Santa Wants to Know What to Get Me (Mailbox)

What can I gift you that isn't money?  

[Remember, keep sending in your questions to chris.brecheen@gmail.com with the subject line "W.A.W. Mailbox" and I will answer each Monday.  I will use your first name ONLY unless you tell me explicitly that you'd like me to use your full name or you would prefer to remain anonymous.  My comment policy also may mean one of your comments ends up in the mailbox, but likely only if you ask a question. And yes I will play along with your goofy games even if your e-mail clearly indicates that you are not actually Santa.]    

Santa Writes:

Ho Ho Ho!  Hello there Chris. You haven't come to sit in my lap yet, so I thought I would write to you. It looks like you've spent most of your time being a bad boy with all your threesome talks and hope for groupies, but your good boy moments are really, really so good that they seem to balance the ledger, so Santa is going to get you a gift. Now, Santa can't officially get you hookers and blow or hook up threesomes for you since that would shock the poor elves, you know, but Santa was going pay for a month of twice-weekly housekeeping so you could focus on writing. But then Santa got laid off in August and took two months to find a new job. Santa's own kids need toys and money's a little tight up here at the North Pole this year. Santa would do the cleaning himself, but it's been a while since Santa looked really good in a French maid's outfit, and the reindeer union says they only take me to Oakland once a year. Are there non-money ways I can support you or outrageously cheap gifts you might want for Christmas? 

My reply:

You know this is really weird, right?

This time of year, Santa, I always get two or three e-mails from people who are strapped for cash after buying presents and donating to causes that are much worthier than an 18th rate blog, but who still want to help. I'm a little surprised to be getting one from a thousand year old white male who runs an empire of slave labor, but whatever. The fact is that there are lots of ways to help a blog like this one even if you're not in a position to send us a few dollars. I'll tell you a few.

Of course there are the usual things I put here every couple of months that one can do to support the blog from donating a few dollars to leaving me a supportive comment, but these are some specifically awesome things you can do this holiday season.

You see, Blog's latest goal is to reach a million page views before 2015. Of course at 1250+ page views a day, we're going to make that almost certainly. However, if you're looking to get Blog a gift that will be completely unexpected, what we haven't done yet is hit 50,000 page views in a single month. Blog tried to hit it this last August (Blogust) but we didn't make it by almost 10k.

Go to The Best of W.A.W. or The Reliquary, find one of your favorite old articles, and share that on social media along with a few words about why you like it.
I can't share any more than I already do without my friends forming a mob chanting "Kill the Chris Kill the Chris. He's posted till we're pissed, and we're going to shove this pitchfork through his brain. Kill the Chris. Kill the Chris. Social networks aren't for this. And his blog cross posts have driven us insane...."

Well, you get the idea.

I may not get a single new click from your efforts, but my heart will grow three sizes, and Blog will feel like the happiest Who in Whoville.

Shill the blog, but (ironically) not the writing part.
The truth is most writers pretty much strike an, "Back off mofo! I got this!" attitude. They don't like advice. They don't want to be told they're not going to get rich and famous doing nothing differently. Getting them to read a blog about writing usually means they recognize the writer and want to emulate them or there's something else there they like about it. So if you want to shill effectively, don't say "Look, I've noticed you've been a writer for 20 years and you're still on Chapter 2. Maybe this guy can help you with some stuff."

That will get you a face full of side eye.

Try something more like: "Sweet synchronized tap dancing Jesus clones! This is a funny blog! And it's kind of about writing. Shit, you like writing right?  Maybe you'll appreciate the funny bits even more than I will."

Commit to engagement.
In the new social media world order, our Social Media overlords of G+, Tumblr, Reddit and of course the great overseer Facebook will judge our worth not by money or loved ones, but by likes, shares, +1's, upvotes, and comments. Engaging posts in these ways helps them show up more places, so if you want to do Blog a cost-free solid, take a minute out of your day when you see a post you like to click a button and write a quick comment about how you would give up your first born child just for the chance to read my words again for the first time.

Or...you know, maybe something that's a little more your own words. And a little less bullshit.


As for a gift, I have to make a disclaimer. Among of my formative experiences was my mother running around toy stores looking for something to gift one of my friends that was equal to or more than the cost of what they got me. "We can't give Josh Ants in the Pants, Chris. He got you those walkie talkies. Reciprocity is the foundation of all morality. [She may not have actually said that part verbatim.] Now find a gift that is $29.99 or more. Or go back and get two Constructacons to add to this."

The foundation of all morality.... echoed in my head.  AAAAAAALLLLL  MOOOORRRRRAAAALLLITTYYYYY!

So now I live my life anxiously worried about how my gifts measure up to the gifts I am given, and I am really quite serious that the best gift anyone could ever get me is nothing, so that I don't have to go through that. My uberpeeps get me gifts and I ask everyone else to allow me only the pleasure of their company and perhaps some cookies.

So please, if you don't want me sitting around worrying about what to get YOU, call it a Christmas themed donation or something. (Donations are hard enough to ask for without a sense that I should be giving back something more than just writing my heart out.) I can't possibly return gifts to everyone who tries to gift me if I start opening that door to my readers. Even with as modest a readership as I have. There are several hundred of you. Even if I bought you all cheap ass keychains, I would spend several months worth of my spending money.

That said....here is an idea I saw that I fell in love with. Send me a book you love. Don't send me a copy of a book you love. Send me the actual book you love. You've been meaning to replace it anyway, right? Well worn. Lovingly battered. Lines running down the spine. Torn in places where it just fell to tatters under fingers that couldn't be careful enough for the Nth time. Then you can replace your book whenever you're ready to read it again or can afford it. I want to feel the Velveteen Rabbit love you had for this book when I hold it in my hand. That way you spend nothing, I get a book you love, and it has a very personal touch.

Obviously please don't send me some book that has extreme sentimental value. If I find out that I'm holding the last thing your father ever bought you before he died or something, I'm going to be mortified. But a beloved copy of a dog-eared paperback you've been meaning to replace (especially if it's one of those books you love that no one else has ever seemed to have heard of) would be a great gift Christmas donation.

If you are interested, drop me an e-mail at chris.brecheen@gmail.com and I will send you the address of a friend where packages can be sent.

Lastly, Santa, I really have to give you marks for all the gifts you would have gotten me given an infinite budget, and socially permissive elves.

~sniff~ You know me so well.

ENNND!! ENNNNND!!!!

Tom Servo perfectly expresses how I'm feeling about all this company. Also basically this holiday season. As soon as everyone leaves and I'm done with the titanic pile of dishes, I have to wrap up the semester at school with a bunch of paperwork and then head out to Texas to see my mom. I'll get back just in time for actual Christmas parties and then the holidays themselves.

All this excitement is killing my creativity. So take it away Tom:

[Edit: I don't seem to be able to embed this particular clip, so you'll have to trust me that it's only five seconds and well worth the click. Although you MST3K fans out there probably already know where this is going.]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8SwpoZhC_sE

Scheduling down time as part of your routine is hard but worth it, personally, even professionally.

Daniel Goleman

Be regular and orderly in your life, so that you may be violent and original in your work.

Gustave Flaubert

The more powerful and original a mind, the more it will incline towards the religion of solitude.

Aldous Huxley

Happy Birthday Contrarian

A year ago today, The Contrarian entered the world.

Since then he has done all that cliche crap about making me see rainbows and Christmas trees again for the first time and changing my whole world and blah blah blah. It's all true, the little bastage. Oxytocin is a cruel master, and his mind control powers are particularly refined given his psychic power of contradiction.

Today he turns one.

The Contrarian has added a strange constellation of powers to his psychic ability to contradict things. Among them are a physics defying quantity of drool, the ability to shatter spinal columns with a scream, and an increased ability to mind control any adult humans in his vicinity to help him with extreme cuteness.

He has also decided recently that relying solely on his superpowers won't be enough, and a grueling physical regimen commenced. He is now capable of a shuffling gait across various rooms before falling back down onto his butt, and hopes soon to have full ambulatory power.

I logged some serious hours of cellular mitosis, Uncle Chris.
Don't forget to tell them about that.

Today he gets a Frozen princesses theme party, his own cake to eat by himself, and a pre-weakened villain that he gets to vanquish all on his own. The Hall of Rectitude is stuffed with Uberdude's and The Brain's family.

Me? I get a bipedal cephalopod in my face and up my ass. But I'll tell you about that later.

On Social Media and Social Justice

Note: I'm working on a longer article but BOTH sets of The Contrarian's grandparents are due here at the Hall of Rectitude for his first birthday.

I've also spent several days lately working out the logistics of creating a public Facebook page that anyone can follow or friend and getting it separated from my more private Facebook page. 

In the wake of so many grand juries refusing to indict police officers (which, just so you know, doesn't mean the cops were found innocent, it means they won't even go to trial) my Facebook has become an explosion of outrage and concern, articles about the criminal justice system's inequality, code words for "black" that aren't fooling anyone, discussions of how privilege manifests, and long statuses expressing the complex and angry emotions of a people who realize they are part of a system that isn't broken, but rather that many didn't notice was working as intended. While this is specifically about Facebook (likes, shares, comments) it could be applied to any social media.

The recent string of injustices are causing the usual suspects to come out of the woodwork and complain that people should DO something instead of clogging their Facebook feed with concerns for equality. Actually, that's not true. See it's not the injustices themselves that are upsetting people. It's the fact that so many of their friends are posting about it that has them upset.

It's the usual "slactivism doesn't work" mantra. The thing is, you hear the same thing no matter what you do. "What good are protests, anyway?" "What does being political make?" "What good...."

While I think, in theory, these people might have a place in their heads where one could be working toward justice and equality in a "proper" way, it very much comes across as "please stop talking about it." The usual sort of status quo loving "shut up" that people who don't suffer inequality are wont to make--kind of like complaining when your soaps are interrupted by a bus full of children teetering on the edge of a cliff. It simply has the flavor of "concern trolling." (Gosh, I'm just really worried about how effective this tactic might be. You know.....for the cause's sake. I'm really worried about the cause, you see....)

[It reminds me of Stephen Stills from Scott Pilgrim. "For the cause. For the cause. For the CAUSE. FOR THE CAUSE!!!"]

Let's pretend for a moment that social media hasn't been cited as the single greatest driving force behind most of the social justice gains of the 21st century, the most effective tool for making people aware of atrocities (like the recent slaughter of students in Mexico) since television, and even the engines of some actual revolutions in Asia. (Quite simply BECAUSE all that information is considered equal and there are fewer ways for people in power to control what is said and when. People can't control online forums or social media in they way they can physical spaces, airwaves, or mainstream media.) Feminism, LGBT rights, racial awareness–they've all cited social media as a powerful force in their modern movements and efforts. BECAUSE THEY WORK!

Let's pretend that cases like Michael Brown, Tamir Rice, Eric Garner didn't EVER happen until recently and it's not social media that has caused these stories to go viral. We did this a generation ago when we acted aghast that Rodney King got the crap beat out of him, like it was the first time such a thing had happened, not maybe just the first time someone had filmed it. Let's pretend that we would have been just as outraged (and even aware) of these stories if they hadn't gone viral on Facebook and Twitter.

Let's pretend that these stories would have made it past even local news in the mainstream media without first having been viral on social media. Let's pretend that social media isn't the most effective tool for raising awareness of issues that people who don't own newspapers or TV stations can wield.

Let's pretend that everyone has the same resources, capability, skill sets. That like you (who....I have noticed are almost always white when the issue is racism, male when the issue is sexism, straight when the issue is homophobia, etc....), these people who ought to be going about achieving justice and equality in the "right way," have money to donate, ability to march, time to volunteer.

Let's pretend that no one has different proficiencies. There isn't anyone who is maybe better at writing than working a phone bank or who is better or at reading through dozens of articles and sharing the couple that are good than organizing a protest.

Let's pretend that social justice isn't experiencing a renaissance of allyship because of people who have had their eyes opened through social media to their privilege, to the incredible double standards, to how bad it really gets.

Let's pretend that no one who does use social media to discuss social justice issues has EVER had people tell them that their words changed a mind, shaped an opinion, gave someone else the strength to speak up, or even comforted the group affected by the injustice that they had people in their corner. No one ever thanks them for fighting the good fight. Certainly not dozens or hundreds. No no.

Let's pretend that before the days of social media, those who struggled for social equality in the "right way" never need to interrupt your day, call at dinner, or put themselves in between you and your grocery shopping in an invasive way in order to raise funds for or awareness of an issue.

Let's pretend that the "right way" to champion for change has been effective. I mean just look at all this equality. The "proper ways" never suffer from being shut out of spaces by people who don't want to be bothered or marginalized by being called the fringe of a movement or silenced in favor of more moderate voices.

Let's pretend that every grinding, gutting, horrible step forward hasn't had an equally loud contingent of moderates saying "this is overreach," "this is too far," "this is too loud," "this is too caustic," "this is too angry," "this too soon," and "this isn't the right way to get what you want." "Sit down. Be quiet. Don't rock the boat. Don't challenge our thoughts. Don't be overbearing. Don't be rude. Watch your tone. Do it only in the ways we deem worthy of attention (and please fail to realize the fact that all those ways we like are the same ones that are most easy to ignore). Don't even block our traffic so that we're late getting home for supper. Then....THEN maybe, we will deign to consider your redress."

Let's also pretend for a moment that there aren't scams and bait to get clicks and likes and shares. Because for these things to be "absolutely meaningless" we would have to ignore the pains people go through to procure them as well as their motivation for doing so.

Let's pretend all these things...

It's STILL utterly obnoxious to presume what other people are or are not doing in addition to having the temerity to share with their friends what they care about.

So why don't you please be honest and say, "I don't even want to have to FLEX my finger in order to scroll past this because it clearly doesn't directly affect ME."


This second one is a general reply I gave to several questions asking me why, if justice is such an important and fundamental thing, have I only recently begun to really care about it.


Why have I changed? Why am I like this? Why do I do this Social Justice Bard thing? What the hell happened to me?

About eighteen months ago I got really snarky with a guy who was treating another person like dirt. I didn't think much of it at the time. I was mostly glad I avoided getting punched. It's the kind of thing I do twice a day in a sort of "poetic justice" kind of way, especially to people being assholes. I figured it was sort of a cute story that I would share with Facebook.

But the FB post did so well that I wrote a blog post even though it wasn't particularly about writing. Then that blog post got about 200,000 page views in a week. And I got about 2000 comments across various media.

The person I snarked was a creepy guy on BART who was harassing a woman, and apparently my story struck a chord with many women. Because what happened in the 2000 comments was that I began to realize how common this harassment was and how powerless women feel to stop it. Everyone I knew had a story. People I barely knew all had stories. People I'd never met had stories. Not just stories of rude people with no boundaries (for those were daily or weekly affairs for most) but stories that really got BAD. Violence, screaming, stalking, and sometimes even people so apoplectic that they were rejected that they turned around and raped the person who dared reject their come on. Story after story after story hit my inbox of rape survivors or just people who couldn't get out of a harassment situation. Dozens of them. Then hundreds.

Then thousands.

And they broke me. They broke that shell of me that says, "This isn't such a big deal." They made me realize how much we don't LISTEN to other people's stories about THEIR experiences. How much we dictate to them the parameters of their own marginalization. We tell them they're not experiencing sexism, or not experiencing real sexism. We excuse the actions of people who do these things and silence their stories. "Take a compliment. It's not that bad. I'd love it if I got that kind of attention."

But over here are thousands of stories that it isn't complementary. That it is that bad. That this is unwanted attention.

Once you see it, it's like a smudge on the movie theater screen. Suddenly it's everywhere you look. The power dynamics of street harassment echo those of workplace sexism, echo those of homophobia, echo those of institutional racism. We're steeped in it, so it's like noticing the air. But it's everywhere.

Also, that day, I got the first sense of how my voice could get through to other whites, other men, other heterosexuals (and especially other white, het men) in a way that the people most affected never could.

I should pause here for a caveat. You really have to understand how early and formative and just how bad the urge was in me when I was young to be Luke Skywalker (RotJ Luke, not the whiner, of course). I wanted to do the right thing, fight for good, struggle for the good guys even against impossible odds. I've always wanted to be better than I am.

But I lived in this messed up world where I didn't have any powers, The Force wasn't real, and the right thing was hidden in a tangled thicket of nuance. Problems were big and complicated and there wasn't some "One Right Thing™" to be done about them. Being Luke Skywalker was a pipe dream that died with my realization that lightsabers could never exist.

Until the day I realized that wasn't true.

That day, reading the torrent of comments on a post that had gone unexpectedly viral, I realized there WAS a right thing to do. To listen to every story with empathy is a powerful, radical, and moral act. I realized that I DID have some power even if it's just the power to make people who look like me listen in a way they don't to people who look less like me.

That's why.

(So if I ever seem like I'm being flip to say "Because I want to be Luke Skywalker," know that it's JUST about the most genuine answer I can give you.)

November's Best (Plus Analytics)

The following articles kicked ass and chewed bubblegum during November.

They will be going on to fame, fortune, and immortality in our 2014s Greatest Hits within The Best of W.A.W.

Generally, November was a month of fits and starts. Breaking in a new schedule, I experienced some moments where it worked really well, but there would still be some growing pains as I discovered a few bugs. Then of course the holiday madness hit and there were in laws and parties and more dishes than I've ever seen and screaming and dear god the humanity!

But here are the articles:

20 Shirtstorm Narratives and What's Wrong With Them
Instantly became one of my best articles, rocketing up the charts to number four. It takes some oomph to edge out Coming out as Feminist, but this article had the right stuff.

What is Avant Garde? (Mailbox)
Apparently the world needed to know what the hell Avant Garde really meant. I did not expect this to be one of those Mailboxes that did particularly well, but apparently a world bereft of a good Avant Garde definition had other plans.

I Am The Night....Or Something
I can't say for sure I know exactly why this article did so well since it's not much more than a promise to put a bit of writing about LARPing here at W.A.W. But the numbers don't lie.


December: The hope is that all this work I've done in the last month or so coming up with a schedule that works will finally pay off. I've never stopped working the ball down the field (as you can see), but I'm still hoping to take it up a notch.

December's big news will be one million (1,000,000) page views. It may not happen until the end of the month, but at the current average, it might actually even be Blog's Christmas present to me.  (Or mine to blog.)

November's numbers were pretty good, but I'm going to start wetting myself now about what's coming.

Best Young Adult Author (Nominations)

Who is the best Y.A. Author?

It's time to write in nominations for our December poll. This month it's BEST Y.A. Author. Maybe they wrote a lot of stand alone books rather than a series. Or maybe they wrote multiple series. Whatever the reason, you think they're the best Y. A. author in the biz.

The Rules

1- As always, I leave definitions up to your best judgement because I'd rather be inclusive. If you nominate authors who are clearly adult authors (No Stephen King or G.R.R. Martin), I'll put the kibosh on it, but I'm not going to get persnickety about where exactly young adult becomes children's books or where exactly they become adult books. If you think an author fits, and they're not grotesquely inappropriate, I'll take it.

2- You are nominating an author's whole body of work. If you loved one book, but not really any others, best save that for the next time "Best Stand Alone Y.A. Novel" rolls back around.

3- I would like to discourage the nomination of authors of a single great Y.A. series. We just had a "Best Y.A. Series" Poll, and I don't want to do it all over again. I won't be enforcing this, but try to pick authors who have either done several stand alone books or multiple series for young adults.

4- You may nominate two (2) authors. (Remember that I am a breathtakingly power hungry despot here at Writing About Writing. To encourage reading and reading comprehension I will NOT take any authors beyond your second.)

5- You may (and should) second as many nominations of others as you wish. No author will be going on to our poll that doesn't get at least one second, and it is not unheard of for a poll to have SO many nominations that I only take the results with two or more "seconds."

6- Please put your nominations here. I will take books nominated as comments to this post on other social media; however, they may not get the seconds you need because no one will see them.

In a couple of weeks we'll get the poll fired up based on your nominations. It's all up to you.

Best Y.A. Series (Poll Results)

What is the best Young Adult series?  

The readers of Writing About Writing have spoken and, it was definitely a strange one. Usually the classics have a good showing until the final round and end up down at the second half of the poll, but this time they were the running champions.

I've also never ever ever seen Harry Potter do so badly in any poll its been on. Ever. Usually if it gets nominated, it's going to win (or at least come in second).

The Hunger Games got crushed. CRUSHED!! It's unusual for the books with popular, contemporary movies not to do as well as others. But Hunger Games is a smear along the road of this poll. (I blame the horror of prose that was Mockingjay, personally.) I guess people really listened when I said to base votes on the books and not the awesome that is Donald Sutherland.

We also got 510 votes, which I believe is a new record (not including the Terry Pratchett fan invasion earlier this year). So thank you to everyone who took the time to participate.

Tomorrow I'll open the nominations for December's poll, which will be Young Adult Authors, so think about all the writers who have had multiple Y.A. series or stand alone books.