{"id":22491,"date":"2014-02-24T00:01:09","date_gmt":"2014-02-24T05:01:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/?p=22491"},"modified":"2014-02-23T07:25:18","modified_gmt":"2014-02-23T12:25:18","slug":"sfwa-to-join-or-not-to-join","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/2014\/02\/24\/sfwa-to-join-or-not-to-join\/","title":{"rendered":"SFWA: To Join Or Not To Join?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/qbynzi1-yok\" frameborder=\"0\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>*gunfire*<\/p>\n<p>*gunfire stops*<\/p>\n<p><strong>GROSSER<\/strong>: Comrade! Hey, comrade!<\/p>\n<p><strong>MARTIN<\/strong>: What?<\/p>\n<p><strong>GROSSER<\/strong>: Why don&#8217;t you just join the Union? We&#8217;ll go upstairs together and cap Daddy!<\/p>\n<p><strong>MARTIN<\/strong>: This union, is there gonna be meetings?<\/p>\n<p><strong>GROSSER<\/strong>: Of course!<\/p>\n<p><strong>MARTIN<\/strong>: &#8230; no meetings.<\/p>\n<p>*gunfire commences*<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">* * *<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m nesting on the idea of joining the SFWA.<\/p>\n<p>I like what they represent, in theory. And given a lot of the, erm, fun that&#8217;s been going on there in the ranks lately, maybe adding a positive voice to the mix would have some value. Plus: Writer Beware! Such useful. Very service. Wow. I also know a lot of great people in the organization and, oh, hey: I <em>am<\/em> a science-fiction writer. In America. SO I GUESS I QUALIFY AND STUFF.<\/p>\n<p>On the other hand: that\u00a0<strong>Grosse Pointe Blank\u00a0<\/strong>video above is kinda me? Like, I dig that writing is a community but at the end of the day this whole thing has a distinctly <em>Ronin-writer-without-clan\u00a0<\/em>vibe to it. And right now my time is strained so hard the elastic in my schedule&#8217;s waistband is about to snap. If this just means I get more emails that I have to answer (and will probably fail to answer), woooo, jeez, please, no. And finally, given the, erm,\u00a0<em>fun<\/em> that&#8217;s been going on in the ranks lately, I see some voices abandoning ship.<\/p>\n<p>(A discussion on SFWA&#8217;s relevance to self-publishers <a title=\"Is The SFWA Losing Its Relevance?\" href=\"http:\/\/www.thepassivevoice.com\/02\/2014\/is-the-sfwa-losing-its-relevance\/\"><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><strong>is here<\/strong><\/span><\/a>. The comment section is a mix of interesting, thoughtful, and worthless, but that&#8217;s increasingly par for the course there.)<\/p>\n<p>I joined HWA once upon a time and had a hard time seeing any benefit from it. And being there significantly increased the noise in my life rather than decreasing it.<\/p>\n<p>So: you people.<\/p>\n<p>What are your experiences? I&#8217;m not looking for a list of benefits available from the SFWA &#8212; I can see that from their website. I&#8217;d like to hear from writers who have joined, left, or chosen not to join &#8212; and why? What did you contribute? What did you get out of it? So on, so forth.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>*gunfire* *gunfire stops* GROSSER: Comrade! Hey, comrade! MARTIN: What? GROSSER: Why don&#8217;t you just join the Union? We&#8217;ll go upstairs together and cap Daddy! MARTIN: This union, is there gonna be meetings? GROSSER: Of course! MARTIN: &#8230; no meetings. *gunfire commences* * * * I&#8217;m nesting on the idea of joining the SFWA. I like [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-22491","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"hentry","6":"category-theramble","8":"no-featured-image"},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pv7MR-5QL","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22491","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22491"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22491\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22498,"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22491\/revisions\/22498"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22491"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22491"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22491"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}