So, at lunch, we had a…

So, at lunch, we had a long politically-charged discussion (the RH thing, the WisCon thing, the ReaderCon thing, the Frenkel thing, the Lemberg-Bergmann thing -- even touching briefly on the original Bear thing, etc. and so on). This is mostly the sort of thing I'm trying to avoid these days, but this was good company to have the conversation with. We didn't resolve anything, sadly. But maybe having the conversations is the most important part right now, when one has the energy to face them.

My current theory is that, starting around RaceFail '09, the SF/F genre entered a long consciousness-raising session on race and other identity issues. And we're now perhaps at the midpoint of that session -- the dark middle, the morass, when you're exhausted and tempers are frayed and you wonder why you started writing this novel in the first place. But there's something here you love, something that speaks to a part of your heart and soul that nothing else does, and so despite the exhaustion, you drag yourself up and take another stab at fixing all the broken bits.

And it's been five bloody years already, with quite a few broken hearts along the way. And you know that it might be another five, or more, before you get to any kind of decent ending. If such a thing is even possible. But this book, this world, these people are too important to you. There's something still shining, under all the muck and dreck. You're not giving up just yet.

At least I'm not.