All Taxes Eve

It's September 14. If you're self-employed in the U.S. - and if you're a freelance writer, you're self-employed even if you also have a day job or two - third-quarter taxes are due tomorrow. I tend to forget these things, but fortunately Damon remembered and I did the math and wrote the check yesterday.

This is the kind of thing writing classes ought to cover. After all, you can stick your own butt in the chair every day and check writing teachers out of the library - Dickens! Shakespeare! Diana Wynne Jones! Carolyn Keene! - and learn from the best and the worst, on your own time, at your own pace, any time you feel like it. It's fun, it's cheap, it just takes a little discipline. Keeping the ledger, paying the taxes, networking, promotion - those are the hard parts, and classes are hard to find.

The last time I didn't do quarterly taxes was, um, twenty years ago. I was charged a late fee even though the annual taxes were submitted on time. Laws keep changing, but I bet the government still wants you to pay as you go. Since then I note down everything I make through writing - not just advances and royalties, but appearance fees, any books I sell direct to the public, any penny related to writing - and stick it all in savings. Yes, savings, because day jobs are for covering bills. Writing income is special and unreliable. Come tax time I total the earnings, divide them by three, and use the vouchers and envelopes provided by the IRS to send one-third of my earnings for that quarter, extracted from savings for that purpose, to pay for democracy. I will never be in a 33% tax bracket, but charging this exorbitant rate cushions me from the effects of any large year-end windfalls that might arise, late fees arising from my losing track of the calendar, or other surprises.

If my income includes book sales, I should also fill out forms and write checks for sales tax; but normally my direct book sales are so trivial I only fill out the annual form, and under Texas law this is fine, as along as I remember to fill out the form once a year even if I owe no taxes. I hate filling out sales tax forms because I have to figure the actual percentage and keep track of whether I sold the books here or in Austin or where ever. This, by the way, is why authors need those math classes. It's too late for me, but if you're a teen-ager with authorial ambitions blowing off math, take warning. If you take nothing else away from high school, learn how to figure sales tax!

Authors in other states will have different sales tax requirements and state income tax to worry about; authors in other countries will have to deal with their own tax laws. But the basic requirements are the same everywhere:
1. Keep track of income
2. Keep track of expenses
3. Get professional help. I'm serious! Accountants are paid to keep up with the tax codes and forms. You're not. They know about things like late fees and deducting mileage when you drive to the library (but I can't deduct bus fare; how much sense does that make?) and what disqualifies you from using the guest bedroom where your write as a home office deduction. You can pay their fee out of the refund you get for overpaying on quarterly taxes.
4. Get your paperwork in on time.
5. Don't lose the vouchers. I keep mine in the back of the accordion file where I put the receipts.

Then put your butt back in the chair and get back to writing, as without work in hand you won't earn anything. But start tracking your expenses now, even if you've never sold a penny. You can claim the business as a loss on your annual income taxes, as long as you can demonstrate a good-faith effort to sell your work. And you need to develop good business habits well before you start to need them.

Idea Garage Sale: An Invasive Species

I was on the balcony writing when I heard that deep-throated ventriloquist "meow" cats use when their mouths are full, and out came Thai with a mouthful of bird.

Thai is a lousy hunter, so it wasn't dead. I know some people say when a cat brings you live prey that they want you to play with it and learn to hunt for yourself, but I assure you, Thai doesn't know how to kill things. So I would have had no choice but to take it from her, even if it had been a house sparrow, which honestly I'd as soon she killed as not. But it wasn't. I think it was a juvenile Carolina Wren, though it had an eye ring instead of an eye streak and the tail was missing. It was so small, and the beak was a wren beak, and the breast feathers were yellow.

Thus began the great pursuit. Of course I didn't succeed in taking it from her. She let it go before I could, and then I was running interference to keep her from catching it again and it was hopping and flying frantically, until it wound up in the bedroom between the wardrobe and the built-in bookshelves. So I shut Thai out on the balcony and tried to drag it out with a towel, but no dice. But the wardrobe is in an alcove created by the bookcases being built around a disused but not filled-in door to the study. So I went around to the study (having to shut Bruce out of that room and the bedroom, which is a more elaborate process than it sounds like), moved the full bookcase, and opened the door.

Now, I had been feeling lousy and moreover this was during the period when the desktop computer wasn't functioning and we were still trying dodge after dodge to bring it back. The wren had all kinds of dusty holes and corners in which to hide, and took advantage of them all, while I couldn't google "animal rescue" or "How do I get a scared wren out of my study?" But, being the old-fashioned kind of person I am, I had the phone book and a landline, and I used them.

Most of the animal rescue places weren't answering their phones for one reason or another, but I finally got one, where a woman told me to darken the room, open a window, and leave it alone for awhile so it could find its way out. I told her I wasn't sure it could fly. It was fluttering around about the height of the baseboards and had no tail. She said in that case when it tried to get out the window I should put it in a box and bring it over.

The study is not that easy a room to darken. I tried to hang a towel over the windows in the balcony doors, but it didn't work well. The wren had settled down behind the filing cabinets, which is near the corner with the open window, so I built a crude pen out of file boxes and stuff that could be set flush to the floor and were taller than the wren's demonstrated flight capacity. Concerned that she was probably overheated and lacking any other bait, I set a shallow dish of water in the middle, shut the connecting door, fetched an indignant Thai off the balcony through the bedroom, shut her and Bruce both outside, and had lunch.

After lunch, I came back up in time to see the wren perch on the water dish, fly from there to the window, and fly away.

So I swept the study (the doorway was filthy) and put everything back where it belonged. Thai snubbed me all day, making a point of being near me so I could see her doing it.

If you don't automatically think "picture book" after all that, you should reconsider whether writing for children is your true calling. The situation is accessible to small children, the action is visual and potentially funny, rife with ways to delineate in art and text the soft-hearted, muddle-headed, messy householder and the desperate but resourceful young wren who doesn't trust her, and it ends with a punch line. Depending on the emphasis chosen, you could imply morals about keeping your workspace tidy, courage and resource in the face of danger, or even training your cat not to hunt. Make the householder a dog to whom the visiting cat has brought a live bird as a present, to make up a quarrel (she says!) and you've got a Beatrix Potterish anthropomorphic social farce.

That's the obvious use. But why stop with the obvious? Especially when the obvious is a format I've never been much into. I never even read them much, advancing to chapter books as soon as feasible, and you may not have noticed this, but my wordcounts tend to run high for a picture book.

Couldn't I also use an anecdote like this as an anchor for an article for a nature magazine? As part of a work of non-fiction on urban wildlife and how to deal responsibly with the intersection of human residence with the animal world? Raccoons and possums in the attic, skunks under the shed, squirrels on the bird feeder, mice in the compost heap - I've got them all. Can I write about them? Could it be a fable? A cartoon short subject script? (Nope, not getting into scripting, either!)

With my productive work days averaging about four hours long lately, I'm not going to divert any energy into developing this idea in any of those formats. I need to focus on Len, and keeping the existing projects in the mail, and keeping the house and yard from smothering in neglect. It's not impossible I will use this someday.

In the meantime, having put it into a blog post, which is using it after a fashion, I can forget about it for awhile.

Writing Checks my Style Can't Cash

This is one of those wake-up-in-the-middle-of-the-night things.

This week, Len said to Cave of Bean: "He'd jump off a cliff if I asked him to." I thought this conversation was setting up the plausibility of Di's hiring Len to train Pegasus to be "a lady's horse," since Bean demonstrates her ability to turn out a calm and tractable mount. But it's also a promise to the reader that at some point Len and Bean will have to jump off a cliff. Why it took me till the middle of the night to realize this, I don't know.

This all implies a much more action-heavy climax than is normal for me, or than I'm confident of delivering, and reminds me that despite all my attempts at Di-style planning, I still don't know a lot about the second half of the book. The half I'm coming up on.

The kind of book in which transvestite and horse are desperate enough to jump off a cliff together is a lot more exciting than the kind I normally write; or than the first half is setting up, in fact. If I go there, I'll also have to do some heavy revising of the first - criminy, I'm on the 16th chapter and still feel it's all set-up. This is an intimidating amount of work, not just for the revising, but for my individual style. I've never been an action writer. In order to justify that single tossed-off boast, I'll have to become one.

Or, I can delete the sentence.

Hell, no. If you're going to fail, fail big. Excuse me while I look for a cliff.

Planning More Research Trips

I was going to go out to Helotes today, but tropical storm Hermine took care of that. I didn't stop in Helotes on the way out to Bandera because I was under the misapprehension that it didn't exist during the relevant time, and though I learned different on the trip, I was so tired on the way back, and Helotes is so close, I didn't stop. Now I know that Len makes a stop there while tracking Pegasus, I need to poke around a bit as soon as the weather clears.

The big plans are for October, Texas Archeology Month, and I'm going to have a sticky time making decisions. San Antonio events include "Exploring Ancient Water Systems in a Modern City: San Antonio and the Acequias," on October 12, and "Privy to Investigation: Archaeology of Outhouse Pits and Artifacts from the Alamodome Project, San Antonio, Texas," on October 19, at the Institute of Texan Cultures (can't pass those up!) and Volunteer Days at Rancho de las Cabras, on October 2 and 16 and November 6. Further afield, and more on task, the 10th Annual Val Verde County Archeology Fair will feature the Texas Camel Corps. Since the animals are making themselves characters more than I intended them to, it behooves me to meet a camel. Plus, various opportunities to see rock art, a Gault Site tour which I don't need but at which I might be able to make myself useful (but that will be up to the volunteer coordinator), "How the Confederacy Armed Itself," in Houston on October 21 - in short, much, much more than I will be able to do.

Lots of driving, lots of infodumps, and writing will slow to a crawl for awhile. So I'd better do all the work I can between now and then, and plan my events with care.

Idea Garage Sale: The Tritelight Zone

A man wakes up in a strange landscape, with a perennial migrainoid visual effect that made the world look flat, nonsense sounds coming out of his mouth and those of everyone around him. He makes up his mind to do one thing and finds himself doing something else. He soon realizes that his wife, who he was thinking of leaving (or even murdering) has stuck him in her Sim game.

This man's conflict with his wife stems from the fact that, when she believes she knows what's best for him, she is almost always right. He is one of those people who take pride in his own perversity, which he calls individuality; who says "If you tell me not to do something I will sure as hell do it" without realizing that this is handing other people the control of his life that he takes such pride in retaining. His wife, however, is a simple soul who gives him good advice straight on and thinks he ought to take it because it is good. So when it became clear that he would never humble himself to behave sensibly, she stuck him into her game, where she could see to it that he got to work on time, improved his skills, and hardly ever picked fights with people.

Hardly ever, because she doesn't play him exclusively. She has other exes, and some relatives, she has to take care of, too, and of course when she sends one of them to a community lot and the protagonist turns up as an NPC, he has free will and can play up as much as he wants. But as time goes on he realizes - and resents - that he really is happier when he behaves as his controller wants him to behave. Possibly he can communicate with the other trapped personalities and they work out ways to rebel, but since they're all there for roughly the same reason coordinated activity is problematic. Everybody wants to be ringleader and nobody wants to follow anybody else's plan. Eventually he probably becomes resigned to the whole thing.

I conceived this notion during the Year from Hell, when I spent a ridiculous amount of time playing Sims. I know a lot of people do awful things to their electronic dolls, but I've never understood the impulse. The attraction of the game for me has always been that I could make the little buggers be happy, whether they wanted to or not. (Also, house building. And endless generation of pun names. Larry Penates. Sally and Gerry Mander. Maddy Moiselle. Polly Phonik. I would write them down at work for access in the averbal evenings.) When chance or stupid game rules or miscalculation made them miserable,I could swoop in and address the problem. If worst came to worst, and one of them died because another one wouldn't get out of the way and let someone out of the pool and I was busy on another part of the lot and didn't notice, I could close the game without saving and rescue him that way.

I can't do that in real life. I wish I could. Some of the Year from Hell could have been prevented if Certain People had done what I wanted them to do rather than what they wanted to do (no, really!), but I had no control over that. Some could have been mitigated if I, or anyone, had picked up certain foreshadowings in our lives and acted on them; or if I had made this choice instead of that choice ten, fifteen, twenty years before. But, we didn't, and reality has no option to quit without saving and reboot from the most recent back-up.

The weakness of this trapped-in-a-Sim world concept is obvious. You could make a Twilight Zonesque short story out of it, I suppose. Somebody with more satirical flare than me might be able to turn it to good use. But it's hard to think of a direction in which to take it that would achieve anything. Ultimately, it's as pointless as a Sim lifestyle. Not good literature at all.

Eh. We all have bad ideas.

Why I Love Literature

So anyway, I was reading a book called Jane's Fame, by Claire Harman, which is a history of Jane Austen's reputation. Her literary one, mostly, but with her, even more so than with most authors, it's all tied up with her personal reputation, and what people assume about who she was and what she thought and felt (in the face of a dearth of solid information, thanks to her sister's notions of privacy). It is in regard to these assumptions that I find this story particularly delightful.

The first reliable French translation of Jane Austen's work was undertaken by one Felix Feneon (excuse me for leaving out the accents; the present internet setup refuses all subtleties) in the 1890s. He discovered her while he was in prison on suspicion - and pretty reasonable suspicion at that - of being associated with an anarchist bombing. He was a War Ministry clerk who kept detonators and mercury in his desk. Kept in solitary while awaiting trial, he was denied access to outside reading matter and soon read through all the French volumes in the limited prison library - which apparently only stocked female authors on the grounds that they wouldn't corrupt the morals of prisoners, or something like that. What remained was Northanger Abbey, so he read it.

And he loved it. Unlike many of her more conservative fans, he saw all kinds of satiric savagery in her social commentary; and he immediately set to work to get permission to import an English dictionary and begin a translation. After he got out, acquitted of anarchy but fired from the War Ministry anyway, he worked in company with John Gray, a lover of Oscar Wilde's (who was at that time languishing in Reading Gaol and complaining he could get no Jane Austen at all) and supposed to be the model for Dorian Gray, to finish the translation, publish it, and move on to the rest of the novels. Feneon's subsequent literary career included being the first French publisher of James Joyce.

What is not to love about this?

August was the Weirdest Month

I will burden you with no details, this being primarily a post to test whether the outmoded internet juryrig currently available to me will in fact let me add to the blog. Only, be assured that I have not been idle during the last two weeks. Len's story is advanced to the point that the agonizing doubts have started kicking in. My spontaneous ideation has gone from "surefire Printz winner which will turn into a series and a blockbuster movie that brings the horse opera back to popularity, with a soundtrack by Melissa Etheridge and k.d. lang in an historic collaboration" to "takes too long to start, I spend more time on establishing shots than on action, Di has hardly appeared on stage yet, all the men act like women insteade of Len acting like a man, and the timeline doesn't work at all."

This self-doubt business is ahead of schedule, but not disruptively so, and not strong enough to make me walk away from the book to see if it needs more growth time, or to kill my belief in the story. I have, after all, set myself a steep set of hurdles with this one, the highest of which probably is creating characters in a conflicting zone where modern ideas of gender normative behavior meet, not only historical ones, but modern ideas - mediated by the likes of John Ford, John Wayne, and Louis Lamour - about what historical ones were. Add in the fact that a Civil War-era Texas frontiersman relieved tedium by reading everything he could get his hands on and therefore knew Shakespeare, Schiller, sentimental poetry, Scott, and Homer better than most modern college freshmen, and you can see my problem clear enough.

I'll solve it, or I won't. Stories that are within my proven capability are boring to write. An author's reach must exceed her grasp, or what's a heaven for? Not that I believe in heaven; the more incentive to perform great labors on the earth, in hope of getting one of them right and leaving a monument to my own existence. Though, if all my castles in the air get built, odds are good it's the actress playing Len who will benefit most in the shining halls of public memory.

Speaking of which - what the heck is up with remaking True Grit? Damon and I are disagreed on the purpose of this travesty. I think it is an insidious plot to kill huge numbers of rednecks with strokes and heart attacks; he thinks it is to galvanize them all to pick up their deer rifles and revolt en masse. Either way, it is clearly an evil measure and should be exposed as such. I suggest that everybody give your favorite John Wayne fan a copy of the book for Christmas as a protective measure.

The book, by the way, is "really" YA. The narrator and protagonist, Mattie, is 14, the mover and shaker of the plot, and as full of true grit as any character John Wayne ever played.