I hated attending public high school. That's one thing I want absolutely clear. I hated waking up early and tolerating people I didn't like and having tons of homework and having to be in all sorts of classes I neither enjoyed nor cared about. It was a miserable couple of years and I'm glad to be out of it.
That being said, there are some things I miss about public school.
I miss several of my teachers. I miss a couple of my fellow students. I miss the warm, fuzzy feeling that washed over me whenever I got a good grade or an essay covered with positive comments. I miss discussions. I miss watching movies I never would've watched otherwise and liking them way more than I thought I would.
And......
I miss Valentine's Day.
Yeah, I know. You're probably stunned. Especially if you knew me when I was in school and heard me complaining about it and rhetorically asking if it would be alright to just stay home on the 14th. I acted grossed out and sardonic and irritated, like Valentine's Day was the most uncomfortable, ill-advised idea ever conceived of by man.
I'm nerdy, antisocial, introverted, and unromantic; such attitudes are expected of me.
In truth, though, I always liked Valentine's Day. Because it was high school, Valentine's Day was our biggest holiday. Around Christmas, a couple people might be seen carrying gift bags or little trinkets, maybe - but on Valentine's Day, more than half the girls and at least a few boys had bouquets and stuffed animals and balloons. There were even little trinkets available for purchase from the school - cards and bears and roses and, most famously, serenades, which involved a group of students going around the school, finding the students who'd had serenades purchased for them, bringing them to the front of the class, and bestowing tuneless, a capella renditions of popular love songs upon them. I think the school might've even been decorated.
And it was all just so inexplicably nice.
Who can say why? Why, looking around at that sea of plastic and glitter and construction paper, witnessing awkward serenades and an even-greater-than-usual amount of PDA, knowing that more likely than not most of these couples would've broken up by the end of the semester, did I feel so... so light?
Because I did. I never received anything on Valentine's Day, of course (please refer back to the paragraph where I mention my antisocial, introverted, unromantic nerdiness), but in spite of that, and in spite of the sheer ridiculousness of everything about that day, there was something about it that I really enjoyed. Something that I miss now.
Now, I'm homeschooled, and my only real social interaction comes on Wednesdays, when I go to a homeschool group... thing. And in case you didn't already know this about homeschoolers, we don't really do Valentine's Day. The only people in that group currently involved in romantic relationships are the married teachers. I didn't even remember it was the Wednesday before Valentine's Day until my teacher brought out chocolates.
It's not as though I'm not commemorating the day at all. I have plans for the weekend; an outing with my family and a hangout with my best friend. And I've scheduled romantic books to read, one that I'm reading now and one that I'd intended to be reading now but will probably end up reading near the end of the month instead (but that's okay, because as far as I'm concerned Valentine-related activities can happen any time in February). But... it's not the same, somehow.
Ugh. Look, the reason this post is titled "a confession" is that that's what this feels like... a confession of something incredibly shameful. Because I don't know why I feel this way and because it doesn't make sense and because I can't help but wonder if I would actually enjoy Valentine's Day if I was still at school or if this is just some warped, bizarre nostalgia talking.
'Cause the thing is - and this is something I haven't really told anyone, not in just these words - I've been kind of miserable lately. Which is also embarrassing, because nothing absolutely horrible or life-altering has happened in my life to justify my feeling wretched. There've just been a couple of little things, small, insignificant occurrences that made me feel let down or hurt or angry or all of the above, which have all blurred together into a little cloud of sad which has taken up residence over my mood. And the worse I feel, the more annoyed with myself I get, because I tell myself there's no reason for me to be feeling like this, that none of this is a big deal and my reaction is beyond disproportional, that I need to just grow up and deal with it, blah blah blah, etc., etc., same song, second verse, welcome to my life.
So now I've gotten to the stage where I start thinking that if some specific thing changed or happened it would magically make everything better, because as long as I'm melodramatically telling myself that I'd feel better if only my circumstances changed I don't have to actually take any steps to improve my existence (it's the American way). If only this would happen, I say, then none of this other stuff would matter. If only Valentine's Day were like this, then I would be happy, really, really happy, if only for a few days. I don't know if it's true; the nice thing about such thinking is that Valentine's Day won't be like that, so I'll never have to deal with being proven wrong.
*Sigh*
Pretty much what I'm getting at here is that I expect everyone who reads this post to wish me a happy Valentine's Day and tell me how much they love me. In great detail.
(Just kidding. Things got a bit mopey there and I thought it would be better to end on a humorous note.)
Happy Valentine's Day.
~Pearl Clayton
PS. Off topic, but I wanted to say a quick thing about comments. I know it usually takes me days and weeks to respond to comments, if I ever get around to responding to them at all. It's not that I'm not reading them; I read all the comments I get, often repeatedly, and I appreciate them more than I can say. In fact, that's why I have trouble responding - I can rarely think of any replies except "Thanks, I'm glad you liked it!" or "Thanks, that's nice of you to say" or something along those lines, and I feel like such replies are obvious and generic and quickly become repetitive and are insufficient to express my gratitude. So if you post a comment and I never reply to it, know that I've seen it and am enormously pleased to have gotten it, but maybe just can't think of anything that I feel is worth saying in response.
That's it. Bye now.
Thursday, February 12, 2015
Monday, January 12, 2015
Various Thoughts on Self-Esteem... Ish
So I'm reading this book.
Yeah, I'm sure you're all shocked. "What? She's reading a book? No way! She never does that!"
But that's enough sarcasm for now.
Anyway, this book was published in 1938, but in some small ways it's a bit similar to modern young adult fiction. Not in the significant ways, mind; it's well written and engaging, and the plot, despite being minimal at the point where I am, shows signs of becoming gripping before the end. No, the ways in which it's reminding me of series like The Hunger Games, Divergent, and especially Twilight (unfortunately) are all character-related.
The basic setup of the book is this: a young, plain-looking female first-person narrator not overburdened with personality, self-possession, or critical thinking skills falls in love with a brooding, lonely man twice her age. The man is brooding and lonely because his beautiful, clever, resourceful, popular wife tragically died some time before. Luckily for our boring narrator, the brooding lonely man returns her love (I guess; he has yet to actually confirm that) and marries her. Alas, because she is plain and unconfident and a bit slow and consequently positively overrun with self-esteem issues, she can't help constantly comparing herself to her husband's first wife and thinking that her husband can't possibly really love her and must've married her just because he needed companionship in his depressing widowhood.
One day, she shares these concerns with a reserved and polite gentleman she's become friends with. Apparently very upset, he attempts to encourage her by saying, "I should say that kindliness, and sincerity, and if I may say so - modesty - are worth far more to a man, to a husband, than all the wit and beauty in the world." (She of course thinks he's just being nice and completely dismisses this, because, as we all know, neuroses are more fun than contentment and self-confidence.)
Alright: I'm beginning to suspect that there Mr. Sadface's perfect first wife wasn't all that perfect and that maybe her tragic and unexpected death wasn't quite as tragic and unexpected as it seemed, and that this line is meant to be one of the first hints at some sort of shocking big reveal. As far as I know, it's not meant to reassure self-critical female readers that you don't need beauty and wit to be loved or anything of that sort, it's meant to build suspense. There's no reason to overthink it or write a lengthy blogpost inspired by it.
But...
It got me thinking and now I need to vent.
So... yeah. The rest of the post will be me totally overthinking this single line of dialogue.
Ahem.
As I said, this particular theme of unremarkable-girl-with-low-opinion-of-herself-gets-inexplicably-fallen-in-love-with-by-glorious-male-and-feels-unworthy feels familiar. It's becoming increasingly popular in modern YA fiction, I think. I even mentioned it in one of my Divergent commentary posts last summer. And, as this book and others I've read from roughly same time period show, it's not a new thing. It seems like female authors think that in order to appeal to the demographic they're writing for, providing them with relatable heroines, they have to write these characters who are dull and not traditionally attractive who wish they were more beautiful and interesting. And then, in order to please the demographic, these characters are given love interests who are far more attractive, mature, and intelligent, and who are apparently attracted to their heroines' sweet, innocent, clueless naïveté and simply adorable "modesty" (read: self-loathing).
Does anybody else find that creepy? Look, I can handle romances like those between Emma and Mr. Knightley or Jo March and Professor Bhaer, where despite their age difference the characters are intellectual equals with similar emotional maturity. But in the book I'm reading now, the narrator's husband has repeatedly called her a child or talked about how silly she is. That bothers me. It's weird and I don't like it. Like - do men actually fall in love with girls who are not their equals in any way? I'm not talking about marrying or dating someone for the purpose of gaining an admirer who will do and believe anything you tell them. I'm talking about love. Real, true, romantic love of someone who is less intelligent, less mature, less wise, less everything than you. Is that realistic?
But that's not the only problem I have with this theme. The other is, of course, that not everybody experiences self-doubt because of the same perceived flaws.
I've talked before about how unsure and self-conscious I get about my writing. And that's not the only thing I fret about. Sometimes I feel like I talk too loud and say too much and try too hard and show off and essentially drive everyone around me crazy. On bad days, I tell myself that, yeah, I have really good friends who truly enjoy hanging out with me, and family members who really do love me - but surely the people who sit next to me and talk to me at school are only being nice and would much rather be somewhere else, and surely even my friends and family get tired of me sometimes, and surely... well, you get the idea.
But see, for all my self-confidence issues, there are things I like about myself. My hair, for one thing, which, as just about anyone will tell you, is simply glorious. It's long and thick and wavy and dark, auburn-y red and it brings in all kinds of compliments. And my fast, sarcastic, quippy humor. Maybe my voice occasionally gets louder than I like it, and maybe sometimes I take a joke too far, but I make people laugh.
*Glances back at the quote from the book* Ummm...
Let's take a slight detour to examine a hypothetical. Imagine a youngish female. She's not stunningly beautiful, but she's pretty enough and generally quite content with her looks. She's also stylish, clever, witty, etc. She knows she's not particularly kind, and she very rarely takes things seriously, and she's not always modest, but... she's happy.
In time, she meets a youngish non-female. His mind operates rather similarly to hers, and so she finds him very easy to talk to. They have long discussions about all sorts of things, laughing at each other's jokes and finishing each other's sentences and altogether getting along swimmingly, and before long the girl's developed quite the crush.
The only problem? It turns out that the affections of the object of her affections already have an object, in the form of a fairly plain-looking, unremarkably dressed, not exactly clever girl who is nonetheless universally kind and caring, unerringly sincere, and endlessly modest.
If the first female were to read this book and stumble across this line, only imagine how it might exacerbate her insecurities, especially if my growing suspicions are correct and it turns out the book's incomparable first wife wasn't all she seemed. 'Tis a fine message to be sending, I suppose... it's better to be affectionate than amusing... it's better to be shy than stunning... better an excess of self-hatred than a surplus of self-love.
*Sigh* I hardly know what I'm saying anymore. I guess... I guess I wish this wasn't what was popular. I so desperately want to like this book, because it's creepy, and well-written, and it comes highly recommended. But... I'm just having trouble relating to the heroine, and I think I'm tired of encountering heroines I can't relate to. Don't get me wrong, I've read books with heroines who are so relatable they may as well have been based on me. They're just not the runaway bestsellers.
And, as I sort of indicated in a vaguish way, I'm not entirely sure this kind of thing is healthy. I'm not saying that things like kindness, sincerity, and modesty aren't good traits that should be encouraged. I'd never say that. But I'm tired of books and movies in which clever, confident female characters are also self-absorbed or manipulative or unfeeling or oblivious or simply overlooked. I've even read a book by George freakin' Eliot of all people in which the intelligent, worldly, well-developed main character has her pride broken in the most painful way possible and is then unceremoniously rejected by the loser she's falling in love with in favor of some sugar-sweet nonentity of a girl whose whole personality is summed up in a shy smile and a sob story.
Maybe this is why I like Jane Austen so much. All of her characters get admiration and happy endings, accommodating Fanny Price and prideful Lizzy Bennet, impressionable Catherine Morland and entitled Emma Woodhouse, reserved Elinor, unguarded Marianne, and Anne Eliot, who's a lovely blend of sweet and smart, soft and strong.
Well... that's it. I've said what I needed to and now I'm not entirely sure how to conclude.
*Shrugs* Until next time.
~Pearl Clayton
Yeah, I'm sure you're all shocked. "What? She's reading a book? No way! She never does that!"
But that's enough sarcasm for now.
Anyway, this book was published in 1938, but in some small ways it's a bit similar to modern young adult fiction. Not in the significant ways, mind; it's well written and engaging, and the plot, despite being minimal at the point where I am, shows signs of becoming gripping before the end. No, the ways in which it's reminding me of series like The Hunger Games, Divergent, and especially Twilight (unfortunately) are all character-related.
The basic setup of the book is this: a young, plain-looking female first-person narrator not overburdened with personality, self-possession, or critical thinking skills falls in love with a brooding, lonely man twice her age. The man is brooding and lonely because his beautiful, clever, resourceful, popular wife tragically died some time before. Luckily for our boring narrator, the brooding lonely man returns her love (I guess; he has yet to actually confirm that) and marries her. Alas, because she is plain and unconfident and a bit slow and consequently positively overrun with self-esteem issues, she can't help constantly comparing herself to her husband's first wife and thinking that her husband can't possibly really love her and must've married her just because he needed companionship in his depressing widowhood.
One day, she shares these concerns with a reserved and polite gentleman she's become friends with. Apparently very upset, he attempts to encourage her by saying, "I should say that kindliness, and sincerity, and if I may say so - modesty - are worth far more to a man, to a husband, than all the wit and beauty in the world." (She of course thinks he's just being nice and completely dismisses this, because, as we all know, neuroses are more fun than contentment and self-confidence.)
Alright: I'm beginning to suspect that there Mr. Sadface's perfect first wife wasn't all that perfect and that maybe her tragic and unexpected death wasn't quite as tragic and unexpected as it seemed, and that this line is meant to be one of the first hints at some sort of shocking big reveal. As far as I know, it's not meant to reassure self-critical female readers that you don't need beauty and wit to be loved or anything of that sort, it's meant to build suspense. There's no reason to overthink it or write a lengthy blogpost inspired by it.
But...
It got me thinking and now I need to vent.
So... yeah. The rest of the post will be me totally overthinking this single line of dialogue.
Ahem.
As I said, this particular theme of unremarkable-girl-with-low-opinion-of-herself-gets-inexplicably-fallen-in-love-with-by-glorious-male-and-feels-unworthy feels familiar. It's becoming increasingly popular in modern YA fiction, I think. I even mentioned it in one of my Divergent commentary posts last summer. And, as this book and others I've read from roughly same time period show, it's not a new thing. It seems like female authors think that in order to appeal to the demographic they're writing for, providing them with relatable heroines, they have to write these characters who are dull and not traditionally attractive who wish they were more beautiful and interesting. And then, in order to please the demographic, these characters are given love interests who are far more attractive, mature, and intelligent, and who are apparently attracted to their heroines' sweet, innocent, clueless naïveté and simply adorable "modesty" (read: self-loathing).
Does anybody else find that creepy? Look, I can handle romances like those between Emma and Mr. Knightley or Jo March and Professor Bhaer, where despite their age difference the characters are intellectual equals with similar emotional maturity. But in the book I'm reading now, the narrator's husband has repeatedly called her a child or talked about how silly she is. That bothers me. It's weird and I don't like it. Like - do men actually fall in love with girls who are not their equals in any way? I'm not talking about marrying or dating someone for the purpose of gaining an admirer who will do and believe anything you tell them. I'm talking about love. Real, true, romantic love of someone who is less intelligent, less mature, less wise, less everything than you. Is that realistic?
But that's not the only problem I have with this theme. The other is, of course, that not everybody experiences self-doubt because of the same perceived flaws.
I've talked before about how unsure and self-conscious I get about my writing. And that's not the only thing I fret about. Sometimes I feel like I talk too loud and say too much and try too hard and show off and essentially drive everyone around me crazy. On bad days, I tell myself that, yeah, I have really good friends who truly enjoy hanging out with me, and family members who really do love me - but surely the people who sit next to me and talk to me at school are only being nice and would much rather be somewhere else, and surely even my friends and family get tired of me sometimes, and surely... well, you get the idea.
But see, for all my self-confidence issues, there are things I like about myself. My hair, for one thing, which, as just about anyone will tell you, is simply glorious. It's long and thick and wavy and dark, auburn-y red and it brings in all kinds of compliments. And my fast, sarcastic, quippy humor. Maybe my voice occasionally gets louder than I like it, and maybe sometimes I take a joke too far, but I make people laugh.
*Glances back at the quote from the book* Ummm...
Let's take a slight detour to examine a hypothetical. Imagine a youngish female. She's not stunningly beautiful, but she's pretty enough and generally quite content with her looks. She's also stylish, clever, witty, etc. She knows she's not particularly kind, and she very rarely takes things seriously, and she's not always modest, but... she's happy.
In time, she meets a youngish non-female. His mind operates rather similarly to hers, and so she finds him very easy to talk to. They have long discussions about all sorts of things, laughing at each other's jokes and finishing each other's sentences and altogether getting along swimmingly, and before long the girl's developed quite the crush.
The only problem? It turns out that the affections of the object of her affections already have an object, in the form of a fairly plain-looking, unremarkably dressed, not exactly clever girl who is nonetheless universally kind and caring, unerringly sincere, and endlessly modest.
If the first female were to read this book and stumble across this line, only imagine how it might exacerbate her insecurities, especially if my growing suspicions are correct and it turns out the book's incomparable first wife wasn't all she seemed. 'Tis a fine message to be sending, I suppose... it's better to be affectionate than amusing... it's better to be shy than stunning... better an excess of self-hatred than a surplus of self-love.
*Sigh* I hardly know what I'm saying anymore. I guess... I guess I wish this wasn't what was popular. I so desperately want to like this book, because it's creepy, and well-written, and it comes highly recommended. But... I'm just having trouble relating to the heroine, and I think I'm tired of encountering heroines I can't relate to. Don't get me wrong, I've read books with heroines who are so relatable they may as well have been based on me. They're just not the runaway bestsellers.
And, as I sort of indicated in a vaguish way, I'm not entirely sure this kind of thing is healthy. I'm not saying that things like kindness, sincerity, and modesty aren't good traits that should be encouraged. I'd never say that. But I'm tired of books and movies in which clever, confident female characters are also self-absorbed or manipulative or unfeeling or oblivious or simply overlooked. I've even read a book by George freakin' Eliot of all people in which the intelligent, worldly, well-developed main character has her pride broken in the most painful way possible and is then unceremoniously rejected by the loser she's falling in love with in favor of some sugar-sweet nonentity of a girl whose whole personality is summed up in a shy smile and a sob story.
Maybe this is why I like Jane Austen so much. All of her characters get admiration and happy endings, accommodating Fanny Price and prideful Lizzy Bennet, impressionable Catherine Morland and entitled Emma Woodhouse, reserved Elinor, unguarded Marianne, and Anne Eliot, who's a lovely blend of sweet and smart, soft and strong.
Well... that's it. I've said what I needed to and now I'm not entirely sure how to conclude.
*Shrugs* Until next time.
~Pearl Clayton
Thursday, January 1, 2015
And Thus, 2015: A Dialogue
Oh, mercy. Help me, help me, it's another year. 2014 is over and we'll never get it back. No, no, no, no, no, no, now January 1st is nearly done! There's only 364 days left and I haven't done anything yet! Oh, no, no, where is the time going? I'll never get anything done. There's no time. I'll never accomplish anything. I'll never amount to anything. I am nothing. I am nothing.
Now, come, what's this? You've had a good day. A wonderful breakfast, a better dinner. Time spent with an old friend and some new friends, with family and Stan Lee. And let me just say, my girl, you looked perfect today. I can't think of a better opening to the new twelvemonth. And oh, think of how many brilliant plans you've got for the year ahead! C'mon, you, it's going to be a great year!
But no, no, there were so many things I was planning on doing today that I didn't get done! And I'll still do them, but they won't be the same because it won't be January 1st anymore! Such an important day, and all I did was watch movies and eat!
All? All? Your plans aren't as important as your family and your friends and your joy. Don't sacrifice special moments like the ones you had today in the name of your ultimately arbitrary lists.
What if I die?
I beg your pardon?
Car wrecks. Mass shootings. Cancer. Appendicitis. Aneurysms. The Second Coming that everyone except me seems to be looking forward to so blithely. I could be dead tomorrow.
You're not going anywhere tomorrow.
Anyone I care about could be dead tomorrow, then! I could lose everything and then some this year.
Or you might have spectacular gains.
There's no room in this world for optimism! I hardly see it anywhere.
I do.
I want this to stop.
I know.
I want everything to stop.
I know.
But not really. What I want is for everything to keep going like it has been practically my whole life. No goodbyes, no deaths, no ends, no losses. Just continuity occasionally interrupted by some welcome hellos and some closer bonds.
I think most everyone wants that.
...
*Whispers*
I'm afraid.
I know.
I just want to feel happy. Happy like I was this afternoon. All the time.
I know.
I just want to feel safe. And secure. And loved.
I know.
Oh, oh, I so desperately want God to be real.
He is.
I wish I could be that sure.
I know.
I feel so lonely sometimes, and I just want company. I want to be near my friends. I want to meet the faraway, imaginative people I admire so much. I want the characters in the books and the movies to appear beside me and tell me things are going to be alright. I want someone I can share my soul with.
You have people like that. You've shared your soul.
Not all of it.
True.
Then, other times, I want to leave everyone behind forever. I want a crushing solitude. I crave that aching loneliness. I half-want to be forgotten. I want to dwell somewhere far away, in the silence and distance and isolation that alone among all mortal things can protect a fragile heart.
Better a broken heart than no heart at all.
I wish you wouldn't quote Doctor Who at me when I'm trying to be depressing.
My apologies.
*Sigh*
I can't stop it. Any of it. It's all so sickeningly far beyond my control.
And that's the worst of it, isn't it?
Yes.
Mature of you to admit it.
Oh, do shut up.
In your dreams.
Hmph.
...
So what now?
Reading.
Obviously. And then?
Writing, perhaps. You said you'd get back into it after New Year's.
Ah, yes. Another thing I was going to do today and didn't.
Which is fine.
Whatever. Then what?
I don't know, a movie maybe?
I doubt I'll feel awake enough. I'm so tired these days.
Bed, then.
Is that it?
For now.
But what if there's nothing beyond now?
I thought you were happy with now. I thought you didn't want anything to change.
The fact that I don't want it won't prevent it from coming.
Then it will come when it's time. For now, I think you're doing fine.
I wish I had your confidence.
Could you settle for my contentment?
If I knew a good way of finding it.
Your new calendar sure is glorious.
Wow, I feel so much better.
It is!
I never said it wasn't. I love the new calendar. I like it better than last year's.
There, see? A silver lining.
Huh. Well, yeah, I suppose it's something.
...
I don't know what else to say to you. Except...
It's okay.
We're okay.
We're okay?
Yes.
Yes.
Oh, please...
Let this one be a good one.
~Pearl Clayton
Now, come, what's this? You've had a good day. A wonderful breakfast, a better dinner. Time spent with an old friend and some new friends, with family and Stan Lee. And let me just say, my girl, you looked perfect today. I can't think of a better opening to the new twelvemonth. And oh, think of how many brilliant plans you've got for the year ahead! C'mon, you, it's going to be a great year!
But no, no, there were so many things I was planning on doing today that I didn't get done! And I'll still do them, but they won't be the same because it won't be January 1st anymore! Such an important day, and all I did was watch movies and eat!
All? All? Your plans aren't as important as your family and your friends and your joy. Don't sacrifice special moments like the ones you had today in the name of your ultimately arbitrary lists.
What if I die?
I beg your pardon?
Car wrecks. Mass shootings. Cancer. Appendicitis. Aneurysms. The Second Coming that everyone except me seems to be looking forward to so blithely. I could be dead tomorrow.
You're not going anywhere tomorrow.
Anyone I care about could be dead tomorrow, then! I could lose everything and then some this year.
Or you might have spectacular gains.
There's no room in this world for optimism! I hardly see it anywhere.
I do.
I want this to stop.
I know.
I want everything to stop.
I know.
But not really. What I want is for everything to keep going like it has been practically my whole life. No goodbyes, no deaths, no ends, no losses. Just continuity occasionally interrupted by some welcome hellos and some closer bonds.
I think most everyone wants that.
...
*Whispers*
I'm afraid.
I know.
I just want to feel happy. Happy like I was this afternoon. All the time.
I know.
I just want to feel safe. And secure. And loved.
I know.
Oh, oh, I so desperately want God to be real.
He is.
I wish I could be that sure.
I know.
I feel so lonely sometimes, and I just want company. I want to be near my friends. I want to meet the faraway, imaginative people I admire so much. I want the characters in the books and the movies to appear beside me and tell me things are going to be alright. I want someone I can share my soul with.
You have people like that. You've shared your soul.
Not all of it.
True.
Then, other times, I want to leave everyone behind forever. I want a crushing solitude. I crave that aching loneliness. I half-want to be forgotten. I want to dwell somewhere far away, in the silence and distance and isolation that alone among all mortal things can protect a fragile heart.
Better a broken heart than no heart at all.
I wish you wouldn't quote Doctor Who at me when I'm trying to be depressing.
My apologies.
*Sigh*
I can't stop it. Any of it. It's all so sickeningly far beyond my control.
And that's the worst of it, isn't it?
Yes.
Mature of you to admit it.
Oh, do shut up.
In your dreams.
Hmph.
...
So what now?
Reading.
Obviously. And then?
Writing, perhaps. You said you'd get back into it after New Year's.
Ah, yes. Another thing I was going to do today and didn't.
Which is fine.
Whatever. Then what?
I don't know, a movie maybe?
I doubt I'll feel awake enough. I'm so tired these days.
Bed, then.
Is that it?
For now.
But what if there's nothing beyond now?
I thought you were happy with now. I thought you didn't want anything to change.
The fact that I don't want it won't prevent it from coming.
Then it will come when it's time. For now, I think you're doing fine.
I wish I had your confidence.
Could you settle for my contentment?
If I knew a good way of finding it.
Your new calendar sure is glorious.
Wow, I feel so much better.
It is!
I never said it wasn't. I love the new calendar. I like it better than last year's.
There, see? A silver lining.
Huh. Well, yeah, I suppose it's something.
...
I don't know what else to say to you. Except...
It's okay.
We're okay.
We're okay?
Yes.
Yes.
Oh, please...
Let this one be a good one.
~Pearl Clayton
Monday, December 1, 2014
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.”
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.
Wednesday, November 26, 2014
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
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
Wednesday, November 19, 2014
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
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
Saturday, November 1, 2014
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
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
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