Maybe I've been watching too much Queer as Folk lately.
Or maybe I've just been thinking about my sexuality too much, because I'm caught in that feeling of just absolutely loving everything that is gay - the culture; the aesthetics; the people; the diversity; the beauty; the hope. (Or maybe it means I've been thinking about my sexuality just enough.)
I've always thought that I wanted to be a science fiction writer. With or without making a conscious decision, almost all of the work I've written so far has been sci-fi. But now I'm working on a possible book that's about gay teenagers, and I'm loving it so much. It feels natural. It reminds me of a couple years ago, when I still wrote poetry everyday. Jesus, everything that had seen my pen was about boys or being gay or the emotions that come with being gay.
I really want to change things, you guys. I want to make GLBT characters in films not just oddities or sideshows, but the main entree. I want to suck the stigma out of them. I want to prove that films with a GLBT focus can be wildly successful, and thus encourage other writers and directors and producers to pursue similar work.
I haven't navigated the business yet. I don't know what types of pressures and antagonists I'll be facing, and I bet it won't be as easy as I make it sound. But I have a dream, and I'm not going to stop fighting. One thing I do know, however, is that excellent writing is always in demand, and if I can be the best damn writer that that town has ever seen, it won't be a question of whether my characters are gay or straight. It'll be a question of how much. =]
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Eh...
Similar to all the other labeling discussions on here, it's best to skip it and just be a writer. If a show has a gay part, write it. If it doesn't, write it. I think coming at your writing with any agenda aside from honesty is needless.
In a week, I fly to Thailand to finish my novel, which has a minor gay character and is a pretty asexual novel. I'm also writing autobiographical non-fiction essays for another project, sadly I find there to be way too little gay sex in my autobiographical stuff, too. Second novel is about gay sex workers. So, it's all over the board... I just think if you develop your skill set, and move toward topics and characters that interest you, that's your only job. If you think how to then make something gay(er), it seems a bit off...
Unless you're hired onto a show that has an established POV and character set, then sure, you have to work within that structure.
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"People who are happy are slugs... They do not move the human race forward."
-- Camille Paglia, on Oasis
Thank you, it's good advice.
Thank you, it's good advice. I think you misunderstood a bit, though. It's not like I make a first draft of a story the way I want it and then make a second draft where I gay it up! It's kind of the opposite. The problem I was having before was that I was writing sci-fi stuff that I wasn't relating to too well, so it wasn't incredibly honest or powerful. But now I'm writing stuff with a gay focus, and I can definitely relate. It's almost embarrassingly honest! No agenda whatsoever. Honest work stems from whatever is most important to the writer and whatever he feels most strongly about, and my life as the oddball gay teenager is what that is right now. I'm totally open to writing whatever story I feel the most emotionally invested in, whether it's devastatingly gay or not, and it's pretty likely that my subjects will change as my views on life change.
But what I was trying to say with this post was that I'm beginning to really enjoy writing about GLBT people, and maybe it's a path that I'll continue on for the rest of my career. It seems very me. And although there is an agenda there, because I really do want my work to affect people, it's not detracting from the honesty of my work, because that agenda really is the most honest part of me. Chalk it up to youthful idealism. I hope to extend that idealism beyond just my youth, though, so that's that. =]
"But don't be afraid to be a fool. Remember, you cannot be both young and wise. Young people who pretend to be wise to the ways of the world are mostly just cynics. Cynicism masquerades as wisdom, but it is the farthest thing from it."
-Stephen Colbert