Mooney

This is what I have to say on the matter. Mooney was no saint, to put it mildly. And he certainly deserves derision.

But not for things he didn’t do. He didn’t, for instance, break the law to marry a girl nine years his junior (and let’s be clear, that would make her almost literally half his age–a young man marrying a child) or almost nine years his junior, even though that’s what scholars say about him.

Not to mention that a story in which her father breaks the law to give her to a man makes her father look like a monster. Is it fair that this should be his reputation if not earned?

Maybe it’s a stupid story, but I just don’t think “man cleared of crime” actually is. And I don’t understand why the hostility against that coming out.

Confession

When I hear fiction writers talking about how it took them ten years to write a book, I literally cannot understand what they’re doing with their time. Ten years to write a scholarly book? Sure. You might have to go out to Davenport, Iowa, and live among your subjects and ask them all sorts of questions and that could take some time. And then, if you have to read everything ever written about the people of Davenport, that’s going to take some time. And then writing while trying to keep current on the Davenport research can be majorly time consuming.

Fine.

But I’ve been working on this Sue Allen thing since November, and, frankly, I’ve spent most of that time at my job or goofing off. And I still have a draft, you know?

I get how it could be ten years between books. Maybe you just don’t have anything to say for a long time after trying to say so much.

I guess that’s one of the things I appreciate about blogging. It trains you to keep the spigot open. Sit down, let some words out. Sit down, let some more words out.

Revisions are going slowly. I’m kind of in the weeds.

I hope something comes of it.

I Saw a Thing!

Not a “The Thing” thing, but just a thing I couldn’t identify. It was an unidentified cute animal! Mrs. W. and I saw it cross the road. It looked like a ferret, which was my initial thought, but it was the size of an adult ferret and yet, it was really slim and kind of small-appearing, like a juvenile something. Plus, it was all one color. I couldn’t tell if it was a really dark brown or black, but it was one solid color, not ferret colored.

I’ve been looking throughout the weasel family on Wikipedia, but I’m just not finding anything that looks exactly right. It could have been, I suppose, a ferret someone let loose out here. Maybe my perception of how big it was is wrong.

But I have to say, I kind of wondered if it’s not a young otter. But I’ve never heard of otters in Davidson county. Though it was on Lloyd, where the creeks are.