Author:
Good evening to all my readers.
I emailed a response to Sephrena earlier today in response to some comments, and especially one from this site and I felt very compelled to respond to.
I would like to clarify a few points.
1. In my works of Bebe, I will admit I made a somewhat bad mistake; probably more like a huge one to all of you though, in my reference to the main character as still "John." From her time in Kiss me Bianca, to Lala Land to Hollywood, and on through Disney, I made that mistake. I humbly and profusely apologize for any possible and unintentional slur my mistake may have caused to any of you dear readers reading the stories. I should have started way way back when writing this using the female pronoun to refer to John as Bebe when the Bebe personality took over. Bad call on my part! Very bad! I admit to this mistake. At some point, I will fix it.
2. Most of the stories that have been written, some date back way, way back, do have some bad grammar. I will admit, some mistakes came through. But as of this moment, I am willing to let it slide for now. Sephrena is reposting my older works here on BigCloset TopShelf for me at this time because of my situation and it is easier to pass along messages through her to you all rather than to try to learn html and all that code to make the stories look good here. I may or may not get around to reworking my older stories though, that is because of my next point that I have to make to you.
3. My wife has surgery in the morning. God willing, she makes it through in one piece, my sanity may stay straight enough for me to make the time to continue work on four more stories sitting in limbo. Life has not been too kind to me, okay? I have a lot on my plate, and digesting it - my wife, my life, my home, my finances, a car wreck, is just a bit much. So again, I do love comments, I do check in early mornings to read them, Just be a little kind to me please? Once everything settles into a routine again, I will try and take care of some of this.
I love you all. I really do. It takes a big heart to be this open to your community. You all have a lot to deal with as well. I apologize for any offenses that may have occurred because of me within my stories.
I am but a humble writer, and dearly yours. Please forgive me.
Clara Schumann
Comments
As Always
All my love!
Love, Andrea Lena
I agree with Andrea
Your stories have always been an inspiration to me Clara. My thoughts and prayers are with you dear. Thank you again for posting to BC. All my love! :DD
DeeDee
We owe you everything
We owe you everything and you owe us nothing. I'm very thankful that you share your work with us. We are better for it.
It's always tough to read comments on our work. Especially those that have some editorial content related to desired corrective actions. It's tough to remember to read those comments with the most positive interpretation. It's tough to remember that most commenters think that they are being helpful.
Especially the random yoyo on the internet that is writing this one.
I always look forward to seeing your work. I love your characters, the situations they find themselves in, their dialog and the expository you write to explain it all to us. It's easy to forgive a few mistakes or editorial errors that happen along the way.
Revise your old work if you must. Personally I'd rather see you put your efforts into new work than revising old work.
Best wishes to you and yours. Growing up is not for the weak.
Crescenda
aka
Your friend
Crash
Bebe
Clara,
We are all honored that you have chosen to share your stories with us on this site. Some of us have never read any of your stories before you started posted them. I am loving the opportunity to read these great stories.
Do I find it strange that Bebe keeps getting referred to as John and he? Yes, I do. Am I offended? No. Now, all that being said, these are not new stories. You wrote them a long time ago and they are just now being shared with us now. From experience, I know changing the name and gender of a character is hard when it is a big story (like the Bebe stories). You can do a Find/Replace for John to Bebe, but it is the pronoun changes that make it hard to do. With a lot of time, someone can do it, but the question is whether that is worth it? What might be a better solution is just state this is an issue at the start of a story. Just state that back when you wrote it that you thought it was the best way to do it but since then you have learned that it isn't.
Personally, I am absolutely loving the Bebe stories, and I don't care about grammar or syntax.
Now as for the life. You worry about family and you own mental health. {{{{{ HUG }}}}}
Keep Smiling, Keep Writing
Teek
Keep Smiling, Keep Writing
Teek
Hugs to you and your wife
Life is tough for everyone and it ca get overwhelming. I read the comment in question in the raw. Seph and I both agreed that the writer of comment should have reworded it.
One of the big reasons I quit writing was because of grammar Nazis. Honestly when your reading a story most people just dont see or care about grammar.
Dearest Clara
I am so sorry to hear of some of the troubles that are besetting you, and I have you and your wife in my heart and thoughts at what must be an absolutely awful time. We have corresponded many times over the years, and I personally owe you a huge debt of gratitude for the wonderful stories which you have written, and the absolutely wonderful characters whom you have described in them. As an aside I should also thank you for name checking a great number of pieces of music, over several genre, which either I love ( "Brown eyed Girl", anyone?) or which your encouragement and enthusiasm has made me go off and discover (Bad Company?)
As for the rest, well what you write and the way that you write it is surely up to you. For me, you write stories which draw me in and make me care about the protagonists. You create memorable and lovely characters who, sad that I am, become my friends. I would hope that that makes us friends too, and so I am thinking about you at this most difficult time. Never doubt that you have friends here, who wish you well. I hope that all goes well. Love Lucy xxxx
"Lately it occurs to me..
what a long strange trip its been."
Thanks for the update
It is nice to get an update from you and I am sorry for all the problems you are having, I hope surgery went well. I have enjoyed all of your stories that have appeared here and when I see a story from you I read it immediately. I hope when you get back to writing that you consider writing future chapters for Bebe. Every great once in a while a story line and characters come along that just deserves more. With Bebe you have done that, be proud it is a gift to be able to create a story like this. As far as grimmer mistakes, that is easy to overlook. In fact with Bebe and John I think it adds to the story, as a reader you have to pause and think about the word usage and gain additional understanding of the situation. I with you well and hope things start looking up.
No need to apologize
There is no need to apologize. Your stories are great to read. Hope everything is fine with your wife and that she is doing OK.
I really enjoy your stories and most of the time I just read right over the grammer errors.
I have read 4 of your stories so far and have enjoyed all of them. I now reading Bebe's story.
Keep up the great stories.
But please take care of your wife and family. They are the most important people in your life. Your friend and readers will also be there for you. So hang in there.
Back to reading and like I said no apologize needed.
Thank you Clara, wishing you and yours well.
I appreciate your heartfelt apology, and offer my own to you. I should have known that the sudden flood of your stories onto BC meant that I was seeing a corpus that spanned your understanding of gender identity; that I was reading a work that probably preceded the 21st century’s flowering of that understanding for most of us. The generosity of the BC contributors is astonishing. Writing is hard, sharing your writing even harder, and anyone willing to do so deserves appreciation and kindness. Demanding that you pass your stories through a “Woke” filter to force them into your modern understanding is excessive. There's no escaping the culture of the times, consider “Huckleberry Finn”, which to our modern sensibilities seems frequently racist and sexist, but Twain was an ardent abolitionist and supporter of women's suffrage; his writing reflected the culture of his times.
Your descriptions of Bebe's thought processes were so on-point, making it clear that to her, John was long gone. That made me assume that our omniscient narrator knew something that Bebe didn't; that there was another shoe to drop; an unresolved tension that ran through all the tales. It was my frustration in waiting for that denouement that led me to write and chastise you.
In early days I sometimes participated in “Someone is wrong on the internet” exercises, (see https://xkcd.com/386/ and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Cunningham%27s_Law ) but gave that up long since as pointless and cruel, resolving to instead say nothing if I had nothing nice to say. In fact, I think my comments about Bebe's misgendering are the only negative comments I've ever written on BC. Take that as high praise, your stories had me so engaged that I couldn't just drop them, I had to 'fix' them. Generally, if a story bothers me, whatever the reason, I just stop reading it and move on, reserving my attention and comments for stories and writers that rise above. Yours do.