THIS IS A POST ABOUT BANANAS AND WOMEN.

I've been catching up on my reading pile (some new, some old), and something is nagging in the back of my head because of it. I read a total of four books this past month, all YA. Here's the most important bit;

I don't remember the main character of any of them. NONE of the main characters stuck with me, or in my head. If you asked me to sit down and describe them, I could give you vague details about the color of their hair or eyes, but that's it.

This is bad.

I'll admit it right now - my memory is less than stellar. My short term is confined to what I ate, and my long term is busy remembering who I've queried or not, but the space where I keep literary main characters is flawless. Spotless. Excelsior. A good/even somewhat decent main character will stick in my mind because I have that knack. (Nevermind math, I remember the direly IMPORTANT stuff; IMAGINARY PEOPLE).

But these past four books, I don't remember their MC at all. This means one of two things;

1. On all four books, I just wasn't paying attention enough. (Not likely.)

2. The MC's just really blow.

'Blow' is a subjective term, and when I use it my age becomes evident - too young to drink, but old enough to have read a lot of books. I'm a product of the Power Rangers and Sailor Moon era, for those who know their decades of TV.

So these MC's blow. When I say that, I mean they were one or all or a mixture of the following;

1. Were merely a vessel for the plot to work out of

2. Had no defining characteristic traits, or traits that were muddy, undefined, or otherwise altered to fit into the story

3. They were blatant Mary Sues thinly disguised by attempts to NOT be a Mary Sue and therefore rendered even MORE Sue-ish.

4. All four MCs were girls, and this means that they also might have been 'living' through their love interest. The author, at times, made their relationship the most important thing in the book, and as such the MC suffered character loss for it.

5. The MC was a repugnant, idealized, 2D, or inaccurate representation of the modern teenage female.

6. The MC and her 'voice' were simply a amplification device for the author to express their own stands on things, such as divorce, materialism (which apparently many of the MCs approved of), and stereotypes (ironically, if the MC points out that she 'doesn't get stereotypes', this is often an indication that the author is trying to make her NOT look like one, but it has the exact reverse effect).

7. The MC was racist, and described everyone who wasn't white as 'creepy' or 'disgusting'.

8. The author frequently seemed to forget who's head they were supposed to narrating out of - theirs or their MC's.

You can see why I didn't name names. :P I'm just entirely appalled by the state of YA MC heroines at this point. Dear industry, can you still recognize a truly 'strong' female MC and publish her? Is the YA industry still being written for young adults, and not older adults who enjoy YA? The last MC I enjoyed was in Jackson Pearce's Sisters Red, and that was when I read it over a year ago. Since then, I have yet to read a female MC that I enjoy and would like to know in real life if she was real.

I may come off as picky, but if I can't remember even one decently built character detail about your MC, something is wrong.

C'mon writer friends! Shake it up for us, your loyal readers. We're RAPIDLY losing interest in your silly Buffy-clone MCs. ;)

Note: This is not to say my own characters are perfect. They actually kinda fall into a lot of those catergories I mentioned above. XD I'm working hard to perfect them.

Post-coitus....for writing?

In sexual terms we call it the afterglow. In less creepy terms, it's the calm after the storm, the recovery, the disarming lull that settles in once you've completed something that felt monumental.

Having written three (rather shoddy) books, I'll tell you this right now; when it's done I feel a distinct emptiness in my chest. I'm pretty lucky in the fact that I can put in two to four hours of writing a day, but it's not always the most productive - some days I get 6k words, others I get 500.

When I start typing out the very end, the epilogue or the last few words, it's always a teary time for me. The ending might not be particularily sad (but being me, it is always sad) but I am still real emotionally volatile. This being my third time going through the process, I'm able to pinpoint it now - I get touchy because I no longer know if what I did was right.

I begin questioning myself; did my material deserve more than what I gave it? Did I shape the clay accurately after the dream, so to speak.

(Writers aren't artists, but that is a discussion for another day.)

Inevitably, I make peace with myself but the nagging emptiness remains. I want to write again, and I make slipshod plots in the notes section of my phone while running errands or checking into work - I want to be writing again as soon as possible, please and thank you.

I think it's an addiction.

It's taking a bit of a tax on my social life. It's hard enough to have a social life on a cesspool island like this, but in all honesty I'd rather be writing than grabbing coffee with people I don't know well enough to like. This is how it's been since I was little - it was just disguised. I had notebooks filled with dragon gods and maps of worlds. (So did everyone else, it seems, but you understand.)

Writing is not the only path in my life, but it's the only one that matters to me.

Maybe my passion does not equal my output. Maybe what I produce doesn't reflect what I feel for it, and if it doesn't then that's the only true failing I'll admit to.

When I'm not writing, I want to be writing, and that's all there is to it. Maybe I'm mentally unwell?

This is not to say the real world holds no interest for me - it very much does. I have no illusion of being a creator of worlds, or an artist. When a story leaves me as a finished manuscript, I feel very empty and immediately scrabble to fill the hole with another endeavor. I feel like I'm wasting time if I'm not churning out words.


I don't know what it is, really. I'm just happy to be alive and writing.


Querying is terrifying and an exhausting process. I would rather write seven more books than query one. But it's one of those things you have to do!


who likes bourbon?
I don't.