New Year's Resolution

I don't generally go in for New Year's resolutions, but I will make one this time: I will post on this blog at least twice a week, on Wednesday and Saturday by 6 p.m.

I don't have a wife or GF. As an atheist, my "solstice" holiday is called Humbug. I've kept my family at arm's length this holiday season, and I've been happy. I'll still go over and help my Dad if he calls, but my sister and her husband are living there now, and so I'm not needed very often anymore. Socially, I don't have much in common with my Dad or siblings. I've felt disconnected for so long when I've been there, and it would trigger depressions.

Almost the entire time over these holidays has been spent writing, reading and critiquing.  Every day I've been exercising, and I've done some cleaning up, with plenty more to do, I'm afraid.

I celebrate New Year's with my writer's group tonight. The party also acts as our weekly meeting/reading. This group is dedicated. They've met every week for seventeen years, never missing a one. We almost missed last week because our usual venue was closed and almost everyone was with family, until one guy put together a small party, including me, who did readings. I wish I had joined them when they started out in the mid-90s. Of course, this thing called the Internet was just getting started then. It was only by the Internet that I found them. Because their website made them appear inactive, at first I passed them over for another group that didn't work out so well. They would only read somebody's works once a month, and only about 1/6th of the words.

In the current group, half the people have been published, one of them has sold a novel, one has received the interest of an agent in the last year. It's a good group. It has purpose.

I have to get my installment prepared for them tonight. Maybe I should practice reading with vodka this time . . .

Mood: happy.

After a few months, the blog's name is changed

I took my time to think of a new name. I to get down to the core of why I was writing a blog. This is just not for practice anymore.

I know I've been absent during an eventful time. A guy went on a spree-killing in Newtown. This has led to what looks like a turning point in the great gun/2nd Amendment debate. As I think, I'd like to write on that next issue because it's still fresh in my heart. We're about to run off that "fiscal cliff," as they call it. We're about to find out exactly how much the government really does, and how foolish it would be if it doesn't.

I've been absent from here rewriting The Feral Bond, and I hope, learning how to write better and faster. It appears to be working. I've just taken out master copies of previous chapters my writers' group (the best in the Midwest) critiqued and compared to recent ones, the former has a lot more corrections and suggestions.

I'm ready to turn this serious now. 

What the World Really Needs: More Head Injuries

By now, everyone has heard of the sad case of Jovan Belcher, but in case you haven't, I made a link to it.  He's the Kansas City Chiefs Linebacker who killed himself and his girl friend yesterday, though-- unfortunately-- not in that order.


Seemingly within minutes after the player involved was identified, the Internet opinions blossomed. I caught this one by Saturnine Films:

The youtube anchor (yanchor?) has an opinion about this incident. No, wait he has an opinion about head injuries. No, actually he has an opinion about the  WWF. Wait, maybe it's about accountability. In a final twist, it turns out his real opinion is about how suicide is not really selfish, and those wanting to kill themselves should be allowed to go ahead without any interference or guilt trips from our oppressive culture. It's a dizzying three minutes, though not incoherent.

This was all anticipatory, a preemptive counter-argument argument to all those voices he knows he's going to hear.Once my shell shock wore off, I was awed. I've never seen so many barbaric proposals stuffed into so little time, for something that hasn't happened. Limbaugh takes three hours to do what the yanchor did in three minutes.

First, nobody had any problems with the ethic that athletes take risks of injuries, until concussions were discovered to have far worse long term effects than anybody imagined. This may mark me as old, but I remember when blows to the head and concussions were considered light comedy:

NFL rules have changed since those days.

A person looked funny, they staggered around, they acted incoherently, just insert a bonk and tweeting birds sound effects, and the crowds ROTF, a bit like what a kick in the nuts is today.

Seriously, though, head injuries are a different order of catastrophe than other ones. They can change who you are. Nobody had any problem with athletic risk before recent medical discoveries revealed how degenerative concussions could be. Now that the long term effects have been discovered, athletes may be made to take responsibility. However, what about the athletes who played before any of this was known? When the NFL encouraged harder hits? What about in the days of Astroturf, when players performed on a surface that was a little more than a shag carpet stretched over concrete? These are the questions that need to be settled.

Then he talks about how the WWF has been ruined because a wrestler with an alleged head injury killed himself. Is the yanchor really suggesting we must have more injuries so he can be entertained? Professional wrestling is already brain damaging for people who watch it, excuse my snobbery. No accident it was depicted in Mike Judge's highly entertaining comedy, Idiocracy, as the chief idiot's vocation. He actually says, not in these words, that people should suffer physical brain damaged so wrestling wouldn't be such a waste of his time.

I have a suggestion: read a book instead. You employ writers instead of wrestlers and writer's don't damage brains. We improve them.

I had an argument months ago on the Democratic Underground (I know, I should put those arguments here) after somebody posted we had become just like Rome due to our fixation on violent entertainment. My counterargument was, no we haven't: the Romans actually killed people for entertainment, whereas we go through great pains to simulate death in movies. Saturnine's spiel  shows we're not very far away after all. I like to think, just some of us aren't.

(Rome had it's form of violent entertainment for about 500 years before it fell. Our country isn't even 240 years old. Just saying there's a few myths about why Rome fell.)

Then he shouts an opinion, Idiocracy-style: accountability. By this, he means that employees  must be held accountable because they needed a job, but employers aren't accountable they only offer jobs under unsafe conditions. In an employer-employee relationship such as pro-sports, why would the yanchor demand accountability only for one side? Doesn't the owner and league choose to take risks when he ventures into a business, just as the player does when he chooses to play? It's called business risk. He doesn't have to yell accountability: it was never ignored, it's what's being determined.

I've heard right wingers complain about all the lawyers and law suits. It may be an annoyance, but in fact, you look at history, such as the Middle Ages, and the law was very complex, the jurisdictions were mind-boggling. It employed a lot of lawyers. Conservatives should have no complaint from the historical  standpoint. Once case law goes a certain direction, as in allowing lawsuits against sports leagues for head injuries, there are only two ways to correct. Have a judge rule against the precedent (not very likely), or agitate for Congress and legislatures to straighten it out.

Therefore, Saturnine, I suggest you organize with your friends and write Congress telling them that we need more head injuries so we can be entertained. If that phrasing makes you uncomfortable,  perhaps you can realize why it isn't being done already and why it won't be done. Same with playground injuries. Just write your legislature and tell them we need unsafe playgrounds, those that will injure a certain amount of kids per year so they'll learn what you mean by accountability.

Are you surprised parents haven't done this yet? This is why people always complain about the so-called lack of accountability, but they will never do anything about it, because they immediately find out how wrong the are if they ever try.

Saturnine then ends by giving his opinion about suicide: everyone should be able to do it if they want to. Like all forms death, suicide is irreversible.  He apparently thinks that a distraught, mentally ill person who isn't in charge of his or her own faculties should be allowed to make an irreversible decision that usually will greatly affect other people. This is not always the case. I think there are times where suicide isn't selfish, where it's justified by the circumstances (see Hitler, the bunker). However, among all suicides, those are the people who are least likely to be dissuaded by the selfishness argument. They will succeed anyway. We shouldn't make the mortality rate higher among other types of suicide just to make it easier for people who aren't responsible for their actions, and those who have responsibilities and are connected to other people who will take collateral damage from their decision.

I shouldn't be amazed that he wouldn't be aware of this. Not from a guy who pines for the days when the WWF was "real" entertainment.

(I'm way over my time writing this, so I haven't proofed it yet. Excuse the errors, please.)

Neighbor disturbance.

I go to sleep at odd times, so I woke up last night at 8:40 to urgent calls for "Help" coming from the wall, out of my next door neighbor's apartment. I called 911 and reported it. As soon as I did, the cries stopped.

Just in case I wasn't too craven to help, I got dressed.  The police came by in just a few minutes. They took my neighbor and his female friend downtown. It was odd, because my neighbor lived alone. This was a guest, an old flame. I could tell, by the fight they were having earlier in the day over who brought up other men (she said emphatically she never did, but he always did).

He's a born-again Christian. A family-oriented sort. I had to break it to him once that my entire belief in Jesus was that he might have actually existed. Contrast him with my neighbor beyond the east wall, who only has loud, drunken, gay sex late at night. I can wear ear plugs if I need to sleep, but some of it is very funny, particularly the battle-cries.  I've never felt compelled to call the police about them.

Yes, (I tell my homophobic family) it doesn't matter if it's hetero- or homosexual. A bad relationship is as bad either way. No legislation against gay marriage will make hetero relationships any better. Though it probably won't make them worse.

However, the real drive toward banning gay marriage (aside from the gay-averse motives obvious to everyone but those who have them) is that in the Bible, God punishes nations. If two gays clandestinely marry, then it's their sin. However, if the nation makes it legal, then the whole country is sinning. It's the same with the issue of choice. If a woman has an illegal abortion, then the sin stops with her, her doctor and her sex partner. If the US makes it legal, then America is sinning.

This is why these private issues turn into public ones. Though even here, the person chooses their beliefs due to unconscious motives. If they're believing that God punishes nations, they have an unconscious motive to do so.

A certain fear of permissive sex does affect a person's religious beliefs. I think that some people just fear a libertine environment thinking that underneath, everyone is inclined to molest children and fuck animals. Call it obsessive- compulsive, perhaps. Sex is basic to human behavior, why wouldn't there be OCD behavior around it? The fear that their sexual environment is out of control bothers some people too much.

It disturbs them enough that stories about a God who dominates people's sex lives really resonate with them. Blind, unconscious fear is no reason to make people suffer or deny them happiness. Our society needs more sexual freedom.




 

Thanksgiving

For an atheist, Thanksgiving is an odd time. For one thing, who are we being "thankful" too? I guess I can think of people I am thankful too. But thinking of fortunate events, or the lack of misfortune during the year, the feeling about that expresses happiness or relief rather than thanks.

The Pilgrims, of course, had someone they could be thankful to. Squanto, the Native American who had earlier been abducted to Europe in slavery, whose village had died off from diseases, but who chose to save the settlers who would have died without his help. That's rare a form of heroism and compassion that needs to be celebrated when it happens.

Being an atheist means, however, does come with a certain principles: one is, if someone gives you a day off with pay, take it. I don't care what they call it. Take it. The other is, never miss an excuse to party and celebrate, no matter what the bullshit behind it is.  Life should include fun, and even in the midst of recalling misery, you still have that need.

I'm severely out of step with my family when it comes to Thanksgiving, but not because of the principle. As you can see, I can reinterpret the holiday to my liking, or even come up with an alternate that just happens to correspond. (Thankwansi anyone?)

Remember first, I've never been married. I don't have children. So, my family includes my dad, my siblings, and their children. I realized in October how little I have in common with them. For my dad and siblings, I've just realize how little I have in common with them. Their Catholic, extremely so. I'm atheist. I'm socially liberal, they're socially very conservative. So, in politics and religion, they're not interested in hearing my side. Besides that, they're not interested in anything I'm interested in. They never ask me what's going on, engage me in conversation. They're not interested in my writing, they won't read it, and that tells me something.

Then I asked myself: when was the last time they gave any emotional support? My first sister helped me when my life collapsed. She set me up in my parent's house. So, yes, she helped me materially. But that was material support without emotional support. In fact, it was under extreme emotional tension between us. I am thankful to her, though.

They've all given me help materially when I needed it. For that I'm thankful. I've paid it back. I bailed Dad's house out of foreclosure.


The nephews and nieces, I wish I had more contact with them, but we've mostly drifted apart despite my wishes.

And, of course, because I'm the opposed to them religiously, socially and politically, that means I'm more or less, disdained, or at least, ostracized. The message is unconscious, and I've always had that feeling from them.

When Mom was alive, I had a different sort of tension with her, and I'll treat that in another post. But I never had a reconciliation with her. I waited for the conversation that never came.

I don't want to wait like that with them. There's no point in going to a place where I'm going to be bored with people who send every unconscious message, and few conscious ones, that I'm not welcome; people who consider my interests to be frivolous and wastes of their time. This hurts, especially when they're supposed to be my closest ties. It drains me and depresses me.

So, I hung away this Thanksgiving. I stayed in, read and wrote. I was happy. I didn't even miss the turkey. I do okay with my own food.

Since this was so successful, I'm going to do the same Christmas, New Year's, and in fact, every week. If I had been well enough thirty years ago, I would have done it then. In fact, I tried, but wasn't able to make any connections outside of the family. But that's the subject of a different post, too.

No, definitely not my family. Not pilgrims either.

Words fail me.

It's hard for me to sum up my life this last month in just a few representative paragraphs. I've been writing as much as I can, as always. I haven't been reading or studying style as much as I should.

I finished Ginger Snaps: The Feral Bond, or the current draft of it, and I've decided to redraft it for several reasons. Foremost, is to teach myself more about writing, learn how to shape the best book I can out of it. The fact is, today's publishing industry leaves little room for error for authors, so I better have things together when I submit my first commercial work because the way it is today, if your first book doesn't sell, publishers are not going to want to touch you again. There was a time when you were "allowed to fail." You were given three books to begin to turn a profit. That's no longer the case. With the Internet, every publisher, and in fact, the general public, can see how well your book is selling, or how badly it's not selling.

I've had days of depression days of anxiety this last month as I haven't seen in a year. I've felt desires, and longings. I've felt disillusioned with old ties, realizing how little I've gotten out of them, and I've felt loneliness.

I've been seeking out new connections. I'm impatient. I feel left out of life right now.

Yes, sometimes your life's narrative just doesn't come together as a story. It just keeps is shapeless randomness no matter how you think of it. When that happens, how can you ever choose what's most important to write?

Novel is complete! (or this draft is)

I completed the epilogue to my hybrid fan fiction novel last night: Ginger Snaps: The Feral Bond. This means after three years I'm finally done!

Or I would be if I would leave it. Now it's time to generate the final draft.

Election Over

I would have felt mortified if Romney had won, and/or if Claire McCaskill hadn't beaten Todd Akin. The latter would have been a disgrace to my state. After two years of election coverage, it's finally.

This is a worse defeat than it first looks. Only gerrymandering kept Repubs from losing the House. Republicans know this. Moreover, some of the most hardline conservatives either went down (Allen West) or made it by the skin of their teeth (Michele Bachmann). The survivors are going to be less audacious.

Conservatives like to make the excuse that Romney was a weak candidate. And which of their other candidates was stronger? They had a large sample of Conservative leadership on display early this year. What they showed me was modern Conservatism produces people who are either dishonest, insane, thieving or two or more of the above. I can't imagine Newt Gingrich, Michele Bachmann or Herman Cain running a campaign that came within ten points and two hundred electoral votes of President Obama. The embarrassment is they spent four years smearing the guy-- this is supposed to be Hitler--  and they couldn't beat him. They still couldn't beat "Hitler."

Republican leadership is not going to get better, because these are the children of Reagan. One generation raised under Conservative auspices and propaganda that isolated them from the real world. It's given the GOP the likes of George W. Bush and Rick Perry, plus a constituency that pretends that there's nothing wrong with those guys.

For the billionaires, like the Koch Brothers, who donated, um, invested millions in PAC money, you can't blame. You can't blame a piece of shit if it still smells after you've dressed it up. He was the best candidate you could get, and sadly, that was the best campaign he could have run for your cause. With Citizens United removing donation limits, they thought they had it all figured out. They some media companies. They redistributed some wealth. Another election like this and those companies might just build a fiberoptic system so that our Internet isn't third world anymore. They might think twice about campaign donations now. They might just come to the conclusion that it's cheaper to be taxed instead.

The election might be over, but the whining has started. From Rush Limbaugh, to Ann Coulter to Carl Rove. They all can't believe all the smear tactics didn't take. They can't believe that people would rather worry about being buried under medical bills for bad luck. No, this is called letting the government do its job, as it does with medicine in every other country in the civilized world.
 
And they're all shocked. Didn't you guys read polls? They did but you didn't believe them. They preferred the Intelligent-Design approach to interpreting polls. Catch up with the times. Polls have become extremely good in the last few decades. When most are pointing the same direction, you can count on the election going that way.

I would have felt guilty if the Dems had lost, though, because this time I didn't volunteer. I needed my time. Still do. Maybe 2014, but let's give it about 20 months before the campaigning starts.

Oh, anybody notice that Puerta Rico voted for statehood? Here's the US flag with PR as the 51st star:

Yeah!

Election? What Election?

I've said almost nothing about politics here, and have made almost no statements about this very important election. That's mainly because whenever I try to write on the topic, I always find a knowledge gap. I might know the general science behind issues like Global Warming. I might know the science and have a strong opinion on reproductive rights, but I have almost no knowledge of the office-holders or candidates. Nor could I trace their actions to results and consequences in the real world. About economics, there are too many gaps in my knowledge to argue my opinions effectively. However, I will declare this: conservative economics cannot be right. I can only declare that, I can't support it or argue it effectively, yet. I'm ashamed of this.

Of course, I'm dependent on absorbing information.  I don't read enough about politics because I'm just not fast enough at reading. Fiction is my profession, and I'm well-advised to fill my reading time with it. Perhaps my reading speed is set to improve as my writing speed has because my Attention Deficit Disorder has finally been adequately treated.

However, it only gets better practice, and that takes time. I wasn't able to ramp it up before this election.

It's one thing to declare my opinion, it's another thing to then back it up with information. I have enough information to guide myself voting, but I don't enough to where I feel secure in urging other people what to vote for.

So, I've taken a pass writing about this election, even though it's so important. If you're a progressive, please vote. I'm saying that from the best information I can feed myself, so far.

The most important election of their lives, so far.

Writing faster.

I have got a better process for writing now, and I'm finishing the epilogue of my fan fiction novel, Ginger Snaps: The Feral Bond. I think I might make record time for the chapter.

I tried to defy the stereotypes and cliches both in werewolf stories and with female characters. It's a fantasy story, but the girls in this, whether from GS or from my imagination, originate in the real world. I didn't avoid their sexuality or appearance, but I think I avoided sexualizing them. There are some male characters, but the female characters drive the plot, and human or semi-beast, they do some remarkable things. It has many characters, and a lot of them are flawed but have a moment of heroism.

Spooky Neighborhood Houses

I spent Halloween watching favorite movies, Ginger Snaps and Ginger Snaps: Unleashed. (More about them later, I'm promising.)

As always, I run late on things, so I put my Halloween tribute blog, but every good horror movie has that afterthought, the scene where the supposedly dead monster comes back to life for another attack. Try to see this entry the same way.

I do live in the coolest neighborhood. There are some really creepy, almost mansion-type houses within walking distance of where I live. This first one isn't too creepy yet, because it's so well kept:

Actually, Lucifer lives here.

If they just neglected it a little, that place could get so creepy within a few years. I'm surprised they didn't decorate it for Halloween, but apparently they're sense of property value won't allow it. Think they're voting for Romney?

Well, the people in this house definitely are, (as shown by the Romney sign) even if their house can creep you out:

The great-grandparents are buried in front yard.

I mean, look at that place! It's got the wall, the fence, the gate (which I bet even creaks.) It's old, brooding, just unkempt enough, it rises three tall stories between autumn colored trees under a gray sky. And I hate to think what enraged spirit is looking down at me from that third story window.

I got brave enough to foolishly draw closer (last spring) like any good Lovecraft character:

Warning: Impalement Danger. Do not let children climb on fence.

 What makes this even more remarkable, this house has a twin, on the same estate, behind the same wall, just down the street. This one is even vacant:

Once owned by a cross-dresser with mother-issues.

 However, this last takes the prize. There is no way you could look at this and not be awed and creeped out:

That chill you feel is just the blood curdling in your veins.

And it gets better as you look toward the side, and see the old servants' quarters where every family who ever lived there are entombed underneath:

"Winthrop, father's tired. Please accompany him back to his vault."

All told, it's a lot of fun with just a very short work. I really do live in the perfect neighborhood, for me, a horror writer. I was just a little late for Halloween with this one, but, I'll build on it next year.

Cat: Adult Growth Spurt?

I brought my cat in to this apartment a year ago. She was four years old, and she was tiny thing. I mean, she barely looked larger than kitten-size. She never got along with other cats, and I moved out of a household with three other cats. She was stressed out there, and before that she was a rescue and spent about a year in a cage because they couldn't place her in any home with other cats.

So, after a year of having a place to herself, and being fed well, I just noticed today: she's grown. I don't mean she's gotten fatter, either. She is now a full-size cat.

As long as I've been around cats, I never knew before: they can have a growth spurt well into adulthood. What's funnier is, she had at least two litters of kittens, because she was found with a litter and pregnant with another one. She was barely more than kitten-size herself.

I just wanted to report: there's yet another reason to find cats creepy.

Scratch my neck, or I'm going for your throat

Changing the Blog Name, One Week.

I'm thinking of a new name, something better than the one I threw together for this. When I started, I just wanted to get into the habit of blogging. I couldn't think of a name then, and I couldn't think of direction the Blog would go in. I was diddling really.

Now, I'm trying to get a serious career as a writer. I'm more in the habit of blogging. So, it's time I professionalize this more.

I Want to Change the Name of This Blog . . .

. . . and can't think of a thing! It's frustrating. If there's one thing that's puzzled me my whole life that's how to present myself. I've never been able to tell how I could fit.

I've been ill since Thursday. Sudden attacks of fatigue, where I'm so tired I can't think, accompanied by headaches, and depression. Whenever I think I might be over it, then I get another headache or a sudden attack of sleepiness. I've had to cancel my plans this weekend.

Of course, I'm worried about this. I wondered if it was post-concussion, because I had a couple of concussions as a child and teen, and only recently have they found out how harmful those can be later in life.

But, tonight it occurred to me: last time I quit caffeine, I had problems for months. Yes, even after the withdrawals or over, I found that I didn't have any energy for the longest time, and yes, of course, I also had headaches and depression. Of course, I was taking far more of it when I quit in 2009, by comparison to the daily amount I quit recently. As I remember, yes, the problems were recurring, like my brain gets into the mood for it again and complains when it isn't there.

And, yes, I was using caffeine as a mood elevator before. Now, I'm not, so my mood crashes sometimes.

I know, why would it have this kind of delayed effect? I don't know. That's why I'm still wondering about it.

Movie Review: Sinister

As generic horror goes, Sinister does what it's supposed to, but don't expect originality or depth here.

Elison (played by Ethan Hawke)-- a true crime author trying to revive his career-- moves into a house where a family was previously murdered, a case that he's investigating for his next book. He does this without telling his wife, Tracy, (played by Juliet Rylance) and children (Michael Hall D'Addario and Clare Foley). He is assisted later on by an unnamed Sheriff's deputy, played in weird, Ed-Norton fashion by James Ransone, whose creepy performance in otherwise non-scary interludes keeps you on your toes. Political junkies might like it when Fred Dalton Thompson shows up to play a very Fred Dalton Thompson role. (I'm so glad he's in this movie and not president. That would be scary.)

Open Class Warfare Declared if Obama Wins?

It's disconcerting to hear employers threaten their employees with layoffs if Obama wins, here, here and here. After years of telling us how terrible and unnecessary class warfare is, that now the wealthy have discovered their love for it.

I wondered why I was hearing about employers doing this for the first time in my life, and believed it was because they hated Obama that much. However, second link from LGF explained it: Citizens' United has made employers campaigning among their employees legal for the first time in my life.

About My Past, Part I

I wanted to avoid writing about my background when I started this blog, partially because I didn't want to make excuses but also out of fear thinking my past would weigh me down, unnecessarily. Social pressure alone made me wish to evade the topic. People want to hear about happy childhoods or none.

Since then, I've learned avoiding my history is actually what's harmful. I'm writing this not to play the victim, or make excuses; I'm telling this story because denial is a prison. No matter how much I want to hide or forget my childhood, without a past, I can't navigate the present and have no material with which to build a future. Therefore, I'm looking back, like Lot's wife. Unless you can turn me into a pillar of salt, you have no right to judge.

 In perspective, my childhood wasn't horrid compared with other ordeals children get subjected to. It's not comparable to a war zone or a concentration camp. Many times, however, the weaker blow at a vulnerable point can do as much damage as a harder one elsewhere. After all, The Titanic sank with light hull damage, but the widespread internal effect was deadly.

People have trouble identifying with my early life because two weird, horrifying medical tragedies burdened my family. Together they made growing up in my parents' house like a David Lynch movie.

First, my mother had bipolar illness. Not so unusual, you think, but hers was a rare syndrome that acted a lot like energetic paranoid schizophrenia. Psychiatrists call this-maybe-it-is-maybe-it-isn't kind of illness NOS, or Not Otherwise Specified. To make this even more odd, my father apparently married her without realizing there was anything amiss, which says enough about his childhood.

And he suffered for it. Her insanity included paranoid delusions toward him and his family. She would do things like teach us a sacred dance to ward off Dad's evil. (I couldn't make that up.) Angels and saints visited her to give her advice and orders.

One night, her most reliable hallucination told her the world was ending. In a frenzy, she roused me and my siblings out of bed and herded us into the basement. (I wondered at the time how being down there was supposed to save us. Noah had an ark, my mother had a basement.)

She'd laugh and cry simultaneously, and would have shouting matches with people who weren't there. (I think she won.) Playing music, usually opera, at ear-splitting volume was not unusual for her during severe episodes; neither was her role-playing biblical characters. That experience was the most traumatic for her children. Later, after being medicated, she'd laughingly call her more outlandish companions pucas. From Irish folklore, that's a whimsical spirit. I'd sometimes see her look almost straight down next to me, and she mouth words, giggling. For those who were there to witness what pucas commanded her to do, however, there was nothing amusing about them.

If you could refer to Stephen King's book, Carrie, my mom was a more bizarre, more Catholic version of Carrie's mother, Margaret White. I immediately recognized that character, played by Piper Laurie, when I saw the 1976 movie, but never admitted it until now.

You never knew what was going to set Mom off, and once her temper was out, it would rage from one thing to another for hours. I lived in fear of her. I won't go into any detail about abuse, because my family would never forgive me. Like the rest of her behavior, it was mind-bending.

Sleep was difficult in the house, partly because my Dad would reliably arrive home from work drunk at 2 a.m., resulting in a loud, scary fight. None of this was crazy, any wife would do that. The chilling she'd shout to him, we're crazy. Not only would her children get no sleep, but she would be set for a horrible mood in the morning.

My father was really out of touch with his family. He and Mom fought so much, he avoided home at all costs. (On the other hand, he also made a lot of money doing it.)

Up until the age of nine, I wasn't informed that she was mentally ill. I thought it was normal and every kid lived under the same stress. This was one thing that put a wall up between me and my peers. All the relatives on her side of the family did a great job of acting like there was nothing wrong. I don't know if it was from a conspiracy to keep my Dad from realizing it, or what. The possibility of insanity was not even in his world, nor in mine. I kept trying to understand her and thought her over-the-top temper had some reason behind it.

After a huge family blow-up over one dark Christmas, she ended up in the hospital “for rest.” So, did Dad, in fact. He came home in two weeks, she stayed in for months. He was simply exhausted and had begun to believe what she told him. Psychotics can bend your mind. Doctors hit him over the head with the fact that there was something seriously wrong with her.

Then, he broke the news to me. It was presented as, “You must now be strong and brave, and help your mother.” He lacked any empathy for what his children had been through. He made sure to tell me that, as the oldest, he was entrusting me with a great responsibility to help my mother and siblings. Meanwhile, he continued to be absent, coming home drunk at 2 a.m. after working so hard. That might be attributed the fact that he was a Madman, and as you could see from the show, they did business like that.

I have mixed feelings about my dad. He never divorced my mom; No, he saw love as duty first. He made a lot of money, and I hate to imagine how much worse things might have been if we were in poverty. To explain my Dad's ignorance, or put it into context, he was medically the most inept person imaginable. I once saw him turn athlete's foot into a life-threatening illness. He grew up instilled with certain beliefs: 1) God was supposed to be responsible for health, not you; 2) The almighty would forgive ignorance if you prayed and went to Mass enough; 3) There was no mental illness that couldn't be diagnosed as sin and treated by priests, and 4) psychiatry was a scam. Not that these were actual teachings of the Catholic Church, mind you, but that was the way he practiced them.

If there was one thing he admired in Mom, it was her devout faith. I imagine it stunned him to have to face the fact that she was mentally ill, but it got to where he couldn't deny it anymore.

From the time I was nine until I was fifteen, she went into the psychiatric wards for three to six months at a time. Upon discharge, she went off her medications, and within two months was back in the ward for another stint. Rinse and repeat many times and that was my late childhood and early teen years. Things reached a peak when, with my sister's friends in the house, she fired a shotgun into the kitchen floor. To be fair, she was trying unload it, and shooting it was accidental, but it should have never been out and loaded to begin with. She was hospitalized for a longer time after that.

They finally put her on Prolixin, a medication injected every two weeks rather than taken by mouth daily. With that, her insanity took a long hiatus; and everyone in the family, but her, spent months taking sighs of relief. Her psychosis remained under control close to 25 years, before she was allowed to relapse with tragic results.

While she was medicated, I could see she how bored and disappointed she was with the real world. She had been hallucinating since grade school. I could imagine how it must have been: having saints and angels visit and give you assignments; being a player in a great battle of good vs. evil; having all kinds of beautiful, talking pucas helping you. Then you take some medicine, and it's all gone.

She had always thought the hallucinations to be her connection with God. When they were gone, it baffled and saddened her. I think it also made her lonely.

When she was medicated and purportedly well, she either dismissed her behavior as funny, refused to talk about it, or didn't remember. The last is pretty common with mania. The memory stops working. Taken together with what she did otherwise, however, it made me an angry child.

In hindsight, I also had some impulse control issues due to Attention Deficit Disorder, diagnosed in adulthood. I overheard my mother talking to relatives about it. She didn't believe in getting it treated, didn't like medicating children, and thought it was a normal phase I'd get over. She reassured me. I didn't think about it again until decades later when my diagnosis came through. With that action, she determined I would never thrive academically nor socially. Worse, I did things throughout childhood that made me feel horrible about myself. I went into adolescence with a lot of rage and crushing guilt.

As a Catholic, I was commanded to honor my parents. I think I fulfilled the letter of that, even if I'm now an atheist. It was fair to do so. My mother was mentally ill and wasn't responsible for her actions, but that's a judgment a child can't make. I waited for her to ask me questions about what I experienced, but always when it got uncomfortable for her, she would chuckle― in surprise, I think― and the conversation stopped. I waited patiently for the discussion that never came. At the end, her health was so poor, and she was insane again, so I wasn't going to press her on it. I never had a reconciliation with her.

I know what they say about forgiving and forgetting. The latter is impossible: I wish I could forget. The former misses the point. I did forgive my mother, but it did nothing for the pain I felt, nor for the damage that was done to what I feel and what I can feel. Only she could have done something about those when she was medicated and purportedly well, but she didn't. She never faced up to the responsibility of what she did.

My mother did love me, about that I have no doubt, but that just made it even worse. When you've experienced love going that wrong in your most intimate childhood relationship, it shatters your reverence for love and leaves you suspicious, cynical, and numb. You feel corrupt and soiled. From there, it's very difficult to get anywhere good in just a lifetime.

It was a blow at a vulnerable point, and I was taking water. My brothers and sisters were a little better off. They were younger and didn't experience so much time alone with her.

But another chronic illness would rock my family even worse. This one suffered by one of my siblings, and even stranger and rarer than my mother's.

Ginger Snaps: The Feral Bond, the Story is Done

I'm glad to say, I put up the two final chapters of my hybrid fan fiction novel, Ginger Snaps: The Feral Bond. It's not quite the end of the novel, however. I still have an epilogue to write. Of course, I'm wanting to give the whole thing just one more rewrite. That probably wouldn't be the most responsible thing to do. I don't know . . . This story is never going to pay, it's never going to gain me any prestige.

I started it originally because, well, my life had collapsed. I lost my mind, lost my job, lost my apartment, and was bankrupt. I was just out of the hospital after Electro-Convulsive Therapy. I had always wanted  to write. I had given up on a writing career the decade before, and I had nothing else left to lose, literally, (except maybe my PC, which needed an upgrade) so, I decided to do life right this time, it's not often somebody gets a second act. (Despite what F. Scott Fitzgerald said, they do exist in American lives.)

So, as a writing exercise, to see if I had the drive and to develop my skills, I began to write fiction based on somebody else's work. Remember, this was only to test my drive. I wasn't going to stretch for too much creativity, because I didn't trust my creativity just then.

Sometime I will have a blog entry called, "Why Love Ginger Snaps." I consider it to be a landmark work of horror. It's a new subgenre I would call "Blood Opera." That's where there's heavy crossover into real-life themes and issues between the characters are made central to the horror element.

Unfortunately, that's all the time I have today.

Yes, I've been neglecting this blog. I've been in the obsession stage of writing my hybrid fan fiction novel, The Feral Bond, where I have a hard time justifying any writing time that doesn't go into the book. Estimating 12-18 more work days. This one I might just be over-estimated for once. It's progressing, which is why I'm posting here today.

My underestimating the time a project will take has become a joke. It's not like I've been slacking off or I've been distracted or creatively blocked. Just getting the words down on the page correctly has taken this long. I did have to rewrite the first few scenes, but I was done with that weeks ago. 

I thought I would have this thing complete by the end of summer. At the time, I thought it was just twelve pages. Well, it quickly expanded to over forty and one chapter twinned into two. I'm putting them both up together to complete the story. 

I could only work as hard as I can as much as I can and hope I get faster at this. At least my estimates are now a lot more mathematically based. How long does it take to create an exploration draft. How long does it take to revise, rewrite and then edit. I now have a measure to go by per page. 

In other news, I have a sixteen-year old fan in Australia who loves The Feral Bond. I've been giving him help on his writing, though very slowly for much the same reason why I haven't posted here.

 

Not even a Little

Caffeine and I just had another falling out after I discovered my blood pressure was high. It's the latest of several times that I've quit. Each time there has been an immediate loss of energy. This time I've slept for half of the last 48 hours. Though I have to say, the dreams have been kick-ass. I thought I was lucky to have no headache, until it kicked in this morning. Then, I had my body aches.

What's funny is, I wasn't consuming a lot of it. Maybe a cup of coffee a day and up to 20oz's of Mountain Dew. Apparently, my body thought I was. I had headaches, disrupted sleep, urinary difficulties, none of which I associated with caffeine. Then I had my blood pressure sky-rocket. Apparently, I can't handle any of it. 

Even after all the trouble I've had with caffeine in the past, I still try to use it again. No use denying: I like the mild rush it gives me and I like the flavors of the coffee and the sweetness of Mountain Dew. I'm glad it's caffeine and not a harder drug.

I called yesterday a "sick day" but I still got a lot of writing done, I'm proud to say, much more than calculated I would, for once. 

My Blood Pressure's Telling Me Something

Okay, maybe switching between projects as I've been doing isn't that good of an idea. A check of my blood pressure today revealed it is out of control. For now, I'm putting it down to too much caffeine. (I like Mountain Dew a little too much.) Of course, quitting is going to be a headache, literally and figuratively, and then I'm going to be sleepy as hell all the time for about a month. It might be a bit worse than that, too. I also might be using too much salt. It's easy to get careless about those things. I should be getting more exercise, but that's really the first thing that goes if I'm behind schedule that day.

I've had to stop going to the writers' group. Until my productivity problem is solved, getting critique is of little good. I have to immerse myself in producing things now and try to get faster. At least now I have some initial estimate as to how long a project takes from first draft to final according to pages. The time is appalling, but consistent with how much time overruns I have. Writing the first draft is easy. Two hours per page at most. Editing and rewriting it are terrible. Add five more hours per page to go from first-to-final draft, if I don't have any setbacks, such as finding a scene conceptually isn't working. That always means creating a whole other scene from scratch, which generally takes longer than an ordinary first draft, because it wasn't the easiest thought I had.

Therefore, without setbacks, I can now expect a twenty page story to take 140 hours. Three-and-a-half work weeks. Then, I'd better add about a week for possible setbacks. Twenty pages would take 180 hours. That's a few days over a month. That is painfully slow.

If those measures fail, I might just have to concentrate on one project rather than switching between several. The problem is, and has always been, I'm not fast enough. I'm getting frustrated at not getting anything done.

For troubles outside writing: I have a friend who's in hardship right now and I might have to share my apartment for a while. I'm not as concerned about this now as I was yesterday. It looks like it won't happen. Still I offered, even though I like my privacy.

Then the situation with my Dad is not looking good. I have to go to his place now and then to help out, and when I do, it depresses me. More about my Dad will follow later. An autobiographical post is one of the big projects I've been working on.

Chilling the Neighbor Relations

I live in an interesting little apartment building. The guy living on one side is gay and has loud, howling sex with his dates. From the guy on the other side, I hear loud Christian Radio coming through my walls.

I was talking that second neighbor today, I needed to borrow something, when he mentioned I should consider tuning in to 91.5 FM. He said, "It's Christian radio. Do you believe in Jesus."

I searched for an answer that wouldn't offend him too much, but instead came up an honest one. "I think he probably once existed." There followed a moment of icy silence.

"In all the time you live, that's the best you can do?"

"Yes, sorry."

"No, I feel sorry for you." Of course he does. I was thinking of a comedy bit where we argue about who's sorrier, already done in Dr. Strangelove. But it's better to quit while I'm ahead.

I wouldn't bet the house on it, but I think there's pretty good chance that Jesus the man did not even exist. Frank Zindler makes a strong argument in "The Jesus the Jews Never Knew." There are no reliable secular authorities that recorded him, including a  few who were in Galilee and would have written about him. There's no record of him at the time from Jewish authorities. In fact, it's impossible to say Christianity even arose from Palestine. It could have started from anywhere.

I'm not as given to this theory as Zindler, but it has merit. Why would the Founders of the Church lie so terribly? Why did L. Ron Hubbard or any cult leader lie?

Since our conversation, Christian Radio has been playing quieter from the West. From the East, I expect more from Sodom and Gomorrah tonight. And I don't mind. It's much quieter here than the place I used to live in. I guess I could crank up some hetero porn to cancel the noise scientifically, but I'm used to sleeping with earplugs and they do just find.

A Guerrilla in Bright Orange Camouflage.

In my lifetime, we've moved from the Modern Era, to the Post-Modern era, and now we're in the clutches of The Spam Era.

Spam has ruined so many things that used to be great about computing. I mean, for one thing, you could download freeware programs without fear that the Chinese or Russians aren't going to hijack your computer, use it to break into the Pentagon, and load it with kiddy porn just to make if funny.

However, now there's people-spam. Called guerrilla marketing.

I remember an incident a few years ago in writers' group, a different one than what I go to today. There was one balding guy with long gray beard who showed up. He had a lost, anxious look in his eye. After introductions before the meeting, the first thing he says was that he took this online course from Professor Waddle-Waddle from Corn State University on constructing strong sentences and how much it helped him. I immediately think, guerrilla marketer. He doesn't say anything else, doesn't participate in the meeting, just wears the same stressed expression. 

So, when the next meeting comes, he starts the same way with somebody else. If he were there to improve his writing, also, or had any original interest prior to being subverted to become human spam, I would have had more respect. In one way, I felt sorry for the guy, though. He seemed really nervous and uncomfortable doing this, like an invisible guy stood behind him pointing an invisible gun at his head.

After two more meetings of doing this and not getting anybody interested, the guy left without any further interest. You can put email spam in your trash box. I wish the spammers would back off, because I hate feeling that way about people.

Nothing really.

Still juggling four projects, none of which look near getting done. I hate feeling stuck. I hate having ideas I can't put down and try out. Like, I knew how this novel was going to end eighteen months ago, and I still haven't got it down. What's holding it up?

Details on how the characters get from one point that I've thought out, through a plot line that I haven't, to another that I thought out. You might say what I've thought out have been snapshots.

Then as I write and I put things in, I spot interesting or necessary detail. For example, take scene with two characters, Character A, Character B. Character A is connecting phone wires. Character B is holding the flashlight. Character B begins to talk crazy. In outline, that's what I've figured out in the scene.

When I'm writing, however, I can't stop there. What does Character B say that sounds crazy? What does she do as she's talking crazy? What were they talking about before she did?

Along the way, of course, the dialog has to be interesting. It has to sound enough like real speech. So, while you're writing this, Character B lets slip something, something which either suggests a plot hole or is interesting enough to require development three chapters down.

So, even if I outline, I never know how long something is going to take. Every  outline is a story without the detail. You add in the details, and you might have a totally different story from what you started with.

That's what I've been contending with.

Yet another story started.

I needed something to read at the writer's group. I swore I would always bring in something there. However, everything I'm working on now is either something I've read already which is under rewrite, something that's a much later chapter than the parts of read, or something that's under complete reconstruction.

So, I went into my short story folder and found something I started a few years ago. I worked on it for a little, and found that I liked it. I took it in for a reading.

I met resolution, but I now have a lot of things started, and more story ideas which I don't have a chance to finish yet.

In other writing news: I got a rejection. Any creative writer has to learn that acceptances and rejections are mostly a matter of luck. If you're professional, submitting a work is gambling without money. On duotrope.com you can see what percent acceptance rate specific publications have. If a writer knows statistics, I'm guessing they can take the percent acceptance of every magazine they've submitted to, compare it to one's own acceptance percentage and figure out if they're doing better or worse than average.

In one way, I'm fascinated by this, in another, I recoil in fear. It's an objective way to find out how I measure up to other writers. In a another way, it makes the competition with other other writers explicit. Really, I'd rather live in a world where the spirit of competition doesn't effect the type or quality of stories the audience if offered.

There's probably not a better time to be a writer, because even if you have a story that's rejected everywhere, you could still self-publish it without risk. Of course, if the stories are rejected everywhere, you better have a pretty good handle as to why, and it better not be a quality issue, because you may be showing the world the worst examples of your writing. This might make it impossible to ever get paid for anything else.  

I'm Not Slacking; I'm Waiting for Parts.

Working on a short story, Maternal Instincts, for publication, I hope. However, it's being difficult. The first scenes I wrote aren't working. I'm using Ingermanson's Snowflake method, even though MI is a short story, not a novel. I'm experimenting, figuring that it might save me a draft or two if there's more work on the front end. Tonight, I just changed a major character, and it solves two plot problems. It's a little disorienting. I have to get used to thinking of the character differently. This might also require some research on youtube.

Fact is, this is the part of writing that doesn't look like work, because I just sit there and wait for my mind to solve the problem, with no idea how long it will take. Usually, it looks to anyone like I'm goofing off. However, so far it hasn't helped if I try to force it out of my brain, or if I let my attention wander. The answer doesn't seem to come any faster. However, I'll try the squeeze-the-answer-out method next time. What definitely helps is making sure I'm well rested.

People don't realize this, but fiction writing is not one skill. There are many involved. The skill set includes plotting, dialog, description, word choice, outlining, production, visualizing, characterization . . . and at least several others. Writers will vary in their mastery, or lack of it, in all of them. Story troubleshooting would be one of them. 

However, it's a very small part of the process, so I don't often have the excuse that I'm "waiting for parts." The same with plot development. So, I won't look deceptively lazy very often.  

Dance? Take three steps back, one step forward.

Yesterday, I cut 1,400 words out of Chapter 35 of my novel, Ginger Snaps: The Feral Bond. Today I wrote 500 new ones to replace the scene that didn't work. The old had enough conflict, but it just didn't serve to point the story to its end. The chapter now looks like a mess, but I'm pulling it together.

I realized just tonight one problem I might be having is that I still proceed as though the my attention deficit is still a problem. That is, I check, and check again on what I'm doing, on what I've done. I anticipate forgetting or screwing up. This is unnecessary. I don't have to poke along and checking and double checking. I'm going to try to remember that at all times, and maybe I can build my confidence with it, and break some of these habits.

The difference Strattera makes in my life is significant. I really wish it were diagnosed and treated in childhood because recognizing, diagnosing and treating it in adulthood has taken decades, and it was disguised by other problems.

Today, I had a eureka moment and figured out how I get the characters from where they are to where they have to be through four feet of snow? I was stuck on that for a long time. I had already written scenes that hid the continuity error.

I can never count on when I'm going to have the answers to a challenge a chapter gives me. Moreover, it seems no matter how well I have it outlined, there's always something I didn't foresee, something I didn't count on.

I've never known how some writers do detailed outlines. I'll try it with Randy Ingermanson's Snowflake Method on my next novel. (In fact, I've adapted it for short story and I'm using it currently.) I tried it for the last for chapters of The Feral Bond, with some success. What it really does is give you more confidence, but I still ran into the problem that I can't see some important details until I have other details created, which means, doing it on the fly when I'm writing it.

Though I've heard of writers who are productive machines at it (Asimov, King) but they also had years of obsessive practice before they were known, and Asimov apparently was an Asperger's Savant, and they're in a league all their own.

No, I have an average mind, I'm under-practiced, under-trained, and I have to compensate with hard work.

Stress Fracture.

I worked long hours for many days in a row. I don't know, I think it was eight days, maybe more, eleven hours each. By Friday, I had a migraine. Yes, I've had them diagnosed, but not really treated with anything. I can give myself an aura by changing the color of my text on the screen. Everything grows dark for a few seconds. Usually, that doesn't get any worse, occasionally, though . . .

Anyway, the way I can tell it's a migraine, it hurts like crazy and responds to absolutely nothing. I ended up knocking myself out with a somewhat reckless combination of Tramadol and Benadryl. That put me down for Friday night and most of Saturday.

Part of what frustrated me was the fact that I could prove to myself that I was working very hard all those hours, and switching between five projects, I only got one of them done: the final draft of the first chapter of Ginger Snaps: The Feral Bond (serious fan fiction, BTW). I didn't get that done until Sunday, after concentrating all my time on it.

I expected to have a lot more done. I can only hope I get more efficient, because if it continues like this, whatever small chance of turning this writing whimsy into a living is gone.

Anyway, so, now I the other projects. I have a deadline tomorrow, a personal one, that I'm not going to meet.

For Sunday afternoon and night, I helped my dad and brother, my dad being old and infirm, and my brother being completely disabled. Monday, I got to relax with a friend, at the cost of not having anything to read at the writers' group. They already heard the first chapter, the one I corrected and rewrote.

I'm reading through an anthology of horror stories, some of them seem to be barely horror stories. Except at least a few don't appear to be horror stories to me. The Other Grace by Holly Phillips, is about a girl losing her memory along with all emotional connection to her family and friends, who has to make a choice to either be who she was or be somebody new. It's a great story, that centers on what a person's identity really is, but I have to ask, is it really horror? I guess it is, and it does remind me of The Twilight Zone. Even so, the abruptness of the ending surprised me. I thought it was reaching for a lot more.

Of course, look at me. I complicate up whatever story I write. And a short story, Maternal Instincts, needs to be restructured because I was building it into a novel.

Financially, it doesn't make sense to write short stories. Except, a novel takes so damn long. If you don't write the occasional short story, I could easily see your publisher, your agent and readership might completely forget you exist. If your novels sell, you could always stick those short stories in a collection and sell that. Or get a gimmick that ties them together as Ray Bradbury did with The Martian Chronicles and The Illustrated Man.

Anyway, things are back to normal now. I'm scheduling myself every day, and basically sticking to it. A great improvement in my life. My psychiatrist thought so today when I talked to her. Finally there's a med that seems to improve things rather than just keep me from getting depressed about it.

I Said, No Time Like NOW.

I kept my efforts divided among project, but got impatient. Starting Friday, I concentrated on one project: that was the rewrite of Chapter 1 of The Feral Bond. I'm now on Chapter 35, and I learned a lot since writing those early chapters, so I went back to apply it. Those first two chapters determine people's expectations for the rest of the work. So, I wanted them up before the next revision is done.

And unless I my speed takes off, that's going to be a long time. It took me fifteen hours to correct, revise and rewrite three times. That averages out to about five pages per hour, which, of course, varies.

But if I'm going to be juggling projects making no progress, until I get fed up and concentrate on one, it means my productivity might be directly proportional to my frustration.

Writers' Technique

I had a migraine last night. When that happens, I'm always desperate to do anything to get rid of the pain. I took Tylenol, Tramadol and Benadryl (just in case it was sinus instead). When those didn't help, I took another Benadryl so I could at least fall asleep.

This was a mistake. I got up four hours later than I planned, still feeling the effects, and I'm still feeling them now three hours later. I'll remember what I had forgotten, don't mix Tramadol and Benadryl.  It's just the time of year where I'm tempted to do that.

I got the headache after editing and rewriting. It's hard to tell right now, but I think I'm getting better and faster at it. The edit I'm concentrating on is the first chapter of Ginger Snaps: The Feral Bond. I think I was just a little wordy with it, and tried to stuff too much information into the dialog and description.

So, I covered 20 pages yesterday.  Finished the redraft, started and almost finished another. Now I'm on a third, but there's not so much left to change. Next draft should be the last.

I've tried to improve my writing skills. I study grammar and style every day I can. Two books I'm reading through on the subject are The MLA's Line by Line: How to Edit Your Own Writing by Claire Kehrwald Cook and Plain English Handbook 8th Edition by J. Martyn and Anna Kathleen Walsh. (I look up the 9th edition on Amazon and it costs $34, used!).  I recommend both these books. The first one is better practically speaking, but the second is better at giving you a complete description of the rules.

You have to perfect your craft as a writer. Whenever anybody says they want to write, it's difficult what to advise them because you don't know what their educational background is, or what level of skill they're starting out with. Such as, Stephan King was writing when he was nine-years-old, and kept it up. So, he was already an old hack by the time he was in college.

For people who didn't start out with a writer's education and suddenly decided they want to write in their 20s and 30s or later, I advise you get used to failing first. You probably have as story your writing that inspires you, except when you write. You can't understand why it looks so bad.

Don't look for promise and encouragement for your early work, because it's going to look unpromising. You're going to look terrible in anything when you just start out, with unless you're a Asperger's savant. Even then, you can't count on it. Writing takes so many distinct skills. There's the initial visualizing, there's story construction, paragraph structure, sentence mechanics and so on.

Pondering whether writers are born or made is a silly question. Of course, writers are born like everybody else. What must be done to make them will vary from person to person.

Sneaky Racism: Reclaiming Racial Slurs for General Use

I've met a few people, an ex-roommate and a brief dating relationship in particular, who have said the N-word can't be racist if you use it to insult White people, too. They would never tell me why they felt so much endearment to the N-word that they thought it had to be rescued and not forgotten. To the ear, the word sounds both stupid and ugly, an illiterate derivation of "negro." It doesn't make sense given what other -er words, like "teacher," or "archer" mean. A word like "asshole" sounds better. They also never told me why it was such a great insult that they needed it in their arsenal.

I didn't make my point with them very well then, and so I thought about it and have finally figured out exactly why this exercise bothered me. First, did they going to use it against White people and not Black people?  Of course not. That would be racist in their Teabilly minds. No, after sanitizing the term racially, they intended to use it in a "racially neutral" way. It's affirmative action scorning. They felt n***** wasn't racist as long as fifteen percent of people they directly insulted with were White.

So, in their minds, if they called thirteen Black people n*****, then they better find two White people to insult with it or face their racially sensitized consciences, or worse, have their neighbors talk about it. "Oh, Bill's not really racist. He'll catch up on his quota soon."

If you're really behind, though, I guess you'll seem like an asshole when you call a white co-worker a n***** for using "infer" rather than "imply." But only until you explain to him that it's all in the interest of fighting racism in your very soul. He should understand. He doesn't want to be a racist either, and you can return the favor by letting him call you one in six months when he's under quota.

The other thing I wish I had said was, "Oh, you believe it isn't racist to call a white person a shiftless, sloppy, inarticulate black person, who deserves servility?" It's too bad I didn't find those words, because in fact, when I substitute the usual insulting definition of n*****, it's clear that it's even more bigoted against African Americans if you use it to insult Whites, too.

I did try to say this but wasn't very clear. My disdain alone didn't get it across. However, they were pretty ignorant to not grasp this already without somebody bringing to a conscious level for them. Other people know it even if they don't know how to explain it.

Racism

I grew up in South St. Louis. There was a lot of fear and anger directed toward the African Americans in the North and Central parts of town. The neighborhood was overwhelmingly Catholic, and ethnically Irish, Italian, German.

In the 60s and 70s, it would be fair to say that racism was casually practiced, and the N-word was used in polite conversation to approving nods and enthusiastic giggles. As a child, you never know what history might have led to this, (definitely a subject of another post) but I found the hatred aimed at African-Americans bewildering. I took some bullying and taunting because of it. Yet, there was one weakness I had, and that was jokes. My childhood was tough, and I was willing to laugh at anything, including jokes directed toward me. I had a too-well-developed sense of irony as a kid.

We didn't see African-Americans that often. Yes, I heard that so-and-so friend went to North St. Louis and got jumped, but we seldom saw them in our neighborhood. When they came down, they were just as likely to get beaten or harassed as any white kid in a north city neighborhood, except I think, the police would be far less helpful to the victim.

People complain about "political correctness," but if my memory serves, in the absence of African-Americans, racism was constantly refreshed and reinforced through jokes. Yes, whoever could tell the grossest, coldest, racist joke was pretty certain to have some status in the short-term. The way you hate n** was a reliable conversation piece. It sometimes turned my stomach.


The Catholic nuns who taught me deserve criticism in many ways, but I'll give them credit for this: they did really try to teach tolerance in their own heavy-handed way. We had a particular nun who would rant against it. They took us on a field trip to see "Sounder" staring Cecily Tyson.  (The priests now . . . that's for a different post.)

Unfortunately, among my peers as they reached adolescence, tolerance became something to rebel against, even though the source of the racism was the parents. I think that the same people who rebelled against tolerance are the ones who now have more subtle complaints against "political correctness." I guess the jokes are just too good to give up. For a teenager, often times something doesn't need to rebellious, it just has to look that way. The cigarette companies have made a fortune off that.

 

Anticipating Too Much Incompetence

I have extolled on the virtues of pessimism, that is, where appropriate. There is a such thing as going too far, of course. One example happening to me today.

I take some drugs for physical problems. I have my prescriptions at a low-cost community pharmacy. My plan has changed recently, but the community clinic for which the pharmacy is a part wouldn't call in the prescriptions to another pharmacy. That is to say, the insurance provider couldn't get them to return calls and neither could I. No, to get them to move I had to make a doctor's appointment. While this was going on for weeks, of course, I'm running short of meds. Today, I ran out of a particularly important one. I called it in. I couldn't get a person on the phone for an expedited refill, so I entered the prescription number and asked that they expedite it.

When I go in this afternoon, there's a big line, and a sign up saying the computers are down and they can only take pick ups. Of course, I'm wondering if they got my message, listened to it, and whether they had time, with the computer being down.

I almost gave up and would have called for the refill at the pharmacy in my old neighborhood, which was seven miles away. Given all the trouble I had, I was anticipating more incompetence, which in turn raised my blood pressure. I told  myself it was irrational to fold before I knew whether they had filled it or not.

To my surprise, they had.

It reminds me of the time at my writers' group where our leader was waiting outside the door to our usual venue, a gallery. She had the key, but didn't have the alarm code, and was afraid of setting off a false alarm, which would cost us a fine. She was waiting for the caretaker to call her back. After talking about it, she remembered she had just asked the guy to leave the alarm off, that she had the key. So, she wondered, had he done as she asked? There was no sign telling her, by why would one leave sign saying that your burglar alarm was de-activated? That would be even more incompetent.

So, she tried the lock, no alarm. We were able to go in and go on with our readings.

It's in human nature to try to find a pattern and anticipate things. Optimism and pessimism describe not just prediction, but they dictate strategy. If you've had problems with an organization in the past, you'll think it'll be a problem in the future. But errors in anything like pharmaceuticals, are rare. Usually you can call in and they will listen to your request and expedite the your order, even on a day after a holiday.

But it's when the usual goes wrong, anxiety and frustration overcompensate. Afterward, you begin to respond to the residual fear and anger itself rather than anything that's really going on.

Even after I reason all of that out, I still end up anticipating based on the emotional response in the past and not anything actually happening in the present real world. It goes to show how limited knowledge of your own behavior can be.

Saving it up.

I couldn't actually rest this weekend, so I set aside today. I'm restless, I want to write. I'm hoping I get up tomorrow spring-wound for writing. I have been anxious to get back to the stories, Ginger Snaps: The Feral Bond first. The short story, Maternal Instincts.

I've written out my schedule for tomorrow. Back to work then.    

Respite, sort of.

Had to stop writing and do something else for a while. So, I went over and helped my Dad around his house. He's too feeble to do a lot of things now, so I do mostly cleaning. It's hard seeing his slide, and it was hard seeing it with my mother, or anyone.

We try for immortality and instead we end up extending age a decade or two with diminishing physical and mental capacities. Yet, when faced with that or death, despite what they says when they're young, people choose overwhelming to fade away.

I read a blog by an acquaintance about my age. He said (paraphrasing) unlike people he sees languishing in nursing homes, he's going to kill himself first. My response, which I kept to myself, was, "Don't you think the people you see in nursing homes thought of that?" When it came to pulling the trigger, though, or the switch, or taking those pills or that cyanide, they procrastinated. Until they reached the nursing home level, and still they either procrastinate, or, as horrifying as it is to anybody younger, they find that they're happy enough living that way. They can deal with it.

Fact is, your brain changes as you grow older. Previously boring things become entertaining.  You go from punk rock to Mozart. Ultimate Frisbee to Sudoku.

I'm not young. I'm finally happy with what I'm doing and where I'm at, with a caveat: I wish I had been doing it when I was twenty. I don't have as much time to accomplish what I wish to. I hope I'm blessed with staying healthy and sharp in old age, because apparently, I'm not be able to retire, and never, ever wanted to retire anyway.

However, sometimes your body and mind insist. Having ruined my previous years, I don't have a choice but to gamble, or to continue to live sad.  

Anyway, my real rest comes tomorrow. Yesterday, even with helping my Dad I wrote 300 words nonfiction and edited another 600.

Handles

Now I know everyone who has ever read this blog is wondering: how did you ever come up with such terrible name?

It has to do with my Youtube (Wentshow), Twitter (manfromfred) and Fanfiction.net (Madman Fred) handles, the town I used to live in, (Wentzville, hence the handle Wentshow) my broken confidence, the fact that writing horror was the only thing I had going on at the time (hence the "creepy" part).  I don't think the "geek" part requires an explanation.

To all of this, add the fact that I really didn't know what I wanted to do with this blog. It was a little too early in the game to promote my writing. I wasn't inclined then to do research for my opinion articles, I had sworn not to talk about my personal life, and I really wasn't doing anything anybody would find interesting then.

However, now that I'm writing every day and submitting work, the blog has a direction. More than that, I've repealed the rules on not talking about my personal life. So, they will some autobiographical posts.

Now that I'm posting here almost every day, there's a reason for whipping this blog into shape. However, I haven't decided on the new name yet. It'll change when I come up with a better one.

I'm tired and I'm getting depressed now. I've been cloistered in my apartment writing and reading since Tuesday. I've been working hard and I haven't been rewarded yet. But then again, I haven't been working hard for very long.

Attention Deficit (1) followed by Promises

With so many children being treated for attention deficit these days and the numbers continuing the grow, some people think it's an illness concocted by psychiatrists and drug companies to grow revenues.

About this, I have to disagree strongly. Granted, it may be over-diagnosed. So much psychiatry needs to be supported more in neurology the way theoretical physics grounds cosmology. We haven't reached that point yet. Psychiatry is behind other medicine in development.

Two psychiatrists have now diagnosed me with Adult Attention Deficit Disorder. In neither case did I seek or suggest that diagnosis. The only thing I know is, I'm on a higher dose of the medication than ever. A much higher dose than the previous psychiatrist put me on (and subsequently, taken off when I lost my medical coverage and had to switch psychiatrist). I have to watch my blood pressure now, though Strattera is not in the same class as Ritalin, which is amphetamine.

The difference, though is so profound that I'm willing to take a larger risk of a heart attack. I hope readers noticed I've been keeping this blog daily now. That's only one thing that's changed. (Continue)

Violence in Stories (a ramble)

The first thing you learn about stories, the first thing they'll tell you in creative writing class, is that they're about conflict. As a general rule, the more that's at stake in the conflict, the more suspenseful the tale will be. In real life, however, conflicts that have a lot at stake are resolved either in violence or in the shadow of its threat.


So, of course, one way to raise suspense in a story, to tell your reader that there's a lot at stake is with violence.

So much has been written about the feedback between violence in the media and real life violence. On some boards, I've seen people compare our country to the Roman Empire for our violent entertainment. I had to point out one important distinction: the Romans actually killed people for entertainment, in their arenas and in their theaters. It was what we'd call today a "live" snuff film. But without film, whenever they wanted to have the experience again, they had kill somebody else.

We may have wrestling and various ultra-fighting leagues, but we don't actually kill people, nor deliberately and actually injure them (though we don't mind if  the risk is there). It's an important moral step between enacting simulated death and injury and really committing it-- and for entertainment.

Yet, is there a cross-over, a feed back? I'd have to do more research. I'd say there's apparently a feedback with some people. Hardly with all people. The Japanese have an awful amount of violence in their entertainment. But they have never had the crime rate we do.

I think it has to do with the amount of real-life fear. If the person absorbs violent entertainment worlds and unconsciously learns from those stories what the state of the real world is, then there can be a correlation between fictional violence and real life violence. In fact, it's correlated with a lot of other things. I believe all of the colorful conspiracy theories that spring up are the results of the level of fear, and also being informed by entertainment what is possible in the real world.

I do put graphic violence in my horror writing. Why? The unconscious being what it is, I don't think I'll ever know why, and I'm bound to deny it if I ever get close. My rationalized reason for doing so is it creates memorable images for delivering themes. They're also things far worse than what a reader will ever experience in real life, which by comparison, then becomes a relief. People need to be told how much things could be, and thank their luck. That is, presuming they don't see the fictional environment as the real one.

What I say there might be true of a particular violent event or act. However, a world where there are ghosts, vampires and werewolves is actually something of an improvement over the real one. At least in that fantasy world, an afterlife is unambiguously demonstrated, so it gives hope.

Now I'll get a little political. Vampires and werewolves are actually easier to deal with in most fantasies than corporate persons and global warming are in real life. At least you can put a stake through the heart of a vampire. If only we could have done that to BP after Deepwater Horizon fiasco, or to TEPCO after Fukushima.

No, in real life, we just have to live with the evil, and what's worse, it's not too different enough from us.

Sex in Stories

I was once shocked to be criticized in a writers' group for having a character (a ghost of a fifteen year old girl) talk suggestively about having sex with another girl. I was so surprised. My purpose wasn't to sexually entice anybody. The character was heterosexual, but was trying to describe, without any words for it, how violated something (non-sexual) made her feel. So she said it was like being groped by a woman, and she added a few other details.  My purpose was so at odds with the other writer's understanding, that when she said I was making unnecessary Lesbian suggestions, I had to ask, where? Because in my mind, the character was saying it repulsed her. (I want to make it clear that I have nothing against homosexuality. I just wanted to show that the character was repulsed at having another girl touch her intimately.)

This made me think about a few other issues. I'm a male, heterosexual, and I frequently write female characters. I have to be careful to be accurate enough that women readers don't put my work down in either disgust or disbelief. This might be hard to do, because even within a gender, there's a lot of variance on what's regarded as "normal," or even imaginable. Such as (and to switch genders for a second), a sex act that one hetero guy thinks is normal, and he runs in social circles where it's accepted enough. He could look completely offensive and alien to men outside his social group. I guess anal sex would be an example of this. With the female sex, it's the same way. Except I'm a male with a man's libido trying to figure this out.

The more important issue is: I must ask myself if I write a scene with sex if I'm writing it to indulge in my own pleasure. It's a serious question, especially when underage characters are involved.

The wider issue, though is you have to ask yourself sometimes how you're going to present sex in your stories. Except for characters who are medically asexual (or in sexual latency, such as children)  every person has some way of dealing, or not dealing, with sexuality.  It might not directly be in the story you're telling, but in real human beings, the libido is always there, and it's going to always exert some influence over a person.

I see absolutely no reason to avoid characters' sexuality, though I wouldn't go out of my way to get it in, either, and I especially wouldn't do that to gain readership.

Then again, if put it in, it's then my duty as a writer to make it interesting. Sex scenes are hard to write, and easy mess up. One false word and the whole thing becomes farce. 

Here's where another distinction is important: the difference between porn and any other class of writing. People say that pornography is hard to define. Bullshit. Obscenity is hard to define. Porn is easy. It's a rendered or written work that's meant or used to be a masturbatory aid. Porn is to literature what a dildo is to sculpture. Now, you could write a story with a scene that's pornographic, with the idea that the reader is going to stop after the scene for the orgasm. 

This is also difficult. Fact is, porn and story-telling don't mix well. A pornographic scene in the middle of a novel is a difficult way to advance plot and character. It's equally difficult, if not impossible, to prevent plot and character from interfering with the purpose of the porn, like a vibrator that's also an MP3 player

This is the real reason why pornographers have generally given up on trying to give their work anything but the weakest plots. I remember the days when Marlon Brando received an Oscar nomination for "Last Tango in Paris." That was back when movies tried to mix sex with plot and character. Anybody remember that movie today? It was really a big thing in 1972. It shows how well that movie succeeded.

That formula has mostly been abandoned now. It's too difficult. And if you succeed, it's still too hard to market. Sex has to be dealt within fiction, but unless you're a virtuoso, I'd stay away from anything but the most necessary sex scenes.