Musings

I’m not OK, You’re OK

Are you? I hope. More ok than that ’70’s self help book I ripped my title from, anyway. Did anyone else have to read it for psych when they were in school? It should have been titled the Tao of OKitude. I don’t remember Harris’ theories, I just remember each chapter feeling like torture. As I recall, the solution was reading while listening to the Doobie Brothers cranked on the stereo.

Publicity photo of the music group The Doobie Brothers. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Speaking of, I guess I’ve got the 1970’s on my brain today. I went to get my hair cut, wanted something a little different. Retro. Somehow, no matter what I ask for, I always seem to walk out of the hair salon looking, umm, shall we say, suburban? Doesn’t matter whether the stylist is male or female, young, old, or middle aged, when they see my salt and pepper hair they stop listening and give me the haircut they think is appropriate. You’d think they’d understand appropriate isn’t high on my list, based on the fact that I don’t dye my hair, and usually walk in looking like a frizz bomb.

Today’s guy tried to ignore me, and I tried to explain. Of course, my brain fogged with the smell of hair bleach from the woman next to me getting highlights, and I couldn’t think of the word “shag.” I kept saying fringe. Can’t imagine why fringe would pop into my head. So I made him get props. The sad, dusty binders filled with jagged edged magazine photos. I’m laughing just thinking of the expression on the stylist’s face, trying to decide how to tell me I don’t have straight hair. I reassured him that I understand my hair won’t do anything other than what it wants no matter how it’s cut without major intervention. Just make it so I can make it look reasonable when I put the effort in.

After 20 minutes of cutting, product, 25 minutes of blow drying, 20 minutes with the straightening iron, a little more cutting, a little more ironing, a little more product. Voila!

Mrs Fringe, Smooshed, Smoothed, and Ironed

Sometimes a gal just has to remind herself she knows how to be a person. I’ve been submerged in revisions, but I’m happy to say they don’t feel hellish right now. In fact, I’m feeling pretty good about how the story is coming together.

In celebration of sleek hair and edits that are working, I offer a song to my fringelings.

Battle of the Printer: I Win!

Chiseling for dummies (Photo credit: quinn.anya)

Not the war, though, the printer will win that one. More accurately, the company that makes the printer wins the war.

I’m very proud of myself for the progress I’ve made over the last ten years, getting used to the computer and technology. Honestly, I never thought I’d be able to “think” straight onto a keyboard. I wrote longhand for years, only typing once I had my work exactly as I wanted it. Even once I began writing with the computer, I did a lot of printing. Every time I wanted to proofread, revise, edit, or just generally obsess over my suckage, I had to print the pages and hold them in my hands. I feel so terribly, horribly guilty when I think of how much paper I wasted for a few years, even with recycling old pages.

Lots of progress for Mrs Fringe. But there are still a couple of points in editing and revising where I need to hold the hardcopy in my hands and use a pencil to make notes. This is one of those points. Today I needed two copies of the WIP; one for my greasy mitts and red pen, and one for Husband, so I can keep an eye out to make note of the points where he falls asleep. I have a workhorse of a basic laser printer, cutting edge when I got it 9 years ago. Sure, it’s a little “touchy,” and God help you if you don’t fan the papers just so before loading, but it still works. Sadly, this is the end of the road. The last time I needed “ink” I was told the printer was discontinued, and there were no more cartridges available. I begged the guy to search his storeroom, and he found one. I was thrilled, until I heard the cost. It literally cost me the same for that toner as it would cost for a new printer.

Why and how have printers become disposable? Once this cartridge runs out of toner, the cost to find and purchase a replacement will be well over the cost of a new, equivalent printer. It feels wrong to me, this must be on the list of venial sins.

Rosary (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Obviously, now, I’m trying to nurse this cartridge along, and make it last as long as possible. I printed one copy of the manuscript, and brought it to the copy place to have the second copy made. Remember, this is the first draft. I tend to write “short” so the end product will likely be an additional 5-10,000 words from where the word count sits now. I haven’t brought anything in to be copied for me in a few years. Holy cannoli, prices have risen! $38. for one complete copy.

As I was printing here at home and listening to the click and stutter of rollers inside the machine, I experienced a strong sense memory of standing in the office of my elementary school, waiting for mimeo copies to bring to the teacher. Anyone else remember them? The copies always had a smell like Elmer’s glue and the ink was barely deeper than lavender. Not cutting edge at the time, but the machine still worked, so it was used. I think I’m going to look for a mimeograph on eBay.

English: Jackson & O’Sullivan “The NATIONAL” Duplicator. Made in Brisbane, Queensland during World War II. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Is the Boogeyman Getting Bigger?

Return of the Boogeyman (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

It’s a funny thing. I find as I get older, certain things that used to bother me, don’t. You really do reach a level of understanding, this too shall pass. In other ways, though, those fears take hold and get more firmly rooted. Like, say, fear of the unknown.

I’m at a point where I’m ready to make changes. Not quite sure about what they’ll encompass, but I’m ready. Except, what about that other old adage? You know the one, “the devil you know…”

Fatigue and I were talking about fears the other evening. Not wanting to live our lives dictated by fear. We were talking about our young adulthood, before we knew each other. I realized I used to be brave. Ok, maybe not brave, but braver than I am now. I took chances. Some worked out, some not so much. Yanno, life. It’s a lot harder to take those risks when the fallout of a miscalculated risk involves more than me and a cat. Yes, once upon a time, Mrs Fringe had a cat.

I dream about moving to “the country.” What if we did it? Would it be an easier life, living somewhere the budget would stretch farther? I have blissful visions of a kitchen where I can’t touch both walls while standing in the middle. A dishwasher. Not living with people literally on top and below me. Privacy! A garden. A spot to let the beasts out so I don’t have to always walk them no matter what at least three times a day.

There’s nowhere we could go where our money will magically stretch for a fantastic area, HGTV worthy house, or a house on the beach. A lot of factors have to be weighed in. Cost of living, school system, special ed services, doctors/hospitals, work, somewhat reasonable distance to get to Mother In Law. Let’s not forget political factors. Not every area would be happy to welcome us. I don’t need to be somewhere where everyone has the same political beliefs, but I also don’t want to be somewhere I’d be afraid to state my beliefs, know what I mean? And Husband, who would be very happy if I would forget all about this fantasy and continue to trip over each other in the apartment, choke on the budget, and keep waving as I trudge out with the dogs to walk them for the eleventy billionth time.

If I keep huffing and puffing and moaning, and swear it will all be fabulous and I will wake up and skip through the daisies every day, maybe we’ll go. Eventually. But that isn’t how I want to walk into a big change. My crystal ball is looking a little milky these days. I don’t know if this type of move would work out. If we’d end up in the perfect area, if it would provide enough stress and financial relief to enjoy those daisies. We all face decisions, we all try to stack the odds in our favor. But at the end of the day, big decisions are a leap of faith. A calculated risk, but a risk nonetheless.

None of this obsessing is getting me any closer to the revisions I should be working on.

For the moment, I’ll continue to watch the real estate porn on HGTV while I wonder if I’m being ruled by my fears or being practical. Sensible. Oh gawd, am I supposed to toss my stilettos and buy orthopedic lace-ups now?

And in the meantime, Flower Child and I keep watching our little seeds sprout, pretending we’ve got a real garden. And I trimmed and bathed Little Incredibly Dumb Dog. Productivity, sorta.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Kin, Utopia, and Rape

For me, reading fiction is like a bag of dill pickle chips. I’ve learned to resist temptation most of the time. Earlier this year I was so blocked I couldn’t read even if I let myself. But when I’m in a phase…I can’t eat one. Once I start, I have to keep going until I’m licking the residue off of the bag.

Mrs Whyte’s Kosher Dill Pickle (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Most novels are read, details forgotten within a day. (I’m a fast reader.) Maybe I’ll remember the general plot line, or the main character, and so I’ll remember the author’s name and look for more of their work. Then, of course, there are the macaroni and cheese books. You know, the comfort novels you can and do re-read. Other books are like the special dinners you remember forever. Even if you only got to enter the restaurant once, some meals have a huge impact on your life and memories.

The Kin of Ata are Waiting For You, by Dorothy Bryant, is one of those books for me. *spoilers ahead*

Cover of The Kin of Ata Are Waiting for You

Initially, it was published in 1971 under a different name as a novella, by a small (I think feminist) press. A few years later, it was picked up by Random House and retitled, maybe 1976. I first read it around 1983, looooved it, but until last week I hadn’t seen it around or read it in at least twenty years.

Oh yeah, feminist sci fi, in line with Marge Piercy, Joanna Russ, and the queen, Ursula K Le Guinn.

The protagonist is an anti-hero, a truly despicable man who seems to represent some of the worst of what the Y chromosome can produce. The book opens with him, an unnamed successful novelist who is in the middle of a fight with a woman. It’s ugly, it’s crude, and he kills her. An accident, but his thoughts in response are all about him, how this might impact his life, how he can get away with this. He runs away, crashes his car, and awakens in an entirely different world. Ata. A mysterious island, a utopia where the inhabitants are governed by their dreams and the greater good. No violence, no sexism, no racism, no written word. They know about the world he comes from, and somehow they keep the balance of that world by maintaining their own. Sex isn’t puritanical, not only for procreational purposes, but it isn’t without consequence, either. He does not magically accept this new world, the people, or their ways, and tries to bring the “real world’s” ugliness with him. As he starts to accept where he is, and begins to understand them, he thinks he will return the favor. Yanno, benevolent privileged white guy, gonna teach the savages the error of their ways, help them out with all his words, studliness and of course, his superior understanding that more is better.

This is not a likable main character. It takes a while to find anything sympathetic in him, and just when you think you have, Bryant raises the stakes and you’re disgusted with him all over again. But because she keeps raising those stakes, you keep reading. He’s one big “id” and the kin of Ata are all “superego.” The book is very Jungian, which fascinated me when I first read it thirty years ago, and fascinates me now. Her descriptions of the island and the people, their customs, all beautiful. There is growth for the protagonist, and a definite (though not easy) character arc, and redemption by the end. But again, not easy. In the same way he confuses the kin for simplistic people, it’s easy to assume he will be saved by acknowledging their spiritual “superiority,” without facing any consequences.

Because it’s been so long since I last read it, some of what I took away is different, some of what I noticed are things I didn’t notice then. The time period? My youth? I don’t know. But I do see some “preachy” factor now, that I didn’t then. I wondered, as I read, if Bryant was raised in, or had spent time with, the Quakers. Quite a few of the customs and beliefs made me feel like I was in a Friends’ Meeting House.

Part of the book is a love story–though not a romance, and this is the part that has me rambling on today. I have one absolute rule in reading or writing romance. Rape is not romantic. I can never, and will never, accept a hero as a romantic lead if he crosses the line. For me, crossing the line doesn’t mean intercourse. Any scene where the “hero” uses physical force to restrain a heroine, or hold her down long enough for her to realize and acknowledge those “strange new stirrings” and I’m done. I’ve heard some writers of historical romance (not many) say well, you have to understand the context, the times…. Umm, no, I don’t.

How could I not have remembered this scene, or loved this book anyway? Yes, he rapes his love interest, Augustine.

He knows she doesn’t want him, but she doesn’t fight him off, doesn’t yell for help, so he justifies his actions, telling himself if she really didn’t want it, she would have called for help, hit him, something. Not only does he do this, but a relationship develops between them later, paralleling his spiritual growth. Can this be? Can I, as a modern pseudo-feminist, accept and still like this novel? Should I oppose it on principle? If I had never read this book before last week, had no associations with it, I would have stopped reading.

The scene itself was interestingly written, and in many ways, it made sense as a powerful statement for a gender neutral, post misogynist society. She could have fought him off, she was at least as strong, if not stronger. The impression was that it was him who was reduced by this act, so ridiculous, so disappointing, it was the tantrum of a child, and she would wait until he had finished his fit before she took care of herself.

Augustine becomes pregnant from this rape. Yes, it’s part of Bryant’s theme of consequences, action/reaction. I assumed he would never, as long as he was on Ata, be able to forget who he was, what he brought to the table and thought was superior, every time he saw the baby/child. I kept waiting. No matter how he evolved, truly loving Augustine, their child, and Ata, I was disappointed. In his depths, it’s clear he understands his actions were wrong, even as he committed this act. And again, this never tries to be a romance, and the protagonist is never a hero. Even within the framework of a “love story,” as opposed to a romance, Augustine’s feelings for him are complex, and never overshadow what she believes is the greater good–or better for herself. And on Ata, the greater good and the individual “good” are so entwined they cannot be separated.

I understand why Bryant included this scene, this heinous act on the part of the protagonist. He was a murderer, but it was through the rape that he realized just how his belly was scraping the bottom, and begin the climb towards caring about others and his actions. I understand it, but I feel squinky every time I think about it, and writing about it.

On Ata, there is very little disease, illness, or disorder. There is pain, injury, aging and death; the kin are human beings, not supernatural creatures. But another detail I hadn’t remembered, the one specific mention of a physical disorder, was of a member with epilepsy. He wasn’t seen as special, having a direct path to God or dreams, nor was he seen as less than anyone else. He was kin. And it gives me a connection to who I am today, what my life includes in reality, not the fantasy of what I thought would be.

I’m wondering what will happen if revisit some of my other old favorites. If I blow the dust off of The Once and Future King, will I find might makes right, after all?

Kink.com Happy Hour (Photo credit: Scott Beale)

Published, Publishable, Crap

Disney Rejection Letter, 1938 (detail) (Photo credit: sim sandwich)

Is publishable equal to published?

In all my non-published, never worked in the publishing industry wisdom, I said no. I believe there are writers out there with work that is publishable that haven’t been published. Bad luck, bad timing, giving up too soon, I can think of quite a few ways and reasons this could come about. This question came up in response to a thread derailment on the writer’s forum.

Another member disagreed with me, and he has valid points (along with better credentials than I). Who’s to say/how can someone say something is publishable if the work hasn’t been published?

Writing, specifically fiction, is so damned subjective. What catches the interest of one agent (or editor, or reader) might be downright distasteful to the next. Frustrating, but in my mind, that’s also the good news. That’s what allows for creativity and interpretation.

Cut the Crap (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Don’t get me wrong, I understand sometimes writing is poor. Not having a good grasp of the rules of the language you’re writing in, a story that doesn’t go anywhere, characters that are flat, etc. But what about the writing and writers who get trashed by critics, but have huge commercial success? Good luck, good timing, perseverance…yes. There’s more to it, though. There’s good storytelling–whether or not the sentences are artfully crafted–and understanding what your audience wants to read, who they can and will identify with.

I’ve said all along, I write to be read, to reach an audience, and hopefully, one day, earn a dollar. If none of my work is ever accepted, never reaches an audience, just how pointless was it? I’m asking in all seriousness, hoping for some discussion, not whining.

Here’s where I start chasing my tail. You don’t know until you’re either published or give up. There is no formula. Most people are unable to publish their first manuscript, some hit with the second, some the tenth, some never do. Everyone’s heard stories of writers whose work was rejected over and over, and eventually were published, a few very successfully, others not so much. But of those who stuck with it, kept writing and submitting, there’s another subset of those who found “homes” and publication for some of their earlier works that had been rejected, considered unpublishable.

How could those earlier works have been a waste? And how do you know? I can’t say “forget the audience, the possibility of publication,” when that is half of my equation. I write because I’m driven to write, I have an overactive imagination, and enough hubris to believe others will identify with my characters and or their feelings, care about them long enough to keep turning the pages to see how the story ends.

If I run with the assumption that unpublished is the same as unpublishable, does unpublished automatically equal crap? Does it matter if what’s on my thumb drive is drivel or golden pearls as long as it’s trapped on the thumb drive? Is it possible for unpubbed work to be anything other than drivel? At what point would you decide that? After 100 rejections? 50? 20? 3? Are all the unpublished writers craptastic hacks, while those who are published are brilliant? If I don’t create the work, polish the work, submit the work (everyone is different, this is the part where I stutter and splutter), it will never have a chance. It’s just a pile of crap taking up room in my brain, as opposed to my hard drive.

Here you have it, the chicken and the egg theory of writing fiction, by Mrs Fringe. If all else fails, I hear chicken shit is excellent fertilizer.

Kindof a visual pun that I’ve illustrated. Which came first? Technically not a photo, but I did have to physically scan it in, so maybe that counts for something. This is a few years old. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Hear That?

It’s the sound of Mrs Fringe having a quiet day.

Black Sand Beach, Maui (Photo credit: szeke)

In my mind, the scene above is where I am today. And man, do I need it. This neverending winter has felt torturous.

But, Spring Break started for Flower Child at 2:35 yesterday afternoon, and Nerd Child is home for another week, so it counts as Spring Break for me, too. In the spirit of the day, Big Senile Dog decided to start us off right by peeing all over the apartment last night. In case you were wondering, I don’t call him Senile for no reason. Occasionally, these days, he forgets the protocol for when and how to void his bladder. He isn’t the biggest dog, but he is sizable, and has a bladder appropriate for an elephant.

A busy week this week. I did a fair amount of work on the WIP, submitted eek!!! two short stories, picked up a mountain’s worth of dog poop, all the usual Mama stuff, and had a conversation with the puzzle doctor without crying, pretended I’m moving to New Hampshire and saw some fabulous real estate porn, managed to keep my brain inside my skull despite the ongoing jackhammering on my corner. Great success. To reward myself, I made an extra pot of French Press this morning, and spent the last two hours reading.

Reading (Photo credit: – Annetta -)

Just reading. No research, no Facebooking, no crushing myself with literature I’ll never measure up to, just a nice read. What else would one do lying on an empty beach?

At some point this week, I read about Michelle Shocked’s rant in California. I liked her back in the day. Didn’t love her, but I had a couple of cassettes with her music. I wasn’t shocked that she’s now found religion, and embraced a different outlook along with it–to put it mildly. She isn’t the first, won’t be the last. There’s a difference though, between someone who changes their views, actions, or even their beliefs, with age, time, and their personal experiences and someone who can’t commit to who they are now or admit who they were way back when. It made me wonder, who are/where are the young women we can look at and admire now? Odd, isn’t it, the things that can trigger sadness for lost youth, commitment, and passion?

Gawd, I’m maudlin today.

Imma go put some Patti Smith on the iPod. I would dance along, but I’m afraid to get Big Senile Dog excited, since I’ve only got three paper towels left.

Did You Make Your Bed Today?

my messy busy bed (Photo credit: pequeña esquimal)

I didn’t. In fact, I never do–other than when I change the sheets. To be honest, my bed doesn’t look like the photo above, there’s plenty of room for me.

But what makes someone feel the need to make their bed every day? Serious question. When I wake up and leave the room, that’s it. I usually don’t go in there again until…bedtime. So why would I make the bed?

Flower Child loves to make her bed. She does a great job straightening the blankets, arranging pillows, and sculpting still life portraits out of her stuffies. I can’t help but wonder what makes someone find that a necessary part of daily chores, or even appealing. Wanting the house to be clean, I understand. Keeping the house neat and organized, also understood. I wish I had enough room to be neat and organized, it feels good to walk into a space that’s calm and not overcrowded. But I have never found it to make me feel better or worse to have the bed made. It isn’t embarrassing to me if someone comes over, because I don’t entertain in my bedroom. If someone is over, and does have a reason to come into my room, well, it’s my bed. Is sleeping considered something embarrassing we’re supposed to pretend we don’t do?

You know all those “you’ll sees” and “you’ll understand whens” you heard from your mother when you were growing up? Some of them, I knew I would never see, or understand. I am a totally different personality than my mother was. Other things, like being compelled to make the bed each morning, I kept waiting for them to kick in. Never happened.

New bed (Photo credit: – Annetta -)

My unmade bed and I are very happy.

Last night when I walked the beasts it was freezing. The wind gusts were so strong, when I walked towards the corner to throw the poop bag away, the public trash can was actually lifted and flipped upside down by the wind. Weird, scary, and kind of cool.

This morning before the traffic got heavier, I heard birds. Not pigeons, birds. Spring is coming!

And You Will Bow Before Me

Sculpture by Ernemann Sander: Badende in front of Rheinisches Landesmuseum Bonn (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

My plan/goal/resolution for 2013 was to write and submit. I’m writing. Submitting, not so much. Ok, not at all. I think my idea was to have at least one submission out each month. No, I’m not going to look back and check, just in case I was even more delusional than one a month. At first I thought, “I have plenty of time, January has 31 days!”

Then I didn’t think about it at all. In the last week, I remembered. Well, no problem. Yanno, in that writing is easy kind of way. I’ll make up for lost time, and send out five submissions this month. The strangest thing happened, though. The more I began researching where I should send my stories, the more I had other, fabulous ideas that needed to be written down right now. And the more I thought of revisions that had to be made, on stories I haven’t looked at in forever, right now. And of course, the more I needed to check in on Facebook, right now. Hard to believe I’ve yet to decide what to submit where.

Submit. Submission. Submissive. Submerge. Not loving these words.

dark water (Photo credit: rafa2010)

I know all about submission, I read Anne Rice’s Sleeping Beauty series. I even read the Story of O–and what a surprise that was, found by my 15 year old self in the poetry section of a used book store. But what else would I call it? An offering? I don’t know about you, but that still brings the sacrificial lamb to my mind.

But still, I’m going to do it. Why? Because I write, and that’s what people who write, do. We write, revise, delete, bang our heads into the wall, write some more, edit some more, and then submit. It’s funny, the stages you go through as a writer. Not everyone goes through the same ones, or in the same order, but I’ve spoken with a lot of writers in my forty thousand years. Female, male, self taught, MFAs, published or unpublished, the variations of this theme are all sewn with the same thread. As a child you write, and show your work to everyone. Then you begin to hoard it. No one understands me. Absolutely true, no one understands what you don’t share. Then you begin to share again, with those you think will understand your golden thoughts. And then someone doesn’t, or points out the flaws, and it’s crushing. (This stage may now be extinct, the current and more recent generations have the internet, allowing them to learn everyone has to go through this, and someone taking time to point out flaws and errors is a good thing). Then you write again and dream about being a writ-ah. Or a huge commercial success. And you write more and truly begin to learn about editing, revising, rewriting, sharing your work, being critiqued, and the publishing business. And you begin to submit. Some of us stall out and go through these stages several times.

Writing, pursuing publication, it’s a weird thing. You have to have complete and total faith in yourself and your work, but at the same time you have to be open to critique, open to learning more, improving craft, understand that rejection of that work is part of the process. Pride but not hubris.

Will I get five submissions out by the end of this month? Maybe. But I will send my work out. It will be on submission, not me.

Though there may have to be some floggings.

English: A woman flogging a submissive man on a bed (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Itsnot Me, I Tell Ya

Must have been someone who looked like me.

IMG_0010 (Photo credit: RosieTulips)

Here we are, the evening of February 28th, and I’m so damned tired I don’t even feel human. I want to be positive, and happy tomorrow is Friday, but all I can think is whaddya mean it isn’t already Friday?

*Nothing to do with this post, but there was just a crash and thud outside. I’m wondering if someone lost a flowerpot from a terrace, or if I’m soon to hear sirens. Life in the big city, always an adventure*

So, tonight I’ve got boogers on the brain. Flower Child is still sick. Not bad, and able to go to school, but still sick. Lots of sniffling and snuffling and blowing. This makes me nervous. March is generally an iffy health month for her, and I was hoping she’d be back to baseline before it started. On the positive end, Parent Teacher conferences went very well. The adaptive technology she’s using has been incredibly helpful. The math teacher’s a little confused as to why she answers every question and interaction with him, “live long and prosper,” but hey.

Star Trek TOS Cutting Room Floor Clippings (Photo credit: The Rocketeer)

I’d like to explain it to him, but can’t. Her thinking can be…circuitous. For some reason she associates the math teacher with Nerd Child, which in turn connects her to the phrase. I’m guessing the teacher regrets his surprised laugh the first time he heard it from my girly girl. Poor man. Still, an excellent, creative teacher and I’m grateful for the fabulous team working with her this year.

Seeing as it’s the 28th, I feel I should report on how the writing went this month, since I announced I would be making an all out push, producing as much as possible. Turns out that between Flower Child’s illness, the passing of my father in law, and life, this might not have been the best month to choose. Between the morning of February 1st and this evening, I got about 12,500 words added to the WIP. I also wrote that short, about 3800 words. Not a wasted month, just not quite the momentum I had started with and hoped to continue.

Speaking of the short, I’ve got a reference in there to snot, connected to the main character, a woman in her late sixties. The reason I mention this; super interesting to me to find that a few people strongly and specifically associated snot with children, and not older adults. Is it the word or the mucus itself? I’m no gerontologist, but I am and have been around a good number of older people. Boogers don’t disappear when the AARP card arrives. And someone who would use the word snot at thirty is likely to still be using it at sixty or seventy. One of my mother’s favorite insults was to call someone snot-nosed. She had other, more colorful insults, but that one was always used to great effect, with much power behind it.

A man mid-sneeze. Original CDC caption: “This 2009 photograph captured a sneeze in progress, revealing the plume of salivary droplets as they are expelled in a large cone-shaped array from this man’s open mouth, thereby dramatically illustrating the reason one needs to cover his/her mouth when coughing, or sneezing, in order to protect others from germ exposure.” (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Gesundheit, and happy almost Friday, fringelings!

Justifiers and Qualifiers

The two women friends are shocked at a third woman dressed as a man. But Harlequin and Pierrot are also men. From the Danish “Punch” magazine (not the British Punch), July 1876 no. 30 page 233 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I feel like I’ve done quite a bit of moaning and groaning here on Mrs Fringe in the past couple of weeks. New week, I’d like to start out positive before beginning my usual ~~obsessing~~ musings. While I didn’t write as much as I would have liked at this point in the month, I have worked on both my WIP and a couple of short stories. There. I’ve given my dear readers unicorns and rainbows, you too, can chase your tail while sorting laundry and cleaning lost bodily fluids from canines and dependents.

On to the whine portion of happy hour. As I’ve said in the past, I write romance (the current WIP) and literary fiction (short stories, and a temporarily shelved WIP). None of this includes the blogging, which is another entirely different style of writing. Everybody’s a critic. Those who like romance, other types of genre fiction, or even–squee–my romances, don’t understand why I write lit fic. “Ew. Oh. It’s so dark. Aren’t those the books where nothing ever happens? Why do you write that? Well, it’s not my cup of tea.”

For those who like lit fic, or even–squee–my lit fic, when they hear I also write romance. “Really? Why are you wasting your time with that shit? You can do better than that. Well, I guess it’s easy money.”

I can’t win for losing. First of all, let me repeat, for the 8000th time, nothing in writing is easy money, or an easy path to publication. After 40,000 years I am still, but hopefully not always, one of the unwashed and unpublished masses. Maybe not unwashed, I bought an absolutely divine magnolia pear scented soap.

As a reader, I have a wide variety of books on my shelves. Romance, lit fic, short stories, poems, biographies, essays, non fiction books about economics, various religions, cookbooks, thrillers, horror, mysteries, even a fantasy or two. Some people are more focused, but I know many whose bookshelves look like mine.

Fiction Stacks (Photo credit: chelmsfordpubliclibrary)

So why do these same people with varied titles on their reading lists sneer at me for writing two seemingly disparate styles? Yes, the style of writing, pacing, sentence structure, word choice, these things are different. One is more introspective and character driven, the other quicker paced and it’s true, the black moment is a lot more, ummm, navy blue. But honestly, most (all) fiction is about exploring people, our emotions, our responses, our needs, wants, desires, connection to others, how we respond in any given situation, societal dilemmas and individual dilemmas.

I’m guessing there are slurs for every style and genre, but it feels like the two I write in are particular targets. Romance is for frustrated housewives, girly-porn (not sure what these critics make of M/M romance, but hey), they can be knocked out in a week, blah blah blah. And this doesn’t begin to touch the many subgenres of romance, or the different levels of “heat,” from sweet to yowza! I like writing romance. It isn’t easy, but it’s fun. How do two people (or vampires, if that’s your thing) fall in love? What makes someone heroic, or lovable, for that matter? What makes someone with an independent, fulfilling life want to make the drastic changes necessary to incorporate a significant other and arrive at happily ever after, or even happy for now?

And literary fiction. Sigh. It’s pretentious, self conscious, an excuse to break the rules of grammar, there’s no plot, it can’t be literary if it hasn’t won an award, navel gazing, yada, yada, yada. If you haven’t been following Mrs Fringe for long, let me tell you, I’m quite fond of navel gazing, and wondering why the fuck we make the decisions we do. Yanno, the human condition. Also, not easy to write, and for me, even the pace of production is slower than when I write romance. Is it “fun” to write? No, but there’s a depth of satisfaction I can’t describe, and I love it.

I wish I was like Stephen King, able to create believable, relatable characters that battle unreal creatures and situations. I wish I was like Margaret Atwood, sculpting a marriage of poetry, brilliant prose, and speculative fiction. I don’t have either of their levels of talent, certainly not the imaginations required. But if I did have an imagination that leaned towards alternate realities and creatures that go bump in the night? I’d write those stories too.

Why this rant? Because I am feeling good about working on both, I get different but definite satisfaction from working on each, but I’ve received several of these not so sly little pinches in conversation this week. Unknot your panties, folks. If I’m ever blessed enough to be published in both, they’ll be in different sections of the bookstore (assuming there still are brick and mortar bookstores by then), and I’ll use a pen name for one of the styles.