Draft Aftercare

I did a partial read-through of my NaNo novel and wrote a "reverse" outline to make it easier to see what I'd actually written during the month of November. I'm not at the editing stage yet, but I've rewritten a few scenes and filled in some of the empty spaces. My novel is a boring piece of shit, but it's the most consistent boring piece of shit I've written during NaNoWriMo, so that's one way of looking at it. In other words, it reads like a cohesive story, not a dozen loosely intertwined short stories. My camp novel was a better, cleaner draft overall, but actually calling it a novel is ambitious.

I'm reading Heroines.  It's a collection of musings on modernism and its women (most of whom long relegated to muse status, unfortunately), feminism, memoir, the Western canon, and literary life in general. I'm enjoying it, but it brings to the forefront a lot the same issues I have with a lot of things that try to universalize "girlhood" or "womanhood." Of course, the canon isn't just overwhelming male, it's overwhelmingly white and male -- that goes without saying. I just wish it could have been acknowledged. Plus I can't help but feel a little jealous -- I'm not supposed to write.  I didn't grow up in a house of books; I don't have the "proper" education, etc. The sole quote on writing that has ever resonated with me comes from Gloria Anzaldua (and I'm not a POC, so I don't have the right to claim it for myself):

"Who gave us permission to perform the act of writing? Why does writing seem so unnatural for me? I'll do anything to postpone it -- empty the trash, answer the telephone. The voice recurs in me who am I, a poor chicanita from sticks, to think I could write?"

It goes beyond seeing women's writing as silly or lesser, or fraught with messy emotions. A lot of women will never reach even that level because of other circumstances telling them not to write.