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The Writing Front
At midnight, I punched in the first three hundred words for National Novel Writing Month, also known as NaNoWriMo. It seemed like a good idea to get a symbolic word count onto the scoreboard before I went to bed last night. This morning, the Woman I Love has been supportive enough to shut off the television in order to let me get some more writing in before I head to campus today.
Thus the present word count for Day One as of 0640 hours is 1100 words. The goal for the day is to reach a modest 2000 words. Hopefully I can push to a larger 5000 words if I play my cards right.
These words are for Coming to Terms, a Tearing Down Tuesday sequel set twenty years later. I’ve already got 6000 words down prior to this morning for the project. So I’ll be keeping two word count tallies over the next thirty days.
The first will be an actual project word count signifying overall work. The second will be the NaNoWriMo word count. In my mind, it seems patently dishonest to count the first six thousand words written prior to this morning.
So it goes. Now it is time for a nap.
Respects,
Steven Francis Murphy
Author of The Limb Knitter and Tearing Down Tuesday
North Kansas City, Missouri
It has been a busy week for yours truly. So busy that my fitness program, which had been running pretty consistent since the start of the new year, got a bit derailed as I dealt with one issue or another.
Let’s get to it.
The Teaching Front
We’re advancing to our first exam, which is far later than normal due to the snow days we’ve had. I’m behind in all of my classes as well, which is yet another struggle. Further, due to the disruptions, it has been difficult to build up momentum and bond with the students. As a result, things are not working quite as smoothly as I’d like. Fortunately, I have no real disciplinary issues on the table.
On the other hand, I see a lot of my students using their textbook and their study guide during the lecture to hunt down terms. On the surface this might seem like a good thing, right? At least they are paying attention to something.
Well, actually, it is a bad thing. It is a sign of a time crunched student, or worse, a bored student, who is attempting to work through the study guide while I lecture. More often than not students believe that the lecture material is not important for the test. I often get students who ask how much of what I lecture on is in the textbook.
Less than you’d think. The lectures are often specifically designed to go deeper into the topics at hand or they are designed to operate hand in glove with the textbook.
So an example would be the lecture on the Pre-Revolutionary Era of American History. The traditional way of teaching this is to start with the Stamp Act, the Sugar Act, the This Act and the That Act and rest assured that is exactly how it sounds to the student. They are merely memorizing bits of info for regurgitation and that is the last thing you want them to do. Memorization is just an early step towards true understanding.
Rather than lecture on those acts, I make the student responsible for reading the textbook’s coverage of those acts. What I do instead is lay out the case for why the Colonials believed that their only recourse was to declare independence from Great Britain. I lay down the grievances and I fill in the background for the Colonial’s historical understanding and perception of events.
How does that work out? Well, I’m two semesters into using that method and if you are a student who does what I told you to do, take notes on the lecture, tie it to your reading and form a synthesis of the two, then they do fine.
Test results aren’t much different between one strategy of coverage or the other, I might add.
In any event, they are doing their homework while I lecture. I think I’m going to put that on the Why Did I Fail The Test? section of my syllabus for next semester.
The Student Front
I’ve not had a chance to update either the Pondering Tree or Playing with Genesis.
We’ve moved into the actual writing of the novel. The group I am in wrote a combined first chapter this last week.
We’re in a computer lab and to be honest, I am growing to believe that this was not the best choice for the class. It is hard to get into an effective group in order to get any work done. The computers serve as a frequent distraction. Given that I was using my laptop on Tuesday, even I am guilty of this, though I had a reason (which is not the same as an excuse) for having that computer out. If nothing else, the clickety-click-click-click of the keys on my laptop are relatively quiet.
In fact, in terms of technology in the classroom, I think it ought to be banned. No videos, no slides, no powerpoints, none of it. Just a board to write on and comfortable chairs for the students to sit in with a large desk to spread out their things. On C-Span this morning (and what a wonderful discovery that is, a place where people discuss without drama or shouting or Jerry Springer like behavior) an education pundit was talking about a high tech public school on the East Coast which cost a pretty penny to equip with the latest and greatest in technology.
The performance at that school? In the toilet. Students surf the net, IM each other or spend their time trying to get the tech to work in the first place.
Banish to the Computer Science Department and leave it there.
I’ll provide a proper update to Playing with Genesis that covers the actual course material and progress later this weekend.
Research Project Number – 05
The Client was on deadline this week, which was something of a surprise to me. I wasn’t aware of the deadline. No matter. I sat down with the backlog I could most effectively contribute to and worked over the material. By deadline time, I had most of the storyline components covered. There are a few lingering errors in the manuscript but I will catch them later.
It is going to be a pretty big novel, folks. I’m looking forward to seeing how the trilogy ends.
The Writing Front
In the Early Morning Rain by Berry Henderson and myself is currently out to market. We haven’t heard anything back yet so we’re hopeful. It is a new market open to e-subs so I’ll be looking over my inventory to see what can be polished up and put into the wind. Many of the valuable things I have learned in World Building will be helpful in that respect.
On the novel front I was able to drag out the manuscript for the first time in a couple of weeks to give it a going over. What I have right now are a bunch of cobbled together, pasted together scenes which are loosely linked together. In looking over the manuscript I think some major work is needed to better define the roles of the various characters.
There is also one glaring problem, the same one I noticed with my previous novel effort, Convergence Point.
When I have the space to spread out and more specifically, work on a military topic, I tend to let the action and strategy dominate the narrative. It is a natural strength of mine as a storyteller and an historian. Unfortunately, without significant character depth and development, no one is going to care about that action. It will be nothing more than a series of cardboard targets getting cut down on the battlefield.
So that part of it needs significant work. It is the sort of thing I can probably hammer out in a week of concentrated effort.
As for the World Building in the novel, I think some refinement of various structures and institutions are necessary. I definitely want to redefine the family structure of this society based upon what I have learned in Melissa Eaton’s Cultural Anthropology side of the course.
If things go according to plan, I’ll use my time during Spring Break in tandem with Trinity’s Spring Break (which is at the end of the month) to get the project ready for submission to market.
Other Fronts
Over the next few days the Great Summer Job Hunt will commence. Now that I am lifeguard qualified I should be able to, hopefully, get a decent job at around 25 to 30 hours a week maximum. Even more ideally, it will be a posting to an outdoor pool.
Trinity is making plans to travel to California to see her eldest son and wife for a week during her Spring Break. I should be able to polish up the novel while she is out there. I’ve got to say that I am glad to see that fences have been mended with that particular component of her family.
Lastly, March 10th is my father’s birthday. He’ll be sixty-nine years old if my math is correct. No one thought he’d get this far given that he has prostate cancer, multiple myeloma, stage three lung cancer and a heart muscle that more closely resembles a chunk of hamburger than a heart.
I chalk it up to sheer cussed stubborness myself.
Trinity and I are going to see about getting some barbecue for tomorrow night so we can celebrate a bit early. Both of us will be tied up during the week with our respective college obligations.
So it goes.
Respects,
Steven Francis Murphy
Author of The Limb Knitter and Tearing Down Tuesday
North Kansas City, Missouri
The Writing Front
A Forlorn Harvest
WC: 23,000 first draft
After a few days away from the manuscript I came back today and put in 2200 words, bringing the total to what you see above. I won’t claim that this isn’t a problem riddled document or that it reads terribly well. Right now I am just trying to get words onto the page.
Even though I am 2K short of the minimum 25K goal I do believe that I’ll try and print this manuscript out tomorrow. Then I can sit down and see what is going on with it. It has always been difficult for me to edit on the computer screen. I find I do a lot better if I have the document right there on paper where I can see it all at once.
In somewhat related news, I spent part of last night working on a creation story for the Limb Knitters. I’ve always had a vague idea about their origins but nothing firmly set in stone. It turns out that the exercise was useful even though I am not sure that the Limb Knitters will make a major appearance in A Forlorn Harvest.
We’ll see.
As for other writing efforts, once can peek in on some of my homework for the World Building class over at Playing with Genesis.
Other Fronts
So far the main effort has been devoted to housework and writing for the novel. Here in a bit I’ll hit the gym for the first workout of the week followed by lunch. For some reason I feel a bit weak and punchy today, not sure what is causing that.
Aside from that, not much else to report.
Respects,
Steven Francis Murphy
Author of The Limb Knitter and Tearing Down Tuesday
North Kansas City, Missouri
I’ve got the day off, probably the last true day off I will have for at least a week given that I will soon have nearly 160 exams to grade. The reason I have the day off is due to in service for the full timers. Every account that I have heard of this event gives me cause to believe that for once, I am getting the better end of the deal.
Since I have the time, best make use of it.
The Writing Front
I finished the first draft of A Knitter’s Day this morning. She has a word count of roughly 4,440 or so. It is very rough and in need of polishing. Still, it feels good to have an actual, finished, first draft. The bones of the story are there. Now it just needs revision and polishing.
Here is the irony. I used to hate this part of the process. I still get frustrated with it but over the last decade I have grown to see the value of it. That would give a time traveling Murphy from 2001 absolute fits to hear. Of course, I’d probably point out to him that the reason he left grad school with a B average (notwithstanding the C) is due to the fact that he felt that a first draft was a finished draft.
Yeah, he wouldn’t like that either.
The final word count goal is 5,000 words. I’ve got a target market in mind and my hope is to have this one downrange by the end of May.
In the meantime, I’ve got a volunteer reading over it in return for a crit from yours truly (which I need to get to right now). Terri’s Creative Writing class will get a look at it pretty soon as well. Technical issues continue to plague efforts to post files in that class.
On the other hand, I’m two pages away from my total page count requirement for her class. I plan on going well over the minimum 30 pages of raw copy. Maybe I should go for 60 or 90? Who knows?
And since I’m on that topic, the other part of the class is giving crits out to the other students. So far all we’ve got up is a bit of poetry. I will get to that soon but I was kind of hoping for some meaty prose to crit.
The next project up will probably be Reborn for Glory. I’m still thinking on that one. As for A Bicycle for Kyle, I need to read over it again before I finish it. There are still narrative gaps which need to be filled. In addition to the gaps, I need to do some research. I have a feeling that A Bicycle for Kyle will not be a quick project.
The Teaching Front
Exams start tomorrow. I gave pop quizes which are actually harder than the test (yes, I’m sick like that). However, it did prompt students to say, over and over again, “I’d better go study.”
Why don’t you do that?
Maybe I’ll see some positive results this time around.
Other Fronts
I’ll get my undergrad transcripts sent to UMKC this week. I can’t stand to go to Park’s home campus if I can help it so I’ll do it online. In the meantime I need to apply for a Masters Program. I think a Masters in Political Science would work for my purposes. I’ve been meaning to get a second masters anyway.
The financial aid form is filled out and submitted for the next academic year. Given the summer gap I think I’ll try and get a late form in for the summer (which falls under the 2009-2010 academic year). If I can pull that off, I may simply go to grad school in the summer.
My goals are pretty simple on the academic front.
1. Get my GPA up to 3.5 plus.
2. Get 12 to 18 hours of American History at the Graduate Level in order to seal up a potential hole in my academic flanks.
3. Begin taking Political Science at the Graduate Level in prep for a potential Interdisciplinary PhD program.
4. See about journal publications.
To be honest, I’d prefer to go to KU or MU for a PhD but I just don’t see that in the cards. The only way I might be able to pull something like that off is if I got a novel contract similar to the one Al Reynolds pulled down this last year. That said, if I had a contract like that, then that begs the question.
Why get a PhD? And sometimes I wonder about that anyway. Why get a PhD? Sometimes it ranks right up there with “Why get a Hummer?” or “Why get a private jet?”
So it goes.
Time for lunch.
Respects,
Steven Francis Murphy
Author of The Limb Knitter and Tearing Down Tuesday
North Kansas City, Missouri
Aboard the Battlestar Steven Francis Murphy, BSG-71
Location: Combat Information Center
Mission: Prepping for the Semester’s First Engagement
The Teaching Front
Today we covered more of the Pre-Revolutionary Era which runs from 1763 to 1775. It is, to be certain, a hash of mythology, entangled narratives and a lot of confusing policy wonk stuff.
On the upside, most students have had these lines hammered into their heads.
“No Taxation without Representation.” That is good. But ask them what that means?
“I don’t know.”
So you have to explain the British Parliamentary System. You also, while you are at it, probably better get into the English Civil War (briefly, a little dab will do ya). You might want to mention that the mantra, “No taxation without representation” was not an original notion. Parliamentarians argued about that back in the 1600s.
Then after you line all of that out, you have to explain to them that the Colonials do not have representatives in Parliament. If you want to confuse them, tell them it wouldn’t have done any good to have them there anyway due to the Tyranny of Distance and the time lag in communications.
Next, you have to hammer home the taxes. You should have spent some time explaining the fact that the colonies were allowed to run their own affairs, more or less, up to the 1750s. They are not happy with meddlers and micromanagers. They definitely are not happy with getting the bill for the French-Indian War or making installment payments for the greatly expanded British Empire.
From there you go from taxes and representation to enforcement. That leads to the Vice Admiralty Courts and British efforts to pull away two basic liberties provided for by the common law.
Right to a jury trial and that one is innocent until proven guilty.
So it goes.
Ideally what should happen, if they have been paying attention (and I’m getting better responsiveness out of some classes, probably because they saw the rant in the previous entry) is that they could use the Declaration of Independence as a study guide.
Right now it feels mushy. Sometimes I think what I should do is throw out the current lecture and build a new one based entirely on the Declaration of Independence. Then I can simply go down the list that Thomas Jefferson, Ben Franklin and John Adams hammered out to make their case in 1775. Here is the various tax acts. There is the effort to block the right to assembly. Over here is that bit about the King’s agents and so on.
In fact, the longer I think on it, the more I like that idea. Hell, it can’t hurt.
Sadly, I won’t be able to truly test it out until the next semester.
We are about to hit the start of the Revolutionary War. They’ll test next Thursday and then we’ll see what we get.
The Fitness Front
Made it to the gym twice this week. If I can get a session in tomorrow and Saturday after class then that will make four.
The Writing Front
I posted elements of my three short story challenge projects at Terri Lowry’s Creative Writing class. They are up a bit early and I suspect it will be a bit before they receive any crits. Of course part of the problem is that sometimes you get a crit that isn’t very helpful. The other part is that I need to crit the work of other students in order to get some likewise response.
Still, they are up and I am ahead.
The more I think on it, the more I think that the key to greater productivity in yours truly is to write the beginning and the end first. Then figure out how we get to the end of the story. The Middle is where I usually have trouble, get lost, lose interest.
Reading
I’m continuing to read Ronald Takaki’s book A Different Mirror. Today I started the chapter covering slavery in American History. Some of this is material I know already. I have to know it if I am going to teach American History 120 effectively since it will lead to the American Civil War. I am not learning anything new per se but I am getting neat little tidbits and details that I greatly enjoy hearing about.
Why wasn’t I exposed to this book? Readers know that I am no fan of political correctness run amok (and there has been plenty of that, especially here lately in the SF field). On the other hand, I can’t see deleting known history out of the narrative. If nothing else, I want to provide a complete survey, or at least as close as possible in the sixteen weeks I have. My students, all of them, regardless of their ethnicity, gender or orientation, deserve no less.
Instead of this book I was exposed to a lot of bloviation and preaching by my instructors at Park College. Instead of this book I encountered a revisionist book called Arming America, which tried to argue that gun ownership prior to the Civil War was a myth. It was the worst sort of book, pseudohistory with falsified, fictional research serving a political agenda (gun control). It won the Bancroft Award and for a long time was held up as the standard by which other historians should orient their efforts.
Turns out the book is pure bunk. Yet you can still purchase it even though most of the book’s assertions have been shown to be false.
Then there is Joseph Ellis and his work. I have trouble taking the man seriously because he lied about his military service. If he lied about that then how I can take his scholarship seriously? He especially caters to the Jefferson/Hemmings narrative which many simply accept at face value.
Myself? I’m skeptical but mainly because there seems to be some room for debate on the matter. I am not skeptical because I’m deeply wedded to the notion of protecting Thomas Jefferson. To me he is just a human being, a smart one, conflicted, and not someone who is above scrutiny.
I wonder, frankly, if I wouldn’t have turned out differently in terms of intellectual and historical development if I had encountered this book sooner.
Full report when I get done with it.
Other Fronts
Completed my Federal Aid Form today. It seems to think that my parents will contribute $80K a year to my education. I nearly fell out of the chair laughing about that. Yes, my parents help a great deal, but they do not have that kind of money. Not even now.
So I suspect I should have filled out that section on the parents after all. I’ll get a chance to change it later.
The objective, right now, is to reenter grad school this Fall. Originally I was thinking about a PhD but it turns out that the C I got fucked with in my last semester at UMKC dropped my GPA just low enough to disqualify my entry into the program.
The gift that keeps on giving. If readers think I am angry at the current editor of Asimov’s, then you have no idea how angry I am at the instructor who fucked me with the C (subjective grading standards, no rubric, and I should have appealed and sued). My anger with the editor at Asimov’s is a mere spark compared to the nuclear inferno I feel about this C.
Which is fine. I know why I was given the C and this sort of bullshit happens in academia. I was given the C to impair my efforts at getting additional graduate hours or a higher degree. There are ways to outflank that and I’ll be making use of it.
Needless to say, at some point, before I depart the planet, I will be getting some measure of revenge (legal revenge).
So it goes.
Respects,
Steven Francis Murphy
Author of The Limb Knitter and Tearing Down Tuesday
North Kansas City, Missouri
The Teaching Front: The First Day
When I first started back in Fall 2007, I was all about the soft, easy going start. I was trying to emulate a Western Civ instructor I knew who could enforce his will and yet still be a very likeable person. I was fortunate in that my first two classes were fairly responsible and it seemed to work. With a few exceptions but I figured that was just part of the mix.
Then I got what I call hard case classes, students out of high school or somewhere else who didn’t want to be there. They were going to disrupt and derail the process at will. After a very rough class during my second semester, I changed my classroom management style.
I execute a hard start now, much akin to basic training (light). I enter the classroom, lay down the law in no uncertain terms in much the same manner I used to deal with clowns on 10th and Main. The rules are strict and for the first few weeks there is very little room for deviation. It is during those first few weeks that many of the students feel that I’m being a bad nasty man who has nothing better to do but torture them.
It goes against a lot of the educational nonsense I’ve been hearing for twenty years now. Coddle their self esteem, be nice to them, try to be their friend, etc. I’ve given up on all of that. I’m there to run a class, to teach history and to make the best use of the time. Their job, whether anyone realizes it or not, is to learn the material. If they can’t do the job, then they need to go find someone else.
Here is the odd thing. I do not pander to my students. I do not make any effort to be popular or easy. In fact, I am trying very hard to earn a reputation as an instructor not to be crossed or triffled with.
What feedback do I get? Well, from those that stick it out, the feedback has mostly been positive. I get excellent evals from my full time peers and from the students I teach. I’m one of the go to instructors, which makes me a little nervous as I do not like the idea that students are picking me over someone else. That can lead to trouble.
In other words, I’m popular.
How the fuck that happened, I’ll never know.
Knowing all of this, yesterday when I entered the classroom I had one thought on my mind. Not how I was going to whip the students into shape or what new trick I was going to try. No, this thought was for me.
Pride goes before a fall.
I’ve got to remember not to get too big for my own britches.
Classes went well over all (except for a few very late students who provided the examples I needed for classroom policy enforcement). We got through the How to Study History lecture aka: Lecture Zero and are well on track towards Lecture One in both courses. The plan is to drop the first exams by mid-September.
It was a good day and it was great to be back in the saddle again. I’ve got to get a tenure position no matter what because I think this stuff is in my blood now.
Other Fronts
Nothing major to report. Student front work started yesterday in Terri’s class. I’ll be popping over to the virtual classroom to check on that here in a bit. Trinity is off at physical therapy, leaving me with time to write this entry, do the homework and perhaps review some material for tomorrow’s lecture.
Otherwise, that is pretty much it.
So it goes.
Respects,
Steven Francis Murphy
Author of The Limb Knitter and Tearing Down Tuesday
North Kansas City, Missouri
The Writing Front: Working on a Story Bible
I started work on a story bible for The Limb Knitter universe today. I suspect this is not the first time I’ve started on one but maybe this rearranging of the deck chairs will help on the writing front. Right now I am writing out the definitions and info for terms such as, what do you know, the Limb Knitter. As such, there are things in the story bible that have not hit the public and so I can’t share it.
Sort of like writing a story.
There is this one character who keeps coming back to me, a bitter sort of Christ figure (hmm, I sense a theme) and I suspect I probably need to tell his story first.
Maybe.
The Teaching Front
We’re still waiting to learn exactly what we’ll get for the Fall. That is fair since the cut session is floating around out there as well as late enrollments. I could get three to four courses if luck holds out, probably American History again. Preferably they’d all be American History II as, to be honest, I really do not enjoy American History I all that much. Oh, I can teach it and the lectures do need work, but I’d rather cover the second half.
If I could get the Civil War included in AH-II, I’d be a happy man but it wouldn’t work out. You have to lay the groundwork for the war which can take weeks.
I did mention to The Boss that I’d very much like to teach Western Civilization I. A senior adjunct peer has most of the availables sewn up (this is partly because I fucked up back in 2007 and passed an opportunity when it was available). Still, I’d like to spend a semester working my way from the dawn of Western Civilization through the Greeks and the Romans. I suspect I would not spend as much time on Egypt as some people would like (that would not make Trinity happy) but I’d enjoy myself.
Hell, it is what I trained for in the first place. And I’d like to get the experience.
Anyway, we should know in a few weeks.
Fitness Front
I’ve been to the gym three times in the last four days. My weight has dropped down to 195 pounds, which is a good thing if you ask me. I need to get back to the cardio (always with the cardio) but I never do it. How am I going to get a ripped body if I won’t do the cardio?
I’m getting older and the body is changing again so I suspect I need to do some research on workouts for forty year old men. Since I am signed up for body building this Fall, I should be able to try some of those new workout tips on for size and see what kind of luck I have.
I’d like to look better at forty than I did at twenty, which shouldn’t take too much effort given what I looked like at that age.
Student Front
Speaking of Fall classes, I have signed up for three hours of PT classes, Body Building, Fencing and Karate. Why not get credit for time I spend in the gym anyway?
The Fencing might run over a possible teaching opportunity so I may have to replace it with something. We’ll see how that goes.
Finally, I’m signed up for Terri’s Online Creative Writing course. This will be a first and all of these courses should free me from being present in a classroom. Terri’s class, hopefully, will spur me to get some writing done.
Other Fronts
Not much else to report. Made blueberry pancakes for the Woman I Love this morning. She dragged me out of bed at Oh My God Thirty to do it (somedays, God help me, she is a morning person and I, my friends, am NEVER a morning person).
So it goes.
Political
Oh, by the way. What’s this shit about making it mandatory for everyone to buy health insurance? I thought that (numerous expletives considered and deleted out of fear of losing the teaching job) of ours said he wasn’t in favor of that during the primaries but now his party is going to cornhole me with another fucking bill I can’t afford to pay.
To the folks on the Blue Team, quit trying to help me out. You want to help? Throw $65K at my student loans. Get the VA fixed so it isn’t a festering cesspool full of morons. But chucking another god damned fucking bill onto my plate IS NOT HELP!
Respects,
Steven Francis Murphy
Author of The Limb Knitter and Tearing Down Tuesday
North Kansas City, Missouri
Since the assault brigades have deployed to put fire on this, I’m going to throw my two cents in.
Here is the deal. Gordon Van Gelder, Editor and Publisher of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, will be setting up an online writer’s workshop. It is a pay to play system and the professional moderator will be none other than former Asimov’s Editor and award winning science fiction writer, Gardner Dozois. Membership is limited to 100 members.
The attack pattern, near as I can suss out, is that perhaps it is a bit unethical for a magazine to run such a workshop. The other issue is that there there might be a two tiered payment system for stories (which is nonsense, an unspoken multi tier system already exists as the established writer is getting far more than my five cents a word for their story). Lastly, some folks have an axe to grind both with Gardner Dozois and Gordon Van Gelder, namely the self appointed politically correct fascists of the science fiction and fantasy community. It wasn’t too long ago that Gardner was all but accused of being a racist, sexist editor (utter nonsense).
So I guess the plan is to kill the workshop by bad mouthing it enough so that people will not participate.
Let me punch some holes in this right now.
First and foremost, as a writer, I’d definitely pay good money to get Gardner’s advice on a story. His advice, in fact, is more valuable than publication in Gordon’s magazine, though I would not turn that down either. Over the course of my career, when Gardner was still an editor at Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, his advice on their Forum and in the personal responses he sent me expedited the evolutionary process for me. I sorely miss having that voice in my rejection pile. I think in many ways that Gardner is probably the go to Writer (note that I did not say Editor) who can tell you what is wrong with your story.
Second, writers pay for workshops all the time. We pay to take creative writing classes at college such as the one my peer, friend and mentor, Terri Lowry, teaches. We pay to take them in brick and mortar classrooms and we pay to take them online (my plan for this fall with Terri). We pay good money not only to get the instructor’s advice but also that of our peers in the class. Some of the more fiscally able in the SF community pay a great deal of money to attend workshops such as Clarion or the Science Fiction Workshop held out at the University of Kansas Center for the Study of Science Fiction. Many pay because their favorite author will be there. More than a few, I suspect, probably pay for the networking opportunities (nothing wrong with that).
How, pray tell, is Gordon’s model any different?
The fact of the matter is that it isn’t any different. Editors in science fiction have guided writers with their rejections and their feedback since the magazines first hit the stands in the early part of the 20th Century. The only difference is that the vector of dissemination has changed.
All other concerns voiced by others in the greater science fiction and fantasy writing community, frankly, smack of the standard dose of personal vendettas against two men who do not deserve such treatment.
Respects,
Steven Francis Murphy
Author of The Limb Knitter and Tearing Down Tuesday
North Kansas City, Missouri
Those that done said stuff