papersky: Melting and tetchy, have some links.

Jo Walton (

papersky) wrote,
@ 2008-06-16 14:38:00

Melting and tetchy, have some links.
Totally bizarre a review of Lone Star Stories 27, including a detailed review of my Sibyl poem. Never argue with reviews.

Positive review of Farthing.

Fairly dull interview at SciFi Wire.

ETA Libertarian review of Ha'Penny.

And I don't know, but I must have totally messed up yesterday's post, because so many people saying "but you don't have to do that" when my whole point was that I want to do that and can't, can't all be idiots. I'll try to rephrase it sometime when it's cooler and I have more brain.

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	ron_newman 2008-06-16 06:41 pm UTC (link)
	One minor error in that review. Carmichael isn't the narrator of Ha'Penny. (Reply to this)

	brooksmoses 2008-06-16 06:44 pm UTC (link)
	We might not all be idiots, but I wouldn't lay odds against all of us not having come down with a serious case of Geek Answer Syndrome. (Reply to this) (Thread)

zeborahnz
2008-06-17 02:02 am UTC (link)

I read this post as, rather than commenting on people offering advice per se (though I can see the nuisance of that), actually commenting on people misinterpreting the problem "I can't write sf because the sf I want to write requires stuff I can't do" as a different problem that can be solved with "But you could (and do) write different sf!"

I think it's true that if Jo wants to say "I write science fiction" she can do that based on the Small Change series. But that doesn't help her actually write the sf that she wants to write (and which I'd love to read, so if advice/method-noodling were wanted/useful I'd happily oblige, primarily by wracking my brain for how I dealt with the converse issue when working on the Kangaroo Story and the Scandinavian Novel(s). OTOH the primary way I dealt with it for the Scandinavian Novel was "Eek, attack story of doom-- Must write-- Writing writing-- Uh oh, need a fact; find it quick so I can get back to writing writing writing..." --that is, I didn't have any choice in the matter and so I just coped. So my suspicion -- though of course I may be wrong -- is that if Jo gets attacked by an sf idea as by Farthing, then she might solve the problem herself, in the way people do all sorts of amazing feats of physical strength and endurance when, a child under each arm, they discover an angry bear blocking their sole path of escape from a raging wildfire.

Close parenthesis. <witter>

(And that's me trying really hard to restrain all symptoms of Geek Answer Syndrome. Ah well.)

(Reply to this) (Parent)

	kate_nepveu 2008-06-16 06:45 pm UTC (link)
	I think you fell afoul of that knee-jerk Internet reaction, which is to give advice even when it's not asked for or indeed, clearly not wanted. This is why I put no-unsolicited-advice disclaimers on any post of mine referring to pregnancy. (Reply to this) (Thread)

	mrissa 2008-06-16 06:56 pm UTC (link)
	Does it work? Because with the number of times I have tried to make it clear that I am not looking for advice on my vertigo, that I am getting medical care and have tried a number of things, and yet people keep popping up with the same two or three pieces of advice anyway. Several times a week. (Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

	kalmn 2008-06-16 07:06 pm UTC (link)
	have you tried throwing things at people who give you advice? i bet that'd fix your vertigo right up. ;) (Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

	mrissa 2008-06-16 07:08 pm UTC (link)
	timprov: Punching them would be good therapy. Me: Um...I don't see how. timprov: Oh, well, not physical therapy. (Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

	kalmn 2008-06-16 07:16 pm UTC (link)
	hee hee! great minds think alike. (Reply to this) (Parent)

	kate_nepveu 2008-06-16 07:13 pm UTC (link)
	When I remember to put the disclaimer on, yes. I had a post soliciting advice but limiting it to one piece, and only a couple people ignored that (so I ignored them). (Reply to this) (Parent)

improbabilities

betonica
2008-06-16 06:53 pm UTC (link)

Oh, I got it. (But then, I don't think I could write a full-length piece of fiction in *any* genre; the 75 page phd dissertation was confusing enough due to length.)

The temptation among us humans to help fix, though, is so severe that it blinds us to reality at times. So we all want to leap in and tell you how the smell of the air thing *could* work. (Well, I'm a scientist, myself - I see lots of possibilities and would be only too pleased to start expounding on them.) We forget, in our zeal, that that's just one little piece of a whole novel, and the next 397 scientific problems aren't going to be any easier. In fact, they might be a lot harder if you have to collect data from those of us in the peanut gallery, every other sentence.

You could, of course, write sf that doesn't have all those accurate details in it - and as others have pointed out, some very good sf has been written that way. But I somehow think it wouldn't have that certain papersky something to it.

(Reply to this)

	pnkrokhockeymom 2008-06-16 06:58 pm UTC (link)
	I understood it. :) (Reply to this)

tithenai
2008-06-16 06:59 pm UTC (link)

That's a gorgeous poem. I don't personally care for the essay-writing school of reviewing, but the whole of the review aside...

"At the risk of putting some readers off with what follows, I'm going to talk about the beautifully illustrated poetry in Lone Star Stories in detail."

Why do people apologise for reviewing poetry? It's so RARE that a publication with fiction and poetry gets the poetry even nodded at! I'll take an essay-type review that's ultimately positive over no review at all. Heck, I'll take a negative essay-type review over no review at all, because at least it's acknowledgment.

(Reply to this)

mrissa
2008-06-16 07:16 pm UTC (link)

I didn't comment on your previous post because it seemed like it would be offensive to have someone else charging around your journal saying, "That's not what she meant! It has to flow and be right!" to people you know better than I do.

But yah. It's like -- well, if you'd never seen a group of children interact, you could look up a billion and one things about child psychology, but writing a novel where three children go and have an adventure together would be torture, because you wouldn't even know where you had to start checking to get things right.

(Reply to this)

	sartorias 2008-06-16 07:37 pm UTC (link)
	I saw your original point, but it seemed really boring to say "Yeah, me too" so I didn't. (Though the rest of the discussion was interesting even if it doesn't fix anything.) (Reply to this)

	pameladean 2008-06-16 08:19 pm UTC (link)
	I knew what you meant. That is exactly the same reason that I don't write science fiction. It's very odd, because writing fantasy certainly does have its sudden derailments, but the whole process of figuring out what to do instead is so much more organic and doesn't run one's head into a brick wall in the same way. P. (Reply to this)

	piapiapiano 2008-06-16 08:48 pm UTC (link)
	my whole point was that I want to do that and can't Well, that's how I read it, so you can't have phrased it that badly. If people were offering you advice then it's probably just as others have already said up above: people like to give advice, whether it's asked for/needed or not. (Reply to this)

	mmegaera 2008-06-16 10:04 pm UTC (link)
	I suspect that they just didn't want anything to slow your writing process down. Take it as a backhanded compliment -- "here, let us fix it so you can keep writing and we'll get another wonderful book that much sooner, yay!" (Reply to this)

	elsue 2008-06-16 11:47 pm UTC (link)
	Which leads to the question...do you have any interest in studying science at this point in your life? I know I have stuff that would be doable if only I wanted to devote a lot of time to adding a competence that I'm not ready to commit to. But if I were, it'd be cool. So I vacillate... (Reply to this) (Thread)

	papersky 2008-06-17 11:04 am UTC (link)
	I don't know. That's a good question. (Reply to this) (Parent)

heleninwales
2008-06-17 08:24 am UTC (link)

No, I don't think you messed up yesterday's post because I understood exactly what you meant. It's why I don't write SF either. :)

If I really wanted to, eg if seized by a Cool Idea, I could probably wing it for the first draft and fix the details in the re-write, because if I did write SF, it would be the softer kind. (I do have an idea for a space opera type thing, for example.) But I know that's not how you work, so I know that's unlikely to work for you and therefore didn't suggest it. Besides, you want to write a hard SF novel.

Having to check each detail as you write would be a nightmare if you're trying to build up a flow, so you'd have to evolve a radically different way of writing. It then depends on how much you want to write SF and how wedded you are to your method and how much time you're prepared to waste pursuing something that might not work when you have a tried and tested method that does work very well, just not for hard SF. As

zeborahnz says above, it may be that if/when the write story comes along, you'll improvise a way of dealing with it.

But it would have to mean writing quite differently, perhaps something involving tentative outlines of scenes, a break from writing to learn up the science involved, then a burst of writing once the scene has gelled. Rinse and repeat. The only other thing I can think of would be collaborating with a non-writing but knowledgable-about-the-right-kinds-of-things scientist. Perhaps brainstorm the next bit of story together then you write it. Scientist checks for factual errors. Rinse and repeat?

(Reply to this) (Thread)

	papersky 2008-06-17 11:09 am UTC (link)
	I have tried a number of different writing methods and none of them work very well for me -- nothing kills my interest like outlining. Nothing kills flow like waiting. I really don't want to try to write SF enough to risk breaking my writing method so I can't write anything. (Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

	heleninwales 2008-06-17 12:28 pm UTC (link)
	Aaargh, no! That's much too big a risk and not (IMHO) worth it on the off-chance of producing a good hard SF novel. (Reply to this) (Parent)

	epacris 2008-07-08 05:04 am UTC (link)
	Have you yet noted, or linked to, the short review at Nicholas' LJ "From the Heart of Europe"? At http://nhw.livejournal.com/1059404.html (Reply to this)

	polymexina 2008-09-13 12:19 pm UTC (link)
	Hi Ms. Walton! I'm the Hathor reviewer you linked to. :) i wanted to reiterate how much i <3ed your book, and what a pleasure it was to review it. (Reply to this)

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