Writing politics

There's an uproar going on about a blog post on Apex books, regarding gender and table of contents in anthologies. Actually, its a little more complicated than that, but you can see for yourself if you're interested. (If you are, read the comments - they go on and on and on, including links to other responses).

I clicked on Sophy Z. S. Adani's response, as she was one of the editors of Destination: Future, where "Light Stones" was published. Her blog entry regarding it revealed something new to me - turns out, my little story was most likely chosen (although I will probably never know for sure) because of my gender. My first reaction is to feel sad about that, but in all reality, that story is so terribly flawed that I can hardly read it now. The plot itself works, but the writing...I'd change so many things. I'm very fortunate that it stood out enough for them to get this far (and maybe some day I can clean it up).

The whole point I'm getting to - the last major controversy was Elizabeth Moon's political post, and only recently, WisCon pulled her as the Guest of Honor - a very strong reaction, but I'm not sure what else they could do, considering their stance as the leading feminist SF convention.

I've been writing for awhile now, and before that, reading, but only in the last year or so have I immersed myself into the nitty-gritty below the surface, which happens in the blogosphere and Twitter, mostly. It's crammed as full of opinion and color as the music world is, with ugly things scattered amidst the truth, with both peace-loving wise people and crazies arguing to have their voices heard. For me, it seems like the wisest thing to do is sit back and stay quiet, even when I believe very strongly about something. And then if someone wants my opinion, they'll ask for it. (I'm not quite important enough. Yet.)

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And am I stalling around on other blogs in order to keep from working on the alchemist short? Yes.