Here

Have a small rubber rocket ship.

*Sings* “I’m an alligator, I’m a mamapapa coming for you… I’m a space invader…”

January: Qigong

January, along with many other perfectly serviceable days, contains the day dubbed the most depressing day of the year. That’s Monday, January 18th. On Monday, January 18th I was teaching my first martial arts class. There were three of us all together, in an industrial space not really suited to anything but what it’s actually used for. And I was scared, because I was suffering twin anxieties. In the first place, I was afraid of sucking as a teacher and in the second I was afraid of someone getting hurt.

Considering how inauspicious the day was, we did all right. No one lost an eye or needed stitches or stormed out in a huff. Take that, most depressing day of the year. I went home feeling moderately competent and slightly proud. The people I’d been training with had got the concept I’d been trying to teach – that you can know what someone’s going to do by maintaining contact with their body. It’s something I’ve just started to learn myself, which is funny when you think about it.

It’s funny because I’ve been studying martial arts since I was 16 or so and now, while it’s not polite to ask a lady her age, I’ll tell you I’ve kissed my twenties goodbye. I’ve spent a lot of time punching air and learning line and stance and not a lot of time in contact with other soft fleshy bits. And the more I study, the more I discover I’m actually really interested in the soft fleshy bits, as well as what poking at them does.

So over the holidays while I was trying not to eat too much of Sempai Sarah’s stupidly scrumptious shortbread (that’s alliteration, that’s what that is) and get a little training in, I decided the new year could be more of me going quietly nuts while I over-analyzed everything I did (That punch felt good, but why did it feel good? And was it strong, or did it jut feel good? And how strong was it? Like, knock the wind out of the uke or punch out their stomach plug*?), which is what my sister calls “monkey mind” or I could use the new year to make my brain shut up. And the best way to do that, I thought, was to overload it.

Reasons I Will Reject Your Manuscript the Minute I See it

I’ve been getting a lot of badly/un/semi formatted manuscripts lately, and they seem to be getting worse and worse. I finally cracked today. Sorry, dude, whoever you were. I might have loved your story, and I’m sure I could have been nicer when I bounced it, but I don’t think being nice would have been as helpful as the rejection I actually sent. And anyway, I’m tired of getting stories that might be awesome but are unreadable. You bastards! Think of the slush readers! Why must you tease us so?

Anyway, today I laid down the law in a rejection slip, but I’d really rather do less yelling at new writers in general and see more correctly formatted manuscripts on my desktop. And so, with that in mind, I give you today’s blog post:

Reasons I will reject your manuscript the minute I see it is incorrectly formatted

1. I can’t read it. Oh the words are there, for sure, but I can’t tell if that comma is supposed to be there or if that’s a mistake, or where paragraphs break and I can get my breath, or where dialogue starts and stops.

2. Even if I slogged through the formatting to read it and thought, Gee, this is great, it would take the copy editor a half dozen emails and a few hours to format this puppy so it reflected what you wanted and other people could read it too. No matter how good this story is, that represents a lot of time and hassle for a volunteer copy editor who is essentially doing what you the author should have done.

3a. It shows you don’t follow direction. Submission guidelines are commonly detailed, easy to find and follow, and were probably arduous to write. They were not, therefore, written for shits and giggles. Follow. Them.

3b. I know, I know, you’re a free spirit. That’s cool. But if you want to be a professional (and I’m presuming here that your submission to BWS is the equivalent of dipping your big toe in the writing pool), then you will have to act like one. Be as wild as you want with ideas, but follow the damn rules when submitting.

This kind of stuff happens all the time. People wanting to stand out send their stuff to us in fancy font, or center justified, or with little clip art images embedded. Don’t do that.

OK, the clip art is just obnoxious, not truly heinous. But the font and justification really are awful. Henceforth, attempts to stand out with anything other than your deathless prose and breathtaking storytelling will be met with calls for blood.

Bad formatting is unbelievably aggravating for the slush pile reader, who’s time you’ve wasted, and for you, because maybe you’ve written a great story, but no one will take it or send you feedback on it. I know because I’ve been the dick head on the other end of the chain getting the form letters. And now I’m spending time in slush pile purgatory for my crimes.

Want people to take you seriously? Stop being a free spirit, an artiste, a wild card. Start acting like you respect the people you’re submitting to (as Theresa Nielsen Hayden said, “They don’t call it submission for nothing.”), and start acting like you care about your work. Philip K Dick, for my money the craziest and most visionary writer of the 20th century, had a hard time tuning in reality but he still managed to use the shift key. Put on your Professional Writer knickers and get on with it.

Saturday

Picked up Your Hate Mail Will Be Graded. Yes, I know I could have just read it on his blog, but that’s ten years worth of reading and all I want are the really good bits in a format I can take into the bath.

I think I might have overdone it with the Tudor-era books this last little while, so this book was the right choice. It was a toss up at Bolen Books today. I hemmed long and hard over Quicksilver but in the end I figured I could probably borrow that from a friend before I committed myself to a series I might not like. I also wanted Drood in a big way too, but they only had it in a hard cover size soft cover book (which presumably has some kind of a name) which was 27$ which, for a book in a format I’m not fond of, is just too much. Despite the beautiful, moody cover.

Anyway, I’m spending the day reading. Adam’s playing Assassin’s Creed, so occasionally I deign to look at the screen a cringe or mock. A nice way to spend a Saturday.

Fob

I ached so much that I had a hard time sleeping last night, so I rolled out of bed at 5 and went to work. Was hoping for a massage this afternoon, but that didn’t pan out, so tonight it’s a hot epsom salt bath and no training. That’s right, I’m going to go relax, waste time and spash around for a bit. So this is all you get on the blog front till the morning.

Here. I fob some viking metal off on you.

I mean seriously. How can you not love these guys? Beards like that take commitment.

What I’m Reading Now

Just finishing of The Secret Voyages of Sir Francis Drake by Samuel Bawlf which has been a great book about sailing that even someone like me, who has no idea if the pointy end is the bow or prow or stern, can read and make sense of. Hurrah! And I spent a little time with a book by Seth Godin called The Dip which, like all self-help books, used the word “you” a lot. Reading books that come through the page like that always kinda gives me the heebie jeebies. Can’t we talk about this as if it’s a problem my sister’s husband’s friend is having? Why can’t we have a socially-acceptable fiction between us? Why do I have to be on the spot?

Aside from that, yeah, I… I haven’t picked up any new books in a while and I’m starting to find myself in danger of running dry. Obviously it’s time to take the bank account for a walk to the book store. Suggestions, anyone?

Some Links for You

It looks like shenanigans with Macmillan books over at Amazon are ongoing and the buy now buttons still aren’t up for at least some Macmillan titles. So if you ever needed an excuse to go down to the shop and pick up some new books, now’s the time. These authors, particularly the new and mid-list ones, could really use some extra support from readers while this crap continues.

I’ve got to give some serious credit to  John Scalzi, Tobias Buckell and Jay Lake, who are not only managing to deal with the situation pretty gracefully, but are also explaining what the hell is going on to the rest of us. Lemme tell ya that if Amazon and Prizm or Drollerie were fighting and Amazon yanked my books to punish my publisher, I’d be incandescent with rage. How they manage to have lives, write books, and be sensible and sane about this stuff (even when some of them are undergoing chemo) is a god damned mystery to me.

I feel for the authors, I really do. Now, before you guys tell me I’m insane, and the cost of ebooks is all ready to high, let me say this: The cost of ebooks is a red herring. It does not matter. The market will determine what people are willing to pay and if no one buys a 14.99$ ebook then no one will sell them at that price. Just because I have the right to demand 99% royalties on my stories (what with my monopoly on them ‘n all) doesn’t mean I’ll ever get ‘em.

What does matter that Amazon, the single biggest bookstore in the world, decided that rather than negotiate through a contractual tough spot, they saw the iPad looming on the horizon and thought they’d try to strong-arm a publishing company by hurting its sales and consequently its authors.

I’m glad Macmillan gave them the two fingered salute. I hope my own publishers would be as brave (and cunning with the PR - that open letter was brilliant and Amazon execs still haven’t, to my ) when faced with a behemoth that has so much control over the market.

So that’s ongoing and interesting and eating up a lot of my time while I read commentary and reaction and counter reaction. Normally, though, when I get tired of one aspect of my life, I can take solace in another. Usually when writing is madness, my day job is a bastion of calm. Not so these days, and it’s all because of the ECX, which is driving me nuts on so many levels that I finally snapped and ranted about it on the blog I maintain for work.

If you want to read it, you can go here, but I’ll tell you, unless you’re seriously interested in specialty coffee, the thing that had me so frustrated I was almost in tears this afternoon is going to look pretty strange and arcane.

But not everything is outrageous and/or distressing. No. I have tai chi and qi gong tonight, which should go a long way toward making me feel less like a ball of stress and more like a human.

I know I said I had those classes last night, but I was wrong. That is because it is Tuesday tonight and not last night as I erroneously believed from about noon to eight pm yesterday. Sheesh. Must be time for a vacation soon.

Ran my first kinda-class this afternoon after work and have qi gong and tai chi tonight. Obviously, despite my best efforts, I’m taking a break from writing for a little while. It goes in waves. Sometimes I stay at home in front of the computer, eschewing both friendship and physical activity, and sometimes I couldn’t nail my butt to the chair if I had a map and pneumatic hammer. Sometimes, this is how it goes.

Multiclassing

So, um, I was thinking last night about the characters I used to make for AD&D and thinking about how I always wanted to make a multiclass character and I don’t think I ever did. I also always wanted to take ambidexterity as an attribute, but I don’t think I ever did that either. It just took too damn long for the character to level up and get useful. Sure, when they do level up, multiclass characters are the characters behind whom everyone else hides, but I wanted instant gratification.

Today, while training sticks and bo in the parking lot behind work, I was thinking about how long it’s taking me to get the absolute most basic fundamentals of two-hand weapon work, and about how I’ve been told to pick up another weapon. I was thinking about how I’m struggling to keep the little I’ve learned from evaporating. I was thinking about how I typically train at least one extra out-of-dojo hour a week, but since I started to be OK with weapons, that number has been creeping closer to three hours.

It occurred to me while I was chanting temple-temple-forehead, temple-temple-knee that I’ve done in my life what I was always too impatient to do with my characters: I’ve multiclassed and taken ambidexterity. And it is taking a damn long time to get things to a point where I’m not afraid of dropping stuff on my feet or sticking myself in the side, but in the end, I think it’s gonna be worth it.

Amazon Fails Again

Dear Amazon,

I get that you want to be the Walmart of book retailers and sell piles of stuff super cheap. I do. But between the removal of books with queer characters from sales ranking, to DRM and book-snatching issues with your Kindle and now your tantrum at Macmillan (where, presumably, you plan to use the anger and upset of Macmillan’s authors (who earn a percentage off the cover price of their books) to pressure the company into committing to sell ebooks more cheaply than they wish to – thus hoping authors will in fact fight for short term gains in order to achieve long term losses), I think you are behaving like a bully. Or a bank-too-big-to-fail. That makes you a deeply unpleasant sort of company, and not the sort of company I want to support.

The fact is, guys, I live in a city with three great independent bookstores, and I have an account at Powells.com. I don’t need you.

Bye bye.

Tam