Major Housekeeping (And The Reason Why)

Image Description: Google Domains Notice
"Your domain is about to expire."

So normally, Friday would be the time for some kind of "meaty" article. And I've got a couple simmering on the back burner. (One of them is about Star Wars! Although since it's me in 2016–also known as the year of tragedy–it is going to be about The Force Awakens not Rogue One, but maybe I can do a Rogue One article right before the Han Solo stand alone comes out. Hach ach ach chaaa!) I've also finished teaching for the semester [and at least next semester as well] so there is about to be an uptick in the number and quality of articles around here.

Today, though (and running into this weekend) another of our major changes is coming. I need to get a few things taken care of, and there's going to be quite a bit of housekeeping.

Folks on subscription should be aware that this weekend might get a little chaotic. Lots of articles you may have seen before finding new homes on fresh pages.

So here's what's going on:

About a year ago, if you've been following close I split a certain kind of writing I've been doing into it's own blog called Social Justice Bard. (I'm not going to link it for reasons that will be obvious in a couple of paragraphs.) That was to contain all my writing about social inequality with the occasional cross post here when the topic dovetailed nicely with ideas like how we use words or the narratives with which we explain random collections of facts.

Of course it was very shortly after that that we had a cancer diagnosis, and life kind of short circuited after that for several months as one thing after another came down the pipe including moving out and post all-that-fucking-stress health problems. But now life is about to relax, and I have time to get back to SJB.

But I'm not going to.

That blog is about to shut down.

Instead, the old Social Justice Bard menu (I'm also not going to link THIS because the roll out will involve a few major changes including an all new menu page) that we used to have here will be returning.  Over the next few days, all the posts that were exclusively on the other blog will be getting transferred here. This is where future posts of that sort will go.

http://www.zazzle.com/social+justice+buttons
Image description: Social justice bard pin           

Does this mean no more Social Justice Bard? Actually, you'll probably get more (if that's your cup of tea) if for no other reason than if I put something social justicey up, that would be the post of the day. When the prospect of putting up a social justice post meant I had to turn around and write something else for Writing about Writing, I tended to just skip the former. 

There are a few reasons for this major shift:

My ability to update multiple blogs, write fiction, guest blog, run Facebook Pages, and do other writing finally hit a limit. Yes, I'm now free from teaching (for a while) but most of that time is earmarked for the novel I'm writing. If I'm going to put out some social thoughts, they will either go on my public Facebook wall (often in a slightly more "raw" format) or they will undergo a little bit of contextual framing to fit into a writing blog. But I finally hit my limit to keep branching out and out indefinitely.

On top of that, there are elements of call out culture that are ubiquitous among those who engage in sort of "high profile," "front line" online activism that I cannot handle as well as I should to be participating at that level. I don't want to say they are wrong, or inappropriate, or unprovoked. They are not. They are certainly not worse than what they are reacting to, and they have every justification. I absolutely believe that there should be spaces online where, if someone who is trying to be an outspoken ally fucks up, they ought to have their heads ripped off, their bodies buried, and the earth salted with their privileged tears. And their head should be stuck on a pike as a warning to the next ten generations of allies that some civility politics come at too high a price. But I have a history of abuse and my involuntary reactions to that level of anger aren't healthy for me, and that narrow fjord between good boundaries and tone policing is not something I'm capable of navigating. For my mental health, it is better that I remain a writer who deals with such issues on occasion.

I have also watched in the last year a number of high profile activist writers, all men, for whom social justice writing provides them with income (and perhaps all their income), do things that could, at best, be called non-intersectional. Ignoring transmisogyny or ableist slurs, and even excusing sexism because the writer is about racism or racism because they're about feminism. In one case, ignoring the very folks they claim to be at bat for by continuing to post grisly images of the results of racial violence. The benefits of writing from privilege about social justice are that one is seen as a fiery revolutionary rather than a "whiner" just worried about their own advancement, and I have seen some of this social capital exploited in ways that were not just questionable, but hurtful. Meanwhile the folks (almost all women) writing about their own life experiences rarely make such money and are often harassed across social media until/unless they quit the field. I don't want to be associated with an increasing body of privileged writers who see this as their way to fame or wealth or sex partners. There are days when a well placed cookie really makes a difference in having the gumption to keep going, but that's not why I'm doing it.

Lastly, I was trying to cleave what should not be cloven. I'm a writer. I'm an artist. And the human condition of inequality and oppression and suffering are not a side issue to my art and writing. I care about inequality and I empathize when I see suffering. I split those writings onto their own blog in part to compartmentalize political and social writing into a place where "Holy Shit I Got the Domain Name!" but also so I could develop two disparate audiences, each who were interested in their own aspect of my writing. What I should have been doing was staying true to myself and pouring all of me into the amalgam of my writing's soul and if people want treat one or the other like it's dross, that's on them as a reader and not me as a writer. The longer I write in Trump's America and realize the power that words and narratives have, the more I am confident that these issues are front and center in my artistic life. Not just the issues of our time, but to who I am as an artist and what social forces I will respond to with my art.

So get ready for the return of the Social Justice Bard.

Heisenberg’s Writing Block (Katerino McIver)

Image description: Katerino decorating a cake. 

Heisenberg’s Writing Block

By Katerino McIver


Heisenberg compensators.

It's an important principle.

"Transporters can't work due to Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle!"

"Yes they can!"

"OK - how?"

"They just do."

"That's not realistic!"

"Um... OK, got it! Heisenberg compensators!"

"Really?"

"Yup."

"How the hell do they work?"

"Why ask me? Do I look like a 24th century quantum physicist?"

You don't have to explain everything.

You just need enough to be able to say "yes, we know about that, and this universe has taken account of it, kthxbai."

This is also known as the Suits principle.

They have entire episodes about the ins and outs of a case and who's doing what – without ever going deep into the actual detail of the case. Or sometimes, even what the original issue is!

Like when Louis made a mistake that could derail everything. You don't see the mistake. You see the reactions to it. You know it was big. You know it's something he would never normally miss. You know the fallout from it and how it pushes the plot forward.

You don't need to know what the mistake actually was.

Detail is important.

It is. It gives the writing a sense of realism, and the reader the confidence that you know where you're going.

But trying to work out all of the detail can lead to block.

At least, it can for me - it's right up there with not knowing where to start and being deathly afraid of writing pure shite.

"I can't write that scene because I need to work out exactly where they built the house to get that view..."

"I can't write that scene because I need to work out the exact details of what  he's going to do to break the code of ethics and with what his client was charged and..."

"I can't write that scene because I need to work out the exact details of the treaty..."

I'm currently working on what I hope will become an SF novel. In it, there was a war in Ecuador, from which the main character is a refugee. She's now living near Glasgow (see above about the difficulty of deciding EXACTLY where on the 30-ish mile long coastline between Gourock and Ardrossan she's going to live... yes, that caused me to spend far too much precious writing time spodding on googlemaps...)

The details of the ceasefire agreement directly affect her access (or lack thereof) to her family's estate. This is a major plot point.

No, I don't need to know all the clauses of it. Or all the signatories. Having a good idea of who the interested parties were is necessary - knowing the details isn't.

Having her mention the section & subsection that is relevant to her shows that SHE knows it. Having her express frustration at how it affects her matters. I don't need to quote the legalese.

In a real world example - if I'm discussing Brexit - I don't need to quote the entirety of Article 50. I just reference it.

The details are there. They don't need to be drawn out.

But what IS there is the confidence that if we needed to, we can find the detail.

So when writing, all I need to do is convince the reader that the details are there. I can do that by having characters, who have reason to know, refer to an act or clause, have characters react to the implications of it and have characters behave as if they know all about it - and take it as read.

And if the "details" don't actually exist until I need them - that's OK too!

And if I never need them? Meh.

I may never know the date the treaty was signed, or where, or the name of the politicians that put their name to it. I may never know where the new boundaries were drawn, or what reparations were given between the governments.

And that's OK.

Now, I'm not saying forget the research. You do need some details. Like she's from Ecuador - I played with idea of not specifying which of the 12* countries with a land mass exactly on the equator - but that was too loose and became unrealistic.

So I looked at them all, ruled some out for one reason or another, saw the Bahia – San Vincente Bridge, imagined her crossing it as a child and falling in love with it, and that was that!

So details are good. Background that the reader will never see is good. Little details dropped in that suggest more underneath are very effective.

Just don't let them get in the way of actually writing.


(*Yes, there are 13 equatorial countries, but the Maldives don't have any land ON the equator - there are islands & atolls straddling the line, but none directly on it.)


40-odd Scottish mum currently living in England. I studied physics and now work as a QA analyst where I get to break developer's heart.

Still unpublished writer; I'm working on SF novel and completed short stories including a sequel to Tam O'Shanter. I also roleplay (favourite is old WoD larp system), am learning esperanto and make wedding cakes.

Katerino doesn't have a page to promote and asks that you pop over here if you are feeling generous: https://refuweegee.co.uk

If you would like to guest blog for Writing About Writing we would love to have an excuse to take a day off a wonderful diaspora of voices. Take a look at our guest post guidelines, and drop me a line at chris.brecheen@gmail.com.

Best Obscure Vote (Last Call; Semifinal 1)

What book no one seems to have heard of?  

Tomorrow the second half of our semifinal round will go up, so you have one more day to vote for the best book that seems to be a well kept secret. As usual I was more than generous with allowing some Spock eyebrow worthy books onto the poll. (Hugo award winning best selling authors? Not really so obscure.) But I trusted your experience when you discovered most people hadn't heard of something.

Please don't forget to vote in our current semifinal round for the best book no one seems to have heard of. (And again, the irony of voting on a poll for books no one has heard of is not lost on me.) Tomorrow I will get up the second half of the poll so we can figure out which titles will go on to the final round in time to have a couple of weeks rounding out December to vote.

The poll itself is on the left side, at the bottom of the side menus.

September's Best

I might have a guest blog for later on if they get back to me about some bio/image stuff, but to be honest it's The Contrarian's third birthday today, so if it doesn't happen in the next few minutes, it probably will end up being Thursday's post.

In the meantime, as part of my dogged committment to always at least get some jazz hands going (and also because I am deplorably behind schedule with this post) I figure it is a good time to put up September's best articles. These are the articles that will go up in our Hall of Fame and remind everyone that we manage to not suck at least two or three times a month.

Six Ways to Not Actually Write  Wanna be a writer without actually writing? Ima Lister drops some knowledge on us about how to live a life without ever really having to write.

Three Stories From the Train I took a train to Denver early in September and wrote about a couple of stories. Including one about being recognized as an author.

On a Slow Week A personal update about just how much writing a dedicated writer still gets done when they're going through a rough patch.

The Not-Writing Part

No word counts this week (because they SUUUUUUUUUUUUUCKED).

Sonic Gal's audit drags on and I have yet another 14 hour day (Eight hours of kid wrangling, five of teaching, and an hour commute between), so this is going to have to be a very fast update.

I'll get right to the folksy home-spun writerly wisdom.

A word of advice from a writer who is making about 50% of his income from creative writing and hoping to push that up to "barely scraping by" one of these days:

If you want to write, write. That's all you have to do. Just write.

If you want to write for a living (or for a sideline gig), get ready for a lot of things that aren't writing. Or at least that aren't writing on your story. Business e-mails. Coordinating thank you notes. Kickstarter rewards newsletters. Fixing the web page's menus. Running a Facebook page. Going crosseyed with scheduling in front of a Google calendar because your adult life is nothing but side hustles you hope no one will notice, like a bunch of rats in a trenchcoat trying to take the cheese tour at Shullsberg Creamery. And of course midnight sacrifices under the full moon of entitled white men.

Don't think going traditional will get you out of this either. Making a name for yourself with millions of short fiction submissions. Querry letters. Back and forth with agents. Negotiations. Book promotion. Probably networking.

You're going to spend a lot of time not actually writing if you want to get paid for it.

Also get ready for doing parts of the writing process that you don't like to do. This author hates struggling with a blank screen during a first draft and taking six or eight hours to write a few pages because some days the flow just isn't flowing.  I'd rather write a little tiny bit a day and spend lots of time on revising what I've already got. I love rereading and tweaking what I've already got. I hate trying to grind out hours of fresh copy. But I do it anyway because that's how it gets done. Some people hate revision. Some hate peer review and critical response. Some hate editing.

Tough shit.

If you just want to write, follow your bliss. If you want to get paid, get ready for some shit that isn't rainbow unicorn farts and sparkley glitter-pixies getting freaky.

I won't lie to you. (Oh who am I kidding, I write fiction. I lie all the time....but only to tell the truth, but I won't lie to you about THIS.) Getting a paycheck is right up there with a first kiss. I mean unless it got weird. Or the person smelled like limburger cheese once you got close. Or you were trying under social pressure to perform as a sexuality you really aren't. But let's say you wanted to kiss this paycheck person. It's like that.

And paying a decent sized chunk of your bills from it? That's even better. If the trend continues proportionally, I will need two towels and some after-cuddling if I ever pay all my bills from writing.

But to get there, I sure have had to spend a lot of days doing stuff that was not writing.

On a not entirely unrelated note, I do have some good news.

I found out too late to change anything that my Kickstarter had funded enough to let me drop a class from my teaching schedule, (and then I also got more hours with Bub than I expected) and as a result, I've had a REALLY rough time this semester trying to write with all the other things on my plate. Not that cancer and bronchitis and the return of the nazis hasn't, like, fucked things up as well, but that second night of teaching is...you know...aggregate.

With Fall almost over, and my novel behind schedule, I was facing a really tough choice. And not whether or not to grow a really good writerly beard.  My choice was about how to manage my teaching and still make good (or less bad) on my Kickstarter deadlines.

I was afraid to quit because that was my last punch-a-clock mainstream job, and it doesn't seem a great political landscape to be flinging financial security to the wind. I mean I want to hit the Fallout stage of our post apocolypse world with as many cans of non-irradiated beans as I can. Also, I would need to make about $400/month more from writing than I do right now to cover those teaching hours. (Even more once the Kickstarter funds run out.) I have this sense that I COULD do that, but would be terrifying for me to be trying to raise my income based on the generosity of strangers...in a Trump economy....while watching my savings account inexoribly dwindle.

But the safe road didn't really help me that much: teach only ONE class. It would give me more time than I have now, but would still be seven hours a week that I could be writing and I don't really need (financially speaking) right now. It was a half measure.

So here's where the good news hits. I JUST found out that my bosses are absolutely fine with letting me just take a semester off. I can focus on my book for the next six months, and if I'm not solvent by next fall, I'll just go right back to teaching. Writing time AND safety net. And if the hail Mary hails the way it should, I may just spin writing into a full time gig.

Wednesday night will be my last teaching shift until summer school. And if things go well in the next few months, maybe ever.

Now I can spend even more time staring at a blank screen and taking eight hours to write a few pages!

Yay?

Reminder: Inside Scoop Today

Image description: A scoop of double chocolate ice cream

Please remember that today's "post" is an Inside Scoop newsletter (which folks who are slated to get it can expect probably this evening) or maybe tomorrow morning.

If you want to get the Inside Scoop, head over here and see how.

The Inside Scoop

Hi everybody!

Tomorrow's main "post" will be an "Inside Scoop" update.

That's a newsletter about what's going on in my life (at a slightly greater level of detail than the typical post here), a sincere unpacking of where Triexta is in production, and hopefully a few poignent nuggets of insight that everyone will find moving.

Want to get the Inside Scoop? You still can!

Despite my recent dramatic lifestyle downgrade, Writing About Writing will continue to remain free (and ad free) as art should be. And believe me there were more than a few existential crises and vigorous debates with Nega-Chris about that decision now that my pageviews are up, and "a few dollars a month" in revenue would actually make a difference. It's funny how different lofty principles can feel after an 80% pay cut.

I will also never hide the "best" content behind any kind of paywall.

However, artists need to pay their rent, buy groceries, have medical insurance, and sock something for retirement just like anyone else, and that requires we get dirt under our fingernails somewhere along the line. (Or spend a lot of time at a day job not making said art.) For me that place is opening the door to donations and "passing the hat" once in a while. I won't even guilt trip you with pop ups or sad stories at the end of every post if you just keep reading, but I'm on a budget where even a few dollars could make a bid difference, so I might have a post like this one every once in a while.

And while the "best" content will still be free, I work hard to give my generous patrons a little something extra by way of my gratitude–whether that's a glimpse into my life that most don't get or some information that I haven't shared openly.

If you like what I do here and want to see more of it, please consider a donation. My "Tip Jar" is just to the left if you're on a computer, and my Paypal is attached to the e-mail I'm always sharing here (chris.brecheen@gmail.com) if you'd rather go straight to the source. I can also use Venmo for those who have an objection to Paypal (which I share but can't quite get around it just yet).

And if you want "The Inside Scoop" here's how to get it:

• If you'd like to back Triexta, you still can!  And if you donate at least at the $50 level, you will get all the "Inside Scoop" e-mails I ever write during the course of the whole project. (Probably roughly this time next year before it's totally done.)  At the $50 level, you will also have your name on a blog of thanks that will get linked to the online version of Triexta, and be published in a thanks/dedication page in the book itself (print on demand and Kindle version). Of course the Kickstarter fundraiser has closed, so we will have to do our transaction through Paypal or Venmo, but if you send me money with the note "For Triexta" I can manually add your name to the list of whatever reward tier you choose and send you Kickstarter updates through e-mail.
• Want to just get THIS issue of the Inside Scoop? Donate $2 (or more) and put in the notes "Inside Scoop" and I will send you this month's issue as an e-mail.
• I will very soon have a Patreon up, and anyone who donates at the $5/month level or more will get the same Inside Scoop that I'm currently writing for Triexta (as well as further newsletters of the same type once the current project is complete). There will be other rewards as well. Stay tuned!

I know we live in interesting times and for reasons great and small not everyone even has a couple of bucks to fling at the web content they enjoy. That's okay. Enjoy.

However, if I'm ever going to be able to more frequent and higher quality posts, I'm going to have to make writing my day job, and currently my writing income is about half of what I need. Further, 90% of that comes from fewer than a half a dozen amazing and spectaular patrons. I hope to extend my donation base to lots more people giving smaller amounts.

So if you want tomorrow's "post," all it'll take is a couple of bucks and the words "Inside Scoop" in the notes.

And no matter if you can give, can give generously, or just can't afford it right now, you are all what is making this great experiment come to life. And thank you so much for reading.