Ugliness. Part 2: Ugliness is human
Work must ugly before it gets good.
Creative confidence is less a removal of struggle, and more a removal of doubt. It’s faith and perspective: when things go ugly, they’re about to get good, if you’ll just stay alert and in the bowl.
Hope y’all in the northern hemisphere are finding time to rest and stay cool! Those in the southern...the sun misses you. She told me so.
How to Fill a House
Ollie wants to arrange every frame and knick-knack, extend moving in to a season or more. Jayesh is impatient. Jayesh wants to co-create the life he imagined into stark reality: glossy front halls and loud, wine-fueled dinner parties. They flashed through his head the first time he saw Ollie from across the office…
Read my off-center take on a haunted house story, “How to Fill a House”, in one of the great white whale publications of my dreams, Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet!
Readercon
If you’re going to be at Readercon, say hello!! I’ll have some swag to hand out. Ask for a bookmark! A sticker!
And, come to our reading on Saturday! Here’s the link to add it to your schedule.
Power in SFFH
Super chuffed (am I allowed to say chuffed lol I’ve been awaiting the perfect excuse) to be on the “Power Corrupts” panelwith the British Fantasy Society on July 25th. Free for BFS members!
We’ve all the heard the sayings “Absolute power corrupts absolutely” and “The road to hell is paved with good intentions”, but what really makes a character power mad? And does it ever go the other way? Do people with bad intentions see the light? Join moderator Lauren McMenemy and panellists Erin Brown, Ash Huang, and (TBC) as they discuss abuse of power in SFFH.
Ugliness. Part 2: Ugliness is human.
In part 1, I wrote about the aesthetics of working, when the sanitized public appearance of doing things can no longer be trusted. Today let’s consider a different ugly—the ugliness that, imo, ymmv, is inherent to creating. Because if my first attempt of a tree is so so uggo, and no one is around to hear me complain about it, was it ever really ugly at all?
Sometimes I wonder if other people are better creatives than me 💅 maybe y’all don’t have ugly phases in your work. But I am pretty confident all projects are a little ugly at some point, simply because the best plan can never save you from the pitfalls of the doing; the surprises in making.
Production is not mere execution, unfortunately. Ya can’t outsmart nature and you are not omniscient. Production is always an act of discovery. If you’re doing something new, you will be inexperienced about some aspect of that newness. Fabric won’t lay where you pinned it. The spy plot that seemed so elegant in outline will drag on the page. ‘Learning is doing’ or similar variants are creative cliches for a reason.
Especially today, society wants everything to appear beautiful—and, there’s pressure to make the actual journey flawless and easy, too. Again, see part I. We are pushed to shortcut. We are eager for hacks. We want to be efficient with our scant creative time, in the same way a boss asks you to send her that good-enough minisite mockup yesterday (vibe coded and yeetable, if you would).
Allowing work to be ugly makes things slow if you would like things to be…not ugly, and the only thing worse for business than ugly is kicking off an entmoot.
Creative resistance in this era is resisting this disdain of production. We must resist this fantasy that eliding time won’t elide something important in creative work.
Ok, that’s fine, but how do we actually make it not ugly.
If you’re combining things into something new, even just to you, weird alchemy will happen. The forms will look clunky. The character will talk strangely. The plot will not Plot.
As the creator you then get to harness and push those strange effects, smooth them over, or try adding a third ingredient for balance. Or, you come back fresh and think ‘this isn’t working’—or, ‘why did I hate this last session? It’s pretty interesting.’ Slowness adds time and space, some of the least publicly valued materials we have as creatives.
The combination yields great work. It’s annoying, but magical: acceptance of the weird, time, space, and attention are the only ways out.
We accept without question that bread dough uses time to rise. Reactions need that. And to extend this metaphor, when we’re making something, combining all the necessary materials does initially result in a disgusting gruelish slurry in the pit of a stainless steel bowl. You can add a bit heat to speed things up, but ultimately, you can only rush the process so much without prematurely cooking the bread (and the rise is a bit stinky, and not all that pretty).
Removing time removes notice, perspective, and nuance in your work. Perhaps experience can help you move a little faster, but all creatives have to knead their work. Creative confidence is less a removal of struggle, and more a removal of doubt. It’s faith and perspective: when things go ugly, they’re about to get good, if you’ll just stay alert and in the bowl.
(This metaphor lol. Are we the baker, now? The bread? The butter?)
Take away production, and you take away the mistakes and connections you only make while muddling through the ugly phase. It’s the difference between an actual art director, and a hack who is a nightmare to work under. Real art directors are prepared to change course if things are not working, or take advantage of new information. They set up structures for discovery, rather than a full and rigid battle plan. They understand production as vital, creative part of the process, rather than the rote, thoughtless execution of some grand vision.
Of course, the ugly phase can be the most discouraging part of creation, where you wonder how you even developed the knowledge and coordination necessary to turn on your computer, but after a while I think you begin to crave ugly. I would bet a person who’s afraid of their work ever going ugly, 9/10 times, is a person who hasn’t personally experienced being shaped into a loaf and developing a satisfying golden crust.
Because we’ve got to complete the metaphor and get this pep talk in its little paper sleeve.
By buds
Ordinary Sorcery: The Everyday Magic in Resisting Metaphor
Take Julian’s class!! Julian Guy, perfect mega-talented angel, will expand your mind. Sunday, September 13, for all genres.
Calling all spellcasters! Feeling stuck in a tiresome voice, genre, or writer’s block? In this generative writing intensive, we will challenge ourselves to write without metaphor by studying the ordinary and exacting language poet Marie Howe says, “hurts us.” Through in-class prompts and exercises accessible for all genres and levels, we will write to artworks in the public domain and works of contemporary poetry that reinvigorate and hone our language. A metaphor often averts our gaze from the very thing we seek to describe. In this craft intensive, we’ll dissect the nuance of metaphor and when it is a curse instead of a spell.
Memories Are Only Valuable If They Can Be Lost
Ai Jiang collection?????? Ai Jiang collection!!! Very excited to soon have this collection in hand, which features over 40 of Ai’s stories. Check out Memories Are Only Valuable If They Can Be Lost from Shortwave Publishing.
The Mundane
How many WIPs do I have on my needles? Mademoiselle!! That’s between me and my god.
I’ll be breaking out the ol’ wheel for Tour de Fleece! If you have not heard of Tour de Fleece, it’s a precious yearly tradition where fiber freaks like me pedal our wheels along with the mildly more athletic cyclists doing Tour de France. I got these two buddies off their bobbins in preparation so my wheel can be allllll clear.
They are neither washed nor thwacked so do not cast judgement upon me. I affectionately call the green one Spinach in Your Teeth/Oscar the Grouch.
In writing life, I am still chugging along post announcement. Continuing to pick out little commas in my manuscript like a gremlin—this time, in pass pages! Pass pages are the final stop on the production highway. The type is officially set, and nearly ready to be turned into a real life object.
This is likely the very last time I’ll be printing this book at home on my trusty little brother printer. Wild stuff!
Until next time, my friends xo
Ash
