in (virtual) print

Well this is an honor.

I found out, rather last minute, that an excerpt from my novel The Bee Whisperer (the one I’m hard at work finishing), has been published over at the website Intellectual Refuge.

Go check it out.

Palm Springs Christmas

To follow up on my last post, I did indeed head out to Palm Springs over the Christmas weekend for a writer’s sojourn.

And it was lovely. You might think that spending two days in a hotel room by yourself would be lonely or tedious, but it was rarely ever either of those things. I stayed at the Ace Hotel, which is more affordable than the more traditional spa hotels in the area and geared toward a younger, hipper crowd, which I suppose I fall into.

My room was simple, clean and nicely-appointed with a mini-bar that was packed with tasty treats and good drinks—at a hefty price. I’d asked for a mountain view, and that’s exactly what I got, along with a tiny little balcony, perfect for one. I woke up Friday morning to this view and could not have been happier:

I ventured out mainly in search of food, forgoing the sights and sounds of Palm Springs and the surrounding desert in favor of some laptop face-time and the fulfillment of my whole reason for going out there in the first place:  finishing the first draft of my novel. I probably spent about twelve total hours writing over the two days, watching my word count climb from about 59,000 to over 75,000, my goal for this draft. At times it was hard to get the words to come out, but mostly they flowed in a kind of mindless succession of nouns and verbs and adverbs and adjectives and conjunctions.

How or if many of them will end up in the final draft is hard to say. The draft is not in any kind of finished, readable form. Scenes meander and cut short and veer from one thought to another. I’d say rather it’s a blueprint — all the ideas are there, now they need to be fully fleshed out. One big piece of the story that had been missing before fell into place during my first session. That was some good fortune, as I wasn’t sure before last weekend how the entire story was going to come together, but now I know.

While I wasn’t writing, I slept and took photographs and watched a Jeff Bridges double feature (Fearless and White Squall) and enjoyed the warm sunshine coming in through the double doors of my little balcony. It was, for sure, a non-traditional Christmas, but if the traditional doesn’t present itself easily at hand, who’s to say new traditions can’t be made? I for one would totally advocate for a desert Christmas in years to come. Maybe not by myself, and not cooped up in the hotel room the whole time, but there’s something so appealing about the washed out tones of that landscape, I’d love to explore it in more depth. And maybe splurge on a $40 spa manicure.

I accomplished a big goal I set out for myself this year, and that feels awesome. I haven’t touched the draft since last Friday and won’t until March or April, and then it’s onto a second draft and beyond. I am being realistic with myself when I say I want to have it published by 2015. Yeah, that’s four years from now, but, between a full-time job and the fact that I know nothing about the world of publishing and just life in general, I think four years is a decent amount of time.

In the meantime, Happy New Year and happy writing!

Writing

Writing, writing, writing, writing, writing, writing …

Yep. Writing. Is it stupid to write about writing? It sounds stupid, I dunno. I’m currently in the weeds of the first draft of my first novel, a place that even a year ago, I didn’t think I’d ever be. I don’t know what I was thinking I would do after grad school—write a few stageplays and call it a day? Try and get a couple of short stories published? Sure, I’m in the process of doing those things, but here I am, at the time of this writing, with a story that is 55,489 words long. Albeit, they are 55,489 messy, scattered and disorganized words, but still, they’re mine.

It’s my goal to get a completed draft done by the end of the year—yes, this year—or to 75,000 words, whichever comes first. I have even scheduled a solitary trip out to Palm Springs over Christmas weekend to try and hammer out what will probably be the final four or five thousand words. Wait, let me read that sentence again:  I’m going to travel, alone, on Christmas, out the middle of the desert, with my laptop, to try and write the remaining words of the first draft of my novel—a novel that might not even be very good, or amount to anything at all … I suppose this is more or less what being a writer is about. Maybe so, but right now it sounds crazy.

Today, just today, for some reason, the name of a guy I went to high school with popped into my head and I felt an overwhelming urge to Google him, which I did, because I knew that he lived somewhere here, in L.A., and I was surprised, shocked even, to discover that he was a partner in his own law firm in Century City. A lawyer? This guy was the biggest, dumbest jock in high school and he’s a lawyer with his own firm? In Los Angeles?

I know everyone carves their own path, sure, but I could not help, in that moment, no matter how much I told myself that he was certainly rich but probably almost just as unhappy, feeling just a little bit—not sorry for myself so much—but small and a little ashamed and totally under-prepared and ill-equipped for life. This guy isn’t any older than I am and yet he seems so much more together, so much more adult than I do. It stung, to be honest, since, you know, as a big geek in high school, your survival is due partly to the fact that you cling so tightly to the idea that those stupid jocks who make your life hell will one day end up hating life and serving french fries. Guess what? It’s not true.

So, I guess what I’m trying to say, other than ‘life is not fair,’ is that there are some days, like today, that the decision to be a writer feels like a bad one. A path destined for poverty and obscurity and struggle and being misunderstood. After all, isn’t it just so easy to write a book? A friend of mine’s family recently wanted to know why she didn’t just go write a story like Harry Potter ’cause that’s what that J.K. Rowling did, because, you know, it’s supposed to be so easy. People don’t know—you people don’t know. Hell, just finding the time and energy to write anything after a full day of work is hard most of the time. I find myself sacrificing a lot of social interactions and sleep and money to make even the smallest amounts of headway. And yet, I keep doing it? Why? Why? Why don’t I just go get a job at a law firm?

I don’t know. For the little victories, I suppose. Like this past weekend, when my former thesis adviser praised one of the pages I submitted in playwriting workshop as “one of the best I’d ever written,” though he was quick to follow it up by pointing out that the very next page was one of the worst he’d ever seen from me. I had to laugh. ‘Cause that’s what it’s like, all the time, this writing life. And yet, it’s here and I’ve chosen it and it’s mine. So I’d better go get to it …

the value of invaluable things

It’s February 8th. Three months and seven days remain until I am officially done with school. Naturally, it is at this point that two things start to happen: I start to wonder what comes next, and many well-meaning but ultimately clueless and misguided people pose the question, “so, what’s next?”

And even though it is not much of an answer at all, the best one I have so far is simply, “I don’t know.”

It’s true that something will happen after graduation. For one, I will need to start paying back my student loans, and in that way school has had a very definite value, to the tune of 100,000-plus dollars—well, 100-grand and a masters degree—that’s the tangible, actual value of these last two years, a culmination of classes and writing, workshops, professors, concentration changes, grades, theses, GREs, permits to register, student i.d.s and writers’ conferences.

See, a writing degree is not like a medical degree or a law degree, which are pathways to a very definitive end—you finish school and become a doctor or a lawyer and you go on to make a gazillion dollars. But graduate with a professional writing degree and do … what exactly? Go back to temping? Join a squatter community? Get another MFA? Who knows? There’s no certainty, and that’s the hardest part about writing, at least creative writing anyway, because so few place any tangible value on it.

Even writers question writing. Find one, any one of them, and ask them—they’ll tell you of the exquisite torture that comes with writing: long hours alone in a room, the constant distraction of the Internet, the nagging feeling that it’s all so futile, that words don’t mean anything, that there are worthier pursuits in the world, that they should have gone to medical school, that it’s so hard why am I trying anyway?

So what is the real value of school? That’s a question I’ve been asking since the day I set foot on USC’s campus and it’s only been within the last week or so that I’ve begun to figure it out. To be honest, I’m surprised it took so long, and if you know me at all you know where this is headed: to relationships.

This past weekend was Lindsey’s birthday party. We dressed in ’60s-inspired clothes and drank ’60s-inspired cocktails; there was much merriment. The next day, Superbowl Sunday, I was tired and a little hungover, and spent the day with many of the same people I’d partied with the night before. Together we suffered from the same malaise as we lazed around, barely speaking to one another half the time. It was comfortable—no pretense, no feeling the need to be “on,” just a roomful of tired writers (and their significant others), all quietly questioning their chosen paths, and watching football, of course.

So it’s community. Ha, I almost laughed out loud when it dawned on me. Isn’t it always community, always relationships that are of utmost import? Yes, indeed. A group of us are headed to the Association of Writers and Poets (AWP) annual conference in Chicago this week. At a recent informational meeting, Brighde encouraged us to be bold in our networking, to not be afraid to walk up to writers we admire and to tell them so, because she also said that the way we meet and interact with writers and publishers and editors now will lay the groundwork for our future careers. I think she’s right and that’s already been happening over the last two years.

decisions

Have you noticed that most good movies, or even most movies in general involve stories of people who make bad decisions? Tonight, like most good nights, started out as one thing and then warped steadily into another. It started off as my old roommate Clee taking me to a screening of the new Coen Brother’s film, Burn After Reading (which, now that I’m thinking about it, never made a reference to its title), and then turned into a double feature when we bought tickets to see Woody Allen’s latest, Vicky Christina Barcelona. It was on the car ride on the way home that we lamented Allen’s decision to show two limited views of love to be the only options in life: the main characters can hope only to be stuck in a predictable, loveless-yet-committed marriage, or to chase down impossibly exciting and passionately lustful trysts—all to end up dissapointed in the end. The main characters, Vicky and Christina, natch, were women who both seemed incapable of making good decisions, and when they did make good decisions, they were unhappy with them. At first I wondered why perhaps Allen decided to only write characters who made poor choice, but then a thought came to me, that most movies or books, or anything that had a narrative arc in general, tend to showcase people making bad decisions. ‘Cause that’s where the drama is. If Vicky and Christina decided to rebuff the gorgeous and seductive Juan Antonio (which they didn’t, obviously), there’d be no movie, or at least no movie that anyone would want to see. Same too, for a film like Knocked Up, which some have called an “pro-life” film, because its main female character chooses to go through with an unexpected pregnancy instead of have an abortion. When asked to comment, writer/director Judd Apatow said that in no uncertain terms was it meant to have a pro-life message, but that there just wouldn’t be a flim if she chose to have an abortion.

Anyway, why did I write all this down? More than anything to remind myself what dramatic action actually consists of, and that when I get stuck on some plot point in my own writing that when in doubt, make my characters make bad decisions.

**UPDATE**
Now that I have eight-plus hours of sleep under my belt, I remember another instance of bad decision-making propelling a narrative forward. I guess you could call it the original bad decision—the fall of man, which you can find in Genesis, chapter three. Many horrible consequences came out of that one bad decision—side note: roommate Sharon and I were talking the other night and we pondered the fact that one bad choice, which could take only moments to make, could also take years to unravel—and we’re still trying, as a human race, to right that choice and are going about it in all sorts of misguided ways. So, God is the ultimate lover of dramatic action, ’cause yes if Eve and Adam hadn’t decided to turn away from him, a lot of pain and suffering would have been avoided, but then the story might have been well, a little boring, don’t you think?