Butterfly Cauldron

Call For Papers

"Feminism For Freaks"

At its best, feminism offers an emancipatory potential from gendered
oppression, inequality, and violence. At its worst, however, feminism
can work to simply affirm the rights of middle-class, heterosexual,
white women, and exclude the voices of already-marginalised groups
such as women of colour, trans* women, sex workers and so on. Like
Derrida's democracy, a truly liberatory feminism is mostly a feminism
to come.

Not un-coincidentally, those marginalised groups of women are often
demonised by the dominant culture, rendered as monstrous,
simultaneously invisible and hyper-visible, compelling and
threatening, desirable and disgusting--and forever denied a voice of
our own. The question of if and how monstrosity can be reclaimed or
re-worked is a vexed one for feminists.

We therefore invite proposals that affirm the voices of socially
excluded people, that seek to create new and exciting knowledge and
address themselves to feminist theory and activism or the wider
culture, on such topics including, but not limited to:

* Monstrous bodies and identities
* Social marginalisation and exclusions (for instance, borders, walls,
and immigration laws, and the silencing of voices such as those of
women of colour and transgendered people)
* Liberation/transformation/organisation
* sex work
* queer sexualities and genders
* BDSM
* Visible signs of difference (Muslim women wearing the veil, disabled
bodies etc)
* religion and spirituality
* freaks in popular culture, body modification etc
* fat positivity

Academic, non-fiction and creative work will be considered--the call is
broad, and we're willing to accommodate new and interesting work by
freaks of all kinds.

Please submit abstracts of up to 250 words by May 31st to
estrangedcognition@hotmail.com and suzanmanuel@gmail.com

*Note - Given that some contributors may not feel safe or comfortable
telling their stories in the public sphere, submissions under
pseudonyms will be accepted.

(Come on, people. Totally send me your abstracts. I'm looking at you Mermi. Yeah. That's right. Pretty sure you'll be accepted.)

My girlfriend is coming to visit!

Yes, that's right. My Embunny will be landing in my town on Wednesday, April 16 for a nice, long visit.

I get 10 days of Emmyness!

*swoons and passes out*

That is all. You may now return to your regular blogging.

So, today I ventured out into The World on a weekend. Shocking.

I left my house because I was going to kill kittens if I didn't. They're nuts. They were running around like crazy things, knocking shit over. Well...they broke a vase that I had made all by myself! It was painted and pretty and I loved it and they destroyed it. So, I picked up the pieces, whipped some children and packed up the computer and left before I killed them.

So, I'm currently at one of many CC's Coffee Houses taking advantage of the Not My House location and the free internet to work on my novel.

At the moment, I'm calling it All The Damned Vampires. It's a working title, since I have NO idea what to really name it and well...there are lots of Vampires in it, so. Plus, Lost Boys reference. Go 80's childhood!

I have nine chapters done (first drafts only, of course) but I only have 20,353 words! That's not even half a NaNo Novel! I've been working on this thing off and one for YEARS and that's all I've got?? I'm stunned. I could have sworn I had much, much more done :( My chapters are only averaging about 2,261 words each which comes out to about 7 or 8 pages. Not so bad, really, but....I have to keep reminding myself THIS IS A FIRST DRAFT. The important thing on this go through to do is get the story down on paper. Once the story is down, I can recruit myself some readers to give it a look-see and tell me where they think things need to be stregthened. (I, of course, reserve the right to ignore them completely. But it does help.)

And, OK. I write strangely. Like, right now, I've got the ending done. I'm taken down my Big Bad, reclaimed my Blonde Vampire's soul and done a little wrap-up chapter suggesting what's gonna happen in the next book. Go me. I've also got the introduction done. Introduced my heroine, outlined a bit of her powers, given some of her backstory, had her get in her first fight. Go Me. Got a very moving scene with her at her best friend's grave. Got the piece's major sex scene done (and ya know, THAT chapter is almost 5,000 words. I do good smut.) Which leaves me with. . .the entire middle of the novel to write. So, ya know. It's not like I don't have room or ideas for more :) I'm just....I thought I'd gotten much much more done. *pout* Oh well.

I mean, I've already written the Bad Guy Take Down...and haven't even introduced her yet! See? Weird. So.

What I need to do now is make a list of all the big scenes that need to get written. I need to have some roadmap of what needs to be done to get this thing to where it needs to be. And getting out of the house really helps me. I can focus better. No kittens to distract me. No phone to ring. No television to distract me. Good good.

I'm thinking of putting out a request on the Baton Rouge LJ community for any other writers who want to form a Meet Weekly to Write Club. Hrm.....

Also, I need to do a personal essay thing for this Call for Papers I found. Busy busy busy.

Labels: cats, writing