Notes, Notings, and Common Refrains

One: Right now, I'm aiming for a 6-week challenge: From January 2 to February 13: The dullest of doldrums times in my particular culture. Also, I've heard that it takes six weeks of steady practice to get a habit rooted.

Two: Word count be damned. Instead, I'm thinking along the lines of "A Plot Chain Unit A Day": Situation -> Disruption -> Reaction -> Consequence. Start the next day with New Situation. That might be covered in 300 words, or it might take 1,000. If you don't have all the words in your brain (or time in your day), jot down the synopsis. As with NaNoWriMo, if you're on a roll, you can always write more.

Three: (Because, I, personally, need to be be connected to other people, as well as a schedule, to keep on track) Schedule in periodic breather days (every 3 days? once a week?) for getting feedback on knotty plot units, with a willing partner(s). That partner might also be writing (in which case, you'd trade) but they don't have to be -- they could just be your "sounding board." Breather Days could also be used for going back and filling in synopses, if need be.

(NaNoWriMo's culture of "Never look back, never pause, just throw as many words on the page as you can, regardless of what those words mean," is ultimately what always led to my mental and emotional burnout by the end of November)

There is no fixed word count for success. The point is to finish a satisfying story.

Whatcha think?

Thanks to the entity now embracing A.I. as a "Tool."

(After looking back at my stats).

There were a couple years where I tried to do multiple challenges in a year, burning out, not participating, and then coming back.

According to my profile, there, I started 19 distinct projects, between the November marathon proper and "Camp NaNoWriMo," with a total of 605K-and-a-bit words typed out. My last registered project was in 2020. I did not reach 50K that year; I think it was about that time that I realized simply typing 50k words at breakneck speed did not lead to crafting a story I actually still wanted to tell, come December (what really kept me coming back, over and over in spite of that, was the social permission to make a pillow fort out of an imaginary world, where I could retreat from seasonal attitudinal depression, and other pressures; Pillow forts aren't meant to be permanent).

Back when I started, in 2005, NaNoWriMo was a much different beast than it is now... There were no corporate sponsors, and the only prize you could claim was a winner's T-shirt. And the social vibe was a lot more like the spontaneous writers' communities that sprung up on old school Bulletin Board Systems, IRC chat rooms (remember those?), and Usenet forums.

(All of which I miss, BTW)

Back in 2005, I tried my hand at writing original, personalized, fairy tales on commission, and one of my first was for a young man with C.P.’s 21st birthday.

First, I met with him at his home, to talk about the story he wanted, and what kinds of themes he wanted. Then, I flailed for about a week trying to pin it down before I realized I could email him and ask for clarification.

This is the reply he sent back:

I think about being a normal hero named Michael. He needs clothes like
fionne. Be like Fionne* but be me with Zena the warrior princess as his
friend. There should be the Lost Boys from Neverland but by another name as his friends, too. No CP in fairy tales.

Xena should need me as a healer after fighting. she needs a friend like me,
too.

thanks.

Mike

And that No CP in Fairy Tales has haunted me, ever since.

I agreed with him, when I met up with him for that first conversation, because nothing stings worse than having that aspect of yourself that marks you apart being treated as “special” and your one defining feature.

But it wasn’t long after I finished that story, and sent it off to him, before I started wondering: Why the Hell can’t we have CP in Fairy Tales?

After all, fairy tales have shepherds, and shipwrights, and kings, and cobblers, and beggars, and merchants, and old women, and young girls, and fools, and wise men -- every class and creed of humanity. And people with (what will later be called) “Cerebral palsy” have been part of humanity since the beginning (it’s a congenital condition that has many causes, results in life-long disability, but is also -- often -- survivable. So there’s no reason for people with the condition to not be part of the world.**

So, a couple of NaNoWriMos ago, I set out to write an original fairy tale with a protagonist who had “C.P.” for myself -- but I never used that term, I just described her as a person: what she could do, what she couldn’t, how she and her family improvised adaptive tools for her, etc., with a healthy soak of genre-appropriate magic for a sauce.

The result was my par-for-the-course 50K word salad. But I think there’s a good story in there, somewhere, that actually works.

Back when I was working on that story, I told myself that I was avoiding the specific term “Cerebral Palsy” because my genre’s setting was vaguely medieval/Renaissance Europe, and the medical term wouldn’t have been coined for another few centuries.

Anyway, the other morning, I woke up with a realization:

But that’s not the reason the phrase “cerebral palsy” should stay the hell out of literary fairy tales, whichever milieu they’re set in.

It’s because “Cerebral Palsy” is a medical attribute. And the medical model of disability (and the medical model of everything, really) sets the individual apart from the world they live in, as broken exception, in need of being fixed. And in Fairy Tales, the characters (and especially the protagonists) are there to represent the human condition for everyone.

So it’s not so much: “No CP in fairy tales,” but “no medical diagnoses” in fairy tales.

But in other genres (particularly in modern forms of literature), where the story does rely on a finely detailed individual (Say, for example: in a "One vs. Society," story arc), actually naming their disability would be better than avoiding the name. Otherwise, it would feel like you're treating it as something shameful, that shouldn't be named.

(And now, I'm wondering if it's possible to write something that is clearly a fairy tale, but set in an industrial, or post industrial world like our own. It's a thought.

---

*That's Fionn, as in the Irish hero, Fionn MacCumhail, BTW

**In fact, I think the Anglo-Saxon word “crypel” was simply a descriptive term for those people -- like “short,” or “tall,” “fair,” or “dark”; it didn’t get used in an insulting way until the 1600s.

I did that this afternoon, except instead of flour, I ground up about 10 ginger snap cookies in a tabletop blender with a little bit of baking soda, into mostly fine crumbs. And that was my “Dry Ingredients” mix.

For my “Wet ingredients” I diluted some almond butter (the natural kind, where the oil separates out, and floats on top, when you get it from the store)* with a bit of water, canola oil, tart cherry juice concentrate, and a splash of egg whites from a carton (because I don’t have the coordination to crack an egg – if you do, do that, instead, and beat it a little, with a fork); I mixed it in a 20 oz. paper bowl, "greased" with the canola oil before I poured most of it into my batter).

And then I stirred in my “Dry ingredients” and zapped it in the microwave for 3 minutes and 20 seconds (in a 700 Watt oven). And let it finish cooking simply by leaving it in there to cool down of its own accord (about 20 minutes.

The end result is pretty good. I just ate the whole thing (minus the taste test I did when I first turned it out of the bowl I cooked it in, and a bit of it stuck).

The almond butter and cherry juice is something I had on hand, already. You could also do this with any nut or seed butter you like.

I think thinning it with fruit juice is important though (not just water), because the acid in the juice reacting with the baking soda is what makes the cake fluffy. You could use any cookie you like, too: Nilla Wafers and peanut butter would be a-ma-zing. If you thinned down the peanut butter with grape juice, you could call it a “Peanut butter and Jelly” cake. If your juice is not in concentrated form, like my cherry juice, I'd just use it straight, instead of adding water).

---

*Pro-tip for nut butters with separated oil (easy, but slow, method to remix, especially if it needs it when you bring it home from the store): Before you open the jar, turn it upside down, and leave it for a few days to a week. Let the oil float back in the other direction, and do its own damned mixing! ;-)

Popular opinion:

Get you a sweetheart who breaks out with the most beautiful poetry every time they see you, or at the very least, has the perfect Shakespeare quote for every occasion.

Shakespeare:

Actually... get you a sweetheart who is so in love with you that they get tongue-tied into silence the minute they think of you, and if they are inspired to try and write poems about you, their metaphors are all mixed, and their scansion is a mess -- because the very idea of you is too big for words. And anyway, they care more about you than showing off how clever they are.

Had a dream before I woke up this morning, and while I only remember a few dots of it, the ones I do remember are:

• One of those safety cones cleaning staff put down on the floor, with “Hebrew” lettering (or what my subconscious identified as Hebrew), and an English translation. The translation read: “Plot Point.”
  
• Frantic searching for my passport, and worrying that it had been left behind in a foreign country.
  
• Piling into a car with someone else and his (?) little brother, luggage piled on top, and in every nook of free space inside, and trundling down the driveway in the predawn hours to start a (road?) trip.

My Mother and Father were both in the dream, too (Mother died 26 years ago, and Father died 11 years ago), and the driveway in question was that of my childhood home (where I have not lived in 21 years, in a place I haven’t visited in 5 years).

So the homesickness, and longing for family, that have been saturating my dreams for the past several months, was all there. But they were waving us off (I think), not coming with us. And the whole point of the dream was that this trip was very important (but I don’t remember if any of us knew what the destination was).

Sometimes, my dream mind is frustratingly opaque in its symbolism. Other times ... It's about as subtle as a flashing neon sign with arrows, a scrolling marquee, and a circus pipe organ. :-)

Still have zero glimpse of a plot idea, though.

This is a "chat" I posted to my Tumblr, today. And I'm posting it now, in response to This story segment from dialecticdreamer, and the ensuing discussion.

---

Disabled Person: I need a wheelchair.

Wheelchair Manufacturer: We won't sell you one unless Medicare will pay for it*

Disabled Person: I need a wheelchair.

Medicare: Can you walk 20 feet?

Disabled Person: It's 40 feet from my front door to my bedroom...

Medicare: Can you walk 20 feet?

Disabled Person: I can, but it's excruciatingly painful, my balance is terrible, and I risk falling at every step.

Medicare: Then No.

Disabled Person: Why not?

( Read more... )

---

*Footnote: Even if you are wealthy enough to purchase a wheelchair out-of-pocket, many suppliers still require proof of insurance. And even private insurers copy Medicare's policies when it comes medical equipment and mobility aids.

But ... Tumblr, you know: it may suddenly take off three months from now. In the meantime, it's not exorcised from my mind yet, so I'm posting it here, now (slightly edited to mesh with Dreamwidth's format).

What if we really have had contact with extraterrestrial aliens, already?

Roswell, New Mexico.

Okay, okay. I know it’s cliché.

But hear me out. Besides, I’m offering this as a “What if--” a story prompt, if you will -- not a revelation of some nefarious conspiracy, nor a claim that I’ve figured out the Truth that They don’t want anyone to know.

If there is a single “Big Truth” out there, a) I don’t think anyone can know for sure what it is, and b) if we ever do find out, I don’t think it would be anything terrible or scary, after all (maybe a little sad).

Anyway --

On July 3, 2017, the BBC World Service rebroadcast an interview with the son of one of the men who found the remnants of the “alien craft” (Major Jesse Marcel).

I won’t link to it here, because website itself is inaccessible (audio with no transcript). But if you want to look it up, the keywords I used just now were “BBC World Service,” “Witness” (the name of the program), and “Roswell.”

Jesse Jr. was 11 at the time, and at the time of the interview (in 2010), he came across as sincerely convinced that the bits and pieces his father brought home to the kitchen table were: a) actually alien, and b) not at all like the scraps of weather balloon that were revealed to the public shortly after.

[Caveat] He was 11 at the time, and his father woke him up in the middle of the night to show him what he’d found. It could very well be that he was convinced by his father’s enthusiasm, and that his father was motivated by his desire to find something alien, so that neither of them were seeing these artifacts clearly. And over the years, Jr. could have doubled down on his belief in order to defend his father’s honor. [/Caveat]

Two details of the interview made my ears perk up, and take the idea that there really was some kind of “alien incident” at Roswell, 70 years ago a little more seriously:

1. Jesse Marcel Jr. insisted that his father made no mention of any alien bodies at the crash site -- and that the first mention of the Pentagon hiding “specimens” didn’t crop up until the 1970s.
   
   
2. When asked by the interviewer: “But why Roswell?” Mr. Marcel answered that the site was radioactive, because of all the nuclear testing, and surely, the aliens would want to investigate that. When the interviewer asked: “But why haven’t they been back?” he answered that he didn’t know.

But, as all our most serious-minded scientists (even the ones who are imagining life outside our solar system, and puzzling through ways to test for it) will tell you: Real-world interstellar travel takes a very, very, long time.

So: here’s what I’m imagining might have happened:

Around the time that predynastic Egyptians were domesticating the donkey, astronomers living on the planet that we are now calling “Kepler-425b” turned their telescopes to the sky, wondering if there were intelligent life on other planets like theirs.

...

Around the time that Alexander the Great was trying to establish an empire, their technology has advanced enough to send forth a ship in our star’s direction, carrying an unmanned probe, which has been programed with instructions to home in on any signs of proof of life -- especially intelligent life.

The ship is capable of traveling at incredible speeds -- almost half the Speed of Light -- but even so, those idealistic astronomers know they won’t live to receive any answers that that little probe may discover. It’s all for their future generations, if they are still around, to reap.

That little probe finally makes it to its destination 3,000 (Earth years) after it set out: a little, rocky planet third out from its star -- a medium-sized star just like the one it set out from. And as it gets closer, the signs of life are unmistakable. And closer still: the signature of enriched Uranium, and Plutonium! Exactly what it was sent to find. It comes in closer, maneuvering with the planet’s gravitational pull, preparing to send its message back home.

Except it crashes. It never gets to send that message. It gets dismantled; its parts get hidden away, and only those Earthlings that are thought to be delusional by others of their species believe it ever existed at all.

But the descendants of the civilization that sent it forth have no idea of its fate. They won’t even start looking for its message to arrive for another 1,400 years.

---

But (I hear you say)! Isn’t there another star with seven Earth-like planets, that’s much, much closer?

Yes, there is: a star we call “Trappist-1.” But it’s a dwarf star. The planets in its habitable zone are very likely tidally locked. This means that there’s a good chance the civilizations that arose on them have no concept of “Distant Stars,” much less develop the desire and the tech to venture among them (because the habitable zone on their home planet's surface is bathed in continual twilight, so they never see distant stars).

But I could be wrong about that. Still, if the scenario I outlined for the astronomers of Kepler-435b had played out on one of Trappist-One’s planets, instead:

For a probe traveling at almost half the speed of light to arrive in Roswell, New Mexico in 1947, it would have had to leave its home while we Earthling Americans were engaged in our Civil War -- killing each other over whether some of us have the right to own others of us.

Those astronomers would’ve started listening for a return signal from their unmanned probe around the time Ronald Reagan was threatening to bomb the Russians with that same purified uranium. That signal was that was fated never to arrive.

Those astronomers might’ve shrugged their equivalent of shoulders, and wrote it off as a valiant, but failed, attempt.

If, however, they were determined to find us, and make contact, because they’re even more optimistic and friendly than we are, and allowing time to build a second probe to send it chasing after the first one...

That second “message in a bottle” wouldn’t arrive here until almost 2100.

If they already had a second probe ready to go, and their tech advanced in the meantime, and they manage the miraculous traveling speed of three-quarters Light Speed -- we might get a second chance to say “Hello. Sorry about the misunderstanding,” in 2042-ish.

...Assuming we don’t destroy our ecosystem and die off, thanks to global warming, by then.

okay.

So maybe this story’s ending is more than a little sad.

(I think I've glimpsed the singularity of the Fermi Paradox ... And it is us)

---

Oh, and most of the time I spent writing this was looking up names of stars, and crosschecking the timeline of human civilization.

So I am signal boosting.

Here’s the homepage where B.A.D.D. is explained, and links the the eleven previous blog festivals are are archived: Diary of a Goldfish -- BADD 2017

I’ll be posting my entry on my Tumblr blog, and also here, on Dreamwidth (for those who find Tumblr inaccessible). And in the meantime, I’m signal boosting.

Have a gander at what I wrote last year, just for a taste (on Tumblr): What the “Social Model of Disability” Actually Means.

Okay, granting that the Fermi Paradox is a hot mess, fallacy-wise, which of these common* answers to the question: “So Where is Everybody?!” would please you most -- or should I say -- leave you feeling the least depressed?

A. There’s no else out there.

We really are special snowflakes in the entire universe, and the only life to have sophisticated civilizations and advanced technology.

B. They’re all dead.

Any civilization with technology advanced enough to contemplate interstellar / intergalactic travel will end up destroying itself through war and/or pollution before they succeed.

C. They don’t care about us, or our planet.

We’re too insignificant and boring for anyone to spend resources to get here or try to communicate with us -- not even to mine our asteroids or kidnap us and harvest our livers ... or whatever.

D. Interstellar / intergalactic travel actually is impossible.

Doesn’t matter how sophisticated a civilization is, or how advanced their technology, no one is getting off any of their respective rocks, and we’re never going to get to meet them, or they, us.

E. Why are you talking like “first contact” is a good thing?!

You better hope we never do find proof of more powerful, alien, beings out there. Only bad things could result. Very. Bad. Things.

*”Fool! They’ve been communicating with Earthlings for years, already -- just ask the elephants!” is, unfortunately, an uncommon answer.