Family decided to do something a little different this year by actually putting up decorations in a spot that is high visibility.
In blogging news, it seems the bots finally filled their USB stick and went home to download a terra-byte of collected data for who knows what, as my page views are back to normal for the first time in two months.
So with the bots hightailing it out of the blog world, hopefully never to return for another decade or two, it leaves me with a tiny bit of a quandary: do I continue down the new path that I had to involuntarily chart, or do I casually add an old element or two back into the mix?
It is a tough decision, because on one hand, I made a commitment that I shouldn't back out from; but on the other hand, I made a commitment that I shouldn't back out from.
The above question is a little rhetorical, since I do plan on dipping my toes into the proverbial mud puddle to see what kind of response I will get, if any. Wish me luck.
I finally, unequivocally, with a solid degree of certainty, put my five volume fantasy series "Sister v Sister" on the last train to Clarksville, where only a pedi-cab will meet them at the station and take them on a journey for self-reflection for the next several months. I had decided, mostly because I was in a funk with my latest attempt at writing a novella (no real writer's block, just the conundrum of how to use a short story as a starting point for a novella), to finish writing out my bullet point chapter synopses for my fantasy series. Having left off at chapter 96, it took me about 1 1/2 months to create the remaining 24 chapters (totaled about 75 pages).
Naturally this left me with a plethora of time on my gnarly little hands. And you know a writer with time on their hands and a jumbled mess of brain cells desperately wanting to focus on something worthwhile, no matter how shallow or tenuous it may be. I eventually focused on writing a blog post, and since I had quite a bit of time on my hands, I wrote it out with pen & paper.
The topic of this initial post was something I had been mulling about for quite some time: the unrealistic portrayal of gay characters in novels. Now this is probably a hot button topic for those who've done at least three times the amount of reading that I've done in a quarter in one month, but this was something I really wanted to elaborate on and explain my thought process on portraying at least 20% of my characters as gay/lesbian/bi realistically as humanly possible, based on the societal norms of today and yesterday.
This post ultimately turned into something that I haven't really attempted since my high school days (that's more than 40 years ago for those of you keeping track), an essay, which in this particular instance, was an essay totaling over 7k words. Now considering the amount of aggravation that I was going through with the bots, combined with the hypersensitive faux triggering in today's culture, I made a conscious decision to not post the end result to this blog, but to create a section containing essays in another short story collection that I've been working on for the past several months.
I know there are a certain subset of people who like to take offense when people write about situations that they've never had personal experience with, and it's these people that my essay is geared towards. In general, I explained my rationale for writing what I personally believe are realistic scenarios that the gay community would sometimes face, either passive aggressively, all purpose aggression, or in some instances, with acceptance and empathy.
Believe it or not, I don't mind explaining my rationale behind why I write what I write to other people, as it forces me to step outside of my comfort zone (I'm a weird anomaly, in that I'm an introvert in the real world, but quite extroverted in the digital world). It's definitely not easy stepping out of one's comfort zone, especially when you're half introvert/half extrovert, but it's something that I'm incrementally working on.
I do have other ideas for essays, some of which pertain to other aspects of my writing life, that I have no doubt I will enjoy expounding on. Because, as well all know, a busy writer is a happy writer, no matter what he/she has chosen for a topic/format to write about/write in.
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Lay it on me, because unlike others, I can handle it.