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Text of the page (random words):
ontent home about the author by the author confidence game the bright and the dark chasing fire the sea between the worlds the source in the desert stories from gbahn and archipelago short fiction elementals theme and variations now what leave a reply so here s what i did with my long weekend finally pull out my last book aka big fat historical fantasy aka that infuriating project i ve been working on for 20 years aka my life s work which has been sitting for 3 months since my last major editing pass to give it one last run through okay i think it s done no big changes needed just some minor rewording and proofreading fixes i didn t hate it i might even be happy with it it holds together and does what i wanted to do with it whether it will work for anyone else whether it s marketable whether i can get it published those are all other questions the book is done i actually only spent saturday on it 20 years to write 10 hours to proofread doesn t quite seem right i felt a little panicky saturday night actually my life s work what do i do now of course the answer to that is obvious query agents and or submit to open publishers and or prep for self publishing which will keep me busy for a while and work on some online classes i m taking and maybe crank out some flash for a short fiction series i ve been trying to get started i ll have stuff to do no worries this entry was posted in uncategorized on september 5 2021 by mmwelch a hypothesis as part of an attempt to explain what the hell is going on leave a reply source leah millis reuters via nbc news it s often said that there are two kinds of people in the world although the labels for the two categories vary there are people who want to move forward and people who want to cling to the past there are people who respect history and people who want to destroy it there are good people and bad people however the speaker wants to define those comparisons i m going to propose another comparison in recent years there has been a growing push to get people mostly privileged people to recognize that their lived reality is different from that of other people mostly underprivileged people so my hypothesis is this there are two kinds of people one group recognizes that their lived reality their personal experience their own truth if you will is their own and not the same as the lived realities as others or the same as objective universal verifiable facts the second group denies this believing that their lived reality and their personal experience of truth is identical to truth with a capital t when this second group commits to this belief they have no choice but to regard those who express a different experience and a different personal truth as crazy liars or enemies under pressure from this social movement to recognize the different realities of underprivileged people those in the second group may put a different spin on it if there is no single personal truth then there is no single universal truth either if people s personal reality which to the second group is identical to universal truth can vary then facts can vary too in our society personal reality has gained complete primacy you see it in advertising which has been working hard to turn wants into needs since at least the 1950s you see it in the abandonment of major news sources watched by everyone in the u s in favor of social media feeds that easily enable you to shut out any voices that are different from your own and you see it in the white house statement that functions as trump s concession speech even though i totally disagree with the outcome of the election and the facts bear me out nevertheless there will be an orderly transition on january 20th emphasis mine donald trump is a person whose wealth and status have buffered him from having to face any reality other than his own for his entire life i would argue that his most ardent and armed followers also fall into my hypothetical second category but we all as humans have the tendency to veer from want to need to see our own experience as truth with a capital t and struggle to accept others the solution to this primacy of personal reality is not to throw out attempts at seeking universal truth claiming that if everything is true then nothing matters nor is it to deny or attempt to extinguish people s individual expressions of truth all dilemmas are not zero sum games there are more than two choices i am a buddhist and i m going to phrase this in buddhist terms there is a middle way between grasping and rejecting i do not say this in order to convert anyone to another religion but there are buddhist teachings about how the human mind works that apply to anyone with a human mind and have also been confirmed by modern science and psychology people have after all called the buddha the world s first psychologist here s a relevant teaching we encounter things in the world and immediately sort those things into one of three categories i like it i don t like it or i don t care then we start telling ourselves stories to explain and justify these emotions modern brain science says it like this data received by the senses travels to the amygdala the emotion center and the prefrontal cortex where the analysis happens the path to the amygdala is shorter so we experience the emotion first and that emotion can color the analysis we run into trouble when we start believing that the stories are true identical to truth with a capital t we stop seeing external reality and thereby cause suffering for ourselves and others so the buddha and many modern psychologists in fact suggest sitting with the mind dropping the storylines and just watching the emotions without grasping or rejecting them this is meditation in time we can recognize that the emotions come and go in response to things we encounter but if we do not stoke them with a grasping storyline or put them in a pressure cooker by rejecting them those emotions will pass on their own our lived realities can change we do not have to give up our experiences and emotions to acknowledge those of others we do not need to deny our concerns about government or about the security of our elections or about whether incoming politicians really have our best interests at heart and i am absolutely not demanding that anyone give up their beliefs and listen to me i do not claim to speak the truth with a capital t there is an often quoted and often paraphrased saying of the buddha that we should not believe anything just because others have said it even their most revered leaders and teachers but only when we examine something in the context of our own lives and see what results it has should we believe it and when people grasp so violently at the absolute truth of their own fears and anger then we get armed protesters storming the capitol building we can sit we can take a breath and we can see how this works we can release our grip on our fears and anger work to recognize the reality that we all share and move forward may all beings be of benefit this entry was posted in uncategorized on january 7 2021 by mmwelch life s work leave a reply okay i m being a little melodramatic again but i m super excited about drumroll please finishing the first draft of the big fat historical fantasy note no a word count of 80 4 k isn t quite big and fat although i did run it through a quick editing pass and now it s up to 80 7 so there s that more editing to come let s review 1970 something maybe 1980 82 i read a book set in the american colonies in the 17th century there are roundheads and cavaliers running around and while i have no idea what that means it sounds mighty exciting and a history nerd is born continue reading this entry was posted in uncategorized on september 9 2020 by mmwelch a modern american in 17th century england or nanowrimo fail leave a reply still from cromwell a movie that takes major liberties with historical fact but has some great battle scenes image source it s not really accurate to say i failed at nanowrimo since i never really signed up for the challenge while word counts don t motivate me at all i can write crap fast if i push myself but writing something worth keeping takes time i did decide to use november as an excuse to sit down and write and it seems to be working i ve managed to get a good start on a project i ve been trying to write for more than twenty years the big fat historical fantasy b f h f is set in the stuart era during the english civil war if you re american you re probably not familiar with the stuart era it s the one right after the tudor era i am an american and by some bizarre chain of causes and conditions i m a big fan of the stuart era so how did this happen and what on earth am i an american doing writing about this corner of english history continue reading this entry was posted in uncategorized on december 1 2019 by mmwelch writing dilemma analyzing a tough choice leave a reply avengers endgame still from imdb hello my long unused blog is anyone still reading i have to say that it s been a relief to take a break from the twice weekly schedule i had set for myself and i ve even come up with a story idea that i feel motivated about and isn t like pulling teeth trying to write it s much too soon to talk about that though what i want to talk about now is avengers endgame this discussion will drop huge spoilers for the movie so click away now if you don t want to see them continue reading this entry was posted in bloggery on april 29 2019 by mmwelch stories from refuge 139 i can get anyone to give me access to anything leave a reply c stryjek dreamstime com refuge an underground city built to save people from an apocalyptic world but how will its people save themselves read the stories in any order or start with the introduction at part 1 reconciliation council report c 36 interview with nina 59a recorded by beatrice 75c ry 101 1 29 when i was a little girl i hacked into someone s head for the first time one of my teachers maybe grade three or four an old man who was mean and cranky and terrified all his students i made him put down his chalk and spin around like a dancer all the kids laughed and he just stood there wobbling and wondering what had happened i was sure he had no idea there was a type 1 in his classroom i didn t even laugh to give myself away and i never told anyone so i was sure i had gotten away with it i was arrogant then i probably haven t changed as much as i d like to think continue reading this entry was posted in flash fiction and tagged fiction refuge science fiction on december 27 2018 by mmwelch new year leave taking leave a reply from the marvelous mrs maisel source there s a scene in the marvelous mrs maisel where the title character visits a very eccentric artist who refuses to sell any of his paintings in fact he won t even show his best painting midge manages to charm him as she does almost everyone and he takes her to the hidden room where he stores this amazing painting it s wonderful she says why won t he sell it or at least give it to a museum and why does he live this eccentric lonely life without a family i put everything i have into that painting he says there s nothing left i don t want to sound as melodramatic as this but i can understand what he s saying when i look back at the work that i dumped most of my soul into it s the gbahn and archipelago books i wrote them ten years ago though the pub date says 2013 and i feel like i ve spun my wheels ever since i have written some other things since then some ideas i wanted to explore but nothing really grabbed me by the throat and demanded to be written like those books they sucked out my soul and there s not much left yes i know still sounds melodramatic i ve enjoyed exploring the themes in my unpublished mystery novels as well as the unpublished refuge novel and the flash fiction i ve posted here but i think i ve done all i can do with those i ve said what i wanted to say and i m done pushing the point doesn t result in good work kind of like my attempts at the big fat historical fantasy and the week or so of nanowrimo i tried to do both felt like pulling teeth i just didn t care enough about the characters or the story to make it work if my heart and soul aren t in it it s not worth writing so i m taking a leave from writing for the new year kind of an anti new year s resolution a resolution not to do something which sounds much less anxiety provoking i ve got one last entry in stories from refuge scheduled for tomorrow and i might still do some poetry when it comes to me but i won t be pushing myself to follow this once a week schedule i might even write some fiction if i get an idea and if it doesn t feel like pulling teeth thanks so much to the followers who have been reading and best of luck for your own writing and happy new year this entry was posted in fiction on december 26 2018 by mmwelch stories from refuge 138 why would he confess and deliberately get himself arrested leave a reply c svedoliver dreamstime com refuge an underground city built to save people from an apocalyptic world but how will its people save themselves read the stories in any order or start with the introduction at part 1 reconciliation council report b 108 interview with j s recorded by mary 80c ry 101 1 27 yes i m back i already talked to you about being a hacker and why should i admit that if you re arresting people and then i find out that i got amnesty you didn t even do anything to make sure i couldn t crack your systems again and read the last report i got amnesty because my actions were against government but carol hired me and she gets a criminal charge so that s it right like that woman from civil said yesterday confess a crime like rioting or sabotaging bots or hacking into government systems and you get to go free confess that you stole something from an ordinary person or bought drugs or beat someone up who wasn t wearing a helmet and you get charged like all those other people had nothing to do with government like we aren t the way we are because you people were the way you were but here s something you weren t expecting let s see how you handle this continue reading this entry was posted in flash fiction and tagged fiction refuge science fiction on december 20 2018 by mmwelch poetry corner yucca leave a reply you weren t expecting me here were you desert plant like me among oak trees and pine growing up like i belong here when you think i m just a strange visitor well so are you poetry photography c 2018 michelle m welch this entry was posted in poetry and tagged photography poetry walnut canyon on december 19 2018 by mmwelch stories from refuge 137 that s what the law was supposed to be leave a reply c serjio74 dreamstime com refuge an underground city built to save people from an apocalyptic world but how will its people save themselves read the stories in any order or start with the introduction at part 1 reconciliation...