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Just Tell the Fucking Story

I feel like I’ve been beaten with a stick.

I was getting behind on my novel and wrote about 2200 words yesterday. I know, it doesn’t sound like much, but if you have a full-time job, that’s rough.

I think people who do NaNoWriMo are insane (that’s about 1600 words a day every day for a month).

Doing 1000 words a day works best for me. It’s enough to give it some heft for the writing session, but not so much that I’m going nuts.

I wish I were Neil Gaiman sometimes. It seems so easy for him, how he seems to be able to pop out good material on a constant basis. Yes, yes, yes, I know. A) He’s talented. B) He went through that most rigorous of writing boot camps — working as a professional journalist. No artiste temperament allowed. Put out good copy or don’t eat.

At some point, what it really boils down to is, “Just tell the fucking story. Your hindbrain will take care of all that stuff literature professors get orgasmic about.”

We don’t learn to write fiction in school. We learn what it takes to make a story, yes. We learn what makes a story rich and thick and good. What we don’t learn is the process of putting all that good stuff into our story gumbo, and I think part of it is because in the throes of the process, it’s not entirely a conscious thing. I’ve never heard of a writer admitting to consciously saying/thinking, “Okay, I am going to make these sharks eating away at the huge swordfish a metaphor for my struggles to tell a good story and my fears of losing my abilities.” I have heard, however, writers saying that their best stuff is when they’re so focused on the story they’re telling that the keyboard/computer/typewriter fades away and all they’re conscious of is being there in the story.

In At the Foot of the Throne, the novel I wrote last spring, there’s this recurring theme that I did not put in consciously. I needed a scene where the main character did something astonishingly foolhardy to protect the life of her King (and lover) because he had no heirs — something for the good of the kingdom.

What happened was an encounter with a wild boar.

Throughout the novel, and I did not think consciously about this, the antagonist king is described as being “like a boar with a toothache” or some such wild pig comparative when someone comments on his anger or aggression.

I didn’t consciously choose the metaphor. What I did was trust my subconscious to come up with all that and stuck to telling the story.

Now I am not claiming to be a great writer of fiction by any means. I’m not at all. At best, I am just learning to be competent. What I’ve really got to learn are editing skills — cutting away the unnecessary stuff and keeping the structure strong.

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How Delightful

I put my palm pilot and keyboard to good use today and went over to Border’s to write for a bit.   Got nearly 2,000 words done, too!  Not bad for a morning’s work.

I don’t really like lugging my computer around, but find that writing on something that folds up to fit in my purse is really, really nice!

I have the added bonus of not being connected to the ‘net on it, so I am not tempted to do any web surfing or stuff like that.

I was wondering if the people around would be too much of a distraction from actually writing, but it turned out not to be so.  In fact, the people watching was considerably less of a temptation to let my mind go off task than using a computer connected to the ‘net is!  I did chat briefly with some people who were fascinated by the Palm and the little keyboard, but it wasn’t enough to throw me off my groove.

I’m using Quickoffice on my Palm, which syncs okay with my word processor.  Formatting isn’t ideal, but I’m writing a novel and in a novel formatting isn’t fancier than anything you’re likely to be able to do on a typewriter, anyway.   I really wish I’d had something like this as a teenager.  It would have kept me out of the basement when my hands cramped up too much from writing longhand out in the woods.  There was a rock and a log that would have made the perfect desk!  A laptop isn’t really someone you’re okay with taking out into the woods with you, but this?  Perfect.

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Sent it Off

I sent At the Foot of the Throne to Baen.

I got an automatic email saying it would take nine to twelve months to get back to me and I oughta go write another novel.

Okee dokee…

But if I don’t hear from ’em by the time Stoneflower is ready to submit, I’m querying another publisher. Just sayin’.

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A Tale of Two Novels

I’m actually working on two separate book projects. I’m writing one book and marketing another. After reading Miss Snark, Holly Lisle’s writing blog and PBW’s writing blog, I think I have a clearer idea of how to write a query. I have decided, however, to look for an agent instead of trying to get That Damned Book published myself because I hate selling with a deep and bitter passion. I’ll do it long enough to get myself an agent, but am happy to pay someone else for that part of the job if I can swing it.

I’m leaving At the Foot of the Throne up for another week, but then I need to take it down so it can be sold. Read it if you want. If not. that’s cool. I do ask that you do NOT pass this copy around. You may forward the link if you like, but after it’s down, please let it stay down. Thanks!

I don’t know what I was thinking when I had planned to start Stoneflower while still in the early phases of recovering from surgery. I suppose the story about Margaret Mitchell writing Gone With the Wind while laid up with a broken ankle caught my imagination. I don’t think Mrs. Marsh was on the “good drugs” during her writing phase. Just sayin’. I like to write and have a nice glass of something, but morphine doesn’t do it for me for the writing of good prose.

However, I did nibble at it. I have some 30-50K of notes from years past, and did sit my ass down right before my surgery and notecard the book. I do it slightly differently than the way Lisle recommends. I’ll decide how many scenes each character gets, write their names at the top of the card, then shuffle the stack and start brainstorming. Later, I go back and put them in the order I think will work. After that, I open a new document, set it up with title and all that, then do a bulleted list of each scene. When I finish a scene, I delete it from the bottom of my list.

I know some writers outline in detail, but that’s never worked too well for me. Writing with no plot at all, but a vague idea of the end never really worked, either. This is a happy medium that I like a lot.

Because I want to balance having a life with writing more than I did when I wrote At the Foot of the Throne, I’m having a weekly quota of 5,000 words instead of 7,000. I dove too deep into the last novel, and I don’t think it did my personal life any real good. Certainly it didn’t help me focus on my day job. Right now, I still need the day job. Here’s to the day when I don’t any more!

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Our Stupid Culture

I’ve had it up to my eyeballs with people over the age of 18 not held as accountable adults.

Do I think that there’s any magic age at which someone is an adult and that 18 is such an age?

No, not at all. As long it is stuck to socially, holding someone accountable as an adult at any age over puberty won’t get any real argument out of me. But this pretend stuff has got to stop. If you’re a kid at 18, then dammit, change the laws!

When I was in my mid-teens, the drinking age in Washington, DC was 18. I lived about 50 miles from there, and it was common among people between the ages of 18 and 21 to go to Georgetown to party.

The law changed around my 18th birthday. No grandfather clause. Like many young adults, I grumbled the famous cliche, “I’m old enough to die for my country, but not old enough to take a drink.”

Some “older and wiser heads”1 told me that I’d feel differently when I got older.

Well, I think as old as my parents were at the time is “older” enough. I still don’t feel differently about it.

I grumbled once that they oughta just raise the age of majority to 21 and be done with it. pointed out to me that the credit card companies would freak. They make a lot of money out of the 18-21 age demographic. If the age of majority is raised, you won’t be able to extend that age group credit at very high rates and with all those wonderful fees.

Yes, between the credit and drinking bad judgement, you might think I am in favor of an older age of adulthood.

I’m not. I’m in favor of a culture that teaches accountability, that stops calling a 19 year old college student a “kid” (which I do. I’m a product of my culture, but this I intend to try to stop), a culture that could somehow have real opportunities for youngster rather than forcing them to play at life for years and years after they’re biologically adults. It’s the rare teenager who feels of any use at all in society. Sure some do, and that’s awesome. But it’s rare, because for the most part they’re in a holding pattern. That holding pattern is lousy training for adulthood.

1Not my parents. I’d been allowed to drink on special occasions en famille since strangers started addressing me as “ma’am”. Call it sixteen.

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You've Gotta Be Kidding Me

I was going to write this short little thing to Bob Green (Oprah’s trainer, author of Making the Connection and some other stuff).

He feels like swimming is a lousy exercise for losing fat. I was going to point out swimming has been my major cardio, list how much I’ve lost1 and say “Nya, nya, nya”.

When I write an article, I often do as much as five whole minutes of research to find a website that supports some smartassed comment or other I make.

What do I find? Mr. Green is working with McDonald’s. Now, I’ve read Making the Connection and I know Green believes in a low fat diet. No, if you’re going to eat that way, McDonald’s doesn’t have a great deal to offer. Some, but not much, and no, not an Egg McMuffin without the cheese. BZZZTT!

I don’t respect this. It ain’t that I think a low fat diet is all that. I don’t. I eat low carb, high protein, and don’t sweat the fat. It’s what works for me. But it would be like me, after getting fit by what I’m doing, being a spokesman for an aerobics center that used as its marketing technique pink dumbbells, low weights, high reps and played into a fear of “getting big”.2

In other words, corporate whoring.

1 28 lbs since the beginning of July. A rate of about a pound and a half a week, which is a fine rate of fat loss.

2For those of you who may never have read any of my fitness articles, I believe in moderate cardio, and lifting hard and heavy. Putting on muscle is a great way to lose fat and get fit fast. Women won’t “get big” without special training and illegal or quasi-legal supplementation. Promise.

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Compulsory Public Service

Someone on my LJ friends list is in favor of having a sort of compulsory public service instituted in the US.

As a rational anarchist1, I’m against that.

This is not to say I am against public service projects. Not in the least. What I do say is that they should be voluntary.

I challenge anyone in favor of compulsory public service: If you haven’t done so (and perhaps many of you have. Good for you if you do!), pick a public service project and donate ten hours a month of your time to it.

Volunteerism on a regular basis doesn’t happen as often as it could. There are a lot of reasons for this. Housewives used to be the big volunteer base in the US, and between high taxation and a higher perceived “minimum” standard of living2, the stay at home mom is a rare bird. (For good or for bad. Me? I prefer to support myself, but that’s a personal taste thing). Government services have increased to the point where we genuinely believe that it is the Government’s job to take care of social needs, and we seem willing to pay for charity to be a highly specialized profession. We have a mental blind spot about it.

I’m not saying this as someone who spends a lot of her time volunteering. Maybe you count Polyfamilies as a community building volunteer type project. If so, I don’t do it any more, and that’s five years out of 37, ya know? And I don’t really count it. I’m neither proud nor ashamed of the fact I haven’t spent much time on community service, but I did want the facts straight.

I do think community service is a good and worthy thing. I just don’t think we should use our young adults as slave labor because we can’t be arsed to get off our butts ourselves! We’d be setting ourselves up for another fiasco like Social Security! I’m all for setting an example. You think community service is important? Go do it! Yes, many readers do. And good for you! Talk it up on your LJs, cause people should see a good example to follow.

1 “A rational anarchist believes that concepts such as ‘state’ and ‘society’ and ‘government’ have no existence save as physically exemplified in the acts of self-responsible individuals. He believes that it is impossible to shift blame, share blame, distribute blame . . . as blame, guilt, responsibility are matters taking place inside human beings singly and nowhere else. But being rational, he knows that not all individuals hold his evaluations, so he tries to live perfectly in an imperfect world . . . aware that his effort will be less than perfect yet undismayed by self-knowledge of self-failure.” — The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, Robert A. Heinlein

2 House size has increased threefold since the 1950s. — http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/abs/10.1162/1088198054084680

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But I'm TIRED!

In a change of topic to shock everyone, I’m going to talk about.

<drum roll>

Gaining physical fitness when you start out obese and severely out of shape.1

One of the realities of being quite overweight is that you are often flipping tired! Will taking off fat and building muscle help? Of course. No-one argues that. But, if you’re like a lot of other people you’re told, “Oh exercise is great, exercise is wonderful, you’ll feel so much more energetic if you work out!”

Yes, and no.

What very few people who try to encourage us to work out say is, “The first month of starting a fitness program, even a very sensible one within your present fitness level, is going to mean that you are going to be tired. You’re going to need an extra half an hour to an hour’s sleep a night so that your body can build the muscle it needs to start getting stronger and more energetic.”

Oh, they’ll slip in “get plenty of sleep”, and yes, that’s good advice, but the detail is generally lacking. I’m not sure why. Maybe they’re afraid of scaring us off from starting. It’s a mistake, though. We know how to cope with difficult. We do it every day of our lives.

It doesn’t scare me to know that I’ll be tired for a month, but the payoff will be feeling great after that! I bet it doesn’t scare you, either. But, if I’m told, “Just exercise and you’ll feel great”, and I don’t feel great for weeks, I’m going to think something is wrong. Why in the world would I keep up with that? And why don’t more exercise proponents talk about it?

The problem is a simple one. It’s easy to forget what starting out feel like. I woke up this morning feeling a little sore because I’d done some different lifts last night. But it was a “good” sore — kind of a “Go muscles for gettin’ all strong and stuff!” When I got in to work, I ran up to the third floor with Disturbed blasting in my iPod, and my backpack full of exercise gear because I could and it felt great! I felt like I could wrestle a grizzly bear, give him the first fall, then eat him raw without salt. Back in July when I was starting out with serious lifting, I was resting at each landing (which I hadn’t been doing before) because my muscles were sore and I was tired.

A properly designed exercise routine isn’t an instant payoff thing. Oh, you’ll notice little positive changes early on. If you have trouble sleeping, you might find you sleep more deeply, and wake feeling a little better. When I found a cardio-type exercise that didn’t hurt, I was lucky enough to start getting the endorphin rushes pretty early on. You’ll notice little subtle changes in strength and endurance if you pay attention, but they are pretty subtle. In general, though, at the end of the day, you’re going to be tired. That’s okay. Your body is obediently trying to adapt to your new routine and needs the sleep to do it.

But that wonderful rush of energy and strength is a minimum of a month away — more likely two or three.

Thing is, you’ve sweated out two or three months of something difficult to get something good. I know all of you have. You might have a college degree, or have tediously practiced an instrument to learn to play, or done any of a number of things. This is no different, really.

1Yes, I do have other things on my mind, but they mostly involve getting Keith Hamilton Cobb in… Nevermind… Don’t want you clawing out your eyeballs.

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Proud as Lucifer

I had a glorious swim today. I checked out a whiteboard that had a workout for a swim team on it, and I figured I’d try to do as much of it as I could in 20 minutes.

It felt great, slicing through the water, feeling my limbs extend and pull as I tried strokes I don’t often use, doing the intervals and just having a deliciously wonderful time getting all hot and out of breath.

After he workout, I bounded out of the pool, and pulled off my cap, feeling the hot slap of my wet hair hit my back.1. I went to get my towel, ID and my workout record sheet.2. One of the lifeguards caught my eye and went over to a table to sign off on the sheet.

“Good job,” he said as he took the sheet, and signed it, then said Very Seriously again, “Good job.”

I had been flying up until then. While my mouth smiled, I thanked and I left the pool area normally, I cringed into a little ball inside.

Why?

It embarrassed me that a boy young enough to be my son said such a thing. Now, I have accepted similar compliments from boys that much younger than I am before and wiggled with satisfaction and accomplishment. Granted, they usually wore white pajamas and had black belts around their waists, but they were still that young.

I got to thinking about it as I showered the chlorine out of my hair and tried to pull jeans onto my slightly damp body.

That boy, a lifeguard and I suspect at least a junior swimming coach, did not mean the slightest harm or condescension in what he said. Far from it. For the last eight weeks, he’s seen me several times a week go to the pool. He’s watched my improvements in speed and form in the pool, and while I doubt he’s paid that much attention, my general shape change as well. I would bet a fair amount of money he thinks seeing improvement in anyone jumping in that pool is cool.

I’ve been called “as proud as Lucifer” more than once. I always kinda liked it. Damn’ right I’m proud! I’d think to myself. I did not get that this is not a compliment.

The classic story of Lucifer goes something like this:

Lucifer was the most beautiful of the angels and the closest Being to God, whom he loved with all his heart, soul and angelic might.

He watched with interest and excitement when God made the earth, separated the heavens from the earth, filled the sea with fish, and the land with animals. Then He made a Being in His own image — a being he loved and wanted His angels to love as well.

But then He asked for one thing more.

“I want you angels to bow down to this new Being.”

Lucifer was shocked. He was crushed. He was horrified. “But Lord, you cannot ask me to bow to any but you. I won’t do it!”

God, who could hardly believe anyone, much less His beloved Lucifer would defy Him, cast Lucifer from His sight.

Now…. That’s usually where the story ends.

But there’s more to it.

You see, God repented of His anger3 and reached out his hand to Lucifer, who by this time had decided he needed neither love nor kindness any more, he’d been too hurt and no longer trusted kindness or love. The angel turned his face from from his former Beloved to live in solitude with is own thoughts.4

You can draw many conclusions from the story and take many lessons5. For me, in this moment, the lesson of the story is not to close myself off from kindness, or be so proud that I’m embarrassed rather than pleased at it.

1 You can imagine how hard I was going for my hair to be hot in a pool!

2My insurance company will reimburse an amount that actually covers a basic gym membership at the college for employees if you get it documented that you worked out 2 times a week for 12 weeks out of 20. A sweet and easy deal.

3Don’t get shocked at the idea of God repenting of anger or judgment. God repents of many things in the Bible. Look it up!

4YOU HAVE PERHAPS HEARD THE PHRASE THAT HELL IS OTHER PEOPLE?
“Yes. Yes, of course.”
Death nodded. IN TIME, he said, YOU WILL LEARN THAT IT IS WRONG.
— (Terry Pratchett, Small Gods)

5You could actually make a pretty good case for the fact that the One True Love idea is a serious sin.

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Language and Choice

I have to go to work in the morning.

I have to get the house clean.

I have to finish this term paper.

I have to pay my bills.

I have to make this sweater for my mother.

Ever said anything like that? (Be honest, you have!) We all do. It’s an idiomatic quirk of the English language. Idioms are telling, however, and this is something I’ve been examining lately.

I’ve been doing an experiment lately –replacing “have to” with “choose to” or “want to”.

“Honey, I want to get enough sleep not to feel badly in the morning when I go to work, so I want to go to bed now.”

“I know that Martian Spider Silk would make a great sweater, but I am choosing to pay my rent rather than buy the silk at this time.”

“I want to get the house clean.”

I notice a serious emotional difference. Instead of feeling put upon, I feel a sense of power. Now, people often feel different things, but I find that because I am removing “have to” and “should” from my vocabulary, I am experiencing two things:

First, I feel a sense of empowerment. There is this sense of endless possibility, and I could choose any of it. This means, I am much more focused on doing what I really want.

Second, a sense of background guilt is gone. I don’t feel bad if I don’t clean the house. I chose not to! I didn’t skip out on what I “should” do. If I want a clean house more than I want to fuck around on the Internet, I am perfectly free to put the computer down and pick up the cleaning rag.

Now you might say, “But I don’t have a choice — not really!”

But you do. For every Harriet Tubman, there were hundred of people in the ante-bellum South who said, “I don’t like slavery, but I can’t help any of the slave escape. It’s too dangerous.”

What they were not saying was, “I am choosing not to help in this, as I do not want to risk myself/my wife/my husband/my children in this. My immediate family is more important.” This is not a judgment. Were my immediate family not more important to me than the General State of People I Don’t Know, I would be living very differently from how I choose to live.

When you remove “have to” from your life, all of a sudden you are faced with the fact that everything you do is a choice and it is very difficult to hide from facing the reality of choices you don’t want to make or are uncomfortable coping with the consequences of. I choose to be heavy rather than to diet, and I am aware that’s a choice. I choose to write a lot because it works for me and makes me happy. I choose to get rid of clutter, not because it’s acceptable to have a neat house, but because it makes me happy. If I say, “I am choosing not to clean the house” and there is food rotting in the sink, I am directly confronted with the fact that there are things more important to me than whether or not the house stinks. The consequence is there and there is nothing to hide behind.

We live in a culture that trains us to be uncomfortable with facing up to doing what we want. Not only that, but we live in a culture that is not very accepting of choice. You’re supposed to want to earn a lot of money and accumulate a lot of physical things whether that really makes you happy or not. You’re supposed to have children, and God forbid if you say you choose not to.

Facing the fact that everything you do is a choice takes a lot of courage. You really face up to your self in a lot of ways, and it can be a path to self-judgment. You can feel bad about yourself because you really don’t want what you should want, whether or not it’s because of idealism or something more external. It’s a risk, too. Try saying, “I choose to do X” to someone in your life who doesn’t want you to do X. You can get all kinds of reactions from (happily) supportive to downright hostility. You’ll be asked to justify yourself. Now certainly you can choose to, but ya know what? You do not have to make choices that you can explain to another person such that you get an agreement as to the validity of your choice. You might want to. That choice might work best for you. But you do not have to.

It’s always down to choice.