Here's What's Going on in my Head

Still trying to get comfortable in my skin, exposing myself with blogging. Not quite pulling one's shirt open, which one should never do in polite company. But as a writer, one performs actions that are the equivalent of, well, opening up one's ribcage to show off the inner workings. Exposing yourself. Here I am, and here's what's going on inside me. In my head. In my heart.

It's more than a little frightening. Actually, exposing myself via my stories doesn't scare me. Much. I wanted to be a writer when I was younger, much younger, and after abandoning it, I've come back, and it's like slipping into an old, broken-in pair of comfie jeans. Oh, hello, yes, I remember how well you fit now and I was daft to leave you behind.

But this blogging is another thing entirely. I'm not protected by the thin scrim of fiction, by fantastic settings, nor do I have interesting characters and thrilling circumstances as a buffer betwixt me and the rest of the world. My life is boring. I don't DO anything of interest, which I think is the reason why I have been Twitter-resistant. I mean, who wants to hear about me waking up and waxing rhapsodic over my coffee? Hell, I do that every morning and I don't want to hear it. Nor, I think, does anyone want to hear about whether I'm having a ham sandwich or a turkey sandwich for lunch. My sandwiches are quite boring as well. Lunchmeat on whole wheat bread, with mayo and lettuce, for those who are curious about the jejeune details.

But blogging -- that's considerably more than 140 characters. What the ruddy hell do I write about? "I wrote about 3,000 words today, and revised a chapter of my novel; what the hell was I thinking when I wrote it?"

Now that I'm through whinging about blog content, here's some actual content, and I guess it's indicative of what I'm afraid of: I'm working on a story that bears the working title "Twelfth". During the writing, something came up, figuratively as well as in-the-story-literally. Does that make sense? In the narrative, something came bubbling up, so I suppose that makes it in-the-story-literal. It's a pretty icky thing to write or even say, and I almost hesitated in its inclusion, but I really have to stay true to the story, to the character in question . . . and anyway, I really hate dead baby jokes. (No, that's not a non-sequitur; it relates.) But anyway, when I write things like that, I wonder if I need to put disclaimers all over my writing, like "Really Awful Stuff Happens! Do not read if you're sensitive!" But I think I'm sensitive, and I rather like reading awful stuff happening. Sort of. But that's the worry that's been percolating in the back of my brains.

Oh, goodness, I'm probably going to have to figure out what to do about hate mail. I've still got time, right?