Where I rage

"They weren't killed with guns but with hate. Well now I have hate!"
--Maria, West Side Story.

I forgive the author of my #MeToo moment because he changed. He changed into someone who could never do that again. But the person has changed and this jerk didn't.

I was the same age as Dr. Ford.

So when Senator Collins said that she didn't believe her and voted this prick bastard onto the Supreme Court. I raged.

I am still raging.

An open letter to Senator Collins,

I hope they haunt you.
The women who will die because of your vote.
Not only the women who will die when Roe is overturned.
Not only them.

But the woman who was raped and was told, by you, by your vote that if she comes forward no one will believe her.
Some will die inside as they hide away from the world.
Some will die because you have given people the idea that rape is somehow a woman's fault and they will commit suicide.
Some will die because they don't go to the hospital because you told them they will not be believed.    You told them that they will be laughed at. Not only that but it is all right that they are laughed at. I hope those women haunt you.

I hope you see their faces, white, brown, Asian, when you try to fall asleep and you can't.
I hope you hear their screams in your nightmares.
I hope you don't sleep.

I hope you know that because of you, that part of them have died.
I hope you get that.
I hope you suffer with this choice.

Moreover I hope you do not retire in 2020 and you get voted out on your ass.

I hope you don't suffer alone.
I wish the same on Senators Flake, Graham, and Grassley. I would wish it on McConnell but I don't believe he has a soul to be tormented.

I believe you do. And I hope you do. I hope you live a long life so you see what your actions have wrought. I hope you feel remorse then.

Until then, I hope you suffer as we are suffering now.

Writer's Digest Conference 2018--things that I learned

So.

What a weekend I had!

I went to the Writer's Digest Conference.
I was surrounded by writers.
I was surrounded by people who create.
I saw someone having a spirited conversation with herself. She saw me staring at her and she said, "I'm having a disagreement with my main character." and walked off.
I totally understand this.

I learned that other writers are not my competition. Nor am I theirs.
I don't read just one writer in any genre. Why should I assume my readers will? There is room for all of us on the bookshelf. (and if there isn't--we just build more shelves.)

I learned that if you are a female writer, you are not given as many chances to succeed as a male writer. Not nice--but it seems to be true. Women are more likely to be told to stop writing where men are told to write something else. (It was a fantastic discussion after one of the breakout sessions.)


I learned that there are many different opinions about writing a character who is not your race and culture. All of the opinions are valid. For myself, I know I could never write a story like The Hate You Give or Children of Blood and Bone. I couldn't.

That being said, no one else could write the story I'm writing with Shawn, a young black man as one of the ensemble characters, because I know Shawn. I hear his voice in my head clearly and I can't change his race or one thing about him. I will be getting (more) sensitivity reads, but he is who he is.

If we limit ourselves to what we know, we don't grow. Not as authors, not as readers. That being said there is a fine line between admiration and appropriation. Staying on one side of the line is safer. But don't bust through the line like a winning runner breaking through the tape. That isn't winning. The best line about this came in one session--"You can do it--just don't fuck it up."


I learned that for every "rule" you can name a book that successfully breaks the same rule. Which means that I can do--as long as I do it incredibly well.

I learned that stillness is power. On the page between characters  and sitting with agents pitching them. Four out of six want to at least look at my work. Two of them want complete manuscripts. I attribute this to good pitches, and a good story. I also managed to quell my tendency to babble and be still after my pitches--that's when they said--I want to see more.

I also learned I have a lot to do. A lot of writing and growing--but I'm running towards the path--not trudging my way to it. And That has more to do with the people I met there!

Thanks Writers Digest for an amazing conference!

To all who have come here from my twitter link--welcome! So glad to see you! Let's write the next chapter, shall we?

The new movie IT has monsters--and they don't all wear clown makeup

I first saw IT as a miniseries. Tim Curry scared the shit out of me as Pennywise. I fell for the losers both as adults and pre-teens.

I then read the book and fell for them all over again. IT is one of my top five Stephen King novels and I love the characters. So when my husband got two days off for Rosh Hashanah and my daughter only got one day off I knew that we were going to go see the movie IT.

I am very familiar with the book.
I reread IT every so often and I just finished listening to it on audio. I highly recommend this version. Steven Weber does such a wonderful job it feels like I am listening to someone telling stories by a campfire.


And then I saw the movie today

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For those who have never seen IT and don't mind spoilers. Here's a decent synopsis of the book.

I was going to oppose most if not all screenplay choices that were different than the book, I knew that going in. But I didn't expect to find myself disgusted with the tokenism and sexism displayed in the movie. They stripped down the characters of both the sole person of color and the female member of the losers club and made both of them practically unrecognizable.

Mike Hanlon.

The only black member of the Losers Club in the book and in the 1990 miniseries is intelligent and the person who is dedicated to the history of Derry.

In this movie he was the muscle who had the gun. In this movie he was homeschooled--heaven forbid he go to school with the rest of the kids. In this movie his parents were killed in a fire for no reason I could understand.

Why would someone change a nuanced black character into a non- nuanced one?  Why make him less? It sure as hell wasn't because Chosen Jacobs didn't have the acting chops. The actor did wonderfully with what he had, but wasn't given anything to shine with. All the history geeking went to the character of Ben, a white character.

Worst of all, in this EW article, they want to change Mike Hanlon's adult character to a drug addict.  To quote one of the comments to the article, "heavens forfend that he gets through each day with his own grit and forcefulness."  I hope they don't change Mike like this. If, when the next movie comes out, that does seem to be the case, I will not be in the audience.

Beverly Marsh

The movie takes away Bev's choices. Again, the only female member of the Losers Club and it rips the choices she made in the book away from her.

In the book, Bev was the markswoman. She threw the rocks better than anyone. She used a slingshot and she hit what she aimed at.  When the Losers follow IT into the sewers she is there because she chose to be there.

In this movie she is taken from her home after nearly being raped by her father. She spends the last act of the movie catatonically floating. She is the damsel in distress, not a member of the team and that's not what Mr. King wrote.


Monsters are a staple of movies. But with the sexism and tokenism--I have to wish that they had just stuck to Pennywise.