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I went home for four days and it was so draining, I'm sort of officially planning to just lie around for the rest of the week, resting up before I start my new job. Of course, I did just finish 9 months of working 50-60 hours a week in split shifts, so maybe resting up would be called for in any case?
I haven't written much on my novel since May (May!) and it was good to talk about writing with my Aunt while I was back home, and with a friend who is a beginning-career professional playwright last night. Life has been full of vector-stressors lately, and the writing has really stalled. Now that things are less crazy, I'm trying to get back to the writing. That's partly due to the influence of good friends like S., people here on LJ, my husband, my grandmother who asks me every weekend on our Sunday conversation what writing progress I've made recently (she helped me to quit smoking by the same persistent nagging, and I'm really honestly glad she nags me about the writing now).
Believing in my writing has been my best constant since I was a little kid, a six year old writing what I guess you'd call fan-fic about Charlemagne's Paladins, a 7 year old writing Tolkien Pastiche and doggerel in her red composition folders, a 9 year old writing about magical twin girls switched at birth and trying to refind each other while escaping the destinies their foster parents laid out for them, a 10 year old writing magical-abduction elf-romance while reading Emily Dickinson (for years I'd start a new novel pretty much every year... I wasn't cool like Diana Wynne Jones though - I didn't actually finish mine out to 12 composition books... they usually petered out in comp. book 2 or 3 and got abandoned). I wrote some decent poetry and plays and stuff in high school, but that deeper sense that this was something I was just supposed to do was getting frayed away. Even though I actually published a pair of poems in college, it didn't help me to hold on to that sense of doing the right thing, especially in an academic environment that devalued science fiction, fantasy, and romance - the kinds of stories I loved. The writers around me who were getting praise and reinforcement wrote stuff I couldn't easily understand or empathize with, and the internet author environment we've got today (wow!, so cool!) wasn't around in 1998. And not knowing anything about publishing or markets as a 13, 15, and 18 year old, I had gotten REALLY SAD when my submissions to the New Yorker and the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction got rejected. I figured if they didn't want my novice writing at the New Yorker, I must be HOPELESSLY BAD. (As I've learned more about the publishing world, this strikes me as embarrassing now... but I was only a teenager, so I can't hold my ignorance against myself too much.)
Other people did give me encouragement, but I thought they were just being nice, or supportive as friends not out of any abstract analysis. I trusted Zeke that he would never say it was worth time if it wasn't. And that meant a lot to me - more than all the rest. I think looking back that it shouldn't have meant more - that there were a lot of voices giving me encouragement. A lot of people who thought what I wrote was worthwhile. But for some reason he was the audience who mattered, who said what I needed to hear, in a voice that I would allow myself to hear. And for that I'm just very grateful. Hence the nostalgia. So now, I think I need to listen to the nice people telling me I can do the next bit, and get on with doing it.
There's this joke about a guy, a priest, who is at his church and a flood is coming. The whole town is being evacuated. Some folks drive by in a jeep and offer him a ride out. "No thanks," he says, "G-d will provide for my safety." A while later the water is rising, flooding the roads out. Some folks row by in a boat and offer him a ride. "No thanks," he says, "G-d will provide for my safety." The water keeps rising. There are no more boats. The priest climbs up to the roof. A helicopter flies overhead, and they dangle out a rope for him. He doesn't grab on, "No thanks," he says, "G-d will provide for my safety." Eventually the helicopter flies off. No more rescuers come. The water rises. The priest drowns. In heaven, he confronts G-d. "Why didn't you provide for my safety?" he asks. G-d answers: "Well, I sent a jeep, and a boat, and a helicopter..."
I guess in general, not just to Zeke, I wish I could say to all the people who were my equivalent of the jeep and the boat, "Thanks". Eventually I wised up and took the helicopter ride out of there, and it wasn't till I was safe on dry land that I could look back and feel gratitude for all those folks with jeeps and boats who did their best. For me, for my goals and dreams, and for the rest of the people I knew.
I haven't written much on my novel since May (May!) and it was good to talk about writing with my Aunt while I was back home, and with a friend who is a beginning-career professional playwright last night. Life has been full of vector-stressors lately, and the writing has really stalled. Now that things are less crazy, I'm trying to get back to the writing. That's partly due to the influence of good friends like S., people here on LJ, my husband, my grandmother who asks me every weekend on our Sunday conversation what writing progress I've made recently (she helped me to quit smoking by the same persistent nagging, and I'm really honestly glad she nags me about the writing now).
Believing in my writing has been my best constant since I was a little kid, a six year old writing what I guess you'd call fan-fic about Charlemagne's Paladins, a 7 year old writing Tolkien Pastiche and doggerel in her red composition folders, a 9 year old writing about magical twin girls switched at birth and trying to refind each other while escaping the destinies their foster parents laid out for them, a 10 year old writing magical-abduction elf-romance while reading Emily Dickinson (for years I'd start a new novel pretty much every year... I wasn't cool like Diana Wynne Jones though - I didn't actually finish mine out to 12 composition books... they usually petered out in comp. book 2 or 3 and got abandoned). I wrote some decent poetry and plays and stuff in high school, but that deeper sense that this was something I was just supposed to do was getting frayed away. Even though I actually published a pair of poems in college, it didn't help me to hold on to that sense of doing the right thing, especially in an academic environment that devalued science fiction, fantasy, and romance - the kinds of stories I loved. The writers around me who were getting praise and reinforcement wrote stuff I couldn't easily understand or empathize with, and the internet author environment we've got today (wow!, so cool!) wasn't around in 1998. And not knowing anything about publishing or markets as a 13, 15, and 18 year old, I had gotten REALLY SAD when my submissions to the New Yorker and the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction got rejected. I figured if they didn't want my novice writing at the New Yorker, I must be HOPELESSLY BAD. (As I've learned more about the publishing world, this strikes me as embarrassing now... but I was only a teenager, so I can't hold my ignorance against myself too much.)
Other people did give me encouragement, but I thought they were just being nice, or supportive as friends not out of any abstract analysis. I trusted Zeke that he would never say it was worth time if it wasn't. And that meant a lot to me - more than all the rest. I think looking back that it shouldn't have meant more - that there were a lot of voices giving me encouragement. A lot of people who thought what I wrote was worthwhile. But for some reason he was the audience who mattered, who said what I needed to hear, in a voice that I would allow myself to hear. And for that I'm just very grateful. Hence the nostalgia. So now, I think I need to listen to the nice people telling me I can do the next bit, and get on with doing it.
There's this joke about a guy, a priest, who is at his church and a flood is coming. The whole town is being evacuated. Some folks drive by in a jeep and offer him a ride out. "No thanks," he says, "G-d will provide for my safety." A while later the water is rising, flooding the roads out. Some folks row by in a boat and offer him a ride. "No thanks," he says, "G-d will provide for my safety." The water keeps rising. There are no more boats. The priest climbs up to the roof. A helicopter flies overhead, and they dangle out a rope for him. He doesn't grab on, "No thanks," he says, "G-d will provide for my safety." Eventually the helicopter flies off. No more rescuers come. The water rises. The priest drowns. In heaven, he confronts G-d. "Why didn't you provide for my safety?" he asks. G-d answers: "Well, I sent a jeep, and a boat, and a helicopter..."
I guess in general, not just to Zeke, I wish I could say to all the people who were my equivalent of the jeep and the boat, "Thanks". Eventually I wised up and took the helicopter ride out of there, and it wasn't till I was safe on dry land that I could look back and feel gratitude for all those folks with jeeps and boats who did their best. For me, for my goals and dreams, and for the rest of the people I knew.
