# 01 Nov 2020, 12:05AM: Nonfiction Book Writing in November, and Daily Wordcount Posting:
I am writing a book about open source maintainership. I had planned to get the book to editors/agents by the end of this year; I have made very little progress on it this year so now my goal is to have a small self-published early version of the book available by the end of the year.
Recently I wrote up a blog post about how the hobby writing project I did Sept-Oct felt doable for me, and how to apply those lessons to my book project I've been procrastinating on. Having a little writing prompt every day feels like it will help. I'm also planning on blogging stuff as I write it, or posting it publicly somewhere. Maybe a GitLab repo to start?
November -- there's NaNoWriMo. It's for novels. I saw that there are some rebels who use it for nonfiction, but I don't want to deliberately contravene the goals of NaNoWriMo so I'm not signing up for it formally, but I am committing to writing each day in November as a way to accumulate a lot of progress and momentum for the book.
Today I sat down with Leonard and he helped me restore my faith in my current outline, and I developed a template for each chapter which will make it easier for me to write them, and I wrote seven writing prompts so now I have writing exercises/chapters to start for each day in the coming week.
I also signed up for a daily words community on Dreamwidth to give myself people I am accountable to. I will also tell y'all: I want to write 400 words per day in November, as a minimal goal. On good days I know I will blow way past that! But just -- every day I want to write at least 400 words.
Any of you doing daily writing in November? If you're posting daily "I wrote [number] words!" then where are you doing that? I'd like to join in.
# 09 Nov 2020, 11:06AM: Quite A Weekend:
All the news networks and newspapers have analyzed the ballots counted so far and predicted that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris have won the US Presidential election. We have so much work ahead, yes, but the RELIEF of this result is tremendous. Those spontaneous jubilant gatherings in the streets would have been much larger if it weren't for COVID (I stayed home and I'm guessing a ton of other rejoicers did too). As a friend said, it's like we juuuuuust made the last offramp.
My citizenship is safer (I'm the daughter of immigrants). My property is safer. My health is safer. My neighbors are safer. It's easier to make plans and have them feel meaningful. To feel purpose.
As I've seen some folks point out on social media: there are no red states, only voter suppression states. One of the corollaries here is: states that you think of as reliably Democratic would and could turn Republican if bad actors suppress enough of the vote. Great user experience for voter registration, voter notification, citizen engagement and turnout, and voting matter everywhere. If you want to see how this could work, read America, Inc. by Andrea Phillips -- it's a near-future science fiction novel with a lot of design thinking about US elections. And then if you want to start getting involved in those issues in your area, adults of all genders are welcome to help out with the League of Women Voters.
Leonard finished reading Vikram Seth's monumental novel A Suitable Boy and we talked about it at some length. Soon we'll probably start watching the BBC adaptation. It's such a generous and loving book, so many people doing so many human things. Shoemaking! Electoral politics! Music! Love! Poetry, farming, sex work, riots, parenting, teaching, healing, gardening, romance.... and did I mention the shoe manufacturing?!?!?! I'm so glad he's read it now so it's a part of both our internal worlds, together.
Alex Trebek died. I am sad about this; I grew up watching Jeopardy! and the older I get the more I appreciate all the little rituals and institutions that, together, make a culture.
The brilliant leaves on the trees outside are so gorgeous and, in their own way, lush.
I kept on adding at least 400 words per day to the git repository where I work on my book. It's like a hike. I look up at an intimidatingly high peak in the morning, and then I walk a step at a time for long enough, and then it's lunchtime at the vista. The height is a kind of mirage. What's important is the path.
Filed under:
Reading Memoir
# 12 Nov 2020, 11:54AM: Plain Language Choices:
Pro Publica published a story in a few translations, including plain language, for accessibility reasons. It's interesting to read the default and plain language English versions of the stories, and to reflect on my own sometimes-negative immediate reactions when reading a plain-language piece: are they condescending to me? What are they hiding from me? but also how refreshing it is to see writers explicitly call things "bad".
I tried to write the Sunsetting Python 2 FAQ in very accessible English, because some audiences don't read English very well, or are executives who get scared off by programmer jargon. I saw some reactions that applauded this choice, and some that found that the effect was condescending, scolding, or otherwise offputting. Then, this year, I scripted the video we made about the changes coming to pip, using a somewhat similar plain-language approach -- but it's a video, with smiling people telling you these things, and it's far more about a change than about an ending (specifically "you should give up this thing you are used to"), so it affects the viewer differently.
And of course -- who are the audiences? What should we assume and what should we try to find out first? This connects back to the concision-nuance tradeoff in one-to-many documents which is, like so many other contested spectra, a ground churned over with centuries of thought and argument.
(Pro Publica news via Jason Kottke)
# 13 Nov 2020, 11:05AM: Inclines and Declinations:
A while ago, a friend of mine who lives in Manhattan contacted me to say that she and her spouse would have some time off this week, and suggested that they come to visit us in Queens. We would of course be outdoors and masked and physically distant. We made plans.
And then we canceled them and did a Jitsi videocall instead. Because my friend had just spent half a day in a hospital for various tests, because they'd have to take a cab or subway trip to get here and back, because the COVID case numbers are going up. Everyone understood -- there's no shame or blame attaching to anyone here, just trying to mitigate risks.
We had a great chat about Star Trek: The Next Generation (which they just started watching several months ago), about adaptations and abridgements and what they elide, about writing and publishing and writer's block, about where we were on Saturday when jubilation erupted in response to the announcement of Biden's victory.
I will not be going anywhere for Diwali, Thanksgiving, or Christmas. I will be taking care of my friends and family by keeping them safe -- by doing my bit to keep them safe.
Maybe you have friends or family in pandemic-affected areas who don't really listen to legitimate statistics and are inclined to (disastrously) follow their own intuitions and personal anecdotes when deciding that they're fine with unmasked, indoor get-togethers. People who don't listen to your reasoned arguments.
I once learned -- of course via disabled folks swapping tips on social media -- that doctors often look askance at a patient saying "I did some research and these peer-reviewed papers suggest [x] diagnosis/treatment might be applicable" but are very open to a patient saying "a friend of mine had these problems and [x] helped -- could we check that?" There's something there, I suppose, about how the dominant person in the room is willing to humor you, as a parent does a child, as long as you aren't stepping onto their turf, challenging their expertise. You're acting like a normal, social person, more familiar with your friends' worries than with how your own body works, grasping for the concrete rather than abstractly reasoning.
So I wonder whether a similar approach might work this year, with some of the folks to whom "but it's Christmas" and "don't you want to see your family?" are imperviable rejoinders. Say that your friend is really worried about what'll happen if you go (I can serve as your friend for this purpose). Tell them about your friend-of-a-friend who caught COVID six months ago and still hasn't recovered (I have at least one friend in this category).
And, readers in countries where the pandemic is under control and you can live a reasonably standard life: I'm glad y'all have been sensible. Someday we'll join you. I hope.
# 13 Nov 2020, 11:52AM: It Goes On One At A Time:
I want to tell you a story. It's about this year's election results, and it's about hope.
Just a few days after Election Day last week, with only 58% of the vote total reported, the New York Times was already comfortable projecting that Democratic incumbent Jerry McNerney will hold his seat in California's 9th Congressional District.
I used to live in that district, in the 1990s. I spent my early teen years in Stockton, an agricultural and shipping city. And that seat was Republican, Norman Shumway holding it 1978-1992 and then Richard Pombo winning and holding it after that.
In the mid-90s I came across an ad recruiting volunteers in the local alternative newspaper. I was a young teen and I was intrigued by the ad that said even people as young as 13 could volunteer for 2 hours per week, Wednesday afternoons, to do camerawork at a local cable access TV show. That's how I started volunteering with the Peace & Justice Network of San Joaquin County.
I met folks who had gotten in serious trouble for protesting the Vietnam War, for anti-nuke actions at Livermore Lab, and for various other acts of conscience. I ran the camera, then served as tech director, as a philosophy professor-turned-carpenter interviewed activists, journalists, politicians, scientists, poets, teachers, clergy, old folks with interesting stories to tell.
Every Congressional cycle they organized to try to beat Pombo. He seemed glued to that seat.
Then, years after I left, in 2004, someone ran unopposed as a write-in candidate for the Democratic nomination, and got 39% of the vote in the general election.
Then, in the 2006 election -- which I will always associate with this witty, angry, upsetting, didactic political music video set to "Freedom! '90" (content note for images from Abu Ghraib, Hurricane Katrina, and the 9/11 attacks) -- he WON! Jerry McNerney, who literally used to run a wind energy company and has a Ph.D. in math, won against a guy who was one of the worst politicians in America on environmental issues. Didn't hurt that by now Pombo was tied to the Abramoff corruption scandals.
My friends helped. They helped elect McNerney in 2006, and I think they had helped lay the groundwork, with decades of on-the-ground organizing, huge Rolodexes, media and fundraising experience.... All those years, trying and trying again, growing their networks. It's like Marge Piercy said. And now McNerney has been re-elected over and over, as a solid Democrat, and again this year.
There are candidates who lost last year and won this year. Activists, teachers, clergy. There are seats and chambers we came close to flipping this year, laying the groundwork for future efforts. Whatever those efforts need to be, whatever tomorrow brings.
(originally posted as a comment on MetaFilter)
# 19 Nov 2020, 11:45AM: Thank You:
Today I finally fiddled with the Universal Access settings in GNOME to:
- make the mouse cursor bigger, and add a contrasting outline, so it's easier to see where it is
- add a visible alert every time there's a sound/audio alert
- increase default text size everywhere
It took maybe 90 seconds total and was really easy. I went through some internalized ageism and ableism as I did this. Now I've done it and my computer is easier to use, and I am grateful to all the people who came before me and laid this path to make it easier for me to use. Thank you to everyone who has ever worked on desktop usability and accessibility.
# 25 Nov 2020, 12:55PM: Situation Normal Giveaway, Preview, and Pre-order:
My spouse Leonard Richardson has written a second novel, Situation Normal! Publishing house Candlemark & Gleam will publish it on December 14th, 2020. You can preorder it now in ebook (Kobo, Nook, Chapters Indigo, Kindle) or in paperback (Bookshop, Amazon,
Barnes & Noble)! And there's a worldwide giveaway right now, till December 13th, for a free ebook copy!
Leonard says:
My elevator pitch for Situation Normal is "the Coen brothers do Star Trek". It's a military SF story where no one is incompetent but everything goes wrong.
Situation Normal is a direct sequel to Leonard's short story "Four Kinds of Cargo", published in Strange Horizons eight years ago. Leonard's now posted a retconned version of "Four Kinds of Cargo" to make everything line up with the sequel. He notes:
but the crew of the smuggling starship Sour Candy is now only one thread of a plot that includes weaponized marketing, sentient parasites, horny alien teenagers, and cosplaying monks.
Kobo and Indigo have a free preview up, so you can see the content notes and start to meet Becky, Hiroko, Myrus, Churryhoof, Dwap-Jac-Dac, Arun, and the Chief.
"The Fist of Joy," said Dad. Just the name took him back to the previous war.
"Nuh-uh. An Outreach Light Combat Platform. Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka."
"That's us, Jiankang," said Dad. "They're the good guys. Why are we running? This is insane."
"Who knows what they want," said the mayor in a tone that was either flat or full of adult emotions Myrus didn't understand. "They've been sending us urgent messages, but the Navy drafted our comm tech last month, so we're not that good at decrypting."
"Who made this decision?" said Dad. "Why wasn't the council consulted before we committed treason?"
Cory Doctorow likes Situation Normal even better than he liked Leonard's first novel, Constellation Games, which he called "an underappreciated masterpiece" and "one of the best political books I've ever read, an account of the poison chalice of societies based on coercion that puts great works of anarchist fiction to shame". Doctorow calls Situation Normal:
A triumph: madcap and trenchant, dancing on the precise meridian between funny and weird, with a wild, imaginative boldness that reinvents space-opera from the gravity well up.
And the American Library Association's Booklist gave Situation Normal a starred review, calling it "A fast-paced romp reminiscent of Kurt Vonnegut channeled through the wild inventiveness of Charles Stross and the irreverent political attitude of Cory Doctorow" - again with the Cory comparisons.
Enter the giveaway today, or preorder in ebook (Kobo, Nook, Chapters Indigo, Kindle) or in paperback (Bookshop, Amazon,
Barnes & Noble)!
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