Category: Personal

The Power of Words

Jon ChaissonLeave a comment
fahrenheit 451 graphic novel
From Tim Hamilton’s graphic novel of Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451

I have to say, my initial response to the Fuckwit administration’s seriously misguided attempt at Newspeak this past week by ‘forbidding’ certain words being used in reports coming from the Center for Disease Control and Prevention was not one of shock and horror, but disbelief.  Really?  You’re going to go there?

My second response of course, was a tweet:

Dear GOP: I’m a writer. You’re never going to take my words away from me. Just so you know. Signed, Me

As I said with my previous post, this administration has directly targeted my parents (screwing with Medicaid/Medicare); my family (screwing with women’s health), my friends (screwing with LGBT rights, affordable healthcare, Planned Parenthood, voting, wages, the list is pretty fucking long here), and my neighbors (screwing with immigration, sanctuary cities, hatred for SF and coastal cities in general, and let us not forget their hatred of Muslims).

And of course, they’re targeting me now.  First by voting down net neutrality, and now by forbidding the use of words.  So yeah, I have a legitimate reason to get a bit cheesed off when an entire political party is trying to fuck with my life.

You’re not going to take away my words and music, hoss.  I hope you know that.  Y’all might want to be all patriotic about your gun freedoms, so fair’s fair that I get in your face about my freedoms.  Especially when they hit that close to home.

Yeah, I know, I know…they’re talking about the CDC here, but the bullshit stinks just the same.  I’ve worked in certain client-facing jobs where I was trained to avoid certain words for ‘customer comfort’ or whatever you want to call it.  Can’t use the word ‘unfortunately’ when you can’t do something for them, even if what they’re asking for is nigh on impossible for purely logical, technological, maybe even legal reasons.  You want to avoid giving the client a reason to ragequit our business agreement.  I get that.

But come on: when a science-based federal department is being told not to use the phrase ‘science-based’?  You’re making it painfully obvious that you’re fucking around with the rules, and you’re doing a piss-poor job of it.  It’s like watching your four year old toddler cheat brazenly at a game he’s playing with you,  with him fully believing you’re not paying attention.  It’s like watching a con gamer failing catastrophically at pulling a three-card monte.  It’s like…

It’s a little bit like this scene from The Dover Boys of Pimento University, come to think of it:

Seriously, though. Really?  Forbidding words?  Do you think that works in this day and age in this country?  Especially now, when you’ve got a lot of us pissed off enough that we’re starting to vote in Democrats to key places just to get you guys to fucking stop the stupid shit already?

I mean, I could just let this pass just like every other dumbass thing you’ve been doing this past year in the misguided attempt that you even understand how to run an administration, let alone a government or a country.  I could just wait and listen for the inevitable death rattle of your party until it self-combusts.  I’m less pissed off about your fuckery and more pissed off that you’re just wasting all of our goddamn time and money.  So many things could get done if you would just stop trying to kick your long-dead horse back to life.

In the meantime, we’ll be here, still making a noise.  Still being who we are.  Still looking out for each other.  Waiting for the rest of you to come to your fucking senses.

We’ll be here making that noise for as long as it’s needed.  As Happy Harry Hard-On said way back in 1990, we’ll talk hard.

Without people you’re nothing

Jon ChaissonLeave a comment

joe strummer quote

So.

It looks like Patreon turned itself around and said ‘we done fucked up’, and decided not to follow through with the fee changes.  Which is a good thing.

Doug Jones barely eked by with a win in Alabama, and won it fair and square with just enough that an automatic recount won’t happen…and Roy Moore refuses to concede.

Now we have the FCC voting among party lines yesterday to kill Net Neutrality.

It’s been that sort of week.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how the Republicans have been voting in lockstep for nearly all the least wanted, horribly written, barely thought out bills and resolutions.  I start wondering if they have an endgame here, if there’s some Big Reveal that’s going to happen in Act III that’s going to explain just what the flying fuck they’re attempting to do.  Or is it just going to stop mid-sentence with no resolution?  Have they even made an outline to this book of theirs?

[Don’t get me wrong — it’s not that I hate the party.  If they want to have an intelligent conversation and work in tandem with (if not alongside) the Democrats, then I have no problem with that.  But this past year has been one incompetent shitshow after another from them, and they’re really not selling me on their brand of governing.  Especially when they’re literally targeting my parents, my family, my neighbors, and my friends with their unabashed hatefulness and ignorance.  And me, with the Net Neutrality repeal bullshit.  And being pretty fucking brazen about it at that.]

But what I’ve also been thinking about, a lot, has been community.

I’ve already tweeted and blogged about that Jane Jacobs book, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, but more to the point I’ve been thinking a lot about community in general.  I used to think of community service (I’m talking here about donating your time and services because you want to, not the court-assigned version) as a good thing to do, though for years I thought it really wasn’t my bag.  Let’s face it, at the time I was either lazy or selfish, both, felt it was expected of me or that I was guilted into it; it was rarely of my own volition.

The idea of community ties in with my new novel project; in fact, the idea of community service is a subplot for a few of the characters.  Not to worry, I’m not planning on doing any soapboxing here.  It’s just part of the overall story.  In fact, it’s more about embracing the fact that there are other people out there in one’s immediate vicinity than your family or significant other.  Acknowledging that they’re there, that they may be different from you in some ways, but just the same in others.

Community can’t happen if you choose to ignore or exclude people.  Sure, you can paint it in patriotic colors and all, but those colors are going to fade if all you want in your community is People Just Like You, and leave out the Other.  Even and especially if you try to paint it as ‘personal freedom’.  Community doesn’t work that way.

So what does this have to do with writing, anyway?  Why am I bloviating about this here?  Well, a) because it’s my blog and I can do so if I want (neener neener pthththbbt!), and b) the public’s reaction to these hateful shenanigans has been absolutely amazing.  The overwhelming response has been one of true community — bringing all kinds of people together, often in breathtakingly high numbers, to counteract the hate and the ignorance.  I see amazing numbers fighting back.  And even winning.  I join in when I can and how I can, and in the process I realize I’ve not been reacting as with feelings of doom and sorrow as much as I used to.  It’s more irritation and annoyance now, and I can work better with those.  Because that feeling of community.

And in the process it’s given me a clearer way to get through my day, to get through my creative endeavors without feeling useless.  And it’s inspired me to think more about how I create my characters; who I base them on, where they come from, who they are, what they do.  A vibrant community of all different kinds opens up not just different cultural ideas but different points of view.  And that’s what a good novel always needs.

 

A time for being a pain in the ass

Jon ChaissonLeave a comment

OK, I don’t often talk about questionable business practices here at Welcome to Bridgetown, but a hell of a lot of webcomic artists and writers I follow are *NOT* happy with Patreon right now, and neither am I.

In short: They’ve rearranged their payment fee policy so that instead of taking a percentage cut out of the creators’ payout [I should add that the creators are OK with that part. Think of it as the publisher taking their usual cut from your just-released book.], they are now taking it out of the donors’ payment.

And I quote, from their recent email to creators and donors:
“Starting December 18th, we will apply a new service fee of 2.9% + $0.35 that patrons will pay for each individual pledge. This service fee helps keep Patreon up and running.”

This is under the guise that it’ll standardize payouts for the creator. Which is NOT a thing any creator actually asked for.  They state they ran a poll recently about it, but to my knowledge, I have not heard of any creator actually taking part in it.

So.

This means that for those of you barely scraping by but still wanting to give money to your favorite artist or writer, Your $1 donation per month is now $1.37 per month.

Per donation.

As you can imagine, this adds up. Already we’re seeing $1 donors saying “fuck this” and deleting their payments. We’re already seeing artists and writers think about moving to new donation sites. [Kickstarter currently has one in beta, I believe called Drip, that may start next year that many may be flocking to.]

So what’s my part in this?

Well. I’m okay funds-wise so I’m willing to have the payments go up slightly. The artists and writers I donate to are worth it. So I’m not going to say ‘boycott’ because that won’t work.

No, I want y’all to do something else.

I want you all to be the biggest pains in the ass and email Patreon, @ them on Twitter and on FB, whatever, and make a lot of noise to have them turn this Really Bad Idea around and come up with something else.

Look, I get that Patreon needs to make money too. But this ain’t the way to go about it.

*

And for the record, here’s the email that creators and donors received recently,l, minus the ‘we’re a nifty company’ spiel at the end.

“Dear patron,

Your support is truly changing the lives of creators around the world. You give creators a reliable paycheck that enables them to do their best work. Thank you thank you thank you.

In order to continue our mission of funding the creative class, we’re always looking for ways to do what’s best for our creators. With that, we’re writing to tell you of a change we’re making so that all Patreon creators take home exactly 95% of every pledge, with no additional fees.

Aside from Patreon’s existing 5% fee, a creator’s income on Patreon varies because of processing fees every month. They can lose anywhere from 7-15% of their earnings to these fees. This means creators actually take home a lower percentage of your pledge than you may realize. Our goal is to make creators’ paychecks as predictable as possible, so we’re restructuring how these fees are paid.

Starting December 18th, we will apply a new service fee of 2.9% + $0.35 that patrons will pay for each individual pledge. This service fee helps keep Patreon up and running.”

Fly-By: Taking the Week Off

Jon ChaissonLeave a comment

polar bear cafe penguin

Hey all!  I’m not exactly up-to-my-neck busy and (I hope) the Day Job won’t be too stressful the next few days, but I thought I’d take a week off from blogging just to get my ducks in a row, Christmas presents ordered, novels written, errands done, book covers created, etc.   I’m also in the midst of switching priority levels on my writing projects and want a clear head for that.  You know how it is.

See you next Monday!

Post-Thanksgiving Haze

Jon ChaissonLeave a comment
Luffy eating
This may have been me yesterday.

D’OH!  I seem to have completely forgotten to write and schedule a post for today.  It’s been such a weird week that it completely slipped my mind.  And being that it’s (hopefully) going to be a quiet day here at the Day Job, hopefully I can take care of other things that slipped my mind and/or didn’t have time for.

Such as making some headway on the Apartment Complex story outline.  I finished the initial revision run-through for Meet the Lidwells just the other day, and I’m letting it simmer for a few days before I go through it one more time…so this is the perfect time to kickstart that next project.  [I do need to futz with the MtL cover some more, but I think I’ll do that on the weekend when I have more time and space to breathe.  I know what I want, I’m just having a hell of a time trying not to make it look like it’s a craptacular botch job finished in five minutes on Photoshop.]

I’m hoping things quiet down on the Day Job from here on in so I can a) relax a bit, and b) sneak in some writing work if needed.  Things usually do start winding down post-Thanksgiving (with one last short burst in late December), so this is when I get to unwind and not have to stress out about all that much.  And I am so looking forward to that!

On Writing and Stylistic Moods

Jon ChaissonLeave a comment

anime snowing gif

Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about my recent new projects, and how much lighter and more positive they are in terms of mood and setting.  Not filled with Shiny Happy People, mind you, but neither have I filled them with Miserable Wretches.  I’m quite sure this is a personal emotional and mental reaction to things going on In Real Life, but I’m fascinated by this decision nonetheless.

The Infamous War Novel was written a) when I was a moody-ass teenager and b) during the last few years of the Cold War in the 80s, so you can well imagine how much of a funfest that book would have been.  Several of my trunked stories from that era and up to the late 90s were written during my high school, college and post-college years when was trying to figure out who the hell I was and what I wanted to do with my life.  So a lot of Gen-X whinging going on there.

It wasn’t until the project that became the Bridgetown Trilogy that I forced myself out of that rut and made it a point not to write purely as a reaction to Real Life Stuff.

In a way, though, I haven’t really shaken that off, not completely.  I know I’m not the only writer who’s done this.  Put it this way: I’m nerely making it a point not to write something pessimistic or grimdark, because that’s not where I want to be right now.  I want to write stories that are more positive in some way, to balance that out.  Granted, I’m certainly not writing Teletubbies-level harmlessness in reactive response, either.

Meet the Lidwells was an exercise in writing something purely for the fun of it, and for someone to read for the same reason, and I think I’ve pulled it off.  There are serious moments in that story, but they’re not High Drama.  It’s about the evolution of a band, as well as a family, as they grow from teens to adults.

The next project — the Apartment Complex story — is along the same lines.  There’s a reason I’ve been describing it as my Studio Ghibli story; the style is not just about the physical action, but also about the evolution of lives.

It’s kind of hard to describe, because it’s not exactly an American style of storytelling; it’s more inspired by Asian fiction than American.  There’s a kind of poetry to this style, where your focus on the physical movement of people is just as important as the movement their internal changes — spiritual, mental and emotional.  The pace of the story slows down a little, causing you to pay more attention to the details.

Will I pull this style off?  That’s a good question.  I’ve read so many books of this style over the last ten or so years that I think I have an understanding of how it works.  I hope I pull it off, and I hope you’ll enjoy it.

 

 

 

 

Writing During Q4

Jon ChaissonLeave a comment
anime yawning
I feel your pain, kid.

It’s that time of year again, I see.  When the Day Job teeters between being completely dead and boring to being so insanely busy I lose all track of time.  While I’m thankful that I’m no longer working in retail (or in a warehouse, or on a phone branch) during Q4, the bipolar quality of the job still tends to drive me crazy sometimes.  I never quite know whether it’s going to be one or the other until the day comes.

With my current Day Job, I’ve firmly stood by my rule: I do not think about the Day Job once I clock out for the day.  What if I still have outstanding work to do?  Don’t care.  What if I — DO. NOT. CARE.  It has nothing to do with how I feel about the job.  It’s got everything to do with maintaining sanity and energy for things other than Day Jobbery.

It’s the only way I can deal with the sheer volume when and if it comes.  I work in first-in-first-out fashion on cases that come my way — even and especially if they’re labelled as OMG requests.  These are most often the ones dumped on us at last minute, usually because the requester has forgotten to forward it to us two months ago.  The only ones I’ll drop everything for are critical escalations (and even then I tend to be a bit cynical when they’re labeled such, because sometimes they’re really not).

All this is so I still have that reserve of energy at the end of the day to work on my writing.  You know how I get when I miss a day due to circumstances beyond my control…I get irritable and cranky.  So even if my beloved writing time is spent working on minutiae or revision or low-level preparation for an upcoming project, I’ll at least have gotten that much further.

With this particular Day Job, I have a very vague idea of when it gets superbusy:  mid-month (a few clients send big monthly files then), close to month-end (clients trying to make their metrics), and end-of-quarter (tax season).  And I know that once the last few weeks of December roll around, it’s mostly about wrapping things up, finishing off outstanding queries, and taking it easy for a bit until mid-January.

That’s the trick, at least for me: having at least a vague idea of what to expect on the Day Job over the course of the month, so I can plan accordingly.  [Sure, I’ll be the first to admit that I’ll spend the first of those quiet, dead days by goofing off.  I figure I’ve earned a bit of a respite, though!]  It’s the only way I can keep up with my writing schedule without tiring myself out to the point of exhaustion or illness.

It’s not ideal, but hey, it’s a paycheck, and I’m willing to work around it.

 

 

 

Days Off

Jon ChaissonLeave a comment

shirokuma cafe relaxing

Tomorrow is Veterans’ Day, so had I planned it earlier, I could have taken today off as a floating holiday.  [If memory recalls, I think I used it up earlier in the year so I could go to one of the cons.]  On days like this, I usually get up around the same time, maybe an hour or so later, and start the day.

[Granted, I thought I *did* have the day off (A. even initially took the day off so we could do stuff during the day), thus the inspiration for this post.  I figured I’d keep it up and revise it a bit.]

And like most creative people, my Best Laid Plan on bank holidays is that I want to spend the entire day writing, or doing writing-related things, or catching up on all the small fiddly writing-related things that I’d put aside.  Carpe diem!  Or something like that.  I say Best Laid Plan, of course, because in reality I’m usually doing the exact opposite: futzing around with email, watching cat videos, goofing around with my mp3 collection.  And just like most regular days, squeezing the actual writing work into the last three hours of the day.

Really, though…I do have to remind myself that it’s good to use a day off as a real day off.  Do stuff I enjoy doing that doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with my creativity.  Going on a road trip, going to a movie…hell, even watching an anime series on TV.  There are other things out there I enjoy doing, especially with A., and days off are good for that sort of thing.

If that means I’m squeezing my work into just a few hours as the sun goes down, then so be it.  At least it’ll have been a full, productive, and entertaining day!

Behind the Scenes

Jon ChaissonLeave a comment
Vienna Opera Backstage, Austria
Vienna Opera House pic courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

Every now and again I think of how fans see their favorite writers or musicians or performers when they’re not center stage with a new project.  I get to thinking, this band has finished their tour, they’ve already released all the singles from their latest album, and they’re out of the limelight.  So what are they doing at that point?

Well, the 80s told us that all the bands were hanging out on the Sunset Strip and getting completely shitfaced and taking an apothecary full of drugs and partying until it was time to start the whole album-tour rollercoaster again.  Or something other ridiculous, overblown stereotype of some sort.

The era of social media shows it differently.  Nowadays, we find that artists are working at their day job or completing freelance projects and selling their own wares at conventions.  Musicians are bringing up a family or helping out a friend at a recording session.  Writers are slogging away, trying to make deadlines and heading out on book tours and conventions.  Any one of them might be taking a breather so they can just be regular non-famous people.

I think about something Paul McCartney once said about the length of time it took for the Beatles to record Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band: “Because we were done touring, people in the media were starting to sense that there was too much of a lull, which created a vacuum, so they could bitch about us now. They’d say, ‘Oh, they’ve dried up.'”

I sometimes also think about the time it takes from a writer saying ‘I’m working on a new project’, maybe giving out vague details about it, to the time they tweet ‘YAY!  It’s done!  Off to my agent/editor!’, to the time they announce that it’s being released.  Back in the internet age you were never sure how long it took, especially when some writers like Stephen King could have multiple books and stories out within the span of a year, while other writers might not see publication until a decade after their last release.  Nowadays you can follow your favorite author In Real Time.

I think this might be one of the reasons why some writers are always pleasantly surprised when their book gets a positive response.  They’ve lived with that book for anywhere from six months to a few years, and it’s all their own creation.  They wrote the score, they built the sets, they sang the arias endlessly to get them just right.  Perhaps maybe a few lucky backstage friends got to beta read.  They or their production crew (their agent and/or publisher) may have even done the artwork for the program.  They put it in the hands of their agent, in hopes that someone will be interested.  For all intents and purposes, it’s a one-person show almost all the way to the end.  And when they get there, they’re so immersed in their story that they’re really not entirely sure how the public will react.

It’s one of the most interesting paradoxes in the creative arts; you create something for the public to enjoy, and yet you’re never completely certain if you’ve done it right until they see it.  But if you’re lucky, you have, and all that work will have been worth it.

Despite the distractions

Jon ChaissonLeave a comment
naruto determined
I know just how you feel, Naruto.

The Day Job has been kicking my ass these last few weeks.  The fallout from a new system roll-out that suffered a few growing pains, a ridiculously large workload, and everything in between.  On the one hand, it all makes the day go by ridiculously quickly, but on the other hand, it leaves me hardly any breathing room.  Last week’s vacation was a short respite from that, but alas, I’m still getting my butt handed to me at the end of the day.

Over the last few days I’ve been tempted to lighten the load: stop drawing my Inktober entries, take a hiatus from the blogs and the daily 750 Words, and focus only on finishing Meet the Lidwells.  Or maybe even take a break from that as well.

And then it occurred to me:  That’s how they win.

The last thing I ever want to do is give up my creativity for frustrating reasons.  Yes, I know, this is my Day Job, the one that brings in the money.  But really — do I want to put my lifelong career goals aside because of it?  Hell to the fucking NO.  It aggravates the hell out of me when that happens.

Even if it’s something insignificant like the blogs or the daily words or the Inktober drawings?  Yes, even those.  It’s part of who I am and what I want to do with my life.  They’re the practice that makes me better at what I do, and I can’t give that up.  I won’t give that up.

I was greatly tempted to put up a ‘fly-by’ post a few times over the last few days and say ‘I’ll be back when things quiet down’, but the more I thought about it, the more it made me angry.  I did not want to do that.  It felt like I’d be slacking off, or worse, not taking my writing career seriously.

Don’t get me wrong.  Sometimes it’s hard as hell to balance my Day Job life with my writing life.  I get that.  A hell of a lot of creative people have to contend with that.  We all take time off to recharge, or to regain sanity, or finish a Day Job project, or whatever.  I’ve done it myself plenty of times.  [Hell, I did nothing during my vacation last week except take pictures and do the Inktober entries.]  But I don’t really think I’ve hit that point just yet.

I don’t want to call it.  Not just yet.