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Reacting Badly and "Secret Handshakes"
Jan. 16th, 2016 07:52 amThe Internet landed on Neil Gaiman's head.
Luckily, that soft, curly mop of hair will deflect much of the impact. I'm not worried about Gaiman. Gaiman will be fine, I'm sure.
Also, it seems very clear to most people that what Gaiman said was meant as an advert/squee/general endorsement, not Word of God. If you don't want to read the whole article, the short of it is that, in an effort to promote the opening of enrollment of Clarion, a long-standing writers' workshop, Gaiman suggested that writers "need, NEED" to go to Clarion. He's already answered a dozen accusations by clarifying that he didn't mean to imply that anyone who didn't go to Clarion wasn't a real writer (especially since that would include himself), he was just being an enthusiastic supporter, and that all a writer needs to do to be a writer is write.
In fact, most of the people I'm friends with on Facebook, seem completely baffled as to why Gaiman got dumped on with such vitriol.
I'm not.
Yes, the only thing that makes you a writer is if you write. However, writing is NOT the same as publishing. Publishing is a for-profit business, and it is inherently unfair from start to finish. There are thousands and thousands of excellent and talented writers out there. Conversely, there are only so many slots in traditional publishing houses for all that talent to go.
I could go on about it, but I'm not going to waste space telling you what most of you already know: getting published is hard, often impossible. It's heart breaking. It's soul killing. And, yet, other people seem to be able to do it, and so you start casting around, wondering, what the hell, how did they do it, when I can't???!!
Cue: Clarion.
Clarion is an expensive, in-person, live-in, SIX WEEK writers' workshop. There are two of them (or at least there used to be: one in the east, in Michigan, and one the west, in California, I think.) You pay not only the attendance fee, but your own travel, board, and expenses.(There's at least one scholarship available, however.) The trade off is that you get six weeks of writing instruction (and writing time) not only with your peers in the field, but also with people like Neil Gaiman as your teachers. Usually, also, there's at least one editor who attends, so you're guaranteed a chance to get in-person feedback from someone who could actually forward your career in one way or another.
This is, in point of fact, a HUGE leg-up.
As I said before, publishing is a business. In business, you need contacts, networking skills. Clarion provides a singular opportunity for these. In fact, I still tell my students to consider going, if they can afford it. I feel like Clarion also gives writers and opportunity to really "level up" as the kids would say, in terms of writing craft, skill, because it is so intensive.
When Clarion would have been advantageous for me, I could have *maybe* scrapped together enough to go, but I couldn't have taken that much time off from work. So, I didn't go, but, man, I wanted to.
Dozens of my friends went. (That's not even hyperbole, Minneapolis/St. Paul has a huge SF/F writing community and at the time I was deep, deep into it.) I was pretty damn envious of all the war stories they told, the t-shirt they came back with, and the people I considered SF/F celebrities that they now knew when they went to WorldCons or elsewhere. It felt, from the outside, like an exclusive membership. Like they really HAD gotten VIP access badges or some secret handshake that I didn't. In a way, they did have their own language. At cons, alum would greet each other with cries of "West '92!" or "East '08!" and I always wanted to join in with something like, "Bravo! Zulu! Charlie!" because... well, because I'm a weirdo.
But, so the point is... I can understand why some people piled on Neil's comment. There's lots about the unfairness of publishing to be angry about. It's also especially painful when it feels like the barrier between getting into the cool, insider club is money. And time. And also: this.
I'm not saying that's the truth. Clarion is expensive, but they're not making money hand over fist either. In fact, they've had a lot of trouble with solvency. East may have folded. I know it was in danger of doing so a couple of years ago.
I'm just saying I can understand why people reacted the way they did.
Of course, Clarion isn't the answer any more than anything else is. I know plenty of Clarion alum who published, but I know more who didn't. I even know several alum who stopped writing entirely.
So, even this HUGE advantage isn't a guarantee of success. In a way, that's why people are mad. There isn't any magic entry. Not even talent or skill. (That a lie we tell ourselves, but go read something like Fifty Shades of Gray and explain to me how talent was the key to success there.) Some people literally luck out, and that's almost all there is to it. Persistence being the other major factor, but, on the other hand, I've known people to beat their heads bloody against that barrier to publishing, too. So, even being persistent isn't a guarantee. So, of course, people are angry. Of course they're mad at Neil for seeming to suggest that the magic key is to buy your way into the kingdom. And maybe they're like I was, those years ago, staring, green-eyed, at all the Clarion alum who seem to have some advantage they don't. That's maddening too. The whole business is maddening.
This is why I tell my students that they'd better have a reason they write that has nothing to do with being published. I tell them over and over, you need something to fuel your spirits and keep yourself going. You need to love the process and celebrate it. You need to know that you'd do it anyway, even if nothing ever comes of it.
Because you might get lucky. I did.
Luckily, that soft, curly mop of hair will deflect much of the impact. I'm not worried about Gaiman. Gaiman will be fine, I'm sure.
Also, it seems very clear to most people that what Gaiman said was meant as an advert/squee/general endorsement, not Word of God. If you don't want to read the whole article, the short of it is that, in an effort to promote the opening of enrollment of Clarion, a long-standing writers' workshop, Gaiman suggested that writers "need, NEED" to go to Clarion. He's already answered a dozen accusations by clarifying that he didn't mean to imply that anyone who didn't go to Clarion wasn't a real writer (especially since that would include himself), he was just being an enthusiastic supporter, and that all a writer needs to do to be a writer is write.
In fact, most of the people I'm friends with on Facebook, seem completely baffled as to why Gaiman got dumped on with such vitriol.
I'm not.
Yes, the only thing that makes you a writer is if you write. However, writing is NOT the same as publishing. Publishing is a for-profit business, and it is inherently unfair from start to finish. There are thousands and thousands of excellent and talented writers out there. Conversely, there are only so many slots in traditional publishing houses for all that talent to go.
I could go on about it, but I'm not going to waste space telling you what most of you already know: getting published is hard, often impossible. It's heart breaking. It's soul killing. And, yet, other people seem to be able to do it, and so you start casting around, wondering, what the hell, how did they do it, when I can't???!!
Cue: Clarion.
Clarion is an expensive, in-person, live-in, SIX WEEK writers' workshop. There are two of them (or at least there used to be: one in the east, in Michigan, and one the west, in California, I think.) You pay not only the attendance fee, but your own travel, board, and expenses.(There's at least one scholarship available, however.) The trade off is that you get six weeks of writing instruction (and writing time) not only with your peers in the field, but also with people like Neil Gaiman as your teachers. Usually, also, there's at least one editor who attends, so you're guaranteed a chance to get in-person feedback from someone who could actually forward your career in one way or another.
This is, in point of fact, a HUGE leg-up.
As I said before, publishing is a business. In business, you need contacts, networking skills. Clarion provides a singular opportunity for these. In fact, I still tell my students to consider going, if they can afford it. I feel like Clarion also gives writers and opportunity to really "level up" as the kids would say, in terms of writing craft, skill, because it is so intensive.
When Clarion would have been advantageous for me, I could have *maybe* scrapped together enough to go, but I couldn't have taken that much time off from work. So, I didn't go, but, man, I wanted to.
Dozens of my friends went. (That's not even hyperbole, Minneapolis/St. Paul has a huge SF/F writing community and at the time I was deep, deep into it.) I was pretty damn envious of all the war stories they told, the t-shirt they came back with, and the people I considered SF/F celebrities that they now knew when they went to WorldCons or elsewhere. It felt, from the outside, like an exclusive membership. Like they really HAD gotten VIP access badges or some secret handshake that I didn't. In a way, they did have their own language. At cons, alum would greet each other with cries of "West '92!" or "East '08!" and I always wanted to join in with something like, "Bravo! Zulu! Charlie!" because... well, because I'm a weirdo.
But, so the point is... I can understand why some people piled on Neil's comment. There's lots about the unfairness of publishing to be angry about. It's also especially painful when it feels like the barrier between getting into the cool, insider club is money. And time. And also: this.
I'm not saying that's the truth. Clarion is expensive, but they're not making money hand over fist either. In fact, they've had a lot of trouble with solvency. East may have folded. I know it was in danger of doing so a couple of years ago.
I'm just saying I can understand why people reacted the way they did.
Of course, Clarion isn't the answer any more than anything else is. I know plenty of Clarion alum who published, but I know more who didn't. I even know several alum who stopped writing entirely.
So, even this HUGE advantage isn't a guarantee of success. In a way, that's why people are mad. There isn't any magic entry. Not even talent or skill. (That a lie we tell ourselves, but go read something like Fifty Shades of Gray and explain to me how talent was the key to success there.) Some people literally luck out, and that's almost all there is to it. Persistence being the other major factor, but, on the other hand, I've known people to beat their heads bloody against that barrier to publishing, too. So, even being persistent isn't a guarantee. So, of course, people are angry. Of course they're mad at Neil for seeming to suggest that the magic key is to buy your way into the kingdom. And maybe they're like I was, those years ago, staring, green-eyed, at all the Clarion alum who seem to have some advantage they don't. That's maddening too. The whole business is maddening.
This is why I tell my students that they'd better have a reason they write that has nothing to do with being published. I tell them over and over, you need something to fuel your spirits and keep yourself going. You need to love the process and celebrate it. You need to know that you'd do it anyway, even if nothing ever comes of it.
Because you might get lucky. I did.