Monster Hunter International by Larry Correia

My.

Mind.

Is.

Blown.

Femmeboy, One Word

Theme Quote Of The Day:

Gender should be dynamic.

Kate Bornstein

(Disclaimer: Not sure if that's paraphrased or not, but it IS one of her prevailing themes, so I'm going with it.)

I have struggled with just about every aspect of my life for as long as I've been aware that I'm not heteronormative in, well, pretty much any way, shape, or form.

I'm not skinny. I'm not straight. I'm not Christian. I'm not monogamous. I'm not cisgender. I'm not vanilla. I'm not a lot of things, and even now, as "enlightened" as I've become, I don't own all my weirdness. I don't deny it, but I have a bit of a fuck-you attitude towards the normies, and am still working on not hating those different from me. I don't always differentiate between confusion and prejudice, misunderstandings and disdain.

I'm plus-sized. I'm pansexual. I'm pagan. I'm polyamorous. I'm transgender. I'm kinky. THOSE are postive statements. I love me. I love my communities. I'm different from just about everyone in each of them; I NEVER claim to speak for any particular group; I'm politically incorrect, I curse a lot, and I'm a pretty angry person, and that's okay.

I'm working on owning myself.

I'm a femmeboy. I'm a drag queen in a woman's body, but not as well-dressed. I can't do my own makeup, I'm a hot mess, sometimes I'm an ugly mess, and all of that's okay.

It's okay to not be a 100% manly transman, or a 100% feminine transwoman. IT'S OKAY, DAMMIT.

I'm learning as I go, and I'm never gonna stop evolving. And I love that, as hard and scary as it is. It's okay, it's wonderful.

I'm 100% me. That's all I can, or will ever claim. I love that.

I hope you do too, even if you don't like what I have to say, because supporting those we don't agree with means we support everyone to be themselves, and to live and let live.

Just don't be mean.

Just don't cause harm - not even to yourself.

Own it, live it, love it.

I'll continue doing my best for the rest of my life.

It's Not I'll Try; It's I Have To

Theme Quote Of The Day:

You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.

Ray Bradbury

This morning, I began typing up THE MONSTER SQUAD. It's 872 words so far, and I'm very proud of myself. Even though it's already driving me insane in how much work it needs.

I've known the whole thing was rough, but by paying closer attention to where I need to Show More, Tell Less, I'm starting to panic. (I suffer from anxiety; panic is far easier than breathing). Not to mention how much weaker it gets, and how much more emotion is needed...

But this longhand hot mess is only about 50,000 words. That's half a full-length novel. I have room to grow.

It'll be okay.

I knew it was hard work from the beginning, but no matter how many times I do this, it's just as daunting as the first time. It's a whole world at my fingertips, swirling around in my mind, in which two others already live. Holy. Shit.

But I can do it. I know I can. I'm a writer; it's all I've ever NEEDED to be, and I'm too crazy to succeed at much else.

However easier it would be to succumb to life, to wither and die, to be crushed by the angst and the pain, I can't. My characters deserve better.

They deserve to share their stories with the world.

I Should Really Be Medicated

Theme Quote Of The Day:

Insanity is doing the same thing, over and over again, but expecting different results.

Albert Einstein

That definitely describes me last night.

Two cats have died since my roommate Danille and I have lived in this duplex on campus. Apparently that scarred me even more than I thought. Not to mention all the animals I've dealt with losing, sometimes literally, in my lifetime.

Depression is pretty obvious, but the really Bad thing is my anxiety. Last night, I couldn't find my kitten, Feisty, and it got into my head that she was dead or had gotten outside somehow. Our house is a mess. Her little corpse could be somewhere.

She's done this before, hiding in my bed, sleeping peacefully, freaking me out. Ryan reminded me that This Is What Animals Do!!! a million times, but crazy doesn't listen to logic. I looked under BOOKS and PIZZA BOXES, for fuck's sake.

After four hours and eleventy searches in the same places, I turned around, and there she was, stumbly and sleepy-eyed, and I wept and cuddled her and she was like "Sup?"

Cats are assholes.

But I have Coke and Camels again and life sucks slightly less.

I also FINALLY finished reading the mss, The Monster Squad. Still no idea what it should actually be titled. I like it. I see lots of flaws. I have some ideas on how to fix them.

Life's generally alright. I really should be on medication. I also need a therapist.

I suffer from depression, anxiety, ADHD, OCD. All unconfirmed. SOMETHINGS are wrong with me. Yes, that is supposed to be plural. I'm also transgender. But I'm poor, y'all, and life sucks like that.

I'll be okay. Maybe.

My pets are just not allowed to die, ever again.

Being My Friend, It Comes With A Price

Theme Quote Of The Day:

Iron Maidens: A juicer, but for people!

ME

I sound like a serial killer 99% of the time. The other 1% is reserved for those moments I spend not existing. Yeah, that's a thing I can do.

My roommate, like me, is a writer, so god forbid our computers are ever commandeered by the police. They'd find us guilty of every unsolved crime ever.

Today we've been researching paraphilia (fetishes) and torture methods - FOR SCIENCE! Well, for writing. And laughs. But we'll go with the science thing.

Hence the above comment I made. It's totally gauche to quote yourself, but fuck it. It's really not the worst thing the cops would find if they investigated me. But it's cool. We know our local cops because of our ex-roommate; we make them laugh, blush, and hold kittens. That's pretty awesome.

I blame my extra dose of weirdness today because I discovered The Bloggess and have been reading her posts for the past two days. And dying of laughter. And researching fucked up shit. That last part's been a standard in my life since I found the internet. My parents are awesome. Dinner was never boring.

Some of the fetishes pissed me off, though. Not that they were gross or evil - those go without saying - but that being attracted to TRANSMEN, TRANSWOMEN, TRANSSEXUALS, and/or TRANSVESTITES are fetishes. Seriously?!

And lots of judgmental comments. And lumping sadomasochists in with dangerous, disgusting, and downright illegal paraphilias.

Fuck you, internet.

Fuck you.

On that note...my friends really need to stop laughing when I say I'm a man. I know I have breasts that are rather large and delightfully squishy. These two things have nothing to do with one another.

His name is Robert Paulson. I have bitch-tits.

Bless Me, For I Have Sinned

Theme Quote Of The Day:

Writing in English is the most ingenious torture ever devised for sins committed in previous lives. The English reading public explains the reason why.

James Joyce

I fucked up.

Usually, when I write out of character, I can fix it. If not immediately, then later on, in edits, when I realize my error.

But in this case, I realized it immediately, and remain powerless.

I write with my best friend, Ryan, fellow transman, and have for almost a year now. Through writing we have discovered a lot about ourselves, and each other, and come to terms with a lot more than we would have otherwise. We were not nearly as close at the beginning as we are now.

We write through text, mostly, and the well of creativity never runs dry, though we generate thousands of words on the least of days, because we bounce off one another. 99.9% of the time, we are mere observers of the world, in our brains, coming together.

On rare occasion, the deepest, darkest, ugliest pieces of me emerge.

Occasionally, it is I who speak, not my character; it is my issue, my pain, that oozes onto the figurative page. And every time this happens, it fucks whatever character I am currently working on over.

I beg, and I plead, and I weep, but sometimes - like today - Ryan refuses to let me fix it. And it doesn't stop hurting me, knowing how I've punished my brain children for something that is not and never was their burden. It doesn't matter that it's a small, throwaway thing. Any tiny bit of OOCness, any tiny bit of something that doesn't belong, is the gravest sin a writer can inflict about his work. It is a hellworthy trespass. In a single sentence, you can destroy a character, an entire novel, just because you have ruined the credibility and the truth of something already so difficult to believe - that these words really do represent a real person.

And she is real. Inside my head. And on paper. But she was not the one who spoke in that one, tiny, throwaway reply. And there's nothing I can do that will make that okay.

I know better. But I'm human. And I fucked up. And I'm still pissed at myself for it.

Boredom

Theme Quote Of The Day:

Boredom is the feeling that everything is a waste of time; serenity, that nothing is.

Thomas Szasz

I am almost never bored. Moments like these, where I am, happen when my brain is so restless, I can't focus on anything.

I ran out of things to watch on Hulu. I have no first draft to write; I've come to the weakest part of my WIP; I swear to god I might be ADHD.

I don't know what to blog. There's too much I could talk about. There's too much in my fucking head. I've been all over the place in coming to slow, eternal terms with my gender identity, the endless process. I'm almost jealous of non-writers, of the cisgendered, of the heternormative. It seems like life would be so easy if I wasn't a million different odd things most people aren't.

Would I change it? No. Not ever. The pain is worth the lack of dullness, even if I'll never be at peace.

But, God, oh God, I could use a single day where things were easy. Just a little vacation from myself.

I can find serenity in truly not thinking, but in being myself, never.

The Best Laid Plans Of Mice And Transmen

Theme Quote Of The Day:

...gender is not sane. It's not sane to call a rainbow black and white.

Kate Bornstein

The goal was to write a blog a day. Then a blog a weekday. But, as a college student on vacation, a writer, and all around, a crazy person, I only realized today was Tuesday - and the day before a major national holiday - because of Twitter. How sad is that?

But here I am, not that you care, 'cause no one's reading this. And that's why I never keep a blog for very long. I can write endless fiction, even nonfiction essays, and be ignored, and fine (otherwise I wouldn't write at all) but blogs are very much a social thing, so what's the point?

There isn't one. And who gives a shit?

I've spent today watching YouTube videos, and reading, and thinking long and hard, which is something I should do more often. And no, silly cat videos and idiotic nut-busting stunts don't make me think that hard; as it turns out, YouTube has a lot more to offer.

I follow Kate Bornstein on Twitter, and have for a few years now. I know it's been a few years, because I remember her on Twitter long before I realized I was transgender, back when I went to my first college, when I took my psychology course. I found her because I was pissed off at the tiny chapter, the single day we were to spend on Sex and Gender.

I know a lot more now than I did then, partially thanks to Ms. Bornstein, and asking her questions. She was wonderful and kind and patient in spite of my lack of knowledge, and my last second scramble to gather some information to present the next day, to try to school my Texan classmates about all these things they thought they knew.

They didn't believe in bisexuality, for fuck's sake!

Sadly, a lot of people don't, because it's so goddamn trendy. Like many excuses that people use to discriminate against me - at last count there were a thousand and eleventy bajillion - I could go on and on about it all day.

I'm not quite sure if there's a concise point to this, other than I've been struggling with my gender identity more than usual lately, and updated it a little bit. Like most people, I am not as enlightened as Kate; I do not believe for myself as freely as I do for others.

I'm a transman. That's supposed to mean something specific.

But you, all you other transmen, be whatever you want!

I am very hard on myself, and very warm and inviting to other people, unless they piss me off.

I've slowly begun to FEEL the fact that I can have a female body, be a man, and be a bit femme, all at once. And that's okay.

I'm a work in progress, baby.

Time to get back to my novel, also a WIP, and remember that it's not nearly as hard on itself as I am on me.

A Miracle In My Brain

Theme Quote Of The Day:
If that were true, then only dead men could write obituaries.

Red Smith

I gave up on heavy editing half a page into reading my manuscript (working title: The Monster Squad). There will be other reads - a helluva lotta them - and god knows, I'll be sick of it by the time I'm anywhere near close to sending it out into the world.

But there will only be one first read.

Because I now write "first draft" (more like a really long, really detailed outline) longhand, I put the words down and then forget them. I don't look back as I read. I write, I remember the most recent events, and I keep going. The characters come to life more and more in my head, and I don't have to remember what they're like; I love them like people, fully formed and very real inside my head.

Yeah, there are inconsistencies already, mostly because I didn't know them as well when I started as I did when I finished. But I don't care. I actually CAN'T edit right now, because I'm enjoying the story so much.

It's making me laugh, and almost cry, and by god, if I can do that to myself with my own words, with work, it'll be phenomenal. Can I do the work? Maybe. But I have hope.

I am not a magical being; I do not live in this world; I don't have the mind of a predator, or ex-military. I don't need these things. I have research, and some spark of creation, and it's worked. The overall draft is fucked up in a lot of ways, but that's what editing's for.

I've captured humor, and horror, and sorrow, and something extra special that I can't define, and I am eager to get back to reading, and to making these words shine to others like they shine in my own head.

That's all I can ask of my work - and more than anyone can ever hope to successfully bring to the table...and yet, it happens. I think it's happened to me. And that's why I can't be anything more or less than what I've been since I was 10: A goddamn writer.

My Fifth Novel, She Is Written

Theme Quote Of The Day:

It is better to write a bad first draft than to write no first draft at all.
Will Shetterly

I did a Great Big Thing today: I wrote "THE END" at the bottom of a page, and suddenly, all those words, those little strokes across that page, became a novel.

I have forbidden myself from writing until 24 hours stood between that final moment and me. I already feel quite crazed enough, and more than that, the rough draft is shit.

I love the story, the characters, this brand new world, but the approximately 45,900 words are not the best words, and it's a big hot mess in a LOT of places. I knew each of those Big Fuck Ups were coming long before they did, because I have three "completed" novels under my belt, and I always lose my way somewhere in the middle, and rush the ending, unsure of what the fuck is happening because the rest of the story isn't as cohesive a whole as it should be.

And that's okay. You pay up at the beginning, or at the end. I wrote my first novel in four months when I was 16, my second in one when I was 19, my third in two when I was 20, and now, at 21, I took 10 days to end up with this blob.

That means I have a lot of fucking time open up to me; to read and reread; organize, polish, rearrange, gut and completely rework. That means I have a lot of Great Amazing Things ahead of me, and I'm proud of the mess, because it's an accomplishment not many people get to feel.

And I know it will be better, and soon. 22 hours 39 minutes from now, I will start the next step in a long and rewarding process, and I will make a novel out of this handwritten mess of a notebook.

And at some point, it will be allowed to have a name all its own.