mollyringle | Entries tagged with self

Are you still following me here and seeing this? Thank you! That is really nice of you! And also, please understand I'm barely ever here on LJ anymore. I miss you and I do want to stay connected with you, though! So, find me elsewhere—pick a couple of these:

Tumblr: https://www.tumblr.com/blog/mollyringle

Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/writermollyringle.bsky.social

My mailing list: https://mollyringle.us20.list-manage.com/subscribe...

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/writermollyringle/

Substack: https://substack.com/@mollyringle

TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@writermollyringle

As thanks, here is a cute picture of my dog in the tub.

A very wet corgi

To me, Pride is important, and queer people of all types are important all year, because they make ALL of us think about traditional gender roles and sexuality norms and whether our cultures really need to be the way they are. Those are issues that too often go unquestioned.

(My undergrad degree was in cultural anthropology, so I can assure you that human cultures display LOTS of variation on these topics, and thus the answer is: nope, no culture has to be the way it is. There are countless alternate paths for gender and sexuality, if you look at all the world's humans and get your own biases out of the way.)

The questioning can be uncomfortable. It can rattle people. But the questioning and the understanding are ultimately going to do far more good than the sticking to "tradition."

I think part of the reason I've always been drawn to gender and sexuality topics is that I, too, have always felt like I did not quite fit into what a girl or woman was "supposed" to be, or "supposed" to want. My coming of age, and maturing, and figuring out I was demisexual and probably at least a little bi, involved nowhere near the courage nor the trauma of the coming-out of many of my queer friends. And really, it's thanks to them that I even learned this much about myself in the first place. So in my view, they absolutely deserve a month per year in the spotlight, though ideally they should get a lot longer than that.

This is why I love Pride Month. It's the type of subject my mind runs on all the time, and the kind of thing I'm always interested in learning more about as our culture (painfully, slowly) evolves.

I wish you a lovely month and peaceful self-questioning.

Today, on a whim, I leafed through some of my high school journals. And this bit kicked me in the gut. I was writing about my boyfriend:

"I even began talking to him about breaking up. Needless to say, this upset him so much that I was knocked back into my senses. Especially the way he pointed out that there was no one else who would take me."

Oh 15-year-old Molly. I want to go back and hug you and tell you he is SO WRONG and that that was, furthermore, a horrible, false, cruel thing for him to say, and also, whether or not a new person will immediately "take you" upon a breakup with someone is not important. I know it seemed important at the time, especially given how shy and picked-on you were in middle school (a scant few years earlier), but you matter whether or not you're dating someone.

I even can be generous enough to say, from reading more of these entries, that I feel sorry for my (really honestly not very good) ex-boyfriend too, because it's clear from what I wrote that his parents and grandparents were cold and strict with him, and that he was super insecure.

Anyway! We don't have to worry about 15-year-old me too much, because, as amply described in said journals, I promptly set out to test his theory by flirting with at least a dozen other people over my remaining years of high school and finding quite easily that YEAH, many were interested. So there.

But seriously. Don't throw harmful shit like this at teenagers' minds, people. They're soft and still forming. It leaves marks. 

I only lately learned we demisexual folk count as LGTBQ+, according to many. Do I now get to call All the Better Part of Me #OwnVoices? Well, no, I'm still not a tall cis bi man, so it's still not OwnVoices that way.

One would also be forgiven for being surprised to hear I'm demi, given the general sex-positivity and/or perviness of my writing and attitude. It confuses me too. But it seems to boil down to "perv on the page and in imagination, demi in real life."

I'm only now learning how common this is! Demisexuality is considered (depending who you ask) a part of the asexuality spectrum. And I previously thought ace meant not having any sexual interest ever, but have lately learned it often means liking sex in theory and/or as a physical sensation, just not being attracted that way to actual other people.

For me it's always been like, "Huh, I'm so weird, because clearly many people would honestly sleep with most of those they find good-looking, whereas I only feel that way about, like, 1% of those I know, even when I find them aesthetically attractive. But I approve of those who are more sexually active, and I like to write about sex and romance. Hrm."

The short term for all that, more or less, is "demisexual." And depending on who your gatekeeper is, it might count as queer. So. Huzzah!

Here’s a story about an alluring guy I met online.

It was the late '90s, in a chat room for fans of The Cure.

He swooped in and defended me against a troll by delivering witty, cutting comments that drove said troll out of the room. I messaged him to say thanks, and we became friends.

He lived on the other side of the country from me, with his folks. We were still in our early 20s, so it wasn’t too unusual that he lived at home. He basically seemed to invest funds rather than work, and was well educated.

Not only did we share tastes in music, but we both enjoyed snarky takedowns of stupid people. Always a thing to bond over in one’s 20s. The friendship continued for the next few years, despite our frustratingly slow dial-up connections.

We confided in each other. I told him about relationship trouble with my boyfriend sometimes, but my online buddy was a gentleman; he never tried to cybersex me or otherwise audition to become my next boyfriend.

He told me about having loved and lost. About a fiancée recently who’d died in an accident. My heart ached for him.

There was sometimes flirtation. Or at least, I read it as such, and I reciprocated. The affection was expressed through rare, shy compliments, songs sent to one another in mp3, and occasional gifts shipped across the country.

We even talked on the phone a couple of times. He was charming, exactly as he was in our message window. Hearing his voice made him so real. Although not quite as real as I wanted.

No one had iPhones yet. Few people had digital cameras or scanners. So sharing photos of ourselves was actually a bit tricky. I managed it anyway, getting a few pics scanned somehow or other and sending them.

He kept saying he’d send some of himself, then not getting around to it. I respected that. Not everyone wants to share pics with people they’ve never met IRL, and he was a sensitive type, protective of his privacy.

Or at least, I respected it to a point. It started getting me down, that we knew each other so well but I could never *see* him. We argued sometimes. His snarky takedowns of others did occasionally extend to me, and I gave as good as I got.

He excelled at making me feel bad about arguing. I was letting my emotions take over my logic, as women are prone to, he said. I challenged him on such misogyny; it was beneath him. He tended to back down and send a conciliatory mp3.

Other people in the chat room were awful at times, inexplicably rude to me. I complained to my buddy in private messages, and he commiserated. Told me nasty secrets about them that they’d overshared with him. God, those people were losers.

One year, I decided I should just go visit him for a few days over summer. I proposed to, and he agreed, but told me I shouldn’t buy a plane ticket yet. He knew someone who worked for Delta and would get me a good deal.

I waited to hear from him. He didn’t log on again for weeks. Didn’t get back to me. I finally took a vacation elsewhere, to visit family who did want to see me.

Hurt, I confronted him when he finally showed up online again. He admitted his absence was a breach in manners and he was sorry. By then I had admitted it would obviously just be too “weird” to meet IRL, so we wouldn’t, but it still hurt.

At least I had him to complain to about those nasty other people. They hadn’t let up. Still, he also teased me about basically everything. Made me feel like I didn’t know anything, no matter what subject we discussed.

If I mentioned my boyfriend or our prospect of marrying and having kids, he went silent, even though he’d always denied any jealousy when I had tactfully brought up the possibility in the past and invited us to talk about it.

I started to feel disillusioned. If talking to him only made me feel bad about myself, and if he was going to be secretive about his life and dodge all the important topics, maybe this friendship was a waste of time.

I didn’t actually say so to him. I just quietly pulled back and stopped having those online conversations. I started feeling a lot better about life, without his negativity. Still, I remained confused about what had happened.

One day, one of those other people from the chat room emailed me; a woman with whom I’d exchanged many catty comments in the past. We politely disliked each other, was essentially our mutual feeling. Or so I thought.

But she was sincere and open in her email. She and her husband had succeeded in meeting our buddy in person, and had had a lot of message exchanges with him over the years, same as I had, and she’d begun to have certain suspicions.

What was my experience with him?, she basically wanted to know. I explained all of the above and more, in total honesty, including my feelings of disillusionment and hurt. Her response opened up a stunning exchange.

He’d been telling her horrible things about me. Twisted truths and flat-out lies. He’d also been telling me lies about her. And spreading lies about everyone and everything, to everyone in the chat room. It was seemingly all he did with his time.

We compared the stories he’d told us. None of it matched up. Put together, it made no sense. It was a big house of illusory cards.

He probably had no friend at Delta. No shortage of photos to send. No dead fiancée and probably none of the other traumas he claimed to have suffered, which had softened up my heart as well as this other woman’s.

He’d had an ingenious system: make each of us think we were the only one he liked, then alienate us from everyone else by whispering lies about the others, making us doubt our own worth, our own mental stability. Make us need him.

Those other people in the chat room weren’t losers at all. He had just made me believe they were. While also making THEM believe *I* was a loser.

I now know this is called gaslighting. We didn’t have that word then, or at least, no one was talking about it the way they do now. It was also more or less catfishing, another word we didn’t yet have.

He was very, very good at it. I’m not a gullible person; I like to think I’m pretty darn skeptical. But he was playing a long game, probably because he was clinically narcissistic and for no other reason, and he convinced me.

I’m lucky, and so is the other woman. We eventually started suspecting something was off and extricated ourselves. Nothing terrible happened to us except a colossal waste of time and affection.

Nonetheless, I do feel stupid and gullible for falling for his act, for such a long span of years. It’s why I haven’t really told this story before—that, and I didn’t particularly want to dwell on it.

But it gives me sympathy for those who are still being gaslighted by, for example, politicians, or worse, by friends or spouses. I know it can happen even to the intelligent.

We want to give others the benefit of the doubt. 99% of the time or more, that’s a wonderful thing to do. That other sliver of time, though…look out.

See now why I started the post with “a story about an alluring guy”? This way you could see, maybe, how I fell into the trap. If I’d started it with “a story about gaslighting,” you’d wonder how I could ever have been so stupid.

People aren’t necessarily stupid for falling for such folks. They may need years of time to climb out of their delusion (there’s no “snapping” out of it; it’s rarely that fast). But keep your compassion for the victims if you can.

Also, don’t ever, ever believe that because someone is good at snarky takedowns, they’re a great candidate for a friend. Friends have your back, true. But a true friend’s natural state is compassion and trust, not sarcasm and evasion.

And if you’re in a relationship or friendship that resembles what I’ve described above, please get yourself out of it. As soon as you can. Ask others who’ve known that person and have gotten distance from them; talk to someone you can trust.

No one who goes into a friendship with a generous, kindhearted spirit deserves to be gaslighted. Whoever’s reading this, I hope you never are. If you already have been, I’m so sorry. I know what it feels like.

[Edited to add, 12/14/2022: Just to clarify, All the Better Part of Me, the novel mentioned below about the 25-year-old bi man, is a coming-out story, but it is probably the only one I will ever write. I have since moved on to the more hopeful scenario: LGBTQIA+ characters getting to have adventures alongside the straight and/or cis characters without sexuality or gender identity being an issue—the worlds we see, for example, in Lava Red Feather Blue and Sage and King. This is the way things should be, the status quo we can aspire to. I hope books showcasing diversity, no matter who writes them, can help open up mindsets so we can get to such a world. I owe great thanks to the many people who have given feedback on my stories and thereby guided me to this decision. You're helping me learn, and I never want to stop learning, even when the process is humbling.]

“I’m a novelist, not a memoirist.” It’s what I keep saying, in defense, when people ponder, in online book reviews, whether I as a 40-something-year-old seemingly-straight demisexual woman have the right to write a novel about a 25-year-old bisexual male. Or someone from another country. Or someone with a disability I don’t have. Or any other difference you might name. I still believe that writing about people different than ourselves is the exact point and the exact job description of being a novelist, and that the empathy gained in the experience is wonderful for all of humanity. Same goes for reading novels. But, today, because it’s been on my mind, I’ll be a memoirist for a bit.

Some have said, essentially, “You don’t have the right to talk about what it’s like to be disparaged for who you are, your identity, your sexuality, because you don’t know.” But how do they know if I don’t know? Granted: right, Molly, how would they know your background when you haven’t told them? I haven’t told them because I didn’t want to talk about it, put it all on display. I didn’t want to be a memoirist; I wanted to be a novelist. Maybe I thought that was safer. Well, it clearly isn’t, in terms of being judged (nay, crucified at times), so I might as well put it out there.

In first grade—I barely remember this; I’m going by what my mom tells me—I had a teacher who was so strict she terrified me. My folks talked to the principal. They collectively decided that, since I could do the work just fine, they’d move me up into second grade. (Was there no room in other first-grade classes? I have no idea why this was the best idea. Personally I think it was a terrible decision.) Nonetheless, I got transferred to a second-grade class, to the surprise of me and the second-graders, and adjusted reasonably well and got on with life. OR DID I?

I have an August birthday, which, as you fellow summer-birthday people know, means I was already among the youngest in my grade. Getting moved up a grade meant I was now at least a year and sometimes almost two years younger than everyone else in my class. I was also physically small; always have been. I’m still only 5’2”, and I didn’t cross the five-foot mark till around ninth grade. My smallness and youth weren’t too huge a deal in elementary school, to my memory, but then came middle school.

Oh, middle school. I don’t have to tell you what it’s like. But I can tell you that it’s worse if you’re tiny, intimidated by all the suddenly-huge 7th and 8th graders around you, intimidated also by the daunting new level of academic work you’re expected to do, and it’s all made worse when you don’t have any close friends at the school. (My closest friends from elementary school went to a different middle school.) Boys who loomed over me and must have weighed twice what I did called me “Smally Molly” (so clever!), and stole my lunch tickets when I was naïve enough to leave them semi-visible in my open binder’s zippered pencil pouch, then they insisted to the teacher with wide-eyed innocence that they hadn’t done it. Popular girls stared at me and my dorky clothes as if I were a slug they’d just stepped on (I have NEVER gotten the hang of dressing fashionably), and whispered to each other and giggled. The one friend I hung out with gave in to peer pressure from a more popular girl and dumped me. I befriended a couple of fellow nerds eventually, and we three hung out at lunch, glumly relating the horrible things people had called each of us that day. Nice boys I developed obsessive crushes on eventually got tired of my leaving them cutesy shy notes and making moony eyes at them, and passed me notes that said “LEAVE ME ALONE! STOP LOOKING AT ME!!”

When I write about someone being rejected, being constantly picked on for who they are, for who they in their awkward cluelessness can’t help being, it is from personal experience, even if the details are changed.

Then came high school. Things improved! I mean…they improved compared to middle school, but…

My obsessive crushes continued, transferred to now slightly more mature boys. They were even mature enough to start being nice to me—kind of. At the end of my freshman year I started going out with a sophomore, who, because of my extra-youngness, was almost two and a half years older than me. He seemed to view me as a fixer-upper, though one he did honestly love. He’d tell me, with sympathy, that some of the other kids were wondering why I wore the same jeans all the time. And that those scabs on my arms weren’t very attractive (marks from nervously picking at my hair follicles until I gave myself constellations of tiny scabs). And I held my silverware like a little kid; had no one ever taught me better? And also, my writing was okay, but there was no way I could, like, go professional with it. Babe, grow up, he’d say.

But at least someone loved me! It was intoxicating. I still didn’t have any other real friends around—those two fellow nerds from middle school had gone to the other high school in town—so of course I improved myself to please him. Not to mention, HORMONES, hello. We were teens. Kissing and fondling each other were the wildest and most exciting activities we had ever experienced in our lives. I was learning A LOT here.

“What a slut,” another girl said about me, because I kissed my boyfriend frequently in the halls. Never mind that he was the only person on Earth I was kissing or doing anything else with—apparently being amorous at all, as a girl, meant you were a slut. For that matter, my boyfriend himself really, really didn’t like it when I started becoming friends with other guys. “He wants to get into your pants,” he’d scold, in a drama-filled argument we had over and over for basically every one of said friends. “You shouldn’t hug him.”

I couldn’t control what THEY thought, I defended. “You WANT to be sexy,” he accused. And he was right: deep down, I did want that. I didn’t want to have sex with loads of people, but I did want to be seen as sexy. Which reputable girls weren’t supposed to want. I was filled with guilt and shame, and tearfully denied his accusation.

When I write about someone being sex-shamed, scolded and put down for having sexual interests at all or even for being SUSPECTED of having sexual interests, and for being very confused about what is expected from their gender, it is, again, from personal experience. Even if the details are changed.

I broke up with that boyfriend, after way too long, after it had gone much too far into dysfunction. I blundered ahead into college and felt out of place once again, not cool enough to want to drink or smoke or party, too introverted to be social like the “fun” students, yet teased by friends in a rather sex-shamey way when I shacked up with my (new) boyfriend. I married him eventually, I kept writing, we had kids, and here we are.

But those scars—man, they still ache during certain weather. When I write novels, I’m being far more of a memoirist than I would have people believe. Even when I’m undeniably writing about people who are different than me and are undergoing specific hardships I’ve never faced, the emotions underneath are mine. Fear, isolation, grief, heartbreak, rejection, love, lust, shame, anger, confused pride.

I have this paranoid suspicion that people see my smiling author photo and read my whimsical-but-well-educated bio and think, “Yeah, I know her type. Girl who’s always gotten everything, had lots of friends in school, whose idea of a rough day was that time she got a bad perm.” I grant you, that WAS a rough day, but that wasn’t the worst of them by any means. I put all of the above out there to tell you that when I write “one of the quiet, weird kids” in my bio, I really mean WEIRD, and that it hurt, for years on end. And that when someone hates my novels and decides that what I deserve is for them to shred me and my work as if I’m no more worthy than that slug they just stepped on—yep, that does throw me right back to the popular kids slamming into me from behind and knocking me over, then breezing past snickering without pausing to help me up.

Is it worth it to keep writing novels? Absolutely. I love the writing part. The sharing part: goddamn, that’s scary. And it will never not be.

This morning on the wonderful KEXP, the equally wonderful John Richards was talking about the nasty effects of bullying and mean kids, and sharing stories listeners had sent in, which made me decide to write up this little anecdote. It’s not as dramatic or harrowing as many a mean-kid story, but it’s ultimately rather satisfying. And maybe it’ll make some other fellow nerd feel better.

So: in middle school, in the late 1980s, I was probably the shortest kid in my class, due to being also the youngest. (I had skipped first grade. I don’t recommend anyone do this to their kid, especially if the kid is already small and shy.) Nonetheless, I had a sweet friend—we’ll call her Sara—with whom I hung out at lunch break. As you know perfectly well, having someone with whom to hang out at lunch break is EVERYTHING.

In seventh grade, this savvy popular girl, whom we’ll call Jen, befriended Sara, and with her flankers of popular friends, started hanging out with us at lunch too. Cool!

Or maybe not cool. Because one day during lunch break, Jen said to Sara, “We need to talk about…” and made a friendly wince, which somehow I knew was about me. Indeed, she then turned to me and said, all apologetic, that while we were still friends, “they” just didn’t want to hang out with me anymore. Sara, to her credit, was looking unhappy and mumbling, “I don’t want to do this.”

But it happened anyway. I backed off—why hang out with people who don’t want you?—and Sara stayed with Jen, and I wandered around wondering what I was supposed to do at lunch break now.

Fortunately two other girls, at a popularity level more equal to my own (ha, I love you guys, you know what I mean, though) invited me to sit with them after a while, and we stuck together the rest of middle school. (We went to separate high schools, though, alas.) So I wasn’t friendless. But I wasn’t exactly undamaged, either.

I ran into Sara in the neighborhood some time later, incidentally. She apologized for what had happened, and said glumly that Jen did the same thing to her not long afterward. Nice. Poor Sara. Still, the rift had been made by then, and Sara and I never really hung out after that, even though as far as I knew she remained a truly nice person.

Jen and I went to different high schools and I didn’t see her for a long time. Then we both ended up at University of Oregon. I joined a sorority in the first “Rush” (recruitment period) of the year. So I was a member of a house already when Jen’s name showed up in the next Rush, in the spring: she had apparently decided to join the Greek system too.

One day I happened to be in the dorm lunch line right in front of her. She put on this big smile and said, “You’re…(squinting, searching for the name) Molly, right? From Corvallis?”

I smiled coolly and said, “Yes. We were at Highland View together.” Emphasis on the name of our middle school. Like, you do remember what you did to me there?

She said nothing about it if she did remember. “I thought you looked familiar! So you’re in a house now, right?”

I said yes, Tri-Delta. She said great, she was looking forward to Rush! I nodded, wished her luck, and moved ahead to get lunch.

I didn’t have to talk to her when she toured our house during Rush, as far as I recall, which was probably for the best. Maybe she had changed in all those years anyway, I thought. I shouldn’t hold middle school behavior over anyone’s head. So when the Rush day was over and the whole sorority gathered to collect notes on who everyone had met and what they thought and thus who we should invite back, I kept my mouth shut about her. The sorority sister in charge of recruitment said Jen’s name and looked up for comments, pencil at the ready.

I didn’t move or say a word. But other women’s hands shot up, those who had met her just today.

“I found her kind of negative and judgmental,” one said.

“When we were done,” said another, “I walked her to the door and she said ‘bye’ all cheerfully, then she marched over to her friend on the sidewalk, hit her hard on the arm, and said, ‘Where WERE you?’ She just does not seem like a very good friend.”

There were other similar comments. And I just sat there smiling calmly, saying nothing, feeling the flow of the sweet, sweet karma.

Needless to say, she did not join our house, and I never had to deal with her again.

Jen’s “crimes” were minor compared to those of many mean kids and bullies. Wasn’t I probably that mean to some other kid, at some time, if I search through my past? True, I don’t think I ever told anyone I didn’t want to hang out with them anymore, in front of their friends who I was stealing, but I know I was a jerk in some way to some people. And to those people I absolutely offer a heartfelt apology, if they’re out there reading this. So, Jen, if you ever apologize to me, I suppose I’ll forgive you. But I have the weirdest suspicion you wouldn’t even remember me.

How unfortunate for you that I’M A WRITER NOW AND CAN MANIPULATE OUR STORY IN WHICHEVER CONVINCING WAY I CHOOSE, muhahaha.

Moral of story: don’t be mean to anyone at all, because some of those people might grow up to be writers.

2017 was...difficult, I think most of us would agree. Not my favorite year ever, for sure. But in the interest of highlighting the positive, here are some of the good things for it in my own personal life!

It was the best of book releases, it was the worst of book releases. The Goblins of Bellwater was released this fall. Publishers Weekly and various librarians and booksellers liked it, which is awesome! Others hated it, largely book bloggers—though certainly not all book bloggers; several nice ones adored it. In any case, the ups and downs were cruel to take at first (well, the downs at least), until I decided that, by my own admission, this is one of my weirdest books, thus it’s not going to be to everyone’s taste. And the shiny silver lining is that despite the “meh” thrown at it, this book has already gotten more exposure and sales than my others, and some people who did like it have started reading my older titles. So now more people have heard of me…which is probably good for the career, at least?

Bonus shout-out to my extroverted younger sister Peggy and (also extroverted) editor Michelle for helping me hand out signed books at the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association Trade Show this October!

Guinea pigs: We adopted two guinea pigs! Blizzard and Cinnamon are brothers, have soft fur like cats, and are insanely fond of vegetables and will squeak their heads off if they hear you open the fridge. Satisfying and low-maintenance as pets go.

Monterey: Summer trip to Monterey with family was that rarest of things: a vacation where basically everything went well. Monterey and the surrounding California coast are astonishingly gorgeous, with a perfect climate: chilly and foggy in the morning, clear and in the 60s in the afternoon, pretty much year-round. There are sea otters playing in the surf at all times, and sometimes whales. We pedaled a family-size bike surrey to Lovers Point and lounged on a white-sand beach under cypress trees and watched teeny fish dart in the shallows. Want to go back and explore more!

Audiobooks: In a bit of serendipity, my publishers started signing up my titles with Audible this year, not long after my friend Melanie began narrating audiobooks at ACX (part of Audible). Thus, Melanie became my narrator for my first audiobook: she read aloud The Ghost Downstairs and did an awesome job of it! More audiobooks of my stories to come in 2018, if all goes according to plan.

Total eclipse of the sun: We went to Corvallis, Oregon (my hometown), to be in the totality zone for the August 21 eclipse, and it was so worth it. (Traffic getting there actually wasn’t that bad anyway.) I didn’t try to take photos on my phone of the two minutes of blazing corona in a deep blue sky; I just stood in the street with everyone else and gaped at it and staggered around going, “It’s so beautiful!” But it looked about like this (photo as credited from this person on Instagram). Next time there’s an eclipse, get to the totality zone if you can. I mean it.

High school reunion: On three separate and unrelated occasions, I saw three high school friends this summer who I hadn’t seen for years, and it was a delight in each case. Kevin the former altar boy and his daughter came to Seattle and dropped by to visit me; then in Portland at my sister’s party I got to see Tom who is also, in a hilarious coincidence, writing about goblins; then in Corvallis at eclipse time I hung out with Astrid, nowadays an illustrator and comic artist, and we talked about writing fantasy as well as awkward high school moments. You all turned out awesome! Which is no surprise to me whatsoever.

New book contract: Given how long I’ve worked on the guy/guy romance novel about Sinter Blackwell, off and on over the years, and how long this particular year I waited for feedback from beta readers and editors, and then how hard I worked on revising it, I am damn-near ecstatic to finally have this contract on my desk, and can’t wait to introduce you all to this book in 2018. I am betting it will have slightly better average reviews than The Goblins of Bellwater, but we’ll see…

And I haven't even listed all the many, many times I was soothed, inspired, or cheered by a book, film, TV show, piece of music, or other creativity. Art saves sanity and thus saves lives. Keep revering and loving and creating it.

We need a word similar to “asexual” to mean “not interested in alcohol.” Every time I say “just water for me, thanks” while others are ordering alcoholic drinks, I feel the need to explain. I feel like people either think I’m avoiding alcohol because I have an addiction to or similar problem with it (I don’t), or because I’m morally opposed to it and am thus quietly judging them (I’m not). It’s just that alcohol does not do anything fun for me, the way it CLEARLY does for most people. All it does is make me tired, and a bit ill. Not any particular fun at all. So I’ll occasionally sip a drink just for the nice taste of it (assuming it’s the sort that actually tastes nice), but I don’t *drink* drink. Just not that into it.

So, yeah, it’d be nice to have a single word to describe that, so I could say, “I’m a-intoxicant” (or whatever) in explanation instead of having to give the entire above paragraph every time.

So my mom dug this up in the grounds of our family beach house recently, buried in a teeny plastic lipstick-tube-like container. It would seem my sister Peg and I made a time capsule, which I do not remember doing at all.

Transcript if you can't read the photo:

Good job! If you liked finding this, write your own note somewhere and bury it. Put the map in the envelope w/ the others.
Molly & Peg Ringle
Aug. '88
P.S. If this is Camille, thanx for the idea

I am left with many questions, such as:

a) Who is Camille?
b) What map? What envelope?
c) 13-year-old self, why didn't you say something actually interesting if you were going to the trouble of a time capsule?
d) No cash or treasure or anything? You cheapskate.

My list goes to 12:

1.     Quitting Facebook, or at least spending waaaaay less time on it

2.     Finishing a trilogy!

3.     Starting a new novel that is not going to be a trilogy and is way simpler and smaller in scope but still paranormal and romantic and quirky in my usual ways

4.     Getting into the habit of daily meditation - I like the app Calm to help guide the practice, but there are lots and lots of others that do similar things and look good too

5.     Stepping up my exercising. In addition to making sure I take walks on an almost-daily basis, I've started doing some high-intensity-ish exercises a few times a week. (Try this one if you dare. Calling it "beginner" may be a stretch! But it'll give you a workout for sure, and I'm getting better at it with practice.)

6.     Also tai chi. I've been doing various YouTube sessions of that on occasion, and find it really does make my joints all feel happier.

7.     Recognizing anxiety for what it is; i.e., my imagination working overtime; and redirecting that imagination into creativity, such as writing stories, or thinking up ways to improve my surroundings

8.     Probiotics for all in the household. Or at least, definitely for me, in the form of things like kombucha, yogurt, kefir, and fermented pickles, and for my kids in the form of chewable probiotics when they won't eat those other things, which is usually. It has correlated to a notable decrease in number of viruses and other infections we've caught. I won't claim it has caused the decrease, but it has at least correlated, and I wouldn't be surprised if there's a cause and effect here.

9.     Earlier bedtimes for kids, better enforced. More sleep for me too. The meditation and similar breathing exercises help relax insomnia's grip on me. And more sleep surely helps our health too.

10. Being a lot gentler in how I think of myself, and getting a lot better at not giving a damn what other people think of me. Self-care feels real good, and ends up making me more patient with everyone else, so hey, win-win.

11. Leasing my soul, for a time anyway, to the Merlin (BBC) fandom, and in particular the Merthur ship. Yay, slash daydreams and fanfics! I've missed your siren song.

(It's pretty much canon, anyway.)
Also, maybe I just haven't dug deep enough yet, but so far the Merlin fandom is one of the sweetest-natured I've ever encountered. Everyone has been wonderfully nice.

12. Trying doing things in new ways, or doing new things. I'm starting small, no bungee jumping yet, but practicing flexibility in daily life is like yoga for the brain.

So my resolutions for 2016 are pretty much to keep all of those up, and do even better at them. Happy New Year, everyone!

My stress and anxiety levels in recent months have been so much lower than last year's. I could yet stand to improve my overall happiness, but "equanimity" does now describe me far more often than it used to. As a result of being calmer, I sleep better, which means I have more energy and don't get sick as often, so my physical health's much improved too.

There are lots of changes I've made, large and small, that I would say have contributed to this improvement. But here are a nice tidy three:

1. Ditching Facebook (and not replacing it with some equally time-devouring online activity). I've discussed this in previous posts. But just in case you wanted an update, I still think this was a fabulous, wondrous move, on par with breaking up with a toxic friend. (In fact, it basically WAS breaking up with a toxic friend. Or at least, a conglomerate of mostly non-toxic people who, together, somehow added up to one gigantic toxic friend.) I miss it less and less with each passing month. I'm stronger in my solitude; I have wise thoughts and am happy to keep them to myself or tell them to someone I know in real life rather than feeling any need to rush online and share.

[Edited to clarify: I'm not calling any individuals "toxic friends." I'm fond of everyone I was friends with on FB, and am happy that I'm still in touch with many of them via the *several* other ways available to us these days. It's the Facebook environment as a whole that I'm calling toxic. Too many posts, too much snark, too much drama, too much getting messaged and tagged for unnecessary reasons, too much intrusion on my work and thoughts. It felt like being trapped at a loud party I wasn't allowed to leave. Not everyone has that experience on FB, clearly, but that's what mine was like. So I post this because if anyone else is suspecting FB is detrimental to their peace of mind, I want them to know it's quite possibly so. And I want them to feel healthier too, so I do recommend reconsidering one's relationship with the site. Not with the people, necessarily--that's not the same issue.]

2. Meditating every day, or almost every day.

(I have yet to achieve the Avatar state, however.)

Yeah, meditation's all trendy and stuff these days. In fact, I hesitate to even mention that I do it, because it's so ridiculously trendy, except I must recommend it because the results are marvelous. I really do feel calmer and more compassionate on average, even with just 5 or 10 minutes a day of sitting with my eyes closed and somewhat half-assedly telling my thoughts, "Shush, come back and focus on the breath, and stop replaying that hilarious YouTube video from earlier." The practice of noticing what my thoughts are doing in the first place is the valuable part, it would seem. And though noticeable progress did take months in my case, it was so worth it. I would sooner go back to Facebook than stop meditating now. (Yes, even that!)

3. Cool tip I heard somewhere that works: when feeling stressed in a rushing-around, not-enough-time kind of way, I intentionally slow down, to the degree of doing something fully three times slower than I have to. It wouldn't make sense to take your whole day that slow, of course, but doing one minor task that slow, as a token gesture, shows your brain that it's okay; taking 45 seconds instead of 15 seconds to put away the bread isn't going to make the world collapse. Also it buys you a little time to think, breathe, get your next move figured out. It works. I like it.

Calm down, world. Calm down.

Things I've given up in recent years that I don't particularly miss:

Most of my hair products
Getting into arguments online (yes, email counts)
Cute but uncomfortable shoes
Seeing movies in the cinema
Watching violent or depressing movies
Keeping up with the news

I could also make a list of things I've given up that I do miss and hope to have again someday, but I'm focusing on the positive here. Comfort and simplicity are of the good.

Humor, meanwhile, is always good. So enjoy this inspired blend of Weird Al and Doctor Who, in which it is proven that David Tennant's Doctor is, indeed, white and nerdy. No wonder I loved him!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P-4_kvxPBYY

Current Music: How'd I get so white and nerdy?

Seattle mom honored as a really bad writer

A West Seattle woman won the 2010 Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest — the foremost national contest dedicated to bad writing.

By Maureen O'Hagan
Seattle Times staff reporter

Without the gerbil, she'd be nothing.

Well, not nothing exactly. But Molly Ringle would likely not have won the 2010 Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest — the foremost national contest dedicated to bad writing. And not just any old bad writing. The contest requires a single sentence, so bad it's ... well, really, really bad.

Her winning entry, written in her West Seattle home:

For the first month of Ricardo and Felicity's affair, they greeted one another at every stolen rendezvous with a kiss — a lengthy, ravenous kiss, Ricardo lapping and sucking at Felicity's mouth as if she were a giant cage-mounted water bottle and he were the world's thirstiest gerbil.

See? The gerbil is the key.

"Some liked her outlandishly inappropriate comparison," said contest judge San Jose State University professor Scott Rice. "It is a sendup of writers who try too hard to be original, and it is a sendup of those revolting couples whose public displays of affection make them poster children for celibacy."

"The wonderfully poor choice of metaphor is what makes the sentence especially funny," said another judge, Sharon Brown.

Ringle learned of her success Saturday. She celebrated with a feast.

"I probably continued making macaroni and cheese or something," she recalled.

Droll, yes. Thrilled, too.

A 34-year-old mother of two, she owes the idea to her infant son, whom she was nursing when she came up with it.

"Something about his attitude and posture ... It reminded me of those guinea pigs we used to have as kids," she recalled.

But dash something off she would not. She pondered and she mused and she reached for the stars, until, by the end of the day, she had pounded out something so perfectly bad, it was gold.

Well, not gold, exactly.

"The contest rules say I get a pittance," she explained. "I'm not sure yet what that is.

"I'm not expecting much but the glory."

The contest, founded by Rice in 1982, is named for the 19th-century writer Edward George Earl Bulwer-Lytton, who penned the notorious line: "It was a dark and stormy night."

Ringle is no novice writer. She is the author of a published novel in the hot-selling "paranormal romance" category.

"The Ghost Downstairs," however, has not sold quite as briskly as "True Blood." She has two more novels that are set to be published, as well, one a romance, the other young-adult fiction.

Which can't help but lead to a question: Is winning a bad-writing contest the best move for an aspiring author?

Ringle sighed.

"I've asked myself, probably belatedly, is that what I want to be famous for?" she said. "But hopefully people in the publishing world know it's all in the name of comedy."

Besides, she said, "You kind of have to have a certain amount of skill to write a sentence so bad it would win. You have to work at it."

* * *

But really, it wasn't that much work. It was fun. And all the entries are at least as good as mine, so go read 'em: http://www.bulwer-lytton.com

I also liked Seattle Weekly's post about it, since they used my silly Aplets and Cotlets remark. (You'll have to read it and see.)

And yep, I've seen the AP release version too--that seems to be the default article.

I feel quite ridiculous. But there are definitely worse ways to get 15 minutes of fame. Now I'm off to get 15 minutes of eating a snack and reading a book before going to bed. Night!

Edit: Due to a lot of spam comments on this entry, I'm locking out anonymous comments, or trying to. Please email me if you want to say "Yay for the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest!" See my page for the address. Thanks!

I wrote this shortly after getting my braces removed last year. It will be of interest only to those who have once had braces or are considering getting them. To the former I say, "Keep wearing your retainers"; to the latter, merely, "Godspeed."

---

Brace-face. Metalmouth. Train-tracks. Chances are, if you had braces in middle school, you got called those things. One plus about getting braces as an adult is you probably won't be. At least, I wasn't. But I thought them every day when I looked in the mirror.

Ordinarily I'm not that vain a person. I don't go into hiding if I have a zit or a bad hair day. I wear sunscreen and don't usually bother with fake tans, so my legs are pasty Northwest white, and I don't care who notices. I often forget to bleach or trim the rather thick hair on my otherwise feminine arms. My physical flaws are part of me; love me, love my chipped toenail polish. I didn't even mind letting people see me lumbering around nine months pregnant.

But I did not like being seen in braces. I smiled with my lips closed for photos. I would consider going to visit old coworkers if I was in the neighborhood, then reconsider--"I have braces. Maybe I'll wait till after I get them off." Metal brackets and wires lining my teeth, top and bottom, back to front, at age 33, made me feel far more uncool than I'd felt since, well, middle school. And I didn't even *have* braces then.

Part of the trouble was that I didn't get braces for aesthetic improvement reasons. My smile garnered compliments before. People, even dentists, sometimes asked if I'd already had braces. But I did have one crossbite--a spot where, when I bit down, an upper tooth ducked behind a lower tooth instead of settling in front of it like it's meant to--and that was wearing down the teeth in question, and throwing off my whole bite to a degree. It was worth it, said my perfectionist dentist, to look into braces, and get that fixed before I broke the crossbitten tooth in half.

I consulted two orthodontists. What I hoped for going in was the Invisalign option: clear plastic trays designed for your own teeth, which you wear all the time but take out for meals and toothbrushing, and which no one can tell you're wearing unless they look really close. The first orthodontist flatly told me, after I'd waited 45 minutes to talk to her, "No." Invisalign wasn't an option for my case. Titanium was required to haul those teeth into place. And by the way, it was going to take four hours to put the braces on, it had to be from 7:30 a.m. to noon some weekday because that's just how they did it, and I'd have to wear them for about fifteen months.

Maybe I'm not in middle school anymore, but I did want to cry.

The second orthodontist looked around my jaw and said, "There's not much wrong here." I liked him already. "Could I do Invisalign?" I asked him. He shrugged and said I could. But it would cost more because of the lab fees involved in designing tray after tray for each stage, and would also take longer overall. Patients often start with Invisalign, he said, but get frustrated at how long it's taking and how little progress is being made, and switch to metal braces. For adults who want it done fast and economically, he said, metal is the way to go. And by the way, in *his* office they'd put the braces on in about an hour and a half, and I'd wear them, say, ten months.

He was definitely my guy.

So, despite my initial preference, I went with metal. It was just ten months, right? Sure, they'd look stupid and feel scratchy, but I could cope. How bad could it be?

Those who say the first few days of wearing braces feel akin to having been hit in the mouth with a baseball are not exaggerating much. The office staff was friendly and efficient throughout, but there was nothing they could do about that "sensitivity," as they euphemistically called it, except hand me a box of wax to stick on the sharpest spots, and advise me not to chew anything tough this week. My mouth hurt everywhere, on all levels. The metal brackets ripped up the inside of my cheeks when I chewed, spoke, smiled, or slept. Tiny ball-tipped hooks protruded from the rings encircling my molars, and those hooks dug especially deep holes in my flesh. (Months after having my braces removed, when I thought of those wounds, my tongue still dove back to those spots defensively and tried to soothe them.) The roots of all my teeth, suddenly finding themselves under permanent tension and being pulled in new directions, throbbed in protest. Chewing anything was an exercise in pain. Room-temperature chocolate was way too hard to manage--which would have been a matter for heavy grief, except fortunately chocolate melts if you suck on it.

The wax I was supposed to stick on the sharp parts was only of marginal help. I couldn't wear it while eating, as it would come off and get swallowed, so the most painful part of the day--chewing--still had to be done without protection. I learned to take a dose of Advil half an hour before meals, but at breakfast that was tricky. I wake up hungry, as a rule, and want my breakfast ASAP.

Also, eating solid foods was disgusting. Seemingly one-quarter of what I tried to eat ended up lodged in my braces until I was wearing a packed layer of rice, lettuce, meat, and bread all across the front of my teeth. Even on the non-painful days, that drove me into fits of disgust and paranoia.

So for that first week or so, and for a few days every time they adjusted my braces, I relied on a mostly-liquid diet. It's what I still recommend to anyone getting braces. Why torture yourself?

Every time I thought my mouth could not get more full of stuff, they would add another facet. One was "crosswires"--those tiny round rubber bands that middle-school kids learn to snap out of their mouths and send flying across the room. I never mastered that skill, but got all too accustomed to the feel of the things, stretching from one upper canine tooth to the bottom canine on the opposite side. This phase lasted a few months and was intended to haul the teeth in my lower jaw over to the left, to center them properly. (While the orthodontist was fixing my crossbite, he figured he might as well straighten every last tooth in my head too.) At other phases, they added a super-tight rubber band that they laid along the wires, splashing a bright color of my choice onto my smile; and, another time, a new set of molar-encircling rings to my farthest-back molars, which previously had gone untouched.

That made flossing even more of a task than usual, and it was a huge task already. Imagine having a wire fixed across all your teeth, and try to imagine how you're supposed to work a string of floss *under* it to clean between your teeth. The answer is, you get a special tool, a little floss-threader that works like a needle to your thread of dental floss. It does the trick, but only once you get the hang of it--and that alone takes a while. I spent half an hour trying to get all my teeth flossed the first night, and wound up throwing the box of floss across the room. Even once I mastered the floss threader, flossing took five minutes every night. Without braces it takes perhaps thirty seconds. And anyone with a toddler knows how valuable five minutes can be.

Professional dental cleaning was no easier, logistically. I had to schedule three back-to-back appointments on the same day: first the orthodontist, to remove the wires; then the dentist, to clean as best as they could around the glued-on brackets; then the orthodontist again, to put the wires back on. After a few unsuccessful phone calls trying to schedule those ("Oh, sorry, we're not in the office on Thursdays"), I made the orthodontist's receptionist call the dentist's receptionist and work out the times between themselves, and tell me afterward what they decided.

My final sentence with braces stretched a little beyond ten months--it was one year almost exactly. When the nice lady at the orthodontist pried off the last rings and brackets, and took a metal pick to my teeth to scrape away the bits of glue, I welcomed the unpleasant sensation. Gone! The damn things were gone! A good flossing (ah, so quick!) and brushing and mouthwashing rinsed away the stale taste in my mouth. My teeth were slick and clean and straight. The orthodontist set me up with Invisalign-style retainers, which I wear only during sleep, and sent me on my way.

A year and a few months later, I still love the results. I didn't expect to notice any difference besides the absence of the crossbite, but actually my teeth are giving me less trouble all around. Less sensitivity than before, temperature-based or otherwise. Less accidental biting of my cheeks. Almost zero random whacking together of teeth that shouldn't whack together at quite that angle. Yes, I do wear my retainers, and yes, I'd rather not. But if it means keeping braces at bay the rest of my life--hell yes, I'll keep wearing them.

I'm still ambivalent on how I'd answer if someone asked, "Should I get braces?", or "Should I go with metal or Invisalign?" As I just said, I love the results, so yes, it was worth it...but just barely. I imagine if you had truly misaligned teeth before, the "worth it?" question will get a more obvious "yes." As for the second question: well, Invisalign will hurt too, make no mistake of that. But it will hurt less, since you have no sharp metal edges to rip up your soft tissues, and at least you can eat and floss normally. Take that under consideration before you decide. And always get a second opinion.

And keep smiling--even if your orthodontia scrapes a groove in your lip every time you do so.

Woohoo! At TheNextBigWriter.com, my short memoir piece "I Ought to Send That Bitch a Thank-You Note" was chosen as one of the ten to go into the My Writing Life book project, which the site is putting together. I don't know much about the book yet, but it sounds like the kind of thing that wouldn't look too bad on the CV.

Some of you got to read the piece here on my LJ, but I've had to lock the entry, since I'll be signing a contract giving the online publishing rights to TNBW. If you didn't see it, it basically said, "I started writing novels as 12-year-old in a jealous snit, and my early works were laughably bad, but in the intervening two decades I've learned a few useful tips on the craft, such as 'Don't quit your day job.'"

In any case, it was a lovely surprise and a nice birthday present to boot. (I'm about to turn 33. Give me virtual chocolate and picspam!)

All right, fess up. Who put me up on a big long list of sexy geeks of 2007? (Scroll down a bit.) With a photo from over five years ago, I might add.

It's likely someone asked if they could nominate me, and I said, "Sure, go ahead!" and then promptly forgot about it. So just jog my memory.

Regardless, it was a pleasant surprise. Dude, I'm listed on the same page as Captain Jack!

"There's nothing about this haircut that suggests the name 'Bob' to me." - Steve

( photos! )

Here's an mp3 of me reading aloud Tolkien's poem "Errantry, which was all

kalquessa's idea.

Text of "Errantry" here.

So that's where the name "Dumbledore" came from, eh?

By the way, does Spike call Wesley "Percy" after Percy Weasley? Both Wes and Percy were pretty proud of being "head boy".

Happy weekend!

...and the one that finally gets you, that's death.

Which is all by way of saying, happy birthday to me! Give me eye candy!

My dodged bullet? I have had this new freckle thing on the side of my nose for a few weeks now. It's tiny, almost black but isn't a blackhead, and hasn't gone away or changed. I usually don't get freckles at all, so I finally called the doctor this morning and got an appointment for an hour ago. Well, everything is fine, of course; he patted my arm and said "It's not cancer," and all. But really, for a bit there, I was having a thoroughly morbid mood. I started thinking of all the stories I'd heard--"My friend's dad found this little mole on his arm. Three weeks later? He's DEAD." And so forth. I planned a few deathbed speeches. It was very dorky and G0th of me.

Anyway, I'm fine, although Zach is NOT going to forgive me anytime soon for taking him with me into that horrible, horrible place (the doctor's office, where he usually gets shots) even though nobody touched him this time.

So. Eye candy! Bring it on!

Profile

mollyringle

My Website

May 2025

S	M	T	W	T	F	S
				1	2	3
4	5	6	7	8	9	10
11	12	13	14	15	16	17
18	19	20	21	22	23	24
25	26	27	28	29	30	31

Syndicate

Page Summary

Style Credit

Style: Neutral Good for Practicality by timeasmymeasure

Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags

Page generated Jul. 6th, 2025 03:21 pm

Molly Ringle

You've read the book; now see the blog!

Entries tagged with self

Hi! Come elsewhere and find me!

All rainbows aside -

"No one else who would take me"

Demi ponderings

Being a memoirist again, just for tonight

The shame we carry forward from youth, and the empathy of writing

Mean girl karma payback story

Best of 2017

A-intoxicant? A-alcohol? A-drinking?

A (nearly totally useless) time capsule found

My best practices of 2015

Three better habits lately

2011: the year of keeping it simple

And this is how I made the Seattle Times at last...

The technology that punishes you for smiling

Publication from an unexpected angle

Hey, I'm a sexy geek!

LemonLye bobs her hair

Errantry, read aloud, an attempt

Life is a series of dodged bullets