9 Rules for Success by British Novelist Amelia E. Barr, 1901

I love this not just because what she says is incisive, but because she writes it so beautifully:

1. Men and women succeed because they take pains to succeed. Industry and patience are almost genius; and successful people are often more distinguished for resolution and perseverance than for unusual gifts. They make determination and unity of purpose supply the place of ability.

2. Success is the reward of those who “spurn delights and live laborious days.” We learn to do things by doing them. One of the great secrets of success is “pegging away.” No disappointment must discourage, and a run back must often be allowed, in order to take a longer leap forward.

3. No opposition must be taken to heart. Our enemies often help us more than our friends. Besides, a head-wind is better than no wind. Who ever got anywhere in a dead calm?

4. A fatal mistake is to imagine that success is some stroke of luck. This world is run with far too tight a rein for luck to interfere. Fortune sells her wares; she never gives them. In some form or other, we pay for her favors; or we go empty away.

5. We have been told, for centuries, to watch for opportunities, and to strike while the iron is hot. Very good; but I think better of Oliver Cromwell’s amendment — “make the iron hot by striking it.”

6. Everything good needs time. Don’t do work in a hurry. Go into details; it pays in every way. Time means power for your work. Mediocrity is always in a rush; but whatever is worth doing at all is worth doing with consideration. For genius is nothing more nor less than doing well what anyone can do badly.

7. Be orderly. Slatternly work is never good work. It is either affectation, or there is some radical defect in the intellect. I would distrust even the spiritual life of one whose methods and work were dirty, untidy, and without clearness and order.

8. Never be above your profession. I have had many letters from people who wanted all the emoluments and honors of literature, and who yet said, “Literature is the accident of my life; I am a lawyer, or a doctor, or a lady, or a gentleman.” Literature is no accident. She is a mistress who demands the whole heart, the whole intellect, and the whole time of a devotee.

9. Don’t fail through defects of temper and over-sensitiveness at moments of trial. One of the great helps to success is to be cheerful; to go to work with a full sense of life; to be determined to put hindrances out of the way; to prevail over them and to get the mastery. Above all things else, be cheerful; there is no beatitude for the despairing.

Apparent success may be reached by sheer impudence, in defiance of offensive demerit. But men who get what they are manifestly unfit for, are made to feel what people think of them. Charlatanry may flourish; but when its bay tree is greenest, it is held far lower than genuine effort. The world is just; it may, it does, patronize quacks; but it never puts them on a level with true men.

It is better to have the opportunity of victory, than to be spared the struggle; for success comes but as the result of arduous experience. The foundations of my success were laid before I can well remember; it was after at least forty-five years of conscious labor that I reached the object of my hope. Many a time my head failed me, my hands failed me, my feet failed me, but, thank God, my heart never failed me.

more on beauty

I had a blast at Margaret Moser's Birthday Bash on Sunday at the Continental Club, hobnobbing with Austin's many Illustrious Personages. Some of the music was even good, most notably the Skunks, who, despite my residence literally around the corner from Raul's at the height of their local fame, I've never seen live. I even got to meet Ms. Moser herself, a writer who Makes A Living at it -- no small potatoes, in my book.

I think I posted before about the sacculus, this vestigial organ in the ear that some scientists in Machester think is what makes humans like music -- well, there must be something parallel in the eye, at least for me. I realized, at some point during the evening, that a great deal of why I was enjoying myself was getting to look at beautiful things and people. Glittery dresses, succulent colors and shapes, lovely ladies, handsome men.

That last one has bothered me in the past, since I'm happily married, but I realized on Sunday that my pleasure in the beauty of handsome men doesn't come out of some craving for a relationship with them (except for The Handsomest Man, to whom I am, naturally, married) -- it's the purely physical pleasure of simply looking at them. It makes my eyeballs feel good in the same way that hearing loud, well-performed, rhythmic music makes my ears feel good. It's visceral and beyond conscious control, which intrigues the fuck out of me, because the feeling is so -- I can't think of a good word for it, but it's something that I imagine could lift a person out of very dark places, which is why I want to write about it in the context of the crime genre. I'm pretty sure my reach exceeds my grasp on the subject, but that's never slowed me down (on anything, I'm sorry to say).

I guess it's possible that I'm some kind of freak; humans have always waxed poetic about Beauty, but I've never felt like they're referring to what I mean here. There's nothing abstract or ethereal about it -- it's a very earthy, physical thing, like an endorphin rush after a work-out. Given that I ain't neurotypical (a new word I'm not yet sure I like), there could be some wiring issues at work in my case. It sure would be interesting to know if anyone else has this kind of experience.

pay no attention to the mullet behind the curtain

the Proustian interview

What no one knows about you?
-- I have a closet addiction to astrology

If not Austin?
-- west Texas

Austin music scene of your youth?
-- dunno, I wasn't part of it

Best physical attribute?
-- I'm strong as fuck

If you hadn't been a writer?
-- psychiatric patient

What have you liked most about being a writer?
-- the writing

Your idea of perfect happiness?
-- complete freedom

Greatest fear?
-- missing something interesting

Living person you most admire?
-- my spouse

Trait you most deplore in yourself?
-- bad housekeeping

Most overrated virtue?
-- depends on what you define as 'virtue'

Greatest love of your life?
-- this brain I got born with

When and where were you happiest?
-- Now. Here.

Which talent would you most like to have?
-- athleticism

Current state of mind?
-- Texas

If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be?
-- my genetic predisposition to depression

If you could change one thing about your family, what would it be?
-- their genetic predisposition to depression

Greatest achievement?
-- surviving my youth

If you could choose what to come back as, what would it be?
-- myself, with more money and all the knowledge I have now

Lowest depth of misery?
-- engagement to the Wrong Man

Quality you most like in a man?
-- intelligence

Quality you most like in a woman?
-- vivaciousness

What do you most value in your friends?
-- tolerance

Favorite writers?
-- all of them

Favorite musicians?
-- White Stripes any time, all others depend on the day and mood

Heroes?
-- anyone who's been through hell and back and lived to tell about it

What is it that you most dislike?
-- fakery

Favorite hero of fiction?
-- Edith Wharton's women

Motto?
-- 'Don't believe everything you think.'

no, that's not quite it

It's more the ways that beauty misleads people. Like, you can have a character who will see the absolute truth about every situation, yet still lose their bearings when beauty crosses their path, even when they know that's exactly what's happening.. I don't want to work that whole "evil beauty" angle that's been done to death -- more have a character who sees themselves being drawn in and changed by beauty and aware of how little they can do to stop it. When something is so hard-wired into the human brain, what recourse do people have? Like that.

...and we're back to private

What can I tell you? I won't be talking about grandma's underwear, but I want to be able to keep track of my progress on the stealth revision of NINE DAYS without worrying about some prospective publisher coming across it and wondering if I'm insane. I mean, I am, but they don't need to know. Not until I've signed the contract, anyway.

So. The Thing I Want To Write About: beauty. Not Beauty with a capital B, like John Donne and Yeats and all those guys; I mean the way beauty drives the normal, everyday human being, without their even realizing it. I think I understand, at an evo-psych level, why humans are attracted to what we define as beauty --  it's because we have this pattern-making thing between our ears that draws us to symmetrical mating partners so as to strengthen the gene pool. What fascinates me is how it goes further than that, with most people -- even the smallest things, like how we comb our hair or which trash bags to buy, are driven to some extent by pleasing our eye. I myself have been known to make blatantly stupid decisions because I like the way one thing looks more than another. 

Maybe it's a little presumptuous to think this grandly about writing murder mysteries, but beauty is very much a theme in the crime canon -- the sleuth is always beguiled by the femme fatale. He's a hard-eyed character who insists on seeing the true ugliness of reality, but he can still be drawn off course by his love of beauty. It gets even more fascinating when the genders are reversed. Do people not realize that women are just as susceptible to beautiful men as men are to beautiful women? It cracks me up to read all these relationship articles talking about how women are only interested in men for how much money they make or whether they'll be good fathers, because, at least in my world, that's not even on the radar and never has been. Beautiful men can make women do all kinds of things they wouldn't otherwise, but it's always explained away in other (usually sexual) terms. Which is too bad, because I think what's really going on is a lot more interesting.

ok, not *completely* unrelated

I've never been an outliner when writing -- even when I have dutifully done a outline before starting something, I rarely end up sticking to it, because my characters seem to have minds of their own. However, I've just discovered where an outline can be really useful: when doing a full edit of a completed draft. It's much easier to read through the MS and outline the places that need updating first, then go back and do the actual writing. I've ironed out several things this way that would otherwise have turned quite hairy -- I would have re-written a scene, then gotten further into the story and realized it needed to be revised again.

Well, that was weird

I really did think that I was going to talk about some secret details viz. NINE DAYS, but it turns out my brain doesn't want to make them public. It doesn't feel right. Kind of like I'm talking about my grandma's underwear at her funeral or something. So we're back to public ranting about completely unrelated topics. You lucky dogs.

the agony and the ecstasy

If you're reading this, you know that I've set the old blaugh to private -- don't worry, I'm not being stalked or anything. It's because I'll be processing some stuff relative to NINE DAYS that won't be suitable reading for prospective publishers, but it's stuff I still need other humans to run their eyes over. If you got invited, it's because your opinion matters to me. That's an absurdly small group these days, so consider it a compliment, if you like. Here's a nudie pic, for your reward:

what could possibly go wrong?

As we've discussed, when not trying to single-handedly wrest the hard-boiled murder mystery genre from the clutches of the Patriarchy, I run my own architecture practice. I'm a sole practitioner, and that's the way I like it. However, there are down sides. One of them is that when you find yourself trying to run six projects at once, you can't blame anyone but yourself. I mean, sure, you can bitch about it -- in fact, I think that's legally required -- but it doesn't help. The hand on the pressure valve is your own. The Man is you.

It's extra fun if you have a recently completed novel that you decide, in between trying not to set all six of your architecture projects on fire, needs an eighth revision. Preferably in the middle of your agent pitching it to publishers, so that it won't remotely resemble the teaser being used to sell it, assuming you can ever actually work on the revision. Which you can't, because you need the seven minutes between design crises to take a shower for the epic meeting at which absolutely nothing will be decided except that YOU'RE INSANE.

Then you'll read something stupid about digital publishing on the internet (I KNOW), and start to wonder how you can get birth control into the water supply. I mean, really? I can't think of anything that a 'digital subscription service' suits worse than the novel form. I'm sure people will buy it, though, because I just saw a movie that got four stars in the local rag, and it was... not awful, but thin, in the way that so much is thin nowadays: trite, calculated, passionless, 'branded.'  THIS is what I fear for my book -- that it'll get a deal with a publishing house who will want to turn it into product that appeals to the same kind of people who can watch an actor do the Tragic Wall Slide and not laugh out loud. Lots of 'content' with no actual mental nutrition.

Not that the shit I'm (not, at the moment) writing is in any way an improvement over the empty calories provided by people much more successful and good-looking than I am. It's different, maybe, but the seven minutes I spent staring at my MS today told me it's not different in a good way.

Then -- THEN -- I discovered a health thing I've been doing recently isn't working as well as I'd convinced myself it was. The alternative that works better has side effects I really don't care for, so now I get to choose between early death or a nice long life in hell.

You know, maybe I should make this blaugh subscription-only while I'm processing this stuff. Or at least put a mental health warning on it.

somebody clone me

OK, the worst of the conflagrations on my desk have been extinguished and I've slept and bathed.

A local writer friend has been kind enough to read NINE DAYS and give me some feedback -- I consider the fact that he finished it it a four-star review, but he's also given me some concrete ideas about how to improve parts of the book that I think could use improving. It's incredibly bad timing on my part, since The Agent is currently querying publishers, and the lack of flames on the Day Job front is only temporary. All I did was cut a fire break. I'm going to be too busy making a living for the next couple of months to do much, if any, editing.

But, goddamn it, I'm practically salivating at the prospect of a better, faster, stronger, six-million-dollar-man manuscript. I started a bullet list of possible changes earlier this evening (wait, that was last night -- so much for a normal sleep schedule) and now I'm itching to try them out. Mainly to see if I can do it. 

That's really all this novel-writing business is, isn't it? Some kind of ongoing race with yourself to get vast and slippery truths successfully down on paper before you croak.

a thought

I'm too tired to really do anything with this, I just want to write it down so I don't forget it. It's come to my attention that the thing I'm really interested in writing about is something other than what I'm currently writing about. I write about it obliquely, on the fringes, because I don't think it's important or interesting enough. What would happen if I decided not to care about that, and just wrote directly about the thing I'm interested in? Even if it didn't make my work any better, it might be more satisfying.

this is not the post you're looking for

I'm in a ranty mood, due to opening yet another book by a highly recommended woman author to find yet another graphic rape scene. I understand that rape, as a crime, will feature in crime books, but I am SICK TO DEATH of authors trying to use it as some kind of salacious hook. Especially women writers.

Sisters. Come on. We need to step outside the box, not move in and furnish the damned thing.

the fear

Goddamn it, I can't even put together a single decent sentence tonight.

I have this fear. Like I've said, I started writing stories at 9 or 10, and thought I was going to be a writer up until my second year of college, at which point I decided it was just too hard and I wasn't any good at it anyway. I'm arty, and being arty was easier, so I got a BFA in studio art instead. That put me on poverty row right quick, so I went into architecture for graduate school. Got married and started my own practice, and figured I was set. Then 2008 hit, and I had nothing to do. Reading is my go-to entertainment, and I couldn't find enough books that didn't make me want to throw them across the room, so I started writing my own, just for the hell of it. Just to see if I could do it. It wasn't serious.Then I finished the damned thing, and it didn't make me want to puke, and all those old writerly aspirations jumped right out of their graves.

The problem is, there were twenty years or so in there where I didn't actively use my writing chops for much of anything except college papers and my journal. I did write some poetry, when the world got to be more than I could handle, but it was pretty crappy and didn't exercise my writing muscles much. So now I fear that whatever skill I had before is gone and not coming back. Maybe I was right the first time -- maybe it's too hard and I'm just not good enough.

Narnia

Another writer whose work I like very kindly agreed to read NINE DAYS, and has given me some positive feedback, which is making me giddy. I mean, it's nice when your friends and your spouse and your mom all like your book, but when it comes from someone whose work you've read and thought, "fuck, I'll never be that good," it feels like GOLD.

I've been having this sort of pink-cloud thing with other writers lately -- a sense that I've found My People. Excessively-verbal, overly-observant oddballs. I don't feel nearly as weird around them as I do around The Normals.

QOTD

" I follow a lot of men, but I’m convinced women make the best tweeters. They tweet more about life, and less about facts."

~ Roger Ebert

the log in my eye

I got called out on Twitter the other day for making a stupid remark to a sister feminist about how she was cooperating with her own oppression by shaving her body hair. I fired off several "so's your old man"-type responses before realizing what a hypocrite I was being. I don't shave anything, but it's not because I'm morally opposed to it (well, I am, sort of, but onward), it's because I'm fucking lazy. You won't catch me flaunting it in short skirts or sleeveless blouses. Not only that, I use many, many beauty products, wear makeup, won't leave the house without my earrings on, and collect perfumes the way some people collect stamps. In short, I practice femininity at an external level about as much as the next American woman, with only minor variations. As my idol Twisty Faster is so fond of pointing out, we all make deals with the culture we live in, so as not to end up some lion's breakfast outside the city gates.

Which brings me to some clarifications regarding yesterday's post. It's not so much that female characters in fiction these days are all intolerably girly, it's that femininity itself is so... fetishized in so many crime books. For instance, in a book I started reading a while ago, even though the female protag is nominally presented as a kick-ass dame, there is much discussion of her long legs and slim figure, what she's wearing in each scene, the sexual violence in her past, etc. etc., ad nauseam. *This* is what bugs me -- not so much the women themselves as this bizarre focus on the cultural salaciousness of things designated 'female.' Feminine characteristics and experience are offered up as titillation for the reader, where masculine experience usually comprises the admirable adventure. When I started reading crime fiction as a pre-teen, I always wanted to be the detective. I never wanted to be the moll. I can't believe I'm the only woman who felt that way.

book recommendations needed

I'm sort of embarrassed to admit that I've never been to a book signing / reading before. In my defense, I only started to take this Being A Writer thing seriously, like, three years ago, despite the fact that I've been writing since I was a kid. It's a long story. Check out the archives if you really want to know.

Anyway, I went to my first one last night, and it was interesting but somewhat depressing. The three authors were all talented guys, erudite and witty; they had insightful things to say about the publishing biz and said them in an entertaining way; there was a respectably-sized audience who mostly behaved themselves (except for the three or four rude fucks who got up and left after the readings and before the Q & A) -- all in all, a worthwhile experience.

The depression came toward the end, when I realized that everybody involved -- the writers, the presenters, the main book characters -- was male. When asked to name their influences, none of the authors mentioned any women, and the host, a bookseller, rattled off an all-male list of 'must-reads' before things got underway (actually, no, there was one woman named -- I remember because she was the only one). To be fair, it was a noir gig, and noir is an historically male genre, but I like to think that I'm writing somewhere in the general vicinity of hard-boiled, and I left feeling worried.

Yes, I know there are great noir-type female writers out there, but none of them seem to be trying to write outside the traditional gender roles of the genre. My tough and gritty 'detective' character is a woman and her femme fatale is un homme fatale instead. She's shamelessly unfeminine, that butch-but-heterosexual type of woman that everybody has encountered at least once in their lives, but whom nobody seems to write about -- and now I'm thinking maybe there's a reason for that. Maybe readers of the genre don't want to read about that kind of woman. All of the big female character hits of recent years that I've read have occupied the house of femininity in one way or another. I dunno if anybody's going to be interested in a female lead that's living out in the fucking yard.

One of my favorite books is NIGHT TRAIN by Martin Amis, which features the only female lead character I've ever read that completely eschews femininity but remains convincingly female. It fascinated the hell out of me and gave me the gall to create Julia Kalas. But Amis is a man -- a man with a famous name, to boot -- and NIGHT TRAIN stands alone. I've never read anything else remotely close. The first Kinsey Milhone book was promising, but she's since developed more or less along classic female detective lines. Maybe I just haven't read widely enough.

So I'm asking: if you've come across a hard-edged crime novel with a female lead who's not an ex-stripper, rape survivor, stilleto-wearing supermodel, housewife, grandmother, or any other femininity-defined trope, please for the love of all that's holy tell me about it. I feel like I'm out in the goddamned wilderness here.

tell me what you're thinking or I'll kill myself

Samuel Johnson used to call his depression a 'black dog' (Winston Churchill later popularized the term). It's no surprise to me that it was a writer who came up with that; I'm beginning to wonder what the fuck I've let myself into.

The worst thing you can do to a writer is not read what they write. That applies to even the pointless carping of a personal blaugh such as this one. I have a handful of regular visitors, but by and large the world isn't really interested in the things I say here, and that DRIVES ME NUTS. I spend an inordinate amount of time thinking I need to 'provide better content' (barf) or start doing contests (double barf) or maybe offer money. Or I could do that thing where people end all their posts with a question in an attempt to make people answer. What do you think?

None of that would work, though, because none of it is what I'm really interested in. I write about the inside of my head because that's the thing that fascinates me -- the black dog is that I'm probably the only person it fascinates. I can see how coming to grips with this would drive so many writers to suicide. When all you want to do is TELL PEOPLE things, and they don't really care -- well. You get the idea.

Here's the thing, though. I'm interested in the inside of other people's heads almost as much as my own. The people I have kept as friends over the long term of my life -- and I can count them on the fingers of one hand -- are people who tell me about the inside of their own heads. Bonus if the inside of their heads is as freakily byzantine as mine is.

What depresses me is how rarely other humans indulge me on that score. People by and large really don't seem interested in the inside of their heads much these days, and I think that's probably why I don't have many readers. This is what I tell myself to keep from driving off bridges, anyway.

things that don't kill you make you stronger

Among the many enlightening and entertaining conversations I had during SXSW, one covered the question of what I think of as 'literary emotional exhibitionism' -- the issue of how a writer uses her personal life traumas in her work. The position I found myself agreeing with was that those things are best used after you've processed them adequately away from the writing desk. I'm not 100% sure about that, for about forty-seven million reasons, one of them being that when things really stick in my craw, I have to write about them. A lot of them don't resolve themselves until I do.

However, I don't do a lot of that in public. I started keeping a journal when I was 10 or 11, and still do -- this blaugh is a modern adjunct, but I don't give a lot of specifics about the tender underbelly here. That stuff stays in the personal journal.

Last week I paid a visit to South Congress Books and spent all of my moneys. They had a copy of NEVER THE SAME AGAIN, the memoir by Jesse Sublett. I'd tried to read it when it first came out but couldn't get through it -- not because it's not a fantastic book (it is, and you should buy it), but because parts of the emotional ride described therein were too close to some unprocessed parts of my own life, and the story takes place during a specific period of Austin history that I almost didn't survive. Having read more of Sublett's work now, and having faced down some of the stuff that scared the bejesus out of me the first time around, I thought I'd give it another shot. Damned if I couldn't put the thing down.

The next day, I woke up with edits in my head for NINE DAYS. Good ones. Nothing that's going to change the course of modern civilization as we know it, just stuff that I was afraid to address before for fear of criticism. So there you go. Emotional bravery begets emotional bravery. You show me yours, I'll show you mine.

pointless update

Man, I'm in a shitty mood. Wrote a scene in my car today and am so exhausted from the bumper crop of Paying Work that I've put off typing it into the MS until my eyes uncross. Just looked in the mirror to find my skin breaking out, right on cue for multiple meetings tomorrow, and a festering personal issue continues to fester. I don't really even know how or if to address it, which bugs the crap out of me. I'm not one to let scabs heal unpicked.

on terminal uniqueness

I don't really have an outline for this post, I just feel the urge to say something about the value of communing with other writers, which I didn't realize was valuable until recently. Now I want to talk to ALL OF THEM. Which is tricky, because my social skilz leave something to be desired. However, I am informed, by a person who should know, that this is not that uncommon a condition, especially for writers. To wit, "Social awkwardness and writing go hand-in-hand because of the fact that we're so self-centered."

MIND. BLOWN.

Not so much by the wisdom of the pronouncement, but by the fact that I -- a certified Smart Person -- didn't heretofore realize that I'm not the only human on the planet suffering from an acute level of self-involvement. Or that it might not be the Worst Thing Ever. Because when you're in the middle of it, that's how it feels, and -- oh, the irony -- the very nature of the beast prevents you from understanding that it's not just you, so you start to feel isolated and embarrassed about your 'deviant' predilections. It's not that I didn't *know* that a preoccupation with one's own internal workings is probably universal to some degree, it's that I forget it pretty regularly. Because I'm not thinking about other people most of the time. LOL. See how that works?

Anyway, a week of intense schmoozing with writers and other creative peoples (SXSW) didn't leave me as exhausted as I feared it would; on the contrary, I've felt energized by it. Although I'm aware of an impending desire to pull a big rock over the cave opening soon, SOUTH OF NOWHERE is cooking along again. I know the word count is going backwards, but that's because I've streamlined some of the plot points and have had to do a bit of re-writing in order to get going forward again. I may also have to take a trip to Arizona at some point, but I'll burn that bridge when I get to it.

writers et. al., Canyon Peguis, Mexico

so much to say, so little time

I'ma have to do this with bullet points. Sorry.

• Have decided to stop trying to look 'put together.' Going Full Old Hippie Fat Broad.
• Musical ears make the best writers. Discuss.
• Two things important to Eternal Happiness: 1) Forgive everyone who's ruined your life, even if they deserve to be hated for all time. Do it anonymously, in your own mind, for yourself. 2) Find your creative Thing and do it even if it doesn't make you any money.
• If my word count goes DOWN after a day's work, am I writing a better book?
• In a world where everything immediately becomes a product (even rebellions against product-ification), the only thing of real value is being our fucked-up, unbranded, unfit-for-public-consumption selves.
• Ed Ward knows stuff. Pay attention.

Details later.

research

Drank TWO iced teas at around sunset today, so I probably won't be sleeping until, like, next Thursday. Keep that in mind as you read this post. My brain is both exhausted and trying to jump out of my ears AT THE SAME TIME.

As we previously discussed, I have some anxiety around social interaction, and decided to double up the ante by being anxious about the possibility of being anxious, but it turns out I'm really fucking enjoying myself. I weirdly love crowds for some reason. I think maybe because I weirdly love human beings but find them somewhat scary. I can interact with crowds at a level that feels safe to me somehow, and Austin crowds are among the most fascinating conglomerations of the species you could ever hope to experience. Texans are, by nature I think, pretty damned gregarious, and Austinites are gregarious in a way that no one else on earth is -- sort of like meeting your best friend in the psycho ward. That knowing laugh, the commiseration, the frank look in the eye. Watching humans interact is kind of my TV right now.

hang up and drive

Read this. Read it now.

running with scissors

Look, I'm sorry I'm so fascinated by my own thoughts, feelings and opinions that I can't help writing about them AT LENGTH here on the old blaugh. What can I say? I'm the first-born child of two prize-winning narcissists. I got it with my mother's milk.

If you met me in person, though, you might be surprised. With all the opinionated ranting I do here, I can imagine you expecting someone fairly mouthy and imperious, but I'm not like that in Real Life. Well, at least, as far as I can tell. I believe in being Nice, don't like conflict, and am something of a nerd. As in, I always leave social gatherings feeling like a complete ass.

Which brings me to today's anxiety... it's SXSW here in the River City -- known more commonly, at our house, as South By So What. Like most Austinites, until now I've just tried to stay out of the way when this shit hits town, but I've never had a novel to sell before. So I'm going to try and hit a couple of SXSW events, which will require socializing, and I don't mind telling you, I'm not looking forward to going over all the stupid things I said and did on the drive(s) home. It would be nice if I got the feeling-like-an-ass thing AT THE TIME, so that I could abort my behavior and save some face, but that never happens. It's only later that I find myself wondering how in the hell I could have said so-and-so to so-and-so. Kind of like staircase wit, except in my case it's more like staircase shame.

And, oh, lucky you! You'll get to read all about it here, in excruciating detail.

places in hell

People keep hiring me to design stuff for them, which means I haven't been writing much. Worse, I've been gorging on popular culture in my spare moments, which is kind of like eating giant cans of frosting one after another. I wonder why I feel like barfing.

Anyway, the teapot tempest of the moment is ole' Taylor Swift's swipe at Tina Fey and Amy Poehler for making fun of her fake "love life" at some event or other recently. Swift cited some other celebrity whose name I can't remember now, quoting "there is a special place in hell for women who don't help other women."

Just to prove how low I've sunk, let me just go ahead and provide my response in the form of an internet meme:

"Helping other women" doesn't mean chanting "you go, girl" to everything another woman does. In fact, I would argue that Fey and Poehler (who never fail to appear in their patriarchy-approved roles without a wicked sparkle of irony in at least one eye) were in fact actually helping the youngster by pointing up the absurdity of her attempts to Do Femininity Right. I dunno if that was their intent, but that's kind of how it's worked out. From where I sit, anyway.

Then -- THEN -- I had to go and read this STUPID article at Salon about how the word Feminism should be retired because this one young, blonde, thin, white woman has this great job at a big company and also a baby and a husband. Like, feminism doesn't really apply anymore, ya know? Because this young, blonde, thin, white woman has achieved a position of relative financial power within a system that regularly rewards young, blonde, thin, white women, and really, that's all feminism was for. We just wanted to get our slice of the capitalist pie. That stuff about wanting to be able to walk down the street without having to worry about whether we're dressed just sluttily enough that we'll meet our performing femininity quota without getting kidnapped and raped -- meh, doesn't matter. We're now allowed to fuck our way into the board room, so Jesus, enough with that goddamn feminism shit already.

Ya know, maybe it's a good thing I haven't been writing much.

she's back!

One of my most favorite blogs, I Blame The Patriarchy, has resumed publication after a very long-seeming hiatus. I've never known who this gal is in Real Life, but she's from Around Here, and will make you laugh out loud.

your mileage may vary

Today's Internet Comment Of The Day comes to us from that bastion of internet Funfeminism, Jezebel.com:

"Feminism was and is about equality; "choice feminism" is a contemporary construct that I'm convinced was dreamed up by the right to force us to support women whose choices are shaped by internalized misogyny. It's a very clever way of maintain(ing) the status quo while calling out any one who protests as a 'bad feminist.'"

Well said!

In other news, I haven't done shit for the last couple of weeks but the Day Job^TM, yet I am completely broke. How does that work, again? If I were living it up on the Riviera, I could understand, but how does a lower-middle class lifestyle eat up a licensed architect's income and then some? I bought some shoes this month. Maybe that was it. Oh, yeah, and ate, bathed, and drove my car. I guess that's more expensive than I realized [/sarcasm].

I'm in a lousy mood anyway. My tolerance for -- I wish there was a word that described the uniquely American way of trying to mimic the ideas, beliefs, and mannerisms of phantasmagorical media characters, as if their completely fabricated lives were something attainable and worth aspiring to -- is rapidly approaching absolute zero. Do people not realize what a fucking capitalist product they are when they tweet-RSVP to the 'Mad Men' costume party at Banana Republic? No, they don't. They think they're being hip and alternative. They wouldn't know blatant consumerism if it bit them in the ass.

Meanwhile, the megatheocorporatocracy continues to "engineer" our food and rape the planet while we're not looking. I guess when we're done fucking up this rock, we'll just move to that new one, right? Technology! It can solve everything!

lemme ask you something

Don't you, in that place inside yourself where nobody else goes, think you're fascinating? I mean, not like, "I'm so fucking great," just -- "wow, the inside of my head." It's only recently that I've understood that maybe not everyone is like this, and I don't really believe it, because, I mean -- the inner landscape, what's not to love? Maybe it's annoying to other people, but that's the way I got made, and it's what I have to offer. Whether it sells books or not is kind of immaterial -- it's what this brain does. It looks at itself and then tries to look at other brains to see what they're like. And then it makes up stories to tell about what it finds.

As a social adaption, maybe it's not the best way to be, especially when coupled with introversion. People scare the shit out of me until I can get to a certain level with them -- that level where you're exchanging real, no-shit reports about that inner landscape. It's hard to get to that point with most people and it's not a job I do well, so I mostly avoid it. I often wish I could just start at subterranean with other human beings, instead of having to go through all the crap necessary to get there. But once I get there, with a sufficiently evolved homo sapiens, man, it's like GOLD.

Because really, what else are you here for? Amassing a bunch of stuff? Climbing the power ladder? Sleeping with ALL the members of the opposite sex? That's why you got the gift of consciousness? Come on.

I am not the center of the universe

Got up this a.m. to discover that the local thieves had stolen two wheels off my car during the night. That's right -- the rims, tires, hubcaps and lug nuts. Two of them. Off a fucking Toyota. While I was home and awake. They ignored the SUV parked across the street, whose wheels are certainly worth more money, to personally persecute ME. Then I got some mixed feedback on NINE DAYS, and promptly lost all will to live and motivation to write.

Here's what I don't understand about myself. Anyone who knows me will tell you I'm an inveterate pessimist, yet I always expect the Universe to reward me rapidly and handsomely for the things I do. I joke about becoming a millionaire best-selling author, but seriously, there's part of me that really believes it, and gets really offended when other people are skeptical. I've learned to observe that part of myself with amusement when it crops up, but I'm always surprised when it does. It makes me wonder how I come across to other people, sometimes. I must seem like the smuggest blowhard in Christendom.

Actually, you know what really ticks me off is that probably nobody cares. In this modern era of over-sharing, I'm just another blog post twitter bookface noise. Don't these people realize what a unique and profound thinker I am? Don't they understand MY GENIUS? Ugh. Somebody shoot me. 

lest I forget

moving along

Not exactly burning up the keyboard, but I'm working again. Slowly.

One of my Bookface buds recently remarked that I should go visit the Tohono O'odham for myself, and now I can't think about anything else. Maybe I should do a Kickstarter? "Send a Broke Writer to Arizona."

Bonus: The Benefactor tweaked me to Tom Miller, whose books look really interesting. Got REVENGE OF THE SAGUARO coming.

the assistant objects to my nose hair

"I say, mater, you seem to have split an infinitive there."

OK, now I'm scaring myself

Over the years I've learned that when I balk at work, the best thing to do is indulge my laziness for a little while. Usually, after a day or two of total slack, I'm back to it. Lately, though, the slack has been expanding beyond its usual tenure, and I can't figure out what the fuck is wrong with me. The easy answer is that I've lost my taste for the Day Job, what with the excitement of a possible book deal -- and that's kind of the way I work: when something gets my attention I want to give it ALL my attention. I don't want to be distracted with petty little things like making a living.

The Agent assures me that I will likely always need a Day Job, and I'm not sure I'll be able to pull that off. I'm no good at doing two things at once. One of them always suffers. Right now, *both* of my Life Ventures are suffering -- when architecting I want to be writing; when writing I feel like I should be architecting. So I'm not doing either very well at the moment, and I'm starting to fear that the paralysis is getting entrenched.

today's 'fuck you' to the patriarchy

I'ma say something about writing in a minute

...but first I must address the newest Killer Cat Hysteria. Full disclosure: I "own" four pet cats and manage a colony of ~7 stray/feral cats that live in my back yard and the alley behind our house. That is, I am cat-positive and well on my way to becoming a stereotype. So it should come as no surprise that I think this latest pointless media frenzy is, well, pointless. 1) Every free-roaming cat on the planet could kill a bird an hour until the end of time and never approach the damage that humans have done to animal habitat; 2) if you really want to go to the mat on introduced species, let's talk about horses, pigs, cows, goats, pigeons, geckos, carp, moths, ad nauseam; and 3) as far as choosing one species over another, it's convenient that rats, mosquitoes, and other human-defined 'vermin' aren't being included in the discussion.

So here's the surprise: I agree in principle with what these cat-haters are saying. I categorically DON'T agree with their solution, but domestic cats should not be free-roaming animals. They should live indoors, with their humans. It's always baffled the hell out of me that people understand you can't just turn your dog loose in the morning and expect it to return home that night unscathed and minus a criminal record, but are absolutely convinced that's the proper way to treat a cat. Even worse are people who let their cats out at night. It's kind of like putting your toddler on the doorstep when you go to bed and trusting that it will be there, in the same condition, when you get up the next morning.

Having said that, these kill-all-the-cats people don't seem to understand what they're up against. Unless you can drop a bomb that will wipe out every free-roaming domestic cat on earth all at once, there is simply no way to completely eliminate them from the wild. Cats reproduce faster than rabbits, and I'm here to tell you from experience that mere seconds after you remove one, another will show up to take its place. Doesn't it make more sense to at least slow down the population rate with TNR? I think that a logical next step might be trap-neuter-confine, where cats that can't be domesticated are released into an enclosed habitat inaccessible to species they might damage, to live out their lives and die of natural causes without reproducing. Maybe that sounds insane, but it makes a hell of a lot more sense to me than this wild-west cat-hunting thing the cat-haters are proposing.

It really weirds me out how virulently some people hate cats -- I mean, people who don't like dogs are all, "Yeah, I'm not really a dog person," and move calmly on. People who don't like cats are like, "THEY'RE SATANIC VERMIN AND SHOULD BE WIPED FROM THE FACE OF THE EARTH." I don't think we should be feeding into this bizarrely fevered prejudice by allowing people to shoot cats. There are already enough people who shoot cats just for the "fun" of it.

OK, done with the cat thing. On to writing.

My word count on SOUTH OF NOWHERE isn't moving right now because I'm going crazy with the synopsis. I wrote a short one for The Agent, and it really got the juices flowing, so I just kept going. The story is developing nicely, and it almost looks like the synopsis could morph into the actual manuscript at some point. That would be lovely, and much more to my liking than flailing around for four years like I did on NINE DAYS. I loved those four years, but once I become a millionaire best-selling author, I'm gonna need to work faster.

the revolution will not be colonized

Naturally, I'd like to lay this shit at the feet of my favorite whipping-boy, Capitalism, but as I cast my mind back over the ages, I can't think of a period in recorded history when women weren't socially pressured to alter their appearance in some way. Maybe the Greco-Romans. That is, back to the era before human beings got all hot to start taking entire continents away from the indigenous inhabitants, which makes me laugh. Hollowly. Because now I understand what the radfems mean about the colonization of women's bodies. Kind of makes you want to puke, doesn't it?

it's the big one, elizabeth

I just had an enormous epiphany. The recent buggery isn't that I hate the way I look, it's that I hate that I hate the way I look. I hate that I've been trained to dislike what my unimproved, natural body looks like. I mean, think about that for a second. I now live in a world where most of the human race would not be considered acceptably attractive minus the various applications we enact upon ourselves. "Beauty" has nothing to do with natural human appearance anymore. This is extremely fucked up.

Since I referenced her before, let's take Joan Rivers. Here's Joan's original face:

and here's what she looks like now:

If you'd seen her coming toward you on the street twenty years ago, you'd think to yourself, "That poor woman, she must have been in some kind of accident." Yet, today, her face isn't considered unusual. The fact that millions of women willingly do this to themselves really blows my mind, but it blows my mind more that nobody seems to be addressing the cultural sickness that lies behind it. I mean, look at this woman's original face. Why would you cut that up? She was gorgeous. 

So my depression stems not from my failure to conform to these new "beauty" standards, but from the realization that even I, wannabe firebrand of the Revolution, have internalized wanting to so thoroughly that I can't stand to look at myself in the mirror.

news flash: I'm not photogenic

Woke up this morning hating myself. Not my self, just my looks. Took some pictures to help me get completely obessesed, then a quick visit to bookface to seal the deal by comparing myself to all those flattering profile pictures -- you know, that one good pic everybody has, taken right after finishing a successful diet in their early thirties. Oof.

In a way, though -- looking at this pic, there's something I like about it.

I dunno what, exactly, just... this is what I look like. It's what I actually, every day, without futzing around with myself, look like, and it matches what I think I look like, in my head. I look like a 52 year-old white broad with bloodshot eyes and a magnificent schnoz. Maybe I should smile more, or get my skin resurfaced, or do something about that mustache, but then I'd have to start coloring my hair, and then the liposuction and the face-lift and the tummy tuck and before you know it I'm Joan Rivers. I'd rather be me.

the house of race cards

Writing a character like Julia Kalas, who is very similar to me in many ways, is kind of a double-edged sword. On the one hand, I get some vicarious thrills by putting her through adventures that I'd like to have myself; on the other, she's got the same blind spots I have. One of the touchier ones features prominently in SOUTH OF NOWHERE, and now I'm kind of scared I've painted myself into a corner that I'll make a complete idiot of myself trying to write my way out of. I'm the kind of writer that relishes the challenge, but I'm also acutely aware of how wrong a lot of other middle-aged white broads have gotten race issues, and I'm certainly self-deluded enough to follow suit without even realizing it.

Fortunately, I think I may have the world's greatest literary agent. Our discussion about a single word in NINE DAYS got me thinking about this, and that's what it needs. If I get it really wrong, I feel pretty sure she's got my back.

I'VE FALLEN AND I CAN'T GET UP

So much to do that I'm essentially paralyzed. Head full of noise. Need to just pick an entry point and wade in, but can't seem to do it. So many things to say that I can't say any of them. Is there a word for this?

rainy day blues

Life just feels like too much work today. Getting out of bed, getting dressed, feeding cats, laundry, eating, bathing -- all of it. It feels like a goddamn full time job. Then there's this creeping feeling that I'm kind of repulsive to everyone I meet lately -- obtuse, smug, self-centered. Where's the off switch on this winter thing?

apparently it's genetic

Just read back over my last post and realize that I've basically turned into my dad.

In other news, I'd been working on a 'blurb' for SOUTH OF NOWHERE for the agent's use in selling NINE DAYS + sequels to some lucky publisher, but it turned into a six-page synopsis. So now I gotta cut it down to 2~3 paragraphs. Words: I love them so much I want to use them all at once. On the plus side, it helped me suss out some new plot points. 

2nd annual top ten things of which I have officially become sick this year

10. American mainstream politics. I doubt this needs explanation, but if it does, I'm too fucking tired.

9. The "Men's Rights Movement." If you're a heterosexual, Caucasian penis-bearer in the United States, very little of the bad shit that happens to you happens to you solely because you are male. If you lose your kids in divorce court, that's a parental rights issue. If the judge grants your wife an unfair alimony settlement, that's a spousal rights issue. If you can't get laid without paying for it, it's not because you're a man, it's probably because you're a dickhead. Strangers don't see you coming down the street and make assumptions about your intelligence, sexual availability, moral standing, or anything else just because of your gender. So please, MRAs, have the stones to just call yourselves what you are: misogynists.

8.Writers who refuse to learn and use proper grammar. I'm not talking about writers who are purposely trying to subvert the dominant grammatical paradigm, I'm talking about people who don't know the difference between your, you're and yore and don't care. If you really love to write, you necessarily really love words and language. Why the hell wouldn't you want to know as much about how to use them as accurately as you can? It's like working in a bakery and refusing to eat the delicious free cake.

7. Porn. You're doing it wrong.

6. Environmental cluelessness. I heard a news story the other day about some people who'd moved to Michigan because they wanted their kids to be able to experience snow after global warming really got bad. Did they get rid of their car? No. Did they downsize their carbon footprint? No. Their priorities were clear: it's all about the snow. Heaven forfend that we remember our place in the animal kingdom and act in our own best interests to protect the planet that sustains us all. THAT WOULD MAKE TOO MUCH SENSE.

5. Gun nuts. We're not living on the 17th century frontier anymore. Deal with it.

4. Losing at chess. I'm supposedly smart enough to be good at it, yet my rating hovers around 1000. 1200 is average. WTF?

3. 'Cougars.' You know what they call men who like much younger women? Men.

2. "Looking healthy." I officially Got Old this year, which involves all kinds of physical shit breaking down. As a result, I've had to start exercising daily simply to be able to get out of bed. My blood pressure is 100/70, my cholesterol is 129/63, I'm in the 98th percentile for bone density, fasting blood sugar hovers around 75 -- basically, I'm so healthy my doctor gets annoyed when I show up for a physical.  But I don't have a six-pack and I still wear a size 14. My hair is grey. There are bifocals. 'Looking healthy' is just code for 'conform to my stereotypical ideal of physical attractiveness.' It doesn't have anything to do with actual health.

1. Architecture. I'm kind of cheating on this one, because it's not really architecture itself that I'm sick of, it's being asked to design ugly shit. When I first started in the profession, I naively assumed that there were so many ugly buildings around because people weren't being offered an alternative; I set out to CHANGE ALL THAT by making my services available to average-income clients. Ten years later, I hereby formally give up. I wish I had a dollar for every beautiful domicile I've designed that clients screwed up their eyes at and said, "but there's no chandelier in the bathroom!" People actively want ugly houses. They want that cut-stone wainscot and hideous 'artisan tile' backsplashes and plastic crown moulding around the eighty-foot ceilings in their football-stadium-sized family rooms. I don't know why they want it, but I'm sick of having to give it to them. So I'll be extra happy if NINE DAYS finds a publisher. It means I won't have to get a paper route.

now I can't even tell whether it sucks or not

Everything is ON HOLD right now while I try to finish up these final tweaks on NINE DAYS for the agent... I promised it to her directly after Xmas, which was two days ago... less than 10 pages to go, but I also know that for it to really be done right, I need to rest it and look at it again in a week or so. So do I write to the agent and say so? Or do I send it to her tomorrow, unrested? I'm leaning toward that.

damn, I'm good

This happens rarely enough that I don't feel guilty about it -- working on some final tweaks to NINE DAYS for the agent, I keep catching myself marveling that I actually wrote it. It's not Great Literature by any means, but there are parts that are actually readable. Maybe somebody will publish it.

it's morning in America

Actually, I've been thinking about this, and it's not that America is by nature a violent culture -- I mean, it is, but probably no more so than any other country of humans. No, I think the thing that really fucks us up is how id-driven we are. The American Dream is basically a craving-fulfillment fantasy -- big house, trophy wife, lots of money -- the kind of shit a teenager would wish for if he rubbed a lamp and got a genie. Which is kind of interesting when you consider that, as cultures go, that's about what age we are, having emancipated ourselves a mere 200 years ago in a fit of rebelliousness uncannily similar to yelling at an overly-strict parent, "YOU CAN'T TELL ME WHAT TO DO!" (and then flouncing off to the "new" world and doing just that to a bunch of other people).

Like most teenagers, we have a vast catalog of immature fantasies: the fantasy that we're somehow intrinsically better than other countries, the fantasy of being the heaven-ordained protector and savior of the weak and downtrodden, the fantasy of global omnipotence. The Violent Revenge Fantasy seems to be one of our favorites, if you take a look at our books, art, TV shows, and movies, and it shouldn't surprise anyone that we've built a country where it's easy to make that particular fantasy come true. Now it's time to grow up.

more gun stuff

If you're a stable, emotionally mature, law-abiding citizen, what do you have to fear from the licensing and regulation of guns? Yeah, maybe it's a pain in the ass to pass a yearly interview and / or background check or something like that, but ya know, if you've got nothing to hide, why the paranoia? Your insurance company, the DMV, and Google probably know just as much about you, or more.

We're not living on the frontier anymore. If you own a gun for any reason other than recreational purposes, you probably shouldn't. Responsible gun owners need to man up and support stricter licensing and regulation. 

enough, already

Look, OK, I know that "gun control" -- as it's ever been discussed in the past -- will never work in the United States, but we've got to fucking do something. Personally, I partially agree that the problem isn't necessarily the guns, it's the violent nature of American society, but until we can do something about that, making guns harder for people to get seems like a pretty good idea.

feminism is eating itself

Goddammit, I have had it up to here with this intersectionality bullshit. If I didn't know better (and really, do I?), I'd suspect that some anti-feminist invented it to bring down the movement, because it's doing a bang-up job.

Look, I'm all for the liberation of anybody who's ever been marginalized by mainstream culture,* but I am also of the (apparently dated and stupid) opinion that feminism should be first and foremost about the liberation of women. If I had a nickel for every time I attempted to engage a Modern Feminist on a salient topic only to find myself playing oppression olympics with racism, ableism, homophobia, or some other issue, I could start up my own International Bank of Nickels. I got no problem with fighting against those things. I just don't think feminism should be co-opted as the platform from which to do it. It's got enough work to do with the one thing.

Can we please just dismantle sexism without being required to save the rest of the fucking world at the same time?

*note to self: write scathing post about the absurdity of seeking the approbation of a system created by and dependent on your own oppression.