HALFWAY TO BOOK 2, time to kill the momentum and navel-gaze

Last week, I had a cold. Very interesting stuff.

The past few days, I’ve been feeling… a bit off. I’m thinking… maybe it’s the last vestiges of the cold? Maybe it’s my iron deficiency? Or the weather cooling off? Have my final, fleeting tendrils tethering me to sanity finally snapped? I’ve been cooking a lot— maybe my leftovers spoiled.

Yesterday-ish, something strange happened while I was writing BOOK 2. Like a shaken can of Coke… it popped off.

I’m sure I had moments like this while writing Don’t Worry and certain pieces of fanfiction. I don’t remember them exactly, I never catalogued them, but this almost jubilant, detached-from-reality, anxiety-adjacent fluttering in my stomach and my head is not a new sensation to me, though I certainly haven’t felt it in a while.

I’m on the record (multiple times) stating how frustrating I find it that, despite being a hearty skeptic in every other aspect of life, I am graveyard-level spiritual when it comes to writing. It’s woo woo up the wazoo in here on how I get a story from my brain onto the page. It jumbles and tumbles its way into Microsoft Word, and somehow, THERE IT IS. It makes me mad just having to admit this (again). Why did I go to school for 4+ years when I could’ve played a $20 ouija board for the same result?? I say, spirits, tell me how to write, and they say, have you considered waking from a fugue state to a completed manuscript?

Back to Coke. I’m over halfway through the book. Along with the spiritual journey described above, I am also getting nervous, because the more I write this book, the more I like this book, and historically, the more I like what I write, the less chance I have of making any money off it. Ah, the webs we weave.

That being said… progress is progress. I can barely even keep up with my fingers, even though my outline has mostly petered out by this point/is no longer relevant. The rest of the story is in my head. I can feel it like an egg yolk still in the shell. The pieces aren’t all in the right place, but that’s immaterial. The protagonist and the love interest are fighting and snapping and colliding and flirting and desperate and absolutely panting for each other but can’t do anything about it because of how books work (still got about twenty thousand words to go, ladies <3), and god, it’s so hard to invest in your own world and words and characters, and it took me almost forty thousand words to get to this point, but now I’m here, and it’s like, hello, I am pulling back the velvet rope, you have entered the special VIP club of my heart, the legendary Fifth Chamber that my original female characters call home.

Is it, like, good? Mmmmmmmmnnnnnnnnnnnyeeeeeeeeaaaaahh idunno. In my head it’s delicious, and until I have to start sending it out to agents begging for representation, that’s all that matters.

Is it a regular romance like I originally threatened? Mmmmmmmmnnnnnnnnnnnyeeeeeeeeaaaaahh idunno either. I can never admit this to anyone except my lovely empty yellow stadium (great acoustics), but I have no idea. I don’t know anything about traditionally published romances. I’ve read maybe two in the last ten years? All I really know about the genre is how OTT annoyed i get when I see those ugly-ass cartoony cell shaded generic romance covers that look like the graphics on a tech giant’s self-serve help page.

Are there actually interesting, complex characters in romance novels? Are they all supposed to be trope-y? That’s what I was going for, but then I made them interesting, and interesting begets interesting and then it all kind of snowballed from there. Not bragging. Between me and someone who writes stuff people actually want to read, I know which one of us is making the kind of money that can influence elections.

But then how do I sell it if I can’t say it’s about Type A and the Party Girl (a very early description of the main pairing)?! Are romance characters allowed to be deeply flawed in a way that isn’t also sexy? Are they allowed to be wrong about things that aren’t just how much they don’t actually totally hate their hot academic rival, or whatever?

A story can be anything. A story that sells cannot.

This lightheaded gentle-uneasy euphoria is good, in a way. It’s an indicator that the good juices are flowing, not just the regular ones. That the part of my writing I would call ME and not just writing (generic) is finally seeing the light of day. Creatively and personally, that means a lot. Financially, it’s anxious crickets.

The specter of unfulfilling yet gainful employment looms over my head. Not going to lie, I think that helped light the fire under my ass. I need to sell a story that leads to selling more stories, because if I don’t, I am going to spend the rest of my life working low-level office jobs and barely being able to afford to support myself. It’s not all about money, except for when it is. Art for art’s sake doesn’t pay the bills.

I just read a non-fiction book that chronicled the history of class in the US*. Kindly, I would call it a soporific tome. At the same time, it helped me clarify a lot about my two main characters and their relationship to their own class and class backgrounds (the timing ended up being a happy coincidence, I never meant to read it as research). Not only that, but it got me thinking about my own relationship to class (despite being Canadian, but Canada is nothing if not the US’ annoying younger sibling who both wants to assert its independence while also following in America’s footsteps as much as is humanely possible, ASK ME ABOUT THE CANADIANS WHO FLY CONFEDERATE FLAGS).

At the end of the day, if working low-level office jobs is what allows me to live on my own, even if the budget is tight, who am I to complain or move above my station? Why is a life lived with access to healthcare and food and shelter not enough? I don’t deserve more or less than the next person who works low-level office jobs that allow them access to healthcare and food and shelter. The “more” I imagine for myself is no different than the “more” anyone else in my position dreams of.

Knowing this does not change the fact that I do want more for myself. This is a class issue, but it’s also an existential issue. Sometimes, I imagine a life path for myself in which I write THE book of the year, decade, century, whatever. I get every single thing I have sworn will visit Ultimate Happiness upon me. I contribute to society. I live in a beautiful home with enough room for my family and friends to comfortably visit. I have an incredible relationship and friend group. I have hobbies that I enjoy and I am in good health. I have more money than I know what to do with, and the rest gets distributed to family, friends, community, and charity.

Maybe the true existential crisis is my bone-deep certainty that even in a world where all of that is true, it will never be enough. There will always be an ambiguous, amorphous “more” that is missing. There will always be an undefinable and unfillable hole somewhere within me. I wish I didn’t believe that some of us were just born unfixably sad, but I do. I can move the goalposts for my own personal happiness as much as I want— “I will only be happy when X happens,” and so on. Maybe I’m just saving myself from the ultimate disappointment by setting goals so unattainable they can never be reached. Because on the off-chance I achieve them, well, then, “I will only be happy when Y happens”. If I achieve that impossible goal? Well, the latin alphabet may end with Z, but there are other alphabets.

Once I learned how to write with more depth than a teaspoon, I think my outlook on life became obvious in my stories. Something that set my fanfiction apart (for good or ill) was that all joy was tempered by the knowledge that happiness is fleeting while life itself is an infinite struggle. Very Sisyphean of me.

This will seem so hilariously small in comparison, but all those years I spent convinced fictional characters Dean Winchester and Castiel falling in love onscreen, becoming canon, whatever, was the equivalent of happiness for me, a real person in the real world, is a perfect example of this. Pinning my dreams of fulfillment on something that is literally fake (and, talk about setting unrealistic goals, lol) as opposed to anything tangible represents such a damning microcosm of this exhausting mindset. So, I ask myself, I’ll finally be happy when the fictional men kiss? There is no greater plan for me (ME, real ME, the one and only ME) than the two guys on TV locking lips?

What kills me is I knew this. Somewhere in the worst, most realistic part of my mind, I knew it was horseshit. Why else was all my fanfiction undermining itself by wagging its finger at the reader and reminding them that the pursuit of happiness is nothing more than a cage we enclose ourselves in!? I knew it, and still, I persisted in the delusion, because what else could I do? The cognitive dissonance in my life at the time— in my relationship, in my friend group, in my job, in my belief that forever-happiness was waiting for me, somewhere out there, if I could just find it— was immense. And damaging. And a product of my own fevered brain that I do not think is something that can be medicated or therapized away.

My inability to believe in uncomplicated happiness might be what kills this book deal. My refusal to write characters who are easy and fixable and palatable is not compatible with the romance genre. I should’ve written horror, but get this, I hate how dour and misanthropic the genre as a whole is. Go figure. I tried my hand at literary fiction— crickets. Guess what genre I’m returning to for book three? News at 11: dumbass tries writing literary fiction again.

Maybe thriller/mystery is my calling. So much of what I read is trash, the closest you can get to AI that’s still written by a human. But there are diamonds in the rough. There are Tana French’s and Gillian Flynn’s. I’m no French or Flynn, but I am pretty grim and dark without being the much maligned grimdark. I like to think those darker sensibilities might make it a place I could carve out a lil niche for myself. For now, at least, I am steadfastly ignoring the depressing lesbian vampire romance that has been lurking in the dusty corners of my mind for ages. Maybe if BOOK 2 ever moves, depressing vampire romance will be next. If BOOK 2 doesn’t move, well, guess it’s back to the drawing board. I have two lesbian domestic thriller concepts that have been percolating for a while in isolation. We’ll see.

Maybe the problem is the lesbians. No comment 🙂

So much of this is just straight whining. I am not even convinced keeping a blog where I endlessly yell into the void is even good for me. Giving me a platform, even one as small as this, plays on my ego, which already got puffed up enough during my time writing fanfiction. I come onto the blog, spin out and navel gaze for a few paragraphs, then disappear again until I need another brain dump. I don’t know. Lots of people blog. Surely they don’t overthink it to this degree? It’s hard to know when ruminating on your life and your choices and being responsible, accountable, and self-aware crosses the line into needless and pedantic narcissism. WHO THINKS ABOUT THEMSELF THIS MUCH?

And yet, if I don’t, who will? A hard life lesson I am still swallowing is that no one is ever going to care about me most, except me. Which is how it should be. Only me is me. Only you is you. You will only ever truly know yourself and have your own best interests at heart. No one else can be to you what you are to you. At the risk of sounding like a moody teenager, it’s agonizing to know that no one will ever truly understand me. I can never invite someone else into my head (not that I would, given the absolute STATE of it), and they can never invite me into theirs. We are all an island. My dismay over this axiom goes a long way to explaining why fiction and fanfiction has proven such an escape for me over the years. What a relief to be able to get into someone else’s head. To know someone else like real people can’t. To know there are other people like me, or even to know there are other people who aren’t like me. People who think like me and people who don’t. Fiction builds us the boat we use to visit each other’s islands. All this time and we’ve failed to understand that life… is like Animal Crossing New Horizons. —oh my god wait, you fly to other islands there. Never mind. You know what I mean. Simile cancelled.

I don’t know. I don’t think I ever will. If there’s one thing I do know for sure about other people, it’s that no one knows what they’re doing. Some people, the well adjusted ones, have made peace with this. The rest of us live like we are on the perpetually sinking Titanic.

My best solution so far is externalizing. Getting out of my own head (aka the opposite of writing blog posts about it). Focusing on writing helps. Physical activity/exercise REALLY helps. God knows how annoyed I was when I discovered the crunchy losers who told me going outside would make me feel better were actually right. Pricks. I’m playing local sports. I go on lots of walks. I love hiking. I’ve been cooking up a storm. I’ve been crafting and doing puzzles and even trying to watch movies all the way through without looking at my phone (yes, the bar is on the floor). Anything that forces me to interact with the world that actually exists versus the evil shadow version of the world that lives in my head (writing being the obvious exception, lol, at least that is a DIFFERENT shadow version of the world) is something worth exploring.

Another facet of externalizing: I’ve almost written another full ass novel! Regardless of the publishing status or quality or accompanying existential dread, that’s awesome and I’m proud of myself. And when it feels like my island is shrinking and I’m almost submerged, one of the few things I can cling to is that every word I write gets me one step closer to a fully functioning boat.

*Book was White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America by Nancy Isenberg. Great if you’re interested in the subject matter. Even better if you need to incapacitate a home invader.

blue curtains & the textural indulgence of seasons

When I was in university, I took a class about nature writing. If you asked me any specifics about this course, I couldn’t tell you. I think there was a lot of poetry, which is not a great start, because I don’t care for poetry. After glancing through some old Google Docs, I’ve been able to put a few more of the pieces together: we talked a lot about indigenous relationships to the land, travel writing by non-Canadians in their home countries, and environmentalism. Overall, it was a pretty neat class outside my comfort zone (hence, poetry) that introduced me to a new way of writing and new (to me) way of how humans catalogue and consider the world around them through nature.

While I may not have taken exactly what the professor wanted me to take from that class (poetry…), it encouraged me to think a lot about my own writing and the worlds it takes place in. This was less the consideration of my characters’ relationship to the land around them than it was even just my own consideration of the world around them. For anyone who’s spent any amount of time reading fan fiction, think about how often characters and their actions are described versus the setting. Or dialogue versus description. You know those visual artists who loudly proclaim how much they abhor drawing backgrounds? That pretty succinctly describes most fan fiction, including my own older work.

In the grand scheme of things, it’s not a big deal. Fan fiction is character-driven and always will be. However, I would be remiss not to concede how much better my writing got once I realized the characters were not the only living, breathing, and interesting part of my stories. It sounds almost high school-esque to say, “Sometimes, things have symbolic meaning.” Remember that tumblr post that suggested symbolism was stupid and all of us 15 year olds on the site lost our minds thinking how clever and funny it was to suggest that the curtains were blue not for some deep, symbolic reason but simply because the author liked blue? Of course now I can’t find the original post, but I sure can find the well-deserved backlash. Or even to say something as pedestrian as, ‘It was a dark and stormy night’ sets the mood for the story going forward. Weather being (often heavy-handedly) thematic is storytelling 101, and yet actually internalizing it and intentionally including it in my work going forward has really upped the quality of my storytelling.

My understanding of the principle of enriching your entire world and not just your characters in the foreground manifested seasonally, which makes perfect sense for a few reasons. One, I’m very affected by seasons in real life, both in terms of mental health and more generally— I strongly associate scents, colours, foods, decor, and even moods with the various seasons. I’m extremely picky about what constitutes an autumn scent versus a spring scent versus a winter scent versus a summer scent. I don’t even look at a pumpkin if it’s not between September 1st - October 31st. Christmas decorations come down on December 26th, no compromises. If I wear fall colours outside of autumn, I turn myself into the local authorities. Two, seasonal changes are extremely visual. I come from a screenwriting background and my internal world while writing is very visual, and I want my readers to experience that as well. Seasons are fantastic at setting the mood (whether congruent with each other or not) and give a more streamlined feeling to the passage of time (which I always prefer over non-chronological narratives). Three… seasons are just lush. They’re so fun to write about, even the problem child summer. They’re fantastic imagery, they add texture and interest, and they help to ground your story.

There are two ideas jockeying for position in my head on this topic, and they’re mutually exclusive. They cannot be true at the same time (maybe), and yet, here I am entertaining them both.

For some, autumn comes early, stays late through life where October follows September and November touches October and then instead of December and Christ's birth, there is no Bethlehem Star, no rejoicing, but September comes again and old October and so on down the years, with no winter, spring, or revivifying summer. For these beings, fall is the ever normal season, the only weather, there be no choice beyond. Where do they come from? The dust. Where do they go? The grave. Does blood stir their veins? No: the night wind. What ticks in their head? The worm. What speaks from their mouth? The toad. What sees from their eye? The snake. What hears with their ear? The abyss between the stars. They sift the human storm for souls, eat flesh of reason, fill tombs with sinners. They frenzy forth. In gusts they beetle-scurry, creep, thread, filter, motion, make all moons sullen, and surely cloud all clear-run waters. The spider-web hears them, trembles—breaks. Such are the autumn people. Beware of them.

The above from Ray Bradbury’s Something Wicked This Way Comes showcases my first idea: The curtains are blue because they’re blue. There are few authors I would put above Bradbury when it comes to making the curtains blue simply because they like the colour. Note how a few paragraphs ago I didn’t give the author grief for making the curtains blue just because they wanted to, but the idea behind the post, mocking the concept of symbolism in storytelling at all. If an author makes the curtains blue because they want to, I don’t actually care. Sure, there’s a line to be drawn between over-describing and just throwing in something for fun, but that line is arbitrary and depends on so many factors that there’s no point in trying to draw one at all. I throw little goofy or enjoyable-to-me tidbits into my writing all the time, just because. I over-described outfits to a hilarious extent in The Dean Winchester Beat Sheet, and kept up that proud tradition in Don’t Worry About It. I can give symbolic reasons for both, sure, but I mostly did it because it was funny (Beat Sheet) or hot (Don’t Worry).

From The October Country, a Bradbury short story collection:

That country where it is always turning late in the year. That country where the hills are fog and the rivers are mist; where noons go quickly, dusks and twilights linger, and midnights stay. That country composed in the main of cellars, sub-cellars, coal-bins, closets, attics, and pantries faced away from the sun. That country whose people are autumn people, thinking only autumn thoughts. Whose people passing at night on the empty walks sound like rain.

Also from The October Country:

Martin knew it was autumn again, for Dog ran into the house bringing wind and frost and a smell of apples turned to cider under trees. In dark clock-springs of hair, Dog fetched goldenrod, dust of farewell-summer, acorn-husk, hair of squirrel, feather of departed robin, sawdust from fresh-cut cordwood, and leaves like charcoals shaken from a blaze of maple trees. Dog jumped. Showers of brittle fern, blackberry vine, marsh-grass sprang over the bed where Martin shouted. No doubt, no doubt of it at all, this incredible beast was October!

The problem with Ray Bradbury is that as purple and eye roll-worthy as some of his prose can be, every once in a while he nails it. In fact, if you have ever noticed a proliferation of hyphenated phrases in my writing where you’re like, okay, that’s a little much, it’s probably due to his influence. The annoying thing about over-hyphenated writing like this is that sometimes, regardless of how little sense it makes, it just works. It evokes a feeling, a memory, a tug in your chest, and that’s all it takes. It’s pathos all the way, baby. Not an ethos or logos in sight. Considering Something Wicked follows the adventures of two kids, this makes perfect sense. Does that excuse him of similar crimes in books with adult protagonists? Does it excuse mine? Readers choice.

I’m not a Bradbury scholar, though I’ve read a number of his novels and, for the most part, enjoy his work. To be honest, my take on his use of symbolism is minimal. Maybe I’m wrong, maybe his work is a well of deep symbolism I’m too much of a dummy to catch, but speaking only for myself as a reader, I doubt it. And that’s fine. There is nothing inherently better or worse than writing with an eye toward texture instead of meaning.

That being said, my second idea: hey man, like, what’s the point?

It is a tale

Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,

Signifying nothing.

Unless an aborted attempt at reading Romeo and Juliet when I was 14 or a CliffsNotes study of The Merchant of Venice in grade 11 English counts, I am also no Shakespeare scholar. The amount to which that makes me an uneducated pleb in the eyes of stuffy academics is unimportant to me. However, the above, from Macbeth, has stuck with me since I first heard it. First it was as it related to Wei Wuxian in The Untamed. After, as it relates to my own writing and this specific debate. How many endlessly lush descriptions of your world without saying anything significant can one read before it starts to feel like empty calories? Like someone getting up on a soapbox and speaking for twenty minutes, only to say nothing at all?

Years ago when it came out, I watched Mike Flanagan’s Haunting of Hill House. I enjoyed the actual horror aspect of it, but the writing… whew. It took a few episodes for me to put my finger on it, but when I did, I became unable to unsee it: this man LOVES listing things. For what it’s worth, I also love lists. I make them all the time. But I’m also not writing a horror novel, unless my increasingly desperate cover letters to prospective employers count. In Hill House, the music swells, the camera swings around, and someone starts to speechify, and in place of actual substance, they’re just abusing semicolons (and thesauruses, because a lot of what’s being said is just repeating the same thing with different phrasing). Once I caught onto that, Hill House totally lost me. I lost whatever respect I had for it, because that’s a lazy way for a professional writer to approach a story and fill runtime.

And the thing is, what’s so different from Hill House saying, “Ghosts are guilt, ghosts are secrets, ghosts are regrets and failings. But most times a ghost is a wish. Like a marriage is a wish. A marriage can be like a house and a marriage can be haunted, and I let that happen to us,” and Ray Bradbury saying in Something Wicked, “Death doesn't exist. It never did, it never will. But we've drawn so many pictures of it, so many years, trying to pin it down, comprehend it, we've got to thinking of it as an entity, strangely alive and greedy. All it is, however, is a stopped watch, a loss, an end, a darkness. Nothing.” Lists, lists, lists, lists of the same thing but slightly different. Why does A GHOST IS A WISH make me want to tear my hair out but “a stopped watch, a loss, an end, a darkness,” is a little much, but doesn’t come close to the agony of Hill House dialogue? Am I comparing apples to oranges? Maybe I’m being unfair, pitting a visual medium against a textual one? But then again, A GHOST IS A WISH is funny regardless of medium, so I dunno.

What it comes down to, I think, is my practical, objective-focused side versus my magpie-esque pleasure button side. In my writing I try to blend the two for the best of both worlds, but like I said earlier, this is no easy task. Indulgence for indulgence’s sake is the point of, uh, indulging, so adding in deeper, more resonant elements becomes very difficult without losing the delicious texture of, “beetle-scurrying, creeping, threading, filtering, motioning, making all moons sullen, and surely clouding all clear-run waters.” Because if and when it doesn’t make sense, evoking only feeling, only pathos, you lose ethos and, as a result, your audience’s belief in your authority as storyteller. You lose logos, too, your argument for your story’s existence, your plot, your ability to lead your audience from one point to the next. Texture is great, but that’s all it is. Without the surrounding context, it’s just a ghost-wish.

While I was hunting down some seasonal quotes to pull for this post, I came across the following from Helen Bevington’s When Found, Make a Verse of:

The seasonal urge is strong in poets. Milton wrote chiefly in winter. Keats looked for spring to wake him up (as it did in the miraculous months of April and May, 1819). Burns chose autumn. Longfellow liked the month of September. Shelley flourished in the hot months. Some poets, like Wordsworth, have gone outdoors to work. Others, like Auden, keep to the curtained room. Schiller needed the smell of rotten apples about him to make a poem. Tennyson and Walter de la Mare had to smoke. Auden drinks lots of tea, Spender coffee; Hart Crane drank alcohol. Pope, Byron, and William Morris were creative late at night. And so it goes.

Funny that it’s about poets, given my stated distaste for the genre (keeping in mind that just because it’s not for me doesn’t mean I think it’s a worthless medium!). Putting that aside, this observation makes the important point that texture and indulgence are vital to the human creative process. Whether it’s seasonal, sensory, or circadian rhythm-related, these seemingly shallow and mundane facets of our daily lives play a huge role in our ability to write and create. This texture, on a meta level, is more relevant than anything Ray Bradbury can put to paper, because without it, there would be nothing to write (woe be the man who keeps me from my odorous rotten apples…). And then imbuing that texture into the worlds of your work is just one of many ways that authors observe the world around them, condense and refine it as necessary, and turn it into a story.

This debate that I am having with myself reeks of semantics, of who cares’. You write how you write, and what you write is what you write, and what you write might be that ghosts are wishes. I guess what I think is relevant and worth taking away from this post is that both approaches have merit, and, as with so many other elements of writing, are context and genre-dependent.

Something I’ve thought about a lot over the years is, despite a four-year writing education, I never really learned how to write on a macro level. No instructor ever stood at the front of our classroom and said, “this is how you write a story”. Which is wild and, judging by my alma mater’s tuition fees, financially vexing. It haunts me, a bit, that you can’t learn to write like you can learn a math equation, the laws of thermodynamics, or how to… do… other STEM-related procedures I have no understanding of. That seemingly unteachable gap of how to actually write a story (preferably a good one) hovers over so many of my granular, hair-splitting arguments I document here about writing that there must be some sort of connection. That anyone who writes any kind of story is, in a way, in a never ending freefall. That some of the most important elements of writing and creating will always resist being pinned to a corkboard. And that is something I will surely be talking about in the future, because I find it fascinating, confusing, and even a bit alarming? But also freeing, and scary, and help, I’m Flanaganing…

I pulled a bunch of quotes for this post and only ended up using the Bradbury ones because his absurd prose proved an excellent case study for this discussion, so I’ll put the remainder I grabbed below so you can enjoy them like I did.

And so with the sunshine and the great bursts of leaves growing on the trees, just as things grow in fast movies, I had that familiar conviction that life was beginning over again with the summer.

– F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

The first week of August hangs at the very top of summer, the top of the live-long year, like the highest seat of a Ferris wheel when it pauses in its turning. The weeks that come before are only a climb from balmy spring, and those that follow a drop to the chill of autumn, but the first week of August is motionless, and hot. It is curiously silent, too, with blank white dawns and glaring noons, and sunsets smeared with too much color.

― Natalie Babbitt, Tuck Everlasting

Summer is only the unfulfilled promise of spring, a charlatan in place of the warm balmy nights I dream of in April. It’s a sad season of life without growth…It has no day.

― F. Scott Fitzgerald, This Side of Paradise

In the spring, at the end of the day, you should smell like dirt.

— Margaret Atwood, Bluebeard’s Egg

'Is the spring coming?' he said. 'What is it like?'

'It is the sun shining on the rain and the rain falling on the sunshine…'

— Frances Hodgson Burnett, The Secret Garden

It was one of those March days when the sun shines hot and the wind blows cold: when it is summer in the light, and winter in the shade.

— Charles Dickens, Great Expectations 

Spring drew on...and a greenness grew over those brown beds, which, freshening daily, suggested the thought that Hope traversed them at night, and left each morning brighter traces of her steps.

― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

I do an awful lot of thinking and dreaming about things in the past and the future - the timelessness of the rocks and the hills - all the people who have existed there. I prefer winter and fall, when you feel the bone structure of the landscape - the loneliness of it, the dead feeling of winter. Something waits beneath it, the whole story doesn't show.

― Andrew Wyeth (Listen, I can’t find the actual source for this quote but I love Andrew Wyeth’s work so it’s staying here anyway)

But now she loved winter. Winter was beautiful "up back" - almost intolerably beautiful. Days of clear brilliance. Evenings that were like cups of glamour - the purest vintage of winter's wine. Nights with their fire of stars. Cold, exquisite winter sunrises. Lovely ferns of ice all over the windows of the Blue Castle. Moonlight on birches in a silver thaw. Ragged shadows on windy evenings - torn, twisted, fantastic shadows. Great silences, austere and searching. Jewelled, barbaric hills. The sun suddenly breaking through grey clouds over long, white Mistawis. Ice-grey twilights, broken by snow-squalls, when their cosy living-room, with its goblins of firelight and inscrutable cats, seemed cosier than ever. Every hour brought a new revelation and wonder.

― L.M. Montgomery, The Blue Castle

And if it’s around October twentieth and everything smoky-smelling and the sky orange and ash gray at twilight, it seems Halloween will never come in a fall of broomsticks and a soft flap of bed-sheets around corners.

— Ray Bradbury, Something Wicked This Way Comes

The wind outside nested in each tree, prowled the sidewalks in invisible treads like unseen cats.
Tom Skelton shivered. Anyone could see that the wind was a special wind this night, and the darkness took on a special feel because it was All Hallows' Eve. Everything seemed cut from soft black velvet or gold or orange velvet. Smoke panted up out of a thousand chimneys like the plumes of funeral parades. From kitchen windows drifted two pumpkin smells: gourds being cut, pies being baked.

— Ray Bradbury, The Halloween Tree

A GHOST IS A WISH YOUR HEART MAKES

For what it’s worth, Oculus is a great horror movie

don’t worry about it: behind the scenes & what’s next

Note: Spoilers abound for Don’t Worry About It

the part where i bloviate

There’s not much in terms of gratitude I can express that I haven’t already, multiple times. If you’re here, I assume you just finished Don’t Worry About It. Thank you. It means a lot to me. I hope you found it meaningful.

Here and there I’ve talked a little bit about my writing process for this novel. I figured there was no better time to collect my thoughts on my unofficial debut than the final day of posting. It actually feels a bit surreal, in the sense that I have now fully published a novel, as amateur as said publishing journey may have been.

First, a slight elephant in the room: almost no one read it. Obviously this could change… or it could not. I knew when I started posting it that ao3 was far from the best place to market it. To be honest, I don’t know of any platform that would be a good fit for Don’t Worry, including mainstream publishing. Even when trying to find an agent, I struggled with describing my target demographic because it’s such a niche topic. This doesn’t hurt my ego because I am confident in Don’t Worry’s quality, but I think it’s fair to say I am still disappointed in its performance. It’s difficult to swallow the amount of attention my m/m fanfiction got versus my original f/f fiction, but I can’t change what my readers are interested in, or the wider societal factors that influence said interests. To the people who have commented on my fanfiction over the years to say that you’d read a book if I ever published it… chop chop! Judge Judy tapping watch gif!

To the handful of people that read this week-to-week from the first chapter to the fortieth, god love ya. It means a lot to me that you trusted me to pull it off. That was like 20+ weeks of uncertainty, which is a big ask. This was not planned at all, but I ended up being pretty happy with the majority of the “cut off” points as I posted 2 chapters at a time. I didn’t even add chapters until after the entire book had been written, so it was just a happy coincidence things worked out that way.

As with a lot of my writing in recent years, I think Don’t Worry’s strongest point is the overarching story— on a grand scale, I am very happy with the story arc, character arcs, thematic elements, and how they all intertwine. I’ve mentioned before that I always try to ensure my endings are earned, and I think I succeeded here. Wren really gets put through the wringer, but not in a way that feels gratuitous or exaggerated, and her transformation (and ultimate realization that she can never truly win) is, conversely, hard-won.

Probably because it was my debut that I wrote on my own time and with no contractual obligations hanging over my head, I’m really proud to say I didn’t pull my punches. There are feminist themes in Don’t Worry that are very critical of a lot of liberal and even leftist views, especially calling into question choice feminism, plastic surgery, gender roles, and the sex/body positive movements. This is a narrative that is very critical of femininity as an institution, while also acknowledging that the women forced to live under this system are not perfect, free of bias, or slay queens just because they are women. Women can and do step on and destroy each other within the wider patriarchal system that seeks to step on and destroy them in turn. Wren (and Ashley) can be deeply unlikeable at times and make terrible (but hopefully understandable) decisions, while remaining sympathetic and complex.

I have often found a lot of “issue” narratives can feel very sterile and inhuman. While I wouldn’t call Don’t Worry an “issue” narrative 100%, there’s definitely something akin to it floating in its DNA. I think I succeeded in taking a lot of the more cringeworthy elements that you tend to see in issue narratives (proselytizing, prose that reads like a tumblr post, one-note hero/villain characters, etc) and offering a more complex, character-focused take. I also think it helps that it’s funny, but not a comedy. We tend to underestimate how powerful humour is in more serious narratives— really helps the medicine go down.

I am very pleased with the tension between Wren and Ashley, as well as their eventual crazy fuck sesh. Lesbians are so rarely portrayed as panting after crazy fuck seshes. Lesbians are so rarely portrayed as being sexual beings (in a way that isn’t a creepy porn category) at all, and I was more than happy to step up to the plate. Plus, who doesn’t love a good will they/won’t they with the added delirium of “does she actually like me or am i simply providing her with non-threatening attention”.

I love Wren. In the name of professionalism, I swore she wouldn’t be my cinnamon roll/blorbo/whatever the new term is, but what can I say. I’ve always loved (and been terrified of) an ice queen. For what it’s worth, I think I did a good job of hiding my affections…

… maybe save the ending. I really like the ending— I do think it’s earned, and I do think it fits into the “surprising but inevitable” camp I’ve banged on about before— but I had my concerns about it being “too easy”. I fretted about the fairly stereotypical time jumps that happen at the end. It’s so easy to skip over significant events and then reap the narrative rewards without ever having to devote page space to the grueling journey— the author is like, just trust me bro, Wren had a lot of quiet personal revelations during her year of living in the woods, you’re just gonna have to believe me. At the same time… I think the previous 39 chapters do a pretty good job of making their case.

I was also worried Ashley showing up of her own volition was a bit much. I think I tempered it pretty well with the final jab at how hopeless the world is for women with the Brandy stinger, but at the same time, I was really moved by the concept of Ashley, always a force to be reckoned with, deciding that actually, fuck what Wren thinks. Ashley’s here to stay, and changing Wren’s decor to suit her preferences as I type this, Wren leaning against the nearest doorframe, arms crossed, watching her work with a hidden smile on her face.

Don’t Worry’s most glaring weakness is the word count. For a literary fiction debut, this is a whopper at just under 110k. Had I gotten the chance to work with an editor, I would’ve been looking for some serious assistance with trimming down the first third. I complain about overlong first acts in books all the time, only to fall prey to the same evil urge. C’est la vie.

As with most of my writing, I find the prose pretty milquetoast. Like, it’s fine. There’s a few bangers hidden in there. But I know I’m capable of better. The problem is, being a good line-by-line writer is fucking hard. You know how many lines are in 110k? A lot. Better prose, meaningful prose, and lyrical (but not purple) prose are all things I will continue to strive for. I know I’m capable of it, is the thing. I just need to put in the work.

The plot, as such, could be tightened up. Notably the drama surrounding Ashley’s mom’s confederate flag decal/kissing Kristy debacle. Though I maintain that Wren thinking CHOO CHOO DYKE EXPRESS COMING THROUGH is incredibly funny is the correct reaction.

Near the end of Don’t Worry, Wren suffers what could kindly be called a break from reality and starts thinking of herself as an object, as it. The funniest possible story behind this is that when I first came up with the concept, it was like, a joke? Not a joke, exactly, but I immediately dismissed the idea as being too goofy, too on the nose, just too much. And then I wrote it anyway, and I realized how the logical endpoint of virulent, merciless objectification through her late teens and entire adult life so far leading to her entire sense of self being eclipsed by only how she was consumed by others, I was like, well, that makes perfect sense, actually. So it stayed.

Would it be weird if I wrote fanfiction for my own original fiction? I have no interest in writing fanfiction anymore, but surely this would count as an exception? Over the past year or so I went through a huge bigfoot phase, which included watching all 11 seasons of Finding Bigfoot. Incredible TV, highly recommend. Anyway, hear me out. For weeks I was consumed by a post canon fic where Wren somehow gets suckered into joining an all-women group of cryptozooligist bigfoot hunters who traipse through the woods one night every month to “gather evidence”, or, as the team on Finding Bigfoot calls it, “squatchin’”. The premise is absurd, but consider this: she lives in the PNW now. Of course there’s an all-women group of cryptozooligists who go on monthly outings to try and find evidence of bigfoot. Or, consider THIS: Wren has trouble connecting with other women. What better women for her to connect with, as a fellow freak, than a bunch of other freaks? They’re not the same breed of freak, but freaks gotta stick together. And of course because Wren is stupid hot, the youngest member of their group is a socially awkward 18 year old lesbian who develops a fat crush on her, which makes Ashley crrrrrrazy, because girlfriend derangement syndrome doesn’t stop just because you’re a lesbian (and also she’s super weirded out by Wren’s decision to do this in the first place because she doesn’t understand that community is the bigfoot wren found along the way), which eventually prompts them to go on a couples trip to visit Celia and Daphne so they can get “a weekend away", but THEN Wren is a moron and doesn’t mention to Ashley that Celia is her ex, and when Ashley finds out she goes even crrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrazier (fair), which leads to Celia being like are you fucking kidding me you didn’t tell her?? and wren is sheepish and embarrassed and really doesn’t have an excuse beyond her still learning how to be in a real relationship and bad at communication and talking about things, which leads to Wren and Ashley having possessive sex in Celia’s guest bedroom on her squeaky guest bed (Celia was smart enough to vacate the premises and take Daphne out on a date) which leads to Wren proposing to Ashley in the middle of sweaty passionate sex, something that is obviously a sore spot for Ashley that they’ve never talked about, never planned for, and Wren didn’t even realize how badly she wanted Ashley to be her wife and for her to be Ashley’s wife until that moment, and Ashley goes even CRRRRRRRAZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZIERRRRR (wren’s penchant for taking L’s remains quite strong post canon) before practically exploding into a million pieces and wail-accepting yet another shitty, unplanned proposal that is infinitely better than the last shitty, unplanned proposal she received, because she wanted it so bad and was so afraid to ever even touch that part of herself again, especially because if Wren turned her down or wasn’t interested in marriage she would blow up, and the fact that Wren brought it up unprompted and when they’re both high as fuck on sex hormones leads to maybe the most enthusiastic yes in the history of marriage proposals, despite the insane and slightly worrisome undertones, and yeah, that’s my presentation.

Sorry, I blacked out for a minute there. What was i saying?

Anyway… thanks for reading my book!

the part where i ask you for money on ko-fi

I threatened to start a donate page on this site, but I ended up settling on a ko-fi, as I believe more people are familiar with it, and, not to be a capitalist pig, but doing it here would cost money, and ko-fi is free. You can also blog over there, though I’ll have to do more research before deciding if it would be the right fit for the platform. In fact, I have no idea if Don’t Worry About It and any other lesbian works I’m considering writing would be considered erotica or pornography (regardless of my own personal feelings on the matter), and a lot of platforms don’t take kindly to that type of content. Lots of fanfiction writers use it so maybe it would be fine? Guess I’ll find out.

You can find me on ko-fi here. Regarding donations, please note: writing fanfiction has been a hobby of mine for over a decade, as well as a way to connect with the source medium, fandom, and myself. Writing fic has been as much for myself as it has been for others, though that doesn’t change how grateful I am for the overwhelmingly kind response (and discourse) my writing has generated over the years.

This ko-fi does not exist for “fic rendered”. I am not collecting or soliciting donations for fanfiction I wrote for fun, as a hobby (aka all of it). I wrote fic for the love of the game (and kudos) and I ask you to refrain from donating if your only goal is to thank me for my fandom contributions. I promise, your enjoyment and engagement is more than enough!

What this ko-fi does exist for is supporting my transition into writing original fiction. One day, maybe, possibly, if the planets align and the unknowable, non-existent forces that govern our existence are in a benevolent mood, a literary agent will deign to take me on as a client and I can become an “official” author, cashing “official” author cheques. However, today is not that day.

I have always struggled with the concept of being paid for my “work”, so I think a donate option is a fair middle ground now that I have left behind fanfiction (which I do not want to be paid for) and entering the terrifying world of having to make up everything myself. And, well, I’m a good writer. This is my craft, and I have spent years and an entire university degree honing it. I can only justify why I think I deserve to be paid for my original work so much before I start to undermine the art of writing as a whole.

THAT BEING SAID…

Donations are not expected or required, only appreciated. Any and all support (engagement, sharing my original work with others, etc) is just as, if not more valuable, than any dollar amount. Anything on my ao3 will always be available for free. Maybe I will produce paid original content in the future on ko-fi, though that is only a possibility.

the part where i Don’t Worry About It Ebook

As I just said, Don’t Worry About It is available for free on ao3. You can download it, print it, put it on your e-reader, whatever. However, I thought it might be fun to do an ebook version as well so that instead of just flat out donating, you can actually get something in return if you like. This is a PDF file I created that looks a little bit more like an actual novel as opposed to fanfiction. I’m not a professional— I couldn’t even get the cover art to convert from a word doc to a PDF gracefully, which is why it’s a bit grainy— but it was a fun project to work on, and potentially something I am interested in pursuing in the future. This is a “pay what you want” model, meaning exactly that, with the lowest price being $0.01.

The cover art was also really fun to do, and something I’ve had in mind for a while. It was inspired by the cover of My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Ottessa Moshfegh. I considered using a pen name that is less goofy than saltyfeathers, but am also mindful of the fact that in the future I might actually want to use said pen name for more mainstream pursuits, so for now, you’re stuck with the goofy ao3 username.

You can purchase the Don’t Worry About it Ebook here.

the part where i what’s next?

It’s so tempting to put “idk” and just leave it at that.

However, I do have plans. I spent the majority of my adult life purposely not having plans, or only having vague plans, and it has become eminently clear that specific goals are what I need to feel like a real human participating in real society. I expect to have a real life real boring real steady job soonish that will take up the majority of my weekdays. I am trying to fill my free time with meaningful and useful hobbies/skills. I am spending time with my family and trying to learn how to move through the everyday social landscape without feeling like I’m being crushed beneath a pressure equivalent to that found at the bottom of the Mariana Trench. I’m trying to figure out what I want in a future partner and future friends, because I spent a long time not putting any thought into either, and as a result ended up in relationships that left me exhausted, lonely, unfulfilled, and with a wealth of self-esteem issues that I feel way too old to have. Despite how impossible it feels, I also have my eye set on eventually becoming a homeowner, and based on my understanding, preparing for that transition can never begin early enough.

As for my writing, I’m about 1/3rd of the way through my next novel (with an eye toward serious plot revisions already, because of course). I can’t give specifics because I am hoping to actually get this one published, but if no one wants that one either, prepare to see it on ao3/ko-fi. This will come as no surprise if you’ve read basically any of my other blog posts that discuss mainstream publishing, but what that means is this novel is going to be “fun” and “palatable to a general audience” and “a lot less complex and interesting than what I’m capable of”. That doesn’t mean it sucks or anything. It’s just a bit… nerfed. But it’s still about lesbians! So, there’s that. Though somehow I doubt that helps much with the whole “getting published” or “palatable to a general audience” concepts.

There’s also a handful of short/novella-length ideas I’ve had kicking around for a while that I might peck away at in the short term. I would love if you stuck around to see what I’m up to, as keeping my writing fire burning means a lot to me and your engagement is a big part of what motivates me. During the drier spells, I would like to keep this blog (or ko-fi, or both) updated semi-frequently. Monthly at the least, I hope. Also, you can put your email address in the little box at the bottom of this page if you want email notifications when I post.

Thanks for reading, and stay tuned :)

rape & sexual assault as plot points

Note the obvious content warnings for this one. Also, spoilers for up to chapter 38 of Don’t Worry About It!

I don’t always ask myself, “Why am I writing [specific thing]?” Sometimes—a lot of the time— I write what I want to write, what I am passionate about, or curious about, or interested in, you get it. I don’t question it. Sometimes the idea-generating portion of my creative process is as unknown to me as the bottom of the ocean. My brain does what it wants, and I’m just desperately trying to keep up.

However, there is a time and place to pause. To reflect. I think the question is less, “Why am I writing [specific thing]?” than it is, “What do I have to add to the discussion?”

Don’t Worry About It has two, arguably three, main characters. Wren, Ashley, and Leo. You may have noticed, or not, that all three of them are white. I’m white. I default to whiteness in my writing. I try to be aware of it in a way that isn’t some onerous, asinine, race-blind goofiness that makes me sound like a buffoon. I thought about it. These characters were white upon conception, but that doesn’t really mean anything, because they’re not real people. I considered changing at least one of their races. I felt awkward about it, because even though I try to be aware of my white default mode, I also felt like this was moving into uncomfortably tokenistic territory. And I, eyeroll-worthy overthinking hang-wringing white knight self-flagellator that I am (while also of course being totally cool about it), worried deeply that, “what if I change one of their races, but then I accidentally stereotype something negative about their race because none of these characters are particularly good people?” Because I guess every single person who isn’t white is a perfect princess? like, just calm down. Deep breaths. You can probably tell I both internalized a lot of 2010s tumblr rhetoric and am also deeply neurotic about it, because heaven forbid I ever make a single honest mistake or say something that someone watching from two states over on their telescope decides is problematic. The constant self-surveillance is real. The constant self-surveillance is not my friend. No marginalized group enjoys when others bend over backwards so far for them they lose their heads up their ass. Juuuuust be chill. An old inside joke from between me and a friend, still ringing true after all these years: Detroit become NORMAL.

The characters stayed white. All that bloviating and naval-gazing above (yes, it’s true, few people need to go outside more than I do) completely fell by the wayside because of a much more pertinent question: As a white author, what would I be adding to the conversation of how people of colour (note there was no specific race I was considering, just generic POC) navigate the celebrity world and every other significant theme that comes up in the narrative? As a white author, was I prepared to address how those themes intersected with their race? Fucking no, dude, of course not.

So for me, that settled the debate pretty firmly. At some point I think I’d like to talk a little more about representation in media and my maybe unconventional thoughts on it, but for now, this will have to suffice. Really, the above is meant as an example of what the process can look like when I’m trying to decide what staying in my lane means, without forgetting that the whole point of writing fiction is to explore other worlds, other people, other viewpoints, other… lanes. Other lanes are where we learn empathy, that we are the same but also different, and sometimes there will be fender benders when you’re driving in new places, and it’s fine, and we will all be okay.

At this point, I have now written multiple works that include rape or sexual assault as plot points, most notably Don’t Worry About It and, from my MDZS days, a moment on the lips, which may have slipped you by. Or it’s possible you saw it and intentionally let it slip you by. No hard feelings, it’s not for everyone. It’s not even for me. It’s a nasty little piece of work that explores both of Wei Wuxian’s stints in the Burial Mounds while he’s living there with the Wens and trading their safety for inventions/talismans sent to back to Jin Guangshan, with Lan Wangji serving as the go-between. For anyone who doesn’t know anything about MDZS, Wei Wuxian’s first stint in the Burial Mounds was bad and isn’t flushed out at all in the source material, beyond him honing his demonic cultivation skills, aka his bad boy powers. The world-building specifics are not super important for this discussion, but what is important is the fact that (in the fic) he was raped during his time at the Burial Mounds, which is discussed early on and throughout the narrative. Not explicitly, but it’s also not subtext that during this time, he was raped by (and developed a very complicated relationship with) a supernatural entity that took on Lan Wangji’s form, which of course makes things quite confusing when the real Lan Wangji shows up and has no idea what happened.

In Don’t Worry About It, Wren is coerced into giving Leo’s father a blowjob when she is seventeen, a gift from Leo to dad, as an offering, an apology for being a fuck-up that just got out of rich kid rehab. The newest, hottest star. The actual details of the assault are scant, including what, if any, conversations Leo and Wren had about it beforehand, but the emotional toll it took on Wren eventually coalesces into a very similar sex scene playing out between her and Ashley, with the roles reversed, Wren’s heinous attempt at regaining any semblance of control in her life.

More for housekeeping’s sake than anything, I also feel compelled to mention that I’ve written a number of Wangxian fics where the concept of “consent” is purposefully blurry, because Wangxian, as a pairing, are like… crazy. There are so many crossed boundaries and wild sexcapades in MDZS that are very fun, but also flirting intently with sex pest territory. I’m not here to defend it, just to note that I enjoyed it, and the majority of my more recent Wangxian fanfiction usually deals in one way or another with the absolutely fucked up & in love ‘no-no-yes’ dynamic they have. MDZS is also very funny, so a lot of this is at least a bit tongue-in-cheek on the part of the author. However, as fanfiction is wont to do, a lot of mine is like, “yeah but what if it was less funny?” I wrote many tens of thousands of words exploring their sexual dynamic in more serious ways, and investigating Wangxian’s relationship with consent, power imbalances, and how their personalities and histories impact it.

So I guess if I ever need to point a finger at why I became so interested in writing about fucked up consent dynamics, blame Wangxian.

I give a lot of consideration to the placement of rape/sexual assault in my stories. And by consideration, I don’t mean I sat down and brainstormed the most PC, least problematic way of doing so. I didn’t approach these plot points thinking how important it is to address stereotypes surrounding victims, ‘perfect victim’ narratives, or highlight failures of the American justice system (especially hilarious considering in the source material, Wangxian live in ancient fantasy China where magical powers are real). As I’ve mentioned previously, Don’t Worry has lots to say, but at the end of the day, it’s a story first. From a writer’s point of view, rape and sexual assault are neutral plot points that can be deployed as necessary to make the story work, just like any other. At the risk of sounding like the world’s biggest asshole, these are also really interesting, complex story beats that offer unique insights into your characters, your world, and the themes of your work (if done RIGHT!!!).

From a real alive woman’s point of view, I read the previous paragraph and my response is:

:|

I wouldn’t have written what I’ve written if I didn’t think it could stand up to scrutiny. Novels aren’t PSAs. Writers and other creators have some duty of care when it comes to what they produce, but that duty is so individualized and personal and contextual it would be useless and maybe even harmless to even try to come up with an authors’ hippocratic oath. This is a situation that every party involved (author, reader, publisher, distributor, media coverage, etc) needs to come at in good faith, critical thinking caps on, and not everyone does. In fact, I’m sad to say, hardly anyone does. This blog post is basically my own personal duty of care. Where my creativity, compassion, and writing ability all comes together in some version of an author’s statement. My own overlong TOS that no one ever reads.

What really grinds my gears is that the stigma of writing rape/sexual assault should almost exclusively be aimed at men. Women can and do perpetuate harm against other women, including when it comes to discussions of abuse and sexual assault (just see Amber Heard for example and how she was treated by both women and men, by far one of the most upsetting, surreal, and outrageous sagas I’ve ever seen play out in front of me) but they do so under patriarchy. How often are female writers in media caught writing sexy beat-off rape material like in Game of Thrones? Not very. Switch to the world of fanfiction, and the numbers flip. In large part because fanfiction is skewed heavily female, but also, an exhausted, weary part of me thinks, to cope. There is so much fanfiction out there about rape and sexual assault (visited upon female and male characters, though keep in mind it is almost exclusively women writing it) that has clearly been given no consideration beyond, “this is hot and sexy”. ao3, wattpad, tumblr, it’s there, in huge numbers. I’m not a scientist or doctor, but anecdotally, and keeping in mind the overwhelming percentage of victims of rape are female, what is actually going on here? There are women who have been assaulted, using fanfiction as a way to process their trauma. Or, and this can relate to the first, women who live in a world that holds these types of assaults up as hot and sexy and they have fallen in line, whether they know it or not. Some may argue there is a third possibility: some women, in a vacuum, genuinely find this hot and sexy. I have chosen not to engage with this argument because a) we don’t live in a vacuum, and b) the health and safety of all women is more important than the kinks of a select few, and while I and no one else can stop them from acting on these desires, they should proceed with extreme caution, especially when engaging with male partners, while also taking time to reflect on why they have this kink in the first place, and if it’s not in fact a case of one of the first two reasons.

Even with the above taken into consideration, the most visible instances of rape and sexual assault used as plot points in a misogynistic fashion are perpetrated and (in cases like TV or movies where there are multiple people involved in the production) enabled by men. But even on my own, I’ve wrestled with whether my being a woman who has not been raped/sexually assaulted means I am ‘allowed’ to write about it, oftentimes in fairly gratuitous, complicated ways. Obviously, being a victim of sexual assault is not an identity in the same way that sex, sexual orientation, or race are identities. It’s less a matter of appropriation and misunderstanding than it is the pop cultural and real life misogynistic context it exists in. I don’t want to do it ‘wrong’. But then again, how can my work, written in good faith and with due consideration be ‘wrong’ in how it depicts victims of sexual assault? Especially because implying there is a wrong way to do it implies there is a right way to do it, which just circles back around to idea of there being good victims and bad victims when in reality, there is no good and bad, only a perpetrator and a victim.

For all the reasons outlined in this post, I was trepidations about writing about sexual assault. I did it anyway. Originally, it was meant to be “texture” in Wren’s past (same goes for a moment on the lips, actually). Not to say it wasn’t a significant event in her life, just that the actual story didn’t revolve around it. One of the interesting things I’ve found while writing about sexual assault is the extent to which it takes over a narrative/character. Obviously, sex and sexuality are big parts of everything I write, but it’s been a surprise to me both times (with moment on the lips and Don’t Worry About It) when sexual assault as a character note ends up taking on a much bigger role than the “texture” I mention above. Which is such a strange position to be in, because I feel somehow like I’ve both oversold and undersold the impact of sexual assault on a character’s life. In a way, this reflects the reality much better than any other approach, because the aftermath of any assault will inevitably be messy. There is no clean-cut minty fresh way to recover from being raped. I’m not trying to pat myself on the back as if I’m the only writer who’s figured this out, but I do find it both realistic and difficult to reconcile the concept of an assault as a life-changing event that also, at the end of the day, is just one of many life-changing events strung together over the decades, all of which will affect you in one way or another.

Writing Wren’s assault by John West was complex, both emotionally and from a storytelling perspective. As of this post being published, Don’t Worry hasn’t concluded yet, but I don’t feel like I’m spoiling anything by saying this event, while significant to Wren as a character, remains in the background of Don’t Worry’s narrative. It feels almost tactless to say, but I am very glad I let this particular plot point cook for as long as it did. There’s certainly an element of revelation to it, as what happened doesn’t become fully clear until about 75% through the novel, but the understanding that something has happened to Wren is obvious from early on. There is tension in that period of knowing/not knowing what’s happened that is used as a tool to put together a compelling narrative. It feels, again, a bit ghoulish to congratulate myself for successfully foreshadowing a rape reveal, and yet… here I am. My most generic defense is it felt right for the story. Don’t Worry is not a story of one woman’s courageous #metoo fight against an obvious Harvey Weinstein stand-in and how, as a result, she liberates women everywhere. Wren refuses to know herself. Wren refuses to take anything seriously. Wren refuses to let anything hurt. The narrative decision to withhold the rape reveal until the 75% point was meant to reflect Wren’s own minimizing of the event. Wren doesn’t spend every day dwelling on the many bad things that have happened to her. She doesn’t sit around thinking about herself as a victim, or a survivor, or anything in that realm. In fact, John West’s name appears only nine times in a novel that is over one hundred thousands words long. His absence looms larger than his presence ever could.

The feminist backlash against how sexual assault and rape are depicted in pop culture (and how society responds to it in the real world) is still an ongoing battle that unfortunately will never end. I hope my sympathies and solidarity for this and the continuing (and also never ending) fight for women’s rights are obvious in my writing, both in my original work and here on this blog. In fact, I kind of wish I cared about it less because the weight it puts on my shoulders is immense and unshakable. The weight it puts on my writing is, also, immense and unshakable.

At the same time, I’m not an activist, a sociologist, a philosopher, a politician, a scientist, or a doctor. I’m not responsible for policy, or public health, or proving a thesis. At best, I’m an advocate. But what I really am is a writer. As far as I’m concerned, a writer’s goal should be to craft the best story they can. And part of crafting that story is sitting back and asking yourself, “What do I have to add to the discussion?” Is there even a possible scenario where a thoughtless rape scene is part of a larger and successful story? Is the assault happening on-screen? Is it in the background? How is it described (or, if onscreen, shown)? How is it moving the story forward? Is it excused? Is it between main/secondary characters, or completely random one-off characters? How do the world and the characters in that world react to it? How does it fit into the larger themes and context of the story? Are you confident that depicting the violent subjugation of a woman (assuming the victim is female, as most are) is worth whatever larger point is being made?

Something tells me the Game of Thrones guys didn’t ask themselves these questions. Something tells me the men who have used rape as a cheap storytelling device have not asked themselves these questions. Something tells me that women’s fear and pain and vulnerability are an aphrodisiac to men before they are a character note.

It seems I’ve answered my own question. Of course I’m allowed to write about it. Anyone is allowed to write about it, even if not everyone should. I’m allowed, not because I wrote about it in any specific way, but because I thought about it, in depth, and how it would impact my story and my character(s) and my themes, just like I would with any other significant narrative element. It’s not exactly in my lane. But it sure feels adjacent to it.

It’s awful to sit here and think about how much of our perception of rape and sexual assault has been warped by sexism and misogyny. How we have to have endless conversations and play word games about whether the women who have been assaulted are “victims” or “survivors”, as if changing the terminology changes the crime. The endless, endless discourse of what constitutes rape/sexual assault, to consider the perpetrator’s future prospects when reporting, the humiliation and pain and trauma, potential for STIs and pregnancy (which, of course, vaults the woman into yet another woman-specific hellacious experience regardless of how she proceeds), the stigma, and on, and on, and on. When issues that either disproportionately or only affect women, there is absolutely no getting straight to the point. There is never an easy solution, because there isn’t an easy solution to sexism and misogyny. You can #killallmen all you want. It’s still not the answer. Our world (and I do mean our WHOLE world, not just my tiny little North American sliver of it) is built on top of a system meant to degrade, denigrate, and disenfranchise women. It is everywhere. And just one teeny tiny microscopic drop of it has come, all the way from the top, and found itself here, on this blog that, on a good day, three people read.

grandma rants about plot twists & 5g

I have a confession to make. I’ve gone digging in my mentions over the years, and have seen a fair amount of discourse about my writing outside the scope of ao3 stats. This involves social media posts across multiple platforms and also, hilariously, a goodreads author page (which I have no affiliation with, for what it’s worth). I out my embarrassing ego trip because this is how I learned that multiple people hate the “twist” in the dean winchester beat sheet. “Twist” is in quotes, because what some would call the unexpected plot development approximately 80% into the narrative, I would call… a plot development. For anyone who doesn’t know, care, or remember, the “twist” in that college au is that Cas isn’t a normal college student at all, but working undercover as a member of an ornately wealthy media conglomerate run by his family in order to suss out the hacker (Dean’s best friend, Charlie) who stole a bunch of money from them and hire her. Essentially, the entire plot is revealed to have been a job interview for Charlie. The devil you know, you know?

Now, the twist people don’t like isn’t that Dean is the b-plot of his own story (hence the title, which also draws on themes of how debilitating the pressure to follow societal scripts can be ((SCRIPTS, get it??)), and, very loosely, follows the generic save the cat screenwriting beat sheet), but that Cas wasn’t just a regular joe-schmo college kid. Ignoring the fact that Cas being exactly as he seemed would’ve made for a very boring story, I’m more interested in the accusation that this so-called twist came out of nowhere.

This inability to see the very obvious twist (aka plot development) incoming is not the result of any one thing. The main reason I can see why people wouldn’t clock it is that overly long college AUs don’t usually have plots. The mind craves consistency, and a large portion of the fanfiction-reading audience wants their tropes straightforward and easily digested. However, I would be remiss to not mention how terrible our collective reading comprehension has gotten. That tumblr post from years ago about pissing on the poor seems only more relevant as time goes on and the internet infiltrates more and more aspects of our lives.

In a vacuum, the plot point that Cas isn’t who he says he is gets spelled out in glaring neon letters. To the point where I was worried it was too obvious and almost eyeroll-worthy at how heavily I was hinting.

Turns out, my concerns were unnecessary!

Hint after blatant hint that something weird is going on with Cas is dropped. Literally from their first meeting, Dean’s instincts regarding Cas are, “Something’s up with him,” the joke of course being he’s right, but he’s not right for the right reasons (gay panic). Har har. Cas takes mysterious phone calls. Dean overhears mysterious conversations. Charlie “off-handedly” mentions her hacking exploits multiple times. There’s a whole not-very-good sideplot with Cain that Cas reacts weirdly to. They run into one of Cas’ old marks who flips out at him.

Maybe the most obvious is that this storyline follows the arc of Cas’ first season on the show— he’s being controlled by his creepy weirdo powerful family and only at the end, once it seems like he’s fully brainwashed by them does he figure his shit out and throw his lot in with Dean and co. With a tiny bit of his season 6 betrayal sprinkled on top for some seasoning.

This all seemed very straightforward to me, but not everyone. And those comments have stuck with me since I first saw them and they made me reconsider what a “plot twist” even is. I really like the wisdom that an ending is surprising but inevitable. Or as I often think of it, I always try to ensure my stories earn their endings, which is a very similar philosophy. This isn’t saying every single reader is expected to predict exactly what is going on— the specifics of the twist/plot development are unique to the story, and also part of the fun. A lot of people guessed Cas was in the mafia, which is a relatively common trope in deancas AUs (presumably because of the complex familial obligations inherent in the trope, but also hilariously in part because Misha Collins is some amount of Russian), which, based on context clues, was an acceptable guess, and I assume quite enjoyable when that guess was close, but not exact. Surprising, but inevitable, right?

And yet, should a twist not be the same? Surprising, but inevitable? Earned by the story that preceded it? Unexpected maybe, but surely a good twist lays the ground work with appropriate foreshadowing? The concept of a twist at this point in the cultural zeitgeist feels hokey. Like in a dumb action movie where you’re pretty much playing roulette to see which character is going to turn out to have been evil the whole time. Or the entire final season(s) of Game of Thrones (which is unique in the sense that you could also discuss it as an adaptational failure on behalf of HBO, but that’s another discussion). Or in a crime drama mini series where at some point you get the inevitable montage of potential suspects doing suspect-y things and maybe they’re really in on it! Though probably not. But also, is that a red herring and not a twist? Or maybe red herring falls under the twist umbrella?

One of my favorite thrillers is Shutter Island. Man, I love that movie. It’s also a movie that is based entirely on a “twist” (that I am about to spoil). However, I’d argue it’s a good movie and an interesting twist that, upon re-watch, earns it. Turns out, US Marshall Leonardo DiCaprio who is supposedly investigating a missing person at a remote psychiatric hospital is literally the inmate running the asylum as part of a radical new therapy! Wahey! Had the movie been made with the viewer in on it the entire time, it would have been a completely different film. Instead of noir gumshoe Marshall Leonardo DiCaprio investigating a spooky missing person’s case on a moody island with his aw shucks good ol’ boy partner Marshall Mark Ruffalo, we would have the ominous Dr Ben Kingsley and his employees running around like chickens with their heads cut off as leo distresses other patients and blows up cars. Not exactly the same vibe, right? Maybe that’s a key component to a twist—were it told from the “untwisted” point of view, it wouldn’t really work. Certainly not in the same way as the original.

Who is in on the twist? Maybe the hokeyness of a twist comes from duping just the viewer, as opposed to the viewer and the character(s). For example, one of the most bizarre “twists” I’ve ever seen comes from a terrible Netflix show a few years ago that got cancelled after one season. You may remember it—it was a starcrossed teen lesbian lovers vampire romance called First Kill, which, UGH, don’t you wish it had been good based on the premise alone. Unfortunately, it was not good. No chemistry between the leads, terrible acting, bad writing, bad worldbuilding, Elizabeth Mitchell?? Nothing against her—I was just surprised to see her.

I digress. The twist. To this day, I remain baffled by it. For the first three-quarters of the season, the two leads (vampire hunter/vampire, respectively) live in a world that is not just implied to not know about the supernatural presence amongst them, but in fact is made so clear by the meta of the show that I never even once considered any other possibility. It was just like, okay, this is a Supernatural/Buffy style setup where the general public is not aware that vampires are just runnin’ around town. All good.

And then an episode ends with the “reveal” that the public actually… does know about vampires? And have known all this time? Despite none of said general public referring to the many supernatural events at have been happening around town since the beginning of the season. Like, it was implied to be this huge secret that is one of those heartstring-tugging tradeoffs that our noble protagonists make in order to preserve normie life. BUT THERE IS NO NORMIE LIFE AND FOR SOME REASON NO ONE MENTIONED IT UP UNTIL LIKE EPISODE SIX OUT OF EIGHT???

I can’t truly articulate how insane this made me, because the show both treated it like a twist, but also hadn’t set up the twist whatsoever so it truly felt like it came out of nowhere and made me think I was having a psychotic break from reality. No one in-universe was surprised, but I sure as hell was. It was baffling to me in a way even the worst TV often isn’t, because even a show like Supernatural, at its worst, understood the most fundamental storytelling techniques of making sure the audience is aware of what’s happening onscreen in front of them.

Maybe you just had to be there. I’ve been upset about this since 2022. Maybe this is the thing that finally did me in and made me realize so much of what’s being made in a post-COVID world is little more than those neural-net brainrot images that almost look like recognizable objects, but in reality are just AI-generated garbage scraped from the bowels of the internet and smashed together in the world’s most evil hadron collider.

But maybe that’s just bad storytelling. Can a twist be done so ineptly it can no longer be called a twist but simply bad storytelling? Are all twists just shit, and any “good twists” are simply good storytelling?

It’s weird because in the grand scheme of things, this doesn’t matter at all. Sometimes definitions are a bit mushy, and in some cases, that’s totally fine. And yet, now that I’m writing about it, I feel compelled to find a specific distinction between the two. I feel deeply unsettled that something so fundamental to our understanding of storytelling cannot be easily defined, despite its prevalence in so many of the narratives we consume.

We’re entering, “grandma, did you forget to take your pills again” territory, but think about the real life version of this that plays out in front of us, over and over. The way dipshits like trump can become obsessed with one phrase, one nickname, one chant, one echolalia, over and over, and regardless of the truth, it becomes the truth for an entire demographic of the general public (lock her up, build the wall, etc). It’s a twist, but it’s a real person in the real world trying to twist reality into something it’s not (and succeeding in frightening ways). This utter breakdown in the importance of definitions, what is true and what isn’t, has seeped into our feeds and social media and streaming networks and content creation and newsrooms in ways that I don’t know if we can ever recover from. The way we (the royal we) continue to enable the spread of misinformation and the eroding of language and truth as we know it feels like a never-ending death knell of critical thinking, narrative control, and our integrity as a species. 

The collective damage COVID did to our psyches and society as a whole, pushing us farther apart and deeper into radicalized online spaces, confining us to our homes/apartments for months on end while the world seemed to spiral faster and faster out of control with every passing second of the 25/8 doomscroll, fucked us up so bad, in so many ways. The fact that one of these ways is that so much more of the escapism on offer sucks in sometimes incomprehensible fashions is so minor, and yet, here in this blog post, has me ranting and raving like every guy on a 5G forum. The rot has spread. We are all in the sludge. What do plot twists have to do with any of it.

You know how people have their bingo cards now? “Wow, Katy Perry detonating an H-bomb over Wisconsin was NOT on my 2032 bingo card”, and so on. “Not on my bingo card” is just another way of saying, “didn’t see that coming!” We’ve entered a space where art no longer imitates life, but we are imposing our understanding of art and cultural narratives onto life. Which is very worrying, since life isn’t art— it’s just life. That’s why we have art in the first place, to help us cope with being alive. Vice versa-ing this, claiming that life imitates art, is a bad idea, but it’s not a surprising one, given the current state of affairs, where everything and your mother is monetizable (I mean literally… you know how many YouTube shorts I’ve seen where ancient, stooped-over grandma keeps getting a camera shoved in her face by her grandchild making bank off her? More than you would expect!). Consider this: how many shows that have predicted real life events predicted events that aren’t shitty?

When everything exists to generate profit, money is truth. More money, more truth. Netflix churns out so much garbage on what feels like a daily basis, and fucking how? They just recently got into hot water for creating AI images of the subject of one of their true crime miniseries, What Jennifer Did. All non-fiction content skews the truth to some degree because they are making an argument, and that’s how arguments are made, but surely this is less skewing, more skewering, when you are literally trying to alter reality.

I don’t have stats on this, but keeping in mind that this post is technically about plot twists, think about how much skew(er)ing so-called “true crime” or other non-fiction content goes through in the editing room. Every episode needs to end on a cliffhanger. There will be red herrings and twists and other detective ephemera and CSI-speak thrown in, because they aren’t depicting the truth, they’re depicting what people have been proven to watch, and as such, what will make money. This is way less of an issue for fictional shows, but when you enter the non-fiction realm and (theoretically) have a responsibility to the truth, people generally expect, y’know, the truth. But if your plot twists and cliff hangers are more important than the truth (if your money is more important than the truth), then where does that leave you? Your audience? Their brains?

The ethics are questionable. The definitions are questionable. The artistry is questionable. I feel like a surly op-ed writer complaining about those damn kids or whatever else about today’s world that I don’t understand, that scares me and is incomprehensible to me. Then again… that incomprehensibility is the problem! So now I don’t know. At least op-ed writers get paid.

To bring things full circle (wonky as said circle may be…) I think the only way to muddle your way through this is to wield your media literacy like it’s a baseball bat wrapped in barbed wire and you’re in a zombie movie. It may be impossible to peel back every layer of misdirection and misinformation, especially these days, but at least you can bludgeon your way a little bit closer to the brain inside that maybe, possibly hasn’t rotted away completely? Or at the very least, ignore the apocalypse altogether and take the long way round.

Something that people may find interesting in the context of this post is a bit of dean winchester beat sheet trivia: For the first thirty thousand words or so, I had Cas’ storyline written as him already having left his evil media conglomerate family, he had made the break from them, and was planning to embark on normie life when he meets Dean. Eventually I was like… something isn’t right with this. And it was the fact that that completely obliterated the most obvious character arc for Cas, that his decision to leave should be a result of the events of the story, as opposed to something that happened offscreen and before the narrative even started. Had I continued in that original vein, the story would have been completely different, completely boring, and, potentially, much more enjoyable for at least some portion of readers. Funny how things work out sometimes.