Trans/plant/portation

I’ll just put it right out there: this could be one of the toughest days of NaNoWriMo. For the whole month. I’ve been squeezing in my writing time, getting attached to my story and characters, and I’m just about to hit 10,000 words and now, what? Now I have a weekend day. A Saturday of amazing proportions and I could do all kinds of things like go to the market, visit with friends, anything and everything and yet, it’s still NaNoWriMo. This is the day that I could pat myself on the back for making excellent progress, and break all of my good habits. And I shouldn’t let that happen. Read More…

Today I’m focusing on character. I mean, I’m writing writing writing and trying to bang through as many words as I can, especially as my productivity was down a bit yesterday. I’m still ahead for the 4-day mark of NaNoWriMo, so all is well. Day 5 reminds me that this is a marathon, not a sprint, and if I’m a little above average one day, then I shouldn’t sweat it when I make less than stellar progress on another day. It will all even out by the end of the month. Read More…

Three days of writing accomplished and I’m at 6,500 words. In a typical writing project I wouldn’t be concerned about the number, but at three days in, I would start  examining what I’d written for pacing. On the 25th page, is it still interesting? Here’s the text just before I left off last night: Read More…

I know, I said yesterday that reviewing one’s previous day’s progress was a good thing. And I stand by that. But that was in the context of getting back in the writing groove, hanging on to the tone and set up so that transitions will come easier when November is over and the work of rewriting begins.

Other than the urge to start rewriting, there is one other clump of weeds that threatens to ensnare the intrepid writer when looking at past sections of text: the realization of plot creep. For example, there are two entire paragraphs that I didn’t intend sitting in the middle of yesterday’s words, smug and defiant, knowing they have at least another 28 days to zombify—I mean, to remain in the text. And perhaps by then I’ll have bolstered them with other related sections and then they’re as good as carved in marble. They are a crafty couple of paragraphs, and maybe they’ve started plotting my demise. Anything is possible. Read More…

Whether I feel like I’m cruising through a bit of writing or struggling against it, I’m always more soaked into the story at the end of one working block than when I sit down the next time. This is mostly okay, in that each new stint at the keyboard brings in some freshness and more opportunity for the ideas and characters in my head to steep in my subconscious a little more. And yet, though there are those positives, I still feel a pull to go back to what I wrote the day before to steep myself in the tale all over again. It’s difficult to do this without rewriting things at least a little bit. Read More…

When I was in college, I went with three of my best friends to a queer student conference at the University of Delaware, three states away from our university. We were happy to meet up with other student activists, but it was arguable that we were more delighted to get a break from the snowy winter of Central New York. Once we were there, reality swept over us; some of the workshops seemed more than a mite problematic. One panel discussion on finding common ground between lesbians and bisexual women failed almost from the outset, with the facilitator asking rather loaded questions, like “So, what do you fear, Patty, about dating Marcy, because she’s bi?” After putting pressure on the facilitator for exaggerating the “danger” of bisexual people in relationships—for surely, it hurts just as much to be dumped for another woman as it would for a man—we walked out of the workshop, trying to figure out how to regroup. And within ten minutes a friend of ours came into the lounge where we were, with tears in his eyes. I asked him what was wrong. He said nothing, he’d just never been in a space before where everyone was gay and black, and he didn’t have to listen to anyone’s racism or homophobia. And realizing how often he’d been ducking between those things, well, now he was frustrated and angry.

In this 2010 midterm election season I’ve been struck by all of the assaults, left and right, that zing at us on a daily basis. In the midst of what feels like a violent, national food fight, I’ve learned to let a lot of things go, mostly for my own sanity. But one issue I don’t think I can dodge anymore is the transphobia within my own beloved LGBT community. Read More…

More than a month ago the media began covering a few—certainly not all—stories about young LGBT people killing themselves. Actually, the majority of the suicides covered were of young gay men. But aside from a critique of the reporting, something else important was mentioned in almost every news report about gay youth suicide: they were the victims of bullying. Read More…

There are some basic rules new writers hear again and again—skip the passive voice, show, don’t tell, and never start a story in a dream or morning routine. Then there’s the never start a story with a piece of dialogue, and the cast out ye adverbs admonition. If these no-nos are the signifiers of poor writing, then surely agents and editors are on the lookout for them and once spotted, our work is targeted to the real or virtual trash bin. And Microsoft can call its icon a “recycling bin” all it wants, but nothing ecologically positive happens with it, so they should stop confusing the next generations about what recycling means. Read More…

In the early aughts I had occasion to explore the offices of the National Transportation Safety Board in Washington, DC. By law, these folks must investigate every plane accident that happens in the country, even the very minor ones. It’s up to their discretion if they examine a railroad incident, car accident, metro train derailing, and so on, but of course they have all of the equipment they need to deconstruct the physical remnants of these human tragedies if they opt to take on a case. It comes down to the seriousness of the event and the staff resources at that moment. Read More…

Photo courtesy of See-ming Lee

I wrote last week about the sudden newsworthiness of LGBT youth suicide. Certainly it’s been around for decades, and there have been and are people who study these people and these moments, but collectively, their work, analysis, and recommendations haven’t made it to center stage. So it frustrates me to see personalities emerge from the woodwork to tout their initiatives, as if we’re seeing a meteoric rise in suicide, or as if the world merely needed their guidance to avert the tide of anguish. Read More…