In Defense of Grief

There's a discussion of sorts, in romance right now about grief. Now, split as the social medias are these days, I am only seeing one corner of it. I have some theories, and I know other do to. 

First, I lost a parent in my twenties. It was hard. But it also absolutely changed how I felt about parents dying in books I read. I grew up on Disney movies where parents die all the time. As a writer I totally understand that two parents seem like so many when it comes to managing kid characters, and so sometimes it seems easier to be like they only have one parent okay, two is too many. (Obviously two is not too many, but yanno, as worldbuilders, we get mean sometimes.)

So, the first part of my argument is that the death, and the grief has always been there. Watching "Hamlet" as an adult I was struck how we tend to perceive Hamlet seeing ghosts as him going mad rather than rightly attempting to grieve his father while everyone around him is trying to move on. Ophelia 'goes mad' after her father is killed. Like they tell her her dad is dead and then are like, well, you don't seem to be handling this well. Plays move fast, but wow.

In romance a very common trope is that someone has died and now in order to get the inheritance, someone must marry. Or someone is dying, but would love to see their relatives married before they go. Or the sibling who was supposed to inherit has died, and now main character must get married. Or sibling or parent has died, and therefore the house goes to some sort of male heir, and female character must get married.  Or someone is or might die, and we need to decide who will take over the business. And it would help if they were married. Or maybe they don't need to be married, but they fall in love with the person they are competing against. Okay, I could actually come up with more examples, but I will stop there. My point is the death, the dying, the grief has always been there. 

Olivia Waite posited that we are seeing more dead of the cancer parents because we all went through COVID, and yet as a disease, COVID has become political in ways that cancer is not. So writers grappling with such are subbing in cancer.  (To be clear, I am aware that both COVID and cancer still exist.) I think this could well be true.  I certainly am seeing COVID show up in just about every genre that is not romance, and romance is so rarely a genre in lag.  While COVID has shown up in some romances, including some of mine, so I am very biased, it is not yet common.  It could be, as suggested, a wish to stay away from thorny political things.  It could also be a result of a wish not to date the book.  I think it is almost impossible to not date books.  Books written pre-smartphone are obviously pre-smartphone.  There are things that will date your book that you cannot plan for. But being early, or mid pandemic places the book firmly in place.  

But the grief, in whatever form exists.  I think many more people have experienced grief, given how many people were and are affected by COVID.  So perhaps they are more aware of the prevalence of grief in romance.  I think finding happy things, even when one is grieving can be one of the joys of romance.  That good things await even after bad things.  But I am also aware that pre-pandemic a number of people recommended a book as fluffy that contained sudden parental death as a major mid-book plot point.  And when I pointed out that a characters parent dies in the middle of the book, a lot of people gave me the okay, so what's your point head tilt.  We all have our own journeys with grief.  The days we need a book that will let us grieve with the characters, and the days we absolutely cannot.  But I suspect that maybe we are all, collectively, a little more attuned to grief.  And so are noticing the grief that has been there all along.  

I am a person who has lost both parents, and I think people like me deserve to see romances about characters who have lost one or more parents.  I'm not saying all books need to have dead parents.  And certainly we can label and recommend carefully so people can all find the books they are looking for.  

A Friendsgiving Defense

I saw an article referring to Friendsgiving as made up, and oh here I go. For five years I tweeted (twote?) silly holidays every morning and so of course I looked into who made up some of them. (I talked a little about that before.) 

And first, all holidays are made up. There are no organically grown holidays. They all got plunked down somewhere, decreed by someone with or without authority. But if you think I am going to eschew celebrating Ice Cream for Breakfast Day just because nobody gets the day off work, you would be wrong. (Also, many people, including the nice people at the ice cream place, work holidays. So let's also stop pretending "everyone" gets holidays off.)

Second, Thanksgiving is also made up. It commemorates an event, sure. But there are four US states that claim the first Thanksgiving discussion was held in their state. It's current placement on the calendar was literally determined as a way to boost people starting Xmas shopping early. 

And honestly Friendsgiving shouldn't need a name. It does because weirdoes who don't understand why you would want to share a meal with someone you aren't related to or planning to marry. But people do because jobs, travel, or family being not great. (Allegedly.)

Gathering with friends, with community is a way to celebrate the supposed mythology of the holiday, the gathering and sharing of fall and winter foods. You can do that with family also. But the family you make counts to, whether or not you are bound by blood or legalities. 

Timing

Everything took longer than I expected this weekend. Okay like three things. I was meeting up with some folks Saturday and needed to bring something with me that needed to be cooked. I had a headache Friday night, so made it Saturday. Except I started late. And then realized it needed to be cooled. 

Sunday I made a soup so I would have food for the week. I fortunately had planned a simple grazing meal for dinner. Because at 9:30 that thing was still burbling away. (Is this what I get for not presoaking my beans? Probably.)

Anyway, the soup finally finished but some weeks or weekends are like that. Everything takes a little longer to come together than you hoped and you kind of have to roll with it. Wishing you started sooner doesn't fix the problem at hand. And better late than never doesn't apply to everything, but for soup it probably works. 

Hope your food is ready when you need it this week. 

People Should Have Things

In November my brain is usually 100 percent dedicated to writing, if we assume that 100 percent means of my free time. And that I also eat, clean, socialize and all those other pesky tasks that keep one functional. Oh right, and work a full time job. 

The job is in benefits. And while I do consider myself an expert on USian benefits, I am also a rando on the Internet. And I am not your benefits expert.

But such are things, that it seems necessary to state, people should have food. The federal government provides useful services that should be happening and in most cases right now are not. The ones that are, are not being paid, which sucks. (Not being able to work the job you were hired for and should be getting paid for also sucks.) 

In the US we treat healthcare as a bonus, a buy up, a nice to have, even though not having healthcare makes people sicker. 

Making healthcare an insurance proposition means one of two things. It either works like car insurance, where they make a bet based on your age, zip code and a few other factors and charge you based on that. This is how individual plans and therefore all state marketplace plans work. 

The advantage of employer based plans is that employees of a certain size can offer a large population that likely has a mix of old, young, risky, and unrisky people. So they can negotiate for a rate that is better. 

The more expensive healthcare gets, the more people who don't use it much drop it (to say nothing of those who can't afford it). This means the people still on it are higher users. This means the costs go up for everyone in a vicious cycle. 

And some of those people who gambled or hoped they wouldn't need it will be wrong. And they will show up in emergency rooms for something that probably could have been solved sooner with access to healthcare. 

Basically, all the choices this country is currently making are going to result in various combinations of death, illness, and injury. Sure, some people will be fine.

But we are treating food, paychecks, and healthcare as nice to haves, instead of the necessary things that they are. 

I am sorry for everyone affected by this. Please be kind and generous to your neighbors. This struggle is going to hit everyone on multiple fronts. 

November

I got an alert from one of my discords on Saturday and thought, oh wow, they must be prepping to write for some reason. And then I realized it was November 1st. One of the things that happens when a large group you participated in cracks to reveal all the people it was harming along the way is a odd disconnect. How could this thing that was great for me have been bad for others? Am I an idiot for not realizing what was happening? Are the accomplishments I had while part of this group tainted? 

And those questions often lead people discard the harm. (Witness the former head of NaNo restarting NaNo while putting up a disclaimer that he wasn't there when things got bad so has no idea how it happened and also no apparent reflection on starting a new group with any safeguards to prevent a repeat.)

Writing in community is great. I personally am editing right now because I am so close to done on this story that I can taste it.

If writing in community helped you write, but the community turned out to be flawed, find a new community. If writing in community helped you write, but the community was flawed, you can reflect and learn and listen to try and be more aware. If writing in community helped you write, you are a writer. You did the thing. 

If writing in community didn't help you write, well, now you know more about your process. Also true if it did help. Learning about your process is always good. 

And if you are writing this month, there are tons of great groups you can join, locally, regionally, online. If communities help you, there are plenty to join.