author: Nicole J. LeBoeuf

Today has been a surprisingly exhausting day for not having actual physical roller derby in it. There was a lot of not knowing the shape of my day because I was waiting for the next phone call to tell me what shape it would be. Just for starters, I brought the car to the shop at eight in the morning, so I was waiting to hear back from the mechanics all day. I had errands to run that I couldn't run until I had the car back. And because of various circumstances, the location and time of roller derby practice was TBD right up until less than an hour before I'd have had to leave for it. (The combination of these factors were a large part of me not going to practice at all, but that's neither here nor there.)

Turns out, I don't function very well when part of my brain is On Call. My brain translates On Call into On Hold. The tendency is to fly a holding pattern, unable to exert real effort while uncertain of what my immediate future holds.

So I'm quite pleased with myself for actually getting some work done on the short story.

Granted, it was mostly down the rabbit hole of research. But I was finally persistent enough to get the answers I needed to the questions I'd scribbled on the first couple pages.

Example 1: My main character laments that there are no suitable books in the house to distract her little brother from Peter Pan, because the roof leaked during the storm right onto their bookshelves. And they couldn't just go to the library because the libraries weren't open yet. True or false?

As it turns out, false. While the Jefferson Parish Library system was deeply crippled, and some branches were entirely destroyed along with all of their books, there was library service in Jefferson Parish as early as October 3. At least, that's what I understand to be the case from what library director Lon R. Dickerson writes in "Building Even Better Libraries, Post-Katrina" (American Libraries, Nov. 2005, Vol. 36, Issue 10):

With a service population of 455,466 residents, Jefferson Parish Library was already the largest library in Louisiana. Before Katrina hit, we had an operating budget of $15 million. By default, we're now the only large library in metropolitan New Orleans that can serve people as they return to Orleans, St. Bernard, and Plaquemines parishes.

JPL has dropped its nonresident fees and is issuing "Katrina library cards" to anyone in the area. Staff and library users alike say that having libraries open is part of their need for normalcy. We expected the rush of people on October 3 who wanted to use our computers, but we also had long lines of people waiting to check out books. We expect to have at least 10 branches open by November. Schools are more dependent on us than ever before, and our library is essential lo the rebuilding of this community's economy. A stronger and more vibrant library will help us attract new businesses and residents.

Now, the last time this story was workshopped, the critique hive mind basically side-stepped the question of veracity. They informed me that most readers wouldn't need an explanation for the dearth of books in the narrator's house. "A lot of people just don't read much. Certainly not as much as us writers do," they said. "You're spendig a lot of energy trying to explain a situation that most creaders won't even question in the first place."

It made sense at the time--at least, once I got past my initial "Huh? Houses without books? That is un-possible!" reaction. But today I'm not so sure. Seems to me, the readership of the types of market I'd try to get this submitted to, they're readers. Right? I mean, someone who reads commercial science fiction and fantasy short fiction... is a reader. I think it's not unreasonable to expect that the target audience of, say, F&SF or Shimmer, is someone who sees unoccupied walls as an opportunity for more bookshelves, then stacks those shelves double-deep with paperbacks. (Also, a not insignificant portion of that reading population comprises writers.)

In the end, though, that's not what matters. What matters is, the family in my story used to have a lot of books before Katrina hit. Now, they do not. This is notable enough for the main character to mention it, even though she herself is not the huge reader that her brother and mother are (or so I've decided for this draft). Revision should result is these facts being plausible character notes and part of a larger important story theme.

(Of course it's an important theme. The main character's little brother is literally getting lost in a book. Of course books are important.)

Example 2: The main character notes that her father used to take the kids fishing in Lake Pontchartrain, despite there being nothing much to catch. True or false?

Again, false. In this case, I was going off my memory of being a kid in the late '70s and early '80s watching Dad catch nothing but the odd croaker--which he'd throw back--and then getting his bait stolen by a needle-noser. That's not a particularly reliable memory to go from. It lacks perspective. It's not accurate to infer the fishing viability of the entire lake from vague memories of Dad casting a line next to the Bonnabel pumping station.

Also, those forays were some 20 years before my story takes place. The lake had benefited from a concerted clean-up effort in the years since my single digits. Heck, in 2000 some parts of the lake were actually declared safe for swimming. That still blows my mind.

Anyway, not only was there plenty of successful fishing in Lake Pontchartrain just before Katrina hit, but it turns out that the environmental impact of Hurricane Katrina on Lake Pontchartrain was surprisingly benign, and in some respects actually beneficial. No reason to think the narrator wouldn't have seen any fish caught on those family expeditions.

In summary: Research is fun! And it is useful. It might even keep the author from looking shamefully uninformed about her own hometown. Yay research!

And then there are days that no amount of specificity can help. They start out already so full of things that the schedule consists of an hour here and an hour eked out there, and then they change. Appointments get postponed. Cars get flats.

True. The rear left wheel split its outer sidewall in response to no observable incident whatsoever, and John and I got an opportunity to relearn how to install a spare tire. We were helped by the late '90s legacy of Saturn manufacturers who included numbered and illustrated instructions on the spare wheel access panel. We were not at all helped by the Conoco corner store counter clerk who opined, "Well, if you've got a husband with you, you don't need to change any tires, right?"

I'm reminded of a mid-90s Seattle encounter, wherein some guy, some stranger, encountered me on the sidewalk where I was adjusting the brake pads of my bicycle, and asked me, "Don't you have a man to do that for you?" I seriously don't understand why people say things like this. I guess they think they're being funny. They can't possibly think they're helping in any way.

Anyway, one spare wheel installation and inflation later, I'm spending my next hour at Big O getting the tire replaced, which operation finished just in time for me to rendezvous with my carpool to roller derby practice. Why, yes I've had practice three nights in a row. It's bout week. And if tonight's scrimmage is any indication, it's going to be very physical and hard-fought.

No derby tomorrow--just resting up before the big event. But tomorrow is a big day where the house is concerned--we finally get to move back in. The new carpet went in yesterday, and tomorrow morning is final clean-up, walk-through, and furniture relocation. That's going to eat up my morning some good, but, despite that and the afternoon appointment that's also scheduled, I'm optimistic about getting some writing in. At least, more than I got in today. And I'll get to do it at my own desk, in my own office. Finally.

Until then!

For the following post, and, well, pretty much forever, please of your kindness consider the phrase "Political correctness gone mad!" a non-starter with me. Thank you. Now, on with your regularly scheduled actually writing blog.

So today on the TV at the bar during lunch there was the preseason football game between the Cleveland Browns and the Washington team. It was being rerun from Monday. Apparently it drew the second-highest rating ever for an NFL preseason game. So sayeth NBC Sports. What NBC Sports is not sayeth-ing, at least not unless you count the post's tag, is the actual name of the Washington team. They didn't say the name of the Cleveland team, either, so I'm not sure whether it was a conscientious decision, like that of The Washington Post editorial board, or just a coincidence.

Anyway, John looked up and proclaimed it the Potatoskins Game. Which is awesome. Potatoes come with both brown skins and red skins. Also gold. Also purple. Green, too, if they're not ripe, but we don't see those in the supermarket.

"I want there to be a sports team called The Purpleskins," I told John. "Its mascot would be an all-organic fingerling potato. There would also be a sly rebuke therein to all those But-I'm-Not-A-Bigots who declare themselves so colorblind that they couldn't give a damn if you're 'black, white, or purple.'"

You know who doesn't stint at saying the racist slur that is the Washington team's name all the hell over the place? J. M. Barrie, author of Peter Pan.

You know who actually submitted a story to Shimmer with that slur all the hell over the text? Me.

*dies of shame*

The problem is, I've got a story in which a main character is obsessed with both the original text and the Disney movie of Peter Pan. In both forms of that story, you've got racist stereotypes of Native Americans like woah. It doesn't exactly help that the fictitious sometime-allies, sometime-enemies of Peter Pan and his Lost Boys aren't meant at all to represent the people who lived on the North American continent before European invasion; in fact, that maybe makes it worse. It's one thing to reduce real people to stereotypes; it's yet another to erase real people in favor of the stereotypes.

All this is hardly arguable in this day and age, unless you're Washington's NFL team owner Dan Snyder, who will argue it into the ground because listening to people isn't his strong point. But. But but but that said, what the hell am I going to do with a story in which a six-year-old boy plays Let's Pretend in the imaginative playground of Neverland as Barrie wrote it?

How the heck do I remain non-complicit in the ongoing slur-flinging and stereotype-propagating without turning my other main character, the boy's thirteen-and-a-half year-old sister, into a caricature of a social justice spokesperson?

Argh.

No, I'm not asking for answers. I'll come up with something. Probably it'll occasion another iteration of the older sister and younger brother arguing over whether Neverland is real. Maybe it'll involve the older sister telling him, "Hey! What did we say about using the R word, Jimbo?" I'll figure it out.

For now, I'm just griping, and thereby exorcising my mortification that I submitted a story in Year of Our Common Era Two Thousand and godsdamned Seven that used "the R word" absolutely uncritically from page 5 through page 14.

*dies all over again*

Don't worry. I'll get over it. And the story will be better later for my abject embarrassment now. But abject embarrassment is... well, it's embarrassing, that's what it is.

It's 11:30 PM. Do you know where your story is? "Well. Um. It's almost done. I got to the end! But... it could be so much better than it is. It certainly could stand to lose a few hundred words." Well, Niki, you had better hurry up. You only have until 5 AM Mountain Time.

Well, that's a relief. I'm going to get this story submitted, in whatever shape it's in when I finally just crash for the night. But it's also kind of disappointing. Every deadline I latch onto, I think, "This time, it'll be different. I'll finish with time to spare." But no, as the deadline gets closer and closer, it becomes clear that once again I'm going to pull it off by the skin of my teeth, if at all.

I do not have a healthy relationship with deadlines.

Some people theorize that people like me get a sort of existential thrill out of creating artificial crises. Putting off work until the last minute before a drop-dead deadline injects a bit of excitement into our lives, they say. It makes us feel important. It gives us the adrenalized oomph we need to finally get shit done.

That may be true for some people, I don't know. It's not true for me. Though the imminent deadline does jolt me into action, it's less excitement and more dread that does the trick. Dread of letting yet another deadline go by without me. Dread of adding to my collection of regrets.

Meanwhile, there's stress. I don't need more stress.

I'm not so much looking for sympathy or solutions as I am just griping. I'm also sort of leaving this post here like a bookmark to which I can point from some future time and say, "That was the last deadline I let beat me over the head with stress and angst. The next day, I began implementing important changes in my time management strategy, which lead to a much healthier relationship with writing and with deadlines."

At least, I hope I can say that. I'm going to try really hard to enable Future Me to do so.

Today was as unproductive as I expected, for all the reasons I feared. My plan was to drive from the airport straight up to Longmont, order a pot of tea at Cafe Luna, and write everything. But on the drive back from the airport I got hit with a wave of I'm Tired And Also I Have a Headache In My Neck. (This is a thing that happens to me.) And look! How convenient, there's an exit for Dillon Road off the tollway, and, well, I could stick to the plan, turn north on 96th Street, and continue onto Highway 42 and then take 95th Street all the way into Longmont, exactly as planned. Or I could just follow Dillon Road until I get to the turn for my hotel, and maybe take a nap. Not a long nap. Just for an hour. Just enough for the headache/neck-ache thing to go away, and for me to feel less like I'm melting. That's all. Just a short little recovery nap.

It was a long nap, of course.

The good news is, John and friends have arrived safely in Indianapolis, and they're preparing to enjoy the heck out of Gen Con Indy 2014. I am looking forward to a weekend full of entertaining con tweeting. And... that's all the news I've got.

I'm now going to declare today over with for all productive purposes and go to bed early. Tomorrow's report will a lot more interesting. Or at least a lot longer.

They are invisible, but horribly bulky. They have presence. They press in on both sides of the interstate, making every driver feel oddly constricted, such that they slow to a crawl and bottleneck the entire highway from Aurora to Thornton. Soon, the entire population of Denver is waiting in the queue. We are talking about traffic so slow that the swallows are perching on the roofs of the trucks as they inch along north and west. Have you ever seen a yellow-bellied swallow hitch a ride on top of a corporate van on the interstate? Well, now I have.

This is the only explanation I've got for why it took me more than two hours to get from Denver International Airport to Longmont. I mean, yes, rush hour traffic, a bad time of the day to take I-70 to I-270 to I-25, but I have never seen it this bad before. So the explanation I'm going with is dragons.

I eventually got to practice and got geared up. About 45 minutes late, but I got there. I very nearly gave up and went home, but I kept telling myself, "You know how much putting on skates cheers you up. Go on. You'll feel better for it." And I do. I really do. Although I also feel extremely tired.

Still managed to take some time to work on the story. I still haven't finished the final scene, but at least I'm not doing yet another revision pass on the whole damn thing. Instead, it's more like, I turn the scene over and over in my head, try to hear the dialogue and pin down the last questions of cosmology, and in doing so I'll stumble upon some element or other that can be cleared up, inserted, or reassembled elsewhere in the story such that the final scene--whatever it turns out to be--will work better. So I feel like I'm slowly spiraling in, getting a better fix on my destination with each turn around the point. When I finally land this plane, it will be awesome.

That's all I've got. Good night all--Channel LeBoeuf-Little is going off the air until morning.

I'm pleased to announce that as of today you can read my drabble, "Priesthood Has Its Privileges," on SpeckLit. The other drabble that SpeckLit acquired will appear on the site in September, so stay tuned for that announcement then.

A drabble is a work of fiction that is exactly 100 words long. They are compact and easy to digest, a nutritious part of your daily breakfast. Bookmark SpeckLit to add a new drabble to your diet every other day.

I'm less than pleased to announce that today I was... not as respectful, shall we say, as one should be, of the sharpness of the edge of the scissors blade I was cleaning off. The result is merely a flesh-wound, but there is nothing "merely" about that when it's across your index fingertip and you're trying to type. You ever heard a typo referred to as a "fat finger" incident? Bandaged fingertips are literal fat fingers, hitting two keys where one will do and generally wrecking one's wpms.

Thankfully, this flesh-wound came after a solid session of story revision today. It was solid not only as measured by the formula "butt + chair x time," but also from the standpoint of story problems solved, or at least brought closer to solved. To wit:

1) Raise the stakes. The story has an "OMG shit just got real" moment about halfway through, but I think the draft my friends read suffered from a bit of stall-out after that. The narrator gets home from encountering the "OMG" moment--and almost immediately forgets about it, or at least stops mentioning it, while she listens to some voice mail from her chatty and insufficiently worried friend. So with this revision I'm trying to keep the tension high by correcting both of those oversights. If I've done my job right, I've corrected them both in a single edit to do with what's in the phone message and how the narrator reacts to it.

Wow. That paragraph is a great example of why talking about writing is sometimes not the greatest idea. Trying to discuss a particular edit in generalities rather than specific detail results in hella confusion cum circumlocution. Well, I'm-a leave it up there, let it fend for itself, 'cause I know what I mean, and one day, publishers willing and the markets don't flop, you will too.

2) Everyone's got a story. There is a character in this story more talked about than talking, and it finally occurred to me I have to give him something to do. He's away in a ski resort with the chatty friend, which is to say, they're in what's basically a fancy hotel suite. I visualize it as a kitchen/living room, a bedroom, and a bathroom. That's it. Yet the chatty friend manages to leave our narrator phone messages that this other character in the room is not overhearing. How did I solve that problem in recent drafts? Well, apparently I had him taking a lot of naps. This... is not ideal. He is not meant to be the Amazing Hibernating Man. So with this draft I tried to figure out, well, what does he do while they're in the resort? Especially considering the special role he plays in the development of the plot? And how can I then reveal what he's doing such that it lays groundwork for later revelations?

So now he spends a lot of time sitting on the balcony out in the snow, oblivious to the cold, staring out into the storm. Which doesn't sound like much of an improvement, but in my head there is a reason. I just have to figure out how to make that reason more clear.

This blog post has been brought to you by a somewhat out of date bottle of New-Skin (R) Antiseptic Liquid Bandage. Protects small cuts without all that bandaged fingertip awkwardness! I think I'll go put on a second coat now. And buy a new, not-out-of-date bottle tomorrow.

Last night was one of those nights when everything and anything wakes me up. Minute motions from the other occupant of the bed; various outdoor occurrences, some involving cars; the apparent hallucination, if that's the right word, that shot me bolt upright, certain I was smelling a house fire; the bat that I watched fly back and forth outside the window, before it came to rest hanging upside down from the awning so it could screech its head off for several minutes straight; my own thoughts chattering away the way they do--

Blargh. I stayed in bed exceptionally late trying to make up for it all. Consequently, I got very little done today.

Well. I did a rather ridiculous amount of futzing around on the Gimp file I use to solve my daily jigsaw sudoku. I set up a bunch of selection paths to make it quicker to remove candidate digits. This probably has more to do than the crappy sleepless night did with today's lack of productivity, in all honesty.

And I scrimmaged in BCB's very last scrimmage in our beloved Bomb Shelter #2. That's right - we are moving out of the practice warehouse on Weaver Park Road. New location is still TBD. In the meantime, we'll be practicing in a variety of places, including a few Thursday scrimmages in July at the Wagon Wheel in Brighton. But that's still to come. For tonight, it was three periods of fun mix-up roller derby with a 4th of July theme, followed by tearing up the track, packing up all the things, and moving stuff out or at least toward the door.

Tomorrow is the 4th of July. To commemorate the occasion, I am taking the day off. On purpose, I mean. As my actual plan. So. Have a happy weekend, everyone!

Ow. Ow, ow-ow-ow ow, and also ow.

My back is sore. My legs are sore. Everything is sore.

It has a lot to do with roller derby, true. But, oddly, not so much to do with playing the actual game. Saturday morning I helped lead the Phase 1 class, in which I apparently attempted to assert my powers of mind control over the new skaters. That is, I spent a lot of time demonstrating a good, low, stable derby stance ("Bend those knees! Torsos upright! Get lower!") not just to be a good role model but also out of an irrational and mostly subconscious conviction that I could actually cause the training skaters to get lower if I just got lower myself. Wouldn't that be nice? For both them and me? As it turns out, I do not have mind control powers. But my thighs and lower back got a great workout.

And then Sunday we started off team practice with a 20 minute session of rotating off-skates fitness stations. This made all of the things hurt, y'all. That means I'm getting stronger, right? I hope?

So that was my weekend. Then Monday happened.

Mondays are farm days! And it's planting time. They're trying to get just as many seedlings into the ground as they can during the "summer solstice plateau," which is to say, the period between the summer solstice and the fourth of July. You can probably imagine the amount of bending/kneeling/squatting involved in working one's way down the row, troweling open the earth to drop seedling plugs in every 7 to 14 inches. But what you're probably not imagining is all the hula hoe and rake work that happens before we get to pick up the trowel. We had to "scratch" the beds, using the hula hoe to break the crust of the dry surface, soften up the soil a bit, and move the soil around to help reinforce the shape of the beds. Then we had to rake the clods off into the furrows. Only then did we get to put the seedlings into the ground.

There is probably a writing metaphor there--something about having to prepare the metaphorical ground before you can plant the seedling ideas and encourage them to grow into stories--but I'm too sore and tired to think about it right now.

Ow.

Today I got to wield the hula hoe for my first time this season. Yay?

*pant* *pant* *wheeze*

The hula hoe invariably goes with hot, sunny weather. It comes out when the weeds pop up and the ground is dry and flaky. For me, it also usually means an aching back and blistered fingers, because I still haven't gotten this right. I must be getting better at it, though, because each year the back aches less and there are fewer blisters.

And fewer unfortunate casualties on the field.

To reiterate: The business end of a hula hoe is a sharp loop of steel that slices just beneath the soil through the roots of weeds both seen and unseen. It lets you deal with weeds faster than if you were picking them by hand. It won't help you with the weeds that are using the wanted crop as a sort of human shield, so to speak, but you can get very close to the line of the crop without missing a beat. If you're clever, that is. And strong. And skilled at maneuvering the tool through the dirt.

There are so many failure modes with this thing. You can be careless at recognizing which plant is the plant you want to keep, and scythe right through friend and foe alike. It's an easy mistake to make if the crop is very young and hard to spot, like just-sprouted onions, shallots, or other alliums. It's also easy if the plant you're trying to keep (burdock) looks, at least from one's standing-up vantage point, remarkably like the weeds you're trying to knock back (lamb's quarter). Then you can be clumsy with the hoe itself and let it slip into the crop line while giving it a particularly vigorous tug--this happens more often than not because I've given it a particularly vigorous tug, possibly because I'm fighting with the tool instead of working with it or because I'm trying to go too deep and I'm meeting too much soil resistance. Or maybe it's because I've just hit a rock.

Or it could be because I'm getting tired and hot and thirsty, and suddenly a five-foot pole with a piece of steel on the end feels terribly heavy, and both my back and my thighs are killing me so there's really no ideal posture left for the job anymore.

Yes, yes. Whine, whine, whine. Actually, today was not so bad. It was murderously hot and sunny, but I was wearing my Full Armor of Sun Protection while hydrating faithfully. And I wasn't at it for more than an hour at a time--an hour before lunch and an hour after. Behold! In the remainder of my day there was knitting, and bicycling, and going out with new friends, and no napping at all! Pretty good considering I didn't sleep well last night and then got up at 6:30. So despite my whining, the physical labor did not in fact kill me for the afternoon.

But even with as many seasons under my belt as I've got, I still get very insecure. I mean, at any moment the hoe could slip and I could kill a significant sample of the crop population! And I know I severed at least one burdock seedling today. Realistically, one is a fairly acceptable margin of error, but it's always sobering when it happens.

Look out, here comes your writing metaphor for the week.

Similarly, despite long experience with writing and revising, I still get scared I'm going to kill the story I'm rewriting. I'll go into the editing process certain that the thing I think needs to go was in fact the story's saving grace, or that in the process of tightening things up I'll remove everything that made the prose live on the page. Even now, I find I don't wholly trust my ear for Story. I don't entirely credit myself with the ability to tell the manuscript's good from bad. If improving a piece requires the fiction-writing equivalent of a sense of pitch, on some level, I'm sure I'm actually tone deaf.

This is very timely, because revising a draft is what I'm going to be doing this week. And I know that even a very clumsy, ham-handed draft has the potential to be killed on the page.

I have to keep reminding myself, "You've been doing this for years. You've sold stories for publication! Give yourself credit for learning a thing or two. If nothing else, give the editors who bought your stories credit for knowing good stuff when they read it." Or even, "Well, regardless, you have to try, because the thing isn't publishable in its current form."

When I start feeling insecure about my ability to wield the hula hoe without causing collateral damage, I don't just put down the tool and run away. What do I do? I guess I slow down. I slow way down. I make shorter strokes and shallower ones, so that I'm more in control of where the sharp end of the tool goes. Sometimes, if I'm not sure I've spotted the crop among the weeds, I do put the tool down--but only for the time it takes me to kneel in the dirt and pull out some bindweed by hand.

There's a parallel for that in writing. Go slower. Take a closer look at particular aspects of the story. Make a bunch of smaller changes rather than one big sweeping one. If my confidence in my "sense of pitch" is low, I can remind myself that I am capable of recognizing a tune sung on key--I can go re-read a favorite book, noting as I do those elements that make it work so well. (Or go re-read a fun but flawed book, noting the blunders and missed opportunities.) When it's someone else's writing that I'm reading, I never lose faith in my ability to tell writing I like from writing I don't like. I can use the act of analyzing others' writing as a sort of jump-start.

At least my editing mistakes are more reversible than my farming ones. There is no CTRL-Z for a severed seedling.