Learning

When I first wanted to be a writer (back when I was eight, I think), I knew nothing about the publishing industry. I didn’t understand how agents worked or what it took to get a book to readers.

A few years ago a young man told me he wanted to write a book so that he could make money. I didn’t know whether to laugh or pat him on the head.

Learning about cancer treatments has been much the same way. I had no idea about the medical industry. I didn’t understand how surgeons worked or what it took to get a mastectomy. I didn’t know about post-op shirts, drains, expanders, or being estrogen positive. I didn’t know terms like her2/neu, sentinel nodes, or lymphedema.

Well, live and learn.

I’m going to have a novel published soon. I’ll get this through this too.

Resistance isn’t always futile. Sometimes it stops progress for years.

Carl Sagan + my art!

I’ve been ignoring my blog. Maybe I mean neglecting. I’m supposed to be figuring a website for my art and all that. People ask me, “Do you have a website?” I feel most failure-esque to say, “I have a blog.” I mean, you can’t sell art on this thing. Sure, someone could leave me a comment about the art and we could go from there, but I don’t have a pretty page with all my images and stuff.

It shows a distinct lack of entrepreneurial spirit. But I did make all that art that is hanging in my show. I did make the art, frame it or come up with a way to display it, get a show date, and hang the stuff. And I’m editing my novel that my publisher is going to put out into the world in February. I’m participating in NaNoWriMo again too by the way. I’m teaching 20 hours a week. I’m going to speed skate practice. I’m illustrating a children’s book for my publisher. I’m spending time with my kid and doing most of the housework.

I’m neurotic, insecure, and obsessive. I’m not lazy.

But I cannot get myself to organize this into a proper website. I resist. I put it off. I think about and don’t understand it.

I don’t really know where this resistance comes from, but I will try to do better.

What is it in your life that you should be doing but you’re not? My list is certainly longer than just get a proper website. That’s what’s bothering me today.

Perfect Sentences and Other Lies

Some people promise to diet or to exercise every day or to be more patient. Do you do that? Swear you’re going to be different and somewhere between three minutes and three days that is all shot to hell?

Mine is that I’m going to be less neurotic.

I’ve been trying to come up with one sentence that captures the feelings/mood/idea of my novel. I felt like I’d been left alone on the edge of a mountain with the instructions to fly down or don’t come down at all and all I’ve got are some feathers and duct tape.

But really. All I have to do is write a sentence. Why I have to make it difficult is beyond me.

So, I’ve come up with a sentence. Here’s my first draft. I’m not happy with the word ‘trauma’ but can’t think of a better word right now.

Two sixteen-year-old girls, best friends, use magic and their wits to recover from trauma and to get revenge.

Thoughts?

Speaking of mug shots…

a book cover

Do you ever google people from your past?

Hmmm?

Well, okay. So.

I set my novel in 1985 because that’s when I was a teen and because I didn’t want to deal with cell phones and google.

I used my hometown as a starting point for my novel. But then my fictional town of Lake Belle became something more than where I grew up. The connections between the two are now almost nonexistent.

The novel isn’t autobiographical, but writing a particular scene did bring my former step-sister to mind. So, I googled her name. It was late and I haven’t seen her in 25 years. My dad ran into once while she was working as a cashier. He didn’t recognize her. My dad is like that.

Anyway. I google this girl of my past. She is forever that girl in my head. That young teenager who hit be with a baton and protected me from an aggressive boy. She’s the girl who when I found a way out of the crazy house we were living in said, “How can you leave me here?”

Saving myself.

She was such a tough girl. She could fight and shout, while I just sat quietly with my head down. I thought–she is so strong. She’ll take care of herself.

Googling her, I found her mug shot. For battery. It was a random search and I didn’t expect to find anything. But there you go.

I’m not entirely sure how I feel about learning this information. Seems wrong for people’s mug shots to be online, doesn’t it? Feels wrong to search for people too–but also tempting. I’m as curious as anyone else, especially when I’m putting off the really hard work of editing my novel.

She isn’t in my novel, but some of her spirit is in an odd roundabout way.

So. Have you/would you google someone form your past? I don’t know if I’d recommend it.

Is that the best you can do?

In high school I spent one year on the yearbook staff. I started the class really excited, and I ended the class hoping never to speak of it again. When my mother saw the section I’d worked on–the advertising section, which I hated but did work hard on–she said, “That doesn’t look very good. That’s the best you can do?”

Or maybe she said, “That’s terrible.”

It’s hard to remember exactly because what I remember best was the pain that went through my chest. My mother wasn’t a mother of false praise.

The ads weren’t good though. I’d struggled with designing the ads. My relationship with the teacher was a disaster since I realized I wasn’t pretty enough to warrant his attention.

Maybe that wasn’t the problem. But I knew the popular boys and girls invited him to their parties and that sometimes he went.

You probably don’t need to be told I wasn’t ever invited to these parties. But I didn’t want to go to their parties. I wanted my mother to tell me I’d done a great job, that I had talent, that I should be an artist when I grew up.

She said (and this I remember), “I wouldn’t show that work to anyone if I were you.”

Twenty-five years later and I still haven’t.

So, last night I sent my “final” draft of my novel to my publisher. (Final until I get edits backs, that is.) All I have to do is wait for her to read the rewrites and tell me what she thinks.

It’s funny how something said to you years ago can stay lodged in your brain for decades. I wouldn’t show that work to anyone.

And here’s me trying to send my novel out for the world to see. (Although, the world isn’t going to see it. A tiny group of friends and some random strangers.)

We’ll see how it goes.

Editing: The Mutant Virus Edition

If you want to be a published author, you have to edit your work. No matter the publishing path, editing is along the way.

Sometimes editing makes me feel like I know what I’m doing. Really. I see the problem. Take my pen to it. Look at the page and see all those marks, and hey, me, I’ve accomplished something. I can even flash that paper at someone and say, “Look what I did today!” It’s a bit like showing off my latest skate injury. It hurts, but I’m proud.

But editing (writing) isn’t always like that. Sometimes looking at my work makes me feel as if a flesh eating virus has wheedled, twisted, and hooked its way from my brow to my heart. I will have to wear a veil to hide the horror of it.

Yes, I like a bit of melodrama.

But a bit like the psychological drama of showing your face to the world if you know the world won’t want to see it…the world may not want to see my writing (I type here, showing the world my writing…). Maybe it would be best to veil the words. What is the point of showing one’s self to the world? Why do we want to do it?

No, I’m not going to cover up and hide. I am going to edit and all will be fine. I am a tiny speck of space dust and my book added to the planet won’t affect the earth’s gravitational pull or anything. But eventually it will make me happy. Happy-ish. The happy-ish speck of space dust.

Sounds like a comic strip.

So, when you edit your work, how do you feel?

The Past–there’s always more of it.

me a very long time ago

A couple years ago I took to writing small bits of memoir in this space. I didn’t set out to. Those life stories just fell into place–though I’d never had a desire to write a memoir. It was a writing memoir, every story connecting to the writing.

I stopped. Maybe I was repeating myself. Maybe I didn’t have anything interesting left to tell. But I want to revisit those stories and see if their meanings have changed.

I listened to a story on memory research. The researchers concluded that the more you think about a memory, the less accurate it becomes. The only way to have an accurate memory is not to think about the memory.

I sense a paradox.

Or is a conundrum?

You know if you handle something too much, it wears away. Why should memory be any different?

Do you ever find yourself in an argument with someone about what happened int he past? You’re certain you are correct, aren’t you? Sometimes though, just once in a blue moon, I notice something in the memory is out of place. Something has fallen into the memory that shouldn’t have. And I wonder–how did that get there?

Like a memory I have of my mother angry and throwing silverware into a cardboard box. I believed this memory for a long time until I realized that the silverware had never been kept in that particular drawer–even though the memory is quite clear. Well, I would’ve three or four then. And it is a small detail. Perhaps is doesn’t matter.

How accurate do you think your memories are?

The Wish Gods

Sometimes I feel like this guy.

I was nine when I understood what people meant by, “Be careful what you wish for.”

I’d wish for my dad to get married. Well, okay. Maybe the expression should be, “Be careful what you wish for unless you’re very, very specific.”

If I’d known that at nine, I’d have wished for my dad to marry someone nice who won’t cause me to leave home and to steal my own stuff.

Perhaps the wish gods are the most wicked of all the gods. The wish gods work in tandem. The first one plants the wish in your mind. For example, you might suddenly realize you wish to be a writer.

The wish grows. The wish roots itself deep in your mind and your soul. By the time you realize you might have been had by a wish god, the roots are so deep, you can’t rip it out without ripping yourself apart.

And then perhaps comes the other wish god who gives you what you want.

Oh. In the meantime, other wishes have been planted, and you are a big wishing mess. And no god has created a big enough wish weed whacker to get this under control.

Okay, enough of that.

I’ve gotten my wish, and that is a great thing. I just hope I know what I’m doing.

And don’t get me started on the hope god.

Investaphobia

All my eggs in one basket?

No one in the history of the universe invests money in a company knowing they’re going to lose all said money. Oh, some people may invest in losers because they know how to actually get more money later–yeah, real estate nightmare, anyone–but the plan is to make money eventually.

People lose money of course. Plans go awry. Hopes are dashed. Dreams are deferred.

I don’t really understand any of it. I confess a deep suspicion that making money without actually making anything in return feels wrong. This sort of thinking gets me nowhere and I’ll probably be a hair’s breath from living in a box and eating beans out of a tin when I’m old. Well, I’ll draw pictures on my box, so there.

Anyway, I want to be a writer. I guess I am a writer? (How does one even know? It’s not like I got a certificate saying so.)

And this has required the craziest kind of investment. Do you want to be a writer? Well, here is Book Street. How much are you going to invest?

How much time? I’ve written 8 novels and at least 80 short stories. That’s taken years. How much money have I made with my writing? $10. That’s less than a dollar per year.

(Thankfully, I like baked beans.)

Well, if you count the cost paper, ink, and postage, I think that $10. is, well, not going to cover it.

But I’m finally, FINALLY!!, going to have my first novel, The Blue Jar published. I am happy. Happy about this fact. Make no mistake. The feeling that I’m dragging my battered carcass over a finish line is nothing compared to the feeling of knowing I have reached that finish line.

Although, it isn’t a finish line, is it?

I’ve got all those other manuscripts, and more I want to write. And I’ll write even if they move the finish line across an ocean on fire and on the other side of a mountain of knives.

But it’s a lot to ask my family. Hey, sacrifice all this money and time on my dream! But else does a person say? Don’t mind me. I’ll give up my dream because you’re here.

No. Not going to do that.

There are no guarantees. No one can predict how a book will sell. My book could sell thousands of copies or next to none. All this work, time, and money and I could still be left with an unread book. And several never-going to be read books.

What kind of investment is the writing life and why do we do it?

I think Wall Street is too risky, and yet I do this.

Hope springs eternal. And foolishly. Gloriously.

“The point is that writing, for lack of a better occupation, is good. Writing is right, writing works. Writing clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit. Writing, in all of its forms; writing for life, for money, for love, knowledge has marked the upward surge of mankind. And writing, you mark my words, will not only save my life, but that other malfunctioning part of me called my soul. Thank you very much.”*

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*Totally lifted from the Gordon Gekko speech in the movie Wall Street. (Though I’ve never actually seen the movie.)

Keep your mouth shut.

Do you argue with people online who you’ve never met? If you do, are those arguments mud-fests with names flying? If not, why not?

Most people I know who are on facebook have at least one I-shouldn’t-have-made-that-comment experience. If not that, then a I-can’t-believe-X-left that-comment experience. Haven’t you?

If you decide to pick a fight or take the bait for one, why? What triggers your I’ll-show-’em response?

Maybe you’ve never given in to the impulse–but haven’t you wanted to? Don’t some people deserve a good telling off?

I’m a diplomat by nature. Confrontation makes me tremble, literally. Nonetheless, every once in a while, I argue. Is that always wrong?

Just yesterday I ended up in a shouting match of sorts on Facebook on a friend’s thread. Part of me says that’s like going to a friend’s house and picking a fight with a fellow party guest. Rude. Unnecessary.

But another part of me–the part that won out in this case–thought that certain people will keep making sexist remarks if no one ever calls them on it. I decided to call him on it. I might not have said anything, but my fb friend had told him to “shut up” and he still made another comment. So. I told him he was being sexist.

He told me I had no sense of humor.

I told him that was the defense of a bully.

Now, maybe I don’t have a sense of humor. Maybe I’m the most unfunny woman on the planet. But I know that you-don’t-have-sense-of-humor is what people say when they make an unfunny, hurtful, or rude remark. Throw the blame on someone. I didn’t say anything wrong. You just don’t get it. As if the person’s unhappy response can be explained only in this way.

I explained clearly why I thought his comment was sexist. He said nothing about any of the points I made. Not one thing. He said he bet that I get called a shrew and a b*tch a lot.

I think it has been 20 years since anyone has called me a b*tch. No one has ever before called me a shrew. Not so as I heard anyway.

I told him that name-calling wasn’t much of a defense.

Someone else on the thread said that this guy wasn’t really that bad. He just said crazy things when he was bored.

Then I sent a message to my fb friend apologizing for the scene in her thread. She told me he’d been asked many times not to say certain rude things, but he always just replied that she didn’t have a sense of humor. She couldn’t unfriend him because he was the husband of a good friend. She understood how I felt, but I was wasting my time.

She deleted the post, which was probably for the best.

I’m sure I didn’t get this guy to change his mind. So why bother to say anything?

But why not call him out? Why not let him know that not everyone thinks he’s funny. If the other women in the post had stood up to him, maybe at the very least he’d have slunk away.

People have the right to say obnoxious things. Other people have the right to say, Hey, what you said was obnoxious.

The gist of his comment that irritated me had to do with women needing Oprah to tell them what to read while men could make decisions for themselves. And the original facebook post my friend made was about a mutual friend getting her novel chosen for Oprah’s book list. (That’s another post.)

So, do you argue or do you let things go?