author: Nicole J. LeBoeuf

Today started rather too early. John had to catch a 10:15 AM flight to Indianapolis (Gen Con!), so we left the house at 7:15 AM. Sometimes the thing I miss most poignantly about Metairie is the 15-minute drive from just about anywhere in town to the Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport. From Boulder to DIA? On a weekday morning in I-270 commuter traffic? Allow an hour and a half, and hope.

But we made it on time -- early, even, despite bumper-to-bumper on the 270 -- and in proof of this you can see happy tweets from my husband in Indy. Which left me with two goals for the morning:

1. A writing session involving, at least in part, revising the phone story, and
2. An 8-piece box of Popeye's spicy fried chicken.

Apparently there's this elderly group of self-described Christians in West Bend, Wisconsin, who feel that the presence of non-anti-homosexual literature in their local library ("Baby Be-Bop, a young adult novel in which a boy, struggling with his homosexuality, is beaten up by a homophobic gang") is damaging their mental and emotional well-being and may in fact be putting lives in jeopardy. They want a lot of money in compensatory damages for being exposed to a book that teaches that beating up gay teens is bad (and that gay-bashers have a tendency to shout homophobic slurs while engaged in gay-bashing). They want, further more, all copies of this book delivered unto their pious, shaking hands, that they may pitch them into a holy bonfire and reduce them to char and ash, for the public's eddification and moral betterment.

Says Neil Gaiman, wise man that he his,

...if their mental and emotional well-being was that damaged by the proximity of a Francesca Lia Block book, I'm just happy they didn't pick up and read the library's copy of American Gods; their eyes would have been fried and their lives put so far in jeopardy that their nearest and dearest would have been ordering caskets before the end of Chapter One.

Me at 6:30 (ish): *Thunk.*

The United States of America at 9:00 (ish): *THUNK!*

Congratulations, President Elect Barack Obama.

(One day, people will ask, "Where were you when they called the election for the first black President of the United States of America?" And I will say, "Watching Indecision 2008 on Comedy Central." That's right. Colbert was blathering, and Stewart made the announcement, and what's-his-bucket came out from backstage bawling and wearing no pants.")

(What? Look, it'll be on YouTube. You look it up.)

It may not look like it from the word count, but I'm in the home stretch. I know where every one of those 4000-ish words left to write goes; it's mainly going to be a matter of writing down the facts already in my head and the citations for where I learned them.

In having finished this project late, I've gotten three days behind on the NaNoWriMo novel. But that's not my biggest regret. My biggest regret is having left myself no time to volunteer in this, an incredibly historic election year for the U.S.A. I didn't campaign for Obama, I didn't make GOTV calls, and I wasn't even able to work as an election judge between this and other obligations that kept me from attending the training sessions. I feel like a total bum.

I'm doing this much: I'm hosting an election results party for some friends. After everyone gets off work, they'll come over here to watch the news and tune their laptops to various liveblogging events. I'll be cooking stuff from our CSA-overloaded fridge - I'm thinking colchannon and stuffed acorn squash. And, if Nate Silver's election predictions are correct, I will finally have occasion to make Schadenfreude Pie.

(Why, yes, that was an unprompted suggestion in the Google search bar.)

All right, back to the grind. See you after the *thunk*. At which point I'm breaking out the Scotch. And yes, if you know me and you're within easy traveling distance of me, you're totally invited. But if you didn't vote, your role tonight will be piñata.

Another disappointingly non-writing-related blog entry from me. Except, it kinda sorta relates to writing. Inasmuch any philosophy of how society should work can apply to writing, that is. I'm just passing it along because it's that good.

My current rules for working in this new world:

1. Make something other people can use.
2. Respond to existing conversations.
3. Buy real.
4. Use your best material.
5. The neighbor you beggar is a customer you've lost.
6. You own a share in the world, your country, your government, your laws, your economy, your community, your public discourse, and in the well-being of its citizenry. Do not let yourself be tricked into despising it. The share you abandon will be snatched up by the same people who are telling you it's worthless.

—Teresa Nielsen Hayden, in commentary.

Read the whole thread for both artistry in blogging and further discussion of what it means to be a viable and beneficial part of today's creative economy. (One might argue that there is no other economy worth speaking of, but that is a discussion for another time. You can have that discussion if you want; I have Deadlines and must disappear now.)

The way these rules apply to writing are fairly obvious, although, like the symbols of an alethiometer, the applications reveal more hidden depth the more you follow the associations...

What other people can use. The writer should never forget that s/he's part of the entertainment industry. Well, that's probably overstating things. Not every writing is meant to be entertaining. However, it must be part of what might be termed a communication industry. If the writing fails to communicate, then the reader cannot use it, and no amount of artistry can save it.

Existing conversations. Writing doesn't live in a vacuum, no more than does the writer. It responds to the pressures, issues, and concerns surrounding the writer's life. A book responds to the real conversations of the day, or it doesn't get read much.

Real. The thread in which Teresa posts talks about buying objects made with real components: oak rather than pressboard, leather rather than plastic, wool rather than fake fur. There's an analog to this in writing, I think. In writerly circles, the question "What does the writer owe the reader?" often comes up. It elicits answers varying from "The truth" to "A ripping good story" to "Nothing at all." My own response is somewhere in between. It's not that the writer owes the reader anything directly. Who knows whether there will, in fact, be a reader? The writer's obligation is, I'd say, to the writing. To the story. And to him/herself. The obligation is to write something real. A story we had to tell, one that we're emotionally invested in, one that speaks to real concerns we ourselves have. If we do that, then we'll find we've fulfilled our obligation to the reader quite adequately. But if we don't, we've pulled a cheap trick and made the equivalent of bubble gum and cheap pleather purses, something valuable not in lasting service to the consumer/reader but rather in its producer-enriching need for frequent replacement.

Put another way: if we ourselves are bored with what we're writing, how can we expect a reader to be interested in the result?

Best material. Never do a half-assed job. Never be a hack in the pejorative sense. If you hold a certain publisher in contempt (say, it's a second-string magazine and you don't want to "waste" your best writing for $0.01/word), it is better to not submit anything at all to them than to submit sub-par work. Anything you publish is attached to your name. Anything you write that isn't published is still attached to the way you view yourself as a writer. Well, that's how it works with me, anyway. Don't hold back: always write the best material that's in you. You won't waste it. There will be more. Ideas are a dime a dozen, but your name, your self-esteem, your craft are where you rise or fall. Never sell yourself short.

The neighbor you beggar. What can I say? Contempt for your reader is the road to self-destruction. I suppose I might point out the recent anti-piracy circus in the SFWA, but really, does a rational human being need to be shown examples as to why it is bad business to treat one's customer as though s/he were a criminal or an idiot? Is this not simply obvious on its face? As a writer, your customers are your publisher and your readers. Respect them, or suffer their disrespect in return. It's really that simple.

The share you abandon. This is the most abstract and all-encompassing of Teresa's rules, I think, and the one that deserves the most thinking-about. I don't think I want to try to reword it much. Mostly I want to just meditate on it. But I'll offer the conversation this much: We all have unique opportunities to make the world a better place. We mustn't let the cynics convince us not to bother. Else entropy triumphs. This is true in writing as much as it is true in philanthropy and politics.

Finally, Teresa further clarifies "buying real" some hours later in the comment thread.

This is your reading assignment. Go to it. (Meanwhile, like I said, disappearing now.)

Regardless of how the finished product looks, please believe me when I say that I very rarely set out to make a political point with my fiction. In fact, I can only think of one example--the post-Katrina New Orleans ghost story I began writing, flush with rage and helplessness during that first week after the storm as reports came in that the Red Cross had been denied entrance and trucks full of water were held indefinitely at the parish border--and that story will probably never be finished.

I certainly never set out to put politics in the books about Gwen and her bookstore. But tonight's writing turned up politics, all right. Tonight's writing featured the talemouse, that shy, retiring is-not-a-character, giving the Bookwyrm a furious lecture on reproductive freedom. I didn't expect that at all.

Her name is Gwen. Not 'prodigy.' Has a name. Isn't just a function. The talemouse is getting really mad now. How can the Bookwyrm be so obtuse? It knows so much, it governs the entire Fictional Hierarchy--how can it be so blind? Men characters, bad ones mostly, say, 'Woman's function is to reproduce.' Say, 'Should not have a job, should not write, should not be distracted from making babies.' Bookwyrm says, 'Gwen's function is to reproduce. Should not have bookstore, should not have family, should not be distracted from making stories.' He doubles over, panting with the effort of such speech. He has had to remember the voices of certain tertiary characters he's hidden inside in order to express himself so clearly. Bookwyrm. Woman-hating villain characters. Can't tell the difference.

Perhaps we can blame the never-ending Election Thread over at Slactivist. I just caught up on reading it today, watching the thread go from readers staying up all night tracking county-by-county results from Virginia to all abortion, all the time. Or maybe this had been building up for a long time now, and I never knew it until my timid little talemouse got mad enough to stand up and say--to the Bookwyrm, who is for all practical purposes his God--"People aren't just functions. They're people."

Brave little talemouse. Bless him. One day he may become a real character after all.

Which is not to say that you should not visit the polls tomorrow. Not at all. You should totally go to the polls and VOTE. Really, few things are as depressing in this so-called democratic republic than the concept that a 20% turnout is considered high. Go vote! However, I will continue to whine about how much life will suck for me as I work the 14-hour day involved in running my home precinct's polling place. During a general election. With poll watchers telling me how to do my job.

And no laptop.

I am not allowed to bring my laptop! It is electronic. It has ports. It could potentially be used to hack into the electronic voting booth that I'll be running. So it's not allowed on the premises.

And for once I have nothing ready to knit.

*cry*

So given that work on the Nano-novel tomorrow will be a no-go, I prioritized it today. I brainstormed about how to throw pointier rocks at Gwen, who is up the tree of Being In Charge Of A Bookstore No One Will Shop At Because Of Suspicions Of Past Criminal Activity. She thinks she knows how to handle this. She is wrong! So wrong! Give me an hour, and I'll figure out why she's wrong. Something to do with digging up copies of her own books and discovering one of the missing children in it, I think. Also, I decided that the scene with 7-yr-old Gwen meeting the Bookwyrm, which I've written before, will be rewritten from the point of view of the talemouse, who will be amazed at seeing a story character travel to the place between stories.

Meanwhile, I plan to bring the short story along with me in hard copy tomorrow: critiqued copies, print-out of current work, and spiral notebook. Perhaps by the end of the day I'll have something ready to type up. I am so very sick of dragging this revision out.

And sometimes that time and place are never and nowhere. Quoth PNH:

Harlan Ellison groping Connie Willis on stage at the Hugos wasn't funny and it wasn't okay. I understand (from third parties; I haven't spoken to her about it) that Connie Willis's position is that Ellison has done worse and she can handle him, but I really didn't want to watch it and neither, I think, did a lot of other people in the audience. Up to then the comedic schtick aspects of the Hugo presentation had been genuinely funny. After that, I think, many of us just wanted it all to stop.

Just as with George W. Bush's now-famous uninvited shoulder-rub of German Chancellor Angela Merkel, the basic message of Ellison's tit-grab is this: "Remember, you may think you have standing, status, and normal, everyday adult dignity, but we can take it back at any time. If you are female, you'll never be safe. You can be the political leader of the most powerful country in Europe. You can be the most honored female writer in modern science fiction. We can still demean you, if we feel like it, and at random intervals, just to keep you in line, we will."

It's not okay. It's not funny. It wasn't a blow against bourgeois pieties or political correctness. It was just pathetic and nasty and sad and most of us didn't want to watch it. It's another thing that's going to stop.

Knowing me, had I actually been there, I would have blushed with rage and said not a word, for fear of being smacked down by Mr. Ellison's clever tongue and a roomful of acquiescing silence. Then I'd've gone looking for a knot of attendees to gripe with at the bar afterwards.

But I can fantasize. And I am in good company in the fantasizing, apparently.

And Patrick is absolutely right about what this kind of behavior, from Bush or Ellison, is intended to communicate. And that it has got to stop. And it is going to stop.

Things take time. If nothing else, that's what I'm learning from all this daily goal setting. Submitting critiques takes time, because I can't freakin' shut up. Finding and emailing interview subjects takes time, because I don't know many names off-hand in the fields I'm researching and I'm anal about getting my emails worded just right. Revising fiction takes time because I'm a freakin' perfectionist with maybe shades of ye olde obsessive compulsive disorder.

And four-hour training sessions on how to facilitate use of evil yet compellingly shiny electronic voting devices from Hart Intercivic take a really long time, especially if you hang around the county clerk's office for an hour afterwards to discover whether your out-of-town plans have turned out to interfere with your availability as supply judge. (They do. I won't be around on Saturday, August 5 to pick up the supplies, see. But I will be retained as a machine judge, so the training hasn't gone to waste.) And then if the bike ride to and from the county clerk's office exposes you to more sun than you prepared yourself for, afternoon naps take a really really long time.

So. After a night of not sleeping, where are we at?

• Not a word written today on the freelance gig, but lots of progress made Monday morning in seeking interviews.
• Revised chapter 3 of The Golden Bridle and will email it as soon as this poor old WinME-running laptop stops giving me hell via its context menus. Chapter 3 took so long that we'll just talk about chapter 4 next week.
• Turned in a very long and wordy critique at the Critters site. One more by Wednesday and my ratio will be happy.
• Poked my head in a friend's private novel critique forum, as promised, at Critique Circle. Although if my day's obligation is merely to poke my head in the forum, it's probably not worth a bullet point here.

OK, so, it's nine-ish. Blearrrrgh. Bad enough that I was working until 2:00 AM this morning. Worse that I stayed up another couple hours with John working samurai sudoku puzzles. Blearrrgh, say I. Bleeaarrrghghgh.

Today, the plan is to do this stuff here:

• Another 3000 words on the freelance gig [Never got there]
• Revise chap.s 3 & 4 of Golden Bridle and email to beta(s) [9:17 AM, July 11. Only ch 3, actually]
• Critique a story over at Critters [Done as of 3:15 AM]
• Pop my head back in at Critique Circle [Done as of 3:25 AM]

This, by the way, is your friendly reminder that you should plan on voting. It's easy, it's non-fattening, and it's your civic duty. Do it if you know what's good for you.

(Ha ha. I made a funny. Get it? Get the funny? See, if you know what's good for you, you'll vote for what's good for you. Get it?)

(OK, so I'm bad at making funnies. Blearrrgh.)

Right. Moment-o-truth is later on this evening, probably quite late indeed.

11:18 PM - Definitely "quite late." We're talking all-nighter here. It's OK though. We're approaching the full moon. Pagans run on Lunar power, right? (grumble grumble) But about that, more later.