This last week, the younger daughter in law was (rightly) scolding me for having lost my inhaler and for some reason decided to start by asking me “Where do you live?”
I had no idea where she was going, so I stared at her, my eyes slightly crossed, while her husband interjected with “In her own head.”
Younger daughter in law snorted and said “You live in the US. You have pockets. Put your d*mn inhaler in your pocket, woman.” (And as I type this, I realize I am again bereft of inhaler and have no idea where I left it. It’s okay, I’m better. Probably won’t need it.) At which point I said “Oh, so that’s where you were going with that.” And younger son interjected, “But for real, she lives in her own head.” To which I had to say “Have to confirm.”
I don’t think I’m particularly strange on that, as is. Well not for writers.
But there are dangers associated with the condition.
I’m practically a poster child for how this affects my physical life. Metaphorically speaking I live my life walking into walls, because my eyes are turned inward, into whatever fascinating world or event is going on in there. (And there are at least six worlds squabbling in my head right now.)
Which means I often …. don’t realize how sick I am, say, and therefore don’t go to the doctor in a timely manner, and end up in the hospital and one of these days, to quote my grandfather, will wake up dead. Or of course, wander off from cooking in the kitchen to go type just one page, and don’t remember to go back till there are smoke billows.
But it is a problem the other way as well. Mostly because I sometimes don’t realize why the brain sticks and the words won’t flow. I forget, so to put it, that I’m not a spherical brain, of uniform density, floating in frictionless vacuum, but that I do in fact live in the world, and specifically in the US and that external events affect me.
External events? Well, my health for sure. I’m very mad at how long the edits to No Man’s Land are taking, not to mention the fact that my assistant is going to straight up shiv me if I don’t go over the edits on the non-fiction book, and I have a Rhodes and a Dyce to finish and–
But when we came back from Portugal, and partly I suspect because I slept spectacularly horribly while there, I had a bad case of the ne’ergetwells. As in, by the time I landed I was cutting in and out of reality and not sure which country I was in, much less which place, specifically.
Thing is, I thought it was book flu. Because I had finished a book just before leaving, and because the kids having their wedding was the culmination of a few months of work for me (mostly beating bureaucracy with a wooden spoon, as one does.) So I thought I was suffering from “Book flu” which is a sort of auto-immune lockdown that used to set in when I turned a book in to trad pub.
So I ignored it, then I got antibiotics, but it didn’t go away, and it wasn’t till three weeks later that my family herded me to the — I almost typed vet — doctor and got me the other course of anti-biotics and weaponized decongestant tablets that means I’m ALMOST well now.
But I still feel guilty for not writing, because my brain is supposed to work — damn it — even while my body or my life are falling apart.
Now, before anyone imagines any dramatic life news, there are none. But there were many times over the last 20 years or so when my life sure felt like it was falling apart: stuff happening with the kids, moves, or just those periods in life where every possible appliance, car, and convenience stops working. Like last year, when the water main into the house broke, turning my yard into a swamp, say.
And then there is the state of the country — I know, shocked you are that I would mention that, but bear with me, it’s important — which …
For various reasons, having to do with my past life and the things that happened in Portugal in the seventies, most of which didn’t actually make it to the “history” books, or made it in such a distorted form that it bears no resemblance to my lying eyes, I keep an eye on politics. I keep an eye on politics like one keeps an eye on an insufficiently tamed wildebeest in the backyard. It might seem fine now, but any minute it could trample you.
And part of the problem with this is that I DESPISE letting it affect me. I keep thinking of all the lefties announcing they couldn’t write because George W. Bush — W. for heaven’s sakes — was in power, and saying they couldn’t even and…. So, 2012 (for various reasons 2008 didn’t alarm me the same way) when my brain shut down — for a number of reasons, mostly health, but yes, politics and the sense of having seen this movie before — I was mostly furious at myself.
But anxieties and PTSD are as real as physical illness. And no, 2016 didn’t fully dispel my fears, because the same strange ideology that destroyed the 20th century (well, a variant of two of them, both equal in schrecklichlikeit) seemed to still be in control of most institutions, and still driving us downt he blind alley of statist nonsense. The enemies of the future (hattip at Virginia Postrel) were still driving the train, and I knew all too well where it let off.
Notwithstanding which, thanks to moving and health improving, I started writing again. (Now it’s more a matter of several competing worlds struggling for attention in my head.)
So how does it feel, in 2024? I don’t know. I’m still coming down from stress and illness and the absolute certainty we were driving into a deep, dark tunnel with no outlet.
But I thought this bore writing, for those of us of another political color (I know some of them read this) as well as for those on our side.
I don’t know what the future holds. I know — KNOW — that the fears of the left are nonsense, spun wholesale from the fervid imaginations of a lying press. How do I know that? Well, because I’ve been hearing about concentration camps for gays since W — W! — and my gay friends have as much trouble concentrating as I do. (Seriously. No one is even thinking of mildly rebuking gay people.) No rebuking of trans people, either. Unless you consider rebuking to not trans kids before the age of reason, or not administer hormones before other alternatives are explored (which is frankly medical malpractice, driven by greed.) And as for the latest insanity of claiming they’ll deport anyone who can tan or break up interracial marriages…. there isn’t even an ideological avenue through which the right in the US could get there. This is nonsense dreamed up by a left that has run out of ideas to scare people into giving them support they can’t earn.
So in that sense, please, trust me. You’re in no danger. None of us is. The incoming administration is not a re-threading of Hitler. That fear doesn’t even make any sense. To call American conservatives — small government, fiscal responsibility, individual liberty — Nazis is not only great slander, it’s deranged slander. It’s like running around with your head on fire, afraid your pet iguana is going to grow up to be a lion. Not even in the real of possible.
Now, will everything they do be wonderful and usher in a golden age. Well, no. In fact I’m guaranteed to get upset at about a third of it. But if we’re lucky, it’s leading somewhere I approve of — more individual liberty, less government intrusion.
If you think government is the bestest thing ever, console yourself with the idea my side’s ideal is to leave you alone as much as possible. Which has the advantage of not being as intrusive.
So, take a deep breath. Sure, keep an eye on the news, in case Trump inexplicably decides to grow a small toothbrush mustache or Vance decides to deport (!) his wife.
By and large, though, you can chilax. Our aim is to not bother you. So long as you don’t bother us. We won’t take your money or break your stuff, so long as you doe the same to us.
Take a deep breath. Yes, the world will intrude. We are, alas, embodied beings.
But we are also writers. We don’t really live in this world but, mostly, inside our own heads.
So, go and sit down, put fingers on the keyboard, and start making the worlds you live in manifest in this world.
Whether because you feel better, or as a distraction, go and tell stories. Cut yourself slack for being worried, and yeah, sure, read the news.
Still write. The rest will pass away, the stories will remain.
Go write.
Mad Genius Club 
24 responses to “From Outside”
I believe I boycotted one of the random name generator sites for a few years because the dufus running it felt it was very important that he publicly supported GRRM for sulking and refusing to write after, I think, the 2004 presidential election. Eventually I forgot dufus had done that, and came back to find him being kind of snotty and faux-anthropological about my religion, so I boycotted him again. And now of course, the LLMs have rendered that kind of site almost obsolete.
Oh yes.
It’s tales like this one that make me very glad I was an engineer and not an author. I had to deal with the occasional idiot program manager (who really didn’t understand the validity of “Good. Fast. Cheap. Pick any two.”), or arrogant customer rep (“It will work because I say it will work! Don’t lecture me on physics and reality!”), but if I’d had to deal with trad pub or the sort of jerk you described I’d probably still be in jail (trad pub) or blacklisted everywhere (the jerk).
But I’m not sure LLMs are the cure; they can only operate in line with the programmer’s bias.
But I’m not sure LLMs are the cure; they can only operate in line with the programmer’s bias.
TBH, that’s a problem with a lot of forms of programming even if it’s only “programmer understandably failed to foresee use case X, Y, and Z.”
The problem with the LLMs, usually miscalled “AI”, is that people are beginning to treat their pronouncements as incontrovertible fact, unlike the case with “normal” programs. A perfect example of GIGO, but with the G’s assumed to be Gold. LLMs definitely have their place, but it isn’t as the “universal experts” many assume it is.
Yeah, the people who depend on them for factual information are just plain dumb, but those people were only marginally less dumb when they people were relying on CNN or Fox News what was going on in the world. Those of us who’ve tried every conceivable prompt to get Midjourney to give us women in Regency dresses, without getting what we want, don’t have a lot of illusions about the capabilities of the LLMs. 😉
You have to train the bot. Hence, why I get decent results. Though with extra fingers, of course.
Good point (and also a good reason to stay involved with LLMs, to help steer their “education”). And yeah, for some reason the Art AIs are all convinced that two thirds of humanity is descended from the Six-Fingered Man. 🙂
Apparently counting is one of the hardest things for the AI models. A while back, I was trying to get one to give me the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, and not only did I note get anything like what’s described in Revelations, I never even got four of anything.
yes. getting x number of is a serious problem.
Find artists that did the regency covers and throw their names in. This helps, in the beginning.
OR regency artists.
Good tips, thank you!
Just ran across this; seems like a perfect job for “AI”:
https://notthebee.com/article/listen-to-phone-scammers-go-nuts-as-an-ai-grandma-keeps-them-occupied-for-an-hour
🤣
Yep, great idea! 🙂
What is an LLM?
Sorry, it stands for Large Learning Model – a more technical term for what is commonly called Artificial Intelligence.
large language model
Had to look up Virginia Postrel. More books on my TBR pile, thanks for that.
I was worried that the MSM might be right and that Kommie-Ho would win, pushing us ever farther along a deepstate vision of Feudal America. Thankfully it really was too-big-to-fraud this time. There were still shenanigans going on around the country, and there likely will be until we are able to convince enough people to clean up the election process. But I feel much, much better about where we’re headed now.
TDS is strong this year. Where some of these talking heads got their ideas about what a Trump administration would do is beyond me, because much of it wasn’t even hinted at. Deporting legal immigrants? Breaking up multi-racial marriages? Or immigrant marriages? I know the left projects like an iMax, but I can’t believe even they would go that far. Though I do think many of them would like their slaves back. The fear mongering the Dems/MSM espoused this year was insane, and it’s broken a lot of people. I find the meltdowns with the 4B and shaving their heads quite funny. But the guy in Duluth that murdered his family and then committed suicide is so, soooo, heartbreaking. And that kind of irrational fear points straight back to the harpies on The View, MSNBC, CNN, etc. They bear some responsibility for breaking these people.
Someone needs to remind lefties not to take counsel of their fears.
I was pretty pleased when Sally Rooney (who? Never mind … literary wonderkind, scribbling unreadable literary drek) and her Jew-hating allies signed onto an open letter pledging to boycott everything Israeli – because it provided a comprehensive list of writers and celebs to avoid. Nice to put it all out there, Sally!
As for writing my own stuff – I’m putting the final touches on the YA emigrant trail adventure, and picking up with the final Luna City volume. I usually have two projects going at the same time. Get bored or stuck on one, work on the other for a while.
This madness will pass. I am enjoying the spectacle of the corporate leftish news media absolutely melting down into puddles of goo.
There’s a Joe Buckley listed, but there seem to be a few authors by that name, so unsure which one is protesting. Cory Doctorow, Lisa Duggan, Susan Finlay, and Martha Wells are the only other names I recognize. Martha Wells being the only one I’ve ever read anything of. Of the names I looked up that might be familiar, it was pretty much all leftist authors that seem push message over story.
The election has very nicely removed one of my sources of existential angst. Alas, there are others…
There always are, right? But let’s take heart and work.