TRIGGERED: why I hate ignorance about my country

This commentary was originally posted in the comments section of a YouTube video about Prince Harry, Meghan Markle and the whole "Megxit" scandal which I have been doggedly following like a bloodhound on the scent (though I am not sure why). Some ignorant pundit (and if I hear news people say "pundent" ONE more time, I will scream!) stood up and said the Duke and Duchess of Sussex (or whatever they call themselves now) need more security in their hideaway on Vancouver Island because Canadians own MORE guns per capita than the U. S. 

This caused my jaw to hit the floor. But tabloid media (and ALL media) are the province of stories that come unsubstantiated, just out of nowhere:  "a source claims" and "Palace officials have stated. . . ", with no proof of ANY of it. 

I seldom post long commentaries any more, not because I have nothing to say but because I don't know where to start. To avoid being overwhelmed, I must sidestep a lot of it. But this one was too outrageous to let pass. I like to break up big  blocks of text, which I did, with what I hope are appropriate images. 

"I'd like to know where he got his stats on Canadians owning guns! We are NOT a gun-oriented culture, and VERY few citizens arm themselves or own an arsenal, as many civilians do in the U. S. 

Yes, we DO have guns: the criminal element, such as gangs, can always get them illegally. Hunters use them, including indigenous peoples who need them for their food source, but in every case their use is tightly regulated. 

To own a gun, you have to jump through so many hoops (including mental health checks) that it bears NO relation to the U. S., where firearms can be bought at the local hardware store along with duct tape and plumbing supplies. 

We have no "second amendment", no Confederate flag, had no civil war, have an extremely boring history with far less bloodshed, never had a glorious Revolution, are seen as passive and somehow a "lesser" nation, just because we are forced to live cheek-by-jowl with what increasingly looks like a lawless Wild West, where people think the solution to school shootings is arming all the teachers (not to mention some of the students). 

Meanwhile, Trump says "it isn't guns that cause mass shootings, it's mental illness." That's just great, Donald, heaping more BS onto the steaming pile of crap about mental health which by now should be obsolete. So mass shootings are caused by "whack jobs" and "nut bars", and people who are "cray-cray" and "forgot their meds". Maybe it's the fact that I have bipolar disorder and have never even SEEN a gun, or known anyone who owns one, which causes me to wince and even despair when I hear made-up statistics like this. 

But please, no more unsubstantiated assumptions about Canadians and guns. We have been casually compared to the U. S. (inevitably, to our detriment) for as long as I can remember. Either we're that charming little backwater where draft dodgers and ex-royals can hide out, safe from the evil papparazzi, or that nutty place with a hipster fruitcake for a Prime Minister. ENOUGH!"

A fluffy white mystery: the Korean crow-tit

Blogger's note. What baffles and pleases me about this blog with its modest-but-loyal following is how I get comments, sometimes quite a few, on posts that are several years old. Though I've continued to post here, I sometimes think, "oh, nobody's reading this," and even try to avoid looking at stats, because it's too easy to get caught up in it (and that's not why I do this anyway). Unfortunately, the internet has become one big competition for views, likes and subscriptions in recent years. 

Strangely enough, the biggest reaction in recent times was to a small, satiric piece about a fluffy little bird called the Korean Crow Tit. It started out life on the internet as a  cute 'n fluffy meme which was soon posted and reposted everywhere:

I had my misgivings. The name  "Korean crow-tit" did not seem to match this creature, if in fact it existed at all. It looked more like those fake baby chicks you used to get at Easter, usually stuck onto cardboard. Could this in fact be Fake Bird News? I tried to find out more. 

Here's a sampling of comments and responses I received, some of which are fairly heated for this fluffy little topic. I've removed most identifying remarks, but alternated font colours for (I hope!) clarity.

Hi, Margaret! I love a good internet-"meme" mystery!

So, as near as I can figure, the bird that is colloquially referred to as a crow-tit in Korea is the Parrotbill - the Vinous-throated Parrotbill Sinosuthora webbiana.

The picture that comes up if you google "Korean Crow-tit" appears to be some kind of actual tit-but possibile leucistic. Not the parrotbill, though I see some superficial resemblance.

I will have to investigate further to see if I can figure out what that mostly white bird is that is coming up in the search.

Marc Devokaitis
Public Information Specialist
The Cornell Lab of Ornithology

The bird appears to be a Long-tailed Tit (Aegithalos caudatus).

As a korean its really uncomfortable to see googles first result on korean crow tit is your page. U have never seen birds in korea yet when im so happy that our crow tit is getting some attention and love from people all over the world u say its fake??? What evidence do u have to say its fake??? U have none... because they r true...i grew up with them. This page is offensive

I was very curious myself if this bird actually existed... That should not be taken offensively.. it's such a beautiful little bird it almost does look fake due to its sweet and perfect appearance....

I know this is probably not relevant anymore, but I wanted to try giving insight even if it's late. As far as I can tell from asking my friends and relatives who grew up in Korea, the word "baepsae" (뱁새) is typically used in conversation to refer to both the Vinous-Throated Parrotbill and the Japanese Long-Tailed Tit (which is colloquially called the Korean Crow-Tit). I think the Parrotbill is the more official/proper translation, but the reason the Long-Tail appears so often when you search "Korean Crow-Tit" seems to be because most Koreans think it's the cuter of the two and the word is used to refer to the Long-Tail far more often than the Parrotbill as a result. (But that's just what I've learned from people around me. I can't confirm anything for 100% certain.)

This is the Japanese Longtailed tit! :) Probably the cutest bird to ever exist imo

This is Aegithalos caudatus

Absolutely true....This is the right name. ..checked everywhere ...On YouTube too..Thanks so much .

Hello! I came across this post by accident but wanted to add that here in Europe we have a variant which is called Codibugnolo (meaning long tailed) - it's a tiny white bird with black stripes (pretty similar to the 'Korean Crow Tit'). Also about the cotton-like appeareance, like someone already said, it could just be the bird fluffing up its feathers from the cold.. my budgies sometimes look like that when they clean themselves, other times they completely puff out and look like starving pinschers haha! Hope I didn't intrude with this comment

It is a species of long tailed tit that mostly resides in Hokkaido, Japan known as Shima Enaga and the white floofy balls are only native to japan. Other variants have different colours

Adding onto the information above, the bird is not a Japan-limited bird. it's habitat extends from Asia to Mediterranean. One reason why the photo shows white colouring is because it is a migratory bird that changes its colour depending on the season. I just wanted to correct the misinformatin about the bird being Japanese.

For everyone saying this is a Japan-only bird, it's actually widespread all across Central/East Asia and Europe and (gasp) even Korea! They're a migratory species and change the color of their plumage from pinkish-gray to the winter black/white. Yes, the adorable white cotton ball can also be found in places like Germany. As for the 'fake' Korean crow-tit, Aka the Baepsae - Vinous-Throated parrotbill. It looks very similar to the long-tailed tit and also lives in places like Korea, Vietnam and Japan.

Yes finally, we have them here in Sweden too! Here they're called stjärtmes in Swedish. Lovely small bird. All this 'controversy' about this bird just shows how easy people trust what they read online, kindly source check please. :)

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PLEASE NOTE! This is a link to the original article, entitled FAKE BIRD NEWS: The Korean Crow-Tit, from 2017. I'm STILL getting comments on it. COOL!

FAKE BIRD NEWS: The Korean Crow-Tit

FAKE BIRD NEWS! The Korean Crow-Tit

This Is The Korean Crow-Tit - The World's Cutest Bird!

This little birdy is a Korean crow-tit and it looks like a fluffy cotton ball with tiny wings.

It's a little poof ball!

LOOK AT ITS TINY WINGS!

The above rhapsody is from a site called Sunny Skyz, which posts mostly, I believe, sunny, funny, adorable things, which these bird pictures definitely are.

I looked up the fluffball birdie elsewhere, and it appeared on a few other bouncy, flouncy, good-news sites, along with (groannn, inevitably) Pinterest.

I quickly became enamored of this poofball, compared (on one page) with "something a little kid would make out of a cotton ball". I even made a little animation with it (somewhere below).

But then I began to have my doubts.

I began to have my doubts when I looked for information about this bird, and hit a complete and total dead end.

Wikipedia, which has entries on just about every species of bird, bee, animal and plant, had nothing at all on it, in spite of a massive entry on Korean bird species that ran into the hundreds. 

It got worse. My beloved Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology (which I refer to almost daily now that I have become a Bird Nerd) had nothing on it either. Tits, yes! There are many kinds of tits, and I have heard all the jokes. But no Korean crow-tit.

I had a growing suspicion, one I've had many times before. Somebody was having me on.

After googling around fruitlessly and only finding endless replications of the cute little fluff-balls, with no information about them at all, I came across a startling entry from a site,about a Korean "boy band" called BTS. Once I read it, I was more confused than ever:

Now the video I linked says, "They call me a try-hard", but I think it's more accurate to leave the word 'baepsae', or 'crow-tit'. This hinges on the fact that this song utilizes a well-known phrase in Korea: "If a crow-tit walks like a stork, it will tear its legs". A crow-tit is a bird with a small stride because it has short legs, and when we compare this with a stork who has much taller legs, we see that the stork would easily be able to travel farther with less effort.

(Video removed by YouTube)

The song itself mentions the stork and the crow-tit multiple times, the "crow-tits" being the generation from which BTS members come, whereas the "storks" are the generation prior. The stork generation is comprised of parents, teachers, employees- people the younger generation is meant to be able to look up to and to learn from.

So somebody probably extracted the name from that song and attached it to pictures of a very cute bird which nobody can readily identify. How many people know about the old Korean legend of the crow-tit, and how it might tear its little legs if it walks like a stork? Fans of BTS, perhaps, though this strikes me as a little obscure.

My question is, how many people accepted this fluffy little hoax without question? Quite a few, it seems. The white birdie has been around since some time last year, and I haven't seen it challenged (until now!).

BLOGGER'S P. S. I just emailed the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology, which has never failed me yet in providing information about all things bird. That's what I love about them. There is always a human being there, and one that loves and knows about birds. Usually they get back to you post-haste.

So if and when I get an answer about the real identity of this tiny little poofball, I'll update you immediately. Myself, I can hardly wait! 

UPDATE: MUCH later, and the comments are still coming! Rosy Novelist posted these remarks, but the links weren't live, so here they are with links. 

Rosy Novelist has left a new comment on the post "FAKE BIRD NEWS! The Korean Crow-Tit":

Hi! I'm a South Korean currently studying in the U.S. I came across this blog post and couldn't help but leave a message.

So the white fluffy bird is actually a Long-tailed tit. In Korean, it's "오목눈이." This Korean YouTuber uploaded a video about how the Korean baepsae is commonly mistakened with it.

Link to video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-mTP52IqM4. It's in Korean but when you look at 00:47, she explains with the visuals.

The long tailed tit is a common bird found throughout Europe and the Palearctic. Here is the distribution map from Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long-tailed_tit#/media/File:Schwanzmeise_(Aegithalos_caudatus)_distribution_map.png.

So, it is a lovely bird that is found throughout Eurasia. Koreans have seen it throughout its history and called it "오목눈이" while in different cultures, they are called something else.

So I think the "Korean crow tit" is not the right name for the fluffy bird because 1) Birds don't have nationalities 2) it's a long tailed tit.

The notion that it's a Japanese bird or a Korean bird or any other nationality bird is pretty ridiculous. Birds are birds and they are lovely! :)

Rosy Novelist has left a new comment on the post "FAKE BIRD NEWS! The Korean Crow-Tit":

Exactly! Baepsaes are parrotbills - brownish fluffs found in Korea as well as elsewhere. The white fluffs are long tailed tits that are migratory birds that stay from Europe to Asia.

I think this post also explains well: https://aminoapps.com/c/btsarmy/page/blog/fake-bird-news-alert-baepsae-does-not-mean-crow-tit/D8BQ_p81hPurDKYqJJKgwMxBNWMKXg17dg

Stunning? I'd say so!

Top Psychiatrist’s Stunning Announcement About Gun Violence


By PAULA J. CAPLAN, PHD
Featured Blogs October 9, 2015

After each highly publicized gun violence incident, some lawmakers—whether with good intention, for political gain, or both—declare that we must have laws to keep guns out of the hands of people with mental illness. It is therefore stunning and profoundly important to note Sunday's blog post from the American Psychiatric Association's president, Dr. Renee Binder.

As chief executive of the major lobby group that advocates for the interests of psychiatrists, Binder might have been expected to recommend an increase in psychiatric treatment for the mentally ill as a way to reduce gun violence. Amazingly, she not only did not make that recommendation, but she made the powerful—and well-documented—statement that people diagnosed with mental illness are far more likely to be victims of violence than perpetrators of it and that most of the mentally ill will never commit acts of violence against others. Thus, to pass laws to prevent the mentally ill from owning guns is no way to reduce the frequency of murders. In fact, as Binder pointed out, "Stronger indicators of risk include a history of violent behavior, domestic violence, and drug or alcohol abuse."

Politicians on the Sunday morning news shows either failed to read Binder's essay or chose to ignore it and plowed right ahead, pushing for gun laws about the mentally ill. And on Monday morning, former Congressman Patrick Kennedy appeared on CBS, making an impassioned plea to prevent the mentally ill from owning guns and making the bold—and unfounded—assertion that that such a step would have prevented the most recent mass shooting. It will be worth watching to see if over time, Binder's strong statement alters politicians' proposals. Today, Republican Presidential candidate Ben Carson made a similar plea.

Two important points shed further light on this matter. One arises from the fact that the primary way that "the mentally ill" are identified is by having been given psychiatric diagnoses, but a vast body of work over three decades has revealed psychiatric diagnostic categories to be constructed and applied with little or no scientific support, so attempts to divide the populace into "the mentally ill" and "everyone else"—and aim to pass laws affecting the former—make no sense.

The other relevant point is that the ballooning numbers of categories and subcategories that are called mental illnesses has led to the psychiatrizing of our society, the tendency of therapists, media people, the public, even some novelists to try to explain every aspect of human behavior as caused by a mental illness. This often takes the form of, "Person X did Y, and the fact that they did Y proves that they are mentally ill, because Y (almost any action or expression) is a mental illness." Defense attorneys operating in a system that is often stacked against the accused, especially if the latter are poor or women or people of color, understandably try to get their clients diagnosed as mentally ill, hoping to argue that the psychiatric disorder is reason for a reduced sentence. As a result, a confounding factor we will increasingly need to consider is that an artificially created correlation between a diagnosis of mental illness and commission of a violent act will result, as anyone charged with an act of violence is increasingly likely to be labeled mentally ill. As that happens, it will unjustifiably become ammunition for those who want to base laws on the notion that "the mentally ill" are more dangerous than the rest of the populace.

POST-BLOG THOUGHTS. I've added a couple of things that might be relevant. Below is one of those cut-and-paste Facebook messages about depression, which are, I guess, better than nothing - but not much. They strike me as paper doll or cookie-cutter responses, don't cost anything, and can give you a false sense of having done your bit (so you can wash your hands of it all). 

These are posted for just one hour, then, I assume, taken down - but why? Why is it considered so dangerous for people to leave a post about depression on their page? Why the necessity of reassuring people with statements like "I did it for a friend and you can too" (which smacks of "well, my friend has this problem. . . )? The whole post seems to be saying, "it's OK to display a message about this completely taboo topic, because no one will ever know".

For many people, even mentioning the subject to offer "a moment of support" is just too great a risk, likely because they fear being exposed as a sympathizer. "If I don't see your name, I'll understand" is a very sad statement: I know you can't risk mentioning your name, because people might think you're "one of them". As I've said before, and I will keep on saying it, mental health issues are where gay issues were in 1970, and cancer issues in 1950. 

I have some things to say about all this (as usual). Below the Facebook quote and my response to it, I've posted a link to something you really need to see, if this subject interests you at all. (Please note: this is what you should NOT wear as a Halloween costume.)

Facebook cut-'n-paste message:

Yes depression is such a bitch and seems relentless. A lot of us have been close to that  edge, and some have lost friends and loved ones. Let's look out for each other and stop sweeping mental illness under the rug. If I don't see your name, I'll understand. May I ask my family and friends wherever you might be, to kindly copy and paste this status for one hour to give a moment of support to all those who have family problems, health struggles, job issues, worries of any kind and just need to know that someone cares. Do it for all of us, for nobody is immune. Hope to see this on the walls of all my family and friends just for moral support. I know some will!!! I did it for a friend and you can too. You have to copy and paste this one, no sharing.

My response to these one-hour-long, "if I don't see your name" messages of support: 

We're starting to see more about depression on Facebook these days, and people are pasting and sharing and doing all manner of things. But do you know what might do even more to help the cause? If you know of someone who is off work with depression, don't avoid them or pretend it isn't happening. Ask them if they're up to a visit at home or in the hospital, and go see them and bring flowers or something else they might like. Depression is disabling and hurts far worse than a heart attack or a broken bone, but there are virtually no flowers sent to psychiatric wards. People's aversion runs very deep. Let's get over it, shall we? THAT would be really helpful.

http://margaretgunnng.blogspot.ca/2015/09/fun-in-psycho-ward-mental-patient.html

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http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B001K7NGDA

DON'T listen to your body!

As is so often the case, this post is something I adapted from my personal journal, which I will admit often amounts to a load of complaining. But keeping a journal is one of the sure symptoms of writerhood. I have had many a person sit down with me over the years saying "I want to be a writer", meaning they want to make effortless money and be an instant best-seller (it can't be that hard, can it?). One of the first things I ask them is, "Do you keep a journal?" Normally I get a blank look, a why-would-I-want-to-do-that expression, as if a journal must be written on pink Hello Kitty stationery with scented lavender ink.

Mostly people merely take stabs at writing, brief ones. Then they sort of run in terror, realizing that they will actually have to put their work "out there". As a friend recently told me about her own former ambition to write, it just got buried under the mundane tasks we all must undertake in the course of a day.

All this leads to something else. (Which is what I seem to do in this blog, though I can't tell you why. Steinbeck leads to Travels with Charley leads to why people treat dogs like babies.) So this is about my never-ending, awful sort-of-relationship with doctors, who have been poking and prodding my sagging old body for a year now trying to figure out why I am having this persistent, nagging, sometimes severely disabling pain.

It's getting in the way of jumping in to preparing my novel The Glass Character for publication (which I wish I could enjoy more). This is what I wrote this morning:

"I want to get the medical stuff over with, which it should be next week when I get told there’s nothing wrong with me again. I have a theory it’s a low-grade infection, but I doubt if he will give me anything for it, will likely say “it’ll go away on its own” when I have been in pain for nearly a year now. They said the same thing about the infuriating ear symptoms which I’ve now had for 13 months. Things do NOT “go away on their own” in many cases, but doctors now let things fester for so long they become ingrained and chronic and really WON’T go away. We then have a "nuisance patient", a hypochondriac completely obsessed with imaginary illness. But someone has commanded doctors from “on high” not to prescribe antibiotics. They’ve swung from one ridiculous extreme to the other, and in both cases it’s to get you out of the office FAST."

So how many specialists or procedures HAVE I been exposed to? Let me count the ways. Gastroenterologist (God, these things are hard to spell). Gynecologist. Ultrasound. Colonoscopy. Ultrasound again, because they couldn't find anything the first time, and now urologist/cystoscopy (can’t ever remember how to spell that one). I have also been to a nephrologists and an otolaryng-whatever-it-is. All uselessly. Each person takes a part of the body, and they are never co-ordinated or put together in any way. They’re not supposed to be. Each body part must get sick in its own way, and if it gets sick outside of certain strict boundaries, then you’re not sick, or at least that part of you isn’t. If you have a condition such as a bladder infection and only have three symptoms out of five, then you don’t have a bladder infection and will not be given antibiotics.

Oh, antibiotics! Like Valium in the '70s, doctors handed them out like candy until relatively recently. Patients wanted something to relieve their fear and distress about being sick. They wanted to come away with something. Doctors wanted them the fuck out of their office so they could go on to the next patient. So they went home with a prescription.

Then all of a sudden, we are being told WE were wrong to accept all those prescriptions for all these years. WE were wrong to seek a fast and easy way out of disabling symptoms. We should have just put up or shut up, because there was probably nothing wrong with us anyway.

Suddenly, in spite of everything our doctors had been telling us for decades, antibiotics were just wrong.

It still comes at us from every side, ads on TV with cute but shaming slogans like, "Not all bugs need drugs." It's a kind of finger-shaking admonishment to the public, because for God's sake didn't we create this situation to begin with? The public, being weak and self-indulgent, demanded antibiotics so vociferously that they created a race of Superbugs which are now resistant to medication.

We have rendered antibiotics almost completely ineffective. How does that make us feel?

Doctors had to stop acting like free vending machines for this seductive candy because "someone" ordered them to, some medical association or other. "It will go away on its own" became the new mantra. This got patients out of the office nearly as fast as "Here, take this prescription for amoxycillin".

Now, you can have pus running out of you and feverish red inflammation and strep throat (and my granddaughter, then three years old and running a fever of 104, might have died from it: my daughter, a dragon when she needs to be, INSISTED she be prescribed antibiotics, which cleared it up completely in two days), and the doctor will not prescribe antibiotics. Once again, the crushing weight of shame is applied to us as she tells us something we have already been told 100 times. "Patients ruined antibiotics by taking them too often. It will go away on its own."

There are two things my doctor never prescribes: antibiotics and pain relievers. When I told her I'd had significant and even severe pain for a year, pain that sometimes prevented me from functioning well, she said, "Advil is the drug of choice."

"But I've been taking Advil for a year now and it has no effect at all."

"Try Tylenol."

"I've tried them all. None of them work."

"Advil," she said, a little testily.

"Can't I have anything stronger?"

Oh, it's the facial expressions, the bodily shifting, the "I know I'm dealing with an addict cadging drugs" manner that gives it all away.

"Advil is the drug of choice." (Meaning: if Advil doesn't work, I am having the wrong kind of pain and need to set it straight. Or else I'm lying.)

Another time she asked me the doseage I was taking and I said something like 800 milligrams. "That's too much," she said. "But the lower dose doesn't do anything." "Always take the correct doseage or you'll damage your kidneys." But the "correct doseage" wasn't doing any more than the so-called overdose anyway.

I have enjoyed good health for most of my life and have stayed away from doctors whenever possible, so I can hardly be called a hypochondriac unless such a damning stereotype can develop in a  few months. I hate taking pills, and it does not occur to me to abuse prescriptions. I have dreaded developing some sort of vague but persistent, painful medical condition that no one can get to the root of. And now it's here. My own theory - and who gives a shit what I think anyway, it's only my body - is that this is a low-grade bladder infection which has been flying under the radar for a year. But doctors refuse to see it that way. "Your urine test is normal," my doctor said, furrowing her brow and sitting back in that "get out of here and go directly to the psych ward" way. If my urine test is normal, I cannot have a bladder infection and have to go home and behave myself.

Over and over again I hear/read the same advice from people: Listen to your body! If anything feels amiss, go see your doctor immediately! I am here to tell you that you won't be in her office for long. Your symptoms will have to escalate until you are in severe enough pain to wait months to see a specialist, who will tell you there's nothing wrong anyway. The cancer diagnosis won't come until it is far too late to treat it. Then you will be asked, "For God's sake, why didn't you DO something about it?"

Is there nothing you can do? Why are you stupid enough to ask? Take Advil, which should get rid of all your symptoms. It's the drug of choice.

http://margaretgunnng.blogspot.ca/2013/04/the-glass-character-synopsis.html

http://members.shaw.ca/margaret_gunning/betterthanlife.htm

War is hell (but what is writing?)

WRITING IS HELL

If you're a freelance writer and aren't used to being ignored, neglected, and generally given short shrift, you must not have been in the business very long.

Poppy Z. Brite

Coleridge was a drug addict. Poe was an alcoholic. Marlowe was killed by a man whom he was treacherously trying to stab. Pope took money to keep a woman's name out of a satire then wrote a piece so that she could still be recognized anyhow. Chatterton killed himself. Byron was accused of incest. Do you still want to a writer - and if so, why?

Bennett Cerf

I am irritated by my own writing. I am like a violinist whose ear is true, but whose fingers refuse to reproduce precisely the sound he hears within.

Gustave Flaubert

Writing is not necessarily something to be ashamed of, but do it in private and wash your hands afterwards.

Robert A. Heinlein

It's tougher than Himalayan yak jerky in january. 

Richard Krzemien

Writing is not a genteel profession. It's quite nasty and tough and kind of dirty.

Rosemary Mahoney

Follow the path of your aroused thought, and you will soon meet this infernal inscription: There is nothing so beautiful as that which does not exist.

Paul Valery

Writing is so difficult that I feel that writers, having had their hell on earth, will escape all punishment hereafter.

Jessamyn West

I was working on the proof of one of my poems all the morning, and took out a comma. In the afternoon I put it back again.

Oscar Wilde

If writing seems hard, it’s because it is hard. It’s one of the hardest things people do.

William Zinsser

Easy reading is damned hard writing.

Anonymous

Ahhhhhh, JESUS, not one of these blocks of quotes again, all about "the writer's life" and what sheer hell it is to write and about how you must shed your skin and ooze out quarts of blood and etc. etc.

It's not like that. Not like that at all. At least, not for me.

I love to write. Sitting down to work on this blog every morning is more fun than going to the beach. Hell, the circus! I don't worry about the quality of it at all. It's play.

No one wants to hear this, but I have to say, though I've had my share of struggles with the craft and was not really ready to try to publish a novel until well into my 40s, most of it has been pleasurable in a way that borders on the sexual.

I don't know why that is. Many of these quoters, not to mention gazillions of others, would conclude, "That's because you're a lousy writer." It took me a while to disagree with this. Actually, what it took was getting two novels published. It still breaks my heart that they ended up selling so poorly, but out of something like thirty reviews between the two of them, only one was negative.

My publisher at the time said, "It's a miracle, Margaret." I wanted to say: how 'bout twenty years of hard work? Yes, but hard work that still brought a smile to my face.

Writing is hell, supposedly - nearly everyone says so, or wants you to think so - but in my mind, at this stage, right now, what is really hell is trying to get it out there. I think I still have something valuable to share: in fact, I know it. Maybe I am being punished for this, although at the same time we're all supposed to be brimming over with self-esteem (see My Declaration of Self-Esteem, yesterday's post).

It's so weird: writers are supposed to be furtive (as if it's a secretive, even dirty activity). They're supposed to sweat blood: if there's an exhilarating flow to the work day-to-day that results in a work you are immensely proud of, you must be doing it wrong.

You've got to suffer. SUFFER. Big-time. If you don't, it can't be any goddamn good.

I suffer all right, but suffer in the process of trying to get my story into the hands of readers. Here, too, public perception is extremely odd. People react with a kind of embarrassment that you even want such a thing. Shouldn't you just be content to write it and put it away somewhere? What about the process; shouldn't it be its own reward?

I hate to go back to the old saw about the professional cellist or ballet dancer who has trained all her life, is at the very top of her field, and never gets to perform. Shouldn't she be OK with that? Shouldn't she just be content to play her Steinway in an empty hall?

Phhwaaaaaahhh!

Writers who want to share their stories are egotists, and if they actually want to make money, they are mercenaries. Never mind that they have bills to pay like everyone else.

It's odd, but I've noticed over the years/decades that the first thing people ask you when they find out you're a writer (and I never tell them any more because they always look so doubtful) is, "Have you published anything?" When I tell them, they invariably ask, "Did you self-publish?" (or "e-publish", that other free-floating form of the vanity press). When I tell them no, they look at me quizzically and say something like, "However did you manage to do that?"

It's kind of like my freelance work. I've written at least a thousand columns and reviews which have accumulated over 25 years or so. (No one believes this, either. But I wrote weekly pieces, which adds up to 50 or so a year. Do the math.) This is what I heard, all the time, but furtively, as if someone was opening their coat to show me dirty postcards:

"Do they pay you for that?" (in a doubtful tone).

When I say yes, they then ask:

"How much?" (Last time I checked, it was rude to ask someone who works at McDonalds how much they are paid. It just is not done.)

Then comes (incredulous):

(a) "That much?" (or, conversely):

(b) "Is that all?"

Anyway, this is turning into a load of complaining again. I don't complain about the writing process too much any more. Blogging has broken the ice jam and brought back the exhilaration I used to feel before everyone started trying to convince me that Writing Is Hell.

But I'm still on that road. It's called The Glass Character, folks. It's a novel. I think it's the best thing I've ever done. As far as I know, no one has even looked at it: my reviews mean nothing, I guess, because my previous two (PUBLISHED!!) novels didn't sell very well.

And yes, THIS is hell, and always will be. There are a gazillion quotes about how desirable failure is, about how we should all have as many failures as we can possibly manage because we learn so much from them and become Better People.

But in publishing, even one failure (or perceived shortcoming) can sink you forever.

Be warned.

Getting published is hell.

http://www.amazon.com/Mallory-Margaret-Gunning/dp/0888013116/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1319992815&sr=1-1

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1896300693/qid%3D1064537730/sr%3D11-1/ref%3Dsr_11_1/103-6792065-9634225