Everett Maroon's Blog, page 18

Old Movies Young People Should Watch

I’m 42 years old. I’m staring middle age in the paunch. I refuse to have a crisis, in part because it’s a trope, but after having a crisis in my mid-30s over the whole gender shenanigans I’m hesitant to create any more angst for myself. It’s like reflecting on the 9 years I lived in Syracuse. I counted up the snowfall for all those years and determined it was 1,100 inches. That is more snow than I care to experience in this and my next lifetime (note to the reincarnation powers: please don’t stick me in a desert next time around just because I wrote that). So snow and angst have been crossed off my bucket list, great.

Getting older brings with it some other unfortunate awkwardness, however. I make cultural references that people under 30 don’t understand. And for me these pop culture mini-Litmus tests are even more out of date than my age would suggest they’d be, because my father was 41 years old when I was born, so he harkened back to the freaking swing era. I can make a Hoagie Carmichael mention and not even have the 50-year-olds in the room know what I’m talking about.

There’s a lot of wonderful stuff in those bygone eras from the middle of the 20th Century, for sure. And it’s a high bar to think that in our Internet age college students would spend any time paying attention to anything produced in the previous millennium, but on the other hand, we’ve never before seen such effort made to restore old film, make out of print books available again, or set up tributes to once-forgotten authors. So with the wealth of content available to us today, it’s good practice to see older stories, for the first time, or on repeat. These are some of our cultural predecessors, inspiration for the generation of writers and directors once removed from our contemporary literature and film professionals. It’s also good to retain our collective history–I see young adults all the time at the HIV nonprofit that I run, who have never before heard the evidence supporting safer sex practices. These individuals didn’t live through the advent of AIDS, didn’t lose close friends, didn’t wonder who would come down sick next, didn’t watch their government ignore them while so many people, nearly 600,000, succumbed to the virus. And there is a whole body of written and cinematic literature out there that works through that pain, and offers insight into our problems today, including and beyond AIDS.

With the rewards of such reflection in mind, I offer a list of suggestions for anyone under 35. These are movies they should see:

Longtime Companion (1989)—One of the early movies about the AIDS epidemic, it’s not just a tearjerker. It’s an exploration of how different generations of gay men defined chosen family vis a vis surviving the crisis. Younger viewers may recognize Mary-Louise Parker from Weeds, and Campbell Scott from Royal Pains, along with several of the other actors. There are plenty of well delivered narratives about the early days of AIDS, but this film is especially accessible and it was a bellwether in its day for getting the conversation about HIV into the popular culture consciousness.



On the Waterfront (1954)—Yes, it’s the film in which a young Marlon Brando says, “I coulda been a contender.” But watch the film and see why that isn’t just a fun line to imitate, it’s the crux of his whole character. If we think violence and politicking around unions and workers is anything new, this movie will help us see otherwise. If we think cinematographers need full digital color to blow audiences away with the visuals, this movie will school us properly. Taking eight Academy Awards, including Best Director, Best Actor, and Best Picture, first-time viewers will not only be sucked into the story and the characters, they’ll see glimmers of this film when they watch most any mafia film that came after it.
Xanadu (1980)—This is not an important film by any means. It doesn’t have a strong message for society. It’s trite and not well acted. But come on, it’s got more rollerskating than the rest of the movies in the 80s put together. Plus, Olivia Newton-John, and Gene Kelly’s final movie performance. It is quintessential 1980s in tone and fashion, and the songs get stuck in your head. And oh, it’s a cultural reference point for people who like cult movies.
Sophie’s Choice (1982)—Here’s another old film that has recognizable actors, including Meryl Streep, Peter MacNichol (Numb3rs) and Kevin Kline. Even if you know the spoiler in the film, it’s worth watching the transformation of the narrative from strange eyewitnessing of a dysfunctional relationship into gut-wrenching horror. And of course every Streep performance is a masterpiece.
What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962)—This movie is harrowing. I suppose it could be surprising for younger viewers who think that black and white movies are sappy, silly, overacted things that we can’t relate to anymore. But with Bette Davis and Joan Crawford in the main roles as elderly sisters plagued by regret, alcoholism, and mental illness, this movie is far, far from mid-century comedies. There’s a lot to think about with today’s focus on celebrity and some people’s need for attention, and other themes pervade the film—the tragedy of our expectations for female beauty, the juggernaut that is Hollywood, the lack of attention from protective institutions toward abuse victims. It’s disturbingly presented, and reveals a lot about what has and hasn’t changed with regard to how we show violence and derangement in film today.

Once again, this is far from a complete list. I haven’t even mentioned Kubrick in this post, but that just means that I’ll have another article in the future with some of Stanley’s work that people should still watch today. Admittedly, I love almost every one of his movies…

Lighting the Uh-Oh

Emile has lived through a holiday season once before, but last go around, he didn’t notice much of it. Holding up a 14-month-old to a Christmas tree bursting with colored lights is a bit like holding a moth up to the sun, except for the lack of fluttering. For me it just isn’t December if there’s not a tree bedecked with garland and sentimental ornaments, but we worried about setting anything up in the same space as our new walker of the household. I hatched a plan to hide the tree behind our click-clack futon so that until Emile learns to climb, direct access would be prevented. This also means that the lowest third of the tree is obscured by black vinyl, but whatever, for the wee one this Kmart brand 6.5-foot tree is like an amazing magical fortress.

Now then, for the sake of context, let me point out that for a 14-month-old, Emile is quite verbal. His vocabulary now includes the following:

Ow
Mama
Dada
Mommy
Daddy
Woof (usually said to dogs or puppies)
Meow (usually said to cats or dogs)
Hi (his actual first word)
‘Lo (short for hello, usually said to anything resembling an electronic device, always positioned in his hand at the back of his skull where naturally these devices reside)
Uncle
Apple (used for apples but also oranges and pears)
‘Nana (for bananas, not grandmothers)
Bye-bye
Mwah (said in conjunction with a blown kiss)
No, or no-no-no (said with increasing frequency)
Yesh (often said with a nod that makes my heart explode because cynics like me can’t handle the cute)
Uh-oh

Now then, “uh-oh” is a popular go to word for Emile. It is applied to anything dangerous, like outlets, cords, and noxious toilet cleaner–none of which he can touch, so please stand down on the educating email–but it also comes in handy for things we’ve told him are fragile, like iPhones, mirrors, French doors, and laptops. Emile uses two forms of the “uh-oh” these days, because the nanny’s mother taught her daughter–Emile’s playmate five days a week–to say, “Uh-oh, Spaghetti-O,” and she, being sharing oriented, taught him. His pronunciation sounds more like “Uh-oh, Rio,” and so I’ve imagined that he has some kind of insight into the Mayan calendar/end of the world debacle, but I’ll save those jokes for December 21. In any given day Emile may say “Uh-oh” or “Uh-oh Rio” 4,239 times. Yes, I’ve counted. I may have to make a compilation video at some point, because who doesn’t love mash ups of repeated phrases?

We’d decided several months back to forgo our usual two trips east for family holidays for a single visit to Hawaii. Neither of us has ever traveled there, and I for one have daydreams about wearing a lei and taking pictures of the lava floes. This sets us up squarely in Walla Walla for Thanksgiving and Christmas, thus the need to set up the tree. Since Susanne is allergic to just about every tree on the planet, we can’t bring a live or cut spruce into the house. When we moved out here I went to Goodwill and plunked down $50 for an artificial tree, which was my first official experience with fake conifers. There is branch fluffing involved, people, so as to minimize the breakthrough of light between the evenly colored branches. Fluffing, while necessary, produces dust, because artificial Christmas trees that wind up at Goodwill are old trees, where the previous owners spent I don’t know, decades or something, shedding their own epithelial cells all over the holiday decorations, and then left them to fester in a musty basement for 11 months a year. To say this tree didn’t smell like pine or fir was to make a non sequitur, because apparently fake Christmas tree and tree smell have nothing whatsoever to do with each other.

Due to a promise made last year to get rid of the tree, I posted its availability on the Walla Walla Freecycle list, where people ask for or offer free things from or to other people in the community. Out in the greater Washington, DC area, this amounts to baby clothes, furniture, or sundry items made of decent quality. Here in Walla Walla I’ve seen offers for people to take away mounds of dirt. Dirt. Not “topsoil” or anything for gardening use. Just dirt. There was a guy who asked for a locking box so he could store his gun before social workers from the foster care system were due to arrive. It’s not the same band of items, I guess. I posted the tree–complete, in good condition–and in two minutes someone offered to pick it up. In the next five minutes 8 people wrote to ask if it was still available. I sent out an email telling the list the tree had been claimed, and another 10 people asked if they could have it. Some of the email messages made arguments as to why they deserved the tree, others told me horrible stories about their lives, saying that THIS TREE would fix everything that had gone wrong for them. I thought the first come, first served protocol was the lay of the land for Freecycle, but what do I know?

I hefted the old tree up from the musty basement (sorry, tree) and left it on the front porch, where my Freecycle counterpart quietly whisked it away. And I cut into the new box with my Jaclyn Smith 6.5 foot tree with LED colored lights and put it together in something like 3 minutes. Because apparently in this century, you don’t have to put each little branch onto the tree. Whew!

Emile emerged from his nap and as he is wont to do these days, immediately let it be known that I should place him on the floor such that he could go on walkabout. He will wander around the rooms like an old man with short term memory issues, telling the kitchen hi, banging on a few pots, and then meandering into the dining room. But today the glow of red, blue, yellow, and green caught his vision, and it was off to the races. He bolted over to the boundary futon.

“Uh-oh uh-oh uh-oh uh-oh uh-oh uh-oh uh-oh uh-oh uh-oh uh-oh uh-oh,” he yammered. I wondered if Emile was giving a nod to every light on the tree, or every fake and luscious green needle.

The pointer finger broke out: j’accuse! “Uh-oh uh-oh uh-oh uh-oh uh-oh uh-oh uh-oh uh-oh.”

I walked up to him.

“That’s a tree,” I said, hoping against hope that he would soon start his singsong of treetreetreetreetree. He nodded instead.

“Yesh,” he said. As in, “Dumbass, I know it’s a tree. But don’t you see ALL THOSE UH-OHS?”

I picked him up, taking him closer and giving him new angles of the tree. My email beeped at me with more messages from people wanting the old tree that I’d already given away.

Oh my God, I thought. Merry Christmas.

A List of Inspiring Trans People Huffington Post Hasn’t Mentioned

The Transgender Day of Remembrance came around last week, and to commemorate the day several web sites ran articles about transgender people, but not necessarily with regard to the individuals who died due to violence or suicide. The Huffington Post, for one, ran a list of photos of “transgender pioneers” which for many people in the trans community, myself included, seemed an odd way to memorialize murdered people. Was the intent to offer our most stellar examples of humanity for the nontrans masses so that they could learn more about us? To contextualize the extremely stark statistics about hate crimes? Or did the list of 50 “pioneers” distract from a more helpful conversation about marginalization and the media’s avoidance of these stories and lives?

So I offer instead a better list of outstanding transgender and transsexual and genderqueer individuals. While there were some in the list on Huff Post (and why, by the way, is the column called “Gay Voices” when it encompasses LGBT-spectrum topics?) who are known for being inspirational, or who really did pave the way for others, there are several people included who are really only known for being media hogs, or who have a history of problematic behavior or comments. If we’re going to celebrate people in the transgender community why not make a list of people engaged in social justice work, progressive arts and publishing, and health care?

I’ve rounded up people who come to my mind when I think of such things, and no, this isn’t a “top X” list or anything exhaustive. So in no particular order…

Dean Spade, Assistant Professor of Law at Seattle University–Dean teaches poverty law and agitates against the industrial prison complex. He founded the Sylvia Rivera Law Project in New York City and teaches and writes about the intersection of US law with transgender rights. He is also fond of waving his arms a lot when he lectures, which I personally find helpful for following along with his riptide speed of speaking.
Red Durkin, Comedian and Writer–Red toured with the Tranny Roadshow doing standup comedy, and she authored a pile of zines before announcing late this year that Topside Press will be publishing her first novel, Ready, Amy, Fire, in 2013. She has hosted writing workshops and done a host of solo comedy appearances, but one of the reasons I love Red is that she unravels painful things like Ye Olde Trans Narrative in her work, and makes audiences laugh at the inanity of a transphobic culture while they get exposed to some brighter ideas.
Sara Becker, M.D.–There have been, thus far, no national studies of transgender health, no data that health practitioners can comb through to use when advising patients, no benchmarks. If an ailment affects such and such a percentage of women in their 40s, doctors have no way of interpreting those numbers for their trans women clients. Dr. Becker sees more than 1,000 FTM and MTF patients over the course of each year and publishes as many case studies as she can so that there is at least some trickle of information for other physicians to use in their practice. Also, she has a pilot’s license. How cool is that?
Morgan M. Page (Odofemi), Artist and Writer–Odofemi founded TWAT/fest, the Trans Women’s Arts Toronto Festival, the first trans women’s art festival curated by trans women to showcase the work of their community. And when the award-winning Odofemi isn’t working on her multimedia art, she’s supporting trans youth through activism and anti-violence programs.
Tom Léger and Riley MacLeod, publishers, Topside Press–Founded last year, Topside Press put out a call for short fiction with trans themes, and the press release itself went viral. Apparently there are trans writers out there interested in carving out a transgender literature, and Topside has decided not to wait around for someone else to take an interest in publishing their work (yes, I have a story in their inaugural collection, but that’s not why they’re listed here). Between Tom and Riley they have a background in anti-prison activism, trans community building, finance, and creative writing. So say it with me again: transgender literature. Music to my ears.
StormMiguel Florez, Folk Singer–Miguel is a San Francisco-based songwriter and performer who takes on trans themes in his work, but also asks probing questions about the intersection of race with gender identity. He’s also addicted to zombie everything, even making a transgender zombie film that played in that city’s film festival.
Annie Danger, Artist–Annie is a performance and tattoo artist (mostly not at the same time) who explores a radical reunderstanding of bodies and identities while mocking contemporary culture’s easy answers to stress, usually through a send up of motivational speaker Tony Robbins. Maybe she could tattoo Tony Robbins one day, I have no idea.

Honorable Ally Mention goes to longtime staffer at the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, who authored Washington D.C.’s regulations protecting trans-identified people in housing, employment, education, and public accommodations. Lisa did not back down when conservative gay men claimed the regulations would take away from a push for same-sex marriage, or result in the oft-mentioned, never-happened men wearing dresses assaulting women in restrooms issue. She was one of the lead authors of the just-published National Transgender Discrimination Survey. She works on national policies to improve the civil rights of trans people.

There are more, plenty more. Perhaps I’ll have to write some followup blog posts about all of the cool and wonderful things transfolk are doing across the continent…

How to Get Through Thanksgiving Without Overly Gendering Everything

It’s one thing to recognize I’ve reached adulthood, but it’s quite another to be able to look back over many, many years and see that the threshold was crossed quite a long time ago. I’ve now got under my belt a large swath of experiences that have pointed in the direction of today. When it comes to Thanksgiving, I’ve learned to perfect my turkey preparation, just one of many aspects to the day that are now part and parcel of the holiday for me.

I’ve also gotten attached to a certain table setting for Thanksgiving, and to having the Macy’s Day Parade on in the background as I cook, which let me just say really sucks for people in the Pacific Time Zone. For those of us who grow up with Thanksgiving through our childhood and into adulthood, we have expectations around something that happens in that day. Eating the crappy green bean casserole, or at least having it on the table, arguing about who sits where, making a particular holiday cookie, there’s always something.

Also in my personal history is the need to dress up. It’s a formalish dinner, with the special china laid out and the polished silver on the fancy schmancy tablecloth. Mom would even enlist me in ironing the napkins, which of course I hated but which of course she hated worse. Which is why the job fell on me. (Remind me sometime to tell you about the enormous Jabba the Hut pile of ironing in the downstairs laundry.)

Now then, dress up often meant dress, which by the time I’d reached adolescence was more often a clean sweater and khakis, but my point, as obtuse as I’ve made it, is this: Thanksgiving is a gendered experience. Who sits on the couch, yelling at the football game, and who is in the kitchen prepping the meal. Who does the dishes afterward, who carves the turkey, there are many moments throughout the day that tell us something about gender roles and expectations.

Now that Emile is more aware of his surroundings and the relationships of the adults around him, it’s occurred to me that there are things I can do–as the adult that I am now–to help dial down some of the more sexist traditions that my culture has handed to me. There’s nothing revolutionary here, but maybe if we can make it through the next 15 Thanksgivings with less emphasis on sexist ideology, we’ll have made a small difference in the experience for our family and friends. Some of the ideas that come to mind are:

Get everyone involved in the cooking and meal preparation–Other than the whole hoopla around frying turkeys in a vat of vegetable oil, I haven’t seen men do much in the way of cooking or baking in any given year. (Other than myself and a few select gay men I know, but overall, this has been the case in my experience.) Even people with less kitchen experience can help do the prep work of chopping, cleaning, peeling, and mixing cake batter. It’s a good time to educate folks on how much labor is actually involved in getting the big meal ready, and folks will feel more of a sense of satisfaction when they sit down to eat because they helped make it happen.

For that matter, get everyone involved in cleanup–The big bonus here is that if each person chips in the cleanup will go way faster. Some folks should clear the table, others do the rinsing or washing, and others still on hand to dry the clunky things that won’t fit in the dishwasher (or if there’s no dishwasher, stuff in general). There’s nothing about being female that makes them better at cleaning, and this way, the boys and men in the group will have less justification for begging off of future housekeeping tasks. Nobody should be allowed to take out the garbage and call it a day.

Do something as a group afterward where everyone can participate equally–Card games are good for this. Once the meal has been cleared and the dishes washed, why not play a game of poker or hearts or Uno? The basic Wii sports game is good too for not reinforcing sexist notions of body ideals (like in first person shooter games) or an overly competitive atmosphere. Get people to interact with each other instead of the monitor or television screen. Maybe steer clear of Risk, unless three-hour-long family fights are your idea of a good time (Hint: don’t try to take Europe until the end).

Don’t put so much emphasis on wearing gender-specific clothes as fancy wear–There are girls out there who insist for 6 years that all of their clothes be pink, but for the other female-assigned youth out there who prefer knockabout pants and shirts, Thanksgiving dinner doesn’t have to be a power struggle over the dress you want her to wear. I’m pretty sure I’m heading into an era where clean clothing will be acceptable clothing, so I hopefully won’t be arguing with Emile about which articles make it the most clear to strangers and relatives that’s he’s totally and unarguably a boy child. Outfits can be appropriate for supper without being all about pink and blue and our gender identity. (This from a former teenager with a penchant for sweater vests.)

Leave the sexism out of the dinner speeches–I’ve heard stories from friends about the drunk uncle who stands up, glass in hand, and thanks the womenfolk for the great meal they’ve provided and let the eating be over soon so he can get back to the football game. Drunk uncles of the United States, you’re just embarrassing yourselves. Sit down, eat your food, give a simple thanks if you must. But let the Thanksgivings past be the final resting place for those archaic ideas about gender. And enjoy the pie.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

 

How sick must a pregnant woman be in Ireland for her doctor to say her life is at risk?

Reblogged from Dr. Jen Gunter:

While a full analysis of the tragic case of Savita Halappanavar’s death from sepsis at 17 weeks in her pregnancy is not possible without access to her medical records, there is a key piece of information provided by her husband that supports his claim that a termination was not allowed or was delayed because of the law. It is the fact that…

Read more… 491 more words

I nearly always find questions of degree helpful in breaking down reductive arguments, and Dr. Gunter does it very well in this article on the woman who died last month in Ireland when doctors refused her an abortion.

Remembering Our Dead, Part 14

A couple of years ago I wrote that I wanted to move on from the remembering our dead and feeling like I was always mourning as a transgender person. I wasn’t attempting to ignore death or suffering, or our collective pain, but I wondered aloud about the consequences of having our most notable event be our public grief. There are specific deaths that haunt me, like the violent ends of Tyra Hunter in Washington, DC, and Gwen Araujo in California, where my sadness crops up again and again whenever I start thinking about the ease with which people murder my trans sisters. Perhaps however it’s the aggregate of shortened lives, the headlines in alternative media that declare that in 2012, 265 transsexuals–mostly trans women–have died. Or maybe it’s when my brain starts a painful calculation of how many more of us were lost to drug addiction, or medical negligence, or due to homelessness, maybe that’s when I consider screaming. In a culture that so often vaunts itself as “pro-life,” transgender people are cleanly marked as less than. Otherwise, where is our national outrage? Even young gay men have their celebrity champion against bullying and the damage bullies wreak.

It feels like too much, a lot of the time. But in my next breath I need to acknowledge my middle class status, privilege of whiteness, and the reality that I am mostly safe and definitely supported by the community at large where I live, despite my openness as a trans man. If I am ready to push past the Transgender Day of Remembrance, I’m leaving it to those more vulnerable than me to keep the mantle held high. Yes, I’ve mourned the losses of my chosen family since I came out as queer in 1991–to AIDS, to self-loathing, to fear, to violence, to chemical dependence–but I can’t walk away from bringing these atrocities to light, to larger audiences.

I’m sorry I said I wanted to focus on happier moments. I do live for the sunrise. My sense of humor is finely honed and always ready for use. But eight years in to my transition, through the bleakest moments, I will take time tomorrow to remember. My small town has never heard of TDOR, and probably wouldn’t know what to do with it if anyone stood outside at dusk with a lit candle. But I’ll remember, and try to do justice to the community in my own way.

That said, there is life after the vigils. With the presidential election a scant two weeks past–a fortnight!–I turn my attention to the last Obama administration, and I wonder:

Will we finally get health care reform to improve the lives of gender nonconforming people?
Will we see any reform for prisoner care so that transgender individuals who are incarcerated aren’t subject to isolation or housing with the wrong gender?
Will more jurisdictions protect transgender people from discrimination? Will Congress?
Will we see more work training programs for transgender people? More educational support for trans youth who are so often bullied out of school?
Will more homeless shelters provide accommodations for transfolk, instead of telling them to go away?

Will our allies coalesce around transgender issues and needs and call their elected Representatives and Senators that these developments are important to them? Will they go to local TDOR events and be visible beacons of support?

I put myself out there because these are my people, my friends, my chosen family. I mentor, I whine, I write, I try to make people laugh, I volunteer my time, I bake. Whatever your skills are, make them available to others, please. Remembering our lost ones is so important, but I would love to see a smaller list on display next year, and the year after that.

I promise, I am no one special. I’m not particularly fit or smart or compassionate. I get just as annoyed at drivers on the road as the next person. If I can push myself to make a positive difference, so can most other people. If the political climate insists on divisive rhetoric, we needn’t care–be here for the ones asking for help, be a steady hand to the neighborhood. Go to a community meeting, even if you only like some of the other folks in the room. Skip reading hatemongering blogs, and spend that time getting proactive for the transgender people you know (or don’t know yet). Read our books, buy our art, tell your friends, tell your church, tell your parents.

Laugh with us and cry with us, and be human with us. And yes, please remember us.

The Monsters that Eat Motivation

[image error]If only writing were just about writing. If only the time we could dedicate to delicious production would fall into our laps and procreate making oodles of more writing time that we could carry around like a jar of marbles. But barriers to our own prolificacy are real, and grotesque, and numerous. They’re sneaky buggers, shutting us down even when we’ve established a groove, or are in mad love with our story, or if this is the only day of the week where we can carve a new canal into the manuscript. There be monsters here, in the world, with the best of intentions of a writer’s project their preferred fare. To defend oneself I have cobbled a list of such wickedness in the hopes that we all can identify them more quickly and banish them back to their lairs.

General self-doubt–Ah, the pernicious beast, this one! It loves to creep up at the worst hours, especially as writers are sitting down to their keyboards. You can’t do this, it whispers. You’re not good enough. Leave the writing to the “real” writers. What a mean message, because it has the power to unravel confidence in many areas beyond writing talent itself. The best defense against this monster is to find distractions, a.k.a. do something that makes you feel good. Your favorite music to set the writing mood, enough sleep each night, a quick walk to generate endorphins, anything. In the case of last defense, tell the monster to go away. Seriously. I am evidence that this can work. I suggested a long, around-the-world vacation for my inner critic, and it really did go away.

Procrastination–I’m sure you’ve got other things to do beyond banging through 1,500 words in the next hour. Procrastination is sticky like that, giving writers all kinds of reasons to defer actual writing. It sounds reasonable to do another load of laundry or spend an afternoon running errands, but in aggregate these concerns trample over momentum because they break up one’s focus until all one has left is a scattershot strategy for writing. And trying to remember who is whom, where the last scene in the diner happened, or which plot twist was introduced 30 pages earlier is a real draft-killer, because they all take away from being in the story and getting more words into the text. Procrastination also lends itself to increasingly dire consequences: put off writing long enough and you’ll stop caring about those characters and their tales. And that is a horrible fate for a story. To defend against this species of awful, get organized. Pull out your calendar and a machete and hack away until you have reserved writing time and opportunities to get all of your other tasks managed. If that means making a huge dinner on Sunday that frees up time on Monday or Tuesday, great. If the kids need to go to soccer practice, set up a carpool so that you have writing time when it’s not your turn to play ferrymaster. If you’re easily interrupted at home, write somewhere else. I’m a fan of public libraries and coffee houses, but that’s just me.

Overextension–So many projects, so little room in the schedule. If you sit down and don’t know whether to work on your humor book about Reno, the ghost story featuring Alexander Hamilton, or the six short stories in some stage of edit, then your lack of focus may be hurting your productivity. Agents and editors will eventually have to vouch for your project above others if they decide to pick it up, so it helps your manuscript if you can identify a priority right now. Sure, you love them all. This isn’t the animal shelter, though–they’ll all be here waiting for you, patiently, when it’s their turn. It can be healthy, writing-wise, to have a few projects going on at once, yes. Some weekends I set aside just for short work, or blog articles. But when you’re staring at the computer not sure what to work on next, and wind up playing Gems with Friends for 90 minutes, then it’s a red flag to shorten your short list of projects. To defend yourself, write up everything you have in draft form that you could conceivably prioritize in the next 6 months, and winnow it down to 3 items. That’s it. Six months isn’t long to wait on the other things, really. But you need to get serious with one manuscript that you can push forward, and the others will come. It may also help to set aside some notebooking/back story time so that you can continue thinking about other ideas even if they’re not on the “write now” list. Creative juices what they are, sketching out ideas is always fun, often inspiring, and usually leads to more creativity in the future.

Jealousy of other writers/books/success stories–We like to think we’re terrific people, what with our interesting takes on the world and our talented ability with words, but most if not all of us suffer from jealousy or envy at some point. Those people out there writing and publishing books that are worse than your manuscript? They struggled with the industry, too. They built their platforms, received rejection letters, or possibly cried over their insecurities. What do you know of it? Jealousy is particularly evil because it takes away your own autonomy if you let it hang around long enough. The evil creature of jealousy will convince you that your autonomy is just a figment of your imagination. It’s the publishing industry that doesn’t care about you. It’s the awfulness of literary agents who ignore your value. It’s the poverty of readership in the US that keeps you from success. These are all lies. Write well enough, find an idea good enough, tell the story interestingly enough, be different and professional enough, and you will get published. I’ve heard stories about people rejected for ten years or more, 14 manuscripts written or more, before anyone deigned to publish them. If they were envious of every other writer out there, well, let’s just say that most successful writers focus on their work and not the merits of the other 1.5 million books that come onto the market each year. So to keep this monster away, get off the Internet and keep the Poets & Writers magazine in the next room from where you’re writing. Give yourself isolated writing time and you’ll feel good about your progress instead of miserable that some spin off of a bad novel series is getting fantastic press.

Be aware of your emotions around writing. If you’re starting to sound like a ranting lunatic, find a hobby to master. Yodeling. Fishing. Kickboxing. Nothing hinders us more than a lack of perspective, which in a way, is what spawns all of these monsters. It was love that brought you to writing, so do your best to keep your affection for writing as your main motivator. It’s the best defense out there.

What We Talk About When We Talk About Revisions

National Novel Writing Month is upon us, and whether or not we’re keeping up with our word count, we probably keep hearing the advice to put all edits aside and just lay down the first draft. This is good advice, because 50,000 words is impossible to achieve if the writer is focusing on perfecting the first 2,500. And yet people may not know what we mean by revisions or edits. How will we know when to start editing? More importantly, how will we know when to stop?

The answer to the first question is relatively easy–when the first draft (what I like to call “pass through”) is done. And by “done,” I mean every scene that needs to be in the document is written. I point out the scene inclusion because when I’m writing my first draft I often put in place holders like this:

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So when those are all filled in I mark it as ready for editing. Revisions begin as soon as I’m ready, in the next minute, a few hours later, or after a break if I think I need one. Generally I jump right back in after a coffee, because I’m not fond of getting back up to speed on a book; I’d rather stay swimming in the characters, storyline, and themes. Before edits can begin though, I need to think about what my goals are for the second through twentieth pass throughs. Yes, twentieth. Revisions are the real work of writing, as the first draft is the feel good phase. This is the heavy lifting, but look at it this way: you spent this much time building up momentum, you can’t let the project crash and burn now.

At least that’s what I tell myself.

There are different levels of edits, namely:

Developmental editing–This answers the questions about whether the book fits the audience, if the story sounds too much like a competitor book, if the project is flat or not nuanced enough to be sellable

Substantive editing–This focuses on the substance of the manuscript, including the strength and interestingness of the characters, the believability of the plot, the pacing and mechanics (or seamlessness) of the writing, story and chapter structure, and use of dialogue and description

Copyediting (also called line editing)–Here we’re talking about removing egregious errors from the text, examining word choices at the line and paragraph level, ensuring consistency (character names, language use, etc.), and using a consistent style sheet

Proofreading–This is the last editing type to be run against the manuscript, in that it looks to remove any remaining errors from the text and checks against earlier edits to ensure all of the changes called for by the editor have been made.

To be sure, writers spend most of their time in the glut of substantive editing. We are working to improve the story, make it more real, make it extraordinary. I used to linger too long on jokes, and I still feel the need to overwrite on humor, but I let myself prattle on in the first draft and in revision I pull out my machete to hack away at the extraneous stuff. I delete whole characters, merge others, and tell myself I’m not a vicious person even though I removed the universe from my pretend people. I take out the list of themes I thought I’d be writing about in the manuscript, and hold them back up against each successive draft, amending the list as it reflects each new reality. I go over dialogue again and again, pinpointing language differences between characters and speaking it out loud (this is a little funnier when one is writing in a public place). If I see a typo of course I’ll fix it, but I don’t really worry about egregious errors until I’m very late in the process, say after the fourteenth draft or so.

Well, maybe that’s misleading of me to say. As a former editor, I spot a lot of typos. I’m sure other editors would cringe at me because there are still many peppered through the text as they look at my manuscript. But whatever, folks, I cleaned up 80 percent of my junk, I swear.

With regard to questions of pacing, I like to take flash cards (or an Excel spreadsheet, whatever floats your boat) and draw up the list of scenes, even if I mapped them out before writing, because well, things have a way of creeping around and shifting. On each card, I list:

The CHARACTERS–who are they, and what are their motivations

The SETTING–the name of the place they inhabit

The ACTION–what events occur during only this scene

The OUTCOME–what new development transpired

Are there “duplicate” scenes I can trash? In action-based stories, are there enough pauses for the reader? In reflective texts, is there enough movement? If I can’t identify a development, do I need this scene? Is this the best setting for this scene and this action? Has the same action occurred multiple times? Does the outcome move the plot forward? Do I want to change any of the four elements?

Not everyone wants to take as comprehensive or process-driven a method for revisions as I do, but I really loathe it when an agent or editor comes to me and says they love the book except, and the “except” is something I should have spotted in revision. Talk about frustrating. So if I can parse through my manuscript and get it as close to perfect as I myself can make it, then I’m satisfied when someone disagrees with me on plot or substance.

Now then, it’s only November 11, so don’t worry about any of these revision things. You’ve dallied long enough just reading this. Go write. Write with abandon. Full speed ahead. If you have a question for edits later jot it down in a notebook or as a comment in the text, but keep pressing forward. December 1 will roll around at the same rate whether you insist on writing now or get stuck in concern over one fiddly little sentence.

Xenaspeed, dear writer.

Photo credit: Narisa Spaulding on Flickr

The Most Exciting Aspects of the 2012 Election

While there are several House races and ballot initiatives still being counted, the big news today is that President Obama was reelected in a decisive victory over Mitt Romney last night. (Note to self: Always have a concession speech on hand so people don’t think you’re a spoiled jackass.) In addition to the troubling developments that came out of this election cycle, there were many highlights and exciting moments that will affect us as an electorate for some time. Again, in no particular order:

The women’s, Latino, and African American votes determined the presidential winner—Clear majorities from each group voted for the Democratic side of the ticket, setting the pundits abuzz over whether the increasing conservative of the GOP pushed them away. Of course the opposite could be true: Democrats made pains to express their support of “everyday” Americans, the “47 percent” and the middle class. While the old school messages about workers and unions were not as present as in elections past, the point about supporting the auto industry served as a good proxy into the same target demographic, and exit polls showed that Obama’s funding of the auto bailout brought over working class white voters to vote for him in Ohio, Wisconsin, and Michigan. But outside of this issue in these limited states, it was the turnout of women and people of color who felt their interests were on the line who made the difference. 

Women made big gains into Congress—So far 20 women make up the next United States Senate, the largest number of women in that chamber of the legislature ever. Some of these new senators, like Tammy Baldwin and Elizabeth Warren, are take-no-prisoners progressives, who will likely be mentored by Senate veteran Barbara Mikulski. I can only hope that their presence (and the resounding results from female voters) will help steer Congress away from some of the more extreme positions against reproductive rights. Women still are nowhere near parity with their percentage of the population, but 2012 is another steady step toward more female inclusion in the ranks of elected officials. And LGBT candidates across the country did fairly well in their races, too.

Same-sex marriage is much closer to a mainstream mentality in America—Three states had ballot initiatives to add same-sex marriage rights (Maine, Maryland, and Washington) and the measure passed in all of them. This is the first time that marriage equality passed when put to a vote–the states with same-sex marriage before this acquired it through their legislatures or the court system. Minnesota also refused to amend their state constitution to ban same-sex marriage, meaning that the National Organization for Marriage, the group organized to oppose marriage equality, lost millions of dollars and all of its contests this year. It has only been 8 years since anti-marriage equality initiatives and amendments brought out flocks of people to the polls, taking down John Kerry’s bid in the process. Eight years is not a generation, certainly, but younger voters who are overwhelmingly supportive of the issue have made a big difference in this election for the right to marry.

Puerto Rico made clear that it wants to be the next State—For the first time residents of Puerto Rico affirmed that they want to formally become the 51st state, voting in a non-binding referendum that would still take an act of Congress to make it reality. Residents haven’t voted for this distinction before, which would give them a real vote in the House and two in the Senate, and which could pave the way for improved infrastructure and more money to the island. That said, it’s up to Congress to act on any measure that would make Puerto Ricans full citizens, and with control still in the hands of the Republican Party, that isn’t likely, unless the GOP leadership decides it could be a means of capturing some more votes from this community in future elections.

Citizens United didn’t throw the election for big money—Between Super PACs, candidates’s committees, and the political parties, more than six billion dollars flowed into this election. If people worried that the Citizens United ruling would shift the results, those worries dissipated as the exit polls came back and the ballots were tabulated. Corporations as people somehow became the garrulous, halitosis-ridden smartass guy that nobody listens to for real advice. Although I argued yesterday that their funding of negative ads distracted many races from centering around the important issues, that distraction did not detract from the electorate’s understanding of their priorities or discourage them from voting for their candidate.

The media picked up the big election story as a mandate from America for politicians to work together—I recognize that this mood—part scolding, part ebullient—may not last into next week. But at least for now, the majority and minority party political leaders in both chambers of Congress are talking about coming together. Yes, Mitch McConnell set it up as the President coming halfway, not his own party, but compromise as a concept was not presented as an impossibility, which it certainly has been since the health care reform debates. The GOP will likely not want to look like it’s a slinking dog with its tail between its legs, but leaders are talking openly about moving past the stubbornness of Tea Party ideologues. And if the extreme conservative wing has been relegated back to the margins, it will be a marked improvement for the country.

UPDATE: I blame a frenetic day today for the notable absence of the most satisfying aspect of the 2012 election, which is this:

Next up after the lame duck session: entitlement programs and the fiscal cliff. This will be the first big test of the new Congress. Fingers crossed.

The Most Troubling Aspects of the 2012 Election

8:15a.m., Pacific Standard Time on November 6, and it feels like this election started two decades ago. Finally we’re arrived at Election Day. Tomorrow we won’t have to sit through more attack ads blowing up our enjoyment of The Walking Dead or Leverage. I will deeply appreciate Wednesday for that, even if the country isn’t in agreement on who won or if the news cycle leads with which candidates are suing which other candidates for a recount. The dust won’t have settled on much of what Americans will vote for today, but even now, with the polls open and people queuing up for their moment with a ballot, there are a few issues brought up by the 2012 election. And some of them are disturbing. In no particular order:

The absence of medical expertise to inform laws that affect reproductive health, women’s health, and abortion—From Representative Steve King, candidates Todd Akin and Richard Mourdock, and carved into the Republican Party Platform came many moments of presumption and imagination about how human bodies function and what role God plays in conception or the biological prevention of conception. Sure, pro-choice advocates have fumed at disingenuous statements around medical care before and it’s not new that anyone would worry that conservative, ill-informed men feel free to write laws with no or misleading medical evidence taken into account. But this election cycle from the primary through the general election, and woven through many of the state races for Congress we saw wave after wave of misogyny and hate, directed at anyone with a uterus. The fight against women was multi-faceted, repeatedly hitting on access to contraception, defunding the “antiChrist” that is Planned Parenthood, attempts to install “personhood” legislation, demonizing rape survivors who chose to terminate a resulting pregnancy, inventing new restrictions on abortion—even to save the life of the mother—and on and on. That the rhetoric around these issues was so extreme and so consistently present throughout the range of races across the country speaks to a concerted effort to find new ways to control the domain of debate and the outcome.

The obsession with individual voter fraud—Since the 2010 midterm elections, several states have drafted new laws to require a photo ID as a barrier against voter fraud, and despite evidence that individuals pretending to be a valid voter almost never occurs in America. This focus on “anti-fraud” legislation has all but pushed out conversations about making voting more fair or more consistent—consider that each state and the District of Columbia create their own ballots, instead of us all using a federal ballot for the President and Congress races—or on validating electronic votes to make sure the counting software is working correctly and accurately. There also are several states in which mass voter disenfranchisement has occurred in past elections and those places deserve further reflection, but for the 2012 election cycle, the news is focused mainly on whether these new voter ID laws are working and what effect they may have on the results. Immigrant voters, the elderly who sometimes have trouble accessing the supporting documents that they need to get a photo ID, transfolk who don’t look like their ID anymore or who may have changed their legal name, all face new barriers to voting, and active harrassment from groups organized for such a purpose.

[image error]The trouble with Facebook—To prepare for their initial public offering, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced a shift in users’ profiles, a.k.a. the timeline profile. During the summer changes were also made to the news feed, filtering out some friends whose statuses no longer popped up and relaying others with more frequency. This has had the effect of artificially removing the diversity of opinions present among any one account’s friend set, leading to a kind of virtual confirmation bias. Why see the nuances in the position of the other side when you can scroll through miles of Willy Wonka memes that reinforce your own beliefs? By hiding friends or relatives we disagree with we each can create a universe that simply echoes our vision, in effect continuing the political polarization that has grown in strength since the fight in 2000 over the Florida recount and the Supreme Court ruling. This is repeated on other social networking sites like Twitter but no service has as many users as Facebook and no other site takes the pains FB does to manipulate what content is delivered to which profile accounts.

The piles of SuperPAC money that distract from issues—It’s been repeated these last few presidential election cycles that more money was spent in “this” election than in any previous, but 2012 is notable because the gloves have come off of election funding regulations with the Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission ruling. Now advocacy groups as well as corporations are allowed to spend unparalleled money schlocking misinformation about the candidates that would be pulled from the air were these ads regulated by the laws for advertising. Not only do many of the SuperPAC groups obfuscate where their money comes from, with little accountability for their content they have largely been devoid of substance and heavy on negative baiting or name-calling. But there is one thin silver lining, in that there is evidence to show that most Americans didn’t vote based on negative ads they saw, and they largely tuned them out. Of the nearly 65,000 political ads shown in Ohio this election season human beings can’t have watched each time with careful attention. But election results will serve as data for political operatives to mine until the next set of midterm elections in 2014; if campaign managers believe SuperPAC groups help them, we will see more flashy commercials about corruption, unpaid parking bills, bad budget plans, and the like, instead of a discussion about issues of economy, job growth, healthcare, and support for seniors and immigrants.

Nate Silver’s very popular blog for The New York Times has Obama an almost sure win in the Electoral College tonight, even though the popular vote is the closest since political operatives counted such things. Whatever the outcome the spin makers will descend on the results almost immediately, and the invective about socialists, rednecks, gun lovers, hurricane-watchers, know-nothings, and elitists will continue. At some point Congress will return to the Hill and need to hash out a federal budget. No matter what was said or done in this election—binders full of women, fears about Mexicans stealing jobs nobody else wants, insistence that the US is becoming a secret Muslim nation—at some point we need to come together as Americans, unless we want to begin the next election cycle on November 8, 2012.

I can’t be the only one here who needs a break from the campaigning.