E. Prybylski's Blog, page 8

Writing. We Hates it.

There are days–and more of them than we are likely excited about–where writing feels like pushing our brains through a cheese grater. I’m having one of those days now, actually. As I write this, it is extremely hot (over 90F with 41% humidity) for where I live. Now, if you don’t know, I’m a New Englander. We usually don’t see these temperatures until August. So our AC isn’t in (we have window units), and I am melting in a puddle of nope. If I didn’t have housemates, I’d probably be lying on the kitchen floor in my underpants. To top off this sundae of suck, I have had a migraine for three days now. Not fun.

On days like this, we need to be kind to ourselves. I saw a tweet the other day with someone talking about not shaming folks for only writing a few words in a day. Apparently they have received flak for having low word-count days and sessions. And I am here to squash that like a bug. (I don’t usually squish bugs, honestly. I feel bad about it.) There are days where I stare at my Windows desktop with a blank expression for half an hour before I have the mental energy to open something. I’m sure you’ve had days like that, too.

It’s okay.

We all have days like this. We might even have weeks, months, or years like this. There are times when life has decided we aren’t writing right now. That’s okay,too. If you are dealing with problems or situations that require all your energy to manage then it’s only natural your creativity will take a hit.

From Wikipedia

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs shows creative activities as the top of the pyramid. If your other needs aren’t being met, there’s a good chance you may be feeling like you just don’t have it in you to write at the moment. And that is okay. If you need a hall pass from someone telling you that it’s okay to take time off, this is it. Here you go. Come back to class when you’re feeling better.

If you need a hall pass from someone telling you that it’s okay to take time off, this is it. Here you go. Come back to class when you’re feeling better.

I am all for pushing through and writing when it’s hard. You shouldn’t quit when it gets tough, but recognizing times in your life and in your health that you need to step back and focus your time and energy onto other things. I have, at many points in my life, needed to take breaks. Also, don’t be afraid to acknowledge burnout. It is real and can drain you of your ability to put words on a page. These are all real, and they are all valid. It’s not just major emergencies that can destroy your ability to write for awhile. Sometimes just working all your scheduled hours can be enough to throw you.

I don’t have much more to add here. Just be kind to yourself. Write when you can, be honest about when you can’t, and stay hydrated.

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Fallen Friday: The World of Smoke and Magic

With the upcoming release of my novel, Fallen, I am going to start writing blogs about the setting, the characters and more things about me as an author and a person than just my usual fare of writing advice. That’s not going away, of course. This is still my editing blog. But I am expanding.

Okay, so, on to brass tacks.

Fallen is an urban fantasy in a world that was inspired by a combination of re-reading the Dresden Files and watching the movie Bright. I’ve been a lover of the genre for ages, and after watching Bright a few years ago, my husband and I were spit-balling about the movie and talking about what we’d do if it were our world. Which then turned into us creating some stories in the setting.

Now, I’m going to admit here in front of the whole world that I’ve been doing text-based role-playing since probably the late 1990s. I started on a forum dedicated to the Gargoyles television show (shout-out to my friend, Brynn, who got me into it), and then I continued from there into AOL chats (Rhy’din, Red Dragon Inne) and even ran one myself for a few years (Silence Falls Inne). I met some of my lifelong friends there. I even met my husband through text-based roleplay.

If you don’t know what it is, the long and short of it is you have people taking on the roles of characters and, usually through a chat medium or a forum, telling the stories of their adventures in a cooperative fashion. It’s sort of like Dungeons and Dragons without the dice.

So my husband and I, as is our wont, started building up this world with some amazing characters and stories, and it lived there between us for awhile. I have literal hundreds of logs of it on my computer.

And as we played, and as we developed this world, we started agreeing that writing a novel in the setting would be cool. Now, my husband is also a writer, but he hasn’t done much more than short stories at this point in his life, and has his eyes set on a different story. That’ll be for him to talk about, though.

With it settled that I’d do the writing, I got down to it.

I started writing the novel during the lockdown in 2020. I didn’t have much editing happening that year (or much anything happening that year except all the D&D ever), so it seemed like a good time to do it. As I wrote, of course some of the characters changed from what they were in the roleplay, and through all of this my husband has been my coach, cheerleader, and sounding board. I’m constantly pestering him to read passages where I’ve written his characters to see if I did them justice because, well, I love them. Though the stories I’m writing here are different from what we’ve played out. Even if some do have the same beats.

I started writing the novel during the lockdown in 2020. I didn’t have much editing happening that year (or much anything happening that year except all the D&D ever), so it seemed like a good time to do it.

E. Prybylski

While I’ve written several novels in the past (not including the “novels” I wrote in high school), this one felt different. I had always intended to publish a different series and setting first and have actually rewritten that novel from the ground up about three different times now. But something stopped me. This time, when I put my hands to the keys, the story more or less just fell out of me all at once. It wasn’t as fast as NaNoWriMo–it still took me almost a year to write. But unlike the other books I’ve written in the past, when I read this one, I didn’t feel the urge to strip it to the outline and try again.

In fact, I have the audacity to think it might actually be good.

Part of what kept me going was my writing group, I’ll be honest. I was posting drafts live to them to keep myself accountable, and one person in particular (Elly, you’re a rockstar) kept me going. She’d talk about what I’d written, express excitement or worry. Or ask me when the next chapters were coming out. It kept me going through the hard parts, and when I got to the end, she was so excited for me.

I finished actually writing the first draft sometime in April, I believe. I spent May revising and sent it in to my editor a couple weeks ago. We’re about halfway through the first pass because before sending it to her I ran it through SmartEdit several times long with PerfectIt and had Word 365 read the entire thing aloud to me. While it butchered some of the names in a hysterical manner, it worked well enough for what I needed.

Now, of course, the real work has started.

As I’ve talked to my authors about for years as their editor at Insomnia and the publishing house I started at, I am gearing up to do my pre-release marketing. I’ve got my street team assembled, I have been putting together a list of blogs to submit ARCs to, I’m working on a “press kit” for my book as iWriterly suggested in her brilliant marketing video. In addition, I’m in talks with my amazing friend at Pop Fizzion to make a special bath bomb to as a raffle prize to give away to people when I get closer to release (or during my release party), and I’m going to be looking into commissioning art for some stickers to send out. I don’t have a lot of money for prizes, but I’m working on fun ideas to get people engaged.

It’s honestly surreal to be going through this process for a book that’s mine. In some ways, I feel arm’s length to it because a lot of these motions are familiar and based on advice I’ve been giving to authors on and off since the first release I was part of in 2010. It’s a collection of short stories (I don’t get anything from you buying it at this point, so you can or not if you feel a yen to). It’s published under my maiden name, but that really was me. Same with this book that I published in 2011. I didn’t write all of these stories, but I did edit them, and I do have a story in there. I also have a piece of flash fiction in this collection and another two short stories in this one. (It’s been a long time since I looked at those. Wow.)

I know that’s a whole stack of links, and I apologize.

Despite having been published in multiple short story collections and having had a number of articles in The Mighty get good reviews, finishing a novel somehow feels more real to me. It’s not that I don’t think short stories or articles are valid–I absolutely do–but my heart has always been in long form fiction, so the shorter pieces never quite felt complete to me in the way finishing a novel did.

Well, this has been a long ramble for a first post in this new series, but this is where we are.

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Lessons Learned and Where I Am

As we prepare to launch Insomnia Publishing’s newest release, First Favor (the third Sam Archer book), I am kind of reflecting some on the things I’ve learned about editing, publishing, and writing over the last few years. While I’ve been a bit quiet on the blog front, I’ve been very busy on the life front. And on my career. This is likely to venture into the personal, so you are going to learn a bit about who I am and what my life is in this blog. It’s not really about writing advice, but maybe you’ll learn something? I don’t know.

Over the last couple years, I’ve been re-thinking my approach to editing, writing, and publishing. I’ve been giving deep thought to what I want, what I need, and what direction I want to take. Both with my company (the aforementioned Insomnia Publishing) and with my editing. I’ve spent a couple years studying editing and really giving deep thought into what services I provide, what my price points ought to be, and whether or not I am over- or under-charging. What kind of editing I do, and how I want to approach things in the future.

I also started writing the first book I’m publishing. I started Fallen in the middle of last year and finished the last draft of it earlier this year. I signed a contract with my own company (I have an in with the acquisitions editor) and have my novel in editing. Seeing the editing process from the other side with another editor has given me some insight into the “user” end of the experience. Though I will say my editor is a delight and very easy to work with. We are old friends, so there’s no sting or distrust there.

I also am switching software for my typesetting. Given the outrageous costs of Adobe, I was still using CS3 to work on my book covers and typesetting. It still works, of course, but I run the perpetual risk of losing the software and my ability to do the work if I lose the key and install disks since it’s no longer supported, and Adobe really doesn’t like the fact that I’m still using it and not paying the astronomical fees to update. Or paying monthly for access to their software. Which, frankly, is just abhorrent to me. I am, maybe, old fashioned in the sense that I prefer to buy my software and not rent it.

In doing that switch, I am re-visiting how I do my cover art and typesetting (I’m now using Affinity’s suite). While I’ve read reviews that it’s not as good as Adobe is, I can say with certainty that it’s a far cry from using CS3 (a software suite from around 2005), so anything it doesn’t match up to with Adobe certainly outstrips what I had. This has changed my work flow and made me faster and given me more versatility with my covers. It makes things easier to design the way I see in my head, too, which makes all the difference. For example, I had to re-typeset First Favor Sunday night into Monday after realizing that the file had un-typeset itself. A page had been deleted somewhere, and the manuscript was a disaster as a result.

While I was working on it I figured out some ways to make my life faster, make things more efficient. I’m always adding things to my process and learning new things while I work. Which, honestly, is one of the things I like best about this line of work. There’s always a way to refine what I’m doing, smooth things out, discover new details of the programs I use. It’s a never-ending process, and I love learning more in order to be better at my chosen vocation. I could list these little shortcuts, but I expect most of you would have your eyes cross if I discussed it. Typesetting is a highly technical field mixed with wizardry and a love of fonts. I am, in fact, a horrible font nerd at this point in my life, and I could probably spend a solid half-hour babbling about fonts, readability, and qualities you’re looking for in one if prompted. Or, if you’re unlucky enough to meet me at a cocktail party, unprompted.

In addition to that, I’ve been working on better ebook formatting and trying to learn how to embed fonts to let me use chapter headers and dropcaps. For example, in First Favor, I use a dropcap on each chapter in the same font as the chapter headers and the title page (and the cover). It’s “Chapbook” in case you were wondering. (I am sure you weren’t.)

I do like Chapbook.

Lessons in editing are a different kettle of fish than typesetting and cover design, of course.

Over the last few months I’ve done some book coaching for some lovely clients, both of whom need different things. I’m not going to get into their requirements because that’s personal, but it’s given me a different perspective on what I do. Walking someone through the process of writing their book and encouraging (and holding accountable) my authors is very rewarding. I love seeing them blossom and develop and meet goals. I’ve not done writing coaching in a formal way before, but I’ve been working with authors in my Discord group regularly. It’s not as detailed or as intensive as coaching, but I pop in, give lectures almsot every week, encourage folks, and we have a lovely community going.

Beyond that, I’ve been spending a lot of time in several groups for editors, talking amongst each other and discussing everything from comma placement and hyphenation to regional dialect. It’s a fantastic and fascinating thing to see and learn from. Some of these folks are veterans of over fifty years. Yet others are brand new to the profession and are drinking in the opinions and views of others. Also, different disciplines have such different perspectives. These things I’m always adapting into my own editing and learning.

Then we come to my writing.

I’m at a point where I’ve got an editor working on my book. This is my first time working on a novel with an editor, and I am finding the experience instructive and interesting. Also having finished a novel and working on my cover for real, preparing the typesetting, thinking about marketing… I think it’s going to teach me a lot about that part of the business. While I haven’t been on the author side of things before, I have been on the publisher side enough for long enough to make a good go of it, I think. I also have some phenomenal authors I am close with who are brilliant at it, and who I am going to be whining to as I learn to do this myself for the first time.

What this will teach me, beyond the satisfaction of publishing my own books (which has been a lifelong dream), this will make me a better editor and better publisher. And I am all for it. I look forward to this. I mean, also, I’m publishing a book, so the child in me who started writing as soon as they were old enough to hold a pencil is squealing and dancing. No, really. Child me did ballet.

If there’s an actual takeaway from this ramble, it’s that no matter how long you’ve been working in the field, there’s always something to learn, and exploring other angles of the same industry can provide a lot of insight into how to approach things. I’m not saying authors need to be editors. In fact, I think that (unless you have training) it’s a terrible idea. However, studying the thing from multiple angles can give you a whole new appreciation for the industry you’re in. I love learning, and every new milestone just tells me just how much further I have to go.

By the way, to plug the aforementioned novel my company is releasing, I’m really excited to introduce you to the third book in the Sam Archer series. Written by my good friend, Dr. Joseph Weinberg, this is the best book in the series yet. If you haven’t read them, you’re really missing out. The series is like a crossover between The Dresden Files and Constantine, insomuch as Sam is a man with no powers facing down a world of things so much bigger than he is. His voice is fantastic, the stories are wonderful, and I am kind of biased, but he has great cover art. (Spoiler alert: I did his cover art.)

See? It looks pretty awesome.

First Favor comes out June 15th, 2021 and is available for pre-order from Amazon. If you haven’t read the first two books in the series, you can find Pipe and Pestle also on Amazon for $3.99 for the ebook.

If you enjoyed this blog post and want to give me a thumbs up, feel free to visit my ko-fi and leave me a tip! A few tips is a tank of gas, a cup of coffee, or a cheeseburger.

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How NOT to Market Your Book

How many times have you been scrolling through Twitter and seen one of those people on your feed who tags a bunch of people individually, replies to tweets, and copy/pastes a poorly-written advertisement that’s more hashtag than text? Well, this week we’re talking about how not to market your book. And that? That’s definitely one way not to market your book.

Don’t do this.

Marketing is a challenge for authors. We are, at heart, writers and artists, and most of us bristle at the notion of having to talk to people. Introverts unite… separately… at home. However, as per my previous blog, we aren’t able to ignore it and be successful. This, however, doesn’t mean that all marketing is equal. Bad marketing is, in some ways, almost worse than no marketing because bad marketing will let people know your book exists, but it sure as heck won’t engender goodwill toward you or your work!

With no further ado, let’s talk about what not to do.

Spam links with no explanations.
Sharing links to where your book is sold is part and parcel to marketing yourself, however, if you are flooding your various social media outlets with links to your book without further content, it’s just going to irritate people. Make sure if you’re sharing the link to your book, you at least say a little something about it. Also, I’d only share to certain hashtags or outlets once or twice a day. While I’m not a Twitter algorithem expert, I can tell you that as a Twitter user, scrolling through the same advertisement thirty times in an hour makes me want to scream. I always mute that person, and I am not alone in that.Try and hard-sell people your book.
If you’re approaching strangers on social media (or other places) and trying to force your book on them, it’s not going to get you anywhere good. Cold sales aren’t really an effective sales strategy, and it won’t do much to get people interested in you or in your work. Nobody likes the social media equivilent of a telemarketer. Spam groups or hashtags.
In writing groups, it’s an extremely common occurance to have somoene join, drop links to their book with some marketing pitch either once or repeatedly, and leave. They don’t engage in the community, they don’t talk to people, they don’t offer any value. They just drop and jet because they have fifty other writing groups on their list to do the same thing to. This isn’t the venue, they’re not your audience, and if you aren’t engaging with people, all you’re doing is looking like a jerk. Start petty fights on your author social media accounts.
This is a delicate line to walk. I’m not talking about politics or big issues here where speaking out can get you in trouble, I’m talking about being mean or childish and being unkind to people who don’t deserve it. Develop a massive ego.
Publishing a book is a huge success, and you have every right to be proud of yourself. Truly. A healthy amount of the “good feels” is necessary when selling your book because you have to fend off trolls and jerks and lettheir nonsense slide. However, this healthy amount of self-esteem sometimes turns into authors thinking they are, in fact, the next Tolkein. You aren’t probably. Does that mean you can’t be darn good? Absolutely not. But remember that you aren’t going to get more book sales by stepping on others.

How to market your book is a huge discussion for which I always feel under-qualified despite reading a lot of marketing books over the years and watching countless videos and so on. I never feel like I know what I’m doing, but from my understanding most folks feel like they have no idea what they’re doing behind closed doors. So I’m not that far behind the curve, I guess.

Regardless of that, ultimately, the things to avoid when marketing are things that add no value to the person encountering the post or marketing method. Give people value. give them something more, something to enjoy. If you’re just screaming into the void without targeting it appropriately or acting like that MLM friend who invites you to dinner but then tries to hard-sell you into joining their scheme, it’s not going to earn you favors.

Characterization and its Value

After years of writing this blog on and off, I came to the startling realization yesterday that I hadn’t written an entry regarding characterization and what that means for authors and books. In light of this horrible mistake, I am writing this entry now!

Characterization is telling the reader about characters (or even places). It’s the meat and potatoes of the “getting to know you” part of the story, and it can be extremely powerful. This blog ties directly into last week’s topic: description, so if you haven’t read that yet, I’d catch up!

Over and over again in groups and with individuals, I see folks struggling with how in the world do you help readers understand things without beating them over the head with it. We are told often to show, not tell, and while this advice has value, it’s missing a lot of the “how” of the statement. Part of the how is characterization.

I’m going to start with indirect characterization here rather than begin with direct because, frankly, I like indirect more. In some ways, you can think of it like the way Sherlock Holmes deduces facts about a person based on things like their shoes, watch, colors, clothing style, and all other details. While what he does is an exaggeration, it reflects something we as humans do every day when we meet people. It’s the reason why “long-haired freaky people need not apply” became a thing. We form understandings of people based on details about them. Whether these opinions are accurate or not is an entirely separate discussion, but it is a real thing that occurs in the world, and we can capitalize on it in our storytelling.

Characterization can happen beyond just describing a person, too. Describing their space or things around them can add a lot to the understanding of an individual. Let’s take a look at what I mean through two descriptions:

Morgan’s office was so clean it looked as though nobody could really work there. Every paper sat in a precise spot on the glass top of his desk (which was so clean it gleamed and didn’t so much as bear a single fingerprint), and his pens were organized into several containers by color. The wide windows behind him looked out onto the university campus grounds from the height of several floors, affording him the view of an eagle in its nest.

Office One

Richard’s office perpetually smelled like Indian food. Piles of books covered every surface, many with extra papers stuffed into them–notes often tangentially related to the book he’d filed them in. The dark wood paneling and many bookshelves gave the space an almost cave-like feel, and the incandescent bulbs he used in his many lamps only heightened the sense of dark and warmth. He refused to use the overhead lighting, finding the buzz of the fluorescents unendurable.

Office Two

Now, we know nothing about Morgan or Richard or what they look like or even what they teach. But these two offices tell stories about two radically different people, and we can gather bits of their personality through their spaces. This is characterization. While it doesn’t always require a large description to get a point across, you are giving readers an insight into a character’s head when you talk about their clothing, their choices in music, their cars, the way they arrange their bedrooms, and the way they use language in dialogue.

The way you use language, too, can indicate to a reader how they should feel about a character. If you use warmer, more caring language to describe them, readers will pick up on that. Even subconsciously. While most readers don’t enjoy a book with an exceptionally analytical eye, they are more perceptive than you might expect. You can rely on this and know that readers do typically pick up on subtext pretty well so long as you don’t bury it.

This use of indirect characterization is half the puzzle. Using a character’s spaces, clothing, and other such things is considered “indirect” characterization. As you may imagine, it’s the less overt way telling the reader who these characters are as you can probably glean from the name.

Direct characterization are things you tell the reader outright. These are things you tell the reader such as describing someone as “a tall, thin woman with confidence that hung on her like a mantle.” Too much of this will breach into “telling” territory, but it is the most efficient means of giving readers information. If a character is only going to be on scene for a short period of time, or you need a reader to know some very specific details about them for story purposes, this is a good bet.

Also, direct characterization includes things like a character telling someone something about themselves or thinking it if you’re using internal dialogue as a method in your story. It isn’t a bad thing by any stretch of the imagination, and if you only use indirect characterization in a novel there’s a good chance you’ll hurt your pacing by having to tell readers an overwhelming amount of detail about the character to get your point across.

My definitions of direct and indirect characterization here differ from some other examples I’ve read where they say direct characterization is only the author telling the reader specific things (like me mentioning the confident woman) rather than any sort of reveal about a character through direct thoughts or dialogue, but I’m going to posit that anything that is equally obvious to the reader would fall under direct. While indirect is more environmental storytelling or telling the reader things about the character through the use of their clothes and other such markers.

Regardless of how you choose to discern direct and indirect characterization, we can all agree both types are vital to a story and provide a backbone to how your characters are viewed by the reader. The same actions taken by one character might be viewed very differently when taken by another based on the way you as a writer choose to display them.

Beyond this, characterization also happens with every action a character takes in a story. The reader gains more insight into them with every word devoted to that character. While, obviously, some methods are more effective and useful than others, recognize that readers absolutely will pick up on things.

This leads us to discussing issues where, for example, people hate your main character or don’t understand their motives. While some of this might come down to having a main character who relies on tropes or behaves in ways abhorrent to a reader’s sensibilities, some of it could well be lack of characterization on the part of the author. After all, to us, our character’s motives and intentions are crystal clear. If a reader just cannot connect with a character at all, there’s a good chance you’re missing some of the pieces that give a reader insight into them.

This is not to say characters cannot have secrets or big reveals, but remember, readers are gathering information on every single action a character takes. If they don’t have enough information for them to understand why a character is taking the action they are, you’ve missed a beat somewhere. Fortunately, adding that in may be as simple as providing a few lines of dialogue or a paragraph where a character ruminates on their intended purpose.

However, there are some characters where no amount of characterization will make them not sketchy down at their core. I’m sorry, Twilight fans, at no point does Edward Cullen being over a hundred years old and perpetually in high school and stalking a seventeen year old girl become less creepy. No matter how you frame it. Nor does Jacob deciding that Bella’s unborn child is his mate and that he’s going to groom the kid to be his perfect lady. The facts of the matter are still horrible.

Description

In my writing group this past week, I learned that some of my writers have been struggling with description and finding that line between too much and not enough. And how to do it in a way that doesn’t just feel like a list of facts. While we aren’t meeting this week because I am seeing a friend for social reasons for the first time since the pandemic started (squee!), I promised them I’d write a blog to help them work on this. At the end of the blog is going to be an exercise you are welcome to use to work on your own descriptions! If you like that format and find it helpful, please comment and let me know, and I can start doing a blog series that comes with exercises for you to work on.

On with the show!

The first thing we need to nail down is the function of description in our work. Why use it at all? While the reasons may seem obvious to some, sometimes laying things out can help. The first of description’s functions is to help the reader build the world in their mind’s eye. It lets them “see” things the way you do. It also helps to bring the reader more fully into the setting by providing them with those lucious little details that can really make your work leap off the page.

As with so many things in writing, however, the key is finding balance. I often describe various different kinds of writing as adding salt to your food. Some people like more or less salt on their food, and that’s perfectly okay. However, if there’s absolutely none whatsoever, we tend to notice it in a bad way. If there’s too much, it’s inedible entirely. So our duty as writers is to add the correct amount of seasoning to our text. That said, there is a fair amount of “season to taste” that happens here, so there’s no specific hard and fast rule about the precise measurement of most of these things. Everything from adverbs to passive voice to all the other things we’re told never to do actually has a place in the language and can have a place in writing; you just need to use it with caution and specificity. The same goes for punctuation, even!

Now, to focus on description, the details of how to use it and when have some measure of “rules,” though we still look at things being to taste. Let’s compare some descriptive passages you may or may not be familiar with for the purposes of looking at different description styles:

In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat: it was a hobbit-hole, and that means comfort.

It had a perfectly round door like a porthole, painted green, with a shiny yellow brass knob in the exact middle. The door opened on to a tubeshaped hall like a tunnel: a very comfortable tunnel without smoke, with panelled walls, and floors tiled and carpeted, provided with polished chairs, and lots and lots of pegs for hats and coats – the hobbit was fond of visitors. The tunnel wound on and on, going fairly but not quite straight into the side of the hill – The Hill, as all the people for many miles round called it – and many little round doors opened out of it, first on one side and then on another. No going upstairs for the hobbit: bedrooms, bathrooms, cellars, pantries (lots of these), wardrobes (he had whole rooms devoted to clothes), kitchens, dining-rooms, all were on the same floor, and indeed on the same passage. The best rooms were all on the left-hand side (going in), for these were the only ones to have windows, deep-set round windows looking over his garden and meadows beyond, sloping down to the river.

The Hobbit, JRR Tolkien

The old man was thin and gaunt with deep wrinkles in the back of his neck. The brown blotches of the benevolent skin cancer the sun brings from its reflection on the tropic sea were on his cheeks. The blotches ran well down the sides of his face and his hands had the deep-creased scars from handling heavy fish on the cords. But none of these scars were fresh. They were as old as erosions in a fishless desert.

Everything about him was old except his eyes and they were the same color as the sea and were cheerful and undefeated.

The Old Man and the Sea, Ernest Hemingway

These two passages are by very different authors writing in very different genres with Tolkein being the father of the fantasy genre as we know it and Hemingway being one of the grandmasters of literary fiction. The passage from The Old Man and the Sea is a few lines past the opening, but it is still on the first page of the book, so both of these are in the beginnings of their respective stories and are the first blush the reader has with the setting for the most part.

The first difference you will notice here between the two is the length. Tolkien’s description and opening there is 235 words while Hemmingway’s is 78. While they are both describing different things (a person versus a location), you hear each author’s voice through the prose with distinction. Tolkien loves paranthetical asides while Hemmingway is rather concrete with only enough detail to get the rough idea of things. He definitely wouldn’t have described everything about the hobbit hole.

Neither of these descriptions is “right” or “wrong.” But the difference tells the reader more or less what they’re in for in terms of the author’s style. They also evoke very different things if you study them enough.

Tolkein draws the reader in by creating, in great detail, this cozy little home in this cozy little world that you can settle into like resting in your favorite armchair. He describes everything important and both tells the reader a lot about the house but also about the hobbit who lives there. That description suits the main character of the story and introduces him and his life as much as it does describe the setting. Much like his home, Bilbo Baggins at this point in his story is a cozy little man in a cozy little house living a cozy little life.

That right there is part of the function of description: characterization.

One of my favorite descriptions of all time–and I am paraphrasing here–is a description by Neil Gaiman who portrayed a character as the exact size and shape of a refrigerator (it’s somewhere in American Gods, or Neverwhere; I forget which). It characterized the person perfectly and brought the image to my head and gave me instant insight into who they were and what they did.

In Hemingway’s description of Santiago (the titular old man), we learn a lot about him from his description as well. That he’s old and worn and scarred from the work but still energetic and bright. You can read that in the way Hemingway uses language to describe him. He’s also described in a loving manner through the eyes of someone who cares for him. Much the same way as we can see Tolkein’s love and tenderness for Bilbo.

While I can and will talk more about characterization in another blog, for the sake of time and word count, I won’t get too deep into the subject. Just understand that the way you use description can be an important part of it. The words you choose to describe your characters and the attributes you give them will shape how the reader views them and what readers expect of the character. You can always subvert those expectations (I encourage it for fun AND profit) but describing characters in certain ways will give readers different views of them.

So how do you describe something? Description is more than a laundry list of attributes. Take, for example, these two descriptions of the same character:

Albert was tall. He was thin and had long fingers. He had white hair. He had a long nose. Albert was missing some teeth. He wore ragged clothing.

Albert was a tall, thin man. His hands should have belonged to a pianist, but his slouchy, patched overalls belonged to a farmer. His long, scraggly white hair was past needing a trim and into the territory of needing a veterinarian all on its own. He was missing several teeth but smiled anyway, an easy, honest thing. Just like the rest of him.

Both of those depictions give identical information, but the second one tells us more about Albert, rather than just listing attributes in a vacuum. The difference comes partially in that rather than listing attributes out, I give a little bit more of what they mean. The note that his hands should’ve belonged to a pianist tells you they’re large and probably rather strong with slender fingers. Having white hair will only get you so far. You can describe the cut, color, and length all you want, but if you don’t give readers a reason to care about it or more than raw data, you’ll just bore them. Particularly if you give it to them in a big block of text.

This same method should be used for locations, items, or anything else of enough significance to warrant describing. Much like with the hobbit hole, you should describe places readers will “visit” often with more attention than you do places they go in passing. These descriptions don’t need to be massive, but you’ll want your reader able to picture the place and know what to expect from it. Also, if you don’t describe your locations much (or at all) you’ll run the risk of having your characters standing in a white void in the reader’s head with nothing around them.

So how much is too much? How do you know what to describe and what not to describe? That takes some practice and consideration. On one hand, you need to provide enough detail that the reader can picture something clearly enough to “see” it. On the other, you need to ensure you don’t drown them in unnecessary details. If the number, shade, and facets of the gems on the hilt of your character’s sword are important or pertinent to the plot, then by all means, describe the exact details of that. If that isn’t, you can describe the hilt as jeweled without losing too much sleep over it.

Description is one of the signals to a reader that a thing is important. If you describe a place, person, or thing in detail, it is usually because it is significant to the story in some way. Whether it’s a character who will be important to the story or the MacGuffin (link to the definition if you don’t know the term), if you intend on using it and having it be important, description will clue the reader into the fact that it matters.

So, circling back to the beginning, description serves three main functions:

Helping the reader see the worldAssisting with characterizationHighlighting important people, places, or things for the reader

Returning to the conversation about salt and preferences, some writers tend to use more than others. Description can vary between the genre of the work (some genres use more, like in classic stories which rely heavily on simile to describe things), the individual writer’s preference, and many other factors. While there are right and wrong ways to describe things, and right and wrong amounts and types of description for different books, different moments, and different authors, that’s something you can work with your editor on.

Also, be aware that during first drafts, you will likely do one of two things: over-describe or under-describe. I tend to be in the latter camp, and during my first draft I describe almost nothing. Which is why I go back over things and rework them before even sending things to beta readers a lot of the time (with a few exceptions like my husband who puts up with my bad behavior). Don’t feel bad about over or under describing things in your first draft. Remember: edit after you write. Just get the story out and then work on it.

Finally, as promised, the exercise. I would like you, in your own words, find a picture to describe. It can be any picture you like (though make sure you provide proper attribution to the photographer or artist). You can do it in the comments or in the #homework channel in the writing group. Either way, write a description of this and try and tell the reader something about the picture. Evoke a story, a moment, a feeling. Don’t just list off attributes! Once you’re done, you can show the picture to the reader if you want to, but the key here isn’t to show off a photo; make the reader “see” the image.

Good luck, and I look forward to reading your exercises!

Editing Rates and Updates

I recently made a post up on my editing website regarding editing rates and talking about why editors charge what we do. That version’s extremely clinical since that blog is meant to be seriously nuts and bolts. This one’s more conversational, so rather than re-hash all the details of the other blog, I’m going to talk a little more personally here.

Editing rates has been a hard topic for me since I am constantly fraught with imposter syndrome. If you didn’t know that about me, now you do. While I am an expert, and I know it if I lay all my accolades out in front of me like a deck of cards, I a lot of the time live in the constant fear of “what if someone finds out I’m just a nerd!” and end up under my desk after sending out a big quote. A lot of editors do that.

I’m also part of a number of editors-only groups on various platforms (shout out to Editors Lair), which gives me a chance to let my guard down and talk shop with other editors. It turns out that this issue I have with imposter syndrome is endemic amongst editors. We are always wrestling with ourselves over whether we charged enough, too much, too little, or just right. Or railing against being gaslit by people who think our rates aren’t worth it, which then triggers the imposter syndrome spiral.

At least once or twice a week I see posts from editors of various skill levels expressing stress and fear over how much we charge. And I won’t lie, a good editor charges a pretty significant chunk of change for an edit. That said, when I zoom back and look at the value a good editor can bring to a manuscript, I can’t bring myself to say other editors don’t deserve what they charge. I am no different.

“At least once or twice a week I see posts from editors of various skill levels expressing stress and fear over how much we charge.”

Knowing that about us, recognize that our editing rates are created out of a careful mix of factors that include things like how much overhead we have in running our business (website, utilities, subscriptions to software or things like the CMOS, professional memberships, etc), paying for our health insurance, covering our take-home, and more. We are, after all, small business owners, so we have to make ends meet. Some editors do editing on the side for fun or to supplement other enterprises. Others edit as a hobby. There are so many reasons we do what we do, but it’s usually with an undercurrent of being really, deeply passionate about working with authors and loving books.

I love books.

I have always loved books and loved reading. I can still remember my mother reading me The Hobbit and Dragonsong and Uncle Wiggly as a child. She read me The Lupine Lady and Love You Forever. And all the Berenstain Bears books. I could list my favorite books until you chucked me face-first at a Barnes and Noble and told me to shut up. I spent most of my high school years huddled in the library at every opportunity.

I’ve also been a writer as long as I can remember. My first full novel is due out this year, though I’ve had a number of short stories published in various collections over the years. I wrote my first “novel” in high school (all forty pages of it in Word) and have savored writing ever since I first learned how.

Beyond my love for reading and writing, I’ve been in the industry a decade. Ten years of learning, studying, discussion with other editors (we’re a chatty bunch), learning from expert writers, devouring books on the craft. I have read multiple style guides, discussed the merits and drawbacks of them with my peers. I say discussed, but if you’ve ever been to a debate forum at a nerd convention, you’ll know the kind of discussion I mean. (I say that tongue in cheek.)

Furthermore, I bring more than a love of just the written word to the table. I am an ecclectic mix of experiences and knowledge. Everything from European fencing to modern firearms, from police procedure to a solid understanding of Medieval history. There are plenty of things I don’t know, of course, but I joke that while I got my BA in history, I should probably just tell people I have a degree in research. I’ve spared clients from embarassing mistakes more than once (I had a client who tried to rack the slide of a revolver in a manuscript at one point) and have given medieval fantasy writers insight into the fact that their characters wouldn’t probably be drinking from glass tankards.

“I am an ecclectic mix of experiences and knowledge. Everything from European fencing to modern firearms, from police procedure to a solid understanding of Medieval history.”

Spreading all these things out in front of me, I don’t feel bad about my rates. Or at least I don’t while I’m writing this. There’s a good chance I’ll lie awake all night, staring at the ceiling worrying about them, despite that they’re on the low end of the EFA’s rate scale and, in some places, under it.

Recently, I have made the jump to charging by the word rather than by the hour. While people I have worked with in the past may worry at seeing the change, know that I’m willing to work with you on the rate change, so don’t throw up your hands. We will make it work. The reason I went to a per-word rate was multiple-fold. First, I was undercutting myself because I work faster than the average per-word listed in the EFA’s rate scale by a significant margin if the work is on the cleaner side. And even if it isn’t, I still tend to edit quickly. (I read–not edit, just read–at the rate of about 11-12k words per hour). As a result, I’ve been hurting myself and not charging what I’m worth.

Those of you who have been here awhile and are friends may know I’ve been agonizing over this for awhile, and after a decade in the business and being capable of delivering the kind of feedback I do, I really needed to start bringing myself more into line with the EFA’s guidance since I am EFA-quality at what I do, even if I haven’t managed to scrape my pennies together for a membership just yet.

Ultimately, just remember that editors are working hard. There’s usually sticker shock involved with our quotes, but a good editor works extremely hard for their clients and are doing far more than spell check.

On a more personal level, COVID has thrown me for a loop. I didn’t get it, thank God, but rearranging my life to deal with the situation of the world has been a challenge. I am, as I write this, recovering from my second dose of the vaccine and looking forward to being able to do things like go to the grocery store without fear. I also have some time scheduled with a therapist to help me work through the anxiety I’ve developed about being around crowds again.

Yes, indeed, I have a therapist. It’s worth it, and I am not ashamed to discuss that fact. I may, in fact, talk a little more about mental health in another blog since it’s a subject writers often wrestle with both in prose and in life.

I’ve been trying to use the time in 2021 to try and rebuild myself some and re-evaluate what I want in life and out of my work. I also took some personal time to write, which I hadn’t really made for myself in years. As a result, I’ve got that novel I mentioned earlier in the blog coming out toward the end of this year. We don’t have a release date yet (it’s still in editing), but as soon as I have one, I’ll be shouting it from the rooftops.

The last year has, for me, been a time of deep reflection, consideration of what I want out of my life and my future, and setting up steps and plans to try and get me there. While, being disabled, there are things I cannot and will never do, I am more than I have been. And I am looking forward to sharing that with the world.

I have been bad about being active on this medium of late, but if you are looking to reach me and have a chat, I am over on Twitter at @EHPrybylski, running a writing server on Discord, uploading pictures of my cats on Instagram as @EHPrybylski and on Facebook under the same name.

If you’re still here after this long ramble, thank you for reading.

What Publishers Do and Don’t Do

I had a run-in recently with someone on a writing group on Facebook. The individual was stomped by the admins of the group, but the discussion is something that sits ill with me and a subject that needs to be addressed. I may have talked about it years ago in this space, but it’s something that bears repeating.

The row was over the fact that authors must market their books, and publishers don’t market your book for you beyond a few specific avenues. This author was utterly aghast that I was saying publishers don’t do that, and got quite haughty over it, claiming to be some kind of bigwig with an agent and a traditional publisher and how dare I, a peon, question them. (Insert gagging noises here.)

Too many authors in the world fail to understand what a book publisher does and does not do for its authors, and it’s something that leads to major issues with authors and publishers, and everyone walks away frustrated from the experience and feeling as though their expectations were not met. This lack of understanding is also one of the major reasons new authors’ early books may flop, even with a publisher’s help.

To start with, to be a publisher of any repute, regardless of the model, publishers (whether traditional, hybrid, or otherwise) must have the following:

Acquisitions based on merit.
This means an acquisitions editor who reads pitches, determines if something is the right fit for the company, and then decides whether or not to pick up the manuscript. Every company has slightly different criteria they look for in a book, and they’ll have differences in genre, preference, and so on. But either way, someone is actually looking at the manuscripts and deciding whether or not it’s a good fit. An editorial process with at least one editor.
The editorial process at Insomnia has several rounds of editing with a project’s lead editor. This will look at things like word choice, structure, sentence composition, removing excess words, clarifying confusing passages, fact checking as needed, punctuation, and so on. Then the book moves to a secondary editor who looks over it for any spelling/punctuation errors that may have been missed the first time. This happens again after the book has been typeset to ensure the maximum possible cleanliness of the manuscript. Professional-grade typesetting.
Whether for print or e-book, typesetting is extremely important, and doing it properly really can make or break a book. It’s a skill in and of itself, and while the skills for typsetting an ebook and typesetting a print book are quite different, either one or both are absolutely necessary. If you want to know how good their typesetting is, do a glance inside on their books listed on Amazon. Good cover design.
Sure, the old saying says not to judge a book by its cover, but a terrible cover won’t sell books. If all their book covers look like an eighth-grade Photoshop job, run the other direction. While not every company has the money for expensive cover design, any decent publisher will put out covers that at least look like they belong on a bookshelf and not at a garage sale. A solid method of distribution.
Distribution for most of us publishers means a combination of Ingram (or many other such book distributors) and Amazon. If your publisher is distributing only through Amazon’s KDP (formerly Createspace) services, that doesn’t mean they might not be a good seller, but it does show that they’re on the small side. Bookstores will not order through Amazon, so that’s something to be aware of. Ingram is one of the biggest distributers in the world, so any bookstore can order from them. While there’s no guarantee your book will end up in a brick-and-mortar store, having the option is important. Provides an ISBN
This is pretty self-explanatory. Your publisher should provide your book an ISBN (or multiple in the case of multiple versions of the book).

Now, you see this list of things publishers ought to provide if they’re to be considered legitimate, and you see what’s not on it?

Marketing.

This may come as an unpleasant surprise to folks, and for that I’m sorry, but publishers don’t typically do much in the way of marketing for authors. Those who do will do things like taking out occasional ads on Amazon or Facebook, and they’ll try and get your book into things like BookBub, which is a long shot by all accounts. This means that the marketing will fall to you, the author.

You will have to get out there (metaphorically during the pandemic, please) and sell your book. Your publisher will support this as best they can, but they cannot and will not do it for you. Even if you’re lucky enough to be picked up by an agent and a major publisher (one of the Big Five), they’re not going to do all your marketing for you. Sadly for all of us, writing books is not a set-it-and-forget-it situation. You can’t just get a book deal, publish it, and then do nothing and wait for money to roll in. Lightning may strike, and you may make sales, but I wouldn’t rely on it.

Sadly for all of us, writing books is not a set-it-and-forget-it situation.

E. Prybylski

The reasons for this are multi-fold, but it boils down to two key points: your publisher won’t want to spend the money on it (or maybe can’t) and readers don’t want to hear from publishers. While your publisher may well spring to have your book put into Ingram’s mail-out catalogue or will do some targeted Amazon marketing, this cannot replace the benefits of having the author talking about their book. Your publisher will not book blog tours for you and while they may work to help get your foot in the door at things like radio stations, the station is more likely to respond to an author rather than the publisher. No joke.

Hiring a publicist is extremely expensive, and small to mid-sized publishers cannot foot that bill. And the staff who’s on is often busy with other projects, so they cannot devote their time to marketing your book for you because they have other books to edit, design, and publish. At my company, for example, I am the head editor, typesetter, cover designer, and webmaster (insomuch as I poke at it every so often and hope I don’t break things).

Every book we produce comes through me, and once the book is out, I’m onto the next project. While I may take time to help an author with pre-release marketing and will make an effort to put them on my newly-minted podcast and let them give a lecture to my weekly writing group, I can’t do much more than that except maybe send a couple emails and do some cover mock-ups. I just don’t have the time because the next book is coming down the pipe and I have multiple clients hiring me for editing and coaching.

I’m not trying to complain to you about my workload, but you can see that I have no room to put another hat on the towering number I am already wearing. Most small publishers are in the same boat. In the bigtime (Big Five) they will assign you publicists, but that doesn’t mean you get to sit on your hands. In fact, you are expected to do most of the same things you’d be doing without a publicist. The real difference is that you will have access to expert advice, but you’re expected to run your own Facebook page, Twitter feed, and website and maintain an email list. While the publicists at a Big Five publisher may create a press kit for a new author and use their ties to get them articles in larger news outlets and maybe land them a spot on an NPR show, authors are still expected to use their own networks to market their book.

One of the unexpected surprises of being a new author is how much goes into promoting your books. I was lucky to be published by Penguin’s Putnam imprint for my debut novel, The Golden Hour. Yet even with the backing of a hefty Big Five publisher, I discovered that delivering the manuscript is just the beginning.

Todd Moss

Don’t believe me? Todd Moss, author of the Washington Post bestseller, “The Golden Hour” has a blog post on the subject (and she’s where I got the information on what the Big Five do for publicity.

In short, like any business venture you undertake, authors are expected to market it. While writing is romanticized (and rightly so), the less fun part of being a success is doing things like marketing, and learning how is very much available to us these days. While we might not all have publicists with the connections of Penguin, we can learn how to leverage what we do have and create a larger network for ourselves in order to boost sales.

While writing is romanticized (and rightly so), the less fun part of being a success is doing things like marketing.

E. Prybylski

It’s very possible to write an incredible book and not be lucky enough to have it sell if you aren’t willing to market the heck out of it and work hard to that end. As with many things in life, it’s not enough to be good at what you do–even great at what you do–you have to make sure everyone else knows you exist. After all, if they don’t know you exist or know that you’ve written a book (or books), then how can they possibly buy it?

As A Historian

This blog is mostly focused on writing. I’ve occasionally touched on other things, but this is mostly about writing. Today I don’t speak as an editor or writer; I speak as a historian and American who witnessed history being made this past week and not in a good way.

Those of you who know me outside this blog know I went to college for history. I studied mostly Rome through the Renaissance in Europe, and that is what I have my B.A. in. I use that mostly for the purposes of helping my editing clients who write about history, but this week it has given me perspective on what happened in the Capitol of the United States of America.

This blog isn’t about partisan politics, before you tense up expecting such a thing. I am not here to do anything but report the facts as faithfully as I know them based on my understanding of history, my viewing of far more hours of footage of what happened than is probably good for my mental health, and having watched the events from literal start to finish via PBS’s stream.

I tuned into PBS’s live stream with the intent of watching Congress debate the votes, as we all knew was coming. While I find watching these events extremely boring, I view them as part of my civic duty. Just as I watched the entire impeachment on C-Span. No, really. The entire thing. I was tuned into their coverage all day, and when I was unavailable to watch, I caught up later.

I give you my sources because I am hopeful you will recognize those as not partisan. At the very least, C-Span is non-partisan because it provides no analysis whatsoever and merely explains some of the definitions of terms or will explain what bill is being referenced and so on. They are exceptionally dull to watch, but they are real-time and with the lack of analysis they are free of partisan taint. Likewise, both by my own quite extensive research as well as labeling by multiple bias-detector sites, PBS Newshour is also virtually unbiased, though individual speakers sometimes show some.

My personal political leanings are irrelevant to this post, so I’m not going to discuss them, and there’s a good chance that if you attempt a guess, you will be wrong.

I was watching when this all started, and I saw and heard the riots happen in as close to real time as was possible without being physically present. During these riots, I felt the same sort of gut-dropping, heart clenching pain I felt watching the Twin Towers fall on 9/11, which I also witnessed in real time. It is going to be one of those events that, for the rest of my life, I will know where I was and what I was doing. Just as many others remember things like the Challenger disaster or, on a happier note, when humanity first arrived to the moon.

Those who don’t note the seriousness and gravity of what has occurred perhaps do not understand just how close we came to the brink of an actual, successful coup d’etat occuring here in the United States of America. One driven by the words of a sitting president. Keeping my personal views out of it, at the very least, I can say with certainty that the address to the rally prior to the ransacking of one of the most sacred buildings of our country by people whose intent was to murder elected officials and cease the peaceful transfer of power that is the bedrock of our country’s form of government was the spark that lit the wildfire.

Make no mistake. I heard the chants of “hang Mike Pence” and saw footage of the men with zip-cuffs. I saw the faces of the people in the Capitol. Do I believe all of them were there to perpetrate horrible acts of unspeakable violence? No, of course not. There were many people milling about certain areas who were swept up in the energy of the crowd with no true understanding of just what they were doing. Crowd psychology and mentality is a very different beast than the intentions of singular individuals. However, I do know for absolute certain that there were enough people there who were hellbent on doing whatever it took, who claimed that “this is 1776” who claimed that it was a “revolution” that I cannot pretend that the crowd wasn’t one spark away from burning the buidling down.

In fact, someone was arrested with molotov cocktails intended for exactly that purpose. Many others had weapons of various kinds including knives, firearms of various types and forms, and that one man with a spear. As well as the number of people I witnessed assaulting police officers with whatever came to hand: crutches, bottles, sticks, riot shields, the barricades themselves, and anything else they could weaponize. At least some of that crowd was out for blood.

Now, pulling back to a larger view, this kind of mentality has been present in crowds during such events for as long as history lasts. In many circumstances crowds have gone from protesting to extreme violence without much pause and if you don’t study crowd psychology, you might not know why. But for people wound up tight and armed with what they belived wholeheartedly was an attempt to steal the country from them by dictators, it was a powderkeg. The spark of which was the president’s speech. These are the unfortunate facts as I have seen them. Now, whether the president lit that powderkeg knowingly or unknowingly or maybe misunderstood the impact and power of his words could be argued. I’m not here to make such assessments.

I do think our country needs to learn a lesson from the ease with which these people breached into the Capitol, overwhelming the police despite concrete fore-knowledge of a volatile protest. We know they are very capable of enacting security measures as seen during the BLM protests, and the contrast between the degrees of security is stark. Foreign actors could easily have embedded themselves in that crowd to gain access to the Capitol and to some of the secure documents and such located within. I don’t believe any foreign adversaries are responsible for what occurred, but it is not a stretch to say that such a security breach with such ease is something we will need to prevent in the future when considering security for our country’s elected officials while they undertake such grave and important business.

I have been saying to those around me since September that I expected something like this to happen. Not because of any political persuasion but because these kinds of events have happened many times through history and always ended the same (insomuch as causing a violent culimation of events). Regardless of one’s political affiliation, the rampant and virulent spread of conspiracy theories and violent rhetoric since before the election had me saying that no matter who won this election, there was going to be violence, protests, and a very dark and difficult time for this country.

I grew up surrounded by Republicans. Both my parents and all my grandparents were steadfast Republicans to the point where my grandfather has plaques and such dedicated to his contributions to the party over the years. I’m not saying this as some kind of “ultra-liberal” extremist because I’m not one. But our country is broken. The screaming and finger-pointing that has become the common go-to behavior of people discussing politics in more recent years has given birth to extremism–as it would by nature. You put people in a pressure cooker, surround them with vitriol, and blame the “not us” for the problems of the “us” and you incite war. Which is exactly what has happened.

Humans have always been tribalistic. Going back to our earliest ancestors and, truth, even before, we are creatures of identity. Our tribe, our group (our team, our block, our city, our country, our town, our political party, our race, our gender, our. . .) is a major part of how we identify safe from not safe. Safe is us. Not safe is them. This is base human behavior and psychology. I’m not saying it’s all right by any stretch because it has also created sexism, racism, classism, ableism, and all the other awful “ism’s” we have in our world right now. Because we divide the world into “us” and “not us.” I recognize that my explanation here is simplistic, but it’s intended to be. I’m also not going to say “can’t we all just get along!” becuase there are damn well people we should not get along with and should never, ever give voice to. (The KKK, neo-nazis, and others spring to mind.) We have fought wars over some of these principles and rightfully so.

Part of the reason some of our founding fathers opposed the notion of parties was this exact us/them mentality that we have seen grow from it. People who otherwise might well agree with one another on important and, indeed, vital subjects feel the need to pick a party that best aligns with their values even if that party doesn’t really represent them well. Then, once they have selected a party, the other party becomes the dreaded Them. This inhibits our ability to work out solutions to problems as people. And the majority of the time, it is as people who see the same problems but disagree on how we get there.

The roads we have tread on have only ever lead to where we are. I have watched this happen over and over again through history–most notably in Rome. Rome crumbled under very similar pressures and very similar circumstances. They had similar income disparity between the hyper-rich and everyone else trying to survive. This happened during the French Revolution as well. The Romanov Execution, too, had similar themes and similar events. I am not advocating for a violent overthrow; I am drawing parallels through similar pressure causing huge fractures to society.

So what do we do and where do we go? As people living through this incredible and horrible time, how do we handle all of these things and move forward? Where do we turn?

My recommendations to you are as follows:

FIRST

Make sure the news sources you consume as as non-partisan as possible. For what it is worth, I have found this chart to be extremely accurate and helpful when selecting my news sources: https://www.adfontesmedia.com/ Anything at the top of the green block should be considered both reliable and trustworthy. If you have trouble reading the chart, the sources is sees as most reliable (and least partisan) are:

APReutersThe Weather ChannelThe Denver PostNPRNewsyABCHouston ChronicleNBCUSA TodayCBS

That said, certain segments and certain hosts may be more or less partisan even on these news sources. So approach them with some degree of caution. My method tends to be to read stories from multiple sources and look at where they cross over to find truth. I know current trend is to blame all of these news sources as “hyper-liberal” but they truly aren’t, no matter what you are being told.

SECOND

Question stories that seem extremely attractive to you. The reason I say this is that the job of (actual) fake news is to emulate the real thing and affirm bias as well as introduce dishonest things. Look at some of the propaganda from WWII for information. The way the Jews, Romani, disabled, gays, and anyone who wasn’t “German Enough” was at fault for the extreme poverty that followed World War I. This was a clear example of scapegoating which is occurring even now (making it Their fault). This mentality that if you are not “us enough” you are “them” is something to view with extreme caution because it is easy to manipulate. McCarthyism, for example, did that exactly as you would expect. Governments across the world and all throughout history have used this rhetoric to achieve their desired outcomes.

Confirmation bias is something we all must wrestle with. The more we agree with a source, the closer we must question it. That goes for everyone for everything. This kind of critical thought is wearisome and stressful and requires constant vigilance, though you eventually pick up on the cues that identify bombast from honesty.

THIRD

While I will never, ever tell you to keep people in your life who are damaging to your mental health, it is important not to create an echo chamber where all you hear and encounter are the resounding reverberations of a single, potent political ideology. I don’t mean that you need to listen to the outlandish conspiracy theoriests with the same weight you provide a trusted source, either. However, you should be open to hear what people who believe differently than you (and are willing to have honest, fair discussions about it) have to say.

Nor do you need to deal with people whose sole intent is to troll you. People who refuse to adhere to the rules of polite discourse and who engage in constant logical fallicies that damage the capability of people to have discussion shouldn’t be allowed to dominate the discussion.

Likewise, don’t get into a poo-slinging war with a stablehand. They probably have a shovel, and you won’t win by ending up covered in muck. You cannot, sadly, convince through vitriol what civil (if forceful) words will not convey. That isn’t saying we don’t all have times when we get so frustrated we say things that feel good at the time but aren’t the sorts of things we’d say at dinner with the Pope. There is also a time and a place to address something with outrage and force, but recognize that if you start a conversation that way, you likely will never get your point across in a way the other person will receive it–no matter how justified your anger is.

Identifying someone who is acting in bad faith is an important part of this process. I have friends with whom I have significant political disagreements, however I keep them in my life because I know for certain that they are not acting out of bad faith. They are honest, kind, good people at their core with whom I have disagreements. They are not the sorts of people who would have done what happened at the Capitol, for instance. I also want to be clear that political disagreements are different than if those people think as though I as a person should not exist and am not valid. When I say politics, I mean we disagree on how we are going to handle the crisis of medical care in our country, the specifics of what firearm laws should be enacted, and so on. They aren’t people who would, given the choice, see me harmed for existing. Anyone who is toxic in that manner has no place in my life and will not be tolerated, and I do not encourage you to keep such people in yours.

FOURTH

We are tired, and we are hurting, and we are frightened. However, during this period in our lives, we must also not allow our hurt, fear, and anger to destroy our nation. I’m not saying you should not protest or speak your mind. I am not saying you should just sit with your anger and pain and not exercise your rights to free speech and assembly (where applicable since we do have a raging pandemic, so use discretion). However, what happened at the United States Capitol is an example of anger, fear, and hatred overruling any sort of good judgement these people may have. There is no excuse for it, and let it be a warning to the rest of us. Giving into our emotions and venting all our fears and angers and grief in such a manner both will not accomplish its goal (congress still completed its duty in counting the electoral votes) and will not serve whatever cause we have. Speak with eloquence, power, and force. Speak as one voice. Use your megaphone. But put down your torches and nooses. Such barbaric behavior does not belong in the society we have built.

In addition to this, remember that if we are all tired, hurting, and frightened, we are all–as a world–in a more volitile and fragile place than we have been at any time in living memory for most of us. Our friends and loved ones are more vulnerable and more fragile even as they are also more angry.

One of the few pieces of wisdom I have from my father–echoed by my mother–is that anger often covers fear. Fear makes us feel helpless, exposed, and weak while anger helps us feel powerful. We are all, whether internally or externally, feeling helpless, exposed, and weak because this pandemic spares no one. From the rich and powerful to the homeless, this disease has no mercy. Much like the Masque of the Red Death, it spares none. On top of that, our country has been at the mercy of people in power whose goal has been to deepen divides and profit from the hatred. Demogogues of any flavor are often dangerous, and we have seen a notable rise in their number as they prey on the cracks in our society borne of many years of war and financial catastrophies.

FINALLY

If you can, if you have the space and energy, be kind. Whether you agree with someone or not, see pain and speak to it. Be honest, be genuine. Think before you speak.

No more powerful and poigniant example of the power of language can be shown in immediate history than the effect of the president’s speech on the crowd. His words lit the fuse of what happened at the Capitol. If you are on my blog and read it, then I presume you are a writer. This example should show all of us the power of words. We can inspire or incite. We can hold up or rebuke. Words have power. Use them with intent. Use them with discretion, and use them with love.

I know our country is seeing its darkest winter in living memory. Thousands of people are dying every day, and the divides between our nation feel like they are too deep, too jagged, and too raw to ever mend. But remember we are the country who had the Civil War and survived. Our democracy survived a civil war and was able to come back from that. Our country has seen hell and continued. We are strong, and the guardrails of our democracy do work. We have seen them in action if you have been looking for them. They function, and they protect us.

As Benjamin Franklin said just after a session of the Constitutional Convention: “A democracy, if you can keep it.”

Breathe and know this isn’t the end of everything. It may feel it, but through the hard work, dilligence, watchfulness, and continued work of every person in our nation, we can keep it.

We can keep it.

What’s Up With Me

I’m sorry I haven’t had a blog up the last couple weeks. This kind of year is rough for me physically. The weather kicks me while I’m down and causes my Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome to flare up. I have also had some things happening in my personal life that needed attention. I am all right; it’s not COVID or anything like that. But I had something come up in the last week that required my complete attention, so I missed Monday’s blog, and this week I don’t have much for you.

What I can tell you is that sometimes the best thing you can do for yourself is know when you need to take a break. And it is okay to have a time where you aren’t as productive as other.

Thank you for sticking with me, friends. I appreciate your readership, and I hope to be back up to speed next week.