50,000 words and other foibles

They say that most people who "want to be writers" never actually finish a manuscript, much less complete the editing process not once but twice. That the unsuccessful are often that because they don't put in the effort. But where does the effort actually stop? Even if you have a manuscript, it can take up to ten years to be published.

I guess at least I've made a distinction that some people don't. I am a writer...even if the flow for this particular entry is a little dull, I don't doubt that. I have the evidence after all. But I am not an author, which is a little bit different isn't it? And I certainly wouldn't call myself successful, not in direct correlation to this particular career choice. So in the end, am I any better than the half-baked child I was?

Part of attaining anything is putting in the work to get it. Depending on the thing you desire to attain, the sacrifice will be greater or lesser. Though what value you place on the thing has more influence on how much you will sacrifice for it than what value it has in society. At least that's how I feel about it. Thus my trip to Ohio this coming weekend...although I'm beginning to think it may have been not the best thought out plan, it is what's going down. Hopefully I will make some connections, or at least learn something about my chosen craft. I'd better because this business is going to be pretty darn expensive. Either way, I'll surely enjoy seeing Meghan (and maybe she'll forgive me for using her as a free hotel). And getting out of Roanoke for a bit is definitely a plus.

So in the end I think it will be a good trip. And maybe I'll have taken another formative step towards my goals. Because since it's going to take me at least three years to pay off my loans most likely, I might as well work on what I can reach. And, as much as I may chaff at the location, where I live and what I'm doing are both surprisingly well-suited for this activity. We'll see where things go from here.

Oh and by the way, I am about 500 words away from the minimum halfway point for my new book, tentatively titled "Mother of Creation." Am I psyched? Yes.

Passion

I realized something today thanks to an email I received from a magazine I had previously submitted work to. I was at that time rejected, but I still get emails when they have new submission guidelines to put up, and I remain hopeful. Some of the greatest authors were not even recognized as such until their death, after all.

That aside, I was reading the guidelines for a new project they are doing that calls for literary erotica. And I realized something rather profound. I could certainly write erotica, but it would really have no soul. Because the last time I felt erotic was...a while ago anyway. Sure, I've had lovers since that time, but the engagement was much the same as writing a piece of erotic literature would be. All of the surface detail was there, but it was hollow. There was no spark. Even if something like that got published, it wouldn't necessarily make me happy.

I guess what I'm saying is to write, and to write well, one needs passion. You can string words together all day long but if you can't feel it it's not there. The same as with people, or work, or anything else in life. And passion comes from being able to share something with someone else.

Really the only reason I'm thinking about all these things is because I'm living alone. I almost had a heart attack in the shower this morning when the door blew open thinking someone was in the apartment with me. Too many years of paranoia driven parenting. I realized in that moment that there was nowhere I could go. No one I could rely on. No way to be safe. And no one who would miss me if I disappeared. The last isn't entirely true of course. My mother is coming to visit this afternoon and so she would have realized if I was missing or dead. But that wouldn't have done me much good.

Still, I understand why people who live alone go out all the time and are never home. It's lonely to come home to nothing. You wonder why you're doing what you're doing. What's the point if the only person you're living for is yourself? But that's not really true either, it just feels that way from time to time. You're always connected. Even when sitting alone inside hollow rooms that echo with nothing.

Complications

Perhaps I was a little too hasty in titling this blog.

In some ways, having a job for these past two weeks has allowed me to appreciate the simple things in life in a way I hadn't when lost in the listlessness of summer. But in other ways, it has been stressful in the extreme.

Since starting work two weeks ago I haven't written a single word. My relationship with my parents has degenerated. And my fears have mounted. I begin to wonder who I am. I envy others their apparently clear path forward.

I want to know with certainty where it is I want to be, and more than that (for I begin to think I already do) I want to have the opportunity to be there. And I wonder if I made a wrong turn. What if I'm going the wrong direction? But there's no one who takes my worries seriously, no one I can rely on. Catherine, maybe, but she's too busy. I know I should be able to take care of my own worries. I try to count the blessings I have. And I am grateful. I understand that where I am is where a lot of people pray their whole lives to be. If I play my cards right, I have a lifelong, high-paying position with great benefits. Even should my current position for some reason not be fulfilling enough or disappear, I can move through the company without sacrificing anything - except my dreams. And if that sounds dramatic, then I guess it is. But it's how I feel.

No one gets it. And so today I made a decision.

1) I'm going to learn to rely on myself. I'm tired of being someone who is a burden on others. I'm tired of being weak. I don't want that anymore.

2) By next September, I will have determined exactly what I want to do with my life. And I will be leaving this position, or at least in the process of it, and taking the next step forward to fulfill my own ideals. I'll be 23. It's a good age to start the rest of my life.

And in the meantime, I'm going to learn everything I can from this position. I'm going to learn everything I can from Roanoke and the community I find myself in. And I'm going to learn about myself, too. And I'm going to keep pursuing the things that make me me.

Oh, and I'm going to pay off at least one of my loans. And save lots of money. Because why the fuck else did I take this position?

I won't be the narrow-minded, rigid, afraid person you think I am.

Apartment hunting

Rawr for life decisions....

I found two great apartments yesterday that I feel really positive about. They both have hardwood floors, which is one of my preferences, and office space. The difference is that one is two bedrooms and really eclectic (which I like) plus the kitchen is really spacious, so you could have people over for dinner (which is also a plus since I'd like to do that). The other is about 100 dollars less expensive, has a decent sized kitchen but that's it, and only one bedroom. It also could potentially have the advantage of having its own water heater and access to a washer/dryer. I think they're both about the same on utilities....well for one I would have a gas bill in the winter. Even though I know it will be a lot to clean, I would like to have more space rather than less honestly. They both are the same for the initial deposit as well. So I'm going to bring my parents to see both of them this weekend hopefully and get their opinion on both. I have to call both of the landlords tomorrow and set up appointments.

Also, I'm probably a corporate sell-out. But it's the only option I've been presented so far so I'm gonna go with it.

Moving forward

I am now an employee of Elizabeth Arden.

Through my employment I am going to advance my Spanish and gather the money to live my dreams. I'm going to find an apartment in the neighborhood of Roanoke I most love, take Aikido, and save up money and vacation time until I have enough to go to Japan. In the meantime I will continue writing, pay off my school loans, and learn how to be an adult, finally.

I am, needless to say, mildly nervous and extremely excited.

So here's to the start of something new.

A message from Elizabeth Gilbert

The author's opinion of Eat, Pray, Love

If you could do anything, anything you wanted, what would it be? If money were no object, tell me your dream. What does your future look like? Nothing is too big, or too small.

Well I'd start off traveling to Japan. And probably also northern Spain. I'd take Aikido and learn to use my staff. I'd study Japanese forever. I'd buy every major work of Spanish literature and read them all, and a lot of the English ones as well. I'd probably take yoga, too. I'd go to a spa, lavish attention on myself. I'd be able to buy myself new clothes. I'd meditate, somewhere, with someone. I'd be a writer. I'd write about everything. At least that last part I don't have to wish for.

Yeah, I think that about sums up my most immediate goals.

Introspection

I think I've reaffirmed something for myself.

There are two people who live inside me. No, I'm not confessing to split personality disorder (unless maybe I am o.o). I'm talking about two competing dreams. Two competing ways of viewing the world. I am, in many ways, two completely different people.

Part of me is a writer. The writer is quiet, introverted, and disconnected from reality, but has a good grasp of humans and the human psyche. She listens well, but can sometimes ramble for hours about the same subject. You're often lucky if she remembers to brush her teeth in the morning. The writer dreams. Reality isn't really pertinent. She spends her time seeing the world through the eyes of others - other characters, other dimensions described by other writers and creators. The writer is fragile and secluded, at times, and uncaring of the petty problems found in the everyday at others.

But there's another part of me that longs for new things, that engages unfailingly, that becomes miserable and preoccupied in isolation. I could call this other person a lot of things - diplomat, perhaps, interpreter, a mover and a shaker, certainly - so I suppose a leader will do. The leader makes. The leader does, and loves the reality her feet are planted in. The leader is the person I could be if I accessed my full potential.

I suppose the writer and the leader are not exclusive. It is possible to balance the two. I've managed it before, in some ways. But lately, I feel as if I'm stagnating. Devolving, perhaps. So, essentially what I wanted to say is this: absence makes the heart grow fonder, and balance is the center of stability. Sometimes, balance requires movement, and sometimes it requires none. Always it requires inertia, from a strictly physical perspective. It's the changing from one state to another that is difficult.

At my heart I'll always be a person of cool colors. But I shouldn't forget that I have to hold the whole spectrum to be happy. So I must keep attempting to live a warm and vibrant life.

Tennessee, we need to talk about your road signs....

But other than that everything is good.

I took a trip today to Bays Mountain Park, since I had nothing better to do. I am, as I may have mentioned previously, staying at my aunt's this week taking care of her animals. There are two dogs, Ivee and Molly, and two cats, one who I call Squeaky (though his real name is Duke) on account of the fact that he literally sounds like a squeaky toy, and another one whose name is Daisy or something else that starts with D and is a typical cat name. Of all the pets I probably get along with her best, even if I can't remember her name. I feed them and, in the case of the dogs, play with them some and make sure they get let out of the house. The only bad part of the job so far is that they think I'm slacking if I get up at 8 am to let them out. I guess I'll add that to my list of reasons I don't want a dog. :-p

Unfortunately, I forgot to take my camera to Bays Mountain Park, but it's okay because I mostly did things that a camera likely would have been useless to chronicle. The park itself is at a higher elevation, as it's name might imply, than the house here. The mountains in this part of Appalachia are odd. I can't explain exactly how. On one hand, it appears to me that they are smaller, but also more abrupt, somehow more widely spaced or less sloping. At times you feel like you are huddling between the earth's breasts, and at times you can see around you for miles. It's a little disorienting, in all honesty. I'm used to the wide rivers and ancient, rounded mountains a little further north. Somehow it seems that the mountains in my part of Virginia have more regularity to them.

I went to the park because, as I discovered thanks to Yahoo!/Google, on Sundays the park does a sun observation using one of their telescopes. What I mean is, the park contains both an observatory and a planetarium, and from the observatory on Sunday from 3pm to 3:30 one can view a part of the surface of the sun. Which is, needless to say, awesome. They also do moon viewings on Saturdays during the winter months, when it gets darker earlier. I have heard there might be an observatory somewhere around Pulaski, or might have been, but I've never seen it or visited. It makes me curious.

After viewing the sun from two different devices, one of which showed me sunspots, the other those filaments that spring from the sun sort of like the fila of an amoeba - these are apparently caused by kinks in the sun's magnetic field, which are in turn caused by the differing speeds of the surface rotation of the star, caused by the spherical shape of the celestial body, which makes me ponder the possibility of similar but less flashy occurrences in Earth's atmosphere - I wandered down to the planetarium to watch a showing there. It was my first time in a planetarium - it doesn't remotely compare to the night sky, but it is certainly interesting. The program was on IBEX which stands for something along the lines of "Interstellar Boundary Explorer." Some of the images were really fascinating, and the explanation proffered concerning the project made me ponder the concept of halos for a long time. See, IBEX was designed to measure, essentially, the solar radiation, or solar winds, which protect the planet and everything in our solar system. Unfortunately, the particles which make up the solar wind are invisible to the human eye, but you might get the idea if I described it as the sun's glow wrapping over everything and embracing it somehow. At least that was how I felt about the phenomenon.

In any case, I was all unawares but apparently the planetarium itself is considered one of the best in the Southeast, and cost some million dollars to construct (I'm not sure what cost a million bucks, but I would hypothesize it was probably mostly the projection equipment, followed by the fact that they would have had to reconstruct part of the building during the remodeling without affecting the surrounding construction). My curiosity ignited, I now find myself wanting to return to DC and see a show there and compare. I think I would like a show about finding constellations the best though.

Now that I'm back and the pets are fed, I find myself preoccupied with what I may be missing in my own locale. Probably not anything that grand or celestial, but perhaps there are things I've somehow missed at home that would be worth leaving the river bank (which I miss terribly, though I'm aware I have no right to as I hardly spend as much time there as I could). Still, I'm sure there's much more to explore here. And I'm so glad to be traveling again, even if it is just to the edge of Tennessee.

Eventful

Today I had an interview with Elizabeth Arden. I think it went well, which is exciting. : ) I should hear from them sometime next week.

I also had lunch with Maria before I came back to Radford, and we got Chocolate Paper for dessert. It was lovely. I missed Roanoke.

Once more, I decided that everything works out for the best. I reaffirm this belief from time to time in my life, and today was one of those days.

Then I came home and tried to prepare for my journey to Tennessee but my brother accidentally spattered my dress with bleach. I'm thinking about spattering the whole thing with bleach to make it uniform. I can't decide for sure if it would look cool...or just like I spattered my dress with bleach. Decisions, decisions...

Then my aunt and uncle came by for about five minutes....I haven't seen them for months so that was good I guess. Their dog tried to eat my sandwich.

Basically, my sugar's wonky. Thus my fragmented writing style. I might give this a much better go if I didn't feel like my insides were full of clouds.

Night.

Two in a row, who knew?

Today I emailed one of my prospective employers. Originally, I was supposed to know if I got this position two weeks ago, but they need another four days to figure things out. Fortunately, behind every unfortunate occurrence is a concealed opportunity and hopefully their stalling has given me the time to maybe get a better/higher paying job in Roanoke. Which would be nice.

I've come to the realization in job hunting that, as I had previously suspected, my Spanish major is probably the best decision I could have made. It's the only thing getting me interviews right now, I think. The idea is, one the one hand, reassuring, as it means I have a sort of leg up, as it were. On the other hand, I am kind of disappointed that my International Studies major can only really be utilized in one of the positions I've managed to interview for (which was an internship and is kind of a fall-back thing). At least I know I really love Spanish (and I do, as fascinating as I find other languages Spanish is my favorite so far). So no matter what I'll get to explore something I love further, with the added ability of paying off my loans. Sweet, right?

In further news, I just wrote a sweet and possibly improbably scene in my new book, which is currently tentatively titled Mother of Creation in honor of the eventual fate of the sort of main character as the unwilling mother of a god and the goddess figure which manipulates her into that unfortunate position. Basically I'm psyched. I started off trying to be careful and write in a sort of chronological order but I've since given up and just focused on channeling the scenes given to me until I run out of that and go back to beef out the plot/characters/etc. It's moving a lot faster now.

Still no word from agents, but they still have another week or so that they could respond before I'll move on and start looking for a new batch for The Last Disciple. I think a potential difficulty with that work is my own lack of decision concerning the genre. Still, I think it's marketable. Definitely a lot better than many other books I've recently come across. Lack of cohesive plot/character development honestly is one of my least favorite things to be exposed to in a book. It sticks in my head for days, and not in a good way.

Now I'm obviously rambling. Time for bed!

"I'm as deep and winding as the sea" and other ego-stroking statements

Hmm...where to begin.

Job hunting is long.

I bought Memoirs of a Geisha in Spanish in Roanoke, when I was visiting Cynthia. That was cool. I've been reading it, and thinking to myself something along the following lines: This chick started off living in a hut and became the most desired woman in all of Japan. Except she also had a lot of misery and drama in her life. Isn't it better to just hang out and not be consistently misery/drama-ful? Can anyone just hang out and live their life when they feel like they are expected to do more? What does hanging out and living life imply? What, therefore, is more? Will I be completely gray by the time I'm thirty-five?

Ah, the questions of a person with too much time on their hands.

That being said, I've continued writing, and submitted materials to both magazines and agents. Someday, I'm going to be a writer. Heaven help those who stand in my way. According to my projections, this may in some ways disrupt some of my other dreams/desires in life. Fortunately, they can wait. I've only used up a quarter of my allotted span, after all. (This is of course a vague projection. I have no idea of how much time I am truly left on earth.) Therefore, I have three more full quarters to become a writer. Considering all that I've accomplished this far in, I find that rather reassuring.

See, my life is sort of eventful.

Yes, I know I just stole the title from Star Wars Episode IV

May my life be so epic.

I have spent a lot of time these past few months feeling generally miserable. That isn't to say that I didn't enjoy things. But it was as if I had grown as much as I could grow. I was stagnated.

Thank goodness that's over.

I've returned to my home in Radford. Yes, it has been a little disappointing. Things aren't coming easily - that is to say, the struggle to move on to the next stage in my life is, well, a struggle. Everyone knows that the job market is bad, and I haven't been as proactive as some of my peers. But I'm feeling pretty confident that, sooner or later, I will get where I'm supposed to be. And that, quite honestly, is a good feeling.

Learning the lesson of perseverance, of living with myself, of enjoying the little things, is what this summer is about. In order to receive, you must give, and while it is important to look back you can't let the past mire you in "was" and "what if".

So, in keeping with my own personal philosophies on the subject, I've started submitting to publishers, as well as keeping up my job search. I'm also, hopefully, going to be volunteering soon at a local nonprofit. I know what I'm worth, which is a nice feeling, too. Things will work out. This is the law of the universe.

(Though it is worth noting that, as the song goes, you can't always get what you want - but if you try sometimes, you just might find, you get what you need.) On that note, best wishes if you're reading.