Oof, 2021 started out well, didn't it?

I mean even with the spike in Covid-19 patients, and the continued lies spread by the President and his allies about the election, I had a feeling on New Year's Day that we'd escaped the awfulness of 2020. That we'd turned a corner, the case numbers would be coming down soon, President Biden would be in office in just a few weeks, and we could start the work of rebuilding everything the Republican Party has destroyed over the last four years.

Even the Georgia elections (!) gave me hope. My fellow citizens in GA turned out in such numbers that they put the two Dems over the top, putting an end to the use of the Senate as just a roadblock to legislation. Exciting times!

And then came the coup.

I know, I know. Attempted coup. Or riot. Maybe insurrection, if you're a journalist and you're feeling spicy.

And suddenly all of the mental habits I'd tried to shed from 2020 were back. Reflexively checking the news every five minutes. Doomscrolling on Twitter. Cognitive dissonance from looking out my window, seeing a bright January day in SoCal, and then hearing reports of shots fired in the Capitol building.

Texting friends living in DC, to see if they're okay during the madness.

I called my brand-new freshman-clean House Rep yesterday, not just to urge her to impeach Trump, but also to check in and see if they were safe.

What a country.

Difficult to think in such times. Difficult to write.

But so far, I've managed to do it. Each day, closed out Twitter, stared at the screen, reading over the previous days' work until I sink back into the story.

And it is sinking. It is an escape, for me. A needed one, in this case.

So I've pushed the novel up to 21,348 words. I'm almost done with the scenes I've been working on, patch-work-style. I move up and down the page, writing sections as they come to me, completely out of order. I leave visual gaps in-between them, extra newlines, to show that these are fragments. Then go back in and fill the gaps later, stitching together all the pieces until they read like a continuous whole.

It's not how I've written other novels. Not even how I usually write stories, either. But it's the only thing that's working for me, right now. So I'm using it.

Hope wherever you are, that you're safe, that you can still put yourself in the headspace to write, even if it's just a few words.

Hang in there.

In preparation for diving into Season Two, I've been rewatching The Mandalorian's first season. And there's a lot of things I'm noticing, good and bad, about the series that I didn't pick up on before.

Warning: Slight spoilers for Season One below.

The Good

I still love the decision they made to set it just after the original films. Both aesthetically, because it lets them recreate the look of those movies (which I’m still a sucker for), and story-wise, because it gives them a lot of room to play, with the Empire crumbling (but not gone) and the New Republic still finding its feet (along with everyone else). Lots of possibilities.

And seeing characters that got short shift in the originals, like the IG unit and the Ugnaught, finally get their due as fully realized people, warms the heart of this old fanboy.

The special effects are simply spectacular. You can tell they poured a lot of money and time into them. And it's not just The Child, either; the ships, the creatures, everything looks as good as (or better) than anything made for the movies.

Ditto the music. I love the theme: So sparse but memorable, really sets the Western tone for the series. They keep the music low-key or gone for most of the show, which I appreciate. It's there to heighten some moments, but otherwise they know they don't need it.

And sometimes -- not often enough, but sometimes -- the dialog crackles. I think the scene between the two speeder troopers at the open of Episode Eight is one of the funniest, most re-watchable scenes in a modern Star Wars production.

The Bad

Far too often, though, the dialog is clunky. There's too many times where characters point out something completely obvious, like when they reach the lava river in Episode Eight and someone actually says "That's a river of lava."

Or the dialog simply makes no sense at all. Like when The Child approaches Greef, hand out, intending to heal him, and Greef cries out "It's going to eat me!" Which is laughably bad. Nothing Greef's seen in his time with The Child could make him think that tiny thing was going to try to eat him. It's just ridiculous.

Often they recap something that the audience has heard already, sometimes twice. And I don't mean the whole "I don't take off my mask thing," which they obsess over for some reason. I mean actual plot recaps they have two characters give each other after we (the audience) have just seen it happen in that same episode. There's a scene in Episode Seven where Cara and The Mandalorian recap not just the situation he's in (which we know because we saw him get it in) but also why he brought her along (which we know because we saw him recruit her).

It's not just the fact that these recaps don't make any sense in-story (because they're often between characters that know the things they're rehashing). They're also wasted time, in a show that doesn't have time to waste (only 8 episodes for season one, each only about 30 minutes long).

Setting aside the dialog, I also wonder if The Mandalorian changes at all over the course of the season? His circumstances change, sure, but he starts out a pragmatically ruthless, honor-among-thieves type, and ends the season as...a pragmatically ruthless, honor-among-thieves type. There's no grand moment when he realizes something about himself that he wants to change, and makes a conscious decision to change it. The droid IG-11 has more of a character arc then he does!

The Ugly

There's so many parts of this season that make me cringe.

Basically all of Episode Six ("The Prisoner"). For that episode to work at all, we need the other crew members to look and feel like a tight-knit group, moving and working like a well-oiled machine. That way, when they betray Mando, we'll actually be worried about him being able to take them down. As it is, he's the only member of the crew to display any competence at all, so it's no surprise when he comes out on top.

The less said about Xi'an's "I'm a bad girl and I'm into you, Mando" shtick, the better.

They really obsess over his helmet wearing. Too much. In a galaxy filled with all kinds of intelligent creatures, from Calamari to Tusken to Jawas, is it really so odd for someone to always wear a helmet? Re-watching it, I was struck by how much I really don't care what Mando's face looks like. I care about other things, like "Why did you leave The Child alone in an empty ship in the middle of Mos Eisley?"

And the whole sequence with Moff Gideon...Ooof. Where to begin.

Let's start with why he doesn't already know the troopers have The Child? The speeder guards obviously know The Child's important. They have working comms. Why don't they just tell Gideon? Because that'd eliminate the need for his "I'll keep them alive to drag out this episode" speech.

Then he commits the sin of actually saying they know what the e-web thingy is, and then goes on to explain it to them anyway.

Gives them "till nightfall" to talk things over, as if he cares about their lives...When, if he did care about them, he wouldn't have sprayed blaster shots into the bar in the first place.

It's all such mustache-twirling villain stuff, I can't help but roll my eyes.

Which is a shame, because the actor, and the character, is fantastic. An Imperial Moff, clinging to some semblance of control in his corner of space, defying the fall of the Empire. Great stuff.

I just wish they gave him something to do other than posture and bluster. Oh, and pilot a Tie-Fighter, something an administrator who came up in the intelligence services has no business doing. It's kind of like if the Governor of Montana used to be in the CIA in the 1970's but then decided to hop into an F-22 for funsies. Just...why??

Conclusion

On first watch, I felt The Mandalorian was a solid B-movie in TV show form, a nice little Western story told on the edges of the Star Wars universe.

After re-watching it, I still think that, but I'm more frustrated than before at the mistakes the series makes.

It's hard not to compare it to Firefly, another Western-in-Space story that had a pulpy feel. The Mandalorian doesn't come off well in that comparison: It stumbles out of the gate, with clunky dialog and "villains" that don't act in ways that make sense.

Here's hoping Season Two is better!

Feels a little silly to be setting any goals for 2021, to be honest. If 2020 taught me anything, it's that plans can become meaningless fairly quickly.

But I live in hope, and so I want to enter the year, like I always try to, with some goals in mind for my writing.

Goals from 2020: How did I do?

First, a look back at how I did on 2020's writing goals:

Write four short stories

Hahaha, nope. Not even close.

The story I started just after setting that goal? The one I'd been chewing on for a while, and wanted to just get started on? That's the novel I'm currently writing.

It didn't take long for me to look at the outline I'd produced for the "short story" and realize it was really a novel. And since, at the time, I was already working on one novel, I shelved it. Came back to it only this November, for NaNoWriMo, and I've been chugging along ever since.

I did start a new short story, that will actually be short, but hit delays because I tried to follow the advice of Story Genius, which ran me right into a wall of writer's block. Had to hit pause that one, too, so I could start working on the current novel.

I did get one story edited, and by edited I mean "wrote an entirely new back half of the story, doubling its word count." Said story is now so long it's too long for many of the markets I'd like to sell it to. So maybe I can get credit for that one?

Finish the current novel

This one I did do, sort of.

"Current novel" here meant Prison Fall, the book I was working on most of this year (before the new novel). The official goal was to have it done, completely, ready to go to agents, etc. And it is done, in the sense that I've done multiple drafts now, one of which involved basically rewriting most of it, and I've done multiple editing passes since then to clean up the prose and eliminate inconsistencies.

The feedback I've gotten from beta readers, though, has revealed some things I want to fix before sending it out. So it's not all done, in that sense. But close enough.

Post more to the blog

This one's also a mixed bag. I started out well, conducting interviews with local writers and posting them here on the blog. I think I got three months in before the pandemic crashed down on me, wiping out the mental headroom I had to work on those.

Ditto my book and movie reviews. I had a good run of keeping up with them, but eventually ran out of steam, over the summer this time. Began to interfere with my enjoyment of the books, where I felt I had to keep notes on every little thing as I went through. Not to mention my motivation for writing them up fell away. So I stopped.

So this one's a partial success.

Goals for 2021

Oof, here we go. Is it okay if I just call a do-over on 2020, and copy those goals? No? Fine, whatever.

Finish first draft of The Last Dragon

Slow and steady. I want to keep working on the novel I started back in NaNoWriMo, and finish its first draft before the end of the year. It'll be an ugly draft. It'll have mistakes and inconsistencies and historical inaccuracies everywhere. But I can't fix it if it doesn't exist, so I want to finish it out.

Finish edits to Prison Fall

One last pass to do the touch-ups from my beta readers.

Finish The Harvest

This is the short story I was working on in October. I like the story, and I want to finish it. By finished, I mean, drafted, edited, beta read, the whole shebang.

For once, I'd like to do the full cycle of drafts on a short story before sending it anywhere. In the past, I've gone through a few drafts, then started sending it out, sometimes before beta readers get to it. As a result, the story I submit to later markets is always stronger (and very different) from previous ones.

I'd like to have submit the strongest version from the start, this time. If that means it doesn't get submitted anywhere this year, I'll have to live with that.

Post three times a week

Yes, fine, I'm copying this one over from last year. It's still a good goal.

Stretch Goal: Submit Prison Fall to agents

If I don't finish the edits till the end of the year, this'll have to wait till 2022. But it'd be nice to have this actually out the door, accumulating rejection slips, before the year's out.

Wrap-Up

So there they are: my 2021 goals.

I'm setting the bar lower this time around, because I think the pandemic is not going away in the US anytime soon. Even with the vaccine, we're seeing folks -- medical front-line workers, even! -- refuse to take it, all while hospitals are full and mask-wearing is maybe at 50%. It's going to be a long hard road to herd immunity.

What about you? What writing goals are you setting for the new year?

We made it to a new year!

In the past, I've taken that for granted. One year rolled into the next, I got older, and the world kept turning.

Not this year. This year, reaching January feels like an escape, like ducking under a closing door just before it seals itself shut.

So a sincere Happy New Year to us all!

Novel's at 19,864 words. I'm still butt in chair every morning, forcing myself to stay there until I hit my word count goal. Some mornings it's easier, some it's harder, but...I'm always making progress.

I'm actually starting to run out of runway on the research I've already done about the setting. Which means I'm having to make more things up out of thin air, and thus getting more things wrong. I've already had to revise a few scenes based on new reading I've done. That'll happen more and more, I expect, until I can catch up.

I know that ultimately, I'll need to do some heavy editing of this draft, once it's complete. Not just to fix some inconsistencies, but also to ensure the things that are consistent are historically accurate. Or at least, as accurate as a non-specialist like me can get them in a fictional tale.

But since I know I'll need to do it, it doesn't scare me to get things wrong now. What's important now, I think, is to get the emotional beats of the story right. If I can nail down the characters, and how they react to the things that happen to them, I can fix the details later. Even if those details mean I need changes to the events of the plot, that's fine. So long as the emotional arc of things is right.

That's my theory, at least.

I want to thank those of those you who've been reading me regularly through this hell year. You give me hope that someday, these novels I grind away at will see the light of publication.

And for my fellow writers, I offer a hope and a blessing: May your writing be a joy and comfort to you. May your inner editor take a vacation when you're drafting. And may all your tales be true.

Onward to 2021!

When my wife and I moved into our new house back in February, we thought that would be the most stressful thing we did this year.

When I backed out of working a booth at a conference in early March because some Covid-19 cases had been reported in California, we thought I was being overly cautious.

When I had my birthday party on Zoom in April, with cases raging both here and back east, we thought that would be the low point.

When May came, and protests exploded across the country, we thought it wasn't safe to join them because of the potential for the virus to spread, never imagining that the police would be the biggest threat.

And then...and then the year is a blur for me, truly. Protests, and cops run riot, and record wildfires, punctuated by two camping trips taken in desperation, to get out of the house, to get somewhere, away from people, only to find that those spaces were crowded, too, and it seemed that no one, young or old, thought wearing a mask or keeping their distance or traveling with just their families was important.

I remember October, because for Halloween we turned out the lights and huddled indoors and hoped no one stopped by to ask for anything, for fear of them bringing the virus with them.

I remember November, because the election dragged on and on and on, and the Trump Regime launched an attack on the legitimacy of the results that failed in the courts but convinced my entire family back home that Biden is an illegitimate President.

Oddly enough, November is when I was first able to mentally breathe again.

It's also when I started writing the novel I'm currently working on, jumping into NaNoWriMo with both feet and falling on my face, as is the 2020 way.

But I picked myself back up, and I'm still working on the book. I like it more and more, as I write it and figure out new things about it. It's going to be different from anything else I've written: a fantasy with very little magic, a historical book with a diverse cast across two continents, a novel told in third-person with entire chapters written in first.

I have no idea what I'm doing. I have no idea if anyone will want to read this thing once it's done. It's scary, but also....a little liberating?

I think that's something I want to take into 2021 with me. An attitude, of not quite "fuck it," but close. More like "you have no idea what's going to happen in the world, and no control over it, so you should write what you want and worry about selling it later."

Which is not to say that I've held back from writing the stories I'd like to. More that, when writing them, I've aimed to write something sellable, something I think the market will buy. It's a...pressure, I guess, that I put on myself. To put some elements in and not others, to shy away from tackling anything too big or too strange.

This novel is one step along the path of letting that go. It's a weird structure. It's about a time and place(s) that no one (in the US) writes about. Its main character is disabled.

It'll probably go nowhere, even if I manage to pull it off, craft-wise. I'm writing it anyway.

So thank you, 2020, for teaching me this much: Writing is hard, so you should write what you love.

See you all in 2021.

Happy Holidays!

I'm finally back in my office. All the house work we've had done for the last three months -- while we lived, worked, ate, and slept sealed-off in the guest room -- is over. Taking down the barrier between the guest room and the rest of the house was like opening a huge present; we were grinning like kids the whole time.

And the work all looks fantastic, and a little unreal. Like we've stumbled into someone else's house. But no, it's ours! And we can once again use it all.

So I'm back to watching the sun come up over the mountains just east of the city, hammering out words before the work of the day begins.

Speaking of which, the novel's up to 18,000 words. So I'm putting out about 2,000 words a week, which is not bad, but does mean this draft won't be done until looks away, does mental math sometime in June (?!).

Which is...fine, I suppose. That's still a novel draft in less than a year. But if I only work on one project at a time, that means it'll be six months before I get back to editing my last novel. I've gotten some excellent feedback from my beta readers, and I'd like to incorporate it all before sending it out to agents.

Maybe I can keep working on the new draft during the week, and edit the other novel on the weekends? That's technically not taking the weekend off, but it is taking a break from the current draft. And editing's the kind of work that's hard for me to track, in the sense of how many words I've covered. These editing passes I'll need to jump around in the narrative, adding a bit of dialog here, changing a description there. It's not linear work.

What about you? Do you work only one project at a time, even if that delays things? Or do you find a way to juggle multiple pieces at once?

Anyway, as we wind down 2020, I hope you and yours are coming through the pandemic safe. I hope the vaccine gets rolled out to where-ever you are soon, and that enough folks get it for the danger to pass.

Good riddance to 2020. I'll see you all in 2021!

Novel's at around 16,400 words. I haven't done today's writing session, though, so I should finish out the week closer to 17K.

The deal is working, so far. Holding myself hostage, unable to go for my morning job or take a shower or have breakfast or anything until my writing's done for the day, has been rather effective.

And I'm looking forward to the weekend again, when I can daydream and doodle and research and not have to worry about hitting a word count. That recharge time is proving important, for my mental health and for my writing.

Funny, I think I started this year by throwing away word count goals and the idea of penalizing myself for not meeting them. Here I am at the end of the year, once again setting daily word count goals and forcing myself to meet them. It seems not only do different techniques work for different people, different things can work for the same person at different times.

What about you? What previous writing habit have you brought back this year, if any? Or maybe there's an old trick you've dropped?

Novel crossed 15,000 words today!

My pace has slowed since NaNoWriMo, but I'm still managing about 2,000 words a week, which is pretty good for me. Puts me on track to finish this draft sometime early next year.

I've changed up my writing routine a bit, both to give myself more time to write, and to have a chance to recharge.

So I've made a deal with myself: I have to write in the morning, first thing, as soon as I get up. No news, no twitter, no email. Just writing, until the day's words (at least 250) are done. I can take however long I want to set those 250 words down, but I can't do anything else until I do.

Most days, I end up going beyond those 250. Once the pump is primed, the words keep flowing.

In exchange for this early-morning discipline, I only have to write on week days. Monday through Friday. Saturday and Sunday are days off, now, just like they would be (I hope) if I were a full-time writer. If I did write full-time, I'd still need vacations. Still need days off. But I'd have no one to tell me when to take them, and I'd probably feel guilty if I did.

So I've made this deal. Treat writing like job, get it done first thing in the morning, and in return, I can take the weekends off.

Sunday was the first day I've deliberately taken off (from writing) in...months. I still did some research for the current book, digging up images and articles on Swedish manors built or renovated in the 18th century. I sketched some notes for future scenes. But I didn't write anything, didn't have to produce any words.

It was...incredibly relaxing. It was glorious.

And I came into Monday's writing session recharged. Ready and eager to go.

This is the first full week I've been working under this self-made bargain. I'm looking forward to the weekend, having met my word count goal every day this week, first thing upon waking.

What about you? Do you ever take days off from writing? Do you feel guilty when you do, and if so, how do you handle it?

So I didn't win NaNoWriMo this year. It wasn't even close.

But I'm not quitting on the novel. I've come too far not to see it through.

And NaNoWriMo has got me flexing my writing muscles again. After today's writing session, I'll have churned out almost 2,000 words in a single week. That's not novel in a month pace, sure, but it's a novel-in-a-few-months-pace, which is better than I've been able to achieve since the pandemic began.

Even so, I still feel pressed for writing time. I want to brainstorm for a bit, every day, before working on a scene. Or after finishing a scene, reflect on what might be missing from it, what I'll need to add the next day. And that's hard to do, when I've only got thirty minutes or so free to spend on the novel.

It's good that I've got some vacation coming up at the end of the month, then. That'll certainly give me more time in which to work.

But I want -- I need -- to carve out more time during a regular work day. Which might mean dropping some of my other hobbies (I've been brushing up my French, and learning Swedish) in order to make that time. Or maybe I'll get up even earlier, so I can make that time at the start of the day.

Not sure what's best. Gotta figure something out, though.

What about you? What do you do, when you feel like you're not getting enough writing time?

Did I say I could write at least half a day this week, free from distraction?

turns to self from last week: Oh my sweet summer child.

I've been able to put in a full day of writing just once. Once

Every other day, I've had my water shut off and construction going on in both the room right next to my temporary office (I'm currently working in the dining room) and above it. They're grinding, sawing, singing, at random intervals, throughout the day.

It's...impossible to concentrate.

Still, I've managed to squeeze some words out. Crossed the 11,000 word mark on the novel yesterday, which felt good.

But I'm nowhere near close to hitting 50K by the end of the month. According to NaNoWriMo, at my current pace, I'll be lucky to finish by end of February 2021 (!).

So while I'm bummed about not "winning" NaNoWriMo this year, I'm still glad I did it, for two reasons.

First, because I was doing it, I was able to convince a friend to take the plunge, and try his hand at his first novel. And he's won! He's well past 50K at this point, and is on track to wrap up the first draft of his first novel. I'm jealous of his word-count, true, but I'm also overjoyed that he got it done. Can't wait to read it, when (if) he's ready for beta readers.

Second, because the time pressure for word count did push me to stop using outlining as an excuse, and just start writing. I was terrified of getting lost, of not being able to write it if I didn't know where I was going.

I forgot that I've written all of my other novels without an outline. All of them. Short stories, as well.

I'm not a full-on pantser, but I do discover things while I'm writing that I don't seem to think of when simply outlining. I need a plan to get started -- characters, situation, possible ending -- but once I'm in it, the plan gets altered so much that a detailed outline would be pretty much trashed by the time I'm 5,000 words in.

Outlining, for me, comes later. Once the first draft is done, and I've mapped out all the place I want to go, all the things about the world I want to see. Then I can pull together a detailed outline, find the weaknesses in the story, and use an updated outline to produce the second draft.

So I've learned a bit about my own process. It takes longer, this way, I feel, but at least it happens. Better to charge ahead and produce a draft that can be edited, then to spin my wheels creating an outline that's going to get thrown out once ink hits the page.

And what about you? If you did NaNoWriMo this year, what did it teach you about your own writing process? Do you write better in the morning or evening? Do you need to outline it, or do you need to wing it? Can you write through distractions, or do you need a calm place in which to work?

My wife and I are re-watching The West Wing for the first time since Trump took office. It's been...revelatory, to see those people and those controversies again, after the last four years. To imagine (again) a White House whose biggest scandal might be some harsh words said to a fundamentalist on television, a White House where a single lie to the Press Core can occupy a character's arc for a whole episode.

A White House that might hire Ainsley Hayes.

If you're not familiar with the show, Hayes is a young Republican that out-debates a high-level member of the President's staff on a political talk show. When the President finds out, he decides to hire her to work in the White House Counsel's office. She refuses, at first, to come work for a Democrat. But after seeing them working in the White House (as part of being there to turn the job down) the Chief of Staff summons her sense of duty, and she accepts.

I love the Ainsley Hayes character. She's an excellent counter-weight to the arrogance of the other staff members, she's smart and witty and optimistic amidst the daily hustle and bustle of the administration. And she faithfully represents the Republican position on issues circa 2000, right down to her objections to the Equal Rights Amendment.

It's during an episode where she has a casual debate with another staffer on the ERA that she articulates the Republican governing philosophy:

I believe that every time the federal government hands down a new law, it leaves for the rest of us a little less freedom. So I say, let's just stick to the ones we absolutely need to have water come out of the faucet and our cars not stolen.

This is an absolutely accurate summation of what Republicans believed (and many still believe).

The problem is, it's not a conservative stance. It's a libertarian one.

Libertarians want to roll back the role of government to what it was in the pre-industrial period: foreign defense, a little bit of property law, and that's it. That's why the Libertarian Party wants to legalize all drugs: the War on Drugs is not in service of either of those goals.

Which is all well and good, but neither is Social Security. Or the fire department. Or public schools.

If you believe that more law means less freedom, then you have no interest in making good laws. Because the only good law is the law that never gets passed.

This stance has been masquerading as conservatism in the United States for the last few decades, but it is not conservative.

To try to recover the conservative position, let's turn to the writer considered the progenitor of the movement, Edmund Burke:

Society cannot exist, unless a controlling power upon will and appetite be placed somewhere; and the less of it there is within, the more there must be without.

Hmm. Doesn't sound like he thinks fewer laws means more freedom.

Nothing turns out to be so oppressive and unjust as a feeble government.

Oh? He doesn't want to make government so small he can "drown it in the bathtub"?

Two more quotes, both of which, I believe, sum up the actual conservative position:

A state without the means of some change, is without the means of its own conservation.

And:

The greater the power, the more dangerous the abuse.

In other words: Modern Conservatism is opposition to radical change

That may sound like a small philosophy, but it turns out to be a big one. Burke was writing (from the safety of England) during the French Revolution, forming his philosophy out of opposition to the Terror.

He opposed both the refusal of the French aristocracy to change and the radical changes being made by Robespierre et al.

The conservatism of Burke fully believes in the power of government to do good. But it acknowledges the potential for government -- like any powerful organization -- to do evil.

It's a combination of a skeptical view of the nature of people -- government being necessary, in part, to protect us from our worse instincts -- and a skeptical view of power wielded without check.

So while Burke might have opposed something like the ERA in his own time, someone like Burke dropped into the US of the 1970s, where women had been voting and going to college and having careers for decades, would have seen no issue with enshrining their equal status in law. In fact, he would have (rightly) seen it as a preservation of liberty against backsliding by the state.

Okay, one more quote:

The people never give up their liberties but under some delusion.

For a true conservative, one of the purposes of law is to firmly entrench the rights and liberties of the people. Thus more law can and does mean more freedom, if those laws are written correctly.

Also note that for Burke, liberty is not the freedom to do as we please. Burke believed that we could not be free unless we tamed our passions; that only a people with their emotions in check could be said to be free.

To take a more modern example, freedom does not mean the freedom to go without wearing a mask. Public health fits squarely in the realm of government, and those who defy laws written to preserve public health are not exercising their liberty, but inciting anarchy. That's a true conservative viewpoint.

It's difficult to see, after decades of the Republican party trying to put their stance into practice, but they are not conservatives. They're radicals, shading into libertarians, wrapping themselves in a tradition they no longer follow.

Slow but steady.

I'm at a little more than 7,000 words on the new novel so far this month. Behind where I need to be to finish NaNoWriMo, but further than I was a few weeks ago. That's got to count for something, right?

Writing during the week has been difficult. Work has been...stressful, and I've needed to come in early and stay late, just to keep up. That's obviously cut into my writing time, but it's also drained my batteries before I even have a chance to sit down at the keyboard for the day's words.

As a result, while on the weekend I built up to around a thousand words a day, during the week I've fallen back to a few hundred. Sometimes. If I'm lucky.

There's light at the end of this tunnel, though. I've got a week of vacation coming up. A full week, when I can write at least half the day, before house and family obligations pull me away.

It might not be enough time, even then, for me to catch up to where I need to be to reach 50K by November 30th.

But I'm going to try for it, nevertheless.

Hope your own writing is going well, and if you're trying NaNoWriMo, that you're slaying each day's word count, day by day.

Onward!

Work on the novel has been slow but steady this week.

I’m not getting down more than a few hundred words a day. But I am getting them down.

The slow pace feels like a lack of time, for me. As in, I don’t seem to have enough time to gather together my thoughts about where the story should go, and then set them down. Like I have just enough time to do one, but not the other.

And for NaNoWriMo, I need to do both.

Hoping to be able to make up some lost time this weekend. Wish me luck!

Jesus, we actually fucking did it.

We're kicking the Giant Orange Baby out of the White House.

This is an historic victory, for so many reasons.

First Black woman elected VP.

First South Asian VP.

First woman VP, period.

A record 74 million votes and counting for the winning candidate. In the midst of a global pandemic. And while the incumbent spent months casting doubt on the entire election process.

Biden's also the most experienced President-elect we've had in a long time.

Obama was a one-term senator. Bush II had been a state governor, but hadn't served in the federal government at all. Same for Clinton.

And we all know Trump hadn't worked in government at all, not even at the level of parking attendant.

You have to go all the way back to George H.W. Bush to find a President with anything like Biden's experience. Bush I had been VP to Reagan for eight years, and before that he'd been a Congressional Representative, the US' Ambassador to the UN, and CIA Director.

It's a good precedent. Bush I was a steady hand at the wheel, avoiding the quagmire in Iraq that his son would jump into feet-first, and navigating the end of the Cold War with grace.

But maybe a better parallel for Biden is even further back, nearly sixty years back, with LBJ.

Like Biden, LBJ served for decades in the US Senate before becoming VP to a younger, less experienced, but more charismatic President. And when he took office, he was seen as carrying the burden of finishing what the previous President had started. Just we look to Biden to consolidate and extend Obama's legacy.

Thankfully, LBJ was a master at getting legislation passed, which is how a Texan ended up signing both the Voting Rights Act and the Civil Rights Act.

Biden's going to need some of that skill to work with Congress, especially if the Republicans hold onto the Senate and McConnell decides to continue his role as Majority Roadblock.

We can only hope the parallel holds that far. Goodness knows we could use some good luck, here in the States, after four years of being cursed with the worst administration in over a hundred years.

I thought writing during a pandemic was hard.

Turns out, writing during a tight election where one of the candidates has spent the last several months shouting "Fraud!" at the top of his lungs whenever someone mentions mail-in voting (while casting his own votes via mail) is even harder.

So I did start working on a new novel this week, for NaNoWriMo. And I have worked on it each day.

But I've made very little progress. Only 1,424 words to date.

I'm trying not to stress about it. I have enough to worry about already, from work happening on the house to day-job deadlines looming next week to the pandemic getting worse in my city to trying to help my wife convince her mother that no, in fact, Biden will not come personally to her house to confiscate the guns she doesn't have and disband the police department.

It's a lot.

But I want to tell this story. I've been thinking over these characters for a few months now, and I want to see where they go. I want to show you their world.

I just have to build it first.

What about you? If you're doing NaNoWriMo, how is it going?

The Washington Post has a comprehensive run-down of everything the Trump regime has broken over the last four years. The list is long, and it starts from the very first day of their time in office.

We need to roll it all back.

But more than that, we need to fix the broken parts of American democracy, that have allowed a minority government to stall progress and enrich themselves at the expense of the rest of us.

We need to reform the Supreme Court. Justices should have term limits. And the power the justices have arrogated to themselves of deciding the constitutionality of laws passed by Congress should be removed, and placed in a completely separate, explicitly bi-partisan, Constitutional Court.

We need to abolish the Electoral College. We elect governors and mayors directly. We should elect the President directly, too.

We need to admit both Washington D.C. and Puerto Rico as states. They deserve the full rights (and responsibilities!) of citizenship.

Finally, we need to address the balance of power between Congress and the Executive. Congress should take back powers it's given away, like the ability to declare a state of emergency.

And it should reduce the powers of the executive branch where they have been delegated. For example, border patrol agents should have no special powers to search and seize, no matter how close to the border we are. Federal police should not be able to deploy military weapons against citizens who have peacefully assembled. And moving funds between agencies or programs (when Congress has explicitly earmarked them) should be labeled a crime, and thus an impeachable offense.

All this, in addition to specific policy shifts, like stopping the provision of military gear to police departments, ending the abuse of refugees and migrants, and rebuilding the State Department as the primary driver of foreign policy.

It's a lot. But it's not impossible. We can do it, but it's going to take all of us.

So please, vote. Vote not as the end, but as the beginning, of building a better country together.

Because none of us are free, unless we are all free.

So I found a cure for the distractions last week: Stop reading the news.

I'm serious. Before last week, I'd check three different news sites in the morning, first thing, before sitting down to write. I felt informed, sure, but I also used up time in the morning that I could have spent writing.

So now I'm...not doing that anymore. I wake up and write, for about an hour, before doing anything else.

I still read the news, of course. I just do it after my writing is done, not before.

And so far, it's working! I've been able to churn out anywhere from 800 to 1,200 words a day, doing things this way.

Which is good, because NaNoWriMo starts on Sunday, and I've signed up for it again.

I know, I know. There's too much going on. I've already got a novel I need to doing additional editing passes on. And what about that series of short stories that I wanted to do, based on those horror writing prompts?

The thing is, I logged into my NaNoWriMo account last week, just to blow the dust off it, and I realized that every novel I've ever written started out as a NaNoWriMo project.

Even if I didn't finish the novel during that November, I got enough of a start that I eventually finished that draft.

So I signed up. I think the previous short story idea I had, about a woman in the eighteenth century who fights to protect an endangered species -- dragons -- has enough there to be longer than a short story. I already put off starting it once, because the more I worked on it, the longer it grew.

Well, if I just call it a novel off the bat, the length's fine, isn't it?

As training, I'm working through Lisa Cron's Story Genius. It's got a series of exercises for drilling into the bedrock of your story and figuring out what really makes it tick, so (presumably) writing the novel itself becomes easier. For example, writing a full scene from your main character's past that shows the origin of the internal issue they're going to work through (in the course of the novel).

I'm doing it for the horror short story, for now, not the novel (not yet). First because, well, doing it on the novel would be cheating. Second because I've not used this book before, so I wanted to try it out on something small to see if it works for me. And third, because I was kind of flailing on the short story. I hoped some structure would push me forward.

And it has, so far. As I mentioned, I've been churning out backstory scenes, working through my main character's personal issues so I know just what situation will push them out of their comfort zone (and into the plot).

I'm hoping to have enough worked through before Sunday that I can at least write a first draft of the story, and get it out of the way before I need to focus on the novel.

But if not...Oof. I'm not sure what I'll do. Start the novel, I suppose, in order to keep up with the NaNoWriMo pace? And pick up the short story on the other side, in December.

If any of you are doing NaNoWriMo this year, look me up! My user name's mindbat , let's be writing buddies, and help keep each other's spirits up!

Distractions piling up this week.

First, there's the upcoming election, which has my stomach in knots. We need to kick out the current regime in the US, but even if voted out, will they go? Even if they leave, what will they destroy on their way out?

Second, we're having some work on the main bathroom in the house. Which has meant days where the water's shut off. Days where the workers pounding on the floor right above my makeshift office feels like they're hammering directly into my skull.

Third, the short stories I've been sending out, including the one that I feel is the best thing I've written to date, are getting rejected, one by one. I know I'm not supposed to take that personally, but they make me question myself.

I mean, what am I doing, really? Building a writing career out of fifteen minutes here, thirty minutes there? Who am I fooling?

The writers whose stories I know, the ones that have made it, all have spent more time on it. More time writing, more time editing, more...time, in general. I don't know if it's a constant source of tension with their families, but...I can't take that kind of time.

So I'm down and doubting, dear reader. Unsure of myself, and this thing that I'm doing.

I don't want to quit, but...if all my writing has is a weird half-life, scraped together from minutes in the day, is it something I'll ever be good enough at? And if all I'm doing is doodling on scraps of paper that might end up on the fridge if I'm lucky, why am I doing it?

Did I say five new flash stories last week?

At my current pace, I'll be lucky to finish one.

Apparently, I forgot how hard a first draft can be.

I am working on one, though. It's a sweet little story about a group of kids who turn cannibal.

...did I not mention it was horror?

I'm sketching it out, 100 words at a time. I say sketching because I'm writing it in patches, jumping from place to place in the narrative instead of writing it straight through. It's a way for me to get past any block I have writing a certain section. I can skip ahead, or go back to a previous scene, and come back to the part that's giving me trouble later.

It's working, because I'm already eight hundred words in. That also means this is likely not going to be a flash piece, unless I trim it way down after. Which is fine, but once again shows I'm not a great judge of how big the story will be based on the idea I have. Maybe that's something that will develop over time, as I write more pieces of various sizes?

Meanwhile, the novel's heading out to beta readers. And I've got some time now to pay attention to where my short stories are going, and start submitting them again.

Which means I'll start getting rejections rolling in again. Each one still stings, but...really, there's no other choice. Write, Finish, Submit: The last step there is as crucial as the others.

Hope where-ever you are, you're able to keep writing, eight months into this pandemic. Using whatever tricks you can to keep your creativity alive.

It’s done! The edits are done!

Well, this round of edits, anyway...There’ll be more, down the line.

But the third draft of the novel is finished!

This is the first draft that I feel can be seen, so I’m sending it out to beta readers, hoping to get some good (meaning: useful and thorough, not merely positive) feedback.

I’ll also need to send it to sensitivity readers, because some of the characters are from ethnic groups outside my own. I think I’ve done them justice, but I know I’m not the best judge of that. So I’ll ask some friends of mine to be additional readers, letting me know if I’ve messed anything up.

While I wait (and lean into my reading, to unwind a bit), I'm going to work on a short story or three.

Or five.

I found a horror anthology that’s accepting flash fiction on five different subjects through December. The topics are broad enough that I’ve brainstormed a few different story ideas for each.

Since they’re flash pieces, I thought I’d write one up for each topic, and submit them all (which they allow). Five little stories for my brain to chew on while I take a break between editing passes.

What about you? What do you do, between revisions of a longer work? Or do you take any sort of breathing room between them, at all?

I turned the corner, and my soul left my body.

My wife says I walked around slack-jawed, not speaking, not noticing anyone or anything else.

It was our first trip to Galaxy's Edge, at Disneyland.

We'd been walking around the other areas of the park all day, in the lingering heat of early October, 2019. I'd wanted to go to Galaxy's Edge straight away, but our friend had insisted we wait till the sun went down. When the crowds would thin, and the lights and special effects on the buildings would come out.

She was right.

Because when we finally made it there, the park was perfect. Not empty, but not crowded. Cool enough to walk around, but not yet cold.

And everything was lit up.

I've been ambiguous about a lot of things Disney has done with the Star Wars franchise. But that day, in that park, I forgave them everything.

Because they nailed it.

The streets, the buildings, the design of the doors, the mother-fucking Milennium Falcon sitting right there, looking every inch a hunk of junk that's ready to race around the galaxy. They even got the sound of the floors in the Falcon right, our shoes click-clacking on the floor panels exactly as if we were being followed around by a foley artist from Lucasfilm.

It was...uncanny.

And I wanted to go back the very next day.

As you can imagine, though, we haven't been. We told ourselves we could return in the spring of 2020, just in time for my birthday.

What naïve summer children we were.

Thanks to the pandemic, there's no return trip in my near future. No immersion in the world of Black Spire Outpost.

Except through fiction.

So I picked up Dawson's book set on the world the park is meant to represent. I wanted to go back there, even for a moment, to let her words guide my imagination in invoking the spirit of the place.

Too much to ask, perhaps. But I had high hopes after reading Dawson's Phasma, where she introduced two new characters -- Vi Moradi and Cardinal -- while building out Phasma's backstory. That turned out to be a Mad-Max-via Star Wars tale wrapped inside a spy story; an incredible balancing act.

And once again, Dawson pulls it off, weaving a high-stakes story with a small-scale focus. She brings back both Vi and Cardinal, filling out more of their arcs and letting both of them shine.

But.

Something bothered me all throughout the book. I didn't know what it was at first, just a vague unease in my mind as I read along.

It wasn't until halfway through the novel that I realized what it was: the colonial attitude of Vi and the Resistance towards Batuu (the planet on which Black Spire Outpost is located).

Let me explain. No spoilers, I promise.

When the story begins, Batuu is not involved in the conflict between the Resistance the First Order. It's too small, too unimportant. The war has passed it by.

Which is one reason Vi is selected to go there, as some place the First Order won't be paying attention to.

Logical on the face of it. But it's the start of my problems with the story.

Because no one on Batuu invites the Resistance there. No one on Batuu wants to be involved in the conflict, at all.

The Resistance just assumes they have the right to build an outpost there, regardless of what the local population wants.

Which means they assume they have the right to bring the war there. To bring violence and death with them. Because they know the First Order is going to eventually discover said base, and when they do, they will respond with oppressive force.

And throughout her stay there, Vi repeatedly acts like a colonial officer sent to a "backwards" place:

• She quickly makes a deal to steal an ancient artifact and use it to bargain for supplies (instead of leaving it alone, as she has no rights to it)
• She assumes the right to squat in ancestral ruins that the people on Batuu consider sacred
• She receives medical care from a local elderly woman, which saves her life, and her thanks is to rip the woman's only help -- her grandson -- away from her. She thinks she's right to do so, as it's "for the greater good"
• She's constantly saying things like "Don't they realize I'm doing this for their own good?" every time she can't bend someone to her will
• When she finds herself using local expressions and greetings, she doesn't think of it as being respectful, but as "going native"

I could go on.

It's a frustrating flaw in an otherwise fantastic book. I like Vi, I like the other characters, I like the story, I even like the ending.

But the constant attitude of Vi and the Resistance that "we know better than you, so we're going to make these choices for you" is so...belittling, so arrogant. It feels out of character for a movement that says it's all about free will. And yet totally in line with the way we Westerners usually interact with other countries.

I still recommend the book. It's the next best thing to being there, in the park. Which is an incredible achievement, despite the problematic nature of some of its plot points.

I've been having incredibly vivid dreams.

Dreams that fade from memory when I wake up.

Parts of them linger, though. An accusation that was hurled at me. A song someone else was singing.

I think it means my unconscious mind is...bored? I haven't worked on anything new in a while, since I decided to focus on the novel edits. And as I near the end of the novel, those edits are becoming more re-phrasing and less re-writing. Less work for my imagination to do.

So I wonder if that's why my dreams have suddenly become full-color 3D rousing soundtrack level productions. It's my unconscious saying "give me something new to work on!" while I keep saying "not yet."

Because I do lean on my unconscious mind a lot when writing. Drafting or outlining, I'll often hit a wall, a place in the story where I'm not sure where to go, and I'll stop there for the day. Literally sleep on the problem, and come back the next day.

Usually, by the time I return to the work, I've got a solution. My unconscious has chewed on the problem all night, and delivers it up to me when I need it.

After...well, years...of working together like that, I'm wondering if my unconscious misses it. Even in the midst of a pandemic, even when I think (consciously) that I can't work on two things at once, it's saying "let's give it a shot."

So I guess I will! I'll pick up the new story again, wrap up its outline, and start drafting.

Or maybe even just dive into the drafting part, who knows? The outline's mostly done, and it's the writing itself that works out my unconscious the most.

What about you? Do you rely on your unconscious mind for help in your writing? Has it ever sent you a message, like it seems to be doing to me?

"Where's my backpack?"

It's Friday evening. We've just unpacked the car on this, our second weekend camping trip.

And my backpack is missing.

The backpack that contains everything non-food I brought for the trip: my clothes, my sunscreen, my toothpaste. A jacket for chilly mornings. A hat for when we go hiking. A book for reading during downtime. Extra solar-powered lights, so we don't have to setup the tent in the dark.

Even the lower parts of my camping pants, which can detach via zipper to become shorts, are in there.

My pants are literally missing.

We searched the car multiple times. Checked in every other bag. I even looked in the cooler, in case it had somehow been shoved in there along with the food and soda.

It was gone.

Later, after we got home, we saw it laying on the floor of the garage, waiting to be loaded into the car. Left alone, like a kid picked last for a basketball team.

So I had to go the weekend without it.

I slept, ate, hiked, all in the same clothes for three days. My scent was...not good, let's say, by the end of things.

And while we were hiking through the desert, with scraggly succulents clawing at my legs, I dearly missed the lower part of my pants.

But everything else? We made do.

I borrowed my wife's hat for hiking, and she used a spare umbrella we keep in the car.

I borrowed her rain jacket for the mornings, to keep off the chill (It didn't rain in the desert. She brought it as a spare, which turned out to be excellent foresight).

We shared sunscreen and bug spray.

And avoided people, of course, because it's still an effing pandemic.

So all that other stuff? Turns out I didn't need it. Not once.

And other than that, the trip went well! We found a way to foil the bees (bug spray to repel them + a water bowl off in the distance to attract them). We took the pups for a hike around and up some rock formations (in a day-use area, on-leash). We ate the food I spent all Friday cooking, at one point munching on some chilled paninis in the shadow of a boulder after a short hike out from the car.

We are, it seems, actually getting better at this.

Sleeping is still an issue. Between loud campers and smoke, it's difficult to get a full eight hours. Cooking is fraught, between the invisible burner and the bee invasion.

And we seem to get caught in traffic every time we go. We apparently leave at the exact right time to get jammed up in rush hour, every weekend.

But this trip was better. The missing backpack was the biggest thing, and it turned out to be not much of an issue at all.

We're already planning our next trip out.

I can't believe Breonna Taylor's killers are going to walk free.

I mean, I can believe it, in the sense that racism is real and cops are killers and they're killers because they kill and get away with it in this country.

But it's just...hard to grasp that after all we've been through, these United States, in 2020, a group of people could decide it's just fine to charge into the home of one of their fellow citizens and murder them, so long as the murderers are wearing badges.

It's also hard for me to wrap my head around the President of the United States saying for months that the only election he could lose is a fraudulent one, and there's no howls of indignation from his side of the aisle. No Senators lining up to condemn his words and ask that the House open a new impeachment investigation.

Nothing. Not a fucking peep.

Meanwhile in my state, in supposedly progressive California, we still use inmates as firefighters, paying them perhaps a dollar a day, which is slave labor by any other name. And once they've served their time, if they happened to have been born somewhere else, we hand them over to ICE for deportation.

Oh, and there's still a pandemic on, so walking around outside to enjoy the air newly-cleared of smoke and ash means constantly dodging people who aren't wearing masks.

So it's all I can do right now, when I'm not doomscrolling, to keep editing the novel. One chapter at a time.

I feel like I should be making more progress. Editing more than one chapter a day. Maybe even racing to the finish line.

Or picking up the story I was outlining a few months ago, and starting to actually put words to paper.

But I can't.

I just...can't.

The writing spirit is very willing, but the writing flesh, the meaty brain and hands that would summon words from the void, are quite busy right now.

So I press on, one chapter at a time. I'm not stopping, but I'm not able to move any faster right now.

Because this book's become even more important to me, lately.

It's about prisons. It's about all the different kinds of people that get locked up, and why. It's about exploitation, and greed, and how it's all kept going by the people that look the other way. The ones that hold their noses so they can benefit.

It's also about forgiveness, and change. About making yourself vulnerable again, after holding onto a hurt for so long.

I want to finish it. I need to finish, to have this story told. To share it.

There's not much else I can do, so I'm doing this.

Voting. Donating. Speaking up.

And writing.

A frustrating book. One minute, it'll be knee-deep in the blinders and false-assumptions of economics, the next it'll flip and call out economists for being too focused on GDP and not enough on human dignity.

That kind of whiplash makes me not trust anything the authors say. They're too inconsistent for me to be able to piece together a coherent approach or worldview for them.

Or argue with their takes. I mean, how do you approach someone who believes the B.S. that Silicon Valley has been spouting for decades about being "disruptive" (instead of the truth: they're VC funds chasing the bubble-high returns of monopoly) but also admits that increasing automation can displace people who should be helped?

Or a team that argues that GDP should not be used to measure growth anymore -- and even that growth is not that important -- but also uses GDP growth in their arguments for other policies (for example, that immigration does not hurt the societies that accept immigrants)?

It's all over the place.

If anything, this book further convinces me of the limits of current economic thinking. So many times, the authors posit a problem ("why don't people move around more?") that has obvious answers as soon as your take your head out of the economic sand.

I mean, so many of the things that make it hard for them to "explain" why humans act the way they do are fundamental ideas in economics that have been debunked.

Amazon isn't profitable because of its size. Amazon was a business failure for decades, that Bezos kept afloat through his access to capital. Only in the last few years, when it's become an illegal monopoly and so can flood the moat around its market, has Amazon turned a profit.

The authors swallow the Amazon line because they're still beholden to the economic idea that bigger means more efficient. But anyone that's ever worked in a large org knows that bigger organizations are less efficient than smaller ones. They just wield more economic power, and so can remain large.

And they find it hard to explain why people don't move around more (from poorer places to wealthier ones) only because they rely on the economic model of human behavior, which posits that people always act to increase their wealth, and do so efficiently.

Which is obvious bunk to anyone who has, you know, spent time around actual people.

The authors whiff on basically every issue they address. They find it hard to calculate the costs or benefits of social media, when Facebook's balance sheet is publicly available (proving social media is big business). They advocate for helping immigrants find their way in a new society, without pointing out that the policies they recommend -- job matching, housing, child care -- would benefit everyone if implemented universally, not just the displaced (and so be more politically viable).

In the end, I think they themselves sum up the book's "insights" best:

Economics is too important to be left to economists.

Well said.