“Life would be a lot easier if I were more upbeat. If I worked better in a group, and I wasn’t the kind of person that stiffens up when hugged.  If I were positive and less critical. If I stayed on the sunny side.

Life would easier if I were nice.“

I’m not nice.

I’m polite, usually, but that’s not the same thing.

I’m fair, mostly. I think fairness is undervalued in most things. Who wants fairness, when there’s in-group loyalty to be had?

I’m critical, and due to that sense of fairness, I’m paralyzingly self-critical.

Critically? I can see that it’s easier to get along in life when you’re a nice girl. When you smile and wave the pom-poms. When you’re not constantly talking about cocks and misogyny and sex dolls and… cocks.

I can’t do it.

I don’t, really, even trust nice.

Right now? I’m nervous.

I wrote something that’s not very nice.

I’m always nervous about putting new stories out there in the big, wide world for everyone to see.

I’m doubly nervous, because this most recent story isn’t tempered with much humor.

You can get away with a lot of not being nice, if it’s wry.

I can manage wry.

The name of the damned series is wry.

I can only barely manage nice, even on a good day.

I’ve complained about all this before.

But can she breathe?

The weirdest thing about being a hypercritical snarker, while writing for an actual audience, is that I feel entirely disconnected from how most people appear to read.

Readers, in general, are supposedly looking for what I think of as the Maas list:

• A Superlative Character: The best detective, the richest hero, the purest girl, the oldest vampire, the meanest biker, the smartest professor, the domliest dom, the subbiest sub, who has a:
• Palatable “Conflicted” Fatal Flaw: a quirky personality disorder, a romantically dark past as a poor person, humorous clumsiness and/or sexual abuse PTSD, an abiding love of humanity, Catholic guilt, having no game with the ladies, a dysfunctional family, an overdeveloped sense of interpersonal loyalty, must defeat:
• The Sexy Enemy: the charismatic head of INTERPOL, the evilest crazy slut, the armies of several kingdoms, the Fairy King, the head of the Colombian Cartel, a guy who sounds suspiciously like Rupert Murdoch, HIS FATHER, the whole world whut does not understand the magic of fancy underpants games.

The Superlative Character with the Palatable Fatal Flaw must defeat the Sexy Enemy in a battle for the Ultimate Prize:

•  restoring humanity’s rightful heritage, rescuing at-risk youth, preserving her family name, defeating an evil God, winning all the drug trade in the Western US (or Eastern Europe), saving the ENTIRE WORLD, or finding deepest, truest, lifelong, undimming, forevermore, loverly love and then having a zillion babies.

So… yeah.

That’s the kind of High Stakes Bingo that really affects people.

Everything needs to be turned up to 11, as soon as possible, so as to “hook” the reader. Heroes must be heroic. The thieves need codes.  Hope must ring eternal.

The ending better be happy.

So, I see a lot of readers that use superlatives in reviews:  The hero is so hot they melted; they laughed, they cried, they squealed; it was the best thing they’ve ever read, they will die if they can’t have the next installment immediately.

I don’t fall in love with characters–not mine or anyone else’s. This is a huge thing. Danielle Steele used to claim she fell in love with all of her characters, and she thought that was why people liked them so much. She loved them, so other people loved them. The closest thing I can personally compare to “falling in love with a character” is actually falling into awe over how Tolstoy wrote the inner life Ilya Andreyevich Rostov. <— (That’s easily the least sexy sentence I’ve ever written. Sweet Jesus.)

I fall in love with writers. 

I fall in love with bodies of work–repeated motifs, commitment to building an aesthetic, obvious pre-occupations, Quixotic battles with stuff that just isn’t going to get resolved. Ever.

I fall for weird bits of truth.

A lot of what I like best is just plain depressing to most people.

I do this thing where I oscillate between “Whatevah, I do what I want, ’cause I’m awesome,” and, “Self, why are we not writing about Byronic Billionaire Doctor-Rockstars?! Are we insane?! Why must we be so difficult?”

I don’t know why I must be so difficult.

But… I don’t plan on any brooding punk rock podiatrists in the future.

I guess I’m committed.

I’m not sure why this is, now.

When I was younger, I used to “act out” in a sexual way: sleeping with club take-out, or with inappropriate friends, or exes best left alone. Ill-advised encounters, often while drunk.

Impulse sex.

In retrospect, that’s a young woman’s superpower. That fake-out assurance that your personal life may be a total wreck, but at least someone finds you sexually attractive.

It’s good to be wanted. Or, at least, to feel wanted. To know you’re at least seen.

That sort of bad habit as band-aid isn’t an option anymore.

I have way too much to lose for any sort of “acting out.”

I’ll tell you what I want.

I want to feel visible.

Because I’ve spent my entire life having the entire world tell me that I’m mostly a visual commodity.

I am uncomfortable with being conspicuous at this point in my life, and I’m confused by flirtation.

I want to feel like anyone remembers I exist. I need someone to remember the parts I keep losing.

I want to say, “I am more than just the body you’ve gotten used to, emitting the noises you’ve already heard.”

And, I worry that it just isn’t the truth.  There’s no woman so beautiful, so captivating, that someone out there hasn’t gotten massively bored with her.

And, I know I’m boring. Depression is boring.

So, the first thing that goes is libido, now. I get really dismissive about orgasms. I can do it myself. I am, in fact, much better at it.  More efficient. Less frustrating. If all I wanted was an orgasm, I could acquire one.

What I want is what I can’t I do for myself.

**Get as Freudian with that as you’d like.