Where On Earth Have I Been?

First of all, before I do anything else:

HAPPY 2013!!!

Now I know what you’re thinking: “Thanks, Ari! But, uh…we’ve reached the Ides of January and you’re just now wishing us a happy new year?”

The answer to that question is a bit complicated, and I shan’t endeavor to explain it all. But the basic story can be broken down into three interconnected parts:

1. I’ve been at home on break. And what have I been doing, if not blogging? A brief list, in no particular order:

• spending time with friends and family
• holiday celebrations
• holiday cooking (just cooking in general, really–I miss having a kitchen when I’m at school)
• taking walks in the great outdoors (THE GREAT OUTDOORS ARE GREAT YOU GUYS)
• drinking tea
• reading books
• writing/editing

And in order to do these things, I made a concerted effort to spend less time on the internet than I usually do. The success of this endeavor is questionable, but:

2. I’ve been writing and editing. Questionable degree of success here too. For several weeks (basically as soon as the holidays were over) I tried to dive back into editing UNFAMILIAR SPELLINGS. I cut some stuff, rewrote some stuff…and then hit a wall.

An awful wall.

The kind where you become convinced that everything you’re writing is crap.

The kind where you honestly can’t remember why you even liked this story in the first place.

The kind where you find yourself staring at your screen at 2 AM and moving punctuation around just so you can have the illusion of being productive. (I wish I were exaggerating.)

Needless to say, my actual output dwindled to nothing. I desperately wanted to go work on SHADESHOCK (my WWI novel) instead, but I’d promised myself I’d finish the US edits before I did, so I found myself in a depressing pit of doing nothing. Finally, in despair, I sent off a rambling, panicky email to my friend Marieke in the wee hours of the morning, an email that could essentially be summed up in the sentence, “WHAT DO I DO????” Her thoughtful response: “Well, what do you feel like you should be doing?”

It was what I needed to hear. Because I felt like I should be taking a break from writing, but I hadn’t been giving myself permission to do that, even though the angst and burnout clearly weren’t worth it. So that’s what I’m doing now. Granted, I’m in the midst of reading/critiquing a couple of manuscripts, so I’m not entirely out of the writing world, but I’m doing my best to take a break until I’ve got my feet under me and my head screwed on straight.

3. I’ve been obsessing about the First World War.

It’s a little embarrassing to admit, but this is a large part of the reason I haven’t been blogging. It’s not that the topic is somehow not conducive to writing (QUITE THE OPPOSITE). Rather, it’s that I’ve already subjected my friends and close family to my excited rambling, obsessive reading, and indignant outbursts—I’ve been hoping to spare my readers.

Sassoon!

But blogs are like journals, and journals are for honesty, so honestly? This what I think about 70% of the time that I’m not in class or talking to people or whatever. In the past month, I’ve acquired nearly a dozen books about WWI, many given to me quite unexpectedly by incredibly generous friends (who took me at my word when I joked about how I would not object to people giving me books about WWI—<3 you guys). I bought a book of WWI poetry at Powell’s in Portland, Oregon. I bought a book about the Somme on AbeBooks.com. I’m currently halfway through a biography of Siegfried Sassoon and the autobiography of Robert Graves. I just checked out World Without End, by Helen Thomas (wife of the poet/soldier Edward Thomas) from my university’s library.

And on some level I was only about 51% facetious when I told my parents on the phone yesterday, “So, this whole college thing. Can I do it over again and major in World War One?”

My point is that I’ve been shielding you all from the brunt of my mania by refusing myself an outlet here on the blog, because I’m afraid I’d talk about nothing else. I’ve missed blogging, though, so…I’m  back. But I’m giving you all advance notice: I may occasionally ramble passionately/emotionally about my new favorite topic.

There. You’ve been warned.

And again, happy 2013.

It’s that time of year again… (or, “NaNoWriMo Will Eat Your Soul, But You’ll Be Happy”)

NANOWRIMO IS COMING! NANOWRIMO IS COMING!*

I can’t believe it. My fourth NaNoWriMo (and my 6th one-month writing challenge, if you count my Camp NaNoWriMo participation for the past couple of years). By this point, there’s little question of my ability to get 50,000 words in a month—it’s just a matter of making sure I get them.

But this year is a bit more nervous-making than previous years. Et pourquoi, you ask?

1. This semester is the heaviest academic workload of my college career (i.e. most reading and most time spent in class).
2. On a related note, I’m taking five courses instead of the usual four.
3. I’m the president of my school’s NaNoWriMo club, so I’ll be organizing write-ins on top of doing my own writing.
4. I’ve got two other sets of extracurricular commitments.
5. Most importantly: I DON’T KNOW WHAT I’M WRITING ABOUT YET (I’ve had several ideas so far, but not one that’s really jumped out and grabbed me by the front of the shirt, so to speak).

This song basically sums up my feelings:

And every year, I inevitably end up having the following conversation with my father:

Me: Daddyyyyyyy, I have so much to dooooooo this semester! I have to [rattles off list of commitments]. And on top of that, there’s NaNo in November! It’s going to be SO MUCH WORK. I’m going to DIE.
Dad: (with a mixture of amusement, concern, and slight annoyance) You know, you could skip NaNo this year.
Me: O.O HOW COULD YOU SAY SUCH A THING? NO. SACRILEGE. CANNOT SKIP NANO.

I don’t blame my dad for hoping I might forego noveling madness in favor of normal academic madness. I’m sure if it were my kid whining to me about self-imposed nonessential stress, I’d be offering the same advice. But the truth is that no matter how much I complain, no matter how much I naysay and worry that my grades will go down the toilet, or that I’ll never sleep, or that I’ll spend the month as a basket case, I somehow emerge—exhausted, triumphant, and with grades intact—on December 1st. And honestly, that’s kind of the best part. All the stress makes victory feel like that much more of an achievement, and as the NaNoWritis song puts it:

But I’ve gone through all of this before
So I know what November has in store
If I’ve done it once, I can do it again
‘Cause it feels so damn good when I finally win

It’s my last chance to do NaNo in college. My last chance to prove to myself that I am capable of doing this. And I’m doing it because I love it.

So here I go!

How about you, dear readers and raptors? Leave a comment and let us all know if you’re noveling too this November!

*If you’re new around here and don’t know what NaNoWriMo is, click here!

Some Love for Leigh Ann Kopans

The Collegiate Writer’s Prayer 

Our Leigh Ann who art on Twitter,
hallowed be thy name.
Thy book deal come.
Thy will be done
IRL as it is on Twitter.
Give us this day our braided bread,
and aid us in our ms stalking,
as we aid those who stalk us in return,
and lead us not into desperation,
but deliver us from self-criticism.
For thine is the Twitter feeds,
and the CPs, and the lovefests,
for ever and ever.
Amen.

 

Ohhhh gosh. I’m not religious, so I hope this doesn’t count as blasphemy. It is certainly not intended as such, and I sincerely hope no one is offended. I just wanted to use the Lord’s Prayer as a template for this because that’s how it started in my head, and I liked the rhythm of it. Even though I totally messed around with the scansion (shhh don’t tell). And even though Leigh Ann is Jewish (cf. “braided bread”), and a rabbi at that. Minor details.

And the explanation for this can be found here.

Blogiversary Eve (or, Angst, Contests, and Submissions)

I want to write a proper post, but tomorrow is BLOGIVERSARY. So this will be short and rambly.

Last night was sort of a weird night for me. Mostly, I was feeling some publishing-related angst, but it was magnified by everything else going on in my life and basically I ended up drinking tea and eating chocolate and feeling glum and mopey, which really isn’t my gig at all (cheerful optimist that I am). But I figured, as I usually do in such situations, that things would look better in the morning.

And in the morning, things were indeed better. Things were a lot better, because I found out that I’d been picked as a runner-up in an agent contest I’d entered on a whim a couple of weeks ago. I maaaaaay have done some squealing and a bit of a happy dance. So that was awesome. And on a related note, I got an honorable mention in another contest last week, which also made my day. In both cases, I honestly hadn’t expected anything to come of it, so I was really surprised and really pleased to see my name show up on those lists.

All of that has made me think that it’s high time to get my butt in gear sending things out, whether that means queries or short story submissions or contests or whatever. It’s so easy to get wrapped up in editing endlessly, convinced there’s always something to improve. And there IS always something to improve, but there’s also a point where you just have to put down the pen and put yourself out there.

Now, if I can just bring myself to push the “send” button…

(EDIT: Also, remember that drawing to win an ARC from BEA is only open until 11:59 PM PST tomorrow, July 16th 2012. In order to enter yourself in the drawing, just leave a comment telling me which books you’d like to win.)

“Wait…you want to READ it?” (or, Why Sharing Writing Is Fricking Scary)

Today, I did something I kind of thought I would never do. Something I’ve been nervously contemplating for (literally) years. I’m still not entirely sure what possessed me to do it. But I did it:

I sent my novel manuscript to my sister for critique.

If you couldn’t tell, this is something that scares me. But in a sense, the fact that it scares me is odd. I mean, first of all, my sister loves me. And secondly, my sister is obviously not the first person to read my novel. In the past three years, I have sent my manuscript to dozens of beta readers.

Three years. Dozens of readers. You’d think I’d be over this by now.

But here’s the thing about those beta readers. Generally, they’re people I met on the internet through websites like NaNoWriMo.org and the deceptively-named LadiesWhoCritique.com (there are guys on there too). All of them are writers themselves. And most importantly? They don’t know me in real life.

I have long shied away from sharing my writing with people who know me. And the closer those people are to me, the harder it is to let them see my work.* It’s not just about liking it. While I’m obviously pleased (and often embarrassed/bewildered) if someone does like my writing, I can handle someone not liking it—it’s all a matter of opinion, and I write some weird stuff sometimes. Fine. I recognize that, and I’d rather hear an honest opinion (i.e. “It’s just not my kind of thing”) than false praise.

Here’s a sampling of stuff I do worry about, though:

• Friends/family thinking my characters are me. Like many writers, I do selectively grant aspects of myself to characters. For example, Julia shares my phobia of falling, and Albert shares my dislike of interpersonal conflict. But there are lots of things we do not have in common, and I would hate for someone who knows me to read the story through the lens of “characters = Ari”. Because they don’t, and even if they did, would that really have any bearing on the story?
• Friends/family thinking I’ve written them into my story. Again, like many writers, I’m a magpie. I collect details and behaviors and tics from everyone around me, and many times they end up in stories I write. But there is no character in my novel—or anything I’ve written since the age of 13 or so**—who is based entirely on someone I know in real life. My stories are not RPF…but I worry that people might think they are.
• Readers trying to psychoanalyze me through my writing. I can just see it now: “What does she mean when she has him say that? Maybe it’s an expression of her latent need to express control over her relationships. It’s either that or her deep and abiding existential fear of the Flying Spaghetti Monster.” *shudders* Dear God. I hate it when people do that kind of stuff in literature classes, and I hate the idea of someone doing it to me. And as John Green so eloquently put it, it sort of screws with the idea of fiction mattering, particularly with the idea of fiction mattering independently of its creator.

…and so on.

I don’t know exactly why I have these fears. It’s not that I’m worried my friends and family will suddenly stop liking/loving me after reading my writing. All I do know is that it’s very similar to the feeling I used to get when I was doing a play and found out that my friends or family were in the audience that night. Performing for 400+ strangers? No biggie. Performing for my friends/boyfriend/parents/sisters/aunts/uncles/cousins/grandparents? Eeep. o.O

Several weeks ago, when I was in the midst of rewriting/polishing the manuscript in preparation for querying, I broke down and asked a bunch of my friends for help. I had to. I needed beta readers, and finding betas on the internet can be a lengthy process. Most of the friends who agreed to help are readers of sci-fi and fantasy, so even if they’re all in their late teens/early 20s, they’re close enough to the target age range for this project. But sending them the story was the most nerve-wracking thing. And when the responses started to trickle in, it wasn’t just in the form of written critique. People would come up to me and talk to me about my book. They would tell me where they were in the story and what was happening and ask questions about the characters and plot and worldbuilding. Even more bizarre, they would TALK AMONGST THEMSELVES about the book. One friend even quoted a line from it at dinner one day when I wasn’t there, prompting a discussion about the quote. (That’s one crazy/bizarre/awesome part of other people reading the book: your story and characters taking on a life outside of your head. But I digress.)

The point is that nearly every time this kind of thing happened, I would blush. I’m not a blush-y person, but I definitely turned red. I squirmed. I avoided eye contact, or sometimes just used my discomfort as an excuse to leave until the topic changed. Because how do you confront the fact that people you know are suddenly seeing this private aspect of you? This thing you’ve spent hundreds and hundreds of hours on, typing into the wee hours of the morning, scribbling in coffee shops, getting out of the shower with suds in your hair because you’ve just had an idea that needs to be written down NOW?

Anyhow, all of that is to explain why sending my manuscript to my sister weirds me out. But now that I’ve bitten the bullet and done it, I’m realizing that there are cool aspects to it as well. Like the fact that our shared history means she (unlike 99.9% of readers) might actually get some of the “sooper-sekrit-inside-jokes-with-myself” that pepper the manuscript. We’ll see.

And who knows? If I’m lucky, she might even like it.

So, to all the other writers out there: are you comfortable with having loved ones read your work? Or do you get nervous about it too? Or are you one of those lucky few who have no qualms about sharing it with anyone/everyone?

Also, in unrelated news, I found this amusing:

* Until today, I had only ever asked one family member—my littlest sister—to read the manuscript, and it’s because she is actually in the age demographic for this book. (My dad read it too, but I didn’t ask him to. He started reading without my permission and I allowed him to finish it.) And I did let some other close friends read it, but it took a very long time for me to work up the courage for that.

** When I was in 7th grade, I tried to write all of my classmates into the novel I was working on at the time. I would bring excerpts to school and read them aloud to my friends, who were always really curious to know who they were/what they looked like in my fantasy universe. But it just got too weird. I began to feel awkward about the fact that describing people as they appeared to me didn’t always line up with how they perceived themselves. So I just stopped.