Me vs. the Agenda ...

I'm having one of those days when I could listen to Operation: Mindcrime over and over and over again and not even get tired of it. It's usually a good thing but today it's to keep me upright.

Why, do you ask, if I haven't updated in a month would I need to be kept upright?

I've started my second novel. With Crossing the Gate out in the ether, hopefully being looked at by agents (so far no one seems to love Marc as much as I do) I have turned my attention to Jared. Jared, the sweet, gentle muse whom I know better than I know myself. The sweet, tender boy who loves his man and his music and isn't nearly as much of an activist as the people around him. But, like I get when I am just starting a creative project, my brain is just not with it. I'm up way too late and when you have a day job (curse those day jobs) you end up with no sleep and even less energy.

I love it. I'll sleep when I'm dead. But damn if it doesn't make a writer tired. I like to blame my characters. Gotta love rock stars. They never sleep either. Of course at this point in the writing, Jared is hardly a rock star. Or is he.

It's strange to write a memoir about a fictional person when it takes place in a clearly non-fiction universe. Dropping this character into a world of Metallica and Queensryche and Megadeth and Bon Jovi all the while keeping to this slightly alternate world is difficult. Especially when you're writing about a past and a history that a lot of people either don't understand or don't remember. What is nothing for me - the PMRC debacle, the attitudes toward gay people, the feelings people had are different for others. We all bring our own biases to everything we read and write and when the author touches a nerve we are no longer engaged with the characters but reading from a perspective that can be uncomfortable at best.

In my writer's group recently, the "agenda" with which I write was brought up and laid on the table. While I hadn't given conscious thought to the agenda in my work, when I sat back and really listened to what they were saying, I realized how much of what I write does in fact lay out an agenda. I don't think about it. I don't sit down to write and say, "I am going to drive this point home today." I sit down and often I turn off and my characters turn on and it isn't until two hours later that I look back and see what I've written. I've always felt they have the agenda but not me. But as a (want-to-be) professional writer, I need to remember how to step back and separate myself from that character. If I am going to write in the style that I do, I need to approach it as a third party, an outsider, and catch language that might be better served in a different way. I don't need to change my style. It's my style. But I need to double check what I really mean to say. Or, what THEY really mean to say.

Anyway, I need to write about this stuff more. It helps my brain function in different ways. It slows me down. I'm usually running so fast that I forget to stop ...