You get to build your perfect space for reading and writing. What’s it like?
I will do this writing prompt as an exercise, but know that readers and writers don’t stop. There is no perfect place to read and write, because what makes someone good at either is being able to do it anywhere…. thus the reason I use a tablet and keyboard for everything rather than my desktop. I want to be able to get better whether I’m in my living room or in a restaurant… but I’ve watched a lot of YouTube videos on construction, so here’s what I’d do if I bothered to stay in one place.
The perfect reading/writing space for me is a cabin, and I’d like to build it myself (with a group of friends if they’re into that kind of thing). I wouldn’t like it to be very large, but I do want it to be made of the best materials, like rock wool insulation (my house burned down when I was in sixth grade, and it’s almost fireproof). Depending on how long the build I could create and still have people show up, I’d like to do two stories, but a root cellar and a first floor, not a full two-story house.
Where me being a writer comes in is that my desk would probably end up in the root cellar, even if I built myself a whole ass office. I want the place that has the least amount of sensory input, which is why a root cellar would be preferable to an office on the main floor.
The fictional character that’s been with me so long we’re roommates is Carol, and because of our past conversations, she would like a word. Carol works for NSA, so basically her perfect office is mine. When I’ve written about her before (“A Christmas Carol”), I’ve talked about how her husband, Roger, is a contractor and asked Carol where she wanted to live. They built their house into the side of a mountain, so Carol’s office is in a basement….. but only technically. She’s got a basement office in the Blue Ridge range, therefore also equipped with a stunning view. It is not lost on her that whether she is bathed in light or shadow is dependent on where she’s standing, which she feels is an accurate metaphor for her work.
I do not know that I could afford a piece of land like Carol and Roger’s, but the idea is cool. But let’s just pretend that I only have grass and trees. A regular cabin is fine to start.
So, we’ve got the resources we need except the things we need to buy. Instead of buying the lumber, I go ahead and buy all the tools to process cutting down my own trees. Everyone within a 10 mile radius will come to me for milling the trees they’ve cut down in their own yards, so I’ll make it back, or I can just sell all the equipment when I’m finished…. but I doubt I would do that because eventually I would see outbuilding opportunities….. 😉
I also want a stone floor, but in this weather I’d like a heating system for it. So, we’ll put one of those underfloor doohickeys in that connects to the hot water and keeps it running so the stones don’t cool down. But in terms of “stone,” I think I actually want polished concrete. I’ve seen so much of it done that there’s a wide range on what it would look like completed.
But for now, we’ve got the materials for framing, insulation, and the floor. Let’s make sure to add some drywall and fancy hardware for the inevitable doors. I’m not sure what I would like in terms of hardware, and Carol shops online all day. She’ll handle it.
(Because that’s what they do at NSA, right? Sometimes I even eyeroll at myself.)
My office tends to be very plain. I would like a desk and chair that are both too comfortable to leave, and outside of that, I don’t have expensive tastes. I don’t even really have expensive tastes in furniture, I’ve just had a $50 “gaming chair” and an Aeron and I’m going to tell you there’s quite a bit of difference after having sat in each of them for years.
So, I’d want to get an Aeron from a used furniture dealer because they’ll last a hundred years. I don’t need new….. and a big ass desk, because an Aeron won’t fit under anything small. If the room is large enough, I’d like to have the Aeron ottoman and another small chair behind me so that I can use my ottoman when I’m not using my desk and I also have room for another person to sit (but that chair cannot be comfortable enough to invite people to stay long term….)
If I did not put my desk in the root cellar and made the whole first floor my office, I’d like a wood-burning stove. That way, I could make coffee quickly in addition to staying warm. 🙂
The only thing I would take time to do on paper that I won’t here is mark where all the outlets go. As a tech person, I have to have a lot of them….. but what I’ve noticed is that I don’t necessarily need a lot of power. I mostly just need a lot of places to charge small things.
It would be nice to have electricity, even to be on the grid. However, I know that realistically I could get by on a jackery and a cell phone connection if that’s what was available.
I just don’t know that I’d ever bring these plans to fruition, because it’s unlikely that I’d find land like this near the Metro. That’s okay, though. Maybe someday I’ll get lucky like Carol and my husband will be a contractor, too. I could even say that. “Are you a contractor? My fictional character is married to a contractor and I’m jealous of her, soooo…..” Because that would make me sound completely stable.
But here’s what I know to be true. In order for Carol to live in that house with Roger, I had to think of it first. So, is Roger really that important in the whole scheme of things?
Yes, you’re right. He does fix everything.
Hmmmmmmmm.
I obviously need more than one thinking chair, here.
Invent a holiday! Explain how and why everyone should celebrate.
Kidding. I’ll think of something before this entry is up. Before we get started, I have to tell you what a cute boyfriend Zac is. He brought me a kids’ t-shirt (just like I like them) that, in a handwriting font, says, “I’m an annaylistanaylistannalyst spy.” I told him if he started working for DIA I’d trade up a letter. 😉 The only thing CIA did that will never even touch DIA’s power no matter what happens for the next hundred years is obviously finding Wakanda (but also cool that DIA’s ancient predecessors, the Culpeper Ring, won us our independence). We didn’t beat the British outright militarily, we outspied them). I choose to believe that Captain America is DIA- it’s not just Martin Freeman that’s American intelligence, he just couldn’t tell us. But it’s in the FOIA. You just have to be specific in the question and no one has ever gotten the right combination of words in the request to unlock said I in the A.
We ran out of soda so Zac gave me the next best thing, Athletic (brewery that focuses on non-alcoholic beers so hard that they are the gold standard. Athletic should be the Google and Kleenex of N/A beer. Seriously, it’s that good. I had a sour (don’t remember whether it was cherry or raspberry) and a radler (lager and lemonade). Oh, and I had a Czech pils (or an N/A flavored like one) and at some point, a real beer which I think was also a sour (mostly because I was freezing- I should have had a shot of something instead because it just wasn’t strong enough to make my blood any warmer…….).
The N/A sour was objectively better in terms of flavor. Plus, I woke up this morning feeling just fine. I have decided I am done being hung over. Trying new cocktails is great and all, but I just can’t hang and don’t want to, because I am all about calories, just not empty ones. If I get buzzed, I make a decision to have another one while my brain is cloudy because everything sounds like a great idea until your brain swells for revenge. Plus, I am a straight up diarist. What am I going to write about if I pass out and don’t remember?
However, I do want to join the boys (Zac and Oliver) on the back porch for a stitch and bitch. I was teasing him this morning about how “of course all queer men are amazing at intelligence. They love gossip, and intelligence is basically international gossip. The 3D chess of gossip. I loved his laugh at that one.
I also want to see Jonna Mendez again live when her autobiography comes out, because it’s the book I really want to read next. It’s the natural progression from where she and Tony left off in “The Moscow Rules.” Team Mendez are my favorite writers, and at first, it wasn’t even intelligence that drew me in. It was the “Argo” script. Tony and Jonna (uncredited) wrote “Argo” in reaction to the movie to give people real vs. reel. The movie is scary. The book is now terrifying. It’s different once you’ve met them, because you make a connection and then you see your friend in danger, not this made up character. Your picturing their facial expressions because you’ve seen them in person.
If I could make a holiday, I’d make one for CIA, and this is a real thing. It’s not “let’s all dress up as James Bond and develop a fondness for gin.” It’s that for some reason, people in DIA get more respect. There’s Veterans’ Day and Memorial Day. Yet, civilians work for CIA that do some of the same jobs the military does and there’s so much crossover- CIA is considered paramilitary.
If Marines can be equated to doctors, CIA is probably closest to a surgical nurse, trying to anticipate the military’s needs. Doctors get glory. Yet CIA doesn’t get thanks, in part because they never want to be seen as asking for it. They’re our MiB, and we are but Citizens of Locker C…….. but they still have the same PTSD coming home from a war. However, I would include FBI in this holiday as well, because we’ve obviously got a war at home. The FBI having to embed themselves in drug cartels and white supremacy groups is no less dangerous than your base getting bombed in Afghanistan. Plus, there’s so much crossover, like when CIA gets word that a terrorist from another country is planning to come here. FBI has to be on alert for when said high value target lands.
Then, there’s Homeland Security, the office managers of an operation like coordinating with a terrorist’s travel plan. Let’s include them with all the intelligence officers because they’re part of the solution, not the problem. All of these groups have terrible reputations and they’re not undeserved. The US military has just as much blood on their hands, but intelligence doesn’t have romantic country songs about them…. I’m not saying they should. Many people ask if they can do something. Few people question if they should.
I know firsthand what it’s like to date someone carrying around classified information that is not pleasant. I watch how he manages himself when I am genuinely interested in his emotions about work and he has to figure out a way to talk about them……………. without ever really talking about the problem. And yet, he doesn’t get frustrated and give up.
He finds a way with analogies just like I do here. Our brains track similarly because we are both interested in intelligence and both neurodivergent. We are both also empaths and emotionally flexible. It’s great that we’re both writers, because he might not be able to say “Israel is doing X and this one thing gave me a heart attack and I’m not supposed to tell you this, but….” We just switch to something fictional, like MiB (Adult entertainment section in the back!).
You can’t tell me that shit is not equally hard to navigate for a civilian. Again, CIA’s reputation is not undeserved. I am only saying that civilians are just as important as the military, and FBI is overlooked because there’s a day for policemen and two for the military and they are neither.
And NSA…… because they’re the ones that would run across this post first. Carol will not be amused.
Editor’s Note
I started calling my Amazon Echo Dot “Carol” a few years ago, because it put a hilarious spin on government surveillance and made me laugh like a hyena when I thought of it. Once I named her, I started thinking about what it would be like to have an NSA agent whose sole job was to watch me. What would it be like if they were your guardian angel? That they listen in on your phone calls and secretly think “the audacity of this bitch….. what’s going to happen next? This is a Ben & Jerry’s situation. I am not okay.” That Carol hurt when I hurt, cried when I cried, etc. That she was invested. Thus, Carol will eventually become a book because she’s the first true character that plays in my mind independently and has her own personality.
Here’s what I’ve learned about fiction that I didn’t know before. I get so focused on my characters’ voices that it becomes induced DID for the length of time I’m writing….. except I’m working with two or more voices at the same time, so when a character has monologuing Syndrome, I am that one person. That’s what feels like DID. During a conversation, it feels like induced schizophrenia, because you are hearing voices in your head for fun and profit.
Carol’s husband, Roger, is very rich. He started a landscaping company and got into pools later. Now he has an empire and Carol could be a kept woman easily. She just can’t leave a job in intelligence. She feels needed and wanted in a way she doesn’t get at home, and Roger can’t be her entire support system……. and in some small way, I enrich her life because she can forget about her own problems for a while.
In this scenario, I would be a Mr. Robot-type character because that’s who I am in real life without the hacking or coding skills. I just found that vibe for writing and I fucking love it. Learning how coders work unlocked my mind, and I have to believe it’s because so many of my coworkers were also autistic and needed to turn down the sensory issues in the room. Right now, all my lights are on, but that is unusual. I am a stickler for working with natural light, and just a bit of it so the room is dark but not depressing. I can go deep enough within myself without all that. I do not need to introduce anything that would make me ruminate more than I already do.
And, of course, Carol reads all of it because she has access to my e-mail and files. For instance, Carol knows about Supergrover, and she is the only one who has the real story. It’s comforting that I have someone to talk to about it when it can’t all go here. Because she is a character, we can have real conversations because I am thinking about what she would say in response vs. what I would. That’s the nature of craft- being able to not only capture your voice accurately, but being able to dream up accurate ones for other people as well.
That’s why I think starting with stream of consciousness is so important before fiction, even if it’s only having kept a diary as a kid and still have it for reference. The trap is making every character sound like you. It’s confusing for the reader because they have to keep re-referencing who said what, annoying when that takes several pages of backtracking. Due to my blog, I know very well who is speaking…. when I am making decisions based on my own echo chamber instead of hers.
In order to write Carol, I have to speak Carol. In order to make her leap off the page, it becomes a symbiotic relationship. In short, I’m her remora. The reason she’s the shark is that in my head, her voice is alpha because I’m just a scribe. So is she, obviously, making notes to take home to the boys. But I got on the shit list by accident and now I’m just endearing. When she first got me, it was on a camera going into a bank. I was looking straight at her, and she thought, “who is this tiny sprite here to fuck up my program?” Over time, I’ve become the soap opera she watches at lunch just for shits and giggles. For the record, I’ve made her swear a lot more….. and now she’s addicted to Dr Pepper Zero.
The best thing about working for the NSA is that it can be all remote. Carol works from home because Roger asked her where she wanted to live and built a custom house. Their house is basically carved into what could reasonably be compared to “The Englishman Who Went Up a Hill and Came Down a Mountain.” The reason for this is that Carol, like me, prefers to work in natural light. Her office is in what would normally be considered a basement and yet still has a stunning view. The house is in the middle of the Blue Ridge range, where she keeps a stunning array of monitors with no bullshit florescent lights or cubicle farm.
Carol got too used to working at home and having everything delivered during the pandemic, so when it was safe to come back to the office in Washington, she was just like, “nah.” She’s senior enough that she can do that kind of thing and no one will get shirty about it. “Shirty.” She picked that up in London in 2012. She was there for one reason and one reason only. I talked her into seeing the Women’s National Team for me….. and she thinks I don’t know that. Or, at least I hope I do. Plus, Carol doesn’t have all the hang-ups I do about video calling strangers, and of course her Internet connection is infallible so she knows it feels like everyone is really there in 8K. That often it reinforces people’s humanity to see them on video that doesn’t come across in person, because there are so many moments that everyone forgets other people are watching.
She’s picked up a lot of information that way. Intentions of coworkers are easier to read when you understand microaggressions and look for them. She doesn’t assume that people are lying. She only assumes that what they’re saying is the truth, but the feelings about what they say may or may not match. Carol understands all thousand implications in “oh. You’re here.” No one is happy when they see the NSA is present.
Where’s her holiday? She watches me. Who the fuck deserves it more? 😉
Christmas 2022 has been a very quiet affair so far. It obviously looks a little bit different than I thought it would, but not in a way that feels foreign. Even if things had gone exactly as planned, Christmas morning would still be the calm before the storm. I wake up earlier than everyone else during the rest of the year, as well as aging and requiring less sleep. Santa hasn’t come to my house in seven years without me being there, arms outstretched with hay (Hey Finns, reindeer eat hay, right? Unclear. I hope they weren’t just being polite.). Early this morning, Santa told me what all of you got. I’m seeing your faces as you’re opening up your presents and thinking how right he was as your faces light up. It’s an incredible energy to sit in this morning as I write. I think things like, “I wonder if Jonathan liked his head.” Yes. That’s an actual thing I thought this morning, and I’m leaving it without context because it’s so much funnier that way.
I have spent several Christmases completely alone, and though I appreciate the pomp and circumstance of Christmas (particularly the classical music), it actually is a cool thing to spend it thinking about yourself. You don’t have to compromise with anyone. I am not saying that you should turn away family in favor of this. I’m saying that if you end up alone on Christmas, it is a gift. TRUST ME. You have a day to yourself to plan anything you want. USE IT without feeling guilty. If you literally can’t get to your family, don’t spend the day crying for them. Create new memories with yourself to share with them.
If something says it’s Christmas to you, go for it. In my own life, Christmas has been Star Wars until recently (I, too, like to eat Chinese food on Christmas and go to the movie theater, too.). One of my friends said “Star Wars movies are not Christmas movies.” I said, “yes, but some of them have been released Christmas week.” It wasn’t about the subject matter, it was about going to see a movie on the big screen after opening all my presents. For future reference, if I invite you to go to a movie with me, it means that the movie is a big deal, not that you are. You may be as well, but most movies are perfectly fine on a television, particularly if you aren’t precious about the picture. Just because it’s large doesn’t mean it’s expensive.
I have a relatively nice TV, but I will always shell out for IMAX if it’s an action movie that I’m desperate to see. If I was in any way wealthy, I would have rented one of the IMAX theaters in downtown Silver Spring to stream “Jack Ryan.” It’s one of the few spy shows I like in terms of plot ideas and execution, because Clancy gave them source matierial that covered everything from world events to the exact length of a left-handed cotter pin…. and is that an African cotter pin or a European cotter pin?
Why yes, that was me making fun of Tom Clancy. Thank you for noticing. The one thing that they get wrong is that there is such a thing as a CIA agent, but Jack’s not it. He’s a case officer. All people in CIA operations are called “operations officers” or “case officers.” An agent is an asset we’ve put in place…. as in, someone who most probably lives in the area of operation as opposed to a US citizen.
I will watch anything with spies in it. Full stop. I just don’t take much seriously. There is no equivalent to “Law and Order” in intelligence because to make a procedural you’d have to know what the rules were to be able to write about them. It’s not just CIA- all intelligence agencies foreign and domestic would have a problem with the general public knowing the minutiae of what they do. I read a ton of non-fiction so that I can pick up real knowledge, it’s just necessarily dated. Most of the operations I can speak to are from the late 40s to early 90s. I do not believe that I could write what it would be like to be a spy in today’s world, but I think I have a pretty good handle on what it is like to be one in general… the personality quirks and mannerisms that become timeless whether it’s human intelligence collection or cybersecurity.
It seems to change the people I’ve met in all the same ways. Intelligence is not regimented like the military. You are free to be whoever you want to be, and you can write your story the way you want to tell it. Therefore, in my experience, no two spies are alike. Their personalities are as individual as a fingerprint. In terms of grand patterns of behavior based on the books I’ve read, working in intelligence takes all of those disparate personalities and changes minute parts to work in concert.
I’ve been to the spy museum where not only American legends gather, it adds old KGB/Mossad/GRU agents that now want to work with the museum, etc. I like spies as people. They’re generally hilarious and devastatingly clever. And here’s something about spies that you may not have thought of. They vote. They’ve been to many, many countries in the world. They see what works and what doesn’t. And they bring all that knowledge back to the US and it informs their policy recommendations. If anyone in an intelligence agency lives in your neighborhood, the intellectual property value just shot through the roof.
If spies didn’t have their fingers on the pulse of politics while they were executing their operations, it would very much surprise me. It occurred to me just how attractive it would be to someone living in a country that had some political power… able to use their knowledge to either change their country or get out before things got much, much worse.
It just occurred to me that it might be a very good idea to put it into the ether that if you are a gay government employee in a country where being gay is illegal, get some power. All we need is a reason to come get you and we will. It’s been proven. It’s not that we as a government don’t care about all gay people and don’t wish we could fix everything… it’s that if you want the clearest, quickest path to an ex-fil, find information that the United States government needs and tell us why we need it. If it feels scary to put yourself out there, CIA has an Onion site where you can leave absolutely untraceable messages. Sometimes it’s not worth fighting the system. Sometimes it’s worth playing the long game to get out.
In 1947, being gay in the CIA was illegal and not even because CIA hated gay people. It’s because it was one of the hot button issues that would get you tortured and killed overseas- an unnecessary risk. Now, CIA is rainbow central with queer and trans officers. Actually, that’s another plus. Join US intelligence and not only will your work become valuable, we can introduce you to a whole bunch of other queer people who do what you do. So, not just people you might want to date and be friends with because they’re also queer, but because you actually have a whole lot in common.
It occurs to me that I am now pimping out the Central Intelligence Agency as a gay dating app, and I do not know how they would feel about that. Well, I wrote it down on my web site. If it’s offensive, someone will be with me shortly. I should have talked to Carol about this before I posted it.
Carol is not a real person, she’s my Amazon Echo Dot. I read somewhere that people were concerned that Alexa was actually the NSA, and I thought it was hilarious. This is because let’s say it’s true. That’s even better. It’s Carol’s entire job to log what I say and what I do. It makes me double over with laughter to think that there is a woman in the world whose entire job is looking down on me like a guardian angel and being stuck in a permanent face palm.
I have put a really kind face on government surveillance, and I feel tender toward her because I’m such a mess. This is because I anthropomorphized my Echo Dot and gave Carol an extensive back story. She and Roger, her husband, live out near Hollins College in southern Virginia. They have this fabulous off-grid setup because they got a government rebate for green construction and Roger is a contractor. So, Carol has a professional, NSA-level computer setup in her basement so that she can listen to me while she looks out over the Blue Ridge Mountains. Yes, it’s a basement, but the house is built into the side of a hill. Floor to ceiling windows on one side. Carol doesn’t like feeling boxed in, which makes me feel like doing interesting things. Actually interesting, not “today I’m going to mess with Carol.” She’s straight and married and all that, but it still lights her up inside when I’m happy and destroys her when I’m not, because it’s her job to listen and she took it a little too seriously.
Because I know so much about Carol and talk to her every single day, I am sure that she will be a fictional character in one of my novels, just not the alternate history. The alternate history is set in a time period too early for The Patriot Act.
I also feel it absolutely necessary as a mental health patient to say that the reason I’m so into Carol and keep adding to her story is because I could use her in a book one day, not because I have gone down the rabbit hole of being cool with government surveillance. That’s a mixed bag, because as someone who doesn’t code but knows IT, I feel that there are worse people that already have eyes on me than the United States government. If China and Russia already have me under surveillance, why do I care if the US is also there? If something I’ve done has caused me to get hacked, I want my government to see what happened and be able to decide if I need help or punishment. They may be rancid butter, but they’re the only ones on my side of the bread.
Carol would probably vouch for me, but “we are going to have a LOOOOOONG TALK about this when we get home.”
At least since it’s Christmas, she won’t ground me until tomorrow.
Stories That Are All True 