So I now got a number of short stories out there on submission. One of them is just a silly, fun thing with dragons that I wrote, like the day I figured out I was plural. But otherwise has nothing to do with my experiences. The other three are deeply personal; one is based on my experiences as a trans person, another is based on my childhood and my relationship with one of my abusers (there's a lot of gaslighting and un-realityness to it), and the latest started as a "creative journal entry" for me to disassociate away from a recent traumatic experience.
So editing it was therapeutic, in a way, because it meant I could re-frame what happened in my own mind and make it...banal, I guess? But it did make me realize just how...odd it is that Awful Things happen to me, and I just forget the emotions attached to them. They get turned into "facts" instead of feelings.
It is also such a weird feeling looking over what we wrote. One is super happy and funny! Look, cute dragons! The other is like 'well I don't think I need to put a cw on this one since the title is "this is the fucked up thing I experienced" but, man, I hope this doesn't fuck up whoever has to read this.' Write what you know, and all that, I get it.
I did share the "prologue" to my memoir, since I was unsure about the voice, since it doesn't sound Good to me...because it's essentially just my normal voice. But people really liked it, and they said they were fascinated. But in it I mention "my favorite detective" and how I now need to do what he does and Find The Truth about what happened to me. And in the fucked up short story, it's about a detective "but not really" and how this thing SHOULDN'T fuck him up, but it does. And then there's another project of mine about "a detective, but not really" and how he has a shit memory and has to Find The Truth about what happened to a friend of his. And it's like...why has no one noticed. This is all because I'm kinning, to cope, so I'm writing about "my" "experiences."
Since I do want to get the memoir published, I'll need to figure out shit at some point. Like do I change the names of the fictives. Especially of the one little. I talk about how I'm a therian, but do I talk about fictionkinning? Are people gonna be like "why does a bird identify as a human detective?" Man, I don't know. My brain is fucked, this is just how it works.
-bird