The Stars and the Cookie Jar

Meme content! It beats the news. sovay  tagged me with the letter L. 

 ( Cut for late-night visitations  )

 ( Cut for family history )

 
I have strong fears this is a novella. 

( Cut for lack of climate control.  )

STOP. YOU'RE FIRED. GO HOME, TENTH MONTH OF THE GREGORIAN CALENDAR, YOU ARE DRUNK. OFF YOUR FACE. JESUS. WE'RE GOING TO HAVE TO PAY SOMEONE TO CLEAN THIS UP. 

Persephone has gone down to the Underworld, and I am freezing my tits off.

...uh by which I mean I hope everyone had a happy Mabon if that's their thing. Team Judaeo-Wicca is now going to gear up for Simchas Toyre, and then take a nap until Halloween.

Quieter around here than it's been in years, though. And very early this morning/very late last night I sang for myself -- for my wife -- for no other reason for the first time I can easily remember.

She said I had a lovely voice.

This is just me dropping by to say that I'm happy -- I'm most content in my own skin -- and learning every day that if there are memories that keep coming back to hurt you, the best thing to do may be to find yourself someone to help you overwrite them. The past is starting to feel like the palimpsest and not the story of me. I can't help but think this is a good thing. And I know I'm loved.

It's still coming on October, though, so have some salt. Lots of salt. Salt is cheap.

(I wanted to write a whole long thinky digression about love and identity and partnerships and gender and skin-shifting and sex, but I think we're all better off I didn't.)

This comes by way of Ellen Kushner's Twitter and Malinda Lo's tumblr and by winding roads to a comment chain in the Printz contender blog (for YA books).

Basically, a commenter said -- and it didn't start out inflammatory, but its casual, callous tone was worse to me -- that there were "too many" same sex relationships in a book, and that same-sex relationships didn't "feel organic" in the world the writer had built (over the course of three books, I believe.) The commenter felt the author had "strong ideas about what [author] wanted to write about" and that the same-sex pairings, because they were neither depicted as Twue Wuv, nor ended tragically, magically, or diabolically -- in fact, they were just kinda casual the way things are in real-life YA -- were part of an "agenda" the author wanted to sell to readers.

I didn't join in the comment chain because it's about a month old at this point, and also because they've been warnin' me about my blood pressure for years now.

My kid is the daughter of a great romance. Why should I not reflect that in what I write? Why do we not get that connection, that magic, that serendipity of love in our narratives without it "pushing an agenda"? Why do the queers always have to do it Karenina-style? We don't all end up driven off cliffs, incarcerated, or in unhappy heteronormative cages.

On the other side of that coin, not every relationship is going to work out. Sometimes people cheat, sometimes partners drift apart in a desultory, friendly way, sometimes a pairing is more bread and butter when what you both wanted was laksa, and sometimes us queers are going to fuck around happily as people do and not think about the morning. When that happens, no one has to commit suicide. Or even take an epic road trip. I promise. It's fiction. Things can come up roses, as opposed to coming up herpes.

And may I say, of course the author had strong ideas about what she wanted to write about [sic, I'm pretty sure.] It was her own damn book. Books do not get written without strong ideas to drive them. We'd all just blog instead.

I suppose it could be said that visibility is my agenda -- mine personally. I've always written about same-sex characters, and usually there's been an element of contented romance (or okay, an element of porn). But mostly, I write that way because when I try to write about the straights, it sounds no end of dumb and I look gormless -- all out of gorms to give -- as a person who has ever seen the sun or felt an emotion ever or stubbed her damn toe. It's just not true enough for my writing if I'm trying to write something I don't know. And it sounds bad in my ear and I delete it. DELETE DELETE DELETE.

I never thought of it as an agenda before, though; I thought of it as a weakness in my craft as an author.
Now I suppose I'll have to get some goddamn buttons printed up.

Also, what is with the catastrophic new posting design on LJ??

ETA: I have scads of Renaissance music -- bring on the shaums, bring on the citterns, I gotcher branles and gaillards right here -- why is Kit Marlowe so seemingly partial to Florence + the Machine? Inexplicable. 

Now I have four projects going, because that's completely appropriate. Do I ever finish anything? Hahaha, that's funny. 

The insomnia isn't helping. I'm being visited by Spuckles, the Newfie of Dysthymia (ashlyme, he's Shuck's erratic, hormonal cousin. You can tell him because he's got a hankie tucked in his spectral collar) and pecking out maybe fifty words at three in the morning, which is super efficient, let me tell you. 

I suppose the point of this post is that I hate the tug-of-war between mental health, adult life, creative output, and medication. When I'm unbearable as a human being and an asshole to my wife and kid, I can pull pages and pages from my veins like nothing. Whether they are good, useful, valuable pieces of art we could argue until morning; but at least the words come. 

It's a thing.

Also, it's autumn soon. FIVE POUND BAGS OF SALT FOR THE ENTIRE READERSHIP OF THIS ELLJAY.