I'm way behind with responses to this list -- I hope you don't mind if I
slumgullion several together here.
First, about my keynote address for the feminist conference in September;
several of you have asked to read the darned thing when I get it written.
(As you can tell from my tone, I'm having trouble with it.) I'd be
delighted to have you do that, and to have feedback from you before I face
the world with it. What I'll do is write the speech as email; that way, I
can send it to anyone on this list who wants to see it -- just let me know
who you are.
Second, about finding science fiction. I want to recommend amazon.com;
they're very good about finding books, even long-since out of print books.
(I was pretty horrified to get a note from someone this week reporting that
amazon.com did have one of my outofprints but was asking $190 for it, and
wondering if I could suggest a better source; obviously, if you run into
that kind of thing it's not helpful. But it's not likely to happen often,
surely.) And I suspect that this list could manage to do some *lending* of
books that turn out to be really hard to find.
Third, about what I've published recently. Almost no science fiction, I'm
sorry to say; a very brief short story called "Soulfedge Rock" in
Scarborough and McCaffrey's "Space Opera" anthology. My Linguistics &
Science Fiction newsletter keeps appearing, by magic -- now coming up on
Volume 17, Issue #1. (It takes as much of my time to do the newsletter each
year as it would to write a novel, but I'm not sorry; it's very rewarding
work.) In nonfiction I've done a little better. I had several new verbal
self-defense books from John Wiley -- "You Can't SAY That To Me!", and
"Try to Feel It My Way," and "The Gentle Art of Communicating with Kids." I
have a book coming out from Thomas Nelson & Sons this October called "How
to Turn the Other Cheek" (self-explanatory title, I guess) and I've just
turned in the final manuscript to Abbeville for something called "The
Portable Grandmother Book." I have a book on "multilingualism and the mind"
under contract and am working on that one right now. I have a short book
called "The Peacetalk Solution" making the rounds -- no publisher yet; I
don't know just what to call it. It's fiction, but not a novel -- more an
extended fable. My agent has also been hunting a publisher for a children's
book (actually a prequel to my Ozark sf trilogy), called "Proper Names."
And there's a science fiction "treatment" being looked at right now by one
of the television thingies. I have an essay called "The Pragmatics of
Applied Fantasy" coming out shortly in a conference proceedings, and I'm
doing an article on the use of science fiction to teach linguistics for a
"scholarly" volume. .... I started out thinking there wasn't much going on
here, but more occurred to me as I went along. The thing about actually
supporting a family by writing is that you have to have a dozen projects in
the air at once, at minimum, or you don't make it; absurd as it sounds,
it's easy to lose track of things that have been finished and out in the
pipeline a while. I'm continuing to work on my sf novel about a touch
dominant alternative U.S., whenever I can get a couple of free minutes;
that one has the distinction of having been rejected by almost as many
publishers as turned down "Jonathan Livingston Seagull." And there are a
few more things in the works, mostly short stories, but I've worn out my
welcome on this topic by now. Later.
Fourth, about unworthiness... It's built in to the way we live, I'm afraid.
I think the most difficult thing for me to handle, worse than the "we can't
buy your books because nobody ever bought any Native Tongue books"
rejections, has always been the fact that I've never been able to get my
family to read my stuff; that keeps me humble. Sometimes one of them will
read one book because it "speaks to their needs," but by and large they
can't be induced or seduced into the task. My grandchildren aren't old
enough to tackle it yet, so I don't know what will happen with them. I
think we just have to get up every morning, take a deep breath, announce to
the universe "I am just as good a writer as Shakespeare" and get on with
it, and that takes guts. My profound admiration goes to every single one of
you who keeps on writing in spite of it all.
Enough,
Suzette
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