June 26, 2017

car crash personalities

Okay, I HAD TO write this one down so I can remember this.

I binge-read Laini Taylor's blog from time to time, because I love reading about her writing process. I get the feeling that we have very similar processes, especially in the fact that we have very perfectionistic tendencies that get in the way of drafting. She's written before about how the process of discovering the right pieces of a story is akin to messing with a Rubik's cube over and over again until the perfect combination appears with a satisfying SNICK!

The past week, I've been working on a crucial piece in Rory's story that I've been avoiding for quuiiiite some time, precisely because I had no idea how to connect from Point X to Point Y. I finally had an epiphany after some intense soul-searching and had at least a semblance of a plan. It was intense enough that I marched my ass over to the undergraduate library after work to check out some books for RESEARCH. Namely, resources on gender in the rock and music industry at large.

Essentially, this past week I've been trying to write an "article" about Rory in a misogynistic perspective. I read up a lot on how female rock stars and female fans have been written about in music journalism, a predominantly male realm. It's been a patchwork process of weaving together a bunch of terrible, awful cliched things to say about a woman, particularly an unpredictable one. In particular, I borrowed some of the phrasing that's been used to describe Courtney Love like a road accident: "car crash personalities", "like watching someone climb from the wreckage of a car crash", "car crash timing." I started applying this idea to Rory, molding some sentences to reflect this.....

And then, when I scrolled up to edit the article's title: "Music Column: Rosecrans Royalty Car Crash Personalities and the Problem with Her Highness," that's when it suddenly jumped out at me. WHAT SICK IRONY, THIS IS PERFECT.

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