Tag: NaBloPoMo

Uppity Women (NaNoWriMo Day #4)

Today’s word count: 507
Total word count: 1368
Dear Internet,
Note to self: A dinner of Lucky Charms, chased with a half bottle of Witches’ Brew, is probably not one of my more ingenious ideas.
I want to thank everyone for reading, sharing, and commenting on yesterday’s post. We’ve been having some really great conversations on Twitter as well, and I’m loving all the thoughtful commentary. The page is also been shared quite a bit across the social networks, which is also a bonus. Thank you to everyone for participating in this very important conversation.
While TheHusband is one of my biggest champions, he’s often one of the least likely ones to read my blog. This mostly has to do with how sporadic my updates have been over the last few years as compared to the last four days where this will be post #6. I also calculated the word count those posts are at about 5,000 words. My NaNoWriMo piece, well, not so much, but I’ll get to that in a second.
This morning while we were getting ready to head out for the day of errands, he seemed pretty excited by my story idea, which of course got me talking about what I wanted to do. We spent the better part of an hour with me verbally walking through some things about the story, what I liked, my ideas, what wasn’t working. We continued this later, over lunch, where we started drawing up an outline so that I could work from that.
His hypothesis was there were two types of writers in the world: Those who outline and need the skeleton before the flesh, and those who write and need just the flesh. (He listened to every episode of CBC Writer’s and Company from the last three years, thus the basis for his explanation.) He says my problem, or style, is that I write from the flesh AND I over edit. A paragraph could take me four hours. There is a beauty in that, for word precision is very important to me but that is obviously not going to work for NaNoWriMo.
To which I agree.
As we had left late in the morning, our errands were done by mid-afternoon, which would give me about six or so hours to write before Sunday night television kicked in. I was pretty excited about having that much time blocked off with all of my day’s chores done.
Except, I didn’t write. I read Facebook, Twitter, mailing list emails, Google reader and as well as wrote postcards. I had opened up Scrivener as soon as I sat at my desk and kept in running in the background, tabbing to it every so often to stare in petulance at it before tabbing back to whatever I was doing.
I even started answering the political robocalls.
But I wrote nothing.
Nearly every interview or piece I’ve ever read about writing, the author in question always, always, always mentions that in order to write, you must read. Read in your genre, your interests, outside your interests. Doesn’t matter, just read. A particular situation that worked in one story, could be tweaked for yours. As I noted in June , I knew I was depressed when I stopped reading or listening to music. I used to read 10 books a month, now I’m lucky if I will do that every six. I found when I started reading Game of Thrones this week, the connection to reading and writing became clear. Ideas were coming, sometimes fast and furious, as I traveled around Westeros. I got what those authors were throwing down.
(I’ve also read enough interviews of authors where they are often asked, “What are you influences/where do you get your ideas?” and they come off with a flippant reply that ideas are everywhere / from their brain / I make everything up or some other they-think-is-clever response. These authors, some very well known, are full of shit. You read, you get ideas, you make your own connections, you write. It’s cyclic. It’s simple. It’s not magic, no matter how much you want it to be.)
But today! Today after talking and walking through ideas, nothing came to pass. I was worried, I told TheHusband, for I started in one direction and now I have to change it fit this new theme. I’m even changing point of view (first to third) and that means I have to re-write everything. He argued with me, of course, for he said that you should continue in the new path and worry about the opening stuff later.
But I need to read what I have written in continuity to make sure it is making sense! He told me I was procastinating and sent me back to my desk.
I huffed in indignation like a three year old, grabbed my laptop, the notebook with story notes, and with Wednesday trailing behind me, came down to our dining room. Why I thought changing location, where TheHusband was arguing the Internet was possibly my real detrator, would help, I had no fucking idea. I thought perhaps liberal liquid lubrication would be helpful, so I uncorked a bottle of cheap wine and sat down.
And I began to write.
The take away from all of this: I need to develop a drinking habit to get things done.
There are a couple of things about this NaNoWriMo that are important to me: Finish a story, possibly in book form, write it in third person, and make it interesting. I know I can do this, I know that I want to do this, I need to stop allowing the oooh shiny from distracting me.
Or start visiting my local adult beverage store more often.
ttfn,
Lisa

Why (white) men should not (mostly) write about gender disparity in technology

Dear Internet,
In 1994 or ’95, I started getting interested in computing and even more specifically, the INTERNET. This all stemmed from a class I took at the time  (taught by a woman) succinctly titled, “An Introduction to the Internet”; which would be all command line interface until the college installed Netscape .9 in the open computer lab later that year. Color. Photos. From. Finland. WOW.
That class changed my entire life.
I got my first paid gig doing tech support at a local ISP in 1996, which lead to another gig in San Francisco, which lead to other gigs that took me around the country. My last pure tech job was as an Senior Internet Systems engineer at UUNet/Worldcom, which I spent my days configuring routers, studying for the CCIE, and other network engineering fun things. As WorldCom was going through a bit of a rough patch, I took this as a sign to head back to university, finish my undergrad in English (where I had started nearly a decade prior) and figure out the rest of my life. I moved back to Michigan and started classes at Aquinas in January of 2003.
I completed my undergrad in the spring of 2005, my first masters in the spring of 2008, and my second masters in the spring of 2010.
None of my degrees have anything to do with computing or technology, which was very much on purpose. My creative brain needs a lot of hand holding while my technology brain does not. While there were gaps between my technology jobs (school and all that rot),  I’ve always kept my head wet by keeping up my interests. My current position is the perfect job for me since it combines my education AND my experience: I’m a systems and web librarian at a local college. All of my senses are tingly.
I’m giving you this background not because I think I’m unique in my education or my foray into technology, but to illustrate that I’ve been in the technological world for a very long time and I have very rich experience of being a woman in a man’s world. I knew getting into tech back in the early ’90s  women were not as dominant and they were just starting to get into the peripheral of the scene. When I went to Def Con in 1997, the number of women who were hackers at the time were just beginning to be as dominant as the ones who came along to support their partners. In the next couple of years, the more cons I visited, the more women were becoming an integral part of the scene and less like visitors from another planet.
As this is such a male dominated landscape, I’m no stranger to sexism or sexual harrassment that was and still is clearly abundant in the world of technology. This is the one constant that has not changed since that first class I took in 1994.
To wit, within the last week alone, two seperate vendors did the following:

  • One sent an email explaining that to turn on the server I had just received by documenting I had to push the big green blinky button
  • After explaining to the vendor I was going to use sudo for installation of Enterprise backup and walked him through the steps, he still explained what sudo was and why I needed to use it

This is in addition to my day to day life where sexism runs rampart, whether it is intended or not. Last week, the beer guy who kept talking to TheHusband about the deliciousness of beer when we picked up a bottle of Guinness Black even after I pointed out it was for me; the car sales people who kept approaching TheHusband when we were shopping for cars even after we pointed out I was not only the primary person driving but also the purchaser. The comic book store clerks (5 out 6 we’ve visited) who kept trying to suggest titles to TheHusband even when it was I asking to buy such and such issues. So forth, and so on.
For many men, most I would think, don’t even think they are being sexist. Some even think they are being helpful. Our culture is so ingrained that something designed as being very male (beer, car shopping, computers, comics) belongs to the male of the party, they  without thinking about it direct all conversation to the male even if it is the female who is inquiring. I’m betting that 9 out of 10 men do this unintentionally and subconsciously, there is no thought that what they are doing is sexist.
I’ve long come to accept this is part of my life, as my interests in male dominated areas (comics, technology, sci-fi/fantasy) continues to grow, so too will the sexism (unintended or not) continue on. I’ve developed a thick skin to the daily sexisms because fighting each and every turn is exhausting, and often futile. So I pick my battles when I can and fight on like a good warrior for these battles.
This is one of those battles.
Ealier this week, Roy Tennant, who writes at Library Journal’s The Digital Shift, published an article called Fostering Female Technology Leadership in Libraries.
I’ll wait while you go read.
I’m going to go make some tea while you’re going through the comments.
I may also start a new cross-stitch pattern while you’re going through that.
Are you back? Good.
Here are the problems I have with Roy’s article, and later his comments.

  • When pointing out his suggestions were just as sexist, or at the very least patronizing to the very people he was trying to help, he told me, the very type of person he was trying to help, I was wrong.
  • When giving him suggestions on how better to further the action or dialogue, he ignored them.
  • When several of us pointed out that as a white man, he had the utmost of privilege and that his suggestions were born from that privilege, unintentional or not, and ergo why his suggestions sounded patronizing even when he thought they were’t, he took that to mean we were attacking him personally even though we were attacking his argument.
  • Ditto for the number of times he keeps discussing how much of a feminist he is on this site and other social media as well as alluding his critics are off the mark. Let me point out once more  the criticisms have come from the very people he’s trying to help. No one is disputing your feminism Roy, we’re critiquing your proposed solutions and your dismissiveness of our experiences in your follow up commentary.
  • When I disputed that the experiences he was writing about were not the same I experienced, so he should not generalize, he said, “yet I’ve heard the opposite from other female colleagues — that such jokes create a hostile environment for women. For now, I’m still with them.”  The problem with this is you cannot expect special treatment for women (tampering down of jokes/commentary  in the work place) if you want to be equal. You can’t have it both ways. It has to apply to EVERYONE or apply to NO ONE. It is not equality if special considerations are made. This was the huge problem I had with this list, because tampering down jokes and being respectful to a woman should not just about women, it should be for all humans.

What really gets my goat, however, is Roy’s apparent ignorance of his own privilege on this matter as he keeps beating it around social media how much of a feminist he is, so he’s right and we’re wrong. It was pointed out to him in the comments that as a white male, he enjoys specialized treatment, which he may not even be aware of but as a white male he does certainly enjoy. He told the person,

Karen, the fact that you think you know me is laughable. Indeed I have “given up privilege” as you put it. For but one example, I voluntarily left the LITA Top Tech Trends panel to make way for the committee to add more women, a number of whom I nominated in the process, and subsequently when the panel at one conference was again male-heavy I complained about at the session. I notice that they’ve largely been better about it since.

So. Giving up privilege, to him, means he left a panel on a professional association. And then complained about it’s male dominatedness later on? And that’s it? This is supposed to make me feel better? Nothing here about his personal life. Nothing here about what he is doing at his own company to promote women in technology or in other very public spheres he’s active in. Because an empty seat on a panel for a small subset of the profession is so helpful to the rest of the female gender in getting them into technology?
Right.
Ultimately what is causing me the most frustration is what also makes me the most depressed. Here is someone who has power, who is known on a large scale in the profession, who can’t even acknowledge that his approach to this very worthwhile topic is perhaps not the way that it should be? That maybe, instead of labeling myself and others critical of his approach (again, the very same marginalized group he is attempting to promote) as his “attackers,” he could step back for a moment and at least acknowledge our commentary might have some substance?
(Bears repeating: No one is disagreeing this topic isn’t worthwhile. I am disagreeing with this execution.)
This fight for equality is not even close to being over yet, nor will it be even in my lifetime. However, the unfortunate part is that it is people like Roy, self-styled (white) male femimists, who have solidarity for our cause, who want to be supportive of our needs, are the very same ones who are often our worst detractors. I believe Roy genuinely thinks that he’s doing a very good thing by writing about this topic, even if I disagree with what he wrote. I also think this is why he’s so defensive of any critique of his actions because he thinks he’s doing something to help the downtrodden, how on earth can this even be remotely bad?
Do not ever be afraid to be critical of anyone, regardless of who they are, when they start discussing means and ways of experiences and feelings when it is clear they have no experience in what they are discussing. You, and only you, can own your experiences and feelings. Do not let others dictate how you should live.
Roy asked for ways to change this, which I gave him a list which was ignored. Here is more to add to that list if you want to support women in technology:

  • Donate to the Ada Intiative.
  • Start/chair an interest group for women in technology in LITA, the technology arm of ALA
  • Start a GeekGirl Dinner in your area.
  • Use Meetup.com to start/find groups in your interests (there were loads of Women in Technology interest groups on MeetUp).
  • Depending on where you work, what you do; start off-site initiative for women to have a hack-a-thon
  • Find local hacker space communities to start a women’s initiative
  • Use professional conferences to propose panels / groups / discussions to get more people aware but also to pay it forward
  • Create a women in tech book club at local bar/ coffee house
  • Donate time to do mentoring to high school and middle school girls
  • Donate to or become a sponsor for a nearby women’s conference, like GeekGirlCon

Wanting to bring a voice to a marginalized group is a very good thing, but dismissing the concerns or critiques of that same group when brought up to you is bad. Do not generalize your assumptions of women as a whole in a particular area (in this case, technology) because your sample of that experience will be small and it will not be representative of all voices. Do not presume, as a male, to know my experiences and also, to dictate how I should feel about them. I can only speak of my experiences in my life, I cannot speak for other women, but the broader, much larger vile act of sexism is very, very real. Everyday Sexism is documenting this in spades.
Once this is posted, I’m donating to the Ada Initiative. I welcome any civil, commentary on this topic but keep in mind any obnoxious trolling will be deleted.
Fight the good fight,
ttfn,
Lisa
Edited: Nov 4: Added link to start a SIG at LITA in the to-do list

Need vs Want

Dear Internet,
When I came home from work today, I found myself bemused in my driveway when I realized I had not thought of or worked on my NaNoWriMo story at all today. Now that I’m getting back to working five days a week instead of three, I’m still working on a schedule to make everything fit. I’ve also taken on a part-time gig for a committee work I’m involved with at MPOW, which I have to also get cracking on as well this weekend.
Balance.
Our plans for the evening was to head to a concert, which we ended up bailing on as TheHusband wasn’t feeling well and I was feeling tired. My body seems more delicate then I remember it ever being, which seems exacerbated by the complications of my recovery from my arthritis surgery in June. If you’re not following me on across the usual haunts, the tl;dr version is this:

June 28th, I had arthritis surgery on my right ankle to remove nearly 20 years of bone chip/spurs from my original accident in 1995. I was planning on being down for the count for a few weeks, but I was bed bound for nearly 2.5 months and out of work for nearly three months. The number of times I left the house, nay went downstairs, during July and August can be counted on one hand, with some left over. My recovery has been so slow1 they have installed a wound vac, which I wear 24/7 and I have to charge up nightly.

While I was eating my dinner tonight of rather bland canned soup, I was flipping through several back issues of The Writer and Writer’s Digest. As I read quips, advice, and interviews, the one thing that kept popping up in my brain was the idea of need vs want in genre writing. I want to write thought provoking but not necessarily heavy stories while I need to write the dark and spooky stuff to work out all of my monsters. I mused that when constructing characters, I try so desperately to keep bits of me out of them, the darker bits, for reasons only known to my subconscious self. My heart tells me I’m not ready to go down that road right now, that writing the fluffier pieces will help get me off the ground. The fluffier pieces may be good, but the darker pieces is what will create my mythos.
I’m keeping those monsters at bay, until the time when I can properly pull them out slowly, one by one, into the daylight to acclimate them to this outer world. Then perhaps they won’t seem so scary.
ttfn,
Lisa

1. The first question I hear is, “Are you diabetic?” so I’ll just cut you off at the chase and tell you that no, I’m not diabetic. Yes, I do get checked on a regular basis. No, I do not have poor circulation. No, I am not a smoker and have not been one for a very long time. No, they do not know why it is taking me so long to heal. Yes, I’m getting checked by the doctors on a bi-monthly basis.

Serpent gnawing at the roots of Yggdrasil

Dear Interent,
When you are diagnosed with a dairy allergy, your world takes on a whole different shape and color. Milk protein, whey, and their derivatives are in a lot of foods you would not normally assume they would be in, as well as medicines and hygeine products (whey is used in some toothpastes for whitening).  Where before I bought things based on their reputation and usefulness, I now buy things based on whether or not they will harm me, even unintentionally. And my most recent discovery? Vitamin Water Zero derives their calcium and magnesium from lactic acid, which as a milk derivative and thus makes me sick. Who the hell thinks to label read a bottle of water? I mean, it’s water!
My allergy is severe enough that my allergist told me under no circumstances should I leave the house without an EPI pen and benadryl on me at all times. This allergy seems so ridiculous at times, but sometimes it allows me to be mischievous, like telling the wait staff you want a meat burger slathered in bacon with vegan cheese on it or you want a meat pizza with vegan cheese. So there is that. We also found that I can tolerate sheep and goat’s milk based products, which has been huge to allow me to eat a lot of foods I haven’t had in a year – like Cacio e Pepe. (I also get to yell at Val and Kristin a lot when they complain about feeling ill since one is also allergic to dairy and the other is lactose intolerant, allowing me to lord over my dairy free righteousness.)
There are of course  things that I miss. A lot. Like ice cream. Sour cream. Good sharp cheddar. Italian food. Malts. Now that I know the reason why I’ve always felt like crap for most of my life has mostly to do with my dairy consumption, removing it from my diet means that on the whole, I feel a lot better. Huzzah! But while I’m extremely thankful for all the vegans in my life who have helped me obtain some of what I now miss, there is no substituting good old fashioned cow milk. I also don’t really care what anyone says, vegan or not, you simply cannot substitute the creaminess of a good sharp cheddar with some soy and nut based concoction. Anyone who tries to sell you that bridge in Nebraska is a fucking liar.
Despite the label reading, and missing out of things, and carrying an EPI pen with me at all times, it isn’t these things that cause me the most frustration. Suprisingly, it’s the fact I have to constantly defend or explain my allergy to people who think that reading WebMD qualifies them to be medical experts:  No, I’m not lactose intolerant, I’m allergic to milk and can go into anaphylactic shock. People who are lactose intolerant have digestion issues, people who are allergic have digestion issues, breathing problems, hives, and other fun maladies. Yes, I can eat eggs. Yes, I can eat beef. No, I probably can’t eat $X because $X has milk and/or whey in it.  And so forth, and so on. I’ve had strangers tell me I was wrong about my allergy, or give entirely unasked for advice when my allergy is brought up.
Honestly? I don’t get why they feel justified in sharing their Wikipedia knowledge with me when they are almost always wrong, and secondly, I dont’ get why people always seem to think they know better than someone with decades of experience on this particular topic or who lives with it day by day. My allergy is potentially life threatening. Please do not dismiss this as being trivial just because Kathie Lee and Hoda had a nutritional expert on the TODAY show supposedly debunking allergies based on some non-peer reviewed research provided by Billy Bob’s consortium and tackle company.
If you don’t know, ask. Just don’t assume.
TTFN,
Lisa

NaNoWriMo: Day #1

Dear Internet,
Today’s word count: 861
Total word count: 861
One of the projects I worked on over the summer was consolidating my writing into a manageable organization to figure out what needed work, what didn’t and so on. I found all of my Scrivener files floating around various locations, consolidated them into one central location, and was pleasantly surprised to see how much notes and writing I had done on previous existing works. I spent a couple of hours reading and making mental notes because truthfully, I had no idea what I was going to write this time around other than I knew I had to write. I was hoping to put together ome kind of outline or plan, but even with some works in progress, this felt like it needed to be more off the cuff then researched based. Plus, I’ve also been bursting with so many ideas that it is hard to decide which one needs the love most of all.
I found a couple of pieces I had started writing from way back when and pulled bits of what I liked from them, using those ideas to craft something new. I cranked out almost 900 words in about 1.25 hours, which is pretty awesome I say. I know tomorrow, Friday, is going to be hard to steal time to write and I plan on making up most of the slack this weekend. I also need to start constructing something resembling a plot so I can get this project moving forward.
Here is what I’ve come up with: Unnamed female (so far), whom we’ll call Jane Doe for now, wakes up to the looming faces of her best friends to find out she’s lost several days. In panic, and concern, they reach out to one of Jane’s family members, a great aunt, who owns a store of some sort in norther Michigan, specifically on the 45th parellel. Her friends pack Jane, her dog Gaston, and most of her belongings into Jane’s car to send her to this mysterious to figure out her life.
Here is what I know:

  • From the 900 words, with very little written description  I know Jane is a blonde, ex-smoker who cheats like mad, and likes old technology. She’s angry, confused, and brave. She doesn’t know what happened, but she knows she’ll find the answer sooner or later. She has a dog named Gaston who is trained to respond to unique keywords. For example, “Chocolate chips” is his cue to go into attack mode. All of her immediate family is missing/presumed dead and she is an only child (this part may change).
  • Her aunt is going to be Nanny Ogg from Discworld mixed with Mrs. Roper from Three’s Company. Her store (yet undetermined) will also act as a meeting place for the local supernatural/paranormal world. Jane doesn’t know it yet, but her family has some special skills. This also will help explain her missing/dead parents.
    • A year or so ago, I was digging around for conspiracies about the 45th parellel and came up with, well, quite a bit. There were once thought to be magical properties and a major ley line, so if there is any good place to have a paranormal world, this would be it.
  • A couple of years ago, I wrote a very detailed sequence of events of how one of my characters lost time, but it doesn’t quite fit in here. I’ll see what I can beat into submission.
  • I recently read about when the British moved from Julian to Gregorian calendar in 1752, that Wednesday September 2 moved into Thursday September 14 to make up for the drift of time over the centuries. I’ve been toying with the idea this “lost time” as it were, plays into my story. Think of something along the lines of Jasper Fforde’s Thursday Next novels, except significantly less funny.
  • I’m debating on creating a new village in the area I am placing Jane or usigng an existing one. Jury is still out on this.
  • NaNoWriMo doesn’t have genre to fit this but it will best be described as paranormal/mystery/magical realism with a dash of quirk.
  • No romance unless it somehow moves the plot forward and pairing will not be the end all/be all for the final.
  • This will not be the great American-Canadian novel and I’m okay with that.

This should be enough to get me going for awhile.
More tomorrow.
TTFN,
Lisa

First Maker of Poetry: NaNoWriMo 2012

Dear Internet,
As my convalescence was ending in August,  I worked out a plan to jump start my writing as all the voices in my head were beginning to drive me to distraction. It was them or me. But as time marched on, my mobility has improved, and lifetm keeps getting in the way, some of those promises have gone to the wayside. I found when TheHusband would chain me to my desk and demand I write 1000 words, I could do that fairly easily, even with just a kernel of an idea. So with that in mind, I decided I’m going to use National Novel Writing Month as the public shame (in addition to TheHusband’s) to push myself back on track.
Goals

  • Write five days a week, 2500 words each day
    • Space break days apart.
    • Adjust word count appropriately if missed more then two break days
    • Does not include outlining or research
  • Blog five days a week, 250-500 words each piece
    • Blog pieces can be on any topic
    • Alpha/beta reading does not count towards blog pieces since these are private
  • No editing
  • No website design changes. Period.
  • Excluding household chores and the occasional eating, non-NaNoWriMo related activities (TV, cross-stitching, knitting, etc) are on hold until days word count has been reached

How you can support

 
Fingers crossed,
Lisa