by Neil Clarke
Pay attention. Elgin says, “This is the first thing, the one that has to come before all the others. Nothing else can happen until you honor this First Rule.” Pay attention to what’s going on, not to old grudges or future worries. If you want to practice peace talk, you need to know what the other person is saying. Listen first. Try to understand what’s going on. Then and only then, speak.
So if you’re not listening, if you’re reading this essay in order to react to something entirely different than the words or find fiskable content, you may not get much out of it. I’m writing an essay about how to communicate better, aimed at people who do want to learn how to communicate better, based on Elgin’s theory and my own personal experience and reading. I am well aware other people’s mileage may vary; that’s one reason I’m sharing this particular personal odometer reading.
Reject preconceptions. If there is one thing I have learned, it’s that your expectations of an interaction will shape it. Partly it’s because we perceive what we expect to perceive, sometimes even in the face of evidence to the contrary or perhaps even because of it.
At the same time, the way we behave towards people, even the non-verbal acts—our body language, our posture, our micro expressions—affect the message they’re going to give us, as well as the wrapper that message is packaged in.
Stay in tone is another of Elgin’s precepts. That’s something you can’t do without paying attention. Your communication is more understandable to someone if your tone matches theirs. I’m still not sure I totally grok this in the way that Elgin meant, but I’ll take a stab at it. If you speak to someone using vocabulary and concepts that don’t match theirs, the mismatch will impede understanding. See my starting point about communication goals.
What if their tone is angry or violent? Well, see the next precept.
Take no bait. So hard to do. I know I’ve bitten on an invitingly garnished hook more than once. Not as often as I used to, thank goodness, and it’s usually a situation where polite professionalism and taking everything at face value in order to repel the cannons of sarcasm is the best strategy. See also: flailing around about something over which you have absolutely, totally, indisputably not a gram of control. Because it does absolutely, totally, indisputably not a gram of good and sometimes proves counterproductive.
Preserve face. Let’s start with the concept of face, which is comparable to dignity, perhaps. No one likes to lose face. But here it’s not your face that you’re working to preserve, but the other person’s. Why? Let’s return to that notion of scoring points in the exchange. As soon as you start doing that at someone else’s expense, you have removed the possibility of a win-win communication, one where everyone comes out ahead, which is quite possible when genuine exchanges are taking place.
Choose your metaphors. The metaphors you use speak a great deal about your inner reality. Don’t bring a loaded gun comparison into a peaceful gathering.
The idea that language shapes perception/reality is not a new one. It seems a basic concept, but sometimes the practices that grow from it are the ones that the people who are perfectly happy with how things are right now, thank you very much, find the most mock-worthy. Perhaps because yes, sometimes they do ring oddly or seem a little silly. Perhaps because something at that root level carries a great deal of potential for slow, subtle, strong change.
Trust your inner grammar. This is a precept I’ve had to wrap my head around because I find myself asking—what if your inner grammar is “broken” or at least functions differently than most people’s? But it seems to boil down to this—trust your gut, but make sure it’s your intuition, rather than your insecurities, doing the talking. Your instincts are fine-tuned from decades of exposure to the world around you; you know how communication works, that when you extend a hand towards someone it usually means “friend” rather than “foe.”
Avoid lies. Many absorb this basic precept in childhood (and may or may not live up to it), others pick it up over the course of years, and a few reject it outright as unworthy and unnecessary for their ubermenchy selves. There’s a weird strategy, strengthened and normalized by the Internet, of simply repeating an untruth or gross distortion over and over in order to try to make it true. In my opinion, lying is pretty much the same as hanging a sign around your neck reading “ethically bankrupt to the point of no longer worth dealing with.” I don’t really have anything to say to the folks that see truth as optional.
Anything you feed will grow. If someone is friendly towards you and you are friendly back, that feeling will increase. Conversely, it is possible to not feed stupidity or cruelty. Does that make it go away? Of course not. But it does lessen the growth.
Joy is the skill of skills. In my experience, it is possible to learn to be happier, partially through one’s outlook on and expectations of the Universe. Does joy solve homelessness, sickness, oppression? Well, actually, I do think a more joyful world would pay more attention to social ills.
So—I don’t know, what am I saying about Elgin? That we need more joy and fewer words aimed at cutting people down. That seeing good writers sidetracked or derailed, sometimes made afraid to write their own unique and wonderful experiences, is frustrating, because there should be more genuine communication in the world than less.
About the Author
Cat Rambo lives and writes atop a hill in West Seattle. The author of over two hundred short stories and two novels, she is the current President of the Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America (SWFA). Her most recent book is Altered America: Steampunk Stories.
Editor’s Desk:
The Little Things
Neil Clarke
I turn fifty this month. Normally I don’t make much of a fuss about my birthdays, but this year I’m letting my family throw a party. It’s not that I expect fifty to be any different than forty-nine, but it is a milestone year and since the heart attack, those milestones actually mean something to me. Little victories are important too.
As I mentioned in an editorial a few months ago, one of the presents I expected to have received by now was to be free of my day job so I could focus entirely on Clarkesworld and my other editing projects. Unfortunately, what appeared to be a solid job prospect for Lisa suddenly evaporated after some staff changes at that company. That set her back to square one and has left me in an increasingly frustrating position of being stuck where I am. I know she’ll find something, but it appears the little losses mean a lot to me now too.
I recently blogged about having impostor syndrome. It’s that terrible little voice in your head that tells you that success was just luck, a fluke, and it will all evaporate when people figure out the truth. If you aren’t careful, the little losses in life can be magnified by this beast. Far too many of us in this field seem to feel like impostors and I’ve been at war with my personal monster for too long now. Lately though, I think I might be winning.
I’m a big advocate of magazines starting small and growing. In my eagerness to see the magazine expand, I’ve allowed impostor syndrome to convince me that the value of my work was the enjoyment I received from it, so I took a smaller financial reward. Oddly enough, this is counter to the advice I give authors: make sure you get paid. I also told myself that reinvesting in the magazine would pay out in the long run. My vision demanded the magazine be “complete” before I could be justified drawing a proper wage.
There was a lot of theory in my madness. Fortunately, enough of it was correct and our revenue steadily increased over the years. Where I failed, however, was in identifying the relationship between readership and supporting readership. Over the last three years, our readership has increased, but the percentage of readers supporting us has steadily declined. This year, it dropped below seven percent for the first time. So much for little losses. That’s a real problem.
Optimally, I would like to be at ten percent. Think about that for a second—one in ten people would be paying for our work. Insane, right? Yet, that’s the business model m
ost online magazines are working towards. Each of us have some ridiculously low percentage as a goal. It’s no wonder that people have been trying to convince me to reconsider our approach to free content.
I know the market is oversaturated and that’s probably a contributing factor, but I’ve been watching with interest as individual authors with similar social media footprints launch Patreon pages and related projects. I’ve seen them rapidly shoot past what we make in a month while offering considerably less than we do in return. Clearly this is more of a passionate show of support for their work than it is about getting something. Sadly, you don’t see this happening with magazines, so one has to ask, has the short fiction community lost its passion for magazines? And before you say anything, those “we’re going to close if . . . ” Kickstarters tend to work only by deliberately manipulating their supporters. It is not quite the same. I don’t see authors saying “I’ll never publish again unless . . . ”
So where’s this newly-minted cranky fifty-year-old man headed with all this? I’m not sure. I know we have to continue to grow the size of our audience, but this trend seems to indicate that it will only grow increasingly difficult to bring in supporting readers. We need to start thinking about what we can do about that ninety-three and change percent that don’t support our efforts. I have no doubt that some of you are reading this, so I’d love to hear from you and find out why you think things are the way they are.
And hey, if anyone feels like giving me a fiftieth birthday present, subscribe to any of our vendors or make a pledge over at Patreon. Every step back towards seven percent—or dare I dream ten percent?—provides one of those positive little milestones I’ve learned to appreciate. Maybe we can even do this before our tenth anniversary this October!
P.S. I didn’t want the six plus percent of you supporting us to think I’d forgotten you. You’re my favorite readers and listeners. Without you, none of this would be possible.
About the Author
Neil Clarke is the editor of Clarkesworld Magazine, Forever Magazine, and Upgraded; owner of Wyrm Publishing; and a four-time Hugo Award Nominee for Best Editor (short form). The innagural edition of his Best Science Fiction of the Year anthology series was published by Night Shade Books in June. He currently lives in NJ with his wife and two children.
Cover Art:
Regis III (The Invincible)
Jaroslaw Marcinek
About the Artist
Jaroslaw Marcinek was born in Szczecin, Poland and is a freelance illustrator and concept artist. His primary interests are in science fiction, fantasy, horror, thrillers, and history.
