all righty then

I now own a domain. Go me. It took far too long to 'easily' connect things to other things, and required a trip to the internet wayback machine to resurrect some links, but it's done.

I suspect skiffy connectivity (THANKS BIG CABLE COMPANY!) as the culprit. Every time I think oh, going the tech route would've been more lucrative, I am reminded of exactly how high stress the actual solving of the problem is, weighed against the eventual satisfaction. No. I would rather face essays.

tired

I had coffee yesterday with a brilliant young friend of mine. We met when she was a student in one of my writing classes--the argument and research class, the one I almost never teach because I find it difficult to teach political subjects without getting exhausted. Outrage with no outlet is bad for the soul. Anyway, K. and I were talking about her life, and she was describing one of her friends to me, a guy who had a 'friend with privileges,' and how that relationship had gone south because, essentially, the girl wouldn't put out one day when she was tired.

"Oh my god," K says. "I just. You know."

I raised both eyebrows. "What did you say?"

She winced. "I turned away from him. Disengaged. But I didn't say anything. Sometimes I just get so...so...tired, you know? Of having to educate all the time, speak up, all of that. It's exhausting."

Yes, yes I do know.

My hat is off to the people who do this day in, day out. The feminist bloggers. The female gamers. The women who engage, again and again, with the well-meaning men and the assholes and the "nice guys" and the self-righteous (and often defensive) beneficiaries of privilege. I just made the mistake of commenting on a Facebook post and caught a faceful of but my misogynist game isn't REALLY misogynist from some fanboys, complete with such clever responses as 'absurd' and 'what he said' and assorted ad hominems. All I did was link Scalzi's "Lowest Difficulty Setting" essay to 'em as an example of why a world-build in a patriarchal, inherently misogynistic single POV was not as complicated as, say, what Bioware attempts, and Bioware deserves some credit for that, even if the gameplay/hero/whatever the hell has some issues, in part because there are choices in making that hero--gender, race, class-- because, well, it does. It's more work. When my students try something challenging and don't succeed as neatly as the student who took the easy way out, you think that doesn't factor in?

Because this is the internet, the discussion has shifted position and turned somewhat personal. I have now engaged exactly four times, and that is exactly four times more than I should have. I am tired. I think we'd all do better with face to face and some beer for discussions like this. The anonymity is a bitch.

On the other hand, my friend K, with her friend...sometimes you're just tired, even if the person's sitting right there with you. Maybe the only solution is beer, or yoga, or Borderlands 2.

Maybe I'll just keep writing what I write, and let those characters--who are not allowed to be tired, because I say so--keep fighting the good fight. I'll be over here, with my stout and my Xbox.

because the internet needs another cat

Idris, preparing to mayhem.
(yes, that is a verb)
(because I said so)

skittles

The first major revision draft of the sequel to the Book On Submission is done. It went down a thousand words, then slowly crawled back up again, and finally topped out a little north of its original wordcount. The story line makes more sense (I am a chronic under-writer, prone to leaving gaps in the narrative like missing planks in a wooden bridge over a deep chasm of WTF). My inner editor (who sounds a lot like my agent) kept pointing out places where I'd made assumptions, or forgotten to share useful information, or just plain got confusing. I found all the places where I remember thinking, Okay. I have no fucking idea what happens next. Just write through it! which I did.

It is far, far easier to revise, even if I have major pieces moving around.

I will give it the rest of the day, and then go through it again, reading as a reader (because that's not the same as reading as a writer), and see if it holds together. I've got a self-imposed deadline of June 5 to get it to my agent. She pointed out she only gets to read it for the first time once. So it needs to be good. Or at least not in three colors, which is how I edit.

I call it skittling. I find a passage or something that might need to move, and I make it red, or blue, or whatever. Then I go to the place where I think it should go, and I splice it in. Sometimes pieces change or die. Sometimes I graft on whole new sentences or paragraphs. Then, if I think it holds together, I go back and delete the original block, leaving black prose studded with bright colors. That way, when I go through the next time, I can see where I've done major editing, and I can keep an eye out of pronouns and missing words (which I don't always catch, but that is why the gods made copy-editors).

But for now...enough. The migraine is winning. And we need to go on a cheese run. I have macaroni and cheese to make tonight (the good, old-fashioned way, which I've never actually done before).

AND I have Cixin Liu's The Three Body Problem waiting for me, too, a gift from a former Chinese international student who told me that book changed his life, and which he bought for me when he found it in English. I'm pretty psyched. I haven't read Chinese SF before (Russian, French, British, yes). So maybe I'll come home, armed with cheese, and actually read a book in the daylight for an unbroken couple of hours, on purpose, as if I were still a high school kid with time to burn, instead of squeezing out maybe 30 minutes at night before I fall asleep.

You're a good dog, Rita

Here I sit, reading "messy first drafts" on the patio. The weather is SoCal spring-time lovely. The hummingbirds in the fig tree are buzzing around on important hummingbird business. These little tiny finch-y shaped birds, yellow and brown, are hopping around the ripening figs.

And beside me, on the doormat, naps Idris, his plastic milk ring beside him. We have been playing fetch since 10:30, on and off. He naps, I get some work done. Then he wakes up, chirps, and brings the ring to me. I can ignore this, for a time. He will wait patiently, chirping at intervals. Then he will nibble my ankle, or bite my pants. He will bring the ring closer. Bat it around my feet. Hide it under the stool, or the desk, and attack it. Bring it out here, on the patio, and pursue it around the concrete.

So we play, in 15 minute bursts, until he needs to rest. Then I get work done. Repeat. And in between, he sprawls beside me, toy nearby. When I go inside, I will whistle, and he'll come galloping after me, expecting a treat.

Nous and I think we got a dog after all, trapped in a cat's body.