Good afternoon!

The next episode has gone live, and it is about evaluating writing advice.

Here is the list I’m working from:

• Look at the source
• Check other sources
• Avoid Absolutes
• Trust your instincts
• Experiment

Here is a relevant blog post where I talked about this information before.

Links:

RSS: https://anchor.fm/s/1166519d8/podcast/rss

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1Fxa7eJNO8CFbz9w5OkTMN

Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/write-something-good/id6805610402

I’m still on the cruise, enjoying the Writing Excuses community. There are 2 more episodes recorded, uploaded, and scheduled to go out. I have 4 more episodes outlined and ready to record. I’ll derive the rest of season 1 based on how the first 8 episodes go.

Let me know if you’re hoping I talk about something in particular, or if you have any book recommendations for me. I’m still planning on doing book reviews, with an eye towards what writers can learn and apply to their own work.

The day is Tuesday, but I only know that because the elevator I just rode had a sign on the floor telling me the day of the week. The crew on the ship rotate the elevator day-tags nightly, right around midnight. I saw them do it, once. They have this metal tool that looks a lot like a fireplace poker. On the day I saw the rotation, all they had to do was pick up the existing sign, flip it over, and make sure it dropped into place. I imagine it’s a little more involved on other days.

It is easy to lose track of time on a cruise like this. This morning, we pulled up and parked next to a glacier. Melissa and I took a bunch of photos, and I’d share some of them if I could have more than one device connected to the Internet at a time. I could probably go back to our room, get my phone charger, transfer the pictures via cable to my Surface, but that sounds like a lot of work. For now, trust me when I say that the views in Alaska can be breathtaking and surreal.

Actually, you know what? You deserve a treat. Here is a picture I took while Melissa and I were getting breakfast. The blue thing in the middle is a glacier. Ask me about crevasses and moraines.

The ship we’re traveling on is The Voyager of the Seas, and it is part of the Royal Caribbean fleet. We’ve been on a ship almost identical to this before. I’m very familiar with the layout. Not so much that I could navigate it blindfolded, but I know the fastest way to get from the aft to the fore (go to Deck 4, go outside, and walk along the starboard side so as to avoid smokers). You can also go to Deck 5 and walk through the promenade, but then you’ll have to encounter a bunch of people that aren’t in your group. That is, if you’re traveling with a group of around 100 writers, as I am.

That’s the other facet of this trip. Writing Excuses Retreat: The Grand Finale. It is the last planned cruise. There are hopes and dreams that they’ll start up again in 2029, when ICE and Trump aren’t making it difficult for our international community to join us. Trump ruins everything. Even my beloved writing retreats.

But I don’t want to think about Trump or ICE or Hegseth or zombie Mitch or any of the myriad things that I think so much about when I’m home. That’s one of the points of going on this retreat. To get away from the real world for a little while, vacation, relax, connect with the found family which is this writing community, and try to get some writing done.

I already brought up some of the bullshit that’s going on in the real world, as it were. If you were to extrapolate from that and assume I’m failing to vacation properly in other ways, you’d be right. My clothes don’t fit very well anymore, so I’ve been careful about what I’ve been eating. And, to help Melissa’s blood sugar levels, we’ve been walking a lot, especially after meals. My feet feel like they’re about to fall off. I’m constantly aware of the muscles in my legs. And, foolishly, we’ve been getting up to an alarm every morning to make sure we can get a good spot in the Windjammer on Deck 11.

As far as connecting with the community, I’m doing an adequate job. They’re really what I’m here for, after all this time. These truly are friends, even if I only see them for one week of the year. Good people. Good writers. Found family. My people.

I’ve managed to get some writing done, too. I’ve advanced The Psychic Out of Time a little bit. There was a particularly difficult spot I’ve been struggling with for the last couple of months. The section wasn’t complicated. I found it kind of boring, and if the writer is bored, the reader will be very bored. I needed to find a way to make it either shorter or better, and this week, I figured out how to do both.

Later today, I’ll be doing a reading from The Psychic Out of Time. Reading in front of a crowd is nerve wracking, exhilarating, and reaffirming in different stages. I’m really only nervous about this one section because I have to do a kind of funny voice for half the dialog. If I pull it off, my peers will be entertained. Otherwise it’ll be embarrassing.

There is a kind of melancholy I’m holding at bay, because as one of the other writers pointed out before we even got here, this could be the last time I’m going to see some of these people. Melissa and I have been making this trip for 8 years. It’s hard to believe that this is the last one. It makes me wish that we had more time on this cruise.

As I suggested at the beginning, it’s easy to lose track of time, even when we have a schedule of events and items on the agenda forcing us to delineate and divide all of this gelatinous time. I’m doing my best to just be in the moment, laugh, love, and enjoy, without thinking about how Friday will arrive before we are ready, and The Grand Finale will be finished.

In case I don’t post about it tomorrow, the second episode of Write Something Good goes live on Wednesday, September 9th at noon Pacific time. You can find it on Spotify, Apple, and the video footage is on YouTube. The first episode was the introduction, so there wasn’t that much meat on the bones. The second episode is on how to analyze writing advice, to make sure it’s something you should listen to.

It’s the first of September, which means that Green Day has gone their yearly deep sleep, which we should disturb in about 30 days.

I’m sitting with my feet up, between trips. The last several days I spent in Anaheim attending the latest WorldCon, and in a couple days, Melissa and I head to Seattle to join the Writing Excuses Retreat team and community for the last WXR cruise. Today, as the late, great Raul Julia said in his final movie, is only Tuesday.

Did I have a good time? Yes. I spoke to lots of cool people. I got to interview folks for Small Publishing in a Big Universe, sold out of The Repossessed Ghost and almost sold out of the other two titles by the end of the convention, and I shared some meals with really great people. I walked a lot, which is why I’m propping my feet up now. 30,000 steps the first two days. That’s way more than I’m used to.

I attended the Hugos and wound up live-casting the results to Bluesky, which was unnecessary but fun to do. Someone I talked to about it suggested that it might have kept me from living in the moment, but it felt more like I was treating the internet as a close friend. Melissa didn’t feel like going to the awards show, so I was in the audience alone.

Two words stand out from the awards, which I need to talk about soon.

Everyone in attendance could see that there were not as many people in attendance as there should have been. Trump’s policies and ICE make it unsafe for people to enter the US. “Fuck ICE” isn’t really a political statement; it’s a moral assertion and the position of regular folks.

But those aren’t the two words I’m thinking of. We’re getting there.

A number of people expressed how upset they were that so many of their friends couldn’t be there to celebrate with them. Some were most specific than others, but the general undercurrent could be felt in several of the acceptance speeches. Some standouts include Jason Sanford, John Picacio, and Diana Pho.

One of the quotes I loved in the middle of all that: “If cautionary tales worked, they’d have worked by now.”

Also, the anti-AI sentiment was strong, and there was a consistent message: It is human creativity that makes great things possible.

Then there was Amal El-Mohtar, and her acceptance speech.

Most of it was excellent, and I agree with. She noted that the speeches before hers brought the anger, which is necessary, and that we need to stay angry and fight for each other and our communities. I agree with all of that and more, and stated so on Bluesky.

Then she dropped the two words that at first, I didn’t really think about: Free Palestine.

I’ve met Amal, and talked with her, and read her stories, and I don’t believe she’s antisemitic at all. So I heard the words, thought of what I’d seen regarding genocide of Palestinian people, and I didn’t really think that much of it.

My friend Rebecca talked to me about it first, as we were leaving the Hugos. I pushed back a little, because again, I didn’t think Amal’s words could possibly cause any harm.

The next morning, I had breakfast with a Jewish friend, and we talked more in depth about it. He’s been to the West Bank. He’s seen more than I have, and those two words made him uncomfortable as he sat in the audience. It’s a jingoism, reducing the situation into black and white, the kind of thing that bad people use to put him and his children in danger. I’m not going to mention his name, because as he put it, he felt safe talking to me about it, and I’m not going to endanger him by but putting his name and out discussion out there on my blog.

I listened, and I will continue to listen. It is complicated. Many innocent people have died, both Israelis and Palestinians.

I think Netanyahu is a Problem. I think the Palestinian people are suffering. I don’t want to see any more people killed, regardless of their nationality or faith. I believe we have more in common with each other than our differences, and that if we can lean into those commonalities, especially our ability to love and support each other, we can find a way to live in peace.

There really isn’t a way to simplify all of this down to a two word phrase.

I don’t have all the answers, and I’m not going to pretend I can wrap this up cleanly. I’m going to keep listening and learning.