Vylar Kaftan

Pointing at the Moon is now available online. It was published last December in COSMOS, the Australian science fiction magazine. It’s the first hard sf story I’ve sold.

I’m posting this on behalf of a friend. Some of you will know who this is; I have her full permission to do this. In fact, she’s reading this. I’d like to help her solve this problem.

She has an addiction to DXM, which is the chemical in cough syrup. This has been going on for many years. At this point, the damage to her body and mind is severe. She’s got to quit and she knows it. But every time she’s near a drugstore, she finds herself walking in and buying DXM. She’s having a hard time breaking that habit.

She has tried seeking treatment in recent times. She was in a treatment program which she abandoned partway through. Now she’d like to return, since she’s more serious about quitting, but they won’t take her back because she left partway through. This was a mistake and I think she understands that now.

To complicate matters, she lost her living arrangements with her father, partly because he’s an ex-addict and finding it hard to be near her. She’s temporarily living with her mentally-ill sister, and the living situation is unstable and possibly dangerous to her physical safety.

She has almost no money. I’m unclear on the current job situation, but I know she’s been fired from many temp jobs for drug use. She could move just about anywhere to get treatment, if she could afford it. I think she could scrape up a couple hundred bucks if she had to, or perhaps her friends would chip in to buy her a bus ticket somewhere if needed.

Further details: she’s a resident of Michigan. I believe she’s exhausted all her local affordable options, though I’m not sure. She found AA and its variants difficult because they tell her how to relate to God (though I, and many of her friends, feel that she’s never given AA a truly fair shot). She may need medical detox; she’s struggling with the fact that few people understand DXM addiction and how it differs from alcohol and other addictions. She is not violent or dangerous at all.

As for me, I understand the perils of addiction (somewhat) and I’m taking care to offer what I can without getting bogged down in the problem. So don’t worry about me.

Now. What else can she try?

*****
1. One idea I had was moving to a small town where DXM is not sold. There are lots of little towns like this. She could work as an assistant to an elderly person in exchange for room and board. This might give her the time she needs to be away from her drug. But I’m not sure how to find a setup like this. Alternately, she could move to a smallish town, and write a letter to the local pharmacist explaining why he should never sell her DXM. She’d still need a job, which might be difficult to find.
2. She’s introverted enough that she could live in a trailer in someone’s backyard with nonperishable food for months, and be just fine–perhaps trading farm labor for her room and board. Again, not sure how to find this setup.
3. She could take a bus to almost any state and enter a residential treatment program. I could help drive her to one if it’s in Northern California. Trouble here is that you usually have to be a resident of the state where you’re seeking treatment (right?) Also, money. This would be hard to afford. She could stay on and exchange labor for room and board, but I don’t know if that’s allowable.
4. What else can be done here? Ideas?

Thanks for your help, everyone. And to you who’s reading this: You know I care about you. *hug*

P.S. We’re brainstorming here. Suggest whatever you can think of; maybe it’ll spark another idea.

Okay, so a while ago I asked you guys what to do with 15 heads of garlic.

New question: What should I do with 10 heads of garlic… and 20 ONIONS??

Ideas so far–softball practice, making mean people cry, meditating on the psychology of ogres…

Since today is International Tell Lies on Your Blog Day, I thought I’d try a few.

The government has your best interests at heart and is trying to help you.
I have a four-inch blue snorkel surgically attached to my gallbladder.
Global warming is a myth.
I held up a bank just to get the tellers’ nametags.
None of you will start telling lies on your own blogs.

I got my contributors’ copies for the October issue of Realms of Fantasy, where “The Luckiest Street in Georgia” is published. The illustration is wonderful! Eric Dinyer read the story closely and captured details accurately, depicting multiple scenes in one montage (can that word apply to illustrations too?)

What I like most is the wise look in Minette’s eyes. She’s 83 and has seen many things. (In a speculative fiction sense of the word, too.)

The story was written in the 2005 Clarion West Write-a-Thon, so I can thank Kate for inspiring me to write this one. And my former neighbor’s cat, an old tuxedo cat named Minette, who liked to sit on porches and look at things. I spent rather a lot of time looking at Minette, and her occasional gray visitor that I dubbed Tom.

If you’re a short story writer, and you have any of the following problems:

• you’re just getting started and have no idea what you’re doing
• you have trouble with character, plot, dialogue, or the essential building blocks of a story
• you have nothing ready to submit to markets
• you keep working and reworking the same story trying to get it right, but you’re never happy with it
• you’ve completed several stories, but can’t figure out what’s wrong with them
• you’ve completed several stories, know what’s wrong with them, and can’t figure out how to fix them
• some of your drafts come out well, and some don’t, but you’re trying to salvage every story you write
• all your stories are currently in circulation, so you have nothing new to submit
• you’ve sent your stories to almost every possible market and you’re running out of appropriate ones
• none of your stories in inventory suit the current markets you see available
• you’ve sold some stories, but your inventory is dwindling
• you’ve sold all your stories and have nothing left to circulate

…there’s one solution which will help with all these problems.

WRITE ANOTHER STORY.

Too often writers (especially beginners) work and rework the same story. While of course there’s good reasons to revise, often the time you spend on that one story is better invested in writing 10 new ones. You’ll learn more from that than you will from trying to make a broken story work. And chances are, one of the new stories will be better than the old one anyway. Eventually it’s easier to see which stories are worth revising, and which ones are just learning experiences.

There’s more benefits too. New stories give you more material for circulation, thus increasing your chances for a sale. When you have several new stories, it’s easier to see which ones are worth your time for revision. Having lots of stories means each one matters less to you–which is a good thing, because it makes rejection easier to handle. So what if a market doesn’t buy a certain story? You’ve got five other great stories to choose from for your next submission.

There’s only a few exceptions to this advice–mostly for the people who write exceptionally fast and/or without much conscious effort. That’s not necessarily bad, but sometimes it’s useful to slow down a bit and reconsider things. These people can probably figure out who they are.

For most of us, writing another story is a fine way to solve many of our problems. Why don’t more writers do this? Because it’s hard work. Enough said.

So go write another story. Start one today.

Guess the 100 most common words in English.

5 minute time limit. Harder than it looks! I only got 43, and that’s more than other people I know who tried this. I’m sure someone else can do better, though.

For those who’ve been worried about me–

While I’m still learning to cope with assorted medical conditions (collect the whole set!), I can finally say that I feel about 95% recovered. It’s mostly happened since early July–just in this last month. I’ve still got restrictions, but now they’re more manageable.

Guess how I know I’m better: I’m furious at how much time I lost this spring. GODDAMMIT. I could have written so many stories in this time! RRRRRR. RAGE. HUGE TEMPER TANTRUM.

There. Now I’ll go channel that rage into KILLING CHARACTERS.

doom doom doom

“Galatea” is now available as a podcast from Podcastle. It’s really weird to hear my work read by someone else! But neat, though. It’s like discovering a fresh side of the story for me.

If you’ve never tried a podcast, it’s pretty easy. You can either download it or just play it from your browser. It’s about 30 minutes long, so you can take a popcorn break partway through if you want.

The response to Transcriptase has been overwhelmingly supportive. I’m happy about that; readers will find our stories there for years to come.

In other news, William Sanders has responded to Transcriptase here and here.