Experiencing Crushing Failure and Remembering the Future

The first year I tried to do NaNoWriMo, I failed miserably for a number of reasons. It was before I had an account on the official NaNo website, for one thing. The site provides pep talks from famous authors and lets users see their friends' word counts, so there's always a spirit of friendly competition. In addition to not being on the site, I'd never written anything more than a few pages long before, so I was attempting something foreign and new. That November, November of 2011, I wrote scarcely anything, and I didn't finish the novel I'd started until April. That manuscript is barely 22,000 words. Maybe I ought to be proud of it. After all, it was my first finished story and I worked hard on it. And I was proud of it for a while. But then I got some negative feedback on it from someone whose opinion I put a lot of stock in, and now I can hardly stand to think about it.


But I'm not here to talk about NaNo 2011.


I'm here to talk about NaNo 2014, which would've been my greatest NaNo failure had it not been for NaNo 2011. One could even argue that it was my greatest NaNo failure, since in 2011 I wasn't really participating in an official, dedicated capacity.


I seriously can scarcely believe how badly this NaNo went. I've had the idea I was writing from for several months, but I started developing it in earnest back in August. For a while, I was incredibly excited. Then... I don't know, something went wrong.


Maybe it was that I had to write a short story for school, and it didn't go well, and I ended up struggling and getting frustrated. Maybe it was that my reading list was ever-lengthening and that wretched, ambition-killing thought crept back in: "So many other people have already written books. And you know what they say - there's nothing new under the sun. Your stories have all been told. Forget writing. Just read." Maybe it was something else. For whatever reason, by the time November rolled around, my passion had cooled and I no longer cared much about NaNo.


But I was still determined enough. My word count goal was 30,000. On November 1st, I wrote more than 2,000 words. I was ahead of schedule and ready enough.


But then, I just didn't write.


Whole days went by in which I didn't write a word. I kept telling myself that tomorrow, or next week, or November 15th would be the day I started writing in earnest and that I'd still be able to reach my goal. Halfway through the month, a good friend who also did NaNo (and, like, actually did NaNo, hit her word count goal and everything) came over and we each read what the other had written thus far, and she loved what I had and told me I had to finish it, and it should have been a huge confidence boost that got me just dumping words on the page... and it wasn't.


On November 20th, I changed my word count goal from 30,000 to 20,000. By yesterday, as I was sitting down to my 10,000-word-long manuscript in utter despair, I told myself I'd be content if I could just pass 15,000.


The end-of-November word count of my manuscript is approximately 18,050 words. It's always hard to gauge how much longer the first draft will get, but I'd guess I'm around halfway through.


I feel bad.


Now, let me just say this right out: I'm not seeking laudation or encouragement. Don't bother telling me that 18,000 is still super impressive or that we all have bad months or that there are all kinds of people who couldn't write a novel of any length or anything like that. As a perfectionist, as someone who knows she can do better at NaNo because she has done better in the past, and as someone who has been thinking about and tentatively planning for and looking forward to NaNo 2014 since last December, I am disappointed in myself and nothing anyone says will change that.


Here's what is going to happen.


I have a couple other school writing assignments that I have to do. I'm going to write them. They're going to be good. I'm going to (try to) relax and have a fantastic month, stuffed to brimming with Christmas-related activities and wonderful presents and the presence of family members and friends and all sorts of things like that. When I've had a breather and a glorious holiday season and I don't hate my book as much as I'm inclined to at the moment, I'll get back to it and finish it. Maybe next year I'll start work on some other idea, one I can work on without a one-month timeframe. And then, next November, I'll do NaNoWriMo again. And this time, I'll do better.


I read a book recently that I loved. There were a lot of things I loved about it, but only three passages from it ended up in my Quote Notebook. One of those came when the main characters encountered an unknowably ancient character that spoke in riddles, like the mentors which are the subject of my last post, except that this character wasn't anyone's mentor and was only there for one scene. Anyway, one of the cryptic things this character said was, "Those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it, but those who remember the future can plan ahead for the weather".


Ponder that for a bit, why don't you.


So here's to remembering the future. Here's to remembering there are other Novembers. Here's to not repeating the past, and here's to planning ahead for the weather.


To conclude this post, I'm going to post a brief excerpt from my NaNo book; the one that's already on the NaNo site, in fact, so some of you have already read it (although I've made a couple of minor changes to it since posting it on the site). And believe me, I came within about a centimeter of talking myself out of doing this, because even having already put this online I find it scary. To be sure, I've felt worse about my writing before. This manuscript and I are at least on speaking terms - but they're strained.


I guess my thinking is... well, I don't really know what my thinking is. To give you an idea of what I've been spending my time on and struggling with, maybe. It adds meaning to the rest of the post. Or something.


Well... here goes.


~Pearl Clayton 




“Adjective.”

            “Lame.”

            Sometimes, when Huck and I hang out, we put on brilliant disguises and go out on the town, maybe see a movie or eat lunch somewhere or spend an hour or two in a bookstore. Sometimes we leave the brilliant disguises at home, go someplace where we know there won’t be many people, and just sit and talk.

            “Lame?”
           

            “Yes, lame. You know, incapable of walking.”

            Sometimes we do silly things. Like, for example, sit in my living room and play Mad Libs.

            “I get the strange feeling you’re trying to tell me something.”

            “Move on to the next word, Huck.”

            Aunt Ella used to love playing Mad Libs. On the rare occasions I got to spend a week or a weekend or a day at Dad’s house, Aunt Ella would always try to catch me and make me fill a couple in with her. She seemed to like my word choices, which never made any sense to me, as they were usually words specially selected to express my frustration: boredom, end, nonsensical, pointless, lame – they made for rather depressing resulting paragraphs.

            “Noun.”

            “Is this the word being modified by ‘lame’?”

            “You know I’m not going to tell you.”

            Deep sigh. Yes, I know. “Um… idea.”

            Alright, so maybe I’m a big spoilsport, but I’ve never found Mad Libs even the slightest bit amusing. They’re only funny because they’re random, and in my opinion randomness on its own isn’t really very funny. And yet I am apparently doomed to meet people who find them (and my negative reactions to them) endlessly hilarious.

            “Person in room.”

            Ugh. I hate the ones featuring a Person in room. “Huck.”

            “Yes?”

            “Just write it down,” I say, fighting back a smile. I am not going to make him think I’m enjoying this.

            Which is not to say that Mad Libs are never entertaining. I remember once I was doing one with Aunt Ella and the paragraph was about books. It was only the first or second one we’d done, so I was still trying to think of creative and interesting words, and one of the book titles ended up being The Machinist in the Fragrant Dress. I fully intend to write a book with that title one day. I mean, man, the possibilities with a title like that! They’re endless!

            “Disease.”

            “Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanokoniosis,” I say. There’s a moment of complete silence. Then:

            “Um, how do you spell that?” 

            “Just like it sounds.”

            Another time, Aunt Ella asked for a plural noun, and I said “hours” (one of my passive-aggressively irritated answers; because, see, it felt like we’d been playing for hours). The paragraph was about winemaking, and contained a phrase about the juice of ripe grapes. That is, it would have contained a phrase about the juice of ripe grapes. Instead, it said something about the juice of ripe hours.

            That phrase has been stuck in my head ever since. I feel like it belongs on some motivational poster: “The juice of ripe hours of work is sweet, sweet SUCCESS!” Or maybe lost somewhere in the vague speechifying of the mentor character in a kung-fu movie – “Inner peace will come to you as the juice of ripe hours of meditation.” Ooh, or how about a cheesy, shoddily written romance novel? “And so, as Mirabella and Clem continued to spend ripe hours in each other’s company, love began oozing into their empty hearts like the sour, sun-warmed juice of those hours.”

            I’ll keep mulling it over. I’m bound to come up with something good.

My Love-Hate Relationship With Wise Old Mentors

So, since I've established that books are my one passion (see previous post) I might as well post a post being passionate about book-related stuff.


We all know about wise old mentors, right? You know, that character who shows up in a lot of fantasy stories who's impossibly old and wise and who gets way too much enjoyment out of speaking in irritating riddles and who supposedly loves and trusts the hero he or she is mentoring and yet constantly scolds, condescends to, and gets angry with said hero? Yeah, you know. Merlin. Yoda. Dumbledore. Merriman Lyon.


I have mixed feelings about these characters.


More specifically, my feelings vary from version to version. For example, I love Gandalf. But then again, Gandalf never really looks down on Bilbo or Frodo. Instead of feeling he needs to teach them deep lessons by speaking cryptically or telling them stories with unclear morals he wants them to figure out, he believes in them from the beginning and leaves it to them to learn lessons through experience. Gandalf genuinely feels that these little, non-adventuresome Hobbits lacking in self-confidence are capable of amazing things; consequently, they accomplish amazing things. He guides them to find their own worth through his leadership rather than giving them their worth through his teachings.


I like Aslan, too. Aslan, who will believe in his heroes as long as they believe in him, and who, like Gandalf, learn through experience (and I'm not talking about seemingly arbitrary, "wax on, wax off" experience - actual experience).


But so few mentor characters are like Gandalf and Aslan!


More often, I encounter mentor characters who take their belligerent, impatient heroes and assign them tasks or tell them stories or spout pseudo-profound speeches that seem to have no meaning. When the impatient and belligerent hero impatiently and belligerently demands to know why the mentor is making them do this or telling them this or saying this, the mentor says nothing because apparently the hero needs to figure out the kind of profound-ish point of the task or the story or the speech himself (or herself, I guess, but in my experience very few fantasy books have female heroines).


Take Dumbledore. There are things about Dumbledore I like. There are scenes where I find him amusing. But then there's the way he, just like half the rest of the wizard world, acts like Harry's the best thing since Christmas simply because he had a good mother, an evident opinion that clashes horribly with the way he's almost never forthright about anything with Harry! Like, seriously, does he trust Harry implicitly and inexplicably or not?


And Kilgarrah from Merlin the TV show... no, I can't talk about Kilgarrah. I hate him. I hate him I hate him I hate him. I'm pretty sure that every tragic and upsetting thing that happened on that show can be blamed on Kilgarrah, in exchange for actually helping Merlin, I don't know, once? Maybe twice?


I feel like I could go on about this for a long time, dissecting my individual feelings for as many of these characters as I can think of, trying to figure out why some of them frustrate me so much, but it would take a while and isn't actually the reason I'm writing this post.


Despite my love of some mentor characters, I'm getting pretty tired of them. After a while, it just stops being plausible that every useless incompetent supposed hero is going to run across a really old, really enigmatic, really confusing sage whose pretentious ramblings somehow turn the loser into our great and noble protagonist. And honestly, I prefer heroes who are heroes in their own right, who don't need to hear stories with morals to become good men and who don't need to be forcibly faced with horrors to become brave men and who don't need to hear nonsensical maxims full of paradoxes and vagueness to become wise men.


And thus we come to Robin Hood.


Robin Hood doesn't have a wise old mentor. He isn't chosen to be a hero because of some prophecy and then assigned a befuddling (and all-too-often befuddled) Merlin-esque teacher to make him into the hero he's destined to be. He chooses to be a hero. He chooses to rob from the rich because he's got a temper and a grudge, but he chooses to give to the poor because he's innately noble and he loves his people. In some versions of the story, "his people" aren't even necessarily the Saxons. "His people" are any people oppressed and saddened and heaped with undeserved injustices. Such is the way I've always understood the story, anyway.


And I realize that I love Robin for that. I love that he's just doing what he does because he honestly wants to, from the beginning. I love that no matter how roguish or overconfident or prideful he is, he's always fighting his battles at least partly because he feels in his heart that they're battles that need to be fought, and since no one else is volunteering to fight them, he'll have to.   


And what has led me to realize this?


I'm reading a book in which Robin Hood has a wise old mentor. And MAN is it making me angry.


Admittedly, I wasn't angry at first. When she (yes, the wise old mentor is a she) first showed up, Robin was dying and only she, an expert healer, could save him. That's fine. I even rather liked her, as I assumed she'd be in the book for a few chapters before Robin, having recovered, left to go out and resolve to do battle with the Normans.


100 pages later, Robin was still languishing in her cave and I was getting frustrated.


But I didn't get angry until she told him the story.


So she told him this story. It didn't make any sense and had no lesson or moral that I could discern, except for maybe "don't trust pretty redheads" (on further reflection, that moral might be contributing to my anger just a little). However, Robin evidently found it very meaningful and, where I am now in the book, is struggling with the inner conflict which will undoubtedly lead to his becoming Robin Hood.


I'm thinking I'm probably going to get angrier when it's revealed what the moral he and the wise old mentor are seeing in the dumb story is. I'm guessing it's going to be some folderol about keeping your promises or taking responsibility or something, even though the story was about an idiot who impulsively promised something to a pretty but ultimately dishonest redhead. Naturally, when her dishonesty and manipulation was revealed he refused to keep his promise because it was made under false pretenses. Then his punishment for this covenant breakage isn't really all that terrible, so... yeah, I really don't see the moral here. Beyond, again, "don't trust pretty redheads".


To complicate matters further, I'm about 99% the wise old mentor is the pretty redhead from the story. But she's good, because she's turning Robin Hood from a knave into a hero with her story which apparently has a point. But of course Robin's too dense to realize she's the pretty redhead, despite the fact that she's rather heavily hinted that she is (which reminds me of something else I don't like about non-Gandalf wise old mentors: in order for them to be needed and for their philosophical observations to be warranted, the heroes in stories with them have to be complete idiots).


So, to reiterate: Robin Hood in this story won't be fighting for a cause he's led to believe in by his own affronted sense of justice. He'll be fighting for a cause he's led to believe in by the bizarre legends told to him by an irritating old woman.


Oh, incidentally, she foresaw his arrival on her doorstep and his eventual heroism, so this story's also leaving out the whole "choosing his own destiny" thing.


It's like the author missed the whole point of Robin Hood.


Not cool, man.


Thing is, I finish what I start. Moreover, I'm trying to be optimistic. Maybe it'll get better. Maybe Robin will prove to be noble in his own right. Elsewhere in the book, before the wise old mentor rather rudely inserted herself into the narrative, he did stand up for some defenseless people all on his own. I'm going to finish the trilogy, or at the very least this first book, to see if it gets better. Which it very well might.


But... seriously. Enough with the wise old mentors. Or, if you insist, make them more like Gandalf.


~Pearl Clayton       

The Hunt for My Heart

I haven't really done much planning for this post. It doesn't really have a point; not at the moment, anyway. Perhaps during composition a point will creep into it. It wouldn't be the first time.


I should've written it yesterday afternoon, when I felt strangely, peacefully empty, when I was full to brimming with the thoughts I'll be writing in this post, and when I felt like I was tottering on the brink of some vast emotional abyss that the vaguest breath of sadness could send me plummeting into. I'll bet that yesterday afternoon I could've written something incredible. Instead I waited, and now these thoughts aren't commanding my headspace anymore. I waited, and the peace is gone and I can't get it back, and this post is no longer something that I need to write, and I hate that. But I don't like to leave things unfinished, so I'm going to attempt to get this written.


Yesterday morning was a bad morning. A really bad morning. I won't go into details. Suffice to say there was an external storm resulting in heated words which in turn resulted in tears (a rare occurrence for me), and that when that had blown over I had my own internal storm which blew my mind to some of the darkest places it's ever been. And when that, too, had blown over, leaving behind the deathly, glorious calm of yesterday afternoon, I sat and talked with my mom, who has had to endure many storms and many post-storm talks with her moody and melancholy daughter, and has done so with an admirable patience for which I fear I don't express as much gratitude as I should.


I told her that I feel like my heart's not really in anything these days.


My heart's not in my writing. We're almost two-thirds of the way through November and my NaNo book is stuck under 10,000 words, its icon sitting dormant on my computer screen and not even having the courtesy to mock me. I feel almost no shame. I feel no sense of urgency or burning desire to get it written. I don't hate the book or love it. I dislike it passively. It's not its fault that it's not being written; it's mine. It's my writer's block and my low self-esteem and I don't hate either of those things either. My writing is still a part of me, but there's no longer any passion behind it.


My heart's not in my schoolwork, but then again it almost never has been. I go to my homeschool group and get my assignments, and take weeks to complete them because without deadlines I have no reason to hurry. I'm not doing any independent studying because there's nothing I care to learn about. I don't care if I never learn anything ever again. During the external storm, at the horrid crescendo when the climaxing external storm clashed with the rising internal one, when my thoughts were muddy with anger and depression and self-hatred and a great rush of antisocial feeling, I said I never wanted to go to school again (more specifically, I said I never wanted to go anywhere ever again; bad days tend to have the effect of dragging my emotional age down to about five years old). As the final project in one of my classes, I have to do a research paper (one that'll actually have a deadline) and I'm dreading it. I hate research papers. A few days ago when I was complaining about it to my mother (who is, once again, wonderfully patient) she theorized that I only hate writing about things that don't interest me and that I should pick a topic that does interest me. But there's the problem. I can't think of anything that interests me enough to make it worth researching.


I told my mother all of this. Like any good mother would, she asked, "So where is your heart?" 


After some deliberation, I replied, "In my chest," partly because I didn't particularly want to say something like "I don't know" or, worse yet, "It isn't anywhere", and partly because I like to cope with things that upset me by turning them into lame jokes.


In that moment's deliberation, I briefly considered saying something like "In my future", as that's where I spend an embarrassingly large percentage of my time: off wandering through a childlike daydream where I have legions of fans who hail the books and movies I make as masterpieces, where the petty grievances and conflicts and miseries currently plaguing my mind have become laughable memories which I dismissively share with my many admirers (still earning their commiseration in spite of my nonchalance, of course). I waste hours meandering through this shadowy land, where I'm multitalented and stylish and pretty and all sorts of people wish they could be as amazing as I am. I think I could safely say my heart's in it.


But while my various friends whose hearts are in their futures plan, getting jobs and driver's licenses, thinking about colleges and degrees, fixing up the old cars bequeathed to them and writing brilliant, publishable stories, all I do is idly dream. The dreams never have mention of how I got to that place before my adoring public; I'm simply miraculously there. The thing is, lurking behind every dream is a dark gray pessimism that likes to creep in and tell me that they're all far-fetched and silly and selfish and vain, one that says I'm not good enough to get published and I'd be incapable of making movies and that even if I succeeded nobody would like them. I felt it would be wrong to say my heart's in my future, because I fear that if I actually put my heart into my future, if I sent things I'd written to publishers and started looking for a college with a really great liberal arts program and forced myself to turn some more of my many ideas into manuscripts thousands of words long, I would only succeed in getting my heart broken.


Moreover, my heart wasn't in my future yesterday afternoon. In the calm after the morning's double storm, when I could feel the tearstains on my face and the fragility of my emotions, I thought nothing of my own merit. For a few hours, those futuristic dreams were utterly forsaken. I didn't compose dialogues or envision movie scenes. I never once paused in what I was doing to share my supposedly brilliant thoughts on a subject with a nonexistent audience. For a few hours, I had no self-confidence and no ambition.


And it felt wonderful.


But as good as it felt to be temporarily free of the deafening sound of my own voice in my ears, there was still the looming and dreadful possibility of having to admit that I lead a passionless life. I didn't want that. So after Mom had left to pick up my sister from school, I wandered around the house in an almost unreal silence and hunted for my heart.


And in that eerie, peaceful hush, the only place I could manage to find it was in books.


I found it in the book I'm currently reading, a homey, familial tale that's reminding me a lot of To Kill a Mockingbird (one of my favorite books).


I found it in the eager anticipation of some of the books I got from the library on Sunday, like the first two books of a trilogy that's a retelling of the Robin Hood legends, set in Wales and incorporating elements of Celtic mythology (you can understand why I'm excited to read these, I'm sure); and like the second book in a series in a started recently, a series designed for booklovers whose first book surprised me and delighted me, made me laugh and quickened my pulse by turns.  


It felt good, finding my heart.


That's all changed a bit now, though. The hush has ended and my voice has reentered my head. When a new idea for a TV show sidled its way into my head a few hours ago, I tried to shove it away, and when I caught myself composing some gushing message board discussion of me I felt completely awful. But it's all slipping back into the way it was, like yesterday never happened. Back come the empty, obsessive daydreams; away goes the raw, quiet excitement about all I'm going to read next.


Don't get me wrong, I'm still enjoying the book I'm reading, and I'm still expecting to enjoy the books I'll read next. But I can tell there's been a change, and it's not a change I'm pleased with.


And even in the contented, vulnerable, muted afternoon, I couldn't shake the feeling that my heart was poorly bestowed. If my only real passion in life is reading books, not in analyzing them or reviewing them or writing them, just reading them, what on earth will I do with my life?


Sometimes, even when I'm not recovering from a bad day (it just happens to be much worse on bad days, like yesterday) I half-envision a future quite different from the one that generally appears. In it, the years pass by and I grow older. My sole talent is writing, but any publisher I apply to rejects me because the story's too predictable or because it feels incomplete, because my characters are inconsistent and underdeveloped, because the story won't appeal to enough people, because of any number of reasons related to the seemingly numerous faults I find in my stories. So I underperform in a job that my heart isn't in, as my perfectionism objects feebly to my bare-minimum effort but I can't find it in myself to care enough to do more, meaning that I never rise in the ranks to bigger and better things. Meanwhile, my friends start going off and getting married and having kids, so I start seeing them less and less (if at all), as first my grandparents and then my aunts and uncles and parents and teachers grow older and less like themselves, changing and sickening, until...... Until my human interaction is practically nonexistent, and I watch the world continue to modernize and change and shift alarmingly from the cold comfort of my empty apartment and the discomfort of my horrible job. And I try to stop the memories of my old daydreams from crowding in and telling me how different my life is from what I wanted it to be, but I fail, and I stoop under their weight as my life rapidly drains away. Things get worse as all my favorite actors, the ones I'd hoped to work with or at the very least meet, start dying. And time marches on until I'm alone, until I'm drowning in my own selfish misery, until not even books interest me, until I have nothing left. And thus I finally reach my pathetically attended funeral and afterwards am quickly forgotten by the world at large.


(And in case anyone is now massively concerned about my mental health and overall happiness, I promise I'm okay; this is not an everyday thing or a constant preoccupation, and as I'm sure many of you have seen I'm in general plenty happy and easily amused and prone to laughter and all that good stuff. I just occasionally have days of what my mother and I call shlumpiness. We all do.)


So now we come to the point (see, I told you I might find one): I want a passion, or at the very least a more clearly defined passion. I want a reason to get out of bed in the morning. I want a reason to want to leave my room. Some days I have them. On November 27th, there'll be family and friends and really good food. On December 17th (or somewhere thereabouts) there'll be The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies and a day spent fangirling and gasping for breath and maybe crying with my best friend. On December 25th, there'll be Christmas breakfast casserole and a stocking and a tree skirt full of surprises because I don't have a wish list.


I have bad days, but I also have good days. But sometimes I feel like, more than anything, I have days that are neither, empty days of going through the motions of life without much investment in it. I don't want to just live and persevere in an effort to get to the next good day or the next good book. I want my heart to be in something other than my chest or my list of favorite books. I want there to be something, something that I'm good at, something that I love doing, something that can bring me a sense of purpose and, later, accomplishment. I want there to be something I can live for.


And so the hunt for my heart must continue.


~Pearl Clayton               

The Crippling Fear of Inadequacy

It's time once again for National Novel Writing Month, and I can't seem to decide whether I'm excited or terrified.


On the one hand, I feel plenty ready. The book I'm writing this year is a sequel to something else I've already written, so I already know and love my characters. I know what new characters and plotlines I want to introduce. I know from writing the first story that this story comes easily to me, and that the narrator is both easy and fun to write as. I'm feeling competitive, ready to outdo (or at the very least attempt to outdo) my previous writing accomplishments and the friends of mine who are doing their own novels alike. BRING IT ON, NOVEMBER!


On the other hand, November's only thirty days. And I still have school and lots of books I want to read. And a lot of things are supposed to happen in this book, so who knows whether I can get them all written in such a short amount of time? And I've been having a lot of trouble with writing lately.


That last one might be obvious. If you scroll down, you'll see my latest post, a short story I finished writing yesterday after working on it for several days. If you scroll down a little farther, you'll see that my last post before that was on September 3rd.


The extent of my writing over the past few months is as follows: I wrote that last post on September 3rd. I wrote the short story over the last ten days or so of October. I wrote another short story, this one a school assignment that ended up being about 16 pages long and not quite 7,000 words, over the course of October. Over the course of last Sunday and Monday, I finally finished last year's NaNo book, writing about 8,700 words in two days (and yes, I was extremely proud of myself).


That probably seems like a lot. But it doesn't feel like a lot to me, because it took me an entire month to write a short story that was shorter than the amount I added in my book in just two days. And I went almost two months without blogging. And I know how much I struggled to write both the school short story and the one I posted yesterday. And I know why I'm having all this trouble.


The reason I haven't blogged in two months, despite the fact that more than once I came across something in fiction I felt like ranting about, is that I didn't want to post any regular posts until I'd finished the posts from the short story challenge I started over the summer. And the reason that it's been taking me so long to finish that can be found in the subject line of this post: the crippling fear of inadequacy.


The thing is, I'm afraid of disappointing people. I worry that my stories won't live up to the expectations of the people giving me prompts. It's the same reason it took me so long to write that story for school. I'd been given an assignment to write something by my favorite teacher ever, and I couldn't shake the completely unfounded feeling that if the story I wrote wasn't amazing she'd feel let down. (My working excuse for the delay while I was writing it was that I hated all my characters, but then I realized that characters very similar to the ones I supposedly hated had made appearances in my other non-assigned writings without really slowing me down at all.)


And then Sunday came, and I had to finish last year's book, and the only person I could conceivably disappoint was myself, and suddenly I was done and my book had magically become 23 pages longer than it had been before.


Thus last year is behind me and I can boldly go into a new November.


There's just one small problem.


The story I finished on Monday is a fantasy story. It features a completely made-up land with its own people and language and mythology and history, its own social stigmas and prejudices. The characters face danger and death, betrayal and fear. There're moments of poetic writing and character growth. It's not actually as good as I'm making it sound...... but I think it's pretty dang good.


The story I started writing at midnight is about a modern teenage girl with few social graces who is attempting to adjust to the idea of having a best friend, a massively foreign concept to her. She bumbles around, sassing people and trying to cope and accidentally making more friends along the way. It's a fun story, she's a fun character and, as previously stated, a blast to write; but compared to last year's endeavor, it feels a bit...... insubstantial.


My concern now is that all my friends and maybe even some family members or teachers will read last year's book and think it's good and ask to see my other stuff, and then be confused and bored by my newer manuscript and its lack of meat.


Once again, I'm being crippled by a fear of inadequacy.


*Sigh*


There's a stereotype out there that teenage girls have no self-esteem. I've heard teenage girls described as having "enough insecurities to fill a house". And some days, I feel like I'm upholding the stereotype. But where most girls presumably fret about their appearance, or their social status, or their lack of a boyfriend, I fret about my writing. No matter how many times or how many ways I'm told it's good, there's almost always a voice in the back of my head silently arguing. "But the ending was stupid." "But I didn't flesh that one plot point out enough." "But I'm so rambly." "But what about that one incredibly lame line of dialogue I insisted on putting in and then immediately regretted?" "You're just saying that because you don't want to hurt my feelings."


The voice with the fear-of-inadequacy problem is even worse. "You realize you use the exact same dialogue device in, like, everything you write, right? Someday someone's going to notice that." "This isn't up to your usual standard. Are you even trying?" "Why is this taking so long? Normally you don't have this much trouble." "Ugh, this is awful. You can't let anyone read this. For some reason they all think you're good at writing. They would be so disappointed by this."


Those who have read my non-blog writing are often besieged with demands of feedback. This is why. I get very frustrated by my own self-confidence issues, and sometimes positive comments will lodge in my brain and fight them back for days, even weeks. On Monday, as soon as I'd finished, I sent last year's NaNo to a couple good friends, and ever since I've been anxiously waiting for comments that I know aren't going to be arriving until at least mid-November. Because if they love it, and like the characters that I intended for them to like, and get excited by the things that are supposed to be exciting, it'll make my whole week. And if they don't....... well, I don't exactly know how I'll feel, but at least I'll have the opinion of someone besides myself to refer to.


I get that I'm not alone in this. Many great artists had it much worse than I do, believing their masterpieces were worthless. I actually find that comforting.


There's a Sherlock Holmes movie called They Might Be Giants that was made in the 1970s. It's about an ardent Sherlock Holmes fan who copes with an emotional trauma by forgetting his real life and believing he's Sherlock. His brother forces him to see a young psychologist, conveniently named Dr. Watson. Shenanigans ensue.


There's one bit in it that I was much amused by, when "Sherlock" is trying to convince Watson to come solve crimes with him. He says something like, "I understand that you probably feel unworthy to be my companion because of my massive intellect. But you're not! You're perfectly adequate! Just repeat this to yourself: 'I am adequate!'"


It's meant to be funny (and it is). But I'm finding it's not as easy as it sounds to say even those words and believe them.


I am adequate.


I am adequate.


*Takes deep breath*


C'mon, November.


Let's do this.


~Pearl Clayton                 

Short Story #3: The Mandolinist Saves the Tea Party

Imagine you're attending a tournament. Pennants are flying, the air smells like caramel apples and roasted chestnuts, everyone around you is talking at once. The color and the scent and the sound all blend together to make your blood run high and your breath come short. Soon...... soon......


A man climbs onto the stage in the center of the field you're all clustered around. He clears his throat and, slowly, the crowd goes silent. The food-sellers stop calling their wares. The mothers and maiden aunts cease their gossip. The merchants pause in their heated discussions of business. All eyes move centrally and focus on the crier.


"Ladies and gentleman, wizards, jesters, bandoliers, and- um- others," the crier begins. "The first participant of our grand tournament today is-"


There's an expectant silence as the crier pauses for effect. The food-sellers shift their trays from hand to hand. The mothers and maiden aunts lean forward, their lips parting slightly. The merchants feign disinterest. You wait.


"Pearl Clayton!" he cries out at last.


A gasp races through the crowd. Pearl Clayton? Impossible! She's not been seen nor heard from in over a month. You all thought she'd gone. Flown the coop. Given up tournaments forever. All eyes turn to the gate in amazement.


A girl sheepishly comes through the gate and walks toward the stage. Her red hair is flying loose, part of it covering her face. As well it should. She ought to be ashamed of herself, disappearing like that for so long.


She reaches the stage and climbs onto it as the crier leaps off. She turns, slowly, to face the crowd. She smiles awkwardly.


"Hello," she says. The crowd doesn't respond. Pearl shuffles her feet uncomfortably before going on. "I was challenged by Sir Hannah more than two months ago," she continues quietly. There are cries of outrage. Two months! Has she no honor?


Looking panicked, Pearl raises her hands, her eyes silently pleading for calm. "Please, please," she calls out. "I know I'm terribly delinquent, but I'm here now, and I'm fully ready to answer Hannah's challenge!"


The crowd reluctantly grumbles into silence. The food-sellers seat themselves among the rest. The mothers and maiden aunts glance at each other significantly. The merchants shake their heads disapprovingly. You think to yourself, Well, this'd better be worth it.


Pearl takes a deep breath. "Hannah's challenge was to compose a tale about a tea party gone awry, a bored princess, a deceiving knight, and a mysterious musician," she says.


There are murmurs of expectation throughout the crowd. It's a promising premise.


One more deep breath. And then, at last, Pearl begins her story.


The Mandolinist Saves the Tea Party


It was the sunniest of days, but it wasn't overly hot. The grass was looking delightfully thick and green, the sky was shockingly blue, and the hundreds of pastel roses surrounding the wicker tea table in the garden were all perky and fresh. Queen Gertrude sighed contentedly as she ran her eyes over the scene. The queen's tea parties were known for their utter perfectness, and this one was shaping up to be no exception.


"Come, Penelope, come and sit down, there's a dear," Gertrude chirped at her daughter. Then, as Penelope was approaching her place to the right of the head of the table (which was, of course, the queen's place) Gertrude reached out and caught her arm.


"Oh, Penelope," she said in ecstasy. "You look simply ravishing today. Oh, it's going to be just wonderful. We're all going to have so much fun!"


Penelope shrugged her mother's hand away and sat in her incredibly uncomfortable white wicker chair. Oh, yes, just wonderful. It wasn't like they did the same exact thing three or four times every blasted summer. Oh, wait- they did.


And it really was the same exact thing. Always a new pink dress covered in ruffles for the princess who hated pink and ruffles. Always the same finger sandwiches and miniature scones and other pathetic excuses for food for the princess who was constantly hungry. Always the same three hours of repetitive small talk and gossip on the same inane subjects that the princess who was bored by small talk and gossip was forced to participate in. Always the same guests sitting in the same places drinking the same over-sweetened mint tea.


Wonderful.


But this time it was worse. This time the queen had, through nefarious scheming or (more likely) complete accident, scheduled her pointless tea party on the same day as one of King Claude's state meetings, meetings much rarer than the ridiculous tea parties, when his various advisors gathered at the palace to discuss the country's politics and current events, solve any problems, debate new laws, eat real food, and more. Penelope had started attending the state meetings when she was twelve years old and hadn't missed a single one in the five years since. She loved the meetings. She loved taking part in the decision-making and contributing her ideas. She loved the way the councilors actively sought her opinion more often each meeting. She loved the way they addressed her as Nell, not Princess, not Penelope, not Princess Penelope, just Nell, the name her father had always used for her when her mother wasn't around.


She had begged and pleaded and reasoned and explained, but her mother had only looked at her blankly. "But dearest, I don't understand," she'd said, reaching for Penelope's hand and taking hold of it despite Penelope's frantic attempt to pull it out of the way. "Why would you want to go to one of those horribly dull meetings when you could be spending quality time with me and the other ladies of the court?" Then had come the pursed lips and the, "Oh, dear, Claude's put you up to this, hasn't he? Don't worry, love, I'll tell him you'd rather be with me."


"But I wouldn't rather, Mother," Penelope had finally said in desperation. "I want to go to the meeting with Father. Please. It'd only be one time."


But the queen had shaken her head and sighed. "Poor Claude. It's clear he wanted a son; but someday he's going to realize he can't turn you into one by sheer willpower." Then she'd gone and Penelope had been left to lower her head onto her desk, biting her lip to hold back her scream of frustration.


"Don't worry, Nellie," the king had whispered in her ear later. "I'll fill you in afterwards."


"It's not the same as being there," she'd said dejectedly. "But thanks."


So here she was, in an uncomfortable dress in an uncomfortable chair as plump, overdressed courtiers and giggly girls Penelope's age began trickling into the garden and eagerly reading the name cards, apparently looking for their places even though everyone always sat in the same place every time. Ugh.


Next came the compliments and greetings, the "Oh, you look so beautiful, milady!"s, and the "Why, that dress really suits you, Princess Penelope!"s and the "Looks like your mother's done it again, huh, dear?"s. And Penelope tried to sit up straight and tried to force a smile and said "thank you" until the two words no longer sounded like words.


Then everyone had to sit down, which, thanks to the ridiculous nature of both the chairs and the skirts, took an exceptionally long amount of time. And when everyone was finally seated, the slow process of serving the first course of tea and sandwiches was begun. Penelope would've sighed in exasperation, but she knew that if she did her mother would ask her what was wrong.


About halfway through this initial serving process, the first soft strains of a folk song drifted across the table, almost immediately drowned out by a reflexive smattering of applause from the guests. Penelope brightened a little. Not much. But a little.


Into the clearing came the Mandolinist, the court musician, strumming his mandolin at just the right volume: quiet enough that it wouldn't interfere with the meaningless conversations, but loud enough that it could be fully heard and appreciated. The Mandolinist was a professional.


Accordingly, he was incredibly full of himself. He had worked hard to become mysterious and intriguing, growing his dark hair out so that it was constantly slipping into his eyes, refusing to tell anyone at court his real name so that they all had to call him "Mandolinist", lurking in corridors and niches unseen so that he always knew just about everything going on at court...... the works. Penelope thought he was marvelous.


Penelope spent the next half hour attempting to tune out all the talking happening and focus on the increasingly complex and masterful mandolin music instead. More than once she succeeded for a few precious minutes, only to be jarred out of a blissful reverie by some woman's shockingly loud laughter or by her mother "helpfully" prodding her awake. "I suppose you must be tired, dearest," the queen said compassionately. "You were staring off into space. I hate to think of you missing out on all the fun!"


I am missing out on all the fun, Penelope thought, her mind drifting to her father's state meeting. Lord Demetrius had probably learned all sorts of new jokes. Earl Grayson was probably sharing anecdotes from his farm out in the country. And when they were done chatting and catching up and started the, Duke Orson would be asking for advice on how to deal with the unrest in his duchy, and Penelope had thought up such a brilliant solution, which Earl Grayson would undoubtedly have disagreed with, which would've led to a truly magnificent debate......


Penelope sighed and glanced up at the Mandolinist. At the same moment, he turned to look at her. He nodded and smiled sympathetically, almost like he knew what she was thinking. And, come to think of it, what with all his eavesdropping he very well might.


The tea party continued perfectly; tea, gossip, tiny stacks of papery bread and cucumbers that were misguidedly presumptuous enough to call themselves sandwiches...... Everything as planned.


And then...


...it happened


Queen Gertrude's famous "flush of pleasure", a not-exactly-delicate reddening of her cheeks which made an appearance about the midway point of every tea party, was just starting to spread across her cheeks when Sir Damien arrived.


Sir Damien had only recently been knighted. He was a loud, impulsive, talkative sort of fellow, with dark hair, a roguish smile, and the most glorious beard anyone had ever seen. He was admired and sighed after by almost every female at court between the ages of sixteen and sixty. He loved to regale his admirers with stories of hunting and participating in tournaments of every kind on his father's grand estate (although nobody quite seemed to know who his father was or where this grand estate was located, as Sir Damien had never actually shared those details).


Queen Gertrude thought he was charming. Penelope disagreed.  


"Hello, ladies!" Sir Damien called, just as he always did.


Interestingly, he didn't get the same reaction he always did.


Queen Gertrude's tea parties had a system. A pattern. A formula. They were predictable and dependable. That was what Penelope loathed about them, and what Queen Gertrude and all the others loved about them. Perfection. Precision. Rules, even, albeit unspoken rules.


One such rule concerned the fact that Queen Gertrude's tea parties were decidedly man-free (with the natural exception of the Mandolinist, who was inarguably necessary because there had to be music; plus, he was purposefully silent and conspicuously inconspicuous enough that if the tea partiers found his presence discomfiting they could simply ignore him). And so the giggles, blushes, and gasps that followed Sir Damien's entrance were far more reserved and confused than usual. All the women glanced at one another nervously, silently asking, Now what do we do?


Then it got worse.


"Look at you, sitting around here when you're surrounded by such beautiful gardens!" the incredibly oblivious Sir Damien boomed. His obliviousness had become a bit of a running joke among the few girls like Penelope who thought he was a complete idiot, and the many previously attached or homely girls who knew they didn't have a chance with him and had thus bitterly decided to turn their noses up at him. Really, if one was looking for it, the fact that he seemed completely unable to pick up on social cues became as plain as his glorious beard. It was evident now, as he'd clearly stumbled into the queen's famous tea party having no idea what it was and now appeared to have impressively failed to notice the discomfort of the guests.


Where did he even come from? Penelope wondered. She had zoned out again, jerked out of her thoughtfulness by Sir Damien's arrival, so she couldn't tell what direction he'd come bumbling in from.


"Let's liven this party up!" Sir Damien suggested. "Why don't we all take a turn about the gardens? Your majesty?" he asked, turning to Queen Gertrude.


The flush of pleasure had vanished completely, replaced by an ashen look of shock, both at Sir Damien's presence and his unpalatable notion. They couldn't take a turn about the gardens! For the love of all things good, this was a tea party, not a walking party!


But then again, how could the queen reject the offered arm of a knight? And not just any knight: Sir Damien!


"Why- why yes. A- a lovely idea," the queen said uncertainly, taking Sir Damien's arm.


A few minutes later, the entire tea party had abandoned their plates and were wandering about the gardens, vacant-eyed and inwardly panicking with no idea what they were supposed to be doing. Penelope was standing in front of a yellow rosebush, plagued by inner turmoil.


On the one hand, it was wonderful to be able to move and to finally encounter some variety in these ridiculous parties. On the other, Penelope could only imagine how miserable her mother must be. The poor woman. If this nightmarish unscheduled walking was allowed to continue much longer, one of the queen's tea parties would be absolutely ruined for the first time ever.


"I don't get why they all like that Sir Damien so much," said a voice near Penelope's shoulder. She turned to look at the Mandolinist.


It wasn't the first time she'd ever spoken to him. He had an interesting habit of unexpectedly joining the conversations he'd been listening in on, or striking ones up with people he knew from his spying who had scarcely even seen him before. Queen Gertrude hated it and had often emptily threatened to have him dismissed for it, but King Claude, Penelope, and many others had grown accustomed to it. Some, Penelope included, had even come to rather like it.


Now, Penelope shrugged. "The charisma, maybe. Or the stories he tells. It might just be the beard."


"I bet I could grow a beard," the Mandolinist said a little defensively.


"I'm sure you could," Penelope agreed. "But I don't think it'd look quite right. Maybe wait a few years."


The Mandolinist nodded thoughtfully. A minute passed. Penelope and the Mandolinist pretended to look at the yellow rosebush. Penelope was actually thinking about how miserable her mother must be and how pretending to look at a rosebush, while certainly preferable to having a tea party, got boring very quickly. The Mandolinist was actually looking at Penelope.


"So, Princess," he said at last. "Tell me: do you want to help your mother?"


Penelope shrugged again. "Not really. But I'm beginning to feel like I should. Got any ideas?"


"If you exposed him as a liar, I'll bet none of them would feel guilty going back to their seats."


"Is he a liar?"


The Mandolinist looked shocked. "Yes, of course he's a liar! He wasn't raised on some grand estate. He's from a small country farm."


"I can't prove that, though."


"He's never actually jousted before."


"Abominable, but again, I doubt they'll believe it."


"And he's only gone hunting once."         


Penelope shook her head sadly.


"And that beard is completely fake."


Ah, now, see, there was some information Penelope could make good use of.


It didn't take long to find the queen and Sir Damien, as Sir Damien was relating one of his so-called childhood memories to the queen in his booming voice. Penelope came up close to them.


"Hello, Mother," Penelope said.


"Oh, hello, Penelope," the queen replied dully, just as Penelope was tripping over a rock that didn't exist. Shrieking in exaggerated panic, Penelope reached out desperately and grabbed hold of the first object her hand touched. This object was, by design, Sir Damien's beard.


It came off in her hand.


Queen Gertrude gasped. Penelope slapped her hand across her mouth in an attempt to stop herself from giggling. The attempt failed, but none of the partygoers hurriedly gathering around noticed. Everybody was too busy fighting to get closer for a better look at Sir Damien's beardless face. He looked stunned. He also looked like a twelve-year-old.


"Oh, Sir Damien, you've got such a baby's face!" one of the courtiers Penelope's age cried out before her mother could stop her.


Recovering himself, Sir Damien made a desperate lunge for his beard, but Penelope sidestepped him. It was too late, anyway.


"Well," Queen Gertrude said regally, "I must say, Sir Damien, I am shocked by this turn of events. I really don't know what to make of it all. If you'll excuse me, I believe I've had enough of walking in the garden. I'll think I'll return to my party." All the others hurried to follow her, relieved that the departure from tradition had come to a speedy end.


The flush of pleasure returned full-force as Gertrude and her guests reseated themselves. Not only was the tea party being resumed, those in attendance now had a deliciously juicy new scandal to discuss for the duration. The tea party had been saved, and then some.


Penelope, still holding Sir Damien's beard and desperately attempting to keep back her laughter, sat down with them. She couldn't wait to tell her father about this.


As the Mandolinist returned to his place and recommenced his strumming, he glanced over at Penelope. She smiled and nodded. He winked, then turned his attention to his mandolin.


Still smiling, Penelope slumped down in her chair. Oh, well. Back to the monotony.


If only tea parties could always be this much fun.


THE END.    

Am I Not Smart Enough to Read Books?

Okay, fear not, I'm going to continue writing short stories (Hannah's challenged me to quite the duel and I'm looking forward to accepting the challenge) as soon as I get a chance, but at the moment, as has happened on before, I need to take a sec to rant about a book I'm currently reading and struggling with, and my blog seems like a reasonably good place for it.


Today's problem?


Authors have got to tell me why their characters do things.


I am getting so tired of being confused by characters' actions when a single paragraph could make everything crystal clear.


To properly express my frustration today, I think I need to explain what's just happened in the book, but I'll change the names and things so as to avoid giving spoilers.


Gladiola and Evinrude are best friends who live on the planet Ugh. They were both born and raised on Ugh, and are members of a society called "People Who Are Really Super Duper Nice (To Other Native Ughs)". Gladiola runs the local chapter of PWARSDN(TONU). Ugh is also inhabited by the Aches, immigrants from the planet Ouch. Gladiola looks down on the Aches and thinks they should be kept separate from the Ughs, but Evinrude has always had her doubts about both anti-Ache discrimination and PWARSDN(TONU).


As the book progresses, Evinrude and Gladiola's friendship begins to disintegrate as Evinrude befriends some Aches. A minor plot point is Gladiola's continued effort to get a small article utterly condemning the Aches as dirty undesirables based on made-up statistics published in the PWARSDN(TONU) newsletter... of which Evinrude is the editor. Evinrude continues to passive-aggressively refrain from putting the article in, without ever directly telling Gladiola that she's doing it or why she's doing it.


One day, Evinrude finds a book outlining all the anti-Ache legislation currently in effect (Ugh nurses cannot be required to treat Ache patients, Ugh schools and Ache schools shall not share textbooks, an Ache may under no circumstances marry an Ugh, etc.). Because the subject interests her, she takes the book and puts it in her purse. Later, she accidentally leaves her purse at Gladiola's house and Gladiola, being a sneaky, unpleasant sort of character, looks through it, finding the book, stealing it, and then shunning Evinrude. Later, when Evinrude confronts Gladiola about the shunning, Gladiola demands that Evirude tell her the truth about the "paraphernalia" in her purse, saying that she "just doesn't know anymore", and that the government put those laws in place, and that she can't believe Evinrude thinks she knows better than the government.


The last thing I read was another confrontation between Gladiola and Evinrude. Gladiola demands to know why her article hasn't been published in the newsletter yet. Evinrude, who's been going through a rough patch, finally loses her temper and says she'll never publish it. Gladiola threatens to throw Evinrude out of PWARSDN(TONU). Evinrude gets more upset. Eventually, the anti-Ache legislation book comes up again, and Evinrude says that Gladiola can't dictate what she reads. Gladiola retaliates by saying that she can see why Evinrude's boyfriend left her (leading to the aforementioned rough patch). Despite the fact that the breakup had nothing to do with Evinrude's feelings about Aches and everything to do with the male in question being a worthless loser, this comment makes Evinrude more upset than ever and she demands that Gladiola give her the book back. Gladiola says she will if Evinrude puts the article in the newsletter.


So Evinrude does.


Here are my questions:


1. Why did finding the anti-Ache legislation book make Gladiola think that Evinrude was an Ache sympathizer who thought she knew better than the government? Wouldn't studying anti-Ache legislation seem to suggest a dislike of Aches and a desire to know exactly what steps had been made toward keeping them in their proper place? And in what way can a straightforward listing of the laws, a simple factual booklet outlining laws that Gladiola supports, be pro-Ache paraphernalia?


How to fix it: I'm still not actually sure. This seriously makes no sense to me. But I assume it made sense to the author, so she should've been able to explain the path Gladiola's mind took to her weird conclusion.


2. Why was Evinrude upset by Gladiola threatening to kick her out of PWARSDN(TONU)? Evinrude is the narrator, and in the few scenes in which Evinrude is attending PWARSDN(TONU) meetings, she seems bored, out-of-place, and dispassionate. If she has some big reason for wanting to be in the group or some profound emotional connection to it, I should've known before this scene to make the threat meaningful.


How to fix it: "I've never much liked the PWARSDN(TONU). The meetings are too long and I feel like we never really get anything done. But the thing is... this group's a part of who I am. It has been ever since Gladiola started running it. This is practically where Gladiola and I grew up. Not being a member anymore... it'd just feel all wrong." (So that's a really rough draft, but you get the idea.)


3. Why was Evinrude upset by Gladiola's comment about her boyfriend? As I said, Evinrude knows good and well that Aches had absolutely nothing to do with the separation. In fact, nothing Evinrude did was; not her temper, not her passions, not her ideas, nothing. It was all the guy.


Admittedly, this one makes slightly more sense. The book has talked incredibly briefly about how heartbroken Evinrude is, so Gladiola rubbing salt in the wound riling Evinrude up is understandable. But... still. Evinrude is brilliant and reasonable, and I feel like she has more reason to be angry at the guy and therefore unaffected by Gladiola's comment than to be so distraught she's tottering on the edge of collectedness.


How to fix it: "I know, I know, that that dang book had nothing to do with Fyodor calling it quits. I know. But Gladiola's comment hits too close to home, right in the center of the wound that's nowhere near being healed. Suddenly I can see his face, as clearly as if he's still standing right in front of me, the anger, the hurt, the slouched shoulders, the lowered brows. 'I think we should call it off for now, Rudy.' And even though I know it's impossible, I can't stop myself from thinking, What if she's right? What if he looked at me and saw all the things I've been trying to hide, and he decided I just wasn't suitable? What if he read all my secrets on my face as easily as I read his?"


4. Why is Evinrude so flippin' desperate to get this book back, desperate enough to compromise her morals and give cruel, thoughtless, manipulative Gladiola exactly what she wants? Evinrude doesn't need the book to learn the laws. She can look them up. She can find another copy of the book. For Pete's sake, she can ask her Ache friends what the laws are. She already knows more about the way Aches live than that book could ever tell her just from being friends with some. Never once in all the time Gladiola's had the book has Evinrude thought that she wished she had it back. Even when Evinrude was taking the book and putting it in her purse, she made no explanation in her narration for wanting it. So, in short, Evinrude doesn't need the book and I have no reason to believe Evinrude wants the book, and yet I'm supposed to believe she's willing to publish an article she is horrified and repulsed by just to get the dumb thing back. Is it to show Gladiola she's not the boss of Evinrude? Because if that's the case, Evinrude has completely failed in her objective by doing exactly what Gladiola's wanted her to do since the beginning!


How to fix it: Scattered narration of Evinrude thinking about the book. Give her a good reason for wanting it and then have her think about that reason. Don't just suddenly have her want this book more than anything!


But what really bothers me most about this is that nobody else seems to have noticed. Of course, I'm sure it all made sense in the author's head, and I certainly am no stranger to the feeling of writing in a rush of inspiration and then going back and remembering things that won't make sense to anyone but me. But that's just the thing; surely she went back! Surely she reread and redrafted over and over, and in all that time she never thought, "My, that's a bit of a non sequitur!" Then her family members and friends read it, and in that process no one ever asked her, "Wait, why is so-and-so doing this?" Editors both personal and professional, publishers, reviewers, critics. Dozens of people read it and everyone "got" it.


This brings me to my subject line question: Am I not smart enough to read books? Because this is not the first time I've encountered this problem. It even exists in other places in the book I'm reading. Over and over, narrators, the people whose heads I am supposed to be inside, the people I should know inside and out, do things that utterly baffle me and fail to tell me why. The admonishment to "show, don't tell" is being taken to great extremes, because apparently meditating on your actions and explaining them to the audience is just too boring. Or maybe they're boring to everyone but me, because no one else needs them.


I'm writing a book right now, narrated in first-person present-tense, just like the book that's the subject of this post. The difference is that my narrator thinks more than she talks, from long paragraphs in which she analyzes situations and her own feelings to sarcastic asides while she's having conversations. Yes, there are some scenes where she does things and doesn't explain why... the scenes in which not even she knows why she's doing what she's doing.


Look, I found an easy fix for question 4: "Gourd, why am I so desperate to get this worthless book back from Gladiola? It's like I'm on a freight train and the brakes are out; doing this, insisting on this, is going to destroy me, but I can't stop myself."


So... am I stupid? Is my book boring? Because that's how I feel whenever I stumble across something like this. I feel like every other reader, all the people who loved and recommended whatever book I'm reading, made those logical leaps easily, understanding perfectly why characters did what they did and felt how they felt, while I sit around helplessly confused and incredibly frustrated. I feel like if I ever let them read my book, if anyone anywhere ever reads my book, they'll sit there rolling their eyes and skimming the long, introspective paragraphs, saying, "Gosh, Pearl, you are so wordy. We know why she feels this way, we know why she acts this way. You don't have to tell us. It's ruining the story."


*Sigh* Okay, I think my rant's finally over. I think I'll be able to go back to this book and read a little more before bed. But... please... if anyone else has ever had this happen, has ever been annoyed like this, could you please let me know? I'd really appreciate feeling less alone.


Bye for now.


~Pearl Clayton

Short Story #2: How Melvyn Martin Came to Develop an Unfortunate Rash on His Forearms

So, guess what? I'M STILL ALIVE!


No, really, I am. I haven't posted in a month and a half, and trust me, I feel quite sheepish about the whole thing. I do have a lame explanation, though.


See, remember how I was doing that thing where I asked people to give me suggestions for short stories with every intention of taking their brilliant ideas and making them into full-on narratives? Well...... I received two wonderful suggestions from some very good friends of mine. Suggestions so wonderful, in fact, that, frankly, they scared me a bit. I looked at them and I said to myself, "Pearl, how are you ever going to do justice to those suggestions?"


But it's been too long now, and I've finally decided that, regardless of my ability, I need to buckle down and get these stories written. So here goes.


This story is written from the prompt, "write about two people carrying a sofa running through the middle of a big city chasing a van", courtesy of my very dear friend Aloisa.


Keep the ideas coming! I'll write them all eventually, I promise! :)


Ahem.


How Melvyn Martin Came to Develop an Unfortunate Rash on His Forearms


It was at exactly twelve minutes past noon on the third day of a swelteringly hot July that the whole debacle began. Melvyn Martin, a short, bookish sort of a fellow with wispy hair and cumbersome eyeglasses, would remember that fact for the rest of his days, as he'd just been amusedly noting the delightfully symmetrical time when he heard Jason come out of the house.


12:12, Melvyn thought as the door slammed. There's just something about that number that's so... nice.


It would be the last time Melvyn ever thought something so naïve.


Jason walked up and stood next to Melvyn, shading his eyes with his hand and squinting down at the driveway. Jason Lunt was Melvyn's roommate. This arrangement had originally been set up because Melvyn lacked the funds to get through college and rent a house. At the time, sharing a house with the six-something, boorish, outdoorsy Jason had seemed to Melvyn rather like penance for some unspeakable sin, but as time passed, they'd grown quite used to each other's company. They were so accustomed to each other, in fact, that when they had an intense discussion of their finances in which Melvyn did most of the talking and realized that, now that Melvyn was out of college and had gotten himself a job of reasonable respectability, they were collectively bringing in a great deal more money than they had at first, instead of joyfully deciding to move out and finally get his own place, Melvyn suggested that he and Jason get a bigger house.


Today was moving day. Melvyn, Jason, and Jason's two older brothers had finally finished loading the last of the furniture into Jason's oldest brother's van, and the two elder Lunts were getting ready to set off for Melvyn and Jason's snazzy new downtown apartment. Melvyn and Jason would follow later. It was 12:12 and all was right with the world.


Except that the way Jason was squinting down at the driveway was making Melvyn nervous. Melvyn was constantly telling Jason that he needed glasses, but six years of closely observing the damper that Melvyn's truly daunting spectacles seemed to put on his social interactions (particularly those involving the participation of the opposite gender) had permanently turned Jason off of the idea. When Jason raised these objections, Melvyn would reply that wearing glasses couldn't possibly be more damaging to one's social career than the inability to see, especially considering the way that Jason was constantly having to squint at things in that highly disturbing way...


"Say, Mel, d'you think they're gonna load up that sofa?"


Melvyn blinked in surprise as Jason's interjection interrupted his musings. Slowly, he turned his attention to the driveway. There was the van, the front seat occupied by Jason's brothers (whose intelligence, or, rather, lack thereof had taught Melvyn to be far more appreciative of Jason's high-school-educated approach to life). Positioned directly behind the van was the maroon-and-cerulean-paisley-on-taupe sofa, a housewarming gift from Jason's mother. Melvyn hated that sofa. For one thing, it didn't match any of their other furniture, and then there was the fact that it was made of some horrid fabric like polyester or rayon only more evil that gave Melvyn a rash if it touched his skin, so he couldn't wear shorts if he was going to sit on it, not that he ever wore shorts, he couldn't understand why any men ever wore shorts, they looked so silly, but anyway it's not like Melvyn could say anything negative about the sofa because Jason was so childishly attached to his mother that Sigmund Freud would've wept for joy if they'd been introduced...


"Well, I assume so."


"Okay. It's just... doesn't it look like they're gettin' ready to go?"


"Well, yeah, but I'm sure they'll jump out and shove it in before they go. Relax, Jason."


No sooner had Melvyn said this than the van's engine was revved and the van began to pull out of the driveway.


"Mel, look, they're leavin' the sofa!"


Melvyn shrugged. "I guess they ran out of room. They'll probably come back for it-"


"No, they won't!" Jason interrupted, in a voice far more tinted by panic than Melvyn considered to be necessary. "Mel, this was 'sposed to be the last trip! Oh, you don't know my bros, Mel. When they say somethin's gonna be the last trip, it's gonna be the last trip! There's no way they'll come back for that sofa!"


"Oookaaaay..." Melvyn replied slowly. "Um- I see the problem, but what exactly do you intend-"


"We've gotta grab it and catch up with 'em!" Jason yelled enthusiastically as he ran toward the dreaded piece of décor.


"Whaaat?"


"C'mon, Mel!" Jason had already lifted one end of the sofa and was looking at Melvyn with a desperate urgency that was massively disproportionate to the scale of the problem at hand.


Ranked only slightly behind "Stubborn Refusal to Get Glasses" on Melvyn's list of Jason's more regrettable tendencies was "Unchangeable Belief in Action Hero Status". Jason seemed to be of the opinion that taking things far too seriously would make him cooler and would, ultimately, turn him into the type of man that violent shoot-'em-up movies with twist endings tended to center on. Melvyn, meanwhile, firmly believed that Jason wasn't remotely the sort of person who ends up running from the government with a beautiful girl in tow and more the sort who... well, who ends up chasing vans while carrying paisley sofas.


"Jason," Melvyn said remonstratively as he ran up to the other end of the sofa, mentally preparing his hugely logical rebuttal to Jason's hugely illogical plan. "You-"


"WE DON'T HAVE TIME TO TALK! PICK UP THE SOFA, MEL!"


Considering the circumstances, Melvyn can certainly be forgiven for reflexively lifting his end of the sofa. And really, once Jason had inexplicably squeezed his eyes shut and then began running backwards after the van, Melvyn didn't have much of a choice but to come along.


Right off the bat, the two ran into some problems.


The difference in their heights, for one, which made the sofa's balance awkwardly lopsided. It also made it difficult for Melvyn to see over Jason's head, which caused a few steering complications. But after running into (and upsetting) three trash cans, Jason finally opened his eyes and turned his head so as to watch where he was going, which made the whole process go much more smoothly.


But even after that, there was still the problem of Jason's bad eyesight, which resulted in the pair (or rather the trio, if you count the sofa) ramming into a few walls and also a cat which Jason afterwards swore looked just exactly like a blanket until it yowled in anger and attacked his legs.


Then there is the generally known fact that carrying a full-size overstuffed sofa while running is slightly exhausting, especially, and note that this is not meant to insult anybody, when one is a short, bookish sort of a fellow, i.e. someone not much accustomed to exercise. This special dilemma of Melvyn's was somewhat exacerbated by his continuing attempts to talk Jason out of the whole "catch-up-with-the-van" idea.


"Jason, couldn't we just bring the sofa in our car when we go up later?"


"THERE'S NOT ENOUGH ROOM! THIS IS THE ONLY WAY!"


"Well, we could ask to borrow your brother's van-"


"HE'LL NEVER AGREE! YOU DON'T KNOW HIM, MEL, HE KNOWS NO REASON!"


"Jason, I am right here. You don't have to keep shouting at me."


"GO FASTER, MEL! WE'RE LOSING THEM!"


They had, in fact, already lost them, due to the fact that vans, in general, move more quickly than people on foot, especially when those people are carrying sofas. But Jason Lunt was nothing if not persistent.


Luckily for all persons and sofas involved in the debacle, Jason and Melvyn's original home was not very far away from their new one, and was even nearer to the first streets that could theoretically be considered "downtown". And, as everyone knows, no matter the day of the week or the time of day, downtown streets will invariably, inexplicably, and inevitably be more difficult to traverse than suburban ones.


And so it occurred that, within a few more minutes, Jason and Melvyn caught sight of Jason's oldest brother's van, now moving much more slowly than it had been when it left the house.


They then immediately lost it again, because it turned a corner.


"C'MON, MEL! WE'VE ALMOST GOT IT!"


"Oh, my back," Melvyn moaned in response.


That was about when they met Janie.


Well, actually, they met Ms. Anderson first.


Well, actually, first Jason said, speaking in a normal (if rather breathless) voice for the first time since the commencement of their grand adventure, "Yikes, I wouldn't want to be on her bad side."


Melvyn was rather surprised, equally by the quietness and the randomness of Jason's comment.


His surprised was greatly increased by the abrupt and rather painful collision between his head and a large jonquil-and-magenta-plaid handbag.


"Dirty thieves!" came a screeching voice from far too close to Melvyn's ear. He turned to see the heavily-made-up face of a female of uncertain age who was wearing a mauve dress with teal polka dots and wielding the aforementioned mercenary handbag. She proceeded to hit Melvyn again as she demanded, "Who do you think you are, running off with a helpless old lady's couch? That couch cost me good money, you young rapscallions!"


That was when Janie showed up, bouncing along beside the two men, the sofa, and the gaudily dressed lady. Janie was a small, bookish sort of a girl with large horn-rimmed spectacles and messy, wispy black braids. Perhaps Melvyn would've detected a sort of kindred spirit in her, if he hadn't at that moment been so distracted by the cacophonous explosion of breathlessly simultaneous talking that had broken out right around that time.


"Ma'am, this isn't your couch, it's ours," Melvyn said.


"Mel, what's a rapscallion?" Jason asked.


"Why would two young whippersnappers have a couch like this?" Ms. Anderson demanded.


"Some people have uncommon tastes, Ms. Anderson." Janie explained sagely.


"Is it a kind of vegetable?" Jason asked.


"Where did you two come from?" Melvyn asked Janie and Ms. Anderson. (At the time, Melvyn was wondering how this plump lady and skinny girl were keeping up with him and Jason so easily, having apparently forgotten that he and Jason had been running while carrying a sofa for several blocks and were thus moving at a rather easily kept pace.)


"There's an apartment complex a few blocks behind us. Ms. Anderson saw you guys running by as she was coming home from her jazzercise class and she thought you must've stolen her couch," Janie explained (she was quite an adept explainer).


"Who are you?" Melvyn asked.


"Are whippersnappers food, too?" Jason asked.


"I'm Janie," Janie explained.


"Okay," Melvyn said.


"By the way, it's a sofa, not a couch," Jason said, having given up on getting the definitions of rapscallions and whippersnappers.


"Oh," Ms. Anderson said, pulling up in surprise. "Well, if it's a sofa, it can't be mine. I have a couch."


Janie stayed behind with Ms. Anderson while Melvyn, Jason, and the sofa (which was not a couch) ran on. "Maybe we'll see you around," Janie called after them.


"Yeah, maybe," Melvyn called back, realizing how close he and Jason were to their new home.


This episode had rudely shattered Jason's glorious action hero ideal, as action heroes generally aren't attacked by colorfully attired ladies and their helpful explanatory companions. And so it was that the latter leg of the roommates' trip featured a lot less yelling and running into things than the former. Of course, there was still some yelling and running into things, most of it occurring when Jason briefly stopped looking over his shoulder and they consequently bowled over an old man who, as it turned out, was a sailor, and who, incidentally, spoke and acted in the way that the most depressingly stereotypical sailors do.


But, at last, Jason and Melvyn stumbled into the parking lot of their new apartment complex. Jason's two brothers were there, awaiting Jason and Melvyn's eventual arrival in their car. They expressed the appropriate amount of shock and confusion, gave Jason the proper amount of meaner-than-necessary brotherly teasing, and went on with their mundane lives.


While Jason's brothers fulfilled these responsibilities, Melvyn and Jason sat sprawled on the sofa, panting. When the brothers had finished and wandered away, Melvyn panted out, gasping after each word, "I. Hate. You."


"Well," Jason replied, gasping in turn, "We. Couldn't. Just. Leave it. There. Now could we?"


Melvyn sat up, stared deep into Jason's eyes, and said, "YES. We could've."


Alas, Melvyn had donned a short-sleeved shirt on that fateful morning, and the prolonged exposure to whatever absolutely wretched fabric covered the sofa had resulted in the worst rash Melvyn had ever had. To make matters more humiliating, the following day the local newspaper's front page sported a photograph of Melvyn, Jason, and the sofa running through the crowded city streets underneath the headline "TWO MEN AND PAISLEY SOFA RACE THROUGH DOWNTOWN". Melvyn wanted to find as many copies as possible and burn them; Jason had the front page framed and hung in the living room over the sofa. Melvyn vowed he would never forgive Jason for the episode. But the simple fact of the matter is that no two people who had such a symbiotic mutual dislike as Melvyn and Jason could possibly stay mad at each other for long, and Melvyn ended up forgiving Jason long before his rash had faded.


THE END.

Short Story #1: The Readin' Lass

Introduction - Following is the first short story of my new writing project (refer to previous post for details), based on a suggestion from my mentor: "a story from the perspective of a Nac Mac Feegle who is spying on a young woman who is reading The Wee Free Men for the first time". I hope that it is appreciated, and please give me some more suggestions because writing this has been great fun.


Disclaimer - Because I am not Terry Pratchett, I cannot vouch for the accuracy or inoffensiveness of the Wee Free Man-speak (in fact, my Wee Free Man-speak might even be shamefully intermingled with some Southern American inflection because I happen to be reading To Kill a Mockingbird), but I tried writing it without using the affected Scottish brogue and it just looked wrong. Also, this will probably make very little sense to anyone who hasn't read Terry Pratchett's Tiffany Aching books.


And now, without further ado......


The Readin' Lass


I peek oot from behind the curtains at the big wee lass, tryin' to figure out what she's doin'. She's not movin' much. Looks a bit lazy, really. Maybe she's just starin' doon at her hands. I've seen bigjobs doin' stranger things. But I've got no pressin' engaygements at the mooment, so I might as well go en for a closer look.


I zip aroond to the other side of the room and lean in. I can jest aboot see what she's holdin' noo. I lean in, jest a little closer, and...


Och, crivens! She's readin'!


I make a beeline for the nearest exit. Nayver trust a lass who reads, noo that's jest common knowledge. Written words is dangerous things.


I've nearly made it safely oot when I hear somethin' odd and turn back aroond without stoppin' to think it through. I hafta squint to see her better, cause ye can bet yeer boots I won't be gettin' too close agin.


She's laughin.


Noo, I've heerd o' writin' causin' the wailin', and the pullin' o' the hair, and the gnashin' o' the teeth; I've heerd o' writin' leadin' to the likes o' curses and murder most foul; but I've nayver heerd o' any writin' makin' a body laugh.


Laughin' is somethin' ye do when fightin', or boozin', or when the Big Man tells a joke whether it's amusin' or not.


I take a wee step closer.


I turn my heid a bit to see what the book's front looks like and I nearly leap outta my skin.


Feegles.


There're Feegles on her book, painted up nice and pretty! I'd swear it on my heid!


Ooh, so she's a-laughin' at Feegles, is she? Weil, she'll wish she hadn't, oh, she'll wish...


"Hello."


CRIVENS!


I leap right outta sight and git back to hidin' behind her curtains, but it's too late. She saw me alreidy, and now she's laughin' agin.


I'll no' stand fer this.


I spring back oot, holdin' my sword high and lookin' quite terrifyin'. "Now see here, ye big wee lassie!" I say in my moost commandin' voice. "I dunno what filthy slanders yu've been readin', but they're none o' them true, ye hear? Who wrote 'em? I'll find 'im and he'll wish he'd never so much as thought about Feegles!"


She's not smilin' anymore. Clever lass. The corners of her mooth is jest twitchin', that's all (from fear, undootedly).


"Forgive me, master Feegle," she says very po-lightly. "But I'm afraid I have no idea what you're talking about."


"Oh yeah?" I say. "Then how'd ye ken I'm called a Feegle?" (Noo I've caught her in her deception.)


"Why, I've just been reading about you," she says. "Well, not you specifically, but Feegles in general. The Wee Free Men."


"Tell me what it says!" I insist. She reaches for the book and starts to open it. I shriek (in a verra manly way). "No, don't read it, that's no' safe! Jest tell me what it says about Feegles."


"Well... It says you're very brave," she esplains.


"That's... oh," I say. That's no' a slanderous falsehood. "Go on."


"And very ferocious."


"Yeah?"


"And that you're the greatest drinkers and fighters the world has ever known."


Maybe this book isn't soo bad after all.


Then I remember somethin'.


"Weil, if it says all that about Feegles, what were ye laughin' at?" I inquaar. We'll jest see hoo she dodges that.


She smiles. "I was laughing at everybody else in the book. They're all a bit ridiculous, especially when compared to all you Feegles."


I think this over a mooment. "That makes sense," I say.


"Well, of course it does," she says back.


I think it over another mooment. "I'm still no' entirely shure I believe ye," I say at last.


"Oh?"


"Per'aps... per'aps, big wee lassie, ye could read me a little?" I ask.


She lifts her eyebrows. "Are you sure? I thought it wasn't safe."


I puff my chist out. "Are yu' suggesting that a Nac Mac Feegle is afeerd of a few written words?"


"Of course not," she says. "I wouldn't dream of saying anything half so silly. Come over here."


I go over and sit doon next to her.


Truth be told, it is a big risk lettin' somebody read alood to yu'. But surely somethin' that says so many good things aboot Feegles canna be too dangerous.


Besides, I'm a Nac Mac Feegle. I can handle a wee bit o' danger jest fine.


THE END.


~Pearl Clayton