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Woman looking at what it means to be diverse.

Diversity to the point of exclusion?

They say that dreams are the subconscious’s way of speaking to the conscious. It’s our way of trying to nut out things that have been plaguing our minds.

I must have a lot of things plaguing my thoughts, because I actually recall many of the dreams that I have. Many of my story ideas have started as dreams. Over the years, I’ve developed ways to cling to those last images that hit me during the moments between REM sleep and waking. When I sit at the keyboard, I start writing and let the story develop.

However, when I sat down to write the other morning, it wasn’t the dream itself that I wanted to write, but rather a commentary on the dream’s subject matter. That commentary is this blog post.

My dream was about a woman who wanted to write diverse stories, complete with the erotic scenes, but was constantly persecuted for doing so. In her everyday life, she was forced to write many of her stories in secret, with her friends pounding on the door, demanding that she show them the latest works. But the moment she showed them, out came the judgments and the hatred. So, she was forced to hide what she truly wanted the world to see. It was sad, because her stories were filled with beauty and romance, and a world that was accepting of all—yet, that was not her real life.

I guess you can say that it was a nightmare within a dream, and in many ways, my subconscious was telling me to stop worrying about what might be the world reception to my stories and just share the buggers. Get my writing out there. But there is an underlying fear that goes deep into my psyche.

As I traversed the path from my bedroom to my computer, I knew exactly what had sparked that dream. And I knew that I had to speak up about how things have gotten so out of control on the public stage—terrifying as that thought might be.

There is a genuine fear that hangs over my head about being persecuted for the stories that I write. The world says that it wants diverse stories with diverse characters, but there are those who will publicly attack a writer for even attempting such a thing. At the same time, there are those who will go for the throat when a writer tries to stay under the radar, sticking to stories that rest in the comfort zone.

Yet, those of us who want to speak up about this duplicitous discrimination genuinely feel that we can’t say anything at all—for fear of being lynched.

The fear is real, and by making my fear publicly known, I open myself up to attack. But I’m doing it anyway, because if I don’t, my dream from the other night—the one where a female writer wrote her diverse stories in secret and never shared them with the world for fear of being persecuted for doing so—will reoccur again and again. I know how my brain works. My subconscious wants me to understand that I, as a writer, should feel confident to write whatever I want to write without the fear of attack—and other writers should feel that too.

I do need to apologize to my readers in advance. This post is long, but it needed to be said.

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Focusing on What I Can Control

Every year, at this time of the year, I sit down and examine my journey into the publishing industry. I look at the little goals that I had set for myself and how I progressed towards those goal. When I do this, it’s about reminding myself of what I have achieved, and not focusing on what I haven’t achieved.

It’s about celebrating the little wins, and sometimes, it’s about reminding myself of the things that are out of my control.

There are external factors involved at every step along my personal publication journey. I’m getting better at identifying what those external factors are and shaping my goals, so that when I do these annual reviews, I’m able to be proud of my accomplishments.

Last year, I had set six objectives. One, in particular, was fully out of my control, 100% reliant on others. The other five… Well, I need to learn to get a little bit more specific in my goal setting

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Two Birds, a Car and a Hippie

It might sound like that start of a really bad joke, and in some respects, what I’m about to tell you has its hilarious moments, but there are also moments when I question the sanity of some people—including my own sanity.

The past week has been filled with NaNoWriMo writing, complicated with near misses with not one, but two birds, and an interesting tirade from someone who clearly doesn’t understand my sarcasm.

Where does one even begin?

Well, I guess it all started last week on Monday morning.

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We Let Them In: Is Privacy Dead?

Protecting oneself on the internet is something that I’m highly passionate about. There are so many ways to get into big trouble within our online interactions that I’ve made it a personal mission to understand the true nature of the dangers out there.

This is the world that my children are growing up in. They have never known a life when the internet didn’t exist. Social media in its various forms has become a massive part of the way they’re expected to interact with the world at large, and it’s my job, as their mother, to ensure that they know how to navigate this internet-based world safely.

With the increase in internet dependency within our daily lives, there are certain questions that have started to leak to the surface of my consciousness. Almost everything that we do is now online, with very few exceptions.

Yes, this shift to an internet-based society has, for the most part, made our lives easier, but has it really made it safer?

How has this push to doing everything online affected our sense of privacy and security?

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We Let Strangers In: Internet Bullies

Have you ever been in a situation where you have given your opinion on something based on your knowledge and expertise only to be shot down by one ignorant fool? Have you ever had that experience on social media? And have you ever found that when you chose to ignore the ignorant fool on social media that they kept coming after you—attacking your character? And, to top off the whole experience, did you need a friend to step in and handle it, for fear that you would just explode on public channels?

I would be surprised if I encountered anyone savvy with the social media world who hasn’t experience the troll attack at least once. It seems like a rite of passage to the internet world. For the most part, we’re able to ignore the trolls, because they’re after some strange definition of self-gratification, enjoying taking everyone else down into the dark hole of hell. But what if the troll is actually a stranger that we have openly let into our lives, influencing us?

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Why the Sunrise?

I’ve been taken sunrise photos for a long time now. I’m up so early (naturally and by choice), often getting so many things done. I deliberately take the time to watch the sunrise, and I capture it on in digital pixels with my DSLR. It’s my routine, and it works for me.

I have recently uploaded my September 2019 collection of sunrise photos, but it was so hard to chose a favorite. It was hard to decide on my latest fuel.

Some time ago, at a meetup with some of my writing buddies, one of them asked me a simple, but complicated, question: Why the sunrise? She was asking how I was able to actually be up so early in the mornings.

With the sunrise between 5 and 6 am in the summer, it’s actually easy to understand how she struggles to fathom the hour that I get up. Yet, my answer to her question was just as simple, and complicated, as her question: It’s just part of who I am.

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