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On waiting, EuroCW, and Writing...
Jul. 11th, 2010 06:35 amI’m writing this crouched beside one of the Euston Road gates of the British library. It’s Sunday; the library opens at 11 and it is now 10:55. There are a group of people sitting or standing here, in the alcove that leads into the library square. The British Library gate is huge & metal, made out of the words “British” and “Library” repeated, in case you didn’t get the message. It has some doors cut into it, but they’re bound with two coils of thick black chain. The person sitting beside me is obviously one of the Business/IT visitors: he’s reading a 7city training book on “Approved persons, controlled functions, and training and competence.” The people opposite me are tourists, judging by their small silver wheelie cases. There’s a girl in neon pink crop pants and zebra flip flops who’s trying to repair a necklace, and a blond girl wearing headphones who’s taken her shoes off. Also, old people. Also, a man in a green T-shirt who is wearing a “Police Line Do Not Cross” ribbon as a sash. It’s another day in London. My last full day, actually: I’m leaving tomorrow for Cambridge.
So, updates: we had a mini-CW reunion here yesterday. The lovely Rochita came in to meet me and Derek in London. We did a whirlwind tour of the British Museum & the British Library, and discussed our various writing projects. It was so nice to see them again, and to get to talk about fiction again with people who have drafted and critted and beat their heads against computer screens alongside me. I really envy those who are in the current CW workshop: it’s a wonderful experience.
Fiction-wise, I’m trying to finish my revisions on the Jack-the-Ripper story while I still have the London landscape to draw on. After that, I’ll probably try and revise my wizard story, or I may try and turn my hand to a new story, which is apparently to be called either the RaceFail! Story or the “blue people” story, and is, yes, written in part as a response to RaceFail ’09. My response, anyway, because I took that maelstrom as a challenge to write fiction that engaged with racial issues in a personal way -- not using race as background window dressing, appropriating other cultures for “exotic color,” or mindlessly repeating the formulas that have informed SF-- but drawing on my own muddled, conflicted experience of race and culture. I think one of the greatest dangers for a writer like me, who loves playing with the tropes of the literature I grew up reading, is that my stories could end up contributing yet more links in a chain of formulaic constructions of Otherness. I hope that writing “what I know” will help me to write an original story about race. But maybe not. We’ll see how this turns out.
That’s it for now. More later. Promise.
So, updates: we had a mini-CW reunion here yesterday. The lovely Rochita came in to meet me and Derek in London. We did a whirlwind tour of the British Museum & the British Library, and discussed our various writing projects. It was so nice to see them again, and to get to talk about fiction again with people who have drafted and critted and beat their heads against computer screens alongside me. I really envy those who are in the current CW workshop: it’s a wonderful experience.
Fiction-wise, I’m trying to finish my revisions on the Jack-the-Ripper story while I still have the London landscape to draw on. After that, I’ll probably try and revise my wizard story, or I may try and turn my hand to a new story, which is apparently to be called either the RaceFail! Story or the “blue people” story, and is, yes, written in part as a response to RaceFail ’09. My response, anyway, because I took that maelstrom as a challenge to write fiction that engaged with racial issues in a personal way -- not using race as background window dressing, appropriating other cultures for “exotic color,” or mindlessly repeating the formulas that have informed SF-- but drawing on my own muddled, conflicted experience of race and culture. I think one of the greatest dangers for a writer like me, who loves playing with the tropes of the literature I grew up reading, is that my stories could end up contributing yet more links in a chain of formulaic constructions of Otherness. I hope that writing “what I know” will help me to write an original story about race. But maybe not. We’ll see how this turns out.
That’s it for now. More later. Promise.
