"Happy to be here! Can't wait to stab shit."

I never got the whole, “little girls will grow up with unrealistic expectations of what their bodies should look like.” I remember someone telling me that I shouldn’t expect to look like Barbie someday. No shit. For one thing, my toes aren’t one high-heeled piece.

These are very useful for kicking, however.

She’s freakishly disproportionate. She’s made of hard plastic and wasn’t huggably soft like a real human being. As a child, I wondered if this common sense was hard won for the poor deluded soul who told me I couldn’t look like Barbie. I pictured her horror when she tried to speak to Barbie and realized that Barbie would never ever speak back.

I loved adventure stories, fantasy/sci-fi or otherwise. And even though most of the adults I knew were women, there were very few women in the stories that I loved. And if there was a woman, she was almost always captured and had to wait to be rescued.
But I didn’t see this as a male/female thing. I saw it as an odd-man-out thing. The lesser represented gender gets captured. Got it. Well, I had fifteen Barbies and one Ken.

It just made sense.

Did you notice skewed gender/race/sexuality roles in the stories around you as a kid? Did you change them in your play? Maybe you just preferred matchbox.

September 18, 2012!

Woooooooo hooooooo! It might seem a long way off, but it’s really just around the corner. I’ve got so much to do, most of it mental preparation. I’ve got to get ready to talk to scads of people I don’t know. On the internet, it’s easy. In person, it can be a lot harder. I can be pretty funny, but I usually make jokes around what other people are saying, making them laugh. If people won’t talk to me, well, there’s not much I can do. I think I must be meeting lots of introverts lately. When no one can think of anything to say, damn it’s awkward.

Does anyone have any tips about getting people to come out of their shells? I’ve got a lot of talking to do. ^_^

Right now, let’s celebrate. I don’t drink champagne, so this will have to do:
(Find this recipe here.)

What are you up to this week, friends? Got any big deadlines looming on the horizon?

I almost burst into tears I don’t know how many times. I was so jittery and emotional that I took a two-hour walk and then became a compulsive tidier for a few hours more. But I feel lighter. I hope some of you do, too, and I hope you know you’re not alone.

My writing’s really heating up right now. Soon enough, I’ll be able to tell you why. ^_^ I hope some of you will join me writing today or tonight. Or if you’re overseas and will actually be reading this the day after I wrote it, I’ll be writing with you in some weird space/time paradox.

Are you busy busy busy right now? Seems like most people I meet are rushed to the max. Here’s to hoping you have some breathing room!

It’s about depression, about how people struggle with it silently, but survive. It’s about how when folks overcome depression, they feel they can’t celebrate because they’re too ashamed they were depressed in the first place.

I celebrate you everyday, Jenny. You’re my goddamned hero, which is so much better than being a regular hero. You put yourself out there , and you’re funny. Among the trolls of the internet who do anything they can to bring someone down, you have the balls to get out there and tell jokes, to lead a war on William Shatner and to net a giant metal chicken a gazillion facebook followers.

The fact that you can admit something you’re ashamed of can only make me love you more. And I know you know, now more than ever, that you’re not alone, but I’ll say it again. You’re not alone. Never will be. I for one will stalk you forever. Comforting, huh?

And to everyone else, no matter what secret battles you’re fighting, you’re not alone either. Even if I don’t share your personal pain, there is someone out there who does. You’re all my heroes, the silent masses who struggle with depression, with self-harming, with eating disorders, or with what I went through when I finally admitted to myself that I find women just as attractive as men. (That may come as a surprise to some of you, or not, but I’ll just throw it out there. If it means you don’t want to be my friend anymore, we probably should never have been friends in the first place.) <–See? That's what I'm talking about when I'm talking about shame.

It all comes down to shame. We don't let our pain out because we're afraid of what people will think. When I finally admitted both the above struggle and my issues with food, I was amazed at how wonderful and supportive my husband is. If you don't have a support team, I support you. I'm with you. And if you do have a support team in place, I'm with you still, one more voice helping out. One more voice telling you that you're not alone. I see you. I hear you. I am you.

We're all gonna get through this together.

Or maybe that’s just me.

I have a gripe today about ordering online. I got most of my husband’s presents from Thinkgeek, with their handy dandy ordering system. I’ve never had a problem before. Now, I shall never be ordering from them again.

The items I ordered came in a box much too large for them. The one strip of inflatable packing pads seemed to have been thrown into the top rather than wrapped over anything. I know this because it was close enough to the opening to get caught in the tape. It stayed in place while everything else rolled around in the box.

So, all the packaging for my items looked as if it had been through the war. Several packages had come open and one item was broken. When I called Thinkgeek, they apologized sure, but also tried to calm me down with, “This is the holidays, and we’re very busy.” I know what time of year it is, and you didn’t just cut corners, you cut off whole sides!

To make matters worse, they promised a replacement of the broken object, but instead of doing that, they refunded my money without even telling me. I didn’t know the replacement wasn’t coming until I checked my statement. I had to run out for a replacement gift on Dec 23rd when I’d already done my shopping well in advance.

I’m well and truly irked. And I’m going to show my irk by never shopping there again.

I know this is a small problem in the world we live in today. It also happens to be a problem I can do something about by telling everyone.

Other than that, I had a safe and happy holiday. I hope you did, too.

Anything giving you the holiday grumbles?

p.s. to Maria. I’m so glad your puppy is doing better!

“Rejection always stings. It stings me, you, everybody. Nobody likes to be rejected. A writer who likes being rejected is a writer who is secretly a robot and must be smelted down into slag before he tries to kill us all because he hates our meat. Pain is instructive. And it’s not permanent. Not if you don’t let it be. Some writers savor misery like a hard candy endlessly sucked in the pocket of one’s cheek, but fuck that.”

Taken blithely from Chuck Wendig’s blog.

I read that earlier today and it brought up so many memories. I’m not currently submitting anything, but I distinctly recall most of the rejections I’ve gotten. Many have been the puzzling form rejections. Some of have been handwritten little gems. Only one suggested I try something different with the work. The rest were veiled ways of saying, “I don’t think I can sell this.”

My favorite rejection was from an assistant who said she tried really hard to convince her boss to take me on. It was handwritten on the first page of my manuscript, wrapped around the form rejection as if she couldn’t leave a paper trail. Utterly heartwarming. I hope she some day gets her own agency. ^_^

I think I’m going to have a thoughtful day. How about you?

I think I know this troll, though it wants to be anonymous. (It left me a very fake name.) In aid of that anonymity, we’ll call her Letitia, Letty for short.

Letty left me a comment on my blog after being booted from her writing group. Somehow, she decided I should be the receiver of her ire. Quoth Letty:

“Just a note. The wrting group was not impressed by you or your critiques. One of them was voted by another goup as the worst they had ever seen.”

Ow, ouch. After being voted out of her group, Letty tells me they voted me the worst first. Noooo! Now I’m wondering how often this happens. Does the grocery store vote me the worst shopper? Did my waitress the other night vote me the worst diner? I’m wracked with concern!

Letty’s comment was left on a post several months old in response to one of my posts about prologues. I didn’t approve her comment, so Letty left me another:

“you’re a writer who censors?”

She clearly wasn’t happy I didn’t approve her comment. I’m happy to have a discussion with anyone. If I say, “I don’t like prologues,” and someone else likes them, they can leave me a comment, and I’m more than happy to discuss prologues with them all day long. There is no way I’m approving attacks, though, from this troll or any other. There’s no reason to put up with that shit on my blog. If Letty wants to badmouth me, she can do it on her own blog.

I admit, I’m poking the bear a bit here. I have no idea if Letty will ever see this or if I’ll be setting off another tempest in a teacup by posting this. I just wanted to get this out there, to see how people feel about this sort of behavior and see how they respond or deal with it. I could have just ignored Letty. In fact, in the beginning, I planned to. Then I realized, why shouldn’t I call attention to this childish behavior and make fun of it?

Leave me a note and tell me what you think. If you don’t, I might just vote you the worst commenter. Unless you vote me the worst blogger! Nooooooooo!

I’m trying to push full-steam ahead on my editing. The end of the year is such a milestone, and I want to be hip-deep in edits by the time it gets here, letting that burst of energy around New Year’s carry me through the middle of the book all the way to the end. There’s just Christmas in the way.

Oh, crap! Presents, decorating, holiday parties! When you’re looking at a busy year, you forget these things are fun. Right now all my friends and family are in danger of getting pens for Christmas just because I have writing on my mind. I guess if they don’t like the pens, they can always give them back…

In case you missed it yesterday, I did an interview on Tracy S. Morris’s blog! If you haven’t seen it yet, please drop by and say hello.

I felt crazy last week and decided to walk as far as I could in my enormous neighborhood. I ended up with six miles under my shoes by the time I was done, and took this to mark the occasion:

The end of the sidewalk. Past this was the entrance ramp to the freeway. Good thing I stopped.

How is your December looking? Do you even bother with any kind of holiday, or is it just another month?

My first interview. Must…hold…in…squee…

SQUEEEEEEEEEE!

Let me know how many of you are dropping by so I can bake enough pies.