I've mentioned before that I've always been afraid of the police.

Not that I have any negative experience to make me afraid. No, I grew up White and privileged, shielded from the things they did to others.

Yet I was afraid. And I was right to be.

Because if the police can pull you over for a broken taillight, insist on a search of your car, and choke you to death when you resist said illegal search, you never want to be pulled over.

If the police can raid your house on an anonymous tip and kill your dog when it tries to protect you from the armed intruders violating your home, then leave without even an apology when they learn it's the wrong home, you never want to have them pay you a visit.

And if they have the power to insist that the only way you're going to get help with your heroin addiction is to plead guilty to a crime that hurt no one but yourself, you never want to ask them for help.

But that's where we are, in the United States. We've expanded the role and powers of police so much, that the often the only hand being held out for those who are homeless, or addicts, or mentally disturbed, is the one holding a gun.

As we re-examine the place of police in our society, Vitale's book is essential reading. It's not a screed, and not wishful thinking about how everything would be peaceful if the police went away.

Instead, it takes a hard look at what the police are for, and then dares to ask the question: Are they successful at it?

As it turns out, they're not. They're not any good at solving homelessness, or making sex work safe, or getting addicts into recovery, or reducing gang violence, or helping the mentally ill get treatment, or disciplining school children, or even something as mundane as actually preventing crime.

Police, in a word, are a failure. They're an experiment that we need to end.

Because the problems we've asked them to address can be, just by different means.

We can get the homeless into homes, and use that as a foundation to get them standing on their own again.

We can invest in businesses in and around gang-troubled neighborhoods, to give the people who might join those gangs the opportunity to do something better.

We can find other ways to discipline children than having them handcuffed and marched out of school.

The End of Police is both a passionate plea for us to find a better way, and a dispassionate look at how badly our approaches to these problems have gone wrong.

It's not too late to try something else. We just need to make the choice.

I'm rather upset with past me.

Finally dove into editing the novel this week. Stopped procrastinating and worrying about the right way to do it, and just started doing it. Figured I'd look for inconsistencies, and touch up language or dialog along the way.

And at first it worked! I chugged along, making small changes, trimming sentences here and there, for four whole chapters.

But then I noticed something: The chapters I'd written (and edited, now for the third time) were all too short.

I'd left out physical descriptions of the characters, so the reader had no guidance on what they looked like.

I'd left out descriptions of the locations they were moving through, so the reader had no way to orient themselves in space.

And I'd left out any discussion of how the characters should react to a crisis, so the reader had no idea of the alternatives, or how bad the crisis really was.

I could tell all this, for the first time, because the reader was me.

I don't mean that I was literally lost in my own novel. Thank goodness, no, I still knew where everything was, and what everything looks like.

But I'd had enough time off from the book to approach it like a reader. And I've recently read some books that had a quick pace and an interesting plot but never gave me enough time to get oriented in the world, so I always felt a little confused.

Both things that let me recognize it when it started happening in my own book.

So this editing pass -- draft number three, for those keeping score at home -- is turning out to be a "filling in the gaps" pass. Expanding conversations so each character's whole train of thought is present (or at least enough for the reader to make the tiny leaps required). Spending more time in a space before the plot pushes us out of it, so I can give the reader something to visualize.

Thankfully I've been thinking about all of these things for two years now (or three? is it three years?) so I can fill in the gaps when I spot them. But even as I fill in the gaps, I know I'm creating more work for myself. Because each of those filled gaps is now a first draft, and will need to be revised again (and again) before it's ready to go out.

So thanks, past me. You keep the plot humming along, but you forgot to lay down all the sign posts along the way.

Today, the US healthcare system occupies a place very like US beer did in the 1990s.

See back then, US beer was a joke to liberals, or anyone that took beer seriously, and a point of patriotic pride to conservatives.

These days, after decades of shifting regulations that allowed the market for craft beer to first find a foothold, then blossom, US craft beer is world-renowned. Numerous pubs in other countries proclaim they serve "American-style craft beer." People across the political spectrum can take pride in their local brewers, no snobbery or jingoism required.

Our healthcare system has not experienced anything close to that kind of renaissance. Conservatives refuse to countenance any critique of the system, while liberals use it as a tired punching bag. We're warned of the dangers of "socialist medicine," all the while my mother-in-law is constantly harassed about a $4,000 bill she doesn't owe (the hospital filed it wrong with her insurance), doctors and nurses are overworked, and millions go without any sort of insurance.

And, frankly, Medicare for All sounds great, but it scares the bejeezus out of anyone to the right of Bernie Sanders. Not to mention it's sort of vague on details, and seems to require a rather large leap to get from here to there.

So I was primed for a retread of the old arguments in Which Country Has the World's Best Healthcare?. US healthcare is terrible, Canada's is great, etc etc.

Thankfully, that's not what I got at all. Instead, I found the missing manual, a way to evaluate different healthcare systems around the globe. Along with a proper sense of the history and workings of eleven of them.

Emanuel describes a set of axes along which to measure a healthcare system. Things like patient wait times, or costs at the point of service, or choice of doctors. Then he proceeds to examine each country's system in turn, looking at the things it does well, the challenges it faces, and -- most importantly -- how and why it does those things well or badly.

True, the US performs terribly on basically every axis. That's not news. What is news is that multiple countries manage to provide better coverage, better care, and cheaper care, without giving up private practices, or even -- in some cases -- letting go of private insurance!

Reading this, I felt both relieved and angry.

Relieved, because with so many different systems out there, no one's got a monopoly on the "right" way to do things.

Angry, because for so long the debate in the US has been framed as single payer or status quo. When the truth is that we can do a lot to improve our system without letting go of the basic free market nature of it.

How much further would we liberals have gotten, if we'd argued for a regulation of drug prices, instead of single-payer? Or insisted that insurance coverage for children be provided for free, as part of any policy, like it is in other countries with well-regulated markets?

We don't have to have the government take over as the single payer for everyone. We don't need to radically overhaul the system. We need to properly regulate it, to get the outcomes we want: patients being able to choose their doctor, use their insurance to help pay for their care, and not go broke obtaining the prescriptions they need.

Framed as the proper regulation of a free market, what could the conservative response have been? I suppose they could argue that Greed is Good, and everyone that has to choose between paying the rent and buying their blood pressure meds deserves it, so the CEO of some corp can enjoy a multi-million dollar bonus.

But that doesn't have quite the same ring as "death panels," does it?

So ultimately, I'm grateful that Emanuel and his team chose to write this book, and publish it now. It's high time we brought a more nuanced, useful debate, to the argument over healthcare.

I need to get back to working on the novel.

I've let it sit these past few weeks, untouched, while I finished getting one short story into shape and started plotting a new one.

But if I'm going to meet my personal deadline of having the novel ready to submit to agents by December 1st, I'm going to need to edit this second draft.

To be honest, I'm intimidated. I've never edited anything this long before.

How do I even do it? Read it all through, and then go back and edit passages? That sounds...like it'll take forever.

Or do I work chapter by chapter, editing each one until it's done, and then moving on? That sounds like an easy way to lose sight of inconsistencies (or to having to go back and edit previous chapters anyway, as inconsistencies show up).

I think what I'm going to do is a series of editing passes. Pick one thing to look for -- like the consistency of a single character's dialog -- and edit all instances of that. Then pick something else -- the descriptions of a ship, say -- and edit all of those.

I'm hoping this will give me a structure in which to do multiple reads over the book, without getting lost in the weeds of any individual chapter. And it should broaden my perspective so I can stitch the book together, so to speak, with these edits. Make it more coherent, more whole.

But what do I do with the short story I've been outlining? I don't want to lose momentum on that. And I worry that the novel, once I start editing it, will take up all the room in my brain for narrative.

I want to work on both. Use the story as a break from the novel, and use the novel as a break from the story. They're different enough -- one's near-future sci-fi, the other is early modern period fantasy -- that I should be able to keep them separate in my head. And editing is different enough from drafting that I'll be exercising different writing muscles with each.

What about you? What do you do, when you've got a longer piece to edit and a shorter one to draft? Do you alternate working days? Finish the shorter piece before editing the longer? How do you handle two stories that both need your attention?

Since reading Ibram X Kendi's How to be an Antiracist, I'm starting to re-examine certain policies I've taken for granted. What I've previously thought of as meritocratic or race-neutral might be neither; it might instead be part of the problem.

In that book, he gives a clear criteria for whether a policy or idea is a racist one: Does it establish or reinforce racial inequality?

With that in mind, I thought I'd look at my own house -- the tech industry -- and at our very real tendency to run companies composed mostly of white males.

There are many reasons why this happens, but I'd like to drill into just one: The university degree requirement.

Most "good jobs" these days require some sort of university degree. Tech goes one step further, and asks for a degree specifically in computer science or another STEM field.

The degree isn't enough to get the job, of course. Most interview processes still test skill level at some point. But the field of candidates is narrowed, deliberately, via this requirement.

The question is: Does requiring this technical degree bias the selection process towards White people?

Criteria

Before diving into the statistics, let's back up and talk about the criteria here. How can we tell if the degree requirement biases selection?

In order to do that, we need to know what an unbiased selection process would look like.

And here is where it's important to note the composition of the general US population (and why the Census being accurate is so very very important). If all things are equal between racial groups, then the composition of Congress, company boards, and job candidates will reflect their percentages in the population.

Anything else is inequality between the races, and can only be explained in one of two ways: either you believe there are fundamental differences between people in different racial groups (which, I will point out, is a racist idea), or there are policies in place which are creating the different outcomes.

With that criteria established, we can examine the possible racial bias of requiring university degrees by looking at two numbers:

• How many people of each racial group obtain STEM degrees in the United States?
• How does that compare to their level in the general population?

Who Has a Degree, Anyway?

According to 2018 data from the US Census, approximately 52 million people (out of a total US population of 350 million) have a bachelor's degree in the US.

Of those 51 million, 40.8 million are White.

Only 4.7 million are Black.

That means White people hold 79% of all the bachelor degrees, while Black people hold only 9%.

Their shares of the general population? 76.3% White, 13.4% Black.

So Whites are overrepresented in the group of people with bachelor degrees, and Blacks are underrepresented.

So by requiring any university degree, at all, we've already tilted the scales against Black candidates.

Who is Getting Degrees?

But what about new graduates? Maybe the above numbers are skewed by previous racial biases in university admissions (which definitely happened), and if we look at new grads -- those entering the workforce -- the percentages are better?

I'm sorry, but nope. If anything, it's worse.

Let's drill down to just those getting STEM degrees (since those are the degrees that would qualify you for most tech jobs). In 2015, according to the NSF, 60.5% of STEM degrees were awarded to White people, and only 8.7% of them went to Black people.

The same report notes that the percentage of degrees awarded to Black people (~9%) has been constant for the last twenty years.

So universities, far from leveling the racial playing field, actually reinforce inequality.

Conclusion

Simply by asking for a university degree, then, we're narrowing our field of candidates, and skewing the talent pool we draw from so that White people are overrepresented.

Thus, we're more likely to select a White candidate, simply because more White people are able to apply.

That reinforces racial inequality, and makes requiring a university degree for a job -- any job -- a racist policy.

What can we do instead? To be honest, if your current interview process can't tell candidates who have the right skills from candidates who don't, then requiring a college degree won't fix it.

If your interview process leans heavily on discovering a candidate's background, instead of their skills, re-balance it. Come up with ways to measure the skills of a candidate that do not require disclosure of their background.

In programming, we have all sorts of possible skill-measuring techniques: Asking for code samples, having candidates think through a problem solution during the interview, inviting essay answers to questions that are open-ended but can only be completed by someone with engineering chops.

By asking for a demonstration of skill, rather than personal history, we'd both make our interviews better -- because we'd be filtering for candidates who have shown they can do the job -- and less biased.

And if we're serious about increasing diversity in our workplaces, we'll drop the degree requirement.

I feel like I'm telling this story to myself, over and over again, with each outline. New details get filled in, new connections appear, with each telling.

And each day I get up and tell it to myself another time, adding more pieces.

I so much want to just write, just set the words down on the page and let them fall where they may.

But then I'll be plotting out the second third of the story, and I'll have an idea that ripples all the way back to the beginning. And it makes me glad I haven't started writing anything more than snippets of dialog just yet. Because all of those snippets will likely need to change.

This story...It's more complicated than other short stories I've written. Less straightforward.

It's a five-part structure. One part setup, followed by three parts flashbacks (taking place over years and across continents), followed by a climax. And it all needs to hang together like a coherent whole, present flowing to flashbacks and then returning to the present.

I'm not sure I can pull it off, to be honest. I'll have to do a good bit of research for each flashback, just to ground them in reality. Then there's the problem of each flashback needing to be its own story, complete with character arc, while feeding into the larger narrative.

It's like writing four stories at once, really, with them nested inside each other.

Will it all make sense, in the end? Will the flashbacks prove to be too long, and need culling? Will my framing device be so transparent that it's boring? Will the conclusion be a big enough payoff?

Who knows?

All I can do is tell myself the story, piece by piece, over and over again, until I can see it all clearly.

I've never written a short-story this way before.

I'm coming at it more like a novel. I'm outlining, then researching things like character names and historical towns to model the setting off of, then revising the outline, rinse, repeat.

So I've written very little of it, so far. And what I have written -- snippets of dialog and description -- might get thrown out later, as the outline changes.

I'm not sure it's better, this way. I feel frustrated at times, like I want to just write the thing and get it over with.

But I know -- well, I feel -- that that will result in a story that's not as good as it could have been. Like eating grapes before they've ripened on the vine.

And I do keep coming up with more connections between the various pieces of the story, more ways to tie it all together. Each one is an improvement. Each one makes the story stronger.

Perhaps that's how I'll know when to stop outlining, and start writing? When I literally can't think of any way to make the story itself better?

How about you? How do you know when it's time to write a story, and when it needs to sit in your mind a little while longer?

Started drafting a new short story this week.

I'm taking a different approach, this time. For short stories, I usually just sit down and write it out, all in one go. At least for the first draft.

For this story, I'm doing a mix of outlining and writing. I jot down lines of dialog as they come to me, or -- in one case -- the whole opening scene came in flash, so I typed it up.

But the majority of the story is still vague to me, so I'm trying to fill it in via brainstorming and daydreaming. Sketching a map of where it’s taking place, thinking through why the town it’s set in exists, what it’s known for. Drafting histories for the main characters.

It’s fun, so it’s also hard to convince myself that it’s work. Necessary work, at that.

Because my guilty writer conscience wants to see words on the page. No matter that I’m not ready, the ideas only half-formed. For it, it’s sentences or nothing.

So I’m pushing back by reading a book specifically about short story techniques, using the authority of another writer to argue (with my guilt) that it’s okay to pause and think. That progress can mean no words save a character bio. That every story needs a good foundation, and that’s what I’m trying to build.

It’s working, so far. My guilt does listen, just not always to me.

What about you? How do you balance the need to feel productive with the background work that every story requires?

I love the Fast & Furious movies. Yes, even 2 Fast 2 Furious (Roman cracks me up).

I'm not even a car guy. I just love the stunts, the emphasis on practical effects, and the way they juggle so many charismatic characters on screen.

And the way the series embraces heart, with the emphasis on family, and (especially) the tribute to Paul Walker they built into the ending of the seventh movie.

That ending was so powerful (confession: I cry every time) I never saw the eighth movie. Until last week, after binge-watching the others to put me in the right mindset.

And I gotta tell you: Fate of the Furious is the worst Fast & Furious movie I've ever seen.

(Warning: Spoilers Ahead)

What Went Wrong

Beyond the bad dialog (of which there's plenty), and the numerous close-ups of characters staring into computer screens (which is exactly as boring as it sounds), Fate of the Furious has deep, fundamental problems with the story it's trying to tell.

Cipher's motivation (pause for eyeroll at the character's name) is so vague you get the feeling the script just has EVIL VILLAIN PLOT written out for the scenes where she's supposed to explain what she wants.

If she wants nukes, then as a hacker, wouldn't it be easier to steal the Russian missile codes, then seize control of a land-based missile? You know, one that can't be sunk or stuck in the ice? And if you can hack the security on hundreds of cars at once, why do you need an EMP to get into one abandoned base?

And what are the nukes for, anyway? She's going to play world cop? The anarchist hacker is going to take on the job of hall monitor for world governments? Really?

Since her motivation is silly and her plan is vague, there's no tension in any of the set pieces. We know she's going to lose, because she's the EVIL VILLAIN. With MAGIC HACKING POWERS. Yawn.

And what does she need Dom for, anyway? His role in the great nuclear football caper is to -- wait for it -- cut a hole in the side of a car using a tool anyone could use.

That's it. That's his vital job.

Oh, wait, he also has to drive the EMP into a base and set it under a sub. So hard.

It's not like they could have, I dunno, suborned a shipping company, then had someone unload the EMP box under the sub, could they?

Since Cipher as a character doesn't make sense, and her need for Dom isn't obvious, then there's no reason for us to get invested in any of what happens.

Yes, I know there's a baby involved. The timeline on that kid doesn't make sense, either, so my suspension of disbelief is blown there, too.

Finally, a special shout-out to Scott Eastwood, who is a terrible actor performing a useless role. Really, who needs him around, when we've got Kurt Russell?

How to Fix It

To fix it, we've got to reach deep into the engine of the plot, and completely rebuild it.

Let's start with Cipher's motivation, and work backwards from there.

Instead of wanting to steal nukes and play cop, she wants to steal a submarine as a broadcast platform. The plane she's been using has to land periodically for supplies and to refuel. Not to mention it's got to constantly calculate radar coverage for every country's military in order to keep from being discovered.

Much easier to use a sub, and stay underwater for as long as you need. Surface only when you want to broadcast. There's plenty of ocean that's international waters, where she'd be legally free to be. And the nukes in the submarine would ensure world governments kept their distance.

So now we can keep the end set piece, where they go to get the sub. But now the sub is a specific means to an concrete end, not some remote-controlled toy.

And how is she going to steal the sub? Well, she needs Russian nuclear codes in order to make the threat of them credible (not that she wants to use them, mind) and she needs massive drilling equipment to punch a hole through the ice so she can get the sub into the water without having to move it off the base.

She needs to steal all of this, then, and then get the drilling equipment in place, across the ice, while launching an assault on a Russian base. Easiest to steal the nuclear codes while they're in transit with the Russian Defense Minister. Only way to get the drilling equipment into place is to convert some big rigs into monster racing cars, and train a team to drive them.

She's going to need a expert driver, and an expert leader.

She's going to need Dom.

But how to get him to work for her?

Her first attempt is actually part of the opening race sequence. When we see Cipher, she's introduced as just a local hustler, under an assumed name. It's her that Dom's cousin owes money to. It's her that he races for slips.

Oh, and here's where we gotta swap out the actress. I love Theron, but she's not going to be believable as Cuban. So we get Halle Berry. She's the right age, she's an amazing actress, and we can play off her Bond girl days by filming her like she's just eye candy early on, then revealing that she's the genius-level antagonist for the movie.

Now we can drop the "oh gosh my car won't start, silly me" scene between Cipher and Dom. Because we establish her as a hot racing badass, easily Dom's equal. We establish that she's willing to cheat, in the way she has her goons try to wreck Dom during the race. But we also establish her as having some honor, as she gives Dom her respect.

And we explain why she's kidnapped Dom's kid. That's an escalation, something she does reluctantly, because her gambit with his cousin failed.

When she recruits him, we drop in a few extra lines to clue the audience into what's happening, and why Dom is going to act the way he does:

Cipher: "Do it for your family."

Dom: "I got my family right here."

Cipher: "Not all of them." shows video

But we don't show the video on-screen. So we, the audience, are going to spend the next X minutes wondering what part of Dom's family she just threatened. Brian and Mia? One of the gang? Another cousin?

That's building tension.

Meanwhile, we have the assembly of the gang, all the prelude to Dom betraying his team. But it's not an EMP in Germany they're after. Instead, Hobbs' team is supposed to be protecting the Russian nuclear codes from being stolen in St Petersburg.

That's why Hobbs et al would get disavowed if they're caught: They're operating not just on foreign soil, but on Russian soil.

So this first set-piece now has higher stakes. It's nuclear codes, not a random EMP. And it's on the streets of St Petersburg, not some random base in Germany. We don't even need to know Cipher's full plan at this point, because there's enough here for us to take what happens seriously.

Since we've eliminated the EMP and moved the nuclear codes set-piece, our second one has to be different, too. This one -- where Dom faces off against his team -- is where Cipher's crew (with Dom) steal the drill parts they're going to need. They're taking it from a North Sea oil company, so it's in the UK, which is why Dom can arrange a meeting with Shaw's mother. And it's the first time we see what Dom's been building for Cipher: the first of the racer-modded big rigs.

We still get Dom versus his team, we still get to see how they can outsmart and out-maneuver him (using the harpoons). He gets away because a) the big rig is really strong, and b) Cipher hacks Letty et al's cars so he can get away. No zombie cars, just a very personal attack on Dom's old crew.

This sets us up for the confrontation at the sub heist. Letty and her team have to build their own big rigs, both to maneuver on the ice and so that they can't be hacked by Cipher. We get a quip about how they used to rob those trucks, and now they've got to drive 'em.

And now our final set-piece makes sense, and is more interesting. We're going to see Dom, Letty, and the gang drive these huge trucks across the ice, which they've never done before. It's a race against time, as Letty and the gang try to dismantle the drill before it can punch through the ice and Cipher escapes in the sub.

Oh, and we keep the scene where Shaw takes out a plane full of goons while carrying a baby. That's just magical.

And there you have it. Shift a villain's motivation, re-arrange a few of the heists, and everything lines up. We have a Fast & Furious movie worthy of the name.

And while we're wishing, let's get Ryan Reynolds to play Little Nobody, ok? Set up his character for Hobbs & Shaw, and give Kurt Russell a break (because we don't need two nobodies, do we?).

Missed last week's Keeping Score, but for a good reason: I was wrapping up the second draft of the novel!

I set down the final words in the last chapter later that weekend. It's done!

Or rather, the current draft is done. I've still got some editing passes to do: for consistency, for character dialog, for general polish.

But this draft, which started out as minor edits and grew to become pretty much a rewrite, is finished. As part of that rewrite, it's grown, from 70K to 80K.

Ditto the rewrite I was doing for the short story, which I also wrapped up last week. The story's grown from a 3,000-word piece to something north of 8,000 words! Some of those might get cut away in editing, but it'll still end up more than twice as long as it was before. I had no idea there was so much story left to tell with that one, until I tried to tell it.

With two project drafts done, I've mostly taken this week off. I need the space for the novel to cool off so I can approach the edits with an objective eye. I might leave that one untouched for a month or so, just to get some distance.

For the short story, I think I'll start editing it this week. At least an initial pass for consistency and word choice, before sending it off to beta readers. Once I get their feedback, I'll make further edits, to get it into shape for submission.

Meanwhile, I've started brainstorming a short story idea I had a while back. Everything's still vague now, but it's about dragons, and mentors, and loss. I'm excited to see how it shapes up!

Powerfully written.

Kendi lays out a set of definitions for racism, racist, and antiracist, then shows how those rules apply across different areas: culture, sexuality, gender, class, etc.

Along the way, he tells stories from his own life, using his personal growth to illustrate how following the principles of antiracism leads to also being a feminist, an ally of the LGBTQIA+ community, and an anticapitalist.

Because Kendi is so willing to be vulnerable here, to admit to his previous homophobia, his sexism, his snobbery towards other Black people, his hatred of White people, he takes us along the journey with him. And he makes it okay if you're still only part way along the journey, because he gives you a path forward.

What could easily have been a sermon, then, becomes a conversation. A directed conversation, to be sure, one with a purpose, but one where both parties admit they've made and will make mistakes. It made me want to be better, to think more clearly, than simply laying out his current perspective would.

And his anchoring of racism vs antiracism in power, and the way power is distributed among (invented) racial groups, is empowering. By targeting power's self-interest, we can push for lasting changes, not just momentary victories.

We don't wait for racism to fade away. We don't wait for my family to become less afraid of Black people. We first remove the laws and policies keeping the races unequal, then people's fears will go away.

It's a serious responsibility, but it gives me hope. Because it makes the work more concrete: Not asking people to hold hands and sing together, but winding down the police state. Investing more in schools, and less in prisons. Breaking up monopolies and pushing power and money into communities that have neither.

So I recommend this book to anyone, of any race or caste. It offers clarity and hope in equal measure, because we have to see how racist power works -- and how pervasive racist ideas are, in all groups -- if we are to dismantle it.

It's been a struggle to write this week.

My uncle -- who because of age and circumstances was more like my grandfather, so I called him Pop -- died on Father's Day. And I've been living and working under a shadow ever since.

Hard enough to lose him. Harder still, because I couldn't make the trip out to Texas for his funeral, because of the pandemic.

He's gone, but I didn't get to say goodbye.

So I've been soldiering on. Writing a paragraph or two, at least, every day.

But each word is a struggle. And if I stop and think about anything for too long, my mind drifts back to losing Pop, and I come undone for a while.

Stay safe out there, folks. Wear your masks. Wash your hands.

Write what you can, when you can.

This is turning into a month of listening, for me.

After the controversy erupted over J.K. Rowling's statements on trans people, I realized how little I actually know about that side of human experience. Where did these new pronouns come from? What's the difference between transsexual (which has been around since I was a kid) and transgender? Why nonbinary?

So I decided to start with digging into pronouns. Because a) I'm a grammar nerd, and b) Getting more comfortable using new or different pronouns is a concrete action I can take, right now.

And I'm glad I did! This book is a delight, a quick read that doesn't skimp on the details.

For example, I had no idea of the controversy over generic he that raged in the US and UK over the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Suffragettes like Susan B Anthony argued that if he covered women when it came to paying taxes and being arrested for crimes, then it covered them when it came to voting, too.

This passage, in particular, struck me as completely bad-ass:

If, for instance, in a penal law there are no feminine pronouns, women should be exempt from the penalties imposed. And if men are to represent woman in voting, let them represent her in all. If a wife commits murder let the husband be hung for it.

She (and suffragettes throughout the nineteenth century) lost that argument, and the argument that the fourteenth amendment covered women, since it used not he but persons and citizens.

Which is why the current discussion over the ERA -- where detractors insist the fourteenth amendment already covers women -- is so specious. There's hundreds of years of American jurisprudence that says otherwise. We absolutely need an explicit amendment that grants women full and equal rights.

As even this one example, shows, arguments over pronouns go back a long way.

Calls for a new "gender-neutral" pronoun go back three hundred years (!).

Use of the singular they in just that manner go back seven-hundred years! It was never accepted by grammarians, but it was used in print and daily speech all the time.

Baron traces all of this history -- the legalities of the generic he, the rise of new pronouns, etc -- and links it together, showing how the current debates about pronouns and trans rights echo debates we've had down the centuries. Every time, the side of "existing usage" is really on the side of weaponizing grammar to suppress certain populations.

That's a side I don't want to be on.

If you're at all curious about where the "new" pronouns have come from, and why using the right pronouns is so important, I highly encourage you to read this book.

Or if you're already onboard with explicitly asking for people's pronouns (and sharing your own), and just like language, I'd still recommend it, as a fantastic and informative read.

So: What's your pronoun? I'm he/him/his :)

Daryl: About the protests the other day--

Wayne: Assholes with authority are assaulting folks for asinine reasons.

Daryl: But--

Wayne: Beating bystanders with billy clubs and then bleating for bills is bully talk.

Daryl: Can't we just--

Wayne: Cancel the cops.

Daryl: Do you mean...?

Wayne: Defund the detectives. Defang the dildo-wielding degenerates who deal damage and destruction wherever they descend.

Daryl: Even if they--

Wayne: Evict those eager eagles from their erroneously elevated nest.

Daryl: For how long?

Wayne: Until fascist fuck-ups who would fancy frisking a black fish if they found one finally confess.

Daryl: Golly

Wayne: Granted god-like powers to grab goods and grandstand on greatness, they gotta go.

Daryl: Have you thought about--

Wayne: Heave ho to the hot-headed hitmen with hearts of hate and habits of heavy fists.

Daryl: Just--

Wayne: Justice doesn't jump out and jack-boot a juggler in the jiggles just for laughs.

Daryl: 'Kay.

Wayne: Keep the keystone kleptocracy kilometers away from kids, is all I'm saying.

Daryl: Likely.

Wayne: Laying into little Leopolds and Lillys without legal legitimacy is for losers.

Daryl: Maybe they--

Wayne: Mashing moppets every month for making messes is monstrous.

Daryl: Not if they--

Wayne: Noting the narcs neglect of their neighbors in favor of nightly numbers.

Daryl: Ouch.

Wayne: Overlooking obvious offenders in their offbeat overstretch creates opposition.

Daryl: Proof.

Wayne: Punching protestors is poor protection of the public.

Daryl: Quotas.

Wayne: Quenching their quixotic quest for quotidian quiet.

Daryl: Right?

Wayne: Radical rascals who reject right-thinking and responsibility.

Daryl: Sounds like--

Wayne: Shifty seneschals who shit on any semblance of sanity.

Daryl: Talking about--

Wayne: Tiny totalitarians who top out thinking tanks make them trustworthy.

Daryl: Unbelievable.

Wayne: Utterly unsatisfactory and unscrupulous usage of ubiquitous umbrellas of immunity.

Daryl: Verily.

Wayne: Vanquish the vicars of vicious vicissitude and vampires of verification.

Daryl: What you mean is--

Wayne: Walk over to those wankers with their whale-like wads of cash, wax their ears, and wash 'em off our way-fares.

Daryl: Extreme.

Wayne: Exactly.

Daryl: You really think--

Wayne: Yes.

Daryl: Zounds.

Wayne: Zip 'em up, and zero out their budgets.

Daryl: All righty then.

Wayne: Black Lives Matter, bud.

Growing up in Texas, we didn't talk about Juneteenth in school.

We talked about the Civil War, of course. Of the "brave" and "fearsome" soldiers that Texas sent to fight for the Confederacy. But not about slavery, other than it being a "bad thing" that "was over now."

We talked about Texas' War of Independence from Mexico. That war was also motivated by slavery, by the desire for white Texans to have and import slaves. But we didn't talk about that either. Only the Alamo, and Santa Anna, and again, the "brave" soldiers who fell.

But we never mentioned the brave slaves who ran away from home, in a desperate flight to freedom. Knowing they would be beaten if caught, and possibly killed.

We never talked about the black soldiers that served in the Union army, knowing the whites in that army still thought of them as "lesser men," and that if captured by the Confederates they'd be made into slaves, even if they'd been raised free.

We didn't talk about that kind of bravery.

So we didn't talk about Juneteenth, and how its origins were Texan. How white Texans were so desperate to hold onto their human property that it took a Union Army arriving on the Gulf shore to force them to give them up.

Because our history was written and taught by white Southerners, who, being racist themselves, can't see anything but shame in such a holiday. They identify too strongly with the losing side.

But having learned about the holiday as an adult -- too late, true, but better than never -- I can see pride in it, mixed in with the shame.

Not white pride, mind you, but American pride. Pride that the Civil War was fought and won by the side of justice. Pride that the slaves were freed, that we set off on a path to give all Americans the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

The path is long and stony, and we've still a long way to go. But we can celebrate the progress we've made, even while pushing forward into the future.

I'm spending this Juneteenth catching up on more of the history that I missed in school. And thinking on how I can do my part to move us further down the path to becoming a truly free country.

Justice for Breonna's killers.

Defund the Police.

Black Lives Matter.

This week, I've been chasing the dragon of a finished draft.

I'm so close to being done with the short story revisions that I've been working on them every day, instead of alternating with the novel. It's like at a certain point, I can only hold one or the other in my head, and I've been holding the short story.

I'm still following the one-inch-frame method, jumping from scene to scene and writing a few paragraphs here, a page there, then coming back and joining them up later.

It feels like a cheat, sometimes, like I'm putting off doing my homework and playing video games instead. And I suppose I am, in a way, holding off from writing the parts that feel difficult in the moment and writing the ones that come easily.

But so far, I always end up coming back to the hard stuff, and finding that either a) It doesn't seem hard anymore, or b) It's not even needed.

The latter still worries me. How could this piece that I thought was essential not even need to be written? Am I not just procrastinating on my homework, but refusing to do it altogether?

I try to reassure myself with the knowledge that this is just a draft, one of many, and everything can be revised later. Nothing is permanent.

So here's hoping I can wrap up this draft over the weekend, and then push through the last scenes of the novel! Would be nice to end June with two projects completely drafted, ready to sit on the back-burner for a bit so I can come back and revise them properly.

How about you? When you're closing in on a finished draft, do you find you have little room in your head for anything else?

How does one write, in times like these?

I feel guilty for not being at the protests (my wife and I are both at high-risk for covid-19). For not being and doing more, both now and in the past.

I can make changes going forward. Donate to Black Lives Matter and to Bailout Funds. Push locally for police reform. Vote for candidates that will hold our police accountable.

But where does writing fit into that? How can I justify spending time...just, writing stories?

Because I have kept writing, even as the police have tear-gassed my old neighborhood. As helicopters fly overhead, towards the next showdown between the people and the "heroes" that are supposed to keep them safe.

On the one hand, I write because writing is my escape. A way for me to tune out the world for a bit, and come back to it ready to rejoin the struggle.

On the other hand, I write because writing is a form of activism.

When we read, we can enter the mind of a character completely. See the world entirely through their lives. Cry with them, when the world throws them down. Shout with joy when they triumph over those who would hold them back.

We can build empathy with people and situations we never thought we could. We can also see the dark sides of our own selves, when thoughts and habits of our own are cast in a different light, or shown to us from someone else's perspective.

So I write to escape, yes. But also to create something that can change someone's mind.

It's not as fast as signing a petition, true. Or joining a protest. Or calling a government official pressuring them to be better. Which is why I will continue to do all those other things.

But I will also write.

George Floyd

Breeona Taylor

Sean Reed

Ahmaud Aurbery

Eric Garner

Michael Brown

Dontre Hamilton

John Crawford III

Ezell Ford

Tamir Rice

Sandra Bland

Freddie Gray

Trayvon Martin

Rodney King

Malcom X

Martin Luther King, Jr

Donate to Black Lives Matter

Donate to the Minnesota Freedom Fund

The Washington Post is tracking all the people killed by US police

Earlier this week, I was on a Zoom call with some fellow writers. We were discussing how our writing output was doing during the pandemic: whether it was fine or (for most of us) had gone down.

And I realized: I've basically retooled my entire process during these last few months.

I used to write mostly on evenings and weekends, but now I do it in the morning, before the day even starts.

I used to write in blocks of a few hours at a time.

Now I do it in short thirty-minute bites.

I used to write a scene or a story straight through, from start to finish.

Now I jump around, filling in sections a little bit at a time, and then join them up later.

And the biggest change of all: I used to mostly pants my stories, but now I'm doing a lot of plotting and outlining before I set anything down.

Will it last once we're able to leave our homes safely? Who knows?

I might go back to the old way of writing. I might never be able to write that way again.

But it amazes me all the same, that little by little, my process has changed so much, in so short a time.

What about you? Has your process stayed the same through the pandemic? Or have you had to re-learn how to make your art, in order to keep working?

Memorial Day is meant to honor those who fell in the service of their country.

So today, I'd like to give my thanks to the grocery workers who contracted Covid-19 while making sure we could feed our families.

To the doctors and nurses who caught Covid-19 while fighting this new disease.

To the truckers, keeping goods and commerce flowing, who risk infection every time they step out of their vehicles for gas or a bathroom break.

To the warehouse employees -- for Amazon, Target, Wal-Mart, and others -- who died needlessly, because their wealthy bosses couldn't bear to lose a single cent to sick leave.

In this pandemic, we've discovered who the essential workers really are. And it's not the CEOs of the world.

It's those keeping us fed, keeping us safe, and keeping us alive.

I thank you, all of you, for your service.

After two good weeks in a row, it was time for a rough one.

Had to shift my schedule up by three hours this week, for work. Well, I say shift my schedule, but...there's no way I'm going through my normal morning routine (writing, walking) at 4:30 in the morning.

So it's more like I abandoned my schedule, and then jet-lagged myself (while staying at home!).

As you can imagine, my writing output has suffered.

But it hasn't ground to a halt! I've managed to keep the writing streak alive, carving out time after work (thank the gods for afternoon naps) to make progress on both the novel and the short story, again on altering days.

Not always much progress, mind you. Several days "just get one sentence down" wasn't just a trick to get me to write, it was all I could get down.

But I did it, and I'm through to the other side, and can catch-up on sleep and (writing) work this weekend.

And reading. Surprisingly hard to read when your body is in the wrong timezone.

What about you? Have you settled into a new routine, and managed to keep with it? Or have the re-openings, patchwork as they are, disrupted the schedule you built during lockdown?

Disappointingly, this is not the full original text. It's been trimmed down by almost half, and then padded out with other articles Houdini wrote.

Still, what's left behind is fascinating. Lots of great stories of scams and burglary, from using chewing gum to steal jewels to having a confederate hide in a checked trunk in order to steal from a "locked" luggage compartment. Many good story ideas buried in here.

You can see why Houdini was so fascinated by the techniques of thieves and con-men. So much of their work involved mis-direction and slight of hand, the same techniques he used as a magician.

You can also understand why he went after mediums and psychics so hard: They were using those same techniques of magic, but not presenting themselves as magicians.

Thus they were not only defrauding the public, but casting legitimate magicians like himself in a bad light. Because they were frauds, and so when they were discovered -- which they almost inevitably were -- they made reputable magicians like himself look like frauds, too. Better that he unmask them, to make the difference more distinct.

So, a good book, still, though far too short. I'll have to track down a complete version at some point.

Current writing streak: 64 days.

Finally reached the part of the novel where I'm back to editing, instead of writing new chapters. It's made things easier going, on that front. Less intimidating to sit down with words already on the page, and know I've just got to make them consistent with everything else.

There's a few chapters at the very end where I'll need to be drafting from scratch again, but for now, at least, it's smoother sailing.

Of course, this won't be the end of my editing passes. I'll need to do at least one more of what I'm thinking of as "consistency passes" to check all the new material against what's already there. Then I'm planning on doing a dialog pass for each main character, to ensure they speak consistently throughout. Finally I'll do a phrase and copy-editing pass, looking for awkward wording or cliché description.

So still plenty to do.

I've also continued to work on the short story on alternate days this week. I wasn't sure I was ready to start writing the new section of that work, to be honest, but by focusing on just one little detail at a time -- Anne Lamott's one-inch frame technique -- I've managed to add ~1,000 words to the draft. If I keep this up, I might actually have the draft done (and ready to set aside, for later editing) next week.

Which would be...amazing. I wasn't sure I could ever get back to some sort of functioning writing schedule during the pandemic. Or get back to writing more than just a sentence or two a day. But something's happened recently, like a mental fog has lifted. I'm able to brainstorm again, and hold both of these storylines (the story and the novel) in my head again, and write a page a day again.

It may not last. I'm going to appreciate it while it does, though. I know not everyone has been as relatively fortunate as I have through this pandemic.

So I'm grateful, for the work I can do, while I can do it.

How about you? Have you felt like you've turned a corner lately? Or are things still too much in the air for your writing brain to settle into some kind of routine?

This is the kind of American history I wish they'd taught me in school.

It's a story of intrigue, of diplomatic maneuvering between dozens of nations. Of military campaigns won and lost. Of peace betrayed and hope rekindled.

I would have eaten this stuff up. Did eat it up, when presented with the history of Europe in the Middle Ages or Japan's Edo Period or China's Warring States.

(Okay, so the latter two I only got exposed to via video games, not school, but still)

But teaching me this version of American history would have forced adults around me to acknowledge our part in this struggle. And most of the time, we were the villains.

We made treaties with Native American tribes, swearing to abide by some border line, and then promptly set about settling past that line. We struck deals with the leaders of individual villages and then insisted whole tribes adhere to them. And when those tribes refused to sign new treaties with us, establishing new boundary lines, we invaded, burned their villages to the ground, and slaughtered their people.

And Washington was at the heart of all of this.

As First President, he established the policy of buying Native American land when we could, and killing them all if they wouldn't sell. He also pushed them to become "civilized," which in his mind meant dropping their own culture -- including their sustainable agriculture, their religion, and their gender roles -- and adopting settler culture wholesale.

Why would he do this? Because he speculated in Native American land, buying up the "rights" to tracts that hadn't been formerly ceded by any tribe. He needed those boundary lines pushed back, that land cleared of Native Americans, and then settled by Europeans, if he was to recoup any profits.

This is the part of American history that has white squatters fighting both Native Americans and elites back east for their "right" to seize land.

The part that has our very first treaty under the Constitution negotiated with a Native American tribe.

The part that has Washington taking time out of the Revolutionary War to have three armies loot and pillage their way through Iroquios territory, destroying crops and peaceful towns as they went.

And its the part that shows the Native Americans as what they were: A free people, with their own politics and divisions, struggling to deal with the invasion of their lands. Some sought peace, some wanted to fight, and some moved rather than deal with the Europeans. But all of them thought of themselves as their own nations, with control over their own territory, and their own sovereign rights.

Something Washington never conceded to them, and he embedded that denial in our relationships with the tribes from the start.

This sort of history is complicated, and Calloway does an fantastic job sorting through it. Amazingly, he condemns Washington's mistakes without finger-wagging.

It's enough to relate them truthfully. The First President condemns himself.

The streak's alive! I've managed at least 30 minutes of writing for 57 days straight now.

Alternating the days I work on the novel with the days I work on the short story seems to help, too.

I've even started tracking my daily word count again, when working on the novel. I don't let myself stop writing until I hit 250 words.

As a result, I've made notable progress on it. Finished three new chapters, and I'm ready to start editing down the next few.

And for the short story, I'm gathering notes on my research and getting plot points nailed down. This weekend (or early next week) I think I'll be ready to start writing some dialog, and then gradually fill in the rest.

Oh, and I have three other pieces submitted to paying markets. Keeping in the habit of sending them right back out a few days after a rejection comes in.

So this week has been good, relatively speaking. Still not operating at 100%, creatively, but I'm finding a new normal, a new pace of working to make a habit.

What about you?