Where Personal and Professional Life Collide...

The one thing I will say about the Hugo kerfuffle is that it's becoming glaringly obvious who in our field is an asshole without couth or manners, and who is a decent human being with social skills.

And that there are a sampling of both all along the political-opinion spectrum (although more of the really uncouth behavior documented seems to come from the far right, which is why they also come across as being the most scared).

Or, as people with good breath control call it, "The Greatest Internet Scavenger Hunt the World Has Ever Seen." We just finished up this year's weeklong homage to creativity, joie de vivre, and teamwork, and I blogged about it for Book View Cafe.

Breaking the Comfort Zone, and GISHWHES

Remembering What it's All About

Not Only Refilling the Well, but Digging a New One Entirely...

Go, read.  Contemplate.  Comment.  Especially if you participated - I'd love to hear from my fellow 'hunters'!


Meanwhile, my teammates also blogged...

"We saved Scrappy!"

Tales of Survival (or: GISHWHES is over)



And if you'd like to see some of our finished Items, they're going up (slowly, because Work) on our tumblr

This past week, news broke in the SF community that there had been yet another complaint about sexual harassment lodged against a well-known editor. This editor had been censured previously, back in 2010, but it turned out that none of the complaints had been "officially" registered.

That has now changed. And the fact that previous complaints were swept under the table by HR (because nothing "officially" had been done) has ignited a new push to teach people HOW to file a complaint so that it WILL be heard.

Sadly, the news didn't surprise me - or, probably, anyone who has ever worked in a power imbalance industry (read: pretty much everywhere).  There will always be people who try to take advantage of that.  But it's far wider a problem, affecting those outside the author/editor corridor.  DAW author Kari Sperring has reprinted her essay from 2010, "What Safety Means to Me" about her experiences at conventions, and she's speaking for a lot of us.

And if you're still thinking "oh, but...."  then you need to read this:  "But He Didn't Know He Was Hijacking your Ship: On Conference Creeps", from Maria Dahvana Headley.

Every convention, ever since I was fourteen, there's been at least one guy who gets up in my personal space, gets handsy, thinking that he's being charming, or seductive, or just plain entitled to me.

I get less of the harassment than is described by others (although I still get more than should exist, period, like the individual who started telling everyone that we were a couple. That was...creepy as fuck). I've always assumed that this was because I started out professionally as an editor, which protected me somewhat - I was higher in the food chain than a twenty-something writer would normally be** and that has carried through to now.

Or maybe, like so many others, I've just excused it as "another offensive male who doesn't have a clue how to behave in society" and ignored it, because we're trained to be nice.

Screw nice.   I have a responsibility to the rest of my community, to not excuse it.  To not allow it.  If you're out in public, there are expectations as to your behavior.  Going forward, if someone behaves like a creeper, I'm calling them out as a creeper. Your physical existence entitles you to nothing other than your own existence.  Do not presume.***



*Although the one time someone tried to give me an unexpected, unasked-for, "friendly" back rub, I almost broke their nose, purely by reflex.
**I got a different kind of harassment, with a number of writers thinking that the way to a book contract was down my pants.  I got very cynical very early, because of that.
*** when in doubt, walk up to a woman and say "hi, my name is X, you look interesting, can I buy you a drink and talk to you for a while?"  That is how you flirt in the real world, not by laying hands or leering.  And the direct polite approach often works.  Really.


Originally published at Writer. Editor. Tired Person.

This afternoon has been a bit...shaky. As most of you know, 9/11 did a number on me, emotionally, and it took years to even acknowledge it (why I will never say "you need to move on" or "you need to get over it" to anyone about anything, because So. Fucking. Not. Helpful.) So yeah, a bombing in Boston, the city where so many of my family lives/works? Even knowing that it was contained, that it was (relatively, terribly) a small incident, I was still stressed as hell. Especially when it was confirmed that one of the unexploded devices was found outside Boston proper, in my sister's town, where they'd been watching the race go by.

(family members who might have been affected have been accounted for, which is why I'm able to type this now)

I avoided any visual updates as the story broke, but even the texts were enough to trigger a mild "I need to sit down and cry/shake a bit" moment. It's the inability to DO anything but stand witness, distanced but immediate, that hurts me, then and now.

I am both unsettled and touched by the fact that one of my tweets, a reminder that you're not 'letting anyone down' by looking away from the media coverage if it's hurting you, has been retweeted now over 300 times, and translated into Dutch. Maybe I was able to do something this time? Even if just to reassure someone that they didn't have to tear open their own wounds, to help staunch someone else's...?

In times of awfulness, be a Helper, as Mister Rogers told us.  However you can, as much as you can.


As to who did this, why, what their twisted logic might be...this has the feel of Oklahoma City all over again, although thankfully done with less competence. Tax Day, Patriot's Day (Observed) in Boston.... probably not a coincidence. But I'm not going to speculate further, because we don't know. And pointless speculation does damage, not healing.

I'm just lighting a candle, and sitting beside it.  Feel free to light your own, pour a glass, and sit with me....

Since 31 January, I have been socially interactive - in a crowd, no less - 4x. Four times, in a single week.

This may seem perfectly normally to some of you, but that realization went a long way to explaining why last night, at the 4th of those gatherings, my brain went "no more people. Nyet. None" and directed me to go the fuck HOME.

I like people. But I am a social introvert: less is more. Bring me the people in groups of two and three (five, max) and I am perfectly forever happy. Shove me into a crowd of ten or more, even when they're people I like/find interesting, and you've thrown me into a den of vampires: my energy will fade and then so will I.

The trick, of course, is to ration these gatherings, and when rationing isn't possible, make quick hits and then leave graciously. But it still kind of sucks sometimes, when you're having a good time but know that you can't take much more without significant cost...

This is one of the godsends of the digital age: I can interact with a lot of people over the course of the day through the Internet, and the drain, while there, is massively reduced. It's a lot like living in a major city, really: if I want a conversation, it's there. If I don't my neighbors and fellow city-dwellers are perfectly happy to ignore me/not be a drain.

This may explain why I've spent today with the door locked and the phone turned off*, purging my research library and reshelving the survivors... For the record, 30 culled, 250+ survivors. I think that's a respectable ratio.




*ok, ok, I was livetweeting the cull. That doesn't count.