Scurvytown

I have neglected this blog for 6 months. Six months is also how long I have been in pain from a slipped disc. I’d like to blame that for everything that fell to the waysides in the second half of 2012, but instead of wasting time on blame, I’m trying to make up for it now.

Simply put, I plan to “do the work.” All those little projects I’ll get around to “someday,” well, that might as well be today. I also have to do a hundred little things to keep myself busy in the winter months to stave off seasonal depression. So there’s that, too. Hoping I don’t burn out. Trying to schedule relaxing, fun things onto my to-do lists as well as things that I just really need to get done. The year of completing projects, yeah right. Oh self, that is a challenge and you know it.

Haha. Crazypants talk.

During my extended winter break (w00t, working in academia), I wanted to get away, but the Lunar Module is getting old and cranky, so that wasn’t happening. And I realized this apartment has gotten super messy since I’ve been in this icky crippling pain. So I cleaned a bunch, and while resting from overdoing that, read a bunch. I finished two novels that had been in progress while I was in my penultimate semester of grad school. And then I launched into Scalzi’s Old Man’s War since I saw Sword & Laser was going to be reading it for January 2013. It was incredibly fun and fast to read. After that, I dove right into Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash, which had been on my list for awhile.

While I was reading that, I reorganized all my books. I now have things in a much more logical order. There’s an entire shelf of thesis research, a shelf of short stories, related non-fiction living together in harmony, and a shelf of books on my to-read list. I now have a physical and virtual to-read shelf (*nods to goodreads*). I also made a goal of reading 52 books this year, which either I count Infinite Jest as 3-4 books or save the rest of it for next year. Or I can shorten my goal and read a few other epic books.

Continued with Snow Crash, anticipating getting the new Warren Ellis book on Jan 2nd, but it arrived a day early, so I scurried through the remaining 25% of Snow Crash and into Gun Machine, which has been twisted in all the right ways so far. Typical Ellis phrasing that I enjoy quite a bit.

So not really a fan of resolutions, I am more about teaching myself to get shit done. So whatever shit I didn’t learn last year, I’ll learn more this year, and the year after that. I am plenty happy being a lifelong learner, and happier than I have been.

In preparing to attend TAM this week, I have been doing a lot of thinking about my elevator pitch about skepticism. On FB, I posted a link to a very helpful blog post by Emily Finke about this subject.

How best to articulate something that often has layers of complication, based on personal experiences of the skeptic and whomever comprises their audience? I’ll be thinking about this for the next 24 hours, as I’ll be in full traveling to TAM mode.

In the meantime, my mother sent me another of her fantastic emails, and I really feel like sharing this one because it’s relevant to this situation. Plus, she sends me the most encouraging words, and I love to brag on how awesome my mom is.

When I was a kid I was sometimes aggressively urged to attend summer Bible school. Okay, make that forced. I remember listening to ‘stories’ about Jesus and his crew. I was interested only when they told the story of the disciple Thomas. Good old doubting Thomas. The one disciple who not only questioned Jesus’s story, but went so far as to actually probe the wounds with his fingers. The ‘teachers’ expressed regret with Thomas and his need to question and his inability to blindly believe. But I liked him. Like Thomas I am a ‘prober’. I have to question and evaluate and sometimes stick my hands in the wound. I don’t like being told something must be accepted on blind faith. I have to see and, sometimes, touch.

My dad used to tell the story he was told by his grandmother regarding his mother. When she was a little girl his mother asked her mother “Who made us?” Her mom said, “God made us.” She thought about that for awhile and then said “Okay, if God made us, then who made God, and who made the thing that made him?”

So, you come from a long line of skeptical women. Make us proud. (But not too much probing. That can get messy.)

Funny, my main goal for going to TAM is to learn a lot, to break down my own misconceptions about things that I don’t even realize are wrong, and to make as much positive out of the experience as possible. Oh, how I dwell in possibility! Much of the skeptical thought process is important to me, in life, and in my thesis research. I want to prove myself (mostly to myself), that I earned the grant I received, that I deserve to be going to this event, and that I can turn this experience into a stepping stone, from casual skeptic observer to finally finding my skeptical woman’s voice.

Since learning that I received one of the Surly Amy grants to attend this year’s TAM, I have been, like many others, reading up on harassment issues at conventions. And then, there seemed to be an explosion of harassment all around. There was good stuff, too, like new policies on dealing with harassment at specific conventions. So it wasn’t all frustration, with grumbling reactionary swearing from behind my computer screen.

Several people, not naming names because I being vague. Oh wait. I am being vague because really, I only heard rumors that several people were so concerned about dealing with harassment at TAM, that they didn’t feel comfortable attending. This isn’t any of the more well known people I am talking about, who have made their actual reasons for not going very clear. But I’ll turn the camera onto myself here, because I was a bit concerned about it, I must confess. I wondered how I might deal with it. What if there are pervs with up skirt cameras? What could I do that wouldn’t involve a, “Ma’am, you’re making a scene, could you please leave?” scenario. Just to name one possibility. Just saying, I grew up with five brothers, and I can take care of myself and anyone else being harassed.

Well, I don’t know if this will help, but I like doing things that are funny to me, so I have done a little something. Backstory time! In May, I went to a craft fair in Cincinnati, and someone was selling some felt pins for $3 apiece. I took one look at the vendor’s sign, cracked up, and bought one from her, telling her they were fricking awesome. I had really only intended to make a batch of the same kind of pins to hand out to some friends at Dragon*con in September, not actually thinking that I would get the TAM grant and get to go to that. But then all that happened, and all the harassment chatter, and I decided I would bring a huge batch to TAM to see if anyone wants to join in.

And with that, I bring to you, my batch of vulva pins. I plan to wear mine on my sleeve. Because sometimes, you kind of have to, you know? Because when it gets to the point where people are afraid to dress a certain way because of a handful of perverts/stalkers/harassing fucktards, it feels good to say right up front, “Yeah I wear my vulva on my sleeve, and no, you can’t fucking touch it.”

A week ago, I drove to the park to watch the transit of Venus, a rarity of an event. I mentioned this in my last entry, but that was a few days after. A whole week later feels like so much further away. Yet next week feels like tomorrow. I am not sure about the whys and wherefores of this skewed perspective, only that I have it, and I doubt that it is uncommon.

I have been thinking a lot lately about memory, ones that I’ve lost, ones that I’m not altogether unsure I’d be happy to have back, ones I sometimes wish I could erase altogether. It is hard to explain to other people, though I am certain there are others who have experienced this seemingly bizarre loss. For me, there was a time when my brain thought it was an Etch-a-Sketch, and my neurologist deemed it a good course of treatment to overmedicate me into a drool-bot.

This then gets heavily tied into my writing, without my intention, even when I fight it. About 4 years ago, I wrote a character with similar issues, though I exaggerated her experience to be so much worse than mine. This character was born to a sinister purpose, one that had been hidden from her throughout her lifetime. I really love the characters that surround her, and the places she goes once she escapes from the reality that controls her. Roughly a year ago, I think it was, I realized that the only way for me to end her story was to end her narrative completely.

I fought this outcome so hard, but then last night, I finally wrote the words that ended her life. I am utterly sick about it, and I hope that comes across on the page, through the actions of the characters who were trying to protect her from her bitter fate.

Right now I am trying to reconcile fact and fiction, cope with this imagined loss, and complete the ending to this story. This character gave me such a great gift, and that is an ending to a story that has been four years running through my mind. Endings are one of my biggest writing challenges, and I am both terrified and delighted to have written one, so that now I can go back and fill in the missing pieces. I hope this task proves as rewarding as it is daunting.

For as long as I can remember, one of my favorite authors has been Ray Bradbury. As a teenager, I perpetually had a copy of a collection of his short stories checked out from the local library. The summer I had a root canal, I carried that heavy tome with me to the dentist’s office. As the laughing gas started to get to me, I would drop the book on my head and giggle uncontrollably.

I am not sure that I have a favorite story. I think more likely that I have multiple favorites. “Kaleidoscope” in particular sticks out, and a handful of others. Another one that immediately springs to mind is “There Will Come Soft Rains,” which is a short story based on a Sara Teasdale poem of the same name.

Anyway, I always loved the simplicity of his storytelling, the character-driven tales, especially the short ones. I wanted to be a short story writer, but found discouragement early, and stupidly listened to it. I have since stopped looking for discouragement, or giving it much note if it finds me. I try to remember the most important step in the writing process is to write. Bradbury knew this so well, and followed this rule always.

I was deeply saddened by his death today. Though I am not one to get teary-eyed over a favorite author’s passing, this one hit me. Honestly, it changes nothing in my life, but I felt a wave of sadness creep over me, betraying my robotic coding, giving way to human emotion.

I am not sure quite how to articulate all that I feel about this. For the next hour, I plan to add onto my Camp NaNoWriMo word count for the day.

As I sat at the pavilion at Ault Park last night, grumbling at the cloud cover that obscured the transit of Venus, I began to scratch out some thoughts about some current concerns with the state of my writing. Beginnings and endings, and all that messy stuff in between, somehow beginnings are tripping me up in this month’s NaNo endeavor. I thought about how I tend to start my stories the same, and about how much I need to break out of that comfort zone, explore new territories and lay waste to old habits. I hope that for the next hour at least, I can begin to crack the codes I have written myself into, and learn to open up new worlds I might otherwise not get to see.

A friend of mine has been trying to gently persuade me to go to TAM for awhile. I had initially thought it wouldn’t happen, then thought perhaps it might, and then had given up on trying to go this year, thinking 2013 might be the year I get to attend. After all, just under 6 months ago, I got to go to London in a study abroad program, thanks to a few scholarships and a lot of hard work. I thought, “I just need to work hard to save up for 2013. No big deal.”

On May 1st, I saw this post by Surly Amy on the Skepchick blog. I immediately opened up a document, copied the grant questions into it, and half-heartedly began to answer them. I left the unfinished document open on my desktop, intending to complete it, but didn’t quite get around to it. Roughly 20 days later, my friend made a post about the grant and I commented that I had thought about applying for it. She said I should go for it, and something just clicked on inside me, like, “Of course I should try for it. Trying is what I do.” I have no idea why I thought stopping was a good idea in the first place, nor do I care to explore that ridiculous avenue. In fact, just as my friend was tweeting about the grant, I had opened up my thesis prospectus to work on it and the grant app popped up in front of it: a lovely coincidence. But really, not such a coincidence, as both documents were incomplete and in desperate need of my attention.

At the moment when I opened the document, I was sitting with a group of writer friends from our local NaNoWriMo group, in a cute coffee shop in Northern Kentucky. I checked my email at some point, and had a message from my wonderfully supportive mother, who had somehow stumbled upon the grant link and sent it to me, telling me, essentially, that as “my little skeptic,” I should try for it. I laughed as I emailed her back that I was in the middle of applying for it.

As my writer friends and I chatted and wrote, and chatted and pretended to write, I completed the grant application, returned home, edited it, and emailed it. The next day, I saw this post, detailing the first 6 recipients of the grant. As I read about these women, I thought how much I would love to meet them, and be one of them. My hopes were up, but they wouldn’t be dashed if I didn’t get it, because I would still get to read about the adventures of others, and despite any jealousy that might stir up, it would still be incredibly fun to read about. And anyway, if I didn’t get it, there was always next year, and at least I had tried.

And then a little over a week later, I got the email notification that I am one of those women. I will link that post when it goes up, of course. I just completed my bio, after fretting over it a bit too excitedly. No, scratch that, exactly as enthusiastically as I have any right to be.

As I was working on my bio to send back to Surly Amy, my friend posted a gorgeous blog entry about becoming a more active member of the skeptic community. Here is her blog post: Keep Shouting.

I tweeted to her that I needed to send her the portion of my grant application where I named her as my skeptic hero. So I will post that here now, the portion of my application answering the question, “Who is/are your lady-skeptic heroes and why?”

Seelix/ Emily Finke is my number one lady-skeptic hero. I was lucky enough to meet her about 7 years ago at a NaNoWriMo meet and greet in Cincinnati. Within the same year, we both joined a group of local Firefly fans, and have been friends ever since. Emily is the one who told me about our local Skeptics group, which runs a monthly Science Café that I have attended several times. She inspires me on several levels. She is always posting fascinating links to websites that I might have missed on my own. She is the one whose advice I asked on which skeptical podcasts to listen to, and I was immediately hooked on Skeptically Speaking, I think most of all, because I felt more connected to the host since she is also female. I loved reporting back to Emily later about which podcasts I felt engaged with as a skeptic.

I consider myself immeasurably lucky to have this friendship with Emily, because my favorite skeptic lives just down the street from me. I am fairly certain that without her, I would not have found such a burgeoning and supportive online community. As of now, I am still skulking in the shadows, but I am learning how to step outside that imagined comfort zone and to interact with others. Earlier this year, I helped a young skeptic lady find out about our group. My youngest brother and I had traveled to Washington DC, to the Reason Rally in March, and his girlfriend decided to tag along. During the 9-hour road trip, I learned about her level of skepticism. She was delighted when I told her that we have a local skeptic group, and I cannot wait until I finally get a chance to take her to her first meeting. At the time, I didn’t think much more of the conversations than how it was really cool to have this in common with her. In reflection, I realize that I was advocating skepticism to another female, and that is quite an empowering feat, I think, for both of us. Honestly, I have Emily’s thoughtfulness and encouragement to thank for that.

Camp NaNoWriMo starts in just under 30 minutes. I opted out of my first cabin, despite landing a Firefly fan right off, because no one else was very chatty. Got moved into a new cabin, and opted for people my age writing in my genre. Much happier with the placement this time. Folks are chattier, and seem interesting. Very much looking forward to seeing how this experience plays out.

It’s raining in Cincinnati tonight. I had been planning on walking down to the corner bakery and getting a coffee and a donut to start Donut Day off properly, but I would have to put pants on for that, and it’s still stormy/gross outside, so instead, I will just sit here and write another blog post about a very awesome thing that happened today.

Earlier this week, I decided to sign up for Camp NaNoWriMo. I just got assigned to my cabin, having chosen “Surprise Me!” as my preference for being sorted. I figured why ask for folks of similar age/genre when I could just get the full random effect? I was immediately delighted to see that one of my fellow Cabin mates is a Firefly fan.

For this project, I am re-tooling last fall’s NaNoWriMo, writing a set of all new stories based around a central bizarre location. I think the project will share some genes with Bordertown, which I have not yet read, but is on my summer reading list.

I am excited to start writing, though I have a few pre-writing chores to tackle this weekend, like compiling character lists and story themes. One year, for NaNo, my story was inspired by a series of rhyming couplets. That might sound entirely batfrakkers, and that’s a fair assessment, but it was also incredibly fun. One of my best novels (that I still need to finish and edit) came out of that experience.

One of the reasons I decided to do Camp NaNoWriMo is to get a head start on writing for the prose class I am taking in the fall. Second, I hope to squeeze an episode or five of Scurvytown in there, too. Third, more short stories to submit out into the world. I have a goal by the end of the summer to have at least 3 short stories sent out to lit mags and/or contests, so I need to unplug from the Internet and get focussed on the writing. I know, I know. Good luck with that. I’ll definitely need something, call it luck, call it a cattleprod, whatever, to get me offline and into my bizarre fictional worlds. Escapism at its finest.