Holy Carp

I just wrote a novel.

I’ve been trying to do that on and off since I was a teenager. There’s probably a dozen or so fitful starts and stabs in there – I don’t even remember some of them unless some random event triggers a memory and sends me down some rarely walked path.

There’s drafts and notes and backstory (oh, SO much backstory) all over the place. But never more than a chapter or two of actual writing.

It’s not a finished product, not even close. It needs editing and ordering and polishing and expansion. But it’s a novel, and I wrote it.

I took on a challenge: write a 50,000 word novel in one month. And here I am, 30 days and 50,101 words later, victorious. I finished something important and challenging that meant something to me. That’s  important, too – even if this novel never sees print, ti will always be something I did. Something I made, created from my own mind with my own work and determination and skill.

I wrote a novel!

Now to rock out to my favorite Beatles song.

Dear Sir or Madam, will you read my book?

Approaching the Finish Line

The month is almost over. The 50,000-word goal I set for myself at the beginning of the month is in reach – I’m on track to finish a day early. And the novel is going better than I thought it would. It’s taken on directions and depths I never would have imagined if I’d tried to plan it all out. And I’m enjoying it all more now that I’m not trying to shoehorn it into doing what I want it to do: no amount of will is enough to turn a tomato vine into an apple tree.

I’ve learned things about myself. I’ve learned things about writing. And I think once I’ve done the requisite editing, polishing, and fleshing-out I’m going to have something worth shopping around. So look for that to happen in the first half of next year.

Also look for more writing to happen. I’ve built a habit of writing around 1700 words a day, which is good not only for getting writing Done but for keeping my mind healthier. And I’m enjoying it a lot. Watching a story take shape is a wonderful thing.

I think I’m going to keep doing this.

The Trouble with Chocolate-Dipped Madeleines

I picked up a taste for madeleines when I picked up Proust a couple of years ago. I never got more than a few pages into “Swann’s Way” – the sheer density of Prousts’ writing daunted me, despite the fact that it’s one of those books I feel like I Really Should Read. But I liked the madeleines, and from time to time I’d pick some up at Trader Joe’s for a treat. I’d eat a couple while reading in my favorite chair on a Saturday afternoon.

A few weeks ago I found them at my neighborhood Fresh and Easy – and theirs were chocolate-dipped. Sweet fluffy madeleines. Dipped. In. CHOCOLATE. The small end was left bare, so there’d be a place to grip them.

But eating them has given me a little problem. I like to do things in A Certain Way. (Psychologists call this OCD, but I prefer to think of it as a Strong Sense of the Rightness Of Things.) I would like to eat the chocolate-dipped part of the madeleine last so that I can have that to look forward to. Makes sense, right?

Except that requires gripping them by the chocolate end as i eat the plain end. Which means I get chocolate melted on my finger tips, and it ruins the smooth chocolate coating. On the other hand, if I eat the chocolate part first, then the last bit is plain and anticlimactic. That, too, goes against my Sense of the Rightness of Things.

This week I got a little frustrated at my new job. The boss asked me to take on a certain project, one which I already had some great ideas about. I met with a focus group to figure out what the opportunities were that needed addressed and got their inupt. I added my own, involved a colleague to get some of his ideas as well, and set to work on developing these ideas. I came up with what I thought was an excellent plan. We were supposed to meet this week about it, and I was under the impression it was to present my findings and ideas.

And it turned out that the boss had in mind to set up a committee to do all this. We gathered input again to determine the needs of the project without even looking at what I’d found or figured out. He ran the meeting, and once the work was basically done he turned it over to me.

I was a little bothered. That’s no way to eat the madeleine! I already had a perfect fool-proof plan for optimal deliciousness. Why was this plan being ignored? The work was done! No need for meetings, problem solved, BAM! next question.

But that’s not how teams work. That’s how teams dominated by hotshot diva superstars work, but those aren’t so much teams as “divas plus unwitting and perhaps resentful supporting casts”.

So I remind myself that ultimately I’d rather get the problem solved than get my way. And honestlyy, about 95% of what the committee plans to do is exactly what I had in mind to begin with. How much credit I get for it isn’t the biggest issue.

I adjust. I remind myself that there’s no wrong way to eat a madeleine, and that they’re delicious from either end, and that I really ought to get a madeleine pan and learn to bake my own. (The last bit is less metaphorical, so don’t get confused and hung up on it.

Lessons Learned Not From Tigers and Turtles

(A bit of new silliness next door.)

When you grow up in a house where discipline means a two-by-four, bad dogs get thrown over the fence or beaten with their favorite toys, people who come to the church looking for help are assumed to be worthless drug addicts or alcoholics and given nothing but a brushoff, nothing you want matters, not even your room or your piggy bank or your privacy are your own, and the things you love most about yourself are routinely derided and dismissed, you learn a few things. They aren’t always healthy or wise lessons.

You learn that violence is power: the strong do as they will and the weak submit  as they must. It’s not the best argument or the most righteous cause that wins – it’s the loudest voice, the strongest arm. Mix in three years of literally daily verbal and physical bullying from virtually the entire student body and you get the point driven well home. That’s where I learned to value coldness, ruthlessness, detachment – it was a way to survive. I couldn’t fight back, not against any of them. So I went where they could hurt me less.

You learn to fetishize violence like Travis Bickle. You dream of vengeance and a way to repay all that humiliation.

You learn to cling to what’s yours, to what should belong to you and no one else. You learn to keep that close and held tight behind your back because if they see it or even know it exists they’ll make you share it with them. They won’t ask or persuade because they don’t see why they should. They will take it and you will lose it.

You learn not to trust. Everyone uses everyone everywhere. Help is for those too weak to have made the right choices, and they deserve the shame that’s come to them. Let them admit it and be forgiven or keep their pride and get nothing.

You learn that love is contingent. Be who they want you to be, think what they want you to think, live like they want you to live. You have no voice but the echo of theirs. You learn that they love you for who you are to them, not who you are in and of yourself. You learn that when you make them angry or disappoint them they will make you feel small and unwanted and unloved. And you cannot make them happy without becoming someone else, and if you give them that you will have nothing. You will be nothing, because if your will is not your own then what is? That’s where I learned to keep to myself. For someone as naturally and exuberantly wordy as I am, I am very good at weaponizing silence. I wasn’t born introverted or antisocial or weird. I had to learn all that.

But that was decades ago. I don’t have to live there. Not one of the bullies who made every school day a living hell for three straight years has given me a second thought in all that time. My parents – well, they remember what they remember. I don’t expect much from them but that they keep their distance.

So I try to teach myself different. I fight the impulse to crush, bully, and silence. I learn that there’s more to life than tigers and turtles. Tomorrow I’m going to frame the first dollar I made as a writer, and to hell with the ghost that scorned my imagination.

I Think Too Much of Myself

I don’t think of myself as a good collaborator, at least when it comes to writing. I cringe a little when people ask me to help them write something because I worry I’m going to insist on making it sound like me and alienate them in the process. So I was a little apprehensive yesterday when my friend J asked me to help her with a resume, cover letter, and application for a promotion.

We spent the afternoon at a Starbucks poring over sentence after sentence. And it turned out just fine. We managed to craft some sentences that said what she wanted to say, not what I wanted them to say. I didn’t irritate her by insisting on my own style. I managed to live with a few word selections and sentence structures that I’d consider less than perfect. She liked them better than my choices. And I’m 100% fine with that. This was about her career and helping her express herself, not my artistry and ego.

It was easy – I didn’t even have to think about keeping my ego in check. And we had a good time enjoying each others’ company in the process. So what does that tell me?

Books I’ve read/been reading lately:

• T.C. Boyle’s Talk Talk, which was a good story about identity theft but had what I felt was a very unsatisfying ending.
• James M. Tabor’s Blind Descent, about the quest for the deepest cave on earth. I liked it, and the story itself was interesting – but the author seemed to intrude too much on it, and I’m not wild about his style.
• I’m in the middle of Ian Tregillis’ Bitter Seeds, which so far is excellent. Thanks for the recommendation, John Scalzi!