Taking Stock: November 2016

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Christmas is coming--and so is the end of the semester. Things are starting to look up.

Dreading: Finals. They’re never as bad as I think they’ll be; the anxiety leading up to them is actually worse. This semester, though, I have a cumulative Chemistry final, so all bets are off. 

Switching: Majors. In October I transferred into English Education (from Nursing), and I’m already feeling a lot happier and less stressed. My goal’s always been to study for a job where I can help people, and English Education combines that with the subjects I’m best at and love most. I’m a little sad about giving up Nursing, but not sad enough to plow through Organic Chemistry. 

Reading: The Boston Jane series by Jennifer L. Holm (I’ve yet to read a book of hers that I don’t at least like); Chains by Laurie Halse Anderson, Issues 1-6 of The Dreamer by Lora Innes, The Trespasser by Tana French, Dune by Frank Herbert, and The Fall of the House of Walworth by Geoffrey O’Brien. 

Scrounging: For Thanksgiving leftovers. At this point we might have a little bit of turkey left, but everything else--three-berry cranberry sauce, loaded mashed potatoes, gravy, stuffing, pumpkin pie--is long gone. 

Missing: Sleep. 

Raging: Over the election. Sort of. At this point I’m more depressed than angry...but also still angry. We’re in for a rough couple of years, and right now I’m praying there’ll only be four. 

Thankful for: My family. Books. Writing. Netflix. College. 

Watching: An ungodly amount of TV, especially during break, plus four horror/true crime documentaries. Each one was creepy in its own way, but my two favorites were Killer Legends and Cropsey. They’re both centered around urban legends, available on Netflix, and very, very good. 

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. 

Happy Things

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Stealing a page from Olivia’s book today.

   1./ The first frost.

   2./ Gray days.

   3./ Buckets of extra-buttery movie theater popcorn.

   4./ Heading home after a day of classes.

   5./ “God Only Knows” by The Beach Boys  and “Forever Young" by Bob Dylan.

   6./ Picking up books at the library.

   7./ Rain. (Rainy days in October can be beautiful. Alternatively, they can be miserable—but the ones around here have mostly been beautiful.)

   8./ Friday night movies with friends.

   9./ Knitting. (Yep, still working on that scarf. Note to self: next time, use bigger needles.)
   10./ Fresh apple cider. 

   11./ Alphabear. (Thanks for the recommendation, Joni!)

In other news: this semester has been tough, and I’ve got to admit that I’m glad it’s winding down. I have a couple of ideas/newsworthy stuff for future posts—hopefully those will be going up soon. And I hope you all had a wonderful Halloween! 

Reading Slumps, Part 2

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Or, will Alex ever stop whining about her first world problems?*

 I’ve decided that they’re two types of stories—the ones that show you how you want to write, and the ones that show you how you don’t want to write. Not that anything I’ve read in the past couple of months has been outright terrible. Everything has been good, decent, or okay. And that’s the problem. I’m ready for something like The Monstrumologist or The Reapers Are the Angels. Something that makes me want to cry because I didn’t come up with the idea first.

Through all the good-to-okay books I’ve read since fall semester started, one thing that most of them had in common has stuck with me. None of them are unexpected. It’s not so much a question of plot or character development but some weird, impossible to define ingredient—that bit of whatever-it-is that makes a story seem new and unfamiliar, even if the plot’s actually been done ten billion times before. I don’t expect each book I read to have that, but when it’s missing, I notice.

In the meantime, I’ve been reading a bunch of short stories on Tor.com. Some of them are better than others, but they’re all just the right length for reading in between classes.

That Game We Played During the War by Carrie Vaughn

Modern day fantasy of two prisoners of war who meet to finish the game they started years before. I ended up loving the concept a lot more than the story itself (mostly because of the length—I’d love to see this as a book). Still well-written and emotional.

The Night Cyclist by Stephen Graham Jones

This one didn’t scare me. At all. Bicyclist vampires are still a cool idea, though.

Men Who Wish to Drown by Elizabeth Famma
 The best atmosphere out of these three, plus it’s about mermaids and whaling (two of my favorite things), so I can’t complain. The narrator’s voice is also wonderfully lemony:

 “As long as you have known me, I have been Grandfather Henry. But when I met my wife, Martha, I was still Resolved, a name that since our wedding day I have only signed to legal documents. No man was permitted to call me Resolved, because none could accuse me of any such virtue."                                                                                                                                A man after my own heart.

     

 What have you guys been reading lately?

*Not likely. 

5 Minute Reviews: The Magnificent Seven

 Let the record show that Vincent D’Onofrio as Jack Horne was almost my only reason for seeing this one, and he did not disappoint. Neither did anyone else--this movie was so much fun, guys. So. Much. Fun. I’m kind of surprised by how much I ended up loving it.

 First, though, let’s go over the mediocre stuff. The villain is named Bartholomew Bogue, so it’s a miracle anyone ever took him seriously, even if he is one step away from bathing in the blood of infants. The town he invades is called Rose Creek and looks a little...shinier than I’d expect an old West mining town to look. (Then again, I’m no expert on the old West.) And if the name Bartholomew Bogue didn’t tip you off, the story is not exactly morally complex.

 None of the mediocre stuff bothered me. The plot’s predictable, but watching it I never got the feeling that anyone thought they were reinventing the wheel. It’s the predictability that lets you relax and just enjoy the characters--like I said, my favorite is Jack Horne, but I also loved Faraday (who’s played by Chris Pratt), and they’re a couple side characters who I REALLY would have loved to see more of. In a nutshell: there’s not so good stuff mixed with very good stuff, and I think the very good stuff wins out in the end. I’ll be rewatching it once the DVD comes out.

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.

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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?