On Writing and AWOLing and Commencing

Hi!

This is another one of those I’m-not-dead-I-swear kinds of posts, but there’s a bit more to it than that. Because it’s not just this blog that I’ve neglected—in the past few months, my extracurricular writing has basically ground to a standstill. Several reasons for this:

• I’m taking a creative writing class that requires me to write approximately 300 words per day. For a NaNo vet, this seems like a trivial number (I can do 300 words in <5 minutes if I have to)—but unlike NaNoWriMo, these can’t be word-vomit. They have to be carefully-crafted 300 words, each piece in response to a given prompt. Doing that takes 1-2 hours out of every day. So I’m writing, and writing creatively, but not working on my longer projects.
• The First World War. I read about it. I write about it. I think about it. I’m looking at postgraduate study for it. And all of that takes time.
• It’s my last semester of college. My final weeks on campus, spending time with my friends and enjoying all the amazing things my school has to offer. So that even when I have a free evening (as I do tonight), I’m opting to go to a friend’s poetry slam rather than snag some writing time. Because pretty soon, I won’t be able to attend this friend’s poetry slams—but I’ll have plenty of writing time.

All of that said, I miss blogging, and I particularly miss my novels (I’m itching to get back to editing them). I spent last night brainstorming several sticky plot points with friends, and another couple of friends helped me out a few weeks ago when I was desperate to work out some worldbuilding logistics. So I do what I can when I can.

Anyhow, the upshot is: you probably won’t be seeing all that much of me on the interwebz in the next month or two, but it’s just because I’m trying to squeeze every last drop out of my undergraduate experience and not freak out too much as Commencement approaches. So never fear, dear readers and raptors—I shall return anon!

Much love,

Ari

A Moment of Everyday Magic (or, Getting the Right Notebook)

I’m taking a creative writing course this semester. It’s cool in some respects, but not cool in others, and the not cool part for me is the fact that every week we have an hour and a half lecture during which I learn approximately nothing.

Seriously.

To be fair, this is not entirely the fault of the professor/class. I’ve taken a fair few creative writing courses in my college career. I also started writing when I was five. I also spend/have spent a lot of time talking to writers and publishing industry people about writing. So while I’m sure that for people with different experiences, this lecture is engaging and productive, for me it means 90 minutes of spacing out, writing notes to myself, and staring blankly at the weekly handout while my equally-bored friend doodles on her notebook beside me.

(Sometimes we pass each other snarky notes, but that’s beside the point.)

Recently, I decided I needed to take matters into my own hands. This is my last semester of college, dammit. I want to get something out of this. I talked the matter over with my creative writing tutor (whom I very much like); she was sympathetic and suggested a few ways I could maybe make use of the lecture period, but also acknowledged I might just have to suck it up the rest of the time. I appreciated the input, but it was still a pretty bleak outlook. I thanked her for her suggestions.

And as soon as my meeting with her was over, I went to Barnes & Noble to buy myself a freaking writing notebook.

It makes me sad that I need to do this. At the same time, it’s really the only solution I can find that gives me any sense of satisfaction. If I have to sit in that lecture hall listening to professorial pontifications for an hour and a half each week, at least I’ll spend that time writing. Writing fiction. Writing something that I might actually be able to use.

But purchasing a writing notebook isn’t as straightforward as it sounds. I didn’t know what I was looking for, exactly. I had envisioned grabbing a simple, spiral-bound notebook, but every such notebook I found in the bookstore looked so…flimsy. And the sturdier ones were pointlessly pricier. I didn’t need one with my college’s name embossed on it. I didn’t need one for five subjects. I didn’t need one with graph paper.

Then I saw it.

You know how it happens: You’re in a store (usually a bookstore) and something just leaps off the shelf at you and cries, “ME! You came here to get ME, didn’t you?” In my case, the leaping object was a “Decomposition Notebook”—based on the old composition notebook style, but made from recycled paper, its charming cover printed with bees and honeycomb. There were lots of other composition notebooks like it, but this was the one. My notebook. It was so obvious.

Except…

I frowned at the price tag. Did I really need to pay $6 for this thing when I could easily get a comparable notebook for less than half that price? It wasn’t like $6 was going to break my bank account or anything, but still, that was two cups of chai right there. Why did this notebook need to be special anyways? Wasn’t I just going to scribble all over it?

I hemmed and hawed, but time was running out, and I had to get to class. Deciding that it didn’t really matter what notebook I had and that I could spend the extra $3 on chai, I put down my notebook and picked up one of the flimsy spiral-bound ones. I trotted up to the counter, fumbling in my bag for my debit card.

“Sorry, can you move to the next window down?” the cashier said, just as I’d pulled out my wallet and opened it.

“Oh. Uh, sure.” I started to close up my wallet again when my attention was snagged by the pocket I use to keep gift cards. And what should I see but a Barnes & Noble gift card, on which I happened to have about $8 remaining.

Fate. Providence. The Universe loves me. I spun about, dashed down the stairs, swapped out the flimsy thing for my notebook, and bounded back up, gift card in hand. I was going to get that notebook AND have chai to go with it.

And thus it was that I got the perfect writing notebook to use in my not-so-perfect writing class. I’m breaking it in today by picking up my 2012 NaNovel where I left off. Hopefully, I’ll get something new and interesting on the page.

Boo freaking yeah.

Story of a Friend Crush (or, Ari and Siegfried Sassoon, Part I)

If you know me in real life, or follow me on Twitter or Tumblr, you’ve probably seen me gushing about some old dead guy named Siegfried Sassoon over the past few months. And if WWI or war poetry aren’t your thing, you probably haven’t the faintest idea why I’m so excited.

So today, I’ve decided to fill you all in a bit. Who is this Sassoon fellow and why should you care? Well, if my fascination with WWI is an addiction, then Siegfried Sassoon was one of my gateway drugs.

And what a poetical BAMF of a drug. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

This is how it happened:

Last semester (fall of 2012), I took a course on total war in Europe from 1914-1945. Our midterm assignment was to read two WWI memoirs or novels and write an essay comparing them. I opted to re-read All Quiet on the Western Front (since I hardly remembered a thing about it) and Henri Barbusse’s Under Fire, a book published during the war and the first novel to depict life in the trenches as it really was. My professor was an ardent fan of Barbusse (like, he wrote the introduction for the edition that I got out of the library), so I figured it was a good option.

But when I started reading, I just couldn’t get into it, at least in part due to the translation (I think I would have enjoyed it more in its original French), and also partly due to the voice. Whereas the narration of Paul Bäumer in All Quiet had gripped my attention from the first page, I found myself pushing my way through each chapter of Under Fire with the grim determination of a soldier slogging through mud in the trenches. It got to the point where I lamented to my friend Sophia over dinner one day that I despaired of ever finishing it in time to write a paper on it.

“Do you have to read this book?” she asked.

“No, but I have to read a book, and my professor likes this one, so–”

“Well, that’s just silly. Go pick another book that you like.”

Easier said than done. I recall staring at the list of titles in my course packet, with little to no idea what each one was about. But the name Siegfried Sassoon jumped out at me a bit (as it tends to do). I remembered him from our readings on shell-shock, and flipping back through my packet, I reread his story as it was sketched out there. An interesting fellow indeed. And Mr Sassoon had written a memoir called Sherston’s Progress, and it was on my reading list.

Well…

I frowned at his picture there in the packet for a bit, shrugged, then returned Under Fire and checked out Sherston’s Progress.

To call this a “good decision” would be a drastic understatement.

Right from the beginning, I genuinely WANTED to keep reading. It wasn’t just that Sassoon’s voice was charming (though it was). It wasn’t just that I liked the writing (though I did). It wasn’t just that I was interested in the story (though I was). The most salient part of my experience as I read was how much I grokked this man. I got him. I don’t know how else to explain it. His thought processes, his sense of humor, his flaws and foibles, his self-acknowledged self-contradiction—they all made perfect sense to me, because they were mine too. My suitemate Hana can attest to the fact that I spent an afternoon and an evening on the couch in our common room delightedly spouting quotes at her whenever she walked into the room. “I love this guy,” I told her. “I love the way he thinks!” It was the feeling of walking in someone else’s footsteps on a beach and finding it the most natural thing in the world because that person’s legs moved just the way yours do.

Sherston’s Progress is actually the third part of Sassoon’s fictionalized memoirs, the first two parts being Memoirs of a Fox-Hunting Man and Memoirs of an Infantry Officer. I was dying to read them as well, but given the volume of work I had, I couldn’t afford to get hooked on a non-academic book. I contented myself with reading Wikipedia articles and such in my non-existent spare time. The more I learned about Sassoon and the First World War and the other war poets (Robert Graves, Wilfred Owen, etc.), the more fascinated I became, and as NaNoWriMo approached, I was struck by the notion of writing a story set in the trenches. The idea was inspired in part by a poem of Sassoon’s (called “Sick Leave”) which begins:

“WHEN I’m asleep, dreaming and lulled and warm,
They come, the homeless ones, the noiseless dead.
While the dim charging breakers of the storm
Bellow and drone and rumble overhead,
Out of the gloom they gather about my bed.
They whisper to my heart; their thoughts are mine.
‘Why are you here with all your watches ended?
From Ypres to Frise we sought you in the Line…’”

Arthur, my protagonist, is definitely not Sassoon, but I did draw a lot of ideas from Sassoon’s experiences. And what experiences might those be? Tune in later this week for the crazy story of Sassoon’s life during the war, and then finally, the tale of how I got to “meet” Sassoon last Thursday.

Missed part of the Ari and Siegfried Sassoon series? Here’s the rest:

Part I: you’re here!
Part II: Mad Jack, Poet, Soldier, Non-Spy
Part III: Shellshock and Poetry
Part IV: A Tale of Letters and Libraries

And because I’m curious, dear readers and raptors: Do any of you have a friend crush on a historical figure? Or a crush-crush? (I wouldn’t classify my interest in Sassoon as a crush-crush, but for or those of you who are prone to them, I suggest you check out this Tumblr.) Who fascinates you and why?

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.

How NaNoWriMo Helped Me Love My Old Novel Again

Dear readers and raptors,

NANOWRIMO 2012 IS OVER, AND I HAVE 50,000 WORDS!!!

*confetti*

Four years in a row! Holy cow, how the time does fly, and gosh, I’m really proud of myself for pulling this off on top of schoolwork and extracurriculars. I’m also incredibly proud of all my friends who undertook this, regardless of their final wordcounts—you guys are ROCKSTARS!

But beneath all this noveling joy there lurk some things that you don’t know about me. So for this week’s Sunday blogpost (going back to my regular schedule now that NaNo is over), here’s an odd factoid:

In the weeks leading up to NaNoWriMo, I often go through a period of deep suspicion.

I don’t like to admit it to myself. I’m a little weirded out that I’m admitting it here. But basically, in realizing that I’m going to have to set aside my endless editing of Unfamiliar Spellings, I get kind of nervous and, dare I say it, resentful. I know I’ve committed to writing this new novel. I know I’m supposed to be worldbuilding and getting to know these characters. I know I’m supposed to sketch out ideas for plot elements so my pantsing will at least have a modicum of direction to it.

But every time I try to do this, I feel guilty, as though showing real interest in my new plot bunny is a betrayal of my work-in-progress (WIP). Out of loyalty to the intricacies of non-loc/spelling, I’m not allowed to fully appreciate the awesomeness of the holographic racehorses on Asta. The hilarious quirks of a spacefaring Shakespeare company are somehow in competition with Smeth’s sprawling cosmopolitanism. And God forbid I should love Tony and Bella and the crew of the Helen Aeris as much as I love Albert and Julia and Kozm.

All of that ridiculousness played out in 2010 and 2011, and I fully expected to encounter it again this year. Except I wasn’t counting on one thing:

By October of 2012, I was kind of sick of Unfamiliar Spellings.

Sacrilege. SACRILEGE. How could I possibly be sick of this story/world/characters?

Oh, I fought it. I didn’t want it to happen. I’d keep the document open on my desktop behind my schoolwork and poke at it from time to time. What I was refusing to recognize was that, by that point, I’d spent a good chunk of my year working on this novel—I went on an editing spree in early January before the Writer’s Digest Conference, and then a MAD PUSH of edits in February and March in order to send out queries in April, then spent a couple months querying before I stopped in order to do more edits, then got feedback from a new round of beta readers, then headdesked when I realized the extent of the new revisions I needed to make, then drew up a list of edits…

…and have been sitting on that list since the end of the summer, rereading the draft and waiting for enough free time to revise.

Anyone would be drained after that. Of course, I know the importance of taking time off before you edit, but I just couldn’t bring myself to set it aside. Even though I could feel my enthusiasm slipping away, I felt like I *should* be editing, so I kept trying.

And then came NaNo 2012. It was the latest I’d ever gotten into the month of October without knowing what I was writing. Fortunately, my fascination with my WWI/WWII class kept bleeding over into everything I did, and somehow, by 12:01 on November 1st, I had a very sketchy plot and characters.

Maybe Shadeshock wasn’t as “threatening” because it was in the same world as Unfamiliar Spellings. Maybe it was the novelty of writing historical fantasy (rather than the sci-fi of 2010 and 2011). Maybe it was the lack of prep work. Or maybe it was just that I was feeling so done with US and that there really was something special about Shadeshock. Regardless, NaNo 2012 was the first time that I didn’t feel the slightest bit guilty about enjoying the new novel.

I allowed myself to like the setting.

I allowed myself to like the plot.

Most important, I allowed myself to like the characters.

NaNoWriMo 2012 ended. I crossed the finish line with 50K and flying colors. And last night, I realized that in all the time I’d spent wrapped up in NaNo, I’d finally gotten enough distance that I was excited to go hang out with my old characters again.

And thus it is that, after months of angst, I love my old book again.

So hopefully, winter break will let me finally implement those edits, and maybe I’ll finish the Shadeshock draft too. For now, though, I’m off to WRITE LIKE THE WIND. (Finals, finals, finals. All the finals.)

How are you all? For those of you who did NaNo, how did things go for you? For those who didn’t, what have you been up to this month?

Oh, and though he’s been AWOL for a while, Frederick Regency Raptor would like me to let you know that he sends his greetings.