Page is hard to write about. Despite working with her for over 4 years, she remains a mystery to me. She was my PhD supervisor, and we had a bumpy start. To be fair, I was partly responsible for that bumpy start because I didn’t know what I was getting into when I applied to do…
Tag: self-care
“The Good Parts”: The Real Sex Ed
There has been a lot of discussion of limiting children’s access to sex ed. But that may not be possible. Sex ed is all around us. The most you can limit is your engagement with their education. And why would you want to limit that? My First Sex Ed Classroom: A Slumber Party In first…
“Where do you Get your Ideas?”
If you listen to interviews of authors, one of the questions you’ll hear most often is: “Where do you get your ideas?” I hear a plaintive note in this question. It is asked so often. Sometimes with reference to a specific work or series (like with George R. R. Martin and A Song of Ice…
Solitude and Music: The Silence Between the Notes
“Couldn’t put my phone downScrolling patientlyIt’s all the same to meJust faces on a screen, yeah I’m trying to realizeIt’s alright to not be fine on your own” (comethru – Jeremy Zucker) Alone | Together Recently, my musician friend Jabin Law starts a new music project “Alone Together”. Alone Together is a follow-up project of…
“Save the Cat”: Anti-Abortion Virtue Signalers
How do fringe interests like abortion and homophobia take center stage at a time when we have bigger issues? (N. B. We always have bigger issues. So we might as well ask how anti-choice and anti-queer people ever take center-stage.) The answer actually has something to do with how to be a good writer. It…
Little Victories in the Fight against Homophobia
I fell in love with the art of drag long before I really understood or accepted my own queer identity. We can learn a lot from drag queens. And not just fashion tips. The news has me exhausted and worried lately. But today, I’m going to take a lesson from Bianca Del Rio: ”Not today,…
Mindfulness: An Archaic Concept of Me, Delivery 5
Authorʼs note, May 8 & 9 2022 I wrote the initialisation scene of this story, way back in 2017. My Evernote tells me the scene was first drafted 3 December 2017 at 17:52. The initialisation scene – edited a few times since 2017 – is found in Delivery 1 of the story. In that scene…
Writer’s Block: Bangalore Edition
I often find that when I am feeling numb and don’t want to write, the reason for it is simple. I am afraid of what I will write. All of this falls under the deceptively simple name “writer’s block.” But why would I be afraid; that is, what would I be afraid of? There are…
Pride Means Protest, Now More than Ever
Is this our last Pride celebration? Pride Means Finding a Place where We Belong So, come on baby, dance that danceCome on baby, dance that danceCome on baby, let’s dance tonight… In my twenties, I worked with an organization that provided services for LGBTQ youth. I loved doing this work; it’s part of what propelled…
Gifted and Talented (Caturday Questions)
Teachers assigned us labels when we were younger, like “gifted” or “gifted and talented.” Or, in rare cases, “prodigy.” What do these labels mean? Do they help us or hurt us? Can we change them? Can we own them? Some people discover their labels as adults. And then there are those labels on your writing….