Aslaug's Axe Shed

This is going to be a rant. Consider yourself warned.

It won’t be a rant about my usual gripes, though. It’ll be frustration that needs an outlet, and irritation that needs relief.

First of all, I got myself some new furniture this past Sunday. Or more precisely, I got some used furniture in far better condition than what I had. I got a new bed, a new TV (which I still only use for watching DVDs … television is the bane of my life) and a new desk. All this prompted me to clean out my bedroom good and proper, and the whole place looks better than it has for ages. And I can sleep at night … as opposed to before, where my mattresses had completely collapsed, leaving me either sliding off the bed or laying across two uneven mattresses, giving me the equivalent of a bed-noogie every night. Nightmares aplenty, I can assure you.

So far so good. That should all be good.

The trouble was what happened when I got that furniture. My father, bless him, who just turned sixty, lumped the whole thing onto a trailer and drove for four hours to bring it up here where I live. I had two friends on hand to help carry it all up the stairs and it worked like a charm, but when it was all in and in place, I offered to make a cup of tea for my dad before he had to go back. Mind you, he never stays more than half an hour when he comes by, but that’s alright. I know why. Because the drive is so damned long, he HAS to get going if he wants to be back home in reasonable time after all.

So no problem thus far. However, as we sat there on the couch, my dad, my friend Emil and myself, I offered to let my dad read an article I got published in a newspaper recently. It’s a small thing … nothing fancy or anything, but it’s my first newspaper article so hey, I was quite happy about it. He read it and was quite pleased about it, and then he asked about the book.

I swear, I could feel the ice in my veins even as he asked. My father is not into fiction in the first place. I don’t think he’s read fiction for … gods know how many years if ever. Fair’s fair and tastes vary, but I knew in advance what he’d think. Still, he asked and I couldn’t bloody well say “Sorry dad, I’m not going to show it to you,” so I took it off the shelf, amidst a barrage of reminders that it is -fiction- … and that it’s not meant to be particularly serious and so on and so forth.

He took one look at it. Opened it. Noted that it was very long … then pointed out “Well, it’s not something I’m ever going to read but then again, you didn’t expect that.”

I shrugged and said that no, I didn’t expect that. I mean, it would be grossly out of character for him to read fiction in the first place. He reads A LOT, mind you … but mostly biographies and suchlike. Books on history (I don’t have my interests from strangers, I can tell you that much) and so on.

Still, I reminded him yet again that it was just fiction and really only written for the fun of it. By this time, I could see that my friend Emil was close to cringing on the couch. He seemed to realize where it was headed.

“Yeah well, it’s set in ancient Rome, but it’s really just a work of fiction, written mostly for fun,” I said.

My dad took one look at the front and put down the book. “I’ll bet you anything they didn’t look like THAT!” he said.

And that was that. The disapproval in his voice was very clear. I already knew that my mother disapproves of the genre … I mean, I vividly remember when I was twelve and she told me that she thought Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse were morally questionable characters because she thought it was wrong to assign human traits to animals. She was highly interested in what I had written until she realized the characters are anthropomorphic animals … and then all interest vanished in a split second. It was no longer something worth discussing.

It felt awful. It still feels bloody awful.

Look, I don’t care if they read it. I don’t care if they like it. They don’t have to like it. They don’t have to read it. It’s entirely their choice not to. I didn’t write this book for them. I wrote it for myself, to have something to relax with while I was doing some extremely serious work on various research papers. I needed an outlet, dammit. I needed something that I could do which was NOT all serious and all “factual” (insofar as one can ever be factual about history) constantly.

I have an extremely vivid imagination. I always did. While I studied, I had to stay absolutely on the straight and narrow. No making things up. Stick to the source material at all times.

Analyze, research, compare, explain …

ALL THE FRICKIN’ TIME!

I needed my weird stories because I needed a way of expressing myself. As I have told dozens of people, the reason why it ended up being anthro-writings as opposed to tons of other things was really just a happy coincidence.

I had been directed to Sabrina Online and I loved the whole cast and the story and the humour. I found out there was a Zig Zag the Story somewhere and hey, lo and behold, there was a forum attached to that! So I started writing a few posts there and shortly thereafter, I was talking to Tigermark, Silver Coyote and Aramis Dagaz. They all wrote and asked me if I didn’t write since I seemed to have a good grasp of the English language.

The rest is history. I started writing anthro-stories because the people who offered to help me with advice were part of that group already.

And I’m bloody grateful for it because it’s given me all these great, wonderful experiences and it’s done so much for my self confidence to learn that I can write and that some people actually think I’m pretty good at it.

It’s helped me IMMENSELY over the years.

So to find that my parents disapprove so wholeheartedly of the genre HURTS!

They don’t have to read it as I said. But the least they could do was express a bit of support that I found an outlet and that I dared take the plunge and get something published.

I tried explaining to my mother what I was working on next … and that it contained only human characters. I tried to explain the basics of the plotline to her, and she broke me off abruptly, telling me that it was something she couldn’t cope with.

The bottom line is that I’m not going to involve my family in anything I do concerning writing in the future. I’m probably not going to even mention it to them again. If they bring it up, I’ll have to brush off the issue as quickly as possible.

You know the worst part? My dad probably don’t realize that what he said was hurtful. I honestly don’t think he realizes it and if I ever told him, he’d almost certainly not understand what I meant.

I’ve been stuck in the most massive writer’s block for six damned weeks. It wasn’t until I called someone very dear to me yesterday and basically rambled to her about this for over an hour that I managed to get it off my chest. Then she helped me break the writer’s block and I’ve done a bit of writing both last night and today as a result.

But ever since I went home for my father’s sixtieth birthday and saw my mother’s raw disapproval all over her face when she realized what genre the book was, and again this past Sunday, I’ve basically found it difficult to write anything.

Why does it matter so much that they don’t approve? They’ve never read a word I’ve written nor will they in the future. So why do I even care?

Maybe because they are my parents, and because come what may, we want our parents to be proud of us and approve of us. And to look at my mother’s face and see the sheer, naked -disappointment- there … or to hear the slight ridicule in my father’s voice when he said “I’ll bet you anything they didn’t look like THAT!” … it felt like they punched me.

Why does everything have to be factual? Why is it wrong to have imagination? To see fantastical things in your head and commit them to paper? Where the Hell would the world be if writers never wrote fairy-tales or horror-novels or crime-stories? I’m not trying to compare myself to all the literary greats … Gods forbid I should ever do such a thing, but in my own small way, I’m doing something I enjoy.

I’ve always said that I would probably eventually move away from the whole anthro-thing. I am probably always going to come back to it once in a while, though … because it is how it all started.

Because you guys who read my senseless drivel and my inane attempts at literature gave me a boost that I can never thank you enough for. So yes, I’ll probably always come back to this.

Because it’s SAFE. Because it’s something that doesn’t demand absolute seriousness of me. Because I can just let my imagination run wild, and you know what? That’s got value in and of itself!

I told my friend all this yesterday, and it helped. It really helped getting it off my chest, but I know it’ll come back and nag me and tear at me if I don’t write this.

What my family thinks of my writing shouldn’t matter. I knew from the get go that not one of them would actually go out and buy a copy of the book even if it had hit the shelves of ordinary bookstores all around the country. Because I knew they wouldn’t be interested in the genre or the fact that it’s fictional.

I KNEW that.

It just hurts like Hell to see the disapproval and ridicule out in the open. Frankly, I think they could have tried to smile at it and be nice about it. They could just have said “Hey, good for you. Probably not quite our thing, but good on you that you went ahead and did it.”

Instead, it was “I’ll bet you anything they didn’t look like THAT!”

Instead, it was the look on my mother’s face when she saw the first piece of interior artwork.

Instead, it’s this fucking lump in my throat that I just can’t seem to get rid of.

Instead, it was six weeks of the most overpowering, horrible writer’s block I’ve ever experienced.

And the worst part of it all? I feel bad for being this upset about it. They are well within their rights to disapprove. It’s their RIGHT not to like it, for goodness sake.

So I’m ashamed of myself for being upset over something that’s probably just a trivial thing in the first place, and yet I can’t shake it.

Damned it. Damned it all!

This is not what it should feel like.