writing

What We, as Writers, Must Do Now

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So I think we can all agree that life is rather surreal at the moment. For example, just saw that Guinness Book of World Records record holder for the Shortest White House Employment in the History of Ever as he Was Fired Before His Start Date (not a real record) Anthony Scaramucci put up a poll so people could vote on how many Jews were murdered in the Holocaust.

Spoiler alert, it’s approximately 6 million and not up for debate.

And yet, there we are. He also posted about a Halloween costume where you could dress your child up like tragic Holocaust child victim Anne Frank. Fun, right?

Once again, this guy had a job, however briefly, in the White House. This is where we are now, a world with plot points so ludicrous and villains so beyond on-the-nose, editors everywhere are probably in chronic pain and not sure why.

How, as a writer, do you top reality when reality is coming together like the drunkest story ever told that shouldn’t be?

It’s a tough question, and I don’t really have the answer. But I do wonder if we should be listening to writer Neal Stephenson and focus on brighter futures, no matter our genre. What we need now is hope, positivity. We, as writers, have an obligation to imagine a world where this sinking ship is righted.

So fingers to keyboards, my fellow writers. We have a society to save.

For more on my thoughts about Charlottesville and rising bigotry, please read An Open Letter to My Friends of Color.

Check out  my full-length novels: 

Aunty Ida’s Full-Service Mental Institution (by Invitation Only)   

Aunty Ida’s Holey Amazing Sleeping Preparation (Not Doctor Recommended) 

 Her Cousin Much Removed

 The Great Paradox and the Innies and Outies of Time Management.

And download Better Living Through GRAVY and Other Oddities, it’s free!

Peruse Montraps Publishing.

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#WomenBoycottTwitter Because Our Voices Matter

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By Ron Clausen (Own work) [CC0], via Wikimedia Commons

So today #WomenBoycottTwitter, and I don’t know if it’s more painful for us or Twitter. I may or may not have a problem relating to tweeting, reading tweets, liking tweets, retweeting tweets. You know, the whole tweeting experience.

On the plus side, my productivity will likely set world records.

In case you missed it, actor Rose McGowan, a harsh critic of Harvey Weinstein and “alleged” rape victim of his–given all that is emerging about the former Weinstein Company head, I have no reason to doubt McGowan, but as far as I know, he was never charged or convicted–was banned from Twitter for a time. Twitter claimed she wasn’t banned for speaking out and naming names (and she named names), but for tweeting a private phone number, allegedly violating the terms of service.

The thing is, though, donald trump (not a typo, I don’t capitalize his name), self-proclaimed sexual abuser of women who just goes ahead and grabs them as he said on tape, also tweeted out a phone number. He’s threatened nuclear war. He’s harassed individuals like ESPN reporter Jemele Hill, possibly resulting in her suspension from her job. He’s blamed Puerto Rico for the aftermath of his lackadaisical hurricane response and threatened to let it stew in the mess he made as people die, literally die, of completely preventable causes.

Yet he’s never been suspended from Twitter.

Some people claimed that McGowan’s suspension was purely automatic, triggered by the number of reports. But then why haven’t reports automatically triggered trump’s suspension?

So here I am today, Twitterless, thanks to Twitter’s uneven application of its rules. White supremacists, nazis, really, can spew their hatred on the platform. Bots can influence elections and the tech company pretends it can’t tell the difference between a bot and a human. Women like Leslie Jones can be harassed off of the platform and it takes huge outcry for her tormentors to be removed.

Rose McGowan can be silenced for speaking out about sexual abuse.

I don’t know how many women are with me today. I don’t know if Twitter will notice our absence. Maybe men will greatly enjoy being the only voices in the room.

But our voices matter. Women matter, even if, in the current climate, we’re constantly being told that we don’t. It’s because we matter, because we can be so loud and so strong that they’re telling us, as they did Hillary Clinton, to shut up and go away.

Be careful what you wish for, money-making entities relying on us to set your advertising prices.

We’re not going to be quiet anymore. Our voices will be heard.

But it’s our choice where we share them. And for today, it’s not on Twitter.

 

Get Away for a While

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Definitely better than what’s going on right now.

Definitely.

Plus there’s eavesbraining, so there’s that.

Listening for Hoofbeats

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Alexander Hamilton by Alonzo Chappel [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

I’ve got a roiling case of the blahs today. It’s rainy and gray and we’ve had one major disaster after another, and I am starting to realize the cavalry isn’t coming. Any Cavalry.

Of course, that’s the point, that’s the idea of the targeting that Putin’s been doing across social media platforms, getting into the psyche of all, whether stoking the fires of hatred, of misogyny, of suspicion, of despair.

If anyone knows despair, it’s Russia. Ever read any Russian literature?

I rest my case.

So what can we prescribe to help us get through what is becoming the roughest of rough patches, what might extend to a global rough patch akin to sand paper? Well, my Russian literature joke kinda did it for me, I have to admit.

My needs aren’t great.

We will have gray. We will have blah that slides into something else, something darker. If we didn’t, under the current circumstances, we would be something less than human.

But.

It’s humor, even the slightest glimmer of humor that can see us through this, give us the strength until we don our armor and realize the one and only truth:

We are the cavalry.

For more on my thoughts about Charlottesville and rising bigotry, please read An Open Letter to My Friends of Color.

Check out  my full-length novels: 

Aunty Ida’s Full-Service Mental Institution (by Invitation Only)   

Aunty Ida’s Holey Amazing Sleeping Preparation (Not Doctor Recommended) 

 Her Cousin Much Removed

 The Great Paradox and the Innies and Outies of Time Management.

And download Better Living Through GRAVY and Other Oddities, it’s free!

Peruse Montraps Publishing.

 

 

Dream a Little Dream

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Henri Rousseau, “The Dream” [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Such strange dreams last night. Vivid and as solid as sitting here typing away. Only much much weirder.

Everything made sense while I was in the dream; nothing felt especially out-of-place, but when I woke up, the memory of something so polar opposite to my waking life felt jarring. Incongruent.

Which spellcheck still insists isn’t a word.

Dreams fascinate me, the way entire worlds are built, sturdy worlds with neighborhoods and streets and homes which feel familiar yet don’t. And yet from the moment we float up to consciousness, even before we’ve opened our eyes, they slip away from us, those visits to another place we’ll likely not see again.

It’s nice, as a writer, to have a built-in source of inspiration and ideas. You don’t even have to take your dreams word-for-word; sometimes just the mood or setting will spark something.

Meanwhile, I still find myself wondering how something that can seem so real could never exist at all.

For more on my thoughts about Charlottesville and rising bigotry, please read An Open Letter to My Friends of Color.

Check out  my full-length novels: 

Aunty Ida’s Full-Service Mental Institution (by Invitation Only)   

Aunty Ida’s Holey Amazing Sleeping Preparation (Not Doctor Recommended) 

 Her Cousin Much Removed

 The Great Paradox and the Innies and Outies of Time Management.

And download Better Living Through GRAVY and Other Oddities, it’s free!

Peruse Montraps Publishing.

Monday, Monday Always Monday

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By Zimmermanns (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)%5D, via Wikimedia Commons

And back around again to Monday. New week, new need to cut my fingernails, as they’re now at the length of clacking against the keyboard and it’s driving me crazy and slowing me down.

No one wants slow typing fingers. Writers definitely don’t want slow typing fingers. If your ideas get too far out in front of you, they sometimes dissolve into mist and you can’t catch them. Ideas are a elusive.

I’m trying to cut down on caffeine again, and attempted to trick my brain with a half-caf. My brain is smarter than I thought. Or more caffeine dependent. Either way, upside is that another cup of coffee only brings me to one cup of coffee.

What’s that, hypothetical reader? Decaffeinated coffee still has some caffeine, which means that another cup of half-caf might mean more caffeine than a regular cup of coffee?

Spoilsport, I say to you, hypothetical reader. Spoilsport indeed.

While a week of peace and general calmness seems to be too much to ask in our alternative universe, I do wish all a week of good words, great ideas and smooth sailing, whatever your endeavors.

Unless you’re some kind of evil-plotter, in which case I wish you all those things only if your evil-plotting stays firmly in your manuscripts.

We are adrift right now in this vast sea of uncertainty. Good thing I brought a pen.

 

For more on my thoughts about Charlottesville and rising bigotry, please read An Open Letter to My Friends of Color.

Check out  my full-length novels: 

Aunty Ida’s Full-Service Mental Institution (by Invitation Only)   

Aunty Ida’s Holey Amazing Sleeping Preparation (Not Doctor Recommended) 

 Her Cousin Much Removed

 The Great Paradox and the Innies and Outies of Time Management.

And download Better Living Through GRAVY and Other Oddities, it’s free!

Peruse Montraps Publishing.

When Alien Invasion Starts to Sound Good…

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By Annika Laas (Own work) [CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)%5D, via Wikimedia Commons

Hello Friday. My head is pounding, it’s raining again and this week hasn’t ended any better than it started. Don’t know what I was hoping for, really, beyond a tidal shift in the space-time continuum, setting us back on our real course.

Perhaps that was an out-of-proportion hope.

A friend sent me an article yesterday about a drunk man who claimed to be a time traveler from the year 2048, shifted back to warn us about an impending alien invasion. As a writer, I’m skeptical.

He claimed the aliens sent him here, but if the aliens are so awful that he needed to come warn us, why would they send him back to warn them about…them? Terrible plotting.

Then again, his blood alcohol level was sky-high so maybe the whole writing-while-intoxicated thing is a myth borne of very very discreet editors.

Frankly, the article left me with the well-worn more questions than answers. Apparently he asked for the “president of the town.” If our governmental structure has broken down that much by 2048, isn’t that the story?

Ugh. And we’re back to now.

So here’s hoping for an alien invasion? Here’s not hoping for an alien invasion? Here’s indifference to an alien invasion?

I have to admit my curiosity about other life forms from the far-reaches of the universe and the science they use to travel perhaps unwisely outweighs my fear of them.

But at the end of a week like this week, I prefer the possibilities of the absurd to the realities of the absurd.

For more on my thoughts about Charlottesville and rising bigotry, please read An Open Letter to My Friends of Color.

Check out  my full-length novels: 

Aunty Ida’s Full-Service Mental Institution (by Invitation Only)   

Aunty Ida’s Holey Amazing Sleeping Preparation (Not Doctor Recommended) 

 Her Cousin Much Removed

 The Great Paradox and the Innies and Outies of Time Management.

And download Better Living Through GRAVY and Other Oddities, it’s free!

Peruse Montraps Publishing.