The Stories I Write When I’m Not Trying to Be Polite
I have finally, finally, finally made it to the stage in my life where my bucket of fucks is draining of fucks. This is the gift of menopause that I am enjoying the absolute most. Now, understand, this isn’t something that happened overnight. I didn’t just wake up one day and say, “I have zero fucks to give today.” I have always been a people pleaser, so this is a gradual un-fuckery of un-fucks.
And that shows in my writing.
I was reading through Barrel of Whiskey the other day, and I recognized the beginning steps of this un-fuckery journey. See, in Whiskey Witches, I was so careful not to piss anyone off, I wasn’t… honest. And what happened? I still pissed off the readers this wasn’t intended for, but I didn’t meet the readers I wanted to talk to. They could sense the… hiding? And that is why, I think, Whiskey Witches - the entire three mini series - will never really launch nor take off.
I mean, yeah. The writing isn’t as good as it is now. Like, I’ve learned a lot. I still think there were some natural abilities that I had early on that got filed down and are less existent now - like my ability to write emotion? I had a friend tell me that she recommended my books to her mother, but they both had to realize that I just didn’t write emotion.
That hit me. Hard. And it sat with me for a long, long while.
I’m… an empath.
Who can’t write emotion?
I mean, I don’t generally tell you what you’re feeling. I’ll describe it. And in writing Where the Dust Still Glows, I’m challenging myself to describe it even better, more viscerally and less body language-ly because Dreamlanders don’t dream and they don’t feel because they’re programming. So, how can you name an emotion when you’re not supposed to have them?
And that—that whole book is showing me that I have tied myself into so many knots trying to be nice to everyone around, trying to be kind, trying to be gentle, trying to be… something they don’t afford me. And all it’s done is make my writing more complicated, harder to understand. And if my writing is harder to understand, imagine speaking with me.
This ties in to every single aspect of my life. This is the reason I’ve been so keyed up and out of touch with my magick, my relationships, my work, my writing, my health. Fuck. Eating is a pain in the ass because I can’t eat wheat.
The thing I am loving the most about Where the Dust Still Glows and Without Villains is that I’m finding my place in the un-fuckery of un-fucks. That gradual progression into a reality that feels… real is being born through these two books. And it’s something I’m going to carry into Sol Break and into the rest of my books. Which means that you might not actually enjoy my earlier works. But you might enjoy the new ones.
Which sucks because the old books are descent. They’re solidly descent. Not great. But good-ish. With a grain of salt.
I love the writing path I’m on, and I truly look forward to continuing.
