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The truth will set you free

Neil Gaiman, as is his wont, shares some useful advice:

I remember once being taken to task by Rachel Pollack for something in a short story I’d written. “But that’s the only bit in the story that’s true!” I told her. “It doesn’t matter if it’s true,” she said. “What matters is if, in the context of the story, it’s believable.” And I knew that she was right.

I was recently taken to task myself — actually, I believe the word used was “asshole” — by a writer submitting a story to Kaleidotrope, who felt that I’d somehow insulted him by not falling instantly in love with it. Obviously I was rejecting the story only because I couldn’t handle its deep and affecting truth. It wasn’t, as I thought I had politely alluded to in my rejection letter, that I felt the story was over-written, sloppy, and difficult to get into — or even that it simply wasn’t the type of story I was looking to publish in the pages of Kaleidtrope. No, when I rejected it, I was obviously rejecting and insulting its truth — and, by extension, rejecting and insulting its author, to whom, presumably, that truth had happened.

You really can’t argue with someone like that. Beyond the unprofessionalism of calling an editor who rejects your story an asshole because of that — even if you are convinced that he is an asshole, never, ever do this — there’s a real misconception about what makes a story work going on there. A story can be full of fact and still not be any good. A rejection of the story isn’t a rejection of the author, or of the truth. It’s just a rejection of weak writing.

Cross words for the Washington Post

Oh man, this note from Fred Piscop bums me out more than I can say:

I’m very sorry to announce that I will be leaving my position as editor of the Washington Post Sunday crossword.

For financial reasons, the Post has decided to discontinue its own Sunday crossword in favor of a syndicated one.

I missed this announcement when he made it back in September — I’m a crossword puzzle enthusiast, possibly even a cruciverbalist, but I don’t hang out in online crossword constructor communities as a general rule. Still, I’d been having some trouble lately printing the Sunday puzzle from the Post‘s website. Turns out, it’s because there hasn’t been one since the last Sunday in March.

I’ve been a big fan of Piscop’s edited Sunday puzzle since college, when our student paper started syndicating it every Friday. I still remember one puzzle I toiled on during my lunch break when I worked at the campus bookstore. The themed clues were all four-double-letter combinations, with just ridiculously punny answers, which I seem to remember it took more than a few of us to figure out. For instance, the answer to the clue “BBBB” was “waxmakers,” because that’s what bees are. I know, people have been shot for puns not as bad as that, but it was funny at the time and made an impression. And I’ve been happily doing the Sunday puzzle every week since then, even when I stopped picking up the college paper regularly (and then moved away altogether), by printing it out from the Washington Post‘s website.

But now it’s gone. There’s still the New York Times Sunday puzzle — I’ve been known to buy the newspaper just for the puzzle in the Times Magazine — but I’m genuinely disappointed to see Piscop’s weekly puzzle go.

One life, furnished in early Ellison

Last night, I attended a screening at Lincoln Center of Dreams with Sharp Teeth, the new documentary on writer Harlan Ellison. Ellison and the film’s director, Erik Nelson, were on hand after the show for a short Q&A. (Longer on A than Q, in typical, cantankerous Ellison fashion.) The film is a great and often very funny portrait of Ellison as man and writer, flaws and all; and while it may not win him a legion of new fans — the work itself will have to serve to do that — it absolutely left me wanting to re-read some of his stories.

Unfortunately, I didn’t get home until close to midnight — after the subway, the train ride, and the squirrelly cab driver who seemed overly excited that his radio station could pick up Cleveland a sports station — so I didn’t have a chance to dig out the old volumes. But if you’ve never read Ellison, do yourself a favor and check out some of his stories. And, if you’re able, the film. There are lots of reasons — some good, some maybe not so much — why the man will be remembered, but it’s stories, the life’s work, that are truly remarkable.