Author: Sarah A. Hoyt

I don’t suffer from it. But my son, Robert, does.

However, I’m starting to suspect trying to blog on Saturdays is a lost cause. You see, on Saturdays, we bum around town either in a pack of hoyts TM or — today — my husband and I. Today we hit the re-store for some scrap vinyl and paint. I found a website that swears that the wrong side of vinyl, painted and varnished, achieves an effect similar to floor cloths and more durable. Since we can’t have rugs on the floor because Euclid (the model for Pythagoras in the mysteries) was cloth-trained before we got him, and therefore will come running from across the house to pee on the sock you dropped on the floor two seconds ago, I’ve conceived this idea for protecting the various areas of century-old oak floor that get the most use with floorcloths.
I’m not convinced this vinyl thing is the best of ideas, but I’ll keep you posted on it. Meanwhile the antibiotic is doing its antibioticky thing and my head is clearer than it’s been.
Tomorrow I get to write — hopefully. Fingers crossed.

I find myself as awkward at this daily blogging things as a teen at her first party. (My first party? I hid in a corner wondering why my friend at whose house it was taking place had invited a tribe of Neanderthals. None of the guys were even remotely… human, let alone attractive. Then again I was sixteen, so this might have been normal.)

Right now I’m looking for that dark corner to hide in. I mean… what do I do? What do I say? What are the popular girls doing? And you expect me to dance to THAT?

Let’s face it, I’m not putting up deeply significant posts every day. Unless I start walking around with a notebook to jot down something everytime a possible linkage occurs to me… Um… I could do that.

Anyway, today could be filed under “another d*mn wasted day.” I woke up late, but still felt tired. Too tired to concentrate. Went for my morning walk which was nice – first time in several days I did the full walk. Came home. Did the litter boxes, a job I normally do without thinking but which so thoroughly wiped me out I had to nap.

Read Slightly Scandalous (can’t remember author and book was left downstairs) which was okay for popcorn reads. Don’t know that I’ll run out and buy all of the author’s books, but will buy them if I stumble upon them and have money. It was pleasant enough and she didn’t rape the Regency three ways from Sunday.

Napped again (are you starting to see a theme. For reference, I normally CAN’T sleep during the day. Even if I try to.) Went to doctor. Sinus and double ear infection. Came home and asked older boy to take me to pharmacy – had to, as Dan had my car, since snow was expected. Yeah, I walked to doctor. It was actually pleasant – it’s not too far. Oh, it was cold as heck – snow expected, though not here yet – but I have a foofy coat I bought in Ohio, so I was warm.

Dropped off prescriptions, went grocery shopping while I waited, came home, took meds, cooked dinner… ate… and here I am.

I just realized I gave you an accounting of my actions today, like my grandmother used to do, and possibly for the same reason. She did it because she was alone and wanted to believe what she did with her time still mattered. I did it I think because I feel like I got nothing done. Which is true.

I’m about to call it a night at eight thirty pm again. BUT I have meds, and hopefully tomorrow will be better, right?

Am I a bad person because I wish it WOULD snow a lot and the guys would get a snowday? At this time in their lives, they don’t really bother me much when they’re home, and it feels so snugly with all of us in the house. Probably won’t happen, though you never know. The forecast has been wrong twice and in Colorado when that happens it means they’re way out of their league.

Colorado – where the weather is insane and drives the weathermen that way.

Will any work actually get done? Will the snow fly? Will the boys drive me insane? Will the weathermen put broccoli in their socks and rub their heads with bunnies? Who knows? Tune in tomorrow for another exciting episode of As The Sarah Turns…. :)

I’ve been thinking about fiction versus reality, recently. It’s Leonard Cohen’s fault. I was listening to his songs while working, and the song Everybody Knows caused a random firing of neurons that led to fiction and reality.

For those who haven’t heard the song – it is about a lot of things that “everybody knows” which just ain’t so. In case you miss the point he drives it home with everybody knows that you’ve been faithful, give or take a night or two.

This, because I was traumatized by a college course called Theory of Literature whose final paper made me answer “What is the difference between literature and real life?” at length, over ten pages (no, I wasn’t allowed to go up to the professor and hit her repeatedly over the head with War and Peace while shouting “the book is literature, but I’m hitting you in real life,”) led me to the number of things that everybody knows in fiction that just aren’t so in real life, and how much of that knowledge has bled over into real decisions made about real life.

There are a lot of these. I mean, a lot of ideas that come from the pages of literature and that have, unexamined, slithered into people’s back brains where they lodge, making a mess of that real life where you do die if you’re beaten with a large book.

For now we’ll leave alone things that are “narrativium” (Terry Pratchett’s word for the force that binds his Discworld… and all stories) – like all the problems getting fixed at the last minute; like the brave little guy always winning; like our sympathy for the plucky comic relief character. We’ll leave those alone because, frankly, my life seems to obey these rules. Also because then we get into art imitating life imitating art.

Instead, let’s get into facts of life, history, society that everybody knows and which are, on their face, so totally absurd that you wonder how so many people could believe them. And then you realize they are the background of ALMOST every novel published in the second half of the twentieth century.

What am I talking about? Oh, for instance, if I’m EVER on another panel with a bunch of under thirty female authors and the subject has anything to do with women or history I’m bringing War and Peace, so I have something on hand to demonstrate the difference between reality and literature. Because every one of these women – bless their dizzy little hearts – will unfailingly bring up the six thousand years during which men have oppressed women. Apparently, my gender has been kept in slavery to such an extent that they weren’t allowed to do anything and when they did it anyway, the vast conspiracy of all the males in the world hid it from history. And then, these super villains magically got defeated by a bit of shoulder-to-shoulder and self-empowerment. (Because it would be that easy to defeat people that powerful.)

Usually I counter this by pointing out that the men I live with – all three of them – can’t agree on whose socks are whose, much less on a vast conspiracy involving doctoring history books, blackening the name of female religions, associating goddesses with unpleasant things, etc etc etc ad nauseum. They look at me, round eyed and then go on as though I hadn’t said anything (which is why I need War and Peace. The iron-cover edition.)

Even right now I can see some of you going “but…”

Yeah, right. Women WERE oppressed, right enough. By a collective conspiracy of males? Oh, h*ll no. By biology. When you spend most of your life incubating new life and caring for infants and – in the conditions of the time – are likely to die of it, yeah, you’re probably not going to be a great thinker or warrior. Not to mean there weren’t some. More thinkers than warriors, mind, and those either religious or noble and almost unfailingly either celibate or delegating the business of raising the children to other women.

Look, kids, men were oppressed too. By their biology – a friend tells me men don’t get PMS, they’re just like that all the time – by the fact that their muscles and larger size made them logical hunters and warriors. They took most of the risks and the skeleton of any ice-age hunter tells you how much pain they endured. Oh, yeah, medieval skeletons aren’t much better. Life was brutish, short and nasty for everyone, right? Plus, they sort of had to assume their wives’ kids were theirs. There was no DNA test. So, sometimes they went a little overboard in making sure that momma wasn’t slipping a different one in. (And if you think THAT didn’t happen – ah! Genealogy is a joke because NO ONE can know what their great great great grandmama did with the peddler behind the kitchen door while great great grandpapa was out felling the wild boar.
Think about that – at least women knew the kids they were looking after were their own. Men… well, it required a leap of faith. They might be slaving away, and getting all beat up or dying to defend someone else’s progeny. All on their wife’s word.)

What never happened outside books is the gigantic conspiracy of males, the “we must keep her down”, the “well, we have to erase memories of the wonderful matriarchy by making the goddess into an evil demon in our religion”, the “yeah, this woman beat our pants, so we’ll erase her from history books.”

To begin with, this idea is absurd on its face. No. Hear me out. How CAN today’s college educated, smart women not realize both the vastness of the world and how UNCONNECTED AND TRIBAL it was even a hundred years ago, let alone six thousand?

(Look, the reason the Europeans took so much of the world four hundred years ago wasn’t their superior technology; it wasn’t their superior (ah!) intelligence; and it sure as heck wasn’t their superior rapaciousness or their greed (sorry, guys, no.) It was the fact that they were the first to overcome tribalism in favor of the nation state and that they had continent-wide communication and at least limited cooperation between nation states. Read stories of colonization. Time after time a tribe eliminates the European colony thinking “that’s the tribe, that’s all there is.” Good strategy in tribal wars. Which was ALL they knew. They didn’t know and they couldn’t GUESS that this story would go all over Europe (broadsheets and pamphlets and later newspapers) and bring them retribution from nation states, much bigger than their little tribe or even federation of tribes. They couldn’t conceptualize it.)

How could – to take one narrative that seems so widespread that everybody knows it is so without thinking – evil patriarchs replace the idyllic matriarchy in tribe after tribe after tribe ALL OVER THE WORLD, even when these tribes had no means of communication with each other? How could they all change history to hide the fact women used to be in charge? HOW? Think about it. A million little tribes, all over the world. Each with its language and its ways. Each one so suspicious of strangers that “them over the ridge” are another nation. Worse, how could this happen AFTER THE DISCOVERY OF WRITING (the DaVinci Code) and then be so thoroughly erased that only a conspiracy passing from wise person to wise person throughout the centuries knows the truth?

While we’re on that, let’s examine the idea of any sort of conspiracy that involves more than three people, which leaves no trace or almost no trace even centuries later. Good Lord. Have you guys ever tried to keep a secret that a group of friends knows? At best it’s like playing telephone. Things come back to you that you know mean your friends have talked but not given details or given the wrong details on purpose. So you’ll hear that so and so lost their aardvark, instead of their husband. At worst, the entire village, city, nation will know. Even if they sometimes pretend not to – with imperfect success. (Remember the Friends episode on “she knows I know they know but they don’t know she knows…. Yeah.)

Has any of you read Roman history? Or how about the history of the Middle Ages. How many “would be conspiracies” are now plain for all to see? Heck, were plain even in their day? Even if the conspirators didn’t know that everybody knew they knew? Two can keep a secret, if one of them is dead.

So how did the idea of the great conspiracy of men against women or any other great conspiracy become an everybody knows to the point that people – unthinkingly – use this as the basis of their decisions and their positions on the world?

I think – and I could be completely wrong on this – it is because fiction is more real than non-fiction. And these ideas – mind you – at one time made great and startling fiction. (No, they don’t anymore. Not really. Why not? Because they’re expected. They’re the “easy path.” Oh, you can still use conspiracies and secret societies. But do try for a little couth – I mean, look, if you bring in the Templars, credibility just went out the window. As for the conspiracy of men against women. Heavens! You might end up on the NYT bestseller list. That’s how old and hackneyed the idea is.)

What do I mean fiction is more real than non-fiction? Well… I have followed in some fascination the way that false memories are created, and they are very close to the way good novels are written. The way to make someone remember – think they experienced – something that just ain’t so, is that you weave reality and fiction, things they know are so and have experienced (the wind on your face, the tight throat that comes with crying, the description of a sunset) with the things of imagination. If you do it well enough, people will believe they lived it. They will believe these are things they saw with their own eyes and lived in their own lives. Oh, not rationally, but where it counts, in the back brain.

No wonder educated women – and men – KNOW these things that could not withstand the most cursory examination. No wonder it becomes the substratum of belief and knowledge from which decisions are made.

So, what am I saying? That we should regulate what goes into novels? That we, writers, should examine the ideas we weave in our fiction? That readers need to think more objectively about what they read?

No, yes, yes – but…

Look, no one should regulate what goes into novels or any form of art. The idea of a censor board gives me cold sweats. It’s bad enough it is being regulated, in a way, right now, by the everybody knows syndrome. Try to write a novel in which a female-dominated society is more rapacious and evil than their patriarchal counterpart and it’s likely to be rejected with “but this was never so” when it truth, maybe it wasn’t (there is really no evidence of ANY female dominated society. Again, see the part where women were slaves to their biology. There MIGHT have been Amazon-like groups in some tribes, but the evidence is so far not conclusive) but it’s as likely as the other way around.

Should we, as writers, examine the ideas that go into fiction? Uh… yeah. Indeedy. Never mind that some ideas that make great fiction make no sense in real life, (It’s a million to one chance. That means it’s a sure thing!) at least as a writer TRY to rise above everybody knows. TRY for original ideas and ideas that make sense. The great patriarchal conspiracy, all joking aside, no longer thrills anyone. Dan Brown might have milked the last of it.

Other things that no longer thrill anyone and which have become part of everybody knows with very little basis in fact: the idea the oppressed rise up against their oppressors (in fact, the “oppressed” usually rise up when the oppression lightens. All the great revolutions were bourgeois ones. The only other revolutions are actually action from outside); the idea that intellectuals are naturally allied to the workers (this is a Marxist chestnut that has made its way into fiction and from it into popular belief. In fact, we egg heads, with few exceptions, are puzzled by manual workers – I might be one of the exceptions, but just because I LIKE manual work); the idea that women are more caring and peaceful than men – no, seriously. I think this must have come from the fact that most women writers way back were spinsters or nuns. Look, I went to an all girls’ school. It was sort of like hell without the flames. (Except that one time we short circuited the electrical board in the attic to get out of English class. But I think the statue of limitation has gone out on that one.) Women are as sneaky and underhanded as their male counterparts and, btw, they can get very physical too. So, please, no more planets where there are only women so it’s peaceful (no matter how much it allows male writers and editors to enjoy a bit of vicarious and guilt free tribadism.)

It is not my business to tell anyone what he should write. It is my business to tell my colleagues the main problem I have with most books nowadays is that they bore me to tears. Now, I might not be representative of most people. Some people clearly read to have their biases confirmed. But not all. I’m convinced there’s a large group of people like me out there. And that large group is woefully underserved.

Yes, readers should be thinking about what authors wrote and examining it for plausibility. But if storytellers are doing their job, then readers won’t – perhaps can’t – do so.

So it comes back to writers again. I won’t ask you to use your powers for good. Instead, I’ll ask you to do something more difficult. I’ll ask you to think and to find ways to make your readers think.

It will be more fun. And it just might bring about a better future in which everybody knows is at least a little closer to reality and people aren’t making decisions based on false memory syndrome.

Okay, people. I grew up reading Science Fiction and Fantasy and mystery. I’ve still read a limited amount of romance.

For good and sufficient reason, I have decided I need to explore the genre more. Who should I be reading? Suggestions ranging from the popcorn to the serious much appreciated. Preferrably books available for the kindle, because my house is already sinking under the weight of books.

I have been very hesitant about this trying to blog everyday thing, but between Dave Freer and my agent, they’ve convinced me this is absolutely necessary. I note I already missed a day in the last week, but I will try to persevere.

However, I suspect, like a lot of other daily blogs written by writers, you will have to endure my occasional whine about not being able to write. This one is actually special. It’s a whine about not being able to write OR read.

I usually can gage my levels of tiredness and neurosis by what I read. If I’m going along at a fair clip, I read a lot of new stuff – like six to ten books a week, ranging from sf to mystery to romance. Yeah, it’s not that much compared to some of you, but consider that I also write two to four books a year and do assorted furniture refinishing and such.

When I’m not doing so well emotionally – and it can be anything, ranging from a worry about the kid’s school to a worry about a friend’s health, to (all too often) a worry about my career – I re-read stuff I’ve read before. Usually stuff I read before a long time ago, like Heinlein or Simak or Christie or…

And then there’s the times when I’m so near the snapping point – for any of the reasons above, but usually also because of some physical issue – when all I can read are Disney comics.

I’ve only twice in my life come to the point when Disney comics were hard to understand. The first was when I was very ill at around twelve and the other when I had bad pneumonia.

For the last year I’ve been stuck at phase two. For the last two weeks at phase three. This is weird since I’ve written less this year than normal and while one kid’s school is worrying me, it’s not that bad, just not excellent and not at the level he could do.

Unfortunately, while I’ve pushed through and written some, when I read what I wrote it reads like it was translated. Possibly from Mandarin Chinese. It was also written by an alien, in that the emotions get “Threaded” funny. I.e., people will react to things out of turn… before they happen, when they happen to someone else, etc. Editing is as much effort as writing.

Now, I have no clue why, but at least in the last two weeks I think it is just a sinus infection – at least judging from other symptoms. So, today I’m taking myself to the doctor and seeing if I can get this under control. And then I need to figure why the long-term issues. I suspect they’re physical, I just don’t know in what way yet. Of course, it would be just that I’ve been working hard at losing weight, and that takes its own toll. Unfortunately that’s on for the next two years or sixty pounds, whichever comes first. So if that’s the issue, I need to find ways to cope.

There is this tendency among writers – maybe among people in general – to think our minds are divorced from our bodies, but what I’ve found is that when I’m doing something inexplicable and can’t stop myself from doing it, no matter what the will power (like… binging on bananas seems to mean my potassium is low) there is a physical reason.

As a reader, I find this fascinating. What books would Heinlein have left if his health weren’t always between bad to indifferent? In what ways has health affected other favorite authors? Are some of the more blah books by very good authors the result of an illness that wouldn’t let go.

It is humbling and sobering to realize that a writer is both mind and flesh and blood. No matter what the worlds in our minds, our minds are still trapped in this world.

Or something that’s generating lots and lots of pain.  I spent yesterday fighting with a mind-debilitating headache.  However, I did write on Saturday, and my brain does, finally, seem to be in writing gear.  It’s all in leaving the cons behind, I think.  So now I get to buckle down and write.  YAY.

For months now, I’ve been dealing with a slow breakdown of every appliance in this house: from a leaking washer to an exploding refrigerator shelf, I’ve walked with Murphy beside me all the days of my life.

Frankly, the last time this happened I was trying to collaborate with Eric Flint and right now I was considering going back an finishing that collaboration, so I’m so totally blaming him for this.  My appliances hate Eric Flint.

Anyway, that’s not the alarming part.  That’s an annoying part, and expensive in time and money, but particularly time — which is why we’ve put off shopping for new appliances till after the cons.  It’s easier to do dishes by hand and hit the laundromat once a week than to spend a week or two shopping and then clear the basement for washer delivery

Meanwhile, the weirdest thing has happened.  My dishwasher was DEAD — as in, electrically dead.  This wasn’t even surprising because this dishwasher has had the control panel replaced upteen times, and going electrically dead is what it does.  It’s been that way for about two months now.  I was using it as a glorified dish rack, to keep the kittehs off te dishes and I left the door slightly open so stuff dried.

So, yesterday, I’m sitting at the kitchen table, drinking tea and talking to the guys and I look over at the dishwasher panel and see lights on.  For a while all I could do was point and go “the… the… the….”

We took shameless advantage and ran  a load of dishes, figuring this was a weird fluke and we’d get exactly ONE wash out of it.  However, today it continued to function, and I ran another load.

Now I’m worried.  This is akin to your dead-and-buried pet coming back into the house, or the best friend that you saw shot to death yesterday sitting up in his coffin.  I’m all for a working dishwasher, of course. Leaves me more time to write in.  Still, it’s hard to escape the feeling it’s a zombie and it will start making unnatural demands pretty soon.

Do zombie dishwashers wash your brains?

Do you know how many people tell me that if writing just one novel a year doesn’t pay enough to live on I should get a “real job”?

Leave aside the fact that writing is a job — it’s a skilled profession, editors expect us to act professionally, and we put in as many hours in it as in any other job.  No, I’m not subscribing to the Marxist theory of labor.  I know you can spend hours polishing a dog turd and it still won’t be worth much.  However I also know my books continue to be published by publishing houses which are, presumably, businesses and don’t do this stuff out of charity.  Therefore I am not, presumably, writing dog turds.

I also know that the business is broken.  Even more so than other arts.  And so the producers end up making very little indeed, even when people in the middle DO make money.  (Have to.  Come on, the stores and publishing houses don’t stay open on air and promises.  Yeah, I know they’re failing, but still.  And don’t get me on that subject, trust me.)

So, is the suggestion that I get a real job and write on the side a good one?  Perhaps, from a monetary point of view.  Except that in my own, personal situation, it’s almost impossible.

First of all I don’t write just a novel a year.  There are many reasons for this, but the most important is that I can’t write just a novel a year or that novel will become unreadable.  Maybe I’ll explain that in a future post…  Just take me on faith for now.

More importantly, writing is not my only job.  Oh, it’s my only paying job.  But in the long road to publication, I became other things — mother, housewife, refinisher of furniture, cook, etc, etc, etc.  Some days I can barely fit in the writing and I know from past experience if I have a full time job, I won’t be able to fit in the writing.

So what’s the solution?  Danged if I know.  I have to find new ways to market my writing, maybe, now that electronic publishing is available.  I have to write new things and hope they pay better.  And then, too, some of my other jobs will change — I mean the boys will move out eventually, right?

When I was a kid I used to think I would grow up and have it all and it would be effortless.  Now I know better.  I can have it all, but it will be effort-ful.

One of the things we don’t normally mention (much) is the animals that help writers.  I mean, inspiration, help (they do press keys) and reassurance on those days when it seems like nobody loves you…

As everyone knows — right? — my normal helpers are five very dedicated (possibly to eldritch gods) cats, four indoor, one outdoor.

However, when visiting my inlaws, before World Fantasy Con I benefited from the editorial and supportive services of two insane doggies — my in-laws little toy poodles.  Their names are — SUPPOSEDLY —  Sandy and Rusty, but my husband had them answering to  Fluffer and Nutter, which really fit their personalities.

Fluffer is on the left, and Nutter asleep next to him, below.  My husband “killed” them with tiredness by playing with them too much.  Cruel.

I have decided to commit NaNoWrimo.  I’ve done this before but not for the last two years.  This is because November is a spectacularly bad month for us to try to do this in.  There are two birthdays in the family, in addition to the holiday and preparing for the December holidays.  However, I have a book — The Brave And The Free — that’s three quarters done and one — A Fatal Stain — that’s started, and they both need to be finished ASAP so I can move on to other projects.  So, there it is.  I’ll be Nanoing and reporting on it.

It started badly as yesterday and today were consumed by what can only be called “stupid cat tricks.”  Miranda-cat swallowed what appears to be an entire spool of black sewing thread, causing us to take her to the emergency room yesterday. 

For a while we feared surgery would happen, but it turns out no, she actually passed the thread after “a massive amount of laxative” (in the words of the vet’s assistant.)  She will be home as soon as daddy can pick her up, and I’m sure she’ll have words with us.  Meanwhile I’ll go and pick up the highschooler at three something, and then try to settle down and write.