standing on a star unstable

We counted today in thunderstorms, as regular and as constant as a belltower. I took a nap on the couch when the internet went down, and I took another nap on the porch during an afternoon shower, when the rain tapping on the leaves matched so perfectly with the cool breeze it almost seemed engineered.

In between naps, I went down to the lake for possibly the last lake bath of the year. I river-bathed a lot growing up, so it seems both ritually wonderful and absolutely natural.

Thunder was already rumbling as I finished up. I made an unwise move with my razor, and scraped my thigh badly, just above the outer edge of my knee. The sacrifice for this year's lake baths has been made.

I got out before I spied lightning, then stood on the dock while the water turned green and aquamarine, and grew choppy with the oncoming storm, and the sky darkened to petrel gray. Directly overhead, the sun beat bright and warm; in the twenty minutes I was down at the lake, I got enough color to refresh my tan lines.

I wished I had my camera, but I knew would have spent more time trying to convince the camera to capture the color range I saw than I would have spent enjoying the weather. So I stayed where I was, dripping stone-scented water while blood welled and ran on my leg and the wind tried to whip my towel away from me.

I've always loved slanting golden light shining on grass while dark skies roll in; it might be my favorite single sight in the world. But paler yellow light from high above making jewel patches in water while dark skies roll in--probably a close second.

Now we have night bugs, and I think a tree frog or three.

Summer, I wish you'd never leave me.

I am only slightly puzzled by co-workers who signed the sympathy card for my grandfather's death asking me today "how was your vacation?"

Ah, well. Without the ridiculous, how would we recognize the sublime?

Oh, professional envy, you're freaking hilarious.

Someone I've known since at least the 7th grade, the guy who sat next to me in senior English, has been nominated for an Emmy for writing.

I had that whole "THAT'S AMAZING, I'm so happy for--Oh my god, what am I doing with my life?" reaction one expects to have.

Well, at least, that's what I expect to have.

I started to laugh my rear off at myself almost right away, though.

Good thing. :)

I keep thinking: I remember when this was a whole lot harder. This book-writing thing. When I didn't know if a scene had low tension or even a purpose.

It is also strange to me that I write on intuitive auto-pilot these days, and only have to pause now and then to take a compass bearing. It's not as hard as it once was to find my way out of the middle of a novel. Now, granted: it helps to write MG novels of significantly less complexity than a George RR Martin spectacle. But you know. It's not the only thing I write, and I still don't struggle like I did.

I just don't know when it all changed. When I stopped floundering and realized that I could a) notice problems; b) analyze them; c) fix them. While I still need editors, copyeditors, beta readers, and critique partners, they are more there to speed up the process. I could probably get to a Pretty Good Book now, on my own, given five, ten years to really think it through--and that's without skill increases! (Thank god for editors, copyeditors, beta readers, and critique partners!)

When I was a kid, and I wrote both for fun and for the emotional outlet, I didn't worry much (any) about craft. I let intuition guide me in every particular. I copied what I liked from writers I read often. When I first tried to become a working writer, I tried to expurgate the fun and the emotional outlet, and to Write Properly. I think I saved me from myself pretty early on in that process, but I think about how many intellectual stories I lunged after, that I had no real connection with, I think: "What was I doing?"

But it was part of the learning process. It was requisite for me that I intellectualize the process, so that I could learn how to make it effective for other people to share in my fun and in my emotional outlets.

So, I had a big dither over a scene tonight, and had no forward motion on the book for pretty much two nights in a row because of this scene, and I finally wrote at the end of it: [Reconsider this scene; either cut or punch up. Can the horse jump over the wall without ripping off THE BLUE SWORD too much?]

The scene is boring, as is, but I think it might be necessary to have a similar scene right here for the pacing. And for my character's growth. And for certain kinds of tension. But I'm not sure how to rewrite the scene so it is not boring, and has character growth and just the right amount of tension (I think I've got the pacing part figured); and the only thing I've thought of to happen is something Robin McKinley thought of 23 or more years ago, so that's just out. You've got a wall and a girl and a magic horse. She wants to get inside. How do I not rip of McKinley, specifically when Harry jumps Sungold over Jack Dedham's fort wall? (Or maybe Sungold just does it. I don't remember. I refuse to go read the scene, either.) --I'm not actually asking anyone but myself, btw. I know how. I just don't know how yet.

Thing is, as I stared at the scene where my girl is on the horse outside the cloister walls and just waits patiently last night--and wrote around it, and edited some other stuff, and did some spot research--I didn't even have the "ripping off McKinley" option in my head. So, that's forward progress. Right? I mean, my brain is moving.

I'm not frustrated. I know it will come to me in time. I might not need the whole scene anyway, since it really shows the internal power struggles of a group of characters who are seriously non-essential to the story I'm telling. I mean, the reason my main character is stalled at the gates is because they're arguing inside about whether or not to send aid with my character. (Just like THE BLUE SWORD, I freaking guess, yay, I'm already so close, no wonder this occurred to me.)

In the end, it probably needs to wait until I see the rest of the shape of the book, even though it pains me to leave a scene so completely wrong and have to come back to it. It's not the scene itself that bothers me, it's the ripple effect of what might change as we go forward, if I have this scene too wrong, too off the anticipated future mark.

Anyway, there it is. This weird confidence: It struck me, the weirdness, today. That I can analyze something that I'm so attached to, and not mind analyzing it. And I'm okay with it not being perfect, though I want it as close to right as it's possible to get--begin as you mean to go on, and all that, and measure twice, cut once.

I've had this confidence a lot lately, and it freaks me out. The angry little Puritan inside of me says, "You should be suffering more." And the angry little Fitzgerald inside of me says the same thing. There are a lot of voices that insist on suffering in exchange for pleasure, success, or art. Sometimes I think: well, maybe I already suffered a lot, so I'm getting a pass, for now, for this one thing. Then I also think: do I even believe those voices? I don't, so much. Maybe in my core beliefs, more than I should--I did some time among the Puritans--yes, that's a metaphor--but I work every day to change my core beliefs, to challenge my assumptions of the world.

So maybe, the work is the work, and it's rewarding. Maybe that's all there is to it.

Well, that went pretty far afield from "Hey, it feels weird that writing competently is so much easier than it was when I started."

Clearly, "measure twice, cut once" only applies to novels, not journal entries.

I had one of those dreams again, the kind where you wake up exhausted and tired, red-faced and crying. I think I freaked my husband out when he came in and saw me. I know I freaked myself out in the course of my dream. I had the full gamut of sleep paralysis, and the fear that I was going to wake up in another time (this time, 1984), and at one point, my jaw muscles started chattering uncontrollably.

But this post is not about the weird sleep or the fragments of the dream I still hold onto.

This post is about childhood.

I know that, for myself, childhood was a long, extended period where I felt I had no control over anything, and that many of the petty things that I did as a child are direclty related to that lack of control. I see what I assume are examples of this kind of behavior all the time in the children I know. Some of it is the issue that the brain--you're making new pathways, you're dealing with how to handle the chemicals that wash over those cells, and the chemicals just get more intense as you approach puberty.

You are a child, and you're not in control, and you want to be and nothing makes sense. There are problems you see when you're a new person that you can't believe the older persons let exist. I remember the first time I learned what "rape" meant--we were watching the evening news, and the announcer said it, and I asked my mom, and she said, "It's when one person forces another to have sex." I remember the first time I saw the KKK on the news, and I asked my mom, "Why is that legal?" And she didn't know. And that was just the beginning, and I feel incredibly lucky that my first knowledge of some of the most horrible things in life came through the news and not something more personal that affected my own body or someone I loved.

I have a friend who--I hope this isn't saying too much--has imprinted strongly on Doctor Who, and this friend has been examining the reasons for the imprinting. The things jumped out at me in that analysis: the Doctor knows something is wrong, and then he tries to fix it. He believes the problem exists. It's an important first step, you know? But he also takes action. Those are the two things we want our parents to do. That we want the world to do.

And while my friend was talking about this, I realized that the one and only thing I've had that gut- and heart-connection with lately is Avatar: The Last Airbender. Which is about kids confronting evil, kids saving the world. And I realized that was a big theme in my childhood reading, in my childhood longing: I wanted to save the world. I wanted to do it as a kid, because the adults sure weren't getting it done.

And I've watched all of this cartoon and I'm thinking strongly I might sit down and watch all of it again, because there is such a longing inside of me, inside of the child that's still inside of me, to save the world. To notice the problem. To believe it exists. To take action. To do something.

I don't see a lot of options anymore, for saving the world. I don't have the ability to do much for political action--I vote in every election, I write my congressman, but I'm not going to run for public office. I should probably go vegan or at least vegetarian, and I'm working on that. I try to reduce my carbon footprint, but I know I need to do more there. Most of us do. I don't write well thought-out explanations of the evils of the world for the education of the internet because my brain doesn't work like that. And what else is available to us, to those who notice the problem? We rescue cats, and we raise our kids the best we can... but there's no Firelord to fight, is there? I mean. If there is, let's go fight him.

So. What's left for me? Art? Yeah, probably art.

As a writer, and particularly as a writer for children, I feel like it is my job to illuminate the present, the past, and the future, to show the problems, to show people trying to solve the problems. That's about all I can do. It does not make me a woman of action, by a long shot.

Does it help?

In my dream this afternoon, during my teeth-chattering nap, when I thought I was going to have to go back to age 9 and relive my life up to now... All I could think was, "This time, I'll do everything right."

And that's why I was crying when I woke up. I was thinking in the dream of all the things I would do differently in my life: spend more time with my grandparents, try harder to have a relationship with my father, give my mother less of a hassle, save more for college, be nicer to that friend in junior high....

After I'd been awake for about an hour, after I'd been playing with my 7-year-old nephew for an hour, I looked at him and realized he's only 2 years younger than the self I was dreaming about. How unfair am I being to my 9-year-old self? I wondered. You were just trying to learn how to live in the world. How could you possibly also have saved it?

For a good chunk of the dream, I knew if I held on, I could stay in 2011, and if I let go, I would end up in 1984. And I had to keep convincing myself to hold on. My husband. My book--I just spent a day in Manhattan working with my editor. And there was a voice who was telling me it'd be okay, I could still have my husband, and my book. It was just a matter of dedication.

(Like time travel is that easy or something.)

But I didn't believe the voice. So I held on.

But the other thing I didn't believe, and this was something I've been struggling with my entire life: if time travel were possible, I would be able to go back and make things perfect. I woke up crying because I was also remembering all the times I suppressed rage and hurt and disappointment in an effort to make things better with my dad, or to spend time with my grandparents, or to be less of a hassle to my mom. I already tried all of that, and it wasn't good for me. I'm still learning how to have emotions like a human, not a Vulcan (though the Vulcans always made perfect sense: you suppress the emotions because emotions are just too devastating otherwise).

So, what I have--all that I have--for this world-saving thing is: my memory of the problems I could see so clearly as a child; my compassion for my nine-year-old self, and all the other nine-year-olds out there, no matter how old the shell surrounding them is; and a publishing contract.

That's it. No conclusion but for that. I suspect I should have something more.

I did this meme a couple years ago. I have more images now.

1) Post ten of any pictures currently on your hard drive that you think are self-expressive.
2) NO CAPTIONS!!! It must be like we're speaking with images and we have to interpret your visual language just like we have to interpret your words.
3) They must ALREADY be on your hard drive - no googling or flickr! They have to have been saved to your folders sometime in the past. They must be something you've saved there because it resonated with you for some reason.
4) You do NOT have to answer any questions about any of your pictures if you don't want to. You can make them as mysterious as you like. Or you can explain them away as much as you like.

( Images, yeah. And I'm 90% sure there are no dups with the past iteration of the meme. )

2011
Still living on the outskirts of Ann Arbor with my husband and his daughter, and I am 36. Kayla is now 16, and looking seriously at colleges and her future career path. At work, I'm in the midst of promotions, myself and people under me, and reorganization. It's the first real movement in my dayjob career in 5 years. However, in December 2009 I sold a novel, and have been waiting (and working) on it since then--my book comes out in September of this year. My mom has moved to Michigan (via the circuitous route of Montana then Seattle, Providence, San Francisco and LA). She's about 3 hours away now, which is the closest we've lived to each other since 1993.


2001
Have moved to the outskirts of Ann Arbor with my boyfriend and his daughter. Kayla is in first grade, and we chose this small town turned bedroom community because of the excellent schools and the location. We almost moved another half hour down the highway for a cheaper house, but my boyfriend's father advised us that moving closer to work was worth a slightly more expensive house. (He turned out to be right.) I'm working at the University and have been since 1995. I have started taking classes again after a financial snafu forced me out of college in... 1995. I got promoted quickly to a pretty high level that I will not advance beyond for ten years.


1991
Living with my mother in Durham, North Carolina; attending the new high school, and generally being an overworked-by-self 17-year-old. Choices, man, choices. My sense of youthful immortality wasn't manifested in the "do dangerous things" vein, but more in the "I can do EVERYTHING!" vein. Being run-down via overscheduling became a prominent theme of my life for some time. (I think this choice was a reaction to living a relatively quiet and secluded childhood; as soon as I obtained any degree of control over my own whereabouts and activities, I went crazy.) I spent a fair amount of time in those days hanging with my best friend, Chaitra, but we were drifting socially; I spent a lot of time with a wider social network that I felt less close to. I was co-editor of the school lit mag that year, and wrote and costumed and stage managed and acted for local children's theater, and babysat a LOT (three school evenings a week from 5-10PMish), and was taking AP classes, and, and, and.

1981
Living with my mother in Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan. I was six. It was the first time we'd lived more than an hour away from my dad (my parents had been divorced for 2 years) or my grandparents. I was incredibly lonely, being so far from my bevy of adoring cousins and aunts and uncles; realizing that I only had my peers to socialize with regularly was sort of a nightmare. We were living in family housing at Lake Superior State, while my mom finished her bachelor's in nursing. I did enjoy the random collegiate adults Mom associated with. One of them held fondue parties and owned an Afghan dog. I am partial to fondue and Afghans to this day. I went with Mom to night classes on occasion, and began my love affair with college campuses, I think. It was my first time living in a college town, but I've never left college towns since, not really.

After years of trying to get my 5-7 a day of fruits and veggies and feeling as though I was consistently failing--in part because my mind could not parse a giant apple as 2-3 servings, and in part because, whatever I do, I don't think in numbers* in any way that makes counting servings rational...

I recently came across the notion of eating your 5-7 a day according to color. It's actually from a book called Getting Ready to Get Pregnant, since, you know, that's what I'm getting ready to get ready to be--and the nutrition advice in that book makes the most sense of any book I've ever read. Maybe because it's in easy-to-memorize gotchya lists? I really don't know, but it's really working for me in a way nutrition advice usually doesn't.

Anyway, the fruit/veg advice is so simple, so in tune with my brain: eat a rainbow every day. Have something orange, something yellow, something green, something blue/violet, and something red. The theory is, each color family has a similar set of good benefits--orange usually harbors beta carotene, or something like that, and so on.

Yesterday, amongst the many things I ate, I had green from spinach, guacamole, and beet greens; red from salsa, red peppers, and beets (or maybe beets are violet--I probably should re-read this section of the book, since this violet thing seems to be a stumbling block); orange from an orange and a small yam; yellow from a delicata squash; blue from blueberries. I also had some mashed potatoes, meat loaf, almond butter, peach jam, two slices of whole wheat bread... and some decadence, since I was out with friends, in terms of grits cakes, bacon, and a little bit of brownie and ice-cream. I'm sure I was excessively caloric because of said being out with friends, but I know I didn't suffer from a nutritional deficit!

Today was harder, being a work day, but I had red from apples, yellow from bell peppers, green from guacamole and green leaf lettuce... Tonight, I'll have at least a serving of prunes to fill in blue or purple or whatever it is prunes are for. Orange--well, sorry orange, buddy, you're screwed today. But at least I know it, and will correct for it. Tomorrow I should be able to eat the full color suite easily again, since I'll take my lunch to work, and I have leftover beets, squash and yams to take.

Anyway, it's a thousand times easier to manage my servings as I'm choosing what to eat, and not try to keep together some count throughout the day. I aim to get at least a serving from each color. It's easy to see where I'm missing something and fill in the gap.

I wish I would have figured this one out 20 years ago! When I made my tostada this evening, overflowing with lettuce and yellow peppers, I realized: this is a far prettier way to eat.

Anyone else have similarly fun ways to keep track of nutrition?

---

* No, I don't think in numbers, but I am not opposed to numbers. I'm good with short-term memory of 7 digit numbers--in part because of my job--and I can memorize phone numbers like very few people I know, unless they don't make sense to me, which some numbers just don't, like splash_the_cat's home number. (On the other hand, I still remember mrgeddylee's number from when we were in college. It was a really good number. Ending in 1348, which is a really easy number.) I'm good with mnemonics, I guess. And weird memory tricks. And if I say the page number of the book before I close it, I will be able to remember what page I was on when I come back to the book. But do not ask me how many servings of grain I ate today. It does not compute AT ALL.

I went to a movie! For the first time in like ever. The first time since the last Harry Potter, in fact. I saw Vision, which is the movie about the life of Hildegard of Bingen. I had no quibble with any of the facts in it, which probably means I'm still not well-versed enough in my Hildegard history, but maybe not? Other than the Rhine didn't look properly Rhinish in the tenth of a second distance shot of it, and maybe it was all supposed to be the Nahe delta leading up to the confluence of the Rhine.

Anyway, my only problem with the movie is that a few of the scenes were working too hard at showing too much at one time, to the point that they felt quite forced. But that's okay. Otherwise, it was dreamy, involving, absorbing and quite compelling, and it was totally great inspiration for the book I'm currently writing, which has a bit of Hildegard in it.

I also used this weekend (and the snowday that struck today) to take in Downton Abbey, which I feel like everyone already watched on PBS like four months ago, but it was really good and I enjoyed it. Though I felt like it also ended up with a bit too much crammed-in-itis. Like, "we're going to explore American heiresses saving British noble houses PLUS entailment PLUS women's suffrage PLUS The Titanic PLUS the difficulties with being gay in that time PLUS those awkward old views on menopause/hunting/medicine PLUS the rise of the middle class PLUS feeling adrift with new technology (telephones, electricity, typewriters, AND cars)." I mean. It was only 7 episodes! That was a lot of stuff for 7 episodes, and really, I wanted tons more of the Old Lady War between Professor McGonagall and Harriet Jones of Flydale North, plus as much Mister Bates and Emma's restrained romance as possible. On the other hand, it was pretty satisfying a lot of the time. Until the end. The end was basically a huge cliffhanger, if you ask me.

And, I haven't done a reading post in FOREVER, which makes me feel like I've fallen down on the job SO MUCH, but allow me to rec a book. Ally Condy's Matched was surprising, because I picked it up thinking it was more a romance than a thoroughly and creepily satisfying dystopian novel. The Society seems quite nice on the surface; things are clean and everyone is well-fed and well-educated, and there is a certain plausibility to the tidiness of it all. I don't think you spend ten pages in 1984 being lulled into anything; it seems horrible from the get-go. In Matched, the creepiness seeps slowly in: you see it all through a fourth- or fifth-generation member of the Society, a product of breeding experiments and indoctrination, and it all seems to make sense. I'm trying to think of a dystopia that did such a good job lulling me. Not coming up with one.

Now, finally, a smidge of self-promo. My book has a page on the publisher's website, and is available for pre-order all over the place. You know this already if we're connected on Facebook or Twitter, but some of us aren't connected there, and I just wanted to get that out there. :) Awesomely, Rae Carson's book, Girl of Fire and Thorns is also available for pre-order. I am totally excited about both of these things!

Dear Mers 1994, 1997, 1999, 2001, 2003:

Sit down. In the chair. Finish some stories. Submit them to the highest markets, and when they are rejected, go second-highest. Keep submitting. Or, don't--write some novels, if that's easier. Submit those, too. Stop wasting your time gaming. You know that other people are fulfilled from gaming, but you aren't, so get on it. Also, stop believing that just because you haven't done X, you're unqualified to get on with life. So, go. Seriously. Go now.

-Mer 2011

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Dear Mer 2005:

If you don't WRITE, you won't get better. At this stage in the game, it's all about the PRACTICE. No amount of career navigatory planning is going to get you the practice. GET ON IT.

-Mer 2011

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Dear Mer 2007:

Remember how all those authors said that you should enjoy your time before the deadlines hit? That is not something authors say because they're trying to make YOU feel better. They are JEALOUS AS HELL of you, that no one is going to yank your WIP out of your hands to turn around the galleys.

Don't get me wrong, I'm happy to be a working writer. But still. Time to call your own is precious.

-Mer 2011