I was so close to finishing my copy edit this morning. This evening, maybe. I also have to work up the dedication and acknowledgements.
Still. So close. Ah, well. I expect I’ll make a couple last decisions after work today and put it in the mail tomorrow, well before deadline.
Also, there’s nothing like a rigorous copy edit to make you question the strength of your relationship with your mother tongue. Apparently, I need to work a bit on the difference between “each other” and “one another”.
I hope you do.
Anyway, I wrote a post about a book called Meditations on Violence: A Comparison of Martial Arts Training & Real World Violence, which was not only about the way real fights differ from what we expect, but is also about how we deceive ourselves about what we can do and what we can’t. My original post is here: blog / LiveJournal.
Well, last night I had another “Meditations” moment: For quite a while now, I’ve been a morning writer. Physically, I’m a night person, but I could never get anything accomplished at the end of the day–too tired, too distractible, too many other things to do. For years, I’d come home from work and get nothing done on my projects. Once I started waking early and writing before work, I was much more productive.
But why, exactly, was that? Did I say tired and distractible? That’s just me defining myself as a person who can’t do some perfectly reasonable thing, and last night I walked out of my day job after a full day’s work and my usual morning writing session to head to the library.
There, I put in another two and a half hours on the copy edit. I expect to finish the whole thing today.
Can’t write/revise/whatever at the end of the day? Why do I tell myself these things? And how long is it going to take for me to break that habit?
I wish the photos had turned out better, but still, they can’t help but be pretty cool considering the subject matter.
For instance, a huge diorama of the zombie apocalypse:
or an equally huge epic fantasy layout:
Of course, I posted multiple photos of the dioramas. Check them out.
There’s also a set of steampunk creations, a WWII layout, space ships of every kind (many of which I’m sure come from TV or movies I don’t recognize) and other fun, wild stuff. Really amazing.
I uploaded them at their full size, so if you’re really interested, you can see them fully blown up. Here’s the whole set.
1) A new type of cloud is recognized. And it’s beautiful.
2) Manly men = Straight men, now and in the past? Not so.
3) Cops have their water hoses, but what do protesting farmers have?
4) Paul Krugman answers readers’ questions about the economy.
5) Facebook status updates from comic book superheroes. So damn funny I can’t stand it.
I have a couple of gadgets that can turn chuck into ground beef, and I really recommend using one of them. Pre-ground beef just isn’t safe.
There’s something I alluded to in my Big Idea essay that I meant to expand upon. Unfortunately, it didn’t fit the theme of the essay, so I’m inflicting it on you here.
Writers, do not make your vampires cringe away from/burn at the touch of crosses and crucifixes.
Why? Well, let’s talk about honor killings. Seriously.
In Jordan, as much as one-third of the murders of women are honor killings. Women who are raped are not treated as victims–they’re treated like criminals and killed.
In our own culture, we’re still trying to get past the idea that women are at least partly-responsible for sexual assaults against them. We still still have people who want to what a woman was wearing or what she did to cause the assault. It’s taking a long time to excise that attitude from our culture, but I like to think that most people, if they stop to think about it, understand that you don’t blame the victim.
And here’s why I think these two topics are related: You (man or woman) are walking home from work at night when someone jumps out of an alley, drags you in and kills you by draining your blood. Or maybe you (man or woman) meet someone sexy and interesting and decide to invite them back to your place; once there, things go way too far and you end up the victim of an attack.
And how does God treat you afterwards? God burns you every time you touch one of his symbols.
I know, it’s a trivial thing, really. It’s a silly vampire story, and it isn’t a patch on the real misery real victims endure. Still, it’s a relic of an older, awful time, when crime victims were held at least partly culpable for their victimization. It enshrines a culture where the highest, most exalted being repudiates someone because of a thing they had no control over, because of a choice and an action that fell on someone else.
It turns God into a blame-the-victim asshole. Really, the Supreme Deity really ought to get his public relations department to work on this.
If I weren’t an atheist, I’d be seriously annoyed. As an atheist, I consider it simply inconsistent characterization and a cultural relic of awful times. Also as an atheist, I have to admit that, while I consider vampires dangerous and scary, I don’t think of them as “evil.” Certainly not more evil than a shark or a tiger–they’re hungry, and people are their prey. As soon as The Lord starts turning away crocodiles with the power of faith, I’ll accept it with vampires.
So, God=one of the good guys. In theory, at least, right? Then maybe he should stop setting fire to crime victims who come too near him in our stories.
Responding to a copy editor’s queries is a whole different kind of thinking than revising my own work.
I keep forgetting to mention this: I’m not planning to link to reviews, good or bad. I’m grateful to the people who write them (tremendously grateful), but I think it’s intrusive for a writer to comment or link to it.
Just my opinion, naturally.