Christmas in the time of despots

By the way, I don’t need you to be Christian; I’m not Christian in the way most churches recognize. But here are more thoughts on Christmas.

I was thinking of my least favorite Christmas song (“All I Want for Christmas is YOOOOOO”) and asked my husband if there were any recently written Christmas songs that didn’t peddle a fantasy, either about snow, mistletoe, family Christmases, etc. or at the praise song level that didn’t address the social justice aspects of Jesus’ message. Older songs actually address social justice issues, from pointing out Jesus’ lowly birth to Masters in the Hall mentioning that Jesus would cast down the proud. We need social justice more than ever, but the dialog is sorely missing at Christmas, drowned out by jingle bells and commercials.

I wrote this out of my sadness and depression in this season, watching the humanity of the United States slowly bleed out drop by drop by legislation and regulation that favors the rich business people at the expense of the poor, people of color, and the LGBTIQA (sp?) community.

I dared myself to write the social commentary I wanted to see. I don’t have music for it, so if anyone wants to contribute that, let me know, and maybe I’ll become a singer-songwriter again:

I’ve memorized the carols

As I wade through Christmas crowds,

With lyrical exhortations

To casteth down the proud

The mighty have proclaimed themselves

So far above the fray

They stake their claim in Jesus’ name

But they forgot to pray.

I have to sneak to pray the words

I’m not supposed to say:

CHORUS:

I want a real Christmas

I want the Peace on Earth

I want the Good Will promised

With Jesus’ lowly birth

I want to see the lions

Give shelter to the lambs

I want to see the low raised up

And the Kingdom born again.

I’ve read the Christmas story —

The migrants on the road

There to appease the government

Despite Mary’s heavy load

I’ve read that Baby Jesus

Was born among the poor

But now we’re told the poorest

Deserve to live no more

And we would starve poor Jesus

If he returned once more.

CHORUS

It’s hard to see it’s Christmas

With trees in black and white,

My mind seems far too weary

To deal with all the spite

I light a single candle

For strength on every day,

To love and give to all creation

Any way I may,

And every day to shout the words

I’m not supposed to say:

CHORUS

Removing the Growth of Words

Yesterday was a good editing day.

Generally, a writer is supposed to write the first draft, blocking out the basic action of the story, and then edit. But I had gotten into a muddle, and I knew it, and I couldn’t write more unless I found the muddle and corrected it.

I knew the muddle originated in the chapter that was half again as long as the other chapters, but I had to decide which material drove the plot and which material was extraneous and superficial. That gave me a formula to work with.

It turned out I had tried to give too much background on my mythical beings, the Archetypes, and their half-human offspring, the Nephilim: “Here, Anna, here’s everything you need to know about your ancestry.”

Last night, I asked myself the following questions:

Do people give hours of expository dialogue in real life? No.
Is this just going to give Anna Schmidt, the protagonist, information overload? Yes.
Have I written myself in a corner, because I’ve overexplained one plot line to the detriment of the other (She’s in danger, the whole world’s in danger?) Yes.
Am I going to have to edit this mess to proceed? I’m afraid so.

The murder of two thousand something words (and not even great words) later, I’m happier with the chapter. Not final draft happy, but first draft happy.

The moral of the story is that some words harm the story as a whole, and surgical excision is necessary.

One more thing: Portugal reader, who are you? You make me curious.

The Two Trees

I have struggled with the symbolism of the Garden of Eden story my whole life. Seriously, I started questioning it at age seven, and none of the lovely young Jesuits who interned at my grandmother’s church gave me an explanation I could accept.

In the Garden of Eden segment in Genesis, God creates a paradise, and then he creates Adam and Eve, who he calls his children. And he tests them in a way that plays over and over again in creation: God says “Don’t eat the apple”. The serpent, representing peer pressure, says: “Hey, try the apple.” Eve says, “Hey, let’s eat the apple.” They eat the apple, and their eyes are opened, and they see their world and they make a big fuss of nudity.

I understand that this is an origin story that predates Christianity, and that its intention is to come up with an explanation about why there’s pain and suffering and menstrual cramps, but the problem is that the story has unintended consequences that cause more harm than pain, suffering, and menstrual cramps.

These are the reasons why I have trouble with this story (my viewpoint is probably biased by western culture and feminism. I do not apologize):

1. Adam and Eve, God’s children, have done only what generations of teens have done since: disobeyed their parents after having been given incomplete information on the consequences. God has, in effect, underestimated the intelligence and drive in his creation, and as a result, he exiles his children from the Garden with no remedy.

2. Questioning one’s parents is one of the hallmarks of growing up. Many an argument at the Thanksgiving dinner table has developed as a result of one’s values having changed by going off to college. In effect, then, God has punished his children with the nuclear option for growing up.

3. Although both ate the apple, Eve earns more than her share of scorn for eating first and then handing the apple to Adam. This casts Eve in a maternal role over Adam, rather than acknowledging Adam did it by his free choice. Therefore, Eve is put in the tricky position of being both Adam’s mother and his spouse. This continues as a myth in today’s relationships: women are put in the position of “taming” their partying bad-boy boyfriends into “real men”, and the men secretly blame them for destroying “the good old days”. Ironically, it also justifies the belief that women can’t make reliable decisions and that men must make them for their families. If you take this to its logical conclusion, women end up being made responsible for men who won’t actually listen to them.

4. As a professor, I tell my students that my job is to prepare them to reach beyond and accomplish things I haven’t accomplished. I’m told that parents want their children to have it better than they do. Why, then, is God such a bad parent in this tale? Why doesn’t he want Adam and Eve to possibly outreach him?

The Genesis tale appears to be about obedience. However, unrelieved servitude is not any more laudable than unrestrained freedom.

What about a balance?

I myself envision two trees, each representing an extreme — freedom and responsibility, rational and artistic, introverted and extroverted, individualistic and communalistic. We take a bite of each to understand the extremes, and pledge ourself to a balance of the two we can live with, because the extremes both have their damage.

Take a bite of each — the yellow apple tastes like the most perfect apple you’ve ever tasted, the one that tastes like a memory, like comfort, like nostalgia. The red apple tastes like impossible things, as if molecules of violets and woodsmoke and applejack from a mason jar and a taste of apple pie and tiny strawberries.

Of course, in my version of the Garden of Eden, Adam had to choose between Eve and Lilith. He chose Lilith, and ever since, people questioned the myths they were presented with.

The Nerve Center of a Small Town

When I first moved to Maryville, a small town in Northwest Missouri, I asked my department chair where I could take my parents for Sunday breakfast. She said, without hesitation, “Hy-Vee Cafeteria.” Hy-Vee is the local grocery chain and their cafeteria is nothing fancy. But if you want to get a feel for Maryville, the cafeteria should be your choice for breakfast.

The cafeteria sports vinyl booths with abstract patterns in subdued grey-blue and grey-pink that have become more subdued with wear, and mismatched black chairs at low-maintenance blond tables. Out the plate-glass windows I can see the purple-rose of dawn through the Christmas trees for sale.

At 7:00 AM, a man in a yellow-green safety jacket applies himself to his eggs and coffee. I’m A group of men, some younger with the blue-green colors of the high school, have finished breakfast and say their parting words. The group of farmers, one in a grizzled beard declaring that “I won’t vote for him next year, “ left a few minutes before, as a man in a cowboy hat and a woman with faded orange hair and glasses choose a booth for themselves as the boys’club of six AM shifts to middle-age couples in plaid flannel and sweatshirts and jeans.

In an hour or so, young families will trickle in, some I would recognize from the university, some I’m less likely to recognize from town. Families here live in a different Maryville than I do, one that has Christmas parades and pageants and high school football. Townies live in a different Maryville than I do, one that has tractor parades and benefit dinners and the Live Nativity. My culture lies in fragments across the United States, in coffeehouses, on the cliffs of Starved Rock, in the leche at a bakery in Hermosa Park, in the South Lounge of the Illini Union, in a thunderstorm in the Catskills.

But we all end up in the cafeteria at the local Hy-Vee for breakfast.

A Heads-up

I’m moving into the end of the semester, a time of grading and great stress. To make the season merrier, I’ve been exiled from my building for today and tomorrow due to — yes — bed bugs. Office hours in Starbucks aren’t so bad, though. Because of the piles of end-of-semester grading, I will be writing and blogging sporadically over the next couple weeks.

Also, I feel a bit blue this time of year because, as you might have noticed, there’s not much peace on earth and very little good will toward anyone who isn’t our own people. It’s been hard to be an idealist lately. The naive child inside me feels pretty battered lately.

Please send love and hugs and good wishes my way, preferably in a way where I can read it.

Going back and editing early

My final total for NaNoWriMo is 74,171 words — but the novel, Whose Hearts are Mountains, is not yet done. I’m actually going back to what I’ve written already and editing before I write the last section — in this case not subtracting, but adding foreshadowing, correcting details and making the earlier parts consistent with what I learn about the character later.

Why am I doing this instead of plowing ahead and going back later? Because the things I want to correct are bugging me. Like what signs do we have that Anna has the push-pull of a human side (wanting touch and contact) and Archetype sign (reserved, not emotive)? Not too much. Do we know about her stepfather’s past? No, but hoo boy, I discovered it yesterday and it’s big. Do we know why her natural father is so broken? No, I need to put that in. Do I have the chronology right? I hope so, because I’m really bad with time.

I hope this busts my writers’ block. I hope this makes me feel better about this novel. I need coffee now — today’s coffee is Costa Rican Tarrazu, roasted last night.

Decoding a Poem I Wrote in High School

I wrote this poem in high school: *

Quand PJ, ma petite chatte **
vient, elle me demande ***
“c’est vrai, est-ce vrai?” ****
et je répond “c’est vrai”. *****

* This is the only French I knew besides
“Bonjour, Guy!”
“Bonjour Michel! Ça va?
“Oui, ça va. Et toi?”
“Pas mal.”
People who took high school French in my age cohort will remember this as the first conversation in Son et Sens, the high school French 1 textbook.

** Was PJ a petite cat? Bwahahahahaha, no. She was a watermelon on sticks.

*** Did PJ demand anything of me? Food. She demanded food.

**** Was PJ an existential cat? No, she was Stupid Like A Box of Rocks. She liked drooling on feet.

***** What was I discussing with my obese, slabor cat? (See **** for explanation of “slabor”). What is true? What is really true? It’s lost to the ages, friends.

I was so pretentious in high school.

PS: Tis the Season to Have Writing Woes

I am less than 30,000 words away from a rough draft of a novel, and NOW I’m struggling to write.

Yes, I’ve said that before and I’ve gotten over it. I still want to talk about it.

It’s the most stressful time of the year:

Fall semester ends soon, and do you know what that means? End of semester projects in three classes! Final exams! Finalizing grades!

Stressed-out students! Stressed-out professors! Stressed-out people driving cars!

My house has become Christmas Music Central! (All I Want for Christmas is Yoooooooo!)

What should I get Richard for Christmas?

Am I doing Christmas right???

So with all of this on mind (and more), I sit down with my work in progress and say “OMG I know I’m not doing this right! I should have done more of this, that, and the other! It’s too long! It’s too short! It’s too complicated! It’s too simple! I haven’t even finished Prodigies!”

What to do?

1) Think about the book before I sleep. Some of my best plot ideas come from dreams.
2) Sit down during my usual allocated time (after I publish the blog in the mornings and before work) and GO FORWARD, not look back.
3) Drink coffee.

A NaNo Success Story

As you noticed from the title, today’s post is called “A NaNo Success Story”. But it’s not my story, which you’ve already heard — more than once.

This is my husband’s story.

For those of you who don’t know my husband, his name is Richard Leach-Steffens, and he looks like this (the person who isn’t me):

We were both a bit chubbier then.

He is universally regarded as the sweetest guy in the universe. He has a couple quirks, but so do we all. One of his more obvious quirks is that he has trouble finding words, and instead of a stammer, he uses grand arm gestures to try to coax the word out of hiding. (In the fashion of married people, I have picked up this habit, except I also say “uh … thingie” while trying to remember).

Richard has always wanted to write. When I asked him what job he dreamed of when he was younger, he said, “I wanted to be a traveling restaurant critic, but I have writer’s block.” I thought he had the perfect job idea, by the way: travel, eat, write, get paid. I’m still wondering why I didn’t come up with this.

When I started participating in NaNoWriMo, I invited Richard to participate with me. “But I don’t have ideas!” I knew that Richard had ideas, because he helped me with ideas all the time. Many a car ride and coffee hour has been spent bouncing ideas off him, and him bouncing ideas off me.

Richard, like many, dipped his toes in writing through Camp NaNo, a less strenuous version of NaNo, where one could set their own goal. Richard’s first project was part 1 of a novel based on one of the characters in my series of novels, Arnie Majors, the D.B. Cooper of draft resistors. His second Camp project was part 2 of the same book. He felt comfortable writing in an established world, because although he’d gotten comfortable with his writing, he didn’t feel comfortable with his imagination.

Last year, Richard started (and completed) his first NaNo book. Again, it was based on my Archetype world, but he took a character mentioned once in passing and created a book around her story. It’s clearly his book and not mine — yet it’s true to the universe. He made his word count goal in time, so he won.

This year, Richard wrote a book with his ideas, his imagination, start to finish. It’s soft Science Fiction, very conceptual — in other words, his kind of book. (His Master’s is in history, specifically military history; my PhD is in Family Economics, with a bunch of sociology and psychology thrown in).

Think about this — Richard had writers’ block. He didn’t trust his ideas, he didn’t trust his imagination, he didn’t trust his writing skills. He now has one book to finish and then three to edit in case he wants to publish (and torture himself the way I torture myself trying to get published).

He’s a NaNo success story.

Proposal: A Real February Holiday

We need a holiday in February.

In the US, we have Thanksgiving in November, Christmas a month later, and New Year’s Day a week after that. So we greet the darkness of midwinter with a vision of a glowing fireplace and wassail and Santa in the Coca-cola red garb and the reality of stolen moments of togetherness in-between the Christmas crowds and the ugly sweater office parties. But fantasized versions of Christmas are good; our movies reflect the family Christmas we need, and instruct us to make our own families and love the people we have.

Then there’s the time from after New Year’s until spring, the hardest part of the winter. Ice and slush smeared with cinder and mud, with no red ribbon or colorful lights breaking the monotony.

What about Valentine’s Day? you ask. Valentine’s Day, as long as I have lived, has been a show of lording privilege over others. In grade school, the children all decorate boxes for others who stuff valentines in. If the teacher doesn’t require kids have valentines for everyone, then the popular children get valentines and the unpopular ones do not. If the teacher requires that children give everyone valentines, then the unpopular children get ugly, uncomplimentary, and sometimes literally snotty valentines. As adults, the haves display their Valentine’s booty on social media, and the have-nots — don’t.

Maybe we should make Valentine’s Day a real holiday, where we show love by giving? Gather our friends and have a good lunch before we put red bows on the dogs at the humane society and walk them; give manicures and pedicures to the women at the senior home; clean out our cupboards for the soup kitchen and give our old dishes to the women’s shelter.

And those flowers? Give them to someone who would not get a flower otherwise. A friend of mine gave me a white rose in my office one year, in a time when I hadn’t dated for years. The best February ever.