Current Status

Although the crisis of the past weekend is no longer endangering me, it has taken its toll.

In the midst of the crisis, I rushed through my novel installment and turned it in for the class. It was, yes, rushed, and it shows. I am getting pretty negative feedback at this time from classmates. My brain is fried, and it won't be able to crank out anything that reads like a novel for a while; all I can write are something akin to an instructional video.

My ability to read and comment on others' work is quite impaired as well.

I will stay on and finish the novel class that I am currently taking, but I don't expect to get much out of it, given how shaken I am. I think I will need to retake the class in the future, when I am in a better mood and situation.

As for activities outside the virtual classroom, I am too shaken to watch United 93 at this time. I may never be ready to deal with the hatred of the Muslim world, and the ineptitude of the W regime, that the movie deals with. The Muslims and the W regime not only killed Martha, they may be slowly killing my soul as well.

I will go ahead with my trip to the San Francisco area for Memorial Day weekend. Hopefully, walking in Sarah and Kirsten's footsteps will rejuvenate me. If that doesn't help, I will need a sabbatical from writing the novel, and that won't be a fun thought, since I started work on Perfect Girl to have an outlet for my anger and issues in the first place.

I do have to say that the writing bug is still biting me. In addition to Perfect Girl, I also have agreed to write a story about myself for a Seattle-based LGBT organization, so that they can use it (and other transgender people's stories) as basis for a play. I am also sitting on a short memoir that I wrote last fall - a special memoir, because much of the ground work was done on the road, in DC and Seoul. I have decided that if I ever finish Perfect Girl, I will immediately work on another transgender story in some form, using these pieces as raw material. The protagonist, unlike Sarah, will be an immigrant from a Third World country, and will need to deal with the homophobia of her native culture AND the struggle to fit into America. Although I am in no mood to develop this at this time, I know for sure that this will be far less posh than Perfect Girl; the protagonist certainly will have neither the family acceptance nor the high-benefit unionized corporate job that Sarah has.