Holiday Season

Ever since August, Costco has been decking its halls. The number of catalogues in the mail has tripled. At least one local radio station has gone over to all holiday music, all the time.

Holidays are difficult. I'm thousands of miles from my family and the newest generation of awestruck children. It never really feels like Christmas here, and all those songs about Jack Frost's icy mucus and winter wonderlands glazing the garbage dumps with magic are pure bilge when there are roses blooming in every garden and no frost for 87 miles.

One way I avoid the holiday season is by immersing myself in NaNoWriMo until my eyes fall out. Or rather, until Thanksgiving is well past and the Christmas season is upon us. And then I'm too bleary-eyed to care much.

However, there's one holiday I can seriously get behind. I like the idea of Trucemas, and I'm one of those people who celebrates Christmas as the birth of the incarnated Lord.

Some suggested ways to celebrate Trucemas:
* Avoiding all malls, shopping centers, parking lots, and big-box retailers until at least January 15
* This goes double if you are employed in any of these
* Playing “Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer” a minimum of once per day
* Playing “Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer” a maximum of once per day
* Being kind to people who annoy you
* Yes, even family members
* Yes, even the ones who give you fruitcake
* Sincerely thanking annoying family members for the lovely gift of fruitcake
* Cramming the gift fruitcake into the public address systems of any mall, restaurant, school, or big-box retailer that is currently playing Christmas Muzak
* Binding and gagging anyone who comes to fix such systems (mince pie makes an excellent gag if you're out of fruitcake)
* Reading or rereading Terry Pratchett's Hogfather and similar uplifting holiday tales
* Watching the Mr. Magoo Christmas Carol
* Watching “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” and lamenting the absence of elf-ridden electric shavers from the commercials
* Watching “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” and replacing “Rudolph” with “Adolf” and “Reindeer” with “Nazi”
* Arguing over whether Goebbels or Goering should be Yukon Cornelius
* Arguing over whether Goebbels or Goering should be the Abominable Snowman
* Having more eggnog
* Threatening to sic the Blackshirts on anyone who uses canned, pre-grated nutmeg on your eggnog
* Honing a butcher knife while explaining the role of suet in (A) the human body and (B) mince pies to anyone who does not display the appropriate Trucemas spirit
* Getting enough sleep
* Reading “A Child’s Christmas in Wales” aloud
* Remembering that you do love at least some of your family, at least sometimes

May your days be merry and bright, and may all your Trucemasses be covered in blooming roses.

WRITING: Notes on Writer's Block

I came home from the retreat relaxed and happy, proud of my word count, overflowing with the book. And *immediately* was slapped in the face by the cold, wet, unmistakably rotting Salmon of Sucktastic Events.

It was the kind of thing that could easily derail me -- something nasty that could have left months of doubt, suspense, anger, frustration, and uprootedness in its wake. I was afraid I would lose the book. That has happened in similar circumstances; as longtime readers may remember, I haven't finished writing a book since November 1997, when I finished the last one and promptly fell apart under the accumulated weight of tragedy. (Viz., the death of my niece, the move, the long slow anguish of my father's terminal cancer, the destruction of my marriage.) I went through a writer's block so ferocious that I could not sign my name, even. And although I've come a very long way from that desolate place, I am afraid of returning.

I also knew that "losing the book" was no way to think about the situation, and I was damned if I would give my power away to some bloody imaginary muse. So last night, while Michele was at choir practice, I went to Star*ucks in Castro Valley and tried to write. I left after an hour; it was crowded, and people were starting to look askance at the fat girl in the corner crying as she tried to type.

So I went out to the car, cried more, pounded the steering wheel, picked up Michele, went home, went to lurk in the studio, responded as civilly as astonishment would allow when Paul, in an act of clueless daring, came in to ask me if we had any instant mashed potatoes, and then typed in some of the anger.

And broke the forming block. Stopped it dead. Slashed it away with honestly expressed anger.

This was a victory.

I know what I need to have in order to write. I've worked damned hard to create those circumstances. And I am not going to allow a faint echo of a threat of losing them to make me freeze up. I won't allow what I need to be stolen away by my own fear.

If I am homeless I will still write.

If everyone around me leaves or dies or is damaged, I will care for them and myself, and I will tell stories in the dark of the night as I go to sleep.

If I am trapped in mind-numbing jobs, doing work I don't care about for people I don't care for, I will do as good a job as I can manage because I want to live up to my own standards, and then I will take a nap, gather my forces, and do the work that matters most to me.

I will write. I will tell the stories.