I’m behind for yesterday’s and last week’s #SaturdayShortStories Roll Calls

I’m behind for this week’s #ThursdayTales Roll Call

I apologize very much for the lateness.  I was very sick last week so I managed the TTRC but didnt finish the SSSRC.  This week I was getting caught up but suddenly a pile of stuff fell upon me and I haven’t finished.  I am working on it and I had hoped to finish them up today but it just didn’t happen that way because people needed me to help them do things and so I did.  Not making excuses, just cascading things caused a problem.

Hopefully I will have this up by Monday evening.  I hope.  I have a day full of stuff tomorrow but I’m surely gonna try.  If not, then it will be Tuesday at the latest.  Again, I apologize very much and I know some people have been asking, and I did dawdle a bit but it wasn’t nearly enough to cause this kind of backup.  I don’t think I really accounted for other life activities (when this started I didn’t really have anything else to do but that totally (temporarily) changed and I’ve never been good at planning things or accounting for contingencies so here we are.

On the plus side:

This Roll Call will include 32 stories.  That’s a lot of reading.  A lot.  Believe me, I know!

If you want to check the stories out they are listed at io9 under #ThursdayTales and #SaturdayShortStories and if you enjoy one or have constructive feedback, please leave a comment for the author, it will be much appreciated.  I’m making a schedule.  We’ll see if I can’t get these things out on time in the future AND get some FridayFlash written.

Thanks for being so patient.

I’ll OCR this later with my other *ahem* OCR’d posts that I haven’t edited to add the text.

For those interested, and oh, you SHOULD be interested, check out Grokkery and in particular this post, which I think is pretty enlightening.

It would be fantastic if I could say with complete honesty that I haven’t been blogging because I’ve been busy. It would be one fantastic lie. I’ve really been moping around and complaining a lot of being blocked and out of ideas and maybe having “lost my mad skillz” for writing.

That being said, I actually managed to get something accomplished. That something was mostly “finding impetus”. Not in the sense of “why am I doing this?” but more like “what can give me a push on a regular basis and won’t be too difficult?” I have seriously begun to doubt my ability and the only way to tell, I guess, if I really can’t write or if I’m in a funk or if I’m just being a lazy ho is to write some stuff. I keep starting out with that, meaning well, but I’ve found that projects I’ve taken on begin with the best of intentions from me but that I don’t have the strength to write extended narrative right now.

I have so many stories that are hanging out in my notes which began as outlines and degenerated into a mess of random notes. It’s very discouraging. Since I’m continually trying to find my writing sweet spot I’m trying yet another new thing. I finally got my deskal area cleaned off so I can start to write tiny fiction. Very tiny. I know I can write something tiny. Maybe I can do some tiny things and build up to some bigger things. No promises, though, because I’m a fickle creature and liable to mope again for several months at a moment’s notice.

I do have 2 short works of fiction in the works at UnMotivational Posters which will be a first for me, unless you count Pimpmanster. They’re longer than the tiny fiction I’m going for but I started them before I made up my mind to go small. They’re kinda smallish. Esque.

I’m going to write one thing definitely. Anyone who’s a blogger, please check this out. Finding Ada was begun last year by my friend Suw Charman, and is a blogging celebration of women in science and technology. On 24 March there’s going to be a wave of blog posts for Ada Lovelace Day 2010. Who’s Ada Lovelace? Whoa, dude! She was one of the first computer nerds ever! This is important because… Twitter hashtag is #ALD10.

I wrote a post for last year. It sucked.

So, to recap:
-Sorry for slacking.
-I’m going to try (again) not to do it again (again) again.
-Big narrative is too mighty for my puny narrative maintenance skills.
-Sometimes I write about men in lingerie.
-Short works in progress, other projects in pipe.
-Will try not to fail.

That is all for now.

For now.

I had sort of really agonized about that and felt all bad and awful but in the end what can I do? I can just keep writing, even though I’m way behind. Got blocked again, doodled around, broke my own rule and went back to read what I had written (oh, the shame!). I’m so sorry I inflicted that on you guys! But not sorry enough not to continue inflicting it for as long as necessary until I have a story that doesn’t suck.

There you have it. The thrills, the excitement, the time I didn’t stop writing halfway through and declare it a losing game. It’s all good!

-Constella

Main Entry: 1whore
Pronunciation: \ˈhȯr, ˈhu̇r\
Function: noun
Etymology: Middle English hore, from Old English hōre; akin to Old Norse hōra whore, hōrr adulterer, Latin carus dear — more at charity
Date: before 12th century

1 : a woman who engages in sexual acts for money : prostitute; also : a promiscuous or immoral woman
2 : a male who engages in sexual acts for money
3 : a venal or unscrupulous person
from whore
Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary

When people use the word “whore” it’s almost always in a negative light. “She’s a whore” or “he’s a man-whore” or even “I’m a shopping whore”. In the first two examples it’s nearly unequivocally negative. In the final, it’s often said with a sheepish grin and that semi-conspiratorial, semi-ashamed tone of voice. Even when someone is referring to the job “whore” it’s with utter distaste and disrespect. There’s no respect for a whore.

My (hiatus’d) Aphrodite series is about Peca who is in a unique circumstance. I won’t say more than that because I want the circumstance to have some effect when it’s revealed but I want to present her sympathetically. Not in a sense to make people say “aww that poor girl she has to hook to pay the bills” or something, but as a young woman who maturely and with considerable thought made the decision to exchange sexual favors for money. Peca is, by the first definition of the word, a whore.

When I first began writing this series I had a specific dynamic in mind. “A hooker who [PLOT TWIST HERE]” is what I wanted, and I began to just write. After finishing the first two chapters I really began to think about the story. It has to be realistic, there has to be a reason she can be a prostitute and not be ashamed of it herself or shunned by her community. Why? This caused me to want to understand the beginnings of prostitution and sexual institutions around the world, and why, in this “enlightened” age of continuous sexual revolution, a prostitute is still a bad person.

This is a lot of work, so don’t expect me to cover the whole thing in one post. Not only is it patently impossible, but it would deprive me of the work of learning what I’m doing and building the world the story takes place in. To create the future we have to know the past. In terms of this story today is the past and so I’m beginning here.

I recently had the experience of meeting a working girl through a site we both comment at. She’s very nice and agreed to help me with any sorts of questions I might have. I asked her if she thought the stigma of her profession would ever be wiped away and she replied that no, she didn’t. She feels that even far into the future, a whore will be a dirty word. Why?

Coming from a conservative Christian background I can think of a few reasons:

-Whores are breeders of disease
Is this really so? I’m certain there is a great number of prostitutes who do not make use of protective measures and safer sex, but on the other hand there’s a decent amount of non-sex-workers who could give a damn about safer sex. At legalized brothels the workers are required to be given a clean bill of health by the state and to use protection during their encounters.

-Whores are being exploited
Because there’s not a single woman in the history of forever that married for moneyor security, slept with a guy to get something she wanted, or availed herself of a man’s power while he availed himself of her body. Neither has there ever been a man who slept with a rich woman to live the good life, or lived off his girlfriend. Never. No person ever enjoys sex and money enough at the same time to become a prostitute. Nobody is secure enough in his or her sexuality to make such a decision. Right? Of course some prostitutes are exploited, forced into strip clubs, alleys, and cheap movie studios to have sex for someone else to earn money from. There are also people who choose to go into that line of work instead of something else, for whatever reason, and who make the decision with care and consideration.

-Whores break up marriages
Really? I would say that the woman (or man) who is getting paid to have sex is doing her/his job and the person who is willingly walking out of the door to go have sex with someone besides their spouse is probably the one actually breaking up a marriage. Just sayin.

-Whores are terrible people
I have worked in the sex industry before, in a nonsexual capacity. The prostitutes I knew were college students, women with children, young ladies who enjoyed having sex and getting paid for it. All of them looked out for one another. All of them looked out for me. Sure there was the usual amount of personality clash among the ladies but in general it was like, as people stereotypically say, a family. None of them was a terrible person, and that experience really changed my view of women who have sex for money.

-Nothing good can come of a whore
I’ve listened to the stories of my girls (at the time) when they had their clients. At least once a day there was a man who wanted to talk. Hell, sometimes I would end up on the phone with someone who would try to talk to me. About their lives, about their wives, about things they can’t tell anyone else. To them a whore is like a priest. If you’ve ever seen the first episode of Firefly you’ve seen what to me is an iconic scene, courtesan Inara Serra with her hand resting on Shepherd Book’s head as he speaks with her in her shuttle. It’s such a beautiful scene it always chokes me up. There’s nothing sexual about it. The man seems anguished and as she gazes down at his bowed head she touches him in what seems like benediction. She wasn’t providing him with carnal services, but spiritual ones in that moment.

Lest you think I am glamorizing prostitution rest assured, I’m not. My mission here is to understand the world’s oldest profession for the purposes of legitimizing it in a piece of fiction. Neither do I have anything against prostitutes. In today’s world we have women who get mostly bare and shake it for sport teams, commercials full of sexy people doing sexy things and intimating that a product or service will get the consumer more sex. We have an entire industry, perhaps several of them, built on the idea that a worthy woman is a beautiful one and beauty looks like this and this is what’s sexy so the ideal for a woman is, ostensibly, the look that would get her the most sexual attraction from males. On the other hand when a man somehow manages to get paid for sex (by a woman) he’s all that. He got paid AND he got to do it too. And, interestingly, when a man is not a good guy he’s no longer a stud but a man-whore, which somehow implies that he’s the skanky male version of a certain type of woman, which is its own kind of fucked-upness because it implies “whore” as a natural condition for women.

This is getting a little long so I’ll wrap it up, but it’s my intention to post periodically about my research into this topic. I’m not just researching the history of prostitution, though it’s certainly a big part of this. I’m trying to imagine and write the future of it, and to distill the connotation of the word from what it really means.

When I’m writing I often have a theme song or soundtrack for a story. For the Aphrodite serial it’s City High’s “What Would You Do?” because to me, it portrays the rarely-seen star of the song in a realistic and sympathetic light. This song is a big influence on the idea and what really struck me is not that she had to be a prostitute to take care of her son, but that it had to be a job she was ashamed of and that got her called a ho. I know that while Lani seems rueful about her job, she does it to take care of her son, whom she clearly loves. For that she, and other women who bear the stigma of a sex-obsessed, paradoxically puritanical society’s disdain, have my respect.

What with all this preparing for NaNoWriMo I’ve had my head stuck in OneNote in between bouts of seriously doubting my ability to write anything. I’m soothing myself by saying in a couple weeks you will be sick of new content because I will have written some every day for the month of November.

I’m currently reading this hilarious book by Sean Bonner who is an old friend and I will be doing a review of it most likely over the weekend. It’s free, so grab a copy and please feel free to comment on my review because I’ve never written one before! He wrote a review which so far has turned out to be surprisingly accurate and can be found here.

I’m also about to commence reading The Vector by MCM of 1889 which has been released so far as a serial but is available for the low low price of $5 from a slew of places listed at the bottom of the book’s page. He’s releasing it bit by bit for free unless you purchase it in which case you get it all. I tried to wait but it was too damn good and I couldn’t wait so I’m going to read it and then write a spiffy review. Maybe I’ll just start doing book reviews here too.

Speaking of books, if I had one I could be reading The Vector on the new Barnes & Noble Nook ebook reader because the book is available as a .pdf and the Nook reads .pdf files! I hope I get one for xmas!

Thanks for reading this somewhat original content (I know I’m shocked I wrote it) and please check out these awesome people.

Also for kicks and thought-provoking reading check out Sittingbear’s blog, Dust. Please leave a comment somewhere. I keep telling him it’s not so much commentable as evocative but he languishes for comments. Leave one! Prove me wrong!

I’m going to get back to that at some point, hopefully soon. I keep hearing that regular writing is the cure for what ails suffererers of writer’s block and that’s probably true but it hasn’t been working so well for me. You wouldn’t even believe the number of halfassed drafts I’ve put together and then left floating because I can’t bring myself to let anyone know, -ever-, that “I wrote that.”

To soothe my conscience I’ve been doing lots of research though, and you just won’t believe the stuff I’ve learned about various deadly diseases, upcoming technology, and strange animal tales. Seriously, you should read up on the Portia spider. What a sneaky beast.

In short, I’ve been slacking. We all know it. I apologize. I still love you guys though.
<3

I’m working on some projects for some people, and hoping that in the midst of casting my eye elsewhere for a little bit I will gain some perspective on my own work.