More on The First Chapters Project

I was looking at Twitter the other day and reading through mentions of the Nebula Conference Weekend, including celebration of our new Grandmaster C.J. Cherryh, when I hit a tweet saying something along the lines of, “I hope SFWA doesn’t think this excuses the choice of picking (another author) in the past”. The way the sentence struck me got me thinking about the sort of perception that allows that particular construction.

No, SFWA, aka the organization known as The Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America doesn’t think that. Because SFWA isn’t a person. It doesn’t think. Sometimes I like to imagine that SFWA. It lives in a basement somewhere and looks much like a pale green gelatinous cube, covered with lint and cat hair, and various unguessable things lurk in its murky depths, like discarded typewriter ribbons, empty Johnny Walker Black Label bottles, and that phone charging cable you lost a few weeks ago.

In actuality, SFWA “” at least in the sense they’re thinking of “” is an entity that changes from year to year, most notably through the leadership, but also through the overall composition of the 200+ volunteers and handful of staff that keep it running. The President makes a lot of choices for the organization; others are made for them. The President gets to pick the next Grandmaster, for example, although every living past President weighs in on the choice, as well as things like the Service to SFWA Award and the recipient of the Kate Wilhelm Solstice Award.

The Board does have to approve those decisions, but there isn’t a giant brain in a bubbling vat marked “SFWA” pondering the decision, and the Board, elected by the nearly 2k members to represent them, does a pretty good job of sorting out what should and shouldn’t be approved. At least, so far they have restrained the majority of my crazier notions, which is as it should be, though I still think a secret SFWA headquarters in the Antarctic guarded by robot unicorns would be a reasonable expense.

So SFWA – at least in the collective sense – changes. All the time. That’s been part of the issue in the past, and one thing I’m trying to do while in office is assist existing efforts to create an institutional memory, so we don’t have the equivalent of a system where we get a leader up to speed and then pitch them out the door as soon as they know what they’re doing. We are arriving at the end of a move from being a clubhouse of old pals, started 50 years ago, to a major nonprofit corporation benefiting professional genre writers. The President may be the temporary public face of that corporation, but they cannot be the heart of it, because sometimes they may not have the time to give to keep it beating. That central engine should be our staff and the Operating Procedures and Policies Manual (OPPM), a longtime effort is finally nearing completion.

Have we had bad Presidents? Sure. A few. Also a whole lot of very good ones. The history of SFWA fascinates me the more I find out about it, and at the heart of many of the best stories are battling egos counterbalanced by a genuine desire to do good on most sides. I’ve been keeping copious notes, and I’ll get at least two books out of my term, a nonfiction one about F&SF fandom in the early 20th century, and a satirical novel that may take a very long time to finish.

Has SFWA made mistakes? Holy smokes, yes. One reason I’m painfully aware of that is that people keep telling me about them. I was standing at last year’s Nebula Awards reception when a woman came up to detail how SFWA had insulted her writing group in a previous decade. And Laurell K. Hamilton was a member of that group, she told me, fixing me with a pointed glare. What could I say, other than, gosh, I believe it would be different nowadays? She swept off, having let me know I could never hope to have Ms. Hamilton in the organization. (But Laurell, if you’re reading this, I’d love to talk about why we’d welcome you.)

Have those mistakes been deliberate? While I’m aware of those egos battling behind the scenes at times, 90% of the problems detailed to me were a result of carelessness and a process that wasn’t paying attention, so communications got lost. The problem is a lot of time silence can feel like an answer — never the one that you want — even when it’s not intended as one. Others are a result of culture clashes where people aren’t thinking about differing perspectives.

Have people tried to tick each other off on occasion? Yes, and sometimes that’s where the organization has gone astray in the past, by letting petty feuds, grudges, or even friendships sway things unduly. When people have set out to upset each other, they have inevitably been successful. Luckily the vast majority of that behavior recently seems to be happening outside the organization, and many of the people truly hip-deep in it seem to have self-selected themselves out.

So SFWA is more on track in this decade than in some past ones. That isn’t because of me. I have benefited greatly from the work put in by other SFWA officials over the past couple of decades. I want to name a few names, but they are certainly not limited to this group. Russell Davis kicked off a lot of stuff, including some housecleaning that I know must have been extremely difficult. Michael Capobianco has done the work of ten people, more often behind the scenes than not. John Johnston III has constantly and ably handled the ninjas of Griefcom, administering a main benefit of SFWA that operates invisibly to most people, while the team of Victoria Strauss and Ann Crispin, now Victoria and Michael Capobianco, kept Writer Beware publicly discussing scams and unscrupulous businesses that needed exposing in a manner that benefits all writers, not just SFWA members. John Scalzi, Mary Robinette Kowal, Rachel Swirsky, Stephen Gould, and a slew of other Board members and officials (at this point I have left out a host of names in brevity’s name; please forgive me if yours is one of the omissions) have also put their shoulders to this particular wheel in recent years, keeping it rolling along despite a whole lot of rocks and fouler substances in the road. They have put in time and effort and love, because no one takes a SFWA office or role without a love for this organization, and that’s something that unites us all.

I can’t do anything about those past grudges and wrongs, other than say SFWA’s doing better on a lot of fronts. Nor do I have much, if any, power over controversies stirred up and continuing to be stirred up primarily because the stirrers have found that a successful strategy for selling books. But I don’t really know that I want (or need) to, because the folks embroiled in all that apparently have plenty of time to fling at it, while I’m trying to snatch what writing moments I can when not working with SFWA efforts aimed at helping writers that have nothing to do with those controversies. For example:

• The Contracts Committee back is back. Have you looked at the model magazine contract that was their first effort? That’s an important document for two reasons. One, it shapes the industry in a positive manner by giving editors what they need to start a magazine that treats writers correctly. This was my main reason for bringing the committee back, actually, because that kept getting requested. Two, it’s actually more than a model. It’s carefully glossed, so a writer can look it over and know what each clause is intended to do, what it should (and shouldn’t) include, and what they should push back on. The Committee just finished a similar contract for writer/agent arrangements and are working on others, including anthology and collaboration contracts.
• I recruited M.C.A. Hogarth to run as my Vice President and that was one of the smartest things I could have done, because she is awesome and efficient and knowledgeable. Both of us have corporate experience, which I think has been helpful. Maggie has helped facilitate the entrance of independently published writers into the organization, including driving efforts aimed at helping them. One example of an effort driven by Maggie would be the partnership with Kickstarter, which has grown into multiple things: a curated page on Kickstarter of projects involving SFWA members, the SFWA Star Projects initiative, a Kickstarter rep presenting at the Nebula conference, and that same rep’s offer to assist SFWA members with planning Kickstarter campaigns. Other partnerships that have been established include Amazon, Audible, Bookbub, Draft2Digital, Kobo, and Patreon. Even more are in the works, and we’re also trying to make sure existing ones are used to their best advantage wherever possible. I cannot begin to detail her efforts, but Maggie is indeed, as someone declared her recently, truly metal.



• Beyond that, Maggie is significantly more conservative than I am, and I think having a variety of viewpoints is a very good thing for the SFWA leadership. She balances out some of my wilder tendencies, and I’d like to hope I perform something of the same role for her. F&SF writing/fandom is much more multiplicitous than those pushing the conservative vs. liberal line would have us believe, and SFWA is about working for writers “” all professional F&SF writers. Maggie’s evil agenda is primarily helping our members make more money, and that seems like a pretty good thing. Mine is making things work efficiently and in ways that benefit all members.
• I have worked to facilitate the amazing and hard work that CFO Bud Sparhawk and comptroller Oz Drummond have been doing behind the scenes wherever I can, but I cannot take credit for any of that. Nonetheless, SFWA is moving towards a scrupulously-maintained financial state that can go beyond just sustaining itself, but can allow it to grow at a slow but steady pace. When I came on board we were highly dependent on a revenue source that is rapidly diminishing; I’m pleased to say that we are recovering from that and will not be similarly dependent in the future. I hope to replenish what was taken from the reserves within the next few years.
• Via the efforts of volunteer wrangler Derek Künsken, volunteers are finding roles where they can use and expand existing skills, acquire new ones, and know that they are working to benefit SFWA. At the same time that we’re using more volunteers, we’re being much better about acknowledging their efforts. A few weekends ago I was at the volunteer breakfast at the Nebulas, passing out certificates of appreciation (created by Heather MacDougal) for the second year in a row, and we are making that event an integral part of our annual celebration from now on. When I came onboard, the volunteer situation was bad enough that we were losing members because of it “” again, no malice, no intent to hurt people’s feelings or make them feel unvalued, only good desires and intentions that got overwhelmed due to a lack of communication and a team to back up the volunteer coordinator.
• The SFWA Bulletin, that notoriously troubled and erratic entity, is back on schedule and rapidly proving itself capable of representing SFWA’s mission to the world at large. Editor Neil Clarke has been working to create covers and content that reflect the professional nature of the organization and which are useful to working writers. Among other things, we’ve got writers guidelines up for both it and the SFWA blog, and some members have covered their fees via a couple of blog posts or a Bulletin article. Jaym Gates, John Klima, and Tansy Rayner Roberts did the initial work of digging what seemed like a mortally-wounded Bulletin out from under a pile of criticism and ill-feeling, and deserve much praise for performing that rescue. Both Bulletin and the Blog have writers guidelines available online for what I believe is the first time.
• The Speakers Bureau is up, although we need to work now at publicizing it. Nonetheless, I’m very very proud of how it looks and functions. It’s a case of once again facilitating someone else’s work, because Jeremiah Tolbert of Clockpunk Studios did a fabulous job on that, and you’ll see another major effort that he engineered unveiled in the next month or so, a website dedicated to the Nebula Awards.
• The Nebula Conference “” I’ve blogged about it elsewhere “” but this year I had so many people coming up to tell me things not just about how useful the programming was this year, but how welcoming and inclusive the conference felt, from small details like the provision of a gender-neutral bathroom (one in a central location, no less) to much larger ones like the actual panel topics. Sarah Pinsker worked with generous sponsors to make sure that all the nominees that wanted to attend could be at the banquet, and also helped organize the presentation of the Alternate Universe speeches, which were a delightful manifestation of our community’s creativity and solidarity.
• SFWA tries to celebrate the best and most interesting work produced in the genre each year. Towards that end, I made the change of putting the Nebula Recommended Reading List up online. Why? Because it helps people find good stuff to read, stuff that members have enjoyed enough that they thought other people should read it. I spent a good chunk of last year reading for the Nebulas, and I added a good many items to the list while doing so. Along the same lines, this year the Norton jury will produce a short list of recommended reading that will, or so I hope, prove useful to educators, librarians, and booksellers.

So yeah “” SFWA’s doing pretty well right now. And plenty to come in the next six months. As a result of Nebula discussions, we’ve got a flurry of activity going on right now with Board votes, committees forming, and Derek filling all the volunteer roles I’ve been flinging at him recently. Here’s a few notes about what’s coming in the rest of 2016.

• The Membership Retention Committee, which I’m overseeing, is looking at the new member experience and how to help make people aware of the useful things SFWA offers them. Rob Dircks has been working on an infographic of ways SFWA can help a member promote their work “” I know of ten of them, several of which were implemented in the last year, such as the New Release Newsletter.
• I’m putting a group together to try to get people using the discussion forums more. Part of the complication is that their previous incarnation on SFF.net gained a name for being full of flames and other unprofessional behaviors and then got embroiled in a controversy that got confused with the current version. But the forums have been on the upswing lately “” one small sign of that is that lately there’s often people in the chat room attached to the forums during the mornings and some of those discussions are leading to interesting volunteer efforts. Members may have noticed recent issues of the Singularity holding pointers to particularly interesting or useful discussions.
• I’ve got a couple of outreach efforts in the works, including a Storybundle one that will lead to opportunities for members and another to some conventions. I know the first one will be fruitful, and the second just yielded some results in the form of a pipeline to programming at the next Emerald City Comicon.
• Fundraising is something I’m also trying to set up so it happens in an organized way that gets the money to the places in the organization that need it. If you’re one of the fabulous groups that fundraises for the Emergency Medical Fund, please consider shifting that to the Givers Fund, which feeds all of our grant programs, rather than just the EMF, which is currently well-funded. With the reincorporation, we are a 501c nonprofit organization, and your donations are tax deductible and also eligible to be matched if your employer matches charitable contributions.

When someone says to me, “SFWA should do X,” more often than not I agree, but also know it’s not feasible. So I write it down, because at some point, when the organization is purring along like the well-oiled machine it can and should become, we may be able to do it. Two years ago when I came on as Vice President, there were problems getting in the way of that mission: no one was tracking what anyone was doing, and results included moribund processes, erratic efforts, a Bulletin still mired in chaos, and a lot of members who were unhappy about the state of things (although unable to agree what the state was, in most cases). The only thing saving us were the valiant efforts of the SFWA staff, most notably Operations Director Kate Baker, hallowed be her name. A few years later, a lot of those loose ends have been taken care of and there’s a plan and process in place for taking care of more.

SFWA exists for professional F&SF writers. We can talk about the mission to inform, defend, advocate for and all of that, but it boils down to this: if you are a professional genre writer, you should be able to join the organization and know that you are getting your money’s worth. Recently while researching, I counted ten ways SFWA can help a member promote their work; half of those were created in the past two years.

Right now, membership’s worth the price (according to my personal meter; I acknowledge mileage may vary), but the people who are getting substantially more than their money’s worth are the ones actively engaging with the organization: participating in the discussion forums in order to share resources, tips, and sometimes just vacation or pet pictures; reading the electronic newsletter, The Singularity, to find out about activities and opportunities; using some of the promotional tools we’ve been assembling; and, more than anything else, volunteering in a way that yields satisfaction, entertainment, and sometimes even knowledge. That’s why I keep volunteering, and have been for the decade I’ve been a member.

I’ve got another year to go as SFWA President and while I don’t know if I’ll run again, I do have a timeline of stuff I want to see SFWA do in the next few years. Right now those manifestations of “SFWA should do X” probably get slotted in as something to think about in 2017 or even possibly 2018, depending on other efforts. Or they may just get written down in the shared Evernote notebook we have labeled “Pie in the Sky.” But they’re getting recorded in an organized way that they never have been before and that makes me think we can refrain from the continual reinvention of the wheel (this time with eight spokes instead of six!) that’s plagued SFWA in the past.

Will there be more controversies? Yup. But I think the vast majority will be at the same level, which is in the 1-3 range on the scale of 1-10, with smooth sailing being 0, and a controversy involving massive amounts of illegal substances, border-crossings, and the violation of animal heads being a 10. That is the nature of humanity, that no matter what choice is made, people feel the need to weigh in on it.

In the past I’ve avoided those controversies as a rule because, in the words of the immortal John Bigboote, they were “not my goddamn planet.” But sometimes as SFWA President, those problems are in fact happening on the soil of my planet or happening close enough that we’re catching some fall-out. So I spend a certain amount of time trying to put myself into other people’s shoes, figuring out which parts of my reactions to things are informed versus those that are knee-jerk, and generally thinking about where I’d like to see SFWA in, say, ten years and whether or not they’ll affect that. So far the answer has been “no” consistently enough that I continue not to worry about the occasional rocky patch. They just give me more traction overall.

Why am I writing all this? That’s a good question. Mainly it was that tweet, which made me think about a lot of other tweets. I’ve got a bad habit of taking criticism of SFWA a little personally, at least while I’m in a leadership role, and I know that the vast majority of the criticism isn’t intended that way. And partially to explain why when, at the SFWA meeting last week when a woman demanded to know why I wasn’t “doing something about the Hugos,” I just smiled at her and explained that’s not a circus ring I have any right to step into.

So I’m saying this. Next time you’re thinking about SFWA, get rid of the idea of the gelatinous cube. Yep, it’s a group, but it’s a disparate group, ranging all over the place politically, and still managing to get along. But yelling “Hey SFWA” and expecting every head to turn is unrealistic. (Oddly enough, sometimes it even seems as though the intended audience for those shouts isn’t even SFWA.) Are you a professional genre writer interested in working on networking, community, resources for promoting your work, and other stuff like that? Then the organization may well have something to offer you. But no one’s claiming that membership is mandatory or issuing your mandated set of viewpoints at the door. (Getting a bunch of writers to agree on anything is pretty difficult. I know this from bitter experience.)

By the way, since the season is starting where I have to point this out on a daily basis – SFWA still has nothing to do with the Hugos. We administer the Nebulas. If you’re curious about those, here’s the website and here’s the 2016 Recommended Reading List so far. I’m using it to track my favorite reading this year; one advantage of that is that it’ll give it all to me in a nice little list at year’s end that I can use when doing my 2016 recommendations blog post.

I’ve meandered on a while and said what I wanted to say, and avoided working on a couple stories and an essay in the process. I wanted to let folks know what we’re doing and throw out a few facts to counteract some of the weirder assertions I’ve seen over the past year or so. Mostly I was procrastinating, though, and WordPress tells me I have now gone over the length of much of my fiction.

So if you’ll excuse me now, I need to go feed the thing in the basement and then write a few stories.

* I had no idea how much time this role was capable of eating, but I should have. It’s not my first volunteer rodeo. It is, though, the most entertaining so far.

My last day is June 30, 2019, wheeeeeee, after which I will have been Vice President of the Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA) for one year, and President for two two-year terms, adding up to the sum of five consecutive years on the SFWA Board. Thank goodness for term limits.

The Elections Committee asked me to do a write-up of what the role involves, which was an interesting exercise in reflection about what all I’ve done over the past time on the Board, and I thought that might be of general interest to the F&SF community at large as well, particularly because SFWA has evolved so rapidly in the past decade, including the admission of indie, small press, and game writers, the implementation of dozens of new initiatives, and the explosive growth of the Nebula Conference Weekend. So here’s an expansion of what I sent our Elections Commissioner Fran Wilde.

The President is one of the major faces of the organization, and should be willing to attend events such as the Nebulas and conventions as well as representing SFWA at the other events they’re present at. (When signing up for conventions, I usually pitch a SFWA meeting and/or “What Can SFWA Do For You?” panel, for example.) As such, they do need to bear in mind that anything they say on social media or in interviews may be taken as having “of SFWA” appended to it, whether or not they want it to. The President carries this more than board members, and needs to remember that the membership may interpret something they say jokingly on Twitter as indicating the overall board’s opinion. Having a disclaimer that your opinions are personal and do not represent the organization on places like social media profiles is vital.

A good President will be familiar with the bylaws and OPPM and work to bulletproof the organization against anyone wishing to do it harm. They must work side-by-side with the board, the Executive Director, the Deputy Executive Director, the financial team, and a slew of volunteers and contractors to make sure that SFWA remains true to its mission while growing and adapting to the evolving and ever-changing publishing landscape.

In order to do that, the President needs to keep an eye on what’s going on–which can be difficult at times, given the volunteer nature of the position and the stressors of life. They need to be available to people who need them or arrange someone to cover them when on vacation. But it’s also usually easy to keep up with things and often just a matter of checking in on the discussion boards and e-mail once or twice a day. I do want to note (from experience) that many e-mails are time sensitive and not paying attention can result in holding things up in a frustrating way for other people.

The President also needs to make sure the other Board members also stay on top of things and they work in tandem with the VP to ensure things remain on task. One tradition that’s been implemented are regular weekly video calls with the Executive Director, Deputy Executive Director and SFWA Board. These last 15 minutes to an hour and are pretty low-key. I’m going to miss seeing those friendly faces and getting to compare notes.

There is also a monthly call with the Volunteer Wrangler, frequent calls and texts with Griefcom, and sometimes the need to sit in on calls about legal matters when, for example, a scam publisher decides to try to intimidate Writer Beware into removing an advisory about them, which happens every few months. (My policy has been to be very assertive legally in replying to these; SFWA has the funds to defend itself and I want to make it clear to these folks that Writer Beware won’t play their reindeer games.) It should be noted — although it may be obvious by now — that there is a requirement to have Internet access should you decide to run.

The President needs to review the financials in a timely fashion when they are presented to them by the financial team along with the rest of the SFWA Board. Sometimes they will need be able to sign off on decisions with some authority as well as make informed decisions on their own. They have a small discretionary fund; I have used mine on outreach and learning and funding some minor low-cost projects, usually some form of volunteer recognition. I did use a chunk one year to attend a conference on non-profit fundraising, which was fascinating.

The President needs to provide the membership with regular and thorough information about what’s going on, in the form of reports for the Singularity and Binary, the President’s letter in the Bulletin, and posts on the discussion forums. (I’ve tried to do this for the public as well, with things like my blog series on SFWA and independent writers, a piece I’m working on right now about game writers for a magazine, and even this blog piece.)

The President must know the organization, its resources, and the frameworks around those resources. There is a constant flurry of people asking for assistance or guidance with communications coming in through a multitude of channels, including telephone, e-mail, and social media, and 90% of the time it’s a matter of steering them to the right place, whether it’s the office, the Emergency Medical Fund, the ombudsman, Griefcom, or something else.

The President needs to not give into the temptation to Do All the Things, because there will be a constant stream of people bearing all manner of projects, many of them things that really do need to be done. Therefore the President needs to be someone good at working with or steering people to the Volunteer Coordinator to find roles for volunteers that will be rewarding for both sides as well as working with the Volunteer Coordinator to make sure volunteers are getting recognized.

As noted earlier, the President should be willing to attend events such as the Nebulas and conventions as well as representing SFWA at other conventions and conferences. They must attend the various receptions and functions–including the Volunteer Breakfast and Spouse/Partner party at the Nebulas. At conventions and particularly the Nebulas, the President should pretty much figure 90-100% of their waking time will be devoted to SFWA-related stuff and spent networking and engaging the membership, along with leading Board and business meetings, spending time in the SFWA suite or table if there is one, and participating in SFWA-focused programming.

The President needs to be a good leader, mindful of the varied needs of the membership, and willing to put energy into learning in order to fulfill the organization’s needs as well as occasionally set the organization above their own interests and/or ego. Patience is important; kindness is vital. It is one of the most rewarding — and occasionally the most frustrating — roles I have filled in my life and I am deeply grateful for the opportunity to have done it.

Will I come back? Not anytime in the next few years, but I will continue to do volunteer work with the organization. =) However, I’ve been putting my own writing on the backburner a bit while doing this, so I’m looking forward to putting that back into my work. Look for lots of new words in 2019, including a new Tabat book, at least one collection, more on the space opera series, and the launch of a self-pub effort I’m excited about!

sfwapro #sfwapro