Week of March 11-17 (slightly belated)

[mrissa]

Five rejections. I try not to get emotionally involved with short story submissions -- either they'll buy it or they won't, and once it's shipped out, it's no longer my problem -- but I must admit that I had a sinking feeling when I saw an editorial staff change at a magazine that had asked for a very small and reasonable rewrite. Sure enough, the new editor did not want the story, not even enough to send a courteous, "Yeah, hi, I know the last guys asked you to do a rewrite on this, sorry," sort of rejection. Form reject. Wheeee. So let's not dwell on that too much; the small and reasonable rewrite improved the story, and it has miles to go before it sleeps. Ideally very few miles. But still.

Oh, dog. Dog dog dog dog dog. Do you have to pat my face in supplication when I'm trying to put you in the sink? Because remember why you're going in the sink? It's because your paws are muddy. (Stupid thaw.) And having a soft but muddy pawprint on my cheek is just not fetching, no matter how carefully and sweetly you do it.

Today we are denning, me and the dog. Between errands and social engagements, we haven't had a day of just curling up around the house for awhile now, and it's time. I am her alpha monkey, and we need to be in each other's noses a certain amount. So that's today, along with some house stuff and getting stories resubmitted and so on.

And now I have five questions from akirlu, from that meme from before.

1. What's your process for naming fictional characters?
Step one: cry.
Step two: swear.
Step three: decide that I am never going to publish another word, no never.
Step four: go do something else -- another story that's already far enough along to have names attached, cleaning something, baking something, reading something, whatever.
Step five: and then, a miracle occurs.
Step six: write story.

This is my usual process. Sometimes things are different. With the Carter Hall stories, things are just there when I reach for them. Same for "Deportees" (the space opera I've been mumbling about): of course the captain is Sarah Albrecht. That's her name. That's when I have internal conversations like, "And that's where Ann talks to Winter about her brother." "Oh, good. [pause] Who's Winter? Also, Ann has a brother?"

With What We Did to Piss Off the Continent -- oh, excuse me, What We Did to Save the Kingdom -- things are misbehaving themselves with names, which I am taking as a sign that I should let it percolate longer and work on "Deportees." But I have a few deliberate names, thanks to conversation with ksumnersmith. Derived from deliberate warping of French words, in this case.

When I'm writing something set in this world or a near-analog, I scan names for the ethnicity I'm using -- Ansa Nikkanen was clearly not Vaula Nikkanen or Ansa Numelin or something like that. And when I'm writing SF, I tend to try to avoid overuse of British Isles surnames unless there's a darn good reason, because I think we have too much subconscious impression that they are what ordinary people are called. This is much easier with far-future SF, because I get to make up a good deal more of what it would mean to be of Cambodian extraction in 2417 Mars than I do of what it would mean to be of Cambodian extraction in 2017 Michigan. But it's worth doing anyway, because another Jennifer Smith is boring.

2. What was your worst vacation ever?
You know, I don't have any vacation that stands out as excruciatingly bad. I don't store stuff in total orderings, and I would probably have to try hard to figure out the worst of a pretty good bunch. Aspects of just about every vacation have not gone as planned, but you roll with it. I mean, we certainly didn't know there was going to be the Tube and bus bombing in London on 7/7/05, but that didn't ruin the rest of our time there. We would have had sympathy for the victims and their families if we'd heard the news from Minneapolis; we had sympathy for them in London, but we weren't them, and you can't let the world pen you up in fear.

I got really fairly sick at World Fantasy in '05, as many of you heard or saw, and if that counts as a vacation, it was probably the most total wash of any vacation I've ever had. Sick in a hotel room: not fun. Missing almost all of the con stuff: not fun at all. But even then, I got to meet several friends I'd only known online up to that point, I got to see my old friend Andrew who lives in Madison (and whom I don't see nearly enough -- he's one of my favorite people), I got a pretty necklace, there were free books, Dr. porphyrin took care of me and I got to spend the drive back yammering with her, which I wouldn't have gotten to do if I'd been well...Robin played with rare earth magnets at the schmancy dinner table, and they made a delightful sound and so did he...really, on the whole, it's hard for me to focus on the hours of shaky nastiness.

I am generally that disgustingly cheerful. Really.

3. What was your gateway drug -- that is, what was the first thing that hooked you into SFF?

I liked the kids' versions of fantasy and SF from the time I was small, but I hadn't processed them as a genre. My dad read The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings and the Narnia books to me when I was very small, and my mom started me on my childhood Arthurian binge. But I hadn't realized that there was a whole section of grown-up books in the bookstore and library filled with the kind of thing I liked. Then the library in Lawrence when I was 11 shelved Dragonsong and Dragonsinger as YA and Dragondrums as SFF. Ohhhhhhhhh. Revelation. We were off to the races. My dad was reading Prelude to Foundation about that time, having read the original trilogy ages ago, and so I got that stuff. Treasure trove. Wonders. Delights.

The other revelatory book for me was a few months later, once we'd moved back to Omaha, when my dad gave me Nancy Kress's Beggars in Spain, because "it seemed like your kind of thing." It was my kind of thing -- it was exactly my kind of thing -- and while I kept reading classic SF pretty steadily, I looked at this example of the new stuff and said, "Oh, hey. That's really cool. I can do that!" I couldn't have written like Isaac Asimov if I'd tried -- it just wasn't in me. I can't write like Nancy Kress, either -- can't write like anybody but me, not counting pastiche -- but it's a lot conceptually closer.

4. Is there anything you're really sappy about, and embarrassed to be sappy about? If so, what?

Nope, I am an unabashed sap. Ask me about my friends and family, and I will rattle on blithely about the keenness of them. I talk about my dog in public, for heaven's sake! I mean, I don't say snookie-wookums, but I don't do that in private, either. That is not the kind of sap I am. I am the Scandosotan kind, the kind who beams upon people and uses simple declarative sentences like, "I like you."

There are a few songs that make me cry every time, but I'm pretty open about that. Toad the Wet Sprocket's "I Will Not Take These Things For Granted" is pretty high up there. Also I cry at the ending of Galaxy Quest. Every damn time. With the fankids, after they've saved the day with their geekness and landed the ship safely with the flares? The little bounce the blonde girl does? I am still that blonde girl, and I still do that bounce. I may be the only person in the world who tears up about that movie, but I do. This morning I read Neal Stephenson writing that Galaxy Quest was centered around making fun of science fiction fans, and that misses a little of the point, I think: Galaxy Quest is centered around affectionately making fun of science fiction fans while wholeheartedly embracing our sense of wonder, knowledge, and the possible.

5. If you couldn't be a writer, what would you do instead?

I really don't know. If I hadn't gotten any indication that I could write at all -- if I hadn't won the Asimov Award and hadn't had feedback from editors and friends (notably timprov -- he's a pretty critical reader, and at the time he started reading my stuff, I didn't know him that well -- so if he said, "This is good," I could hear it and not just hear, "You are my friend/daughter/granddaughter/etc.") that my stuff was worth reading -- I might have been more emotionally committed to nuclear physics grad school. Maybe. It's hard to say. At this point I would certainly not go back. People oughtn't to be nuclear physicists as a fall-back option. It just doesn't work well.

I mean, I can come up with hypothetical career plans for hypothetical mrissas -- if I'd liked the actuarial internship when I was a teenager better, that sort of thing -- but any thoughts I have in that direction at this point are along the lines of, "If I need additional full-time work while I'm writing." And that sort of work would be set up so that it interfered as little as possible with my writing and my family. It would be a job, not a career. So what would I be if I couldn't be a writer? An unsuccessful writer, basically.

Comments

[sraun]

Speaking of puppies - sometime after Minicon, I'm planning on having an early Saturday afternoon 'puppy party'. I.e., I'm going to be inviting all the fen I know with dogs to bring them over and let the dogs romp for a couple of hours. Fenced back yard, doggie door, trade off on watching the back yard, they'll have the run of the yard and first floor. So far, I have 'Oh, yeah, fun!' from jbru, kalmn and chirosinger. Do you think Miss Ista and one of her monkeys might be interested?

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

In fact, I have "contact Rauns: dog playdate?" on my list for this week. You are psychic. Or at least awfully timely.

[sraun]

I haven't absolutely picked a date yet - but if I had to bet right now, I'd go for the 14th, with the 21st being the next most likely.
The theory being that I know the 7th and 28th are taken (Minicon and gaming). The 14th is going to be a Minn-StF meeting, but if I planned on 12N-3PM, we'd be done in plenty of time for those of us who wanted to make both to do so.
Refresh my (awful) memory - when did I ask you before?

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

You didn't ask me before. It just seemed like a good idea. I don't have any known conflicts for either of those dates. (Well -- symphony tickets for one of them, but that's far later in the day.)

[applewoman.livejournal.com]

You're not the only one who cries at the ending of Galaxy Quest. I LOVE that movie.

[ckd]

Me three. The distinction between "laugh with" and "laugh at"? I know exactly what side of the line the folks who made that movie were on.

I am also always amused by the dubbing they did on that line of Sigourney Weaver's. It's very clear exactly what she said on set, as opposed to what made it onto the release soundtrack ("screw that!") in order to keep the movie PG-13.

[dsgood.livejournal.com]

British Isles surnames: I have one -- thanks to a UK immigration officer who couldn't spell my grandfathers' Polish-language surname, and asked for something easier. My grandmother's maiden name was Gutman.

Many of the Goodmans in Ireland and Great Britain inherited the name from Viking ancestors; and a fair number of the Goodmans in Minneapolis seem to be Scandinavian.

Conversely, there are apparently a number of Cohens in the British Isles who aren't Jewish (let alone kohannim).

In Time For the Stars, Heinlein had a character named Mei-Ling (?) Jones -- with the surname having the Spanish phonetic pronunciation.

I used to work with a Finnish-American named Lindgren. I assumed he was a Swedish Finn, but turned out his ancestors were Finnish-speaking. His guess was that his grandfather had decided to adopt a more American name.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Oh yes, part of the reason British Isles surnames are more common in literature than ethnic backgrounds would indicate is anglicization of other names. Mine is no exception: they had chosen Lingon to be more distinctive than their patronymic, Petersson, and then the Ellis Island people didn't know how to spell it.

But it's circular, you know? The more it happens, the more it looks like it "ought" to happen.

I have an great-uncle-by-marriage whose surname is Minarovic, and while people might place the emphasis wrong (it's approximately "m'NAR'vic"), even "minna-ROH-vic" would be fairly easy to correct. But some of his relatives changed it to something like Minar or Minor to be less "ethnic." I'm glad his branch didn't, and I'm glad that his sons, my godfathers, never had to consider such a thing necessary for advancement in their work etc.

[papersky.livejournal.com]

You are far from the only person who tears up at that movie.

The kid saying he knew it was just a show, and then being told it's real says "I knew it!" gets me every time.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Yes. That part too.

[dichroic.livejournal.com]

Funny you should mention things. !) Galaxy Quest was on TV here yesterday, though I only got to see a snippet of it in one of Ted's around-the-dial remote flips. (He gets custody of the remote because he actually watches TV, while I more often look up from a book and ask what's going on. 2) We noticed a very nice "We Will Not Forget" plaque about those bombings in Russell Square a week ago.

[ckd]

We noticed a very nice "We Will Not Forget" plaque about those bombings in Russell Square a week ago.

Where, exactly? I will want to visit it next time I'm in London.

[dichroic.livejournal.com]

I thought we saw it when we were returning from the British Library to the Hotel Russell when we passed it so I thought it was to the northeast side of the square or on the street (that forms the east side of the square) a bit north of it. It's a small plaque and is on the east side of the street. However, Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell_Square) says it's by the cafe on the south edge of the square. (A good place to eat breakfast, anyhow.) The Wikipedia article on the bombings says there are plaques at the stations, as well.