Hiatus

I decided not to do NaNoWriMo this month, for a lot of reasons. There's just too much going on. I've had to eliminate a lot of things I normally enjoy, just to stay sane.

I try to write a little every day, but that's been slipping away too. I had to get off Facebook entirely because there's just too much negativity. Lots of hatred and judgment floating around right now, and I can't take it. So I let that go. I haven't been on FB since yesterday morning, which probably seems like a short period but it's long for me.

I've noticed that my mind is clearing of the drek, but it feels like it's going to be a while before I feel healthy again.

This afternoon for the first time in months I was eager to write. I threw together a 1500 word short story in an hour. I think all the anger has been getting in the way of my writing as well.

Everything is a threat to the despot and the helpless

I was talking to a friend of mine and we got on the topic of gun control. Now, she's as strongly liberal as I am strongly conservative, and a lot of times she says things that I just ignore. I know I'm right and she knows I'm wrong and we get along great. However, this time...

She said, “Those people put their constitutional rights ahead of the safety of their children.”

I was so stunned that my brain went blank and I couldn't say anything. Because my constitutional rights ARE all about the safety of the children.

In most of the world, he who has the guns makes the rules.

In most of the world, children live in constant terror of being killed, maimed, raped, or taken from their parents to serve in brothels or armies, because they have no rights. Weapons belong only to the strong.

Our ancestors, the men we call the Founding Fathers, came from a world where that was precisely the case. Where you had no right to be armed, and anyone who had weapons was automatically the master. Where you obeyed a soldier or a policeman without question because he could kill and you had no recourse.

The Founding Fathers created a system of armed peasantry precisely to prevent this kind of abuse. They came from a world where the strong could force the press to write or not write, or eliminate it entirely, on a whim. Because they had the weapons. Thus, freedom of the press.

They came from a world where the strong determined where you would worship, and how, or if, and they could enforce that with their armies. Because they had the weapons. Thus, freedom of religion.

They came from a world where the judges and courts were owned by the rich and laws served only the powerful. They created a system of thirds—executive, judicial, legislative—where each part has control over the others and none can bully or demean. And none had weapons. Weapons were the province of the people.

Most of the world is still there. Our ancestors, for the most part, came here because their children would be SAFE from that. Where the judges were impartial and a man was allowed to defend his family.

There are people out there who want to take that away. “Save the children,” they shout, but it's not about the children. The children are a convenient handle that they can use to force disarmament.

It's not about the children. It's about power. Because all over the world, he who has the weapons has the power. Those who want us disarmed want that power. Save the children? The constitution is all about saving the children. The right to bear arms was always, and remains, about the right to self defense.

If they got the guns, which they have stated is the ultimate goal, it wouldn't stop there. Because people have been killed with rocks and clubs and knives much longer than guns have existed. “Save the children,” they'll scream as the demand that all knives be turned in. Then what? Rocks? Once a right is lost, only blood will bring it back.

It's all about power. If we give in on one point they will push harder until they have what they want, which is a completely controlled and helpless populace who will do what they're told.

Because someone else holds the weapons.

Internet addiction

Now that's just embarrassing. In February I ran a special with Amazon for Parallel, free for five days. Now suddenly it's April and I look at my blog...and I still have the announcement of the special up.

The last few months have been weird as far as writing goes. I'm doing a lot of editing, but not much new writing. I sit down to write and aim straight for the internet. Facebook, mostly. After all, I must do social media marketing stuff, right?

Wrong. It's not marketing. It's bumming around with what appears to be an addiction, spending hours at a time just waiting for a response to someone's comment or making my own.

I wonder if it has something to do with the fact that I'm at home, basically alone. I have very little social interaction.

I do find that if I don't have any social time I withdraw even more and it becomes a downward spiral. I just pull back into my little shell and shut out the world.

That's when I start getting depressed. My brain goes into nobody-likes-me mode. Creative time is important, but so is social time--even for a confirmed introvert. Being around people is just exhausting. I don't come home energized, I come home wishing for a nap. Wishing I'd never gone out. But I also need it. Necessary medicine. Now, if I could go dancing, that would be different. I could dance until 2 AM and come home bouncing and energized.

In the time it took me to write this, I've checked FB twice. I'm going to log off now. Nope, three times.

What I need to do is bring the computer that doesn't have internet access into my office, and use that to write. I'd get more done, and my rule about using the internet only before 9:AM would last more than ten minutes.

No, I am not going to go check FB again! NOT, NOT, NOT!

Or so I tell myself.

See you later!

Parallel is Free!

Parallel is free today!

We are legion

In universe 197439 the Earth is dead, decimated by an unidentified plague. No one moves in the streets. I still live there, but I've fallen silent. In universe 81345 the Earth is abandoned. No one knew of me to take me with them. In our own I hear the tales of nations quarantined as the disease sweeps across the planet.

If it is not stopped I may be the only survivor.

There are those who don't want it stopped. They may kill me, but they work without a full understanding of my greatest strength.

I am never alone.

NOT IWSG

At the moment I find myself relieved that I'm no longer on the "IWSG" (Insecure Writers Support Group) list. I dropped off it some time ago, without noticing. Honestly, these days I can barely remember what day of the week it is, let alone manage the complex realization that this Wednesday is also the first Wednesday of the month (and the fifth Wednesday of the year, and the second 1st Wednesday of the year and Oh, I don't know, maybe the first day of the rest of my life?).

Between the job hunt (I managed somehow to scrape together enough to pay February's expenses) and the writing and the garden and a spring that shouldn't be starting yet and my editing I'm swamped. Priority paralysis. Sometimes I just find myself wandering aimlessly because I don't want to focus.

I'll get back to IWSG at some point, but I realized months ago that some things would have to go or I'd end up more insane than I already am. So I dropped IWSG (rather by accident) and Critters (on purpose) and a couple other blog-spurts :) I was involved in.

I'll probably get back to it when I can make a living from my writing. In my situation, where I have to do all my own editing, and cover art, and formatting, and marketing, etc, I need to cut out the extraneous activities.

So IWSG went the way of the DoDo, although I'm still posting that day if I happen to remember--or if someone on Facebook reminds me, as happened today.

I like writing, in all its facets, and having people swing by unexpectedly is fabulous.

Thanks for coming, thanks for reading, and I'll see you later, 'kay?

Edits

I have a story that has been bothering me for a long time. I wrote it for NaNoWriMo in 2010 (I think) and I LOVED it. I read it and chortled, and went on to write three more stories with the same characters.

A fascinating story, of a young non-human woman raised by a human family--and her people want their world back.

When I finally got around to doing the plot edit a year later, I was both confused and frustrated. I wanted the story to remain as it was, but it had some major flaws that needed to be worked out. With four major story-lines and four main characters, it was just too complicated. Then there was the fact that the four stories started and ended at different times in the narrative--but all four were necessary to the story!

I eventually decided to split out two of the storylines and make another book of them, since the connections were peripheral. They met in the middle, and then separated again, even though they were going on simultaneously. I could easily make two books out of one (like knew lamps for old) and preserve the original idea.

It simplified things enormously, but also introduced three new characters (with their own motivations and backstory), which complicated it again. And then I realized that the story ended in the wrong place--the end used previously had belonged to the plotline which I split off. Which is nice in a way, because now I can use that ending for the other book...

But the beginning is wrong now, because the beginning also belonged to the other book.

Bleh. I love the book. The other three in the series are good (one is FANTASTIC) but I need to get this one done before I even consider publication.

Happy writing! :)

Too many strong female characters?

This morning on Facebook (which I've taken to calling "Spacebook") I ran across an interesting question.

"So here's a question for writers and readers: I'm working on a mystery story and when I showed the first part to my writing group I got the comment that there are too many strong, tough female characters. One person said, "You have three female characters, all ninjas" (that's an exaggeration, but they are all physically fit and tough.) Does that strain credibility? And if so why? No one would think twice about a story with a lot of tough male characters. What do you think?"

The answer to this is complicated, and can't be fully explored on Spacebook. It's just not the right place. The answer runs the gamut from social expectations to psychology to random musings of my confused mind. It even runs into research I did (many years ago, and just for myself) that breaks down media into easily digested sound bytes.

In the words of Indigo Montoya, "It is too much. Let me sum up."

First, the gender of your audience. If your primary audience is female, you are going to be able to get away with more strong female characters. However, the audience for action adventure is going to be assumed to be primarily male, which means that strong male characters are going to be expected. Your writing group will break this down without thinking about the ramifications.

Second, the social expectations of your audience. The media society we live in has a certain set of expectations. These are things we don't bother to think about, for the most part. We don't even blink when a woman is a reward for the hero's actions--it doesn't even occur to us. It doesn't occur to us that the "strong" female character is a caricature of feminine graces with cleavage. These are things we've been led to expect. Ladies are to be rescued and the men do the rescuing. And if you don't believe me, honestly view the last ten movies you watched, the last ten TV shows you watched, the last ten books you read, etc. Likely one of the ten is going to have a strong female character, if that. Even those that have a strong female character, she's generally a caricature or a physical reward for the hero, and shows more cleavage than muscle.

It is possible that your entertainment preferences are different than most, so in that case go with the ten top grossing films, top ten most popular books, etc. These are what the majority are seeing and absorbing. Believe me, these things set up expectations and if those expectations are broken the readers are going to notice that something's wrong--even if they don't understand why.

The society we see in the media frowns on a physically strong woman. People have certain expectations when they read a book or watch a movie, and if you break those expectations you're going to get a reaction--probably not a good reaction.

Third, the writing, and this is where I'm going to spend the most time. Just about anything can be made to seem normal and acceptable if you write it appropriately.

Are the characters real? We are used to seeing female characters who have only one or two attributes--she's a good mother and a book-keeper. She's strong and spiteful. She's got cleavage. But unless we're dealing with a romance, male characters are nearly always fully nuanced. The female characters are there only as an accent for the male. People tend to write this way without thinking about it.

In order to create believable female characters, they need to be at least as fully nuanced as the male. They need to have the same level of introspection, interests, flaws, idiosyncracies, etc. Their challenges need to be fully realized and NOT dependent on the sub-plot of the men around them. If there is a romantic element, they still need to be people in their own right and not just a satellite circling around the male MC. If the female MC's only attribute is that she's strong, your readers will get bored quickly. If there are three MC's who are equally strong in the same ways, it's going to come across as three of the same person, and your readers will pick up on that. They will likely key on the things that the characters have in common, and say "You have three female characters, all ninjas" when that may not be the problem at all.

The second thing to be focused on is balance. If the main characters are all female, all strong, etc, it's likely to come across as a feminist commentary. You need male characters who are strong as well, even if strong in different ways. If you have no male characters, your story will be of interest to very few--see social expectations, above. Women expect to see both male and female characters. Men expect to see male characters. In order to appeal to both, you need both.

You'll need to write differently and with more awareness in order to make this situation work.

Third, are you over-emphasizing their fitness? Strong characters don't need to say all the time that they're working out or flex their muscles continuously. Let their actions stand in for telling. If you tell your readers more than once that this woman is a weight lifter, it sounds like you think your reader is stupid. If we watch her lifting weights, and part of the story takes place in a gym, and she has a weight-lifting trophy in her room, all of these things add to that aspect of her character. If she's a tai-chi instructor, that tells us something about her level of fitness without beating your readers over the head with it.

In my years doing manuscript evaluations, as well as writing groups and critique partners, I learned that the problem is not always visible. When someone says that there's a problem with a book, I need to take a look at the situation and determine for myself what aspect of my writing needs to be adjusted. If someone tells me that a character is "too strong," is that individual seeing the character's strength, or strength in relation to another character (is another character too weak?), or is there too much "telling" in relation to the character's strength, or is it a reflection of something else entirely?

Even the most obvious of critiques doesn't always pinpoint the precise problem. It's my responsibility, as an author, to identify the true problem and correct it. Often it's something tiny--a word choice, or a situation that needs to be restructured.

The situation is complicated, but once you identify the problems with the writing (what makes them come across as "all ninjas" when that wasn't what you intended) it will most likely resolve itself.