Sail: An Open Letter To Myself

(Disclaimer: I have never been sailing, nor do I have a clear idea of what a boat looks like. But just go with it.)

The more I stay here, the more I see that destiny is only the direction of the breeze.

It's up to you to hoist the sails, get on the water, build a fucking boat.

You could go your whole life procrastinating, letting your nerves and doubts keep you safe and sad.

Moving forward, getting something done, creating something worthwhile, is not something that happens to you.

It comes from hard, unsexy, uninspired work. It's about choosing a sense of accomplishment over comfort.

Comfort is lovely.

Comfort is a dangerous narcotic.

You must work on something that makes you happy, otherwise the work will exhaust you.

Everyone is built for something. Everyone has that thing that pushes all their happy buttons at once - being a stay at home parent, a game ranger, an entrepreneur. 

But finding that thing doesn't mean being high all the time. It doesn't mean that confusion, frustration, or fear will never return.

Finding it just means that the wind is in your sails. That's a big deal, a big relief, a big chance to be the best person you can be.

But it's just that: a chance. Not a promise or a money-back guarantee.

Actually doing it, choosing the forward motion instead of fighting with your crew or bobbing around the water in a place that looks good enough.... that's up to you.

So go.

Sail.

Critical Drinking and other discoveries

I've been at my job for a month now.

These are some things I've discovered.

I wish we had one of those Antique Roadshow type shows so I could find out if these discoveries are worth anything...

1. Everyone is numb, and everyone's resigned to that fact.

Though there are no sad little cubicles and flickering fluorescent lights, my job's still at an office and there are still the hum of monitors, bored sighs and and furtive glances for managers followed by monotonous gossip*.

Back in the day, my young, impressionable, only slightly perverted mind saw Joe Versus The Volcano and believed that nine to five was just as may-as-well-commit-suicide-ish as Joe's experience at the beginning of the movie. But now that I know all about magical realism and have dealt with my crush on Tom Hanks, I know that it was ever so slightly exaggerated. But, like all bad-in-a-weird-but-kinda-good-way movies, it was based on truth, man.

Fuck yeah corporate life.

There must be some neurological speed camera that could measure how much duller I get throughout the week. On Monday I'm like Perky! Happy! Lunchtime already, woo! and by Thursday I'm like Oh. Hey. Yeah. No. Huh? No.

2. Pretending to work is even more tiring than actually working.

You would think I'd have learned this in varsity, but when you're working on an essay and decide to take a 'refreshing study break', you can sit on the couch, eat ice cream and put in a Friends DVD. At work, if you're not in the mood to put in that last 45 minutes of effort before home-time, you can't just grab your Kindle and go chill on the couch in the lobby. Firstly, because there are always weird ladies sitting there and they never talk to each other, just glare at people and judge their vending-machine choices. Secondly, did I mention there are CAMERAS EVERYWHERE?

So if you're not in the mood, the best you can do is sit at your desk and stare out of the window, wiggling your mouse now and then so that the screensaver doesn't come on. Yaaay.

3. I suddenly understand the appeal of going out every weekend and getting incredibly intoxicated.**

 I call this Critical Drinking, because it's as close to critical thinking as I've gotten over the last few weeks, and by that third tequila it feels pretty critical. Red-wire blue-wire big red numbers COUNTING DOWN kinda critical.

While I enjoy the odd party, I never really got clubbing until now: the loud music drowns out your thoughts, the dim lighting hides your flaws, and the alcohol makes you brave in a world full of limits. It's a strange alternate universe that serves as an antidote to the quiet, sensible sameness of what's become my everyday life.

You know what else I didn't get until now? Hangovers. I had my first bona fide hangover the other day, and it was so unexpected that at first I didn't know what was going on. I woke up (at like, two in the afternoon) and thought MAN WHO MADE THE WORLD LOUDER, COME ON GUYS. NOT OKAY. It wasn't cute. Don't drink, kids. And if you do, take painkillers and a big glass of water before bed instead of falling asleep drunk like a dumbass.***

4. I actually sympathize with people who want to DO STUFF in their spare time.

I still see myself as the mossy, fuzzy rock that rolls her eyes at all those rolling stones for having so much energy. But now that I HAVE to sit around and stare at a computer for most of the day, it's sort of lost its appeal as a low-impact hobby.

I actually want to feel alive in my spare time. I'm exercising. I'm steaming veggies. I've signed up for roller derby, ffs. Me. Doing a sport. That requires a mouth guard.

So that is the handful of unexpected discoveries I've made as I slowly morph into a tax-paying citizen. And they said it'd never happen because of my forearm tattoo!




*I feel like my writing's gotten worse. FMWC. (that's fuck my writing career, y'all.)
**I haven't been around cool kids in a while so I'm not sure if the term "wasted" is still in use.
*** Somehow I don't think that clause is going to make it onto many high school sobriety pledges.

Keep Your Trenchcoat Closed

A writer's impulse to flash can be a dangerous (and occasionally illegal) thing.

Because once you're past that point of OMG OTHER PEOPLE SEEING MY WRITING IS LIKE FALLING INTO BOILING ACID FULL OF SHAME AND REGRET, well, it's rather pleasant to show your writing off. Especially when (not to name names) certain relatives and fellow amateur writers say nice things to you.

Things like:

I like this.

This is nice.

This is great.

This is excellent.

This is my favourite thing ever.

You should be worshiped as a goddess.

Of course, there are those negative (oh, excuse me, I meant constructive, helpful, and my personal favourite: just being honest) comments that send your ego screeching back into the boiling acid stage. But more often than not, I find if people don't like something they just wander off - someone who takes the time to comment is generally pleased with the thing.

And that praise, however lukewarm, tends to be a little addictive. For a sensitive (read: cripplingly insecure) soul like mine, there's something edifying about someone (often a stranger) telling you that what you're doing is worthwhile, that something you made had an effect on someone else.

And there are so many options for flashing now: between FictionPress and Jottify and Livejournal and Smashwords and blogs and facebook notes and haikus that fit into tweets. It's all about showing off, pimping, and the instant gratification of comments, likes and shares. And all the cool kids are doing it - tweeting lines from their books and even posting 'deleted novel scenes' to their blogs (which I really don't get - isn't that the literary equivalent of serving leftovers to dinner guests?)

While deep in this oversharing phase, I happened upon the first piece of advice in Dorothea Brande's Becoming A Writer: Don't whore out your amateur stuff, you idiot. It's counterproductive.

Okay, maybe I'm paraphrasing. But that's the gist, and it's been bothering me ever since.

I have the manuscript for my first novel, Sarai, complete and sitting on my laptop. I could format it tonight and have it up on Smashwords by tomorrow. And that is so bloody tempting - but I know it's not good enough yet. It's far from good enough. It's embarrassingly inadequate, actually.

But the truth is that I've posted writing - here and on my Jottify account - that I didn't like, that only marginally passed the not-embarrassingly-inadequate mark.

But I posted it anyway, because it was 'good enough for the internet.' I flashed it because I wanted a reaction, even if it was just a passing like by someone who simply hoped I would like their stuff back. But the hard truth is that unless someone is a professional writer or editor, their opinion, however glowing, will not make you into a better writer.

So I've made a resolution to keep my trenchcoat closed, and face those hard edits, ask those hard questions of myself and make my work stand up to my own (punishingly high) standards, rather than taking the easy road and flashing bits that I know aren't at their best yet.

Do you think writers these days - especially n00bs like me - suffer from chronic oversharing?  Share (or overshare) your thoughts in the comments!

Go Build A Tree

I have almost a dozen trees outside my window, the tallest standing at least ten metres high. It struck me, while I was lying on my bed and putting off opening the first draft of Sarai, that a novel is like a tree to me. 

All those thousands of leaves (words?) anchored to their branches (chapters?), which are anchored to the trunk (of plot?), which is supported by strong yet invisible roots (themes!). Who knows how deep they go – the point is they hold the tree up against the harshest storms (of criticism?)*. These trees are calming yet interesting: serene, they have nothing to prove because they're old and know they belong here. 

The novels I love and admire are like these trees: strong, graceful, whole.

And someone telling me to write a novel is basically saying: Go build a tree.

That 'someone' is of course a part of myself. The ambitious part that wants a Jag in my driveway even though I don't drive. 

Go build a tree? It seems a bizarre and unachievable task. I may have a pile of sticks and some half-rotten leaves, but any Frankenstein's monster* I construct out of those bits would look pretty bleak. I couldn't call that odd thing a novel any more than I could call a scarecrow a person. 

I never believed I could write a novel until the 29^th of November last year, when I looked back at my NaNoWriMo attempt and realised I'd written one. Maybe it wasn't just selfish ambition – it'd be nice if Sarai was a bestseller, but even nicer if the people who read it (even if it's just the four poor souls I bribe into beta-reading) would enjoy it. And if they don't? If they give me the stinkeye for wasting their time? It's dangerous for the ego, this whole writing thing. I don't know what's scarier, that the whole thing might fail – or that it might succeed and people would actually expect even more from me next time.

So here I am, with my first-draft monster made of sticks and leaves in front of me, wanting me to bring it to life. I'm rubbing the paddles together and shouting CLEAR, not knowing who I'd like to electrocute more, my novel or myself. 

But maybe if I love it enough to siphon more and more life into it, cutting away the dead bits and supporting the scrawny trunk with one of those little splints you get at the garden centre, it'll start to grow. And maybe once it's finished, a reader I've never even met would download it, fly through it in a day, throw it down and and inexplicably yell, “It's alive!”

*I promise the actual novel doesn't have so many cumbersome mixed, extended flora / zombie metaphors.