aamcnamara | Entries tagged with always one more quirk in the author

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I would be startled. Surprised and startled that anyone could be like that, that I could be like that.

And I hope there would be delight, after the shock wore off. But I am not sure.

(For some reason I feel like it is "uncool" to answer these, but I like this particular question, so I am answering it. You may think I am uncool if you like.)

As a member of the Outer Alliance, I advocate for queer speculative fiction and those who create, publish and support it, whatever their sexual orientation and gender identity. I make sure this is reflected in my actions and my work.

I've posted this next bit before, when I was making an initial list of books to bring to college; but it bears repetition here in honor of the Outer Alliance Pride Day. (And the new Bordertown anthology)

"Changeling" by Elisabeth Kushner [in the Bordertown anthology The Essential Bordertown]. . .has a special place in my heart. It was one of the--okay, say it, the first time I'd seen gay girls in a fantasy story. [Or any story, really.] So yes, it changed my life. It said, This is okay and This is how other people feel too. I rarely ventured out of SFF books and sections then, and certainly never would've thought to go looking for books about lesbians. When I asked for a Bordertown anthology for my birthday that year (having read Finder and Elsewhere and Nevernever), I had no idea what I was getting into.

Having read "Changeling" gave me enough confidence in myself to say who I was and to go looking for those other books--which, in their turn, helped reaffirm my identity.

So that's a personal reason of my own to join the Outer Alliance--The Essential Bordertown is out of print and hard to find even if you know what you're looking for, but there are other people who need stories like "Changeling" to come along for them.

There are lots of other reasons to write queer speculative fiction, and almost all of them are good. I have other reasons for writing queer speculative fiction myself. But that's one.

I know I've hit my stride with this essay for the government because I have both settled into a casual style and quoted Pablo Neruda in the last paragraph and a half.

---

Visited Lawrence University this weekend. Lesson learned: physics = lasers + ribidium. I swear, the stuff was everywhere. I eventually had to ask--okay, so what is so great about this ribidium? The answer made sense (alkali--it only has one electron in the outer valence shell--so it reacts easily, and the wavelength of light it's sensitive to is readily available), but still. Ribidium everywhere.

The physics people were cool, too.

Depending on where I get accepted, maybe I will go there.

Driving back, my father and I did not hit another deer. We are proud of this fact.

---

No writing news today, sadly. I need to organize my schedule so that I can get some writing done, but the workload from school is still formidable (don't let anyone tell you the second semester of senior year is easy; they're lying to you), and I'm usually drained by the time I'm done with all of that. Somehow, abandoning my schoolwork to concentrate on my writing doesn't seem like the greatest plan I've ever thought up.

In the grand tradition of New Years and birthdays, I will wake up tomorrow and feel exactly the same. Then, about three months from now, I will look at myself in a mirror, or just sit like I am here in front of the computer, and I will not be able to imagine myself back in 2008.

Funny old world, innit.

Things that happened to me this year:
- I decided to apply to summer writing workshops for 2008.
- I taught myself (well, with help) how to rewrite stories.
- Odyssey.
- Went to Wiscon and Readercon, both for the first time.
- Helped edit an issue of a webzine. (Hi, Sherwood.)
- Eight short story submissions. Out of eight for, well, all my life until this point.
- Completed a semester of online health class in two weeks.
- Survived my junior year of high school--and got good scores on my AP and IB tests.
- Survived (so far) my senior year of high school.
- Tried, and failed, NaNoWriMo. But I tried, which is the important thing.
- Made new friends (hi, everyone--and everyone who isn't reading this, that goes for you, too).
- Applied to college.
- ... well, this is an achievement, of a sort: watched several seasons of Buffy and almost all of the new Doctor Who.

Goals for 2009:
... you know, if you had asked me on New Year's Eve last year, "Alena, what do you want to do this year?", I would have said, "Oh--get good scores on my IB tests, stuff like that. Apply to college." I could not have predicted any of the things that stand out now in my mind about the year.

So I don't think I'll make resolutions, or goals, or anything like that.

I like a good surprise.

"Can Life Compete" -- Strange Horizons

I agree with a lot of what he says--even though I've never played WoW. Similarly, I found a group of friends on the Internet, and by talking to them, learned social skills that were applicable to that thing called "real life".

Admittedly, I did have a couple of quibbles with some of his points. In my experience, it isn't just adults who'll make light of internet friends and socializing--a lot of teenagers that I know also make these arguments. If I were to draw a line between people who "get it" and people who don't, I don't think it would be an age line. It would be between so-called "extroverts" and "introverts".

These teens who don't understand internet friends are usually averse to using the Internet for socializing beyond, say, Facebook and Myspace. This isn't a bad choice; it is perhaps wiser than diving into the depths of the Internet (in some ways; worse in others).

. . . but if you're a pre-teen, or a teenager, and you're lonely and you don't know anyone else who likes the things you like, if you're baffled by how to socialize, sometimes anonymity can be a shield. If you mess up (and this is the important part), no one will care. No one knows who you are. You can be someone else tomorrow. Different personality, different way of doing things--depending on the site, different clothes, different hair, different gender.

It's a freedom. It's a deliverance.

And, gradually, you learn who you are. You know that you're the kind of person who says this when that happens, you're the kind of person who does that when this is going on. You know what you can do, and what you can't; what you will and what you won't.

I'm very fond of my Internet friends. I've known a lot of them longer than I've known my 'real-life' friends, and I know that without the people whose real names I don't even know now, who are an avatar and a made-up name, I wouldn't have the friends whose names I do know. Who I can hang out with real life, who I can whisper jokes to in class.

Some people don't understand this. Some people can't.

On LJ, obviously, some of this is self-evident. But if this journal is my soapbox, then this is what I'm standing on it to say. Because this is why I am who I am. Because this is why I am.

Edited To Add: I believe life can compete. If I didn't, I wouldn't be here, under my real name, and I wouldn't have friends in real life. I do think there is something real life can give us that virtual life can't, but I think that both are necessary.

To a certain extent, this journal has lost its point.

Originally, it was to chronicle my adventures in applying to the Clarion workshop in 2008. (Owing to their last-minute clarification of policy, of course, I didn't apply.) It then fell back on the other workshops I was applying to: Odyssey, Alpha, IYWS. All three have now replied, and all three accepted me.

With those deadlines gone, it feels like there's time to relax. There isn't, really. For one thing, it's the Season of the Standardized Tests. The ACT is over; so is the state math standards test, which may or may not count toward graduation--depending on whom you ask. The SAT, SAT IIs (the day before Odyssey starts!), AP and IB tests are all still yet to come.

And then Odyssey wants a second story from me, and a third on the first day of the workshop. Having heard some of the comments and compliments on Story #2, which I sent them, I am nervous that it will prove to be a brilliant fluke, and not representative of my greater work. I feel, in effect, nervous and uncertain. I don't think that they'll kick me out now--well, I hope that they don't--well, they probably won't.

But several people have commented on the voice in story #2 especially. I don't think that either story #1 or the potential story #3 that I'm currently sighing over (in the midst of homework! and tests!) has as distinct a voice as does the narrator in story #2. I don't even know where I found that voice.

--

I have realized lately that I have two houses and no home. I think that this happens a lot, with kids who have divorced parents with equal custody, but it was a shock in some ways to realize this. I'd thought for so long that my parents' divorce was an entirely positive thing that this negative aspect of it really was, well, a surprise to me.

And I'm not sure how to fix it, except maybe to write about it, which is sort of what story #3 will be, if it ever gets out of my brain.

--

Other things that have happened:
- My mother has agreed to take me to WisCon. (I will be sad when I go off on my own and I have to pay for all this stuff myself. From, uh, my writing. ... Or just not go to this sort of thing.) I'm excited, because going to Odyssey means not being able to go to Fourth Street.
- I've finished working on the school's musical and begun a sort of apprenticeship in lights in our student-run black box theatre. It's interesting. They do it, once, and then go off and leave me to it, assuming I've watched carefully enough to learn.
- We had our spring break, and I spent an exhausting week visiting colleges in NYC and western MA, bracketed by late-night flights. On the one back, the woman sitting next to us had a cat. Good job at preventing allergies, Airline That Shall Not Be Named. Good job.