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Not the post I originally intended.

10/24/2014

1 Comment

 
10/24/14

I had planned on writing something about my current work in progress (and also my lack of progress), and comment on how sometimes a writer's worst enemy is him-or-herself.  But while I was in Marysville with my husband this morning, a very nervous and excited radio newscaster blurted something about a shooting in progress at Marysville Pilchuck High School.  Which is not far from where we were at the time.

Later that afternoon, the full story came out.  A very popular young man, a member of the Tulalip tribe, shot a girl who'd evidently refused him a date, and some of her friends, then himself.  It fills my mind and imagination, and I'm having trouble thinking of anything else.

Right now, two proposed gun laws are coming up to the ballot, and everyone is screaming about gun safety, stopping gun violence, etc.

No one seems to be asking how to just stop the violence, period.

When I was a kid, everyone had guns.  Yes, okay, I grew up in Alaska, and the majority of the population still hunted for food and no sane individual went on camping trips, fishing, etc., without something capable of stopping a bear.  But Dameon grew up in the lower 48, in a couple of different states and multiple schools, and has some of the same memories about guns from back then.  Things like trucks with rifle racks, which likely as not had rifles and shotguns ready to go in them, being no big deal.  Like a shooting club at school, with competitions and so forth.  Like people going out target shooting with their kids for fun on the weekends.

I don't remember it being a big deal when a kid brought guns to school.  Usually, it was because he or she was in the gun club.  Any kid carrying a handgun to school as an attempt to be intimidating was treated with more contempt than fear.  It was, at the very least, considered to be in appalling bad taste.  It also was a badge of cowardice.

My point is: We were as violent as any other bunch of teens in that era, toward the end of the Vietnam conflict, with our share of gang wars, protests, riots, rebellions, drugs, and so forth, but I don't remember anyone ever shooting anyone else in school.  I remember casual shootings as being pretty rare, period.  Okay, there was the occasional "Spenard divorce", where one spouse shot the other, but even they were not common.

Guns were not a joke or a toy.  They didn't give you bigger testicles, earn you automatic "respect", and no one cowered in fear from you if you carried one.  If you shot yourself by accident, you deserved it for being stupid.  If you shot someone else by accident, that was a tragedy, but people blamed you, not the gun.  If you didn't know how to handle a gun, you learned how or you didn't mess with them.

That's what we were taught.

What changed?  Where did the basic respect for life go?  The understanding of action vs. consequence?  Is it a lack of parenting?  The popularity of 1st person shooter games?  The level of violence in movies and on TV?  Guns being demonized by society so that they seem glamorous toys, not tools that need to be treated with respect? Toxins in our food, water, air?  Over-medication?  Combinations of these things?

I don't know.  I do know that the problem isn't guns, it's our society and, especially, how we're raising our younger generations.  We're somehow destroying them, or allowing them to be destroyed.  And no one is asking the right questions. 

Or maybe it's just that we're afraid of the answers.



1 Comment

Life and something like it.

10/20/2014

2 Comments

 
I've been debating the wisdom of starting a blog for years.  Many other professional writers, traditional and "indie", tell me it's essential.  Yet, some of my favorite writers, at whose literary feet I've worshipped for years, not only don't blog, they barely have anything resembling a real website.  I strongly suspect they were strong-armed into creating their current "websites" under duress.  Their agents or publishers called them up and said, "You need a website."

Writer: "But I don't want a website.  What would I do with it?"

Agent/Publisher: "Post news about your books.  Bits of your writing.  Something about yourself."

Writer: "Look, I became a writer instead of an actor because I'm not all that big on being on stage."

Agent/Publisher: "It's the way things are done now, kiddo.  Privacy is dead.  Readers want to know about their writers.  Get a website."

Writer: "But I only just retired my typewriter.  I know zip about computers."

Agent/Publisher: "Hire somebody."

Writer: "Oh, all right, fine."

And so it came to pass.  I'm not going to name names or post links to some of the examples of this type of site I've found, but they've certainly caused me to re-examine my own desire for a blog.

I had a site of my own, also called "darraghmetzger.com", up until very early 2014.  I took it down because it had been originally built and populated by a very generous and helpful friend of mine in a format and using a program that I found incredibly cumbersome and difficult to use or update.  And I couldn't blog on it, and I'd been told I absolutely HAD to blog.

But then, instead of immediately putting something else in its place, I went "tharn" (I use this word, which I took from Watership Down, a lot.  It perfectly describes how technological challenges affect me most of the time).  Build a site myself?  From scratch?  With a blog?  Ye gods!!  I had no idea where to start.

You have to understand, I really am a total technophobe,  Yes, I have to use computers at work for almost everything I do.  The deep loathing and suspicion I hold for them is mutual.  I can crash a computer just by sitting down and touching the keys.  Really.  My ability to summon the Blue Screen of Death with a few keystrokes is just this short of magical, and has been noted by colleagues on many occasions.  No one can screw up a program faster than I can.  My laptop has been into the Geek Squad so often, they know me on a first-name basis.  I'm a running joke among my tech-savvy friends.  I refer to my phone as a "Fred and Wilma" model.  I have a Twitter account, but have to use my computer to post to it because my phone is too old.  And I have no idea how to tweet, so don't even remember to check it every week.

Still, this being 2014, I have to deal with computers every day.  And each time I get asked to learn a new program, or sometimes just enlarge the limits of what I know with the programs I use, I still get that cold knot in my gut and a tiny voice that probably springs from something in my childhood squeaks, "I can't learn that or do that -- I'm too stupid, too old, it's too hard."  Every single time, I grit my teeth, sit down, get to work, and power through it, learn what I have to, and move on to the next challenge.  But it never gets easier. 

But on the other hand, I genuinely love learning new things and enjoy most challenges (as long as they're not related to computers), so weeks later, I finally girded my loins, and with the help of another friend who was willing to tutor me, I put together the current TFA Press site.  Check it out.  I'm actually pretty darned proud of it.  With that under my belt, I felt ready to tackle my own site again.

And promptly went "tharn" again.

Now, almost a year later, I've finally realized that I cannot possibly achieve my writing goals in a vacuum, and I need to move into the 21st Century (however reluctantly).  I need feedback, interaction, and input from other writers as well as my fans, and I need a vehicle to allow for that, since e-mail seems to be going the way of the dinosaur as well.

Ergo, a blog.

I hope to post contributions by other writers, comments on my current and previous works, the tie-ins between my work and my life, and so forth.  I hope you'll tune in now and again.  And feel free to send me a note or a comment.

My e-mail: darragh@darraghmetzger.com

2 Comments
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    Darragh:

    Every author writes because they have something to say.  Sometimes what I have to say doesn't fit in a story...yet.  So I put it here.

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