Hillary Rettig

Harry Potter and the Boggart Perfectionism

Hillary — Tue, 21 May 2013 15:18:55 +0000

Harry Potter fans recall boggarts as creatures who live in dark household spaces like cupboards and closets and who, when you encounter one, take on the appearance of whatever it is you are most afraid of. In Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, there’s a great scene where Professor Lupin and his students provoke a classroom boggart into repeatedly changing appearance:

To terrorized student Neville Longbottom, it appears as Severus Snape in full glower.
To arachnophobic Ron Weasley, it appears as a gigantic spider.
And to ultra-perfectionist Hermione Granger, it appears as Professor McGonagall telling her she “failed everything.”

Perfectionism works the same way! It will not just manifest itself as your worst professional fear, but if you do manage to dispel that fear, it will gladly morph into any other fear you might have.

Boggart Snape: Pre- and Post-Riddikulus!

Some forms your perfectionism boggart might take include:

“My work is unoriginal.”
“My insights are mundane.”
“I can’t do characters.”
“My book won’t sell.”
“I’ve got to get an A!”
“I’ve got to get this done NOW!”
“If I don’t succeed, I’ll be a loser.”

But underneath, it’s just plain old perfectionism, a kind of professional trauma that manifests itself in harsh self-judgements, an over-focus on product (versus process), an over-reliance on external validation (versus intrinsic rewards), shortsightedness, pathologizing of the normal work process, dichotomizations, invidious comparisons, etc.

You may recall that the solution for a boggart is to impose your own image on it via the Riddikulus charm. Neville replaced Scary Snape with a vision of Snape looking ridiculous in his grandmother’s clothing, Weasley took the legs off the spider, and Hermione re-visualized the boggart as Professor McGonagall giving her an award.

Harry Potter himself had a special problem: for him, the boggart assumed the appearance of a terrifying, soul-sucking dementor. Lupin therefore decided Harry should use it to practice not Riddikulus, but the more difficult Patronus charm, so that he could use that charm when attacked by actual dementors.

Two Spells to Vanquish Your Perfectionism

You, too, can use Riddikulus and Patronus! Every time you feel yourself becoming critical or despondent about your work, try this two-pronged approach:

1) Use Your Riddikulus Charm. Say to yourself, “Wait a minute! I’m not really falling short; it’s just the boggart perfectionism making me think so!” This should help defuse the perfectionism.

Harry Potter’s Patronus

Then, to finish the job:

2) Invoke Your Patronus, a.k.a., Compassionate Objectivity, as defined in The 7 Secrets of the Prolific:

“Compassionate objectivity is a a mindset where you combine: (a) Compassion, meaning you view yourself and your work with abundant empathy and understanding, with (b) Objectivity, meaning you see things accurately, with all their nuance and complexity.“In place of perfectionism’s reductive, rigid and punishing world view, compassionate objectivity offers nuance, flexibility, empathy, compassion, and true love and respect. The compassionately objective person sees through perfectionism’s illusions and understands the realities about herself and her work. She knows to: set achievable goals, and be compassionate about any failures or mistakes; be realistic and grounded, as opposed to grandiose; emphasize process almost entirely over product; rely on internal rewards; work within the realities of creativity and career building; and not to identify with her work.

“She also eschews invidious comparisons, dichotomization, rigidity, unhelpful labels, hyperbole, negativity, shortsightedness, fetishes, unconsciousness and blind spots.”

Just like Harry had to practice his Patronus, you’ll need to practice compassionate objectivity. Eventually, however, you’ll be able to maintain a compassionately objective mindset and to use compassionate objectivity to drive off any perfectionist boggarts and dementors you encounter.

Images and lots of information from The Harry Potter Wiki.

I Wish Hilary Mantel Were My Sister II: Manuscript Coherence and Polish Come Late in the Writing Process!

Hillary — Tue, 21 May 2013 00:01:41 +0000

As if Hilary Mantel’s wise words on memoir weren’t enough, she also has something great to say about the writing process itself. In answer to the question, “What’s the best thing about writing a book?” she replies:

The moment, at about the three-quarter point, where you see your way right through to the end: as if lights had flooded an unlit road. But the pleasure is double-edged, because from this point you’re going to work inhuman hours, not caring about your health or your human relationships; you’re just going to head down that road like a charging bull.

This is REALLY important for all writers to understand, and here’s why:

Anne Lamott famously said, in Bird by Bird, that every piece of writing begins with a “shitty first draft.” That’s almost right. The reality is that most pieces of writing are built from many shitty drafts, until you reach a point where the whole thing starts to cohere and come into focus. That’s Mantel’s “floodlit” point, and it truly is magical.

Mantel puts the transition at about three-quarters of the way through, but I think it can show up anywhere up to about ninety percent through the process. When it shows up, though, is far less important than that you keep working until it does.

I Wish Hilary Mantel Were My Sister I: Memoir Isn’t Easy

Hillary — Mon, 20 May 2013 23:26:32 +0000

Honestly, I wish Hilary Mantel were my sister. Despite egregiously spelling her name with only one “l”, she is one cool writer. In a New York Times interview she demolishes the naive view that memoir writing is easy:

Memoir’s not an easy form. It’s not for beginners, which is unfortunate, as it is where many people do begin. It’s hard for beginners to accept that unmediated truth often sounds unlikely and unconvincing. If other people are to care about your life, art must intervene. The writer has to negotiate with her memories, and with her reader, and find a way, without interrupting the flow, to caution that this cannot be a true record: this is a version, seen from a single viewpoint. But she has to make it as true as she can. Writing a memoir is a process of facing yourself, so you must do it when you are ready.

GREAT to read this. In every writing class I teach there are memoirists who feel guilty because they’ve bought the line that, “You’re just telling your own story. How hard can it be?” Hopefully if you’re one of them you’ll take heart from Mantel’s wise comments.

Six Things You Should Never Say to a Photographer (Or, if You’re a Photographer, Never Say to Yourself!)

Hillary — Sun, 19 May 2013 12:15:41 +0000

by Soraya Rudofsky and Hillary Rettig

It’s never easy to be a creator, or creative professional, but in the age of ubiquitous camera-phones, photographers have it particularly rough. Photographers, how often have you heard someone say one of these:

1. “Photography’s easy, because the camera does all the work.”

2. “Photography’s not a real art like painting or sculpting where you need to build your skills. For photography you just need a good eye.”

3. “You take such great pictures–you must have a great camera.”

4. “Could you take the pictures at our next family reunion?” (Alt: “Please bring your camera to my five-year-old’s birthday party that I invited you and your child to attend.”)

5. “It must be easy to run a photography business.”

6. “You don’t have a degree, so you’re not really a professional.”

These misconceptions are all around us, and they can do a number on our self-esteem as artists and professionals. They reflect not just a naivete about the realities of photography and photo businesses, but perfectionism, which causes us to oversimplify and deprecate both the creative process itself and the work of building a sustainable creative business.

Here’s the truth about photography and photographic businesses:

*A camera is only a tool that the photographer uses to realize her creative vision, just as painters use paintbrushes and paint to realize theirs. All artists use tools.

Moreover, most photographers work hard. A photographer might take twenty photos (or, in some cases, hundreds of photos) of the same thing using different angles, composition, lighting, apertures, lenses, etc., until they find the combination that works. Moreover, the chances are that the photo you see on the wall has been carefully edited with extreme attention to detail to achieve the final look (and this doesn’t mean Instagram filters).

Non-professionals might point-and-shoot, or at most adjust their camera to a pre-set like Portrait or Landscape, but that barely touches the surface of the camera’s use as a tool. Most professional photographers spend a lot of time learning the nuances of how to see, and how to use their camera to record what they see.

*Photographers spend years not just mastering lighting, composition, and other shooting skills, but developing their vision. Which is why…

*A good photographer can take a better picture with a bad camera than a bad photographer can take with a good one.

*It’s no more a compliment to ask a photographer to work for free than it is to ask a doctor, lawyer, etc. Sure, the photographer will probably be glad you like his work, and he may be happy to volunteer once in a while. But his time and talent are valuable and, in the case of professionals, the means by which he makes a living. If you wouldn’t ask a baker for free bread, or the hardware store for free hammers, you shouldn’t ask a photographer for free photographs.

*No business is easy, including businesses that “look easy.” Moreover, many professional photographers earn at least part of their living photographing weddings and other events, which is about the most high pressure gig of all. (Imagine coping with frazzled brides and grooms—not to mention, their families—week after week!)

Most photography businesses fail within the first year. For an excellent graphic showing the realities of the photographic industry, click here.

*Degrees are irrelevant. While there are excellent degree programs out there, many great photographers, including Ansel Adams, Herb Ritz, and Henri Cartier-Bresson, were mainly self-taught. In photography, as in many other fields, degrees are a perfectionist “fetish”–a relentless, but ultimately meaningless, focus for perfectionist self-criticism.

(Please note we’re talking about degrees, not training! Training is very valuable to photographers as it is to artists of all sorts.)

The above misconceptions do hold a lot of photographers back, so it would be great if all photographers would do their part in: (a) making sure they themselves are absolutely clear on the truth of the situation, and (b) pushing back (gently!) on the misconceptions when they do encounter them. That would make life easier for all photographers.

There’s also another set of problems that hold photographers back—perfectionism and traumatic rejections. We’ll discuss those in a followup article.

Update: Thanks for the positive feedback! This post on Coping with Clueless Questions, Crass Comments, and Crazy Conjectures should also help you when faced with the many naive judges out there!

What Joyful Productivity Looks Like: The “Woodland Trail” Metaphor

Hillary — Sat, 18 May 2013 12:42:21 +0000

Picture your writing (or other work) session as a stroll down a beautiful, sun-dappled woodland path. The path is wide and flat, the air warm and inviting, and on either side of you are banks of friendly plants alive with twittering birds. You’re having a marvelous time, and are moving at a relaxed, yet efficient pace – almost with a bit of a strut.

All of a sudden someone pops up out of the underbrush and joins you on your path: it’s your spouse, full of opinions on your current piece of writing.

You walk on for a bit, your spouse yammering in your ear, not just about the writing, now, but about he/she wishes the house were better maintained and how you two never go out any more. It’s an unpleasant distraction, but you’re still mostly enjoying your walk.

Then, someone else pops up – your parents, who are worried about how your writing will reflect on them.

And then your siblings parachute down onto the path, asking when are you going to get a real job, and aren’t you embarrassed to be driving around in that old car?

Then, an old teacher or boss pops up, reminding you of how, “you really don’t do dialog very well.”

And an editor who, twenty years ago, described a story of yours as “jejune.” (Yes, people do remember cruel comments for decades!)

And the author of a newspaper article you recently read that proclaimed that the market for epic family sagas, like the one you happen to be writing, is “dead.”

Etc.

Soon, you’re walking at the center of a clamorous crowd, none of whom you’ve invited. Naturally, you’ll have a hard time working in the midst of their harping, carping and negativity.

The prolific handle things differently. They decide, with absolute authority (get it? author-ity), who comes on their trail, and how long they can stay. You’re only allowed on if they want you on, and the minute you’re no longer an asset to their process, you’re gone. (I like to imagine that “gone” being either in the form of a vaudeville hook whisking the offender off stage right, or a giant boot sending him into orbit.)

And no free passes: everyone has to pass the “asset” test, including partners, parents, kids, and “important” teachers, editors and the like. And those who fail the test a few times permanently lose their right to apply for entry.

They’re banished, baby.

And so the prolific have a wonderful time strolling peacefully and productivity through the hours, days and years of their work.

Adapted from my book The 7 Secrets of the Prolific. Buy now, and get instant ebook access.

George Clooney on Mental Backpacks

Hillary — Fri, 17 May 2013 19:05:34 +0000

George Clooney!

A few days ago I wrote this piece on how having a mental backpack can slow you down. How could I have forgotten this scene from the great movie Up in the Air? Thanks to Angela Beeching, author of Beyond Talent: Creating a Successful Career in Music for the reminder.

Now I’m going to go off and pretend GC paid a personal visit to my blog.

Wanted: Reviewers for Japanese edition of 7 Secrets of the Prolific

Hillary — Fri, 17 May 2013 00:04:40 +0000

We’re just about done with the Japanese translation of my new minibook Perfectionism: Defeating the Enemy Within, and are looking for manuscript readers/reviewers. The book is about 30K words long. We’re looking for diverse readers: students, businesspeople, educators, artists, activists, etc. If you’re interested, please email.

No compensation, but you’ll get a free copy of the final book, of course. Plus, my appreciation!

The Eroticization of Equality and Social Justice

Hillary — Thu, 16 May 2013 22:41:37 +0000

Note from Hillary: this is a reprint of an article I published elsewhere a few years back that I wanted to archive on this blog. The topic remains timely; thanks for reading!

To begin with, check out the romantic presidential couple at the bottom of the right-hand group of pictures (near the date) in the above image. Isn’t it wonderful that we elected someone who, among his many other virtues, is so loving? That’s not a trivial thing, as psychologists Kathlyn and Gay Hendricks write in their article, The Obama Relationship: a Major Benefit Nobody’s Talking About.Okay, back to that first link. It’s to the Love as the Practice of Freedom conference, the first national meeting devoted to romance fiction and American culture. I attended it a couple of weeks ago at Princeton University, and had a blast being surrounded by academics, authors, editors, and readers who were not only passionate about their emerging field and its importance in the larger culture, but passionate about passion and its role in our lives and in society.

Progressives should pay serious, and respectful, attention to romance fiction, for two reasons:

First, as I hope to convince you — or seduce you into believing! — below, romance itself is a fundamentally progressive activity. If you take romance seriously, and don’t denigrate it just because patriarchy says you should (more on that, later, too), then you’ve got to take romance fiction seriously, since it’s a major expression is of romance — not to mention, romance’s usual wonderful destinations, love and sex — in our culture. More than a quarter of all books sold in the U.S. are romance fiction, and more than 64 million Americans read at least one romance novel each year (source: Romance Writers of America, RWA). Romance fiction is an enormous part of American culture, and an important transmitter of values.According to RWA, romance fiction is built around a central love story that culminates in an “emotionally-satisfying and optimistic ending.” The “bodice ripper” cliche is not just discredited (implying, as it does, lack of consent), but woefully out of date: the genre has burgeoned way beyond historical romances and now includes romantic suspense, erotica, crime, Christian, African American, teen, paranormal (all those sexy vampires won’t just categorize themselves, people!), science fiction, and lesbian / gay / bisexual / transgender (LGBT) subgenres, among many others.And it’s not just the books that are changing: RWA research says that in 2008 22% of romance readers were men, versus just 7% in 2002.

(click on arrow at right to continue!)

Romance: a Progressive Thing

In 2007, the arch-conservative website HumanEvents.com asked a group of “scholars and public policy leaders” to list the ten “most harmful” books of the 19th and 20th Centuries. The first three listed, unsurprisingly, were The Communist Manifesto, Mein Kampf and Quotations from Chairman Mao.

The fourth was Dr. Alfred Kinsey’s book Sexual Behavior in the Human Male, a.k.a. The Kinsey Report.

Wow — just wow.

What do conservatives — and repressive regimes and ideologies the world over — have against romance, love and sex? Why do they need to control them so much? (Pace to our libertarian friends, who, though economically conservative, tend to be cool on the whole relationships thing.)

Perhaps it’s because romance, love and sex are among our most potent avenues for self-knowledge, self-expression, self-liberation, and societal liberation. Done right, these activities erode barriers and boundaries, both within us and between ourselves and others, and therefore pose a direct threat to the fear-based, control-obsessed “strict father” model that cognitive linguist George Lakoff, in his best-selling Don’t Think of an Elephant!, says lies at the heart of conservative thinking:

“The world is a dangerous place, and it always will be, because there is evil out there in the world. The world is also difficult because it is competitive. There will always be winners and losers. There is an absolute right and an absolute wrong. Children are born bad, in the sense that they just want to do what feels good, not what is right. Therefore, they have to be made good…a good person — a moral person — is someone who is disciplined enough to be obedient…”

Not exactly the most romantic world view, is it? Moreover, Lakoff points out that the types of sex that despots most seek to control — gay, unmarried and young sex — are those most likely to subvert the strict father model.This isn’t new stuff, by the way. Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre, one of the foundational works of modern romance fiction, was reviled by social conservatives upon its publication in 1847:

“Jane Eyre is throughout the personification of an unregenerate and undisciplined spirit,” wrote Elizabeth Rigby in The Quarterly Review in 1848, and her “autobiography..is preeminently an anti-Christian composition…The tone of mind and thought which has fostered Chartism and rebellion is the same which has also written Jane Eyre.” Anne Mozley, in 1853, recalled for the Christian Rememberer that ‘Currer Bell’ [Charlotte Bronte's pseudonym] had seemed on her first appearance as an author “an alien…from society and amenable to none of its laws.” And Mrs. Oliphant related in 1855 that…”the most alarming revolution of modern times has followed the invasion of Jane Eyre.” Gilbert and Gubar, The Madwoman in the Attic, 2d ed. (Yale University Press, 2000) [emphasis mine - HR]

Jane’s “crime?” Merely the insistence that she had a right to her own feelings and needs, and to work to have those needs met. (Chartism, by the way, was a movement for universal male suffrage and other hideous democratic reforms.)

Let’s contrast all that with Lakoff’s description of the “nurturer parent” model underlying progressiveness:

“…the world, despite its dangers and difficulties, is basically good, can be made better, and it is one’s responsibility to work toward that…Nurturing has two aspects: empathy (feeling and caring how others feel) and responsibility (for taking care of oneself and others for whom we are responsible). These two aspects of nurturing imply family values that we can recognize as progressive political values: from empathy, we want for others protection from harm, fulfillment in life, fairness, freedom (consistent with responsibility), and open two-way communication. From responsibility follows competence, trust, commitment, community building, and so on.”

Nurturing, empathy, communication, trust, commitment: pretty much the definition of love.Progressiveness is, at its heart, a call to love not just yourself and your family and friends, but strangers (including those you disagree with, or who happen to live a long distance away), and the other beings who share our planet. Note also the fundamentally optimistic viewpoint, which is shared by romance fiction.

Lakoff says we all have aspects of both nurturing parent and strict father in our psyches, which we express to greater or lesser degrees depending on our psychological makeup and circumstances. Fear activates strict father-based thinking, while a sense of safety and security activates the nurturer parent. So, when in 2003/2004 the Department of Homeland Security issued bogus terror alerts at politically opportune times for the Bush administration, that promoted a state of fear that, in turn, promoted conservative thinking and behavior. And whenever anyone romances, loves or has sex, that promotes a state of nurturing and other qualities that, in turn, promote progressive thinking and behavior.

Romance = Rights

Which brings us back to the Princeton conference. The title, Love as the Practice of Freedom, is from an essay by cultural critic bell hooks:

“The absence of a sustained focus on love in progressive circles arises from a collective failure to acknowledge the needs of the spirit and an overdetermined emphasis on material concerns. Without love, our efforts to liberate ourselves and our world community from oppression and exploitation are doomed. The moment we choose to love we begin to move against domination, against oppression. The moment we choose to love we begin to move toward freedom, to act in ways to liberate ourselves and others. That action is the testimony of love as the practice of freedom.”

As author of a book on progressive activism and member of the New England chapter of RWA – stop laughing: New England happens to be a hotbed of romance writing — I know that most romance writers are super cool and aware of the political implications of their work. But I was not prepared for the deep level of political awareness I found at the Princeton conference, much less the deep level of political vision. These are people who see romance fiction as fundamentally feminist in its emphasis on, and celebration of, women’s concerns, values and struggles. (Yes, yes — I know romance shouldn’t be solely a woman’s concern — and that it often isn’t — but bear with me: I’ll address not only that, but the anti-feminist elements of some romance fiction shortly.)

Happily, the ongoing political evolution of romance fiction isn’t stopping with feminism: just last week, after a multi-year struggle by GLBT romance writers and allies, the RWA formally recognized the Rainbow Romance Writers chapter for writers specializing in GLBT-themed romance fiction. Tearing down that wall in a genre that accounts for a quarter of all book sales, and appeals to an incredibly vast and diverse global audience, is a HUGE social advance.

One of the Princeton meeting’s stars was Ann Herendeen, a Brooklyn librarian who last year published her first novel, Phyllida and the Brotherhood of Philander, a witty and entertaining Regency romance (think Jane Austen) with a helluva twist: the heroine winds up living happily ever after with her hero AND his boyfriend. (That wasn’t a spoiler, by the way: it says so on the back cover.) Not surprisingly, Herendeen had trouble finding a publisher for her revolutionary book and so initially published it herself. After a couple of years, HarperCollins not only picked it up, but (said with pure authorial envy) blessed it with some of the best cover art I’ve seen.

It’s not just about GLBT liberation, either. Another star was author Beverly Jenkins, a pioneer of the African American romance. Many of her novels, including the classic Indigo, are set in the 19th century post-Civil War reconstruction period and provide historically-grounded narratives of happy marriages, fulfilled individuals, and hope and optimism retained during one of our country’s most awful and oppressive eras. Perhaps more than any romance author, Jenkins’ work embodies not just an activist spirit, but the healing nature of both romance and activism.

Prejudice and Pride

There are three main reasons why romance fiction is reviled. The first, and most easily rebutted, is that the genre contains a lot of formulaic, badly written works. But the best romance novels are equal to the best in any genre, while the worst are no worse than the worst spy novels, crime novels, westerns, etc., and those latter categories are not nearly so reviled. This brings us straight to reason #2: patriarchy, which splits the entire human experience into male and female categories and aggrandizes the former and deprecates the latter. The split occurs differently in different cultures and historical periods, but in recent eras in the West sexual aggressiveness has been the purview of men, and romance and intimacy that of women. Most of us are familiar with how this dynamic hurts women; for insight on how it hurts men by causing isolation and depression, among other maladies, read psychologist Terrence Real’sbooks.

Partly because of the liberatory nature of love, and partly because our culture is so hostile to romance and romance fiction, pretty much everyone in the field places a high premium on freedom and authenticity. The conference’s most poignant moment came when a speaker mentioned telling someone that she edits romance novels, and that person replied, “They’re edited?” The experience of being mocked for having an interest in, or building a career around romance seems universal, and so sooner or later everyone in the field makes the decision to follow their heart (literally!) in the face of public disdain or ridicule — a decision many progressives, not to mention Jane Eyre herself, should identify with and support.

Mega-best-selling novelist Jenny Crusie, author of Bet Me and Anyone But You did everyone a favor by modeling proper pride. “I’m Jenny Crusie and I have no shame,” she began her opening night speech. “I tell people I write romance and they just have to deal with it.” She said she always found those who tried to shame her “odd,” exhorted everyone to, “not give away so much of our power just to belong,” and ended with Martin Luther King’s famous dictum, “The arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice.” Her speech, with minor adjustments, could have been given at any progressive activist conference.

It was Sarah Wendell, co-founder of the hugely popular (225K page views/day) Smart Bitches, Trashy Books blog, and coauthor of Beyond Heaving Bosoms: The Smart Bitches’ Guide to Romance Novels (Simon and Schuster, 2009), who wrapped up the whole personal/political/romance/love/sex/liberation thing and tied it neatly with a bow when she said, to laughter and thunderous applause, “I will always come down on — or go down on — the side of freedom.”

The Eroticization of Equality

Reason #3 why romance is reviled (this time from the Left!) is the traditional huge power imbalance between the heroine and hero. There are still plenty of these sexist — or old skool, as Wendell calls them in Beyond Heaving Bosoms - novels being published. (The paranormals are particularly sneaky about it, with the vampire / werewolf / shapeshifter hero being much more powerful than the heroine not due to institutionalized sexism, but simply the fact that, duh, he’s not human.) But people who condemn the whole genre for this are both painting with an over-broad brush and failing to acknowledge the genre’s rapid expansion and moral evolution. These days, you’ll often find an alpha male and alpha female romancing each other (see novels by Crusie and Jenkins), or, if an initial power imbalance exists, it is redressed during the course of the story by having the heroine grow stronger. (By the way, it’s also commonly acknowledged in the field that if you were ever to meet one of those Byronic alpha-male romance heroes in real life, he would likely be a real jerk.)

This, however, raises another problem — one of life, rather than literature. According to historian Stephanie Coontz, a leading historian of marriage and family relationships who also spoke at the conference, egalitarian partnerships tend to be the happiest, but also tend to lack sexual spark. The question,” she said, “is how to eroticize equality.” Conference speakers wrestled with that toughie, with mixed results, until Guy Mark Foster, an assistant professor of African American studies at Bowdoin College who studies biracial romances, took the point:“What we need to eroticize is the pursuit of equality.”

Ah.

More and more, romance fiction is incorporating the ideals and values of progressivism, not just by becoming more diverse in its characterizations and relationship constructions, but by replacing a one-up, competitive model of power, in which I derive my power from your relative weakness, with a between-equals, cooperative model in which power is shared and distributed to the benefit of all. The more it does this, the closer it will come to providing models of ecstatic, loving, romantic, sexual relationships that work in real life – a huge public benefit and (as Charlotte Bronte AND her critics would no doubt agree, albeit with opposing reactions) radical act.

Now, if progressives and radicals would only incorporate more of the ideals and values of romance in their lives and work. It shouldn’t be that hard: after all, the romantic revolutionary meme is ancient and powerful. We even have a precedent: the way recent technological romantic revolutionaries (i.e., geeks and hackers) took the ideals and values of the marginalized science fiction stories I read as a child and propagated them throughout our culture, resulting in a huge amount of technology-based liberation.

We can do the same with the ideals and values of romance — and, when we do, we will all live Happily (or, at least, More Happily) Ever After.

UPDATE: I’ve since learned that although GLBT authors have indeed experienced discrimination within the genre for years, there was no years-long struggle to start a GLBT chapter of Romance Writers of America, as I stated above. The chapter was proposed and formalized within the usual several-months period. My apologies for the error. – Hillary

Passive-Aggressive Poe

Hillary — Thu, 16 May 2013 18:50:57 +0000

Apropos of nothing in particular…

New Page: How to Cope With Clueless Questions, Crass Comments, and Crazy Conjectures

Hillary — Thu, 16 May 2013 12:27:54 +0000

Oh, the things people say to writers!

“What do you do?”
“What do you write?”
“Is there any money in that?”
“Where have you been published?”
“How’s the book coming along?” (Alt: “When will you be done with that thing?”)
“Why don’t you just sit down over a weekend and just finish it?”
“You should write like Stephen King!”
“You should put a vampire in it!”
“Why don’t you just go on [popular TV show]?” And, the ever popular,
“When are you going to get a real job?”

These are the kinds of (often, but not always) well-meaning questions, comments, and conjectures that bedevil writers. A little planning can help a lot in terms of coping, however. Below are strategies for: (a) increasing your tolerance for difficult questions; (b) maintaining conversational boundaries; and (c) dealing with hostility.

Read the rest here.

Summer 2013 Workshops: Hartford, Hyannis, Boston, and Online!

Hillary — Wed, 15 May 2013 16:23:05 +0000

Check out the Events Page and register soon!

Academic Mug Shot

Hillary — Wed, 15 May 2013 16:08:04 +0000

Those who need to know what this means will know what it means.

Many Authors Also Can’t Figure Out How They Wound Up With Weird Covers on Their Books

Hillary — Tue, 14 May 2013 20:34:39 +0000

Michael Chabon on True Novelists versus “Rebel Angels”

Hillary — Tue, 14 May 2013 02:20:46 +0000

From Wikipedia:

In a 2012 interview with Guy Raz of Weekend All Things Considered Chabon said that he writes from 10 p.m. to 3 a.m. each day, Sunday through Thursday. He tries to write 1,000 words a day. Commenting on the rigidity of his routine, Chabon said, “There have been plenty of self-destructive rebel-angel novelists over the years, but writing is about getting your work done and getting your work done every day. If you want to write novels, they take a long time, and they’re big, and they have a lot of words in them…. The best environment, at least for me, is a very stable, structured kind of life.”

The Importance of Perception to Productivity Work

Hillary — Mon, 13 May 2013 12:03:21 +0000

People carrying a backpack or other weight typically estimate hills to be much longer and steeper than they really are, to a greater degree than unencumbered people.

It also turns out, however, that if someone puts a backpack on your avatar you will experience virtual “hills” as being longer and steeper than they really are. This is crazy! Don’t forget that, since both the avatar and hill are virtual, no actual energy is being expended other than for keyboarding! But we perceive an energy expense.

However, the effect is true only if it’s an avatar customized by you to look like yourself. I’m guessing that’s because, in the process of interacting with your virtual doppelganger, you’re also identifying yourself with that online persona and getting invested in the outcome. One can therefore reasonably speculate that perfectionists, who tend to overidentify with their work and get overinvested in their outcomes, are literally creating for themselves more of an uphill climb!

And the clever researchers, Sangseok You and S. Shyam Sundar, managed to demonstrate that literally. Welcome to the fascinating future, where we’ll see a lot more actual testing and quantification and delineation of heretofore untestable psychological, philosophical, and even historical precepts, thanks to virtual reality!