Month: May 2010

Small declaration of independence

By / May 8, 2010

The moment passed by so quickly that I almost did not recognize it for what it was, but my almost-teenage son declared independence today. I was nagging Link about the story he needs to write for school. I called him to the kitchen, prepared to sit down and write as he told the story. Link was feeling grumpy about it, because he wanted to play video games instead. I began to explain my plan, but Link scowled at me and announced.

“Mom, I’m not a baby.”

Still focused on getting the work done, I asked if he would prefer to do the writing himself. He said that he would and he stomped up to his room with paper and clipboard.

It was only after he was gone that I began to think. Just a few months ago, he was so tangled about writing that unless I acted as a scribe, he couldn’t accomplish anything at all. Those same few months ago, Link was lamenting that he had to grow up because he just wanted to stay a kid. The fact that he would reject my help and declare himself as an older kid, indicates that something inside him has shifted. He is beginning to want his own triumphs rather than support from me. I’m glad to see it.

Now it is time for me to step back. Link is ready to be more grown up. He needs me to quietly eliminate the habits of thought and action which treat him as a young child. In so many ways he still is one, but every day he is less so.

Stuff to do in the month of May

By / May 7, 2010 / 4 Comments

Today I will see Iron Man 2. It will be full of shiny explosions and not much to think about. This is good because my brain is ready for something not particularly thinky.

Balticon booth preparation: I need to ship merchandise to Balticon so that Howard has things to sell. At the end of the month I’ll have to help Howard pack so that he can go.

Balticon Art Show preparation: They’ve given Howard eight panels in the art show. This was at first a dismayingly large number. We could wallpaper a room with all the strips he has done, but that doesn’t look eye-catching in an art show. Fortunately I’ve communicated with the art show director and found a solution. We’ll be putting together the panels as something akin to a museum exhibit. There will be pictures of Howard’s workspaces, explanations of his process. We’ll also discuss the process I go through to ship out books and how the books layout is done. A whole panel will be devoted to the XDM project. Hopefully it will be educational and interesting. But I’ve got lots of work to do to get it ready and I have to mail it all to Baltimore by the end of next week.

The Quest for the Tavern: This is an XDM adventure module. Tracy has already finished a draft of the text. I’ve got to do preliminary layout so that Howard can see where the pictures need to go. Then I have to put in the pictures. There also needs to be lots of copy editing and probable text revisions. The whole process needs to be complete by the end of May so that the thing can go to print.

RMS pre-orders: We’ll be opening pre-orders toward the end of this month. Before we can do that, I need to line up t-shirt reprints and magnet re-prints, and poster re-prints. We want all of these things available in the store so that people can buy lots of stuff and combine shipping. But it means hours of prep time getting the store ready to go.

Conduit: I’m listed on the website. I expect to be doing presentations and panels. I’ll need to prepare and to schedule myself so that I can be where I need to be.

Family stuff: The end of school brings a multitude of closing activities. There are a school carnival, field day, dances, birthday parties, mother’s day programs, and end of school homework projects.

Writing: Hah. I want there to be writing. I’m just not sure where I can possibly fit it in.

The odds and ends of Penguicon thoughts

By / May 7, 2010

A last few thoughts which sprang from my experiences at Penguicon.

***

It was fascinating to me how many of my conversations at Penguicon turned to parenting. At first I was a little concerned. Parenting is huge in my life and a topic about which I feel truly competent to speak at length. I worried that I was somehow unconsciously shifting all conversations in that direction. But then I realized that parenting is huge in many lives. This was confirmed by David Kletcha, who kindly reassured me that writers talk about parenting all the time.

***

I truly enjoy people watching at conventions, because people have given themselves permission to wear things they love just because they love it. I’ll watch the couple wander by with big stuffed bees on their backs and I wonder what those stuffed bees mean to them. If I’m not completely burned out on socializing, I’ll sometimes ask. In every case the person lights up, happy to tell her story. People want to be seen. They want to matter and to be special. Among the fascinating choices in personal dress, I love most to see the ensembles which are aesthetically perfect. I want to say beautiful, but that is not the right word. Sometimes the clothes are meant to challenge. But I am always impressed when the person and the clothes form a harmonious whole. For example, I saw many corseted figures during the convention. Most of them looked somewhat uncomfortable. But there was one woman who passed my booth and she walked like the corset was not even there. She was graceful and proportionate. It was a beauty to behold. Upon inquiry, I learned that she is almost never without her corset. The practice showed beautifully.

***

A girl came by the booth with a hugely wide-eyed expression. She spotted the Schlock Mercenary merchandise and gasped “Oh he’s here?” As I watched she almost melted into a puddle of squee. She apologized to me saying. “I’m sorry this is my first convention.” I could tell she was shell shocked by having so many cool things gathered together in a way she had not previously believed possible. The squee was not so much for Howard as for all of it. I saw her several more times, and she appeared to have settled in to the convention. I’m glad. I hope she had a great time.

***

During the convention I had several good conversations with Jim Hines. He and I have met before and so I was glad to see him in person as well as on the internet. On the last day, when everyone is trying to catch everyone they want to fare well, Jim came up to the booth. We spoke for a moment and then it was time to part. There was the slightest pause and in typical Jim Hines “Let’s drag this thing we’re not saying into the middle of the room where we can look at it” fashion, he said “Do we hug?”
Yes we do. And we did.
I thought about that afterward. There are stages of friendship and acquaintance. Sometimes there are moments when the boundaries are still being defined. You feel close to the other person, but you don’t want to impose a level of intimacy that they may not be ready for. Then there is this careful dance which sometimes goes wrong. Hesitance to impose can be received as a hesitance to grow closer. Then two people, who really want to connect, both end up feeling a little rejected. When I find myself in this careful dance, I need to take a page from Jim’s book. His direct question opened him up to overt rejection, but it also made things clear. And then there was a hug.

***

One of the hazards of a convention is the repetition of stories. I’ll launch into a story and realize that I’ve related it twice before at this event, but I can’t remember whether it was to this group of people. Howard named this feeling Parastorynoia. Which is a pretty good word for it.

***

I was describing to Sal and Caryn the process off pushing myself to the edge of my limits and just beyond.
“When I do that, I discover how strong I am, and I’m less afraid forever.” I paused a moment “And sometimes I push far beyond what I thought my limits were.”
Sal responded, “When you do that, you get new limits.”
I looked at him and knew without a doubt that this he is a person who has gotten new limits repeatedly throughout his life. Extensive military training is designed to do that.
I haven’t been in the military, but it still feels like my life is a long stream of challenges after which I am stronger and less afraid. In some ways I’ve become a challenge junkie. I take on more than I should far too often. The risk is real. It is possible to break rather than become stronger. I have no intention of stopping, but seeing what I’m doing is good.

***

And on that note, I think I’m done sorting my Penguicon thoughts. Time to move on to the next things.

Culture Comparisons

By / May 6, 2010 / 1 Comment

A couple of people we met during the course of Penguicon had also visited Salt Lake City. They talked about the “weird vibe” they felt there. Howard laughingly compared it to Invasion of the Body Snatchers and both times the person laughed and said “That’s it exactly.”

Since those conversations I’ve been pondering how I feel about being a participant in a culture which feels like Invasion of the Body Snatchers to those outside it. There is a significant homogeneity to LDS/Mormon culture. It comes from shared religion and shared neighborhoods built into tight knit little communities. In many ways, Utah is like hundreds of small towns all smashed up against each other. You get the in-everyone-else’s-business nosiness of interested neighbors along with the benefits of neighbors who watch out for each other. From the inside, this culture feels very safe and predictable. People raised there are often afraid of what may lay outside. This is unfortunate, because outside are a lot of amazing people worth knowing.

Human brains are wired to pay attention to things that are different from what they normally see. This is why a visitor comes to Salt Lake City and may feel uncomfortable. The locals are acting in near unison according to social norms that are foreign to the visitor. This same discomfort happens to me when I visit elsewhere. At Penguicon I was bombarded by social situations which were just slightly askew of what I am accustomed to. Add to that fact that I moved through several different social circles within the convention, each with it’s own rules. I spent time with writers, with webcartoonists, with Con com staff, and with Aegis. In passing I saw a dozen other social groups. It really was a lot to take in and analyze so that I did not commit any faux pas.

Upon returning home, Howard and I had the opportunity to describe the convention to people here in Utah. I quickly realized that my descriptions were creating a much wilder picture of the convention than was actually true. The truth is that I’ve seen the same sorts of silly/fun/play behaviors here in non-drinking, strict dress-code Utah as I saw at Penguicon. The costumes are different, but the desires to relax and be accepted are the same.

I do not believe that everyone can just get along with everyone else. I know that there are fundamental conflicts of belief which people need to fight for. But I also believe that there is far more common ground to be had that some people are willing to admit. I have to believe in that common ground, because I found comfortable places at Penguicon and I am wonderfully comfortable here at home in Utah. Part of me thinks it is strange that this should be true. But mostly I am just glad of it.

My Conversational Habits

By / May 6, 2010

In the comments to Howard’s recent post about Penguicon, I am called “charmingly quiet.” This description amuses me. I don’t think of myself as a particularly quiet person. I certainly do not feel shy. Inside my head I am actively participating in the conversation, it is just that most of my thoughts don’t get spoken aloud. I tend not to speak up unless I feel like my thoughts are unique or a viewpoint which is otherwise unrepresented. The larger the group, the less likely this is to be true. In smaller groups I feel a greater responsibility to help keep the conversation alive, and I am more active about finding ideas to add.

On Friday night I spent several delightful hours speaking with fellow writers. At first the group was small, only four of us, and the conversation was shared pretty evenly by us all. As people drifted in to join the group, the conversational dynamic shifted. People like Mary Robinette Kowal, Patrick Rothfuss, and Cherie Priest took center stage as they began regaling the rest of us with amusing anecdotes. I felt a brief desire to be able to do that, to fix the attention of 10 people and tell a story that has everyone laughing uproarously. It is a skill I could learn. I could learn it from Howard. He does it all the time.

Then I remembered the time at a party when I was participating in a smaller conversation at the edge of a large group. I began telling a story which fell into one of those random conversational pauses. Suddenly I discovered that I had the full attention of everyone in the room. It was rather alarming. I was telling a story that was two people funny. I didn’t think it was 10 people funny. The consequences had multiplied if my story fell flat. It didn’t, but neither was it a hilarious success.

The truth is that my conversational strength is not in entertaining large groups. My strength is conversations with small groups of people who are talking about things that really matter to them. On the tail of this realization, I also recognize that this is one of the reasons that it is important for Howard and I to spend some of our time separate at conventions. He shines while regaling stories in large groups where I tend to be charmingly quiet. Sometimes I want exactly that. I love listening to Howard tell stories. It is restful to be a semi-anonymous observer in a conversation. But it is also important for me to have identity and friendships separate from him.

Knowing all this about myself has taught me to watch for the quiet people in conversations. They are not quiet because they lack interesting thoughts. Which is one of the reasons I love smaller conversations. I love listening to people who spend a lot of time observing. I’m also very impressed when I’m around people who have a sense of conversational balance. These people will realize when someone has been quiet and try to draw them into the conversation. I am most impressed by people who can story tell for large groups and then turn around to draw out quiet observers. I was in excellent company at Penguicon, those storytellers I listed above. They did it all.

Regulation of Input and Retaining Reserves

By / May 5, 2010 / 2 Comments

Each evening as I returned to my room after a day of conventioning, I looked at my laptop and dreaded opening it. This is unusual. The internet is usually my friend. I like my regular blogs and email. But my brain was so full of new things, that the last thing I wanted to do was add more new things. My caution was wise because I ended the convention over loaded.

I’ve been back for three days now and I am still carefully regulating my input. I’m back to answering email and blog comments. But I still haven’t caught up on my usual internet sites. I’m not reading much that I don’t have to in order to keep our business running. Also I am sleeping more than I would like. It is a necessary reset, which is being hampered by my extensive list of things to do.

I’ve seen this sort of overload in my kids as well. Patch is the most prone to it. He really requires quiet spaces in order to stay his usual happy self. One of my jobs as a parent is to watch my kids and force them to slow down when they’re getting over stimulated. Apparently I need to do a better job of doing this for myself. A couple of friends at the convention told me how they always schedule time mid-con to hide from everyone and everything. This sounds wise.

I am already thinking about how I can put this into practice next August when Howard and I take the two oldest to GenCon. We are all going to be over loaded and I need to think carefully about how I can counter act that and give us quiet spaces. The kids and I may have to ditch the convention for an afternoon and go find a park to sit in. Or perhaps we’ll watch movies in the room. I am going to have to be much more careful to conserve my own energy. I can’t afford to run myself to the edge of my limits when I have two kids to watch out for. I’ll also have Howard who will run himself to the edge of his limits, as is his job. I need to spend energy making sure that the presence of the kids does not interfere with his ability to work the show. It will be an interesting challenge.

Conventions are not the only time when I need to spend energy regulating input. I still remember clearly the day I worked myself to my physical limits assembling two pallets of books, and then had to face a plethora of kid crises with zero emotional or physical reserves. That was the kind of day I vow never to repeat, and I haven’t, but I keep coming close. I think one of the hardest things about being a mother is that I can’t allow myself to run to the edge of my abilities. I have to hold part of my energies in reserve so that I can always answer the needs of the children. It was one of the joys of Penguicon that I could use up my reserves. Mostly. Except for the phone calls. (How exactly did they expect me to help find the eye drops in my brother’s house while I was over 1000 miles away? I don’t know, but they called to ask me anyway.)

Hmm. This post began talking about regulating input and ended with retaining reserves. My thoughts are still rambling and I lack the focus to bring things back around so that they all connect at the end of the post. Also I am still tired. So for today I will apply the lazy solution and add the words “and retaining reserves” to the title of the post. That makes it all relevant. Right?

Anxiety Under Stress

By / May 5, 2010

The first day of Penguicon was fantastic. I spent the entire day having fascinating conversations with amazing people. Then I climbed into bed and my brain kept running for an hour, trying to sort everything. Just as I drifted off to sleep I snapped awake with an overload of mommy guilt. It only lasted for a few minutes, but during those minutes I was shaky and almost in tears. It was focused on being away from the kids, but it was really the result of too much input and not enough down time.

I was similarly shaky at the end of the convention. We were all packed and sitting at the restaurant, waiting for time to depart to the airport. A very perceptive friend asked if I was okay. I wasn’t really. I was holding on to calm and repressing the person in the back of my brain who wanted to curl into a ball and cry. Again it was the result of too much input and too little processing time. But I did not want to miss even a moment of visiting with friends whom I see far too seldom.

Last night I snapped awake at 1 am in a panic because I have not yet shipped things to GenCon. I have three months until GenCon. There is plenty of time to ship books there. But it took me several minutes to claw my way in to sufficient consciousness to remember that fact. The real problem is that I have an overload of things to do and most of them are both urgent and important. So instead of taking a couple of days to unpack and re-organize after Penguicon, I am trying to dive straight into all of the things to do. So far it is not working well. I’m getting things done, but it is all stressy and fragmented. If I can get myself focused I can dig out from under. But it is hard to become focused with so much looming.

The result is a latent anxiety waiting to pounce upon me. It is stress manifesting as fear. Fretting out all the details of what will happen if I fail is not nearly so useful as just getting stuff done so that I won’t fail. Also, the thinking in circles is made of unhelpful.

The good news is that my head is getting steadily clearer. I’m actually being able to blog some of the Penguicon stuff to get it out of my head. The luggage has been unpacked and stowed. I’m starting to wrap my head around the at home things. As I do, the anxiety subsides and I see that I really can do this.

Finance for Freelancers

By / March 26, 2011

While at Penguicon I moderated a panel called “Finance for Freelancers” with co-panelists Tobias Buckell and Catherine Shaffer. I wasn’t intending to moderate, but I was foolish enough to be the first one to ask who would be the moderator. Having everyone introduce themselves and tell why they became freelancers gave me just enough time to scribble a few notes so I could direct the discussion.

I feel like the whole thing went very well, due in large part to the wealth of experience that Toby and Catherine were able to share. It is a joy to moderate a panel of competent people who know how to make their points concisely. I learned some things and I felt like we shared useful information with the audience. I wish I had a transcript to post, but I can remember a few highlights. What follows is loosely connected notes from the panel:

The insecurity of not having a paycheck: All three of us agreed that the idea of freelancing sounded really scary when we were at the beginning of it, but that after doing it for a few years we all feel more secure in our incomes than we did before. This security comes as the result of having many different sources for income. When one contract dries up, the others carry you until you can pick up another contract to fill the financial gap. Both Catherine and Toby talked about having the ability to stop working for people who are difficult and how that contributes to contentment.

Health insurance: Toby gets insurance through his wife. Catherine has been getting it through her husband, but is considering cutting free of that. Like freelancing, the idea of searching for health insurance is scary, but once you get into it the fear goes away and it is merely expensive. Toby made the point that the price of health care needs to be calculated on top of what you need to pay your bills. This is part of the calculation you make to figure out how much money you need to bring in as a freelancer to make ends meet.

Organization: I spoke a little about organizing time. I have an assigned accounting day once per week where I look at my accounts. During the early years there were some weeks when I merely glanced because there wasn’t anything else to do, but I still kept the accounting appointment. We all talked about how it is important to keep the business accounts separate from the personal accounts. There was some variance about when a freelancer should incorporate, but Catherine quoted a $40,000 per year figure after which it is really to your financial advantage to be incorporated. Catherine uses a free financial management program to track her money (I can’t remember the name.) I use Quicken/Quickbooks. Toby uses Excel. All of us stated the importance of being able to do reports based on the financial numbers so that the freelancer can see where money is coming from and make good predictions for the next few months or years.

An additional note on organization: I think this point was made in a different panel, but it fits here. Creative people often have a learned helplessness when it comes to business organization. They don’t like thinking about numbers and they tell themselves that they can’t do it. Business thinking and financial organization can be learned. I taught it to myself. Over years of practice I got pretty good at it. Organization can be learned. Good financial record keeping can be learned. These things can be just as much a habit as putting on pants in the morning.

I know there was other good information in the panel. I may add it as I think about it. I’ll reiterate what I said in the panel, if you’re considering being a freelancer, you should check out Toby’s blog. He talks about this stuff and does seriously useful number crunching.

Post-Con Crash Day

By / May 4, 2010

Prior to Penguicon I wrote tasks on my to do list for today. This was foolish. Apparently pushing myself to the point of shaky fatigue at the con, followed by hours of plane travel, followed by a short night’s sleep, followed by six hours of driving split into two pieces, followed by a poor night’s sleep, all of it turns today into a crash day instead of a productive one. I know I’m in a crash day when I’m walking up the stairs and part of my brain tells me that we should just lay down on them instead.

I did have a brief spurt of energy for one hour. During that time I went through all my indexed notes and assembled a massive list of things to do. I’m reasonably certain I’ve now collected all of it into one place. This is important because many of those things have deadlines this week. All those things I did not have to worry about until May are now looming large.

I want to drift and relax and recover, but I’m not sure I’ll get to do any of that between now and July when we ship out books.

Writing Excuses: Living with the Artist

By / May 4, 2010

Two weeks ago we gathered me, Dawn Wells, and Kenny Pike together to record a podcast where we talk about living with an artist/author. That podcast went live yesterday. You can listen to it here:

Writing Excuses 4.17: Living with the Artist

It was so much fun to record and I feel like we barely scratched the surface of the issues. Everyone should go listen and beg for more so I get to hang out with the Writing Excuses spouses again.