John Scalzi

Thursday Linkfest

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Yesterday was busy and thus thesis-less, plus I got very little sleep thanks to some very unfomfortable shoulder pain, so odds are I’ll be saying little of interest today. Instead, I’ll entertain you with links to stuff that I’ve found interesting over the last week (or so):

  • My good friend Chris Slee reflects on the Edisonade (aka the pre-history of Science Fiction) and what was the best thing *before* sliced bread.
  • The ever-stylish Ben Francisco cherry-picks the SFnal highlights of the authors@google youtube series and gathers them together in a single handy post (although he’s missing Neil Gaiman in the line-up). If you’ve not seen these, particularly the John Scalzi, I recommend going and taking a look.
  • The Aurealis Awards are announced and the results posted on their website. Cat Sparks has posted photographs of the night, in which a bunch of writer-types have scrubbed up pretty well (and I show up looking marginally less shabby than usual in the vast flicker list of the night.).
  • Mick Foley (aka Cactus Jack, Mankind, Dude Love) reviews Aronofsky’s The Wrestler.
  • Steve Kenson on the lack of randomness in contemporary RPG character creation. (My first reaction to this post? To go roll up a Marvel Superheroe’s Character and convert it over to the point-by driven system of Kenson’s near-perfect supers RPG Mutants & Masterminds)
  • And, as if there’s not enough of me on the internets already, I sneak on over to Lee Battersby’s blog and guest-post my memories of the first week of Clarion South 2007.
  • John Klima bids farewell to the recently shut down Realms of Fantasy over at Tor.com, but also wonders where all those stories that used to go RoF’s way will end up (For my money, you can’t go past Fantasy magazine if you’re looking for fiction with an RoF-like feel)
  • Scientists discover that fiction can drive social evolution – which seems a little like overcomplicated the obvious, to me, but there you go.

Talking Dirty: Why Writers Should Focus on Being a Business

PETERMBALL Writing Advice - Business & the Writing Life , , , ,

Over the weekend I headed out to a Professional Writing Seminar held by Marianne de Pierres which covered the terrain that’s common at such things, but also hit a few key points that I hadn’t come across before. Part of what she talked about during the seminar was taking responsible for your own professional development (and, well, your career), and as someone who has done a lot of development (as a student) and developing (as a tutor, and a lecturer) it got me thinking about the gaps in my skill set.

I’ve done a lot of stuff to develop my skills as a writer – undergraduate and post-graduate writing programs, workshops, six-week courses like Clarion South – but more and more I’m feeling like I’ve got the writing part down (kinda) but still need to work on the day-to-day business side of things: dealing with page-proofs, handling contracts, and taking care of what little money I make via writing.

We Treat Money Like a Dirty Topic in the Arts

Writers, as a general rule, don’t really talk about handling money in any meaningful way. There have been some good instances of it recent years – it seemed like John Scalzi’s words of advice for writers about money went around the internet in a matter of moments – but as a general rule it’s still a taboo topic once you get past “writers don’t make money; don’t quit your day job.” This is probably why Sean Williams’ post about the taxation, accounting and effective record keeping seminar he held at the South Australian Writer’s Centre fascinates me. He doesn’t really hit the details of the seminar in any meaningful way, but there are some very colourful graphs that give a rough outline of where his deductions come from and where the money he doesn’t get to keep is going.

I’ll be honest; I would have killed to be at that workshop. What advice there is out there is often vague, or slanted to a different tax system, and I think there’s a need for that kind of stuff to be out there and accessible. People spend so much time getting together the writing skills they need to become professional authors that the other stuff gets overshadowed.

It’s a lesson that all writers should embrace: think about the business side of things – especially the money management – real early in your career. You’ll be surprised how quickly you wish you had those skills down.