The ultimate flow chart if you’re ready to publish your novel.
You can write – and rhyme as you go with this online application.
You can look for ideas over here.
Read some one line true stories – amazing, concise stuff. May make you re-evaluate Twitter.
Spellfail helps you catch commonly misspelled words. No, I don’t use it as much as we should.
You can also get some advice on How to Write with Style by Kurt Vonnegut.
And some tips on creating a compelling plot.
6
Jul
As some of you know, I’m a devotee of sorts to Julia Cameron’s creativity programs. One of her recommendations is that you find a “spot” some public place that connects you to your community. When I lived in smaller towns, this was easy enough: there was usually only one spot that suited said needs. Nowadays, however, I live in the Twin Cities which is, ultimately, a network of neighborhoods, only distinguishable once you learn to recognize the hallmarks of “good” “bad” and “transitioning.” While I love the district I live in – far northeast – I’m running into some problems I did not anticipate.
There are three coffee shops on Central. One I hate on principle: it has lousy seating where there is light, and no natural light where there is adequate seating. Also, I always feel slightly dizzy/sick when I go in there, which warns me I do NOT belong in there for whatever reason. The other two I have to bus to: one has replaced Big Gay Coffeeshop Vera’s, and is of much the same overpriced fare. The other has no A/C in summer, and while friendly and community oriented, has an owner who thinks it’s OK to argue with me about my allergies (UNCOOL) and the last time I was there I could swear I saw fruit flies come out of the lettuce in the sandwich I ordered. Also uncool, even though not controllable. The place is fine in winter, but for summer, doesn’t make a good workspace.
Also, since I live on the street with three buildings owned by Holy Land and a Mosque, it’s understandable if not happy that the Holy Land corporation has continued to buy up all the liquor licenses on the street. There are no bars that are open for standard bar hours. While there are a broad variety of restaurants, the popular one, Adelita’s, does not appeal to me at all. Sen Yai Lek is great for meeting friends for dinner, but not really a great hangout – and I know it’s weird, but for a place I’m going to go write and participate, I feel it should in some way be dedicated to Americana.
So while I can walk to an infinite variety of grocery options and the post office, I have virtually no options within walking distance for the two community anchors I would use the most. (The library across the street is being renovated, also ruling that out.) Certainly I can take the bus to a lot of places (I share a car, and Mike gets it for work) but when you’re lugging a laptop that does have its limits.
I realize much of this is sheer cussed pickiness. But a place must be JUST right. And safe. Safe is way important these days.
4
Jul
Not only am I incredibly bad at it – I suck at lying, and so when in situations where I feel it’s best I generally resort to passive forms like omission. I actually have to fight with myself to leave an Internet pseudonym.
And most of the time, my life is so bizarre I don’t need to lie. People who don’t know me don’t believe me anyway. There’s one newer person in my life who would never say it to my face, but who suspects I’m at the very least prone to hyperbole. Perhaps when making a story funnier if I can, but no. I’m not terribly invested in whether he trusts my personal veracity or not. I’m just not hung up on that stuff anymore. But he’s starting to catch on that a lot of those stories of mine he dismisses are true, running into people that were there or people who know both of us that say, “Oh yeah, you should have seen her right after that, it looks like she took on the truck fleet herself!”1
I can tell that either he’s been asking or people have been talking, because more and more often, I’ll say/explain something on the fly, and he’ll stop me and say, “Really?”
- Not in reference to any actual situation, ever. [↩]
I’ve got a first draft on the proposal now, and holy crap… it’s weak. I still believe the book itself is pretty damned strong if still in a first draft, but right now the overview would fail my “short attention span” rule. For now I’m leaving it sit. I already had to trash more than half of the second chapter, intended for the book proposal – it was too personal and way too far from the topic of what happens to those who, by proximity must observe and are therefore affected by your divorce.
In the next month, I’m hoping to get the proposal into a condition where I’d let another human being look at it. I’m also just about ready to release the great big survey on Wicca and Divorce, and I am going to need that puppy Tweeted, Facebooked, Tumbled, and email-forwarded like mad. So for those of you who want to help, this is me letting you know… this is HOW you can help. By letting anyone and everyone everywhere in your neopagan sphere know that there’s a survey I’d like them to take. I’m getting the legalese worked out, along with the privacy notice. I do indicate on the front page that many questions may be triggering, so we’ve built in a way for participants to skip questions, or go to the bottom of a page and hit “send” and then walk away. There’s really no way to ask these questions without sending someone back to a therapist. Just writing this book, especially in the wake of recent life events, has depressed the hell out of me. And since writing a book is never just writing a book, I’ve still got a long journey ahead with a god-awful depressing subject. It’s like being locked in a room with one of those twits who likes to say “But my life sucks more!” until you are forced to shush and listen to a litany of indeed, suckage. That’s not the book’s fault; that’s just the nature of the subject.
Right now I’m stuck in an in-between. Divorce is a very serious subject, and I am a very funny woman. Alas, this is to the detriment of the book. So I’m struggling to negotiate the right headspace between the “fly free and wacky” approach that generates my best writing, and the “I must take this seriously to be taken seriously” approach that allows me to broach heavy topics but that is not really a palatable read. Curse you academia!1 YOU did this to me!
So there I am. Just a little bit stuck.
- Not really. Nothing worse than slipping on a banana peel and landing on a trampoline, anyway. [↩]
1
Jul
Testing again with a new cross-poster.
29
Jun
Minneapolis Gay Pride 2010 shot by puppethead on flickr
Minneapolis boasts the third largest Gay Pride celebration in the United States. The contributions of gay culture here are quantifiable: without the influx of gays in the 80s and 90s (some cast out of their homes, others just seeking their own) a good chunk of the urban renewal that has enlivened Minneapolis would never have happened. When a gay couple moves in next door, my first thought is “Up go the property values!”
The first real friends I made in Minnesota were all in some way part of or allied to the gay community. I was struggling with yet again being an outsider, a status that will never really change for me, and while I didn’t exactly find home, I found acceptance. The kind support of the people I met helped me overcome the homophobia I’d been ingrained with growing up, and opened up paths to freedom within and without that I had never previously imagined.
Now, a decade later, I have friends gay and straight, black and white and occasionally striped, but all mostly liberal. It’s sad, but I don’t particularly enjoy debating – I’d rather just let those around me live with parallel opinions and trade recipes; except in the case of those with really poor character those opinions were come to through life experience as valid as my own.
I am proud of the contributions that the gay community has made to Minneapolis. I am proud to call certain gay individuals my friend, not because they are gay, but because they are people of good character. I uphold their rights to marry, to love and to go about their lives with the same expectation of safety that I have. (Which really should be a lot better than it is for all of us.)
At the same time, I uphold the rights of others to peacefully express their opposing views on this and any other subject.
I have followed the situation with Pastor Brian Johnson with interest. While I completely disagree with his stance on homosexuality, I have to say that the Pride board was dead wrong about this one. It suggests a loss of perspective that is the predecessor to bigotry. The reaction is totally understandable: it’s impossible not to take an anti-gay preacher personally when you are gay. When someone’s politics is directed at your very personal life, your emotional response will fire off first. That’s definitely what happened here, and in the process, the board forgot:
Loring Park is public and belongs to all taxpayers.
First amendment rights belong to the opposition, as well.
As it is, Johnson got some interesting reactions as he passed out Bibles. Many were outright immature, and much of it was about thinking of Loring Park as “pride only” space when it is, in fact, public space – space that conservatives have a right to use, too, and not just those Log Cabin people.
The point of Gay Pride originally was to assert the rights of gays to participate in their whole community. At some point, as happens when subcultures spring up, it became more about the gay community. Johnson and the legal battle he was involved with is a grim marker of this loss of perspective: everyone in the world is in this together, and over-isolating and segregating yourself will lead to the people who set me free becoming the bigots. I hope this does not happen.
28
Jun
I have some personal values that I would not consider universal to all Pagans, but that I do find important enough to look for in those I call friends. I think these make an important difference in my life, and can improve the lives of others around me, too.
Curiosity, and Wonder – to greet new ideas with exploration rather than immediate fear and/or negativity. A basic desire to see where things go, to fall down the rabbit hole and to explore unknown worlds. I really think it’s a must for any competent witch.
Positivity – this is not “I never get angry” or “I’m blissful.” Positivity is hard work, not Pollyanna-esque optimism. It’s working to find the good in a situation, but also to make good where a situation is bad. This is where you can bitch and bitch about the people you can’t control, or you can plan for the situation as a whole without overfocusing on individuals, personalities or pettiness.
Open-Mindedness – this likely pairs with curiosity, but doesn’t. There are of course limits on this, but it is the ability to listen to and genuinely consider a foreign idea. While I may not accept the new idea, I will at least listen to it, and in some situations try out the idea to see if it works. But I will not just assume something “won’t work” or is “pointless.” I allow for the potential to be surprised.
These are traits I uphold as values personal to myself, and values I look for in friends. It’s taken me a long time to distill what I look for, but now I know it it really does make a significant different to me in whom I choose to befriend.
I’d still like to get a few more beta testers for the Divorce and Wicca survey I have up. It’s long, but allows you to skip non-relevant to-you questions and you can save and come back. Betas need not complete the total survey. Betas also need not fit the survey qualifications. Right now I just need to know that the survey works and will continue to work as it gathers more data.
Also, aside from Witchvox and the Wild Hunt, any recommendations of places I can promote it are very, very welcome. Also, when the time comes, tweeting it, reposting it to your Facebook, or posting it to your own groups will be much appreciated.
I do plan on posting on the Pagan News Service group on Google, and I am plotting in my head for an article series – one for Witch’s Voice (highest readership) and on the advice of Gordon at RuneSoup I’m also thinking of pitching some articles for an “Advice from a Witch on Divorce” article to various women’s magazines. I may be a little too late, hard to say – I would guess that most monthlies are doing their fall issues now.
I got some valuable advice yesterday about what else I will need to do to get this book off the ground, so I’m hanging in there.
So if you want to beta test leave me a comment and I’ll follow up with you by email.
My first hint that Wicca was intended as a happy path came over a year after I’d started down it: my not-terribly dour Christianity at some point morphed into a not-terribly dour but quite serious approach to what I considered to be my intended path. I started off because of my strong beliefs about natural stewardship (Christian terms to denote my still-Christian thinking at the time) and, in moments of raw honesty, because Wicca showed me a chance of clearing the icky energy around my then-dismal love life. I didn’t find the Charge of the Goddess until I got my hands on some Doreen Valiente lurking in my university library’s shelves.1 I saw the Charge of the Goddess my very first time online, sometime after I encountered the commands of the Magus (now often renamed the Witches’ Pyramid.) That was the first place I read, “Let My worship be in the heart that rejoices, for behold, all acts of love and pleasure are My rituals. Let there be beauty and strength, power and compassion, honor and humility, mirth and reverence within you.”
Because, for all my levity I am and was a rather serious soul, I took this not as the call to pleasures aplenty, but as a serious responsibility to embrace joy thoughtfully. Perhaps this is why I never quite plug in with the ecstatic movement, much as I’d like to. From what I recall as to my first thoughts about this was, “This is in the divine voice,” followed with, “Oh, so gay people are totally OK then.”2
What appealed to me was how the happiness was balanced. It wasn’t just a hedonic fest, but in fact something much deeper, balanced, and allowing for reason.
It didn’t occur to me that happiness rated highest among those values.
About six months after that, a coven came to visit the new witches at Mankato State and to impart a little bit of knowledge to us. While I don’t remember much about it – one guy who couldn’t quite draw an inverted pentacle, and thinking that they were sweet people – one young man was recently divorced and clearly struggling. He said something like “Following your bliss does not mean abandoning your responsibilities.” These were clearly the words of a man in need of help, feeling lost. I did not know anything about Joseph Campbell at the time.
But, as I learned, “following your bliss” was essentially the same as “Do what thou wilt is the whole of the law.”3 Finding what truly brings happiness is a long, difficult journey, and while it’s by no means a “do whatever you want,” as to get to what you truly want always requires at least some impulse-control, it is in fact a responsibility. You are responsible to doing right by yourself. You may never achieve happiness, but you are responsible to yourself to pursue it.
Clearly, responsibility is a BIG core of my own values, and I like to think is among other neopagans as well.
In my case, I avoided taking responsibility for myself by placing my perceived responsibility to others above my own needs. I did not really want to marry anyone, ever. But I was in love (really.) When I found myself disappointed by my spouse, I usually pushed it aside. I told myself to accept that people don’t change (still true) but since I’d committed, I had to see this through – so on some level I was also slut-shaming myself. My family disapproved of cohabitation, so I pushed up the wedding. My mother was concerned I wasn’t married or “serious” at the same age she was.4 I also had the serious issue of finishing college looming before me, and my two-three jobs alone were not going to pay for it. I was actually in a very unhappy situation, and did not enter the marriage with the love and joy that you’re supposed to.
So, at the time of my divorce, I found myself in a dilemma: I took all those vows. But I was also miserable. There was not making mirth or feeling joy. I chose constantly between the needs of my passive-aggressively demanding spouse or my own; when I chose my own – or actually, just conceded to the relentless demands of my job – I was greeted with dishes to wash, a home I’d cleaned messed up or my ex, inert before a video game. While all was minor by itself, factor in 16 hour days while trying to get a graduate degree and it was stressful to the point of unfair. With children it would have gone right into the unseemly.
When I finally, after a heartbreaking day, let my soul speak to my husband instead of the social voice of his ever-tired wife, I found myself asking for a divorce. I was shocked to hear myself say it. But when I finally stilled, I needed something so badly that it outranked my vows, my perceived responsibilities, even my relentless job. I needed to be happy. And to be happy, I had to leave.
Divorce did not lead to instant happiness. It took years. While I’m happy now, it was not an easy journey and still takes vigilance and time out to truly listen to myself. I’ve found that happiness is not the same as years of hedonistic responsibility. To be able to listen to yourself demands care of yourself and others, because it’s when you get sucked down into negative patterns – all too often in the pursuit of short-term pleasure – you lose the ability to genuinely hear yourself.
It wasn’t just my ex that was forced to struggle with my own path to happiness: I was always trying to do something to bring happiness to another person, falsely convinced happiness would return to me. My efforts were always taken advantage of, but in truth, no one was going to give back what I wanted, and I realized that half my problem was that I was unable to actually verbalize what I wanted. I didn’t know how to ask for happiness. The people around me instinctively knew that, and most dropped me or were dropped by me as my personal development brought me to a place where I could truly ask for what I need.
So happiness is an inner value, where sometimes we struggle against our urges but most of the time we fight for them – because it’s not just smiling and clapping your hands. Happiness is work, and that’s what makes it a valid value.
Note: Thorn Coyle also wrote an ecstatic perspective on joy. It’s much shorter, more pagan-writing traditional and well worth the read.
- This was in 1996, well before the neopagan mini-Renaissance. [↩]
- It was an issue I’d been wrestling with at the time. [↩]
- Thelema, not Wicca, but sometimes gets muddled in by eclectics. [↩]
- She is, like many mothers that lack self-awareness, often frustrated that I have not and will not live her life or follow in her footsteps. [↩]
I thought I’d let a few of you all know how it’s going on the Divorcing a Real Witch project. In sum: slow and steady. The initial beta test of the poll on Wiccan divorce experience failed, so we (meaning my husband) moved it to a different server, and after an initial slow load time it appears to work in every browser. So now I’m looking for new beta testers. Contact me if you’d like to test the poll for me.
I’m also working on the second draft of the first two chapters, and trying to assemble something remotely usable as a proposal for prospective agents. In the process I’ve become frustrated with others in my craft and my Craft. I’m starting to suspect the reason I get so many patronizing and useless responses is because certain people just don’t want to admit it when they don’t know something. This reveals a lot about the reason for the abysmal state of publishing on pagan topics.1
- Seriously, “try Writer’s Digest” or “Writer’s Market” is not a helpful response, since I already did it. Pointing me to AgentQuery after I MENTION AgentQuery is also NOT useful. And telling me to “do my homework” when I’ve just demonstrated that I have deserves no more and no less than a middle finger up your nose. Grr. [↩]