shooting from the hip

Stability Underfoot

I just want to stay in bed reading schlock and playing AbyssRium today. Unfortunately, the flu–I’m pretty sure it was flu, I certainly ached all over for it–has abated, which means I’m back to running. One cannot do that while snuggling in bed, and Miss B, in forced leisure while I hacked, coughed, and shivered, is brimming with energy that needs to be worked off. Otherwise she will find herself Jobs Around The House, and they will likely involve Things Mum Does Not Want Done. I won’t be cross with her for them, because she is Dog and Dog Can’t Help It, but I will be rather cross with myself for being a lazy puppy mum and not providing proper work for her.

The snow and freezing rain all melted off. There was a day when I couldn’t tell if it was raining or if the stuff falling from the sky was melting ice from the tree branches. The trunks were lathered with bubbles, there was so much water running everywhere. We live on a hill, and often the only thing keeping us from sliding down it are the fir trees. They take up an amazing amount of water, and when people higher on the hill cut down a lot of their trees I could really tell the difference in the runoff. Idiots. Branches on the roof are a small price to pay for stability underfoot.

I spent the weekend doing a revise on Harmony before sending it off to my agent and writing partner. It’s not going to see publication, I wrote it specifically and only because my agent wanted to read more YA from me and I wanted to give her a gift. Pretty much the only gift I do not suck at giving is my time and stories, so I invested heavily in this one. I hope she likes it. And my writing partner got it because, well, she kept me sane during finding said time to finish it. I agonized over spending time on it instead of a paying project, mostly because after the Steelflower fiasco and the concomitant financial hit things are tight.

I did try to open up the Steelflower 2 file on Sunday, just to see if the physical reaction had gone down. It hasn’t; I shook and dry-heaved into my office rubbish bin. The feeling of violation is as strong as ever, and I am despairing of it ever going away.

Anyway, I have Cormorant Run copyedits to deal with this week, and Afterwar wordcount to get in. There’s no such thing as a day off for the foreseeable future. I’m also contemplating a serial for my Patreon folks once the new year is here. If you’re interested in that sort of thing. I just have to decide which story simmering in the back of my head will do for such a thing.

And now, it’s time to get out the door and run. Gently and easily, but enough to work off Miss B’s fidgets and make her livable again. She knows, since I’m in my running togs, and is being Very Patient while I sit in front of the glowing magic box. The ways of the Hoomin Monkeys are strange to her, and she tries very hard to be patient, indeed. The need for action is twitching and trembling under her skin, and mine as well. Odd Trundles could also do with a constitutional, since it’s been too cold and slipper for his short-haired, clumsy self lately, poor fellow.

Off I go.

Now We’re Here

shehulkicon The zero draft of Harmony is finished! It’s over 100K, easily my longest zero yet. I dislike it, as a book. It’s messy and structurally unsound, and revising it will no doubt be a chore, and I slogged through it for so long I have grown to hate it with the fiery hate of a thousand suns.

All in all, usual for finishing a zero draft. When I go back, I’ll no doubt find passages that maybe aren’t so bad, and ways to fix the structural problems, and and and.

I took yesterday off–for a certain value of “off”, I guess, one that included a doctor’s visit and all the chore backlog from weeks of stabbing the book and hoping it would die. Also as usual: a monstrous headache and the urge to try that tiny bottle of Drambuie I bought to see if I’d like it. Conclusion: It’s not for me, if I want liquorice I’ll go straight for absinthe, thanks.

So today is for a run, and for turning my attention to Afterwar. I meant to use NaNoWriMo to finish the first half of Afterwar, but the last 50K of Harmony intruded. I’ll still aim to use that spur to get me through. My head doesn’t hurt quite as much, and while I’d love to take a week off, I’m already behind and the urgency of writing is poking at my back and pulling my hair.

The funny thing (well, funny-strange, not funny-haha) is, one of the pitches for Afterwar was the simple question: what if Trump won? I’m not sure if my precog ability was working overtime or if it was just the most horrific topical scenario I could come up with to express the alt-historical track I intended the book to take. Of course, now we’re here, and the small hands of the orange demagogue are grasping at corruption riches while his “friends” try to normalize registering people to send them to camps.

The darkest timeline, indeed. And we’re only a few days into the “transition”. Great.

Writing has always been, for me, a scream against the darkness. I suppose now I’ll find out where my courage truly lies, again.

With that ultra-cheerful thought, I’ll sign off. Perhaps I can sweeten the pill by saying this: if you have often wondered, as I have, what you would do in said darkest timeline, well, now’s the chance to find out. Think about it beforehand, so when the bite comes, you’re ready. I have faith (faint and fading, but faith nonetheless) in us.

Over and out.

Inconvenience Bigotry

wonder-woman

So. The popular vote elected our first woman president, but the electoral college will hand it to a racist orange malignant narcissist and his super-evil twopence piece who will, God help us, probably be doing the actual governing. Hatred has reaped a rich harvest. I am hoping its sowing methods are not sustainable and the ground will be exhausted ere long. Optimistic, maybe, but I have to believe that or I’ll go even madder than I already am.

In light of this, I have two things to say. (I have more, but two will suffice today.) The first is simply this:

When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, “Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.”

—Fred Rogers

I would add, when scary things are happening, be one of the helpers. If that means you practice self-care so you can be strong for others, great. If it means protesting, fine. If it means hugging everyone you love and committing afresh to daily kindness and decency, okay. You know best how to help in your own circumstances and life.

The second thing I have to say is for my fellow white people. Yes, I am talking to you. Sit up, pay attention. This is on us.

Do not be polite to bigotry anymore.

I’m hearing a lot of “come together” rhetoric right now. I’m hearing a lot of “part of my family is racist but I still have to see them at Thanksgiving.” Here’s the thing: you don’t have to lend yourself to hatred. You really don’t.

Racists often talk about how they’re “ostracized” for their “beliefs.” You know what? Good. Racism is ugly. Hatred is ugly, and it is not worth a whit of social acceptance.

When your elderly Fox-News-swallowing neighbor starts in with the coded dog whistles, walk away. When your family members make “Killary” jokes, make your disgust plain and walk away. When that guy on the bus is yelling at a PoC to “go back to where you came from” or “sit at the back of the bus”, say something. You don’t have to engage the asshole directly, but sitting next to the target of harassment and striking up a conversation about the weather, using your body language to shut the harasser out, can work wonders.[1] Let your face show how disgusted you are with that asshole. Make it clear their behaviour is absolutely repugnant.

One of my favourite things to say to assholes like that is simply, “Stop that. You know better.” Because they do.

Look, everyone is saying “the polling mechanisms are broken!” No, they’re not. What happened is simple: People know racism and hatred and Donald Trump are repugnant. They know. Having to say you support Trump while talking to a pollster is repellant. You could not believe yourself a good person and do that, and most people want to believe they’re good. (I could go on a rant about most people stopping at four on Kohlberg’s stages of moral development here, but I won’t.) In the voting booth, nobody is watching, and you can be as much of a shitheel bigot as you want to be.

Which is fine. I’m okay with the voting booth letting people show the aggregate ass-end of white supremacy. It’s not like anybody didn’t already know, and the right to vote cuts both ways. But out here in other spaces, we have the absolute right to be disgusted, and to show our disgust.

Let’s make racism so socially unacceptable that even their “polite” dogwhistles and little euphemisms are repellant. Let us make it clear how fucking loathsome bigotry and hatred are.

Now, I can hear some of the bigots whining already. That will make us a minority! You can’t pick on minorities! Nice strawman, try again. I am not advocating violence, simply clear disgust. I’m saying it needs to become the norm to treat bigotry, hatred, and harassment with the contempt it deserves in every social space. When it becomes an inconvenience and a moral and social cost to be a Turmpist “alt-right” asshole, less people will do it.

Why am I saying this directly to my fellow white people? Deploying our privilege to show everyone that this shit is not okay is on us. Getting up and pointedly leaving the room your racist Uncle Bill holds forth about building a wall and making Mexico pay for it is the least you can do for humanity. Using your privilege to shield the target of harassment on a bus or the street or in the workplace is a righteous act.

Maybe it’s just because I’m forty and I have little to no patience for bullshit. Maybe it’s because the field in which I grow my fucks is barren now, or maybe it’s because I have kids and I want the world I leave them to be a little better than I found it, or at least a little less hateful. Maybe it’s because I’m goddamn tired of people nodding and smiling and smoothing things over when some crepe-necked white man assaults everyone around who doesn’t look like him. Maybe it’s because I’m a fucking human being. I don’t care.

Do not give people a pass when they spout bigoted bullshit. Let them find out that hate is lonely and ugly. Let that truth inconvenience them. A very wise friend of mine is of the opinion that Americans don’t make a move until their convenience is threatened, and I think she’s right.

So let’s inconvenience the fuck out of bigotry, my friends. Because we know better.

[1] I can already hear a bunch of people saying, “But what if it’s unsafe?” Well, you’re the judge of that in the situation, fine. Do as your conscience and safety dictate.

Not Too Wild-Eyed

That moment, after a super intense period of stress, where your body takes revenge for the emotions, whatever repression you’ve done to manage the worst of them, and the nail-biting anxiety? That’s where I am. The Princess brought home a cold from work, and I put off getting sick until the gauntlet was finally run. I knew I was storing up trouble, but in classic Lili fashion, didn’t care.

*sigh* I give myself very good advice, sometimes don’t follow it, and often decide to just run the fuck through at full speed and worry about the bruises later.

The good news is…the stressful events are done. I am once again producing paid work for a publisher. Someone I love very much has passed on while in hospice care; he is in no more pain and I was able to see him before he went on that greatest of journeys. I am over the worst of the cold and can get back to running next week. The meds mean I’ve been sleeping, at least.

Now it’s just fallout to deal with. I retreated into a good 200 pages of the third volume in Shelby Foote’s Civil War narrative yesterday. A good fifty of those pages were lit with sunlight coming in the front window, so there was probably a little vitamin D in there. The cold is retreating, and I think I’ve probably cried all I’m going to for a little while. I’ve turned my email autoresponders on; whatever business is left over for the rest of this week can wait.

The kids are healthy, my sisters are in contact, the dogs are content, the cats are their usual selves and the cavy is monstrously fat and extremely active. Agent and editors seem to be happy enough with me, though I’ve been somewhat of a trial to them in the last month, I’m sure. The people I rely on to keep me on the straight and narrow tell me it’s fine, I’m not too wild-eyed.

I had to make an emergency trip to the PO box recently, and buy stamps from the automated kiosk there as well. It was after hours, and a woman who spoke little English was in distress, with something she had to mail. My fierce maternal instincts took over, and I went to work–grabbing an envelope, addressing it, putting her return address on it, popping enough stamps on it to cover the cost of the envelope AND the postage. We both had Google translate on our phones, and between that and gestures and babble, we solved the problem and got the thing into the mail for her.

I tell this story because I realized, when I got into my car–still in my pyjamas, having driven all the way over muttering to myself over having to leave the house at all when I felt like warmed-over crap–that I felt…better. Helping someone else is an anodyne, especially when one’s own life holds some unpleasantness. It feels good to pitch in, to help solve someone else’s problems or to simply listen to them and share the weight, knowing you’re relieving some of the pressure inside someone else just by being there.

It almost makes me pity people who lack empathy, because the dopamine hit from helping someone else out is so nice. I wonder if they just don’t feel that, and it baffles me. Doing the Right Thing, pitching in, helping where one can is one of the few surefire ways to ameliorate the black hole, at least for me.

All the way home from the post office, the sun peeked through clouds as it sank, and the light was golden. The crows were out, and they help too. They’re smart, strong survivors. I know the recent stress won’t break me, that the overwhelming feelings will pass, and that even the runny nose and annoying body aches will pass as well. It’s not comfortable, but I can get through it. That’s what forty has become for me: the consciousness that I’ve made it this far, that the feelings will pass through and away, and I’ll still be here when the wave is spent.

It’s enough.

Joy in Candy

I was going to write a long post about this past weekend, but…no. I just can’t.

Instead I will wish you a happy Samhain, a fruitful New Year, and much joy in candy and delight tonight. Thank God I have the kids and the dogs to keep me busy. I don’t want to brood tonight. I mean, a little bit of brooding is good for the soul and necessary as a mirror to judge one’s reflection in, but I’m afraid I’d fall down the well and have to climb out without even a Lassie to bark for me.

Anyway. Happy Samhain. 2016 can be done anytime now. ANY GODDAMN TIME NOW.

More Than I’m Doing

schoolbus It’s that time of year again–the time when I get a deluge of letters from people who have school projects due, and want to put me in those projects in some way. I feel kind of bad that I can’t answer each one fully, but if I did, I would have no time to write and consequently no income. I’ve tried to ameliorate this by talking about my writing process openly and even collecting essays about it into convenient form, but each year, as school terms wax and wane, I get spates of requests. I’m honored to be asked, of course, and I wish students all the best. I just cannot do more than I’m doing.

This past weekend, I finished Volume II of Shelby Foote’s massive work on the Civil War. I was warned going in that Foote bleeds magnolia sap, and it’s been interesting to see subtle (and not-so-subtle) choices made in that vein. He is never so happy as when the South wins one, and never so conflicted as when he faces the fact that the South simply refused to turn away from slavery, no matter what. At least he has the intellectual honesty to admit and highlight the latter, though one can sense his gritted teeth during those passages.

I popped by the library to look at what they had in the way of Civil War stuff, too–specifically, about guerrilla actions in that timeframe. They had nothing much, and I suspect I’ll be forced to mine Foote’s bibliography for some starter overviews. This is, of course, me gearing up to write Afterwar. The prospect of that trilogy terrifies me as much as ever, but mere fear can’t be allowed to stand in the way. My head is a strange place these days, between geography, logistics, and the peculiar creative ferment of turning “tomorrow” into “history” and letting the result show me its own internal logic.

I’m also working on the zombie apocalypse book, a monster if there ever was one. I’m attempting bigger zero drafts–in the 100k+ range instead of 60-70k. This calls for more endurance and a greater attention to certain types of structuring. I’m hoping it means I’m growing as a writer.

These things mean Harmony has to be set on the back burner. I don’t like that, I’d rather finish it first, but needs must when the devil drives, and I have a deep abiding need to feed my dependents and keep the house standing. It won’t be hurt by a little more time to boil in the back of my head.

It’s a good thing we’re coming up on NaNoWriMo. I still haven’t decided which work I’ll use for it this year, but the time is getting close. Maybe I’ll use it to finish the last half of Harmony while I also lunge for the end of the zombie book. Once I turn to Afterwar, there will be no room in my head for anything else, so the sooner I get these other two finished, the better.

The only other news from Chez Saintcrow is the change of seasons bringing a heightened amount of squirrel antics. Every time I let the dogs out, one of the arboreal rats decides to induce a merry chase or two. Miss B’s fondest desire is to catch one (again, since she has a dim recollection of doing so at least once before) and Odd’s entire world narrows to the excitement of making a new friend each time. I have committed to wearing shoes even inside until things calm down a bit, because you never know. Chance favors the prepared, and all that.

So. Wish me luck, and something for the inevitable headaches this proposed amount of work will spur. *sigh*

Over and out.