Three Interesting Things

1. Project 2025 has some specific plans that affect those of us who are fans of books and reading.  This post sums them up.

2. I confess I am mildly obsessed with this story of an office mountain climbing retreat where they left one coworker behind and search and rescue had to be called in. 

3. Jason Reynolds walked a reporter through his bookshelves.  

Also, the wonderful L. D. Lewis is sponsoring a grant to emerging Palestinian Creators in the Speculative Arts, and there is also an option to contribute to a second grant, as well as info on applying here. 

Writing is not Publishing and Vice Versa

Regardless of the manner or ways in which you publish (assuming that you do, or intend to), writing and publishing are different. Not just because they are different steps. But also many parts of publishing are outside your control. Sorry, my control freak friends, but it is true. 

And so the things that you can do to separate the processes in your head will help. You may never want to write anything that doesn't get published. You may never write anything that doesn't get published. But various things from weather, to reader taste shifts, to wild world events, will impact sales in ways you cannot prepare for. 

So you need to know why you write. The answer can change over your writing career. It can be the joy of storytelling. It can be the burning need to get these impatient characters out of your head. It can be the love of setting up and revealing a puzzle. It can be many things. 

But if it's to be a bestseller, or to make oodles of money, you might or might not. And if a story doesn't perform the way you had hoped, and you plan to keep writing, you need to know how to be a writer. 

Three Interesting Things

1. This article looks at the latest ebb and flow of folks of color, particularly Black folks, in publishing. 

2. This article looks at the ways that fandom has gotten a little weird.

3. This article about dumped orange peels is from quite a few years ago, but I found it fascinating because I hadn't really thought about what happens to all those orange peels when they make all that juice, and because sometimes manufacturing dumps do kind cool things. 

"Soft Power" at Signature Theater

Content notes: onstage stabbing, use of prop guns, discussion of race based violence and racial micro-aggressions. 

In a play where the main character has the same name as the playwright, and that character has a fever dream, well it's hard not to describe the show as something of a fever dream. 

I am going to confess that despite being a musical lover, I have never seen "The King and I". I have seen "The Book of Mormon" which is a similar white person goes somewhere to teach some non-white people that they are wrong and eventually they both learn from each other plot. 

So a flipped version where a person of color, an Asian person comes to teach the Queen of the US sounds cool. Except our leaders are elected and in 2016 we did not elect a queen. 

So when the playwright character gets stabbed and passes out, he dreams of a version of himself meeting the producer who hires him to write the show, and they then meet a Hillary Clinton who is running for President. 

The show is a fever dream and yet, like some dreams where you wake up and go, yep, I know where that came from, it's not wrong. It's weird, but interesting. It gets at the exhausting way we handle our democracy. There's a song about the electoral college that has a supreme court justice dancing with a sparkly gavel. Every gun used is painted a bright red, white, or blue. It also finds time to talk about assimilation, heart vs duty, and the things we learn from our parents. 

The cast was wonderful. Daniel May captured the optimism and duty of Xue Xing. And Grace Yoo sang and danced her butt off as Hillary Clinton. 

There's an interesting choice during two numbers that involved tapping, to have instrumental tapping, which I would love to know the story behind. The answer may well be, it was a dream. Dreams are weird. 

Note: I attended a masks required show. 

Three Interesting Things

1. We just had a tornado warning here last week, so disaster prep is on my mind.  While tornadoes and hurricanes are different, some of the things it can be useful to consider ahead of time are similar.  So, I appreciated this story about hurricane prep.  It's pretty US focused as far as the links, but the steps are similar for everyone.

2. For the olympics and paralympics, Paris has - for now - become easier to traverse for the disabled. 

3. And I've been enjoying the reveals around Banksy's latest series. 

Goals

The olympics wrapped and one of the things I loved about the track portion of things, was that they listed things like who had a season best time, a personal record, a national record, and so on. There was one race where almost everyone on the track hit a season's best. 

There are so many goals you can set for yourself, and it can be useful. I tend to be a lost in the trees person who forgets about the big picture forest, so setting goals can give me something to aim for.

But goals are helpful if they are maybe a bit of a reach and also achievable. There is one gold medal, but there are season's bests possible for everyone. 

And then, let's hope these athletes also have both celebration and rest in their plans.

It can be so easy to hit a goal and then go set a new one and forget to pause an celebrate that goal. 

To borrow from an old ad campaign, when people ask what's next after you hit a big goal, you should say you're going to an amusement park. Or the beach. Or the library. Whatever cool amazing thing that you do to celebrate that step. 

Because after all that work, you deserve a treat.  

Three Interesting Things

1. If you noticed that US women gymnasts seem to be lasting longer as gymnasts, this article talks about some of the reasons for that. 

2. I was intrigued at this idea of a national tenant's union.

3. And with the caveat that I am friendly with the author of this piece, an abbreviated look a dragons and romances, and some dragon romances.  Note: title, while starred, alludes to an NSFW word. 

Your Pace is Yours

I talk a lot in writing about figuring out your best pace. That writing communally can be fun, because having people around you doing the thing is fun, not because matching their pace is always the best idea for you. 

The sports coverage may be better where you are, but USian Olympic coverage always refers to being a silver medalist like it is a massive disappointment. And when it comes to writing, done is done. First draft, edited draft, polished draft, they mostly just need to get done. Sure, sometimes there are deadlines. But no one who reads a book they picked up in a bookstore thinks, hmm, I hope this was written more speedily than the book over there. 

Are there limits? Sure. I've met people who have been changing the commas in their draft for about two years, and that doesn't feel productive to me. Sometimes you have to quit a story, or say your going to quit a story. And sometimes a story has a fundamental flaw and you have to decide to rewrite it from the ground up or just write something else. 

But that first draft, that first attempt to tell the story, it just needs to get done. And done can honestly be in the eye often beholder. Done can mean having "insert fight scene here" in part. 

Speed to the end of the draft is only one measure of it, and I enjoy watching my little graph line go up as I draft.

And if it bums you out to see other's finishing faster, perhaps it helps to think of yourself as one of the other gymnasts. Imagine being the gymnast who is not Simone Biles or sub in your fave athlete here. All these other gymnasts showed up to compete. And they still did their routines after Biles did hers, already knowing that no matter how perfect they were, they could not beat a person who has actual moves named after her. But they still did it. And some of them had their best days ever. 

You don't have to be the Simone Biles of writing. There is only one of those. But there are so many books. And have you met readers? They love books. They are waiting for your story too. Because even the fastest writer doesn't write enough to keep a reader happy for a whole year. 

Three Interesting Things

1. NPR's Code Switch talked about how book bans can mean kids never see some types of characters. 

2. A new book looks at the early twentieth century Olympics, and how one swimming race brought together three very different swimmers, including a Hawaiian swimmer more known for another Olympic sport.  

3. Speaking of other Olympic sports, the story behind this surfing picture is amazing.