Must. Be. Meaningful.

I’ve started several blog posts that I haven’t finished. Percocet took over and I couldn’t think. And everything I write seems ridiculous. Trite. Meaningless.

I don’t have anything to add to the cancer narrative. I can’t add any original observations.

I’ve started reading two breast cancer memoirs. I finished the first chapter of one of them and now I can’t decide if I want to continue reading it. Her story is compelling and she’s honest, and I’m sure it is a worthwhile read (several people highly recommended the book), but I really can’t relate to the beginning of her story.

She went to a strip club when she found out she had breast cancer.

While many women have written about their experience, certain things about the disease are very personal. And how you feel about your body is an issue with this disease. How society feels about your body is part of this disease.

All of this makes certain aspects of the disease hard to talk about. Near impossible for me. Im happy to tell you about drains and medications and tissue expanders and chemo. That’s the easy stuff.

I keep dreaming about strange rooms, houses, apartments, filled with stuff, so much stuff that I keep realizing there is more stuff in them than I thought and someone or people come in and take the stuff away. In the dream, I can’t decide what to do, but I’m surprised at all the stuff and surprised that people want to take it away from me, and half the time I’m not dressed properly so I can’t do anything because I’m trying to find my clothes.

It’s something like that.

Make the New Year

The beginning of a new year seems to demand the saying of something profound. If I were really smart I could say something that would get pasted into a cool pic and memed around facebook. (Well, my first problem is that meme isn’t even a verb. Should be at this point though, don’t you think?)

Neil Gaiman Addresses the University of the Arts Class of 2012 from The University of the Arts (Phl) on Vimeo.

I assume (yes, that’s right, I dare to assume) that if you’re reading this blog at all then you’re also a writer or artist. So, what else is there to say but go make something? Go. We should all spend more time making things. I don’t really understand people who don’t want to make anything.

Make a picture, make a cake, make something with yarn and sticks, make someone happy.

So, the year begins and what will it bring? Any predictions? What will you make?

The Magic of Numbers

Numbers are magical. Well, they can be. Numbers go on forever. We need fractions and percentages and formulas. As much as you may hate math, numbers are everywhere. They allow the Internet to work. They make sure you take enough medicine to help you but not kill you.

Then there are those numbers people believe have magical powers. Birthdays and lucky numbers and dates for the apocalypse. Do you believe in numbers like these? Do you take note when the clock says 11:11? Did you feel something significant should’ve happened on 12-12-12?

A new year arrives and what do you do? Write a list of resolutions? Eat black-eyed peas? Kiss someone at midnight?

I’ll be 45 this year. My mother died when she was 45. It’s hard not to give that number weight, especially when I just scheduled an appointment with a surgeon to make sure I don’t actually have breast cancer. My mother didn’t die of cancer though. She had an aneurysm.

But if I give power to lucky numbers, it seems I’d have to give power to the number 45. I don’t want to do that. Would you?

Happy New Year. May the numbers align like stars and bring you luck.

And this and this and this…

an effort to draw a horse

A person is supposed to try new things, right? Like a year and a half ago I began speed quad skating. I thought it was a crazy thing to do, but now I love it.

In art, I’ve drawn a few things I didn’t think I could. Like a whale and a tiger. (Not together, mind you.) But I’m taking a break from art shows. I need something different to justify another show.

I want to try a comic. Or graphic novel. Whatever you prefer to call it. I have these two characters–Ink and Mirabelle–who are bunnies. Maybe I loved Watership Down too much as a kid. The story lines wouldn’t be about action, just their relationship. Maybe that’s boring? But Ink loves Mirabelle but Mirabelle being up on the moon more than she loves being on the earth with Ink. He tries so hard to persuade her to come back to him.

Ink and Mirabelle

And I want to write a series, but I’m not sure about that. Mostly I like the idea of being able to follow a character for more than one book. Creating a world and being able to go back there time and time again. The manuscripts I have written do take place in the same town (mostly), and some of the characters overlap. A main character in one story is a secondary character in another, and then has a tiny walk-on part in yet another. Maybe that can get too twee, but if I feel the character belongs there, I love doing that.

And I would love to try animation. Unfortunately, I don’t have the equipment for that. I’ve tried a few things, and they’ve been okay as far as experiments go, but they aren’t what I want to do really.

I’ve made a few handmade books. I definitely want to make more, but I can’t manage to sell them and they cost money to make. So they aren’t practical.

Wait. Is any of this practical?

I thought not.

Oh well. There’s too much to do, and I’ve got a book to edit for publication first.

What projects would you like to tackle? Anything you dream of doing?

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.

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.

Just Give Me My Poisoned Apple Already

I wouldn’t literally eat a poisoned apple, but metaphorically I think I already have.

The evil queen in disguise is my own psyche, and the apple is seeds of doubt fleshed out with insecurity, neurosis, and fear. Hard to believe anyone takes a bite of that.

How long has it been since an agent asked me to write a book jacket synopsis?

Feels like a hundred years. Unfortunately time hasn’t cleared my head or given me any good ideas. To explore another fairy tale, it’s more like the brambles around my thinking have grown thicker and stronger, and I’m going to need a helluva sword to cut through it all.

In this scenario, I’ve got to be my own prince. Good heavens, what part of my personality is that?

Throwing away an opportunity to get an agent because I can’t get myself to write that book jacket copy is about as dumb and passive as any Disney princess has ever been. I’ve written thousands upon thousands of words, and yet these few feel impossible. I start and start and start, and I get angrier and angrier with myself. Don’t I know better?

Mirror, mirror, on the wall,
who’s the best writer of them all?

The one who writes instead of worries.

What is my novel about?

A girl. And her best friend. One has been hurt and everyone knows. Well, almost everyone. The other has been hurt, but it’s a secret. …

That’s rubbish.

She accepts a ride from her best friend’s brother. She refuses to talk about what happened, but she’ll try anything to forget. …

No, no, no.

Two girls go into the woods at midnight for magic and revenge. …

Well, that’s silly.

Maybe this means my novel should be shut away in a drawer and forgotten.

Do I really want my dream to die because I can’t write one page of explaining my own novel? What is the worst thing that could happen if my writing fails? Well, whatever it is, worse things have happened. Life doesn’t depend on publication. I can keep writing anyway. That’s the main thing.

I look though at published novels and then I look at my own unpublished work… I’m reminded of a professor I had in grad school who said my work lacked a certain…coherence. Now, this was the head of the department who had also called me–in front of an entire class–an idiot, but this professor told me he liked my writing. He said it was original. I had unique ideas. That I looked at things from interesting angles. Honestly, I don’t know what he meant. But he also said that I seemed incapable of putting my work together in a sensible form. That my work suffered from incoherence.

Writing this synopsis/book jacket shouldn’t be this hard.

Now. Where’s my apple?

Surfacing

Do you have the secret to organization and balance?

I know about lists. I even make lists. Where do the lists go? I think they drown in the sea of nonsense that is my desk. Anyone can make a list. Look. I’ll make one right now.

(in insignificant order and incomplete)

finish organizing desk
do laundry
paint bathroom
grade papers
finish designing online writing course for work
call dad
write down ideas/plans for Plum Tree
catch up with blog reading
buy birthday gifts for Saturday’s party
finish illustrations for children’s book
start planning for October’s show
write that book jacket synopsis for the agent
make a better list

The problem with some of those things is that they never really leave the list. Laundry is forever. Sure, I could prioritize the list, but…well, that’s something else to put on the list.

prioritize the list

The list doesn’t appreciate how tired I am or that my son needs to eat.

Maybe I should put whinging on the list so I can mark something as done.

On the bright side, tomorrow I shall write the last story for story-a-day May. Whew. What will happen to my writing after that? No idea.

With my big move out of the way, so maybe I can now become the sane and organized person I’ve always wanted to be.

I’ll put that on the list.

be the way I ought to be

It’s on the list! That means I have to do it.

What about you? Do lists work for you? Or do they laugh at you behind your back?

Belief

Have you ever seen something–a garden gate perhaps, a picture hanging on a cafe wall, an odd, unexpected object in an odd and expected place–that made you stop and look again. That stirred your heart, maybe your gut, a place deep within?

I love connecting with a picture, a story, a random object.

Imagine if something I made did the same for someone else. Even if I never publish anything, connecting with someone through something I created would mean wonders.

When I was 16, I read this book, The Truth about Unicorns. I’ve blogged about it before. I loved that book so much, when I got to the end, I went straight back to the beginning and read it again. Why did I love it?

I don’t know.

But that book reached me. Maybe this is problem. I want to write a book like that book made me feel.

Or how Watership Down made me feel.

Or The Phantom Tollbooth.

Mama Day.

But how does one write a book like that?

I don’t know. But that’s why I write. Eight novels and a pile of short stories, and I haven’t written that story yet as far as I can tell. I believe in that story, and one day I’m going to write it.

What book do you aspire to?

The Writer’s Map

My writing career is not going anywhere in as much as I’ve no books published and agents aren’t even walking down my street, much less knocking down my door to invite me out.

But of all the books written in the world, only a certain number can hit the shelves. Probably what I need to do is write a better novel.

Dozens of writing books and articles read and I still seem incapable of managing it.

I feel like I’m standing in the street staring at my house and I’ve been asked to draw a map from my house to a far away city I’ve never been to. And I can’t get up in the air to get an ariel view. All I’ve got to go on are a bunch of descriptions of all the towns between here and there.

What? Is this another writer whining? It’s easier than writing.

If whining were energy, we could power the world til the end of time. I’m not sure that would be better for the environment though.

Map! I don’t need no stinking map!