I just wanted to throw this quick tip–that many writers probably already know–out there: music helps. I don’t always write with music. Sometimes I just like to hear my keyboard or the wind outside.
Lately, however, when I sit down to write, I don’t have writer’s block, but I feel overstimulated and overwhelmed. I think this is because of my increased use of social media. I’m an introvert, so the social aspect of social media is difficult for me sometimes. If I’ve been on Twitter or something for a while, then try to write, I often feel agitated and nervous. Going for a walk helps with this some, but not enough to write.
Music, however, helps. With the right music (this varies) I’m able to get back into the story and feel that world again. So, if you’re fidgety and restless when you try to write, see if playing some music gets you back in the zone.
(You can tell I’m between books, because here’s another blog post.)
This morning, I received an email from a friend asking me to blog about being genderqueer. First, let’s get some taxonomy out of the way. Genderqueer is a blanket term for having a gender identity that doesn’t fall neatly into either male or female. I believe the scientific term for this is non-binary. Other types of genderqueer are genderfluid, gender***, gender-neutral, third gender, and probably some others that I can’t remember at the moment, but I’ve only had one cup of tea today, so please forgive me. Genderqueer falls within the trans community. Basically, the trans community encompasses trans women, trans men, and non-binary people. Here’s a link to a wonderful diagram that explains the difference between gender identity, gender expression, biological identity, and sexuality.
Genderqueer is my preferred term to describe myself. Non-binary seems too sterile. Genderfluid, from what I understand, is where a person feels more masculine sometimes and more feminine at others. This doesn’t describe my experience. I’m pretty much blended all of the time. My perception of myself could probably best be defined as intersex. Intersex used to be called hermaphroditism, and describes a person born with both male and female sexual characteristics. Biologically, I’m female. In my head, I’m both male and female. I lack male sex organs. We’ll get back to that.
As a kid, I always felt different. I didn’t like dolls. I played with plastic or stuffed animals. Later, I liked boy’s action figures. I wasn’t really a tomboy. I wasn’t athletic or outdoorsy. My friends were usually soft, nerdy boys, and we meshed beautifully. Middle school and high school were absolute hell. I didn’t fit in anywhere. I wasn’t attracted to most men. Straight (the fun term now is cis sexual) men actually turned me off and sometimes angered me. The more alpha male a guy was, the more I wanted to punch his sack. I loved lesbians, but I wasn’t really sexually attracted to them. I loved gay men, but they weren’t sexually attracted to me. My teen and young adult years were confusing and lonely.
In my early twenties, before I met my husband, I worked as a stripper. I did all of the glitter and high heels and whatnot for work. During the day, however, I often dressed as a boy. When I went out with my guy friends, I sometimes passed as a boy. I don’t know that I was fluid then, because the stripper garb felt like playing dress up. It was a role, not something I was.
I met my husband when I was twenty-six. He looked like a perfectly normal straight guy, but I could smell the weird on him. I knew something was up. At this point, I had never heard of all of these terms. I didn’t know what I was. I knew what I wasn’t—a ‘normal’ heterosexual woman. So, here comes L., all six foot three of him, tall and broad and looking like a young Colin Firth. And he was deliciously strange. We clicked immediately and have been inseparable ever since. I always scoff when I hear people criticizing “insta love” in romances; it totally happens.
A snapshot of our relationship dynamic could be a time when we went to an antique mall. We stood in the checkout line, me with an armful of Incredible Hulk action figures, him with a Depression glass candy dish and a decidedly feminine Victorian desk set. We were getting things for our home offices.
These days, I basically look female. I dress female—more or less—sometimes I pack, but under skirts and dresses, so no one knows but me. I sound female. I use feminine pronouns. All of these things are mainly because I’m lazy, somewhat cowardly, and don’t want to upset the people who are used to seeing me as female. In the bedroom, however, I wear a strap-on. The first time I wore one, I felt whole for the first time ever. Finally, my body made sense. There’s a fetish called pegging where straight women wear strap-ons and have sex with straight guys. I don’t peg. I use a prosthetic. I make love. I’m not using a toy; I’m making my body look and function more the way I feel like it should. That is my preferred way to have sex and has been for about twenty years.
That’s one of the reasons I enjoy writing m/m romances. Romantically, I have more in common with a gay man than with a straight woman. I’ve written one erotic romance with a straight couple and struggled with the erotic parts. I don’t think it’s a bad book, but I think my gay romances have a more natural feel.
In a perfect world, where surgery was free, painless, and carried no risks, I would get surgery to correct my body and make it fit my mental image of it. I’m okay with things not being perfect. I’ve found love and happiness, I more or less accept and like who I am. I didn’t hear the term ‘genderqueer’ until maybe ten years ago. I immediately loved it and embraced it. I didn’t realize that made me part of the trans community until a few years ago when I went to protest the bathroom bill in Texas and a trans male doctor explained the trans spectrum. The information moved me to tears. I wasn’t a complete weirdo. I was part of a community.
As I said, genderqueer is a blanket term. It’s rather nebulous. It means different things to different people. This is what it means to me. I guess I’m rather nebulous, so I like it.
To be perfectly honest, as a writer, I sort of hate Goodreads. Why? Because readers can leave ratings without leaving a review explaining why they rated it that way. I also hate them because GR has no way of verifying that the reader actually bought and/or read the book. For example, there is a user who goes by Wendy on GR who rates something like four or five books a day (I’m not exaggerating) and rates them all one-star. “She” only “reads” LGBT books. To me, this looks like an obvious troll. However, after I and many others complained to GR, they responded that she isn’t violating their policies and there’s nothing they can do. She is one of GR’s highest rated reviewers. I’m not kidding. I truly wish I were.
However, there are many normal, honest, real readers on GR that also leave low ratings. This used to irk me. I wanted—no, desperately needed—to know why they didn’t like my book. This still bothers me, but not to the extent it once did. I have four strategies for dealing with this. No, they don’t involve wine or chocolate, but those do help.
Look at the reader’s profile.
This is done simply by clicking on her portrait. You can (usually, sometimes profiles are private) see what other books the reader has read and how she rated them. If you recognize some of the books and/or authors, this might give you some insight as to what she didn’t like it. Maybe she mostly reads YA and your book is definitely not YA. Maybe she prefers plot-driven books and yours is character-driven. Maybe she’s just rather harsh and gives most books a low rating. (This is different from our troll, Wendy, who only gives one-stars and “reads” unrealistic quantities of books.) My new release received a two-star rating from a guy yesterday and I was momentarily devastated. When I looked at his profile, I saw that he also recently gave two stars to a book by an author I admire. An award-winning author. Obviously, this guy just has bad taste in books. Heehee.
Realize that the reader isn’t you.
Okay, that sounds elementary to some of you, but it was a revelation for me. I don’t rate/review books the way most people (apparently) do. I see books as works of art. I love and respect them—even if I don’t enjoy them. Because I view them as works of art, I see them as having inherent value—some artistic merit apart from whatever my experience is with the book. (And yes, I adored literature classes.) I don’t know if this is a writer-thing or just how I was raised. I’ve never left a negative rating or review of a book. I will give it three stars and say some things I liked (there are always things I liked), things I didn’t like (without dwelling), and who I think might actually like it. Or I don’t review it at all. I leave negative reviews of hospitals if they overcharge me and restaurants if they’re dirty or a business if their customer service is horrible, but books get a pass.
Most readers DO NOT think this way. For them, books are entertainment. If a book fails to entertain, it’s crap. I was sneaking about on a reader message board the other day and someone said if a book contained a certain element she didn’t like, she’d dropkick it off a cliff. This horrified me. If someone talked about kicking kittens off a cliff, I would have had a similar visceral reaction. Most readers aren’t literary scholars who will examine a book from different perspectives. They’re people looking to escape the daily grind of their lives. They want something that meets their needs, whatever those happen to be at the time, and if your book doesn’t meet them, well, off the cliff it goes.
For me, this was an ah-ha moment. It gave me a better understanding of my audience and even some empathy for them that I didn’t quite have before. Sometimes, if they dislike something, they just…didn’t like it. They may not even be able to articulate it. So, they leave a rating. However much I dislike ratings, I have to respect that.
Revel in the good ratings and reviews.
I guess I tend to be a negative person. When I first started publishing, someone could write a beautiful review and I would be on Cloud Nine for a of couple of hours. One low rating and I was in the dumps for days. Now, I try to fully appreciate good ratings and reviews. I roll around in them, reading them several times. I try to imagine the people who left them (okay, I snoop around in their profiles) and send them good wishes and good vibes. I’m not just grateful to them, I love them.
Keep writing.
Don’t let a negative anything affect your love of writing. If you find yourself unable to focus on writing because you’re hung up on a negative rating or review, block it out. You might want to take a break and do something nice for yourself—take a hot bath, go for a run, visit with a good friend—whatever makes you happy and puts you in a positive headspace. And then dive back into your work. Don’t let anything get between you and your art. Ever.
I don’t want to run afoul of the new EU privacy regulations, so I’m suspending this offer for now.
I promised at the end of my M/M historical western mystery romance, A Little Sin, that interested readers could get a copy of the deleted syrup scene from my website. This is a sexually explicit scene that is intended for adults only. If you’re considered an adult in your country and would like a free copy of this NSFW deleted scene, please email me at: everwintergreen@gmail.com. Tell me what file format you want: MOBI, ePub, or PDF. I’ll be happy to send you a copy.
I deleted this scene because I was afraid it slowed the action of the mystery down too much. Every few scenes Garland and Avery seemed to be up to their eyeballs in each other. I was afraid this was just one sex scene too many.
I just wanted to throw this quick tip–that many writers probably already know–out there: music helps. I don’t always write with music. Sometimes I just like to hear my keyboard or the wind outside.
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