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).

*******

* 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.

Rest in Peace, Daisy Coleman

I didn’t know Daisy Coleman, even though she lived in my town nine years ago, because I don’t have children and thus was not privy to high school culture. Then news had broken out that she had sneaked out to a high school party here in Maryville, been given a large amount of alcohol to drink, and was raped by one or more of the male partygoers while in a stupor.

I believed Daisy Coleman (and still do). I believe that she intended to be around popular boys, perhaps for social cachet, perhaps because one of the boys “liked” her. Sneaking out to stay up until the wee hours, even to drink, makes her not that unusual — there were several teens drinking in the barn of one of the boys’ parents.

But many in our community didn’t see it that way. The boys in question were on sports teams, and many in the schools championed the rapists. The sheriff and prosecutor did not see any way to prosecute the boys because Daisy was drunk. (The fact that the boys were also drunk somehow shielded them.) Many in the town defended the main suspect, who came from good family and whose grandfather was a legislator. So Daisy faced not only the trauma of rape, but harassment and lack of justice.

I, a survivor of rape myself, felt triggered by the series of events, especially the lack of justice. When I was raped in junior high in a different town, one year younger than Daisy, I decided to say nothing, not even to my parents, because I had spent years being badly harassed in the school district and I suspected how much worse it could get. I instead dissociated and made the memory go away. Living in Maryville, though, brought it back. And made me wary of a town that could behave without compassion.

I wish I could tell you that Daisy overcame the rape. However, Daisy Coleman died Tuesday night of suicide, 9 years after the rape occured. Maryville has blood on its hands, and no amount of Chamber of Commerce promotion is going to wash it off.

Rest in Peace, Daisy.

If there was justice, the rapists would dream every night of being stabbed in the genitals. The people who taunted her would dream of being doxxed. I know personally there is not justice, and it makes me angry.

Here’s the news article

’tis a gift to be simple

I had this old song, beloved by Quakers, in my head:

‘Tis a gift to be simple

’tis a gift to be free

’tis a gift to come down

where we want to be

And when we come down

in a place just right

it will be in the valley

of love and delight.

When true simplicity is gained,

to bow and to bend we will not be ashamed

To turn, to turn, will be our delight

till by turning, turning, we come round right.

**********

But what does that mean?

Simplicity is one of the tenets of Quaker (Friends) belief. The belief is that, if we keep our lives simple enough, we may hear the divine in the silence. We may clear away the clutter to find what’s essential. We may find that we feel better living right-sized instead of large. We may see ourselves as a part of the world rather than centering it on ourselves.

The song is comforting. I still keep my life a little too complex, although COVID has pared back some of that. I still fault myself for not being in the place I want to be (with some renown), but perhaps I’m in the place I should be.

Wish List

I’ve been writing too much about kittens. And COVID. And quarantine. That’s probably been because that’s been my life, in a summer bereft of traveling, going out for coffee, and …

Today, I’m putting my wish list out here for the universe to peruse:

A spa day at The Elms where I can spend all day in the Grotto running between the steam room, the sauna, and cold showers. Lounge on one of their beach chairs with a cool, minty fresh washcloth.
Getting motivated with my writing.
Getting my nails done. I have managed to grow them out and not bite them, and I want fancy color.
A trip to Champaign-Urbana to visit my friends. I know they’re COVID-negative but I don’t know if I will be after the 19th.
At least one of my novels (there’s currently three full ones plus the one or two I have to seriously edit) getting published by traditional press.
Initiative to get back on a diet
Getting one of my short pieces (poetry, fiction, flash fiction) published by a journal
Getting my Surface Book replaced (this will happen soon)

I think that’s enough for now.

Sleepy Sunday

It’s Sunday morning, and I slept in really late.

I need to get back into writing, in-between making a sourdough rye bread and spoiling one little kitty. If I can wake up.

The coffee is on its way. It’s a commercial coffee from a small mill instead of our usual home-roasted. It will wake me up just as well. Hopefully.

Me-Me and Girly-Girl are teaming up on my while I write. Me-Me thinks I’m not clean enough. Girly-Girl just wants attention.

Richard will brine and smoke salmon this afternoon. I want him to make a cream sauce and serve them over sourdough waffles for dinner if he’s feeling adventurous.

This is my Sunday. If I could only wake up …