Day 17:

Another super-early wake-up, in good health and mood. Good! Lots to do today.

Happy Wednesday, CoSo - whenever you rise to meet it. 🌃

Today's (early) walk before evening work involved listening to this LRB Podcast on "Africa's Cold War", which speaks to ongoing occupations that hinder full autonomy and self-determination among many African nations. An intricate and important conversation. #GlobalHumanism
https://pca.st/episode/79d1effb-0356-439a-9bba-04cb0ee0ef66

👌🏻

#Books #Literature

Cormac McCarthy has died at 89 (confirmed today by his publisher, and announced by Publisher's Weekly).

McCarthy's work taught me that it was perfectly fine to write in whatever mode the story called for. Sometimes that's minimalism. Sometimes a whirlwind of rich prose.

But most importantly?

He taught me that history is littered with erasures. We fill in the gaps where we can.

I am grateful for his life.

#Books #Literature #WritingCommunity

Building out a whole new culture, rich with its own diversity and traditions, is an absolute trip.

Doing so in a far-flung sci-fi setting, where you have to be careful about the science around every single material, process, and floral/faunal reference you choose to include?

Amazing. I love this part.

#AmWriting #SFF #WritingCommunity

Also:

A vendor friend of mine has a son who's been travelling the continent - but he's been held up by a rough turn of events. Paraguay has strict laws about street drinking (Colombia does not), & some of his friends got arrested: court date unknown, the Colombian embassy thus far not involved, lawyers too expensive, and...

The poor kid is bringing a pot of lentils, rice, & beans for his friends to eat each day.

We do not live in a just world. Safe travel is a privilege afforded to very few.

Oh, this is a fierce one, folks.

Today's #Newsletter talks about #SFF's tempests in teapots (like the cozy horror chatter currently plaguing the bird site), but it also calls for us to remember what we share with other labourers.

Where is our class consciousness, when picking our battles?

#BetterWorldsTheory
https://mlclark.substack.com/p/lessons-from-the-vending-life-outside

Day 16:

Waking an hour before my alarm. World is calm. Highway near-silent. I think my body knows I have a 5-hour window for writing the novel today between other work.

Well, all right. :)
Let's get this day started, eh?

Happy Tuesday, CoSo!

Time for a walk, and then tomorrow's newsletter. :)

Hope you've all had brilliant Mondays and/or survived them!

Afternoon, CoSo!

Not my favourite topic, honestly, but today for #OnlySky, I cover reactions to last Thursday's indictment, and push for us to remember that no individual rises to unchecked power without a whole system built to shelter and support him.

This underlying culture is what the US must reckon with now, if it's ever to build a better union.

#Politics
https://onlysky.media/mclark/after-the-indictment-the-deeper-political-schism-behind-the-spectacle-of-trump/

I'm not surprised. I'm just sad. We could have had such nice things. https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2023/jun/12/nine-out-of-10-people-are-biased-against-women-says-alarming-un-report

I had a chat with my first reader about my trilogy, and it just made me so excited to finish Book 1 and present it to my agent.

She's a phenomenal person - strong Christian abolitionist working actively on carceral reform issues, taking her faith to heart in sitting with people in prison and via rehabilitative justice circles.

We bonded over the restorative justice in Children of Doro. My trilogy has a *huge* restorative justice arc to it, too, so...

Just gotta get Book 1 finished soon! 🤞🏻

Day 15:

Waking creaky but calm. Morning CoSo! 🍵

Yesterday I outlined the key themes, storylines, & knowledge centres for the book-that's-now-a-trilogy. (Key to have that summary for my agent when I submit Book 1 once it's ready.)

Still lots to do, but for now, other work awaits.

...Including an article this morning involving a person I greatly dislike having to write about. (But! It'll have my humanist spin on it, so hopefully I won't need a scalding hot shower to feel clean again after. 🙃)

Day 14: I got up WAY too early, so even though I'm itching to start the day's writing, sleep hygiene matters, so I am slowing my roll for this first hour (podcast and closed-eyes time, with lovely rain sounds in the distance), and THEN I'll get writing at 4am.

Happy Sunday, at whatever more sensible hour you rise to greet it!

It was important to say something to this teen picking on littles.

My Spanish still glitches when I'm nervous, but I told him that he had responsibility to use restraint because he was stronger, & to remember that he's setting an example to these other boys for how to be.

The younger ones cheered & agreed with me, & I brought the older into the fold by saying that he was still learning, too. & he listened. All ended well. But whew! My first time getting involved in a row in a second language!

Well that was a first. 😬

In the park, there was a group of 9 boys, and the eldest by far was beating on one of the younger 8, who then collapsed sobbing while his little brother fell weeping over him to protect him from more.

I stopped, and a Colombian woman did, so at first I deferred to her. But while she helped the boy up, his brother still clinging to him, the eldest kept defending his actions: it was the child's fault if he got hit for messing with someone bigger. The woman left. But...

Y'know, I thought I'd poured everything into Then Raise the Dead Man High & Children of Doro - the two complementing each other: one humanism in the worst of times, one humanism at its most aspirational.

But as I reach the 3/4 mark in A FERTILE SOURCE OF RUIN, knowing I'll need a trilogy to tell this ancient story of human struggle with nationalism well... I'm struck by how much more there always is to do.

(I think you'll like this one.
It's got an engaging clip.)

For now? Time for a walk. 🌺

Wee afternoon tea & #Poetry break. 🍵