The Math of Adjustment

We've been talking the the Write Better Faster group about this Awkward Yeti cartoon: https://twitter.com/theawkwardyeti/status/1403353281372602370?s=09

I had one of those weeks. Or weekends. Essentially, for reasons, I currently cannot use my stove. I became aware of this when I tried to turn it on to make dinner Friday night. I decided this was a sign that I was meant to make the frozen pizza in my toaster oven instead. 

There are cascading things related to this. Building staff needed to enter my apartment Saturday which of course meant looking around and thinking maybe a quick scrub of the kitchen was in order. 

And of course it meant the plans I had made to consume pasta and soup over the next few days got scrapped. 

Now of course these are essentially minor inconveniences. I happened to have a frozen pizza, and other food that could be prepared using the toaster oven and/or microwave. My kettle is also electric. I did have to scan through the fridge and figure out what was not going to wait for the fix and needed to be roasted or consumed or frozen in the next few days. 

But I am fine. My loved ones are fine. This is mostly a logistics problem. 

And yet, life has been a large logistics problem for about a year and a half. Having to think through the logistics of this, revise yet another plan, because of something outside of my control is tiring. 

It's okay to be tired. It's okay to be bummed that I can't make soup right now. And it's okay to be sad about something that is not life threatening. We are all carrying a lot. Being tripped up sucks. Even when you know it will probably work out okay. 

On the Newsletter - My Own Ripped Bodice Summer Bingo Report

Over on the newsletter, I reported which boxes I did (and did not) read this summer.

Three Interesting Things

1. I really enjoy the 88 Cups of Tea podcast, so I appreciated this interview with Yin Chang where she talked about her return to "Gossip Girl" and what she's learned in her time building both a storyteller community and a food community. 

2. This older post about banking and prudery noted the impact on Patreon, former book purveyor AllRomance and others, which was context I saw missing from many others.  This Slate piece covers some of the more recent developments with OnlyFans. 

3. Given all the things lately, there are two charity auctions with a bookish bent coming up: Romance for Haiti and Romancelandia for Afghan Women. 

Hope Isn't Silly

I was telling someone I'm in a stint of books about hard things - dystopias, traumas, grief, cross cultural parents.  And they are each useful and good, and are mostly all lined with hope but sometimes it's hard to keep going even with the promise of hope.  

And well, it's hard when the world itself is as it is.  I thought I had kept my expectations realistic, but there are things I thought I could maybe do this fall that are clearly not possible right now.  And that's sad.  

And my worries do not include in person work right now.  I have friends who have already been back to in person work, who are being asked back because someone wants to try, or because there are financial stakes to being there in person.  

The project I'm working on right now I am dealing entirely with people who have lost someone so I am dealing with a lot of people in every phase of grief, including the I think everyone is lying to me and everything is terrible phase.  It is a really great project. It's using a lot of my skills in ways I hadn't flexed in quite this manner in a while.  But it's hard.  

Grief is hard. Trauma is hard.  One of the things I am reading rattled off the stats and between war, assault, intimate partner violence, and addiction, we are a society that is already carrying a lot of trauma and adding a pandemic just means another layer to that.  

Hope can often be placed alongside words like fluffy and sparkly, words that connote sillness and a lack of seriousness.  But hope is incredibly serious business.  Looking around at the cracks and issues in our society and being willing to roll up sleeves and work on making things better is serious stuff. Gathering enough food and cozy blankets to feed and snuggle everyone in your household is also serious stuff.  Survival, as this pandemic has reminded us, is not a given.  Doing the work to keep going requires a complete toolset and hope is an important part of it. 

Three Interesting Things

1. As someone who used to rely on Snopes quite a bit, this article detailing both plagiarism and false sourcing was fairly disheartening. 

2. I was pointed to this post from last year that spoke of some ways to make sure you are avoiding racist tropes in your fiction. It focuses on SFF, but I think is widely applicable. 

3. Bookstore Romance Day is this weekend, and there's so many panels.  Also, there's Bookshop links on that page if there are no participating stores near you and/or shipped books are preferable to your life right now.