Tuesday, December 18, 2012

Posting, Posting.

I have tried over and over to start a new blog post on here the past few days. I don't know what the issue is, why my brain won't let me work all the way through something. But I have a pile of half-finished drafts, none of which seems to have any real point.

Maybe it's the end of 2012 looming, and my mind is scrambling to make sense of all that's happened this year. Inventory and evaluate and figure out where to go next. (Maybe, if you want to get all Mayan, it's the end of the world looming... :P.)

So, since I haven't been able to finish them, I'm just going to round up the beginnings of thoughts. Maybe something will strike you:

I've read numerous blog posts about "Christian" being a genre for fiction. It's not. It's a demographic, a type of person, not a type of book. Christianity is a belief system and Christian-ness is a trait. We've segregated books based on this demographic. We've argued about the whys and hows and the should-it-be-sos? Guess what--Christians are not the only demographic doing it. LGBT authors/publishers are following the same path. YA books are set aside as a separate genre, when YA is really a demographic, too. I am not sure how I feel about any of that. It's both good and bad.

I have been dealing a lot with jealousy lately. Seeing other YA authors hitting the NYT bestseller list with first novels. Yes, yes I know that not the normal path. That those are the select few. That I need to get more books out to really get noticed. I am working on that. I am. And I'm not going to whine. I'm just being honest.

The Connecticut shooting. I've kept quiet on that, except for one comment on the idiots from Westboro planning on picketing the funerals. But it doesn't mean I don't care about those kids. I do, very much. And I pray for their families. I'm just not one who posts about stuff like that generally. I'm also rather sick of all the gun control ranting on Facebook. I have my stance on that, too.

Beastie 1 getting lessons from Dad. That includes safety lessons, btw.

Sandy Hook has also seemed to generate a lot of posting about mental illness, over-diagnosis and mis-diagnosis of things such as ADHD, and boys in general not fitting into the current school structure. I happen to believe our culture is screwing up our kids with school policies--teaching to the test, making kids move forward without learning the basics, introducing complex and abstract concepts too early, trying to make all kids learn the same way. I could write so much about this. I homeschool in part because I know my son would have been diagnosed with ADHD if I'd had him in school--but I'm telling you now the only time he acts ADHD is when he's fed artificial colors. Make THAT fly in a public school. I think too many parents WANT their kids labeled with such-n-such syndrome so they can release themselves of responsibility. And it demeans the moms who are dealing with kids who actually HAVE those disorders, which are, yes, real.

Maybe I will start a post series about living with a child with NBS..."Normal Boy Syndrome."

OK, I guess that's enough. My normal boy has some science to get done. My normal girl has piano to practice. And I have another blog post to start working out--a post about a book I read recently that really got me thinking....

3 comments:

Kessie said...

It's Top Ten season right now, so you could do some kind of Top Ten list of books or whatever. I'm currently working on "books I read this year that didn't suck". A lot of them did. Thank you, free ebooks!

I like all of your thoughts. They all sound like good blogposts, but then, sometimes you just run out of things to say. I have a whole bunch of half-finished posts. I just leave them in Drafts and tinker with them as the mood strikes. Sometimes I have to be PMSy to attack certain topics.

Sparks of Ember said...

I like the "genre" Christian, except for one, people might actively avoid it who might have gotten something out of it - but at the same time, if it's heavily Christian and they buy expecting secular, they can get pretty mad. But truthfully, I only pay attention when it's romantic fiction as I know the Christian books won't have all the sex (& YA books are generally toned down, if they have it at all).

I haven't seen much gun control ranting on my FB but I think that's cause most of my friends are all of the same opinion. The topic on the news has me concerned, though. Hubby just got his concealed permits a couple months ago. I'm thinking maybe I should get some lessons, too.

Kat Heckenbach said...

Yes, Kessie--I think it's a case of me just not having enough to say to support a post. Or my thoughts can be summed up in a short paragraph. And I might just do that top ten list.

LadySaotome, I think the label can be very important, for the exact reason you mention, but I don't consider it "genre". Semantics, maybe, but it's something that's been rattling around my head :).