Mom moment, plus meme

[resonant]

Yesterday the kidlet was sitting beside me on the couch, and for some reason decided to read one of our health books. Which is how I was forced -- suddenly and without warning -- to explain to an almost-six-year-old an illustration of proper condom use. Man, these things just come out of nowhere.

So since I'm in a tell-all mood now, ask me a question. Any question. About any of my stories, or what color my cat's paw pads are, or what's the grossest thing that ever came out my nose, or anything. I'll either answer or refuse rudely.

Comments

[byandby.livejournal.com]

ROFL.

Did the kidlet understand?

[resonant8.livejournal.com]

I think she did. Because of the style of the illustration, she mistook the body for a woman's, and then made sense of the condom by saying it was a glove.

When I said, "That's a picture of someone putting a condom on a man's penis. A condom is a device that prevents pregnancy," her eyes got really big and she said, "You mean men can get pregnant?!"

[glitterdemon.livejournal.com]

i think that's quite possibly the cutest thing ever.

[sinick.livejournal.com]

A future MPREG slasher in the making, I see. :)

[byandby.livejournal.com]

I'm still laughing. That is so funny. It's always interesting to get a child's perspective on things. I think that I'm going to have to agree with Sinick - a future MPREG slasher. :D

[resonant8.livejournal.com]

Maybe so -- because she actually looked as if it made her happy to think that men could get pregnant.

Of course, it could just be because, having failed in her efforts to get me to gestate a baby sister for her, she was planning to start working on her dad for one.

When I explained things further, she said, "So this is if they don't want a baby?" and I said yes, and she said, "But when you had me, you wanted a baby, right?" thus bringing it back around to the areas that are of interest to kidlets ...

[kelliem.livejournal.com]

Heh, that reminds me of the time my daughter was about 10 or 11 and asked how two guys have sex. She understood how M/F worked but not M/M. So I explained some of the ways, carefully, and needless to say got a resounding "Ewwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww!" in response. Of course, she has since gone on to be into Yaoi and slash... guess it's genetic. :)

[resonant8.livejournal.com]

Wow -- it speaks well of your relationship with her that she felt comfortable asking that.

I'm trying to imagine asking my mother about something like that, and -- lord, no. First of all, we'd both have died of embarrassment, and second, I would have been quite sure that she wouldn't know the answer.

(And, unlike me, she didn't have any reference books around to explain things like that ...)

[kelliem.livejournal.com]

I've always felt very pleased that she can come and ask me any question she wants an answer to and be assured I'm not going to flip my lid. Well, I might flip my lid if she asked me how to become a fundamentalist right-wing homophobe but other than that... ;-D

[resonant8.livejournal.com]

"Mom? Evolution is just some crackpot materialist-ideological theory, right?"

[kelliem.livejournal.com]

I think that would call for deprogramming. :-)

[wordwitch.livejournal.com]

Yeah, my 12-year-old recently asked that. We have an agreement: she doesn't ask me anything she reeeeally doesn't want to know the answer to, and I try to use sufficiently oblique language not to gross her out big-time while still giving her the information.

What's funny there is that she asks me and not Margot. I had to sit her down and explain exactly what kinds of experience we each had had before meeting up and becoming way monogamous and domestic. So that she knows that we know just about anything she might encounter.

Well. Except for dealing with attention from all the boys in class. "Popular" was never a word applied to either of us.

*sigh* The trust she has in me really shows the difference between adopted-in-infancy and adopted-at-five, which is where my other two are. Not that they're unwilling to ask me embarrassing questions. And I am getting "Mom"s recently, once in a while. After four years.

[resonant8.livejournal.com]

Aww. That's sweet, though.

Ah the joy of mom hood.

[wolfdancer.livejournal.com]

I some times wish I had kids. But you never have to explane things like this to your dog.
Just have them spaded.

[resonant8.livejournal.com]

[snickering at the idea of explaining sexuality to dogs.]

On the other hand, you generally don't have to prevent kids from humping the legs of visitors.

[fabularasa.livejournal.com]

Speak for yourself.

[resonant8.livejournal.com]

Oh, dear. I see there are parts of the Joy of Parenthood that I have been spared missed out on.

We do have to have a house rule that says, "It's impolite to take your clothes off when we have guests, or when we're anywhere other than home." Somehow I thought the public nudity phase and the first-bra phase would not be happening at the same time.

[bluerose16.livejournal.com]

Hmn ... question? Well, alright.

Tell me all about the kidlet. The story you just told was hilarious, and I'm sure there must be other funny kidlet stories. ^^ So, I'm asking you to recount on, if you can. If you can't think of anything, though, just tell me: bath salts or bubbles?

[resonant8.livejournal.com]

bath salts or bubbles?

Shower gel. Hate baths. [shudder]

Tell me all about the kidlet.

Whoa. Carte blanche! You may regret giving a parent this opportunity ... because of course I believe that the kidlet is wholly remarkable and uniquely fabulous.

My favorite kidlet story is from when she was about 2 -- talking in complete sentences, but barely -- and we took her into the church sanctuary for the first time. It's a big, high-ceilinged modern cathedral-type place, and it was mostly empty, but some sound was still coming in through the open doors.

She cocked her head to one side and said, "It is something yike."

I said, "Something like what?"

She said, "Something yike a chime. Something yike a yight that is burned out."

She was describing the echoes.

(I told this story on a discussion board, and I said, "I don't think she was being intentionally poetic; I think she was just trying to describe something that was outside the range of her vocabulary." And another poster said, "That's what poetry is.")

I might also add that yesterday she brought home from kindergarten probably the world's only picture of a ballet-dancing shark.

something yike a chime

[goat-song.livejournal.com]

buh.

*stricken*

[bluerose16.livejournal.com]

^_________________________^

I'm sorry, that's so, so adorable. I used to say my 'l's as 'r's, also. And - just - cute.

A ballet-dancing shark, eh? That's wonderful.

How on earth could anyone hate baths?

[resonant8.livejournal.com]

I don't get how anybody can like baths. Half of you above water level and freezing, the other half marinating in your own shed skin cells. Yurgh.

[bluerose16.livejournal.com]

^_____^

I suppose if you think about it that way. It's closer to swimming for me, and anything that even resembles swimming is A Good Thing.

[myalexandria.livejournal.com]

"trying to describe something outside the range of her vocabulary" is also what theology is, thus making it a particularly appropriate reaction in church :)

[resonant8.livejournal.com]

So true! That's actually one reason why I often have trouble with "Bible study" and the like aimed at children, whereas I would have no problem at all with a kids' book of, say, the Psalms or the Beatitudes: Some things you can really only get at with poetry, and trying to explain it in prose leaves out all the important stuff and creates a false sense of certainty, of a thing that can be understood.

[myalexandria.livejournal.com]

yeah, I think the most important thing to remember about the religious language we want to call "true" is that it's both true and not Truth -- it is a real description, but it's always true in a certain sense or in a certain way, not exhaustive. I've also heard theology described as the attempt to explain experience -- so, for example, to put it very broadly, the Nicene Creed is just the codified end point of four hundred years of monotheistic people experiencing Christ and the Holy Spirit as divine. Trinitarian theology is *true* in the sense that it describes a true human experience of a God who is one, yet internally relational, and it's true in the sense that we experience that relationality in three ways and on three levels, and it's ok to describe that sensation in the concrete language of Father/Son/Holy Spirit, one essence/three hypostases -- but it's dangerous to think that the particular concrete language you wind up using to describe the truth is completely identical to the truth itself. The best early trinitarian theologians knew this -- Augustine and the Cappadocians were quite explicit about it -- but it's apparently a hard idea to get across. People aren't very comfortable with the ambiguity of true-not truth.

Christianity and children is a very hard question. I doubt it's possible to understand sin and repentance before adolescence, much less discipleship, agape, universal redemption, and the kingdom of God. And crucifixion seems like kind of a traumatic bedtime story. On the other hand, if I had kids I'd want to prepare the ground for them to potentially grow an adult faith, and that means bringing them into the profoundly imperfect church community and at least floating all these words and ideas so that they don't seem completely alien at the age at which you might be ready to start understanding them.....

[julia-fractal.livejournal.com]

Go you for giving an honest and straightforward answer to your daughter! When I was 8 or so, my cousin and I kept accidentally popping our balloons while playing with them, so my mom gave us some wonderfully strong ones with a funny little tip at the top. I didn't realize that they were inflated condoms until junior high sex ed. So at least neither you nor your daughter will go through a similar incident...

Writing Questions:
1)What are you working on now? Are you writing another romance novel, original erotica, or taking a break?

2)How do you work out the plot? How do you decide what happens, and then come up with the scenes to illustrate it? I remember you saying that this was something you used to have difficulty with, but obviously not anymore. Specifically, how did you work out the plots for "Transfigurations" and "Teeth of the Hydra"?

Thanks a lot for indulging my curiosity. Have a great evening!

[resonant8.livejournal.com]

so my mom gave us some wonderfully strong ones with a funny little tip at the top.

[laughing] What possessed her?! Wonder if she was taking photos.

I don't remember ever encountering the concept of birth control until I myself was almost old enough to have sex. It was trauma enough to get my mother to explain tampons.

Nice questions, too.

What are you working on now?

Actually in progress:

1. Another romance novel.
2. A fairy tale for the 8-12 range.
3. Lots of sundry SF and fantasy short stories.

In the planning/research stages:

1. A historical ghost novel. (May God have mercy on my soul; my knowledge of history is so weak ...)
2. A fantasy novel set in San Francisco.
3. A SF novel involving opera.
4. A romantic comedy on the wacky-Southern-magic-realism family tree.

How do you work out the plot? How do you decide what happens, and then come up with the scenes to illustrate it? I remember you saying that this was something you used to have difficulty with, but obviously not anymore. Specifically, how did you work out the plots for "Transfigurations" and "Teeth of the Hydra"?

Oh, god, yes, it is still something I have difficulty with.

My usual method of writing is to start in the middle (usually at the point where the sexual tension starts to coalesce), follow whatever conflict I've set up out to its logical conclusion, then go back to the start and write my way back to the middle again.

This suffices perfectly well for short stories, but it doesn't work very well for novels because I can't keep an entire novel in my head at one time. (Well, not yet. I'm beginning to see the vague outlines of it now; maybe with practice I'll be able to do it.)

For "Hydra," I quickly figured out that I was going to need both a contemporary plot (covering a couple of weeks) and a historical plot (covering Ray from puberty to right before the contemporary plot begins). I wrote the contemp plot by the method above. Then I wrote all the historical scenes I could think of (all revolving around Ray's awareness of his sexuality). Then I printed the whole thing out and laid it out on my living room floor in two long rows, contemp on one side and historical on the other side, and rearranged the pages until the correspondences looked reasonably good.

For "Transfig," oh, lord, the process was such a mess. If I thought every novel was going to be that difficult, I'd never try another one. I honestly thought I was writing a 40K short story. I wrote nearly an entire draft of this 40K short story, and there was something wrong with it, and I didn't know what, and I threw myself on Julad's mercy, and she said, "You're missing this, and this, and this, and this," and I said, "Damn it, this wants to cover a whole year, doesn't it?"

So then I wrote a synopsis of the entire backstory (all the stuff that happened between Book 5 and the beginning of the story), and then I had lots and lots of chat sessions where everybody I knew helped me out with deciding what needed to happen next. And then I'd write some, and Julad would say, "You're making it too easy for them," so I'd write some more, and she'd say, "Better, but on this next step you're still making it too easy for them," and so on.

I probably wrote the entire thing about four times, and each time it got longer and more complicated and ...

So when the time came to write the first romance novel, I outlined really heavily -- but unfortunately there was a lot I didn't know about romance novels, so I didn't outline right; my outline didn't cover what it needed to in terms of making the standard relationship transitions happen in the right way so that one leads logically to another and they all flow logically from the emotional problems I've set up for the heroine.

Which is why I just re-outlined the second romance novel on my beloved little pile of lime-green post-it notes, and now that web of emotional conflicts and interpersonal conflicts and life conflicts actually seems to be coming together the way it should, with everything properly interdependent.

I'm tempted to write to my former English teacher and tell her that I've become a much bigger believer in outlines since I became a pornographer.

[julia-fractal.livejournal.com]

Best of luck with publishing your stories and finishing your WIPs! I'd certainly run out and buy anything you wrote.

Thank you very much for your fascinating and detailed answers! This is the first time I've heard of someone starting a story from the middle. I usually figure out the ending/climax first, along with disjointed pieces here and there, and have a hell of a time putting it all together.

Yay for outlines! I think your English teacher should be proud of you.

so my mom gave us some wonderfully strong ones with a funny little tip at the top.

[laughing] What possessed her?! Wonder if she was taking photos.
No, my mom wasn't aiming for a Kodak moment with the condom balloons. I think she was just being pragmatic and wanted to keep us occupied. She was right in assuming that I wouldn't know what they were, but severely underestimated my memory span :)

Thanks again for your answers and for replying to my other comments. Happy (American) Thanksgiving!

[winstonmom.livejournal.com]

Where do you get all of the *details* for the sex scenes? Do you have a consultant (hehehe).

[resonant8.livejournal.com]

Huh. Interesting question.

First of all, I'm older than a lot of slashers (I'm 40), so I've got 22 years' worth of sex to draw on. I mean, granted, that's almost all with the same person, so I'm sure there's a lot I don't know about how one person varies from another in bed, but still, it's a lot of various personal experiences to remember.

(Some of this is just small, trivial stuff -- I used to wear my hair long, so when I put Harry and Hermione in a certain position in "Bed and Board," I could immediately see that her hair would be in his face unless he did something about it. I find that if I pay close attention to the physical logistics of the scene, it will recall physical sensations to me -- that's what it feels like when the mattress dips because someone has put all their weight on their knee right next to your hip, the drawback of this position is that you really can't move your hips up and down, only side to side ...)

I don't have a consultant, but my betas will catch me if I stop paying attention and start letting the words write themselves, which is how you get trite and predictable sex scenes.

Somebody wrote me after "Bed and Board" and said, "I've actually tried this two-guys-and-a-girl thing, and you got the blocking just right," which made me insanely proud, since unfortunately I myself have never had the chance to try it.

I will confess (don't tell the spouse) that I take mental notes even while actually having sex, and have been known to get up afterwards and jot down something I don't want to forget.

[ineke.livejournal.com]

Your kidlet is just too cute. I think it's also partially the nickname 'kidlet'... you know, anything mini-sized is adorable *g*. Kids... whatever. Kidlets: eeee!

How's your original romance going? Are you still trying to shop it around to publishers, or have you given up on it? (Which would be a mighty pity-- I mean, I haven't read a Silhouette in perhaps 10 years, but by golly, I'd read yours *g*)

[resonant8.livejournal.com]

Thanks! We think she's perfect. (She's about to make the transition from kidlet to kid, though; we can see it coming.)

I'm not doing anything with the first romance at the moment because I would hate its guts if it had any.

One problem I have with it is that it's so short. I wrote it especially for Silhouette Desire, which wants a word count of 55,000-60,000, and they didn't want it -- but there's not much market for something that short that's actually explicit. It's too short for the spicy lines and too spicy for the short ones.

Eventually when I have some distance on it, I may either rewrite to add some actual conflict to it, or cut it down to a short story, but right now I'm leaving it alone so as to avoid the temptation to set it on fire.

But I am writing another one, along with all the other things I'm writing (see above. (http://www.livejournal.com/users/resonant8/73406.html?thread=1131454#t1131454)

[skuf.livejournal.com]

Ack, I tried to think of a really interesting question, but I'm going to be boring and ask what I really want to know:

Are you going to write another long HP slash fic in the foreseeable future?

[resonant8.livejournal.com]

Long as in Transfigurations? Unlikely. I didn't even intend to write a long story then.

Long as in a normal short story, rather than a smutlet? Yes. I've got an aphrodisiac-potion-goes-astray story in first draft stage now. In fact, I ought to be working on it rather than writing in LJ.

[skuf.livejournal.com]

I'll take normal short story-length, then - especially of the aphrodisiac-potion-goes-astray sort :o)

hmm, this looks like a good time.

[goat-song.livejournal.com]

is there any chance you could get me into the six_duchies community? i promise i'm not an agent of teh hobb, or a lawyer, or bill gates, or anything like that. just a kid desperate for fanwork of a beloved series of books.

sorry to be a pest. you said any question. :D

[resonant8.livejournal.com]

Hey, if you're considering doing art in that fandom, I'm wildly, passionately in favor of your being a member! I've contacted the community owner for you.

[goat-song.livejournal.com]

thankyouthankyouthankyou.

i do have some pictures, but they're all very unfinished and smudged and not really all that presentable. i'll do more if i have to earn my keep, though!

[catmoran.livejournal.com]

I feel like a bit of a dork asking this, but this has been driving me nuts for months.

If I'm remembering correctly, you are the author of a fantastic original sci-fi smut fic. The pairing was between a human male and an alien, I think they were at university, and the human had some taboos (population control related?) to overcome. You posted the story, received a million comments to the effect of 'this should be published!' and took it offline to submit to some publications.

So my questions are: 1) are you the author of the fic I described. 2) If it was published, what do I need to buy to get my hands on it. or 2b) If it was not published, is there any chance that I could swear on my grandmother's grave to never share it and get a copy?

Sometimes it's great having a memory like a steel sieve, and being able to reread things I've enjoyed before. Other times, not so much.

[resonant8.livejournal.com]

Wow, you still remember that after all this time? Yes, it was me. It's not published anywhere, despite my best efforts, and I'd be happy to e-mail you a copy.

[catmoran.livejournal.com]

Thank you! My email is catmoran (AT) catmoran (DOT) com

It wasn't difficult to remember, it's the truest sci-fi smut I've ever read. I bet if you ever re-released it to the internet, you'd find that a lot of people remember it.

[exceptinsects]

Hey, would you be willing to send me a copy of this too? I'm exceptinsects at gmail, if you would. Thanks!!

[resonant]

Glad to!