(no subject)

I have big aims for the next couple of days. I want to have caught up with my Aurealis reading and I want to have re-read all of my dissertation to date and started to persuade it that it really wants to make sense. I want to be able to take big deep breaths and smile. There's nothing much historical in my outlook, nor even fictional, unless I get stuff back from supervisor. This means I'm out of excuses. I have to do my little bits of work!

Ditmar and Aurealis

I'm doing reminders.

If you have a favourite book or essay or anything speculative from this year, make sure that it's been put on this list for the Ditmars, so that people know it's out there (since Ditmar shortlists are created from the number of fans who nominate a given work) and if you have favourite fiction, check that it's been entered by its publisher (or anyone, in fact) for the Aurealis Awards. If you haven't read much from certain Ditmar categories, then now is a good time to start and the list I've linked to is an excellent place to start.

Also, watch Cranky Nick's blog, for last time I did a post like this he disliked it. This year I'm actively collecting adjectives about me from people who I've never met and so I await his comments with interest. I mentioned my own work in the post I did last year, so let me do that now, for consistency. All my published work for 2011 is non-fiction and not eligible for Aurealis. All my personal favourite essays/reviews are on BiblioBuffet this time around. My personal favourites, however, are of pretty limited use, as they are what I like of what I've written.

The important thing is that good work by anyone get noticed. Now is the moment when we all (as readers, as fans) have the chance to make sure the stuff we've enjoyed is a bit more visible. Voting for the Aurealis is done by jury (and the judges are all doing that, right now) and nominations for Ditmars aren't open yet. This means there's still time to make sure that your favourite book or story is up there and being seen. Go for it!





(Bits of this post were brought to you by Evil Gillian - I really need to keep her more under control.)

(no subject)

Some mothers have to work harder than others. My mother was just the very patient receptor of an excited phonecall by me.

All this Aurealis reading has led me to discover equivalencies between the way not-quite-successful SF writers work and the way not-quite-successful historical fiction writers (especially those who use the Middle Ages) work. I think I have it sorted. I don't know why it took me so long. Mum also sat through me discovering why Connie WIllis is so popular* despite her errors and why other authors can't make it off the ground despite much hard work.

It was all terribly obvious, once I'd thought it through. The fact that it's taken me this long to think it through and that I needed the Aurealis books to counterweight the historical fiction and historical SF simply shows how many assumptions I was carrying around concerning genre differences. My bottom line today is that writing comes down to narrative as told by human beings and that some very basic errors can be made in quite different narratives and be accepted by readers because the writer and reader share cultural assumptions.

Now, how do I write this into my dissertation without turning it into an entire nonsense?




*And why her novels work, in fact. This is because the real focus, of course, isn't on the history or the science fictional aspects. They're backdrop only. Now I want to take some of her more extended dialogues and compare them with Oscar Wilde. I want to look for theatre in Connie Willis, not in the drama sense, but in the interaction between characters and the manner of its expression. You know, if someone wanted an article from me about this, I would do it. In my copious free time, of course.