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Superfat Seven

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Yesterday I was having a chat with one of my writer friends about putting your face online. He has just launched the second novel in his series about Ardamin, a clone inhabiting a dystopian future (check the series out here on Amazon) and he has been promoting the latest novel on Instagram, including showing himself with his book.

So far, so normal. Unless you’re me, or someone like me. I’ve been running this blog since April 2013 (with some gaps for life events) and I’ve never put my face, let alone my body, on view. Over on my Instagram account there are maybe three instances where I’ve revealed myself as an adult. That’s out of 581 posts I’ve put up over there. And… to be honest I fight every day not to take them down. I may yet do that.

Why?

Superfat Seven.

When I was nine, we moved house, from a big city to a village. I was The New Girl. And some boys in the class below me immediately started calling me Superfat Seven. Until this point, I don’t think I’d ever thought about how I compared to other kids in my class. I was just me. That name would follow me everywhere I went, and I dreaded walking home from school if they were on the same street (which they often were) because the name calling would follow me home. I’ve seen photos of myself at that age and I can’t see why they chose that name, looking at it objectively. I had pudgy cheeks, but I wasn’t the huge lump that I very quickly saw myself as due to this name. Looking back, I guess the sole reason I was bullied was because I was The New Girl. That was it. But, the name had life-changing consequences.

I’ve never been diagnosed (I’ve never sought it out), but I’m almost certain I have Body Dysmorphia. I will do almost anything to avoid having my photograph taken. Even with family photos as I was growing up, I desperately wanted to grab the camera and throw it to the floor. But I was a well-behaved kid and knew that cameras were expensive so… I didn’t. I can’t bear to look at myself in the mirror. The only thing I focus on when doing my hair in the morning is the hair itself. When going somewhere where I have to be presentable, I focus on the neatness and cleanliness of the clothes themselves and whether what I have chosen is objectively ‘good enough’, not how I look in what I am wearing, because I will never accept how I look.

I have learned to mask the depression and anxiety that this has caused, but it has become entangled in other issues over the years. Unravelling it all seems like another lifetime’s work. Masking is what we do to get by in life, isn’t it? Don’t get me wrong, I don’t for one minute think that anyone else is bothered by how I look, nor do I think I am the focus of their attention. This is all about my inability to accept myself.

Superfat Seven.

What has this got to do with writing, with being an author? A hell of a lot, actually. Marketing your novel when the perceived wisdom is that you will be more approachable, more memorable, more relatable (I hate that word so much!) if you show your face, is a huge problem for someone like me. I know so many other authors who have their Instagram account filled with themselves. Their posts are bright and engaging and… relatable.

The upside is that I used this crushing mental health issue (because it is a mental health issue, let’s be honest) to my advantage when writing Callie, the main character in Anti-Virus. The cause of her situation is very different and entirely more violent than childhood bullying, but I was able to build on my personal experiences to create her story. So, there is that.

They say what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. It may be true. Sometimes though, it would be such a relief to be strong without having to go via Superfat Seven Highway to get there.

This-stopia

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I have an Instagram account (@freyathewriter). Instagram is an amazing place to be for writers – the community is great. Readers, writers and others that find themselves caught up in the web of the community are having a great, supportive time over there. I bought a book only 11 days ago that was an independent writer’s first publication – and it was excellent. If I hadn’t joined Instagram, I’d likely never have read it. Congratulations to Nicholas Crivac for getting Apotheosis to print. Take a look at his website if you want to know more!

Anyway, I digress. On my Instagram account I got involved in a conversation about how the way the world is at the moment means that any ideas us dystopian writers might develop seem to have been stolen by, or been the inspiration for, various regimes around the world (looking at you, governments of the UK and USA!). It means we have to push our plots further and harder so that they don’t just end up being non-fiction tomes. Having said that, in my experience what it has meant is that the tiny news articles that slip through when we are all being supposedly distracted by the latest scandal (which seem to focus very much on the Royal Family these days) have been the jumping off point for some quite interesting and unexpected plot twists. I can’t decide whether to be pleased or horrified at my schadenfreude. It just goes to show, we are all a messy mix of light and shade.

This takes me to my next point (I did have a plan for this blog post, honest). I’m so focused on my burgeoning novel that other writing is taking a back seat. I’m in the throes of my first edit of my book. It’s both challenging and revealing and I find that I edit best with a cup of coffee, under the duvet, in bed (who knew?). I wonder if it’s because it reminds me of when I was a law student and the only way I could have access to all the law books I needed when writing and studying (it was before the internet!) was by spreading them out on my bed? Anyway, once I’ve made some more editing progress my flash fiction and poetry brain cells will kick back in. I do have a list of ideas, inspirations and whatnot, I just don’t want and can’t get too distracted by them for now. I used to contribute a lot to DVerse and I want to get back into that, definitely. It too is a fun place to be.

Which takes me to my final point, which is a bit of a shout out to Helena Hann-Basquiat. She too has been off the radar for a bit (I think the youth across the pond are still saying ‘a hot minute’), but I am reliably informed because I follow her and comment on her blog posts (not stalkery at all), that she is also getting back into the writing gig. I’m so pleased because (a) she’s a brilliant writer and (b) because I reaaaaaally enjoyed being part of the Jessica collaboration back in 2014. it appears that the final book in the trilogy is in the works. All being well I can unleash my really dark side on a bloody slice of this final book, if she still intends to go down the collab route with it. I have a dark dystopian soul and an even darker horror soul. And then there’s my fantasy soul too which is really quite a doozy. Anyway, all hail Helena. I’m looking forward to working with you, if you’ll have me.

There. I think I’ve written all I wanted to for now. I intend to be here on a weekly basis, every weekend, all being well. I’ll be in my dressing gown and PJs, allthough you won’t see that – or will you? Who knows who is watching and by what method?

We are in This-stopia after all…

 

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Malakhi

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A teacher, a rabbi came to this earth

courtesy of a star, a manger and a virgin birth.

Ages before, despite the temple’s destruction

oil of one day stretched out to eight –

– imagine the miracle!

Hope lights our times, shadows flee in their wake

Hanukkah, Christmas in one time combined.

Faiths diverge but converge all the same

in their wishes for peace and love and brotherhood,

if you can cut through the soundbites and posturing, that is.

I am a mongrel, one foot in the Deep Mid Winter of my past

My heart swelling to Baruch Hu as I whisper Kaddish in memory.

Y’hei sh’lama raba min sh’maya

Bitter sweet at this time of disruption

For all that is gone, for all that has broken

For all that divides in words left unspoken.

Amen.

Shalom.

Salaam.

Shalom Aleichem.

As Salaam Aleikum

Oseh shalom bim’romav hu ya’aseh shalom

Let us welcome the Malakhi, in whatever form he – or she – takes.

******

It’s been a while. Longer than I thought. Life, you know?

Last night saw the first night of Hanukkah and Christmas Eve – two miracles for the price of one. It inspired me to take some time during a small oasis of calm to share my thoughts, my feelings, to highlight just a tiny slice of the similarities in the underlying hopes of the three Abrahamix religions, not to mention in some of the words used in greetings and wishes bestowed.

Yes, it’s probably a bit clumsy (I’ve not written for a while) – but it’s all me.

Whatever faith you follow or not, I send my love to you, my brothers and sisters in this messed-up, argumentative worldwide family of ours.