Something my anxiety is always trying to convince me of is that I’m not good enough.
It’s a feeling I end up having to fight a lot on any given day—especially when it comes to my writing.
Author X Audience is here for you to read because I embrace one rule about my writing constantly: finished is better than perfect.
Well, March certainly didn’t go the way I expected it to. 2020 really started with a “maybe we’ll have WWIII, as a treat” and has kept on kicking right up to “maybe we’ll have a global pandemic while we’re at all the other mayhem too.” My anxiety’s at an all time high. How about yours? Also high? Take a breath in, and a breath out. Practice those coping mechanisms. Here’s a bunch of free yoga and a bunch of other fitness apps that are completely free until May 1st to help you keep your body and your mind healthy.
I’m going to get to talking about the chapter, but first I just want to take a moment to tell all of you that it’s going to be okay, and we’ll get through this, and what we build on the other side of all this will be worth surviving all this now to witness. I also hope you’re being gentle with yourselves. Existing is enough. Persisting is enough. You don’t have to do anything with this time except care for yourself and stay home to help slow the spread. I know it’s hard—I myself am a giant extrovert and going stir crazy at home—but it’s what we need to do to protect each other.
When my beta readers were reading the manuscript for the first time, one of them had just finished Chapter 13 and sent me a message.
“Theresa,” he said. “I’m really enjoying the manuscript so far, but… It kind of feels like nothing cataclysmic has happened? Is something climactic going to happen soon?”
I asked him where he was. When he told me he had just finished Chapter 13 and was about to start Chapter 14, I had to take a moment to cackle—you know, that evil way Disney and anime villains do. Then I told him, “Don’t worry, something will happen soon.”
One of the things my anxiety loves to do to me is try and convince me that everything is my fault.
Of course, this only applies to the bad things. When good things happen, anxiety brain likes to remind me that I just got lucky or that this stroke of good fortune can’t possibly last. Good things are a fluke, and bad things are completely and utterly my fault—and if it’s my fault, it must also be my responsibility to fix them or be punished for failing to fix them. Anxiety brain can really get out of hand with what qualifies as “bad” and “my fault.” I’ve had to pull a slew of coping mechanisms out of my tool box to deal with anxiety brain trying to punish me for the actions of the American government barely three days into 2020.
We see those tendencies crop up for Alexis in Chapter 13 of Author x Audience as well, especially in relation to her relationship with her mother and being home again.
November is a pretty big time of year for me, and for Alexis.
Like her, I always went to my grandparents’ house for Thanksgiving to celebrate with my mother’s side of the family. Any turkey less than 18 pounds was “just a big chicken” by my Papu’s ruling, and my sisters and I would peel potatoes with our Nana and set all the tables while my four male cousins cleaned up after. Everyone was involved in Thanksgiving, and it was great. We spent the whole week lounging around, enjoying each other’s company. It was a warm and happy space.
Then, when I got to college, I stopped wanting to go. It was great to see them, but now people were doing things like asking me what I was going to do with a fine arts degree and guilt tripping me into coming because, what with my Nana and Papu’s advancing ages and their brushes with cancer, “we didn’t know how many Thanksgivings we had left.”
Here we are, a day late!
This one is going to be a tad short—partially because I just finished NaNoWriMo and am therefore exhausted; and partially because I feel like a lot of the themes in Chapter 11: Human speak for themselves.
This chapter of Author X Audience is about trauma.
Trauma is difficult to nail down. It’s difficult to know what it looks like, what will trigger it, and even who is suffering from it. The thing about abuse is that one often doesn’t know that they’re being abused when it’s happening. Women don’t stay with abusive husbands because they want to, they stay with difficult partners because they believe they’re the only ones who can help them. Similarly, I knew I didn’t like being hit by my father as a child, and I certainly felt it was wrong, but no one did anything to stop it, so I assumed it must be normal.
That abuse of my person left me traumatized, and it’s only within the last five years that I’ve really understood how much.
A Really Hot October was one of my favorite chapters to write and edit because of a few reasons. First, it’s really sweet. Second, it shows that Terry brings something to the relationship. And third, we really get to watch Alexis work.
We’ve just come out of Bisexual Visibility Month, and one of the things that doesn’t get talked about often enough when it comes to bisexual people is how invisible we become when we’re next to someone who is assumed to be our partner. For example, I, a fairly female presenting person with a short haircut and a loud voice, may be assumed to be a dyke lesbian if standing next to a fem person who is assumed to be my partner. Alternatively, I may be assumed to be a heterosexual babe with alternative tastes if standing next to a male presenting person.
Without explicitly stating my orientation I have never been identified as bisexual at first glance.
There are a lot of ideas that can turn daily existence into a mental hellscape. Especially when you have anxiety. Alexis deals with one in particular in Chapter 8—but before I get to her experience, I need to walk you through mine.
When I was a child, my parents put me in therapy at a relatively young age. I was placed in therapy because I was hitting other children. One might wonder why I was doing that, but one wouldn’t have far to look. My father had been beaten by his father, and though he considered himself far less of a tyrant than his father (because he used his open hand instead of his belt), my father still seemed to think that hitting my sisters and I was the best way to get through to us when we did something he didn’t like.
This blogpost is about different types of love. We all dream about falling in love from a relatively young age—probably something to do with the mass of stories romance is included in. It’s like air because it’s everywhere. But as I’ve grown up, I’ve fallen in love with a lot of things. I fell in love with books and video games, because they told me stories that made my soul burn. I fell in love with writing, because I got to give voice to my own stories. I fell in love with my partner, who is aromantic and asexual and my platonic life partner. And I fell in love with my work, making books from the production team.
Alexis talks a lot about her work in this chapter, and how much it means to her. That’s how I feel. And I wanted her to have a story where it’s not just about having a romance—it’s about getting to have lots of different loves. Her and her work. Her and her family. Her and her partner. If nothing else, I want people to take away that one love is all well and good, but that there are many types of love worth having out there, and anyone who’s going to make you pick and choose isn’t a good person to have in your life.
Theresa Nicole Tyree 