You Have To Be Willing To Break It

Posted on by Sarah A. Hoyt

When I was a kid I hated, with a burning passion that whole “if you love something set it free.  If it comes back to you it’s yours. If it doesn’t, it never was.”

I confess part of it is that I saw it everywhere in posters filled with the iconography of the seventies: some chick letting go of a dove against a red sunset on the beach, or something.  I can’t say I’m totally against everything that was immortalized in that way in the seventies, but I have the sort of reaction someone has when jabbed with a sharp pin to a lot of them, and any maxim received that way is worthy of skeptical scrutiny.

Since this was mostly advocated for love affairs I have to tell you that I, and Jane Austen and Agatha Christie for that matter think it’s dead wrong.

If you have a relationship and it’s working, but not fully solid yet, sending your partner away (or having him go away) for a long period will break it 9 times out of 10.  And even if it’s solid, the breakage rate for long distance relationships is something like twenty percent, judging from the village where men went away to work abroad and women stayed home.  And even then, I’d bet it wasn’t higher because most women didn’t know and didn’t want to know what the guys were up to while they were away, and the guys pretended they couldn’t count and that the new kid didn’t inexplicably come out with blue eyes.

Okay, it’s more men than women who stray while away, because men are more tactile and visual.  Maybe it was why most traditional societies had a built in “man’s infidelity is not as serious as women’s” or maybe it was because men couldn’t get pregnant, women could and there was no serious way of preventing it and therefore women straying threatened the structure of society, while men didn’t.  Or maybe the feminists were right and it was just seeeeeeexis! (Why isn’t this as easy to wail as raaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaacis!)

Where was I?  O yeah, out here, in the weeds.  Right.  To get back to the purpose of this post, if you have a romance going for the love of heaven don’t tell your girlfriend/boyfriend that you should see other people in the hopes that he/she will come back to you afterwards, because that’s just stupid on stilts.  Every time I come across this plot on a TV show I lose all interest in the rest of the series because it just means both characters have mental issues.  (Not that I’m opinionated or anything.)

A lot of love and friendship – “I’ve grown accustomed to your face; it almost makes the day begin” – is what used to be called propinquity or to put it in Agatha Christie (and Jane Austen) terms “They were thrown a great deal together.”  I can hear that in Portuguese and in my grandmother’s voice.  It was the “discrete” way for older relatives to arrange your marriage when I was young.  Grandma or great aunt would invite so and so’s cousin over a lot while her grandon/nephew was visiting and “they were thrown a great deal together” with no other amusement.  Most of the time it worked.  (What?  It would have worked on me to.  In fact, it was in a fair way to, but it went astray for reasons beyond everyone’s control.)

Likewise, I had a friend in college, whose wife went away a week after his daughter was born.  She came back three years later (he’d been raising this kid on his own while attending classes, mind, and working to pay for both their living, so he never slept.  I never had a romantic interest in him – not my time – but I admired him greatly, because he lifted his burden without complaint even though it was killing him) very ill, and he took her in and looked after her.  Was she his then?  I doubt it.  We graduated and I got married in the next year, so I never got to hear it, but I bet the minute she got over lingering effects of illness she was off again.  So the test is not even a test, it’s just stupid.

So the revised Sarah Maxim is “If you love something, hold on to it.  What, are you stupid that you need to be told this? And if it comes back again, make sure you put it in sheep dip first because who knows where it’s been?”

However the maxim “you have to be willing to break it” does apply to relationships, as well as to everything else.  It’s a matter of levels, though.  Someone who breaks a marriage because they have an argument over painting the bedroom or mowing the lawn is not proving they are strong – they’re just proving there’s something wrong with their head.

OTOH if Dan suffered a brain lesion and started beating me and there was no cure and no way to stop him, I WOULD walk away.  However, our case is different, we’ve knocked through – pardon – most of those “you have to be willing to break it” moments and because we were, and because both of us knew it, we never went too far and we stayed together.

Same thing with friendships.  I mentioned here the friend I lost after 9/11 – actually around 2006 – because she wouldn’t shut up about politics, and she wasn’t DISCUSSING them either, just shouting talking points at me.  “War criminal!” “No WMDs” “Are going to put all homosexuals in camps” etc, etc, etc.  (The total lack of irony in ignoring what Islamic regimes DO to homosexuals—no, I won’t go there.  I actually pointed that out and she looked confused then told me it was cultural and accused me of being racist.  Never mind.)

The thing is it had gotten that far because I wasn’t willing to break it.  I liked her, the kids liked her, she’d become part of the family.  I knew – to be blunt – that something wasn’t right up there.  But which of us is totally sane?  Okay, so her hangups were particularly extreme and she would go on rants for extended periods about things that made no sense.  But it was only sometimes – so I let her rant even when it offended me.  And when she made crass political statements I deflected it with a joke but I never told her “that’s asinine” or more often “that’s heinous.”

And so she had every reason to expect she could push it yet again, and she could push it that far.  Only she couldn’t.

It is an unfortunate trait of my character to let myself be pushed around, until suddenly my back is against the wall and I can’t be pushed further and then I turn and fight.  I’m fairly sure it has been a great shock to people – like my ex-agent – and it’s not quite fair to them, either.  I’d change it if I could to give more warning, but see the reason I let myself be pushed around is that it’s less trouble and the white-hot-heat of my attention is on my work and my family, which means I don’t have room for any more trouble. So it needs to rise to the point of impinging on the things I DO care about before I snap.

My relationship with my agent is actually a good example of what goes wrong when you’re not willing to break it.  For years she’d been “pushing” it by rejecting things before sending them out or by getting such weird answers that I wonder what the letter she sent out was (Kris Rusch found out one of her agents was sending things out with “this is awful. She insisted I send it, so I am.” Not literally, but that was the gist.  For various reasons, I think that happened at least twice.  I never got to see the letters out though.)

But it wasn’t until Sword and Blood that it started truly annoying me.  First, because the answers I got back seemed to indicate people thought it was a comedy, which they couldn’t think if they had READ it at all.  Second, because they couldn’t get that idea unless her letter out said something like “A fun adventure” and their heads broke trying to picture vampires/a world in darkness/a fun adventure.  (It’s dark, with sexual overtones.  Oh, fine, yes, “Oh, Sarah!” It’s dark with female dominance sexual overtones.  Deal.  It is what it wanted to be. There’s a certain resemblance between me and “Oh, John Ringo, NO” We both get abused by our muses who periodically make us write stuff that we don’t want to.)

Second because she then pressured me to sell to a small press who didn’t seem to know what to do with it, including having it checked by an “amateur” proof reader who – for the love of heaven – presumed to correct my French by using google translator and my names for the musketeers by deciding the ones from the first (silent) film were the right ones.  (A piece of trivia for you: Dumas only named Aramis – Renee.  Also those people who say “but D’Artagnan really existed, the story was based on real people, so D’Artagnan was Charles” – PFUI.  PFUI with bananas on it. – The story was based on a story about four cousins from Gascony who might or might not have had an adventure involving the Queen’s ring.  In other words, it’s “real” like The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress” or “A Few Good Men” are based on the American revolution.  However, that doesn’t mean that Manny was really named Thomas or for that matter that Jefferson and Adams were involved.  The people who think that Dumas just wrote down what the musketeers did and were need cold compresses or perhaps a rock to the head.  “Based on” doesn’t mean “it’s an account.”  In fact, I think the only thing “real” about the musketeers was the “rumor of an adventure with the ring” and the fact there were four of them.  Okay, and he picked the name D’Artagnan, from near the Charles de Batz’s domain.  DOESN’T MAKE THEM THE SAME PERSON, even the locality is riding it like a rented horse.  Ahem.  Where was I?  And who put this soap box under me?)

Note I signed the contract with the small press, and it wasn’t just because at the time I was still under the impression I needed an agent to continue working – it was just too much trouble to break the relationship and I kind of liked her, and we’d worked together for eight years.  But it rankled, and it acted like a burr under the saddle.

And then there was the whole “we’re now going to publish select works” from her agency and that broke it for good and all, because I could no longer trust them.

It might not have broken it, if I hadn’t already been feeling impinged upon, and if I’d given her warnings it might have saved the relationship, at least to the point of breaking with greater decorum.  BUT I didn’t realize how resentful I was until it was ready to explode, and then I did at a touch.

Is it the same with publishers?  Yeah, sort of.  I love Baen dearly and I can’t imagine them doing this unless Toni dies (please don’t die, Toni!) tomorrow and is replaced by someone who was trained in NY publishing and (it goes without saying) isn’t all there – however, if Baen said  tomorrow “You can only work for us, under any name.  Look, we put it on the contract.”  I’d be out a there so fast I’d leave streak marks.  No, the indie doesn’t (yet) pay even vaguely enough to allow me to live from it.  But that would impinge on my ability to work by forcing me to write ONLY what they wanted and I’d be willing to starve rather than submit.  They know that, too, and even if they were crazy enough to do it (actually stupid.  Nothing can be gained by “owning” a writer.  Art doesn’t work that way and, malgre moi, writing is a form of art.) they wouldn’t because I’d just walk and what’s the point.

However, if you’re a newby signing with an unknown publisher remember that.  Make sure they know you’re willing to break it, and what your break point is.  Kevin J. Anderson has told me he never got a good contract on a deal he wasn’t willing to walk away from.  The ones he REALLY needed and was willing to sell at any price, he got treated like cr*p on.

But – at the bottom of the fourth page – what I meant for “You have to be willing to break it” wasn’t even for relationships, but for any work of creative invention, any living arrangement, anything that is not quite right but you’ve grown accustomed to.

You don’t need to break it, but you have to be willing to.  I talked yesterday in Mad Genius Club of breaking a character by having him do something heinous and out of character and how this was bad.  It is.  But I’ve done it – in outline and first draft – more often than any of you wants to know.  The thing is, until you do that, you don’t know where the boundaries are and when “The character breaks” and if you don’t know that you risk doing it accidentally and sending it out there and having the readers hate you.  You have to break them a few times before you know where the boundaries are.  Which means you have to be willing to break it.

This might sound obvious and easy, but I used to be so careful of my novels and so afraid of breaking them that I often got blocked for fear of going wrong – of introducing the wrong incident or the wrong tone, or making the character go too far.  Don’t be afraid.

Particularly in series, being willing to break it is important.

And my husband once got me out of a deep blue non-writing funk by sitting down at the computer while I was getting a cup of coffee and having my characters break out into a wild bisexual orgy in the middle of a court appointment.

I was so indignant because my characters would never do THAT that it made them come alive in my head again.  Because I knew what they wouldn’t do I knew what they SHOULD do, and the novel went on (after I erased the orgy.  No.  It’s never been published.  No, when I rewrite it the orgy won’t be on it.  No, I erase it and won’t put it here for your prurient enjoyment.  SHEEEESH.)

If you’re creating something alone or with someone you have to be willing to break it to know how to make it really strong.  This applies to works of art, relationships, and works of mechanical invention.  It doesn’t apply to babies (unless you think changing their diaper breaks them.) Your mileage may vary.  See your dealership for details.  The author is not responsible for acts of criminal stupidity on or off stilts committed by acting on this advice.  Caveat Emptor and don’t go acting like you don’t have a brain.  Just consider where your limits are before they’re hit. That way you might save what would otherwise be irretrievably broken.

 

 

 

 

233 thoughts on “You Have To Be Willing To Break It”

  1. Ah, commitment and the correct judgement of when it is correct.

    Nothing like practice to learn that.

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  2. I believe the correct expression is “Absinthe makes the heart grow fonder”

    it’s been misquoted and reworded even wronger ever since that episode with Van Gogh and his ear and the bottle of moonshine. But really Absinthe is beer goggles for the peasant and/or artists in Provence

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  3. “And who put this soap box under me?”

    (Averts gaze, shuffles awkwardly out of the room)

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    1. Has anyone suggested to the LibertyCon concom about having a soap-box decorating contest? Maybe with author, character, and free design (PG-13) categories?

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  4. A degreasion: I actually liked the “Oh, John Ringo, NO!” and wish he’d do more of it. Does that make me bad?

    M

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    1. Back when “Ghost” was kicking and screaming to get out of John Ringo’s head the Baen Bar Flies played an active role in his story development process, often serving as first readers for scenes he was having difficulty with. Great times, but John’s advanced past all that, or at least become more selective.
      John never intended to publish “Ghost.” He wrote it to get it out of his head and shut the muse up. Jim Baen became aware of its existence from posts in the Bar and demanded that John make it available to him which he very reluctantly did.
      For those unfamiliar, “Ghost” is not SF. It’s Ludlum/Clancy action adventure with an S&M B&D twist. As a side note, one of the Flies learned that some romance novel writer’s organization gave out writer of the year awards determined by on-line voting from readers. Ringo won in a walk. Never ever place temptation in front of a Baen Bar Fly. We know no shame.
      So Sarah, don’t be so quick to dump that bisexual orgy scene, at least not before running it past Toni. At the very least she’ll be entertained, and potential awards and honors await.

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          1. What the hell do you think Weber’s Honorverse books are?

            All those Long, Hard Objects Full Of Seamen Shooting Massive Loads At Each Other, Penetrating Deeply Into The Target’s Rear Area, Using Extensive Penetration Aids….

            >:)

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      2. Er… Sword and Blood is sexually er… dark and there might be orgy scenes in books two and three, but I won’t know till I figure out how to get my copyright back.

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      3. Surely Ghost is SF – SF embraces absolutely everything from before the big bang to after the heat death of the Universe and beyond.

        Mainstream is a teeny tiny piece contained within the larger time frame dealing with issues more or less contemporary to the writing – in the broad scheme of things what’s a millennium more or less in the life of even just our Universe?

        Compare with David Drake’s just for fun piece on necrophilia.

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        1. At best you could call Ghost alternate history, and that would be stretching things quite a bit, since when the series was started it was set in the present or very near future, our time frame has just moved a little faster than the timeline of the series. I believe the official categorization as techno-thriller is pretty accurate.

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          1. Waddya mean alternate? Oh, I thought it was all fictive too, especially when no no Georgian beer came on the market, but …Why do you think Our Good Pal Vlad “Reset” Putin STOPPED halfway through his invasion of Georgia? John Ringo’s supposedly fictional SEAL buddy with a pocket army and a couple of nukes up in the hills just east of where they stopped … Quite the coincidence, eh?

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  5. There is an engineering term, “test to destruction”, that I have always liked. The idea is that you don’t really understand a material until you have stressed it to the breaking point. I think that is an important thing for us to realize about or relationships (personal, professional, literary) there is always a point where they will break, and considering where that point is helps us to keep from being blindsided by it (as I was in my first marriage.)

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    1. But generally speaking breaking people is bad because they can’t be easily put back together again and don’t have duplicates

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        1. I have seen a couple of relationships where one of the persons involved seemed to be always pushing for that breaking point. I don’t know, maybe the underlying idea was something along the way ‘if he/she truly loves me…”. Or with one of them, trying to mold him into the guy she had really wanted, and he wasn’t.

          Neither one lasted very long.

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          1. This is one of the problems attendant to growing up in an abusive household — the child of such rearing can only perceive love when it is packaged in abuse. Very destructive.

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            1. “Many of my violently abused women patients have told me that they find nonviolent men intolerably indifferent and emotionally distant, rage being the only emotion they’ve ever seen a man express. They leave them quicker than they leave men who have beaten and otherwise abused them.”

              Full text here

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          2. I remember hearing about a woman who was discussing “why men don’t commit” and her theme was that too many times the women tried to “manipulate” the men into the women’s idea of the perfect mate. She was saying that these women often didn’t think the men were “smart enough” to spot the manipulation but denied the manipulation when the men called them on it.

            In the opinion of a man “too set in his ways” to be a good husband, to work any marriage requires honesty and trust between the two. How could a man trust a woman that he knows is trying to manipulate him and denies it?

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          3. There are people who cannot live without the extra helping of drama and accompanying crisis. There are a number of reasons from adrenaline junkies, to mild forms of hypomania, to the underlying belief that in an emergency you are allowed to let the jots,tittles, and associated moral paperwork accounting for them slide while the “crisis” is being attended to.

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            1. ” There are a number of reasons from adrenaline junkies”

              Including the most simple one, which is also the reason there are drug junkies and alcoholics, etc. It feels good. Remember the toxicity is in the dose. There are Adrenaline junkies who like mild doses of it, just like there are people who like a drink or two (and there are ones who go for a mild dose of adrenaline everyday like those who have a drink every evening, and those who only do so on special occasions) and then there are those like a binge alcoholic who OD on adrenaline and do completely nutso stuff like play chicken with semi’s to get their fix.

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              1. Sorry, unclear writing alert: one reason is adrenaline junkies, another reason is hypomania, the third can be that crises give you slack.
                All three types are exhausting after a while.

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                1. Actually rereading your post it is fairly clear, I just misread it the first time as saying people who can’t live without an extra helping of drama are adrenaline junkies and hypomania and crises giving you slack are reasons (or excuses) for it.

                  I should be the one apologizing.

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                  1. Not an issue, you have a more interesting take on it. Toxicity of the dose indeed.

                    Anyways, I am on a quest to clean up my writing, The hard part is that the natural state of my mind is like a finely tuned and balanced mechanism traversing an old driveway – every bump and divot makes me launch off in a different direction. All those extra words I throw out might keep me on track.

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      2. Breaking people not a problem. People keep breaking themselves. All you have to do is observe to learn about their limits – and maybe help them pick up the pieces.

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    2. An old joke amongst Industrial Engineers used to be that the only way to achieve perfect quality control was 100% destructive testing of production. The marketing folks never seemed to get it.

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    3. I know “Test to destruction” quite well. I worked in a software test engineering lab where that was our main goal — test software against an array of equipment, software, internal and external devices, and operations, to see if we could break it. If we did, it went back to the developers for more work. LOVED that job! The only reason I quit was because my physical problems reached the point they interfered with the work, and that wasn’t fair to my employer. They tried for five years to get me to come back.

      You DON’T do that to personal relationships, however. You may know your break point, but you may not be aware of the other person’s breaking point. There are points, however, where you have to say, “I’ve had enough”, and walk out, or “this is no longer working for either of us”, and move on. Sometimes it’s very hard, and you have to steel yourself to do it. Sometimes it happens to you, and you have to recover. I have a friend that took ten years to recover from something that happened in her life (she’s happy now, which is good).

      I can see where breaking a character can be good or bad for a story. I think HOW you do it, and how the character responds, determines how the act affects what you write. In some instances, if you don’t break the character too badly, it could actually make him/her more “human” to your readers, and his/her recovery could add to the story. I’m not sure I’m a good enough writer to bring that off — yet.

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    4. The Right Stuff got its title from the need for test pilots to “push the envelope” — to find the borders of the plane’s flight capability and return to tell the tale (don’t try to take it through a 270 degree turn at mach 1.5 unless you’re over 10,000 feet, and if you do, here’s what to do to survive it. maybe.)

      Pushing the boundaries of the envelope is not a good relationship ploy, although I think an appalling number of (immature — see “tautological” for details) people do it. In its worst expression you end up in “he beats me but he’s my publisher” land. Decent, mature (see “tautological”) people do not push the relationship envelope, nor allow others to push theirs. That is why G-d gave us the warning growl.

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  6. Sometimes I wish someone WOULD push me to my limits so I could have the pleasure of a cold hard break.

    I’m too namby pamby to break up good-enough for possibly-better.

    Too logical. Too cold-hearted. Too calculating. Too rational. It’s an interesting combination for one with a wild romantic streak.

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  7. “I was so indignant because my characters would never do THAT that it made them come alive in my head again.”

    That story made me chuckle. In various places I’ve read advice to “break” a character in a non-canon exercise: e.g., take an hour to write a short story where your big-city homicide detective wakes up in Mordor, and you’re likely to come away with more insight into his character.

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    1. The sky was dark at noon, with ash falling like dry snow. I could hear the thunder of volcanoes and the howling of orcs tormenting their captives.

      Just another Saturday in Mordor.

      My name’s Samwise. I’m a detective.

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        1. Alternatively, there’s always the “Billibub Baddings” books – where a dwarf from a stereotypical fantasy realm is deposited in 1929 Chicago. (I haven’t read them myself, but I know the guy who wrote them.)

          The first one starts “There are a thousand stories in the naked city; and when you’re a dwarf at four-foot-one, they all look that much taller.”

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              1. Looks like BN.com still has the nook book available (which might be an oversight on the part of Tee or his publisher if the Amazon e-book is down… now I’m conflicted over whether I should point it out to him… well, it’s something I can do tomorrow easily enough.)

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    2. Are you supposed to naturalize him or have a portal dump him there? Or is that a free choice?

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      1. As I understand the advice, it’s entirely up to you. The point of the exercise is to put the character in a “fish-out-of-water” situation and have some fun with it — and see whether it reveals anything new about the character. Of course, if you end up with lines or scenes you can use in your “real” writing, that’s gravy. For example, what the detective says to an Orc captain might, with a little tweaking, be pretty much the same thing he’d say to a nightclub bouncer.

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      2. It is always more interesting to have someone be chased by tharks while wearing a Brooks brothers suit.

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        1. Hmm. Are you reading Endstone? Sword & sorcery in a wacked-out United States — and one character does wear a suit (for good and sufficient reason).

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          1. No, lisping sharks are much the scarier ones. Not only do they devour you but before they do they cut you to ribbons because of your appearance, behaviour and personal hygiene.

            N.B. – the stereotype of lisping gays is used here for comedic porpoise only and should not be taken to imply any connection between speech defects and sexual orientation.

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          1. You can tell I’ve been hearing and reading too much about Shark Week on Discovery. It took the above comment before I made the connection with Bob’s comment.

            What’s worse is that I didn’t get Sarah’s comment about sharks lisping until now, either. Gotta get to bed earlier tonight.

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            2. You prefer therns?
              “I knew down to the scuff marks on the toes of my Florsheims that the disapearances had to do with the Therns, them and their monsters. The Iss would never run clean until that foulness was ripped out, and I knew a few hundred green men with Radium to root those baldies out.”

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  8. The variation on that old saying I always preferred was:
    If it comes back to you it’s yours. If it doesn’t, hunt it down and kill it.

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          1. Well, to them, you’re the most evil of Sexiiiis! of all – a gender traitor.

            But that’s ok. Just throw carp at them.

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            2. The accusation of Sexiiiis, like that of Raaaaascist, is in fact a charge of non-conformity to the prescribed gender stereotype (which they will deny exists because stereotyping is evil and is therefore not something of which they are capable. Their definition of these crimes automatically excludes them.)

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            3. I guess I’m too. I’m a straight woman who likes to draw nude and almost nude nubile young women. Sometimes dressed in chain mail bikinis.

              My defense is that I have not gotten the chance to see enough scantily dressed or nude young male models to be able to draw them as well. A serious lack for an aspiring artist. Drawing from live makes you develop a lot faster than drawing from pictures.

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              1. “I guess I’m too. I’m a straight woman who likes to draw nude ”

                I read this and for a moment thought you were saying you preferred to draw nekkid.

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                1. Heh. If it’s hot enough I may, but that’s only when I’m alone and there is no risk of anybody surprising me. I wouldn’t have that much of a problem with being seen, actually, except for the fact that considering my age and shape now it would be cruel to the poor person who’d see me.

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                2. A fine Southern gentleman once explained to me that here in the deep South naked or nude simply means sans clothing while nekkid means unclothed and up to something.

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                  1. And then there’s buck nekkid, which is what you are when you try to get away from the something you might or might not have been up to, as in “I don’ know what’s goin on, but I jes saw Lonzo trottin’ towards the crik and he was buck nekkid!”

                    Not to be confused with “naked as a jay bird,” of course.

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              2. Oh, I like drawing both genders nude. I like the human body. I bi-drawer, even if heterosexual. Um… if I ask any of my guys to strip, I’ll get shot. Well, not Dan, but he won’t let me draw him.

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      2. Given the number of spurned female revenge fantasies in the news, it would be sexiiiiis!!!!!* for them to claim that sexist.

        *Sorry, but no, it doesn’t work nearly so well as raaaaacist. Sexiiiiis seems more like a Roman calling for slave number 6.

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                    2. Yep, I’m very shy. And a bit of a prude. Recall the legionaires line about me “Every woman’s husband, and every man’s wife” – just a complete lie. I’m just a quiet little wallflower.

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                    3. Sigh. I hate to bring this up, but “Bithynia, the land where Caesar’s go to get nookie when they get curious” was in your bio? (I mean, Hadrian just BOUGHT a Bithynian boy, but I believe there was some song about Gaius and the king of Bithynia? Three days or something?)

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            1. What a thing it is to have well-educated fans. What a fine thing for this blog.

              Speaking of which I’ve now decided the larger world into which Magical British Empire fits is “Worlds of Secret Magic” (even when it’s not secret at all like in Witchfinder there’s always something er… arcane going on) so, would just taking the two last words as Arcanae Magica work? I’m fairly sure I’ve cacked the conjugations. I’ve only had one year, and it’s been a long time.

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            2. That would be useful in re-making the opening sequence for _The Prisoner_ in Latin.
              In regards to Sexiii….

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  9. *Bring out the torches!
    Oh yes, I let things go until the torch comes out and then it turns into devastation and arid wasteland ;-). College administration, yep. Military overlords, yep. Parental units, yep. Health insurance, yep. Neighbors, yep. Not-friends, who I thought were friends, not really– I do total breaks and never talk to them again. Hubby, not yet.

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    1. Dang– what I meant to say was the hubby and I spent two years in different countries. We wrote, called once a month, and even took a vacation together, but we still had to reconnect when we were finally in the same country. It was very hard. I had decided that I needed to hold onto him… and I have been so glad I did–

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        1. ARG– he has supernatural patience ;-) He should have broken during my first year of my chemo (Cytoxan every four weeks and 100 mg of prednisone daily). He does get testy once in awhile, but food clears up that pesky problem.

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          1. Yes, that much Prednisone could make anyone taking care of the person taking it go nuts. Much patience is required, as well as understanding that it’s not their fault.

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  10. I spent a lot of time working out of town (still do at times, but not for extended periods and usually working solo), I can attest to the accuracy of your statements. Not sure how many of the wives at home stray only one of the men I worked with had a wife that it came to light was fooling around while he was out of town (and he was one who would never even look at another woman) but I from personal experience I would say around twenty to twenty-five percent of the husbands would stray if they spent a year or longer working mostly out of town (mostly being defined as forty plus weeks a year, coming home only on weekends). When the boss rented us a house to live in I had two ironclad rules, I don’t care what you do on your own time out of this house as long as you are here and functional for work on time, but in the house 1)there will be no drugs and 2)there will be no married women not accompanied by their husbands.

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  11. Would you consider leaving your next blog post half-done, walking away for coffee, and letting Dan at the keyboard? .

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    2. Ye gads, there’s be more black redaction bars on this page than in a NSA document dump! It would look like an Aggie’s lecture notes after an end-of-semester review.

      *(For those not familiar with the world of Wronghorns, Tea-sippers, and Aggies, some Aggies use black highlighter.)

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  12. The only benefit to a long-distance relationship is that guys run out of things to say in about 6 months and start repeating themselves. When you only see your SO once a week or so, a guy can stretch that period of original material to two years or so.

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      1. My guy and I did long-distance for 18 months, and figured out that we had so much to say, we needed to be together to have time for it all. Only four months and we’ve decided we need another 20 years or so to see how it will work! ;-)

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        2. Mrs. Dave and I have spent most of our relationship on opposite sides of the globe. When you only get voice, you find. things. to. talk. about. It’s the only way to maintain your relationship, so if that’s what you want – key thing to figure out, there – you need to put in the effort.

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          1. Been there, done that — three times. I’m not much for letter-writing, but some of the ones I sent DW from the Canal Zone required a dollar’s worth of postage — in 1968! Vietnam was better — we sent 90-minute tapes. We usually exchanged two or three a week. Never did run out of things to say. Lot of things went unsaid, but that was because of security. It’s a real drag when you work 60 hours a week, and can’t talk about your job…

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      2. With many relationships there is a lull in conversation as the participants have run out of socially accepted topics and have not yet begun to explore the ideas which one just doesn’t run out in front of strangers (put another way: the cute kids get trotted out early on but you have to build real trust before you bring out the deformed mutant offspring, no matter how much you love them. Or because you do love them and can’t bear having them laughed at.)

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        1. How to tell your Odd Relationship has moved to the next level:
          – “Purely hypothetically, if you *were* to have a supervillain lair…volcano, or icy mountain fastness?”
          – “do you have any philosophical objections to time travel?”
          – “are penguins inherently evil?”

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          1. – “For minions: Imperial Stormtroopers, Red Shirts or Flying Monkeys?”
            – “Kinetic or phased energy weapons?”
            – Your discussions of Marvel vs DC Universes include specific period, series and storyline references. “Sure, DC was crap in the 60s, but they easily surpassed Marvel in the 80s” is a valid (if horribly, horribly wrong) argument.

            And you know your relationship has reached true bonding (not to be confused with bondage) when you can look at each other and discuss how many minions you would like to have.

            BTW – couples communication in Klingon is just sad; speak High Elvish like normal folk.

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            1. Red shirts, *duh*

              My gal & I have realized that we have a whole private language (with lots of Babylon 5, Beavis & Butthead, and the detritus of comedy and comic books thrown in), and given that the half-references are often twenty-years out of context, they’ll be impenetrable to our forthcoming young’un. Should be amusing to see how long it takes the code to be broken…

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          2. 1. Cave
            2. As long as there aren’t objects that loop temporally. Where does entropy get reversed then.
            3. Insufficient knowledge of the species on my part precludes a judgment.

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            1. “2. As long as there aren’t objects that loop temporally. Where does entropy get reversed then.”

              Unless they release some energy in a way that balances things back out. Could explain magic items…

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              1. Well, you do know how ghosts are frequently connected with cold. If they can reverse entropy, that would explain that.

                however, I refuse to have ghosts in my time travel. It’s not aesthetically pleasing haughty sniff.

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          5. 1) Both, extinct volcanoes provide all those nice tunnels, and it is always easier to heat an icy mountain hideaway than to cool a superheated molten one.
            2)Of course not, but it would be nice if it was a two way street with multiple speed limits.
            3)To the best of my knowledge yes, but after my first encounters I have avoided them to all extents possible, the one downfall of the icy mountain fastness lair is that it might be attractive to penguins.

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          6. Icy mountain, volcanoes will always blow up. As to time travel, depends on what time is, doesn’t it? And I like penguins, so no. (I also like snakes. And spiders. But keep the six legged – and it’s worse if there are more than eight legs, millipedes… ugh – bugs away from me, unless we are talking about something like big moths or butterflies, or, maybe, dragonflies.)

            And there has to be some better minions around than Stormtroopers or Red Shirts or Flying Monkeys, and why either or when it comes to weapons, couldn’t I have both? (+ sharp pointy things too, one always needs sharp pointy things).

            No idea when it comes to Marvel and DC, I never read that much of either, although I rather like some of the recent movies. I guess I don’t qualify as a geek.

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            1. Simple rule to improve the quality of minions: Any minion that cannot hit a man-sized target at 50 yards will become the man-sized target.

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          7. You know, when I asked Calmer Half that about penguins, his response was to request where the trope of penguins as evil started, because he’s not familiar with it. “As far as I’m concerned, penguins are shark food.”

            Guess that’s what comes of dealing with actual penguins. But then, a lot of our conversations are like that, as I try to distill the essence of 80’s cartoons, 70’s-2000’s comics, and other American geek culture to my favorite alien.

            But then, our discussions wander from Transformers to the time it takes for tundra to recover from disturbance to the day to day practicalities of living in a refugee camp as it’s being decimated by cholera. … we only run out of energy to talk, not things to talk about.

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    2. I thought the point of a relationship was to reach the point where you didn’t have to come up with things to say.

      Damn. No wonder I’m single…

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        1. *chuckle* introverts like to talk, too. At least this kind does. I just don’t do large groups much, they are too tiring. But get me with a small group that has similar interests, and boy can I talk.

          Friend of mine from England and I have discussed most of the above (ice mountain, volcano, red shirts, etc) over the year or so, but that’s mostly because weird stuff is the norm for our conversations and “normal” is what feels weird. *grin*

          Best relationships I’ve had involved silences that were more contented than uncomfortable, and new ideas always made me think “wow, I wonder what ‘X’ will think of this? Gotta tell her soon as I get home…”

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                1. YES. I adore meeting My People at conventions and blogshoots, but I need a couple days to hide and not talk afterward.

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                  1. That. I’m usually out-of-sorts for about a week. Part of that’s simple physical exhaustion, but a lot is stepping down the reactor from the redline of dealing with so many people.

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              1. If you find socializing energizing, you’re an extrovert. If you find it drains energy, you’re an introvert. If neither, you are perfectly balanced.

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                1. Or in the viewpoint of the introvert–
                  If you find thinking and daydreaming energizing, then you are an introvert. If you find it drains energy, then you are an extrovert. If you are neither, then you have a very dull life. ;-)

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                  1. Yesterday someone informed me that sitting down and writing a WHOLE NOVEL must be very difficult. I thought “uh… isn’t keeping from writing it more difficult?” But I didn’t say anything.

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                    3. At least that’s … “normal” isn’t the right word, here, but I’ll go with it. It’s whether or not I’m any good that follows me around late at night, looking in the cupboards and moving my things around while I sleep.

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                    5. Not really, no. Though I’m not actually in</i< anybody else's head, that I'm aware of (and would you tell me if I was in yours, and who would want me in their head, for that matter?), and so I can't tell if everybody else does the same illogical things I do. Special? Special. The word tasted odd in my mouth. I'm contrarian enough to instinctively dislike the status quo. Any status quo, it seems.

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                    7. Well, you’re not going to win your fantasy sports league if you aren’t in the right bracket.

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                    8. Yeah, my fantasy sports league has warg-riding orcs and dragons, and elves swinging from forest-giants. I have yet to see it on television, and that makes me sad.

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                    11. That’s … inspired. I’m sitting in my office giggling. Seriously, I think Mrs. Dave is wondering about my already-tenuous grasp on sanity.

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                    12. What kind of fantasy sports league are you in? I’m considering joining an urban fantasy sports league but am also drawn to a high fantasy league and doubt I have time for both.

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  13. …(after I erased the orgy. No. It’s never been published. No, when I rewrite it the orgy won’t be on it. No, I erase it and won’t put it here for your prurient enjoyment. SHEEEESH.)

    Spoilsport! :-)

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    1. Ya know, there are a couple of ways that scene could be hysterically funny. One is if the judge is one of the proverbial unflappable good-ol’-boy county judges who also raises livestock and has seen and heard a whole lot over the course of his life. Another is if it is an activist federal court judge who is shocked and appalled by the male partner taking the dominant position. Or you could get a complete novice justice who’s been appointed as a place-holder for some politico’s relative and who can’t imagine that anyone would do . . . that . . . in his courthouse. Especially not doing it like THAT!

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            1. While his majesty sneaks out of the side door with one of the more well shaped ladies. Or several. Or if he swings both ways, he just may wrestle some of the better looking young men away from her majesty, or actually her majesty’s ladies in waiting who were escorting them who knows where since her majesty can not, I say, can not be seen being unfaithful to his majesty. One must not start any rumors as to the parentage of the crown prince.

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                1. Come on, practical issues. You know who the father of the heir is if she only sleeps with him, so unfair or not it matters. Okay, maybe if she was the heir of the previous king and he’s more of a consort it may not matter that much, but when the right to rule comes through him it does, yes?

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                    1. I read, “public,” as, “pubic”. Didn’t change the meaning much, I must say…

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                    7. Oh, Foxfier, that is a great picture. Wow, thanks. I’d more fully express my gratitude but Sarah would rat me out to my wife.

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  14. It was the “discrete” way for older relatives to arrange your marriage when I was young. Grandma or great aunt would invite so and so’s cousin over a lot while her grandon/nephew was visiting and “they were thrown a great deal together” with no other amusement. Most of the time it worked.

    Lasts, too– thus my grandfather-in-law’s lecturing on marrying your friend (we named our boy for him) and parents’ worry about who their kid is hanging out with.

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  15. On a more serious note, I believe (my personal belief – I have no proof) that the original sentiment meant in the phrase, “If you love something, set it free…” is a good one, but is misunderstood and misrepresented by everyone today. I suspect that when it was constructed, it was meant to say that if you love something, you should step back and find out if that thing (person, animal, etc) loves you, without holding on so tight that they aren’t able to escape if they don’t.

    Naturally, what I wrote above is much more clumsy and less catchy than the other, but it is rather less ambiguous.

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    1. That is the case with many a maxim. “The customer is always right” is utter nonsense. What it means is “Nobody ever won an argument with a customer.”

      Similarly, “You get what you pay for” is for suckers with more money than brains. The proper expression is “You rarely get what you don’t pay for.”

      I think the “If you love it let it go” advise was meant for Othello.

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  16. Do you have to break your character to know how far you can push him or her? I’m struggling to finish this stupid book (the sequel to what I put in the Garage Sale, which I said would be done by end of the year), and it’s just not coming.

    Sarah, you’d said something a few months ago about that indicating that something earlier on was broken. That’s probably right, but maybe something earlier on hasn’t been broken enough.

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    2. Have a man come through the door with a gun in his hand.

      Alternatively, figure out you thought was supposed to happen next, and do the opposite.

      My two cures. Though figuring what “a man with a gun in his hand” is sometimes interesting — in my current story, I just concluded it was a necromancer possessing another woman’s body with a gemstone in her hand.

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    3. You have one fan here at least. Just keep trying until you find something that works; it’s what I do.

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  17. Okay, it’s more men than women who stray while away, because men are more tactile and visual.
    Wow that took my breath away. All my life I’ve been conditioned to think because I’m a man I’m flawed in some way. it’s such a shock to be told that the problem is an abundance of desirable traits. (Not that this is an excuse for straying)>

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    1. No — but manly virtue has to be more positive. It requires more will power. I always thought everyone knew men were more tactile and visual. No, you’re not broken — you’re different from women. Women are not broken because they’re not men, so why would men be broken for not being women? The tactile and visual thing makes it harder for men to be chaste (and therefore their chastity more precious) but it also makes them better engineers. We need both men and women.

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      1. No, the womyn took a vote in the Seventies and decided men and women are just alike, completely identical in every material way, except women are better because they don’t suffer from testosterone poisoning.

        In reality, both have their strenghts and must only use their powers for good … umm, sorry. Because men are (generally speaking — watch some of Marie Dressler* & Wallace Beery films for contrary opinion) physically more powerful their ability to restrain their physical prowess constitutes a willingness to level the playing field, just as women’s greater verbal dexterity requires restraint on their part to not suppress men’s voices.

        *If you [SEARCHENGINE] Marie Dressler you will discover that in the early 30’s she was Hollywood’s number one box office star, something impossible to believe of a woman with her appearance in these more enlightened less sexist times. A favorite exchange occurs with Jean Harlow in the movie Dinner at Eight:
        Harlow: Do you know, machinery is going to take the place of every profession?
        Dressler: My dear, that is something you need never worry about.

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        1. Ow! That one left a mark. And yet without saying anything more vulgar than an implication and an assumption of shared knowledge.

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  18. You know, I’ve always thought that “If you love something, let it go….” was meant to be about parents and college-aged teens, not about romantic partners.

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    1. Ick. Ack. You’re an evil woman, Merry. When we get da boys out of the house hopefully to their own lives, we don’t want them BACK. (At least not permanently.)

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      1. The same guy, Sting, wrote both the “set them free” ick song and “I’ll be Watching You,” the ultimate possessive song. He doesn’t seem to see any ground in between.

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        1. …and the thing that both causes me unending pessimism about the results of the modern education system and also totally creeps me out is the popularity of “Every Breath You Take” in wedding ceremonies over the last 30 years.

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  19. If you love your bike, let it go … if it comes back to you, you highsided.
    *a little motorcycle levity before I head out to work*

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  20. I was atways under the impression that, “If you love something set it free. If it comes back to you it’s yours. If it doesn’t, it never was.” was something to tell a friend whose relationship was falling apart.

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  21. Had to break a 20 year relationship with a spouse years ago. She was going through some very hard times at work and with her relatives and decided that she could take all her anger out on me and as her husband I had to submit. A lot of verbal, psychological, and occasional physical abuse. Counceling? Burned through five separate councelors in just under a year. Every time they got close to the real situation she would fire them for one reason or another. I finally decided that I could no longer tolerate such treatment and still respect myself so I left. A painful and ugly period in my life I’d rather not dwell on.
    She later did find a councellor that clicked and worked through many of her issues. Contacted me years later and apologized for her behavior. We are now friends, though I could never again trust her to have my best interests at heart like I once obviously in error did. Doubt that I will ever again put myself in such a position of vulnerability. Wounds scar over and eventually heal, but the flesh is never quite the same again.

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  22. Thoughtful post.

    1. So the revised Sarah Maxim is “If you love something, hold on to it….”

    I read ‘hold on to it’ as ‘cultivate it’. (In cases like children preparing to leave the nest, cultivation implies letting it grow unimpeded.)

    2. However the maxim “you have to be willing to break it” does apply to relationships, as well as to everything else.

    Yes, because ideally adult relationships should be voluntary ones in which both/all parties benefit. Someone who is incapable of breaking it has relinquished, willingly or not, their individual sovereignty.

    3. I mentioned here the friend I lost after 9/11 – actually around 2006 – because she wouldn’t shut up about politics…The thing is it had gotten that far because I wasn’t willing to break it.

    There’s an element of tragedy of the commons here even though only two people were involved. One of the parties was not intelligent/sane/ethical enough to realize the commons had to be respected.

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  23. It is an unfortunate trait of my character to let myself be pushed around…

    :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll:

    Ahhh…just clearing my vision which blurred for a second…

    He folds his tent, like the Arabs, And as silently steals away

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    1. It may sound odd… but I believe her.

      We’re exchanging ideas here, so she seems much more… direct. But if someone was being rude outside of the usual formats of interaction, she’ll let it slide until it’s unbearable.

      Pretty common in women. There’s usually at LEAST one in each office.

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      1. The problem is that I don’t pay enough attention to NOTICE. I, myself, never go out of my way to do something underhanded. Oh, I can be G-d’s own bitch, mind you, but when I am no one DOUBTS what I mean. I get in YOUR face, right there…
        so — when I’m not paying attention, AND people are underhanded, I don’t notice. I’m more likely to notice in person than online because I read body language — but online/phone like most of my professional contacts, it just slips.

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        1. I, of course, was referring to my perception of you as a blog host.

          Even when no deception is intended, online personality may differ significantly from face-to-face personality.

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  24. Maybe it was told to all the writers, but Virginia Kidd once told an author who wasn’t making much money for either one of them that she was none the less one of the three best writers on the firm’s list and so was firmly and forever planted there (or at least as long as she wanted to be, I suppose). It was fun to discuss who the other two might be in that context and then go on to a broader context of who somebody else might pick from that firm’s list for the top 3.

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  25. Friends of Bill and Lois tend to phrase a similar notion a mite differently. With an appropriate boundary folks can snuggle up as close to the boundary as they want. Without an appropriate boundary life can be on a hunting auto-pilot – too close and get burned too far and freeze too close and get burned repeated. And detach with love.

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  26. Particularly in series, being willing to break it is important.

    Sometimes you have to change things up, just to keep things fresh and interesting.

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  27. Pingback: You Have To Be Willing To Break It | According To Hoyt | Head Noises

  28. Sarah, there is a shrink called Henry Cloud who has written two highly regarded books, “Boundaries,” and “Necessary Endings.” The way you speak of your agent makes me believe you did not trust each other for quite some while before you separated. The ending was necessary and everyone bled until you had the good sense to end it.

    Your experience leads me to believe that a writer should insist upon the right to inspect any correspondence on her behalf. I don’t see why an agent would refuse that, except perhaps that s/he doesn’t trust the writer. Absent that transparency, I don’t see how one can trust one’s agent.

    I had no idea how effed up the publishing business is until now.

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    1. It gets even worse. Check out Kristine Rusch’s site in the “Business Rusch” section. She goes into detail some of the horror stories she’s dealt with, and some of the ones in the comments are enough to make your hair stand on end.

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    2. Actually it wasn’t till that final deal that I realized the trust between us had frayed. There was also weird long silences and apparently not knowing what she’d told me last, but I thought she was just very busy, not that I was low priority.

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    1. Preach it sister, I’m having to deal with a situation involving that myself right now.
      By the way, is it a bad sign when you (think you) know someone better than they know themselves?

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      2. It depends on how correct you are. There have been a few people who thought they knew me better than I knew myself, but they were so wrong it was ridiculous. Probably because they were performing Leftist analysis of my motives, I suppose.

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  30. I was married for just weeks shy of 22 years to a genuine California dippy-hippy. That was one of her favorite mantras. It was simply an excuse for not working on your relationship. I got sick of it, so I started saying “If you love something, set it free. If it doesn’t come back, HUNT IT DOWN AND KILL IT!!” She didn’t seem to appreciate my witticism…

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  31. You have to be willing to break it… Oh, you didn’t mean physically?

    Well, I’d better get Calmer Half off to the chiropractor to get fixed, anyway, before I ask him to do another hike…

    What? It was only a little interpretive hike yesterday, only an hour and a half, and there were a couple benches. Ok, it was after a day of flash-flooding, and the trail was alternating muddy gravel and wet limestone slabs, neither of which had much traction for his cane, but… Hey, at least it wasn’t like the time when I took him on a hike through Mammoth Cave! And why does he keep refusing to even think of climbing a few of the mountains in Colorado when next we head that way?

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    1. Hmm, sounds a little like the “trail” conditions the last time I hiked Bandalier/ Frijoles Canyon. Something about flash floods, fire, flood, look for the little red tapes because the trail’s gone, and “let us know if you find a body in the debris.” I’m still not sure if the ranger was joking, but I didn’t encounter anyone living, dead, or otherwise. Did a lot of rock scrambling and boulder jumping, though. Great hike.

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      1. I did a nice little hike in Hells Canyon a couple of falls ago, after it had burned that summer. Nice clay/ash mixture, with the vegetation burned off, a couple days of rain, about a half inch of snow at the higher elevations, and currently about 38 degrees and raining made for rather interesting* traction. On the plus side there wasn’t any of that pokey starthistle to contend with.

        *interesting=similar to trying to walk up the inside of a really large mayonnaise jar.

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    2. Mammoth Cave is great. You didn’t take him on one of the tours that requires climbing the giant tower to get out, did you?

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      1. …nnnnnnnoooooo, that was the start point of the tour, going down that giant staircase at the new entrance… so then he couldn’t back out, and had to go all the way through…

        He did get better, even if it took two weeks before he could think about walking without the cane for more than 5 steps…

        He keeps saying life with me is a series of unanticipated challenges and adventures… But if we climb a 14-er in Colorado, it’s not unanticipated if we plan beforehand!

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  32. Oh, one other thing about being willing to break it.

    Once you’re willing to break it, it gets a LOT harder not to.

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