Word of Advice to Writers

If you're a writer like me who prefers to type their work, I have a piece of advice for you. Never, ever, ever, ever simply type your work into something on the internet (such as a blog post, or a poetry post form on AllPoetry). I guess I'm violating that right now, but this is not a story or poem so it's alright. Always, always type first into Word and obsessively CTRL+S. If possible, do this while hooked up to an external hard drive. And save to that external as soon as you finish. I know computers are unreliable, but the internet is even more so. I had learned this lesson before after losing some poems, but I ignored it yesterday, as I happily spent 3 hours typing up a story - into LiveJournal (God knows why I decided to use LJ instead of Blogger - I don't think I would've had such a problem on Blogger). It was autosaving often, and so I felt fine. I was getting ready to go to dinner so I stopped at a stopping point and pressed Publish. It said it published successfully. Always one to check, I clicked 'view entry now.' There it was - the first paragraph of my story. Nothing else. An entire day's work - all gone. Now, on Blogger the autosave automatically makes a draft. Not so on LJ. You have to manually create a draft by clicking 'save'. And I hadn't done that. Of course not. I haven't yet rewritten the story - but you can bet I'll be writing it in Microsoft Word. It almost makes me paranoid enough to make me want to write by hand, but I haven't done that in forever and know it takes far too long. Ah well, c'est la vie.

My interest in LGBT activism

Having attended the National Equality March, I have had some questions along the lines of "why are you so interested in LGBT issues?" So this post will attempt to answer that question.

I am interested in human rights in general, and I started being interested specifically in LGBT rights in college. I think the first time the importance of equal rights really struck me was during the Bone Marrow Drive freshman year. I was working one of health history tables, which is where they look over your info and take your cheek cell samples. A guy came up to me (I have no idea who he was) and sat down. I looked at his paperwork, which has a spot where you put if you have any of the AIDS risk factors. He was gay, but he had noted that he had recently been tested and was HIV negative. I called over one of the nurses. She told me we had to decline him. This man was willing to give his bone marrow to save someone's life, but I had to tell him he couldn't. It was crushing for me to have to say that to him. I felt terrible (and I still feel bad about it when I think about it). Clearly society values some people less simply for their sexuality. This didn't seem right to me.

I had already encountered discrimination against people. I come from a rural, intolerant area (in many ways - not just of LGBT identified people). I made my first gay friend in 11th grade - I didn't grow up around anyone openly very different from me, but my parents raised me to be open-minded, loving, and tolerant. This friend had a lot of issues due to his family's refusal to accept who he is and teasing and ridicule at school. So I knew there were injustices. In addition to that, I had fallen in with a group of evangelical Christians who preached the wrongness of homosexuality (I never really bought it, personally, which I'm glad about).

Not long after the BMD incident, I made a lot of friends in the Lambda Alliance. Now I am a great proponent of many of the movements for LGBT rights, and have been involved in some activism. I really think everyone deserves to be treated equally, regardless of any differences they may have. So there you go.

PS - if you want to see my story on the National Equality March (which made the front page!!!) go here.

Climate Change

So, I missed Blog Action Day slightly (because I was writing a Flat Hat article instead, which I'll put up tomorrow). Oops. The topic was climate change. I agree that climate change is a pertinent, important issue. Through polluting our environment we are making a negative impact on our earth, and it is really up to us to stop that. Seas are rising; soon there will be less beautiful places to travel to (and by that I'm implying everywhere is beautiful, not that being close to sea level makes a place beautiful). The place I'm from is not very high off sea level, and I worry that might be affected. I try to reduce my negative impact on the environment by recycling and making eco-friendly choices when possible. But even if I could eliminate my impact entirely, one person's efforts are not nearly enough. Individuals, though certainly they can help, cannot effect the kind of change necessary to repair the nature we've harmed. We need to get governments to pass laws which will stop manufacturers from polluting, and will cause automobile designers to make greener cars, among so many other things. Perhaps this is nothing new, and isn't saying much. But it is just a plea to care about climate change, and start taking steps in your own life to be a better friend to the environment. Also, check out other blogs that participated here.

Maryland Renaissance Festival and National Equality March

Basically copying my Yelp review for the Ren Fest:

This was my first renaissance festival. I was surprised at how affordable the food was (I had sort of been expecting Busch-Gardens-level expensive) and how delicious it was. I had macaroni and cheese on a stick (yes, it's possible) and a baked potato and tried some of my boyfriend's turkey leg. The shops actually had some high quality stuff (not kitschy at all). Watching the jousting was fun, and the German juggler had some cool tricks and was mostly funny. I was tempted to ride an elephant because I've always wanted to, but I wanted to save that experience for something more than a glorified pony ride. The best part is just watching the people. My boyfriend commented that it would be a time-traveler's nightmare, and I bet he's right. Nevertheless, it was good fun. I will second, however, another Yelper's comment about people smoking - it was quite inescapable, so keep that in mind.

As for the National Equality March, it was incredibly inspiring. Nothing like being with hundreds of thousands of people who are all gunning for the same change you want to see to brighten your day. On top of that, there was a spontaneous rainbow on the sunny, clear day, which we took as God's approval. Of course. I believe in rights for everyone. I don't think being slightly different should mean you hold less worth as a person in the eyes of politics. I stood by my LGBT friends and fellow allies as we marched passed the White House and up to our nation's Capital Building. I took a lot of pictures which I will share later. There were many signs; some funny and some simply true. I only saw 3 protesters, and they weren't doing a very convincing job. There were many states and colleges represented (people from Alaska, Princeton, U of Wisconsin, and Harvard, among those I saw). There are so many people who just want the same freedoms that the normative culture enjoy (marriage, the right to serve openly in the military, immigration rights, etc). I hope that the nation saw all of us in all our different shapes, sizes, colors, and personal identities and was inspired by that.

a quote

"How unyielding is that space between connection and interruption - one false move, one misspoken word, and you find yourself on the wrong side of things." - Dalia Sofer, The Septembers of Shiraz

National Book Festival

Thanks to the weather, which was highly rainy, my hiking plans for Saturday were canceled and so we decided to go to the National Book Festival on the mall in DC instead. The Book Festival happens every year and is put on by the Library of Congress. It brings lots of authors in to do book signings and give talks and has a lot of kid-centered activities to encourage kids to read. There are tents for several genres such as Poetry and Prose, Fiction and Fantasy, Mysteries and Thrillers, Teens and Children, and History and Biography. They were also giving out a lot of free reusable bags, which is sweet.

Jeff and I met up with Stan at Dunn Loring and got in at about one o'clock and met Alex there. Just as we arrived, massive bestseller James Patterson (who shares a name with my late grandfather) was going up to speak. He was surprisingly funny and clearly didn't take himself very seriously. He regaled us with anecdotes such as going into a bookstore to watch people buy his first bestseller but seeing someone steal it instead. All of these stories were of dubious veracity, but they were entertaining nonetheless. He has recently branched into young adult fiction and has a website, readkiddoread.com, dedicated to making kids readers for life. He talked about ways to get kids into reading and then got into his suggestions for writing. First of all, he advocated using outlines, which works for him. He also said "stop writing sentences and start writing stories." As a popular novelist, for him the story was the most important part, and he admitted to not being the greatest stylist there is. He also suggested working on multiple projects at once, which for him keeps writers' block at bay. He encouraged people to write every day, even if you thought whatever you wrote that day was bad, and if you were trying to write a novel, writing a page a day could get it finished in a year. When asked how he wrote so truthfully about a black family (his character Alex Cross who shares the name of one of the friends I went with), he stated that he thought people were more the same than people made them out to be.

After that I went to catch part of Julia Alvarez's talk, since I've read her In the Time of the Butterflies. She writes historical fiction about the Dominican Republic under the dictator Trujillo, where she grew up. She emphasized the political importance of reading about other countries' situations, even through fiction. She thinks that doing so can make us all freedom fighters in a way. She also talked about the importance of public libraries in getting her access to reading, which influenced her to write. I didn't catch any talk of her methods, unfortunately.

After getting some delicious cinnamon pecans, we went to see George Pelecanos, who writes crime novels set in DC and is a writer on The Wire. He told a story about a man in prison who got books sent to him secretly and eventually was influenced to write, and recently published his first novel (sadly I can't remember what it was). For him, research was the most important part of writing. He was mostly influenced by events in the news, which propelled him to write about those issues. He actually said the writing itself was not that fun for him, but that he liked getting the message out and doing the research. He also writes about people from vastly different backgrounds than himself, and says that the way he makes the characters authentic is to go to places where he doesn't belong, places where his characters might live, and just talk to people, and listen, and find their voice. I haven't read anything by him, but my friend Alex wanted to see him speak, and now I want to read a book by him.

I unfortunately missed Mark Kurlansky's speech - he's a historian whose book about Cod I am reading now. I thought about getting him to sign the book, but it's a library book so I decided not to. My friend Stan did get a book signed by him. We also failed in our mission to procure either a salt shaker or an actual cod to get him to sign (he also wrote A World History of Salt). Other authors present included David Baldacci, Judy Blume, John Grisham, John Irving, Jodi Picoult, Daniel Silva, Nicholas Sparks, and David Wroblewski. I kind of wish I had gotten there earlier to see more talks, or that I wasn't so tired of standing and wet from the rain so that I would have stuck around longer. Still and all, it was a great experience, and I hope to go next year as well. There are book festivals like this in other places, too (for instance, also one in Baltimore this weekend) - definitely check one out! To find out when and where your local book festival is, click here.

The Month of Vegetarianism

August has come and gone, so it's about time to reflect on that month where I didn't eat any meat. I don't feel like writing out a huge chunk of text, so I'm just going to answer many of the common questions I got and still get about it. Have another question you want to know about? Ask in the comments and I promise to add it.

Why did you go vegetarian for a month?

There were two main reasons I did this. The first was simple curiosity. I've been mulling over how I feel morally about eating meat (at the moment fairly ambivalent) and have been wanting to try out vegetarianism (I had been cutting down on meat anyway). When the lovely Amy challenged all her friends on Facebook to do a month of vegetarianism, I thought about it for a while and decided I would give it a go. I guess a month is supposed to give you a good idea of what it's really like.

Was it hard?

Easy question: no. For nearly the entire month I was on the West Coast, a veritable mecca of vegetarianism (especially Portland, which I was in for 3 nights in total). LA was a little trickier than expected. Coming back onto campus for that last almost-a-week was by far the hardest bit. Not to say I wasn't tempted, especially in LA (I attribute that to not having as many great veggie options). Also, I'm a bit of a foodie when it comes to tourism so I was a little sad to give up the opportunity to try some regional dishes - especially sushi in Vancouver. However, I plan to get back out there sometime, so not a huge loss.

Did you like it? Did it make you feel better?

I did like it, though occasionally wished to try a meat dish. Shamefully I mostly ate out so wasn't that healthy, however, I did notice a difference in the frequency of digestive problems (much less!). I always thought that was due to dairy consumption (I love cheese a little too much), but maybe that's not the whole story.

Are you going to become a vegetarian now?

Short answer: no. Long answer is that while I still feel a little guilty about eating meat (even more so now, I started having meat guilt dreams during August), this month also allowed me to discover the reasons I really would want to be vegetarian. Truth is, these reasons - health and environmentalism - can be almost as effective if I am eating only a little meat as they would were I eating no meat. And since giving up burgers forever is not a fun thought, I'm going to simply cut down on my meat consumption a lot. Sadly, the meat consumption is currently on an upswing, probably due to both feeling deprived and the lack of vegetarian options at the dining halls. I am going to set a goal right now to be fully vegetarian at least 2 days a week, and slowly increase that number as time goes on (FYI: I'm already half, or 2/3, vegetarian every day - I only eat meat at dinner [if I eat it], and of course breakfast is a bagel when I eat it so no meat there). I am currently using Tofutti Better than Cream Cheese and Vegenaise, and I use soy milk in my cereal and drink chocolate soy milk (SO GOOD).

Did you learn anything during this time?

In addition to whatever you can construe as learning above, I learned the difference between animal rights and animal welfare activism thanks to Amy. I have discovered that I am not interested in animal rights, as I mistakenly assumed I was, but instead, more interested in animal welfare.

On the whole I found the process enlightening and fun. I tried new things like tempeh (delicious!) and seitan jerky (not so much a fan). I got to the point where I don't loathe tomatoes. I ate at a whole bunch of amazing vegetarian and vegan restaurants, thanks to Amy's awesome trip planning skills (and her GPS, it must be said). In addition to that, I discovered a valuable resource in Yelp for general food and drink recommendations for cities, and HappyCow.net for specifically vegetarian recommendations. Overall I am very glad I did it, and maybe I will slowly become vegetarian - who knows!