Cross-posted from The Midnight Hour

It's Friday again. Which means another post about writing. (Yes, I know I missed last week. Trust me, I was juggling other chainsaws.) Right now I'm at the end of an all-night editing session, so bear with me if I ramble a bit, but I had this all in my head before I tried (and failed) to go to sleep last night. So hopefully it will come out coherent.

Are there any new writers in the audience? Young writers, or those who are just starting out? Come a little closer and sit down in front, you guys. This one's for you.

Welcome to writing. It's a hard job. I think it's one of the best jobs in the world. But it is so easy to be blown off-course.

There are a lot of reasons why you'll tell yourself you can't write. There's the I Don't Have Time reason. There's the I'm Not Good Enough Yet reason. There's the Everyone Will Laugh At Me And I'll Only Be Rejected Anyway reason. There's the Words Never Come Out Like I Want Them To reason. And millions, billions more.

There is one thing I want to tell you about, something absolutely critical to a writer.

It's the ability to give the whole bloody world the finger. You know which one I'm talking about. That finger.

Look, this is not an easy job. But it can be done. You just won't get anywhere if you let any of those naysaying voices, whether they're in your head or coming from someone else's mouth, stop you. Lean in, guys. I want to tell you something important.

It is a thousand times better to write something crappy than not to write at all.

I am deadly serious. The worst bit of talentless dreck full of "that"s and passive verbs is better than shooting yourself in the foot before the race is even started. It doesn't matter WHAT you write. It matters only THAT you write.

I've had a couple teachers tell me they have their students read my writing posts. (I'm honored, by the way.) Hello, kids. It's good to have you along. Here's the one thing I want to tell you: Don't you ever, EVER let anyone stop you from writing. Go ahead and feel afraid--it's okay to be scared. (The power to transform the world is incredibly frightening, isn't it?) Let that fear drive you to say the things that need to be said. Let it be fuel. Keep writing. Just keep your fingers on the keyboard, keep the pencil on the paper. It will all turn out fine, I promise. I swear.

Just keep writing.

Look, a work doesn't have to be perfect. If a perfect novel was ever written the universe would probably implode from the antimatter or something. We are imperfect beings in an imperfect world. Just get the writing done. Get the work out on the table, and then you can cut it up and edit it and prettify it. First, as a very wise writer once told me, you write the goddamn novel. Then you worry about everything else.

A lot of new writers think they have to edit and polish as the damn thing is coming out of their heads. As you get better at writing a lot of editing will go on in-process. But often, new writers will fall into the trap of second-guessing every word, and they get frustrated. Nothing comes out right. The words just won't do what they want.

And they quit.

You don't have to get that frustrated. Focus on getting the work out first. There's plenty of time for revisions. Believe me, you'll revise the damn thing so much you'll be sick of it. Have fun and don't sweat while you're actually writing it, at least.

And then there's that other reason to quit: other people. Or other people's voices in your head, saying You can't do that! You can't SAY that! This is horrible! Who do you think you are, anyway? Everyone's going to laugh at you!

I call that little voice the Internal Censor. And it's hard not to be so self-critical that it seems safer to just let the blank page lie there. It's hard to push those voices aside. It's achingly hard to believe that you have a story that needs to be told when the world seems designed to tell you you're insignificant. And young writers have the hardest time of all, sometimes, because they haven't developed that sense of proportion yet--the one that tells them, however faintly, that the self-critical voices are full of horsepuckey.

Hey, don't get me wrong. The sense of proportion doesn't get louder when you get older. Sometimes you just learn to listen to it, that's all.

If you can, if it will help, give those nasty voices the old finger. Tell them to eff off. You have a right to write. You further have the right to write whatever the hell you please. So it's not Shakespeare or Chekhov or the famous Great American Novel. So what? Every word you put down, every day you're at the keyboard or holding the pencil, is better than a day of being too afraid to do it.

Don't ever let anyone tell you that you don't have the right to write. If you love writing, if it burns in your soul like a rocket, even if you just enjoy it and feel compelled to do it, you have a right to write. Don't stop because that naysaying little voice in your head tells you it's not good enough. Don't stop because Aunt Martha would be so embarrassed if she knew you were writing THIS! Don't, at bottom, write for anyone else.

Hey. Psst. Lean in just a little closer, because I'm going to whisper. This is Sooper-Sekrit.

Write to please yourself. Write what you want to read. Write what makes you feel good. Write what makes you tingly. Write in any genre you damn well please. Write cross-genre. Write about whatever you want to.

Yes, yes, you do have to worry about grammar and structure and story and characterization and making your work readable. That's why this is an art, that's why this is work. But at the heart of this work is joy. If you write what you love, what pleases you, your work will have a ring to it. It's like fine crystal. It sings. Even if it's sloppy. Craft can be learned. With enough patience and persistence you can learn when to dangle your participles and cleft your gerunds. You can learn the rules, and they will help you.

But the joy, it's a gift. Don't throw it back in the Universe's face by writing something you hate or writing what you think you should, or what someone will Approve Of. Write whatever makes you happy. Put that pen to the paper, put that pedal to the medal, lay down some tire-rubber and streak for the horizon. Race to beat the Devil. Do it because it feels good and it's what you want to do.

Those voices always come back. I don't think I've ever met a single writer who didn't have them in his or her head. Get practiced at telling them to sod off. Learn to distinguish those voices from honest critique or emotional blackmail. Critique you can accept gracefully, blackmail and drama-queening you can walk away from.

But the self-critical voices? You can just give them the finger. Yes, that finger. Tell them to #%$& off.

If nothing else, it's tremendously satisfying. And in this line of work, we take our satisfaction where we find it. All right? You dig?

Now. Go write what you love. Don't let anyone stop you. Laugh in the face of that fear, even if your heart is cold and your knees are knocking. Go set fire to the words you were given to write, the words only you can say.

Go out there and give 'em hell.

Good morning. I finally feel human again. Or at least, reasonably so. How about you?

Since today is a catch-all type of day, I figure I'll do a catch-all kind of post, of Things I've Been Wondering Lately. I wonder about a lot of things and I suppose this is my chance to share the joy.

* I finished reading The Guns of August and immediately wanted to know more about the First World War. I've got a couple books about Tannenberg and the Eastern Front during WWI (I needed to do this for character research for the YA). I guess the clearest thing coming through, when reading about war, is what a waste it is. A monumental, colossal waste. I wonder why people in power are so fond of it?

* Not just that, but I've been seriously wondering lately about economic issues. I'd wonder why capitalism always wants to have a huge base of "cheap" (read: as close to "slave" as possible) labor, and those who profit from that cheap labor are usually rich and spend a lot of money ensuring the supply of cheap labor--but then I think of other economic systems that rely on a mass of cheap labor, like Stalinist Russia or even modern China. It makes me wonder if cheap labor is a political question instead of straight economics.

* And the more I read about economics, the more I realize that it IS a political question, because the intersection of money and power is political. Or to put it another way, if you don't have enough money or control over your production, you probably yearn for revolution and social progress a lot more than if you have a whole fortune to lose if you have to start paying your workers decent wages.

* Which makes me wonder about imperialism too. Is a condition of empire to have a huge poverty-stricken underclass to provide that cheap labor?

*Why in the bloody blue blazes are they saying it's going to be in the mid-nineties tomorrow? What the hell is going on here?

* Education is something I stand firmly behind. But the current norm in schooling isn't education, it's indoctrination. And then there's the problem of funding--schools and libraries, if you look at the money spent on them and their staff, are just not a priority in America. (Neither, apparently, is healthcare or the eradication of poverty. See above.) Is it different in other places? Where would I find the stats on that?

* I wonder if trees are singing in math. You know, look at their branches, and the mathematical expression of regularity the branch structures have, and yet they are also flexible complex systems interacting with the world around them. They have to be singing. But it's probably in math.

* I hate math. My second-grade teacher always told me I wasn't any good at it. I believed her for years.

* Why aren't more people really interested in wolverines? I mean, these creatures are fascinating. Although they are weasels. That is a strike against any creature. Not as big a strike as belonging to the rodent family.

* I realize a lot of people love cute little mice. But I HATE rodents. Mostly rats. It's the beady little eyes and the naked little tails. How can one think anything with a naked tail is cute? GAH.

* The more I think about it, the more I think politics functions on the same principle (though with different social processes) as inner-city gangs. I once read somewhere that people still function in tribes, and they don't care too much unless someone from their tribe (the group of thirty to fifty people they really know) is affected by something. Political parties seem to function just like gangs, which are really just violent tribes, or confederations of violent tribes. More on this when I finish reading Islands in the Street.

* I'm about to announce the Sooper-Sekrit Projekt.

* I wonder why the sky is a different blue in winter--a thin blue--than in summer, when it's deep and hazy? And spring blue, washed with rain, is different yet. Is it light refraction and temperature and humidity changes? Or is it what I think in my heart of hearts, that the sky is speaking to the earth below?

* Oh, and I need a glossary if I'm going to write the second Steelflower. *headdesk*

For right now, that's a little bit of what I'm wondering. Scary, ennit?

If you can't tell, this is another long jag of sleeplessness. The horror of insomnia really only reaches a crest on the third night, since after that the world takes on a hue of unreality divorced from all but the most scorching event. The second night, where I'm at, is terrible in its own way and usually only bearable with doses of Mahler's Fourth.

Don't ask me why. Mahler just gets me through the rough patches. At least a particular part of the Fourth. I tried Beethoven's Ninth once on a second night and was almost done in.

I'm only partially joking.

The second night is when you think you might conceivably be able to sleep, and to have that chance snatched away is cruel, cruel. To endure hour after hour of the silent world, feeling your dry hot eyes protest at the work they're asked to perform, to think that if you just hold out another quarter-hour blessed slumber might result...it's an exquisitely awful torture devised by the makers of Tantalus.

I'm hoping I won't see the third night. Night 3 of an insomnia jag is terrible.

I did everything I was supposed to do--no caffeine after noon (though I desperately needed Motrin AND chocolate), a walk in the late-afternoon sun to convince my circadian, a small snack before bed to keep the tummy happy, deep breathing and a half-hour of quiet before retreating to bed.

No dice. Akhmatova summed up insomnia thus, in a translation now lost in a book I left behind in the trap of my first marriage:

Both sides of my pillow
are already hot

And I think that's a great, very poetic way to put it. Dammit. Exactly.

Both sides of the world are already hot. Time for some valerian tea. It might not knock me out but at least it will tranquilize me. I could probably try reading some Cussler from the Muffin's collection. If that prose doesn't send me into fits of somnolence, I don't know what will.

I'm kidding about the Cussler. Really. Some things even I won't do. I'll probably go back to Christopher Fry's The Dark Is Light Enough or Emer Martin's Breakfast in Babylon, both of which have kept me company until dawn several times. Under no circumstances will I touch Sylvia Plath, Janet Fitch's White Oleander, or Siegel's Like The Red Panda, which will almost certainly do me in if they get to me tonight.

See, that's part of insomnia too--at least for me. The prescriptive use of literature, along with wariness of the pitfalls. I once read Kerouac's description of Mexican junkies (wasn't it Tristessa? I think it was, should find that book) on a third night and wasn't Quite Right for a couple days even after I started sleeping again.

Anyway. Valerian tea and prescriptive literature. What do you read when you need comfort?

6K on Weasel Boy today--yesterday--today. I have not, alas, been to sleep yet. I've polished an essay too, filled out paperwork, and really wanted to get some shuteye since I have to put in serious work on the Sooper-Sekrit Projekt. Which is a serialization that will go live in June, if you really want to know, and that's all I'm saying just yet.

I'm exhausted but I can't sleep, despite the comfort of The Chair. You would not believe what I went through to get Scotch Gard on this thing. I know I shouldn't have gone with light beige microfiber, but seriously, the only other option was leather and that I won't do.

Oh, and about The Chair: it's the Furuvik series, the Kviarp chair. Unfortunately it doesn't show up on the Ikea website, for some weird, weird reason. But seriously, I know it exists because I am parked in it right this moment and the back support is heavenly.

Another thing that is heavenly? Clive Owens. In mini-movies put together by BMW and directed by peeps such as Ang Lee and Guy Ritchie. (Sadly, the Ritchie one has Madge in it.)

Now, I have a yen for Clive Owen. I will see just about anything that man does. I realize I am interested in the character he plays and how pretty he is (I am not COMPLETELY shallow) but hey, I have hormones like everyone else. I'm allowed a few moments of appreciation of a very, very fine work of art, right?

Right?

And seriously, James Brown? And Gary Oldman as the Prince of Darkness with smeared lipstick and a soundstage? HOLY COW THIS IS FULL OF AWESOME.

My favorite, though, is this little gem.

And, OMG, this one is just...wow.

There are others, including a wrenching one about a war photographer and...well, it may just be a marketing ploy on BMW's part, but holy cow the directors did a good job and I find Clive bloody stunning.

Yes, Selkie, I'm blogging about it. You were right.

Anyway, I'm thinking Tuesday is going to be a blur of exhaustion. So I'm going to bid adieu. I've got another vampire attack to get Weasel Boy and his fair lady shaman through.

You know, some nights, even though I can't sleep, it's still pretty cool just being me.

Well. I sent the first draft of the YA off and am working on Weasel Boy this morning. I got the beginning for the second in the YA trilogy and have to tear myself away from writing it because the Sooper-Sekrit Projekt (soon, my dears, you will be able to Know All) will be taking up my afternoon--AFTER the new chair is delivered.

You see, for five or six years now I've been writing while sitting cross-legged in a papasan chair, with the laptop balanced on a footstool in front of it. (Well, a footstool and this little thing, which is from Levenger, referred to in our house as "that company that sells crack to writers." I could spend HOURS on one of their catalogs...) The only drawback to this is a certain amount of pain, both lumbar and thoracic, because there's no back support at all. Still, I've held off getting anything else because a. I can't afford it and b. a certain amount of my creative process is the sitting cross-legged and I couldn't find a chair that I could sit in that way and write.

Enter, oh my dear God, Ikea.

The Selkie loves Ikea. The colors, the regimented order, the options. She has since infected me with the adoration, and this past weekend I initiated C.H. (our friend Make_me) into the fold. Which was my second trip to Ikea last week, because earlier in the week I was able to get out while the Teen was watching the kids and pop out there...and while I was there last week I found THE CHAIR.

THE CHAIR is low, but it's wide enough for me to sit cross-legged. It has back support, and out of all the chairs I tested at Ikea it was clearly the winner. Now, there were a couple problems--it only comes in a sort of pale beige microfiber unless I wanted it in leather, which I most emphatically did NOT. (Too sticky.) But I can drape a bedsheet over it to keep it from getting smudged (that is a losing battle, but I could try) or I could Scotch-Gard it like it's going out of style and hope that works.

And today THE CHAIR will be delivered. Which means I'll be saying goodbye to my poor papasan.

I am ridiculously excited.

Anyway, since you're probably bored with my obsessive love for THE CHAIR and all things desk-related, I'll give a couple linkies and sign off.

* CE Murphy talks about making time to write, and

* OMG! A biography of Max Schreck! How awesome is that? I could almost forget that I promised not to buy any more books so I can afford THE CHAIR.

Oh, oops. I'm back on THE CHAIR again. Jeez, obsess much, Lili?

Good morning, everyone. Since I'm about to start on a Sooper-Sekrit Projekt as well as a guns-blazin' edit on Redemption Alley, with wordcount each day on Weasel Boy, it's official. I'm not even going to have time to breathe. But that's okay. The living dead don't need breath, do they? And "living dead" is pretty much how I feel this morning, even after coffee. I feel like I could be in a Romero flick, cocked head, drool, and weird shambling gait included.

So, how about some creepy stuff? Buckle yourselves tightly, dear ones. We'll start with something small. Something only a little creepy.

Here's Schiller's skull. Only, not really. They've done DNA testing and it's not Schiller's skull, though it was exhumed from a mass grave where the poet was buried and thought to be his. DNA testing has said neither of the candidates for Schiller's skull are actually his. Neat, huh?

That's about the last level of creepiness that has some cool attached to it. We're going to go deeper, into the creepiness that has NO COOL WHATSOEVER.

Now that we've stretched out and warmed up, take a look at this publishing scam directed at teens. Yes, for $2500, your teen can become a member of a pyramid scheme/cult! This reminds me of the thing just out of high school, when my young friend got a job selling knockoffs of designer perfumes. Huge bottles of them, and the kids had to work parking lots and mall entrances (running the risk of being in trouble for soliciting without the approval of the property owner) and hand over their earnings to the person who signed them up for the job. In essence, it was pimping perfume. It sounded too good to be true, and truth be told I was kind of glad she did it, because we both needed the lesson. It ended up with her being stranded in California because her car had broke down and they wouldn't let her come home--but that's another story.

The creep factor here is way, way higher than Schiller's skull because these people are targeting teenagers. Ugh. Teen writers: please, please keep Yog's Law in mind.

Next up the ladder of creepiness is something exponentially worse. How about scaremongering by the Air Force? The absurdity of "throw money and your children at us so we can use and abuse both to guard against fictional terrorists!" is reaching all-new heights. In SPACE!

Now, military recruitment is not and never has been an art of complete unvarnished truth, mind you, but this is an all-new height of untruth. In other words, flat-out, baldfaced, epic lies. Which shouldn't be necessary to induce people into the patriotic and honorable institutions of the armed forces. Except, well, I'm not sure our armed forces are being used for patriotic or honorable ends.

As a matter of fact, I'm pretty sure they're not. Which just adds insult to injury.

I don't know why I'm surprised, considering the last (and worst) item on our Creeptastic Parade today. Did you think break-ins by the government stopped with Watergate? You're wrong. And now arson's added to the mix as well.

Basically, the story is this: remember the news stories about Republican Party apparatchiks pursuing political "investigations" of anyone in the Justice Department who didn't toe their political line, or anyone who tried to do their jobs? (Not so incidentally, those jobs might include watchdogging and prosecuting government corruption, something that's at an all-time high with Rove, Cheney, and Boy Monkey in office?) The news coverage of such things has quietly vanished from the mainstream media. And those political "investigations" have been aided by break-ins, arson, and at least one alleged attempted vehicular assault.

The mainstream media would rather cover John Edwards's haircut, Obama's bowling score, American Idol, and Miley Cyrus photo shoots. Arson, break-ins, and vehicular assault by our own government is getting a huge pass.

Yeah, that's the creepiest thing of all. The Fourth Estate is no longer really our friend, fellow citizens. They're part of the narcotic drip meant to keep us anaesthetized while the super-rich buy even more power and entrench themselves even further as lords of earth and latifundia.

How's that for creepy?

Cloudy and cool today, and I am very glad. Somehow sunshine and heat doesn't appeal to me right now--I want to do up a pot roast and some mashed taters, and that's not a hot-day kind of dinner. Not to mention I want to curl up on the floor and stare out the window, and if it's sunny I feel like I should be outside doing yard work. I don't precisely mind yard work, but after yesterday's huge effort to get Strigara in first-draft form ready for an editor to look at it I'm feeling pretty drained.

A lot of Readers have emailed and commented to ask if they can get Serafim at a regular comics distributor, and when exactly the print edition of Steelflower will be out.

* Right now we don't have a distribution network or anything for Serafim, so the best way to get it is to order through Josh's website (look for the little "Add to Cart" button on the top) and pay with PayPal. Sorry about that--but you can ask your local comic store about it. If they get enough requests they might stock it! And that would be awesome.

* The print edition of Steelflower will be out on September 1. Which means, in practice, that it will be shipping probably a week early.

Urk. My brain still feels like a sponge that's been squoozled dry. So I'll bid you all a civil adieu and go do the dishes, preparatory to lying on the floor in the living room and staring out the windows at the sky.

Is it wrong, that it sounds like such a good idea?

Argh. Ahoy. I finished the revisions on Strigara to make it a first draft instead of a rough draft. I'm going to give myself a day, then go back to Weasel Boy. And, not so incidentally, the last-batch revisions on Redemption Alley I'm faced with.

I would much rather have a glut of work than be knocking about with nothing to do. But when I finish this sort of rough-draft revision, my brain feels like it's been scrubbed out and wrung dry. I have to lay on the floor a bit and stare at the ceiling, drooling, until the sponge soaks up enough water to fill out its accustomed outlines again.

Bleargh. Goosh. Splish.

You know, when I started this writing thing, I had no idea about revisions. It's just as well, or I might have done something desperately stupid just to avoid it. It's not that I don't like revisions, it's just that...Jeez. On an 80K book, you will probably write five times that in revisions, between tweaks, false starts, other bridging, fixing structural issues, emailing your editor--you get the idea. Argh.

All of which leads me to: I'm within spitting distance of 70K for the YA on my pass between rough draft and first draft. (Definitions: the rough draft is the very first corpus of the book, the draft NOBODY SEES because it is messy and unfinished. Prettify and fix it up after a short break and you have a First Draft, which will be savaged by your beta and editors. *headdeak*)

The book will end up between 70-80 (closer to 80) and the only bad thing about this part of the process is obsessively reworking pretty much every freaking sentence. Which (can't you tell?) I'm kind of avoiding for about ten minutes while I write this.

But enough of that. Here's a cool Dante Valentine icon contest, for those of you with LJs. Enjoy!

All right, back to the salt mines...

Dear Muse,

No, I will not write space opera just yet. Quit asking. I know you've got plans for me, but the stuff that's under deadline is the stuff we have to do first.

Jesus. Quit crying. STOP IT. Don't look at me like that.

Okay. All right. Fine. ONE HOUR of space opera a night. That's my final say on it.

Don't hug me, Muse. I'm going to work your a$$ off for this.

Love, Me

In other news, Paperback Writer has some Story Vows up. They're awesome, and awesomely funny.

Does it make me unfaithful if I usually work on two books at once?

And the next random thing: Indian cricket in cheerleader cover-up. I understand conservatism--really I do--but why is it always directed against women's clothing/behavior? All these societies who systematically, economically and otherwise, repress one-half their population--and then make that half something that needs to be mutilated or repressed even further to guard the culture's "virtue".

That being said, the idea of cheerleaders at a cricket match kind of makes me put my head to the side with an RCA dog "What? Huh?" look. Do the cheerleaders take tea with the teams or the fans?

And because my brain is wired weird, I went straight from Indian cricket to Bollywood this morning.



I took some bellydance a while back, and I'm here to tell you a lot of those moves I'm seeing are HARD. (I know it's not belly or Eastern or even Egyptian-style dance, but it looks similar to me and makes the same muscles hurt when I try to block it out.) DAMN. That's some serious dedication and effort right there.

If you haven't guessed, I love me some Bollywood. (God bless Youtube, where I can get a quick fix without having to go looking for an Indian grocery, where I can buy ghee and random DVDs that might or might not work in my player.) My favorite, though is a Shahrukh Khan flick titled Asoka, a very highly fictionalized account of an emperor who converted to Buddhism. Here's a little bit of goodness from that film--incidentally, this is one of the Prince's favorites. He loves dancing around the room to this, and will beg me to rewind it all afternoon so he can hear it again. (The guys on stilts are a particular favorite.)



Now is the time for me to mention I think Shahrukh Khan is totally hawt, right? Anyway, love me some Bollywood and I especially dig sharing. Enjoy this last one, also from Asoka, it's got subtitles.



Catchy, ennit?

Now it's back to revising. I'm halfway through Strigara now, and should have a workable first draft (not the rough draft) by the end of the week if I take it easy, less if I push it.

I did give the talk on writing a series--it turned into more than I thought it would, and I think I totally blew it by getting off-topic. But the audience was asking questions, so I chose to go in the direction prompted by their questions rather than stick like glue to the subject. I'm pretty sure it was a total bomb.

*sigh*

Anyway, off I go. The house is quiet and I'll get an hour of work in before everyone wakes up. Sounds good. Happy Monday, all.

I think my body's fighting off another bug. You know that flu feeling you get when you're just coming down with something? Not sick enough to take to your bed, or even sick enough to take a decongestant. Just blargh, run-down, body aching, head caught in a vise not squeezing very hard but still there and stuffed with cotton to boot.

Yeah. Like that.

My Friday post is up at Fangs, Fur, Fey; it's titled That's Great. Now, Do It Again. It is a reprint of a post I did last June. Sorry about that, but the subject has come back up again and I think it's useful. Above all, I didn't want to retype the damn thing.

There's some other cool stuff--like Danny Valentine having a new LJ comm dedicated to her. (Thanks to the fan that pointed that out to me.) And, as usual, Mark Morford dishes up some home truth.

You've been continuously mugged and beaten and robbed blind for the past seven years straight, and as you lay there on the cold, hard economic ground, bleeding and gasping and wondering what the hell happened to your vacation time and your health care plan and your mortgage payment, your attackers scoff and leer and toss a couple of bloodstained nickels on your pulverized face and mutter, here sucker, have some bus fare, and then they cackle and stomp away with all your loot and dignity and hope, back to the White House from whence they came.

What, too harsh? Not really. It's a lovely feeling, made even more sweetly ironic by the fact that Congress will likely soon shove through another $108 billion in war funds like a giant gallstone through our collective fiscal urethra. Right there, that's about 500 bucks for each and every adult human in America, baristas and Baptists and NASCAR fans alike.

Do you see? Your "economic stimulus" check is meaningless, an empty gesture, a trifling crumb of recompense after robbing you blind via insane gas prices, infrastructure meltdowns, massive failed wars that aren't really wars. Thanks for the bogus check, Dubya, now where can I buy a sliver of our missing national dignity? (Mark Morford)

Yeah. I really can't add much more to that. Except that later on in the article, he links to a study that shows meditation can strengthen empathy. Make you kinder.

Boy, do I ever need that today. I'm feeling like Nix, our third cat--the one who looks like a ferret and is jumpy as a...erm, big jumpy thing. (I almost said coke fiend, but decided that would be Too Much. Oops...) Anyway, I feel like every inch of my skin is too aching and sensitive today, like I'm skittering and jumping from one shadow to the next, trying to find one big enough to hide me from.

Anyway--on the reading front, I read Scott Westerfeld's Pretties and Specials yesterday too. The series was great. A little deus ex machina-y (what the Selkie and I call magic dingus-y) at the end of Specials, but no complaints. It was great, well-structured, and nicely done. Bravo. Usually when I blaze through a book or two that fast I'm not looking under the hood and tinkering with the engine, which means I'm not being pulled out of the story. I did find some of the luck stuff--like the main character just happening to land inside an anthropological experiment--a bit heavy-handed, but what are you going to do? It's YA, and short YA at that. All in all, it was a fantastic little series, and just what I needed.

Last but not least, my Mother's Day present arrived. I've taken to buying my own and enthusing over them so nobody has to buy me soap on a rope or a tie or anything, you know. Everyone's happier that way. This year the kids got me a Garbo box set. I've always wanted Queen Christina on DVD. Now I can satisfy my longing for sultry Swedes who just want to be aloooooooone. What an awesome gift.

Heh. Not too many complaints, despite the post title. Oh well, it's nice to be pleasantly surprised. Also: I scored this at Powell's last time I went. What a great title, eh? I'm hoping it will live up to it. Even if it doesn't, the premise is awesome and should provide me with grist for the mental mill.

But first, work today. And a nap. Definitely feeling like a nap.

I almost forgot: Saturday (tomorrow) I will be at Cover to Cover Books from 5-7PM for the monthly Writer's Mixer. I'll be presenting on the topic of continuity and character development in a multiple-book series. In case you want to, you know, come by and beat me up or anything.

Happy weekend, everyone!

I finished re-reading Sarah Dessen's Dreamland, and I've been reading Crompton & Kessner's Saving Beauty From The Beast. Both center on an issue that doesn't get much airtime--"domestic" violence against teen girls by their boyfriends. Since the Princess is heading into preteenhood (I know it's not a word) I want to know all I can about the warning signs, not from inside this dynamic, (I pretty much have those down after a bunch of bad relationships and therapy) but as a parent.

I don't know why we think high school is insulated from (gender-based) violence. We're shown every day that it's not. I'm not talking about gangs at school or hazing, both violent in their own right. I'm talking about the daily warfare, the daily risk you run by having mammaries and female organs in this society. We're soaked in that danger literally from the time we're born.

This isn't a feminist rant. This is a parent's rant. I had boyfriends who beat me up and stalked me in high school. I'm not sure my parents ever grasped the nature of the problem. Of course I had punches I had to roll with at home, too. I was disposable.

Sometimes I get so sick of being At Risk just because I have ovaries. The world is full of peril, and a lot of men in America, though sweet and nice enough, don't understand the pressure of being literally under attack and/or seen as worthless/second class from the moment you're born, because you're born female. (It's like the first strike against you, and God help you if you're also brown-skinned or poor, too. Those are strikes two and three.) And the worst thing is, this is so implicit, it's taken for granted that girls are virgins until they're whores, that marriage is the highest good, that a girl has to belong to someone, that a boy can stalk the crap out of her and it's "love" worthy of a pop song or movie. (My essay in Nothing But Red, originally titled Rape As A Property Crime and ending up as Half Of Humanity Is Worth Less Than A Chair, is all about this, so I'll just Move On now. Because the next subject ties in. Let's move on.)

I hate to point this out, but I was covering the fundamentalist polygamist Mormons years ago for StoryHunters. It's no secret that these middle-aged, male religious-cult leaders have been providing themselves with teenage harems. It's what middle-aged male religious-cult-leading bigots DO. I'm sure that's a major attraction for becoming a middle-aged religious-cult-leading bigot.

It took long enough for someone to do something about it. But the press coverage...dear sweet Mother Mary in a jumped-up chariot-driven sidecar.

Here's a little memo to the press: Will you guys stop f!cking going on about the hairstyles and dresses those women are forced to wear and start talking about WHY THIS WAS ALLOWED TO GO ON, ON AMERICAN SOIL, FOR YEARS AND YEARS? There are infant graveyards. Thousands of teenage boys thrown out so the older men can get clutches of young wives. Malnutrition. Child sexual abuse. Murder.

And the MSM is fixated on the goddamn hairstyles. I.e., "this doesn't really matter, because it's happening to women."

God.

Yes. Damn right I'm angry. We all should be angry over this one. When a guy "marries" four or five teenagers and gets them knocked up, he's a bigamist. And guilty of statutory rape. Why should his "religion" exempt him from the law against rape, statutory rape, and child abuse? I mean, I'm all for a dialogue between the people and the law, since the law is the servant of the people. I'm just not for child abuse being sanctioned or overlooked by the law. Which is essentially what we've got, with these fundie Mormon polygynist asshats.

I might feel a little bit different if the women could have several husbands each. But then, you know, if that happened, the cult probably would have never gotten off the ground or had a blind eye turned to it.

And the press is fixated on their hairstyles. Not to mention an HBO show glamorizing this sort of thing. Because if it deals with rape and oppression, it must be chic! Women don't really mind! Hell, they like it! It's on TV!

I'd better stop before some jerkwad thinks those last four sentences aren't sarcasm. Or before I blow a blood vessel. Whichever comes first.

Jesus-please-us. This is why I stopped doing the religion-news blogging. I was in serious danger of having a coronary. And, you know, I started getting work elsewhere. But that's another story.

Good morning (again.) Didn't get much sleep, but I don't feel like I needed it--I did fall into bed really tired, couldn't sleep, read some Bukowski, and finally did sleep, with weird dreams of lanterns and spiders.

Don't ask.

Anyway, last night the Selkie and I (on kind of short notice) made it to the Alice Hoffman signing at Beaverton Powell's. Hoffman is only the Selkie's favorite writer in the world, and we were both fangirly and all. Ms. Hoffman was divine--sweet and funny and old-fashioned polite. She read a bit from her newest book and answered some questions. Both the Selkie and I got questions answered, though mine was pretty much the Selkie's question; it was about Ethan in Blue Diary. I wanted to know where he came from and the Selkie wondered why we never saw anything from his POV.

Yeah, us writers, always thinking about craft. The Selkie asked about The River King and the answer was so heartbreaking. In a kind-of-good way, though. I suppose if there was a theme to last night it was "writing can save your life."

Anyway, Ms. Hoffman told us that Ethan was Bluebeard (which the Selkie had got ages ago but I hadn't, and I'm usually quite good at spotting my fairytales.) And that she had to love her characters, so Ethan--a character who was either evil of had some evil in him, is how she put it--wasn't someone she could get near.

I understood. Really, I do. The urge to love your characters is deep and profound, and I suppose I do love all of them down deep in some weird way. But mostly I dislike my heroes. I downright hate a couple of them--Michael Constantius, for one, is a manipulative asshat and I hatehatehate him. (One of the best times I ever had writing was that crucifixion scene.) Japhrimel I also dislike in some very fundamental ways, as he's so wrapped around the axle by what he feels for Danny he won't tell her anything for fear of losing her or frightening her. Plus, he was a demon, for Pete's sake, and his idea of "truth" was so flexible as to be absurd. Darik? Insufferable and arrogant, but he's nicer than the others just because of those exquisite manners. The Watchers? Collectively, they're one creepy bunch of guys. I do like Jack Gray, though, and I'm awful fond of Merrick. I have a little black spot in my heart for Merrick.

I ramble. But the way I feel about my heroes is usually a complex mishmash of not-very-positive feelings. My heroines I'm closer to, but all of them are flawed--I mean, Christ, try spending an afternoon with Danny while she's On The Rampage. Or with Elise when she's in a snit, or Rowan when she won't do anything for herself. Argh. I can understand my heroines and to some extent my heroes, but I don't love my characters. They're people to me, and fully-formed and fleshed people at that, but I don't love them.

Part of that is because they're going to leave when the story is done. Another part is that the story demands horrible thing to happen to them, and it's wrenching. Dead Man Rising was terrible for me, because I understood Dante so thoroughly and could feel what she was feeling. It was awful.

Hrm. I'm rambling, and that can't be very interesting. Suffice to say that it was ALL KINDS OF AWESOME to actually see Alice Hoffman in the flesh and get some of my favorites--especially Seventh Heaven--signed.

The Selkie and I had a longish dinner afterward, and a chat about character motivations. I can't wait to read her WIP. *fidgets* Then we both wended our way home, and I settled in and read Scott Westerberg's Uglies, which was (as I've said) a very good, very rolling read. It really reminded me of Tanith Lee's Don't Bite The Sun and Drinking Sapphire Wine, which is high praise from me. I finished it in about three hours, give or take about twenty minutes, and wasn't bored once the whole way through. I did like how the subject of anorexia was approached, in a quiet almost-glancing way, and dealt with very lightly. I can see this book doing a lot of good.

And now it's Tuesday morning, the kitchen is full of dishes, I haven't had coffee yet, and I've got the YA to do a draft on. I think once I get through the first three chapters--which I've retooled and retooled because that's what first chapters do, for me--it will go better and smoother.

Or at least, that's the hope.

I do love my job. This is awesome.

I just read Scott Westerfeld's Uglies since I got home from Powell's. (More on that in the morning. Later in the morning.) Wow. It reminds me of Tanith Lee's Don't Bite The Sun, and is really rollicking-good.

Just thought I'd share.

I'm doing a lot of bulleted lists lately, for which I beg your indulgence. All my connect-the-dots is going into the writing. I just found out we need another revision on Redemption Alley. It's not a HUGE one, it's just one of those workmanlike things that's got to happen once a story's been pruned so an editor can see the nasty bits underneath. Heh.

* Gin, Television, And Social Surplus. This was AWESOME. I hope he's right, but one of the things I'm struggling with lately is a bit of depression over humans as a species. We just seem so in love with destroying. Not even clean destruction, like a wildfire that clears everything out--but destruction for its own sake, from a dictator destroying lives and culture and social networks to wars destroying everyone who touches them in an ever-expanding ring, to gallons of poison pissed into our own life-support system. It'd be nice to find some evidence of people creating even half as much as they destroy, and just as reflexively.

You see? I'm on a real kick here. And most of it is...

* Holden Caulfield. I bought Catcher in the Rye for the Teen, since he said he'd never read it and I thought it was a) one of those books he should read, and b) that he's old enough now he won't go into a huge honking depression over it and end up making some silly gesture that will land him in the newspapers. Then I got to thinking, it's been a while since I read it, too. So when he was done he put it in my TBR pile, and I read half of it last night.

( Cut for rambling... )

* This upcoming Saturday, May 2, I'm going to be the featured speaker at the monthly Writer's Mixer at Cover to Cover Books. I'll be talking about continuity and characterization over the course of a multi-book series. If you have any questions etc. about writing series, why not comment or drop me a line? It will help me gauge the types of things to talk about, and if I talk about it all week I might sound halfway coherent when I do my half-hour thang.

At least, one can hope.

Happy Monday, all. I'm about to go back to the YA (it's rested for a week) and start weaving in things I missed the first go-round because I was going so fast. Oh, and I'm making chicken tikka masala for dinner. Wish me luck.

My Friday post on writing is up. It's about the "permission" to create bad art. *grin*

Since I'm deep into Weasel Boy and still on that same flat diet (just slide a pizza under the door, thanks, I'll stagger around to eating it when I'm about to starve and go right back to the work) I'm just going to bullet a few things out for weekend digestion and head back to the salt mines. (Mixed metaphors, anyone?)

* On May 3, I'm going to be the featured speaker at the monthly Writer's Mixer at Cover to Cover Books. I'll be talking about how to keep character consistency and continuity over a multiple-book series. I'll have a whiteboard, so I'll be at least halfway coherent, and there will be snacks.

The best thing will probably be the snacks, given my shyness. But I'm going to give it the old college try.

* Mark Morford, again, with All The President's Liars.

They have a potent aura of trustworthiness, fairness, decency. They are f—ing generals, for chrissakes, and hence we like to think of them as straight-talking, no-BS working men whose word is solid and whose authority unquestionable and therefore no wimp-assed monkey-faced president or scabrous Defense secretary could make them say something they didn't actually believe.

Wrong. Oh, how horribly wrong.

So I ask again, did it work? Was America duped? Well, yes and no. There's little doubt that this insidious, sustained PR attack — and make no mistake, it was/is an attack on the American people; such calculated "psychological operations" aimed at U.S. citizens are actually very illegal, though it's enormously difficult to prove so in court — swayed millions of Americans, gave fuel to the preemptive attack argument, inflamed (and still inflames) the warmongering right, scammed the media, fanned the pro-war fires for years before the public recoil finally kicked in.

But oh, kick in it did. This is the fascinating thing. Even all those high-ranking military experts lying like well-decorated dogs in one of the most impressive, appalling PR campaigns in American history could not keep Bush from collapsing, could not prevent Americans from learning the real facts of the failed war and toxic presidency — eventually. (Mark Morford

* I have given up on reviewing Cassie Edwards's Savage Wrongs. I offered to take one for the Bitchery and review it, but I just...I can't. I'm sorry, I've tried several times. I just Cannot. Do. It.

So, if you live in the continental US and would like to give it a go, email me at lili at lilithsaintcrow dot com, first come first served, and you can have the damn thing. I just can't. I'm sorry. *hangs head*

* Can I just say that Caitlin and Angela are AWESOME PEOPLE?

* A quick note: by the end of the day, between the punishing wordcount and the homeschooling and the getting the kids fed and into bed, I just want to drool as I play World of Warcraft. Dude, a human warlock in Teldrassil is ridiculously overpowered (even more so in Auberdine) and that plus-five-percent rep gain? AWESOME! Although, having a mace specialization as a race and not being able to train for maces because of being a warlock? BOGUS. I just...I guess I just like maces, especially with the regen stuff usually on them interacting with Demon Skin etc.

I am now officially, if I never was before, a geek. (Yeah. Like I wasn't before I realized I was talking with a kid half my age about a video game and acquitting myself rawther well. Gah.)

* This morning the Teen's Ipod-alarm woke him up with Billy Joel's My Life. He's taken it as a sort of anthem lately. And he tells me my music is "cool."

I have hooked someone twenty years younger than me on Billy Joel.

I feel old now. Or maybe "mature". Yeah. That's the way to put it.

Happy weekend, everyone!

Note to my stupid self: When will I learn not to mutter, "Well, I prefer being busy, anyway." where the career gods can hear me?

I know I've scheduled enough time for every project and a fair amount of downtime in between, but still. Sheesh.

So, erm, if you're wanting to see me anytime in the near future...I'm afraid the closest most peeps will get is sliding the pizza under my door when I'm typing furiously.

Back to Weasel Boy. I swear I'm not even going to look at the manuscript that arrived this morning for revisions until sometime next week when I finish the YA revisions into first-draft form.

*crosses fingers*

*takes deep breath*

*dives*

No, really. It is. And I'm not the only one who finds this news utterly delightful. I mean, come on. Of course the Earth is singing as she twirls through space, like a four-year-old in the backyard with a Goodwill prom dress and a magic wand. Twirling in circles, and singing that tuneless sort of song kids half-hum when they're having a helluva good time, completely absorbed in what they're doing.

As the Selkie might say, "That kid has magic." By which she means, a lucky child whose parents understand that sometimes kids just need to goof off and hum.

But maybe the Earth is humming like an adult in the kitchen, fully absorbed in the making of something. Or at the laptop, or just messing around with a piano. Have you ever done that? Not played the piano, mind you, but just listened to the sounds it makes when you plonk it, humming while you do so?

I think Gaia wants us to sing back.

That was always one of my favorite Sesame Street songs. I don't know about the "sing just about the happy stuff", but the "don't worry if it's not good enough for anyone to hear"?

Oh, yeah, I believe in that. I really think that's part of the point of writing. Or creating anything. (You knew this would come around to writing, didn't you?)

One of the best things that ever happened to me was reading The Artist's Way--the part where Julia Cameron says to give yourself permission to create bad art. To me, that was incredibly freeing. Permission to write the worst dreck in the world, as long as I wrote and kept writing. As long as I was happy, and doing what I was made to do.

Heady stuff. Because before there is discipline and doing this professionally, there was just me trying to get up the courage to write without feeling like I was a failure every time I set pen to paper. Trying not to remember everyone who ever told me I was worthless and that I couldn't create anything worth looking at. Even, yes, my mother's voice saying, "You're so smart, why didn't you do this right the first time around?"

I had a writing class once were I started explaining this. "If you need permission," I said, "you've got it. You've got a working writer's permission to write however badly you want. It's not important for the first million words. That's why they call it practice--"

I turned back to the room and two women were crying. Turns out they had really just needed to hear some variant of it's okay to try this, to be bad at this. So much of our culture is bound up in the idea of teachers or authority figures giving us "permission".

We ended up writing out certificates that stated so-and-so was a Writer, goddammit (the "goddammit" was my personal hiccup, uttered mentally every time), and had the right to write. It was silly, right? Nobody should need anyone's signature to attempt to write, or to create. (I'm not saying everyone needs someone's permission or even my permission, so don't get all het up about that red herring.)

What I'm saying is, if you need to hear from someone that it's okay to do this, and it's okay to screw up and make mistakes while doing this, consider it said. Consider it heard. For what it's worth, I am telling you this: you have permission to write the worst dreck in the world, sing off-key, dance without being Baryshnikov, knit without worrying about dropped stitches. The world is messy and wonderful, and how do we ever expect to learn how to write better, dance better, sing better, knit better without practice? And practice means making mistakes. It means f!cking up and going back and figuring it out and messing around with the joy of making something. That's the important part. The finished work is important too, of course it is--but don't let the fact that you're going to make mistakes stop you from trying. Please don't do that. Make all the mistakes you need to.

Each mistake is a chance for joy. Each dropped stitch could be a fork in the road, one that can take you somewhere you've never been. Each clumsy word will strengthen you, each comma you go back and remove will cheer you, each time you stumble while dancing you can consider it an invitation to a new movement, maybe one that's never been done before.

Earth has been singing for a billion years or so. You think she didn't have a few dropped notes? And still, look at what she made.

Ain't it grand?

Weasel Boy is going well. 4k yesterday, and a lot of it usable. There will be dead weight in the rough draft, sure, but I want it well underway by the time I go back to the YA.

This is in many respects my favorite part of working, the creative burst that precedes a lot of revision. I had been having dark, dismal thoughts that the creative burst was in my past, that I couldn't get up that head of steam anymore, etc., etc., shake that Internal Censor until s/he howls. But I've discovered that wasn't the case. I was just resting, the ground kind of fallow and my usual speed slowed to a crawl. The creative life is somewhat of a bicycle ride, because one has to balance carefully and watch for danger and look at the bloody scenery. When one has to juggle on top of riding the cycle, speed necessarily slows--and this ain't no Tour de France, it's okay to sniff some roses and kiss some pretty boys along the way.

Or girls. Or tentacled monsters, if one prefers Cthulu.

On the book front, I've finished Wages of Destruction. It was a fun read, very dense, and I don't understand half of what I should about statistics etc. but the author made it reasonably clear in context. I haven't read any other studies of the German economy during the interwar and WWII period, so I'll have to take the cover blurbs' word that this is a revolutionary study. It did inform several other books I've read in odd ways--like Alan Clark's Barbarossa and Beevor's great study of Stalingrad. Now I'm hoping Tooze looks at the Russian economy in the same period. I'd read that book.

So...what I'm reading now: The Guns of August, Ivan's War (thanks to all the Readers who suggested those) and, to leaven everything, The Beasts of Tarzan. I like Burroughs, actually. It's pulp, but it's reasonably good pulp and I know what I'm getting with every mighty-thewed chapter. Srsly, I haven't read this many thews since the Iliad.

I have this regrettable fondness for Tarzan, mostly because of Travis Fimmel. I wish the WB would release that series on DVD. Hey. Quit laughing. I loved that show. It was awesome.

I am tossing around the idea of a historical Watcher series. It would mean a lot of research, but it would probably be fun. Of course, since I'm booked for the next couple of years it's going to take a while and might never come to fruition...but it's nice to think about these things, you know.

Happy Tuesday, all. And now, back to the salt mines--and I'm cooking Fifteen-Bean Soup and rye bread today. Let's hope it works out as well as some of the writing is...