I've been somewhat paralyzed on the writing front. I have about eight ongoing things I'm writing, one urgent, and have done very little on any of them. Sometimes I write on the blogs. Sometimes I write in a personal journal that documents the trials of bringing up a violent kid come-of-age. But mostly I'm paralyzed; I write very little.

The fascist coup is mostly to blame. I always wrote to interpret American culture to people who are interested in it; the stories have gentle humor and love of the small town in all its twisted glory. Those days are over. The US has gone fascist, and that makes almost everything I've written hollow and pointless. Should I write novels of the resistance? Of survival during a fascist era, as are the spy novels I've been reading? It seems a retooling is being called for yet I am not quite sure on the strategy.

For example, the other day I decided to start with the pop art. If I want to get back on Facebook, the way to do it is to have lots of pop art, a different one for every page. To that end the best book to push is e pluribus haiku anthology, a rambling 3487-haiku tribute to the US but written from a point of view of a traveler in 1975 or thereabouts. What is that now? There is no hitchhiking, there is no generous populace, there is no easy-life-on-the-road. It's a historical thing but who wants to read history when a fascist is going on the march? Better to put my energy into creating something useful. But what would that be?

So in the end I did nothing. I have biography, family books, lots of poetry, short stories of American life, Wal-Mart, McDonald's and Disney. They are good and reputable but I don't feel like hustling them. The Quaker ones sell well and are picking up in popularity and my inclination is to go that direction even if those are harder to write and take more background.

The urgent one is a retelling of Beauty and the Beast which is mired in my own difficulty getting into fantasy when reality is so crushing. I want to use reality to fight reality, if that makes any sense. I'm a little leery of relying on shifting, beasts, and sex to get me through the tough times. But that one has a deadline, and the hard thing is, I'm not even clear on how bad the pressure is, but I know I have to get moving.

Meanwhile, the bond market is crashing. The farmers are screwed and angry. The economy is upset and people will stop their panic buying, and just concentrate on surviving. And me among them, though I have no money to wonder where to hide it. All my friends waiting on retirement have just seen 30k, 40k, 50k disappear. Uncle Elon saw 30 trillion or something disappear, and that didn't stop him. Blown up in the skies over Florida, maybe. Put all the government resources into a space company that doesn't have a CEO, and make the fleet all Teslas. That'll show 'em. We writers will sit here doing what, observing? Better than fantasy, I suppose.