30 August 2014

A True and Fucked-Up Thing

This is an article from the Atlantic about what guns are most often used for. I posted it on Facebook a while back. Now I'm posting it here.

This is not a political statement. I am not anti-gun. I've had guns; I've lived in houses with guns; I can shoot a gun, and hit what I aim for.

When my son was a baby, his dad bought me a pistol, because he worked late into the night and I was home alone with a baby in the middle of nowhere. It would keep us safe, he said, when he wasn't there. I didn't want it, because we already had plenty of guns, but he wouldn't take it back.

One night, he got pissed off and shot himself with it. He's been dead 11 and a half years, and my feelings about it, like my feelings about guns, are really complicated. Would he have gotten pissed off and hanged himself? Opened a vein? Overdosed? No. I knew him, and no.

There's nothing that can be done about this, nothing I expect or even want to be done about it, because whatever gun control laws might dictate, under whatever present/future/ideal circumstances, he still would have had the gun. By the time it happens, it's too late to do anything about. Until it happens, there's no way -- because there's no need -- to prevent it.

But here it is, a thing I believe because I know it to be true. A ridiculous, impossible, senseless, fucked-up, true thing.

15 August 2014

Try, Try Again.

I'm going to write some things again.

I haven't written in a long time. When I write it's terrible, but I told someone the other day, I need to write even though it's bad (so bad), like running out the rust from old pipes.

I'm angry and hateful a lot. So many things are so frustrating, and they're not even things that relate to me in any direct way. It's just bullshit that bothers me, and I think it has a lot to do with the amount of time I spend online (particularly on Facebook -- thanks for your little mood-alteration experiment, assholes), not because I'm online but because I'm reading garbage rather than reading books, or writing.

How long has it been since I even looked at my book? I've gotten rejections from all the agents I queried a year ago, but never sent out another round of queries... partly because all the agents I queried said it was too serious and they'd never be able to sell it, even though the writing is "wonderful" according to one of just a few agents who sent a personal reply. Which means I need to work on my query so it doesn't sound so serious. And also work on the book some more because let's be honest, it's not finished. Or particularly good.

It is serious. But it's also not entirely serious, because could I really have just brooded over it for twelve years? Probably, but I didn't. Anyways, there's more to come so stay tuned.