I am a novelist with work published in science fiction, fantasy, mystery and historical "novelized biography". I've won the Prometheus award and the Dragon award. I also write under the names Elise Hyatt and Sarah D'Almeida. http://sarahahoyt.com/
My answer — more polite than the Renowed Archeologist deserves was as follows:
Don’t give toys to the barbarians. The end. That applies to everything: Guns, precious artifacts, Art. “But we’re not barbarians” They’ll say. “Oh, you’re not? Have you stopped calling for the death of people who believe in a different religion? Have you stopped killing women for talking to strangers? Have you stopped hanging or dropping walls on gay people? No? YOU ARE BARBARIANS and you don’t get toys.” When MMike establishes his reign of terror, I want to be in charge of foreign affairs
Yes, I am snooty, and yes, sometimes my Greco Roman ancestors march behind my eyes like a migraine, looking down on all the barbaric folk. Or as I told someone I once dated, “Yeah, sure, my people are backward. Dude, my people built the Colosseum while your people’s greatest achievement was rubbing mud on their bellies.”
So, what is barbarism? Well, I’ve given some examples above, but yeah, it changes with times, okay. My Greek ancestors were quite okay with beating a disobeying woman black and blue, and heck as one of my kids who was living in a heavily Hispanic area said “In most places in the US, beating your wife is something to hide. In this area it’s just something you do on a Saturday night to let off steam.” (He could hear it.) I can confirm that in my childhood, in Portugal, this was the “normal” and having a man who didn’t beat you was a dream. I suspect this is still the same in much of the world.
And yet, these people are “civilized” compared with much of Islam or the tribal areas of Africa, where people are still openly bought and sold, and where albinos can be killed for their body parts which are considered to have curative value.
And those parts in turn are “civilized” compared to most of our ancestors and/or certain very primitive tribes. And if you’re under the impression that primitives are peaceful, you have merely swallowed the noble savage bullship. I advice you to run not walk to buy and read War Before civilization. Yes, I do actually realize it’s expensive as heck, but trust me, it’s worth it. And any culture that doesn’t go about wearing the parts of a vanquished enemy to prove they’re victorious is to an extent already somewhat civilized.
Again, civilized is relative.
But it’s time for us to stop conceding, and agreeing that “everyone is civilized” or some such nonsense, much less “celebrating all cultures.”
We are Americans and whether the Europeans admit it or not, we are the pinnacle of human civilization, by comparison to whom they’re all barbarians.
And it’s time we stopped encouraging the barbarians, both those coming over the border and those in Academia and other mentally damaged fields who believe in noble savages and want to hand the precious patrimony of mankind to barbarian crazies who might decide to go on a rampage like civets with a Koran shoved up their rear and destroy them to prove how holy they are.
It’s time to praise and prize civilized behavior, American style: we allow individuals to be themselves so long as they’re not stepping on anyone else. We speak our minds whether you want us to or not. We don’t respect your barbarian sensitiveness (Barbarians are always terrified of words because they know they’re barbarians). You can become civilized or be left in our dust when we go to the stars.
And until then? No guns, no art, no priceless artifacts.
Heck, if we had a real government composed of Americans and not Barbarians, we should conduct specialized raids to save the priceless patrimony of mankind (Yes, mankind, deal. Mankind has two sexes. But It’s called Mankind. I’m tired of catering to the precious sensitivity of barbaric fools) to Barbaric children who might destroy it tomorrow.
As it is, the best we can do is not give them anymore. And tell our own barbarians to grow up or be pulled from any position of power until they do.
No more barbarism. There is no honor in barbarism. and it destroys everything around it.
1) There is a real post coming. This is just to let you know how it turned out. Also, I am running exceptionally late, and need to shower and get dressed before I write (No, I didn’t wake this late. I’ve just been dealing with things, cats included.)
2) This book is substantially the same as the Baen edition. We fixed a dozen typos (There’s ALWAYS typos, no matter how carefully edited, and added an afterword, but other than that, if you own the Baen ebook, you’ve read the book.
3) IT’S IN HARD COVER FOR THE VERY FIRST TIME EVER.
Athena Hera Sinistra never wanted to go to space. Never wanted see the eerie glow of the Powerpods. Never wanted to visit Circum Terra. She never had any interest in finding out the truth about the Darkships. You always get what you don’t ask for. Which must have been why she woke up in the dark of shipnight, within the greater night of space in her father’s space cruiser, knowing that there was a stranger in her room. In a short time, after taking out the stranger—who turned out to be one of her father’s bodyguards up to no good, she was hurtling away from the ship in a lifeboat to get help. But what she got instead would be the adventure of a lifetime and perhaps a whole new world—if she managed to survive…. A Prometheus Award Winning Novel, written by a USA Today Bestseller.
And now, ladies and gentlemen, in recognition of victory, brought to you by Radio Free Colorado in exile:
Louis XIV invented bureaucracy in its current form to keep the up and coming bourgeois and the old noblemen occupied and out of his way. And I hope he burns in hell for it.
There is a scene in The Twelve Labors of Asterix that completely captures what I’ve been going through for the last 3 days trying to prove to Amazon that I have my permission to publish my own work. It’s when Asterix has to go through the House That Makes You Mad.
He has to get a permission slip to go to the window that gives permission slips, so that the permission slip can be validated to get another permission slip.
We have now gone up one level, because after making me sign a contract with myself (Who the F*CK else would sign for Goldport Press) they didn’t like it because both signatures are the same.
The last message, since the name involved is Brazilian was composed in Portuguese and said in essence “Honestly, guys, for the love of the poor souls in Purgatory can you stop acting like monkeys with keyboards?”
They now claim it will take them five days to prove that I’m me. I offered to get an affidavit in my legal name saying that I own Goldport Press, and get it notarized, or show them copies of my tax returns. I suppose I could also get our bank to certify that my signature is valid on Goldport Press.
But seriously: THERE HAS NEVER BEEN A COMPLAINT AGAINST GOLDPORT PRESS, and if they look, they can tell it publishes my name and my pen names. This should not, in any way be a problem. I could understand this level of scrutiny if I were someone who regularly publishes other people and/or out of print books. BUT why expend this kind of effort on someone who is JUST publishing herself and her pen names?
I do understand wanting the reversal letter, though I’ll point out even with that, they weren’t that tight in the beginning, and I don’t think there was any issue. I got all my reversals legally, sometimes after hiring a lawyer. I had friends though that when stonewalled by Ace and DAW both of whom were experts at ignoring requests for reversal as a way of denying them (and at one time my editor at Ace, who is a cartoon character, but not a funny one, tried to tell me I had to ask for reversal through the agent that initially sold the books, knowing I was no longer with that agent. The lawyer took care of that) sent them a letter, registered, with proof of receipt, saying that if they didn’t answer within ten days the rights reverted, and she used that to publish her own stuff. I don’t think they had any problems with that.
Yes, they have problems with (mostly foreign) scammers publishing other people’s books. For a while there was a fad for collecting the free portion of like three bestsellers books, and publishing them as a “collection.”
However, this has gone beyond all sanity. I could understand their behaving this way if:
a) Goldport Press was a new account and had NEVER published anything by Sarah A. Hoyt.
b) Goldport Press had never published reverted books by Sarah A. Hoyt.
c) Goldport press had had complaints about publishing author’s books without permission.
d) I hadn’t sent a reversal on Baen stationary.
e) I hadn’t multiple times signed emails from Goldport Press with “Sarah A. Hoyt.”
f) I hadn’t emailed them about the case from my customer account.
Now they say they’ll take 5 days to verify that I’m me…. which will probably devolve, by tonight into asking me for a cheek swab so I can receive the form that verifies I’m me.
I’m having flashbacks to getting my entire school grades with courses taken and curriculum, so it could be validated in the US so I could get a job as a college instructor (Look, I NEEDED it at the time. I was 25) and going to my old High School to be told I’d flunked out in 9th grade. Turned out they still used paper records, and were copying the page adjacent to mine (the girl’s name differed from mine by a middle name. We were actually friends and she was the originator of the famous joke-phrase (stage whispered at her during a test by another friend and ignored by the teacher) “Just copy what I did, don’t try to think. When you think you f*ck up everything.” We managed to drag her, yes, sometimes by allowing/encouraging her to cheat through 9th grade, but she couldn’t pass the exams to go further. For the record, we had a reason to help her. She was one of the decoys in our gifted form (see, the socialists made gifted forms illegal, but the school still wanted them. Mostly because… uh, some day ask me about my gifted from. One of our stunts was rewiring our classroom. Another was accidentally (kind of of) giving a nervous breakdown to a new teacher. So the school threw in three or four non-gifted students into the form. And because we were going five times the speed, the poor girls, who would have been fine in normal classes were DROWNING.)) That was solved after my dad came by and deployed what mom called “The power of the mustache” (Actually the power of the height, because he’s six one in Portugal) and was all polite and forceful at them. Before that they were refusing to acknowledge that that was NOT my middle name.
Which is the problem with any bureaucracy. By giving petty half-trianed (if that) clerks the power to deny or accept things that are vital for the people applying, it quickly revolves into permit-raj and banana republic operating rules.
Which, yes indeed, is the problem with our vast and completely insane governmental bureaucracy. They’ll all now permit-raj and insane, which is why we’re operating by banana republic rules.
If a company like Amazon, designed to MAKE MONEY can fall into this kind of insanity, imagine how much easier it is for governments.
To make the folly of this complete — they’ve now cost me three days of work, and imagine how many I’ve cost them. There are apparently three people dealing with this now. And probably stepping on each other — it would not stop any actually scammers. Which I helpfully pointed out to them, yes, because I live to make friends and influence people. (Shush you.)
If I were a, for the sake argument, South Elbonian scammer, I could very easily fake a reversal letter from Baen by taking their symbol and making up more convincing letterhead than theirs, and being all formal (which their reversal letters never are, being a note from Toni to me.) Then I could trick out an amazingly official letter from Goldport Press and make up a name of an editor to sign it. It’s not actually difficult, and how are they going to verify this person doesn’t work for Goldport Press? There is a contract.
And with that, if I were a scammer and thus inclined, I could publish any bestseller I wanted to. No problem. It would be denounced in three days, and then I’d use the same files and start another account. This is how they do it. (I once accidentally bought a scammer’s version of an F. Paul Wilson book.)
Except I’m not a scammer, so I tried to do things above board, and in return ended up mired in the House that Makes You Mad.
This is why if there’s any justice Louis XIV is burning in hell (forget his mistresses, those are peccadilloes. Forget murders and judicial murders and wars. He deserves to burn in hell for inventing bureaucracy.) And why all bureaucracies should be burned to the ground and this kind of process rationalized.
And also why companies should stop acting like banana republics.
While I still have some hair left.
UPDATE: So, apparently cursing at them in gutter Portuguese works. The ebook and paperback are now publishing. The hardcover isn’t, because they’re crazy. (I mean, if I have the rights to publish the book, you’d think that means I have the rights to publish the book, right?) I’ve poked them on that. I want to announce that I’m available to curse in Portuguese at them if any of you has similar difficulties. It apparently is the magic sauce, at least as long as they use Brazilian flunkies.
*In keeping with the fact the last few days have been full of Murphy’s blessings, (Including a subscription to mid journey bot, which I can’t activate for …. reasons I don’t understand.) I’m now engaged in a full tilt (at windmills) battle with Amazon to publish Darkship Thieves. While it’s perfectly normal for them to ask for the reversal letter, this time they decided to take stupid pills. So after I sent them the reversal letter, they decided to tell me it didn’t have my name or Baen’s. (It was right there.) And after I sent them that, (screen shots of where they were on the letter) they decided that I now needed to explain why Baen had published it and send documentation (WHAT?); that I had to prove the book was in fact written by me (WHAT? Also library of congress); I needed a contract between myself and the self owned press AND I hadn’t sent them the reversal letter (which has now been sent 5 times.) Now, before you say “Amazon is evil!” I’m not sure this is so much evil as the fact that an ESL speaker is acting like permit-raj. Because they CAN. As for Amazon being evil: Yeah. It sure is. It’s no more and no less evil, OTOH than the other sites that publish books. Its accounting is better than smashwords; its search functions are better than B & N and Kobo. But more importantly, it is where the customers are. I don’t get the luxury of saying I won’t publish there. Though the fact they’re acting like loons terrifies me I won’t be able to publish the series at all, as I know of other people whom the permit raj decided to f*ck with. (And FYI of all political stripes.) I do have a means to go around should I be permanently banned, but then I’ll only be able to market to those on my newsletter, which will stop my being able to expand my audience. For self-publishers, (or for that matter consumers of e-books, or even more strangely, low carb eaters) Amazon is Luna Authority in The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress. I’d like to stop doing business with Luna authority, but it’s like stopping doing business with air.
I also wish you to know that Toni Weisskopf has offered to help me convince Amazon that I do indeed have the rights, something that no other traditional publishing house EVER would do. I’m still hoping I can solve this without more work for Toni, but we’ll see.
Anyway, I’m frazzled and upset and late with the promo post. For the last, I request your forgiveness – SAH*
Book promo
If you wish to send us books for next week’s promo,please email to bookpimping at outlook dot com. If you feel a need to re-promo the same book do so no more than once every six months(unless you’re me or my relative. Deal.) One book per author per week. Amazon links only. Oh, yeah, by clicking through and buying (anything, actually) through one of the links below, you will at no cost to you be giving a portion of your purchase to support ATH through our associates number. A COMMISSION IS EARNED FROM EACH PURCHASE. *Note that I haven’t read most of these books (my reading is eclectic and “craving led”,) and apply the usual cautions to buying.– SAH*
When John Fisher retired from the Navy SEALS, he thought he was done with war.
But now, someone is killing the avatars of the tribal gods. Worse they’re stealing the power that is supposed to revert tp the gods when the avatars die. Mary has been told to investigate.
“Scum of the spaceways,” the interplanetary police had called them, so Wolf Stone and his motley crew left the solar system for another. There, they found a tyranny not too different from the one they left, and this time, they decided to fight.
And when they fought for justice, they were one blood with the crusaders!
This iktaPOP Media edition has a new introduction giving historical and genre context to the story.
This anthology is a benefit anthology for the Tom Burnett Memorial Library in Iowa Park, TX, Is your library haunted? Are you sure? Many book lovers find peace and solace in their local library, returning over and over to the place their spirit calls home. Some of them keep going even after their bodies have stopped working. To say nothing of the ones who were already there when their home became the library. Join 10 authors as they explore haunts from the past, the future, and the dead.
Back in Texas he might be The Rio Kid, but at the other end of a long cattle drive in Fort Collins, Rio Bell is now struggling through his first year as a Colorado rancher. With his new wife, old hands, and a few mountain men, he’s learning fast as they deal with winter weather and stubborn cattle.
The killing cold and deep snows bring all new challenges to calving and just getting in supplies, but tempers can run hot as ever. Not everybody wants to see him succeed… or even survive.
They’re about to learn he’s no greenhorn when it comes to taking care of business, regardless of what that particular business may be.
EXPERIENCE THE HORROR! As a new virus escapes from its Chinese prison and threatens to infect all of humanity! WATCH! As hordes of people fight for toilet paper and run home to lock themselves inside! GASP! As “Doctor” Anthony Fauci tells everyone to stop everything and cowers them into submission with fear! A TRUE STORY from a female firefighter who had to go forth amidst the lockdowns and personally saw the psychological and societal destruction brought on by thoughtless politicians, sloppy journalists, and the power of tales of terror.
“A Federal emergency hotline for psychological distress registered more than a 1000% increase in calls that April compared to the same time the year before. How many people were driven to taking their own lives as a result of the never-ceasing panic porn and with restrictions so tight as to imply coronavirus was deadly to each and all, regardless of age or medical status — we will never really know.”
ENCOUNTER! Scolds who shame and intimidate those who dare defy senseless orders! SHIVER! As mobs appear in the streets to harass and compel the public to their beliefs, and watch as they destroy cities and lynch historical figures! DISCOVER! A revolution in voting that ends with a new president inaugurated behind barbed wire and guarded by thousands of soldiers! WITNESS THE POWER! Of censorship and blind public obedience!
And just when you think it’s over…you find out IT NEVER ENDS!
This gripping real-life tale of how people lost their minds in 2020 includes a car chase, a massive fire, and a cast of characters that you will never forget!
They had heard, those Mexicans, of Gringo honor—and one at least, was willing to gamble that young Dal Givens would return with the many good American dollars for the release of his friend, John Thurston—who otherwise would die of dry rot and torture in the great new Federal prison of Carrizal!
This iktaPOP Media edition includes a new introduction giving historical and genre context to the novella.
(Btw, on these, I want to thank Jason Fleming for bringing these books back. So many of my pulp favorites are out of print and can’t be obtained at any price. These books pay almost nothing, so you need to have a massive volume to make ANY money, and it’s never enough to make a living. So, it’s in many ways a labor of love, and I just wish he’d do more early sf/f. ;) – SAH)
At eighteen, Allen Rupert’s criminal past caught up with him and he faces a choice of military or prison. To get as far from central Texas as possible, he joins the navy but spends half of his time in the brig.
Recognizing Allen’s mechanical skill, he’s trained as a machinist and assigned to the small corvette Liberty, patrolling the Gulf of Mexico. During an ASW drill, Allen defuses a torpedo that went live in its tube, and is summoned to the bridge. There, Acting Captain Ryland Rigó commends him for his good work.
For the first time in his life, Allen sees someone look at him with respect. Weeks later, ashore, he invites her to lunch. To his utter shock, she accepts.
Thinking her just another girl, Allen is shaken to his core to find himself swept into a maelstrom of domestic politics, international intrigue, and the plots and plans of Demi-humans and Machines. All while trying to fix his broken life and attain the only thing he wants: Ryland.
Vignettes by Luke, Mary Catelli and ‘Nother Mike.
So what’s a vignette? You might know them as flash fiction, or even just sketches. We will provide a prompt each Sunday that you can use directly (including it in your work) or just as an inspiration. You, in turn, will write about 50 words (yes, we are going for short shorts! Not even a Drabble 100 words, just half that!). Then post it! For an additional challenge, you can aim to make it exactly 50 words, if you like.
We recommend that if you have an original vignette, you post that as a new reply. If you are commenting on someone’s vignette, then post that as a reply to the vignette. Comments — this is writing practice, so comments should be aimed at helping someone be a better writer, not at crushing them. And since these are likely to be drafts, don’t jump up and down too hard on typos and grammar.
*Sarah Speaking: I realize it’s evil to hit you with essentially 2 promo posts in a row. But today we’re going to be running around like crazy people (ducttape-grandkids coming mid-week) and yesterday night Valeria-cat announced she wasn’t feeling so good by peeing all over our bed. Twice. So, I’ll write post on Monday. These two days I run around like crazy -SAH*
De Gusta-Books Non Est Disputandum by Foxfier
Look, if you like a book, you like a book. It’s really not something that will change when someone says “I don’t like it.” In matters of taste, it’s not up to debate.
Recent…ish… there was a kerfuffle over some list or other of “how dare you read these books? They’re bad!” where it was a definite purity spiral, and from the selection and justifications it was questionable if folks liked ’em, or just thought that they should like them. (Think in terms of the difference between books you want to read, and books you want to have read, and books that you want folks to think you read.)
Sad how little that narrows it down, isn’t it? Anyways, long story short, instead of laughing or complaining, it was suggested that somebody try to get folks to write lists of good stuff to read. Guess who the “somebody” is today…. The format is title and author, link if applicable, what it is, and if you’ve got something besides “I just really liked it,” list that.
So, for example:
Daring Finds series by Elise Hyatt, an Odd and quirky crafting series with romantic sub-plot, and I like it because it’s fun, of the “his men would follow him anywhere, if only to find out what happens” sort.
The duology of A Net of Dawn and Bones and Seeds of Blood, by C Chancy; near future broken masquerade (“magic and monsters come out of the shadows”). Definitely not a romance-type urban fantasy, think more like the Dresden files, but with non-romantic duo instead of Harry as the main character. I like it because Chancy takes her subjects seriously, as well as telling an interesting story. Things are plausibly explained in-world, and not in a way that is actively painful if you’re familiar with the subject; it opens in hell, for goodness’ sake, and actually sells it.
And so on, however many books you want to list.
You don’t like someone’s list?
Make your own list, with the books you do like, and why! Spread the treasures! You get inspired to make a list, link to the person who inspired you– or just reblog them, and then join in, too, whatever works. Let’s try to spread some positivity, right? Besides, books!
Frontier Magic, by Patricia C Wrede. Magical AU American history, post 1800. First series I talked my daughter into reading, largely on the basis of “Well, you liked The Enchanted Forest Chronicles.” Part of the fun is seeing the translation and logical continuation if you change one thing.
…I have been informed by the two eldest that I am adding Marda Quincesinger, Postulant, by Maggie Hogarth It is “basically fantasy– dragons, talking animals. Fantasy.” She likes it because it’s awesome! and Shadows by Robin McKinley, an alternate world roughly modern-day fantasy. “It’s got a good story line. It’s interesting to read.”
Dragons Love Tacos, by Adam Rubin. It’s a bedtime story book. Simple, cute, survives being read every night for a month straight, and the kids start picking up words by exposure.
Alright, back to what came to mind when I thought of good books I wanted to share.
Radiance, by Grace Draven. Romance, fairly physical, slightly dark/epic fantasy setting. I like it because the characters start out acting like adults in a rather painful situation, and (I hope I’m not spoiling too much) eventually fall in love; what really stood out was that there was a lot of physical touch that had nothing to do with romance.
Whose Body? by Dorothy L. Sayers, and I’m linking the whole series because it’s good. It’s a now-historical mystery series, was current-day when it was written between the world wars. Generally starts with a murder, which is generally solved by the end. A lot of non-slapstick, understated or ironic humor, including the entire novel Strong Poison towards the middle of the series, where the plot line is “female author suspect of killing her ex-lover using methods from one of her novels.” In a novel. By a lady. Who did that kind of research…. thus showing that the worry of “does my search history make me look like a serial killer, or a writer?” predates the internet!
Father Brown’s Mysteries, by G. K. Chesterton. Historical fiction, pre-WWII England, basically the spiritual grandfather of mystery novels. They’re legally available for free all over the place. It’s kind of like if Columbo at his most bemused was transported back into pre-war England, and had some adventures and solved (rather good) puzzles.
Bound to the Alien Engineer by C. V. Walter. It’s book two in a series, definitely not-sweet romance, near future sci-fi, and you’ll hurt yourself laughing because it’s about a bunch of scifi fans trying to find out about their friend, by shaking down the guys cosplaing as big, blue aliens from a fandom nobody recognizes.
Exile’s Honor, by Mercedes Lackey. Fantasy, intelligent spirit-bond animal subtype. It’s awesome because Alberich is a snarky, honorable, somewhat grumpy with absolute justification, hard working character of towering awesome. Read it against my better judgement– I find the mind control ponies of Valdemar to be creepy– and I love this book.
Hank the Cowdog, by John R. Erickson. The adventures of a ranch dog in Texas, who is not nearly as intelligent as he thinks he is, in a way that a five or six year old can recognize and find funny well into adulthood. Last on the list because this will be really long…. these were the first books I was allowed to read after my mom got word that the school library was restricting me to books they thought I could handle. Which was so restricted I’d have to work up to Color Kittens. She didn’t maim anybody, I promise, though I won’t say it wasn’t a risk. For these, I actually love the audio books best– they were books on tape when I was a kid, read by the author, and they are incredible. We have both the audio editions and several of the book bundles, you can find them searching for Hank the Cowdog Set”.
So, folks– make a list, or several– what’s your De Gusta-books?
It will probably surprise no one here, subjected as you have been to my random brain-drops for years, but the thing that made the most difference to me in Jordan Peterson’s 12 rules was the rule that said: Treat yourself as though you were someone you love, for whose well being you’re wholly responsible.
I don’t think I’m alone in that. A lot of us born in or after the middle of the last century were so disgusted by the message of hedonism and self-centeredness of the times, that we ran the other way, at least where it pertains to ourselves.
Never to anyone else, of course, but for ourselves, many of us lived by the rule of “The beatings will continue till morale improves.” And when body or brain or soul broke, we just saw it as an excuse to kick ourselves harder and call ourselves names.
It never occurred to me this was a bad thing, until I read that rule in Peterson’s book. After all, being self-absorbed, self-loving and self-indulgent are bad, right? No one wants to do that!
Except there’s a difference between self indulgence and treating oneself as though she were the despised red-headed step child. And I’m an adult and should have noticed it.
Like this: There is a difference between demanding a feat of pure effort from yourself every once in a while, and not letting yourself take a breath, not letting yourself show weakness, being terrified of not succeeding at something. Thinking that if you fail it’s all your fault and you done it. Beating yourself up at every failure, and hating yourself for not being perfect, or for being (merely) human.
So, that rule from Peterson was a blinding revelation, and it probably shouldn’t be. I’m still incredibly afraid of being overindulgent and spoiling myself to the detriment of others or of my work. But I try to remember to take my meds and try not to hate myself when I fail.
But there are levels to this rabbit hole.
I might have mentioned I was put on a sleep schedule. This came about because I was talking to older son, and he said that if you only sleep less than 7 hours a night for a stretch of time, it’s suicide on the installment plan. And I stared at him.
Look, I haven’t slept more than (and often not) six hours a night for over thirty years, and before that I wasn’t particularly good at it, either.
I never thought it did you any harm. Just never did. I mean. I thought sleeping eight hours was for the weak and the indulgent.
So I got yelled at — when do the kids start yelling at you on the regular? Because lately both of them periodically look at me like I grew a second evil head, and then the yelling commences. Usually loving yelling and all, but really — and put on a “sleep hygiene” schedule, that involves no electronics two hours before bed and light blocking curtains and… I kind of failed yesterday because I was fighting a cover, but REALLY, it seems to help? More than I expected.
I got the sarcastic “No sh*t” for that, and I suspect a lecture on not living on coffee and whatever I find when I’m hungry (which is often stuff like popcorn which I shouldn’t be having, period) and probably a right smart telling off about proper exercise. He says I should try to run the body according to the owner’s manual.
But I’m serious. I always thought you didn’t need eight hours of sleep, that sleeping that long was a sign of weakness.
And we all know about the debacle last year, when I was determined not to ask for help, though we had to move earlier than I expected. And then a bunch of you put me in a corner and yelled at me, and I’m glad you did. For one, it gave me the courage to try a yearly blog fundraiser, which I promise to keep up, even if the idea of asking for pay for my daily work still seems odd.
Okay, I decided to post this, because I think there are others (Coff. Crossover) among us who have similar issues.
We treat ourselves like rented mules and demand superhuman feats of all too human bodies and minds.
Or, put it another way, if you wouldn’t demand it of anyone else, you shouldn’t demand it of yourself.
If you wouldn’t think anyone else is a “mooch” for asking for money help in a pinch, much less for asking to be paid, why would you think that of yourself?
And no, taking care of yourself isn’t self-indulgent. Yes we’ve all heard about people who think “Self-care” is trips to Paris or $500 pairs of shoes. And you know what? If you can afford it, you can do that too. You’re not a medieval monk.
BUT you shouldn’t indulge yourself to the point of financial straits, no. Let’s not be stupid.
However, treating yourself as a human being who needs food, rest, and sometimes, through no fault of your own, a helping hand is not self-indulgent.
And you should cut yourself some slack on “less than perfect”, not blame yourself when you get sick, and generally … well, try to treat yourself as someone you love and whom you’d like not to die of tiredness.
And if you have a gift… Well, Peterson says that creatives who don’t create die. Either physically or mentally, either fast or slow, but they die. So, that too, is not self indulgence.
And staying healthy enough to create is essential.
Stop beating yourself, berating yourself and hating yourself and then demanding top performance.
You’re not a rented mule.
No one is asking you to indulge in extravagant self-love, but give yourself a chance, okay? The rest of us will thank you.
Or perhaps this should be called “They rejected our reality and substituted their own.”
Nah, I’ll stand by my title.
My grandmother, who was sane as a brick, became curiously credulous in her old age, that is after the grandchildren had married and moved out of the village and her house was no longer the nerve center of the family.
There was nothing wrong with her brain. Her brain worked as well as it ever had. If you told her a girl down the street had given birth to a snake, she’d first laugh at you, then march down the street, knock at the girl’s door, and tell her what was being said.
But she believed the most absurd tales from… well…. tabloids, which she fell into reading because they appeared in the grocery store and she was bored. And at that, by the way, her old, faithfully subscribed Catholic newsrag wasn’t any better, though it ran to the “more believable to a lady who had never consciously encountered anyone so exotic as an atheist.”
So when I came to tea, she’d tell me how some girl in Lisbon had given birth to snakes. And how an atheist who was giving birth demanded the cross be removed from over the hospital bed, because she didn’t want her baby to see it. And then her baby was born blind.
Now if you’d asked grandma if G-d was the kind of being to strike a baby blind because his/her mom was an atheist, she’d be horrified at the notion. And if one of her grandkids had declared him or herself an atheist (I’m fairly sure my brother was close to, back then. I haven’t inquired of the state of his soul) she would have been chagrined, and tut tutted and prayed for him or her. But she would not for a minute wish that said grandchild have blind children.
The problem was that these things in the newspapers came with a dual nature: First, they were not quite real, because they weren’t about people she knew. How was she to say what some heathen in Lisbon did? Or whether such strange creatures, hundreds of miles away, could or did give birth to snakes? And obviously atheists in foreign parts wouldn’t be like our atheists, even if we had any, which she had no direct knowledge of.
Second, surely they wouldn’t print it in the paper if it weren’t true.
So I shut up, and drank tea with her, and nodded at her stories, then turned the conversation to the cats and the dog, and what she was doing in the garden. She’d also tell me about neighbors whose names I could never remember. (Seriously, if I met you at a con, it takes three times of telling me you name for me to remember your face with the name. Half the time I remember the name and have a pleasant association, but can’t remember the name. Speaking of, would the lady who gave me the knit minion cup owners email me? I’d like to send you something, because those have brought us so much joy.) In those opinions she was, again, sane as a brick, and it all made sense.
I find myself, now, going the same dance with my mother, though I’ll note only since the Covidiocy. Having been locked up and deprived of her network of continuous reality check, she fell headlong for Fauci’s folly. There is no point even arguing with her that there was never a need for all the crazy measures, much less than that the measures were countraproductive. It’s all “but you’re the only one saying that” and “what makes you think you’re smarter than the experts?” and such. This from the woman who withstood full on socialist propaganda and laughed at it.
But these expert opinions come from America, where modernity and medicine came from. And the only person she has to reality-check is my brother, who has believed every technocratic piece of bull excreta to come his way since he fell headlong for Al Gore’s Earth in the ballance, or whatever his book was. (And worse, he thought that Al Gore was so “smart” mostly because the book was beautiful written. The translator must have been amazing it’s all I have to say.)
And this is the problem. In our society, no one can actually go out and see what’s happening everywhere for themselves. They might be sane as bricks, but they don’t know any of those Trump voters, and lord only knows they might all be demon-worshiping white nationalists, even the ones that are black.
That’s why I was dismayed yesterday when reading the New Neo’s dispirited post about how leftists make Trump voters into horrible “things”.
Some of the comments on her post were about national divorce, but frankly, that’s stupid as rocks and I apologize to rocks. The national interests aren’t neatly divided along lines that make any sense on the map. Apologists for this loopy idea will say “I know it will be difficult.” Really, do you? Because I bet you that you don’t.
Not only aren’t the left concentrated on any particular region, (and no, we don’t even know about the big cities, because the margin of fraud is huge there) but it’s mostly confined to people who watch and believe TV. Or NPR. Or whatever the heck used to be “respectable modes of information,” up to and including the New York Times.
Now, my parents are in another country, because I moved away, but I’m sure most of you aren’t exactly eager to split the sheets and send the 80 year olds to live in foreign parts, right? Or, and I have a number of friends like this, they only get their info from quick TV summaries, in between doing whatever they’re obsessive about doing for a living.
And the real left, as such, is at most 10% of the nation. And frankly most of them have issues. Are you really going to give them half the land? HOW? And WHY?
The problem is not the people. The problem is that we’re at this awkward mental space, where — because the left not only used to dominate discourse, but has been cancelling people financially and professionally for decades — a certain percentage of the country, many of them, but not all old, are listening exclusively to news that might as well come from a parallel universe.
I used to know, because when they’re all around you, it’s important to know, the left’s means of taking over a country and it always started with “control mass media.” Which they did by the thirties or so, in the US.
It wasn’t even that they were exclusively US left at the time, but that at the time all parties in the US were “progressives.” It started before FDR, even if FDR made it permanent on the left, and proved very adept at corrupting all our institutions. But all the journalists, and every “educated” person was progressive for the same reason Heinlein was progressive initially. Because they equated centralized, top down government with “progress” — i.e. with having flush toilets, and real medical care, the same reason that Britishers are very fond of their health service. It came in at the same time as modern medicine, so the “progress was visible.”
And from there — because the visions of the future being sold in schools tilted more and more left — we ended up with news wholly dominated by Marxism.
Which means the reporters can’t even SEE the truth, much less report it. So what they’re reporting is all about those weird Trump voters — of which they don’t know any, because no Trump voter in their midst dares admit it on penalty of never working in journalism again — and the snakes they give birth to.
That ultimately is the big problem. They made us go silent, are no sure we don’t exist, and spend their time making up outrageous lies about us.
I have friends who fall into the “too busy to get anything but the news at ten” or whatever, and they of course think that Russia put Trump in power, etc. etc. etc. And that we’re doing great under Drooling Joe. While there might be some cognitive dissonance with groceries and gas prices, they really are too busy to pay much attention, and the short term explanations distract them.
They know I keep this blog. If they thought about it for a minute, or even dared read this blog (they don’t, because it’s obviously crazy. Or as a former friend so charmingly put it “She’s gone peculiar these last few years.” Yes, she’s British.) they’d know I’m one of those people who supposedly give birth to snakes.
I’ve told them to their faces that I voted for Trump (the first time under severe protest, but it was better than the alternative, as we’re seeing.) I have told them Marxism is a crazy cult, and that the sky and the stars will pass away before a comma in the founding documents becomes irrelevant. And I swear they forget it the minute they walk away. I mean, I’m their friend, they know I’m not stupid, so I can’t possibly give birth to snakes, like those people they hear about on the news. (I guess it’s easier if you were a casual con friend to just think I’ve gone peculiar.)
We don’t need a national divorce. We already have that. We’re a separated couple, sharing the same house, avoiding each other at every chance and interpreting the noises we hear as being something exciting like rains of spiders or giving birth to snakes, when really the ex just slipped on a pool of cat vomit, and is now thudding around the house in a cast.
Now, this is not complete, of course, because we know what they do. It’s more like they avoid seeing us, but keep dancing up and down the stairs naked where we can’t avoid seeing them. So we know they didn’t give birth to snakes. OTOH we assume there’s a lot more of them than there is, because they holler about snakes so much. (Yes, I DO know the images I’m putting in your head. You will surely deal.)
Meanwhile, we’re limping around with our cast, and they’re going “Ahah, I knew it. They’re giving birth to white nationalist snakes” and they have all these words they’re phobic about without having any clue what they mean. Like “nationalist” which means you must be fascist, because well…. national socialists. And you want to shake them till their teeth come out and say “DUDE I’m a patriotic Libertarian. No socialism here.”
And in a way, of course that’s what they need. Only the ones who do it first, who cross over the house, and shake their cast in the crazy person’s face and say “What the hell are you gibbering about you political nudist? I’m one of those people you’re so terrified of, and you’re a non-fracking idiot, you mental reject” are going to pay an immense price, as we’ve been paying for generations.
Because the full force of demonization is brought to bear on those that refuse to be written out of existence. The left can’t help do it. They need to keep their worldview intact, because it’s become the center of their being.
So the first few who tell them who they are make it stick, are going to be painted with the “gives birth to snakes” brush. We’ve seen it happen.
Which makes it a perilous endeavor for those of us in overtaken fields, who want to make a living.
The problem — for the left — being that they have created this …. ersatz cone of silence, where they can pretend we don’t exist. And therefore they think we’re few, rare and old. And they’re safe.
But breaking the fire alarm doesn’t mean you won’t have a house fire. What they’re doing to the economy is the equivalent of running around with a can of gasoline and a box of matches.
People can’t ignore the fact they’re having trouble feeding the family. They might not say anything, but the anger and the number of restive “against the people in power” people keeps growing.
Growing well beyond what I expected because the number of people who — in the face of unprecedented propaganda, and despite some doubts over his endorsing lockdowns — hunched their shoulders and went and voted for Trump so much that the left had to cheat at the last minute, in front of G-d and everybody, way beyond their already massive planned cheating, was astonishing even to me.
And there probably are more ready to do it now.
Which is very like what led to the Romanian Christmas gift. Quietly, behind the backs of officialdom, people had come to hate the regime like ravening fire. It just wasn’t worth their lives to say it, before they realized EVERYONE hated the regime. Not only weren’t they alone, almost everyone was with them.
There will be a moment like that here. Perhaps very soon. We can almost see it coming.
Heck, at this point we can almost smell it.
But they can’t. We’re still, to them, those weird people that give birth to snakes.
In the end we win, they lose. Pray G-d, if you believe in Him that when the time comes we have the fortitude not to beat them to death with our cast while screaming “Does it look to you like we give birth to snakes, you dumb f*ck.”
And pray really hard that a lot of them wake before that moment. Because quite a few are dear friends or even relatives, and not into the evil so much, as hypnotized into thinking evil is good. And anyway, Trump voters are those people far away who give birth to snakes.
They’re not stupid, and they’re not evil, even if they’re acting as both. Pray G-d they have a Road to Damascus moment and wake up, before it’s too late.
Heck, pray even if you don’t believe. Because at this point it’s our only hope, our only barrier on the way to having to do things that will damage us for the rest of our days, and scar the republic possibly more than ACW did.
Let’s hope Bismark was right and “God has a special providence for fools, drunkards, and the United States of America.”
Because the alternative is very very ugly. And it might be needed. May G-d have mercy on our souls.
In Kate Paulk’s Con Vampire series, she has the forces of evil gather at science fiction conventions.
Now, part of that is necessity of the set up. Her character is a vampire who hangs out at science fiction conventions because there really is no natural light inside the hotels, as long as he’s careful, and it beats sleeping all day and wandering the empty streets at night.
So, of course, the big bad will also have to be at the cons.
But she has a good explanation nonetheless (because she is a good writer.) And that is that SF in particular gathers most of the Odds and that the Odds dream the future for the normal people who can’t conceptualize it, and you break the back of the optimists in the world.
Now, if this were true, she’d be 30 years too late, at least. At that, it’s got better with indie, and of course, Baen was always a haven of relatively sane science fiction.
I don’t know about you but I remember screaming something like “I’m so tired of rusty futures” in the late 80s.
Of course, by the nineties, I was getting it both directions: the books I bought all assumed dire post-apocalypse or dystopia ahead. And the writers’ groups were even sillier. People were writing characters in 2010 having to continuously wear masks outside because of the pollution. And meanwhile I was screaming “WHAT POLLUTION? Y’all are way cleaner than Europe.”
Or it was 20 years in the future and everyone was living under underpasses and only owned a shirt. I kept looking back and trying to figure out when the bomb had hit EVERYWHERE, because dudes, even if we have a major crash ahead — and we do — our material wealth isn’t going to VANISH.
You’re not going to be in the situation I was in, as a kid, where our family owned ONE SHARP KNIFE. It had been sharpened so often it was almost as thin as paper, but mom used it for everything nonethless, because knives were EXPENSIVE.
You’re not going to be saving pins and needles like gold, and owning a limited number, because most of us have thousands in the house. We could subdivide twice and it still wouldn’t be scarce.
You’re not going to have people living in used container boxes. Not unless they want to. Because I don’t care what they told you, but there isn’t a massive overpopulation crisis that will require a bazillion new houses built faster than we can accommodate. Not for 20 years or so. In fact, with commercial buildings becoming less needed we’re more at risk for ghost towns.
And yet, a recent TV series had people in 2030 cramming two to a shipping container.
You see, the problem is that Kate was right. Most people can’t project the future at all. Instead, they get the idea of what the future is from things they catch in the air, which in turn is things that Odds and Futurists (BIRM) think are coming, and which pervade Science Fiction.
(In trad pub, except Baen, they enforced this, too. Which is why I never sold science fiction elsewhere. “This can’t be the future. There’s no overpopulation.” “What about the depletion of resources? They’d all be poor” or “It can’t be set 500 years in the future. If there are still humans we won’t even look the same.”)
Anyway, so–
The crazy internationalist agenda, demanding we eat the bugs, trying to cram us into giant non-funtional megalopolises, wanting us to use electrical everything because “we’re running out of oil?”
This is the science fiction of the seventies and eighties coming through. And because it was based on a bunch of popular, very badly figured out “non-fiction” they piously believe we have too many people, and we’re running out of everything, and they want us to live the future they were promised.
I suggest you hoist middle fingers aloft, and give it to them good and hard.
They were sold a lie! The future is more prosperous than they can dream.
We’re Americans. We come from the future, and we’re going back there.
Yeah, yeah there’s going to be a little inconvenient contraction for a little while, and we might have to eat the bread the devil kneaded for a couple/ten years.
But in the end, America will be prosperous again. And we’re going to the stars. If nothing else to spite everyone who doesn’t want us to. Because we’re G-d’s own bastard children, and we don’t recognize the authority of these so called experts.
We can dream our own futures, thank you so much. And we’re going to dream they bright and shiny and prosperous.
Let’s leave the rust in the past and embrace the amazing future.
*I don’t normally echo posts here from Mad genius Club, because a substantial number of you read both. But I have a feeling this one is somehow important to echo. And it explains some of the stuff that’s been going on. – SAH*
The price for the gift is to exert the gift.
Have you ever realized that most of the depictions of magic in fiction are a decent description of the writer gift?
I mean, it should be no surprise to anyone, right? What else are we writers going to talk of? What else will we equate with magic?
Perhaps that’s not true — I don’t know — of writers who aren’t what we call “gateway” writers. I hear — but it’s hard to know for sure, you know, because fiction writers lie. It’s kind of what they do — that there are writers out there who function solely on the rational side of the brain. I have heard them in panels, on blogs, even in my own writers group, assure me that they come up with the plot, rationally, and rationally cast characters for it, and rationally pen every single word.
Maybe they do. I’m almost sure that is true for some of them, because I’ve read their books, and they are utterly and completely lifeless. Interesting intellectual exercises.
Sometimes, if the premise is interesting enough, they will carry you through. But you won’t say “Oh, I would love to meet so and so in that book.” You don’t remember someone’s passion or sacrifice. You don’t… The book is not about real people.
Don’t get me wrong, it can be diverting, but you come away detached.
… For some of us it’s not like that. And the choice is never between writing or doing something more productive with our time.
We can pretend. Oh, boy, we can pretend like anything. Catch me in a crowd of “we’re all professionals here” and I will tell you I can write or not write. And that if writing stops paying I’ll walk away and go do something else.
But you know? I lie for a living.
Writing is… Something I do, because I need to do it.
It is also something at which I was always good, as far back as I can remember, or at least since I started writing at six.
Am I saying I was publishable at six? Oh, dear Lord, no. Most of my writing then was, to be honest, bad fanfic (of Enid Blyton.)
The thing is, it was better than I had any right to be. I hadn’t done the work. I had no idea what I was doing. And yet… there was life there.
I no longer have those writings. Whichever remain have probably long since been eaten by rats in the family’s outbuildings. Heck, I no longer have my first novels written in the US. They were written in media I can no longer read. And that’s probably a mercy, because the current me, the person who actually knows how to tell a story, cringes and wants to hide at the things I do have. The clumsy, hasty introductions, the dramatic scenes that aren’t, and most of all, the stories that are utterly incomprehensible unless you are also in my head.
The weird thing in those, and from what my husband tells me — I don’t know — in my earliest novel written in English is the grace notes, and the things I was given for free: the characters that live on the briefest of descriptions, the emotions that shine through, the urgency, the… life.
I can see it, even through the cringy bits.
This was not something I learned. It might be something I can’t learn.
Sarah, how do you write characters? Well, they are in my head, and they talk to me. Not that I hear them, physically (Oh, dear Lord, trust me, this might make me a rarity among … for lack of a better term “gateway writers.”) but I feel them there. I know who they are. I know what they do in their scenes that aren’t in the novel. I know what matters to them, what’s in their heads when they wake up. I know them, either as close friends, or as the guys down the street. They’re themselves.
And that comes across.
The learning? The craft?
Yeah, you should learn that, but that is not the inexplicable gift. The craft is what tells you what scenes to show — even when they upset your characters (rolls eyes to the inside of head. Shut you. I don’t want to hear it.) — craft and practice are essential. Even the most gifted of artists is a mess without the craft side. And if you study and practice enough, the craft becomes part of the gift.
Look, think of the gift as fire you are given. It is just fire — and if you let it run wild, it will consume you, and leave nothing to show for it, but ash — and there’s nothing amazing in it. Except that you have it, without knowing how to make it. You were touched by the divine fire, and life pours out to your stories, but if the stories suck, it’s a waste.
So you study and work, and if you’re lucky and apply yourself, and sometimes rewrite and re-shape the fire, you have an immortal phoenix, shining through the centuries for all others. (Which btw, passes through being entertaining. Because nothing that people fail to love lives forever.)
The problem is that the price of the gift is to use the gift.
And the magic in most fantasy books warns of the downfall. There are many ways of killing the fire, the life in your fiction, the passion, the strength of your writing thing.
I always liked Mercedes Lackey’s Valdemar description of ripping your magic channels through by doing something you shouldn’t be able to do, and being left with a hurt/half-dead magic. Because that’s what it fell like when I pushed through a book I had to write, but which I didn’t want to. Forcing the gift into it left me sore and tired, and wondering if it would ever come back.
Yes, I do know. The working artist must have schedules and produce regularly. I’m not telling you otherwise. But I think there’s ways around it.
Usually the way I came back from that was to take a few months, read my old stuff, pick up an old thread, write some fun stuff.
Then came the year of homeschooling and writing six books, none of which I wanted to write for various reasons. That was fifteen years ago, and I forced it through.
Here I should explain that teaching, any teaching, pulls from the same place as writing.
That left me… dead. I described my writing after as “arid.” The grace notes, the fun stuff that just falls in wouldn’t. I’d have to reach for it, struggle.
Oh, there were exceptions. A Few Good Men came through, against my rational wish not to write it. (Look, it’s space opera, about a future USAian revolution, with gay male leads, and the world’s weirdest romance, for various reasons.) But it wanted out, and I wrote it in two weeks (if you count the six days I took off for urgent reasons.) Or I wrote it in a week and a day.
My autoimmune was acting up, and I felt like hell, but each day that week and a day I got up and wrote almost 20k words, and I wasn’t tired. I was flying.
And the Dyce books started out as drudgery, but they had a song of their own, and they ripped through me in about 3 days each. (Hush you.)
But in between books the recovery time was longer. And anything that didn’t have a force of its own became harder to write. A short story could take me two weeks, suddenly. And novels were started and floundered, which is why I have about twenty of them half written.
Forcing myself to finish one, just made me silent for months.
Now, some of this, don’t mistake me, was physical. Each of the last …. oh, 20 years in Colorado, my auto-immune has been worse, and my thought more muddled. I wasn’t sleeping, and I wasn’t functioning properly, and any treatment was a brief patch over the abyss.
…. I thought it was getting old. I knew some of it was burnout. The complete disproportion between how much I loved or worked on a book, and the result it achieved. My inability to influence cover or marketing, or …. any of it. And then my doctor told me that I was actually suffering adverse effects of altitude. Which led to trying to get the heck out of dodge fast.
(Despite everything that has happened politically, and everything I don’t like about my poor, beleaguered, beloved Colorado, I don’t think I’d ever have left without that. A part of my heart, a large one, will forever remain in the Rocky Mountains.)
I’d already started trying to do stuff for the burnout. Small wins pull you out of that, and the fact Another Rhodes sold amazingly was part of that, as was how well Barbarella did.
And three weeks ago I wrote a short story for LawDog’s Saints of Malta Antholoy, and yeah, it took forever, but it took forever, because I’d forgotten what it was like to have a voice come through. I’d forgotten and didn’t trust the voice that tried to sing through me, like an expert player through a disused harp. And so the poor story squeezed through backwards and sideways. The first thing I got was the last paragraph, and had to fumble in the dark, until I figured that out, and then had to TRUST the voice screaming to come out.
I don’t scruple to say that might be the best story I’ve written in the last 7 years at least.
And then, suddenly, I could feel it, the old flame struggling back to life.
… I no longer remembered what it tasted like. It was like… trying to speak a tongue in which I was once fluent but no longer really remembered.
I told a friend it felt like French. I used to be fluent in French and speak it without hesitation, think in it, as I think in English.
Now I can’t. I know the words. They’re there, in my head, but I don’t TRUST them, and so I never say them. I understand French. I just am afraid to speak it.
And that’s what was happening both in writing that story in finishing Bowl of Red (ALMOST , truly, almost. It’s been more mundane things that stopped it yesterday and today.)
I’m now, slowly, haltingly, learning the language of creation again. Letting the writing thing come through.
And I’m glad I got there before I read the last thing I tried to write before getting out of Colorado. It is a half finished novel, and I looked at it the other day. And I was scared out of my wits.
It was dead. Not bad, as craft, mind. But dead. LIFELESS. There’s nothing there. It’s a hunk of dead words. I can redo it, but I’ll have to start from page one and recast it.
I’d never ever ever have read anything of mine that was so devoid of life. I didn’t know I could write stuff that dead.
So… How did I ALMOST kill my writing thing?
I’m starting to get glimmers of that.
You can’t kill a writing thing by ignoring it. Eventually it seizes control and makes you write it.
But you can kill it by forcing it. By forcing it to write what it doesn’t want to, what it blatantly despises. (Note there are three books of mine I’ll never re-issue. Not unless substantially rewritten.) By forcing it again and again over and over to write and put life in what it doesn’t want to write or put life into.
Over and over again. Don’t play. Don’t enjoy it. Don’t give it time to recover. Plunge again and again into the battle, with your ever more battered little fire, till it’s all just ashes and nothing.
Heck, for all I know my physical issues in some part at least are part of this.
Because writing is part of who I am, woven through my being. And the price of the gift is to use it. But … not to abuse it.
So, does this mean I’ll write less?
No. I think I’ve figured what “re animates the embers.” I am going back to what I used to do. I read the old stuff. I find the threads that work. And I write experimental things I’m not sure will work, but feed my soul.
I try new things. I go where the life is, and stay there a bit. Even if sometimes I still have to force the harp to sing, when it wants to run off and catch butterflies.
I am now planning for built in periods of rest. Not rest in silence, but rest in letting the fire have its way a little, feed a little.
So it can grow anew.
It’s all still very fragile and tentative, as I grope my way back to where I was 15 years ago.
But two things I know: The price of the gift is to use it.
And: You must let the gift be its best and do the impossible now and then, or it dies off.
So. This is how I almost killed my writing thing.
And how the fragile, bloodied, almost dead thing is at last stirring anew.
According To Hoyt 