Now that we are official post-NaNoWriMo, I'm writing an as-yet untitled short science fiction story with some themes that are a bit of a stretch for me. The main character is a drug-addicted war veteran with serious PTSD and a body full of dangerous military hardware. He is a difficult character to write, not because of any trouble I have with the PTSD perspective, but because it's all too easy to internalize the horrors the character has endured. One particular horror, the death of a young child, made me literally sick to my stomach as I wrote it. As a parent, just hearing about the deaths of children always makes me a little queasy now, and intentionally exploring a particularly horrible death, even in fiction, actually hit me pretty hard. Yesterday, I found myself unable to write, not because the words weren't flowing -- on the contrary, they were flowing fast and furious -- but because I didn't want to throw up. I was able to get past that scene eventually, but still... Uggh...

The other major characters are his drug dealer and a neighbor who pities him in a caring kind of way. The neighbor is a pre-operative transsexual who is also difficult to write, because it's so damn easy for such a character to fall into stereotypes. No, she's not a transvestite lounge singer... No, she's not "sassy" and doesn't refer to anyone as "girlfriend"... She is emotionally sure of herself and stable, and simply happens to be a woman in a man's body. In my experience, this is rare in fiction of any sort, not just science fiction. Initially, she finds the main character pathetic, but quickly comes to understand that he is pitiable because he's basically living in hell, and when he decides to make a very good but very difficult choice that nearly costs his life, she's there to support him.

In many ways, this is a love story, although not in the romantic sense. They come to care for each other a great deal, and in many ways the vet owes her his life in the end.

Not all writing is cathartic, but this particular story feels like it is for me. Issues of death, sexuality, and addiction bubble beneath all our surfaces, and sometimes it's good to give them voice.