Author's Editorial Conference: Pins and Needles
I'm deep into the author's conference that started on Feb 4, with our 4th weekly assignment turned in last Thursday and comments still trickling in on what we wrote (and replied to that other people wrote) from the previous week, assignemnt 3, as well.
I'm on pins and needles because for both assignment 3 and assignment 4 what I turned in are scenes from my book that specifically highlight my sexuality and my attempts, at the time, to get things to work and/or figure out why they weren't working. And so it's personal and it's hard not to just talk their ears off explaining and elaborating in response to every little tidbit of feedback.
Assignment 3: a scene where your character is in a difficult situation and how they handle it
Assignment 4: a scene full of dialog in which what a character says is at odds with what character actually feels or believes
For Assignment 3, I snipped a bit from "Back to University", where a girl in my college class invites me back to her room and I'm hoping she fancies me and things will develop; but she talks about her divorce and how she sometimes misses staying in bed on a rainy weekend and having nonstop sex, and I get all self-conscous about being a virgin and not knowing how the heck people figure out how to get from "friends" to "yeah and sex".
For Assignment 4, I snagged a section from the previous chapter, about 6 months' prior to the Asgn 3 event in real life, where I was at a party and wondering why the hell I never get a girlfriend or get laid and I get all cynical and wonder what would happen if I just act like other boys, in other words be overt about seeking sex and pretend like I don't care if she does or not... and holy shit, the girl I try it out on doesn't get pissed off, she SAYS that I'm being disrespectful and she's not that kind of girl etc but she's bantering with me. And it freaks me out quite a bit (and confirms my cynical anger about How Things Are) and I quit playing
The feedback is interesting (and I crave more more more feedback dammit, and discusson and stuff!).
In general: the others in the class see my main character (that would be ME) as sexless or asexual in Assignment 3, and then in Assignment 4 so far (feedback just starting to trickle in) they see my behavior with this girl as totally normative, completely missing that I'm acting in anger and contempt, that I'm acting out of character and that this isn't at all what I want, this demeaning humiliating game. And they ask "Gee why did your MC stop? Did he fail to get that the girl was into him?"
This all constitutes a mixture of good and frustrating results. Good, that people read the scenes and without prompting, and without me pounding them over the head lecture style, they perceive "Hey wow, you experienced yourself as a sexual being who just wasn't having any success, and yes indeed the reason is that your participation was so different from 'normal boy' behavior that you were completely off their radar, you came across as sexless" in Asgn 3. And good, that I did not have to claim that the girl was interested in me, or that my verbally sexually aggressive behavior (overtly asking for sex, not letting it drop when she says no) was in fact normative and that I was copying boy-behavior I'd seen all around me.
What's more frustrating is that my book needs to get people inside MY head, the MC's head, and with the others in the class reading a scene here and a scene there, I can't know (yet) whether they'd have a clearer sense of my feelings and attitudes and, well, my sexuality, if they'd read up to this point in the book instead of just being dropped down into this scene.
In our "introduce yourself" first emails to classmates, I did say I was genderqueer, without much additional explanation: "I'm genderqueer. (sort of like being trans, which you've probably heard more about; more on that later)". I think most of them have forgotten, I haven't brought it up since then.
I did reply "backchannel" (i.e., to her email address alone, not to the group as a whole) to one other author, because she replied to my Asgn 4 immediately, on Thursday, and I wanted an early feel for "if I explain a little, does it click into place?") -- and that went very well, she said not only these two scenes but another one featuring me being beaten up for very little discernable reason, suddenly made a lot more sense.
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I'm on pins and needles because for both assignment 3 and assignment 4 what I turned in are scenes from my book that specifically highlight my sexuality and my attempts, at the time, to get things to work and/or figure out why they weren't working. And so it's personal and it's hard not to just talk their ears off explaining and elaborating in response to every little tidbit of feedback.
Assignment 3: a scene where your character is in a difficult situation and how they handle it
Assignment 4: a scene full of dialog in which what a character says is at odds with what character actually feels or believes
For Assignment 3, I snipped a bit from "Back to University", where a girl in my college class invites me back to her room and I'm hoping she fancies me and things will develop; but she talks about her divorce and how she sometimes misses staying in bed on a rainy weekend and having nonstop sex, and I get all self-conscous about being a virgin and not knowing how the heck people figure out how to get from "friends" to "yeah and sex".
For Assignment 4, I snagged a section from the previous chapter, about 6 months' prior to the Asgn 3 event in real life, where I was at a party and wondering why the hell I never get a girlfriend or get laid and I get all cynical and wonder what would happen if I just act like other boys, in other words be overt about seeking sex and pretend like I don't care if she does or not... and holy shit, the girl I try it out on doesn't get pissed off, she SAYS that I'm being disrespectful and she's not that kind of girl etc but she's bantering with me. And it freaks me out quite a bit (and confirms my cynical anger about How Things Are) and I quit playing
The feedback is interesting (and I crave more more more feedback dammit, and discusson and stuff!).
In general: the others in the class see my main character (that would be ME) as sexless or asexual in Assignment 3, and then in Assignment 4 so far (feedback just starting to trickle in) they see my behavior with this girl as totally normative, completely missing that I'm acting in anger and contempt, that I'm acting out of character and that this isn't at all what I want, this demeaning humiliating game. And they ask "Gee why did your MC stop? Did he fail to get that the girl was into him?"
This all constitutes a mixture of good and frustrating results. Good, that people read the scenes and without prompting, and without me pounding them over the head lecture style, they perceive "Hey wow, you experienced yourself as a sexual being who just wasn't having any success, and yes indeed the reason is that your participation was so different from 'normal boy' behavior that you were completely off their radar, you came across as sexless" in Asgn 3. And good, that I did not have to claim that the girl was interested in me, or that my verbally sexually aggressive behavior (overtly asking for sex, not letting it drop when she says no) was in fact normative and that I was copying boy-behavior I'd seen all around me.
What's more frustrating is that my book needs to get people inside MY head, the MC's head, and with the others in the class reading a scene here and a scene there, I can't know (yet) whether they'd have a clearer sense of my feelings and attitudes and, well, my sexuality, if they'd read up to this point in the book instead of just being dropped down into this scene.
In our "introduce yourself" first emails to classmates, I did say I was genderqueer, without much additional explanation: "I'm genderqueer. (sort of like being trans, which you've probably heard more about; more on that later)". I think most of them have forgotten, I haven't brought it up since then.
I did reply "backchannel" (i.e., to her email address alone, not to the group as a whole) to one other author, because she replied to my Asgn 4 immediately, on Thursday, and I wanted an early feel for "if I explain a little, does it click into place?") -- and that went very well, she said not only these two scenes but another one featuring me being beaten up for very little discernable reason, suddenly made a lot more sense.
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