See me in my cute "Camp Nanowrimo" shirt? I'm getting all geared up for it again this year. I decided to do 50,000 words of challenging exercises this year, rather than just randomly scrabbling down words or loftily trying to stick to an outline. At a friend's recommendation, I ordered _3 A.M. Epiphany_ so that I'll always have an exercise at hand.

But I'm still looking for others. If you've got an awesome writing exercise, please share!

I just read this article by Cory Doctorow about this experiment he's running; comparing the proceeds from a story collection published traditionally and one he's publishing in all sorts of zany, DIY ways. It seems like a cool way to explore the competing trends in publishing, and much better than the speculative, "yeah, but, it seems like this to me" arguments.

But I'm a little bothered by one thing--it seems like he's ruined his experiment by posting about it ahead of time. Sure, to represent DIY publishing fairly, he needs to create as much buzz about the book as he can. But creating the buzz around the idea of the book as an experiment, rather than around something that could be applied to any self-published book, seems like cheating to me.

Which makes me question his sincerity about the experiment. I mean, he's obviously thoughtful enough to have considered this angle. So why did he publish the article? If anyone's got info that could clarify this, I'd love to hear it!

I've been waiting around for a big fluffy ball of enough time to write a proper post to fall into my lap and it hasn't happened. So here are a few thoughts that have been floating on the surface of my brain, like those pretty gasoline swirls on a rain puddle.

- I just discovered (via pandora, of course) The Grouch. I am particularly enamored with the song Artsy. I put it on my playlist and playlist.com. Here's a link, but I bet there's some logging in or whatever you'd need to do to see it. http://www.playlist.com/playlist/18003228683 Also on there is "American Way" by Nas, which struck me as profound, but then again, maybe I'm a sap. I also really was blown away by the song "Uncle Sam" but couldn't find it with playlist and don't remember the artist. [Edited: I just got off my behind and actually checked the link and it looks like you don't need to log in. So if you're curious abou the songs, you should be able to find them through the link above.]

- Amanda's school (which is a nonprofit and is really struggling right now) is having a notecard fundraiser. If you're going to buy holiday cards this year, or maybe want to find a gift that is nothing like what you'd get in the mall, please check it out. http://www.hearttohand.org/Calendar-Fundraiser.html We're working on making it paypalable, but right now, it's checks and physical mail only.

- Thanks to the geek feminism blog, I came across this awesome Finally a Feminism 101 blog. It's like this compendium of intelligent answers to feminist-challenging questions. Nothing (so far) that I didn't learn in college, but put together in an organized way. The tone is super not hostile, super newbie/nonfeminist friendly. (Yes, I did just imply that a lot of feminist dialogue on the internet is hostile. That wasn't my main point, though. I think people have a right to be hostile, and that it can be wonderful to finally be able to just say the fucking hostile things that you can't say because you're too fucking nice. It's complicated, and clearly I'm too tired to write about it coherently. Maybe more later, when that fluffy ball of time arrives.) Anyway, it's great because I've spent a lot of time floundering around sounding like an idiot when someone says something like "now that women have equal rights, feminism is not useful." It's like, I know what I think about it and why I think feminism is relevant, but I don't have a good, snappy, well-packaged response. But this is like a collection of well-thought-out, heartfelt snappy answers.

- I'm stuck on my writing and not managing to put time into it. Personal crises and poor time managment kind of crashing together. My thoughtful and insightful friend wild_irisessuggested that instead of trying to please every part of my personality all at once, I could write different stories that different parts of me like for different reasons and make my peace with the reality that some part of me will probably hate any story I write.

- Speaking of which, I just read this neat story by Ellen Klages in the mini-anthology "What Remains" about, well, I don't want to give spoilers. About this relationship. It struck me simultaneously as sweet-profound-lovely and sappy-unrealistic-MarySue. I think, on balance, that I really like the story.

- I recently rediscovered the Maureen McHugh story "The Cost to be Wise" in the collection _Mothers and Other Monsters_. An extremely excellent book, btw, and available for legal free download (google it and small beer press to find it; I'm to tired/lazy to do it right now). Anyway, I read "The Cost to be Wise" in college and loved it. It stayed with me (mentally dubbed "that story with the red plastic bag") and I was sure I'd never be able to find it again. Then, bam! there it was in a book I bought. How cool.

- I just got my hair cut (again! now that it's short I have to go in there all the freakin' time!). I found myself asking for a more "girly" look and explaining, almost in tears, that I was just too tired to keep bucking the gender expectation thing much longer. It was kind of eye opening; I thought I was so tough and strong. Fortunately for the tough and strong part of me, it looks about the same amount girly as before anyway.

Okay, my big, fluffly, stolen-from-sleep-I-really-should-be-getting ball of time is about out. I'm off to bed!

My dad was visiting this weekend, and we spent a good amount of time fighting. The gist of it was me being newly aware of not having to run around pleasing everyone every second to try to make sure no one will ever leave me, and him being like, wtf? why are you being so grouchy with me? What's wrong with you?

Because we have a great deal of rapport, and because he understands me pretty deeply on an intuitive level, and because we're both pretty committed to having a good relationship, a lot of good has come out of all the fighting.  I'd like to relate one really neat experience.

We were in the car, and I was saying how I thought he misunderstood me or wasn't listening or something. And he said something along the lines of 'well, I've done a lot of listening to you this weekend and you haven't listened at all to what's going on with me.' And then I was all, 'RAAHHR! I'm so angry! Why do I have to kiss your feet and ask super nice for your full attention if I want to say something important and have you not get all distracted every two seconds, but you seem to feel like I owe it to you to listen to you, and that it's my job to solicit what's going on with you, and that I should feel bad if I don't?' (Except not quite so clear or intelligible; but that was the gist.)

And then he got it! He stopped for a bit, thought about it, and acknowledged the validity of my point. Then he said that he thought the tendency I had identified in him stemmed from a childhood where no one listened to him or considered him at all, and said that he was glad I had pointed it out so he could work on it.

Every time I have a situation like that, where I notice some disparity or lack of balance in a relationship, and then respond by speaking up instead of rationalizing how it's really fine in order to avoid conflict, I feel so empowered and so much more in touch with my authentic love and appreciation for that person.

It's clear to me that the emotional freedom to speak up like that is coming from having confronted and healed a lot of stuff with my mother. But the framework and clearsightedness for being able to identify the disparity comes straight from the real-world feminism of WisCon and the friendships I've built in the WisCon and Potlatch communities.

Yet I wonder if it muddies things to frame them in terms of sex and gender. One could obviously argue that I've been socialized to be nice and to put up with power disparities because I'm female, and my father's been socialized to be pushy and to assume things should be his because he's male. But that really feels to me that it oversimplifies things and takes attention off the main issue. To me, it feels more important that I, specifically, am learning to speak up and to demand balance in my relationships, and that he, specifically, is learning to be more in touch with the feelings of the people around him and to be more considerate. It looks to me that us both being human and both engaging in the personal growth before us is much more important than gender.

I remember someone jumping down my throat in a college class once when I spoke of finding the universal in human experience, saying that I was clearly speaking from white privilege and that the very use of the word "universal" is oppressive. But I really don't think she was right. I think that it is true that each human shares a fundamental humanness, and that great good can come from recognizing how, in all of our diversity and all the different ways that we live, there is a common thread of striving.

This is sort of an aside, but I'm also thinking about how the word "feminism" now, by definition, includes consideration of all sorts of diversity and oppression, like queerness, race, a broader look at 'gender' as distinct from sex, nationalism, tribalism, culture and microcultures, and probably many others that I'm not thinking of right now. I wonder if this endless-seeming enumeration is a reflection of the same thing I'm grappling with, that no matter who you look at, they are an individual with their own experience of trauma and oppression, and that this work of feminism (especially intersectionality) is really for everyone. There's no one who is entirely or purely an oppressor, the work of removing oppression from one's life is not the same as declaring oneself a victim, and the oppressive structures and habits we see hurt us all.

Clearly, these thoughts are not all digested or worked out yet, but they feel important to me. I hope that you, my dear FB friends, are up for conversing with me about it.

Last weekend, I went to a fabulous reading in San Francisco that was sexually explicit, queer, and kinky. Something happened there that I didn't expect. I felt like I could breathe there in a way I hadn't known enough to miss. Everyone pretty much ignored me, but in the most wonderful way. It was like I could be as queer or kinky or aberrant as I could, and no one would even blink. No patronizing, self-congratulatory 'supportiveness' or anything. But there was a general warmth and welcoming feeling. Like folk would accept me if I were straight as a rod or crazy pervy queer. Not because of or in spite of, though.

During the performances, I started crying and couldn't stop. Fortunately, not in a sobbing, attention-drawing kind of way. More like glamorous movie star with tears running down my cheek. But not glamorous. Anyway, the point is, I couldn't stop, nor could I figure out what was going on. That night and the next morning, I chanted about it and at least identified the beginning of the problem. I came to this place where I was like, "Damnit! The sweet gal who wants to have a white picket fence and an organic garden and raise kids is real. She's not a construct to cover up the 'real' queer person underneath. But the queer girl is real, too." I kind of got stuck there; I mean, how to choose?

Fortunately, I was staying with a friend who is just an amazing woman. She's insightful and wise and loving, and she sees me in a way that not everyone does. So I asked her about it and she made a wonderful suggestion. She essentially said, "Of course both parts are real. The thing is to get them talking to each other."

On my lengthy drive home, I did that. I know this sounds wacky, but there was a real dialogue going on there. With words between the two. But not in a maybe-I'm-going-crazy way. Anyway, as soon as I started giving a voice to those two internal women, I started crying again. This unusual, keening cry that just didn't stop. For the whole conversation. What came out was that the queer girl inside? She's not just queer. She's a dyke. Really. And kinda' butch. And that picket fence woman? Terrified that if the other one gets out, her husband will stop loving her. The poor little dyke is only about seventeen and pretty weak from being locked in a trunk for fifteen years under a crocheted doily. So she's really no match for thirty-two year old Mary Sue in her sweater set. And Mary Sue's verbal abuses and attempted murders have been really hurtful to her. Because she needs Mary Sue to mother her. And she also had been hating Mary Sue because hubby loves Mary Sue and despises Baby Dyke. (Both of them are really into hubby, but for radically different reasons.)

Once Mary Sue understood, she let go of being all insecure and realized that she loves Baby Dyke, and will protect her no matter what. And that her husband doesn't have to love Baby Dyke, but he does have to acknowledge her presence and not be mean to her. And as soon as she apologized for being mean and trying to kill Baby Dyke, I stopped crying.

(Apologies ahead of time for crappy syntax and boring diction--I've been wanting to post more and just not finding the time I want to do it. I've got ten minutes right now and I figure short, rough post is better than nothing.)

I can't believe how happy it makes me to play soccer and train for distance cycling! It's more than the post-exercise euphoria and the time away from day-to-day responsibilities (though I love that, too!). I think it's kind of the opposite of how I used to feel working out on an elliptical machine. When I'm out doing exercise I love, I'm not thinking about whether I'm fat and how long I have to suffer before I would look cute in a bikini or any of that grossness. Instead, I'm thinking about how much I want to be faster so that I can beat that f'ing forward to the ball next time, or about how it would be so cool to do the Davis Double in a few years. I in my body am a subject doing stuff and not an object on display. (But more soon in another post about having a hot bod--I wish I had time to go into it now!)

In addition to the feminist empowerment angle, being all jock-like makes me feel more like me. The same way that I do when I say something that's hard to say but really matters to me (more future posts!) or when I get my sexual orientation stuff expressed right or when I write a story that has real potential and that I know no one else could have written.

I'm dying to start running again and to begin working toward doing a marathon, and to join a dojo with my hubby and get back into karate. But the reality of my other commitments are pressing in on me, so I don't know how I'll swing that. We'll see.

Remember how I fell into LARPing, like, two decades late? Well, I'm finally on Twitter. My name there is dancingsinging, too.

I think one reason why I resisted it so long is because on some less-that-fully-conscious level, I was convinced that if I'm not witty or deep or interesting, people won't love me. So sharing the day-to-day, this is what I'm actually doing stuff is kind of me stepping out in courage. You all can find out that I spend time futzing around learning a new piece of software and doing other banal stuff like that.

All part of the process of me learning to be fearlessly authentic. Guess what? I'm authentically ordinary a lot of the time.

So much has been going on for me personally, much of it too private to put up on a blog. But I do want to share this one experience.

A little background--since I was about sixteen, it's been clear to me that I find women sexually attractive, as well as men. Around that same time, I decided I was going to marry my then-boyfriend, now-husband. It seemed very simple then--I like apples and I like oranges, but I don't need to eat them both to feel fruitfully fulfilled. And since monogamy seemed like the only possible option that could successfully sustain real intimacy and I already loved my guy so deeply, marrying him seemed obvious.

Sixteen years later, my perspective on intimacy is deepening and broadening, and while I'm still totally committed to my marriage, I don't see it as the only thing that might have worked any more. As a result (or perhaps as an inciting cause?) of this, my attraction to specific women has been feeling more important to me lately. I've also been resolving my feelings of not deserving a place in the queer community.

I was chanting about this (I'm a Nichiren Buddhist, so that's what I do when I'm working something out) and I started remembering some ugly harassment that a good friend of mine and her girlfriend went through in college. And then I thought of Matthew Shepard. And I thought of how what was inflicted on them was about the same thing that's in me, and that I should be in the line of fire as much as anyone. Then, I thought, but I'm just me, I'm the same as I always was, and there's nothing dangerous or threatening about me and my sexuality. No one should be hateful or violent or cruel to me.

And suddenly, it was crystal-clear, for the first time--all queer folk, we're all just us inside. I'm ashamed to say that I spent a long time kind of telling myself that those folks who choose to express their sexual orientation flamoyantly were partly responsible for the ill treatment they elicited, or if not responsible, then not in a position to complain. But of course, we're none of us doing anything other than the best we can do to be ourselves in a hostile and casually cruel culture.

I started crying, and I cry still every time I think or write about this. None of us should have to live with this. I know I have it easy--because of my looks and lifestyle, people assume that I'm straight and hand me straight privilige on a platter whether I want it or not. I can't imagine having it much easier than I do, as a femme-looking, married, white woman with an adorable little three-year-old. And still, it tmakes me feel sick and unsafe whenever someone makes a gay joke or denigrates butch gals.

I think what's happening for me personally is that I've stopped being so scared and worried about my own security, so I've opened my eyes a little to what's really happening to other people in the community. And I'm so sad and hurt for them, and so disappointed in my culture and larger community, which is not living up to what it could be. It's time for me to start doing something about it, and this post is my first little step.

I've decided to only eat meat that I feel good about eating. So, the grass-fed, drug-free, humanely slaughtered cow in my freezer? Yum-bo! Delicious Taco Bell tacos? I'm just saying no!

A couple interesting things have come to light out of this eating habit shift:

- I can't believe how many times I forget! I chobbled down this delicious turkey sandwich at Starbucks, and it took me three days to notice that I had slipped. It's like over the years of omnivoring, I got into the habit of not noticing that what I'm eating used to be an animal.

- It's hard to find convenient, nutritious vegetarian food around town. I grew up in a much more hippie-friendly town, so when I was a vegetarian as a kid, I didn't realize how easy I had it.


The impetus for this change was a series of conversations at Potlatch with a cool guy named Ian. He seemed like a really great person, but after a while, I noticed myself deciding I didn't like him. That was strange enough that it caused me to probe a little deeper, and I realized that I was just projecting my internal conflicts onto him. I wrestled around with it and realized that I really don't think it's cool for me to have been participating in mass production of meat.

After I got over myself a bit, I went to talk to Ian some more. We had a great conversation about things like 'why should I be ethical when no one else is?' and 'since there's probably never going to be a big enough consumer shift to change things, why bother?' He had a lot of good insights. The one that's been most helpful to me has been the concept of 'not in my name.' I don't have to be Accomplishing Something Important to decide not to participate in something that goes against my ethical principles.

Pretty soon, I'm going to get around to addressing Ethical Dairy. But one big change at a time!

P.S. I am so not saying that people who eat Big Macs are bad, or even advocating ethical meat consumption. Just sharing where I'm at.

I have to admit, the thing that moved me most about Potlatch this year had nothing to do with writing, or the exalted book of honor. It was this awesome "new" thing I discovered--LARPing! Yes, yes, I realize that LARPing's been around forever, and yes, my hubby used to do it when we were teens and I thought it was a little too nerdy even for me. But! This was parlor LARPing, with no boffer weapons or anything. OK, the boffer weapons were probably cool, and I just missed the boat back then. Not that he ever invited me or anything.

But I digress! My main point here is that LARPing is super fun. Way more fun than just sitting around talking. Which says a lot, coming from me.

At Potlatch, there was this extremely competent guy, jhkimrpg, running the LARP. This seemed to be a crucial aspect of the whole thing being so fun.

Oh, for the one or two people out there that didn't discover LARPing before me, LARP stands for Live Action Role Playing. Basically, the way parlor LARPing works is one person ahead of time does a ton of work (or looks around on the Internet or buys a game) and sets up characters and goals and a rough plot structure. Then everyone shows up, moves some furniture around to represent sick bays and spaceship controls or whatnot, and is assigned a character. Then all the characters are let loose to interact with each other, trying to achieve their private goals and protect their secrets, while only knowing the public info of the other characters.

The fun, for me, was in the acting (I got to be a starship captain!). It reminded me a lot of being a small child and running around with my friends playing pretend. Except that everyone's got a fully mature intellect and developed social skills.

So now, I'm trying to round up about six local friends who would be willing to set aside their grown-up propriety and jump into the fun!

I've been getting ready for Potlatch this year, reading and thinking about gender and exclusion and the tendency to go binary in our thinking. In light of this, my daughter in the back seat with her lift-the-flap book saying, "the opposite of long is...short!" caught my attention. Is it really part of the way our brains are wired to think in terms of binaries, or is it training?

Am I raising a sexist, exclusionist little monster with the these only innocent-seeming Little People books? You gotta watch out for those Little People books!

I'm in the middle of one of my timed 5 minute breaks. So, when the timer goes off, I'm just posting this. Sorry in advance for the abrupt ending, but it's the only way I can be disciplined about my procrastination!

I'm doing nanowrimo again this year. It's extra exhilarating, because my pre-work totally flopped, so I'm pretty much winging it. I like my main characters though, so I'm having a good time so far.

I had this great idea about the common sugar-overindulgence that most nanoers lean on to get us through the grueling ordeal. See, I have this pre-diabetic condition, plus when I eat too much sugar I gain all this belly fat and get grouchy and everything. So, I've been thinking how I should probably cut back, but then I haven't because, well. Because.

But! I decided today that I'd only eat sugar while I'm writing. So, I have extra incentive to sit down and write, while I'm breaking the habit of mindlessly consuming sweets.

Ack! There's the timer. Back to my novel...

Just got my hair redone today. Yeah, boy! Dark, dark almost-black brown, with a nice swath of hot magenta. And some super funky, sexy bangs. It makes even the wondrous blue hair style seem boring in comparison.

I'll see if I can master that fancy "friends only" thing and post some bigger pics.

Update: The most obvious way to post a picture (seeing if LJ would host it for free) and the second most obvious way (trying to use photobucket without reading any annoying instructions) didn't work. E-mail me if you want to see photos. There are four of them ranging from 20-30K.

So I started my tech writing gig, the one that was so wonderful and was going to fit seamlessly into my life and act as a gentle counterbalance to my parenting responsibilities. Yeah.

The first day I officially started, I missed a deadline. This is because the tiny little assignment I agreed to do before I could get childcare arranged and start officially grew into a monstrous, many-tentacled beast. 

One good thing about it, though, is that I've noticed in my interactions with my coworkers how very dependent I can be on the praise and approval of others. So, if nothing else, doing my job while holding the line at the maximum number of hours I agreed to will be good practice for me.

Notice the lovely, bloated prose in this post? That's because I'm just too burnt out on words to edit and make this sucker readable. Sorry 'bout that. 

I'm hoping that once things are smoothly underway, I can employ myself as a writer and write for the love of it.

Nope. Not even gonna organize these paragraphs. Hopefully, my next post will be coherent and bubbling with joy.

My ears, that is. I bleached, then dyed, the bottom half of my hair blue. Well, at home I got as far as bleaching and turning my hair a pale green color that made it look chlorine-stained. I got my ears, and they turned out the nice turquoise shade I was trying for. Then I went to the lady who cuts-ahem, used to cut-my hair. She told me it was hopeless and I should wait for it to grow out. She also told me to take lots of pictures so I would remember my horrible mistake. She didn't seem to get that I liked it way better than plain brown, even if it didn't turn out exactly as I wanted.

Then, my neighbor recommended a different hair stylist, who not only got exactly what I was going for, but also managed to dye it a nice, vibrant, rich blue for me, no problem.

I'm tempted to write about how free and self-expressed I feel now, but I guess that's obvious. :)   

I wrote this pen-and-paper style yesterday in the airport coming back from WisCon:

The woman sitting next to me is reading a pullout section of the paper. On its cover is a color photo of a boy--maybe five years old--kneeling by a gravestone in Arlington, laying yellow flowers at its foot. The title of the piece is "The Land of the Brave." The photo made me cry--literally, here in the airport, tears came to my eyes. The caption made, makes, me mad. Is this bravery?

I suppose the boy is brave, in the way humans are generally brave, when we're put in an impossible situation. I imagine this boy's life--it's impossible to go on after that, yet he goes on. Driving from Madison to Chicago, I spent a while imagining Amanda's life if I were to die on the way home, to leave her and never come back. It's simply impossible, yet these things happen, all the time, and for the most part, we go on.

But to me the photo is not about bravery, but about the cruelty we inflict on our children, in the name of preserving a good, just, and brave world for them. Why do we do this? How can we stop it?

I asked the woman for the photo when she was done reading the section. Looking closer, I see that the man died in 2005. The boy in the picture was indeed Amanda's age when his father died. Or perhaps it was his uncle, or a family friend. I pray that he was, that they all are.

I would like to talk to the photographer who took this picture. Did they intent for their work to be framed this way? Did they see what I see in this image, or to them was it really the poignant, sweet, story it has been presented as in the article?

Well, now I really am an official amateur writer. I have a rejection slip in my special rejection-slip binder.

I was really hoping for a "we love it but it's not for us" scrawled at the bottom, but I'm not too bummed. If I'm at this for ten years and still getting standard rejection letters, I might be. But for now, it feels like an exciting milestone.

I'm thinking that the rejection binder might not be exactly my style. I have these awesome friends who have, over time, wallpapered their bathroom with those little slips inside fortune cookies. I wonder if I could do the same thing in my office...

-Eva