A fantastic day

All day long, and even since late last night when I think it first happened, I’ve had what I think is maybe the single itchiest mosquito bite on the inside of my left leg. It’s driven me quite mad throughout the day.

But this evening, despite all that, I went back to the Center for Fiction in Manhattan for a panel discussion on Why Fantasy Matters. It was about as interesting, but a lot more on point, as the utopia/dystopia panel on Monday. I’m a big fan of Kelly Link, and I quite enjoyed Naomi Novik’s first Temeraire book. And if I’ve yet to read anything by Felix Gilman and my experience with Lev Grossman’s writing has been less than terrific, everybody had a lot of interesting things to say about the genre. Including Grossman, who I actually quite like as critic of (and apologist for) fantasy, and whose much better known novels I may just have to pretend don’t exist. (Seriously, if I haven’t made it clear, I hated The Magicians.)

Two things I particularly liked. First, Grossman’s acknowledgment that “one thinks a lot of grandiose and unacceptable things as one is starting a novel.” And Novik’s writing advice: find writing that you like and critique it. I find this is one of — possibly the only, but certainly one of — the benefits of having a slush pile, as I do with Kaleidotrope. Figuring out why a piece of fiction does or doesn’t work, and putting that critique into words, can be valuable experience for a writer. (It also doesn’t hurt to see the other side of the rejection letter. It’s almost never fun for anybody.) You can learn just as much, if not more, from giving critique as from receiving it, Novik said (to a nodding Kelly Link beside her).

There are a few more events this month at the Center that I may be going to, but that’s it for this week. Onward to a perfectly ordinary, realistic Thursday.