#ursula k le guin: conversations on writing

[bigcats-birds-and-books]

Books of 2023: CONVERSATIONS ON WRITING by Ursula K. Le Guin with David Naimon.

Currently dual wielding books, over here--I've never really been big on reading two different fiction books at once, but I can pair fiction with nonfiction just fine.

I haven't read as much nonfiction as I'd hoped to this year (overcorrecting from last year, apparently), so I'm excited to get back into some Writers Writing about Writing stuff while I cool off of my current project before I gear up for NaNo. This one starts with "In Memoriam," though, so I suspect it'll probably break my heart a little bit. This is Fine™.

[exoexid]

i won't let anyone tell me ever again that my history degree is useless. i won't allow anyone to say that humanistic and social sciences don't count under capitalism, and aren't able to help us all """progress""", or bring significant changes to our reality. we are seeing the roots of the "no one of us can be free until everybody is free" quote (thank you maya angelou!!), and how it all comes down to learning and studying and listening to our past and the people all around the world affected by a (western established) multifaceted system that is failing now more than ever because thanks to social media and the global connection it's giving to all of us it cannot look away anymore. a system (and its enablers) that slowly but surely are being exposed and forced to take responsibility in such a impactful and inescapable domino effect.

you start by reading about i/p and then you find yourself reading and informing yourself about yemen. about the ethnocide of the uyghurs. about armenia. about sudan and tigray and the congo. about why namibia is responding to germany. about south africa, and about the numerous human rights violations north american first nations have been suffering for centuries (about the residential schools, about how many reserves don't have clean drinking water...). about thousands of refugee camps and dangerous migrations and why people risk their lives to cross the mediterranean.

it all comes down to caring, even if just a little bit, about things that happened not too long ago actually. in history terms some of them practically happened yesterday. it's beautiful to see so many people fighting for justice and for a better future, but that can only be achieved if we know our past. one of our uni professors used to tell us that we don't study history because of that saying about how a society that doesn't know its past is condemned to repeat it, but because the day might come in which someone might try to deny a fact or event that definitely happened and definitely affected some group of people, and we have to be able to identify it and correct it. we have to be able to identify if oppressive tactics of any kind are being established and pushed again, even if they aren't exactly as they used to be (because they never are) to stop them. we are here thanks to our ancestors, and we owe it to them. we cannot, we mustn't forget.

[annabelle--cane]

not to say that people are wrong necessarily for resisting positive statements about "women's intuition" or whatever, but it feels disingenuous to try and have serious conversations about the binary of "thought vs feeling" in the context of gender politics without bringing in how epistemologies of rationalism have historically been constructed to only validate the knowledge claims of oppressor classes, or the ways in which prominent black feminist writers have been extensively engaging in conversations about afrocentric feminist epistemologies for decades. and I realize this reads a bit like a gender studies word salad but a lot of writing already exists on this topic and I feel like a lot of people could stand to read some audre lorde or patricia hill collins before forming a hot take based on one annoying post and a paragraph or two of ursula k le guin.

[earlgraytay]

@fierceawakening -- I think wrt the Ursula K. Le Guin quote, you might be getting hung up on some of her wording and missing what she's actually trying to convey?

The thing she's trying to get across is not "people shouldn't take joy in writing things other people have written before".

The thing she's trying to say is "it's really fucking annoying to be having a literary conversation where you are saying interesting things, and then to watch someone else get lauded for saying the most basic, baby-level version of those things because they've never taken part in your conversation."

Like, the example I'd give if I was talking about the phenomenon would be The Book Thief by Markus Zusak. (A book which I read and liked.)

In 2005, when The Book Thief came out, critics were salivating over it because it was a literary novel with Death as a Major Sympathetic Character. They thought it was fascinating that Death didn't quite understand humans but told their stories anyway! ..... and like, the thing is, is that they're not wrong? But also, SF/F authors had been using the conceit of The Grim Reaper As A Major (Sympathetic) Character since bare minimum the 'late 80s at that point, and many influential sf/f authors even characterized Death in a similar way.

I know you don't like Pratchett, but he'd been writing this stuff since the late 80s. Gaiman and Piers Anthony had been doing a similar schtick for a similar amount of time. They were already having a conversation about what Death might look like as a sympathetic major character. Some folks had more to add to that conversation than others (Anthony in particular wasn't saying anything particuarly mature about it...), but they were already having a conversation. And the critics mostly ignored that conversation, because it was happening in SF/F and therefore was intellectually bankrupt, right? RIGHT????

None of those authors could have or would have written The Book Thief, and that story deserves the critical acclaim it got. It's a damn good book. Parts of it will haunt me forever. ...But it deserved to get critical acclaim for how it added to the conversation. And at the time, critics were treating it like it was the start of the literary conversation of Death As A Major Sympathetic Character. It wasn't, by a long shot.

That's what she's complaining about. That's why she compares it to restaurant critics effusively praising buttered toast. It's not that people shouldn't be able to find innocent joy in writing Babby's First SF/F; it's that authors and critics who knee-jerk rejected SF/F were treating "literary" stories that were effectively Babby's First SF/F like they were starting brand new literary conversations, with the kind of innocent glee you'd expect from someone who'd just invented an entire genre.

She's salty and tired of having her work taken less seriously by people who don't know anything about the conversation folks in her field were already having.

[camlannpod]

i’ve just discovered this and it’s the greatest thing i’ve ever seen

other than folklore, what inspired you to create the podcast?

Oh gosh thank you!!!! I - Ella - am a queer English woman who's moved about 34 times in 30 years. I grew up in Australia and Hong Kong, as well as both the South and North of England. As a result I grew up with a really complicated sense of identity. I'm a white English woman - the closest I could find to any coherent culture at first glance was just...Imperialism. And I have to live with the reality of that - the responsibility, the legacy, and the fact that I personally benefit from British Imperialism. But it's not a culture.

So I dug deeper. There is a British culture, and an English culture, that pre-dates British Imperialism and was deliberately destroyed and concealed from working class English people by wealthy imperialists in order to create the myth of the English empire. King Arthur was Welsh! And Early English cultures worked with and respected early medieval Welsh and Scottish scholars and kings. The culture of the British Isles has always been a conversation between these nations - a conversation interrupted and sullied by English, imperialist violence and propaganda.

I think that all of us, always, have a choice - in our actions, our words, and how we choose to construct our identities. I think that constructing an identity is a fraught, scary, emotional thing. I also think it is so important to imagine ourselves as kind, complex, and engaged with the communities that raised us as well as our cultural neighbours - both near and far.

I'm not sure whether this answers your question. Ursula K Le Guin once said that if she could summarise why she had written a book in one sentence, she wouldn't have had to write a book about it. Sometimes I feel like that with Camlann - it's so full of love, and me, and everything I've thought and felt in the past ten years - that it's really hard to distill it down to specifics. But I hope this is helpful, and thank you very much for the lovely message.

[nkjemisin]

Things in my ask box #2

Got a new one for the “questions that might catch the poster some flak” bin. The poster asks, “What were you thinking when you wrote ‘The Ones Who Stay and Fight?’“ There was more to the question, but that’s what it boils down to (and I did clarify with the ask-er that this is what they wanted to know most).

I don’t generally like to discuss readers’ interpretations of my stories. Art is subjective, and what one person loves another might loathe, sometimes for the exact same reasons. Also, half the time I don’t even know what I’m doing; sometimes I don’t notice a theme in my work until years later when a reviewer mentions it, or I re-read it long after publication. My mind works in mysterious ways, even to me. But since you asked what I was thinking and not to confirm/deny a particular interpretation, I’ll try to explain.

(First, for those who haven’t read it, Ursula K. Le Guin’s “The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas” is her most famous short story, and probably one of the most famous short stories in the world. There’s a whole subgenre of responses to it, because it provokes such powerful reactions in readers, and I’m no exception. [I’m a huge fan of Le Guin, if you didn’t know from me screaming about her to anyone who would listen for like 10 years now.] If you haven’t read the story, you should; it’s probably available somewhere online. There are a million ways to interpret the story, and if you poke around for reviews or lit crit analyses you’ll find feminist readings, anti-capitalist readings, mythopoeic/folklorist readings, and more. My story does not make sense if you haven’t read her story; it functions solely in conversation with Le Guin’s. Think of it as fanfic, if that helps.)

I’m not a literary scholar and I don’t pretend to be, but I’ve always leaned into the anti-capitalist reading of “Omelas.” Anybody who’s reading this in the developed world is already living in Omelas. Every time we buy a pair of Nikes, we’re contributing to sweatshops, child labor, migration crises, pollution... our own version of the abused child locked in a cellar. No ethical consumption under capitalism. Also, I lean anti-capitalist with “Omelas” because I think often of this quote by Le Guin:

“We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable. So did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings. Resistance and change often begin in art, and very often in our art, the art of words.”

Bad. Ass. I want to be her when I grow up.

That said, when I decided to respond to this as a writer -- by writing back to it -- I was more interested in anti-racist readings of Omelas. Those interpretations don’t seem to be as popular, but at the time I wrote my story, I was trying to process the absolute bombardment of open racism and every other kind of bigotry that seemed to be metastasizing in the wake of Trump’s election. I pondered the world that these people seemed to want:  a world of war and endless suffering, doomed to end in extinction for us all (tho some believe Jesus or Jeff Bezos will whisk them away before things get too bad). I wondered what it would take to come back from that world, if we went down that path but managed to survive as a species. So to my mind, Omelas works well as a metaphor for conservatives’ (and fascists’) endless fantasies of the world that was, in which everything was wonderful before the “corruptions” of liberalism destroyed it -- corruptions like equality, diversity, intellectualism, religious freedom, and democracy. This is the “again” that the “make America great...” people embrace -- a “better” world that never existed. We all know that in the 1950s, there were plenty of kids in cellars, worse than today: BIPOC kids, queer kids, disabled kids, poor kids. If America’s wealthy and powerful get what they want, they will get to live in a utopian fantasy; the rest of us go in the cellar.

The society these people want is one that further-codifies the idea that some people are lesser. Some people aren’t as fully people, basically, and therefore don’t deserve rights, basic necessities, compassion, or life. Therefore I decided to make my “utopia” (scare quotes because, like Omelas, Um-Helat really isn’t) an anti-bigoted society, which has instead chosen to codify the idea that no one is lesser. Instead of its happiness depending on limited oppression, I wanted my “utopia” to depend on limited suppression of that insidious idea.

Suppression is no better than oppression, by the way. We’re used to oppression, so maybe it doesn’t seem so bad... to some. But both ways of maintaining these not-quite-utopias require harm to be done to some for the benefit of others. Omelas chose to limit the harm to a random child, and to a lesser degree to all its citizens, who must morally compromise themselves in order to enjoy their lives. Um-Helat chooses to limit the harm to those who’ve internalized some people are lesser -- the intolerant, per Karl Popper’s paradox of tolerance -- and to the “social workers,” who must morally compromise themselves in order for the other citizens of Um-Helat to thrive. I was also playing with the idea that there’s nowhere to walk away to. Imperialism and capitalism have made pretty much the whole world Omelas, in real life. So how does any society grapple with its own complicity with evil? Omelas is better off than our own world, and Um-Helat, because people can walk away, there.

It’s entirely possible that I failed to do what I tried to do with this story -- first because I tried to do so much. “Omelas” is a deceptively simple argument with deep, complex points being made; my attempt to answer had to cover a lot of territory. Second because Le Guin was a master of the short form, while I’m pretty much a dabbler, and third because this was also my first time trying pastiche, and it probably shows. But I believe in shooting my literary shot, hit or miss, and I’m glad that I did. It turned out better than I expected.

So that’s what I was thinking. ☺️

[starghost-fics]

I should have posted this already, but for a minute I completely forgot about everything other than sewing and [redacted writing project].

Chapter 21: In which Ted comes over to talk to Trent, and some cookies are completely forgotten. Sorry—biscuits.

commentary below the cut

(slaps lid of this chapter) this bad boy can fit so many abridged conversations about emotional issues in it

throughout this fic, there have been moments when i picture an expression on ted's face and think "god damn you, jason sudeikis, how am i supposed to put that look into words"

those puppy-dog eyes, those eyebrows

how is trent supposed to argue with a man with big, brown eyes? that is why he didn't want to let Ted come over. whatever you say, beautiful.

to repeat, because it's that important: the book that Ted mentions, about deserving, is Ursula K. Le Guin's The Dispossessed, which I adore more than most other books.

one might say i'm forcing this particular reference

but i can so clearly see one of the library ladies (mentioned in the Ted side-scenes) handing him a stack of Le Guin, maybe after he mentions A Wrinkle in Time

and Ted latching onto that particular idea so hard that it becomes part of his being

it takes him quite a long time to apply the idea to himself, but for now he's very busy making sure everyone around him knows they are free of deserving or not deserving

anyway they're all kissy-face now! what could the next chapter possibly hold

[sleepysera]

"Starting out, I was able to place a poem every now and then--in one of the little tiny poetry magazines--eight or nine readers--but at least I was in print. But I couldn't sell any fiction. For six or seven years I was methodically writing short stories and novels, trying to place them, and getting nowhere. Got lots of nice rejection slips.

The fact is, I was committed to being a writer, to my writing, and I had a self-confidence or arrogance that carried me through. 'I am going to do it, and I'm going to do it my way.' I stuck to that. And bang, I finally broke through. I sold two stories in one week, one to a commercial magazine and one to a little literary magazine. Once the door cracks open, it seems to stay open."

-Ursula K. Le Guin, Conversations on Writing (2018)

[roseofbattles]

This has become something of a tradition at this point so ten good things that have happened this year/things I'm proud of!

Greatest Hits of 2023

1. TRAVEL. I went a lot of cool places this year which after the last few years felt like a big deal. Highlights were a trip to Boston with a group of old friends, and a trip to NYC with a group of new friends 💗

2. I got a lot closer to my reading goal with 41 books this year - if I finish the book I'm currently reading before the end of the year. I really loved reading The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K Le Guin and The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller.

3. My garden has done great this year - that's the best part of where I live in California 100% is that I can grow things year round. I picked more tomatoes this week and am growing so many other things.

4. A lot of writing happened this year - less fanfic and a lot more original work. I'm hoping to finish the first draft of my novel in 2024. I'm really proud of what I've accomplished with it so far - it's my longest piece so far at ~75k words

5. I tried a lot of new recipes this year with a lot of success! Cooking is something I love but struggle to do for myself so it's been really helpful cooking virtually with a friend every other week. Favorites included: 20 minute creamy sausage and gnocchi and coconut curry chicken meatballs I also made Yor's stew which was delicious!

6. I sent a lot of letters this year! I've always loved to but I made a concerted effort to send more this year. It's always a joy to hear when someone gets one, or getting one back. (If anyone wants a pen pal lmk ;))

7. My Spanish has improved! I knew virtually no Spanish when I moved to California but I'm able to have basic conversation with my coworkers now which is very exciting. Learning a second language has been a goal of mine for a long time and being around people who speak another language every day is definitely helping me practice.

8. Saw two new musicals: Le Mis and Hadestown (I know I'm one hundred years late to Le Mis) but I had forgotten how nice it was to see live performances like that. Both were incredible

9. Lots of time with new friends and old this year was a highlight; having people visit from out of state and also over to play board games

10. Survived a lot of bad things! Including a terrible roommate and a lot of stress related to that. That's been a huge improvement.

Bonus: something I'm hoping 2024 brings is more rest, and more time with the people I love 💞 This year has been simultaneously endless and over in a blink and it's been a very exhausting one, emotionally and mentally. I'm very grateful for all of my friends and family and also my cat, who is the best cat

Tagging anyone who would like to participate and also @lantur @firewoodfigs @nightofnyx8 @x-rainflame-x @fullmetalscullyy @janetfraiser @possumsinatrenchcoat @smoothshine @thatisadamnfinecupofcoffee @musing-and-music and @littlewitchbee if any of you would like!

[folklorist-word-florist]

An Overlook on Pacing

SO, pacing! The element that can break or make your story! :D

As we are talking about writing here, we are talking about the speed of your story: the speed of the events unfolding, AND the speed of how the events are told to the reader. E.g. You can have a story that happens in a thousand years, told in the same number of pages of a story that takes place in ten minutes. The first speed is about pacing the plot, do you rely on exposition to world-build? On dialogue? On descriptions of setting or action? The latter is about the pacing of your prose, how you construct your sentences, where you place—and how frequently—action and dialogue, exposition and inflection.

Plot and structure

First we have to acknowledge pacing is interlinked with genre. Different genres have different conventions due to audience expectations. Pacing both depends and determines the genre. And as one writer might write a space opera today, and a contemporary character study tomorrow, so their pacing would change.

My opinion is that there's no good pacing, only the right pacing--for your story. Want to drag a kiss into two pages long? Do it, but with intention, which comes with due diligence on studying different types of story structure. The most useful writing advice I got on this is Ursula K. Le Guin's two-word wisdom:

Crowd, Leap; which event serves best in lengthy detail, which can and should be a sweeping impression. This requires some planning ahead of time, so all-panster might feel a bit 😬 here. I will put a post together on panster-planster-planner later. For now, I say for panster, write all the scenes the way they are coming to you right now, as much and as quickly as you can. You can sort the event pacing in editing.

A recommendation you might have heard ad nauseam: Blake Snyder's Save the Cat beat sheet. Like any plot structure studies, take a look, apply it to the story you love, see how they worked or not worked, and take notes on how that might serve your own writing. 

Save the Cat Beat Sheet Template  •  Infographic

Stories exist with a paradoxical preposition: what we read is past tense by the nature of writing and reading, yet many, especially genre fiction writers, strive to provide the sense that the unfolding of events occurs in front of the reader's eyes; there, the sense of wonder, suspense, or urgency. Even with in flashback of The Bad Thing Hundred Winters Ago, the story moves forward because we get a clue of why something is happening/going to happen now or why/how the characters are the way they are, etc..

(Note I did not say "plot," only "story." Because Story is more than just what happened, but how what happened and where what happened and why what happened.)

Everything you put on the page should be thoughtfully curated. Every scene and each word has your own reason for why it's exactly where it is—a process that takes time and practice and critique, but trust that it'll come:)

This leads to the other part of pacing: controlling the flow, thus (attempting to) control how your readers think and feel about the story.

Save the Cat! website has many beat sheet analysis of popular movies that can be helpful in understanding how to apply the principles.

Musicality

Stories work in forward motion, pulling readers along with them. Sometimes the motion is fast, action-packed and no breathing room, like what the story character is experiencing; sometimes the motion is slow, maybe to mimic a sense of conversational tone, writer to reader, or to create the agony of suspense.

The gradations of these motions are no accidents: again, intention. Be aware of how your placement of descriptive writing, dialogue, beats, the rhythm of your sentences might change the reader's perception of time. And rhythm is in every word in every language (multi-lingo people, like yours truly, might notice how this affect the way you like your sentence constructed and use it to create a style true to you).

In short, longer words/sentences/paragraphs=slowing down. shorter words/sentences/paragraphs=speed up. There should be a balanced combination of acceleration and deceleration. Usually this is combined with story beats (action scene is followed with reaction scene, give the readers breathing room and create anticipation for next action).

An advice to combat writer's block I got when I first started writing was "Read poetry out loud."

Read anything out loud. Books from writers you like, song lyrics, your own writing. Get a feel of the shape of how the words are put together. This great advice does have an obvious deficit, ofc, in requiring the advisee possessing hearing and speech ability (and a deeper connection to them both; some people are just more visual, then it can be the length of sentences and paragraph on paper that matters). Anyone here who are writing hearing-impaired would like to chime in, we would be very grateful.

[blysse-and-blunder]

In lieu of a making a comeback

11:45pm Sunday, June 18, 2023

Went through my drafts folder today, scrolling quickly past all the posts I’ve saved for when I’ve finally finished succession and found that the last time I drafted a commonplace book post was back in early May? I may post that one later—it’s a bit of a time capsule now, and isn’t even fully finished (hence why I saved it rather than posting). but rather than wait for perfection—my lesson of the year it seems—I’ll dash off a short one here. for my own entertainment, which of course is the point.

[no read more on mobile; scroll or press J to skip]

Reading just started victoria goddard’s bee sting cake, the second book in the greenwing & dart series. jemis’ narrative voice sounds a little too much like fitzroy’s — exacerbating my prejudice against first-person narration where the pov character just kinda sounds like the author’s mouthpiece—but seeing more of ragnor bella, this area of the twelve kingdoms, these references to the Interim and the Last Emperor, remains delightful. Also about 80% of the way through ursula k. le guin’s a wizard of earthsea for the very first time, which has been a slow because I’m absolutely savoring it. one of those books that feels like it’s in conversation with Tolkien but goes about ‘let’s make magic literary’ in a totally different way.

watching the aforementioned succession. @hematiterings and I were doing a rewatch (for me; her first time) and we have now gotten up to season 4 episode 3, You Know the One, which means that there’s only one more episode before I’m in new territory. it’s been a really rewarding rewatch, even as I’ve been doing laptop work the whole time—I’m understanding characters’ relationships and the stakes of different decisions and events so much better than I did the first time.

listening for some reason this week and last I have not been able to get enough of Hildegard von Blingen’s bardcore covers. Specifically the cover of taylor swift’s willow, which is not a song I knew, cared about, or really even noticed before now? But it the bardcore cover elevates it so well? hildegard’s voice is so lovely? one of those sopranos I usually don’t quite believe are real—just a pleasure to listen to. bad romance and holding out for a hero have been on repeat as well, and pumped up kicks (buskin boots!) is so much more interesting than the original, but willow has been the one I actively searched by name.

playing d+d campaign one tonight for the first time since FEBRUARY. it was good! we laughed! R tried to seduce a jaguar! we might be starting a schism in a fantasy meso-american religion or possibly playing the ball game to avoid that! we won’t be able to play again until late July, early august! The real boss fight is—has always been—scheduling.

making look at this dining room chair I glued back together.

No after pictures yet but it was clamped for a few days and has now been back in use with no ill effects since…gosh, last weekend? so we’ll count that as a win.

working on between finishing my most recent slog of grading (32 review assignments, which I spent waaaaaay too long on out of an anxiety of needin to help them revise for their final portfolios) and the next round of grading (final exams for 385 are due…thursday, possibly? and portfolios Friday, though I expect I get many either late or with extension requests, my fault entirely), I think I have to write at least one job app for June 30 and. maybe try to slap some new stuff into ch 2. or conference paper? hm.

[gabessquishytum]

Ten Books to Know Me By!

Tagged by @honeyteacakes! I really loved your list of books, I saw the scarlet pimpernel on there and did a happy scream!

1. Little Women - Louisa May Alcott

This was a formative book for me throughout my childhood and adolescence. I must have read it almost 10 times. I struggle to read it now (some parts just hit too close to home for me) but I hope one day that I’ll be able to return to this wonderful novel.

2. Daughter of Time - Josephine Tey

This book altered the course of my life, no kidding. If you love history or true crime this book is seriously for you. It will definitely make you rethink everything you know about the way history is written, the way historical individuals are portrayed and why stories are so important.

3. Persuasion - Jane Austen

All of Austen’s novels have impacted me massively, but this one is my favourite. The way that romantic love is portrayed in this book is so beautiful to me, the way people’s personal flaws are portrayed as something that can be forgiven and accepted. This is a very hopeful book, and it is also an incredible portrayal of what it’s like to live with anxiety.

4. Neverwhere - Neil Gaiman

I love all of Neil’s stuff, but this one is probably my favourite. It was the first of his solo novels that I read (after Good Omens). It’s fun, imaginative, terrifying. I fell in love with the idea of urban fantasy thanks to this book, and I think it was super influential on the development of my own writing.

5. Santaland Diaries - David Sedaris

I love the combination of cynicism and sentiment in this book. It's funny, it's real (if a little overexaggerared at times). It also makes me feel better about myself and my struggles with employment. Plus, David Sedaris was probably one of the first gay people I was ever aware of.

I also worked as a Christmas elf in a store (not Macy's, unfortunately) so I feel a forever connection to this book.

6. The Wizard of Earthsea - Ursula K. Le Guin

This book confounded me when I first read it as a child. I didn't like the main character, I found the plot complicated. But returning to it years later, I fell in love with it. It's a book about becoming a better version of yourself, about fucking up majorly and trying to put things right. And about love and friendship. Plus there are further books in the series, and a dragon. What's not to love?

7. War of the Foxes - Richard Siken

I know a lot of people have read Crush, and while I absolutely love it, War of the Foxes is a gentler piece of work which explores some of the same themes from a mature perspective. There are some absolutely beautiful poems in this collection and I really recommend it for anyone who wants to contemporary poetry!

8. 163 Days - Hannah Hodgeson

Another favourite poetry collection! This is a beautiful, unique piece of work that discusses life limiting illness, hospital, and what it's like to be disabled in an able bodied world. It takes a lot to make me cry but this book moves me so much and brings me so much joy, too, because it exists! And I can feel just a little bit less invisible because of it.

9. Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons

The funniest, most ridiculous book, and an absolutely brilliant satire of British countryside life. I quote this book ALL the time. It is my lifetime ambition to own a cow called Useless.

10. The Song of Achilles - Madeline Miller

Another formative book which did so much for me as a young queer person. The fact that this book was "mainstream" and loved by so many people (including people who may not have naturally been queer allies) made the difficult conversations easier. It was really important for me to be able to bring this book home without having to hide.

Thank you for this opportunity to talk about books! I'm tagging @the-art-student-in-221c @aquilathefighter @valeriianz @ineffablyendless @pintobordeaux @reallyintoscience @notallsandmen @akhuna01 but feel don't feel like you have to do it! ❤

[erinthesails]

Inspired by @getmean, i did a little writeup of the books i read in 2023, and a little blurb about my thoughts! read 37 total, which isn't bad considering how busy it was, this past autumn especially.

organized roughly by genre because i thought the breakdown of what kinds of things i ended up reading was interesting, and marked my faves of the year with *s!

Novels

Altered Carbon by Richard K. Morgan

Did not start strong in this category, this book was truly awful. Like, I wanted to be able to just turn my brain off and at least enjoy a fun sci fi adventure but it was like. God. the worst parts of detective/noir novels and the worst parts of sci fi bound together by an interesting concept that the author had no idea how to handle. Im getting mad about this book again just thinking about it

Gingerbread by Helen Oyeyemi

Really really liked this! I love Oyeyemi’s prose and the way her writing always feels surprising. Read this in a group, with people who didn’t really enjoy it, which was unfortunate, but it compelled me a lot! I think i liked White is For Witching better, but still a really lovely interesting story

*The Dazzle of Day by Molly Gloss

This was probably my favorite new book of the year, and it came as a total surprise! Picked it up on a whim at a used bookstore and didn’t actually expect much of it, but was actually stunning. Super super highly recommend for anyone who likes sci-fi and thought experiments and the mundane realities and sacrifices of creating a livable future for everyone. It reminded me of The Dispossessed but like, a lot tighter and with characters who felt more distinct. Which is high praise because i fucking love The Dispossessed. Ursula Le Guin stans read immediately

Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi

Soooo good, soso good. I was skeptical at first because like. A whole book where you never hear from the same character more than once is a very tough sell. Each chapter is from a different character’s POV, displaced in both time and space from one another, but Gyasi weaves the stories together so well, I felt newly invested in both the collective tale being told and the new people we were meeting every chapter. Another absolute banger

*The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin

This was a reread, because I assigned it to my students and wanted to get it fresh in my mind before discussing in class. Tearing my hair out, collapsing to the floor in tears, etc etc etc. Book of all time forever

Our Missing Hearts by Celeste Ng

This one was a shocking disappointment! I absolutely love Celeste Ng’s other work but this one fell so flat. I’m not sure if it’s because she felt uncomfortable writing a child’s POV—but that wasn’t the problem, because the chapters from the Mom’s POV were just as flat—or if she was feeling self-conscious about the fact that it was speculative fiction (despite not being marketed that way at all) or if this was just a COVID project that got pushed into the world before it was ready… I’m really not sure what happened here, but again, conceptually interesting, but so unexciting in execution. Not enough to rattle my faith in her though, I’ll be back again next time Ms. Ng…Everything I Never Told You really was just that good

We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson

Glad to have finally read this one! One of those books i’d always meant to read and expected i’d like but just never got around to until now. And I did! Love a story where the house is haunted by the people who live in it, love fucked up sibling relationships, love a child with murder on the mind. I kept expecting it to like. Do a little more with the conversation about class and historical power. But maybe that’s just because i’d read White is For Witching recently

Tender is the Flesh by Agustina Bazterrica

Thought I’d like this one more than I did, but it wasn’t bad. There were parts where the metaphor really started to get muddled in a way that uh. Felt like it undercut the more interesting parts of the story. Like yes cannibalism is imperialist capitalism, but also it’s maybe factory farming? Which is a less interesting way of framing things? Imo? Also the actual descriptions were so visceral I kept getting queasy and having to set the book down, which doesn’t usually happen for me with books. So sign of effective prose I guess! But ultimately it didn’t feel like it was for me

Monkey King by Wu Cheng'en

WOOOHOOOO SUN WUKONG, EVERYBODY GIVE IT UP FOR SUN WUKONG

Signal Fires by Dani Shapiro

This one reminded me of Our Missing Hearts in a lot of ways, primarily that a) it felt like it was trying harder to be Important than to be complex and interesting, and b) it features a child narrator who Does Not sound convincingly like a child. It was fine tho, read it with my mom because it’s her favorite author, so that was kinda nice!

Nevada by Imogen Binnie

I always have a hard time with Coming Of Age In The Big City books, even and especially queer ones, but I did kinda like that this one felt So aimless and frustrated. I’m not sure if that was the author’s intention, as I think it was written as sort of autofiction, but I was compelled by how completely misguided the main character is, while still being sympathetic. Like you can watch her thought patterns taking her the wrong way realtime and still understand why they went there, and clearly see the core problem she’s avoiding, with it still being believable that she wouldn’t be able to see it. I like a character who has no clue what’s going on, what can I say! Unfortunately I’d also just read Zami which made this book feel lesser by comparison, but that’s not Nevada’s fault. I cannot hold it against Imogen Binnie for not being Audre Lorde lol

*The Baron in the Trees by Italo Calvino

This was the year of finally reading books that have been on my shelf for years!! Really liked this one a lot. It has a lot of the best parts of Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s storytelling, with a bit of a thicker layer of realism, which sometimes serves it, sometimes doesn’t. Delightful overall, definitely a fave of the year! Favorite part though was reading this book with a friend who, when we met to discuss it, opened with “okay i didn’t actually expect this guy to spend the WHOLE time in the trees”

Orlando by Virginia Woolf

I happened to be reading this at the same time as Baron in the Trees, and i felt like the two resonated across each other in really interesting ways! I love when that happens, and it happened a few times this year, which was exciting. Woolf is always doing the most, of course, but a lot of the emotional landscape of the story really stuck with me, as well as the meditations on “what is art and the pursuit of creative fulfillment for, anyway?” Me too, Orlando, me too

Novellas

The Employees by Olga Ravn

Really interesting little book! Never would have heard of it if it wasn’t for a friend from grad school, but i really liked the structure of it and the way it used lots of different voices without having to necessarily make characters out of any of them

The Tale of the Unknown Island by José Saramago

Not sure if this can really be classified as a novella as I think it’s like less than 5,000 words long, but i bought it as a book, so a book it shall be! Lovely little parable and a strange moment in time captured on the page!

*Present Tense Machine by Gunnhild Øyehaug

Another total surprise picked up at random from a used bookstore! I thought the cover looked interesting and the book was too! This is like. The platonic ideal of a novella. Not too high concept, doesn’t work too hard to explain itself, but includes enough additional detail and character to allow the ideas to resonate further than it would have as a short story. Seriously, go read this is so good

The Strange Library by Haruki Murakami

We love a strange library! We also love an artbook! Honestly the design of the book was more compelling to me than the story itself, but it was a nice book to sit with for an afternoon and let yourself settle into the world of it

The Hole by Hiroko Oyamada

Ohhhh the tension and tone of this one is so well done…I know some people who felt like it was too slow and never got around to anywhere in particular, but I felt like the feeling it evoked while leading us by the hand was so clear and so unsettling it was worth it. It felt like the feeling was the goal, the suffocating, dead-end feeling of being locked out of the world by the expectations of motherhood and wifehood and the way suburban survival exists only to perpetuate itself…it’s good, it’s really good!!!

Chronicle of a Death Foretold by Gabriel García Márquez

Marquez is so good every time always. Another really excellent use of the novella form, telling a really dense story that feels like it’s meandering while actually packing in so many essential details. We’re running really hard in circles in a field and marquez is dragging us along and it feels like what the goddamn hell are we doing, what are we running towards is this anything or am i just being taken on a little adventure for no reason. Then you stop and look down and realize you’ve trampled the corn stalks down in a perfect fibonacci spiral that points neatly toward the solution. Or something.

Permutations Among the Nightingales and The Gioconda Smile by Aldous Huxley

Combining these two because I don’t have too much to say about either and they both came from the same collection. I liked Permutations a lot better than Gioconda because cyclic story structures always scratch my brain, but neither were too compelling. I’m beginning to think i just dont like Aldous Huxley

What Moves the Dead by T. Kingfisher

Hmmmm I feel like…there is a certain kind of smug, sweetiepie speculative fiction that no one acknowledges as a particular movement in the genre, but that is really notably There and that Doesn’t Work For Me. Okay that sounds really mean. I didn’t hate this book! It just felt very self conscious about its project of like. “Queering the gothic.” And ended up feeling very sanitized and boring as a result. I don’t know, I felt about this book similarly to how I felt about Psalm for the Wild Built by Becky Chambers. Like, the Concept is good in theory, but it’s expected to do way too much heavy lifting in a story that, ultimately, feels more self-congratulatory than complicated or engaging. I don’t know how to explain it, but it feels like a story that was solved before the author sat down to write it. Not objectively bad by any means but just wasn’t for me

The Willows by Algernon Blackwood

Another instance of finally reading stuff I’d always meant to read! I know this story is often cited as the kind of “original” weird fiction/cosmic horror, so it was interesting to see how that played out. Definitely not quite either of those genres as I know them today, but there was still a subtlety to it that felt really satisfying. It was good! I’m glad people have drawn from it and written even better stories in its style! I can definitely see the way stories like Annihilation have roots (lol) in this story

Fiction Collection

*So Long Been Dreaming edited by Nalo Hopkinson

I often tend to meander through and not finish fiction anthologies, which is weird because i love short stories, but I almost always gravitate toward single-author collections and lit mags when I want them. But I’m really glad I finished this, because almost every story in it was excellent! I really love Nalo Hopkinson’s writing, so it was fascinating seeing her editing sensibilities at work

Fruiting Bodies by Kathryn Harlan

Just okay! Had some winners and some losers, as all collections do, but pretty much puttered along at a solid “fine” throughout. Nothing really stood out as particularly bad or particularly good, which is a shame because it seemed like exactly the kind of thing I’d be into. The title story was probably my favorite, but other than that, I honestly don’t even remember most of them

Afterglow edited by Grist

Another anthology, this one that I picked up because it had a cool cover and compelling premise (sci-fi climate optimism). Unfortunately most of the stories had the same sort of smug self assuredness that i disliked in “What Moves The Dead.” I’ve ranted about this at length but i always have mixed feelings about cli-fi, especially the subgenre of climate optimism. A story that has its tone and outcome so neatly pre-determined by definition has to work pretty hard to do anything unexpected, and most of these did not, HOWEVER, there were two standout stories I loved so much they made the whole collection feel worth it. Everyone read “The Secrets of the Last Greenland Shark” by Mike McClelland and “Broken from the Colony” by Ada M. Patterson!!!

Milk Blood Heat by Dantiel W. Moniz

A pretty solid collection that, again, didn’t have too many stories that really stuck out, though, again, the title story was the most memorable and it lingered with me much more closely than Fruiting Bodies

Memoir

Tranny by Laura Jane Grace

Yayyyy, Laura Jane Grace! I always see that quote from this book going around Tumblr and wanted to read it myself. I liked it a lot! It also got me to listen to more Against Me! because I’d really only listened to Transgender Dysphoria Blues before this. Which has been delightful!

*Zami by Audre Lorde

Major standout of the year, even though it took me a long time to read the whole thing. Each chapter is such a perfectly crafted, bite sized piece that I was just kind of meandering through one or two at a time, turning them over in my head as i went. I also read it right before reading Nevada, so unfortunately I already had the perfect Lesbian Coming Of Age In New York book on the mind that i couldn’t help comparing it to. We all know Audre Lorde is amazing, but this book is really truly gorgeous

A Small Place by Jamaica Kincaid

Not sure where to classify this lil book honestly, as it fits here, and under novella, and under nonfiction topic, but it felt like there was a core of memoir there that stood out as i read. Another book i bought years ago and only just got around to reading, but it was extremely vivid, i love Kincaid’s voice

I'm Glad My Mom Died by Jennette McCurdy

Whewwwww this book was a lot. It is as good as everyone says it is but definitely hard to read at times. Not much to say other than it’s definitely worth reading

Nonfiction topic

Six Memos for the Next Millennium by Italo Calvino

Love the ideas in here, but imagine it would have been a lot more engaging to listen to them as lectures than to read them all together. Love Calvino but he does tend toward the abstract, and these were a bit dry. Got me thinking about a lot of literary goals and challenges though, which was interesting

*A Swim in a Pond in the Rain by George Saunders

I liked this a lot! I tend to avoid “writing advice” type books because they’re so often preachy and not useful, but i really liked the format of this as a breakdown of what’s working in each of these stories and why. I also haven’t read many of The Russian Greats, but really enjoyed most of these ones he selected! My main takeaway is that Checkov kinda rules and Tolstoy kinda sucks. And i stand by that

Under a White Sky by Elizabeth Kolbert

Interesting collection of essays about climate change! It definitely had the journalist’s stink of “neutrality” at times, but gave some really fascinating accounts of people doing cool things in the climate change world. I really don’t read much nonfiction like this, so it was refreshing and informative and i learned a lot about carp

*Ezili's Mirrors by Omise'eke Natasha Tinsley

Okay so i really love Theory, but I never read it outside of class. I guess i always worried i would feel too lost without being able to check in with all the PhD people who are more versed in academese, but i decided to give it a go and i’m really glad i did, because i absolutely love this book. Such a fascinating mix of theory (she does open the book by saying “don’t read this as a book of theory” but like. Yeah there’s theory in here) and lived experience and history and mythology and storytelling and the myriad ways that gender is a story we tell and a story that’s inscribed onto us and a reality written by histories of colonialism and survival pushed into shape by self-expression and community……i liked it a lot!!! And if you’re interested in learning about anti-colonialism and gender, you’ll like it too!

Graphic novel

New Masters by Shobo and Shof Coker

Got this after dropping in on a panel by Shobo and Shof Coker at Emerald City Comic Con! Loved the way they talked about creating this world and you could really feel how much detail and care went into every part of it. Enjoyed it a lot, I hope to read more from them!

The Harrowing of Hell by Evan Dahm

Evan Dahm!!! My beloved Evan Dahm!!! He is always at comic cons and I was so obsessed with Rice Boy as a teen, I’m always a little starstruck by the fact that i can just walk up to his booth and talk to him lol. But I did and bought this book from him, and got it signed even! This book is so fucking cool and moody and manages to make it a story about Jesus in hell without it being. You know. The way it could be with that as the subject. Just a genuinely compelling treatment of Jesus as a character and person, with very cool art too. I also read it while i was listening to Unreal Unearth which i know is extremely. Uh. i don’t even know. Baby’s first Dante’s Inferno. But it absolutely contributed to the vibe and made it a great summer evening activity

[camlannpod]

hi I’m the person who asked about character creation advice in the listen along stream. My internet went funny so sorry I couldn’t specify on stream!

I meant characters in general! I really want to get into writing stories (books, podcasts, film, I haven’t really decided yet) but I’m struggling a bit with fleshing out my characters and I often feel like they’re all kind of the same person.

I really love the characters in Camlann so advice would be great!

Hi hello! Thank you so much for joining us for the stream, I'm sorry for your internet difficulties!!

Hm, this is an interesting and tricky question which I want to preface with a quick disclaimer:

Everyone writes differently. There's no one correct way to write, and whilst there are tool sthat you can use for writing - just like there are tools in visual art and music, learning which tools you want to use and how you want to use them is, I think, a big part of learning how to write well and in a way that's enjoyable for you.

This said! People often make jokes / comments about 'plotters vs pantsers' or 'architects vs gardeners'. A lot of writers fall into one of two categories - meticulously plotting detail before writing, or just kind of going with the flow. I personally am very much in the latter category, so I'm afraid I don't have a lot of specific tools or exercises I can give you.

This said, I'm going to do my best. Ursula K Le Guin is, in my opinion, one of the best writers of the 20th century, and she writes a lot of wonderful essays about the imagination and writing which I find really inspiring. I'm paraphrasing because I can't find the quote, but she once said something along the lines of: "If I can't close my eyes and have a conversation with a character, then I'm not ready to write their story yet."

That's a lot how I feel about writing characters. Some of it is conscious. I identify traits - flaws, strengths, quirks - in myself and others, and I give them to my characters. Dai is hyperactive and excitable because I'm hyperactive and excitable. Perry infodumps because I infodump. Morgan is stressed and protective because I am both of those things. But they also all have elements I don't have - Morgan is a lot more understated and pragmatic than I am. Dai is much more confident and reckless. Perry is significantly more organised and self-disciplined.

As a rule, I personally find it best to avoid ever trying to write 1 for 1 either yourself or a friend into a character. That way lies hurt feelings and honestly an inability to see them clearly, because it's very hard to see yourself objectively. Instead, I think of it like putting puzzle pieces together, or a patchwork quilt, or planting seeds. People often say good writers are good eavesdroppers. Phrases that people say on the tram stick with me. Strangers in shops. People dancing. Expressions and ways of speaking that filter through to characters I write.

Once I've identified a small handful of key pieces, I leave them to grow in my subconscious. This normally takes a few months. It's like...moulding a piece of wet clay for a few hours - ok, I don't want them to be X, I do need them to do Y - and once you've got roughly what you want in the right places, putting it in the kiln that is your mind and letting it cook. I just...think about my characters a lot - daydream about them, imagine them in different situations etc. Once I feel they've had enough time to settle, I start writing.

I honestly find one of the best ways to get to know a character is just writing them. For me that always feels like a conversation. And not just writing - editing and rewriting and rewriting - learning what they would or wouldn't say, thinking about how they'd react in different situations etc. There are...minimum 7 drafts of the Camlann scripts? I got to know the gang better just because I spent a lot of time with them.

Finally, for audio specifically, always always read your scripts aloud! If you can, rope in a friend or two. The way people speak out loud and the way they speak in our heads when we're reading is very different. Something that's incredibly moving in prose can feel awkward and stilted in audio. So read it out loud - start getting a sense of your character's vernacular. Do they say 'don't' or 'do not'? Do they swear? Do they use slang? Are they flirty, shy? I always find that my characters start coming to life when I can hear their voices. If I can hear them speaking to me, they're ready to be written.

This is all a little wibbly wobbly, and very personal to me, but I hope it at least helps you think about how you want to write. Good luck, and have fun!

[jiubilant]

9 & 19

9. Favourite OC?

aw i can't pick a favorite. their stories are all important to me in different ways

19. What are some things that inspired your stories? Real events? Maybe a dream?

oh uh hmm. conversations with my gf and my friends and my sister. random charming interactions with strangers. ursula k. le guin and peter s. beagle. sometimes i read something and think "i don't like that. i'd write it differently" and then i go and write it differently...studying writing i dislike has been just as helpful to me as studying writing i like

[mxdam]

i'd like to do a fuller revisit of the idea of margarethe as a gothic character! this may be several posts. let's start here:

fairy tales, the female sphere, and female speech

the story of cinderella is a fairy tale in which the wicked stepmother is a narrative force, and not a fully realized character. she exists to provide opposition to the protagonist and be vanquished or overcome in some format, like the evil queen of snow white. "fairy tale" in itself is not a genre that encourages character depth, reflecting its original nature as oral/aural storytelling. insofar as any fairy tale character has real character, or motivation, it is sketched in the most straightforward way, and in the case of all fairy tale antagonists, unsympathetically. but is it possible to have, as they say, sympathy for the devil?

i am not the first person and will certainly not be the last to argue that the position of wicked stepmother in the cinderella fairy tale reflects certain actual patriarchal realities that were a part of women's lives throughout history. in social systems where women were considered, legally, perpetual minors and/or property, were prevented from accumulating wealth or participating in trades or the job market, and could neither inherit nor pass on estates after their death, the stakes were profoundly high when it came to the choice of marriage partners and the actions they took after the loss of a male partner.

the actions of the wicked stepmother become, in that context, understandable. cinderella presents a threat to the social well-being of her own daughters. if she has limited resources (regardless of whether cinderella's father is alive or dead in a given telling of the story, she will always have limited resources as a woman in a patriarchal society), she must exert all of those influences for the promotion and benefit of her own children. insofar as a woman can achieve anything in the world, that achievement is her children; their success, their ennoblement, their social rise. she has no choice, because this is all the power that society and the family will allow her: domestic power, the power of speech, the power of manipulation, the power of familial and domestic cruelty.

in her biography of agrippina minor, roman empress and mother of nero, emma southon quotes tacitus: "influence is rarely lasting, such is its fate." she and tacitus contrast influence with potestas, power, which is meaningful political action. influence is the realm of women; they use it to further the aims of their families, their children, acting from behind the throne and within the domestic sphere. (when nero wanted to sideline his mother, he sent agrippina out of the imperial palace to live in a separate house, and forbade senators and political actors from going there--confining her to a domestic, apolitical sphere, forbidding her from engaging in powerful speech.) maria tatar quotes ursula k. le guin in an interesting parallel in her book on female heroes and fairy tales, the heroine with 1,001 faces, discussing le guin's 1986 speech that describes a Father Tongue, "the voice of power and reason," and a Mother Tongue, "the language of stories, conversation, and relationships." "in this ideological dichotomy, the Mother Tongue is devalued as 'inaccurate, unclear, coarse, limited, trivial, banal."

the intimate connection between womanhood, motherhood, speech, domesticity, powerlessness, and, ultimately, female agency/evil (the same thing under patriarchy) find a conjunction in the figure of the wicked stepmother. in kenneth branagh's rendition of cinderella, on which much of my writing is based, lady tremaine (no first name, by the way--walk-on characters who are present for 15 seconds get first names, but the main antagonist doesn't!) quite literally talks cinderella into self-exile in the attic and self-removal from family togetherness. she never hits her, shoves her, beats her: she simply talks, and her words are enough. the most physical act she takes to confine and harm cinderella is when she locks her into the attic toward the end of the film, at the moment when it seems ella is about to achieve her freedom.

to that end, the cinderella fairy tale viewed from the stepmother's perspective becomes a story about patriarchy. it becomes a story about powerlessness, female dependence, and disenfranchisement under a social system that not only channels women into heterosexual partnership and marriage and requires motherhood of them, but forces them to wield motherhood as power--the only power they will have in a system that demands their exile from the public world of potestas and into the shuttered house. the domestic sphere and its limitations and cruelties, therefore, are hugely significant in the stepmother's story.

what does all of this mean? how does it make the wicked stepmother's story gothic? tune in next time...