The Nature of Poetry

Did I mention that Josh Young — one of my characters — taught me to write better poetry? Given that Josh doesn’t exist except for pages in a book and in my mind, this would seem impossible. But when I wrote Josh, I created him as a talented English major who got teased in grade school because he was too beautiful, and who has grown into a formidable young man with mystical leanings. (Whether he is still beautiful or not, I expect, depends on personal preference, but his girlfriend/wife Jeanne thinks so.)
Josh, as an avid student of English literature and composition, learned about the same things I learned in that poetry class in college, but he took them more seriously. He identified as a poet, so he understood metaphor and developed the ability to distill his thoughts in the purest way possible. I, on the other hand, wrote entirely out of emotions, and my poems are of three sorts: “There’s this guy, I’m so blue, and I’m so blue because there’s this guy”. (My husband would argue this is still the case, bless him.)

When I wrote Josh’s poems in “Gaia’s Voice”, I had to write as Josh. In reality, that meant pulling up all those technical things I learned in my poetry class (long LONG ago), and pull Josh’s thoughts through that process. In my imagination, it looked more like this:

Josh stood over my shoulder. I hadn’t heard him approaching me, and I blamed my hearing as much as I credited his Aikido training. “Have you thought of holding back your passion?” he inquired as he read the words over my shoulder on the screen.

“Holding back?” I asked dumbly. I defined myself, if by nothing else, by my passion. I highlighted a block of text to delete it —

“No. Don’t deny the passion. Channel it. Play with it. Hint about it. Concentrate it like a laser beam and zap someone with it at the end of the poem.” I turned around to see him push that unruly lock of black hair out of his eyes.

I stared at my words on the screen. They made “How do I love thee” sound coy. They bludgeoned, they overwhelmed. They didn’t tease the way first love would. They did not capture Josh’s feelings. Moreover, they did not capture mine.

“Poetry captures an experience, not a speech,” Josh noted. Then, just as quickly as he had appeared, he walked off into the white existence of my imagination.

I wrote a fun section of my Work in Progress yesterday I wanted to share. To give a little background, A shadowy group called Second World Renewal have chased Grace and Ichirou, prodigies in viola and art prospectively, and Ichirou’s chaperone Ayana, across Poland. The three have boarded a ferry from Gdynia, Poland to Nynahshamn, Sweden as an attempt to get to their home countries. As they boarded the ferry, Grace noticed the porter resembled one of Second World Renewal’s hired muscle. Because Ayana brushes off Grace’s fear, Grace suspects Ayana is in league with the group.

Ayana sends Grace and Ichirou off to the disco while she claims to set a trap for the group’s thug. Having no choice, they dress up and go to the disco, where Grace gives in to her fatalism in a .

Let me know what struck you, what questions you would ask.

*****

Music blared in the disco, enough that I thought I saw the walls move. A few people sat at the bar tables and even fewer danced. The blue lights — can lighting, neon accents — rendered the clientele almost anonymous and the wooden tables and chairs and walls a greasy black. The performer, dwarfed against his equipment, hit knobs and slides and created loops of sound that slid against each other. The couple that slow-danced when everyone else on the floor couldn’t figure out whether to dance fast or slow took the anonymity offered to start locking lips. I wondered what that would be like …

Ichirou and I finally sat at the edge of the disco. We sat silently, not watching the performer, not looking at each other. I thought about Stockholm Syndrome and whether I could truly escape Second World Renewal’s plot and why they wanted me in the first place, given I wasn’t a real prodigy like Ichirou, and if I would survive to get my first kiss —

Tears overcame me.

Ichirou reached for my hand.

I yelped — “Don’t do that, you little pervo —“

A tall man wearing a crew uniform stopped by our table. “Is there a problem?” he asked in a low pleasant voice. That was all I could discern of him given the lurid blue lighting.

“No,” I gulped. “Everything’s okay. I’m just babysitting and — “

“You decided to bring your charge to the disco?” the white-uniformed man chuckled.

“Well, I …” Ichirou had turned away with his arms crossed as I spoke.

“It’s okay. Just so you don’t let him drink any alcohol.” His face bent close to mine, and I saw freckles, dark eyebrows, and a thin nose.

“We’re not drinking,” I shrugged. As far as I was concerned, Ichirou wasn’t drinking. I myself considered trying Sex on the Beach if I was about to lose my freedom to Ivanov’s goons.

“Why not? You have a chaperone.” He shared a significant look with Ichirou, of all things, and Ichirou nodded. “May I get you something to drink?”

“Sure, if you’re not going to drop a roofie in it.”

The man nodded thoughtfully. “It’s hard not to worry about that, isn’t it? I assure you, nobody’s going to tamper with this drink. What would you like?”

“Sex on the Beach,” I mumbled.

“I couldn’t hear that,” the crew member grinned.

“She wants Sex on the Beach,” Ichirou chirped. I laid my head on the table, hoping the blue lighting hid my flaming cheeks.

“Ok, one Sex on the Beach for the lady, and for you?” I heard the crew member ask Ichirou.

“I’m fine with mineral water. Sparkling if you have it,” Ichirou replied. And do they have any vegetarian food?”

“Lacto-vegetarian?”

“Lacto-ovo-vegetarian,” Ichirou corrected. “I don’t want her drinking on an empty stomach.”

“You’ll make a fine salaryman someday.” I saw the crew member wander off as I lifted my head. If I survived this trip, not even I would believe the story.

“Please, no, not a salaryman,” Ichirou breathed when the crewman had walked out of earshot.

“What’s a salaryman?” I queried.

“The stereotypical Japanese man. Works in a company, lives for the company, spends more time drinking with his co-workers than with his family. Dies of overwork.”

“Oh.” I wondered if being a salaryman would be better or worse than being a kidnapped prodigy.

The anonymous crew member interrupted my thoughts wielding a tray. “Here you go,” as he handed me an icy drink off his tray.

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“You take care of her, all right?” The crew member pulled out a phone, scrutinized the screen, and trotted quickly out of the disco.

For the Love of Coffee

On Facebook, coffee is a sacrament. Have you noticed this? Coffee jokes, coffee witticisms, coffee mugs. If you subscribe to writing-related pages on Facebook, you’ll quickly become convinced that coffee is the fount of all inspiration. For many of us, it is. (Those of you in the United Kingdom don’t understand this because your coffee usually is Nescafe instant and some boiling water. That is not coffee.)

Some of you reading this don’t fancy coffee and prefer your caffeine another way. For example, tea — sweet, unsweet, green, oolong, Earl Grey. Most of the people I’ve met who drink Earl Grey were English majors or Star Trek: Next Gen fans. Or Mountain Dew — all the people I’ve met who prefer Mountain Dew are computer programmers. Read on, because it may help you understand us coffee drinkers.

Why do so many writers prefer coffee? It could be because of the allure of coffeehouses* as places to write. Perhaps it’s knowing the mystique of the coffee’s journey from coffee cherry to processing method to grinding to brewing. Maybe it’s just that coffee is a socially sanctioned form of stimulants.

Coffee drinkers, like writers, appreciate the history of coffee. The apocryphal story of the discovery of coffee goes like this: An Arabic shepherd, feeling weary, sat under a bush to rest after making a fire to boil water. After he let the water cool, he notices one of his goats take a drink and then bound around the pasture with leaps and hops. The shepherd witnessed this, took a drink of the water, and no longer felt tired.**

Can you write without coffee? Yes — any ritual will help you get in the mindset, and writers have plenty of rituals — Using a fountain pen to write, writing in a dedicated Moleskine book, writing in a blog as a warmup, listening to music … Coffee is just another ritual. With caffeine added.***

*****

* You will find the best ambience in indie coffeehouses. Consider yourself lucky if you have access to these. Chain “stores” that sell nationally recogized brands, not so much. Only one Starbucks in the US, in my opinion, has true coffeehouse ambiance, and it’s the Starbucks at Northwest Missouri State University, in the library. I work at that university and hold some of my office hours here.

** I question this account for a couple reasons: 1) I’ve seen goats. They dance like they’re overcaffeinated ALL THE TIME. (Meet the crazy goats at Goats Gone Grazing Acres for an example.) 2) The herder boiled his water to be sanitary, only to drink it after a goat slurped it up? I prefer the story without the dancing goat.

*** Full disclosure: I am a coffee snob. In this household, we buy small lot green coffee beans and roast them at home in a small-batch drum roaster. We brew in a French press. We check for flavor notes. It’s really quite obnoxious. Really.

Procrastination

We procrastinate for several reasons:

Because the tasks lack challenge (Housework, for example)
Because the tasks are too challenging (Getting up in the morning?)
Because the tasks are monotonous (Housework, for example)
Because of fear of failure (Why I have five manuscripts that I haven’t marketed aggressively)
Because of fear of success (Honestly. Success changes lives)
Because we just dislike the task (Housework, for example)

In other words, we want to perform tasks that are challenging but not too challenging, have enough novelty to engage us but utilizes our skills, and offer reasonable success that doesn’t fall outside our comfort zone. If we don’t perceive that the task will grant us all that, we procrastinate.

Many factors inside and outside ourselves can create an atmosphere ripe for procrastination. Illness and worry can ramp up our belief that tasks are too challenging. Depression can enhance our feelings of failure. Jarring background music may burden us with more challenge, while bland or crowded surroundings may increase our perception of monotony.

The process of writing yields all sorts of procrastination pitfalls. Some tasks — proofreading, for example — can be boring. Revising a novel or poem can challenge writers to the point of stress. Search and replace on a document can be monotonous (Scrivener, which is what I use to compose my writing, has no automatic replace). The difficulty in breaking into the market with one’s writing can enhance fear of failure, and daydreaming can enhance fear of success. Some parts of writing, such as writing a synopsis, can be annoying.

We can trick ourselves out of procrastination. Some tricks I use are:

Breaking the task into smaller pieces. For example, I lay out the outlines for my books in quarter-chapters. Instead of feeling that sense of accomplishment only after finishing a chapter, I feel it with every quarter-chapter. (Small, frequent doses of accomplish reduce the fear of failure and the monotony).
Switching up where I write (this is why writing retreats are so popular)
Skipping forward to a more rewarding part of the book (more challenge, more motivation)
Skipping forward to a less challenging part of the book (in my current book, that means writing in the Michigan hideout part of the story — less challenging than piecing together the malls in Gdynia (which is pronounced Goo-DOON-ya for you English speakers)
Starting my writing day by promising myself I can quit writing after 10 minutes (I’m dealing with minor depression today — this is my best strategy for writing with depression).

Procrastination is not our friend, but we can negotiate a cease-fire with it.

Thanks for reading. I love you all.

The Joys and Sorrows of a Playlist

Many of my fellow authors make playlists to inspire them to write. It makes sense — music helps people muster up feelings which can energize, soften, or entrance.

Football (by which I mean American football) and soccer (by which I mean everyone else’s football) use popular songs and team anthems to fire up the audience.

In movies, a playlist can make all the difference in the viewer’s perception of the movie. Guardians of the Galaxy‘s well-chosen vintage soundtrack may well have been some of the reason for its success. For an example of how a soundtrack manipulation can influence our perception of a movie, watch this trailer.

Back to writers — yesterday, I read a Facebook post from one of my favorite romance authors, Robin D. Owens. The discussion centered around soundtracks as motivation, and I was reminded of all the pitfalls we writers have when trying to put together playlists:

Unlike James Gunn, who could afford the time and money to go through thousands of songs to complete the Guardians soundtrack, writers rely on what they have in their MP3 collection, songs they can recall, and suggestions from their friends.
A song with words might have the right words but wrong musical feel, or vice versa. Here is a sad song about child abuse whose tune doesn’t fit its words:
A song you thought was suitable doesn’t flow with the rest of the playlist. I wanted the playlist for Prodigy (Grace, the main character, likes that one) to incorporate a lot of classical, because that’s what she would be listening to. I, of course, wanted the pieces I picked to fit the mood of the segments of the book, which include a lot of running and a counter-attack on the protagonists’ part. I put the playlist together, and realized that one of the classical pieces sounded like the background music to a 1930’s Superman movie.
iTunes Store has little talent for this type of search. Type “eerie” and you get songs called “eerie” in their title and albums called “eerie”. Most of these will be death metal (not eerie), rap (not eerie), or Halloween music (NOT EERIE, ironically enough.) No theremin music (they can even make “Over the Rainbow” sound a little scary.)
Almost nobody can make your playlist for you because they can’t get into your head, which is the only place your characters and plot live when you need a playlist. Perhaps a playlist goddess can. Or the person who listens to you prattle about your book daily — my husband has gotten pretty good at playlists.

Try a playlist — not just for writing, but for motivation. For working out, for running, for housework, for getting up in the morning. I had a partner for a presentation back in college who walked into the room where I was putting together my poster, said, “excuse me”, and dropped the needle on “Also Sprach Zarathrustra. He then breathed, “I’m prepared now.” It turned out that this was his ritual to get through public speaking, as he was an introvert.

Just understand that it’s a work in progress. Like you are.

Change or Die

As you might have read here before, I’m writing a book. I woke up yesterday morning and decided my novel fell into the Young Adult category. I decided to rename the book “Prodigies”. Then I decided that, instead of splitting the narrative into four different segments with four different first-person narratives, that I would retain one first-person narrative throughout. So in about three minutes, I changed everything but the characters and the plot.

When I first started shaping this story, I wanted to write in the viewpoints of all the characters because — so cool! so experimental! so avant-garde! I loved my characters; I wanted to give them all stories — the eighteen-year-old mixed race violist who spent her life in residential music schools; the seventeen-year-old graphic artist whose talent is edged by madness; the 26-year-old teacher and mentor who has declared war against a shadowy conspiracy; the 28-year-old veteran with PTSD and a talent he will not reveal. But one of the rules of writing is to limit your protagonists to one (or maybe two if you must) because readers prefer reading the story through one person’s eyes. I chose Grace, the violist, because I felt she saw and interacted with the characters the best:

******

I stood in front of Room 16, afraid if I knocked too loud at that time of the night, I would attract the attention of those large men who served the Ivanovs. If I knocked too quietly, I would not wake Ichirou at all, especially as the bedroom lay beyond the suite —

As I dithered, I realized that I could go outside and throw rocks at the kid’s second-story window. As if that wouldn’t attract attention. As if I could figure out which window was his.

The door opened, and Ichirou hissed at me, “You may want to keep the grumbling down.”

“Thank you, Captain Obvious,” I hissed back as I let him pull me into his room and close the door silently.

“I’m just saying …” Ichirou took a deep breath. “How do we get out of here?” I noticed he wore jeans and a t-shirt with his hoodie over it, and his laptop sat by the door.

“What about Ayana?” I whispered, remembering that Przemysław had said he wasn’t sure about Ayana.

“Ayana told me to go with you.” Ichirou picked up his computer bag and peered through the peephole. “Of course,” he muttered. “A reverse peephole.”

“Should we — “

“Go go go!” Ichirou hissed, then grabbed my free hand and trotted across the lounging area, bumping into a chair. He threw the curtains open and pulled the window sash up. “Watch your step; it’s a bit far to the fire escape.”

Ichirou tried the fire escape first; his laptop appeared to unbalance his small frame for a moment, until he lurched forward and pulled himself onto the metal step and gripped the railings.

My turn. I perched on the sill, judging the difference between myself and the fire escape. I would not have to jump; if I shifted far enough to the right and stepped a bit, I could reach the step with my foot and shift my weight to grab the railing. Hopefully my viola would survive the maneuver.

As I swung myself onto the fire escape, we heard a gunshot, then another.

We ran down the fire escape. The pounding of our feet met the pounding of my heart.

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*****

I also wanted to move away from “The Ones Who Toppled the World” because I’m afraid that title oversells the plot. They don’t topple the world, but they certainly do a number of the United Nations. (What do you think of “The Ones Who Toppled the Nations”?)

I guess I wanted to say that a writer should not be so wedded to something in their story that they will not walk away from it. If change improves the story, by all means change!

What Makes You Passionate? (No, not about sex)

This question is for my readers — writers or non-writers: what makes you passionate?

No, this is not about sex — or it could be, I guess; I just don’t want to hear about it. This is about what fires you up, inspires you, drives you to create, or to dance, or play with your kids, or even to sell Mary Kay (if you’re out there and reading, Cassandra!)

Passion is not the act itself; it’s the thoughts and feelings about the act — for example, “I feel passionate when I read my girlfriend’s texts and I want -” (No, that’s sexy, whoever of you thought that. We’re skipping that today.)

Let’s try this again: “I feel passionate about trains — it’s the history, it’s the very size of the engines, the glamor of the old lines in the Golden Age of trains. I love building my own elaborate layouts for HO gauge and building scenery and picking out my rolling stock …” (Note: I had to research this section to write it. I do not have elaborate layouts in my house.)

Not everyone describes their passions in such glowing terms. Introverts tend to keep their passions to themselves. Some people are afraid to describe their passions at all, because they think their passions are too strange– there are a few that fit that category, I’ll admit; Ed Gein’s* sewing projects, for example.

We need to know what makes us passionate, because that’s what makes our lives magical, what motivates us to create, to excel, to grow.

What makes you passionate? Feel free to jump in!

* If you don’t know who Ed Gein is, look him up. He inspired both Leatherface in Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Norman Bates in Psycho.

Utopia Moments

I never thought I would get old. (Yes, I know — consider the alternative.) Society treats aging for women as a liability, throwing in words like “faded”, “hag” — honestly, though, it’s not that bad. If one doesn’t read mass media or the screeds of militant meninists, the reality is that people think I’m too skinny (absolutely not true), more men hold doors for me, and people ask about my grandchildren (no kids, no grandkids — would you like to meet my grandkitties?) In a culture that worships youth and beauty, I’m finally off the hook.

Sometimes, as a writer, I use struggles to write a moment of utopia. I think it’s a natural urge to give my messy reality a happy ending. Utopias are never perfect,however, because that would be boring. In fact, the imperfection of utopias makes for good drama (several Star Trek reruns use that principle to good effect.) But at the same time, reading one’s written utopia makes for a satisfying sigh and a feeling of being wrapped in a security blanket, if only for a moment.

For example, the short story below. It takes place at the setting for a few of my books, an ecocollective named Barn Swallows’ Dance. The main characters are a May-December couple who have been married for about 30 years, Josh Young (age 53) and Jeanne Beaumont-Young (age 83). The Kami mentioned in the story are spirits in Shinto. Enjoy!

******

That day, as she had every day for the six months since her husband died, Jeanne Beaumont- Young sat in the back yard of her cottage in the circle of cottages waiting for him.

Her daily help thought she was morbid, maybe even senile, but they allowed that her relationship with her husband had been something of a fairy tale. He had been an author — not a paperback author, but an author that The New York Times and the like lauded as important. He had credited Jeanne, a much older botany professor, with much of his inspiration. The age difference had been considered controversial, but no one could argue that they hadn’t loved each other.

The back yard, like the front, sported a lush collection of trees, vines, and plants, all edible. She had planted them all years ago when they had moved there. Others took care of them now.

She sat in the wooden lawn chair for hours a day, a wizened woman with a fall of thick white hair. Waiting.

Jeanne wished she could see visions. Gaia had not given that gift to her. Jeanne could talk to kami, or nature spirits, encourage them to grow big, strong plants. But she could not see them, or even see metaphors of their presence.

That had been her husband’s gift, and she desperately missed him.

That’s why she sat in the yard, in her permaculture guild, a planting of trees and perennial food plants, day after day. Josh had told her once that Shinto religion believed that the most exemplary of humans would reincarnate as kami. Josh had believed in Shinto, and she believed he was exemplary. She believed he was out there, as a kami, waiting for her.

She could not have told anyone about this, and no one would have believed her anyhow. But she sat. And waited.

A mist rose up from the depths of the woods. One patch of mist grew more defined, more opaque, and did not burn off as the sun rose. “I?” the patch thought to itself as it coalesced, taking form, although no more solid.

It clutched toward sentience. “I … am?” It looked around at the trees surrounding it. “Purpose?” It knew it had a purpose, and its purpose had to do with the sun slanting down through the branches, and the cool green, and the muddy scent of the nearby lake. A fragment of sound, more staccato than birdsong with odd pauses, crossed its mind: “Sometimes, the most exemplary of humans …” In the jumble it heard its name, knew what it was: kami. Protector spirit.

The kami floated toward the lake and slid inside a tree trunk to see how it felt inside. The tree, which it recognized as willow, felt good, right. But – It felt a lack of something, a piece of itself gone. It strained to remember – remember? What was that? Didn’t it always live there? Remember …

Somewhen, it had been something else, dying in a place of stones and earth, its life pouring out of it. Remembered birdsong: “My willow, I’ve called for help, but I’m afraid you won’t make it.” It – he — recognized his last words: “I told you you’d outlive me.”

He was a willow? That made no sense: He was inside a willow, but he was not a willow. Another word: metaphor. Someone, the old woman with the husky voice, called him a willow. That realization jogged another memory, a robust woman who stood next to him in white, and a voice like wind whistling through a log which he surmised was his voice: “you are my brook, and I would die without you.”

He was looking for a brook? No, he was looking for the woman; this was metaphor again. He vaguely remembered his past life was based on metaphor; now he was stripped to his essence and had no need to speak obliquely, or even to speak. He moved now, like a cloud blown by wind, looking for the woman.

He didn’t travel far. He felt her presence, bracing and quicksilver, and floated down to a clay-walled cottage where a frail, white-haired woman sat at the edge of a circular grove of trees. He knew these trees – had planted them with this woman in his past life. Jeanne! he realized, and his sense of detachment crumbled. “It makes no difference what I am now, I am as much hers as I am Gaia’s.”

First sunset in the grove: He stood in the sunlight in front of the clearing, showing himself to her. She squinted into the clearing, wrinkling her brow, but she did not see him. He felt an ache in his center that he remembered in his previous form – his heart. He tried to call her voice, but he spoke only wind. He stayed there, watching a tear run down her cheek. When all was dark, she walked inside the cottage.

Second sunset in the grove: She wouldn’t recognize his current form, because it did not look human as she was, as he once had been. He tried to remember what “human’ looked like – upright, two legs, two arms. He tried to remember what he looked like as a human – this was much harder. He remembered being small, mouselike – not mouselike in actuality; that was another metaphor. Dark hair, almond-shaped eyes…

It took many sunsets for him to remember what he had looked like. He had to walk in the woman’s dreams as they floated over the forest. The ephemeral world dismissed the tiny silk fluffs of cottonwood as seed parachutes, but they carried the dreams of humans to the places where they would grow. He became as tiny as dust, walking through the rainbows reflected on each tiny strand of fluff. One night he came across her dreams, smelling of watercress. He saw himself from a distance, a young man who gazed at the woman she once was. The woman was soft and formidable in a sweater and jeans, her dark hair tied back –

“No!” He admonished himself. “Look at yourself. Study every detail.” Black thick hair touching his collar and falling in his eyes. Large, almond-shaped, luminous brown eyes – he never would have guessed. A slight smile, sulky lower lip. Long but not prominent nose. Slight body, like a willow sapling.

“Josh?” he asked his younger self, his ephemeral self, but got no answer. This was just a dream, not a life.

He – Josh – floated back to Jeanne’s grove. He stood in the grove in a patch of sunlight., standing right in front of the now-old Jeanne; the white-haired woman seemed agitated in her chair but did not see him. Josh felt rain on his cheek that matched her tears. Then, a flash of memory, tinged with a feeling that tasted like flower nectar, which he now knew as love–

Jeanne could actually hear kami!

He knew what to do, now that he remembered speech.

Hours passed. The light hit the guild in a certain way, spotlighting a patch of grass in the ring of trees and shrubs. She heard a voice, light and dry, a hallucination, her Josh: “I remember you don’t see things, but you do hear. Step into the light.” So she did. Within the circle, Josh stood as she first knew him — a black-haired, ethereal, mercurial young man rather than the calm, greying, near-sighted older man she remembered from their later years.

He kissed her, as he always had, like he was slaking his thirst. “You are my brook, and I couldn’t live long without you.”

“You are my tree, my willow, and I would have grown dry without you.” These words were their secret, their wedding vows. Nobody else had ever heard them.

“You know there are birds to feed. Come along.”

“What do I look like now?” she whispered

“A goddess of summer, as you always have to me.”

They stepped into the apple tree, as they had no bodies to burden them anymore.

Inside Out, Outside In

Everything you write in a journal can give you insight on yourself. It can also give you insight on your stories.
Everything you write in your stories can give you insight on your story. It can also give you insight on yourself.

(This is not to say that you are the main character in your stories, as you are in your journal. Or you might be — Mary Sue and Marty Stu stories are not necessarily bad if the story is well-written. For those unacquainted with fan fic, a Mary Sue/Marty Stu story features a protagonist who charms everyone, becomes indispensible and gets the girl/guy/gender fluid individual. He or she has no discernable faults. The story gives you the impression that the main character is an extension of the writer. It’s best to avoid writing Marty Stu/Mary Sue because it’s hard to write well. However, James T. Kirk in the Star Trek reboot fits this profile rather nicely.)

You inform the emotions of your characters based on your emotions and your take on others’ emotions. How could you not? Everything you learn about emotional complexity from life, often explored through journaling, sneaks into your story as you try to inject emotional realism. Conversely, sometimes you read that page or ten you’ve written and say, “That reminds me of me.”

I came to this realization studying yesterday’s tempestuous missive in this blog. Hours after I wrote it, three words jumped at me: “I love everyone.” I realized what I actually said was, “I want everyone to love me.” After becoming really embarassed for giving that away, I claimed that neediness, and then thought, “Now, wouldn’t that make a Mary Sue more intriguing?”

To spiral back to the beginning, everything you write in a journal can give you insight on yourself. It can also give you insight on your stories. Everything you write in your stories can give you insight on your story. It can also give you insight on yourself. It takes writing and introspection.

Day 2 Camp NaNo — and reflections on fame and weirdne.

Today, on the second day of Camp NaNo, here are the searches I performed (which is why I only wrote abut 1000 words in two hours):
Japanese girl’s names
Krakow to Gdansk train schedule
Translate to Polish: “How dare you molest that young man”

I might have missed a couple.

*********
I don’t ever want to be famous. As an American, this statement is almost sacrilege. I want to be competent at what I do. I want people to read my message. But I do not want to be famous. This is why:

Fame costs too much.

What do I mean by that? I mean that I am what one might call neurodiverse. What that means is that my brain does not see the world the way other people’s do. People termed neurodiverse include 1) people on the autism spectrum, 2) people with mental health disorders, and 3) people with cognitive differences. (My classmates in school believed me to be 1) and 3); my doctor has diagnosed me as 2) ).

People who are neurodiverse are often termed “weird”. I have been termed “weird”, although nowadays that’s tempered by “intelligent”. This is what people call “weird”: even with medicine, I come off as exuberant and a little mystical. I dream books. I talk to dragonflies. I fall in love all the time but ask nothing of it. I want to learn your stories, all of you. I love everyone. Everything positive, nerdy, inspiring amuses me.

Sometimes, even with my medication, I can get depressed. I can think I’m the most unworthy person in the world and want to disappear, and nothing anyone says will change that.

Fame costs too much. Why?

Hiding who I am to look “normal” costs me. It wraps me in a bundle of “not-okayness”. Can you imagine my exuberance peeking through in an administration job, or a corporate job? I already get looked at askance when I giggle in a Faculty Senate meeting because I’m enchanted with a new project. I would promise more than I could deliver in a layoff because I would hurt for those people. I would not lose weight to have a professional photo taken, and I would not try to look my age. I would want to have that picture taken with one of my cats. I would fight tooth and nail to stay approachable. I would talk to the dragonfly in your presence and explain why I had.

People can look at neurodiverse me and say, “Wow, she’s a little out there.” (This has happened). They can call me the R-word (this has happened). They can say, “If she became a professor, so can I” (I hope they’ve said this). They can say, “She’s weird in a good sort of way” (on a course evaluation, honestly).

They can say, “She’s like me, so I don’t have to be a corporate or fashion or administrative drone”. This is true, but you may have to give up fame to accept your humanity.