I know links aren’t the greatest content, but Thursdays are the day I tend to drag the most and there’s been a lot of great conversations going on out there this week.

• Why Strong Female Characters are Bad for Women
• Jim Hines chimes in on the above article
• Michael Knost on True Professionals
• Is there a double standard in romance? (Gender roles and identity are a fascinating topic)
• Writers’ Block, or Writers’ Avoidance?
• SFX magazine says the lack of female horror writers in their recent Horror spotlight issue isn’t its fault (they just didn’t try very hard, and also women aren’t horror fans anyway)
• Baby Starves to Death while parent play a virtual baby raising game (Proving this isn’t an American/laziness problem. The internet should be about connecting people, not isolating them. Anything else is a sign of a problem with the person, not with the ‘net.)
• A 101 year old woman grows a horn

Not that kind of inspiration–the Writing kind!

• Newborns’ blood used to create secret DNA database
• Earthquake sped up Earth’s rotation
• Writer Inspiration (why to keep trying, keep writing)
• This is how we treat our best and victorious Olympic athletes? We post pictures of them pulled from video in the most unflattering position possible and label them “Monsters”?

This week’s concept is Free.

My picture:

The Meaning: This is my bed. Freedom is only a truth in my dreams. Life is a series of choices and consequences and I strive to live it with no regrets (by living well and coming to terms with my own actions). But in my dreams there is full freedom. The laws of responsibility, commerce, capitalism, and even physics need not apply. In my dreams I come back to a point where I can be anyone. Do anything. The weight of the world doesn’t exist here, and as I walk through unconsciousness I cannot be made to touch the ground.

A lot of my stories start from flashes of inspiration in my dreams. Never literally, because the laws of logic also don’t apply to my dreams. But my dreams are my direct connection to my “what ifs”. Later tempered by style, shape, the rules of reality and solidification into written word, the freedom of my dreams are nevertheless the raw birthing room of my stories, the fuel to try to bend the harshness of the world in the waking world to my whims.

I understand that writing is not a priority when it comes down to survival. Food, shelter, water, medicine. I know these are the core things I need to survive in this world and most other things can be overlooked.

But I don’t want to just survive. Food, water, shelter, clothing might keep my body alive and functioning but writing is what my soul feeds on. Stories are what I need to be really alive, not merely functioning. For a while now, okay, for most of the year so far I’ve been living in a state of survival. I need to be alive. I need to live and be able to look back when the world and bodily things fall away and see that I went through life with reason, passion and purpose. Life is burns too fast. It’s very easy to waste an hour, a day, weeks and years. It’s very easy to look back and think of wasted time, taken for granted and squandered away.

Sure everyone needs, and deserves a little squandering. But waste builds up like toxins in a life. Waste begats waste where as for me writing is opening the windows to a spring breeze to let all that potential in.

Yeah, there are more important things in life that isolating myself and striving to write that perfect tale. But it’s not about the end result. It’s about the strive. It’s about wanting more, and working for more and bringing that into all parts of my life. Writing is the core of more, which is why it’s the song my soul sings.

I haven’t been singing for a while now, and I hurt because of it. I’m ready for not a hummed tune, or a half remembered bubble gum pop chorus. I’m ready for a full-ensemble orchestra.

So life, fuck you and your drama. Your trauma. Your emergencies and insomnia. Fuck you and your demand for functionality and priorities, for cost cutting and need judging. Fuck your games and your rules and your black-lined moments of hope.

I refuse to merely function. So I’ll be in my room. Writing.

• DarkScribe’s annual Black Quill awards are up for voting. If you love horror/dark fiction please go over and vote. (I’m embarrassed to say that when trying to nominate this year I discovered I read significantly less horror than I did last year.)

• Tip to the SFWA blog: Ergocise.com is a tool for writers and others whose jobs involve sitting still at a desk for hours. This free program reminds you to get up and stretch at prearranged time periods, which I’m sure we could all use.

• Kate Harding, an advocate for True Health, not health dependent on your weight has an excellent article up about Lincoln University in Pennsylvania, which mandates all students over a 30 BMI take a remedial phys ed class on the assumption that high BMI=inactive and unhealthy. The college goes to the lengths of not allowing fat students to graduate without trying to guilt them about their size. Apparently they don’t care about the health/activity level/lifestyles of skinny students, as long as they’re skinny. Clearly all skinny people are super healthy eaters and very active and all fat people do nothing but constantly eat and lay around, lazy slobs. (I hope you realize that was heavy sarcasm.)

I would be very interested in hearing other people’s thoughts on this policy. (Especially on the aspect that students who are under 30 BMI who want to take the class are not allowed to.)

• My husband has begun blogging. I would appreciate it if you could click through and give him some hits. Plus his essay on the Nine Heathen Virtues is interesting.

Edited to add:

• Why you story was rejected- an insightful look at the mix of quality and lucky issues that might be behind your rejections.

• How to waste your life- a very good, inspiring post from Jason Sanford on quality of life and our choices of actions.

First some resources:

• The Official Friends of the U.S. Marine Hospital page
• The Wikipage
• An Excellent collection of neighborhood pictures and history- Portland is a unique community because it’s one of the oldest in Louisville and yet because it became a “dumping place” for Irish immigrants, and now for the poorer Louisvillians. It’s a “between” neighborhood, not downtown, yet also not the West End so it often gets ignored both by developers and the city. (Portland’s zoning is complicated, which adds to the difficulty developing it.) Here you find people who take massive pride in their homes, many of which date back a hundred years or more, side by side with derelict abandoned properties and poorer families who simply cannot give the homes the care they need. (Keeping up with a home in good shape is a constant process, any homeowner will tell you. Keeping up with one fifty to a hundred years old can be significantly more trouble. Our own home  was built in 1900, renovated in the 80s sometime and stood empty over 8 months before the mortgage company in California that took it in a foreclosure sold to us. I only mention all this because it’s a typical story in this area, which commonly overlooked by historical preservation and city rehabilitation programs, continues to struggle.)

Also, if you notice the gorgeous yellow two story house with white trim and black shudders in the street and home pictures. My friend Kube lives there.

Anyway, for effect I’ve borrowed the following picture of the Marine Hospital cira 2004.

Gorgeous, regal old beast. Well not long after this photo the city began restoring the building. This is what it looks like now.

I’m cutting the rest of this post so it doesn’t dominate my blog, but there is much more under the cut.

Keep reading…