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I do want to say a few things, which is that this particular Hugo nomination at this point in time means a lot to me. (1/?)
I drafted the first version of "The Inaccessibility of Heaven" in 2007. At the time, I didn& #39;t have the craft or ability to finish the draft, and I left it literally mid paragraph (IIRC mid sentence) (2/?)
Over the years, I came back to the story, opened it, read it, and concluded I still didn& #39;t have the craft to finish it. It was quite a bit chunk by then, and it& #39;s one of those stories that I wrote as I finally settled into my own voice and lyricism (3/?)
In 2020, life changed. A lot. The pandemic happened; lockdown happened--and not just any lockdown, but a lockdown in the middle of a divorce.
(French divorce procedures are quite long)
(4/?)
(French divorce procedures are quite long)
(4/?)
You can imagine it wasn& #39;t ideal. My writing dried up, among other things. It wasn& #39;t giving me joy, and trying to get words on the page felt like pulling teeth out, or drawing water out of a well where there was only mud. (5/?)
And there were obviously other priorities. Divorce is never fun; and this was a divorce with young children involved. (6/?)
There came a point where things settled down, and I saw something like the ending of a long tunnel. Like looking on a mountain that had been super hard to climb and finally seeing down--not the rising sun, but that grey, pinkish light just before. (7/?)
And I opened that draft again, and looked at it again. And thought about endings and craft and what it had taken to get to the top of the mountain. And I thought "you know, I can do that. It& #39;s not so much to look at that story again".
(8/?)
(8/?)
And it was like... I could see it for the first time. I could see what I needed to do differently. I could see what words I needed to change, what words I needed to write, what things I needed to do. (9/?)
I rewrote that story with a scalpel while juggling paperwork and a thousand other things. I rewrote it sitting at a desk in a house that felt unfamiliar and new, and I drew water of the well and it hurt, but not as much as I thought it would. (10/?)
I didn& #39;t expect to sell it. I didn& #39;t expect it to be read. I certainly didn& #39;t expect it to make the Hugo ballot. Which just goes to show, I haven& #39;t learnt that much 
https://abs.twimg.com/emoji/v2/... draggable="false" alt="🤣" title="Lachend auf dem Boden rollen" aria-label="Emoji: Lachend auf dem Boden rollen">(11/?)
But it did sell. It was read. It is a Hugo finalist. And in a year where a lot of things changed and a lot of them hurt, where I struggled so much with writing and a lot of other things besides, this means a lot to me.
Thank you for being there. Thank you for seeing it. (12/?)
Thank you for being there. Thank you for seeing it. (12/?)
Also, to my friends (and you know who you are): thank you so much. (13/13)
Oh sorry, the story is here https://uncannymagazine.com/article/the-inaccessibility-of-heaven/">https://uncannymagazine.com/article/t...
