30 percent!

I have reached 30% of said novel. I am very excited. This calls for celebration.

It's probably gonna be longer than 50K just because I've only just gotten to the scenes where Nadie and Leandra get to know each other. I like them. Nadie is gas and Leandra is a sparker, and together--fire.
Other news. I am teaching myself to play guitar with correct fretting technique this time, and now feel as though I don't know how to play at all. Is very frustrating. Most of my muscle memory--useless.
I have basically discovered that if you want my news in mostly sensible, continuity-heavy, long posts that read like chapters of a story in that they're mostly related to what happened before, you should stay here. If you like them in shorter chunks, don't mind me commenting on feminism, random other story ideas, trans* and NB resources, and a hell of a lot on asexuality; enjoy watching me get excited about random things, and like a consistent update schedule, you should follow me on tumblr.
My boring interny stuff is closer to being done but is still not done, same with the shopping stuff and reading through Poets & Writers. Dang, but that's a long magazine.
Also! I don't usually put fanfiction here, but! Aro/ace Natasha Romanov! Heterosexual biromantic Sam Wilson! The soulmate trope suddenly making sense!

Merry Christmas!

       I think I've managed to write SOMETHING every day except Christmas Eve (which was a travel day), though I don't feel like I've gotten very far. We're nearly to the actual coming out to Jimena part.
I finished a book I'd been working on that I bought way back in November: Afterworlds, by Scott Westerfeld. Honestly, I don't have the energy to review it properly, and I don't feel guilty about that because it's not queer fiction, and it has no trans characters whatsoever. However, what it does have is a queer main character and a plot that does not revolve around her queerness. It raises the tension, as it would by virtue of our society, without *being* the tension. And my favorite part about that? The inside flap mentions nothing about the love interest being a woman--it merely says "falling in love--with another writer." And it is that fact that is most important to the plot. Imogen being a writer provides far more tension than Imogen being a woman. Thus Westerfeld, and whoever writes his jacket copy if it's not also Westerfeld, puts another brick in the process of normative-ization. TW for pyromania, possible cultural appropriation (they actually talk about the lines of cultural appropriation!) death, terrorism, serial killers, murder, ghosts, degradation plot (character goes from innocent to murderous).
        It's written as two books in one--Darcy writes the words, as the cover says, and Lizzie lives them. Between that and listening to my mother talk about the new book by David Mitchell, who wrote Cloud Atlas, I had an idea for a story that follows four characters, each of whom is directly impacted by the same fifth character in very different ways. They each paint a different picture of him based on their own experience--one falls in love, one is terrified, etc.
       I've been playing along with ideas from this website: mogai-archive.tumblr.com. It lists tons of words for genders, orientations, and pronouns. I have a vague 'verse in my head about a people who are not sexually dimorphous (there's only one basic body type, and the variation is in the little details) and use all of the words for gender and all of the pronouns. I also want to write about characters with flower genders. I've been attempting to find a word that describes my gender, and I think I'm going to just combine two and say I'm subgirlfluid. Subgirl is 3/4 agender and 1/4 girl. Subboy is the same but 1/4 boy instead of girl. Subfluid holds the agender part constant and the 1/4 part goes between girl and boy. I don't *quite* like subfluid because I want to emphasize the girl side of the fluidity--the boy side only occasionally crops up and doesn't feel as much a part of me.
      Exciting news, or perhaps not so much, for my readers: I got for Christmas two of the research books I'd not been able to get ahold of. One is Passing Lines, which is about sexuality and immigration, and the other is another fiction book, Freakboy.
      I also got some of Jonathan Friesen's books for Christmas. He was my old writing teacher. If his style has evolved any closer to mine, which it looks like it has based on the fact his latest romance is with a boy with DID, perhaps I should look into his publisher? Never pass up a chance to name-drop network.

Characterization of Henriette

How did I forget Henriette? No, seriously. How did? Henriette is easily one of my favorite characters. I have misplaced my list of questions to ask, so I shall do my best.
Henriette is 5'6", skinny, with messy dirty blonde hair, blue eyes and freckled, pale skin. She's kind of a hippie, barefoot whenever possible, earth lover, peace lover, but also wears body glitter for reasons she's never explained. She likes ripped jeans, which got that way through use, natural fabrics, shirts without designs, no jewelry. She's got a tattoo of the Deathly Hallows symbol on her shoulder blade. She's into robotics and computer science, and loves fantasy, especially Harry Potter. She's an introvert, but an open kind of person, which leaves her completely exhausted at the end of the day--luckily for her, no one is demanding her nights from her. She's a fairly friendly person, but she does get confused when things head flirty/innuendo, and tries to avoid such conversations. She enjoys helping people. She speaks fluent Spanish, like Leandra. When she's comfortable with the situation, she's a great conversationalist, really good at the give and take, but when she's not, she just sort of shuts down. Nothing in particular seems to be really important to her, it's more that she balances having a lot of mostly important things. She listens to New Age stuff but also pop. Henriette is asexual and possibly aromantic, and cis. Relationships make her go mostly 'huh what?' She is a Hufflepuff.
I kind of want to write a second novel about Henriette. At the moment, she's slightly Mary Sueish, though--she needs some flaws.
Sheer obliviousness?

Winter break!

So winter break is a thing. I has goals.

1. Practice guitar for an hour every day
2. Work on the novel some every day
    a. If I'm stuck, use Writing the Breakout Novel for inspiration
3. Read the newest issue of Poets & Writers
4. Boring internship stuff
5. Practice my ASL
6. Boring shopping stuff

I'm nearly done with Whitney's story!
In other news, I recently acquired a Tumblr: phoenixtawnyflower.tumblr.com. I post slightly more detailed stuff over here (I didn't transfer the conference stuff) and rather more reblog stuff over there. Anyway, if you have a Tumblr, you should totally follow me (innocent expression). I carefully manage my queue, so stuff you've already seen here will turn up there mostly in order, but mixed in with reblogs and other stuff.

Tell me a Whitney

Hello, everyone! Happy NaNoWriMo! And Thanksgiving, that little thing...
They actually have NaNo at my school. I've never tried it, but I did wish I could, homework-related-guilt-free, go to one of the several-hour writing sessions here.
Life continues very rough. Story continues very stubborn. I have now got to the point where I need to tell Whitney's coming out story, and despite everyone's insistence that I don't actually need the story, just the leadup and the fallout, I still feel the need to actually write the thing. I don't know if I want to switch POV or maintain a dialogue setting, but I dont think it matters. I'll write whatever comes out when I write it.
Unfortunately, this isn't a very well traversed blog, and y'all who do read are almost always silent. Otherwise I'd ask for ideas on what you think Whitney's backstory should include (siblings? With what reactions? Quirks? Interesting teachers?) in hopes something will strike a chord and I'll start writing it. Downsides to not being even reasonably well known.
It's also possible I'm counting on the phenomenon which goes, if you complain about something to enough people, the thing will go away. BRB. Going to try to write the thing again.

Coming Out Day

So I barely noticed National Coming Out Day: Like every year, it passed pretty much without any actual coming out.
And then like three people on my news feed were all, "Hey, I forgot it was National Coming Out Day yesterday. Newsflash: I'm_________." Some I already knew, some were not a surprise, but I'm having feelings about it because I've never done it.
At some point, I built it into my lexicon for dealing with new people. I don't hide it. It comes up in conversation. It does this a lot of ways.
"My girlfriend--"
"Why did you_____?" "Well, I'm a lesbian, so---"
"Wait, are you--?" "Gay? Yes."
So everyone at college knows. My parents know. My close friends know. My grandparents on one side at least know.
But not most of my extended family, and not most of the people I knew through middle and high school--who make up the majority of my facebook friends. At least, I don't think they know. People have surprised me before.
"Congratulations on coming out!" "Thank you. How did you know?" "You know, the Internet."
Part of me feels like I should. Visibility is important. Visibility is a thing I advocate. And I feel like I'm talking the talk but not walking the walk to stay closeted.
And it's no longer a thing that would likely get me outright disowned or a large amount of nasty messages sent my way. I expect a couple "It's a sin, repent" messages, one or two, maybe, and my relatives talking around it for the next forever, but I can live with that.
So why am I still not doing it? Why am I still scared?
Partly, why should I tear down my shields and allow in the messages and the judgment when it's not negatively affecting my life not to be out to some people? The people that needed to know, the people it was hurting me to stay in the closet for, they know. Why should I expose myself that much more? Is it that likely that there's someone on my news feed that doesn't already have sufficient gay role models?
Sigh. I knew it wasn't my duty to come out as long as it would hurt me. Not sure what the right answer is now.
Atalanta says stop using 'should' statements. I'm not sure I know how to police myself without 'should' statements.
Hello, everyone. I'm a Kinsey 5, that's predominantly homosexual/romantic and only incidentally heterosexual/romantic. I'm sexually and romantically attracted to women almost exclusively, to their minds and their souls, not to their bodies. I usually identify as female but once in a blue moon experience brief dysphoria. I touch on the asexual spectrum extremely lightly, so that I almost always have to have heard someone talk, enough to get an idea of their personality, to be attracted to them, but mostly identify as allosexual (not asexual). My gender expression tends toward fellagirly with a large helping of genderfuck, which means I sit like a guy, grow my hair long and dye it, don't wear makeup or shave my legs, appreciate jeans and skirts, love suits, vests, and ties, and occasionally do makeup/police my body language/bind/dress/wear a wig specifically to make people question my pronouns.

Back to school!

I realize I've been off the grid for almost a month. It's been kind of a hard month, and school started in the middle of it, so I've been scrambling to try and get everything under control. Sorry 'bout that.
I also got a touch of writer's block with one scene that I couldn't figure out how to write. But the idea came to me at dinner on Wednesday, and I held onto it until tonight, when I unexpectedly finished my quizzes an hour early and decided to reward myself with writing. As usual, the scene blew itself much larger than I expected, but it was fun. I'm a little worried that I'm doing too much tell instead of show, but I'm trying to leave that stuff till after I've got the whole thing written. It's probably going to go unbearably slowly from here on out, but hopefully it will be a steady slow instead of a is-this-ever-going-anywhere slow.

In other news, school is having a craft fair in December and I've booked a table to sell my wee bracelets. So I'm trying to work out what I want to make. I have a current stock of:
2 rainbow diagonal stripe bracelets
1 completed, 1 half made trans diagonal stripe bracelets
1 half made genderqueer bracelet
A long string of ace bracelet I can cut into individual bracelets
Yeah. Per-thetic. But I keep giving them away.
So I reckon I'm almost good with ace--I'll make another Viking Weaving of them and then cut them into bracelet sized strings. I'm going to steer clear of earrings (though I might do zipper pulls) and of multiple patterns--I'll do diagonal for the wider flags (rainbow and trans) and diamond for the narrow ones (GQ and pan). But wait! I can pull off diagonal of the narrow ones if I double the colors and work with six strings instead of three. Hm. And it's easier. Is the diamond cool looking enough to go the extra effort? I need more of everything. Diamond's way too much effort for rainbow or trans, so I'm probably good there. Thoughts?
Also, have a link the Trevor Project poked at me just today. Adorable humans for my inner hopeless romantic, who also happen to be a-spectrum.