Since coming to America from Australia I’ve really missed an active reconciliation culture. There are many awesome activist things that happen here, but reconciliation is something that it’s important to me. It’s like breathing, it’s a fundamental part of the country that is inside me and the land I belong to. Sometimes it’s hard to talk about, fundamental things are like that. I end up having these long, complex conversations that are probably mystifying at the other end. There’s still a part of me that feels empty when a meeting starts and there’s no acknowledgement of country, no respect paid to traditional custodians, the history and cost that gave us the opportunity to meet. …
Attention Oregonians and those that like to visit the city of roses. One of my plays will be performed at the Pocket Pulp: Sci Fi Night on Thursday June 20.
Other familiar names in this pocket of pulp include Tina Connolly and Terry Bisson. I love Terry’s dry wit, I wish I could be there. Are you ready to be Maxima Vrugleplexed?
If any of you can make it, I’d love to know how it goes.
I am a member of SFWA, but I do not hold office. In this blog post I will refer to SFWA as we or us, that’s my SFWA, the reason I am a member of SFWA, a SFWA I share with other members and will fight for.
Dear people who have criticized SFWA, members* and non-members.
Thank you for your disappointment, your outrage, your eloquence, your passion around the Bulletin debacle. By taking the time to articulate your disappointment you help make SFWA a better organization. I know I am not the only SFWA member who has been following SFWA posts on twitter, paying attention to what happens on facebook, reading many many blog posts and participating in conversations in the SFWA forums**.
Comic 130! Comic 130!!!!!!! I promised I would make 130 comics by June 23 and I did it!
For a bit I was drawing a comic every day and zooming ahead like a machine, then (just as a wise writer told me this was probably not a good long term strategy) my drawing fell over and I did close to nothing for two months. I hoisted myself back into the saddle and with more than a little fear in my eyes I’ve successfully put out one comic every two days.
We have ARRIVED!… but I don’t think we’re there yet, I think we’ll keep going. I think there’s a mountain over there that looks interesting. I think there’s a cardboard box with something scary inside. I think I don’t know what the road ahead looks like, but I’d like you to share it with me and I hope we’ll make some cool discoveries together.
If you have ideas about promotion, merchandise, cool things you’d like to see, please let me know.
Every year I’ve participated in the Clarion Write-a-thon – a six week, try to push yourself creatively to raise money for a good cause. Every year I’ve met great people, re-connected with friends, made art and told stories I never would have without the desperation of this challenge.
There’s a poem that I wrote standing on one foot that is better for the physical intensity of that challenge. Another poem that came out of my love letters to inanimate object series is now a crowd favorite at my readings, a poem that has caused people to discover that they actually like poetry. It’s a challenge that gave me permission to bring art back into my life as a regular, shared practice (something I’ll write about more in a few days).
I’ve signed up for the 2013 edition and I’m pretty excited by the new cute badges you can unlock!!! I’m kinda a sucker for them and it’s made me fill in my profile a bit more than I intended, just so I could see what happened after happy waggy puppy dogs.
This is my profile. Signups are now open and this year’s challenge begins on June 23. I’d love it if you could join me.
I spent the afternoon at a school talking to super smart 4th graders about comics and art and stories. They asked really good questions and had terrific imaginations.
It was a lot of fun.
If you came here looking for advice on how to look cool in primary school (for boys or girls)… well chances are you probably are already cool, even if your classmates or other people around you don’t see it… or maybe see it but aren’t very good at telling you they see it… or they might even tell you, but it’s hard to notice because negative stuff can hurt so much.
The classroom I visited was full of kids I think were cool. Quiet shy kids trying to figure out how to say stuff that meant a lot to them are cool, loud boisterous kids all over the place are cool, musical kids, athletic kids, writing kids, drawing kids, thinking kids, scared kids. Every kid in that classroom was cool and if I have one regret it’s that I didn’t get to spend more time with each of them. There wasn’t time to get to know each unique person.
It’s easy to worry about fitting in, or feeling not seen, or seen in the wrong way. There’s no magical formula to being cool. I wasn’t cool in primary school, but I did work hard at being the best possible me I could be and find my own way. People seem to think I’m cool now and it’s a little confusing.
1) Say nice things to yourself. Amy Poehler has some good advice, for girls or boys (she has lots of other good advice too).
2) Know lots of people worry about things, lose sleep, cry, feel alone, and it’s ok to talk about it. This read pretty true for me, it might read pretty true for you.
3) If you get a website address and put http://cat. at the beginning and .meowbify.com/ all the images on that website will turn into animated giffs of kittens. That’s pretty cool.
4) Learning circus skills can be fun, look cool (even if people don’t appreciate it now, people will appreciate it later) and learning to juggle can be difficult and frustrating, but good for your brain. I haven’t learned how to juggle, but I can twirl sticks and play spoons. I remember a cool kid at my school who could balance things on his nose. Find the circus skills that work for you. There are classes or you can teach yourself.
The first doodle of the con, getting warmed up. Joan Slonczewski’s reading, sentient microbes can be architecture firms.
I’ve recently taken to drawing during readings. I find it helps me stay alert and remember the key moments of the story. The drawings don’t have to be good, I just have to do them.
Drawing on the iPad has been freeing, it creates less mess, the smooth texture of stylus on glass is less distracting pencil or pen and there’s a sense of infinite canvas within a constrained ratio. I don’t feel like I’m wasting paper if I do a bad drawing or get bored and want to move on. I just make the layer I was drawing on invisible and create a fresh new layer to draw on.
Sometimes I find pleasing juxtapositions between the layers and merge me after the reading, making a new work that is the synthesis of several authors and stories.
During dinner on Saturday night I spent about half an hour trying to write a poem about the Tick, in response to a spontaneous challenge (dinner was full of superhero poetry). The Tick is such a profound entity that I ended up creating a visual poem. It was fun to generate a series of icons that tried to express some of the Tick’s square chinned surrealism. It’s possible that drawing might turn up somewhere, but it might not.
Jo Walton speaks, I draw
My favorite doodle of the convention was drawn during Jo Walton’s guest of honor speech.
I love Jo’s elliptical talks of synthesis. Caring about characters, tools and tricks and not tricks, because who wants to manipulate the reader, what an effective manipulation!
Her talks are a process and a conversation that illuminate complimentary and contradictory facets of this wonderful world of writing.
Wiscon, the fab feminist fiction festival on matters speculative, interstitial and intersectional, is done for another year.
I’m in the airport at O’Hare and my flight boards in 10 minutes, but here’s the initial links I promised to folks during the Karen Axness panel.
Blog post wherein I ask for help around books to read and female writers to pay attention to. The comments section is FULL of excellent suggestions.
Twitter hashtags to pay attention to if you want book suggestions #womeningenre #womentoread
Comic Rocket. Amazing tool for keeping track of webcomics that maximizes benefit to the creators you love (RSS feeds are convenient, but not always the best for the creators in terms of web page hits) and helps you find other good comics. If you feel like keeping track of my webcomic through this tool you can do so here.
