Eight-Ring Circus

Busy-bee morning, though it is freezing still outside and we won’t get above the temperature of ice for a few days. It was so cold this morning I rolled out of bed and into my running togs and the Jedi bathrobe, and I am pondering the advisability of wearing said bathrobe for a 5K. (I mean, that qualifies as training, right? You can’t ever know when you might have to flee dressed as a Jedi.)

These are the things I think about.

I’ve put up the book page for Roadtrip Z. The first couple chapters go up on Thursday, or before if I get my act together. (Hint: probably the former.) I am SO EXCITED about this, guys. I like doing serials, I like the challenge and the weekly check-in with readers. I also like the idea of doing something new (for me). Since last year was so awful with the Steelflower debacle making the mortgage chancy, I’m happy to be trying something new. Publishing is kind of like being a shark–you stop swimming, you suffocate.

(It’s not shark-infested waters. That’s their home. They LIVE there.)

The only bad thing is the usual nerves (nobody will like this, they’ll hate it, it will suck, they’ll hate me, THE SUN WILL GO OUT AND WE’LL ALL STARVE) are magnified, and on a weekly basis, too. But really, that anxiety is never going to go away. Best just to realize it’s normal, plan for it, and move on.

(And every once in a while sit on one’s bed and scream into a pillow. Ever tried that? It’s liberating.)

It’s a busy morning partly because of work, and partly because Odd Trundles has been attempting to, erm, well, either mate with the Mad Tortie or dominance-hump her. She has variously taken refuge near the office heater (he keeps knocking over), my bedroom (where he follows, barking), or my lap, which means he gets, ahem, excited over my ankle since it’s the closest he can get. (You ever tried to write a sex scene while a bulldog attempts sweet sweet nookie to your ankle? It’s…exotic.)

Now the Tortie, somewhat shell-shocked, is clinging to my shoulder as I type this, and Odd has retreated to his bed in my office, licking his paws and making longing noises. The Tortie’s tail makes it somewhat difficult to see the screen, so I’m going to go put her somewhere out of Odd’s reach and head out for my run.

(Maybe with the bathrobe. I haven’t decided yet.)

This concludes the peek inside the eight-ring circus that is my head, and the accompanying circus of Chez Saintcrow. Thank you, and have a nice day.

(Hope you kept all your fingers and toes inside the carriage…)

Mostly Unsurprised

Yesterday I took time off from housecleaning chores to finish Nicholas Stargardt’s The German War. It seemed incredibly apposite reading, given the American greased-slide into fascism. (Which I hope will be arrested, but it’s looking less and less likely.)

When an enraged Hitler Youth leader wrote to Rainier Schlosser, Goebbels’s head of theatres, denouncing the city’s Schauspielhaus as a ‘hotbed of reactionary sentiment’, it was Schlosser himself who explained that ‘theatres with a pronounced liberal atmosphere are essential because they cater for a certain section of the audience and ensure that [these people] ultimately remain under our control.’ (Stargardt, The German War, p410)

This led me, of course, to think of the “furor” over Pence being booed at Hamtilton. Which propelled me down an interesting mental road, classifying der Turmper as a somewhat accidental dictator with no real ideological fixation except self-aggrandizement. I have often wondered, if der Turmper didn’t exist, would the GOP eventually have had to create him? Der Turmper has no constellation of talent that he shares an ideology with to perform the services classical fascism depends on. Consider that Breitbart fellow, Bannon: he is, at best, a shabby bargain-basement imitation of Goebbels, not a pioneering propagandist in his own right.

I keep filtering news, movies, Twitterstorms, and much other media through a wad of “is this an opiate for the masses?” and being unable to decide. Then I wonder if that very confusion means the slide into fascism is accelerating, because it’s enough to overwhelm and paralyse.

Another aspect of the book was the sheer amount of projection authoritarians engage in. I understand it’s a very important part of the authoritarian mindset and personality, but the gigantic, endemic proportions continue to surprise me. (Related: Believe the authoritarian when they tell you what they’re going to do.) Again and again, the Nazi rulership accused its opponents, domestic and foreign, of the exact things it had already done or was planning to do. I don’t quite have the patience or the stomach to delve into American exceptionalism and the projection that accrues from such, but I cannot think it’s dissimilar.

What also surprised me was the amount of internal emigration, not just by intellectuals or artists, but by regular diary and letter writers. The problems and tensions of such emigration–and the conditions that make it an attractive or necessary option for survival–are particularly resonant. Just the sheer amount of ugliness and “what has that apricot narcissist done now” swimming around in the news is enough to make me want to retreat, to curl up in a ball and hope the storm will pass me by. Selfish? Probably. Tempting? Certainly. Fighting the urge takes emotional energy. No wonder people got tired and retreated. Engaging day after day, even just signal-boosting, becomes a burden. If one has the luxury, the privilege of internal emigration, one can easily mistake it for self-care.

Stargardt’s prose is finely tuned and his authorial voice manages not to shy away from the horrors he has to pitilessly show. Sometimes his disgust is palpable, yet his tone never wavers. It must have been exhausting to write, and it was exhausting to read and feel the shock of recognition over and over again. I see the same shifts in private conversations, the same shifts in propaganda, the very same excuses being used today as were used in the 30s and 40s. The signposts are all there; the only thing missing are guns and tanks on American soil. I’m still absorbing the thought that if there isn’t an existential threat (like Russia’s invasion of Germany after Germany’s 1941 almost-went-all-the-way invasion of Russia), fascists will create one; Trump’s neuroses and the GOP’s pandering to hatred has done its best to Frankenstein one together. (“Immigrants! They’re Taking Away Our Things!”)

I’ve gone straight from Stargardt to Svetlana Alexievich’s Secondhand Time: The Last of the Soviets. The differences are only outweighed by the parallels. People are the same the world over, and the scourges of war, ethnic hatred, and authoritarianism are too. It’s not a particularly comforting thought right now, but at least I feel a little more prepared. After reading history, I am doomed to watch others repeat it, but at least I will be mostly unsurprised.

With that charming thought, I shall bid you adieu for the day. These copyedits aren’t gonna review themselves. Although sometimes I wish they would…

Pendulum, Post

wonder-woman Afterwar continues to fight me. Or more precisely, I continue to keep chipping away at it, my vision of what it should be interfering with what the book actually is, and once again I must learn submission to the shape of that is. I’ve had a good run of bookage I didn’t have to fight myself to carve free, lately, but this one seems fair to break that.

Part of the problem is that 2016 has been a very bad year. Death of loved ones both mine and others’, fascism stalking the land, intense stress, bad luck…the hits just keep on coming, and I keep hoping things will turn around. I am wavering between violent grief and equally violent hope, and both are bad for my nerves.

The other part of the problem is that this book is big and complex, and while I don’t have the entire shape of it, I know it’s larger than anything I’ve done so far. I get damn near paralyzed by the sheer size of the obstacle, forgetting I can break it into small chunks. When I do remember about the small chunks, there are so many of them scattered on the floor around me I get paralyzed by their sheer number. So I oscillate between too much detail and too much big-picture, with spates of furious working when the pendulum is passing between those two points. Once I get the first 50K of the book out of the way, some of the panic will be ameliorated, but…that’s a ways away.

With most books, the fear is, “I’m never going to finish and it will be crap anyway if I manage to do so.” This one is a heaping helping of “Oh, I’ll finish but it will be awful and the publisher will hate it and I’ll have to sell the house and THE SUN WILL GO OUT AND WE’LL ALL DIE.” So, you know, at least it’s something new to be afraid of? Every book is different, they all terrify one in different ways, it’s enough to make me type “why does Wonder Woman even bother” into Google just for a laugh.

Of course, Wonder Woman does bother. She bothers to do superhero things all the time, because it’s who she is. There’s a certain amount of comfort in answering one’s own silly question so definitively. Right now I’m just telling myself that even the worst years end, and at least 2016 isn’t the Year of the Divorce (which was bloody awful), and that I will finish Afterwar because I have no choice and even if it’s horrid, it will not be horrid and unfinished, and I can work with a whole corpse.

It’s not much, but it gets me through daily wordcount.

There is still no snow. There’s a bit of sunshine, which means it’s cold and clear. The hacking cough means I haven’t been running, but perhaps I can venture out for a short walk with Miss B, who is FULL OF ENERGY and does not understand why I am so slow and making such awful sounds at short intervals. She veers between worry and twitchiness, sort of like her owner.

Well. Time to wrap myself in a blanket and get the morning’s wordcount underway. Let’s hope the waning days of 2016 hold no more shocks or bad luck, hm?

Over and out.

Not Winning, Winning

I didn’t “win” NaNo this year. Well, I mean, technically I produced 70K in wordage, but 50K of that was spent on finishing the zero of Harmony. Which will never get published, goddammit, and is also not the NaNo goal I set myself.

Ah well. Win some, lose some. November was a hideous fucking month, for obvious reasons.

On the bright side, the zero draft of Harmony is finished, and Afterwar just broke 20K. The characters in the latter are beginning to do just as they please instead of what I’d prefer, so that’s a good sign. And I finally found a volunteer spot! Lots of places were swamped with volunteer candidates after the election, but I managed to find a place where I can do some good. So that gives me a warm fuzzy.

It’s getting chillier, and local squirrels are becoming braver. The Princess has sent me pictures of them crouching on the deck, eyeing the French door balefully. She’s not yet nervous, although I think she should be, because she sends those pictures when she’s at the table. I think the squirrels are trying to figure out how to break through said door and knock her down, preparatory to stealing whatever she’s snacking on at the time. She thinks I’m being ridiculous, and that there is no way a squirrel could break into our house.

Youth and optimism, right?

The library finally got a copy of The Angel of History for me to attempt. I bounced pretty hard off Alameddine’s first book, but I’m hoping this one will be the magic door. I also picked up another translation of Death in Venice, which I should read first while the other is still fresh in my head for the compare/contrast. So that’s my week’s reading sorted. Maybe, if this cold gets worse, I’ll put flannel sheets on my bed and just…retreat, for a day.

HA, WHO AM I KIDDING? I can’t afford to take a day off. Also, we’ve run out of tissues, so I’d be getting up every five minutes to blow my nose with toilet tissue. I refuse to put a roll of the latter next to my bed, for God’s sake. I’m not nearly ill enough for that.

Still, it’s nice to think of flannel sheets, lots of hot tea, and the luxury of simply reading for hours. One day I’ll set aside time just for that.

Right now, though, it’s back to work. I may not have won NaNo, but I still finished something, and that’s a spur to finish more. Winning enough for me, at least.

The State of the (Reading) Lili

Manuscript

It was a long weekend, my friends. The best part was Quasi-Surprise Houseguests, and the kids got to go see Fantastic Beasts. I did not want to go–I’m all Pottered out, I think. Besides, putting Eddie Redmayne (and his lips) in everything is beginning to wear on my nerves a bit. He’s a good actor, but I’ve reached full saturation on him for a while. But hey, the kids liked it! I’m told it’s very visually stunning.

Instead, I spent the movie evening at home with Mann’s Death in Venice, finishing it the next morning as I stood in my office, spellbound. I’d never read any Mann before, and this was the Heim translation, which I’m told differs significantly from an older one. Now I suspect I’ll have to compare/contrast translations. It’s sad that I can’t read it in the original, a German-speaking friend tells me the sentences are marvelous bits of architecture.

I went straight from that into a book on the Korean War, but I bounced off that pretty quickly. There was a passage of breathtaking racism, not from an interview but from the author, and that killed it for me. I’ve moved on to Reza Aslan’s Zealot and Alessandro Manzoni’s The Betrothed; the former is extremely readable and I’m hoping the latter will scratch my itch for something similar to Sir Walter Scott.

My bedtime reading, however, is Schom’s The Eagle and the Rising Sun, which is also eminently readable. Schom has an eye for human details, and though at least one reviewer got snitty about it, I enjoy my history with such little pleats and finishes sprinkled through. I hadn’t quite realized what an asshole MacArthur was in the Second World War. In the First he was a hero, there is no doubt. In the Second, well. Schom is clear about the old-boy network that protected MacArthur from the consequences of his actions, compounding the error and basically spitting on those who died as a direct result of his malfeasance and arrogance.

My Civil War research for Afterwar has reached a bit of a snag. I was halfway through Stampp on slavery in the antebellum South, but I had to lay that aside for a little bit. Current events make it even more stomach-churning than normal. Maybe when I finish the Manzoni I’ll be able to handle it emotionally. I think I have enough stuffed in my head that I just need to let it bubble and start finding my handholds inside the shape of the story itself. Later I’ll research for specifics and work my way through the backlog, but I need a breath or two before the plunge, so to speak.

I started logging my reading in an Excel spreadsheet a couple years back. It sometimes provides a necessary spur, but my inability to make charts of the information is maddening. It’s not Excel’s fault, it’s a function of my own complete non-understanding of even the most basic spreadsheet things, which drives me even crazier. I dislike being awful at things (who doesn’t?) and it would be nice to see, for example, how male and female authors stack up in my yearly reading total. So far this year, I’ve only finished forty-four books, but in my defense, that includes monstrous ones like War & Peace and Foote’s Civil War trilogy. I’d love to go at the moderate pace of a book a week, but life interferes. *sigh*

For now, it’s Monday, and that means a run and the creation of more words. I was able to luxuriate in reading for the past two days, but now it’s back to producing. Fueled, the engine inside my head is already at a high rev. It’s time for Callas singing Medea and some initial wordcount before I run to jar the rest of the day’s work loose.

Over and out.

It Isn’t Glamorous

Well, I’ve filled out availability forms for the local ACLU and the local food bank. Maybe they can share me? I need to budget my time and energy carefully for the long haul.

Today is for yet more stabbing on Harmony. Normally at this point I am racing breakneck for the end of a book, but this one is dragging and has become even more of an endurance contest. I’m not quitting, but my God, I’m tired of this goddamn book. It’s a good thing it’s just a gift, not for publication, because if I had to go through edits I think I might well set my desktop on fire and dance around it screeching.

Now there’s a mental image.

So today is for putting my head down and working through. One step at a time isn’t glamorous or adrenaline-junkie fun. It is, however, how the majority of progress gets made. If parenthood hadn’t taught me that, writing would.

Be kind to yourselves today, my dears, so you have the energy to be superhero-awesome. Take those little tiny steps. Don’t be discouraged by how small they are. They’re forward, and that’s what counts.

And now, I’m going to vanish into the wordmines…

Until My Heart Begs

GOOD MORNING.

Harmony is 95K, and it still will not die. I meant to spend November getting wordcount on Afterwar, but, um, it looks like the 50K I’m producing this month is going to this monster of story that will not lay down no matter how many times I stab it.

*time passes*

…I just sat here for a couple minutes, staring, fingers poised on the keyboard. I’m exhausted, most of my energy is going towards finishing this damn book, with a sizable portion of putting my money where my mouth is regarding resisting the fascism sweeping across America. This is a nightmare, and I am not resigned. However, you’ve seen that on my social media feeds. I’m not going to repeat it here, at least not today. I’m just too goddamn tired.

Today, I’m going to use some Focus and get this book closer to being finished. I’m going to take a few deep breaths and practice some self-care, because I am scraping the bottom of the barrel, energy-wise. I have a long run scheduled, which will hopefully renew some of my Zen. And, last but not least, I am going to tell my kids I love them, hug them, and reassure them. I suspect this last is most important of all.

So. *cracks knuckles* A few hundred words setting up this bringing-cult-leader-back-from-the-dead scene, then it’s out into the rain to run until my heart begs me to stop. Then run some more. Then it’s more writing.

Well, my day is sorted, I guess. Over and out.