Nobody Here

Happy Halloween!

In honor of Halloween I've gotten out my witch's broom and swept away a bunch of my links. In most cases they're blogs that don't seem to be updated anymore. Others are blogs I just don't really read that often or in rare cases, in which I disagreed with the blogger sufficiently to feel uncomfortable linking them, but you know, I'm not going to go over there and scold them about it and be all, "hey, I'm delinking you cause I don't like what you said," cause it goes without saying that they can say whatever they want, but that doesn't mean I have to link to it, yanno? Anyway. I wouldn't mention it at all except reciprocity is a matter of etiquette for lots of peeps so those who don't have links will want to take note of it so they can delink me.

As a woman, I have no use for Hemingway. Before you get all bunched up, don't go adding more words to that sentence than it's already got. It doesn't say "As a woman, I have no use for Hemingway because he's a drunken smelly old misogynist prig." It doesn’t say that because it’s not what I’m saying. I’m just saying that he’s too much of a manly man writing for the other manly men for me to get much out of it. Sure, there are some universal themes there, but I can get my universal themes pretty much anywhere. Reading Hemingway is more like eavesdropping than listening. He isn’t talking to me.

I don’t read manly men like Clancy or Crichton either, although I did have a brief and breathless thing for Ludlum in my wild youth. I don’t think a lot of guys are reading Jennifer Crusie or Jennifer Weiner or any other number of Jennifers either. Lolly Winston, in the back-of-the-book interview for Good Grief, says she hates to think of it as chicklit and hopes guys will read it. Look, it’s a very good book, but all I can say is good luck with that.

It’s a well-known rule of writing for children that girls will read about boys but boys won’t read about girls, so be careful when choosing your protagonist. Murray features a girl narrating and starring in what is essentially a monster book, so is it any wonder that poor kid hasn’t gotten a gig yet?

There are exceptions. Boys like A Wrinkle in Time. Men like Thursday Next. My sister likes Hemingway. Everybody likes Mark Twain. Of course there are lots of books written for all genders, and countless authors who enjoy universal appeal. But it's also hardly groundbreaking news that girls like to read books for girls and boys like to read books for boys.

The lack of understanding of each gender for the other is more than a cliché, it’s big business. Self-help gurus, talk-show hosts, therapists, and comedians have built long and lucrative careers on just this one thing.

But if it was really as big a problem as we make it out to be – or if we really wanted to solve it – you’d think we’d* read each other’s books.

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*By "we" I do not in any way mean "me." My husband reads, for fun, $100 economics books written by Austrians and containing about 3 words I recognize per page. If my happy home depended on my reading these, my kid would be in for some heartache.

The photo post inspired a good tangent in the comments about security and revealing "private" information - including photos and names - online. Of course, as several people pointed out, none of it is really private. We've all seen enough E! True Hollywood Stories to know that if somebody wants to try hard enough to find you, they can. And these days they don't even have to try very hard. It's all mostly just a five minute search away.

Should this worry us? Well, I dunno. In the course of any given day I walk around and, as Roy said, "I don't wear those Groucho glasses or anything" (good one, Roy). People see me, they learn my name, they see where I live, my license plate number. They take my credit card! I give it to them! I don't worry about any of that stuff.

Of course, with the internet there's a much wider audience, in theory at least, so a little more caution is probably justified. But in my case, really, I see more strangers in person every day than online. There are roughly 10-12 people who regularly read my blog. I'm (reasonably) comfortable that they're all OK, which I guess leaves the occasional visitors and the nutters hitting that Next Blog button looking for a victim. I'm also (reasonably) comfortable that none of the content of my blog is going to stand out enough to give them pause. It's not that I strive for a boring blog or anything, it's just that I'm an ordinary girl who happens to like talking about stories and storytelling, not the sort of thing that nutters generally like to feed on.

But with nutters, by definition, you never know. That's why we call them that. So just in case, as an extra layer of caution, my name doesn't appear anywhere on my blog. Sure, if you didn't know it you could find it, if you were willing to invest a little time and energy and maybe even a few bucks. But since we've already established that anyone can be found, all that remains is to make it a little less easy and inviting, in measure with what you perceive the risk to be.

Now, some people will say that no risk is acceptable. It would be tempting to agree with them, if it wasn't a lie. You can't hide, even if you want to. In trying you're creating a sense of security where none exists. It is a scary world, especially if you're a girl, or raising one. But you have no choice but to live in it, have you? So you balance that with not wanting to live - or teach your children to live - in fear, you decide what - for you - constitutes reasonable precautions, and you take them. What else is there?

The idea of posting a picture of myself on my blog has never appealed to me. From time to time people ask me why I don't have one, and I don't really have a reason, except, why would I? I posted the picture of my NaNo shirt on a whim. I thought it was funny and selfmockworthy that I was such a NaNoNerd that I scurried right out and got myself a shirt. I was surprised that people found it worth remarking on (and by the way thanks to those who said nice things like "Hey, there isn't even frosting all over your face!"). Evidently up until that point, Roy had supposed that I looked like this, by which I mean Mary Badham, not Gregory Peck. Although it would be cool, I think, if I did look like Gregory Peck. I said that if peeps would just post a pic from the start, before you knew them, you wouldn't have any internal image to reconcile. Which is true. And I love it when other people post their pics. Especially of cake, or their feet, or baseball. So I went ahead and took the green pic from my NaNo profile and put it over there in my profile area, excepting I washed out the color so it wouldn't clash with my new (old) template, and now it doesn't resemble any person really, more an old-fashioned wanted poster from a Western movie.

I'd still never post any identifying details, including pictures, of my kid, because I don't think it's up to me to violate her privacy (she's too young to give permission), and also because of the loonfreaks. Since a picture counts as personal information, there used to be a whole "should you post your picture?" question, but except in cases of minors I don't think that applies anymore, unless you're a dead ringer for Claudia Schiffer and likely to draw extraordinary attention from creeps. These days so many peeps are doing it, it's probably the least conspicuous course of action, and anyway what are the chances of somebody on the street recognizing you from your blog? Personally, my internet paranoia waxes and wanes. Back when I started freelancing I used my real name online, last name and all, and I did occasionally get the professional nibble that way, so I guess that was good. I've stopped that though, and now I use my first name at most. Sure, determined people could find you, but there's no point in sending out engraved invitations to the aforementioned loonfreaks.

Some people don't like to post pics because they like being someone else online. They don't want you to know who they are - even at the most superficial level - in real life. That one doesn't apply to me. I figure maintaining one personality is work enough without having separate ones for family life, professional life, social life, online life, and so on, so I just go with the one.

I don't get people who put pictures of themselves all over their houses. I tend to run the other direction when the camera comes out, so I don't have too many pics of myself anyway, but if I did I'd hardly put them in my living room. I don't even have up any wedding pics, except one that's just our hands, not our faces, because it's just a really cool shot. Not that I have a problem with people having family photos around, but have you ever gone into somebody's house or apartment and noticed lots of pictures of just them, alone, prominently placed? I think that's weird, and slightly creepy.

Agent 007 says you have to have an author photo, and you shouldn't be ugly, and if you absolutely must be ugly, you should at least not wear six inches of eyeliner. That got peeps pretty bunched up. It does seem like a lot of pressure. And is there anything more torturous than posing for a photo? Not that candid shots are any better, since I usually have food in my mouth.

Anyone's kids read the Series of Unfortunate Events series? I picked up a volume of the first three, because the book I'm about to write is dark middle-grade and I like to check out current stuff in the same general vein as what I'm writing.

I'm afraid the Lemony Snicket movie was better. I generally enjoy the affected style of narration these books employ, and I like whimsically dark kids' stuff - Roald Dahl is the man, is he not? But ultimately I just don't think this Snicket person pulls it off. Considering the amount of action in there, it's less interesting than it could be. To be fair, though, maybe that's cause I already knew all the jokes and stuff from the movie. The narrative is often clever, but other times it tries too hard to be clever without quite making it, and just gets in its own way.

Plus, they want like $12 apiece for these sometimes thin books, no paperback option. There's twelve of them now, and judging from the title of the most recent, one more to come. I'm all for writers getting paid, but are peeps really willing to invest $156 (plus tax) in this? Well, apparently so, considering how well they sell, and good for him (her?) because there really are some fun things in there. You just have to work kind of hard to get to them, and it'll cost you. I'm glad for Lemony that it's working out so well, but in general that doesn't seem like the kind of value proposition we should be striving for.

How cool am I in my NaNoShirt? Huh? Huh?

Ok, maybe "cool" isn't quite the right word. Also I see I'm out of paper towels.

Speaking of NaNo, everyone who decided to do it sound off with your username so we can all add each other to our friends thingie and heckle one another. I'm jennyo.

A while back, Paula posted this piece about schools policing the lunches students are bringing from home. Peeps were all, "Hey butt out, buttheads, that's my decision as a parent!"

Then this week she posted this piece about a principal canceling a prom, his stated reason being that he didn't like the amount of money students (and therefore their parents) were spending on it. This time (some of the same) peeps were all, "You go, girl!"

Which begs the question, do we want the schools participating in (interfering with) raising our kids, or don't we?

All part and parcel of the larger, age-old debate that Grace talked about in this great post, as to whether schools exist merely for the acquisition of skills, or whether they serve a higher calling, and if the latter, what exactly is that calling?

Personally, I favor respecting the choices of parents, be they for Vera Wang prom dresses or Lunchables, except in cases where those choices constitute abuse (OK, you may have me there on the Lunchables).

But I also know that the larger question is moot. Given the amount of time kids spend in school, they are being raised there. This doesn't preclude their also being raised in houses, places of worship, libraries (redundant to the last), malls, playing fields, and dozens of other places. But make no mistake, the schools are participating in raising our kids whether we like the idea or not.

Which brings us, as this blog always must, to the books. Nowhere is it more impossible to hide that we're teaching more than just the 3 R's than in a high school English class. We could teach reading comprehension with a recipe just as easily as with Faulkner. We could teach analysis and debate just as easily with the local newspaper as with The Scarlet Letter. Vocabulary? The New York Times crossword would work just as well as To Kill a Mockingbird. They could write critical and analytical essays about Archer's blog same as they could about anything Dickens or Fitzgerald wrote.

But we use the books. These books. Why? Because we're admitting, flat out, that we're teaching them more than those basic skills. Because part of that more is teaching them a little bit about life, by which I mean, giving them a context in which to think about life, and what it means, and how they want to live it.

The omnibrilliant Miss Snark says something even more brilliant than usual:

"Forget this novel that's making the rounds. Think of it as your college student kid who's out in the world. When it needs attention, you'll get a call."

Also, while we're on the subject of Miss Snark, anyone who reads her (you guys read her, right?) see this bit about folks writing query letters that tout their winning NaNoWriMo as some kind of publishing credential? Are you freaking serious? Look, we all know I'm pro-NaNo. But it's for a draft, people. Writing to an agent and saying, "Hey, I rattled this off in just 30 days, you wanna see it?" Seriously?

See, this sort of thing encourages me. Because I know the editors with my manuscript on their desks have a lot of other manuscripts on their desks, but I read stuff like this, and I'm thinking, yeah, but the people who wrote those manuscripts are, like, dumb.

I go to my share of writers' things. Conferences, workshops, luncheons. I like them. I have no idea why. Usually there's a lot of nutballs there. I mean, let's just go ahead and judge for a moment, shall we? Because at any gathering, you're going to have your share of the drunk, the obnoxious, the vapid, and the arrogant, and writers are no exception, not at all. Especially, I'm sorry to say, if the event is about writing for kids. J.K., I love you, you know I do, but I blame you for this. They read an article about how you're richer than the Queen, and they say, "What, for writing a children's book? But that's easy!" and off they trot to the nearest conference, supposing, nay, expecting, that in between the pasta salad and the weirdly textured chocolate chip cookie, somebody is going to come around with bags of money so they can collect theirs. And why wouldn't they? Their own kids just love the stories they tell!

Most recently, the NaNoWriMers in the area I live were planning a pre-November get-together to kind of, I dunno, say hello and talk about writing a whole novel in a month. The person coordinating it very kindly wanted to make sure she wasn't excluding anyone, so she asked the people with kids to chime in on whether it needed to be a family-friendly venue, in case they couldn't get childcare. No, I said, it's not practical to bring a 2-year-old to an event where I want to focus on anything except her most of the time. This is true. But also on the inside I was thinking, nay, screaming, "Charight!!! As if I'm really going to expose my little girl to a bunch of internetloonstrangerfreaks, any one of whom could be a pedophile or a serial killer or just really really smelly!"

I know that's (probably) not the case. I know they're (mostly) just regular peeps I could have a nice conversation with. But it's still unlikely I'd make real friends - the kind you see again beyond the event - with even the regular ones. I don't meet many people I connect with on more than a superficial level (who does?), and if the superficial is all there is, I tend to skip it. It's not that I'm a snob, it's just that I'm shy in person and it takes a lot of energy for me to do social things with people I don't know well, so I spend my chips where I'll get the most out of them, you know? Ok, maybe I am a snob. Maybe that's the very definition of a snob.

None of that means I won't go to the NaNo thing, if I'm home in time, which I may not be because I have the Renfaire that day (Huzzah!), or other writers' things as they come along. I will. Why will I do this? Because I learn things at them? Because none of my local friends are writers and despite my social oddities I enjoy talking with other writers? Because these things usually involve snacks and I love snacks? Yes on all counts. But also because in my last city I had the coolest writers' group/writer friends ever, and I initially met them at workshops, and I miss them and wish I could duplicate that experience here in my new home. So like the rat in that random reward experiment, I'll keep hitting that button hoping this time I'll get the cheese.

Which is when it occurs to me that we all of us have our own personal slush pile. And if you want to find a needle in a haystack, you have to go through a lot of hay.

T minus 28 days. Time to stop heckling others to do NaNoWriMo and get to work myself. As usual, I'm in over my head. My idea is weird, and writing it will involve skills I've not yet acquired. But last year's book was a similar case, and that turned out pretty good, so fueled by the kind of optimism the middle-aged can drum up, given enough wine and candy, I'm sallying forth. This month's efforts, sponsored by my good friends over at the Almond Joy, Kit Kat, and Take 5 factories, will involve research and loose-end tying, the hope being that I'll have a good outline to work from when November 1 hits.

If anyone is looking for me over there, I'm listed as jennyo.