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much madness is divinest sense to a discerning eye
awards . . . a gripe 
About the Author
Diana Pharaoh Francis
High Fantasy Adventure
Quote of the Nonce
Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Fail again. Fail better.
~Samuel Beckett

Probably, indeed, the larger part of the labor of an author composing his work is critical labor; the labor of sifting, combining, constructing, expunging, correcting, testing. This frightful toil is as much critical as creative.
~T.S. Eliot

The real secret of magic is that the world is made of words, and that if you know the words that the world is made of you can make of it whatever you wish. ~Terence McKenna

Tell the readers a story! Because without a story, you are merely using words to prove you can string them together in logical sentences.
~Anne McCaffrey

The beautiful part of writing is that you don't have to get it right the first time, unlike, say, a brain surgeon.
~Robert Cormier

If you don't feel that you are possibly on the edge of humiliating yourself, of losing control of the whole thing, then probably what you are doing isn't very vital. If you don't feel like you are writing somewhat over your head, why do it? If you don't have some doubt of your authority to tell this story, then you are not trying to tell enough.
~ John Irving

Sometimes making stuff up feels a lot like Coyote* running across the empty space between one rocky pinnacle and the next, and as long as you keep moving you're fine. When you stop and look down, it's suddenly all too apparent that there's absolutely nothing underneath and that you're keeping in the air by a peculiar effort of will.

And then a good day comes, and you start running through the air once again, and, if you're smart, you resolutely don't look down. ~Neil Gaiman
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21st-Nov-2006 04:41 pm
I have decided on a mission. That is, I have the power of nominating for the Nebulas, since I'm a member of SFWA. If you get enough qualifying nominations, that is ten different people nominating a work in time, then it goes to the final ballot. Most of what ends up on awards ballots I don't like that much. It's often good, or good enough, but it's also often literary and often leaves me rather cold. I may have mentioned previously that I can be plebian in my tastes. There are works I can admire that just don't speak to me, and others that perhaps don't have the quality of craft that speak more to me. Then there are the more commercial works that seem to me to have both craft and story. And for some reason, they don't end up on ballots.

So I've decided to make it my mission to put some of them there. If only to say to an author, hey! someone liked your work enough to nominate. I'm not going to look for the one extra special book, I"m going to nominate whatever I like. That goes for the world fantasy awards too. You like a book and you're eligible to vote--put it out there. It might make the ballot.

To me it's not so much about seeing these books win, as it is about seeing some more of the popular tastes reflected in the process.

And can I just add this . . . if you plagiarize on your paper in my class, just so you know, it isn't that hard to notice, especially if you use words you don't even know the meaning of, and if you start referring to things as if you know something about them, like what the wasp represents in Hindu culture. Uh, yeah, that's not an F baby, that's a zero, and I'll send your paper on to the powers that be who will be talking to you, and I may flunk you for the class, though I haven't yet decided. It isn't worth it. Better to try writing it yourself and flop on your face with an F (which is at least some points) rather than get 0/200, and fail the course.

Di
cipher
Comments 
22nd-Nov-2006 12:38 am (UTC)
I am so having visions of you now, with fist raised, yelling, "Fight the power of The Man!" and then getting t-shirts for everyone to wear. And three people do it, three, can you imagine, three people walking in and nominating that book and walking out. They may think it's an organization. And can you, can you imagine fifty people a day, I said fifty people a day, walking in nominating that book and walking out? And friends, they may think it's a movement..."

Sorry. Ahem. Had to. Compelled. Dark forces at work, y'know.

Plaigerists in college. *rolls eyes* The one mistake I never, ever even bothered to try -- with two college professors as parents, there just wasn't any point. I already knew you get laser vision and plaiger-vision as part of your adjunct or professorial position.
[info]kaigou
22nd-Nov-2006 03:13 am (UTC)
You can get anything you want, at Alice's Restaurant, exceptin' Alice . . .

I think you may have impressed me to dig that out and listen to it again. And mark the papers with circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each one . . .

Di
[info]difrancis
22nd-Nov-2006 03:34 am (UTC)
You can hand out the papers while wearing dark glasses. Don't forget the seeing eye dog, either.

CP said that when he was on campus doing various student things in prep for his first semester, he was trying to find the right line. He asked a young man what line he was waiting in, and the young man replied, "I'm in the line for Group W." CP told him, "I think I may be one of only six people here who would get that joke."

I used that joke every now and then at work, and always got blank stares. I suppose that says something about a workplace, when you say, "and if three people, just THREE people walk in and say it, they'll think it's an organization..." -- but then, I was working with mostly former-military. Though I did include an homage in the WiP where one DEA Agent says, "and they sent me to the academy and I passed and they pinned a medal on me and said you're our boy."

Of course, if you were to put circles and arrows and a small paragraph on the back of each, it'd probably only be more depressing in the end, when you try and explain and see nothing but an entire classroom of blank stares. Sigh.
[info]kaigou
23rd-Nov-2006 04:39 pm (UTC)
The one I tend to use is the veins in the teeth, dead birds bodies line, but of course, at the moment, it's gone out of my head. Der.
[info]difrancis
23rd-Nov-2006 06:46 pm (UTC)
You mean this part?

And I went up there, I said, "Shrink, I want to kill. I mean, I wanna, I
wanna kill. Kill. I wanna, I wanna see, I wanna see blood and gore and
guts and veins in my teeth. Eat dead burnt bodies. I mean kill, Kill,
KILL, KILL." And I started jumpin up and down yelling, "KILL, KILL," and
he started jumpin up and down with me and we was both jumping up and down
yelling, "KILL, KILL." And the sargent came over, pinned a medal on me,
sent me down the hall, said, "You're our boy."

When I was first married, our telephone number was (I kid you not) 899-KILL, and we had that snipped from the song on our answering machine.
[info]kaigou
22nd-Nov-2006 01:19 am (UTC)
I used to nominate regularly. Then I got so far behind in my "to Be Read" pile that by the time I read the book it was past eligibility.

Ever notice on the nebula how the same people nominate each other over and over?

Have you read "Hounding the Moon"? Hint Hint Hint <-:
[info]ramblin_phyl
22nd-Nov-2006 03:15 am (UTC)
I don't actually have a copy. Why isn't that on my list to be bought? I shall add it forthwith.

Di
[info]difrancis
22nd-Nov-2006 04:00 pm (UTC)
September release.
[info]ramblin_phyl
23rd-Nov-2006 04:41 pm (UTC)
Crap. I'll be on the lookout for it next time I hit a B & N. Or I'll get it through Amazon or some such. Or, hey! I'll just have them order it locally, cause she'll do that. I'll let you know when I get it.

Di
[info]difrancis
22nd-Nov-2006 03:16 am (UTC)
I should say too I don't keep a to be read pile. I just pick up whatever looks good in the moment, and scatter the rest onto the shelves willy nilly. And then try to read whenever I can. But the idea of an actual pile, hovering and sticking its tongue out at me . . . *shivers*

Di
[info]difrancis
22nd-Nov-2006 01:25 am (UTC)
Once had a case where a young man in my class began the class by stating how much he hated creative writing, then a few weeks later submitted a poem that got that little voice going in the back of my head. Half a minute on Google later, I found the 18th century poem that he'd plagiarized word for word. I'd never read the poem before, but the language and the metre gave it away as not his. Why do so few plagiarizers think of that? Especially in the age of the Internet? If he'd plagiarized some _Catcher in the Rye,_ which I have read, I might not have noticed, because the vocabulary would at least have been contemporary and more similar to his. But I guess if creative writing made enough sense to him that he could figure that out, he'd have been able to try writing some of his own. It makes me kind of sad, because he seemed plenty bright to me. So if creative writing was making so little sense to him, or wasn't capturing his imagination at all, I fear that there was some way in which we were failing him. Suppose he had ADD that was going unnoticed? Or suppose he was perfectly fine, but school curricula had managed to completely destroy any love of wordsmithing he might have had? Not that every student is going to love writing, but I was a bookworm kid, and I realised in high school that many of my classmates couldn't figure out a piece of creative text well enough to get any enjoyment out of it. I would laugh out loud at something I was reading, and to them I was acting crazy. No matter how much I explained it, they saw no connection between the fact that I was reading and the fact that I was laughing. And these were not dumb people. It was just that years of English class had made reading a chore. That's frightening.
[info]nnaloh
22nd-Nov-2006 03:17 am (UTC)
Exactly! On so many fronts. I try to tell students they don't have to like anything, which often means they will. And I try to give them creative fun assignments when I can. But sometimes you just have to go through the assignment . . . might learn something. And then they fight creatively, tooth and claw, not to do so. Hey, isn't your new book out? That's another that has to go on the to be bought list.

Di
[info]difrancis
22nd-Nov-2006 03:38 am (UTC)
That, and kids will do anything to read something if you tell them they can't. Hahahahah, I used to do that in the bookstore. "You'll hate this, and this, and this..." or "this is really mostly adult material, it goes kinda deep into stuff that I would guess will miss you..."

(Magazines are rarely returned; usually you just send back the covers to prove they weren't sold. I had 60 magazines every month, so that's a lot to go in the dumpster, and I'd "pay" the teenagers to do stuff like take out my trash or paint the shop or dust something, in coverless magazines. It's amazing what kids will read when it's not for school.)

Actually, now that I think about it, the most powerful phrase to use to get kids to read is, "oh, this one you might like, but it'd really piss your parents off..."

Bwahahaha. Worked like a charm.
[info]kaigou
22nd-Nov-2006 03:50 am (UTC)
To me it's not so much about seeing these books win, as it is about seeing some more of the popular tastes reflected in the process.

That would be nice.
[info]kristine_smith
23rd-Nov-2006 04:47 pm (UTC)
I'm hoping more than just me starts doing it. Then maybe the more popular tastes will actually start to percolate through and the books will actually make final ballots.

Di
[info]difrancis
22nd-Nov-2006 05:17 pm (UTC)
I am unfamiliar with the process of nominating a book for an award, so this is pretty darn interesting. I always wondered how some of the more popular fiction could just be ignored. It seemed a bit like they were thumbing their nose at commercial and creative successes. Now I know why. Fight the powers that be!

Plagiarism is a pitiful thing, really. Wouldn't want any students to actually take the time to sit down and write an essay. Nope, that'd take time away from other things, like football, video games, drinking, or socializing. Who does plagiarism help?
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