Transcript
Speaker: Hi Lodgers and Birches, producer Tim here and just with a quick little content warning for this episode. As the co-hosts do discuss a little bit about some of the things going on in their lives which have kept them away from podcasting, there is some discussion of family death, pet death, chronic illness, and domestic abuse between one hour and one minute and one hour at four minutes.
Speaker: So if you need to protect yourself from that, just skip those few minutes and pick back up at 1.04. Now to the episode.
Speaker: Hi everyone! Welcome to QueerLogix, the queer-led podcast about everything Tolkien. I'm Leah, and I'm here with my usual co-hosts, Alicia and Grace. Hi.
Speaker: Hello. Thank you so much for joining us today. Pull up a camp chair, crack open a chilled can of whatever you like, and enjoy the sunny summer solstice with us as we talk a little bit about what we've been up to instead of recording podcasts for the past year.
Speaker: ah This is little bit more of a catch-up sort of ex-Tolkien episode as we indulge ourselves just a little bit and talk about a particular project that has been occupying our brains and our time and also just kind of let you guys know a little bit more about what life has been doing to us and making podcasting a little bit harder.
Speaker: We kind of hope that shedding a little bit of light on this project will be interesting and enlightening to you, all of you birches as well. And hopefully we'll kind of, i don't know, set you guys up for what's to come for us.
Speaker: But basically, let's kind of get into it. We wrote a book chapter together, you guys. Y'all, we wrote a book chapter, all three of us. Three authors. Wow.
Speaker: That we're all still alive is, frankly, a miracle.
Speaker: So this chapter... is for a forthcoming anthology published by McFarland in their Studies on Tolkien series, the working title of which is Great Heart and Strength.
Speaker: It is edited by our dear friends Claire Moore and Cammie Agin. Our chapter title is She Chose Her Fate, the Genderqueer Women of Tolkien and Freedom Beyond the Patriarchal Binary.
Speaker: Very, very on brand for us. So we kind of wanted to talk a little bit about writing this chapter together because I have never done anything like this before, especially not with another person and never mind two.
Speaker: So it was a really big learning experience and honor and just like a really cool thing for me to do. And yeah, I don't know if you guys want to get into a little bit about your past experiences with writing academic work.
Speaker: Alicia, you're probably the one who has the most experience with publication and the process of writing and editing and going through all of this. Can you start us off by telling us a little bit about your previous experience about doing something like this?
Speaker: Yeah, and this is... the fourth or fifth book chapter I've written. Well, so I say that, but I was writing one at the same time we were writing this together as well. thought about I have another ah book chapter that's coming out and it's being published by the Oxford University Press and it is a, it's being edited by Demetri Fimi and Luke Shelton. I have a chapter in that project that is on Tolkien and gaming.
Speaker: So cool. Which i well I want to say more about, but I can't. um But it was it was really interesting kind of us doing the bulk of the work on this chapter happened literally right after i had done the bulk of the work on that chapter. So was a really good like kind of apples to apples comparison. And If you are not someone who writes academically in the humanities, like if you have written academically before, but I don't know, in the sciences, you really need to know that having multiple authors on a paper in the humanities is not how things are generally done.
Speaker: Nope. We're pioneers. Yeah. It is a much different experience collaborating to that extent when you are writing than it is writing something on your own because you are you're in a perpetual editing environment. Right.
Speaker: Whereas if you're just writing a chapter on your own, you write what you need to write, you send it off to the editors and then they come back with their changes and you do what you need to do and pick whatever fight you feel like you need to pick. But if you're writing collaboratively, it is so different than that. Mm hmm.
Speaker: One of the things that I hadn't realized was going to be so different is that and like we collaborate for the podcast all the time, right?
Speaker: And when we're writing for the podcast, we want things to sound cohesive. we want to come at things from a similar angle and bring our own perspectives and everything.
Speaker: We want to sound like we're on the same page. But we have different voices and our voices should be different. It's tough for listeners when you can't tell whether it is Grace or Leah or Alicia who is speaking. and and we know that happens, but we try to keep our own voices really keenly part of the listening experience.
Speaker: And that's not what you do when you're trying to write a paper together. You're trying to bring all of those perspectives and voices into a unified presentation. And so that also means that the way that we all are inclined to like shape our sentences a little bit differently or my extreme overuse of commas or i know one of my other writing like things is like too many end dashes and putting all of these things together and then trying to smooth it out and make sure that each part that we're writing is in conversation with every other part and then it sounds like it's come together and we can all stand by every word that's in it
Speaker: and every word that had to be cut out of it was a very, a much more time intensive process than I had realized it was going to be. And I think that it could have been a much more like painful interpersonal process with different co-authors who were less committed to creating this whole from the sum of its parts. So I think we we did pretty well. We're still back and doing the podcast again. like It did not end the podcast.
Speaker: I was going to say that the fact that we're all still alive and that we're all still friends is a miracle. i actually don't think that that's true. but The fact is is, for the chapter, we all sort of have to have a more or less unified voice for the chapter to sound cohesive and get the thesis across, right? It's like, you can't really have a bunch of separate voices telling each other things like we do here, really.
Speaker: But the fact is, all three of us are kind of naturally on the same page together, and we all kind of vibe together in different ways, but not like completely at odds with each other. So meshing our voices together was still really challenging,
Speaker: But it wasn't like a hurdle that I feel like we didn't overcome, if that makes sense. I feel like we were able to kind of bring that sort of editorial voice, I guess, to our own work and to each other's work because we know each other and we know what we want to say. And we also know kind of how each other says it really well. And we really want to kind of bring out the best in each other and also bring out the most clear and cohesive way we can get this point across without confusing each other or confusing the reader.
Speaker: And so i feel like the fact that we do podcasts together and collaborate together set us up really nicely for working on this chapter together. That doesn't mean it was like, you know, super smooth sailing because it's a very different thing Like one of the ways that I was really struggling with in academic writing in general, which is something I have never done before because I've never done any kind of post-grad or graduate work or anything like that.
Speaker: was that podcasting and academic writing have very different sort of narrative styles. in In podcasting, you kind of want to take people a bit on a journey. You kind of want to let some drama unfold. It's kind of like, you know, when you're listening to something like, I don't know, maybe Radiolab or, you know, some other sort of podcast where you're setting up things for kind of a bigger reveal. You're, you're taking people and not like highlighting everything all the way,
Speaker: in academic writing, they want you to signpost every step of the way. They want you to stage your want you to state your thesis right up front. They want you to repeat your thesis as you keep going.
Speaker: You want to highlight like what I'm going to talk about. Here's the thing I am talking about. This is the thing I have talked about. That's like the whole structure of the paper. And me, I'm kind of like,
Speaker: This is like watching a movie with my mom and her asking what is going on during the movie. And I'm just like, just, just watch the movie, mom. you it's your aunt Your answer, your questions yeah will be answered. If you just keep watching the movie, just let me cook, man.
Speaker: and Just let it go.
Speaker: There is a reason why I generally i present at academic conferences a lot more than I write papers in terms of like publishing things in journals and in chapters like I write academic presentations.
Speaker: at least to a year, but I don't publish nearly that often. And it's because I also prefer this narrative approach. I want to craft a story. And sometimes you get editors that allow you to do that because they're following what you're doing and it is not taking away from what they are trying to do with their overall book. that Zelda book that I'm in the mythopoeic narrative and the legend of Zelda I have the first chapter in that book and it is partially because I write that way and I it was it's like an introduction kind of chapter so like yeah i mean that you do get to do that sometimes but not often like it is an awful lot like
Speaker: writing a high school report in terms of signposting everything you're going to do. And I understand why it needs to be that way, but it's not the most fun way to write. It's not. It's a lot of hand-holding. And i'm I always feel a little bit torn between feeling like, is this infantilizing? Or is this, you know, like, a I understand, like, why why it's happening that way and why the editors are doing that.
Speaker: Even if I feel a little bit like, just let me cook, man. It's just... We're going on a journey together. I'll guide you there. We'll get there. We'll get there when we get there. And it'll be great. The reveal will be dramatic. and But I understand. It's like, you know, you you want to signpost everything and you want to you want to guide your reader so that things are clear and accessible.
Speaker: And your audience can follow you in the best way possible. yeah But yeah, it's not the most fun for me because I'm like, I like the drama. i want to I want the unfolding. As a process, it's, Alicia, your point about like a high school group project.
Speaker: is really interesting too and ah we have not ever actually debriefed about this uh so i'm gonna ask this question kind of like live on air and we'll see if we have different thoughts or similar thoughts on this this is the end of the podcast i guess sorry guys i know that for me my experience with group projects in academic settings has largely like 95% of the time then and Grace will do 90% the project. Oh my God. Yeah.
Speaker: And I'm wondering if that's a similar experience that each of you have had as you've like had to deal with group projects, like middle school, high school, college, any of that. Totally. It got better in college because like if this is somehow the first episode of this podcast you're listening, I went to art school ah and the only time we really did group projects is we had an art direction class and essentially what happened there was there were four people in the group and you did four projects and you alternated who was the art director. So like in some ways you were the leader, but also when you were the art director, you were doing the least amount of work and the other three people had to like
Speaker: do all the work and then you directed it interesting interesting but yeah before that class happened no i was 100 always the person doing most of not all of the work so when you take three people who have always been the like if nobody else is going to do it I'm going to do it I I have to do it like there's no there's no other choice like well it's not going to get done otherwise right and then you do group work with people who are competent and engaged and care about it 100 although everyone's timeline might be slightly different and where like we all stress about deadlines is different oh yeah
Speaker: When you do that, i feel like there's there's this piece of the process where you're like, oh, but I'm not doing all of the project. Am I doing it wrong? Am I doing it wrong? It's like having to trust that the other people who are here with you are with you.
Speaker: And knowing like knowing it intellectually, but like making your body believe that took me some time because I just kept checking in like, no, I don't have to worry.
Speaker: like this is I'm worrying about me, not everybody else. This is great. Yeah. And I will say, so I was taking ah an undergraduate class at Marquette just for funsies at the same time that we were doing a lot of the writing and editing for this book chapter.
Speaker: And partly it's the fact that I'm nearing 40. And partly it was like the recency of the experience of doing this fun group project with my co-hosts. But there got to be a point in this class that's an undergrad class. It was very cool. It was about the history of the novel in English and French and like how we go from like epics and sagas to the the start of the novel and interiority. and Very cool with an absolutely excellent professor. But I'm there with the undergraduates and we end up doing group project work.
Speaker: And the person who was my group project partner at the end was like, oh, my God, that was the best group project experience I've ever had. Like every other group project I've ever been in was terrible. And I was like, I've done my job.
Speaker: I'm doing okay for the young folks. The healing process. Yes. It can heal this generational trauma. It ends here. yes And you can now go do like fun, nerdy things like you want to do. Go forth into the world and and do fun things.
Speaker: nerdy academic things without having to to worry that you're the only one who cares about it go yeah and like for me like that was really sort of like a guiding light through this this process was the fact that i think that since we had been podcasting together and basically doing a group project to together for so for some time that like it was sort of like I can trust this and I can trust you too to care about this in the same way that I do and want the best for the each of us and you want the project to be the best that it can be
Speaker: And that we're all, all three of us are committed. And that was something that I had been able to like physically like see and experience through producing the podcast together. And so it was sort of like during times when, i don't know, when my body and my, my anxiety, my,
Speaker: was doing a large number on me. Okay, guys, let's be 100% honest. Alicia gave Leah an ulcer during all of this because Alicia's time management and Leah's time management, very different things. Very different thing
Speaker: things. Grace is like, I can do either one of those extremes. Yeah. Maybe not both. I got that ADHD. i need the adrenaline pump of, oh my God, I got to get this done at the last minute. And Leah needs a little bit more. Leah needs more time. Leah needs time. i i cook slowly. so But that was also something, yeah, that was something that we got to learn. And I think that we've also have been learning about each other, like doing this and in this sort of more compressed timeline with external deadlines and external editors who are setting the schedule and they are also following a set publishing the schedule.
Speaker: It kind of made sort of a bit of a pressure cooker sort of situation. So we, could learn these things about ourselves and how we work together in a very compressed time format and i think it's super valuable and like it was kind of like eye-opening for me about like myself and like how i work basically it's like when all of this anxiety and trying to navigate different styles of time management and figuring things figuring each other out
Speaker: I still had that like really deep sort of inner knowing that I trust you guys and we're all going to get this done together. And I'm not going to be left out to just like yeah out in the wind and stuff like that. I'm not going to be left alone in this. You guys are with me.
Speaker: And that was like really, really valuable to me. And so thank you guys for that, because that was really, really something that I can't tell you how much I value that. Again, having an anxiety disorder and having having experienced quite a lot of quite a lot of situations where I've kind of been left behind a bit in this, I was like, I felt however much my brain and my body is reacting to these deadlines, these pressures.
Speaker: You guys are with me on this. And that's, that's incredibly valuable to me. We did some things to try to like almost game out how we anticipated we would each experience different stressors too with that timeline and time management.
Speaker: Like we set some artificially early deadlines for ourselves so that those of us that are like, I need to work to a deadline right now had deadlines, but they were early enough that we could get things in or had time to flex things.
Speaker: if we needed more time and that there's more time and we and we did. yeah i think we can be entirely honest that at one point when everything was hitting the fan in all of our lives, we did have to ask for an extension on one of the rounds of submissions or edits or or something.
Speaker: And it was really helpful to have Alicia here in the corner going, okay. Okay. Lots of people ask for that type of extension. Academic deadlines don't really exist, which is as is probably like insider knowledge that I shouldn't be sharing with people. but like.
Speaker: Every single academic person I know misses at least half of their deadlines. It's a well-known phenomenon. When you're editing a volume, you build that into when you are asking people to get their chapters because there's going to be somebody who's at least a month late.
Speaker: It happens all the time. Now, In an ideal world, you don't want to be that person. Am I often that person? Yes. The chapter that I was just talking about that I was writing around the same time we were writing this one, i ended up having to get I think it was like a five week extension on because the date that it was due was the date of my stepmother's funeral.
Speaker: ah She died very suddenly and I had to pack up my whole life and drive from Canada down to southern Georgia, which is in a 19 hour drive and a tiny smart car. And it it really fucked me up. And because I am who I am, a flawed person, i was not nearly as far through the paper as I should have been.
Speaker: the two weeks before it was due. So I ended up having to ask for an extension. And when we got to the point where we knew that we were probably not going to make this deadline, I had to talk everyone through, no, no, no, it's fine.
Speaker: Unless you're actively presenting something, deadlines sort of don't really exist. yeah I remember that being very so very soothing to me. Yes.
Speaker: and It's such a difference from my, like, always try to get an A sort of mindset from days as a student in various contexts and everything. Because you turn things in and you turn things in on time and you're trying to get a grade. And this, I was not trying to get a grade.
Speaker: We were trying to create the best product that we could at the end of all of this work. And we We needed to take the time that we needed to be able to get there. Unfortunately, we had editors who were willing to support us in that. Just constant, continual shout out to our editors. Knowing how excellent they were allowed me to trust the process a lot. Claire and Kimmy are phenomenal.
Speaker: And so being able to to change that little bit of framing and mindset was was really key for me, because the other thing that we've done is we've done presentations for like academic presentations at conferences and seminars and things like that.
Speaker: And those do have a deadline. The deadline is when the talk starts at the very, the very last minute. You have to be ready to talk when the talk starts. And so this where it was, it's a slightly more negotiable thing in order to get everything to be the best place it should be was not the thing that I was used to and that my ah my nervous system was used to. And it it took like thinking through and We really were very fortunate to have Alicia on this project with the experience.
Speaker: Oh, totally. they It just it made such a huge difference. And then being able to trust the editor so implicitly, just really, really excellent.
Speaker: And then that made it easier for me to. When we had to go through and like make edits or move things around, i think it's worth noting that we started this book chapter in the basis of the paper that we gave for the more perilous and fair seminar for the mythopedic society.
Speaker: Too fair, too perilous. sir Yeah. Too to perilous, too perilous, too perilous. I had to try not to give it the not nefarious title. Too perilous, too perilous, too perilous.
Speaker: but It was based in in the the presentation that we gave during that seminar yes about women in Tolkien. And so we looked at Eowyn, we looked at Galadriel, and we looked at Luthien. And Eowyn and Galadriel, we've covered on the podcast. And so we have so much to talk about. And then Luthien, we have not yet covered on the podcast. So there's so much to talk about. And as discussed, we are all people who, as we have confirmed, will shoulder the burden and be like, I will forge ahead and I will get it done myself. And we are all loquacious people.
Speaker: And so we write many words. talk so much. oh my gods There are word limits and word limits are cruel.
Speaker: They were so cruel. but So when we were originally discussing this, we decided that we were each going to take one character And these are kind of the story beats that we want to hit with each of these characters. And we would write all of those separately and then come together and edit it as one paper.
Speaker: And i kept telling everyone, do not worry about the word count yet. Like when you're doing the original write, you write what you need to write to get out what you need to say. And we will come back and edit it for word count later. Because I have found, at least in my writing process, that if I do not take things to their logical conclusion, I never get to the point where I can edit down for length successfully because I haven't told the story I need to tell. And when we first put our documents together,
Speaker: We had a 6,000 word limit? Yes. Something like that? yeah It was 6,000 words. It was more than double that, wasn't it? Oh, yeah. Oh, way more. Yeah, it was like 15,000 words. It was like 15,000 words. I think it was that. Were we counting footnotes and were excited in that? I don't believe we were. No, we were not at first because we...
Speaker: The way word count works for writing purposes is really weird because footnotes don't count, but they do. Because like the word count you're given when you are publishing in a book is a rough word count that should equal out to however many pages.
Speaker: Hmm. And when I first started publishing book chapters, that was not inclusive of the work cited. But in the past, like two or three years, the work cited has become inclusive in that work count, which is an interesting situation to be in. Because when you are publishing something academically, you want to cite a bunch of other people because you want to make everyone reading it aware that you have done research and you know the people will you need to be citing. However, credit where credit is due. and Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker: But then all those citations count against your word count. So yeah you have to balance proving that you know what you're talking about with having enough characters left to actually make your argument. It's like you you're sacrificing like a thousand words to tell people that, yes, I actually have something to say and I have an original thing to say.
Speaker: in less than 10 now less than 6,000 words and you're like no and there's another component of this that I think is ah probably not unique to Tolkien writing and Tolkien academia but it is specific with to it as well which is that there's only so many words from the published works that you can really use in right yeah any volume and so You have to cite your sources. You have to prove your work. You have to establish the things that you're referencing and talking about.
Speaker: And you have to play nicely with everybody else who's in that volume because you can't just do the thing that you were told to do in your upper level English courses and like cite the full quote that you need and talk through it and like use those words for proof because there's only a percentage that was is going to be able to get through for the publisher.
Speaker: Maddening. Absolutely maddening. its yeah And so like making sure that you're using the most judicious quotes or like the most applicable pieces of it, even if there's something that really helps in the next sentence, too.
Speaker: And having to pare that down is. That is can be extremely painful cutting of 10 words that just it hurts to lose. Again, give giving me an ulcer.
Speaker: it's An insane process. who Who thought of this? Yeah. There were things that we were able to do of like interweaving pieces, especially because in the history of Middle Earth, Galadriel is alive through all three ages.
Speaker: And so we were able to take some things that were a point that might relate to like Galadriel and Melian. And make sure that something that we'd want to have established about Luthien when we get to it later is is established in maybe a footnote in a section about Galadriel. Or Galadriel and Eowyn exist contemporaneously Middle-earth at the same time in the Third Age where Luthien does not. And so like we were able to do some interweaving of things and cutting words and concepts to their sort of distilling them down to their, their most direct piece and interweaving them.
Speaker: So we didn't have to kill the entire concept of the darling, but we also had to kill a lot of darlings. So many. There were so many. Leo, what's the one that hurt you the most to lose?
Speaker: Oh, great question. I think the thing that, again, another guiding light for me was knowing that, hey, I have I have a podcast where we can get into some of this stuff that we cut. So it's not gone forever. Yeah, it's kind of nice previews. It's like Schrodinger's darlings. They're not dead. They're not quite alive yet either, but they're not they're not dead.
Speaker: I think probably the stuff that I was really excited about, not to give too many spoilers away, but basically, like, I had wanted to talk a little bit more about how Noldarin colonialism is actually a very gendered thing.
Speaker: And that kind of needed to go away in order to keep our focus on specifically basically our thesis, which was these three characters are genderqueer, and we wanted to really have our arguments centered, honed in on that.
Speaker: So that was probably the thing that I was the saddest to lose because i was like, oh, but it's still so relevant. Yes. But it's not relevant to this to this particular chapter, really.
Speaker: So it had to go. What about you guys? Yeah, Alicia, did you have a ah darling that it hurt to lose? Not really. One, I've already, my i wrote about Eowyn.
Speaker: Shock. But I had already, like, presented a paper about Eowyn and Faramir, and I ended up reusing a lot of that in this chapter, and i had to cut a bunch of stuff about Faramir, because... Right.
Speaker: Hmm. I mean, there there is a relation there, and I do think their relationship is important, and especially when you're talking about Cuckleborn and
Speaker: Baron and how they relate to their partners. I do think it's it's relevant and worth talking about, but it's kind of outside the scope of, like, genderqueer femininity. Yeah, of this particular subject, yeah. Yeah.
Speaker: It honestly hurt my feelings more that we had to cut the colonialism as gender stuff. Because I'm also, I don't get like really in my feelings about a lot of stuff. and we we did find out spoilers for later on when we talk about this more, probably. um i ended up having to cut a whole lot about Faramir and then I cut so much I had to put some back in. Yeah. but Again, a maddening process.
Speaker: Yeah. But also I found myself in general, I was being very ruthless with my own editing because we yeah we we have we've worked together for so long at this point.
Speaker: I knew out of all three of us. that I could probably cut more and feel less bad about it. Both because Grace in particular can talk forever about anything.
Speaker: I mean that in a most loving way. Yes. Said admiringly. yeah Alicia, Alicia, how dare you this tell me the same damn thing that my therapist did this week? Yeah.
Speaker: We love that about you, though. Yes. Yes. And like I knew Leah was like kind of stressed about the whole process. And I was like, well, look, I know I can ruthlessly cut a lot of things and that will help us with the overall word count. So I'm just going to do it.
Speaker: And I also wasn't sure when we first started the whole editing process together. how everyone else was going to take needing to edit for word counts. Yeah. that The Galadriel stuff we had to cut was the stuff that hurt my feelings the most because I think it's really interesting and I want to talk about that. We have podcast.
Speaker: Yeah, we have a podcast. Thank goodness. Mine was, it's still in there a little bit, but I have so much more that I would love to explore about Luthien... And this whole like vampire and werewolf thing. Yes. It's so inherently queer. And like.
Speaker: To pretend that Tolkien. Did not know that vampires. Especially lady vampires. Queerness? What? with What? So like i get to talk about it a little bit. We talked about it like in the the presentation.
Speaker: But there's so much more to play around with in mind and get to talk about in a podcast episode that like that's one that I look forward to doing someday because it's just going be cool. Totally.
Speaker: ah Yeah, I think maybe thankfully i come out from a creative writing background. And so like workshopping and editing and killing darlings again is sort of like, I know how that process goes. And I also know that like cutting things again with the same sort of trust that what we're doing here is helping you make this better and helping you make this the best that it can be. And also like,
Speaker: fit very specific parameters and so it's like it's a very tight little line but it's sort of like killing your darlings is not it's never personal right it's always it's very very much like we want this to be the best it can be it's very much of a this is what's right for this piece this moment and you can take your darlings and put them in your heart Put them in a notes document for later. yeah and it says nothing about you personally as a writer or as for your particular thesis, really.
Speaker: It says it's said a lot more about what's needed here and now. Like that said, we did have a lot of really cool stuff that we had to cut. And again, I was very ah soothed that I was like, oh, thank God we have a podcast. Yes. Full disclosure, we're not quite through the editing process yet. We have one more. we have one more round. It's just copy edits.
Speaker: Yeah. yeah And it's the round where we pull out all the quotations we can, essentially. there is still time. to I do have a darling. It has not been killed yet.
Speaker: And i I don't know if it's going to end up being killed. But in case it does get killed, there is a footnote. in this chapter where refer to you catastrophic murder and and I am just I've been fighting for it really subtly ah but I I feel like if I lose if if I lose any darling it will be that one it'll that one yeah yeah we're all fighting for it though like we love that one I know we all we're all I had to pull it out of the main text because Leah did not feel great about having that in the main text. So i put it into a footnote and cut as much as I possibly could. But I do... The last editing round we had, it was suggested to change it to You Catastrophic Slaying. And I do not think that that gets across the... Not the same word. Not the same word. The dissonance?
Speaker: Nope. Yeah. I do think You Catastrophic Murder has... some teeth to it. Yep. Not the same thing. Not the same thing. Yeah.
Speaker: So that that may end up dying. And if it does, that will be my killed darling because I'm fighting for it. we did a lot of trying to make sure that even if we had to pare down things, that we were able to keep them as succinctly and cleanly as possible in there where it mattered and where it really mattered.
Speaker: to each of us and kind of fought for each other's favorite phrasings and darlings and and things that were just really, yeah really keen to us. Two things. One, i do love the fact that we are all people who have fun with footnotes.
Speaker: Oh, I bet you footnote's my favorite. Oh, we we love a footnote. Nothing better, man. So good. Love it. So being able to write in that format where we have the footnotes and and doing that was really, really, really nice. And then we also gave ourselves...
Speaker: so much loving time to work together, like to work independently, but then to work together. Google Docs makes it an absolute wonder to be able to be doing this in this day and age instead of like trying to do drafts and edit by snail mail or something like that. Like I cannot imagine how much more challenging that would be.
Speaker: But instead, we were able to get literally on video calls and work on the document together, taking all of the pieces and trying out different phrasings, workshopping it out loud,
Speaker: workshopping like in text as we were trying things and then being able to say okay yes that's perfect yes or no that doesn't actually get at the point the point i'm trying to get at is this and i'd already pared it down to this and then somebody helping each of us rework it yeah into something to make it into what we wanted it to actually Say, yeah, we gave ourselves so much more time to do that than is probably reasonable. But we knew that this was our first example of doing this type of work together.
Speaker: Despite having done a lot of other types of work together. So there were definitely nights that we are sitting there across three different time zones. And it is amazing. an a.m. hour in each of those time zones yeah and we're still going in line editing it was 3 30 in the morning one night and i was like guys look okay um we've been doing this for like four hours at this point and it's my brain's dead like And at one point, Alicia, you were like in the car, right? Oh, my gosh. Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah. That was early in the process, like when we were still trying to figure out. It was before we pitched. It was before we pitched it because we were trying to figure out what we were going to pitch.
Speaker: And I was in the car speech to texting, which is you guys can hear my voice. I have an accent. Google does not do super well with it all at the time. So I'm like speech to texting about fucking Luthien and I, and it's going off the rails as it generally does. And i've I'm just like, I have all these ideas. I hope to God they are coming through. Cause like, I'm literally driving home like through the mountains and Appalachia, like with barely any connection to the internet. But I'm like,
Speaker: no, I figured something out and we need to talk about this. system yeah It was such a wild situation because like i I get all my like real good talking and thinking done while I'm driving and it's not a situation where I usually have to like unload what's in my brain on someone else because if I'm writing by myself, whatever, it'll just stay in there. And I was like, oh no, no Grace and Leo need to hear this. We need to like we need to confer.
Speaker: Yeah, we touched a little bit on it. But again, we're three different people across three different time zones. And all of us have full time jobs, which are not academia and which are not always set up to accommodate big blocks of time in which to accomplish writing writing with two other people.
Speaker: This is a weird hobby to have. It's a weird hobby to have, man. Thank goodness for Google Docs. But I think that that was also kind of a ah process that it maybe was a little bit gentler than perhaps it could have been because we've been working together across three different time zones to podcast and to to talk to each other, you know.
Speaker: And so we kind of took some of those... scheduling sorts of lessons and kind of setting up internal sort of deadlines we also just kind of had to recognize like there were times where we we did need to have that 3 30 in the morning after four hours of editing and just literally reading stuff out loud and rearranging and rewording and saying how does this look how do you like this better or like hey what if i move this paragraph here
Speaker: Like just literally doing kind of like nuts and bolts, like editing together in real time. i think that we really needed that because i feel like that was the way that we could figure out kind of our singular voice as the chapter instead of the three of us trying to kind of squish each of our different pieces together.
Speaker: And again, we we all know each other's voices pretty well, and they kind of mesh together pretty well. But literally having to just sort of talk to each other and talk through it and kind of see how the phrasing kind of landed, that was a really valuable thing for me personally, because I felt like that was where it was like, OK, yes, we are all of one mind and one voice here and making it sound coherent and I know from talking to Claire that she has said that like the fact that you guys wrote this together is amazing and the fact that it sounds so like clear and that like there's one voice and that it really reads really well and like couple I was like, oh, my God, thank you so much when she told me that because she's like, yeah, you guys should be really proud of yourselves because it doesn't sound like three different people smooshing it together. It sounds like you guys are all together in this. And I was just like, oh, my gosh. So we tried really hard to do that. Thank you.
Speaker: It makes all of those hours of being like, how can we carve two words out of this sentence? can we shave down six words out of here? well Yes. Yeah. it It also let us, the process that we used, I think let us take trust that we had like sort of paid into the bank.
Speaker: of and knew we could trust each other. And it was a theoretical trust built on practical experience. And then in this project, like deepening that trust and knowing that, yes, like the thing that we're trying to keep in there We're all going to be there for each other. The thing that we are that we recognize we have to cut words out of, we're going to help each other figure it out.
Speaker: And so i think like over time that that helps us to have like, oh, yeah, having had this experience, I know how much I can trust somebody else's line edits from this group.
Speaker: But taking the time to do it and to to shore up all of our confidence in that and be there for each other, and think was really valuable in a ah very hard to measure sort of way. But it's it is really lovely.
Speaker: I love everyone in this bar. Oh, I love everyone in this bar. Yeah, for all my ulcers that I i got from this from this project. So basically, I guess you've never written and an academic paper before and you're thinking of collaborating with someone. have a podcast first and then write together.
Speaker: Also, it's like this is 100% the podcast equivalent of, so you want to write a fantasy novel. Well, first, what you have to do is develop a series of languages. Yes, exactly. All right.
Speaker: So, yeah, you want to write a fantasy novel. First, you must decide how it was created. Okay. First, you must write every language that has ever existed.
Speaker: Yeah, it was very helpful to, I would say we probably spent a good 10 hours on video calls together just editing. And it it it was the pre-edit edit because it was the editing that we all did together before it went off to the editors. So when the editor started sending things back, we didn't,
Speaker: have to get on and talk for hours and hours because we were already on the same page pretty much across the board on what it was we were trying to do. So we, when we started getting the edits back, we kind of handled that individually. And then once everyone had done their individual accepting or denying of edits, we would go over the Each of us would go over the entire paper to make sure everything was still cohesive. Looks pretty good. Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah. And that's an important thing to note is that we kind of did a lot of, I guess, front loading of some of that work so that we could kind of do things a little bit more individually and also and know that we were all kind of coming from the same place and would kind of land in the same place.
Speaker: And we collaborate pretty well together too like I think so. I really think so. no one really got in their fucking feelings about anything. yeah Everything was just kind of taken in the spirit in which it like was given. like We weren't having fights in the comments with each other anything. like Someone would suggest an edit and you would either take it or not or do some random third thing. It was a really good process, honestly. You put pieces of it and rework it so that the thing you couldn't let go of was still there but you took the thing that that did 90 of what needed to happen and that somebody had helped you figure out it like it was yeah it's really good i also went to art school so the process the process of of critiquing it's like oh i had my spirit broken long long and long ago so just yeah i don't i no longer have feelings to hurt but but yeah i do think that like all all three of us have done like creative work and have kind of worked together in in putting different kinds of projects together. And so we know how to how to take critique and we know how to how to workshop things and we know how we know how to take you know suggestions and also sort of we know when we we want a point to make. We know that it's like, okay, I hear what you're saying and I still want to say this.
Speaker: Maybe there's a way in between that. Maybe there's a, you know, you saying this can, we'll make this better and we can still get there. Yeah. I did want to ask Alicia doing this anthology. This is not peer reviewed.
Speaker: This anthology is just several or individual people coming together and being published together. And the editors are the ones who are reading them and accepting them and making the changes.
Speaker: Can you tell us and tell me, because I don't really know the whole process, but you can you tell our listeners a little bit about, i guess, the difference between an anthology like this and the peer review process?
Speaker: Well, some anthologies are peer reviewed. That is a thing. What ends up happening is It's an awful lot like any other editing process. You get back edits, but it's usually tied to whether it should be accepted or not. Right. And the edits you get are more for the actual content and and not for.
Speaker: stylistic things or like word count or whatever because what it is testing is does this argument make sense and is this argument in conversation with other peer-reviewed articles or whatever i have peer-reviewed few journal articles and it's much easier to do that than it is to edit in the way that Cammie and Claire are editing because you are literally just saying, should this be published or not? Is this is this good or not? And if it if it needs changes, what should those changes be? And I have personally found myself, like, i find it very hard to say something shouldn't be published. I usually, if i if I am peer reviewing something, I'll usually say, except with changes, even if they're pretty drastic changes, as opposed to saying this isn't worthy of publication. even if the changes are very drastic.
Speaker: But yeah, it's to the writer, it feels essentially the same. i love this piece. You just need to change the entire thesis. I know i'm I'm not very harsh because you hear all these like people talking about reviewer number two and how reviewer number two is always an asshole. Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, so the whole thing behind peer reviews is double blind. Like, you as a reviewer don't know whose work you are looking at, and the person whose work you're looking at does not know who actually reviewed it. And for whatever reason, apparently the second reviewer is always an asshole. I don't...
Speaker: But like, I think like you're supposed to shoot for three reviewers. And I do know in some smaller fields, it's hard to get that many people to review. Yeah, I haven't found it to be an awful process on either side of it, honestly. And to some extent, like your editors are also peer reviewing, right?
Speaker: Right. In this situation, Claire and Cammie, are very well read and know what's going on. And they are, even if it's not going through a full peer review process, they are still peers who are reviewing. And yeah, exactly. Definitely pointed out places where we could make arguments stronger or we need to change arguments or drop arguments.
Speaker: Yeah. Yes. Or streamline something because it's not the time for it. Right. Yeah. I think one piece of this whole process to and this has been true of the podcast and conference presentations as well.
Speaker: But just as people who were socialized as women in this world, it is really. really common for imposter syndrome to just like crop up and rear its ugly little head and one of the joys of working with great co-writers and co-hosts and with great editors is that you have all these moments to tell each other tell the imposter syndrome to fuck off If a mediocre white man can fail upward into publishing X, Y, z you can absolutely do this thing that you are passionate about and that you are so right for doing.
Speaker: So it helps to have people throughout the whole process and it helps to have people throughout the whole community who are pushing for good and interesting scholarship like this.
Speaker: Yeah, again, i have I have anxiety that that was definitely a thing that was kind of accompanying me through this whole process of it. Because I'm like, i have never done something like this before. i am a academic writing virgin. so and it felt a little bit like going from zero to 100 to a degree because of imposter syndrome. Because I'm like, I am just some dude who likes to read. Like, this is a very nerdy hobby. i'd just like to talk about things.
Speaker: And there's a difference between just liking to talk about things and reading things and, you know, setting up something for others to read and then talk about.
Speaker: and is literally what we're doing, though. I know. In the podcast. So basically this entire podcast is Leah's like therapy ah and trying to overcome these feelings.
Speaker: Well, and it's fascinating also to realize how many people we look to who are women and queer folks and, and just like incredible intellectual juggernauts in this community who also have have said they still feel the imposter syndrome. Like it comes for us all and we fight it back together because truly if some of the things that get published with absolutely
Speaker: no appreciable research in the field or familiarity with Dylan Henderson.
Speaker: it's ah Sorry. As those get to publication, certainly the work that is being so, so carefully poured over and thought through and worked on together and edited deserves to make it to the light as well.
Speaker: Yeah, for me, it was just sort of like in thinking through the feeling of being like, I actually do have something to say and i actually have something maybe kind of unique to add to the conversation, which is it's something I really struggle with sometimes because i am mostly like look to other people sort of validating my feelings about things. I always like I'm kind i'm kind of reassured.
Speaker: that like, oh, you think this too? Amazing. I'm not crazy. That's amazing. And so I'm like, i think that's part of why like when we were figuring out what to pitch when we really wanted to include Luthien into a chapter about genderqueer women, that's something that we have not really seen in at least in published work. And I think that was kind of part of like, this is something kind of unique that we could build on and bring to the conversation here.
Speaker: and it's going to piss people off and that's going be great. Which is great. And I feel like there were a couple of things like when talking about Galadriel that I was sort of feeling like, I don't know if I have really seen this before.
Speaker: and that's kind of a vulnerable position to be in because you're sort of like, am I crazy for saying this out loud? Because you know that there are going to be haters on the internet who say that we're crazy for even speaking in the spaces. all yeah and see our previous podcast episodes so we've learned to tune them out or to like take the things that are like okay you've gone too far and we're going to refute that now but it's something that we know is we're folks who do exist on the internet we're going to hear some bullshit for sure but that happens with every podcast episode we do we take that risk that's very very true
Speaker: Well, how did you feel, Grace? Because you also, this is also your first book chapter. it is, yeah. And I got to do a lot of the work on Luthien. And I felt very ah nervous going into it because i had not read many even of the versions, the different versions that there are of that story and the different contradictory versions that there are.
Speaker: this and i did not feel like i could even like retell the story of baron and luthien pretty quickly to a friend when i started digging into it and by the end i'm like okay so that motherfucker over there okay all right and that's a bingles a dick bingles a dick and i there are some sons of feanor who i have strong feelings about this guys one version Yeah, those fucking guys. Blessings to my friend who, after my most recent stint in the hospital, when I was too sick to work for like 10 days, sat in a chair in my bedroom and let me tell him about the story of Baron and Luthien and who is a douchebag that we hate.
Speaker: amazing So being able to delve into all of that and and have like strong opinions now that I would enjoy talking through with people and everything is, I think, really valuable. I really enjoy that.
Speaker: And for me, also, the point when I was like, no, no, we absolutely like there's not just one thread to pull here Luthien. Tolkien literally writes her turning into a vampire, like shifting shape into a vampire.
Speaker: I have no qui like I feel like I could just put that sentence. He says complete like we we got this. But I would like before I had delved in enough, I was worried about being able to make my points and like then was maybe more more more verbose than I needed to be in trying to make them and all that and and scaling it back and making sure that it all stayed in line with each other was was really, really valuable.
Speaker: to be able to do. And as I say, we've kind of touched on this. The work that we have been doing off and on on this book chapter is a pretty big part of the reason why we did not have many episodes last year. We didn't get a lot of recording time, though we spent quite a lot of time on these same computers looking at each other's faces.
Speaker: We did not do that in a way where people got to hear what we were talking about. Yeah, it would have been real boring. You wouldn't have wanted to hear it. Not good content. Not good content, guys. There was an amazing moment when one of my kittens decided to contribute to the paper in real time. And yeah did take that and the photo of the cat looking incredibly pleased with herself and make that the like, thank you. Are there any questions slide in our presentation?
Speaker: so we We had some moments of levity, but really it was a lot of nitty gritty stuff that we were working through. it And we also just life-lifed a lot for all of us.
Speaker: We talked about we all have full-time jobs that are not jobs that say, hey, would you like to take some time to do academic writing? We all deal with chronic illnesses.
Speaker: we We, and we also dealt with some like weird life shit throughout the entirety of this past year, year and a half.
Speaker: i spent a significant of the amount of the time that was leading up to particular deadlines in court against what turned out to be somebody with a domestic violence situation who was hurting myself and my husband and my mother. And we had to request restraining orders and get temporary restraining orders and all of that and have dealt with that for a long time.
Speaker: here in the background, which took more of my energy than i realized it was going to as a sustained sort of thing. And I know we all dealt with a lot of tough things.
Speaker: Yeah, like I got newly diagnosed with the chronic illness that I have. So that was a fun voyage of discovery. and And I know Alicia has also been going through a lot of things as well. yeah so Yeah, I was back and forth to Georgia a few times because it's in deaths in my family.
Speaker: Which I feel like in some ways is kind of stolen valor when I tell people that my stepmother died because like everyone immediately jumps to, oh my God, that's so terrible. But like, I never really had a relationship with her. So like, I feel more bad for my father than I do for me because he,
Speaker: lost his wife of 20 something years 30 something years they've been married a long ass time and I'm sorry to my father if he for whatever reason listens to this episode our dog Gordon died in January he was uh 15 and a half years old and that one emotionally destroyed me in a way that neither of the other deaths that were actually in my family did because he he was my buddy I think I had some pet loss like at the start of that time frame and we just all went through a lot.
Speaker: That's not to turn this episode into like, oh, I feel sorry for us. We've been having going through a lot. It's mostly we I wanted to offer that we have been working on quite a lot of stuff. It's just not podcasting.
Speaker: But and also a lot of other stuff has been happening. And i I guess I just wanted to like offer that up to listeners in being like, we are real people with real lives and things going on. And this isn't like meant to be like a pity party for us, but really just to kind of say that like, we're really happy to be out podcasting again. and we would really like life to kind of calm down.
Speaker: home would be great yeah and i feel like great explaining explaining our absence just a little bit is something i hope that you guys that you listeners will uh appreciate and thank you for for sticking with us and know that we've put some framework in in the coming months where it will be easier to get an episode out to y'all don't know maybe a sort of once a month kind of basis where we can keep doing that and keep doing the the podcasting and creating that we are so excited about doing because, oh my goodness, do we have so many wonderful ideas that we had to cut from this. and We had to cut from the book. We were talking about before we did the chapter. We have things to go back to. And oh my goodness. So we have grand ambitions to do all of the things and talk about all of the things. And now we actually have some like dates scheduled when we can talk about all of the things and keep putting episodes out for y'all.
Speaker: I know that there's like this book chapter that is coming at the end of this amazingly long road too. And we have so much that we're excited to be sharing.
Speaker: One other thing that i wanted to touch on is just like a cool little humble brag for us here. And for quite a number of our listeners and and folks who we value very deeply too,
Speaker: The Mythopoeic Society Midwinter Seminar that we co-hosted, the proceedings from that are published as a ah volume from Mythopoeic Press.
Speaker: And that volume is now officially, I have gone and I have held it in my hands. It is in the archives, the Tolkien archives at Marquette University, along with so many other fantastic academics and volumes and everything that they hold there for everyone who's looking to do research.
Speaker: And so just a really quick shout out to all of the people who have a paper in that set of conference proceedings. Taylor Driggers, who did the keynote address, Sarah Brown, Christopher Vaccaro,
Speaker: Rory Quiripel, Mercury Natis, Luke Shelton, Valerie Estelle Frankel, Cameron Borkween and Nick Polk, Peter Conradi, And Madeline Lowen, all of those papers from that conference proceeding now get to sit on the shelf in that archive. And the work that everyone did to bring those forward gets to be tangible in the world. And I'm so excited about that reminder of the work that everyone's been doing and how it continues paving pathways for the rest of everybody who's working contemporaneously and coming along behind and and working all the way through.
Speaker: Our conference baby. It's real. She's all right now. held it. Oh my God. I held it the other day. so my gosh. So all that is just to say thank you so much to all of the listeners and contributors who have been part of this journey and are going to continue on this journey with us. We are so thrilled to be able to continue bringing you content and interesting things to to think about and explore in the many formats now both print and podcast. So with that in mind, if you would like to know where to find us on all of the different socials and all of the things, Alicia is going to let you know.
Speaker: Yeah, you can find us basically anywhere you listen to podcasts. We're on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube Music, blah, blah, blah.
Speaker: Please like, share and subscribe. You can also stream our episodes directly Zencaster. That's Zencaster.com slash Queer Lodgings, a Tolkien podcast with hyphens in between all of those words. Or if you're feeling fancy, you can go to our website, which is QueerLodgings.com, where we have show notes, resources for individual episodes and transcripts on some of them. We also have a merch store there if you want to buy some Fueled by Spite stickers. And there is a link to our Discord server.
Speaker: We're also on Facebook as Queer Lodgings. Twitter, the only thing that is acceptable to dead name, but we are not actually posting ah there other than just podcast updates.
Speaker: That is Queer Underscore Lodgings. We're on Blue Sky at Queer Lodgings. And on YouTube Podcast at Queer Lodgings 6911. Nice.
Speaker: You can find us by searching Queer Lodgings Podcast. If you have any feedback or ideas or just, you know, want to shoot the shit and say, hey, and you're not on our Discord server, you can send us an email at queerlodgingspodcast gmail.com. Thank you.
Speaker: Thanks, everyone. and now the listeners know that 99% of the reason why we don't post anything except for podcast updates on Twitter is we hate Elon Musk. And 1% of it is we're too loquacious for that few characters.
Speaker: like Alicia a lead us off with where everyone can find us. Yeah. Or do you want me to try it? Do you want me to try it? i can I can do it. Okay. Probably.
Speaker: yeah i mean, after a last time, wind has fully left my sails, but I can give it a go.
Speaker: Can't believe Tim left all of that shit in. I have to go listen to it again. It's so mean. It's so bad. It's mean. I sound like such a fucking idiot. And I have spent so much time telling all of our guests how Tim makes us sound fucking smart. And then he pulls that shit with me.
Speaker: When we share a house. He's just letting everyone know how he does his work. Divorced. Divorced.
Speaker: I'm pretty sure this is what's going to end up in the fucking end text. Probably. The gift that keeps on giving. Exactly. There you go. Tim Lenz, bringer of gifts.
