Should auld acquaintance be forgot
And never brought to mind?
Should auld acquaintance be forgot
And days of auld lang syne?
For auld lang syne, my dear,
For auld lang syne,
We’ll take a cup of kindness yet,
For auld lang syne. – Robert Burns
Well, here we are on the 7th day of Christmas and the last of the year. I started this blog back in July because I’ve been wanting to write a book about this subject since 2004 but could never make myself sit down to write it. See, if writing were running, I’d be a sprinter; I come on very strong for a short period of time and then wind down, so while I do quite well with essays and tolerably well with short stories, books and novels are quite beyond my ability. Now, don’t say “Oh, that’s not true!” because it is; knowing one’s limitations is not defeatism, it’s simply realism. My style of composition is wholly feminine; what I mean by that is, women tend to see things as unified wholes while men tend to see them as collections of attributes. The masculine viewpoint is very helpful when writing long works; each portion of the book can be considered separately and then combined into one long work. This is not to say women cannot write like this; of course they can, and many do it very well, but I’m not among them. Try as I might, I’ve never been able to construct stories or articles; each work forms as an organic whole in my mind, which as you might expect limits me to a few hundred words at a time. Ever notice that a couple of times a month I write a column which sort of rambles? Those are the ones which did not form whole, and I’m usually less than satisfied with the results. And a novel written that way would be a shambles.
But then early last spring my husband pointed out that I actually can write very long works as long as the whole is composed of small, independent parts. And that gave me the idea to do a blog; one essay a day, each one a distinct small unit, with a single underlying theme but no overarching plan. Each day’s column is a thing unto itself and can be read in isolation, so though the whole amount of text here is more than enough for a book I only had to think of it, plan it and write it one short essay at a time. If I ever get a book offer, it’ll consist of a series of essays (either selections from the blog or articles of the same type) rather than one unified whole. Anyhow, once I came up with the idea I was still paralyzed for a while; I had no idea how to go about it, nor what it would cost. Then early in July I followed a link from a message board discussion on Wonder Woman (yes, I’m a fan) to this post on the Human Scorch’s blog; I was impressed with the way it looked and since I knew Scorch from another board I timidly asked him how I could start one of my own. He gave me a link to WordPress and I found it spectacularly easy to use…and the rest, as they say, is history. Scorch, have I ever adequately thanked you for the tip and the design pointers? If not, THANK YOU!!!
I was asked a few months ago how I manage to write a coherent column every single day, and I replied that a lot of this stuff has been bouncing around in my head for years. Most of my early columns were adapted from chapters of my aborted book, the ever-popular essay “Modern Marriage” was edited down from a longer one written in 1997, and “Painted Devil” was an idea which first came to me over 20 years ago but never quite gelled until I realized the heroine needed to be a courtesan. Since I arrived fairly late to this whole blog scene I felt it was important to get a lot of material in place in a relatively short period of time, and since my husband travels a great deal for his job I have a lot of time to kill when he isn’t home; I therefore had both the time I needed and the drive to do it, though frankly I’m surprised that I’ve actually managed to publish a column every single day without fail since the beginning. There were a few times when I honestly thought I would be caught flatfooted, but all I had to do was visit the websites linked in the right column there and I would always find a subject on which to write.
Sooner or later, though, I’ve got to run out of steam, and since my husband’s travel schedule is much heavier in the second half of the year than in the first I won’t have as much free time for the next six months as I did for the last. I’m therefore allowing myself a couple of days off per week from here on out; I’m not sure exactly how I’m going to do it yet but I promise the off-days won’t be back to back so those who like to read every day will only be disappointed for one day at a time. Since I write most of my columns in advance (this one was written on Monday) I can take both Saturday and Sunday off and still publish prewritten columns on those days, so I’ll probably end up skipping Sunday and Wednesday or something like that, but we’ll see. Don’t worry, I’m not quitting! In fact, by lightening my work load a bit I hope to prevent future burnout. And though my husband has been extremely supportive of this venture and reads every column (though not always right away if he’s on the road), I have no intention of neglecting him to keep up my present daily pace.
What a year it’s been! Just in the six months I’ve been writing we’ve seen the first two inductees to my Hall of Shame, the suicide of the “Craigslist Killer”and the subsequent censorship of Craigslist, the invalidation of prohibitionist laws by the Supreme Court of Ontario, the Melissa Petro scandal, sleazy schemes by the American government to censor the internet and divert federal funds to persecute voluntary adult prostitutes, the presentation of a report condemning U.S. abuses of prostitutes to the U.N. Human Rights Council, the infiltration of the morally reprehensible “Swedish Model” into American police department rhetoric, the exposure of a sexual predator masquerading as an escort blogger, repeated attacks against the porn industry by condom fetishists, numerous incidents of violence against whores, the rather suspicious persecution of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange and the discovery of a potential cure for HIV. And while trafficking rhetoric has become increasingly popular with governments, public sentiment has largely turned to decriminalization. And though I haven’t said anything directly about the new TSA molestation procedures at airports, I think most of you can probably guess where I stand on the issue.
I wish all of my readers a Happy New Year, and I hope to continue providing you with interesting reading for a very long time to come!
You’re welcome! 😀
🙂
Indeed, what a year! Since I’m not done reading all that you have written (only about half thus far), there still is a lot for me on your off-blog days. Enjoy!
A happy new year for the two of you too, with all sincerity.
P.S.: I found this photo that made me think of some of the themes in your blog. I thought you might use it for something (in case you don’t already know it!).
Thanks for reading! 🙂
It’s been a crash-course for me, in a subject I already knew more about that the average Joe. And yes, thank you for it.
I’ll be happy to read a post from you most days, now that it won’t be every day.
OK, now back to my second go at the anthology. Lethni is about to explain why she took up sacred prostitution (she can do that eating a meal, or even grooming her fur).
You’re very welcome. I may even just make very short posts on my off-days; we’ll see how it turns out. 🙂
Maggie,
Best of luck to you and your family in the new year.
For the first time however, I think I somewhat disagree with you.
A book CAN be put together with lots of great “sprints”.
It’s the publishers that have a problem with it, but there are ways around that, especially for you. Ever hear of “Be the Media” ? I think that it could give you valuable insight.
For now, I would hope that you do give yourself breaks, and rest.
But Perhaps you should start a “free style” project. Just sit down, and write. Don’t second guess yourself. Just start that book. Express yourself. Refine it later. I have read many great books in some very unusual styles. (Crank, I just finished was really cool how it was done.)
Sometimes the second guessing, and thinking that you’ll never be able to finish it will only serve to feed writers block. Give it a try. Maybe you are BETTER at sprinting. I’ll give you that, but how will you ever run the marathon if you don’t try? Just the other day you said that a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. Equally, a book of a thousand pages begins with a single word.
I can’t wait to see which one you choose. =)
Well, I sure have managed to write a lot; 175 posts at roughly 1500 words per post, which is roughly 262,000 words. That’s about 525 pages for a textbook and 750 or so in paperback! So OK, publishers, I’m ready when you are! 🙂
This is more than twice the number of words as my only completed novel-length project, the afore-mentioned Anzu James: Naked in Orbit. So you have written two or maybe three books worth here.
It’s not just a matter of finding the time to write, it’s also about keeping up with the news and scanning through a lot of crap to find a few good things to write about. My biggest problem with blogging is that I have way too many other interests competing for my time. Of my three main goals, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, I spend a lot of time on number three.
I also noticed that your articles are usually very refined right from the moment they’re published, whereas I have found that my typos are completely invisible until I actually click on the “publish” button. From that point forward, I discover mistakes every time I read it.
I suspect that I don’t meet the minimum requirements for blogging when measured in terms of functional brain cells.
For the record, this blog is only one of two that I read regularly. People who think like you are a rarity. Visitors always leave here smarter than when they came (whether they know it or not).
Happy new year! Time to break out the booze, get naked, and crawl into the hot tub…
That’s true about scanning; it takes me at least an hour a day to do that.
Well, I write them in Word and proofread them before pasting them into WordPress, then I immediately proofread them online and nearly always have to correct a few clumsy phrases, redundant words or typos. I also have a little advantage in that proofreading is something I’m very good at; back in my librarian days I edited a number of manuscripts for extra cash.
I consider that high praise indeed. Thank you, Dave! 🙂
Maggie,
Having now completed reading all of your posts from 2010, may I commend you for the quality and quantity of your writing on many matters.
Whether the subject is tragedy or triumph, profound or mundane; you never fail to inform and engage the reader.
Thank you, Gumdeo! I hope you enjoy my 2011 columns just as much. 🙂
As an avowed scientist, one has to own to the idea that gender identity is a three way function of physicality, psychology and socialisation.
I find it very important to realise that physicality, which begins to take shape at the end of the first foetal trimester, responds to the activation of the testes by the gender XX/XY chromosome.
This process is governed by the expressed level of testosterone in the developing foetus, and so this is NOT a binary switch, but an analogue greyscale with extreme femininity at the low end, and extreme masculinity at the high end, and *every blended position between*, incuding gender androgeny at the 50/50 mark.
All these positions, and the resulting physical characteristics and psychological predispositions (brain structure itself responds to gestational testosterone levels too) are valid gender natures.
While the graph has a double bell curve with peaks near both ends, there’s room for everything in between, with much lower frequency of ocurrence.
So to our transgendered friends, I say this : how you are, is your natural identity, expressed on a gender spectrum that is truly and scientifically a sliding scale, not a hamfisted binary choice.
❤