There ought to be a word for it

I should just be able to say "my grokling" and have you all understand that by that I mean the first-born of my cohort, the first child born to my circle of close friends when I was newly adult, my oldest adoptive-niece-or-nephew...

Are you with me? Good.

My grokling has this year (a) achieved her doctorate, (b) got married, (c) announced that she's pregnant, and (d) this day moved from Germany to Santa Cruz. Which is just over the hill from here. I am unreasonably excited to have her close again. Also I get to lend her books. I have been distorting this child's mind for twenty-seven years, and now I get to play with her baby too. My great-grokling!

In other news of new toys, we went to a party yesterday and mine host seduced me with (the promise of) a bicycle. I haven't had a bike of my own since I was a teen; I haven't been aboard one since I was in my early twenties. I don't think I've forgotten how, but my legs will be appalled by all the effort. Still, Silicon Valley is very flat. (Valleys in America are not like English valleys. Hills on either side, to be sure, but a great flat plain of a floor between. It's one of the adjustments one needs to make.)

Also at the party, we were talking to a wannabe writer and proffering wise words and good advices, as one does; and she used a phrase that only underscored for me how much people's approach has changed. A line I use a lot on panels and so forth is that I'm the last generation for whom writing really was a lonely business; these days it's all beta-readers and critique groups and writing dates in coffee-houses and scallions of advice and encouragement on the internets. Scallions and scallions.

And one of those advices, clearly, is that you have to reach the stage of being "ready to publish". Of course this has always been true, in the sense that you have to learn to write, you have to acquire craft before anyone is going to publish you* - but that was not a judgement we ever made for ourselves. We wrote stuff and sent it off, contributed to the great slushpile mountain on which the publishing industry was built, began our precious collection of rejection slips. Other people told us when we were ready to publish, in the form of an acceptance letter and a cheque.

These days, apparently, you tell yourself that you're not ready yet; or your critiquing group tells you, or the internet does it, or... Maybe you subscribe to that notion that you have to write a million words before you're up to standard?

I'm really not sure how I feel about this. Keeping the slushpile down, easing the burden on agents and editors, encouraging people not to submit until they've worked up their craft, surely that has to be a good thing? But, I dunno, engaging early with the professionals also has its advantages. Even building that collection of rejections does no harm. And I'm uncomfortable with the self-censorship inherent in the idea, people not submitting work because in their own judgement or that of their friends they're not yet "ready to publish". I worry that there are people out there diligently writing, counting and trunking their million words. And then expecting to publish, because they're ready now.

I have no structured thoughts on this, just an uncomfortable twitch. Probably because I've spent, lo, these thirty-five years sending stuff out whether I was ready or not, and encouraging others to do so, and... yeah. Things change, and perhaps that is no longer the best advice - but I still stand by it. Make them turn you down, don't do it yourself. Make them all turn you down. And then go round again, because there's always someone new who hasn't seen it yet, and it only takes one person to say yes.


*NB: yes, I am entirely ignoring the whole self-publishing thing for the purpose of this argument.**

**Yes, I am a dinosaur.