Derry, Northern Ireland

Derry, Northern Ireland
A book I'm working on is set in this town.

Sunday, August 7, 2011

I should not be proofing anything

Right now I HATE what I did with LD...including using caps for words I wanted to emphasize.  It's amazingly juvenile and I want to redo the whole fucking story.  Jesus, it barely makes sense, contradicts itself and jammers on and on, sometimes.  I was told I'd have to the end of August to submit a final draft by the publisher, but I sent it in early because I was coming to SA and had no idea how long I'd be or if I'd have a chance to work on it, anymore.  Now I just want to crawl under a rock at how embarrassing this thing is.  I'm asking the publisher if they'll let me resubmit.

Of course, I'm probably being hyper-critical.  I can do that, at times...and all over nothing.  One of the joys of being a writer, I suppose.  From now on, I should put the story in a drawer for 6 weeks to get some distance from it before I do a rewrite.  I used to do that before I got so sure of myself.  Guess I need a little slap now and then to remind me of reality.

Next week will be spent ferrying my little brother around to find an apartment he can afford and a job...preferably not in that order.  It's been suggested he be dumped at a homeless shelter called "Haven for Hope" but I can't do that, and my sister agrees.  We promised our mother we wouldn't and besides, when I went by there, it was anything but inviting.  It's a couple blocks from the county jail and surrounded by a freeway and sad, run-down little shotgun houses where the poorest of the poor live.  No grocery store or even a convenience store that I could see...though it does have a dental clinic.  It also has fences and bars to keep the uninvited out.  And this is considered the best way to handle what could be a problem.

People keep amazing me with what they think are acceptable solutions to difficult situations.  For example, rather than raise taxes on billionaires and companies that take American jobs overseas, the GOP instead worked it so the US's credit rating took a hit, thanks to their intransigence on lifting the debt ceiling.  (Of course, S&P are hardly credible, themselves; they liked Lehman Brothers right up to the end, and their reasoning for the downgrade used figures that were off by $2 trillion dollars...and that is NOT a typo.)  But none of it was necessary and all of it was ludicrously childish...and most of that was thanks to Obama behaving more like a parent trying to silence a 5 year old lost in hysterics than a president out to lead the most powerful nation in the world.

I once said civilization is headed into a new dark ages...meaning deliberate ignorance and selfishness will take us over...and damned if it isn't happening right before my eyes.  When Rome collapsed and the world careened into chaos, it took over 500 years to bring us back to the point where we were able to see learning and intelligence as positives instead of something to be feared and jeered.  And even then, it was another 300+ years  before the Renaissance took over and catapulted us into the stratosphere.  Now we're crashing back to stupidity like Icarus did when he flew too close to the sun...and the Tea Party is leading the way in the US.

There's no excuse for this.  None.

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