Hate and the Perfect Victim

I don't do this.

I don't comment on current news stories, I don't do tribute art. I try VERY hard not to jump into publishing industry drama and genre drama. It's kind of my rule. I don't do anything that might capitalize on somebody else's misery.

But the Chapel Hill shooting has affected me.

One, because nobody IRL is talking about it past "He (the shooter) was angry over parking".

Two, because this should not have happened. 

In case you live under a rock (or get all your news from mainstream media) three beautiful people, a newly married couple and the wife's sister, were killed by an asshole who hated them and everything they stood for. The couple were deeply into charity work. The man seems to have been an all-around ass. And in a perfect world this would be all we'd need to say. We'd be able to grasp the gravity of what happened. We'd be able to comprehend the tragedy, speak for how unfair it is, shake our heads and then make an effort to make sure it never happens again. But we don't, and so we have to bring in details.

 The murder victims were muslim, and the shooter was an athiest.


These details should not matter. Our first question when someone is killed by someone else should not be "what did the victim do" or "what were their races?" or anything other than "How do we make this stop?" Victims of violent crime should not have to display their history to be helped. The clothes of a rape victim should not matter, or their blood alcohol content, or their gender. The victim of harassment should not first have to display their life story to "prove" that they did not deserve what they're getting. People who are hurt should not have to prove that they don't deserve pain.

We should not have Chapel Hill.

We should not have Gamer Gate.

We should not have Charlie Hebbdo.

We should not look at that list and think that any one of those people deserved it.

But we do. We look at rape victims and rate them on a scale from Virgin to Whore. We look at a murder victim and ask what they did and why. We say "This shouldn't have happened, but look at what they did" in the same breath, as if the first part has anything to do with the last.

We walk over homeless people. We deny the mentally ill necessary medications because they have a history of addiction. We tell women they asked to be raped and tell men that they can't be raped at all. We write stories where a young woman's death is justified by her sex life and her words, and another's survive by her pre-determined goodness. We indicate who the valued are through how pleasant they are to look at and be with.

We tell people that their pain is their fault.

We tell them that if they were only better, we'd care.

And then we celebrate the people who "fit" our victim checklist. Which is, if anything, just as bad. When we find our Perfect Victim, we put them on a pedestal. We look at them and point at them and go "Isn't this just horrible, what happened to them? Isn't it clear, how little they deserved it?" We treat them as if they are a broken treasure that must be kept and built back up and lauded.

We trap this person in the horror of the worst moment of their life. We keep them in a box labeled by the scars they carry forever. We make them choose between hiding their pain or having that pain be the definition of their relationship with us. We make them tell that story, THE story, over and over and over again until it's some malignant catechism they chant with their eyes closed, hoping that this time the words won't catch on their soul and hurt them all over again. We make the event that tore their life apart be the thing immediately following their name.

Sometimes we even use that in place of their name.

We become so caught up in the headiness of finally, finally having someone to rescue, we forget that victims are people, and by the time they have a story, they no longer need you to save them. Either they're recovering or their dead, and either way their story is not and never will be yours. Feeling sympathy does not entitle you to someone's life story. It just means you're a decent person.

Hate isn't only a problem when the victims are the nice, shiny people we want to know. It's a problem when the victims aren't lovely, when they're somebody you'd rather forget, and when something about them makes you squirm. Because the problem is not the victim. The problem is Hate.

There's a lot of bible verses that get flung around like confetti, but one that doesn't is the bit where Jesus says it's not what goes into a person that defiles them, but what comes out. The emotions and events and information you receive do not make you less of a person. A hurt one, yes. Even a scarred one. One thing I learned this past year that PTSD is a scar of memory. But that doesn't diminish you, build you up or break you down. It's what you do that counts. It's what you think, what you say.

And hate only exists inside you.

The only hate you will ever truly feel, the way you see the sky and taste your food and hear your music, is the hate that comes from your own brain and heart. That heady, hot, volcanic urge to destroy that's so addictive, so good to feel and so horrible to remember. That's the worst hate in the world. That feeling is what will destroy the world...and you in the process.

This is why it is so important to guard yourself, and your thoughts. Why it is so important to be generous to others. To make the joy of others your passion. To look at a person's pain rather than the circumstances around it and no matter what say "I'm sorry." To make other people valid, and the fact of their existence, rather than the nature of their lives, the definition of their value.

We need to learn how to love, not eros but agape, unselfishly and unconditionally, with the object of the beloved's own good above our own. Not because it makes us better people or because we get a benefit, but because it's right. This kind of love is literally what the bible repeats, over and over again. When Jesus says "Love your enemies" he uses the greek word agapāte. It is literally a command to care so deeply for those you currently hate that you would die for their welfare.

Because it's hard.

Because it's dangerous.

But most of all, because the people you hate are worth it.


We need to learn how to say I'm sorry without conditions.

We need to learn how to say I forgive you without conditions.

The details--the wonderful, myriad differences that make each of us unique, our religion and our sexuality, our gender, our heritage--should enrich our lives, not define our value as people. We should hate what people do. Hate the unfairness, the inequality, the cruelty, the blood letting. But don't hate them, because you might as well be the murderer when you do.

We need to learn that each individual person is the most priceless thing we will ever see.

Humility

one day we will invent an emotion that we cannot express via lol-cat. This is when the universe will end. 

I think the thing I keep coming back to with writing is, well, how very much I suck at it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know. Last thing you guys want to hear me say, last thing I should say three days before I self pub another book. But...well, it's true. It totally is. Today was the best damn day I've had on Amazon so far...and it was, by the rules of the road, pretty goddamn pathetic, if you hold it up to anybody else's standards.

In my head, down deep inside, I do think I'm a good writer. Maybe not the best, maybe not professional best-seller material. But I do think I'm good. Otherwise I wouldn't be writing at all. But the evidence I see? Stack of rejection letters eight miles long, The Incident last April (I still cry over that) the, um, less than steller way The Great Publishing Experiment has gone (You guys are great, you guys are awesome, I heart you guys forever and I expected nothing more than what you've given) and I kind of realize that what my heart says? Is not what the reality is.

I think the thing that made me decide to self publish was realizing that the big boys didn't want me anyway, and never would. Ever. That's...amazingly freeing, knowing that you've got absolutely nothing to lose. And that's the dead honest truth. I do have nothing to lose by self-publishing. I am a non-entity, a cypher. A sucky writer. However much I trash Hubbard and the Gor novels they are writing gods compared to what I put out. And before you say "HOW CAN YOU SAY THAT, CW!" I want to point out one small, not incidental fact:

They are published. I am not. And this is never, ever, ever, ever EVER going to change.

I read things that tell me I've thrown everything away by self-publishing my stuff, and oh God does it hurt. It makes me want to scream or cry or throw things or do all of that all at once, together...right up until I realize that in the long run it never really mattered. It doesn't matter how clean I keep my career. I never had a career to keep clean in the first place. Which means I can try whatever I want, fail however hard it is I'm going to fail. I had nothing to lose. It was never going to be a reality, so why not knuckle down and start doing the heavy lifting? It's just as effective as giving up, and what was I going to do with that writing time anyway? Play Minecraft? (Not that Minecraft isn't cool. I Just need something to do after a creeper explosion blasts through into Lava and I not only die, I lose my diamond armor, sword, enchanted pickaxe and full stack of Emeralds. Why do creepers explode? Because FUCK YOU, that's why!)

And I denigrate the Self-Publishing Experiment, but in reality? What I wanted to see was not how many copies of Book X or Book Y I could sell right off the bat. I wanted to see if I could grow an audience. Build something that will make selling my "real" work (AKA full sized novels) worth it. And I am seeing growth. I am seeing something that could turn into something else, something really, really cool. Do I have any idea what the hell I'm doing? Fuck no. But one thing I do know is, next month is gonna tell me how much of a prayer I do have. If it does really well, I'll know it's time to start getting excited. If it does what pretty much everything else has done...eh, we're having fun anyway, right? And the point of this is not to make six million dollars and sell six million copies and get the movie deal and the TV interviews and the soundtrack of my dreams. It's to get to nerd out with you guys over how awesome that story is that incidentally also is mine (But we'll forget about that part).

So you know what, guys? I could be wrong. Maybe I don't suck. Maybe you guys aren't just here because I rip into bad authors. Maybe I can write on, say, a Twilight quality level. Maybe you wonderful, crazy, insane people actually like reading the things that I write.

So I'll make you a deal.

I succeed? And let's define success as I sell 100 copies of one book, in one day. Meaning 100 of you buy, for real money, a copy of a single book. Like, 100 Starbleached or 100 Silver Bullet copies in one twenty-four hour period. I do this? I will get a tattoo.

Given what I've seen? I think my skin is safe, forever. (not that i don't love you guys. I do. I totally do. I just...think I kind of know you lot pretty damn well) But you can prove me wrong. Go ahead, kids. I dare you.

100 books=CW gets a tattoo.

State of the CW

So. Mission Earth flogging WILL continue tomorrow (oh god) but we need to take a break for a moment and discuss the boring stuff. Or whatever.

First up: God, you guys are awesome. The response to Starbleached has been better than I expected. Not hugely wonderful OMG I CANNOT BELEIVE THIS I have hope now awesome, but I know that, as of right now? Half of my regular readers have a copy. That is kick ass. Please tell me how you feel about it. Also? The books sold, not the books bought during the freebie peroid, the books I have actually gotten money for, account for, like, a third of that. And if you do not have a copy, go get one. I plan on continuing that story, I am SO INCREDIBLY PROUD of that story, please please please please PLEASE let me share the awesomeness of that story with you.

Okay. Next up: Blue Ghosts is the next lil book in line. This is an Exiles story. What is Exiles? The Exiles are Faerie creatures trapped on Earth. Yes, kids. Paranormal romance involving Faeries and ghosts and the Lexington, one of the coolest locations in Corpus Christi. Casey Winter and Marco Creed investigate a ghost. Who may not be a ghost. It's complicated. And it's due out in October! It picks up where Silver Bullet left off.

Also, November/December (depending on wheither or not I take a months break from this self-imposed publishing schedule) will also pick up from where a Silver Bullet story left off. As in, minutes after it ended.  And because I know that very few of you have read Silver Bullet, much as it pains me to do it, Silver Bullet is free on Smashwords until October 13th. Code is GX35X
  
As for how I'm doing...I am not doing good. 

I am hugely, monumentally, cataclysmically depressed. Which is not good when you have a history of S/I issues. I am dealing, my friends. I am dealing. But it is hard. This month (as mentioned in the Mission Earth flog where I kind of got personal issues all over our happy fun times) does not make it easy. But the hardest part has been accepting something really, really hard.

I'm not writing this part now because I want to flail and moan and cry. I'm writing it because I believe that it needs to be written. Because it's a part of a story that hasn't ended yet. But I want this to be here, where everybody can see it, so that in a year, or two or ten, when this is over, I can point over here and say, this is where I was going, this is where I ended up.

I'm putting a cut here, because once again I'm about to get personal stuff all over the fun place.So once more, here's the unfunny cut kitty:

If you don't want to get sad and depressed, ignore the cut and watch the kitty.

More Stuff

 
Okay, cover and sample to go live midnight, tonight and tomorrow morning.

I am SO freaking happy with this right now. It's the first time in a really long time that I've finished a project and been happy with it.

I still feel like an ass for choosing to self publish. Today I feel like less of one. Why? Well, as I will touch on again later tonight (oh, about midnight) there are things that you just...can't do for a commercially published book if you are an unpublished writer looking to become a professionally published one. So there are ideas about technique I've completely ignored because they're not viable options in the publishing world.

The most depressing thing in the world, to me, was that Fight Club only got a $5,000 advance. Because it was just that weird. I mean, I totally understand why! How the hell do you summarize that book? I assumed it was a bromance about punching for years, until I watched the movie. And it was life-alteringly awesome. But nobody had any confidence in it, because it was weird.

I am not comparing myself to Fight Club. I do not have a Fight Club in me. I am not that kind of writer, and I never will be. I tell bizzare little stories that have no social value, at all, and I'm happy with that. And I don't think that I know better than the publishing industry at large. I think they made the right choice telling me to get lost. I'm not a great writer, I'm not destined to be a great writer, and I've made some pretty good progress accepting that. That has been my goal through all this, by the way: To accept that being a professional author is out of my reach, that I'm not going to make it, and that I just need to get the fuck over it already and move on to my real life, whatever that might be. I can't spend my whole life pounding on a door when there is no evidence whatsoever that door will ever open.

And it's not so bad, here. There's light here--a distant, impossible to get to light, but there is light--and because self-publishing is a career killing, selfish thing to do...well, I'm not leaving here, so I might as well adjust the window dressing and make myself at home.

And that means doing the things that I wouldn't do if I were trying to get published. Like rip apart other people's books (It is so. Freaking. Fun) and movies, and complain and bitch about my life, and write short little things I can only sell for a dollar.

That turn out to be (to me, at least) FREAKING. AWESOME. I really, really, REALLY wish somebody else had written this story. I wish I didn't know what it was about, where it was going (there's going to be more FYI) and I wish I hadn't read it EIGHT MILLION TIMES until my brains started dribbling out my ears.

Ah, well. Enough depressing shit. BOOK! SAMPLE! TONIGHT!

In Which A Dedicated Pro-Lifer Jumps Ship.

So today I found out that Mississippi state House, on Nov. 8th, is voting on a bill that would grant “personhood” to human embryos. And I realized that despite years and years of education in Why Abortion is Bad and When Life Starts and a gazillion other things my good Christian parents have educated me about, despite being a dedicated Christian (with kinks) and a Republican (technically) I really don't like this. Having this pass and set precedent for other states would be a really bad thing for me. You know, because I'm one of those “woman” things with ovaries and a uterus.

And no. I’m not saying this because limitations on birth control, which is what this group is advocating, would limit my happy fun sexy times. I don’t have happy fun sexy times. I have not had sex. Ever. And I don’t plan on having sex in the immediate future, partially because me having a baby right now would be a really bad thing. Even if I were on birth control I probably wouldn’t be having sex, because I have some really good evidence that the pill doesn’t always work.

Me.

Yep. I’m a pill baby, folks. Not only that, but Mom was on the pill because her doctor told her it’d be a really BAD idea for her to ever get pregnant again. She’d lost two babies before she had me, and when she did get pregnant with me, the first time she went in for a checkup the doctor could feel my head.

And you know, maybe it’s me shoving my head up my own ass here, but that tells me that God really wanted me here. Enough to bypass every safety mechanism my parents put in place because Mom having babies was Not A Good Thing according to everyone. And this leads me to why this bill pisses me off.

Point the First: I am poor. Anyone I marry is likely to be poor. Therefore, if within the next ten years or so I decide to get married, it probably will not be “right” for me to have a baby. Note that I am considering this in the relm of “marry” because, religious leanings aside, given how often birth control has failed in my family if you want to get in my pants you’d better fucking be ready to marry me before you cross the finish line, so to speak,  because I cannot afford to have a baby if and when I get married right now, let alone if I’m on my own. In fact, every other consideration off the table, under every conceivable set of probable circumstances shows me that I probably will not ever be able to afford a baby and provide the level of care and life the child would need.


With "good of the child" as my primary concern, it's a bad idea for me to have kids. So who the hell are you to take this decision away from me? To tell me that if I want to have a relationship with someone I’d better have a baby plan in place first? I’m already paranoid about having a kid, in or out of wedlock, before I’m ready to raise and care for that kid. And I want to have a kid! I just know me having babies right now is a bad, bad, bad, bad, bad idea. This is a decision I’ve made carefully and soberly, and to have somebody tell me “tough luck” and take the few, unreliable tools I DO have for managing my future away from me is not fair. If I can’t afford a fucking CAR, sir, I can’t afford a baby. And you’re telling me that I also can’t afford to have a relationship, MARRIED OR NOT, because I can’t even have birth control?

And hey? Pro-life people? Did you see that place above where I said “Even if I’m on the pill, I probably wouldn’t have sex”? Does it not occur to you that some people use hormonal birth control for something OTHER than not making babies? That maybe us women people need to be able to function and not be incapacitated with cramps? Or deal with the anemia that comes with excessively heavy periods? That being able to predict when the monthly gift deposits itself on our door might be a good thing? Oh, and you know the mood swings that come with? Do you want to combine brittle emotional states with chronic depression? You want to know what a fucking funhouse it is to have S/I issues and know beyond a shadow of a doubt that once a month I get to hold on to my sanity by the skin of my teeth? Because I sure as fuck didn't, and I got to anyway.

You want to control crime? Make sure you don’t have poor families with sixteen mouths to feed. Make sure women don’t have to fucking sterilize themselves to ensure that “woopsie daisy, there’s a baby” doesn’t get in the way of feeding their other children. Make sure that the family a person has is the family they can afford to feed. Want to prevent abortions? See above.

And that brings me to Point number two. This is aimed at the religious people. The people who want to do God’s will in life, who think that preventing abortions is it.

Who the BLAZING BLUE FUCK do you think you are? How DARE you shove your head so far up your own ass that you think anyone can abort something God wants to have happen? Do you see that part above me? The part where I said I’m a pill baby? Do you think that one single person God wants in this world hasn’t been born? Do you think we really have that much power? Really? You really want to think that human beings have more power than God?

Do you think God is so weak that a surgeon with a scalpel and a vacuum can undo something he wants done? Is your God so powerless that he can’t secure the birth of every child he desires?

Judge not, lest you be judged, sir. And you’re judging. You’ve decided that every teenager who gets pregnant is a careless sex fiend. You’ve decided that every career woman who decides to go on the pill is a feminazi ice bitch. Every poor person who visits planned parenthood is someone getting an abortion, and every woman who gets an abortion is a whore.

In your world, there are no rape victims.

In your world, biology is perfect.

In your world, everyone can scrape together the tens of thousands of dollars it takes to bring a single healthy baby into the world.

You don’t see the pain.

You don’t see the desperation.

You have the compassion of a jar of mayonnaise.

You know that part in the bible? Splinter in your friend’s eye? BIG FUCKING LOG in yours? Abortion is a splinter. Abortion is a matter between the individual WOMAN faced with that choice and God. So is birth control. So is everything else in a WOMAN’S life. May I emphasize that again? If I decide that I am neither financially nor emotionally nor physically stable enough to have a baby it should be my fucking choice. You cannot tell me what I am capable of. It is my body, and I’d rather become a nun than bring a child into the world when I cannot provide a stable, healthy home for it. Children, marriage and sex are decisions that are between ME and GOD, and not some rich politician who probably spends twice my monthly rent on BOOZE, or gas, or electricity for his air conditioning, who doesn’t see things from my perspective, who has never seen things from my perspective, who, if he did see me, would see me as a waitress and would ogle my boobs and cut my tip in half if I protested.

In short, sir:

And yes, that’s me judging too. And I’ll apologize to both you and God for it when I’m less pissed off.

C.S. Lewis, the great theologian and fantasy writer, said two things in passing that apply here. The first was in his biography, where he discusses the massive amount of pediastry that happened in his prep school (aka boys screwing other boys). He said that he never felt it his place to judge because he never experienced that particular temptation. Then, in The Horse and his Boy, there is a place where Aslan tells a character why it was necessary for him to scar the character across the back: the girl needed to know what she had carelessly done to her faithful servant. When the girl, now humble, asks what happened to the servant, Aslan replies that that is not the girl’s story. We each may only know our own stories.

You might believe that birth, not abortion is the morally right choice. This is great. I believe that too. But, and this is the key, you will never have to make that choice. I will. You will never have to decide between buying food and buying diapers. Between having a romantic life and having stability. And constricting my freedom just so that you  can sleep at night is not and cannot be God’s will. And to think that you have any control over God’s will, in a positive or negative sense?

Look up megalomania in the dictionary. I think you’ll see your picture right next to it.

Character building: Mary Sue pt 2. Also, Honor Harrington and Bella Swan

The problem with Mary Sue is if you read or watch TV for any period of time, you start meeting versions of her that you like. People who are brilliant, beautiful, always successful and always beloved, who more often than not have that magical pet cat or dog or (insert animal here). And you begin to wonder why this character works, when your own dear Sue collapsed under her own weight.

For myself, there are three characters that I absolutely love, that technically are "Sues": Sherlock Holmes, Dr. Who and Honor Harrington (grumblegrumblenextbookinfreakingJulygrumble) All three are badly overpowered in their chosen expertiese, all three have no true equal, and all three are highly idealized. Honor, in addition to being the BEST ADMIRAL EVAR!!one1! has a list of titles longer than most libraries, and Nimitz, her telepathic/empathic treecat that also gifts her with psychic powers in a universe where humans are not psychic (and that kind of universe-breaking is a big hallmark of Sueism) And then there is the Doctor. Ignoring the Tardis, ignoring the large stable of women desperate to play tonsel hockey with him, even ignoring the fact that he is effectively immortal, he carries a deus ex machina around in his pocket. Sonic Screwdriver, anyone?

And yet...they work. And they are hugely loved by the people who read them. People almost rioted when Sherlock died. I only found out that Honor was to die after Weber decided not to kill her (and I will never trust him again. Because you do that once, you can do that again, and it was bad enough loosing LaFollet last book. *sniff*) and the Doctor has survived longer than most socialist governments. What the hell?

Poverty =/= worthless

I grew up conservative.

I still consider myself to be a conservative. Possibly feminist, as (and isn't this bizzare) my research on spinning as a hobby has lead me to draw several conclusions reguarding the evolution and value of "woman's work" in history (note: still have not researched this hobby as an economic thing. Just as a "how to do it", which indicates to me that there is something to this idea). I don't think that it's the government's job to take care of people. I think that it's the individual's job to take care of people, and that human beings, collectively, have abdicated their responsability to the agency least capable of humane care.

But when I say that I "grew up" conservative, I say that this was the only "right" system of thought in my family, as Christianity was the only "right" religion. As a child and teen, I did not believe in God because I believe in God. I believed because I was rewarded with affection and the approval of my parents when I parroted back to them the things they wanted to hear. As a teen I was fully on the "homosexuality is wrong" bandwagon because, oh my god, did my parents smile at me when I handed this response back. I remember once telling several friends of mine that I wouldn't want to work with GLBT material, NOT because I did not actually want to, but because I did not want to dissapoint my family. When they reacted as one might naturally expect ...

...I realized that this was not actually something I really cared about. I cared because I got approval from my family for saying it, and not because I actually believed it was wrong. This forced me to examine a lot of things, a process that is still ongoing. I did not drop my Christianity, for example, but other than the real basics, it doesn't have a lot to do with the doctrines I was taught as a child anymore. And for the record, I now firmly believe that you can be a Christian and be gay. It's between you and God and Romans 14, and as I've never been faced with that particular issue (I'm about as straight as a ruler) I'm not qualified to say what God feels on the subject.

I bring this up because I had a moment with my family this afternoon where the differences between us yawned like the grand canyon. My brother, one of his friends and I were all sitting outside, and my brother noticed a man digging through my apartment complex's dumpster. He said, in a tone of disgust usually reserved for small, slimy objects, "I don't have a lot of patience with poverty."

This made me blink. My brother is a viking. He has the hair, the build, the attitude. He spends most of his time wandering around with a stick in his hand because we are no longer allowed to carry swords, damn it. And he's the kind of person who would sooner commit suppuku than allow a kitten to sit outside in the cold. So I said, with all the wisdom of a big sister to a younger brother, "Huh?"

"Oh, I don't hate the poor. They're the people who are trying to work out of it. But I dislike poverty. They expect you to support them and stuff."

And then I think I said something racially insensative about african poverty, but I was pretty pissed off and trying very hard not to strangle him with a few feet of unspun roving.

First of all, nothing said the man going through the dumpster was poor. My dad was the breadwinner of the family, and he made pretty good money when we were growing up. We never needed clothes, or food, or government assistance to keep our house. Because we did foster kids, we were actually able to provide a home for other people's kids. But my mother was and still is a skillful dumpster diver. She could look at a sofa sitting out on a curb and judge exactly how much more time the thing might have. She could gage the best time to arrive at a particular bin, in order to discover the best objects for salvage. The best bench we ever had was a sofa frame she rescued and sweet-talked Dad into adding slats to. She did this not because we needed money (though in the twilight years of our family, this was actually true) but because she enjoyed it. She hated to see a perfectly good object go to waste when she knew she could do something with it.

So maybe the dude in the dumpster saw something he could use. Maybe he lost his glasses or a credit card, or maybe his wife or kid or roommate threw out his W2 and he's desperately digging through the garbage in the hopes that he can still find his specific bag and get it back.

But maybe it is true. Maybe he was poor. If he is, so am I, because we both live in the same apartment complex and I have, as of late, found myself choosing between eating and paying rent and electricity. The only reason my sofa is not a dumpster find is because the kind person who gave it to me asked me if I needed it before she threw it out. I wouldn't qualify for government assistance because I don't have a kid and I make too much money as a grocery store baker. And I checked this. My father has offered to buy me a car and I have turned him down each time because I know I could not manage the gas and insurance on top of my rent, electricity and food. The internet is a lugsury I really can't afford, and paying for Audible is a decadance I can only justify by not having enough time to read anymore due to my awful job.

My brother neither has to pay rent, nor utilities. I do not want to draw any conclusions about his personal spending habits, but I do know he has never had to support himself financially.Both of us have been very sheltered by our parents. I think he believes we were poor, as he was fourteen when our family imploded (there were several weeks of ramen noodle soup and frozen corn there, near the end, and we got evicted from a couple of houses) but we weren't. He may believe the same thing now, as my Dad is often broke, but they're not, either.

I think I am almost qualified to say this, loud and proud, so I'm going to: people don't go on public assistance because they don't want to work. People go on public assistance because they need help, and nobody else is offering. And if the number of people on welfare and food stamps is overwhelming, it's because a lot of people are desperate, and not because a lot of people don't want to work.

I remember one afternoon near Christmas, when my father had given me about a hundred fifty dollars to buy my own Christmas presents. I had no idea what I wanted. Books, maybe. Or else computer stuff. I needed caffiene, so my mother and I went to the grocery store, and when we got to the check out there was a little woman (I can't say girl because she was older than me, but there was this child-like quality to her I remember) who was crying because her Lone-star card (aka food stamps) was short and she didn't have enough to cover her groceries.

And I did not think "lazy ass. Get a job" when I saw this. I thought about the many times growing up that the same thing happened to me and mom, though not with food stamps. My dad, as I said, made a lot of money, but he believed that when he ran out, he always had his check book. As a result, there were many times when the grocery store refused our checks and we had to go home empty handed. I still have that kind of reaction when I get to a check out counter, this kind of stomach-drop, oh fuck, count my money kind of tensing up. I saw this woman standing there with what was probably her Christmas dinner, and maybe a couple of extra things for her kids--because given the hoops you have to jump through to get on food stamps, she probably had kids--and I remembered the many times I stood next to my parents while the same thing happened to us, sans the government assistance part. I remembered thinking, what are we going to do? when this happened. I remember thinking what are we going to do? when I watched my family implode, and we didn't have enough money for food because ... well, because. I still don't know where it all went. I remember living in that hell hole of a relative's house for four years because we couldn't afford to live on our own. I remembered cutting myself because with the emotional abuse in there, it was not safe to cry. I remembered how Mom tried to help me, but there wasn't much she could do because we had nowhere to go. I remembered Dad handing me money, just giving me a hundred fifty dollars and then walking off, and I remembered a time not too many years before when that would have been an awful lot of money to just hand somebody, and we could have used it for food or rent or car payments or something else that would have allowed my family to survive another few months, or else gotten us out of that relative's house before it broke me.

So I bought that woman her groceries. Because I remembered how much I used to want someone to do that for me.

Selfishness is never okay, and calling judgement on someone else is never okay. Poverty is not something people fall into because they don't want to work. It's something that hits them. Every day. It's in how hungry they feel, their bad house, their poor neighborhood. Maybe they anesthesize this pain with alcohol or drugs and wind up finding just another place for poverty to hit, the itch for drink or for a needle when they can't afford to buy food. I got to taste this a little bit, once, and I didn't like it. I can't imagine this going on for years. I don't like where I'm at, and I make too much money to qualify for food stamps or public assistance. I can't imagine what life is like for people who can. How desperate they would be.

I can imagine what life might be like, if the people who had extra money bought someone's groceries instead of another television set. If instead of buying a new car for Christmas when they have a year old one that's just fine, they went to a social worker and offered to spend that money on another family, or on a foster kid that needed it. If we lived within our means, and then took what was left over and gave somebody else who needed it a leg up. Extra month's rent. Extra groceries. Extra time. 

I don't think the government will ever be able to take care of people. It's too big and by necessity, too impersonal. But I do believe that as long as we ignore other people and assume that you're poor because you want to be, the government will have to. If you don't want programs like welfare and food stamps, then buy someone else their groceries and help someone else pay their medical bills. You can do a far better job than the government can, and if you're ever hit in the face by poverty, that's what you'll want someone to do for you.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go work in my horrible job.

Book Bitch: Anthem.

So I saw my younger brother reading today. I know. Stunning, right? This is like the third Sign of the Apocalypse I’ve seen this week (the first two being a quarter inch of ice on EVERYTHING on Sunday and Unholy Bitch from work being nice to me when she came in for her shift). What stunned me even more, though, was what he was reading: Anthem, by Ayn Rand. Shocking. My brother, who never reads, was nose deep in a “real” book.

Don't live for your dreams. EVER.

Okay, this is gonna be cynical as hell, so please forgive it. The trigger was an advertisement for a new movie, Santa Paws. I don't know what Santa Paws is, other than talking puppies and Walt Disney's ashes spinning in his urn, but one of the puppies said, at the end of the trailer, "All you have to do is dream."

I've had this backbuilding annoyance with this part of popular culture. We've marketed the living fuck out of the idea that if you work hard enough and day-dream even harder, you'll get your dreams. Disney Princesses moon over lakes and water and men (mostly men) while singing about how much they want something. Books talk about Live Your Best Life Now and The Purpose Driven Life and how "God has a plan for you", implying that this plan is not right now, and God am I going to get into the Prosperity Gospel bullshit in a couple of minutes. And every single "uplifting" movie shows someone pulling themselves into success of some form or another. TV shows never follow the losers, it's always the winners and then OMG when the winners lose it's a tear fest and a showcase of character and integrity because our self-inserts the main characters only lose when they deserve to learn a lesson. The natural tilt of the universe is that we, the centers of it, shall win eventually. I don't think our parents had this level of bullshit saturation that we do right now. The result is we have a generation that believes we'll get our fifteen minutes of fame. Usually presented on a platter, but sometimes after a shit-ton of hard work that somehow falls far short of the real work involved in being successful.

This was showcased really well in a chick flick a couple years back, Julie and Julia, about the life of Julia Childs and Julie Powell. Half that movie is good, and it's the half with Meryl Streep in it. I am not going to say that Julie Powell is a waste of skin and air, because the character is based on a real human being and I refuse to believe anyone can be that bad. Amy Adams as Julie Powell is annoying, entitled and obnoxious, and there's an undertone running through the whole movie that the success both women get is something they earned, something they're entitled to because of all the hard work they went through to get there. In the case of Julia Child, that was probably true. The Julie Powell half of the movie ... guys, if you succeed at internet anything it's not because you're good at something or bad at something. It's because the internet farted in your direction today. In her half of the movie, after she worked hard, screamed, cried and threw tantrums, she was literally handed her goal on a platter, right next to her deboned duck.

And then you have Prosperity Gospel. For those of you who haven't darkened the door of a large church, picked up a bestselling Christian book or listened to Christian radio lately, Prosperity Gospel turns God into the big Slot Machine in the sky: put in enough faith tokens and you'll get a pony. The two big headliners are Joel Olstine and Rick Warren, authors of Your Best Life Now and The Purpose-Driven Life, respectively. I have not read Best Life Now because there's only so much Olstine I can take in one sitting. Purpose Driven Life centers on the idea that if you can figure out what God wants you to do with your life, he will bless you and you will be happy, or at least happier than you are right now. That God does not want his children to live a life of sorrow and despair, and if we just work with him, he'll make everything good and beautiful and reward us for our work and suffering right now.

Guys, I'm listening to a Christian album right now, one of the best I've heard in years, by Stephen Curtis Chapman. He wrote it after his adopted daughter died in a car accident. He wrote it to deal with the sorrow and quite obviously, his difficulty reconciling a loving God with his daughter's death. If you believe in the Christian God and you believe that God is in control, than you have to believe that it was his will for that to happen. Because if He didn't want it to happen that way, it wouldn't have. And that's why I find Propserity Gospel so fucking offensive. It implies that if your life has gone to shit and things aren't happening the way you want them to, there is something wrong with you. You don't know something. You're not doing something right. You haven't figured the Great Question of Reality out yet and if you just pushed a little bit longer and held on a bit further, you'd break out into the great meadow of rainbows and unicorns and everything would be alright again.

If you're a Christian, you believe that God Himself became human -- I mean, think about that for a second. You go from being God of All to being a subsistence-level carpenter, who is also a member of one of the most despised races in human history, during the reign of Emperor Tiberius in Ancient Rome. And God's will is that we prosper? Poverty is not God's will for us, sometimes? What, did he just make an exception for himself? -- and died one of the ugliest, most brutal deaths humanity ever conceived of, shortened only because he was severely tortured the day before his crucifixion. Yes, it had a point. It had a beautiful point. The payoff never came during Jesus's life, the last years of which were spent homeless. Hell, our own homeless would be a step up. They get down filled jackets and warm concrete to sleep on. According to my belief system, God's will for his own life was horrible, with an eternal payoff.

You know, sometimes things just don't work. For every uplifting story, there are a lot that end poorly. The happy stuff is remembered, not because it's normal, but because it's so abnormal, and we humans are self-centered enough to believe that if it happened to you, surely, surely eventually it'll happen to me. Surely if I sing at Simon, I'll go on to American Idol, win and get a singing contract. Nevermind that most of the people who go are fodder for our amusement, I am different. Surely I am different. Surely God will bless me. He didn't bless himself, but he'll bless me.

The best thing a person can do for themselves, in my opinion, is not to live for your dreams. Live for your family. Friends. For the weekend when you get to go fishing, or do whatever else it is that brings you joy. Living for your dreams is about as solid as attempting to eat them.

Am I saying that you shouldn't try to get them? Hell no. I'm just saying you shouldn't expect it. I'm saying that "think positive" and "keep high self-esteem" is bullshit. "Focus on your potential" is bullshit. Think pessimistically. Attempt success and plan for failure. Keep an exit strategy in mind. Prepare for failure. Maybe don't assume that something you made sucks, but assume that it could be made better. Because the thing nobody tells you about? The dreams don't die. Even when you want them to. Having a dream will eventually feel like you've swallowed burning coals, because it's guaranteed that you will fail most of the time. And your choice is either to think that there's something wrong with you -- because they always win on American Idol -- or to think that maybe it's just not going to happen this time. Either way, the coal is not going to go out. You're not going to throw it away. You might have planned that exit strategy, but you're not going to take it. Ever.

And yeah, you can give up. That has nothing to do with "living for your dreams" ... frankly I think "living for your dreams" encourages people to give up. They're not successful, so it must be their fault. There must be something they're not doing. But if you realize that most of it is just chance and persistence, the only thing you can do if you want to succeed is to keep trying and to keep trying a lot. It's like the lottery, the more tickets you have the more likely you are to win. It's also like the lottery, in that you're not really likely to win, but dreamers are compulsive gamblers.

So expect failure. Make sure you've got a landing platform. Make sure you've got a life. Don't give up, but don't be wedded to the idea of winning, either.

Writerly ... stuff

I've been revising (again) in the hopes that perhaps people will like the revised version a bit better. Trying to get a book published is a lot like fishing, in that you get to bait a lot of hooks and reel in bupkiss while the mosquitoes suck you dry. I must repeat to myself, it's business, it's only business, it's not supposed to be pretty and they're not supposed to like you. It's just really hard not to take a form rejection personally. If writing = business, there are two kinds of product: Good, which sells, and sucky, which does not sell. A form rejection means I suck. End. Of. Fucking. Story.

But that's not what I wanted to discuss/ ramble about. In my internet wanderings I ran into Laurel K. Hamilton's blog, and one of her posts irritated me enough to rant. So here we go.

One of the fun things about revising is being able to take a scene apart, figure out what I was trying to do with it and then try to figure out how to make it better. I have no problem taking a scene and making it worse. A little more tense, a little more extreme. Something I've played a lot with the last six months or so is just using body language to convey emotion. Rather than "The blank made her nervious," write "The blank sat there with blankety running down its sides. She felt the spit dry on the back of her tongue." I have no idea how much more effective that is, but it means I have to spend a lot of time role-playing what my characters do. Even if it's just eyes closed, hands on keyboard, wandering around hallways in my mind. I have to feel something of what my characters feel emotionally so I can work out what they would feel or do physically.

One thing I have no problem doing, though, is shutting that off when I'm done with it and moving on. My characters aren't friends, my world isn't real, it's a fun box I can take stuff out of and play with, and then put everything back into when I'm done. Part of this, I think, is because I know exactly where I'm going with this, and it's hard to, say, feel scared for WBR's protagonist when I know she's gonna have a (relatively) happy ending. But most of it is, I don't go for creative bullshit.

Fiction writing is fake. My characters, all of them, are little psychological constructs that are plot dependent, just as the plot is character dependent (IE situation a requires weak link represented as character A) and if I don't have the capacity to alter them at will, as required by book/story/editor/reader/whatever, then I am not doing my job. I do not speak for my characters, I am not the voice of my own invention. In fact, I would say that when I write for somebody other than me, I am not doing something creative with words. I'm doing something creative with you.

A writer who is effective plays their audience like a violin. Or to put it more bluntly, when you read what I write and it has an impact with you, I am fucking with you. I am screwing with your emotions and your mind, making you have the reactions that I want you to have. In the beginning you become interested. In the middle, you may laugh, you may cry, you may become angry, but if I am doing my job, you are doing what I want you do to, thinking what I want you to think, believing what I want you to believe. And in the end, you ought to close the book thinking, simultaneously "That was a good ride" and "I'mbackonplanetearththankyougod (post roller-coaster ground-kiss) I wanna go again. Later. Like, tomorrow." and you wind up re-reading select passages a few hours later. Ideally, of course. The primary goal of a novel is to take the reader's virgin mind and do a great many things to it, hopefully enjoyable.

IMHO, a writer who places anything over reader reaction in the writing hirearchy has lost the plot. Even if all you're writing is a teaching manual, your goal should be expressing the idea to the reader. If you're writing horror, the reader should be horrified. A mystery ... whee, you really get to jack with your reader there. Fantasy should be exhillerating and scary as hell. Sci-fi should have a sense of wonder and speculation. Christian fiction should express Christian ideals, as should any other religious novel. 

The absolute last thing an author should do is fuck with themselves. It is not shallow to be able to set your tools down and move on. It's sane. First, because reality is a demanding, bitter, nasty bitch that requires your full attention, and who probably considers your novel to be a nasty two dollar ... yeah, we really shouldn't carry the sex metaphor any further than that. Second, because if you go pro, you have to deal with little things called "editors". Who may require you to kill significant portions of your book. I'm not talking about your darlings. I'm talking about their families, right down to their second cousins. And if you've gotten yourself so wrapped around your fictional universe you don't want to hurt your little babies, your boss might go "Well, that debut novelist is really more co-operative" (or if you are debut, "That midlister is much easier to work with"). Pro writing is a job. Half of the paycheck is to create something. The other half is earned by murdering significant portions of that something so that it is made better and more appealing to a general audience.

And for the record, I have to wonder just how deeply one really can "feel" a novel, as LKH's stuff is the shallowest stuff I've read in a really long time.

The Ovaries are coming! The Ovaries are coming!

Carol Burnett once described labor as follows: "Grab your bottom lip and pull it over your head."

I have actively considered becoming anorexic, not because I want to be skinny, lethargic, unhealthy and have my family fawn over me constantly, showering me with steak and chocolate (...actually that last part doesn't sound so bad) but because one diagnostic criteria is, your period stops. Your body becomes so unhappy with you, it begins shutting down critical functions, kind of like car manufacturers going on strike until they get health benefits and a pension. I guess your body wants to blackmail you back into compliance. The problem is that your period has stopped.

  It's basically the Ransom of Red Chief on a biological scale.

Men joke about it. "Never trust anything that can bleed for five days and not die," "she's on the rag", so on, so forth. One section of the totally awesome first Council Wars book, There Will Be Dragons (It's silly as all get out, but how many books do YOU know contain a literal dragon catapult AND Sluggy Freelance's Bun Bun?) uses period humor, where the previously artificially sterile women suddenly have periods en masse and all think they are dying. And while this may seem very fucking funny to a guy, let me point out that the female human body contains a function where your first reaction is OH FUCK I AM GOING TO DIE. 

People wonder why thirteen year old girls are so flighty and brain-dead. My proposal is, about two weeks before/after their thirteenth birthday they looked down and saw a great deal of blood staining their clothing and, naturally, screamed because they are fucking bleeding out of an orfice, and humans are trained from birth to consider sudden blood out of any biological opening as a bad thing. Naturally these terrified shreeks bring either Daddy or Mommy, who (our child knows) will sweep them into their arms, run downstairs without stopping for coffee and take them to the ER, where a CT scan will show the source of the bleeding.

So imagine our little girl's horror when Daddy backs out of the room veeeeeeery slooooooooooowly and Mommy starts laughing and cheering and discussing ways to celebrate this huge step via a large dinner. There is much cheering, and Daddy may be sent to get a stuffed bear and Baby's First Maxi Pads while Mommy shows her daughter how to rinse blood out of panties (always use cold water, kids). Our heroine here realizes one of nature's fundamental truths: Her parents want her to die. There could be no other possible reason for such celebratory behavior. They will probably put her ashes into the stuffed bear, or worse, into the maxi pads.

Then the truth hits her. This is normal. Mom does it to. This is how we get babies to continue the cycle of life. And then the cramps hit her, and she realizes she would rather cut these organs out of her stomach with a blunt button than she would ever have children, if it means she's going to feel like this more than once. And when the tears are dried, the cramps are over, and the maxi pads applied, our little girl finally sees reality clearly. She sees what life wants to do with her. She sees a future of rigorous sanity punctuated by a period of red, a celebration of womanhood preformed by women in too much pain to stand upright, and our heroine says, "Fuck it and pass me the hair gel."

Also, I'd like to address something that feminists keep bringing up. Now, I do consider myself slightly feministic, in a Susan B. Anthony kind of way. Equality, ya know? And yeah, I do the whole when-I-have-a-brand-new-hair-do thing, because there are times when I do like being girly. But there are a group of women who insist that the reason women consider their periods a curse is because the Patriarchy says it is. Which leads me to believe that the misogynist accusation that all feminists are transsexuals is correct. These women have obviously never had a period in their life and experienced the joy of severe cramps, or putting on your favorite off-white jeans and then looking down halfway through your workday, or trying to explain to a humorless male boss that your abs hurt so much you are dry heaving and you need to go home and lay down. It is not a gift, it is not the moon's blessing, I am not going to fucking paint with my menstal blood what the hell!?! I am going to go lay down with tylenol and a heating pad and a tub of chocolate ice cream and try to pretend that I am not bleeding uncontrollably into cotton batting. There is really only one picture that can fully portray what a period makes me feel like and this is it:

The chestbuster is my uterus.

Pearl of Great Depression: There's a REASON this stuff isn't in stores

You'll want to skip this entry. Seriously. Just skip.