Wow. It's been a while, guys. I can only apologise for the intrusion of real life, and depression edging its wicked way back and everything else etc etc.
This won't be a long post, alas. I'm pretty tired and I don't have much to give to you guys in ways of thought processes. I just want to give you these images; you may have seen them, I don't know. I just appreciate the signs.

http://www.buzzfeed.com/mjs538/the-best-walk-for-choice-signs-from-around-the-cou

On another note, I just want to appreciate all of you contributers. Some I know personally, some I don't, but all of you have shown love, appreciation, support and intelligence over the last 8 or so months I've been a contributer to this blog. So thank you. <3 Women like you make me very very happy indeed. :)

Links & Larks

Yep, good news. I'm not going to break my new rule the same week I make it. Go me! (Links list might be slightly longer than usual -- I've been saving them up for a while.)

Caudoviral gave us a great shout-out last week, because he is awesome. Go read his blog about biology and sciences, which is full of cool and interestingly explained articles and things you didn't know about medicine. (Full disclosure: yeah, we're friends; no, I wouldn't say his blog is awesome if it weren't.) (Caudoviral)

In less-awesome news, the U.S. House of Representatives recently voted to cut all funding to Planned Parenthood. I’m sorry; did I miss the memo? Do we want everyone to drop out of college all full of babies because the pill costs $70/month at Wal-Mart and no one can get it for $20/month at PP anymore? Is that how we’re going to fix the economy? Really, John Boehner? This page has a link to a petition where you can tell the Senate to cut this crap out immediately, plus a bunch of fun ideas for protest signs. (Bitch Magazine)

Keeping up with the Prop 8 debate? A review has been set. On the one hand I am absolutely opposed to Prop 8 in every respect and I wish they would get this matter of basic human rights settled already; on the other hand I’m kind of finding the legal ins and outs really interesting. (Yeah, I read Supreme Court decisions for fun when I was in high school.) (There’s a more recent update – about the Court’s unwillingness to speed up the schedule – here.) (SCOTUSblog)

Speaking of marriage, feminists caused your divorce! Did you know? Bitch has something to say about that. (Bitch Magazine)

It’s preaching to the choir, I know, but this post is an insightful and eloquent report of the way the conscience clause can be horribly misued and in fact lead to the deaths of women with no benefit to the fetus. I have a lot I want to say about that when I can find the time to put it into words (I am actually much more conflicted about it than I thought I was); meantime read Thomas’s clear and straightforward view. (Yes Means Yes)

On a similar topic, two reporters (or a reporter and an intern, rather) at Slog did some interesting investigative journalism, going to crisis pregnancy centers in the area. Their findings were interesting -- much of the information given about abortion was (surprise!) inaccurate. (Slog)

Elsewhere on Slog: whether you saw the Oscars or not, I think you should read Lindy West’s recap of the ceremony. (Actually I think you should read everything Lindy West writes, because she is awesome. And besides being funny and feminist and interesting, she gets a million bonus points for this.) (Slog)

Speaking of movie stars giving each other awards, someone made a word map analyzing word frequency in the Oscar acceptance speeches. Did it seem to anyone else as if the ladies were all “Oh, I can’t believe you’re giving this to ME” and the dudes were all “Yep, I’m awesome and I own it”? Maybe it’s my feminism, ruining everything and wrecking your marriage. (OverthinkingIt)

While we’re Overthinking things, I kinda wish I’d written this awesome post comparing Clueless and Mean Girls to each other... and to  political revolutions and their effects. (OverthinkingIt)

This article on the sexiness of ladies who read is about 80% charming, but I think it says a lot about me that my reaction to the first half was “Don’t buy her a coffee and hit on her, she’s trying to read. She’s busy!” (The Monica Bird, and thanks, caudoviral!)

And just for fun, go read this Married to the Sea comic. I should analyze why I like it, I suppose, lest I like it for the wrong reasons, but that would kill the frog.

Old Rule Out. New Rule.

For two weeks I haven't been posting, and I have an entire browser window with a dozen tabs to links I think are interesting and feminist and relevant.

I haven't been posting because I've fallen prey to that evil beast that stalks bloggers: real life. Seriously, folks, I am never effing home anymore basically ever. I sleep here, and sometimes grab a bite, but as often as not I'm gone for ten or twelve or fourteen hour stretches, and it's getting worse. And what I should do is bring my laptop and blog on the public transportation system that seems to be my second home (I spend so much time on it because it takes FLIPPING FOREVER to get anywhere) but my laptop is heavy and I have enough crap to carry around. And part of taking flipping forever to get anywhere on this particular public transportation system is that you spend most of that time switching over (train to train, bus to train, train to bus, etc.) and typing while doing that is a bitch.

So, this is my never-mind-post, right? No. This is where the stubbornness that saw me through my junior year of college comes out and makes itself felt. I promised myself I'd write on this blog when I started it, and damn it, I am going to pursue that goal even as its inherent stupidity is made plain to me by my own insane schedule. I am inspired by this post at OverthinkingIt. I am going to write MORE OFTEN.

What that actually means for me is that I'll be writing less. What I've been trying to do is write one big Essay-Full-of-Thought every Monday. To do that I really have to find time to write something Sunday, and right now Sunday is the only day of the week that I even ever occasionally get off. Sometimes I only get it half-off. (It's okay; I get Friday kind of half-off too, or I can at least sometimes work from home on Friday.) (My schedule sounds like some sort of high powered lawyer's. In actuality I work a bunch of days, but still spend most of my time getting from job to job, and thus manage to work a ton and yet be a woman of very little money.) (Moving on, because no one cares about my financial problems.)

The point being, even when I have Sunday off, I don't have time to put all the crap I'm thinking about into words. I am thinking about a ton of crap -- stuff I'm reading (Son of the Shadows sucked me much more in this time than when I tried to read it in college and I may actually make it through the whole series this go-round, but I have a new detective series too, and switching back and forth is giving me whiplash); stuff I'm watching (The Good Wife is rocking my world -- how much do I love feminist TV? Rizzoli and Isles rocked my world too -- but this week's Castle did not live up to last week's potential); stuff I'm doing in real life (my hang-up right now is the academic achievement gap; it's getting my focus professionally and creatively and in my non-fiction reading); stuff I'm finding online (Rachel Maddow is doing some absolutely amazing coverage of what's going on in Wisconsin, and if you haven't seen it yet I cannot recommend it highly enough). In short, it's the old Patricia C. Wrede quote -- "Getting the ideas is easy. The hard part is writing them down."

Now, for me, what I really see coming into play is my perfectionism tendencies. I must write a BRILLIANT POST THAT CHANGES THE FACE OF BLOGGING FOREVER. Well, ladies and gentlemen, I do not have time to hold myself to that standard. I am sorry. I am next scheduled to have some free time in early June, and I will go back to changing the Internetz forever then.

Until then, what I have time for is this. At some point near the beginning of the week, I will put up a short post -- not one of my epic tangents where I ramble on for fucking years about all the implications of everything, but just -- I thought this, and it was cool. I am going to stop waiting and letting things percolate until I have LOTS to say about them; I am going to stop feeling that some things are Beneath Me and Not Worth Blogging About (get ready for a slew of Castle posts, everyone; I've only been holding off because I have mixed feelings about how much I adore that show); I am going to stop feeling like an English teacher may come and grade me at any moment (I practically am  a goddamn English teacher; it is time to get over my fear of them). Then, at some point near the end of the week, I will put up a list of links that I think are cool and say interesting stuff, written by people who have more time and/or intelligence and/or commitment and/or eight million other positive adjectives than I do right now.

After three months, I will evaluate this method of posting. If it works, it stays. If not, I'll go back to being epic or come up with a third option.

role-ing around

So, quick background to what brings me to this post:

after a year of struggling with depression, I finally decided to take anti-depressants, and so far the results are AWESOME.

The first two days I took my new bitty pills, I was having a REALLY hard time. I thought it was a reaction to the meds. An hour after I took the first one I was spacey, panicky, and generally not a happy camper. The second day it was the same. By the third day I realized it was not the pills, it was my mental reaction to taking them. In that week I came to terms with the fact that for a long time I had ignored: I had Depression. It wasn't simply an illness like having a flu, it was like having diabetes. Or, really, it my case, it was like having Asthma.

See, I have Asthma. I've had it since before I can remember. I have had to tote around an inhaler for always. And I probably always will (even though I don't use it much anymore)

My mom reminded me that I used to be very mad about this as a child. I hated having to carry my inhaler, I hated having to stop playing tag when I couldn't breathe, I hated not being like everyone else. It was something I eventually got over - I mean, after you finally accept you can never have the puppy you've dreamed of, there's not much else to DO but get over it and avoid playing tag. (exercise induced as well as allergic to fur, superawesomefuntastic)

I now have to accept my depression as something that I will always have. Like my asthma and non-often-used inhaler, I won't necessarily always be on meds, and I assume I'll eventually get over it, but accepting myself not as "Me, who happens to be depressed" but as "me, who has Depression" was really REALLY hard for me.

There's something very scary about having a behavior be not just a behavior but a facet of yourself. It's scary because I feel like the terms are less mine. My "just feeling depressed" was something I defined, in a sense. "This is me depressed" is something I could observe and control. "The girl with Depression" (always a capital D on that one) was something that a large group of people had and now I was one of them - and I no longer controlled it and it was no longer mine. It was ME, not MINE, and suddenly doctors are involved and I'm altering brain chemicals and it's never just going to go away. I'm stuck with it. It's me.

I think when one has a new role or facet of one's self, there's always this period of submerging one's self into it. I wanted to talk about my depression. I wanted to talk to other people with it. I wanted to find my place among this club I was suddenly a member of. It was both scary (like being invited to a party where you didn't know a damn person) but also comforting (hey, I was invited to a party!)

There are other parts of myself that I'm discovering that are becoming facets of myself rather than behaviors: my sexuality and love life is, at the moment, quite fluid. (also, a LOT more fun then my Depression, just sayin') and having that fluidity be more then just behavior is helpful to me as a whole.


I want to tie things together, but I think I kind of suck at that, so I want to throw some thoughts and questions about this out there:

what are behaviors in your life, and what are roles for you? are you a picky eater or a Picky Eater? For me, I do not cook. And I always defined myself as Someone who Can't Cook. And I took that as a role. But I realize now I CAN cook. I'm fucking capable of cooking, I simply don't do it much, so I don't have practice. Having that be a behavior and not a facet of myself is relieving. That behavior as a role was confining - now it's a thing that can be changed. I have control of it.

What roles in your life are fluid and what roles are permanent?
Are you a Student? or are you simply going to school? Are you Broke? or do you just not have money right now? Do you have Depression? or are you depressed?

What roles hurt you and what roles help you?
Does being Gay bring you comfort or would you rather just not talk about what gender you'd like to bone? Does embracing your illness empower you or does it make you The Victim?

If a certain role hurts you, can you change it to behavior so you can take control of it?


For me, embracing Depression as something I am is simply a truth. I am getting comfortable with it, and it helps tremendously that I am feeling better. But, like asthma, I will have to deal with this for a long time. and It will require care and sacrifice.

Link Round-Up

Too many links sitting on my computer in the sort of vague idea that I should share them. Well, here they are.

The bad (Trigger warnings on all):

Oh, House Republicans. You keep finding new ways to make me hate you. Listening to people is SO for sissy Democrats, right? Keep on keepin' on with your badass ignoring of your constituency.

I have a whole post I want to write about the conscience clause, and its nasty paternalistic nature. Meanwhile, check out Yes Means Yes.

In other news, South Dakota. I am, as always, impressed by what total assholes run your government.

The good:

Sociological Images has an extremely interesting post up about nudity and what it means for men and women.

Lindy West already rocked my world. Now she rocks it more.

My Valentine

A lot of people don't like Valentine's Day. I can kind of take it or leave it, myself; you know, there are objections and crass consumerism, and I'm really against taking it too seriously, but there are certain things I really like. My family always takes the time to be affectionate on Valentine's Day, and on a personal level I like being reminded to appreciate the good people in my life. And it's a reminder to me to be good to myself, and take care of myself.

One thing that annoys me is the stigma attached to "taking care of myself" on Valentine's Day. You know, I've taken myself out to dinner and to the movies (hell, I've taken myself to a weekend in Paris), so maybe myself and I just have a bizarre relationship. But one of the tricky things to me about having an adult outlook is the apparent dichotomy between taking responsibility for a variety of things -- i.e., not being a slacker -- and saying no to overcommitment and putting one's health, including mental health, first. I struggle with this, and I know others do too.

So I like that there's a day when I'm reminded to not be hard on myself, and to appreciate the work that I put in to making myself happy. And yes, I agree with those who argue that you should remember to do that every day, instead of a greeting-card-mandated holiday. And I try. But there's nothing wrong with a special occasion, and there are only a few days a year when I make the extra effort to have that attitude.

Some of the ways I take care of myself are High Minded and Intellectual. Some aren't. I wish there weren't so much stigma surrounding the second kind.

I don't have a significant other right now, and I haven't for quite awhile. One of the ways I respond to Valentine's Day is by wearing one of my favorite T-shirts, the one that says "Explain to me again why I need a boyfriend." But that doesn't mean I don't like and appreciate romantic love, and if there isn't any in my life (and there's no rule that there should be) I can appreciate it in fiction. (Well, I appreciate it on behalf of my friends who have it, but there's a creepy line there.) So I like certain kinds of romantic entertainment; there's a lot I don't like but I enjoy the occasional romance novel or rom-com, and you know I'm all up in Castle and Beckett's personal lives.

Which brings me to the stigma thing. I'm allergic to cats, but otherwise I fit a lot of the "pathetic single lady" stereotypes. That T-shirt, that I love -- a character in a movie wearing that t-shirt can be assumed to be a man-hater (or maybe a lesbian, which is awesome, but which I'm not), or someone deep in denial about needing a romantic partner, or both. The Jennifer Crusie novel on my bedside table would signify being shy, awkward, and in need of a makeover. The amount of enjoyment I take from certain TV shows or movies -- well, that's a geek who will never interact normally in the world. And don't get me started on the fact that I knit.

I don't think those stereotypes apply to me. But the fact that they spring to mind immediately with a lot of the activities that give me pleasure -- and in hyper relief on this particular day, as opposed to any other day -- means I have spend some time defending my own fun even to myself. And that is un-fun.

I've been reading a lot about gender (and racial) stereotyping recently -- go nab yourself a copy of Fine's Delusions of Gender; it knocked my socks off -- and one thing that I find interesting is that the more mental energy you spend suppressing your worries that you may fit a certain negative stereotype, the more likely you are to fit it inadvertently, because you're uncomfortable and prone to mistakes. (In studies, men and women were given the same math test in two groups. One group was merely given the test. The second group was told that women often do worse on math tests than men, but that this test was specifically designed to compensate and women scored just as well as men. The tests were the same, but the scores of women in the second group were significantly higher. Interesting, no? While you're up, grab yourself a copy of Steele's Whistling Vivaldi.)

So I love that I'm reminded to take time for myself on this day, and I love that I am reminded to tell the people close to me that I love them and that they're special. And I love that I have really supportive people in my life, who do the same for me. And I don't like that as I take care of myself, the things I do to make myself happy stereotype me in nasty ways, and on this day of all days, I have to fight doubly hard to not let those stereotypes bog me down.

I fight it by taking care of myself anyway, and it teaches me a lot about owning the things that make me happy. And I can be happy about that, too.

(Of course, fighting it by ignoring the day all together is another solid strategy.)

In Other Book News

I haven't posted this week on account of being pretty horribly ill and not having a lot of coherent thought to share. But as kind of an addendum to Wordwrestler's post about the NY Times Book Review, I thought I'd toss this out there, for our international readers and anyone who hasn't caught this yet.

So, the Bitch Magazine debacle.  Sequence went something like this. Bitch makes list of 100 Awesome Feminist YA Books. Cool! I read it, and I think it has the same issues most "best x number of books in given genre" lists have; it leaves off some of my favorites, includes a few that are like, the hell?, and a few that were like, you've got the author right but for heaven's sake don't start with that one. And there are a million I haven't read, so I should maybe get on that, but probably won't any time soon. Whatever, I have those kind of issues with every book list I read -- doesn't everybody? We don't agree, that's why it's fun to make lists. So anyway. People start commenting. And two or three of the books get called out for being triggering to rape survivors.

Now, you're Bitch. What do you do? As a reader, you know that everyone's opinions about books are different, you can't possibly please everyone, and taking books off a YA list for being "too disturbing" smacks of condescension and nasty censorship. As a feminist, you want to honor rape survivors and not say that triggering people is awesome. As an editor, that's a hundred book list, and I'm betting each individual editor has not read all 100, and there may be some in there that are based on reader suggestions, which no one has read. Dilemma.

What Bitch does is remove three books from the list. And the shit, she flies. Scott Westerfeld and Maureen Johnson, two well-known YA writers on the list send in respectful, grammatical, fuck you letters. Westerfeld asks that his book be removed, as he doesn't wish to be associated with the list anymore. (Personally I wasn't terribly enamored with his book, but that's neither here nor there.) Bitch gets called out by writers. And readers. I looked on some of my favorite feminist websites and couldn't find much supporting either side; mostly they're busy protesting HR3 (which I wrote to my Congresswoman about, and if you're a US citizen, you should too, because it's basically codified misogyny, thank you SO much, GOP). But anyway.

So there's another wrinkle up for debate. Who do you listen to in a case like this?

Open for discussion: a shenpa moment

So I'm minding my business, reading the New York Times, and there's a review of Allison Pearson's new novel. This led first to a moment of feeling really old, because I thought, "Pearson. I know that name. She had a big-deal bestseller a year or two ago..." only to find out from the review that, um, yeah, that was in 2002. So after a brief shocked head-shaking about how quickly time does go by, followed by a restorative glass of sherry, I kept on reading. And I soon found, as we feminists are wont to do, something to get angry about.

Clunky as this plot machinery might be, Ms. Pearson does a winning job of making Petra and Bill...as funny and incisive as characters created by, say, Nick Hornby or Stephen Fry, though with considerably more tenderness and felt emotion.

Now it seems to me that this is a fairly classic and insidious example of condescension--"Good little chick-lit novelist! Why, your characters are just as good as the big boys' are, plus your lady-ness gives you bonus! emotional! insight!" ::headpat::

Ahem. The question is what to do with this perception besides wrapping my next fish purchase in the NYT. I went with, "Write a blog post, mentioning that this thing happened and pushed your buttons a bit." Which is where all y'all come in. I'm interested in your thoughts, on other ways to read the sentence quoted above, or just on your own reactions to it. The full review is here.

Sexism 101 or 'I do not think it means what you think it means, boys'

First things first, you guys are awesome! Thank you for the lovely, kind responses to my last post. You guys rock! I'm so glad I'm sharing this blog with y'all. And I shall certainly take those recs XD

Secondly, this has been a week full of raaage with regards to British/all men and their take on sexism. I don't know if you guys have heard about the Andy Gray scandal, but if you haven't a quick rundown:

(Warning: trigger warning for general sexual harrassment; have only mentioned it on the off but just in case)

Off camera (which is why everyone's getting all up in arms), Mr Gray and a colleague were discussing the merits of a female ref. Of course, it was as faily as you'd imagine. Cue 'offside rules' joke etc. That doesn't really bother me. What DOES bother me is his reaction to Karen Brady's comments about facing sexism in her workplace: 'Do me a favour, love.' I'm sorry? Are you, A WHITE STRAIGHT MAN who has NO EXPERIENCE of anything other than being top of the social chain, 'correcting' a woman on her experiences? SERIOUSLY? Fuck. You.

Later, after another incident of his sexually harassing a woman on camera, he is (thank the lord) sacked. Now, of course, all these men are wailing 'IT'S JUST A JOKE. Lighten up!' Or 'reverse sexism. How come all ladies can make jokes about guys being stupid?' Um...not the same thing guys; your privilege is showing. I am facepalming so hard, because these attitudes? They affect us, as women, because we are continuously undervalued for our achievements and told to 'lol, stay in the kitchen'.

Fail No. 2. (and this may potentially be triggering for rape survivors, I'm warning you now)

The False Rape Society. A blog on the internets. There to help all men harmed by rape allegations. It just boggles my brain, quite frankly, but these bloggers are consistently enabling the rape culture that pervades society. So a hearty FUCK YOU to them. Because EUGH. Just what the world does not need.

I hope y'all have a great weekend (apologies for lateness of post; I didn't get home yesterday until after midnight)

Fictional Turnoffs

So here’s some news that’s going to be a shocker to everyone who has ever met me. You may want to be sitting down. Ready? Not everything I like to read and watch and listen to and play is strictly intellectual. Not all of it is strictly feminist. Not all of it is strictly clever, or strictly original, or strictly groundbreaking. Not all of it is even very good.

Most of the things I enjoy are at least one of those things. In fact, I would argue that there is some sort of minimum sum I require, that a lack of cleverness is made up for by the existence of a feminist message, and intellect can make up for a lack of originality. I think that’s more or less true for everybody, with their own criteria, of course. If after the first few minutes or pages or whatever, the sum is too low, I stop it and go entertain myself with something else. I was thinking about doing a whole post about that and saving this one for next week, but for whatever reason (read: I'm tired, and that seemed hard) this is the one that wants to be written today.

All that is well and good, but there are some things that multiply the whole equation by zero, that make it impossible for me to like something, or impossible for me to recommend it, or at the very least impossible for it to move into my high-tier favorites list where it might otherwise deserve a place. And because bitching is hella fun, I am going to write out a list.

Warning: This list contains strong language. I know, I know, you're shocked again.

1. Whininess. See my white guy entertainment post. Okay. Problems suck. I am there. I think my own problems are pretty goddamn sucky, and there are billions and billions and billions of people with whom I would not trade. But there are two problems with whining. One is that it demands center stage. It forces everything else to be put on hold: others’ problems, understanding the reasoning behind one’s own problems, and – and this is the kicker – finding solutions to one’s problems. So, really effective there, especially in a fictional context, when the plot has to either stop moving, or interrupt you rudely. (Not as clever as you think, authors.) Also, at a certain point, repetition gets boring. And whininess, after awhile, is repetition. I see this (and the next two or three on the list, actually) as the main reason(s) I don’t like contemporary literary fiction. (Let me quickly make it clear that I whine all the time in real life, and I try to support my friends when they need to whine in my direction. Fiction is different. I read fiction to escape real life. Whining I can do anytime.)

2. Look at Me; I’m So Fucking Deep. It goes hand in hand with the first one, but there is a certain tone in some kinds of books that drives me mad. I can best describe it as a desire to be congratulated for identifying sources of unhappiness in one’s life. The internet has made me feel so fucking disconnected, maaaaaaaan. Our modern world, duuuuuude. People just don’t get what’s real, know what I meeeeaaaan? It’s not about getting credit for solving a problem. It’s about getting credit for identifying a problem, and then claiming that the problem one has identified is part of the universal human condition and is therefore deep. Two things. 1) It’s not necessarily universal. My problems may or may not have anything to do with whatever the hell you’re talking about, and you really have no idea how the problem affects my life even if I do find it applicable. Especially if it relates to The Challenges of Living in the Modern World. And before you say anything, let me remind you that your idea that you understand my problems better than I do is condescending and inappropriate. 2) Something actually being a universal-human-condition problem does not necessarily make it deep or interesting to read about. Unless you’re approaching it originally, I don’t really care what you have to say, because I identified that problem a long fucking time ago. You get no credit with me for figuring this out; some stoned college freshman beat you to the punch ages ago. (To veer off on a tangent for a moment, the reason this is tied so closely to #1 in my mind is that it always seems to carry with it a lack of perspective. I'm going to save you some suspense. The problems that we face as a society now, including the kinds of hypocrisy we enjoy, are different in some ways, but no better or worse or more interesting or more important than those faced by any society at any time. New technology and change has always freaked people out and made their ways of interacting with the world undergo a change. Go read a history of the Industrial Revolution and get the fuck over yourself.)

3.  Misogyny/Lack of Social Awareness. Yeah, that’s kind of self-explanatory. It’s why the novel of The Princess Bride will never compare with the film; ignorable borderline misogyny is a hell of a lot more tolerable than overt misogyny tinged with self-awareness. Grow up, folks. Ladies is people now, and we have been since the mid-seventies. (In other news, black folks is people, trans folks is people, queer folks is people, folks what don’t agree with you is people, and all of us people are sick of your whiny "depth.")

4. Poor Pacing. I don’t like acknowledging it, but I am very much of the millennial generation, and as such have an unfortunately short attention span. Your scenes should have a point. (Remington Steele, I wanted to like you so much! I will give you another chance someday.) Conversely, if your scenes have a point, and move in a particular direction, each step you take in that direction should make a noticeable difference. BONES. If you're just treading water, you lose your stakes, about which more later. But you can't simultaneously keep your characters in a holding pattern and falsely portray movement. It's irresponsible and shows a lack of respect for your audience.

5. Narrative Shortcuts That Backfire. Look, people. First person narrators should not drop hints, in some sort of smug I know something you don't know kind of way, unless your point is that your narrator is a fucking asshole. (Third person narrators may drop occasional hints. One every 100 pages or so.) Let’s think about why for a minute. One reason is that it’s obnoxious. I will fucking read the story because the story is good, not because you have lured me with your secret weapon of “it was a decision I would come to regret.” Secondly, people don’t talk like that. I’m a teacher at heart, and I overexplain everything (welcome to my whole family) but in real life, a person is far more likely to run off on a tangent so that you get the FULL CONTEXT OF THEIR POINT than to drop a hint about who and what they are and then go back to what they were doing. Even Holden Caulfield, who explicitly refuses to give the reader background, goes off on tangents rather than dropping hints. The only people who drop hints are storytellers, who don’t have faith in the interest their story generates on its own and feel the need to manufacture some. This is why it’s so egregious in a story told in the first person. James Patterson, are your ears burning?

6. Expecting Charm to Work/General Laziness. I consider #2 to be a particular subset of this. In the Turkey City Lexicon – which I adored growing up, back when I thought I wanted to be a writer – there’s an item about knowing the difference between a conceit and an idea. It’s called the Jar of Tang, go look it up. Anyway, the fact that you have a good idea, or a unique viewpoint (you probably don’t) or a new perspective (see above re: you don't) is not enough to make your work quality without mastery of other storytelling devices. Your possibly good idea does not elevate excrement into art. If you write shit dialogue, it lowers the tone of your idea, and makes you look like an idiot. In other news, give your audience some credit. It is annoying to guess a twist fifty or sixty pages in advance. It is even more annoying -- by a factor of hundreds -- to guess a "twist" seventy or eighty pages in advance and spend those seventy or eighty pages watching the author drop gleeful hints as they imagine that they have you completely fooled. Kate Mosse, I am talking specifically to you.

7. Awkward Writing. Yeah, occasionally you have to go listen to how people actually talk. I have this theory that this means you’re doing a kind of writing you’re either 1) not practiced in, or 2) not meant to be doing. It was a great relief when I realized I am better at writing essays than writing fiction and quit trying to write fiction. Patricia Cornwell, maybe you should try grocery lists for a while?

8. Stakes Shortcuts. Sometime, when you are trying to put your finger on something within a piece of entertainment, ask yourself what the stakes are. I learned about the idea of stakes from a director mentor of mine, and it’s drastically changed the way I look at entertainment. To break it down a little – there are high stakes and low stakes. You want entertainment to be about high stakes, because if it doesn’t matter what happens, nobody will read to the end. So the entertainers do their best to make the stakes high. Now, there are easy high stakes, and hard high stakes. Easy high stakes come cheap. The world is going to END and EVERYONE WILL DIE unless this particular plot thing happens! I call stakes like that cheap because they don’t require you to particularly care about any of the people on screen (or in text). Everything is going to go wrong if the plot goes wrong, therefore, if the audience doesn’t invest in the plot, they must hate humanity. Great. Sold. Hard high stakes mean that if this particular plot thing happens, a person’s identity or relationship or place in the world will be destroyed. That’s harder to pull off effectively, because the audience has to actually care about the character(s). If they don't, they get bored, and it’s a huge waste of space. Now, that’s not to say that one form of stakes is better, exactly. But if you want to engage the minds and the emotions of your reader/viewer, pure easy stakes aren’t going to be enough (unless you luck onto some symbol that means a lot to them emotionally, which – hey, look where I’m going with this). There’s a multitude of ways to take shortcuts and artificially raise your stakes, no matter where you start with them. Want people to care about the world ending? Blow up a well-known landmark with some emotional connection to your audience. Or show characters that they can identify with flee from destruction. (Sounding familiar?) Want to make people care about characters’ relationships? Give the characters quirky and endearingly eccentric traits, because everyone considers zhirself kind of quirky and endearing on some level, and thus can identify. But those are shortcuts. Good entertainment means you care about the characters for their sakes, not just yours. You care if their world ends, or if their relationships end, because they resonate as people, in addition to just reminding you of yourself. It requires both commitment and trust from the creators.

9. Solving One Problem Means Solving All Problems. Dear Rom-Coms of the World: Finding a mate does not instantly repair other relationships, work problems, financial hardship, or low self-esteem. Please take note. Love, Real People.

10. That Goddamn Plot Where Someone Who Realistically Would Die So Fucking Fast Without Their Resources Manages to Survive and Connect With Nature. I have hated this fucking thing for twenty years, and I reaffirm my commitment to hate it for twenty years more. Twelve-year-olds of nearly any era are not equipped to live off the land for any length of time. That is ridiculous. Also, reading about root-digging and animal-watching is boring. If I wanted to connect with nature vicariously I would go to the goddamn zoo.

Those are mine. What are yours?