Award nomination!

I was supposed to sit on this a while longer, but somebody apparently jumped the gun, so now I'm allowed to tell.

Romantic Times (which covers a great many things besides romance) is holding its Reviewers' Choice Awards, and With Fate Conspire has been nominated! In, er, the "Epic Fantasy" category, which is not what I would have expected -- but hey, I'm in good company:

THE WISE MAN’S FEAR Patrick Rothfuss, DAW, (March 2011)
WITH FATE CONSPIRE Marie Brennan, TOR, (September 2011)
THE COLD COMMANDS Richard K. Morgan, DEL REY, (October 2011)
THE KINGDOM OF GODS N.K. Jemisin, ORBIT, (November 2011)
STANDS A SHADOW Col Buchanan, TOR, (November 2011)

I won't know the results until April. In the meantime, congrats to my fellow nominees, and to all the other nominated authors.

Every Part of Your Life Is Real

You know how sometimes you find yourself losing patience for something, entirely without warning? Yeah. I've lost patience with the phrase "real life."

It's an extension of the gripe I had when I was in graduate school, about people referring to academia as "the ivory tower" -- as if a job there was somehow not a (hmm, this sounds familiar) a real job. Trust me, universities have just as much in the way of politics and bureaucracy and such things as any other workplace. People in them do work, get paid money . . . just like people do in a corporation or store.

Lately I've seen writers talking about how "real life" has distracted them from writing. I'm not just talking about hobbyists (though my point would stand even if I were); I'm talking about professionals, for whom writing is, if not their sole job, at least one they file taxes for. Why is that part of their lives somehow less valid than the rest of it? I hear people saying the same thing when they talk about things in contrast with their hobbies. What exactly is real life, anyway?

I don't think there's a single answer. People use the phrase in a lot of different ways, for a lot of different reasons. Work is real life and hobbies aren't, because work isn't fun, and we all know (thank you, Puritans) that fun things are of the devil. If work is fun, it becomes not-real. Trouble is real. The things you can't get away from are real. But all the rest of it . . . that doesn't count. You have to deprecate it, apologize for devoting energy and attention to it, because it's a diversion and therefore fake.

I say, screw that. Every part of your life is real. Even the optional parts, and the ones you enjoy. I'm not saying there isn't any such thing as prioritization; obviously some things demand or deserve more investment from you. But that doesn't make them more real -- just more important. Let's say what we actually mean, and not something else, that makes people feel like the things they care about are for some reason invalid.

My job and my hobbies, almost everything I do, involves imaginary people and events. But that doesn't make my life not real.

Thanksgiving Advent, Day Nine: My Dojo

Just got back from two classes in a row at my dojo, one in kobudo (weapons) and the other karate. From when I walk out my front door to when I get home, that's pretty much three straight hours in which I don't sit at my computer, barely moving, alone with the imaginary people on the screen and in my head.

This is a really, really good thing.

It's exercise, which sedentary types like writers have to be very careful to get. The exercise actually starts with walking out the door; our dojo is close enough that I generally hoof it there and back. Takes a little longer, but it gets me out into the fresh air, and gives me some good contemplation time. Then there's stretching, and the mild cardio of doing kumite (sparring) and kata.

It's also social time, which is likewise very important when you write full-time (or have another solitary-making job). A couple of years ago, when I was working on A Star Shall Fall, I went through a stretch where, to meet my deadline, I needed to write about 1500 or 2000 words each day, and revise 5000 of what I'd already written. This coincided with the dojo being closed for two weeks while the black belts and sensei decamped to Okinawa for the World Karate Championships. While it was good from a freeing-up-time standpoint, ask kniedzw what it was like, living with me for the duration. I went crazy. Workworkwork all the time + no real outlets = bad news.

Our dojo is a really cool place, too -- very welcoming, very laid-back while also being committed to excellence. Shihan, the owner, is ninth dan in Shorin-ryu (our karate style) and eighth dan in Yamanni-ryu (our kobudo style); he regularly travels the world to do guest seminars in foreign countries. He's that good. One of the other sensei recently made sixth dan. My sister-in-law, the lowest-ranked sensei in the lot, is third. The excellence is there for you to learn from, without being one of those scary-competitive places like the Evil Dojo in the Karate Kid movie. <g> Working there wakes up all the old gears in my head, left over from my ballet years, where I think on a fine-grained scale about what my body is doing. It's a very good change of pace from how I normally spend my time. (Even if sometimes I'm thinking about how to apply what I'm doing in a story. Shutupdon'tjudgeme.)

When I moved here, I didn't really want to study karate; there were other styles that appealed to me more. This place was convenient, though, and I knew people there, and I liked the atmosphere. When it comes to actually going to class and enjoying it, those things matter more than the details of the style. I'm very thankful that I had someplace this good so easily available to me.