Different Directions

Field Notes In/On Transition

Different Directions

One of those blog posts where I feel like I have to apologize for not posting more often. I’ve been trying to get my thoughts together for a new blog for a couple of weeks. But the thing is that while I have been driven to write everyday, it hasn’t been this blog that i’ve been working on: I’m working on a novel. It may never see the light of day, but I’m trying my hardest to sit everyday and work on it in the mornings, before work. Blog thinking has been hard to come by, when I sit down to type, even now, i’m getting ideas for what I’m going to write tomorrow.

The writing is just as therapeutic for me, as working on this blog, or writing poems, but it isn’t in anyway autobiographical. I am not giving any story away other than to say it would be classified as Sci/Fi and it has some fantasy elements. I’ve been doing this, (missing only one or two days early on) for almost six weeks, and every day I write a thousand to fifteen hundred words. The only talking about the project I do, is noting my word count of FB, because well, It helps me to have people cheer me on, it helps me a lot.

I am learning a lot simply by having a real daily practice of writing. I really feel like for me it is as close as I can get to Meditating or Yoga at the moment. I feel free, like I am doing what I was meant to do (if I believed if fate or destiny) ... which is much how I feel about presenting female, and living as a woman in transition. It is the most natural thing in the world for me to sit down and write a Science fiction book. I read four or five of them a month, minimum. I do read other genres, and am fairly well read in Can-Lit. But Sci Fi (and Fantasy) like Punk Rock, or Blues Music is where my heart is. 

My goal is to finish the initial draft, then go back and do big rewrites of certain sections, that I’ve already made note need to change, or leave them but basically rewrite the whole book, this time with a bit of research and annotating. Then I will go through and make sure it’s written right one more time. More rewriting, then Bam: publish it under my own imprint. I want to do some hard copies from my usual place maybe, but am thinking that given the genre, etc that it might do best as an e-book, so I want to figure out how to get on Amazon & itunes. 

I hate making big pronouncements that might be doomed to failure, but it is kind of what I do. I’d really like to keep learning and honing my craft with this novel, and future novels (this one might be a trilogy or a long duology) so that I can write a novel a year or every couple of years. I have very little interest in pursuing publishers. If I ever have a book that sells well enough to get some publisher’s attention and they want to buy some one-time rights, we can talk. Otherwise, I’ll get it done faster on my own, thanks. I feel deep in my bones that this is something I can do. Whether I do it or not depends on too many factors to even worry about. One is making a living. But, that, I think will always be at least as hard as it is right now for me, given the ridiculous capitalist world we live in, where people are penalized more for being poor than anything else in the world. 

But I don’t want to get into a political thing, that just pisses me off too much. I started talking about my writing process to get to how it’s helped me with some of the recent horror show I’ve put myself through. I am not going to go into big details to protect the other person involved’s anonymity. Suffice it to say that I am not doing any more electrolysis or Laser hair removal for a while. I was rude and thoughtless to someone who (and no one does) didn’t deserve any kind of anger from me. They had done nothing but good by me, and I got angry with them for in my despair, I thought they were mocking me. They weren’t and even if they were. I had a tantrum. Now the person doesn’t want to deal with me. I don’t blame them.

I have never been comfortable with undergoing those treatments, but always felt like ‘I had to’ because of the thickness of my beard, and that I was getting such a deal. But I was not graceful about being grateful. My appointments were on Friday evenings, a time when all I want to do is relax. I rarely go out on Fridays. End of the week. No socializing, only hibernating for me. I was so stressed before during and after each session, that sometimes i would leave in a kind of shell shocked haze. I really do feel that I simply was not ready so soon in my transition, to be doing that. it is a traumatic thing. I came to see it almost as a kind of self harm in the end.

My beard will be getting a bit darker again, I guess. But though I have nothing but regret for treating another person so carelessly, I am kind of glad that it happened. I spent the entire saturday Sunday and most of Monday crying to myself about it. I cried in the pharmacist, at work, at home, while I was sleeping. I cried a lot. By Tuesday I was kind of dried up, and had finally talked to some friends, and was feeling like it was a big learning experience for me.

Other than the crying and reaching out to friends what really got me through was not writing about it in my journal, or coming up with a poem, or even writing a blog post, like this, it took me til now to do that. I wrote even on the worst days of my wallowing, rolling in the ashes. I wrote my silly makes no sense but super fun to write Sci-Fi novel. I felt strong while doing that. Only that. And I read, whatever novel I was reading, sometimes while crying, but the reading habit I picked up again in 2013 also helped keep me sane when I was feeling insane.

You know when something happens in your life and you feel like something inside you has moved or changed as well as in your mind? If not, i hope you find out sometime. It feels good. Interestingly, one of the places that i have been able to recover myself after this, is a place where sometimes in the past i’ve been pretty much a crankypants, work. I’m not ‘meant’ for retail, not at all. But since my ‘bad weekend’ work has been really positive, everyone coming in all smiles. I’ve had more customers ask my name in the last 2 weeks than maybe the last 2 years. Some part of me that was so angry, so broken, has maybe been repaired, or at least patched up. I feel whole, I feel able to let the small stuff stay unsweated. This is very new for me. I have no idea if it will last. But I feel strong right now. I mentioned to someone yesterday on Facebook that I had been complimented on my outfits four days in a row by total strangers in the street. that’s five days and counting, now.

To wrap up what I meant to be my shortest post ever, I hope I can keep up at least once a month on the blog. It will be my only New Year’s resolution that doesn’t involve exercise.