Snark in the name of sex education

I wrote a thing for the Girl Museum blog a few weeks ago, for our 52 Objects exhibition (which is really cool in it's own right, and you should go look at it. That's why I linked it). I wanted to write on it when I signed up to do it, and then I didn't because I realized I'd have to actually, you know, do it, and then I had to because I said I would and the deadline was getting close.

And then I got angry. Which might sound weird, but I have a really big issue with a lot of sex education programs out there, because they suck. Some are ok–my sex ed was ok–not amazing, but at least the 4-J school district actually taught sex ed, and I got varying levels of it in the 5th, 8th, 9th, and 10th grades. Admittedly, the 10th grade version sucked because the teacher was bad at all things, and the 9th grade version was scary because Coach Bass was scary. In a good way, but still. 5th grade was biological, and divided by gender, which was good, and 8th grade focused a bit more on issues of "don't get pregnant, here's how not to (rather lacking in practical details, but at least we got told about things like condoms)" and that sort of thing.

What I don't remember any of them looking at, though, was issues of consent. That you can say no, and if you do say no, anything after that point is rape. Doesn't matter the circumstances, it's rape. Doesn't matter if you said yes earlier, if you're saying no now, it's rape. Consent is, in my mind, the single biggest thing that's not being taught, let alone being clearly taught. It's horrible, and we can see the outcomes reverberating throughout Hollywood right now, let alone in "joking" phrases like "No Means Yes, Yes Means Anal."

So yes, the notion of consent is a HUGE deal to me, and I hate it when people muddy the waters with phrases like "date rape" (sorry Mom, but I disagree with you completely). It's not different, it's not less rapey. I can understand why some people would like it to be different–it can change one's mentality to being less of a victim, but I think it muddies the waters in ways that allow rapists to think it's ok. It's not. Related, here's a funny, but irritating they had to make it at all, vido on consent.

All that to say that you should go read my thing over at Girl Museum. The post is here, and I got snarky because we were discussing changing some objects, and mine was possibly on the chopping block, especially since I didn't really want to write it (but we didn't know what would be coming in, so we wanted a backup we could run with). I strongly encourage watching, at least in relation to this post over here, the John Oliver video over there. Fluffy the Bunny is funny, and the actual object (the video "Molly Grows Up") is really interesting from a historical/sociological perspective.

Right, back to #NanNoWriMo.

#NanNoWriMo

Or, if you don't speak hashtag, and really, why would you, it's National Novel Writing Month. I'm not sure why it's has "national" in the title, since it seems to be a pretty international thing these days, but yup, November is the time of year when a surprisingly large number of lunatics commit to writing a novel in a month. This year, I'm one of those lunatics.

I'm not sure what other people accomplish; I can't write a novel in a month, even if I weren't working full time, but I also imagine others are more driven than I am (seriously, that wouldn't be hard). Conversely, I also know that the likes of Stephen King and John Scalzi don't get their stuff done in a month–and Scalzi's novels are under 100k (I believe he said they tend to sit between 80-90k), so expecting someone to pump out a 60-80k novel in 30 days is unreasonable. Also, you try writing 2k words a day (which is what Stephen King does). Unless you start repeatedly typing "balls" over and over again, it's hard to do with fiction. Especially for those of us who self-edit as we type, removing many extraneous words (no, "that' is not necessary for much beyond padding a word count). Less hard for academic work–not easy, mind you–or editorial pieces, but never easy.

That said, it should be entirely possible to get the barf draft out in a month. It won't be pretty, but it will be something complete to work with. At least that's my goal. Barf a full first, very rough, draft into Scrivener by 30 November, then leave it be until January or so, when I'll go back and start editing it for various plot holes, bad phrases, etc.

And I'm cheating. I took this week off from work (and the whole month off from Girl Museum, which is really weird for me, as I've not had a proper break from GM since I started in January of 2010), so I get an extra 2 days. Possibly up to 5, if I extend through the first weekend of December. Also, I wrote the first chapter several years ago, so I'm around 1100 words up to start with.

Though I'm only working on Chapter 3, and fairly certain that I really only have one chapter, just with a couple of breaks in it. Meh. I can sort that nonsense out later. Barf a draft up, first!

Don't expect this to be a regular thing, but for now, I leave you with this, the very beginning.

“That went well, I think.”
Anya looked at Lila in disbelief. “In what world did that go well? Sandwich is missing part of his little finger and all of his eyebrow, Nate is still unconscious, and you, well you’re just having a bullet dug out of your shoulder. None of that can be defined as ‘well,’ Captain.”

I wrote a thing!

You can read it here: http://standardissuemagazine.com/arts/here-come-the-girls/

I'm quite chuffed about it. Very little editing done to it, none of it onerous (just things to standardize to their style). It feels quite good to have written something that someone else has published, not felt the need to edit, and frankly, done it all in less than a week (though it was arranged about a month prior to that). Most of that week was spent trying to get images sorted out, anyway!

Go me! A positive start to a new year. May it be better than the shitstorm that was 2016.

Done

2016 fucking sucks. Get the hell out, and don't come back. I'm done with the shitstorm that is politics, war, and death of this year.

RIP Carrie Fisher