It’s apparently Pep Talk Tuesday

[bodlon]

Sometimes my reading habits get me into trouble.

Namely, I am occasionally fond of reading literary fiction, or at least the heavier and stranger edge of mainstream fiction. I went through a heavy phase a few years ago where I was practically only ever reading things written by Douglas Coupland, Chuck Palahniuk, Don Delillo, Dave Eggers, and so on.

The problem isn't that I enjoy this kind of thing when I consume it, but that this is not the sort of thing I write. Or, if those influences are apparent, I don't think of my writing in the same way as I think of those authors' works when I'm reading them. They're in some strange, bubbling layer beneath the surface, informing choices and character more than the overall state of affairs.

And yet, when I'm looking at a blank page that might lead to a couple hundred more pages instead just fifteen or twenty, it's like I get uncomfortable with things like magic realism and gadgets. Somewhere in my writerly makeup is a voice that swallowed the line that to be a real writer, who writes real books of real importance, I have to throw out the magic and space ships. All the weirdness and wonder has to be symbolic (or at least psychosis) if it exists at all.

That voice can get very, very loud. It's derailed me more than once. It's the reason I'm probably going to have to put down the Jeffrey Eugenides book I'm reading in favor of something else this week because I spent this morning's writing time wrestling with it whispering to me that I don't need characters that are changeling princes or necromancers. That just muddies the real issues I'm trying to write about! And really, a) those previews for Dylan Dog: Dead of Night just scream "played out," b) I'd just be copying Jim Butcher anyway, c) and look, if I insist on writing genre shouldn't I be aiming a little higher? Like, say, Mieville and Neal Stephenson? You know. Real writers.

It's insidious. Worse, it's ridiculous because that voice has me preemptively judging myself for wanting to write the kinds of stories I like to read. Which, since we're on the topic are real stories with real value by real authors that do just fine communicating things, thanks.

Chalk it up to graduation in a couple of weeks, I suppose.

~*~

- A professor at Southeastern Oklahoma State is being denied tenure and losing employment over her gender identity. Her colleagues are helping grieve her case, but yeah. Kind of a mess.

- Transwoman viciously beaten, left to seize without medical attention in a McDonalds while employees watch. So here's the thing: conservatives derail non-discrimination bills with boogeyman stories about transpeople and bathrooms, when the fact is it's those who are unlucky enough to be read by others as different -- particularly transwomen, but I know a transguy who almost wound up in some serious hurt over restroom confusion -- who are getting assaulted.

- "RIP Typewriters" is trending on Twitter. Like many deaths reported on Twitter, the end of typewriter manufacturing has yet to come to pass.

- I don't anticipate ever wanting to bother with Jersey Shore, but these short videos of actors from the Roundabout Theatre Company performing lines from the program in the style of Oscar Wilde are strangely compelling. Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 3 - Part 4 - Part 5

- I honestly can't remember if I've ever linked to If It Were My Home or not, but even if I have I'd link to it again just on the basis that it's one of those sites that tends to result in missing time for me. It's like TV Tropes, except without the thing that goes doink.

- Poor Jane's Almanac, being a fine essay on why Tea Partiers who dress up like Ben Franklin to protest taxation and public funding for social programs might want to reconsider their dress-up persona.

- Independent bookstore does membership drive in order to avoid closure. Interesting idea, and I hope they succeed. Bookstores are wonderful, useful places in ways that online sources just aren't.

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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[bodlon]

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