First Drafts

I had a dull day at work without J, who is on annual leave (I’d say holiday, but he’s at home, using up unused holiday days before they expire on 31 January). I had to make a phone call which I handled badly, or at least not as well as I would have liked. Other than that, it was mostly sorting old papers again, but at least I’m making some progress with it, however slight. Tomorrow I need to go to the bank before the end of the month, which is usually the highlight of my working month, except in January when I usually go multiple times as people send so many membership fee cheques in (some people still write cheques, particularly as our members tend towards the elderly and technophobe).

After waiting fifteen minutes and having the rabbi make some phone calls, we got a minyan (prayer quorum) for Minchah (Afternoon Prayers), but someone had to leave at the end so we couldn’t daven Ma’ariv (say Evening Prayers) and had to do that at home instead. It’s hardly the worst problem ever, but it was frustrating. The minyan is usually made up of people who work in offices locally, as there isn’t much of a local Jewish population, and at the moment many people are on holiday.

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As usual, I read a Torah study book on the Tube in to work, but I skimmed How to Write Science Fiction & Fantasy by science fiction author Orson Scott Card at lunch and on the way home. A lot of it is intuitive, or related to types of science fiction I have no intention of writing (at the moment), and much of the rest I suspect I picked up from another book he wrote about writing technique. I’ve never been sure how much you can teach writing, or any art. I guess there’s a part which is technique, which can probably be taught as a craft, and another part that is raw talent that has to be honed by actually writing, if you’re lucky enough to have it.

One thing that did interest me was the idea that you might need to do a first draft to try out ideas and then rewrite it into something completely different. This was shocking to me, as my English teacher at school used to insist that a first draft was 99% of the final product. Talking of a “rough draft” was even worse, and anyone saying that to him would be told, “Rough is what the doggie says.” Similarly, Steven Moffat, the greatest of the Doctor Who new series writers and showrunners (in my humble, but controversial, opinion) says that a first draft is most of the work; the subsequent drafts are just polish. And who am I to argue with the author of Blink and Heaven Sent?

It’s a strange concept for me to get my head around: a draft that I go into knowing very little of it will survive into later drafts is just not how I have written up until now (although part of me wants to perform a drastic re-write on my first novel one day). I can see that it makes sense for science fiction or fantasy in a way that it might not with more realistic fiction. With these genres, as well as the usual plot and characterisation common to all fiction, there’s a lot of literal world-building to test, finding rules for an environment and for pseudo-science or magic that are consistent and don’t cheat the reader or make things too easy for the hero. I can see it might be easier doing that on paper than in your head, but it is a paradigm shift for me, even if I was already tentatively going down that path.

A related question is research. I want my book to involve virtual reality (like Meta), but realise I know very little about actual contemporary virtual reality to extrapolate from. My instinct is to search bookshops for non-fiction about it as well as famous science fiction books like Neuromancer and other classics from the cyberpunk sub-genre (I’ve read the seminar cyberpunk short story Johnny Mnemonic. But don’t mention The Matrix or I’ll scream. It’s an over-rated pile of Philip K. Dick fanfic). But maybe it’s better to just write at this stage and look at other people’s thoughts (real-world and fiction) after I’ve got something down on paper. That will also save my bank balance and give me more time to read the BIG PILE OF OTHER BOOKS I’ve acquired lately.

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The baby blessing has come up again. This is the family event Sister and Brother-in-Law are planning for next month, with attendance at their shul (synagogue), at the communal refreshments afterwards and two big family meals, a week before another family/social event my parents are planning for Dad’s seventieth birthday. This has made me anxious on multiple levels, some religious, some autism- and mental health-related.

The latest issue is that the hotel where we would have to stay has electronic locks, which would be problematic on Shabbat (the Sabbath) when electricity can’t be used. When I was in New York, the staff at the hotel I stayed at were used to religious Jews asking (or more usually hinting, as it’s not really permitted to ask non-Jews to perform work on Shabbat) to have doors opened for them, but this might not be the case here and they might see it as suspicious behaviour.

Even beside that, I still feel deeply negative and anxious about the whole thing, doubly so as I feel I have no right to express my discomfort, whether from religious or autistic/socially anxious reasons, even though I worry what kind of state I will be in by the end of January if I go through all this, which I feel is a legitimate worry and not me being difficult.

Then there is the fact that, at the moment, it looks like I would have to go through these events without E, which just feels so painful now and I don’t know how much anyone in my family understands that.

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I was thinking today about not achieving the level of halakhic (Jewish law)observance that I wanted or expected I would have by now. This is partly because E and I are now growing together and religious growth needs to be at a pace that both of us can bear, and I’m OK with that, but, even beyond that, I have been relying on leniencies in some areas or relaxing my standards for a while now, as I’ve mentioned before. As I said the other day, I think it’s hard being frum (Jewishly observant) with mental health issues, neurodiversity, less frum relatives and without feeling integrated into a supportive community, let alone juggling all of these. I hate to use ‘privilege’ language, but I increasingly feel that being fully halakhically observant is a privilege. It’s not something all Jews can attain, even if they want to, but as a community we are not accepting of that.

As I thought about it, I realised that I am disabled, but for twenty years I was trying to be frum without knowing I was disabled, not knowing that there were legitimate leniencies I could rely on (sometimes I knew I could rely on things because of depression or living with less frum parents, but I did not know about autism). It’s a strange situation to be in, to become retroactively aware that you were disabled all your life. I doubt it happens to many people; I would think usually disability announces itself very clearly! It’s something I haven’t really come to terms with.

I’m not sure where I’m going with this, beyond my reiterated desire to say something to other frum people about this, but not knowing what I want to say or who I want to say it to or how I want to say it and being afraid of the reaction I would get for essentially justifying my non-observance of halakhah.

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