back at it

 I'm writing again. I'd forgotten the sensation of feeling my way through the plot with only the vaguest idea of what's coming. I mean, there's a general plot in mind. A plan, if you will. An intention.

It's not that I can't think more than a chapter ahead in detail, it's that I don't want to. The kind of granular detail I want in a Google map I absolutely do not want in my storytelling process. I know the preferred terms are plotter and panster, but I think it's less about being carried along by the plot than it is about discovering it. Like...like a dungeon crawl. Or unlocking the map on a new level of a video game. What's over here? What's that? What does this do? If I know, then... eh? Why am I doing this?

(Then there's the debacle of Windscar's first draft, that I wrote to an outline and then trashed. Maybe I'm just crap at plotting.)

But let's stick with the dungeon-crawl metaphor. I think the close focus I keep on where I am putting my next literary foot is definitely reflected in the kinds of stories I tell. Generally short duration in-world, tightly focused, totally up in a character's head. That style makes it harder to do big sweeping epics. I think Rory worked--not as an epic, exactly, but the story spanned years--because I had an omniscient narrator. 

Someday I will try to write a single POV novel. Maybe even a first-person. And someday I may try out some of that postmodern fluidity of time and linearity. 

This, however, will not be that novel. 

 

Nightwatch on the Hinterlands is here!

Nightwatch on the Hinterlands is loose in the world.  You can acquire it in all the usual places, and you should, because Tinycat said so. Do you want to argue with Tinycat? 

(Spoiler: you do not. She is more obstinate than either of the kaiju boy-cats. She will wear you down.) 

=

As many times as this happens--and this is #6--a book release day is a rush. So much goes into producing a novel--I wrote it, yeah, but my amazing agent, Lisa Rodgers, and the incredible team at DAW, are the ones who make sure the story is dressed polished and ready to go outside. So thanks to all of them for getting the story to you. 

I had fun writing this one (which is not always the case), and I hope you enjoy reading it, too. 

How Rory Thorne Destroyed the Multiverse

Hey hey! Big news! I can now show you the freakin' amazing cover-art for my novel, How Rory Thorne Destroyed the Multiverse, coming from DAW on October 8, 2019.


And, and! You can even read the first chapter right here.

Rory Thorne is a princess with thirteen fairy blessings, the most important of which is to see through flattery and platitudes. As the eldest daughter, she always imagined she’d inherit her father’s throne and govern the interplanetary Thorne Consortium.

Then her father is assassinated, her mother gives birth to a son, and Rory is betrothed to the prince of a distant world.

When Rory arrives in her new home, she uncovers a treacherous plot to unseat her newly betrothed and usurp his throne. An unscrupulous minister has conspired to name himself Regent to the minor (and somewhat foolish) prince. With only her wits and a small team of allies, Rory must outmaneuver the Regent and rescue the prince.

How Rory Thorne Destroyed the Multiverse is a feminist reimagining of familiar fairytale tropes and a story of resistance and self-determination — how small acts of rebellion can lead a princess to not just save herself, but change the course of history.

Preorder available from... 

Amazon

Barnes and Noble

Indiebound

Book Depository

but why not dragons?

So over on Facebook I see a post by a former grad-student-turned-HS-teacher, asking how to help a student of hers "transition" from epic fantasy to "more serious" literature, and I am back to being 19 again, in the TA offices, listening to the MFA grad students going on about genre in tones of great scorn, and feeling defensive and defiant. Be proud of me, readers: I did not storm in there and punk-post about judging books by their cover (the student reads books with "dragons on the cover," which is obviously proof of the contents' quality), or get high-handed about how fantasy can be, and often is, serious literature with challenging writing, jesus H, have you read N. K. Jemisin or Le Guin or goddamned Beowulf, the fuck is wrong with you?

Instead, I spent a morning on this post instead of the WIP, but hey, blog posts are still writing, and the WIP needs to percolate a little more, and goddammit.

Once, long ago, I was an undergraduate student who wanted to be a writer. I was persuaded to pursue the literature degree, rather than the creative writing degree, for reasons of practicality, which, had I interrogated them closely, were really based on fears that you can't make a living as a writer rather than any certainty that an English degree would prove more employable. (I should have gone for the astronomy degree, or the chemistry degree, or anything else in STEM. I was dissuaded by Calculus 2, for which I had an abysmal teacher, and a desire to spend my weekends playing D&D instead of in a laboratory.)

I spent much of that undergraduate literature degree reading things I did not like and trying to find ways to read and research things I did like for credit, like the forty-source annotated bibliography on J.R.R. Tolkien scholarship instead of Hawthorne or Dickens or [insert canon author here]. That, in turn, led me to his inspirations and influences, and I discovered Beowulf and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and All The Medieval Romances(tm) and mythology, which mean going over to Classics for some of my electives (and reading the Welsh and Irish stuff on my own), but whatever. I had imagined that literature was full of dry realism, women seeking husbands and red badges of courage and scarlet As, and instead I found all this magic stuff that looked like D&D. After years of resisting the parental dictates to "read more widely" (which meant: read Dickens and Bronte and put down the Tolkien or Cherryh or the Le Guin) I saw that I could read legit literature and still get my fantasy vibe on.

But I couldn't write it, not in that MFA program, so I kept going with lit in grad school, and after a series of science-grant administrative jobs I ended up adjunct professoring in composition at a big public university. The staff is composed of people like me, lecturers with graduate degrees, and English graduate students in both the PhD and MFA programs. My office shares a hallway with several professors, some in Creative Writing, some in Literature. As one might imagine, I come into contact with a lot of academics. A lot of us like Tolkien. A lot of us are gamers. But for most of us, it's still unserious. Leisure stuff. "Real" literature is something else, something mysterious, that could be universal themes or beautiful prose and universal themes or so much cultural cache we can't get rid of it? (And okay, but why is a goddamned hairy-handed vampire more legit than a dragon, as a book's subject? Dracula, not Twilight.)

Well. In my cynical mood, I'd say what they mean by serious is Not Fun (for me, this applies also to Dracula).

The Facebook poster seems to think that her student's dubious literary analysis skills will be bolstered by Not Reading Fantasy. I think--just based on the kid I was, reading shit I did not like one bit in high school lit classes--that if the student has something to say about the work, her literary analysis will suddenly improve; but if she's bored or disengaged, well. Shitty writing. I learned to fake it, but I had good teachers who let me play with form. My essays were half the time fantastic arguments made in character's voices, weird and recursive and, because I gave a damn about what I was writing, good analysis.

Which is not to say broadening of literary horizons is not a good and necessary thing for cultural literacy and just knowing shit and hey, sometimes we find something we like--I would not have read Virginia Woolf on my own, or any of the modernists, without that graduate seminar--and sometimes we encounter concepts we wouldn't, if we stayed in our comfort zones (Like modernism. Like post-modernism. OH MY GOD, JAMES JOYCE, WHY?) But if we're talking about learning to read critically, then... why not something with dragons on the damn cover? Just because dragons aren't "real"? (Well you know what? Neither is Mrs. Dalloway, or Kurtz or the Artful Dodger. Characters and settings aren't real. They just exist on a scale of scientific-materialist plausibility.)

Here's a thought: if you want someone to be a better writer, let them write about something they care about. Dragons. Or vampires. Or women seeking husbands. Or whatever.  Then make them think critically about why they like it, why the prose is working (or not), what the author's saying. Some writing is just crap, okay! But the way to have someone realize that is not to tell them it's shit and hand them a different book. Teach them to like the thinking, and they'll start looking for writing that makes them think. With or without dragons.

to be Faire

I need someone to explain to me why it is that I cannot go to a Renaissance Festival now, in my 40s, without getting eyed and oogled, when I was invisible as a 20-something. Maybe the sun? The heat? Too much alcohol on the part of the hitter? A couple of years ago, I think that's what happened. Drunk dude weaving all over the food court, decided he wanted to drape himself on me and babble about my beauty. I do not have a black belt in martial arts just to hold up my pants, and I deflected him (gently). When he came back around for another go, the Rat, who has many more degrees of black belt, and who is substantially taller, interposed herself, looking stern, and he toddled off.

Anyway, I don't think he was aware of much except there is a female over there and she is smaller than me and oh, I am about to fall down.

And he was an anomaly. One is not generally accosted by strangers, which puts Ren Faire on a slightly different plane than, say, everyday walking down the street in which accosting has always and ever been by strangers: hey baby, wolf whistle, little-girl-let-me-show-you-my-penis (truth).

But Faire, see. (Or Fair; much like the spelling of fairy, there is variation.) There's this thing about Faire, in case you've never been, this element of carnivale, of boundaries strained to breaking. There're some folks who try to be period, and then there are the people who are there to cosplay pirates or Doctor Who or their current D&D campaign or whatever. Mostly the cast is the former, and the dressing-up-public is the second. But point is, there's a lot of skin on display. Boobies, mostly, to the limits of legal. And, you know, great! Yay boobies (and whatever else).

Because of the high flesh factor of a ren faire , there is a corresponding bawdy factor. The sexual innuendo content of your average interaction with performers and cast (and even vendors) is pretty high. This is a ...feature, I guess, of Faire. Which is to say, I don't actually like that aspect overmuch, but without it (or when organizers attempt to suppress it) makes Faire seem childish instead of subversive.

I also realize I started off this post complaining about this very thing. Maybe I don't mind it happening, I mind it happening to me? Or I find it just... weird. Like, come on now. I mean look. Here.  This is a photo from 2015. I have a lot more ink on my right arm now, and less hair, but this is what we look like every year.  

I realize this is a strange, fine line I'm treading. Shit gets said in a Faire that I'd never think was okay in any other setting, ever. It's like we leave the norms at the door: this is how polite people behave. We don't wear corsets. We don't have shelves of cleavage, or people dressed as wenches, or belly dancers, or shirtless men in leather pants, in a general public setting.

Maybe it's consent. (I'm working through this as I write). You go to Faire, you know this sort of behavior's out there, you're...okay with it? Or at least, okay with it being around you. I definitely don't think you should have to interact with anyone's toadshit if you don't want to, and no one should touch you, like, ever. So not consent. Forewarning.

And maybe I, me, the 40-something woman, just want to be able to look at the hand-forged knives without having the shop owner, who is older than my father, trying to flatter me by telling me how sexy I am.  It's weird. Like, dude. Seriously. Stop.

I think maybe it's not about me at all. It's about Nous, and they assume he's the dude and so he's the one who's into weapons and so by complimenting his wife they are complimenting him...? I don't know.

When we go with the Rat and Shan, people stop Shan to take pictures of her--because she has this crazy hat covered with ostrich feathers, yes, but also because she's all curves and you can rest a dinner plate on the shelf of her cleavage. And I get that, but also just gods knock it off. And it is always, always the cis-het guys who do this. You don't see the dykes coming over and going oh, lady I do not know, can we photograph you and your boobies. The straight women and gay men don't swoop down on Nous and make admiring comments or ask for photographs.

Ugh. I don't know. I have loved Renaissance Festivals since I was a teenager. The Rat and I worked at the one in Colorado in college as street entertainment. It was cosplay before cosplay was much of a thing. It was this place where the Rat and I weren't the weirdest people in the room, hell, we weren't even in the top five. It was weirdly safe in a way a lot of our lives weren't at the time.

So maybe my willingness to tolerate and excuse the atmosphere is based in a romantic nostalgia. But even now--there's a certain defiance to the anything-goes attitude. No one apologizes for who they are, or what they look like, or any of the usual shaming weirdnesses. That's great! Let's keep that! The problem, though, is that the cis-het normative harassing bullshit falls into the same category of no shame, and I want it to. Like--y'all have had your time, okay? You still have it, outside the gate, every day. This is the place for the rest of us. Because you can't live out your fantasies and let the rest of us be safe to live ours at the same time.

who wants to live forever?

We begin this post with a cat picture, as is the custom of the interwebz, and also because Skugga looks very grave and dignified in this instance (which took place about 3 seconds before he decided he needed to gallop around the living room).

It is that point the quarter where, as one can see by the gap in the posts, I've been slammed under endless student drafts. This is because I teach the entry-level college writing class, which means a lot of writing and a lot of commentary to be made on the writing. My students are not good writers. That's why they're there. It's no shame to them; most of them are international students, or generation 1/1.5. That they're taking college classes in a language they've been speaking for 4 years is a testament to their badassery. But they still need a lot of feedback, and that is where my energy goes.

It'd be easy to say my energy goes there because that's why I get paid. I mean, that's true--the university pays me to teach, and by all the good green gods, I will do that. They don't pay me to care, though. I do that for free. And because I care, and because my dedicated peer tutor cares, we spend maybe more time than is union-mandated doing the work for which we are paid. (I have never understood why people go into teaching if they don't love it. It's not a place for people who 'can't do anything else'. It's the place people go when they want to make a difference and get, like, zero fame and recognition for it, except from one's students and maybe one's colleagues.)

I choose to teach because I think the job fucking matters, and because I'm good at it. I teach this particular course and level of writer because I see the biggest improvements and evolution in student writing and thinking. There are other courses that are easier, from an instructor's perspective. This one's a constant push of writing and commenting. But when I read a Boss Fight draft, and see a kid who's gone from omg Nicomachean Ethics and Beowulf I don't get it to a cogent examiniation of courage in poem and philosophy... yeah. Okay. I feel pretty good.

And yeah. Aristotle and Beowulf. Because if it's hard for everyone--and it is--no one feels stupid, and at the end, everyone feels like they accomplished something (because they did). And also...I don't know when or where else a student's going to get any exposure to ethics, unless they seek it out in an elective. People are very good at talking about their hearts, and following their feelings, and jesus, okay, fine. But Aristotle emphasizes reason, and so my kids have to think about that, too: their motives for doing what they do, and whether or not those motives are noble, or under compulsion, or from passion, or whatever.

One of my students observed that a truly virtuous teacher, by Aristotelian standards, would kindly sacrifice her time to her students because it was noble to do so, and because she reasoned her efforts would have some result; the teacher who is kind from compulsion is not really virtuous, even if her efforts also bring results. I joke with Nous that I am the citizen-soldier of teachers, acting for honor's sake, because of the shame I would earn if I did not perform my duty. That's not true, though. I respond poorly to external compulsion of all varieties.

But my gods, if it's internal--if, like, I think I need to finish a project no matter fucking what because I don't leave things unfinished--I can make myself pretty miserable. Like, 93k words of miserable that just keeps going in the wrong direction compounding itself because I will get this done. If this WIP had been a sweater, or any other knitted project, I'd've frogged it. No. I'd've cut the yarn and thrown the whole damn thing out.

So I did.

I could simply pretend this toadshit comes from starting the project when I was carrying an extra course last spring and I proved simply unable to balance Teacher Brain and Writer Brain. There's even some truth to that. And yes, external stress didn't help--isn't helping, thank you election--because I started this story in a dark, low-contrast world of competing political world-views and morally ambiguous characters a protagonist who was not a hero and then I realized--oh. I've read this before. Like 100 times. Am I adding to this conversation about moral ambiguity? Am I elucidating some angle of the non/human psyche, or leveling a critique/observation about the real-world context? Am I just exploring motives and underpinnings for why someone acts like they do, the literary equivalent of making excuses?  I grew to like the characters. I just kinda hated their world. It looked too much like this one, even with aliens and spaceships and cyborgs. It was cynical. I'm tired of cynical.

I had my students read an essay last week discussing the changes made in the 2007 Zemeckis Beowulf movie from the original poem. My students were struck by the difference in Grendel's mother, between poem and film, from (arguably) scariest monster in her underwater lake who almost eats Beowulf, to Angelina Jolie in gold shiny skin with a tail. They liked that movie-Beowulf seemed more mortal, more human, in that he allowed himself to be seduced; but they were pretty convinced he was a damn fool for having done so, and they would never make that mistake. I posed to them this dilemma, then: make a deal now, for success your whole life, your life's dream, and then die, rather horribly, sometime around 60; or muddle along, doing your thing, for the next 80 years with no particular success or failure. Just, you know, middlin'. There were some wide eyes. There were some thoughtful stares. There was a sudden sympathy for movie-Beowulf.

(And I thought--yeah, okay. If you told me--trade the last 20 years of your life so that something you wrote lasted for the next thousand plus years and left a mark on the culture--like Aristotle or Beowulf--I'd have to think long and hard about that bargain.)

A fair number of my students condemn poem-Beowulf because his motive for killing the monsters is always his fame, his glory, his legacy; they want something more pure for his courage than even Aristotle's cold reason. They want him to be brave because it's just right. They want him to be a damn hero.

I think maybe that's the story I need to tell right now. A hero. Not an unproblematic one, maybe; but still, someone who actively tries to do good things because it is noble to do, and base not to do so, and that means a society that isn't so mired in cynicism that public opinion means something.

Maybe that's my fantasy.

this week...

...began with two dead watch batteries. Saved because third watch is a thirty-odd year old Snoopy wind-up with a little tennis ball counting off seconds. At least it's on studded black leather band.

8 inches into one panel of Dad's vest, I discover the row is 12 stitches short because I cannot count. Frog it all, begin again.

Broke the red glass flower part of the hummingbird feeder. Made do with a cut-down plastic pen body. Birds did not care.

I made chocolate chip cookies because COOKIES, and because I had a couple days of no student commenting (that ends... now) so I had time.

The Girl Scout cookie supplier was a no-show Wednesday. But we still have chocolate chip cookies, so we will not die.

There will be pub Friday tomorrow, goddammit.

Word-count! Sent to the Rat, because I am driven by deadlines and discipline and other words starting with D.

Insurrection planned in game! Much furious typing!

More word count! Followed by the realization that I don't like writing much. It's hard! Wah! ...and then more word count, weeping and snarling.

From an actual conversation with The Rat:

"Oh, see, I knew all your creepy-ass reading about space ship crashes would come in handy." 

"Indeed. I'm not saying you should compromise the outside, which would do a lot more damage. I'm just saying the bodies should probably be in pieces rather than puddles." 

"Pieces! Excellent."

And now begins the slow trickle of 57 first drafts for comments by Monday. Fuck and damn.

Oh, word-count. It was nice knowing you. At least there will be beer.

For now, coffee. Then yoga. Then Arrow tonight. And maybe, maybe more word-count.

Happy New Force Be With You

Star Wars: The Force Awakens. Let's talk.

I tried to watch cinematography more this time, and I did. But this post isn't about the framing or the ways in which JJ Abrams used light and dark to communicate about character to his audience. It's about the reason I actually like or dislike a movie, rather than critically appreciate it. It's about character.

The interwebs have many opinions about this film. I'm firmly in the camp of Loved It, somewhere behind The Empire Strikes Back and, after the second viewing, in a dead heat with Star Wars (ep. IV, which I stubbornly call the original because goddammit A New Hope). I think FA is maaaaybe a notch better, overall. Or even several notches. I'm only qualifying the maybe because, well, sentimental attachment. (I was five when I saw SW. I had feelings back then.) If I gather up my objectivity, then... yeah. Better.

Why?

The story's mostly the same. Hero's journey, blah blah, superweapon, blah blah, something Force-y and lightsabers and space battles and the good guys win! But. But.

It's about friendship. Rey's the protag and the hero, absolutely, but there's more of a sense of group effort, here. She needs Finn. More importantly, Finn needs her and his development comes about because of that need and the loyalty it engenders. Rey, for her part, doesn't throw a hissy-cow when she finds out Finn lied about his past or go on about oh, the betrayal! He becomes the person who does come back for her, and who will fight for her, and for whom she, too, will fight. I hope to see more growth and development of what I hope remains a friendship (I say, as if friendship is somehow inferior to romance. It's not. But friends first!).

And, well, the movie's about Rey. Savvy and capable, rather than feckless (and a little whiny. Sorry, Luke. You totally were). Confident. Capable. Brave. She's also seriously lucky with a lot of things (but that's part of being a hero: luck. Even Beowulf knew that).  She cries a fair bit, but she doesn't get all wobbly-lipped and trembly, which is a pet peeve of mine with young female protags. And she doesn't scream. She is also kind to things weaker than she is, like stray droids. She doesn't take the easy way and sell BB-8, or refuse to get involved in his business. YES, that's all light side stuff, but so what? The world could use a little more compassion and give-a-shit. She runs at trouble, instead of away from it. She doesn't need rescuing. No one makes a big deal about IT'S A GIRL. Everyone in the First Order calls her The Girl, but no one says oh, heavens. How can a GIRL be doing these things?

There's been some muttering that she's too capable, what with the piloting and the engineer/mechanic stuff and the so-many-languages and that Force business. To this, I merely shrug. Luke shot down a Death Star on the strength of his feelings, ffs. Rey bounces the Falcon off half of Jakku before she twigs to flying her right, and she uses her force on a) a stormtrooper (and Obi-Wan told us they had weak minds) and b) to resist Kylo Ren. (Which, yes. She's tough. He's...not. Reminds me of his uncle at that age. Cough.) She's no more capable than Luke was, back in the day. Or Harry Potter. Or a dozen boy heroes who manage, somehow, to kick ass despite being farmboys or neglected orphans or whatever else.

And then, Kylo Ren. Vader was super scary (I was five. Gimme a break.). But Ren is... relatable. (Dear gods, I hate that word. But it fits here.) He's not totally confident. He wants to be such a badass. But he's scared, too, that he'll fuck it all up. He's lonely. He gets frustrated. He's trying to measure up to something bigger than he is. He is, as Chuck Wendig has noted, vulnerable. He feels like a real person, which I think is more important sometimes for villains than for heroes. We want to be the hero, but we can see ourselves being the villain because we, too, have those issues. That weakness is in us. It's what we do with it that matters. And that's why Ren's the villain: because he's an asshole by choice. Because, you know... I don't think you should be able to come back from patricide. Even Luke didn't do that. Face Vader did not mean kill Vader. It meant settle your shit, kid, and become your own person. And Kylo Ren, well. We all know who he killed, and if that makes him his own person, because it was his choice...then I really wanna see Rey stomp him flat someday. Vader inspired fear, but fear is a reflex. Genuine dislike means there's an emotional reaction. I don't like Ren. I don't hate him yet, but the trilogy is young.

Leia was formative for me. Get that walking carpet out of my way and I thought I recognized your stench and mouthy and fierce and all that...so different from the Disney princesses of the day (this was, of course, long before Mulan). And without Leia, we couldn't've had Rey. But I'm so glad we do have her, and that we have Finn (a stormtrooper! The Rat and I have been wondering about them forever), and that we have a villain who we can really, genuinely despise.

So yes. Better than Star Wars.

tired

I had coffee yesterday with a brilliant young friend of mine. We met when she was a student in one of my writing classes--the argument and research class, the one I almost never teach because I find it difficult to teach political subjects without getting exhausted. Outrage with no outlet is bad for the soul. Anyway, K. and I were talking about her life, and she was describing one of her friends to me, a guy who had a 'friend with privileges,' and how that relationship had gone south because, essentially, the girl wouldn't put out one day when she was tired.

"Oh my god," K says. "I just. You know."

I raised both eyebrows. "What did you say?"

She winced. "I turned away from him. Disengaged. But I didn't say anything. Sometimes I just get so...so...tired, you know? Of having to educate all the time, speak up, all of that. It's exhausting."

Yes, yes I do know.

My hat is off to the people who do this day in, day out. The feminist bloggers. The female gamers. The women who engage, again and again, with the well-meaning men and the assholes and the "nice guys" and the self-righteous (and often defensive) beneficiaries of privilege. I just made the mistake of commenting on a Facebook post and caught a faceful of but my misogynist game isn't REALLY misogynist from some fanboys, complete with such clever responses as 'absurd' and 'what he said' and assorted ad hominems. All I did was link Scalzi's "Lowest Difficulty Setting" essay to 'em as an example of why a world-build in a patriarchal, inherently misogynistic single POV was not as complicated as, say, what Bioware attempts, and Bioware deserves some credit for that, even if the gameplay/hero/whatever the hell has some issues, in part because there are choices in making that hero--gender, race, class-- because, well, it does. It's more work. When my students try something challenging and don't succeed as neatly as the student who took the easy way out, you think that doesn't factor in?

Because this is the internet, the discussion has shifted position and turned somewhat personal. I have now engaged exactly four times, and that is exactly four times more than I should have. I am tired. I think we'd all do better with face to face and some beer for discussions like this. The anonymity is a bitch.

On the other hand, my friend K, with her friend...sometimes you're just tired, even if the person's sitting right there with you. Maybe the only solution is beer, or yoga, or Borderlands 2.

Maybe I'll just keep writing what I write, and let those characters--who are not allowed to be tired, because I say so--keep fighting the good fight. I'll be over here, with my stout and my Xbox.

today, i am disappointed in the world

I hit a point, sometimes, where I just can't muster the energy to be angry about the things that deserve that anger. Or when too many angry-making things pile up until I'm buried in them. I am not sure which point I am at, at present. Maybe both. But I am freakin' tired, people.

I am tired of so-called Christians practicing none of the compassion I see in their Jesus. He hung out with the dregs of society. He did not avoid said dregs and condemn them and treat them like shit. He did not spend his days posting (ha. Jesus on Facebook. There's a thought) about how awful those other people are, and being smug; nor did he spend all his time trumpeting his own righteousness. He said--love people. Be humble. All that really hard stuff. I don't see a lot of love. I think if these people had been Jesus, they've been all Yo! Magdelene! Get OFF MY FEET! Nasty ho. Stop that. Then come talk to me.

I see my best friend hurting because her brother won't come to her wedding or bring his family because he doesn't want to "give his kids the wrong idea"--said idea being, apparently, that two women might love each other that way. No, it's better to give those kids the idea that Jesus might hate two people for loving each other. Great plan.

So that makes me tired. And it makes me angry. But mostly tired, because I cannot do anything about it. Or them. Or the attitudes they carry, that have not changed in the 20 years that I've known them.

And I swear to all my ancestors that I am tired, tired, TIRED of the manufactured drama around Certain HBO Series(tm). Is it rape? Is it not? Come the fuck on, people. It's fantasy, it's fiction, and it's supposed to be upsetting. More upsetting: rape happens now, today, all around us, to people we know, and you're all worked up about a fucking TV show. Worry about real women who are asked what they were wearing, or were they drunk, or were they married, or did they really fight back, or the thousand other shitty things we say, as a culture, to rape victims to turn them into partially responsible agents in their own violation.

Also sick of people muttering about how the source material isn't critical enough of the violence against women. It's the middle ages. It's violence against everyone. It's worse to be a woman, sure, and worse still to be a poor woman.  But if you think GRRM isn't critical of that, well shit. I don't know what you're reading. I say this as Not A Fangirl, but someone who found the books uncomfortable and not entirely satisfying. But again, I think--if you don't like the books, don't read them! And if violence against women upsets you, DO SOMETHING. Or write something that better portrays what you want to see in the genre. Or write letters to publishers so they buy things that you want to read, and put them on the shelves, instead of discounting large swaths of the reading public and imagining we prefer romance novels or paranormal romances or sexy vampires or whatever.


But sexism, homophobia, religiously excused assholery--that shit's really for real, and happening to really-real people.  And we can't be bothered to care about that, no, let's throw a shitstorm instead about a cable series.

Tired. So. Damn. Tired.

discovery

I have a writing group meeting on Saturday. This is my first meat-world writing group ever. I've had Zero as my e-reading group for... ever. Eight years? Something like. (Although she has fallen down on the job in the last year and has two novels backed up. I am starting to feel unloved.) Nous reads, too, but only sporadically, what with the diss. And the Rat reads all my manuscripts with her unsentimental brutality and makes my words better every time. But real, live in-flesh people to read and gulp, give feedback on the spot? That's new. All of these people are new, too, except one, and she is my friend/coworker, and I've only read short bits of her writing. They all know each other. And this group used to be Elizabeth George's group. A couple of them are Seriously Published, some are unpublished, and some, like me, are sporadically published. So. The plan, for this first meeting, is to bring something we can read in 10-15 minutes, something current that we're working on.

I feel a little sick.

I don't know how out-loud-readable my work actually is. The Rat says--not very. Sometimes I do things with grammar that would make my English teachers cry. (Yes, they let me teach composition. Scary.) I write a lot of the time for rhythm and flow--how the words sound in my head as I write them, cadence, the number and balance of stresses and beats in a phrase. I also intercut lines with other lines and cross-cut thoughts. There's an element of performance to reading out loud that scares the hell out of me. I am no actor. But then I teach, don't I, and that's a good 75% performance. More than.

Writing is a matter of talent, skill, sure, but it's also about taste. And I write genre. Friend P. assures me that others here write genre, too, and one even writes SF, and P. herself reads and loves spec-fic, so I will fit right in. I hate, by the by, the habit that makes me say that--I write genre--as if I am confessing a sin, as if I should be ashamed. But I am also used to the nose-wrinkling from the MFA types when they hear genre, as if literary fiction isn't a genre of its very own.

But let's be honest. What scares me is that a bunch of people who do not know me will think that I suck. Which I don't, I know that--I am a good writer. Other strangers spared the experience of meeting me face to face have purchased my work and put it in their publications. I know I do not suck, and yet--I am reduced to being 10 again, moving into a new school, and trying to figure out how I am going to fit into a bunch of people who've known each other for years.

Sweet ancestors, this isn't even about the words on the page, this is about being the new kid. Now I just need to decide what to wear read.

in which i am branded a hater of men

I am tired of boy stories. I am tired of sons who must fulfill their fathers' destinies. I am tired of the Savior of Everyone being a boy. I am tired of that being the norm, and stories in which there are girls or women or, gasp, mothers as the influential figure being unusual. Okay, these are actually two different complaints. There's the Influential Parent Is The Father thing, and the Speshul Hero Is A Boy thing. Where are the mothers? John Connor has Sarah, and she's the one who makes him a badass, but how rare is that? Are there women who are made badass by their mothers?

But really, I am tired of boy stories. Why does the child in TRON have to be a son named Sam? Why not a daughter named Sam? Have we not seen a bazillion iterations of Boy Following Daddy's Footsteps? Even my favorite author ever is all about boy stories. The last women stories she wrote were back in the late 80s. Maaaaybe the early 90s. She wrote a sequel to a woman story recently, but that's a sequel. And now her new shared-world online story begins with... a boy story (grant it was one of her co-authors, but still). Knowing the other authors, a girl may appear at some point. But I am sad that the whole thing begins with... a boy. Again. And a dead mother. Again. And a daddy issue. AGAIN. And this is a shared world with three women writing it.

Nothing wrong with daddy issues or mommy issues or stories about boys or girls. But it's the same tired crap, over and over, too many times. I know there are exceptions. The point here is not oh, but there's a Sarah Connor or a Ripley or a Leelu or a True Grit out there. It's that you can name them pretty easily as exceptions.

I suppose part of it's audience. Okay, probably a lot of it. I know men who won't read novels by women who write male protagonist POVs. They have no such qualms with male writers and female POVs. Shocking. And like it or not, and I do not like it, SFF is male-oriented. The shelves are flooded lately with paranormal romances*, and we all know who those are for, but I don't take that as indication the genre is shifting toward women as audience or authorship.

I found Marion Zimmer Bradley and Darkover when I first seriously got into SFF. I was working my way across the library shelves, and the MZB was the first cover I thought looked cool, so I took it. And it was about women! Whoa. Then I found this novel by someone named Cherryh, and it was about a woman, too. Whoa again. I didn't realize at the time what a big deal that was to a 10 year old, but in retrospect, it had a huge impact on the kinds of stories I expected, and respected.

*I don't like, or read, paranormal romances as a general rule (confess a weakness for Stackhouse stuff, but that's because of Eric, because really, I have a weakness for Vikings and THAT is a whole 'nother can of wtf because it doesn't get much more boy story than that, unless you also go east and north and into the Finnish material, or you think Skadhi's the coolest thing ever, or c, both of the above). But I don't think the presence of a vampire, werewolf, ghost, spaceship, etc. makes something SFF, either.