Welcome to Gaia! ::

I mostly write for me, so I write what I think I'd like to read. I seldom stay within the normal boundaries of a genre, but my writing is nothing I'd call literary. That said... if I were going to try to convince someone to publish, for example, Keenan's story, I might say something like:

The story is one about a young man discovering what the word "courage" really means. I think that's something to which most people can relate. Along the way, he encounters people and ideas he'd never thought of before. It's a story of growth, but beyond the typical coming-of-age stories.

There's a nonfiction writer at my church who keeps asking me this very same question about MOSI, and I can never answer her successfully. @_@ It's hard. It's probably one of the things I fear the most about trying to get published.

I have come to a point where I am no longer the only possible audience for my writing, and in fact, I am not even a part of the target audience. And so I find myself considering whether I can ethically publish, given the messages of my work, and how the hell I’m going to sell this to anyone if I do.

From time to time, and perhaps more often than I think, I find myself hesitant to go through with even putting words on paper, because I am afraid to present a view that is not popular- is not “on message,” especially to a teenaged audience. I, who believe in the power of introspection, find myself channeling the Newsweek writer, who asked of a Twilight movie’s gently introspective soundtrack, “do we really want to encourage navel-gazing in teenagers?” My most honest reaction is, of course we do.

Or at least, one honest reaction.

We are, as a society, so taken with action. On the scale of virtues, it rates far higher than reason or sensitivity.

Do I agree with that? No. Yes. No, but it is so very hard to disagree.

I think so much of what is wrong in our time stems from stifling our ability to think and to feel, often in service to action.

At least, I think I do.

But it’s hard to say this, hard to think it, and so that idea becomes a secret I keep from myself. I am very private about these things, and then I write, and my writing has become such that I can no longer avoid them.

Dragons is about contemplation. It is not about doing the right thing, but knowing what the right thing is, about not trusting your instincts, as they are really a deep socialization and often counter to other forms of reason, but finding a deeper, organic sense of justice.

But inaction? Opposition to socialization? These are not lessons we want to teach our kids.

Only, they’re lessons I want to teach them. They are tied to the value of literature.

I am an anarcho-synarchist, and Dragons is an anarcho-synarchist work. And I am thinking of publishing it in a representational democracy. It is what I believe. ******** if I know how I’m going to sell it.

Oh, and The Black Circus is worse. In the soundtrack I created for it, there’s a reason that “A Love Suicide” comes before “Seisouso,” the musical representation of Elvira’s climactic performance. Given the nature of the titular circus, The Black Circus dares to question the real value of living.

Is this an idea we want in the hands of a bunch of hormone-addled teenagers? Of course not! Somewhere, there is the implicit assumption that they must take it the wrong way.

And if it is popular enough, inevitably someone will. Knowing that, can I take responsibility for publishing The Black Circus? Would I be responsible for that outcome?

But, on the other hand, if I abandoned The Black Circus for this reason, I would have to take responsibility for the reverse, for the possibility of lives lived without reason.

Is this a problem? Is it even a thing?

Perhaps the fact that I could formulate the idea of The Black Circus, and the sudden reluctance I find to do anything about it are proof enough that something must be done. That the “inalienable right” to life is not always an expression of the value of life, but an insistence that we do not trouble anyone with our mortality.

For, if life, then why not immortal life?

But in living forever, so much must be lost. If we say living is good, living forever is good, then birth must also be good. But in living forever, birth must be eliminated.

Life, then, must have some value other than itself. Thought, happiness, and choice, perhaps. The purpose of finding a purpose. Truth, love, and beauty.

But the question must be asked, even if it is not “on message.”



TL;DR: I KNOW WHAT MY AUDIENCE IS, BUT NO ONE WILL EVER THINK MY WORK IS APPROPRIATE FOR THEM, AND SOMETIMES I DON’T EITHER.