tDW Archetypes

Either this new chapter-naming system is utterly brilliant, or really fucking cheesy.

I will soon find out which.

And I'm totally fucking sending this fucking book back out by September first, goddammit.

I am.

In Which the Protagonist Attempts to Be Mechanically-Inclined

So Jenn and I have been roasting in this apartment. This has been slightly confusing, because we never roasted so much in the apartment on the ground floor. And then we figured, hey, we're on the top (3rd) floor of the building now, and 115 degrees is Really Fucking Hot no matter what floor you're on, but really, it was ridiculous up here.

Our little box air conditioner was great downstairs. Cooled everything but the kitchen, really. But up here... shit. It's been shit. Even my room, which is right next to the reading room where the damn thing is, is damn hot.

A couple days ago, I cleaned the fan in my room, which had collected a ton of dust on it. Since then, the newly-invigorated fan has been blowing shit off my walls (my room is covered in pictures, maps, posters, quotes, etc). Jenn noticed this today, and I explained that I'd cleaned the fan.

And something clicked in Jenn's head.

"Kameron," Jenn said, "does our air conditioner have a filter?"

"I dunno," I said.

"I heard from somebody that you should clean out your air conditioner's filter. I can't remember who it was. Let's check."

So I pulled off the front of our air con unit, and lo and behold!

A filter.

A really, really fucking dirty filter.

I rinsed the thing off in the sink, watching all the black goo go down the drain, and then patted it dry and shoved it back into the unit.

Turned it on.

Blast of air hits my face.

And it was on *low.*

Gee, I wish we'd fucking figured that out on the day it was 115....

I was also terribly happy to hop into the car with Jenn today en route to the grocery store. Why? Cause when she turned on the car, it made that tell-tale clicking sound. And I knew what that was! A dead battery! I felt so useful.

We got a jump from the neighbor, looked for engine lights in case it turned out it wasn't the battery but the alternator, and no engine lights, so we survived a drive to the store and back.

And for some reason, I was pleased.

I've fixed the toilet, I change all the lightbulbs, I know basic "what the fuck is wrong with this car" crap, and - look! - we have a working air conditioner now, and I know how to fix one in the future.

Someday, I will be brilliant, as opposed to merely useful.

"The Women of Our Occupation"

Regendered.

Holy fucking shit.

I want both versions of this story.

(at LCRW, thanks David)

They Made Me Work Today

Bastards.

Global Warming is Fun

"Cooler" front coming in now, finally, and not a moment too soon. Big thunderstorms, wind, rain, the whole deal as the cooler air pushes out the warmer.

It might actually get down to 70 degrees tonight.

Tomorrow: low 80s.

Imagine!

The Lady in the Pool

Some tips for Shyamalan:

1) breaking the 4th wall once or twice with a witty line or two can be fun. Doing it blatantly in a too-long scene where you give your movie critic a silly monologue while he's facing a hell beast, isn't.

2) don't cast yourself as a writer or artist, especially a writer or artist Messiah. It's just bad form. In fact, don't write about writers who are "special." It's like Stephen King writing himself into the The Dark Tower series, or writing his own experiences into Kingdom Hospital. You ruin my suspension of disbelief, and for a tall tale like the one you're telling, I really need a suspension of disbelief

Cheesyness and self-referential dick-sucking aside, I enjoyed this movie. I did. But then, I liked The Village. So take my opinion with a grain of salt.

Say what you want about Shyamalan, but the guy knows how to write great characters. He's helped by great casts, but his characters are all sympathetic. You like them. You feel for them. You want them to succeed. And it's pretty tough to get cynical people to care about people while they're watching a summer movie.

The more media I ingest, the more I realize that you can have your characters doing any insane weird shit you want - fighting off dogs made of grass, getting picked up by giant eagles, living their lives in showers - and if you love the people, you'll go along with it. Just give them something they want, and we're all along for the ride, hoping they get it.

Even if what they want is to stare long and hard at M. Night Shyamalan and then hang around by the pool until they get picked up by a giant bird.

Why I Write Fantasy

It's all about the chicks with swords.

I take a lot of delight in writing about a woman who leaps into the fray with "both blades drawn."

I probably take too much delight in it.

Ah, that's right - this is what it's all about...

The Emotional Index Quiz

Cause I'm in the middle of inputting line edits. Yawn.

Your Top Emotional Needs:

1. Need to be appreciated. 7
2. Need to be respected. 6
3. Need for honesty/integrity. 4
4. Need to be alone. 4

Quiz

Bah! Emotions! Pff!

Still, I must say that's a pretty accurate list. Though I'd put respected at the top, and appreciated second, myself.

Dark Tea Time of the Soul (The Writer's Edition)

I've been working on the same screwed up 30% of tDW for nearly two years now, and I've reached the point where I've decided the entire book is crap and needs to be burnt down to ashes and buried in a big dark hole in the ground in Siberia. The problem with only working on the crappy parts of your book for so long is that you decide the rest of the book must be crappy, too.

Which, of course, it's not. Or I sure as hell wouldn't be going through this process. There are some good things. And in the 30%, there are even some salvageable things, though I'm having a hard time deciding what those are.

I'm in the middle of one of those Dark Writing Tea Times of the Soul, where I go out and read the blogs of people I know and think, "Why the fuck am I so behind?"

Granted, anybody reading Elizabeth's Bear's blog is going to think, "Why the fuck am I so behind?"

A lot of this running-faster-I'm-so-totally-in-a-race problem is that I tend to latch onto people outside my age group. You know, people like Bear who are ten years older than me.

Which is silly. If I want to run a proper race (which isn't recommended, but egads, I'm always fucking doing it), then I should probably judge my progress in relation to the people on this list (OK, let's pretend Tim Pratt and Catherynne Valente aren't on that list, OK?).

To be honest, the only person any of us are competing against is ourselves; the fact that so-and-so has a three book deal and I don't doesn't screw *me* out of a three book deal, and increasingly, I'm very happy that so-and-so got a three book deal, cause I either know them or am aquainted with them in some way (six degrees of separation and all that).

I think a lot of this sudden jumping around like the white rabbit is that I've actually been going to cons and meeting/speaking with other SF/F writers or at least seeing them on panels and bumping into them in the bathroom. And at some point you start to wonder if maybe you're just an imposter, and shouldn't be there at all. SF/F, in particular, is one big incestuous social club (I don't neccessarily mean that in a bad way), and it doesn't take long for everybody to know everybody else, or at least to have heard of them. I mean, you know, why aren't I comparing myself to, say, Michael Cunningham? He's 54 and has only written 6 books. Sure, a couple of those books are near perfect, but shit, I can write 6 books by the time I'm 54!

The answer, of course, is that I don't feel he's in my peergroup, and I don't know him. I'm also not likely to ever run into him at a con (ha, wouldn't *that* be a trip). Because if we're talking sheer literary greatness and movies and at least a little money, then hey, I should aspire to be Tom Wolfe. But I'm not running next to Tom Wolfe. I don't read his blog. I don't sit with him at lunch.

And it can be a bitch, feeling like you're clawing away at something for so long, and very little seems to be coming of it, whereas other people who've been clawing at stuff for a long time are making something of it.

The really crazy part about my sudden low mood regarding writing is that this has been one of the best years for me as far as writing goes. I sold two short stories this year (the max I've sold in a year, thus far, is three), and I've got some interest in tDW, and God's War will indeed be finished someday. I have a lot of projects. It's not like I'm stagnating.

But damn, it sure feels like it.

The thing with writing, with any art, any craft, is that it takes a lot of time to get good at it. A lot of time. And a lot of practice. And a lot of trial and error (read: "failure"), and after a while you start to wonder if you're just beating your head against the wall merely to hear the satisfying thump.

There haven't been a lot of things in the last year or so that I've had any success with. The fact that I somehow managed to sell anything at all and get a novel out the door says something about where my priorities are, and probably where some of my talent is. Cause if I really sucked goats at this, I have no idea how I'd have had anything to talk about as far as writing goes, this year. God knows it was hard enough to function on my ten hours of sleep a night and type up dialogue with a sugar headache. But I did it.

And you know, one of the biggest lessons I'm pulling out of this whole chronic illness thing is knowing that I could function as long as I did, as sick as I was. It's not something I'd recommend, obviously, but looking back on it, at what I did manage this year while my pancreas slowly died on me, I'm wondering how much better things can be once I get my shit back together.

Maybe the Dark Tea Time has to do with the fact that I know I'm about as better as I'm going to get, and it's time to test that theory. And if it turns out I'm still a staggering failure at nearly everything, then it's not just cause I was sick, it's cause I'm just incompetent.

I don't believe that'll be the end result, but I think that's some of the fear behind my inability, the last couple of days, to start getting my life back. Granted, I've had a lot of emotional upset to deal with, and that takes me down for the count, and the heat's been seriously staggering, but the emotional pain will ease, and the heat will dissipate, and that will leave me with... me. And no more excuses.

On a More Upbeat Note...

It's still bloody fucking hot here!

The Routine

Sit on the edge of the tub. Run cold water. Rinse feet. Rub with soap. Rinse. Repeat. Look over your slightly numbed toes and footpads for sores, blisters, warts, blemishes. If found, make a note to show these to your doctor during your monthly visit. Rub at foot callouses with pumice stone. Rinse. Rub feet with lotion.

Take solace in the fact that you've just performed a new daily ritual that will hopefully keep you from getting your feet chopped off at 40.

This Must Be Hell

The air conditioner at work just broke.

Note: Today's real feel temperature for Chicago is 114 degrees.

What I've Been Up To

Trying to wait out the heat, mostly. But stuff is getting done. Slowly.

Went to my gym and cancelled my membership (you have to do it 30 days ahead of time), finally. I start back up at my mixed martial arts school (read: boxing!) in September. While I still have my final 30 days at my gym, I'll also be getting used to working out outside my house again. Today's the first time I'll be back since before I got sick. The heat has finally forced me to exercise out of the house; the gym has air conditioning.

Put some more money in the bank. I'm slowly accruing what I'll need for the trips I'm taking this year and relocation money next year, should I end up getting a job somewhere else.

Doing a lot of reading, and figured out what's wrong with God's War. Now I have to fucking fix it.

Still frustrated about a lot of things, still pretty emotionally drained, but getting better. My sugar's stabalized, finally. Called my doctor this weekend, and for the first time since I got out of the hospital, he didn't tell me to call him next week to update my numbers. He said that unless I'm consistently going over 150 or below 80, I should be good. And 90% of my numbers are in that range. It means I'm consistently feeling - physically - near-normal for the first time in a year and a half. It's been a long road. And it's still not perfect, but it's a lot better than it's been.

There's still some struggling going on with weight and diet. The doctor wants me to lose weight, and I'd rather not be hungry. I'm already working out five days a week. In any case, I'm cutting back even more where I can, and thinking about substituting some of my whole wheat carb counts for fruit carb counts, just to see if that'll help me drop some weight. Right now, I suspect a lot of the weight gain is because I was starving for a year, and it's now leveling off, just like the sugar levels. We'll see what the scale looks like at my next appointment. I really don't want to go on any more drugs.

I know things are going to be all right. The health is better, and that's a good start. When that's doing all right, I can do everything else.

Now I just need to do everything else...

Why do I always feel like I'm running a race that I started too late and have to complete with a bum leg?

The Women of Our Occupation

My story, "The Women of Our Occupation" is up at Strange Horizons.

Surprise! Stressing About Your Weight is Bad For You

I need to show this article to my doctor...

"To me what makes more sense is that there's just a lot more social stigma associated with being overweight amongst females, and that that causes a lot more stress and distress," Muennig said. "There's evidence showing that high levels of stress can increase your risk of morbidity and mortality."

The findings provide evidence, he added, that "the message that women are getting in the mass media about their weight is actually more harmful than we previously thought."

Please Drink Your Water Today, Chiklits

Another busy rush hour on the train headed out to O'Hare. You get a lot of people and a lot of luggage packed on that train on Monday mornings just shy of 8am.

I was holding onto one of the poles by the door, and this little woman was standing on the other side of the pole, holding on just beneath me. She rested her head on the pole; no big deal, it's early, people get tired. Then she brought her head up again, then thumped it back on the pole. Not rested. Thumped. She did that twice. I turned off my ipod and started paying more attention to her. The binder she was carrying started to slip from her grip. She didn't seem to notice.

When the binder fell onto the floor and she made no move to go after it, I grabbed her wrist and asked her if she was OK.

She didn't respond. Me being me, and wearing my own medical ID bracelet, I checked her wrists for an ID, and didn't find any.

The last person who passed out in front of me on the train had an epileptic seizure and started foaming at the mouth.

Jenn is always telling me the horror stories about people who need help in cities. You can cry out in a room full of 100 people, and quite often, nobody does anything. You can get raped right next to the Art Museum downtown in broad daylight, and nobody will do anything (yes, that's happened before). You get pretty anesthesized in cities. You get used to lots of people. And the way you get used to being with so many people is to respect their space, even if something seems a little off.

Because Jenn is always telling me these stories, I tend to act a little more quickly than other people in crowded places when it looks like somebody's in trouble. When the guy who had the seizure fell out of his seat, I was the first one to get up and ask him if he was all right, and the one who yelled at the person in the back of the train to hit the emergency button to alert the train operator.

So, after asking this woman three times if she was all right and not getting a response, I turned around and hit the emergency button again. And then everybody started moving. One guy gave up his seat and him and another person got her to sit down. A very hot guy crossed from the other side of the car, announced that he was an EMT, and squatted down next to her and started trying to get her to talk.

I told the train operator we had somebody passing out in car 3056 (this is important to tell them; I learned this the last time somebody passed out on me) who might be going into a seizure (she had no medical ID, and I was going off past experience).

Having her sit down helped, and the EMT got her some water. I offered her hard candy (cause, of course, I have those for my own episodes), but she was coming out of it.

Turns out she was overheated. If I had to guess, I'd say she likely hadn't had breakfast either, and that likely didn't help.

By the time the train stopped, she was coherent again, and the EMT was hitting on her. It was very cute.

In any case, after an overheated weekend and a week that's setting up to be in the triple digits, it was a good reminder to stay cool, and drink a lot of juice.

Though passing out on a train is apparently a great way to meet hot EMTs...

In Which the Protagonist Decides It's Time For Another Blogging Break

Yup, it's about that time again, when the protagonist's overabundance of self-pity overwhelms even her own ability to tolerate it!


You know what my problem is?

I haven't written anything new in nearly two weeks. That's enough to make me batshit.


See you all on Monday.

"One of the things that draws writers to writing is that they can get things right that they got wrong in real life by writing about them." - Tobias Wolff

God, I Hate This Job

OK, I need to stop whining. I need to get my shit together, or nothing is ever going to get done, nothing is every going to change.

Deep breath.

I Am So Tired

Remind me again why we all get into relationships again and again and again when all of them just end up hurting you and somebody you love again and again and again?

Isn't the definition of insanity doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result?

Juicy Feminist Goodness

Blame the Spice Girls? (via Twisty)

Barbara Ehrenreich has a blog! (thanks, Jenn)

And if you haven't read this bit about "choice feminism" from Linda Hirshman, you should. (also via Twisty)

Yawning Lion defines feminism (ohhhh yes, the feminist sex wars continue! For the record, I think trying to force yourself to be a lesbian is about as sexually unfair to you and your partner as trying to force yourself to enjoy sex with men. But hey, that's why I'm not a radfem or a real feminist, I suppose)

Women, Health, and the Politics of Fat.

I'll rant about all these links later...