I’ll get to them, I promise.

But, in the spirit of doing at least something I’ve said I’d be better at this year, an update on the List of Stuff I’m Writing:

To write:

Gid— first draft by March 2012 — This actually looks very much on-track. Last few chapters outlined, could even be done (gasp) early. Currently sitting at 25,600ish words.
Gavrick’s Brood — Aiming to start by May. Still a-clamoring. Going to need some worldbuilding, methinks
“The Fire Children” — is hinting it might like to be a longer work when it grows up. I’m stuffing my fingers in my ears. Not that that worked with Gid.

On the horizon/no set dates:
“Wolves”
“The Desert in Fimbulwinter”
“The Reunion Tour of Billy James and the Flamethrowers, or How Billy Got the Band Back Together”

I’ve been carving out more reading time these last few weeks, too, which has been pretty nice. I’d like to get out of my own way and do more reviewing here (which reminds me that one of the not-yet-finished posts is a bit of musing on what a review should do, and how the reviewer/venue affects my thinking on that). The question becomes how far back in my have-read pile to go. I’ve read some pretty excellent stuff.

The caffeine and the day are winding down, and my wit has long fled. In the interest of not adding another unfinished post to the drafts pile, I’ll leave you with a link to Locus’ recommended reading list for 2011. What’s on there that you’ve read? What should I seek out?

But I wasn’t done ruminating, and thus, this post comes not as we stand just over the thresshold of the year, but maybe, I don’t know, a step or two inside, just enough to have tracked a little mud into the hallway. Or for our host to come tearing out of the kitchen shouting “take off your shoes I just mopped!”

I couldn’t remember if I’d done one of these resolution-y posts for 2011, but lo, I did. I actually dreaded searching for that, since, well, what if I hadn’t accomplished anything? The good news is, I seem to have done some stuff:

• Night Owls is done. I could’ve sworn I’d blogged about finishing it, but it doesn’t seem to be anywhere. Finished it in June over one feverish leave me the fuck alone, I’m writing weekend. Polished and edited over the next few months. Sent it off to Miriam and she didn’t hate it. Huzzah! Which makes 2012 the year of nail-biting as it goes out to editors.
• Gid is my current project. You might notice it’s gone from “Gid” to Gid. In my head, it made the transition from a short story to not just a novel, but a middle-grade novel. I’d like to be further along on it than I am — 18,000 words in puts me somewhere between a third and halfway in. More outlining should make that end word-count goal a bit clearer. I’d really like to finish it before March.
• “Running” became “Along the Portal Road” and has been sold to an anthology. More on that soon!

In the spirit of (as Logen Ninefingers would say) being realistic about these things, I’m shelving a few projects for the time being:

• The Nin Sequel (with Hill) – sitting at about 57K and likely to stay there for awhile until we hear more about book one.
• “Letters to Janey” — Also temporarily back-burnered until I figure out where it’s going.
• “Kate” — Sadly, I think I’m trunking this one for now. It doesn’t quite fit into any markets I’ve researched, which makes it tough to place. If you hear any calls for bittersweet ghost stories that aren’t actually scary, let me know!

In comparison to other writers, it’s not the most prolific of years. I’m sure if I tallied up all of my writing over the course of 2011, it’d be a nifty-ish number, certainly not a bad one for someone with my schedule. Still, there’s part of me saying, not good enough. Do more. Which leads to the crux of my resolutions for 2012:

This is the year I give myself a break, and the year I demand more from myself.

Contradictory, yet not. Any deadlines I’m on right now are entirely arbitrary. The only person I disappoint by blowing them is me. Which, y’know. A million and ten self-helpy-type people would say I should be at the top of my own Do Not Disappoint These People list.

So, okay, I’m up there.

The plan, then, is to hold myself accountable for writerly goals, but when the inevitable spanner gets thrown into the works, to adjust rather than berate.

We’ll see how that goes.

Looking forward at the mud I plan to track across 2012′s floor:

To write:
Gid — first draft by March 2012
Gavrick’s Brood — name very subject to change. Trying to leave it for after Gid, but damn is it clamoring. Aiming to start it by May.
“The Fire Children”
“Wolves”
“The Desert in Fimbulwinter”
“The Reunion Tour of Billy James and the Flamethrowers, or How Billy Got the Band Back Together”

All of those stories have been started, but have otherwise been put aside. They currently mainly exist in snippets strewn throughout my docs folder, my gmail inbox, and the occasional Evernote file. Ideally, I’d like to finish all of them and get them submitted by the end of the year. I won’t be sticking due dates on them until I have an idea of how Gid is going.

Right, then. I have a clockwork boy who needs to come to a bad realization. Happy New Year, you lot.

@HillaryMonahan: “Add more dialogue tags to up your NaNo word count!” Me: “NO DON’T DO THAT PLEASE STOP DEAR GOD WHAT IS NANO TEACHING YOU!”

@falconesse: @HillaryMonahan Whoever said that needs a fucking smiting.

@HillaryMonahan: @falconesse Yeah, enter NaNo, the exercise in Dubious Writing Advice From People Who’ll Need An Editor.

@falconesse: @HillaryMonahan Problem is, with that level of superfluous padding an editor’s head will asplode. WON’T ANYONE THINK OF THE EDITORS?

@justanna: @falconesse @HillaryMonahan I think the problem here is that “advice to win NaNo” and “advice to write well” are not the same thing

@Hillary Monahan: @justanna @falconesse We were just talking about that. Unfortunately, a lot of participants don’t seem to SEE the difference.

So, let’s talk about it!

The goal of National Novel Writing Month is to crank out a 50,000-word novel between November 1st and 30th.  One of the “freedoms” participants are supposed to allow themselves during this period is the permission to write without editing.  You sit your butt in your chair, put on your fingerless gloves, hook up the caffeine IV drip, and GOGOGO.

There is nothing inherently wrong with this method so far.  Sure, if you’re used to tinkering with the text as you go, not-editing can feel awfully alien.  It’s like trying to go a week without cracking your knuckles when you do it all the goddamned time — leaving that clunky sentence be just seems so very wrong.  You get used to it after a while, though.  Maybe you start highlighting the text you know you want to go back to in red, or you turn on the track changes feature and insert comments that say FIX THIS.

What gets problematic is the advice doled out on how to hit that sweet, sweet 50K mark.

Some days, writers will run out of steam well-shy of the 1667 words needed to make the daily goal.  Maybe a scene’s not working, or a character’s flat, or they just don’t frickin’ wanna.

Or maybe the looming spectre of Thanksgiving has them wanting to get ahead of schedule, in case a few days’ worth of families and travel and turkey and pie renders word-making unlikely or downright impossible.

This is where padding comes in.

Padding your word count is the NaNo equivalent of stuffing your bra:  come the end of the night (December 1st for NaNoers), that wad of tissues has to go.

And yet, there are forum threads dedicated to adding useless filler.  Typical examples:

• Never use contractions!  Don’t is one word; do not is two!
• Give all of your characters like, four names and always use them!  Joe Bob Smith Jones went to the store.  “Hello, Joe Bob Smith Jones,” said Wanda May “Sunflower” Murphy when Joe Bob Smith Jones entered the bakery department.
• Have your characters read pages out of the dictionary!
• Have your characters make a sandwich and go into excruciating detail about every step!
• RANDOM DREAM SEQUENCE!  RANDOM JOURNAL ENTRY!  GROCERY LISTS!
• Every noun must have at least one adjective!  Every verb at least one adverb!
• Dialogue tags!  Lots of them!

/headdesk /headdesk /headdesk

This is terrible advice.

My question to anyone contemplating these “padding techniques” — and yes, they get scare quotes because I happen to think they’re bullshit — is this:

Do you want to win NaNo, or do you want to write a good book?

The choices certainly aren’t mutually exclusive, but when you start adding in words you know are getting cut come 12/1 just so you can say you won NaNo, then you’ve chosen internet bragging rights over writing.

No, seriously.  The prize for churning out 50,000 words in a month is the ability to say “I wrote 50,000 words in a month and my heart didn’t explode from all the caffeine I ingested to reach that goal.”  You can put a little banner on your website, and come November of 2012 your profile on the NaNo page will say “2011 Winner!”*

But do you have a good book?  Or more realistically, a good, solid first draft?  A first half you’re inclined to finish?  A third?

If a significant chunk of your word count comes from this kind of padding, what use is it to you when the month is over?  At that point, when the frenzy is over and the forumites drift away until sometime next October… what do you have?  Something you need to tear apart?  Something that requires you to go through the draft getting rid of silly character names and adjectives gone wild?  Do you need to spend hours going through 200-ish pages of manuscript making every “is not” into an “isn’t?”  (Global find-and-replace isn’t always your friend here, I promise.)

There will be “winners” who crossed the finish line by inserting their History 101 essay into the pages, or by having a character whose only purpose is to add 300 words to every chapter with a Rickroll.  I have to wonder if the shiny banner for their livejournals is worth it, or if they ever feel a twinge of I didn’t really earn this guilt.

Probably not.

And really, it’s no skin off my teeth either way.  The only ones truly hurt by this false padding are the authors themselves.  The time spent inserting nonsense into their draft (and, if they go back to it after December 1st) the time they spend yanking it back out is time they wasted.  Maybe instead of writing a feverish dream sequence that has no bearing on the plot, they could have spent some time outlining or strengthening some dialogue.  What’s sad is that excessive filler can be hugely overwhelming when you try going back to a story.  It’s extra work.  It’s not fun.  Which might mean they’re more likely to walk away rather than fix it.

—

Does this mean that I think every single word you type should be a keeper?

Hell no.

But if you’re going to add extra words — whether to catch up or get ahead — make them relevant to your project.  Make them words that, even if they don’t make the final cut, you’re proud to have written.  NaNo is about experimenting.  It is about trying different narrative styles.  It is about making mistakes that you’ll fix down the road.

So how about making any padding work for your story?  How about making it really count?  Pretty much every project I start has a “Things the Author Knows” file that goes with it.  That’s where I toss all the little extras that might be important to the world, but have no immediate bearing on the story.  That way, if I need them in the future I can dust ‘em off and work them back in.  Plenty of those snippets are cut right from the drafts, when I reread and see myself veering way off course from the plot to explain something that, well, no one cares about.  At least, they don’t care right then. 

Bored with a scene or don’t know what happens next chronologically?  Skip ahead and write a scene you’ve been looking forward to.

Character’s personality eluding you?  Write a vignette showing an event that shaped who they are today.

Forgive yourself for that infodump, but don’t let it run into a chapters-long digression.

Hone your dialogue:  let two characters banter a bit, as long as that banter advances the plot, reveals backstory, or develops the characters and/or their relationship with one another.

—

Writing ain’t easy.  Writing fifty thousand words in the span of a month is even harder, especially if it’s not a pace you’re used to.  Especially if you have to make room in your day for it and find extra hours that just don’t seem to exist.  Or if you have a job that demands long hours.  Or kids.  Or any number of things that require you to not be in writing-mode.

Point is, if you’re going to change up your routine so you can finally sit down and write that novel that’s been kicking around in your brain since forever, why spend even a second of that precious, possibly-stolen time on words that don’t belong?

Write the best goddamned book you can throughout November.  Even if you only get to ten thousand words.  No one comes to your house on December 1st and takes away your keyboard.  No one points and laughs at you for not winning NaNo, or bars your entry to some swanky NaNo Winners’ Club because you “only” hit 40K.

So make those words count, Wanda May “Sunflower” Murphy!

—

*Yes, I know, there is a page of special offers for winners.  Scrivener, which I love the hell out of, is offering a 50% discount to NaNoers who hit 50K.**  But the prizes that offer you free copies to self-publish your stuff?  Rrrrrrgh.  That’s a whole other post.  Let’s leave it at:  falconesse says that’s probably a bad idea.
**If you hit that 50,000 by padding the shit out of your manuscript and take advantage of Scrivener’s offer, now you’re not just cheating yourself, you’re cheating a small business whose dev team has worked their asses off to bring you a good product.  Just putting that out there.

And like they do every year, the ghosts of old stories stir.  Some of them whisper in their characters’ voices.  Others rattle chains made of plot and setting and mood.  If I close my eyes I can catch flashes of scenes that have been waiting all these years for me to lay down those first few chapters, or a glimpse of a face whose sharp angles I could pick out of a crowd.

Of course, I glance at my sidebar here, and Gid folds his metal arms and tells me he’d like to get back to Aunt Sadie now, please.  A blonde woman looms behind him, the faintest outline of a crown on her forehead, and she is not amused by these upstarts either.  She’s supposed to be next.

Back in September, I told myself that if I could get the first draft of Gid down by the end of October, I could take November and make an attempt at NaNo.  There’s no way I’m cranking out 30,000 words in the next twelve days — that’s an even more intense pace than NaNo — especially not when we have guests coming from out of town this weekend and I’m a-travellin’ for work next week.

So, okay, that should settle it, right?  No NaNo this year, buckle the hell down and finish Gid.

But oh, the temptation.

You see,  this is the first time in nine years that I won’t be spending a significant chunk of November on the road.  That’s where my momentum has always died in the past, and now those thirty days are a gloriously clean slate.  No work travel.  Thanksgiving’s at my house, and I can lose one day of writing to cooking, especially having twenty-four days before it to get a little ahead.

And I think… I think… Why not?

It’s a few things combined, this desire to muck about in things that aren’t on the schedule:

First and foremost, it’s the sense of we’re-all-in-this-together.  I have a lot of friends who write.  Being surrounded by other people who not only get story but share and can commiserate with authorial angst and neuroses is an incredible boon.  When people I know are getting creative, I find my own productivity increases, too.  So imagine that feeling not only concentrated into a span of days where you’re all at work on something, but there are a a couple hundred thousand other people doing the same.

Do I need that for inspiration?  Well, no.  I write the rest of the year, too.  But there’s a sense of camaraderie and excitement around NaNo that’s awfully hard not to get caught up in.

It’s a chance to refocus.  You know how they tell you to check the batteries in your smoke alarms when Daylight Savings time ends?  NaNo is a kind of yearly battery-check for me.  It’s a reminder to take a look at my output, see what I can do better, see what’s worked over the course of the year, what hasn’t.  I can take the month to tweak my schedule and get my butt-in-chair time back on track.  I can look ahead and see where I’d like to be at the same time the next year.  Should I be doing that throughout the year?  Probably.  But I don’t — at least not always — so one big whopping reminder on the calendar works for me.

It’s a chance to catch up.  Yes, the spirit of NaNo is to write a completely new project in thirty days.  But, well, NaNo ain’t the boss of me.  If I want to try finishing Gid and get started on Gavrick’s, that’s okay, too.

It’s a chance to play around.  I am fairly decent at picking one story and sticking with it until it’s done.  Sure, it took me a long damned time to get to that point, but it’s worked.  Still, there are the occasional snippets of things “for when I have time” lurking in my inbox.  They have a way of distracting me from what I should be writing.  NaNo is an opportunity to sharpen a stick and poke at those.  If I like where a story’s going, sweet!  If not, I can decide it doesn’t work, set it aside, and come back to it later on with fresh eyes.

It’s a chance to take chances.  This goes hand-in-hand with the last point.  The introductory how-to-NaNo posts tell you the key to the project:  don’t worry about editing, don’t worry about perfection.  Just write.  This is where I put a little asterisk on my own NaNo philosophy.  I did try the whole “just keep writing, hit your 1667 words a day, and don’t sweat it” thing once.  The story got wildly out of control, and while I got something like 20,000 words in before I gave up, very little of it is salvageable.  It’s on my hard drive, still.  I don’t even like re-opening the file because even thinking about tearing it apart and building it back up makes me cringe.

However.

Want to play with a different voice for a while?  Want to try your hand at science fiction when you primarily write romance?  Why not allow yourself a thousand words, a chapter, three days, to try it out?

Last year I figured, 50,000 words, that’s 10 short stories if you figure the average wordcount is 5K.  One short story every three days, why not?  I wrote down a list of titles — no plot, no character sketches, just aiming to write whatever seemed to fit with the name.  I failed miserably at the experiment, but by the end of the month I had the starts of two stories I intend to go back to.  One needs a huge overhaul, since I changed POV and format halfway through.  The other I think is a solid little thing that just needs more time devoted to it.

—

A lot of writers seem to think hitting the 50,000 mark is the only measure of success.  Either you cross that finish line or you might as well give up.  That’s where I stood the first few times I participated:  if I wasn’t hitting the milestones on time, it wasn’t worth finishing.

Which, whoa.  Hold on juuuust a second there.  Having 40,000… 30,000… 25,000… 10,000 words isn’t good?  It’s not an accomplishment in and of itself?

Hell with that.  I hit a 10K milestone, out comes the dark chocolate.  Shit, sometimes I break it out at 5k.  Or one.

Point is, you’ve written something.  The words don’t magically poof away come December 1st.  The ink doesn’t fade from the page.  Even if you’ve only managed a hundred words a day, at the end of November you’re 3000 words further in than you were at the start.  I’m going to let you in on something.  Come here.  Hunker down.  Ready?

Night Owls, which I finally freakin’ finished this past May, started out as a NaNo project in 2007.  I got 1,845 words in — not even two days’ quota! — before I put it down.  I didn’t pick it up again until last fall sometime.

So, y’know.  It counts.  Whatever you write, how much or how little, it counts.

Who’s in?

Remember the book?  (Ooooh, the book.  Grrrr, the book.)

Two months on and I’m still not finished with it.  I’m closer to the end now, maybe a hundred pages away.  Most of my progress has only happened because I decided it was better if I started skimming.

Two hundred pages of that and I haven’t missed a damned thing, plot-wise.

Because there hasn’t been much plot.

Plenty of character development… for people I suspect are mostly side-characters we’ll never see again once this bit of the arc is over.  Our Hero becomes fascinated with one companion in particular:  a man from another culture whose methods of communication are vastly different.

And here’s where the problems begin.

“Teach me,” says Our Hero.

“‘kay,” says his companion.

Then, for the better part of two hundred pages, we get to sit in on the lessons. It gets tedious very quickly.  Even though the conversations are different, the misunderstandings become repetitive.  We learn — over and over and over — about the nuances in the companion’s communication style.  We get lessons in his culture.  Eventually, after a battle scene that finally inches the plot along, and a 70-page side trip into more worldbuilding (I shit you not), Our Hero follows his companion back to his home country for even more worldbuilding.

And no.  Gorram.  Progression.

Here.  Let me show you how a character can learn another language without it taking up half the goddamned story:

See that?  Three minutes, and Antonio Banderas has solved the problem of “Oh shit, do we have to read subtitles for the next hour and a half, or have everything run through a translator?”

While I will commend the writer of this book (grrrr) on the detailed and intricate world he’s created, and will freely admit that he can string sentences together and create colorful characters, that’s about the best I’ve got.  When it comes to story, we’ve simply been wallowing.

Writers:  know your worlds. It’s essential that you understand the rules governing the places you create.

However.

Your readers don’t need to know every last excruciating detail. Reveal only what is necessary.  Don’t dump it out all at once or spend chapters and chapters teaching the protagonist about the society while nothing else happens plot-wise.

Let’s say your hero spends time with the River People.  Their boats are swift and sturdy, and eventually the hero will escape from the villain in one.  If you’re devoting thousands of words to how the boats are built, or why they’re shaped a certain way, that knowledge had better come into play later on.  A few paragraphs?  Fine.  Sure.  It’s a neat tidbit and a bit of flavor about the world.  But chapter after chapter?  Showing the hero selecting the tree from which to carve the boat?  Showing him carving it out and boiling the pitch to make it water-tight?  If it has no bearing on the plot, ask yourself if you’re not simply wasting the readers’ time.

For a good example of a character learning about a new culture, take a look at Daenerys Targaryen in A Game of Thrones. She’s married off to Khal Drogo and has to pick up the Dothraki language and its culture as she goes along.  We sit in on some of her lessons with Doreah, but they always move the plot along.  Her handmaidens, Irri and Jhiqui, fill in interesting things Dany needs to know while other things are going on.  When Dany learns she has to eat a stallion’s heart in front of the Dothraki, she does — and the action has a noticeable bearing on the story.

Venture with me, if you will, back to Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time books.  I’ve complained bitterly about the plot stalling for several books, but hark back to the early titles with me, and think about when Rand and the Two Rivers folk spend time with the Aiel.  They tromp all over decorum, embarrass themselves and have misunderstandings that are sometimes comic, sometimes serious.  They spend plenty of time with no bloody idea what the Aiel are on about, or how to interpret their words and actions.  But while all that’s happening, Rand is moving towards becoming the Car’a'carn. Egwene is learning the strength and self-resilience that will not only make the Wise Women accept her enough to teach her how to control her Talent for Dreaming, but the things she learns in the Wastes will eventually help her become the goddamned Amyrlin Seat a few books on.

In this book?  (Oh, this book. Grrr, this book.)  I’m seeing none of that.  Maybe I’m wrong.  Maybe in the next 100 pages or so, I’ll find out why the agonizing details of all the lessons were so damned important.  Maybe because I’ve been skimming, I’ve missed Our Hero’s Huge Epiphany.  (Spoiler: I haven’t.  I was actually watching for one.  It’s not there.)

Eight hundred pages in.  Out of that, I’d guess two hundred pages are actual plot, and that’s if I’m being generous.

I don’t think there’s a golden ratio of worldbuilding to character development to story.  If there is, I certainly don’t think I’m the person to declare what it might be.  Still, devoting less than a quarter of your time to your plot is probably doing it wrong.

Build your world.  Love it.  Know its ins and outs.  But be careful not to overwhelm your readers with it.  Those keen little tidbits can always be published as extras for your fans, whether as neat bonus stuff on your website, or in an eventual compendium if you’ve got an epic on your hands.

Pop into the comments and talk to me!  What stories have you read where the worldbuilding was done well?  Have you read anything where the setting dragged down the plot?

Company’s Coming

Jess stared at the fork on the floor in disbelief.

Droppin’ your silver means company’s comin’. Gran’s voice was loud in her head, the memory of the old woman in her rocker still crisp, though both matriarch and beloved chair had long since rotted away.

The fork gleamed in the sunlight.  Cheery.  Ominous.

A fallen fork’s a man on his way, said head-Gran.

But there weren’t any men.  There weren’t any women, either, except for Jess herself.  Everyone was gone.  Away an’ over the hills, Gran might’ve said.  Wherever they’d gone, whatever had emptied the world of all the people save one, it had been thorough.  Six years, and Jess hadn’t seen a soul.

Not a peep on the radio, not a single flare burning against the sky, not a car on the highway.  No one had drifted through town looking for survivors — had there been an event to survive?  No scavenging motorcycle gangs roared down the street looking for food, water, firewood.  No one at all.

Because they were gone.  Jess had accepted it.

Her cutlery, it seemed, hadn’t.

Still, she wasn’t about to neglect her hostessing duties.  Gran would be appalled.  So she put sheets on the guest room bed (hoping her guest would be a gentleman and stay in his room.  She slid a steak knife under her pillow, in case he wasn’t. Hope for the best, prepare for the worst, Gran had said.  She’d meant it for doctors’ appointments, weather forecasts and money, but Jess had always applied it to people, too.)

With the guest room aired out, she brought up a box of MREs from the cellar – beef brisket and buffalo chicken.  She’d raided the local army surplus store a shortly after the world cleared out, and even though the instructions said they’d last three years, the rations hadn’t turned yet.  She baked bread and took down a jar of her blackberry jam as a precaution, in case today was the day the MREs went bad.  Worst case, they had dessert.

She took a bath, dug out a sundress, and made lemonade from a powdered mix.  Then she sat on the porch to wait, wondering if she should have tamed the front lawn.  (She wondered if she should have tamed, ahem, something else as well, in case she didn’t want her visitor to be a gentleman, but it was a bit late for that.)

But no one came that day, gentleman or otherwise.  She stayed out well past dark, keeping the candles lit.  All she got for her vigil was a smattering of mosquito bites.

She dreamed of sweet pipe-smoke and newspaper pages rustling in distant rooms.

The next morning, her spoon went clattering, streaking reconstituted milk across the polished wood.  Spoon’s for a woman, whispered head-Gran, and Jess wondered if they were arriving together, or if she should make up a bed on the couch.

Or what if they didn’t want to stay with her?  Every house on the street was empty; they could have their pick.  If the street didn’t suit them, every house in the neighborhood, the town, the whole world was up for grabs.  Why cram into her tiny ranch when there was so much room to spread out?

Well.  Even if they didn’t sleep over, the silverware said they’d be stopping by.  She’d be a good hostess and let the rest shake itself out.

As morning melted into evening, though, Jess was just as alone as ever.

She went to bed scratching more mosquito bites.  In her dreams, a dark-haired couple danced the foxtrot in the kitchen.  Jess woke up humming “Beyond the Sea” and missing Gran and Pa.

The next day, the utensil drawer slipped its rails.  Knives and forks and spoons skittered off into the corners.

Maybe I’m just clumsy, Jess thought, digging a cheese knife from beneath the china cabinet.

Maybe I’ve gone crazy, finally.  Snapped from the loneliness. But she’d never felt alone, to tell the truth, and as far as hawks and handsaws went, she was pretty sure she could tell the difference.  She picked up the rest of the runaway silverware, then did her best to recreate Gran’s oatmeal cookies using powdered eggs and olive oil.  They came out a bit greasy, but edible.  She made four dozen.

She ate them by herself, over the course of two weeks.  At night she dreamed of holidays and christenings, birthday parties and funerals attended by people she used to know.  Sometimes she woke to murmured conversations, but when she wandered through her darkened house no one was ever there.

After that, Jess stopped watching for visitors.  She’d make a treat if something fell, but only enough for one.  Those nights, she’d hurry to bed so company could come.

On the first day of autumn, she bobbled Gran’s silver ladle.   When she straightened from picking it up, Gran was at the table, shelling peas.

“Gran?”

The old woman looked up, her smile deepening the wrinkles that were just as Jess remembered them.  “Jessie!  We missed you.”

“I’ve missed you, too.”

“It hasn’t been any trouble, has it?  Us barging in unannounced?  It’s terribly rude, but we didn’t have a way to…”

Jess clutched the ladle to her chest and sat.  “It’s been fine.  I like the company.”  Then she asked, “Where have you been?  Where did everyone go?”

“Over the hills,” said Gran.

“And far away?”

“You could come with us.”

But she liked her solitary life, her little house, the night sky full of stars.  “I think I’ll stay.”

“Well enough, if you’re happy,” said Gran.  She knocked a fork from the table. “Company.”

Then Pa stepped through the door, and others followed.  Later, Jess traded the ladle for a more reasonably-sized teaspoon, and still her guests remained.  She visited with them while the dark descended and the night grew close.

They faded with the sun, and Jess tucked the teaspoon back in its drawer.  “Good night, Gran,” she said, and tottered off to bed.

Dear All Things Considered,

I was appalled to hear Margot Adler’s piece on All Things Considered this evening, in which examples of sexual harassment were downplayed to the status of “problematic.”  Even the title, “For Maids in Manhattan, Unseemly Sights on the Job,” minimizes the very real issue of sexual harassment in the workplace.

The man who left the door open so people working in another room could see him naked is guilty of sexual harassment.  He was not being a mischievous old scamp.  He was exposing himself to women who did not invite this behavior in any way.

Adler stated that “none of the housekeepers who called [Brian Lehrer's] radio program said these things happened all the time.”  The implication there is that “therefore, they don’t.”  I don’t believe two mornings of call-ins to a radio show count as a representative sample, especially when you consider that according to RAINN (The Rape, Abuse, & Incest National Network), 60% of sexual assaults are not reported to the police. How much does that number go up if someone reporting a crime fears she might lose her job?

In the very next paragraph, Kathryn Carrington says that, when guests “planned to drop their towels” (which I’m pretty sure constitutes indecent exposure, don’t you think?), she asked her supervisor to send someone to the room with her:  “I would like someone to be there with me, you know to escort me there.”   You don’t ask for an escort if you’re mildly inconvenienced.

Renata McCarthy stated that “she came across only one serious sexual harassment experience during her years of work in hotels.”  Any harassment is serious.  No one should have to put up with harassment of any kind.

She goes on to say “‘when a housekeeper comes to clean your room it’s a personal experience. I mean, somebody is coming into your bathroom and touching your belongings, and making the bed, after you have slept in it. So for someone to open the door, and have a towel wrapped around their waist, I think the person is acting like they might act at home.’”  Housekeepers are not family. They are not possessions.  They are not there for any guest’s “pleasure.”  They are there to do their jobs — yes, this includes touching your toiletries, but it does not include seeing you naked.  Dropping towels and making unwanted advances is sexual harassment.

If you stay at a hotel, you do not have any right whatsover to harass the staff.

The amusement in Ms. Adler’s voice in her closing line — “So perhaps there is a little confusion about boundaries here” — was so insulting to me I had to turn off the radio.  What confusion could there possibly be?  We’re taught from a young age that our bodies are private, and that we shouldn’t expose them to people who don’t consent to see them.   It doesn’t matter how much money you have or how much the other person doesn’t have, whether you’re a one-time guest or whether you stay in the same room for a week out of every month.

Every example in this article was one of an unwanted sexual advance, plain and simple.  I believed NPR would have taken the opportunity to examine the issue in a serious way.

Shame on NPR and Margot Adler for making light of this.  I expected more.

-Lauren M. Roy

Things to get written in 2011:

actively tapping away at:

• Night Owls — closing in on 78,000 words, in the home stretch of the first draft.  Urban fantasy
• “Gid” — Steampunk-ish, still rattling around in the brain.  Need to spend some time thinking about who and what he is before I know where it even fits.  Some days it’s a middle-grade boys’ thing.  Other days it’s a short story for grown-ups.
• “Letters to Janey” — I think it’s a fairy tale.  I’m not sure Janey’s even in it anymore. Fantasy.

on the horizon:

• The Nin Sequel (with Hill) –  at the 57,000 words mark, a little past halfway done. YA
• Oracle — if you read/listened to “Apex,” this is more of the prophetess’ story.  Torn between keeping it steampunk vs going to a more traditional fantasy.  Needs more thinking.
• This story about some gods strolling into a small town in… Texas?  Nevada?  Not sure yet.  Also not sure if it’s a short story or a novel or what.  It wibbles between the two in my head.
• Grailchild — /shakes fist

finished work:

• I have a short piece out there now, pending response.
• Looking at shelving “Kate” for awhile — I’ve poked at it, tweaked it as much as I think it can be tweaked, but I’m not sure there’s a proper home for it.  It’s not a horror story.  It is a ghost story, but melancholy rather than scary, and if there’s a pro-paying market out there seeking those, well, I’m open to suggestion.
• “Supernova” I’m also leaving be.  It’s too short for consideration at most places looking for flash, but I don’t think adding to it is the answer.  Sometimes, you just have to call a story finished.

—

Still with me?  What I’d like to do, once Night Owls is done, is take a few days and peer at some of the projects I’ve marked off as needs-more-thinky.  I’m in the mood for fantasy in some form, and I need to figure out if a few of the characters poking about in my head are part of the same story or come from different universes.  Some of them feel bleak and gritty, others are bedecked in jewels and arrogance.  I’m not sure if their borders intersect.

I’d also like to get more short-form stuff going.  The above projects could all be novel-length, if I let them grow that big, but there’s a nice satisfaction that comes with finishing something, and I wouldn’t mind feeling that a little more often.

Anyway, 60K down on the big project since the start of the year, and the light at the end of the tunnel approaching (well, before edits, but shhhhh let me pretend).  I think I have two and a half chapters to go.  It might be three and a half.  Still, close enough I can taste it.

As I scrolled through the page of Ms, one listing caught my eye:  “From Moly to Monkey Spoons.”  According to the entry, Monkey Spoons are:

Spoons at one time given in Holland at marriages, christenings, and funerals. They may still be picked up occasionally at curiosity shops. The spoon at weddings was given to some immediate relative of the bride, and just below the monkey on the handle was a heart. At funerals the spoon was given to the officiating clergyman. Among the Dutch, drinking is called “sucking the monkey” (zuiging de monky), and one fond of drink was called “a monkey sucker.” The Dutchman began the day with an appetiser- i.e. rum, with a pinch of salt, served in a monkey spoon (monky lépel); and these appetisers were freely used at weddings, christenings, and funerals.

Monkeys creep me the fuck out.  I don’t know what I’d do if gifted with a monkey spoon.  Thus, the following story.  Enjoy!)

MONKEY SPOON

When we got married, Bill’s mother gave me a goddamned monkey spoon.

“It’s a Dutch tradition,” he said, as if that explained everything.

“You’re not even Dutch.  And monkeys are fucking creepy.”

“I know,” he said.  And again: “I know.”  Then he gave me the look that over six years I’d learned to interpret as please just humor my mother.

So I did.  I forced a smile when she called to ask if we’d opened the package.  She must’ve tracked the shipment and called as soon as the driver uploaded my signature. “Yes, Mrs. Mason.  How thoughtful of you.  A new family tradition… I see.”  The spoon glittered hatefully as I twirled it around.  The monkey itself perched at the end of the handle, grinning like it had just torn the head off its mate’s shoulders.

Its creepy eyes caught the light and flashed malevolence at me.  I shuddered and put it down, sliding it along the table until it was out of my reach.

“You have to drink out of it at the reception, after the toasts.”

“I… what?”

“It’s tradition.”

A month later, we did as she asked, sipping a concoction of rum and salt from the bowl of the spoon while the monkey glared at us. Bill said it wasn’t so bad. My sip tasted like piss. I blamed the monkey: I hated it, and it knew it.

It hated me right back.

After the wedding, I shoved the monkey spoon in the silverware drawer. I couldn’t bring myself to put it in the pretty polished box of keepsakes next to our church program and the extra stack of wedding napkins. I imagined the monkey shredding them in the dead of night and making a nest out of our memories.

Nor was I about to display it in the curio cabinet. It was fuck-ugly and there was only so much kissing up to the mother-in-law I was willing to do. I’d married her son. The wedding was over, vows said and gift checks cashed. She couldn’t veto the nuptials anymore.

So in with the everyday utensils it went, buried beneath measuring spoons and the four sets of decorative cheese spreaders we’d received from various distant cousins who didn’t know what else to buy for us. I didn’t have to think about the monkey spoon for sixth months or so, until one particularly busy week when neither of us remembered to run the dishwasher.

I wanted ice cream while we watched Law and Order, and Bill spent a solid two minutes sifting through the drawer. He came into the living room with two bowls. A plastic spork stuck up from one. From the other, looking indignant at this menial usage, was monkey spoon. Bill seemed to think it was funny. “Don’t tell my mom I used him to scoop out the Rocky Road,” he said.

The whole time I ate my ice cream, I covered its eyes with my thumb.

The next morning, the dishwasher made an awful grinding noise halfway through its cycle. I killed the power when it started to smoke.

There, in the bottom, wedged against the spinny thing, was monkey spoon.

We had to replace the dishwasher.

—

When Bill’s sister got married, she didn’t get a monkey spoon at her shower. Mrs. Mason had moved on to other traditions, it seemed, so I saw an opportunity. I sought her out in the bridal suite at the reception hall, while the photographer was still wrangling the wedding party for pictures.

Her nose crinkled in distaste as she opened the box with monkey spoon nestled inside. “What is it?”

“It’s a tradition,” I said. “You pass it to the newest bride in the family. For good luck.”

She eyed me dubiously as she turned it over in her hands. “Um, thanks,” she said, but she didn’t mean it. As she tucked it back in the box, the monkey’s hate-filled gaze caught mine. “OW! Fuck,” Jenna said, dropping the box to stick her index finger in her mouth. “It cut me,” she said, and that’s when I saw the spattering of red on her dress.

The maid of honor came in and got her bandaged up, and the photographer kept Jenna turned so you couldn’t see the stain in the pictures, but Jenna hasn’t talked to me since.

And monkey spoon came home with me.

—

I put him out in a yard sale. It rained cats and dogs until I brought monkey spoon back in the house. The sun came out after, and we made five hundred dollars in an hour.

I tried pawning him off on my coworkers during a Yankee Swap at a holiday party, but people kept trading him and trading him, until he ended up in my own lap once more.  On the way home, with icy rain sheeting down, the car broke down and I had to walk two miles to a gas station for help.  My freshly-charged cell phone’s battery was dead.  I got frostbite.

I sent him off to the Salvation Army, but the trash bag full of stuff broke open when Bill was carrying it to the car. Monkey spoon lived in my trunk for a year before I realized he hadn’t made it into the new bag I’d brought out to Bill.  During that time, I lost my job, broke my wrist, and everything I touched went to shit.  Once the spoon was back in its drawer, things looked up again.  Overnight.

—

That was four years ago.  We have a daughter now, a little girl.  She’s teething.

Bill’s mother came over to watch her last weekend so we could celebrate our anniversary.  Whle we were out, Michelle started wailing.  Mrs. Mason decided she’d use an old family remedy and rooted around in the silverware drawer for a spoon.

Of course she found monkey spoon.  Of course.

Into the fridge it went, then into Michelle’s mouth to soothe her sore gums.

“I thought it would make her laugh,” Mrs. Mason said.

It did.  It does.  When we wash it, she cries until it’s back in her pudgy little grasp.

It’s not safe to let a baby keep a spoon like a teddy bear.  I know that.  I’m a terrible mother.

When I come near her now, she looks at me with bright, glittery eyes.  Her gaze matches the monkey’s.  I should take it from her, have the fucking thing melted down once and for all, but I’m afraid to.

Because now, I’m afraid monkey spoon will take it out on my daughter instead of me.

Enjoy!)

RENDEZVOUS

“Meet me here,” you said, “when it all goes to hell.”  When the stars started falling, when the heavens spat forth ash and avenging angels, we’d walk away from everything and rendezvous here, on this corner, and take a room in the hotel across the street to watch the end play out.

Everyone else has emergency kits filled with band-aids and iodine, with pairs of clean socks and a few hundred dollars just-in-case.  They’ve got batteries and radios and those little flashlights you shake to light.  Mine had none of those things except for the money, but even that’s gone.  My pre-planned route didn’t take me to a hospital or a fallout shelter; it led me to a package store where I bought their best bottle of wine.  Then it led me here.

Your kit was nearly the same as mine — a bit of cash and some cocktail napkins.  You were in charge of caviar and brie and grapes.

Winged figures wheel in the sky.  Now and then they dart down to earth, great swords flaming.  Four mounted policemen rode past me a while ago; last summer, you’d petted one of those horses after the Independence Day parade.  I think their duties have changed now.  Instead of guns, the officers carried a sword, scales, a gas mask and a scythe.  The horses snorted steam, and the hoofprints they left behind smelled of brimstone.

Getting here wasn’t hard.  you’d said.  As soon as you think it’s starting. I walked out of a meeting while my colleagues gathered at the window to stare slack-jawed at the roiling clouds.  The streets I walked down were nearly silent.  Everyone was still inside, then, watching the waters turn to blood on CNN.  The screaming only really started when that wolf ate the sun.

If you left when I did, you should be here by now.  Your walk is shorter than mine, even if you had to backtrack a few streets.  Maybe you had to avoid the place where the ground was swallowing up the sinners.

The florist next door to the liquor store was selling roses at an apocalypse discount.  Which really means I left ten dollars on the counter and took a bouquet.  He was too busy weeping to haggle.

By now the ash has left a thin layer of grey on everything, even the blooms.  I didn’t think to bring an umbrella.  It covers me, too, like a smudgy dusting of snow.  The first time I went inside to ask the concierge if you’d been by, he yelled at me for tracking footprints along the carpet.  The second time, he was gone, replaced by a demon who was charging every guest room three days’ worth of movies from the adults-only channel.

He hadn’t seen you, either.

I’ve tried your cell phone.  I’ve walked part of your route.  On Rosen Ave I had to duck into a doorway so the frost giants wouldn’t trample me.  They were on their way to battle the Aesir.  Their war chant was kind of catchy.

If you made it into the cheese shop, I’ll never know.  The owner was hanging from a light fixture, the toes of his shoes carving a groove into a block of cheddar as he swung.

In the end, I came back here.

They’re out on the streets now, the rest of humanity.  You can tell the ones who thought they’d be raptured not by the looks of fear on their faces, but by their stunned betrayal.  There are others who seem to think they’ll survive this.  They’re the ones marching along, arms locked at the elbows and signing songs of triumph.  The last group walked head-on into a swarm of locusts.  The only thing their singing accomplished was to give the locusts easier access to their mouths.  They all died choking.

I imagine you striding towards me, windblown and giddy.  ”You’ll never believe what I had to go through to get here,” you’ll say, and you’ll tell me how over on St. James the machines are in open rebellion.  “The crackers didn’t make it,” you’ll say, “but we can get a package of Ritz from the vending machine.  Unless it talks back to us.”

Or you’ll say, “I bought us these gloves in case Fimbulwinter has time to start.  Do you know how hard it is to find hats and scarves in July?”

Or, “I’m sorry I’m late.  This Valkyrie insisted she buy me a drink.”  I’d understand.  You don’t argue with Valkyries.

But it’s been hours, and you’re not here.  Meteors streak across the sky, lighting up the street in the sun’s absence.  It’s only a matter of time before a big one names itself Wormwood and slams through the atmosphere rather than skipping across it.  The hotel walls are melting now, the brick turning to slag.

You’re alive.  Deep down, I think I’d know if you were dead.  I wonder what other contingencies you made, what other things you’d do in case of apocalypse.  I wonder if you’re at another hotel right now, laughing and raising a glass as saints march by beneath your window.  I wonder where you were when it all started, what you were thinking, who was on your mind.  I wonder if, despite provisions and promises, despite late-night, desperate declarations, you chose to stand me up for Armageddon.

I wonder if, when those first trumpets sounded, you went home to him instead.