a man on the verge of burning

(apologies to Suzanne Vega)

Home sick for a second day, learning about all kinds of things one shouldn’t do whilst feverish. Primary amongst them this week? Mainlining the entire first season of Dexter.

So many moments in the overall first season arc come down to missed connections, failures to communicate, and characters not being willing to collaborate or ask for help. It’s the kind of thing I find difficult to watch (friends will possibly have heard me hold forth on this topic in re: Othello) because of that.

As a writer, it’s a thing to think about because it’s a good lesson in building tension and conflict, and in how to move the plot in an organic way. As a human being, I’m trying to balance out 13 hours of watching Michael C. Hall in tight shirts with those same 13 hours watching Michael C. Hall as a brilliant, violent sociopath.

I’ll just be here in my corner clutching my skull.

~*~

I’ve finally had my first weird dream/nightmare about my impending 12 year high school reunion.

The closer it gets, the more acutely I’m aware that many of the people I’ll see I haven’t seen for many years, am not particularly intimate with most of them, that I remember my hometown as a hostile and uncomfortable place filled with people who didn’t understand who and what I was then. I’m withholding judgment about what I’ll encounter now, but old feelings of alienation and anxiety are certainly washing up.

I probably just need to watch Grosse Point Blank a couple of times and find my black tie.

~*~

I’m having a lot of anger and frustration with the book right now because it still doesn’t feel like a coherent thing yet. I have worries about it — Are there too many LGBTQ characters? Are my characters-of-color coming off as token/playing into dumb tropes? Are my women characters falling into the same trap? Is the way topics each of them deal with daily coming up in casual conversation offensive? Topical? Wonderful? — but the draft is so disjointed that I can’t really inflict it on a first reader for advice.

I feel like playing for months with these characters while being specifically directed NOT to plot or build structures brought out a lot of my bad habits. Or, more precisely, that it established a headspace for me in which I can think about my characters really clearly, and enjoy their company, but in which their trajectory is stunted. I know them too well outside of narrative and can’t seem to cram them back in.

So I won’t write, and then I’ll feel guilty and chuck out a few thousand words, but it’s an empty exercise. I can make words, but none of them go anywhere. I feel alienated from my work in this profound, depressing way that leaves me cursing the way I’ve gone about this. I feel angry at the way people try to be helpful by goading me to talk about things that aren’t ready to be discussed, and then forcibly dragging them out into the light while they’re still undeveloped.

I look at 2009, a good year in which I was writing a lot and selling work, and felt there were tons of fascinating opportunities to follow up on. Now I’m halfway through 2010 and all I really have to show for it is months of refusing to write anything except for the thing that doesn’t work. Now I’m sitting here at the end of June with no good, new work and feeling locked into this path because I’m in a boat with a group of people and can’t change course. It’s ego-destroying.

Every moment of my life I believe in the salvific power of the written word. It has, can, and will make my life the life I want to live. Like any thing of power, though, it also contains the power to do the opposite.

Poison is medicine is poison.

~*~

Links:
Dan Savage, for all his faults in certain areas, is also one of the few voices in the public discourse who says things that make me feel like a whole person. Case in point, his June 24 column, Cock In A Box (semi NSFW, depending on what your work thinks about very frank sex advice columns).

A really interesting article about the “Silent Partner,” or something of a recurring theme in how writing works for some people.

Cat Valente talks Apex slush. Added benefit: I now have the urge to shout “GHOSTPIGS MOTHERFUCKERS” at irregular intervals.

A classic Trek fanvid to “Tik Tok,” the song which is eating my damn brain now.

Apparently, the Universe is just as excited about the latest series of Doctor Who as I am.

Writer A. Lee Martinez takes on DC’s lack of genuine diversity in their comics. Thoughtful, honest, and a solid critique. Recommended reading.

An interesting article about queerness and sex in SF/F, mainly from a writer’s perspective. It’s an interesting read, and touches on things like when and how to include sex in a story, writing the Other, and homophobia in readership.

An excellent post on how the companies behind the Dove’s Movement aren’t really allies to women and girls at all, and actually stand to profit both by the so-called moment and by undermining it.

The ACLU reminds us that cell phones = easy tracking mechanism. Old news, but hey. It never hurts to take note.

This post has been mirrored from Christian A. Young's Dimlight Archive. To see it in its original format, visit dimlightarchive.com

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