Author: Sarah A. Hoyt

*Yes, I’m rolling on a theme.  Indulge me. – SAH*

 So I won’t be misunderstood let me make clear at the outset that yes, I believe individuals are born with different capacities for different things. Let alone the capacities one sees in oneself which might or might not be observed objectively, it’s impossible to watch a kid growing up and not to know some things come more easily to people than others.

Take words, for instance. I rarely, if ever, struggle for words. Oh, on some days when I’m ill or insufficiently caffeinated, I’m capable of saying a sentence the wrong way around, but just a glance at it will show me my error. I find it almost alien to imagine fighting for each word as you write, having to work at translating thoughts/images/feelings into words. And yet, people I have reason to trust, like my husband, who has nothing to gain by lying, tell me that this is possible – that it is in fact a condition of vast swaths of humanity.

So, we’ll establish that people are wired differently, whether due to genetics, epigenetics or environment at a very early age.

That’s fine.

What this means is that you have a “gift” you get for free. So far as it applies to fiction writing I’ve identified the following gifts: a gift for language (arguably the least useful except in limited and specialized circumstances); a gift for characters; a gift for plotting; a gift for theme.

Usually a person will get one of these almost at an instinctive level. Sometimes, they’ll get two or more. It could be argued I got two: language (though I made things difficult for myself there by being a non-native speaker, which added some years to my journey) and characters. Is this enough to publish salable (let alone good) fiction. I wish.

Take my friend, Dave Freer, who tells me started with only plot. Was this enough to produce salable fiction? Well, he sold earlier than I, but that was influenced by so many factors that it might or might not mean anything.

Writing draws on all the talents above, plus some other, unspecified. To make it, in addition to all that, you need keen business acumen, an ability to spot trends, a thick skin that allows you to persevere in face of rejection, enough mental health to be able to withstand one of the most uncertain careers you can embark on, and enough insanity to want to do it. Talent, as such, is not there anywhere.

And yet, over and over again, newbies showing me their work ask “do I have talent?” Or “have I got it?” with the it being the mysterious force that allows creation.

Part of this is the myth of talent and genius our society has spun. We read about DaVinci and Einstein and Mozart with a sort of mystical awe. There is genius, we think. There is talent. And we imagine these people plunging into their field of endeavor effortlessly and fully formed.

Do I need to tell you it’s not true? I doubt DaVinci walked up to a canvas and effortlessly drew a Madonna. In fact, we know he didn’t – we have bits we believe were done by him as an apprentice and – whatever Dan Brown thinks (rolls eyes) – most of his notebooks were taken up with practice sketches and notes to himself on this and that. We know Mozart’s story as well and though I’m not as familiar with Einstein I would wager that though he might have been a mediocre student, he probably explored math and physics extensively on his own to the limits of availability. (I’m “gifted” with a child of the same stamp, and trust me, sometimes I’m amazed at how hard he works on his own time, provided it’s something that interests him. Which often has nothing to do with what the school thinks he should be studying.)

Even the language we use on this is wrong. We talk of “gifted” children and of having a “gift” for this or that. Other than at an almost elemental level (it could for instance be argued I have a gift for language. This is not true as I have to work harder than most at learning foreign languages. I did have an easier time of English than almost anything else, but I still worked very hard the first year. Much harder than my classmates. BUT I am a verbal learner, which means once I conquered the language, words come easy.) This is not true. Scratch a “gifted” child and you almost always find a kid who is working twice as hard as the others. The fact that this work is often “play” for the kid doesn’t change that. The gift the child has might be something completely different – i.e. what he got for free is probably something more elementary – like the capacity to concentrate earlier and more intensely than other children, or the capacity to visualize his adult ambitions and use them as a driver to his motivation.

Add to that that writing is an uncertain and odd career. When you start, you often know nothing of how the field operates or how one gets even one toe in. (Okay, that’s getting easier with the internet.) By the time you figure out how difficult it is you’re often fully committed… And your friends, relatives and strangers on the street think you SHOULD BE committed. They don’t hesitate to tell you so, either. (If you write science fiction and fantasy you add another layer of weirdness, as a lot of people can’t understand why you’re writing about spaceships or fairies. “But this stuff doesn’t exist!”) You find yourself coming home from a day job, or stealing time away from familial duties to work relentlessly at an avocation that might or might not ever bring you even the barest level of recognition (defined as a couple hundred people reading it and liking it) let alone monetary reward.

Of course people setting out on this uncertain sea – the pen is a harsh mistress. Eh! – will want to know they’re destined to do this, that there is a reason they’re so oddly afflicted, that there is a chance they’ll make it.

I understand all this, but unfortunately I can’t tell anyone they’ll make it. There are so many factors going into making a success of your writing endeavors, that unless I know you personally and have seen you in action throughout the years, I do not know how far and how fast you’ll go. I’ve been known to be wrong, too. Some people I dismissed as “pot boilers” who would stick at a certain level the rest of their lives, suddenly shot way up. Other people who to my eyes had it all together have spent the last twenty years working at one or two books and never selling.

I don’t know your religious or metaphysical beliefs, nor are they any of my business. However, for the purpose of writing, it helps if you start off believing there is no destiny.

If you want to write, if it truly is what you want, you’re no more guaranteed success than if you want to make shoes or to make and sell neat medieval toggery at cons. (You probably have less chance of succeeding at writing, in fact, since what I’ve found is that it takes an inhuman amount of work, concentration and planning.) Would you think it was your destiny to make shoes? Or to sell neat stuff at cons? No. Of course not. (And yet it might be, as much as to write books.)

So, start from there. There is no destiny. I don’t care what your momma told you, you don’t have to do this. If you can, walk away now and save yourself.

Those of you who remain, now, examine your assets. What’s the part of writing that’s easiest and most pleasurable? The part that people tell you “wow, I really like” – right, that’s your gift. Stop fussing with it, and start learning the other parts of a story. Read a few books you really like and try to separate all the elements that go into it. Be warned that if your gift is “language” people will routinely over estimate you.

They’ll tell you things like “you’re such a great writer” – but they won’t finish the story, because there is no story beneath the great words. You have to be alert to that sort of thing. Absent an ambition to write poetry; the sort of recherche short-shorts that get published in college magazines; or plotless and acclaimed novels no one ever reads, language is well nigh useless. It helps you write faster, I think, but you also have to stay on top of it. If I give my language full rein, I can easily smother the story-telling under a blanket of prose. People who stop to admire my vocabulary will get popped out of the story as easily as if I’d made a crude grammatical mistake.

Suppose you examined your “gifts” and realize you don’t have any. Can you still be a writer? Of course you can. Again, other writers get one or two elements for free and those might frankly be an hindrance, as they then think everything else should come that easily.

If you still want to set out on this uncertain route, with no guarantee of success ever, then start learning. Your best textbooks are the successful novels out there. No, they won’t contaminate your style (don’t make me come out there and hit you with a dead fish.) If only it were that easy to acquire the style of the masters. They will simply point out a “route” for you to follow. In the same way “how to” books can be useful. I found a very few truly useful, Dwight Swain foremost among them.

The caveat here is you must find the books that are useful to YOU. Even from Swain, my husband found the character book useful, while I could never finish it because it annoyed me and interfered with my character creation, which I do at an instinctive level. Conversely, even though most new agey writing books (just bought one by accident) drive me to screaming fits, at a particularly dispirited and low time in my life when I thought I’d never get published, one of these books that regarded writing as a “practice” like praying or meditating, allowed me to write again.

The reason this is important, is that some people feel an almost pathological need to write – I’m one of those – and if they’re not doing it, they get very unhappy. I’ve known people – not me, thank heavens – who get suicidal during prolonged writing withdrawal.

If you’re one of those, and if you feel a need to write, even though you know you might never get published, even if you don’t have a single of those gifts for “free”, work on acquiring them. If you’re going to be writing, you might as well make it salable and give enjoyment to others.

But don’t worry about talent. Chasing “talent” is an endless snipe hunt that has ruined more potentially great writers than anything else.

Start by assuming you don’t have any talent. Now, do you have courage, determination, a thick skin and just a touch of divine madness?

Work it, baby, work it.

So, Tuesday I mentioned in passing that I think Talent is a myth, and of course I got the usual answers “no, I met someone very talented at x or y.”

Which brings us to this post and why I hate the “classification” that schools do in “gifted.” And this is not just because in schools gifted normally means “does what I tell her to do, no matter how stupid, promptly and without complaint.” I mean, that is part of the problem. I had the hardest time convincing them that the sons were underperforming because they were bored, not because they weren’t capable. (There is something profoundly insulting to teachers who think that whatever they assign the first grader, even if it’s putting round pegs in round holes, is the most fascinating thing that kid can learn to do. Ditto for third grade teachers who only have picture books in their classroom and who think your child isn’t reading them because he is “learning disabled” not because he reads Roman history in his spare time at home. [Granted in middle school aimed books, because I, personally, preferred not to be responsible for his learning the less savory stuff Romans did. I kept that stuff in the locked bookcase. Yes, of course he read them too, though I only found out his bookcase opening trick years later.] And right now you’re going: see, your kid was “gifted.” Hold on to that thought.)

I hate the classification of “gifted” even when accurate because of the meaning behind it. This is something you were given, something you were born with. You’ll always be gifted, even if you choose to be a total dumb*ss, and they treat it like it’s important and relevant and makes you soooo special. (And for those ready to say this is envy: I was in those classes too. Mostly because normal class teachers wanted me out of their purview ASAP due to a nasty tendency to argue every point into the ground. [And it was nasty. Had I had to teach myself, I’d have hit the little pest in the head with a heavy dictionary first day.])

I don’t object to stratifying classes by ability. In fact, I think the places and times that did it made life easier for both the child and the teacher, provided they have some means of deciding who goes into the pool that isn’t based on “She dresses so nicely and does everything I tell her.”

In my time and place, because it was illegal, (revolution abolished such things) they did it only for extreme cases and in self defense. So in my second year in high school (which starts in seventh grade) I found myself in a form that collected every single best student of their forms the year before, save for those who went into our rival form. (And you know, these many years after, I remember we were N and locked in mortal combat with form M. Grades are posted publically, and it was a horrible humiliation if they had more As than we did.)

Certainly extreme ability should be stratified out, as should extreme disability. There are things that no amount of integration are going to equalize and you can’t teach “genius” and morons at the same time with the same material. If you try you get the mess our schools are today. That said, and see as before, I don’t trust the schools ability to decide who are genius and who are morons. (Younger son is certified genius [certifiable too] and I had to fight more than once to keep him from remedial h*ll, because he had a speech impediment, an odd sense of humor and was bored spitless.)

And now you’re saying “But Sarah, you just admitted there are geniuses.” Drat. Will you wait. All shall be explained.

So, anyway, I hate the word “gifted” to apply to those who are smarter than the average bear, because it implies they were handed this “packet” of genius, and there’s nothing else they need to do to succeed and do well in life. In fact, one teacher, explaining why the school spent so little time and money on the smart kids told me “your kids are gifted, they’re going to do well in life no matter what.”

Oh, boy. I know several high IQ people. Genuine high IQ – say, top 2% of the population – and though many of them have multiple degrees, the “average” job is retail clerk somewhere. The others are in perfectly average jobs. The ones who are in exceptional high-authority/high-pay jobs are probably the same proportion as from normal-smart people.

Intelligence doesn’t equal focus, doesn’t equal aim, doesn’t equal understanding of the world as is, and it almost correlates inversely to the ability to get along with people.

And this is why I hate the term “gifted” and the whole idea of genius.

The idea of genius runs through western civilization, and we’re soaked with it, to the point we don’t think very clearly when the words “genius” or “prodigy” come up.

We think “genius” and we think Leonardo DaVinci. We think polyvalent and able to do everything well. And most of us don’t know enough about his biography to know that it too was pretty much like that of the geniuses I know. He succeeded despite a string of unfinished works and dropped commitments, as a wild hare hit him and he went off to do something else.

His achievements while impressive, are a fraction of what you’d expect from his “genius.” And even with his genius, he was apprenticed and learned his trade.

What I despise about the myth of genius and the myth of talent is the lack of acknowledgement these people are born with the tools to learn (some things) optimally. They are not born with all the tools they need to complete their task. Genius is usually focused and saltational (as to specific abilities, not meaning that geniuses focus well. Trust me, I don’t mean that.) By which I mean that you’ll be a genius in one area: say your verbal processing. And by saltational I mean that often, for whatever reason, even in the area of their greatest ability the geniuses start below normal level (another reason it’s hard for schools to identify) and focus on it until they excel to prodigious amount. It’s just that the process of getting there is weird. It’s like a car who does zero to 60 in 2 minutes, but spends the first minute and a half idling then gets to 60 in half a minute, and then gets to 600 in the next half minute. (I.e., saltational = it jumps.)

Now for some relatively simple tasks, say running you might have the ability and have acquired the skill while doing normal every day things, so the first time you try to run a marathon, you present as a “natural.” This is mostly true for physical skills but not always. Younger son has always been able to do calculations in his head. Well, since he deigned talk to us. I think it’s the visualization talent, plus a natural knack for numbers.

But take a more complex “talent” one of those we associate genius with. “A genius for business”, or “a genius for art” or “a genius for music” or writing…

I’ll focus on writing, because I know the most about that, but I’ll say in passing that I think the myth of genius has destroyed modern art. If you’re a genius your untutored scrawls are gold seems to be the idea. And thus it all becomes about interpretation and spin and, in the end, makes art into a game of “the critic goes naked.”

In writing, where I know the road because I walked it at least twice, barefoot, in snow, both ways, talent might actually stand in your way of making a career out of this. The best natural writers I know, whose first works were perfect and clear and detailed are neither of them professionals.

I tell beginning writers that we each get a talent for free. This is not necessarily true. I’ve met some people wanting to be writers who really don’t seem to have a talent. But maybe it is because their words are so bad I never get to their exquisite plotting. (I’m not being snarky. Some of the best plotters I’ve read make me cringe over their word choices, so it’s possible.)

I got lucky and got two. One was a gift of words. Still have it, though I try to reign it in, because otherwise I send people to the dictionary and that tends to break the spell of the story. The other was a gift for characters. With rare exceptions, my characters show up fully formed, with their own history and their own voices. (This is good and bad. Some of the people I get stuck with! And you should see the ones I outright turn away.)

This is good, right? Well, it’s helping me, particularly in terms of saving time when the writing is going. And now, I’m experienced enough I know how to match the other elements of the story (sort of) to those two.

But when I started out, those gifts could have counted as hinderances. Because I had a word-gift, words were all I saw, and I tended to obsess about them and never finish anything, or else beat the life out of it by polishing every minor word. And once I got over that (if you like my work, bless Dean Wesley Smith, who told me my words were fine, stop obsessing on them and that was an order) my character definition was so much better than my ability to plot which was “early workman” that people tended to tell me my plotting was horrible. It wasn’t, it was normal for beginner pro, (though I had clue zero about foreshadowing until Dave Freer applied a Gibbs Slap) but in comparison with fully formed, actuated characters it looked shoddy and all patches.

In fact, to the extent that my “gifts” did anything, and while I appreciate them now, when they allow me to coast a little, they hindered my becoming a professional, because I had no clue how to acquire the skills I lacked. I mean, I’d never worked to get the ones I had.

(Well, I’d never worked on them consciously. And here, we must get to environment. Yes, there was capacity there, but my dad’s fascination with words and poems, even in another language didn’t hurt, nor did my tendency to read everything that stood still long enough. As for characters, I was as most of us here are somewhat clumsy with people, which is deadly in a village where at any time there are a hundred feuds running through and a wrong word to the wrong person will destroy your reputation or your family’s business. So I had to learn to “read” people and because it was difficult, I devoted a lot of time to it. Also, let’s not forget the inestimable contribution of mom’s and grandma’s favorite hobby: gossip. And not just gossip but gossip with family history. They or their cronies would start on “Bob never can keep a job.” And then go down the list of reasons his grandfather had also been a ne’er do well. Most of these women were sharp (and bored) so while eating breakfast I was likely to overhear three masterful character sketches.)

Which bring us back again to “gifted.” In some old traditions, including medieval court etiquette, if you got a gift, you had to give something back of equal or greater value.

If you have a “gifted” child, treat them that tradition. So they got something for free, yay. But now they have to put in equal work on everything they intend to do, to supplement what they got for free. They have to give back equal or greater value in talent, in concentration and in effort.

The myth of the ‘fully formed’ genius is just that, a myth.

Being “gifted” means your challenges are different, not that there are no challenges.

So, if you were born with gifts, give equal value back.

Show Me on the Trilogy-David Pascoe
I love Star Wars (unlike Her BbES Highnessness, who I’m more or less convinced just doesn’t like the competition). It was likely the most formative milieu of my early youth, and remains an easy place to rest my thoughts. My father had, at some point in the misty, murky passages of pre-time, acquired an LP of the Empire soundtrack, and before we had a VHS player, I used to listen to it for hours while trying desperately to get my Legos into the right configuration for an X-Wing or a TIE Fighter. (Couldn’t happen; they didn’t have all the nifty pieces they’ve since created. Back in MY day, we had to put our Legos together barefoot, backwards, both ways, in the snow AND the dark. It was a rough period in my life. Now, of course, I just can’t afford all the sets I deserve. /sigh)

My father introduced me to that long time ago, in that galaxy far, far away at a formative point in my childhood, and I immediately incorporated the mythos into what went on in my head. Space wizards and heart-of-gold smugglers, inhuman (literally) bounty hunters and brooding over it all, the Big Man in his black mask. His first scene, where the stormtroopers breach the door onto the Tantive IV, and he steps through after they’ve slaughtered the rebel scum? Used to make me jump. Every time.

Since then, I’ve learned about Joseph Campbell, and developed a fair sense of story and how to go about putting a universe together for others’ enjoyment, and I’m morally certain that Lucas screwed up a few things. Now, admittedly, many of those only become glaringly, painfully obvious once the two prequels were released in theaters (I’ve heard there was something that came between the original trilogy, and the two others, but I have it on good authority that it’s a poorly done fanfic of a film, and that an otherwise excellent cast did the best they could with what they were given. Which halfway applies to the prequels, as well. It’s knotty). The joke became, “show me on the trilogy where George hurt you,” and it was painful to watch a lot of it. Of course, half of that pain was the Big Bad Guy being a whiny adolescent. Something to look forward to in about a decade and change, when Wee Dave goes to the Dark Side.

But there are some kinda messed up stuff about the Star Wars universe. The Good Guys use the Force to cloud men’s minds “influence the weak minded,” in the words of one prominent Jedi master. They are an unelected elite, super-powered by reason of an accident of birth, and given the authority to judge their fellow sentients. In one scene, the oligarchy at the top of the Jedi Order actually discuss (and then attempt to implement) what amounts to a military coup. And we’re told these are the good guys.

On the other hand, the Bad Guys are, well, pretty bad. Working to topple a corrupt and oppressive government that is so weak as to fall prey to the guilds and unions of the hyper-wealthy. The government of a polity so loosely aligned that its internal politics are dominated by a few major players; whose elite work toward their own ends, rather than what will benefit those who owe them allegiance. (Wait a sec, that sounds like American politics…) And it’s not like these Darths are exactly working toward reformation, except in the sense that galactic society will be reformed according to their will.

Murder, intrigue, subversion, all are legitimate tactics in pursuit of their goals. We even get to see an innocent and carefree (*cough* for a slave *cough*) young boy grow into a whining and petulent adolescent twisted into one of the most recognizable of villains in pop culture through the machinations of a single, powerful Bad Guy. A bad guy who thinks nothing of throwing whole systems into chaos. He manipulates millions to fuel his rise to power. Wars are fought, entire species enslaved, all to put one man on a throne. And eliminate those pesky Jedi, of course.

And there’s messed up, and then there’s messed up. How does the economy of the Old Republic work, actually? There are a few things known about specific corporate entities. Han Solo wields a BlasTech pistol. Crime lords have enormous power, albeit on the outskirts of otherwise “civilized” space. Free traders seem rampant, and the space pirates who prey on them. What about governance? There is, presumably (it’s mentioned a couple of times) an extensive bureaucracy, but the audience never actually sees much of its influence. Obi-wan Kenobi never has to show up to traffic court to explain that midnight chase through the air-lanes of Coruscant. Did he even have a valid driver’s license?

And what about the Empire? Is it a command economy, as seems reasonable from the autocratic and militaristic nature of that particular beast? We have no idea, as such details are missing from the films, and the canon lore is in a constant state of flux (thanks, Disney). How does the Rebel Alliance function, logistically speaking. They seem to have sufficient resources to wage war on a galactic hyper-power. Do they control whole systems? Is there some kind of shadow economy funneling them money through donations to popular charities? Save the Aquatic Gundark, perhaps? Keep Dantooine Green?

Speaking of rebel scum, how are they freedom fighters, instead of terrorists? Dialogue from Episode IV suggests they regularly engage in espionage against military targets. What about the Luke Skywalker guy? Celebrated Hero, or mass murderer? How many lives must have been snuffed out when he destroyed the Peace Star?

There’s a lot to learn from the series of five films, and assorted additional source material. Or at least a lot of speculation possible, which, to be fair, is the more likely. Especially for a writer. Especially for a writer of space opera. I’ll be digging through George’s magnum opus in the coming weeks, and I look forward to your thoughts.

So apparently this antibiotic I took was so strong as to ALMOST be an anti-Sarah, which means as I stopped taking it, I came down with an epic head cold. I finally got tired of it yesterday and spent most of the day curled up with books or sleeping, and then went to bed at nine, which means I slept almost 12 hours, on top of all I’d slept during the day.

I keep forgetting that this works to cure colds. My aunt (mom’s younger sister) used to think Port Wine cured colds, because you drank as much as you could stand, then woke a day later without a cold. But I find for me it works just fine without the Port Wine in the equation. I’m still a little snuffly, but there isn’t that feeling I’m trying to think through cork.

And this morning I thought I never remember this works, because logically, in my head, it shouldn’t work. Yes, yes, power down and give your body a chance to fight the nasties, but it’s an infection, and sleep – by itself – shouldn’t cure it.

There are things like this that you think shouldn’t work, but do. And because you don’t really believe they will work, you tend to forget it. Or you never believe it.

Take for instance when I first took the Oregon Writers’ workshop and Kris and Dean told me to “trust the process” – that is to believe that just doing a thing over and over again makes you better at it. It’s not sense. And we probably all know people who have been “trying” for years to be writers, or musicians or basketball players and still suck at it.

But then if you look at it closely, all of these people “trying” aren’t trying very hard. Even for me, it took 13 years to publication, because I’d get discouraged and wander off to do something else (mostly bake carrot cake. Don’t judge me.) I kept coming back to it, and pushing, but then I’d go off for months and lose all the progress I’d made. And most people who try for years and never succeed usually have that pattern, or have some issue that makes it impossible for them to succeed in that field. For instance, it would be insane if younger son decided to become a musician and he couldn’t succeed without specialized classes, because he has sensory issues. So just trying and trying, when you can’t “hear” what you’re aiming for wouldn’t work. It would be crazy if I tried to be a basketball player. No amount of game could overcome the fact I’d be much shorter than everyone else who plays basketball.

For writers a peculiar temptation I’ve mentioned before is to become so immersed in your world and your characters you spend your whole time dreaming it, instead of writing it. And writing it is a painful process, since you have to introduce to your readers these people you know so well, and to mention details you think are obvious because you’ve lived with them so long. So the dream is super-seductive and will actually prevent you from writing.

So, yeah, you can spend years ideating your world and never write, but that’s not the process you should trust. You should trust the simple, dumb process of putting words down, and trying to write the best you can. Yeah, you’ll make a lot of the same dumb mistakes (and it will hurt you because you can see them) but eventually something breaks and you hit another level. This is of course, assuming you continue to read and study the masters of your craft. (Or listen to, or look at, or whatever your craft involves.)

My older son was talking to me, while painting walls, about the distinctive quality of Heinlein’s juveniles. His main characters, son said (and is right) are not particularly gifted. They’re not the chosen ones. Instead, they find themselves in a situation, or want to learn something, and very often have to work harder than anyone else. Think of Rico and his mathematical boneheadedness. Or Torby learning to scan for raiders before they come out of whatever they called warp drive (it’s been a year or two and my memory drops details.)

But they work hard and then they succeed.

This is very different from just about every other YA. Even Harry Potter. While he’s not the fastest or the smartest, he’s the “chosen one” and he’s a naturally good quiddich player. (Think how likely that would be.)

Even in Diana Wynne Jones, the kids are usually fated to be something or other, endowed with abilities to be something or other, and the book is a process of discovery.

Of course, those YA are drawing on a much older tradition, the tradition of folk tales and fairytales, in which you were born special or you weren’t.

But that tradition tied in to a society in which you were born special, or you weren’t.

Heinlein was writing for a (at least envisioned) society in which you were born equal, and those willing to strive harder (whether or not they had the gifts naturally) to do what they wanted to do came out on top.

Which btw, sounds like Heinlein felt about it sort of like I do. “Talent” is a myth. Some of us have a component of what we want to do for free. In my case, heaven help me, it’s words, which in the quiver of writing arrows is the least important. The rest I had to learn, by writing and writing, and writing, and trusting the process. But no one is born with the full panoply of talents to become an extraordinary writer. Even good beginners grow if they continue in the art. And this makes sense, of course, because why would someone be born with all that’s needed for a profession that didn’t exist when our ancestors were adapting to new conditions?

But there is a pernicious idea – weirdly amid those who don’t believe in anything more than the physical – that humans are “born” to do this or that. It was after all part of the package used to sell us a freshman senator from Illinois. He was “born” to this. He just naturally had “more game” than everyone.

We’re learning slowly and painfully he was born with the ability to impress people for a limited time, and in things requiring a not very deep analysis. Which is an ability people can be born with – like facility in the use of language – but the rest of the job takes time and effort, and might be too much for on-the-job training.

Getting away from politics, this is why we both have a poisonous fascination with degrees from the “right” institutions and those institutions continuously water down their curriculum. Because really, they don’t believe they have to TEACH anything, just credential what’s already there.

Which brings us again, like water circling the drain to the d*mn idea of the noble savage. It’s a long, long idea in our society, though it used to be believed because G-d endowed “innocents” with special insight.

So, for instance, when the babe at the mother’s breast, spoke for the first time to proclaim the true king (I must use that in a story!) it was G-d speaking through him. But we dethroned G-d and kept the innocent.

This is why any victim-of-the-week has “unique rights” to criticize western civilization and “speak truth to power.” (Mostly speak truth to people who want to prevent those with the real power – i.e. the government – from giving the “victim” whatever the “victim” wants.)

This includes people who arrived in the US yesterday from some h*ll hole, but who supposedly can see everything wrong with the US, because they’re endowed with the special sight of the noble savage. (As someone who went through acculturation, it will take them years even to see what’s really there, and not what they learned to see in their homeland.)

If we want sanity, if we want a meritocratic society, if we want to save representative government, it is time to get away from this very romantic idea that people are born to do this or that. Sure, they can have a set of characteristics that makes the learning easier, but in the end, they have to trust the process and work through it.

So if you really want to do something, don’t fool yourself that it will take no work, and don’t excuse yourself that you’ll never succeed because you weren’t born with it.

I’ve seen people fail for both those reasons. And succeed despite all sorts of handicaps if they keep working at it.

So, work hard, trust the process and never, ever, ever trust the man on the white horse, i.e. the man who was just “born” to take power and do a difficult job without learning process.

That way lies kingship and slavery.

*And I’d apologize for posting it late, but I caught a head cold my son — good sharing boy that he is — brought home from his job, so I slept till about five minutes ago.*

Where did all the common sense go? -Amanda Green

I’d apologize for being late with the post this morning but, frankly, I’m just glad to have gotten something to Sarah. After several years of lower rainfall totals resulting in watering restrictions, etc., Mother Nature has decided to correct the problem. That is the good news. The bad news is she has decided to do it in a very short period of time. The ground is saturated. The lakes are filling up. And my house has now flooded in three rooms for three days in a row. Fortunately, I have the routine down pat by now. Carpets are pulled back, padding is removed and set to dry and fans are going. But so are the allergies and, for the first time in years, my asthma. So, if this post makes little sense, put it down to Mother Nature.

Anyway, common sense. It seems there is a distinct lack of it these days. North Texas has seen more than one example of it over the last few days. Between folks driving into high water areas and then requiring rescue to families standing in the open with cellphone cameras rolling as tornados bear down on their location, you have to wonder what they were thinking. It is going to take a long time to forget the teenager who, along with his friend, got caught in high water, that was rising, and who had to wait an hour for the National Guard to send in a Blackhawk helicopter to rescue them. Instead of calling and talking to family and friends, the teen got on Twitter and worried about how his prized pickup was now trash.

Sorry, bud, but as water is rising around me, moving so swiftly the local emergency responders can’t get to me, the last thing I’m going to worry about is getting on Twitter.

Then there was the principal at a Georgia who went off on a very ill-advised tirade in the middle of graduation. Apparently she did not like the way members of the audience were acting during one of the student speeches. So she got up and chastised everyone. Not the best way to mark one of the most important days in a student’s life. But it got worse. After calling one of the “offending” parties a goober, and after a few other remarks, members of the audience, as well as some of the students, started walking out. That’s when she made what will probably be a career ending statement when she noted “Look who’s walking out. All the black people.” Yes, it was a statement of fact but so ill-advised in this day and climate that it will haunt her professionally for the rest of her career.

But those are minor, believe it or not. You look at the looting that took place in the aftermath of the Baltimore riots. A CVS pharmacy that had been hard fought to get it brought into the neighborhood was firebombed. None of the rioters thought about the service that pharmacy gave to the neighborhood or how many elderly and disabled members of the community it served. But I guaran-damn-tee you that when the dust settles and CVS decides not to rebuild, those same folks who supported the riots will whine and decry the company for not coming back.

Oh, and let’s not forget the condemnation for the mother who saw her son amongst rioters and went down to get him. Initially lauded for taking a stand and pulling her17 year old son out of there, she has since been condemned because – gasp – she hit him in the process. I normally cringe when I see anyone taking a blow to the face. I hate to see a parent slap a kid. (Not that I don’t believe in a well-placed hand to the rear.) But in that situation, I probably would have done the same thing. For one thing, trying to reason with him in the middle of a riot wouldn’t have worked for a number of reasons. For another, he was being a dumb ass.

It did not take long for the cries of outrage to sound. Just a day or two after the event, I started seeing comments from a certain sector claiming that her actions were why there was so much child abuse and bad behavior in the black community. How dare she strike her son!

Sorry, but they are wrong. Here was a mother proving to her son that she cared about him by pulling him out of a situation that could very quickly have resulted in him being arrested – or killed. Would those condemning her have been as proactive in dealing with their own kids were they in her position? I doubt it.

Fast-forward to Garland, Texas and the events that unfolded there as a result of the “Draw Mohammed” exhibit. First of all, anyone thinking it is a good idea to come to any sort of gathering in Texas with the idea of causing trouble ought to think again. A lot of folks down here legally carry concealed. It is also legal to carry rifles, etc., in the open. Most of our cops aren’t Barney Fife. And we aren’t completely without common sense. It was clear the school district and the local police department knew there could be trouble and were prepared for it. The fact there are two dead wanna-be terrorists proves it.

But what really gets me has been the response by some quarters to what happened. There is a movement in Garland to make sure an exhibit that might offend someone at some point in time is never held there again. That is an understandable kneejerk reaction to what happened. I don’t agree with it, but I understand it. I also applaud the district for not immediately caving.

However, the condemnation of Pamela Geller, who heads the organization that sponsored the event, shows a complete lack of foresight, understanding and common sense. Worse, it shows a double-standard the socially enlightened are trying to force on everyone. Why? Because we mustn’t do anything that might upset someone, no matter whether they are justified in their reactions or not.

To which I have only one thing to say: Bull!

If we aren’t allowed to draw comics featuring Mohammed, where do we draw the line? If those cartoons aren’t to be allowed, then why do we allow people to stomp on our flag and burn it? That is offensive to me and a large number of other men and women who live in this country. But I don’t see any of these social justice enforcers looking out for my feelings. Why?

That answer is very simple. The social justice enforcers are cowards. They know that we aren’t going to rise up and take action because they burn the flag or spit on our soldiers as they return home. That is their right to freedom of speech. How many times have we heard that and agreed? But on the other side of the equation, as we saw in Garland, there are those who will take offense and take direct action. So, instead of dealing with the problem – them – it is easier to simply limit even further our First Amendment rights.

It was Geller’s fault for provoking the action of the two men. She is a bad woman. She must be punished.

No, she was offering a forum for folks to exercise their right to free speech. Did she know there would be some who would be offended? Of course she did. But being offended does not take something out of the protected umbrella of the First Amendment, unless it is pornography. The event did not rise to the level of yelling “Fire!” in a crowded theater. But, to the social justice enforcers, it is easier to blame someone who will not fight back than it is to actually take a stance against those who will. This fails big time on the common sense meter because all they are doing is further empowering those who would gladly, happily take away their freedom of speech, freedom to associate and, to be honest, their freedom and their lives.

It is time to grow up, grow a pair and quit being enablers.

So, yesterday we managed to have sun, hail and snow all in the space of a few hours.  More importantly, the bad weather caught me and older son at the other house, where we were painting the attic, and brought our work to a standstill.  Painting white on white even if the older white is all scuffed and dirty — hence the painting — is near impossible in a gloomy, drowned looking half light.

We waited around for half an hour or so, then waited some more till the weather abated enough to drive back.

And then I had to do at least partial cleaning here (more needs to be done.  Things are… well… things.  We’ve spent so much time at the other house, this one is in danger of choking on cat hair and household dust.)

What this all means is that I’m still sipping a cup of too-hot-coffee in the sleeping house and trying to extrude some post from a jumble of thoughts and emotions, before I have more coffee and put some serious work into Darkship Revenge which, in its present state, is a kludge.

So you’ll forgive me if I take on Mother’s day.

I always assumed I’d be a mother some day, even though I never thought anyone would be crazy enough to marry me.  (Yes, he’s still asleep.  Eh.  He masks the nuttiness well.)  After all for a woman being single was not a bar to being a mother.  And besides, I could do it all, hear me roar and all that.

Ah! I’m glad I didn’t try it that way.  With all hands on deck, motherhood was at times — when I was ill, for instance — more than I could handle.  In fact, the early childhood of number 2 son is a blur, as I was recovering from near-fatal pneumonia.  We had a friend live with us and pitch in, but also Dan took on a lot more of it than normal.  Heck, all through Marshall’s elementary school, he kept track of school parties, baked when needed, that sort of thing.  (Fortunately he had a traveling job and spent some time on the bench.)  Or as he puts it “I was a kindergarten mom.”

He also took over all the time when Robert was tiny and I was recovering from pre-eclampsia.  I think Robert was three months old the first time I changed his diaper.

Motherhood for me wasn’t an easy badge, anyway.  It was a matter of infertility treatments and several misscarriages.  And yet, when I held our oldest in my arms, the first thought that came to me was “I’m responsible for him for at least 18 years.”  And it was terrifying.

By the time motherhood came, I’d assumed it would never happen.  I’d have books.  Surely you can be a complete adult without having children.

I know people who are complete adults without having children.  I don’t know if it would have worked for me.  It was that responsibility I couldn’t evade, and the certainty that I was part of a chain stretching back to forever that made me grow up.

I looked at my kids and knew that, if everything went well, they’d be here long after I was gone.  I tasted my own mortality.  Which spurred me, of all things, to take writing seriously.

Regrets?  I have a few.  (Ducks flung carp.  Which of you has the carp cannon?)  Things like, if I had to do it again neither of them would see the inside of a school till at least 10th grade. (It’s easier to apply to university if you do the last two years in a regular school.)

But then… but then… if we had homeschooled all that time, would we have known about the dual college/high school program in which younger son was so happy?  Who knows.  A lot of his classmates came from that background, but there are no warranties.

And if we’d homeschooled would our household become even more wrapped up in itself than it already is?  If that were true, the kids might never figure out how to move out (We’re still not sure they will!)

And if we’d homeschooled, would I have written at all?  And does writing even matter compared to children?

I can’t answer.  It reminds me of that scene in Lords and Ladies where the Chancellor is fantasizing about what would have happened if he’d married Granny and she says “What about when our house burned down and we died with all our children?” because just taking an alternate path doesn’t mean no strife.

As is, I look across twenty three years, to holding Robert in my arms (while he gave me a suspicious look.  That boy was born fifty three) and being terrified I’d forget to feed him/change him/let him catch the black plague/whatever, and think it didn’t go badly at all.

Yes, they ate up a lot of my time, but writing still happened in between.  Yes, there were troubles and worries, and I suspect the worry will continue.

But there are those moments of inexpressible joy, too: building wooden railroads with younger son, all up and down stairs, and running toy wooden trains on collision courses; watching older son place second in a state singing competition, against children who’d been in voice lessons since birth, when he just sings all the time, around the house; watching younger son play Petruchio to a packed house and do it perfectly; late night coffee with older son in a diner, watching the rain paint the windows; countless walks with both of them, and the talks; watching them work hard and succeed at their chosen paths.

All of these are moments when I had to back off and realize they might have been completely dependent on me, once, but what they are is not all what I or their father put in.  They are their own, imbued with a divine spark, with will and interests and abilities of their own.

And that is a wonder to behold.  And the best reward of all for all the years of care, and diapers and feeding.

They are more than the sum of their parts, and I’ve been privileged to watch them grow up.

So here’s to Robert and Marshall as they are in their early twenties, the best mother’s day gifts any mother could have.

Good day, Huns and Hoydens. We’ve made it to another weekend, which is a worthy reason to celebrate. I’ve nothing erudite, insightful, or amusing to say, so go enjoy your day, preferably with good friends and a good book. Here are a few options to get you started. Salut!

As always, future entries can (and should!) be sent to my email. Happy reading!

Jason Dyck, AKA The Free Range Oyster

Minion herder, eschewer of obfuscation, buys red pixels by the petabyte

Ken Prescott

Not By Sight

Dennis Sandoval is a “Ghostrunner,” an elite United States Air Force covert operator with a shadowy past. In the waning days of the Cold War, Sandoval must jump into East Germany and rescue an American missionary before a crucial East-West summit. But the mission spirals out of control; both the CIA and East German State Security are after the missionary. Cut off from his chain of command and hunted by Willi Metzger, a fanatical East German State Security officer with his own agenda, Sandoval must call on all of his skill and risk everything in order to survive and succeed.

Cedar Sanderson

Sugar Skull

Sally, whose full name was Alessandra Padilla Rivera, and who had been raised by a grandmama on stories of El Cucuy, the chupacabra, and the jaguar god who hunts in the night, knows how hard good jobs are to find, and keep. She has a mother to support, and a new job to prove herself at. A couple of problems, though… She is working in a morgue where strange things are happening. The only person she can talk to is her boss, her mother just turns the television volume up, and her friends are grossed out by her job. But Sally is convinced her boss isn’t fully human…

Alma Boykin

Fledermaus Murphy: Tales from Riverville

When Fledermaus Murphy comes to town, the only thing certain is Murphy’s Law.

Welcome to Riverville, where a giant bat works at the coffee shop, the school district battles inappropriate mascots, an author hunts for his mews, and landscapers work at night. Nothing is quite as it seems when Fleder Murphy is around.

A short story set.

*Sarah talking. The usual disclaimer applies that these are books sent in for promo, not recommendations as such, since we haven’t read them. Knowing two of the authors, I think they must be good, but read the sample pages, as usual.
Meanwhile I’m doing a “Summer Reads” program through Goldport. Not that you’d think it’s Summer approaching, what with the thunderstorm that kept me up half the night. (Guys, next time I decide to go offending weather gods, tell me it’s a bad idea.)
This week I have Witchfinder on sale for 2.99

and next week it’s another one –likely either Ill Met By Moonlight (the first of my novels ever published) or No Will But His. If you have a preference, let me know. There will also soon be new novels (sorry, but Rogue Magic Editing is squeezed into 2 hours at night, if I don’t crash first (and right now I’m prone to suddenly feelings like the stuffing was removed from me) and this is messier than Witchfinder, which is something I thought I’d never say. It’s also more difficult since I’m trying to make it individual voices, first person, and you know… it’s a craft thing and I need my thinking hat on. AND I might still fall on my face! There will also be other stuff, once Darkship Revenge is delivered.

There might or might not be another post later.  I have a ton of stuff I need to do at the other house, so I don’t know when I’ll get back home.  I also Madame Athena in my head.  I wish I could paint walls and write at the same time.  Yes, I know technically I could but the Dragon it doesn’t work so well for me — not Dragon’s fault.  I freeze and go um oh um. — and the transcribing people are too rich for my blood while we’re paying mortgage AND rent.  This too shall pass.  Better days will come.  For now, all I can say is there might or might not be another post later.  It’s Schrodinger Post!*

Fear and courage and fear as a weapon to enforce comformity and obedience are part of the themes of Darkship Revenge [I knew it was a bad idea to have two R words in a row, ah well] whose tagline could be “it’s best to live on your feet.”

I normally have trouble telling you what the “point” of a book is even after I finish it until it rests for a while and I can think, and in fact I just realized the synopsis I sent in for Through Fire was at best incoherent, so I’ll need to redo it and also add a paragraph to the payoff page, because what I have there could be interpreted as what I mean. Or it could not. I’d rather clarify it. Not a moral, precisely, but tying the threads together. (The funny thing being that in conversation with Kate I told her exactly what the point of that book was, but it still wasn’t on that last page.)

This made me think of what Brad Torgersen (rightly) says “this field is soaked with fear.” Yesterday, I read a post, possibly linked from insty, talking about why fear works so well on the middle class who has career aspirations (we’ll talk more about that later) and who can’t afford to be seen with the wrong people, supporting the wrong ideas, talking to the wrong side of the fence.

As I’ve watched person after person “distance” themselves from Pamela Geller, a disgraceful and bizarre idea, because, let’s make this very clear: she had a contest for people to draw Mohammed in vile ways [This is what I’d heard. That is was the “most offensive” that would win. Apparently I was wrong — quelle surprise — it was just to DRAW Mohammed. Only offensive to devout Muslims of certain sects.]; two people tried to shoot her and everyone in there.

Let’s repeat that in case you don’t get it: lines on paper, which no one who potentially could be offended by it needed to see were responded to with an attempt at killing her.

If you don’t think that’s bizarre, substitute the contest to draw Mohammed with a contest to draw Christ in the most vile way possible [we already have that. It’s called the NEA-ed.] Imagine that two armed people showed up to shoot you for it. How many people who did the ritual “Geller made the poor Muslims do it” all over the media, including Fox News, would do the same? One? None?

Of course, Christians don’t do that. At most they would show up at pray at you. And THAT would be considered hateful and closed minded, and people would talk about being intimidated going into the art show [Every time another show comes up with a way to insult Christians this script plays out.] And then the police would show up to keep them separated, just like outside Planned Parenthood, the people who pray the rosary at you have to keep a certain distance or be arrested, because, well, they make people feel bad and it’s hate speech.

I have yet to hear a talking head say “Well, if people don’t want to be prayed at, they shouldn’t have abortions in a fixed place, in public. I mean, it’s like a trap for Catholics.” Or “if people don’t want those fundies to show up and shout Bible verses at them, they shouldn’t have [yet another] a play showing the Messiah of Christianity having gay sex.” Or… No, you don’t hear it, and for students of religion who wonder about things like the Crusades which, they keep telling us, have no Biblical support, it might be a good idea – as the good professor says – to think about the incentives you’re providing.

But people who are distancing themselves from Gellar in a hurry aren’t acting like they’re afraid of death: afraid of being blown up or shot or stabbed as so many people who spoke up against the religion of “peace” have been. No. They’re afraid of losing public face. Their “distancing from Geller” is not because they’re afraid the Jihadis will show up at their door, or stab then during their morning bicycling, no. They’re afraid their friends and neighbors will think they’re anti-Islamic which has been declared by those who command the heights of the culture to be bad. More so, they’re afraid their BOSSES will think they’re anti-Islamic or “hateful” (since the left is now determined to tell us “hate speech” which is ALWAYS defined by those in power over the culture “isn’t protected.” [Which is a lie. The protection of speech is ONLY needed for speech others hate. Otherwise, no need. No one has ever been told they can’t say they love mom and apple pie.]) and their career/employment/chances at recognition in their specialty will be over.

It’s easier to cow most humans (social animals) with social ostracism than with death threats. There’s something heroic in standing up against a death threat while merely standing up against losing your job because of a whisper campaign calling you a poopy head looks slightly silly. Worse, because it’s a whisper campaign you’re never absolutely sure it’s not all in your head.

This was brought to a head by the comments yesterday about my blast from the past. I said that (as I remember, I locked that post on LJ and d*mn if I remember the password eight years later) there had been a mass fit throwing (what we now call a twitter storm) and hints that I’d never work in this town again. When someone asked for them as proof that they’d threatened careers before, I tried to remember if there was anything specific enough from either editors or writers who were better known than I (which at the time was practically everyone, including Bob who mans the seven eleven and hand sells his novels from under the counter to late night junkies.)

I don’t know precisely anymore, but I doubt there was much more than “You’re not who I thought you were.” And “I thought you were on our side” and such things from people with career ending ability. Look, they don’t usually go around saying that in public.

But think about those two sentences in the context of being said by someone who can deny you employment, should you ever need it. Did they threaten your career? Well, no, but should you not fall into line, the ability to end it is there nonetheless.

Look, part of the problem with this is that the US is no longer a meritocracy. I don’t know when it happened here, because I wasn’t here, but I remember when my brother graduated college and was applying to his first job. It took him years to find an engineering job, partly because the job market for computer people sucked in Portugal at the time. So he applied to a lot of things, including American companies.

The first step in this was a test. Partly it was a competency test, partly a personality test. A lot of this was boogaboo. I remember after one test Alvarim called home to verify when he’d been weaned, just to know if he’d had it right in the test. Boogaboo. Nonsense. “Magic.” And full disclosure in 1981 I took one of these tests for employment in the largest newspaper in the city at the time, and I never got called back for an interview. I suspect it was the “world affairs” portion as I’d been in the states for a year and they had a different “narrative” than in Portugal. Or it could have been that there were 200 of us taking the test for two positions and I had a high school diploma with one or two Journalism AP classes. Frankly, I was shocked that on my resume I was called to take the TEST.

Anyway, the tests weren’t perfect, but it was within the rights of a company to administer the tests, and I understand (can’t swear. As I said, I wasn’t here) that it was once widely used here. In practicality this meant the graduate from Harvard and the guy who taught himself computers in his basement were co-equals. The highest test won.

I still had a test for my last “real” – translator – job, because when you need someone with seven languages, you’re not going to get them all in normal ways and some will be self-inflicted, so you need to test them. How they get away with it, I don’t know.

I know that the other tests, particularly given by large corporations, were ‘debunked’ as being (usually) ‘racist’ and such, and therefore discriminatory. I don’t know if they’re illegal, or if they simply aren’t “done.”

I do know that more and more as I’ve been here, your employment is likely to depend on whom you know and who can recommend you for a position. That means a whisper campaign can as effectively shut you out of making a living as it could do to a writer back in the days of five houses who all talked to each other and no other route to reach readers.

And that’s why the reaction to Sad Puppies and to Pam Geller. Because people must be seen not to be “bad”. They must appease the people who can destroy them, before the whisper campaign starts.

One of things that has amused me, but not really, through the Sad Puppies thing was watching people who’ve known me for years suddenly think I was “right wing” in the way the SJWs say I am – i.e. that I subscribe to theories of race or gender supremacy, or that I think women shouldn’t work (which would be mighty funny, considering I can’t remember an ancestress who didn’t have her own business, going as far back as I can go) or that I’m an homophobe, or whatever.

Whisper campaigns are scary effective, because they can get in behind your rational thought. If someone told you to your face that I was a white supremacist and you’d met me and (particularly) my kids, you’d probably pee yourself laughing. BUT if the same info came to you whispered, as “Well, you know, her opinions on race are just nuts” or worse “of course, I disagree with her thing on race” – incredibly effective because it leaves you to make up in your own head how bad my opinions must be for someone to say just that.

And this is why luminaries are publicly denouncing SP and Pam Geller and anyone else who steps out of line. Because behind their brain they know we’re pretty despicable, even if – particularly if – no one ever told them anything concrete about our despicableness.

So, have there been career threats? Not open, and nothing any of us could point to. Until recently. Recently – because we’re freed by the fact we can always go indie and have a truly closed pen name [and btw, to me the clear admission that they were manipulating things in secret came when my agent told me we couldn’t have a pen name that was secret from the publishers. And also when someone – a midlister – did have a secret pen name (I believe the book is The Seamstress but I don’t remember the author name. And the title could be wrong, though the sense is right) and got pushed to bestseller, and the publishers were furious about her having a secret pen name. Which doesn’t make any sense, unless they have a lot of control. But even having been in the field for years, I greeted that with relief. Because it confirmed what I suspected.]

The problem with whisper campaigns is that you can’t defend yourself, you can’t argue, and you can’t kill them once they start.

So when a whisper campaign starts against someone, the best way is to fall in line and denounce the person loudly and ritually. Which is why Brad is right, and my field (and a lot of society) is drenched, dripping and stinking with fear.

OTOH having been on the other side of this let me tell you, if enough of us refuse to live on our knees, then living on our feet becomes possible. Of course, for the first few this means metaphorically dying (or having your career and character – which is far less glamorous) on your feet.

Is it worth it? I think so. I sleep better at night, and trust me, this is very important. And I can see myself in the mirror without flinching. Also, I’m not jumping at shadows. (“You’re not the person I thought you were” might be completely inoffensive, even said by a publisher, but when you’re afraid they’ll kill your career, it becomes a threat, even if they didn’t mean it that way. So you’re jumping at shadows [and I don’t remember if there were more concrete threats, but to me those were clear enough. Then again I was drenched with fear.])

To me it is worth it. Would I have done it, if Indie weren’t a possibility? I doubt it. I’d probably have walked away from the field altogether.

But what this means is that in your very own field it is important to be on the lookout for opportunities for freedom, for the ability to work, to practice, to establish a career regardless of what people think of you. And then you can be free and stop the ritual denunciations and the crazycakes agreeing with insane people (“lady” is an insult! Totally.)

I know for a lot of you this isn’t possible yet. But I know, also, a lot of those drenched with fear in my own field are ignoring the wide open door. They’ve bought into narratives of less quality (and there’s a rant on that later.) So, don’t shy from the open door, look for it. Create it if you can.

Always look for a chance to live on your feet, or to quote Heinlein, to be a live lion.

Ça ira. Potentia vobiscum.

UPDATE: Welcome Instapundit readers, and thanks to Glenn Reynolds for the link.

*Yes, yes, another report from the closet with the see through door.  Actually this was the first time I visibly stepped out of line, the first issue that bugged the almighty cr*p out of me enough that I threw a fit publicly on line.  This was back when I was on LJ and it got SO MUCH backlash from my colleagues and hints that I’d never work in this town again, that I had to close it to public view.  Now, of course, I’m a bonafide traitor to my gender (who knew you could be betray something you had no choice about or that you owed any loyalty to strangers who only shared a characteristic with you.  Oh, wait, Marxists know.  Like the shadow they know the evil that lurks in the heart of the unsorted, un-group alligiance men women humans widgets.  And they’re more than willing to mau mau the person that steps out of line.  Well, that’s too bad, because this here too-tall-nail has decided it’s more moral, more interesting and far more fun to hammer back.*

And the women are winning.  And this is a bad thing.  Seriously.  Indulge me.

I know this goes completely against everything you’ve ever heard and learned.  History — and SF — is full of dreamers who are convinced that if women ruled the world it would all be beauty flowers and non aggression.  (To these dreamers I say spend a week as a girl in an all-girl school.  It will be a rude awakening.)

Dreamers of the Dan Brown stripe posit a peaceful female worship, with yet more beauty and flowers and non-aggression.  They ignore the fact that 99% of the goddess-worshipping religions were scary.  And don’t tell me that’s patriarchal slander — it’s not.  The baby-killing of Astoreth worship has been documented extensively.  (Of course, the Phoenicians were equal-opportunity baby killers.)  The castrations of Cybele worship were also well documented.  Now, I can hardly imagine a female divinity without imagining hormonal episodes requiring appeasement — but that’s because I’m a woman of a certain age, and that’s fodder for another altogether different discussion.  Suffice it to say that the maiden and mother usually also had a crone persona who was … er… “not a nice person.”

Anyway — all this to say since I joined the MOB (Mothers Of Boys) the scales about such things as the inherent equality of men and women as far as their brain structure and basic behavior have fallen from my eyes.  (Well, the scales that remained.  My experience in school notwithstanding, I’d been TAUGHT that females were getting the short end of the stick and that’s a hard thing to overcome.  Learned wisdom is so much more coherent than lived wisdom, after all.)

Again — indulge me — I’m going to make a lot of statements I can too back up, but which would take very, very, very long to document — so it will seem like I’m ranting mid air.  Stay with it.  If I feel up to it later, I’ll post some references.

Yes, women have been horribly oppressed throughout history including the rather disgusting Victorian period that most Americans seem to believe is how ALL of history went.  I contend, though, that women were not oppressed by some international conspiracy of males — yes, I know what Women’s Studies professors say.  I would however remind you we’re talking of a group of people who a) have issues finding their own socks in the dresser they’ve used for ten years.  b) Are so good at communicating as a group that they couldn’t coordinate their way out of a wet paper bag, or to quote my friend Kate, couldn’t organize a bonk in a brothel.  (In most large organizations the “social/coordinating” function is performed by females at various levels.) c) That women being oppressed by a patriarchy so thorough it altered history and changed all records of peaceful female religion would require a conspiracy lasting thousands of years and involving almost every male on Earth.  If you believe that, I have this bridge in NY that I would like to sell you. — Women were oppressed by their own bodies.

Throughout most of history women had no safe and effective means of stopping pregnancy. — please, spare me the “herbal” remedies.  I grew up in a village that had little access to medicine.  If there had been an effective means of preventing pregnancy we’d have known it.  TRUST me.  There are abortificients, but they endanger the mother as well.  However, until the pill there was no safe contraceptive.  The herbal contraceptive is a plot device dreamed up by fantasy writers.  Also, btw, the People’s Republic of China TESTED all these methods (including swallowing live tadpoles at the full moon.)  NONE of them worked.  SERIOUSLY.*

What this meant in practical fact is that most women were pregnant from menarche to menopause, if they were lucky to live that long.  I’ve been pregnant.  If you haven’t, take it from me it’s not a condition conducive to brilliant discourse or reasoned logic.  On top of that, of course, women would suffer the evils of repeated child bearing with no rest.  In effect this DID make women frail and not the intellectual equals of men.  And it encouraged any male around to “oppress” them.  I.e., when the majority of females around you need a minder, you’re going to assume ALL females need a minder.  It’s human nature.  Note that beyond suffrage, the greatest advance in women’s equality came from the pill.  Not a coincidence, that.

However, the people who think that women were oppressed by an international historical cabal rule the establishment.  Including the educational establishment.  I find it hilarious that in their minds men/boys are so powerful that they must be kept back and are suspected of being criminals just because they have a penis.  This is attributing them god-like powers to rival what any Victorian housewife would believe.

Anyway — these people have decided all efforts must be made to equal male and female performance in school.  Since, in practical fact, this is impossible since males and females develop at different paces and favor different areas, they’ve settled for hobbling the all-powerful males.

You see this everywhere from Saturday morning cartoons to kindergarten to all the grades beyond.  In cartoons these days, the girls ALWAYS rescue the boys.  (They do it while keeping impeccably groomed hair, too.  Impressive, that.)  And in school all the girls are assumed to be right and all the boys are assumed to be wrong.

Because it’s been determined girls learn better in groups — not all girls.  I HATED group work.  But most girls — group work rules the class.  Because girls do better in homework, particularly of the “decorating and coloring” kind, this homework persists well into highschool — even with no pedagogical excuse.  Because single-sex education is good for BOTH genders, but BETTER for boys, single-sex education is anathema.

As a matter of fact I don’t  know ANY parents of boys who haven’t been told their sons are ADHD at some point and told the boy needs ritalin.  Even my older son, who is almost as verbally inclined as a girl, and who has always been interested in learning had this pushed at him in first grade.  Middle school is insane for boys, as their verbal skills at that age lag well behind the girls.  They are not only behind academically, they also tend to have issues working in groups.  Boys are accused of sexual harassment on a regular basis at this age.  No girl ever is.

I remember going to the parent teacher conference for my older son, in sixth grade, and sitting in the hallway listening to the other parents.  All the parents whose children had perfect grades were parents of girls.  All the parents whose children were inexplicably not doing well, despite high IQs, were parents of boys.

You’re not outraged?  Reverse those.  Perhaps it will help.  Imagine that our method for teaching teens was leaving all the girls out in the cold and favoring boys.  Wouldn’t it shock you?  It should.

On top of all, we’re fostering a victim mentality in these girls.  We’re giving them the advantages AND telling them boys are oppressing them — these all powerful creatures from which there is no escape.

You’re not worried?  You should be.

If an alien species had devised a way to stop the human race from reproducing they wouldn’t have come up with a better way to drive both girls and boys crazy.

Look — this is striking at the core of our society.  by which I don’t mean American or even western society.  I mean SOCIETY.  Human.  Association.

Insofar as that goes — and without in anyway defending it — there is a reason that, given the chance (mostly by nature and that pesky pregnancy thing) societies become ridiculously anti-woman.  There is a reason Islamic countries are terrified of the female half of their population — no, don’t want to hear anything about higher observances.  Female circumcision.  Veiling (anyone who thinks those who put women in slip covers respect women needs his or her head examined.)  Women’s testimony being worth half of the man’s.  Women punished for being raped.  If that’s respect and kindness, give me insult and intolerance any day — there is a reason Imperial China circumscribed females to non-human status.

The reason is that we ARE more powerful than they are.

No, seriously.  And I’m not talking about the ability to bear life within us, or some such chestnut dreamed up by an anthropologist.  I’m talking about — creating social links.

Women, perhaps because they were the child caretakers and therefore had to be able to communicate child care lore as well as teach the children, seem to have learned to organize and create cooperative links.  Men’s brains seem to run to hierarchies — the order giving necessary to cooperative hunting — while women’s brains run to networks — the communication lines necessary to pass on recipes and child care tips.

The farther we go back, the more we’re sure the greatest innovations leading to civilization were the work of women: agriculture.  Animal domestication.

I’m going to take a wild leap and assume we also invented language.  Stands to reason “Gog go around mammoth from front” is far less complex than “Iga make sure child doesn’t eat poisonous berries.”

In that sense we MADE society.  We fit into society naturally.  Our aggression is verbal, social.  It’s an aggression that consists in freezing out and/or going around people.  Male aggression consists of hitting someone over the head.  Our society — any advanced society — condones the first, but not the last.

We are — so to put it — house broken.  Males aren’t.  Young males MUST be trained to fit into society.  Young females instinctively know how to go around and manipulate the system. (Yes, I’m talking generally.  I had no social clue and was very much male in my approach.)

THIS, ladies, is our turf.  They had a handle on us while continuous pregnancy weakened us.  They could even get the upper hand and push us to a corner.

NOW they can’t.  Science has equalized the odds.  And therefore, our superior organizational skills — ever more needed in an increasingly complex society — already give us an advantage.

On top of that our schools are treating our boys as guilty until proven innocent.  This is alienating them and making them crazy.  It’s also giving them a distaste for learning, which is why most college graduates are women.

We’ve won.  They’re on the run.

It’s now time to remember that they are our fathers/husbands/children.  It’s now time to remember that if we demand that men behave like women and become women in all but equipment only a small percentage will be able to accommodate.  The rest will become embittered, disillusioned and, ultimately, aggressive.  Because that’s how men behave when they’re not happy.

It’s time to stop driving the young warriors from the tribe to live in the wilderness.  They only become dangerous and come back in attack mode.

We’ve won.  Fly the standard.  Sound the trumpet.  And then extend your hand to the enemy — bring those boys back in.  They are no more guilty for the crimes of their ancestors who were terrified of women than the little girls today are guilty of the crimes of women who in the last four decades have been terrified of men.

It’s time to stop this nonsense.  We’re two halves of a whole.  Regardless of how your preference runs, or whether you have both genders in the home — it takes both to make a society.  Or at least a functional society.  And — until science overcomes that — it takes both to make a physical human being.

Go out there and hug a man today.

*Actually, according to the my friend Kate Paulk’s research, there was some sort of berry (?) on the coast of Tunisia that taken every day prevented conception.  This was recorded in some Roman manuscripts, and if it wasn’t a joke, become extinct within a few years.  If she shows up in comments, she might give us the name of it.

Yesterday a minor, passing reference hijacked my entire comment thread. Fortunately this is a REALLY rare occurrence here at ATH, so nothing to worry about. Oh, who am I kidding? You guys have been known to highjack posts about weapons to talk about snickerdoodles. (Who am I kidding, now all my comments will be about snickerdoodle goodness, right?) It’s part of the reason why I love you.

But yesterday’s post bumped up against what I call “the historian’s blindfolds.”

To be exact, I made a passing reference to first night rights of the Seigneur, while at the same time qualifying it with “where it happened” which immediately sparked both protests that it never happened and that it happened every time.

My feeling about it is “Yes.” And also that the people arguing were arguing from the 21^st century and from their relative positions of “people don’t do/do this.”

So, of course, because I enjoy having people tell me I’m ignorant/hyperbolic, I’m going to wade in. I’m going to wade in with galoshes. Mostly because this times up with a very exasperating feeling I get particularly while writing historical fiction.

And that’s the feeling that not only in the past another country but the citizens of that country took deliberate steps to prevent us spying on them.

This is not true, of course, it’s more that the “everyone knows” doesn’t get recorded, and the “never happens” or “happens so rarely it’s big and sensational” gets recorded ALL the time.

Take our times, for instance: we know from objective sources like police reports that child kidnap by strangers is exceedingly rare. But between non-custodial parent child-grabs and the few, sensational cases of strangers kidnapping children which get a never-end of reporting, people are afraid to send their children out to play and the crazier jurisdictions will slam you in the pokey for letting your kids walk home from school alone.

Then throw in “is your stranger abduction lower BECAUSE we watch our children like hawks or because there are fewer people who’d even do it?”

A writer in the 25^th century, could justifiably (by source) write a pedo-infested-nightmarish life, or one in which there were almost no stranger kidnappings. Both justified. Diametrically opposed.

And then take the stuff that’s written about our time with propaganda intent. A writer in the 25^th century could justifiably write about shadowy conspiracies to keep men and women out of gaming/sf writing. I mean, why not? Our time does. One that got hold of the names of professionals in both fields, OTOH would write about mass psychosis of male and female “radical feminists” who every few years reset to a past that never existed and demanded an inclusion they already had.

I’ve – for instance – for the last several years been very suspicious of Dickens, because my other sources for the time (not just primary sources, but those writing often in a family/biography) context paint quite a different picture.

I mean, yes, there were horrible conditions at the time, but they were horrible conditions by our perspective, and we live in an era of superabundance. And the underclass lived very disordered lives. Well, I read student doc. Our underclass just uses different substances and is better fed. Go to Student Doc “Things I learn from my patients” (it’s not coming up for me, hence not linked. Also, prepare to lose hours there.) BUT as “bad” as the industrial revolution might have been, it attracted droves of farmers from the countryside. And having seen it happen in real time in India and China, I’m no longer able to believe the propaganda that they were “forced” off their lands.

Farming looks like a lovely, bucolic occupation to those who have never done any, but the farming they did at the time involved no tractors, no milking machines. It was inadequate tools and inadequate strength beating inadequate livelihood out of inadequate (in most places) soil. Yeah, to paraphrase Mark Twain, the girls wove wreaths for Michaelmass, and everyone danced around the maypole, but in between there was a very harsh reality that made the rather horrible conditions in the early mills seem like heaven and depopulated the countryside and packed the cities – as we see now in China and India.

So, our first problem with finding out if there really was a “first night” right for the seigneur is to figure out the difference between the accounts and the truth. There is no direct evidence, but remember all the recording of the times was done by church men who might very well not know what was going on. Sometimes, granted, it was willful not know. The village priest determinedly didn’t know of certain things that went on around mayday and I’m fairly sure would continue not knowing if he walked in on it and saw it. Because he wasn’t stupid and stuff that’s been going on for two thousand years and yet is of a nature not to be co-opted into the church celebration of this or that saint (St. Anthony and St. John with bonfires and wild herbs and jumping over the fires, and trekking to the city and across the city to see the sunrise on the sea, for instance, for Summer solstice. Yeah. Perfectly normal Catholic tradition) couldn’t be stopped cold, but knowing about it would mar his ability to preach against certain things which he must preach against. (“It was a morning in May—” And for the record this particularly guppie always thought going amaying is about gathering the flowers to put in every entrance to the house to word off evil spirits. But I am an ODD and often unable to see what’s right before my eyes because I was told it was different.)

The problem of the “first night” is compound by several issues: we’re talking a span of about 2000 years. It’s about sex and everyone lies about sex, or shuts up about it, which can be the same. We have fundamental disagreements on the basic nature of men and women. And that’s what I’m going to go with. Because that’s the interesting part.

First, let me establish that I don’t say that human nature has changed that much. Second, let me establish that what most people in the 21^st century, with particular emphasis to Americans THINK they know about the immutable traits of humans is laughable even to someone like me who grew up under harsher circumstances.

Third, let me establish that I’ve reached that time in my life that if I found a letter from my great-great-great ancestress saying she’d love me if she knew me, I’d verify it. And if I found a letter from a modern intellectual saying that it took a modern man to love something or other, I’d sneer.

In other words, I’m at the age that I think a lot of what I’ve been taught, and a lot I believed, is the sheerest bull excreta.

We were taught, for instance, that the troubadors invented romantic love.

They might have invented romantic love as expressed in poems – often from kings to their convenients – but I can tell you that there were stories in the village going back before movies and novels polluted the minds of people with the idea of lovers killing themselves for love, or peasant boy and girl running off together, of someone loving someone and never marrying because she married another.

Behind the whole “invention of romantic love” theory, I hear the voice of Marxist theorists who, poor things, think sex is all power and physical satisfaction. And that alone is enough reason for me to quirk an eyebrow and wonder.

But, otoh…

On the other paw, it’s hard to tell what romantic love meant. Almost certainly the tales I heard, preserved through the centuries were the exception.

Again I go back not just to my childhood, but to my whole life. When people here argue that women/men would never contract an alliance for anything other than the greatest love, I have to wonder how much this is influenced by the propaganda (movies, books) since at least the 19^th century, that that IS the only reason you’re supposed to do it.

It’s sort of like saying “Every mother loves her children above all.” We all reinforce it, because that’s the way to be and it’s what we’d like to believe. But suffice it to say that many mothers demonstrably prioritize finding themselves over loving their children. And I don’t even mean in the divorce sense (though some do, too) but in the sense of having a job that almost doesn’t pay after daycare, etc, just to escape having to be with their kids all the time. (And it’s not that I don’t understand them, and I do love my kids. Perhaps too much, since I’m having trouble kicking the wee birdies out of the nest.)

In the same way, even the people who don’t marry for love, pretend to marry for love, because it’s the one acceptable reason to marry. “Because I was lonely” is not acceptable. “Because I wanted to have a home of my own” is not acceptable and “Because he could give me the life I hope to become accustomed to” is DEFINITELY not acceptable outside certain forums. And yet I had friends – good, honorable, decent women – who married for all three. (I married for the deepest love but I am a derp and a romantic.)

And that’s today. Amid the village couples, relatively (though not majorly. We had movie theaters accessible by street car. And we had radio soaps. We just didn’t have television and most people didn’t read much) unsullied by “romance”, the women seemed to look for the highest grade man they could find, and marry the first one they could snag. The men seemed to look for the prettiest girls, and marry the first one they could snag, though there too relative class and her bringing something “in her stocking foot” was important. I remember my mom was making an entire wardrobe for the daughter of a rich farmer, and objected (very slightly. We needed the money) to the sack-like nature of the garments, a nature enforced by the mother of the poor girl. Mom can be as foot in mouth as I am, and she said something like “If she ever wants to marry, she can’t dress like a nun.” To which the lady answered, “Oh, please. She’s an heiress. What will marry her off is her money, not her looks.” I know that sounds awfully abusive, but her daughter concurred, and it was the attitude of most people around there/then. And yep, I knew men who walked away from ‘the greatest love’ because they attracted the attention of a plain but rich girl.

In books this would mean a fatal flaw in their character, and they’d come to a bad end. In real life? The couples I knew were as happy as any other couples, and sometimes more.

What I mean to say by this is that if you extend backwards to a time of great penury and strife, when your survival was on the line, letting the stupid Lord have your girl for one night (when you’d have her for the rest of her life) might not be a bad idea. Since Lords tended to be promiscuous and (other than better fed/clothed) look like their peasants, you might never be able to tell who was the father of the first child (and yep, if every couple only had one child that would require immense altruism on the husband’s part. But they usually had a number of children) and yeah, you’d be jealous and hate it like poison. And she’d at least pretend to be dragged from your side by cruel tradition. BUT fighting it and murdering the Lord? Oh, please. Villeins were little more than slaves. And having your wife spend a night with the Lord (before or after your marriage – marriage, as has been pointed out was nebulous too. I’ve heard it argued that Will and Nan were perfectly within their rights in going aMaying before the formal wedding because they were betrothed. And certainly Mad King Henry treated his wives betrothals as proof they came to him sullied. – yes, he was mad, but it stuck with reasonable people) was the same as having her bring “a little something” in the stocking foot.

Did it ever happen? I’d almost put my hands in the fire. I’d even put my hands in the fire it was PERVASIVE some places. Yes, it was only talked about as happening elsewhere, because, sex, and who wants to talk about it, after all?

But when that type of thing has benefits for both sides, yeah, it will happen. You just won’t find direct sources for it. And it won’t happen everywhere. (I had this humorous glimpse while writing this of a Lord claiming first night rights, because it’s expected, then telling the trembling bride she can have the bed, he’ll sleep over in yonder couch, and just don’t tell people anything. And the Lord is in his 90s or so, so it saves face on both sides ;).) Not every Lord will take a lively interest in his subordinates wives.

Also let me establish that Christianity would be a great moderating influence on it (and I think the Judeo Christian idea that women had souls/were in a way equals would over time change this, and enshrine the idea of romantic love as an ideal) but in the time we’re discussing there were invasions of pagans, who became Lords over the place before they converted. There were, for that matter, Moorish invasions and we know how the cultures descended from that one treat women now. So, let’s not say “no, never.”

Human nature is worked on by culture, by expectations, by how easy/difficult life was. It, in itself might be inflexible, and male jealousy and wanting to know the kid is yours is one of the great inflexible parts… or perhaps “less bendy parts” since we do have proof in many times and places it did bend, in some ways, and in answer to overwhelming need. Then again, we have no proof that “the greatest love” operates in most male-female linkage, though surely it operates in some, and it’s enshrined as ideal.

It’s very hard – make that, very, very hard – for us to understand the past, even harder than understanding foreign culture. In the last hundred years we’ve doubled the average man/woman’s life expectancy and we live the life of kings compared to them. No, we live a life kings couldn’t aspire to, even in the nineteenth century.

Does this make us different beings? Well, no. We still lust, still dream, still marry and are given in marriage (okay, not so much of the later these days) and still have children (some of us) and raise them (fewer of us.) BUT we do all these things in different ways that shape our choices/interests/feelings in ways they couldn’t have imagined. And in the same way we can only peer at them through a glass darkly.

Remember those two books about the 21^st century, one in which women dominate the creative professions, and another in which a shadowy conspiracy of masked men conspires to keep them out?

That’s what we see every time we look at the past.

We’ve slapped the SJW’s for wanting to project today’s requirements onto the past. “Heinlein was racist/sexist/badthink because where are the transsexual lesbians of color?” (Actually this just proves they didn’t read them, because there ARE transsexuals and lesbians/bi women of color. Never mind.)

Lets not do the opposite and think that in the past everyone behaved according to our ideals.

They were people. And their environment acted on them in ways we can’t fully figure out. Even the historians argue about it, and certainly popular history is wrong.

When we look to the past and to the future, let’s squint, so our reflection doesn’t hide truth from us.

First night? Could have happened. Only accounts I ever read were during invasions and might be the equivalent of the raped Belgian nuns, but some variation of pimping your wife to the Lord to get his protection, almost certainly did happen, some places, some times.

The rule? I doubt it. Because there was a noblesse oblige from the very powerful to the powerless. And where that failed, society failed.

And that’s the main point, always. When looking to the past, if something seems like it wouldn’t work long term, it probably didn’t. Like the Dickensanian hell-mills, a lot of it was nostalgie de la boue and propaganda for one’s favored system.

Motives like that are why the past is so hard to scry, and the present is often not that much easier.