If you happen to be curious: THIS for the record, is PRIDE

If you haven’t had a chance to adopt your new Queer Queen, this is your chance. Lzzy Hale of Halestorm, who penned what, in my not so humble opinion, SHOULD be the anthem that all Pride Festivals are singing. I’ve been trying for weeks to pen a commentary of the song that offers her the respect she is due, but after attending the show tonight, after seeing Halestorm perform it, I realized that as in all things, Mz Hale speaks only for herself.

So, in honor of Pride, of the bullshit and the crazy, I give you what it really boils down to:

“New Modern Love”
I’ve got a forbidden love

I’m not giving it up
Not giving it up
I’ve got a new modern love
I’m not giving it up
Not giving it up

I won’t pretend that I don’t feel
The way I feel
I can’t forget the taste of something hat’s real
Step into my closet and maybe you’ll find
Something that’ll scare you
Something that you like
Your old familiar logic is poison on your lips
It’s nothing in the water
That’s just the way it is

[Chorus:]
I’ve got a forbidden love
I’m not giving it up
Not giving it up
I’ve got an uncommon love
I’m not giving it up
Not giving it up
I don’t care if you don’t want it
‘Cause I, I got it
I don’t care if you don’t get it
‘Cause I, I still want it
I’ve got a new modern love
I’m not giving it up
Not giving it up, no

You can’t rewire these circuits any other way
Yeah, you can twist the signal
The message is the same
Step out of your bubble and
Maybe you will find
Something that’ll save you
Something that you like
Your old familiar logic is poison on your lips
There’s nothing in the water
That’s just the way it is

[Chorus]

Step into my closet and maybe you will find
Something that’ll scare you
Something that you like
There’s something that you like
There’s something that you like

I don’t care if you don’t want it
‘Cause I, I got it
I don’t care if you don’t get it
‘Cause I, I still want it
I’ve got a new modern love
I’m not giving it up
Not giving it up, no

Not giving it up
Not giving it up, no
I’m not giving it up
Not giving it up, no

Thank you, Lzzy. Thank you.

New Modern Love can be found on Halestorm’s most recent release, Into the Wildlife.

On Writer Insecurities …

There comes a point for me, usually between the second and third draft (which is realistically where I am in this novel) where every insecurity I have as a writer emerges.

It always starts with a small nibble at the back of my mind. You suck, it says to me. And, like when my cat wants my dinner, I push it away. But see, just like when my cat wants my dinner, there are claws involved. The claws dig in, scratching, poking, and finally I have no choice but to acknowledge the sucking.

I dare to suck! I scream back at the nibble.

No one cares the nibble responds.

In that moment, the nibble outgrows the metaphor. It becomes a wave inside my head, inching ever closer toward high tide. I analyze eveything from the color of a character’s hair to the direction of the story to whether or not what I’m doing makes any sense. I pour endless time into character journals and scenarios that will never happen, all in the name of development. Side characters get tons of attention. Side characters to the side characters get developed. All because I am wallowing in the biggest worry of all:

What if no one reads this?

Every writer will say: I write for myself!

We do! We really do! But you know what, when no one reads what we’ve written, that eats away at us. So, there comes a point when my little insecurity bug bites and I scratch and scratch and scratch until I’m bleeding.

As a queer writer of queer characters, I find myself even more worried about that whole “what if no one reads it.” I live in a world where the bisexual community is still misunderstood and erased and while I hope to only be telling a story that is authentic … what if no one actually cares about being authentic in the story? What if the gaystream (and mainstream) media win the day?

What if the stories I am trying so hard to tell just don’t matter?

Truth be told, the only way out of this is to write. To just keep writing. To write and write and write and write and write and hope that  in the end, the insecurity road has given me a better draft than the one I started with. But until the writing really begins in earnest, all there is to really do is to keep itching and scratching out ideas and hope that in the end, they all make sense.

But sometimes, one also needs to just vent. Just a little bit.