Mette Ivie Harrison's Blog, page 56

Fictional Motherhood #1: Twilight (New Series)

First of all, I am a mother. I have 5 children living, 1 died at birth. I spent a lot of years getting over the death of that child. I think some of this is because of our cultural ideas of motherhood. The guilt that can really kill you is the guilt of not-having-done-enough. When I was pregnant with my last child, I continued to exercise at a fairly aggressive level. I was out running several miles a day the week before she was born. I chose to deliver at home because I hate hospitals and the rules surrounding birth. There are other reasons, but I won't give in to them now, because when my youngest daughter died, I got a lot of crap from neighbors who believed that it was my “fault” for not choosing to go to a hospital because I was more interested in my own comfort than in the safety of my child. I was a mother, and what kind of a mother doesn't give up everything she wants for the smallest risk to her child?

Feminism has tried to mess with this idea of motherhood, but I'm not sure that it has gotten very deep at the problem. Basically, the cultural icon of mother that I see is the woman who is willing to give her life and her identity for her child. This is sometimes literal, but it is also metaphorical. A woman can send her kids to day care. She can refuse to cook homemade meals for them and get takeout every night. She can hire a cleaning service and get scuba diving lessons. But only if her children are happy, healthy and well-cared for. If her children have a need and she does not fill that need, she is going to be seen as a bad mother.

Instead of getting at the problem of motherhood as a crazy, impossible and unhealthy ideal (like, for instance, the perfect “wife”), feminism has tried to get at abortion rights by arguing that the “fetus” is not, in fact a child. Therefore, a woman should not be held responsible for not being a perfect mother to a not-yet-child. We have begun to extend the time period of motherhood, as well. A baby can be dropped at a hospital in some states before motherhood begins, for about a week or even a month. But after that, not choosing what is best for the child rather than for yourself is not only bad mothering, but pretty much illegal. I don't believe that our culture has the same stringent ideas of what constitutes good fathering. Men are supposed to fight to the death to protect the physical well-being of their children. But women are in charge of the total well-being of children and rather than fighting to the death, are to drain themselves emotionally, physically, spiritually, and psychologically.

I remember what a battle it was for me, as a nursing mother, to force myself to eat before my baby did. If I didn't, I wasn't going to be able to produce milk or have the energy to make food for myself, but it felt as if I was a “bad” mother if I didn't take care of all the baby's needs first. Never mind that a baby's needs are never-ending.

So, to Twilight, or rather Breaking Dawn. The book's central plot follows Bella's argument that she is a mother and that a mother must give her life to her child, no matter what the cost. Just because she is bearing a vampire baby who will likely eat its way out of her, doesn't matter. Just because this vampire baby may be a horrible creature, unable to show the least bit of restraint in its thirst for blood, doesn't matter. Just because her husband doesn't want her to give birth to this child because he never wanted or expected children—doesn't matter. Bella is a mother from the moment that she is married—literally--and she is thrust into the role of motherhood, a role which her own mother has been woefully insufficent at. Bella's mother has remarried, proving she is more interested in her own life than in Bella's, and Bella has been shipped off to Dad instead. And from Bella's brief scenes with her mother, it's clear that Bella feels that she is the mother in her relationship with her mother. She is the one who can deal with finances, who is self-sacrificing, and thinks of other's feelings.

In this sense, Bella is indeed a perfect mother icon of culture. But to look uncritically at this depiction of Bella is to miss the underlying darkness surrounding her motherhood. As someone who loathes being pregnant and has faced depression through 7 pregnancies, let me say that the description of Bella's pregnancy is very apt. It is miserable. It happens too fast, even if you are planning a pregnancy. You wonder constantly if it is the right thing to do to be pregnant, even once the choice has in some ways been taken from you. I found myself wondering how unhappy I would be to have a miscarriage, despite the fact that I had a miscarriage between my first two children and was horribly upset by it. The reality is that the person I am while pregnant is not the person that I am while I am not pregnant.

While pregnant, Bella is suddenly seized by the need to drink blood as the child within her grows in power and its needs become her needs. Hello, pregnancy cravings, wild mood swings, sensitivity to smells, and sudden dislikes of foods that you once loved? Alien, a movie that got a lot more positive feminist press than the Twilight series ever has, is based at least partly on this same premise, that being pregnant and becoming a mother is a lot like giving birth to an alien. Guess why? The child inside IS an alien in every biological way. For someone who is A negative as I am, married to a man who is B positive, this is obvious in the way in which any bleeding during the pregnancy is treated, as well as when you get shots after the pregnancy to keep your body from facing the reality that a baby is an alien creature that should be rejected. None of my children have been of the same blood type that I am. We can stop the body from creating antibodies, but that doesn't change the reality. Pregnancy is an alien creature taking over a woman's body and demanding that she take care of its needs first, before her own, often changing her personality completely.

Another reality of motherhood that is made obvious by Bella in Twilight is that of the looming specter of death. Facing death in childbirth is something that is so commonplace that no one mentions it. People argue that abortion should only be allowed when the mother's life is in danger, but the mother's life is ALWAYS in danger. That is what childbirth is. Moving a creature the size of a full-term baby out of the uterus, between the legs, and into the real world is a dangerous prospect to the mother, but that's what motherhood is, right? I said to a friend of mine that I hoped the “uterine replicator” of Lois McMaster Bujold's universe would be available soon enough for my daughters to avoid the trauma of childbirth and my friend was flummoxed. But that's what being a mother is, she said. Holding the baby inside you, being connected to it, risking your life for it. My babies did not literally use their teeth to cut their way out of me, but metaphorically, how different is it? Fetuses often suck their mother's dry of nutrients. How many women end up hemorrhaging during delivery, and become so weak after that they justify a long hospital stay?

The belief that a child is going to be a “monster” is another important reality of pregnancy. No matter how many tests a pregnant woman undergoes, there is no guarantee that the baby she delivers will be well physically, let alone well mentally. We don't know when we give birth if we are giving birth to a future President or a future serial killer. We can't know that. And yet motherhood means not asking what the future will bring. Being the perfect mother means giving all to the act of mothering, even if there is no hope of a good life for the child.

Idealized motherhood continues for Bella even after her baby is born. She has to keep living even if her body wants to die. Because she loves her daughter and needs to protect her from the threat of the vampires who think she may kill them all. Children are indeed monsters. Seriously, babies are the most selfish creatures imaginable. They have to be to survive, I suppose. If they didn't scream, they'd get ignored to death. They are machines of need. They have to be fed, carried, burped, diapered, cleaned, kept warm, woken up with, soothed, and on and on. What is the definition of a monster if it is not this? And as soon as they are old enough, they learn to poke adults in the eye, to kick and hit anyone in sight, threat or not. They demand that everything belongs to them and defend this position seemingly to the death.

You may argue that Bella isn't a powerful female character and you may be right. But you can't argue with me that the message of the novel is about the joys of motherhood. In my experience, teen readers were turned off by the last volume of this series not because it showed motherhood as something super sweet and feminine, but because it showed motherhood as it really is, bloody and dangerous and never-ending. You might find me agreeing that the continued message of the book is—stay away from sex because that is dangerous shit, leading to pregnancy and death of the most horrible kind. But it isn't going to produce a generation of girls who become mothers without any reservation.

Monday Book Recs: I Hunt Killers by Barry Lyga

I don't have any excuse for how long it took me to read this book. I tend to think of myself as shy of horror. I never have liked scary movies. I find them painful, and then feel forced to watch to the end so I can at least get resolution. Serial killer books worry me that they will be about the horror, mine and the victim's. And there is a part of me that wonders about our current cultural obsession with crime shows that have to be all about murder, never any other crime. The photos of death, the details of death, the moment by moment last thoughts of the deceased. And I am also bothered with the assumption that all murder victims have terrible secrets that have gotten them killed.

That said, I was really sucked into this book despite some moments of not wanting to know THAT much about serial killers. The constant voice in the head of the serial killer father was spooky and horrific, but in a psychological way, not gory. And it felt real to me, something that I could connect to. I also fight the voice in my head that is probably my father's, that tells me what I am doing isn't good enough, isn't right, even when I am aware as an adult that I disagree strongly with my father on many moral issues. I think that having Jazz obsessed with murders, worried that he is too obsessed, that he has too much in common with his dad, was also an effective way to explaining his character. He needs to prove he isn't his father. But he is formed by his childhood with him, so he has to do something with all that crap in his head.

I also really liked the female characters in the book. The grandmother was annoyingly real. I absolutely believed that she would have a serial killer for a son, and not just to blame her, but that there would be give and take there. She may be crazy and unlikeable, but one thing she ain't is weak. I loved the girlfriend Connie. She isn't the one obsessed with death, but she knows Jazz well enough that her argument with him about his obsession is spot-on. I loved his reaction and the subsequent confrontation with his father. I also liked that we got to know some of the victims so they weren't simply names and dead, female bodies. Of course, the figure of the mother is still to be unraveled in book 2.

The pacing in this book is spot-on. Even if you guess who the killer is (I did), it doesn't matter. You still have to wait to see what unfolds. I think the best murder mysteries can allow you to guess the ending without it ruining everything, because of the inevitability and the character revelation that has to happen for a satisfying conclusion. Even if you know who has to be caught, you don't know how and you still desperately want to see it happen the right way. That's what works here.

And can I say that Howie is one of my favorite characters of all time? A book that has proper pacing can make me read to the ending without taking a breath, but it doesn't necessarily get a recommendation or a reread from me. Howie is one of the parts of this story that just makes it another level of perfect. He is such an unlikely hero, but his quirks are realistic in their way. And the tattoos—what a great gimmick! Love, love, love!

Friday Tri: Analyzing What Went Wrong

This week, I was having a bit of a block about going to the pool. This is weird, because I was for many years exclusively a swimmer and it feels the most natural and most calming for me of just about anything I do. Nonetheless, I had had a series of bad workouts in the pool recently and I didn’t want to go.

So I sat down with myself and tried to think of what I could do to make going to the pool just a little easier. I decided that I needed to bring something to drink and probably some calories, so that meant Gatorade. Then I also decided that I was going to take it easy and put in quite a bit of kickboard yards because I can always breathe then.

These may seem like simple changes, but they made a big difference. I didn’t hate the swim workout. I liked it. And I came away thinking that I need to head to the pool more often. But it has also left me thinking about how often I avoid doing something because I had a bad experience last time—without just sitting down to figure out how to do it better this time.

If you hated your last workout at the gym, analyze it. Was it because you didn’t eat breakfast? Or because you did? Was it because you didn’t have anyone to help motivate you? Was it because you hated the instructor of the class you were in? Was it because you did too much too soon?

Write down what you did wrong and what you are going to do to fix it next time. And then see how that changes your attitude about going back to the gym.

Did you try signing up for a race and you didn’t like it? Maybe you don’t like racing competitively, but maybe there are other parts of a race that you do like. What could you do to make it more interesting for you? Family waiting on the sidelines, cheering for you? A planned treat afterward? Buying yourself a medal?

Do you need a trainer to get you going? Do you need to workout in the middle of the day because you don’t want to interrupt family time? Do you need to hire a babysitter to get out? Or buy the proper equipment? Don’t just give up if you don’t have the money right now. Make a plan to get it. Work toward what you want, and you’ll stop avoiding things that you want to do, but are too hard to get to.

The same principal works as a writer. If you are avoiding sitting down and getting things done, figure out why it is. I’m not sure I believe most people are inherently lazy. Maybe you’re not sitting down because you need more quiet. Maybe you need to let yourself write badly. Maybe you need to bribe yourself with chocolate and other goodies by your computer. I don’t know what will work for you, but you do.

Writing Wednesday: Holly Black Is Brilliant Part II: The Dark Night of the Soul

A dark night of the soul as defined by Holly (and obviously I think usefully) is a moment when the protagonist doubts everything she has done before and the goal itself. This should happen somewhere midway through the book, possibly 60-65% of the way in, though I wouldn't want to say exactly where and make writers formulaic about it. It could also happen right near the ending. The important thing is that it can't happen too early on or there is no impact. There has to be a real commitment to the goal or it doesn't hurt when you feel like you have to give it up. There has to be several try/fail cycles so we can see that the protagonist isn't just giving up easily. This isn't about it being too hard. This is about it being impossible literally.

In addition, the reader has to feel the dark night of the soul every bit as much as the protagonist does. It has to be absolutely real, no faking allowed here. No smiling, just kidding, or oh, that was all a misunderstanding (one of the reasons I have problems with romance novels). This has to be a realization of the fruitlessness of the effort or possibly a moment of betrayal. It can be seeing the real flaws in the person you are following or are in love with. It can be, as in Pride and Prejudice, the moment that you realize that the one person you might have loved is also the person you can now never have because your sister has now married the one person he could never be related to in marriage, and your whole family is disgraced. And it is all your fault because you could have stopped it if you had only not been so flawed. Or in Emma, where you believe for a very long chapter that the person you love is in love with someone else, and you have to wonder if you are willing to try to break them up in order to be happy yourself. Are you that kind of person?

In romance, it may feel like the stakes are smaller than in genre fiction, but really, they are the same. They are accepting that everything you have done before has no meaning, that you are useless, that you have no control over your life. It means accepting that you will not have what you want, that the world as you know it will end. (If this feels overly dramatic, think of Pride and Prejudice, when Lydia has run off, and how the whole family will partake in this ruin. They will not be able to be part of any society ever again. It really is the end of their world.)

In a fantasy novel like The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, the dark night of the soul is when Aslan is found dead. Edmund going over to the White Witch is pretty bad, but it's not the dark night of the soul because Aslan can still keep the good side going. Edmund may be lost, but the cause is not. When Aslan is dead, the world is over. The White Witch will win. Her armies will kill everyone else. Narnia itself will be in winter forever.

In a movie like The Fugitive, the dark night of the soul is the moment when Harrison Ford has found the one-armed man but he is surrounded by the police and the Marshalls and it seems that after all his work, he is still going to be shot and the bad guy is going to go free. In a detective novel, the dark night of the soul can be anything from realizing that no one is ever going to give you the information you need to solve the murder to being caught by the murder and threatened with death. In The Princess Bride, the dark night of the soul is when Wesley is being tortured on the machine and the princess is being forced to marry a man she hates.

How you get out of the dark night of the soul is up to you as a writer. There are as many ways to get out as there are ways to get in. You can use a deus ex machina (which gets a bad rap, but is still used all the time. It can work if done well). You can have the hero decide to go forward anyway with the plan, even if there is no hope of winning, and win anyway (a la Return of the Jedi). You can turn things around so that it turns out that the goal wasn't the right one anyway and that the dark night of the soul was a necessary reevaluation of the truth (in spy movies this happens when alliances shift). You can use magic (as with Aslan), and though I tend to prefer magic that has previously been hinted at, Lewis is playing with Christian tropes, so the deeper magic works because we expect it on some level. You can have an important reveal or do one more try. Or I suppose as in a literary novel, you can simply give up and have an unhappy ending (I don't recommend this).

The point is that the happy ending will have a lot more power if you have entertained the possibility of an unhappy ending, and really shown how the hero would deal with it if that was what happened. Courage is facing fear, not never feeling fear, as they say. So a protagonist who accepts failure as a possibility is more courageous, even more heroic. And the worse the failure, the greater the triumph. As readers, we really do want to see what a character does when at the lowest. Do they throw a tantrum? (Again, this can work). Do they swear and curse? Do they give up? Do they yell at all their friends and demand to be left alone?

I think in the end we want to see this because we want to feel that when we are in our dark nights of the soul (and everyone goes through many of these), there is hope that we can come out of it. When we are having a tantrum or swearing and yelling at friends, we can remember that we are showing who we are, too, and that doesn't mean we have to be perfect all the time. We read because we want to practice what we are reading about, I believe, and surprisingly, readers want to go through hard stuff in practice even if they don't want to in real life. Don't cheat your readers. Make your dark night of the soul truly dark, in the way that would really make your character hurt. You aren't a writer to make your character's life happy and bright. You're a writer to make your reader fell.

Writing Wednesday (on Tuesday): Holly Black Is Brilliant Part I: Want-lines

At World Fantasy this year, I spent about 6 hours listening to Holly Black “book-whisper” a fellow author's book, from about 9 pm to 3 am. Holly is the best at this of anyone I have ever seen. She is also extraordinarily generous in her time. I hope that some day she will write the book on writing that her agent keeps bugging her about. I thought that sitting down and taking notes for 6 hours on what she said would be the proof that she already has the book practically written, but in fact, the details were too book-specific to probably be useful. Nonetheless, I am going to try to distill what I learned from listening to Holly.

“What is your character's want-line?” was a continual refrain during this conversation. I've certainly heard people say that a character needs to have a goal or a purpose from very early on in the book. I've recommended it myself. But to put it like that makes it sound as though the character's goal will remain the same throughout the book. While certainly this is sometimes true, it isn't always true. Bella always wants to marry Edward in the Twilight books, but Katniss doesn't always want to win the Hunger Games. And even if there is a primary goal, it can be superseded temporarily in a particular scene by a secondary goal.

A “want-line” is what the character wants right now, and it drives every scene. While a primary goal can be the want-line in many scenes, it can also be set aside for the scene at hand. For example, Katniss wants to win the Hunger Games overall, but in this scene, she wants to protect Rue. Or in this scene, she wants to show the audience she's in love with Peeta. Those things may or may not lead to the overarching goal. In Bones, Booth is in love with Brennan for a long year, then she rejects him and he falls in love with someone else. And when Brennan falls in love with him, he rejects her, not to be cruel, but because he has simply changed his want-line (at least temporarily). In Return of the Jedi, Luke wants to destroy the Emperor, but he also wants to save his father. Ultimately, his desire to save his father takes precedence, because he takes risks he otherwise wouldn't.

In my novel Mira, Mirror, the mirror first wants to get enough magic to become human again. She is willing to do almost anything to anyone to get what she wants. She has learned to be manipulative from her sister the evil Queen. But at some point, this stops being her primary goal. She begins to sympathize with Talia and she wants to help her get her goal. She actually gives up her own hopes to be human again because it will help someone else. Though in the end, she does get what she wants to begin with.

What happens in many first-draft novels that is problematic is lack of clarity in what the want-line is in each scene. If there is the overarching primary goal, beginning authors sometimes think, that's enough. Then you can have lots of fun things happen without worrying about talking about the other goals. Survival is important, or possibly meeting friends or figuring out what the rules of the world are that is being introduced. The primary goal can be put on the back burner, right?

Wrong. If a character has an important goal like saving a family member or returning home, then unless you as the writer establish why they have to put aside that goal temporarily and what the new goal is—just for this scene—you are going to have a problem. If James Bond has a secret mission and then he meets this hot girl, he can only spend the night with her if he believes that it has something to do with his mission, that ultimately he believes this will help him. Or if he decides to give up his mission, to turn in his badge, so to speak. Or at the very least, he needs to recognize that he is taking a risk of diverting from his primary mission and that this is worth it, that the woman is worth it.

If you are trying to save the world from imminent disaster like a looming asteroid, you can't spend hours wandering around the surface of the asteroid admiring its beauty. You have to get to work destroying the asteroid. If you find that there are life forms on the asteroid and that makes you reconsider your mission, fine. But make it clear that is what this character has done. There has to be an in-story reason for every scene. The reason for the scene can't simply be—this is cool or—I want to introduce this other character. The in-story reason has to make sense to the main character who should be driving the action.

What if you are writing about a character who doesn't have control of the situation, you ask? Someone who is captured by the villain or who is a child forced to follow around after adults? Yeah, this could work. But still, you as the writer have to make it clear what the want-line is and why the protagonist has to delay it right now. There should be plenty of angst about this, whining and complaining in some way to the reader. And attempts to get away. To get back to the primary goal. Or whatever the new primary goal is.

Let's say you have a situation where the primary goal to begin with is to save your sister's life a la The Hunger Games. But then your sister dies in a terrible accident or ends up betraying you completely to the enemy. You can't have the same want-line after something like that, of course. So you need a new want-line. Readers are willing to put up with a certain amount of moaning and sitting around, not sure what to do next. Maybe a chapter, maybe two chapters. But not much more than that. After that, you need a new want-line. Maybe the want-line is simply to cause as much destruction as possible. Maybe it's to find distraction in doing something difficult and likely to lead to death. But there is still a want-line.

I don't think this is unrealistic. There may be some people who wander through life not knowing what they want, but I don't think there are very many. I think real people want something and try to get it, pretty much all of the time. Sometimes we aren't clear about our own motives for doing things. That can happen in fiction, too. Though it should be clear fairly early on that the writer knows what the character wants even if the character doesn't.

This is one of the main reasons that villains can often feel like far more compelling characters than the heroes of some stories. Think of Star Wars again. You see lots of little kids wanting to pretend to be Darth Vader, even though he is clearly the villain. Why? Because he has a clear want-line. He's the one building the Death Star, and building the Empire. This is a guy who wants power and isn't afraid of what he has to do to get it. Whereas Luke, in the first movie, is just a kid who wants an every day life. He's wandering around, looking for droids, then for Ben Kenobi, then finds his aunt and uncle are dead, then gets sucked into the adventure with Han Solo and Princess Leia. But he isn't driving the plot of the first movie. He's reacting to Darth Vader's plot.

It would be pretty stupid of me to say that this doesn't work. It does. But beware of a protagonist who only reacts to others. You can still have a situation like Ender's Game where the protagonist is unaware of the larger reasons for the actions of those around him. But Ender always believes he knows why he is doing what he is doing, even if he is wrong. He thinks that he is just trying to win the game, or trying to get out of Battle School. He wants to prove how brilliant he is. He wants to kick all the adults around him in the teeth. He wants to help his friends. He always wants something, and he works to get it.

A protagonist who lets others wholely control the situation can end up feeling wishy-washy and uninteresting. But worse than that, the plot of your story may lack all of the power that it would get if there were a strong want-line. Without a want-line, how can you tell if the protagonist gets what she wants? How can you tell when the story is over? How can you build that kind of tense scene that readers cannot put down? How can you have conflict if there aren't two distinct goals set against each other?

Monday Book Recs: Captain Vorpatril's Alliance by Lois McMaster Bujold

The Vorkosigan saga is probably my favorite series of all time. I think there are books in the series that are less compelling than others (Cetaganda is one of my least favorite, but Memory—which ends Miles career as Admiral Naismith is one of my favorites). I have friends who are less dedicated readers and they wanted to know if this book was “worth reading.” I ended up reading it in one day and handing it off, wondering to myself if they would consider the book an essential one or skippable. But then I went back and reread several of my favorite scenes. In an attempt to keep from giving away too much, I will say that there is a scene with “The Gregor” and “The Coz” that was great. It was a danger to let Miles take over the story, I'm sure, so one scene with him was all that could be allowed to happen, I think. I also loved the several scenes with Simon Illyan and Alys Vorpatril.

There were a few moments that felt a bit nostalgic, but I enjoyed them. This is also probably not a book for those who are only interested in the over-the-top space opera moments of the series. The action and the stakes are fairly low key. Which isn't to say that the consequences don't end being wonderful to watch unfolding in their epic, jaw-dropping splendor.

What I liked most were the character moments of this book, which Lois is so great at. Miles is a character who has probably become easy to write, if Lois just allowed herself to keep doing new episodes of the story. She doesn't, and Miles is always changing, and therefore not easy to write at all, I suspect. But Ivan is particularly tricky. I can see the appeal as an author of telling the story from Ivan-you-idiot's point of view, but that doesn't mean it will appeal to Miles fans. Like Mirror Dance, which allowed us to see Mark as the hero, I think there may be fans who don't want to read this story. I think they're crazy, frankly.

The Miles Vorkosigan books (not including the early Aral/Cordelia ones) are about non-stop adventure and galactic hijinks. But Ivan isn't interested in that. As he puts it, Miles thinks that anything worth doing is worth exceeding. Ivan has always paled in the shadow of his cousin, though Ivan is the better looking of the two and has had plenty of romantic partners of his own. But it isn't until he meets someone who understands very clearly how difficult it is to live with people who are ambitious and who thrive on more—and more—and more, that Ivan can fall in love. While I'm sure everyone likes to imagine being Miles, super smart and super capable, there is a side of me that also feels like Ivan. Like no matter what I do, it can't be enough. Like maybe it wouldn't be so bad to just accept mediocrity. Like I don't have to save everyone, but can mistakes and end up needing a rescue myself.

I will say, I am still hoping for a prequel with General Piotr in the days of the Cetagandan Invasion. And I wouldn't mind going back to Sergyar for a new adventure there, possibly with some other side character. I love this universe so much, and love Lois's take on it, I can't imagine her writing a book not worth reading. I have the sense that there are plenty of other worlds we haven't seen yet a la Ethan of Athos. Maybe now that Lois is who she is, she can afford to not care if some fans won't follow her there? I will. Sign me up. I'll go anywhere she cares to take me.

Friday Tri: Modesty, Pink, and Fat

I have mostly stopped feeling embarrassed at wearing a bra top and fairly skimpy shorts to workouts on a regular basis, year round. I do remember years ago distinctly thinking that sweats were good enough for anyone to workout in, but this was before I was doing any serious exercising and even then, I was aware of the fact that you had to pay real money and buy a good swimsuit without lycra if you were going to be swimming regularly.

These days, I am somewhat annoyed by the lack of color choice in women's athletic gear. I am a girl, and I have no problem being a girl. I'm pretty sure anyone who sees me in my bra top and shorts will not wonder if I am a boy or a girl, though I suppose it might happen on a bike if I've got a bike top on to keep me from getting burned (which is pretty much the only concession to “modesty” that I will make). But do I have to wear pink shoes, pink shorts and a pink top all the time? I suppose the advantage of that is that at least everything matches, but pink is not my favorite color. It feels a bit too girly for my tastes and while I accept that some girls want that look, I feel like making everything that color is done by manufacturers who just want to label something “for women” without actually thinking about the variety of the women who will be using their gear. I have all black outfits, but tend to prefer a bit of yellow, orange, blue or green somewhere. Is that not allowed?

If you see women working out who are wearing what you consider to be immodest clothing, please reconsider your assumption. If these women are wearing makeup and have clearly done their hair nicely, then perhaps they are thinking about how they look. If they are dripping sweat and are making grunting noises while lifting weights at the gym, they are probably just wearing what works best for them. If there are women who have fat showing that you think looks “ugly,” please also consider that they may be showing fat for other reasons than that they think they look great showing it. They may be wearing what they are wearing because they want to get rid of the fat or because they are trying to get in shape. The gym shouldn't be a place where only perfect bodies are allowed.

In Defense of Twilight

We can't attack Stephenie Meyer because she is rich.

We can't attack Stephenie Meyer because her book and the woman herself have moved beyond the real and have become cultural icons.

What is wrong with girls having power to choose when they want to have sex?

What is wrong with subverting the romance novel alpha male trope into Edward?

What is wrong with reinventing the vampire?

Why don't people see the extensive world-building in this book?

Is this really bad writing or simply an easy reading style?

Does everything have to be “LITERATURE”?

Are we really looking at the power dynamics in this book carefully enough?

So, it's normal when every hot woman wants to have sex with the hero of a fantasy novel, but when two hot teen guys want to have sex with the teen heroine, then it's Mary Sue fantasy?

Not having read the vampire tradition from Stoker's Dracula does not mane that Meyer has nothing to say.

What teen girls like doesn't matter to the rest of the world? It isn't important?

Is it bad to have a final violent confrontation end with a woman's compromise through words?

Abortion is one of the major issues of the day—what's wrong with a book that talks about it deeply?

What happens in high school matters. Don't say “high school” with a sneer, because every grown-up is aware that high school lives on in the business world and in adult social situations.

Anti-feminism is not necessary anti-women. There are different kinds of strong mothers, including mothers who stay at home.

Why do all the complaints about Twilight sound like echoes of Hawthorne's complaint about “that damned mob of scribbling women”?

What is wrong with fiction that is love and family centered? Think about what they said about Jane Austen?

Look, I have plenty of problems with Twilight. And I don't mind a fair discussion of those problems, in a situation in which the people speaking have all read the book and perhaps some other YA novels and some romance fiction to compare it to. People who are not reading simply to make fun, but out of love for these kinds of fiction. People who are willing to see things from differing points of view. But the disdain which is heaped on Twilight has become a kind of self-congratulatory, aren't we all so smart that we don't read stupid books like this, high school is so juvenile kind of anger against a woman who is successful that it becomes distasteful and rather nakedly pleading.

Anyone remember Nathaniel Hawthorne's complaint about "that damned mob of scribbling women," who, like Louisa May Alcott, wrote about family lives and sold like crazy while Hawthorne had to wait for a hundred years of white male college professors to validate his depiction of what should happen to women who think that they deserve more than marriage and socially acceptable sex? Stephenie Meyer has been given a scarlet letter, the letter "s" for success, and that supposedly allows all of us to throw stones and rotten fruit at her. I'm not saying you have to like this book. I AM saying that if you haven't read it, you can shut up. And if you can't think of a single nice thing to say about it, maybe you are going to have to wait, like Hawthorne, for your books to be assigned in lit classes in college.

Awesome Quotes from World Fantasy 2012

Elizabeth Hand—“It takes just as much time and energy to write a really bad book as it does to write a really good one.”

Graham Joyce—”those who may only be spoken of in circumlocutory terms.”

Michael Rowe—“virginity in vampires has been elevated to the soda pop level.”

Holly Black—“clarity, clarity, clarity.”

Holly Black—“you have to let the important moment feel important.”

Holly Black—“all books have a dark night of despair and innermost doubt.”

Holly Black—“in a life or death situation, everyone knows what he believes.”

Holly Black—“all conversations must move plot forward.”

Sean Williams—“there are stories that are not ours to tell.”

Guide to the Dealer's Room

Self-pubbed authors table

Crystals

Skulls and other artifacts you don't want to ask about

TV/pop culture books

gaming for nerds.

Books signed by authors at this conference you could get for free.

Old books from someone's garage that now sell as “collectibles.”

Fake swords and armor.

Magic wands

Needlework from Harry Potter fan art.

Weird, over-priced jewelry.

People who either attack you immediately as soon as you come within range with suggestions about what to buy or those will not meet your eyes at all, even if you are interested.