July 2022 – Ren J Dorian

I debated not making this post. But I think it needs to be recorded somewhere other than Twitter. Below is the draft I made before dividing up and posting the thread:

Sometimes I think WAY too much about the threats I used to receive for Victim (my weird little sci-fi horror). I’m about to start a competitive master’s program this fall. I don’t need the additional stress if something like that were to happen again.

I tend to joke that I have “one of the most obvious faces on the planet.” It’s normal for people I don’t remember to walk up to me and start talking like they know me. When I probe them with questions, they typically remember seeing me somewhere random (sometimes it’s even my doppelganger). I am apparently very memorable.

(This is, by the way, part of how my enjoyment of playing around with my presentation can bite me in the a*s when it comes to misgendering. People remember me. If they see me in a different presentation that they think “matches” (their view of) me, then that becomes how they gender / see me.)

I go through phases sometimes where I’ll use a new author bio image. I often change it to one that isn’t a person (even though supposedly readers prefer seeing someone’s face). I just changed it to a stack of my own books. It’s one of the promo images I took.

I also “sanitized” a couple of details on my more forward-facing author bios (namely amazon and goodreads). I feel bad and, arguably, like I’m being a bit paranoid about it. But I also don’t need that extra stress. I still have my pronouns listed on my website and twitter.

Also, sometimes things do happen. Here’s a [blog post] from last year about a reviewer that took issue with my pronouns. There were no threats involved.

Am I being cowardly? Maybe. But at least I’ll be less stressed about it this fall. And hopefully less likely to wind up in a situation like that again.

To clarify: I kept he/him pronouns for my more forward-facing author bios. I removed mention of they/them pronouns. I’m still proudly and openly non-binary (and I take they/them or he/him pronouns).

July 24, 2022September 25, 2022

Write with me? Quick update

[Blog]

The [first blog post] about this was published on May 25, 2022. It’s now well into July. Whoops.

(I won’t review what the challenge is. Review the above link if that interests you.)

I originally undertook that challenge because I realized I wasn’t writing as much as I wanted to. I still don’t know if it’s the pandemic, stress, timing, or, honestly, everything else that’s going on right now. But I feel like I can’t catch up to myself. The problem that caused me to undertake the write with me challenge still persists.

And I still want to do something about it. However, I think the timing was off before. Now I think it’ll be easier to batch any wwm (write with me) videos together so I can upload them in groups. I’ll probably keep the format the same (one spaced for ever day and included on the playlist), even though that wouldn’t necessarily be accurate to when the videos were made.

I did make it almost two weeks originally. Although I don’t have a set schedule decided yet, I have decided to continue the challenge. This time, I won’t be aiming for every day. Instead, I’ll be batching them for a while and trying to determine what schedule works best for me. I’ll probably be posting another one of these updates on it in the future.

In the meantime, here’s the playlist [link] again.

Now I’m off to upload videos.

Note from the future: Youtube videos successfully embedded on September 25th, 2022. I’ve also started uploading some with sound: