Vicarious Rising

I am As I Is - No Refunds

I have to admit, I am not very well read in terms of the classics. I find this shameful because I think the primary reason I rejected reading so many of them was due to my teachers' unimaginative interpretation of the required literature. This turned me off from trying to read anything considered "good for me" because if the establishment thought it was good for me, it must not be something I wanted to be a part of. If the only way to understand the book was according to the Cliffs Notes version, I wasn't interested.

Another reason I think this void in my literary education it is terrible is that the older I get, the more I run across quotations of brilliant authors whose words resonate with me. It saddens me I didn't have their works a part of my developmental make up. On the other hand, there is some pride in having come to these same insights without having been influenced by the great thinkers, but I suspect I would have been better off having been exposed to these writers if I hadn't been so damn stubborn.

It isn't too late, I'm a fast reader and I plan to do catching up. One author in particular keeps rising to the top of my list, Oscar Wilde. I did manage to read "The Picture of Dorian Gray" back in college. I did read it without it being part of coursework and completely loved the novel. Which makes me wonder why I didn't read more Wilde then (see: my stubborness). The man has said many things that make my eyes widen in awe. One of his ideas is that "The basis of optimism is sheer terror." As a ridiculous optimist, I'm not sure what the hell that means, but the audacity of such a statement makes me grin. I guess, unlike me, Wilde was not an optimist. It doesn't deter me from adoring him all the more for his boldness. I don't agree at all with this sentiment, but I'd hardly want to argue with him on it. It seems a waste of time to convince someone who isn't an optimist your point of view. And a bummer at that. Especially since I will prove right in the end unless I let the bastards bring me down.

The Wilde quote I have on my mind tonight is "Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth." I find this an apt observation on many levels, not the least of which is the sheer number of blogs and my space pages out there with more deep dark secrets exposed than one would ever imagine. But even those pages with incriminating photos attached to some degree are a mask, with the internet acting as a filter. To those who are not in our real lives, we can become whomever we want to be.

I spent at least 80 percent of my life with a shield up. I wouldn't call it either a mask or being in my own person. I was going through the motions as a survival tactic. As I began to emerge, however, I don't think I ever learned to act as being separate from "in my own person" or wearing a mask. The most I would ever do was refrain from saying anything or give my honest assessment. What I write in my blog is pretty much the same way I present in real life. Maybe with a better word structure and I'm always glad to not have to worry about pronunciation.

I might also wax on and on about a subject here that people in my real life would have checked out on long before I was done talking about it. That's part of the beauty of having a blog where I can gab to my little heart's content.

But I think the internet is a very safe place for people to anonymously share their inner selves, things they dare not put out for the masses to see for fear of ridicule and rejection. I can't decide how I perceive this phenomena. Some of what gets written is just, well, in my opinion, drivel (and, hey, I am not discounting that some, if not all, of what pours outta me doesn't qualify for that category). And I think the internet is a fabulous way for people to have an audience for every stray firing of their neurons. Chances are some other wacko out there can  related and *presto*, you have a new buddy. Would this friendship hold in real life, however? This is where I am unsure. Is the mask of the internet really enabling people to be completely honest, or does it set up another way for people to become what they wish to be rather than who they are. Maybe they speak the truth about their feelings, but not about themselves.

And, of course, it is easy to idealize people you only talk to online and don't depend on day to day in real life. The news is full of these stories. I've personally been guilty of this.

I'm still obsessing over what is truth and my quest for authenticity, which has me toodling with these thoughts. My book's overall theme is about making connections with people.  My main character is someone who had never been good at making them at the beginning of her life, but is making the attempt to change that while not having any blueprint for doing so, including family support. Like me, she is looking for people who are real, people she can trust, but not necessarily people see things the same way as she does. People with which to share and explore the journey of life.

I'm wondering if writing fiction is a type of mask for telling the truth. A few people suggested I write an autobiography, but honestly I have zero desire to do such a thing. For one, I feel it would be terribly hurtful to my family. I don't have any need to have the world vilify them for what they did to me. I don't think anyone will be served by publicly exposing them. The progress I have made in trying to heal and build whatever tentative relationship we have now, while nowhere near a normal family relationship, is not something I wish to jeopardize. Second, I don't feel comfortable revealing the details of everything. There are things I can't even discuss with my therapist yet. Some memories make me fill up with a silent scream that I don't have any intention to put on paper for the world to see.

However, there is a place for all of these to be fictionalized and come out in a way that is cathartic for me, and perhaps helpful for people reading. Does that make me false for putting it in another character's hands? I don't think so. I think I am still working through the part of me that is unsteady about my family's accusations that I am a liar and a bad person, but the more well I become, the more their critical voices fall away. Stupid, rambling blog posts like this help me wring out their taunts.

I will close this post with another favorite Oscar Wilde quote: "The well bred contradict other people. The wise contradict themselves."

I was raised to be well bred, but, damn if I don't think I've ended up wise and feel kind of dumb for it. Contradictory isn't the same as hypocrite, right? I checked the thesaurus. Whew. I should be able to sleep now.

PS I hate late night TV commercials. If I see another ad for ExtendZe, I may put a plastic bag over my head.

PSS I hit 46,144 words for NaNoWriMo today. :)  I think the whole novel will end up being just under 100,000 words, but when I hit 50K, I will have achieved the goal of NaNoWriMo, and well before the deadline. Woot!

Levity is My New Middle Name

Or maybe my new nickname. I've never been a big fan of the name Judith. Have I mentioned that my mother named me after her baby sister that died of SIDS? I think it's sort of creepy, especially since my mom found the baby dead and blue in her crib. Personally, I've had a sneaking suspicion my mom had a death wish for me. If I believed in bad omens or curses or those things (my mom does - she thinks she has the power of the Evil Eye and that she has actually caused the death of eight yellow finches and one dance teacher), it wasn't the kindest choice of names.

But I digress. I was reading a post by the fabulous Gabriella Moonlight discussing her predisposition to be upbeat that I related to. Another favorite fellow blogger, Timibe, also professes a passion for living in the solution. I am drawn to these people in recovery who look forward with the belief that life is full of possibilities that are so much like me, and so different from those people I grew up with.

I am also reacting to a comment from NJ Girl who wrote that she believes in fate and a greater plan, that everything happens for a reason. First, I want to point out that I wasn't saying that I didn't believe there was a greater power out there because I do believe there are greater things out there stirring up the universe that I have absolutely no comprehension of and that likely have a consciousness (nor would I be shocked if there were not). I also believe in patterns and connectivity between all things, in systems and relations. And I love love love the occult and tarot cards. But I also believe in chaos and free will and randomness. And like I said, I think there is a danger in attempting to read signs into things as hard proof because we have a tendency to see what we wish to rather than what is necessarily there.

I think as humans it is easier for us to believe there are reasons for everything than it is for us to accept the concept that shit just happens. I was watching the movie "The Strangers" the other night (just a so-so scare, btw), and the best line in the whole thing was when Liv Tyler asked her brutal attackers why they were doing it. One of them simply responded in a sing song voice: "Because you were home." I found that chilling. We would like to think that maybe it was because we did something to anger someone, that there was any something logical or controllable to cause an attack. Or perhaps something that singled us out as special to make us a target. But if there is nothing, no reason at all, it makes us just float frighteningly in the ether with nothing to grab on to. We weren't special, we weren't bad. We were just in the wrong place at the wrong time. There was nothing we could have done to save ourselves. There is no good to come of it. Those are not easy truths to handle.

I also think that is why living in the now is so much more effective as a way to live as a sober person than worrying too deeply about what it all means or the grand scheme of things. I don't think I am meant to know too much. Being who I am supposed to be is the optimal thing for me to do. The simplicity of it is freeing. I've felt as if a 20 ton weight has been taken off me, and everyone around me has benefitted from it. It would be such a drag to take myself so seriously, to have to believe every tragedy, no matter how heinous, was somehow a good thing because it happened as part of some marvelous master plan. I prefer to believe in meaningless horror.

Maybe it makes me an oxymoron or a hypocrite or a parallelogram for simultaneously believing in the mystical and disbelieving in fate, but that's where I stand in my silly happy shoes. I like to feel that I am the choreographer in my life, that I am not a puppet dancing on the end of some higher being's strings. That what I choose to do can have an impact on how things go. It makes life more interesting, no?

Besides, if I were a higher power, planning out eternity in advance just seems so damn prosaic. Let the little humans run about like chickens with their heads removed and laugh your deified ass off. Better entertainment value when you have eons of time to kill.

Providence of the Prudent Kind

I don't believe in signs. I think coincidences happen all the time. People just choose to see them as some sort of divinity in order to justify decisions they make, but you can make anything into a signal if you look hard enough. It's like people playing numbers games in finance: you can make anything say just about anything you want it to if you massage it right.

Which isn't to say you should look a gift horse in the mouth.

Today I received an email from the writing institute I participated in the summer of 2007 saying that as a former student, I could apply early for the coming summer. If I simply wished to register for the same course level as previous, I could just apply and send in my deposit. If I wanted to apply for a higher course, I would need to send in some writing samples. Hey, I have writing samples.

I was planning on reapplying for this class after I took an interim class to polish up this manuscript, but since this application dropped into my email box, I will go ahead and sign up with my request for an upgrade to the advanced class (don't think I am quite ready to try Masters yet). I will still probably do the interim class as I would like to present my best for review to the NY Summer Writers Institute. From there I will go conference pitching. Eek. I haven't done that since my drinking days and I chickened out on sending my manuscript after making successful pitches to agents.

It's nice to have a plan, though. Just don't call it fate.

Keeping the Dream Alive

I took the night off from writing on Saturday. I hadn't planned on it, but I found myself completely exhausted and zonking out on the sofa at 11 p.m. My husband roused me up to bed, then I proceeded to sleep until 2 p.m. this afternoon. This staying up late writing caught up to me big time.

I've set a goal to try to hit the 50,000 words by November 25 (the official close date for NaNoWriMo is Nov. 30) so that I can send it in before Thanksgiving. I believe this is do-able. Then my plan is to continue to work on the book in order to use it as a manuscript for a writing class to help with the editing process. I have further plans for it beyond that, assuming things continue to go the way they have been. I've set fairly specific goals with deadlines that are not my own dates, and I am usually good about meeting those once I commit to signing up. It really helps that my husband is (and has been all along) hugely supportive of my writing.

I made it past 31,000 words tonight, and I feel like I worked through a slump. I think realizing part of the source of my fears (that I was fabricating truth) enabled me to break through my writer's cramp.

The periodic pep talks that NaNoWriMo emails have been extremely motivational. The writers clearly have been through the process before and have managed to key into the exact feelings I am feeling towards my manuscript at the word count point I am feeling it. According to them, the back 25,000 should be a relative cakewalk. I am going to choose to believe this will be true and enjoy the process.

Cognitive Dissonance with a Side of Sloth

My parents always told me my face was an open book. I believed them because, well, I was a good girl and I had no reason not to believe everything my parents told me for all the reasons good girls do such things. What I took this to mean was that without saying a word, they knew everything going on in my head. Quite a terrifying thought for a small girl who occasionally had the audacity to have a negative thought or two about her parents. I took to closing my mouth, literally, in the hopes that the racket going on in my head would not be heard slipping out that orifice and wondered how much of my thoughts could escape my ears, eyes and nostrils. But mostly I strove to have good thoughts and always be honest when forced to actually speak.

Conversely, my parents did not have a real grip on reality, trying to tell us we had the perfect happy life, that my mother's peculiarities and fits of anger were just idiocyncracies, that my dad's night time trips to my rooms were for my comfort, that putting a suitcase on the street for my sister with a sign saying "room for rent" when she was five was just a joke they still find horribly funny. I became confused about my sense of what was real because I was "happy" but felt, in fact, rather murderous. When I was four I had a vivid dream about my mother attacking me with a knife, stabbing me over and over, and I squeezed her neck to defend myself causing her head to pop off the way that kids pop the top off of daisies and dandylions. There was no blood, just my mother's furious face accusing me from the ground. I still feel guilty about that dream - what the fuck kind of pre-schooler dreams about popping off her mommy's head? And I've got to say, part of shame that clings is because I think there is a part of me that does still have that urge. She is a real nutcase sometimes.

And then there is this whole major communication problem my family has. As in, no one really talks directly to anyone when there is a problem, but they will talk to someone else in the family. Or, most likely, my mother will just make up some sort of drama about why so-and-so is mad at such-and-such, when really so-and-so just had a bad day. But she tells such-and-such that so-and-so is mad because such-and-such borrowed her jeans and left a stain on them and is always disrespecting so-and-so's things. And of course Mother tried to tell so-and-so that such-and-such is always careful with so-and-so's things, but "you know how your sister can be..." Thus igniting a family feud that didn't really exist because now such-and-such is not speaking to so-and-so, and so-and-so has no idea of what the issue is. But guess what? Mother has an idea of what bee is in such-and-such's bonnet. Weirdly, it has nothing to do with the jeans....

I'm not even going to go into the stuff with my father that "never happened."

All this insanity produced a shoot from the hip woman, who as a younger woman had no small amount of supressed emotion and opinion that had been hanging out in her spleen waiting for the booze to wake it up.

Thankfully, both the spleen venting and the boozing have ended and I am living a mostly sane, happy life these days. But I as I was struggling last night with some progress in my novel's plot, I realized there is some irony in my desire to be a fiction novelist. I have this burning desire to tell the whole truth to the best of my knowledge, yet here I am making things up.

I believe this is causing me some distress in a way I'd never considered before. Obviously self-esteem issues are going to attack even the most accomplished writers at some point, but I think one way mine is sneaking in to sweep my feet out from under me is by telling me what a fraud I am in trying to write. Not so much in the putting down of words, but in the authenticity of revealing a truth through fiction. I'm having a crisis writing some of the recent scenes thinking that the suspension of reality is too huge, that no one would ever buy these characters, that the whole thing feels stilted and fabricated. That this contrivance all just proves that I have no idea of what the truth is.

If that doesn't shiver my timbers, I don't know what does.

Underneath everything, I want to be real. I want to connect to things and people that are real. And I want to express myself through fiction. Stephen King once said, "Fiction is the truth inside the lie." I believe these words - I want to embrace them with all my heart. Everything isn't so simple, that I can have life without deception or intrigue. The child me and the angry young woman me wanted that simplicity, to burn through all the falsehood and see everything with pure clarity. The life I have now is so much richer and better for the layers and complexity, and while I believe truth exists, I don't think it means one single answer or a life without fear.

I guess what I am saying is that there is a part of me that is thinking there should be a clear path on where to go, what to say, This Is the Way of the Righteous. But it ain't so. My story will unfold itself in its own messy way, and as long as I am guided by a desire to see rather than to please, maybe I will find some truth to share.

And stop making excuses for being stuck in the damn writing. Arg.

Important Matters

I'm sitting here, er, not procrastinating, I swear. Last night I hit almost 17,000 words and my goal for this evening is to get to 20,000. If you notice the time stamp of this post, it's late. I like it that way. My son was rolling his eyes at me about getting a decent night's sleep, but I tried the "do it like everyone else" hours thing all the way through college and beyond. I functioned just fine, but my best work was always done in the wee hours. When I wake up, I am just not creative. I am, however, decent at grocery shopping and basic errands. If I have a list I made ahead of time.

But the muse hasn't quite come into her own yet tonight, so I was reading a little online snippets and saw that President Elect Obama is searching for a chef for the White House. I find this utterly fascinating, especially as he seems more worldly in the ways of food than say McClinton and no veggies Bush. I love food, and think having a personal chef would be a blast - except for the part that I love cooking myself. Having the option of one hanging around sounds just awesome, though. I have to wonder if I would eat healthier or not. I've been eating pretty healthy with all the farm share and self-harvested vegetables we had this past summer. It'd be tempting to get a personal chef to, oh, I don't know, find me white truffles. Which, of course, I like best on a rich white parmesan cream sauce over fettuccini.

One of the chef's the story reported as being in contention is a personal favorite of mine, Rick Bayless, who has restaurants in Chicago and does some wonderful Mexican cooking. How cool would that be to have him in the White House? Have there been celebrity chefs in the White House as the official chef?

No, really, I am not just stalling here. I'm getting to work on those 3,000 words. Any. Minute. Now.

************************************

It's 4:42 a.m. and I passed the 20,000 word mark. Hoooooo raaaaaayyy.

Closing in on Week 1 of NaNoWriMo

As of about 5 a.m. today I passed the 8,000 word mark. There's good and bad in there. Mostly I feel like it's a lot of meandering. I'm getting to a point now where I am bored with setting things up and want to just drop it and get into something else in the storyline. I am wondering if anyone perchance reading it will have wanted to keep with me to this point. I've tried to keep enough going on to keep things interesting, but I don't know that I've done a good job of it. In fact, I feel a lot like the main character in my story. She's a girl who has uprooted herself and moved into a new town in a new state in a whole new region. She's trying to get used to her new surroundings and is taking everything in, but after about the first week or so, she's just sick of the whole thing and just wants to take a break and watch television. No more unpacking boxes or meeting new people. No more getting on with a brand spanking new life. Fuck it. Let's put our feet up on the coffee table and watch life go by.

I was bestowed a couple of honors this week by two of my favorite blogs. Both Pat of Child Lost and Heather of The Amazing Adventure nominated me for the Brilliante Weblog award. It tickles me pink and purple, and also gave me a much needed boost this week to have these women give me these, so thank you very, very much. I will nominate six bloggers of my own, as per the rules. It just may take a day or so. I think many of you have already received this one, but I wonder if I may double dip? I'll have to ponder. The difficulty of these things is that I know personally (as much as I am embarrassed to admit it) I feel a little wretched when I don't get nominated for one, so I kind of hate the idea of leaving someone out. It's a lot like the way Valentine's Day used to be before the teachers started making the kids give one to all the classmates. I know, I know, I'm supposed to be all recovery-full o' self-esteem, but once in awhile things feel like slights that I know are not meant to be. I'm human. So screw you all who didn't pick me for your team. Ptooey.

Hmmm. And I wonder why I haven't gotten a Thoughtful Blogger Award... Could be the attitude problem...

Messages in My Herbal Tea

Recognize that you are the truth.

Self-reliance conquers any difficulty.

So spake my Yogi Tea bag tags....

Pause for a Moment of Silence

It is almost surreal, to be sitting here in my verbena scented office snug in the back upper corner of my cocoon of a home, working on what I hope will be a publishable novel (or one that I can be proud of) and listening to the acceptance speech of the man who will be the first black President of the United States.

Whatever happens after this snapshot in time, surely I won't ever forget where I am. Right. Now.

Democracy

Voted.

Making Headway

As of late last night I topped the 3,000 mark for words on my tiny seedling of a novel. My pace is a little slower than I probably should be going at to meet the 50,000 word minimum by November 30, but I'm not completely off track.  The newer stuff is marginally better than the first three pages. I have to just leave those first several pages alone, possibly until after I finish the entire galloping task, or I might get stuck or discouraged.

I've been thinking a lot about the writing classes I took last year and what I learned from them. I think it has not only been helping my writing, it has been making the process a fuller experience for me. For instance, because this is early on and I am establishing place and character, I want to show, not tell the readers what's going on. The creative expression class helped me see how to do this better. I also learned about critical reading - and I have done tons of reading in the past year - to find styles that I admire and work for me. I've kept an ear out for ways that authors describe things within a story without making it seem like a grocery list description, but rather integral in what is happening, both interesting and evocative, things that bring the reader into the story as seamlessly as possible. I'm not sure I am pulling this off, but I am being mindful of it. The story, thus far, feels more lush for it. I also want to not go too far where you forget what the point of the story is because you are lost in gobbledy gook about the scene.

What that means also is that basically nothing much has happened in terms of plot. I do have some sweeping ideas of where I want it to go, but I haven't gotten too specific. There's still some decisions on major plot points I want to make, things like do I want to lean more towards a thriller or have that be sort of an ancillary part of what the overall theme of the novel is? Naturally there has to be a problem to solve, but I haven't decided how dramatic the stakes will be yet.

I'm thinking I will practice with my writing what I've been doing with the rest of my recovery. Do the work and see what comes.

Unsteady Fingers

Alrighty. I did it. I wrote 1,038 whole words for my first day of writing.

Oh, and it kind of sucks.

Inauspicious beginnings. Gotta love them. I always hate starting to write stuff. I guess if I keep that in mind, I can hope the rest will get better. When I wrote my last book eons ago, the first chapter, all of 3 pages, got rewritten so many times and I still hated it. I'm not sure what my problem is with getting the story started. Definitely a weakness.

But I will try to pat myself on the back for doing day one. Can't figure out how to do the word count thingy online. Perplexed and frightened by the idea of posting anything on the NaNoWriMo site.

I will have to try not to reread it and just keep plowing ahead. *rolling eyes at self*

Arg.

Oh, and anyone who is participating in this venture who wants to be a buddy with me, shoot me an email. But only if you are gentle with your criticism. I'll return the favor.