First the news: Escape Between The Pages has the cover art for the next Jill Kismet book, Heaven’s Spite, which is due out in November. It’s shiny and pretty, and honestly I can’t wait for this book to come out, because it’s going to just kick everything we know about Jill right in the pants. I can barely contain myself, the glee is so awesome.

Moving on to our Friday writing post…

Pride, like laudanum and other poisonous medicines, is beneficial in small, though injurious in large, quantities. No man who is not pleased with himself, even in a personal sense, can please others. -Frederick Saunders, librarian and essayist (1807-1902). Ganked with thanks from AWAD

I have a confession to make, dear Readers. It’s not pretty.

I am pretty savage, in my own little way, when it comes to Speshul Snowflake writers. The thing is, there’s a continuum of Speshul Snowflakery. It goes from the all-Speshul, all the time, to the occasional burst of Speshulness from even the most polite and well-adjusted person.

Nobody’s perfect.

Not even your humble Narrator.

A couple days ago I was bitching and moaning to my writing partner. (Hey, Nina!) I waxed pretty indignant, and cranky to boot. And Nina, bless her cotton-picking little heart, was very kind to me. She finally said, “Look, treat it like spec work. You can do that, you’re good at it, it pays the bills. Come on.”

Which brought me up short. I realized, in one horrifying moment, that I had been indulging in venomous Speshul Snowflakery.

Yes, I do mock the Snowflakes among us. But here’s the thing: everyone will have at least one Snowflake moment in their lives. This is a conservative estimate. If you have one a year, you’re damn near a saint. I suspect most reasonable, well-adjusted writers have one Snowflake moment a month, or even a week.

And that’s OK. No, really. It is. I’ll just wait a second here, so the surprise of hearing me say that can pass. *makes face*

All right. It’s OK. I swear. Because it’s not about having the Snowflake moment, it’s about knowing how to handle it.

This falls under the heading of “professional behavior”, and if you expect to make a living as a writer you need to start from the very beginning with a professional attitude. At one point or another, you’ll shoot yourself in the foot and make a withdrawal against that bank of goodwill. Everyone does. But it doesn’t have to be fatal.

First, accept that nobody is perfect, and you will have a Snowflake moment or two. Get used to the idea. Writing is an incredibly personal art, and writers are judged six ways from Sunday by every single person who claps eyes on their work. But if you know that sooner or later you are going to lose your temper, you are going to have a Snowflake moment, you ARE going to have that response, you are already three-quarters of the way to solving it.

Once you realize the possibility exists, you can try to pause when you’re angry (a hard but eminently learnable skill) and take a deep breath. Soaking one’s head in a bucket of cool water may also be necessary, or a good stiff drink. Whatever gets you there. It is hard, but it is possible to short-circuit the Snowflake moment so that hopefully, nobody but you or your best friend knows you’ve had one.

Here are a few rules I’ve made for myself to avoid the temptation to Snowflake out. You can, of course, leave your own strategies in the comments, where I (and others) will no doubt steal them shamelessly.

* Do not respond to reviews. Ever. Even the positive ones. I’ve covered this in detail, but I think it bears repeating. Responding to even positive reviews ups the chances that you’ll get all het up over a negative one and think it’s a good idea to explain/justify/attack the reviewer/whatever. This leads straight to an Internet Boondoggle and makes you look like an asshat, even if you’re right/justified/whatever. Just don’t do it.

* Don’t respond to emails that piss you off for at least 12 (ideally, 24-36) hours. It’s publishing, not triage. Nobody’s going to die if you take a few hours to make sure that rage pounding behind your eyeballs and cranking your blood pressure doesn’t come out in whatever response you choose to make. This will save you from many, many Snowflake moments that have the potential to shoot you in the career foot and bleed you dry.

* If you must blog about it, lock the post for at least two days. Sometimes you just HAVE to write it out. I’ve done it. And then, two days later, sanity has reasserted itself and I’ve deleted the damn thing no matter how funny and righteous it is. The risk in putting this sort of shit on your blog, even private-locked, is that now it is out of your control, on servers you have no control over, and you will be tempted to unlock it before you’ve cooled down. So if you have just GOT to blog about this huge injustice or whatever is pissing you off bigtime, lock the post up hard and go have a drink. Let your agent/writing partner/best friend know you’re considering putting up a post about X, and see what they say. (See next item.)

* If you are lucky enough to have at least one friend who will gently tell you to STFU and quit being precious, LISTEN TO THEM. This friend may be your agent–occasionally an agent will help you not shoot yourself in the foot. (Beware of expecting your agent to read yoru every diatribe, though. That can sour a relationship right quick.) More often this is going to be a writing partner or friend whose calm and judgment you trust. I’m lucky to have dear Nina, who is collected in the extreme, as well as practical and capable of unhesitatingly telling me when I’m getting my panties in an unnecessary wad. My job in those situations is to listen, and to at least agree to a moratorium on saying anything publicly until I’ve calmed down.

* Get away. Take a walk. Use Freedom to cut off that tempting Internet capability for a while. Push yourself away from the computer and go clean the kitchen or something. Just get away from that thing that’s bugging you. Hopefully, distracting yourself will give you enough breathing space for perspective to creep in…and it will save you from having a public Snowflake moment.

* Decide take the high road EARLY, and stick to it. This is useful at conventions–everyone is tired/stressed/excited/onstage, and behavioral brakes are weakened. Make the decision to treat the convention like it’s not going to make or break you–because it won’t. Remember that the hard sell doesn’t work, your time will come, and you’re there to ideally have fun and NOT make an ass of yourself. Also, staying classy on the Internet makes you the exception rather than the rule. You will never be ashamed of being polite and taking the high road. Getting into the habit of reminding yourself to be polite will help you when crunch-time comes, you’re tired and stressed, and that bitch on the panel has just interrupted you, or that jerkwad commenter/reviewer has called you a hack, or that editor has messed with your Precious Verbage for the last fucking time. You have a chance to not do something you’ll regret. That chance, that possibility is all we get. It’s got to be enough.

* Learn to let it go. One book doesn’t set the world on fire? Let it go and write another one. One reviewer goes on and on about how s/he hates your genre/your books/you because it’s all trash? Let it go, because if you respond it’s wrestling a pig in mud. An editor asks you to completely excise X, then in the next revision pass tells you to put X back in and they don’t know why you took it out? Realize they’re human too, scream into your pillow, and let it go. It’s not that these things don’t matter. It’s that you have to deny them the power to dictate your behavior.

This is an imperfect science for an imperfect world. Human beings are messy, they make mistakes, and they get angry and have bad judgment. However, the Snowflake moments we’re all prone to don’t have to be fatal, and you can make plans to minimize their impact. This isn’t to say that you won’t sometime, somewhere, have completely justifiable rage and you will let it loose in public in a way that will make the world a better place. Those rages and moments, however, are the exception, not the rule, and it’s silly not to plan for the other 99% of the time, when you’re just going to be falling prey to being human and excitable.

I was saved a rather embarrassing Snowflake moment (because I had vaporous dreams of a blog post that would be funny and explosive and would SHOW THEM ALL, DAMMIT) by dear Nina. I’m unendingly grateful, and I know how lucky I am to have her. Which means that next time we get together to dish about writing and the industry, I’m buying drinks. All things considered, that’s the cheaper alternative.

So remember: everyone has Snowflake moments. The professionals just know how to gain that critical few minutes of perspective that stops them from indulging them in public and turning their career into a mudpit.

Over and out.

Related posts:

1. On Retail, Food Service, And Speshul Snowflakes
2. On QueryFail, Or, The Lilybed of Grief
3. There is too much. Let me sum up.

* Every time I say “trunk novel”, someone asks what that is. A trunk novel is a term for a novel that won’t ever escape the inside of a trunk. It’s a piece a writer works on solely for his/her own gratification, one that stands little chance of every being published, mostly because the writer understands it’s horrible. It’s the writing version of junk food. I love my trunk novels. (Yes. That’s plural.) Often I work on them during breaks from other books. They’re sort of dry runs, practice to keep me in the game. It can also mean a trunk novel that gets published after a writer is famous, or famous and dead.

* OK, guys, let’s get serious. Lots of you are emailing me telling me that various e-book distributors are protesting publishers’ move to agency pricing by pulling my books. You invariably ask me to “talk to the publishers” and solve this problem.

I cannot do that. Furthermore, I will not even consider it and the very thought makes me cranky.

First, the publishers have little control over whether the distributors carry their books. Publishers and distributors are two separate companies and make their own decisions. Second, I would not dream of coming down on the side of the distributors on this issue, for the simple fact that the publishers’ interests in this case align with my own. The agency pricing model gives writers a better deal, and it keeps the books around for longer. The distributors want to profit at the expense of the writers (who produce the content) and the publishers (who invest in quality control and on the chance that the content will made the money back for them).

In short, THE PUBLISHERS ARE NOT THE ENEMY HERE, AND THE WRITERS ARE NOT THE ENEMY EITHER.

It is perfectly natural for the distributors to want to maximize their profits, or to keep going with business models that benefit them at the expense of the writers or publishers. They’re businesses, maximizing their profits is what they DO. But neither I nor the publishers should take the rap for it. Because it is also well within publishers’ rights to say, “We invest in bringing this content to the marketplace. We pay the advance, we provide the editing and quality control, we provide the art and marketing, and we will set the price for it as we see fit.” And in this one case, the publishers’ views align nicely with the rights and views of the writers producing the books in the first damn place. Professional writers are OF COURSE going to support their publishers in seeking the pricing and policies that grant them a living wage (or a close approximation of one). Or, to be more precise, that maximize the chances that a writer can afford to continue writing because the financial rewards are enough to let them scrape by. (This is where I go off on my “just because you’re published doesn’t mean you’re rich” rant. I’ll save that for another day.)

The distributors’ response–yanking certain publishers’ goods in order to pressure them into dropping the agency pricing model–is greedy and short-sighted in the extreme. Brick and mortar stores, e-book sites like Fictionwise, other sites like Amazon, are DISTRIBUTORS. The whole purpose of these companies is to distribute the goods that people want to buy, in this case, books. If they do not distribute, people should get annoyed and find somewhere else to shop. Distributors shoot themselves in the foot in these kinds of situations, despite their PR working overtime (usually through their customer platforms) to convince customers that someone else (the big bad publishers, the writers) are to blame.

I understand people contact the writers because we are the “face” of our books. People write to me about all sorts of things I have zero control over, like cover prices or font sizes or distribution to foreign countries or or or…you get the idea. It irks me that there are problems I can’t solve for the readers or to facilitate their enjoyment, but that’s life.

But please, please, dear Readers, don’t jump on me because a distributor is kicking and screaming over the e-book pricing model that may very well make or break an author’s chances to keep bringing these books to you. (Although, really, e-books are such a small part of total book sales…even though it doesn’t seem like it to people on the Internet.) Don’t jump on my publisher, or THE publishers, either. The publisher wants me to keep writing as much as you do; the publisher wants you to have the books as much as I do and you do. It’s the distributor who doesn’t want agency pricing because it gives the publisher and writer a bigger slice of the profits (profits that distributors have grown accustomed to in the last five-ten years or so) that deserves your ire. They are the ones you should be demanding an answer from–an honest answer, not “the big bad publishers are picking on poor little us, waaaah!”

Honestly, if it was the publisher being an asshole, I’d tell you. If it was me being an asshole, I’d admit it.

In this case, it’s neither. We’re not the assholes here, and filling up my email inbox with rants about how I need to get on the publisher and yell at them do not help. I know you’re frustrated. I’m frustrated too, as you can probably tell. I have no choice but to sit tight and wait for it to all shake out, since there is literally nothing I can do. In this case, the publishers are going into battle on behalf of writers. Well, it’s on behalf of their own profits, but it’s benefiting writers. Fair enough.

Now I’ve got to go hop on the treadmill and work all this adrenaline anger off.

See you around.

PS: Behave in the comments, please. Thanks.

Related posts:

1. Publishing And Misplaced Punishment
2. Trunk Fiction, And Other Fear
3. Good News, and Amazonfail Wrapup

Some days she’s like that.

I am just going to keep throwing bonbons at her until she takes pity on me or until the solution wriggles out from under her and into my head. In the meantime, I’ll be working on another project to make this one jealous. Making books jealous of each other is a good way to jolt them free. If I’m not working on one thing I’m working on another, and that’s what’s saving my sanity.

Such as it is.

So. I’ll be shoveling bonbons and working on the homicidal-fae book today if anyone needs me. If you see the Muse, throw some choco at her or kick her pretty little derriere, willya?

Thanks. You’re a pal. I couldn’t do this without you.

*exits stage right, hands fisted in hair, muttering*

Related posts:

1. The Lure of Free, and the Fickle, Heartless Muse
2. That Damn Muse
3. Writing With A Heartbreak

I am pleased and proud to announce that Orbit Books will be bringing out all five Dante Valentine books in an omnibus, with an all-new cover, in March 2011. I’ve seen some roughs of the cover, which unfortunately I can’t share, but they are splendid. I am incredibly happy to be able to announce this. I have other good news, but I have to wait to share it. Which just about kills me.

And now, onto the fail!

Some of you may have heard about a second Amazonfail over the weekend. Basically, on Friday afternoon-evening, Amazon announced that it was disabling the buy buttons from all MacMillan books. (Later, unannounced, they pulled sample chapters of MacM books from the Kindle.) MacMillan is a huge publisher, and plenty of SF/F authors were affected, including one or two of the Deadline Dames, Tobias Buckell and John Scalzi.

The reason? MacMillan wanted to go to “dynamic pricing”. Which meant that when an ebook first came out, it would be priced higher ($12.99-$15.99) and the price would decrease (to $5.99) over time, analogous to a book coming out in hardcover, then cheaper in trade paperback, then even cheaper in mass market, and finally the cheapest of all in remainder. Amazon threw a gigantic tantrum over this, wanting to sell ebooks for $9.99, world without end, amen.

MacMillan released a statement, Amazon dragged their feet and finally on Sunday released (on the Kindle forum on their website, of all places) a self-serving piece of tripe meant to portray themselves as the underdog looking out for consumers instead of a corporation caught trying to strongarm market share.

There are a couple of things I want to say about this debacle. But first, the links!

* The original breaking story in NYT and VentureBeat.
* MacMillan’s statement.
* Amazon’s statement.
* Laura Anne Gilman’s take on Amazon’s statement.
* Tobias Buckell’s very good breakdown of ebook pricing. Even if you read NOTHING else on the debacle, read this–because it addresses one of the nastiest misconceptions of the whole thing–namely, that ebooks are free to manufacture.
* John Scalzi on how Amazon humped the bunk and on ebook pricing.

The things I want to say:

1. This is not new behavior. Amazon has a habit of delisting or trying to strongarm publishers on Friday evenings. Remember when they wanted to eff over small publishers? Remember when they went through and delisted and deranked LBGT titles? Once is chance, twice coincidence, three times means it’s a policy, a pattern. I am no longer willing to give Amazon the benefit of any doubt.

2. Ebooks are not free to produce, dammit. As Tobias Buckell points out, ebooks are not cheaper for publishers to produce than paper books. That’s because publishers are providing quality control. Self-published ebooks are not free to produce either; the cost is borne by the buyer more directly without quality control; vanity press ebooks are paid for by the author. THIS SHIT IS NOT FREE. The biggest misconception I’ve seen in this debate is “ebooks are free, MacMillan is trying to gouge the reader!” NO, GODDAMMIT. Ebooks need to be edited and converted into ebook format, as well as marketed and invested in to be made available. Don’t bring up the music industry, because a book is not a pop song. Don’t bring up Baen or Cory Doctorow either, they make their money in other ways. I wish I could tell all the sanctimonious bastards badmouthing MacM to “QUIT USING THIS AS A RED HERRING. Go read Buckell’s explanation again.” If there’s anything that makes my blood pressure spike in this whole thing, this is it.

3. Amazon is not the little guy here. Amazon is not looking out for reader interest. Amazon got caught being an asshole.

4. I do not agree with Buckell and Scalzi about DRM. In my mind, DRM is the only faint and fading protection authors have against book pirates, and throwing out DRM instead of concentrating on how to build it better and more efficient and so it doesn’t enrage the consumer is throwing Baby out with bathwater. This is not a popular view, but it is mine and I will not have the comments section be dragged down into telling me how I’m WRONG and BAD for having it. You’ve been warned.

5. I still have Amazon links on my site, as a courtesy to my readers. If you want to buy my books through Amazon (always assuming they don’t delist me for some goddamn reason or another), who am I to complain? But I do list Barnes & Noble, Borders, Indiebound, Powell’s, and (upcoming links) Book Depository first. If it so moves you to buy through them, or through anyone else, first, then more power to you.

That about covers it. Play nice in comments, feel free to post links to other rundowns of the whole thing. I’m exhausted and still nursing a cold, so off I go to drink some tea and get some revisions done. And let my blood pressure come down. Otherwise I might bust a gasket, and who will write these books then?

Related posts:

1. I’m Not The Jerk In E-book Pricing, And Trunk Novels
2. Disappointment
3. Publishing And Misplaced Punishment

You and I got something
But it’s all, and then it’s nothing to me, yeah
And I got my defenses when it comes to your intentions for me, yeah
And we wake up in the breakdown
In the things we never thought we could be, yeah…

I’m not the one who broke you
I’m not the one you should fear
We’ve got to move you darling
I thought I lost you somewhere
But you were never really ever there at all… (Goo Goo Dolls)

Yes, I want to get free. But you don’t need to talk to me. I’m done talking. Now I’m moving.

There are hard days and easier days. Today is somewhere in between. But when I’m on the treadmill and running, I find pieces of myself I left behind so I could fit in your cupcake tin. They slide back into place like they were never gone, and I feel more and more like myself. Each day is better as the other physical things migrate out of the house–kind of, I don’t know, like bits of shrapnel leaving a wound.

I’ve made my way out of the cocoon. The wings are dry. I’ve climbed the damn tree I was hanging in.

Now I’m going to fly. I’m scared, and there’s no net…but the worst has already happened, and I’ve not only survived. I’ve just plain thrived. I guess I didn’t need what I thought I did. Lesson learned, I won’t forget it. Ever.

Now I’m gone. Really gone. Gone gone gone.

And it feels good.

Related posts:

1. It’s The Little Things
2. Wednesday Three
3. Upward And Inward

So, link salad!

* A great NYT article on female desire. (Hat tip to Violet Blue.)

* Falconesse with the math behind Harlequin’s vanity press: how many books you’d have to sell to break even, hidden costs, and the like. Recommended reading for anyone who wants to self-publish, vanity publish, or get published.

* Patrick Stewart (yes, THAT Patrick Stewart, my favorite shiny-headed captain) on domestic violence. This hit home for me, hard.

* Monica Valentinelli on Too Much Free.

On another note: the latest Jill Kismet, Flesh Circus, is just out a few days ago, and I ran across a torrenting site this morning where people were putting up requests to have it torrented. Guys, I’m glad you like the books. Really, I am. I’m thrilled.

But stealing from me, by torrenting my work, makes it harder for me to make a living writing those stories you love. That means less stories for you. Cut it out.

I mean, I can always find another job. One I might not love as much, true, but I can always find another one. It’s the readers who will miss out on the stories they love–yes, even those readers who trumpet that they SHOULD get the books for free, for a variety of woolly-headed inaccurate reasons that boil down to cheapness and entitlement. I like what Mike Briggs has to say about this–he goes through and destroys those arguments one by one.

It’s frustrating to me that the book is just out and already several someones are looking to steal it. Human nature being what it is, I’m not surprised. I’m just…frustrated. And disappointed.

Over and out.

Related posts:

1. Ask The Working Writer, And Stealing
2. Tuesday Link Salad
3. Link Salad, And Some Advice

Also, I am over at SciFiGuy’s place today, with an interview and a chance to win a copy of Betrayals. I will be answering questions in the comments all day. Come on by and say hello! Plus, I’ll be at the Cedar Hills Crossing Powell’s this Sunday for the SF/F Authorfest. Come by and see me, fellow Dame Devon Monk, Barb & JC Hendee, and a bunch of other cool people, including the 501st Cloud City Garrison (Vader’s Fist). Good times will be had by all.

And now, my dears, for my Friday writing post. Are you all settled in with a tasty sandwich and frosty beverage? Good enough.

If I’d listened, none of this would have happened.

You see, I grew up being told that I was a quitter. That I never finished anything, that I had no discipline. I was told that I had my head in the clouds, that I was unreliable, that I might be booksmart but I would never be smart in any other way. I was just too dreamy. I always took the easy way out.

Part of the work I’ve been doing on myself lately has been taking a look at some of those core assumptions I was raised with. A big core belief is that I’m unlovable. Only slightly less huge is the belief that I’m a quitter, that all my success has been a fluke and that I have to live in constant fear of being exposed as, well, a fake.

I may know intellectually that this makes no sense. But the real work comes in when it’s time to change that sick heart-thumping feeling of danger, the feeling that you might be found out at any moment, that you are an imposter in a world of Real People.

I have two beautiful children I’m raising mostly-alone. I am making a living by writing, not the easiest task. I have over twenty books out. And just this week my editor at Razorbill called and told me Betrayals made the Times list for Children’s Paperback Fiction.

It was about twenty minutes later, when I was squeeing on the phone with my agent, that the ugly core belief came out.

“Do they ever make a mistake?” I asked her, anxiously. “I mean, will they find out they’ve been wrong and take it away? Does that happen?”

She reassured me that no, it did not happen, and we went back to squeeing. But later, after I hung up the phone, I wondered why I’d even thought that. It’s the New York Times list, for Christ’s sake. Why could I not accept and believe that I’d worked my ass off, day in and day out, and might deserve some part of the honor?

Because of that core belief that I’m a quitter. It was said to me so often for the first twenty-odd years of my life that I’ve ended up internalizing it, believing it–and it taints even the best news a writer could hope for with the sullen, gut-clenching feeling of being a faker.

But there’s hope. (There’s always hope.)

I pretty much accepted failure was going to be part of my professional life when I set out to get published. Rejection and failure happen every day, and sometimes multiple times a day for a writer. But total failure wasn’t an option. I decided to keep writing until someone, somewhere, liked what I did and offered to publish it. Sooner or later, I reasoned, if I kept working at it, I’d get on somewhere.

Lo and behold, it happened. I got my first break, and I kept writing. I networked like a mad bastard and kept writing. I got an agent and I kept writing. I got my first New York publishing contract and I kept writing. Other contracts followed and I kept writing. Foreign rights, requests for short stories, requests for other books followed–and I kept writing.

Do you sense a theme here?

The thing about challenging a core belief is that it requires that you take a look at the empirical evidence, not just how you feel. I am supporting myself and my kids with words I pull out of thin air. I do my best to hold up my end of the bargain with my Readers–to tell the truth–and you, my dear Readers, respond.

I made an effing NYT Bestseller List, for God’s sake. This is not something you get just by sitting back and smelling roses. It took hard work and a refusal to quit.

That refusal to quit makes me not a quitter. It means whenever that nasty little voice speaks up inside my head I can meet it with evidence in the real world that I am measuring myself by a broken yardstick. That’s the first step to replacing the yardstick with one that works–and not so incidentally, one that won’t stab me in the heart every time I’m down and a little low.

If I’d listened just to that voice, though, this would never have happened. I would never have even gotten published the first time. I would have quit when I got my fiftieth rejection slip, or even earlier.

Some part of me must have known it wasn’t true. Some part of me set its shoulders, lifted its chin, and said to hell with you and what you think, this is what I’m doing. That part is the real me, and it deserves to come out into the sunshine. This is the first jackhammer I’m going to take to that edifice of the core belief. I’m going to break that f!cker up and turn it into rubble, and build something better.

If I had listened, I would have stopped before I got published. If I’d listened, I would have stopped before I got an agent. If I’d listened, I would have stopped and accepted defeat years ago. I did not. I kept going, even while believing myself a “quitter” down in the secret chambers of my heart.

How’s that for crazy?

So, my dear fellow writers (and Readers), let me tell you this. You are not what other people tell you. You are not what other people say. You are what you do. Don’t stop. Don’t give up. Get that jackhammer, get that wrecking ball, and start the process of being kind to yourself by chipping away at those voices in your head that judge you and tell you you’re Worth Less. Look at what you’ve done so far. Imagine, if you’ve done all this while believing those awful things about yourself, what could you do if you were not chained? How awesome would that be?

It’s not easy work. But, as my sister once so memorably said, “They call it life because it’s hard.”

I won’t give up. And if I can refuse to give up, so can you. Let’s go kick some ass, you and me.

Over and out.

Related posts:

1. The Mystery of Steel
2. The Mystery of the Mask
3. On Persistence

When I was running at the track over at the middle school, I would always dread this time of year. Because American football tryouts and practices would be going on in the field inside the track. I hated the aura of effort and misery over the young kids. I hated how the parents would yell from the sidelines, looking to live vicariously through their poor kids instead of working to live as adults. I absolutely loathed how the “coaches” would yell abuse at the kids. If someone talked to my kid that way, there would be consequences. Someone would lose their job and I’d make a lot of trouble for the school. I realize I am an administrator’s worst nightmare. So be it. Nobody verbally abuses my children, thank you.

Sometimes, when the wind is right this time of year, I can hear the whistle blowing and yelling from the middle school. I’m glad I have the treadmill and I do my running in the morning now. My heart would ache for the poor kids every time I went running over there during American football season.

This little trip down Memory Lane was spurred by this Malcolm Gladwell article in the New Yorker, titled Football, Dogfighting, and Brain Damage. Go read it. (Seriously, go. I’ll wait here.)

Catchy title, isn’t it? You ain’t seen nothin’ yet.

The first brain McKee received was from a man in his mid-forties who had played as a linebacker in the N.F.L. for ten years. He accidentally shot himself while cleaning a gun. He had at least three concussions in college, and eight in the pros. In the years before his death, he’d had memory lapses, and had become more volatile. McKee immunostained samples of his brain tissue, and saw big splotches of tau all over the frontal and temporal lobes. If he hadn’t had the accident, he would almost certainly have ended up in a dementia ward. (Malcolm Gladwell)

Ten years, okay. But surely if a kid stops early they don’t get as damaged. Right? You think it’s okay for a kid to play this “sport”? Really?

McKee got up and walked across the corridor, back to her office. “There’s one last thing,” she said. She pulled out a large photographic blowup of a brain-tissue sample. “This is a kid. I’m not allowed to talk about how he died. He was a good student. This is his brain. He’s eighteen years old. He played football. He’d been playing football for a couple of years.” She pointed to a series of dark spots on the image, where the stain had marked the presence of something abnormal. “He’s got all this tau. This is frontal and this is insular. Very close to insular. Those same vulnerable regions.” This was a teen-ager, and already his brain showed the kind of decay that is usually associated with old age. “This is completely inappropriate,” she said. “You don’t see tau like this in an eighteen-year-old. You don’t see tau like this in a fifty-year-old.” (Malcolm Gladwell)

Yeah. Harmless, aggressive fun. Well, what about those super helmets that are supposed to be coming out now, that are supposed to cut down on brain trauma?

“People love technological solutions,” Nowinski went on. “When I give speeches, the first question is always: ‘What about these new helmets I hear about?’ What most people don’t realize is that we are decades, if not forever, from having a helmet that would fix the problem. I mean, you have two men running into each other at full speed and you think a little bit of plastic and padding could absorb that 150 gs of force?” (Malcolm Gladwell)

The most maddening part of the Gladwell article comes when he’s interviewing Ira Casson, who “co-chairs an N.F.L. committee on brain injury.” Casson is careful to engage in lawyerly doublespeak, and avoid all real responsibility.

“We certainly know from boxers that the incidence of C.T.E. is related to the length of your career,” he went on. “So if you want to apply that to football—and I’m not saying it does apply—then you’d have to let people play six years and then stop. If it comes to that, maybe we’ll have to think about that. On the other hand, nobody’s willing to do this in boxing. Why would a boxer at the height of his career, six or seven years in, stop fighting, just when he’s making million-dollar paydays?” He shrugged. “It’s a violent game. I suppose if you want to you could play touch football or flag football. For me, as a Jewish kid from Long Island, I’d be just as happy if we did that. But I don’t know if the fans would be happy with that. So what else do you do?” (Malcolm Gladwell)

In other words, as long as there’s money to be squeezed out of the public’s hunger to see men beat the shit out of each other, people like Casson will be all too willing to profit. The fact that it’s killing people, driving them to dementia and scarring their brains, doesn’t matter. There’s cash to be had. As long as people will pay, hey, people will play. And that’s it.

The problem is that this breaks the implicit contract between players of American football and the “managers” and “coaches” who push them to give their all. If you are going to push a dog, a child, or a man to give you their best effort, their everything, it is incumbent upon you, as Gladwell points out, not to march them off the end of a cliff. It is not enough to “lead.” One must lead responsibly. Why is this simple fact not taken into account? Oh, yeah. That little thing called profit.

Now, when I hear the whistles floating over from the middle school and the sound of kids flinging themselves at each other, I am going to be even more disgusted. If I’m ever over at the track while “practice” is going on, Jesus, I don’t know. It’s going to be difficult to watch. There are those kids, thinking that their parents and coaches know best. They wouldn’t ask us to do this, or let us do this, if it was dangerous, right?

Right?

Right?

^[1] To me, real football is what Yanks call soccer. American football is something different. YMMV

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This just in: I give myself such very good advice…but sometimes I do not follow it. For example, if my writing partner started doing this I’d say “Slow down. The engine inside your head is running at full speed, it’s going to take it time to slow down after that monster revision and then the proofing. You’ll strip some gears or blow a gasket if you don’t relax a little. Take a deep breath and take it easy.”

Very Good Advice. Except, well, I can’t. Stuff is due and if it isn’t turned in on time–yeah, you know where this ends. It ends with me running in circles barking and sobbing about how the sun is going to go out and it’s all my fault, waaah.

I know it’s not rational. But there comes a point after finishing a novel, especially if one don’t give oneself an adequate cushion of time for the snapback, where the flywheel inside one’s head is whirring madly and sparking. A massive long-term mental and emotional effort, which is basically what a novel is to your brain and feelings, has a momentum all its own. And when you finish that first draft, all that effort and momentum is still going. It’s like being on the freeway for a while and then taking the offramp and having that weird sensation when you slow down. Your body has become accustomed to eighty miles an hour (or, erm, the speed limit) and going fifty feels like twenty, and going thirty-five feels like crawling. You can run right into a wall if you’re not careful, because your body’s been tricked into thinking eighty miles an hour is the equivalent to standing still.

So my brain and emotions are still going at top speed from the novel, and the offramp is a pretty short one. Having to slam on the brakes and execute a turn at high speed–or even worse, zoom through the intersection (hoping no cars hit me) and back onto the freeway without a chance to stop for petrol or a meal or a loo–isn’t pretty or fun.

Moments like this are why I laugh so long and loud when someone tells me, “Gee it must be nice to sit around and just write all day.” Right before I have to hyperventilate and suppress the urge to punch whoever-it-is in their well-meaning-but-utterly-clueless face.

This is NOT easy. It has, like every job, some days when you’d just rather be at the beach or even napping in an air-conditioned bunker. Some days it’s even harder because the discipline can’t come from a boss eyeing you or peer pressure. It has to come from that habit one has built up of writing every day, the ass-in-chair-hands-on-keyboard.

And sometimes even that discipline isn’t enough and you have to dig down deep for sheer bloody-mindedness. Which is a quality I am told I have in abundant supply, and I am hoping it will be enough today…

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What’s the problem, you might ask? No problem. Just that I need to take a rest. I need to work, to sink into the worlds inside my head and get them out onto the page without interruption. Until tomorrow morning, I’m not up for anything except a true crisis. You’re in a Mexican jail at 3AM and you have only a cell phone and my number? Okay, cool, my first visit is the American Embassy and then I’m on a plane to come get you, don’t worry. But other than that, please, let me be alone today. I need it very badly.

It’s a funny thing–I am probably the least social person I know. And yet I almost always have a full house–kids, friends, friends of kids…I need large chunks of solitude that I hardly ever get because I have the wee ones. Sometimes it gets to the point where I retreat to a bathroom, close the door, and just sit on the floor for a little bit enjoying the idea of being alone as far as I can with cats and a seven-year-old yowling at the door. “MUMMY! WE DON’T EXIST IF YOU’RE NOT LOOOOOKING! COME OUUUUUUT!”

I exaggerate. But not by much. I am perfectly happy for long stretches of time in my own company. Which I see a lot of people just aren’t. Takes all kinds, I know…but I sorely need a break today.

Bukowski wrote a lot about needing solitude the way other people needed oxygen or food. It’s not quite that bad for me…but I understand.

So, my dears, I am off to be alone today. Of course, the kids are all home, so I will probably be driven to barring the bathroom door at some point.

I wonder if I can run a cord for the laptop in there? I will sit in a dry bathtub and write this scene that has to go in…

ETA: I find it amazingly ironic that Wordsmith’s quote of the day runs thus: “Solitude has but one disadvantage; it is apt to give one too high an opinion of one’s self. In the world we are sure to be often reminded of every known or supposed defect we may have.” -Lord Byron, poet (1788-1824)

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