On The Uncomfortable Hierarchy That Writers Have

When I was at Clarion, a Very Big-Name Writer came to speak to us.  He believed he was inspiring.
Among the many things he said in an attempt to exhort us was, “As writers, maybe ten of you are worth one of me! And ten of me are worth one of Neil Gaiman, here! And ten of Neil are worth one Stephen King!  But you can move up that ladder!”
And later on, we asked Neil about that, and Neil made that soft little sigh he makes when he’s disappointed in someone. “The thing about {$Big-name-writer},” he ventured, “Is that he sees hierarchies everywhere. And so he finds them. And he’s usually on the bottom of them, which I think makes him deeply unhappy.”
Neil is right.
The thing is, back when I was a quote-unquote “nobody,” I still had conversations with John Scalzi and Tobias Buckell and other quote-unquote “big” writers punching above my weight. When she went to WorldCon, my friend Emily wound up having a great conversation with George Martin, even though she didn’t know who the hell he was. My wife had a brilliant discussion with Alan Dean Foster, and I still envy her for that (I was out of the room).
I think that in general, if you talk to a writer and have something interesting to say, they will chat with you. And that’s glorious. There are exceptions, of course, as there are in any field – I can think of a handful of folks who sniffed my nametag and found me wanting, then conspicuously ignored me – but mostly, I go to cons because what the fuck, here I am talking with all kinds of people, some of whom are pretty big deals…. and they don’t care.
Now, Big-Name Writers are often not as available to the general public as you’d like, because when I go to a con I prioritize my friends.  And often my friends are fellow writers, and so I wind up being a little exclusive because, shit, how long’s it been since I’ve seen Keffy? And people who’ve been around forever probably have some flavor of that, where there’s only so many people they have time to meet, and they wanna seek out the familiar Greatest Hits collection instead of seeking out the just-as-good-but-more obscure B-side that is currently you.
And there’s also writers who are fans of each other. It’s interesting, because I look at some groups of writers, and sometimes I feel they’re very clubby, promoting each other’s fictions. But I realize that’s because they’re each fans of that style of writing, as in they’re all aspiring to be very similar stylistically, and so they chat more – and I recognize that I tend to seek out people who write like me who I’m a fan of. So that’s another factor.
And, of course, there are douches who don’t have time for “lesser” people.  These douches exist in every profession, sad to say.
But in general, I agree with Neil. I think that Twitter and cons are a surprisingly hierarchy-free environment – you can find elements of tiering if you look for it, of course, but having moved in other fields where hierarchies are much more ingrained, generally I’m shocked at how amazingly friendly and approachable writers are.
The thing is, I see hierarchies all the time, because I have a crippling case of impostor syndrome.  And, much like Big-Name Writer, the problem with having impostor syndrome is that it hunts for reasons why authors must be superior to me… and then puts me on the bottom of that totem pole.  And there’s a very sad part of me that keeps track of who’s responded to my oh-so-witty Twitter replies, and who got the invite to that anthology when I didn’t when I am totally in her league, and knows that he has an agent and that’s all due to the way they shook hands at the convention, that’s proof of how ridiculously old-boys’-group this whole shebang is.
I’m generally a better writer when I ignore that noise.
I can concentrate more on the work.
The thing is, you can see hierarchies wherever the hell you want.  In many cases, you can take a group of your friends and map them into strict (and maybe even accurate) hierarchies from the Alpha Dog all the way down to that shivering Gamma Rabbit, and the only thing you’ll have accomplished is to make yourself feel miserable that you’re not at the top.  And I find that if you abandon the idea of “Who is superior to whom?” and instead kick back to go see a movie with them and throw popcorn at each other, your life will be a lot more satisfying.
Spend less time worrying about the hierarchy and more time making friends.  It’s actually good advice everywhere, but especially so in writing where you’re going to take enough hard knocks from rejections and bad reviews and stories you don’t yet know how to write.
So yeah, I get fits of hierarchy, which I treat like fits of depression – an unhelpful illusion that I should do my best to ignore.  And when I shrug that shit off, I find it easier to write another 500 words for the day.
Those 500 words need to be better.  Can I write better than I did the day before?  That’s all that matters.

WeaselCon, New York City, 02/20 at 4:30 pm – A Reminder!

As a reminder, I’ll be spending two hours at the Beer Culture bar in New York City at 4:30 pm on Thursday, February 20th.  If you can read this, you’re welcome to show up and say hello to Gini and me.  (Though it’s nicer if you RSVP so I know you’re coming.)
I will provide nametags.  I will also post a picture of what Gini and I are wearing that day on my Twitter feed, so you’ll have the best possible image of me.  I will, as threatened, pontificate at length about the new corduroy pillows.
Feel free to show up, if you wish.  I have no idea how many people will arrive, so we’ll see how it all goes.

Oscar Movie Reviews: Her, American Hustle, Wolf On Wall Street

Every year, Gini and I try to see all ten nominees for Best Picture.  I don’t know whether we’ll get through it this year, as we’ve boiled it down only lacking the three smallest films – Dallas Buyer’s Club, Philomena, and Nebraska, two of which you can only see in theaters – but we did go on a run last week where we saw three of the big nominations.
Her
I was so excited to see this film – it’s by a director I love, it’s near-future SF, and it deals with AIs interacting with human beings (which is one of the things I continually write about).  So when I got to the theater, I was bouncing up and down in my seat.
So why didn’t I like it?
First off, the problem with Her is that it’s incredibly self-indulgent.  Yes, I know, it’s trying to create a sense of time passing, but there’s so many shots of Joaquim Phoenix wandering sullenly through melancholy rainbows that you could literally shave ten minutes off the film if you cut those wandering scenes out.  I get that he’s lonely and isolated.  But when you keep repeating that montage throughout the film, it adds flab.
Then there’s the other unfixable issue in that Her is trying to tell two character arcs – I won’t spoil it, but basically Her is two movies bolted together.  And by the time we got to the end of the first one, I was satisfied, and emotionally exhausted – and then it told a whole other side of that story, and I just didn’t have the energy for it.  And that other half of the relationship is entirely necessary, as it’s what gives the film its emotional depth, but it’s also got a heavily preordained conclusion.
Unlike the first half of the film, which has the potential to go in all sorts of unexpected directions, the second half starts with a heavy-handed foreshadowing of what’s going to happen, and then… that’s exactly what happens.  There are no surprises on this road to the end, just a repetition and deepening of the dilemma.  And so, when you’re already tired from dealing with the emotions stirred up in the climax of the first half, you’re watching a very on-rails experience in the second half.
Which isn’t to say it’s a bad film – I quite liked a lot of it.  I liked that the OS Joaquin Phoenix falls in love with very much has her own agenda.  She is not a passive construct, but something actively seeking, and the fact that she’s willing to contradict and baffle him is glorious.  I read a Twitter-review that said that the OS was all that was bad about women – a clingy, needy, bitchy girlfriend – but I think that says far more about the writer than the film, because the OS is a literal blank slate who is dealing with a man who purposely eats his emotions.  He’s actually kind of a schmuck to her, and the fact that people sympathize with him is actually somewhat of an issue.
But I liked that Joaquin Phoenix was lonely, but not isolated – he had friends, a small social life, a good job.  He wasn’t a stereotypical nebbish who no one liked, he was just sort of a disquietingly soft-spoken Man Of Awkward who could be nice in the right circumstances.  (A creepy guy who dated, via some combination of wish fulfillment, the most astoundingly beautiful women – his ex-wife is a heartbreaker, and his romantic tension is Amy Adams, for Christ’s sake.  That kept throwing me out of the film as I thought, “This mustache with this personality gets these women?”)
But basically, this movie is self-indulgent, taking over two hours to tell a story that could be told in 100 minutes.  It’s got some really nice stuff in it, but I wondered why it was crashing at the box office.  Now I know why.
American Hustle
Basically, at this point, I’m going to assume that Christopher Bale is magic in whatever he’s in.
American Hustle is a wonderful train wreck of a film where you take a bunch of clearly-defined dysfunctional personalities, put them in a paint can, and shake.  Basically, every time a situation could be solved easily, someone exacerbates it by acting in an entirely in-character and yet totally disastrous way.  It’s a ping-pong ball where alliances shift effortlessly as these idiots wound each other and take stupid revenge…
…and yet you actually feel sympathy for them.  They’re all in pain in some way.  And yes, they are taking it out on other people, but there’s a certain desperation in the way that none of them know how to be happy, and they want to be happy, and so they’re grabbing at other people like a drowning man clutching at a life preserver.  They’re making the absolute wrong moves, of course, but the genius of American Hustle is that even as you facepalm you can understand why they think this is a good idea.
They’re wrong.  They’re always wrong.  But American Hustle is a frenetic masterpiece of glory to watch, and cements David O. Russell as one of my favorite directors.
(Also – and I will be honest here – watching Amy Adams and Jennifer Lawrence slink around in revealing 1970s dresses is pretty easy on the eyes.  Sorry, straight ladies, you get the freakazoid hairstyles of Christian Bale and Bradley Cooper.  It’s really not fair at all.)
Wolf on Wall Street
I really did not want to watch this, as I’d had enough of three-hour indulgent movies.  Add that to the fact that it’s about bankers who make my skin crawl, and I thought it’d be like being locked in a party filled entirely with people you hated to talk to.
Yet Wolf on Wall Street is Scorcese’s funniest movie.  There’s several scenes – the quaalude scene, the discussion of midget acquiring – that could be straight-up raunchy comedy.  It’s as though Scorcese, who always admired gangsters and so never really made them look ridiculous, said, “Fuck it, bankers,” and decided to make them look as goofy as possible.
Don’t get me wrong: my ass wriggled for a lot of this film, as everyone in it is repugnant, and doing repugnant things, and I kept thinking, “Okay, Gini and I know that all of this hooker abuse and drugs are nothing anyone should aspire to… but after Gordon Gecko, I know the next generation of scummy bankers will be using this film as a checklist of things they want to do,” and that kept sickening me.  But I don’t know how you approach that.  I don’t know how you make a movie about excess that won’t actually cause some psychopaths to respond positively to it.
(I mean, you can, but then it’s so dreary that no one will want to watch it.)
So Wolf on Wall Street was like watching a training film for the next generation of assholes.  I know people will be citing this as an inspiration.  And that sickened me.
But the thing about Wolf on Wall Street is that it’s smartly indulgent.  Yes, an hour of this movie could be cut – but we’ve seen this story before.  Guy gets the joys of crime, gets the crown, overreaches, gets caught, winds up a schmuck.  If you’d cut it down, you’d make it less interesting, because all of the good stuff is literally the stuff that’s not important to the plot, but is hysterical.  In particular, the most memorable sequence in the movie (quaaludes, man) is a narrative dead-end that literally thumbs the plot to a pause for twenty minutes – but like any good anecdote, it’s worth telling.  Cut out the anecdotes, and the story is cliched.
So I liked it more than I thought I would.  And Jonah Hill is a surprisingly good actor.  Really, I’m more impressed by the dude’s narrow range every time – he doesn’t vary wildly outside of sad-sack, but he sure plays a lot of notes on that tiny violin.

The Butterfinger Discussion: An EVEN MORE Ludicrous Polyamory Update

Long-term readers will remember The Butterfinger Discussion – which is not a lost Big Bang Theory episode, but rather a metaphor I devised thanks to problems caused by me constantly asking Gini for sexual permission.
The stress was caused because, being polite, I asked Gini for permission every time I thought someone I liked might ask me to have sex with them, just in case the opportunity arose.  If there was someone cute at a con, I cleared it.  If someone flirted with me in the vaguest sense, I cleared her.  That made Gini feel stressed and unappreciated, because I was constantly asking, “Hey, what about her?  What about her?”
And so I devised the awfulness of the Butterfinger Metaphor – wherein I said this:

 “Look,” I said. “Imagine that we’re going out to see a movie. You know I love movies, because movies are awesome. But imagine, if you will, that there was a chance that at this movie theater, on any given night, the cashier might also give me free Butterfingers. It’s like this sudden, unexpected bonus of something I don’t need, but I really like!”
“I don’t care if you eat Butterfingers.”
“Well, in this world, you do care. In fact, you care about the Butterfingers so much that I have to make sure you’re aware of every Butterfinger I eat…”

Ladies and gentleman, in the wake of my triple-bypass heart surgery and my entry into the Land of Coronary Patients, we have entered that world.
For if I were to eat an entire box of Butterfingers – a heart-clogging 187% of my saturated fat content for the day in one box – Gini would fucking kill me.
And if Gini had to choose between me participating in the calorie-burning activity of sex with a strange woman and the calorie-laden act of chomping a candy bar, Gini would be grabbing my ass and urging me to put more cardio in my coitus.
The world is weird.  The lesson is, be careful about what kind of things you envision, because sometimes?  They come true.
(Oh, and if you want to know the rest of the Butterfinger discussion, just read that entry.)
 
 

ZOMG NERDY NAIL WRAPS

So these arrived yesterday:

Those are nail wraps from Espionage Cosmetics – who, among other things, did the Browncoat Eyeshadow Collection and The Collection of Ice and Fire.  These are from their Kickstarter, and I’ll be curious to see how they work in real life – they’re kind of like stickers that go on your nails, and I suspect my nail salon will be mystified.
But I do intend to wear them to WeaselCon in New York next Thursday.  No, I won’t tell you which one – I actually have six more of these suckers.  And yes, Gini will be wearing them too, since I share.
I can’t wait to give you a review!

When Gays Are Beaten In Russia, Why Should You Give A Crap About SFWA's Shenanigans?

My critique buddy Charles Oberndorf had this to say on the SFWA scandals:

Given the disastrous stance in Soviet Union and Nigeria against gays and lesbians, given the lack of rights for women in most of the Middle East, it seems to me there are bigger fish to fry than a few outdated musings by two older guys who have done a lot for the field. To acts as if these musing were civil rights violations is plain silly.

I agree that the shameful treatment of gays and women overseas is a bigger deal than the internal politics of some writers’ organization.  But you know what?
I’m not a member of the Soviet Union’s culture, or Nigeria’s, or the Middle East’s.  Those people aren’t reading me – and even someone handed them translations of my essays, they’d probably view me – rightfully – as some idiot outsider trying to meddle in their morality.  That always goes well.
They’re also massive issues.  My chances of affecting what they think are small.   I can put in a vote to maybe have Congress condemn them, but realistically?  My voice in those organizations is miniscule.
My voice in SFWA, and in gaming culture, and in polyamory, is large.
Not as large as, say, John Scalzi or Seanan McGuire or David Gerrold or David Brin.  But I have a far better chance of affecting those cultures by writing and complaining about them.  Already, the fact that several prominent SF authors have spoken up has changed the culture of SFWA – maybe you don’t agree that it’s for the better, but by God when we spoke out loudly, things shifted.
Maybe that’s not, say, legalizing the protection of gays in foreign countries.  But we have made this space into something I perceive as friendlier to women.
And I think the idea that, “Well, this change isn’t as big as the global changes that need to happen, so why bother?” is pernicious and detrimental.  You change what you can, where you can.  Even if it affects five people, those five people’s lives are bettered.
I can’t change the location of the Olympics or arm-wrestle Vladimir Putin into being cool with homosexuality.  I can, however, speak out loudly in the smaller groups I’m involved with, and contribute significantly to creating change within them.  That’s vital.  In some ways, it’s more vital, as changes don’t happen in one global sweep; they happen in tons of little evolutions cascading through smaller structures until they achieve critical mass.
If this was a more equitable world, I’d devote hundreds of blog entries to the massive inequalities across the world, and those blog entries would change people’s minds.  But they won’t.  Those distant folks aren’t listening to me.
So instead, I’ll talk to the people who are listening, and maybe change a couple of minds in smaller cultures, and call it “good enough.”
This shit matters.
Keep talking.