Author: marylowd

Well, I’ve now watched all of Veronica Mars. I have extremely mixed feelings about that show. There is a lot of misogyny baked into it… but Kristen Bell is awesome and elevates the central character even when the show consistently punishes and isolates her.‬

There are two big ways to express misogyny — one is to actually express the underlying contempt for women that runs through so much of society. The other is to simply leave women out. Continue reading “Thoughts on Misogyny Inspired by Veronica Mars”

Sometimes looking for more words in my brain feels like trying to scoop the goop out of the bottom of a pumpkin with an iced tea spoon.

That feeling when you have some coffee, but it’s too bitter, so you pour some hazelnut syrup into it… but it pours too fast, and now the coffee is far, far too sweet, and at no point was it actually drinkable, and you remember that, really, you just don’t drink coffee.

I’ve found it really useful in my writing to just get in the habit of doing the thought experiment of gender-flipping basically every character before settling for sure on their gender. I just ask myself with every character: would the story be different if I gender-flipped this character? How? Would it still work? What would need changing? And then, finally, which way is more interesting? Continue reading “Gender-Flip Exercise”

The six-year-old, singing quietly to himself, “Hey, hey, we’re the Monkees. And we’re too busy singing to put anybody down.”‬

‪A slight pause, followed by the six-year-old interrupting his own song with the observation, “They are pretty busy singing. That’s true.”‬

Sometimes my brain constructs new versions of Scream while I’m asleep. Technically, this is nightmares — a masked serial killer tries to murder me. But I like the Scream franchise and didn’t mind.‬

‪Until my brain started including my kids.‬

‪There’s a reason there are no small children in Scream. ‬

That feeling when you’re listening to rare music by an artist you like, and you keep turning it one notch up and then one notch down, trying to find a magical volume level at which it’s actually good… and yeah, that’s probably why it’s rare…‬

Wow, my teeth-crumble-in-my-mouth nightmares have gotten stubborn.‬

‪Generally, if my teeth crumble, I know it’s a dream, so it’s over soon. In the latest though, I kept explaining how I must be dreaming all the way through a hospital trip.‬ Continue reading “Crumbling Teeth”

That feeling when you’re trying to pace yourself on a long project but also push yourself to write as fast as you can, and you can’t seem to agree with yourself on a leadership style for dealing with yourself.‬