I just got back from an extended weekend visiting family. Conversations Between Writers will be back next week. In the mean time if you were looking for your writing motivation…
Uncategorized
Sorting My “To Read” Stack
So, I’m organizing my life. Basically the system of keeping track of things all in my head no longer works now that I’m older and can’t remember things as well. I’m not sure if its because there’s just too many 80s song lyrics cluttering up the joint or if there’s some physiological reason. All I know is my memory is not what it used to be. Anyway, as part of my sorting all the crap I want to keep track of into an organized system, I wrote down all of the books on my “To Read” list both digital and physical into one place and sorted them into categories.
The first thing I realized is that not all of the books that I own and haven’t read are actually books I want to read. So I gave myself permission to sort out all of the books that are just “Own and Haven’t Read” from the ones I have personal or professional interest in reading. I then sorted the rest into these categories regardless of format.
Fiction Want To Read: 33
Non-Fiction Want to Read: 11
Anthologies: 19
Fiction Magazine Issues: 53
Books for Car Trips: 3
Books By People I Know: 15
Books on Writing: 7
Research (by project):
- RC: 13
- CW: 1
- WoS : 4
- H: 1
Books to Read Someday: 60
Books for General Inspiration: 34
TOTAL: 254
Wow. So… that gives me a lot of emotional responses. The first one is that is a lot more than I can reasonably read in a calendar year. I’d also guess that every reader I know over the age of 27 or so has a similar list of To Read. I’d imagine that most writers’ To Read Lists are worse than this (though I think a lot of us include the “Books I Own And Haven’t Read” in our lists either consciously or unconsciously). So, as a writer, when I send a novel into the world it is not just competing to be bought, but it is also fighting with a the To Read lists of everyone who purchases it.
And this is the point in this thought process where I stop to silently scream.
*a silent scream break is taken*
Ok. I am zen. *deep breath* So. Very. *grits teeth* Zen. Next on the list of mental hurdles to overcome are the 15 books by people I know. Like, the sort of people who would show up to my funeral not just retweet my death with a frowny face (though I appreciate all the frowny faces sent on behalf of my eventual demise). The most guilt inducing of all of these is a biography written by one of my very closest high school friends and I REALLY should have read it by now.
I also feel guilt over the unread fiction magazines and anthologies. I feel that I should be up to date, or at least close to it to really know what the short story market is about. I can’t possibly call myself well-read in genre if I have that much on my To Read. There are lots of really important stories I should know in there. This is professional guilt, social guilt (as there are lots of people I know relating to short stories too), and personal guilt because I WANT to be better read and up to date in short fiction.
Research is probably the only stuff I feel really in control of and know exactly what I need to read, how important it is, and have an actual plan to read a good portion of it.
I can probably safely not think about the books on the “To Read Someday” and “General Inspiration” at least for the moment. That leaves me 160 items on my active To Read list. I have no hope of the list remaining static (I subscribe to too many magazines for one). But for my own personal sanity I need to come up with a plan to do better.
So, I wrote myself the following “rules” to try to do better.
Rule 1: Don’t read books you decide you don’t actually want to read even if you’ve already started them. There’s no way you’ll actually get to the books you want to read if you force yourself through stuff you hate. It’s ok to not want to read stuff.
Rule 2: Cheat. It’d probably feel pretty good to knock out a few of these as soon as possible. Read a bunch of short ones first.
Rule 3: Time. Schedule more time in the week to work on reading short fiction. The one story a day thing is great, but it doesn’t keep stories from building up if you don’t knock out a good chunk every week on top of that.
Rule 4: Manage Guilt. Try to read the most guilt-inducing stuff first but be sure to reward yourself with stuff you want to read on a regular basis.
Rule 5: Death. Remember you’re never going to get to the end of this list. If you do, it’s only because you’re dead.
Conversations Between Writers
A.C. Buchanan
Andi is a genre writer living in New Zealand and a TOC mate of mine from Winter Well. You can check out their website and follow on Twitter. Andi is a fan of eating cheese, befriending lobsters, and writing awesome genre fiction about queer, and neurodiverse characters. I’ve been a fan since Winter Well and am excited to share our conversation.
Andi Buchanan: Hi!
Minerva Zimmerman: Hi! How was your day
AB: Full on! But I have tomorrow off. It’s my birthday and we’re going to see either red pandas or dinosaurs! How about yours?
MZ: Happy Birthday! Both choices are excellent. Not too bad, just winding down. My dogs think it is time for snuggling on the bed. You’re all finished with your Master’s!!!!
AB: Yes, finally! It dragged out a bit at the end, but got there in the end.
MZ: I know your subject was about disability in fiction, but I don’t actually know what your discipline/department is
AB: It’s English Lit – though it wasn’t a project that ended up being neatly contained. That was tough in some ways – I know I’d have ended up with a better theoretical basis in some aspects had I been based in a Disability Studies department, for example, but it was really good that I was allowed to just do my thing and follow my ideas.
MZ: Yeah even something like Anthropology was a possibility, so I didn’t want to speculate 😀
have you gotten to hold it all bound and printed?
AB: Yes, very shiny! Took it up to the library last week.
MZ: /squee I sometimes get all verklempt about not doing a Masters, but now I have over 5 years of experience in museum collections, so it’s hard to justify it when it wouldn’t mean any more pay. Also I live very far from any universities
AB: Yeah, fair enough! It took me a few years to properly want to do one – and I certainly don’t expect it to increase my pay – but I work on a university campus and I could do it part time and pay the fees by installments so, hey, why not.
MZ: Oooo I’m kind of jealous. I love school.
AB: I… may have got stuck! Which is fine, I guess.
MZ: at school? 😀
AB: Between work and study… yep, pretty much.
MZ: but lots and lots of ideas for fiction! it’s like… a nexus of ideas
AB: I have occasionally been tempted to write – you know those Hotel Babylon, Wedding Planning Babylon etc – books that compress alllll the dramas down into a single day? If I wasn’t bound by confidentiality I’d totally write a University Babylon one.
MZ: 😀
AB: But maybe you were talking about being in the intellectual heart of the city, the free exchange of ideas…
MZ: Both! You need both for good fiction (in my opinion)
AB: On the more serious side, holding on to a university library card is definitely for a bonus for someone who is (a) a complete nerd and (b) wants to research fiction.
MZ: Ok, that I am TOTALLY jealous of. You can do a lot more online these days, but I miss having access to article databases, and just… randomly finding books.
AB: Yeah, it’s the journal databases that are the big draw… but being able to hunt through the shelves is pretty fun too, even though I don’t do it as often as I should.
MZ: and nice little nooks to write. You have a novel coming out in march
AB: Yes – a novella, technically – it’s called Liquid City and it’s mostly steampunk-ish with some space opera and new weird type elements (I find genre classification hard).
MZ: …do I detect lobsters?
AB: It’s about the people who transport cargo through the tunnels underneath a rapidly-industrializing city, and what they find when they head into unexplored territory.
No lobsters this time, but a rather grumpy cephalopod.
MZ: that’s sort of kind of a little lobstery.. well, more tentacles and less shell
AB: I’ll give him a couple of pincers in the edits.
MZ: and ok, totally not the same 😀 What are you working on right now?
AB: ALL the things! Aside from a round of edits on Liquid City, I’m focused on a couple of short stories at the moment. Then I have another novella I want to take a look at editing – it’s near future queer romance, with heaps of magic and the odd sunken village.
MZ: As you do…
AB: I have a novel on the go, very slowly, and at some point I’m going to be thinking about a sequel for Liquid City.
MZ: cool! Is there anything else you want to make sure we talk about?
AB: Nothing springs to mind, sorry! I know that’s not very helpful…
MZ: That’s Ok! I just want to make sure I’m not monopolizing the conversation.
AB: No go for it! You’re not monopolising, you’re guiding!
MZ: I’m kind of curious about the choice between Red Pandas and Dinosaurs. I mean those aren’t usually at the same place.
AB: Nah – it’s a case of the zoo if it’s good weather, the museum if not. Or, maybe the red pandas have discovered a lost colony of dinosaurs and formed a symbiotic relationship.
MZ: That’d be pretty cool actually… I’d watch that movie
AB: We have a rogue swarm of bees on the loose by my workplace, so there are going to be animals wherever I go.
MZ: rogue bees? like, Africanized bees?
AB: http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/64932184/angry-bees-swarm-in-central-wellington THEY PUT THEM IN A BOX AND THEY ESCAPED
MZ: sneaky bees. I imagine they were buzzing the theme song to Mission Impossible
AB: I expect so.
MZ: I wonder if the person sent to capture the bees just forgot where they put the box and were like “uhhh they escaped. Yeah, that’s it”
AB: Have you seen the cartoon about the scientists eating bees? It’s one of my favourites.
MZ: no! Where can I see it?
AB: Ah can’t find the picture but the joke works fine without it:
Scientist: But WHY is the bee population dying?
Scientist: No idea. *eats bee*
Scientist: Did you just eat a bee? Scientist: *eats bee* No.
MZ: hahahaha
AB: This makes me laugh probably out of proportion to its actually funniness.
MZ: I dunno, I think it is pretty funny. Not sure why, it just is.
AB: *eats bee*
MZ: hahahahha
Well, I should probably let you get a cider and start in on your birthday celebrations
AB: Mmm cider! Celebrations are tomorrow but cider is any day.
MZ: I’ve been hoarding all my seasonal spiced cider
AB: Oooh. I had a nice pear and ginger one last week.
MZ: Oooo I love pear cider.
AB: Anyway, thank you for listening to me talk about bees.
MZ: *eats bee* 😀
AB: om nom nom
Next Week We Return to Our Regularly Scheduled Program
It has been preempted this week for a picture of a piglet in leaves:
oink oink!
Remember you can always volunteer for a Conversation or volunteer someone else on the handy form HERE.
Welcome to 2015 Let’s Get Organized
I’m not a resolutions kind of person. I do like arbitrary starts though. 2015 is a big year for me because of as of yet still sekrit projects that will be coming out during the year. I’m in the weird position of needing to plan a while bunch of things and schedule my time much longer into the future than I normally do. I’ve gotten a lot more organized and in control of my various things in the last four months or so due to HabitRPG. It’s basically a to-do app that is set up like a RPG with super cute 8 bit style graphics. Apparently I won’t do things I know I should do just to do them, but if you give me gold and exp I am ALL OVER IT. Make it so I can collect pets and there are multiple colors of said pets? I AM SUPER MEGA ON IT! I worry about my brain, but this is really working for me. I can’t really game and be productive any other way so I’m kind of hardcore about it.
Anyway, this has taught me that I am better off getting ahead of the game and just doing the maintenance to keep it up. So I’m trying to get ahead of stuff this year before I get behind the curve. To help me with this I asked for people’s favorite solutions on Twitter and here’s what people suggested:
@andrhia – suggested Franklin Planner systems and reading Getting Things Done
@zanylikethat really likes Todoist
@hottestsingles suggests Trello
@outseide likes using The Pomodoro Technique
@melissadominic lives by her Bullet Journal (this is a pen and paper technique super useful if you already use a paper journal)
@andicbuchanan also likes HabitRPG, DayZero for longterm goals, MS Project for really complex projects, Evernote for organizing information, Mindmeister for mind mapping, and is playing with Raise the Bar for habits.
@nisamcp uses Day One and Evernote
I already use Evernote and Habit RPG, I’m poking at the Bullet Journal technique and there’s some aspects of Trello that really appeal to my brain.
What works for you?
I declare a Mulligan on this week
Some weeks just kick your butt. I’ve decided I won’t even feel guilty for it. This week has completely destroyed me and it’s not even half over yet. I’m going to get some well-needed rest and prepare for the rest of the things lining up to take a whack at me.
I’ve got a few Conversations Between Writers lined up but I’m starting to schedule people for 2015. Please let me know if you’d be interested in doing one. You can email me, message me on Twitter, or use this handy form.
Fountain Pen Friday: Pilot Kaküno
So one of my Uwajimaya purchases was the Pilot Kaküno because it was so cute I couldn’t pass it up. Yes, I know it’s supposed to be for children… but when has that stopped me on anything?
Here’s what the pen comes with, pen, cap, and a black Pilot cartridge. It has directions for a converter but one is not included.
I can’t read Japanese but some of you can, so here’s the directions. Hmm, well I’m not a fan of writing in black ink… let’s see what colors of Pilot cartridges I bought… Ooo Pink!
Oooooooooh yeaaaaaaaah.
Guys… guys… this pen is adorable. IT HAS A WINKY FACE NIB.
I gather the reason is so you know you’re holding the pen right if you can see the face when you are writing? I mean I’m talented, but I’m pretty sure I could still hold this pen wrong in a way that shows the face… but I don’t care! IT IS ADORABUBBLE!
Ooops I got so excited about the winky face I forgot to show you an item for scale. Here you go… nailpolish.
You could use this with the cap posted but I never will. I mean it’s fine… just not my thing. The cap is also the same octangular shape as the pen body so it won’t roll away off the table while you’re not using it. HANDY!
The pen body and the grip are both kind of octagonal. The grip however is much smaller around and while it is faceted it isn’t as uncomfortable as the triangle grips can be. Though it encourages proper grip you don’t HAVE to.
Note to self: you have terrible handwriting wearing a wrist brace and are still crap at drawing ponies.
The Good
- CUUUUUUUUTE
- comes in fine and medium nibs in a variety of color styles
- plastic
- can use a Pilot converter
- writes nice
The Bad
- hard slightly unusual grip
- proprietary cartridge
Overall grade: B+
Conversations Between Writers
M. Fenn
A fellow genre writer and TOC mate from Crossed Genre’s Winter Well, today’s writer is M. Fenn. You can follow her on Twitter @MFennVT and she blogs at http://mfennwrites.wordpress.com/
- Fenn: Hey there!
Minerva Zimmerman: Hello! How’s it going?
MF: Not bad. Trying to stay warm. How are you?
MZ: Not too bad. Just got done with work for the week. Now it’s all the household and writing stuff.
MF: Nice to have a long weekend.
MZ: Sorta, I”m starting to get to the point where I’d rather have the extra work days cause it feels like I never get enough done.
MF: Heh. I kinda get that impression from some of your tweets. I take it the museum’s rather under-staffed?
MZ: Well, yes and no. I mean all museums are under staffed
MF: Yeah?
MZ: but mostly I’m the only collections person
MF: Gotcha.
MZ: so that tends to get backed up when we have big projects or a lot of object donations
Plus I have to get all the paperwork out before the end of the year so now I”m trying to get that done while doing projects, processing objects and all that.
MF: That’s hard. The house museum I used to work for ran into that problem a lot.
MZ: Oof, yeah you understand how stuff can get.
MF: Oh yeah. Especially when you throw politics in the mix. One winter I was the only employee.
MZ: that is super common, especially at house museums
MF: I’m not surprised. Kinda why I’m not there anymore.
MZ: I actually have no idea where in the world you are geographically, you aren’t stuck under snow are you?
MF: No, thank goddess. I live in southern Vermont–325 miles or so from all that lake effect craziness. But it’s gotten way too cold too early here.
MZ: Yeah I’m in Oregon and we had a weird cold spell last week. Really odd for us.
MF: I bet. You’re near the coast, right?
MZ: Yeah it got a lot colder in Portland. The ocean keeps us a little more temperate here.
MF: We used to live in Eureka, CA. I remember that temperate climate. And all the fog.
MZ: Yeah pretty similar if a bit rainier and a tad cooler overall. So what have you been up to recently? What thoughts have been cluttering up your brain?
MF: All kinds of stuff. Getting ready for my weekend escape to Boston tomorrow. Trying to get a story in some kind of shape to send to my betas.
MZ: Are you a writer who researches a lot of stuff?
MF: Depends on the story. If I’m writing alt history, there’s tons of it. How about you?
MZ: I like to do a lot of “what if” research. I think that if I throw enough strange information into my head a story is bound to fall out eventually.
MF: Heh. I like that approach. I did some “what if” research for a new story involving potentially sentient plants. Discovering what science has actually been done on that topic was pretty cool.
MZ: Ooo there is some super neato stuff with polygraphs
MF: Oh yeah? I didn’t find that.
MZ: which I mean, who thought to hook a plant up to a polygraph is weird enough…
MF: Definitely. I love that there are folks thinking like that.
MZ: yeah apparently one of the tests they’d do was to have two fichus and hook one up to the machine, and then slowly pull the leaves off the second in a different room and supposedly they’d get readings off the one not being molested.
MF: Whoa, that’s interesting.
MZ: And this is old stuff, 1960s or so
MF: Most of it does seem to be old stuff, that I found.
MZ: and then the kirlian photography stuff, that’s neat.
MF: That is neat. And I was reading about how plants can send out chemical signals to insects–like helpful parasitic wasps–for assistance.
MZ: Yeah and some forests seem to transmit information through underground fungus colonies too
MF: Plants are amazing.
MZ: I wonder if there’s more modern studies on article databases
trying to think what search queries to use to try and get fun stuff to fall out of the internet when you hit it with a stick.
MF: I don’t know. Pretty much what I found were summary articles that referred to older stuff for the most part.
MZ: I’d probably look at JSTOR for “plant communication”
MF: Is it just me or did that seem to be easier to do before Google started to try to read our minds?
MZ: maybe “botanical”
MF: Oh, that’s an excellent place to start. So much stuff in JSTOR.
MZ: and now that they let you “check out” a few articles at a time without an organizational membership it’s super useful for writers.
MF: Indeed. I need to hunt around in there more.
MZ: Me too. Time seems to be the thing I have the least
MF: You’re not alone in that. And this fall is whizzing by.
MZ: Ahhhh deadlines. The thing I’ve been thinking about this week that’s kind of weird is teletypes.
MF: Yeah? How so?
MZ: We updated a bunch of labels in a display that has a teletype in that was used for telegrams, and I can’t help but think about how you could hack some of these historic machines for modern purposes.
MF: Interesting. What did you have in mind?
MZ: I was doing research for the labels and it turns out some steampunk people restore these things… and I got to wondering what other reasons people might have for resurrecting them.
MF: Huh. And that makes me think about how the Germans (I think) have gone back to using typewriters to write secure messages that can’t be hacked.
MZ: Yeah, I played with that concept a little with resurrecting modem BBS systems in the near future in COPPER, but I think there’s more there to play with.
MF: I think you’re right. Hey, did I ever tell you how much I love the computer your MC in COPPER has? I want one.
MZ: ME TOO. Also her chair. Omg… that chair. I want that chair so bad.
MF: Yes!
MZ: I mean, genre fiction isn’t much fun if you don’t get to “create” all the things you want to exist.
MF: Very true. That’s something I need to get better at, expanding my imagination for the details that could be.
MZ: That story is weird because stuff I pulled out of my brain kept getting invented in the prototype phase between when I wrote it and publication.
…like, the toasters. THOSE EXIST NOW
MF: Really?!
MZ: Yes. And the order-interface touchscreen table for coffee. plus my friend briefly dated a detective from that exact Seattle precinct too.. SO WEIRD.
MF: That’s kind of hilarious.
MZ: It was pretty funny.
MF: And now I’m wondering if I borrowed that order-interface table from you. I need to compare yours with the one I came up with now.
MZ: Eh, it’s simple extrapolating from present tech. I wouldn’t worry about it.
MF: Yeah, pretty much. But you know, I ought to polish it a little differently. Or call it the Minerva-XZ25 or something.
MZ: /shrug I find it weird that you basically order your drink off a touch screen on the Coke Freestyle machines. I think I end up in more people’s fiction than I have any right to.
MF: Your comment about how you end up in lots of other people’s fiction made me laugh. One of my characters is named after you.
MZ: 😀
MF: Minerva is a great name. It suited this chick pretty well. She’s a psychic pharmacist.
MZ: Ha! people really seem to like the name, especially writers
MF: There’s just something to it. I gave her the nickname Minnie, though. She hates it.
MZ: Yeah, I can’t imagine anyone would be too enamored with Minnie.
MF: Yeah, me either. Especially in the time frame (1932). Minnie Mouse?
MZ: ooof
MF: Heheheh.
MZ: Mouse Ears Bad.
MF: That would be a good band name, though.
MZ: Probably. I once created a fake band called “Stiff Kitten” I still don’t know why that seemed hilarious to me at the time.
MF: That’s a good one, too. Punk or goth?
MZ: Metal I think.
MF: Even better. It is pretty funny.
MZ: It’s always nice to talk to a fellow writer and museum person 🙂 Have a great trip to Boston and stay warm.
MF: Thanks! Stay warm in Oregon.
Pentel Pulaman JM20 Disposable
So, you can probably guess that I bought a bunch of cheap fountain pens I didn’t already own. I am doing this blog feature just about weekly so if I was buying all the expensive pens I’d probably already be broke and destitute. I bought The Pentel Pulaman strictly off the price and a “huh, that’s weird” glance at the nib.
It is a very unique pen. I’m just not sure it’s really a fountain pen.
I’m looking forward to running this pen dry because I am dying to take it apart without covering my house in red ink. It has a plastic delta-wing shaped tip that appears to have a core running through it that feeds the ink. Honestly, it reminds me most of a Papermate Flair pen. It writes like a Flair pen, and with certain motions it makes a fine splatter of ink on the page as I loop a letter or shift the tip. I kind of like the effect, but it would annoy the crap out of me if I was trying to write very precisely.
It’s a very standard pen size. Feels pretty much like using a felt tip pen. I think it would make a killer redlining pen or homework correction pen. Buy it for all the editors and teachers you know.
The Good
- Cheap
- really unique design
- lovely felt-tip style writing experience
The Bad
- I just can’t consider it a fountain pen.
- splatters ink slightly
- disposable, non-refillable
Overall Grade: Well, as a Fountain Pen I’d say on an A-F scale it’s a Potato. On a scale of A-F for felt pens, it’s an A. It’s just not what I think of for fountain pens, even disposable ones.
Ghosts in the IM: Conversations Between Writers (and Editors)
Jaym Gates
Jaym Gates is a writer, editor, and communication specialist. You can find out more about her at jaymgates.com and follow her on Twitter.
Minerva Zimmerman: Well… so you’ve discovered you’re an editor.
Jaym Gates: I am?
MZ: It appears so. You keep doing anthologies and show no signs of stopping
I”m afraid you have a terminal case of Editor.
JG: And every time I consider it, Charles Tan and Ken Liu start getting Ideas.
MZ: not just them, they’re just more public about harassing you.
JG: I think it’s a sport at this point. But yeah, I’ve got a bunch of stuff hanging over my head like the Sword of Damocles. Also, if I start usin’ an Old West sort of lingo, I apologize. I’m editing to dev notes.
MZ: I was thinking more like wondering if you were wearing the gold lame shorts from Rocky Horror
JG: I don’t do shorts. Or lame. Class is a lost art. *sniffs haughtily*
MZ: Lame is such a bad idea in general.
JG: It really is. *shudder*
MZ: How many projects that are YOUR projects are you working on right now? Or is that a bad question?
JG: Erm. So, War Stories is out in the wild now. Got some launch events and big reviews ahead of us.I have 111k words to edit on Genius Loci, which is hitting Kickstarter on November 4, and we have a Reddit AMA on November 18. The Exalted RPG anthology is waiting for one more story and my copy-edits, but it’s almost ready to go, and pretty awesome. And I juuuuuuuuust got the greenlight on something I’m *super* excited about–another tie-in RPG anthology–on Saturday, but until the contracts are signed, can’t say anything. So those are my four current projects, and Rich Dansky and I are noodling something.
MZ: uh oh
JG: And then I’ve got something kind of sort of planned with Ken and Charles for next year, but we’ll see if that moves beyond a Twitter joke.
MZ: Pretty sure something will, if it’s what you’ve talked about now or not remains to be seen. What else is burning up your brain these days?
JG: Doing a TON of writing, all of the sudden. Sold a bunch of short stories last year, and then, this year, got a bunch of stuff all at once.
MZ: That’s awesome
JG: So I’m doing RPG writing for a project that I don’t think can be named at the moment, and a tie-in story for another shared world, and Dave Gross pinged me about a possible project, and Ken Scholes and I are working on a bunch of stuff together. And I’m doing some serious raging at GamerGate, so that’s about 15k words there, probably.
MZ: Yeah. I just bonded with a female coworker over games today, didn’t know she was a gamer and it came up randomly in conversation and then we geeked out for like 45 min. I want to go back to games being only awesome. y’know
JG: Oh, cool. And yeah, can we just get back to making stuff, please?
MZ: and enjoying stuff Privilege is not having to think about stuff. I miss that about games.
JG: Ugh, yeah, going to be a while til we get that back. But I kind of disagree with the common theme: it’s actually good that this happened. The industry needed a painful evolution.
MZ: Yeah, just… I’d rather the learning curve didn’t have to go THROUGH us.
JG: Look at it this way: we’re getting to help build a great industry.
MZ: And I’m not even catching crap directly. It’s thousands of times worse for those that are… just for speaking.
So, I want to talk about horses. Not that I know anything you can’t learn in 15 min before a trail ride on the oldest slowest mares in the world. You’re passionate about horses and seem to window shop for horses on the internet the way I look for a third dog.
JG: Haha, pretty much, except my habit is WAY more expensive…
MZ: I have not been tempted and I even have a barn suitable for horses.
JG: They’re basically gigantic, long-lived dogs, when it comes right down to it.
MZ: I do think about maybe getting some goats… and then I think better of it.
JG: HA.
MZ: Yeah there was a horse in the field next door for awhile and it seemed to have the temperament of a curious Labrador …and I totally got it in trouble one day and I wasn’t thinking about it. See, I’d had all these apples I’d been storing in a tote on my porch, and they got a little old so I dumped them in my back pasture for the deer to eat.
JG: Ooops
MZ: And the next thing I knew my back fence had been mended and there were horse shoe prints all over my field.
JG: Hahaha
MZ: So, pretending that I WAS going to get a horse… what are things to look for in a giant goggie?
JG: Depends on what you’re using it for. If you just want a giant dog, there are TONS of rescues out there who have horses that’ve had a rough break in life and need a loving human and steady supply of feed. (Horses are more susceptible than any other creature to abuse, neglect, and economic woes, due to their size and expense.) If you want a riding animal, again, a lot of rescues have older horses who’re well-trained, but had a rough break. And yeah, they may be 20, but they often live to their early 30s, with good care and gentle use. At that point, you want a horse that moves freely, engages with a human well, and doesn’t have a bad back or knees. Kind of like humans. 😛
MZ: I would be a terrible horse.
JG: Awwwww, we’d put you down humanely though.
MZ: They kill writers don’t they? Wait, no… writers kill characters.
JG: Oh, is that the way it’s supposed to work? Oops, brb…ahem.
MZ: That’s not what I gave you a shovel for. Though, to be fair I did know it was a possibility.
speaking of horses and writing– Horses are something that writers get terribly and completely wrong a lot of the time.
JG: Oh god, yes. About the horses, not the shovel, er, never mind.
MZ: 😛 What are some simple tips for writers to not do stupid horse things?
JG: Learn what a ‘hand’ is. One of my favorite authors has ‘gigantic draft horses’ that are 15 hands high, which is the average height for a horse. Like a guy being 5’10. At least LOOK at a diagram of equine anatomy so that you’re not having your character pet the fetlock on the nose of the poor pretzeled horse. And read up on some history, if you want to use horses. They’re *amazing* creatures, and honestly, a lot of writers underserve them. Screw Lassie, there are horses that have done amazing feats.
MZ: Ok, I actually know that a fetlock is a foot bit.
JG: *claps* Yay!
MZ: You’d think that US Cavalry movies with horses doing amazing things would have caught on during the Western years
JG: There were some, just nothing that really hit mainstream. I mean, Mr. Ed, Silver, Flash, there were a TON of celebrity horses, but that was a long time ago.
MZ: You know, they don’t taxidermy cowboys.
JG: Oddly…
MZ: A lot of celebrity horses got taxidermied. I find this unsettling and weird. Maybe because I work with a lot of taxidermy. I mean they plasticize some scientists if they ask for it… but that’s about it
JG: Ha, hmmm… I don’t like wax or taxidermied things, really.
MZ: I just don’t think you should uh… preserve beings with known personalities. Cause you can’t preserve the personality part and so it just becomes a weird creepy shell thing.
JG: Exactly!
MZ: Well, this conversation went weird at some point. It’s probably my fault. This is probably a good point to ask if there’s anything else you’d like to talk about that we haven’t covered?
JG: Between the two of us, it’s not ‘if’, it’s ‘when’.
The only thing I can think of is that people should keep their eyes open for some pretty cool SFWA projects, and that there’s a great company called Make Believe Games that I’m doing PR for, and we’ll have some fun multimedia stuff coming out soon there, too.
MINERVA ZIMMERMAN 