Dreams Related to Writing

I had a dream in which I was writing by hand (novel or short story) at a little, round table outdoors, in front of a coffee shop.

A guy in my writers’ group (in the dream reality, not this one) opened the front glass door and saw me. He looked and sounded like the actor who plays the wacky guy in The Mindy Project—the one with lots of dogs. He told me the writers group is inside and I’m welcome to join. So I followed him in.

Next I was sitting alone at a tiny white table in kind of a large white space. I realized to my horror that I wasn’t wearing a mask. So I hastily got one out—it was pale yellow (a color I don’t have).

Next—along the right wall of the downstairs part of this café (not far from a staircase leading to a loft), there was a row of small white tables about six feet away—well, maybe four—with one side pushed against the wall. People sat at those tables, and some of them were in my writers group. I approached them, we exchanged greetings, and we did some rearranging of seats to make this gathering work. I ended up at a table in the far corner with one guy (the one at the door earlier?) and a tiny young woman with pale hair and a sharp nose. (Maybe she symbolized what this society believes women should look like.)

4/18/21

Some of my dreams I vaguely know were based on this gothic fantasy novel I’m reading. A group of 12 sisters, etc.

I dreamed something that may have been about revision. I kept looking at pages in a printed manuscript.  Suddenly a whole bunch of text would disappear from a page. But it would reappear ag as in. Then disappear.

Writing amid Household Problems

July 22:

Well… last night I read yet another rejection letter for a gothic novel that I consider my best novel so far. Guess it doesn’t matter how much I revise and edit it. Anyway, I meant to query magazines/ journals today… and discovered that my WiFi decided to say, “Fuck you! So what if you pay Comcast way too much? You don’t get to have WiFi!” Restarting my laptop… unplugging and unplugging my modem… pushing the button on top of my modem… nothing worked. The instructions on my computer screen mentioned connecting the modem and the laptop with an Ethernet cable–but I don’t have a spare.

Did I not pay my overpriced Comcast/Xfinity bill? Maybe I need to dig through snail mail and check…. And maybe I need to take a look at the surge protector somewhere under my tv cabinet.

And then there’s the bathtub full of dirty water. Well, about three inches, that is. It has something to do with my hair clogging the drain. The plunger has brought up a lot but not solved the problem. So my last shower was in the back bathroom (which requires stepping on a stool to climb in). I do pull Cousin It out of the drain from time to time, but apparently Cousin It finally succeeded in committing suicide.

I need to call a plumber… but first I’m gradually cleaning and tidying rooms that the plumber would see. That’s the living room, the hallway, and the bathroom. (I can close doors down the hallway.)

I say gradually because I’m doing this at cooler times, when I’m less likely to pour with sweat. I intend to do a bunch this evening, or basically… night.

Nice thing about all this craziness–plus my obsessive “This is what fascism looks like” news reading/watching, I’m scarcely brooding about toxic people. Barely, though it slips in from time to time.

Reading Mexican Gothic has inspired me to steep “Theater Patron” in more gothic atmosphere. It admittedly increases the word count, but it’s all for the best. Something to keep in mind in many of the Margot/Roland/Vincent stories. (“Theater Patron” is one of many, and I’ve been revising it for publication.)

July 23:

My main focus today is house cleaning (yuck) because I intend to call both the plumber and Comcast tomorrow.

The standing water has mostly drained, but there’s still some–and that’s after days, maybe a week. I’ve lost track.

The WiFi is still nonexistent—pretending as though my network doesn’t exist—it isn’t even a choice. No, I’m not trying to use a neighbor’s WiFi–I want my own back! It’s frustrating. I wanted to submit stories to magazines/journals yesterday, but I couldn’t use the internet on my laptop. The only internet is on my phone.

Brooding about certain toxic people… I think one narcissist showering me with verbal abuse, projecting, and pathetically trying to gaslight me right before Oregon began officially socially distancing… is triggering in part because of a certain narcissistic sociopath who used all the same techniques… but was far more skilled at manipulation. That’s a motivation to resume working on the novel inspired by said narcissistic sociopath. It’s better to do that earlier in the day, not in the evening. I don’t wish to go to bed in a rage.

I took a break from housecleaning. I had dinner while streaming Trevor Noah and resumed working on a fun, humorous fantasy novel—changing the novel from past tense to present tense. This has been a gradual process, of course, since it’s over 92,000 words.

I still need to take some things out to the trash and recycling and sweep the floor of the living room, hallway, and bathroom. The bathroom floor might also need some scrubbing.

It’s pathetic that all this is happening at once—the clogged bathtub drain, the shower curtain rod falling down repeatedly, the WiFi not working. Plus I still need to get on with putting up that curtain rod in the library and making library curtains and cleaning the mildew from the wall in the back apartment and painting over that with anti-mold primer…..

Meanwhile, I have memories of a narcissistic sociopath in my head, accusing me of being incapable of functioning—a variation on how my narcissist mother made me feel incompetent starting when I was four years old and helped paint the living room. The accusation of incompetence is tied in with my need for respect and acceptance.

July 24:

I’m revising an old story to submit online and have several internet folders open to magazines/literary journals. I’d like to submit more than one story today, but I’m compelled to edit/revise stories before submitting them, especially if it’s been a while since I worked on them.

I called about the WiFi, and it’s working: Comcast needed to reset the modem. How random. I called the plumbing company, and they have someone coming Monday afternoon. Such a relief to have all that taken care of—also a relief that I have two bathtubs.

Coronavirus Journal

A successful author—I don’t remember who because I suck at names and haven’t read her work—but a successful author, maybe from South America, stated that writers need to write about this pandemic. My reaction was: that makes perfect sense. But how on earth am I going to write about this pandemic?

Fiction that I especially enjoy writing is fantasy fiction, historical fantasy fiction, historical fiction, dark fantasy. Fiction that I end up writing with rather less enjoyment is autobiographical or semi-autobiographical fiction. Writing about this particular pandemic… how could I do that?

I decided the only way I knew to write about it, at least for the time being, would be to write a journal. Write about my afflictive emotions and confused thoughts and trying to process and not really processing properly.

Upon a little more thought, it occurred to me that I could set fiction during this pandemic… but show it in a low-key way. Whenever the protagonist goes outside, everyone is wearing a mask. People are keeping their distance, yellow Caution tape is all around playgrounds, people only go to restaurants to pick up orders, or they wait at home for the restaurant food to be delivered. The protagonist, at the beginning of the story, hasn’t left her house in a month. I have no idea how to incorporate plot into something like that, but it could always be “literary” fiction that I submit to literary journals.

And another possibility, especially since I plan to write fiction about suffragist witches, is to include the 1918 flu pandemic in historical fiction about suffragists.

During the 1918 flu pandemic, people generally didn’t do that. There just aren’t many books about it, aside from historians and writers of historical fiction who nowadays write about it as a historic event. But people who lived through it… didn’t process it, apparently. They were traumatized and glad it was over and just wanted to shove it away, push it out of their thoughts once it was over. They didn’t warn younger generations. They didn’t confide in younger generations. So there’s this whole generation that blocked out a major world event that came toward the end of the first world war, which was also a traumatic world events. Two traumatic world events coming together.

But I rather think writing about it will help process. I mean writing about this pandemic, that is.

The pandemic reached the U. S. in late February 2020. At least, according to the news, the pandemic first appeared in Washington state (only one state away!) on February 28. But it could have been in the U. S., for instance in New York City, a little before that. Maybe a month before. After all, it sometimes needs time for symptoms to appear, and sometimes people are asymptomatic—like Typhoid Mary.

It would suck to be Typhoid Mary.

The last time I went to see a play—and I know I’m coming from a place of economic privilege when I put it like this, but—the last time I attended a live play (as opposed to watching a Shakespearean play on YouTube) was a Saturday in the middle of March, a couple days before social distancing became official per Governor Kate Brown’s orders in Oregon. The play was A Doll’s House by Henrik Ibsen, and it was beautiful (especially the costumes!) and made me realize that I’d forgotten quite a bit of it from reading it in college in the early 1990s.

Ah, the 1990s. It was before 9/11. It was before fascist Repugnantcans started proving they don’t need to win the popular vote in order to move into the White House. They just have to rely on cheaters and voter suppression. The late twentieth century seems like such an innocent time compared to this. Back then I wasn’t even disillusioned with relatives who have personality disorders.

So… I created a new document and started writing. I cut and pasted all the journal entries I’ve written since social distancing started in Oregon, and those are all in the  new document. At the moment, that’s thirty-five pages.

 

Camp Nanowrimo and… Summer is Coming

I’m definitely behind in my Nanowrimo novel. It’s open in front of me right now and I’m adding a tension-filled sort of dialogue scene right now (Vita distracted me and now this). Hopefully I’ll make more progress tonight–maybe even get ahead again–but just catching up would be good.

I feel like procrastinating on things, including that novel. Like just reading this novel and using the bicycle desk and maybe binge watching something … when I need to be so much more productive.

Mind on home improvement stuff and house cleaning and organizing—but I don’t want to do it when it’s warm, and it would make sense to wait until next month, since I’m participating in Camp Nanowrimo now… but of course I need to get the house ready for summer. I just ordered some fans and cooling stuff.

#

I moved a chair across the hallway from the sewing room to the bedroom, and Gabriel is delighted–rolling around on the chair, playing with its back. He’s acting like he’s never seen it before.

For two summers, I’ve used a portable air conditioner in the upstairs bedroom. But the window won’t open, for whatever reason. I’ll try again—I don’t need to turn on the AC for a while yet—but I’m going to rearrange the sewing room so I can set up the AC there.

I just ordered three fans online–getting ready for summer, climate change and pandemic style.

“I was just thinking: Frankenstein!”

Last week I attended a wonderful talk/ book discussion, “Reading like a Writer: Frankenstein,” which conjured Mary Shelley et al telling spooky stories around a fireplace on a rainy night in Geneva, Switzerland, in 1816. It must be the most famous party in literary history. (Conveniently, during our discussion, it was raining heavily, and we met at a haunted Victorian mansion.)

I just watched the latest episode of Doctor Who, at the end of which the Doctor said, “I was just thinking: Frankenstein!” My first thought: “Are they going to Geneva in 1816?!” After the credits, there was a brief preview, and it indeed looks like the Doctor and her friends are going to visit Lord Byron’s villa in Geneva on the night that Mary Shelley first started writing Frankenstein! If I had a TARDIS, that would be high on my list of times/places to visit.

Also, next month I’m going to see Manuel Cinema’s mixed media production of Frankenstein; it involves puppets and video and whatnot. It’s going to be amazing.

Maybe this year I’ll read some more books by and about Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley and her mother, Mary Wollstonecraft. I’m feeling so inclined….

The Nerve of me, interacting on social media like anyone else

It’s National Novel Writing Month, and tonight I reached the month’s official word count goal of 50,000 words. I posted not only to my Twitter account and my Facebook account the fact that I’d reached 50,450 words, but because I’d seen other people do it, I posted it to the NaNoWriMo Facebook group page.

This is what I posted:

“I just reached 50,450 words!

So… tomorrow I’m definitely going to wash the dishes and clean the living room. But I’m aiming for 90,000 words by the end of the month, since that’s standard novel length.”

That’s all I wrote. Nothing more. So what happens? A perpetual playground bully (PPB) commented: “50,000 is standard novel word count.”

I stared at that comment and was utterly flabbergasted. I had simply stated a fact, and here was a bully—like so many before—contracting my statement. I didn’t even post an opinion or a question about word count. So I went to the Writer’s Digest website and found an excellent article (I’ve read it before) by Chuck Sambuchino about standard word count, and I copied and pasted the url as a comment under my post.

https://www.writersdigest.com/guest-columns/word-count-for-novels-and-childrens-books-the-definitive-post

Then I replied to the PPB: “That’s only the bare minimum.”

The PPB bizarrely acused me of saying that 90,000 is the minimum, even though that obviously was not what I wrote, as anyone could easily see by looking at my post. She added, “and that’s not true.”

I replied, “No, I didn’t write that it’s the minimum. I wrote that 90,000 is standard word count, which IS true.” Then I blocked the parasite… and started considering dropping out of the group, as I’ve done with quite a number of Facebook groups where I encountered drama thanks to PPBs.

Here are three things that push my buttons… and they also happen to be narcissist/sociopath red flags:

1. Contradicting me—in particular, contradicting me when I state a fact, not even an opinion.
2. False accusations.
3. Attempts to gaslight me.
4. Lies.

This perpetual playground bully whipped all these out in just a couple of comments! I include “attempts to gaslight me” is because this PPB accused me of claiming that 90,000 is the minimum, despite the obvious fact that I clearly stated that it is the standard. Her accusing me of that is a false accusation, a lie, AND an attempt to gaslight me, all rolled into one.

Yeah, I’m going to name a narcissist or sociopath Kerri in one of my stories, for certain. Coming to think of it, I could probably access a list of every bully I’ve blocked on Nazibook… that’s like a ready-made list of names for villains. If you’re a bully and you know I’m a writer, you’ve automatically given me permission to base a character on you.

The nerve of me, interacting on social media just the way other people interact on social media without being under attack. Am I shivering from cold, or am I shivering from shock? Hmmm. You’d think that a fact about word count would be one thing I can post on social media without being under attack, but… nope. There is absolutely nothing I can post on social media without being under attack from someone who has a shortage of empathy and should go back to the playground.

Anti-Feminist Bullshit Day

Oh. My. Goddess. When the bar is only 1/8 of an inch above the floor, you should be able to get right over it. It’s not asking too much.

In a writers’ group this morning, one member, a white cisgender male in his sixties or seventies, shared a piece he’d written that listed off bullshit stereotypical descriptions of feminists. No, feminism is about dismantling patriarchy, rape culture, and systemic oppression such as misogyny and racism and gender binary. It’s not about hating men and wanting to have “test tube” babies. Patriarchal males are so narcissistic that even their made-up version of feminism is about them. (Since the 2016 election, I’ve repeatedly noticed patriarchal/misogynistic males wave narcissist red flags.)

As for bra-burners?! That was a misnomer invented by patriarchal mainstream media. Atlanta had a city ordinance against burning trash. Therefore the feminist protestors in question tossed oppressive, sexist things such as girdles and Ladie’s Home Journal into a trash can without actually burning them. Stop repeating a lie that has been repeatedly disproved… and read feminist books and blogs.

Later, I logged onto Facebook and visited a group that I usually enjoy. It’s for participants in National Novel Writing Month. But a female posted, asking if she must have “strong female characters” in her novel (because of something someone, maybe a friend, said) and if this is some “feminist agenda” or a requirement. She said she has a male protagonist and no “strong female characters.” Really? Not one single character in your entire novel can be described as a “strong female character”? She seems to think that because it’s medieval historical fiction, that she shouldn’t have to include strong female characters. This presumably means that her novel will have no major, three-dimensional female characters.

I was utterly flabbergasted, twice in one day (and I don’t even work in customer service anymore–heck, I’m somewhat reclusive nowadays). And I’m not going to read anything by her. Even Joss Whedon has no trouble creating strong female characters. It’s such a low bar. No doubt if she learned about the Bechtel Test, she’d have a heart attack or piss her pants or post about this “feminist agenda.”

Both situations reminded me of what a friend recently said in a feminist discussion: that people really hate us feminists. She’d dropped out of an atheist organization for this very reason. I’ve repeatedly observed that the only people with whom I enjoy socializing are feminists.

Yeah, and I’ll keep writing unabashedly feminist fiction. The funny thing is, this was a NaNoWriMo group, and my NaNoWriMo novel for this year is Feed Misogynists to Dragons, a novel so feminist that the title indicates it. I mean, it’s in your face. I’m going to soooooo wallow in the feminism of this novel and my “feminist agenda.”

A Use for Trolls

I’m not sure if this will be small parts of a larger work—probably—but I could put trolls into fiction, with tiny roles. Bit parts. Bit parts…with little bits. Here’s an example, using today’s troll:

The enormous green troll grabbed by the ankles a smug and arrogant white boy, a ninth grader who skipped class that day. He’d been known by his classmates to harass girls since kindergarten and often wore a red baseball cap with white letters saying, “Make America Great Again.” The troll lifted this boy up into the air and swung him around. The boy’s head kept thumping against the ground, and he became unconscious, his smug smirk fading.

Chinese Authorities and Underwear

I’m scrolling through a travel journal and reformatting it. It’s from my trip to India, Nepal, and Tibet in 2008. I came across this:

 

I recall reading that, for whatever reason, China doesn’t allow you to bring more than twenty changes of underwear. When I read about that, I imagined what it could be like when a Chinese authority looks through my suitcase.

“You have too much underwear! You are a member of a splittist faction!”

“No, that’s just a rip in the seam.”

“Why you have Dalai Lama pictures in your underwear?”

“I figured of all the places that would least likely get looked at carefully…”

This is so crazy—I’m in Tibet for real! I’d like to take a picture of a yeti, but I won’t be out in the wild, and I doubt a yeti would be circumambulating the Jokhang Temple.

 

Quandary about Querying

I should have gone back over Hauntings of Claverton Castle and The Vanquished and the Surviving and drastically cut down the word count after only about ten literary agent rejections, rather than after about thirty such rejections. Looking at information about literary agents, I find that they’ve already rejected one or both of those manuscripts, or at least that someone from their agency has, which is close enough (because if one agent of a specific agency rejects a manuscript, it’s normal for them to pass it on to other agents in the same office).

I had fooled myself that surely since some books, such as Twilight, were published despite their long word count, surely it was okay for each of these novels to be over 110,000 words. But no, I finally decided (while reading a book by a literary agent that reminded me of word count limits) that I should play it safe and cut down these two books. Each has at least one less chapter and quite a few removed scenes. I suspect that the word count was why some agents rejected them.

Today, after only a few hours of researching agents, I’m considering putting aside those two novels and waiting until an agent accepts another novel before I make another stab at Claverton Castle and Vanquished. After all, if you already have an agent, naturally that agent will be interested in some of your other work. True, if you jump around different genres like I do, you might need more than one agent…but that’s not an immediate issue for me. What’s immediate in my situation is this: do I go ahead and continue searching for agents for these two novels, or one of them, or do I set them aside for now and instead wait to contact an agent after my critique group has gone over the entirety of the WIP that I’m sharing with them? Or do I revise a certain novel I wrote during National Novel Writing Month that I think has a lot of publishing potential, and query agents about that novel (although I’d better share it with my critique group before I do that).

I think I’ll do this: continue revising a couple of WIPs, including the one I’m currently sharing with my critique group…and continue researching literary agents and pick out agents whom I haven’t queried yet about Claverton Castle or Vanquished, because surely there are still a few agents out there I haven’t queried but who are into supernatural and gothic historic fantasy. Or queer and supernatural gothic fiction. Surely I haven’t queried every such agent yet.