"Just" friends, and other lies

Disclaimer: I am well aware that not everyone who writes fan fiction is a woman. And I also know that there are many non-binary genders whose perspective may not be appropriately covered here. But the discussion that was started began as a discussion between hetero men and women. I recognize that a lot of women I know personally who write fan fiction are gender fluid and/or something other than hetero, and that a non-hetero male perspective would probably be significantly different. I don't want to leave anyone out, so if you've got something to say from another perspective, please do.

In the aftermath of the whole Fandom vs Journalists fuckup which I'm happy to say it sounds like the fangirls won, mildrednbobbin asked a very interesting question, which was this:

Do women wear romance goggles?

As it turns out, I have a lot of feelings on this subject, probably because of that whole idea of "just" friends is something  that I have put a lot of thought into. So much, as it turns out, that it's taken me a couple weeks to get my thoughts in order. Because the thing is, being as I am, there is no such thing as "just friends." For me, friendship is it. It's as far as I go, and the deepest combinations of feelings I am capable of. It's different every time. It's deep and meaningful, and sometimes difficult and fraught with affection and admiration, and deep, true feelings, that I sometimes feel pressured to keep half-hidden, because of knowing that so many others feel like friendship is just what you have aside from those other feelings. So throwing that Just in front of friendship is like slapping a barrier on my relationships, saying, "we go this far, but no further." Which is ridiculous, of course, because where romantic relationships tend to exist within pretty well-established structures and patterns, and sexual desire is, from what I can gather, largely autonomous, a thing that happens without you having any input other than (in the best scenarios) to say yes, I will pursue this feeling, or no, I will not, friendship is, as I said, varied and complex in it's in and outs and preferences and cherishable moments. So when looking at why women tend to see romance even when men insist there isn't one, I first want to examine the point I made on the actual post; that women are taught from an early age that there will one day be someone for them who will fulfill every possible need, whereas men are encouraged to look for a fullfilling life outside the home.

Today's tactics for keeping women separated from men seems to exist in a kind of divide-and-conquer method. Think of how many heroines we get who are proudly "not like other girls." Think of the constant messages that women are catty, that women competing with other women is somehow much less clean and honorable than it is when men do it, that women are insecure and jealous of each other. Think of the media's sudden interest in the brutality of "girl-on-girl" violence and bullying, of the excuses that "she just fell in with a bad crowd." and "she's not really like that." and all the many, many stories in which the romantic lead is, "not like any girl I've ever met." Add it all together and you'd almost get the impression that we're discouraging girls and women away from other girls and women, wouldn't you? The fact is, we teach women when they are still girls, that if you want to run with the boys, you're going to have to set yourself apart from the rest of "them." We live in a culture where friends are that thing that girls have before they start dating. Because other girls will try to steal your boyfriend, or because other girls will call you a slut, or because a guy may love you, but hate your friends... Meanwhile, men and boys are encouraged to never take the "opposite sex" too seriously, lest they be subject to endless ribbing from friends. Media narratives hugely reinforce these stereotypes; romantic comedies with female protagonists tend to be all about getting the guy, about getting him to notice you, getting him to fall in love with you, getting him to drag you out of whatever misery fate has dropped you in. When friends do feature (which is rare enough) It's usually a story of how one lifelong friend (because there is only ever one) has to get over her jealousy at being replaced, and be happy for her friend to be leaving her. Conversely, taking a  comedy about men and relationships, (which is almost never called a romantic comedy) The love story is generally not about falling in love, but about how his friends help him get the girl, or about how difficult it is for him to maintain his boy-time with his friends. A lot of the time, in men's stories, the love story has already happened. He's either married, or else comfortably single. In media and other storytelling forms, men are encouraged to have strong multifacted bonds with other men, and keep their relationships with women as self-contained as possible. Women are encouraged to pursue strong bonds with maybe one or two women if they can get it, but also understand that it is inherent in their nature that their most fulfilling relationship will be the romantic one, and with the knowledge that no woman can ever truly trust another. I remember when I was 19, a friend of mine who identified as bi, introduced me to her new boyfriend. As soon as he had me alone, he asked me, "So, when did you two stop fooling around?" I was pretty shocked.
"What? Did she say that?"
"Well no. She says you two are really close. And obviously, she's bi, so-" When I told him he had it completely the wrong way around, that nothing ever happened between us, and it never would, he seemed completely flummoxed. When, fuming, I told my friend she should dump him, because he was obviously using her for sex, she got angry with me. She responded with,
"Oh, don't be so judgemental. Of course he's going to think that. Guys always do."

Which is kind of a segue into my next point. Women's behaviors are constantly monitored. Women are not asked so much as ordered, to consider the implications and thought processes of other people. It's a lifetime of "If you wear that skirt, guys might think you're asking for it." "You don't want to come off too ________ or people will think ________" "You know, some people could take what you've just said the wrong way. Be careful you don't offend anyone." For men, by contrast, that sort of censoring comes up much less often. So I think another part of why male writers, producers and actors tend to shrug off the ideas presented in say, slash fan fiction, is largely because it really doesn't occur to them. And unlike women, they can then safely assume that it has never occurred to anyone else either. If you'll notice, women authors and actors are typically much less bothered by the idea of fan fiction then men are. (Sadly, there are not enough women producers to test the theory.) I'm not saying men's attitudes and opinions are never challenged but they're more likely to have only ever been challenged by other men. Women interpreting words or performance as different from what an actor or writer intended is more likely to throw them. And of course, when we're talking about a romance between two guys, that throws up a whole lot of, if not blatent homophobia, certainly a general threat to that character's perceived heterosexuality. Women's opinions, thoughts, and  stories, are open for interpretation. Men's stories are meant to be exactly what they have made them, and no more. I've made that complaint about Moffat many times, that unlike Doyle, or taking a different tact, the writers of Doctor Who who came before him, he can't seem to be able to keep sexuality ambivalent. He has to have his heroes as heterosexual males, and even when the romance is all off screen, it has to be explicitly stated with no room for interpretation. Because good Lord what would happen if other people had their say!

My third point is one of the major problems I have with slash fiction in general. Particularly heterosexual men have safe spaces to frankly explore their own sexuality. You can throw heterosexual sex on a screen, and people will allow it to be filmed, and people will watch it, and people will understand it. Men's stories are full of men who are less than perfect getting women who are idealized perfection. Women don't have that. If women are seen as wanting that, they are selfish and greedy and shallow, even among other women. If women are seen as being too desirable, she's a slut if she accepts the attention, she's a frigid bitch if she hates the attention. In stories, if women are curious about sex, they are punished, either through trials meant to redeem them, or by becoming cold, unfeeling women who no one could love. So here then, is a safe way for women to explore sexuality and desire: through interpretation of someone else's stories. Which is wonderful except for the underlining sense that, in case anyone should think your own sexuality is leaking through, get rid of the women entirely if you can, and focus on the men. Men being played by actors, and written by writers, and filmed by producers, whose sexuality will always be secured in its own acceptance. So of course, they're going to be dismissive of the need for women to have a platform and give a voice to their own sexuality. The ways they choose to express it shouldn't really be all that shocking. Given that we accept and understand that most mainstream pornography shows lesbian pornography essentially as by men for men. So really, is it so shocking that a portion of gay erotica is written by women, for women? Certainly, the latter is done with a lot more respect and affection, and a hell of a lot less exploitation for the former. Or at least, usually.

Anyway, I want to thank mildredandbobbin for getting my wheels turning on this one, because it's an interesting thought.

Fangirl Feminism

Remember way back when I said I didn't want to talk about what fandoms I love? Yeah well, This happened.

I have so much rage about this I can't even think straight, and we all know what happens when I rage, so yeah, kids, parents, future employers, look away now. I have so much rage, I was just a few minutes ago telling my mother about it. My mother responds, "and when did this happen?" and I replied, "last night."

"Oh my God, your fingers must be sore." (My mom is so awesome.)

There are several things I'd like to talk about this, but it's been pretty decently dissected by other people. And there's a whole lot of supportive awesome on Tumblr about it. So yeah. Basically Google "Caitlin Moran" it'll cover the whole mess.

Okay, so first thing's first. I have my problems with Stephen Moffat's Sherlock. In the first place, like with everything Moffat writes, the roles for female characters are pretty pathetic, by and large (though admittedly played by some awesome actresses.) There's his long-standing discomfort with anything that reads as asexuality, which I have written about before. There's also the fact that every fandom has it's toxic elements. There's a lot of general dislike of women in any fandom.  And while I think it's lovely that girls and women have places on the Internet to revel in their sexuality with pretty much ZERO judgement, and nothing but hearts and cookies, the fact is that it's usually slash, and so removes a lot of actual female sexuality from play. And that does sort of rub me the wrong way. *cough* sorry.

But there's a lot I like about fandom culture, and about the Sherlock fandom in particular. In the first place, a lot of people there are older, so I feel less creepy, and they're a bit more aware of my aforementioned issues. In the second, there are a lot of fics where Sherlock is asexual, or demisexual, and some of them represent really well. Which you get in pretty much no other fandom. It's also a fandom that actually does make room for new characters, and because of Moffat habits of writing goddawful women, it is also a fandom that rewrites those women into something more complex, and generally more awesome. Basically, if you're looking for a fandom that really does write the world as they want to see it, Sherlock is where you wanna be. And you know what?

A whole lot of people want to see John and Sherlock having sex.

I mean honestly. It's been like 200 years of writing 2 men, at least one of whom is sexually ambiguous, who deeply love each other and pretty much shun the whole rest of the world, and you're going to tell me that before the 21st century you really never considered the fact that like a whole lot of people want to see John and Sherlock having sex? I mean really? The show has been accused of queerbaiting, surely it has occurred to some of the people who make that show that "OMG SUBTEXT!!!!" runs a bit rampant. To be honest, Holmes will always be asexual to me, but those are some damn pretty faces this time around, and while journalists delight in finding fic they can make fun of, there is plenty of well-written stuff to be found. (Including the author of the fic that was read out, who is actually incredibly talented.) I mean, Martin has gone on to say that he reads it. (I think he was kidding? He's pretty much got the best face ever, so I can't actually tell.) And really, they're pretty good sports about the whole thing, given the number of people who just really really want them to hate their fans.

Because let's be honest, that's all this is, isn't it?

I don't know why that is. I'd like to say we can blame E.L. James for putting badly-written fanfic into public consciousness, but the fact is, we can't. Because this fangirl's been around. I remember when it was bandslash with real boys (which is, incidentally, something a lot of people in the Sherlock fandom get squicked out by. You don't use real people's lives.) and "journalists" would point out these things, and said bands would laugh it off. (Or kiss, depending on your listening pleasures.) Plenty of authors encourage fan fiction. People giving interviews routinely want actors, musicians, even authors (sometimes especially authors) to be disgusted at the idea that women or girls are turning what they've done into sexual tension and then some. They are routinely not. (ETA: By which I mean that most laugh it off, encourage it, or at the very least, quickly change the subject.) I'm not sure how this keeps getting missed. But seriously, Graham Norton, Caitlin Moran, whoever else?  

NOBODY ACTUALLY CARES. 

There is fan fiction for every imaginable fandom. There are negative people in all those fandoms too, the kind of people who send our new Mary Morstan death threats. That is awful. There are plenty of fandoms not welcome to anything outside of established ideas, and that is terrible. I was part of a fandom that actually had a group with a special name, which showed that they were real fans, because real fans understand these boys have girlfriends, and it's disrespectful to make up girlfriends for them, because everybody knows real fans make them have sex with each other. And yeah, there is some horrible fiction written, and there are places where fans go to mock it. Those places are not in front of the subjects themselves. Those people don't want to do that, it would be alienating people who admire them. By and large, fandom is a safe place to explore ideas and thoughts you might be ashamed of, either because they're all a naughty good time, or because they make you giggle (I will never understand why journalists don't have nearly so much fun with crackfic as they do with slash. I mean, why is it weirder that women write dirty sex between men than it is that women occasionally write dirty sex between men who might sneeze and turn into a unicorn, or suddenly suffer an affliction that causes them to speak only in song lyrics?) This is a part of being a fan. It's part of loving stories. It's part of learning to write. When did it become such a big deal? As people have pointed out, there is zero difference between Irene Adler being made into a sometimes-lesbian-dominatrix-but-in-love-with-Sherlock-because for an hour and a half, and a 221b-is-for-blowjob about John and Sherlock.

I want to talk about Caitlin Moran's "feminism," which includes the kind of sex-shaming that only twelve year olds still think is funny.  I want to talk about the good fandom has done, the way it brings creators together, the way it offers them a safe space to do what they love, and to love what they love wholeheartedly, while still being utterly, joyfully ridiculous about it, which is something Moran supports apparently on a theoretical basis. I want to talk about her own fangirling over Benedict. And I would love to talk about every other stupid question she asked that panel, which apparently included cracks at Amanda Abbington getting the role because she's Martin's real life partner, and nitpicking over a mistake that was made in the episode. I'd like to talk about how Mark Gatiss has published erotic fiction under a pseudonym, so that whole, "ew, gay" vibe of everything she did would have been a bit uncomfortable. But I'm not going to. Because I don't write fanfic, so I haven't got much to add that hasn't already been said. But I really just want to know one thing:

When you walk into a room you've been paid to be in, while others, (the sad little virgins) have waited in line for days, when you go in there knowing that everyone there has waited two years for this moment and is thrilled to be sharing it, what actually happens? I don't know, and I probably never will, because most of us don't have the opportunities Caitlin Moran does. What is it that makes your gut reaction to remind those people who have worked hard to make this happen, that the people for whom this show means so much that the BBC went, "Yeah, go ahead, take two years. They'll wait." are freaks? It's pretty obvious that she hates other women, but as far as I can tell, these people like their fans. Benedict cringes every time the word "Cumberbitches" is used, and both of them have talked about how even though the press make it out that the fans are insane, and even with a few bad experiences, they're really lovely, and they both feel lucky. Leaving aside that any fanfic author would have asked better questions. I'd like to say something intelligent and feminist about this whole mess but there is a point when something is so stupid there is nothing in it for intelligence to respond to. Moran is a bully. It's as simple as that. She bullied the audience, the panel, and the writer of that fanfic, and all writers of fanfic. This kind of bully is the reason I couldn't call myself a feminist til I was in college, because before then the only feminists I knew were bullies who believed if other women would stop acting the way men wanted them to, men would learn to behave better. I know different feminists have different goals, but really?

When you humiliate other women because you've got nothing of substance to add or you want to stand out you are not a feminist

When you encourage somebody else to humiliate another woman because "teehee aren't other women pathetic?" you are not a feminist

When you are grossly underprepared for a job you undertook and your knee jerk reaction to feeling out of place or insecure is, "I'll just point out how I'm not as bad as some women!" you are not a feminist

When you shame other women for following passion, or for being deeply invested in something you are not a feminist

When you use sex negativity to shame other women for their sexual choices, or expressions of sexuality you are not a feminist

Most importantly when you scare women's voices away from feminist spaces, away from creative expression, away from telling the stories they want to tell, and seeking support and validation from people who can offer it you are not a fucking feminist.

I don't care how good you are at "academic feminism." I don't care how many buzzwords you coined, or how many books you've published. If your feminism isn't about women, it's egoism. There is a difference between believing women deserve to be treated better, and believing you deserve to be treated better than women are treated.

Fan fiction is harmless. This is shameful

What is and is not political

So I just read this.  First, if you're not following Drew on Twitter even just for the giggles, you need to be doing that. But also read his blog, because there is some really good stuff there. And then  a few days later WriteWorld posted some really great stuff about othering, to go along with previous great stuff about "writing the other" and if you are not following Drew, you should be, but if you are not following WriteWorld, you are not yet half the writer you could be. Get on that. (though, granted, if you are a writer and you are not following WriteWorld because you are not on Tumblr, then you have more self control than I will ever possess, but I swear, this is not me leading you astray.) And then in response to all of that I wrote this post. And then, because of the aforementioned mental illness, it sat on my dash for a much longer time then I intended it to. Sorry about that. Here it is now, in all it's glory!

As you have undoubtedly seen over the last few weeks, I also suffer from mental illness. I am generally a very high functioning depressive anxiety sufferer. I have a job (FINALLY OMG THREE MONTH JOB SEARCH SUCKED SO MUCH!!!) And when I'm not working I occupy my days with studying and writing, and other busy make-work stuff. I like to do things. This may not seem like it could be true of an anxiety sufferer, but it is, in fact, the reality. I like to move around. I like to have things always coming up. It stops me from believing the crap people say about people with disabilities.

I've written a few times about being a person with a disability, and how that has shaped me as a writer. Also, I have written how difficult it is to write a person with a disability. It's something I've been struggling with for a long while. Most times, my main characters aren't people with disabilities, but I'll have someone with a disability in the background. This part isn't because I'm scared of it being mistaken for me. It's generally because when you put a person with a disability up front and centre, you first have to explain that person, because you have to assume enabled people are going to read your book. You have to explain things they might have to do differently, and then you have to explain all the things that aren't different. And that can sometimes be the harder thing to do.

I have both a visible disability, and an invisible mental illness. So I'm in a bit of a weird position.
It's tough to have a mental illness. It's tough to hear that a person who is generally happy and optimistic can have a mental illness like depression, and understand that it isn't about positive thinking. But in the last seven months, the tough part of my mental illness has been the really depressing stuff that I'm not actually wrong about. It's having to separate the feeling that I don't deserve to be stuck on the system, that I should have been able to get my education, that people who love me the most are the people who have been lying to me my whole life about what they think I'm capable of, with the fear that it's always going to be this way, there's nothing I can do about it, and I probably should have died as a baby like all the doctors thought would be best. (Yes. That happened. Depression sucks, you guys.)

Recently, I had a discussion with someone. She is a friend of mine, who has read my work before. She mentioned, in the pseudo-casual way, why I always put people with disabilities in the background of my story. I explained my reticence to put them in the foreground, and that I was sort of trying to work my way out of that. She said "No. That's not what I meant. I mean, you always write them in. I'm just thinking it might be distracting just to have them there, when you don't talk about it."

"Well, that's sort of the point. I don't think about the actual diagnosis. It doesn't matter, it's not part of the story."

"Well, isn't that a bit too political? People aren't going to want to read it, like that. You can't just have them in there for no reason."

Here's the thing: I grew up with people with disabilities. That is one half of the world I was straddling. Those are my friends. I put people with disabilities in the background of the story, because mine has been the background of my life. I'm lucky. It doesn't consume everything I do, except when it does, except when it's supposed to. Because yes, at summer camp we would occasionally talk about symptoms and diagnosis, but mostly we talked about boys, and clothes, and school subjects and horrible teachers, and bands we liked. And yet every single one of us were aware that two weeks a year was the most normal we could squeeze into our lives, and we were supposed to pretend we didn't know that.

When my depression and anxiety is at it's absolute best, I still have to be afraid what people see and don't see. Because I am physically weaker than almost everyone I know, including my sister, who is 3 inches shorter than I am, my friends, who forget because they "don't see me like that." and my ten year old nephew, who doesn't understand when I don't roughhouse with him. I have to be aware of those things, because everyone else doesn't want to know, so I have to cover it up. Just like have to be aware that the whole world thinks my life is depressing, even when my depression is so bad it's the worse of the two conditions. I have to remind people there are good things about being born like this even on the days when I can't get out of bed long enough to eat.

Nobody wants to know that I actually don't mind being disabled, that my legs don't hurt as much as they used to, that I've been able to travel on my own, that I do things on my own because that's how I like doing them, not in some bid for "independence". They don't want to know about my friends who've got married, or had kids, or have jobs a hell of a lot better than the one currently tiding me over. Because they don't want to know that this is not the problem. I went for years without a diagnosis, because it seemed pretty obvious why a kid with a disability might be sad. Sometimes, that was used as the excuse to bully me, "well, there's not a lot we can do. She's different from the other kids."

I write people in the background with disabilities because they're in the background of my life, but also because they're in the background of yours. Because I know you don't want to look at us, and I deal with that knowledge every day, and you know what? It sucks, and I'd rather not have to hate you for it, because there are still more of you then there are of us, and I am not that misanthropic, not yet. I put us out there because I don't care what you want to know anymore. I put it out there because I still can't put it all up front, I'm not ready for that, you're not ready for that, and this is what I can do.

It's not my fault if I'm a political issue instead of a person. And I don't care- no, I hope- that makes somebody uncomfortable, somewhere. I think it's someone else's turn to be an uncomfortable reality. I dare you to write me one person with a disability who's just there because we are. Don't make excuses. I have to write people I don't identify with every day. Try it. You have no idea how needed it is.

But I do.

Where Do You Get Your Inspiration?

This weekend, I went to the Kingston Art Fest. I am vaguely aware of it since I have friends in the art community, but I’ve never got to attend it, and my mother was desperate to help me find something to like about the city, and picked up a pamphlet. It was about a week later that I found out my younger cousin would have a tent.

Tonya is four years younger than me, and, clearly, infinitely more talented. She makes these portraits with found art photographs for the sketches, and drier lint for the finished product. While at Art Fest I sat and watched her nervously say hello, unless someone directly asked her about her work. In which case her eyes would light up and she’d launch into long explanations of what she was doing and how she did it. And the whole time, with a spare canvas and basket of lint at her lap.

Her mother tells me she does this all day. While watching TV. While on the phone. She loves what she does, and it shows. And watching her, it hit me like a kick in the stomach. So do I.

That should not be news. I don’t mean to suggest that I had started to hate what I was doing. I don’t. I hated writing first drafts because they’re frustrating and I got stuck a lot. But that hasn’t been happening lately. I hated editing, because reading over that chapter one more time made me want to throw up. I hated reading about the odds.... Okay. So I was starting to hate it.

That’s scary, learning that. But what’s even scarier, is how now that I don’t hate it anymore, now that something has happened internally to make me not hate it, I don’t know how to take it. Hence my last post. But watching my cousin work, and doing a lot of thinking, I think I have worked that out too.

In my family, you don’t enjoy your job. You just do it. You don’t hate it, or at least, my mother doesn’t hate her job, and my sister had a job she loved and would only consider going back to work for that job. But we were not raised to follow a passion so much as we were raised to do a good job at something. It’s difficult to live under that when you’re really only good at one thing, and even then, it’s a long shot. So for a large chunk of my life, I’ve been taking myself too seriously as a writer. I’ve been trying to make it work, more than I’ve been trying to make it work. I somehow got it in my head that if I wanted to be treated like a writer, I had to treat it like a job. And so I did. And, like any person with two jobs, I hated every second of it. Especially the fact that my hard work never seemed to pay off, and that just made me want to slack off more.

I remember when I was thirteen and fourteen years old, waking up at seven every morning on summer vacation to get those five pages, because I was only allowed an hour a day with the computer, and five pages took me 90 minutes, but I knew my brothers wouldn’t get up before eight thirty. I remember coming home from college and living for weeks off lunches of peanut butter sandwiches or dinners of a mix of rice and Clamato Juice, which my housemates referred to as pink rice. I didn’t do it because I was poor. I did it because it could be cooked and eaten in under an hour, and I needed time to write. It was such a well-known phenomenon, in fact, that two years ago, when working on a particularly good chunk of The Damn Vampires, I called a friend to tell her I was feeling ill, and she responded with, “are you eating food? Because you did say the writing was going good.” Somehow, I had forgotten all that.

Lately, I’ve been writing more like myself. More like the person I am. I set aside a couple hours each day and write until a chapter ends, or until I get to the end of a scene, and then brainstorm a bit, or work on something else until the timer runs out. Then I gripe and groan about the assignments that need doing, and clean the house and take the dogs for their walk and wish I was still writing. I miss it when I’m not doing it. I resent the intake of food. And watching my cousin work this weekend, I realized that is the way it’s supposed to feel, and that is what I have been missing, not just for the last four months, but for the last year or longer, as I tried to make myself into a writer that I really am not. I’m not a workerbee. I am an artist, and that’s what I want to be. I’m not someone who needs to be reminded you can’t only write when inspiration hits. Inspiration hits every two days or so. My job is to stem the tides, and wait out the initial jolt of excitement, and put one foot in front of the other. And I have, miracle of miracles, actually been doing that.

I still feel about eight years behind, because of what happened, and because of everything it has brought me since. But I wrote my first novel at 14, and my first screenplay at 12. Maybe eight years was just enough time for everyone else to catch up?

It’s good to be back.

Tonya Corkey makes found art portraits with dryer lint. Her current collection "See You In The Future" is visible on her website, which unfortunately does not do it justice. But you should check it out anyway.

  www.tonyacorkey.com

Stories (The Good, The Bad, The Ugly, The Mirror)

So, weirdly, my depression seems to have done something to my writing. Not sure, to be honest, if it's a positive thing or a negative thing. A couple weeks ago, I was talking about how depression doesn't actually give you any self-knowledge, which is a bit of an oversimplification. Whenever I slide back into the depths of Relapse Hell, something has to break before I can climb back out again. Last time, I was able to use this knowledge to haul myself back out. This time, the thing that I learned about myself is every bit as unattainable as I believed it was when I went in. I don’t know what to do with that knowledge. But it seems, I am doing something anyway.

Ordinarily, when I sit down to write, this is what happens.
Omg why is this story in my head so good? I cannot get this down.
There. I have written it and it’s awful. I wish there was somewhere like an idea repository you could dump things so someone less crap then me could do this.
It’s not fair. I don’t want to do this.
I hate this. It’s awful. Why do people tell me I’m so good?
HATE IT SO MUCH!!!!

Lately, all of that’s been happening, as normal. And then, in this very calm voice, the same calm that scares me at night and tells me that it’s never going to happen, and I should just give up, goes,

It’s not like it matters, anyway. Just do it. Just do it and suck. If nobody cares, at least nobody cares if you suck.

Which makes a lot of sense. I’m not sure that it’s a positive feeling. But it’s been a nearly a month, and I’m still writing, nearly every day. (Okay, so I haven’t quite built up to every day. But whatever. Words are getting posted, and I no longer want to die. I am taking this as a win.)

So. Words are coming out, and I don’t feel like I hate the words less. But I feel like I’m probably always going to hate the words, or at the very least, I’m always going to wish I wasn’t the one writing the thing. I think that might be a part of me. It’s a part of me that makes me long for the days when I was young and could read back what I’d written and see how young and untried I was, but also see potential. It makes me wish I’d never learned to read critically, which is almost blasphemy. It is, at least, a part of me that’s loosening the reins a little bit. It’s also why I love to write in different genres. There are certain things I can’t take seriously, and I’m learning to forgive myself that. I remember Stephen King once offered a room full of would-be writers the advice to read crap, so at least you can comfort yourself with the fact that you are at least better than that, and that was published. I feel like right now, I’m taking a bit of a different approach.

I just finished reading the latest Neil Gaiman book, The Ocean At The End of the Lane. I’m not going to review it, never fear. I do not think I could adequately or critically express how brilliant it is, other than to say, “It’s Neil Gaiman. Go read it.” But Gaiman is one of those authors who is so brilliant it doesn’t make me feel bad about whatever I’m doing. Because telling yourself you want to be that good some day is the same as little Ally writing stuff that makes the adult Ally smile, and cringe and still see the potential. It’s the equivalent to buying your first home and realizing you will never be wealthy enough to own a castle. Of course, it would be nice to have a castle, or even to have a home as big as you’d like. But it’s not going to happen. Somebody else is there, and there is no way I am that. And weirdly, I am fine with that. I hate the fact that I might never write something as popular as Stephanie Meyer has written, and that might be seen as a reflection of my skills. And I’m terrified it might even be a reflection of my skills, and it’s that terror that makes me hate everything I’ve ever written. I am aware of the problem. But then. There are writers who have somehow set the bar so high, I don’t ever want to even reach for it. And that knowledge is somehow a lot more comforting to me than, “I can do better than that.” The knowledge that it’s not just that I can’t be the best. It’s that I can decide I don’t want to be. It strikes something deep and visceral inside me. I don’t want to be the best. I just want to tell stories.

Put like that, why the hell not?

Square one, all over again

One of the awful things about recovery is that the essential goal is to get back to where you were before the depression hit, which is an idiotic goal. Because most of the time, wherever you were, is gone, and you have to sort of chase it for a while before you catch up to it, and the rest of the time, you get there, and everybody else is somewhere else.

This blog is a good example of that. I started this blog, and I honestly didn't expect it to be read. But then, quite quickly, I accidentally stumbled onto something people were reading about, and then people were reading me. And that was really exciting, and sort of weird, and I wasn't sure that I was ready for that yet, certainly I was unprepared for it. And I kept at the writing as often as I could while trying to write the other things I wanted to write, which was really difficult, and then school started up again, and that got out of hand busy and life got in the way again, and then... depression.

My depression tends to start up in waves, which crest at a certain point, and get very bad, and then dissipate, unless something happens. In this case, something did, and the storm broke directly over my head for months. But going back over my notes, things I was writing (also things I was not writing) and various conversations I was having, I had been getting steadily sicker for months. Not sure why. It`s just, as a dear friend says, "the nature of the beast." This particular episode was exacerbated by many personal issues, but it had been coming, if I had slowed down a bit, and watched the signs. I know that. I would have known it sooner, had I been paying attention.

But other people, unfortunately, don't know that. I'm starting to realize that whatever happened a few months ago has never actually happened for them. I don't mean that some people don't experience depression, that's not exactly news. I mean some of them, even though they're aware that I have depression, or even when they've seen some of the symptoms of depression in me, what happened to me is something some people in my life, even those who have known me my whole life, had no way of suspecting was even there.

I see it in the way my mother treats me differently now, how when I talk about the future, sometimes it feels like she's trying to talk me out of it, as if my future is too much for me to handle right now.

How everybody tells me not to worry so much now, but they say it differently than they used to.

How when I tell someone I had one nap today, and they say "good" they actually mean it with relief.

How my mother works into every conversation, "have you eaten today?"

How I don't know who to call when things go wrong anymore, because I don't know how to say "this sucks right now." and have it not be taken as "I am standing on the ledge, again."

I don't mean to sound poor me about this. It's the fallout for a major depressive episode. It's just the fallout has never been this bad for me, or for anyone I love. I don't know what to do to show them that I'm getting better, except apologize over and over for what I have been, and what I've made them sit through and watch. Having been the comparatively healthy person while someone else walked along that ledge, I know how much I've hurt people and let them down in the last few months. I'm not exactly pleased with myself.

But I'm still recovering, and it's an annoyingly long process, and for someone like me, born with zero patience, and a hundred and one things to do in the world, it doesn't suck for anyone more than it sucks for me. I'm frustrated, impatient, and not sure how to transition to normal feeling bad anymore.

Which is a weird thing to say, apparently. It reminds me a bit of how I felt when I was first diagnosed, except in reverse. Then, I was anxious to show that I was getting better, and it was difficult to prove to people that the person they knew was just the result of symptoms of the illness, but working through those symptoms, and the several years people had to get comfortable with that person, had been near impossible. I had made strides, but  the changes didn't really occur until college. And well. We all know how that went. Now, I'm doing the same thing again, but I'm also struggling through having to explain to people that I can be both "a happy person" as my mother has always described me, and "a person with depression." That both of those things are a part of me, have always been a part of me, and are part of what makes the depression so difficult and also sometimes easier, is not an easy thing to explain, especially in the wake of the hell my loved ones have been forced to witness, thanks to me.

But here I am, in a new city, with a whole slew of new experiences coming up (more on that later) and hoping against all hope that it will make the difference again, only to go a little better this time. I'm writing regularly, and taking it much slower, and feeling much happier about it. And maybe I'm glad to have another shot at this.

If ever, that is, I can manage to get it!

More About Depression - Writing

Apparently, this is not how other people do this.

When the howling gets too much for other writers, they write things down until the howling stops.

It's funny, but I think because I never wrote when I was depressed when I was a kid, I cannot write the depression away. I was never about hiding in other worlds. What I really wanted, was to drag someone else into these worlds. I didn't mind if they were kicking and screaming, to be honest. My little brother was the first person to be dragged into the stories, and he never really seemed to mind. In fact, we still talk about them, and they are still the easiest fodder I reach for, when I don't have anything to write. But I wanted there to be other people.

I have a medical condition that means I can't tell lies. It's a combination of the anxiety and persistent negative thoughts, my being non-neurotypical, and home training. But I was able to tell stories. I was able to draw people, to explain to them who I was, without having to convince them it was real, and that's what I did. I drew people in. Sometimes, I forgot, and lost touch with the fact that the me that existed in my head, could only exist in my head. And then I was lonely all over again.

It's part of the reason I wanted to write films instead of writing. I wanted to be around people who wanted to tell stories, and I wanted to know if they were anything like me. It's something I still struggle with. I've never been the kind of person who needed constant validation from others. I know that I do things differently, so I don't often hold myself up to other people's standards.It was never that I wanted to be like other people, so much as I wanted other people to be more like me. Which, I swear, is not as conceited as it sounds. Most of the time, when it was felt I couldn't do things, the reason was always because other people didn't. To me, it seemed "other people" must be very sad.

I think that's probably why I still struggle with the idea of self-publishing. Even though it feels like something I really want to do, what with being a control freak, and all. But there's so much that I could get wrong, it's such a minefield, and most importantly, it means that I'm the only person who can help me. It's a bit scary.

I'm not doing great on the move thing. So one of the first things I've decided to do is to join a writer's group. I'm hoping it'll help with the ABSOLUTE HATRED OF EVERYTHING I WRITE, and possibly offer me the advice needed to keep going. Failing that, it will at least give me an excuse to talk shop!

If anyone else wants to give me feedback on something I'm working on

I'd love it.

Been a rough week on the recovery front. But I'll get there.

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.