Latest / Writing Excuses / 20.37: Deep Dive into “All the Birds in the Sky” - Using the Lens of Why

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20.37: Deep Dive into “All the Birds in the Sky” - Using the Lens of Why · Writing Excuses

• 0:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: I swear detective I was nowhere near the polar lounge on the night my poor darling husband Charles was murdered.
• 0:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: I was on a hoodon of mystery cruise with my assistant, Dudley a darling boy.
• 0:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: You two can join us on our next deadly cruise February six twenty twenty six seven nights out of Los Angeles on the Navigator of the seas.
• 0:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: Call now if you dare.
• 0:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: Three one seven four five one six one five oh or go to hoodonacruises.com
• 0:30
  [SPEAKER_02]: This episode of Writing Excuses has been brought to you by our listeners, patrons and friends.
• 0:36
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• 0:45
  [SPEAKER_02]: Season twenty, episode thirty seven.
• 0:50
  [SPEAKER_05]: This is Writing Excuses.
• 0:52
  [SPEAKER_05]: A deep dive on all the birds in the sky through the lens of why?
• 0:56
  [SPEAKER_05]: I'm Mary Rabinette.
• 0:58
  [SPEAKER_05]: I'm talking on.
• 0:58
  [SPEAKER_05]: I'm Dan.
• 0:59
  [SPEAKER_05]: I'm Aaron.
• 1:00
  [SPEAKER_05]: I'm Howard.
• 1:01
  [SPEAKER_05]: So this is our last segment in this deep dive that we've been doing with Charlie Jane Anderson's book, All the Birds and the Sky.
• 1:09
  [SPEAKER_05]: We are delighted that we have an opportunity to talk to her as well.
• 1:13
  [SPEAKER_05]: So there'll be an interview with her coming up to recap a lot of what we've been talking about, which will be especially relevant for this week's topic because in part we are talking about intent.
• 1:24
  [SPEAKER_05]: This episode is really about the lens of why, and as we've talked about earlier in the year, things were focused on are the thematics of the story, the authors intent, the way she uses tone and tradition to sort of express the core ideas of the book, right?
• 1:41
  [SPEAKER_05]: We're hitting this one last because we get to kind of sum up a little bit of things that we've talked about before in terms of setting in terms of timeline and in terms of character to get a real sense of how is she assembling all of these into a legible coherent thematic message in all of this.
• 1:59
  [SPEAKER_05]: And so I guess my question for you all and it's a little bit of a broad question beyond just this book itself, but when you're thinking about your intention of putting those the Maddox in a project, how are you approaching that and how do you see Charlie Jane doing that here?
• 2:17
  [SPEAKER_02]: it varies for me project project some of them I discovered the theme after I've written it this book feels very very much like a lot of the themes were decided ahead of time which is I think some of it is the friction between two opposing views of the world yeah
• 2:33
  [SPEAKER_02]: But the other thing for me that I think that I found intriguing was that friction comes from the stories that we tell ourselves about the world.
• 2:46
  [SPEAKER_02]: I see very deliberate decisions being book one, book two, book three, like the decisions about where to frame each of those.
• 2:57
  [SPEAKER_02]: the decisions about the kinds of conversations the kids have, the tropes that Charlie Jane is using of, you know, fantasy kid.
• 3:07
  [SPEAKER_02]: Here's the science fiction kid.
• 3:09
  [SPEAKER_02]: I see those as being decisions that were probably made like baked into the idea.
• 3:15
  [SPEAKER_05]: Yeah.
• 3:16
  [SPEAKER_05]: I mean, this has an explicitly dialectical structure, right?
• 3:18
  [SPEAKER_05]: You have two opposing viewpoints that have to reach synthesis by the end of the story, right?
• 3:23
  [SPEAKER_05]: And there's very classic, big alien structure to get to walk you about it.
• 3:27
  [SPEAKER_05]: But you know, you have magic on one side or magic in community and connection.
• 3:30
  [SPEAKER_05]: And then you have sort of, you know, rationality, science, cerebral kind of approach to the world.
• 3:36
  [SPEAKER_05]: And this sort of like we can solve the big problems versus we need to be
• 3:42
  [SPEAKER_05]: trying to solve too big of a problem and causes more problems, right?
• 3:45
  [SPEAKER_05]: That's like sort of these two competing viewpoints.
• 3:48
  [SPEAKER_05]: And sort of the tension between individuals within those viewpoints with the systems that they're embedded in as well.
• 3:54
  [SPEAKER_05]: So you have all of these different layers, but the fundamental thing is quite simple of, you know, magic versus science, right?
• 4:02
  [SPEAKER_05]: And then as you dig into that, she's found ways to lay on complexity over and over and over again to each of those elements.
• 4:10
  [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, because the schools of magic have finally come together historically, you had the healers and you had the tricksters and they were at war and science didn't enter into it.
• 4:26
  [SPEAKER_03]: That was those two were fighting.
• 4:28
  [SPEAKER_03]: And when we look at the way, I think the character's name is Milton, his approach
• 4:37
  [SPEAKER_03]: to solving things with technology, in many cases, is to buy up technological solutions that would be competing with the way he wants to do it.
• 4:47
  [SPEAKER_03]: And so that that dialectic between or that contrast, that conflict between science and magic is reflected within each of those realms.
• 5:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I was thinking about I was wondering for myself thinking about in magic.
• 5:06
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's really explicit that there are these two things that had to come together.
• 5:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I was wondering like, what is it on the science side?
• 5:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's harder.
• 5:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: It was harder for me to parse.
• 5:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: And as you were talking, I was thinking about I guess it's makers because there's a lot of like makers and takers.
• 5:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: Like it seems like there are
• 5:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: the people who create things and the people who acquire them from others, which feels like it is an exactly because the thing that person they're taking from was also a maker, but like it feels like there's so much acquisition that it doesn't even allow for there to be a diversion within that side of things in the same way that there is in the magical side of us.
• 5:39
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's interesting because I actually thought that Seraphina was in many ways representing the other side of science, because she's working on the science of emotion with the robots.
• 5:49
  [SPEAKER_02]: and that is a thing that Lawrence specifically has trouble with, that he specifically has trouble with his own emotions and this relationship with this girlfriend and that types of science that he's doing are very like, this is cool, this is flashy, let's go into another world, but emotions, that's this amazing, almost witchcraft thing that the girlfriend is doing.
• 6:16
  [SPEAKER_05]: And it's the thing that change we need to become a paragraph and he needs that emotional resonance from having this connection to Patricia.
• 6:24
  [SPEAKER_05]: And you know, I mean, there's also the magic she's accidentally putting into him and all that.
• 6:28
  [SPEAKER_05]: But you know, on the magic side and on the science side, we get this microcosm view of what it is like for these two opposing things.
• 6:36
  [SPEAKER_05]: And this sort of like uneasy synthesis that we get in the magical world of the healers versus the tricksters, then is really not a synthesis is just doing two different things in different times in a way that doesn't really work.
• 6:48
  [SPEAKER_05]: You know what I mean?
• 6:49
  [SPEAKER_05]: Like the tension between the healers and the tricksters is like constant throughout that.
• 6:54
  [SPEAKER_05]: And there was such an interesting thing of her putting in this model of like, here's the bad answer.
• 6:59
  [SPEAKER_05]: Here's what it looks like when you think you've synthesized, but you haven't actually done the work to combine two different things.
• 7:05
  [SPEAKER_05]: And then, you know, I mean, there's a little bit of a thing at the end of like, we don't see how relieved that work, the hard work of synthesis happens.
• 7:13
  [SPEAKER_05]: Gene matching and science in the end, it's a little bit like done magically, but like it gestures towards this future that is more resolved than what we've seen in the magical world or in the scientific world.
• 7:23
  [SPEAKER_05]: Because again, there is that tension there too between the emotional and the science or between the makers and the takers, right?
• 7:29
  [SPEAKER_02]: You just reminded me, and I don't remember the exact line, but in when Lawrence goes to MIT to see the rocket launch.
• 7:38
  [SPEAKER_02]: And there's this dude who says, do you want to come see this really cool thing that I did with the rocket?
• 7:43
  [SPEAKER_02]: And I can't remember her name, but the woman who's showing him around you is about.
• 7:49
  [SPEAKER_02]: And she's like, what you did?
• 7:53
  [SPEAKER_02]: And this idea of the takers who take credit for things that other people did as opposed to people who are like, look at this community that we're working in.
• 8:02
  [SPEAKER_05]: And we see that in Milton too, right?
• 8:03
  [SPEAKER_05]: In Milton puts Lawrence in that role of literally parachuting in and being like, oh, it's not even company, it's our company, right?
• 8:12
  [SPEAKER_05]: And we see what that does to that guy over time and see what comes is like more depressed version of himself.
• 8:16
  [SPEAKER_05]: But also this more cautious version and a little bit wiser than the other people in the room when they're like,
• 8:22
  [SPEAKER_05]: Should we blow up the world?
• 8:22
  [SPEAKER_05]: What do you think?
• 8:24
  [SPEAKER_05]: It's interesting because we get this note, I think it's him who has that note of caution in that conversation.
• 8:33
  [SPEAKER_05]: So in seeing the way in which those dialectics are structured throughout the books,
• 8:39
  [SPEAKER_05]: There's also this meta commentary thing that's happening here, right?
• 8:42
  [SPEAKER_05]: Because we have these two opposing ideas in terms of magic or science, but we also have this book is synthesizing multiple traditions, right?
• 8:50
  [SPEAKER_05]: It's speaking to fantasy and science fiction is speaking to genre and to literary, right?
• 8:55
  [SPEAKER_05]: We've kind of touched on these a little bit.
• 8:56
  [SPEAKER_02]: And I think it's also speaking to age groups as well.
• 8:59
  [SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, it's like middle grade YA and adult all at once in terms of the book itself sitting at these crossroads between all of these different genres and categories in a way that I think, you know,
• 9:12
  [SPEAKER_05]: not to put you on the spot Dan, but I've seen like it was a little uncomfortable for you and maybe like how do you bounce off the book in a little bit.
• 9:18
  [SPEAKER_05]: You know, I guess like when you're looking at where does this book fit into the conversation that a genre is, how do you blend those two things, right?
• 9:29
  [SPEAKER_05]: We see a lot of science fantasy these days, but what makes it feel more one than the other?
• 9:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: This is not an answer to your question at all.
• 9:36
  [SPEAKER_05]: I'm going to say it anyway.
• 9:39
  [SPEAKER_05]: Another question was stupid.
• 9:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: But it's like one thing that I love when you go to book readings with like literary people that will always ask, what works is your work in conversation with?
• 9:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: And interestingly, despite the fact that I think science fiction and fantasy are extraordinarily historically focused genres, I don't hear that question as much on the genre side of things.
• 10:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: I think it's assumed that you're in conversation with everything and therefore why are you even asking?
• 10:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: But I don't actually know the reason why that is.
• 10:07
  [SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, I mean, I think there is a real resistance to that.
• 10:10
  [SPEAKER_05]: Instead of in science fiction fantasies, we talk about canon and set of conversations.
• 10:15
  [SPEAKER_05]: And maybe I'm betraying the amount of time I've spent at poetry readings by trying to get us to talk more about conversations, right?
• 10:21
  [SPEAKER_05]: Because I think this book is in conversation with Earthsea and Diana Winjoins on the one side, and with big ideas science fiction on the other side, right?
• 10:33
  [SPEAKER_05]: There's such like,
• 10:35
  [SPEAKER_05]: The characters on the scientific side are so clearly inspired by old school science fiction of like we can fix the world by doing X, Y, and Z. And then this heroic fantasy, this magical school stuff on the other side.
• 10:48
  [SPEAKER_05]: And so trying to blend those two.
• 10:51
  [SPEAKER_02]: You're making me think of something that I noticed I was just recently at a literary reading, and I was the only science fiction person there.
• 11:01
  [SPEAKER_02]: And I noticed that everyone who started their readings, whether they were doing poetry or a novel, would start with, here's why I told the story.
• 11:16
  [SPEAKER_02]: This is what the story is about.
• 11:18
  [SPEAKER_02]: here are the images that I was interested in and then they would read it.
• 11:23
  [SPEAKER_02]: And whereas I'm like, hello, we're on Mars.
• 11:25
  [SPEAKER_02]: Okay, let's go.
• 11:28
  [SPEAKER_05]: Let's take a break there and we'll come back.
• 11:29
  [SPEAKER_05]: I really do want to dig into this like, why do you do write this?
• 11:36
  [SPEAKER_05]: Welcome back.
• 11:37
  [SPEAKER_05]: Um, I think, you know, right before the break, Aaron and Mayor Robinette, you were both talking about these questions that you encounter in the literary world that you don't necessarily encounter in the genre world, right?
• 11:47
  [SPEAKER_05]: And we're drawing really like broad distinction between those, but I think it's a little useful in this case.
• 11:53
  [SPEAKER_05]: You know, the thing that I'm always thinking about when I'm considering a manuscript or reading a book, whether or not I enjoyed it, is
• 12:00
  [SPEAKER_05]: Do I feel the authors perspective in the text?
• 12:04
  [SPEAKER_05]: Do I get a sense of where they're coming from and why they wrote this thing?
• 12:07
  [SPEAKER_05]: And then sometimes I'll ask them that and people seem really surprised by the question, right?
• 12:12
  [SPEAKER_05]: In the way that you're saying of like, in our spaces, we don't always step back and consider why.
• 12:17
  [SPEAKER_05]: Do you think it's useful to think about why before you start writing?
• 12:21
  [SPEAKER_02]: So what's interesting to me is that I do in novel links at any rate.
• 12:27
  [SPEAKER_02]: I do usually have a reason that I am conscious of before I start writing the book.
• 12:31
  [SPEAKER_02]: Oh, why?
• 12:31
  [SPEAKER_02]: The short fiction sometimes I'm just like, and there's a story that I'm confident at.
• 12:37
  [SPEAKER_02]: But with novels that there's always a question that I have that I'm kind of exploring, like the Martian contingency.
• 12:44
  [SPEAKER_02]: I just joked that I was like, all right, everybody, we're on Mars.
• 12:47
  [SPEAKER_02]: Let's go.
• 12:47
  [SPEAKER_02]: But what I was actually interested in was what, you know, what does it take to create a new community and a new place?
• 12:55
  [SPEAKER_02]: And so that's that's my why behind the writing.
• 12:58
  [SPEAKER_02]: is this question.
• 13:00
  [SPEAKER_02]: And I don't know what I find useful about it is that when I was having to make a decision between two choices for something I could do in a scene, it helped me narrow down to this is the one that supports that question that I'm asking.
• 13:18
  [SPEAKER_04]: In my own writing, I have found that if I don't know why I'm writing a story in advance, or if my why is very shallow, then the book will come across as very shallow.
• 13:32
  [SPEAKER_04]: My Cyberpunk books, The Cherry Dogs Books, which I love, and I will happily write more of them.
• 13:37
  [SPEAKER_04]: The very first one, I wrote it because I wanted to write Cyberpunk.
• 13:41
  [SPEAKER_04]: That was the whole why.
• 13:43
  [SPEAKER_04]: The question I was exploring was, can Dan write a sucker for book.
• 13:48
  [SPEAKER_04]: And I think that you can see that in it.
• 13:50
  [SPEAKER_04]: It doesn't feel as deep or as interesting as the other books in that same series.
• 13:57
  [SPEAKER_04]: By the time I got to the third one, it was very much me exploring my relationship with my teenage daughter.
• 14:04
  [SPEAKER_04]: What is it like?
• 14:05
  [SPEAKER_04]: How is that relationship formed?
• 14:07
  [SPEAKER_04]: How is it maintained?
• 14:08
  [SPEAKER_04]: How can it go sour?
• 14:10
  [SPEAKER_04]: And that was what I was looking at doing it through the lens of this cyberpunk adventure story.
• 14:16
  [SPEAKER_04]: And so when I have a why am I writing this?
• 14:20
  [SPEAKER_04]: And what is this about in mind in advance?
• 14:24
  [SPEAKER_04]: Even just subconsciously, the writing is more interesting.
• 14:28
  [SPEAKER_05]: Well I think also you know we've been saying this thing in terms of literary readers writers talk about you know who are they in conversation with and in the why I think a lot of that also is them looking back at what they've written I don't know that they have those answers up front so just just to be clear we're not saying that like this kind of writer thinks about ahead of time this kind of I think
• 14:47
  [SPEAKER_05]: we are all unreliable narrators have our own intent in mind and all of that.
• 14:54
  [SPEAKER_05]: And so I think sometimes it's figuring out what the hell that I write after the fact.
• 14:59
  [SPEAKER_03]: I do not remember who wrote it and it would take me a while to source it.
• 15:04
  [SPEAKER_03]: But I remember the quote very well, which was the things that you think are your weaknesses are strengths.
• 15:14
  [SPEAKER_03]: You're not ready to see your actual weaknesses.
• 15:18
  [SPEAKER_03]: And that's a little close to home.
• 15:20
  [SPEAKER_03]: I know.
• 15:21
  [SPEAKER_03]: I was the first time I read that I was like, oh, I hate that.
• 15:25
  [SPEAKER_03]: I hate that so much.
• 15:27
  [SPEAKER_03]: But, you know, on topic here, when I ask myself why am I writing this story, there's a spectator up in the nosebleed seats who says, whatever you are, whatever answer you come up with, that's good as long as it gets you writing, but you're wrong.
• 15:47
  [SPEAKER_03]: Because there's a real why there that you're not ready to look at yet.
• 15:52
  [SPEAKER_03]: You need to be able to look at it before you finish the story.
• 15:56
  [SPEAKER_03]: But be able to answer the question up front.
• 15:59
  [SPEAKER_03]: You know, be able to be able to have a meaningful why that gets you writing.
• 16:03
  [SPEAKER_03]: But there's going to be something under that that's more important.
• 16:06
  [SPEAKER_03]: And I know that sounds kind of woo-woo and mystical.
• 16:08
  [SPEAKER_03]: But you didn't have a reason.
• 16:10
  [SPEAKER_03]: It doesn't have to be the reason.
• 16:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, and I'll be honest, I really admire people when I ask them, actually a lot of genre people who will sometimes say, like, what are you writing?
• 16:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: They're like, I'm writing about grief and my cat, and I'm like, oh my god, I'm writing this chick who sits in a room.
• 16:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: Like, a lot of times I am very focused on what I'm trying to do and not why I'm trying to do it.
• 16:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I really admire the ability to understand the greater why.
• 16:39
  [SPEAKER_01]: I think a lot of times for me it's a little bit more like these are eight things that made me think about writing this story and some of them are very silly and maybe one of them is a little bit important but probably not and then like just kind of throwing that in a bag like a you know bag of things and shaking it.
• 16:58
  [SPEAKER_04]: I hesitate to put words in Charlie Jane Andrews' mouth and we can ask this question, you know, we can ask why did you write this more fully when we do the interview with her.
• 17:07
  [SPEAKER_04]: But the thing that kept coming across to me while reading it was that she was writing this book
• 17:15
  [SPEAKER_04]: to kind of point out that magic and fantasy and science fiction were not all that different.
• 17:22
  [SPEAKER_04]: Both sides came up with genuinely terrible plans to save the world.
• 17:27
  [SPEAKER_04]: Both of those plans had the same ultimate effect of destroying community as a concept.
• 17:35
  [SPEAKER_04]: And the finale is we have to synthesize these things and bring them together.
• 17:40
  [SPEAKER_04]: We're really not all that different.
• 17:42
  [SPEAKER_04]: And I don't know if that's what she actually intended.
• 17:45
  [SPEAKER_04]: I don't know if that is like I was reading it almost as a response to our community.
• 17:54
  [SPEAKER_04]: Fantasy and science fiction authors fighting with each other.
• 17:58
  [SPEAKER_04]: And again, we'll have to ask her, but that's how it felt to me.
• 18:01
  [SPEAKER_05]: It's interesting because again, I think if
• 18:04
  [SPEAKER_05]: You know, maybe her idea at the beginning, I mean, we're projecting here, right?
• 18:08
  [SPEAKER_05]: But as a thought experiment, if the idea at the beginning was, I'm going to write a novel about, you know, the fight between fantasy and science fiction, but at the end of the day, what the book is actually about and the final reveal is that the dialectic isn't math and magic.
• 18:22
  [SPEAKER_05]: The dialectic is
• 18:24
  [SPEAKER_05]: isolation and community, right?
• 18:26
  [SPEAKER_05]: And that's the thing that is really being contested with is how do we connect to each other when we have all these differences, but you're right, that each of their solutions on the science side and on the magic side was what we need to do is disconnect from each other and that is the enemy.
• 18:42
  [SPEAKER_02]: And we see that on a small scene level, again, going all the way back to the beginning of the book, that when Patricia goes and she talks to the Parliament of Birds, when Lawrence goes and he goes to MIT, they both have the sense of belonging
• 18:59
  [SPEAKER_02]: in that moment of something amazing happening, Lawrence in particular felt like there's the line when they see the two-second time travel thing about, that it was like being led into a secret club.
• 19:14
  [SPEAKER_02]: And then that gets taken away from them.
• 19:18
  [SPEAKER_02]: And so I think through the whole book, you're absolutely right, there is this sense of community versus isolation, community is healthy isolation is not healthy.
• 19:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I think that it's been interesting through this whole discussion, listening to different things that we've said about the why this book is.
• 19:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: Like, on one, you've talked about like the soul of San Francisco, which I like being fought over, which is something I know zero things about.
• 19:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: And it makes you wonder, like, is it even, is it important?
• 19:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: I think it is not important, I will say, that we actually know the why.
• 19:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yes.
• 19:48
  [SPEAKER_01]: As long as it feels like there is a lie to what Dan was saying.
• 19:52
  [SPEAKER_01]: And what I think is interesting is sometimes people in science fiction especially will say like, I didn't like this story because it felt like it was trying to teach me something.
• 19:59
  [SPEAKER_01]: It felt like the theme was too strong and too easily understood.
• 20:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I wonder if that is what it is.
• 20:06
  [SPEAKER_01]: If everybody comes away with the exact same point, then it feels like it's too heavy on the page that there should be a little bit of a lightness that allows you to read a few different thematic elements into it as opposed to just like banging over the head with one.
• 20:20
  [SPEAKER_02]: I heard Elizabeth Barris say this thing.
• 20:23
  [SPEAKER_02]: She said the difference between a story and a polemic is that a story asks your question and a polemic answers it.
• 20:30
  [SPEAKER_04]: I was about to say the exact same thing when I teach about theme, that's what I tell students is that theme is a question that your book is going to explore, not necessarily a book, not necessarily a question they're going to answer.
• 20:43
  [SPEAKER_05]: Well, you know, I was thinking about the movie centers because it's all I think about these days.
• 20:48
  [SPEAKER_05]: And one of the things I really love about that film is it refuses to resolve into an easy answer, right?
• 20:54
  [SPEAKER_05]: It presents you lots of easy answers along the way and then one by one knocks those pennies down, right?
• 20:59
  [SPEAKER_05]: And it leaves you in this place.
• 21:01
  [SPEAKER_05]: Not of confusion.
• 21:02
  [SPEAKER_05]: There's an emotional clarity.
• 21:04
  [SPEAKER_05]: But then when you try to unpack it into easy lessons, it's very resistant to that.
• 21:08
  [SPEAKER_05]: And I think one thing that is really lovely in this book is we start with thinking, oh, it's going to be X or it's going to be Y. And then the end result is something different, right?
• 21:17
  [SPEAKER_05]: And it still feels like she sets up the shape of the answer and that shape is still true, but then the details all change along the way, and really matter what those changes are.
• 21:28
  [SPEAKER_03]: And one of the questions that I ask myself usually mid-project is not, you know, why am I telling the story, but why is anybody reading it?
• 21:42
  [SPEAKER_03]: And, you know, you can take it tongue-in-cheek.
• 21:47
  [SPEAKER_03]: Why would anybody read this?
• 21:48
  [SPEAKER_03]: But I'm working on a bonus story right now for the next Shlock Mercenary book, and I realized
• 21:55
  [SPEAKER_03]: I was doing a fine job of telling the story, but part of the why of people reading it is because they want to look at the pictures.
• 22:05
  [SPEAKER_03]: And I realized I needed to pay a little more attention to what was going on in the background.
• 22:12
  [SPEAKER_03]: and then I started doing some world building in the background and came up with this whole thematic idea of Geiger suits as the architecture and and one thing led to another and I realized oh yeah I really needed to ask that question because
• 22:31
  [SPEAKER_03]: because now the story is deeper.
• 22:33
  [SPEAKER_03]: They're more going on because I recognize that the reader doesn't just want to read the story that I have in mind.
• 22:42
  [SPEAKER_03]: They want to look at something else that inspires, you make sense of wonder, whatever, and I don't have to ask or answer questions with it.
• 22:52
  [SPEAKER_03]: I just need to put things in.
• 22:54
  [SPEAKER_04]: Geiger suits sounds like a genre of music that I would deeply love and never listen to.
• 23:01
  [SPEAKER_02]: This is pretty accurate, I think.
• 23:04
  [SPEAKER_02]: But something you were saying made me want to add yet another metaphor into the lens of writing.
• 23:12
  [SPEAKER_02]: Which I got from, I've been thinking about it a lot, which I got from Amel Amotar where she did a keynote speech talking about writing as an act of hospitality.
• 23:23
  [SPEAKER_02]: which is a metaphor that I love so much and I've been thinking about it in terms of the why of it.
• 23:31
  [SPEAKER_02]: When you buy a house, when you decorate the house, when you buy furniture for that house, that you are serving the why of yourself.
• 23:42
  [SPEAKER_02]: These are the needs I have and that that is the writing of the story, but you're also thinking about who you want to be inviting into the home and the circumstances under which you want to invite them in.
• 23:52
  [SPEAKER_02]: So like someone who knows that they have a lot of out of town guests is going to want to set up something that has a guest room.
• 23:58
  [SPEAKER_02]: somebody who's like, oh my god, please no, no one in to my house is like, hmm, we have barstools.
• 24:06
  [SPEAKER_02]: But when someone comes into your home, like you, you, like if someone's coming in in a mobility device, you'll add a ramp, you'll rearrange the furniture.
• 24:17
  [SPEAKER_02]: But if someone comes in and they don't like the color orange, you don't hide the orange.
• 24:21
  [SPEAKER_02]: So knowing why you're making changes to the story is about knowing how it serves you, but also how it serves the people that you are inviting into the story.
• 24:29
  [SPEAKER_02]: And some of that goes back to the things we were talking about earlier about providing context for people who wouldn't come into the story who don't have the context, but you want them to feel welcome.
• 24:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: I think that's true.
• 24:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: I also think though I do want to say a word for stories that live in a place of discomfort in which the point is for you to sit on furniture that you would never have sat on and not enjoy it and make that think about what this says about the way you sit and the way you stand in the world and where you feel welcome.
• 24:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: and where you assume that you are not welcomed.
• 25:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so I think there's something really exciting about hospitality because hospitality can be a welcome in hospitality can also be, you know, something that you are doing to someone you can be inhospitable on purpose in order for people to think about what it means in order to be hospitable to others.
• 25:16
  [SPEAKER_05]: You can always say about that as like a haunted house is also an act of hospitality.
• 25:20
  [SPEAKER_05]: You people are signing on for the ride and you should communicate what this is.
• 25:23
  [SPEAKER_05]: And so, yeah, I mean, sometimes if I'm inviting people over, I'm like, yeah, I'm going to serve you my food, the kind of things that I eat and like to cook.
• 25:30
  [SPEAKER_05]: And I'm not going to serve you something that you literally can't eat because you're vegetarian or allergic to an ingredient.
• 25:36
  [SPEAKER_05]: But beyond that, also this is my home.
• 25:39
  [SPEAKER_05]: It's my curated experience.
• 25:40
  [SPEAKER_05]: You're going to experience that.
• 25:42
  [SPEAKER_02]: And there's some people that you don't invite into your home.
• 25:46
  [SPEAKER_02]: And also there.
• 25:46
  [SPEAKER_03]: And Ramsey.
• 25:52
  [SPEAKER_02]: But also, like, when I have a massage therapist who will come to the house sometimes help me deal with some stuff.
• 25:59
  [SPEAKER_02]: And yeah, I experience some pain in that house.
• 26:03
  [SPEAKER_02]: And I am better for it.
• 26:04
  [SPEAKER_02]: But that is, again, deliberate decisions and the why of it.
• 26:10
  [SPEAKER_02]: So, but the why of it first, I think, is how does it serve you the writer?
• 26:15
  [SPEAKER_02]: And then you start thinking about who else you want to affect with it.
• 26:18
  [SPEAKER_03]: But I just want to say it hits me about mid-project when I have to ask that question again.
• 26:26
  [SPEAKER_05]: I love this topic.
• 26:27
  [SPEAKER_05]: I feel like we could talk about this for a very long time, but we're going to leave it there for now.
• 26:31
  [SPEAKER_05]: Thank you all for going along with us on this deep dive into Charlie Jane Anderson's all the birds in the sky.
• 26:37
  [SPEAKER_05]: I'm very excited to talk to her and find out more about her perspective on it and the things that she wants to talk about in terms of the process of writing that book.
• 26:47
  [SPEAKER_05]: In the meantime, though, I have a little bit of homework for you.
• 26:50
  [SPEAKER_05]: I'm wanting to take some time, you know, take some time away from your drafting as part of your writing process and really sit down and think about your intentions.
• 26:59
  [SPEAKER_05]: What is your why of this project?
• 27:01
  [SPEAKER_05]: Why are you feeling like this is the story you need to write now in this moment as your next thing?
• 27:07
  [SPEAKER_05]: And write that down.
• 27:08
  [SPEAKER_05]: It doesn't have to be long.
• 27:09
  [SPEAKER_05]: It can be a simple sentence.
• 27:11
  [SPEAKER_05]: And then once you've written it down, take it out of your notebook, put it in a desk drawer somewhere, and don't look at it.
• 27:18
  [SPEAKER_02]: This has been writing excuses.
• 27:20
  [SPEAKER_02]: You're out of excuses, now go right.
• 27:25
  [SPEAKER_02]: Writing excuses has been brought to you by our listeners, patrons, and friends.
• 27:29
  [SPEAKER_02]: For this episode, your hosts were Mary Robinette Koal, Dong Wan Song, Erin Roberts, Dan Wells, and Howard Taylor.
• 27:36
  [SPEAKER_02]: This episode was engineered by Marshall Card Jr., mastered by Alex Jackson, and produced by Emma Reynolds.
• 27:43
  [SPEAKER_02]: For more information, visit writingexusies.com.