Just For Fun; July 25 2020
Saturdays are a big day for me, now. For one thing, it’s now my blog post day! That’s always an exciting process, as I scramble around my brain for a topic worth talking about. In addition, though, it’s the day I inject testosterone.
I’ve been microdosing T for 6 weeks now, with no obvious changes. This is both a positive and negative thing, because obviously, there’s a part of me that would’ve loved to pop a full goatee in only a couple of weeks. More importantly, though, I haven’t experienced any wild mood swings and weird reactions.
Saturdays are also the only day I have time to sit down and get some solid hours of work in. I try to write when my kid is with her other parent, but I often get caught up in the ‘just for fun’ writing instead of the ‘work’ writing, and there is a massive difference.
“But Red, isn’t it all just writing? Why not take your ‘just for fun’ writing and try to publish that, instead?”
Oh, naive reader. Oh, you unfettered babe swaddled in the cloth of oblivious contentment. I -
Actually, hm. Why can’t I try to publish the writing I do to blow off steam? What makes it different?
Chiefly, the stories I intend to publish are about something. Some very good advice I once received was to make sure the stories you intend to publish have something to say. I’m talking themes, messages, the story underneath the plot and characters and settings. Sometimes I don’t know what my novels are about until I’ve finished them. Sometimes, I don’t even know then! It takes me a couple of read-throughs to realize what’s coming across.
An embarrassing example was when I messaged my partner, losing my mind over what I’d just realized about my novel, KANAE. “It’s about autonomy!” I said. “The story validates unconventional families and tells us that no one should be able to dictate what you do with your uterus!”
“Yeah,” replied my partner. “Did you seriously only get that now?”
... And then I felt the English literature student in me cry, because I’ve clearly forgotten all about him.
The writing I do that’s just for fun? It’s a series of connected drabbles written with my partner. There’s no underlying theme, there’s no plan. If I were to look back on it and realize there’s a deeper meaning to these little stories, we could probably polish it up and cut the content down to relevant chunks, but there’s no intention.
That’s what marks the main difference. Any piece of writing can be edited and revised and made visually appealing, but only the stories about something wind up being my work focus.
If you’ve written something you’re trying to get published (or have published), what was it about, thematically?