Modern authorship is a make-your-own-rules kind of game. Self-published, mainstream, hybrid, neither (ask me about subscriptions to The All-Hearts Cabaret) and it’s up to you, the author, to decide how you want to play it.
Me, I’m doing my freaking best under the weight of my neurodivergent, gender-baffled self-awareness. I want to be/do/know/have/eat/encompass everything that exists, and this is a real problem when it comes time to make decisions.
And yet…
On Tuesday I visited one of the very nice nurse practitioners at my doctor’s clinic. No knock to the NP, y’all are keeping Western Medicine functioning, but this poor child doesn’t know me from a hole in the ground. So she went ahead and prescribed me medication that I (and many of you) expect will make me want to unalive myself.
Baby…I don’t do speed.
I just don’t. That class of drugs is Bad For Me. And when the popular literature tells me that no one knows *why* this particular drug works,? No. Just no. I’m not that messed up, TBH. I *like* my neurodivergence for the most part. It’s fun to have this many ideas. Maybe I could do better at keeping appointments and finding my keys, but the last time I tried this class of meds was a nightmare. I made a vast number of bad choices, while totally ignoring the work I needed to do, and ended up sobbing under my desk more days than not.
So…fuck you.
Fuck this.
Please, please don’t take my experiences as advice. You do you, as we say, and decide for yourself. Me? I’m going to just learn how to be this shambolic, well-intended, heartfelt and whole and every now and then problematic neurospicy genderqueer who gives no f’s for ordinary people’s comfort because I’m having too much fun.
I’ve been writing The Fixer as a highly personal blog, and sometimes the personal is horrifying. Poetry is a good medium for saying what is almost impossible to say. Sparse, so targeted, able to express what is unsayable in any other way.
Consider this your content warning for a dirty word and a reference to a violent act. Things have been intense in my world lately, with a lot of big wins but also some really messed up stuff. This is some of that messed up.
“The thing is, none of that shit is real. Nothing is real, and I can prove it. Pick any molecule in existence. If that molecule was a solar system, that is, if some atom in a molecule in a mitochondrion in a cell in your body was the size of the sun, its electrons are somewhere out past Pluto. Most of you is empty space.
Wait, it gets worse. I can prove you don’t exist. Science is fantastic. I mean, I get why people think they’re just making stuff up, because quantum physics is bonkers.
Because if you get down that small, if you’re looking at electrons, first of all you’re using the most advanced science we’ve ever scienced, machines the size of cities, billions of dollars of infrastructure. And it still barely works. You’re trying to catch ghosts. Really you are because the only way you see quantum particles is smashing them into each other and taking a photo.
I’m not kidding. This is science. That’s what they do at the CERN super-collider, which is why they call it a collider.
But think about that. They’re seeking the building blocks of all we know, and you’d think it would be obvious. I mean, we’re made of atoms, everything is made of atoms, but atoms don’t really seem to be made of anything at all.
You can know where a quantum particle was, or you can know where it’s going. You cannot, cannot by the fundamental structure of the universe, know both. They’re like cockroaches: if you turn on the light they disappear under the cabinets. I mean it, if you locate a quantum particle, the act of looking at it makes it change direction.
Imagine you’re at a baseball game and you’re looking at something else. Like there’s someone on the jumbotron who doesn’t know her nip has slipped or whatever is distracting you. And you hear the crack as the batter hits the ball and so you look and you looking makes that sweet long drive to the unguarded right field suddenly in midair veer to the left and land in the midfielder’s glove.
That’s what doing quantum physics is like. At a million bucks a throw.
Here’s the even worse bit: in the end the odds of finding any one particle in any one given state or location are just that, odds. There is no certainty at the bottom of reality. Just chance. Your particles come and go, fluctuate in and out of being, are at best potentialities that walk and talk and wear pants and think they’re in charge of some shit when you don’t even really exist. You are seafoam on an ever-cresting wave sweeping through time and space, sentient glitter that winks in and out of existence faster than you or I can imagine.
So why the fuck does it matter which bathroom I use?”
What am I doing with these line poems? They say so little, tell so much, but I believe there’s a balance between poetry that is born of long thought, and that which tears through us, that grasps a mere tenth of our feeling yet makes it manifest in a form that others can see.
I want to work harder. I want to burn. I want to push and push and push until I reach a lie, then push beyond. I want you to break when you read them. I want you to be reborn.
My local shopping district, a cute and happily robust cluster of antique shops, fabric stores, and casual dining trends, hosted an event for World Dracula Day, celebrating the anniversary of the first release of Bram Stoker’s novel.
I thought, what better way to take advantage of the fact that I dress like (let’s be honest) Doctor Who on an extended 1889 story arc. Off I went to diligently assemble an appropriately sepulchral ensemble. Aside from lacking long hair and having the wrong shade of top hat, I managed a very satisfactory homage to Gary Oldman in that grey suit (or Lucien Vaudrey if you nasty.)
In other words I looked great. I look good in suits in general, and this outfit was so satisfying that I decided not to wear it to the vampire party. That is to say, I looked just how I like to look on the day to day, and the thought of calling it a costume was…
It was fucking cringe, alright? It felt like I was making a joke about myself. I am very, very aware that I dress differently than almost everyone alive (that’s much of the point) and so maybe I overthink my aesthetic, but there’s so little joy that we’re permitted in this economy that I’ve leaned way in on this thing that persistently brings me joy. It seems to make other people happy too, for the number of compliments I get. Someone dressed in plus-fours and a waistcoat is not an ordinary sight. You’re welcome.
But it’s just my ordinary clothes. It’s not a costume. Or if it is, then every single one of us are wearing costumes every day.
typical me, typical me, typical me
This is the larger truth, that we are all doing drag, every single day. We *choose* how we want to look, even when we’re not aware of it. Every time we get dressed, we are choosing which part of ourselves to present, depending not just on our moods but on the context, and if you don’t think that’s true, go ahead put on sweats and crocs then try talking to the CEO of your company the way you talk to the people you play sports with on the weekend. If that’s the same person, congrats, you’ve won capitalism.
Regarding my excellent self in the mirror last Saturday, the serendipitous collection of grey apparel that when put one with the other seemed to have been made for the sole purpose of becoming this suit. I was too happy to want to stain it with the frivolity of pretending I wouldn’t dress exactly like this every day. I mean, the ultimate cop-out Hallowe’en costume is to just put on what you wear to work, right? Costumes should transport, make fantastic, startle and confound. This outfit was simply too good.
Bloody shame I’m such a snob, though. I hear there were prizes.
I’ve always thought of myself as unable to resist temptation. As being too desperate for dopamine to not eat the cookie, not buy the gift. I always eat the cookie. But I don’t always buy the gift.
And I realized my problem isn’t with reward systems, it’s with gamifying food.
Consumer capitalism has a terrible relationship with food. It’s used as lure, camouflage, dumping ground, flag to wave, and whip to beat ourselves with. It’s a popular brand of mayonnaise declaring over a 90s grunge pastiche soundtrack that it “will not tone it down.” It’s a food that has never once in its existence contained fat declaring in block letters on the label that it’s “fat-free.” It’s thinking almond milk is virtuous without considering the operations of the almond farming industry (not pretty, if you ask a bee in California.)
Dieticians and specialists in early childhood will both tell you that using food to reward or punish children makes food a battleground and plants in them the seeds of lifelong eating disorders. So why would I do that to myself? If I eat a cookie, it’s not because I have “allowed” myself a “reward” of a “bad” food that I would ordinarily resist. It’s because I wanted a cookie, and I happened to have some. I might treat myself to a more expensive meal for a special occasion, but I don’t like tying food to performance benchmarks. I’m not a seal, bopping a ball with my nose to get a fish. I’m a person with an oven and a working knowledge of baked goods, and sometimes having a cookie is the only thing that makes me want to do my job. Let snacks be snacks, I say.
Gifts, though…I resisted building a Lego set for almost a week until I’d hit a word count goal. The unopened box sat on my desk for days, taunting me a little, but more inviting me to reach my goal.
I now have this nice reminder on my desk that I can get what I want if I stick to it. That cookie, or cake, or 700 calorie whipped cream and coffee thing? Long gone.
But don’t let me stop or shame you. Everyone is wired differently. I don’t want to attach moral significance to snacks. Excuse me, I’m going to go eat a cookie.
There’s no denying that I am a snob. As such, I like my Historical Romance to be damn well historical. Attempting to live by my own standards, I mostly muddle about in the Victorian Era, despite all the press about its repressive culture. Michel Foucault has said some things on this, but I’ll save that for my dissertation (and this heavy-duty post of mine from last year.)
Intellectual wanking aside, writing fiction in the idiom of the Victorian age is a lot of fun. I like the diction and writing style, the license to be poetic and to drench my dialogue in innuendo and double entendre. I like as well the scenarios the Victorian era offers. Despite its reputation as an era of repression, it was in fact a time of broad social upheaval and technological advancement with many parallels to our time, including the struggle to implement socially beneficial infrastructure as the epidemic and chronic illnesses of increasingly urban lifestyles were battled with public health measures like sewers and indoor plumbing.
Deep diving into Victoriana feels a little like visiting Japan. It provides a sweet spot of a lifestyle much like mine, yet with an utterly foreign aesthetic and social imaginary. Britain under Queen Victoria and Japan in general are both cultures built on very precisely managed social facades, behind which can rage stunning perversities. We observe the gentility of a tea ceremony, but flip over the painted scroll hanging on the paper wall and you will find a geisha ‘entertaining’ several octopuses. The Marylebone gentleman speaks in Parliament, dines with his wife, kisses his nanny-educated children goodnight, then goes to the bawdy house and gets his arse resoundingly ‘birched’ like the good old days away at school.
While the Regency is a very popular period for Historical Romance (from Austen to Heyer to Quinn to Hall) it was not a very long time period. Many of its charms linger into the Victorian age. Well-spoken politeness still wins the day, and one’s past can define one’s whole future. Yet by the end of the 19th Century, class structures have notably shifted, introducing new types of people to each other. The middle class has begun to emerge, challenging the nobility’s power through sheer force of numbers. And technology had already begun to change the way everyone lived, at a pace unmatched in prior ages.
Not to mention it’s after Britain’s abolition of slavery, which suits me very well. I certainly can’t erase the wealth acquired through the Transatlantic slave trade, but statistically any titled person i.e. English Duke in the Regency was likely benefitting from the Slave Trade. Yes, that wealth carries over even to our times, but let’s say I prefer to play with the fiction-writing kit that doesn’t include that particular component. My titled 19th Century snobs can still be cruel, remorseless, indifferent to oppression. Today we might call them Tories, and there’s a wealth of contemporary fiction about this same kind of ultra-rich white cis-het culture. I don’t need to write about duels at sword-point for my stories to contain entitled men who feel they have the right to be violent, and who need putting in their place, which is really more where my interest lies.
And then there’s the aesthetic. I like dark suits and slim waistcoats and pocket watches and canes that turn out to be shivs. I like tailcoats and tight white shirts and black hansom cabs slipping through the streets to indecent assignations. Cockneys with knives. Can-can and Burlesque. Laudanum and Absinthe, Impressionism, subways, suffrage, Sarah Bernhardt and steam power, Charcot’s gynecological exhibitions and Aubrey Beardsley’s priapic prints, masturbation both as a symptom of insanity and the means by which one prevented it, and all the while corsets get tighter and tighter. The British Experiment reached its giddy apex, and for a few bold years the sun never did set on its Empire, while quietly it was being said that perhaps its former colony across the Atlantic was about to steal its gilded crown.
Change by the bucketful: unavoidable, terrifying, fascinating.
I told WordPress to notify me twice a week that it was time to post something. I began immediately to resent this, and have ignored several notifications. This is me all over. It doesn’t matter if an event is in a calendar, on a chart, in my phone, in an email. As soon as I’m told to do something I’m not already happily doing, my RSD and defiance disorder go on high alert and I start deliberately, some might say belligerently, ignoring the notifications.
Which is why I have yet to discover an author business planning system that sticks. No matter how carefully I craft my quarterly plan, my weekly schedule, I just don’t do the dang work. I’m so good at ignoring important things that I started asking myself if I have Asperger’s. I so often refuse to do what’s best, even when it’s obviously what’s needed and would be really easy to do, though I genuinely do like myself, in a compassionate, c’mereyou dumb-ass kinda way.
I think and think and think and in truth I probably just spend too much time alone. I can overthink anything, which can be good when you’re doing big vision work, and much less helpful when you’re trying to pick a task and stick with it until you can call it done.
Because I have so many things to do, it’s a struggle to prioritize. Everything feels like a priority, and I don’t want to spend all my time planning, but I’m not achieving much with the time I have so maybe what I really need is to get the heck over myself, sit down and do the work *I know* needs to get done, and let the rest fall into place.
The place where I get all of it right is just over the horizon. I have a flat tire and I’m fucking hungry, but if I can get this wheel back on, I can start rolling again and get to where I want to be.
Do you use a planner? Google calendar or similar? What works for you?
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