Consider Your Writer Talent Build Carefully (Revision)

No no no. That's WOW.
My blog is WAW.
Totally different.
Wow...they DO sound alike when you just say them.
That never even occurred to me.

I used to be addicted to World of Warcraft.

Well, not addicted addicted. I could quit any time, of course. I wasn't like my friends putting in the hours of a full time job to be in a raiding guild. I wasn't like those guys in their parents' basements. I was a high class addict, you see. Avoiding ten page papers that were due in less than 12 hours...absolutely, but I didn't really have a PROBLEM.

One thing I noticed about W.O.W.'s talent point mechanic was how strangely like being a writer it was.

No. Really.

Hear me out.

I should probably start with the USDA approved message to writerly folk that if you are serious about being a writer, one of the best things you could possibly do would be to take any Massively Multiplayer Online Games you happen to be subscribed to, place them into small box, and then place that box inside a bigger box filled with enriched uranium, and then take that box, put it into a rocket that is filled with explosives, and launch that rocket into the sun (or preferably another sun......one that is going supernova).

You will amaze and astound yourself with how much time you have available for writing when an afternoon's session isn't interrupted with: "Shit, I haven't done my daily fishing quests yet." (Because nothing says "fun game" like treating not-actually-fishing as a chore.)

Yeah, me neither. So keep it down to a few hours a week and keep writing, kay?

Of course, I stopped playing because Cataclysm sucked ass (and not in the way that makes someone go "Oh my god. I've never felt anything that intense!"). But let's pretend it was because I'm a disciplined writer who knew it was just going to be part of the price I had to pay, that I totally have epic mad levels of discipline, and I want to be a writer just that fucking bad. Furthermore, let's pretend I haven't started back up in the last few months.

Okay? Are you pretending? Splendid.

Anyway, this post isn't about getting rid of WOW. You can face that demon on your own....or better yet with a group...or a raid......of demon hunters.

Uh, sorry.  Where was I? Oh yeah. This is about how writing is often like WOW.

You mean you spend thirty hours a week doing it with nothing to show for it except some shiny pixels that make you think you're cool? 

Shut up evil italics voice!  No one invited you to this article. No, what I mean is that you have to decide carefully what kind of writer you're going to be.

If you've played WOW, or really any MMO, you know that your character fulfills a sort of "role" whenever you group up with others to accomplish goals. If you're an MMO vet, just bear with me through the crash course.

In most games like WOW you either take damage, deal damage, or heal. (There are games with a fourth role called "support" where characters sort of swiss army knife what's needed in a given group and drop some sick buffs, but WOW isn't one of those games.) If you take damage, you have to be a big bad tough to kill guy with lots of ways to taunt the monsters into attacking you instead of the people doing the damage or healing--this person is called the "tank."  If you deal damage you have to be able to crank out attacks that can hurt but without doing it in a way that takes the monster's attention away from the tank. If you heal...well, you heal, but again, you don't want to heal TOO well, or the monster will perceive you as the bigger threat. You keep the tank from getting killed, and everybody else if you can.

Unless everyone else is too incompetent to reign in their DPS and they end up with the monster's aggro. Then you let those fools die to teach them a lesson. Except that you'll get blamed for them dying even though they totally deserved it. Everyone always blames the healer when they die. Always. Even if they literally jumped off a cliff into a room full of snake men like in that movie Dreamscape...on purpose....into a fire...and pulled out their weapons so they would impale themselves when they hit the ground. It was still the healer's fault for letting them die.

Did I mention that I usually heal (if there's no bard class).

But really, "I can't heal through walls" needs to be about three times as big.

Off topic much?

I'm pacing myself.

In WOW, and most similar games, each time you gain a few levels, you get a point to spend on a "talent" that gives your character a little bit of customized power. Used to be there were whole trees where you had to buy somewhere between one and five talents to unlock something more powerful. (These days it's all streamlined and a little cookie cutter.) These are called talent trees–because they look like trees....that are growing upside down.....with three or four long spindly branches....and....okay, they don't look anything like trees.

Are you going to tell us this metaphor, or just tell us a bunch of things that aren't this metaphor.

Shut up.

Anyway, when you buy these talents, you don't just buy some from here and some from there in a mishmash of grocery-shopping-esque "I'd-probably-use-that-eventually" kinds of choices.  You are shopping with a list that has the ingredients from the recipe, and no Ben and Jerry's--not even Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough goddamn it!--is going to deter you. You consider how to get the best talents for that "role" you're playing. You want to unlock the more powerful talents because they will make you better at your role, but you also want to make sure everything fits together with what you're trying to accomplish. And sometimes there are really great, awesome, powerful talents that you don't take. Not because they aren't great, awesome, and powerful, but because they just don't fit with what you are trying to accomplish.

Like if you're a damage-dealing character, and you need to crank out damage, you might ignore a talent that gives you more armor every time you get hit by a monster. It's not that armor isn't awesome. Armor is the enthusiastic oral sex of the MMO world: you can never get enough.  It's just that every talent point you spend getting better armor is a talent point you can't spend to do more damage.

If you pick the armor talent, you might have to skip the "Rip Their Face......OFF" talent.

Now here's the problem: people who want to hedge their bets take that armor talent anyway.  Then they become less awesome at their "role" of doing damage. Sure, they can take a few more hits, but what they really WANT to be doing is more damage. They sacrificed their niche for something more jack-of-all-tradesish and now they can't do as well at their niche. The good guilds don't let them join. They get called noob. None of the sexy characters who are just-like-a-hot-human-except-blue will go back to their starting village to take a look at their etchings. And no one will cyber them.

We were promised some kind of metaphor or connective tissue with writing.  Did you forget about that?

Shut up evil italics voice.  I'm getting to it.

As a writer, you have to chose your focus wisely. You have a finite amount of time, and you probably have a finite amount of creative energy before you don't want to write anymore in a given day. You also probably have certain physical limitations like joint stiffness or eye strain. So it's important to think about the kind of writing you want to be doing and consider the "talents" you pursue.

You probably have a "role" you want to be writing in: "Fiction Author," for example or "Journalist" or "Web Content Freelancer." And sometimes it can be dangerous to think all writing is created equal and all avenues will serve you equally well.

Yes, freelance work might be useful. Sure, a journalism degree isn't a waste of time. Sure offering yourself up for no-pay gigs that get you some recognition might be useful. Fanfic might be useful. Writing web content might be useful. Blogging for free for a big blog might be useful. Any of these things would develop skill sets you don't already have and teach you a thing or two about writing. There are lots of "valuable lessons" to be learned. Experience is valuable. But they are like that awesome talent point that doesn't fit with what you're trying to do.

Just to be your-mom's-good-china-when-company's-coming clear. It is not that these things are not useful. It's not that they can't help you be a better writer. They just might be like that armor talent–that is to say they might be helpful but not necessarily helping you be the best kind of writer of the type you want to be. They take time and effort away from the one kind of writing you really may want to be doing.

While you're doing somebody else's Shakespeare homework or writing web copy for roughly 1 cent a word, are you missing other opportunities that involve the kind of writing you would rather be doing?

It's easy--all too easy--to take a job as a writer because....hey I'm a fucking WRITER! Freeze frame Flash Gordon fist-in-the-air-jump!

And then you look up one day, and it's twenty years later, and you're still on chapter six of your book because you come home at the end of every day from your "Fucking Writer!" job and the last thing in the world you want to do is write some more. You're probably a really good writer–twenty years of practice will do that–but eight hours a day is really about all you can handle. To make matters worse you might have a really specific style of writing at your "fucking writer" job that isn't helping you with the sort of writing you always dreamed of.

Oh and you're married with kids, so good luck trying to quit your "fucking writer" job to go make 8 cents an hour because you want to chase your dreams full time.

The same can be said of teaching writing. Just about every teacher I had at SFSU would rather have been writing full time. The same can be said for editing. The same can be said for publishing. Feelance. Techwriting. Whatever. A lot of writers get stuck in jobs where they thought they would learn something useful in a job that was close to writing, or "kind of creative," and they just ended up regretting how sidetracked they got.

I can't tell you how many writers I know who've told me they wished they'd just been a patent clerk or gone into construction so that they could come and not be revolted by the idea of writing for another few hours.

No one is suggesting you pass up opportunities, but the goal is to do so in a way that works you UP your skill tree, not to take every random opportunity because you might develop as a writer.  If you want to write about the robot wars on Khyron Beta Prime, joining a writers group for sci-fi writers two towns over (even though the drive is an hour each way) might be a better use of your time and effort than a paid internship at your local paper.

Disclaimer: If the kind of writing you're doing makes you happy, then you're not really stuck.  If you can make a lot of money writing, and come home and write some more, then rock, rock on! I know a tech writer who can demand some fucking serious money, and then does their fiction writing at night without missing a beat.

And guys....seriously...I can't stress this next part enough: if you got into something but then you found that it gave you a fulfillment in life that you ever could have expected, you've won the jackpot.

Really.

That's all we're really trying for in this life anyway, right?  If it turns out that raising a family brings you more happiness than writing eight hours a day in a boiler room apartment, then do that! Too many people lose sleep over some unfulfilled desire just because that was their childhood dream, but they've long since found other aspects of life more fulfilling. My mother dreamed of being a published author when she was young, but ended up writing internal policy for a bank when she discovered what really brought her joy in life was her family.

Of course now she lives vicariously through you by telling me to write BDSM erotica, and not noticing that you take a shower with steel wool every time she does so.

Please shut up, evil italics voice.  Please...

This is why I often turn down certain kinds of freelance work or advice about where to find writing gigs–even good paying ones. It's not that I'm too good for them. I certainly don't think they would be pointless or that I wouldn't grow as a writer from the experience. It's just that once I've done web content for twenty or so articles, I'm pretty sure I'm not going to have much trouble imagining how the 21st will go.  I want to write novels and mediocre blogs about the thing I love in this world.

Everyone has to balance their ambitions and hopes and dreams against the reality of their lives. If you're the breadwinner for a family of six, I'm not suggesting you quit your job to chase rainbows. But what I can tell you is that you can easily lose years because you went for that "armor."

Side Gigs and Update Schedules

I had two days lined up of side gigs that cut into my writing time. Today was going to be eight hours and tomorrow is going to be about eleven. I got a reprieve on today (thought it probably means I'm going to have to actually do it in the next couple of weeks). I ended up taking the day off from blogging anyway since it's been a right hard week and I haven't had a proper day off in over a fortnight.

We should be back on our regular update schedule by next week, but I'm not going to try to catch up on the weekend or even get some kind of filler up tomorrow.

This isn't my appeals post, but if you want to stay in the loop when I go off my update schedule please remember that it requires at least being a $1/month patron.  Only $12 a year. Otherwise just know that until I'm making enough from writing to start phasing out side gigs, this is going to be part of the cost of doing business.

Writing Prompt: Short Term Goals

Today's prompt isn't about writing; it's one of our many "meta" prompts about being a writer.

When you ask writers about their goals, the first major problem you run into is that they don't actually have any. The second is that if they do, they're really more like objectives.

Ask most writers what they want and you'll get some pretty mushy answers. To "make it." To "succeed." Among the most concrete would be some idea of paying the bills with writing or some belief that publication will be the holy grail. Of course, get a little closer and you might find these a little mushy as well. Self-publication or small presses don't count (nor would a career writing smut). Neither would paying the bills if one was living in a tiny old studio next to the boiler room on the outskirts of Tupelo, Mississippi. They turn out to have some important specifics regarding their goals that are hard.

Of course, we can get lost in our fantasies, but it's important to have solid, concrete, and plausible goals. When we're faced with the option of a low paying day job writing web content for 60+ hours a week, it's very important that we know if our goals are "I want to clear $25k doing anything so long as it's technically writing," or "I want to be a upper middle class novelist with a fanbase and published by a big five." (I wouldn't recommend grueling hours of content writing to the person who wants the latter.) Check back in on this person in twenty years and if they made the wrong choice, they're going to be no closer to their goals.

And it's certainly important, in a world with so much advice about how to "make it," if you would rather just write as a hobbyist who enjoys the craft when the muse attacks. And if writing is the way to fame, fortune, and groupie threesomes, it quickly becomes apparent given the level of introspection. (And by the way, there are way easier ways to get any of those things than by writing.)

The problem is that these goals are often too big. They're just too mamathian for us to handle. We're like a kid who wants to get an A in Math class but hasn't the first idea how to make that happen. As important as specific and reasonable big goals are, and as much as they may perhaps shape and define our major life choices, they are often too large to metabolize into some form of daily action.

This is where short term goals come in. How do you break this big life goal down into pieces? Instead of looking at some gigantic thing that will take place over the next 10+ years, how do you proceed in the next year or two. (I wanted to be a working creative writer, and I wrote aimlessly for decades until I started setting smaller goals like "Get a Creative Writing degree." "Start a blog and post every day." "Figure out how to monetize, and do that right away even if it's a few cents a month." "Write at least one page per night on my fiction.")

How do you break down your big goal into bite-sized chunks? Of course it depends on the goal. If you want to publish a novel (and let's assume that you want to get it right, but self publishing would be okay) instead of just saying "Yep, totally gonna do that someday," identify the smaller goals in getting there. 1- Write it. 2- Rewrite it. 3- Revise it. 4- Content editing. 5- Line editing. 6- Proofreading.

Then take step one and decide what the smaller goals are for that.  "1- Write it"= " 1-I will write at least one page per day. 2- I will write at least three pages every day I don't have work or family obligations. 3- I will spend 4 hours writing on Sunday even if I finish three pages early." (I'm a huge fan of daily goals–and daily writing–if you can't tell, but you can personalize your own goals.)

The end result will be analogous to your ability to make big life decisions based on your big goals, except with smaller decisions and smaller goals. (Rocket surgery science, this ain't.) For example, you might be making great choices regarding not letting yourself get roped into a grinding job that will use up your creativity because it's "technically writing for a living," but now you also have the smaller goal to help you make the choice that you have to get a page written before you start playing Farcry 5.

Or if you want to look at me, I outline my goals and realize almost instantly that I'm spending too much time on Facebook under the auspices of "promoting my work" and not enough time actually writing it, so I immediately know that even though my Facebook page is huge and successful and gives me positive feedback when I provide it with time and attention (and has even been the source of some income), it is not a direction I want to channel so much energy. So I need to put limits on that or bump up goals regarding the actual writing.

These smaller goals should all be SMART(S) goals too. Write "a little" every day is technically achieved after two words, and will never get your novel written. Write "a page" every day is going to see your first draft in about a year. Write 1700 words a day might not be reasonable if you have a day job or a family and will quickly be abandoned by the wayside. The more these goals adhere to the SMART(S) paradigm, the easier they are to achieve. (That last "S" is particularly important. It's fine and well to submit to The New Yorker and/or The Atlantic ten times in the next five years, but you have little control over whether or not they actually accept your submission.) It's just really hard to hit a goal if you haven't really defined it.

PROMPT: In order to do this prompt, you must first define what success means to you. Now break that down into short term, yet still SMART(S) goals. Come up with at least three sub-goals that are themselves steps to getting to your main goal. (For example, if you want to be a novelist, you should probably write a book.) They can be steps done sequentially or concurrently (like I am writing a book, promoting myself through social media, doing smaller works of fiction, and working on a career as a blogger simultaneously) but they should break down your main goal into smaller pieces (my main goal these days is to phase out my side gig jobs because I make career money from writing). Now choose the first goal (if your three goals are sequential) or whichever goal you think is more important (if they are concurrent) and break that into at least two smaller pieces. Each of THESE should also be SMART(S) goals.

This process is recursive. You can break smaller goals down even further. (Perhaps focusing on where and when you want to write each day.) Find whatever level of specificity works for you–but be sure that's for definitions of "works for you" that involve actually making progress towards your goals and not "vague enough that it's easy to ignore."

Wifi-less flight

Folks apparently it was ambitious of me to think that I was going to post anything (more than something like this) on a transit day. Technically I was ready to rock, but I tried to pay for internet on my flight with PayPal, and PayPal wanted me to answer a security question which WOULDN'T LOAD because I didn't have internet....

So this was me:

Except with less bed frame and pillow behind my head and more plane seat, peanuts, and discomfort. (Though on the bright side, the deity in charge of flying–who certainly can be both capricious and cruel–must have taken pity on me for the missed flight and middle seat discomfort from Thursday because I had the only row on the whole flight that had no one in the middle seat.

Regardless now I'm up to (and I'm not even kidding) like seven half done posts, so at least starting tomorrow, I'll have no shortage of things to say for a while. On my WAW Facebook page, I'm going to repost the link to our latest call for poll nominations (best modern science fiction) since that went up late on a Saturday, but for everyone else I'll just let you know that it's there.

I'll hit the ground running tomorrow! Keep writing!

Best Modern SciFi Not Written by a Cishet White Man (Nominations needed!)

What is the very best science fiction written by a woman or POC or member of the LGBTQ+ community written in the last 20 years? 

This poll is from our Year of Diverse Polls, and as such it can't includes authors who are cishet white men. Please adjust your nominations accordingly.

Also for my FACEBOOK followers:

If you didn't read that explanation and/or don't read this and insist on adding some sanctimonious comment to WAW's Facebook Page about how you're so enlightened that you only judge art by its quality or how this is the real bigotry or "what would you think if I said no [marginalized group]; how would you like it then?" (or basically any of those boilerplate, paint-by-numbers Chadclone points), do so at your own peril. (Also true if you did read that stuff and dropped the same old arguments anyway.) I'll be erasing comments and showing the more obnoxious commenters the door. There are ten months to go and the answers are literally a click away.

Since we did a similar fantasy poll just a while ago with a lot of dovetail, we're going to skip on to our next popular topic (but with the diverse polls rules)–modern science fiction. Please note that I'm tightening up the "modern" for this as Sci-fi tends to be impacted. (Twenty years instead of 25.)

The Rules:

1. Please note the diversity requirements above.
2. Nominations must be copyrighted no later than 1998 (twenty years). Any series with books before that cannot be nominated as a full series (but individual books still can be). 
3. As always, I leave the niggling over "Science Fiction" to your best judgement because I'd rather be inclusive. If you feel like Pern is science fiction, I'm not going to argue. (Though you might need to "show your work" to get anyone to second your nomination.) I'll only throw them out if they get super ridiculous. 
4. You may nominate two (2) books or series. If you nominate three or more my eyes glaze over and I seethe with primordial rage. But more importantly for you, I will NOT take any nominations beyond the second that you suggest. (I will consider a long list to be "seconds" if someone else nominates them as well.)
5. You may (and absolutely should) second as many nominations of others as you wish. So stop back in and see if anyone has put up something you want to see go onto the poll.
6. Please put your nominations here. I will take nominations only as comments on this post. (No comments on FB posts or G+.)
7. You are nominating WRITTEN SCIENCE FICTION, not their movie portrayals. CGI may make Sleeping Giants pretty fun to look at, but if you find the books to be a little contrived, you shouldn't nominate it.
8. No more endless elimination rounds. I will take somewhere between 8-20 best performing titles and at MOST run a single semifinal round. So second the titles you want even if they already have one. (Yes, I guess that would make them thirds, fourths, etc...)

8 Steps To Improving Your Manuscript (Claire Youmans)

8 Steps To Improving Your Manuscript 
by Claire Youmans  


There’s power in distance.  There’s power in time.  Your writing will improve if you step away from it for a while and let it rest, let it cure, let it rise.

When I get going, finally, after months of research and in-my-head outlines, scene structure and character development, I rip right on through, nearly 24/7, for as long as it takes. I take minor breaks for the absolute necessities of life  but I leave my brain fully engaged in writer mode.  I am not happy when anyone tries to interrupt me.  I cannot do ANYTHING else because it will interrupt my train of thought, and that will set me back about a day, sometimes two or three, for every hour stolen from my writing at this time.  So, just NO.  Go away until I call you and I’m not going to be nice about it.  But at last…
.
Step One:  I’m done!  I finished the draft!  I think it’s great!  Woo-hoo!  A copy edit and it’s publish-city, right?  Wrong.

Step Two:  I put it away for a week, sometimes longer.  I do something else.  Sometimes it’s another project, sometimes it’s a trip.  Sometimes it’s the normal life stuff I have let slide.  I set a return date, and refuse to look at the manuscript before then.  When I come back to the manuscript, I want to have fresh eyes.  I want to see the things I’ve left out, the things I’ve put in twice.  Or thrice.  The words I’ve doubled.  The character names I’ve changed midstream.  The repetitive words and actions I’ve used to annoying extremes.  I want to read like a reader.  I don’t make notes and I don’t correct anything but minor typos.  Not now.  I just pay attention.  This read can take several days to a week, depending on how long the book is, but then I’m done, right?  A few corrections and it’s ready?  Nope.

Step Three:  I let it sit another week, maybe two.  This is really hard.  I’m on a roll!  I can’t stop now!  But I must if I want a better book.

Step Four:  I read again, but this time, I will address the things I noticed before, the little obvious things.  During the second break, my brain will cogitate over the big manuscript picture I finally saw, for the first time, on that first, fresh-eyes, read.  There will be lists, sometimes in written form, of the things I want to look for.  Of things I want to address.  I’ll get rid of those repetitive word choices, actions and expressions!  This narration needs to come out.  That concept needs explaining. This needs to happen before That, not after.  A character’s arc needs greater definition.  This area needs more emphasis.  I need to see where the longer series arc is going. What are the characters telling me?  What am I setting up?  Where are my loose ends?  Do I tie them up now, or is that for the next book?  How do I fix these over-arcing problems?

This takes longer, and I still can’t take breaks.  I need to keep the whole book in the front part of my brain.  This is a novel we’re talking about.  That’s a lot of material.  There are a lot of characters and each of them has his or her own story.  I must keep all of this clear.  So don’t bug me.  Aren't I done yet?  No!

Step Five:  I leave it the heck alone for another while.  As long as I can keep my hands off it.  I’m not good at that.

Step Six:  I reread.  I tweak.  I do another batch of corrections and edits, sometimes fairly major ones.  Finally, it’s as good as I can get it... 

Step Seven:  …for now.  Now, it's time for serious feedback from my wonderful coterie of beta readers.  While they are reading, I get some serious distance.  I have to use severe discipline to keep from bugging them.  It’s a good time to go out of town.

Step Eight:  When I get their comments in, I’ll do another read, and will most likely see they are absolutely right.  They’ve seen things I haven’t; often they all see the same things.  I see new things myself.  I see directions for the next book I didn’t even know were there.  This absolutely vital step gives me not only fresh eyes, but others’ eyes.  This is where good turns to really good.  By the time I finish this step, I have a much better book than I started with at the end of Step 1. Only now is it ready to go to my editor for her uncannily accurate feedback.  And there’s still more to come in the writing/waiting game before the book at last comes out.

Time and distance are your friends.  They give you the power and the vision to make your work much better than it might otherwise be.  Be strong, be disciplined and wait before rushing off to press.  Let that manuscript cure. Let it rest.  Let it rise.  Your book, and you as a writer, will be better for it.


Also check out Claire's blog and FB page and available books here:

http://claireyoumansauthor.blogspot.com

www.tokigirlandsparrowboy.com

Facebook:  The Toki-Girl and the Sparrow-Boy

Amazon:  http://www.amazon.com/The-Toki-Girl-Sparrow-Boy-Claire-Youmans/dp/0990323404/ref=cm_cr_pr_product_top?ie=UTF8

If you would like to guest blog for Writing About Writing we would love to have an excuse to take a day off a wonderful diaspora of voices. Take a look at our guest post guidelines, and drop me a line at chris.brecheen@gmail.com.

Best Dystopia Written by a Non Cishet White Man (Results)

What is the best dystopia book or series written by someone other than a cishet white man? 

Remember to go here if you don't understand why we're doing a year of diverse polls.

I missed my flight.

Some of it's on me. Well...I mean all of it's on me for not doing what they always tell you to do, which is to give yourself all this fucking extra time "just in case."

I'm not so much a "just in case" type. I'm more of an "OH SHINY Oh that's really cool and I bet if I were to-- OH FUCK IS THAT THE TIME??? FUUUUUUCK!" type.

Then I sat around and waited for a BART train. Then I sait around and waited IN a BART train, feeling that fleeting feeling of hope drain with every announcement of "We will be moving shortly." This caused me to JUST miss the airport connection. And when I got into the security line, they were having a bit of a day. I mean it wasn't TERRIBAD, and the line wasn't long, but they were understaffed and it took too much time.

I heard them call my flight. Then my name. And I hadn't even taken my shoes off yet....

The later flight I got bumped to was not direct, and the airport where I waited for two hours did not have functioning wifi. (They said they did, but it wasn't working.) The wifi on the flight is glacially slow, and Vera's battery seems to be in the middle of the Mortal Coil Shuffle™due to age. It's losing two or three percent per minute and I'm pretty sure that number is soft because she doesn't want me to worry. ("No it's okay, boss. You go ahead and download another picture. I'm........fuh....fine.") She's been flashing me a 20% thumbs up lately right before powering down, so I don't trust anything lower than 50%

So today has had a lot of bumps (since the stop over was in Denver, many of them were literal). I would have loved to see something break the tie for second place, but I don't have a lot of emceeing or energy to drag this out another couple of days and do a double post in me. Besides, we need to move on to our next poll.  Keep in mind our diversity requirements but think science fiction.....

Congrats to the winners and thank you everyone who participated.

Text results below

The Handmaid's Tale- M Atwood 97 22%
The Hunger Games- S. Collins 57 12.93%
The Giver- L. Lowry 57 12.93%
Broken Earth Trilogy- N.K. Jemisin 41 9.3%
Never Let Me Go- K. Ishiguro 39 8.84%
Parable of the Sower (Earthseed)- O. Butler 31 7.03%
Oryx and Crake- M. Atwood 27 6.12%
Xenogenesis- O. Butler 26 5.9%
Station Eleven- E. Mandel 24 5.44%
1Q84- H. Murakami 16 3.63%
Newsflesh- S McGuire 14 3.17%

The Fifth Sacred Thing- Starhawk 12 2.72%