Reproduction and the Right

I'd like to start with this video from my friend Kit the Brave:

Yeah, I know. These quotes are from out of touch extremists. Except, you know, one of them has a strong chance to be the Republican nominee for president. And...in case you feel safer with Mitt Romney, well, there's this...what Romney thinks depends on who he is pandering to.

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I'd really like to be able to present these issues in a balanced, fair way, as I try to do with many of the things I talk about. But the problem is that those who oppose birth control are not thinking that through. Those who oppose abortion should SUPPORT birth control, right? Listen to what Romney said in Iowa in September. This isn't rocket science, right? More birth control=fewer abortions. That simple, yes?

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For the record, I don't have children. I forgot to put it on a to-do list. It never happened. When I finished my PhD in 2001, Bryon and I had the talk. We had pretty much waited too long. He didn't want children because he works with kids all day. Yes, I know that your own children are different, but hey, look no further than a nurturing job to take care of many of your nurturing needs.

Also for the record, I am very pro-kid. I like kids, and I'm not one of those childless people who has any trouble with taking care of the tykes. If we'd become pregnant, unless there was any medical issue that prohibited a healthy pregnancy and a healthy baby, we would have done the parenting thing.

But you know, I don't feel a child is my way to live vicariously in the world. I feel that there's a bit of a food/space/water shortage. And my immortality is not assured by a child. The memory of you tends to disappear in five generations, they say. So I'm happy with the alternative as well.

If I had had a child, I am in a good position to take care of one. But what if I had four children? It could be quite a stretch to take care of another if I had four. Or, what if I became pregnant now at 46? That's an age to have pregnancy complications, and we older perimenopausal women are the second highest group to have accidental pregnancy. Birth control keeps me from having these problems, or keeps me from having to weigh the very private and moral issue of abortion.

I could be abstinent. But...I don't have to. Birth control. Yay.

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Again, I don't understand the conflation of birth control with abortion issues, or birth control seen as an evil of its own. Men and women engage in family planning. Ninety-eight percent of women use birth control, and the majority aren't using it to be unfaithful. Statistics bear out over and over that men on the whole tend to be more unfaithful then women. We never here about how slutty guys are when they have sex. Ah, cultural double standards, how we perpetuate you!

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Mirrored from Writer Tamago.

Revising: Getting Organized

I freely admit that one of the things that is happening to me as a writer is that my drafting process is evolving. I expect that I will never find a solution that works for each book, but I am learning some things about my own creative process that seem to be useful to know.

Recently, I have become a believer in the gloppy first draft, which means don't edit. RESIST! Hard for me, but I get more material this way.

And then I find that I spend the second draft writing what most people might think of as a first draft: I take my gloppy exploration and throw out the dead ends and keep the good bits, and sort of put tentpoles underneath.

And then...I wrote a synopsis. This was helpful, because it indicated to me I had directions and developed characters.

Now, I am rewriting for a third time. I plan to rewrite at the slowest rate of one chapter per week (for 17 weeks?), and really dig deep on details and integrate workshop suggestions. This will probably be the workiest of the drafts right here, where things are really reshaped and some of my earliest reader concerns are addressed and evaluated.

Next I schedule what I call backweaving. I release the story back to some other readers (interested writers, interested readers, my token child reader) and I see what new suggestions come back to me. I evaluate those suggestions and address them accordingly. I am also reading the draft aloud, and checking for continuity--making sure everything that needs to be added in early is. I have given myself a month or so for this, because if I've done my job right in 3, the story should be pretty solid here.

And then draft 5. Another aloud reading, a proofreading, maybe a couple more readers who are really getting the story.

And then peripherals, and ta-da! Off it goes into the world.

With a month off for Taos and the 25th anniversary trip, that means that Abigail Rath should be ready for agents in November. At a slow, steady pace. If I can get through it faster, so much the better, but my expectations are realistic. This would mean about a year for the book.

I may well work on some other gloppy draft during the 4th and 5th drafts, as writers are wont to do.

I've never been this organized before. However, I find that setting goals at a certain point can be just as motivating to me as setting aside time. And since no one is imposing goals on me, I need to do so to myself.

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Catherine

Mirrored from Writer Tamago.