Sweet 16

Hi team! Good hell, it's been a minute! I'm sitting in my bed on my adorable new MacBook Air getting ready for my last first day of school. Although getting here has been quite the struggle and I would rather get my teeth pulled than wake up for class tomorrow at 7AM, I am excited to be going back for my very last semester of my Undergraduate degree!

I know it's sort of (10 days) late for a Happy New Year Here Are Some Resolutions post, but my blog my rules, yeah? I've been sick the past few days leading up to my last semester and watching Django Unchained 8 times to make myself feel better. But this year I truly mean to make a new me. Maybe that's not exactly true. I lost myself a lot in 2015, whether by my own choice or by letting horrid people steal me away. But I am back with a vengeance. And I have some resolutions, damn it. And I'm putting them here so I feel that odd sense of ~requirement~ that sharing things with internet friends makes you feel.

• Read 45 books.
• I've met every single reading goal I have set in the past 4 years and I have no plans to stop that now. I am up from last year but down from the dream goal of 50, to allow time for school to take over my life. 
• Write a blog post at least once a week.
• Duh. I promise to be better. More poetry, more thoughts, more flash fiction. More writing, more me.
• Continue with my daily writing exercises.
• I got a beautiful new journal from my best friend Niki this Christmas and every day this year I have written a ten line poem as an exercise to stretch and continue my writing. Hopefully some will be decent enough to share here but I'm just glad to be writing continually again.
• Read every book assigned to me in my last semester.
• Easier said than done. We'll see. But I gotta make those student loans worth it.
• Finish at least the first round of edits on my novel.
• I finished my first draft of my first novel this last August and I intend to have my first round of edits done as soon as I graduate. That's step one to my big published dreams. Let's get it done.
• Take more time for my own mental health and stop letting people who hurt my brain in my life.
• Again, duh.

And there is my 2016! Life has been a disaster lately but it is slowing getting better and better. I can't wait to reconnect with all of you and watch your lives blossom too. Here's to Sweet (20)16!

checking in

Every word I'm trying to write feels contrived. Or maybe I'm just tired and stressed and a weird version of lonely that I am severely not ok with. Every metaphor feels reached for and foreign on my tongue. Then again, I doubt that it's new or fascinating that another twentysomething is having an existential crisis. But it feels important. It feels big. And I miss you. All of you. And I miss the words in my own head as much as I miss yours. I'm still here. The here is just very flexible and strange.

while I was away

Hello, my lovelies. I haven't been on here as often lately but I promise there is a very good reason for that. Here, let me show you.

I finally finished my novel. Longtime readers of this blog will know that I've been working on this bad boy since November 2013 when I challenged myself to participate in NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) and I won, writing 50,000 words that month. Finishing the rest was hard with school and now with my new big and important full time job (#adult) but I did it. On August 10, 2015 at 1:39AM I wrote the end. 86,729 words, 265 pages, and all of my heart. 

Thank you for reading my blog and my writing, for sticking around and letting me read your words too, and thank you for the endless support. All my love. 

7.5.2015

The last elephant died in a zoo in Arizona, across the street from the dental office specializing in incisor implants and Novocaine overdoses. She stared across the street as ten men tried to push and pull the elephant onto an oversized stretcher while she felt her hands play inside the sandy blonde hair of the man in the chair. He let his deep set eyes finally rest under her touch, closing the lids over the murky waters hidden inside of them. The mountain range extending from his nose to the purse on his lips was too delicious to leave untouched and she let her fingers wander between the valleys and hills.

"She cried for months before she died, didn't she?" He asked.

"She needed attention. Nobody wants to die alone even when it's for the best that they do."

"I want to die right here." He was nervous. The blood in his veins shook when the needle went in and began to pulse to where she attached the other end to the center of her heart. They shared grief and blood and the death of the elephant. Their blood spooled back and forth between them as the elephant was dragged away.

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1.27.15

We sat in the dark under covers and blankets reading tales of wizards and shadows that talked when the clock struck twelve. In the summer our kites would breeze past the bellies of the clouds and we swore we could feel the friction brushing onto our fingertips and making our hair rise with electricity. As we aged the ropes on our kites grew smaller and smaller until the only choice we had was to cut the kites free. They flew higher than they ever had and as I started to cry you held my hand for the first time. That was a new type of friction, a friction I knew I would be chasing the rest of my life. 

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Dear Stephanie Perkins

It's been too long since I've had a book to gush about. A book that filled me up, made me it's prisoner, made me squeal like an idiot and made me believe in love and words. A book that sparks my insides and moves me to write and to read and to smile and to UGH very loudly.

Stephanie Perkins you win again. 

Last year I read Anna and the French Kiss swiftly followed by Lola and the Boy Next Door. I shared some thoughts on those two books here but to echo the sentiment a bit, these books moved me so much. These characters are just so alive and so beautiful and broken and unique. The way Stephanie writes is just electric and so full of love. You can feel this woman's passion and love for words and her characters soak through the pages.

She writes how I want to write. I love when you can tell an author loves their characters and I think Stephanie Perkins takes the cake there. I can almost feel her squealing with me when the characters kiss and getting frustrated with me when her characters aren't together. I like that I can feel how much love and care and attention each character gets. I like that the characters become my friends and that they are Stephanie's friends too.

I devour her books also. It's been a good summer for reading but good GOD I was not ready for the majesty of Isla and the Happily Ever After, the last book of her sort of, interrelated series. I don't want to give anything away by way of plot but here's the low down. Isla is shy and has always loved Josh, a broody hot artist who can't seem to focus on much. After a very awkward (and literally awesome) first official meeting over summer vacation, their school year in Paris becomes a lovely jumble of romance and sorrow and GUYS I COULD NOT.

One of the best parts of these books is that they truly transport you to the landscapes that they take place in. In Anna, you are swept away to Paris and you return back to Paris in Isla after some time in New York and some even more delicious time in Barcelona (STEPHANIE PERKINS I CAN'T WITH YOU). But one of my favorite experiences was reading Lola while I was in San Francisco last week. I mean, holy wow it brought the book to life in bursting colors. I drove through the Castro and picked the houses I though Lola and Cricket lived in and loved in. I bought some crazy dresses in the Haight and felt my Lola showing. She knows San Francisco and she paints each city she uses so lovingly and so beautifully.

My favorite line of Lola

I could gush about the intricacies of her books forever, how much I love the boys she writes (PS STEPHANIE PERKINS YOU ALSO SUCK BECAUSE I CAN'T PICK BETWEEN THE THREE OF THEM HOW DARE YOU), and how beautifully she writes her women. I can see pieces of all of them in me and that makes reading her books very fun and also very revealing. These girls have their faults and there are times when reading them revealed mine and I got so uncomfortable for a minute, but then so inspired. Like Isla for example. She is so hard on herself and she focuses on her past and Josh's past so much. I was so frustrated reading that until I realized that I do the exact same thing. Her books always seem to reveal me. It's because her characters are so damn realistic. It might seem easy to dismiss these books as easy to read or mindless romance but HOT DAMN do they get heavy and real and raw.

Stephanie Perkins is the writer I want to be and her words always wake me up when I need them to. I have been in the worst writing rut of all time. I feel like I have creative ADD. I sit down to write, feel so jazzed to be writing, and then I just can't. It feels empty and useless to try. I feel like I have nothing to say and no words to say anything. But her books excite me. They make me feel love and they make me feel a love of love in books. That feeling of getting so sucked into words that you cannot stop, you cannot and will not put it down. I want to write a book like that and Stephanie Perkins makes me feel like that type of writing is possible.

On her blog she has talked about battling depression. About how hard it is to write through it sometimes. I feel that pain so so much. Brains are assholes. Brains tell you you can't write or that you shouldn't or that people won't like you. And when that happens, bodies and words shut down. On one of her posts about depression, I left a comment for her about how much she inspires me. And guess what? She responded to me! :) She said "Thank you, Em. I'm so sorry that your brain is mean to you, too. I'm glad you're fighting it! Keep writing. I can't wait to read YOUR book someday. :-)"

...

...
......

ARE YOU KIDDING ME?! I was dying when that happened last year. And something more, I know she means it because she is just the nicest.

I know this post is all over the place but in the end, it has one purpose. Thank you so much Stephanie Perkins. Thank you for your books, your characters (particularly the boys but... how can I pick between the three ugh), your hope, your words, being you. Thank you for everything. Thank you for giving me my writing back.

I cannot wait for your next masterpiece.

...

I want my break from writing to be over. Hello. I was tired and then I was sad and then I was dangerously close to happy and then I was even sadder and then I was lonely and then I went to San Francisco. And I left my heart in that bay. It was so nice to be in the ocean again and I refuse to let it be that long before I get back to the ocean again.

I have a lot to tell you. I have a lot to show you. I have so many stories and words and poems sitting in my head finally. Now I'm that good kind of tired that comes when you know you have a big journey ahead of you and you just got done with a big journey. And you need a rest but you would rather venture on. I'm that kind of tired.

I listened to this song as the plane took off for home and it gave me some life back. I'll see you all so soon.

charm and fury

The lake was lovely, dark, and deep, the promises promised in Robert Frost's poem lurking somewhere just below the surface. They were tangled in the water lilies and spread with the algae on the slimy surfaces of the stones that created a mosaic on the floor. A gentle hand found my gentle waist, an ever softer fingertip rested against my parted lips. I could taste the memory of your tongue on mine. I could feel your hand pulling me closer and tangling in my dress as you kissed me. We were so young, my darling. So young and out at midnight sneaking onto private lakes to skip stones.

You were cigarettes and moon dust. You were charm and fury and mine. You spun me round and we stood facing the lake, standing together and pressing our bodies together until the only barrier was the air. Hands clasped, we skipped stones caked in neon across the water, your voice whispering snatches of old tunes into the curve of my neck. The stones pulsated on the lakebed, a beating heart of the Earth, the beating heart of us. In our now frozen and forsaken town, the heart is beating too still, too faint for the ears of strangers. With you far from me, and I in my bed, I still feel our hearts combining and diving below the murky depths of the past.

via *

in restless dreams I walked alone: 3

F. Scott Fitzgerald always feared oblivion and losing his voice amid the voices of others. He couldn’t stand the thought of owning a mind made up more of the thoughts of others than of his own. I understand his fear and by God if that’s not the most debilitating fear a writer can have. There are those books you read that fill you with so much inspiration and so much fire that you cannot wait to write your own. Your thoughts race with new stories and new ideas and your hands fly like crazy until it feels like they are going to snap off from overuse. But then there are those other books. Those books that are so life changing, so unbelievable to even be real, that makes you think that you could never in your wildest dreams create anything new or important. Everything that could ever be said has already been said in the perfect words of someone else. Not only will your own writing never compare to theirs, but you don’t even want to compete because their work is too golden to even approach. What is a squeak of mine compared to the shouts of Gatsby? 

Those books are the ones I’ve read so many times it almost feels as though I’d written them. I’ve walked each chapter like a hallway in my childhood home. Holden’s hunting cap hangs on a hook in the front room, Gatsby stands in the doorway looking far off into the distance with an empty champagne flute in his hand, Scout and Jem elbow past me toward the back door, Atticus following close behind reminding them of their manners. And there in front of me on the dining room table: a typewriter. Although the world seemed so full of voices, none of them were mine yet. I could tell the characters surrounding me were begging for more people to fill the house. It was up to me to give them life. My voice needs to be shared just like theirs did. In my mind I sit at the typewriter and my fingers drift coolly across the keys. Even when they are a bit more stilted in reality, that dream pushes me forward. 

So I sit cloaked in sad music in a bed full of broken spines and well-loved pages, wrinkled from repeated visits through the ages. My mother worries that I’m not sleeping enough. My father hopes I can make a viable career out of late nights, coffee, and words. My roommates are just grateful I take time out of imaginary worlds to pay rent in reality. People stare at the dark circles under my eyes and think they are simply marks of one person’s tired night. Little do they know they are footpaths carved into my skin by the endless running of my mind. 

via *

in restless dreams I walked alone: 2

Since I can remember I’ve been immersing myself into the minds of other people; when I was younger I’d invent a new person for myself to be and let them take over my brain for a day. I used to think that meant I had the makings of an actress but it was really the makings of a writer. I had more characters than I could count ready at my disposal, begging for their stories to be told. I would sneak into corners of rooms and talk to these people and write swatches of stories down in the margins of well-loved books. I started collecting the lives of those I’d imagined around me and soon moved into collecting the lives of those I knew and watched.

When the time came for me to have my own life, I wrote down every detail of what happened to me, experimenting with new words and trying with all my might to capture exactly what every single event in my life felt like. How the summer sunset’s look like melting sherbet wrapped in crushed velvet while the September sun looks like warmed honey seeping out behind the mountains and smelled like marmalade. How my first love’s hands reached at my sides like shy little tree roots, nervous to spread out and claim the forest floor. The more I wrote, the more I read, the more I saw, the more I kissed, the more the words demanded to be let loose onto paper. I felt more like myself when my eyes were peeking out between ink on a page.

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in restless dreams I walked alone, narrow streets of cobblestone

My mother used to come into my room while I lay completely still on my bed, letting melodies drift across my skin and tattoo themselves on my arms and legs. She asked me why I always had such sad music on, letting my room turn a dusty blue as each sad song crooned through the night. Why did I need Jeff Buckley to hold my hands? Why were The Smiths brushing my hair off of my face and out of the hot tears that were plastering themselves onto my cheeks? It felt good to feel so much. If felt good to lay paralyzed by pain, remembering all of their voices and their promises, watercolor tears streaming down my cheeks. It made me feel more alive, this addiction to nostalgia. I’d let the chords swell until nostalgia was sweating itself from every pore. That’s when I’d pick up my pen.

Everything went numb. It was like the blood in my veins stopped flowing and all I could hear were ghostly laughs bouncing off the walls, just out of reach. There’s only so long that a heartbeat can sustain you before the blood stops moving and you need more. My blood sat there in my nail beds, gathering in crystallizing pools and freezing over, waiting for the spark to set it on fire again and set my pen in motion. Letters lounged on my cuticles begging to leap onto the page. That’s why I needed their voices. I needed to hear someone sing sadness so I could get lost in my own head. It’s amazing the trigger moments that happen when you surround yourself with the art of others.

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story startings- Maggie

So I've been writing this short story when I've had a free moment or two to spare with school winding down. Here is the beginning. Let me know what you think, lovelies.

She liked to feel the curt little hairs bud in the center of her armpit. As she sat at the table picking through the bowl of peach halves she was systematically cutting in half, she’d absentmindedly move her finger inside of her sweatshirt and feel the tiny bristles like slightly overgrown grass creeping out where she had so meticulously shaved two days ago. The dress she’d had to wear to the party still lay across her couch like a woman caught in a fainting spell, its purple ruffles barely touching the floor.

            Purple had been her mother’s favorite color. Even her casket had been purple when they’d buried her in July. Maggie wore the one black dress she’d owned at the time with the purple heels her mother had bought her for her High School graduation four years before. The shoes rubbed until the skin stretched across her pinky toes was rubbed into blisters full of water, finally popping as Maggie stepped forward to deliver her eulogy. Her toes were swimming while her eyes remained dry. Maggie had forgotten to shave her armpits that day. Later, in the back of the hearse with the hearse driver panting on top of her, his fingers gripped at her armpits and he stopped kissing her neck.

            “You one of those nature loving girls who doesn’t shave her pits?”

            “I didn’t have time. Nobody woke me up.”

            “A 22 year old girl can’t wake herself up?”

            “My mom used to call me every Wednesday morning. I haven’t woken up on Wednesdays for three weeks.” He looked at her face, trying to get her eyes to lock with his. Maggie stared at his crooked bow tie. “Her brain exploded. She was dizzy one morning and her brain exploded. So now I don’t wake up on Wednesdays.”

            “I’ll keep you up til Thursday, babe. You just lay back and let it happen.” Maggie closed her eyes and willed her brain to explode. It didn’t. When his watch beeped at midnight she pushed him off of her and wandered to her car, her underwear dragging along the bottom of her left heel. When she got home that night the raw pink skin on the sides of her pinky toes had glued themselves to the inside of her shoes. Ripping them off made her scream and blood slowly cry from the wounds. This was the first night she felt lonely.

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a prayer of inspiration

The wind is not nearly bracing enough tonight.

It's calming and balmy and chilly

while I sit here demanding hurricanes

and hail, the wind on fire coming to 

carry me away, to burn and to purge

with sandpaper skin sailing through my window.

I've tossed and turned in every reachable sea,

made my own oceans and drowned myself in them all

before the baptism could begin. 

It was a baptismal breath,

a barely palpable gasp into new being that

kept me clawing at the barricades

pushing me beneath the waves, into

catacombs crawling with spirits and spiders,

macabre reminders of dark days gone by.

The wind was silent then, is silent now.

It was lush and never lonely. 

It caressed and coddled

when I needed it to throw me down,

make me its rag doll.

Tonight, with the moon dancing in the breeze,

the jigsaw pieces meandering into place,

I'm craving destruction, the human spirit

quivering to feel confusion and pain. 

Feeling lost to feel found.

Cutting flesh to wrap it up.

Blowing towns to shreds to rebuild them.

via *

indulgences

I could write a post telling you minute by minute the happenings of my literature conference a few weekends ago. I could tell you about the great friends I made, I could tell you about my plans to go back next year, I could tell you how exhausted I was after sleeping for maybe four hours all weekend. But that would be way too much for one post. It's probably too much for two posts.

But what I can tell you is the most important thing I learned that weekend. That this is attainable. Being a writer is attainable. I am on the right track, I can do this, I am supported and talented and eager and hungry.

We had three amazing speakers this weekend and the overwhelming theme of all of the talks was that it can be done. There are different ways to get it done, and writing is the hardest thing you could choose to do, but it can be done. The thing to look out for though, is ways the world will try and fight you on getting your work done.

Bret Anthony Johnston spoke with us and talked a lot about indulgences. People tend to see writing as a career as an indulgence. Well, really, any artistically driven career is usually seen as an indulgence. People think that you are so lucky to be able to work at your dreams and think it's so easy to just sit and write or paint or act. It's not. At all. Artistically driven careers are some of the most taxing career choices. Yes, I am doing what I love and that is wonderful and I'm incredibly lucky to be able to do what I love. But it's also so damn hard because it's something I love. I can't shut my work off at 5 pm. If I get hit with an idea at 6, I write that idea at 6. If I get hit with a poem at 3 in the morning, guess who stays up and writes. Because that's how I'll provide for myself. If I let those ideas escape, I'm flushing my career away.

Indulgences are what artists give up for their careers. Ron Carlson, another one of our amazing speakers, urged us to remember how important it is to be alone when you write. You have to shut yourself away and keep your ass in that chair while the ideas pool onto your screen. Don't stand up for that phone call, don't check social media, tell your friends you can't make it to the bar tonight. You have got to write alone. You have to give up indulgences so you can write or paint or act or work on a show. Most of my friends are in theater, which means they don't get to go out on Saturdays or Fridays because they are providing a place for others to go. If I have to finish a chapter or I get hit with inspiration, I have to forgo my dinner plans so I can write a scene for my character's dinner.

It is not an indulgence to follow your dreams. It is a necessity. Writing is breathing for me. If I didn't write, I wouldn't breathe. If that means I can't go to brunch every week or I can't stay up with all the books I have to read because I'm too busy writing my own, that is the price I pay. Bret said that the world makes it really easy not to be a writer or an artist. The world will throw better, more secure jobs your way. It will throw money at you. It will throw you miles of needless distractions that keep you away from your art. It's the writer's job to tune it all out, keep your ass in that chair, and bleed life into blank pages.

This is barely scratching the surface of that weekend and I have so much more to tell you. But I thought this was an important place to start. I wanted to start by saying that I believe in all of you artists out there. I believe in your poems and your watercolors. I believe in your acting and your stories and your lighting designs. Fight for your art. Never give in. Never give in to the indulgences around you. This is attainable. We will all get there.

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nightlight

It's harder to sleep at night knowing
I'll miss the stars and record players
Spinning in their galaxies,
These orbits outside my window.
Miles above the radiation-
Light years away from memories of
hands and tears nestling into my fingertips.
My shoulders closing in like book covers,
letting my heart be burrowed in my
word soaked ribs.
I curb loneliness with pages.
His spine is gone and yet five spines
have settled in my bed,
peaking at me under pillowcases,
laughing below my calve
and lounging beside me in my sheets.
The stars have the black matter to
nestle inside of but I have
my serpentine spines.
The night wears on and yet sleep
remains a shadow dancing on my wall.
Pages flutter with the breeze sneaking
in through the open window and
rattling the cages the characters share,
begging for stories to be told.
Go to sleep, I whisper, trying to
evaporate into the stars as they
beat against my brain and seconds
hoist their hands on toward daylight.
Another morning coming much too soon.
But I'd rather be tired and inspired,
heart on fire, fingertips wired to the keys,
than retired from the desire to create
and let these people breathe.

via *

pour me a drink and pour your eyes over me.

You've always been the dangerous one. First I was your secret, your play thing, your high school taste. I was a risk you took, a risk to your cool factor, the image you'd molded of yourself as a bad boy, the streetwise one. If I was such a secret, doesn't that make me the dangerous one? I know you more than you'd like me to. But you never stayed away.

Your hair was always long, but even longer now. You moved closer to me and I breathed you in: the smoke, the liquor, the past. Fogged up windows, hushed breath, so much history. And years later I still feel your hands, the first hands. 

I was hazy quickly. You called it forward action, I called it liquid luck. I watched you from my booth, I pressed myself agains the wall, I let my eyes bubble up the length of my straw until I saw you looking back. 

That band is loud.

That band is shit.

That band gets better the more you drink.

You slid into my booth again and I slid my hand across your back, down your leg. Your hand found my thigh. Don't let them see. Maybe this isn't such a game after all. 

I'm told your eyes were on me when you sang. I know I was staring right at you. You were eating me alive. Everything burned, like guitar strings against calloused fingers. 

As we left, there you stood smoking. Or talking. It didn't matter. I grabbed your face. I kissed you like I knew I would. I couldn't even tell you why. 

I can only write about you with an elevated heart rate. With bass lines piercing the silence. When I dance in a dark room all alone. Maybe it's because I only feel you when my heart is racing and my nerve endings feel alive and tingling. You are the dangerous boy, after all. You make me feel dangerous. 

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words words words

Last night was the second in my series of four Young Adult writing workshops. But mostly, last night was the night I shared the first chapter of my book. Thom and Piper made a grand debut! I've never shown people my book (except you all seeing the little clips from November.... but you all aren't people. You are wonderful wonderful little gems who I love.) But last night I showed the first chapter to a successful current YA author and my writing group.

I have loved this writing group because we are all writing the same genre. There are a lot of variations in WHAT we are writing, but it's all YA. It's so helpful because you are getting criticism and feedback from people who know the genre and who are legitimately trying to help you. In my creative writing class at school, it's just an intro class so a lot of the people aren't literature majors or they are writing very different genres. Because the genres are so different, sometimes it's hard for them to critique my pieces because they are coming from entirely different worlds. But this group was tailor made for me. I really hope we can all find a way to keep writing together even after the four sessions are over. Input is so valuable.

But, I'm getting a bit ahead of myself. Let's talk about the first week of the workshop. The first week we had an editor and literary agent come and talk with us. When sending out query letters to agents, most often all you are sending to them is the first five pages of your novel. And. That's. It. So what if your writing in chapter three is flawless, all they are seeing is the first five. Anyway, one of the first things they said to us was that prologues are NOT a good way to go. A lot of readers don't even read them (which ASTOUNDED me. If someone has written something in a book, I read from 1 to the end.) This was a crap sentence to hear because guess what my book starts with.... a prologue. Shit. They also said you can really tell when words are a writer showing off and which are for the characters. THIS. This was important. I can name so many books where writers are merely showing off.

All of this was a huge wake up call. I knew that I wrote the prologue because I felt the first chapter of my book wasn't strong enough on its own. I need to pad my first five pages so an agent would read it and see that I really do have talent. That's not right. It should all feel strong. I should feel proud of all of it and not try to sneak scenes through the cracks, hoping they won't be noticed.

I also realized that my prologue was so self serving. This book is based on an experience I had. And when I wrote the prologue, I wrote it as me, not Piper. It was me mostly saying, here's this story "not about me" and here's why it matters to ME so suck it. It was more like a diary entry. The farther into the book I got the less that part even sounded like Piper. It was pretty words but it was all for me, not the reader or the characters. That's not my job as a writer.

So this week before the session when I knew I'd be sharing my first five pages, I rewrote the entire first chapter. I kept a few snatches of conversation but I rewrote all of it. And the group really liked it! The visiting author (who was very cute and talented) said it felt like a John Green novel!! Getting a small comparison to my favorite author is something I'll take lovingly! The majority of the comments were about how authentic and real my dialogue felt and they liked the characters. I'm on the right track everyone!

After I got home last night, I read through the critiques they left on my pages and rewrote the first chapter AGAIN. So now the first 8 pages have been changed. Three times. And while I was changing those around, I realized there is an entire plotline in the book that has to be taken out. I'm finally starting to understand how hard writing a book is. And I'm so excited. That's the biggest thing I'm taking away from these workshops. I feel so inspired to keep writing. Critiques aren't discouraging but encouraging! Readers see things writers don't and when I see some of their critiques it's like a huge duh moment of "why didn't I think of that? That's so much better than what I had!"

I always remember John Green saying that in Looking for Alaska his plot element about his main character's obsession with last words didn't make it into the novel until the 10th draft. WHAT. That is a main theme in the book; the book doesn't work without it! But knowing that excites me. If I'm this proud of what I've written so far, who knows what this book will become by the time it is published? We will have to wait and see.

Thank you all for supporting me and watching me grow. I cannot wait until the day I can share this book with you all. I love you all.

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3.1.14

It's felt so quiet in the blogging world these past few weeks, hasn't it? Just me? February was upon us and it made everything feel quieter. Everything felt very tired and heavy this month, except the gorgeous weather that Salt Lake City has been treated to. When it wasn't a day sprinkled with springtime sun, it was sprinkling rain. My two favorites. I was even able to read outside for the first time of the year. I even felt a bit too hot in the sunlight. I stayed in the sun. I stayed hot. It was delicious and welcome. I'm ready to be too hot as opposed to too cold.

March is a favorite of mine and if the end of February was any inclination as to the wonder that will be March, I say bring it on!

Wonderful things coming this March and beyond:

• I'll be 22 on the 20th! I've always felt so much older than I am and as I continue to pass birthdays I feel like I'm finally aging into my personality (Thanks for the quote Nick Miller.) 
• Last Thursday was the first of my four workshop classes for a Young Adult Literature writing class. We met with an editor as well as a literary agent and got to pick their brains about writing and publishing. Next week I'm bringing in some of my own writing to be edited by the next guest speaker, a writer of Young Adult fiction. Cannot wait!
• Even bigger news, this week I found out that both of the pieces I submitted to the National Undergraduate Literature Conference were accepted! Not only was I invited to the conference, but I will be reading both of my pieces at the conference! I'm overwhelmed and excited and humbled and all of the other adjectives. That conference is the first week of April :) Look at me, achieving things. Unreal. Still.
• The novel didn't get finished in February. Surprise surprise, school has kept me enormously busy. So much reading. So much essays. So much studying. Not a lot of time for personal writing, especially the novel. I cannot wait for spring break so I can sink myself back into that pool and lose myself in that story again without that nagging voice in the back of my head telling me I should probably be doing homework instead. 

February came and went very fast, even if her presence was felt very heavily. I hope March feels the need to stay a while, have a drink with me, take me out on the town. 

How were your February days? I hope March is even better for us all. Big things are coming this year. My bones are buzzing.

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this is about writer's block

1234
12:34
A long day rings in a longer night.
It's hard to speak when the voice
squeaking out of your mouth isn't your own.
Are my poems working? Are they worth it?
I'm not writing about war. I'm not writing about Europe.
I'm writing about nostalgia, the taste of him
running along my collar bone.
I'm writing about love, lust, sex.
We can't all be Dickinson. Some of us are more Neruda.
Some of us can't shake Venus off of our shoulders.

1238
12:38
Too much culture can quiet a roar,
reduce it to a barely palpable huff at
a dinner table at an awkward family party.
Intimidation is the most powerful contraception.
I'll never write like them, I'll never paint.
Look at them float their words into my ear
like gifts while I scramble to remember what
rhymes with orange. Do I look like a writer?
Can I even fill the remainder of this line?
One more to make an even stanza. Cop out.

1249
12:49
She says to me, people want to hear the
shitty things that happened to you. She's right.
People want to hear about love, lust, sex.
People want to hear the memories I can tell them,
full of MY voice, MY thoughts, My words and sounds,
not theirs. I cannot be them. They cannot be me.
Screw the deadlines I set for myself, the lines I
draw in my own metaphysical sand. There are only
so many words you can surround yourself with
a day until your own words start to become muted.
CAN YOU HEAR ME NOW.

1253
12:53
Is it broken? The hammer? Did it fall?
Have words coaxed the words from their mousetraps?
Is the Great Wall of China truly visible from space,
or is it only visible in China when you stand
bashing your fists against its blocks?
We will give it a try, as always. Break it out.
Thom is talking, tall and true. Piper pleads and pines.
His hands find my hip, his eyes flash honey.
I'm 14, kissed for the first time. I'm 22, reflecting in my bed.
I can hear me now.

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for Lux

You felt the wind in
your hair, even in the
last moments when
the wind was carbon dioxide,
snuffing out your cigarette
and snapping the flirtation
from your eyes.

The castles in your mind
toppled and crumbled as
their hands fondled and gripped,
first only one, then a score
of men by moonlight.
Their hands were the hands of
Gods and monsters.

Where was your mind?
Where were you dreaming of?
How did we fail you?
What land have you and
your sisters run to with
ropes on your neck and
pills in your bellies?

Now you can move through
us all, barely kissing our eyelids
with your ever laughing
lips, lusting for life,
hungry for love and journey.
Golden hair bleeds down your back
and brushes over us as we dream of you.

(Based on The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides)

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