A Brief Update

I just finished editing the second draft of my novel (the one I started at the beginning of the year). I would call it a small conquest, considering that the continuous narrative is only 8,546 words long and I have about 7,000 words of disconnected scenes to sort through in the coming days. I feel like as soon as I think I know where the novel is going, I discover something else I want to add, probably because compulsively writing every day usually leads to the highly intellectual creative process of “OMG guess what I learned today, I must incorporate this into a new subplot.” I’m a little worried that by the end of this, my writing is going to have as much continuity as seasons 2-6 of Glee. But that’s something for my editor brain to worry about, isn’t it?

How my Brain Tricks my Brain into Doing the Things my Brain Actually Wants to Do

          I can proudly announce that so far, I have worked on my newest story every day in 2015. *crowd goes wild**Digs myself out from all the roses thrown on top of me* Thank you, thank you.

But how do you do it, Emma? How do you balance school, work, and writing? Are you some kind of demi-god?

Well, dear reader, I use the “Don’t Break the Chain” method, where you choose an activity and for each day you do that activity, you make an “x” on a calendar. The “x”s connect to form a chain (get it?). You skip a day, you break the chain, so don’t (break the chain that is). I have been so consumed in keeping my chain aesthetically pleasing, I’ve written more in the past two months than I had in the last half of 2014.

            But I’m a grown woman. Why the heck do I have to trick myself into being productive? If I genuinely want to be a writer and create things I’ll be proud of, why do I need these games to get me to actually put the time in?

For some reason my thought process goes exactly like this:

Creative fulfillment as an artist and a person? Meh. A tiny “x” that connects to more tiny “x”s? Hotdog, let me get my laptop!

I want that tiny “x”. I crave it.

Seriously, my brain is supposed to be the source of my logical capacities and yet it is the least logical of all my organs. Imagine if my more involuntary organs worked like my brain, if my heart one day said, “I know both you and I want me to keep beating, but you’re going to clean out your email inbox first.” I would be even less functional than I am now.

“But Emma,” one might ask, “if you want to mark the day off so bad, why don’t you just lie and make the ‘x’ without writing?” Again, my brain fails me. I’m afraid of breaking the rules, as if this sheet of paper I printed off the internet is somehow going to punish me for not holding up my end of the bargain.

But I do know that I have a sheet of paper with a string of brightly colored “x”s. And, you know, the early drafts of a novel that I’m semi-proud of. But I mostly pleased with the “x”s.

If you want to join me in this circle of desire and guilt (and I know you do), you can print out your own “Break the Chain” calendar designed by Karen Kavett.

The Types of Emails You will Get in College

      Your school email address will be the most useful as well as the most misused technology issued to you by your university. Here’s a list to sum up all the slightly ridiculous emails that really irritate me when I’m reading them on three hours of sleep:

1.    Incredibly vague alert from your professor that makes you wonder how they ever wrote a clear dissertation

I get it. At any given day, my professors are juggling three classes, two articles, and one book deal, but when I sent an email an hour before class reading, “Assignment due class tomorrow.” I can get a little stressed too. And no, the answer to these confusions are not on the syllabus.

2.    Extremely specific scholarship offer that has been sent to the entire student body.

I’m sure this information is on file and the director would only have had to spend a small portion of their day filtering through the school’s system, but maybe they just want everyone to know what kind of financial aid is offered to current students who are the youngest children of American astronauts who also have a 3.5 GPA and played golf in high school. 

3.    Message from that one kid you’ve never spoken to in your global history class who wants to create a study group for the final.

Even though we all know that if you and your classmates get together to study, we’re all going to get as pretentious and tangential as we are in class. So, come Monday, you’ll pretend you didn’t get the email and you prefer to study alone, anyway.

4.    Reminder for the next meeting of a club you signed up for at the freshman activity far back when you were still young and hopeful.

Ah youth, back when you thought you could solve the entirety of institutionalized discrimination before you got your degree. Then classes and homework and those few blessed hours of sleep came crashing down upon your dreamy head. But you’re still on some student director’s contact list and you don’t have the courage or motivation to ask to be taken off.

5.    Reminder of all the tuition bills you still need to pay.

*Logs out* *Closes laptop* *Smashes laptop* *Sets the battered remains on fire*

Okay, so I may have a Problem

Everyone is king when there’s no one left to pawn.

-Beat the Devil’s Tattoo

There are two entities I would like to blame for this problem, Spotify and the friend who introduced me to Spotify. In reality, my friend probably doesn’t even know of the problem she has enabled. But Spotify had to have known, when putting together its Southern Gothic playlist, that they were feeding some kind of habit.

This habit of mine is to listen to the Civil Wars, standing by the window, my grandma’s quilt wrapped around my shoulders, bathed in the morning light. I imagine I’m watching over my daddy’s drought-ravaged tobacco field, wondering if my beau survived the gunfight at the local bar. My trusty mutt lies at my feet, waiting for me to grab the family shotgun and wreak vigilantly justice on our remote, lawless town.

Except I’m in suburban Minnesota, have never fired a gun in my life, and own a Shih Tzu whose afraid of the vacuum cleaner. My parents are from small town Wisconsin, but even that town has a Walmart now.

Not that this isn’t my father’s fault. Instead of playing Radio Disney in the car like a normal parent of preschooler, he played old school country music for the entirety of my childhood. By the time I was eight, Folsom Prison Blues by Johnny Cash was my favorite song. It's not quite the eerie, folky feeling of Southern Gothic music, but you can see how it led me here.

You can see how this would mess with a young girl’s psyche, to the point where she watches Winters Bone and thinks “That would be kinda cool.” Or to the point where I say “y’all” around my friends, when we all know I’m about as country as 1989 era Taylor Swift.

There’s no universal message that can be drawn from this obsession, except maybe that one shouldn’t let their impressionable daughter listen to Mammas Don’t Let Your Babies Grow up to be Cowboys. That one should remind their daughter how lucky she is to watch True Detective in her perfectly lawful city? That Southern life is pretty much the same as Midwestern life except with different accents? I don’t know. Clearly I’m not distanced enough from this subject. I’m listening to Black Rebel Motorcycle Club while writing this.

Does this happen to anyone else? Is there a certain type of music that transforms your imaginative self into someone you could never be?

Which Came First: The Writer or the Narcissist?

           I consider watching Girls on HBO to be an educational, as well as spiritual, experience for me. Not only does the plot teach me how not to act as a young woman more than a little bit lost in her life (Note: Don’t pee in the street), but the main character, Hannah, teaches me how not to act as a writer. To quote the show’s unlikely voice of reason, Shoshanna, Hannah is a “F*cking narcissist. I’ve never met anyone else who thinks their own life is so f*cking fascinating.” In truth, Hannah’s relationship to her work leads to her believing she has a unique perspective on life that needs to be shared with the world.

            In reality, no one publishes a poem, novel, or blog post without the belief they have something the public needs to hear. The question is: is this belief self-confidence or narcissism? I know I’ve sat through enough cringe-inducing writing workshops, thinking, “God, is this what I sound like to other people?”

Does the process of writing, spending hours documenting and editing your own thoughts, make one a narcissist? Do only narcissists have the bravado to expose their thoughts to the world?

            Or neither?

For starters, most writers are internal processors, meaning that writing is their way of clearing out the mess in their head. In that sense, we don’t think about ourselves or analyze our emotions anymore than regular people. We just process in the more permanent way of documentation.

Writing (as well as reading) is a practice in empathy. When creating fiction, one has to imagine how another person would feel and react to a situation the writer may or may not have experienced before. When creating non-fiction, the writer has to find something in their observations that applies to more universal feelings. But yes, I am a little arrogant to think I can teach the world a lesson about the time I got my ears pierced and there was a guy in the parlor looking for genital accessories (I’ll tell that story later).

Furthermore, I resent the older generations simultaneous obsession with my generation’s exaggerated self-involvement and our low self-esteem. Don’t be a Hannah; accept criticism on your work, pay attention to perspectives other than your own. But acknowledge that you as a writer and a person have something to say. It’s the world's decision whether or not they want to listen.