Chapter 12 - Updates

I promise, I am trying to get on a better blogging schedule.  I know I've been pretty sporadic here, but now that I'm actively working on improving my craft, I'll hopefully have more to say.  Some little words of wisdom here and there.  I want to aim for a post a week here.

Here's my most recent Barnes and Noble haul:

From top to bottom:
Code Name Verity by Elizabeth Wein - I started reading this last week.  My schedule's been pretty full, but I've been sucked into this thing.  Everyone on the blogosphere has raved about it and I see why.  So glad I started it.
Different Seasons by Stephen King - Confession time: I haven't read everything King's written.  Shocker, I know!  Until now I've had a strange aversion to short stories and novellas, but my writing classes have opened my eyes.  I'm also writing some short stuff now so I need to do my homework.  This one includes the inspiration for the Shawshank Redemption.  Can't be half bad.
The Iron King by Julie Kagawa - It's my first fey book!  I've heard about this series over and over so I thought I'd give it a try.  From what I read last night, I like.  The faeries so far aren't your typical winged creatures flinging glitter everywhere.  They have teeth, literally.
Daughter of Smoke and Bone by Laini Taylor - Finally!  It came out in paper back and I bought it yesterday.  As much as I love a good hardback, they're expensive.  And I'm back in school paying for supplies.  Gotta be thrifty.
Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn - I'll admit, I bought it because of the hype.  Everyone has been raving about it and it's at the top of the best sellers lists, so how bad could it be?  Plus Barnes and Noble had it for 40% off.

So what have I been doing all this time, you ask?

Well I went back to school!  That's what I did.  After much pushing and shoving and calling the registrar's office (because NC State has the most asinine advising system on the planet), I forced myself into two writing classes.

First I have Fiction Writing, which I love.  My professor (I don't know if it's appropriate to call him that because he's a MFA student at State and he's also probably only a couple years my senior and I feel weird calling someone who could be considered a peer Mr. So and So) is great.  He reminds me of one of my long time friends, if she were a dude.  He's a science fiction writer (yeah, I googled him and found his blog, whatevs) so I'll probably try to hunt down the stories he's had published.  The class is great.  Granted, I'm the oldest person there, but everyone is excited and ready to go.  They start talking about our readings and discuss them before class even starts.

Last week we finished our first drafts of our stories to workshop.  We have two due during the semester consisting of 2,000 to 10,000 words.  I've never written short stories before (aside from that pretentious allegory I tried to write in high school), so this is new territory for me to squeeze my ideas into that word range.  I think I did well on my first go around.  I wrote about two kids spying on their strange new neighbor.  My own neighbor was the inspiration.  Life imitates art, right?  My workshop group receives its critiques next Wednesday so I'm excited to see what the class's response is.

Second I have Creative Writing.  This class focuses on more forms: drama, poetry, and short stories.  Right now, we're smack in the middle of our poetry third.  My professor is another MFA student who specializes in poetry.  She's exactly what I would picture: soft spoken, well dressed but without make up, often wears only one earring, and she must have art class before she teaches us because she never wears her shoes and her toes are covered in either plaster or white paint.  This class has a different feel to it.  The students are quieter, less prone to blurting out their opinions, but now that we've begun critiquing each other's work, they are starting to become more animated.

It's a funny thing being back in school but not working toward a degree. For one, I feel old.  Most of my classmates are five years younger than me.  They can't buy alcohol and have really only just graduated high school.  They're concerned about Rush and football games and intro Biology exams.  They don't know what their majors are, but they have ideas.  I feel like a fish out of water sometimes.  I say things like, when I was in college, or my old college roommate, or when I was a senior.  I don't have an answer when they ask me what year I am or what my major is.  I don't have either.

But I see that bright-eyed ambition that I've been missing.  Out in the real world, it's an easy thing to lose.  Young minds like these are always clicking and turning, looking for new ways to make better grades, how they can update their resumes, what they can do over the summer to show they didn't waste their time.  They're busy and tired.  Each semester, their lives change with their classes.  They are surrounded by their friends, free from the watchful eyes of their parents for the first time.  They have the world at their fingertips.  It is refreshing to see that again.  It makes me want to move, to do more.  These are people who will stay up the night before, toiling until the task is done.  I've become lazy.  If I don't finish something by bedtime, I push it off until morning.  Not these people.

So in a way, I am different, but I am the same.  They are different, but they are the same.  We're all a little bit mad but we are all determined.

Chapter 11 - Write Without Fear

Again, I apologize for the long lapses between posts.  August has been filled with weddings and trips and classes and work.

Last time, I wrote about having writer's block.  And I am first to say: I was wrong (Hear that, Mom?).  Writer's block is another one of the convenient excuses I can hide behind like lack of time or inspiration.

It is fear.  Plain and simple.

Fear of ending.  Fear of not living up to the grandiose expectations that I have built up in my head for how I want my writing to be.  Fear of actually having to put this thing out into the world one day.  This is Step One.  Write it.  If I finish, it's been written, and if I have a first draft, soon I'll have a second and then people will be putting it in front of them and the judgments will come.

It is an old notion: if I don't try, I won't fail.  It is a cowardly move, for sure.  I am slowly learning to let my writing stand on its own two feet.  I can't cripple it from the get-go by never finishing.  Let me let you in on a little secret:

Everyone writes crappy first drafts.  Professionals and amateurs.  Everybody.  (And if there is someone who writes a perfect first draft, we don't talk to her anyway.)

The beauty of a first draft is no one else has to see it.  A first draft is a diary; a first draft is your dirty little secret.  You take your first draft and you mark the hell out of it.  You massacre it and the final product looks nothing like that awful piece of prose you put down.  If you're lucky, in the end, what you have is something that comes close to what you imagined in your mind.

Every writer wants to do a story justice.  But what about the characters? we moan and cry.  We aren't painting them in just the right light.  

So what?

Keep writing and it will come.  The important thing with a story is 1. starting and 2. having the courage to finish it.  I can pretty much guarantee that perfect little snippet you've written a thousand times in your head will not match up to what ends up on the paper.  The beauty is that with time and careful inspection of your work, the final product is exactly what it needs to be.

My advice?

Write.  Just write.  Don't comb over the details looking for out of place commas or even plot holes.  Put a bandaid on it and let that little bit of magic come.  Writing is something like channeling for me.  It's a groove, often like running.  You have to warm up and stretch.  You have to give yourself time to let your strides lengthen until you reach a sustainable pace.  Sure, it's painful.  You have moments where you feel like you are constantly running uphill.  You are battling to get the next word down, to find the right detail.  You have to remember no one else is watching.  If it's shit, toss it.  However, you may find that upon revision there are some good kernels in there you can tease out.

I am still guilty of these things, but I am learning to write without fear.  I had a moment the other morning while reading some of my Fiction Writing class's assigned essays and I thought, Good Lord, I am not this good.  I will never be this good.  I pulled up the manuscript and started looking at it, hating all the parts I'd once loved.

Then I made myself stop.  I'll never finish anything if I let myself be paralyzed by fear.  I may have to humble myself a little bit (I am not Hemingway and I am not Steinbeck; I don't aim to be), but that doesn't mean that what I'm doing doesn't have value.

Honor it.  Block out the negativity and let the words come.  Free write.  Associate.  Observe.  Ask questions of your characters.  Challenge them.  Make them grow.

As a young writer, it can be a lot to take in.  There are so many rules, but if you write a lot and you read a lot (the two most basic rules for becoming a successful writer), you will find that you already know a lot of them.  You see examples of what to do and what not to do every day in what you read.

Writing can be a lonely road.  You lay bare parts of yourself normally kept hidden and you offer them up to the world on a platter, asking for acceptance.  Many times, you won't get it.  But I believe with talent and perseverance, one day, it will come.

-E

And if you can't write, like they say at NaNoWriMo, just add ninjas! 

Chapter 10 - Writer's Block

Some say it's a myth.  Others write through it.  Mine has seasons, different phases like the moon.  I am currently in a waning phase.

I am almost done* with the first draft of Momentum.  Sara, my roommate of nearly 5 years, has moved out.  I've lost the boy.  I'm losing money.  I am fighting to be even considered for writing classes.

I have a lot of empty space and a lot of echoes to contend with right now.  Writing has been like bashing my head repeatedly against a wall.

Not the right tone.  Not the same magic vein I tapped into before.  Inspiration has been fleeting and I've grasped at the little wisps of it like I used to chase after lightning bugs as a kid.

It's also summer and the story's climax is...at odds with pool days and sunshine.  I have to get dark.  I have to walk in rainstorms (literally) just to feel the way I need to.  Thankfully, fall is coming!  In high school, my friends and I called it the Autumn Effect.  It is the casual winding down of summer, the installation of the school year routine.  Back to the grind.  The days grow shorter and the nights cooler. Suddenly, it's easier to be sad.  More acceptable.

I have finished a manuscript before.  It is sitting beside me right now gathering dust, waiting for the right time.  I remember the exact day I finished.  It was in April and I was hunched over solo at a table meant for two in those Starbucks they put in Barnes and Noble.  Apparently, books and coffee go together.  I remember typing the last sentence and I, appropriately, announced that little victorious word count on my Facebook status.  Fast forward two years and it doesn't matter much how my heart pounded in my chest, shooting my blood through with adrenaline (I had done it!  I finished something!).  Not much came from it.

Maybe that's what I'm afraid of, why I feel a brick wall when I try to finish.  I know where to go and slowly, I have figured out how to get there.  I just can't start moving.  I trip, sprint a hundred feet, back track, edit, stumble, and finally stop.

I am not giving up though.  I suppose that is growth.  My problem used to be I would never finish.  As soon as things got rocky, I would let whatever project I was working on putter out and instead go with the lightning strike of inspiration.  I'd answer the seductive call of the next best thing.

I am not done yet.  This story isn't done yet.  It is far from perfect and it deserves all of me.  So that is what I will give it.

-E

*'Done' is a relative term.  A first draft is always awful and while I have combed out the tangles of the first few chapters (when I really should be ignoring my inner editor and simply writing), the rest is, for lack of a better term, a hot mess.  Cheers!

Chapter 9 - What I Know

The late day sunlight sent little leaf shaped shadows across the wrinkles in the creek.  Her feet stood on the edge, dipping the toes in, and she watched the water pass silently.  The water here was magical somehow, some sort of soothing essence which always calmed her.  

She remembered summer mornings racing through the fresh cut wet grass barefoot to the creek where the rope swing hung from a high branch.  She thought of the tree bridge downstream where she was convinced for several months fairies had lived . Upstream was the "waterfall", as they had always called it, and farther up from that was the fort her father built between two trees.  

The creek held many memories, and she watched it flow down and away from her.  In her hands, she clasped delicate white flowers like gardenia whose petals she periodically plucked.  She would drop a petal into the stream and watch it glide on the surface of the water over unseen rocks and past exposed tree roots until it disappeared from sight.  Then she would drop another.  The sunlight twinkled in little pockets and she forlornly wondered if it would be the last time she ever saw this place again.

Normally, the sounds of splashing and laughing children filled the creek where the embankments hid them from the watchful eyes of their parents, but for now, she was alone.  A soft breeze rustled through the leaves overhead and the rope swing with the knot at its end waved back and forth like a cat’s tail. 

Her mother would be calling soon.  She was always calling her up from the creek, telling her to wash up in the mudroom, and for goodness sakes’, would you please put some shoes on.  But this time the calling would be different.  It would be to a car where they had packed all their things, all the things that made up their life crammed into a car, and they would leave the creek behind.  

It is an old adage - one argued and endorsed by many writers.  

Write what you know.  

Sometimes it is helpful.  A lot of my writing, whether I want it to or not, centers around my experience growing up in the South.  It's a flavor, a feeling, that certain magic of the first fireflies coming out at dusk while murmured voices from the porch carry across the yard.  

Also, it begs the question: how do sci-fi writers get anything done at all?  

Chapter 8 - The Devil's in the Details

Details, details, details. 

For me as a writer, it's a blessing.  Something can catch my eye and instantly, words start flowing in my head.  Inspiration sometimes strikes as a dinky trickle or a ragging river.  For me as a person and particularly as a girl, it can be frustrasting.  I'd like to use a personal story to illustrate this. 

I remember a lot about my (only) ex-boyfriend.  And yes, I believe first loves always stick with you, occupying a place in your heart you can never truly erase them from.  It doesn't have to be a bad thing.  Years later, I'm sure I could pass him on the street, we would acknowledge each other, and I would walk away knowing we are now strangers.  That's what happens when a broken heart heals; it bounces back strong and resilient, ready to throw itself headfirst into the next promising relationship. 

But when it's still mending, every single detail of a relationship can be agonizing.  As someone very concerned with details, I romanticized him.  Instead of remembering how he made me feel, I knew the small things and I cherished the stolen moments.  Even now, I could paint him like a picture.

He had sandy hair which grew long and curled right behind his ears and eyes the color of the ocean.  He had brown freckles in them too, more on one side than the other, always slightly off-balance, his symmetry just to the left.  When he was drunk, which was often, his slight lisp became more pronounced.  A childhood spent growing up at the beach and surfing made him tan and lean, almost like he'd been hardened by the waves.  On his chest where his ribs came together in the center, he had a little divet like an upside-down V and I remember sitting on my bed when we were breaking up, pressing my crying face into him and feeling my nose butt up against that spot I'd traced lovingly so many times before. 

Over the summer when he went home to his parents' and to work at the beach, I would visit on the weekends.  We'd drive around without shoes on with the windows down in his beat up green car, listening to songs with eight minute guitar solos and trying not to knock over the buckets of cleaning solution and chlorine tablets in the backseat.  When he was working his pool cleaning job, I'd tag along.  We'd visit beach houses and mansions and pretend we were as rich, jumping into hot tubs and pools of all shapes and sizes when no one was home.  I remember popcorn shrimp and french fries from a little shack on the beach road and the 4th of July where I sat cross-legged drawing circles in the sand with my back molded against him, watching fireworks explode over the water and shower the breaking waves in fantastic colors.  Red and blue and gold and green.    

When his father, the commercial pilot, suggested we take their four seater for a ride, he gave me his crooked smile and slipped into the front seat.  We'd been together for months and I never knew he had his pilot's license until then, but that was how he was.  Humble and surprising.  We flew low over the coastline all the way to Cape Hatteras, watching the cars and people scurry about their lives below us like ants.    

See?  It's very easy to look at the past and see it in shades of black and white.  After the ashes settle in the wake of a break up and the heart mends, you only remember the good times.  It's hard to gain perspective on what it was really like because all I can remember are the details. 

For relationships, it may not be the best habit I have.  For writing, this hypersensitivity can be a blessing.  The details and little moments are the vehicles I use to create an emotion, tell a story, or construct a scene.  In the editting process, I go back to what I've created and parse out the pieces that count, that really say something, but for the writing process as a whole, it helps give shape to what I'm trying to do.  It makes my story concrete and full. 

This may be a very roundabout way of saying "show, don't tell", but it's how my brain works when I'm writing.  Typically in a story, I know the beginning and the end.  I know the characters and maybe some of what happens in the middle, but fleshing out the rest of it is all about the details.

Chapter 7 - Please Don't Hate Me

This is going to be a live blogging experience...in which I quit my job. 

Oh boy.

I've solidified my new server position and will start training after work this month.  Now, my boss finally returned from his lengthy business trip and I am planning on giving my notice.  Last day?  June 1st. 

Right now, he's in a meeting and I'm sweating.  I know he isn't expecting this and truth be told, I have no grudge against Soul Crushing, Inc.  I've never given notice before though.  I mean, I've quit jobs but for obvious reasons like school or moving.  So this is new territory for me.

I also need to tell my manager.  Sorry, let me clarify.  I have a manager (whom I share an office with, how effed up is that?) and then we both have someone who oversees us.  I'm going to talk to Head Honcho first and then tell my Lady Boss. 

It's 9:47.  Head Honcho is in a meeting until 10.  I don't know why I get so anxious about confrontation!  I can feel my heart thumping and I can't keep my hands still (one of the reasons why I'm writing right now).  Also Lady Boss has been yapping on the phone with a friend since I came in this morning and it's really starting to grate on my nerves. 

9:54.  If she doesn't shut the fuck up, my head may explode.  Also, I have to pee. 

9:56.  Uh oh, she's about to get off the phone.  Going to hide in the bathroom. 

10:08.  Dammit!  She cornered me.  I'm 22!  I don't want to hear about your kids. 

10:13.  Trying to sneak away. 

10:14.  Okay, here goes!

10:33.  Whew.  I did it.  Still sweating, but I feel better.  Head Honcho was very understanding.  Lady Boss is back on the phone.  I'm waiting for her to get off it now so I can tell her.  It's like ripping off a Bandaid.  I'm on a roll, ready to get it done. 

11:02.  And it's done!  Well, Lady Boss took it surprisingly well. 

I feel relieved, honestly.  I think I'll have a little freak out when I have all this free time on my hands now, but I really am looking forward to sitting down and giving my writing everything I have.  It's time to focus on what I want.  For once. 

Chapter 6 - Motivations

I want to talk about motivation today.  First,

My plan has been set in motion and amounts to this:
1.  Leave job at Soul Crushing, Inc. (and write).
2.  Start waitressing (and write).
3.  Move into a more affordable apartment (and write).
4.  Begin Creative Writing courses at a local university in the fall (and write).

As to #1, my parents are not very happy with me and while I understand, I respectfully disagree.  I have done everything practical and "right" in my life.  I've also done it in the correct order.  I graduated high school in the top of my class, went to one of the best public universities in the country, chose two majors and stuck to being pre-med, I didn't get arrested (just one drinking ticket, but come on - we like to pretend we're a dry university and that's laughable), I didn't get pregnant, I graduated in four years without amassing loads of debt, and I landed your typical office 9 to 5 after graduating.  I became financially independent.

What I'm saying is I did all the right things and you know what?  I'm unhappy because what I want isn't practical.  Sure, if I ever get published and make a living doing what I love, then all of this will seem like a bad dream, but I don't have a crystal ball.  My parents, I think, probably once had the same ambition and head-in-the-clouds kind of attitude that I do.  Call me crazy, say I'm regressing to childhood fantasy, but I am unwilling to give that up.  I pledge to always be curious about the world.  I do not ever want to lose the magic I see in day to day life.  I refuse to.

When I told my father, he sat back in his chair and did his sideways disapproving head-shake, keeping his eyes away from mine, and almost laughing, said, "My daughter, the waitress."  Like it was a slur.  Like I was slumming it to go back to where I've come from.  It would have made any other person angry.

For me, it lights a fire under my ass.  My entire life I've felt that I have to fight for what I want.  I told them I was going to college.  I told them I was going to be pre-med.  I told them I was going to Spain.  I told them I was going to run a marathon.

I did all those things.  So I know when I tell them that I'm going to be a writer, one day through hard work and dedication I will be a writer.  It may not be soon and I'm sure as hell it won't come easy, but it will happen.  My best motivation has always been someone telling me I can't do something.  So I will take the little head shakes and that twitch at the corner of everyone's mouths when I tell them I'm quitting my job to write a book and I'll pocket it for later when I'm bogged down in the middle of it, wondering why the hell I wanted to get myself into this business.

Second, I thought I'd share some of the motivations behind Momentum (current word count: 57, 607 - I know I've been slacking).  Although it isn't happening yet because no one really gives a shit what I have to say at the moment (but that will change, world! *shakes fist*), I know eventually someone will ask me where I get my ideas.

The idea for this story came from several different experiences.  One of the scariest books I ever read was Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky.  I had nightmares for years after, not about the act of killing someone, but the guilt and paranoia that follow it.  Then, one night my junior year of college, I was leaving the library at 2 am, in a caffeine-and-Adderall-incuded haze and I passed by some of the frat houses on campus.  They sit in two semi-circles, Frat Court where there are 5 houses, and the aptly named Little Frat Court where there are 3.  As I cruised by Little Frat Court, I saw that the courtyard they all face was lit up in blue lights.  They were having a party.

And that was that.  The blue skinned girl came directly from that.

I also found a feeling I wanted to capture.  I believe you can bare the most intimate parts of yourself with writing.  It is a vulnerable task by nature and I wanted to explore a feeling I've felt often during my life.  Not to go all emo on your ass, but there is something very lonely and alienating about watching a party go on without you.  I've written about it before (not here), but it's like standing outside on the street and watching that warm happy glow come through a window you aren't allowed through.  JR, the main character in Momentum, spends a lot of time glimpsing things through windows.  I want the reader to feel that sort of alienation with him, the want to join in on that life you've only seen in flashes before, but somehow you can't find a way inside.

Hopefully, I can articulate all the things I want in this book without bashing the reader over the head with it.  If I can, I think this thing may be halfway decent.