Thanksgiving. (Yesterday's Account.)

I am thankful for my family, (though we are reeling from loss).
I am thankful for my life, (though I am hurting).
I am thankful for the roof over my head, (though it's painful to be home).
I am thankful for my health, (though I've had a cold this week).
I am thankful for my books, (though I can't escape myself completely in them anymore).
I am thankful for my college, (though it is painful to be there, as well).
I am thankful for --
For --

I am thankful for my faith and belief in God and Jesus, (because without that, I would truly go mad.)

Angel (left), Tumble (right)

Confessions and Comfort

Yes, it's Saturday. I meant this post for yesterday, but my laptop is still out for the count. I'm using my mother's laptop, and she's getting her master's degree online from Liberty University. So, she's on pretty much... always. She's asleep right now.

As you might know from my previous couple posts, I'm participating in Nanowrimo. Or was, until 5k words were lost and I had to switch to using the laptop of a busy woman. But it's not just that, is it? I can't write very well.

Why not? One laptop is as good as another, right? That's the mindset of pretty much everyone around me. But I can't get the words out. At best, I've managed about 1,300 words a day. Closer to 1,000 words, or none at all. In Nano, your target word count per day is 1,667 words.

So, why can't I do it? Why won't the words come? Well, as you can tell from the title of this post, it has to do with my comfort spot.

Let me describe to you the very different rooms of my house in which I find myself:

• My room is the size of a closet. In the corner, stuck between the door -- which actually hits the desk when opened far enough -- and a large, wooden dresser, is my desk. My bed, which takes up most of the room, is just far enough from the desk to make typing while sitting on it very difficult, so there's a small stool jammed between it and the desk, in order for me to not have to balance my laptop in my lap. Strewn across my desk are notebooks, embroidery thread, papers, and a couple of small bottles of paint.
• My mother's workroom, which was my childhood room, has pink and yellow walls, with Winnie the Pooh stickers and crayon scribblings all over them. Probably your average-sized bedroom, and my mom has collected what looks like thousands of crochet magazines over her lifetime. They're everywhere. Her desk is stuck between a bookshelf of Mom's religious reference books and a side table. There's a fish bowl with one of those little beta fish* and a clean mug (also, coincidentally, Winnie the Pooh) that contains all of her pens and pencils, along with a couple of those green Barnes and Noble straws poking out of it. Oh, and let's not forget to mention the hundreds of crosses that now decorate the wall.

I realize that was a pretty solid chunk of description, so let's get down to the main point: the two rooms are as different as night and day. My small, messy room with the furniture looking too large, compared with Mom's very religious-looking room whose walls haven't changed much since I was five years old.

Of course, since Mom has her Master's classes and likes to have her laptop in the same room with all her reference books, I can't just pick it up and take it to my room. Which is a problem.

To put it bluntly, the hundreds of crosses staring at me make me uncomfortable. The many, many Bibles** do, as well. And the reference books, which all have names like How to Read the Bible for All Its Worth (Gordon Fee & Douglas Stuart) and Martin Luther, the Bible, and the Jewish People (Schraam/Stjerna).

I told you -- A LOT of crosses.

It's not that I'm not religious. I am. Quite so. (Very hard not to be, especially when my former preschool doubles as my current baptist church.) It's just that... well, I'm too religious.

I know it's insane. Completely irrational. But during the summers of my childhood, I spent a week in the Pentecostal camp where my grandad lives. And they'd like to tell people that Harry Potter is evil, that fantasy is evil, because it worships magic and witchcraft or whatever.

And... even more beside the computer.

Which makes it kind of hard for me to write fantasy now, in front of an insane number of crosses. Even though I'm a Baptist and I believe that if God gave me the imagination, He probably wouldn't mind my fantasy. And anyways, evidence: C.S. Lewis and Tolkien were both Christian writers, who wrote fantasy, and their stuff is legendary. Pretty mainstream fiction, not the Christian fiction you find only in your typical Lifeway Christian store.

But I can't help feeling it. Feeling this irrational need to avoid fantasy, even though I love it, because when you put it that way...

I know God loves me. I know He wouldn't judge my fantasy writing -- sometimes I even get the hope that in Heaven, He has a giant library with every book in the world, and some of my books will be there, too. It's make-believe, imagination, a tool He gave humans for the purpose of imagining new worlds.

Perhaps, one day, I will write a book in which I suggest thematically that creating a real world, or at least one that feels real, should probably be left to God. Because right now, my world feels realer than the one around me, and I worry when I see those crosses. They remind me of the world around me, that my imagination is not everything here, and that, perhaps, magic needs to be subtler than spells and potions and spontaneous explosions, out here in the real world. I'm almost sad, at that. Like we've constrained something to a small box, to a subtle little area inside of our minds.

Perhaps this is why power goes to your head, when leaders create their own little world, their own society, when they rip down the old society and put up their own. 

This sort of commentary reels through my mind. I get antsy, can listen to music and swivel in the little swivel chair, and I can't write. Because it is truth unwrapped from its gauzy layer of fiction. And it doesn't make sense. Truth doesn't make sense. It makes feelings. And that's why it needs its little coating of fiction, because fiction does make sense, and it can keep the truth in its place.

I need my little comfort spot. I need the peace it brings, how it sets aside those antsy feelings and truth and lets my fingers stop shaking long enough to write.

And perhaps this all sounds a little out there, a little dreamy, like my mind's come untethered and I'm sending you images from the clouds. But I think a comfort spot is more than just comfort. It's a necessary break from the real world. The real world reminds me that there are people who think God wouldn't like my work. My comfort spot lets me know what I think in the matter.

I hope this makes sense to you.

Have a blessed day.

[EDIT: I hand-counted all of them. There are 113 crosses in my mother's workroom, give or take a couple. Still, a formidable number of crosses, wouldn't you agree?]



*Yea, his name is Jeffrey. After my Uncle Jeff, even though Uncle Jeff is from my Dad's side of the family.
**Let's put it this way: my aunts have seventy pairs of shoes and a Bible between them. My Mom has seventy Bibles and one pair of shoes.

Letters to Life: For the Sake of Diversity!

Dear People of Everywhere:

There's a thing in psychology. A big question. It circles pretty much everything people-related: is it nature or nurture?

I like this question. It's a good question to ask about things. Are you doing this because you are born with it in your veins, or are you doing it because you were raised with it? I don't really see other ways to the why behind any question. After all, nurture is there every time in your life; it's not a question of childhood, it's a question of environment.

For example: I'm a Baptist Christian. Happy to be one, actually. And I would guess that it might have something to do with the fact that the preschool I attended once upon a time also happens to double as my church today. Some of my earliest memories took place there: laughing and running around the playground outside, the stained glass windows of the sanctuary, the Sunday school/preschool classroom on the ground floor with its rug with the alphabet on it... happy times.

As I believe it, God gave us free will, which is why religion can be a nurture question, and not a nature question.

What does this have to do with anything? I assume that you don't visit this blog to listen to my religious views. (Really, though, it's about all my views. Including my religious views.) This example is just a lead-up to my main point.

Which, I suppose, goes along the lines of: why judge people on a matter of nature, when there are things to disagree with about nurture?

Not that I'm advocating prejudice of any kind. But I realize that wariness over differences can almost be counted as nature nowadays. We are nurtured from such a young age over trivial things, that it really can seem like nature. (See toy advertising words and gendered culture.)

When I say "trivial things," I mean by my perspective. The broad things, like gender and sexual orientation and skin color. That prejudice is taught from a very early age indeed. (I mean, have you ever walked down a children's toys aisle? All pink down one side, all blue down the other. It's disturbing. I preferred the gender-neutral libraries as a kid.) Not to say they are trivial to everyone, just that they are not the small, everyday things like how someone's voice is pitched at just that most annoying pitch, and that song that you hate is that person's favorite song. I pay attention to those smaller things. (I don't talk to people often, so really, by "trivial", I mean the things I don't keep an opinion on when I meet you. I keep an opinion only on whether you've annoyed me by interrupting my reading for a reason I don't care about.)

In books, you see things pretty clearly. How many times do we rip on Bella for being a weak, clingy, obsessive girl? And then think that perhaps the story would've been better if it was Edward's. (Or at least, that's what I do. I'm ashamed to say, sexist culture sneaks into my brain sometimes, too.)

I can think of many instances. One time, I was at B&N with my mom (who pays for the books I buy), and she refused to let me buy one about a boy who was gay-bashed. The MC wasn't even the gay boy; it was a female friend of the gay boy. (Of course, that was awhile ago and I can't remember its title or price; but my mother is of the "love the sinner, hate the sin" camp. I do imagine that sexual orientation was a factor.)

Now, gender, sexual orientation, skin color -- these are nature things. Not nurture. The only "nurture" thing about it is the way you look at it. I would hope I am such a tolerant, open-minded person because I have read all sorts of books since kindergarten. I would suspect people who are misogynistic are that way because either: a.) they have been actively taught that; or b.) because they honestly think society is already equal, and therefore misogyny can't exist. 

These things should not matter. It's just the way we're born. It's us who have made this matter.

Keep in mind I'm a teenager and not exactly an expert, but do I have to be? Even toddlers can tell the difference between nature and nurture. How ridiculous would it sound if someone told you that you chose the wrong skin color? (Don't get me started on tanning booths, whitewashing on YA covers, or any other such hogwash.)

So, why is so hard to find these natural things in books? It's not so bad, I gather, here in 2013. I will actively seek out books with a different culture, a woman protagonist, or a LGBTQ protag (I'm pretty sure there are more letters in there somewhere...), so I couldn't tell you about a dearth of them. But I know that the quality of them can be gosh-awful, a lot more than books about straight white guys might be. Particularly when it comes to sex.

Or perhaps it's not bad writing, per se, just harsher judgement from the reader. I don't know. But, as the title of this post implies, I would imagine it's the former, there being some need nowadays to toss in diversity, but seemingly no reason to write it well. Any subtle sexism or racism can be blamed on the character in question -- "It's not that she's a girl, it's her character." Which is a terrible argument, considering that an author (while character's character seems like an imaginary friend who chooses their own personality) does have a small ounce of control over how s/he expresses that character.

Well, so... readers' harsher judgment might be part of that. We will point out anything perceived as weak. Not all of us, not with every character. But it's there.

If the world were up to me, there would be an easy solution: focus on and develop such diverse characters as you do the straight white guy characters. Readers would then love them, because they are good characters. Unfortunately, the world is not up to me, and people will believe whatever they want to about a certain character -- or not believe at all, as the case may be.

Thankfully, there are diverse characters we can all love and hope for a better literary future because of: Hermione Granger, Holly Short (who does happen to be a POC, even if she's whitewashed in the graphic novels), Eona... (I'm having trouble coming up with LGBTQ characters. I avoid romance on principle, and I somehow think that LGBTQ ended a rather small niche in mainstream genre fiction, anyways, thanks to culture.)

I am one author. Not even published yet. But I know, quite deeply, that I will never consciously add a character in just for the sake of diversity. And, considering the fact I write epic YA fantasy, I have a feeling that most of my main characters will be diverse, and complex because of their diversity. I strongly believe that differences unite us all the more.

This one author here, will do her best to help diverse characters become real. I can only hope others will follow suit; and that maybe, just maybe -- in some distant future -- my words and worlds will help a change for the better for diversity,without making diversity seem like a cheap character trick that needs to tossed in due to social movements.

Sincerely,
JDM -- daydreamer, fantasy writer, avid reader.
      

Happy Easter Sunday!

Happy Easter and last day of March! I also believe it's the end of Lent, so happy that, as well!

Easter is so much more than bunnies and Easter eggs. It's so much more than candy, gifts, and going to church in your best clothes.

Today, of course, is a blessed day: it's the day of that most central event of Christianity, the resurrection of Christ. It's that symbolic day that Jesus came back to life.

The Easter bunny and eggs are symbols,of course: the white bunny for innocence and purity, the eggs as a symbol of rebirth. But they are poor substitutes for the real story behind the holiday. It's one of the reasons I am glad I am not atheist: because it's a holiday with meaning behind it.

(Not that I have anything against atheists. I'm just kinda sad that holidays like Christmas and Easter mean nothing to them, because they don't believe in the story behind them.)

It's the day Jesus came back, guys. For the three days He was dead, Christians died for Him. There was no quabble between Catholics and Protestants, no debating the methods of baptism. There was a single type of Christian: those who upheld the belief that God's Only Son died for them, and would come back.

And He did. He rose from the grave on Easter, to show the world that He is God's Son, and death cannot hold Him.

If you're not Christian, that's cool. If you don't believe, then that's fine. But I do believe, so I wrote a short post on why this story means a lot to me. It's Easter Sunday, and a Christian holiday, so I feel entitled to write a post on my Christian beliefs.

Have a truly blessed day. And here's an Easter song from Veggietales ('cuz that's how I roll) for you to listen to. =)