And We Shall March

Hampton / Holding

“She called me in and said, ‘You’ve got a choice, dear, now,’ ” Mr. Hampton recalled. “ ‘You can write this play over and over again for the next 40 years, and it’ll probably get a little better. Or you can do something completely different.’ And I said, ‘Well, I’m thinking of writing a play about the extermination of the Brazilian Indians.’ And that set my course, really — which was to start again, every time.”

Heh.

People, THIS Is What I Have To Put Up With. Every. Day.

Blog's on autopilot for most of this month while I'm busy elsewhere, giving me an opportunity to clear out posts that have been held hostage in the drafts bin for one reason or another.
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This is what the keyboard looks like from where I sit.

It's either wiggle my hands under him (fortunately I don't need to see the keyboard to type), or shove him to another part of the desk (which means risking the complicated piles of papers), or pick him up and throw him onto the couch. The problem with the couch option is blah opens to round of ! yay it's the throw me on the couch so I can bounce and run back so you can throw me on the couch which means i get to bounch run back and have you throw me on the couch again because you know what i could do this all day !

I fucking hate that game.

I was hoping that the pillow I made him out of his fave blanket would help, it did a bit, until he decided he liked his home perch better. He's like this with the sewing machine, too.

Sometimes I can get him to center, occasionally I can get him to sit on my lap while I'm working, as PsychoKitty used to do, but if he's on my lap and not being petted, he whines. If you've ever heard a Himalayan whine, imagine that for three hours straight. If you've never heard a Himalayan whine, then think of the cutest yet most irritating baby you know. What that baby sounds like when hungry? That's what this cat sounds like when he whines.

Yes, that's a keyboard attached to the laptop.  This is because the keyboard on the laptop stopped working for no reason other than All Tech Hates Me, and it went down  So I grabbed . Thing is, I *love* this shiny keyboard! It's quiet, it feels good to lam, it's pretty. The only downside is bbb so I've got to get a skin for it. I'm also not too sure it can take extended hammering.  Some people have lead feet, I have lead fingers.

Goonan, a.k.a. The Author of 'In War Times' Makes With The Blog

Excuse the drive by posting, but Kathleen Ann Goonan has actually started posting on her blog! Go looky.

Okay, back to rewriting these damned sonnets. God I hate writing poetry.

If What This Guy Is Saying Is An Accurate Summary Of Events, English Majors Everywhere Should Run For Their Lives

Foreign producers of Shakespeare like Groß and Wilms evidently don't find his work alien to their own experience, and, given the popularity of the plays around the world, the same may be said of theater audiences everywhere. As far as I can tell, the only people intent on questioning the timelessness of Shakespeare's plays today are literature professors in the English-speaking world. In recent decades it has become increasingly fashionable among Shakespeare scholars to deny that there is anything intrinsically great or universal in his plays. They view Shakespeare as a product of the narrow horizons of his own day, and label him a distinctly English phenomenon. Indeed his greatness is often treated as a cultural construct, something invented or even manufactured in England. His plays are said to be the product of a culture industry, which first imposed his works on England, then on the English-speaking world, and finally on the whole globe, as if he were a skillfully marketed commodity, the Guinness Stout of the Renaissance.

In this view, Shakespeare is the ultimate Dead White European Male. He was canonized by the cultural establishment of England and then used to impose English values around the world (especially throughout the British Empire). In their efforts to cut Shakespeare down to size, and find something contingent, even arbitrary, in his reputation, Shakespeare scholars sometimes speak as if the cultural establishment could have taken any one of his contemporaries—say, Ben Jonson or Thomas Middleton—and through clever packaging and marketing built him into the world's most famous poet. Talk about biting the hand that feeds you! The only reason the general public pays attention to Shakespeare scholars is for their help in understanding his greatness, and yet some of them are now actively engaged in debunking that greatness as a cultural myth.

Since outsiders may have trouble believing that the literary critical establishment is so cavalierly shooting itself in the foot, I need to quote some examples.

I dunno. For all this 'active debunking' he's rallying against, the cited examples  seem a bit dated. A book published in '95, another in '92, a conference in '91... Something is fishy about this piece (even as it reminds Us of one of our Favorite Sites Ever). I'll read this again when I have time.

Shh! Mat Johnson Is Speaking

Hey, remember the guy behind the upcoming Vertigo book Incognegro? Well, he wrote an essay about self-publishing over at his home port of Niggerati Manor. Here's a small excerpt:

And at the end of that four years, I would probably have several books, having written them in a month or two to expand my product line. And with no real time for craft and my attention completely focused on the market, each would have sucked roughly as much as the first one. Having spent the bulk of my energy on the commerce instead of the art, I would have remained the same shitty writer I was when I started. The moment I chose to self-publish, I would have ceased to make substantial growth. I would have virtually calcified.

For the love of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, click on that link and read it. Share it with your friends. He's focus is on issues of blackitude, but what he's saying applies across the vast wasteland of self-publishing, I think.

An explainer, as I've come to understand I need to do at times because of the crossover here, self-publishing in comics is a different beast than self-publishing in prose. Though equal amounts of crap come out of both, it is 'more okay', philosophically, to self-publish in comics than it is to do the same in prose. Why that is is complicated and I'm not about to attempt to get into it.

Because When It Comes Right Down To It, Eventually You Are Going To Die. Yes, YOU.

Which is why if you are a creator, no matter what medium is your chosen form, you should make specific provisions for what happens to your intellectual property once you have gone gently into that night which is alleged to be good.

In the wake of the passing of his friend John M. Ford, Gaiman tapped a lawyer friend of his to create a template will that also covers your creative estate after death.  An excerpt from Gaiman's post:

He's not the first writer I know who didn't think to take care of his or her posthumous intellectual property. For example, I knew a writer -- a great writer -- separated from and estranged from his wife during the last five years of his life. He died without making a will, and his partner, who understood and respected his writing, was shut out, while his wife got the intellectual property, and has not, I think, treated it as it should have been treated. These things happen, and they happen too often.

There are writers who blithely explain to the world that they didn't make a will because they don't mind who gets their jeans and old guitar when they die but who would have conniptions if they realised how much aggravation their books or articles or poems or songs would cause their loved ones (or editors, anthologists or fans) after their death...

Clicky above. Read the whole post. Download the downloadable bit. Act. We don't think about these things, but as the man said, we should.

Because the internet(s) are vast and wide and not everyone spends their lives exploring its tubes, if you have a creator friend/loved one in your life who will probably never stumble across this FREE template created by an actual lawyer, send them an email to Gaiman's post alerting them. Or call them and read the important bits to them. Or print out the template, write a cover letter, and mail it to them.

And if they respond along the lines of 'nobody cares about my stuff,' remind them of the words of one of the Great Ones: Nobody Knows Anything. It's no secret that sometimes creators suddenly become valuable once they're dead, irregardless of their profile during life. Whomever is left grieving does not need to deal with that morass. A little consideration now will make that person's life easier down the road. This is a kindness you are in a position to provide while alive.

I think the only difficult part in the template is trying to figure out who should be given control over your creative estate. It's a lot of responsibility, and in some ways, a significant burden. Lots of trust involved. Lots of responsibilities handed over. This person would have to be someone who knows you well enough to know what you would want. Common sense warns that a true heart conversation or two would have to be held with the person you identify BEFORE you fill out their name on a legal document of this type. Just putting that out there. The devil is in the details, after all.

To Quote Al Swearengen: @$#%^^%#$#%%$

What happens when you're behind on going through the lis emails? What happens is you miss the notice about this that was sent out weeks ago!

Wed, Nov 01, 7 PM
David Milch
Deadwood: Stories of the Black Hills

In conversation with William Deverell, Director, Huntington-USC Institute on California and the West 

The creator/executive producer and cast members of HBO’s “Deadwood” discuss the themes and motivations that run through the series – gold, Custer, betrayal, profanity – and the remarkable accidents of history that created the wildest town in the West.     

The only way I can express my extreme disappointment is here.

I suppose it's for the best. There's probably going to be spoilers, and I'm still on season two.

My Friends Find The Bestest Things On The Internet(s)

Only the graph below landed in the inbox, with a challenge to guess who it was describing. I was not given the link to the full article until I emailed back my guess. I'm going to be nice and give a link to the whole thing now. But don't click on it until you get to the end and have made a guess as to who this is describing, okay?

He was also frightened of invertebrates, marine life in general, temperatures below freezing, fat people, people of other races, race-mixing, slums, percussion instruments, caves, cellars, old age, great expanses of time, monumental architecture, non-Euclidean geometry, deserts, oceans, rats, dogs, the New England countryside, New York City, fungi and molds, viscous substances, medical experiments, dreams, brittle textures, gelatinous textures, the color gray, plant life of diverse sorts, memory lapses, old books, heredity, mists, gases, whistling, whispering—the things that did not frighten him would probably make a shorter list.

It's funny because it's true!! I read it over and again throughout the rest of the afternoon, giggling every time. Somebody should make this graph into a T-shirt or coffee mug. The entire article is most excellent and worth a read, if you're interested. (Though there is a bit I fundamentally disagree with when it comes to the supposed weaknesses of the man's settings and the vagries of his descriptions.)

The minute I hit "non-Euclidean geometry" I started screaming with laughter, startling the co-worker who happened to be walking past the cubicle. She didn't think it was so funny, though. I launched into an explainer, but when her eyes started glazing over I remembered the gulf between Geek and Mundane and managed to make myself shut up.

More On Clarion East Moving To San Diego

You know, every time I say I'm going into radio silence for a bit something comes up and I have to zip back.  The inbox is bursting with several pointers to a note by Jim Shea, director of constituent relations for UC San Diego. He's directly responding to this post, which is nice to see as I was growing a tad weary of the Response By Proxy that had been rolling in over the past few weeks:

Yes, we are putting in place a Creative Writing MFA program. Yes, we see Clarion as a wonderful adjunct to that, because creative writers feed off fellow creative writers the same way our neuroscientists feed off the other neuroscientists floating around campus and around the Torrey Pines Mesa. It's the nature of knowledge and learning, it feeds off itself. But we want the Clarion Workshop for what it is and what it always has been: because it's the best sf/f writing workshop in the nation. There's nothing nefarious behind it, unless chasing excellence is nefarious.

The second issue the post raises is money -- something I know about, since I'm managing the fundraising process for the Clarion Workshop. The post notes what a terrible time this is for higher education funding in California, and, pointing to our commitments on scholarship funding and on program funding, wonders whether -- once our five-year commitment is up -- we'll pull a "Godfather" and ask for something in return for everything we've put into the program from our own resources.

If you care about the Clarion situation, clicky above to read the whole thing. If you don't,  worry not. We'll probably be returning to All Transformers Movie All The Time shortly. (I'm still in need of that countdown clock, by the way.)

Thank you all for the heads-up. I'm going to have more to say about this, just not immediately due to issues of Busy. I *might* include with that a response to the collection of  "how dare you/how can you be so mean/what have you done giving you the right to say anything/how can you question (insert collection of names of high profile Foundation board members here, along with list of their works and/or awards) " notes that were part of the reaction to my first set of thoughts on the move. TO BE COMPLETELY CLEAR, none of that type of note came from anyone on the Foundation board. Those notes are presumably from people who have not noticed or do not care that we do not have a genre press that serves needs beyond hype. So  I'm thinking about explaining How Dare I to them, and why I don't view sharing concerns in public as an act of tribal betrayal. But as the Clarion move and our puff-prone press are separate issues, I'm thinking I shouldn't conflate the two... Still toying with the idea, though. Either way, more later.

Oh! To those who provided a pointer with well-meaning snark, appreciated, but please find something else to be upset about. I think his link to the alternative history explainer is funny.

Meanwhile, back to stealth mode for a few days. No, really. I mean it this time.

Yeah, So We're Not Going To Be Around Much This Week, Either

Sorry. More stuff that Needs Must than available time to pull it off.  It's happened before, it will happen again.

Meanwhile, I offer up this excerpt of Collateral -- script by Stuart Beattie, directed by Michael  Mann (don't ask me how many times I've watched Heat. No, really. It's up there with why you should not ask me why why Grendel should have kicked Batman's ass unless you  have a LOT of time on your hands) --  brought to you by the latest Existential Crisis to hit BGF Central. Because all of life's questions can be answered in pop culture!

                    VINCENT
Your business "plan?" Someday?
"Someday my dream'll come..."?

(beat)

And one night you'll wake up and
discover it all flipped on you.
Suddenly you're old. And it didn't
happen. And it never will. 'Cause
you were never going to do it, anyway.
The dream on the horizon became
yesterday and got lost. Then you'll
bullshit yourself, it could never have
been, anyway. And you'll recede it
into memory...and zone out in a
Barcalounger with daytime TV on for
the rest of your life...

(beat)

Don't talk to me about killing.
You're do-in' yourself. In this
yellow-and-orange prison. Bit by bit.
Every day.

EXTREMELY CLOSE: Max is soaking up every word.

                VINCENT (CONT'D)
All it ever took was a down payment on
a Lincoln Town Car. What the hell are
you still doing in a cab?

Normal service will probably resume later this week.