#35: Inspiration vs expiration

Actual updates

Thinking of renaming this section BEE UPDATES, because guess what? They still can’t leave us alone! A bee stole Matt’s drink when we went out to a farm to get a pumpkin1 and do other fall activities, and if you’re reading this and thinking that bees are generally known for their small stature and could not possibly even lift a drink, let alone steal it, you are not wrong. The bee stole his drink by buzzing up and perching on it - specifically on the lid opening, where you put your mouth - as soon as he set it down. So that was moderately rude.

Hap also went apple picking with his kindergarten class - making it two hayrides within one month, an infinity-percent increase from the total number of hayrides he had been on in his life up to that point - and also got menaced by bees there! One other kid actually got stung, which must have totally ruined the trip, poor thing.

I have a suspicion as to where all these bees came from. You read about this hero, right? I have to assume there are extra bees around because some of her cop-attacking bees got away. Don’t think about the timeline of that vs my bee problems too deeply, just agree.

Okay, so, remember last month when I felt like I was on a hot streak, creatively, and I joked (“joked”) that I would be in a slump by the time this month rolled around? Well, here we are!!! I guess I’m not in a slump, precisely, but I’m having to make myself write, rather than having it just fall out of my brain and into the computer. This is usually because I’ve reached a point where I need to make some decisions and do some pre-planning, and this time is no exception. I’ve got to figure out where I’m going next from here, otherwise it’s going to keep on feeling like I’m dragging the words out one by one. It also means I’m not just writing a bunch of dialogue, with which I find much easier to get a good flow going2.

But I’m also feeling down on my writing for what might be a counterintuitive reason: I just read a book that was just unbelievably well-written and unique and interesting; its revelations were delivered in such a satisfying way, its central concept is new to me but easy to grasp, and, of course, it’s gay as hell, which is obviously a compliment. If you haven’t already figured it out, I’m talking about The Dawnhounds by Sascha Stronach. Sidebar, after reading this book, I have to ask, is everyone in New Zealand completely weird about bones??3 

But yeah ok so: it’s really good and I was about 50 pages in and wanted to just start my own whole dumb book over. I don’t have any illusions that it won’t need heavy editing to begin with, but it made me want to start over from first principles; my pacing feels uneven now and my reveals clunky. It does, however, vindicate that a bizarre ghost fantasy like mine can and should have one or more love stories4 in it. Not with the ghosts - not to kinkshame Ghost Enjoyers, but these ghosts don’t have personalities or agency or form as such, so there’s not much there to get into a relationship with, unless you’re hot for the howling void5.

On top of this, every time I think about what it takes to get a book out of your own computer (or out of Other People’s Computers, aka the cloud, aka where your book lives when you’re writing it in a Google Doc) and into paper in people’s hands, I want to pass out; there are so many steps to fail at6. For instance, I went to Sascha Stronach’s website to look something up, and I found that he has a blog about various things, including topics of a writing and publishing nature. This one in particular was a big kick in the teeth - not only do you have to write something decent, and go through a whole process involving convincing professionals in various different roles to take a chance on you, but you also have to have read enough related fiction that an agent would have heard of, which is similar to your book but not TOO similar, so that you can compare yours to it and thereby get your foot in the door. It’s like there’s a secret language you have to already know how to speak in order to be given the information that the language exists.

It’s weird, because at the same time, I am continually startled by how many books there are - every time I’m involved in a book recommendation conversation anywhere, it’s inundated with suggestions, and most of the time, there’s something new to hear about. Some of these sorts of chats contain more repetition than others, but even in those where everyone’s seconding and thirding other recs, there’s still plenty of new material. So people are making it through this gauntlet! People are getting their books in front of the eyeballs that can help them get those books published! And furthermore, not every book is earth-shatteringly great! So even some mediocre books are still passing this incredible array of tests! Shouldn’t I feel good about this?7 

Likewise on the music front. I subscribe to Tegan & Sara’s newsletter, and they go into a lot of detail about how they worked out how this or that song should work - one will write a song, send it to the other, and get back thoughts and notes and “what if this sounded totally different” ideas, and the end result is a song that’s better than the original draft. I miss that part of being in a band; lately all the songs I’ve written have been silly (that said, my song about unionizing the skeleton factory frankly rips) and have just been thrown together by me on a commute or something, because they don’t matter. I haven’t written anything serious because I don’t have an avenue for it right now, and also because I don’t have that sounding board where we can try it out and see what works and what doesn’t. It’s a little nervewracking to get edits suggested on a song that is close to your heart, or that goes into topics that are sensitive for you, too - that’s why it doesn’t matter if you’re just writing songs about sheep on a murderous rampage8.

But in thinking about the band thing versus the writing thing, the two are very different in one crucial way, and that’s the Fucking Around Index. I made that up, but consider: you can fuck around in a band that you don’t need to make into your career; I have so many friends in bands and they take it varying levels of seriously, but no one really thinks or thought they were going to hit it big and go be rock stars for their job, and that was fine. You can be in a band that plays in little bars for a dozen people and have a great time, and you don’t have to throw your whole life into it; you can practice as much or as little as you need and work as hard or not-hard on your songs as you want. The ability to record music and release it independently, without a label or with a small local one, means that you can even be essentially Fucking Around and still even have albums that other people purchase for money.

But that isn’t really a thing in writing, is it? If you’re doing it, you’re DOING it - you’re putting in however much time it takes to write the thing you’re writing, and then you’re either sharing it privately, just among your circle, or self-publishing (which seems dicey - sure, great stuff gets published that way, but so does stuff that was distinctly Not Good Enough), or trying to pursue mainstream publication, with an agent and an editor and the whole nine yards. And I do kind of get it - if you’re spending a few years writing something in your spare moments, are you just going to sit on it once it’s finally done, in a state you’re happy with? You put in all that effort, you’ll want it to be for a reason, surely. But at the same time, I kind of wish there was a Fucking Around mode for writing. What’s the weekend warrior option? What’s the one where you’re just playing for your friends and know you’re not going to make a huge impact, but you’re giving a roomful of people an entertaining evening? Is there one? Is there one in longform fiction? I’m thinking not - and so here I am, trying to convince myself that I haven’t just written, uh, 84,737 words of total hot garbage9, with quite a bit more to go.

Finally, in non-art news, Halloween just happened, and poor Hap had a high fever and couldn’t go out trick-or-treating! He’s feeling better now, don’t worry, and maybe his dinosaur costume will still fit next year10. Myself, I dressed as Guillermo from What We Do in the Shadows, and what I learned from this experience is that I should get glasses.

What am I reading

That’s right, I’m going to talk about another book even though I just talked about a book. It’s a twofer this month: you heard about one I just finished, and now you’re going to hear about one I’m about 3/4 of the way through.

I’m reading Wil Wheaton’s revisiting of his earlier memoir: the original was Just a Geek, and this one is Still Just a Geek. The original actually was in large part his responses, as a more introspective adult, to his even earlier blogposts, and this edition includes the blogposts, the subsequent responses, and a ton of annotations he’s written in (basically) the present day expanding on or explaining what he’s said in the past, and occasionally apologizing for it as well - like most people, I’d imagine, he used to make some jokes that weren’t cute at the time and haven’t improved with time. We’re all trying to evolve to less-assholey versions of ourselves at all times, right?

So, first off, I cannot fault him for going absolutely hog wild on the annotations. Never mind that it’s the entire premise of the book - even without that premise, I have no leg to stand on in criticizing someone for having more footnotes on a page than actual text. Look at this very issue. I think I’ve broken my record already, and I’ve got the whole Links section still to do. So we’re going to place that very carefully and gently to the side with all the respect it deserves, and dive into the content.

It’s mostly an exploration of how his traumatic childhood - deeply shitty parents who exploited him and his labor, stole his money, and made him feel like nothing - affected his post-Star-Trek life, although with some forays into some early 2000s web stuff that really landed with me (my parents did not treat me as a meal ticket, and I am the worst actor in history, but I built my own blog in 2000 because Blogger wasn’t customizable enough). Also plenty of mental health content - also relatable - and perhaps a few too many insistences that a joke was funny or a piece of writing was good.

It’s interesting for me to be reading this as we’re doing a full series watch/rewatch11 of TNG; I never thought the character of Wesley Crusher was so bad as all that - a little clunky, maybe, but we expect more out of tv roles now than we did in 1987, I think. Like, he was certainly not alone in a bit of clunkiness. And I read him as being a bit of an awkward kid whose brain was on a level with the adults while his personality wasn't, yet, and the world is full of kids like that. So, yes, it would have been cool to have him experiencing teenage problems (and I don't mean "trying to ask out a girl" so much as "not knowing how to relate to the adults he worked with like a fellow adult, even though he was not one, and it wouldn't be fair to expect that, but teens expect unfair things out of themselves all the time because they don't have a lot of experience being a person yet"), but even without that, I wasn't sitting there seething at the screen because a precocious teen was pushing the space buttons. I groused way more about a certain orangey-red lipstick they put Deanna Troi in for about a season.12

It’s also kind of funny to me that he’s Online to the point that, who knows, he might search himself and find this post, and if he does, hello, Wil Wheaton! I hope this doesn’t land as a critical review of your book, and I hope all your wishes come true, by which I mean I hope Jonathan Frakes calls you up and tells you he is now officially your dad.

Some links

This is going to make you so mad, as it should - it’s a straight line from these deliberately heartless rent management tools to the housing crisis. Rent Going Up? One Company’s Algorithm Could Be Why

I feel like “Oregon Trail Generation” elder Millenials and baby Gen-Xers are my core audience here and so this is probably news you can use: Boy, I Hope the Oregon Trail Movie Musical Has a Song About Dysentery

File under: Art, Fake: National Gallery Confirms One of its Vermeers is Not Actually a Vermeer

File under: Art, Stolen: New FBI Clues Reveal More about the Mysterious Couple Who Had a Stolen de Kooning Painting

Listen, Angela Lansbury sounds like she was a delight and a joy in every way, but of all the articles about her that came out in the wake of her recent death, this is probably the most amazing: Today’s History Lesson: Angela Lansbury Once Saved her Daughter from Charles Manson’s Clutches

Do you like your astronomy with a side of detective work? Then this article is for you: First Known Map of Night Sky Found Hidden in Medieval Parchment

I swear this was not on purpose. When I added this link to the list, not only was I reading a different book, I thought another different book was next in line. Methane-Eating “Borgs” Have Been Assimilating Earth’s Microbes

You probably read that article from last year? the year before? that made it clear that plastic recycling was a big sham. This article goes into greater depth on that, plus our options for trying to unfuck this. It is depressing! But we’ve all got lots of experience with being depressed (right?) and can manage it! Planet Plastic

TIMELY. The Unsettling Power of Existential Dread

Also, this seems relevant, although I do find their methodology kind of suspect. The United States of Cussing: Every State’s Favorite Swear Word

Tunes I’ve been listening to lately

It’s time to go Full High School with this one. Sometimes the luck of the musical draw sends you back, I guess. I know a lot of people don’t like to listen to music with words when they are trying to focus, since the lyrics are distracting, but for me an album you’ve known by heart for over half your life serves the same purpose. Anyway, even though this was standard Can-con radio rock at the time, it’s got a special place in my heart.

I went on a bit of a Blur kick recently, and I also figured out where I knew this song from: a friend had put it on a tape for me, but it was a tape that didn’t have a track listing (sidebar: why would you do this. why). So I actually didn’t realize what I was listening to until many years later - it wasn’t a radio hit wherever I was at the time, so I had no context other than that K___’s sister put it on a tape that she liked enough to duplicate for me. I hope that kid (now in her 30s) is doing well.

The quality of the video is absolutely butt, but the quality of the song is good. Take my word for it if you don’t speak French - it’s about giving up on your dreams about the kind of a nation Quebec would be, since it turns out that just like everywhere, corporate interests rule the roost and the people are kept docile by tv and gambling. Also it is a jam.

This month’s top 5: My best Halloween costumes

1. I didn’t “peak in high school” with much, but I might have with costumes: one year I was a lava lamp, and it was excellent. My mom and I made it at home with a lot of grey posterboard, clear plastic, and balloons, and I was too big to get onto a bus when I was going out with my friends that night.

2. Also, since I had acquired the nickname “Kermit” (for stupid reasons), I went as Kermit the Frog in grade 8, and I won a prize at the Halloween dance for it, but I rented that costume from a costume shop, and had to return it the next day. For actual Halloween, I wore a DIY costume that involved a green turtleneck of my little brother’s, Cornholio’d over my face to give me the beaky shape of Kermit’s head, and two halves of a styrofoam ball glued on top with the pupil shape stuck on in construction paper for the eyes. It was JANKY but I liked it way more than the pro costume.

3. Zombie Kurt Cobain. Matt let me borrow his Jag-Stang to carry around, and the rest was just ratty jeans, a striped sweater, a wig, and zombie makeup.

4. Last issue I mentioned that my Lumberjanes costume was one of my best, and I still agree with that statement.

5. I don’t know if my Gideon (from Gideon the Ninth, duh) costume was one of my best, because I did a really inexpert job of painting a skullface on my head, but in my defence, the character also did a really inexpert job of painting a skullface on her own head. Also it gave me an excuse to wear my leather pants again and draw the cover of a skeleton-themed dirty magazine to carry around. I wore it two years in a row due to pandemic-related inability to give too much of a shit.

Honorable mention in the “very little effort” category to the year I was Molly Millions from Neuromancer. Leather jacket, cool attitude, mirrored lenses popped out of a pair of drugstore sunglasses and stuck over my eyes, done. No one got it, though.

All right. This is really long and has the most footnotes I’ve ever done. Let’s see if I’ve reached the email cutoff and you have to read it on the site (or I guess in the Substack app, in the unlikely case you read enough newsletters on this site to make it worth downloading an app for). Who knew I was going to go into such detail on a book about a book about Wil Wheaton? (Again, if you’re reading this, hi and that’s not a slam)