How much do you hold back?

Irrefutable fact: what you do on the internet can affect your life. Spouses have found evidence of marital infidelity on Facebook; people have been fired for things they said on blogs; friendships have ruptured over tweets; and on a more specific front, agents have passed over writers because they found blogs, Twitter posts, MySpace journals, and the like badmouthing agents and publishers, demonstrating overall diva-ish behavior that bodes ill for working with them, or just showing off their crazypants. The crazypants they wear on their heads to hide the tinfoil hats that keep the aliens out. By the way, the aliens are the subject of their next book. It’ll be all about the probes. No one understands their genius, and the publishers are all secret pawns of the aliens who are trying to keep Mr. or Ms. Crazypants from telling the world the truth. Zardoz has spoken.

You get the idea.

At this point you can no longer assume that the internet grants true anonymity, or that your internet life can somehow remain separate from your real life. We live in a digitally connected world where screen names are now tied to photographs, business is conducted over e-mail, IP addresses can be traced, and one part of building an audience is becoming known in online venues and maintaining an identifiable presence.

So when doing that…how much do you hold back?

I hold back a hell of a lot. I keep a lot of my personal life and frustrations out of this blog, because I don’t want the world at large to know my private business. My insecurities, moments of doubt, and worries over rejection are just that: mine. No one wants to listen to whining about that crap. I curb most of my fouler language; I want to publish YA novels, and it’s generally not a good thing if YA writers are slinging the F-bomb about. I barely mention work, partially due to a non-disclosure agreement and partially because I learned my lesson about being indiscreet with work a long, long time ago. Political rants – well, sometimes I post those, but tend to keep them to myself more often than not simply because they aren’t very interesting. I’m neither radical left nor radical right, and with my tendency to overthink everything and try to see all perspectives, it’d make for pages of political reasoning posts that no one wants to read. The only things that’ll get me to flare up are gay rights or rabid, hurtful intolerance of any kind.

Thoughts on the publishing industry? I’d say I curb those, but there’s really not much to curb. It is what it is, and frankly energy is better spent trying to work with the machine and joining the effort to correct its flaws rather than railing against it.

At the same time, I don’t hold everything back. I’m gay and love my boyfriend very much, and I don’t care who knows it or who has a problem with it. I’m a sarcastic asshole, and I think everyone knows I make little attempt to hide that – no matter how I might try to hide how squishy I am underneath. Western centrism in fiction, the dearth of accepted minority main characters, and token stereotypes of exotic/ethnic characters bug the hell out of me, but don’t stop me from enjoying a good book no matter the race of the characters. I have an unholy love for weirdly-flavored martinis, and if anyone takes issue with a legal adult having a drink on weekends (YA writer or not), they can unwad their damned panties. I’m an atheist, and have spoken freely about the fact that while I have no problem with any organized religion as long as they don’t advocate harm to others, my lack of faith is my choice – and I expect my choice to be respected as much as I respect others’ choice to believe whatever they believe in. My family and I haven’t gotten along in the past and I’m having typical comedic problems integrating with my boyfriend’s family, and it’s not a big deal who knows it. Everyone has family problems of some sort, and I feel it helps me identify with people I meet online to know we share that common bond of familial frustration on one level or another. It’s a very human experience, a very relatable experience, and one I don’t mind sharing with others as long as that sharing doesn’t delve into any private things.

These are the things I keep to myself, and these are the things I place out in the open as part of my public persona. While part of having an online presence (and part of being an adult) is knowing when to speak and when to shut the hell up, and while discretion is the better part of valor…at some point you have to add some color and life lest you become just another faceless screen name with no voice and no lasting impression on anyone.

For the sake of online professionalism sometimes you have to hold back even when you don’t have anything really crazy to hide. Sometimes you have to play it safe, until you’ve felt out your place and know how to find the balance between speaking your mind and saying things that you’re afraid will come back to bite you in the ass later.

But at what point does holding back strip you of all personality, until you’re playing it so safe that there’s no reason for anyone to give a damn at all?

Happy New Year.

I’ve been reading posts all day about what people have learned in 2009, what people vow to do in 2010, how many old things are laid to rest and how many new beginnings wait in the new year. I have trouble joining in the uplifting of hope, the declaration of intent, the swelling of new vitality and new promise. Not because I’m feeling particularly Scroogish, no, but because to me 2010 means the same thing as 2009:

Keep trying, keep working, keep fighting, and never quit.

The rollover between one day and the next doesn’t change that. The shift in the last two digits of the year doesn’t make the anticipated victories of the new year any greater than those of the old year. It doesn’t make the failures hurt any less, and it won’t eradicate the many bumps in the road ahead. It won’t make it any easier to pick up and keep going after getting knocked down, and it won’t change the driving need to keep doing it over and over again until I find even footing and claw my way just a little further up. The attitude most assign to the new year, I keep all year round. I may suck at optimism, but I’ve got a goddamned monopoly on bullheaded stubbornness and determination.

Tomorrow is a new beginning, another chance, another day to try to make something happen – another day to do my damnedest, push another few steps along the road, and enjoy the sweat in my eyes as much as the quiet, sweet seconds when everything’s calm and for just a breath, I can live in the moment. Yesterday was the same sort of day, whether 2009 or 2010. The day after tomorrow will be the same – and the next day, and the next. The difference between one year and the next is all in your head, and if you really want to you can make a fresh start any day and every day.

Never forget that.

But don’t let that stop you from getting rip-roaring drunk, either, because I damn well know I’m about to. Happy New Year!

Why Writers Need to be Readers

This morning I woke up and thought of all the things I planned to do today. Top of that list were proofreading my recently-rewritten manuscript, working on the crackfic, and reading a friend’s manuscript. Nowhere on that list was a dedicated effort to sit down and finish any of the half-read books scattered about the house, my place in their pages marked with scraps of paper, bills, bookmarks, even post-its.

Then I realized how long it’s been since I actually finished a book, and hung my head in shame – because by not reading more avidly, I’m doing myself an enormous disservice as a writer.

More than studying grammar, more than workshops, more than peer critiques, writers need to read. They need to read often, read widely, and read outside of their circle of comfort; read not just the kind of books they write, but the kind of books they’d never write. Reading offers insight, offers knowledge, offers a view into what works and what doesn’t; it provides inspiration, demonstrates the many proper ways to frame and pace a story, and gives the writer an intuitive eye for good story-crafting that no instructional lecture or essay can deliver.

When you read, you learn. You learn new ways to approach style, pacing, and characterization; you learn new perspectives, new ideas, new theories; hell, you even learn new words, and frankly I enjoy a book where every once in a while I have to stop and grab the dictionary because I didn’t know a word – though you also learn when not to take that too far, to the point of making a story incomprehensible. You learn what’s been done before, what’s been done to death, and what could be exciting if explored even more.

And if you ever stop learning, you stop growing as a writer.

The act of writing itself can serve as something of an isolation chamber. It’s easy to get so locked into the act of writing that you lose all objectivity towards your writing, all sense of how it pertains to the outside world. When your writing loses its connection to the outside world, you lose your connection to the reader. So read, to see views outside your isolation chamber. Read books, read the news, read blogs, read short stories. Read anything that makes you think, makes you question, makes you wonder “What would happen if I…?”

Just read. Find worth and merit in others’ writing, so you can impart worth and merit to your own.

Read, and remember why you wanted to be a writer in the first place.

So now “mainstream” = “white?”

The other day I read a feature spot on a new author (who shall remain nameless because he seems like a nice guy, a good writer, and he can’t be blamed for what’s written about him). In this spot he was described as a “writer of color,” which rocketed my little brown behind right back to 1960 (a miracle when I wasn’t even alive then) and made me wish I could tame my unrepentant waves into an afro so I could be a “writer of color,” too.

The author of the article went on to praise him for choosing, despite his color, to write a character and storyline that broaden their appeal by being “mainstream.”

Let me translate that for you, in case you missed it.

He praised the black guy for choosing to write a white character anyway, because white characters are more popular to a predominantly white audience.

Don’t get me wrong, I understand the demographics of the North American reading public. The majority of people who buy books and read for pleasure are of some Caucasian descent; it’s undeniable fact, and a rather sad one at that. While the brown people of the world may no longer be a true minority considering our widespread populations and growing buying power in the middle class market, the hard numbers show that (in North America, at least) most of us just don’t read – so in the book-buying demographic, we’re still very much a minority.

But I thought we’d moved past the race of the protagonist mattering to the reader’s ability to empathize with them, as long as the story is well-written and the characters sympathetic. I can understand a white audience not wanting to read 50 Cent’s reprehensible G-Unit books; I don’t want to read them, and I’ve spent parts of my childhood surrounded by the kind of lifestyle they promote. But cultural differences denoted by skin tone have become either marginalized or more widely accepted in North America, and considering how many people of a rainbow of colors share a similar lifestyle, it shouldn’t be so hard to have a protagonist of some shade of brown that’s still considered mainstream. Hell, I write non-Caucasian protagonists…just not all the time. My characters range the human color spectrum, and I’d like to think both Remilliard and Kensington have appeal despite standing on opposite ends of that spectrum.

Many authors write non-Caucasian protagonists. Justine Larbalestier’s (say that three times fast) main character in Liar is most certainly not white, and it created an understandable stink when the original cover for the novel depicted a Caucasian girl. Yet the story is one that anyone can love, and it’s most certainly mainstream enough to reach a broad audience.

She’s just one example. There are many more, and many entirely mainstream books that feature non-Caucasian protagonists while still retaining wide appeal (Le Guin, anyone?).

So why are we still viewing characters “of color” (are we picking up my disdain for that term yet?) as a detriment?

Eh. It’s only one person, one article…but I can’t help but wonder how many still share that view, and why. Especially when we really need more diverse protagonists that will not only make non-Caucasian characters more mainstream, but engage readers in multi-ethnic markets so there’s no longer such a paucity of us with a stake among the book-buying public. Many authors have taken steps to demonstrate that ethnic characters can and do have widespread appeal; I’d love to see more join them, until our fictional worlds are as diversely populated as our real one.

No rainbows over NYC tonight.

Thank you, New York, for demonstrating just how much work we still have left to do.

Despite the disappointment and sarcasm dripping from every word, I really do mean that – because when one of the most progressive states in our union still can’t vote gay marriage through and politicians state that it’s what the people want, it shows me that we still have a long way to go to show the world at large that you cannot view the human race as a single faceless whole, accountable only to a flawed majority that emphasizes equality and impartiality only when it serves their purpose, yet freely discriminates based on differences. When someone can stand up and say in all seriousness that “the people” want to deprive other human beings of the same rights and liberties that they enjoy based on something so simple as sexuality…

…well, it gives us a goal to work for. A clearly-defined marker that says “This, here, is part of the problem that we need to work on.” We need to raise our voices, speak clearly, rally support, and show that we, too, are the people – and this vote was not what we wanted. Our voices matter. Our rights matter.

We aren’t some segregated group that can be treated as objects to be dealt with. We are just as much a part of the body called “the American people” as those who oppose our rights…yet we have to fight to be treated as the same.

Look at me. I am an American. I am a gay man. Those two things aren’t separate.

And they shouldn’t have to be.