How to be a GOOD Creative Writing Student...Whatever the Hell That Means

O'er another long hiatus...wait, what hiatus?

I believe I've mentioned not using this space to bitch about writing and stuff, but that inevitably happens anyway, so why are you surprised? Ha, ha.

I did, however, want to pump this out given that it's been bothering me something fierce, and it's an issue I think (though I hope) won't follow me for the rest of my writing career. But maybe it will.

I'm a creative writing student enrolled in a number of "fiction" writing courses at my college. I'm working toward my BA in creative writing, and I'm nearly there, though I can't help but see this problem being one that will plague me no matter how I'm dealing with the written word. Namely: what makes one a good writer? Or a good reader for that matter?

Let's start with the "good reader" aspect first: what's a good reader? By and large, I've been led to believe that a "good" reader is one whom is a serious reader, and by serious I mean reading serious works. So here's where I show my ass a bit: I'd define good works in terms of "classics". Say, Joyce Carol Oates (as I'm currently slogging through her novel "The Accursed"). Or Faulkner. I'm not going to lie--I just had to Wikipedia search whatever the hell Faulkner has written, but he's a "serious" author and he writes "serious stories" and I'm supposed to be all about that shit.

Or how about Lawrence? (whom I'm actually somewhat fond of) or Hemmingway (dear God, Hemmingway) or Flannery O'Connor (another favorite, no lie) or Steinbeck! Or...or..or--

Any of those.  Serious readers read the serious stuff, so they can write serious fiction and that's what you have to do to play the tug and war game of literacy. Good readers don't read Rowling back to front every other year because they're still waiting for their acceptance letters to Hogwarts because OF COURSE twenty-two year olds can still be trained to be wizards (it would be a directed study).

 Good readers don't waste their time with Stephen King, never mind that he's a brilliant writer himself and given this post here a damn "good" reader if I do say so myself, but COME ON. I'm still not up there. I've read the Hunger Games and Game of Thrones and lots of other books that are now major motion movies and hit shows on HBO. For Christ's sake I'm nearly through the TWILIGHT saga, and I've even read Fifty Shades of Grey. FIFTY SHADES OF GREY. There's got to be a crime against that.

Aside from my favorites of the oldies I mentioned above, I don't read the "serious" stuff voraciously. I don't wake up craving Tennessee Williams, nor do I need to go over that one chapter in Atlas Shrugged just to confirm that I think Ayn Rand meant to imply about whatever the fuck the book is about. I get up in the morning and reach for Gone with the Wind (yes, yes I know) and I don't think it's been a bad hour spent re-reading the sex scene from Diana Galbadon's Outlander. 

I suppose I feel at an acute disadvantage in my writing and reading life. In my creative writing classes, I feel this need to "present" the writer I think I should be. Why, yes, of course I've read this short story and that short story, and no I did NOT spend two hours last night on my illicit fanfiction piece, are you kidding me? I can't talk about my love for fantasy or sci-fi or even the occasional smutty romance. I mean, fuck genre period. "Good" writers don't do genre. That's muck stuff.

I can even remember such a long time ago in my freshmen year when my roommate brought an aspiring journalism major to our dorm. We did the introductory "what's your major" greeting tantamount to college socializing, and when he heard that I was a "fiction" writer he bent down to look at my bookshelf and went, "oh, genre. I like non-fiction stuff. Brain food."

I wonder what he thought when I told him "fiction" in the first place, but like I said, "good" fiction is Hemmingway and writing about contemporary people in realistic contemporary places. Maybe even historical fiction is good, but it's got to be historical. By the books. No crossing Henry the VIII with witches or making him travel to the future and meeting his long descended ancestor or something. That's not what good writes do.

So there's the line I straddle: perfect little literary-reading creative writing major by day, twardy, genre peddling bastard by night. The two worlds can't cross. They just can't.

So my writing is no "good" because my reading is "no good" and maybe I'm just fooling myself with this writing thing anyway. There's my dilemma.

Now, see, here's the thing, people: I don't completely believe that. I know that's all utter bunk, and who the fuck are a bunch of hoty-toty, Starbucks double expresso shot chai soy latte dweebs to tell me what to read and what to write? Why can't I be a writer who reads Hemmingway and writes novels about a space-dwelling team of rebels all caught in a political conflict with martial problems? Who said I can't be both things, or that both "things" must be separate in the first place? Who said all genre had to suck?

Who said literary stories don't suck?

I can't name specifics (because I can't remember) but I've come across "serious" stories that were just plain awful. I'm not a fan of Hemmingway, or Virginia Woolf, and I find Sylvia Plath to be depressing even for my sake. These supposed "greats" that lord it overly lowly little genre peasants like myself, aren't my cup of tea. So wha'st the problem here? They're supposed to make me a "good" writer and reader, yet I just can't drink the Kool Aid.

No me gusta.

Look, I think the score is this: there's a sad bias present in the literary world. Genre is dumb. Literary is too serious. Genre isn't serious enough. Literary is too critical. Genre could stand to be more "high" end. There is no middle man--either you stand on one side of the court or the other, and if you happen to find a middle ground, good for you, but why not choose a side? Why not "choose" to just stick with literary fiction and save those prospective publisher the grief of having to CARE about your YA novel about mermaids? You'd be so much happier.

I don't think so. I'm not wholly happy now. I can't even be myself, the writer I am, in class because I'm so afraid of judgement. I'm so afraid my instructor will tell me to forgo the fantastical elements in my piece because there are "stronger" aspects in my story that simply don't need it. Guess what? I have been told that before. Sometimes my instructor was right. Sometimes they were wrong. In the end, I was left with twenty plus pages of something I couldn't feel comfortable with, and instead of working to make it better I watched Netflix all night.

That latter bit might be my own folly, but I fear the day I'm in at a writer's convention, or book fair, and I'm surrounded by all these accomplish folks who stare at me in disgust because I tell them I'm currently writing a 1000+ page fantasy epic. I'm scared they'll instead ask me of my opinion regarding the symbolism in T.S. Elliot's The Invisible Man and my response will be: "four". I'm afraid I'll forever be afraid of my own shadow, especially if that shadow is wearing a black-t shirt that says "genre".

I know it's foolish. Really, to be a "good" writer or "good" reader, one must be simply that. Read everything. Write everything. Your natural sense of criticism, the muscles you build so to speak, in doing this will be your filter to discern what's "good" or not "good". And that's all without someone's prior opinion clouding your own.

It's just sad that I forget that a lot of the time. That I'd rather sit with my lips buttoned, pretending to be someone I'm not, while my heart's work sits on my desk in my computer, having to suffer this bias.

I think it will get better someday. It has to. There are just too many books out there to be read (good or bad) too many stories out there to be written (good or bad) and life's too short to sit around deciding what's right or wrong about that.

I just hope it will all stick one day.

So I know I said...

Hey self, and anyone passing by...

I know I said I was going to post my reviews of Twilight before, etc. and I'm pretty sure I will STILL do that, but current updates is that it's pretty slow going through the book because I'm fucking bored as hell and can't get through a few paragraphs without becoming irritated. All honesty here, though it's not so much a slight on the books themselves, and more so a general summation of my current feelings while reading.

I'm bored because Bella and Edward seem to be having the same back and forth conversation for far too many pages, and that's all undercut with Bella's over-analyzing every tiny thing said, lovingly interspersed with her admiration of Edward's godlike beauty and deathly pale skin. It's become a bit tedious, that's all.

The irritation comes in from Bella's own personality--how self deprecating she is, how clumsy she is, how much more perfect Edward is than her--alongside Edward's constant brooding of his vampirism. Again, I'm not necessarily saying the series as whole is irrelevant because of this fact (and more relevant BECAUSE of it) but, again, it's just my brutal honesty as a reader.

Funnily enough, while having trouble with Twilight itself, I'm nearly through with the so-called Twilight rip-off, Fifty Shades of Grey. While there is plenty not-so positive feelings rising inside me from my experience here, I'm nearly through and wondering if I should just post my thoughts on that.

Might as well, I suppose.

Just a thought...

So, I decided to reread the Twilight books (yes, that Twilight, those books) and then post my reviews/thoughts and overall impressions of my re-discovering the series here. 

What I can say, is that I feel Twilight has reached the status of similarly being "old news" and dare I even say legendary? For a trawl backward to see what made it so iconic in the first place. Now, the first book came out in '05, last book finished in '08, so that's been about six or so years (forgive me, my math is terrible!) ago. Pretty lengthy time, and I just felt the need to blow the dust off and compare how I look at the series now, being nearly out of college vs. how I looked at the series when I was in high school. 

I was an ardent-ish anti-Twi-hard back then. While I wasn't for burning the books (that's just a crime not even bad literature should suffer) or bashing Meyer online and declaring I would burn her house down or something stupid like that, I just thought the books were terrible. I attempted to read them, but I could never make it pass the first ten or so chapters. 

 Recently, I started the second book first, made it to the middle of the book, and then decided to pause and head back to the first. I enjoy the progression of a long story, seeing how it develops, what changes, etc.

It's for fun, I suppose, in the name of doing it for the experience and rounding out my dismal summer vacation with something vaguely constructive. What I could do is post my impressions of what I have read so far, though I wanted to finish the whole thing before moving on to the other books. 

Don't Know Why I Didn't Come

(on a small note, I've been thinking about passive-aggressively playing this song after some bad sex. I love you, Norah) 

Wanna know something funny? I just spent an hour so hunting down this article published on Buzzfeed. It was a list of authors/writers who use social media a lot (would still love a link). One writer in particular I immediately connected with: she hadn't written her book yet, but was still tweetin' and blogging about her efforts. I was trying to find her website to see if it was "okay" for me to put (what I consider) rather banal things on my blog. 

Doesn't that sound awfully silly? 

It does to me. An hour of my time wasted to look for validation. I'm always trying to do that. So many of us are always trying to do that, and while it's not such a bad thing, I realize that I could have just started writing and saved myself the trouble. 

I'm always trying to validate this blog. I'm always trying to validate my reasons for writing what I write on here, or find valid things to be written on here. I tell myself I'm "looking for inspiration" but I'm just wasting time. And I'm so tired at the end of the search. 

I'm going through something right now. I just am. That's hard to admit, but that's my life at this instant. I just got out a bad, bad relationship. An abusive one. Everyday, I experience these horrible flashbacks of what he did, or said, and I just sit and stare and get so angry. Or so sad. I feel trapped. How do I stop feeling this awful hurt? I try to talk it out, I try to engage those moments, but it's still like plunging back into a dark, dark hole. I hate being in that place. I don't know if it's natural or not; it just hurts like hell. 

I suppose it might be having some effect on my writing, but it's just having a plain effect on everything. I see his face, remember the way he smelled, or the feeling of his mouth on mine--I get so sick. I wanna cry. I feel this bad ache in my chest and I just wish it would stop. 

I guess I just needed to say that. 

HEY HEY HEY

I feel fantastic...hey...hey...hey....

No, I really don't, but ohmygod isn't this video CREEPY AS HELL

Mouth Piece

Hey all or mostly no one,

Anytime I've been away too long I start to feel really bad that I'm neglecting this space. I feel bad on a few levels, but most prevalently on a writerly level because a blog is supposed to be a writer's way of "reaching out digitally" and "using social media to market oneself" yadda, yadda. And I suppose that I could do a lot of shameless plugging on lots of other sites that I lurk about at times, but I will admit that the scared, awkward little teenager in me is afraid of the attention, and selfishly wants to keep this space for herself. Go figure--(you know...'cause it's on the internet and stuff -_-)

Quick anecdote: when I was a scared, awkward teen in high school, I kept a journal that I was so sure was going to be some kind of road map to my life if I died. Never mind that I had a fascination with death while I was a teen (and not in an emo-y goth-y romantic way, so draw your own conclusions there) but I felt that in detailing my most intimate and whiny thoughts I was creating a kind of scrapbook that people would read when I was gone. They would read it and go "gee, she sure was something, wasn't she? A real visionary, a real literary artiste! Why oh why she did have to die so young!" and then you know...I would be mourned and revered and maybe get my journal published because, yeah.

Major teenage arrogance there, I know, but cut me some slack. I was painfully lonely, painfully awkward, and, you know, writing was my anti-drug. Plus, when you're a teen you're convinced that the world gives a shit about you in this big epic way, and it's not until you're older and have been REALLY shat upon, do you finally realize in solemn and grim contemplation that, no, the world really DOESN'T give a shit about you and there's absolutely nothing you can do about it.

Anyway. I'm feeling like there's a really grim and solemn cow plop of shit sitting on my face, and it's only fair to say that I had some hand in slapping it there. Here we go again: another semester almost over, another year gone by, a little older, and I'm still looking at not going back to school again.

My mom said, like after my freshmen year: "Is this going to be an issue every year of college?" and I was like--no, 'cause I'm going to look for anything I need to supplant my tuition costs and stop worrying mom, 'cause I'm like going to be famous writer like JK Rowling and make tons of money have theme parts that serve fictional beverages from story, so nahhhhh!" And yep. Shit on my face. She was completely right. My mother was completely right and just saying that makes me want to die inside.

I guess I should have known better, but I'm stubborn in my own quiet way and I just plain don't want to leave the lovely city. I love it there, love everything about it's gritty mechanical noisiness and rude, fast-paced love em' or leave em' lifestyle and I want to embrace it like a coating of deep fried chocolate and become one with the shit in the sewers and the grubby dollars in the hands of hobos. I don't want to leave. I don't want to go back home. I don't want to be a failure. I want to fight...but I guess I'm getting a little tired of fighting.

One thing about getting older (and if you're wondering--I'm really NOT that older. Seriously) but I'm not a kid anymore either. I'm a grown up, can drink legally and all that, and I'm just beginning to get a bit wiser too, albeit in a rather painful regretful way. I don't want to leave my home away from home, but maybe I will this time. Maybe I won't make it. Maybe I need to be gone...right?

I don't know. I'm just not liking this shitty cowpatty pancake on my face. It doesn't smell so good.

I Think I've Got it...

It happened. I think.

It happened. It's scary to think about, but there's no earth shattering apocalypse or orgasm or even boatload of money coated in coke and wrapped in bacon covered in cheese...

It just happened.

Yes, I'm talking about writing again, but writing is my life right now. It might feed my family one day (*tries not to laugh hysterically*) but writing means---well, it means a lot to me so:

I realized something and it's pretty amazing:

I've been trying too hard.

I was aided most by this article and then maybe some of this one too. It's been a slow burn over the past few days--pssh--past few years but by George I think I've got it.

Here's what I tell people about my writing life: I'm currently working on three novels. "Whoa," they say, eyes wide. "That's intense." Hell, yeah, it's intense and I'd probably be done with two and working on the last if I were Stephen King. I'm not Stephen King though, BTW. I'm a struggling undergrad in a writing program who isn't even really "working" on three novels. Not wholly.

I've been wrapped up in three concepts for three stories that I was head over hills with turning into three novels. One I call my "steampunk sorta-maybe disel-punk-esque" story is about a twelve year old boy named Cole determined to cross the country to track down his missing brother when his father dies.

The second is my "sci-fi" story that has a bunch of characters and absolutely no plot. A few situations, some endings, but no plot.

The third is my "fantasy epic in part 3" about a young woman who falls down a well all Alice in Wonderland like and lands into a world that smacks her right into a tense political conflict between warring countries.

I think these ideas are pretty awesome and I've been hanging onto at least two for the better part of six years. They are all the babies I care to have right now and my dream is to have them turned into full length novels that I will one day feel in my hands and marvel at their sheer reality.

That's not going to happen now. Not ever, but not now.

Charles Finch sums it up in his article under boldly named "Patience" and "Focus". Alien concepts to me only a week or so ago. A WEEK. But like I said, I think I've got it now.

See, I have neither. Patience. Focus. I'm fresh out, sorry.

And it's weird cause, like, I think back to a simpler time. Back when I would stay up all night clacking away on a dingy keyboard that was connected to an old computer that was a 1998 Dell or something. Anyway, then I was totally focused, or at least a lot more focused than I am now. I would sit and write and write happily 'cause I was just so excited to sink my teeth into my story and see where it took me. I never realized that momentum was motivated by a need to just get it all on a blank Word doc and keep going.

Somewhere I lost that. Every word had to count, every sentence had to be perfectly edited. I had to write that epic the FIRST time around 'cause Lordy knew there was to be no second go.

My point is, I've been trying too hard to be this writer that is thrown into our faces 24/7. The JK's, the GRRM's, the Kings, the Collins, the Roths. These supposed "overnight" sensations that found literary success in what seems like no time at all.

But that's not how it happens. We know that JK was rejected a lot before the lucky publisher picked her up. As GRRM worked on The Song of Ice and Fire trilogy he met the challenge of a 1,800 page book that I'm sure wasn't written in a month. Roth details her writing struggles in her blog.

So Rome wasn't built in a day and I was trying to build three Romes. It was more out of a sense that the ideal writer was to be bustling away at a dozen different projects and simultaneously churning out finished projects than arrogance, but maybe it was arrogance too. I thought it could be done. I thought I was doing my work justice.

Six years later all I've got is a smattering of written info for each and not one chapter in sight.

I'm humbled now if you couldn't tell. I'm not Batman, and aside from being pleasantly surprised at the fact, I realize I can relax and be a normal human who works on one thing. I can write those hot sexy new ideas in a notebook and know I'll come back later. I can attempt a disciplined writing schedule that won't be easy (the attempts will probably fail more often that not) but I can try. I can take some pressure off; I can breathe, I can relax. At least a little.

Most importantly...I can enjoy writing again.

Maybe.

Why Do I Even Bother?

Well, I've longed stopped trying to come up with the answer but--

This blog I follow--the author says it's her way of "thinking aloud". Now that's an idea. I've never seen it that way before...

But isn't that what everyone does nowadays with social media and whatnot? Think aloud? And it's annoying because some people don't have particularly interesting stuff they're thinking about to begin with and, so, if some dweeb teen is thinking about devouring a pack of cookies, and then takes a snapshot of said cookies, and then a snapshot later of having eaten that pack of cookies---see how banal and pointless it all is? Who cares, right? You follow that shit, you've probably at least got some blog or Twitter or whatever page you're following for the guilty pleasure of having a peek into someone's warped imagination and...you don't care, but you're doing it anyway. It all just seems so pointless. 

I guess that's how I feel about blogging. It feels pointless to me. ME blogging stuff about...whatever--ME--I guess, my thinking aloud--that feels pointless. I wish I had the energy to be clever and thought-provoking, or at the very least the ignorance to not know any better but...

I've already said that I hate to complain on here. It comes across as a pathetic livejournal or something and I already have one of those and I've never used it thank you very much. I just have to try harder. Except that trying to do anything just feels pointless right now. 

Sigh. 

Fuck my life. 

Shits Nasty, ya'll

Soooo...

Instead of doing any actual work on my three novels/stories/bullshit in progress I've just been writing short naughty erotic stories about my characters. 

FUCK MY LIFE 

Excuses, excuses...

40 Excuses I use NOT to write: 

1. I'm too tired/hungry/sleepy/sluggish

2. I don't have a proper journal...

3. Or pen...

4. I need to spend more time looking for a job--

5. OR reading. 

6. I haven't read diversely enough. 

7.  I read too much "genre" fiction so my ideas and stories are poor and unworthy anyway. 

8. I need to spend more time worldbuilding or fleshing out a plot, characters, etc. 

9. I don't HAVE a feasible plot OR conflict to BEGIN with, so what's the point? 

10. My handwriting is too sloppy. 

11. Writing is worthless--I should be focusing on getting a REAL degree so I can have a REAL job! 

12. Unless I hit it big like JK or GRRM I'm just wasting my time. 

13. I'd rather make love to spend time with my Netflix account. 

14. Breaking Bad 

15. Breaking Bad ON NETFLIX

16. THE FIRST FOUR SEASONS OF BREAKING BAD ON NETFLIX

17. Whatevers on TV at the moment. 

18. I get so full when I eat that it saps away any energy I could use toward writing. So there's that. 

19. I'm reading a book that I've either a) never read or b) finally trying to get the time to read. 

20. The webcomics I'm following at the moment (eg. The Epic Adventures of TJ and Amal, Teahouse, Starfighter, Sfeer Theory, Oglaf...) 

 23. Drawing doodles of flying penises in my journal.

24. Netflix (it's ALWAYS Netflix!) 

25. Talking to my family

26. Email. 

27. Food. 

28. Reading articles ABOUT writing instead of just, you know, WRITING.

29.  Acquiring beautiful leather bound journals...and spending more time flipping through the blank pages and WISHING I had the fervor to go to town on them with ink. 

30. Delicious Emily games

31. Having to babysit my niece. 

32. My older brother delightfully putting a harpoon into any plans I've set aside to get some writing down with his last-minute grocery shopping journeys which requires me to make the trek to his house and watch his precocious little girl. 

33. Needing the right font to head my chapter titles with. 

34. Buzzfeed. 

35. Pooping. 

36. Sleeping 

37. Oiling and/or messing around with my hair

38. Listening to my Ipod

39. Poking at my face

And: 

40. Spending the last hour writing this damn thing. 

THIS IS MY LIFE.

Kal's Very Bad Day

Mom and Dad. Mom and Dad and your little brother Kaelo.

Family, but you don't have that anymore. Maybe you never really did. What you've got is a proficiency with weapons and machines, a whole bunch of tattoos that hurt like hell, and a screwed up childhood that sometimes you can't even believe you really went through. You're one of those kids.

But yeah. Here you are. Sitting on this stupid little bench in this stupid little park watching all these Earth kids and their parents having fun and shit. Laughing, playing, having picnics and enjoying each other's company. All you really wanted was to just have your lunch--stir fried bulbs of Kortorian onions with tomatoes--in peace while you waited for your next job to start, but now you’re getting an eyeful of familial happiness that brings you crashing back to a lot of bad memories. Memories that you thought you'd gotten real good at pretending didn't exist.

Like when you finally made up your mind to run away from your uncle's house. When you got tired of it all one night—the beatings, the mockery, the endless pain-- and decided that you weren't going to wake up and face the same hell you'd been going through for the last five years. You weren't going to be hit across the face with a leather thong, or have your step-aunt throwing hot grease onto you when you slept in too late for her liking. You weren't going to keep picking scabs you got from harvesting the soft silk nestled inside the thorny stalks in the pasture out back behind the house, until your palms got good and bloody. You weren't going to keep smelling the liquor on your uncle's breath as he held you in front of his face after he’d slapped you so hard you saw stars, warning that you couldn’t mess up again. Then there were your cousins...your cousins and the horrible shit they did to you when the lights were out and the house was quiet. Maybe that had been when you’d decided a life in reckless space was better than another minute of torture there.  

So you left. You stole all your asshole uncle's earnings out his safe, picked his cooler of all its food, and ran through the grass and trees and sand until you finally managed to bribe your way onto a cargo ship that was headed straight for Galmaki Central. Things didn’t really get better after that, maybe even worse when you thought about it, but you knew that no matter what happened you would never, EVER, go back to that house again. To those people who were supposed to be your family but lacked all that ability in all sense of the word.

Then there was those years you spend with that crater faced, bounty smuggler who was supposed to be helping you out, being your partner as you helped collect bounties with him, but turned you into a servant instead. The one who made you come along, help him hold down some guy who owed him money, while he gutted a hole in his stomach. You never forgot how that poor bastard's blood splattered in your face, how you watched it pour out that hole, how you held your mouth shut until you were finally out of that miserable, urine smelling apartment, out of that bastard's sight, and vomited your insides out and cried and cried as rain poured over your back and washed the puke away.

Wanna know what was really fucked up about all that too? When you finally came back to that bastard he laughed and pointed to your shirt and asked, what's that? And before you could answer he knocked you to the floor and kicked and kicked you until you felt a rib crack, and then he just laughed as you laid there on the floor, crying, and he said, Gotta learn to take the good with the bad. He threw the credits you earned from the job on top of you, but took a few extra because you still had "expenses" you needed to pay off. Good with the bad your ass.

But you left him, right? Yeah, you left. You ran away from him like you ran away from home. Yeah, you got mixed up with some more shit that earned you some ugly scars that you could see on your body but actually feel inside your heart. But that’s when you got harder too, tougher. More cold. Then again, maybe you've always been hard and cold. Maybe you've never really been a nice guy, maybe there's never been anything innocent about you, even with Mom, Dad, and Kaelo's deaths. Cause in truth you really can't remember what it was like to have them close to you, to have family, so for all you know you've always been fucked up.

So you're back to the park now. Out your head and watching these fucking Earthling families having fun and shit. You watch as a human father throws a football to the son, as the mother brushes the daughter's hair and rubs her face into the curls. The fathers and sons go back to the blanket they've laid out in the grass when the game is done and the mother opens the basket she brought along and hands everybody sandwiches. They're smiling even through peanut butter and jelly, even when one of the kids spills something on their newly pressed shirt.

The mother still smiles and laughs though as she cleans them up. They don't get beaten, they don't get humiliated, and they don't get raped. They're still a family and not just when it suits them. You have to wonder where the justice in the world is.

So now you can't eat anymore, no, no. You close your container of food and feel the dressing and sauces gurgle in your stomach. You feel that impulse to run away and throw up, to cry, to scream, but you fight it this time. You fight it because you're not some little kid anymore, scared, alone, and vulnerable. You know how to take care of yourself, how to get money, how to get food, and how to make sure nobody ever, EVER, treats you like you're less than anything ever again. You can fight back, you can endure, and you certainly can sit in a crowded park on a summery day and watch the family that you will never have.

Just had to...

"....Having swallowed these ideas, people regurgitated them at me at nearly every turn. And for a time, I swallowed them, too. As a black woman, I believed I wasn’t supposed to be a writer. Simultaneously I believed I was supposed to write about black people — and only black people. And only within a strictly limited set of topics deemed relevant to black people, because only black people would ever read anything I’d written. Took me years after I started writing to create a protagonist who looked like me. And then once I started doing so, it took me years to write a protagonist who was something different."

N.K. Jemisin, Dreaming Awake, a post from her blog

Here's the link.

Believe it or not, I actually DO have something to say about this quote, because since I've started reading this woman's book (The Broken Kingdoms, second in the Inheritance Triology series), I've fallen head over heels. Seriously--I NEED her in my life. 

So, again, we'll see what happens. 

"A great deal of the conversation about publishing and diversity is grounded in the idea that there simply aren’t many writers of color. One of the most frequent derailments during any conversation about this topic is the belief that because of historical, institutional racism and the socioeconomic consequences thereof, there simply aren’t as many writers of color. It’s also popular to create an exhausting statistical frenzy by talking about data collection and submission ratios and the like. These are comforting explanations. If we can blame history and institutional racism, if we can blame math, we don’t have to accept responsibility for reading narrowly."

                                                                                                                          ----Roxane Gay
                

"I hate writing. I love having written."

              ---Dorothy Parker

"You fail only if you stop writing."
 
                      ----Ray Bradbury

Wear Them Big Girl Britches Bitches: Taking Harsh Criticism As a Writer

First off, I gotta get hip with this whole linking thing. I am just so sure that one of these days someone somewhere is going to go all ballistic on me for improperly linking to something of theirs. It's going to happen. 

Now, as I have decided to momentarily crawl out of my navel grazing yurt of pity and angst-dome, I came across this interesting little piece at Cuddlebuggery which is a YA book blog I frequent from time to time (not as much now though). 

Anyways, this blogger at Book Hollow ran into some issues when they reviewed a self published book of some author "no-one-really-knows about". The author pretty much threw a hissy fit because she felt the reviewer was being "mean spirited" and having a "bad day" when she reviewed her book. Never mind that the reviewer actually wrote a very honest and tactful review, with the only vitriol coming in the form of sarcasm, the author felt that she was a "victim" of bullying and has since flooded Goodreads with her many blog posts detailing her treatment. 

Righty-o. So in my time of writing this I decided to do a little digging into this bullying of authors self published (or otherwise) thing. So, I discovered that the site stopthegrbullies.com is devoted to providing support to these ailing darlings of apparent abuse from reviewers and all around trolling assholes. 

Now let me first address the whole hissy-fit author issue first: Based on the review from Book Hollow and the author's subsequent response, I'd have to say that this woman has a major case of NTGAPS-- Needs To Grow A Pair Syndrome. Seriously. 

You criticize the reviewer of having a bad day and being hurtful toward your book when they were just being honest about what their reading experience was? Plus, given the actual review, there wasn't anything there in the least bit entailing that the reviewer was trying to put her down. She didn't attack her personal integrity, told her to never write another book again, or called her a stupid poo poo-poo-face. Sarcastic or not, she addressed her issue with the novel in as straight forward a way as possible. 

Did I mention the reviewer WAS honest? 

So the author's response is to be super offended and then talk in her blog post of being an utter victim and whatnot. Again, I say to her, please grow up a little. A LOT. Please. People are going to be assholes when they review your book. Sometimes they're going to be honest (which is what you got from Book Hollow) and sometimes they are just going to respond with a flat "didn't like it" and you'll never get much more out of them. Heck, sometimes you'll even get an "I liked it!" in more or less a short, blithe way and, let me tell you, that's not always good either (though this chick seems like she needs the validation). So people suck. Reviewers can suck. Getting a negative review can suck but that is the way of the writing world. You enter this realm (or at least you should) with the expectancy of someone not quite liking the novel you've sweated, cried, and bled over. Again, it sucks. Of course I want someone to like my stories as much as I do, but you gotta realize that that is an unrealistic expectation, and whining over someone merely giving their opinion has to be the most unproductive, immature thing to taint your writing career with. 

On to stopthebullies. So the site is made for support and details posts which point out instances of abuse from reviewers, yadda, yadda. While some of the issues I came across could very possibly (and I say that with extremely flat empathy toward the whole thing) contain legitimate issues of bullying and harmful cyberstalking for the sake of being a bastard, there's one post that really raised my skepticism level up to a hundred and ninety. Basically, the "bully review" is considered such because the user accidentally gave a one star review on the author's page just for the sake of asking a question about the book. While she was quickly corrected by other users, since her one star review didn't demonstrate an actual grievance with the book, STGRB pretty much used her as an example of what it means to leave a "bully review" despite the fact that what she did was obviously a mistake and in no way meant to offend anyone. 

So this really irked me. You're using someone as an example (not a very good one at that) in order to show what you consider to be bullying. I just don't see how this articulately conveys what STGRB is trying to do. It was a mistake, an accident, and while they point out they aren't calling the user a "bully" her one star debacle somehow qualifies as "bully reviewing". Last I checked bullying was the act of someone purposely targeting an individual, group, what have you, with the intents of inflicting ridicule, harm, and any other form of assault. So for this site constantly whining about how so many of the members are victims to in turn use someone as a example to fuel their agenda--not cool, dudes. NOT cool. 

As I said, there could very well be real cases of bullying that finds its way into some of their posts. A lot of accusation of taking comments out of context spew from both sides and it would take some real tenacity to follow each and every case to make a definite stance on who's actually to blame. I'm skeptical of STGRB as a whole, but I'm not saying no one on there isn't being bullied. It happens, and as whiny and nutless as I find some of the entries (for instance there's a whole username list of "toxic" offenders which comes off kind of--childish---to me; kind of like a kid in elementary school writing out a crayon scribbled list of classmates they consider dum dum heads) and the general tone of the whole site, I still can't wholly say someone isn't being abused. IT HAPPENS. 

But that's just it, right? It happens. As a writer especially, it's going to happen a lot. You're going to feel bruised and battered and just outright pissed on by the world at large because someone didn't react positively to your work. Sometimes people are going to criticize you for whatever reason. J. K. Rowling (who I kind of personally admire) has got the shit end of people's asses for years since HP's arrival. Many are famously known for not even reading her books and calling her out as the harbinger of Satan and all that is unholy and not good. People believed she was on a personal mission to turn children into demons and coerce them into drinking blood with her and summoning the dead. Did it hold water? Uh, hell no, but there you go. Any rationally minded person can see that this it was just idiotic assholery on the bestower's part, but it happened. And she dealt with it. Many greats before her have dealt with it. 

So you deal with it. People shit on you and you try to be objective about it and you deal with it and keep writing. Yeah, sometimes you'll be hit a little too personally, and in some instances maybe you have to defend yourself, but it's just plain dumb to assume that you're immune to it. 

Personally, has it happened to me yet? No. But it will. I even kind of want it to. 

Am I glutton for cruelty? No, but many times back in college I felt that no one had really given my work the hard edged eye that it desperately needs. Not that I want someone telling me that because my works sucks than that must mean I am a considerably sucky waste of human existence as well, but I know it's out there and there's a reckless (but realistic) part of me that wants to face it, to get some mud thrown in my face. I want someone to shred my work to pieces so I can (once I stop crying and nursing my wounds with chocolate) sit down and figure out how to put it together again. Constructive criticism is always great, and generally preferred, but I've got to get hit with a few flame bullets before I can learn how to properly dodge them the next time. 

I want that experience any day versus walking around in some narmy, overly sensitive head cloud that tells me I'm a good writer and I deserve only praise when the one thing that may save me is to have that cloud waved away and reality give me a little lesson in what it really means to be an artist. 

It starts with learning how to wear them big girl britches. 

 
 




 

"I'm writing a book. I've got the page numbers done."

                               

                                              ----Steven Wright 

Halleloo.

Wake Up, Bitch!

Dear Our Creator-- the Writer Person Who Refuses to Acknowledge Us Anymore,

Hey. 

Heeyyyy. 

How ya doin'? 

Good? 

You okay? 

What? 

You are? 

Really?

REALLY?

Hmmmmmmm. 

Nope. 

Nope, we don't think so. Not buying it.

In fact, we think you're lying. 

In fact, we think you're a lying bastard and consider this letter to you our reasoning of why. 

What? Who are we? 

Well, we are your novels. Your works in progress. Your scenes that have too long been kept in stasis. 

Your protagonists stuck in their rooms staring balefully at their ceilings and wondering about our next move. 

Your plot that is all exposition and no climax. 

Your hanging resolution to that world shattering conflict the whole story is built upon. 

Your first chapter that is only three words without even a frickin' period at the end. 

We are those things. 

Ah, ah. Wait. Don't bail on us just yet. Don't scoff with a bitchy roll of your eyes and stalk off to watch some TV show you've seen over a dozen times. 

Please just listen, writer-person. Please just hear what we have to say. We swear we'll make it quick. 

First: what's been up with you lately, huh? One minute you're all into us--you're pacing the floor in excitement because you've just had an epiphany about why the damn villain is a sociopathic maniac--then you've suddenly killed them off and then we have no villain. 

Or---you're working on us---like really working on us, like getting up at six in the morning and sitting for four hours with sleep encrusted eyes while you type up a chapter---working on us and then all of a sudden there's nothing. You won't get out of bed, you won't shower, you won't even give us a glance as we sit there shivering on your desktop next to that obnoxious McAfee pop up thing and that downloaded episode of King of the Hill. One minute you're here and then the next you're gone and we're all sitting around looking at each other, silently mouthing, what happened? 

You have to understand-- we're not really angry at this point, but we are kind of sad. Things were going so well. 

Okay, so maybe we are a little pissed. Just a little. Okay. A LOT, but it's with good reason. You've hurt us, you know? You're hurting us. We love you and all we want is for you to see us through to completion. 

We're so distorted right now, so disfigured and blotty. A few characters here, some misguided motivations there, a rickety conflict over there, and half a setting to make camp on. We mean, what. The. Hell? 

We just want to be whole. We just want to be cared for and loved and you're the only person to do it. 

That is, of course, unless you suffer the most crippling misfortune of somebody ELSE suddenly having the same ideas as you and then that person writes us down, and gets us published, and they make a bazillion dollars and three movies, and we become totally there's even though we really wouldn't want to. 

That could happen, you know. It scares us and we don't like thinking about it. 

Or you could...well die, but we REALLY don't like thinking about that. 

Look, our point is that we need you back. We're so lost without you. You're our everything and we swear that if you give us some more chances we can be something meaningful for you. We swear it. 

We'll be so good. We'll follow along with your decisions, walk into scary houses even if we know there's a crazed axe murderer waiting to chop us into pieces; we'll become powerful goddesses with mechanized body parts and even kiss a dead person if you'll just come back to us. We can be so amazing to you, just like you're already amazing to us. 

Look--with this letter we are only trying to reach out to you. Consider it a written intervention. We don't mean to come off as harsh or furious or even disappointed. 

We just miss you, okay? Soooo much. 

So, look, despite all that stuff from before--forget about it. Really. Water under the bridge. Nobody likes to be kicked when they're down. You come back to us when you're ready. 

Seriously, no pressure, really. We are so not being sarcastic. Keep taking some time. Relax a little, play some video games, take a nap, go for a walk, eat something sugary. Think. Reflect. Meditate. Do a little yoga. Become one with yourself. 

And then consider coming back to us. We love you. We need you. 

Most importantly, we believe in you. 

So go get 'em.