Getting Back Into the Swing of Things

Back at school! Ahhhh, I missed this campus so much. I'm at Editor Training all week, working on putting out the first issues of the paper for the semester, moving in, seeing people, buying books, and trying to learn how to cook so I don't starve during the year. Therefore, I won't be blogging for probably two weeks until I stop to breathe. Also, you know, the novel. That's gotta take precedence before blogging.

But. Hopefully, I will be getting a copy of CINDERS by our own lovely Michelle Davidson Argyle from the blogosphere and I'll put up a review of that. To read more about CINDERS, click on the link to the right - The Innocent Flower. 

I'll probably still be reading your blogs. Have to find some way to procrastinate, right?

Lots of love,

Me.

Week of Celebration/Countdown/Mindless Panic

Several things on the agenda for this week.

1) WRITEONCON IS ON TUESDAY, YOU DON'T NEED AN EMAIL REMINDER, YOU HAVE ME. I'm so excited to absorb all of the wisdom that will come out of this event. I will be a happy, happy sponge. Preemptively thanking all of the organizers. This is the first "writing conference" I've attended. Reason #128290 why the Internet is made of awesome. I'm pumped beyond all reason to be surrounded by freaks like me. This is like the atmosphere of NaNoWriMo, except with more food and less angst.

2) 10k on the new manuscript, guise. And a good 10k. The kind that will cause me less distress when editing comes around. The characters are taking the story in different directions than I originally anticipated, and I am cautiously following their lead.

3) Less than a week before I move back to school. This brings me great joy but also great misery. Great joy because I get to return to the wild where I have no curfew and nobody can tell me what is an acceptable use of my Friday night. Plus I miss everybody like crazy. Sunday can't come fast enough, I swear. Great misery too because I have thus far done no packing or preparation whatsoever. And I'm moving into an apartment this time, which means I have fewer RAs and authority figures making sure I am fed and sober. More closet space, but this means I have more stuff to lug over there. Excluding death by sharks and paper shredders, moving in is about as horrible as it gets.

4) Along those same lines, I am in a state of MINDLESS PANIC right now, because next week is Editor Training Week for the newspaper, where we collectively decide to not crash and burn for the year and start putting out the first issues. And talk about goals. Stuff like that. I am trying to put together the schedule for my tiny staff (after the quitters and the graduates and the people who REALLY NEED TO CHECK THEIR EMAIL, yes, open letter to my copy editors: get on that), and at the moment, it looks like my future is going to involve work, work, and more work. Which means less writing and non-work friends. It is right about this time when I start to wonder who decided to spike my lemonade last year when I applied for copy chief, because I must've been as high as a kite on PCP when I took the job. Who possibly believes I can live up to the demands of this gig? NOT ME. /anxious

5) Being the lameass that I am, I finally read THE SKY IS EVERYWHERE by Jandy Nelson (took me long enough after the endless pimping on the blogosphere) and I'm officially joining the list of people whose brains have been broken by this masterpiece. Jandy, your writing completes my life, dear. Please never stop. Love, a poor writer who grovels at your feet.

6) In other news, the LSAT is kicking my sorry ass up and down Logic Lane and trouncing me in the game of intelligence. I can hear it laughing at me in my head, and it sounds like a mix between Lord Voldemort and Elmo. Carry on, everybody.

Pixar, I Want Your Babies

(This has to do with writing at some point, I promise, and not just my ridiculous fangirl crush on Pixar.)

So I'm almost positive I have mentioned before that even though I'm planning on a career in law, I have several alternate futures where I pursue other careers that I would never realistically be able to do. One, Food Network chef. Two, ballerina. Three, journalist. I have a lot of interests. I appreciate that about myself, because I'm usually not bored with anything I do.

Number four is animator. Yes, I have always thought it would be really cool to be an animator. Most people probably would find this a baffling thing to find interesting. I mean, I'm sure the childhood dream of normal people is to be an actor/actress. Something glamorous. Being an animator is the opposite of glamorous. You work long hours, you don't get to spend a whole lot of time with your family, you stare at a computer screen for hours, you probably routinely cry into coffee-stained napkins at 3 in the morning. Caffeine pills are no doubt a sizable part of your food pyramid. Worst of all, you don't go to red carpet events and nobody will ever know your name.

I can probably count on one hand how many live-action films I've watched and felt a sense of real artistic wonder from. On the other hand, I walk out of most animated films wondering what the hell I'm doing with my life. I love watching the way the light is animated to fall in skin, the textures from hard plastic to soft fur looking as real as anything, and the way an animated character's face can express the range of feeling as well as - sometimes even better than - a real person. The people at animation studios are creating these stunning works of raw, emotional art, and what am I doing to make life a more beautiful thing?

I've always found animation to be the most similar thing I can think of to writing. At some level, you're creating a story and watching it unfold before your eyes. And no, live-action films don't come close, in my opinion. Actors help make live-action films. Animated films spring onto the screen from brains and hands, pretty much out of nothing. And people work on them for years! They probably fantasize about seeing it on screen for the first time the same way writers fantasize about seeing their freshly bound new books for the first time with the shiny covers.

 

There are a variety of reasons why I haven't seriously pursued the idea of being an animator, the greatest being that the amount of artistic talent I have fits comfortably into a shot glass, but that doesn't mean I can't call it my dream job. If I did have talent and drive, I would totally give my right arm (well, maybe not, that might be useful in animating, so a few toes might be better) to attend Cal Arts and work at Pixar. Also, this article about John Lasseter, which is long, but seriously worth the read because it tells a great lesson about perserverence. He went from getting fired at Disney to creating Pixar to being appointed the head of Disney's animation department. You go, John Lasseter! I will live my animation dreams vicariously through you.

Or maybe I can be your lawyer one day, whatever can get me creepily closer to you.

Any other careers you think are similar to being an author?

I Get An F- For Organization

A lot of my novel is set in an urban backdrop (by a lot, I really mean all; Washington D.C. and the fantasy city) and this is obviously a manifestation of my desire to move out of Central Illinois to somewhere where there are more interesting things to do than a) go to Steak and Shake or b) go to Borders. I do a poor job of hiding my projection issues in my writing. 

Anyway, one of the characters has a real city-fatigue problem, and I think I actually understood it for the first time this weekend. My friends and I were driving to the drive-in theater which is 45ish minutes away from where I live, and it was nearing sunset. And I realized that there is really nothing more beautiful than seeing endless rolling cornfields in late summer.* It's all golden and green and truly, a very pretty sight. I'm sure much nicer than skyscrapers. It does actually make me feel a little homesick when I'm somewhere that isn't flat (like San Francisco). D'awww, I am really a Midwestern girl at heart after all. 

We were, by the way, going to see Despicable Me, which made me melt like butter in a microwave and Gru and the girls are now my official prototype for every functional father-daughter relationship in fiction. Okay? Okay. 

The other thing is I was driving to Borders the other day (this is like every day of my life here; I've recently started branching out to Barnes & Noble too like the wild child I am) and next to me, I saw a couple riding on a motorcycle. That is not weird in itself. What was weird was the woman sitting behind the man was reading a book while they were flying down the street at 50 mph. Reading on the back of a motorcycle? She's officially awesome. So this made me think about where the most unconventional place is that I've read a book. I'm probably going to have to go with that time I was reading the sixth HP book when Snape kills Dumbledore and my mom, being the tactful person she is, interrupted me near the end. I immediately burst into tears, yelled at her, "Mom, I CAN'T TALK TO YOU RIGHT NOW, Dumbledore's DEAD, and my life is ruined!" (or some variation thereof), ran out of the house and found refuge in my neighbor's gooseberry bushes. I finished HP6, sobbing into gooseberries.**

Top my story, please. I bet you can't.

*Keep in mind that my definition of "rolling" is not your definition of "rolling" unless you also live in Central Illinois. Rolling is primarily flat with maybe a few anthills scattered about. 

**Dumbledore's death was really traumatizing, okay. Admit it. You cried. If you didn't, maybe you should go get yourself checked out to make sure you're really human.