Pratchett went back to older throwaway jokes (like dwarves being apparently unisex) and used them as metaphors to discuss social change, racial assimilation, and other complex issues, while reexamining the species he’d thrown in at the margins of his world simply because they existed at the margins of every other fantasy universe. If goblins and orcs and trolls could think, then why were they always just there to be slaughtered by the heroes? And if the heroes slaughtered sentient beings en masse, how heroic exactly were they? It was a long overdue start on redressing issues long swept under the rug by a parade of Tolkien successors who never thought of anyone green and slimy as anything but a notch on the protagonist’s sword, and much of the urgency in Pratchett’s last few books seemed to be related to them. “There’s only one true evil in the world,” he said through his characters. “And that’s treating people like they were things.”
And in the last of his “grown-up” Discworld books, that idea is shouted with the ferocity of those who have only a few words left and want to make them count. Goblins are people. Golems are people. Dwarves are people, and they do not become any less people because they decide to go by the gender they know themselves to be instead of the one society forces on them. Even trains might be people, and you’ll never know one way or the other unless you ask them, because treating someone like they’re a person and not a thing should be your default. And the only people who cling to tradition at the expense of real people are sad, angry dwellers in the darkness who don’t even understand how pathetic they are, clutching and grasping at the things they remember without ever understanding that the world was never that simple to begin with. The future is bright, it is shining, and it belongs to everyone.
“This is like an AA meeting for book depressives, anxiety cases, ADHD, I consider myself the triple threat,” Margaret Stohl (Beautiful Creatures, Icons) joked at the first panel I attended at the first ever YallWest book festival. “In honor of my ADHD AA meeting–My name is Margaret Stohl. I am a bestselling author in 50 countries. I’ve had a book made into a movie. I’ve sold a lot of books, I’ve visited a million countries and I’m so depressed sometimes I cannot get out of bed in the morning. I am a New York Times bestselling trainwreck.”
With those words my heart dropped. I wasn’t expecting this. Sure, the description for the panel said, “Honest talk about painful struggles
with depression, anxiety, ADHD, life. Margaret Stohl, Libba Bray,
Rachel Cohn, Kami Garcia, Richelle Mead,
Lauren Oliver, Stephanie Perkins,” but I thought it was a joke. You know one of those, I get really crazy during deadlines, type things. Not, actual mental illness.
I moved to LA to write, to separate myself from the things that bring me down and to get away from my bipolar disorder and the bottle of lithium that sits unopened in my suitcase. I most certainly didn’t come to LA to sit and listen to my favorite authors discuss their own mental problems. But, I did. And, honestly, I think it is one of the best things that could have happened to me in this point of my journey.
Like many of you who read COBG, I want to write more than anything and sometimes, it’s hard. Sometimes, my mind goes to dark places and I stare at the screen while I berate myself. I tell myself that I am horrible, that no one cares what this black girl from the Bronx has to say. Sometimes, I can’t get out of bed, never mind write. Sometimes, I’m so overcome with so many thoughts and ideas, it’s difficult to pinpoint just one thing to focus on. What I learned on Saturday is that Richelle Mead can relate, Lauren Oliver is a survivor and that Stephanie Perkins almost didn’t write one of my favorite books of 2014, because the same demons that plague me, plague her.
I thought long and hard on how I would report on YallWest 2015. Long as in this post is days behind schedule and hard, because it truly is difficult to pinpoint what to write about a weekend long experience that I equate with booklr heaven. Should I write about the lines of people of all ages and genders waiting for a few moments with their favorite authors? Should I discuss tripping over suitcases and carts filled with books, because some book geeks wanted every single book they own to be signed? Would my followers be interested in reading about the friends I made or the fact that I hung out in the greenroom and ate lunch with Susan Ee (Angelfall) or that I stood next to Veronica Roth (Divergent series) for like five minutes without realizing it was her? Sure, I could brag and chat about all the things I did that you didn’t or I could share an experience that helped me. Share it is.
Oh my God, what if you wake up some day, and you’re 65, or 75, and you never got your memoir or novel written; or you didn’t go swimming in warm pools and oceans all those years because your thighs were jiggly and you had a nice big comfortable tummy; or you were just so strung out on perfectionism and people-pleasing that you forgot to have a big juicy creative life, of imagination and radical silliness and staring off into space like when you were a kid? It’s going to break your heart. Don’t let this happen.
