Month: December 2020

About Me

2020

Autumn

A few years ago, a mormon bishop took it upon himself to inform me that my lifestyle was outdated, and that as a woman I needed to apply myself to a career instead of settling for being a simple stay-at-home-mom. He proclaimed this on a Sunday, while wearing a suit, with the authority of God and all that jazz.

And I thought to myself, “Wow, even the mormons don’t like me.”

If it was some sort of attempt at conversion, it had the exact opposite effect — and I’m still very much a stay-at-home mom. I guess the thing that people don’t understand is that I feel an enormous amount of passion about raising my children, and no criticism is going to change that. I’m not going to sell my soul for approval.

The one thing that I did take away from the exchange was that I am alone.

Totally, completely, alone.

I’ve met a lot of women who consider raising kids to be nothing more than a diversion from the ever-so-much-more-important career. Like paychecks are the only things that matter in life.

I’ve lived with the isolation ever since.

But here’s the funny thing about 2020: despite the lockdowns, social distancing, and rampant censorship, the one thing that I’ve learned is that I’m not alone.

There are a lot of people like me.

More than I would have expected, too.

We were just all too scared to say what we really thought before now.

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Uncategorized

Merry Christmas

Autumn

There’s a decent chance that the children will be the death of me before Christmas. It’s been fun, but there comes a point where you just can’t keep putting off the inevitable. I go with peace.

Lol I wish.

We’re in the homestretch, which means that there’s a flurry of activities to accomplish before the big day, as well as wondering if I’m going to have any chance at all of finally making personalized Christmas stockings this year (probably not). It’s our tradition to decorate gingerbread houses with the kids, and I still have my heart set on making a yule log cake. And, of course, I need to finish sewing Christmas outfits for all the kids.

And the children are increasingly excited as they count down the days.

So I’m signing off to focus on the real world.

Wish me luck.

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About Me

Austrian cream cheese bars

Autumn

I jumped on the baking bandwagon.

I don’t actually know if that’s still a thing, or if people have burnt out on it by now.

But anyway, I’ve been baking WAY more than I used to. For the sweet tooth.

I made Austrian cream cheese bars, and thought that it would be fun to take a picture for the blog.

But before I got around to it, my two-year-old attacked them with a chopstick while I wasn’t looking.

So here you go. Yummy.

They’re supposed to have nuts on top, but I didn’t have any on hand.

About Writing

Writing babies

Autumn

One of my pet peeves with fiction is when child characters start out important, then are reduced down to props or are inexplicably absent at the end. A good example of this is from An American Tail, when Fievel’s baby sister Yasha is completely nonexistent for the latter half of the movie.

If you’ve been following my blog this year, you’ll know that I had a baby about six months ago, and that I’m currently working on a fictional story about a woman who had a baby. The silly thing is, having those parallels is actually making it harder for me to write about motherhood.

I spend all day snuggling, kissing, playing with, and caring for my baby, then at night after the older kids go to bed and I settle down to work on my writing, I feel self-conscious about describing all of that. It’s a little too autobiographical.

And it’s bothering me enormously.

I’m going to add in more descriptions of motherhood when I rewrite it, but for now I feel like the first draft has a giant hole in it.

Chalk it up as part of the process.

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About Writing

Why Readers Deserve Happy Endings

Autumn

I have a straight-forward style of storytelling, where I deliver what I promise with no gotchya’s or plot twists. When I was posting stories on Reddit, I’d occasionally get comments from people who were relieved that I ended on a happy note, instead of abruptly implementing, “rocks fall, everyone dies” for dramatic impact.

I confess that my tastes in fiction are quite old school, so I can’t speak with 100% certainty of what’s being done currently, but from what I saw others posting on Reddit, and what I know of popular series like Game of Thrones and Harry Potter, a lot of writers are obsessed with killing characters, plot twist betrayals, and numerous cheap ploys that tug on emotions.

Sometimes I wonder, at what point does it become emotional abuse?

Bear with me a moment here.

As a writer, I have an ego — my decision to make my stories available for other people to read is testimony of that. I’ve spent years practicing, studying, and philosophizing, and while I don’t think that I’ve achieved perfection, I do believe that I’m better than average.

But I don’t think that I command any sort of god-like control over anyone who chooses to read my fiction.

I am not out to deliberately manipulate your emotions.

My goal is to tell a story.

The thing is, if you were in a relationship with someone who was deliberately keeping you off-balance, utilizing your emotional attachments to punish you, and dangling good promises with no intention of delivering, that would be a horrendously abusive and toxic relationship, right?

Well, guess what?

Writer – reader counts as a relationship.

Readers have the power to put down a book at any point for any reason, so on some level Game of Thrones fans are agreeing to be subjected to an endless parade of death, etc. However, the frequent use of manipulative tactics combined with persistent anxiety, makes me think that readers might not realize they have that power.

We don’t have to accept being jerked around so much we can’t enjoy a happy light-hearted story without panicking that something bad is going to happen.

There is a point where enough is enough.