A really unpleasant topic

So, not like I'm completely obsessed with her or anything, but I get emails with Jenny Trout's updates and I check my emails when I wake up on my iPad every morning. And her latest one touched upon the whole Football-player rape case and how societal perceptions actually back up the defence they put together about how they didn't even know it was rape because the girl had not said no ( You can read that here http://jennytrout.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/i-didnt-know-exactly-what-rape-was.html).

That touches a real nerve with me, for a few reasons. Like, back when I watched Hollyoaks (and as I plan on linking this to Jenny's blog in a comment, Hollyoaks is a soap in England geared towards teenagers, it comes on at 6.30pm after the Simpsons. Occasionally, with the darker storylines, they have to put it on at 10pm. It follows life in a small village in which a university is placed. I don't know why there's a university in a small village where there's only one pub, bar and nightclub, but there we go. No wonder there's so many murders in the programme, there's sod all to do), anyway, back when I watched Hollyoaks there was this awful storyline with this guy who drugged and then raped girls. He got his friend involved, and the moment I stopped watching was when they were raping twins in front of each other and not thinking anything except how wonderful it was they were finally having all this sex (yes, they were complete losers). Why put that into the world, Hollyoaks? I mean, yes it sparked debate but I don't know what the pro side of that debate would have exactly been.

I admit, I'm writing about rape, and it is an awkward thing to write about tastefully, without undermining actual victims. One of my main characters was raped (you can call it statutory, since she was thirteen, or you can call it intentional, since she was put into a compromising position by someone she trusted) and what I'm aiming for is to show how victims do blame themselves, because she does, but also that these people are people, they have aims and thoughts and feelings. I don't want to undermine the situation, or act like it can serve as part of a fairy tale, and I hope that comes across. But Jenny's post reminds me just how balanced you have to be in thinking how you would cope if someone took advantage of your body regardless of your expressed thoughts, and how the "no means no" culture doesn't work. Because how many times have you been in a situation where you say no but you really do mean yes? Someone who just gives up fighting isn't saying yes either (I know Jenny didn't mention it, though she came close with being worn down) it's them realising that you are stronger and you have no regard for their feelings and this is going to happen whatever they want.

You know what? The rest of this post is going to be pretty freaking personal. Don't read anymore if you're easily offended. And if you're a friend reading ... don't do what some people have done, and stop talking to me as a result of this.

I always thought, first of all, that it was weird how, in a new relationship, you negotiate your way to the first time you have sex. It happens, unless you're interested in one night stands or something, because you're taking an emotional connection and making it physical and yes, you do need to spell out what you do and don't like and compromise. It's no different from the other aspects of a relationship. But then the second time you sleep with your boyfriend/girlfriend, why is that a given? Why is the first time automatic consent to the next however many times? Maybe I just have weird sexual hang-ups since I'm not that big on it (or the only two people I've ever slept with in my entire life are the only two slightly disappointing people on the planet) but I just never got it. I said 'yes' once so that yes lasts for every occasion and not just once? I'm not saying there needs to be verbal agreements every time, but a proper understanding of the person you're sharing bodies with, that should happen.

And on a slightly darker level, rape has kind of been present in my life, for my whole life. From things that have been said by my mum, I'm not altogether sure I'm not the product of rape ("oh, we only wanted three children, and we got number four" - I'm number four, yes), and my biological dad did one of the most depraved things ever. I'm not very vocal about paedophilia, because it's just too much for me sometimes, but he raped my brothers and sister. The three they wanted. Apparently, when I came along my mum realised what he'd been doing, and divorced him before he could get to me too. You might think that's a wonderful thing to be, the only family member not raped by your own father, but it's horrible. First, my mother didn't tell me what had happened, my stepdad had to (I had passed my high school entrance exams, and was rubbing it in as kids do to my older brother, he hit me and my dad had to explain why he would be so pissed off, as if intelligence can be damaged by rape), second off, I was immediately told not to tell anyone, ever (oops), because my mum had a lot of pride in her decisions and my dad was clearly a Bad One (also, she's in a certain position in life which I won't go into, but she thinks it Looks Bad) when all I needed was to talk about it, to try and understand why at eleven, I was being thrown into a position where I had to understand absolutely everyone else in my family but no one would understand me and third, the really, really disgusting outcome of this kind of situation? I wished it happened to me. You read that right, there's no typo. I said that a few years ago in an argument and my stepdad stuck up for me, saying it was a common reaction actually (so thanks for that, because that was the first time I didn't ever feel alone in this situation, and it only took what, fourteen years?) - I just didn't want to feel different, or have the us vs you situation that came up so many times. I wanted my mum to not use "he was raped and you weren't" as an excuse for every bit of bad behaviour my brother indulged in. I wanted her to stick up for me because of what was happening at the time and not because of something I had no control over before I was even born. Of course I didn't want to go through what they went through, of course not, but I wanted her to remember that I wasn't there, that I couldn't be there, and that blaming me was not going to help. If it had happened to me to, I wouldn't have gotten the blame as much as I did. So it's not even the victim who gets blamed sometimes Jenny, it's the innocent bystander.

I know I sound bitter, and like I don't have a good relationship with my family. I have a complicated relationship with my family, but it's mainly a good one. It's just that there are some deep-seated issues that are never going to go away because we can't talk about it. Mum actually went for therapy a few years ago when things got really bad and it's been better since then, but there are still moments ... like, we'll go back to the "I was sick" bit (because I love kicking that when it's down), I had to get better, fast, because I had a baby to look after. I worked my ass off to be well enough to work again. And the brother I mentioned above? He stopped going to work, my mum said because he was so devastated by what happened to me (read the above and join me in a 'yeah, fucking right'). So I had to work my ass off to be able to once again provide for my son, seriously depleting the savings I'd been working on (I'd almost saved enough for a down payment on a mortgage) in order to provide for him in the mean time, I had to teach myself ways of tricking people into thinking I'm not mentally damaged by this (have two people talk different things at me at the same time, watch the glaze go over my eyes as NOTHING goes in. Or ask me something I'm not expecting, that shorts my brain out too) and it's okay for my brother to once again rely on the state because I had almost died? Does that make sense to anyone? I am bitter about things like that, how it then again always comes back to my biological father and how big a dick he is.

And coincidentally, friends who I've whored by blog out to, I went into this with someone we know. And she did the whole 'that sucks' bit without offering anything else. And then she told everyone we knew that her uncle had raped her. And I actually saw red (not just a description with artistic licence, my vision went so red I almost blacked out) - she had barely contributed to the private conversation we'd had, said nothing about how she had an intimate understanding of it when I just needed someone to understand, and then took her own pity party to you guys. I said some really unforgivable things at the time, but I stand by them. What we had been saying was private, and I thought I could trust her sense of empathy and what I thought was a close relationship, and she used it for her own pity party. I wasn't mad about what had happened to her (don't read that wrong, it's sick and depraved and I feel numb every time this situation rears its ugly head in any aspect of life because as you can probably tell, it's dominated a lot of my personal life, I'm saying that the rage I felt in this situation wasn't about her experience, but about her actions at the time of talking about it) but I was mad at her. So mad. If you think you know who I'm talking about then yes, this is how much worse she is than what you think. This is part of why I was going through such a bad patch at the time and left a place where I had previously felt safe, and loved, and understood in a way I hadn't in so long. She took that at that point in time. She is heinous. That's not me blaming a victim, that's me saying that she should have some understanding of how rape affects everyone involved, and even those who aren't, and she couldn't go there because it's all about her. For non-friends who wanted to read my two cents stuck on Jenny's thread, this girl is pretty fucking awful. She used to call me her best friend, and as you can see I'm pretty opinionated, but I try to come from a good place with it. She once asked me for advice, I gave it to her, and she started doing this sort of shit. Basically, her friends have to be yes-men and if you don't worship the ground she walks on, you won't last long. I went through a bad patch at university, the same one I'm referring to above, and one of my friends sent me a care package. It made me cry so bad, and I thanked her and said how wonderful she was to do it, and other people were also calling this friend wonderful. So the woman I've been talking to for most of this bit then starts whinging that we love this friend more than her, and why aren't we loving her as much, and no one else understands her. So you can see how I'm feeling, one person has seen me suffering and sent me a care package, and the other has seen me suffering and trashed my advice then used my pain for her own needs. But that's her all over.

So yes Jenny, society has a shit view on rape. Even the victims have a shit view. Even those who are blamed who have nothing to do with it. And when the fuck is that cycle ever going to end?

**I just want to edit and say, I know it looks there, despite what I said, that I'm blaming this girl when I should have been supporting her also, since she had gone through what my whole family had. It's not that I didn't empathise, or couldn't see her point. It's not that I ever thought she deserved what happened to her, because there's no way anyone deserves it. It's not that I thought because she had gone through it, and I had only been blamed by proxy, that I thought my situation was more important than hers. But I had opened a dialogue that was intense, that people don't discuss because I don't think people actually realise how much the blame gets passed on, when the only person to blame was the person whose actions caused it all. The rapist is the only person who needs the blame. I opened a dialogue with someone I trusted, and with everything she'd been through, you'd think we could have an open and frank discussion and come out stronger for that. She did something that I don't understand, she didn't share and seek understanding from someone who clearly could do that on an intimate level, she show-boated and left me hanging. She put a big fingers up to my trust, in order to use the ordeal to get more fawning from the people we knew. That's what made me angry, that it could have been a support system for the both of us. Do you know what she said when I finally tried talking to her about it? "I didn't want to stomp all over what you were telling me". I didn't want to stomp over what you were telling me.

Fuck you.

If there's one thing she absolutely guaranteed by her behaviour, it's that she ignored my feelings, in favour of her own, she turned that trust around for her own ends. Yes, she deserved sympathy, but why did she choose that time to tell everyone? Why turn a private conversation into a public parade? Because if I had then gone to any of my other friends and said what had happened, I'd be stealing her thunder and it's not like I had gone through it, and what kind of friend would I have been? That's what she was doing. What kind of person absolutely ignores a cry for help like that, especially with the experience they're saying they've had? I don't disbelieve her at all, her attitude to sex is something I've seen before in rape victims, but her behaviour as a friend is dispicable.

Passive Reading

I have a few rants stored up from my interactions with those people at Goodreads. This one I touched upon on Saturday, and I knew I wanted to rant about it but I couldn't for the life of me remember the topic even as I was posting it (oh, brain damage, you tease!).

Remember how I said when I read a sentence as simple as someone going to the shops my brain will immediately start alongside my reading some backstory and running commentary and speculation (and I'll be judging grammar and use of language, but I didn't say that before) and that I get annoyed by simply being told something is good and bad without justification for why (I'm surprisingly okay once I get a 'because') well, I wanted to expand on that.

I consider these kinds of comments the antithesis of what I do, and I call it passive reading. It's not like passive smoking whereby someone else makes you smoke though you don't want to (thanks for sharing your cancer), but actually passive, that kind of blankness that makes me wonder if there's anything there.

Admittedly, most of these conversations happen when discussing 50 Shades of Grey, so it's not the best source material, but since the whole concept of 50 completely baffles me, I need logical thought behind all those pro- arguments. But what I get back is 'I liked it because it was good'.

What was good? The storyline? The storyline is pretty standard romance. The characters? Oh, please read Jenny Armintrout's blog, and Cassandra Parkin's ebooks. The kinky BDSM aspect? When you actually find BDSM and not abuse, hit me up, we'll discuss source material and hopefully you'll understand that kink is not a reward/punishment system for general behaviour. The language? Again, The blog and ebook. Jenny points out that the grammar is so bad, at one key kinky scene, it reads like Ana is giving Christian's father a handjob at a benefit. And "down there" makes me think of her feet. In Australia.

But I'm not here to trash 50, I could never be as hilarious as Cassandra or Jenny for a start, but that is basically my reaction to any book where I get that as an argument. Even books I like, I want to discuss bigger things. Like, I read Divergent and Insurgent recently, and the post I put up on Goodreads? It was about whether other readers considered divergency a nature/nurture development, and whether people sometimes elected to become Abnegation precisely because that's where the power of government is (considering the fact that Tris' dad was Erudite, I'd say that it was an educated guess that he manipulated the system, and then when his children grew up they both had a tendency towards Erudite, like him, as well as Abnegation, where they grew up. If you have no idea what I'm going on about, read the books! It's like a post-apocalyptic version of the hunger games, but everyone dies, not just kids. I actually don't like the Hunger Games comparison, but it's probably the most popular book that's similar) and I regularly speculate with others about what will happen in The Fall Of Five, from the Lorien stories (we have some exciting theories about the beginning of Setrakus Ra and his involvement in Mogodorians trying to eliminate the Loriens and Science Fiction is amazing). I love breaking books apart (not literally, sacrilege!) and exploring them with other people, I want them to show me an emphasis I hadn't considered before. It's like reading a whole other book.

I don't get why other people don't do that. How they can read a book and be like 'well, I got a warm, fuzzy feeling so I like this book' and that be it. Even at the base of it, be like 'I liked the main protagonist for his humour and tenacity.' Okay, you don't want to sound like a prick, I clearly have no problem with it, I'll rephrase; 'I liked the main guy because he was funny and even when life sucked he tried hard to live the way he thought was right.' I respect that, because I know why you liked it, it shows me a little bit about you, a new little bit of the book, and makes me consider the author in a whole new way.

I hope, should I ever get published, or self-publish, and people email/tweet/comment on here (no hints, or anything) that I get "becauses" whatever people think of the book ("It's shit because you named your main character Lambrini, are you taking the piss?" - yes, yes I did. I love it, I will not change it. And yes, at first, I was taking the piss, but it suits her, they had that tagline 'girls just wanna have fun' which is now 'girls just wanna be unique' and it shortens to Lamb which has connotations of innocence and a need for protection, and I bet you can now tell one theme in my book, just from me breaking down her name. And hopefully, you get why I'm not ever changing it. But I digress), it's just polite. I mean, I replied to Jay Asher's message thanking me for panning his non-book, saying why I loved his work and that my original post was me being generous for loving his other works so much. He didn't reply back so maybe I was a little breathy-fan-girl in my approach (okay, I was totally a breathy-fan-girl. Like when I served one of 5ive at work) but I still like to think he appreciated my opinion on his actual work.

Just ... just respect the amount of effort and alcohol a writer has gone through to write and rewrite and edit and consider things like prophetic phallacy and alternate vocabulary that works in colloquial speech *coughs*chagrin*coughs*Meyer*coughs* and give them something back. Give the other readers something to bounce off.

Reading is not a passive sport. You don't stare at a page like you can stare at a TV screen and still have the action go by, you have to engage. And if you have something to say but can't articulate it? Think for a few minutes before putting something online. The internet doesn't have an opening time, you know?

A couple of songs I love

I keep over playing this one, so I thought I'd share the lyrics. This is New Found Glory's Truth Of My Youth:

There was a time and place,
Where I never thought,
I'd leave my own hometown,
But those days finally,
Are dead and gone,
It was never my intention to stay there,
Oh no,

There was a conscious effort played by me,
To disown anything I see,
There was a girl I knew,
Way back when,
Who says she doesn't know me anymore,
These are the lies the things you never mention,
These are my past mistakes I'll stay away from,

These are my thoughts written down on paper,
It's my only savior,
From not saying what I want to say,
These are the thoughts that are on my mind,
Moments that haven't yet been defined,
And I don't know if you could ever understand,
These are the things I can't say when were alone.

There were countless hours on the telephone,
My ears were ringing from the dial tone,
There were flashing lights,
People staring,
There was nothing I could ever do,
These are the lies the things you never mention,
These are my past mistakes I'll stay away from,

This is the truth,
The only time you'll here it,
I write it down because it seems so hard to say it,

These are my thoughts written down on paper,
It's my only savior,
From not saying what I want to say,
There are my thoughts that are on my mind,
Moments that haven't yet been defined,
And I don't know if you could ever understand,
These are the things I can't say when we're alone.

or if you want to watch:

 

sorry it's only a fan video.

 

The other song I wanted to share was one no one seems to know, but it's got me through a lot of shit. It's Vienna by Billy Joel, but everyone thinks I mean the Ultravox one. The lyrics and video again, yes?

 

 

Slow down, you crazy child
you're so ambitious for a juvenile
But then if you're so smart, tell me
Why are you still so afraid?

Where's the fire, what's the hurry about?
You'd better cool it off before you burn it out
You've got so much to do and
Only so many hours in a day

But you know that when the truth is told..
That you can get what you want or you get old
You're gonna kick off before you even
Get halfway through
When will you realize, Vienna waits for you?

Slow down, you're doing fine
You can't be everything you want to be
Before your time
Although it's so romantic on the borderline tonight
Tonight,...
Too bad but it's the life you lead
you're so ahead of yourself that you forgot what you need
Though you can see when you're wrong, you know
You can't always see when you're right. you're right

You've got your passion, you've got your pride
but don't you know that only fools are satisfied?
Dream on, but don't imagine they'll all come true
When will you realize, Vienna waits for you?

Slow down, you crazy child
and take the phone off the hook and disappear for awhile
it's all right, you can afford to lose a day or two
When will you realize,..Vienna waits for you?
And you know that when the truth is told
that you can get what you want or you can just get old
You're gonna kick off before you even get half through
Why don't you realize,. Vienna waits for you
When will you realize, Vienna waits for you?

 



I'm eclectic at best, I know.

Against the grain

Yeah, three blogs in one day. I really should shut up.

But I'm obviously not, I just want to address a couple of things about my agenda which probably won't flow because Ant and Dec's Saturday night Takeaway is on and it's amazeballs. Plus my son keeps telling me just how rubbish he's doing on Angry Birds on my iPad, bless him. I know what happens when you don't destroy the pigs, but thank you.

Basically, it's about the idea of an Essex person, particularly Essex Girls. I hate how we're meant to be peroxide blonde's with fake tans, fake nails, fake hair, and fake brain cells. I have never seen a white boot stiletto we're meant to be famous for wearing. Most people I walk past wear saggy-bummed jeans, baggy hoodies and their hair (if they're female) being in a high ponytail. So they get the hairstyle right (although, my hair is peroxide, since I wanted to prelighten it to dye it another colour but I have red, raspberry-pink and bright orange to choose from and I am shit at making decisions). We kind of see people who emulate the Essex stereotype as alien beings. Seriously, some girl was in my store all dressed up in Typical Essex Girl Wear a few months ago and the amount of bitching I heard from the crew about the state of this girl was unbelievable.

So yeah, you look like Amy Childs and fast food employees look down on you. I can't believe I've just mentioned TOWIE by proxy, but they're currently responsible for upholding the 'Essex people are pretty and dumb' stereotype so they can do one already, however relevant they are for this blog post.

Do you know who I know from Essex?

-A girl with a Masters in clinical Psychology. I've known her since I was four and she was three. She's my son's Godmother.

-A producer on national television. If you watch This Morning, that girl with the light brown/dark blonde hair was one of my best friends in high school. I made her dance to 5,6,7,8 by steps on the school stage in a talent competition. Strangely, she was the English class genius and I wanted to work in television, we seem to have swapped roles.

-Two girls who are writing their own novels.

-A girl who breeds mini-lop rabbits.

-A lawyer.

-Someone who's grade eight at the Oboe. She played drums in a band at school too.

That's not including my family, who are teachers, doctors, and lawyers as well. That's not including the ten other people I can hold conversations with about books, which no one else can get. Or the girl studying Chemistry at Uni, or the fact when I was getting my bachelors, in one of my study groups of 15, 5 of us were from Essex.

I just really hate that wherever I go, people have this impression that we're uncultured. Seriously, in a twilight topic someone mentioned I was from Essex because she saw it on my profile (good ol' Goodreads again) and she condescended to the fact that she didn't think we knew how to read. I seriously wanted to tell her where to shove it, since Essex has more grammar schools than any other county in England, one of which I attended. Yeah, you read that right, I passed an exam to attend my high school. Actually, three. One of which you can either do, or not, since it's all about logically thinking through word and letter patterns and problems. Speaking of which, I am really into Hanjie and Logic puzzles, which are amazing when you know how to do them (and Hanjie is so pretty once you get the jist of it) ... I really hope, if this blog achieves nothing else, it at least proves that this girl on Goodreads deserves a punch in the face, because Essex people are articulate, and smart, and have oodles of self-confidence. There are more celebrities and lottery winners from Essex than anywhere else in England as well ... I just fucking love Essex. But not for the stereotype.

Jenny Armintrout's an inspiration

I love Jenny Armintrout's blog, which you can find here http://jennytrout.blogspot.co.uk/?zx=47e909f72dd2174 but this post isn't about shameless promotion of a writer whose only book I've read is her freebie book on that blog (on the to read list: all the others she's written).

Instead, I want to talk about something specific she's mentioned, about the publishing world that actually makes my heart sink.

She refers a few times, in various blogs, about the "Sunshine Sisterhood of Writers", and how in the industry as a whole, you have to admire and rate your peers regardless of how good you think they actually are. I also got a friend add on Goodreads from an author because I'd panned someone else, and they admired my balls (she'd been congratulated by this writer on her position on amazon's ebook sellers list, and read this woman's work as a thanks for the congratulations, then couldn't bring herself to talk about the work because it really is that abysmal. But maybe I think that because the book we're discussing here seems to think if you live in Essex you live next to Indian guys. One of my neighbour's is a handicapped woman who keeps chickens and constantly has two or more carers with her, and the other side is a white van man and his family who keep themselves to themselves. Opposite is my old Guide leader's daughter, who also keeps chickens. We're so white middle-class it hurts. Regardless, her view is racist and she might as well have the entire county in the Sugar Hut every night for all she knows of Essex life. But I'm never bitter about the false ideals of my county, or indeed, the circumstances that may arise from living in close proximity to ethnic minorities).

It actually makes me sick. So if I want to enter this world, I have to make nice with people no matter how much I don't believe it? Okay, I'm the girl who's had a mental dilemma about the fact I work in fast food and for years I've had to convince myself about our products in order to even sell the damn things, although this horse meat scandal that's happened recently has nicely put my decision to rest (look, believe what you want to believe about whether the facts being presented to you are the facts, but since the counterbalance is rumour and mockery and not factually based, I have to go with what I'm told. It seriously took me years to make my conscience settle on this, but I did start working at a burger bar when I was borderline vegan, so forgive me a little) but I am all about being honest.

If you're not honest, how can you grow? I don't mean telling someone "you're shit, mate" but constructive criticism is where I'm at. My driving instructor got that if he gave me constructive criticism, I'd drive well. If I did a manoeuvre right and he complimented me, there'd be seconds before I fucked up. I seriously mess up being told I'm good, I would not last long in the sisterhood. It would be more like 'you did really well with that plot device' 'yeah, yeah, I know I'm shit'.

Maybe it's the British sense of self-degradation in me, but I don't think so. I said in another post, I've been on my deathbed before, and coming out of hospital I couldn't remember the word "spoon" or have a conversation for longer than 30 seconds without losing track of what was being said. I have written a novel in the time since, I have earned a promotion at work, I'm the only person in my store to have completed our apprenticeship programme, I've gotten a first class pass in a book-keeping course and passed my driving test. I am full of "I can do anything, I have balls of steel" bravado as a result. But you tell me how well I'm doing and I'll cry because you're lying.

**side bar for hilarity, I mentioned the book-keeping at work, and then a few weeks later, I actually had a conversation with someone where they were talking about other things in people's lives besides burgers and fries and he goes 'and you're studying to be a librarian, right?' like you have to take exams on the Dewey Decimal System the way cab drivers in London do. He meant the book-keeping and thought that's what it was. I agreed, because my mind was blown for a second, and then could not stop laughing. Because balancing accounts helps with shelving books ... still laughing now.**

Anyway, so I think I'd suck in the sisterhood. My presence on goodreads alone (where I've included a review with no stars because I thought the story was crap) would have me booted out before I hit the shelves. Fuck it, seriously, I don't want to sell maybe 50 copies and be told it's so good ... like a few friends have read my writing, and it went on a website temporarily. One friend, and a few people on this site were like 'yeah, it's good, well done' and it's like 'thanks, means a lot, but why?' the reviews I've liked best were:

-my friend Lydia, who told me off for my fragmented sentences. I kinda blame the whole 'slight-brain-damage' thing because that's how I think now, in fragmented sentences, but she was right. It read like "I need to go to the store. I need some eggs. I have a cake to bake." and she said it did her head in, and should be "I need to go to the store because I need some eggs for the cake I'm baking." - same tone, same information, but so much easier to read. We ended up having a long conversation over pizza about stuff like sentence lengths and the application of punctuation to change tone and ... yeah, we're raging geeks (we're so Essex Gel it hurts, right?) - we also talked about her writing and how it's like all these books we keep referring each other to, just so you're aware my punctuation wasn't the only hot topic over my gluten-free BBQ chicken and her foot-long lasagne.

-someone on fanstory who told me what I already know, my tense is all over the place. It's hard though, because I'm writing recent-past tense, so sometimes it goes "I am feeling like this, because this happened." So yes, I mix tenses, but there is a relevance. There are sometimes I mix them when I shouldn't though, so I do need to edit, which I will next time I get a break from work (Tuesday. I live for Tuesdays. I'm meant to have Monday's off too, but I work from 11pm on a Sunday to 8am-ish on a Monday so bollocks to that idea) but she wanted me to change it all to present tense. Fuck that shit, it's recent-past.

Anyway, even though I have had strong reactions to this, you can see that they've caused me to think and emote more so than 'yeah, that's good' although props to my friend Sammie (who got me writing again in the first place after I thought high school killed it, so Sammie's allowed to tell me I'm good and nothing else) because she keeps trying to guess what's going to happen next and she ends up with emails sent at 2.30am when I'm on my break waxing lyrical about the most dickheaded of my characters.

So how, if this is my reaction, could I ever survive being published? Although I wrote a bad review recently and got a response from one of my favourite YA writers, so maybe I could survive.

It wasn't my fault by the way, Goodreads linked a pyschologist's first novel to the YA author because they're both called Jay Asher. I think I was the first person to read and then review this book, and it was terrible, but I thought that I loved 13 reasons why, and the future of us, and Jay wrote in the future of us (and I paraphrase) "if nothing else, you should respect a writer for finishing a book, because writing an entire book takes so much effort" so I thought "damn straight Jay, I'll be really lenient with my review as a result." Then someone commented on my review and said it wasn't his, and he messaged me and said it wasn't his, but thanks for being nice about his actual books in my review, and then he blogged my review as his "favourite bad review" because the bad review isn't even about his writing and I crawled in a hole and died a little. Thanks Jay, parade the one time this year I got it wrong (but I still love you!). If you want to read it and my god-awful grammar, it's http://jayasher.blogspot.co.uk/ oh yeah, us writers are all about this blogger.

I've gone off on a tangent and forgotten how I got here. Sorry, my 1am finish lasted until 3.30 and then I bought microwave pizza, ate it and fucked about on candy crush saga until 5am and didn't wake up again until 1pm. I clearly have no idea what the fuck I'm doing right now but I also have a lot of shit I want to talk about. I also start work at 11pm, so win.

Why do you read it if you don't like it?

So, one of the things I want to do on my blog is address a few issues. This is one that comes up a lot on goodreads, but only on the books I've panned (maybe because on the books I've loved and then entered into discussion on, I actually don't want to be ignorant) and it really annoys me.

People seem to think that it's a waste of time to finish a book you don't enjoy at the beginning. I just can't even begin to articulate how much I find that rude, and ignorant, and just plain disrespectful. There are plenty of reasons to finish a book you do not enjoy at first:

-Because the label bookworm is fairly accurate. Reading is a weird form of addiction whereby once you've invested in reading a book, you have to know how it ends. Maybe the beginning misconstrues the blurb and you read on to find the storyline that caught your eye in the first place. Maybe there are nuances you did not enjoy but there is enough, just, to keep you reading on.

-Because if you do want to discuss books with someone, it's a good idea to know what you're discussing. Maybe you're discussing character development, or plot twists, or characterisation, or use of langauge. This is what I mean by nuances, you can think someone writes beautifully but has nothing to say, and someone else has a magnificent story but no way of communicating it properly.

-The beginning can be misleading. Some authors spend a lot of time on exposition, so that you get about halfway through the book before you get to the storyline. Others have the storyline at the beginning (the biggest crime of most ebooks in my kindle) and you need to read the rest to know how the book will alter and grow. Why is the blurb only focused on the start, or the end of the story? What of books that only contain review comments on the blurb page?

-Something I do, and I'm not the only one, is to take a guess from the first few pages about how things will transpire. Like, right now I'm reading A Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne, and he's waxing lyrical about how rude Pearl is, and I'm playing guess the husband (the stranger Hester reacted to, check one!) and the lover (the priest who doesn't interact with anyone for 90% of his life, but when he does everyone loses it over how wise it is. I haven't got there yet, so can't check that one) and the outcome for Pearl (she's either going to be loved by everyone and everyone'll be like "I can't believe she was a bastard" or else she's going to die. I can't call it yet) and whether Hester will lose her A (At the end?). My point is, even though I read, I think at the same time, so you could write "Cathy went to the shop" and my brain will be going "Cathy's married to Mark isn't she, but she's not happy in her relationship so maybe some drama's going to go down at the shop" at the same time as going "is this the local shop or the one out of the way so Mark can't see?" and also "What shop? Are we brand-naming or coasting over that. Is it going to be relevant?" - I can't just put down a book, I need to know I'm right. I'm like, 95% right all the time (and extremely narcisstic, apparently), how can I just walk away from a book and not finish it?

Actually, I walked away from three books, and they're stuck in my mind, so you know there's something major still going on. The first was Great Expectations, which I read in school at 15. We also started watching the DVD in class, so we'd alternate between the two. I stopped reading when the DVD went past where I'd read to, and Pip lost all his cash (so about 3/4 of the way through, I guess) - all my questions were answered before I got there. I hate reading the book after watching the film. I did watch the recent Douglas Booth version on BBC and loved it, but it's not the same. The second book was The Post-Birthday Party by Lionel Shriver. I love Shriver, We Need To Talk About Kevin is my favourite book ever and she participated in a TV experiment on the effects of MDMA to see if it should be legalised and was just ... I wish I was her. I left the Post-Birthday Party because another book from a series I'd been following came out, and I just never went back. It's on my to-read list, along with about 60 other books. The third and final one, was Gerald's Game by Stephen King. My inner monologue killed the story ("So she's been tied up for about four hours now because night is only just falling and I'm a third of the way through the book yet she's dying of dehydration and her husband that she accidentally killed three hours and fifty minutes ago is already rotting on the floor and somehow a mongrel has smelt the three-hour-old rotting flesh and somehow come into the house and is easily tearing his flesh from the body? This isn't scary, this is stupid, King has no idea about timelines and I hate him." - Gerald's Game is apparently King's weaker novel, but screw it, I won't be reading any more. I know, I know, controversy!) and it's the only book I have never craved to get to the end to. I couldn't even crave the end of the stupid chapter, because it was so monotonous and illogical. I like being logical.

Basically, I think it's an invalid argument, I read a lot of different genres, for different age groups, and my favourite book is about a woman who makes a bet with her husband about having a child who then turns into a mass-murderer. There's no one likeable in it, and the storyline is intense and has a lot of situation-building in the start, but it's loveable. I like other books that no one else seems to, like Lauren Kate's Fallen series. I also like some books in one genre and not others (like, I couldn't get on with Hush Hush, which is basically Fallen. Other people feel the opposite) but if you don't read, and don't stick with a book, how will you know? Tell me I'm not the only one to think like this?

I am a bad blogger

I keep saying I will blog more, that I will review books and use this space to write about my own journey in the world of writing, but I'm obviously terrible at this. Sorry.

There are a few reasons for this. Consider this an introductory post that would be better placed as an info page (maybe in a couple of years) to explain why:

-First, I have a full time job. I work in theory, 45 hours less breaks a week. A break is forty-five minutes, depending on whether I have given other people breaks (the joy of middle management in shift work), and a shift is nine hours depending on whether I actually get out on time (clue: I don't). Like, tonight I'm meant to be working a 4pm - 1am shift, but I have to be there at 3.40pm at the latest and will probably be there until 2.30am. So I don't get a lot of time past work.

-Second, I'm a full time parent, shiftwork dependent. When I'm off, and he's not at school, I am in charge. Hard to blog when you're a mother to a very active and imaginative five year old boy. I spend a lot of time removing him from jumping off furniture/telling him he can't swing his toy swords about so close to the TV/ornaments.

-Third, as I said, I'm a writer, I like to write in my free time, as rare as that is. Blogging is such a great exercise in writing but if I have a scene in my head, that's going to take precedence.

-Fourth ... not meaning to whinge, or start a pity party, but a few years ago, I got pretty sick. Like, on my deathbed, having intense treatment at the hospital sick. I'm like, eighty percent okay now, but there are things that it does affect still. I can sleep like crazy, and feel tired if I get less than eight hours. I can wake up after that and feel more tired than when I went to bed. I also have a few memory/attention problems, so feel free to call me out if I start to talk about something, go off on a tangent and forget what I was writing about. Even reading through will not help me notice it, which I know is shocking, but for me blogging and writing are two different formats (like a letter to your mum and your bank manager will be different in grammar use, format, length, formality etc) and I also can't leave a blog post two months for editing before posting. That's a little ridiculous. The other things it affects come through when I speak, so hopefully you won't notice so much.

So I will blog when I can, but since I think these are four valid reasons, I can be forgiven for however infrequent I post. But since I have no readers, I think I'm safe from being persecuted.

Until next time, whenever that is!