megwrites

So, I had a thought while I was singing a cat themed version of "Can't Buy Me Love" to my cat, as you do.

Maybe one of my problems with writing lately isn't so much "oh god, is my work important enough to be worth writing at all", but that I've got some deeper things to think about.

Actually, let me rewind. Before the part where I belted out a Beatles tune at one of my pets, my mental health took an uptick. ( Cut for talk of my mental health and meds and brain stuff and depression/anxiety and brief mention of suicidal ideation. )

So...

All this contemplation has lead me to ask some questions and think of some things.

First, is that I think my writing is stymied by the conflict between wanting to really pour myself into my writing, to really own it and turn it into my writing and the belief that I and my experiences and who I am are not worthy of being in a story much less a story that other people will ever see. That's a mix of depression, I think, and good old fashioned self consciousness.

Second, I think I haven't answered some fundamental questions. One being, "Why do I love what I love? Why am I drawn to write certain things?"

For example: I love paranormal romance stories about sexy angels and their tempestuous, somewhat unhealthy relationships with supernaturally powered women? But why do I love it. Why do I love it enough to want to write my own story of that sort? What is about angels, the supernatural, strong women who kick ass that I love? Or vampires or aliens or whatever?

I mean, what is it that I think is so damn cool, so fucking awesome that I'd want someone to sit down and enjoy said type of novel?

Or for that matter, the speculative genre as a whole. Why fantasy fiction or any kind of SF/F? Also, romance, what do I really love about it? What is about telepathy that I like as a feature of some stories or the "stoic, seemingly heartless and cold person falls in love with someone their complete opposite who brings them out of their shell" trope in romance?

I'm still working on that bit, but it seems to me that maybe there's a lot to be mined there. Not just for my own fun, sport, and edification - but also as part of my writing.

I mean (for example) - if I just really fucking love space ships because I think anything that goes "pffwooooomfffffffff" in a big fiery ball and then goes into outer space is just the bee's knees, then focusing on the big fireballs and the power and wonderment of that much fuel and combustibility being harnessed to launch a multi-ton piece of aeronautics into the black abyss of space without blowing the shit out of everything in a ten mile radius is something I should focus on. Because it's what I'm excited about it. It's something that can be a theme in my work, something that I can bring to the table that maybe I see or think about in a way that's new or surprising to others.

So that's my thought for today. And my excuse for an update. May it serve you well and in good health.


TL;DR: Mental health is getting better. It's important to think about why you write stuff and also to sing to cats. But especially the bit about the cats. No great writer ever succeeded without first singing a beloved popular rock song to a cat. Though I might not advise singing "Mrs. Robinson" to a lion or anything. They're universally known to hate folk-rock. It's Queen or nothing for the mighty king of the beasts. THIS IS A COMPLETELY TRUE FACT. I AM NOT MAKING THIS UP AT ALL.

1. I'm trying out the Pheonix client for Dreamwidth, so let me know if anything about this entry has turned out wonky or otherwise not as it should be.

2. My husband put the finished draft of my novel into .mobi format and loaded it on our shared Kindle. It was like it was a really real book. I'm tempted to now to just give it away and let people throw money into some kind of tip jar because, eeeee! It looked really nicely formatted and like a real book and everything.

3. I'm still figuring out how to organize that inclusive SF/F writer's group/writer's support and critique comm thing type dealie place majigger. Right now I'm thinking of drawing up a basic statement of beliefs and goals and letting people see if they like it.

( A rough list of what the basic statement's tenents would be. I welcome and encourage feedback. Seriously. Talk to me, DW-verse! )

4. I am now consumed by the need to start researching ALL THE FLOWERS AND PLANTS because there's a story somewhere in my head. Not sure where it is, and it's not ready to come out yet, but like a seed opening underground, I know something is going to pop up soon with some sunshine, some rain, and some time.

5. I mentioned this on Twitter and Tumblr, but it's that season again. My birthday is in April and when I get my inevitable gift cards/birthday money, I'm gonna need book recs. My criteria (copied from Tumblr) are:

- Really awesome SF/F or urban fantasy/paranormal romance by authors of color and/or about protagonists of color. The less fail-y the better. God, but I need some good speculative literature right now.

- Steampunk that doesn’t fail.

- Ditto the above for authors who are queer, trans, have a disability, etc.

- Any awesome history books about non-European, non-White people centric history.

- Any books about journaling, drawing, or painting that have been helpful, especially for beginners who don’t have a lot of nifty tools at their disposal.

- Hot, steamy, queeralicious romance, erotica, etc. Will try out heterosexual pairings or situations where it breaks through norms and tropes or otherwise is something besides the same old, same old. Kink is a plus.

- Any good social sciences/culture books about topics relevant to my interests.

- Any good pop science books, particularly on physics, astronomy, astrophysics, biology, or chemistry. ETA: Botany and other natural sciences are good, too.

- Any other books that seem like they’d be right up my alley.

6. This is my dog on Youtube. This is her tail of adventure, action, and whirlwind passion. She is absurd in every possible way and extremely sweet and inordinately fond of citrus and eating cloth. I just wanted to brag about her because she's really cute and sleeping next to me. Yes, she is named after the book/movie but only because she was named "Cora" at the animal control place we adopted her from and we didn't like that. I wanted to name her Sharptooth.

7. I'm on Goodreads. Go add me so I won't be lonely? *sad woe face*.

1. I just want to say a big "bless you" to all those authors who put up sample chapters on their sites, and actually start with the first part when they do this. I've come across several authors who want to pull an excerpt from, say, chapter 20 or chapter 10 or some such and I'm like, "THIS DOES NOT HELP ME". The thing is, to understand your book, I need to read it in order. Thus, I need to start from page one. And while chapter 20 may be a page turner, if the first 19 chapters are boring as hell, I'm not going to invest. Which is why I like to start at the beginning. To make sure that your book is giving me a reason to want to read on.

2. I have a really, really evil trouble starting post in my head after seeing some news around the writersphere about a couple of paranormal romance series being discontinued for bad sales according to their authors.

But one in particular really made me want to say some inordinately snarky things. It's not that I relish a fellow writer not meeting with success when they work hard and put their hearts on the line, it's that when said writer pens a book that basically says from front to back, "Sorry, people like YOU aren't good enough to be in this book. People like YOU are too ugly for a Sexy Tiems Paranormal Romance Like This, come back when you're beautiful", I'm not sad to see it leave the shelves. And I feel just a little bit vindicated to know it failed.

The thing is? I'm used to mainstream romance and paranormal romance hating me by exclusion. I'm used to being told I'm not pretty enough because I've got covers and covers and covers of books about skinny heterosexual white chicks staring at me to let me know what is pretty enough. And I've sort of learned to deal and find the hidden gems and live with eternal optimism and not expect too much.

But this book didn't just settle for exclusion, it went right on to face slapping. This one book actually made me leave not just the romance bookshelves (and abandon all the other books I was going to preview and consider buying) but the bookstore. It was during this winter when I was going through a lot of bad mental stuff and there I am, looking for something exciting and fun to read because damn but I needed some relief and *bam*. Hit in the face with the things that have, at times, my made life completely miserable. Things I have to push back against on the daily or cave in to self-harm.

For the moment, I'll table that post because I'm not looking to get into internet drama over it, but one day I may make the post about how writers need to think twice (and thrice) before they decide ignoring big parts of their potential audience is the way to go - because as recent news would seem to bear out, that bigotry isn't working out so well for some people.

3. It being poetry month and me not wanting to post any of my own poems right now, I'll post my favorite Pablo Neruda poem:

Sonnet XI
by Pablo Neruda

I crave your mouth, your voice, your hair.
Silent and starving, I prowl through the streets.
Bread does not nourish me, dawn disrupts me, all day
I hunt for the liquid measure of your steps.

I hunger for your sleek laugh,
your hands the color of a savage harvest,
hunger for the pale stones of your fingernails,
I want to eat your skin like a whole almond.

I want to eat the sunbeam flaring in your lovely body,
the sovereign nose of your arrogant face,
I want to eat the fleeting shade of your lashes,

and I pace around hungry, sniffing the twilight,
hunting for you, for your hot heart,
like a puma in the barrens of Quitratue.

In case you've noticed (or cared to), I know the postings here have slowed to a veritable crawl and even elsewhere they've slowed in the last couple of months. I'm going to try from here forward to get things going a bit more. Not that I think my wee little DW/LJ is of any major concern to anyone, but I do know it can be a bit of a pain in the butt having someone on your f-list who doesn't post anything or comment a lot.

The reasons for the slow down were that this winter was one of the most difficult I've ever been through, especially mentally. ( The reasons why, skip if you're not super interested in my mental health or anything like that. Trigger warnings for discussion of depression and anxiety. )

So now that you've all been informed of that, which I know you're all richer for having read, the basic idea is that I hope to start posting more. And to get on that giant backlog of book reviews I have and all the other things.

But here in my part of the world, spring is springing (or trying valiantly to, since it's in the 30's here in NYC) and I'm trying to spring with it. If there's anything I've missed since December or didn't comment on that you wanted me to or anything else, let me know.

Writing to the sounds of Jackhammer Symphony #1 in C-Flat outside the window. On the plus side, it drowns out the Crying Baby Quartet downstairs quite nicely.

Yes, kids, this is the glamour of New York City. You too can move here and listen to a bunch of sweaty guys from Brooklyn in orange vests using metal machines to tear up concrete outside your apartment window on a day when it's too warm to close the windows while you're trying to write.

I now understand why people give me hilarious looks when I mention that I moved here from Florida.

That is all. As you were.

Profile info has been updated to reflect the impending loss of job, the death of Nippy the Cornsnake (she passed two days ago), new writing playlist, impending domestic partnership, and new commenting policy.

That is all.

If you're reading a book and suddenly the idea of fairies or vampires scare you, you can close the book and be assured that no matter how real the writer made you feel that those things were, it's fantasy. It cannot crossover into reality.

If you're reading a book and suddenly the idea of death scares you. There's nothing you can do. Death is perhaps the only reality.

It's strange that there is nothing else consistent among all human beings except death. We have broken just about every other rule at least once, but not death.

What does it say about the universe that the only consistent, uniting feature of everything is that eventually, it ceases to exist?

So I reviewed Laura Anne Gilman's Staying Dead a few days ago and in my review, made a comment that the main character's habit of addressing herself by her last name struck me as, well, unrealistic and smacking of Mary Suedom.

A few people commented immediately that they refer to themselves by their last names when self-addressing.

Which got me asking a lot of questions, questions that I'm still asking. One of those questions is why did that (and several other traits) of the main character strike me as being so utterly and obviously Mary Sue when those are attributes that many people have, in actuality.

Then fairmer replied in the comments of the review with this: "It's not the most Mary Sue thing on earth. Probably. But what do I know? I have pretentiously spelled first name and green eyes. I'm practically a walking Mary Sue! :) :) :)"

And I started really trying to examine why I didn't consider it pretentious or annoying of her to have any and all of the qualities that would just put me right off of a main character in a novel. Not to mention that there are many characters who are definitely not Mary Sues who also have the same qualities and they didn't annoy me.

The fact is, I still haven't figured that out. I think it might have something to do with the difference between doing something because it sounds like it would be good and doing something because it actually is good.

When somebody pens a character with traits that I think are deliberately designed to make me think something rather than letting their actions/words create the same impression, then it bothers me.

It's like this dating service commercial I once saw and it has a man and a woman on a date, and the woman with a really clumsy, overly loud, quite dorky gusto tells the man that she's, "Single, sassy, and spicy! Caliente!"

And of course, she came across as the exact opposite. She came across as awkward, unsexy, and frankly, a n00b. With the capital zeros and everything.

I think that's the way it is with a Mary Sue. Mary Sues are the characters that are trying so hard to show you that they're cool or cynical or tough or quirky that they end up showing the opposite.

It's more complicated than that, and Mary Sues are a bit like the famous quote about pornography. I don't know how to define it, but I know it when I see it. That, however, doesn't stop me from wanting to find a definition.