Wish me luck (on the verge of a COVID semester)

I took a break from this journal yesterday because the beginning of the semester is fast approaching. I got up early this morning fretting about some bit of paperwork I needed to get in before 10 today, and I will spend the morning doing some last minute magic to my course sites. We will be meeting in a blended format, so I will have classes each class day that will keep me in contact with students.

I’m ready. I’m not ready. I’m as ready as I’m going to be. I never feel ready; I just have to plunge in and deal with putting out fires as I go. Like my usual semesters, except with masks, hand sanitizer, appointment-only office hours, surface disinfectant, and the possibility of students bouncing in and out of class as they get sick. No worries.

This is going to be a hard semester. This will not be business as usual, and I’ve been so stressed for so long already it feels normal. I don’t know what this semester will bring.

Wish me luck.

With people, there’s always hope

I just got to the Board Game Cafe, and already I’ve advised an incoming freshman and their mom about some of the features of Maryville. Life is starting to feel back to normal with just that little thing.

We’re practicing social distancing here, and mask wearing (there’s an ordinance in Maryville).

There are two girls (probably high schoolers) playing a complex game at one table, and occasional people looking for coffee.

As for me, I’m writing this blog, and afterward, I’m going to transcribe some of my pen and paper notes and see if I’ve gotten any further with Gaia’s Hands.

Maybe there is hope, even though I feel like I have to scream through my mask to be heard, and I don’t know if I’ll get sick, and I don’t know if this pandemic will ever end. But there are still people, and with people there’s always hope.

The COVID teaching year

And now it begins … fall semester under COVID.

I have two meetings today, one over ZOOM and the other socially distanced. I’ll have one more socially distanced meeting on Monday, and then classes (my new hybrid method) will start next Wednesday.

I don’t know if I’m ready for this. I will make sure I mask well and use my ethyl alcohol spray and wipe down the tables and meet students over ZOOM unless and until my students all get sick.

I’m usually excited about the beginning of the school year, but there doesn’t seem like there’s much to get excited about. Apprehensive is the better adjective.

I need to make new rituals to replace the anchoring of the new school year. I didn’t know how much I needed them until they were gone. The beginning of the year picnic, gathering for refreshments before the big meeting, Convocation. The new wardrobe.

What shall I do? Break in the video camera and microphone? Bring in a stuffed toy? (No, my colleagues won’t take that well) Wear my Bub mask? YES!

If I can keep my sense of humor, I think I’ll get through this.

I got my computer back!

Finally got my computer replaced.

I updated the system and it didn’t break.

All my programs work.

I guess miracles do happen 😛

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My preferred computer is a Microsoft Surface Book because it can go with me pretty much anywhere, and it has a hard keyboard (as opposed to the Surface Pro, which doesn’t work well on one’s lap).

I have a computer I used when mine was in the shop, and it’s a monster of a Dell gaming machine. It’s impossible to carry around, and there’s a glitch in the sound now for no apparent reason. I got it for graphics, which I explore at times; ironically the new Surface Book for Business with its small form factor outperforms the behemoth in graphics. So all I need is about $2k to upgrade for both. No problem, right? (HA!)

I have my favorite computer back, and it’s good enough. Plenty good enough!

Odds and Ends today

First off, my newly published story “Come to Realize” can be found here. Honestly, I didn’t know the story would be considered humor!

Second, I just got back from ten minutes (that’s all I can do right now) walking the track. I have runner’s high and I didn’t even run! (I think it’s called hypoxia).

The big thing, though, is that I’m still working on getting more racial/ethnic equality in my writing. I’ve completed two stories; I’m down to one story, Prodigies. I feel a bit uneasy making these corrections, afraid they’re going to be considered clunky (although they’re just like the ones that describe Black skin color). I decided that my discomfort was part of the problem — the subconscious ruling that white people are the “default”. I have one book left to do, and the irony level is that the book was written by the viewpoint of a multiracial narrator, and still assumes whites as default.

Anything I can do to make the world richer, I will do.

Decentering Whiteness in my Writing

I read an important tip on Twitter last night that’s transforming my writing: If you’re going to describe skin tone on people of color, you need to do the same for white characters.

It’s a simple, but revolutionary thing — I have been making the assumption that I don’t have to describe white people because it’s assumed that white is the default. I didn’t even do this consciously.

One could rationalize making white the default through statistics — Most Americans are white, therefore. But that’s doing a disservice to people of color, who still make a significant number of people in the world.

Worse, specifying skin tone for non-whites — Blacks, Latinos, Asians, Native Americans — while ignoring it for whites signals that minorities are “other”, not of the group, something to be stared at.

So I’m making a point to go back into my writing and add descriptors of white skin. It has felt very strange, which is part of why I should be doing it.

I have gone through one of my finished books and today I will do the other two. And then I will feel like I have done the right thing by my readers.

Free-writing Jeanne and Josh again

I think I will free-write today and try to get somewhere with my book. Sitting and staring at the computer won’t work.

I wish I could write in my room — the atmosphere is better. Except for the little demon who tries to chew on my fountain pen as I write. My fountain pens are relatively inexpensive, but they’re not Bic stick pens (Biros for my British friends). I’d rather they not have little tooth marks in my pens.

So I will be writing pen and paper in the living room, exploring specifically Jeanne and Josh’s relationship. For review:

Jeanne is a 45-year-old botanist whose insistence on logic hides a green thumb — an observable ability to make plants grow. If any hint of that reaches the academic community, her research on domesticating a perennial bean will be discredited. But a memory awakens in her, one in which she is called to create garden oases.
Josh is a 25-year-old writing instructor. He is immersed in a spiritual world through his belief in Shinto and his aikido. His visions tell him that Jeanne must become the keeper of a great garden. But he’s afraid to tell the logical Jeanne about his spiritual life because he’s afraid she’s going to reject him.

I’ve been fighting one plot point for ages: The fact that there doesn’t seem to be reciprocity between Jeanne and Josh. I’ve come to the point that, early on, Jeanne doesn’t even think it’s possible for them to be a couple. He’s too young, she thinks, and would not be attracted to her. Meanwhile, Josh is struggling with his fear of rejection. A twenty-five year old whose reality is fluid might well fear this.

I love Jeanne and Josh as characters, and even better as a couple, because they subvert the whole romance thing. He is younger, more expressive, lightly built (don’t blame me; I’m attracted to men like that). Jeanne is ample, very instrumental (in the sense of making things happen).

There’s so much to carry here, I feel like I’m juggling cats. But rather than structure at this point, I think I need to free-write because I’m making no progress composing within the outline.

A Small Accomplishment (and some Midwestern Female Syndrome)

Yesterday, a little bit of networking paid off.

I participated in a writers’ chat on Zoom headed by Debbi Voisey, a writer from England, about publishing tips. One of the topics was publishing in literary journals, and on the panel was Shawn Berman, the editor of an online journal, The Daily Drunk.

When he explained that the journal picked items that were “humorous and quirky”, I realized that I had a piece that might be what he was looking for*, Come to Realize. I don’t write humor much, but a story about a vampire in a Narcotics Anonymous meeting seemed like it might fit the bill. And, apparently it did, because it’s getting published next week.

At less than a thousand words, Come to Realize is flash fic. I seem to have a little luck in flash fiction and short stories and poetry**, and less luck in the novel category. I suspect this is because of marketability instead of skill. It might be that my quirk is more welcome in small, non-lucrative presses than in the big money-making ventures.

This might push me toward self-publishing, because I don’t think my stories are what mainstream fantasy expects. The tropes are not obvious — there are no elves, alternative worlds (well not much, anyhow) I don’t want to write to the trends (which always change anyhow).

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* Midwestern Female Syndrome entails the inner desire to be perfect with external behaviors of self-deprecation and overly qualified statements. Here is an example. In reality, I have been published eight times, not counting the two slop journals publishing everything right and left to make money off of selling copies of the journal.

** Here is another example of Midwestern Female Syndrome. It seems us Midwestern women are always striving to look mediocre.

The Rosetta Stone of my Memory

The things I remember from my past are little clips of little consequence:

My first memory is sitting on a couch right in front of the window. It’s dark in the room because there are midnight blue blackout curtains on the window. Midnight blue with slubs of red. My dad keeps peering through the window. Only the grey of dawn peaks through the curtains. I think I was two.

After we moved into a house, the neighbor boys gleefully stomp up our attic stairs looking for treasure. My sister and I trudge up after them, having never been in the attic with its 50-plus years of coal dust sifting from the crawl space. My bare feet grow very dirty. I believe I was seven.

Many, many evenings, my parents play bridge in the kitchen with Mom’s cousin Dale and his friend Kenny. My sister and I are on orders not to disturb them, but I don’t listen as well as I should. I liked my cousin Dale and his friend Kenny too much to stay away for long. I could have been six, or seven, or nine.

At the Brookfield Zoo, I really wanted to see the snakes. I had read about them, and I wanted to see if they were as terrible as I thought. My parents decide to wait till last to see the snakes, and by then I am so tired and crabby we end up going home before seeing them. Everyone blames me. I was four at the time.

One glorious afternoon, I swing on a swing at the local park, waiting for my mother. The sunshine enchants me, and although my fellow day campers taunt me for singing at the top of my lungs, it doesn’t bother me, because the sky sparkles. I was ten.

These memories fall out when I tug on one of them. The first memory stays with me without provocation like a stone in my pocket, as if it was a mini Rosetta Stone of my memory. The memory itself is so small, with no particular evocation of its own rather than waiting for something.

Perhaps I was waiting for the rest of my life.