Down With the Isms

Now that the big excitement of RadCon is over, I’m back to focusing on my WIP, The Spirit Binder. I find myself approaching a sensitive scene. One of the side plots is that Navaire, the man who showed up to mentor Cleodora, is the same age as her mother. The two of them fell in love, married, and now Mom is expecting a child. Uh-oh, I have to write a childbirth scene?

Well, I don’t HAVE to write it. As the author, I can have Mom not get pregnant. Or I can figure out another way to write around that scene. But this is another time when I’m challenging myself to present the situation in a respectful way rather than avoid it.

It gives me a chance to think about childbirth practices. Our modern medicine isn’t the only way of birthing, obviously. With fantasy and spirits and the mystic world I’ve already built, I don’t have to follow the reflex of Puritanical squeamishness about childbirth. Hey, I already went after patriarchy and capitalism. Might as well keep on to medical sexism.

These are the kinds of thing that happen when you write without an outline. But I have no regrets. DOWN WITH ALL THE ISMS!

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