I love early dismissal day
May. 10th, 2007 02:13 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ann_leckieNo lunch at the high school today. So I dropped the kids off (stopping to purchase two fundraiser Krispy Kremes and send the kids into the cafeteria to buy milks to go with them) and went to a university library. Not for the books--although that's a great feature of the place. But there are also many large desks with outlets and ethernet jacks, armchairs near lots of same, big windows, and a cafe. You can take a drink anywhere in the library so long as it has a cover--food they want you to keep in the cafe. I have written many, many words there.
I worked for nearly three hours on The Snake's Wife, mostly retrofitting for things I've changed about the last part. This is harder than it seems at first blush. If I want to, say, insert a specific reference to a character's armor, that should be very simple, a single sentence or even a word or two. But when the scene I'm working with is polished and worked over, those couple of words can totally change a scene, or make it unbalanced, or minimally make a previously good sentence ugly. So inserting something like that often requires half and hour or so of staring and rejecting various possible ways of doing the job.
Related to this is another thing I've found and am intrigued by. Let's say I want to make a major change in...oh, the atmosphere of a scene, or the attitude the reader has towards a character. Not infrequently that change can be made with a single, carefully made and strategically placed sentence. (Not always, you understand. But often enough that it's interesting to me.) It's amazing how tiny details can really do a lot of work. The flip side, of course, is that you have to be careful when making even the smallest of changes.
Anyway. The three hours saw all the retrofitting and fixing finished, and the next session will involve forging ahead, which I always prefer. Once I'd done as much as I was going to, I packed up my stuff and headed out to have sushi for lunch, all by myself with a book.
****
Nick Mamatas thinks women are generally better writers than men. I'm not sure I agree with him. I do agree that the demographics of reading make it more likely that women will write, or know something about putting words together when they do sit down to write, but I personally and with no data think that if you counted up every writer, male and female, you'd find the same proportion of good and bad writers.
But I also think Nick is telling the truth about his slushpile--that by and large women's mss are of higher quality.
See, I think women are socialized to underestimate their abilities and achievements. I think that if you've got two writers of equal ability, one male and one female, the male one is going to be more likely to confidently send his stories out, while the female writer is more likely to consider very carefully whether it's good enough to send out. And maybe decide that it's not. The end result is the slushpile that Nick describes.
This does not say good things about story selection in markets where the gender balance of the TOC matches the slush--let alone where the proportion of female contributors is lower than the actual slush proportion. It is telling to me that ASIM, which has blind submissions, has a higher proportion of female contributors than submitters. It is also telling to me that the finalists in the recent contest at Escape Pod were authored by women more than half the time--subs were blind.
I now wish to state for the record that I do not think Gordon Van Gelder is a sexist pig. Really and honestly, I don't. (Though I have to admit that the whole Truesdale thing is....okay, the kindest way I can say it is "a result of poor judgement." Amplify in your own imagination.)
Where I'm going with this is a defense of the Slushbomb.
I think a lot of the folks who just don't see the point of the slushbomb, or who are offended by it, are perhaps seeing its goals very differently from the way I see it. It's not intended to "prove" that any given market's selection policies are a result of gender bias, unconscious or otherwise. (The existence of unconscious bias in editors of either or any gender is, to me, a given and so obvious that it should need no explanation.) I know that![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
ccfinlay suggested it with the express purpose of seeing its results, sales-wise, but myself, my immediate reaction was "Oh, no, waaaay too small a sample."
I also don't think it was intended as a punishment, or meant to offend. As a protest it's not particularly useful--a sexist pig will be convinced of nothing, and an editor who is unaware (and determined to remain unaware) of his or her own unconscious bias is not going to find in the slushbomb any compelling reason to re-evaluate.
But believing as I do what I said above--that a lot of women are failing to submit out of lack of confidence--the slushbomb is a partial antidote. "Don't be afraid of subbing to Analog! It's fun! We'll all sub (and be rejected) together!" To me, it's a way to encourage more women to submit more. And for the folks who believe that the slush proportions are the source of TOC proportions, this would be the one effective way to address that--by upping the slush proportions. Right? So what's not to like?
Being offended by the Slushbomb, as an editor, is missing the point. The Slushbomb is not about editors. It's about women writers.
Thinking it's stupid or pointless is another thing entirely--but if one thinks it's stupid because supposedly it's meant to force an editor to do anything, or criticize any particular editor, then one might perhaps consider the possibility that one is mistaken in one's assumptions.
*****
I am looking forward to Wiscon, and seeing my CW peeps! And also a few folks on my f-list who I have never met in real life! Paidhi Girl is very unhappy that she's not coming this year--she had a blast last time. Next year, I promised her.
Those of us from my CW class will be doing a group reading, and I'll be there with "The Sad History of the Tearless Onion." Besides "Footprints" it's the only thing I have that's short enough--I am not by any stretch of the imagination a miniaturist. The reading is Friday evening, 8:45 to 10:00 pm.
****
Last but certainly not least, a review at Tangent Online of the upcoming Science Fiction: The Best of the Year 2007 edition(edited by Rich Horton), including a para about "Hesperia and Glory."
I worked for nearly three hours on The Snake's Wife, mostly retrofitting for things I've changed about the last part. This is harder than it seems at first blush. If I want to, say, insert a specific reference to a character's armor, that should be very simple, a single sentence or even a word or two. But when the scene I'm working with is polished and worked over, those couple of words can totally change a scene, or make it unbalanced, or minimally make a previously good sentence ugly. So inserting something like that often requires half and hour or so of staring and rejecting various possible ways of doing the job.
Related to this is another thing I've found and am intrigued by. Let's say I want to make a major change in...oh, the atmosphere of a scene, or the attitude the reader has towards a character. Not infrequently that change can be made with a single, carefully made and strategically placed sentence. (Not always, you understand. But often enough that it's interesting to me.) It's amazing how tiny details can really do a lot of work. The flip side, of course, is that you have to be careful when making even the smallest of changes.
Anyway. The three hours saw all the retrofitting and fixing finished, and the next session will involve forging ahead, which I always prefer. Once I'd done as much as I was going to, I packed up my stuff and headed out to have sushi for lunch, all by myself with a book.
****
Nick Mamatas thinks women are generally better writers than men. I'm not sure I agree with him. I do agree that the demographics of reading make it more likely that women will write, or know something about putting words together when they do sit down to write, but I personally and with no data think that if you counted up every writer, male and female, you'd find the same proportion of good and bad writers.
But I also think Nick is telling the truth about his slushpile--that by and large women's mss are of higher quality.
See, I think women are socialized to underestimate their abilities and achievements. I think that if you've got two writers of equal ability, one male and one female, the male one is going to be more likely to confidently send his stories out, while the female writer is more likely to consider very carefully whether it's good enough to send out. And maybe decide that it's not. The end result is the slushpile that Nick describes.
This does not say good things about story selection in markets where the gender balance of the TOC matches the slush--let alone where the proportion of female contributors is lower than the actual slush proportion. It is telling to me that ASIM, which has blind submissions, has a higher proportion of female contributors than submitters. It is also telling to me that the finalists in the recent contest at Escape Pod were authored by women more than half the time--subs were blind.
I now wish to state for the record that I do not think Gordon Van Gelder is a sexist pig. Really and honestly, I don't. (Though I have to admit that the whole Truesdale thing is....okay, the kindest way I can say it is "a result of poor judgement." Amplify in your own imagination.)
Where I'm going with this is a defense of the Slushbomb.
I think a lot of the folks who just don't see the point of the slushbomb, or who are offended by it, are perhaps seeing its goals very differently from the way I see it. It's not intended to "prove" that any given market's selection policies are a result of gender bias, unconscious or otherwise. (The existence of unconscious bias in editors of either or any gender is, to me, a given and so obvious that it should need no explanation.) I know that
ccfinlay suggested it with the express purpose of seeing its results, sales-wise, but myself, my immediate reaction was "Oh, no, waaaay too small a sample."I also don't think it was intended as a punishment, or meant to offend. As a protest it's not particularly useful--a sexist pig will be convinced of nothing, and an editor who is unaware (and determined to remain unaware) of his or her own unconscious bias is not going to find in the slushbomb any compelling reason to re-evaluate.
But believing as I do what I said above--that a lot of women are failing to submit out of lack of confidence--the slushbomb is a partial antidote. "Don't be afraid of subbing to Analog! It's fun! We'll all sub (and be rejected) together!" To me, it's a way to encourage more women to submit more. And for the folks who believe that the slush proportions are the source of TOC proportions, this would be the one effective way to address that--by upping the slush proportions. Right? So what's not to like?
Being offended by the Slushbomb, as an editor, is missing the point. The Slushbomb is not about editors. It's about women writers.
Thinking it's stupid or pointless is another thing entirely--but if one thinks it's stupid because supposedly it's meant to force an editor to do anything, or criticize any particular editor, then one might perhaps consider the possibility that one is mistaken in one's assumptions.
*****
I am looking forward to Wiscon, and seeing my CW peeps! And also a few folks on my f-list who I have never met in real life! Paidhi Girl is very unhappy that she's not coming this year--she had a blast last time. Next year, I promised her.
Those of us from my CW class will be doing a group reading, and I'll be there with "The Sad History of the Tearless Onion." Besides "Footprints" it's the only thing I have that's short enough--I am not by any stretch of the imagination a miniaturist. The reading is Friday evening, 8:45 to 10:00 pm.
****
Last but certainly not least, a review at Tangent Online of the upcoming Science Fiction: The Best of the Year 2007 edition(edited by Rich Horton), including a para about "Hesperia and Glory."
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2007-05-10 07:52 pm (UTC)In addition to the data point you already mentioned about our flash contest, I should also point out that, although we're not quite at parity, the percentage of stories EP buys from women is higher than the percentage who submit. I'm not sure when the last time was that Scott ran the numbers, but at one point it was something like 20% of our stories coming from women writers (guessing only by names) and 33% of sales.
Hooray for the slushbomb, too. I went through a range of opinions about it last year, and I've finally concluded that it's like diet and exercise. Why you're doing it can be for all sorts of reasons, and anyone else's opinion of your reasons shouldn't matter. What matters is the result; more people submitting their work is an absolute good.
no subject
Date: 2007-05-10 11:29 pm (UTC)I think you're absolutely right about this, and to some extent it accounts for the very different reactions people have had--a lot of people participating have very different ideas about why they're doing it. But like you, as far as I'm concerned, subbing is the whole point.
I'm also really glad to hear about EP's numbers. :)
no subject
Date: 2007-05-10 07:59 pm (UTC)I think that's very true. It may also explain why women are far less likely (Nick said he hasn't had one yet) to attempt to argue/bargain with an editor, or fire off an angry email to the editor, or whatever. It's either we're more polite, or we know our place (as writers, not as a lesser sex). There is one wackjob in my critique group who says the nastiest things about editors that reject him. I can't imagine a woman lobbing such vitriol (though I'm sure there's one SOMEWHERE) at a person she's never met.
no subject
Date: 2007-05-10 11:31 pm (UTC)I've been known to say grumpy things in private before filing a rejection away and forgetting about it--I think that's only natural. But it would never occur to me to be nasty (let alone in public), or even, Mithras forbid, to actually argue with an editor.
no subject
Date: 2007-05-10 10:15 pm (UTC)Re: WisCon: YEAH!!! I look forward to meeting you in person! I think Rachel and I might be driving out together, though not absolutely sure about that...
no subject
Date: 2007-05-10 11:31 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-05-11 03:55 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-05-11 12:01 pm (UTC)But somehow I don't see that as a protest--a protest would be aimed at editors (or perhaps the people who buy the magazines, but that issue is complicated and that group is diffuse and hard to reach without access to the editor), and it seems to me would be designed to carry a message like "This is wrong/bad/hurtful!" Or even better "We as a group are making you aware of this problem and we are going to continue to pressure you until you stop!" I don't think there's any sort of protest (as I see 'protests') that would be effective in this situation.
For me, anyway, solidarity, communicating solidarity, building solidarity, isn't the same as a protest. Sometimes they look the same--gatherings and marches and similar can have both effects. But I do think there's a difference.
A bit tangentially, I think communicating solidarity can be very effective in doing the things a protest might. "I feel this way too!" by enough people can (over a very long time, granted) make it less socially acceptable to engage in certain behaviors.
no subject
Date: 2007-05-11 12:24 pm (UTC)I see one of the primary functions of rallies and protests as communicating homosocial solidarity, and in communicating with third parties. Going to a war protest is unlikely to shake the anti-war establishment directly. But it gives you a better platform from which to organize and has sway on people who are somewhere between hawks and doves.