The Novelty Girls

(And everybody who knows me starts giggling. )

Since I am effectively a stay-at-home writer, I have plenty of spare time for, well, wasting. ^_^

Of course, there’s the awesome Romance Divas community, including forums and a very addictive chatroom. That’s probably my biggest time-sink, right there — talking about writing instead of writing. *whistles*

Okay, maybe not. I’m obsessed with the MMORPG World of Warcraft, and I can play that for hours on end, especially if my fibromyalgia is acting up (which it has been for quite some time *sigh*). I follow a couple of WoW-related blogs/communities, including WoW Insider and WoW Ladies

Yes, I am aware I have just admitted my total geekdom.

Add to that, I follow a plethora of blogs and journals through Google Reader and LiveJournal. Some of these are friends, author blogs, review blogs, and so on and so forth.

With all this procrastinatory goodness, it’s amazing I manage to get anything done.

(And I’ll put some positives in just to keep with Crystal’s theme. Promise. )

In my case, “things about my body I hate” — well, if we’re going to talk functionality, the whole fibromyalgia deal tops the list. I could do quite well without that, thanks very much. If, however, we’re looking at pure aesthetics, I’ll just repeat most other women in saying, “My weight.”

It’s not that I have a problem with overweight women. Hell, one of my ex-girlfriends was a plus size woman, and she’s gorgeous. But, I’m at that uncomfortable weight between “average” and “plus”, where there really seems to be a dearth of decently-fitting clothes. (Specifically, skirts and pants. Argh. I can find plenty of stretchy shirts, but they don’t seem to make anything else in that material, and I rather doubt the rest of the world wants to see me walking around in a top and underwear. ^_^)

It’s also basically impossible from my hormone problems for me to lose weight, yet because of my insulin resistance, I really should. Sigh. Gotta love the catch-22s.

My best feature? My eyes. Growing up, my mom used to tell me I had “Egyptian eyes” because of the slight curvature and long eyelashes. Apparently, her eyes were similar when she was a kid but she grew out of them (not to mention singing half her lashes off), and she always said the shape would probably change when I was 16 or 17. Since I’m now 23 and this hasn’t happened, I’m going to assume I’m safe.

Crystal, you have picked a right doozy of a topic this week. *G*

Genetic manipulation is personal to me on multiple levels. I have been an avid science fiction/fantasy reader since I was nine years old, and as such, I have read many “cautionary tales” on the matter. There are so many things that could possibly go wrong with unchecked and long-term use of genetic manipulation that I am very concerned about the matter.

The question of simply boy vs. girl… well, while I can’t have children myself due to several medical conditions, I have to admit I wouldn’t know what the hell to do with a boy-child, and thus would prefer a girl if I could. However, that’s why they have adoption.

I don’t think that it is right on a moral level to manipulate the genes of a child after it is created. Partially, I wonder, would genetically altering its sex result in a transsexual child? Seeing as my ex-fiance was a preoperative female-to-male transsexual, that is an extremely hard road. There is so much more about gender than simply sex characteristics; they have actually found many differences between the male and female brain. So tampering with gender while the baby is “in progress” worries me, because the transgendered life path is a very difficult one to walk — and the sort of folk who would want to pre-select their baby’s gender aren’t, I think, liable to be overly supportive.

On another level, where does genetic manipulation stop? I know — or rather, I should say, I knew — someone who believes that “gifted” people are the future and that anything lesser is worthless. This person has actually spoken in favor of “wiping” people with certain mental disabilities from the gene pool. I ask, is that not eugenics? How is that different from what the Nazis tried to do in the Third World War?

Certainly, were I to have a child and find out that it would have a serious mental handicap, such as Downs’ Syndrome, I don’t think I could personally care for a child with those needs. There are other ones, however, that I would feel myself more prepared to handle, like ADHD or bipolar disorder. I, personally, would likely abort if I found out my child had Downs’. (Realistically speaking, if I found out I were pregnant at all, I’d be aborting. There are too many risks for me to attempt to carry a pregnancy to term.)

I can understand being personally uncomfortable with certain handicaps. I can’t understand wanting to wipe these people off the Earth, because they are some of the kindest and most honest people I know. Yes, they may not be as intelligent as you or I, but what matters most is the heart.

If one were to say that people with mental handicaps should be genetically altered / aborted, or that living people should be sterilized (as some have suggested), how far does it go? I read one person recently state that anyone with a disability should be “removed” from the gene pool. That, by the way, would include people like me. Yes, my life is hellish someday; just last night, I had to take a vicodin, two ultram, and multiple muscle relaxants to get the pain to ease up so I could sleep. But it’s my life, and I’d like to keep on living it, thank you very much.

I don’t personally intend to pass down my genetics, because in the case of both my male partners, fibromyalgia and related conditions run in their families. Were I to have children under these circumstances, the outcome would be almost certain to have it at some point in his or her life. I don’t feel that’s fair. Other people feel that the gamble is safer, and that’s their choice.

I think people need to be more accepting of each other as they are, rather than wanting them to be something needlessly different. I have no doubt that if certain persons could pre-program their children to be devout worshipers of Christ, they would. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work that way. It shouldn’t.

And for all the good that could come of genetic manipulation, I am deeply afraid of the day when it becomes common practice, because I do not know where they will draw the line.

I haven’t lived anywhere near as many different places as some of the Novelty Girls — like, I bet Lori, who used to be in the military, has some great stories. *grins* I’ve lived a total of three places in my admittedly short-in-comparison life: Olympia, Washington (my hometown); Lewisville, Texas; and Sharon, MA.

There’s been very odd regional differences everywhere I’ve lived. Add to that, my mother is from the New Hampshire area, my father from northern California, and I was homeschooled with very little thought and effort given to outside socialization past the point I was nine. I think I may actually know less of the local WA phrases than either NH or CA of their area and generation — oh, outside of the jokes about the “365 Days A Year Rain Festival”, of course.

I became very confused when I moved and nobody knew what a “church key” was (it’s a bottle/can opener), nor did they have any idea what the hell I meant when I said it was a “gosling drownder” outside (a storm heavy enough to drown a flock of goslings).

Then, when I moved to TX, I was extremely confused by the tendency to refer to any carbonated beverage as a “coke”. My ex-gf would ask the kids if they wanted a coke and upon assent, give them cans of store-brand blue raspberry soda. Me:

Unfortunately, after two years, that one kind of…. um… stuck. Now I get to confuse all the befuddled New Englanders. *whistles*

Weird place names? I think the street I grew up on is pretty bad, because it’s a very long, hard-to-pronounce Native American word with a lot of dashes. I think the people who named that street were intentionally sadistic. (I’d print it here, but my folks still live there, and my dad is paranoid that if the street name gets out on the ‘net, there will be Stalkers and Harassment and Death Threats, oh my. Dear gods, I hope he never reads this. >_<)

About an hour where I live now, there’s a city named Worchester. You’d think it would be pronounced “wohr-chester”, but nooooo… it’s locally pronounced “wooster.” If said with a heavy accent, then “wuhstah.” I’m kind of glad I’ve never heard anybody from here try to say “Worchestershire Sauce” before……

I was reading an interview with an author earlier, and I got to thinking… many of us bust our butts promoting, holding contests, doing chats, trying to sell our books. I think virtually all of us have a blog (although some like to gather dust… *coughs and glances at the dust bunnies on hers*). We talk about our books, our friends’ projects, the industry, and almost anything writing-related. But what about our non-writing lives?

Personally, I have more than one blog. I have Dust Bunny Central my writing blog, and I have a personal LiveJournal (it’s possible the two may end up combined due to fuckwittery on the part of new LJ ownership, but we’ll see) with a “this is my personal space, and if you don’t like reading about the following, you’re better off not reading it” disclaimer. I don’t hide that I’m a goth, bisexual, kinky, pagan, polyamorous, and sometimes a royal bitch. This is me, and I make no bones about that.

I know that other writers aren’t nearly as comfortable being open about their personal lives. Some are afraid that if they let the “inner bitch” out, they’ll lose readers. Others are afraid of giving too much information for security reasons (which is a valid concern, as online and real life stalkers do exist). Still others think that it’s nobody’s business what their real life is like.

As a reader, I like glimpses into the real lives and personalities of authors I like. I’m an “anything goes” kind of girl. You want to talk about your personal sex life? OK, whatever. Your kids? Same deal. Pets? Aww! Kitten/puppy pics. I like to have an idea of the person behind the books, but maybe I’m just a weird fangirl that way.

Though, there have been at least two authors that I refuse to buy because they are consistently catty bitches who voice their opinions loudly in the most offensive way possible. I really don’t mind when writers share their personal opinions, but if you can’t do it without insulting everybody who disagrees with you, then you really should keep your mouth shut. Then again, those writers aren’t even talking about their personal lives – that’s just talking about writing!

Where do you fall on the spectrum? Do you like to share information about your personal life, or do you prefer to keep it separate from your writing life?

Yeah, it’s that time of year again. Impending doom err, Christmas, within two weeks, and all sorts of stuff to organize and get done. Like, oh, mail out the pressies. (YIKES. >_<)

Some people get into holiday activities more than others, and there’s always those who just say “No” to Christmas (Kwanzaa, Hanukkah, Yule, Midwinter, <insert wintery holiday here>). Presuming you’re the sort to participate, how do you manage your writing schedule during this hectic time of the year? Do you try to keep writing? Or do you say “screw it” for December and pick work up again come January?

Anybody who’s been in a writing community or critique group for any length of time has had to deal with the inevitable people who are more than ready to deliver a swift death to their fellow writers’ dreams. Let’s take a few real life examples here. A friend of mine was working on a vampire novel several years ago (around 2002), before the big craze hit. Somebody at her writing group told her repeatedly and very harshly that she was wasting her time, because vampires were a dead genre and would never sell.

In the same writing community, I was told by another person that the urban fantasy novel I was working on was unoriginal because it featured a woman hunting (psychic) vampires for vengeance. According to her, I was writing a Laurell K. Hamilton rip-off, and anyway, nobody else could make a “breakout” in vampire fiction since she’d already done that with her book.

Right. See how accurate that was.
Where the hell do these people get off? (Not literally. I don’t even want to think about that, thank you very much! ) These aren’t even “the rules.” These are unilateral declarations of what will and will not sell. Here’s the problem with that. Not even the agents know what will sell. Yes, they have a better idea than writers, that’s for sure, but how many stories have you heard about authors who were told repeatedly by industry professionals that their book wasn’t saleable for whatever reason — and then went on to become a best-seller?

This isn’t to say that everything is saleable, because that’s not the case. It rarely is determined by pure subject matter, though (outside of genre restrictions), and more upon how well the writer pulls it off. Let’s say there’s some writer talking about her romance featuring elven ninja pirates in New York. The idea sounds totally implausible and unlikely to sell.

But, is it my place to take this woman aside and tell her she should work on something else? If she is obviously passionate about it, why not let her continue to write the story in peace? Maybe it won’t sell. But selling is not the end-all, be-all of writing. Sometimes we write stories not for other people, but for ourselves — and sometimes stories that will never see print are important for us to write, maybe to learn about writing, or maybe to learn something about ourselves.

What do you think? Is this behavior a “favor” to new writers, or is it an active detriment?

Happy Halloween, everyone, and blessed Samhain to those who celebrate it. Anybody doing anything fun for the holiday?

Also, it’s the eve of the ultimate insanity: National Novel-Writing Month, aka NaNoWriMo. So, of course, the obligatory question: Who’s in?

*cough*raiseshand*cough*

I was talking with another writer friend recently about subgenres. She was complaining that people lumped anything that was sent in a contemporary period and contained some form of magic together as “urban fantasy,” when there have been long-standing authors like Charles de Lint who set a prior standard.

Well, there’s a point to that. The lines between subgenres, and even genres, have faded over the last few years especially. I’ve seen categorizations that don’t make any sense; some people categorize anything with a vampire in it as horror, and that’s simply not the case. (Especially when you wonder, looking at some paranormal romance heroes, if the poor vamp even has fangs.)

Between Paranormal/Fantasy Romance and Fantasy, there’s one major dividing line, and that’s the focus of the primary plot. If the primary focus is the romantic relationship between the hero and the heroine and there is a happy ending for them, then it belongs in Romance. If the romance is the secondary focus or not even there on the radar, or the ending is tragic, then it belongs in Fantasy (or depending on the tone, Fiction).

Subgenres are a bit of a different beast. There’s a lot of them, and you can find combinations of them, or sub-subgenres. For instance, urban fantasy is a subgenre of fantasy and dark urban is a subgenre of urban fantasy. (Or a combination. It can be argued either way.) Both romance and fantasy as genres have evolved over the years, and so have their subgenres. The paranormal romance of decades ago is not very much like what you see now, and the epic fantasy of today very little resembles Tolkien, for instance. The only urban fantasy I recall from the 90s that’s like what is branded urban fantasy (technically, dark urban) nowadays would be Laurell K. Hamilton’s early Anita Blake and Mercedes Lackey’s Diana Tregarde novels (and Sacred Ground, a stand-alone she did in the same vein).

Where am I getting at with this?

Genres have to evolve over time, otherwise people lose interest. Who wants to read the same story twenty bajillion times? (I’m going to jerk my head toward the obvious Tolkien rip-offs and secret baby stories here. :P) Sure, there are people out there that love those stories to death and would never get sick of them — but I bet there’s a lot more of us that want variety.

The problem with evolution is reader expectation. I talked last week about romance novels that lacked the requisite HEA. Is this a sign of bad marketing or an evolution of the genre? Let’s say for theory’s sake (though I doubt it is actually the case) that it’s the latter. There are a lot of people angry and disappointed. They expected chocolate cake and got a fruit tart. Even if you liked fruit tarts to begin with, if you bought a box labeled Triple Chocolate Delight cake and opened it at home to find a fruit tart inside — you’d be pissed as all hell, right?

The same is true of readers. But, to take the analogy further, there are many different types of chocolate cake available. (I’m not going to list them for fear of death glares from dieting divas. ) So, you’re expecting one thing when you see Triple Chocolate cake — but when you open the box, it isn’t what you expect. Sometimes it can be a pleasant surprise. Sometimes it can piss you off, because dammit, you wanted a specific type of chocolate cake.

But is it fair to get pissed off because the Triple Chocolate cake you ordered wasn’t a three-tier with a chocolate frosting interior but a chocolate cake with a Godiva liqueur center? They still fit the bill. They just are different.

And I guess that’s what’s bothering me about some of the rants I see. Once people get a certain expectation fixed in their head, any deviance from that is automatically disliked and spurned — sometimes viciously. (Granted, in some cases, it’s deserved — a fruit tart is not a chocolate cake, after all.)

Anybody else notice this around the web? What do y’all think?

I’ve been more or less dead for the past couple months. The chill is starting to fade, and I’m making my way back to the land of the living. (I think. Every now and then, zombies reach out of the ground and try to drag me back under, but I’m

I want to put out a huge thank you to the rest of the Novelty Girls for their understanding over the past couple months. Let’s just say that drama and stress reached new levels I didn’t even think possible. Breaking up with my abusive ex and the fallout thereafter was less stressful.
Right, so. The last six months have been spent mostly in a daze. With all of the real life and relationship crap going on (and backstabbing friends, that’s always a fun one), I haven’t done much writing. OK. That’s an understatement. I think I’ve written maybe 10k in the past six months. For comparison, I normally write about 10k per month on a bad month.

Yeah.

I was talking with another writer about Not Writing. She’s been under a lot of stress herself lately and feels apathetic about the book she’s working on — but she’s afraid that if she takes a break, she won’t come back to it.

I know that fear.

When I was younger, I didn’t think that any of this could happen to me. In 2002, I wrote three novels, a novella, and several short pieces. I didn’t think that I could not write. I didn’t think anything would ever get between me and my writing.

The last few years shattered that arrogant assumption.

I’ve been spiraling further down, sinking deeper and deeper, to the point that most of this year, I haven’t cared about writing at all. I was content to handle day-to-day monotonous shit, play computer games, watch movies and TV, read, and just not give a damn about writing.

Oh, I struggled. Especially when people around me were saying, “You should write” or variants thereof. They meant well, but sometimes pushing is the wrong thing to do. The more I fought, the more apathetic I became. Every time I sat down at the keyboard to get my words in, it felt like dragging my heels to a shit job that I couldn’t wait to quit.

It shouldn’t be that way.

Finally, I stopped trying.

A friend of mine said something very wise to me a long time ago, that continually comes back to me. Paraphrased, because I don’t recall the exact wording: “Sometimes you have to give up everything in order to gain everything.”

Slowly, I found myself starting to want to write again. After far too long with no new ideas, one came to mind for a short story. I started writing… and for the first time in months, enjoyed the act of writing.

I have some modicum of a plan. I’m not out of the woods yet. I feel like a sick woman afraid of relapsing.

But I’ve come this far, and I know if I do fall back… I’ll make it out again.