Justice and Mercy

There’s a debate going on at the moment, regarding prisoner’s rights in South Africa. A lot of you may not know that a very large percentage of our prison population is HIV positive, mainly because they picked up the ’slow puncture’ in prison.
Large numbers of prisoners are dying in prison, and many have now made the case that these prisoners should be allowed to go home and die with their families.
Which is all well and good, and a clear case of tempering Justice with Mercy, as is right and proper.

But is it really? We are so very concerned about Mercy, that it seems to me that Justice has fallen by the wayside.
Where was Mercy when these men raped children? Where was Mercy when they brutally murdered people in their homes, or shot them in cold blood because they were ‘inconvenient’?
The answer? Mercy was nowhere to be found.

My Wise Sister-in-Law said (wisely, of course) that you can’t pay with more than your life. Which is very true. Many of these men would not be dying now if they hadn’t gone to jail, so in a sense they are paying with their lives.
But here’s the thing: 99% of them do not care. It’s a well known fact that if you go to jail, unless you’re very fast or you have some serious connections, you will be raped. Repeatedly and violently. And there’s a very good chance you will get AIDS from it.
Everyone knows this. But they still do it. They still think they can do whatever they please, to whomever they like, and there will be no consequences.
I’m not saying that male rape in prison is a good thing, don’t get me wrong.
It’s a horrible thing, and I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy.
But it is a consequence.
And when the government is so concerned with tempering Justice with Mercy that Justice has gone out the window, we need those consequences.

Think about this: in Saudi Arabia, consequences for crime are clear, immediate and more often than not severe. Allright, some of the things they consider crimes are not in the Western mind, crimes at all, but the point is that there are consequences. If you murder, you die. It’s a simple equation, and it works.
Because they are less concerned with the rights of the criminals than the rights of the citizens.
In the West, it’s often the other way ’round.

If our Mercy was more tempered with Justice, the world might be a different place.

Wold you do this?

Would you work eight extra hours while you’re sick, on fifteen minutes’ notice?
Because apparently I should have.

In any case.

I have finished The Naked God, and it’s like a genie popped out of nowhere to grant me all my wishes. I really loved that book.

In other news, Albert was an Asshole Royal last night – dragging me out to his friends’ place until ten when he knows I have to be at work at six, and then fucking off to some other friends untill bloody midnihgt. He also said they phoned him to go, but I was tired, not deaf. They never phoned him. So either he went there out of his own will, or he never went there at all. And thus was out doing godknowswhat with godknowswho. He also smoked all my cigarettes.

To sum up: I hate my job, I love the book, and Albert is a pain.

Seriously. Everyone in the world must read this.

Speaking as someone who has my novel open in the background while I surf the web and try to catch up on all the blogs I want to read, go read this.
You’re missing our if you don’t.

OMFG I actually Knew a President!

Have you ever indulged yourself and Googled various people you know to see if they show up? Well, I was Googling my grandfather, and his name came up along with Marais Viljoen. Now, I knew Oom Marais. Not well, but well enough to sit on his lap when I was a little girl (not like that you perv!). His wife taught me to knit. Not terribly successfuly, but I was six. So that part’s to be expected.
And only now do I find out he USED TO BE PRESIDENT OF SOUTH AFRICA? Why was I not told? Think of all the mortal terror I could have inflicted on the other kids at school!
I could have threatened to send the Secret Police after them!
Muahahahahahahah!

Except nobody ever told me, and so my evil empire never happened.
Foiled again.

Mugabe declares war?

So, was just on the phone with Albert. Apparently everybody’s favourite syphilis-addled tyrannical dictator has just declared war on the rest of Africa.
Well, the man’s completely out of his tree, so I don’t think it’s actually impossible.

I just really, really don’t want it to be true. Because if for-real war breaks out in Zim-against-the-world, South Africa will be standing bang behind old Mad Bob. Because they were all terrorists together in the war against colonialism/imperialism/apartheid, and once you’re brothers in the Struggle you’re brothers for life. And it doesn’t matter that the only difference between a freedom fighter and a terrorist is that freedom fighters have already won – because here at the arse end of Africa, the terrorists have all won. And they’re sitting in positions of power remembering the good old days when they could necklace people for telling the truth about them.
Do you know what necklacing is, by the way?
They put a car tyre around your body. They fill it with gasoline. And then they light you on fire, and turn up the music so they don’t have to listen to you scream.
If you’re a man, that is. Only then do you get off that easily
If you’re a woman, you can expect to be raped a few times before they actually get around to the tyre part. Like Maki Skosana, who was still a child when they forced broken glass into her vagina and set her on fire.

And these are the people who run the country, who decide whether we go to war or not. People longing for the glory days of murder and mayhem…
People who believe, whacked-out as it may sound, that Mugabe is actually an okay sort of guy with some good ideas – they’re even adopting some of his land reform practices here! The same land reform practices that saw white farmers murdered, milliions of dollars worth of crops destroyed and the people of Zimbabwe set on a downward spiral of opppression, starvation and abuse. Brilliant, right?

Inspiration strikes like a thermonuclear warhead!

I have had a brainstorm. That’s like a brainfart, but it makes actual sense.
See, lately, as you might have noticed, I have been having some trouble writing. And now, I have finally figured out why that is.
You see, when I started my Monster Book of Doom, I had a pretty clear idea of what was going to happen. But in the process of actually writing it, the whole feel of the stoyr has changed. I’ve gone back so many times and rewritten things that I no longer know what the central plot actually is. Hence, writer’s block.

So, to cure this most horrible of diseases, I have hit upon this: I am writing a detailed – and I do mean detailed – plot summary. Chapter-by-chapter he-did-she-did-this-happened and why. It’s like an old legend – he went there and did this and this is why, and so this happened.
As I’m writing – I’m only at Chapter 2 – I can actually feel the plot crystallizing in my mind, becoming if not set in stone, at least set in wax. It might melt and re-form later, but at least I don’t feel like I have a Hydra by the tail anymore.

I’ve never been an outliner, you see. My previous stories (all part of a monster of a saga involving much drama, many beautiful people and a practically infinite number of things happening for no apparent reason) were all very organic. They happened, more than they got written. But while a seven-thousand page multi-fandom fic involving Captain Picard, the Zerg (Starcraft), Spock, the Elves (Tolkien’s version), Gandalf, Data, sentient spaceships, vampires, people from another dimension, gods, demons, evil gods, suicidal immortals revered as gods, drugs and the sexual morals of someone who’s read way, way too many bodice-ripper romances, was great fun to write, not to mention a great way to spend the years between nine and nineteen, it didn’t make a whole hell of a lot of sense.

But this one has a plot, and I happen to think it’s a pretty damn good one. I just have to figure out what parts to include, since some of the things I’ve done either don’t fit the plot, or actually contradict pretty much everything else.
So, my Writing To-Do-List runs as so:

* Figure out plot.
* Decide whether antag is good or Evil (very important)
* Finish Plot Summary of Doom
* Rewrite Parts that don’t work while preserving parts that do.
* Edit Book
* Query Agent
* Get Published.
* Die happy

*dances around the office happily*

I am no longer flailing about! Well, I am flailing about, but now I’m flailing about with a plan!

Age-Banding books and why it’s a bad idea.

I was seven when I started reading in my second language (that would be English). Within six months I had graduated from Heidi to the ancient Greeks. My parents didn’t have many children’s books, so I read what we had – which was a lot of books. My love of reading came from being allowed to read what I wanted, when I wanted, and being praised for it. (yes, I’m a praisewhore)

Alright, some of the books I found might have been inappropriate – but putting age-bands on books isn’t going to stop that.

My brother started reading for pleasure when he was seventeen – because the girl he liked was a reader. She’s his wife now. The first book she gave him to read was Only You Can Save Mankind, by Terry Pratchett. It’s a children’s book. Imagine his reaction if it had had a big band on it saying ‘11+’ or something similar. He’d never have read it!

I believe a lot of people have already said that putting age-bands on books will discourage children who are just beginning to read – couldn’t agree more!

A book is not written for a certain age, it’s written for a certain mind. My grandmother and I both adore Harry Potter. A lot of grown-ups like Harry Potter. A lot of children like it too. How are you going to age-band it?

Are Philosopher’s Stone and Chamber of Secrets going to be 6+? And then you’d have to make Prisoner of Azkaban a 9+, of course. What about the later books, which become steadily darker? Deathly Hallows should be at least 13+ then.
But what about Yiorgos, who read the entire series in his tenth year? He’d never have started it, because the first two would be for ‘babies’ and the last lot would be for kids older than him.
Or are they going to band the entire series at one age?

The idea of agebanding is not only ridiculous, but counterproductive.

Go to http://www.notoagebanding.org/ to read what other people think.

So today started out terribly.

As you all know, I’m blind as a bat. So when my glasses are not where I expect them to be…well, I tend to start freaking out.
This morning, they were not only not where I expected them to be – they were, in fact, nowhere to be found.

I woke up Albert. I made coffee (and if you think making coffee by touch is fun, think again). We moved the bed a grand total of six times. We interrogated the cat. We checked the garbage and the stuffing of the PC chair.

Alas, for the glasses were nowhere to be found, and Merlin waxed pretty much the opposite of verbose.
Eventually, though, the glasses were found. Yes, the quest ended in joyous success.
And I was twenty minutes late for work, but Sheron was already there so that didn’t matter much.

And tomorrow, there will be siblings, and computer parts, and all things wondrous. Yay!

*Much Later*

Have had bad day. The other girl lost my pen, which I had to buy because they don’t supply us with stationery that works, and then I got shat upon for saying she had to buy me a new one. While I’m expected to buy back a flashdrive which someone stole out of the office, and nobody says a word.

I really really hate this job.

Bad boyfriends

Writing is like a psychotic boyfriend, now that I think about it. You know the type – your parents love him, your sisters adore him, your friends think he might be ‘The One’ for you. And none of them notice the way you walk hunched over all of a sudden to keep your heart from breaking, and the bruises that are the reason why you suddenly wear a lot of make-up.

Writing is a lot like that. Sometimes, when it’s good, it’s very good. But when it’s bad, it’s worse than anything you can imagine.

I haven’t been writing for a year and a half now. It’s like being in heroin withdrawal, with the added bonus that your drug of choice doesn’t work anymore. I still love writing. I still love the feel of a character or a story inside of me, waiting to come to life. I imagine that that’s what being pregnant must feel like.
I just can’t do it anymore. I am filled with ideas, pregnant with them…but when the time comes to put them on a page, I just can’t do it. I write perhaps two pages and think to myself ‘what utter shit. Nobody will ever read this!’ and it’s true. Because somehow, somewhere, I seem to have lost the confidence in myself that made it possible, even when I despised myself and wanted to die, to write and get myself out of there. Writing was my lifeline back then, lifting me out of myself and taking me to places where I could be whoever I wanted to be, do anything I wanted to do. And it doesn’t work anymore.

Because since this thing happened to me – this thing that turned my art against me – writing has been my pain. Not my drug against the agony of life, but the cause of it. And that’s never happened to me before.

And I still want it. That’s the worst part. Maybe I’m just too stubborn for my own good, unwilling to give up on the idea that I will be a writer, or maybe I’m meant to get through this and go on writing, someday even something worth reading.

And that’s why writing is like a psychotic boyfriend. You know he’s only going to hurt you. You know he’s bad.
You know that ever time he says ‘it’ll never happen again,’ never is really only ‘until next time’ because it will happen again.
And you still go back.
Because despite what the world wants you to believe, there are more important things than being happy. And art is one of those things.