Why the “Nano Method” Works: Silencing that Inner Critic

I think the ever popular Nanowrimo (National Novel Writing Month, for all you noobs) and its sister event, Camp Nanowrimo produces a lot of shitty writing. I also happen to think that that is fantastic. Now, before you get all frazzled and prepare to comment sixteen reasons why your Nano writing doesn’t suck, hear me out.

When I was fifteen, I wrote a book from damn near start to finish. That’s pretty awesome for a kid in the tenth grade who took on extracurriculars like an addict to coke. For a while after that, I found myself starting projects and not being able to finish them. One after another, I’d give up and toss my material out because, well, frankly, it was godawful, and I knew it. It’s only been recently that I’ve been able to push through to the end of projects satisfied with myself.

So what happened? What was the difference between five years ago and now?

The difference is this: at fifteen, I actually thought I was a good writer. Oh, not just good, I thought I was bloody fantastic, the next Margaret Atwood right out of high school. Then, when I wrote things, I just shot them out as they happened in my brain, and to me, whatever I put to paper was pure gold. King Midas with a laptop, yo.

Now, jump ahead three years, multiple small town publications and a glowing review from my local university’s writer-in-residence. I had gained a single, valuable piece of knowledge that changed the way I wrote astronomically. One day, as I sat in a creative writing class with thirteen or so other “great writers,” I discovered that I wasn’t nearly as much of a prodigy as I thought I was. It was simultaneously the best and the worst thing that has ever happened to my work.

It was the worst thing for a few reasons. I got it at the wrong time, for one. An eighteen year old kid with self-esteem issues to begin with isn’t going to like realizing that one of the things she thought didn’t suck about herself, kind of, well sucked. I started second guessing everything I wrote, unable to string three words together without deleting and rewriting them in different variations six more times; I wanted everything to be perfect, bringing out the editing pen before I’d even gotten the story down. Secondly, I don’t think I was at the point where I could understand that sucking is just another stepping stone to being freaking awesome at something.

After the revelation, I spent another year and a half starting projects and not finishing them, scrutinizing my work paragraph by paragraph as I trudged along, never making any progress (or so I thought) and then getting tired or bored and giving up.

—

It was the best thing, because it allowed me to eventually understand that everyone sucks at writing when they first start a story. And I have Kate DiCamillo to thank for that.

If you don’t remember who that is, DiCamillo is the author of one of the staple books of my elementary school years: Because of Winn Dixie. It’s a pretty good book, but we only know that it’s good because we just get to see the heavily revised, beautiful final manuscript that the author brought forth with all of the brain power she could muster. I don’t know if you’ll believe me, but let me prove it to you; the first draft of that book was an absolute turd pie.

One day, I was messing around on the internet, and I came across a document from Scholastic Books comparing the first pages of the many drafts of Winn Dixie, and I couldn’t believe my eyes when I read this monster:

Welcome to draft one of a John Newbery Medal Winner. It’s a jumbled mess of choppy sentences and poor word choice, and yet it was exactly where it needed to be at that moment. Without that initial vomiting of ideas and bits of dialogue, the author would have a pretty difficult time forming a story. It’s like trying to cram for a Chemistry exam, but focusing carefully on every little chapter instead of the bigger picture. By the time you get to the end, you’re bound to forget half of the things you shoved into your brain from the first six units, and you can’t even do the seventh unit, because you can’t get the base knowledge to finish a titration equation anyway.

I’ve run into this problem so many times: I’ll get a semi-rough first chapter down, and I’ll have all of these awesome ideas that seem to work perfectly with it. Except, I waste three days chipping away until that first chapter is exactly how I want it, telling my ideas to hush, and be patient and please hold on for another twenty freaking minutes and I’ll write you down, okay? By the time I’m ready to move on, the ideas have gone stale, and I’m left with what I’m assuming is the writer’s version of blue balls.

I’ve got this beautiful first chapter, and nowhere to put it.

The “shitty first draft,” as Anne Lamott calls it, is important. It’s not about proper grammar or flawless plot lines. It’s about spewing out everything you need to create the fantasta-crazy-beautiful story living in your imagination. You can’t carve a bust without stone, and as a writer, sorry to tell you, but that lumpy grey slab has got to come from your brain. So bring it up.

This brings me back to Nanowrimo, and why I love it and its awful story creating so much. Above anything else, this hectic push to fire out 50,000 words in thirty or so days has taught me to be okay with my shitty draft, mainly because I don’t have time to fart around and make everything look pretty. Not if I want to keep on track, anyway. And if you’ve committed to Nano and actually told people you were doing it (stupid,stupid, idea, that one), your ego automatically requires you to finish. So, for sanity’s sake, you’ve got to try and keep a constant flow of words, even if you can’t think of the right title for your super spy organization, and have to call it “lkasjdfhlasd” for the first three weeks. Believe me, it’s no fun having to catch up on a four thousand word deficit on top of your daily 2000 word goal at two am. So skjfhdj webrksjd gasudi away, friends.

Thanks to Nano, writers with all of the potential in the world are forced to bite the bullet, stomp on the muzzle of that reptilian critic in their brains, and tell the damn story, already. Nano is about producing material; if it were about making things perfect, it would be National Novel Writing Year.

So, aspiring authors, regardless of whether you choose to participate in Nanowrimo or not, learn to love your bad work, because your bad work is still material, and it still, from time to time, produces lumps of absolute genius. But you can’t make material pretty if it isn’t there to work with in the first place, ya feel me? Spew first. Shoot it all out. Build a routine and stick to it; keep your momentum up. And then, only when you’re sure there isn’t a story left to tell, then you can attack it with a jackhammer.

I shall leave you with a mantra, courtesy of Ernest Hemingway: “The first draft of anything is shit.”

Repeat after me: “The first draft of anything is shit.”

Now go write shitty novels so you can make them bestsellers, you wonderful creatures.

Once more for good measure.

Performance Anxiety

There’s always a period of time before I start a project where I’m afraid of what I’m about to do. I’ll have everything planned out– unless it’s one of those woah where’d you come from, let’s get you over with quickly then, ideas– and I’ll be excited to get to work so I can see my quiet thoughts live and in colour in front of me. Except, the closer I get to my start date, the more I balk.

I feel like anyone who’s serious about writing doubts their ability; I have days where I’m like, psh, I’m so good at this, I was born to do this, why did I ever want to do anything else? Those are the rare days, if I’m speaking honestly; the other ninety percent of the time I’m left scrutinizing ideas or already written works and thinking about how hard this stuff is. For every good sentence I write, there’s about sixteen more awful ones, and if I’m not tearing my hair out at that point, there’s likely a screw loose. But then I suppose every author has felt like that before they really got going, and continued to deal with that apprehension after they discovered that they could make a living from their scribbles.

I know that with enough elbow (knuckle?) grease I can write good stories, ones that people will read and talk about. It’s just that it’s easier to imagine success than it is to actively achieve it, and that scares the hell out of me. I’m not afraid of the work, believe it or not. There’s nothing I love more than a good heavy writing session (editing is a completely different story; editing is a process Satan himself invented, I’m sure). I also revel in the rush I get when I finish a large project. (Again, editing excluded. Because that is like pulling teeth.)

What I’m scared of is starting. Because once you start, anything can happen. Once you start, there’s a possibility that you can get thinking about what crap the whole thing is and give up before you’re done. Or you can reach the end and cut off all the rough bits and slap a fresh coat of paint on your piece and send it out into the world with a bow in its hair only to be ridiculed by all who see it. Once you start, you can fail, and doesn’t that just scare you to bits?

It doesn’t always happen that way, I know. There are books on the market and short stories in magazines to prove that. But in the beginning, at that place where everything is rusty, and getting anything out is a whole lot like trying to get the first few sips of a chocolate milkshake through a plastic straw, it always feels like you’re headed straight down the not-so-nice and difficult path. I find myself thinking about quitting more in those beginning stages than I do at any other part of the project.

It’s probably not even that bad; I’m a total wuss.

I guess in that way, writing–like starting a workout plan or committing to piano lessons– is very much a test of faith in yourself. Nothing good ever comes easy, but whether you finish– regardless of the outcome– comes right down to how bad you want to get to the end. And because of how bad I always seem to want to get to the end, I push through the terror I feel at the beginning, right through the muck of the first few paragraphs, and then, once I’m up to a good clip, I keep going, because that’s what I was born to do.

But don’t you dare mention the word editing, yet. That shouldn’t come in until it is absolutely necessary. Before that point it is a forbidden swear, and until then, the project is beautiful and everything is perfect and don’t you ruin it, you little wretch.

Am I Really Doing This Again?

I think the more I try to push away writing projects for other things, the more my life works to swing me around and bring me right back to where I started: small and scared, pen in hand in front of a blank piece of looseleaf. Or, in this case, insert creaking knuckles and office laptop screen into the appropriate slot, I suppose.

I don’t want to talk about where I’ve been; I’ll let the stories do that. What’s important is that I’m back again, and that I never actually stopped writing to begin with. The rusty old brain has been kicked around, patched up, scratched up and booted halfway from here to Arkansas (I didn’t actually go to Arkansas, I just like the way it’s spelled, and how I say it phonetically in my head like an elementary rebel while I pronounce it aloud the right way), but thank the Lord above, she’s kept on trucking for me, and that’s more than I could have asked for.

Hell, she even managed to pump out some things that got published, that little fighter, and I love her for it. And now, after our nap that wasn’t quite a nap, now we’re here; maybe because I like this medium, or maybe because there’s something I’m supposed to get from this, I’m not sure. I do know that my fingers got to aching to move a melody against a set of plastic keys–this Mac makes a better sound than a baby grand, let me tell you– and where a rusty tap used to jut out from my cortex, a leak has sprouted from beneath the siding and there’s a bunch of stuff–creative oil, perhaps– just gushing out into my imagination and pooling there. And though that blank page is as terrifying as ever, I’m starting to see what it would look like with, dear God yes, words on it. So I guess I’ve just got to do what I’ve always done and put them where it looks like they should go.

You can see it when I’m done, too, if you like. For now, you’ve got these silly little brain scrapings to read. Hope you like ’em.

Hello, again.

Adults are Boring: What I Learned From YA

For the past few years of my life, save for a couple exceptions, I’ve tried to stay away from YA fiction. That is, until I started to write it, and became drawn to the stories that were pulling so many of my friends in. So I’ve been looking for it a lot lately. Last night, I came across a little gem called Eleanor and Park by Rainbow Rowell. It seemed innocent enough. A story about two teenagers who fall in love in the eighties. And it didn’t have vampires in it. So I went for it. And I read it in one sitting like I expected to.

What I didn’t expect was the impact that it had on me. This book is the farthest thing from mindless. Though the two title characters are sixteen, there’s something about their relationship and their experiences that just seems so raw and true. I found myself identifying with them. I had felt what they felt before; I understood.

I laughed. The book was funny. I found myself caught in a current of erratic heartbeats and chest swells as I roared through that book like a transport truck late for a delivery. I ate it. Chewed it, swallowed it, and then realized I had eaten too quickly, because when I finished the book, I was left with the same feeling you get after wolfing down a great donair way too fast. I wanted more.

And as I closed my e-reader (so not the same as closing a real book, but I’ll take what I can get), and let it digest, I became aware of something that I had been running from without even knowing I was doing it. I had been avoiding the teen section at the bookstores because cynical old me thought I was too old for YA (That’s Young Adult Literature, for all you noobs out there). Yeah, and I was probably seventeen when I made that decision, which makes the things seem so much more ridiculous. I thought that YA was somehow romanticizing the life of young people in some stupid cliche fashion that was going to give the wrong ideas to people my age. I thought that writing “teenager” and “love” in the same sentence was dumb and unrealistic. I thought that YA books were trying to turn the adventures of their younger characters into something that could rival the life of an adult, and I thought that was kind of silly. Why? Because I had been told that teenagers and children weren’t capable of the stuff of grown ups by people who were living adult lives since I was probably old enough to string a sentence together.

So I read adult fiction, and by that, I don’t mean erotica. I haven’t so much as touched a copy of Fifty Shades, nor will I ever. I just mean books the the general fiction section. I stocked up on heavy novels with deep political or social meaning as though somehow, books about adults for adults made the adventures, feelings and experiences of the characters much more real.

And then I picked up Eleanor and Park, and I finished it, and finally realized what I had been missing. I’m sorry, lovers and writers of (some) adult work, but your plots are too lofty; your diction tries too hard, and it looks to me that you’re all just little kids wearing big people suits, trying to make yourselves look grown up. All your doing is making yourself look boring. After reading the likes of John Green and Rainbow Rowell, I’ve discovered some things, and remembered other things I had loved during the days of Ramona and Beezus and Nancy Drew. First: adults– and by that, I mean the societal definition of adults–are overrated. I really do think we’re all secretly sixteen-year-olds with skin that wrinkles a little more each year. I think that as people get wrinklier, they feel as though they have to act like they’re wrinkly and they forget what it’s like to be a teenager. I find too many people dismiss the thoughts and feelings of young people as being too melodramatic, or implausible as if age and wisdom was somehow the only thing to legitimize one’s ideas and emotions.

Why is it that our boys and girls put away their comic books and their Lego and the tapes of their favourite pop bands when they hit adulthood? Honestly, I love Lego. Comic books are cool, and I’d be the first one to rock out to the Backstreet Boys on my way home from work. It’s because we’re told that at a certain age, things become childish and somewhere down the line, childish has become a bad thing.

And I think that’s wrong.

I fell for it. So have many of you, probably. And the sad thing is, because we’ve all fallen for it, we criticize teens and young people for feeling and doing as if we’re trying to drag them down with us. But all that’s doing is closing us youngsters off, telling us that we’re being dumb and that we shouldn’t be able to express ourselves. And so we don’t. We keep their mouths shut and our ideas locked away a little tighter each day and slowly as our skin hardens, we become adult.

I just read a novel that focused on teenagers–just like my own work does. One, it should be noted, that I wouldn’t have bothered to pick up before I started my novel. That was because it looked annoying and was meant for teenagers who hadn’t hit the same level of maturity I had in my less than twenty years (Oh, the pretentiousness is killing me). And in it, I have found some of the truest passages about being human that I think exist on the face of the earth. It gives me hope that the message I’m writing will be taken seriously and not tossed aside because my main character is barely out of high school. I wanted to make my Gracie real, and raw and human in ways that I didn’t know YA could do, and now that I know it can, I’m even more excited for what this book has the potential to do.

I got thinking today about all of the things I was afraid to say and do in my stories because I didn’t think anyone would buy it. But today, I’m a little braver, so I’ll tell you three of them.

First, and most importantly, I think, young people can be in love. And I don’t mean all of that stupid lusty stuff adults keep dismissing it for. I mean the kind of deep, true love that people say only happens when you’re old enough to afford a mortgage. The kind that envelopes you and takes every fiber of your being to support. The kind that keeps you up at night, the kind that rejoices when the one you’ve picked gets excited about caterpillars on the sidewalk. The kind that makes you notice really weird– but awesome– things about a person, like how they’ve got nice kneecaps or how they’ve got three giant freckles in the corner of their left eye socket or how they can’t dance at all but somehow watching them do it makes your heart flutter. It’s love in its most purest form, and it is beautiful and fulfilling and because too many people dismiss it for lust (there is a difference people, I promise, but that’s not the point), many of us young folk are scared to express it, because we’re going to be called juvenile and not taken seriously. But you know what? There is no such thing as a proper age to fall in love, and so there is no need to dismiss a book for portraying it before adulthood.

Second: young people are funny. And I don’t mean in the stupid insulting fat jokes kind of funny– of course, I’d be lying if I said I’ve never cracked one, but we all have, and that isn’t the point either– but I mean the intelligent sort that can only come from someone who sees the world differently. There’s something about coming into adulthood that sucks all the fun out of humour, and suddenly jokes need to be horribly crass or to have secret critiques of society in them to be funny. I’m not saying that satire isn’t humourous, I’m just saying I haven’t laughed at a comedian over twenty five, like, ever, and it’s not because I’m not educated either. I have, however, laughed out loud at Junie B. Jones. Like, recently.

Thirdly: young people are smart, and creative and they worry about things, just like adults do. Real, tangible, important things. We worry about the environment and we worry about staying healthy and growing up and having a family and doing something meaningful, and yet our worries are often dismissed as silly. Our schemes for fixing things are said to be impractical and we’re forced at eighteen to choose something plausible to do with the rest of our lives. I wonder what would happen if we were all given the time to let our teenage brains stay on the same track for awhile, wait a little longer to come to fruition.  We have the capacity to change the world, and many of us are doing it right now, but I think there’s a lot of potential that’s being snuffed out because we’re all being told that we have to grow up. Maybe the way young people see the world is just what we need to fix it.

Go on out tonight, if you’re bored, and hit the youth section at a library or bookstore. I’d recommend John Green or Rainbow Rowell or hell, even Judy Blume if you’re feeling a classic.

      

Ever wonder why some of the best books identified in our world right now deal with the lives of mere children?

Go on. Put down your political commentaries and your fact-books. I’m not saying they aren’t good; I’m a fan of a lot of it. But pull off the adult hat for a minute. I think you’ll be surprised by what you find.

John Green Takes Anxiety Meds: Why Sometimes It’s OK To Admit That You Just Can’t Anymore

Among my friends and loved ones, it’s no secret that I suffer from OCD– you know, that anxiety disorder that people without it use to make excuses for being controlling and anal (Which drives me up the wall, by the way). The thing that not many people know of, is the struggle that I’ve had in coming to terms with the fact that I’m medicated.

Zoloft is a pretty neat little pill. You take it every day, and eventually there’s enough in your system so that dealing with the anxiety that sometimes makes it hard to go into public places is a whole lot easier. In the beginning, I was okay that I was medicated. By the end of the year, I was not.

Evil little bastard, you are. (Even though you do good things)

I didn’t like having to check certain cough meds to make sure that they were okay to take when I had a cold (most of them weren’t).

I didn’t like not being able to take Advil when I had a headache.

I’m not much of a drinker, but I hated having to explain to people why I had turned down their offers with an “I can’t” instead of  a”no thank you” (Which I realize I didn’t have to do, but people stop asking faster when you tell them that there’s a reason you can’t drink– welcome to the world of the university student).

I hated having to listen to people– sometimes close friends– talk to me about all of the different options and how sometimes people with medication were weak–butnotmeofcoursenotI’mthestrongestgirltheyknew they are always quick to add.

But most of all, I hated the fact that I had to rely on a little pill to make my brain and body function enough so that I could live a normal life. And they didn’t even work all that well.

By the end of the year, especially in moments of high stress, I discovered that on top of the anxiety every student gets around exam time, the one thing that was causing me the grief that the pills couldn’t counteract was my OCD itself.

The pills were treating the symptom, not the cause.

You see, then I felt silly. Of course they weren’t working all the time. I was taking a pill to calm the anxiety so that I could more easily ignore the issues that were causing it. After a few weeks of being out of school and feeling myself calm down enough to start rationalizing my way through things, I went to the doctor and explained my theory. He seemed to agree, and suggested, now that I was living in a different province, that I waited until I went back to school to go see a councilor who would help me work on attacking the root of my problem. Then, the moment I had been waiting for for months arrived: he agreed to lower my dosage so that I could begin the process of weaning off of the Zoloft.

I was proud. I was strong. I hadn’t quite beaten it, but I was getting better, and that was a total plus. Good for me.

Except it’s been about two weeks since then, and I’m back to pre-medication anxiety levels–in some cases, not all. I’ve found success in dealing with it by using exercise, and I have to be open with my family a whole lot more so they can reassure me of things that my OCD twists around and makes abnormal (which is perhaps the most frustrating part, because I feel silly and irrational and dumb). It’s exhausting, and sometimes I’m very discouraged, but I will work through this doing the best that I can.

After I excitedly informed my parents that I was coming off of the Zoloft, my mum smiled, and gently told me that if I couldn’t take it, then I could always be put back on a regular course. I laughed, because there was no way I’d do that again.

Now, I’m not so sure.

There are a variety of environmental factors I’m taking into account that could be causing the sudden surge in anxiety, and I’m going to ride out the storm for awhile longer, but some days I want to quit and call the doctor. It is on those days where I feel that I’m at my weakest. I’m embarrassed, yet again, that I may have to admit to myself that I may need medication to function. I get frustrated and beg God to take it away, to make me better so that I don’t have to deal with anything anymore. If there is one thing that’s kept me sane since my diagnosis, it’s Him. Except, he rarely ever gives me exactly what I want. That’s the thing about the Big Man Upstairs. He answers your prayers, always, but most of the time they’re in ways that you don’t expect.

 

 

Or, you know, we can just stay the way we are. That’s fine. We’ve evolved enough. At least we walk on land now.

Today, I was reading through a feed on Reddit that John Green was using to talk to fans. One of them asked about his past with anxiety, and he began to talk about his use of medication–daily and for years– combined with the exercise and cognitive behavioral therapy that I will be seeking in the next few months.

John Green. Nerdfighter, Vlog Brother, Author of some of the coolest books for young adults on the market, and on top of being active and talking to experts, he has to use medication to deal with anxiety.

It’s not because he’s weak.

And evidently, it does nothing to hamper his creative genius.

And, he’s not embarassed to talk about it.

To be honest, I’m not ready to accept the fact that I may need a little yellow pill to keep me running. But maybe there’s something okay about having to admit that I wasn’t ready in the first place. Maybe it isn’t admitting defeat.

Part of getting better is learning to listen to what your body needs. I am sick, after all. It’s not a cold– though my allergies have me wheezing up a storm, over here–but it is a brain-sickness. And sometimes, in order to cure or lessen the symptoms of a disease, or a virus, or a disorder, you need medicine.

If John Green can take his medicine, then so can I.

(If I have to admit that I need it, of course).

(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction

After a few weeks of letting the story I’ve dreamed up settle and grow in my head, at the beginning of this week I started to seriously undertake the process of writing my novel. I remember that when I started this blog, I talked a lot about another book I was writing. There were entire posts dedicated to the earnestness of my venture and how much time I put into it. One year, a scrapped project and a massive revelation later, I can’t help but notice a difference between the first time I tried to do this, and now.

If you remember, I wrote a post about a week ago on my motivations for writing before versus my motivations today (I’ll link it here, if you’re new and think I’m cool, or something–> https://mercysbrainscrapings.wordpress.com/2014/05/20/something-beautiful-sorry-audience-this-isnt-for-you/). While I was in high school, I developed an image of two friends, and their interactions became a full-fledged plot-line, filled with enough action and cool science-fiction-y stuff that I became sure that once it got published, Tom Cruise would read the manuscript and be like, “OPRAH. I’M IN LOVE. I’M IN LOVE WITH THIS BOOK AND I DON’T CARE WHO KNOWS. I NEED THIS TO BE A MOVIE. CALL SPIELBERG, CALL BAY, THE PEOPLE NEED THIS.”

Tom, it’s okay, we both got excited about things that didn’t last.

Of course, it was geared toward kids my age, and if it had ever become a film, Tom Cruise was the last person I’d want in it, but the ideas I had had swirling around in my head had me thinking along the lines of movie deals and the New York Times bestseller list. And so my baby idea that began innocently enough became so influenced by what I thought people would have wanted that it grew too big for me to handle. I became overwhelmed, trying to connect things that I hadn’t wanted in the story in the first place, and as I got more and more frustrated, I began to doubt my ability. Then, as things got in the way, I– and it pains me to admit it– gave up. Like Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes, I professed my greatest joy to the world, and ended up divorcing it (Though, similarly to what the press is saying about Miss Holmes, I’m much happier on the other side). I will write that story one day when I’m more experienced, but for now, I will hold on to the original idea, still untouched even after all of the, erm, procedures, and wait until I feel that it’s time to pull it out again.

That project shall be forever known as the “Joan Rivers Venture”

Now, in beginning to understand myself and understand what it is I want to tell people, something in my writing has changed. And I don’t mean the style– I couldn’t change that even if I tried– but the feeling I get when I do it. I know what I need this story to reveal, and even in the moments where I’m unable to find the words to use to get that message out and have to spend half a freaking hour typing and hitting delete and writing and crossing out until I’m happy with it **takes a deep breath because no punctuation** I feel like I’m going in the write (HAHA, puns) direction. There is this weird sense of satisfaction that comes with finally writing the story you’ve been meant to tell; something that just fits you and follows the current of wherever your mind was heading in the first place. It makes the insane amount of hard work I’m doing worth it. I’m both very pleased and pleasantly surprised with the direction my book has taken; now I can truly start doing what I launched this blog for in the beginning.

I have started, therefore I will finish. And I won’t be happy until I do, so if you care to follow an ambitious nineteen year old on a journey that pulls her in way over her head, be ready to see this through ’til the end.

If you’ve been reading me from the beginning, or have just stumbled upon my ramblings, thank you for the support so far. The amount of encouragement I’ve been receiving is very reassuring.

You rock so much that if I were this squirrel, I’d totally give you that flower.

 

Talking to Strangers Taught me Things. (Sorry, Mum)

Depending on the day, I can either be a total people person, or a real-life version of Gollum– you know, before Bilbo took the ring. On those days, I loathe anyone who makes eye contact and try not to leave the house.

Precious doesn’t want to go outside, the sun doesn’t likes him, no it doesn’t…sss…sss

One of my goals for getting better is to tell myself on those latter sorts of days to suck it up, princess. The world goes on regardless of whether or not you’re stuck inside. Why don’t you go enjoy it? Stop missing stuff! –that type of thing.

When I was invited to check out an outdoor weekend market a few towns over last night, I said yes for two reasons: the first, because it was a family outing. I’m not going to say no to a family outing, especially if they’ve been kind enough to take me in for the summer. Second: because every fiber of my being told me that I shouldn’t go. Not because of any weird intuition, or anything telling me that we were going to crash and die on the way down (ain’t no Final Destination shit goin’ on in here, no sah), but because I did not forsee myself wanting to go out. So before I could convince myself otherwise, I said yes. And then I put my phone down so that I couldn’t pick it back up again and tell them I wasn’t coming.

I regretted it all night. Oh, there’s writing I could be doing, I didn’t have a chance to do that today, oh, I still have to do those dishes, oh I’m still not feeling too hot, sleeping in tomorrow would help me, I’m really going to need Saturday to work.

In other words.

I regretted it when I woke up at 6:30 this morning to shower before we left at eight. And at seven, when I still hadn’t gotten out of bed.

And at twenty to eight when I– God forbid– pulled out the hairdryer to make sure I didn’t get stuck in a chilly sea-side town with frozen hair in May.

But when I got into the car and we pulled away, I was surprisingly thankful I’d made it that far. I love my family; they know the area better than I do. It was time to explore.

And you know what? When I got there, I began to–gasp– enjoy myself. Not because of all of the booths that allowed potential shopping of goods that no one was going to have, but because in taking everything in, I felt joy, and interest and curiosity and peace. I wandered around and looked at antique furniture, homemade bread, two dollar book sales (girl, you know I hit dat up), jewelry counters. I saw things and met people and not only was my creativity fed, but my soul was too. For the first time in a long time, I struck up a conversation with a woman–a complete stranger, careful kids–petting a dog outside of a little shop. We spoke about art. I told her that I was new to the area, and she gushed about its charm and warmth, and in that moment, not only did I believe her, but I saw it; I felt it. We spoke about writing, and she told me how much our county benefited creative people like me. We wandered around and looked at pottery inside the shop we stood in front of, and met the owner and maker of that pottery, and I saw just how people like me can survive in little places like this and be happy.

On the way home, I had a conversation with my aunt, who is wise and beautiful and smart and who knows the world better than I ever could. I learned things.

Also, I bought a cookie. And that cookie tasted awesome.

It’s early afternoon now, and I’m still going to write and read and do all of the things I wanted to do, but instead of moseying around the house, stopping for an hour here and there to surf the net and not change out of my pajamas (or put on pants, for that matter), I’m sitting on my couch, relaxed and thankful for a day that gave me things. Things that I never would have had had I stayed in.

And so my challenge to you is this. Go out. Go out on days where you feel like it the least. Go and find curious places with people and new things, and if you happen to stop for a moment, say hello to anyone close to you. Do not fear the crowds and public places, because even though they’re intimidating, they hold experiences that you aren’t going to get on Netflix, or going through your girlfriend’s latest vacation pics on Facebook. Talk to your family; they know things and they want to share them with you. And for the love of God, not having pants on is not an excuse to stay in. You’re missing real adventure, here.

Today, I found joy in the mundane, because I discovered that sometimes all you need to feel better is to step out the front door for something other than a big night out or a roadie with the girls. And now, as I settle myself down to write some more, I’m ready and willing to explore where this story is going to take me. To be honest, I don’t know where it would have gone had I stayed in.

I can tell you though, not as far.

Something Beautiful: Sorry, Audience, this isn’t for you.

I discovered something recently that made me smile, and slap a palm to my forehead at the same time (could’ve had a V8, kid.)

I used to write things for the sake of getting noticed. Oh, if I write a book this way, then it’s more likely to sell and I’m more likely to be able to make a living off of something that I enjoy, awesome, whoopdedoo, and all of that fun stuff. So I would take to my laptop, or my 80-page Hilroy– which in the beginning stages of a writing project, I put my first draft in, because my words often flow easier when I feel like I’m bleeding them into paper right from my soul (yeah, morbid thought, I get it, but I’m one of those weird, creative types, remember?)–and write down the idea I thought would be the next bestseller. I would pack it full of action and romance and craziness–though I did my best to keep away from vampires, because the modern generation of that sort of literature has ruined my view of supernatural stories

Someday, Lestat. Someday.

Seriously; Twilight scared me away from Anne Rice, and I don’t know how I feel about that–

and get to work, confident for the first three weeks that I was going to make it. Except, I would pack in things that everyone was doing. My plots became cliche, my characters bland, and I could tell what was coming next, not because my brain was running as it should, but because my muscle memory was kicking in and writing the ending to the last eight movies I’d watched. I’d get frustrated, try to change up the whole story, while still keeping the things that I thought would make it sell, and then give up because it just wasn’t working.

If there are infographs about your story type, RUN.

It was only until I started the Gracie Project– which is what I’ll be calling my work for the next three months– that I realized what I’d been doing wrong. For the first time since I started taking writing seriously, I understood what hadn’t worked before. All of the short stories I’d written in the backs of my notebooks or on a whim in planes and cars and in class when I should have been paying attention, is that I was working on things that inspired me, not what inspired my generation to flock to a bookstore at midnight to buy the fourth book in my new, imaginary series. I began Gracie because I had been going through a rough time. She popped in at the right moment, and was doing the things that I wanted to do. She was funny, she was adventurous, and she was completely different from anything I’d ever written before. Suddenly, everything made sense. Every Pinterest quote (yeah, it’s an addiction, so sue me. I’m nineteen; it happens), every page of every author’s interview I’d scrutinized, every memoir, came flooding back to me and I got it.

I need to tattoo this to my fingers. Seriously.

You must write for yourself, above all. That is your only hope in creating something beautiful.

See that gem? That came from Gustave Flaubert. I’ve read it at least fifty times over the past few years, and most of the time I agreed with it. And then I’d turn around and act as if I didn’t, even though I had completely tricked myself into writing the things I thought other people wanted. Gracie was, and is, my way of curing myself of things that got stuck in my head and made me hurt. She is my medium; she is who I have chosen to tell my truth, and you know what? Though I haven’t worked out all of the details of her adventure, more and more of them are coming to me every day, and that is exciting.

What joy it is to be invited by your own characters to explore new worlds with them. I don’t have to leave my couch to see the things she sees, and I’ve reached a point where I’m not dying to make a daily word count. Instead, I wake up wondering when I can squeeze more of her world into mine. The way I see the world is changing. I’m creating something beautiful, not for a reader (who, if, by some miracle, picks up my manuscript and falls in love with the world the way I’m beginning to, great) but for myself. How can I expect someone to read my work if I haven’t breathed whatever life I could into it?

If you’re reading this, whoever you are, whether you’re a writer, whether you’re a businessman, cab driver, chef, dancer or Office Depot clerk, my challenge to you is this: carry out your passion in such a way that you find yourself inspired. If you exist to serve the opinions– please note I said opinions; helping other people is probably something people should do a whole lot more–of others, how could you ever enjoy what you’re doing? I’m not going to tell you that happiness doesn’t take work. I can’t expect the Gracie story to be easy, but even when the going gets tough, I still want to like what I’m doing, ya feel me?

Do it for yourself. Somehow, the more your work pleases you, the happier you are, and–I swear this is a thing– others begin to see the merit in it. You’ll discover very quickly that those who don’t particularly enjoy what you have to offer don’t matter as much. If, at the end of the day, you are pleased with yourself above all, then off to bed with you, solider, you done good.

Now if you excuse me, I’ve been wanting to make stuff with words all day.

 

Road Maps and Novel-Writing: Keep Me Away from Indigo.

I went to write in a coffee shop today because being home meant distractions. I started to work on my book while sitting on my parent’s loveseat, but plot thread and character development were replaced every minute with imhungrymyfacehurtswhydoesmyfacestillhurtthedentistsaiditwouldonlytakeaweektohealmaybeishould

takesometylenolohtonightsepisodeofdrphillooksinterestingmaybeishouldtapethatohshitishouldprobablycheck

andseeifmylandloardpulledmyrentdoihaveunderwearfortomorroworshouldidolaundrybeforeigohomewhydidyou

evenbothergettingallfourwisdomteethoutthisissoannoyingPINTEREST

Replace a few of these with endless YouTube video mini-marathons and I lost a good two hours of writing time being home. At that point, I took a stand. I refused to lose to the curiosity of my twenty-first century teenaged brain, and so I packed up my things, left my laptop at home and headed to my local Starbucks to grab a latte, scribble out a dozen pages of draft one and praise my decision to put my Master’s degree on hold lest I join the ranks of overqualified baristas who serve people like me and wonder why they aren’t working at a job they’re qualified for.

Sorry, Starbucks folk. Our job market is awful, but you do make a mean chai tea.

I got some pretty important work done before I realized that I needed to do some research, not necessarily for accuracy, as most of what I’m writing is indeed fiction, but to give me an idea of the sort of thing I was getting myself into, and how to write it. Most of the subject was unimportant; probably something I could look up online later, but as a kid who still can’t comprehend things unless she’s underlining them on paper, I did, in fact, need a road map. Why I needed the map isn’t really worth telling (at least right now), but I should note that I was in the perfect position to get one. See, in Canada–and I’m not sure about anywhere else, so don’t murder me for thinking we’re unique–our main bookstore chain, Indigo, and its sister stores usually come with a Starbucks on the inside. Of course, I was sitting twenty feet away to the gates of this chic and modern Heaven-on-Earth. If Indigo didn’t have a road map for the area I was looking for, then I don’t know who would.

So I wandered from the Starbucks into the main store and was immediately caught by the adorable Kate Spade collection of journals that looked like old library books. No, I didn’t buy one. But I contemplated it. Oh yes, for five minutes, actually. (Ten points for self-control, what what).

Not for long.
Can someone freeze my credit cards, too?

No worries, my steel will didn’t hold up too long. I bought literary magazines. I bought the newest book from an author I’m going to see at the end of the month (Joseph Boyden; I first read Three Day Road, a story of two Cree friends who go off to fight in WWI, and fell in love). I bought a neat little question and answer book to fuel thought and make my evenings a little more fun. I bought a collection of C.S. Lewis essays (I love that man, impeccable genius, both as a fantasy author and Christian apologetic), and then, and only then did I reach the travel section to collect my map. They had it, just like I knew they would, but as I did the walk of shame to the cash register, I did not feel triumph, but sympathy for my debit card.

My addiction to literature– and cute things and shopping in general– is getting out of hand. I suppose it could be worse, but sending me into an Indigo is like sending a recovered drug-addict into a crack house to pick up a jacket for a friend who left it there.

If you were wondering the map did come in handy.

Sorry, little guy.

Grace, Boats and Neil Gaiman.

I spent three hours today on a boat by myself with sixty or so strangers, two books, and a notepad. The situation was a kettle, a few teabags and a deep mug away from perfection, let me tell you. I live for long trips. If, in the rare case that I’ve neglected to bring some sort of reading material, I can occupy myself by exploring the many corners of my brain. I can’t even begin to tell you how many characters I’ve dreamed up on family road trips; most of them I use right away if I feel that I can’t get to know them well enough for a full-on novel venture. Sometimes though, sometimes I’m introduced to a boy or a girl that just won’t go away. I’ll get a funny image, and blow it up, and stretch it until I’ve got some more information, and by the time I’m satisfied, I’ve got a fully rounded– usually obnoxious, loud and mouthy– person in my head.

I swear I’m not crazy.

Gracie was one of those characters. I’ve had her hiding in there for awhile; long enough for family and friends to start joining the pack, and by the time I clued into what was happening, I had the tools to bring every single one of them to life. With three hours to kill, I started getting to know Gracie and the five-odd people that came with her. I had a blue ballpoint and a little Marvel-themed pocketbook (I keep my grocery lists in there… desperate times call for desperate measures, right?) and as the boat took off from the dock, I sat in my chair and I bled as much of them as I could onto the tiny little scraps of paper I had left. When I was satisfied that enough of their story had been told for the afternoon (also, I was running out of space), I put them away for a bit–I’m sorry, I’ll let you all back out later, I promise— and picked up someone else’s brain babies.

I’ve not had a chance to read much of Neil Gaiman, but he’s an author I’ve wanted to check out for a very long time. I picked up American Gods at a used book store where I live months ago, but without time to read, I put it away for a little bit. This week, a friend lent me another of his stories: The Ocean at the End of the Lane. It’s only about 180 pages or so, and I ate it up in two, hour and a half long sessions. Talk about a haunting tale. The beauty of this man’s words mixed with the fog swirling over stormy waters that looked green from where I was sitting, and all I could think about was how perfect my surroundings were for a story of that magnitude. For a small book, Gaiman’s narrative really packs a punch. If anyone is interested in a review, I might do one, I loved it that much.

A final note on public transport: there was easily over a hundred people in total on the boat today. No one gave any notice to anyone that they hadn’t known before. There were many, but each acted as though they were all alone. I find this to be the case on other modes of travel, too. Except for planes. Planes bring strangers together.

I wonder what happened to making friends on the bus?

Am I the only person who enjoys people-watching, or is that weird now?

I watch people like most people watch “Grey’s Anatomy.”