Monthly Archives: May 2011

Writing Like a Rock Star

25 Wednesday May 2011

Posted by in Writing

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I spent last Saturday at the DC 101 Chili Cook-off with Andrew and my 14-year-old sister, Becca (I figured that if the end of the world were to happen, listening to music and eating free chili with two of the people I love most would be a good way to go out).

Becca loves Weezer. She loves that band with the passion that many people only get for a few years in their teens. Becca’s a musician herself on piano and guitar (lucky for my dad, who had to wait a long time for a fellow musician in a daughter), has committed all the lyrics to the 100+ Weezer songs in their repertoire to memory and is learning to play as many as she can. You should hear the way she talks about Rivers Cuomo. He stood within a few inches of her at one point in their set, so she got a good look at one of her idols. The phrase, “the face of glory” came up more than twice. What amazes me is that this is her second-favorite band we’re talking about. If she ever sees her favorites live, we might need to have a stretcher handy.

One of the things that stood out to me, though, is that Becca mentioned that Rivers Cuomo has a reputation for having kind of a big head.

“He thinks he’s better than everybody,” she told me, and I heard admiration in her voice. “He’ll probably insult us when he comes onstage.”

They came onstage late, in fact, which sounds like the norm for a concert, but you need to consider that 1. the Cook-off started at 11:00 a.m. and they weren’t due onstage until 6:45 p.m., so they had plenty of time to get ready, and 2. the other bands played on time. When Weezer did saunter onstage, though, the crowd went nuts.

I meant to be annoyed at this swaggering behavior, but I found myself intrigued. Imagine the sheer confidence it takes to show up to work late, announce over a microphone that you intend to attempt to have sex with everyone present before the end of the day (as the lead singer of Panic! At the Disco did – make the announcement, that is, not necessarily follow through), and expect people to cheer? It must be exhilarating.

I’ve noticed that in general, musicians and writers and the like tend to fall in one of two camps. The first is the down-to-earth, approachable, fan-friendly type (Switchfoot and Neil Gaiman come to mind). The second is those people who know their music or writing is boss and don’t feel the need to tell a crowd that they’re looking beautiful tonight, or anything else for that matter (think of Harlan Ellison, who’s said he sees no reason for fans to expect autographs or meetings with him, that the books he’s written more than cover any obligation he may have to them).

The perk of the first camp is that I think you have a much more meaningful connection with people who like your work. Especially in an age where publishing is going through all kinds of changes and authors are expected to take a much larger role in marketing their work, I think it’s valuable to create a sense of community and connection. The other important fact to keep in mind is that people like Rivers Cuomo and Harlan Ellison earned their attitudes by virtue of a large quantity of excellent work. If I go around acting like an ass with no credit to my name, I’m just an arrogant jerk.

The perk of the second camp, though, is that I think on occasion people who do put out a lot of excellent work try so hard to be approachable and friendly that they almost end up apologizing for their success. My other sister, Elisabeth, has a tendency to downplay her accomplishments. She’s studying theater and business management, has worked on short notice and on plays that have been nominated for awards, but getting her to take a compliment can be like trying to catch a fish with your hands. Allowing yourself a certain confidence and awareness of your talents can be really empowering, and if the Weezer concert is any indication, as long as you have the talent to back it up, your fans will even embrace some swagger. I’m having fun adopting a bit of this attitude while I’m writing, complimenting myself on my word count or a sentence that comes out particularly well.

If you’re creative, do you find yourself more on the side of ultra-confidence or humble approachability? If you’re consider yourself more of a fan than an artist, do you admire arrogance in writers and musicians, or is it a turnoff?

If You’re In Enough Places, One is Bound to be the Right One

22 Sunday May 2011

Posted by in Books, Writing

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This past Friday, when I got home from work, I went to check my emails, as one does when gmail is blocked on the work servers. I was going to drag this out all suspenseful-like, but I just want to say it: I had an email from Tanya Frickin’ Egan Gibson! (Note: it’s possible that only three of those names are legally recognized).

She wrote me an awesome email, thanking me for writing about her book and telling me how glad she was that I’d connected to it emotionally. She told me my post made her day. And I was like, “Holy crap, this is just my tiny little blog that I started for a class project and continue to prod myself into spending more time writing. Real authors don’t see this.” But they do, apparently, thanks to the modern magic of Google Alert, and I’m starting to learn something.

All the magazines say showing up willing to write is what counts. Ha ha, they don’t really say that, they say it’s the query letter, or the hook (get ’em by the first paragraph or the editor will deliberately spill coffee on it!), or the setting, or 5 (7, 10, 3) Easy Tips to Get Noticed that make or break you, but they start with the assumption that you’re willing to put yourself out there.

I don’t always think of blogging as the “real” writing, but maybe I’m wrong. Writing here means putting myself out there and connecting with people as much as anything else I am doing in the written world right now. Serendipity means I got a thank-you email from someone much farther along in this whole writing game than I am, which made my day. This exchange has just recharged me, and I am looking forward all over again to getting back to the two stories I am currently working on, and hopefully making a connection to someone again soon.

How to Buy a Love of Reading

18 Wednesday May 2011

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You need to know about this book. I picked up How to Buy a Love of Reading by Tanya Egan Gibson on a whim the last time I was at the library, and it turned into one of those books. You know the ones. I had to have it near me (it’s tucked against my leg right now). I felt nervous if I left home without it. I’m an, ah, involved reader in general, but it doesn’t often happen that I regularly find myself talking out loud to a book–arguing with or cheering on characters, laughing, swearing, yelling. About half an hour after I finished it I started crying, partly due to the kickback from the emotional surge of the book, partly because it was over. I think I read nearly half the book twice in my attempts to delay the sad moment when there would be none left.

The book is about Carley Wells, who is a pretty average girl living in a neighborhood straight out of Gatsby (seriously–one mom “practices” her mannerisms by studying an old tape of Jackie Kennedy). Carley’s overweight, devoted to her best friend, Hunter (the ‘golden’ boy, who’s struggling with an increasing dependency on alcohol and painkillers and the frustration of living in an image other people created), but not particularly interested in the social climbing scene. She also dislikes reading. Normally I’d shudder in horror, but considering the teacher she has to deal with, I can actually see her point. She’s a sweet girl, but not outstanding. Her parents, naturally, decide that the way to make her stand out on her college applications is to concentrate on a passion for literature, and commission an author to write a book to Carley’s specifications, the Book that will make her love to read.

From there, How to Buy a Love of Reading hones in on relationships. There’s Carley’s interaction with Bree, the high-concept meta-fictionist hired to write The Book, and their process of realizing what stories are about. There’s Bree and Justin (aka Rock Star), the bestselling author she went to college with, who hopes to reconcile with her. Most importantly, though, it’s about Carley and Hunter.

Carley and Hunter’s friendship is the reason for the yelling and cursing and pleading. Words like “raw” and “heartbreaking” don’t feel deep enough. It is painful to read, painful to write about, painful to think about. There are times when unconditional love and insurmountable difference coexist. The times when friendship continues through irreparable hurt because there is no way to stop loving that person. Ever. Times of clinging to each moment of ease and joy because they need to be enough to weather longer stretches of doubt and pain.

Gibson knows this kind of friendship intimately. In different hands, it would be easy to call Hunter a jerk, to call Carley weak. It would be too easy to dismiss the whole relationship with a wave of the hand and tell Carley it’s time to cut her losses and move on. Gibson knows it’s about more than who the other person is. It’s about who you are, and what it means to believe in a person, a love, without demanding proof before offering forgiveness. She knows the question is how you define yourself and the other person at every stage of a friendship.

I know what it’s like to have a Hunter. My friendship was different, and so was the way it ended (less complicated, thankfully. Less devastating in terms of what was said and done), but the emotions hit home. That’s why it’s so painful to read, and so perfect. Everything’s stirred back up again, but she meets you in exactly the right place to understand.

And Gibson does come back to the Book that makes her book’s title relevant, and that feels right, too. She does not try to make the book-within-a-book parallel the main narrative. She does not play stupid tricks. She does use the Book as a yardstick for Carley, a place to ground her as she grows, and by the end the parts of the story feel like they are where they are supposed to be.

The Proposal Story

11 Wednesday May 2011

Posted by in Love, Wedding

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By request:

So Andrew and I have been going to see the cherry blossoms in D.C. every year for the past three years. The first year we went, we were giddy because he had just come back from three months in England the day before. The second year it rained, we went after peak season, and I sprained my foot from the sheer amount of walking we did, but it was still fun–we huddled by the hot chocolate stand when we got too damp, took strategic close-up photos of remaining blossoms so photo evidence would look lusher than what we actually saw, and he offered to carry me back to the Metro station. This year was the third year, and, unfortunately, my schedule was super-full, and we didn’t get to go.

At least, that was the plan.

So on Thursday, my Sunday dinner plans fell through. I was disappointed, but couldn’t very well blame my friends for illness and last-minute project panic. I sent Andrew a quick email asking him if he wanted to go to D.C. with me instead, and he replied, quite enthusiastically, that he would.

So Sunday: he picks me up at the church where I work, still in fancy clothes (button-down, dress slacks). He told me he hadn’t had time to change after church. We drove down to the Metro and hopped on the Orange Line. Now, Andrew’s got budding Dad Pockets already, between wallet, a hefty bunch of keys on a lanyard, and phone, so I was teasing him by playfully grabbing at his pocket. He told me later that I actually grabbed the ring box at one point (I thought it was his phone!). Seeing as how I didn’t gasp or give him a knowing look, he started breathing again, and put his jacket on his lap as a protective measure for the rest of the ride.

The cherry blossoms were GORGEOUS this year. Big, frothy things bobbing up and down (one of the things I love about the cherry trees is no one prunes the runaway limbs, so you have to duck under them as you walk. It can be a little scary when you’re walking four abreast on a narrow strip of sidewalk with nothing separating you and the water and realize a huge branch is now blocking the way as well, but I think trees deserve to be allowed to make proper canopies. Besides, even if you fell in, you could grab a branch to pull yourself out!). Andrew and I meandered around, taking photos of each other and narrowly escaping arrest for illegally climbing flowering trees (so worth it).

Frothy blossoms!

My fantastic almost-fiance, illegally climbing a tree

I am not above flirting with a tree branch

Eventually, we started to talk about going somewhere for dinner. We headed off the path, just to notice a little clearing with some beautiful trees and almost no one around. Andrew said he wanted to “look at” these trees, and I’m like “Okay! Trees are pretty!” So we’re standing there, and I turn around and he has a card in his hand. I recognized it from a prior Valentine’s day–it’s a little card with two birds in a tree and one is singing to the other and it’s adorable. Andrew told me he had wanted to write me a card because we don’t do that often anymore, and again he’s romantic enough and I was oblivious enough that I took this at face value. The card was really sweet, all about how many things remind him of me every day, and how important it is to him that I am in his life. So we hug, and kiss, and then he says, “And…”

And I say, “There’s an ‘and’?”

And he tells me again how he will never stop loving me, and I tell him this too, and it was only when he said, “So I wanted to ask you…” that it finally hit that this was our moment, right now.

And he got down on one knee, and pulled out the ring, and I was crying, and he said, “Will you marry me?”

And all of a sudden I realized that I had my hands on my face and I was so happy I couldn’t speak. Which was a bit of a problem, because the man I love more than anything is on one knee and would probably like an answer. So I start nodding, and as soon as I can take my hands off my face I say “Yes,” and we spent the next 20 minutes laughing and kissing and crying and saying “Oh my God” way too many times and jumping up and down.

Neither of us wanted to wait through dinner before telling people, so we went straight home to my family and told them, and then to his parent’s house. By the time we got back to my car at the church, all the restaurants were closed, so we went back to my place and ate leftover spaghetti and split the last bit of wine in the bottle, and it was completely fitting.

Hooray!

A Birthday Present and a Door

09 Monday May 2011

Posted by in Breaking Boundaries, Goals, Publishing, Writing

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So I got a Kindle for my birthday, which is awesome because a. with the life and career I’m trying to make for myself, I can’t justify not having one and b. I was genuinely more excited about this present than my family expected. Most of my life, you see, I’ve been the old-fashioned one by far when it comes to the technological. My mom sometimes spins it kindly and calls me an “old soul.” My sisters just shake their heads at the fact that even now I send a text maybe once a week. When Kindle first came out, I was one of those people who started talking about the magic of holding a book, smelling the paper, etc.

So what happened? I was on the Metro one day, people-watching for a moment, and realized that all these people on the car with me with their heads bent over a screen were reading. And it didn’t matter at all whether they turned a page or swiped the screen with one finger, because it was the same story. Lizzie rolled her eyes when I told her that (“You mean you changed your mind about Kindle because you were pleased that society was reading? I thought it would have been the weight, how many books you have access to…”), but it’s true. What matters to me is people reading, is stories making it to people who might be entertained or educated or changed by them. That matters to me more than any feature, although I’m sure as I play with my Kindle I’ll start to pick up some excitement about those, too.

My mom and I ended up getting into a whole conversation about the publishing process and what e-publishing means. How I could get involved in it. Sometimes I focus so narrowly on my day-to-day to keep from getting overwhelmed by my schedule that I forget to remind myself that I’m not in this to be a clerk at a law firm forever. I need to keep looking at the bigger world of what I want to do, and let myself get excited, and maybe even take a leap. Maybe I do need to consider putting together something to publish myself, in addition to sending manuscripts and queries the traditional way. Maybe I use the design knowledge I’ve picked up in classes and internships to help other people make their work stand out. Who knows? In any case, I’m excited about what I want to do again, which is just what I needed to start another year in my life.