Why I Write: Finding Joy in the New Year

The following was also cross-posted on the writing blog, Finding Wonderland.

We've been talking about writing goals in our WritingYA critique group this month, and I've been thinking a lot about that over the past few weeks. One of the ideas I keep coming back to is reconnecting with what brings me joy in writing.

It's a tough question, and one I find particularly difficult to consider during times when ongoing anxiety and depression issues rear their ugly Cerberus-like heads and distract me from seeing an answer. In part, I think I keep obsessing over this particular question BECAUSE it has been so hard to answer. The easy, pat response is, of course, that the writing itself, the act of crafting words and bringing stories to life is a joy in itself. That's what everyone wants to hear, right?

There's more to it. It isn't solely about the joy of putting words to page. That particular joy is something I've felt ever since I was a child, but here's an admission: it was not sufficient to tip me over the edge into wanting to make writing my life's work.

If you know me IRL or have been reading my blog and other social media for a while, you'll know that I was focused on a visual art career from about middle school onward. If anything has ever been a calling for me, that felt like it. I liked writing, but art owned my soul.

It turns out that maybe woo-woo soul searching questions—am I still an artist? Is writing my new calling? Can they both be my calling?—are sly distractions from the question of what brings me joy in writing. And once I've been distracted by those questions, I end up sliding down a rabbit hole of uncertainty, anxiety, and fear.

But, as I started really focusing on the idea of what brings me joy in writing, it was much more concrete and real-world than I expected. I looked back on what caused me to make that initial decision to try writing freelance articles on the side for my then-employer, which is what led me to take that first writing class through the UCLA Extension Writers' Program. What was it that made me so happy, so elated, so motivated to write those arguably quite ridiculous pieces of writing?

Besides the fact that I got to visit weird websites and make jokes about them, got to humorously explicate pithy quotations, and got paid a teeny bonus for doing so, this was my first experience of the sense of connection that writing for a public audience can create. Not just a SENSE of connection: an actual connection, because people would email me with suggestions; they'd send me comments. I was basically blogging before there were blogging platforms, because this was 1999-ish. I was lucky to have an insta-audience (albeit a small one) because I took over someone else's columns on an already-established site, and it was an incredible feeling to get those responses to what I wrote—sometimes from the very websites I was writing about. (And I learned a lot about the fine line between jokes and gratuitous hurtfulness, because I was a very sarcastic twentysomething.)

This is interesting, because I have mixed feelings about the IDEA of connection—my social anxiety and introversion comes into play more and more the harder I think about it. I start thinking about all the blogging and writing I've done that does NOT make me feel like I've managed to connect. And the stakes feel higher, too, because I've accepted the decision to make writing a major part of my career, not just something I'm doing on the side.

So then I get lost in the thought-hole of "I'm doing this for my job, so I can't afford to think about FUN anymore." The very idea of joy seems irrelevant. This is the mire I get caught in, over and over.
Where that train of thought has gone off the rails, I believe, is that I've created a false dichotomy between work ENJOYMENT and work EFFECTIVENESS. The truth is that I'm NOT as effective a writer when I am not in touch with my reasons for doing it. When I'm distracted by extraneous worries that fool me into thinking they are the real problem.

And so that brings me back to what my intrinsic rewards are, and besides satisfaction in a piece I enjoyed writing and worked hard on, and laughing at my own jokes, I keep coming back to writing as an act of connection. Some corollary truths here: When I am more fully engaged in a piece, I think it is ultimately more effective in making me feel connected. I am engaged in this because I feel like I am talking to YOU, right now. The writing itself makes me feel connected, if I engage in it fully.

That feeling has little to do with any comments or responses the writing might generate later, but I wonder: is there a sense of disengagement in some of the posts I write that actually somehow discourages connection and leads to fewer comments? By disengagement, I don't mean a lack of honesty or an unwillingness to spill my guts (though I am definitely guilty of the latter; I'm not a person who is forward with my opinions)—rather, I wonder if I'm inadvertently creating a feeling of distance. In my magazine writing course, in graduate school, I was repeatedly pegged as sounding too academic, and I wonder if that plays into it.

So I have been thinking of ways to connect, to engage. Different ways to approach my writing on a more day-to-day level.

I'm still thinking. More on that later…

On Plot Structuring

Cross-posted to Finding Wonderland.

I'm finally back to having time to devote to my WIP--or I should perhaps say, I have seized time back from the ravening bitch-goddess that is unexpected work. Not to mention the slightly less ravening bitch-goddess that is EXPECTED work. And what I realized was that my WIP has the extreme need for some attention devoted to structure. (And also that I wanted to change the title again.)

I've been spending a lot of productive time lately looking at screenwriting books, or at least books written with screenwriters in mind but which are also quite helpful for us novel writers. I've gotten a huge amount of thoughtful and practical advice from Story by Robert McKee and The Writer's Journey: Mythic Structure for Writers by Christopher Vogler, even though I haven't finished reading them yet. But possibly the most directly useful book has been Save the Cat by Blake Snyder, which was recommended by fellow author and member of our writing group Sara Lewis Holmes (of the lovely and poetic blog Read Write Believe). Snyder uses a method called the "beat sheet" to lay out plot structure in chunks--or maybe a better word than structure is "dynamics," because it isn't so much a matter of specific THINGS that have to happen at certain times, it's the rhythm of the thing.

I had done a beat sheet for this project last year, but that was before I decided to split it into two books, so it was long overdue for me to try to revisit my "outline" (or what passes for one) instead of just working on individual chapters and going into denial about major stuff like the book as a whole. I kind of like the beat sheet because it gives some structure to the story beyond just outlining the scenes or chapters. But I was starting to feel overwhelmed because what I have is this old, bloated beat sheet from before; a partially-rewritten manuscript with a bunch of scenes and changes not included in the old beat sheet; and a stack of index cards with plot points on them that I'd been attempting to shuffle around. What I decided to do, with the help of the Save the Cat Beat Sheet for Novels Spreadsheet that I found on Jami Gold's website, was create a set of Beat Sheet Cards, one for each beat listing the name of the beat and a short description (cut and pasted from the spreadsheet) and an approximate page count goal.

I did this by printing them onto big Avery shipping labels and slapping those onto the index cards. (I love office supplies.) Then I spread those out on my living room floor and aligned my plot points underneath them--reshuffling in a couple of cases, and inserting a couple of new ones as I found out there was kind of a gaping hole in the plot. Once I had it all laid out, I then went in and rewrote the beat sheet.

And changed the title again. *Shakes fist* TITLES!!!

Anyway, this was a helpful exercise. I was having trouble visualizing everything because of the fact that there are two POV characters that alternate, and because a third character is taking on a bit more of a role in this rewrite. This made it easy for me to pinpoint where I still needed to add in that third character's arc. It also made me realize I really need to do something about the ending....

Writing Process Blog Tour – a Self-Interview

I was invited to do this writing process blog tour by a couple of different people over the past few weeks, but because I was traveling, I was only able to say yes just recently. I was invited by Paula Treick DeBoard (see her process post here), a fellow writer living here in Modesto, and author of The Mourning Hours (a thoughtful, gripping mystery, non-YA but with a young protagonist) and the upcoming The Fragile World.

I'm always interested in other writers' processes and their day-to-day coping mechanisms, because writing is often an isolated, isolating activity, and that tends to make us writers feel like we're weirdos alone in our self-imposed struggles—but when I read about others' writing processes, I'm reminded that we all share many of the same struggles, regardless of genre, audience, or subjectively perceived weirdness. So here's hoping I can contribute to that sense of sharing in the joys and tribulations of this whole writing endeavor—and maybe lessen someone else's feelings of uncertainty and disconnectedness. Warning: wordy...

1. WHAT AM I WORKING ON?
Now that I have already-published novels out there in the world, I've realized that being a writer entails some serious multitasking: revision on one book while you're drafting another; publicizing your new book while trying to rewrite the next project. That's where I'm at now. With Underneath feeling like it just came out, even though it was a year ago, and with The Truth Against the World literally having just come out a week ago, a lot of my attention is focused on trying to spread the word about my books that are already out there.

You probably want to know what I'm actually WRITING, though, right? Well, having been informed by reliable sources that Dystopia Is Dead, I'm planning a major recasting of my work-in-progress, which isn't really all that dystopian but does have some pseudo-dystopian elements. Essentially, this entails changing the story from a supposedly real-world, hundreds-of-years-in-the-future post-post-apocalyptic setting to a fantasy/imaginary world. So…now it's a fantasy! But without magic.

Currently titled Fuel to the Fire, it's the story of what happens when a seemingly innocuous piece of new technology falls into the hands of uncompromising social revolutionaries—and what happens to the unsuspecting inventor of that technology. It's also a story of socioeconomic class turmoil, from the alternating perspectives of a girl who "has it all" but is still stuck in her predetermined role, and a boy from the wrong side of the tracks who ends up mired in the heart of the social revolution. Something like that, anyway...

2. HOW DOES MY WORK DIFFER FROM OTHERS OF ITS GENRE?
One thing I've heard from others here and there is the observation that all three of my published books have been distinctly different from one another. Though they're all YA, none of them fall neatly within a genre, and they aren't similar to each other, either. In a publishing world that seems to deal more effectively with writers whose books tend to occupy the same genre, I'm not sure if this is good or bad. Reviewers have noted, accurately, that all three books (despite their differences) have strong themes of identity and family, and I guess that's the thread that ties my work together thus far.

Two of my books specifically have mixed-race/multicultural protagonists, and all three talk about themes of cultural identity as well, and how to reconcile various aspects of identity. Books about kids of mixed ethnicity are just now becoming more visible and accessible, and I like to think that The Latte Rebellion, my first novel, published in 2011, was an early example. And I do plan to write more novels that feature mixed-race characters, because that is, quite simply, the world I live in.

3. WHY DO I WRITE WHAT I DO?
This ties in rather neatly with my answer to the previous question! I write lots of mixed-race characters because that is the world I live in—a diverse one in which very few people are truly "just one thing." And to claim otherwise is to deny the whole fascinating world that lies within and behind each individual. I don't sit there and consciously decide to "write what I know," but the world I live in and grew up in insinuates itself into my writing no matter what. Is the answer as simple as "I write what I do because of who I am?" I don't know. Maybe.

As far as why I write YA novels, there are a number of reasons. I never completely stopped reading YA books even as I grew into adulthood. (If you know me, you know I have never lost touch with my inner teenager, either.) Also, the YA genre really started to blossom in the mid-late 80s/early 90s when I was a tween/teen and had a profound effect on my reading habits. Beyond that, I think that the teen years are a time when many people either stop reading or are cemented for life as readers, and it feels like a privilege and a mission to try to engage readers and keep them reading. And there is a truly exciting range and quality of stories being produced for a YA audience, stories that sometimes take more risks, written for an audience that clamors for honesty and a lack of bullshit yet is still willing to believe in just a little magic. And do coming-of-age stories ever go out of style? I don't think they do, because I don't think we ever stop learning and growing as humans, and that's what coming of age is about.

4. HOW DOES MY WRITING PROCESS WORK?
Somewhat inefficiently. The fickle nature of inspiration constantly reminds me that at the heart of successful writing is the ability to plonk your behind down in your desk chair and just WORK. That's why NaNoWriMo has been so helpful for me, because I'm really good at overthinking everything to the point where I paralyze myself.

One process tool I find really helpful is drawing a chart of my storyline(s). I don't work all that well with a straight outline, but being able to visualize what is happening helps me out a lot. Often it looks a bit like a flow chart that I fill in as I write, with parallel tracks for subplots, lines connecting events that happen simultaneously, blobs for critical themes or character emotions, and so forth. As an artist I tend to be a visual thinker, so being able to look at the plot helps me write.

I do have written notes, though. I usually have a general summary of the plot arc written out (what I've figured out so far, anyway) and those notes get more detailed as I write along and things get clarified in my mind. Usually when I'm writing, when I get to that day's stopping point, I jot down notes for any upcoming scenes that I've figured out. I put these directly into the Word document, right after that day's writing, so all I have to do the next time I sit down is read over the scenes I last wrote and then refer to my notes to get going. Big-picture notes get added to the flow chart, or sometimes a master document I use for the purpose of general notes.

5. AND THE OTHER PART OF THIS QUESTION, HOW DOES MY WRITING PROCESS NOT WORK?
Explicit chapter/scene outlines don't really work well for me. They just don't. Even though I like the idea in theory, in actual fact they make me twitchy.

When my brain is too packed with other things, my writing process really does not work. Writing, like any other art, does require time and attention, even if it doesn't necessarily demand constant light-bulb inspiration. I need head space in order to do effective writing. I'm still trying to figure that one out—how to allow myself time for my creative work.

As I mentioned before, overthinking myself to the point of paralysis is a huge problem for me. "Just write the damn book and fix it later," I try to tell myself. Perfectionism is a surefire road to writer's block, but lifelong habits are hard to break. So I try to remind myself of what my college Ceramics professor, Richard Shaw, used to say when our projects got to a certain point of doneness, but we beginning students were still fussing over them—"It's close enough for art."

PASSING THE TORCH, OR WHO’S NEXT:

Rachel Leibrock is a good friend from the Mills College MFA program—she is an impressively multitalented writer who, as a journalist, has worked for the Sacramento Bee and the Sacramento News & Review. Oh, and she writes poetry, prose, and YA too.

Colleen Mondor blogs at Chasing Ray, and is a longtime blogging friend both online and offline. She's a reviewer for Booklist, head honcho at Guys Lit Wire (a group blog focusing on literature for teen guys) and an aviation journalist, as well as the author of a fascinating memoir about flying in Alaska, The Map of My Dead Pilots.

Annie Choi, who blogs at Annietown, is a friend from the wayback days of undergrad yore at UC Berkeley, at which time I'm pretty sure neither of us guessed we'd BOTH end up writers umpteen years later. She is the author of two hilarious collections of personal essays, Happy Birthday or Whatever and Shut Up, You're Welcome.

Can't wait to read what you guys post!

On Meaning and Goals

As I mentioned in my latest post on Finding Wonderland, I'm reading The Van Gogh Blues by Eric Maisel. One of the things the book encourages the reader to do is think about what creates meaning in one's life, and so I tried to be game and did a bit of writing/thinking about it. I discovered that I make some interesting assumptions about meaning that I don't always examine closely enough:

I seem to associate meaning with things happening outside of myself. If that were true, I'd have no control over making anything meaningful. And maybe that is my big fear, the fear that making meaning is not under my control. Or maybe I'm afraid that if I acknowledge making meaning IS under my control, I will have to admit that I'm bad at it. That I've been doing a poor job.

I'm getting hung up again on the idea that others are the arbiters of what is ultimately meaningful, whether my accomplishments are meaningful. Deconstructing that, I notice there's an implicit assumption that I need to have accomplished things in order for meaning to be a consideration.

If there's anything I should have learned from being in the arts, it's the importance of process, just as much as product. Perhaps in some cases more so than product, because we learn from process.

I zeroed in on a few ideas that I feel are important to me: Learning. Process. Progress. And I started to think about how being goal-oriented is sometimes an obstacle to appreciating process.

A goal, an end result, should be an image that inspires, encourages, invigorates. It should spur more joy in the process and the act. It should not discourage, dishearten, inspire fear or anxiety, cause despair. I constantly confuse goals with chores.

If a goal does that, then perhaps it is not a goal as I want to define it. What is it, then? And how can I reformulate it so it's the "right" kind of goal?

I have too many chores and not enough goals.

Maybe goal is the wrong word. Dream. Objective. Aim. Wish. Inspiration. Goal is too simple. It is a source as well as a goal, a beginning and an end point. It's the motivational starting point as well as the dream at the end. It gives meaning to the process.

I'm starting to think the mistake is in thinking of "goal" and "process" as two separate, separable things. Anyway, some Points to Ponder.

About Online Personas: Do I Have One? Do I Need One? Does Anyone Care?

You'd think, for an introvert like myself, interacting online and blogging and whatnot would be easy, seeing as I can do such things from the comfort of my non-people-filled home.

But no. And here's why.

1. It turns out, for me, interacting is interacting, at some level. Yes, in-person interaction is much more exhausting and often high-stress and occasionally bitterly disappointing (that's where my introversion starts to veer into misogynistic, self-critical melancholy). But online interaction takes a certain amount of energy, too. So I'll kind of disappear for days at a time, just as—if you know me IRL—I sort of do in actuality. I need periods of hermitude so I can be a fun-filled bundle of nonstop cheer when you do see me. Or, at least, so I can recharge my energy reserves and be ready to act like a normal person when I see you. And online, I seem to also function in bursts, and then need downtime in between. The two types of interaction also synergize, in the sense that if I'm feeling overwhelmed by real-life stuff, I also tend to be too exhausted to be present online, either.

2. I don't know how much of my actual self I want to put out there. Again, as an introvert, I'm used to sharing only certain things with certain people. So I often get paralyzed into doing nothing when I start thinking about posting X or Y to Facebook or this blog. It's not that I'm secretive. I am sort of private, I guess. But mostly, I wonder things like: Who actually cares if I post this? What if I post something that makes someone weirdly confrontational? What if I post about myself and then regret it and feel stupid about it later? What if my blog post doesn't pass some imaginary "coolness test" that I've totally built up in my mind? And so on.

3. Persona management is something that concerns me now that I have actual published books and articles and stuff out there. And frankly, it feels like an overwhelming Sisyphean task. Should I be doing certain types of posts now that I'm "an author"? Is it bad if I don't do what author X or author Y are doing? (Obviously the answer is no, but the question still bothers me.) What if by doing X or Y I totally screw it up? What if by doing NOTHING I screw it up? And then there's the feeling that whatever bits and pieces of myself are already floating around out there have a life of their own already—a thought that makes me feel incrementally better simply because it's out of my hands.

Ultimately, though, I guess I do at some level crave interaction, or I wouldn't be writing things and posting things in the first place. But just as I feel a bit out of sync with the way "most normal people" (who are these people??) in the world function socially, I also feel a bit out of sync with how I'm supposed to be or expected to behave online. I guess that's because now there IS such a thing as "normal" behavior online, now that most* people are online and doing things. So the normative mores for online behavior now follow what those "normal people" do, and we're back to fundamentally the same situation in the online world as the physical one.

Of course, that is a vast generalization. And I want to live in a world—real or online—where there is room for variety in the socialization spectrum. It's not actually something we're taught very well (or at all), in our society: to tolerate different types of social behavior and patterns of interaction. I make a conscious, conscientious effort to respect the needs of the people in my life when it comes to them needing more or less interaction. But I need to respect my own needs, too. And I guess, right now, I'm not sure what my needs actually are as far as my online presence is concerned.

Abort, Retry, Fail

This morning I was interviewed for the local Capital Public Radio NPR program Insight, with Beth Ruyak. Since they had me drive into the studio this time for an in-person talk, that meant I had ample time on the 90-minute drive back home to reflect upon the many ways in which I sounded like a complete dork.

Instead of (or in addition to) thinking about how awesome it was that they invited me back, or how much less nervous I sounded than the last time I was on the radio, or even how cool it was that I just had 15 minutes MORE of fame, thus totaling approximately an hour of radio time in total, I spent most of the drive dissecting what I could have done better. Because THAT'S JUST ME! A barrel of laughs!

So, problem #1: the sound of my voice. In the green room beforehand, chatting with the guest who was to appear before me; talking to the producer of the show, Ellen; even meeting Beth Ruyak before the show for a few minutes--I sounded PERFECTLY NORMAL. Professional, even. Then, the minute I was sitting in front of the mic and had to talk--my first words, I believe, were "Hi, Beth!"--suddenly a frog appeared in my throat out of nowhere, as if by magic, and I was talking around a mucus impediment. LOVELY.

I should note, however, that I sounded just fine (in my own head, anyway...) when I read a passage from the book. Having been complimented on my reading during the book launch last week, I felt relatively confident that that part, at least, I could manage. And I think I did. However:

Problem #2: As I mentioned above, I did sound less nervous this time--and I'm happy to say, I didn't have that problem I had before of suddenly blanking out on what the host asked me while in the middle of a long-winded answer, thus forcing me to babble on until I reached a conclusion of some sort. But I did experience a similar mind-blankening panic issue: several times, I would be in the middle of my long-winded answer and then forget what in tarnation *I* had been saying and what my point was supposed to be.

The way I see it, there are a few possible solutions to this problem, all of which I found myself using today, and which I have likened to 1980s-era computer lingo for your amusement:

1. ABORT! ABORT! Finish my sentence and rely on the host to finesse the transition if I stopped making sense.
2. RETRY! Keep on blathering in the hope that I will remember what my initial point was and be able to bring it around to a reasonably coherent conclusion.
3. FAIL! Trail off mid-sentence and mid-thought and look pleadingly at the host, while mentally banging head against the desk.

Fortunately, I *do* get a retry, an actual one--the host seemed potentially interested in inviting me back when I have a new book (yay!), and also, I have a chance to redeem myself with another radio appearance tonight, this one for Write On Radio, a program at KFAI Minneapolis. Wish me luck...

Blogging Thoughts

I've been giving a lot of thought to the problem of what purpose I want this blog, this particular one right here, to serve. I haven't been posting a lot. That doesn't mean I'm not blogging, because I post twice a week to Finding Wonderland, rain or shine, and as the Cybils blog editor again this year, I put up between 3 and 5 posts per week there. And then there's my paid blogging/article writing gig at A Place for Mom, which has been upped from 2 posts a week to 3. At about 500 words apiece, it's no small potatoes. I blog a LOT.

Just…very little of it is what I'd call my personal thoughts. I tend to save those for short bursts on Twitter and Facebook. I am also constantly battling questions like Who really cares? What purpose does it serve? Are my thoughts really that interesting? Does anyone even "read" blogs anymore or do they just go surfing for specific topics? I mean, I haven't been doing much blog reading lately myself. I hate to admit that, especially as someone very much enmeshed in the children's literature blogging community. I've gained a lot of treasured friends and writing connections by reading their blogs. But my blog reading is no longer regulated by Google Reader; I read a handful of random posts in any given week, clicking through from e-mails or tweets or Facebook. I haven't been commenting. Everyone else has plenty to say; they don't need to hear my two cents.

So then what? That's the question I've been asking myself, over and over. What do I have to say, here, that hasn't been said a million times and far more eloquently? What do I have to offer that's unique, and that I haven't posted elsewhere? And do I have enough of it to offer on a thrice-weekly basis or whatever? Am I helping, or at least entertaining, anyone by doing it? Myself, at the very least? Do I have to have a special "thing" that my blog is known for? How can I create something sufficiently individual, or is BEING an individual and posting about it enough?

I've wondered over and over if I should say goodbye to this blog; if I should stop blogging, period. I haven't gotten to that point yet. But I'm definitely doing some thinking about the why of it all.

Tribulations of Revision

So, I'm in the midst of revision for Underneath, my next YA novel. I'm gradually discharging various finite freelance projects so that I can focus as much as possible on rewriting with a minimum of distraction. So far it's going OK--the part about keeping freelance work under control, that is. I did a reasonable job of saying no to new things for the duration of this month, and asking for help on some stuff where it was possible to do so. I don't find it very easy to ask for help, in general, so I'm trying to see that as an accomplishment.

And, just this morning, I finished one freelance writing project which I can now cross off the list. That will earn me some extra hours for the next few weeks. Another freelance project, some Illustrator vector images, will be finished probably tomorrow, so that will be another thing to check off.

But I'm not making great progress on the revision. It's going slowly. Every time I look at it I think how incredibly amazing it is that they want to publish it in the first place. I'm at an awful point where I read it and all I can think is OH GOD IT'S TERRIBLE AND EVERYONE WILL HATE IT. I'm having horrible visions of reviews that say stuff like "After a promising debut, Stevenson has come out with a truly lackluster sophomore effort, trite and mediocre."

I have to keep reminding myself that this is just one of the stages inherent in revision, and that this project in particular is liable to prompt negative thinking because of the fact that it's been far more challenging to write this story at every step of the way. Not for any particularly exciting or emotionally charged reason (at least, not that I'm aware of consciously)--just plain old blockage. Halfway through the first draft--which I started, by the way, in something like 2006--I stopped and had no clue where the story was going. I put it away. Then I took it back out a few years ago with renewed energy, finished the first draft, and promptly went UGH again and put it away. Last year I did a massive rewrite, sent it to my publisher, and amazingly they liked it. But now I'm back at the point of looking at it and going UGH.

I'm actually more annoyed with myself than anything else because I'm having so much trouble giving myself the support I need to work on this one. It was easy with The Latte Rebellion because I was pretty much in love with that project every step of the way. This one's been much more of a love-hate relationship.

A Few Things I've Done While Dithering on my Revision

I'm supposed to be sitting here working on my revision of Underneath. Before actually doing so, however, I did the following:

• Updated the Recent Reads column on Guys Lit Wire
• Wandered throughout the house at least five times
• Did a 10-minute breathing meditation
• Futzed around on Facebook
• Updated my Goodreads
• Went in search of the perfect pen for taking revision notes
• Made a halfhearted attempt to tidy up the mail area
• Wrote this blog post

Damn, I am good...at procrastinating.

WFMAD Day 1: Getting In My Own Way

Today’s Prompt:  What things do you allow to get in the way of your writing? Be specific, detailed, and brutally honest.

Today is the first day of the Write Fifteen Minutes A Day Challenge. I'll be posting my fifteen minutes on this blog. I need to post here more (and I promised to do just that several weeks ago, after which I failed miserably to keep up with my promise). I need to do more regular writing and in order to both of these things I need to get over my fear of posting personal writing in public.

It's not just the normal fear of having other people read my writing. I always have that. You just get over it, more or less, or ignore it. It's the fear that nobody is going to care what I have to say. It's the fear that I'll regret having posted something too personal, that it will feel self-indulgent or too revealing. That I'll be boring. That not even my friends will care about what I write. That I compare unfavorably with other writers--I spend a lot of time comparing myself to others and coming up short. Hey, the prompt said to be brutally honest.

A lot of these same fears apply to my writing in general. Maybe it's because I didn't grow up planning to become a writer, didn't grow up knowing that was in my future, but I often feel like an impostor. I didn't think of myself as a writer, just someone who enjoyed writing stories on occasion.

So, yes, fear. Fear gets in the way of my writing--all kinds of fears. And really, when I think about all the other things that get in the way--procrastination, time management issues, failure to prioritize, not having time, not having energy--I begin to realize how many of the things that get in the way of my writing are related to fear, at least at some deep-down level. Fear that if I embrace being a writer, I'll cease to be an artist. Fear that my efforts will ultimately never live up to my expectations and hopes for myself. Fear that I'm not going to earn enough of a living simply by writing and making artwork. Fear that I don't have what it takes, that I'm not disciplined enough or devoted enough. Fear that I don't want this writing life enough, or that I want it too much.

I wish I were the type of person who could let go enough to embrace the artistic, creative life wholeheartedly. But I'm just not. I can't leave behind practical issues. Issues of money, of survival, of fairness in our household. There is a simple joy and relief at having a partner who understands what it is to be an artist at heart, because he also is one. But I also feel tension at the inherent inequity that results from one of us having the "real job," and I end up feeling like the opportunity to do my creative work is a luxury, rather than the gift that it is.

I need to give myself this gift once in a while.

A Quick Note on Those New Year's Resolutions

Remember those? Yeah. I had resolutions once. One of those concerned the reclaiming of lost hobbies, and it's that particular resolution whose progress I'm currently reporting on. However, "progress" might not be the best way to describe what's happening. "Regress" might be a better word, since it seems like rather than reincorporating any of my lost hobbies, I have managed to squeeze even MORE hobbies out of my life. Frankly, there's some important actual work that's being squeezed out of my life. I'm not exactly sure where this mysterious time black hole came from, but something is wrong with the fabric of space and time, I'm pretty sure.

Anyway, it seems like my hobbies currently boil down to the following:

• Sleeping. One might think this is mandatory rather than an optional activity. However, when I ask myself, what do I do in my spare time...it seems like sleeping takes up a good portion of it. What can I say? I needs my 7 to 9 hours.
• Eating. As above. Kind of mandatory, but I like it and I have fun doing it, and Rob and I both enjoy eating as a recreational activity (not as in, like, hot-dog-eating contests--more as in eating strange, fancy, or, occasionally, shockingly expensive stuff).
• Cooking. It facilitates the eating, so I justify spending extra time on it. It's not unusual for me to spend two hours working on a meal just for the two of us. I don't do that every DAY, but at least weekly. I like puttering around in the kitchen, experimenting and improving my skills. And, again, you gotta eat, right? Since I'm in the kitchen anyway, cooking dinner, I might as well enjoy it, right? 
• Social Obligations. I am not the most sociable of people--most of you reading this know that I would be reasonably happy not talking to anyone all day except my husband and cats, the majority of the time. It's just that we have somehow acquired at least one to three major social engagements per week and now this is a major time suck.

And that, guys, is pretty much it.

Hey! you shout. You didn't put "reading" on the list of hobbies! No, I did not. At the moment, all of my reading hours are spent on books related to the HUX classes Rob and I are taking. Seriously. I take a pen and notebook with me to bed along with the reading material, just in case, during the 15 minutes I manage to stay awake before bed these days, something strikes me as usable for writing a paper.

Funny how this sounds like a TOTALLY DYSFUNCTIONAL person's schedule. Ah, the life of a part-time college student.

One final parting thought: I've been so pressed for time that I almost considered putting "fiction writing" on the Hobbies list, because I've unintentionally deprioritized it over the past few weeks. THAT is a real problem. It's all too easy to fall into the trap of "I have to do this other stuff over here, because if I don't, I won't get paid/nobody else will do it/the world will explode." And then, suddenly, it's sleepy-time again and yet another day went by that I didn't even come close to having time to work on my novel.

I fear this: the idea that the measure of a real artist is how willing you are to shove everything else aside just so you can work on your art. Food for thought. (And now, I'm off to create food for the body...)

On Confidence

Sometimes, when I stop to think about it, I'm staggered by the amount of things I don't do because, on some level, I lack the confidence. I'm not talking about risk taking in the traditional sense--I'm not overly worried about the fact that I will most likely never voluntarily go skydiving, for example.

I'm talking about day-to-day things, work or creative projects or bright ideas that go unrealized because I've decided I just can't. Sure, some projects are inherently unfeasible, or impossible given time or money constraints, or just not great ideas from a practical standpoint. But so many others--even some of the ones that allegedly are impractical--fall into the category of stuff that I don't have the confidence to tackle. It even applies to blog posts: I get paralyzed because I convince myself nobody's going to care about what I have to say. Maybe they won't--that's not really the point. But it still has the power to scare me away.

Other things I haven't had the confidence to do: Write and draw a graphic novel. Be in a band (except for imaginary ones). Get over the idea that if I'm not constantly contributing directly and equitably to household income, that I'm somehow failing. Get over the idea that all work-related activities must earn income to be considered "real work." These last two are more substantial problems. (Some might call them actual problems as opposed to minor complaints.)

I feel ridiculous about this sometimes, because I know there's a lot of stuff I have done. But then I think about the things I tried to do and failed, or the ideas I started on and abandoned, muttering "What was I thinking?" And I balk. Again.

I'm in a serious "What was I thinking?" rut right now, which prompted this rather grim train of thought. Here's hoping I claw my way out soon and get some shit done.

There Are Books, and Then There Are BOOKS

Some books, when I sit down to read them, are so impressive or intimidating or amazing that they make me never want to write again. They make me question my entire career decisionmaking process (not that that's too difficult). Obviously, that's my problem, though, not the books' problem. It's not the author's fault that they're so awesome—in fact, I'm sure they put a ton of work into it and deserve it. Anyway. There are other books, though, that, when I sit down and start reading them, make me excited in a different way—make me want to open my notebook or my word-processing program and start writing, too. They make me eager. They make me gleeful. I'm reading one of those now: Mad Love by Suzanne Selfors. I'm only a few pages in, but I'm getting that I-want-to-write-right-now feeling.

I'm not sure what the difference is, or even if there IS one—it could be as simple as a difference in mood on my own part. Or maybe it's that the writing resonates with me in some underlying way—the style? The tone? It's hard to say. It's not as though those books that make me want to give up entirely DON'T resonate; they do. But they usually, in some way, make me feel like they're "up there" at the top of some pinnacle of awesomeness, and I'm "down here" just trying to muddle along, and when such incredible works exist, why should I bother when I could never do half as well?

And of COURSE it isn't the case that the books which make me want to eagerly start writing are not also awesome books. They're great books, too. It's very hard to put my finger on what the difference is, which is why I guess I have to assume that it's me and not the books. Does this happen to anyone else? I can't help thinking that if I could figure out what the difference is, what it is that makes some books spark that need to write, maybe I'd realize something important (or at least interesting) about my own writing.

Writer's Block

One of my blogging friends recently talked about a corollary or, perhaps, expanded definition of writer's block that includes the difficult-to-ignore feeling that one's writing, to put it plainly, sucks. That the suckitude is all-encompassing and inescapable. And that feeling of suckitude keeps you from writing.

I'm very familiar with this species of writer's block. I guess if you're prone to it in the first place, it never really goes away. And I wonder how other people deal with it. Sometimes I have a deadline, so it's a matter of B.I.C. - Butt In Chair. I have to do it. It's my work and somebody needs to see it by a certain date. Then, it's like homework: there's just no getting out of it, and if it sucks, too bad. It still has to be done.

Other times I spend days or weeks in a funk; that seems to be my preferred M.O. I eventually get over it and want to write again; eventually get to the point where I'm willing to risk the suckitude. Why? How? Who knows? I guess because ultimately creating stuff is the only thing I really want to do, no matter how hard it is or how much it sucks sometimes. I can't help it. It's just what I'm meant to be. Nothing else will do.

And You May Ask Yourself, How Did I Get Here?

Every so often, when I think about the fact that my first novel is about to be published, I get this feeling of surreality. I think to myself, this is not how I would have pictured my life if you'd asked me fifteen years ago, when I was an undergraduate in college, or even ten years ago, when I was working at my first (hmm, and last) full-time salaried job.

It's not like I suddenly woke up one morning as a Type-A, high-powered stockbroker, or a doctor or a trial lawyer, and wondered to myself, "Who am I? WHO AM I??" It's just that it didn't even cross my radar that I might pursue a writing career—at least, not until that job ten years ago at IGN.com when I started doing some on-the-side freelance humor writing and thought to myself, "Remember how you always loved writing? Yeah. Maybe I could do this every day. Perhaps I should think about looking into this further."

In retrospect, this logic seems flawed, as I ended up transitioning from one unlikely, competitive, low-paying career goal (art) to another equally competitive, difficult and low-paying career goal (writing). But you have to understand—in 2001, when I quit my job at IGN and decided to go back to graduate school for creative writing, I was still coming off a massively career-shifting and aggravation-inducing year of post-baccalaureate study at the San Francisco Art Institute. After spending all my spare cash applying to 13 art MFA programs (in those dark days of 1998, you had to send most places slide carousels of your work), I was offered only one option—a year of post-bac study—so I took it.

Moving even further back in my career planning, when I started undergraduate school as an Art Practice (and Psychology—but that's a story for another time) major at Berkeley, I had this general idea that I'd end up in illustration or design. But then I was confronted with the dichotomy that is High Art vs. Low Art, or Fine Art vs. Commercial Art, or whatever you want to call it (great post on this at Yat-Yee's blog). I learned, in my fine-art-oriented program, that words like "commercial" and "illustration" were bad things when applied to fine art, so I did what I needed to in order to succeed in the milieu I was thrust into—or I tried, anyway. I didn't exactly banish my entire aesthetic; I just focused on art for art's sake.

In further retrospect, I think my idea was that I'd enter grad school, get my MFA, and then go on to work in illustration or design or whatever other art-related job I could find. I didn't really have a clear idea of what that might be, but I knew I wasn't interested in teaching, which is what most MFAs end up doing. (Or they end up in a mindless day job so they can make art at night.) But since I didn't get into an MFA program--after tons of effort, I might add—I was a little lost after finishing my post-bac year. I was like, now what? I don't feel ready to plunge into the art world. I was traumatized by various unpleasant experiences in my graduate department. Rob was still struggling with the politics of the MFA program there. I was also feeling embittered by the fact that I'd finished my BA summa cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa, etc. etc. and it hadn't seemed to do me much good career-wise.

So I ignored the dilemma and applied for work. It seemed like a good time. The internet boom was…well…booming, and we lived in the Bay Area. Entry-level positions abounded. I got one marketing job, didn't like it, and quit after two weeks, when I was offered the IGN job.

Which brings me back to the writing. Inspired by my manager Mike, who also wrote articles for the site and was going to transition to a full-time content writing job, I offered myself as a freelance writer. Sadly, the internet boom stopped booming, I got a new set of bosses, and I wasn't able to make the transition to full-time writer. But it got me thinking. Why put up with the constant fear of layoffs, the excruciatingly dull morning marketing meetings and the recurring chastisement for my occasional lateness to said meetings when I could REALLY be doing something with this desire to write?

Not having any formal creative writing training beyond some childhood enrichment classes had never stopped me from writing before, but I figured I needed some more learnin' before I tried to actually get published, or get a job as a content writer, or whatever. I applied to MFA programs, and lo and behold, I got into one this time. (A much better acceptance rate, too—one out of two. …What was I thinking?)

By that time I was starting to think about being a freelancer full-time—writing, design, illustration, whatever. And that's a pretty good description of what I do now. That's how I got here. So I guess that answers that question.

The Creative Person's List of Laments

….Because we creative people have the amazing magical power to create neuroses out of thin air!

I may not be as helpful or clever as Merlin Mann, but hopefully this is reasonably entertaining. I enjoyed writing it, although I'm vaguely embarrassed at how many of these neuroses—er, laments—I have personally indulged in on repeated occasions.

So You've Got a Bouncing Baby...Whatever That Is 

1. I'm not even sure this is a very good idea in the first place. Perhaps I: am getting old / killed too many brain cells in [insert college name here] / should have been a [insert more lucrative career here]. (select all that apply)

2. I'm never possibly going to finish [project title].

3. I'm never going to finish revising / perfecting [project title].

Once Your Project Is Done. Or IS it? 

4. Is it really done? Maybe I should just tweak this word / sentence / line / stray pencil mark.

5. It's not done. I never should have sent it off to that literary magazine / editor / agent / contest / juried show.

6. Another rejection? I'll never find an agent / a gallery / a publisher. (See #1. Repeat as needed.)

Break Glass In Case of Unexpected Non-Rejection 

7. They're never going to like it as is. They're going to ask me to completely recreate my drawing / painting / sculpture / main character / plot. 

8. Nobody's going to read / notice / like my book / poetry / artwork.

9. My work will never be as good as [insert name of more talented and accomplished colleague] or [name of ridiculously successful professional in prime of career].

10. The reviews and sales figures will only prove my unsuitability for this career / lack of creative ability / mediocrity / insanity.

When It's All Over...Lather, Rinse, Repeat. And thank your lucky stars you're doing this instead of anything else in the world.

"I'm Not Dead Yet."

Monty Python quotes aside, I'm still here. I've just managed to mostly intimidate myself out of blogging by making it seem like an agonizing and mountainous chore. That, and I've been trying to avoid doing anything extraneous that would distract me from finishing my revision. Which, by the way, is DONE. Almost. I'm having Tanita look at it and let me know if I've committed any egregious no-nos before I give it one last once-over and send it back to my publisher. 

I've also been spending a lot of time writing such gems as this and generally getting caught up after being away for a week and a half. I have a new freelance project that involves social bookmarking, so I am now far more familiar than I ever wanted to be with a handful of social bookmarking websites. If you want to find me on Digg, Mixx, Propeller, Reddit, or Mister-Wong, just look for MeddlingScribe. I may or may not accept your friend request, since I need another online social outlet like I need another hole in my chest cavity, which is to say, I really don't need ANY. (I'm not counting my belly button, since it's not technically in my chest, and it's not really a hole per se, but I digress.)

Anyway, tomorrow I anticipate additional article writing and what-not, but while I'm still here and have your attention (or is it BLOGGER which has MY attention? oooooooo trippy), why not donate books on behalf of Native American teens? Operation Teen Book Drop is LIVE and all you have to do is buy a book or two on Powells.com. Check out details here. Also, please enjoy these photos of Kilauea Volcano by day and by night:

Art, Work, and Other Time Drains

It's been busy around here. That's for sure. My absence has been long and filled with not only toil but also some much-needed relaxation and getting away from it all. The Big Island of Hawaii is a great way to do that, since it's in the middle of the ocean, far away from EVERYTHING.

The week before we left, Rob and I went to another of the local figure drawing sessions and I did these two pieces. The one on the left I did using Walnut ink, a reed pen, and a brush for wash. For the one below, I used a combination of vine and compressed charcoal. Neither is my best work, but on the whole it wasn't a bad drawing evening. In any case, it's all about practice, practice and more practice.

Not unlike with writing, which has comprised most of my workload lately.

I've had my hands full, actually, which is a pretty good thing. Plenty of articles for All Star Directories, like this one, but also working on my latest novel revision for my publisher. Of course, as I go through and edit the manuscript, I keep finding little things I want to change, and it's taking a lot more time than I thought it would because I have now entered the land of the obsessive-compulsive perfectionist.

I've also reached a point I never thought I would reach: I'm officially sick of even looking at this project. Until a couple of weeks ago I was still totally in love with it, but now I only have eyes for its flaws, which is a difficult place to be mentally. I've gotten to that point much more quickly with most of my other projects, but it took a lot longer to get sick of this one, and I was hoping that day would never come. But still I'm plugging away, and hopefully I'll feel better about it once this round is done.

And yep, we're back from our trip to visit friends in Hawaii. I'll post about that later in the week. Plus photos. I promise.

Some Non-Controversial Book Cover Discussion

Sooooo...I heard back from my publisher. Needless to say, this was an occasion of great excitement and celebration, perhaps even minor squealing and drunkenness (figurative and literal). At any rate, I found out the next steps in the process: I'll be doing another round of edits (which I expected), not quite as drastic as the last round but fixing lots of small issues. Due May 3, so obviously the original publication estimate of April no longer applies, but I was just happy to hear my book was still on the radar.

Then, I was asked to generate some alternative title ideas for the editorial staff to consider, which was an interesting task considering I am CRAP at titling anything. Plus I liked my existing title. Fortunately, I get to keep my title (The Latte Rebellion), which is good considering the alternatives I was able to come up with (a few choice examples were Beyond House Blend: The Official Autobiography of Agent Alpha and Skin Deep, Coffee High, so it's no wonder the existing title seemed fine by comparison). So that's one reason I'm quite happy right now.

I was also asked--and this occasioned more happy spazzing on my part--to generate some ideas for the book cover. It's not common for an author to get much say in what the cover looks like, so I was basically overjoyed to have input. I looked at a lot of existing covers, including those pictured here, and evidently the cover artist they've chosen has a good idea of what to do, so...it's just a matter of waiting to see what she comes up with.

What was extra funny about this is, a couple of months ago I had a very vivid dream having to do with the title and cover of my book. I dreamed that my publisher had decided to change the title to Deep Woods (which, incidentally, has zero to do with ANYTHING in the book) and had sent me a sample of the cover, which looked a lot like this sketch here only in color, lots of dark browns and greens and ambers: the main character, her back turned, regarding a crow on a branch; the main character with two shirtless guys (was I thinking about Twilight, maybe?) in the lower foreground; everything framed by two trees at the left and the right and looking an awful lot like the cover of a DragonLance novel.

I think, in the dream, I was appalled.

Fortunately, I don't think I'm in any danger of my book looking like this and I now can be certain there will be no utterly random retitling. Reason to celebrate. 

New Ideas

Yeah, I'm still behind on my promised photo post...I scanned in a few that needed scanning (that's right--in the early 2000s I did not yet own a digital camera) so I'm almost there, I swear. In the meantime, I'm wrestling with a new idea that may or may not be either wise or a good use of my time but nevertheless, it's tugging at me. Ever since writing my first found poem as part of the New Year's Poetry Challenge (a challenge I have yet to complete...) I keep coming back to that form in my mind, especially after Tanita sent me this link. I keep wanting to write more. I'm not even sure I'm doing it "right" or creating anything particularly meaningful, but I've written one other since then and it's fun. It's intriguing, like a word puzzle. A brain puzzle. Finding some hidden meaning in somebody else's writings. I of course wish I'd thought to do what Austin Kleon is doing, but it's a bit late for that.

What I AM thinking about is creating a blog that would be a sort of found poetry experiment, using articles (as I have been) available online. I have minor concerns about legal issues that might arise, though I would hope that providing a link to the articles I use would help to prevent that.

Alternatively, I could just post them here. But this poor blog is already a cluttered mishmash of random crap, so I'm thinking a separate space would be better. Maybe some artwork to go with the poems, from time to time. Not that I have any extra time for extra stuff. It would be an occasional diversion. IF I decide to do it. I get a lot of ideas I don't really have time for...Plus the "what's the point?" monster rather quickly shows up in my head. Of course, the answer is, just for fun. For enjoyment. To see if it leads anywhere interesting. I might just make it a poetry/flash fiction blog in general, so I can keep the formal writing separate from this very casual rambling that I tend to do.

We will see. Or not, as the case may be.