Anyone with whom I've spoken about this topic can probably tell you what a hot-button issue it is for me.  I have several characters who are, by and large, organically queer, both in my fiction and my narrative poetry.  This isn't a political statement - I very much believe in homogenizing instead of sensationalizing these identities, and some of my characters have surprised me.  Some, as I have, move back and forth between identities.

A little bit about my characters: most of them are young - 16-28, say.  This has been consistently true over my nine-plus years of novel-writing, however, so it's not just that I write people my age.  Most of them who enter romantic relationships or experience intense attractions are doing so for the first time in their lives.  I've generally been more comfortable writing males than females.  Until a few months ago, I was very seldom comfortable acknowledging my characters' sexuality, keeping it implicit - I had characters who kissed deeply, sure, and I had several who were engaged, married, and/or slept in the same bed regularly - but I never acknowledged their sex lives, beyond maybe throwing a pregnancy into the mix.

(Geek note: I've also mentioned that 99% of my fandom "ships" are asexual - when I say I ship Mal/River, I don't mean I think they should be having nasty sex - just that I feel their relationship is Platonic, in the transcendent-of-such-matters-capital-P sense.)

About a year ago I finally recognized that two of the male characters in my first Epic Novel Series had been lovers - my protagonist and his best friend.  I'd definitely known this on some levels - I'd written a first-kiss scene more than once, but had always scrapped it for some narrative reason or another, and when the friend-character died it was definitely evident that my protagonist's mourning was of the "OMFG dead life partner" variety.

At about the same time, I realized that the poetry I'd been writing was very centered around my identity as a dyke.  I started collecting it and writing it more consciously, and it utterly accidentally chronicled my transitions from a dyke/pan identity through my brief asexual/aromantic stage and into ace/pan/poly until finally a couple months ago the collection came organically to a close.  (I've previously posted a couple of the poems on here; flocked, of course.  Sometime this winter I'm going to be formally putting them together and looking for an agent / publisher.)

And then there's The Novels.  I'm coming up on three years working on my trilogy of young adult fantasy novels (Prentice Boys, Prophetess, and Keeper) - actually, I believe I started plotting Prentice Boys three years ago today! (Some of you may have heard the funny stories about those first plots.  In which, you know, Matt and Liam were princes, Jules/Mara were one character and was Liam's twin sister, and Rico was their secretly-evil court magician or something??? That didn't last long, I promise.)

I have difficulty discussing the wealth of queerness and related issues that arise for me around this novel, because the precipitating factor for the problematic situations is a MAJOR plot point that isn't revealed until 75% of the way through Keeper.

Basically, there's a budding homoromantic relationship between two of the young characters.  I love this relationship, I've been very excited about it from the start - only before anything more than major sexual tension comes from it, there's a gigantic plot wrench thrown in: ( GIANT PLOT SPOILERS NOT TO BE TAKEN LIGHTLY )
I mentioned on my day-to-day-journal celebros a couple of weeks ago the shock and horror I felt when it occurred to me that my works would be considered objectionable - that there are people in the world who would try to keep their children from reading my works because of these inherent, intricate, implicit romances that take place within them.  I'm not even sure I can articulate how deep that goes.  As much as I would be honored to be paid enough attention to be worthy of banning, to join the noble leagues of banned authors, I think maybe it took this realization for me to really understand how wrong literary censorship is.  It hurts and offends me to the core to imagine anyone objecting to the love between my same-sex-loving / bisexual / asexual / trans fictional characters.

A large number of unexpectedly spectacular things have happened to me so far this semester, ranging from gaining a sense of camaraderie with fellow students to vast realizations about myself to chance meetings to weekends where I ship myself to another city and write forty pages of my beloved novel.  The majority of these things I hadn't ever conceptualized, and therefore had never had the chance to wish for them.  This has gotten me thinking a lot about how strange wishing is, and how ridiculous, in a way.  As hokey and dramatic as it may sound, I know that my state of being wouldn't be half as brightly illuminated if I had gotten the things I wished for instead of the things of which I hadn't dreamt.

On the other hand, even if the wishes meant something different than they did, I know that I wouldn't have been happy if I hadn't wished for anything at all.  As necessary as spontaneity is, the point of wishing is to begin conceptualizing a future - any future.  You're never going to get the right one.  [If you are as geeky as I am, you may wish to insert an IDIC reference here, friends.]

I have plenty of far-off wishes that haven't yet had a chance to solidify or dissipate, and despite this knowledge of how ridiculous they'll probably see when I get the things I didn't know I wanted, I'm not going to stop.  In part because there's something to be said for ridiculousness, and in part because these abstract things I'm wishing for - specific jobs, family, projects - are my motivation.  I'm really fighting for a future completely different than the one I'm imagining, but just because I can't name or imagine or qualify it doesn't mean I don't want it, and certainly doesn't mean I don't have to fight to get there.

So maybe the part of my future I call "Izzy" will actually be "Carter" or "Vincent" or "novel" or "vegetable garden" or "second-grade Waldorf classroom in Puerto Rico" - but I'm building towards something.  It takes imagining what Izzy will need for me to want to be a better person - and as long as it continues, I move closer towards being a person someone will need.  That's enough.





tl;dr?  Here's my challenge for you:

Write a poem situated around one or more of these ideas - wishing, unpredictability, human beings not knowing what they want, what our minds are able to conceptualize, fighting for an ideal that doesn't exist, fruitlessly trying to capture the unimagined future - you get the picture.  This could be sweeping and insightful or twisted and personal or anything in between.

And I'm going to restate: this isn't a contest; you don't have to consider yourself a poet, you don't have to be embarrassed.  If you really don't want to, you don't even have to share it with us.  But I'd appreciate if you'd at least let us know that you've done it.  (I promise I won't pressure you to show it off if you don't want to, friends.)



Who's done it?

Rae rcn412 's untitled (in comments)
Megan dweebulous 's A Writer's Prayer
(I'll have my own sometime this weekend, but it'll be flocked - so friend me if you haven't already, Dear Readers!)

Lately I've been trying to write the same poem over and over again.  It's definitely a love poem, and although the details change, I'm beginning to realize that often the root of these things comes down to a concept frustrating to me as a writer.  Namely:

"I wrote my first novel because I wanted to read it." - Toni Morrison

Similarly, I love the song "Hey There Delilah" not because of its musical style or even necessarily its lyrics - I love it because I want it to have been written about me.  And I'm writing this love poem over and over again because I want to receive it.  Tonight I've decided that the next step is to stop dreaming about other people who haven't confessed their love for me and start writing a poem confessing my love to myself - which sounds like a cliched self-help technique, but I feel like it's really significant for me.

How to explain it... I've described myself in the past as an egotist.  I don't feel as if I have low self-esteem (except perhaps when it comes to my social finesse) - I consistently think of myself as intelligent, competent, creative, et cetera.  But these things have always been straightforward, and never nuanced.  Never, certainly, poetic.  I've spent a lot of time rhapsodizing about other people, generally people who have no idea I'm writing about them (at least until after I've fallen out of love or have determined the feelings are unreciprocated).






My task for the week, for myself but also for all of you: let's write love poems to ourselves.  Not poems that we want other people to be writing, and without being self-conscious about the dangers of the ego.  And let's share them.
Let me know if you intend to participate so that I can hold you to it!



Completed!
Megan Kirby's dizzying

I'd like to welcome you to the first annual Teresa Doyle!  Please find namebadges and praise attached to your fingertips in the form of a keyboard.  Feel free to pick up a brochure - they're hiding back there behind the friendslist-only option.  This year we're going to explore a variety of topics, including fiction and poetry, outdoorswomanship, allergy-friendly cooking, social justice, queer issues, humanism, mysticism, animal rights, educational reform, binaryism, mythology, theory, news, mental illness, and urban exploration.

We've got a range of exciting guest speakers lined up for our writing seminars, including Teresa Doyle, author of "Holding Back the Ocean", Teresa Doyle, winner of the Carlson Creative Writing Contest for Poetry, Teresa Doyle, editor of "Lit Kids: Mama Bird and the Electric Rabbit", and Teresa Doyle, a novelist in the process of finishing her first original fantasy trilogy.  For queer theory we'll have an interview and Q&A session with Teresa Doyle, an asexual college student, and for today, a special surprise: a few words from Amadriel Lucille Emmaline Wilhelmina Doyle, who we've recently discovered is in the running for the World's Best Cat Contest!


MODERATER: Tell us something about your owner, Ms. Madi - may I call you Madi?
AMADRIEL: skahg93489b
MODERATOR: Is that so?
AMADRIEL: rgu