ellen mcbee

Well, it’s going OK. Like many people I got behind on my word count due to the election and the stress that brought. And it brought up a lot of questions.

It’s a good thing I’m only in the first draft. I think putting parallels between then and now in the book would be overwhelming.

Like many of us, I’m taking comfort in how close the election really was. And I’ve been thinking about the Electoral College, as many of us have. It had two purposes: 1) to make sure the slave states’ interests were considered in choosing a president and 2) to make sure that an unqualified person wasn’t elected. We don’t have slaves in America anymore, and we’ve elected an unqualified person that the Electors are going to vote into office. So why do we have it if it doesn’t serve any purpose?

But I digress.

Friends’ posts the past several days have brought up some questions I’m not sure I know the answers to. So I’m going to put them here for the moment so that I can remember that I want to know what they are.

1. What is fascism? How does it differ from other totalitarian movements? Does it have to be totalitarian?
2. What is a state? Do nations have to have borders? What makes people part of one country and not another?
3. Is nonlinear time going to work for this story? Everyone knows how World War II ends, but if I have fictional characters don’t I have to tell it in sequence?

All right; I’m about a thousand words behind. The current goal is to write a little extra every day, so I’m hoping to get caught up by the weekend. I’m not having any trouble thinking of things to write (I have a list of 11 main events on my bulletin board) and each girl seems to have a distinct voice. I’ve had a couple of historical characters stop by and it doesn’t feel shoe-horned to me. I will say that it feels a bit weird to say things like “the Scouts’ guns were kept in the basement” and things like that. I might just start referring to them as the Harcerki instead.

Okay, everybody…back to work!

I’m okay.

I’m disappointed, but I’m okay.

It looks like Heydrich is going to have all the votes he needs, and the Congress. The Supreme Court is next. So the tea partiers will finally have that mandate they’ve been pretending to have all along. Also, it will scare the crap out of them.

(For those who don’t know: my theory is that Heydrich is the linchpin in Amazon’s excellent series, The Man in the High Castle. In real life Heydrich was killed in 1943; in the series, he’s alive in 1962. So I think his survival is where the timeline split. And the unreality of this election is such that I feel like our timeline split today).

So, here are my predictions for the next four years:

1. Heydrich will lose all interest now that he’s won. Mike Pence will be the real president.
2. Abortion rights will continue to be chipped away, but not gotten rid of entirely. Republican congressmen’s daughters get pregnant, too.
3. Obamacare is over. But the way it will go–pre-existing conditions won’t be covered; Heydrich really will introduce death panels; gynecologists will be terrified to practice–will piss off a nation.
4. It will become embarrassingly clear that the administration has no plans and the clothes have no emperor.
5. There will be some huge scandal, like clemency-for-cash. America will shrug.
6. I still think there will be major upheavals in both political parties.
7. I think the alt-left will be founded, from sheer frustration that the truth didn’t set us free. It didn’t do anything except make people even less likely to use logic and reason. We’ll start posting lies that we KNOW are lies, because America will get stupider by the minute. I’m ashamed that Heydrich will sit in the same chair that Ronald Reagan sat it. And I hated Ronald Reagan.
8. I will still be the same person. I won’t hate people because they’re gay, Christian, Jewish, Muslim, African-American, trans, etc. I will still be writing this book, but with more impetus than ever. Because the deeper I go, the more I can see that Heydrich is the most dangerous of them all.

I’ll be watching you, Heydrich. I will never call you leader of our country. When you come for my neighbors, I’ll speak up right away. And you can start your dumb Twitter war with me any time you like. And when you turn my country over to Putin, I’ll remember that I knew who you were.

Also, I want to point out that it being Heydrich’s turn fits the pattern of American presidential politics. We get eight years, they get eight years. Poor people? Too bad you let your desperation change who you are. Heydrich isn’t going to help you. He’s going to help himself, at your expense. Your kids are still going to get crappy educations and you still aren’t getting your jobs back. So the joke’s on you. Except that it isn’t funny.

I have some news to report, other than that I’m participating this year.

I’m drafting the Polish Scouts project, tentatively called Shooting Diamonds at the Enemy. The full quote is, “We belong to a nation whose fate is to shoot at the enemy with diamonds.” Stanislaw Pigon, an eminent Polish professor of literature, said this on learning that Kryzstof Kamil Baczynski, a talented young poet, had joined the Szare Szeregi. Baczynski was killed in the Warsaw Uprising at the age of 23. Because all history has sad endings.

I think that’s going to be a theme in this work: you don’t save something or someone forever, you save it for today. Also, it’s fiction: the endings aren’t all sad. Everybody doesn’t have to die in the end.

I’m also committed to writing this story in non-linear time. I think. Maybe. If I’m smart enough. Everybody knows how World War II ends; and if you’re like me and you see some unfamiliar character, don’t you Google them to find out who they are? And what happened to them?

Anyway, I have started with the story of the German family. I’ve had to have two fictional characters (Sophie and Hannah) who are sisters; Hannah is much older so she’s going to have more things happen to her leading up to the war. It’s a way to tell about eugenics, and the bride schools, and various other pre-war stuff, and still be able to leave Sophie, Emily and Daria for the part of the story that happens during the war.

And it also looks like it’s going to be a set of three or four books.

I’ve been quite pleased though that the voice is coming fairly naturally, at least for Sophie. Now, how to make this girl a True Believer? And for her to come back again?

I guess that’s what the first draft is for. Last year’s NaNo book surprised me, too.