Feeds:
Posts
Comments

Archive for August, 2010

Brief Update

Posted in Life on August 26, 2010| Leave a Comment »

Just to let you all know, I’m actually NOT in England or Wales right now.  Nope, I’m lounging on my very own couch, as I have been doing for the past week or so.  Apparently my ankles had ideas of their own regarding my upcoming trip, and after waking up the day before my flight with a swollen bruised ankle that couldn’t take any weight, I rethought the entire trip and canceled it.

Don’t feel too sorry for me though.  I’ve been having a staycation while the ankle heals, and we’re leaving for Maui on Saturday.  So I’ll be swimming and going down water slides and eating too much and reading while listening to the ocean’s surf and getting fancy spa treatments and watching romantic sunsets with my husband.  Not too shabby, all things considered. 🙂

Read Full Post »

Journey to England and Wales

Posted in Life, tagged , , on August 20, 2010| 9 Comments »

Vacation time!  This weekend I am getting on a plane and taking off for faraway places.  If I were an especially kind person, I would have arranged for guest bloggers in my absence, but alas, I am not as kind as all that.  It’s possible I might pop on with the occasional photo, but it is equally possible I will disappear off the internet sphere for a few weeks while I go off, rejuvenate, see some amazing sights, and have a great time.

In the meantime, here are some of the places I hope to be seeing:

Bath

Idyllic Cotswolds

Thornbury Castle

Mount Snowdon

My favorite city

Have fun while I’m away, and I’ll see you on the other side of Labor Day, if not before.

Cheers!

Read Full Post »

Six Impossible Things Before Breakfast, or How to Have an Exciting Life

Posted in Life, tagged , , on August 18, 2010| 13 Comments »

Once upon a time I lived in London, the United Kingdom.

Crouch End, London, UK

How did this happen?   I was twenty-two years old, I held a fresh-off-the-presses Bachelors of Arts degree in Music, and I needed to get out of Dodge, Dodge being pretty much anywhere in California.  What I wanted most of all was to live in the UK.

I planned my move for twelve months.  I found a program that would obtain a working visa for me (BUNAC) and I saved money for my plane ticket.  Through luck and family connections I stumbled into a prime house sitting gig in the little neighborhood of Crouch End, in northern London (Zone 3 on the Northern line, Zone 2 if I took a bus to Finsbury Park).

In London, I had many adventures, met many strange people, and obtained several jobs over the course of my time there.  Most importantly, I was living in a foreign country, which opened my mind and allowed me to discover who I was without all the external confusing trappings.

While I was living there, I was corresponding via e-mail with a friend of mine, telling him all about my new life and how much I loved living in London.  (And I did love living there.  It was a hard year for me, it’s true, but I never stopped adoring that city.)

His response?  He wrote something to the effect that my life, or in any case what I was choosing to do with my life by living in London, “wasn’t the way the world works.”

I have always remembered that e-mail, even though I received it over nine years ago.  It struck me as deeply profound.  Because of course, me being in London was exactly the way the world worked, because otherwise how could I be there in the first place?

It was profound because that sentence of his got right to the heart of the difference between him and me.  It’s all in the way we believe the world works.  In other words, it’s all in our perspective, it’s all in our minds, and it’s all in our courage.  It’s all in what we believe to be possible.  The White Queen had it right all along.

I believed I could live in London, and I did what it took to get me there.

What do you believe?

P.S. The banner on this blog?  Why yes, it’s a photo of London, and yes, it does help remind me of what is possible. 🙂

Read Full Post »

My Pep Talk to Myself

Posted in Arts, Life, Writing, tagged , on August 16, 2010| 10 Comments »

When I decided I was going to write a novel, I was really scared.  I was also really irritated to be scared.  I mean, how many big projects had I completed with no problems?  How many times had I gotten up in front of an audience and sung in a foreign language I don’t even speak?  (Sometimes even when I knew I couldn’t sing the song in question very well at all.)  And yet sitting in front of a computer alone in my study with a blank screen in front of me was somehow terrifying?

To push myself to go through with my decision, I wrote a note to myself on a yellow post-it and placed it on the bottom right of my screen.  Here’s what my note says: “Writing isn’t so hard, it won’t take long, and I’m sure I can learn while I’m doing it.  No one else will judge me and my work because they are already so busy with their own problems.”

I wrote what I needed to hear, and I read that note a hundred times over the course of writing that novel.

Unfortunately, the note didn’t work quite as well when I was sending my novel out to agents and my short stories out to editors and getting form rejections.  It sure felt like the world was judging my work.  So I wrote a new post-it and put it beside the first one.  This one reads: “Concentrate on doing the very best you can.  This is what is important.”  This helped me focus on doing my own personal best instead of spending so much time obsessing on everything I wasn’t good enough at yet.

Over the last year, I’ve collected a few more helpful quotations on a white piece of paper taped up on my bookshelf, right next to my screen.  Happily these are all up and shareable via the powers of the Internet.

First I have The Happy Stop on the Writer Train, by Dorothy Winsor.  This helps me remember to focus on the part of writing I love; namely, the writing.

Then I have Neil Gaiman’s great take on rejection slips.  (The last paragraph is the one on my paper.)

Last week, I added Seth Godin’s Exploration and the risk of failure.  This reminds me of which category I am in (the second) and the source of a lot of my anxiety (the pull I feel towards the first).  It also reminds me that failure is a good thing.  (I know, what crazy talk is that?  Any other perfectionists out there?)

I love my collection of pieces of paper.  I don’t even have to read what’s written any longer to feel a sense of reassurance.  And have I ever needed reassurance this summer.  Transitioning away from my business has been, in many ways, very wrenching.  My brain is still muddled from my Taos Toolbox experience to the point where I second guess much of what reaches the page – which means that right now, the part of writing that I love is not writing after all.  I’ve been in a fair amount of physical pain, which distracts me like crazy, and I’ve received a few rejections that have cut to the bone more than usual.

Why am I telling you this?  Because I think all of us go through this kind of time, particularly during transitions.  And when you are going through your rough transition, or get that especially disappointing rejection note, or start going down the dark and dangerous road of comparing yourself to others, or can’t write well because your brain is buzzing or you have a headache or your ankles hurt so much you’re contemplating chopping them off and good riddance, well, maybe you’ll remember this entry and realize you’re not alone.  Maybe you’ll look at your own reassuring notes and be comforted.  (Maybe you’ll even add some of mine to yours.)

Maybe you’ll do what I’m going to do today: grit my teeth (although I don’t recommend this for dental health reasons), hold my chin up, and keep going in whatever way I can.  I’ll write some bad words, I’ll submit a few stories, and I won’t give up.  At least not today.

And tomorrow I’ll do it all over again.

Read Full Post »

On Waiting, Part II

Posted in Life, tagged , on August 12, 2010| 3 Comments »

“Life is largely a matter of expectation.” –Horace

Today’s entry is the sundae and the cherry all in one because I get to talk about the things that I love so much that I’m happy to wait for them.  My husband tells me that I live in the future a lot, and I suppose I do, partly because I’m a bit of a worrier and a bit of a planner, and partly because I love looking forward to things.  So here is my list of *six* (yes, I couldn’t quite limit myself to five) things I wait for with sincere pleasure.

6. Food: Enjoying the aromas filling the house as dinner stews in the crockpot or cookies bake in the oven is part of the fun.  And I was looking forward to our anniversary dinner at Chez TJ for several weeks before the fact.  My sweet tooth doesn’t help matters either.  Does this make me a foodie?

5. Friends: I look forward to seeing people or hearing from people so much.  When I make plans with you for next week, you can bet that it makes me smile whenever I think about it.  Getting a long e-mail or, heaven forbid, a real physical letter, is good in the same way.  Granted, there’s not as much waiting involved, but I still get a frisson of anticipation when my eye scans down the page or I see a promising sender in my inbox (I save the exciting e-mails for last).  This also includes looking forward to seeing my dog (I’ll be driving home and get excited about this, which goes to show how extremely dorky I can be) and wondering when my husband will get home from work.

4. New Book Releases (and movie, album, theater, etc.): Sometimes this crosses the borders into painful (GRRM, I’m looking at you), but in general I enjoy looking forward to the release date of a book I want to devour.   Here are the books I’m currently waiting for with baited breath: Monsters of Men, by Patrick Ness; Mockingjay, by Suzanne Collins; Blackout and All Clear by Connie Willis (I’m waiting for the second half to come out before reading any of it); Cryoburn by Lois McMaster Bujold; and many, many more.

3. Holiday/Special Occasion: It has been known to happen that I will create a special occasion in order to look forward to it.  I love all birthdays, and particularly my birthday, for this reason.  The wedding anniversary is a good new occasion in my life, and I also celebrate the anniversary of when I met my husband, which is in October.  My favorite holiday by far, however, is Christmas, and I’ll make a confession: I’m already getting excited about Christmas right now, and it’s only August.  So apparently I get about five months a year of wonderful anticipatory glow from a one-day holiday.  How awesome is that?

2. Completion of a project: Who doesn’t love the twin feeling of satisfaction and relief when you type “The End” at the end of the novel you’ve been working on for the past x months?  Sometimes it’s only the fact that I know how pleased I’m going to be at the end that keeps me going during the murky middle.  Short stories are great because you get to experience this thrill of completion more often.  The same sort of thing happens after a concert or a run of shows or a big project at work.  Of course, the anticipation of completion can be better than the actual finishing, which tends to be bittersweet, but I’ll take whatever I can get.

1. Travel: I love to travel; it is one of my enduring hobbies.  People who know me well but don’t often see me will ask me where I’ve been in the last year because it’s a question almost guaranteed to act as a conversation starter with me.  I structure my life around travel instead of the other way around, and now that I’m traveling to attend various conventions, conferences, and workshops, this has only gotten worse.  When I’m feeling particularly down or stressed, I plan a trip – it doesn’t matter if the trip won’t happen for six months or even more because just looking forward to it will begin to make me feel better.  The closer the trip gets, the more excited I get.  So for instance, I’m traveling to the UK in a little over a week, and I’m internally bouncing just thinking about it.  The difficulty of waiting just adds to the general aura of excitement.

Well, writing this post has put me in a fantastic mood.  Here’s your personal invitation to add to it by telling me about things you like anticipating.

Read Full Post »

On Waiting, Part I

Posted in Life, tagged on August 11, 2010| 2 Comments »

I hate waiting.  After teaching piano to children as young as age four for seven years, I can no longer characterize myself as a wholly impatient person, at least not with a straight face, but man, do I hate to wait.  Yesterday, I was thinking about how much time I spend waiting in the course of daily routine life: I wait for the light to turn green, I wait for the clerk to ring up my purchase, I wait for the check at the restaurant, I wait for people to get back to me via E-mail or text or phone.  I wait for the water to boil, I wait for the mail to arrive, I wait for lunch, I wait for my nail polish to dry.

Yes, this is what I spend my time thinking about.  So I decided I would compile a list of the top five things I hate waiting for.

5. Scheduling: My old business depended on the skillful juggling of twenty to thirty families’ schedules with my own.  I am very good at scheduling, but what used to drive me up the wall was my inability to get a timely response and then the whole process of going back and forth, complete with peoples’ schedules spontaneously rearranging themselves overnight, thus wrecking my grand plan.  Email, phone, or in person, they all have their unique and horrible pitfalls of waiting for someone to respond.  (In person, you say?  Yes, because inevitably people can’t commit to anything in person.  They have to get back to you, presumably after checking with all family members.)  Waiting a week or more for someone to say, “No, we can’t come then because of xyz activity” is maximally frustrating, since presumably they knew that they couldn’t do it for the entire week and therefore I’ve been waiting for no good reason.  This dislike of scheduling and the waiting inherent to it has now extended into my regular life as well, which is why I rarely schedule group events.

4. Results: When I used to audition on a semi-regular basis, I hated waiting for the cast list, solo list, or whatever list to be posted.  Now I hate waiting for responses to my short story submissions.  I just want to know and get it over with, and in the meantime, I tie myself into myriad complex mental knots.

3. Drama: I like things resolved now.  As in, right this very minute.  If I have an interpersonal conflict of some type going on and it’s impossible to quietly smooth over (which is generally my first choice), I want to face it and resolve it as quickly as possible.  Cooling down and talking about it in the morning?  Not so much, because I won’t relax until I feel a resolution, meaning I won’t sleep well.  Having someone initiate drama over e-mail?  That means for every exchange, I have to wait, and the tension builds higher and higher between e-mails.

2. Healing: Whenever I get sick or injured, I convince myself that I’ll never feel better again.  Waiting to heal is particularly difficult because I feel so physically lousy the whole time, it affects all aspects of my life to varying degrees.  Right now I’ve been waiting for my knees to heal for a year and a half, and I messed up my back about a month ago and I’m waiting for it to heal too.  Really, what I’m waiting for is the resumed ability to do things I want to do but can’t.  Of course, if I don’t wait long enough, then I re-injure myself or relapse into the illness and it takes even longer to heal.

1. Loved Ones and Terminal Illness: This is the worst kind of waiting I can think of.  Watching a loved one suffer in horrible pain and waiting for them to die tears everyone involved into tiny jagged pieces.

Feeling impatient along with me yet?  Let’s talk about a few strategies for coping with some of these things (except the last one, which requires a more in-depth discussion).  Setting deadlines can be helpful when dealing with other people.  Distracting yourself is also big up there, whether that be with a fun activity or by working on the next story or audition piece.  Focusing on what you are capable of when injured or sick can help although I’ve found it mostly works in the very short term.  I’ve found being aware of the changes for the better (oh look, now I can walk FOUR blocks with no knee pain, or I can stand at a convention party for THREE hours instead of twenty minutes) to be more cheering.  Scheduling a particular time to talk about a big looming issue means at least you have some idea of the time frame of resolution.

One of the strategies I like the best is to think about the stuff in life that does make me happy.  So never fear, because tomorrow I plan to write the perfect antidote to this post– the top five things I love waiting for.  Yes, they do exist!  But you’ll have to wait to hear about them.

Read Full Post »

Fantasy Sidekicks: Results!

Posted in Polls, Science fiction and fantasy, tagged , , on August 6, 2010| 2 Comments »

The voting period for your favorite fantasy sidekick is over, and the winner is:

WILLOW from Buffy the Vampire Slayer!

Wicca Genius

Runner-up is Ingoya Montoya, from The Princess Bride.

Channelling through his father's sword

And because he’s cute, even though he only got one vote, I’m also gonna show you Pantalaimon:

I deliberately didn’t tell you who I voted for so I wouldn’t accidentally skew the vote.  However, being a huge Buffy fan, I did in fact vote for Willow, although it was a tough call for me between her, Inigo, and Hermione.  Willow is a tricky one because she had all those problems in season six that make her less than ideal as a sidekick, but when she’s at the top of her game, she’s kick ass enough that she almost crosses the line from sidekick to independent superhero in her own right.  For the win, she’s a character I wouldn’t mind being friends with, and honestly, workplace dynamics are important if you’re going to save the world every day.

Read Full Post »

Quantity vs. Quality

Posted in Life, Music, Writing, tagged , , , on August 5, 2010| 7 Comments »

Dichotomies are popular partly because they’re catchy and partly because they’re so easy on the brain.  Black vs. white, capitalism vs. socialism, introversion vs. extroversion, right vs. wrong.  Sometimes I wish things were actually this simple, but most of the time I don’t because these comparisons don’t allow any wiggle room or tolerance for difference or adjustment.

So when we talk about quantity vs. quality, both of these attributes contribute to overall well being and success (I’ll save defining “success” for another time).  Is one more important than the other?  I would argue that for many people, one is weaker than the other, and therefore we need to expend more effort and awareness on whichever side is more personally difficult.  Let’s look at some definitions.

Quantity:

  1. Music: number of hours spent practicing and learning new music.  Also preparing music for a performance or audition deadline.
  2. Writing: butt in chair principle; number of hours spent writing and revising, or a daily word count goal.  Also would include having a submission goal of how many markets you submit to per period of time.
  3. Interpersonal: amount of time spent both thinking about what your relationship (and loved one) needs and implementing that, whether by spending more time talking, doing activities, writing emails, cleaning the house, or what-have-you.
  4. Running a business: amount of time spent both on finding and implementing strategies in advertising, marketing, getting your name out there, as well as time spent providing your core service or product and planning special events.  Focused on goals either financial or quantity-based.

These are all great goals, concrete goals, measurable goals.  They require self discipline and commitment to achieve on a regular basis.  Unfortunately, sometimes quantity is not enough.  Standing in the practice room day after day for sixty minute practice sessions that go exactly the same way every time is not usually going to lead to improvement or make a great singer.  Being so obsessed with word count that you can’t afford the time to stop and think how you can use your words more effectively does not make a better writer.  Trying really hard to be a better spouse without being willing to take some personal risks isn’t always effective.

But what happens if we don’t focus on quantity?  Our brilliance is often derailed by lack of organization or dedication.  Projects don’t get finished or maybe don’t even get started.  Businesses fail due to lack of exposure or avoidance of hard financial numbers.  The people we love may feel neglected or friends might characterize you as a flake.  We might sound great when singing but our inability to learn music on time and behave professionally holds us back.

Quality:

  1. Music: choosing one or more technical suggestions to work through during that day’s practice session.  Being willing to try new things even if they feel weird and don’t work right away.  Working on what your teacher brought up during your last lesson and then giving her feedback as to how it’s going in practice.
  2. Writing: choosing subjects/stories that are close to your heart and therefore dangerous.  Taking the time to revise as much as a story needs.  Doing the necessary preparation work (whether that be research, outlining, note taking, character profiles, etc.) that you personally need to write your best story.  Focusing on a particular aspect of craft while writing, even if it slows the work down.
  3. Interpersonal: prioritizing by finding out what makes the most difference to the other person in the relationship.  Getting to the root of any issues between you.  Attempting to see that person without your usual bias and love them unconditionally.  Being honest and open about hard things as well as good ones.
  4. Running a business: Providing individualized service to your clients.  Prioritizing the goal of improving your product or your abilities.  Remembering the people factor in business.  Not cutting every single corner for cost reasons if the quality detriment is high enough.  Focusing on goals of service and satisfied customers.

What happens if we don’t focus on quality?  We work hard for many years and get “stuck” in the same spot, like we’re running in place.  We crank out large volumes of work lacking the spark that will lead to publishing that novel or winning that part during auditions.  Our relationships coast along but don’t necessarily deepen.   The business tends to get a higher than average turnover of clients or customers.  We rush to complete a task without thinking of the meaning behind the task and making sure we do it to their best of our abilities.

Now for me, quality is a lot harder than quantity.  Quantity is easy for somebody like me who has determination, self discipline, and organizational skills in spades.  Quality, on the other hand, is a bit more mystical because it depends on stuff you can’t measure in numbers.  It depends on taking risks.  It doesn’t always conform to plan.  It could end in spectacular failure instead of middling mediocrity.  So for me, I need to put a lot more focus on quality to get myself in balance.

What about you?  What do you need to focus on, quantity or quality?

Read Full Post »

Art as Alarm Clock (please don’t hit snooze!)

Posted in Arts, Life, Writing, tagged , on August 3, 2010| 8 Comments »

I’ve just returned home from the LA SCBWI conference with a head swarming with information about writing.  What has stuck to the forefront of my thoughts are two talks by M.T. Anderson, author of such novels as Feed and the two Octavian Nothing novels, among others.

MT had a lot of interesting stuff to say, but what caught my attention the most was what he said about literature, and perhaps by extension, all art.  In a nutshell, he posited that the purpose of literature is to help the reader see the familiar in a different way.  (For those curious about reading more, this is a theory espoused by the Russian formalist school of literary criticism.)  By estranging the reader (for example, through use of language or various literary devices), the author causes the reader to experience the world differently and restores a sense of the unknown to what was before a habitual reaction.

I know how easy it is for me to something for granted and stop seeing what’s right in front of me.  It’s this sort of closed mind that makes it difficult to see from another person’s perspective, to fail to notice what’s going wrong (or right) in our everyday routines, relationships, and desires, to become cemented in attitudes, beliefs, or knowledge that might be inaccurate.  In much the same way as spending time in a foreign culture can shock the system and dislodge rusty thought patterns, so can experiencing art, whether that be through literature, theater, visual art, music, etc.

Following this train of thought, literature can act to help us see the world afresh like children do.  In general, children are a lot more flexible and adaptable than many adults, and they are constantly having brand new experiences.  Assumptions are harder to make without a few decades of experience and collected data to draw upon.  While reading a novel that’s using estrangement to wake us up, we can regain our childlike perspective on the world, both as a place full of wonder and weirdness and as a terrifying mystery in which many things remain unexplained or beyond our understanding.  The curtain of adult security and certainty that gives us the illusion of being safe in a world of rational order is drawn aside to expose the truth: that life is always uncertain, whether you’re two years old or eighty, and that any object, person, or event has several layers of reality beyond the surface.

While this ability to see beyond the surface is certainly useful for artists of all types, I would argue that it is invaluable to anyone who wishes to fully appreciate the human experience.  Art forces us to take notice and stop moving through our daily lives on automatic pilot.  It reminds us of what it was like to be fourteen, or helps us imagine an entire collection of possible lives we might have led (or might still lead).  It shows us the world through someone else’s eyes, someone inherently other because they are not us.  Whether we look at a Dadaist painting that skews common objects and reminds us of universal themes such as the passing of time or read a novel in which language describes a commonplace object in terms we would never have applied, the jolt tickles our brains.  Remember, it says, to really *look* instead of merely knowing.  Remember to breathe in an experience instead of getting too caught in our own heads to notice.  Remember to listen and delve deep.  Live what it is like to be a child, when the world lies before you, scary and stunning and exquisite.

Read Full Post »