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I will see some of you later today at Archon. It was one of the first cons I ever went to as a very new writer. In fact I didn’t know science fiction conventions existed to my early twenties. I went to the very first NameThatCon and attended a writer’s workshop taught by Emma Bull, Will Shetterly, and Stephen Gould. It was the most useful class or program on writing that I ever attended. Did it make me a better writer? No. But it did make me a better editor of my own work, and that is a very valuable skill for a writer. It also introduced me to the beginnings of my writing group, The Alternate Historians. The only originally members left are Deborah Millitello and me. All the rest have gone onto other things, or just simply didn’t stay the course. Janni Simner left us to move out of state and has many books out there. We forgave her for moving away, and she kept up with her writing and has flourished. So it all worked out.

That convention was in the spring, by that early summer because that was when Archon used to be held I had sold my first short story. It would be the story I edited just after the workshop, like I said it didn’t make me a better writer, but it taught me how to judge my work in a clear headed manner. Which is absolutely necessary to a selling writer. And no, I can’t explain how to do this to you for your own writing. It’s not that I won’t, but can’t. It was an a-ha moment for me. A moment when the stars aligned and I could simply see the writing. It fell apart before my eyes and I understood how to construct sentences and words to make things come alive on paper. I’ve had this experience in only three other areas. When I was playing chess I could sometimes have the board fall away and I could simply "see" the game, the moves, and how to get there. When I was doing Judo, there would be that moment on the matt when I could "see" how to throw my opponent. I just knew where my body needed to be and did it. I am now having movies and television shows fall away and show their bones to me so I can see how that camera angle, that gesture, that bit of blocking, or dialogue made that scene work. That’s the newest skill, and it will be interesting to see if it grows like the ability to "see" writing on the page.

I can’t tell you how to "see" like that in anything. It happens, not to everybody, not always, but in those moments its like the world slows, then stops, and I can almost see the chess board divide into squares as if they’ve gained a new dimension or two, and the moment in a fight when your mind fast forwards the fight so you know how to win, you see it in your mind before your body acts,  you seem to have extra time to react and you use it. Words almost slither down the page, falling in black marks over white, and I can "see" how the other writer has constructed that bit I like, and it teaches me how to construct my own version of it. It’s a way of learning the tools of your trade, whatever that trade may be. Some people have engines fall apart and reconstruct for them. Others its math, or music, or acting, but not the rest of a scene. 

I hope for all of you reading this that if you need your a-ha moment that it comes to you. You need so many things to be a good writer. You need inspiration, a muse, persistence, a dogged-determination, your own special voice, joy in words, a love of reading, and to be really good you need that last extra insight. You need to be able to "see" other people’s writing and figure out how they do the trick. How did they make you cry here? How did that image burn itself into your brain. Pick it apart, find out how it works, dismantle the clock of their industry and make the tools you learn from others your own so you can construct your own beautiful mechanism. Because our art is made up of inspiration, perspiration, but one last thing, the tools of our trade.

A writer’s tools are not pens and paper, or computers, or whatever new thing they come up with for us to write. A writer’s true and only tool are words. Everything else is just how we put the words on paper, but in the end its just the words. My words, your words out there on paper, trying to convey an entire world with nothing but little black marks on paper, or screen.  Our words out there on their own, because you can’t sit on the reader or editor’s shoulder and explain yourself. You won’t be there to say, "Well that’s not exactly what I meant?" Or, "I really meant to say this, and you’ve totally missed my point." If they’ve totally missed your point then your words have failed, because in the end words are like children you raise them the best you can and then you send them out into the world to explain themselves. Writing well means your words can take the reader across the street without you being there to hold their hands. Now I’m going back to work to make more words that will take more people across a particularly busy intersection of plot, but I have hope that the words will be there and the reader will know just when to cross against the light.