Category Archives: real life

Slightly Political, More Practical

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New ImageA post slightly political but more toward the practical, I believe. I see the same argument that’s being put forth for Trump at a more local level. Someone running for Congress in our district runs ads basically saying, “I’m a good businessman, so you should elect me.”

No. In fact, Hell to the No.

The problem with the idea “Government should be run like a business” is simply Government is not a business, never was a business and never should be run like a business. The purpose of a business is to make money, either for its owners if it’s privately held or its stockholders, which in either case is a very small percentage of people relative to the total population. Anything else is PR. The purpose of a government, and specifically a democratically elected government, is precisely the opposite–to create the greatest good for the greatest number of its citizens. This is completely at odds with what are considered good business principles. In the preamble to the Constitution, this was spelled out about as explicitly as it could be. It says a lot about providing for the common defense and promoting the general welfare of its citizens. It doesn’t say much about the virtues of corporate welfare and shifting the tax burden to the poor and middle class. And don’t tell me that business people “know how to create jobs,” because they don’t, and this is one of the most pernicious myths surrounding the business class. Businesses hire people to meet demand for their goods or services. If there’s no demand, there’s no hiring, and giving them bigger tax breaks doesn’t change that. A viable middle class with money to spend fuels demand and creates jobs, and if big business in this country has done anything, it’s squeezed wages and guided tax law in the name of its own profit until the middle class is practically extinct, then wonders why business isn’t better

If you want my vote, don’t tell me how good a business person you are. Tell me how you plan to make a difference and how hard you’ll work for all the people you represent. Then and only then do you have my attention.

Muse and Writer Dialogues #12

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New Desk

New Desk

FADE IN

A room that passes for an office. There are bookshelves on two walls, a motley assortment of carvings, signed storyboards, and five guitars, but a lot of it isn’t on the walls yet. Except for the five guitars of various makes and models. The desk faces a blank wall. To the left is a window, and beyond that is a brown radiator cover with a printer perched on top. The floor holds paint, tools, and painting supplies, and an unopened window unit A/C awaiting installation. Rather like the artwork. WRITER is sitting at the desk staring at an almost blank screen. MUSE enters. From somewhere. She’s in Greek Goddess mode.

 

Muse: So these are the new digs. It’s a mess.

Writer: Don’t pretend to be surprised. This isn’t your first visit.

Muse: You mean while you were writing that last book? I had nothing to do with that.

Writer: So who was that, then? Your evil twin?

Muse: Nonsense. I AM my evil twin. I said I had nothing to do with the last book. I didn’t say I wasn’t here.

Writer: Is that an editorial comment? I thought the book turned out rather well.

Muse: You would, but that’s not what I meant. I meant you didn’t need me. Unusually for you, you had it pretty much worked out before you even started and you weren’t waiting for inspiration. You were going blue blazes most of the time. It was almost…impressive.

Writer: It’s not as if I had much choice. The deadline was fast approaching and I got a late start because of the move. So much got blown up last year. I was damned if I was going to let what passes for my writing career do the same.

Muse: And?

Writer: And the series had been heading for this ever since it began, so it wasn’t as if I could get lost now. I did know where I was going, but that’s only because your job was done before I even started. That really was impressive. Not to mention efficient.

Muse: I’ll take that as a compliment. So what now?

Writer (blinking): What…? I should be asking you that. Isn’t that your job?

Muse: I’m only a convenient personification of the idea of inspiration, remember? I’m just in your head…along with whatever debris and found objects you turn into stories. So let me hand you a little bit of insight–you don’t get inspired.

Writer: I don’t…?

Muse (shaking her head): Never did. What you do is recognize stories when you see them, and then you follow them until they’ve given up their secrets. So why am I even here?

Writer: Well…I talk to myself.

Muse: I’ve noticed that.

Writer: Then you should understand I feel a little more anchored when I’m talking to someone else instead. That’s you.

Muse: Can’t imagine why. I’m just another voice in your head.

Writer: Say rather a convenient personification of the idea of inspiration, remember? Not quite the same thing. Besides, I don’t buy your argument. Recognizing a story IS inspiration, so far as I’m concerned. You’re just pissed because there wasn’t as much left for you to do on the last project and you got bored. Fine. It’s time for a new project.

Muse: Have it your way. I’ll try to help you out with the winkling out its secrets part. No promises on the inspiration part. We’ll see if you’re right.

Writer: All I ask.

MUSE: You do know I’m going to keep bugging you about the state of this office, right?

Writer: Wouldn’t expect anything less.

FADE OUT.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Fireworks and Final Edits

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YamadaEmperor-600Happy 4th to all those stateside. Our across the street neighbors apparently chose to celebrate by re-enacting the Battle of Bunker Hill. Our cats disappeared for a while but came out unscathed when the coast was finally clear. Not that I should complain. I went through my own phase of being enamored with firecrackers, but that was mostly because I was a kid in a small southern town and often there was literally nothing better to do. Read all the books/comics I had multiple times (no internet). Run out of scrap wood for tinkering. Night too cloudy for stargazing. I know! Let’s set off low-scale ordinance! What I have trouble understanding is why alleged grownups want to do it now. I grew out of it before I’d left my teens, and count myself fortunate I still have all my fingers.

Good thing, too, as I needed them to make final corrections on the typeset manuscript for The Emperor in Shadow, which from the link you can see now has its own Amazon page, and an official release date of September 6th. Which means it’ll more than likely be available in August, because that’s how these things usually work. Since it’s July now (What gave it away? Oh, right, fireworks…), that’s not very long, but why wait? You can pre-order it now and have it as soon as it’s available.

On that subject, I want to give a shout-out to my editor, Paula Guran, who turned the manuscript around in a short time under extremely trying circumstances, only one of which was me cutting it so close to the deadline. It’s a much better book for her efforts. Anything you don’t like falls squarely on me.

Playing Hooky

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WRITING 02I shouldn’t be here. By which I mean that the line-edits for Yamada Monogatari: The Emperor in Shadow have arrived and I really should be working on them instead of fiddling with the blog. In my defense, I did work on them most of the morning, and will likely go back to them once I’m done here. For the moment I am, to put it bluntly, playing hooky.

Is that term still in use? It’s kind of old-fashioned, I know, and hardly anyone agrees on the derivation, even though it’s likely only 19th century in age.  It once meant something very specific–cutting school. By expansion, at least to me, it has come to mean doing something by preference when you really ought to be doing something else. There’s some irony there. In college I would often play hooky by writing stories when I was supposed to be be studying for a Technical Writing test or something of that–allegedly–more serious sort. For a time I considered writing the same thing as playing hooky, since there was always–always–something else I really should be doing. That’s no less true now.

There’s always another demand on your time. There likely always will be. Odds are you have a day job and have to fit the writing around that. Or tests to study for. Or a dinner at the in-laws. It’s always something. So I never got anywhere until I gave myself permission to choose writing over something else. Dealing with the guilt, yes, because we are free to choose but never free from the consequences. You have to decide for yourself where the balance turns. But if you fear anything, it should not be the guilt. It’s the time come and gone that will never come back.

So treat yourself. Play hooky.

Orlando

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New ImageSometimes I think all I have are words. And then I realize, on days like today, that I don’t even have that. I look at what has been said and will be said about the horror in Orlando. I hear the same politicians offering “thoughts and prayers” but who will never, ever, use their elected positions to do a damn thing to prevent another horror. I hear the same politicians trying their best not to gloat too openly, because they not-very-secretly side with the shooter and are used to pushing discriminatory laws while trying to make them sound, you know, about something else. I hear the ones who latch onto the fact that the guy was a Muslim, conveniently ignoring that he was first and foremost an unstable homophobe who had no trouble at all buying all the guns and ammo he wanted, and also ignoring the unstable Christian homophobe who—thank goodness—was caught with a carload of ordinance on his way to shoot up a Pride parade and so one horror did not happen. If one is a terrorist, then so was the other.

Mostly I hear the hopeful voices of those who believe maybe, just maybe, this time will be different, and people will put enough pressure on their “representatives” to overcome the NRA’s money and get some sensible regulations passed. Make it, you know, a little bit harder to kill fifty people you don’t know for reasons that are beyond reason. I want to join them in that hope, but the politicians have long learned that there are no real consequences to inaction and big consequences if they take a stand. We send the same ones back to office time and after time, but they no longer represent us, if they ever did. They work for someone else, and if you doubt that, just note that a vast majority of the American electorate favor some sensible regulation, such as background checks, mandatory safety training, and waiting periods, and yet it never seems to happen. Why? Follow the money. Thoughts and prayers from a politician? Sure. They’re free. They don’t hurt. Doing something? Sorry. Not happening.

I try to avoid politics here. No one is persuaded and everyone just ends up mad. Today I did not succeed. Today I started out mad. Sorry about that, but until we curb money in politics and start kicking people out of office for not doing their jobs, nothing is going to change. Everything else is just thoughts and prayers.