5. Plotting is a good thing

I used to occupy the awkward space between being a plotter and a pantser. I’d plan my books out in my head, but I never wrote a single word down. Outlining was boring, and I didn’t really see the necessity.

But then my agent asked me for an outline for book 2 before we went on sub. I jotted one down and sent it off to her–and got it back covered in questions. Why would this character do this? Why would another character hang out with a murderer? What about all these plots left open in book 1? I hadn’t intended to leave these plot points unaddressed, of course. It just hadn’t crossed my mind. So I rewrote that outline with my agent’s comments in mind.

And then I realized something. I had fixed my plot without writing a word. Similar edits would have taken months post-drafting. But this took a day, maybe two, tops.

And so now I write synopses for every book before I write it. I get feedback, edit appropriately. Sometimes I wonder if I was reluctant to do this before because I was scared. Criticism is a scary thing–and I was protecting myself from it for months, until the first draft was all done. But I was making a whole lot more work for myself, too.

4. Novels need cohesive structure

By this point, you might be rolling your eyes at me. And I wouldn’t entirely blame you. For many writers, these points are self-evident. Of course you should write down a game plan before you write. And that game plan should include stuff like rising action, falling action, denouement. We learn this stuff in high school, right?

Well, thing is, for years and years, I was a mythical, plotless creature. I was a poet. Worse, I wrote prose poetry, eschewing even poetry’s structural dictates and focusing on the pretty little words alone. Many of my poems looked something like this:

In the apartment in the City where i was We, it starts.

We taste hands that might as well be Ours. We speak in tongues that only We can grok. In the apartment where all light through windows cast brick-red and down to dirty shag, We, watched by only mechanical-nanny i, play mirror games, raise hand to hand, close i to reflected closed i see.

In the apartment in the City where i was We, there is only this: popcorn plaster yellowed; night father crocked and groggy-high; air-thin voices of child tenement ghosts through dropceilings , tile floors. But We, We is song and dance enough for Us, onebody waltz, foxtrot and jig and tap, while drunk-i father sings and We, We giggle up in onevoice We.

I thought of these square little pieces as “vignettes.” They began in media res; tension rose abruptly halfway through until you were pushed through an inevitable end. That was as far as I ever thought about structure.

I know my way around a word, then–and fairly intuitively, too. A sentence, I can handle. A scene? Might have a few problems, but sure, I got it.

And the strange thing was that I could easily fool people into thinking that I knew how to write a book. Because my words were pretty and well-controlled. But if you stepped back and looked at my novels in terms of the big picture?

Well, there was no big picture, not really. As my friend Patrick once said, “This is eighty thousand words. But it’s not a novel.”

I actually think that a lot of gifted prose artists have the same problem. And I think that this problem is exacerbated by the schism between literary and commercial writing. Literary writers aren’t here to tell you a compellingly-paced story. They don’t use gimmicks, like three-act structure or beats or the monomyth.

But I’ve eventually come to realize that all of these “gimmicks” are really just shortcuts to understanding what a typical audience expects from a satisfying story. There’s no reason you can’t subvert these expectations–but you can only really do that once you understand this expectation and have control of your overall plot elements. To do that, you need to think of your story holistically. You need to step back and look at the big picture. You need to worry a little less about your pretty little words.

Take care of the sense, as Carroll says, and the sounds will follow.

3. Passive characters are boring

This isn’t to say that you can’t examine passivity in an interesting way. Anna Sheehan’s A Long, Long Sleep was a great example of a passive narrator used for the story’s betterment. But for years, I was writing static, inactive characters who mostly served as a camera for the novel’s events. Part of this was because I’m a fairly timid, shy person myself. But I suspect it had more to do with my micro-focus on a story’s prose rather than other elements of storytelling.

When you’re really, really concerned with describing the landscape, an active character is a danger–she might have bigger things on her mind than the peeling wallpaper and the dirty laundry that’s tumbled to the floor.

Strong characterization is something I still struggle with, but it’s come more easily as I’ve learned more about storytelling and plotting. And the truth is, I love a good, iconic character. Think about the characters from Star Wars. Even when they’re timid, like C3PO, they’re still exceedingly well-drawn. His timidity defines him and causes him to take a certain kind of action, even if it’s to run in the opposite direction. C3PO is not just standing around describing the ones and zeroes of the universe until someone shoves him into the path of the plot.

2. Urgency is bad

This isn’t a writing issue so much as it’s a career issue, but it’s a career issue that can have an incredible impact on your writing. I started querying in 2009. The day I had my first partial request, I announced it to facebook, sure that my career had finally begun.

. . . ha!

A year later, I had one more novel written. I’d sent out over a hundred queries. I didn’t understand why my career hadn’t happened yet. I new that my prose was good and that I was talented, so why was I still wallowing in the slush pile?

Those early novels were incredibly important. I needed to learn how to get myself through the writing of a book. I needed that time to begin to learn about the industry. But they were not publishable. If you told me that then, I would have cried. What do you mean?! I would have asked. They’re well written! They’re good enough! I just want my career to start!

The problem was that I was looking at my books as a vehicle for my career. I would edit and revise them only a little before I sent them out (and this was mostly just rearranging sentences), because I was in a hurry to get this writing thing started. And when I wrote, I wasn’t in it to write really good novels. Instead, I looked at what I considered the worst examples of YA. And I would only aim to be a smidge better than that. Because, after all, these people got published, right? And if I was honest with myself, I was only in it to get published.

It was while I was drafting Starglass that I realized that this attitude was poisoning my books. I knew I had something with potential on my hands. And if I did what I normally did–hardly editing, only really moving words around–I’d blow it.

Now, I do my best to focus on the book itself. A book isn’t a vehicle for a writer’s career. Nope, a writer’s skill is a vehicle for writing good books. And you need time to develop those skills. You need to learn to do your books right. You need to aim high–past good enough. You need to write the best books you can.

You need to avoid feeling like any chance is your last and only chance. It’s a long life–you’ll have a long career. You need to be patient with yourself and your writing if you’re going to write anything worth a damn.

Sure, there are exceptions–when you’re under deadline, probably best not to sit around twiddling your thumbs. And even I still fall victim to this sometimes, thinking I need to squeeze out another book, get another contract, push myself harder toward an ever-moving standard of success.

But when it can be avoided, avoid those feelings of urgency. You want to write good books, right? That can’t be rushed. Think of the books.

1. When he has a hundred and three degree fever, your husband should sleep on the couch.

Okay, that’s not a writing lesson. But it’s a damned good lesson to learn, anyway.

And long.

It still feels odd to say that. I have long hair. I have long hair! Of course, it isn’t terribly long. Some people would only consider it about medium length. The ends, which I carefully and frequently trim both to fight off split ends and because my hair grows surprisingly fast, fall an inch or two past my collarbones.

But for me, that’s absurdly long. My hair is heavy and thick (in density) and wavy and fine (in texture). When I was a little girl, I screamed when my mother combed it. So when I was eight, she and my sister conspired to convince me to cut it short. They told that I would look like Ramona Quimby (sold!). My sister did the deed, chopping it off in the backyard while we listened to the New Kids on the Block.

The ensuing years were spent often correcting people about my gender. I was a scrappy little thing, with crooked teeth and cowlicks. Even before the hair went short, I was just a little odd. My sister had long, straight blond hair, followed fashion, loved Joey McIntyre. She had beautiful penmanship. She played the clarinet.

I played the trumpet, held my pencil wrong, loved the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and didn’t care about fashion or music. I wasn’t a tomboy per se–I wasn’t particularly athletic, and I loved baby dolls as much as I loved my micro machines. But I was just a little odd. I didn’t do things the way my sister did, or the way most girls at school did. Though I hated how people were always mistaking me for a boy, I also knew the hair kind of fit. It was odd and quirky. It made sense.

The home haircuts continued for years, until I eventually took over cutting it myself. In high school, I had mohawks and chelseas and dyed it every shade imaginable. I realized I could change my appearance easily, painlessly. I often found myself buzzing my hair off when I was bored, or restless. My mother nagged me about the scraps of hair I left in the sink, the dye in the tub. And for good reason.

It wasn’t until college that I decided I would grow it out. Not because I especially liked long hair–to be honest, I had few emotional feelings toward any kind of hair, perhaps the side effect of changing it so much–but because I’d never really tried growing it out before. I wasn’t sure that I could really do it, and so for motivation, I decided I would give myself hair like Zero Girl because, well, Sam Kieth is awesome, and why not?

I almost managed. My hair got long enough to put into these little knobby things. And then I cut it all off again. And dyed it a bunch of different colors. Of course.

I think part of the problem was that I didn’t know what to do with long hair. I don’t mean in a “I just don’t know what to do with my hair!” sort of way. Having short hair for most of my childhood meant that I missed out on certain integral lessons. Like what to do with a bobby pin. And how to make a french braid. And how to straighten your hair. I’m an old pro with home hairdye kits, with hair clippers and scissors. But when it comes to making do with the hair that’s there, not so much.

And so it continued: the seemingly-endless cycle of growing my hair out, then cutting it off. I dyed and I bleached and I dyed again. It began to get longish before I went away to graduate school, but Florida was hot, man. And my hair was thick and heavy and created the perfect sauna for my scalp. I cut it off. Then I cut it more. Somehow, I ended up a graduate student with a mohawk. But hey, at least my scalp was cool!

(Wow, is kitty unhappy in that picture.)

I decided to start growing it out before my wedding. I knew it wouldn’t be long by then, but it seemed like a good time to make a decision about it. And for the most part, for once, I’ve stuck with it.

But the strange thing is, I’ve only realized lately what it means to have long hair. I have youtube to thank for that. One day I saw some picture of some fancy braids online and clicked on a link and wandered into the glorious world of hair tutorials. I learned all sorts of things that I’d been too embarrassed to ask. How to twist your own hair into a bun. How to blow dry it straight.

After I cut my hair tonight, I gave it a good wash. I combed the conditioner carefully through, then rinsed with cold water. Funny thing–I’m pretty sure I like having longish hair these days.

But I’m forced to think about my hair in a way I never did before. It’s not just a weight but a thing to be tended to and cared for. Maybe that’s a silly thing to say about hair–it feels silly to me, as a person who spent most of her life only thinking about it in terms of how she could change it.

I’m probably never going to be entirely normal when it comes to the whole hair thing. I’ll always be prone to rash bang trimmings and blotchy dye jobs. I’ll continue cutting my own hair, thank you, and mostly late at night when I’m feeling bored.

But in a way, it feels like I’ve added something to my repertoire by growing my hair long. I’ve learned about a new side of myself–a side that can be careful and deliberate and learn things the other girls have known since their braided one another’s long hair on the playground in fourth grade (I know that this happened; I watched). I wonder if, in some ways, by keeping my hair so very short, and never trying it any other way, I was denying myself something.

That’s not to say I’ll never have short hair again. Just that sometimes, it’s nice not to be so absolutist about your hair, your identity. It’s nice to allow yourself, sometimes, to (har har!) grow.

I miss you lately, only, not really. You should know that even when I’m not blogging, I’m watching–reading, thinking, consuming. Watching–lots and lots of youtube videos, which are a balm to me when I’m revising. They strike exactly that sweet spot between passivity and inspiration. Especially Ze Frank:

I’m in round 2 of revisions, which have been challenging and have stretched my brain and my story and my conception of my story (and my conception of my brain?) in new ways. When I’m away from my manuscript and from my blogging duties elsewhere and from youtube (oh, youtube!), I find myself suddenly desiring to be engaged with new projects, with my hands, with the concrete, with the real world. I do things like sew! Here’s a skirt I sewed, which I am wearing today (that is me today, in the picture, only earlier):

I’ve also started a container garden. This are my seedlings, waiting to be planted. Every time I turn around, they’re a little bigger. It’s almost terrifying. Especially the cucumbers. Those little sprouts are growing into mighty beasts.

Other recent activities include grilling, flailing around to Just Dance 3 in my living room, date nights with Mr. Husband, visits to New York City, nights spent watching entirely too much Mad Men . . .

It’s funny. I think about last year and how little time I felt I had. I was writing and I was working and sometimes I took long walks in the woods, but I don’t think I was really occupied. And when I think back, I realize it was probably depression. It’s funny how depression can do that, sap the joy out of every little corner of your life until the thought of doing anything just makes you say ugh.

I’m happier now. A lot of this is location–a better state, a better town, a house whose foundation was laid three centuries ago, a back deck and water rushing by and mountains on the horizon in the distance. But a lot of it is friends, too. Internet friends, specifically. I had some last year, but I didn’t have the complex and rich support network I have now. So you guys–you know who you are–thank you. You’ve not only helped me to feel a little less alone. You’ve helped me to find the joy, too, that was here with me, every day, all along. I needed that.

Today I’m going to teach you a word. It might be one you already know–if you read Philip K. Dick you undoubtedly do. That word is “kipple,” and I learned it back in 2005, when I read Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? for the first time. The book is much better than the movie–Blade Runner–by the way, not in the least because of the kipple. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.

This is what Dick has to say about kipple:

There’s the First Law of Kipple… ‘Kipple drives out nonkipple.’…Kipple is useless objects, like junk mail or match folders after you use the last match or gum wrappers or yesterday’s homeopape. When nobody’s around, kipple reproduces itself. For instance, if you to go bed leaving any kipple around your apartment, when you wake up there is twice as much of it. It always gets more and more.

No one can win against kipple, except temporarily and maybe in one spot.

It’s one of those words that seems to have been existed out of sheer necessity–it rings true in the same way that a lot of Yiddish does, actually. The world is more richly described for having schmutz in it, not to mention schmatta. My life has always been filled with kipple, much to my mother’s chagrin.

I always had pencils scattered around me. Books. Scraps of paper. Tissues. The refuse of daily life. Years later, I read a book on alternative schooling that suggested that this is the natural state of children. They’re too wrapped up in being and doing to think about cleaning.

I’m not sure I agree with that. Because my sister is an artist (some NSFW artistic nudes on that page, by the way)–composing large-scale drawings and paintings–and she’s always been exceedingly neat. When we were children, her bookshelves were always perfectly organized; mine would be overflowing, the Little Golden Books tumbling down onto the carpet.  Everything had a place in my sister’s room. Mine, not so much–piles on the dresser and the floor and under the bed. I would say that this was because I had a smaller room, but nothing’s really changed as we’ve gotten older. Her apartments are clean, well-organized. Mine have papers and lip gloss and shoes and socks and envelopes scattered about.

And it’s not because I’m a slob. That’s the funny thing. I do my due diligence against kipple. In fact, I learned in college that I clean more than most. I’m constantly reorganizing these piles, throwing stuff out, vacuuming, scrubbing. But there’s always more stuff. It’s an uphill battle.

In graduate school, I learned that not everyone generates kipple. I lived with a woman who didn’t really clean much–she didn’t use our vacuum once in the nine months we lived together. But she also didn’t thoughtlessly generate stuff. Maybe it’s a matter of being careful about what one brings into one’s home. Maybe it’s a matter of buying quality infrequently rather than buying cheap often. Maybe . . .

Who knows. The point is, I’m a kipple-maker. I’m resigned to it these days. It’s simply who I am. Other people, not so much. How about you?

Don’t read. Don’t read while drafting because it will screw up your voice. Don’t read in your genre because then you might inadvertently steal. Don’t read because you should be writing. Don’t read while editing because your heart will be crushed by the superiority of finished prose. Don’t read. Don’t read. Don’t . . . 

My first thought, when I read such statements, is always this: I have a choice?!

I was a reader long before I was a writer. My mother gave me her copy of Tags and Twinkle when I was in first grade and I just never stopped. Read in the bathtub. Read at the dining room table. Read under the covers with a flashlight when I should have been sleeping. Then my mother took away my flashlight and I read by the dim hallway light instead. Read while hanging off the cart at K-mart while my mother shopped. Read in the car and got car-sick. Read at the library, then carried so many library books home that my arms trembled afterwards. Read all the books.

And so, to a certain extent, I can’t help but squint at this advice. I suppose part of me always assumes that all writers have the same engagement (addiction?) to words that I do–that they really can’t choose to not read any more than they can choose to not breathe.

But my objection honestly goes a little deeper than that. I read Among Others by Jo Walton the other day. It was very much a book about being a reader. In it, fifteen-year-old Mori discusses the books she’s read. She compares them. She notices relationships between them. For example, she talks about the differences between The Dark is Rising and adult fantasy novels–how the black and white morality of children’s literature turns into the grey of literature for adults.

Perhaps it was natural, then to see Among Others as a book also engaged in a dialogue with other books even as it’s about books engaged in a dialogue with other books. I noticed similarities between this and Walton’s earlier short story, “Relentlessly Mundane.” I also couldn’t help but notice a relationship between it and Lev Grossman’s The Magicians. Both are books about what happens when magic trespasses on real life. In these novels, it seems that magic uses literature as a bridge into the real world–an access point for the main characters, so to speak. Both are about dealing with magic and the impending loss of magic as an adult.

I’m not sure–can’t say for certain–that Walton has read Grossman’s work. But her book still speaks to Grossman’s work, and a whole host of others. If you don’t read widely, it’s easy to see a book as a singular event–a monologue, maybe. But I don’t think a book is a monologue. It exists in a world of art and literature and it should be engaged with other art and literature just as surely as it’s engaged with other facets of real life.

This fear that other books will pollute our work, perverting the purity of our vision . . . I can’t help but find them baseless. For one thing, I don’t think that purity exists. Sean and I have long joked that, when asked where we got our ideas, we’d respond, “We stole them.” We don’t mean plagiarism (perish the thought!). But rather simple acknowledgement of the fact that ideas aren’t generated anew ever, really, but rather plucked out of the substance of life and literature and conversation and television and newspapers and long walks . . .

and books.

I saw John Carter recently (twice, actually! What can I say? There were good aliens in it), and what impressed me the most about it was the storytelling tropes that clearly originated with Burroughs but have become proliferate through books and movies since. The dark-haired space princess. The arena battles. The little zippy aircraft racer scene. The men in hawk-like armor. The men with burning swords. You see these things over and over again, in Flash Gordon and Star Wars and Avatar. And then I wrote a book and I put a rebellion in it, in part because I always liked the one that George Lucas created. But he didn’t create–it was there long before him. I hadn’t realized it then (wasn’t well read enough). But I do now, and the conversation created by my book will be better for acknowledgement of that–deeper, more interesting.

So I’ll keep reading, thanks–keep watching television and movies and reading papers and talking to people and immersing myself in the art of the world–because I don’t think any book was ever meant to exist in a vacuum. And even if it was, well, that’s not the kind of book I ever wanted to write. What good is talking to yourself? Not much, if you ask me.

On another note, here are some recent pictures of my cat:

And a recent picture of breakfast:

And a recent picture of me:

And in truth, I still can’t. I’m only three hours away from the place where I grew up. But this feels like a place where one could embark on an epic fantasy journey. When Jordan and I drive past farmlands, apple orchards and sheep fields, we still turn to one another and remark, “I’m so happy we found this place.”

New Jersey was great. It will always be, in many ways, home, but when you live there, I think you’re always trying to fit it into your mold–to find the things that appeal to you in the land of strip malls and regular malls and pavement (unless you are a person who loves those things. I think I’m not, but it took me 28 years to learn that). Back home, I had to search for fistfuls of trees between highways. Here, it’s the opposite. There are small tangles of highways between trees. And I am increasingly a country mouse. All I need now is a garden, a few acres of land to smooth down a path through the woods, a little house with a fireplace to call my own.

A few weeks ago, I took a break from revisions to go (finally) get my New York driver’s license. I drove to Kingston, spent 20 minutes in the most pleasant DMV I’ve ever visited, where the employees made jokes and were kind. After, I went to a little cafe across the street, had a really delicious sandwich, listened to the girl behind the counter make small talk with some old ladies, read the newspaper, felt really, truly at peace. In the places where I lived before, I felt like I was a scientist, always searching for the good. It’s not that those places were bad–it’s that they weren’t for me. Here, the good feels self-evident. I feel immersed in it. And there’s been nothing yet here to challenge that. New Jersey might have been home, but I’m Home now, capital H. And I’m so, so very glad to be here.

(On the way home from Kingston, I turned off the main highway, drove past neatly-tilled fields and through wild woods where houses sat nestled amid rock. And suddenly the sky opened up and I was on the edge of the Hudson River, looking out to the other side, and to the lighthouse that sat in the middle on an island. This is what I mean–this is where I live. It still hasn’t settled in. In a way, I hope it never does.)

In other news, Mad Men premieres tonight, and I guess you could say I’m excited. I had a dream this morning that it returned as a cartoon full of product placements. Betty and Don were still married. A nightmare, I guess. I suppose I’m a little anxious. I hope it will still be awesome.

Second of all, I know I’ve been quiet lately. That’s because I’ve been doing that mysterious writer thing called revising. A few weeks ago, right after I got my big ol’ edit letter (alongside a marked-up manuscript which bore a veritable and literal rainbow of sticky notes), a friend asked me if I was planning to blog the editing process. But he wondered if doing so might be problematic. After all, you don’t want to reveal conflicts between author and editor.

Funny thing, though. It’s not that I haven’t been blogging because I disagree with my editor. Quite the opposite, actually–and more on that in a moment. I actually haven’t blogged because I’ve been really busy. Working till three or four in the morning busy. Scratching my head and moving stuff around in scrivener and pushing myself harder than I’ve ever been pushed before busy.

In my off-time (that is, when I’m in the bath), I’ve been reading a biography of JD Salinger. The contrast between ol’ Jerry’s editing process and my own is striking. He finished The Catcher in the Rye and then immediately boxed it up to his agent. He got annoyed when an editor asked him if Holden was “crazy.” He freaked out  over a lot of stuff, it seems. Didn’t want his editor messing with his vision. And while it’s difficult to argue with his end result–The Catcher in the Rye is pretty perfect in both conception and execution, no?–I can’t help but feel like my own moments worrying about my own “vision” and whether someone (an agent, an editor, a critique partner) might ruin it were mostly moments wasted.

Don’t get me wrong: I’m not saying a writer should accept every editorial change unthinkingly. I have strong instincts about my work and what does and doesn’t fly. In our short business relationship, my editor has already reminded me that I should feel free to shoot down her ideas. It’s a nice reminder that my book is ultimately my book.

But I do think that even inapplicable feedback is helpful feedback. Even if a suggestion or criticism doesn’t jive with my vision of my work, it’s helpful to know how a reader who is very different from me approaches that work. Reader response is always valid, and interesting. The ability to synthesize a whole bunch of reader feedback into glittering generalities about what readers want has been key to my growth as a writer.

But I also count myself lucky to be surrounded by people–friends and critique partners, my lovely agent, my lovely editor–who are a whole lot smarter than I am. About the business. About books. I trust their instincts, and their faith in the raw material of my novel. I know that they want Starglass to be the best book it can possibly be.

Because look: Starglass has changed a lot since I first started drafting it. Back in 2010, it was a fairly quiet story about a girl whose mom had died called Daughter of Earth. I needed more conflict, so I though, “Okay, I’ll throw in a rebellion. Or something.” While Terra will always be, at her core, a girl whose mom had died, that secondary conflict–that rebellion–has grown in importance mightily. Minor characters have been fleshed out to become whole people. The world–once a stock SF setting–has been enriched. There are now themes and a hearty dose of epicness.

I never imagined myself writing an epic novel. The writer I was in 2010 probably could not have executed the task. But because I was open to suggestions from people who are smarter than I am, this book has grown so, so far past its original conception. And it’s much better than it once was. A better book.

And fundamentally different. If you’re a writer, you might know the feeling of having an entire universe in your head. Your mind contains characters, stories, which sometimes feel like they’re floating around independent of you and your body and your life. The first version of Starglass was one of these stories. Subsequent revisions–and there have been many–weren’t so much a readjustment of the original vision but a fresh new version. It’s like a “many worlds” theory of books. Revision has not just been a refinement of that original but rather a guided tour through many possibilities. The end result, I hope, will be to find the ideal version–not only the best of all possible worlds, but the best of all possible books.

1. Smiley snowy Phoebe

My hair looks great here! It looks professional! I look smiley! But my shoulders look kinda wide, maybe? And maybe it’s slightly stiff? Hmm!

2. Dreamy snowy Phoebe

Look, I’m rolling my eyes at my husband! You can see my awesome stripey dress here. My hair looks great! But I’m not, you know, looking at the camera.

3. Smiley relaxed Phoebe

The second day’s pictures were much more relaxed. But the light was not so fabulous, and neither was my hair. Still, I look pretty cute here.

Just for fun, here are some outtakes!

Curse you cursed sunlight.

This is me, regarding you skeptically.

Hee!

A rare shot of the photographer in inaction.

I just want to show you my awesome outfit.

Spock eyebrow.

. . . SOON!

Hmm. See, I kind of wonder if this photo should have been A CONTENDA. But I mean, I have no idea. You guys, this is hard! HELP!

I’ve been sick the past few days, since returning from vacation. I’ve spent a lot of time in bed watching anime, reading metafilter, and viewing every single episode of the Nostalgia Chick that I could find. Because I will have to entrench myself in work soon (edits!), I wanted to pop in and say hello.

Hello!

The ocean was beautiful, as expected. Because whatever illness I had was germinating, part of me wanted to just enfold myself in the warmth of the sun and not think about the winter that waited for me back home. I read many books (check out my goodreads, as usual, for bookish updates), saw sights, took pictures of birds and alligators.

We made a pitstop in Gainesville, just long enough to get pizza and bumperstickers from Satchel’s before hopping on the road again. It made my heart hurt a little to drive through downtown, passing my old route home from the library but to know that the little apartment there on the second floor of a pink house was no longer mine. I didn’t expect that–it was a feeling I usually only associate with driving by my childhood home in New Jersey. But I suppose that Gainesville, Florida was really the last place I let myself get settled, put down roots.

Sometimes I feel torn in two directions. I’m fundamentally a homebody. I love my bed, my cat, my routine. But I’ve also seen so little of the world. A few islands and one foreign country. Most (but not all) of the East Coast. Vegas. Indiana. There’s so much I need to see and do. I need to give myself permission, I think, to make that a priority. I need to push myself out of my comfort zone, see new things, meet new people.

But first, I suppose, I should push myself out of bed and take a friggin’ shower.

Snow slippers!

Basil flowers!

Gluten-free cookie of my heart!

My head!

That dude!

hmmmmph!

I hope your Valentine’s Day was as good as ours, even if it wasn’t quite so full of cookies, chocolate-covered strawberries, or Indian food!

I’ll be out of town for the next week on a well-deserved vacation with some lovely people. Expect lots of pictures! Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do. Write when you find work! (etc. etc.)