Whenever I’ve fantasized about writing, the fantasy has been that people read it. Agent lunches would be a bother, foreign tours would take me from my daughter, prizes are rigged, you don’t make six figures if your parents didn’t, and I can already meet movie stars. But to have a voice 🥺
All I have wanted in my life has been basic human dignity, in a culture that guards it like a scarce resource.
While some in that culture try to take away our dignity.
Even the dignity we get is shaped oddly. Lying on a hospital bed describing septic miscarriage symptoms, I asked to be tested for contagions. The nurse understood when I explained that I’m doubly vulnerable as an intersex woman. She shared my fear of this regime and kept discretion.
There aren't enough medical professionals with compassion for patients. Hospitals dictate a lot of that. They force a family to get a court order to either save a life or allow a life to end in a dignified manner. Insurance companies are worse than that. They're the true death panels.
Well, by official orthodoxy, I don’t exist. By my heterodox first person experience, I have both fathered children and had a miscarriage. It’s amazing what we can learn about our species when parents flee cross country from an attempt at unwanted surgical intervention. Imagine if they stopped.
My thoughts exactly. (Although six figures does happen more than you think.) And how many writers go on “foreign tours?” What is that?
It used to happen a lot more before Brexit than it does now…
I'm the same way; I fantasize about being heard, about reaching people to feel mutually understood and not so alone I mostly write children's fantasy, though, when I do. I miss back in the day when kids weren't so bubble wrapped against "negative" emotions lol