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Long overdue update
1.
Other people have said this before, but I think it bears re-iterating.
The stereotype of the romantically mentally ill writer/artist who's so sad and tortured but creates great art because of that pain is absolute crap. After the last two months of my life in which I've dealt with the worst depression and anxiety I've ever had. And it didn't help me write. Insomnia and panic attacks and suicidal ideation made writing a lot harder, actually.
Having proper meds and getting enough sleep and being able to function helps me write. And frankly, as my depression got worse, so did my ability to even string a sentence together, much a cohesive story.
I'm doing better now, but I officially have zero tolerance for anyone who wants to talk shit to me about "artistic temperaments". Or for anyone who wants to make jokes about psychiatric medicines or about mental illness or about any of it.
2.
.
I know I haven't been around much, and lately my posting and my ability to get up with stuff has taken a dramatic nose dive.
The reason for that is mental health issues. In the beginning of November, I ended up needing to go to the psychiatric ER here in Charlotte. I'd been self-harming for a long time, but I was getting to the point of having daily suicidal thoughts and coming up with a plan. I'd been making bargains, telling myself, "If it doesn't get better in six months, I can end my life." Except that bargain kept including a short and shorter time frame, until it got to the point where I was asking myself, "Why wait? Why not get it over with now?"
Very literally, I was in hell. Nothing made me happy or even neutral. I didn't enjoy anything, I cried more than is normal for me, I had panic attacks where I couldn't breathe or think, I couldn't sleep. Everything became hopeless, worthless, and unending. I was in the purest kind of misery I'd ever experienced.
There were many days where I'd pray to get sick or to have something happen to me or to get in a car wreck.
And then I found myself speeding down an empty road looking for something really solid to crash my car into. I stopped myself when I realized I'd gotten up to about eighty miles per hour and that the road wasn't going to stay empty. I tried to deal with that, tried to go on, but I couldn't after that.
So I told Husband Man that he needed to take me to the ER. I went shaking, crying, and hyperventilating while he held my hand and guided me there. I nearly collapsed having to admit why I'd come but eventually the nurses got me calmed down, gave me a really warm towel-blanket hybrid thing and I started the process of Getting Help.
I'm still in the early stages of that. It's not an overnight thing and this has been building for years. I should have sought help a long time ago, but those old, old fears about being revealed as "crazy" stay with me.
This is partly why I'm talking about this publicly. Because I need to get over that. I have nothing to be ashamed of. No more than a person with a broken leg or sprained wrist does. My brain just happens to be in my brain. It doesn't make me instantly a liar or dangerous or unreliable. It doesn't make me deserving of punishment or scorn.
It makes me a person with a problem. All people have problems. This is one of mine. I refuse to let the shame and the ableist crap that I've had flung at me over the years to stop me from getting help and from doing what I need to do. And that includes talking about this.
3.
Now for something a bit happier! I wanted to send out my profound gratitude to all of you on my f-list here and LJ and various other places for speaking about your mental health issues: your meds, your doctors, your treatment, your good days and bad days, your trips to the hospital, your insurance woes. All of it.
For all the words you've written, whether it's public or under lock where a select few can see them, thank you. In a way, your words helped me. Knowing that I wasn't alone and that people do live and cope with these things helped. It helped to see that people I admire deeply and respect for their talent, kindness, humor, fierceness, righteousness, bravery, and general awesome had these issues, too, gave me hope that it wasn't a sentence to never be anything.
Thank you so much. I may not have commented on what you wrote, but I was reading. I did pay attention. Your words stayed with me and many of them specifically came back to me when I needed them.
4.
I need book recs! The holiday season left me bearing gift cards to places where books (electronic and paper) might be acquired and I definitely want to dive into some good things.
Especially fantasy, sci-fi, paranormal romance/urban fantasy written by authors of color (women and non-binary folks esp.), queer authors, and other such folks. I'm beginning to think I need a rule that says I won't read any paranormal romance/urban fantasy written by white women and published by a major publisher/press without three trusted sources first vetting it.
Why? Because the first book of 2012 is turning out to be disappointing. I thought it had promise, I really did. The guy who seemed like he'd be the love interest in the first chapter turned out to be the villain. When the villain begins stalking the heroine, she does all she can and it's made clear that stalking is wrong and creepy and evil! When someone implies it's her fault because she had coffee with the guy, she doesn't take that shit at all! The two main characters don't immediately fall into instant lust and want to fuck each other and mystically bond, they start out as distant acquaintances!
But then the fail started coming in. Describing a character as "East Asian in a dreamy way" (as opposed to the icky kind of East Asian?) and having the main male character get snarly at a bunch of cops for hitting on the main female after the stalker-villain destroys everything she owns, but then insisting she stay with him until she gets on her feet and mentally undressing her all the while.
I'm not sure I'm going to finish this book, hence the need for recs!
Oh, and any really great biographies/histories of non-white/non-European people or subjects would be great. Especially if they're written by non-white/non-European authors.
5.
I kind of want to start a discussion about self publishing and e-books, especially from the side of readers. How much do people out there read self-published books and ebooks? Where do you get them from, how do you find them, what appeals to you? Is the quality better, worse, the same as traditionally published material?
So, chime in if you like to let me know. How often do you read self-published vs. traditonally published books? Ebooks vs. paper books?
I've been meaning to ask these questions for a while, but well. See numbers 1-3 for reasons why.
Other people have said this before, but I think it bears re-iterating.
The stereotype of the romantically mentally ill writer/artist who's so sad and tortured but creates great art because of that pain is absolute crap. After the last two months of my life in which I've dealt with the worst depression and anxiety I've ever had. And it didn't help me write. Insomnia and panic attacks and suicidal ideation made writing a lot harder, actually.
Having proper meds and getting enough sleep and being able to function helps me write. And frankly, as my depression got worse, so did my ability to even string a sentence together, much a cohesive story.
I'm doing better now, but I officially have zero tolerance for anyone who wants to talk shit to me about "artistic temperaments". Or for anyone who wants to make jokes about psychiatric medicines or about mental illness or about any of it.
2.
.
I know I haven't been around much, and lately my posting and my ability to get up with stuff has taken a dramatic nose dive.
The reason for that is mental health issues. In the beginning of November, I ended up needing to go to the psychiatric ER here in Charlotte. I'd been self-harming for a long time, but I was getting to the point of having daily suicidal thoughts and coming up with a plan. I'd been making bargains, telling myself, "If it doesn't get better in six months, I can end my life." Except that bargain kept including a short and shorter time frame, until it got to the point where I was asking myself, "Why wait? Why not get it over with now?"
Very literally, I was in hell. Nothing made me happy or even neutral. I didn't enjoy anything, I cried more than is normal for me, I had panic attacks where I couldn't breathe or think, I couldn't sleep. Everything became hopeless, worthless, and unending. I was in the purest kind of misery I'd ever experienced.
There were many days where I'd pray to get sick or to have something happen to me or to get in a car wreck.
And then I found myself speeding down an empty road looking for something really solid to crash my car into. I stopped myself when I realized I'd gotten up to about eighty miles per hour and that the road wasn't going to stay empty. I tried to deal with that, tried to go on, but I couldn't after that.
So I told Husband Man that he needed to take me to the ER. I went shaking, crying, and hyperventilating while he held my hand and guided me there. I nearly collapsed having to admit why I'd come but eventually the nurses got me calmed down, gave me a really warm towel-blanket hybrid thing and I started the process of Getting Help.
I'm still in the early stages of that. It's not an overnight thing and this has been building for years. I should have sought help a long time ago, but those old, old fears about being revealed as "crazy" stay with me.
This is partly why I'm talking about this publicly. Because I need to get over that. I have nothing to be ashamed of. No more than a person with a broken leg or sprained wrist does. My brain just happens to be in my brain. It doesn't make me instantly a liar or dangerous or unreliable. It doesn't make me deserving of punishment or scorn.
It makes me a person with a problem. All people have problems. This is one of mine. I refuse to let the shame and the ableist crap that I've had flung at me over the years to stop me from getting help and from doing what I need to do. And that includes talking about this.
3.
Now for something a bit happier! I wanted to send out my profound gratitude to all of you on my f-list here and LJ and various other places for speaking about your mental health issues: your meds, your doctors, your treatment, your good days and bad days, your trips to the hospital, your insurance woes. All of it.
For all the words you've written, whether it's public or under lock where a select few can see them, thank you. In a way, your words helped me. Knowing that I wasn't alone and that people do live and cope with these things helped. It helped to see that people I admire deeply and respect for their talent, kindness, humor, fierceness, righteousness, bravery, and general awesome had these issues, too, gave me hope that it wasn't a sentence to never be anything.
Thank you so much. I may not have commented on what you wrote, but I was reading. I did pay attention. Your words stayed with me and many of them specifically came back to me when I needed them.
4.
I need book recs! The holiday season left me bearing gift cards to places where books (electronic and paper) might be acquired and I definitely want to dive into some good things.
Especially fantasy, sci-fi, paranormal romance/urban fantasy written by authors of color (women and non-binary folks esp.), queer authors, and other such folks. I'm beginning to think I need a rule that says I won't read any paranormal romance/urban fantasy written by white women and published by a major publisher/press without three trusted sources first vetting it.
Why? Because the first book of 2012 is turning out to be disappointing. I thought it had promise, I really did. The guy who seemed like he'd be the love interest in the first chapter turned out to be the villain. When the villain begins stalking the heroine, she does all she can and it's made clear that stalking is wrong and creepy and evil! When someone implies it's her fault because she had coffee with the guy, she doesn't take that shit at all! The two main characters don't immediately fall into instant lust and want to fuck each other and mystically bond, they start out as distant acquaintances!
But then the fail started coming in. Describing a character as "East Asian in a dreamy way" (as opposed to the icky kind of East Asian?) and having the main male character get snarly at a bunch of cops for hitting on the main female after the stalker-villain destroys everything she owns, but then insisting she stay with him until she gets on her feet and mentally undressing her all the while.
I'm not sure I'm going to finish this book, hence the need for recs!
Oh, and any really great biographies/histories of non-white/non-European people or subjects would be great. Especially if they're written by non-white/non-European authors.
5.
I kind of want to start a discussion about self publishing and e-books, especially from the side of readers. How much do people out there read self-published books and ebooks? Where do you get them from, how do you find them, what appeals to you? Is the quality better, worse, the same as traditionally published material?
So, chime in if you like to let me know. How often do you read self-published vs. traditonally published books? Ebooks vs. paper books?
I've been meaning to ask these questions for a while, but well. See numbers 1-3 for reasons why.
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I admit, the only time I read a self-published book is if a friend wrote it, or a friend offers me a truly enthusiastic recommendation.
Ebooks vs. paper books?
Probably about 60/40 ebooks/paper.
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I've reached he end of shelfspace. Seventeen is _enough - I want to get rid of books that I don't like much so there's room in my life for new ones, but my 'it's cheap, I'll take a chance on it' reading has shifted entirely to e.
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Part of why I sought treatment is because I knew so many people who had been helped, and that I wasn't alone. I do wish that more people hadn't categorised mental health treatment as something that would destroy creativity, though, because that kept me away from longer than was really good for me. And when I did get help, the meds actually improved my ability to create, not lessened it.
I so hear you on the urban fantasy thing. I love the genre, adore it. I read early Anita Blake and Diana Tregarde and wished so much that there were more stories out there. And now that there are, it's just, so many of them are white-washed and misogynistic and erase or totally fail on anything related to sexuality and gender. I'm sick of books where I can predict the formula of tough kickass chick needing help from Hot Dudely Dude and then being TSTL all over the place even though we've been told that she is supposedly Hot Shit but is making all these asinine mistakes (bonus points when she also is raging into the hero for NO GOOD REASON) and manages to, through her utter stupidity, arrogance and inability to listen to all the other people around her who are making sense, get in a position where she needs Hot Dudely Dude to rescue her.
I mean, I don't mind the stories where the final showdown is such that they have to work together and are equals, but most of the time, it winds up in the supposedly tough chick being the damsel in distress because OH we can't have a woman who is EQUAL to the hero, NOPE, can't possibly have that. /bitter
Um. Anyway.
Urban fantasy that is non-fail!
Black Blade Blues and Honeyed Words by JA Pitts. I am disappointed and annoyed that the author is a man, however, this is some of the best urban fantasy with a lesbian heroine that I've read. The first book, admittedly, annoyed me because the heroine is dealing with a lot of internalized homophobia from growing up with her very fundamentalist Christian family in the midwest, and one of the subplots is the issues it causes between her and her girlfriend. She basically wants to stay closeted, girlfriend is not down with that, especially since they live in the Seattle area (where overwhelmingly, nobody gives a fuck). It's not unrealistic, it's very well done, but it's not the story I wanted to read, which is lesbian heroine has adventures AND gets the girl.
HOWEVER. Book #2 totally is what I wanted to read, and it is worth reading book #1, which again, is still well done.
Um. *thinks*
The World of the Lupi books by Eileen Wilks are excellent. They are a paranormal romance/urban fantasy series following and alternating between two couples. The first heroine is Asian (although I don't remember particulars because it's been so long since reading them), and it's pretty well done. ISTR there are other characters of color, although, again, I don't remember particulars. Can't recall if there are GBLT characters. But the women are awesome. The way I would describe these books is like Joss Whedon's Angel (which is darker than Buffy and deals more with the fantasy/alternate worlds side) without the misogynistic fail. Cynna, who doesn't come in until the second book, is freaking amazing and my favorite character, although the first heroine (whose name I am blanking on and my fucking browser is throwing fits so I don't want to open another window to look it up) rocks too. These are particularly unusual in that the women characters are, imo, more powerful than the guys. Not that the guys aren't powerful, Rule being a werewolf alpha and Cullen being a powerful sorcerer, but they definitely do not fall into the trap of devaluing the women's abilities in order to make the heroes tough and appealing to straight women's fantasies.
And then there is the demon questioning imp demon, who is all kinds of awesome. Who eventually mostly identifies as female, but is very confused about this whole gender business in the first place.
I just finished Anna Dressed In Blood, which is a ghost story involving a scary, kickass ghost girl and the ghost hunter who falls in love with her. If you took Supernatural and made it about one ghost hunter rather than two, and made it about teens, and added a kickass Wiccan light witch mom, and took away the misogynistic fail, you'd have this book. Slight spoiler: Anna KICKS ASS in the final showdown and actually saves the dude's ass. I loved it so much.
The Edge series by Ilona Andrews is really good, and I don't... think.... too fail. The women definitely are strong, and not artificially so, and I particularly love the setting and worldbuilding. My memory on these is a little foggy (unfortunately, my memory is shit and usually after a few weeks, details about books become really blurred), but I really loved them. Although I don't recall GBLT/character of color representation being great.
There are other books I liked but these are the least problematic that I can think of. If you want ones that may be problematic but I liked, I can list those too!
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Oh, wow, thanks for the great and detailed recs! I'll have to go searching for these books pronto.
Yeah, the mainstream part of the UF/PNR genre has just kind of gone downhill. Plus, it's not just heroines who have gotten subpar, but the heroes and romantic male leads. Am I the only one who finds them really rather boring and creepy most times? It's like they're just there to look pretty and badass and kick things and ogle the heroine and that's about it. I kind of expect them to be like the guy from the Planet Fitness commercials who only really says: "I lift things up and put them down." (Here's a link if you've never seen it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M-cpojkILO0).
And if you want to give me recs with books that might be problematic, feel free. Although if you could tell me what's problematic that'd be a big help! :)
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Honestly, I haven't read any self-published stuff other than fanfic and one story by Joey Comeau (which definitely could have used better editing). I am not at all opposed to it, just haven't sought it out.
As for ebooks vs paper, since I got my ipod touch six months ago, I have read 100% ebooks. XD It's just so much handier! Why would I lug a book around when I can read on something I can put in my pocket?
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Yeah, I'm getting a lot of the same answers to the ebook questions. Although I'm surprise to hear how many people use their ebooks for fanfic reading. Which shouldn't surprise me I suppose, but it's kind of neat to think of it. And now I want to get my own ereader and load it up with my favorite fics.
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Oh, and seeing
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Describing a character as "East Asian in a dreamy way" (as opposed to the icky kind of East Asian?)
ugh. sounds like just another variation of "pretty/hot for a ____". Descriptions like these, especially if they're from the POV of a love interest, is one reason I have issues with some portrayals of POC/white relationships in romance books (well, possibly other genres too) written by white authors. I don't get the appeal of being with someone who thinks of me like that. (Ditto heroes who are misogynists.)
I haven't been reading urban fantasy lately, though I do have Marjorie Liu's latest waiting to be read. And I'm looking forward to Alaya Johnson's Wicked City.
I think the only self-published author I've read so far is Courtney Milan, who writes historical romance. She started out in traditional publishing and decided to self-publish to see if she could make money by lowering the price of her e-books and, when possible, not drm-ing them. And I think she made a blog post too about wanting to write about people that most historical romance doesn't care about/won't publish, so hopefully that means not just rich, titled, straight, white people. I like her sensibilities/online persona (I think she's part Asian too, though all her characters have been white).
Since I got my e-reader, last year, I haven't read much paper books -- it's mainly only comics that I read that way now. I much prefer reading on the e-reader because I don't get paper cuts, don't lose my page, can make the font gigantic, can carry a lot of books & fanfic with me... I would buy SO MANY books at ~2.99, so I hope self-publishing endeavours like Milan's work out.
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I mean, come on. Why even make that statement like it's a good thing? If the author intended to address it or acknowledge it's skeeviness or something, maybe. But if it's just a throwaway descriptor why not say, "He had East Asian heritage, was very muscular and handsome". Ugh.
Ooh, thanks for reminding me about the Johnson book, because that is on my "find if possible" list.
Thanks for the ebook opinion. That makes another in the "mainly ebooks and yay fanfic on ereaders!" column. I've gotta get one of my own one of these days.
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It sounds like one of those thoughtless, off-hand comments that has Unfortunate Implications that the author just didn't think about or possibly thought they did address it adequately later on, like with the white privilege comment. Which is one reason why I feel like certain, privileged POVs are not always necessary to the story. Or, rather, that I understand people like this exist and it's 'realistic' to portray them this way and whatnot, but that doesn't mean I want to read about them, even if they have a Learning Moment.
I do like that AO3 has made downloading fics very easy.
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Also, the mentally ill author trope? So much hate. Any skills I have are the result of passion and hard work, not chemical imbalances and screwy neurology.
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And I am right there with you. If I write well it's because I DON'T have bad brain chemistry impeding me.
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I'm sorry that you went through such a lousy time and glad you found the help you needed. I'm having a really hard time talking about my mental state because I don't think I could deal with negatiity, and part of the anxiety is the conviction that a) nobody cares or b) people will pile on all the harder; and right now, I'm lackign the courage to find out whether either is true, so I am in awe of anyone who is willing to share their story.
It helps tremendously to not be the only one.
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I'm glad that you found something in what I posted. And if you ever need to talk to someone, privately or not, I can assure you that I'll be willing to listen and that I do really give a damn (a whole lotta damn) and I won't judge or say the really crappy things that people say when they think they're being helpful about this kind of stuff.
And if it helps, this happened in November. It took me until January (and several discarded drafts) to be able to do this.
I hope you find what you need, and I'm sorry that you're going through a not-so-fun time as well. I'm always here, and you can msg or email me (tentative at gmail).
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i'm glad you are still here