The Idea of a Person

The idea of a person--our own hopes and expectations of who and what someone is or could be--that's what we want a person to be. If we want someone to love, we give our idea of the person we want traits that make them more desireable. We idealize and optimize those we say we care about by accepting and idea instead of the actual person.

I know I've been guilty of this plenty of times. I was once accused of caring about my idea of someone and not that person--all as a reason why I should back the hell off of them.

The girl I thought liked me has been guilty of this as well. I think what happened was something (What, I don't know) happened in her life and she wanted her boyfriend to listen to her and talk with her about the things she actually cares about. I say this because I'm fairly certain that the following things are true:

1. My initial assessment that this girl had a boyfriend and, as a result, isn't worth the effort.
2. That she was shooting me signals over the past few weeks.
3. That she's not going to send me any more signals.

Before I started to think she was shooting me signals, I'd talked to this girl about teaching--she's studying it, I used to do it, and my sister still deals with it. I'm willing to bet her boyfriend isn't a teacher. Most of the signals came about after a conversation about teaching. My knowledge of the subject made her more comfortable.

I'd say we all want some degree of sympathy from others. I think she must have been at a distance from said boyfriend for a while given her radical shift back to near-silence on her part. This is naturally after he boyfriend must have visited her over the weekend.

Since she's satisfied now (or for the time being, if you want a colder assessment), she's not shooting any more signals at me. I created a chance to. I cracked jokes with her, but she just didn't respond. That's why I think she was drawn to her idea of me, not the real me. (She's never once that I can recall asked me about my writing.)

I sure this is the sort of thing that will eventually come out of the subtext of my writing, so I thought I'd address it now while it was fresh in my mind. Feel free to ridicule my stream of consciousness writing if you like. This post is more for my benefit than anything else.

The good news--my instincts were right about this girl from the beginning.

Tides in the Storm

There's no distraction like having everything important get complicated all the sudden. I went through several chapters, assembling three every two days for almost a week. Of course, I ran into another chapter I have to write from scratch and that slowed everything down a bit.

I found that there were a pair of characters I thought were going to be in a single chapter, which would conclude their role. As I created them, I knew I could make them part of the wider tapestry of events. I let this happen, but I kept their presence to only being in Chapter 7. I'm thinking I'll be using them in Chapter 19 as well.

I'm currently trying to figure out if a girl I know likes me. It's not like the debacle from a few months back. The girl I'm talking about now has been shooting signals at me for a couple of weeks now. She randomly touched me last week, which clued me in to what she might be doing. She's been trying to talk to me a lot of the time as well--and this girl is definately the quiet type. And I haven't forgotten that she's tall and pretty as well.

With all these odd frustrations, I managed to not use my computer for about three days. From Friday to yesterday (Monday), I didn't even turn my computer on. I'm picking my habits back up again. The words must flow.

Oh Really, Swan?

Today's been a banner day for Vitamin F progress.

Lyndsey gave me a few more notes on what she's read. She's even more pleased than she was before with the story and the characters. In an effort to help me, she asked a lesbian friend of hers to look over the first couple of chapters. The result was Lyndsey's friend sent me an author's name for the puposes of finding the right tone for a lesbian character. More on that in a bit.

I still get a lot of accolades for the History class sequences, those quick beats where I reveal the history of this world without going into a great deal of exposition. While putting together a sequence where the instructor talks about the Uprising to some degree, I stumbled upon a couple of things. The first was the name of the first Queen (or her mother, I haven't decided): Nancy Osteen. Nancy Osteen is a historical figure, a woman who went out into a frenzy of battle, methodically conquering North America, one small town at a time. The second thing I figured out came from the following text: "Nancy Osteen wanted her opressors to choke themselves with plague and contamination." When I wrote those words down, I realized the accelerated crash of the male genome was not a natural occurence.

Along that realm of thinking, I was doing some research on the author Lyndsey's friend had suggested: Rita Mae Brown. Aside from her starting her career as a novelist writing a book using a first person lesbian protagonist, Ms. Brown has had a most unique history. She was involved in the civil rights movement to a limited degree, she was one of the more outspoken participants in the feminist movement. She was also involved with a group who launched a feminist newsletter committed to--if you can believe this--gathering women together to isolate themselves from "men and men-loving women." Why? They thought patriarchal society was the source of all oppression.

After a little more digging, I learned that there were quite a few distinguished women that were members of groups with similar goals. A few of these even wanted to make militant efforts to achieve their goals (they've since recanted). I just find it interesting an odd that the outlandish fictional idea I came up with actually has a few real world parallels.

Female POV, Male voice

Despite all the odd trappings of Vitamin F, it's supposed to be a story about women, following women during their lives. One of my beta readers differs with me on this fact.

Lyndsey said that she felt the dialogue was a little stiff and a few cliches were used. She didn't say which ones. She was very intrigued by the plot (of the first two chapters). Her response, in a word, was postive. She asked me to send her more.

It was her explanation that, even though she was reading about a female character, she could sense the male writer behind the scenes. She doesn't know anything about the plot twist either. All she knows is that I made some subtle word choices that continuously remind her that "A GUY IS WRITING THIS."

I just wish I knew what those subtle word choices were. That way, I could make the audience forget about me and focus completely on the characters and story.

The Editing Blues

--Imagine the character Calhoun Tubbs (Old Blues Singer) from In Living Color while reading this post.

You know, I was trying to move forward with the editing of Vitamin F, but my readers needed me to move backward, which made me think, "Maybe I'll just stand still." Wrote a song 'bout it. Like to hear it?--Here it go.

"Editing a book isn't easy
"It's harder trying to go over three points at a time
"Ah-ahhh"

Thank ya very much!

And I was thinking about what might make things so rough in when I go to edit something else. It's not an easy thing I'm doing here, especially when I've been wondering if one of my characters might be going bad. Wrote a song 'bout it. Like to hear it?--Here it go.

"Trying to keep a character from going bad is tough
"At least she's not trying to destroy the world all at once
"Ah-ahhh"

Thank ya very much!

Now sometimes, I can be a little tough on myself about all this. I see some people doing well with their lives and think why I don't have that. I haven't wrote no song 'bout that, but I can try to make one up right now. Like to hear it?--Here it go.

"Some people are going around making money
"But I'm about to get a big fat raise and will some day make millions
"Ah-ahhh"

Thank ya very much!

(You know I'm just having fun. That's the joy of writing and editing in the middle of the night.)