50,000 words! If this were November, this would be very significant. As it is, it’s just another signpost, rather than a goalpost.

(A few weeks back, JT Glover posted about chapter themes. My chapters generally aren’t themed, but this, the sixteenth, clearly is. It’s about nudity, bodies, being naked emotionally and physically. Which is, I think, the only way my fourteen-year-old narrator, in fact any fourteen-year-old, can be naked; there are no exposed bodies at that age without emotions being likewise exposed.)

Other writing news of note: I finished a series of mutant turtle poems, which I started back in my last semester, so that I could submit them to this superhero poetry anthology. Even if the anthology doesn’t work out, writing poems–not just motes, but honest-to-gee-dash-dee poems–feels good. In celebration, here are the four best TMNT things I could find on youtube:

and this (click on it–it’s worth it). Good god, what is coming out of Donatello’s face?

(In other-other news, ten days till matrimony. Weird.)

As Nature Made Him: The Boy Who Was Raised as a Girl by John Colapinto

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I first encountered David Reimer’s story as a kid: my mother was getting her special ed certification and brought home a textbook on Child Psychology. At the end of one of the chapters, there was a brief sidebar about the case, which detailed its success, save for an incident when the little boy-turned-girl in question threw her panties over a neighbor’s fence.

But, as I learned through John Colapinto’s powerful As Nature Made Him: The Boy who was Raised a Girl, that rosy-if-mischievous picture couldn’t have been further from the truth. David, born Bruce Reimer, was indeed raised a girl, Brenda, when doctors gave his parents no other feasible options after a botched circumcision at eight months old. Though this case was often touted by his doctor, John Money, as immutable proof that gender was completely a social construction, the truth is that Brenda had an incredibly unhappy childhood, marked by social difficulties and competition with her twin brother, Brian, and marred further by disturbing therapeutic sessions (which included forced viewings of pornography and graphic sexual conversations) administered by Money.

Colapinto’s account is vividly and soundly written. It’s an incredibly fast-read and has the juicy journalistic quality of a good episode of Dateline, not to mention a similarly horrific car-crash-on-the-highway feel. Colapinto’s strong descriptions of David and his family are incredibly sympathetic; when, after finishing the book, I learned that both David and his brother Brian died at their own hands in 2004 and 2002 respectively, I fully felt the loss of their lives that had, I suppose, begun nearly four decades earlier.

Before the publication of As Nature Made Him, the then-anonymous case of the Reimers was often cited by feminists as proof that it was nurture, not nature—upbringing, and not sex—that determines gender. The sad truth is that, had doctors been more open-minded about what constitutes a “boy” or a “man”, David Reimer would have never been subjected to castration, would never have had to endure therapy sessions with Money where he was forced to pose naked with his brother in order to model “proper gender roles”, would never have had to struggle in school and at home with the conviction that he wasn’t really a girl. The motives of the doctors were reductionist, as David himself says: “It just seems that they implied that you’re nothing if your penis is gone. The second you lose that, you’re nothing, and they’ve got to do surgery and hormones to turn you into something. Like you’re a zero. It’s like your whole personality, everything about you is all directed—all pinpointed—toward what’s between his legs. And to me, that’s ignorant. I don’t have the kind of education that these scientists and doctors and psychologists have, but to me it’s very ignorant.” (262)

I do think that there’s a feminist lesson to be found in Reimer’s story: namely, that prescriptivist attitudes toward gender and sex are problematic, and that forcing gender models (and certainly genital surgery) on young children who cannot express their feelings about their own gender or sex is a dangerous game.

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No-go from GUD today; onward to IGMS. Am I crazy to keep submitting to these (paying, big) markets? Yes, yes. I think I’ll try F&SF next.

I need to write more short stories. I have a few ideas floating around, nebulous, but nothing that’s caught yet. I’d like to come up with something to send to Cat Rambo, since she wanted to see more.

On the bright side of things, I finally solved a novel-problem (as opposed, I think, to a novel problem). Until yesterday, my love interest had no personality. But on the way home last night, I figured it out: I’ll make him be just as big of a jerk as my protagonist! He’s been wanting to be written that way, anyway. This development means rewriting, but has also allowed me to be terribly productive today. I got twice as much writing done as I normally do.

In fact, I’m nearing the 50,000-word mark (as of right now? 47,570). This is new territory for me; all previous long-form projects died (NaNoWriMo 2006) or ended (last year’s MS) just over 40,000 words. I have really no idea how long this one will be. As long as it takes, I guess. My goal right now is to finish the draft before my 26th birthday. I’m not sure why. It just really feels appropriate.

Sunshine by Robin McKinley

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This book was a mess.

Granted, it was a beautiful, and often compelling mess. Robin McKinley’s eponymous narrator Sunshine lives in a vividly crafted world where creatures of the night–demons, vampires, werewolves, and, apparently angels (though we don’t meet any of those)–live right beside humans. Set not long after a war between these factions, McKinley creates a surprisingly believable universe where real magical talismans can be bought at rummage sales and where the cops that hang out at the local coffee shop can turn themselves blue.

Several of the characters in Sunshine hint at the same level of care in their construction. Constantine, our heroine’s vampire paramour is endearing, despite being dead ugly; he’s got a wry sense of humor underscored with genuine tenderness. Sunshine’s other romantic interest, biker-turned-chef Mel, is similarly sweet. And Sunshine herself is a believable, if sometimes both rambling and whiny, hero. When she finds herself chained up in a ballroom, intended as a snack for Con, we cheer for her; when her background is slowly revealed, we’re given a more full and appreciative idea of her. And when her rambling stretches the barest of plots–toward the end of the novel, there’s a good couple pages where she talks about being unable to sleep–we can at least say it’s true to character.

Unfortunately, the same can’t be said for our villain, who is wholly disposable, or a sense of overall development, which is noticeably absent. McKinley builds her story in a strange way. Because we so fully inhabit Sunshine’s extensive and occasionally tiresome ramblings, we’re often not told information that she takes for granted. For example, I didn’t realize that the entire universe was an urban fantasy setting until a good thirty pages in. That early revelation worked. Later, this style of plot development so litters the book that I repeatedly found myself leafing back twenty pages or more, sure I’d missed something.

Similarly, there are many plot threads left hanging here. We don’t ever even get to meet Sunshine’s mother, who may or may not be part demon. We’re told that her human boyfriend, Mel, might be a sorcerer, but that thread is quickly dropped. There are two explicit sex scenes toward the last third of the novel that are clearly meant to contrast Sunshine’s relationship with Mel with her relationship with Constantine, but the potential conflict between the two men–and the issue of who Sunshine, ultimately, will choose–is left both largely unexplored and almost entirely unresolved. These problems with pacing, development, and resolution really mar an otherwise compelling story.

But I’m hoping that what will stay with me is not these issues, but instead the novel’s strengths: lovely descriptions of setting on both the micro- (the development of the seasons) and macro- (McKinley’s world building) levels peppered with occasionally touching anecdotes. The story of how her power erupts as a child is particularly lovely and memorable. If only the novel had, as a whole, belied the same attention to detail.

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