Socks are cool. But what's really cool, as Hobbes the Tiger said, are smocks. Smock smock smock.

Chris and I talked workshops in the car on the way back from our first WisCon a couple of years ago, remember that Barzak? "Diving Upward?" You should post the first part of that invite you worked up, as it's got a lot of resonance with all the slipstream/New Weird/Next Wave/thingamabobbie stuff that a lot of people are talking about these days.


(Um, scores can be posted here:)
http://www.quicktopic.com/22/H/e4cWqNPMJYt6

Thanks, everyone. I'm already feeling calmer :-)

Barzak, I read your post immediately after getting off the phone with Tim, so I didn't tell him about Maureen's cooking! I will endeavor to remember to mention it tonight, when he calls. Last night he had handmade ravioli and . . . um, shoot, can't remember. He says just walking to the river makes him out of breath because of the high altitude, so he's passing up the opportunity (so far) of going on hikes. He's also happy things are chilling out on his board.

Man, though, we both miss each other so much already!

Greg: I like socks.

Barzak (and everyone else), I love the idea of having our own workshop full of the new weird or what ever you want to call it. In fact, recently I was listing off things I'd like to own with Tim. Cafe, bookshop . .. when I got to Bed and Breakfast he snorted. "Too much work." he said. "Yes," I said, "But I was thinking about how cool it would be to close off a week or two every year and invite all our writer friends to come stay and workshop with us." He agreed that this would be an awesome thing to be able to do. I daydream about it often, especially after cons like Wiscon . . .

Everybody likes socks. That's the whole point. Everybody likes socks.

I love the idea of a DIY workshop for weird neo-pros. Anybody live in a big house somewhere real nice?

Christopher, yes, I remember our discussing the new writing workshop we wanted to put together, yet, of course, we never did. I'd made a draft of an invitation letter (putting the cart before the horse) after we got back from Wiscon two years ago, and Rowe and I had settled on calling the workshop Diving Upward. Unfortunatley, that mock invitation letter has been lost throughout my several moves in the past two years. :(

But the gist of the letter was this: Even then, two years ago, a lot of us had been feeling our way into writing speculative literature in ways that were, well, different than what was currently being published en masse. Note that qualification: There have always been new and different authors slipping through the dominant paradigm of what fantasy and science fiction literature is, but they're writing is viewed as an exception to an unsaid rule about how genre stories should be told (and sometimes it's not unsaid, but blatantly shouted out in other webboard venues, which I'm sure all of us have been witness to).

In any case, Diving Upward was a term that we'd been thinking of as an indication to the process of how to read these New Weird stories (I like that term, personally, because there will always be a Next Wave after a Next Wave, but will they be *weird*? Maybe they'll be New Pulp, as Charlie Finlay and Ben Rosenbaum have been calling for). The imaginary Diving Upward workshop was going to be for writers of the New Weird, mostly. For writers whose stories called for new reading protocols. I had an image of starting out at the bottom of a body of water, and diving up through the murk to the surface, stories which start out in dark murky places, relying on a lot of subtextual reading capabilities, and slowly but surely bringing the story to the surface. Often, I think the reading norm is to start in medias res, in a reading situation based in action between characters, which is a Wonderful place for stories to start, but not the only place, really.

Okay, so this is going on longer than I wanted, and it's not as good as what I'd drafted two years ago, and lost, but we should put together a new workshop that's interested in not only the *best* story you can write, like Sycamore Hill has a protocol, but the *weirdest*, or one that is relatively weird in some fashion or another: if not in content, then form. Or both. Something to that effect.

I'm feeling the love.

Tim likes monkeys too.

You know what I'm thinking? Yup, that's right:

SOCK MONKEYS!

Edited by author 06-09-2003 07:36 PM
Heather Dear - I'm thinking about you and sending you "Don't be too lonely" vibes. Just think of his little trip as some time to devote to your own writing. Think of all the good info. (gossip?) he'll be bringing home, too.

And... Dang, I come out of an sinus infection induced fog and find friends involved in a knock down, drag out online war. You are all wonderfully clever and imaginative writers and the world would be diminished without you. Please... take Zakbar's advice and add a second drink on me.

Greg: So long as we don't debate the relative merits of knee-high, mid-calf, and ankle socks, I think we'll be okay.

What, are ya scared, Scott?

Here are some really old, expensive socks.