Hi, you made it. I’m so glad you’re here. Things are scary right now, and no doubt they’re going to get worse before they get better, but there’s one really important thing I need you to know first.
We need you.
More specifically, I need you. I need to know I live in a world where there are other people who are scared, who don’t know what to do and don’t think they have anything of value to offer but they’re still trying their best (and yes, you are doing your best even if your brain is shouting the exact opposite at you).
It’s not one static level of performance, it fluctuates because your life fluctuates. Some days waking up and breathing is a victory, and I need you to count those little victories up with the big ones, because little victories is what it’s going to take to get through this.
I want you to do me a favor. Give yourself one act of kindness, right now. It doesn’t have to be big.
Take a breath and focus on blowing out one long exhale. You can stretch, drink some water, get up and move from the chair or bed if you’ve been doomscrolling, find one beautiful thing around you, have a delightful snack, make yourself a cup of something warm and cozy, or, if you can, change your clothes and put on something warm and cozy.
How did it feel?
Congratulations, now you’ve got one small victory under your belt. Now imagine all the friends and allies you hope to find, think about them having little victories of their own too. Of taking the unknown chaos of the day and finding one small moment to stop and change the narrative.
This is your resistance. They want you scared and exhausted, unable to think or do anything but obey. They are big, but we are many, and those many tiny victories will add up, I promise.
Tag: Queer Writer
NaNoWriMo, eBooks, and Permission Slips
Welcome to November, the time honored month where every writer suddenly feels painfully behind on whatever their project is (myself included). Everything feels daunting, the air is colder, the days are getting shorter. Family holidays and the rising tide of compulsory gift giving capitalism are sneaking up on you, and you’re pushing yourself as best as you can.
It’s a lot, and I’m here to tell you that you are indeed doing your best, and your best is always enough, no matter what anyone else tells you.
I ended October with a delightful bout of COVID (my second one within 6 months after 3 years of not catching it, so please be careful at those family gatherings) and while quarantined from my family, and unable to do 80% of my normal daily household responsibilities, I had a lot of time on my hands. When I wasn’t feverish and my brain was actually working, I discovered a fascinating ebook genre: Sentient Object Romance.
Some of these books were 71 pages, and some of these were even shorter, including a 13 page masterwork involving Pumpkin Spice Lattes in dubious places. The average Kindle page is 250 words, meaning that a set publishable length can be under 18 thousand words.
I checked further, what about sapphic wlw romance in general? I found some that were 100k words, but there were almost as many coming in around 76 pages.
As someone who started reading fantasy written by Brandon Sanderson, George R. R. Martin and Patrick Rothfuss, this was mind blowing for me.
Yes, this is no magnum opus, and is likely classified closer to a novella, but for someone like me who is constantly fighting their dopamine seeking ADHD brain, a 40 hour work week, and parenting in the homework grade levels, it was a permission slip.
Permission to write something that didn’t need to be so long that it took years of my life, that didn’t need to jump out at a slush pile reading intern, it didn’t even need to be perfect. I looked at some samples and honestly I’ve seen fanfiction that was better beta’d and edited than some of these ebooks. I watched the author’s timeline waffle in the opening chapters, or have sudden POV shifts from tight third to omniscient, or even leftover pronouns from shifting first to third person.
I sat there, and looked at these samples, and for the first time in my life I thought to myself, I can do better than that, so why aren’t I?
Cue 10 thousand words written in a quarantine induced flurry, of stuffing my inner perfectionist editor into a closet and going, “We can fix this later.” The absolute unfettered freedom of being able to write multiple chapters alone and going back to just add in a line of foreshadowing. In the realm of fanfiction you’ve got to have it perfect chapter by chapter, foreshadowing on instinct and the slim hope that you can keep your entire plotline in your brain across the multiple months or years it will take to get your gigantic fic (or 125k+ novel) to completion.
There’s a Voltaire quote that says, “Perfect is the enemy of good,” and I’d like to say that perfect is also the enemy of good enough, that you are good enough.
I’m currently writing a seemingly self indulgent hair washing scene in a historical fiction hurt/comfort storyline. I went to check the stats to see if it really was as self indulgent as I thought it to be. Guess what? I discovered 20% of historical romantic fiction involves hurt/comfort, and furthermore there were no less than five books that included a hair washing scene.
Your words are good enough. That thing inside you banging at the gates to get out on the page? It’s good enough. You are good enough, and here is my permission slip for you to make the thing.
I can’t wait to see what you come up with.
Where Queer Nerd and Soul Collide 