Edit as I Go

There’s a line in the classic movie, Singing in the Rain, where one of the characters briefly thinks he’s getting fired from his job. His response is, “At last, I can start suffering and write that symphony.” He immediately learns he’s not losing his job and says, “As last, I can stop suffering and write that symphony.” If you talk to my friends and family, they’ll tell you that I have incorporated this quote into the very depths of my personality. Not only do I think it’s hilarious, but it also shows a good life perspective.

I’ve had a lot of time off from working. Which means I’ve had a lot of time to write. So my personalized version after quitting my job, would be, “At last, I can stop suffering and write that novel.” Which is essentially what I’ve been doing with a lot of my time. I spent a few hours with my writing partner discussing my recent work and figured out a lot of edits. I’ve also had a lot more time to figure out my writing process. I’ve been writing for my entire life so you’d think I would have a whole system down by now.

Unfortunately, that’s not really how it works with creative endeavors. I have always been a feast-or-famine kind of writer. I go through times where I am writing constantly. I will start dozens of new projects, progress in bigger works, reading 3 books at once, and just generally always moving on some kind of writing. But when the famine would hit, it would be no writing, little reading, nothing new, not touching old projects for weeks or even months. I got to a point in my life where I was spending months and months in the famine stage and only a few weeks at a time in the feast stage. I decided that needed to stop.

Quitting my job and taking a position with significantly fewer hours has finally given me time to figure out what that means. While I am disappointed to not be making as much money as I was before, I am really glad to have time to figure things out. I published a writing prompt book because it’s something I’ve wanted to do forever but didn’t feel like I had time. I also, as said above, figured out my writing process.

Which is something I didn’t realize would be so freeing until I found it. Because I used to berate myself over not getting enough writing done regularly. I would tell myself to just write. Just put something down on the paper. Because that’s what I was told all through college. Get something down, just do the first draft, you can edit later. The vast majority of writers tell everyone who wants to write that they need to get that first draft done. Just write it. No editing. Creatives tend to be part of the perfectionist crowd, so half the struggle is often getting past your own insecurities. So it’s not bad advice. I think that’s incredibly valuable for new and veteran writers. I still do it for shorter works. But what I’ve discovered now that I’ve been able to write regularly without as much pressure on me, is that it doesn’t work for me for writing novels.

The editing process is A LOT. It’s usually the more time consuming part of writing novels. And for me, it’s overwhelming. Since I’ve had better time to reflect on my writing, I’ve realized that the vast majority of my long projects that have been abandoned, were abandoned when I considered editing them. I have pages and pages of unfinished novels. Some are 20 pages, some are over 40, a couple are longer than that. I followed the formula: write first, edit later. But then I’d always leave them behind. Because the idea of fully editing 30+ pages of a story was too overwhelming to me. I would dutifully sit down, start reading through it, realize there was a detail that needed to be changed and that I’d have to find every. Single. Mention. of that detail and I would give up. It was always too much. The thought of heavily editing 40,000 words all at once makes me physically sick.

So I broke the rules. The more I thought about it, the more I realized that I have never actually followed the rule anyway. Which was an epiphany. I have always edited as I wrote. And it drives me absolutely crazy to not do that. Now I have almost 20,000 words written of a novel and it’s all been edited multiple times already. I feel really good about the story. I like the way the characters are set up. I like being able to sit with my story without feeling like I’m moving too slowly. I like being free to go back and fix things without feeling guilty for editing “too early.”

I especially like the idea of having a more finished product by the end of the story. I’ll still need to edit it at the end. I’ll still have to go through the 40,000+ words of this novel to make sure it’s good. But I (hopefully) will not have to stress over having to make every possible edit.

I finally stopped suffering at a job that, while making me money, was constantly stressing me out and overworking me, and finally managed to work on my symphony. I also managed to figure out the best way for me to write that symphony. I look forward to finishing my novel. I really look forward to seeing how this writing process works for me over time. I haven’t switched things up in a while and I haven’t written anything completely devoid of stress since probably high school. I can’t wait to get this book out, then the next one, and the next one (it’s not a series, I’m just excited for the future in general). It’s taken many years away from college, but for some reason, now is the time I finally feel like I’m on my way as a novelist.

Now just to keep up the momentum!

Say What Needs to Be Said and No More

I am a firm believer in saying what needs to be said in as few words as possible. Not that sentences and paragraphs should be reduced to the most basic subject/verb combinations, but that each word should matter. When I was still a new writer, I shared a longer story with my cousin and she went through it with me. At the time, she was in that phase of Cut-Every-“Unnecessary”-Word-Ever. Which is a normal phase that I think everyone who writes goes through at one point or another. I liked that phase of my own writing journey (which my cousin certainly helped push along) and I think it’s a valuable lesson that everyone has to learn.

When she cut words for me, she cut pretty much every adverb, most uses of “said”, and a lot of adjectives. The idea was to say what I wanted to say without any of the extra fluff. I know there are professors out there who will tell students to never use an adverb and to never use the word “said” as a dialogue tag. I’m here to say those professors are right. And wrong. At the same time.

They’re right in the concept. A story should use the words it needs to use and no more. That doesn’t mean you have to cut everything except the extremely basic plot points. In fact, that would probably make your story worse. What it does mean is exactly what it says: cut unnecessary words.

What counts as unnecessary depends on the story. In many of my first drafts I end up with a lot more dialogue than needed. I tend to let conversations between characters go longer than they should. I like using examples as much as possible so here we go.

“So you really don’t remember?” Bryce asked.
Abigail stood up quickly, twisting to look at him. “I don’t,” she snapped. “Stop asking.”
“You don’t have to be like that,” Bryce said. “I’m trying to help.”
Maria snorted, “Obviously that’s going well.”
Bryce turned to her, “I don’t need your commentary, Maria.”
“I don’t need your attitude.”
“I can kick you off my property if I wanted to,” Bryce said.
“That escalated quickly. Why don’t you just shoot me instead?”

"Would you prefer that?" Bryce snapped. "I can go get the shotgun."
"Feel free!" Maria spat. "You're not being very helpful right now anyway."
"Guys, please stop," Abigail said. "I don't need this right now."

So before I start cutting things, I ask myself what the purpose of the conversation is. What am I trying to show the reader here? Whether it’s a conversation or a scene, there needs to be a reason for it. In the context of the overall story, this scene is here to give the reader an idea of the relationship between Maria and Bryce. Abigail is the character caught between them so she’s less important here (thus why she doesn’t speak much). The point is that the reader can see how Maria and Bryce interact and I want them to understand that it’s tense and they are not good friends. With that in mind, I’ll start cutting things that don’t serve that purpose. So let’s rewrite it:

First off, this conversation is too long. It needs to be cut right after “Why don’t you just shoot me instead?” because everything after that is just repetition of the purpose of this argument. Secondly, these characters sound a bit too similar. They seem to have very similar vocabularies, which makes them harder to distinguish between. Thirdly, there are parts of these sentences that are stilted, they don’t feel natural.

“So you really don’t remember?” Bryce asked.
Abigail stood up quickly, twisting to look at him. “I don’t,” she snapped. “Stop asking.”
“You don’t have to be like that,” Bryce said. “I’m trying to help.”
Maria snorted.
Bryce turned to her, “I don’t need your attitude, Maria.”
“I don’t need you at all.”
“I can kick you off my property if I want to,” Bryce said.
“Why don’t you shoot me instead?”

The conversation has become tighter, and more efficient. It pulls double duty on developing both characters while keeping everything moving along. Unlike the first draft, this conversation no longer stalls in the same place for too long. While in real life we tend to have a lot of boring (but needed) conversations, in a story, everything should move the story along. Whether the part that’s moving is the plot, the character development, or the world building, it should move.

I see a lot of writers get caught up in word count. Either they’re worried that their book is too short or it’s way too long. I take the position that there is no such thing as too short or too long, provided all the words used are the best ones for that story. It’s not that you can’t have long conversations between characters or that you have to cut all the setup for epic battle scenes just to get to the point. It’s that when you’re using the right words, and the right number of words, and no more.

If a book only needed to be 50,000 words but the author was worried and added another 20,000, then that book will feel bloated to the reader. It’s okay to write 25 short books and it’s okay to write 1 really long book.

Just make sure that the right words are there to tell the story.

Unwarranted Apologies

It’s a pet peeve of mine for people to say sorry a lot. It’s not something that bothers me insanely, but it does get under my skin over time. A word loses meaning when it’s overused, especially if it’s used for largely unimportant things. The sentiment behind the word is cheapened. Sorry should mean something and if someone tells me sorry for every tiny inconvenience then I don’t see how that can be sincere every time. I try very hard to only apologize when I am in the wrong. When I say sorry, I want the person to know that I truly feel sorry, that I’m actually apologizing for something that I did. I want them to know I mean what I’m saying.

Beyond cheapening the apology, at some point sorry becomes a distraction. I think it almost becomes a shield for the person saying sorry all the time, like if they apologize enough then the situation will just be forgotten. But to apologize so much takes away from the focus of the situation, especially when it’s not anyone’s fault that something happened.

Not to say that when tragedy hits I won’t use the word sorry to express grief  or sadness. Everyone does that to some extent. I just like to keep a focus on correcting a problem. If I hurt someone then I want to make it right and to instantly blurt out sorry 400 times is just distracting and doesn’t help anyone move on.

When I was just out of high school I went on a trip with our church youth group. During the week, we went on a day excursion to go canoeing. I don’t like canoeing but I went anyway. The trip down the river was going pretty well for everyone up until a certain point in the river where we all had to go over some mild rapids. Most of the canoes ended up tipped, including mine. So my partner, Hannah, and I were literally up the creek without a paddle. A couple fishermen were hanging out because the rapids were a shallow spot and they helped us get our canoe upright. They pointed us downriver and we had to catch a couple paddles from the wreckage of our youth group in order to keep going. Hannah and I were less than great at canoeing, and now we were separated from everyone else: alone on the river. We ran into a lot of overhanging trees and we didn’t know how to steer very well. There were CONSTANT sorrys from both of us, even though we were equally inept.

At some point, I was fed up. I told Hannah that we needed to stop apologizing to each other. Saying sorry was a distraction. We were overly concerned with expressing our own apologies that it was getting in the way of making it through the situation. As soon as we stopped apologizing, we were able to learn together. When we hit tree branches or almost tipped, we figured it out and moved on. By the end of the river we were not experts, but we could steer our canoe. We could work together and focus on the task instead of focusing inwardly on how bad we felt about messing up.

Too often, we are only apologizing because of how we feel, not how the other person feels. We feel bad and that’s a good enough reason to apologize, sometimes. But it should never be the only reason because that’s selfish. We should apologize because of the other person. If the other person hasn’t been hurt then they don’t need an apology. In those cases, sorry is just making the situation about you when it should be about healing the person you hurt.

Of course there will always be times when you do need to apologize just for yourself too, but those times should not be the majority of apologies.

When I was on the river with Hannah, the apologies were about ourselves. We selfishly apologized because we didn’t want to be seen as the bad guy. We were focusing on ourselves and trying to fix a broken situation with a single word: sorry. But it was only a hindrance. In the most literal way to think about the situation; it wasn’t the right time for those apologies. The right time would’ve been at the end of the river, when we were safe on dry land. The right time was at the END of the problem, not the beginning and not the middle.

In many situations, sorry doesn’t fix anything. It is a gateway to healing, but I think it needs to be delivered with meaning and at the right time. The right time is not in the middle of everything. That’s the time for fixing. That’s the time for helping and the time for change. The time for apologies is when the light at the end of the tunnel is in full view. The time for apologies is when you have changed your behavior. When you have proven that you are sorry. Because to me, sorry rarely means anything in the midst of a problem. It’s meaningless because it’s overused and overly expected and, in many ways, it gives me an out of the situation. I apologized so now I don’t have to change the hurtful behavior. If they don’t like me then that’s on them because I apologized. That’s not a true apology and more people need to understand that.

The truest form of sorry is changed behavior and, personally, I would like to see that change because without that, sorry is just another empty word.

 

Bonfire Chill: Part Two

Last year for Halloween I wrote a little bit of a story. It was just supposed to be an exercise in description but I ended up really liking it. Recently, I continued it just for fun. I didn’t share it at halloween because I wasn’t a hundred percent sure I wanted to. But I’m going to share it now.

I encourage you to check out the first part (it’s a short, fast read!) before reading this bit. Let me know your thoughts and if you want to read more because I haven’t decided if I’ll keep this going or not!

 

He pulls her gently into the trees, the sound of her friends’ laughter far away. He can feel her pulse, blood beating through veins like fire. Leaves crunch under their feet, a slow breath of sky rustles the trees, the October air hot on their skin but cold in their lungs. He pulls her gently, deeper into the forest, her wrist held firmly in his hand. She doesn’t resist but she stumbles. He puts out a hand to steady her, his hand wandering, lingering on her waist a little too long.

The smell of smoke lingers in his nostrils and his mind wanders, remembering a time long past that he enjoyed such things. She smells like fire and oak and embers and sweat. He pulls her to himself, cupping her face in his palm. “You’re so cold,” she shivers. He smiles, running his fingers down her neck, feeling the blood pulsing beneath her skin. His hand snakes around to the middle of her back, he leans into her, his lips brushing her jaw, her neck. He could already taste her.

She gasps at the prick, his fangs piercing skin. She grabs his shoulder with one hand, the other clinging to the front of his shirt. The sweet, metal taste fills his mouth, blood running freely down her chest and arm, dripping from her elbow to the forest floor. He feels her heart slowing and pulls away, looking at her. Dark hair and angled features, pale, slender, beautiful. He listens to her ragged breath, tucks a strand of dark hair behind her ear. Her skin is clammy, her eyes distant but shining in the moonlight that peeks through the trees.
He knows she can’t hear them, but her friends laugh again, not noticing she’s gone. Wrapped up in their own little world. He wonders how they can care so little for someone as exquisite as the girl in his arms. He breathed in the scent of her, watched her blood pulse from her neck. He bent and put an arm under her legs, lifting her easily to his chest.

The crunch of leaves beneath his boots, a rabbit startling at his movements, a soft breeze felt again as he steps out of the trees. The circle of firelight barely reaches him. He stands, watching her friends laugh, drink, and stumble in the orange glow. A boy notices and yells, coming toward him.

He pushes the girl into the boy’s arms. The boy stumbles back under her weight but doesn’t fall. The others start toward them, curious, naïve, stupid. He steps back, turning to the darkness, moving through the grass, the trees, breathing the night heat into dead lungs.

Grammar Cringe

My dad is really big on vocabulary, communication, and efficiency and he passed that on to me. I used to be the person who would correct improper grammar. Over time, I learned that was not how people wanted to be treated and cut back on that behavior. I stopped being a perfectionist about it and started considering communication more important than grammar. For the most part, verbal communication can be effective without using the most proper sentence structure. Some written communication is the same way. But not all of it is. It’s weird because it’s not as though I grew up in an area that was super highly educated. I remember my high school teacher complaining about the whole “I seen” colloquialism being prominent in our area.

Both my parents wanted me and my siblings to speak correctly, or at least as correctly as reasonably possible. Not because they were being high and mighty about it, but because it fosters effective and efficient communication. My dad is a big fan of saying what you mean in the fewest words possible. The more effective your communication, the less time you waste and the more you can accomplish. You also avoid the pitfalls of misunderstandings if you put the thought into communicating. (Obviously, no one is perfect and miscommunication occurs even with careful consideration of one’s words. The idea is to have as few of those moments as possible.)

People get real irritated when you correct their grammar. They say it’s “just the way I talk” or they make it into a joke, or they come back at you with some minor correction because you used a gerund improperly last week so who are you to talk about grammar anyway? I grew up being corrected in my speech and writing so it doesn’t generally bother me to be corrected, provided the person is actually correcting me and not just being snarky to throw something back in my face.

At some point I was texting friends and one used “excepting” instead of “accepting” which is, of course, a standard grammar pet peeve. I corrected her. She responded by correcting my use of “u” instead of “you”. (She was also using speech to text.) I have never rolled my eyes harder than that moment. I corrected a grammar mistake and she ‘corrected’ a common spelling shortcut used effectively in texting, which in that moment irritated me like nothing else. Because spelling is one thing and grammar is another. She was making a joke and it’s not like either of us were mad about it, but it was yet another reminder to me that I’m surrounded by people who just don’t care about language.

Her text-to-speech mistake had me doing a double take on the message to understand what she was saying. It didn’t take a lot to realize what she meant but, at the same time, it disrupted my train of thought. The conversation could have continued flowing, but instead it had that hiccup of misunderstanding. It doesn’t happen just over text though. I can’t count the number of times I’ve been having a conversation with someone and they switch subjects mid sentence and I lose track of who they’re talking about. Then I’m trying to work out how everything is supposed to be working together while also trying to keep up with the conversation. Maybe I can eventually piece it together, maybe they finally clarify, maybe I have to ask. Any way you look at it, communication broke down in that moment.

I love language. I love writing. I love my friends and coworkers and family, even when they take the English language behind the garage to beat the crap out of it before dragging it behind their car on the freeway going 85mph and slingshotting its unconscious body into the nearest lake. Even then, I don’t think they’re stupid or uneducated. It just hurts to hear “I seen that on facebook” and “we was driving through town” and “them tables there” and a host of more irritating mistakes. I think what hurts more is that the people saying these things don’t care that these things add up to more and more communication mistakes. You can be lazy in your language, but if you let yourself fall too far into that mindset then eventually it’s going to catch up to your relationships and work.

Do I think that everyone should speak impeccable English at all times? No. That’s unrealistic. Language evolves and changes over time so our usage of grammar rules changes as well. Am I going to constantly correct all my friends and family? Also no. Am I going to find the lack of care for language any less annoying? Again, no. Because I can’t stop caring. I can’t stop seeing how ineffective so much communication is. From informal conversations to formal written directives from corporate entities, the mistakes are everywhere. Sometimes those mistakes result in actual relationship issues and lost productivity. It’s not hard for someone to take 4 seconds to rethink what they were going to say or to reread what they were going to send.

It’s not about looks, or saving face, or pride, it’s about making sure people understand you. The easiest way to ensure good communication is for everyone to follow a set standard of language. Luckily, we have that, if only people would use it.

A Snake in the Grass

I used to hear about really questionable people and thought they were far away from me. I didn’t know anyone personally who was awful, so it felt like these humans existed on some other earth than mine. Sure, in high school I’d hear about some kids doing some shady stuff but nothing too mind-blowing, even to my sheltered-high-school-self. You probably know the people I’m thinking about. The ones who keep making the same life choices that keep them stuck in the same cycles of failure. The narcissists. The selfish. The people lacking any integrity. But the same people who you (initially) think are okay. The people who build some trust with you. The people who make everyone think they’re the victim. The snakes.

For me, it used to be only that cartoonish villain. Not to say I didn’t think these people existed. I knew that they did. I just mostly stayed away from them. I was, and still am, quite picky about who I let get close to me. So I didn’t really encounter these people in a very meaningful way up until I got out of college and started working (I did know people in college who were snakes in their own rights, but it was still a lot like high school in that I didn’t HAVE to be around or close to them).

When I started working, I met one of the managers who we’ll call Sean.

Sean was nice enough. He wasn’t rude. He was a little lazy, but otherwise seemed to do his job. My initial thoughts were simply that he was an okay person, but I wouldn’t want to be his best friend or anything. As the days progressed, I learned a lot more about Sean’s character. On the surface, honestly, you’d think he was a good guy. He’d run a food errand for you and you’d trust him with your debit card. He talked about how he didn’t like to cheat people. He told me a lot that he didn’t like owing anyone money, so the few times I loaned him a couple bucks, he got it back to me in a reasonable amount of time. He went out of his way to help me get a limited edition Funko Pop! figure for a friend. He always acted the voice of reason. He always had an opinion that was well-thought out but he understood disagreement and didn’t expect you to hold all the same views as him. He talked about honesty and doing things that took integrity. He told stories about how he went out of his way for other people, even when they didn’t deserve it. He said he cared about the employees working under him.

With all those examples of integrity, how could Sean possibly NOT be just a wonderful, honest person?

Sean is a true snake in the grass. Within the first six months of working with him, I would’ve chosen to avoid him. But I had to work with him and I had to make sure we didn’t have any fights or anything that would make both our lives difficult. It wasn’t hard to remain civil. Because Sean was just as invested in keeping work relations from exploding as everyone else was. Or at least, we all figured he was. There were times of work drama for sure. It’s not like any workplace is totally immune to it. Usually, Sean would apologize, act the sorriest he could, and then we’d all move on. That’s not what made Sean a snake. What made Sean a snake was a lot of little things.

Everything Sean did was self-serving. Everything.

“But you said he went out of his way to help people!”

He did. Or at least, he TOLD all of us that’s what he did. What he also did was make sure that those people didn’t forget his help. He never missed an opportunity to bring it up. He always reasoned out a situation until he looked good. I can’t count how many times someone who knew Sean would come into the store, he’d chat with them, crack some jokes, catch up on each other’s lives, wave goodbye “catch you later” and then immediately complain about that person. I remember the first time it happened and I knew exactly what kind of person he was. That I could never trust him. Because as soon as my back was turned, I had no way of knowing what he’d be saying about me.

He did nice things for his coworkers because he needed us. Because if he didn’t, work would be unbearable. We were useful. He needed all of us to be on good terms with him so that none of us would put all the pieces together about what he was really doing. Because he was doing some shady things.

If you didn’t guess already, Sean no longer works where I do. He walked out in the middle of his shift a couple months ago. He gave no notice, no warning. He was supposed to have a serious conversation with our store manager but instead, he just left. The only time I saw him after that was a few days later when he came to grab the last of his stuff. He told me that I should also quit. As if I had some kind of ingrained loyalty to him and would leave my job because he acted like a child and stormed out. That’s the last time I saw him.

Despite all this. Despite every person working at the store knowing that Sean is a snake, we didn’t have any hard feelings. It was a pretty obnoxious thing for him to walk out. He knew we were already short-staffed. He knew he was making things difficult for us. He knew all of us would be inconvenienced. Still, we hoped he would do something with his life. We didn’t wish harm on him. Didn’t want anything bad to happen to him.

Months before he left, I was looking at pre-ordering another Funko Pop! figure as a gift for a friend. Sean found it cheapest at another store in the mall where he regularly shopped. He had an account there and offered to pre-order the figure for me. Which I was more than happy to let him take my debit card down to the store and do it. I don’t need the points he would accumulate from the order. Everything was fine. Until he walked off the job and out of my life. He actually started working down at that store. I expected him to leave it. I figured he didn’t have any reason to cancel it. Though, honestly, the more time that passed, the more I doubted that. I found out the other day that he cancelled the order and kept the $10 I’d put down on it.

I truly don’t care about the money. I wasn’t surprised he did it. This was the same guy who climbed into a display pool to fill his pockets with spare change that people inexplicably toss into anything that holds (or is supposed to hold) water. I went down to the store, hoping to face him. Hoping to hear whatever sorry excuse he had for cancelling it and stealing from me. I learned he no longer worked there. He hadn’t even lasted a month due to “HR problems” according to the employees.

So he’s gone. Probably for good. I’m not sure he’ll ever set foot in the mall again. Which is fine by me. There’s only so many snakes I can deal with.

A Brush with White Nationalism and Why I’m Not Suited for Online Discussions

A few weeks ago I published a post about my recent rejection of many of feminism’s ideals. Just before writing that post I’d discovered a facebook page that helped me ‘wake up’ from the lies I’d been believing. That page invited me to join their private group that was specifically made for people looking to live a traditional life. It was a good group and I liked being part of it. I met some great people, joined a discussion or two, and I was just starting to learn more about what traditionalism was all about.

A mere two weeks into this group I learned something about traditionalism. It’s not a nice thing. It’s not fun. It’s very unfortunate and upsetting to me. The thing is this, traditionalism and traditionalist lifestyles attract white nationalism and white supremacy.

Here’s what happened: someone posted a question, (a deceptively pointed question if you ask me) What does everyone think of mixed race couples?

That’s not the exact wording and I wish, now, that I had saved the wording because the way they asked it, I knew they were looking for people who think mixing race is wrong. And they got exactly what they were looking for.

I was, and still am, DISGUSTED by the comments I read on that post. I don’t know that I can really put all my feelings into words. I was disappointed, surprised, angry, and just plain horrified. People were racist, arrogant, bigoted, and despicable. The comments were VILE. And it wasn’t a small number of comments. It was a lot. So many gross and ignorant “discussions” being had and SO FEW fighting back.

But my disgust was not only directed at the members commenting, it was at the administrator and moderators of the page itself. Because they were doing NOTHING to curb the abhorrent conversation. One moderator would occasionally comment, “Tone back the language a touch” but didn’t seem to care about the majority.

The administrator eventually made a “housekeeping” post that said the group “isn’t for snowflakes” and that we’ll encounter things we don’t agree with. I expressed on that post how I was deeply saddened by how the page was handling the situation. I had a brief conversation on that thread with another member (who was very considerate and polite) but I didn’t want to discuss with another member. I didn’t have an issue with the members per se. No matter how heinous some people’s views, they can express them. I had a problem with the page. So I said as much and that I was not planning on sticking around much longer.

The admin responded and so did a moderator. Let’s go over what the moderator told me, which was that he had been telling members to correct their language when it got offensive. This was only partly true. But even this moderator, I didn’t have a particular beef with. Now, you want to know what the admin told me? You want to know how they responded? They said that they had seen no one call another race “inferior” and that the mods were doing what they could. They said that if I saw something like that then I should tag a moderator. At this point, I was done with the whole thing. BUT BOY OH BOY DID I HAVE BACKUP. A guy who had been fighting against the blatant racism BROUGHT OUT SCREENSHOTS. The one of most interest was a screenshot of a comment that started out, “Race mixing with inferior races results in children with limited potential…”

“INFERIOR RACES”

THE ADMIN STRAIGHT UP LIED.

I CHECKED 3 HOURS LATER AND THAT COMMENT WAS STILL THERE AND THE PERSON WAS STILL A MEMBER OF THE GROUP DESPITE THE ADMIN BEING “MADE AWARE” OF IT.

That wasn’t even CLOSE to the only comment that called a race inferior or that used words like “breeding” to describe mixing race. The admin and the page mods were turning a blind eye to what was going on.

I left. I removed myself. I could NOT be associated with this. Part of me wishes I had taken more screenshots so I could show you the absolutely vile bigotry but a bigger part of me doesn’t want that trash in my photos. I don’t want to be scrolling through pictures of my cat and see a picture of a happy white couple that’s captioned, “When you’re white, there’s no upgrade. Don’t mix!” (an image that a couple moderators liked and hearted). I don’t want to be associated with people who call mixed race people “half-breeds” and “inferior”. And I especially won’t be associated with a page of admins and moderators who DO NOTHING to call out the derogatory and vile language used on their own page.

This experience taught me a few valuable things.

1. Racism is alive and doesn’t die easily. The media sensationalizes white supremacy and white nationalism. I don’t buy that it’s as prevalent or as bad as they say. But I saw these things for probably the first time in a very long time. Straight racism without any effort to hide. That was pretty eye-opening.
2. I am not suited for internet discussions. Partly because they consume me. I am caught up in waiting for that notification to the point I’ll sit refreshing a page waiting for it. It’s all I think about and I legitimately struggle to focus on anything else until it’s over. I don’t know why, but it’s an obsessive feeling that disrupts my life. Another part is that it’s so emotionally draining for me. Probably because of it being so consuming to my life, it kinda takes a toll on my energy and emotions too. The last part takes a little more explanation.

I am a thinker and very introspective. When I engage with others, I try to understand what they’re saying without assuming the worst. But I have a line. I am learning more and more about myself and I cannot engage with people whose ideas are this abhorrent to me. I find myself at a complete loss. How can I engage with someone who believes these things? Truthfully, I don’t know how to. Because, for me, a lot of a discussion relies on finding some common ground to start with. We have to begin in a place we can both relate, even if I have to grasp at straws to get that.

But I don’t relate to these people and I don’t want to. I don’t want my values or beliefs to EVER align in ANY way with someone who thinks that it’s “cruel” to have mixed race children because “it’s your duty to carry on and improve the genetics that have been given to you” and a mixed race child’s genetics would be “weak”. Where do I even start with that?  How can I begin to address that thinking? I don’t even want to stick around long enough to talk to this person. I want to leave. I want to be as far away from them as possible because they make me feel unclean.

Don’t get me wrong. Discussions are important and I am absolutely for freedom of speech in every way. The best way to change hearts and minds is talking things through.  I’ve had some good discussions with people online. But they’ve been one on one and with those I’ve found common ground with (even if it’s shaky ground). All the others I’ve had consume me and my thoughts to the point of obsession. I always end up removing myself.

I admire those who can have those conversations because I’m finding that I can not participate in all discussions with all people. I think that’s okay. Not everyone is called to work out the worst of the worst of humanity’s messed up beliefs. I am perfectly willing to talk to anyone about anything. I’m open to having a one-on-one chat about difficult subjects. But I can’t accommodate certain extremes. I can’t bring myself to the altar of ideas and proffer up reasonable thought next to that filth as if they are equals. 

Hopefully, that’s understandable. I hope some of you can relate to these feelings. I’m always working on myself so perhaps someday I’ll be able to engage with more extreme beliefs. For now, I’ll have to let others fight the bloodier battles.

Speak Only If You Must

It never ceases to amaze me how many people can speak without saying anything at all. I know quite a few of them and sometimes I am one of them. Here, in writing, I can cut words and delete paragraphs so as to get my points across as concisely as possible. Conversation can be more difficult.

My dad has always been a fan of saying as much as he can in as few words as possible. It wasn’t until I let my cousin edit a story I’d been writing that the lesson really stuck. She crossed out nearly every adverb, extra description, and many of my speech tags. I don’t remember her exact words but it was along the same lines as my father’s advice: eliminate the unnecessary to get to the point.

It’s solid writing advice. It’s a good way to edit your first couple drafts because it lets you get down to the absolute bare bones of a story. You get to see exactly what’s needed for your work and then your second or third draft can be fleshed out as opposed to needing both cutting and fleshing at the same time.

I have a habit of thinking out loud during conversation. This means that there are a lot of moments where I repeat myself, in different ways, because I’m still thinking about it. Or I’ll stop the whole conversation and stare into the distance as I repeat it in my head to get the right vocabulary and inflection. I also talk to myself, usually when I’m driving alone so that I don’t have to think so hard when I am in conversation. Essentially, I’m figuring out how to say what I want in the way easiest for others to understand. I do it with blog post ideas a ton.

I do catch myself when I start the repetition and I think, for the most part, some repetition is okay as long as it’s clear you’re trying to say something with different connotations. So I’m always working on it.

There are those, however, who really don’t even try.

It’s not even that they repeat themselves, it’s more that they have nothing to say but keep talking. You know who I’m talking about. You’re telling a story about some hilarious misunderstanding you had with your grandma to illustrate your feelings on the generation gap and they suddenly break in with a story about their cat. The cat has nothing to do with the generation gap, it’s not a funny or particularly interesting tale, and it isn’t furthering the conversation. It’s actually slowing the discussion to a crawl. You try to guide the topic back to generational divide but somehow they come up with another completely unrelated story.

They’re conveying information but that information is not entertaining, educational, or thought-provoking. It’s not doing anything productive. It’s them talking to talk. You gain nothing from the conversation and they get to hold your attention for a few minutes. On the whole, I think that’s what they want the most: attention. It’s not about saying anything important or sharing ideas or making the other person smile. It’s about them. They’ve been given a platform and haven’t prepared a worthwhile speech so they say whatever they can to hang onto their podium.

Listen to the other person and listen to yourself. What are you trying to say? Is there a point? If there’s no other reason except that it popped into your head then keep your mouth shut. It may become relevant later but wait for that moment. Sometimes you never get to share a story or anecdote because there’s no good moment for it. Don’t panic. There will be other conversations.

There will be meandering conversation that isn’t about anything particularly deep or intensely interesting. But even in those moments, use your words wisely. Make sure it’s worth it to break the silence.

Integrity: Even if it Hurts

This is a topic I’ve actually wanted to write about for a little while now. My parents really pushed to instill integrity in each of their children. Part of integrity is keeping your promises. But then, I think there’s more than just keeping promises because you can very easily avoid actually promising to do things. It has more to do with keeping your word.

If I say that I’ll do something, regardless of whether the specific words “I promise” leave my mouth, I should do it. It should hold the same weight as if I swore on the life of my family… okay, maybe not that far but you get it.

We all know/knew those people. The ones who would say they’re free this weekend, of course we can hang out! Then 2 hours before you’re supposed to meet up they text you and say that they’re going to a movie with someone else, so sorry, forgot about our plans and said yes without thinking, we can hang out next weekend. Well, why are you willing to break plans with me because you “forgot” but you couldn’t just break plans with the other person? It’s probably because I was just a standby plan until something they actually wanted to do came along.

Now, I understand extenuating circumstances. If I have long-standing plans with someone but then one of their relatives unexpectedly comes to town or an emergency crops up then I get it. There are things outside your control that can disrupt plans. But when I have long-standing plans with someone to hang out at my house and they cancel because someone else invited them to see a movie then I get a little bit upset.

Actually I don’t get upset, I just get disappointed. When I was younger and this happened to me, I would think there must be something wrong with me. Maybe I wasn’t interesting or fun enough to be first choice. Maybe they didn’t think our friendship was important. Now when this happens I’m know that I don’t have to be disappointed in myself but in the other person’s lack of integrity. It’s not my problem. Well it’s sort of my problem because now I don’t have plans and have to be lonely thinking about what I could have planned instead of trying to hang out with someone who obviously thought I was just a backup to more exciting things anyway and probably isn’t even thinking about me and won’t think about me again until they’re done having a great time with other people and now they want to have a mediocre time with someone as boring as me.

Clearly this gets to me sometimes.

The beginning of Psalm 15 asks, “LORD, who may abide in Your tabernacle?” Then it goes through some expected behavior/traits of Christians: he who works righteousness, speaks the truth, does no evil to his neighbor, etc. The one that really grabs my attention is “He who swears to his own hurt and does not change.” To me, this is the epitome of integrity. When you say you will do something, when you tell someone you’ll be there for them, when you say you’ll be available, when you say you’ll vacuum the living room before bed, when you say you’ll feed the dog, etc. etc. etc. Do it even if when the time comes, it’s going to be really inconvenient. Like, yeah, I SAID I would clean the kitchen after work but then I had to stay an extra two hours because someone else didn’t do their job so now I don’t have time to clean the kitchen. No. You said you would do it after work and it’s after work. So do it. But, I won’t have time to watch the episode of my favorite tv show tonight and Mark will spoil it for me tomorrow!

Too bad. This is what it looks like to keep your word. This is integrity, this is what the Psalmist was talking about. It might seem trivial to apply this to things like letting the dog out or cleaning the kitchen but if you don’t have integrity in the small things then how can someone believe you’ll have integrity in the big things?

I’m not perfect. I don’t keep my word all the time either because I make mistakes. But this is something that I really do work on. I do my absolute best to follow through on what I say, even if doing that is going to be detrimental for me because that’s part of what integrity looks like.

 

 

 

 

**I’m adding a little section at the end of each post to let you know what I’m reading (as per my new year resolutions) so that it not only motivates me to keep reading but also to keep me accountable**

Currently Reading: Mogworld by Yahtzee Croshaw

Writing Friends as Characters in Stories

I have really enjoyed writing stories that star my friends as main characters. It’s a lot of fun to read the stories out loud in a gathering and get real life reactions to my work. People generally have a great time whether they’re the hero or just a corpse in the corner of the crazy person’s basement.

In high school I used to write one or two a month during Bible Quiz trips. Everyone who went on the trip was a character in the story. It was usually a very short story in which I would put all my friends as characters that would share a name with the real life person but maybe not a lot else. My friends and I became everything from flawed superheroes to computer software icons. It was all good fun and it taught me how to write for a specific audience. I learned how to make my friends laugh or cringe with how I worded my sentences or how I chose to reveal a detail.

Recently I sat down to write another story with friends as characters and I was having a really hard time capturing the tone that I was going for. I haven’t written a successful story this way in a while. There have been attempts but nothing that I’ve been really happy with.

So what’s going on with me? Why can’t I seem to capture this type of writing right now? What am I doing wrong? Do I not know my friends anymore? Is this happening because I can’t be there? I used to write these every month! How can the skills be gone so fast?

These questions made me go back to all the old stories I’d written. Every story that I wrote in this way, I had on my computer. So I read a few and here’s what I was missing: the essence of my friends. Which is a weird thing to say and is going to take a little explaining.

(I’m changing my friend’s names for this next part because I’m too lazy to ask them if they mind I use their real names) In one story I wrote my friend Kyle was an inmate from a prison (he’s never been to jail), Jake and Mark were six years old (they were teenagers), and I was a woman in her mid thirties (I was also a teenager). This was the first story I ever wrote with friends as characters and it’s still one of my favorites.

What struck me as soon as I read it again was that these characters were almost nothing like my friends in real life. They were different ages, had different backgrounds and weird family relationships that don’t exist in real life. What made them my friends in the story were the small mannerisms that they shared with their real life counterparts. They had the same attitudes and said things that they would say in real life. They also said things they wouldn’t say in real life and did things they would never do in real life.

That’s when I figured out my problem with trying to write a story now. I was trying to be completely true to the entirety of my friends’ characters. I made them comparable ages, backgrounds, and gave them similar actions to perform. Not only did this take away from the story (most friends are friends because they get along and getting along does not make for a good story, a good story requires some kind of conflict) but it was actually distracting me from making the story fun. It’s not about capturing exactly what my friend would do in this exact situation, it’s about capturing the brief essence of who they are in the moment. My friends didn’t care about the deep, interpersonal thoughts of their character. They cared about the witty quip that’s “exactly what I would’ve said!” or the moment that’s actually so contrary to their character that it’s hilarious.

I was missing the forest looking at trees. I was missing the essence of my friend while trying to find the intimate detail. I plan on trying again soon to write a few more stories with my friends and I but I’m going to focus more on the essence of who they are.