I’ve also received a galley copy of my story “Bugs,” which appears to be slated to run in this November’s issue of Analog. If true, that might mean I’ll be in two subsequent issues, since Following Jules will see Analog print in October if I I remember right. MUST.LOOK.UP for sure.

The publishing events are kinda stacking up. Hmm … maybe it’s time to put out another one of my very intermittent newsletters, eh?

Here’s the cover:

What I liked:

1) The story is, of course, really solid. And, since the movie was pretty true to the book … well, you get it.
2) I always enjoy watching Baz Luhrmann’s work. Even when it doesn’t work,it’s interesting.

What I didn’t like:

1) The execution of the plot is clunky.
2) Though he makes an okay Gatsby, I admit I don’t get why Leo D is getting Oscar buzz for this. He’s done a gazillion roles better than this one. Perhaps that’s the reason he’s getting raves now. It happens, you know? Award politics can be more than a bit freaky.
3) The acting as a whole is not remarkable.
4) Several of Lurhmann’s attempts at grand slams end up missing by a bit.

For reasons that may become clear later in this conversation, after I returned, Lisa and I were talking about work hours and work ethic and flexible work balance and whatnot. By flexible work balance I mean the ability to mix your work and life in whatever ways you need. This is something that’s very different today than it was when I first came into the workforce. When I started working, if you worked twelve hours a day it was likely to entail a stint at the office that ran from 7:30AM to 8:00PM (including a quick dash to the cafeteria for lunch).

In my younger days I ran at that pace, but these days I do about 9-10 hours a day in the day job (this will be important later), but it’s easier to do those 9-10 hours because they are often spread out across the day. I no longer really pay much attention to the 8:00AM start time or the 4:30 end time, or whatever. Instead, I work on work things when they are interesting (or just flat-out due, of course…nothing motivates like a due date). If I hit 11:00 AM and my brain is struggling to grab something about work, I step away. I take a quick walk, often accompanied by a manuscript I need to read or edit–basically anything that IS NOT work. That’s right. I do personal things during the day … but, then, I am also often doing work at nine at night or 5:30 in the morning or whatever.

This is flexible work balance and I’ve evolved my approach to it over time, morphing from an 11-12 hour a day office monster to a 9-10 hour a day flexible worker.

I find this interesting because people who are new to this concept can seem to struggle. Like Lisa. She joined the company I work for about six years ago after years of working for herself as s freelance copy editor. I see her struggling sometimes. Part of her struggle is because she’s always been a person who appreciates structure and process. She likes everything in their place and time, and when she ran her own business it marched to a very controlled beat. Another part of her struggle is that she came into the company through an office union which has rules that limit an employee’s ability to work from home or go the extra mile by adding hours. Her expectation of work is formed by the environment she’s worked in.

It’s interesting (to me) to note that our conversation was jump started by a discussion about the work culture in the area of Germany I was visiting–which is full of very hard workers, but is “shackled” (if I can call it that from my very mid-American frame of reference) with labor laws that very firmly limit the raw number of hours a person is allowed to work. (I should also note here that I am no expert on German culture as a whole. Perhaps things are different in different areas of the country … I have no idea of what I don’t know here).

Anyway, the purpose of this entire discussion was to note that I’ve been chewing on a new revelation for me. It shouldn’t be a new revelation, but it is. You see, I’ve been considering myself to be working 9-10 hours a day, and that’s still true. But that’s only the work I’m doing in the day-job. I’m certain I also spend 15-20 hours a week on this writing gig, which I approach as a professional to the greatest degree I can. In other words, it’s a job … though I’ve never really considered it as such, and so I’ve never considered the time I’ve spent on it as “working.”

If I change my frame of reference I see that I’m working 60-70 hours a week.

Interesting.

I find it interesting for several reasons, the first of which is that I now have a new perspective by which to grant myself the right to be tired all the time [grin]. The second is that I realize I do not resent at all the amount of time I put into by work. This is different from the past. When I was working 12 hour days in my younger-days job (and traveling a boatload) I often resented being away from home. I loved the work, mind you. It was great stuff, and very “romantic” from an engineering standpoint, very heady stuff for a late-twenties kid to be driving. But it wasn’t how I wanted to be. Especially when my daughter came along. The third thing I find interesting is that while I don’t resent the work hours, I do resent all the time we have to spend doing the base logistical things it takes to keep the world around us running. I don’t remember thinking that before.

I realize there are a lot of things tied up in this conversation. An advantage of the “old” days is that work very rarely bled into the home environment. Now everything is a mix. I also note that after Brigid arrived in our lives, Lisa stayed home. She did 99% of all the home logistics, so there was considerably less to be resentful of in those days.

* Aside: — Lisa has said a time or two that I probably appreciate her more now that she’s working and we have to do all the basics together in our “free” time. And I say, no, I’ve always respected and appreciated the work she did at those times … but that I don’t think she respected herself as much then as she does/would now. Having a spouse stay home is a major competitive advantage, and dads and moms who chose do to stay at home should be viewed as a critical enabler of the family unit.

But I also think it’s interesting that the breakage of work location with working schedule has allowed people to be more effective overall. At least that’s my take on myself. For example, when I need to break at 11:00AM from work because my brain is locked, and I take a fifteen minute walk, or whatever I do to remove myself from the situation, it pretty much never fails that when I come back to the work/problem, I’ve come back with a solid solution as well as a refreshed level of energy to apply to it. Same thing in the morning when I’m writing. I will often get to a blocked point, not know what to do and instead of looking at a flashing cursor I’ll hop onto my work mail to get a read on what the day will be like … and ten minutes later I’ll come back to the cursor and all will be well.

The downside, though, are months like this, where the two (three, counting life logistics) don’t fit into twenty four hours. In May the day job swelled to eat up a ton of time (including the trip to Germany), and my commitment to a writer’s conference this past Saturday ate up a lot of my normal time on the writing job. What hasn’t been taken by the conference was sucked up in launching “Three Days in May.” So I haven’t been getting the word count I like, and so I admit to feeling frustrated at that.

The problem with this modern work-life world, you see, (at least in the mid-American frame of reference) is that you need a lot of personal discipline to keep things apart. You have to make priorities and you have to subordinate one thing to another on any particular day.

And that’s hard.

To make it harder, you know that the decisions you make get viewed and judged by others. In some ways, they define you. Most of the time those judgments will be wrong, of course. And sometimes they will even be a bit unjust. For example, I am of the opinion that some of my mid-American co-workers (who don’t have any understanding of the German work environment) feel that their German counter-parts are incapable, or lazy, or merely unproductive. This is not correct, of course. Having been there, I know they are very productive, perhaps even more efficient than we are because, in some ways, work compresses to fill the allotted time. But they cannot possibly get the same amount of work done in 35 hours than we can do in 55. So what do they do?

Life is tough, you know?

I admit I’m not fully certain what the point of this discussion really is. All I can say is this: Calling writing a “job” (rather than just something I’m approaching as a professional) has me looking at my use of time in a different light. It’s making me step back and assess the way the world works and the places that Lisa and I sit in it. It’s making me thing about my own sense of self-discipline in fresh ways. It’s making me asses who I am again.

I thought you might find it valuable to do the same thing.

Challenge, of course, accepted.

It started a couple weeks ago–or just a little after I left for Germany. I was wondering how I would do. I mean, I expected I would be in the top tier. I do roughly 23K-24K steps a day on average, so that should be pretty good, eh?

Well, first off, it turns out that’s more than good. It’s (grin) the top of the charts so far. I check the standings every day, and I’ve got competition from two or three guys. For a moment early I was as low as third place. But I seem to have created some space now.

I have no idea if I’ll be able to keep hold of #1. Lots of problems can arise, after all. But I have to stop here and have everyone note the name in the number 11 slot. It’s not every day one can say you’re beating that guy, eh?

Sheesh.

Slowly getting back to it, though. As you probably saw, John and I released Three Days in May. And I’m nearing the end of the reading I need to do for the critique sessions I signed up for at next week’s writing conference.

And I suppose I should note that while I was away I received a very nice email from Sheila Williams reporting that she found my story “Primes” to be exciting, and wanted to include it in a future issue of Asimov’s. Very happy, happy here.

And this evening I went through the copy edits of “Teammates,” the story that will be in Galaxy’s Edge in mid-summer sometime.

My pedometer shows 27K steps and counting tonight.

So, yeah. Things are getting back to normal.

Slowly.

You can find it in these places:

Kindle Format
All other Electronic Formats

This work includes or two previously published works “Oh-oh” and “The Day the Track Stood Still,” as well as “Speeding,” an original story written just for this collection.

Interested in a print version? We’re looking into releasing a print version, also. More on that later. In the meantime, if you’re looking for a print version, drop me an email (ron_at_typosphere.com) and I’ll let you know when it’s available.

I’m really torn on this subject.

You might be able to tell from my photos that I am a white male, and you might be able to tell from my bios that I am from the great mid-west of the United States. I am also of an age somewhere between hippy-dom and disco. This makes me of the exact mold (dare I say stereotype?) of the kind of person/writer this article is gently pointed toward. I admit that I get conflicted by these kinds of discussions, but (being a Caucasian male of a particular age and region) I think about them a lot.

You see, I write stories from female perspectives, and I write them from male perspectives. I write them from the perspective of white characters and black characters and characters of mixed ethnic backgrounds. I write from the perspective of single characters and married characters, I write from the perspective of straight characters and gay characters. I write from the perspective of robots and from non-human characters. I once wrote from the perspective of a leopard.

I can tell you that it’s really daunting to write from all these perspectives. It’s really hard. It’s important to me that I respect all these characters, and that I capture who they are properly. I work at it. I pay attention to things as best I can. I like the elements of the article in question that suggest that merely including “the other” in a serious fashion is a good thing, because that’s true, and I like the general suggestion that attempting to get something right about a culture is the most important thing–and that in the end it’s “okay” (if I can be so bold) to get something wrong (though you should basically just fess up if called on it and agree you’ll try to do better next time).

Because, you know, it’s always wrong. I can’t possibly get every detail of a different culture right.

Of course, the truth is that I can’t even get every detail of MY culture right (assuming by “culture” you mean race or nationality as the article in question is discussing it).

I mean, holy smokes, one of my best buddies growing up was a white male of my age group and from my city. We went to the same schools, liked the same bands, and breathed the same air … but he was, and still is, a University of Kentucky fan! I can’t freaking believe it. Now, before you go off on this, before you make light of this simple example, I want you to realize that there are deep, deep blood differences between a Louisville fan (like me) and a UK fan (like him). The differences are strongly tied to race, actually. And they are just as deeply tied to city/rural perspectives. This is not just a fanciful example that I’m pulling up to make light of a very serious question. This difference separates us. In all seriousness, if I were to write a story from the perspective of a white, male UK fan of my age, I would need to work very, very hard to treat that character properly. And I might well get it “wrong” in some important ways that would off-put some UK fans.

The article would suggest that a (the) way to resolve this would be for me to find UK fans and have them read it. I suppose that’s not a terrible idea. But it won’t help. It won’t help because one UK fan’s experience is not all UK fans’ experience. No matter if I run this hypothetical story through a thousand UK fans, there will be a UK fan that I err with.

My point here is that writing characters is serious work. All of it. And I don’t think you can really “get it right” merely by having someone of a culture read the work. Sure, that’s a fine thing to do. And it’s not a bad idea because it’s always good to learn from someone with real experience. Just don’t expect that to fix your problem, because merely sending the story to someone else is not sufficient to resolve problems of a lack of respect.

And my other point in this whole “you can never get it right” conversation is that I can say this because the world is huge, and because once a story is published the audience will read what they want to read into things no matter what you do. An example: I recently had a short story titled “The Collector” published in Mercedes Lackey’s Elemental Masters anthology. It is set in the early 1900s and told from the perspective of a black man. I worked hard on this character and the setting. As hard as I could. And I told a story that I thought was true to the time, and important to the character (as well as relevant to today, too, really).

Here are two comments it drew from readers on Goodreads. I submit them without any complaint or whatever. I’m using them only to show how a story can be perceived by two different people.

COMMENT 1:

The story “The Collector” by Ron Collins, was the best re interpretation of what a person would really do with magic. Full of hatred at the injustice against freed slaves that still fills the US into the late 1890s, and crippled from fighting in San Juan, Gamba is raging inside against everything. When trapped by an evil magician Gamba is faced with a choice, use his magic for good or seek vengeance. He never goes down the path to evil, but he is still consumed by a motivation for change. Because of this he uses his magic in an evil way for what he believes will be a good end, and that is the interesting part. Will you sympathize with him or vilify him?

COMMENT 2

And then there’s “The Collector”, in which the only African-American mage in the entire volume is also the only main character to choose Dark magic, which really makes it stand out… and not in a good way.

I have no idea what cultures these two readers come from. All I will say regarding these comments is that I was a good enough writer to bring one of these readers to the point I wanted, and not a good enough writer to take the other one there. I guess this is where (according to the Strange Horizons article) I say to the second reader “my fault, I’ll try better next time.”

But, you see, I won’t try better.

I’ll try just as hard. And I’ll succeed just as well.

I say that because to be a writer is to understand that we are only half the equation. The reader is the other half. And the truth is that I cannot expect to satisfy every reader, perhaps especially those who come from a culture that is not mine (or a perspective that is not mine … is there a difference?) and who is looking for me to fail. Luckily, though, all I need to do is to tell stories to the best of my ability. And to do that all I need to do is to respect the characters I’m writing. I need to treat them as the creatures they are. I need to get inside their heads, and know them as well as I can. I need to treat them with respect (the example in the Strange Horizon’s article of writers wanting to use a culture’s belief because they are so “cute” and “funny” is merely a case of writers not respecting a culture…and honestly, I have never heard such a phrasing before, but maybe it’s just because I’m a white, mid-western male who is immune to such commentary).

I don’t begrudge the reader I quoted above his or her comment about my free negro character (there were no African-Americans in the 1900′s, after all, that’s a tag that came into existence considerably later…okay, I admit that might be a little catty…sorry). All readers are free to make their assessment of my writing. It’s fine. And, perhaps technically both readers would say I succeeded in “writing from the other” as far as the character on the page, but one would suggest I disrespected a culture by making the story choice I did. I can parse that a couple ways.

In the end, though, I think that “writing the other” well is about respecting your characters, and that respecting your characters is about living inside them to the best level you are capable of. It’s not about asking “what would I feel like if I were in their shoes?” It’s about asking yourself “How does that person actually feel.”

And no matter what culture you’re writing from, that’s damned hard–because the truth is that in the end, every person is their own culture.

As promised, here’s the cover we’re planning, as well as a little blurb about the works themselves:

—–

Strap yourself into the cockpit and follow along as John C. Bodin and Ron Collins take you on three laps around the Indy 500′s past and future.

Speeding — Famous chronumentary director Connor Singh and his best friend Li-liang Novikoff will go to any length necessary to capture the dramatic secrets of one of the most horrific accidents in Indy history, as they return to 1964 to record the events that lead up to the crash that took the lives of Eddie Sachs and Dave MacDonald.

Oh-oh! — It’s 1969 and a shape shifting race of aliens from Tau Ceti are out to rig the most wagered upon event in the known universe. It’s up to an undercover vice cop from outta this world to stake out the Snake Pit, find a way to stop them, and avoid the fickle fate of bad fortune himself.

The Day the Track Stood Still — Drivers have always had special relationships with their cars, but in the future this may go a little further than Buddy might have expected. He’s about to find out how far he can stretch his relationship when the B’rada come to town with big plans to win the 500, and with it take home something bigger than the Borg-Warner trophy.

———-