race and class and gender, oh my!: or, growing up geeky south of the Mason-Dixon Line

When I was in junior high, I was afraid of the black girls.

Not because they were black per se, but because they were aggressive and loud and whatever they valued, it wasn't books. It's the same reason I was afraid of the redneck girls.

(If I ran afoul of the black girls, though, it was only as collateral damage. To the redneck girls, I was a target.)

Let me unpack this a little.

( cut because, hello? long and complicated )

closer and closer

The Mirador, Chapter 16: 6,480 words

---

We now reach the point in our programme where I have to rejigger the plot on account of having lost my head in the first draft and never gotten it back. (This is the most complicatedly plotty thing I have ever written. Note to self: Don't do that again.)

Fortunately for me, I have matociquala, who's not only willing to say, "Yanno, this doesn't make any sense," but also to listen while I wail and thrash, and to help me get it right. So I know, more or less, what needs to happen. Now I just have to write it.

Watch that first step. It's a doozy.

On the other hand, this is the climax, and it's this and the denoument, and then the draft is done. And I have my little list of things to correct (with more doubtless to come as mirrorthaw progresses through the draft), but I'm very close to the point where, if my editor called me tomorrow and said, "I need the ms. Right. Now." I could give it to her and not have a cataclysmic hissy fit about it, either. We're not there yet, but I can see it from where I stand.

(In other news: wax. Definitely wax. 100 year old wax, even. Tra la.)