Everett Maroon's Blog, page 19

NaNoWriMo for Everyone

This is reblogged from amwriting.com, a truly wonderful site for writers and writing.

NaNoWriMo, National Novel Writing Month, is a month-long extravaganza where writers push through as many words as possible toward a 50,000-word goal. Sounds simple, and yet there are thick, twisted layers of mystery surrounding NaNoWriMo, usually stemming from some consternation that the writing process will be attacked by zombies. No wait. Not zombies. By writer’s block. That’s it, yes. Fifty thousand words feel insurmountable, impossible to achieve in 30 days. NaNoWriMo asks us to take a deep breath and jump in to our stories, even when they stop and start in mad fits, or run into brick, comical walls, or flick off the lights and force us to quandry wander. NaNo is a challenge, it’s true, but it’s also an experiment of will, a daily game of chicken against our fluctuating sense of authenticity as writers, and it’s up to us to stand firm in the face of whatever literary metaphor for irresistible force comes our way.

Here it is, Day 1 of NaNoWriMo. Heck, half of planet Earth has been typing away in earnest while we Western Hemisphere people are just sitting down with a warm mug of something and a working keyboard. This brings me to my first piece of advice, having gone through NaNo some eight or nine times now. NO EXCUSES. The road to a poor NaNo experience–and thus, everlasting sadness–is paved with excuses. I don’t have enough time. I’ll catch up next week. It was a bad idea anyway. I’m not good at this. Excuses almost never motivate good writing and almost always destroy process. So the moment you feel an excuse bubbling to the surface, shut it down with that rule number one: NO EXCUSES. Or to pull from a well known narrative–The first rule of NaNoWriMo Club is no excuses.

Truly, NaNoWriMo is for everyone. I say that because the contest doesn’t care if this is your first book project or if you’re a ten-time NaNo veteran. It holds out the same goal and the same exhilaration at winning on November 30. Now then, those differences in writing experience matter because they will push us to focus on our own points of import, and that is why we need to know what we’re gunning for at the outset. Today. Right now. Yes, I know you want to get hammering. But take a few minutes just to write down on a piece of sticky note paper, your top three goals. Do it now. I’ll wait.

*knee-slapping bouncy music*

Okay, great. Now put that aside and we’ll get back to your goals in a little bit.

Here then, are pep talks for breaking out of the writing contest gate, based on number of times you’ve attempted NaNo and number of wins:

First NaNoWriMo Ever (a.k.a. NaNo virgins)–Congratulations! You’re about to write a first draft of a novel! Right, it’s not a finished novel, and it won’t be on November 30. That’s a good thing, because I’ve just lowered the stakes for you! Act like it’s a good thing, come on. Focus on writing through each scene. If you want to plot out your novel first and then write, fine. If you have three characters in your head and you just want to go boom and write without an outline, do it. Something in between? Sure. There will be plenty of time in December and beyond to fiddle with the text and refine; your job this month is only to get the words into the manuscript. So go! Start typing and writing! See you at the finish line! Really the trick here for this group is to learn how to plow ahead. What kills the manuscripts of many a first-timer is doubt. Doubt about each sentence’s worth, about the prose not passing muster, about weak dialogue, and so on–don’t let this be you. I’m focusing on your getting through the first draft–or the first 50,000 words of the first draft–because that is how books get written. One page, one scene, one plot point at a time. The wordcrafting and attention to language and refinement of themes and character all comes later in revision. And revision is not what NaNoWriMo is about. Stick to your task at hand. And keep that sticky note on your monitor so you can give yourself a reality check on goals when you need it.

Writers with 2-5 NaNos under their belt (and zero wins)–Okay, I understand this NaNo thing seems daunting. Please recall that all writing is worth something, because all writing leads to better writing. You’re back again, you’re still interested and curious, and yes, it’s okay to return to a story that once held your attention, just as it’s totally fine to jump into something new. Writers “trunk” or set aside unfinished manuscripts all the time. It doesn’t make you not a writer to fail, it makes you a real writer. So this time around, tell yourself that the 2012 NaNoWriMo is doubt- and self criticism-free. You’re here to get through 50,000 words, not stall in the lane of crappy self-confidence. You need achievable goals on that sticky note. Make sure that one of the goals is about being good to yourself through the process, and then focus on the concrete. You’ll also do well to sign up for NaNo’s weekly pep talk email. And go on the site once in a while. See what others are writing and what they’re saying about their own work. Do whatever it is that keeps you charged up–great music, a fresh latte, a cat lying across your feet so you can’t get up, whatever. You need this win, and you deserve that fantastic accomplishment.

Writers with 2-5 NaNos (and 1 or more wins)–Every story is its own, and as we are largely reinvented people each year when we approach a new manuscript, it pays to give each NaNo contest its due. I’ve won NaNo a bunch of times and I’ve failed it, too. If you’re not all about the win per se (and you needn’t be), then set your own structure for the month. Maybe this is your own personal NaNoEdMo where you edit a manuscript through as many times as you can in one month. You can still have word and page goals if you work well with them. Or maybe you’re writing narrative nonfiction instead of a novel. Make NaNo your own this year and win it in a whole new way, unless of course, that next novel is burning a hole in your brain. Brain holes are never good, so get it out and onto the screen. Look at your stick note goals and smile, because chances are you’re going to meet them.

Writers with 5+ NaNos (and no wins)–Hey, stubborn gets the job done. Even Susan Lucci won eventually, so keep at it! Don’t know who Susan Lucci is? Doesn’t matter. You’ll do well to figure out what brought you down the last few times so you can move on this year. Maybe you need to pretend there’s no daily word count goal, or put some tape on your monitor where the counter sits. If you lost track of your characters, put them on some index cards and keep them face up on your desk. If you got bogged down in the always-present “showing versus telling” debate (hey, it happens) highlight all of the excessive telling as you go but keep plowing into new territory. Harping on one section because you’re unsure about it is not progress, not this month. Just highlight it as an issue and write the next scene. Or leave it there and write the scene again at the end of the week, after you’ve gotten more words down. I can’t say this enough–NaNoWriMo does not end in a finished novel. It ends with a first draft. It ends with the first 30 rotations of a fresh clay pot on the wheel, not the glazed and perfect piece of pottery. Don’t worry about finished pottery, or what happened in 2008 (it was a bad year for most of us), or if your whole idea is incredibly stupid. Nail down the scenes, and give yourself space to fall in love with your characters. Focus on your goals, the ones on your sticky note. Meet those and you’ll be well on your way to NaNo success.

Writers with 5+ NaNos (and 1 or more wins)–Why are you reading this? Get writing! And hey, mentor a few folks along the way, would you? Sign up for your local NaNo chapter and share your enthusiasm for storytelling.

Have a great writing month, folks!

Living out of a Powerless Refrigerator

The zombie apocalypse–I mean, Hurricane Sandy–in unfolding on the East Coast as of this writing. Although it is still a Category 1 storm, its barometric pressure usually supports a Category 4 rating, and it’s about to merge with another weather system the likes of which have only been seen in the clunker film The Day After Tomorrow.  When I was a small child, the very concept of hurricanes terrified me, what with all of their moisture and millibars and torrential winds and flying palm trees. Hurricanes on vacation were especially nuisance-some because no tropical postcard or tourist ad ever depicts a rainstorm. I’ve been on the school bus during Hurricane Gloria, ridden out hurricanes and tropical storms while at the beach in South Carolina and Delaware, survived a night in a tent during a tornado in south Jersey, and dug through two feet of snow after blizzards in Syracuse, New York.

I hate weather. I mean I admit that I’m not being fair. I don’t like the endless summer here in Walla Walla with one gorgeous sunny day after another for three months, especially as the heat ratchets up through August, peaking somewhere around 110 degrees. Rain once in a while is nice to remind us to take a moment with a cup of tea and a good book and give ourselves a rest. But now that it’s been raining here for two weeks I am itching for blue skies again. I’m never satisfied with the weather, and I get that I’m pretty much impossible to please.

Sometimes to add to my meteorological cynicism, the power goes out. Winds too vigorus? Behold the darkness. Flash floods destroying a power substation? Get used to real quiet without electrical humming. While in most of my power outage experience the lights were restored relatively quickly, sometimes there is just too much damage to get things back and running in the same day. So remember some simple rules about eating at home during your time off the grid (list from the Huff Post, augmented by me):

Check the temperature of both the fridge and freezer. Do this with a thermometer, not your elbow.


If you don’t have a way to read the temperature in the freezer, check each package. If the food contains water crystals, then it may still be safe.


Discard all perishable foods that have been kept in a fridge or freezer above 40 degrees for more than two hours, bacteria can multiply rapidly between 40 and 140 degrees. And the last thing we need right now is a zombie outbreak.


Discard any food that is not in a waterproof container if there’s a chance it came in contact with flood waters. Also discard wooden cutting boards, plastic utensils, baby bottle nipples and pacifiers if they may have been in contact with flood waters. Seriously, no baby bottle nipples soaked in flood waters, okay?


Wash all metal pans, ceramic plates and utensils that may have come into contact with flood waters with hot soapy water. Sanitize by boiling them in clean water or by immersing them for 15 minutes in a solution of 1 tablespoon of unscented, liquid chlorine bleach per gallon of drinking water.


Use only bottled water that has not been exposed to flood waters. If you don’t have bottle water, you can boil tap water for safe use. Otherwise, expect to become a zombie by midnight.


Never, ever, taste food to determine its safety–it could turn you into the walking undead.

Also, should you see zombies on the loose after the waters recede, get to the second floor of a safe building and close off the stairs, and you can figure out a plan from there. Stay safe, people!

OK, so, Lana Wachowski...

Reblogged from gudbuy t'jane:

Lana Wachowski, director of The Matrix films, recently got an award from US lobby group HRC (aka the Human Rights Campaign).

(Transcript of speech)

Some thoughts:

1. Her speech was lovely and all, but I can’t help but be a bit cynical about the HRC giving her an award when the HRC’s history is throwing trans people under the bus…

Read more… 208 more words

Aleisha says it all.

A Modest Proposal for Politicians

NOTE: This post is about sexual assault and pregnancy and stupid, stupid remarks from men.

Last summer, the otherwise unknown Todd Akin, running for the Senate in Misouri, said the following in an interview when asked why he doesn’t support abortion in the case of rape or incest:

“If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down.”

There was much snickering and frustration in the land after this sound bite, namely from people who find such nonsense revolting. Immediately progressives and pro-choice advocates slammed Akin, asking if that was how he felt in the cases of 9-year-old girls who get pregnant after sexual assault, and so on. Popular culture and news media aren’t exactly adept at communicating about horrific events like pregnant children, and so it was that for a time, worst case scenarios floated about social networking sites and cable television like confetti after a They Might Be Giants concert (or a political convention).

But looking at Mr. Akin’s statement, we see that he is not alone in holding such an extreme position, nor with this significant amount of conviction. Here are other statements about rape and pregnancy:

Physicians for Life’s web site – “Assault rape pregnancies are very rare.” [500 a year, by their estimate. Those women just need to carry those babies to term anyway.]

Paul Ryan – “I’ve always adopted the idea, the position, that the method of conception doesn’t change the definition of life.” [Asked why he does not support a rape exception, thus calling rape a method of conception.]

Sharon Barnes (Missouri Republican Party Committeewoman) – “Very few rapes result in pregnancy,” [adding that] “At that point, if God has chosen to bless this person with a life, you don’t kill it.”

Steve King (Iowa Representative) – “Well I just haven’t heard of that being a circumstance that’s been brought to me in any personal way and I’d be open to discussion about that subject matter.” [Asked about pregnancy from rape.]

Dear Mr. King: I think people know at this point not to bring any rape/pregnancy/reproductive rights issue to your attention in a personal way. Because apparently you would be total horse shit in helping them through it.

But hey, in this election cycle, there seems to be endless space and ability to add more completely unscientific, offensive commentary about women’s bodies, sexual assault, and abortion. And to digress for one second: why don’t these people ever talk about how awful sexual assault is and what their position is on dealing with trying to bring perpetrators to justice, the total disastrous statistics around convicting perpetrators, the lack of resources spent on educating men not to rape in the first place, or rehabilitate offenders? Nothing. Silence. Okay, back to our main program.

As I said, we’re always ready for more ridiculous statements about rape and pregnancy, so here’s the quote of the week:

Richard Mourdock, running for the US Senate in Indiana, said in a debate yesterday:

I struggled with it myself for a long time, but I came to realize life is that gift from God. And I think even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape, that it is something that God intended to happen.

Hear this, people. God is your rapist. No, really. That’s what he said.

I think it’s time to shut this all down. If Senate and House candidates, and people running to be the next POTUS are going to lead from the margins of religion, and reinvent the laws of physics and biology and call a small band of crackpot doctors “scientific evidence,” then I think we at least should have a means of measuring how stupid and uninformed and spiritually crazy they are before we cast our votes. Hey, the GOP has lined up behind Grover Norquist, a man who has never been elected to any office of any kind, in order to show how spectacularly they can reinvent decades of economics theory and pretend that by never taxing anyone, the government and economy will do just marvelously.

So how about this? Let’s ask all candidates to take a simple science test. They were all for science education testing as part of No Child Left Behind, remember. This will be perfect. Here are some sample science test questions:

Earth gets most of its light from:

a) the Sun

b) the stars

c) the Moon

d) a big bunch of mirrors glued together by small space children

Which statement is an inference?

(1) A thermometer shows that the air temperature is 56°F.

(2) A mineral sample of galena produced a  gray-black streak when tested.

(3) Based on previous data, ten hurricanes may occur in the year 2013.

(4) A pregnant woman is a sign from God to remember life is sacred.

The sum of all chemical reactions that take place within an organism is known as

A) evolution

B) circulation

C) metabolism

D) God’s plan

A bright object with a long tail of glowing gases is in orbit around the Sun. This object is most likely

(1) a planet (3) an asteroid

(2) Donald Trump (4) a comet

We can then rank our political candidates by score, and communicate those scores to the electorate. And then maybe we’ll only elect people who will know what the hell to vote for *cough cough jobs bill cough cough* when they show up on Capitol Hill.

Two more weeks, folks. Two more weeks.

An Open Letter to Ann Coulter

Reblogged from The World of Special Olympics:

John Franklin Stephens

The following is a guest post in the form of an open letter from Special Olympics athlete and global messenger John Franklin Stephens to Ann Coulter after this tweet during last night’s Presidential debate.

Dear Ann Coulter,

Come on Ms. Coulter, you aren’t dumb and you aren’t shallow.  So why are you continually using a word like the R-word as an insult?

Read more… 345 more words

Someone just made Ann Coulter look even smaller than she is.

Recapping Last Night’s Debate

While we’re all chuckling at the “binder full of women” jokes, I’d like to look at a few other moments from last night, some of which I thought were powerful and some which troubled me. After a night of slumber, my brain has drawn these conclusions, presented in no particular order:

The town hall format is not good for showing the candidates’s aggression, but it makes for exciting TV—Was Mitt about to grapple with the President? It looked like that from the vantage point of my sofa, on at least two occasions. The film stills make it look like they’re blessing each other or practicing their “sit down” drills for their dogs. Turns out, podiums make good fences.

Someone told Barack Obama to keep his back turned on Romney—I lost count of the number of times that the President would respond to his challenger while facing the opposite direction from him. And he kept his eye contact to a minimum. I don’t know if David Axelrod’s new schtick is to act all above the contender, but Obama brought out the cool shoulder last night something fierce.

Mitt missed the mark every time he blew his own horn about stuff he had to do—I may have gasped a little when Romney remarked that he’d been a missionary for his church. Of course he had; every man in the Mormon faith has to complete a 2-year mission in order to become an elder. It’s not like the governor went above and beyond. Also regarding his sudden realization that there were no women in his governor’s administration; I’m sure a concerned inner circle friend pointed this out to him. Also there are laws for public administrations, regarding equal opportunity, hiring, and representation, that Mitt needed to comply with. What would have been more on point with the woman’s question posed to him would have been a mention of him asking for more female representation while he was running Bain Capital. But somehow 25 years of his oft-touted private work experience drifted by without him questioning how many women he was mentoring and promoting. Also, folks are saying today that Mr. Romney’s story is a fabrication.

The questions, and who asked them, reinforced problematic ideas about who gets to represent minority groups/interests, and what counts for “the general public”—A Latina woman asked about immigration policy and reform. A young white man asked about his career chances after college. An African American man asked why his life didn’t seem better 4 years after voting for Obama. A 30-something white woman asked about equal pay for equal work. In faithfully correlating the identity group with the question of interest, the debate gave us a caricature of issues and relegated those issues only to the subpopulation asking about them. As if everyone doesn’t benefit from an economy that prioritizes fairness in compensation for all workers? Or that we don’t all get the fruits of immigrant labor? Candy and the organizers could have worked against this idea that we are a melting pot of special interests, but that opportunity was missed.

Mr. Romney’s insistence on rules is extremely unpresidential—At multiple points last night, Mitt shouted that he was supposed to get to respond, which was a misunderstanding of the town hall format’s rules. He came off like a petulant, spoiled child while Barack basked in his cool cucumber persona. The elephant in the room of most conversations about what the presidency entails is this: presidents often work outside of rules. The drone attacks in Pakistan—where are the rules on those? Quietly sending guns to Mexico? Calling for executive privilege to hide one’s energy policy? Presidential administrations breathe rules and bust rules every minute. Romney may be familiar with seeing himself as above the rules, but he’s not supposed to be so frank about it.

Mr. Obama learned first hand that Romney breaks under pressure—Expect the President to push at Romney at least as hard in the last debate, which will focus on foreign policy. Obama now has foreign affairs experience under his belt, and Romney has a series of gaffes, one of which we got to spend quality time with in the debate last night. Look, being the first to shout “terrorism” is not a hallmark of strong leadership, but Mitt also got embarrassed by his incorrect insistence that the President didn’t talk about the Libyan attack as terrorism until two weeks after the event. “Look at the transcript,” said Obama, who acted a bit like a seasoned litigator instead of the leader of the free world. But he did win the point on what he’d said and when, and he saw that Mitt does not perform well when he feels cornered. Expect Obama to try cornering Romney a lot next Monday.

There was no real plan for the future that seems tenable or concrete—I’d hoped after the first presidential debate two weeks ago that we would get more details from these men on domestic policy agendas or plans, but we got instead marriage initiatives to stem gun violence and broad-based energy policy. No real details were presented, except as attacks on why the other guy’s plan can’t work. Voters choose a party, sure, but they also want to know what that party leader plans to do for their interests. What we really don’t want to think is that we’re voting for a guy who just wants to sit in the Oval Office. There are West Wings tours for that crap. But with each question that was posed with real feeling by Alfred Q. Public, we heard a lot of rhetoric and scant little detail. How will you help me find a job? We’ll pass a jobs bill! How will you help me after four years of me struggling? I got us out of Iraq! These questions all asked the candidates to describe their vision for the US going forward, and they never painted it out for us.

Mitt lost a huge chunk of his stump speech last night—Toward the end of the debate, as many of us were going glassy-eyed at the screen, Mitt made the very true statement of “Government doesn’t create jobs.” I blinked. Did he really say that? Yes, he did! I mean, it’s a correct analysis. Private business makes jobs. Certainly the White House can advocate for a jobs bill or for stimulus money that includes hiring people to fix bridges (which we sorely need, given the dilapidated state of our bridges) and such, but it can’t directly make jobs happen. But Mitt has been campaigning on the President’s inability to create jobs for like, the last 15 months. It’s been a part of nearly every campaign stop, because it sounds great and resonates with people. Truth, schmuth, am I right? But in making the statement that government doesn’t create jobs, Mitt took away a central piece of his argument about why people should vote for him instead of Obama. Oops.

The image of the two candidates just after the debate says it all:

The Rise and Fall of TV Commitment

This originally appeared on I Fry Mine in Butter in 2010.

In a world where there were three television networks, people watched them.

Here are a few finale viewing numbers from years past:

M*A*S*H, 1983: 105.9 million viewers

Roots (mini-series), 1977: 36.38 million households

Cheers, 1993: 80.4 million viewers

Friends, 2004: 52.5 millions viewers

The Cosby Show, 1992: 44.4 million viewers

Last week, Lost’s series finale garnered 13.5 million viewers, and still it seemed like everyone and their neighbor had glued their eyes to their flatscreens. It pales in comparison to most Super Bowl games and any time Michael Jackson gave an interview. And it should be noted that the season 1 finale of Lost attracted more than 20 million viewers, so the show had definitely seen a decline of its viewership. But Nielsen numbers be damned, whatever happened to cult favorites?

Jericho, the terrible post-apocalyptic, conspiracy theorist’s daydream came back to television after a fan campaign roared its demands to the network, and got a whole 7 more episodes before it was canceled again.

So color me confused that FlashForward was canceled last week due to low ratings, even as it was at least as watchable—in my humble opinion—as V. And here’s where I get a little steamed: I know we’re going to be left hanging, forever. After I’ve dedicated significant attention to Charlie and Mark and Dmitri and Lloyd, to wrapping my brain around seeing things in the future that can’t have happened without seeing them in the future, and to remembering which agent is a double agent, which strings on Mark’s board lead where, and that we still don’t really know who D. Gibbons is. Even if some of the dialogue is stilted or some of the acting a bit forced and strident, I didn’t watch the show thinking “I bet they’re all in purgatory and waiting to die.” If I want to watch that crap I’ll rent Heaven Can Wait again. Ain’t nothing like a little Dyan Cannon screaming her guilty head off. Hell, I’d even watch The Heavenly Kid over again before I’d spend 5 years combing through Lost. (For the record, I gave up on the series after a few episodes into season 2.)

I’m glad I never watched Heroes, because NBC gave that the heave-ho without even attempting to tie up any loose ends, frustrating the hell out of viewers. It’s one thing to cancel a detective procedural like Numb3rs or Cold Case, because those narratives focus mainly on single episode story arcs, arcs over a few weeks, or maybe, like CSI, draw those story arcs out over one season. But shows that are centered around a convoluted, all-encompassing mystery can’t handle an abrupt end. Is it too much to ask that the writers have a quick wrap-up plan when that happens, or a couple of Webisodes up their sleeves in case the executive powers that be pull the plug? It actually makes me hesitant to watch these kinds of shows, and I love science fiction, hard-core mystery, and other thriller-type shows.

Think about how awful it would have been if the X-Files had ended in the middle of season 2 or 3, with no resolution. Not knowing the Cigarette Smoking Man’s identity would haunt me to this day.

 

I’m not sure what ratings or share broadcast networks are looking for these days, given that there are tons of cable channels, premium channels, and X-Box to split people’s interests. And I realize that reality television costs less, but my God are there some dogs out there pretending to be worth my time. I’m looking at you, Jerseylicious. Maybe scripted shows could just try to hang in there a little longer when they’ve asked for some audience investment? Or move them to a cable channel like Law and Order: Criminal Intent? What’s wrong with a minor league of shows to test them out, get some publicity going, before putting them on the broadcast 4 where expectations are higher? Why don’t television executives think about using the Web to support their series instead of just streaming episodes (which I deeply appreciate, thank you)?

One last example: Murder One had a good idea that didn’t pan out in viewership, to focus on one murder prosecution a season. Producers insisted audiences couldn’t hold their attention that long. I think people have shown that they can stick around now, for years and years and years. Please try this show out again, and for the love of Pete, bring back Stanley Tucci.

On the Road for an Unknown Writer’s Book Tour

The book tour is an endangered species, part of the soon-to-be archaic practice of publishers in getting publicity for top- and mid-list authors when their latest books hit the market. I remember book tours from the bookstore perspective, because I was once a book buyer and I coordinated readings up in Syracuse, New York. Stephen King, impeccably nice. Oliver Stone, not so nice. Mollie Katzen had lots of culinary tips, William Bennet was reserved, and Donna Shalala had a great booming laugh. For each of these events we ordered 30, 40, 75 copies of their tomes, and the lines stretched out of the store and into the student life building atrium. We’d put extra people on shift and listen to the cash registers ring with sales. It was something of an assembly line: customers waiting, picking up books, paying for books, getting books signed, out the door. A signing could last one or two hours before the interest petered out. We tried not to frown when people arrived with their own books or with books that had been released years earlier, because the authors were sure glad to see everyone. Some of the authors had requests up front or in their contracts that we had to fulfill, things like having sparkling water, or having a rival’s books tucked out of sight, and of course, of course, we were more than happy to oblige them.

When I do a reading, I count it as lucky if the store remembers I’m showing up that night. One reading had me and a few friends standing nervously on the sidewalk, the store dark and empty of staff, while I called my publicist. We were saved from reading on the street or walking away in sorrow when a random car with three store employees drove by us, wheeled around, and opened up the building. By the time I started reading in the quickly rearranged room, 15 people had shown up.

I’m on the lucky side of contemporary authorship because my book has interest for LGBT people, and well, I’m in that community. Instead of sticking just to bookstores I also have read at libraries, community centers, one men’s sex club, and at colleges. I’ve read for four people and spoken in front of 250, though I admit my average is a lot closer to 20. The geography I’ve hit has crossed the North American continent, in San Francisco, New York, Seattle, DC, and tiny Walla Walla. There are no long lines for me, no teetering tall stacks of my books to frame me and my greatness. And that’s okay, because I’ve grown to cherish my anonymity. I pack my own books when I head to a gig, I make sure that a portion of the event is about other people sharing their thoughts and opinions, as I firmly believe that trans people need to stop telling other trans people how to be. I exit every reading feeling like this book is more important and worthy than I am, and I’m proud it will have its own legacy.

But I have to face it, there is much about hitting the road and doing reading after reading that just plain sucks. I worry about making it to each destination on time, but I still have to select excerpts to read and get in my head space for being the best me I can bring to these places. I have to find the store or space, and sometimes they’re squirreled away in a nook with no sign on the door. I feel compelled to be gracious to the most annoying, selfish travelers as I make my transit, because what if one of them shows up at my reading? Unlikely, I know, but I’ve learned to expect the strange coincidence.

Last Thursday I bounced from a Q&A at the University of Maryland to that university’s “Queer Lunch,” and got lost on the way back to my rental car. Syracuse University, don’t get me wrong, is enormous, but the main campus for UM is its own small city. I finally found my intermediate sedan, complete with $25 parking ticket. Great. I have to sell two books to make that back. Writing is not, as people have wondered for years, a way to get rich. Rather, as someone once said, writing is a way to get poor slowly. I see that now.

Back to the District of Columbia I drove, to pick up Susanne and Emile and get a bit of a breather before my reading that night. Four years of being out of a daily city commute, and I was swearing not so quietly that the traffic had gotten much, much worse in DC since we’d relocated to Washington State. It just couldn’t have been this slow…could it? One hour and twenty minutes later I had reached Foggy Bottom, my frustration dissipating as soon as I saw my child’s goofy grin and coos of “Dada!” Hey, who doesn’t love Dada? Thirteen months old and he’s an art appreciator.

Then we tooled it to Shady Grove, where we were staying for a few days. I looked at the clock, calculated when I needed to leave again to get to my reading on time–and find parking–and figured I could rest for an hour. Which I did, with aplomb. I skeetered down I-270 and over to Petworth with 10 minutes before my start time. Assembled were 20 people, including old coworkers of mine who are mentioned in the memoir, my Aunt Suzy, and a few other friends. DC is friendly territory. The reading went well, and I declined a post-reading dinner because I only had enough energy to drive back to the apartment in Maryland, and crash.

The next day I met up with a friend for lunch, dragging my roller bag behind me. I kissed Susanne and Emile goodbye and headed the 8 blocks over to the Metro to catch the Amtrak to Philadelphia, where I had a reading at 5:30. Everything from the subway to the train to the hotel went exceedingly well, and then I sat down next to a stack of Tom of Finland books, waiting for people to show up.

Nobody came. Maybe it was the early start time, or the fact that two publications listed me as reading the night before by mistake, or that the folks I knew who would come to such a thing all were called out of town that weekend, or maybe Philadelphia just hates transgender memoirs. It’s true that I’ve never held Philly in the same esteem of New York City, and as I grew up in between both of the cities, it could be that Philly is just pissed at me. In any case I was at a party with no partygoers. I sat up straight, trying my best not to look like a complete loser. One store employee dryly told me that when Leslie Feinberg showed up to read from Stone Butch Blues, 3 people attended.

Was I supposed to make a funny joke? “Ze only got three more than me, hooray!” I just smiled and nodded, which I know is a cop-out, but seriously, what is someone supposed to say to that? It seemed to me that the store thus had a long history of crappy attendance, given that SBB came out in the 1990s. Or maybe we were just two data points on the extreme left edge, and everyone else has a great response. It didn’t really matter to me, but the store had gone out and purchased a couple dozen copies of my book. I signed several of them, and bought a couple other titles and thanked the manager for their support. And then I went to Chili’s and had suspicious-looking fajitas. It wasn’t in me at that point to seek out actual good food.

The next morning I headed back to the historic train station and rode to NYC, where I met up with the folks behind Topside Press. My sister and niece joined us, and we spent the day touring the Village and Chelsea, filling our stomachs with Indian food the likes of which I never get in Walla Walla. Twice that day Angela Davis and Alice Walker went by us, like it was no big deal. I pulled my roller bag to the side so they could pass, because hello, I refuse to be the jackass who trips Angela Davis and Alice Walker. (It would be a terrible turnabout for me, as I was one of Ms. Davis’s bodyguards when she came to Syracuse University to give a talk in 1991.)

The reading was a monthly event, with a group of five readers. Sixty people packed a small space at the top of a rickety elevator shaft. I can’t say enough about how excellent it feels in my bones to hear a room of 60 queermos laughing. Can we please do this more often? I’d brought eight books with me, and sold seven of them after the event. I rode back to Connecticut with my sister and niece–who oh my goddess is so grown up and savvy now–and slept for four hours. And then I took the commuter train to Grand Central Station (my favorite station in the world, sorry Union), grabbed a cab to 33rd and 7th Avenue, and pushed through my brain fog to figure out which of the two Bolt Buses I was supposed to board. I slept off and on during the 4-hour trip, catching only major milestones on the way: my hometown exit on the Jersey Turnpike, the Delaware Memorial Bridge, the Baltimore smoke stack, the signs for DC’s Beltway. My “tour” was over.

It’s nothing if not a strange beast, these readings and small gigs. I believe in promotion, and I hope that by continuing to stick my face into the public arena more people will discover my writing and maybe some of them will enjoy it and get something good out of it.

But one week later, I still just want a nap.

Guessing the Killer

I originally wrote this for I Fry Mine in Butter in 2010.

When I get a little afraid to admit just how many hours I’ve spent watching cop shows and courtroom dramas, I just add up all the hours spent reading, which is impossible, I suppose, and then I feel better. Because even loving popular culture the way I do, I still worry that what my elementary school teachers told me is true: TV will rot my brain.

Here I am, still intact in the higher functioning way. I must still have a few capable synapses. So since I’ve made it with all these years of television viewership under my belt, I’d like to spend a little time looking at one sliver of television narrative: the giveaway shot.

I want to give some due to the camera action that does what foreshadowing did for Mary Shelley. It’s usually less than a second, sometimes is accompanied by dialogue, but mostly not. I like to think it’s something TV picked up from Alfred Hitchcock, because he really started the quick cuts and shots that we have come to expect in suspenseful storytelling.Psycho gave us The Shower Scene, and nobody (and I mean nobody) had ever spliced together so many quick snips of film in one tight, 2-minute sequence before. It was shocking to audiences in 1960.

Okay, so we’re down with the idea of being able to see and register quick shots of the camera, we’ve been trained into it with 50+ years of cinema and television giving us this device.

Nearly every episode of Murder, She Wrote is handed to the audience on a silver platter with the quick cut sitting in a pile of lettuce. A shot of a scratched up lock. An album cover with a picture of hands on a piano, both of which belong to someone in that episode. A quick glance at a watch with mention that it keeps running 5 minutes fast.

Many of these quick shots come from a wonderful history of the small clue, a.k.a. the red herring. Agatha Christie was fond of these, often letting Hercule Poirot deliver the line, “but that was just a red herring.” As such, we avid armchair detectives realize these 1- and 2-second glances for what they are: dots on the deduce by numbers page, with a few nonsense points thrown in here and there for good measure. Whereas Christie buried many of the most critical clues in pages and pages of stilted, sometimes off-putting dialogue, television makes them more plain.

The next time the camera cuts to broken coffeepot, the unlit pipe, the uneven planters at the end of the walkway, or the squeaky floorboard, suspect right away that it will figure into whoever gets killed in minute 22. Unless it’s the first season of The Closer, because those writers clearly have watched a lot of detective dramas.

Macho Sport Meets Female Body

I originally wrote this for I Fry Mine in Butter in 2010.

This week the Chinese women’s gymnastics team that competed in the 2000 Sydney Olympics was stripped of its bronze all-around team medal for having a member under the minimum age of 16. That so much evidence existed and was in the public for years before this move by the International Olympic Commission—including the athlete’s personal blog and inconsistent birth certificates—is compelling, especially given the furor during the Beijing Olympics in which the same rumors swirled around the 2008 team. Several sports writers and experts have written that the IOC caved in and refused to call China on its willful doctoring of documentation because it was the host country that year and heck, for various other potential reasons that run the gamut from probable to a conspiracy theorist’s dream.

What I want to know is, what is the advantage of the too-young gymnast? Well, when it comes to women’s gymnastics, smaller is better. A shorter length from head to foot increases the likelihood of balance, which is important for pretty much all of the exercises; smaller bodies don’t receive as much stress on their joints from the whipping through the air and hard landings and dismounts; and pre-pubescent bodies still have flexible cartilage at the ends of the bones that make the body slightly more flexible and presumably, a modicum lighter.

So why does a “women’s” sport require pre-woman physiology? Especially as men’s gymnastics stress and require full adult physiques? When was the last time we heard of a scandal involving male gymnasts who didn’t meet the age minimum?

To make things even more confusing, not all sports set up such a mis-alignment between adult bodies and the goals of the sport. Usually the controversy is on the other end of the spectrum, that women can be too overpowering. When this happens, there is ridicule, outrage, and public shaming. All anyone needs to do is ask Caster Semenya. Coaches from other countries were so upset at Semenya’s runaway [sic] wins in the track and field world championships that they insisted on “gender testing” for the athlete, and shockingly, the results were made public, without so much as any early notice before the headlines were splashed all over the globe: Semenya Is Intersex. Only they didn’t use the term intersex. Without so much as one breath about how difficult it must be for a person to have the world discussing news of their genitals and reproductive organs, Semenya’s career went into limbo, with sport officials unsure where she could race—men’s or women’s events?

Before I am accused of picking on easy targets, let me mention a few other names:

Martina Navratilova
Venus and Serena Williams
Dara Torres
Britney Griner

This is not racing gear she’s wearing.

What do they have in common? Well, several things, come to think of it. They’re all now or were in their prime dominant in their sport. No woman has won more Wimbledon singles titles than Navratilova. Serena Williams was the 2009 AP Female Athlete of the year and named the top female athlete of the decade. She has swapped the top ranking in the women’s tennis circuit with her sister, Venus, for years, who herself has earned 43 career titles. Dana Torres has won 9 Olympic medals as a swimmer. Britney Griner, still in college, is dominating other teams.

Also, each one of them has been accused of doping or of being a lesbian, or even, gasp, a man. On more than one occasion. They’re playing some unknown, secret sport, they’ve had to spend countless hours in the public eye, and their results are immediately made public around the world, chewed on by sports enthusiasts and pontificators and garden-variety viewers alike. And then they are asked to get glamor shots and pose provocatively for “Hottest Female Athletes” lists.

The female body in sport is a contradiction for a culture used to plopping gender into neat, tight boxes. It is sweating and contorting in the way that any body does when exposed to physical stress. Looking at muscles up close—and these women have them some muscles—one wouldn’t know what kind of body is doing what action. That’s the contradiction: we’re supposed to believe that there is divine purpose to sex, that women are good only at certain things and not others, which is the purview of men. And while we could argue until the cows come home (I really just wanted to be able to get that in a post someday, so there it is) about why men run faster or hit tennis balls harder, the point is that those differences are inconsequentially small in consideration of the entirety of a sport, and that they only matter to people who have an investment in the sexes being different entities.

Successful female athletes are going to continue to be under the microscope because culture can’t handle the truth—that women can be powerful and still be women, can have different kinds of bodies and still succeed, and can eschew femininity if they want to and not desire to be men. Sport, a male-dominated, big money-making industry, collided a long time ago with gender roles and popular culture, and it’s a collision that is still creating fallout. The trouble is, it’s creating fallout on women’s bodies, and very often, on women of color. It’s Dorothy and Golliath, and I have seen very few women who found themselves in the crosshairs make it out unscathed.

Every time Serena pounds the ball in return of a big serve, I cheer my ass off, not just because she’s not Anna Kournakova (whose dog I admire greatly), but because she’s a contradiction calling dusty ideas about sex and race into question. Plus, she’s so damn good and fun to watch, 2009 tantrum aside. And she has turned a deaf ear to the body fascists who have repeatedly told her to change her body (read, lose weight) for the game. Girl’s got game, okay?

It is possible that the 2008 Chinese women’s gymnastics team will have to forfeit their medals at some point, for the same reason as the 200o team. If people were cheating or outside the bounds of the rules, I concur they shouldn’t be allowed to keep their medals. But I also want to know when the negative affects of cheating will reach the male coaching staff.