Random acts of Ranting

A grumpy, crabby kind of blog post

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Yesterday…

Well, yesterday I did not run away and join the circus, but it was probably one of those days where I would have if I had viable circus-type skills and access to a travelling circus to run away with. I did not turn into the Incredible Hulk and smash things in a frenzy of anger. I did not resign from my dayjob to take up a position that would be more useful to the world at large, such as hunting werewolves or wrangling wild unicorns or, you know, going into politics.

But, oh,  I was sorely tempted.

Especially by the werewolf thing, which, really, goes to show how much I disliked certain aspects of yesterday, because I’m actually quite fond of werewolves.

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We actually had a full cohort at write-club last night, which is the first time all four write-clubbers have been in the same place since other people started joining the inimitable Angela Slatter and I on a regular basis.

As predicted, I did the sensible thing and started working on the next installment of Flotsam. We all gathered and ate and ate chocolate, and 2,311 words later, I was still starting on the next installment of Flotsam, largely because it was one of those days with there irritations of the dayjob had carried through to writing.

Finally write-club was over and everyone went home, and I was again afflicted with the not-sleeping which has become so common of late, so I dragged out a pad and a pencil and took another crack at the story, and it’s possible I came out with something that may actually be a beginning.

Then I lay in bed, still not-sleeping, and pondered how much can be considered enough to satisfy the guilt of not-writing-enough, and I still have no satisfactory answers.

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There is, most likely, another potential buyer walking through my flat this morning. I can’t be entirely sure, because the real estate agent no longer sends the appropriate documents. I just get cheerful text messages asking if there’s any chance of having a quick pop-around in the morning, which I’m not entirely sure means we’re coming and there’s nothing you can do about it or say no if you want, and we’ll respect it.

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So, yes, it’s a grumpy and crabby kind of bloggery from me today, because it’s been a grumpy and crabby kind of week.

Ordinarily, when this happens, I tell people to pat me on the head and go write until whatever isn’t working turns around and actually starts working, and for the most part they do and the grumpy goes away and I start sleeping normally again. It may take days or weeks or, in one instance, months, but eventually it works.

And, really, I guess that’s what I should probably go do.

Actually, fuck it, I’m ranting

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Every now and then publishers I respect a lot go and do something stupid, and this makes me a little sad. This weeks’ case-in-point comes courtesy of the writer’s guidelines for Ticonderoga’s latest anthology, which I read through and had a complete WTF kind of moment when I stumbled across this.

A masculine tone will be favoured but not sought exclusively (i.e. avoid becoming bogged down with intricate descriptions and fancy window dressing in your world building; save your word count for a solid scene – or 2 or 3 – of conflict, action, aggression, etc). (see the addendum below)

I mean, yeah, seriously, what the fuck?

Setting aside the fact that anyone’s daft enough to phrase their preferences like this in an online world where x-fail has become part of the dialogue and there’s a new generation of readers (and writers) sensitive to gender issues, I actually found this kind of disappointing because it runs up against one of the things I really like about Ticonderoga – they’re a left-leaning press whose anthologies have tackled issues such as work choices/industrial relations reform and the cultural identity of immigration. They’re the press that published short fiction collections for  Angela Slatter and Kaaron Warren – two writers I’d argue do intricate description and fancy window dressing that will fucking blow you away as a reader rather than bogging down – and they’re setting up to publish a bunch of other writers who do the same in the coming year (see the forthcoming collection by LL Hannett, for example). If you’d ask me to find three words that described Ticonderoga, progressive would have been high on the list. So would awesome.

To see them resorting to some pretty blatant gender stereotyping in their writer’s guidelines is rather disappointing and incongruous. It’s like going out for a drink with the head of your local Greenpeace chapter and hearing them start going off about all those damn women coming in and taking over the workplace.

I get what they’re trying to say here, I really do, but the phrasing of it terrible and contains all sorts of implied value judgement (compare the implied frippery of the “intricate descriptions” and “fancy window dressings” that will get your story “bogged down” to the “solid action scene”). It hearkens back to the bad old days of literature when men were men and wrote terse, masculine,  Hemmingway-esque fiction of worth and women were safely quarantined to the flowery world of romance . It even nails the implied passivity of the feminine writing as a contrast to the active, aggressive nature of the masculine. It may not be intentional, but they’ve slipped into a nice comfortable misogyny with very little effort there, and devalued a whole bunch of work that don’t fit into the narrow guidelines set out. This is not a statement that says “please send me action-oriented horror stories”, it’s a statement that falls into the old trap of saying “girly writing sucks, boy writing rocks.”

And I say, heartily, FUCK THAT SHIT.

You want your submissions to consist of terse, action-oriented horror stories full of aggression? Then how about this – take away the word “masculine” and say “we’re looking for terse, aggressive, action-oriented horror stories.” There’s no real need to gender the distinction, nor to hang shit on the opposite side of the gender dichotomy you’re setting up.

So, in summary: I like Ticonderoga, I own a bunch of the books they publish and would love to own more if finances stretched that far, but these writer’s guidelines make me fucking sad (and, lets be honest, look like a gender-fail flamewar in its nascent form).

Addendum 1(25/1/11): So it looks like Ticonderoga has taken down the guidelines and made steps towards addressing the concerns above, to which I can only say bravo. This is the step of the Ticonderoga I know and love, and gives me hope that the problems were a one-off thing that are destined to be quickly corrected.

Apathy versus Anger

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Today I spent my free time at work engaging in what is quickly becoming my favorite procrastination activity: daydreaming about ways I can quit my job to write and making lists about the things I need to do in order to make that happen.

On one hand this makes for a nice change – this time last last year I was unemployed and dreaming of ways to pay rent – but after three months in the new day job things have evolved to the point where it’s a hindrance rather than a help.

You see, somewhere along the line I ceased being the office assistant and became the unofficial web-guy for the company. My day’s went from data-entry to content production and putting together a plan for the company to revise the website and engage with social media. I’m far from an expert on this kind of stuff – I got the job by virtue of being the sole person in the office who knows *exactly* how much I don’t know about SEO and webmarketing – so it takes up brainpower.

The net result is that I spend hours writing or thinking about writing or putting together plans for writing, then I come home and stare at the manuscripts I’m meant to be working on and my brain is full of fuzz. And since I’ve rarely had the kind of job where I show up and do this full-time, in an office, it’s getting harder and harder to stop kicking myself for being a slack-arse and not being further along on the writing career than I am.

It’s been particularly frustrating this week. Part of it is the regular January thing – it’s one of those months that’s forever filled with doom and tight finances in my world (too much spending at Christmas is followed by 5 birthdays for close family and friends in the space of a month) – and some is surely the aftermath of the floods.

But I figure that’s accounting for some of the frustration, not all of it. My own apathy makes me angry, which in turn makes me apathetic, and it’s difficult to break that cycle

I suspect it may be time to build myself another thirty point plan for the coming year.