Lost In My Own Mind (with no breadcrumbs.)

Posted on by Sarah A. Hoyt

One of the problems with being a writer is that you end up living way too much in your own mind.

This is fun when what you’re doing is… oh, coming up with wonderful worlds, or even horrible ones, alluring characters, or perhaps even horrible but interesting ones.

What I’m trying to tell you here is that it’s fine to let your imagination run on the page, but do not under any circumstances let it run free in your real life.

Okay, fine, so I admit that I’m the sort of person who has to control herself not to make the story of her trip to the grocery store more exciting.

Early on I realized that telling my mom how I was attacked by brigands on the way to get peanuts at the corner store was a bad idea.  If it didn’t sound realistic, I got grounded for lying.  If it sounded realistic, mom went on the war path.

So I learned not to lie.  Though I reserved the right to tell the story of the hunting for the peanuts in as thrilling a way as I could, “And then there I was in the isle, when, looking to the right, there it was: PEANUTS.  Oh, how joyous I was—” etc.

For the rest of the stuff I wrote stories.  I mean, people in general don’t expect stories to be true.  Though there was the gentleman who chided me for making up elves in my biography of Shakespeare.  (Yes, he DID mean Ill Met By Moonlight.  No, I don’t know why.)

For the rest of the stuff I still write stories.  You can sort of assume that if I’m telling something as true, it is true as far as I know, always barring errors of memory and the way the past becomes colored in our minds.  (How is it that I always remember things happening at six, eight or fourteen?  I think the Author forgot to fill in the other years.)

I do know the limits of memory and what you think happened in the sense that after about twenty years things blur a bit, in my case particularly visual details.  There are places I’m sure I knew so well they live inside me and places in my head (the places I make up) look just like them.  My grandmother’s kitchen has done the turn of fantasy palace kitchen and science fiction kitchen/cottage.  And…  And yet, would I be shocked if I could go back to it?  Would I find I’d miscounted the number of chairs?  That the cabinets were the wrong shade of blue?  And how come I can’t remember the color of the walls at all?

Memory, particularly when you’re a writer, when it softens with the passing of years, tends to make things “better stories.”  Usually it messes the timing.  Say that this is the story of how I found a ring.  (No, I don’t think I ever did.)  In real life, I might never have found who the ring belonged to.  But my mind will conflate it with the story I heard years later of the woman who threw her engagement ring away, and I’ll be sure I found out that was her wedding ring.

Not, consciously, you realize – just over the years, as they pass, the random events assemble themselves into story.

That’s fine.  It’s human.  The human mind creates stories out of random.  It’s possibly what makes us human. The ability to turn “don’t go into the forest because there’s a 20% chance you’ll fall and break your leg and no one will find you in time into “don’t go into the forest, there are rodents of unusual size and swamps of flame.”  And if you made the story good enough, the kids believed it, and nothing bad happened.

However, there is a tendency being writers to make stories out of other things.  Specifically, to make stories out of things we don’t understand.  And since most of the things we don’t understand are people, there is a tendency to make up stories about how people are behaving this way because they personally hate us… or something.

Years ago, when I took the Kris and Dean Professional Writers Workshop, they kept telling us “Try very hard not to make up stories about why publishers or editors are doing things.  THAT can kill your career because you’ll decide they hate you and act weird.”

I’ll grant you it was easy to decide all publishers hated you. If you go by once it’s a mistake, twice it’s a coincidence, three times is enemy action, all of us midlisters were under enemy fire ALL the time.

But most of the time, it was just how the system worked.  Doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t walk, when you finally could.  (Free, thank the Lord Almighty, free at last.) It just meant that your editor was not doing it on purpose.  He/she/it worked for a very large house, and if you weren’t one of the properties hotly defended you were more likely to get trampled and the book’s chances destroyed in bizarre ways than of getting off the gate with nothing bad happening.

It was almost impossible not to get paranoid, and of course my FEELINGS were often that everyone was against me, but realistically I knew mostly they didn’t remember I existed.  Sort of like the old joke “Everyone hates me.”  “Don’t be ridiculous.  Most of them don’t know you.”

But because my rational self knew that whatever the emotions, most people in NYC publishing didn’t in fact know I existed, I was very surprised when, telling an older writing friend about an editor missing an appointment with me, he teased me by saying “Oh, yes, he hates you and is trying to destroy your career.”  I guess he thought that’s what I was thinking because of how distressed I was.  I was distressed because I wasn’t absolutely sure I’d kept the appointment at the right place.  (I have no sense of direction.)  And paranoid or not, it’s not a good idea to stand up editors.  (Turns out we had each heard a different hour, and he called me and it got straightened out.)  But at the same time I wanted to say “Oh, that, no.  Thank you.  I’m not that stupid.”

At the same time, I couldn’t blame him.  I watched people go into meltdown because their editor didn’t smile at them in the elevator.  Writers and the sort of explosive emotional situation old publishing created resulted in… drama.

Since I left all publishers save the one I like and can deal with, I tend to keep from drama in my life.  The sad truth about me is that you can completely annoy me one day and I’ll forgive you in a week – not because I’m good natured but because I have a rotten memory for names. You can be a total asshat, and unless I really know you, in a week I won’t remember.

What this means is that I can be fulminatingly furious at someone in the field, but it won’t keep.  Look, I’m far more interested in what’s going on inside my head.  I can write an entire article talking about how wrong, wrong, wrong you are – not, mind you, calling YOU names, unless you have really stepped in it, which usually means you attacked me or one of mine in a personal way – but this doesn’t mean that when I meet you at Worldcon (in the once every five years I go) I’m going to cut you dead.  Chances are even if I think your politics or your favorite movie are repulsive, I find things about you to admire and even like.

Look I have friends – though they might feel otherwise about me – even among the glittery hoo-has of SFWA.  If we don’t talk about their particular issues, they can be pleasant and even interesting people.

One doesn’t condemn an entire person or forfeit an entire friendship just because our friend has one or two really stupid ideas.  If we did that, there would be no friendship and no person who passed muster – particularly among us opinionated lot.

What I mean is that I tend not to get in conflicts, and not to get involved in emotional drama, not because I’m particularly good, but because I’m really busy.  I’ve got barely enough strength for my daily life, my commitments, and my writing.  I do not have time to wonder if some friend is mad at me because I didn’t compliment her on her new sneakers, and I certainly don’t have time to be mad at you forever because you said my hair was funny.  Even when sneakers and hair are stories, or careers.

Unfortunately I’ve discovered, either because people are scared of what is happening in the field and trying to find emotional relief, or because publishers are not all consuming targets of their anger anymore, that some people have had feuds with me for years – that I was TOTALLY unaware of.

Usually the first I hear of it is when a friend of a friend says something like “I don’t want to get in the middle of your quarrel.”  Which leaves me blinking and going “Our what?” since I haven’t given this person half a thought in months.

This can be very flattering, of course.  It’s almost as good as having someone in love with you, when someone cares so much they carry on an entire quarrel without your even knowing.

But it’s a little bit crazy too.  Now, if you are in this field – or even if you aren’t, I understand this sort of thing happens in other careers too (though of course, I know as much about honest work as a duck knows about prospecting for gold) – and even in normal social life (about which I also know… yeah.  Ducks.  Gold.) – seriously, do try not to get involved in too many feuds.

I’ll admit the thing with SFWA got under my nose, like mustard, mostly because honestly, when they start going after older men for being older men, they’ve crossed lines that sheer decency would leave uncrossed.  I was mad, but it wasn’t personal.  I still am mad.  It still isn’t personal.

What I mean is, the people on the other side range from a handful of self-willed villains (or at least self-righteous harm-inflicting people) to a myriad of people who are just going along, just heard something, want to be on the side of angels.  Even when they act like loons, it doesn’t mean some of them aren’t quite decent, the sort of people I’d let catsit.

No, none of them have gone out of their way to pursue a feud with me – at least not that I’ve heard.  (Though granted, I haven’t heard much, more or less on purpose.)  I was just talking about that situation was an example, because of how insane it got and how fast, fueled by everyone’s imagination and wish to be offended.

I’m seeing that happen more and more, and the thing is, I think the reason it’s happening is that it doesn’t matter.  Someone said that disputes are hotter when the stakes are very, very small.

Right now, there is no proof that good standing in fandom, or with your professional equals means anything anymore.  A lot of the people who are buying books have never attended a con.  The local fandom can no longer affect the laydown of a book.  The author of Wool was second only to George R.R. Martin in sales, but when he attended a big con he had no one at his autograph session – because he was selling to people who don’t go to cons.

From personal experience cons have been losing importance.  Organized fandom has been losing the ability to influence sales… at the same time that not a week goes by I don’t hear of some new feud.  (Not usually involving me.)

I think it’s because, like thinking your publisher hated you was better than thinking you’d been THAT unlucky three times, thinking that people in the field are destroying you is better than thinking that you just haven’t figured out how to deal with the new conditions yet.

The problem is that when your creativity is going towards interpersonal drama, it’s not going to writing, or whatever you do for a living.  Also, it makes people outside the field think we’re nuts.  (Which might or might not matter ;) )

Do other professions experience this too?  Does it matter if someone is fighting with you if you’re not even aware of it?  What do you do about it in saner fields than SF/F?  Am I hurting myself by being unaware that some people might/might not have it in for me?  Where do people find the energy for al this?  Am I broken because my attitude is, “hate me all you want, so long as you’re not actively coming over to argue with me?”

I remember in the village women mostly spent their lives in interpersonal feuds over things like “she cut in front of me in the fish queue, so I’m going to cut in on her at the green grocers.”  Even back then, I couldn’t muster enough interest to remember who was mad at whom, and shocked people who were feuding with my family by talking to them – not out of good nature, but because I couldn’t remember.

Am I the only one with a wretched memory?  Or is it just that I channel so much inside, I couldn’t bother to remember who I was mad at?

Perhaps it costs me in sales, or friends, or something – but if I have to put that much drama into something, I want to sell it.

(Grumbles off, convinced there’s something seriously wrong with her.)

UPDATE: Different social mechanics post up at Mad Genius Club: Ten Ways to Leave your (Writers’) Group.

299 thoughts on “Lost In My Own Mind (with no breadcrumbs.)”

    1. Sort of, except they seem to be caught in a loop where I hear the same thing over and over again — maybe it’s the circuit I do.
      To be sure, cons can still be fun if you want to meet all your friends (or a lot of them) in one place. Which is why I still go, even though I pay the price of con crud. I also get to meet some of you ;)

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      1. The loop’s been rewritten recently, thank the gods. I’m hearing new stuff, though, again, might be the cons I’m going to. And this loop might linger for decades like the last did.

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      2. No, its not just your circuit, con panels are still having discussions that I participated in twenty years ago. Same discussions, same points made, etc etc.

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        1. I’ve gotten to the point now that if I get put on the Magic-ex-machina panel I refuse to do it and do everything else instead. No, seriously. Why do you even need a whole panel to say “Make sure your magic has rules, m’kay?”

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          1. It might be fun (once) to take an antithetical position, arguing for chaotic magic (if it has rules it isn’t magic, it is merely inadequately understood science.)

            Certainly it offers the writer more freedom and, done well, has the virtue of persuading readers that they wouldn’t like magic. Consider the tedious rituals required in a reality where every shrub, every stone, every stream has its own affiliated temperamental watch-deity.

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            1. Mostly serious question (who, me? what? I wasn’t there) here: where does magic realism fit on that magic: chaos to science-like order spectrum?

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        2. Remember that the panels are primarily for the attendees. There are always some new people in attendance who haven’t heard the various panels yet. For these people they serve a real purpose and maybe you could refer to them 100-200 level panels. Still, if you wish to retain the interest of the long term attendees, for heaven’s sake lets look at developing some new topics and some graduate level panels.

          Of course, in a strange way it is reassuring to know that someday, when I am not tied up with being staff at the Anime con I attend, those rooms I never get to go in will be waiting to welcome me with the very same panels I once thought I would never get to hear. (Ha! I am beginning to think the only sure retirement will be death…or, at least, non-attendance.) ;-).

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  2. You said:
    (How is it that I always remember things happening at six, eight or fourteen? I think the Author forgot to fill in the other years.)

    You do that, too? For me it’s four, six, eight and eleven. I’m sure some of the things really happened when I was nine or ten.

    Of course, memories connected with school aren’t that way, because they usually involved the teacher, and I had a different teacher each year. But memories without a date-reference collect at those ages.

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    1. Eh, I only have vague memories of when anything happened. Sometimes I remember an approximate age because of some related thing, like, “I had to be between 4 and 6 when that happened, because I can’t remember anything before I was 4, and after I was 6, I couldn’t FIT there,” but not often.

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  3. There’s a saying I’ve heard applied, variously, to wars of religion and to academic politics: The fighting is so vicious because the stakes are so low. (As in, these are comfortable, settled people with too much time on their hands and not enough truly import things to occupy their time and energy.)

    It must be my Scots-Irish side, but can you even have a feud if the other party doesn’t know? I can see sabotage and character assassination, but a feud really requires at least two active participants.

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    1. Well — I don’t get it either, and that’s what between puzzles me and makes me giggle, but in at least two cases I’ve had people convinced I was also fighting. As in “I knew when she didn’t say anything” — you know what I mean!

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  4. “A man’s got to know his limitations.” Some people aren’t cut out to be small-minded, vindictive, and malicious.

    You’ll just have to make the best of it.

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    1. It’s not an humble brag. I’m mostly absent minded. If poked enough that I remember someone “My resentment once formed is forever.”
      So, it’s not good disposition as an inability to remember minor stuff. But I’ve found this type of thing harms me, particularly in a group of all women. I’m just wondering if it CAN harm me in a group as diffuse, decentralized and unfocused as SF writers/fandom is becoming.

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        2. Yes, but that’s a different kind of poke. I won’t get to it today because I have a short and four articles due (when did life get this nuts?) but I’ll try to get to it this weekend.

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          1. That, too, but mostly because I am possessed of an imp of the perverse. Fortunately, I learned early on that because somebody says “don’t jump off that cliff” doesn’t necessarily mean I should do the opposite. Also, it’s funny when we’re all friends. Until it’s not, but I trust the Huns to cuff me around the ears before that happens.

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            1. cuff
              cuff cuff
              cuffcuffcuffcuffcuffcuffcuffcuff

              Was that enough? (Timing’s right, at least. You’re still funny, so it’s not after.)

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              1. I have a thick skull, and chose to be a writer, so it’ll take a lot more’n that to stop me. Also, I’m quick on my feet, for to dodge flying fishes.

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        3. It seems kilteDave is a fan of playing high-stakes poker…

          (Gets ready to duck incoming fish)

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          1. If he starts trying Texas Hold ‘Em, someone should probably tell Mr. Hoyt, so he can clean up the remains.

            (I kid! I kid!)

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            1. I only play that game with Mrs. Dave, but that’s because she’s fiercely territorial and likes to play with knives (of course, so am I and so do I). Also, until I get something up and for sale (and attract a dedicated readership, but first things first) I’m dependent on her for motorcycle gas and beer money. Which, oddly enough, is how she likes things.

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      2. I have to agree with gs. It’s generally a good thing IMO to be oblivious to spite and malice. Just not worth the time and energy. If someone has a bone to pick with me because of something I’ve done or said, I expect them to be adults and say something. I am frequently prone to foot in mouth disease but normally mean no harm. Besides, it drives “them” crazy to be ignored.

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        1. Yes, exactly — I usually find out someone is having a “feud” with me because they’ve been talking/posting about me, and interpreting what I say as referring to them, BUT THEY NEVER SAID ANYTHING TO ME, not even obliquely. And yes, I can be the world’s ass, mostly in terms of saying stuff I don’t understand people will take as referring to them because I don’t think of their life circumstances or something. But if they asked me, I’d usually say “Oh, crap. I didn’t even realize–“

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          1. Life’s too short to worry about meaningless “feuds.”

            You have your audience. Just keep on keeping on.

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      3. It’s not an humble brag.

        Nor was I imputing such.

        But I’ve found this type of thing harms me, particularly in a group of all women. I’m just wondering if it CAN harm me in a group as diffuse, decentralized and unfocused as SF writers/fandom is becoming.

        This. I was thinking along the lines of In what kind of setting is it advantageous/disadvantageous to be small-minded, vindictive, and malicious? It’s disadvantageous in a dynamic, high-opportunity environment.

        It’s advantageous in zero-sum contexts where resources are limited: peasant society, for example. Such a society is ideally suited to envy politics, and it’s the kind of society its practitioners strive to create while they promise utopia.

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        1. I think it worked well — possibly very well — when all the fortunes of writers had to go through six or so publishers in NYC. Which is why we all went to cons, and I was not only indifferent to them — or attending them only to meet friends/friendly fans — but loathed cons with a passion because I watched myself ALL THE TIME. Now? Or at least if I CAN make a living from indie? BAH

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  5. What kills me is that, while all the SFWA trouble was going on, the only one who was mentioning the second SFWA Humble Bundle of books for a freelance writers’ medical charity was — the ever-classy Lois McMaster Bujold. I totally forgot the SFWA bundle, even though we were talking SFWA all that part of the month. Apparently so did most of the participating writers, because shaming the previous generation and getting a woman to quit having a sense of humor was so incredibly important!

    This is counterproductive, to say the least.

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      1. Well… unfortunately the charity was probably the best thing they’ve done. If it stops the crazycakes attacks on Amazon, great. But somehow I suspect they’ll find time for those.

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          1. I am on the bad side of several influential female members ever since my first post on what feminism has become. Eh. Also, I apparently have one of those faces that shows everything I think. Who knew? So they must have known what I thought LONG before I came out of the political closet.

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            1. Well, you’re kind to men and you don’t demonize male sexuality. That’s pretty much forbidden for feminists.

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              1. I love Camille Paglia. She hits those two points and then goes on to say that the bell curves of male and female IQ have the same mean but different standard deviations, because evolution considers men more expendable at the same time it raises the payback to exceptional effort.

                The feminists want to explode except she’s a … lesbian woman.

                Oh, God, the blood pressure spikes she causes!

                I love it.

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                1. Well obviously she is not a woman who loves other women, she is a man trapped in a woman’s body. This is obvious by her use of a reasoned, factual argument; that is a well known tool of the Patriarchy.

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                  1. Hey now! I use reasoned factual argument (I think) most of the time. And I like men! (Men are proof G-d loves us and wants us to be happy. I only NEED one, but I appreciate most of mankind. Though Alas at my age twenty somethings register as “Pretty kids” — sigh.)

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                    1. Ever think your a gay man trapped in a woman’s body? /runs, thinks about how Dan might take this, runs faster, looks for a car to hotwire/

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                2. This has always been obvious to me in school. I liked competing with the guys at the top, because it puzzled them. Most girls were “solid middle” — I don’t think the species has changed but now girls get the highest grades. I think it’s because we’re rewarding “solid middle.”

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                3. Exactly. Once when I was at college, a professor compared me to Paglia in in e-mail (which I no longer have.)

                  And I’m pretty sure the feminists consider her a class traitor.

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            2. Also, I apparently have one of those faces that shows everything I think.

              You know, we were born an awfully long way apart to be siblings, but still…

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                1. My face usually communicates my general grumpyness. My first performance review of my last job actually described me as “surly”. I still got the raise.

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            3. Aww, c’mon now — if your face showed everything you think you’d have long since been burned as a *itch.

              I am confident that if my face showed even a third of what passes through my frontal lobes (much less the medullah oblongata!) the left side of my face would be significantly flatter and more bruised.

              *Your consonant here. Or substitute heretic if you are not trying for the position of Weiner Campaign Communications Director

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              1. “Are you pondering what I’m pondering, Robin?”

                “I think so, RES… but how would you go about burning a ditch?”

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                1. I mean, there’s a shortage of oil around here to go filling it with before lighting it on fire. Apparently everyone’s been using it to fry these fish that keep showing up from the sky.

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                  1. Haddock from Heaven, just for the (wait for it … … … ) halibut.

                    REPEAT JOKE FOR THE HARD OF HERRING:
                    HADDOCK FROM HEAVEN, JUST FOR THE (wait for it … … … ) HALIBUT.

                    Cod, that crappie joke was feeble. He oughtta be thrown trout.

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                    1. What the hake? Hold on while I flounder about fishing for a response…

                      Any minnow now, I expect someone to set grunts to chasing me with lances and pikes, for the sole porpoise of making me, Joel Salmon, stop. (I may need a sturgeon if they catch me.)

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                    2. They’ll head over to the MYTH multiverse and hire some Dorsal Warriors (From Myth-Fortunes)

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                2. Easy. Fill it with dry brush, add fire. Add wienies as appropriate. Nothing goes with a hot bush like a nice wienie.

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                  1. You better watch advocating burning a former Senator and future Mayor as a witch. AG Holder is likely to charge you with libel and threatening bodily harm.

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                    3. Can we cover him in a particularly slow-burning formulation of Thermite and light it at his feet?

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                    1. Yep, I still see it being done around here occasionally. I’m sure the EPA has conniptions when they see someone out with a drip torch lighting ditches. :)

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            4. I am blessed with a good poker face. It has saved my skin on several occaisions.

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            5. > I apparently have one of those faces that shows everything I think.

              When I was a teenager my mom had a nickname the look of disgust and contempt that I’d flash across my face whenever I heard someone say something I disliked. She called it “The Face”. As in “Did you give him The Face when he said that?”.

              I can’t say that I’ve become better since then, but I can say that I stick more to email where The Face can be hidden. ;-)

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  6. It always surprises me when someone tells me they dislike me because of ……. (please pick a reason… usually because I am comfortable talking to older men). When I find out I usually walk away… these type of people are not worth the time or energy. ;-) A few years ago I lost a “good” friend because of something I said on a chat. She found it in a search… and decided that the comment was pointed at her. That was a surprise to me because I thought we were friends– I guess I was wrong.

    I do remember the people who decide to hate me… so I can stay away from them because I don’t need the drama either. It causes more illness for me.

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    1. She found it in a search… and decided that the comment was pointed at her.

      This reminds me of a concept I learned about recently called “female solipsism.” (The concept apparently originated in the PUA blogs, but has spread around the blogosphere from there.) Allegedly, many* women seem to take most things personally, and will assume that something completely unrelated to them is, well, related to them. The example given in the post where I read about this, as I recall, was a guy in his twenties working as a temp in an office that was mostly middle-aged women. Being uninterested in the subjects discussed around their lunch table, he preferred to take his lunch outside in his car where he could listen to the radio, but his boss (also a woman) required him to take lunch inside with the other employees. So to amuse himself, he brought a notebook with him at lunchtime and would occasionally scribble something down in it. It was never anything connected to that office (or so he claimed in the post I read), just ideas for his next blog post or story or whatever. But apparently, pretty much every single one of his co-workers became convinced that he was planning to write a novel, and that he was going to put her in it, and that that’s what he was scribbling about at lunchtime.

      Does that sound plausible to anyone else? It was a weird concept for me to accept at first, but since learning about that concept, I have noticed it happening a LOT…

      * As usual, Odds are an exception (as seems to be the case with most general rules).

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      1. Oh, yeah, totally. In my psych classes BITD, it was referred to as “egocentric bias”. Everyone is at least a little convinced that they’re the hero of their own story and so they will take random details that have nothing to do with them and make them into a story with themselves at the center. See the entire post above re: connecting details and making stories.
        Granted, some people have it worse than others, and it’s not specifically a female thing, but it’s a known phenomenon.

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      2. Oh, yeah — but there’s a funny reverse. When a newby writer EXASPERATES me by not getting it (and I can be very blunt) I can do a post on “things newbies do that annoy me.” THIS if the person were half-aware they would know was aimed at them. THEY NEVER DO. Some send me emails saying “I loved the post. Good thing I never do those things.” Head>desk. Mind you, I haven’t done those in years, because I don’t mentor raw newbies anymore. I’ve come to the conclusion I speak Mandarin Chinese, because when I say “you don’t have a plot” they hear “you’re interestingly complex and layered.” So… if I take an interest and mentor you, you’re not a newbie, even if you were never published. OTOH if I didn’t give you an opinion it just means I haven’t read it, because my life is beyond insane.

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        1. THIS if the person were half-aware they would know was aimed at them. THEY NEVER DO.

          You just reminded me of J. K. Rowling’s interview where she was asked whether she based any of her characters on people she knew in real life. As I recall, she said something like, “No, and if I did I wouldn’t tell you, because they’d find out. Except one. I based the character of Gilderoy Lockhart on someone I know. I’m safe telling you this one because he’ll never find out, even if he reads this interview. See, he goes around telling people that he was the inspiration for Dumbledore.”

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          1. Well, I have had friends convinced I’d written them (and some very offended.) Not only don’t I work that way AT ALL but the people inevitably light on someone that has NOTHING to do with them except, say, hair color or eye color or size. This baffles me.
            The only people I tuckerize are my kids or people who pay for it. The people who pay for it. Also some barflies who, unexpectedly fall in. Those I do by name, so if it has your name or a joke on it, then it’s you. OTOH I tuckerize my kids because I don’t know how to write kids, so I just mine their childhood. ;)

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            1. Elmer Kelton based a character in “The Time it Never Rained” on a local person, and was worried they’d take offense. Turns out, the real person thought a different character was based on him, and he couldn’t have been happier! Kelton kept his mouth shut and nodded.

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            2. Here’s a notion about writing kids. It just came to me, so I’m going — “Is that a good idea or not?” at the moment. Heinlein said about writing juveniles (read: YA today), you make the protagonist 18 and write it otherwise as you ordinarily would. Kids don’t think of themselves as kids. They’ve always been the way they are. So… just make the kid whatever age he has to be and otherwise write him as you would any other character.

              As I say, this just occurred to me, so I haven’t tried it, but it seems to hang together. I’m sure there are codicils, but… Hmm?

              M

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              1. Oh, yes, of course. I mean writing kids from the OUTSIDE. Toddlers and young kids. There’s a fine line between adorable and demented or out of character for age. As is I wrote my kids as they were at certain ages and agent informed me on no uncertain terms no three year old acted like that. (Bah.)

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                2. Yes, well. Having exchanged stories of your sons and The Daughter, as well as knowing some of the children in the lamented departed High A G Program we once had in this county, I can tell you that the correct phrase would have been, ‘Extremely few three year olds behave like that, and some are even stranger.’

                  Apparently your agent had not had the pleasure of being exposed to these quirky little individuals and made the all to common mistake of believing that if he had not been exposed to a thing, then such things must not be.

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          3. The chemistry teacher at Rowling’s old school apparently was a lot of the inspiration for Snape, and he didn’t see it at all until friends mentioned it to him. (Apparently a nice guy, but very very dense about how people saw him. Also it had been a long time since the 1970’s, and his general physical appearance was not the same.) He was proud of it, once pointed out.

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            1. I presume I am not alone in noticing that Snape was a really, really lousy teacher. His pedagogical technique was calculated to make kids under-perform in his classes.

              A pity, too, because as we learned in Half-Blood Prince, he really knew his potions.

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              1. Snape was a lousy teacher for beginners.

                He would’ve been awesome for someone that had a good basis and a strong desire to learn– advanced potions, etc.

                I had an English teacher who was a short, coffee-swilling Snape. (Minus the need to make sure that I didn’t think I was some sort of super-human.)

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        2. OTOH if I didn’t give you an opinion it just means I haven’t read it …

          Hah!!! Pfooey! You did read it and are denying having done so because you know that once I break in to publication I will capture the market for steampunk musketeer furniture refinishers who shapeshift to fight vampires in order to establish a libertarian haven, all plotted out in meetings at a pub called The Fred!!!

          But I am on to you and shall get around your efforts by inserting selected snips in random blog comments around the webz.

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            2. Except that, while my story is interestingly complex and layered, I have no plot, merely a marketing strategy.

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        3. Mind you, I haven’t done those in years, because I don’t mentor raw newbies anymore. I’ve come to the conclusion I speak Mandarin Chinese, because when I say “you don’t have a plot” they hear “you’re interestingly complex and layered.”

          Oh, the way the human mind will work! You said “you don’t have a plot.” “Ah”, they think, “A plot, only one,” they conclude, “it must, therefore, be complex and layered.” ;-)

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            1. Or “clearly my plot is too layered and complex for her to get! That’s all right, my target audience will!”

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        4. Oh, yes, oh, yes. At one point during the recent SFWA kerfuffle someone solemnly posted a screed on LJ about how when the powerless speak to the powerful that it never registers to the powerful as meaningful. . . and that the powerless can’t conduct witch crazes, only the powerful, so driving the editor of the Bulletin could not have been a witch hunt — instead of the obvious deduction that they conduct witch hunts, therefore they are the powerful

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        5. Oh yes — if you really want to see it in the height of its ugliness I recommend Life at the Bottom: The Worldview That Makes the Underclass by Theodore Dalrymple.

          Criminals are consistently able to evaluate other people’s actions. It’s just the total disconnect between their evaluations and their own behavior.

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          1. Well, that explains the predator in Ohio claiming that while, yes, he did detain the three women in his home, the home life was a happy one.

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              1. Well, sure: He was happy, and I think we can reasonably discount his sensitivity to and perceptiveness of female emotion.

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      5. Interesting. I also think it may be a leftover from the times when a woman had fewer options. It hasn’t been too long ago that being a wife was the only career path for many women. My grandmother’s generation for me. When you are not the apex predator, responding to him appropriately is a survival skill. Hence, “reading a room.” Mix this with the current focus on “me,me,me” and voila.

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        1. I would also look at the possibility that for ever so long a woman’s value was intangible, depending on subjective measures. Most male standards of accomplishment are clearly definable by objective measures: he can hunt or he cannot. A bridge he designs stands up or it don’t. He can run faster, chuck a spear farther, jump higher than other guys or he can’t.

          For a female, many achievements are more a matter of preference. Fashion & beauty are often just adherence to arbitrary and fickle standards. Gymnastics, dance, even cooking are appraised subjectively. Add in that much of the measure of girls’ achievements are time-limited, are a battle against nature’s insistence that waists will thicken, busts will droop, hair will grow and I think you have the basis for a high level of personal insecurity.

          This might also explain part of why girls are more likely to be swots in school — grades are a nearly objective measure of achievement unavailable to them otherwise.

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          1. You’re using vocabulary I’m not familiar with, which is a new experience for me — and to confuse me even further, I can’t figure out from context if the term “swots” is positive or negative. Could you explain what it means?

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              1. No, I believe “swots” means that you do well at something (particularly in school subjects and tests), but you work work work at it and are possibly humorless about it. I believe the American equivalent is “grinds.”

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                1. That would be approximately right. British slang, certainly, and the general meaning. As always with such things, there are nuances which cannot easily be translated. Think of how Hermione Granger is first perceived in the Potter books.

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                    1. Didn’t say she was a grind, said she’s a swot. The fact that she has a great time learning does not make her less of a swot; it makes her more of one.

                      Partly this is a problem of slang not translating smoothly. As the banshee noted, it is the obsessive over-preparation that is the characteristic. Note, also, that it is a term of derision from those who do not apply themselves even though they would greatly benefit from such effort.

                      Harry is a bit of a swot in the Defense Against The Dark Arts coursework, but as he’s marked for death by Lord Whassname and everybody can see the practicality of it nobody ridicules him as a swot. (Although it might be amusing to interpret him as the George Zimmerman of Little Whinging.)

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          2. That was a truly brief era and didn’t prevail for all women even then. Look at the Brothers Grimm and other tales of that era. A young man evaluates his brides by how they eat cheese, or spin, or cook. Periods where most women were not judged by their output are very rare and very small.

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            1. ” Periods where most women were not judged by their output are very rare and very small.”

              Women are judged more often by their put-out than their output.

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                1. Hi, isn’t this is a lovely corner? Needs more space, though, so we’ll have to conquer some of the room. And access to other corners… I know, we can Escherize!

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      6. I’ve heard about that sort of thing and it’s one of the several reasons that a man would have to be crazy to have more than one wife (especially in the same household). [Sad Smile]

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          1. YES– coming from family who lived it (great-great-grandparents). I met great-grandparents who were strong in the church, but were vocally against polygamy…

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        2. My wife says I can have as many mistresses / wives as I want so long as they pay their share of the mortgage.

          Sadly, we paid off the mortgage some years ago. So I’m out of luck now.

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      7. Oh, yes. Seen it many times. Not only when a man does or says something, but other women probably even more so. Unrelated things become attacks, or at least gossip that is somehow a veiled reference to them, and casual comments become studied insults.

        It appears that, when it comes to men being the target of this behavior, it’s often because we are direct, and the “normal” women don’t get that, and study everything for hidden meanings, or dishonest reactions. I have a perfect example from the radio this morning. The female announcer bought her husband Hedge Trimmers for (I think) his birthday (this was something he wanted, but hadn’t bought for himself, so a reasonable gift – for a man). He was happy with that gift, but she became worried that it was the equivalent of him giving her a vacuum cleaner, and asked him something like 5 or 6 times if he was really happy with it, or if he was just saying that so as to not hurt her feelings.

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        1. See, I tend to communicate like a guy, because most of my friends growing up were guys. So, this baffles me too. My MIL once tried to convince me I should be offended Dan gave me a new iron for my birthday. “But I asked for it.” “Doesn’t matter. He views you as a drudge.” “No, he doesn’t. This will make ironing easier and faster.” “What is wrong with you?”

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          1. I have had to explain to male friends before that women can put five standard different meanings into “You look nice today”, and four of them are very nasty insults (three of them directed at the woman, one directed at someone else in the room/group).

            Then I explain that when a man says “I’m hungry”, the woman hears “are you going to make dinner?” and “The lunch you made wasn’t big enough” and “I want to go out to eat” and “I want dinner made here at home soon” and “Did you remember the items on the grocery shopping list” all at the same time, when the man meant was “Hey, I just noticed I’m hungry.”

            Even knowing how to translate, I still sometime find myself reading too much into a statement, or expecting too much from a subtle hint.

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            3. Men can do that too. Screwtape recommends that Wormwood and Wormwood’s client’s mother’s devil be sure to get both of them judging their own words by the words and nothing else, and the other’s words by the most hypersensitive attention to tone and cues possible. That way, they can quarrel bitterly and yet acquit themselves.

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          2. Never give a woman anything that plugs in as a gift. It will be mis-understood.

            Unless, of course, the woman in question is also a geek of some variety. My wife, darling loveable dearest of my heart, is in no wise a geek. Acquiring new tech for her can be a challenge, since there is always some such interpretation available.

            I view her a drudge. I only bought it because _I_ wanted it. It’s a waste of money because she will never use it.

            My personal favorite: after double carpal tunnel surgery and relocation of the “funny bone” nerve and smoothing of her medial epicondrial in the elbow, and development of osteo arthritis in her hands, I got her an electric can opener (the kind where the opener kind can go in the dishwasher to keep clean.) Response: “You think I’m helpless.” Riiiiiight.

            Note that I recognize my irrationality in still loving her to pieces after 37 years. These other things are small things we must put up with. :-)

            My son, fortunate man that he is, married his high school sweetheart, whom he met at the Star Trek club, and who was his gaming partner in High School.

            She -asks- for tech.

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            1. Umm. Dad gave me a toolbox one year. And bought me a palm-sander because I really wanted one, and asked for it, too. And when I moved into a house I owned, my significant other bought me a pallet of bricks so that I could re-do the patio. Hey, they asked me what I wanted, and I told them …

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              1. Once upon a time, a writer’s husband decided to get her a book he knew she really wanted for Valentine’s Day. He asked a clerk for help and while they were searching let slip exactly why he wanted a copy of The Writer’s Digest Guide To Poisons.

                She looked at him.

                He said, “I consider an expression of trust.”

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                1. Agatha Christie? or someone more modern?

                  On Wed, Jul 31, 2013 at 2:44 PM, According To Hoyt wrote:

                  > ** > marycatelli commented: “Once upon a time, a writer’s husband decided to > get her a book he knew she really wanted for Valentine’s Day. He asked a > clerk for help and while they were searching let slip exactly why he wanted > a copy of The Writer’s Digest Guide To Poisons. She lo” >

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                    1. I need to have a talk with Dan about being careful about the total amount of life insurance on him. It is my practice not to be worth too much dead …

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                3. Once at a Police auction I purchased a nice 357 revolver. When I picked it up from the police armorer he commented “nice gun, what did you get it for”. I told him it was for my wife. He totally freaked out, saying he would never buy his wife a gun. As I left I thought “gee he must have a GREAT marriage.”

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                  1. I’m sure you know the old saw about getting a gun for your wife, but for those who don’t I’ll share it.

                    “I just got a new gun for my wife.”
                    “Really, what kind?”
                    “A Ruger 357.”
                    “Good trade!”

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              2. My darling man did not splurge on the engagement ring – instead, he bought a nice bit of jewelry I wore for about six months until it got in the way in the shop one too many times, and 32 feet of knotless clear tight-grained sitka spruce already formed and shaped into two aircraft main spars.

                They don’t plug in, but they did bolt on, after a bit of shaping and fitting, and nailing ribs and trammelling and running control cables, sewing the fabric on, and then doping and painting it…

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                    2. Oh, it tried, most agressively. I went through several cartridges on a darned good respirator mask while applying it, and any break in the seal on the respirator when bending over, break in the seal around my goggles, or liquid that made it past the barrier cream and two layers of gloves was enough to lay me out flat for a day after applying a coat, by the end of the project. You don’t so much start with a tolerance as exposure starts making you more and more vulnerable as you go on.

                      Ingredients include, but are not limited to: Toluene, Methyl Ethyl Ketone, Methyl Isobutyl Ketone, Methyl n-Amyl Ketone, Proplyene Oxide, and Carbamic acid, to quote an MSDS sheet for just one of the dopes applied. Not some of my favorite things, but at least I was using a polyester fabric instead of historically-correct cotton. (Nitrate Dope + Cotton = Nitrocellulose. Put a powdered aluminum layer of lacquer for UV protection on top, and you have the recipe to recreate the Hinderberg with any errant spark.)

                      Like

                    3. I have a high tolerance for most things, but whatever is in lacquer thinner I cannot stand to be around. Even if being used outside I can’t handle being around it.

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                    4. I used to clean tube type single channel radios with tri-chloro-ethylene (organic chemical). For protection I had a regular dust mask… no protection at all because we think after some research (hubby and I) that it was the trigger for my disease… so be careful with those chemicals.

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                    6. [ …list of dope ingredients elided…]

                      At least you weren’t working with nitrate dope instead of butyrate dope, right? (It’s been so long I can’t remember the differences between the two sets of solvents, etc.) Once watched an old hangar queen that had been covered using nitrate dope catch a spark…

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                    7. SteveH – actually, the formula calls for a layer of nitrate dope, followed by two layers of butyrate dope, then a layer of butyrate dope impregnated with powdered aluminum, then the color-holding coats.

                      I specifically chose the formulation (and polyester fabric, not cotton) that should smoulder instead of Hindenberg at a spark… but I’m certainly not going to test it! All cooking was done downwind and well clear of the airplane. (Besides, the last thing I wanted was for the plane to have food smells should a hungry bruin wander by.)

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                    8. Reading this thread, and all of a sudden I can hear Bach’s voice reciting

                      Factories don’t make airplanes as new as his was, parked there in the hay. Twenty coats of hand-rubbed butyrate dope, at least, paint like a mirror pulled tight over the wooden ribs of the thing. Don, in old-English gold leaf under the rim of his cockpit, and the registration on the map case said D.W. Shimoda.

                      Still gives me goosebumps after all these years.

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        2. Oh, yes. Seen it many times. Not only when a man does or says something, but other women probably even more so. Unrelated things become attacks, or at least gossip that is somehow a veiled reference to them, and casual comments become studied insults.

          But they’re not being crazy.

          That’s what they do, so they know that some folks do it.

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          1. Had to double check that I hadn’t actually called it crazy. You had me worried for a minute :-)

            It’s still something that one should learn to avoid doing with their significant other, unless they have evidence that the other person does that to them. So many times, people won’t even admit when they are reading something wrong after it’s been explained to them by a half-dozen people.

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          2. No, they are still being crazy. They aren’t being wholly irrational is what they aren’t being.

            I, OTOH, generally operate on the assumption that if I do a thing it is highly unlikely that anyone else does it too. It’s an Odd trait, and why I tend to seem aloof. It is also based on long experience of the looks on people’s faces when I let some of those thoughts out into the yard for air.

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            1. Yes! I rarely initiate conversations these days (except for the trivial) unless I know someone well. People tend to sidle away. Sigh.

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      8. If you walk into a room and two people there start to laugh, do you assume they are laughing about you?

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        1. depends. Sometimes. If they look at me a certain way, then whisper. If the room is nearly empty and my entrance was obvious.
          I’m paranoid enough that when I enter a room I often assume that everyone in it hates me. Then I remind myself some of them need to meet me first, before they know they should hate me ;) And then I’m fine.

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        2. Problem was, when I was in High School, it was usually true. And no, I’m not making it up. Some of the guys in one of my classes talked about putting me in for Most Popular because I was everyone’s favorite target.

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        3. It depends on the two people ;-). If my hubby is one of them, then yes. We have a standing joke about it. Anyone else, not necessarily unless I see pointing fingers in my direction and then I first look to see who they are pointing at.

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          1. My first response to laughter is to check the hem of my skirt, especially if I’ve been to the ladies lounge recently.

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            1. I did have an incident where I was trailing a long piece of toilet paper while I was dancing with my brother. Oh yea– embarrassing… Didn’t know until a kind woman came up and told me. Of course they though I was my brother’s girlfriend (we are 14 years apart btw). Same brother that now has a one year old.

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              1. Cyn, I had a pad fall down my leg at a formal dance. My mom refused to buy ones with sticking strips because they were more expensive. My way of dealing with it was to move away from it as fast as possible and pretend I knew nothing, but I still remember it with DEEP mortification.

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        4. It usually prompts me to check my fly. Especially after that run of “Our Town” we did in High School when I went through the emotional end scene with the ladders with my zipper down. And someone pointed it out to me in the reception line after the play.

          On two separate occasions.

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      9. *tries to smush a smirk, doesn’t quite manage*

        Wait, wait… so the guys who specialize in in trying to make “romance” as impersonal as possible by reducing women to basically robots and other men to categories, and try to game that system by emotional manipulation, came up with a theory that “women” take things “too personally.”

        So, it is once again Not Their Fault. Exactly like the women who think everything is because other folks hate them…it’s always something inherently wrong with other people….

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        1. Please don’t take this personally, but I believe there may be a middle ground between “impersonally” and “too personally.” It is exactly such polarization that causes people to throw up their hands and declare there’s no point trying to communicate. Dividing the world into “nothing personal” and “everything is personal” eliminates the middle ground of “some things are personal, some aren’t — let’s explore where our views overlap.”

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          1. Oh, I quite agree– there’s middleground, and probably a rather large area of “perfectly functional.”

            I just have a pet hobby horse about the Game guys being the other side of the Psycho Feminist coin, and just as annoying.

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            1. Oh – okay, then. I agree the world is full of people who don’t recognise that “you are ugly” does not mean the same as “I am beautiful.” Sometimes your ability to recognize flaws in others is a consequence of possessing those same flaws yourself.

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              1. Nah, my phrasing is based off of familiarity with the game guys who only re-phrase it as “mostly” so they can keep it as “everyone except for any examples you can bring up.”

                Before I switched avatars, some would assume that I was male….

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          2. Oh, I forgot a tidbit: the guys who will accuse you of doing something, then try to wave it off as you taking things too personally. Most (in)famously, a fellow I had thought was a friend accused me of wanting to send my two year old daughter on a religious crusade ending in her death because I pointed out some stupid mistake he’d made in a facebook rant. Uuuhh…what?!?! (Followed by “you take stuff too seriously,” and then followed by deleting the entire thing after I’d informed him he was unacceptable and blocking him. Luckily, I screen-shotted the dang thing so when he told my husband I was irrational, my husband could quote exactly what had been said… I’m a quick learner, only took four or five accusations of “she’s crazy and lying” to start covering my tail!)

            Yes, I do in fact take accusations of sexual misconduct rather personally, you ill-bred excuse for an adult being, and as for accusations of being willing to HARM MY CHILDREN….. *walks off growling about idiots who can’t accept consequences*

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  8. I just can’t be arsed to deal with politics beyond understanding who’s where, and I’ve learned enough to translate from the codewords used. “Protect writers” generally means, “protect MY intellectual property.” “New,” “unique,” “revolutionary,” and “ground breaking” are all indicative of being the same, old same-old (say, mold?). Mentions of privilege, racism, a lack of black, brown, red, green, orange, colour-out-of-space writers in SF is what’s killing SF all translate to: not going to get involved in this discussion. Not usually difficult to change the subject, actually. I just ask a person what they’re working on, writing, just finished, editing, like to do in their spare time.

    Really, I’ve just got too. much. to do. to keep letting people get spun up on things that piss me off. A reason I don’t read a ton of stuff on news sites. People using bad grammar irritate me. People behaving with rank stupidity ignite a searing flame of rage deep in the trackless abyss of my soul.

    Speaking of having too much to do, I’d like to see – related to Sarah doing too much and needing something else to fill time – posts related to cover design, interior layout and formatting, etc. Basically, tools for the independent publisher and direction for learning the skills involved. Should I get an Adobe Creative Cloud subscription to gain access to Photoshop and InDesign for the benefits those confer, or try to go with something more open source? Mostly, I see a lot of info getting thrown around, but I’m not convinced I trust the sources.

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    1. Regarding the Creative Cloud membership…
      How familiar are you with Photoshop and Indesign? (and likely Illustrator, too?)
      Will you be getting $50 in use every month (or enough use to make it worth $50/mo)?
      if answer one is ‘moderately’ or ‘very’, and answer two is yes, then spend the $50. Otherwise, make do with open source, or less expensive alternatives (like Photoshop Elements)

      Like

        1. I’ve probably mentioned this before, but it bears repeating. (especially as I’ve been uploading a new version of Battlehymn in anticipation of the garage sale.)

          I build my ebooks in Sigil, which is free from Google. And then I use Amazon’s KindleGen software to convert to .mobi.

          For covers that I’m doing, I use MS Publisher. Grab some stock art at dreamstime.com, add titles, and off you go. For example, here’s one I did for FlagShip back when I was doing FlagShip: http://www.amazon.com/FlagShip-Science-Fiction-Fantasy-ebook/dp/B008A8RO1M/ref=sr_1_18?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1375321101&sr=1-18&keywords=flagship.

          If I need to take a book to PDF, that gets a little tricky, but I’ve found that I prefer making a copy of the .epub file and changing the extension to .zip. Then I unpack that, and open the .xhtml files in a web browser (usually Chrome), copy and paste that into Word. I create content links and whatnot as I need them, and save the whole thing to PDF. It’s time consuming, but i felt like it gave me the best control over the linking, the formatting matched what I was doing in the ebook, and it worked.

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          1. I’m more interested in InDesign, which I understand has some pretty powerful formatting tools. But, again: rank tyro. I dunno wot I dunno.

            Like

    3. I’ve been tinkering with GIMP for images and maps. The learning curve was a bit steep, says she who wouldn’t look at the tutorials until after she made the mistakes. (No harm done, I knew I was going to futz up the map).

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  9. The sad truth about me is that you can completely annoy me one day and I’ll forgive you in a week – not because I’m good natured but because I have a rotten memory for names. You can be a total asshat, and unless I really know you, in a week I won’t remember.

    I’m the same way. I’ve been so angry I couldn’t stay in the same room with someone, and a day or a week later, you wouldn’t know there had ever been a problem. Usually because the incident recedes from memory.

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    1. I had an embarrassing moment years ago where I remembered that a fellow had badly mistreated a dear friend of mine… as I was walking away after a brief but very cordial conversation with him. This sieve I have in place of a brain needs smaller holes.

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      1. Yes. I know. I have the same issue. And every time I hammer a troll, I’m afraid it’s someone who has donated handsomely to the site. More so if it’s someone with a similar name. (Do you know how many Bruces there are? The world is full of them!)

        Like

      2. You are obviously not spending enough time imagining the slow torture of your enemies. Maybe I should have a seminar on this topic.

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        1. I generally dislike drama, and it takes a lot to really make me mad at someone. Still, I’m enough of a sadist that I find the thing between Vox and Scalzi to be endlessly amusing.

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          1. As Henry Kissinger observed about 1980’s war between Iraq and Iran, It’s a shame they both can’t lose.

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            1. Yeah. People who think “I don’t care what happens to these characters” are the Eight Deadly Words applied to literature, have never considered the Deadly effect of “Why can’t you both lose?”

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          2. In that battle, I’ll just stand aside and root for injuries. I tend to agree with MadMike’s assessment of Vox: the Anti-Scalzi, and not in a good way. That is no comment on the quality of either man’s fiction; I’ve not read their books yet, though I picked up one by Vox for free a couple of years ago.

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            1. Just finished Vox’s Summa. Good and an interesting idea, though it could have been longer. As far as their “fight”, I’ve always loathed whiners, and at the same time I tend to have a soft spot in my stony heart for the ‘too smart for his own good bastard’.

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            2. Old Man’s War was an enjoyable read. Haven’t read any of his other fiction, but I do keep tabs on what he’s talking about at his blog.
              I like knowing what that wing of the SFF community is talking about.

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              1. Haven’t read Zoe’s Story, but the first three of the Old Man’s War series were good, haven’t seen anything else Scalzi wrote that sounded interesting, and haven’t read any of Vox’s fiction.

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    2. Stewing on things angrily is just a waste of time. It doesn’t change anything, and you’re in a sour mood.

      Like

  10. “One doesn’t condemn … just because … there would be no …”

    Hell, I wouldn’t even be married.

    What I want to know is: What’s wrong with living in your own head. It’s comfortable there. I can go anywhere in all time and space I choose and it’s all free. I feel like the best service I can do to my fellowman is to report back on my adventures while I’m in there. But I resent the hell out of people who want to prevent me from going there. Who want me to scoop the cat box or do the groceries or — Zeus forfend — go to the day job.

    Somebody tell me why I shouldn’t want to live in there. Here.

    M

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    1. Well the usual problem with living purely in your head is that the mean external world starts to gang up on you and cut off access to things that you need such as food, electricity, housing…

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  11. I’ve got pieces of my back-story missing as well. Like an event that I learned about fourth grade that supposedly happened when I was in first or second grade. I still don’t believe it did.

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    1. Rumors. Rumors and lies. :) Aeh, probably everybody else is confusing and conflating stories. Although sometimes there are things like head injuries, or stories in your own handwriting that you haven’t thought about for so long that you’ve totally forgotten them.

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  12. Trust me, office politics can be petty, vicious, and very damaging to one’s career if allowed to fester and grow ugly. And it’s often because someone with too much time on their hands and way too thin a skin takes umbrage at an imagined slight or offense based on someone’s casual off hand comment or action.
    Problem is that in the workplace everyone is to a greater or lesser degree interdependent. Some aspect of your job likely rests in the hands of multiple co-workers, and if one is having a hissy fit over some unfortunate comment taken the wrong way they can make things extremely awkward, even make it impossible to adequately do your job. An otherwise decent employee who develops that overly sensitive thin skin can quickly poison an entire office environment. And that’s not even getting into the whole swamp of racial or gender issues that can trip anyone up. That whole Paula Dean kerfuffle comes to mind.

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    1. Or worse – a couple of years ago there was a dreadful office shooting at a real estate agency in north/east San Antonio which started that way. An employee took umbrage at a comment by his supervisor; the employee was of color and in a mixed-race marriage, and the supervisor had made a comment which she apparently meant to be complimentary about some pictures of his children. Employee took extreme offense, simmered a bit, then came to work with a weapon and shot up the office – and the supervisor. He fled, later was found on a highway median, having blown out his brains. I remember this particularly because it happened near by my home, tied up traffic in a big way … and because when the investigators finished interviewing the survivors, that was all they could come up with.

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      1. I noted this in an acquaintance also in a mixed marriage. Her children (the older is the age of my older one) are gorgeous. She interpreted people turning and staring as “they’re staring because my children are mixed race” while I’m 99% sure they were turning and staring because both her daughter and son were drop-dead-gorgeous. I tried to tell her this, but she wouldn’t believe it. Made me a little sad.

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        1. Classic example of how we are being indoctrinated in education and by our media to think of ourselves as victims. Before retiring I spent a quarter century as a white male in a white collar professional office environment. To successfully navigate the reefs and shoals of such an ocean I learned early on to self censor my words and comments, to the point of being careful even of stray thoughts that might affect my expression or spur an off the cuff remark. You had to know someone extremely well before offering even the mildest of compliments of a personal nature. And with some that I worked along side for years I never ever made even the slightest personal remark. There was a real potential for that victim attitude turning anything I said into an actionable grievance. I vividly recall one young lady actively trying to get a janitor fired for simply remarking to her that it appeared she was working late. She claimed she felt threatened. Of course she was a sheltered southern white girl while the janitor was a gay black man, so she wound up just appearing foolish, but had the situation been different she could easily have cost a man his job.

          Was especially difficult for me as I started out in blue collar factory work back in the seventies where the rules and language was very much different. Nothing like a factory filled mostly with middle aged women to edumacate an impressionable young boy barely out of his teens.

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          1. And the worst thing about it is that we’re told that all this victimhood indoctrination is good for us and will make us into better citizens, able to tolerate each other more. It seems to do the opposite, if all these horror stories are any indication.

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            1. See, I found out early — when I was young people identified me as “hispanic” on sight more — actually at the time, in NC, possibly due to the scarcity of the real thing, most people thought I was Mexican, which still boggles — that it was best to pretend people wouldn’t discriminate against me for that. Not that some idiots wouldn’t, of course, but eliminating that which I couldn’t control and could only obsess about, left me free to build my life and find my niche in it. I had a friend who came over at the same time, but because she had studied Spanish went into her Masters in Hispanic Studies, or Latin Studies, or whatever, and has spent the last thirty years being a professional victim. Which would be fine, if that’s what she wanted, but it isn’t, as proven by the fact she no longer speaks to me because I’m a writer and “important” and “give myself airs.” (Which I know you guys can’t tell, but no I don’t. I have friends in all walks of life, and hell, most of those in retail make more money than I do. To interpret my “very busy” and “I forget my own head” as pride takes a basic dissatisfaction with your situation in life.

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              1. I don’t blame my race or my sex for why things don’t go my way in life. Most of the time, I just wasn’t putting in the effort.

                When I do put in the effort, the result is stupendous.

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                1. Yes, exactly. I do blame my sex for not having enough kids though. “Too busy to have it often enough” (RUNS. RUNS VERY FAST. BEFORE THE CARP CANON CAN BE FIRED.)

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                    5. When ordering the carp canon it is very important not to be dyslexic, unless of course it’s to be aimed at someone you really dislike

                      PS and then there’s the whole cannon vs canon thing. One is some kind of priest and the other is a tube from which balls are ejected at high speed. And not forgetting the Buddhist deity Kannon who sometimes gets confused for a camera maker

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                    6. When ordering the carp canon it is very important not to be dyslexic

                      Yeah, because dyslexia there could lead to ordering a Crap Conan, which wouldn’t be much use to anybody.

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              2. To interpret my “very busy” and “I forget my own head” as pride takes a basic dissatisfaction with your situation in life.

                *flashes back to complaints in high school to the effect that she was stuck up*

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              3. I gather that I used to be accused of aloofness when in fact I was simply wandering around in my own head and had forgotten to peer out the windows. It strikes me as very sad to spend all one’s time peering out the windows of your head, trying to see if the neighbors are watching you. [Insert obligatory Gladys Kravitz reference]

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                1. You must remember that a lot of people are like that, they have no interior resources to call upon instead. Extroverts, mostly.

                  And this is because they are callous and insensitive from birth. You can tell which babies will be extroverted by which ones respond more weakly, or not at all, to a stimulus.

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  13. I’ve got a pretty thick skin and I tend to trust people and believe they mean what they say. This can lead to situations where they are busy being sarcastic or something and I just say “Thank you”. I guess its part of being an odd.

    That also means that when people say things like “if you’re ever in the area do come and stay” then I tend to take them up on it. It mosty works out OK but I think a few people regretting making that particular casual remark to me. These days I tend to reply with something like “I may take you up on that” and see if they flinch.

    I think you live a much more peaceful life not worryng what other people think of you, but in the larger world this seems to be a minority view.

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  14. One doesn’t condemn an entire person or forfeit an entire friendship just because our friend has one or two really stupid ideas. If we did that, there would be no friendship and no person who passed muster – particularly among us opinionated lot.

    Reminds me of the old joke: “I used to have opinions about things.”

    Typically, that’s true. Occasionally, however, someone will decide that their particular idea is the most important thing in the world ever and start to go off about it. In as forceful and rhetorically hostile a manner as possible. So then you hit a point where you’ve been ideologically poked as much as possible and start avoiding them.

    I guess the real question for me is: What responsibility do I have for someone else’s stupid idea and its possible propagation? If someone is saying something boneheaded and wrong, do I have an obligation to step in and correct them? I see people – people I have some respect for as professionals, and particularly people I have respect for as storytellers – saying some things that go beyond disagreement to insult. And yes, I understand that my reaction is up to me, and I try my best to let things roll off the ol’ back, but… people I know. People I’ve admired. People I see either becoming more strident about their positions, or at least more vocal about it. Maybe they’ve always felt that way and only now with the advent of social media do they feel comfortable enough to let it out. Or maybe they’re being radicalized by their fellow travelers. I don’t know.

    People deserve mercy. Stupid ideas do not. But is it possible to take down a stupid idea without someone feeling like they’re being attacked? Which causes them to dig in their heels, double down on their idea, and be that much more likely to consider you the enemy? And how much time can be spared to kill intellectual weeds? If I spend time on that, what’s left for cultivating my own right thinking and my intellectual garden? (How many more metaphors can I use in this comment?)

    I don’t know. I really don’t know.

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    1. I’ve lost a friendship because I refused to listen to her idea that Bush was going to put every gay person in camps. And every time I tried to change the subject, she told me I was disrespecting her. That still hurts.
      Also, I know what you mean. I try not to be insulting of potential readers. I’ve had Marxists be offended at my posts, but you know… If people endorse an evil philosophy, they get what’s coming to them.

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      1. I have quit arguing with people who hold ideas I do not agree with. What I will do is either avoid the issue entirely or simply point out provable facts that conflict with their viewpoint. If they are willing to consider those facts and discuss the situation then all well and good. If they reject my comments out of hand then they are disrespecting me and no longer deserve any of my time or attention.
        I find that an ability to deny reality when it conflicts with the narrative to be one of the more consistent traits of the liberal progressive mindset. At my age I find that I no longer have the patience or time to waste on such folks.

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          1. Oh my heck, my wife got in to it with an acquaintance of hers last night about how my wife couldn’t understand because “she hadn’t grown up black in the south.”

            I guess this means that person doesn’t believe that empathy exists. Sure, I didn’t grow up (insert minority group HERE). So? Like I’ve never been picked on / treated badly / ridiculed for my looks or behavior or belief? An overweight nerd in small-town rural Idaho? HA!

            And what I’m I supposed to feel for the poor victim claiming that no one understands her? Am I supposed to feel sorry for her? Am I supposed to feel pity for her? Isn’t that condescending as (INSERT EUPHEMISM OF YOUR CHOICE HERE)?

            My only condolence is that people tend to say things like this around my wife, but they do not say things like this around me.

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            1. An overweight nerd in small-town rural Idaho?

              Yeah, my usual response is, “You didn’t grow up a nerd in a Redneck school.”

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              2. One thing can unite hip-hop fans, kickers, goths, jocks, and preps: the arrival of a fat female nerd.

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                1. This is why I starved myself for most of my youth. I THINK if I were willing to live like that — sometimes I ate. No, seriously, most days I didn’t eat at all — I’d still be thin. The problem is I can no longer function like that.

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        2. It seems more like they’re trying to impose their will on you, not genuinely have a discussion.

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      2. I have been under the impression that gay people like camps just as much as straight people do, possibly even more. What with all the tennis and golf and arts & crafts and sitting around the campfires singing show tunes while eating s’mores — what’s not to like?

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          1. Ah, but then they would try to say what you could and could not write while at the Government Writing Hotel . . .

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              1. No, they are merely collecting the data. They won’t come back and actually read it unless we do something else to raise a flag, like for example writing a book about revolution or the overthrow of the established order….
                Oh, carp, never mind.

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          2. My favorite camping was always where we gathered in a friend’s basement with our sleeping bags, watched MST3K and played video games and RPGs until the sun came up. Better snacks, his mom usually made breakfast, and no rain or bugs. Or rain. I plan to institute regular blanket-fort camping trips when Mrs. Dave and I have versions 2.0

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            1. Oh, yeah, that would be fun. We used to have “long writing weekends” where we hired someone to babysit all the kids, then best friends came over to our place and we wrote for three days. I still wish we had that!

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                1. Um… if it weren’t that these need to be a dislocation from normal (go to another place/have people in your house, etc) now we could just declare a writing weekend and make the shiftless… er… the sweet darlings write.

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              1. That would be nice, but then the Feds wouldn’t be able to have fun seeing you squirm.

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      3. I’ve had people be offended by posts I’ve made where I actually was making a comment that supported their position. Apparently having the support of “someone like me” was considered in an of itself bad, or perhaps that my reasoning that led me to the support started from a “bad place.”

        On the other hand, it is a true joy being a friend and co-conspirator with Eric Flint, who is a Marxist and a Trotskyite (if I have that correctly) but is in my experience an utterly trustworthy and honest man, and a joy to argue with. He’s smart. That makes a tremendous difference.

        Still, every now and then, he’ll come out with something that causes me to just stare… and I am forced to ask the reasoning. The difference is, there always _is_ reasoning. Further, he can be persuaded a position is incorrect with sufficient data. (except for the Marxist thing.)

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    2. With such things I find that the carefully posed question can occasionally collapse their house of cards, but directly challenging usually sets their heels.

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  15. Sarah, I just saw _Wings_ and _Crawling Between Heaven and Earth_ up in the Kindle Store.

    Are these the same versions that I purchased from Baen?

    Money’s tight right now so I don’t want to “repurchase” books if I don’t have to.

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    1. they are, sweetie. Also, I’m going to put them in the human Wave garage sale, if Sabrina can take addendums, so Crawling will be free and wings will be 2.99 for five days.

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  16. Speaking of forgetting things. Back when my sister was a bad, BAD, person she put a guy in the trunk of her car at gun point … then forgot about him for most of the day. She wasn’t going to actually hurt him, just wanted to scare him (he owed her money, had it, but smoked it). By the time she recalled he was still back there she’s been driving around doing things for hours, and it had reached the high 80’s.

    She stopped and checked. He was sweating like a pig and asleep, but was otherwise fine. She felt so bad that she took him to Dennys and fed him. Made him promise not to “make her do it again.” He just nodded real fast and swore up and down he’d pay her back on time from now on.

    Good times … good times. One day I’ll put all her stories together in a book. The time she went over to Mario’s hotel room and found a naked Russian guy duct taped in the closet was real funny.

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    1. Wow. Memoir, or serial-numbers-filed-off-fiction style? Because if you don’t, I may have to start writing something similar. Which I may just do anyway.

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    2. Geez– I need to write stories of my step-daughter’s adventures. One time she and a girlfriend were driving home to Seattle and was passing Portland. They stopped at a rest stop and found a dead body in a garbage sack. I think she has found at least three dead bodies in three different cities. Good thing she always has an alibi ;-)

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      1. From what I know, he’s a plumber with an Italian accent. Likes mushrooms, dislikes turtles.

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        1. Oh good gravy – she controlled DPH?! What about Oak Park? I’ve spent far more time than I cared to in those hellholes. Heck, I lived in favelas that were safer and more pleasant than Del Paso Heights. As far as I can tell from what I hear these days, they haven’t gotten any better.

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    4. She’s had an interesting life.

      My life was the opposite; boring as molasses. And I’m actually thankful for that.

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          1. I tried dull. I got bored.

            Then I got a job that takes 125% (I tend to spend my first day off staring blankly out the window, drinking tea, and making pithy comments on the net instead of being productive.) Now I feel boring because I commit so much to the job I haven’t taken any random road trips in months, been over two years since I last climbed a mountain. I have gotten to a couple cons, but if this keeps up, I’m going to need to learn to scuba dive or start taking vacations overseas just to avoid remodeling the house out of desire to try something different and learn new things. (Oh, wait, I already insulated the attic. Well, I haven’t started tearing out walls yet.)

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  17. In the sort of profession (most of them) where you’re mostly selling yourself to middlemen, it can matter that some person or group has an active grudge against you. Even then, I’m not entirely convinced that it matters enough to justify the expenditure of energy involved in discovering this information, and I’d be prepared to bet that it’s almost never economical to respond. “Never wrestle with a pig…you both get dirty, and the pig enjoys it”, after all. At most, I might structure my future activities so as to avoid any contact with the aggrieved parties.

    As a writer? No way in hell would I care, even if I were informed of such feuds at no energy cost to myself at all. “Oh, you definitely won’t be buying my book, now or ever again in the future? Well, I’m sorry to hear that, but to each his own, ya know? Now please step aside, so that I might interact with someone who _will_.”

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  19. Unfortunately I’ve discovered, either because people are scared of what is happening in the field and trying to find emotional relief, or because publishers are not all consuming targets of their anger anymore, that some people have had feuds with me for years – that I was TOTALLY unaware of.

    Most of my high school’s sports feuds were like that. I think there’s a national newspaper author who uses a similar line….

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  20. Someone said that disputes are hotter when the stakes are very, very small.

    “Small town politics are extremely vicious precisely because they are so inconsequential.”

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    1. I’m usually convinced that some inter-church fights are so vicious is precisely because they’re family quarrels. (I’ve also seen some bad family quarrels.)

      On Wed, Jul 31, 2013 at 2:48 PM, According To Hoyt wrote:

      > ** > Foxfier commented: “Someone said that disputes are hotter when the > stakes are very, very small. “Small town politics are extremely vicious > precisely because they are so inconsequential.”” >

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  21. Do other professions experience this too? Does it matter if someone is fighting with you if you’re not even aware of it?

    Only if they’re unprofessional about it. I got bit with that a few times, and only found out second hand.

    Hell, in one case a co-worker/classmate tried to set me up for a classic mean girls style public humiliation via faking friendliness, and I was only saved because I was too shy to act on her “friendly” information. I had no idea that she thought we were locked in some sort of conflict, I thought she was just another sailor….

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  22. Even back then, I couldn’t muster enough interest to remember who was mad at whom, and shocked people who were feuding with my family by talking to them – not out of good nature, but because I couldn’t remember.

    Well… I prefer the “try to act like that when you DO remember, so the credit you get for good nature is kind of earned.”

    I also try to offer olive-branches and fig leaves if I can figure out a way that someone and I are talking past each other…but I’ve got a black powder temper. Goes boom, but generally doesn’t stick.

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    1. “I’ve got a black powder temper”
      Boy howdy, do I know the feeling. I’ve found lately that I’m very good at getting angry and very bad at staying that way – even when I want to. I’ll shout and stomp and growl, and half an hour later find myself grudgingly but sincerely forgiving the person. My family is still trying to acclimate to the whiplash.

      There are exceptions of course, generally a matter of righteous indignation and/or having threatened or hurt part of my closest tribe. Just this week I had a moment where the only way the Oyster Wife could keep me from doing something rash was to point out that I *would* be caught, I *would* be sent to prison (the victim was a little girl, draw your own conclusions on my likely response), and then my family would be without patriarch or provider. Sometimes I wish that there was an affirmative defense of “Judge, he needed a good thrashin’.”

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      1. Amen.

        I’m blessed in that my mom’s side shares the temper, and my dad’s side that we deal with are flippin’ emotional judo masters. (The best defense is to not be there.)

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        1. I have something like my Dad’s temper, but on a very, very, very long fuse. This means that I usually will brush off a long, long series of provocations – and then snap and go totally and spectacularly nuclear. I don’t actually do it very often, maybe about every decade or so. The last and most memorable time with a large audience present was when I was still active duty at a broadcast detachment. I wouldn’t be surprised to hear that the ears of those present aren’t still ringing after 20 years.

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          1. I generally don’t explode in anger when I’m upset with something. It’s too petulant, like a baby.

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        1. I wish I had that temper– I have the boiling temper that lasts three days and then explodes (causing tidal waves), I have the cold temper where I go ice, think really clearly, and am totally w/o emotions. That one scares me the most. And then, I have the berserker red rage that usually happens when I am in danger (or need to fight) and it is much shorter in duration. Good thing to because I shake to pieces afterwards … also I have the best aim during those times– before and after I can be a klutz. I keep an extremely tight hold on myself… since I realized my capabilities.

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          1. I have the cold one (rarely) and the red hot one, but not generally the pressure cooker temper. The way I usually describe it is, I have a really short fuse, but it is very hard to light.

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            1. The pressure cooker temper– is not fun. Eventually if I can keep it under control, I will go sane again… lol If I can hold onto it for three days–

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  23. Entering editor mode:

    Lost In My Own Mind (with no breadcbrumbs.)

    ### Did you mean (with no money or Seagrams?) ### If not you may need to define cbrumbs for the reader.

    Departing editor mode and running away . . .

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    1. I took it as a reference to Hansel and Gretel.

      Of course, modern readers may be unfamiliar with that story.

      And it didn’t really work that well for them, anyway. :-p

      On Wed, Jul 31, 2013 at 3:00 PM, According To Hoyt wrote:

      > ** > Pam Uphoff commented: “Entering editor mode: Lost In My Own Mind (with > no breadcbrumbs.) ### Did you mean (with no money or Seagrams?) ### If not > you may need to define cbrumbs for the reader. Departing editor mode and > running away . . .” >

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      1. Aww, you fixed it! I was just about to get all snarky about misspelling CD roms. My beta readers are probably laughing themselves silly over the concept of _me_ pointing out other writers’ typos.

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  24. Why think something is wrong? It’s practical. You have limited time and energy to devote to tasks and relationships. Why would you waste it on something that doesn’t actively affect you or can be ignored entirely? Mix that together with being a person who doesn’t seem to intrude in other people’s lives (as gossip and drama often requires), and it makes perfect sense. :)

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