Okay, not you, me. And not everything, but a few key important things. About life; about writing, which is also life. This is as good a place as any to admit them.

In April of '99 I wrote a short story about a travel writer who was married to a novelist. This novelist was a fascinating, brilliant and funny guy, but deeply insecure and more than a bit of a prick; people who knew me and my circle of people at the time described the character as a combination of John's academic snobbery, Leo's arrogance, Jacob's caustic sense of humor, and John McKnight's impotence.

And I had some words that I put into his mouth: "Happy people don't have to write love stories."

I believed them, too. They were a rationalization, a cheap shot, a justification of why I was cranking out page after page of short opuses about miserable people who didn't understand why they were in such miserable situations, then over the course of the story arrived at an unpleasant realization which changed their lives -- ultimately for the better, but they sure had to go through a river of shit to get there.

I remember, about this time last year, turning to John and saying "Y'know, it's weird. Every single one of my stories has the same epiphany, and that epiphany is 'Oops'." It was true for everything I'd written since about 1997, all the ideas I'd scribbled down and outlined and left to ferment until I was ready to write them.

And then, in July of 2000, I wrote a novelette with a happy ending.

Well, kind of. It's a happy ending that makes most people who read it go "Eww." But the main character discovers what she really wants in life, and she gets it, and she's happier than she's ever been, and no one has to get hurt for it to happen. So I call it a happy ending. You can read it later this year; it's called "Principles and Parameters" and it'll be in Del Rey's anthology The Children of Cthulhu. This fall, they tell me.

This was in July, when I was spending just about every waking minute when I wasn't at work with either John or Chris or Bear, and I put together a trip to Boston and flew there all by myself for a really fantastic convention, and I finally told Leo that I didn't want things to work out with him after all and made him sleep on the couch when he insisted on staying over one night. When I said "Fuck couples therapy, fuck springing for lunch three days a week, fuck calling for advice or anything else, I am going it alone."

And now it's January, and by damn, I am putting the finishing touches on, wouldn't you believe it, a love story.

Well, sorta. It's a chivalry story, the love is of the courtly variety, no one gets laid or married or even kissed, so we are talking roman the way the French meant it back in the day of Chrètien de Troyes, but there is a good guy, and she wins. Along the way she farts around with a whole slew of the various legendary bits 'n pieces which went together to form what we call the Matter of Britain. It's even meta-fiction. It's a commentary on the creation of a canon of work. It's lit'ry. I am dead chuffed about it.

I don't have to write it like that. But I want to.

This is a big change from the days when I didn't want to--when all I particularly cared about writing were stories which felt as unpleasant and helpless as I did.

I'm surprised that no one I knew at the time called me out on it--that no one sat me down and said "Meredith, you're being stupid arrogant. You're miserable and you know it, so why are you going on about happy people necessarily writing all sorts of unsettling shit?"

This is a myth that needs cracking, I think. No, not all writers who do Unpleasant Stuff are by nature morbid or depressive. (According to Harlan Ellison, Clive Barker is one of the most together people you'll ever meet.) But at least among the lit'ry cadre, there is this sort of assumption that Real Life is a cesspit and that only Bad Shit is worth writing about. That is the myth. Down with it, says I.

There is another myth which only in the last few days have I started to realise is false. John used to quote at me some Famous Writer's dictum on writing and money--maybe Joyce Carol Oates or John Cheever or someone along those lines. The quote has to do with writing because you have to: because if you don't sell that story, they're going to evict you or repossess your car or whatever.

Fuck that, says I. Maybe it works for some people, but not for me. I have to have a cushion. It doesn't have to be a big cushion, but it has to be there. Fifty bucks in the bank, twenty, that's enough. As long as it's there, I can sit down with my $1.50 cuppa coffee and scribble for three hours at a kick. As long as I know that I can get between here and the next paycheck without having to sell CDs or starve the cats or buy sandwiches on credit from the gas station for dinner, things are groovy.

I want to be my own patron. Does that make me a dilettante? Okay, I'm a dilettante. But I'm a chipper dilettante. And a published dilettante.

Eat that, Joyce Carol Oates.

I wasn't meaning to, but Colin had some things he wanted to do, so I logged on to Earthlink's web interface to check the mail -- and damned if I didn't find an email from Raechel Henderson of Jackhammer E-Zine, informing me that a short-short story I sold her early last year, "Homunculus", made it into their "Best of Jackhammer" anthology!

I think it's going to be an e-anthology. I'll post the URL once it's up.