You know it’s a good vacation when your worst complains are sports-related.  (I’ll avoid saying more; hockey blogs will do it for me, probably in more apocalyptic terms.)

As of about 50 minutes ago, I’m back from a five-day sojourn to Mendocino County and the family homestead.  I’ve written a great deal of quasi-poetic words on the subject previously, and I will avoid rehashing too much, except to say that it’s one of two places I can really see myself landing in the long term; it’s got the proper vibe on the opposite end of the spectrum from San Francisco, a kind of quiet eccentricity that really resonates with me.  It’s not somewhere I would go without a good deal of financial stability, though; I can’t allow its niceties to overcome the pragmatic facts of its isolation.

The odd thing about the vacation for me was the sense of unplugging.  While I checked my email and my Facebook updates here and there, and I spent a great deal of time sutured to my parents’ Nintendo Wii (company name added to avoid too much innuendo), I was not as engaged with those things as I have been previously.  I also barely touched my own laptop and writing, which, while it did put the brakes on progress in Eyes of Stone left me feeling very relaxed and un-pressured for the duration of the visit.  Really, I think it was the first true, unadulterated break I have allowed myself since before I left my previous job, and I can feel it in my physical and mental health.  No wonder I made some (prosaic) leaps forward in my shuffle toward adulthood.

And now, here I sit, ripping CDs into iTunes via my spanking-new USB CD drive and acclimating to the idea I have to be up at 6:30 for that copyediting gig I think I remember having.  Soon S. will be here to whisk me away to Chinese food and date night, which sounds like one of the best ideas ever engineered by man; and then after that will be bed, and hopefully an end to the deranged anxiety dreams that have haunted me for the past four days.  (Seriously, I am not enrolled in beginning engineering courses as a mandatory part of my employment; I don’t know why my brain keeps insisting on this.)

So, farewell for now, Fort Bragg; I’ll remember you via the smile on my face, the clarity in my mind, and the eight bottles of North Coast Brewery beer sitting in my refrigerator.  Keep it local and weird up there; I’ll be back in the winter.

I have just learned about the TeleEroticist/Reasons I Hate Girls tempest currently wracking the Internet (and Twitter in particular).

To avoid saying much about the names of the people involved, let me first point you to the Jezebel article on the subject, then summarize the salient points I’m worried about here:

1. Woman and man make each others’ acquaintance.
2. Man and woman both blog/tweet about sex, man under the guise of his blogs “Reasons I Hate Girls” and “100 Girls in 100 Days”, woman under the moniker “TeleEroticist”.  Both are aspiring writers. doing some writing as they try to work up to their career aspiration.
3. Woman gets popular due to her Internet musings.  Man less so.
4. Somewhere in here, it turns out man’s musings are fictional, while woman is (near as anyone can tell on the Internet) an actual sex-worker, hence her anonymity; disclaimer about said fictional origins is nearly nonexistent according to my one source.
5. Rumors start circulating about woman getting something more concrete out of this growing Inter-fame (nothing concrete, she insists, but there are rumors).  Man becomes jealous.
6. Man reacts to jealousy by alerting woman’s sister to the TeleEroticist Twitter account, and then publicly outing her via Twitter.
7. Cue Internet backlash!

The quotes I’ve seen from the man in question seem at the very least latently sexist (probably more like blatantly), and definitely petty toward this woman in particular (I am, if you can’t tell, avoiding using their names to at least do some small amount toward halting the outing of either involved party).  This sort of thing incenses me, and not merely because of the sexism; what this man did, even if it hadn’t been done to a sex worker, is potential career homicide.

It’s like this: an artist, of any sort, depends on a combination of skill and popularity to make their way in the world.  This is a fact; even if you’re an incredible writer, you won’t make a dime if no-one has heard of you or likes you.  As such, artists getting involved in politically contentious issues (like, say, sex work) is a serious gamble; you’ll note that most of the artists you see publicly connecting themselves to political causes or “hot potato” cultural issues are either very famous (and so likely to retain fans who already love their art even if they disagree with their politics), or very underground (and probably not doing it for the money).

The two issues exempted from this seem to be free speech and copyright issues, because, naturally, artists are probably fans of freedom of expression and being allowed to keep the rights to their work, and very, very few people would dump on them for this.  (Artists also seem to get away with having serious substance abuse problems, but that’s a whole other ball of wax.)  Everything else—human rights, gay rights, sex-positivity or negativity, gender relations, views on the military, etc., etc.—is fair game to cause people to leave their fandom in droves.  And without fans, artists don’t have patrons; and without patrons, artists die.

There’s a flipside, too: artists still building their careers tend to need day jobs.  Burger-flipping.  Copy-editing.  Call centers.  We wish we could make money off blogging, but it doesn’t work out that way.  And like anyone with a day job, we could get into trouble if our opinions were ever directly connected to us, with the added benefit that it’s possible (if we’re lucky) that we’re more widely read than a random Borders employee’s LiveJournal, and so more likely to suffer the sting of damaged career prospects if our exact identity is revealed.

This is not to say only famous or underground artists are political; plenty of artists, yours truly included, choose to make some of their politics known under their “base” Internet personae.  I’m not shy about my feelings on gay rights, or bias in journalism, or net neutrality.  But every time I talk about those things, I am rolling the dice that taking such a stand isn’t alienating a career prospect, either in writing or else-wise.  But that’s my choice, and while I make it with trepidation every time, I make it for myself; I like to believe that maybe it’s keeping me from getting stuck in a contract that forces me to shove a fist into my mouth on certain issues so I don’t lose my book deals, but I’m probably aggrandizing by thinking it ever matters.

The bottom line is, outing those parts of myself is my choice.  And that, for me, more than the outer’s rampant sexism, more than his obvious envy, more than any other noisome part of his behavior, is the part that incenses me the most.  TeleEroticist was forced to take a very serious risk, one far more serious than my being anti-Prop 8 (even assuming all the sex work she does is legal, there’s a social stigma attached that is far worse than anything I’ve said), and in the process she was stripped of agency.  People are already rolling the dice by posting any opinion on the Internet, and people whose popularity is tied into their career are rolling for even higher stakes.  Do us a favor; don’t roll them for us.

Hi, my name is Tyler, and I want to nose into your private life.

The term is “gossip”: Random House calls it “a person given to tattling or idle talk”, but I’d like to refine that to mean “a person given to nattering about and intruding into others’ private lives”.  That seems to be how we use it anyway.

The thing is, I’m one of those.  But I swear I’m one of those for a good reason.

See, for all I don’t tend to let the reader in to my main character’s headspace (at least not explicitly), I believe firmly that characters are one of the main pillars of writing; you can build a story around weak characters if you want, reinforcing in other areas, but attention to characters as well as the other elements makes a much more resilient structure.  But in this as in so many things, I run afoul of the basic truism of writing: no matter how powerful your imagination, now matter how good you are at unleashing your id onto the page and into the cortices of an unsuspecting populace, you can only write what you know.

So, I strive to know.  And what better way to know characters, what firmer handhold for insight into the human condition, than hearing what’s going on with the people in your life; the people whom you, theoretically, know best?

This is why I always want to know what’s happening with people.  This is why I always want the juicy details of fights, rants, hook-ups, break-ups, meltdowns, celebrations, and every other little thing I can learn.  This is why, when a friend reacts, I always want to hear why they had that reaction (or at least, hear the dodges or justifications when they explain).  And it’s why I’m always examining myself, wondering what brought me to the place where this reaction or that behavior seemed like the correct response.  It’s not because I want to prattle about these things to people; it’s not because of the vicarious thrill of another person’s drama; it’s so I can gain understanding, and maybe, just maybe, channel that understanding into something of value in my own life or in my writing.

So I’ll keep asking, and keep hoping people don’t misunderstand why I’ve asked; and I’ll keep trying to hold what I learn secret, and give it enough of a twist on the page that no-one feels betrayed.  After all, I’d make a terrible nosy spinster.

For the past, oh, let’s say month, I have been hard at work on one story.  That story went through two abortive first drafts before finding its final concept; several rewrites of approximately half the scenes; and a couple editing rounds, including one of my rare dalliances with pre-first-submission beta readers.  The end result: a story whose composition I am proud of, and which I felt confident about sending on to the editor whose deadline I was obeying; even if said editor does not like it, I am nothing but pleased with the work that went into it.

The other end result: I’ve been doing nothing but editing for the past two weeks.

Editing is not a bad part of writing; sometimes, it’s the most fun part; but it’s also, in its own way, the easy part.  It’s painful to perform the necessary surgeries on a manuscript, but for me it is vastly easier to get through an editing round—the process is faster, and more importantly, the big ideas are already there.  Barring scenes that need to be balled up and set on fire and the ensuing major work, I don’t need to be fighting too hard for inspiration.  But, since editing does require its own inspiration, and since deadlines do not always give me room to wait patiently for the muse while looking for the perfect cup of espresso and memorizing the ceiling spackle, I’m forced to keep myself laser-focused on the story at hand; other stories must be resigned to jotted notes, or editing for those days when I’m waiting for a beta reader to get back to me.

And I miss new worlds.  It’s not that the world of “The Hero’s Journey” wasn’t fun, or wonderful, or really that it was any negative thing in particular; it’s that I know it so well now.  I was working on world’s I’d already discovered, scanning over the map for those last few unmarked islands, those weird and isolated microclimates.  I need a new planet to explore; a couple new heads to get into.  Or at least, some time to revisit some old brains I haven’t seen in a while.

What I’m saying here is, this week marks the End of Editing, for a little while; I’m finishing an edit of “Unaired” and sending it on to whoever I decide to send it on to, and then I’m going back to the new.  One day of editing to finish “Unaired”; one day to put my query together for Done with Mirrors; and then I’m spending the rest of the week on Eyes of Stone and Not Providence.  That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it.

Of course, this happens to be a week I’m having friends over…but hey, why else is there a lock on my bedroom door?

Let’s play a game.

A man, a clever man, with teeth immune to the ravages of coffee and fantastic hair that never thins, asks you a question: how do you sum up who you are?  But there’s a catch, he says, grinning a grin that stirs something primal within you: your answers must be in the form of stories others have told.  Not stories about you in the literal sense; not the stuff traded on the playground or boasted of by parents; stories that, in their being about something else, nevertheless caught something about you, some quintessential chord in the music of your life.  A movie, a book, a joke, a poem; what are the dots of paint in your portrait?

I have some answers.  One of them is Big Fish.

I refuse to say anything more about the movie, because to do so is to risk a dialogue I don’t want to have.  That movie left me raw and red and grinning, and that’s all that matters.

If you couldn’t tell by now, I recommend it.  It’s amazing.  If I can even reach within five feet of the story it told, I’ll consider myself a success, and I don’t say that about just anything.

Also, remind me to tell you some time about the strange, clever weasels that lived in the fields near my grandmother’s apartment, and about how I used to be in a vicious Los Angeles gang…