connie willis

I heard the news about David Hartwell’s accident last night; it makes me inexpressibly sad to see one of the people who have shaped the speculative fiction landscape for so long pass. Others will tell you of all his wonderful accomplishments; I want to celebrate his life by recounting a few moments of it that I was privileged enough to share.

I first met David at the Locus Awards in 2006. I was incredibly nervous and introduced him to someone else as “David Hartman,” an error I would perpetuate for several conventions because I’d be so nervous about doing it again that I inevitably would. He was gracious about it every time.

He had an exhaustive knowledge of not just speculative fiction, but popular media in general. Connie Willis sent me to him at some point when I was researching screwball comedies, and we had a wonderful half hour session in the bar with me frantically scribbling titles down on napkins. He was always a pleasure to talk with, and full of interesting nuggets of information.

His dress style was inimitable; I wish more of our editors followed his example. I’m going to miss glancing over a convention crowd and being able to instantly spot him. He was one of the things I could count on at certain conventions.

January has brought some sad passings, including Bowie and Rickman. It breaks my heart to see David added to that list. He was definitely one of the influencers, and the publishing world will be changed by his passing.

Update: Locus says the obit was released prematurely. Keep an eye there for updates.

Neil Gaiman has been catching a lot of flack for this tweet.

People are, understandably, saying that the equation clarion + student = pro writer is not the only way you can reach that particular sum, and they are absolutely correct, although the drama is — as is often the case on the Internet — a bit hyperbolic.

This is the fact of F&SF (and any other genre) writing — there are writers disadvantaged by gender, or race, or sexuality or other physical circumstances. But there’s also a big group — which contains a disproportionate number of those differing physically — affected by economic issues.

Here are two simple facts:

• If you have the economic means to attend a workshop like Clarion West, Clarion, Kevin J. Anderson’s Superstars, the workshops given by Kris Rusch and Dean Wesley Smith, etc, it can give you a career advantage, primarily in terms of forming a support network of peers, although there are a number of other plusses. The degree of advantage depends on both luck and how willing you are to make the most of the time at the workshop.
• If you have the economics means to attend a convention, it can give you a career advantage, primarily in terms of industry contacts. The degree of advantage depends on both luck and how willing you are to make the most of the time at the convention.

But there is nothing being taught at a workshop that you cannot pick up by yourself, given time, though it is true that workshop teaching can often be inspirational, effective, and sometimes entirely life-changing.

Being able to attend a convention or workshop is not just a matter of being able to pay the substantial fee. It’s being able to travel and most importantly — it’s being able to take time away from both work and family. That’s an incredible privilege.

I came through Clarion West in 2005. My instructors were (in chronological order) Octavia Butler, Andy Duncan, L. Timmel DuChamp, Connie Willis, Gordon Van Gelder, and Michael Swanwick. I am a pretty convivial person, and remain close friends with the majority of my instructors. I also was part of a talented class that included E.C. Myers (winner of the Andre Norton Award for his book Fair Coin), Rachel Swirsky (frequent nominee and winner of things) and goddamn Ann Leckie, whose Ancillary series has set the bar for success so high the rest of us are just going, “Yeah right.”

I was able to do this because I had a partner willing to let me quit my job and try writing for a while. A decade later, I have yet to make half of what my Microsoft salary was through writing; I continue to persevere. If I had a family to support, it would have been incredibly difficult to do it — perhaps simply impossible. It gave me an advantage, and it also kicked me in the ass to be productive, because I was intensely aware of just how lucky I was.

Neil is — obviously — not saying you can’t be a writer without such a workshop. Note that Gaiman himself did not go to such a workshop, as far as I know. He is, though, enthused about the workshop (as befits a former instructor) and aware of what a big advantage it can prove.

But it also depends on what you make of it. In any class there will be those who persevere and those who fall by the wayside. Of the people in my writing workshop from decades ago at Hopkins, only a handful are still writing. Ten years later, a few members of my Clarion West class seem to have dropped off the face of the planet.

You have to want it hard enough to work for it, no matter what. You have to be willing to make time for writing words down and thinking about the order and what happens when you rearrange them. You have to have a hide hard enough to survive the day when there’s three rejections plus a nice fan letter whose writer is confused and thinks you’re someone else with a similar name. You have to be willing to trim away some bullshit activities and substitute stuff that lets you work at your craft, like reading or taking online classes or whatever. That’s the part you need.

A while back, I read someone saying that we all have someone who gives us permission to call ourselves a writer. For me, it was John Barth: sitting in his sunlit Hopkins office, a bookcase framing his smiling, balding head talking about my stories and a fellowship he wanted me to apply for is something I will always remember. But that is less important than giving yourself permission to call yourself a writer. It’s harder — it requires a certain amount of adamant ego and determination — but that permission can — and must — come from inside as well as externally. That’s the most important component, and you can do it with or without the aid of a workshop.

TL;DR version? Ain’t nothing going to substitute for hard work. Why aren’t you writing?

Later addendum: Most of the workshops do offer some scholarships; if there’s one you’re interested in, I do suggest asking about what financial aid is available.

Gads, that sounds like a pompous start to pontification. But I wanted to talk about something that I often say in class. It’s something Connie Willis told my Clarion West class, and which I repeat, but don’t explain as thoroughly as I should, because it’s so clear in my head.

But words are imprecise things, and so I’m a-gonna do what we used to call “unpacking” back in grad school and even provide some useful examples.

What did Connie say? She said, “Good fiction teaches us what it means to be human.” As good f&sf writers, I would argue that we might change “human” to “self-aware being,” but that is picking nits.

So what does that mean? It means we’re all faced with this common problem: life. And we want to know what we’re supposed to do, and what we can get away with, and what to do about all that hardcoded primate behavior that keeps popping up from time to time, and stuff like that. Sometimes the message features a universal human, sometimes it is a human shaped by particular circumstances, such as race, gender, class, sexuality, disability, etc. It’s why we like to read fiction. It’s why we like gossip. We want to know what other human beings do.

And here’s why this is important: Sometimes thinking about what a story is trying to say is a good way to complete, rewrite, or sharpen it. Doing this at one of those stages can move a story from good to excellent. Do I start a story knowing the message? Hell no. It emerges (hopefully). Sometimes I have to coax it out of its hiding place in the prose. Sometimes I have to go in with a club.