2009: Trial By Fire

By AC

Dec

So, in many ways, 2009 really really sucked. In 2008, I felt I really worked hard, and at the end of it I was faced with a tough decision: tough it out in Scotland, despite knowing that my money was gone and if I didn’t get a job, the choice would be made anyway, or come home and take responsibility for myself, and have the Lap Band surgery to get my diabetes and weight on track and under control.

Obviously I chose the latter, but it sucked. It sucked that I felt like my Scotland experiment had failed miserably and I couldn’t make it work, and it sucked admitting to myself that I had a serious problem with both my weight and diabetes. It really sucked. And then I moved home, and freelance writing started to fail me; I’ve had serious money problems all year (hasn’t everyone?) and then I started working at a retail job that I don’t love. The road to the Lap Band took so much longer than I thought it would, but it did happen, and once it did, it’s only right now that I’ve been feeling good about it. It has sucked up to this point. It’s been frustrating, awkward, painful.

I’ve been lonely this year, and raw. I feel like I’ve been torn up, torn open, finally facing all of this awful weight stuff, and it’s been really tough. Writing about this stuff for the web has been difficult and cathartic; it’s tough to face down your issues and do it in front of a live audience.

But the past few weeks, it’s definitely felt like this has all been for something, and I hope, as I do every year, that next year is the one where I gain traction. I just want to move forward. I feel like this year, more so than 2008, I really understood what hard work meant, and how much more intense, frustrating and ultimately rewarding it is when it’s so deeply personal. I got my blood sugar (somewhat temporarily) under control, I have lost a total of 40 pounds (more like forty five by my home scale, but I’m trying to go with the doctor’s scale), and I did squeak a completed novel in under the wire.

So this last week or so has been a tremdendous week, and it does mean that I’ll be starting 2010 on a positive note, but this year has been toooough. Definitely the year of trial by fire. How was your year?

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Not So Abysmal

By AC

Dec

St Andrews Okay, so I read this post about starting new novels and I’m kind of shocked. I am weirder than I realized, I guess. This guy, an agent/writer, dreads starting a new novel. Or if it’s not quite dread, it’s certainly daunting trepidation.

So NOT how I feel about starting a new book. Maybe it’s because I have the luxury of writing being a total comfort and adventure rather than a job or a chore, but starting a new novel is the height of excitement for me. I have a sense of trepidation when the writing ends and I know the editing has to begin, but even that isn’t that scary. I suppose once everything is really on the line and I’m being judged by readers, editors, and people giving me money, that might change, but I sure as hell hope it doesn’t.

I’ll be honest, the most exciting thing in my life is that feeling of starting a new story and being intoxicated by it, following the thread where it leads and feeling it beneath my hands–because they feel different. Robin Hood is sliding through my fingers like silk or water, Tarian ran like a lump of clay on a spinning wheel, and Gabryela kind of felt like building the disney castle out of legos. Each novel teaches me more about writing, about myself, about life and I’m obsessed. It’s the best feeling in the whole world, and I love it.

So after a long, rough day, I’m going to do exactly that–write til I pass out.

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Thoughts on Trilogies

By AC

Dec

I’ll admit, I started to mentally write this post when I was partway through CITY OF GLASS, Cassandra Clare’s third installment of the Mortal Instruments series. After I finished the book, my thoughts kind of changed, but I’ll go through it all anyway.

There seem to be three kinds of trilogies. One, where all three books are virtually standalone, and have a building background connection without being repetitive or stalled. Despite that it is a longer series, Harry Potter is a great example. Each book has it’s own problems and issues, and not every book has a major showdown with Voldemort, because there are other things to deal with.

The second kind is the try, try, succeed model. These trilogies are more common and often more disappointing, because they set up all the problems in the first novel, and the characters simply don’t succeed. They try again in the second (which tends to be very repetitive), and succeed in the third. This makes the second novel virtually a throwaway, the first exciting, and the third fantastic, but I hate the idea of a second novel that really serves no purpose other than to fill space and delay gratification.

The Mortal Instruments series was definitely the latter; the second novel was totally missable, mostly because the real central conflict between the characters was that at the end of the first book, *SPOILER*, was that the leads thought they were brother and sister, and not only did I not believe it AT ALL, but the characters didn’t even seem to believe it. It made me feel like flipping through pages until they realized they weren’t.

Really, I think that writers should make a strong effort to make every book virtually stand alone, with an extra sense of belonging to read the whole series. It seems like sloppy writing, and I hope I never find myself guilty of it.

However, both to Clare’s credit and to totally negate my previous statement, damn, was that finale worth it. CITY OF GLASS was a tremendous end to the series and a hell of a book, and it made the lack of believable conflict totally worth it.

So really, I don’t know what I think. Maybe it’s just that yes, storytelling is separate from WRITING and can often trump it, especially because I don’t really like the books where writing trumps storytelling (think literary fiction). In a trilogy, you can blunder and bluster your way through the first two books (not that I really think Clare did that, the brother/sister thing was my only complaint) and still rock all three if you have a compelling story. That’s how Stephanie Meyer got through.

Thoughts?

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Feeling Disheartened

By AC

Dec

You know, something my friends and I discuss a lot is how to feel better when you’re just not feeling good. Emotionally, not like with the flu or something. I’m a big fan of riding it out–you’re meant to feel low when you feel low, it’s instinctual and there’s probably something important that you need to gather from the feeling. However, this contrasts sharply with positive thinking, and one usually doesn’t allow for the other. So whether or not I’m flipping my position, I need a little bucking up today.

So what do I do? Recite poetry. I’m an English major, give me a break.

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

That’s a good one. So’s this:

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or, being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or, being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise;

If you can dream – and not make dreams your master;
If you can think – and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with triumph and disaster
And treat those two imposters just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to broken,
And stoop and build ‘em up with wornout tools;

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: “Hold on”;

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings – nor lose the common touch;
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run -
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And – which is more – you’ll be a Man my son!

Okay, it’s no secret, I love me some Kipling. Sigh. Just trying to keep those words in my head, and trying to believe that this will get better. One day, this will get better.

Right?

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Positive Attitude Part Two!

By AC

Dec

Okay, so in the spirit of keeping my options open and my eye on the prize, I have an interview tomorrow that I really hope will work out, because it’s a job that, at least at the onset, I could see myself in for a long time. So now I’m just trying to tap into that same positivity I had when I got this retail job.

I do think this job could be a lot better for me, so let’s just pray I’ll be as good for them and THEY’LL hire me on the spot!

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Out of the Night that Covers Me

By AC

Dec

You know, I first heard Invictus when a school administrator in my brother’s school recited it to his class at his 8th grade graduation. I was in sixth grade at the time, and I didn’t know it then, but my parents were about to get divorced and everything was about to change.

Those words rang in my ears and I repeated them over and over until they were both meaningless and imbued with every possible meaning in my head. I taped the poem to my desk (along with a few choice others). And I truly took it to heart, but at the time, I didn’t know. I didn’t know. You don’t feel Invictus unless you’ve felt the deck stacked against you, the floor tilt out from beneath you, the world change around you. You feel the pridefulness of “I am the master of my fate” but not its resolution, not its humility, not its desperation. You can know what the words mean–how charged with punishments the scroll–but they are meaningless until you look at the tally of your life and feel deserving of punishment.

It would be a severe case of hubris to say I understand the poem now, but I understand it more than I did then. I know the words by heart–by heart–and they find a new meaning with me, but I know it’s not the only one. I know that later in my life, I’ll come to understand the poem in a more tragic and inspiring way, lumping together all the sadnesses that are yet to come and seeing the triumph in them anyway.

However, I also know that possibly the most important phrase of the whole poem, which the movie certainly appreciated, is I thank whatever Gods may be for my unconquerable soul. There’s a sense of destiny in the poem and the movie that I always believed in; I felt that when I was in sixth grade and I still feel it. I felt it more than I expected to, and I realized how much belief I have inside me that I haven’t been giving myself credit for.

Worry has been pushing belief out of my heart, but it’s not in me to worry so much. I know life will provide for me, even if it’s in ways I don’t anticipate or initially can’t appreciate. My life is going exactly where it’s meant to be going, and one way or another, I’ll make my way as a published writer. Despite the bludgeonings of chance. Because I refuse to have a soul that’s conquered.

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll.
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.

-William Ernest Henley

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The Far Off Spire

By AC

Dec

Scotland So I’m stuck between being monumentally unsettled and yet still not settling. Sounds like fun, right? Yeah. Basically I’ve only barely started this new job, thinking that I can freelance and work at this retail store, but honestly, it’s a lot. I’m on my feet all day at the store, and then to come home and do other work BEFORE going to work on my own stuff? It feels like working these piecemeal jobs that I can’t have the time to write.

I also feel like I can’t just do freelance or just do retail; neither pays enough. Not making enough money is obviously a stress all it’s own, but the real threat I care about is the threat to my writing. Which is why, barely into a new job, I think I may be looking for another one already.

I just feel like for this whole year, nothing has been enough. Yes, I know it’s a recession and crazy overpaid jobs are hard to come by, and yes, this sounds ridiculously egotistical, but I am a smart, well educated woman, why the hell can’t I figure this out, or find a job that can do everything I need it to??

In so many ways, 2009 is closing out the same as it started: staring after that far off spire of success and financial comfort, and feeling like I’m not making any progress reaching for it.

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Jinxes?

By AC

Dec

So something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately is “jinxing it”. Fall is always a potential-laden time for me; I send out applications, I tend to have better luck and a greater sense of excitement, and this fall is no different. I’ve been sending out applications for fellowships that I don’t want to talk to anyone about and I’ve been getting some positive responses from agents, but I’m not mentioning it to anyone (except, you know, on the blog…out on the web….).

So whats up with that? I have a few theories:

1. Older, Wiser, More Hesitant?

I look back, and a year ago I was getting the first serious interest from agents on Tarian, and I was over the moon, thinking it was going to be so fast and so easy and then it just dissolved (actually that one dissolved in the worst possible way, with the agent telling me over and over how excited he was about the novel, and then he said that he’d get in touch with me after the weekend, and the day before Christmas Eve he told me he was passing). And since then, I’ve worked with an agent on revisions, and she passed, and other agents have been almost there and passed. It’s gutwrenching to know how close you can get before they pass. It’s the worst part. So yes, I’m hesitant to put my emotion into it.

2. There’s a recession.

Which shouldn’t matter to luck, but it does, because like it or not, in a very visceral way we’ve all been reminded how things really might not work out. Luck seems to be turning sour a lot faster these days. Besides which, everyone else has tough luck, so a) it’s tough to believe you’ll have better luck, or b) that you should even be talking about it because it’s got an element of cruelty to it.

3. Superstition is back with a vengeance.

I don’t know whether its the cultural prevalence of supernatural elements being all over the place (vampires, werewolves) but I knock on wood, I beware black cats, I look for heads up pennies. And part of me remembers that whole, “don’t talk about it or it won’t come true” superstition.

So, if anyone has either magical charms to counteract jinxes, or words of wisdom to remind me how silly superstitions can be, I’d love to hear either.

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