Oh, I am such an absentee blogger.  Sorry, readers.  I've been focusing on a novel that I am (slowly) working on.  I have some rough material and finally have made headway with the outline.  All my writing energy is directed that way at the moment.  I hope it will pay off.

A short story of mine was recently accepted for an anthology.  I
Add Comment
 
 
I'm pretty sure last year one of my goals was to make a go of writing for a living and getting published, something I went after and did fairly well at.  Right now, though, I'm enjoying my day career so much that I'd like to put more focus on it, and perhaps worry less about writing professionally, getting published, getting paid, etc.  I'd like to write for pleasure this year.  I want to write.  Maybe I even need to write.  Right now I want that to be about delight, self-expression, and learning more than money or creating a career.

In some ways this flies in the face of my previous plans to figure out how to create a creative life.  Or maybe it doesn't.  Maybe some people create a creative life by getting paid for their art, and others find paid work that sustains unpaid art.  Good goddess, that sounds obvious when I write it out.  Anyway, at the moment I'm feeling more in the second camp.

Happy 2011 all!
Add Comment
 
Sexy is Evil? 12/21/2010
 
At FemCon, Kate Bornstein gave the most fantastic keynote address ever, and many things from it have stayed with me.  One is her articulation of and objection to the cultural sentiment that "sexy is evil, and cute is dumb."  Another is her claim that we, as self-identified femmes, can make people fall in love with us.  No matter what we think about our own power or beauty or whatever, we have glamour.   That, she told us, is powerful magic.


It's not how I'd been thinking of myself.  I found her words transformative.


With this in mind, I've been thinking recently that maybe seduction isn't such a bad thing.  Drawing someone to you and stirring up their desire, that can be powerful and delightful for everybody.  It can be fun and playful, maybe even be the thing that kicks you out of neutral, regardless of what side of the seduction you're on.  It can mutual, and I'm inclined to think that the best seductions usually are.


Except that I was reading a back issue of a leftie mag recently that critiqued consumption-obsessed capitalism with the comment that it seduced.  The male author of this piece made a comparison between consumerism and the whore of Babylon, noting that what makes Babylon, as well as consumerism, a whore, is that seduced people.


Now, a righteous feminist I know already called out the incorrect idea that sex workers seduce people, noting that sex work is usually done by those otherwise marginalized, done because there is a demand for it.  She made a series of sharp, insightful critiques for which I was damn grateful.  The author responded and acknowledged some problems with his piece.  Yet he reiterated that consumerism is a problem because it seduces, and seduction is a problem.


Is it?  Or does seduction only work when the seduced already privately has the desire that the seducer is bold enough to express?  What is seduction anyway?  Is it manipulation?  Temptation that makes the good go bad?  A big illusion that pulls wool over your eyes?  Or it is allure, glamour, magic?  Is it considered evil because it's sexy or because it's coercive?  Does seduction mean deceit?  Is it just powerful magnetism?  Is it something deeper?


I'm asking my EdgyHer friends to write something about seduction to find out.  Whether it's a time you tried to seduce somebody or how your favorite city seduced you, whether it's your opinions on the subject or your personal story of resisting seduction, I want to know.  At EdgyHer, we have no shame, no shame at all.  As shameless feminists, we all have some relationship with seduction, whether we chose it or one is projected onto us.  We need to speak for ourselves about it.


Coming up on this blog: what makes me a woman/makes me femme; collage as a writer's block antidote; and my seduction story.  Stay tuned!
Add Comment
 
All New! 12/20/2010
 
Launching another revamp of this blog.  Will I be more consistent?  Who knows!  I'm such a mystery.
Add Comment
 
 
Like many folks trying to make a go of creative work, I recently got a day job.  I'm fortunate to be able to get work, and very fortunate that I can, for the time being, work part-time and still have some hours available to write.  But obviously spending 20 hours a week working with kids is very different than spending 20 hours a week at a magazine internship.

My creative partner on an upcoming project mentioned today that she finds mind-numbing jobs also numb her creative energy.  I found that when I was teaching full-time that I was too exhausted to write at the end of the day.  It's a question most of us face: low-paid, mind-numbing day job that you poor and maybe a little brain-dead, but you don't take work home with you, or intensive, fulfilling day job that wipes you out?  Hobble together a bunch of gigs, or have a steady paycheck but limited time for your creative work?

How do people figure any of this out?  That's something I'll be exploring in this blog in the future through podcast interviews with creative folks.  In the meantime, I'd like to know how y'all work it out.  Please share your strategies for paying bills when you're starting out in an artistic/creative/otherwise underfunded field.

And if you're one of the rare people who don't have financial worries, how do you support others' efforts to create creative lives?

Finally, I had the pleasure of reviewing an art exhibit for East Bay Arts and Culture Review recently. I'm also now blogging about Poverty in America as well as at Ending Homelessness on Change.org.  At least in theory.  I've been day jobbing so much I haven't actually done much writing there recently.  But it's on the way.
Add Comment
 
 
At Femme Conference last weekend I was blessed to attend a workshop called TechFemme: blogging while femme. A workshop for queer femme bloggers? OMG, I'm a queer femme blogger! They talked about privacy, blog tips, and something that I'm remembering as alter egos, though it wasn't phrased that way. Plus, it was led by the style blog goddess who brings us FitforaFemme with help from Bevin Branlandingham. (Let's take a minute to say: AHHH! Femme Conference was amazing in a million ways. For the sake of this blog, I'll just say that I'm so psyched I got to hear about blogging from people who I admire to the point of getting giggly).

Digression aside, this how I understand artist alter egos. In blogging, and in writing and art-making in general, there's a terrible, beautiful vulnerability. That's one of the things that makes for moving, interesting work. People who are trying to cover their asses and stay safe and not risk anything make boring art and write boring blogs. You can tell when someone's not excited or invested in their work, or when they want attention or money more than they want to create what they're creating. To me, writing something worth reading means writing something you actually care about.

But in caring so much about it, some raw, soft part of you is exposed. Even if you're being all loud-mouth and opinionated, if your volume comes from how deeply the topic matters to you, you are in a dangerous, scary place. Because some jerk could come along and rip your precious work and dearest thoughts to little shreds. And realistically, somebody will, because people have very different tastes. So how do you deal? Alter egos. 
Add Comment
 
Femme Conference 08/20/2010
 
I'm attending Femme Conference this weekend and it's filling with me with creative energy, inspiration, joy, lust, shoe-envy, and a host of other emotions. It also means that I'm short on time. But I realized after an amazing session about Tech Femme on femme blogging that I really do care about this project. I'm not sure what I want it to be exactly. It's a work in progress. But so am I, dammit. So I don't want to wait until I figure it all out to post on here, to get started. Figuring it out is getting started, because, hello, creativity blog. Let's figure it out together.
Add Comment
 
 
I've got a new review up at The East Bay Arts and Culture Review covering a SF production of Peter Pan.  I've started my Change.org blog about Ending Homelessness.  Enchanted Conversation just published my essay The Little Mermaid: A Lesson for Women, about gender in Hans Christian Anderson's original story.


The Lost Boys in "Peter Pan" were (I've heard) inspired in part of the street children of Berrie's England. It's strange to think that homeless children could be the inspiration for a story that is so sentimental about childhood.  Stranger still that there so many children are homeless here and now in a world that still loves "Peter Pan."


The production I reviewed includes mermaids aerial performers on fabric. The mermaids completely rock (they're also the Paper Doll Militia, mentioned in my bio).  But I get frustrated that mermaids are so consistently "seductresses" and little else, when mermaid myths from around the globe present such complex images. The Little Mermaid doesn't fall into this, but it has its own ugly take on gender.


Wow, I'm surprised I managed to tie that all together.
Add Comment
 
Yet another blog 06/18/2010
 
Because I'm sure you have time to read this and the other three...
Add Comment