The Long Way Home

by Scott, Jessica

  So, between the contest comments and the agent comments, I’ve got a problem, right?

  You betcha.

  Now what?

  Well, I could sit in a corner and lick my wounds, whining about how everyone is being mean to me and it’s really a gem if only the right person would pick it up but I won’t. I’m also not inclined to dig into this manuscript right now, either. But I’m going to. I’m letting all these comments swirl around my brain and fester. I’ve got ideas of things I can change. Plot points, characters.

  Basically, I’ve got my work cut out for me if I ever want to see this book in print.

  I’ll be honest. I’m tired of the damn thing. I’ve been working on it for two years and I can’t tell you how many times I rewrote the thing in Iraq. So, the fatigue is an issue for me. I’m letting it sit for a while so that when I do finally dig back into it, I’ll be able to do so with a fresh perspective.

  Regarding War: Women and War is Live

  February 18, 2010

  WE’RE UP AND RUNNING over at PBS POV Regarding War: Women and War and I’ve got to say, now I am a nervous wreck.

  I’m in some pretty esteemed company. Anu Bhagwati, Helen Benedict, and Erin Solaro have defined the field when it comes to discussions on women in the military. I simply wrote a blog from Iraq. It’s an honor to be included in this discussion and I only hope I bring something new to the conversation.

  I’m shaking as I write this because this is real and this is serious and I’m all of a sudden filled with doubt as to what I can really add to the conversation because my experiences are so dramatically different from what the media portrays.

  So I’m still shaking. I think I will be for the rest of the day. But this is it. Holy. Crap.

  My Favorite Book Has Never Been Written

  February 22, 2010

  I’M NOT SURE WHY I stopped reading sci-fi. As a teen, I devoured anything that had a spaceship on the cover, even some stuff that was pretty adult for a teenager. When I was a kid, I read the Star of The Guardians series by Margaret Weiss and Tracy Hickman. I loved this series but I loved the characters of Derek Sagan and Maigrey Morianna more.

  Theirs was a deep love but that love had been twisted by betrayal and had turned into deep hatred and mistrust. The space opera involved putting the lost king back on the throne. There was betrayal, a space pirate, and a loyal sidekick.

  But Derek and Maigrey’s story was the one that enthralled me. See, they’d once been inseparable but Derek had a vision that he would kill Maigrey. When the book opens, it’s pretty easy to see how he’d be able to kill her. They hate each other but are unable to end the other.

  The vision is fulfilled in the third book of the series but not for the reasons you might think. Maigrey has been poisoned and with all her powers, will wreak destruction on the galaxy and so begs Derek to kill her.

  Derek does not die until the end of the fourth book and it closes with them standing at the gates of Hell, facing a journey, together, at least, “through the darkness two must travel together toward the light.”

  As a reader, I never understood why that book was never written. I want to see more of Maigrey and Derek, even if their journey takes them through Hell. But as an author, I understand why. The journey through Hell would be simply a journey through Hell. Maigrey and Derek have already been reunited, so there would be no major interpersonal conflict to carry the story.

  But I wanted to see that book written because I adored those characters. Maigrey was incredibly strong and Derek was deeply tortured. They were great and memorable and I wanted more.

  What if I’m Wrong?

  February 23, 2010

  I’VE BEEN RESEARCHING. EVER since PBS offered me the opportunity to be part of the POV blog Regarding War, I’ve been researching. Women’s roles in the military. Statistics. Facts and media reports.

  What I find is astonishingly upsetting. There’s allegedly an 8% prosecution rate of rapes in the military compared to a 40% rate in civilian cases. 1 in 3 military women are allegedly victims of sexual abuse or harassment but are too embarrassed/ashamed/afraid to speak up. There was an increase in 2008 of 165 rapes reported in Iraq compared to 131 in 2007.

  So as I research, I wonder.

  What if I’m wrong? What if the military that I serve in really is misogynistic and anti-woman and hiding a multitude of sins that I don’t see because of my rank or simply because it hasn’t happened to me? What if commanders are incompetent and leaders are failing all around me and women really are victims in an organization they wanted to serve in and be thought of as equals?

  I don’t want to believe this but the research I’m finding disagrees with my experience. I can’t speak to anyone else’s experience and I know that rapes and assaults occur in the military and I also know that there is significant doubt facing women who come forward, especially if alcohol is involved. But is it ”rampant” as one congresswoman says? Is it so prevalent that nearly every woman interviewed for books on Iraq and Afghanistan say they’ve been harassed, assaulted, and marginalized as a result?

  I find the media reports stunning and shocking and all the more so because it does not reflect what I’ve lived. And I’ve been in a diverse set of units. I’ve been in a Patriot Battalion. I’ve served at a Division headquarters and a test directorate. I’ve served in signal battalions and in a brigade combat team. Short of being assigned to a combat arms battalion, I’ve run the gauntlet of assignments and I just don’t see it. I’ve served as an equal opportunity representative, where I saw first-hand the kind of complaints that come through the EO channels, complaining of bias based on rage, gender, or religion.

  And still, I don’t see the military that is reflected in the media. But still, the seed of doubt has been planted. So as I go through this journey of writing for PBS, I’m growing and learning, not only as a woman but as a soldier as well. I can at least see the difference between what the media reports and what happens on the ground but I’m seeing things in a different light.

  I have to say, I did not expect blogging for PBS to change my point of view. To an extent it hasn’t but at the same time, it has. Because I wonder now.

  What if I’m wrong?

  Dealing With Anxiety Or Reasons Why Mommy Needs A Mental Health Day

  February 26, 2010

  ANYONE WHO KNOWS ME will tell you I am high strung. I tend to jump before hearing the whole story, which has led to some tasty dishes of crow over the years. But I’m pretty intense, especially when something I believe passionately about is at stake.

  Last year in Iraq, I enjoyed the busy times. But there were too often times when I would lie awake with this tight little knot around my heart. It felt like something was squeezing. I wasn’t angry. I wasn’t sad. I just felt my heart being squeezed. I’ve since learned to call it my anxiety knot. Sometimes it’s there, sometimes it’s not. But when it is there and its unrelenting, I start looking for ways to cope with it.

  In Iraq, I could turn to Ambien to help with my insomnia. My kids weren’t there. Plus, everyone I knew had some or if they didn’t, they were on their way to get some. It seemed like we all had problems sleeping at some point or another. And I’ll be honest, the drag of the Ambien, pulling you down into the darkness of uninterrupted sleep, is a pretty damn good feeling.

  Until I started waking up more tired than I was when I’d gone to sleep. Clue number one that I needed to ease back. When I couldn’t remember what I’d tweeted about. Clue number 2 that I needed to back off.

  The whole time I was enjoying the use of my little chemical buddy, I knew that when I came home, there was no more Ambien for me. Remember my anxiety knot? Yeah, well I live in chronic fear that something is going to happen to my kids. I’m paranoid that if I take an Ambien, I won’t hear my kids at night.

  That’s probably more than you wanted to know. I’m not sure why I’m sharing, other than to be completely honest with what I’m going through. It’s not all easy. There are a lot of good day
s but there’s a lot of emotion that I don’t think I’ve properly dealt with. I’m working through it but I’m also determined to work through it without pills. I don’t want my girls to grow up seeing Mommy pop a bunch of pills or getting drunk to cope with stress.

  Yeah, stopped drinking, too, primarily because I wanted to drink too much. The urges are there but I’m coping with them. And it’s hard because I work so diligently at keeping it all together. My kids are adjusting well. I’m dealing well. I damn sure wouldn’t want to go back to Iraq any time soon.

  But I keep driving on, trying to remember that each day is a gift I get to spend with my family.

  Social Networking Part 4: Protecting Yourself Online

  February 27, 2010

  HAVE YOU EVER POSTED pictures of your children on Facebook? Did you know that once you post anything to Facebook, they own it and can use it in advertising if they wish?

  Or how about this. Google yourself in the white pages. I was highly disturbed today to find that not only was my name and phone number listed, but my exact physical address was also posted. For anyone who wishes to find me, my address was just a few keystrokes away.

  Color me a little freaked out. In the age of cyberspace and especially for a public figure like an author (or in my case an aspiring one), the fact that anyone could Google me and come up with not only my address but my husband’s name and my phone number was incredibly disturbing.

  While social networking is critical for the success of any author in this day and age, it also means that authors have to be selective about what information they do allow. New York Times bestselling author Julia London has tweeted about received emails from prison inmates asking her to write their story. But what if that same content came by way of the regular mail?

  It is all too easy to find someone these days. Be cautious about how much information you do choose to put on Facebook. If you own a domain name, if you did not register the account privately, your address and contact information is easily available in the WhoIs database.

  I’m not writing this to scare you or to urge you to get offline. Doing so would damage potential future sales. In the online socially-networked world, readers expect to connect with their favorite authors. But be cautious. The internet is full of people pretending to be someone they are not.

  Recommendations: when you register your domain name, register it privately. GoDaddy charges extra for this privilege but I have done so with every domain name I’ve bought. Google yourself in the White Pages and then sign in to edit your publicly available settings. You can remove the listing easily enough so that only your name and city are available.

  Once you do that, look at who you have for friends on Facebook and MySpace. Do you know them? All of them? If not, do you really want to share baby pictures with random strangers? Check out your followers on Twitter. It seems like every week there is a new hacking attempt at violating your account. Only click on links you know, which is often difficult because of URL shortening services that are so commonly used.

  The online world is full of dark corners most of us cannot imagine. It doesn’t take much for those corners to extend into our own social networks. Use caution with the information you put online and if you’re disconcerted, take action to hide yourself. In today’s day and age, it’s still incredibly easy to find information on people but you can make it just a tad more difficult by practicing some common sense.

  Of Whores and Housewives

  March 4, 2010

  THE BIBLICAL ADAGE YOU reap what you sow has consequences, both in real life and in fiction. For women, you reap what you sow can have even steeper consequences and the adage is so deeply ingrained in the psyche of the masses, it will probably never be erased.

  We don’t like whores, either in fiction or in reality. In fiction, the whore may be the slutty best friend or the scheming other woman but she is almost never the heroine. In real life, the whore has almost no recourse to address any real wrongs that might have happened.

  Nowhere is this a bigger problem than in the issue of rape. When we talk about rape, we talk about attackers and victims and this language muddies the waters in the minds of both men and women, because they call up images of masked men jumping out of bushes and dragging helpless women away by their hair. The reality of rape is that it happens between people who have interacted together, maybe even live together in college dorms, apartment buildings, or military barracks, and they almost always involve alcohol.

  Therein lies the problem. Because these assaults involve alcohol, it automatically falls on the woman to defend her choice to go out drinking, something that only “bad girls” do. How many historical romance novels have you read where the hero is in a bar and wrongly assumes the heroine is a tavern wench? A fun misunderstanding ensues, but the overall message is still relatively consistent: tavern wench = good time, not good girl. Good girls don’t go to bars and they damn sure don’t get drunk. If they do get drunk, well, then whatever happens to them happens. They made the choice to go out drinking and therefore put themselves at risk.

  The problem with this societal norm is that when we don’t teach our sons that it is not okay to go out trolling for drunk chicks to take home, we leave them vulnerable to the messages on MTV’s Real World and Jersey Shore that drunk chicks are fun to take home. We don’t teach them about the risks of such behavior nor do we teach them about the morality of making such a choice and it’s a dirty little secret that yes, a guy will go home with you but he probably won’t date you if when he met you, he thought of you as an easy lay.

  Romance novels have tackled this issue somewhat by beginning with a random encounter in a bar or a one-night stand that turns out by the end of the book to have been the soul-mate after all. Unfortunately, this is fiction, not reality and women who have one-night stands are often branded a whore and therefore unmarriable and undefendable. How many prostitutes are killed and the police look the other way? How many girls get drunk, are raped and are told, “no, you weren’t raped, you just changed your mind the morning after”? Are these women not people, too? Or are they simply reaping what they sow? And can you really rape a prostitute? Legally and morally, yes, you can. But to the masses?

  In order for us as a society to truly move forward, we must start with cultural change with the masses. Intelligentsia can sit in their ivory towers and argue that, yes, a prostitute does have the same rights as a housewife, but until you can convince the masses of that, it is simply another platitude that has no impact on real life.

  The fact that we cannot write a whore as a heroine in a romance novel speaks to a deeper truth in our society. Sexual morality still equals credibility and worth, no matter how much feminists try to tell us that our worth is not tied to our virginity or purity. One of the only whores I can think of in fiction who was not tarred and feathered because of her sexual appetites was Starbuck in the remake of Battlestar Galactica. She found true love and ran screaming and screwing in the other direction. Her character was complex but her worth as a pilot was not tied to her sexuality. A Starbuck, however, is much harder to write in a romance novel and even harder to find in reality. We as readers are unforgiving of sins in our heroines that we would forgive a hero. We as a society are even more unforgiving.

  This is the exact problem we have when we talk about rape involving alcohol. Because the female was drunk, she surrendered her “good girl” status and therefore deserved whatever she got. College campuses are a disgrace when it comes to treating skeptically women who come forward. But this stems from a deeper societal issue.

  There are no easy answers for the whore versus housewife dichotomy that we still find ourselves in. Reality is not dictated by intelligentsia and no matter how much critical thinkers might decry the injustice, it will persist at the practical reality for most people. Reality will never reflect the utopian ideal of true equality for women. But that does not mean that we must continue to equate credibility with sexual morality, nor does it mean we have to con
tinue to kill the whore in our fiction.

  There’s A Reason I Stopped Paying Attention

  March 6, 2010

  I TEND TO WANT to know all I can about a subject and once a subject takes hold, it doesn’t let go. It will haunt my sleep, my dreams. Every conversation becomes about whatever the subject might be.

  So I stopped following politics because I was too passionate and could speak about nothing else. I’ve also stopped following writing industry emails like Publisher’s Marketplace because of my frustration with seeing news that, because of my unpublished status, I could not control. Reading about deals for friends was exciting. Otherwise, reading about deals was simply salt on a wound of something I have not yet accomplished. So I stopped reading to stop second-guessing myself.

  But writing for PBS POV Regarding War has created a new focus in my brain and I can’t turn it off. Everything I talk about is the other author’s posts. I fall asleep composing posts in my brain (of course, without writing them down, so that when I do start writing, all that is gone). I wake up at night and the drum beat of thoughts and questions and debates fills my head once again.

  It’s like being back in Iraq when I would lie awake, unable to shut my brain down. It’s frustrating because there’s nothing I can do to change other’s minds and my experience, backed only by the anecdotal evidence of the women I’ve served with, feels somehow less credible than these women who cite studies and reports and interviews. As part of the legal agreement allowing me to participate in this blog, I can’t interview other soldiers and I can’t use any information that is not freely available to the public.

  This job is taking up my brain and it’s frustrating. It’s frustrating because I am just a soldier, part of the misogynistic machine that supposedly oppresses every woman other than myself. I am a soldier, part of a military that still requires the ability to fight and win our nation’s wars with the best soldiers to accomplish the mission.