him. Exploring what Elaine and Kennard’s romance might have looked like was fascinating, too.

I can’t wait to read all the other stories in the anthology, to see what returning to Darkover has meant for other MZB and MZB-influenced writers, and to discover new voices, too.

Mirrored from Janni Lee Simner / Desert Dispatches.

Somehow, deborahjross's excellent long haul post on writing through crisis got removed from my friends' lists when it crossposted this morning. It's back now, but just in case you missed it then, here's a link to the lj version of the post. This look at those times when for one reason or another we can't write is well worth the read.

Writers stop writing for all kinds of reasons ... I don’t think it’s at all helpful to try to “cheer up” a writer in the middle of a dry period. The specific reasons — creative paralysis, personal crisis, discouragement — vary so much, I think it’s safe to say that each of us has to find our own way through.

Dear Short Story Protagonist,

This story does not have enough space or scope for you to have a best friend.

I’m sorry! I really am. I should have seen it sooner, but, well, that’s what happens when I get distracted and don’t write short fiction for a while.

The next short story protagonist will have an easier time of it. I’m pretty sure.

Me

P.S. No, no time for that leisurely horseback ride either. But hey! Endangered animal life is a space-efficient world-building tool, so win-win, right?

Dear Secondary Almost-Finished Novel Character,

The way you’re standing there, tapping your foot and flapping your wings impatiently as you glare at said protagonist?

Not Helping.

Me

P.S. But hey! Endangered animal life. So it’s not like you can go over there and do anything about it.

Mirrored from Janni Lee Simner / Desert Dispatches.

Sometimes, you need to leave the city behind and spend the day reading beneath the mountain pines.

The rain waited until right as I finished the book I’d brought with me.* Then it fell, not lightly, but not pelting either, a cool rain with sun lighting the drops that made sitting out there, letting it fall and dapple skin and clothes, seem exactly the thing to do. We didn’t head back down the mountain (specifically, Mount Lemmon) until a rumble suggested heavier rain to come.

Clouds rolled over the mountains around us as we made our descent.

As we neared the city, the desert warmed up, and we left the best of the clouds behind with the cool mountain air.

*Said book being Kathi Appelt’s The True Blue Scouts of Sugar Man Swamp, which I thoroughly recommend. It’s mythic in ways not unlike The Underneath, only with more humor and a contemporary edge that doesn’t get in the way of its timelessness at all.

Mirrored from Janni Lee Simner / Desert Dispatches.

Prophecy and precognition rarely end well in fiction, do they?

Tempting as it is to see this as a moral statement about … well, about any number of things … I actually suspect it’s because “she listened to the prophecy and so no pain and suffering whatsoever came to pass” doesn’t make a good story.

I mean, Oedipus could have just taken a no-stabbing-or-marrying-ever vow, too, but where would Greek literature have been then?

Mirrored from Janni Lee Simner / Desert Dispatches.

This week I installed a program on my computer designed to remind me to get up, walk around, and take regular breaks from my work. I did this with the intention of reducing various negative effects that go with sitting too long. I was a little worried this would reduce my productivity a little, but it seemed worth a try.

Instead, with those regular breaks, my productivity has gone noticeably up this week.

I suspect there is something to be learned here.

I went with Workrave as my break program of choice. There are many, many others out there, though.

Mirrored from Janni Lee Simner / Desert Dispatches.

Crows learn to recognize faces. In particular, the faces of crow-catching researchers. And pass this knowledge on to their friends and families.

This having been tested by having humans wear different masks when catching birds in different places:

The birds quickly learned that the masked bird-trapper was bad news and proceeded to scold the mask-wearer anytime they saw him or her. But over the years, the researchers found, the mobbing became more and more widespread. In February, Marzluff said, he ventured out of his office in a mask he’d worn five years earlier while trapping seven birds.

“I got about 50 meters [165 feet] out of my office and I had about 50 birds on me, scolding me,” he said. “I hadn’t worn that mask on campus for a year.”

The study itself is old news, but the final line of this particular account caught my attention:

The researchers … are now using brain-scanning techniques on captured birds to find out what’s happening in the crows’ brains when they see a dangerous face.

Crow pov summary: Crows know crow-catching humans are bad news. They warn them to back off. But the humans keep it up. So the crows get all our friends to warn said humans off, too. And they keep it up for a full five years, just to be safe.

So how do the humans respond? They amp the bird catching up and throw in some bonus brain scans.

Your move, crows.

One … doesn’t imagine this ending well for the two-leggers. (Except for the part where, apparently, it did.)

Mirrored from Janni Lee Simner / Desert Dispatches.

Specifically, some followups/tangents spinning off from this post.

Some thoughts on the 10,000 hour/10 year rule that I’d thinking about as I wrote the above. Specifically, on the idea that those considered unusually brilliant in a field all tend to have one thing in common: that they’ve put in roughly the same amount of time.

Two new things this article adds to my understanding: First, that the 10,000 hour rule tends to apply to cognitive tasks more than physical ones. And second, that having 10,000 hours to put into something is a sort of privilege, and often requires outside support. Which gives clarity to the conflict between my sense that insisting “anyone can do it if they work hard enough!” was simplistic and even unfair, and my sense that most people really can do most things if they put in the time. The latter is true, but the resources to put in that time aren’t equally available to everyone.

Marissa Lingen on why while effort is worth praising, it’s also important to develop the skill of knowing when not to do your very best. Or, as she puts it, why “… figuring out what to do your best on and what to half-ass is a major adult skill.”

I have been making a lot more excellent breakfasts this summer. I have been making a lot more breakfasts that wow me. But I am also noticing the effort that takes, and even those wow breakfasts are not always new wow breakfasts. Because going the extra mile every day (or, more realistically, every time I’ve used up the previous wow breakfast) is just not possible. I am not writing a breakfast cookbook. I am not running a breakfast restaurant. Sometimes it’s a good idea to strive for just that one step better, for a variety of breakfasts that are better than just okay. But there are other things on the list, and there always will be.

In a world that values full-on intensity and all-or-nothing measures, learning that it’s okay not to go full-out at everything is valuable, too.

Mirrored from Janni Lee Simner / Desert Dispatches.

I grew up knowing I was one of the “smart” kids. Looking back, being smart was very much a part of my identity. I worked hard, and I was proud of that too, but I nonetheless thought of smart as a gift, a mystery, a thing I was lucky enough to be born to.

Yet more and more studies I’ve been reading the past decade have been suggesting that it’s not some mythical natural talent that leads to success, and that children who are told how smart they are don’t do nearly as well as children who are told they’re good at working hard.

Today I came upon another article on current research on the subject, and it had me nodding all over the place:

Those praised for their effort on the first test assumed they simply hadn’t focused hard enough on this test. “They got very involved, willing to try every solution to the puzzles,” Dweck recalled. “Many of them remarked, unprovoked, ‘This is my favorite test.’ ” Not so for those praised for their smarts. They assumed their failure was evidence that they weren’t really smart at all. “Just watching them, you could see the strain. They were sweating and miserable.”
…
“Emphasizing effort gives a child a variable that they can control,” she explains. “They come to see themselves as in control of their success. Emphasizing natural intelligence takes it out of the child’s control, and it provides no good recipe for responding to a failure”
…
In follow-up interviews, Dweck discovered that those who think that innate intelligence is the key to success begin to discount the importance of effort. I am smart, the kids’ reasoning goes; I don’t need to put out effort. Expending effort becomes stigmatized—it’s public proof that you can’t cut it on your natural gifts.

That last I’ve seen not only among young children, but at rather high levels in every field. I’ve even heard, in some fields, the phrase “she works hard” used as criticism, to indicate the lack of some more natural gift.

We love that myth of magical talent. We hate to give it up or even minimize it’s role for the less magical and more challenging and more long term idea of hard work.

There are some good thoughts on the dangers of false praise in the article, too:

New York University professor of psychiatry Judith Brook explains that the issue for parents is one of credibility. “Praise is important, but not vacuous praise,” she says. “It has to be based on a real thing—some skill or talent they have.” Once children hear praise they interpret as meritless, they discount not just the insincere praise, but sincere praise as well.

Thinking about my own school days, in spite of knowing I was “smart,” in high school I still sought challenges and worked hard at things: I remember once being the only student, even, to leave the classroom when given that choice so I could keep working on a difficult problem, rather than letting the teacher just “give” me the answer like everyone else. I loved challenges.

But then I hit college, where everyone had grown up knowing they were smart, and where surely, I feared, we couldn’t all be as smart as we thought. The first time I nearly flunked a test I began to worry that maybe I wasn’t one of the smart ones after all, and that it was only my higher-scoring classmates who were the truly brilliant. When I eventually switched out my dreams of being a research scientist for dreams of being a writer, it was in part because I thought writing was still clearly something I was “good” at, while working in the lab was something I just as clearly wasn’t.

I don’t regret that choice at all. I loved writing, in a way I didn’t love labwork, and it took my struggles with the latter to give me the courage to pursue the former full-out. Yet I can see now the falseness in the reasoning that got me there. It was the very act of working to become a professional writer that taught me that “talent,” wasn’t enough, wasn’t even the main thing. It taught me that I was going to have to be persistent and always learning and always willing to work incredibly hard, for years and years and years.

In the early days, I was convinced several of my writing friends had more natural talent as writers than I did, too. But sometime amid all the work, I stopped playing that game. Wondering who the smart writers are is no more meaningful than wondering who the smart students are.

I’m not able to write at a professional level because I’m smart and was always good at it. I’m able to do it because I’m really, really good, at learning and struggling and persisting and working really, really hard. I’ve never stopped doing that–I’ve gotten better at it instead –and I get now that it’s not a weakness, but one of my most important strengths.

It’s a strength that far more of us have than we realize.

Mirrored from Janni Lee Simner / Desert Dispatches.

Juvenile red-shouldered hawk rescued by New Orleans firefighters. (Video, but not easily embeddable.)

Interesting to see the firefighter’s reactions. There is something psychologically daunting about reaching for a hawk–even when one isn’t on a ladder and the hawk isn’t dangling from a tree–and one has to learn to deal with that as well as with the physical skills of catching to do so. (As a relatively new wildlife volunteer, I’m currently working on both these things.)

The full story the video came from is here, with more details on the chase to catch the hawk here. Apparently the hawk’s “owner” thought using twine to tether a hawk was an okay sort of thing to do. Good to hear there are plans to pass it on to a wildlife rehabber for possible re-release now instead.

Mirrored from Janni Lee Simner / Desert Dispatches.

Many of you are probably familiar with impostor syndrome, or the fear that deep down that we’re just faking that thing we’re doing, and that sooner or later, someone’s going to find out that we’re faking it and it’s all going to be over. It’s a common thing, and I think many of us have met it, if not as a constant presence, than as a sometime-fear show’s it’s face in unguarded moments.

So I was intrigued when lnhammer pointed me to the Ada Intiative’s (Anti-)Imposter Syndrome Training. Those pages linked to Dreamwidth co-founder Denise Paolucci’s excellent lecture on combating imposter syndrome (there’s also a transcript):

Some useful reminders in there.

And listening to the video sent me down the rabbit warren of seeing what else the Internet had to say about impostor syndrome. I found links across pretty much every field out there, from writing to open source coding to academia to business.

The Caltech Counseling Center’s page talks about three specific categories of imposter syndrome: feeling like a fake, attributing success to luck, and simply discounting success.

Women’s leadership speaker Tara Sophia Mohr talks about how to tell realistic inner judgments from that harsher and more unrealistic/unhelpful inner critic that expresses impostor fears:

I’m getting mixed takes on whether women are more likely to deal with impostor syndrome or simply more likely to admit to and talk about it. But either way, I found this post about university physics students fascinating. A couple of simple 15-minute exercises near the beginning of the course, that do nothing more than have students talk about their values and so affirm their sense of self, closed the gap between male and female performance.

I’m still thinking about that, from multiple directions.

Meanwhile, one of the most useful things for me personally about impostor syndrome has been simply knowing that it’s a Thing, and a common Thing at that. When I look at friends and colleagues at times when they feel like they’re inadequate or faking it, I almost always know they’re wrong. If I were truly as inadequate as I fear in dark moments, how can I possibly be the only one of us to see my inadequacy truly?

I can’t be, that’s how.

Mirrored from Janni Lee Simner / Desert Dispatches.

The first use of literally, in the sense of figuratively, dates to 1769.

My outrage over this issue is officially over.

I do still, however, support the increased ironic use of “figuratively” in day to day conversation.

Mirrored from Janni Lee Simner / Desert Dispatches.

“Gonna be another long, hot night …”

Mirrored from Janni Lee Simner / Desert Dispatches.