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 |  Periodic musings on whatever topic suits me that day. |
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During my teenage years blogging (via such incredible sites as deadjournal, livejournal, and xanga among others) was a central part of my daily routine. But the older I get, the more afraid to post anything truly personal I became. Jennifer Knapp, in what I consider her "coming out" album, wrote, "Careful what you say / Careful who might hear / Someone else inside the universe could write it down / And you'll be hearing it for years." That's the fear with which I've lived every day, particularly since I began coming farther and farther out of the closet. Because I work in education (collegiate mind you), I always have a twinge of concern anytime I post anything even remotely controversial on any site. Here I plan on working to develop my courage at posting my personal ideas, because at least here I have the safety of a certain level of anonymity. (Pen names can be very troublesome sometimes, but they can also be quite liberating.) We will see what comes of this experiment in returning to blogging. |
| Wow! Three months without a blog post already? What the heck have I been thinking? This will probably just be a short "what's she up to?" entry, since I've not made as many appearance as I would like on WDC over the past few months. So, what is up with me? As a writer... I still have a few paperback copies of Choosing Her Chains available through my website.  (If any of my buds outside the U.S. would like a copy, let me know. I'll probably have to work something out regarding shipping costs.) I'm hoping to have the e-book version done sometime mid-November. I was shooting for October, but that's not going to happen. I've also recently redone the website and opened myself up to relatively cheap editing services. Oh, and the PDG poetry class is due to start in less than a month! Looking forward to leading it again this time around (with help from the lovely MontyB  of course). Otherwise my writing has been sadly on the backburner.  As a lover... So...did I mention I'm getting married?  Thirty-nine days and counting! Lots of prep work still yet to be done, since we're doing the whole thing pretty much DIY. It's stressing me out....a lot...When we made the decision to go DIY, I was told that music and the ceremony itself was my job, and decorations and artsy stuff was all Katherine's job (unless he needed manual labor). Didn't really work out that way.  Turns out I'm a control freak and want a hand in everything, even if I almost always defer to her decisions. Who knew?  But I definitely have been doing some writing as part of the wedding prep. I more or less wrote the entire ceremony, since we wanted elements of a lot of things but also wanted to NOT include several traditional things. And, K doesn't know this yet, but I am working on a poem with which I can embarass her at the reception with a public reading. Want to check it out?
I could sure use some help with direction. I like where it's started, but would love some help pushing forward. Very rough. Treat with care. Also, I may have locked it down more than strictly necessary to make sure K can't get to it. If you want the passkey, though, just message me or comment and I'll hand it over.  But yeah, that's about the extent of my life right now. I work. I sometimes write. I plan a wedding. I'm looking forward to the whole "being married" thing so the whole "wedding" thing can stop being the center of my existence. One day soon! Anyway, love you all, miss you all, see you again soon! ** Images For Use By Upgraded+ Only ** |
| It's been nine months since I have updated this blog, which really is far too long. I feel like I've let all of you down for not being as active as I once was. I doubt, with things going the way they are, that I will ever reach that level of action again. Still, you all are my writing family, so I will do my absolute best to at least make sure I'm back in the water more often! So, what's been going on with me over the last nine months? Let's see if I can hit the highlights for everybody! Writing The past nine months I've spent quite a lot of time getting my writing career pushed into production. I can't say I'm where I want to be at--who among us ever is?--but I've definitely hit some big milestones over the past couple of months. First Website! I now own my very own website! I am working on several projects over there, including a more public blog, a list of independent authors on the LGBTQ spectrum, and a homepage for my novel series in progress . Be sure to check it out, but be kind to me and my graphics. I'm still working on getting several things updated in the next couple of weeks. First Publication! My first short story/prose poem was recently published in When Women Waken , a primarily online journal for women writers that publishes in association with Women Writers, Women['s] Books. . There's an error on the published version that isn't in the manuscript I submitted, but c'est la vie. Check it out! I highly encourage any women writers out there to look into their upcoming titles and see whether you might have pieces prepared for submission. It's not a paying gig, but still, getting your name out there counts for something, yes? First Guest Blog Post! I also recently did a short blog post for 10 Minute Novelists (which is an awesome blog + Facebook community). Let's hope it's the first of many! First Professional Editing Gig! This opportunity basically fell in my lap. I've been informally helping friends edit papers for years, and one of them referred me out to an aunt in Michigan who is finishing a graduate degree. Her advisor suggested she hire a professional editor (something our university doesn't usually encourage but theirs does), and there it was! It's been tons of fun already, and I'm thinking of opening my services up a bit as I have more time available. First Book Published! That's right! Thanks to last year's contest at "Hook Us!" , I am now in print! My paperback copies of Choosing Her Chains arrived in my possession at the end of May. If you're interested in reading more about the book itself, feel free to head over to the website for more information. If you are interested in ordering one of these limited run paperbacks, e-mail me through WDC or fill out the form on the webpage for more information! Personal But of course, that's just my "career" stuff. Things have been all sorts of fun in my personal life, too. 1. Getting married! Finally! My partner and I are planning on making ourselves "official" on October 24, 2015. I suppose I better get planning, eh? 2. Moving! So, I have been in a tiny 525 square foot studio apartment with my partner and two cats for YEARS. As of last month, we finally moved into a much bigger place. Of course, we're still unpacking, but hey, improvement is improvement, yes? 3. Knitting! Okay, this one isn't that big a deal, BUT...I have been crocheting for years, but just now got around to learning to knit. I'm ambi-crafty, y'all! So anyway, that's what's been going on in my life lately. It's been a blast, but also insanely stressful. I'm pretty sure the other half is ready to smack me a good one. Regardless, I've missed you all terribly and I am so so so so glad to be back!   I hope you all are having a great summer and a wonderful Friday!    Amalie |
| So, the notorious MontyB challenged me and a few others over at "Invalid Item" "to post a new poem, blog entry, or short story about an every day occurrence in their lives and why this occurrence is important to them." My poems and short stories are saved for other goals this week, so a nice informal rambling blog post it is! One of my favorite evening and weekend activities is the Netflix binge. I rarely pay attention, mind you. Nope. I'm almost always curled up in one corner of our sofa with my laptop, sometimes writing, sometimes reading, sometimes playing on WDC. Meanwhile, my partner curls up at the other end, and my two feline familiars, Sadie and Salem wiggle their way into the snuggle time: Sadie almost always on Katherine's lap, Salem almost always doing whatever he can to somehow manage being in both our laps at once. The scene is usually cute enough on its own, but the rocky trip to get there makes it even more meaningful to me. Sadie and Salem came into my life when they were about six weeks old. I had just finished my master's degree in music education and had begun teaching full-time at a school about an hour and a half from my family, an hour and a half from my alma mater (and my friends still attending there) and an hour and a half away from my best friends, who lived in another city at the time. I was basically just far enough away from everything that I spent my days working myself to death and my evenings and most weekends huddled up in my apartment alone. One day, my mother, sister, and six-week old niece showed up on a scheduled visit to come watch me conduct my junior high band at a football game. My mother insisted on showing up early, because she'd brought me a small trunk of hers I'd always coveted. She came in to the apartment, sat the trunk down, and when I opened it these two noisy little balls of black fur popped out. My sister and I each named one, and they became my shadows. Sadie and Salem were really my only companions most of the time for those two years I was teaching full-time. I took them everywhere: home for visits, to friends' houses in other towns, etc. I rarely left them at home for more than a few hours. They were my kids, and we were extremely close. Now, no one else really liked them that much. Salem was a sweetheart, but a coward, and usually hid when exposed to anyone new. Sadie was much more outgoing, but much less friendly. She insisted on ruling the roost no matter where she went, but she was downright mean to anyone but me. When I made the decision to move some 600 miles away, there was no choice to me be made. Of course they were coming with me. They did, and they remained my most faithful companions, even as I gradually built friendships outside of the home. Then along came Katherine. And boy was THAT fun. She made the same mistake that everyone does when they first meet the kids. Well, Sadie at least. Salem hid under the bed pretty much the whole time she was visiting. But Sadie was extraordinarily curious. Wanted to talk to her and get her attention all the time. Katherine was instantly smitten with Sadie and couldn't understand why Salem was the one I was more bonded to. That is, until she started being around more and more. Salem gradually came out of his shell and would at least be in sight when she was around, but Sadie got downright mean. If I wasn't in the room, and Katherine walked by, Sadie would stick a claw out and swipe at her on her way past. The running joke was that she was just jealous and was being a bitch because that's who she was. Things continued like that for a long time. Salem begrudgingly accepted Katherine's presence when she was around, and Sadie stuck to herself but would make her displeasure known. We both got more scratches from her during that transition than we had from any other cats EVER. The end result was worth it. Over the years they've both come to accept her as another mother. If Salem is sitting with us, he expects to be touching both of us somehow at all times. He'll sometimes come and meow at us when we're snuggled in bed because he insists on laying between us. He wants to be near both of us whenever possible, and sometimes can't decide where he wants to be if we're not sitting together. Sadie, on the other hand, has become Katherine's cat, more or less. Katherine is the one that plays with her most, which she loves, so she's decided that's her human. If we are not together in the same room, it's Katherine Sadie goes off to insist on attention from. And she hardly swipes at anybody anymore except her brother.  Point being, it took us a long time to become a family. Katherine and I will be celebrating our four-year anniversary next month, and we're just now at a place where the cats have accepted the four of us as a family unit. That's why having us all huddled up in one place means so much to me. It means I've built a family, even if it's half feline. ** Images For Use By Upgraded+ Only ** ** Images For Use By Upgraded+ Only ** |
Cross posted at Purple Prose and Other Literary Nonsense. Whether in plot- or character-driven fiction--and I am becoming less and less convinced there is a definitive distinction between the two--character design is central to maintaining an audience's interest in our storytelling. How characters act and react to the obstacles strewn in their path demonstrates who they are (or who they are becoming). A character who acts in a manner inconsistent with his or her personality quickly becomes a slave to whatever urges the author has. I've read enough fanfic to know that playing God with your characters, allowing them to behave inconsistently, almost inevitably leads to boring storytelling. So how do we create consistent characters? We don't. They have to come to us. As a reader, I don't have to like who a character is or what a character does. I just have to be able to understand why they do what they do. That understanding allows me to give the author the benefit of the doubt, to trust that they truly understand their stories, and to simply get lost in the storytelling. If characters make no sense to me, if I can't understand their flaws, then I cannot give myself up to the power of their stories. Falling in love with a character in someone else's work is not so different from becoming enamored with our own. I've written recently about meeting one of my protagonists. Purple prose aside, inspiration struck me in a moment when I most needed it to appear. Alisandra was already there, fully formed from the ether, or from my own mind, or from a crack in time and space between our two worlds. However she came to me, I cannot claim to have created her.But for her story, I escape neither responsibility nor blame. In the end I will lay claim to having told her story as beautifully and accurately as I was able. But the work has not been in the inspiration: it has been in the craft. Darcy Pattison wrote an excellent little blog post on keeping characters consistent. Of her methods, one of my favorite exercises for discovering characters involves a full immersion of myself into their world. What does life look like on a daily basis? How have the edges of that life, sharp or silken, carved the characters' personalities? What things have these story people seen or done that have contributed to the people they are becoming?Character interviews are another excellent tool for getting to know your characters. I particularly love the long outline in chapter seven of K.M. Weiland's Outlining Your Novel: Map Your Way to Success. It gives a novelist a very in-depth idea of the kinds of things you should know about your character when writing them into a piece of fiction, and particularly into one the length of a novel.I've also found altering my usual POV to be another excellent method of getting inside the minds of my characters--particularly if they are antagonists or minor players in the main story. I just slip into a first-person mindset and let their words run wild. I am always surprised at what they tell me about their own experiences. Even those characters I hate most have a right to have their stories heard; I don't have to ever repeat them to find them valuable. These methods are indispensable to us as writers, because they help bring our characters to life in our own minds. I am wholeheartedly convinced that the real work is not in "coming up" with a character. It's in understanding the characters we've already met. We will never understand our characters' motivations, their actions and reactions, if we do not understand them as people first. What does that scar over her left eye mean? Why does he always flinch when he hears the sound of running water? Why does she smirk when she gets angry? In the end, designing a character for me is never about designing her to behave in subservience to my desired plot. It is always about getting to know her, meeting her at her level, and discovering who she is, was, and may yet be. If she trusts me to listen, to understand her story even if I don't agree with it, then she will trust me to tell it to others the best way I know how. My job is not to create. It's to take what's already there, a secret known to me alone, and to give it manifestation in the here and now, so that others can meet the characters that have entrusted me with their stories. Crafting stories is both a buoying joy and a heavy responsibility. We have a sacred obligation to our characters to tell their stories the best way we can, and until we can embrace them, understand them as old friends, their stories will be little more than collections of pretty phrases without meaning. |
I actually posted this earlier today on my offsite blog at Purple Prose and Other Literary Nonsense , but I felt strongly enough about it that I figured I'd post it here too. Monday afternoon, as I was preparing for a quick nap before dinner, I read that Robin Williams, one of the greatest comedians and actors of our time, has passed away . I didn't want to post anything until official confirmation of the cause of death had been reported, but news outlets have now confirmed that he died by his own hand. He had apparently been suffering from severe depression for some time. In one unfortunate decision taken by a desperate man, the world lost a brilliant, creative mind.Although Williams was adored by many, the conversation has already begun shifting away from fawning memorials to questions about his life, his intentions, the dark things from his past. I heard evidence of it on the radio on the way to work both yesterday and this morning. My coworkers are all discussing how their Facebook feeds have essentially exploded with both memorials and criticisms of the man. His struggles with addiction, his three marriages, his somewhat criticized relationships with his kids--all these things and more are slowly but predictably coming under the microscope. Already in many of the more popular (even if I don't understand why) blogs, he has been criticized for being selfish, or for being cowardly, or for being responsible for his own choice. I will not give them traffic by linking them here, but all you have to do is perform a google search and you'll find them, I promise you. Mental illness is a deadly disease, for which suicide often seduces a sufferer with promise of an ultimate cure. Williams is only the latest in a long dark history, paved with the lives of countless artists, writers, musicians, and comedians, some of the most creatively gifted of their times. Kurt Cobain. Ernest Hemingway. Sylvia Plath. Vincent van Gogh. Virginia Woolf. At least anecdotally, the rate of mental illness amongst those in the creative professions seems higher than among the general population. Some more recent studies have confirmed there is a correlation between those in creative professions and mental illness. In one 2013 study, researchers noted that writers specifically were at greater risk for any number of mental illnesses, including schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, substance abuse, and yes, even suicide. The brilliance and tragedy of the creative mind is its gift for seeing things in new ways, not all of which are bright and sunny and joyous. Sometimes the darkness draws us in without our knowledge. Sometimes we dive into it willingly, choosing to hide within the shadows of human consciousness. Unfortunately, danger lurks in those shadows. We swim through the darkest of humanity, and we are not left unscarred.I once thought that suicide was a "permanent solution to a temporary problem." The very good intentions of the statement--intended to inspire sufferers to look for hope in a better tomorrow--ignore the fact that sometimes mental illness is not temporary. For many people, these diseases are manageable but chronic. To suggest otherwise, that somehow a miracle cure is the only desirable outcome of such a battle, is ill-advised at best and horribly callous at worst. I myself struggle with persistent depressive disorder and have since I was very young. I have fought off the urge to take drastic self-harming measures more times than I care to admit. Is it true that the condition sometimes goes into remission? Absolutely. Is it true that some people have eventually found themselves free of the disease? Of course it is. But to tell me that my only goal should be to overcome it entirely detracts from all of the efforts I have taken to live with it, each and every day of my life, no matter how hard a task that seems.Suicide is permanent. It isn't selfish, it isn't cowardly, and it isn't its victims' fault. But it is permanent. The very beauty of life is that, from moment to moment, it contains infinite potentialities for change. To be fair, not all of those possibilities are positive. In five minutes, I might get a phone call announcing that everyone I love is dead and gone. Tomorrow morning, I could discover I'm suffering from an incurable cancer. A week from now, I might be evicted from my apartment. These are all very real worries, some more realistic than others, but real. To imply that everyone's tomorrow will be bright and beautiful is not only shallow--it's demonstrably wrong. But then, there are other possibilities. Some are perhaps pipe dreams. My novel in-production might sell 7,000,000 copies and make me rich, eliminating all my financial worries. My mother might call me to tell me she won a million dollars and is giving me a cut of it. I might wake up with no health issues at all, with my knees and joints in better shape than they have been since high school. But then there are other perfectly possible scenarios. I might get offered a promotion at work. My partner and sister-in-law might have a delicious fajita dinner ready for me when I get home. I might get a publication acceptance letter. I might get to spend an excellent day out by the pool. Just because my life tomorrow might actually get worse doesn't negate its ability to get better. To me, it's the positive possibilities that make the negative ones, if I can't ignore them entirely, bearable. Every day I fight to embrace those possibilities, to keep pushing forward in the hope that tomorrow, even if not perfect, will be better than today. Robin Williams, at least in this life, has run out of possibilities for change. It's tragic and heart-wrenching and I pray that he's found rest from the demons that were plaguing him. It wasn't selfish. It wasn't cowardly. It wasn't his fault. But he'll never sign another movie deal. He'll never get another comedy special. He'll never get to help a friend in a time of need. Those possibilities are now over for him. Don't ignore the infinite potential of your life, no matter what shape it may be in now. It could be taken from you in a moment. Don't let it go without a fight. If you are interested in learning more about mental illness, about how to cope with it yourself or to cope with helping loved ones who suffer, I highly encourage taking a look at some of these links by some of the professionals out in the field. They have much better things to say than I would. What is Depression? Coping Tips for Siblings and Adult Children of Persons with Mental Illness Coping & Support - Mental Illness Coping with the Stigma of Mental Illness ** Images For Use By Upgraded+ Only ** ** Images For Use By Upgraded+ Only ** |
| So, the past several days have been...interesting. To say the least. So, I made a sudden, yet always on the back of my mind, decision. I'm gonna dive into this whole "maybe writing professionally" thing. Start entering contests for money, submitting to publications, etc. Don't get me wrong. I LOVE the contests on WDC, and I love participating in them, and I do still plan on doing so from time to time, just like I plan on continuing my teaching responsibilities, etc. But I'll also be pouring myself into other projects offsite. I had this crazed realization yesterday that I have this dream. I have this dream of waking up some day and being able to quit my job, or even just go part-time, to focus on a career in writing. Now, some of you will probably say, "duh, we knew that." But no, you probably didn't. I had this vague hope that maybe things would just kind of eventually fall into place for me, that they would suddenly make sense and luck would just make its way to me. To wish for anything more, to really invest the time and dedication to the art that I needed to do to be successful, that would hint that this was more than a fleeting interest, a hobby. And I couldn't afford that. I like to think I'm a fairly open and honest person, and really I am. You ask me a question, and I'm going to answer it as honestly as I can. But I'm NOT always open with myself, with my wants, needs, and desires, because I'm so used to just wishing, accepting they were never going to come, and then not doing whatever I had to do to work toward them. Such a path inevitably led to disappointment. Anyway, back to the point. I've decided I WANT this. I WANT to one day feel free to call myself a professional writer. I want to dream about it at night and dive into it all day until my friends and family think I'm obsessed, because I am. I want to mold the world around me to help point me toward my end goal. I've never lost myself to a dream before. Vague ambitions, career goals, yes, but never real dreams. It's exhilarating and frightening and possibly a ride I'll want to abandon before long, but for now...for now... Part of my plan has included getting more involved with the online writing community outside of WDC. That means new web pages, etc. If anybody wants to check them out, please do. I hope to get a user pic up (for all the various sites) that's an actual picture for all of them, but I don't have one quite right for it just yet. Hoping to work on that in the next week or two. Anyway, do check them out! I've started an offsite blog as well, and I'd love it if some of my WDC family came around to comment. This page will stay my more personal blog (and more rambling one I would hope), but I am going to be blogging specifically about writing, etc., on the blogger page, so there will be different content depending on where you look. Check them out! Help a girl get her kicks. @AmalieCantor at TwitterPurple Prose and Other Literary Nonsense at BloggerAmalie Cantor at FacebookOh, and if any of you have similar things offsite, send me the links! I'd be happy to follow you. ** Images For Use By Upgraded+ Only ** ** Images For Use By Upgraded+ Only ** |
| First things first: A sincere apology to anyone I owe a review (and there are about seven sitting in my queue right now). Just as soon as July is over and I can take a breather from rushing through Camp NaNo, I will be diving back into review land. Don't give up on me yet! So, I thought I would step back today and talk about something not directly related to writing. It's about an idea I've toyed with for as long as I can remember but could be brave enough to fully commit. After a week of experimentation, I am happy to report that, for now, I'm making an attempt to go "au natural." With my hair that is. If you hang out on the internet at all, you've probably heard of the so-called "no shampoo" method for hair care. From what I've read, there are basically two versions of what this method entails: 1. The "No Shampoo for Curly Hair" method. Essentially, this replaces normal sulfate-filled shampoo with conditioner. Full stop. Some people have called this "co-washing." I was already doing something similar to this simply by using sulfate-free shampoo and only shampooing every couple of days. (Note: There's even a particularly expensive but effective brand of shampoo called "No Poo." No joke.) Check out All About the No Poo Method if you're interested.2. The "No Shampoo" method that's much more "hippie." If you do a google search for "No Shampoo Method," this is the method that ordinarily comes up. The essentials are simple. You "wash" with a mixture of baking soda and water, and you "condition" with diluted apple cider vinegar. That's it. This method appeals to me for two reasons. First, I like the idea of getting as much of these oddbally chemicals out of my hair as possible. Second, I like that I can spend $2 for a month's supply of hair care products. Considering at one point I was spending $18 a bottle for 12 oz. of specialty curly girl sulfate-free shampoo (which worked with relative success), this method has already done WONDERS for my pocketbook. So, I'm basically documenting this exploratory journey. I decided to try the method for 30 days (inspired by the blog post at Beautiful Somehow . If it works at least as well as my previous methods, I'll stick with it for cost effectiveness if nothing else. If not, well, I've only lost 30 days, and my hair's such a mess most of the time I don't anticipate feeling bereft for those thirty days.Some background information: My heritage is essentially Western European, except for a great-great grandmother on one side who was half Cherokee and half African-American. I am white as a ghost if I've had no sun, but the kinky curly hair dominates my particular strand of the family tree. My mother and grandmother both had nearly unmanageable hair when they were younger. As they got older it became slightly less wild, and they still essentially blow it straight into submission every day. They had the fortunate happenstance of having their hair eventually thin out, which in their cases actually helped the overall look. Mine hasn't yet, and probably isn't likely to do so if it hasn't started becoming noticeable already. Now that I'm older, my hair is definitely more manageable than it was when I was a child. However, because of its texture it's still very difficult for me to make it behave. It's much dryer than ordinary "African" hair (for lack of any better word), but it's still intensely kinky, curly, and FRIZZY. For several years I managed it by keeping it cut short and doing a daily routine of wash/condition and then moussing the heck out of it in hopes the curls would stay curly throughout the day. It never really worked long term. Maybe halfway through the day the curls would start separating into these insane frizzy flyaways. I got used to it. I have long since accepted my hair will never be easily managed. It's now been about a year since I've had a legitimate haircut, so my strands are getting long and I've gone into my long-hair routine of wash/dry/stick in a clip for the day. I would love to be able to wear it down curly, but I also don't want to have to spend hours each morning combing/conditioning/moussing/drying just to have an hour or two of cute curly hair. I've tried pretty much everything my whole life to make my longer hair manageable and have come up empty. If I don't essentially glue it down, it doesn't stay. So, onto the experiment! I'm planning on thirty days of using nothing but natural ingredients in my hair. The standard formula is to wash with a mix of baking soda and water and then "condition" with diluted apple cider vinegar. I have toyed with coconut oil and may or may not introduce other essential oils at some point (once I know how my hair is reacting to the project) but otherwise no foreign substances are going to go into my hair. None. This will be a completely new thing for me, so here's hoping it turns out well! Without further ado, my notes from the first seven days (plus today): Day 1 -- ▼ Day 2 -- ▼ Day 3 -- ▼ Day 4 -- ▼ Day 5 -- ▼ Day 6 -- ▼ Day 7 -- ▼ Day 8 -- ▼ And hopefully my next post will be back to writing-related matters. Thanks for bearing with me as I ramble about my experiment. ** Images For Use By Upgraded+ Only ** ** Images For Use By Upgraded+ Only ** |
| Last week, our office scheduled a meeting with the campus police department for a workshop on dealing with shooter situations on campus. However unlikely it will be that we'll be attacked now (just look at the insane SWAT response from the "backfire heard around the world"), we all thought it prudent to participate in some training, nonetheless. The one thing about the workshop that really stuck with me was the officer's elaboration on the "fight or flight" syndrome. He argued that most people actually experienced neither flight nor fight, but simply froze when caught unprepared. It made a great deal of sense to me, since the few times I've found myself in a really frightening situation, I've often frozen, at least temporarily, before making a decision. So, I feel like I'm stuck in "freeze" mode at the moment. After my highly unexpected win in the "Hook Us!" contest, I've been torn as to whether to go jump for joy and immediately dive into further rewrites/revisions or to go hide in the deepest depths of a dark pit and forget I ever wrote anything. It's PETRIFYING to me, and since I know which path I SHOULD choose, but can't at the moment, I'm just sort of stuck. It's one thing to get a manuscript ready for submission. That's a "doable" task, and honestly, it's safer for me as a writer because hey, the manuscript is likely to be rejected anyway, and rejection is comfortable and doesn't actually require much effort after the fact. But prepping a manuscript for actual publication? Like really for real this is going to happen publication? I think I might throw up from the stress. And the idea of seeing a press release about the book (which I found out about this morning)? Ahhhh! I always wanted to be a published author, but I think I had it in my head that I could just stick something out there, and people will either read it or they won't, and then they'll leave me alone. Obviously, when I'm most rational, that is never what I truly expected, but at the same time I suppose I still hoped. The introvert in me is awfully active at the moment.So, those of you writers out there who ARE published....how do you get past that freeze moment (if you have it) and push forward? I've never been one to give up on my goals easily, and I don't intend to do so now, but just moving myself to action at the moment seems like a Sisyphean task. ** Images For Use By Upgraded+ Only ** ** Images For Use By Upgraded+ Only ** |
| So, for those of you who perhaps did not know, I spent most of the last seven days visiting family in Mississippi, almost 700 miles from where I currently live in Oklahoma. This is the first time I've visited for that length of time since I before I made the big move, so it was significant that I got to spend that much time with them. That much said, they provided TONS of fodder for posting blogs, and I'm not sure I can make a single cohesive blog post out of the trip. Instead I'll do a series of mini-blog posts hidden behind dropnotes. How does that sound? That way you can ignore my rantings entirely if you like. Marriage, or something like it... ▼ Visiting the Family... ▼ Long Road Trips... ▼ Camp NaNo... ▼ ** Images For Use By Upgraded+ Only ** ** Images For Use By Upgraded+ Only ** |
| I have recently been reading some of the work of John Gardner, specifically from his The Art of Fiction: Notes on Craft for Young Writers: ($12.99 from Amazon.Com) and On Becoming a Novelist: ($10.44 from Amazon.Com). His commentary is witty, helpful, and engaging, which means I do not bore of it easily, but also that it takes me a bit to chew on. One particular bit of the latter work has stuck in my head and continues swimming around it from time to time. In the preface to On Becoming a Novelist, he writes: I write for those who desire, not publication at any cost, but publication one can be proud of--serious, honest fiction, the kind of novel that readers will find they enjoy reading more than once, the kind of fiction likely to survive. Fine workmanship--art that avoids cheap and easy effects, takes no shortcuts, struggles never to lie even about the most trifling matters (such as which object, precisely, an angry man might pick up to throw at his kitchen wall, or whether a given character would in fact say "you aren't" or the faintly more assertive "you're not")--workmanship, in short, that impresses us partly by its painstaking care, gives pleasure and a sense of life's worth and dignity not only to the reader but to the writer as well. This book is for the beginning novelist who has already figured out that it is far more satisfying to write well than simply to write well enough to get published. And thus I stand, in the few days preceding the beginning of Camp NaNoWriMo . I have been preparing for this July since February. A short story version of the novel I plan to draft has been more or less complete since March. I've spent the weeks and weeks leading up to July planning and prepping and workshopping and getting as much feedback on ideas and characters as I can as I prepare to knock out a full draft of the book in July. I've finished this challenge twice before. The drafts always come out terrible, but it's an exercise in attempting to do something bigger than you've done before. It forces you to focus on a single task for an extended period of time. And for the first time, I think I might actually be on to something. I think I have something that might, one day, be worth something. There's a story that I love and characters who I both love and hate and want to strangle and want to give everything. I want that story told, and more importantly I want to know their stories. I want to walk inside their skin and then let them walk in mine, so that they can step into our world alive and vibrant and real. And thus, I am petrified. I AM the writer Gardner addresses. I don't want to be only a published author (although that is definitely one of my goals). I want to be a good author. And I'm frightened that none of my works will ever live up to that self-induced impossible standard that I'm constantly attempting to meet. (Side note: If you're interested in other times I've written about "Imposter Syndrome," you might enjoy reading "Invalid Entry" or "Invalid Entry" .)In the end, I'm not even quite sure what I'm trying to express in this blog entry. I've been in a bit of a fog the past couple of months but am striving to work my way out of it now. Right now, I most need to focus on avoiding self-sabotage. In the past, I've gotten it into my head that "if I can't get it perfect, I shouldn't try it at all." That's bullshit. Seriously. Nothing's ever going to be perfect. My story is never going to meet my own standard of perfect, and it's never going to meet anyone else's standard either. There will always be something to improve. And you know what? That's a good thing. That means I will never be stagnant, will never fall into the trap of resting on my laurels. I'll either go insane or go home, and right now it feels like either of those is better in the long run than settling for mediocrity. So, three entries left to finish in "Invalid Item" , I'll dive heart and soul into Camp NaNoWriMo in an attempt to get a full draft of this piece put together. Perhaps I'll let a small group of friends help me edit in the next rewrite, but for now the issue is taking the original story and getting the expanded novel written down. It may be a few months before I'm even close to something I'm ready to start shopping out to publishers (or even to possibly self-publish), but I feel right now like I'm on the right road. I just have to keep following it. ** Images For Use By Upgraded+ Only ** ** Images For Use By Upgraded+ Only ** |
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Pets are very special. 
I certainly believe that romances that happen that fast can go spectacularly (just look at my parents--they married after 3 dates and have been together 33 years). I'm just not 100% convinced that the little sister really understands that kind of commitment at this point. Then again, since she's had two failed marriages already, perhaps she does know and I should just let it go. I do worry about her though, and I worry even more about her 7-year-old and 2-year-old daughters who will have to deal with the fallout should yet another relationship fall apart.