{"id":540,"date":"2011-01-13T11:30:07","date_gmt":"2011-01-13T11:30:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/wordpress65\/?p=540"},"modified":"2011-01-13T11:30:07","modified_gmt":"2011-01-13T11:30:07","slug":"unpreparedness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/unpreparedness\/","title":{"rendered":"On Unpreparedness"},"content":{"rendered":"

I was not a Boy Scout for long — one of many childhood endeavors I didn’t complete, and opportunities I squandered — but I was a Scout long enough to remember the motto: “Be Prepared.”<\/p>\n

Would that I had lived up to it last night.<\/p>\n

It’s not that I didn’t prepare at all for my part of the “Speculative Fiction Night” sponsored by Bull Spec<\/em><\/a> magazine (fourth issue on newstands now!). Before I left the house, I thumbed through Orson Scott Card<\/a>‘s Characters and Viewpoint<\/em> and a couple of novels to check my memory of their treatment of point of view — including, for instance, Robert A. Heinlein’s The Number of the Beast<\/em>, with its multiple first-person storytelling.<\/p>\n

Then, having made no notes and instead trusting to my memory, I drove to Durham. My intent was to conduct a thoroughly unscientific poll of the forty or fifty attendees on their reading preferences (which I did, though not well) and to ask them how much an author’s choice and handling of point of view affects their reading enjoyment (which I botched most thoroughly). That’s right: after stumbling through the first few questions, I forgot the key question I meant to ask the audience.<\/p>\n

Overall, and despite my poor performance, the event went quite well. I chatted with several author friends and SF&F fans, and heard some nice praise from the audience for Baen Books<\/a> (and especially the new Baen website). I finally snagged a copy of The Greyfriar<\/em><\/a> — with a name like Gray, how could I not? — and got Clay and Susan Griffith<\/a> to sign it, and also picked up Forbidden Cargo<\/em><\/a> by newly local author Rebecca Rowe<\/a>. If I didn’t have to go to work this morning (thanks, Tuesday’s ice storm, for throwing off my schedule), I could’ve spent more time with Samuel M. Blinn, Bull Spec<\/em> editor and our host for the evening, Ada Milenkovich Brown<\/a>, James Maxey<\/a>, et al. But, alas, my devotion to Ben Franklin’s dictum forced me home.*<\/p>\n

In sum, it was a nice evening — I just wish I’d done better for my part. For anyone who might have been there, I apologize for my unpreparedness. The next time I go to something like that, I’ll just plan to read from a short story and be done with it.<\/p>\n

___
\n*I don’t know why I follow his advice. So far it hasn’t made me particularly healthy, wealthy, or wise.<\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"pinterest\"<\/a>\"linkedin\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>by <\/span>\"feather\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I was not a Boy Scout for long — one of many childhood endeavors I didn’t complete, and opportunities I squandered — but I was a Scout long enough to remember the motto: “Be Prepared.” Would that I had lived up to it last night. It’s not that I didn’t \u2026 Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[32],"class_list":["post-540","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-writing","tag-story"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/540","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=540"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/540\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=540"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=540"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=540"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}