Luc Reid talks about the online writers' group Codex, his upcoming work, and radio commentary.
Luc Reid's website is available at www.lucreid.com. He is the founder of Codex, an online group for neo-pro speculative fiction writers. The group is free to join, but requires at least one professional fiction sale or completion of a major writing workshop, such as Clarion, Clarion West, or Orson Scott Card's Literary Bootcamp.
The group features a number of special features, including the Spotlight: a process where one member sends out several short stories, no more than 21,000 words total in length, to all other members who want to participate, allowing for discussion of common threads, strengths, weaknesses, and patterns in that writer's work sample. Luc's first book, coming out in September, is Talk the Talk: The Slang of 65 American Subcultures from Writer's Digest Books, which recently became available for pre-order on Amazon.
Q: Why did you start Codex?
LR: The thing that made it feel important to me to have a place like Codex was that I was getting to know more and more great, up-and coming speculative fiction writers who didn't know each other. I was participating in discussion groups for Orson Scott Card's Literary Boot Camp from 2001 and Writers of the Future alumni from 2003, and I kept wishing that people on each board could hear what people on the other were saying. Codex was a way to bring these two groups together, and to draw in others like them who would benefit from a writing community made up entirely of their peers.
In a larger sense, what drove me to want a group like Codex was my insatiable hunger for writing knowledge. Actually, when I started the group, I never dreamed that there could be as much to learn as I have learned since we began. Pretty much on a daily basis, I find myself grateful to other Codexians for posting information and perspective I might not get anywhere else.
The fact that this group is all neo-pros and very advanced amateur writers has turned out to be key. Seasoned veterans aren't as hungry for knowledge and improvement as we are, I don't think, and writers who aren't as far along with their writing skills are focusing on many different issues than we are. There's a continuing passion about improving our writing, but we don't have to revisit any of the basics, because everyone on Codex already knows them.
Q: How has it changed since you initially began it?
LR: Codex is very much the same now as when it was founded, except that it is much larger and has a lot more going on. There are more discussions, and more people, and more successes. Yet surprisingly, it hasn't lost the personal feel it has always had. On the author threads and off-topic discussions, people will talk about fairly personal situations with the confidence that they're in a group of people they can trust. I have no idea how it can happen that we got such a great group of participants, unless the dedication it takes to get your writing to the level where you might expect some pro sales or have already made some has some relationship to being a considerate and supportive person. I do know that the guarantee of confidentiality has made people feel comfortable talking more frankly than would be possible in a public forum, or even one where you weren't positive what was going to happen to your posts a few years down the ine.
Q: Do you know many of the Codexians personally?
LR: I know more than twenty in person, out of seventy or so, from meeting them either at workshops or from some kind of Codex-inspired gathering or visit. Several are among my closest friends, now. One became my agent.
Q: How much time does Codex take up each day for you?
LR: I purposely try to avoid figuring that out, and it's difficult to calculate, because I generally visit in the midst of doing other things, for instance while I'm waiting for a procedure to run on a computer or when I've got ten minutes to kill before going somewhere. That said, I usually check in several times a day, and probably get in thirty minutes to an hour of reading and posting on the average day. On top of that I usually put in a few hours each month enhancing the site or helping people with technical issues, and a bit of time responding to inquiries. All told, maybe an average of five to eight hours a week. It would be more, but fortunately I type rather quickly. Most of the time I take for Codex is not time when I would have been able to do much else anyway, but I expect my house would be cleaner and my arrivals earlier if I didn't spend so much time on the forum.
Q: Do you read all the posts on the boards faithfully?
LR: No, but it's close. I generally don't read critiques of stories I haven't read, which is the great majority of stories recently because I have needed to devote my blocks of writing-related time to finishing a number of projects that editors are waiting on. I also don't always read the off-topic threads. I read the posts about writing and publishing and other Codexians pretty religiously. It's an enjoyable distraction for me, and a good discipline for continuing to think about how to become a better writer.
Q:How has participating in it helped you as a writer?
LR: Codex has helped me in more ways than I could possibly list. Codexians have given me ideas that have gotten me into situations like being a guest at a con and becoming a commentator for a local radio station. Codexian critiques--especially my Spotlight--have shown me things I might have taken many years to learn otherwise. People constantly post insights into markets and into writing that help me focus my efforts much more constructively. And I got to know Nadia, who became my agent and sold my first book for me, through Codex.
Codex has also assisted with my humility. I'll post something I think is brilliant, and soon realize among later, very considerate posts that it's not as brilliant as I thought, and why. Very occasionally I'll post something and get a strong positive reaction, and that's a very heady experience, but between critiques and seeing the remarkable success of other Codexians, my ego never gets out of hand.
Q:Codex has a lot of cool little features, from the Spotlight system, which looks at multiple stories by a writer, to the Rejection Factory, a quickie review process for almost-ready stories, to Twin Worlds, a shared universe writing project. Which of these features do you most enjoy and why, and which of them do you feel are overlooked?
LR: The forum certainly trumps any other writing activity I've ever taken part in in terms of its use to me as a writer. The Spotlight has a special place in my heart, though, because I love getting the big picture, and I don't know of any other way a person can get a bird's eye view of her or his writing as a whole from a variety of other skilled writers. Certainly there must be other ways to manage it, but in practice the Spotlight is a real eye-opener.
As to features that are overlooked, well, anything that gets overlooked on Codex is probably getting overlooked because it's not a good idea or because it's not presented in a way that makes it natural for people to get involved and excited about it. I'd love to see the Twin Worlds project really take off, but I think that is burdened by having a lot of material that Matt had to develop up front, and that participants would now have to go over. If we can get past that initial obstacle, that could be a terrific shared milieu. And I'd like to see more participation in the Rejection Factory, but I suspect all that needs is some code that will automatically post a message whenever a new piece is put up for review, since otherwise people don't know about it and don't seek it out.
Q:How did you come to write "Talk the Talk: Slang from 65 American Subcultures", due out from Writers' Digest this September?
LR: It came out of the blue, in a way I really enjoyed. I was talking on the phone with my agent, Nadia Cornier, one day, and she said that she had been talking with an editor who needed weird reference books for writers. The idea was delightful to me, and I dredged my imagination for an idea that I'd be excited about and that could be really useful to writers. Since I've always loved learning about unusual groups of people and about unexpected things going on right around us, I pulled together an idea about subculture slang, sort of a phrasebook that would let you get in basic conversations with motorcycle riders or stamp collectors or skydivers or prostitutes--or at least imagine what they might talk about and how they might
say it. I put together a proposal and one and a half sample sections over the course of a week or so and fired it off. The idea seemed to fit really well with the vision they had at Writers Digest Books, and we were off to the races. They appear to be getting behind the book in a big way now, which of course is delightful for me.
Q:Should we expect stories filled with slang from you now?
LR: It will certainly be creeping in. I think what was even more useful for me, though, was learning some of the thinking that goes on in various subcultures. I have terms now for concepts that wouldn't have made sense to me a year ago. I understand how sex is like a cup of coffee and what a nerd gate is and why someone would spend their free time covered in bees. So I think you'll see not only subculture slang from me, but also a lot of strange characters who are also in a lot of ways completely normal. My mental picture of humankind has become a lot
more diverse.
Q:How did you start doing radio commentary? What do you like about doing it?
LR: It was another thing that ultimately came out of Codex. I've always enjoyed the commentaries I've heard on public radio stations, but had no idea of actually doing them myself until a fellow Codexian posted about her experience with them.
Once I realized that it was mainly a matter of querying and having some writing credentials, I got in touch with the local NPR affiliate and asked if they had any need for commentaries. I didn't hear from them for about two months, until a reporter/producer there contacted me about a new show he was doing. I wrote some
sample commentaries and they got the green light. I've been doing them now and then ever since.
Writing commentaries forces me to stretch my brain as a writer. I'm usually trying to write something that's brief, informative or meaningful, and funny, and it's tricky to find a subject that fits that bill, and my writerly muscles are getting a serious workout every time I do it. It's fun too to work in a different medium--voice--and to use the new tools that gives me. And insofar as I'm trying to write commentaries that build on things I'm learning in my own life, I have some hope that some of the listeners are finding them not just entertaining but thought-provoking in a useful way. I did one recently that I hope will convince a few people to start running regularly. If I'm actually influencing people's lives in a way that helps make things better, even on a very small scale, that's incredibly gratifying to me.
