Swan Tower

Apparently I'm developing this thing for arguing with mind-melds.

In this instance, SF Signal is taking on gender imbalance in spec fic publishing. Lots of food for thought in there, but I'm at the point where my single overwhelming thought is this:

Is there, anywhere out there, a sociologist with both the necessary interest in genre fiction and the necessary methodological rigor to get us some actual data?

Because until somebody does that study, we're arguing from evidence that is 98% anecdotes and gut feeling. Some magazines (Strange Horizons, Fantasy) openly discuss the gender breakdown of their submissions and publications; Broad Universe has scraped data from issue runs of some more. But where's the data for novels? First novels, bestseller novels, big contracts, broken down by (admittedly fuzzy) categories of sub-genre, maybe even weighted for type of narrative if our hypothetical sociologist is good enough. Reviews, awards, hardcover versus trade paper versus mmpb publication. In a dream world we'd know the submission stats, too -- but good luck getting those. Even without them, it would be a start.

It makes me regret my exit from academia, but truth is, I could never do this study. You really need a sociologist, not an anthropologist; this is not participant-observation work.

Some things we do know: that the people who say "I just buy/read good work, regardless of who wrote it" are naive. It's well-established, in fields ranging from biology to symphony orchestras, that the perceived gender of individuals affects their reception: the percentage of women in orchestras went up after musicians began auditioning behind a curtain, with a carpet laid down so high-heeled shoes wouldn't click on the floor. Swap the names on journal articles, and readers will rate higher the one they think is written by a man. Very few editors or readers out there are actively hating on women writers; the real problem is the inactive prejudice.

But we need data before we can get to the deeper questions of "why," let alone "what do we do about it?" The relative absence of women in science fiction (as opposed to fantasy) no doubt arises from many factors, ranging from fewer women with the educational background to write hard SF, to less free time on their hands for the writing of it, to a reluctance to submit to markets they perceive as unfriendly to them, to editorial bias, to reader bias, and so around the merry-go-round. The relative presence of women in the current paranormal romance/urban fantasy borderland arises from a different set of factors. I don't think anecdotes and gut feeling are without their use, but we might get farther if we had actual concrete information.

(There are too many potential icons for this post, so you just get the swan.)

Attention anybody going to ICFA! I'll be there, of course -- proud attendee since 2003; I can advance both sides of my professional life by flying to Florida every spring, so what's not to like? -- and it turns out I'm going to be doing more than I thought.

At 10:30 a.m. on Thursday I'll be donning my academic hat (and my legal name) and participating in an interdisciplinary panel about fan studies -- a panel of the discussion type, not the "we all read our at best tangentially related papers" sort.

Also, at some point -- I don't know my time slot yet -- I'll be switching to writer-hat and writer-name, and reading in the creative track. I've been squeaked on to it due to other peoples' cancellations, so I suspect I won't be listed in the program, but they always post the errata next to the reg desk, so look for me there. (Yes, in my sixth year, the worst has finally happened: I'm on the program twice, under two different names.) I will, as you might expect, be reading from Midnight Never Come.

And lastly, I'll be bringing some small number of ARCs with me, to sell in the book room. My ego loves the mental image of a slugfest over the last copy between a rabid fan and a dusty old academic in the narrow, book-strewn aisles, but since the universe is unlikely to oblige me with such a scenario, you can probably guarantee your receipt of one simply by looking early in the con.

Hope to see some of you there!

For the first time in my life, I find myself realizing that academic papers can have different voices, just like stories.

Maybe this was obvious to some of you. But while I knew I wrote papers differently for conferences (where I read out loud) than I do for classes or publication (where they'll be printed on a page), I tended to think of those as two faint variants on Academic Voice.

That stories have different voices has always been obvious to me. I can't tell you what "my" voice is, because "Calling into Silence" has a deliberately earthy, grounded tone to it, while "Nine Sketches, in Charcoal and Blood" is more high-flown Victorian and "The Snow-White Heart" is a pale lavender imitation of Lovecraft's purple prose. And I'd need an outside eye to tell me what, if anything, is "my" voice in all of that, the common thread in the prose that links them together.

But here I am, plugging away at an article for kleenestar, and the silly thing has found a voice. I wasn't making much progress on it yesterday or earlier today, but then tonight I hit upon the thought of structuring it loosely around the experience of "our hypothetical newcomer," a stranger to RPGs who is getting into one for the first time. From the moment I put that phrase down, something changed. This article is just the slightest bit tongue-in cheek. I'm addressing my subject soberly enough, but hardly a paragraph goes by without some little thing to liven it up: a faintly snarky comment about the "What is a role-playing game?" section in rulebooks, a passing jab at GURPs and its rules for digging holes. Yesterday and earlier today, this paper had no voice, and I was getting nowhere with it. Now I've found the voice, and I have over three thousand words down, from about 800 two hours ago. I keep telling myself I'm going to bed, and then coming back to put the next bit down.

It's just like a story. I can't really progress on it until I've found the plot/organization and the voice. Once I do? Zoom.

We'll see what kleenestar thinks of the result. If I have to, I can go back and make it more straight-laced. But right now, I'm going to run with what I have.

I believe I loaned someone my photocopy of the "Fantasy as Mode, Genre, Formula" chapter of Brian Attebery's book at some point. prosewitch, was that you? Or someone else? I kind of need it back.

It pleases me that I already have twenty-three comments on this weekend's rant, without me having had a chance to answer any of them yet. For those who have contributed to the discussion so far, I will respond, but probably not until tomorrow. For those who haven't read it: go see me compare SF elitists to nineteenth-century anthropologists. As I said to ninja_turbo, the post lacks swearing only if you think "warmed-over nineteenth century unilinear cultural evolutionary theory" isn't me swearing.

ICFA? ICFA was good. It's moving to Orlando next year, and from the sound of it that's going to be all-round a positive change, but I confess I will miss the familiarity of that hotel. (And I've only been going for five years; what of the people who have known it for twenty?) I would still love to see someone kidnap the Con Cat and bring him to Orlando, even if he does have fleas. Because I will miss having a kitty to pet.

My paper seems to have gone over well, despite being ten pounds of idea shoved in a five-pound sack. I will probably expand it a bitsy and then try to sell it to Strange Horizons, for those who wanted to read it. The expansion will be a Good Thing, though it will necessitate another round of prioritizing information, since I still won't be able to get remotely everything in there. (What, you mean trying to cover twenty-eight novels, three and a half editions of D&D, and thirty years of textual history in five thousand words isn't a manageable idea?)

Every paper and discussion I attended was good. This is unique in my conferencing experience so far. Either ICFA's getting better, or I had good karma this year.

I have a head full of thoughts, not all of them fully baked. Look out in the near future, though, for a manifesto on Anthropological Fantasy, coming to an LJ near you.

I have reached the point where I have a Manifesto.

This is an interesting place to be.

Ruthless cutting of my paper this morning removed three hundred words or so, pulling me back from the rapidly-approaching wall that is the length limit for a conference. (I made it to 85% of the way done by bedtime; now I'm hovering just north of 75%.) Will this be enough space? Probably not. But at least I bought myself a tiny bit of breathing room.

I need to step back and let it compost a bit more, though, so I can figure out the most efficient way to organize this last section. It would be easy to bog down in detailed textual analysis, but I don't have that luxury. Broad patterns only, thank you, analysis-brain. We have approximately 4000 words to play with, and no more. And no, just speaking more quickly isn't an acceptable answer; we'll lose our audience and confuse everybody. We must be succinct. You do know what "succinct" means, right?

Don't answer that.

I've always known that I don't like grading. But this is the first time I've been able to put it in such appalling terms:

I procrastinated from grading tonight by doing my federal and state taxes.

Doing my taxes was preferable to grading.

Ye gods.

I could use some assistance from the internets in putting the finishing touches on a certain project. I'm planning to pitch a course proposal on writing speculative fiction (encompassing sf, fantasy, and supernatural horror), but I need readings! Most particularly I need suggestions of short fiction, but I'd also be interested in how-to texts that might be relevant to these topics.

UNIT ONE: INTRODUCTIONS
Week 1- Introduction to genre
Week 2- Language
Week 3- Outlining, critique, revision
[For these three weeks, I'd like one basic, accessible story from each of the genres I'm covering, just to get them warmed up.]

UNIT TWO: CRAFT
Week 4- Dialogue
Week 5- Point of view
Week 6- Description
Week 7- Exposition
Week 8- Style/Voice
Week 9- Character
Week 10- Setting
Week 11- Plot
[Here, of course, I want stories that particularly shine in the aspect du semaine.]

UNIT THREE: CONCEPTS
Week 12 - Gender
Week 13 - Race
Week 14- Morality
[I'm pretty sure Le Guin's "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas" will be the story for week 14, but the others are up in the air. The general idea of this unit is, hey, spec fic can play interesting games with these topics.]

UNIT FOUR: WHERE NOW?
Week 15- How to submit stories
[Might or might not have a reading for this week. It'll depend on whether I find a story I just really really love and want to end on.]

I would prefer short stories, though in a terrible pinch I might use a novel excerpt. Suggestions?

Just got official notice that my course proposal for Collins, the honors dorm here on campus, has been accepted. Next fall I'll be teaching "Fairy Tales in the Modern World," a class on contemporary retellings of folktales. It's mostly literature-based, but I'm slipping in what I can about movies, role-playing games, and the like.

I'm both very excited and a little nervous. I've got four years of teaching experience under my belt, but it's all as an assistant to a professor, so this will be my first time running my own course. The cool thing is, enrollment is limited to 20, so it will also be my first chance to really get to know my students personally, give detailed feedback on papers, etc, rather than plowing through sixty student assignments and teaching three sections. Since a lot of the students are going to be freshman and sophomores, this means I have a shot at actually influencing how they approach their college education. (Yeah, yeah, delusions of grandeur, I know. But I have hopes.)

Ongoing endeavours with immediate deadlines on them:

• AFS paper (status: 90% complete)
• Collins course proposal (status: 80% complete)
• C.V. revision (status: 95% complete)
• midterm grading (status: 0% complete)
• novel proposal (status: ??? complete)

For the first time in a while, my academic commitments are winning their ongoing war with my writing to eat my head. One week from today, when the first three items are done with and the fourth is (hopefully) mostly done, I'll be able to breathe and look at other things. In the meantime, I need to push them all toward completion. The status percentages looked a lot scarier at the beginning of this weekend, though; say what else you will about the last few days, but at least I managed to be productive with them.

Now I think I need some sleep.