Cool Stuff

1.) Finals are over.



2.) A blog post I wrote, “6 Amazing Antiheroines” is up at The Fangirl Initiative. TFI is a site full of articles about tons of different fandoms, and I’m so happy that I got a chance to contribute. You can find out more about TFI here and read my post here.

3.) This cover for Wide Sargasso Sea:




I’m a little more than halfway through and the language is just as gorgeous. The story ain’t bad, either, even though it promises to be depressing.

4.) I discovered this podcast thanks to Tess. Lore is a cool mashup of history, folklore, and true crime. My favorite episodes so far have been “All the Lovely Ladies” and “On the Farm”.

I promise I’ll put together an actual post before the end of winter break. Maybe. For now I’m enjoying not feeling guilty about not doing homework and looking forward to Christmas.

Why I Haven't Been Writing

 I’m not the kind of person who gets lightbulb moments. Especially not when it comes to writing. Maybe I was on the brink of a revelation at some point—the secret to having faith in my own ideas, or writing the perfect opening paragraph, or finishing every draft I start (and better yet—turning those first drafts into actual readable stories). If I ever was, though, I can say with absolute certainty that I was too stressed/distracted/lazy to notice it. But that’s okay. Because I’m finally beginning to understand why my writing process sucks so much.

 Sort of. Maybe. And I still can’t type they next sentence out without agonizing over how flaky it sounds, but here goes: My writing process has become all about fear. And, okay, fear is something I’ve come to expect, but lately things have been getting out of control.

When I have no ideas, I’m worrying about finding ideas. Once I get ideas, I’m worrying about whether they’re good ideas. While I'm trying to turn those ideas into stories, I worry about the sound of the sentences and the structure of the opening paragraph (and the paragraph after that and the paragraph after that). I worry about word counts. I worry about editing. I worry about every single time I’ve failed before and all the ways I could fail this time. I worry about what I should be writing. I worry about what I shouldn’t be writing. And at some point I finally realized that all I was really worrying about was the finished product. I’d stopped caring about the process of actually writing.

 The thing is, whether the finished story is any good or not won’t matter if I was absolutely miserable the entire time I was creating it. It’s not that I shouldn’t work to make my stories as well-written as I can, but whether other people see them as quality literature or not isn’t up to me. And instead of beating myself up for all the stories that never quite took off, I should be glad that I somehow worked up the courage to try writing them at all.

Anyway.

 I’m not sure how I’ll fix this. For now I’m trying to ease back into writing regularly (I haven’t had much time for that this semester) and trying to enjoy just putting words on the page. Thinking in terms of process instead of product pretty much goes against my entire nature, and I don’t think I’ll ever master it. At least I’m finally trying. I want to quit seeing writing as something I have to do and start seeing it as something I have the privilege of doing. I want to write joyfully. Otherwise, what’s the point?

 (Also, I just looked back over some old posts and saw that I've complained about my fear of failure in at least every other post on writing I've ever published. I didn't plan on this becoming a running theme on my blog, but here we are.)

Picture via Pinterest. 

Catching Up

 Hey! It’s been a while.

Thanks to my fall semester classes, anything approaching a regular blogging schedule is off the table, but since I posted exactly once in August, a roundup is in order. Here are some of the things I’ve watched/read/done since then.

by crqsf

Pacific Rim
Saw the trailers when it first came out, made a “watch this one day” mental note to myself, finally sat down and watched it three weeks ago. I loved it. LOVED it. The jaegers, the kaiju, the hand-wavy science, the fact that everyone’s essentially one big, dysfunctional family...objectively, I get that it’s not for everyone, but I also don’t think it’s possible to hate a movie where the guy with the least ridiculous name is called Raleigh.

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Fringe
 My sister checked this out after hearing that John Noble (aka Denethor) played one of the main characters. We’re about a quarter of the way through season 1. As far as the plot goes, I’m not hooked, but I adore the relationship between Walter and Peter Bishop. They flip the traditional father-son dynamic--Peter’s forced to become the legal guardian of his not-all-there, mad scientist dad--in a way that’s both very sad and very funny.
Also watched: Pan’s Labyrinth, Horrible Bosses, The Witch, It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia (season 1).

The Wicked Boy

This book is nonfiction and true crime (one of my biggest guilty pleasures). It centers around the case of a 13-year-old boy living in Victorian (1890s-ish?) London, who admitted to stabbing his mother to death. It’s hard to describe why I enjoy books like this without feeling sleazy, but it basically boils down to wanting to know the motivation. It’s like reading a mystery--the main point, at least for me, isn’t figuring out who did it, but why they did it. Not that they’re many good reasons for killing your mother…

Writing
Writing has been sucking-pudding-through-a-straw slow, and I honestly don’t mind. Aside from learning how to fit it in without slacking on schoolwork, I’ve been thinking about which direction I want my next stories to take. I’ll never stop loving fantasy, but lately I haven’t been inspired to write many fantasy stories of my own. Most of my new ideas are in a more contemporary/realistic fiction vein, and I’m excited to start working on something again but also terrified that I won’t be able to pull it off. Hopefully I’ll be blogging more about this soon.

How was August, and how has September treated you so far?

Publication News: "Salty Tea and the Sea"

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My selkie-inspired story, Salty Tea and the Sea, is out today. It’s a short (just under 2,000 words) piece about families reuniting, fairy tales, and, of course, tea. I’ve wanted to write a selkie story for ages, and this one couldn’t have been published in a nicer magazine. Kith Issue 03 is full of other food-themed fantasy stories, so do go check it out if you’re interested!

There’s a sense of loss, loneliness, and mystery to selkie folklore that’s always inspired me, and I hope it comes across in my own story. In hindsight, another big inspiration was Jane Yolen’s poem The Selchie’s Children’s Plaint, especially these lines: But Mama goes first, leaving us/ with only a box empty of promises/ and a cold kitchen.

You can find my story here.

Writing Resolutions 7.4.16

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* Write the stories you want to tell, not just the stories you want to read.

* Work hard and make your stories the best they can be.

* Know when to stick with it.

* Know when to quit.

* Giving up isn't always a bad thing, if you've done your best.

* Be crazy.

* Experiment.

* Have fun.

* Worldbuild.

* Pay attention to atmosphere—it's really important if you want to enjoy what you're writing.

* Check the logic of it.

* Nothing is wrong with middle grade.

* Nothing is wrong with YA.

* Nothing is wrong with any other age category/genre/tense/type of story. Do what you want.

* Your routine doesn't have to be like anyone else's.

* Productivity just for productivity's sake isn't worth it.

* WRITING IS NOT THE MOST IMPORTANT THING YOU WILL EVER DO.

I’m posting these here mostly so I won’t forget them. I might elaborate on a couple later, especially resolution #1, which I’ve been thinking about A LOT lately. Writing has been tough lately, but getting better.

Problems With Plotting

So, I’ve been plodding semi-steadily through the fourth draft of my mermaids & Neverland short story, and trying to get some other projects off the ground. It’s been slow going, guys. Partly because I’m feeling drained and a little discouraged, partly because summer isn’t usually a productive time for me, and partly because I can’t plot to save my life.

My idea-getting always begins with relationships. Not even specific characters, but a specific type of dynamic I’d like to explore. If I’m lucky, there’s enough to this relationship to suggest the kind of characters who’d be involved in it. For my Twelve Dancing Princesses retelling, I knew I wanted to explore the relationship between the sisters, plus the eldest princess’ interactions with the soldier. I was also lucky enough to have the basic plot already laid out for me. Most times, I don’t, and this is where things get tough.

I can’t plot, at least not as well as I’d like to, and never easily. For some reason, getting characters from point A to point B is a struggle for me. They’re so many times when I’ve written a decent opening scene before realizing that I have no clue where the story should go next. I’ve tried outlining, flash cards, and freewriting, but so far I haven’t found the magic bullet that will turn me into a plotting whiz. Mostly I just have to muddle through and hope I make it to the end.

Maybe I’m more of a character writer, but 100+ pages of nothing but pointless conversations and introspection do not a good story make. I love tightly plotted books, and I’d love to learn how to improve my plotting “skills”. So my question today is, how do you guys plot? Whether you outline or don’t, whether your stories are plot- or character-focused, I’d love to hear how you navigate from point A to point B.

Picture Credit: X

Writing Updates 6.22.16

So far, this week has been...interesting. Writing-wise, anyway.

Ghostly WV Story: On hold at the moment. I got about 60 pages in before realizing that the plot makes no sense and I can’t push forward because there’s no logical next point to push forward to. I love it to pieces, but for now I’m letting it stew because, honestly, if I try to continue now I’ll probably end up burning it.

Mermaids & Neverland Short Story: Going well. The third draft’s finished and I’m getting ready for the fourth. At this point I’m SO TIRED and just want to finish things up, which means I’ve got at least four more drafts to go. I’m never satisfied with my own writing style, and plots are tricky for me, but I really hope this one comes together in the end.

Other Short Story: Midway through a first draft. This one has a lot to do with memory and family (at least I hope it does). Also, superheros. Hopefully I’ll be able to talk about it a little more once the first draft’s done.

Other Ideas: I have a backlog of ideas right now, but they’re not necessarily all ones I want to write about. A couple MG contemporaries, something to do with 1920s speakeasy werewolves, something to do with flying ships (because Treasure Planet), more contemporaries….I need a break from dark and broody stories. I’m not in the mood for whimsy, exactly, but something lighter and fun.

What have you been working on this week?

  Picture Credit: X

Zombies Bore Me

Near the beginning of Dark Places Libby Day, one of the most likeably unlikeable characters ever, thinks, “Coffee goes great with sudden death,”.  For me it’s “Tea goes great with writing,” because sometimes writing does feel like sudden death. Like when the story you’ve worked on for days suddenly loses all its zest for life and goes belly-up before your very eyes. It’s kind of traumatic.

Well, really, it’s nowhere near as traumatic as sudden death. But exaggerated analogies aside, this just happened to a short story I was working on. One day I was rolling right along, getting out a not-great-but-fairly-passable first draft, and the next I sat down to write and realized that the spark was gone. The story was dead as a doornail, and so was my motivation to finish it.

Since I’m also working on a book-length project, plus another short story (plus, I suddenly have more ideas than I know what to do with), I’m not as upset about this as I usually am. I’m just curious about why this story failed. How come it fell apart so quickly? After thinking about it, I realized it was because this short story was about zombies. And zombies bore me.

I love reading other books about zombies. I LOVE The Walking Dead (both the show and the comics I’ve read). Zombies can be really interesting when other people write about them. But when it comes down to it, they’re just shuffling corpses. On their own, they’re neither especially scary or especially interesting. To make a zombie story work, you need a bit of a unique angle on the mythology, and a compelling story with interesting characters. I had neither.

I was writing your garden-variety apocalypse story, and my zombies were boring. It was nothing I hadn’t read or seen before--slow-moving, unending appetite for human flesh, yada, yada, yada. Maybe it would have worked if my character were better, but on their own they didn't interest me, either. In one way, it’s sort of sad, but in another I feel so liberated. I’ve been trying to write a zombie story for AGES, and now I’ve finally realized that I don’t have to.

So there’s really not much point to this post, other than me realizing they’re certain things I don’t (at least at the moment) have enough of a unique spin on to write about. Also, I don’t have to have a unique spin on everything. Sometimes it’s just enough to enjoy other people’s work.

Is there a certain mythological creature/type of story that you’ve tried to write but just can’t? (Also, if you’re looking for some good zombie books, The Reapers Are the Angels by Alden Bell and The Girl With All the Gifts by M.R. Carey are both fantastic.)

Picture credit: X

Writing Updates + Lemonade Recipe

So far, May has been pretty uneventful but productive, which makes me happy. I’m deep in the midst of first-drafting--in some ways my favorite part of writing and in other ways my least favorite, since every story is so MESSY and convoluted. But things are moving along steadily(ish) for the first time in ages, so I can’t complain too much.

At the moment I’m working on two stories, one short and one (hopefully) book-length. Book-Length Story is about ghosts, psychopomps, and the West Virginia Panhandle, and is so far a complete mess but one I’m really enjoying working on. There’s something a bit magical about writing two characters who have chemistry--not romantic chemistry, but the ability to hold interesting conversations and work off each other. I’m always a little surprised when that happens; it’s not something you can force.

Short Story is about mermaids, Peter Pan, and Neverland. Mostly mermaids. My twin sister and I used to get into arguments about the best spots in Neverland. I always wanted to live in the Mermaids’ Lagoon, and she always wanted to live with the Indians. The seed of this story has been in my head for a very long time, and I was actually trying to write something else when it more or less forced its way onto the page. Like Book-Length Story, it needs work, but for now I’m having a ton of fun watching the first draft come together.

Okay, on to the recipe!

This week, one of my other sisters (I have three) taught me how to make lemonade out of fresh-squeezed lemons. This recipe only makes one serving, but it’s easy to double and delicious. Plus there’s nothing more summery than lemonade.

Ingredients:

2 tbsp sugar

2 tbsp water

1 lemon

Boil the water and sugar to make a simple syrup. Squeeze the juice of one lemon into a tall glass already filled with ice. Pour in the simple syrup, fill the glass with cold water, and mix well.

And those are the most interesting things I’ve done this month. How have your summers been going?

Watercolor garland from Angie Makes.  
Picture credit: X 

On Writing Slowly

To begin: I absolutely am not trying to throw shade at anyone who writes fast. Everyone’s process is different, and I wish I could write a book in a month or turn out perfectly polished short stories regularly. I wish I could, but the more I write the more I realize that I never will be able to, and that’s okay.

I’ve never been an especially fast writer. When I first started writing “seriously” (I was around twelve, and everything I wrote was a poorly-disguised rip-off of something else.) I set myself a goal--something like 2-3 pages a day. That’s more or less the limit I stick to now, though some days I can’t even make that. (My stories are still rip-offs, by the way. Just better-disguised ones. :))

Keeping a strict schedule is also a sticking point for me. I used to write every day, but not anymore. Most days, yes. Every day, no. Sometimes it just comes down to laziness, but other times I do need space to mull over the plot a little. I’m a pantser, and also super disorganized, so if I don’t keep reminding myself to hit the main points, nothing will happen plot-wise and I’ll be left wondering why I ever decided to write this stupid story in the first place.

Basically, I’m not one of those people who can write a novel in a month, or even two months, without it being a hopeless mess. Which is the point, but half the fun of writing is, at least for me, taking the time to get to know the characters, sink into the setting, and enjoy the story. I can’t do that when I’m worrying about word or page counts.

I used to feel guilty about writing slowly, or about the days where I wasn’t able to write at all. To be honest, I still do. Every time NaNoWriMo rolls around I wonder if maybe this is the year I’ll give it a try. And maybe one year I will.  But for now, I’m trying to be happy with the process I have.

Everyone has a different process. Everyone has their own way of doing things, and no one way is objectively better than the others. If you write fast and love it, keep writing fast. If writing slowly works for you, stick with that. Don’t be afraid to experiment, but know your strengths. And enjoy what you have now. At the end of the day, that’s all that really matters.

Do you write quickly or slowly? What does your process look like?

Picture Credit: X

After the End

Or, finals are over and I have no idea what to do with myself. This is the first weekend in months that I don’t have homework I could/should be doing. It’s a bizarre feeling. I’ve been trying to catch up on reading, which helps--I just finished Secrets of the Dragon Tomb by Patrick Samphire. It’s a middle-grade Regency steampunk set on Mars, and exactly as much fun as it sounds. Very Diana Wynne Jones-esque, which is one of the highest compliments I can give to a book.

During summer, I always promise myself that I’ll read a bunch of books and write a bunch of stories before deciding that I’d much rather binge watch Supernatural for three months straight. So, yeah, I’m not expecting to be super-productive this time around, but I am hoping to keep up with writing and blogging. Maybe cook something. This morning I had avocado on toast, which is probably the closest I’ve come to cooking anything all semester. Still, it was delicious.

I’ve also resolved to not start a project unless it’s something I honestly want to write. I have a habit of starting projects more out of a compulsion to just write something than because I love (or even like) the idea itself. Sometimes it works, but mostly I end up with a bunch of soulless, half-finished drafts. Obviously I don’t have to be wildly in love with an idea from the get-go, but there needs to be a spark of something--a sentence, a mood, a character--for me to work with.

And, yep, still working on the scarf. IT WILL NEVER BE DONE.

All pictures belong to their original owners.

Publication News: "A Forest of Bones"

 

Back in November, I blogged about my short story Twelve Dancing Princesses retelling, “A Forest of Bones”. Since then I’ve rewritten it at least four times, and went from liking it to loving it to hating it and back to liking it again. This story put me through the wringer, and I’m so happy to be able to say that it’s finally been published!

Quail Bell Magazine publishes both “real” and “unreal” stories. Some seriously talented writers have been featured on their website, so be sure to check it out.

I’ve already talked a bit about the inspirations behind “A Forest of Bones”--visually, it was very much inspired by Kay Nielsen’s illustrations and the whole baroque/rococo-type look. Starting out, I didn’t have a specific image or sentence in mind, just a feel--I wanted something pale, pretty, flowery, but also dark and spindly. The story really took off when I came up with the last sentence and the naming scheme. Each princess is named after a specific virtue, so you begin with Mild and end with Noble. I knew that Mild would be the main character, and I knew that neither she nor her love interest, the soldier, would be especially young or beautiful.

Here is the music I listened to while editing, and here is the Pinterest board. You can read the full story here.

On Being Productive

  

Before we get started, let me just say this: “productivity” isn’t my natural state of being. My natural state of being would probably involve me in my bedroom at 10:00 am with the shades pulled down, binge watching Netflix and stuffing my face. Or rereading my favorite books and moping because I’ll never be as good a writer as S.E. Hinton (DUH). Loving other people’s stories is a whole lot easier than writing your own.

Because, honestly, writing can get tedious. No matter how much I love doing it, it’s hard to stare at the computer for an hour and come away with (if I’m lucky) one or two pages. Then get up at next day and do it all over again. Rinse, wash, repeat.  I’m not a finish-a-book-in-a-month type of writer, and I don’t think I ever will be.

My solution for that is working on more than one project. Focusing on just one story at a time has never ended well for me; I get perfectionistic and claustrophobic and just want to backspace all the way to page one. Spreading myself around stops me from obsessing too long over any one story.

I also play certain songs over and over again until they fade into a nice background track--right now I’m listening to “Roses” by The Chainsmokers. “Stuck in a Moment You Can’t Get Out Of” by U2 and (weirdly) “Life on Mars” by David Bowie are two of my favorite motivational songs. Plus there’s always “Try” by P!nk. I’m a visual thinker, which means half the time I’ll be tearing my hair out because I know exactly how everyone in a scene should look and move, but it’s not playing out right on paper. Having a soundtracks helps.

 So does journaling. Since college my entries have been few and far between, but I do try to keep track of what I’m writing (or why I’m not writing). Reading books about writers inspires me--I just finished The Art of Neil Gaiman, which is a beautiful book (fair warning: it includes a bunch of examples of his earlier work, some of which is pretty disturbing). I can’t see an empty notebook without wanting to fill it up with something.

And when all of that fails, I write. Right now I’m working on three different projects--a short story I need to polish, another one I’m drafting, and the very start of what I hope will be a much longer project. They all have bits of things that I love in them--ghosts and magic and horror and family--and so far they’ve all been flowing, which is wonderful. I’m not bouncing-of-the-walls giddy with joy, but I am satisfied, and that’s the most wonderful feeling.

So I guess what I’m trying to say is that the right ideas will stick with you, and they’re worth slogging through on the hard days. You can be unsentimental with them and just write, because they’re the ones that you need to finish, no matter what.

How do you guys stay productive?

Picture credit: X

On Failure (and Writing Anyway)

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     They’re days and then they are days--days when I feel like I’ll never write again, never get another good idea, never turn said good idea into a decent story. Days when I look back at the piles of crappy first drafts and false starts and wonder if I’ve really gotten any better. Days when I see that I’ve whined about it all so many times before and nothing changed and, yep, my blog’s going completely to pot…

And after those days I almost always remember that the problem isn’t with my ideas, or even with my writing ability (or lack thereof). The problem is that I’m scared--terrified--of failure. Ten seconds after getting a good idea I’m counting all the possible ways I could screw it up.

    I’ve never been much of a perfectionist with anything but my writing. And I’m not scared of criticism as much as I’m scared of my own abilities to fix the problems in my writing. I want my stories to be the best they can be--what happens when I can’t make them any better?

    The thing is, there will be projects I can’t fix. I’ve written duds before and I’ll write them again.

Some part of my brain keeps convincing me that if I hold off for just a little bit longer, all my stories will come out perfect. But they’ll never be perfect. Anyway, it’s the terrible and frustrating false starts that make the good stories worth writing. You can usually tell if a story’s any good if you’ve written mountains of crap before it.

   
   So what I have to keep telling myself, because I never remember it for very long, is that it’s okay to fail and goof up and make mistakes. It’s okay to share imperfect work. And it’s much, much better to risk writing junk than to write nothing at all. I used to look at other people (writers and artists) and wonder how they produced so much good work so consistently. Now I don’t think it’s necessarily because they’re better than me (they are, but that’s not the point…) but because they’re willing to take their new ideas and try them out, even though odds are some of them will end up at the bottom of a wastepaper basket.

     But not all of them.  

  
    I’m going to write again. I’m tired of stressing because I’ll never be as good as I want to be, and I’m tired of wasting good ideas because I’m afraid they won’t work. I want to write what I love whether it ends up being any good or not. At least I’ll be getting something down on paper, and at least I’ll have fun doing it.

Finding Inspiration in Winter

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  Finding inspiration to write (or just to be happy and get through the day) can be tough for me no matter the season. But these past couple weeks, thanks to slush, gloomy days, and piles of college homework, it’s been about as easy as sucking jell-o through a straw. Spring feels incredibly faraway, so I decided I’d better find some ways to cheer myself up in the meantime.

1. Brew some tea

They’re a couple of things you can do to enjoy a gloomy day, and slurping down a mug of hot tea always works for me. Drink it while journaling or staring out the window if you want to feel especially artistic/cozy. My favorite flavors are Jasmine, Lemon Zinger, and Maple Sugar.

2. Read good books

One of my resolutions for this year is not to finish books I don’t like. I’m one of those people who feels really guilty if I don’t finish a book I started, but I just don’t have the time to waste on books that don’t grab me. Obviously, this doesn’t apply to required reading. :) Some of my favorites this month have been A Year Down Yonder by Richard Peck and After Iris by Natasha Farrant.    

3. Watch good movies/TV shows

When snow cancelled college for almost a week, my sister and I spent our evenings rewatching Doc Martin. Both books and movies help when I’m feeling drained or depressed.

4. Try something new

I’m not a fantastic artist (or even an okay one) but I do like to doodle and play with markers, pens, and my little sister’s watercolors. I’ve also tried tea-stain art and collage. It’s wonderful to play around without worrying about impressing anyone.

5. Just write

A couple days ago I sat down and spit out a short, four-page story about the Nativity from the point of view of the innkeeper’s daughter. I may never edit it (in the first draft, at least, I didn’t feel very emotionally connected to the characters) but it’s encouraging to finish something.

6. Go places

Last weekend I took a bus down to DC to visit The Museum of the American Indian. It was my first time making the trip alone, so I spent way too much time worrying about catching the bus back, but I also walked through some beautiful exhibits. My favorite was Kay WalkingStick: An American Artist. I loved seeing how her style evolved over the years, and how her heritage influenced her art. Plus, I got to see her sketchbooks. Obviously I can’t visit DC every day, but taking a walk or going to the library can be just as inspiring.

How are you guys coping this winter?

Updates: January 2016

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I just finished Because of Mr. Terupt and it might be one of the most adorable middle-grade books ever.

We’ve been snowed in for most of the week and I’m dying to get to the library.

Finally found the perfect hot chocolate recipe!

Daredevil’s second season come out in March and I can’t wait.

I bought a new journal. This is the painting that’s on the cover:

The Reader by Jean-Honore Fragonard

Edited a short story and did some journaling; besides that I haven’t managed to get much writing done (yet).

As much as I love snow (looking at it, not shoveling it) I’m starting to miss spring.

After I post this I’m planning on reading, then (hopefully) writing.

Plans for February:

Stay on top of studying.

Finish Gwinna by Barbara Helen Berger (it’s an old favorite) and Minding Frankie by Maeve Binchy (it’s adorable).

Knit more of my never-ending scarf.

Write more.