pantryslut

I just found out I have an honorable mention in the Year's Best Science Fiction (25th annual, i.e. for the year 2007) for "Dead. Nude. Girls."

I wouldn't have expected it for the sheer fact that the story isn't science fiction at all; it seems to me to fall squarely in the horror/dark fantasy bin. (In fact, I was mentioned by name but not by story title in that same year's Year's Best Fantasy and Horror.) But...neat! I'm kinda floored, actually.

So, perhaps more importantly, what would you like the contemporary fabulist girl geek coming of age novel to look like?

So, what would the fabulist geek girl coming of age novel look like?

I'm kinda serious here.

Sometimes I don't talk much here about the things that are really, actually, preoccupying my head, in part b/c they seem so obvious -- they may be taking up space in my head, but that doesn't mean there's much of anything new to say about it.

Today, waking up in the aftermath of the riot in downtown Oakland last night, is an example. I could say a lot about my thoughts on institutional power and attempts to disguise/flatten its structure and effects; about false equivalentizing; about misplaced anger and justified anger; about private property, even. But I wouldn't be saying anything new or particularly insightful, and I would be opening this space up for pointless fights that don't even change anyone's mind, much less anything else more substantial.

So I am going to say something else oblique about a different, though related, topic.

I think I have decided that, rather than ever utter a word in any discussion of writing and cultural appropriation again, I am just going to buy a stack of copies of John Rechy's memoir, About My Life and the Kept Woman. (An awkward title that makes perfect sense once you get to the end of the book.) I am going to stick a Post-It note to the cover of each book. That note will read:

"If you think as hard about what you're thinking of doing as Rechy did about telling the stories of other people -- people he knew, people he spent a lot of time with, people who were his friends, but people who were not him, were not fictional, and had a different place in the world than he did, but not by much -- then you're probably heading in the right direction. But that's a start, not a finish. The proof is in the pudding and always will be."

This is aside from the rest of the book, which is quite lovely and thought-provoking and recommended.

1. Dreams last night of fresh paint on my clothes, and of people falling into bottomless crevasses. Repeatedly.

2a. One of the reasons I have been thinking a lot about memoir these past few days is that last year, I wrote a grant proposal to the National Queer Arts Festival to curate a show that would have been called "My Butch Body." The NQAF suggested at some point that I develop it as a solo performance instead, and came >this close< to giving me $ and a performance space to do it in. They are still encouraging me to do it for a future year.

The prospect kinda terrifies me. *My* body? And only my body? And no multiplicity of voices to let you all know that, dudes, butch bodies are diverse as fuck?

And what is there to say about *my* body in that context, anyway, that's worth more than, say, ten minutes of your time?

Yeah. Like that. And even though the point has been moot for months, I worry at it like a bad tooth. Attraction/repulsion. I hear good art can come out of that sort of dynamic. And now, as the NQAF starts soliciting grants for next year, the point is no longer moot again, and I have all these fabulous inspiring performances dancing in my head, too. So that's kinda where I am and where I'm coming from.

2b. I think some of my resistance to memoir is also that it's too linear in its Platonic form. When I break out of that and start organizing material thematically (see above), it becomes more interesting and appealing. Still a challenge, still not my preferred mode, but suddenly, possibilities open up and ennui falls away.

3. Meanwhile, I still have another project to finish. I think this week, or next.

I think, the next time I read that particular story that I read on Saturday night, I am going to include a disclaimer: "This is fiction, yo. You think it's true b/c I am a good writer and very convincing, and maybe also because I lifted a few details here and there from real life, but mostly the former (good writer, very convincing) and not the latter, 'K?"

FWIW, I have written exactly two pieces of sexual memoir, as far as I can recall. The first is in Best Bisexual Erotica. The second is in the forthcoming Fucking Daphne. (Heh. You'll see.)

Many of my Spec Fic friends have gotten all excited about Anthology Builder.

It's a neat concept, to be sure. And I might have one story to sell to them.

One. Exactly one.

I think the rest might fall under the "stories with excessive violence or sexuality" rubric, alas.

Still, I will try to get off my ass and send them something this weekend.

I have encountered a certain sentiment lately, that goes along the lines of this:

"Writers should step away from the online blogginess thing and do more real writing, plz, kthkbye."

This sentiment annoys me, a lot, for one very precise reason.

I hate, hate, hate being treated as a public writing utility rather than a person. As a faucet for words.

What I do with my time is my own damn business, and if I decide to spend it all writing here. bloggishly, instead of working on my Next Big Thing, that's my problem. Not yours. (That's the generic you, of course.) If it pleases me, then I will do it, and you have no say. So stop telling me what to do.

Not that anybody has ever said this to me directly, but dang.

Besides, everybody knows that I actually waste my writing time playing online Scrabble. I waste my work time posting here :)

In the middle of rewriting a story yesterday, I was totally frustrated. Every word I wrote stank on ice. My prose was just not coming together. I let out a stream of not-very-creative curses that startled both my sweeties.

Then I sat back down and kept writing.

It got better. A lot better, in fact. I went to bed reasonably sure that it was a good story, that it was doing what I wanted it to do.

I'm noting this here because I feel the same way, on a less acute and more chronic level, with the project thingy I am working on. So if I can remember that it gets better if I keep writing and working on it, that, like dough, it will eventually come together even if it looks like an incoherent mess right now...

Also, in the middle, I reminded myself that what I was doing was *hard*. I'd chosen a tricky thing to try. It takes extra attention and care. And that's OK.

Yes, folks, this is what living with a temperamental writer is like! Us artists, we're such a gas.

*

The rest of my night: I ate yummy food from the Israeli place. There were many pregnant women there. Steven encourages me to think it is causative. I wonder if it's merely correlative, as pregnant women are known to have cravings, and btw the pickles at this place are really yummy and they put them in their sandwiches so there you go. Maybe when I am pregnant, I will be compelled to come to this place regularly. Not such a bad fate.