Fourth Street Fantasy Convention

For those unfamiliar with it, the Fourth Street Fantasy Convention is a fairly small convention that ran during the 80s. It’s oriented toward, well, how to read and write better. Or, put another way, it’s a convention of people who like to read, write, and edit good books, and want there to be more good books to read, write, and edit.

We’re bringing it back. I’m heading up the programming. My approach to programming is: What are some questions I want to hear smart people argue about so I can learn stuff from it. A few of the panel topics this year are: “Pushing buttons for fun and profit;” “Stealing from the mainstream and doing it better;” “What the hell IS ‘structure,’ anyway?” Stuff like that.

Our Guest of Honor is Elizabeth Bear. The dates are June 20-22, 2008. The place is Minneapolis. For more information, check here.

If this sounds like your kind of thing, we’d love to see you there.

If you’re interested in being on a panel, let me know via my email address, which you can find on my web site.

Um…

“In his lifetime, he suffered from unreality, as do so many Englishmen; once dead, he is not even the ghost he was then.” — Jorge Luis Vorges, “Tlön,Uqbar, Orbis Tercius”

Can someone please tell me what this means?

How to have difficult conversations

“General, we haven’t located the SAM battery in that area yet.”
“What’s your point?”
“Until we find it, the air strike seems risky. Perhaps the general would wish to postpone it?”
“Why would you say that?”
“Well, without knowing where–”
“No, I mean, why would you say it? Are you trying to hurt me? I spend the last 48 hours putting together a plan, and now it means nothing? How am I supposed to feel about that?”
“I hear you saying that my suggestion devalued your work.”
“And I hear you saying that my feelings mean nothing to you.”
“General, I think you know that isn’t true.”
“Maybe, but it seems that way. Obviously, you believe my work was useless. You should at least say so.”
“Due respect, General, but you shouldn’t tell me what I think.”
“Okay, that was out of line. I apologize. But it still seems obvious that you care more about these F-18s than you do about whether I’m hurt. How am I supposed to feel about that from my own chief of staff?”
“Yes, sir, we need to talk about that. I understand you were hurt, and I’m not OK with that. ”
“Thank you for acknowledging that.”
“It’s important to me that you know I don’t think this reflects on your worth as a human being . . . .”

On "message," "theme," and Stuff Like That

When I’m working on a story, there is usually some background idea I’m investigating; what some might call a theme, although I don’t entirely understand that word.  In practice, it means that at some point in the process–usually pretty early–I discover that I’m using the story as a means to work out or explore some problem that I don’t understand but find interesting.  Whether anyone else ever figures out my subject is beside the point: it makes the process more fun.

So, here’s the thing: from time to time, I hear references from other writers about “introducing” a theme or some over-riding subject, and I hear it spoken of as if it were a separate process from the creation of the story.  That’s what mystifies me.  How can you, on the one hand, create a story, and on the other play with broader ideas, as if they were independent of each other?  Isn’t the whole flow and working out of the story an expression of whatever theme is being explored?

I’m not expecting an answer to this.  It’s just a thing that has been on my mind for a number of years and I just figured out how to say it.