When The Frogs Come Up

My husband has acquired a new and strange habit of listening to podcasts while working. I completely understand this, as his work is mostly numbers and patterns and words don’t intrude. Yes, it plays havoc with my writing, which is why I have headphones and Sabaton.

Sometimes, occasionally, when I’m doing visual or animation work, though, I will listen to what he’s listening to. Not because of interest but by sheer inertial. If it’s not bothering me, I passively-listen, the same way I passively watch TV by catching bits of whatever he’s watching in between work and such.

One of the podcasts I thus consume was an interview with a figure on the right who is a Trump supporter, but almost exactly in the opposite way of how I look at Trump and his administration. This person is enthusiastic about everything the administration does, but horrified, appalled and even shocked at Trump’s “uncouth behavior.” Meanwhile, I look at a lot of things the administration does with a weather eye even when I agree with the objectives, because I can see doors being opened that terrify me. (And yet, I also don’t see a way around it.) On the other hand Trump’s oh, so rude, terrifyingly crass behavior? Meh. I think he’s a little salty and a tad-bit mouthy at times. So what?

Perhaps this comes from having grown up in a Latin culture, where you can call your best friend a mother lover at the top of your voice, and accuse him of having raped and murdered his own grandmother, and it’s all taken to mean “I’m really mad at you” and no more. By evening, you’ll be having dinner together in the best of moods.

Or perhaps it’s because I understand the dynamic between “Trump Mouth Eruptions” and sympathize.

Look, yes, a lot of what he says that sounds absolutely crazy is intentional. And a lot of it is clear to anyone who read The Art of the Deal. And a lot of the times when he’s rude it’s also intentional, to distract you — or at least the main stream media — from something he’s doing or working on.

BUT–

There’s more going on there, because some of his outbursts don’t help him, and in fact might hurt him. Or at least horrify a number of the more delicate flowers on the right.

Which brings us to why they happen, and how I understand him.

To begin with I’m going to quote Mike Resnick of blessed memory, at the beginning of the indie possibilities. Mike Resnick, a gentleman in every sense of the word, said, “If this works out, I’m going to be very rude to a lot of people.” Why would a gentleman say that?

To understand it, you have to understand the regimen of frogs that traditionally published writers lived under.

Traditionally publishing houses were — literally — the only game in town, if you wanted to bring your book in front of enough readers to make even “underpaid secretary” money. The. Only. Game. In. Town.

Staying employed over the long run, meant swallowing a lot of frogs even if you weren’t from a “cancelled” political persuasion, like me, which had other difficulties, like keeping your mouth shut while the editor you worked for kindly informed you that libertarians wanted to abolish the internal combustion engine. (No, of course not Baen. DUH.)

You had to, for instance, shut up when they told you the book hadn’t sold, which was of course your fault, or at best “genre isn’t selling” even though you knew they’d done the florid stupid with cover or release date or whatever. You had to stay quiet while you watched them do the florid stupid. After six or seven of these, you had to accept their verdict that you just didn’t have potential and were stuck as a low level scribbler. Etc. etc. etc. You had to see them ignore contacts from movie producers who contacted you first, and shut up because it wouldn’t get you the movie deal (the house controlled the right to negotiate that) but it would destroy your ability to publish anything ever again and not just with that house, because it’s a small incestuous field. You had to accept being sent to a conference for middle school teachers to promote your book that wasn’t remotely suitable for middle school. And accept being sent over your 40th birthday. And keep your mouth shut and not blow up when you came home to a notice that this book was being taken out of circulation, a decision made before the print. And through all this, you had to meet these people at cons, and act like they were your best friends. Because as a friend whom I won’t out, though he too is beyond their reach told me, “They see your expressions. They watch how you react and what you laugh at. And what you DON’T laugh at.”

I refer to it as a regime of eating live frogs. You swallowed a frog a day as a minimum condition of being employed, of practicing the craft you wanted to work at since you were cognizant it existed.

And before you say “Sarah, everyone has to do that.” Sure. Sure. BUT there are degrees. Of course the overworked retail worker doesn’t tell his boss to shove it. BUT if he/she did, all it would take at worst is a move to another town to find work again. While if you ran your mouth in trad pub, you were done. Because it was a small field and they all talked to each other. And you couldn’t go down the street and find a similar job. You were done-done. (In fact a lot of us tended to assume some favorite writer had died, when he/she had been cancelled for a minor offense, not even saying what they thought.)

But it was more than that. Recently someone commented that No Man’s Land has more “life” than all my other work, and why didn’t I do stuff like that while I was publishing with trad pub?

Well, because trad pub is the art of the possible. And No Man’s Land and the world it explores is weird. So weird that the only hope for it would be Baen AND EVEN THEN they wouldn’t have much clue what to do with it. Because they would have to sell it to distributors and stores and…. there was a good chance their own reps would think it was weird. (This is what pushed the conformity trend in SF/F, where changes and originality had to be in tiny dosages.)

So your very mind got invaded. Not just explicitly by the publisher saying “No. Ew. We won’t publish that.” But by your perception of what they would or would not take and were or were not interested in/hot for. All while keeping your mouth shut on the bad things.

It was tough. I mean, really tough. And you really had to act as though agents, editors, etc. were your besties. (I did like one of my editors/publishers. Well, and a couple of people in the house. Yes, you guys know which house. BUT I had to act like it for ALL houses, even the ones that I was actively becoming blocked on projects because the people were so hard to deal with.) How much did we have to “act” — well, recently while at dinner with younger son, he asked if he could taste my dessert. And I said “Why not. EVERY ONE of my agents and editors reached over and took food from my plate without asking, at a work dinner.” That much.

Am I salty about this? Weirdly, not that much. I have the temperament that blows up on very little, but then forgives and forgets. I mean, I’m describing how bad it was, so you understand what it might do to other people.

I don’t know if other people who ran to indie are ‘being very rude.’ I don’t have much interest in most of the field at this point, except “books I enjoy reading.” To me writing has become an intensely personal/freeing thing, where I work at what I’m passionate about, promote it as best I can, and that’s it. (Weirdly, for the first time in my life that’s pay. Still slightly underpaid secretary, but will improve once the move is done and I work more.)

The thing I want to show is: you eat a lot of frogs, the frogs eventually come up. You become …. very rude. Because you can be.

Trump’s working life, most of it, required being self-abashingly-subservient to a lot of leftists in the one-party rule of NYC. Worse, over his lifetime he probably saw the left become more narrow, more totalitarian, more incapable of leaving anyone alone, even in the privacy of their own thoughts/words. And he had to act like he was their besty.

Which explains why he hit the political stage saying the things that most of the public was afraid of saying.

And btw, the public being afraid to say things? That’s a sign everyone is eating at least one small tadpole every morning. And the pressure builds.

And then he endured four years, after what was obviously to anyone with the mathematical intuition of a tadpole (which is about my level) a stolen election, of being persecuted for whatever crime the left establishment could dream up, some of them improbable enough to give this fiction writer pause. Granted, he wasn’t as much swallowing the live frog as having it force fed at that point since they slapped various gag orders on him that would ruin him if he spoke.

So — Trump is rude. And sometimes thoughtlessly says things that sound weird or hurt people who don’t deserve to be hurt.

That’s fine. I don’t care. The frogs come up. The more you force people to swallow, the more they come up.

There are things to worry about with the administration, like the offer of 5k (just let us keep the 5k dudes!) and other weirdness.

BUT the “rudeness”? Stop clutching your fricking pearls. If you force people to swallow live frogs, sooner or later they have a belly full and the frogs come up.

Ribbit!