/lit/ - Literature

>>10970758
>>10970758
I'd like to experience that some day. Winter in Australia, I mean. The climate here is being indecisive- winter is struggling to let go. It could be a chill that intrudes to your bones one day, or a deceptive mild the next, and one never knows how to dress. All this talk of the weather, yet I'm still under the covers. Sunday never inspires action. Reading is a best case scenario.

Lately I've been writing a lot, because I've had an ever-evolving novel in my mind. I don't know if it would resonate with a lot of people, but here's the skinny of it: early into transition, a creatively bankrupt mtf wrestles with the fact that she's robbing herself of the biggest excuse (gender dysphoria) for not accomplishing anything with her life so far, and now has to confront larger existential questions, namely 'and then what?' Along the way she encounters her doppelganger, herself if she were to have "manned up", and is haunted by phantoms of her father, a detective searching for her former self,
leading her to question what's even real as she understands it. How do we move past a life trapped in aesthetics? And then what do we do with ourselves?

Some things that have influenced this over the years, though I'm not always capable of speaking to at lengths, because I'll admit my tendency to forget the details of some books over time: Fifth Business by Robertson Davies, Descent into Hell by Charles Williams, A Little Lumpen Novelita and Distant Star by Roberto Bolaño. Sometimes I borrow a nice sentence structure from a book, or make note of words to use. I sometimes struggle with form, but content flows naturally.

So that's where I'm at. It started off bring one thing, but now my character is writing the original idea I had, adding a slight metafiction aspect. I'm trying to keep it from becoming too autobiographical, but after enough time I end up writing about my life.

I too come from a lower middle class family, but my dad supplemented his income with criminal activity. Eventually my parents split and I ended up moving with my mom to an even more humble lot. That's probably around the time I first began imagining my life as a woman, but I don't want to connect that to a specific event. Truthfully, the concept always interested me and my stories as a kid, but it wasn't until I found myself in a strange new place with no friends, no phone, no internet, or anything that I was forced to become more acquainted with my mind. And so I imagined myself as an adult woman having to take a train into work, adjusting my hair, checking my makeup in a compact. There was never much of a sexual component to it, though I do have a longing to bring life into the world. Fatherhood repulses me, however, and the only time I ever entertained that prospect was in the wake of my father's death, until I realized that was more of a desire for the things we used to do together: reading, going to a play, watching a baseball game.