Friday Done List December 19

I wish I'd taken pictures of all the small batch cakes I made this past week. But I didn't, so here's a picture of a Christmas tree instead. No, we have not finished decorating it. Yes, the tree has been up since last Sunday.

Goal 1. Write and Publish Adult Short Stories, Essays, and Humor

• Seven new beginnings for the Advent Project. 
• Have nearly completed an essay using material from my post on literary horror and Native American Heritage Month. I may get that submitted this weekend.

Goal 2. Build Community/Market Work/Brand Myself and My Work

• Promoted my literary horror and Native American Heritage Month post.
• Updated my Goodreads reading challenge for this year. 
• Have come up with a couple of ideas for Time Management Tuesday posts next month.

Friday Done List December 12

Goal 1. Write and Publish Adult Short Stories, Essays, and Humor

• New humor piece published.
  
• Seven new beginnings for the Advent Project. A couple of these were extensions of beginnings from other years' Advent Projects. 
• Wrote up my Native American Heritage Month reading for my Heritage Month Project.

Goal 2. Build Community/Market Work/Brand Myself and My Work

• Did a couple of promotional posts for the new humor piece.
• Wrote a Story Behind the story post for the new humor piece and promoted it on BlueSky.
• Took part in the annual OCWW Holiday Book Mart, which went hybrid for the first time this year. Promoted that on Facebook.
• Have not yet promoted my Native American Heritage Month reading at Facebook and BlueSky. Sunday!

The Heritage Month Project: Literary Horror by Stephen Graham Jones

I thought I had reached the end of my Heritage Month Reading related to the Heritage Months the U.S. used to recognize (that's archived material I just linked to) but dropped earlier this year. (Black History Month is all that's left. I can't tell you why, 'cause I don't know.) But last year's Native American Heritage Month inspired the Heritage Month Project for me. So, of course, I was going to observe it in November with some reading even though, according to my research at the Department of State's website, which used to post info about heritage months, it was never observed by the U.S.

Well, folks, I was cruising around the Internet last month when what do I find? Not only did the U.S. recognize November as National Native American Heritage Month in the past, it continues to do so! We just don't do it through the Department of State. We do it through the Department of the Interior, which includes the Bureau of Indian Affairs.

What does this mean? 

• The Department of the Interior treats Native Americans differently than the Department of State treats absolutely everyone else?
• One hand in Washington doesn't know what the other hand is doing, and the people who went after the other Heritage Months were unaware that National Native American Heritage Month is living at the Department of the Interior?
• The Secretary of State was using "we were here first" as an argument to nix all the other Heritage Months and decided that that wouldn't work with Native American Heritage Month?

I don't care! I just think Native American Heritage Month managing to stay on its feet during the white washing is subversive as hell. I mean that in the most positive way.

So Let's Talk Some Native American Literary Horror. My Search for Something Different

Whatever possessed you to read horror, Gail? Well, truthfully, it's not something I read a lot of, unless you include Shirley Jackson and the occasionally zombie book. After last month's reading, I think horror may have specific genre requirements that I don't understand, so are Jackson and zombies horror? Perhaps someday I will know.

But to be specific about this fall's horror reading: I was looking for Native American fiction writers to read and came upon Stephen Graham Jones. I see that he writes horror. Literary horror. And I think, Well, that would be something different for me to read this year. Then I see that he wrote a book called I Was A Teenage Slasher , and I was all in. I was aware Jones has written quite a few books, so once I started this one, I thought, Gail, why don't you read another of his books, as if you were making a study of him? That would be different, too.

I Was A Teenage Slasher 

The Native American connection in I Was A Teenage Slasher involves a secondary character who is very important, but readers won't get a feeling of being steeped in Native American culture. Unless there was something going on here that I wasn't knowledgeable enough to get. 

What I did feel steeped in was slasher culture, if such a thing exists. The basic premise here is that this is the first-person account of poor adolescent Tolly who finds himself unwillingly pulled into a classic slasher story, as the slasher. I was about to say as the main character, but are slashers the main character in slasher stories? He realizes that he is in a slasher story with specific tropes he can't control or avoid, because his Native American best friend/nearly girlfriend is a fan of the genre and recognizes what's happening. 

This is kind of a heart-breaking story, folks, something I didn't expect from a slasher tale.

Having been a childlit person in the past, I've read a YA book or two. Whenever I read an adult book with a YA main character, I have to wonder, Why is this adult and not YA? It's an easy question to answer here. Tolly is now an adult recalling his teenage slasher experience, making him, in reality, an adult character able to assess events from an adult perspective. YA books take place in the moment as it's being lived. All their responses are, or should be, YA responses.

I Was A Teenage Slasher was an Alex Award winner this year, an award given to ten adult books with appeal for young adults. It may be my favorite book award.

The Only Good Indians

The second Jones book I read was actually one of his earlier ones, The Only Good Indians. This has been widely reviewed and has won an award or three, which were pretty well deserved I'd say. 

This book is horror within a Native American culture. Four youngish Native American men go hunting in an area where they were not supposed to be hunting. They kill quite a number of elk, including a pregnant female who does not experience a quick and easy death. 

Ten years later they, and some of the people around them, pay a price for what they did.

What I'm going to say now is going to seem to come out of left field, but there is a lot of basketball in this book. For those of us who consider basketball to be another one of those run-back-and-forth with a ball sports, this could seem...odd. Mystery solved. Basketball is part of Native American culture.

There's some moving around in points of view here, so expect to do a little work while reading this, which just enhances the whole experience.

The Horror Genre

Here is what I've learned from reading these two books:

• Horror may deal with specific themes around guilt and revenge. Who is most at fault? Those who have done something for which they feel, or should feel, guilt or those the guilty wronged?
• The final girl. This is a quite marvelous literary figure in horror, one I'd never heard of until reading I Was A Teenage Slasher, in which she is explained. She also appears in The Only Good Indians. I will not spoil either of those books by explaining her, but I love her.

I can't claim that my latest exposure to horror has made me a fan of the genre. However, I expect I'll be reading more of Stephen Graham Jones in the future.

A Story Behind the Story: Christmas Lists

Isaac Martin on Unsplash

Yesterday, Frazzled published my most recent humor piece, In Case You Don't Know What I Want for Christmas, Here is My List. I began this before Thanksgiving, planning to write a profound essay about how my immediate family members share wish lists for Christmas and birthdays and how these are this meaningful way to keep in touch about our lives and interests when we don't see each other regularly. (I, personally, curate my list all year round.)

Within 24 hours my original idea shifted into a child's Christmas list, and I never looked back.

I felt bad about tinkering with it over Thanksgiving weekend, when I'd planned to commit to holiday time with my husband. But then the piece was accepted for publication, and I felt better.

Writing Humor and In Case You Don't Know What I Want for Christmas

I started out just making a list of random things a child might want, which is a legitimate starting point. But with humor as humor, you need two things. Which I mention because I didn't know that when I started writing this kind of humor a few years ago.

• You need escalation, rising action.
• You need something like a climax, for those of us who started out writing traditional fiction. You need a kicker of an ending. I feel there is a term for this I don't recall.

Randomness does not help provide either of those two things.

I came up with the idea for children believing Santa will bring them something big, which, of course, he will not since he doesn't exist, putting parents on the spot. But I still needed something else.

I needed Minecraft. I needed Minecraft. Minecraft is a unifying element in this piece and helped me tremendously in terms of generating material and escalating what was going on.

I chose Minecraft because we have a family member seriously into it now, and thus I could write what I knew. Or what I know about what he knows. But it didn't have to be Minecraft, of course. It could have been K-pop Demon Hunters. It could be anything. Except for Pokemon. We've moved past that.

Is There Something Profound Here After All?

I feel that this piece is about obsession and relentless marketing to children. But, as a family member often tells me, "You think too much."

I, too, obsess.

Friday Done List December 5

Goal 1. Write and Publish Adult Short Stories, Essays, and Humor

• Had a humor piece accepted for publication.
• Did three beginnings for the Advent Project.
• Took a Zoom workshop, Character-driven Plots, that was stimulating. Lots of ideas for things to read, a few ideas for new short-form work, and some generative writing.
• I tried to sign up for a Zoom workshop on essay writing, but the organization was no longer accepting registrations. Seriously? They ran out of room on Zoom? Is that possible? Well, that was a gift of three hours I'd have spent Zooming next week, to say nothing of the money I would have spent. Hurray?

Goal 2. Build Community/Market Work/Brand Myself and My Work

• Did an Advent Project post for Original Content.
• Got started on another post for OG that I want up this month.

Goal 3. Submit book-length Work to Agents and Editors 

• As a result of taking the workshop mentioned above, I looked up a writer who linked to her agent who I believe I'll be submitting a manuscript to. But not until next year.

Goal 4. Play with the 19th Century Novel Idea, Which Does Have a Title, But is Mainly a Fun Think Piece

• Two of my beginnings for the Advent Project went toward beginning scenes for this project. This brings me up to five beginnings, right on target.
• The generative work during the Character-driven Plots went toward this project.

Time Management Tuesday: The Advent Project. Or The Holiday Hell Project. Whichever You Prefer.

Since 2021 I've been spending my Decembers on what I call either the Advent Project or the Holiday Hell Project, a way of writing while dealing with the hell of preparing for a holiday that is a bizarre combination of materialism, media-induced spirituality, nostalgia, and some other stuff. In addition, we are one of those families that routinely has relatives terminally ill or actually dying in December or, if we're lucky, we're waiting for medical test results. Or, if we're really lucky, someone is just run-of-the-mill sick at the peak holiday time. 

Our history is bad enough that as December approaches I often feel undirected, low-level fear. This year we have ducked health crises so far, or gotten them out of the way early, but we have two different family groups going on extensive trips, involving flying out of the country. And back. Why? Why? No, I am not filled with the freakin' joy of the season. 

Or maybe I am. This is the joy of the season here. 

Which brings us to the Advent Project.

The Advent Project 

My Advent Project, which I believe I've also called my December Project as well as the aforementioned Holiday Hell Project, leans on the concept of temporal landmarks, calendar dates/events that mark a difference of some sort. Temporal landmarks make people feel they can begin something new.

If there's anything I love, it's beginning again.

And that's what I do during the Advent Project. I accept that this is a rough time of year to get anything done and just focus on beginnings. I try to begin a new writing project each day. I get something down in Word, file it, and then walk away and do whatever else I need to do for December. 

Where do these beginnings come from?

• My writer's journal.
• Beginnings from earlier years that I didn't do anything with and add some more to that earlier work. Yeah, begin again. I'm not a purist about this. I want to generate material.
• I'd like to take a peek at very old projects in the filing cabinet and either start something with them or throw them away.

Last year, I did, indeed, make 25 beginnings. You only need 25, because Advent ends on Christmas Day! Maybe Christmas Eve. I don't know. But my point is, I didn't have to slog it out to the end of the month.

• 7 of those beginnings were moved to working files in 2025
• 7 of those beginnings that made it to working files in 2025 were submitted
• 3 of those beginnings were published

Not big numbers, but, remember, all those beginnings are still available for me to do something with in the future. I may tinker with some of them this month. Beginning is hard.

Also, other years' beginnings ended up worked on, submitted, and sometimes published.

Get this, I was pleased with today's beginning until I looked at last year's beginnings and realized I'd begun it then, too. So now I've put those two beginnings together, and I have a lot of material to work with in January. Don't think I'm not excited about that.

That's one of the positives of the Advent Project. When it's working, I feel excitement about going to work after it's over.

I've done today's beginning as well as this blog post (and received an acceptance on a humor piece I wrote over the long weekend), and now I can walk away to maybe do a little Christmas work and try to deal with the disorder that's somehow accumulated around me. As it does in December.

Happy Advent Project!