Earning the Turn

i am trying to write a novel. i have put everything on hold for it and sometimes i'm so afraid that i'm making a mistake in pursuing this that i can't sleep at night. i worry that i'll never finish, that when i do, no one will want it, that i would have spent months and months on this novel and nothing would come from it. nothing at all. there is so much more that i have to do that i'm despairing a little. really and truly losing hope.

i was told by a man, a writer, that you can't write a story without getting some of it on yourself. I'm saturated in this one, rolling in it, inhaling it in large gasps hoping that somehow i'll discover the one thing that will make the entire novel work. honest to God, there are portions i've written that make me happy to be alive and they keep me going--but there aren't enough. sometimes i think my ambitions are too high, but i refuse to give this one up to work on something else. i have to finish it. i have to. i already know the ending. i've already written the ending, it's just about getting there. i'm on the fourth draft and so many things have changed and unchanged from the time i first conceived this story. i set out to write a book that would sell, an average romance, a light read. but somewhere along the line it has become something else.

the thing about what i set out to do and what i am actually trying to do is that i'm conscious of what is required of me as a writer. what i set out to do was write a light romance, something that would sell . what i'm trying to do is earn the turn. in all my writing workshops, i was taught to earn the story. so many romances today follow a similar format. this is fine, i have no objection to this. but not many romance writers have their workshops to answer to, creative writing workshops with highly critical workshop members. i am incapable of writing a light romance because light romances are very one-dimensional. because they follow the format of a typical romance, nothing is earned, everything is predicted by the reader. there are no moments when the author has to make their readers understand. everything automatically makes sense because the reader has read it all before. in workshop, we were taught to earn the turn. if you have a character who realizes something, who undergoes an experience that changes them, you have to write it credibly. you have to earn your reader's understanding, you have to earn their acceptance of this change in your character. the way you do this is by properly setting up the groundwork, arranging everything in the beginning so that it compliments the turn. what you don't want to do is write, "And suddenly everything changed." that is not considered earning the turn. while that may work for simpler forms of fiction it is not exactly credible to the reader because in real life that never happens. real life is never that easily explained. when suddenly everything changes, specific things happen: when your dog dies, you don't need to change the water in his bowl anymore; when someone steals your car, you lose the tassel you wore to your graduation because it was hanging on the rear view mirror. these are the little things, the small details that are real, that really and truly happen. that is how we fathom change in real life, through the little things. a writer must earn that sense of reality. real life's a mess and writing a mess that is coherent and logical and profound is the real challenge. earning the turn is convincing the reader that what you have written is the truth, that it is real.

in this novel i am trying to write, i have two characters that develop--the best ones do, you know. and i am trying as best i can to earn the turn they undergo. the center of all the problems i'm having is the conflict. the conflict drives their development, leads them to that inevitable turn and i can't seem to get the conflict right. i know what i want to do and i've done some of it, but not all of it. i'm trying to make the mess coherent. it took me three drafts to get the timeline right. by the fourth draft i felt like i was finally passing the middle marker--the end was somewhere in sight. but the other day, after having checked off all the crucial moments i needed to write to round out the plot, i looked at the ending i had and was not satisfied. i realized, as i lay on the sofa considering it, that i needed to rewrite the ending. as it is now, its a circumstantial ending: this leads to that which leads to this misunderstanding which leads to that argument which leads to this reconciliation and they all live happily ever after. it is not a strong ending, it is not an ending deserving of the turn i tried so hard to earn. if you think of it in terms of the law, a circumstantial case is never a strong one: you have to put the murder weapon in the defendant's hand. he can't just happen to be at the right place at the right time to commit the murder, the jury won't believe it. and now? now that i have to rewrite the ending, i will have to rewrite a lot of the key scenes so that everything fits. i have to get a hold of the conflict and really analyze it. just thinking about it makes me want to throw up my hands and admit defeat. i am on the fourth draft of a novel! how much more do i have to do? when does it end? does it ever? am i just not good enough to write? i refuse to believe it and yet refusing means that i have to keep trying, that i have to keep pushing forward even when all i want to do is give in to the exhaustion.

i want it to be exceptional. i want it to be familiar and new all at once. i want it to be startling. i want it to redeem all the one-dimensional, romances. i want to be proud of it. i want to be proud of it.

because there is something so sublime about this dream of mine. it is being able to show people themselves; to look at life and tell it back to you and have you say that, yeah, actually it is like that, its just like i said, just like i wrote. its getting it right, having people trust in me to show them the real thing. its understanding, earning it and gaining it and always studying. its proving that English is a beautiful language too, as beautiful as French or German or Spanish or Japanese. its the sentence, long and lovely and circuitous and misleading. its verbs in the passive, gerundives and commas. its the clause, subordinate or otherwise.

its loving books, knowing that i am capable of writing one, and doing it. i just have to keep on doing it. i just have to keep on.

Hysteria

i think i've mentioned before that everyone loves a rebel. i think i've mentioned before how much this irritates me. going against common opinions and beliefs in order to be extraordinary--it always felt like cheating to me. being contrary just for attention instead of trying other methods.

but of course, beyond the vaccuum of my own opinions and beliefs is the real world and how it operates no matter what i think or what anyone else thinks either. in the real world, there's never just one of anything. there's always two or more. two or more viewpoints, two or more ways to solve a problem, two or more sides of a story. the real world is subtle--like a feather. when you see a feather, you see a solid shape, but run your finger along its edge and you feel and see all the slender, intricate strands that make up the entire feather. that is what the real world is like.

so it stands to reason that certain rebels are not admired at all, that certain rebels are actually and truly persecuted for their contrary beliefs. there's no false martyrdom, no ambitious dissent. these are the kinds of rebels that rebel without thought to their reputation or the world's opinion of them. these are the rebels that have important reasons for rebelling, or at least reasons that they are not willing to relinquish, reasons that warrant a sort of doomed integrity.

i am writing this in response to an article on The New York Times website which is my browser's homepage. the title on the front page was "The Global Warming Heretic." there is a scientist, you see, an old man, who does not believe that global warming is as much a danger as everyone says it is. he says that the higher levels of carbon dioxide can be neutralized by the growing of plants that absorb CO2, that higher levels of CO2 actually create a richer environment for more vegetation to grow, that there were higher levels of CO2 in the earth's atmosphere when the planet experienced most of its development. he says Al Gore is a global warming "propagandist."

but this isn't just any scientist, any old man. he is a well-respected physicist who worked with Einstein and J. Robert Oppenheimer. what he objects to is not the information, the data, that proves that the globe is warming up, that carbon-dioxide levels have increased. he fully acknowledges the facts that support a belief in global warming. what he objects to is the single-minded, opportunistic pursuit of such a belief. the using of global warming to prove one's own point, to prove that one was right about using too much coal, to prove that one was right about vehicles that use up too much gas.

reading the article, i felt somewhat vindicated. here is someone willing to think for himself, who refuses to give in to the mass-market hysteria surrounding global warming. i do not mean to say that his views are correct--i really wouldn't know; i do not mean to say that i am an expert, that i don't care about the planet, that i refuse to recycle and conserve energy just to be rebellious. no. i recycle and conserve energy and try not to use as much gas because it is the right thing to do, no matter that everyone else is trying to do the same. what i object to is the sense of entitlement that some people seem to flaunt when they "go green." they go to farmer's markets and buy locally grown vegetables and put them in their reusable shopping bags and drink their organic juice and think they are better than everyone else. they buy laundry detergents and dishwashing soap and disinfectants that are environmentally safe and look down on anyone else who doesn't do the same. if i choose to do those things, i will do it because i should do it not because i want to prove a point, not because i have some self-righteous agenda. there's no need to brag, there's no need to criticize. going green has become just another social measuring stick when it should be important for its own sake. you're considered one of the "elite" if you either go green with a spartan regiment or if you decide to flaunt your refusal not to go green and drive a huge SUV instead. its ridiculous.

i don't mean to bash going green, i mean to point out a way of thinking that has attached itself to going green. don't think like that. do it for the right reasons or don't do it for the right reasons--just do whatever you do for yourself and don't make it about social status and reputation. i think its true that being environmentally conscious is being sold relentlessly to the public through marketing and advertisement. people don't even really listen to the scientists anymore, they rely on Whole Foods Market and TV ads to tell them what they should do to save the environment. it isn't right. know what you are doing, be aware, be conscious of your actions. even if Whole Foods is right and entirely justified in offering what they offer still make an effort to think for yourself, don't surrender your opinions so easily. whatever you do in life, whether it be good or bad, do it so that you can hold yourself accountable for it later on. resist the excuse that you did it because everyone else was doing it. respect yourself, don't sell yourself short in listening to other people when you are fully capable of doing the right thing on your own.

i watched President Obama on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno last week. i felt like i learned more in that interview than in any other interview. my dad said it was because Leno asked good questions, questions that average Americans were asking, like why those top executives that ruined our economy weren't going to jail and why after all the bailouts the money wasn't moving amongst the people yet. its so rare that the President would go to the people. for the most part, if you want to know what's happening in the White House, you have to force yourself to watch CNN or C-Span or other specialized broadcasts. but to have your President willingly come to you by appearing on a show that you enjoy watching regularly--i like that. and he didn't dumb down his explanations on the economy and what he's trying to do and he spoke sensibly. it isn't about quick fixes and blaming the obvious criminals, its about reworking the laws and regulations so that our financial institutions are properly checked and balanced. i got the impression that he's really going to try and do the right thing, that he isn't just going to do whatever America wants him to do. as an out-of-work American i know what i want--i want the economy to improve, and i want it to improve now. but even though he knows i want that, he's not going to do anything rash to make me happy. he's going to do what's right, what's necessary. so i am willing to be patient. i hope others like me feel the same. i hope that America doesn't turn on him unjustly. he doesn't need anymore obstacles to get the work done. just be patient, just let him do his thing.

speaking of which: does anybody need to hire a writer?

A White Sheet

i've disappeared for a while, no? i said that i would. i am sorry to say that i did not run across the cobblestones and squares of Vienna screaming like a lunatic out of sheer exuberance. we've just left there this morning and my bus-mates can tell you, no screaming. something has happened to me that is compelling enough to record here under the unconscious watchfulness of the world wide web.

i have become hard. i am hardened.

i don't think i will yet be able to convey in writing what happened to me those ten weeks i was in new york. the effects of it will show up in odd places for a long time, i feel. in the way i think of certain things, in the way i talk about certain people. in the way i walk and hold my head.

i wrote to a certain beloved professor and told him that new york was more a distraction than an inspiration. i don't know why i thought it would be different. it was E. B. White, i believe, that said new york was feverish, that it had a fever that could never be tamed. it's true. you can be alone in new york, you can be in new york for vacation--and still the fever gets you. what it did to me was make a callus of my eyes and make a harder shell of my ears. nothing seems to impress me the same way anymore. nothing that is great and grand and worthy of the sincerest admiration evokes from me the right degree of feeling. as a result, there was no lunatic screaming in Vienna and i was kind of looking forward to that bit. i feel as if i might have offended her, thinking of her as nothing so spectacular. don't get me wrong, i got plenty of pictures and said many things in its favor and called it "beautiful" and "magnificent" and all manner of pretty things. but that breathless, overwhelming, sheer joy of being there never came, never rose. it's the fever that's dulled my senses. everything in new york can be just as great and just as grand and just as worthy of the sincerest admiration and being exposed to all of that for three months has built up my immunity to wonder. it was just too much to take that anything of equal grandeur falls prey to my dimmed senses. i've been to new york, so vienna isn't so much grander, is it? that's the mentality. even though vienna was the center of an empire, even though the romans patrolled the banks of the danube, even though strauss and mozart and beethoven and schubert unleashed their musical genius in its music halls and opera houses. even though three months ago i thought of it with the keenest excitement. poor vienna. had i only gone there first.

i think, too, that it has something to do with the freedom i had in new york. i supported myself for three months. i bought my groceries, did my laundry, washed my dishes. i vaccummed my room and swept the kitchen and fed the cats. i unclogged the toilet. i lived there. it wasn't just a vacation. it was my life. and here (salzburg now) my meals are taken care of as is transportation. my mother pays for most everything. i watch my money, you can be sure, but that's about all the control i have. i wake up when they tell me to, eat when they tell me to, get on the bus when i am told. nothing like the wanderings i had downtown or in central park. through the metropolitan museum of new york or around brooklyn. and i even find it hard to believe that i was ever that independent. parents have a way of always making you feel like their child. you're always their child and will always be their child so they take it upon themselves to order your life for you. and i am grateful that i can rest after my fevered life in new york, but there are things that i have to give up as well. i just never thought i would become immune to the wonders of the world. i'm too young to be so callous. i think that i will be good for me to go home. the mundane will bring me back to where i would like to be. i like being impressed. i like feeling humbled.

also. i have found out that i can read a book with mediocre writing so long as there is a compelling romance. isn't that disgusting to admit? but, now, i mean a compelling romance, none of those bedroom novels that have half-naked men and women on their covers. i mean novels about hushed affection with just the right amount of tragedy. i'm growing into tragedies. but this doesn't mean that i ignore my opinions on the writing. i got so frustrated reading Twilight one night that i thought i could do better and began writing again. this after a three month drought. so, you see, it pays to get frustrated. and what it really is, is reading. if i read constantly, i always find my way back to my pen because i never see exactly what i want to see in a story and so i feel i must write them if that's what i really want. you're never going to get what you want unless you go out and get it yourself. and while it may seem uniquely narcissistic to take pleasure in your own creation, plenty of people have done it and i think it a natural tendency. children, after all, are admired by their creators.

i am not going to discuss the situation on wall street (although i am rather fond of the actual street in new york's financial district). and i am not going to talk about the upcoming november elections. i figure enough on that is already being said, has already been said, will already have been said. suffice it to say that i shake my head and hope for the best.

well, more than hope.

tomorrow is a walking tour through old salzburg. goodnight.

in the maw of the demon

so. here i am. the weather has been nice all day, although it poured rain for about two hours yesterday morning. a couple of weeks ago, i got caught in a cloudburst at around 10pm, which is definitely a first for me. the cloudburst and the 10pm. mostly because i was on the street with nothing to protect me but my dress and my skin. i had thought to bring my umbrella that night but had decided against it. the thunder was so exhilirating at first. and the breeze. then out of nowhere it starts pouring rain. it was the uncanniest thing. there was no gradual drizzle at first, not even a light mist. it was as if a dam just broke and we were caught right under it. there was shrieking and laughing and, later on, much huddling beneath construction scaffolding.

this is new york.

before i got here, my going to new york generated a lot of talk. coming of age talk; small suburban girl in the big city talk. but now that i'm here, new york doesn't seem like such a colossal place. i've been living by all sorts of maps here so i know it is a big city, but new york can be just as everyday as southern california. we have to take out the trash three times a week. i do the dishes. i've learned to use the small washer and dryer. i work. it's true that there are all kinds of wonderful things around. but they're just around. i'm sure i won't notice how grand this place is until i go home and realize how quiet and spread out everything is.

and i think that is what i will remember most about new york city. how the city progresses without really expanding its borders any. back home, newness causes the cities to become bigger, to spread their borders, to build new buildings on previously empty land. here in new york, there is no empty land. buildings are torn down and new buildings are built. or old buildings are gutted and renovated. newness rises up and burrows down because that's the only direction it can go in. i went to two movie theaters here and they just struck me as such poor stuff. no stadium seating, no panoramic screen. at one cineplex, the theaters were stacked one on top of each other instead of side by side. at the angelika theater, the theater was so narrow, there was only one aisle going down the middle and seats on either side of it. but New Yorkers have nowhere else to go. districts that were previously run down and seedy regenerate themselves because its not like the people can just abandon them. chinatown used to be an extremely unsavory place but its gotten better now. even soho and greenwich village were not highly desirable places before. but they are now. they were made to be. that's what i mean. nothing stays the same here for long because the people never leave, they have no choice but to stay and patch up this well-worn city. nothing stays abandoned here for long. not like out in the west. there are so many famous photographs of ghostowns and abandoned gas stations and boarded houses or hotels along old highways. they can't afford to have those here in new york--there just isn't any room. they would take those old ghostowns and make it livable again because there are too many people who need places to live here. i remember rome for its surprises, its famous fountains and piazzas and ancient ruins that existed around narrow corners and cobbled streets. i remember paris for its wide open spaces. new york will be my baby boomer--like that generation that never seems to get old, like that generation that seems to always make themselves feel new again.

i went to long island one weekend and i was amazed at the way people live there. they have beautiful homes with green front lawns and green backyards and all kinds of nature. it was a barbecue that we came for, so we stayed out til dusk and i was finally able to say with certainty that i have heard the song of the cicadas. i knew i could imagine it because i've heard the sound before--even before i knew about cicadas. and later there was a strange noise coming from beyond the trees. the host said, "it sounds like someone gnashing their teeth. or a duck." and i said, "maybe it's a duck gnashing its teeth." it was a beautiful afternoon. and there were burgers and hot dogs.

so far i've seen the empire state building, rockefeller center, the metropolitan museum of art, the american museum of natural history, washington square garden, the southern tip of central park, the new york public library, brooklyn heights, long island and two minutes' worth of queens, coney island, times square, the flatiron building (used to pass it on my way home from work when i was living on park ave), and all kinds of other nameless wonders that you can only find in new york. i've been trying to get to the cloisters but the weather's been bad both times i wanted to go. i've got a list going of other places i have to visit.

i think, though, that that will have to be all for now. i'm still living new york, you see, and i won't be able to say much about it until later when i can see it all from a distance.

plus i've gotten sleepy. goodnight.

twilight

towards the end of elementary school, i would sneak out of the Campbell Center during after school daycare and wander around the Big Building. i was in eighth grade then and getting ready to leave the school where i had grown up for ten years. by that time, the teachers had all already gone, including the principal. the secretary might still be in the office on the second floor, but i never went up there. i would move down the hall, looking at what Mrs. Hassett had posted outside of her classroom, peeking into the clinic where cotton balls were kept in clear jars steeped in some green cleanser. but mostly i would look at the trophies. the church had been built long before Santa Ana even became a city, when there was no Main Street or downtown. the school had been built in 1956. we always complained that there was no grass to play on, everything was asphalt. whenever someone banged a chin or scraped a knee, we would always mutter about us not having any grass like the other schools. only that unforgiving asphalt.

there were two cases: one tall made of wood with glass doors that could slide open if unlocked, the other was made completely of glass with only two wide shelves. the trophies weren't in chronological order. i don't remember what they said now. there were some for tennis, some for baseball. i think there might have been some for track. in the shorter case there was a photograph in black in white. the caption at the bottom said "downtown" and "parade" and "along Main Street" and i could see the buildings lining the street and how they were the buildings i could see now but then much sharper--clean and new. like those photographs of new york city in the 40s and 50s. along times square and broadway, the streets are pristine with no litter, no trash. in the center of the photograph was a float with a number of women standing or sitting, wearing classy things for those times and beaming. they were being honored, but i can't remember what for. i did this almost every afternoon, long before i had ever seen The Dead Poet's Society and heard Robin Williams' voice as he spoke as if he were one of the long gone boys in the photographs his students were looking at. it wasn't true, i thought, when i saw that movie. when you look at things like that, you don't hear just one voice. you don't even hear words. you hear the crowds cheering, the motors moving along the street, the grunts and cries of the athletes on the field, the smack of baseball on bat, the hollower collision of tennisball and racket. i wanted so badly to know something old.

then i went to high school where they were always working on new buildings. to be a good school meant having better facilities. it meant changing the landscape so that when past students came back after a year or two they wouldn't recognize the place where they had spent four years of their life. the high school i went to doesn't exist anymore. that version is gone. there are new spaces now and new buildings, steps where there didn't used to be any and grey tiles instead of white. there is a pool. what an extravagance.

and now? i am going to graduate from university next saturday. i complained in the beginning, there is plenty of proof in the archives. i made it clear that i was frustrated and unhappy. and when i think about it, i only began to like my university because of the people. my professors and my peers. i wasted time, or perhaps i should say i took up time working and doing music when i could have been doing what i wanted to do from the beginning: write. it wasn't until i gave up choir that i began really to get involved with the creative writing program. i wish i could have gotten involved earlier. i feel like i'm leaving without having learned everything. other writers seem so sure of themselves, they know how to improve their writing without having to be told. i don't know how to do that yet. how will i keep things going without a workshop to guide me and force me to write? i also feel that my writing is in a strange place right now. i haven't yet written my first fifteen stories--the first fifteen that they say a writer must write to get all the amateur out of their system. after these fifteen, a writer can get down to business. i've written nine and after i heard other people read the other day, that seems very apparent. my longer short stories tend to have dramatic premises when the finer stories extraordinize the banal. as an inexperienced writer, i go for the big story, even if i do tell it quietly. i need to learn to see the value in simple stories too. real life isn't dramatic, it's every day.

but my short short stories, the ones that are only three or four pages long, those have something breathless in them. more people have liked those. the thing about writers is that they don't have faces. they don't appear on tv screens or photographs in magazines. or very rarely to only the few who look for them. if the author is known only by its first two initials, then they are genderless as well. then there are pseudonyms and pen-names. bright minds with shiny penny thoughts and no faces. this means that the writer is always at a distance from the reader. a moviegoer would feel that they know more about a moviestar than an author. what i'm trying to say is that there can't be any excuses, no explanations. when a reader thinks your story doesn't work for these reasons or that it doesn't compare to your others, you can't sit and explain during an interview what you were trying to do. books just don't get the same kind of media that would allow an author to cast a net over her audience. or maybe that is an inner circle that i am not permitted to enter. feeble-minded and simple as i am. still becoming as i am.

and i'm not nearly as confident. after five ten-week workshops i'm still shaky when hearing everyone's feedback. and yet i'd always want to hear. i said that once to everyone in my class, i said, "I'd always want to hear what readers think." with the things i want to do, i'd want to hear to see if i'm doing it right. always. i used to think i wrote for myself, but writing for myself means getting people to understand me and only the reader's understanding is any indication of whether i've done it. if that makes sense. even if it still twinges to hear it, i'd want to hear it, whether its criticism, skepticism, suggestions. i'd like to think of myself as a humble person, but there is a difference between humility and lack of self-confidence and i think i walk that line too often, especially when it comes to my writing. and i'm really going to hate losing the community of readers and writers here at my university. i respect and admire all of them and though they probably don't recognize me as much as i recognize them, i'll still miss their faces. i'll miss knowing that they are there, writing and struggling as much as i. it's true that their lives will go on once i stop seeing them, but that would be another world. as far as what's in front of my eyes, they will no longer exist. does that sound selfish? i don't mean it to be. i mean to say that i will miss seeing them. they will go to where i cannot see them. and i will too.

and, for me, that happens to be New York City. New York City. i will be there for ten weeks this summer doing an internship with a publishing house downtown. i'm still finding it hard to believe even now, almost two months after i found out. if you're wondering, it feels like your life is unraveling and if you're me, you'd grab after those lose ends and try to catch them but they are just out of reach. i feel like my life is unraveling. school is done, finals are next week and i no longer have the routine homework to do. no schedule, nothing due, no class. its as if someone has slipped the partitions out of the box and all the different colored marbles are rolling around together for the first time. i'm a little panicked. nothing i know is in New York City. and though i won't admit how frightened i am when people bring this up, it is far. there won't be comments that need posting on the eee noteboard every tuesday and sunday night, no paper drafts due every other friday, no critiques to write for tuesday/thursday workshops. there won't even be the traffic lights along culver and the traffic along jamboree and the cranes swooping across Mason Park. in the past, the whole prospect of summer was so relieving that i was glad to see it--but only because i knew what would happen afterwards. it was a freedom with certainty. it was a freedom with seasons. this...this is something else. i think i might be scaring myself.

well, after the internship, there will be a trip to Europe. Germany, Switzerland and Austria. we're going to Vienna at last and i plan to run around the streets in circles and throw my arms out wide and dance around like a lunatic across the cobblestones and squares. Vienna! i'm more excited for that than i was for Paris. i hope there will be an opera or a symphony or something conducted by a man with frizzy hair and erratic baton habits. Vienna! where i hear they exchange information on famous sopranos and tenors the way people here exhange the statistics on basketball players. where men free the horses and pull the carriages themselves when the one inside the carriage has just sung incomparably a Mozart. to think that they live their lives there within the grip and under the sway of such music. they wouldn't think so, most like, but to me they seem like giants, people who have been exposed so long to a certain type of wind that they've grown to surpass an average man or woman. like the stuff of myths and legends. and they are bakers and butchers and shopkeepers. its the music they inhale everyday. Vienna.

and me not knowing a word of German. how embarrassing.

of course, when i think of it, i think of these things. romantic. i wouldn't be surprised if ends up being quite the modern city.

well, i think i've exhausted any range of emotions by now, so i will stop. i only wanted this one to be long because i don't know when next i will write. plus its an important time, i want to look back on this and remember.

this is what i will be doing for the next couple of weeks if you never see me again:

tuesday, 10 june 2008: submitting final paper for French 139W Vagabonds; sister's birthday
thursday, 12 june 2008: phi beta kappa initiation ceremony; my birthday
friday, 13 june 2008: graduation honors convocation
saturday, 14 june 2008: school of humanities graduation
saturday, 28 june 2008: last day at bookstore
sunday, 29 june 2008: ALA convention, booksellers dinner
friday, 4 july 2008: leave for NYC
monday, 7 july 2008: first day at Abrams
friday, 12 september 2008: last day at Abrams
sunday, 14 september 2008: leave for Zurich

i really wish i didn't have to work at all after graduation, but my coworker had surgery on her wrist and i can't just leave my boss in the lurch. after all, she did get me the internship in new york. so there will be a significant lull when everyone i know has gone off their various cliffs into the sparkling ocean below and i'm still along the path trudging along. but it'll be alright, i think. my time will come later.

its coming this very moment. can you see? i'm bending my knees and holding out my hands to meet it.

May Day

well, now i'm missing the months of March and April. what can i say? five weeks to graduation and i've got midterms and other things to worry about. i will refrain from releasing certain information here considering my future until i get a particular letter sent to Canada where a friend is waiting for it still unknowing. but i will just say that i started this blog four years ago to record my life at college and i think i have done that to some extent. you can be sure that after i graduate, i will release the feathers in my cap to the wind. college is an institution where you learn, presumably. the learning is what i wanted to capture here. but the future will be different, not structured, unplanned. ergo, i will be too busy picking up the pieces of myself to write, for posterity's sake, the account of a bewildered and still innocent girl in the big city. what i will learn will be far too personal as well. i'll have a notebook handy.

now. i have a thesis and argument due by 3:30 for my next class and i intend to brainstorm on here. i will write on the Reveries of a Solitary Walker by Rousseau and as of right now, my argument revolves around a particular quote from the First Walk that i found fascinating both times i read this text:

I am writing down my reveries for myself alone. If, as I hope, I retain the same disposition of mind in my extreme old age, when the time of my departure draws near, I shall recall in reading them the pleasure I have in writing them and by thus reviving times past I shall as it were double the space of my existence.

we looked at a number of contradictions within the text and i plan to assert that these contradictions stem from Rousseau's double existence: his existence as a writer and his existence as a reader. as a writer he is living very much in the present. as a reader reading what he has already written, he is living very much in the past. his Reveries, he claims, are written solely for himself and why else would someone write something for themselves if not to remember? memory and remembering are linked with the act of reading and so his existence in the past would be an existence as a reader. in this way, too, as reader and writer, Rousseau would no longer need the company of society and can live independently and on his own since he constitutes all that he needs and is self-sufficient. as writer he fills the role of creator, as reader he fills the role of interpreter. he is both God and man in his mind if you would permit me to assert. following would be a number of relevant quotations and concise and brilliant theoretical arguments. i am content with this for the moment since i have all weekend to shape the rest of the paper and five pages and five days.

on other news, i have gotten into the advanced creative writing class here at my university. tuesday was my workshop. i don't mind telling you that i thought the professor was picking on me a little too much throughout class: first for my writing exercise which i wasn't proud of and then for my story of which i was a little more certain. turns out that he really liked my story. they all did. i had been afraid because for my last writing exercise i got such catty comments. i don't know but they were all alert and wary of other talent in the class. we are all talented, that is fact since we were accepted into this exclusive group, but all that talent in one room could get a little stifling. needless to say i think the catty remarks sprung from an inherent and implied competitiveness within the group. the thing is, we all get along really well. we're open with each other, acknowledge each other's gifts and failings rather openly. but my professor's opinion was key since he himself is a writer i admire and already published and lauded. he said it was lovely, well-measured, well-observed. i read his remarks with pleasure and a keen surprise. during the workshop he had few words of praise and mostly asked the others questions of what the story was about. i had a look on my face, i'm sure because of the way one of my classmates kept looking at me. i felt cornered, like my story was completely incomprehensible and inadept. i still don't know why he picked on me so much if he liked it and didn't offer much in the way of constructive criticism himself. one thing i was particularly proud of, however, was when he said the story didn't seem like a story an undergraduate would write. it's old-fashioned, yes, but i'd like to think he meant it was sophisticated too, mature and well-developed.

and i am old-fashioned, if you hadn't caught on. i'm old-fashioned. my writing exercise was dubbed postmodern in the way it inserted a seemingly unrelated scene to the rest of the story but this critiqued story...it's what i love and how i love to write. i think i write best when i write traditionally, not because i can't write any other way--ask others, they would say i could--but because with more traditional stories with plot and characters i can dwell more. i can catch my breath and observe the scenes and see what is happening. i don't feel like i have to narrate at break-neck speed to give the reader some kind of adrenaline rush. these stories aren't about the reader. they are about themselves, the story, and they are about the way a story can be told. that was another thing he said, that i told the story quietly and assuredly. yes, i don't mind a quiet telling, a simple telling that is straightforward if not loud. i don't get my readers with a bang. some people don't appreciate that--some people didn't with regard to this story--but i think the majority do.

you should have read some of their comparisons. i don't know why i can't escape them. i never compare a writer to another writer. it just never occurs to me to do that comparison. but i've had two people tell me that my writing reminds them of Roald Dahl which, to me, sounds completely preposterous considering the things he wrote about and the things i write about. on tuesday i got comparisons to Fitzgerald, the Brontes, L.M. Montgomery, Louisa May Alcott, Jane Austen, and once--appallingly--i was compared to George Orwell and his Burmese Days. now i think the Fitzgerald through the Brontes comparison sounds about right, but i'm the one being compared, so how would i know? i get what they're saying though even if it troubles me a little to be categorized so easily: the way i write is a reminder of certain classics. i don't know if its the language i use, the sentiments, or the scenes i decide to write, but these are what my readers tell me and they should be listened to, i think. people are always searching for originality these days, but can't i just be myself, even if that means being like others? i don't care so much about originality as individuality. i want to write what i want to write about, regardless if this means writing a romance or historical fiction or some other genre piece. writing a genre should not be shied from because it is a way of learning. once you know the guidelines and have followed them, you can move on to forge new guidelines. i learn a lot when i write a particular genre.

i suppose what i'm trying to say is that a writer shouldn't be so caught up in being new and original. be yourself. someone is bound to like you, don't you think? this whole excursion into the creative writing emphasis was my way of grappling with this risk. i wanted to see if i could write my stories and whether people would like them. and they do. more than one person does. i have found that i can write what i want to write about and no one will hold that against me. just don't pretend. a reader can always tell.

now, it's back to Rousseau. all i need now are some more quotations to support my argument and i'll be all set. then i have an interesting essay due next week for my other writing class (e28e) which involves analyzing a story i've written myself. that will be really interesting, but i will have to master the tone so i don't sound so pompous. this is my last quarter and i want to use my brain as much as possible before i have to leave school and work with less astute coworkers. there is a reason why shows like The Office exist. how else could such stupidity be made funny?

talent

i have about twenty minutes.

i am beginning to think with some dread and premature nostalgia that i will miss this place once i am gone from it. i will miss the faculty, the professors i had and the ones i never got to discover before leaving. i will miss the intelligence. i have found that in the real world--in the world of corporations--people aren't as smart as the people i am used to. it's enough to make me want to start applying for grad school. because it's disheartening--to have all that you learned and all that you learned to value be wasted. the future is looking grim. and isn't it just how it is? the moment i have to leave is the moment i find that i don't want to. the moment i have to start my career is the moment i begin to doubt the career i've chosen. is there something real behind the anxiety? or is it just anxiety? how does one know when to stick to one's guns and when to abandon ship?

i learned about mimetic desire last week. its enough for one person to desire something because then everyone else will desire it too. but there's a difference between desire and fulfillment. even if the whole world desires you, it doesn't mean anything if they aren't willing to act on that desire. so, in effect, it isn't enough.

being in a writing workshop has forever ruined reading for me. now i find myself disagreeing with things the author chooses to do. i read every book like i'm critiquing it--and that is truly horrible. this is me postlapsarian, when i have lost my innocence to the criticism and nitpicking in workshop and can no longer look at books the same way. they have pointed out my nakedness and now that is all i see when i read. their nakedness, their flaws and embarrassments and things to be ashamed of. and these are published works. it has made a hypocrite of me because i know what i want to see but i myself can never write what it is i want to see. i read a time travel book and i am skeptical. is that really how an eleven year old would feel when she realizes she has traveled back in time. when i read about an orphan who strives to be a ballerina. should she really be behaving that way, her character doesn't seem consistent. ruined. fallen. and i can't even hand them a fig leaf with which to hide behind because i've never met them and we've never been in workshop together.

and you know, the worst part about writing? it isn't the actual writing. its the unwriting. when you write and write and in the end you must remove a favorite scene, a favorite character, a favorite point of view because it is hindering the story as a whole. how you must work doubly hard to fix it and how this work costs you one of the best moments in the story. the sacrifice. i used to be amazed when author's spoke with far-reaching authority about the worlds and characters they create. but now i know that that signifies a pain. all the things that couldn't be put in the book, that had to be cut, the writer keeps inside so that what they know and understand is far broader than what the reader knows and understands based on the text. how when you read you actually miss so much even when you think you have the entire world in your hands. only the author and perhaps his or her editor know the whole of it. when you think about it, it could be baffling. in this world that we live in, we will never know everything. in a world that you create, your reader will never know everything. it makes of the writer something sublime, because creating means knowing the whole of it when others would only know portions. but there is that sacrifice. writer's are very generous in some ways because they would like to share the whole of it, to share the entire sublime vision to their readers, but are limited, forced to sacrifice due to length, coherence, etc. how we are comprised simultaneously of limitless potential and potential limitlessness. but i'm not a writer yet. i can only hope to be, if only ever to a select few.

my twenty minutes are up.