Here I am again...

I haven't abandoned this blog. I just can't get on it to post during my down time at school. All blogs are blocked in the first place, but I used to be able to use a proxy server to get around that. I know that's not what the school would have wanted, but I figured I wasn't really doing anything wrong. I'm not above breaking the rules if the rules seem senseless. It may be part of my Asperger's or ADD or whatever it is I have. I wouldn't want me any other way, so I don't worry about it.

Anyway, so here I am again on a beautiful (if a bit too hot) Sunday, catching you all up. I hope to be able to blog more regularly again. It's hard to track progress when updates are sporadic.

Quite a lot has happened in the last week, on several fronts. First of all, I'm moving forward on my Suicide Prevention events. The online event now has 26 attendees on Facebook. I never could figure out how to get the event invitation to work on Myspace... it seems to get caught in an endless loop every time I try. So I just posted a bulletin about it and hoped for the best. I may write on some people's comment space as well. We'll see.

Putting this event together--as well as the offline event, which I'll blog about in a second--has been the hardest thing I've ever done. It's not that it's really difficult to set up an online event or anything like that. It's that reading the stories of people who have committed suicide really upsets me.

I started writing Shades of Gay because my best friend used to be suicidal because of his sexual orientation. He didn't deserve to suffer the way he did, and every day I thank G-d that he is still alive. But reading these stories makes me realize how many people aren't as lucky, and how easily it could have gone the other way. More than once I've found myself crying over the needless suffering and waste. So far I've found six stories, and all of them sound the same. This person had a ton of potential. This person was doing good things for their family/friends/community. This person's suicide shocked everyone.

It's time for this to stop. 1 out of 3 suicides is LGBT related. That's about 1500 people a year.

This should be considered a national crisis just as much as AIDS or any other epidemic. Hell, the fact that there are 5000 suicides a year for any reason should be considered a national crisis. The fact that a full third of those suicides are related to being a member of a group making up just 10% of the population should be doubly so.

Anyway, as hard as it is for me to read these stories, I have to keep reading them, because I want to be the voice of all those who have died and who have wanted to die and who still want to die. This is not the way G-d intends human beings to live, it's not the way we should live, and it's going to stop.

Another thing I did this week was create a short video letting people know about this problem. I think if we can put faces and names to statistics, the majority of people can be reached. I'm not worrying about the extremists, the truly committed homophobes who protest the funerals of gay suicide victims and claim that they deserved to die. I'll leave that battle for someone else, thank you very much. But I will try to reach the ordinary people who aren't aware a problem exists, and the ones who are homophobic by default, simply because they've never met a gay person and therefore have had no reason to question the attitudes they've been brought up with.

I'm also trying to reach the people who already care, the people who are LGBT supporters. I'm hoping those people will join me in making a difference.

I've got web sites and press releases and videos galore out on the World Wide Web, and I just pray that it makes a difference. I want to do something important. I want to help people. I want to put an end to needless suffering.

One last piece of news: I am likely having a candlelight vigil followed by a dinner on May 22, in honor of the birth of Harvey Milk and of suicide awareness month. I am working with the LGBT Center of Raleigh to secure a space for the event. Tickets will be $7, and will go towards the LGBT Center as well as the Trevor Project Hotline.

If you do not live in Raleigh, I encourage you to have your own event and let me know about it. I will post pictures, videos, etc.

Shalom,
Stephanie

Why I'm writing this

Yesterday I was having a hard time writing. For the first time since I began the final push towards completing the first draft, I didn't write 1000 words. In fact, I wrote hardly anything at all.

You see, I'd forgotten why I'm writing Shades of Gay. I'm writing it just to write it or just to make money or even just to have a published book. I'm writing it to draw my line in the sand, to squarely face off all those who insist on judging homosexuality, who insist on accusing good people of being "deceived" and being aligned with Satan, who insist on throwing their hurtful words and sometimes more around and don't give a fuck who they hurt.

I'm writing Shades of Gay to say this is going to stop. I have a good friend who I have seen suffer so much and so undeservedly because of hir sexual orientation. 30% of GLBT youth commit suicide every year because, like my friend, they can't make themselves be straight like the people around them think they ought to be. 30%. According to the Talmud, whoever saves one life saves the world entire and yet we are allowing 30% of our youth to die in the name of I don't know what. Religious people would say G-d, but the G-d I worship doesn't encourage people to live short, miserable lives and die at their own hands.
Sadder yet, knowing this will not change the minds of those people who believe that homosexuality is a sin that they ought to help rid the world of. They'll just say, "The wages of sin are death," as if that somehow makes all this wasted life okay. It makes me wonder what G-d they serve and what they really believe. It certainly isn't the G-d I'm familiar with.

So I'm going to say this one last time: stop being so careless with your judgments. Sit at a distance and judge if you want, but keep it to yourself. Better yet, before you judge, hold your best friend in your arms and pray that it's enough to stop him/her from kill hirself. Then tell me that the wages of sin are death and that if an LGBT person kills hirself it's no loss.

While you're doing that, I'll be writing Shades of Gay.

The best laid plans...

This morning I had trouble writing my thousand words. At first I wrote 200... then 370... then 400... then all of a sudden the scene took off and I wrote the entire thousand words and was reluctant to stop. I had to make myself because I have other things to do today.

I had planned on 25 chapters and had written out an entire plan for each chapter, but as usual it isn't going to happen that way. It seems like my brain always forgets the events leading up to an event when I plan out a chapter. Back in Chapter Five, for example, Mitch asked Arthur out to the arcade. I sat down to start Chapter Six, intending to write the date itself, but things happened and the date didn't take place until the second half of Chapter Seven.

Now I'm in a similar quandry because I have the whole rest of the novel planned out, centered around three major events: A Halloween party at Mitch's mom's, a class presentation on gay rights in December, and the senior prom. I meant to get to the Halloween party three or four chapters ago. Every time I think I'm free to "fast forward" to Halloween, my characters aren't ready to go. Fights between friends and significant others, nagging parents, and school bullies have all interfered with moving forward as fast as I would like.

I'm not complaining, mind you. I think the novel is stronger for all the detours I've taken along the way towards each major story event. I just wonder how many chapters it's really going to be, and if I can really write it all by June like I had planned.

I love writing this novel. You wouldn't think so, judging my the number of other 'important" things I remember need doing when it's time to sit down and write. I am probably spending more time and energy on laying out the text and promoting the finished product than i am at writing these last few chapters. But once I get started, man, is it hard to stop!

I'm going to miss these characters when I've finished. Their lives are so much richer than I thought they were.

Will of the people?

I'm sitting in my empty classroom listening to what sounds like a ferocious storm and thinking about things.

I was all set to write a blog about my day "off" (which really wasn't a day off), but when I signed into Blogger, the first thing I saw was that the governor of Vermont is all set to veto the equal marriage bill that's about to come across his desk. I am saddened, disappointed, angry... but not surprised. I'm also wondering if I should be writing about this in a blog that is supposed to be tracking my progress towards the publication and sale of my novel. However, I also want the novel to be an important piece of the GLBT movement, and I'm upset enough about this to write about it, so here goes.

It seems to me that many in the anti-marriage camp are extremely hypocritical. I've been reading over and over that it would be "wrong" and 'unfair" to overturn Proposition 8 in California because it would be against "the will of the people". Yet it is not against the will of the people for the governor to overturn a bill passed by legislators elected by the people and encouraged by the people to pass the bill.

Yes, I know that the veto system is in place in order to stop any one part of a government from gaining too much power, and that mayors, governors, and even the President would be reduced to being figureheads if they had no say about what bills were passed into law. But civil rights should not have to be legislated in the first place, and it is frustrating to see the LGBT movement making progress, only to be turned away at the last second.

I can't help wonder why there is so much hatred towards the LGBT community that the only way we ever get any kind of equality is through the court system. And then people complain that the will of the people is being "usurped" by the courts. Why are basic civil rights ever subject to the will of the people in the first place?

I wish I was able to address this issue fully in Shades of Gay. There are a couple of references to it, but the novel can only focus on so much of the LGBT movement. Since it's focused on the lives of three teenagers, I have chosen to focus mainly on the safe school issue. I just don't have the room to express my opinion about every aspect of LGBT life. Maybe there's some other books in my future. I don't know.

I do know that the governor of Vermont's expected behavior is shameful. Vermont was one of the original 13 colonies that broke away in pursuit of freedom. Now it is denying freedom to a portion of its citizens because of the whim of one person.

It's time for such things to stop.

Goodbye Yellow Brick Road

It's funny how I can allow one well-meaning person to throw everything off. Yesterday, one of the other teachers at my current school told me that she talked to the EC Director about getting me a job as a compliance specialist rather than teaching, since I'm doing all the paperwork for several teachers. She said the EC Director is unwilling to create such a position, but consider it if I was willing to do some teaching as well.

Now, there are several good reasons why I am not coming back to this school next year. I travel 57 miles each way and am planning on moving further north, there's little support (either financial or moral) for EC teachers in this school, and I want to switch careers to a more publishing-oriented industry.

Yet for a minute, I doubted not only my decision, but my whole plan. I wondered whether I should be putting so much energy into pre-publication promotion, as well as finishing the novel. For some reason, all my dreams seemed... silly and impractical and unguaranteed. I thought that I wouldn't really sell any books or anything.

An hour later, having listened to some good music on the way home, I had calmed down and realized that my original plan was correct. I was thinking about the chorus to Goodbye Yellow Brick Road:

I've finally decided my future lies
beyond the yellow brick road.

For me, the yellow brick road or false path or whatever you want to call it lies in the safe routes I've always taken because other people thought I should. Being a writer is and always will be a risky career choice. It would be safer to stay in the poor job situation while occasionally working towards something else.

It would be foolish, of course, to live only on the hope of being a success, without a solid plan. I haven't given up on the outside job market entirely, and won't be able to until Ir each my goal. I may have to do something else to support me for a long while yet. However, I am working towards making Shades of Gay a best-seller every day. This blog is dedicated to the purpose of sharing the ups and downs of my new career path.

So I'm getting off the yellow brick road and back onto the narrow path that my company is named after. Here's a few highlights of what I've been doing the past couple of days:

* Got some feedback on my t-shirt designs from other CafePress members, and began revising accordingly. Since several people felt my design was too plain, I'm experimenting with adding graphics. I'll post a picture of my first new design when I get home, as images are blocked at work. In the meantime, here's the link so that you can check it out yourself:

http://www.cafepress.com/cp/members/products/product_edit_design.aspx?itemno=371223453&side=F

* Finished Chapter Seventeen and posted it on the Scribophile Writer's Workshop site. I'm now well into Chapter Eighteen.

* Continued to make contacts on Facebook and Myspace.

As always, feel free to drop me a line about anything I'm doing or to share your own journey.

Moving right along...

Good morning!

It's amazing how much I want to get out of bed each morning since I decided to focus on making Shades of Gay a success. I'm operating on three hours of sleep this morning without coffee, and even though I'm tried, I'm reluctant to take a nap during my planning period because it would be a loss of precious free time that could be spent doing something productive towards making Shades of Gay a reality.

That being said, I'm not functioning at full capacity here, I need to be forgiven if I say anything that doesn't make any sense whatsover. I'm not exactly speaking English this morning. Besides all that, it's sometimes hard to concentrate on what I'm doing because as a teacher you're constantly getting interrupted by this and that. (Right now I have a child in my room trying to prove that I don't type as fast as I claim to type.)

Anyway, I don't have a whole lot to say this morning. The work is proceeding amazingly fast. I finished another chapter yesterday. I have eight more to go. It's weird to me to see these chapters coming together so quickly. Part of me thinks they must not be that high a quality if I'm getting them out this fast. Yet I'm still working hard on them. It often takes me two or three hours to write 1,000 words. There are multiple stops, starts, do-overs, and word count checks.

Last night I read Chapter Seven aloud to my graphics designer and photographer. It's been a long time since I looked at it. I probably wrote it around Chanukah time. It's always a double-edged sword rereading past chapters. It's easy to fall into the trap of overly admiring it or comparing it to the current chapter. For some reason, whatever I'm writing about is never as good, in my head, as what I've written.

Anyway, the book is coming along. It's probably going to be between 450 and 500 pages... long for a Young Adult novel but hey, it's shorter than Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, so there's no reason it shouldn't sell just as well.