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.

Hi, out there!

I really am still here. But today my husband brought home my NEW LAPTOP. And so i’m sitting at my desk in my office wondering why the hell I didn’t have one of these before!

My old laptop, as you might recall, bit the dust. It’s still usable but only barely. So now here I am with the Dell Inspiron  15, 7000 series. It has a 15″ touchscreen and you can flip it around so it’s in tablet mode.

I don’t honestly think I will ever use it in tablet mode, at least not without a big table to put it on. It’s pretty lightweight. And most importantly, the keyboard is the one they have on the 13″ screens.

Yes, I’m that woman.

When Bic came out with pens that were sized for women? Secretly happy. My hands are small; my wedding ring is a size 5 1/2. My son has a big 17″ laptop and I can’t type on it because the keys are so far apart. This one? Perfect.

I just wish a new laptop made the writing shinier.

I’ve spent the past hour or so…in deep research for the Polish Scouts? Which I’m going to start drafting on Tuesday? No, I’ve been looking for my passwords so I can put all my accounts on here. And I’d like to pretend that this was the first one, but it’s more like the fifteenth.

By the way, Dell hasn’t paid me for my input. But if they want to? I’m totally open to taking money.

Is anyone else tired of hearing about all the flaws of young people today?

Well, I am.

Young people are narcissists. They don’t think of anyone but themselves. Entitled, shallow, wanting trigger warnings, too connected to social media. Staying inside on the couch and never going out and doing things. Spending mom and dad’s money. Their parents are to blame! They don’t have any manners. They don’t respect their elders. When I was their age…

Yeah, that stuff.

I will admit that my oldest sits on the couch. I prefer this to him sitting in his room alone. From that couch he has now taken 11 AP classes, ranging from Calculus B/C to psychology to economics. He’s a talented clarinet player; he’s gone to All-State every year since he was a freshman, and he goes to clinics and classes and National Honor Band last year. He’s a leading light of the Santa Fe Youth Symphony Orchestra. He also volunteered to learn two more instruments for the school musical last year–and may I say there’s nothing more startling than coming home to hear “Always Look On The Bright Side of Life” being played on the saxophone, when as far as you know no one in the house plays the saxophone. And there’s more; he’s also getting famous on Reddit, where he is making the argument that Trump’s supporters on a particular subreddit are a hate group. It’s convincing; he just uses the posts these people make themselves. He’s talented, he’s engaged, he’s better educated than I was after two years at Sewanee, and you know what? He’s done all of it himself. Yeah, that kid’s entitled and lazy, that’s for sure.

My middle child is on social media all the time. She can’t do gymnastics anymore because of her knees, but she’s teaching it. She just started in marching band, where she plays the flute in spite of being told all of last year by other girls in her section that “she wasn’t good enough to be second flute.” She replied that she must be good enough or she wouldn’t be there. When I told her someone who was once a family friend would be at her sports practice and that she didn’t have to interact with him, she said, “That’s OK, I’ll just smile at him.” She still plays hockey, even though the attitudes that plagued us when she was younger are still around (I blog under my real name so I don’t want to be more specific). She draws and makes things, including an incredibly sophisticated cat costume for herself. She’s good with her siblings; she can make absolutely anyone laugh. Sometimes I find myself depending on her too much; she’s emotionally mature and she calms me down sometimes when no one else can. Yeah, that kid is sure too connected to electronics. And entitled.

My youngest is still learning that she can’t do everything! She is learning trumpet and sings in the choir, she does ballet and modern dance, she’s on the gymnastics team. And she’s a great friend; her brother and I used to despair because the kids she invited over here were quite often high-energy and hard to deal with, kids who didn’t have many friends at school other than my daughter. I never really know who’s going to be here when I get home; she has the most amazing assortment of people she likes to be around. And somehow, it all works when she’s there in the middle of them, making compromises and redirecting. She loves animals of all kinds, she loves her brother and sister, and she’s sad that next year her brother will be in college, maybe far away from us. She’s a sensitive soul, sometimes to the point of annoying me. She loves to read, and even more than her sister she makes things and we have craft supplies EVERYWHERE. Yeah, that kid is so entitled and doesn’t show any respect for her parents.

I know there are lots of other kids and young adults out there who are like my kids, making a life for yourselves and engaging on many levels. I love young people! And so should everyone else!

Since my last post, I’ve gotten two beta reads back and now I’m waiting for the third. I’ve already done more editing since it went to the beta readers. Ah, well, it wouldn’t be me if I wasn’t editing, right?

I answered a request from a friend so I have some more reading to do.

It’s an interesting experience to beta read for someone. Getting through the whole entire book isn’t difficult, exactly; it’s just that you can see something that isn’t working, say, on page 100, but there are still 200 more to go. You have to disengage from the thing that’s bothering you and push onward.

Getting a beta read was interesting too. One of my readers sent me a paragraph or so, and it didn’t really give me the information I was looking for. But the second did in-line commentary and also big story arc thoughts. I’m taking most of her advice to heart, although not all. I think about 80% of the issues she had were from me taking out the backstory.

But, no writing for me today. I’m going to the elementary school for my Yearbook Club, then my big kids have flute and clarinet lessons, then taking oldest to a college information session. I’m considering waiting for him in the car so I can do some work. And I’ve had to get a friend to pick up youngest from gym. Meanwhile I have about 1,000 phone calls to make, but am I making them? No, I’m messing around on Facebook.

And my husband is getting me a new laptop. I’m still using the old one, but I’m starting to be grouchy about it. I think a MacBook Air is in my future.