Ariela is Off to WisCon (with Art!)

by Ariela

I matted ALL THE THINGS!

I will be at WisCon40 this weekend in Madison, WI! I'm very excited to meet a lot of cool people whom thus far I only know from teh interwebs. There may be some fangirling, too. If you're there, please say hello.

My panel schedule is thus:

Saturday, 10:00-11:15 AM - Creating Your Own Religion
Which SF authors create interesting, believable religions, and which get religion wrong? (What does it mean to "get religion wrong" anyway?) Do made-up religions with intervening gods work better than those without? How can we as writers avoid making mistakes when creating and writing about fictional religions?

Sunday, 4:00-5:15 PM - SFF Where Religion Works
What SFF books depict well the things a religion does in and for society? Examples include Bujold's Chalion, which has actual supernatural miracles and active godly intervention but ALSO priests and faith workers engaging in the world in all the ways religious have done throughout Earth's history. Independent of doctrines on-screen, what authors "get" how religions change a world?

Monday, 10:00-11:15 AM - The Tough Tribute to Fantasyland
Diana Wynne Jones’ Tough Guide to Fantasyland is a fun look at some of the tropes (and clichés) that show up in fantasy stories over and over. The moderator will have a list of some of these tropes and throw them out for panelists to discuss their favorite (or least favorite) examples in fantasy literature over the years.

I will also be showing in the art show, along with a whole bunch of awesome artists. All of our greeting cards will be available, as well as almost all of our art prints, with some con-only specials, too! (No ketubot, because they're enormous, hard to haul around, and I can't guarantee I would be able to fill one in at the Con; but if you're interested, come find me and talk to me!)

Wiscon runs through next Monday, so next week's blog post will go up on Tuesday instead with a post-con report.

Doodle: Your Friendly Officer Sea Lion

by Ariela

Have you ever found yourself in the unfortunate situation where you related an experience of oppression and no one asked you to corroborate your position with carefully vetted studies?

Have you perhaps expressed genuine anger while discussing repeated infringements on your boundaries and basic humanity, but none of your friends would step up to the plate and tell you to check that unbecoming behavior lest you wreck your argument?

Do you ever find yourself wishing that someone would pick up that slack?

Never fear! Everyone's favorite member of the friendly neighborhood Tone Police is here: Officer Sea Lion!

The Tone Police are one of the great peacekeeping* bodies of debates everywhere, and recent recruit Sea Lion is already distinguishing themself in the line of duty.

Tone Police Officer Sea Lion is a tireless interrogator, ready to ask the same question many times to catch their unwilling interlocuter in a misstep. And of course Officer Sea Lion will never hesitate to hold you to their standard of civil discourse.

*Where "peacekeeping" is defined as maintaining the status quo.

What ever would we do without the Tone Police and Officer Sea Lion? The world will probably never know.

</sarcasm>

Officer Sea Lion was inspired by watching K. Tempest Bradford deal with pushback on Twitter about her Cultural Appropriation Primer.

Officer Sea Lion is under the Creative Commons license, so please feel free to Share and Enjoy with attribution.

Dispelling two common myths about calligraphy

by Ariela

When I tell people I am a professional calligrapher, I get a lot of different responses, everything from "Wow!" to "That's a thing?" But two comments I hear the most are "I could never do that, my handwriting is terrible!" and "You must have a lot of patience." 

Today I would like to put these misconceptions out of their misery. Or at least try.

Misconception number one: you must have good handwriting to be a calligrapher

I can't speak for all calligraphers, but when I do calligraphy, I use a completely different process than when I am writing anything else. My equipment is different, the way I hold the pen is different, and the motions I make are entirely different. I have a sneaking suspicion that if my brain were scanned while I was writing a shopping list vs. calligraphing a text, different parts of my brain would light up.

My calligraphy is relentlessly regular. My actual handwriting is actually all over the map. When I am writing slowly it is reasonably neat, but when I write quickly it gets sloppy very quickly. Here is an example of something I jotted down for myself recently:

Yes, I scribbled the date and location of Troi and Riker's wedding on the back of an envelope.

Looks totally different than my calligraphic hands. (Honestly it looks like a combo of my parents handwriting.)

If you want to learn to do calligraphy, it doesn't matter what your handwriting looks like. You must be able to hold a pen for extended periods; hold your hand steady; draw a short, straight line; and draw a curve. If you can do that, you can learn calligraphy. Some people, for many good reasons, cannot do these things. And while this might also lead them to have less legible handwriting, poor handwriting is not the reason they wouldn't be able to do calligraphy. Correlation not being causality and all that jazz.

Misconception number two: you must be really patient to do calligraphy

I have a hard time not scoffing whenever I hear this one. I'm a very impatient person. Perhaps not more than the average person, but I can only see what goes on inside my own head. Really, I am not patient. What I am is tenacious, perfectionist, meticulous, and stubborn as all get-out. If all  you see is me sitting, making stroke after deliberate stroke with my pen, yeah, it might look like patience. But it's being fueled by something very different.

In one respect I suppose it is kind of true that you must be patient, in that calligraphy is not a craft that you can pick up quickly. I had been doing calligraphy as a hobby for seven years before I apprenticed to a professional. I went through 3 months of apprenticeship before I was even allowed to do the smallest bits of jobs for clients. I did small professional jobs for two years before I started doing bigger ones. Even now it takes a while to complete any one piece.

So yeah, I spend a lot of time perfecting my craft. But so does any artist. Or author. Or athlete. And probably lots of other professions starting with other letters. But I bet that Yo-Yo Ma, N.K. Jemisin, and Serena Williams don't get told "Wow, you must have so much patience" in response to their explanations of their careers, even before they became famous.

So just because you are an impatient person, don't think that you cannot do calligraphy. Sometimes it will be hard and boring, yes, but if you want it enough, it will be worth getting through that time to get to the reward at the end. 

How My Sinuses Feel in Allergy Season

by Ariela

Allergy season has arrived early, and this is how my head feels.