It’s time for the links post! Hurray!
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- Marko Kloos on the cost of going to a con. Yep, this is one reason I cut way back on conventions in 2016: I had other places I wanted to spend my money this year.
- Sunny Moraine has a lot of smart things to say about going to cons, too:
It’s an old and very bitter myth, this idea that being successful in writing is “all about who you know.” And yeah, it’s not all about that. But it is about that. It’s about which conversations you can be part of, with who, regarding what. It’s about who’s keeping an eye on you and what you produce – which attention you earn, but even so. It’s about the room parties and the panels and BarCon, HallwayCon, FloorCon, all the places people congregate and talk shop and talk shit. It’s about making friends and it’s about self-promotion, and again, I think that when you’re a writer the line between those things is practically nonexistent.
- Mari Ness on choices and World Fantasy.
- “Conventions are a lot like Clarion: they’re great if you can afford to attend, but you don’t need them, especially if they’re not accessible to you.”
- There was a really awful post on SF Signal last week. Here’s why it was so terrible, inthe words of those who were hurt by it.
- “Once or twice, I‘ve found a map with a dragon on it, or an elaborate compass rose, or a place that looks like nothing else in the accepted ‘this is what the world looks like’ maps that encompass all of my you-are-here.”
- “Whatever you’re doing to make your art, keep doing it. You belong. You can sit with us. It’s a lot easier for me to extend my hand to you than it is to offer the same to myself.“
- When an academic clocks her hours: Sofia Samatar clocked her working hours for an entire year. It’s quite interesting.
- Jeff Vandermeer had quite a time writing the Southern Reach Trilogy: From Annihilation to Acceptance: A Writer’s Surreal Journey (I like the part where he’s sleeping with the ax. Or the part where he tries to drown a book. Seriously: go read this.)
- Scott Edelman’s 44 year quest to sell a story to Analog.
- Kaye M. has a killer essay called The Unopened Wardrobe Brown Girl Beauty and the Written Word: “We are worth the trouble. We are worth the time. We deserve magic and unexplored horizons and fantastical worlds, too. We deserve those stories. We deserve that beauty.”
- “Harassment isn’t just about individuals, it’s about communities.” Michi Trota is absolutely right on.
- “That feeling of online abuse is hardly different from the feeling you get when it happens in the world away from your keyboard.”
- This is glorious: “When life gives you lemons, make science.”
- The Politics of Justice: Identity and Empire in Ann Leckie’s Ancillary Trilogy Such a great analysis of a great series of books.
- “A study finds that female economists get far less credit for collaborative work than their male colleagues do, often harming their career prospects.” WHAT A SURPRISE.
- Decades of failing to recognize ADHD in girls has created a ‘lost generation’ of women:
Unlike boys, many of whom show hyperactivity, girls’ symptoms veer more toward inattentiveness and disorganization. Girls tend to develop ADHD later than boys. They frequently mask it in an attempt to conform to society’s expectation that they be on the ball and organized. And while some ADHD symptoms can become less intense for boys after they pass through puberty, for many girls, it gets worse.
- “Compared with words like ‘diversity’ and ‘representation,’ with their glib corporate gloss, ‘erasure’ is a blunt word for a blunt process. It goes beyond simplistic discussions of quotas to ask: Whose stories are taught and told? Whose suffering is recognized? Whose dead are mourned?“
- This is an extraordinarily kind and compassionate response to a question from a chill girl.
- All the terrible things Hillary Clinton has done — in one big list. Also, if you think that women are only supporting Hillary Clinton because she’s a woman, then you might be a sexist.
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1) I liked the whole Leckie article but especially the part about Translator Zeiat, and simultaneously imaginary and real categories.
2) Ask Polly: “walk out into the world, and join the rest of us. Feel the love around you. It’s simple and it’s embarrassing and it is everything.” Yeah.