In Which I Embark On Something New

I have a hard time with this blog, because I talk too much. It's the exact same problem I have with Vampires. It's TOO LONG. I cannot possibly get it all right. So I decided, about a month ago, to chop it into smaller pieces, and then publish those pieces independently. It's working out really well. I don't want to shoot myself in the foot, but Book 1 is almost finished. So I think I will try to do that with this blog. Chop up longer posts into more manageable pieces.

To that end, I begin a series of blog entries.

I've been thinking a lot about Asperger's syndrome. Specifically, I've been thinking a lot about the fact that I don't have it.

I think.

I mean, I think I don't have Asperger's syndrome, if it's a syndrome in and of itself, but it's entirely possible my Cerebral Palsy is masking Aspergers syndrome, or I have a more severe form of Asperger's, which explains how I am able to do things most people with Cerebral Palsy cannot do. I am thinking about the fact that Cerebral Palsy is a catch-all term for brain damage causing muscular spasms and limited movement, and though it is considered to be a single thing, it is actually a collection of symptoms as many and varied as the ndividuals who embody it, not so much a condition but a symptom of a condition, in and of itself, and that we did not know that for years, and that Asperger's is similar, and also has similar symptoms, and it may be that I have Cerebral Palsy that behaves as Asperger's does, because similar parts of the brain are affected. And much of the time, I am thinking about the fact that I have an obsessive personality, and I will never never never know for sure who and what I am, and how, and sometimes, that has the ability to drive me more crazy than I am. I mean that literally, I sometimes sit and have panic attacks, not because there are things I can't fix, but because there are things I will never know for sure are actually broken. Sometimes.

But not all the time. Now that I can, with comfort and confidence, write about people with disabilities (I flatter myself to think that it is comfort and confidence that I am writing with, when it is, actually, simply the age-old "writing what you know"), I tend to write about nonspecific disabilities. Christine, for example, in the Damn Vampires, believes she has a rare sleep disorder called narcolepsy, when what she has is a strange virus, which is slowly turning her into a vampire. Last year's Nano, which I may or may not work with later on, featured twins, one of whom was decidedly not neurotypical, though no specific diagnosis was ever presented. I thought, particularly when writing this character, that might be considerably problematic. Part of the problem of being a person with a disability, is legitimizing that disability for other people. But the fact is, there is still a person under every diagnosis. And while I can appreciate the importance of a diagnosis in a medical sense, or in the sense of knowing what to do and what to expect, and certainly in the sense that society will hate us if there is no discernable reason to pity us, in a sense of intergration with wider society, a specific label does more harm than good.

This is what has me thinking about Asperger's. Because lately, it has been showing up a lot in the media, and usually, it's under the guise of "A guy who is a complete asshole but doesn't mean to be, and is totally antisocial/doesn't feel anything." And I feel, not only offended, as we're coming to the realization that it is not just a "man's condition" and also not that simple, but I feel a bit like we're all jumping the gun here. Nice as it is to see Asperger's portrayed at all (though generally by neurotypical people, which is. Oh, I could rage for several pages), it's a bit like what happened when psychiatrists uncovered schizophrenia and dissisociative identity disorder, and thought for years they were the same condition; we suddenly had a bunch of movies about the poor little crazy people, who killed because "the voices told them to do it," as if "voices" was, not only the defining characteristic of a person with the condition, but the only characteristic. Same with OCD. Until very, very recently, like, in the last five or so years, any film or television show, or vague mention in the media of a character or person with OCD, that person's only two symptoms were repeated handwashing, or repeating himself or herself (usually himself. For some reason, crazy women fail to illicit sympathy. Funny, that.) In fact, I had a friend with OCD who was germophobic, and as sensitive as I tried to be to her condition, whenever I had an issue of my own, she simply refused to believe I had OCD, because as "everyone knows" all OCD patients are germophobic. So all this saturation in Asperger's is a two-fold thing for me: Firstly, I think it's lovely that we are being shown non-neurotypically, but, as with most disability portrayals, they're not at all accurate, and I think, in about ten or fifteen years, we're going to be a bit embarrassed by them. At least I hope so.
So, as far as I know, I don't have Asperger's, and I'm not going to claim that I do. But I am not neurotypical, and I have many friends who are not neurotypical, and some of them have Asperger's, and some of them don't. And some of them have a diagnosis they will share, and some don't. But I did want to write a few helpful tips about the incredibly wrong assumptions neurotypical people tend to make about "others." So here goes.

1. Myth: Non-neurotypical people will say rude things, but it's okay because they don't mean it.

Fact: There are three parts to correct in this little untruth. Non-neurotypical people are not rude by nature. It's just our brains are wired differently than yours, and it's a bit exhausting for us keeping a filter all the time, and so sometimes, things slip out. Once, after a fight with a friend, where I told her I would not accept her apology, since I knew it was just an excuse to never talk about the argument again, I was proud to tell my mother I had not been rude. She told me I had been rude. I was absolutely flummoxed. I insisted could
not possibly be rude, since I hadn't actually said anything insulting, and what I had said, was true. She said, "Just because something is true, doesn't mean it's okay to say." To put this in perspective, I was not five years old at the time. I was 27. Further, apart from while I am having a panic attack, I never say anything I don't absolutely mean, and from what I have learned from friends, and from reading, that is fairly normal. Also, you should know, that some people who are not neurotypical can still be assholes. We are people. Each one is different. It's okay to dislike someone, even if they have a disability. It is not okay to dislike someone because of their disability, but is also not okay to like them for it.

Does anyone else get really annoyed at the fact that people think you don't mean what you say? Is anyone else getting a bit sick of the cliche "guy who says random rude things" under the excuse of Aspergers, in the media?

More later!

Where I Learn Everyone Is Smarter Than Me

Script Frenzy again. At this point, I’m fairly certain I run on stubbornness alone. And yet, weirdly, I’m not actually failing. A while back, I decided I would write a few Dr. Who scripts, because I’ve never written a spec script before, but also because I can watch all five seasons and call it research. I haven’t attempted to write or even read a script since this time last year, and I was very happy to switch back to novels when I did, but the psychological switch was instant. I don’t want to get too sappy, but opening Final Draft was like coming home again, like landing in Heathrow airport, like hearing in stereo. So good, in fact, I’ve considered dragging the project on after April, writing the whole series just because I can. The best part, though, is that I’m not twiddling my thumbs wasting time here, but the process is actually improving Vampires.

When I began writing novels again, one of the hardest things I had to do was simply filling up all that white space. It was, quite simply, daunting. So there are spots, right now, where my prose gets a bit. Well. I may need to have Rule Eight tattooed on my body at some point if this habit continues. (Actually, I may get Rule 8 tattooed on my body at some point, purely because it would absolutely be the nerdiest reference ever, far surpassing my amazing friend Claire, who has “I solemnly swear I am up to no good.” on her wrist. Because my friend Claire is amazing.) I would like to think, at this stage of the writing, I have cured myself, since the thing is going on for freaking ever, but it doesn’t seem that I have. I catch myself doing the same in my screenplay. Screenwriting is very helpful with the idea of omitting needless words, because at this point, I don’t need them, but the hands keep typing them and the head keeps hitting the desk as they do.

Further, my prose has been a bit, um, purple, for my taste. Since the beginning of my novel, in fact. And recently, I figured out why  that was. I was trying to invent a secondary weapon with which to slay a vampire. Something you should know about. My primary weapon? Is a little ridiculous. No, it is, in fact, a whole lot of ridiculous. It’s this ridiculous thing cobbled sloppily together by inexperienced hands. No one would ever believe it could kill anything larger than a mouse. I am foolishly attached to this thing, and I am excited by the prospect of making it work in a believable way, because I am a total dork, and that’s the sort of thing that gets me all excited. But it is such a scrappy thing. All the typical standbys like an ornamental silver letter opener et al would be completely out of place. My prose, I found suddenly, was a bit like an ornamental letter opener. Pretty, and it could work, conceivably, for a vampire novel. But it wouldn’t work for mine. The love of my life, who seems to always have the answer to just about every question, talked me through it. I explained to him, these are sort of punk rock vampire hunters. They don’t know what they’re doing, but they do it.  They speak in coarse voices, they’re not particularly romantic, and except for Gerard, whose story is told through memory, and Death, who is, of course a being of very little personality, there’s not a whole lot of personal reflected. So I shifted gears a bit. He says, “Just write what happens.” And he’s brilliant, because I did that, and it’s working. Punk rock prose. Oh yeah.

The other problem I am having is with dialogue. One of the things that always happens in regards to my dialogue is that either I really like it, and everyone else hates it, or I really hate it, and everyone else loves it. I was worried, when I started Script Frenzy, because Eleventh Doctor is quite new, and I didn’t know if I could get his voice right, and I didn’t want him to turn into, say, Ten, because there’s so much more material. Yet Eleven’s voice comes out at me so clearly, it’s as if the TARDIS has landed squarely in my living room and he’s popped out to say, “Hey! I’m going to talk, and you’re going to write down everything I say, okay? Okay!” I could not understand what this phenomenon was until a friend pointed out my love of audio books. This friend also happens to be brilliant, and I am very grateful to him, but he shall remain nameless or I will give him a big fat head. The point is, I’ve always been an auditory learner, and though I can’t act at all, I’ve always been a decent mimic. I know Matt Smith’s voice and Eleven’s speech patterns, so it makes it easier to write him, because I can hear it in my head. Which led to the brilliant plan of casting the vampire novel. Just in my head, of course, so I could properly mimic the speech types I want. So I can hear them. And it’s working!

So, all of that is just me saying that script frenzy is not a waste of time, so there!

Still Here. Alive and Kicking. And Screaming (a lot of screaming)

*Sigh* I so wanted to be out of First Draft Hell by now. See, it’s been almost a year since I started this blog, and I thought I knew how long this particular first draft was going to be, and woo, I was wrong. This thing just keeps going and going. The fact that I know it’s crap and will have to be torn down and rewritten is highly disheartening, but the real problem is that I have to finish it before I can do that. Bleh. Curse curse curse! (I’m practicing not swearing. See?) I feel pretty bummed that it’s been a year and I don’t even have a good enough first draft yet. But, unlike when I began rewriting Hannah, it’s not because the words won’t come out, or I’m way overconfident about my ability to finish, or nervous about my ability to tell the story. I have been writing more regularly than I have in years, and it feels as amazing as it always does. But I’ve also got a lot more going on in my life than I think even I realized. Since it’s the anniversary of this blog, and I started this blog so that I could share my adventures in actually getting off my ass and getting a life, I thought I’d share. Lots of things cooking, and very exciting!

Firstly, of course, I’m still working on my Vampires. I had an idea that I assumed would take a certain number of words. And I did something I have never done before, I mean ever. I underestimated myself. No seriously, I grossly overestimate myself, generally speaking. Societal pressure meets disability culture, I am a victim of too many low expectations (blah blah blah). So usually I make some ridiculous proclamation like say, “I am going to win a Pulitzer by age 35” (not an actual proclamation). Or, oh, “I’m going to write a book in six months.” (Yes. I did say that.) This time, I made a fairly reasonable proclamation, “When I write this first draft, it’s probably going to be about 120,000 words.” And. Well, I’m not quite at 120,000 words yet. Because about a week ago I got completely freaked out, because I was nearing 100,000 words and holy god I had so far to go! Which led me to two conclusions, the first and most obvious being wow my first drafts suck, and the second being that I would of course, need to do some massive restructuring to the pacing of the story that I absolutely could not do within this draft. Which meant that I would have to finish the horrible ugly and very long draft, and then proceed to not use it. Which led me to my only logical recourse, which was basically to not look at the file for about a week.

I was not hiding under the bed. In the first place, my bed is occupied by several boxes of stuff, the primary purpose of which is to keep the dogs from taking things from around the house and hiding them under there to be destroyed later. Also, I was very, very busy with lots of other things, so technically still writing, so. Myeh. Okay, I was hiding under the bed, a bit. I’m sorry. But I actually do have a lot more work than I thought I would, because in addition to this blog, and the book, I’m working on a couple other personal projects. Namely, of course, is the actual day job, which has been, in the last few months, much more demanding than I’m used to, but is about to slow down considerably, which is nice, because more importantly, I am finally and in earnest pursuing post-secondary education.

So remember a few months ago when I had mentioned the young woman who, after reporting instances of child abuse in the special education class she was TA-ing, was fired pending an investigation of whether her autism would interfere with her teaching abilities? And how I said that when I had a moment, I would rant about it? And then I didn’t? There’s a reason for that. It’s something that goes beyond laziness, and something that I am, eventually going to have to share, but I can’t now. The fact is, the whole thing is just, well, triggering, for me. I sat down to tell my own story about my own college experience and the discrimination therein, and burst into tears all three times I tried. It’s embarrassing, not because it’s not horrible, but because it is common, and because of how naive and unprepared for it I was, and how traumatic I can still find it, six years later. The short version is that I too, after working for years towards the education and eventual career path I most desired, after years of being told that, in spite everything, I was smart, and that would make all the difference, I learned that wasn’t strictly true. And then I also had to put aside my dreams of college education, and for years, it was so upsetting to me that I could not entertain the idea of going back, nor did I particularly want to do something just for the ‘experience’ of college.

But about a year ago, I had a health scare. Not a major one, but a little one that made me think a lot about my body, and my life, and my role in it, and I began to think about my life in terms of the next three years, instead of ten years or twenty from now, and I saw that what I wanted and what I had were miles from each other, and the first step to everything seemed to be getting off public assistance and supporting myself. Since I tried college, and the hands-on approach didn’t do it for me, I looked into distance education for the first time, which is where I found Athabasca. So now I’m a full-time English/History student. I don’t know for sure, really, what it will do for me, if it’ll get me off the system. But it will make me a better writer, and come hell or high water or whatever else, that is what I will be doing. So I have hope. It’s also not nearly as traumatic.

In addition, I also seem to be embroiled in someone else’s project. My friend Paul has dreams of dominating the world via video games, or some such thing, and has asked me to assist him in the writing. I have no idea what I’m doing, I’m not a gamer by any stretch (bad hand-eye coordination keeps you away from that sort of thing, y’know). But as he keeps asking for input and I keep writing, and we keep talking about it, it looks like one of those things I may actually wind up doing, which is pretty cool. Always like taking on new things.

I feel bad, because I’m not very good at this whole blogging thing yet, I’m still at the stage where I have a hard time downshifting from talking about the stuff I want to talk about to telling the story. Not because I don’t want to tell the story, or because I don’t want to talk, but because once I start telling the story, I feel guilty if I am not eating and sleeping and breathing it as well. I’m improving from this kind of neurosis, but there could definitely be further improvement. So, I promise this year to… I promise to write more entries than I did last year. Let’s just leave it at that.

Also, I may share some of my actual writing that is not just me talking about myself. Ulp.

Maybe.

Couple other small changes to the blog that I will hopefully actually stick to:

-I am also taking part in Inkygirl’s 500 word-a-day challenge. Which I have been doing swimmingly at except for two weeks, the first of which I had the flu and the second… yeah. Hiding under the bed. You should check it out if you’re a writer, want to be a writer, or just missing Nanowrimo at the moment. You can even do 250 words a day. Seriously, that’s like 15 minutes of writing a day or something equally ridiculous. A monkey with a typewriter could do that. On its own, even, without its fifty friends or Shakespeare.

-I am also doing Script Frenzy, in spite of, nay, because of having failed every single year I do it. I may actually have time to blog in the process of that. If not, I’ll probably regularly on the boards, and I need a lot of hand-holding. You should join in.

-I am taking part in the Goodreads reading challenge for 2011. My magic number is 35. You should also do it, if you are a reader, or add me to your friends list if you’re already doing it. Seriously. I don’t have enough friends who read. My friend, she owns the bookstore in town, and she laments every day, “Why did I open a bookstore in a town that doesn’t read?”

- After reading a series of disgusting articles in which we examine the fact that although more women read more books than men, and this planet is about 50% women, yet the books being published that were written by women are around 33%, and the books being reviewed that are by women are somewhere around roughly 20%, I got a little peeved. And after reading the explanation from publishing journals and popular book reviewers that, “Women just aren’t writing the kind of things we review,” I got a little ragey. But rather than go on a full-on rant, I have decided to be a bit more productive than usual about this whole thing. In conjunction with my reading a lot this year, I have decided to review the books I’m reading, but only if they were written by women. Which means some of the books I’m reading will probably be older books that have been reviewed ages ago, in which case, sorry. Books are expensive. If it weren’t for ebooks and audiobooks, I would be even less well-read than I am now, and I’m not anywhere near as well read as I would like to be. Have I mentioned I love Audible? They’re not even paying me to say that, but I do. I should also warn you I do not yet have any sort of college degree, so my reviewing will consist of a lot of squee, omg you have got to read this!!!!, and a lot of despair. (Why am I not as good as this?!) And possibly some headdesking. (Omg how does this stuff even get published erlack?). For more constructive criticism, you may have to wait til something pisses me off. Sorry.

I think that’s pretty much it. If I could squeeze anything else in there, I probably would, but I don’t think I can. I don’t think I’m travelling this year, even. *sadface* Meanwhile, I would like to thank this blog for being an awesome place to dump things that bug me and things I like, and how tortured I am. And, if I have any regular readers at all, seriously, thank you for spending an entire year not thinking I’m horrible, and maybe occasionally thinking I’m pretty awesome. I shall do my level best to not let you down over the next twelve months!

Also, is it completely ridiculous that I find this awesome?

Babies and Books

One of the most common analogies people make about the writing life is how writing a book is like having a baby. And some people claim this is true, and some people claim that it doesn’t even come close. I have been both of those people at one time or another, but the one thing I do know is that there is one, for certain way that writing a book is like having a baby: People are forever telling me how when you have a baby it’s the most painful and terrifying thing you have ever experienced in your life. And you instantly forget it. Writing a book is also painful and terrifying and long and arduous. But what you forget is not necessarily that it was painful and terrifying and long and arduous. The thing you forget is exactly how much you suck.

I am a big reader, and a big writer. I have been my whole life. One of those things always leads into, and then bleeds into, the other. But I have this problem. If you’ve never written a completed project, you may not be familiar with this problem, but if you’re on your second, third, or fifteenth big project, I’m hoping somebody out there has a similar problem and can help me. Because what happens is I write something and work at it and carve at it and shine it up until I am happy with 93% of what is written there. 93% is as high as I ever get. There is a margin of error for self-loathing, which is, I believe, the cornerstone of any artistic pursuit, and my assumption is if I am happy with 93%, at least 97% is good. It’s a somewhat optimistic assumption, but there you go. I allow myself the reasonable assumption that, when I’m done, I know 3% of it is crap. I can’t usually see it, but I know it must be there. Anyway, I’ve worked at something and made it tolerable to pretty damn good, and the thing is, this usually takes a long while, lots of hours, several long-winded conversations with people who aren’t actually there, several more long-winded conversations with the people who have to put up with me, gallons of coffee and tea, several pounds of imported chocolates and a lot of handholding.* And it becomes something I actually mostly like, and would probably love, if I wasn’t the one writing it, and that 4% of my brain wasn’t sitting there going, “omg this is probably so obvious, it’s probably not exciting enough or interesting or clever enough…” and on and on and on. But the thing is, at the start? It really effing sucks. It sucks a lot. Like this one time, my mother turned to me and says, “My God, I had such gorgeous kids. Seriously, I’m glad, because I don’t know what I would do if I ever had ugly kids.” She was joking (I think). But this feels like that. I don’t want my first drafts to exist because eeeewwww no way could I have made that!

In the middle of my first draft, I’m still reading a lot of related stuff. There’s tone and style and certain genre nuances and keeping track of what’s been done and what hasn’t been done before. So I’ve been reading stuff like The Historian and Sunshine and most recently The Passage. All of which are pretty awesome vampire books, and all of which are a lot better written than the fairly awesome idea I have in my head that is not writing itself properly dammit! And intellectually, I know those books started out crap. Because they all do, they always do, and I can write well, eventually. Urg. Eventually. But rationality gets pushed out the window, and I go all despair despair despair! Because my writing is crap, and this is what it has to look like when it gets published, and I don’t think I can get there from here.

Well, okay, that’s probably not true. Probably I can get there from here, and most likely I will, and of course, I will continue to try. But the moments of I SUCK SO HORRIBLY WHY DOESN’T IT COME OUT LIKE IT’S SUPPOSED TO WHY IS EVERYONE BETTER THAN ME???!!!!! are a needless distraction. The solution is obviously not to stop reading, because that would be a bit like drawing water from a well that’s dried up. So I sit and stew and sulk and read authors who are better than I am, who, when I’m not writing have the power to inspire me to greater heights, but who, when I am writing, remind me just how far I have to go.

It’s funny, because I had a pretty good year, last year. Even having to give up Hannah, it was a pretty good year. I made new friends, travelled farther than I have ever gone, managed to keep a blog for a length of time, that people actually read. I think, most importantly, is I realized that I am a writer like other writers. Writing, I think, is very singular, and we’re all sort of just… here. So I have this thing in my head where I know real writers procrastinate, but I’m pretty sure they procrastinate less than me. I know real writers have other non-writing lives, but I’m pretty sure theirs is busier than mine, so they have more of an excuse, and I know every person's first draft sucks a lot, but I'm pretty sure mine are probably a whole lot worse. And this year, that sort of changed, because I went looking for those real writers, and found out that we are the same. Which means, I am one of those. It’s something, as I’ve said before, that I’ve been well aware of for a long time, that it’s the storyteller in me, more than anything else, that separates me from other people. But years of being told it’s the other stuff, have left me feeling even more singular than I ought to. So this year, I have learned somehow, to lose all that stuff, and accept that I am mired into all of this, the torture, procrastination, addictive personality, and all the rest, and so is everyone else. Just the other day, I was moaning to my beloved that first drafts are so completely stupid and I feel like I’m nothing but a little kid playing in mud, is how productive I am, grumble grumble. And he responded with, “Right. Because every other writer in the universe does it differently.”

They don’t, is the thing, and I work hard to remember that, but it is hard, and it is part of the work involved, and I forget that, every single time. After I've done something I really love and am really proud of, I have to start over and write crap and play in the mud and count words every day because it’s the only kind of satisfaction to be found, that this part is almost over. And then I pick up a book and realize “holycrow, the whole universe is better than me! Despair despair despair!”

I know I’m not alone in this. I know it’s just part of the life. It reminds me of that part in The Hockey Sweater, when Roch Carrier says people on TV were these golden untouchable Gods, but hockey players were the real heroes, because they were only better at something each of the boys had done. That’s how I feel, about other authors. That’s why I hate all the lit snobbery that goes on, and the way some writers deserve to be published and some don’t, and just because millions of people read your stuff it doesn’t mean you’re any good, and you shouldn’t write about people like this and nobody wants to read about people like that and people who self-publish are just little kids who think if they slap their name on the cover of a book they’re real writers, and people who have contacts in the publishing industry have it easy and grumble grumble grumble. We’re all on the same team, here. Some of us do it well, some of us stumble along. Some of us are really good on purpose, some of us by accident. Some of us have a lot of people pulling for us, some of us just have a couple people, some are on their own for now. Some writers are not as good as other writers. But the thing is, we’re doing it. And the other thing I sometimes forget is that some people don’t even have that.

When I told my counselor about how I most often feel like I’m fooling myself, like I’m sitting around, playing in mud, she took a different approach. She smiled and said, “It’s really not a bad life, is it?” And really, it isn’t. To be able to sit around and play in the mud, to be able to hate one part of yourself with just enough vigor to know you’re better than that, and not enough to stop entirely, ever, is something handfuls of people have, and that’s it. We’re it. I’m it. Scary thought, when I’m in the middle of hating what I’ve written or reading authors a million times better than I. Also sometimes scary when I’m reading authors who are only a hundred times better than I, because sometimes even that seems unreachable, and that’s just not fair. But it's pretty awesome the rest of the time.

It’s hard to remember that too, but I’m working on it.

 *Must stop here and thank the hand-holders, who I don’t think always realize how often and how close I come to dropping the whole thing, whatever the thing is at the time. They put up with my endless whining with unbelievably good humor and patience, and have pretty much learned to put up with the 4% of me that will not stop the despair and loathing, no matter how hard we all try, and manage to shake the rest of me back into gear when I need it.

** It occurs to me that if you are not Canadian, you may not even know what The Hockey Sweater is, but it’s kind of a big deal.

This Is Your Brain On Writing

It's the end of October, a time when my body and brain settle in for lockdown, and begin to hibernate. And I feel so good. Holycrow, you guys, I'm all blissed out and bouncy and where I am not behaving as anything approaching normal, but I am too happy and excited and optimistic These are the ways I know the writing is going good.

1. I do not have time to blog (sorry!)

2. All my foodstuffs contain instant rice, or come in some sort of fingerfood varity.

3. When I mentioned to a friend that I have begun taking vitamin D capsules to help with the Seasonal Affective Disorder, her response was as follows: "Have you been eating food? Because you said the writing is going good, and, well..."

4. I am actually telling people the writing is going good.

5. Nothing else I say to anybody makes a whole lot of sense anymore. (I have become a writing cliche, wandering around the room going, "THERE IS AN ANSWER HERE, NOW TALK TO ME, DAMMIT!" etc.)

6. I no longer wish to go out for coffee. I keep a canister of instant flavoured coffee on my kitchen counter so I don't have to go out in order to fortify myself.

7. I have seriously considered canceling my cable, because I only watch TV online, when I have time. (I have been watching a lot of Doctor Who reruns online in between pages though. Apparently, I can forgo things like food and a social life but you do NOT want to take away my David Tennant. I did not know this about myself.

8. I would rather do this than cut video from Awesome EuroAdventure of Awesome.

9. I am so blissed out from writing, I went home for thanksgiving with the fam, and did not want to strangle a single member of my family.

10. Now, when I stay up past 1AM, it's because I'm busy doing something, instead of because I can't go to bed yet.

11. I am so blissed out from writing, I am afraid to leave the house, for fear of an outburst of "OMG WHY DID I NOT SEE THAT BEFORE?!"

13. I am so blissed out from writing my counselor doesn't know what to do with all the happy.

14. I received an exceptionally kind comment from a new reader, and only just noticed it. Fail. Thank you to Emily, if you didn't get my comment on your blog. I'm not kidding when I tell you you brought me to sniffles.

Also from the trenches:

- Azrael is officially my first asexual character. Strictly speaking, It is subhuman and doesn't HAVE a sex drive, but hell, if Disney can make you believe humans fall in love with fish people when they're good looking enough, and Aces consider The Doctor asexual, and we have proven the existence of Cabbits and Mules, I say, it totally counts. (I actually had a conversation with myself over Twitter on that one. I do a lot of that.)

- Today, one of my favorite characters made me very angry. There are motives at work here that I didn't realize, and someone is playing a more active and sinister role than I have been previously aware. Must to thinking...

- I have to write sexual desire and I'm terrified. You guys! I'm gonna mess it up! Seriously, I don't think you understand, I don't get you!

Other than a bunch more shop-talk, which I could do for pages and pages that would probably bore the living crap out of everyone else, and also just be a bunch of gibberish, nothing else is going on. Thanks for indulging! (In two weeks, when I crash out of this fantastic mood, someone redirect me here, okay?)

Where I Write About (Not) Coming Out

Been meaning to write a post on National Coming Out Day that is now over, but the Damn Vampires have been running me ragged. (Yay!) And my house is full of, well…

Seriously, writing is its own kind of insanity. Most of my time is spent wandering around my apartment muttering dates and times and something happens here and I don’t know what it is… and oh my GOD IT’S RIGHT THERE! Etc. I love the cue card phase. The act of holding them in my hand, knowing that they’re all there, and all I have to do is get them down (ha, because you know, that’s nothing, is it?) and being able to move and shift things without the omg disaster how am I going to fit this in this with that thing? Yay cue cards.

So. Moving on. I wanted to write a post about National Coming Out Day. I don’t actually know anything about national coming out day, and I’m Canadian, so instead, I get to blather on about what I usually blather about, which is me, in the context of coming out, which, oddly, is not actually something I’m familiar with.
As part of my very unique presentation of Cerebral Palsy, there is a rather interesting side effect. So interesting, in fact, that I don’t actually think it has anything to do with my CP, but unfortunately, one of the side effects of having a disability is that a doctor will take anything out of the ordinary and attribute it to that. Which is why I never trust anything a doctor tells me, but that’s a whole other argument. Right now, all I need you to know is I can’t lie. Like seriously, I have actually gotten hives from being even a little bit dishonest. The doctor says that’s because the vision problems in my eyes cause a small amount of face blindness, which makes it impossible for me to read deception, which means I never learned how to mimic, ergo, I never learned how to deceive. Which does nothing but add to the mistaken perception that asexuals are adhering to some kind of moral code, and has the added bonus of meaning I never actually had to come out, because I was never in anywhere in the first place.

When people ask about how I know, about how long I have known, and about when I knew (usually followed up by a lot of questions about, am I sure, and don’t I think that maybe that could change, and what would I do if it did?) I think about being fifteen. I was fifteen when most of my friends got boyfriends. I was fifteen when I received a lot of male attention, mostly due to the fact that all my friends had boyfriends, and those boys didn’t want to share. (BFF 101, boys: We know you’re a jerk when your first act as New Boyfriend is to attempt to keep any single friends busy by setting them up with someone you know, even and especially if they don’t WANT to be set up.)  Fifteen was the year of sexual awakening for everyone who wasn’t me, and most of my peers noticed. It took a bit longer for me to notice, largely because nothing really has to change when you’re asexual, that’s the whole point. No rush of hormones, no tingling in your toes or anywhere else, no first blush, nothing. And I never wondered why until everyone else started asking me. Like I said, at fifteen, when I started writing Hannah with a boyfriend, there were audible sighs of relief, like I was offering some kind of comfort, reassurance for something. Meanwhile, as my best friend of the time spoke with nervous excitement about her first stirrings of sexual experience, I listened in horror, not because it sounded utterly unhygienic, not even because he was two years older and she hardly knew him, or because her mother could have walked in at any second, oh God. But because this, apparently, was the future. And one day, someone, somewhere, would expect it of me. And I understood that it was normal and natural, and apparently it felt pretty good, but all I could think was, “Why would anyone even do that?”
For early dissenters, it was easy. I would grow out of it, they said, and I believed them with horror. My mother would say, “Well, one day, I’m sure you’ll change your mind. I’m sure you’ll have a partner of some kind, some day.” And I would nod and say, “Yeah, well, I’m not saying I won’t.” Because it was easier, less argumentative, than saying, “If you know who that person will be, could you please send them far, far away because I don’t want them, please, please don’t let that happen to me.”

It was around that time when the lesbian rumors began to circulate, and the jerks who were angry I wasn’t as easy as they would have liked became concerned friends and family, pulling me aside and asking if I wanted to ‘talk’ about something. And I would have lied, if I could have, would have told them I was straight, would have pretended crushes and learned the lingo. Even would have pretended I was gay, because aside from the aforementioned boys, most people were really nice about it, like they expected it, somehow. It would have been an easy excuse. I didn’t matter enough in high school for it to hurt me, and even if I had, our high school, for a small town, was pretty gay-friendly. I could have lied. But I couldn’t lie. I didn’t know asexual was anything, then, so I just said no, and then was forced to sit through all the speculation. They didn’t know, and I didn’t know enough to argue with them. People assumed I was undesirable, because of the CP, and I didn’t argue with them, though I wanted to because the assumption hurt, but the hurt was hard to explain, under the circumstances. People assumed I was too brain damaged to understand sex, and I couldn’t explain otherwise, because simply having no desire was enough to tell sexuals I didn’t understand. People assumed I was gay, which never made any sense to me, because if I had been gay, I could have come out, and that would be that.
It doesn’t get easier. The assumptions never really stop, people just eventually know me for too long to justify voicing them. I have a friend who has known me for more than ten years, and insists she understands my sexuality, but when we meet new people, she defends me, or sexualizes me, depending on the situation. For instance, if we are out somewhere and she is flirted with, she makes it a point to flirt with me, or encourage others to flirt with me, or introduces me as her ‘friend who doesn’t date but could have anyone she wanted if she did so…’  Another friend is very understanding to the point where if she gets a boyfriend who tries to set me up, she warns him, “She doesn’t do that, seriously, don’t ask.” But if I don’t like said boyfriend, it’s because I have issues with men.

I’ve never faced the dilemma of coming out, the way many others do, because fear of getting caught in a lie has always trumped fear of being persecuted for the truth. Probably because, well, I’ve always been persecuted one way or another (though in defense of those still in the closet, for some, it may be more dangerous than others to come out.) I can only know what it is to always be out, and still, always be coming out. When the whole Prop 8 mess was going on in the states, I began to draw the parallels between being gay and being A, and while the gay and lesbian community has visibility on their side (People know bi exists, but it’s not often considered a legitimate orientation. And pansexual? Forget it.) and the aces of the world are considerably LESS likely to be murdered or tortured, unless they’re mistaken for gay, which is a whole gray area I won’t get into here, one of the main problem points, one of the things I realized during the marriage debate doesn’t so much lie in the fact that marriage is a misogynist tactic, and the patriarchy needs to clearly underline who’s male (powerful) and who’s female (dominated) in a relationship, though that is a factor. I’ve come to realize that a huge part of both the invisibility of asexuals and the oppression of homosexuals lie in the same sort of reasoning that is present in the oppression of the disabled community: Plain and simple, we are not supposed to be happy this way.

We have reached a point in society where we must acknowledge that we are biologically different from each other. Sexuality has become so important to modern society, we are forced to recognize physiological differences that we didn’t have to, before. So we do. And what happens is a whole lot of, “I can accept that you are different, and understand that. But the truth is, everyone in the whole world is aspiring to be me. So it’s okay that you’re different if you can’t help it. But if you could help it, you would be more like me.” And some people really don’t like the possibility of that not being true. So there are those of us, like me, who are out, who have been out for longer than I remember, who don’t have the horror stories to scare you about when and how and why it happened, or how I knew, or what convinced me, and still, I have to come out, every day. And I have to hope that people will believe me, and understand me, when I do, in addition to having to hope that no one will hurt me for it.

I tell people it started at fifteen, for the same reason I didn’t say anything then. Because it’s easier than having to tell the truth, and say I just knew, that I have always known. For some reason, it’s easy to understand how a twelve year old girl gets a crush on her first male teacher, and grows up to be hetero, or a ten year old boy who plays with dolls grows up to be gay*, but no one believes me when I talk about my first sex ed class. One of the things we did was role-playing. I played at being a girl who was being talked into going ‘upstairs’ with a boy. I said no. No matter what he did or said, I said no, until the boy, in frustration, put up his hand, and said, to the teacher, “She’s not even doing it right.” So the teacher came over and asked what the problem was, and I explained that I didn’t want to, that the point of the exercise was to learn to say no, and I was saying no, and what was wrong with that? Teacher responded with,
          “Well, try to be realistic. Try to be honest. How would you say no?”
          “I would say no.”
          “Well, what if he got angry.”
          “Then I would ask him to leave. I would get upset.” Teacher nodded.
          “What if it was someone you really liked, and you didn’t want him to leave, or you didn’t want him to get upset with you?” You can picture the blank look on my face. If you’ve ever seen me with a crush, if you’ve ever seen someone trying to encourage a crush, you’ve probably seen that blank look before.
          “I wouldn’t care. I would still say no.”
          “Okay, but what if you didn’t want him to leave, but you knew it was wrong.”
          “No. No, I would want him to leave.” The teacher smiled, and pulled what I’m sure she assumed was her trump card.
          “What if it was insert name of famous person who I had a huge crush on at this point in my life?” Where I blinked, stammered for a bit, then tried to pass it off as a joke, saying, “Oh, well that changes everything, doesn’t it?” Everyone laughed, and I sat there awkwardly, with the growing nervousness that I tended to associate with another missed step on the social ladder, and I realized I had no idea what these people wanted from me.

I still don’t know, is the truth. People who are scared to come out have every right to be, because you know what? It never ends. You won’t understand them any better, and most of them probably won’t understand you, though they will make it an excuse for any behavior they don’t understand. For some people, you will remain, as you are, a blip in their personal data, an uncomfortable acknowledgement that their world makes less sense to them than they want to admit, awareness that everything they do to ‘normalize’ themselves in a million different ways essentially does nothing but make them miserable, and is thankfully losing its value in the world. It’s not a nice thing to learn. They will take that out on you.

But, there is this: My mother, who spent most of my teenage years into my early twenties comforting me (herself) with the fact that I would find someone, in some way, maybe not sexually, maybe not marriage material, but someone to spend the rest of my life with, while I nodded and smiled in abject horror, was on the phone with me the other day. She mentioned someone’s wedding, and how, at this wedding, she was, of course, questioned about her own daughter’s impending dooms-marriages. My sister, who has been in a relationship for five years and no sign of marriage, and myself, terminally single. She laughed and said, “I know nothing about her. I don’t know what to do with her. She’s in love with a boy. He’s gay.” (Mother refers to the love of my life. He is actually pan.) “Other than that, who knows? Maybe his boyfriend will share.” (He does, actually, and very generously. Thank you!) Same conversation, different vein, mother says casually, “You know, before you, I never knew any of this stuff. I never understood it. But your Aunt never had interest in sex. We thought she was gay, and her marriage was just a cover. But she never seemed gay, and nothing ever happened. So now, with you, I sort of wonder. I mean, I think maybe she could be more like you. It’s funny, the things you start noticing, isn’t it?”

People won’t always see the you that you want to be, and some people can’t even see the you that is there. And it’s hard and it sucks. But even when you think it only matters to you, and you don’t matter, you still matter. You don’t owe it to anyone but yourself to be honest, but just being honest matters more than your fear lets you understand. People are always amazed at how honest I am about it, and some of them write it off as it being ‘easy’ for me. Fuck you, I say, but don’t give me rewards either. It’s easy because the alternative was harder, and that’s never a choice I want to make, that’s never something that gives me pride in who I am, that I did the easy thing. Sometimes, it’s easier to keep silent, and stay in the closet, and I’m not going to suggest that those people are weaker or less than I am. I’m just going to hope for you, that you’re okay with yourself and your world some day.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have some cue cards to get back to, some vampires and a very snarky teenager clamoring for attention, and I think someone has to die today. Have to gear up for these things, you know.


*not to say either of those things lead to people being gay, or hetero, just saying people can make those assumptions, and therefore,'understand'