Meditations on Change and Hair Dye

05 May 2013 6 Comments

by PartlyPixie in unsticking Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,

About an hour from my house, there is a place called the Salt Flats; an expanse of desert in a long flat valley, sparkling white with a thick layer of crystal salt, the ghost of a lake that once covered this valley.

If you go there at night, you can see all the stars above, and the wind is cold and dry in your throat, like the ash of prehistoric sea life. In the distance are mountains, purple and eerie. And if you get up and run as fast a you can toward them, they never seem to get closer; it is only when you turn and look back at the blanket and flashlight and thermos you left behind, that you realize how far you ran, that you are now just a spec in the great glittering expanse of nothing, hung between two places like a star.

And you run back, faster than you want to admit, as fast as if all the bogey men of your childhood were coming down out of those distant mountains and calling your name.

Change is like that.

I've done so much, run so far, but sometimes I feel like nothing is different until I look back at who and where I was last year, the year before. Back when I was in the comfort of denial and I'll-do-it-someday. Back in the time when I wasn't stumbling through writing Something I Want People to Read for People Who Want to Read It, back when I was just a wanna be writer, one working too hard at life and being normal to actually do it.

I look behind at the comfort of that blanket on the ground, the comfort of nothing yet ventured–it's so far away–and I want to run back. The mountains ahead are so far away and so cold looking, and I swear the desert is howling for me, calling my soul to Hell. I'm sure all the demons I have ever imagined are waiting in the shadows, hungry, salivating.

But unlike running in the desert, I can't turn back. Those mountains are where I want to be, even if they are still impossibly distant, even if those monsters live and breathe and I have to slay them with my trembling ink-stained hands.

Even if no one likes what I write.

I can't go back. As much as I sometimes wish to, I'm not that person anymore. I need a change, something to remind me every day that I am different, that its ok to move on.

I read once that people who wanted to make major changes in their lives were able to do so easily after merely changing their route to work each day. Change one thing, anything, and life makes room for more alterations.

Enter a box of hair dye, a bottle of wine, and irowboat's help.

Today, I stare at the world from beneath magenta bangs instead of my natural brown laced with early white.

It seems like such a small thing, changing hair color. Reversible, insignificant, superficial.

But that's the point. Life is a series of small shifts, small steps in one direction or another, each step a reminder of the way we want to go, and shuffling that direction.

Novels aren't written in 30,000-word chunks; they are done 5, 500, 1,342 words at a time, each word and sentence and hour set aside for just the purpose another step through the salty netherworld between.

Those moutnains aren't going to get up and walk their demon-infested paths to us. We have to go to them and fight the good fight all the way to the top. And remember not to go back.

Every time I look in the mirror, I'll remember to not look back, to go forward, to be brave, and bold, and loud.

Let the rest of life follow.

 

 

 

 

Distance, where I’ve been, and getting personal

03 May 2013 5 Comments

by PartlyPixie in The Novel, unsticking Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Shadows at the tide pools.

Forgive me for rambling, I'm rusty at this.

I've been away. Away from the blog, away from home, from myself, even from writing.

I needed a vacation.

Irowboat's birthday is in April, and we decided to celebrate with a road trip in my new car to California – traveling to San Francisco and down the coast to Los Angeles, finally ending in San Diego for a few nights before heading home. It was a chance to see friends (including a visit with the fabulous people of The Office of Letters and Light), to eat marvelous food, stare at gorgeous coastlines, and to research some locations for The Novel.

We had an amazing time. There were long walks, speakeasies, The Golden Gate Bridge, winding roads with no cell phone reception, tide pools, ghosts in hotels, caves used by smugglers and pirates of yesteryear, beaches at sunset, books by Douglas Adams on the car stereo, time with each other. And, of course, amazing friends, new, old, and in-between.

There was a day spent glued to television and twitter when bombs went off in Boston, the surreal contrast of our Great Vacation against the horror and fear of the news.

There was an impromptu stop at Monterey Bay Aquarium, hunts for clam chowder on the coast, adventure.

I barely wrote a word.

It gave me distance, this trip. It gave me time in air thick with history and wonder, time in the places my characters know and love and remember. Time away from myself and who I'm used to being.

That distance gave me the chance for all this writing, all this dreaming to change me, and I've returned different. I'm new, born into myself from the new reality of writing, wanting to write, afraid and excited by all I have to learn.

I can't help but think back to last year at this time. I was frightened, troubled that I might not make it. My insecurities lashed at me like tide on sharp rocks, catching me up in waves I thought might drown me. I knew I would never be the same – I could feel it as I wrote myself real. I've been feeling the changes in me, feeling the strain between who I was and who I am yet to be.

This trip, this distance from my everyday, has broken the bond with the past. I'm floating free. I don't know how to do anything anymore, not like I used to. I don't remember how to blog or to write, I have piles of emails to reply to and comments to answer and things I want to write and share here and elsewhere. And a novel to do.

I don't know where to begin. Not even a little. So I begin here, with you.

What is clear to me is that I'm ready to more myself. Here, elsewhere, anywhere. I can feel it, the desire to hold things back. I've given in too often, and fallen silent instead of saying what I wanted to say. But the time for that is over.

Now it's time to get more real, and more serious. Time to do What I Never Thought I Would.

I'm ready for this, whatever this is. I'm ready.

 

Focusing on the Outcome

26 Feb 2013 3 Comments

by PartlyPixie in unsticking Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

I want to be a writer.

Specifically, I want to write and publish books. Books about vampires and fairies and an organization I created called the Wish Granter's Union.

I want people to read what I write, to be inspired by my characters as I have been by other characters. I want to share what I know about life, about history, about people and love and all the other questions I may have an answer to, or at least a new way of asking the question.

And I suspect that you want something similar if you are here. We all want to touch the world in some way, in our own way be it selling things we want to share with the world, making art or music, or of course, writing.

And we need to remember that.

Which is why I have decided not to apply for Clarion West.

This last Saturday I spent eight hours in a martial arts seminar with one if the most incredible teachers alive.

We were practicing evading our opponent in slow motion, and looking for openings between their movements for our attack. We were to move aside or counter their motion, then find which tartet we wanted to hit for the desired effect, in this case putting the opponent on the ground.

I could evade well enough, but every time I started to hone in on my next move, I would get caught up in the method of it (exactly how do I need to grab his knee to make him fall backward again?) and I'd get hit. Start over, I get hit again.

My teacher had to remind me of somehting we've learned before.

“Focus on the desired outcome, not the method.”

We started again. My opponent hit the ground. I don't know what I did exactly, but it doesn't matter. I got what I wanted.

We must focus on the outcome.

It is so easy as writers to get distracted with the waving arms or our opponents. We spend time reading about craft, researching markets, trying to get into classes or magazines, fighting writers block, spending time arguing over the best method for characterization, whether or not to outline before writing (please stop it).

But we can do something different. We can focus on the outcome and trust ourselves to take the necessary actions to get there.

Because when fighting an opponent, we can hit their arm as hard as we want and it won't knock them out. If we want to knock them out, we must brush aside the arm and find a more viable target.

We must find our desired outcome.

Focusing on the outcome is how I wrote fifty thousand words every month for a year, regardless of the time constraints and the moping and internal struggle I went through, I always knew that all I needed to do was move toward 50,000 words. And I had to knock aside a lot of punches aimed my way, believe me.

But I knew what had to be done, and I did it.

And all of this is why I'm not applying for Clarion.

It is an outcome; a goal I could shoot for and a wonderful opportunity for someone who has the desire and need for close instruction, needing the encouragement and environment to learn to write every day.

But it isn't my desired outcome. It is a sideways step, a side mission tacked onto the path I walk. And unnecessary.

I want to write books. I want to publish. That was what last year was about too, about getting the habit of writing and the practice in of writing, continuing, finishing, repeat.

I'm ready, I think, to fly on my own. I'm ready to aim for the ultimate goal, the big one I've been dreaming of since I was very young. I have put in my time learning to write, now it's time to learn to make that writing readable and publishable.

It all comes done to trust. Trust in myself to know what needs to be done to get where I want to go, no matter what obstacles need to be knocked out of the way.

Which brings me to another maxim from Saturday's seminar.

“There is no success in giving up.”

 

Silence, Resistance, and Arguing with Myself

17 Feb 2013 4 Comments

by PartlyPixie in Uncategorized Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,

I know I've been gone for some time. So long that irowboat took pity on me and wrote a lovely little post just to let everyone know I still alive, if not exactly prolific. Or able to spread butter on bread.

I have drafts and half written posts here on my iPad. More of the in my head. But they and other things I want to write remain as they are, either in the limbo of half-written or left as little thought bubbles in the odd hours of the night.

Before I get those posts that are ready up, I wanted to share this dilemma I'm facing in all it's neurotic glory. I tend to keep these kinds of struggles to myself because they are generally temporary and because we have other things to talk about here. But I need to get this part off my chest.

Because I'm not writing – not the way I need to be.

I don't believe in writers block, and even if I did this isn't it. I'm overflowing with ideas.

And yet, I've gone silent.

Silence in writers can be a good thing. It can be a period of reflection, growth, a respite, or just a small glitch that will work itself out.

But like depression, silence that goes on for too long means it's not just a glitch in the program, and it's time to take a good long look at what needs to change.

So now, let's all imagine the little squiggly lines and Vaseline-smeared lens effect of a television flashback, and go back to nearly one month ago. I'd just written my previous post, and was ready to decide what comes next for me.

And I decided to apply for Clarion West.

If you're not familiar with the Clarion workshops, they are intensive 6-weekly ordeals in which only 18 people are chosen per year, and the process seems to go something like: write a short story and have it torn apart, take a break and tear another person's story apart, listen to the instructors, rinse, repeat. All while staying in college dorms and networking and all that kind of stuff.

The instructors are all accomplished writers. This year, my idol and one do my favorite writers Neil Gaiman will be teaching. The workshop is also in Seattle, and if I get in I would have to get there and back, plus miss 6 weeks of work and pony up the $3,600 tuition cost.

To apply, I need to submit either 2 short stories totaling less than 30 pages (this is the recommended method), or a novel excerpt with a three page synopsis. This shoud not be difficult to come up with.

And ever since I decided to apply, I have been able to write a damn thing. Not even a blog post.

I come up with plenty of story ideas, none of which will fit into a 30-page limit. So I give up and turn to my old rough drafts and search for a excerpt and find one I think I can make work.

But it seems like if I really want to get in, I should write a short story. Two.

So I go back to that, and come up with another few thousand words. It seems to be going well.

And then Resistance sets in. Magically, I have suddenly gone out to do grocery shopping, or decided to clean my house, or have lapsed into a 4-hour coma and wake up on my desk with my forehead all wrinkly like a Klingon from my sweater-covered arms.

Resistance is as common as silence, and generally is something to ignore and push past. But once again, if it goes on too long, I think it comes time to reevaluate my situation.

What if I'm reisisting because I don't want to go?

It's a stupid dilemma to have. The chances that I may be one of the fortunate 18 is small, even if I do my best work. Nothing bad can come of writing and polishing 2 short stories or fixing up 30 pages of a novel. Why not just apply and see where the chips fall? Why not just go for it, and trust in the fates to do what is best for me?

First, the Fates have a fucked up sense of humor, and are not to be trusted. The end.

But the advice is sound, why not just do the best I can do, writing the things that I write (the temptation to write what I suspect they are looking for is high – but that's another post), and get on with things.

It all comes down to goals. Specific goals. If I want to merely apply to Clarion, just to see if what I usually write has a shot, I could have done that yesterday, or even last year. I can easily find 30 pages of pretty damn good writing to clean up and send, but that would only fulfill the goal of applying.

If the goal is to get in to Clarion, then nothing but my best will do. I'll have cheated myself otherwise if I don't do the recommended 2 short stories of my best writing to date, polishing and shining them until they are the pinnacle if what I have to offer. And then if/when I don't get in, at least I know that I did myself justice.

My ultimate goal, though, is to be a writer, to publish and write books people like enough to buy and come back for more, maybe even enough that I could quit my day job.

I suspect I don't need Clarion for that. It might help, sure – help with craft and networking and unknown other things. It seems like a side-step, though. The next step to publishing a book is editing and submitting, looking for an agent, getting rejected and trying again. That seems to be how every writer I love and respect has done it.

I don't know exactly what Clarion would do for me. In the accounts of those I have read, they say the most valuable lesson was just sitting down and writing.

I think I've got that one down. After writing 650,000 words in a year, it's now an ingrained habit to at least get out a few hundred words each day, or even to make a few notes. Writing on demand is not a problem.

But no matter what may or may not happen for me at Clarion, one thing is for sure.

Ever since I decided to apply, I have barely written.

That moment a month ago when I put it down as what I wanted was the dawn of stress and struggle and daily arguments with myself over what to do and how to do it. The only relief I can find is when I can for five or ten minutes convince myself I don't actually have to go, or even apply. Then, I feel better.

And because I feel better, I start to write again.

Until I realize maybe what I'm writing Something Promising. Maybe for Clarion…

Aaaaaand I stop writing.

I'm a believe in listening to one's own heart. And I think my Resistance and my heart are on the same page with this.

I don't want to go to Clarion. Even though I haven't even applied yet, even though I probably won't have to worry about whether or not to go because I won't get in, even though the workshop is a dream chance, the kind of thing people risk everything to do and if I do get in I'd be stupid to give up.

I don't want it.

So I'll apply. Because I can; I'll send in an except even though they recommend I don't. I'll pay the application fee and email in my words and move on.

And when I don't make it, I'll breathe a sigh of relief and plan what I'd rather do with $3,600.

Thanks, friends. I'm glad we had this talk.

 

 

 

 

 

On Babies and Bathwater (so to speak)

09 May 2012 5 Comments

by PartlyPixie in May, Writing Tools Tags: , , , , , ,

Day Nine: Go here to follow this month’s project

We’ve got to be willing to throw it out.

All of it; every blessed word, every hour of blood, sweat, and misspellings. We have to be willing to put it all in the recycling bin if we have to. We have to be wiling to cut any paragraph, any idea, no matter how much you believe it would cost you.

We have to be willing to let go.

Writing, being a writer, demands that we not be greedy. Writing is often a selfish and self-contained act, but being a writer itself demands that we give our stories out to the world—that they become no longer ours, but a part of the great complexity that is the human experience. We nurture a story, grow it, keep it hidden and close as we shape it and shape ourselves into the person who can tell the tale as it must be written. It feels like a part of our body, part of our personality, our soul.

And then, if we are to give it true life and breath, we have to let it go. Into the hands of editors and publishers and then into the minds of those readers we both want and fear. Once our stories have been read, they are in some way not ours anymore. They belong to the people who live the story as they read it just as much as they belong to us, the minds that put them into words.

In one of the most beautifully honest moments of my life, I was sitting at a local diner with my best friend and her new baby. We were watching the new little life figure out fingers and what they do by dropping Cheerios into my coffee cup, and out of nowhere my friend put a hand on her stomach and said, “Sometimes, I wish she was still just mine.”

Once fiction is born, it isn’t just ours anymore. Other people have a say in what they see, they can point out typos and inconsistencies, they can offer suggestions – both good and bad. They can say they love it or hate it, and they get to have those opinions.

If we are still attached to the story, still feel like it is a part of us, we mistake the story for ourselves. And if it is rejected, then we feel rejected. We can get depressed, decide that everything we do is awful and give up.

And take up crochet, even though we hate crochet and the yarn always gets messy and tangled before we finish anything, and all we can make is scarves because really we’re writers and writing goes back and forth, not in loopy patterns like hats or sweaters. Maybe, once everyone has too many scarves, we will get back to writing. Or making everyone afghans.

Or we can remember that this story is the story we wrote, not us ourselves.

We can be willing to let it go. We can be willing to throw it out and start again.

Because every time we write, we become better writers.

Even when we write shitty first drafts. Especially when we write shitty first drafts.

We didn’t just spend an hour writing that blog post to have a post on a blog, but to learn how to blog better for next time as well. We didn’t use those ten years writing and perfecting a novel just to have a novel, we did it to learn what it is to write and perfect a novel, so we can do it again, better, no matter if the first one is ever published.

Every time we write, we become better writers. No matter if what we have done in the past is successful in the world or not. It’s not us anymore, just something we did that we can sell to sponsor the time needed to write more.

Thinking of it this way, publication is not a goal, but a means to the end of being able to write. Rejection isn’t a failure, but a way to know that more work needs to be done, and we need to keep the day job a little longer at least.

But it doesn’t matter really. We’ll keep writing either way.

 

Baggage Claim

05 Jan 2012 Leave a Comment

by PartlyPixie in January Tags: , ,

Day five: 10,593 of 50,000

Now something about that is just downright unsettling. -Jayne Cobb

Please bear with me – this is a difficult post to write.

I’ve encountered something unexpected.

It isn’t about writing, or word count, or about the anxiety over getting this novel done, because that’s going fine. It’s about success, if you can believe it.

Yesterday, I wrote a blog here about things going well, and they are. My readership went up exponentially that same day, and I even had a few people “like” my page on facebook. The advantage to having low expectations for my performance is that I can always astound myself with how well things can go. And suddenly that day, even though the successes were small, things were really going well. I had a moment of elation and triumph and absolute happiness – the feeling that I have found my place in the galaxy at last.

That is when it all started to go wonky.

It started with my heart rate getting faster, and at first I assumed it was the over-extracted shot in the dark (espresso in coffee) I’d had to fuel my fiction writing that afternoon. But then my arms went numb, my hands started shaking, and finally came total mental shut-down. My head started to hurt and my stomach clenched, alternating between unreasonable ravenous hunger and waves of nausea. I couldn’t think, I couldn’t move. All I could do was sit there in front of the computer, absolutely sure the world was coming to an end.

I know this feeling, I thought, this is terror.

I’ve heard of this thing called “resistance” or “fear of success” before, but  never actually gone so far into a project that I’ve encountered it. I didn’t ever think it could be so real and so incapacitating.

I convinced myself to sit down and listen to some of the voices inside me that were terrifying me into a shaking mess of gelatinous writer. I listened, and listened, and listened.

I’ll spare you the gory detail, but from now on I will dub this voice the “Who the hell do you think you are” voice. Because she says that a lot, that’s why. Somehow, I’ve managed to believe for years that I’m not good enough to be liked, or to write, and I certainly don’t deserve to be successful. Anything that looks like happiness and success is against the Laws of the Universe and is therefore Wrong.

Fascinating. No wonder it’s taken me so long to get started.

I’ve begun to wonder if this is the reason we get so damned stuck as creative people. At some point we learn that we don’t get to do this for a living or for enjoyment. It gets internalized. Maybe we even do this number on ourselves to keep from ever getting to that Big Project, protecting our psyches from failure like over-bearing mothers. We hear so much about “fall back plans” that we skip to the fall back and forget about the thing we want so much we’re prepared to risk failure.

Then when we finally get started and have any measure of success, what happened to me occurs and we turn to into a pile of emotional glop.

And stop, never to return. I mean, who goes back into the place that felt so awful?

Fear of Success is the wicked cousin of Perfectionism, and I’m not going to let myself be stopped by either of them. I’m going to write and be terrified and write some more until I have unlearned all the lessons that are holding me hostage to my old ways of (not) doing things.

I wonder what other lessons wait for me.

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