I’m still on the label trip because that’s the way my hyperfocus works, and by the way, can I say that for all the bashing hyperfocus gets, it can be really useful, too. I have over 10,000 words on my NaNoWriMo project, and we’re barely into day four. I give all credit to hyperfocus. When I first started learning Taiji weapons, I fell in love with the sword. Once my Taiji teacher placed it in my hand, I knew it was what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. I pushed her to teach me the Sword Form as quickly as possible as I was obsessed with it. Once again, hyperfocus did me a solid.
What? I’m not supposed to be appreciative of hyperfocus? I’m supposed to say it’s bad and makes me lose time when I should be doing something else? That’s not wrong, of course. There are times when I’ve put hours into something I shouldn’t have. Such as FromSoft games. I have made a rule that I can’t start playing one after midnight because there is no way in hell that I will only play for an hour.
On the other hand, it’s a good thing when I use the pressure of something exterior to me to get shit done, such as NaNoWriMo. I have not been able to write (except here) for several months. Many months. So many months. NaNoWriMo was coming up, and a few weeks ago, I thought, “What if I use it to jumpstart my flagging writing?” I decided that was a good thing and started planning what I wanted to do in NaNoWriMo. In the past several years, I had been doing NaNoRebel because that was more my style and I was bored with NaNoWriMo.
Interjection: In yesterday’s post, I wrote about why I don’t date and what labels I could affix to that. It made sense when I wrote it. That’s all I can say in my defense. Back to my musings.
This year, I decided to go back to my roots precisely because I had not written in months. As the old saying goes, writing at all is better than not writing. It was time to go for the basic ‘write 50,000 words in a month’ and call it a day. I had all these ideas of what I wanted to write about with my NaNoWriMo project, but I wasn’t sure how to do it gracefully.
I had planned on doing two simultaneous projects, but now I’ve smashed it into one. A quick description of it would be mystical/surreal, murder mystery, autofiction (memoir because I like alliteration). To put it in friendly vernacular, I threw everything including the kitchen sink. Why? Because I wanted to. Also because I can. Also because why not? Wthi a healthy dose of ‘you can’t tell me what not to do’.
Back to labels. I included a funny song by Jude Perl called, The Label Song. The basic gist of it is that labels are helpful–until they are not. Use them when they get you what you need (like meds for an ADHD diagnosis, for example) or when they feel like the right label, but then discard them once they don’t.
That’s my mentality, honestly. Labels are something to serve me, not the other way around. I don’t want to be hampered by a label, which I feel I am more often than not. I have a few that are fine with me (Taiwanese American, for example), but the rest are more eh, they’re fine, than anything else.
I think it gets messier in the writing area because I want representation. The reason I started writing fiction in the first place because there was nothing about people like me. And when I mean people like me, at the time, I meant Asian American bisexual women. This is where the label thing comes into play. Now, I would add agender, polyamorous, aro, oh, and we can’t forget areligious as well. And I would want to add Taiji/Bagua, plus black cats–and we’re basically talking about me.
I know that you should not base your main character on yourself (this is a truism in writing), but, what if–and here me out–I did? I also think that’s being biased against people who are on the fringe. I think it’s valid to consider whether people would want to read about a character who was based on me, but what if my answer to that was that I did not care?
That’s really my bottom line. I don’t care what people want to read. I understand that as a writer, you have to think about your audience. But, again, hear me out, what if you don’t? Look. There are plenty of books out there for cishet white people. There just are. In fact, there is no shortage of books for them. At least seventy percent of books* that are popular have cishet white people predominantly figured in them.
This is the same as movies and TV shows, by the way. I’ve reached the point where if there are no non-white people in the trailers, I don’t even consider watching the movie or TV show. Not that I would watch in the first place, but I most certainly won’t with such a blatant lack of diversity. Same with content creators. I’m at the point where I won’t support any content creator who does not prominently feature a minority of my choice. Especially not cishet white men. They get enough support, thank you. And I have given enough to that class of people and now wish to spread it out to others.
I think one of the most frustrating things with being a minority in so many ways is how I have to learn so much about the majority while they don’t have to learn a damn thing about me. It’s why I get so irrationally angry when someone says that they want someone who is a minority to understand their majority view. As a minority, I have to learn about the majority way of thinking as a survival mechanism.
This happened with a woman on Ask A Manager going on a screed against agender people. I’ve mentioned this more than once because it took me completely by surprise. I am one of very few people who mention being agender on that blog. I had mentioned it in that very post, so it was clear that her rant was directed at me, even if it wasn’t in response to my comment.
Before this comment (one in which she tossed in some serious transphobia as well), I thought of this woman in a mildly positive way. After this comment, my view of her plummeted. It went straight into the trash. Along with one other commenter who I had had…not great esteem before, but at least mildly positive. Both of these women declare themselves as staunch feminists, by the way. Apparently, that did not mean supportive of people all along the gender spectrum.
I am very careful with how I talk about my labels. I keep many of them to myself for the most part for my protection. It’s not for the normies–it’s for me.
That’s all for now. More later.
*Yes, I pulled that number out of my ass.