Careful with the Cringe

Current 'panther' friend

Three stories. First, the everything-but-dinosaurs-and-aliens story. It had it all: a castle, a princess fighting to save the kingdom, pirates, and a black Jaguar named Scott. Oh, and sword fights. Did I mention the sword fights? Lots of sword fights. I don't know that it had terrific narrative flow. Or even a plot. But I was 12. So that book covered ALL the cringe. That young Princess was a fencing prodigy, a horseback riding prodigy, and the black Jaguar was, naturally, her best friend. Of course, her father's Kingdom is under threat from within and from without as the pirates are raiding the town below the castle. Our heroine can't immediately address the internal threats, but she can keep the pirates from harming her friends in town. In the course of trying and failing to fight the pirates, she makes things worse by getting kidnapped by them and held for ransom. This is ransom no one is going to pay. See the aforementioned internal threat. It's all fine, because naturally, the pirate captain falls for her. I mean why wouldn't he? So now, insert redemption arc for pirates who are going to help her bedevil the internal threat and reclaim the Kingdom. Much swashbuckling, big Goonies energy, tons of fun. Totally reads like I was 12. This one is buried deep and so it will stay.

Second, fanfic. ALL the fanfic. Scads of it. All tucked safely into archives where it can’t get me into trouble for writing inside someone else’s IP. Was it cringe? Maybe. It was 100% self-insert into worlds that fascinated me, but at the time I was writing fanfic, AO3 didn’t exist. I could write whatever I wanted with the knowledge that none of it could be published, ever.

Unless.

It finally occurred to me one day that one could pub fanfic if no one knew it was fanfic. If I could change names and alter the world enough to be its own thing, I might have a viable product. And that’s how I found out it was far easier (and just as much fun) to build your own world and your own characters.

Third, the contemporary romance novel that lacked a single shred of internal conflict. I had a great time writing it. It was my attempt to prove that you could in fact write a rock star romance and make it work. Except, you know, for the fact that I didn't. It was supposed to have one of those 'annoying big brother' books. Curmudgeon and ray of sunshine things. The heroine is there out of necessity, in a position the hero doesn't want her in, but his meddling sister is intent on setting the two of them up. It was big on bickering, low on actual conflict, and it was a hoot to write. It still lives in a box under the bed. It is likely to remain in that box under the bed. I look back at it now recognize a slew of problematic tropes. There's nothing wrong with the heroine trying to prove herself. This story took it wicked too far. This heroine ends up a martyr. The power dynamic between hero and heroine was super dysfunctional. Granted, at the time I wrote it, I had some crappy relationship templates and what was ‘normal’ for me at that point wasn’t, in fact, normal. So yeah. I credit this book with being the one that started me on the journey of actually learning and understanding what makes a romance a romance. The story is okay. But reading it now, I flinch at all the stuff I see that’s wrong. I’m careful not to judge past me by what current me knows. But still. This book, while it holds together, won’t likely see the light of day, ever.

While I can freely admit that my early efforts at fiction might not meet the bar for publication, I want to say that when I use the word ‘cringe’ in this blog, it’s with a fond smile. Cringe is one of those words that has been swept up by society to judge and make fun of something. I don’t want to judge or make fun of someone learning how story works. Not even – or maybe especially not even – when it’s me. We’re allowed to be bad at something we love or are fascinated by. We’re allowed a visible learning curve. There’s art and grace in developing as an artist. The thing that gets lost when we talk about the lack of skill in our early efforts is just how vital and necessary those early efforts were to our survival. These stories I talked about will never be thrown away or deleted. They got me through times I didn’t think I could get through. If our early story efforts are called cringe because we get sexist BS terms tossed at us like ‘Mary Sue’, as if every action movie ever made isn’t some dude’s 14-year-old self-insert fantasy. There’s a fine line between acknowledging that our early works weren’t ready for prime-time and disparaging ourselves as creatives. I bet that if someone could find the first painting Picasso ever did as a child, it could reasonably be called cringe. It would also likely fetch millions on auction.

When the World Goes Sideways

Ah, the many little substances, rituals, and activities we use to soothe ourselves. Corvid is partaking a little homegrown catnip. 

Dad is being admitted to the hospital as I type. Thus, you may understand when I say there's next to nothing but static on my mind. So far, it looks like he'll be okay. Yet another close call. Had Urgent Care not insisted on giving him an antibiotic shot, things would have gone very, very badly today. 

So I'm self medicating with documentaries and fake ice cream (frozen banana, blueberries, plant milk blitzed in a blender). Meditation is probably on tap for the evening, too.

What's your vice of choice when your world goes pear-shaped?

 

What Dreams May Come

Corvid, the Void Boi, wants you to know that his human mom doesn't need to cultivate purposeful day dreams. She has him and he's a weirdo. 

Day dreaming. It's therapeutic and completely necessary for artists of all kinds. Yet we live in a culture that flings all kinds of accusations about laziness, worthlessness, and 'wasted' time. Add modern technology into the mix and most people over twelve have precious little time for the 'silliness' of day dreaming. 

In an attempt to reclaim some brain space, time, and day dreaming, I'm working my way through a book called Bored and Brilliant by Manoush Zomorodi. It's a treatise on how our devices have stolen away the free time our brains once filled with day dreams and with synthesizing our experiences. 

It's also a useful walk through the brain science that explains why we need wandering minds and 'useless' day dreaming. 

So yes. Day dreaming - the fun, the terrible, the startling. Bring it all on. It's necessary. It's enlivening. Certainly, creativity and stories are built on the foundation of day dreaming.

The interesting piece is that with migraine, you get hallucinations. Not every time. But it seems to be a feature. Hallucinations are the feral cousins of day dreaming. Day dreams can be directed. Hallucinations can't. Yet they're useful, too. Some of the grimmest of my scenes came straight out of migraine hallucination. To be clear, tho, I'd flat give them up if I could exorcise the migraines. There are other ways to get into the altered states required to bring up vision, if not hallucination. I'd take it if I could get it. Until then, day dreams are welcome companions. Hallucinations, well. They show up, welcome or not, and stay until they're good and ready to leave.
 

Top Three Reasons Not to Take the Cat to the Vet

 

Top three reasons? 

There are that many water bowls. All over the house. Not to mention how many massive puddles (and water flung 3/4 of the way up walls, thank you very much) I had to try to clean up for the first eight hours this little monster came down off the vet's laughing gas. 

I asked the vet tech who called the next morning to check on him what the hell they give cats nowadays to put them under for surgery. Cause this is the second time I've had cats who are normally mortally offended by water decide they were mercats after a little happy juice. She laughed.

Corvid had some bad teeth. They're gone. He's fine now. I didn't even ruffle his fur after the shower he gave at the end of this video.

Character Love

Corvid  wants you to know that I have the attention span of -- well -- maybe a kitten. I am easily amused, it seems. Therefore, when the conversation turns to which character has been my favorite to write, the answer is as easy as it is pathetic: Whoever I'm writing currently.

Maybe it's a remnant from the acting days where you inhabited one character, shook it off, and picked up another one, sometimes all in the same show. Or maybe it's just that I feel like it's necessary to fall a little bit in love with each character in the process of writing them. If I can't, who else is going to?

I have great fondness for characters in the midst of finding their power - especially when that power is in something utterly unknown to them. Edie thinks her great strength is in knowing how to blow stuff up, and to some extent, she's right, but her real strength is . . . oh. Right. I can't tell you that without screwing up the story.

The book I'm prepping to sub right now has a heroine who doesn't even know who she is. She doesn't know her own name, having been orphaned as a child and picked up to be reared by a circus troupe. She's out of her depth living in New Orleans at the start of the Civil War with a creeptastic foster mother. She thinks her power is her ability to overlooked. She's wrong.

Which of the two is my favorite? No clue. I'm working on both stories, so both characters take up space in my brain, which is part of that falling in love thing I mentioned earlier. Would it be a complete copout to say I love them both equally, just differently?