My Raison D'Etre: Why I Blog Honestly

So my friend Kat blogged today about appearing competent on the Internet.  She, like many, is cautious about what personal details she puts out on the net, because as a semi-public figure she doesn’t want to come across as whiny or idiotic.  As she says, “Here’s the thing about the Internet: it’s public, and it’s permanent….So I behave like I know that people are watching me, and most of the time that’s fine.”
Then she muses upon the things we lose by only blogging about the things that look good.
I don’t blog about the things that look good.
I air my worst aspects simply for the reasons she mentions: if I don’t write honestly about what I’m going through, people will think that they’re alone.  So I go to great pains to exhume some of my worst moments and put them out there for public consumption.
As a chronic depressive, I think it’s important to send the message to my fellow sufferers that yes, you can have this level of crazy pent in your head and still find a way to function.
As a writer, I think it’s important to send the message that even someone at my level of career gets a lot of rejections, and getting here took a lot of ass-in-seat writing.
As a polyamorous married man, I think it’s important to send the message that a lot of married couples deal with jealousy and squabbling and still manage to love each other very much.
These are all noble goals, and yet Kat’s fears are well-known.  Opening veins in public spaces comes with a cost, and that cost is pretty awkward sometimes.
Because writing is a static thing, and you are (I hope) an evolving person.  There are essays I wrote back in 2003 that I’d be embarrassed to admit to today.  I’ve evolved considerably in how I feel about race, about politics, about feminism – and yet the ignorant shit I wrote almost a decade ago is still on the record.
You don’t escape that.  People, by and large, don’t accept that semi-public figures can change their minds.  And so I know people who’ve read an awful essay I wrote five years ago, and think, “What a thoughtless sexist asshole,” and that’s who I am to them now and forever.  There are places where my name is reviled for stances I’d no longer take, and in many cases have actively backed off from.  People have actively tried to talk my girlfriends out of dating me, because they know what a jerk I am – they know this from a handful of essays they’ve read, but that’s enough to know I’m toxic enough that anyone who dates me must have no self-respect.
Which is fine.  But that’s what happens.  Write once, read forever.
For every person who gets what I’m trying to do, there are an equal number of people who have written me off as a drama queen.  They see my blog as a way of screaming for attention, rather than as a method of sharing.  And for every nice comment I get, there are the links I stumble across where people I’ve never met discuss their mutual loathing of me.
And then there are the days where people have gotten so used to me discussing my feelings in a public space that they forget that this is a very scary thing to do, and I’ll post something somewhere, and a long debate will break out on the intimate details of my personal life – as if my life were a football game.  That’s always a little unsettling.
Then there’s the cost of dating.  Being with me means being in the public circle.  Some of my lovers want more time on-stage, some want less time on-stage, and all of them want to be presented in the way they deem ideal… so The Blog is always an issue in relationships, a quiet thing to be constantly negotiated.
This is not to say that I haven’t done some good.  But the danger of talking about yourself as though you haven’t got your shit entirely together is that many will see you as a walking train wreck.  One post can cause years of trouble.  Some people never forgive for one post… Even if that post was written badly on a stressful day and you didn’t say what you meant.
I blog openly because I believe being honest about my inner turmoil makes it easier for people to see that even quote-unquote “successful” people can still have issues, and work past them.  Otherwise, all you see are the results, and you come to think that the people Up There can’t possibly have anything in common with you.  (Not that I’m a huge celebrity, but I’ve had some accomplishments.)
Most days, I’ll stand behind that approach.  But some days, if I’d known what would be involved, I might not have gone down this path.
It’s a performance that I can no longer step away from.  This blog and I are me, and if I deleted my public presence, there would still be forum threads in spaces going, “What the hell did that attention-seeking idiot do now?  I guess he’s trying to make people feel sorry for him.”
I deal.  It’s not for everyone.
In fact, I think it’s not for most.

The Sock Of Mystery

Why is my hand wrapped in a sock that stinks of liquid bandage and acetone?  Why?  Oh, the mystery!
I guess you’ll have to wait until tomorrow to see.  Hint: It has to do with my girlfriend Bec.  And a bit of sympathetic magick.  (It works better if you put the “k” on the end.)

Alcohol, Tobacco, Pot?

A question on Twitter has led me to ask a question here:
What’s the most dangerous drug: alcohol, cigarettes, or pot?
Now, cigarettes kill a lot of people, can’t be denied.  But I’ve read enough to believe the dangers of second-hand smoke are vastly overrated by the anti-smoking factions.  (Though every time I bring this up there’s an escalating link-war between the two sides, and if you feel like doing that go at it in the comments – I won’t partake.)  So what we have here is a drug that kills a lot of people on its own.
On the other hand, alcohol also kills a lot of people – not so much by itself, but by drunk driving and various acts of murder.  Alcohol has more stories per fluid ounce than any other substance, and I think if you take into account alcohol-related crimes and stupidity, alcohol starts skyrocketing.
Pot, on the other hand, has some real cancer risk, and probably causes some accidents from driving (it’s hard to test whether you’re currently high), but I don’t think is all that dangerous.
Then again, it’s hard to say.  Cigarettes can’t be advertised on TV or radio, so the rate of smoking has been decreasing, whereas Superbowl-friendly alcohol gets teens drinking at an early age.  And pot usage is suppressed because, well, it’s illegal.  So you can’t just look at the current rates, you have to look at a complex series of factors that includes related crimes, advertising, and popularity.
Which seems the perfect spot for a fact-free debate in my comments.

I DO Love The French

So Dominique Strauss-Kahn, he of the rape allegations, is now being questioned about his connections with a prostitution ring. And… well, I can only quote Bart Calendar on this one.

….The kicker is that his defense is that he just thought he was being invited into large orgies for wealthy men and the women who want to fuck them.
“He could easily not have known, because as you can imagine, at these kinds of parties you’re not always dressed, and I challenge you to distinguish a naked prostitute from any other naked woman,” his lawyer said.
Can you imagine that being the defense for a political figure in America?

Two More Thoughts On Being Nominated For The Nebulas

1)  I realize how much Clarion changed my concept of “How publishing works” when I think about my new bio:
Nebula-nominated author Ferrett Steinmetz has been published in Asimov’s, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Redstone SF, and Escape Pod, among others….
See, back in the day, I was infuriated because I had a big blog audience (a lot larger than it is now, Itellyawhat) and couldn’t understand why people were rejecting my stories!  After all, I had people I could point at their website!  I had marketshare!  I mean, if my story was decent, my sheer numbers should be a tiebreaker!
What I’ve realized since is that publishing is all about this story, right here, right now.  It doesn’t matter what your credentials; if the story’s not moving you, you don’t want it in your magazine.  You might get more folks coming by, but what they’ll see is that you published a pretty mediocre story, and think poorly of you.  As an editor, Sheila Williams has rejected Nebula-winners lots of times when they don’t deliver on this collection of words.
Hence, my new author bio will make slush readers hesitate in cover letters.  They’ll raise their eyebrows and go, “This has a chance to be really good.”
From there on, though, it’s about the words I put on the goddamned page, and nothing more.
2)  It does make my Illuminati hackles go up when I realize that I know every single one of the people in my category, having either met them or interacted with them online.  Isn’t this proof of the Great Publishing Cabal?  Isn’t this just the evidence that the big awards are all about Who You Know?
Maybe ten years ago, that’d be true.  But the Internet has kind of levelled that off.
Now, thanks to Twitter and Facebook and the CODEX forums and SFWA forums, you can interact with many authors you love.  It’s not necessarily that the sci-fi world is inbred, but rather that if you go to two or three conventions, you’ll get to meet hundreds of talented people… And keep up with them using social media.  I know lots of writers who aren’t on the ballot, too, and I read a lot of short fic so I’ll follow people who’ve impressed me.  The percentages of knowing someone who’s an up-and-comer are high, once you’re sufficiently immersed.
In addition, some much-needed changes to the Nebula awards have made it so that the best stories rise to the top in a Reddit-like fashion.  There was a SFWA-members board where people who liked stories can upvote them anonymously for others’ consideration, and I know I found a couple of my favorites that way.  This is a great change that makes it more story-centered, less author-centered… Which is a good thing.
I dunno.  There’s a lot of young turks on this year’s ballot, and I feel proud to be among this new generation of writers.  It feels like being part of a new wave.  Which, I tell you, is lovely.

So What's It Like To Get Nominated For a Nebula? (Because I HAVE BEEN WHOO)

Well, in my case, you get a call one evening from a SFWA head – for me, it was from Mary Robinette Kowal, who apparently asked to be the one who called me, presumably to hear me squee, which I find endearing.  And she says, “You are a Nebula nominee for Best Novelette for ‘Sauerkraut Station.'”
And then, after you ask, because you must, she tells you, “Yes, I’m serious.”
And then, after the cheering and the high-five with your wife and the dancing, she speaks the most redundant words in the world: “I take it you choose to accept?”
She goes on to congratulate you and tell you that this is secret knowledge, you must not tell anyone until it’s officially announced… or at the very least, keep it off the Internet.  And this is the hardest part of being a Nebula nominee, knowing that you have just gotten the equivalent of an Oscar nomination, and you cannot say a word to anyone.
So of course you call your best writer-friends and swear them to secrecy.  If you’re very lucky, as I am, it turns out that one of your best writer-friends goes “Me too!” and we do our Secret Nebula Dance, and then get even happier when it turns out we’re not competing against each other in the same category.
You probably have a lot of writer-friends at this point, and you start to realize you cannot possibly call them all.  Your wife is calling her friends, random strangers, pigeons in the park.  For sanity’s sake, you set a number of people you will tell: eight people, including relatives.  Then you must stop.
But you cannot stop HINTING.
And you start getting in on this all-too-appropriately nebulous gossip-train, as everyone implies but doesn’t say, and you start to form a sense of who else has gotten this wonderment, because rumors are flying and this person is neither confirming nor denying, and oh my God.
Did you really get nominated?
Three and a half fucking years after you started your writing career, did you make one of your lifetime fucking goals?
Sitting on your laptop is the final draft of the novel that you finished literally half an hour before Mary Robinette called.  You have been wondering for the past month’s of rewrites whether this novel will actually sell.  You think it’ll be easier now.
You wonder how to bring this up with agents. “Hi, I’m Ferrett, and I’m up for a goddamned Nebula.  How you like me now?” probably would not be well-reviewed on Query Shark.
You wonder whether this is real, but thankfully Mary left a voicemail to call her, so you can listen to that whenever the reality fades.
Your weekend is weird, because there’s this constant knowledge of Nebula.  You’re part of history now.  You have a date where you promised to read your girlfriend Bec one of your favorite stories, and you’ve chosen Deathbird, by Harlan Ellison.  Which, as you pick up the book, you realize was nominated for the Nebula for Best Novelette in 1973.
The same category you’re in.
You’re in science fiction history.  A footnote, most likely; you don’t think you’ll win.  But whatever happens to you, from now on, there’s a list of nominees in Nebula history, and your name will be on that for – well, probably as long as science fiction writing is around.  You’ve become legend – maybe a tiny legend in terms of “Who’s that guy?”, but somewhere, your name’s in the massive credits scroll of science fiction.
That’s crazy.
And you think, I’m not that good a writer.  Followed by, You can’t say that any more.  To say you’re a bad writer is to crap all over the wonderful people who loved Sauerkraut Station so much that they nominated it despite the fact that you did minimal campaigning – people loved something you wrote that they remembered it at the end of the year. To say that you’re a bad writer is a slap in the faces of those lovely folks who blogged, Twittered, and Facebooked you, and now it’s time to step away from that shit.
Truth is, I’m not the best writer.  I still have a long way to go.  I can, and will, get better. But today, I hit a marker I never really expected to see, and to say I’m bad is to say the Nebulas are bad.  So today, I’m at least a decent writer.  That’s as far as my self-esteem will let me.  Don’t argue overmuch, I’ve been arguing with Poor Self-Esteem longer than you have.  That’s a pretty big step for him.
To everyone who loved the story: thank you.  Thank you for making this happen.

The Novel Of Doom: VANQUISHED.

The heap you see here is the last pages of the fifth and final edit of my Novel of Doom. It is now complete and ready for me to start shopping it.
If you were kind enough to come with me on last Summer’s Clarion Write-A-Thon, where I live-wrote the first draft, you may note that this is now the fifth draft.  About a third of the scenes have been rewritten, with completely new ones put in.  Characterization has been improved.  More description to make it more visual has been stuffed in.  A few additional subplots have been added. If you read the first draft, I think you’ll find it quite edifying to see the difference between first and final.
And in the past three weeks, I’ve gone through and yanked 15% of the words out, bringing it down to a lean, mean 89.5k.
(I’ve suffered from the Death Flu, but by happy coincidence I did most of the heavy lifting scribbling on pages, noting what emotional notes to add to what scenes, overviews of new dialog, and so forth.  So when I’ve been stuck in my house muzzy and stupid, I simply followed the directions I’d given myself one page at a time, flinging it to the other side of the couch when done, and then 10% Solutioned it a chapter at a time.)
So, barring some last-minute proofreadings provided by my helpful assistant jenphalian, this is the finalized novel.  I have to take a break, now, and then start reading up on query letters and Synopses That Sell! and all the other crap that comes with finding an agent.  Which is going to be a scary process, made a little scarier by some other factors I can’t get into now but will probably end up helping.
But right now?  That’s a full novel.  Sixteen months of effort.  And it is done.