When I was going through some of my old files looking for something else, I stumbled upon a report I wrote several years ago about a trip my wife and I took to Memphis to the see the “Imperial Tombs of China” exhibition. Since that was the trip that inspired one my favorite early stories, “Golden Bell, Seven, and the Marquis of Zeng,” I decided to reprint the trip report here. It’s pretty long, so I’m going to break it up over the next few days. Continue reading
Category Archives: real life
It’s Not That Complicated
“Everything you want is on the other side of fear.” – Jack Canfield
It’s a little simplistic, but then Occam’s Razor steers us away from the complicated and toward the simple, despite the fact that many of our challenges are not simple at all. Some can be quite complicated: family dynamics, relationships, to name just a couple. Yet when I consider this, I also remember the reverse, a fact demonstrated early on by the Artificial Life hobbyists when computers and their potential for mirroring the “real world” were first being explored, and it is simply this: Simple Behaviors Give Rise to Complicated Systems.
I explored this myself a bit, back in the day. Continue reading
There and Back Again
So no blog posts for last week. Some of you may have noticed, and for those who did, I figured I owed an explanation. For those who didn’t notice, you can safely ignore this entire first paragraph and skip to the next. Saves time. The blog was interrupted by the real world last week, in that I had to take a trip to a site in another state to help close it down. Sad work, that, and also very physically demanding. By the time I got back to my hotel room each day I was too wiped out to do anything constructive. I only managed to get in my guitar practice once, and that barely so. The one time I got finished a little early, it was off to a Teavana® and Godiva® stores, respectively, to make sure I didn’t return home empty-handed on Valentine’s Day. I also stopped at Guitar Center to look at acoustics out of my price range. I’m only a little ashamed of that.
After that, it was home to a different sort of worry. I received an email from PS Publishing telling me it was cover copy, bio, and picture time for To Break the Demon Gate. Cover copy and bio time isn’t a big thing. I can usually find something to say about a book after I’ve written it. It’s when they want such things before it’s written that I usually have trouble. No, the thing that gets me every time is when publishers want a picture. And I think why? Don’t you want to sell books? All by way of saying that I am not the most photogenic person I know. Cameras haven’t liked me since the first time I went to college. I don’t know why. I can’t recall anything I’ve ever done to them, but there it is. The last decent picture of me was taken around 1977, when I had long hair and looked slightly stoned even though I almost never was. Since then it has been all downhill. I keep hoping publishers will forget about wanting a picture. They never do. So it goes.
Yes, that it is a high class sort of worry. It doesn’t rank anywhere near “I don’t know where I’m going to sleep tonight” or “Am I going to eat tomorrow?” but it still manages to be a concern. I should be a better person than that, but I’m just shallow that way. Feet of clay, soul of washi. I am, like everyone else, still a work in progress. Maybe one day I’ll do better.
Recommended Reading
It’s that time again—the Locus Recommended Reading List has been published at their web site. If you don’t know what this is, Locus has more or less been the trade magazine of the Science Fiction and Fantasy field for a lot of years. Every year they do a recommended reading list of the previous year’s fiction in several categories – novels, YA, collections, novellas, etc. You can see the entire list here. This time, my story from Beneath Ceaseless Skies, “Cherry Blossoms on the River or Souls” is included. Keep in mind that the LRRL acts as the unofficial “long list” for the 2013 Locus Awards, which will be decided by the votes of readers and subscribers. And yes, it’s always nice when your work is noticed in a positive way. Or, really, noticed in a negative way. The trick is to be noticed at all.
If you think I’m kidding, I invite you to take a look at the Locus reading list for 2013. Notice something? Yep. There’s a reason it’s referred to as a long list. Do you know how one gets a story or novel or collection on the Locus list? Two of the magazine’s contributors/editors/reviewers have to agree it belongs there. Sometimes, I am told, if a person argues passionately enough, it only takes one. Now, think of all the stories/novels whatever that did not make the list. For example, Yamada Monogatari did not make the list for collection. I’m disappointed but not surprised. It wasn’t reviewed by Locus and so didn’t come to their attention in any meaningful way. But there’s a lot of work out there in that same boat. And a significant percentage of it is of comparable or even better quality to what did make the list.
All this is not to complain but simply to point out a very basic reality—not every piece of fiction published in a given year is going to get any significant notice, regardless. There is simply too much of it. Great from a reader’s standpoint—there’s an embarrassment of riches out there. Not so good from the writer’s perspective. It’s hard not to feel like one snowflake in an avalanche. I mean, you’re there, but so what? Almost no one would miss you, and certainly not that small group of skiers you’re aiming at. If you’re lucky, maybe you’ll graduate to the status of one drop in a bucket. If you melt really well.
Put away the knives and nooses, this isn’t about despair. It’s about why we do what we do. If you’re writing to please other people, stop that. Find something more useful to do with your life while you still can. If you’re writing for posterity, for your own sake knock it off. Seriously. Posterity doesn’t give a damn. I’ve pointed out this fact before and it bears repeating—most writers, good, bad, and brilliant, are completely forgotten within fifty years of their shuffling off their mortal coils. I’d even go so far to say that most of them don’t even make it that long. If you’re doing it to make a living and you’re accomplishing that, great. You’re one of a rare breed. If you’re writing fiction for yourself, if writing makes you a better, saner human being than you would otherwise be, also great. I can think of few better reasons
Otherwise, you’re wasting your time.
Inaccurate, But True
That ½ inch of snow on the left represented major disruption yesterday, because this is the Deep South and we simply don’t know how to cope with cold weather. Or rather, cold weather that makes snow. For a lot of schools and businesses in the area, this represents a snow day. That’s right, schools were closed. Businesses went short-staffed. We’ll pause a moment for the readers above the 38th Parallel North to stop laughing. Continue reading
Richard Parks 