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Archive for November, 2012

I Finished My Latest Novel

Posted in Writing, tagged , , , , , on November 29, 2012| 7 Comments »

You know that novel I’ve been talking about all year? The Academy of Forgetting, a riveting (I hope) YA psychological thriller set in the near future and full of awesomesauce?

Finished. Done. Kaput. Complete.

I’m having trouble believing it. But I am also very, very happy!

Celebratory pie! (Photo by Poppy Wright)

So what’s next, my non-writer friends ask me? Will we see your book on shelves soon? (Writer friends, bear with me here, as I’m sure you’ve received similar questions.)

The answer is NO. In fact, the book isn’t truly finished, as in it is not yet ready for publication. It is ready to be seen by agents, which means it is as good as I can make it. However, if an agent were to be interested, and if I were to sign with said agent, and then if said agent were to sell the book to a publisher, there would most likely be several more rounds of edits between the version on my computer right now and the version that would show up in bookstores.

This entire process can be remarkably time-consuming. And there are no guarantees at any particular step. The trick, I think, is to focus on what I can control, which is writing a novel that I can stand behind and be proud of.

So what’s next? I am updating my agent spreadsheet, I am working on short summaries for a potential book 2 and book 3 in the trilogy, and I am revising my query letter and synopsis. Then I will start sending queries to agents on the spreadsheet. And meanwhile, the fun will start:

A NEW NOVEL.

Which realistically means I will spend the month of December brainstorming and fleshing out various novel ideas. If I’m really, really lucky, I’ll also choose one of those ideas and outline it. If the brainstorming goes more slowly, though, I won’t be doing the outlining until January. If the brainstorming goes very slowly, I might squeeze a short story or two in there somewhere too. (And for those wondering, no, this new novel will not be book 2 to follow The Academy of Forgetting. I’ll only write that book if AoF sells. Or if I get an agent, and my agent believes that starting book 2 before selling could be strategic, and I agree with him/her. Or if I have another particularly compelling reason.)

I am very excited about this, and it also feels weird. It feels weird to get ready to let go of this novel project that I have focused so much of my life on for the past ten and a half months. It feels strange to contemplate starting something new, with characters I don’t know better than I know my real-life friends and no limits at all until I lay some down in the outline. Soon I’ll be having new entirely made-up adventures instead of the familiar old ones.

It’s also interesting to see how finishing this novel, my third, feels different from finishing the first two. When I finished my first novel, there was this sense of euphoria because until I crossed that finish line, I wasn’t completely one hundred percent positive I could actually write a novel. When I finished my second novel, there was a sense of relief that the first one wasn’t a fluke.

But with The Academy of Forgetting, I feel more of a quiet satisfaction that I was able to tell the story I wanted to tell and grow as a writer. I already knew I could write a novel. And I know I’ll be writing another novel in the not-too-distant future. This is my life now.

And that is a truly wonderful thing.

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What Change Looks Like

Posted in Life, Personal Development, tagged , , , , , , on November 27, 2012| Leave a Comment »

I screwed up last week. Multiple times.

Photo by Kate Sumbler.

Here’s what happened. I got really excited about that vulnerability TED talk, which you can probably tell by reading what I’ve written about it. And I decided I wanted to be vulnerable about All the Things…or at least several of the things. So I was pushing myself on multiple fronts at pretty much the same time, which meant two weeks in which so much was going on and so much of it was challenging and emotional exhaustion now.

Apparently this is called a vulnerability hangover, but to me, possibly because I was so enthusiastic, it felt more like a vulnerability OMFG eight car pile-up on the freeway. Fun times.

But there was a strategy behind my madness! Or you know, maybe I’m just incredibly skilled at finding the bright side of the lemonade in that strange-colored cloud over there. But as it turns out, one way of finding out what we most need to work on is to push ourselves to a failure point and then watch what happens. (I don’t necessarily recommend this, by the way; but if it’s happened anyway, you might as well learn something from it, right?)

So as it turns out, my failure point was not being assertive enough. And I didn’t fail at this once, oh no. I failed at it multiple times. Like at least three, and realistically probably more than three. So I know it’s something worth focusing on for the next however-many-months-it-takes. Interestingly, I’ve written an article for this blog entitled “How to Become More Assertive,” but upon re-reading it, I’m not finding it super helpful, so obviously I need to write a new article all about it in the not-too-distant future.

I don’t like writing this. I don’t like telling you how I failed. I procrastinated for a couple of hours before I could make myself type this up. I watch bloggers like Penelope Trunk and James Altucher who let it all hang out and write all about their often spectacular failures, and I’m completely riveted even while I’m thinking to myself, “Wow, I could never do that.” Even now I’m not giving any particulars, which I tell myself is to protect the innocent but in reality is mostly me being a wimp.

But here’s the thing. I want to write about what making change looks like. And change involves taking risks and making mistakes and failing, sometimes repeatedly. It’s not like a training montage in a movie, and it’s not like that moment of realization in novels when the protagonist figures out what is really important. It’s messier than that. And it takes a lot longer than five minutes and seven costume changes.

But it’s part of the process. I keep reading about how the bad and the good go together: how suffering can presage positive change, how failure leads to success, how we embark on the hero’s journey and come back wiser. How before we can rebuild, we have to tear down. Change is certainly interesting and rewarding, but it is not easy.

So I’ll begin thinking about assertiveness. And I’ll fail to be assertive a lot, in a variety of situations, in a myriad of different and creative ways. And gradually I’ll become better at it, and I’ll mess up less often.

This is what change looks like.

 

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It’s Okay to Feel How You Feel

Posted in Grief, Life, Society, tagged , , , , , on November 22, 2012| 4 Comments »

I normally don’t write a post for Thanksgiving Day because I figure a lot of you will be too busy inducing food comas and hanging out with people to read any blogs. But some of you don’t celebrate Thanksgiving, and others of you might want a well-deserved five-minute break from all activities Thanksgiving, so this year, here I am.

And guess what. I’m not even going to be talking about gratitude. Revolutionary, I know.

Although I will post a vanity pic of my first ever homemade cranberry sauce.

Instead, I want to talk about emotions. Our culture often puts certain value judgements on emotions. We have the “We must always be happy” myth. We also have the “tears are for wimps” myth. And we have the “Emotions are bad and must be suppressed–yay detachment!” idea.

I’m the first to agree that the ability to reframe and see the positive side of life is a great gift. Those of you who are regular readers have seen me write about that several times. Positivity helps with emotional resilience, and I think it tends to make people generally happier. All of which is fabulous.

But it’s fine when we have emotions besides happiness. It’s fine to sit there and admit to yourself that something really sucks. It’s fine to be frightened, or angry, or sad, or confused. It’s fine to be completely and utterly miserable. It’s fine to have a bad day. It’s fine if you don’t like Thanksgiving, or if your family is stressing you out, or if you’re worried that the mashed potatoes aren’t going to turn out. It’s fine if you feel shy because look and see all of these people you don’t know.

You don’t need my permission to feel however it is that you feel right now. You don’t need anyone’s permission. Go ahead and feel it. You don’t have to do anything about it, after all. A feeling doesn’t have to propel you into action. It can simply be.

We can repress and get down on ourselves when we aren’t feeling exactly what we’re “supposed” to feel. Or we can celebrate the fact that we’re alive right now and we get to feel the full spectrum of emotions. Some of them are tougher, for sure. Some of them we wish we weren’t feeling. But most of them happen to most of us at one point or another.

The idea that we must be constantly happy at all times is not particularly helpful. In fact, I find it downright exhausting. My favorite people are the ones that are okay with me however I happen to be feeling right then, even if I’m feeling cranky, or stressed, or really sad. The ones that need me to be happy all the time are not privy to the entireness of Amy, and I think that’s too bad. But regardless, I get to experience the entireness of Amy, just as all of you get to experience the entireness of who you are and how you feel. This is a beautiful thing. And it is part of being human.

Maybe there’s some irony in me being positive about not being positive and having emotions like sadness and fear and anger. But I don’t think we hear this message enough. It’s okay to feel how we feel. It’s okay if we don’t exist in an ecstatic cloud of happiness all the time.

It’s okay to accept the humanity of emotion.

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A Single Person (Can Make All the Difference)

Posted in Life, tagged , , , , on November 20, 2012| 3 Comments »

I believe in paying attention to the small scale.

Mind you, I have nothing against big dreams and lofty goals. You want to revolutionize modern transportation? Please do. You want to become a regular on the stage of the Metropolitan Opera? Fantastic. You want to write the next big novel, or design the next big advance in computing, or find new treatments for cancer? I’ll be cheering you on.

You want to save the world? Well, sometimes aiming high gives you the room you need to accomplish something great.

But whether we have great ambitions or not, who we are, how we behave, what we communicate, and the choices we make on a day-to-day basis can also have real impact.

This has been particularly on my mind as I watch the impact that others have on me and my life. On two separate occasions recently, I’ve been engaged in casual conversation with someone who I don’t know very well, and they’ve said something that changed my outlook and deeply influenced decisions I have since made. I don’t think either one of them was making any particular effort to do so, but both of them said something that changed me and helped me to see more clearly.

Photo by Cristian Bernal

We never know when we might do the same, when we will share a thought or insight or ask a question and change someone’s life forever.

When I was in Toronto, I was talking to a friend of mine who is a police officer, and somehow we got into a conversation about attempted suicides. My friend told me he talked to one guy who jumped off a bridge and survived, who said that while he was on his way to the bridge, if a single person had stopped him and smiled at him and asked how he was doing, he wouldn’t have jumped. A single person. Sometimes that’s all it takes.

And haven’t we all experienced that? The email or phone call at the right time, a trip out for frozen yogurt, an invitation to spend the holidays. The teacher who taught us how to think critically or write the hell out of a thesis statement, or the person who believed in our potential even when we were struggling. The sharp kick to send us back in the right direction, delivered without judgement.

I think that’s one of the reasons I find writing this blog to be so valuable. I never know when something I write here might be exactly the thing one of you needed to read that day. But the possibility that I could help someone with these essays the way certain blog posts have helped me keeps me writing.

This week in the United States we spend time thinking about gratitude. I think of the people who have helped me become who I am today, the people who have given me knowledge, advice, and wisdom, the people who have listened to me and provided moral support, the people who have blown me away with their generosity, and it is easy to feel grateful. It is also easy to see how their actions, often small and seemingly insignificant, have taken on a greater meaning.

The small scale matters, and part of its nature is that we might never know how much it matters. We often don’t find out how our influence ripples outwards, what lives we affect, how those lives touch other lives, and what ends up being different because we exist. We don’t know when we’ll say something that makes all the difference.

Which is why I think it’s important to pay attention. Tomorrow might be the day you accidentally change, or even save, someone’s life without ever knowing it.

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The Spaces in Between

Posted in Life, tagged , , , , , , , on November 15, 2012| 3 Comments »

I’m back in novel immersion at this point, as I push to finish revisions, and my head is full of my characters and their plot arcs and a plot hole that’s going to be annoying to fix. It is hard to pull myself out of that world and back into this one.

So I’m going to talk about liminal spaces because when I’m having trouble leaving my fictional universe, that’s what I think is going on. I’m existing in a liminal space, partly in the world of the novel that my imagination has forced into being, and partly in the world in which I have blog post deadlines and dinner to make and errands to run.

Let’s talk about the word liminal. It wasn’t strongly in my radar until I read Farah Mendlesohn’s interesting Rhetorics of Fantasy a few years ago. She divides the fantastic into four categories, and one of those is the liminal. In liminal fantasy, she posits, “the magic hovers in the corner of our eye.” An example of this category is Joan Aiken’s Armitage family stories, which I enjoyed reading quite a lot.

But liminal means a lot more than a category in fantastic literature. Liminal is about being in between, about being in transition, about being both and neither at the same time. In anthropology, Wikipedia helpfully tells us, liminality refers to “the quality of ambiguity or disorientation that occurs in the middle stage of rituals, when participants no longer hold their pre-ritual status but have not yet begun the transition to the status they will hold when the ritual is complete. During a ritual’s liminal stage, participants “stand at the threshold” between their previous way of structuring their identity, time, or community, and a new way, which the ritual establishes.”

Being in a liminal space is uneasy, uncomfortable, possibly awkward. Standing at the threshold is not without its dangers.

Audience or specter?

I went to see Sleep No More while I was in New York, and one of the things this performance art piece does quite well is create a sense of liminality for its participants. Are we an audience, or are we spectres? Are we invisible, or are we obstructions? There is nowhere I am supposed to go, and yet am I where I am supposed to be? There is a narrative being created, and yet there is no narrative visible.

Traveling can also create a liminal experience. I can be both in a place and not of a place. If I travel to several countries in quick succession, I can wake up in the morning uncertain about where I am, what language is used here, what currency. There is a clash between what I know from my world and what I experience in this new place.

Schrodinger’s cat is both alive and dead, and literature about dying talks about it as a liminal state between life and death. In fact, liminal states exist in most major transitions in life. Coming of age stories often rely heavily on the uncertainty and turmoil of the liminal state between childhood and adulthood. Waiting can be involved in liminal states, too: waiting for the results of the pregnancy test, waiting to hear what colleges have accepted you, waiting for the answer to your question, waiting for the hurricane to hit. And what about that strange state between waking and sleeping?

Liminal spaces are challenging, and yet they can also offer freedom. The spaces in between offer us opportunities to recreate ourselves, to see the world with fresh eyes, and to drill deeper into the experience of being human. When we’re no longer sure who we are or what labels we’re claiming, we have room to explore who we want to be.

And critically, when we are standing in the shifting sands of liminal space, we are sometimes able to see more clearly what is important to us and what we want our priorities to be.

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The Museum of Epic Failure

Posted in Arts, Life, Personal Development, Society, tagged , , , , on November 13, 2012| 5 Comments »

I stumbled across an interview with Brene Brown (whose TED talk I mentioned last week), and at the end she says if she was going to found a museum, she would call it “a Museum of Epic Failure.” At which point I instantly emailed a link to the article to my friend and said, “This is the title of my next blog post!”

Photo by the National Museum of American History Smithsonian Institute

We have such strange ideas about failure and success. I meet people again and again who assume that, having failed at something once, it makes sense to automatically give up and not try again. They wonder at the fact that I have written THREE novels, even though none of them are yet published. They make comments that call into question the entire premise of one of my failures, as if I have now automatically learned better.

Sure, sometimes a failure, and the lessons we learn by failing, cause us to change directions. Sometimes we decide we’re better suited to doing something different, or we’ve found a new passion to pursue. Sometimes our viewpoint has changed so that we no longer want the same things we wanted before. But failure can also mean that the next time we try, we’ll apply what we’ve learned this time around and do better.

Meanwhile, when we stop doing something we’ve been successful at in some form or another, people get confused and tell us it’s “too bad.” And if they like us (aka social success), they tell us to “never change.” There’s this idea that once success has been achieved, we need to hold onto it tightly while avoiding change at all costs.

This is an example of black and white thinking at its finest, where success is positive and good and to be cherished, while failure is negative and bad and to be avoided.

What is often overlooked is the necessity of failure. When we take a risk, it is risky because there is the possibility of failure. If we were one hundred percent sure we’d succeed, it wouldn’t be a risk at all, would it? And so many great successes and helpful learning moments come from the willingness to take a risk and allow ourselves to be vulnerable.

Most great art–be it visual, literary, musical, or theatrical–comes from reaching to see where we can go, from exposing ourselves in the act of creation.

Most great relationships–be they platonic or romantic–come from opening up and being authentic with one another, while not knowing how we’ll be received.

Most great entrepreneurial ventures–be they tech start-ups or service businesses or local merchants–come from taking the leap into the unknown and committing ourselves and our resources to a particular vision.

When we are engaged in these activities and being honest with ourselves, we know we are taking risks. We know we may fail. And it is when we allow ourselves the space to fail (say goodbye to perfectionism!) that we are capable of our best work.

Which is when we realize that failure isn’t inherently bad. It teaches us, it pushes us, it leads down paths we wouldn’t have noticed by ourselves. It makes success, when it comes, more meaningful, even while it keeps us grounded and connected. And when failure comes instead, and we feel flattened by its impact, we can remind ourselves of the alternative: staying safe, cramped, and complacent while being too afraid to really try.

We are each in the process of creating our own personal Museum of Epic Failure. I’ve already collected many interesting exhibits in mine. And each one has helped to shape who I am today.

Even things that are uncomfortable can have reasons to be celebrated. Is there a failure you’ve experienced that you learned something important from or that you’re grateful for now? Feel free to share in the comments.

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Tapping into Authenticity

Posted in Life, Personal Development, tagged , , , , , , , , on November 8, 2012| 15 Comments »

A couple of weeks ago I watched a TED talk by Brene Brown entitled “The Power of Vulnerability.” It’s twenty minutes long, but I highly recommend watching it when you get the chance. Brene Brown is a researcher who spent years studying vulnerability, shame, and human connection, and she shares valuable insights from her work and how it has affected her own life.

I’ve been seeing a common theme coming up this year, and it comes up again in this talk: that connection and well-being come from the inside, that they arise from our own beliefs and attitudes about ourselves.

I saw it in James Altucher’s post about Kamal Ravikant, who was desperately ill and miserable until he turned things around for himself and ended up writing a short book about the experience. His secret? He told himself that he loved himself a billion and one times.

I saw it in the reading I was doing about attachment styles. Apparently people with a healthy attachment style tend to assume that their needs will be met. And guess what? More often than not, their needs are met, one way or another. Part of this is probably because they are asking for what they need, and part of it is because they are attracting other people who are okay meeting some of these needs. The fact that they assume their needs are okay and will be met shows a greater sense of self worth.

And now here is Brene Brown, telling us that the one thing separating those people who experience a lot of love and belonging in their lives from those who do not is a sense of worthiness. When we believe that we are worthy of love and connection, when we believe that we are enough just as we are, then we can embrace our vulnerability, find our authenticity, and achieve greater connection.

And in her list of traits that these “heart whole” people have in common, she mentions them having compassion for themselves, because otherwise they are unable to have compassion for other people. This idea relates back to the Nice vs. Kind trap and one of the reasons being a people pleaser ultimately doesn’t work out so well.

At the end of last year, I wrote a post called “You are Worth It,” giving this message in yet another way.

This idea of worthiness circles back around on itself in a feedback loop. Take the recent World Fantasy Convention as an example. I entered into the convention feeling comfortable and like I belonged. Because of that, I was more relaxed, having a better time, and able to be very much Amy. So I could connect more easily with both people I knew and people I was meeting. Then people started joking that I knew everyone (not true, but thank you!), which made me feel like I belonged even more, and so made me connect more. Rinse and repeat.

Very Much Amy

The key point, though, is that the nifty cycle I described started with me. It began with me taking my career seriously and feeling like I belonged in a group of professionals. It began with me taking myself seriously, as a person worthy of respect. Without that, the cycle wouldn’t have had a chance to feed back on itself.

We talk a lot about authenticity: to connect with each other, and in a professional context, to connect with readers. This authenticity comes from the courage to be vulnerable. And make no mistake, it does take courage; this blog has taught me that. And here we find another loop: courage builds feelings of worthiness, and a feeling of self worth increases our courage. 

Let’s be brave together.

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Why I Attend Conventions

Posted in Science fiction and fantasy, Writing, tagged , , on November 6, 2012| 6 Comments »

When I was at the World Fantasy Convention this weekend, the subject of my blog came up (the way it does). I was talking about how I normally don’t do the standard convention reports here because I think they can be kind of boring for a wider audience. (Especially if you don’t drop lots of high status primate names, which weirds me out a smidge and also makes me live in fear of forgetting to mention All the Names, even though that is an impossible task.) I said that what I sometimes do instead is write about something I learned at the convention.

So now I have created expectations.

I had a convention strategy this year, which sounds a lot more impressive than it actually is. In years past, I have mainly tried to hit the big literary conventions (WorldCon and World Fantasy, along with SCBWI). But this year I decided I had the time and resources to do more, and I hit a few smaller regional conventions too; in addition to my local FogCon, I attended ConFusion in Detroit, the Rainforest Retreat in Washington, and Readercon in Boston. For those keeping track, that means in the past ten months I’ve attended seven writing events in addition to my two mini-retreats in Seattle.

My thought was that by attending some events outside of my local sphere, I’d get to meet writers who don’t necessarily travel out to the big conventions. This definitely proved to be the case. But another benefit was getting to spend quality time with people at the smaller events, and then being able to reconnect at the big conventions (where I might otherwise have never even met them).

Look! Fire escape! (I don’t know what this photo has to do with this post, either, but work with me here.)

To say that I’m happy with my year of writerly events is an understatement. But I’ve also been thinking about a conversation I had with Nick Mamatas (at Readercon) about conventions. “Why do you go to conventions?” he asked me. It was his opinion that, career-wise, I might as well stay home.

Now we can talk about promotion and networking and showing your face enough times that even the people you haven’t met or have only exchanged a few words with in passing feel like they know you. But Nick might very well be right. And it is certainly true that one can have a career as a writer without attending very many (if any) of these events, especially in the early stages. We can also talk about filling the well of inspiration, but there are more economical ways of doing that too.

No, when it comes right down to it, I attend conventions because I enjoy them. I love seeing my writer friends and making new ones. I like meeting new people. I like talking about books and writing and the publishing industry to my heart’s content. I like geeking out. I enjoy the hustle and bustle, the late nights and the groggy mornings, the packed hotel party rooms and the serendipitous meetings. I value being a part of this kooky, geeky, sometimes really screwed-up, passionate, generous community.

So that’s what I’ve learned, that for me it’s not about dollars and cents and how much exposure I got in exchange for my airfare. There’s nothing wrong with thinking of it that way–indeed, calculating return on investment is an important part of running a business–but for me, attending conventions is more than simply business.

For me, attending conventions means I get to travel while spending time with some of my favorite people. Not a bad deal at all.

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Lessons I Learned from Julia Child

Posted in Life, Personal Development, tagged , , , , , , , on November 1, 2012| 11 Comments »

A few nights ago, I was eating by myself at a standard American restaurant on Broadway. Whenever I eat alone, I make it a point to bring reading material along to make the waiting go by faster (well, really, whenever I go anywhere I like to bring reading material along).

The waitress asked me what I was reading, and I told her, “It’s a memoir by Julia Child.”

She looked at me blankly. “Who’s that?”

“Oh, you know, Julia Child. She’s famous for bringing French cooking to the U.S.” No recognition. “You know that movie Julie and Julia?” Nope.

It left me wondering if I would have recognized Julia Child’s name before I saw the movie. I hope I would have, but I’m not completely sure. But I’m glad I know it now, because her memoir, My Life in France, written with her grandnephew Alex Prud’homme, is so very charming.

Photo by Kaleb Fulgham

The entire time of the hurricane—the lead-up, the storm itself, and the recovery—I was reading this memoir. The personality of Julia Child fairly oozes from the pages. She gushes away about France, about food, about cooking, and her passion is so obvious from her stories. She recounts so many meals she’s enjoyed in the past, course by course.

Her first meal in France, when she was in her mid-thirties, was what set her on the course to becoming a famous chef. I love this fact so much. Because we never know, do we? We never know when we’re going to have an experience, or meet a person, or learn something new, and have a passion ignited within us. It can happen anywhere and anytime; it’s not something that only happens when we are teenagers or freshly adult, it’s not something that has to be planned carefully, or even something that can be anticipated.

I love this idea, too, because it reminds me that all of life is one big adventure. A new subplot could spin off at any time, or a nice bit of character development could take place, or I could begin my grand romance with pumpkin spice chais. Knowing this makes me feel so lucky to be alive.

By the time I finished reading My Life in France, I’d become very fond of Julia Child. I love her personality, her energy, her courage, and her unwillingness to give up. I love how enthusiastic she was, punctuating the text with Yum! and Hooray! and What fun! I love how her passion for food and cooking helped her through the bad times. I love how she spent a lifetime involved in food and cooking and teaching.

And I love some of her philosophy. When she is leaving her country house in France for the last time, do you know what she remembers saying? “I’ve always felt that when I’m done with something I just walk away from it—fin!” She enjoyed what she had to the fullest while she had it, and then let go when it was over. This isn’t a strong point of my own, but I admire her a lot for thinking it, and more importantly, for living it.

All in all, I can’t imagine a better book for me to be reading in the middle of a hurricane.

What about you? What have you been reading lately?

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