Planning a Vacation During a Pandemic

I feel like there should be sitcoms devoted to the comical ways life has changed since this pandemic. Like the fact that I received this in the mail yesterday:

It's from a Jehovah Witness who, due to social distancing, was unable to come to my door. Now their only path to converting all of us heathens is to hand write really long letters. I was so tickled by this little piece of mail that I almost didn't have the heart to throw it away. (Almost. I ended up throwing it in the fireplace. I do appreciate this lovely woman's effort, though).

But nothing beats trying to plan a vacation during a pandemic. Last year, my extended family (Mom, Dad, sister, brother in-law, nieces, etc.) and I booked a summer cruise to Alaska for my grandpa's 90th birthday, which falls on July 13, 2020. At the end of May, our cruise was cancelled. We were disappointed, but we moved on. We found a resort on the island of Kauai that was still welcoming tourists. We booked the resort and all our flights. In some ways, the new vacation sounded more fun than the original.

Then in June, Hawaii brought down the hammer. They decided that anyone flying into their islands would be required to be quarantined for fourteen days. Not a possibility for us, considering we were staying for only a week.

After that, Clint found an amazing deal for an all-inclusive resort in Jamaica. Jamaica has no travel restrictions or quarantine requirements--they're pretty much welcoming tourists with open arms. Clint and I went ahead and booked it. My mom and my niece were super excited, viewing this vacation as even better than the first two! The one caveat was my sister would now need to get passports for her kids super fast since we were only a month out from our vacation. No big deal; the passport agency is willing to expedite passports for an extra fee. 

Oh wait. No they're not. Not during a pandemic. Apparently a worldwide virus required them to downsize their staff and they no longer have enough employees to expedite passports. 

So we waved goodbye to our Jamaican dream. After that, the conversations regarding "Where should we go for vacation" reached ludicrous levels, with a lot of manic-type crying and kicking and screaming (along with some hair pulling) over the subject. Some ideas originally open for discussion due to the public reopening were quickly disregarded due to these same areas going down into lockdown again, or due to safety concerns with the recent looting/rioting (because, you know, a pandemic isn't enough. Let's throw social upheaval into the mix as well).

So what's the verdict? What did we decide to replace our beautiful Alaskan/Hawaiian/Jamaican trip with? Are you ready to be awed by the glamor of my upcoming vacation?

We're RV camping at a KOA about 2 hours from my house.

*sighs*

Yep. Most of life's 'new normals' are inherently unfunny, but there is some humor in all of this if you look hard enough. Like, really hard. Really really har--yeah, okay. I hate this sh*% too.

My Bipolar Series

A series takes a long time to write, and it's interesting to see how much of your original plans totally change (or downright unravel) through the process. Take Chasing Echoes for example. Originally I had planned for it to be a standalone book. I wanted to read a novel about a teenaged girl who was trapped in a time loop with a guy she didn't like. That concept seemed ironic--and funny--to me. But sadly it didn't exist anywhere. So I decided to write the book myself. Again, as a standalone. Yet as I was outlining it, I realized I needed to provide a reason for my MC and 'some guy' to be stuck in a time loop. The brainstorm went something like this:

Okay, how about my MC has a supernatural dad who--for whatever reason--curses the guy into a time loop? And somehow said-guy drags her into the loop too? YES. This gives her even more reason to hate him. But...why is her dad supernatural? Who or what is he that he can manipulate time? Hmmm. How about we say he's Father Time? Awesome. Done. But wait a sec...if he's Father Time, shouldn't she, as his daughter, be something too? Shouldn't she have powers? Ughhh. Fine. She has three sisters, and each of them is the human embodiment of a season, with coordinating powers. Awesome! Great! This is SO original! But--oh crap--how am I going to incorporate all of this info into ONE book? And why would one "season" get a story but not the other three? *bangs head against wall* FINE. I'll just write one book for each sister...

And that's how Chasing Echoes went from a standalone to a four-part series.

After publishing Chasing Echoes, I did a detailed outline for the second book (Black Lilies). But despite my totally beautiful outline, I went into panic mode and decided I wasn't going to write it. Here's a post I wrote about it: Why I'm Not Writing My Sequel, in March 2016.

And that's how Chasing Echoes went from a four-part series back to a standalone. 

At this point I started working on a totally unrelated dystopian manuscript that I simply adore, The Apathetics. I reached the 12% mark with that manuscript, when for reasons unknown, I got a weird itch to write the first chapter of Black Lilies. Then the second. Then the third. And pretty soon, I was writing the whole dang novel. My writer's block was gone, and I felt excitement for the series again! 

And that's how Chasing Echoes went from a standalone--again--to a four-part series--again.

As I was writing Black Lilies, I started outlining the third book, Spring of Crows, which was going to be Krystal Aevos' (Winter's) book, and I came across two problems. Well, three, really. 

1. An editor friend of mine told me that, due to her age, giving Krystal Aevos her own book switches my genre from YA to MG --an awkward thing to do mid-series. After researching it, I discovered he was correct; young-adult readers don't want to read about a 14-year-old.
2. After Black Lilies was drafted, I realized I only had enough Chasing Echoes material for about another book-and-a-half, not enough for two full books.
3. The thought of writing two more books was making me want to curl up in the fetal position and die.

That second point was quite the conundrum. With only 1.5 book worth of material (if even that), I was faced with forcing prose without enough of a storyline. Aka: Sagging Middle Syndrome. I decided taking away that fourth book would solve all of my problems...including problem #3, which was the stupidest one, but the loudest. Yes, I'd have to tighten my prose, but maybe that would be a good thing. It could lend itself to more intensity for the final novel.

And that's how Chasing Echoes went from a four-part series to a trilogy.
(And also how it was diagnosed with bipolar disorder.)

This decision doesn't come without a little residual sadness. The Aevos sisters are so...real for me, and they each deserve their own book. As a compromise to point #1 (Krystal being too young to be the MC of a YA novel), I decided to split the difference. Book 3 is told through first-person narration from Phee's point of view, but it alternates with Krystal's point of view--told in third-person narration. This gives Krystal a voice, but allows Phee to be the official MC.

This was the best writing decision I have ever made. Knowing that I am now working on the last book in my series feels amazing. Writing Black Lilies was one big homework assignment; writing Spring of Crows is a joy. It's amazing how much your perspective changes when you can see the light at the end of the tunnel. I'm so excited at the prospect of having one major work complete because honestly, I don't feel like an author of two books. I feel like an author of one incomplete series. There's no satisfaction in that. But now I'm sprinting to the finish line (in my slow, sluggish way) and am that much closer to having the freedom to work on other projects. Almost-freedom tastes pretty dang sweet.

The Future

It's one of those rare moments where no one's home except for me, so of course I'm sitting here lavishing in some gourmet cheese and red wine. I love alone time to a degree that's probably unnatural, though I'm sure I'll feel differently someday when I'm an empty nester and these kinds of moments happen more often.

So I'm sitting here, enjoying my wine, and I decide I want a little music. I tell our Google Assistant thingy "Hey Google, play some music." "Okay, playing music from your Spotify," she responds, and awesome music starts piping from my living room speakers. I say, "lower the volume by twenty percent." "Okay," she says, and lowers the volume. I realize it's a bit too low, so I say "Increase the volume by ten percent." "Okay," she says, and increases the volume. Now it's perfect.

And while all this is accomplished casually without any fanfare, it hits me. I'm living in the future. I can barely comprehend it. The fact that I can turn my music on and adjust the volume without so much as lifting a remote has me feeling awed (isn't this the stuff we used to see on sci-fi shows as kids?), yet simultaneously underwhelmed. It's all happened so fast, yet I feel like the proverbial frog boiling, where technology has crept upon me with such rapid stealth that I've barely noticed. My sister wrote a great post on this concept years ago: The Last Time I Loved Technology.



Not only do I feel a combination of awe and ambivalence, I also feel a mixture of giddiness and trepidation. Giddiness because--how lucky am I to get to live in this amazing century where the world's information is more than doubling every twelve months? Trepidation because (and maybe this is the writer in me)--I see the dystopian nature of it all. Language devolving to the digital version of cavemen drawings, personal connections forsaken in lieu of relationships over screens, and so on. I won't get on that soapbox because it'd take me at least 50K words to step back down, but this oldie from 1969, in all its ridiculous insanity, sums it up nicely: In the Year 2525. Some of these lyrics might take visions of the future to preposterous levels, but you have to admit--this song has some sharp and interesting insights given that it came out well before the internet and cell phones.

So yeah, the curious and inspired human in me feels blessed to live in this era. But sometimes, something else in me waits for the other shoe to drop.

~~~

*Update: Since I drafted this post, Clint and Elijah came home about two hours earlier than I expected, and poor Clint is sicker than a dog and puked down the side of our Pathfinder. See why I bask in Me Time when I have it? :P

I Blew It

My New Year's resolution was to write one blog post a week. Not only did I miss that mark, but I didn't manage a single post for the entire month of February.

So now the question is: Do I get back on track with my resolution and try to write that one post a week? Or do I succumb to the fact that I'm just not going to do it?

Black Lilies is currently at 118%. It's turned into one bad dream where I'm running and running but not getting any closer to my destination. I stopped updating my word meter because, what's the point? I'm doing an author's booth for Jamboree Days in July, and months ago I assumed I'd have Black Lilies at the event too, instead of Chasing Echoes alone--my one hit wonder. But now I'm having to face the fact that Black Lilies might not be ready in time. Even if I finished the book tomorrow (which I won't), the process of editing, revisions, beta reading, publishing...that's all going to take months. 

I'm being house-blocked at every turn. The time I should be spending on writing has been devoted to home improvements. Right now I'm painting all the ugly brown wainscoting in my house white, and it's turned out to be the most grueling project ever. Why can't I be one of those writers who's perfectly content in a whatever-house? Why do I have to want everything pretty? Like, I'm sure Hemingway was surrounded by total disarray and filth, yet continued to happily tap away at his typewriter.

Two Blog Syndrome

I'm down to one blog! Okay, this means nothing to you.

Quick background: When I have one blog, I do pretty well with keeping up with it. But for reasons unbeknownst to me, I always try to add in a second one. Examples include "It Makes a Sound" (my blog geared specifically for poems and short stories), Middle School Dribbles (my teaching blog), "Glazey" (my art blog)...you get the point. The problem is when I add in that second blog, I fail miserably at both.

In 2014 I made this mistake for the...fourth time? Fifth? If insanity truly is repeating the same mistake over and over and expecting different results, then yeah, I'm insane. So toward the end of 2014, I published Chasing Echoes, and I thought it would be professional for my website (jodiperkins.com) to feature a blog...a forum to post writing and/or marketing updates. I decided Ocean in a Cup would be my personal blog, and jodiperkins.com would focus on my writing. At the time I wanted to keep my personal life separate from my writing life.

Well that was stupid. It turns out my personal self and my writerly self are the same person. Separating those two is like trying to separate conjoined twins. Sometimes it works, but it ain't pretty. It resulted in me giving up on both blogs. 

So tonight, I finally buckled down and transferred my posts from jodiperkins.com to here (which technically isn't possible through my website host, so I did some ninja tricks to make this happen). After accounting for similar or duplicate posts, there were only nine entries left, which are now located at this label. They are also in chronological order with Ocean's original posts, as if they've always been here. Now when readers go to my author's website and click on "Blog", it diverts them here. It's a little weird since this blog features posts from nine years ago, way before I was even a writer...like, do I really want Chasing Echoes fans to know that my hubby and I had a shaving cream war in the bath tub or that one time I dreamed about a giant copper toilet? But I've decided it's worth the weirdness, because I feel a million times lighter already! 

The next time I try to take on another blog, someone please knock some sense into me.

Freshly Mowed Grass Diet

Trying to support my hubby who--for health reasons--must drastically cut back his meat intake, I watched a few clips from a documentary last week called Forks over Knives. Even though I saw only a smidgen of the film, I decided I can never eat meat again.

Then I watched a documentary called What the Health. Afterwards I determined I can never eat eggs or dairy again.

Then I watched a documentary called That Sugar Film, and determined that I can never eat refined sugars again.

So this leaves...grass. I am now on the Freshly Mowed Grass Diet. Maybe I can throw some wood chips in there too when I need some extra bulk.

When it comes to all of the existing research out there regarding food, I can't possibly listen to it all. I'll either A) Starve, or B) Eat what I want but feel like I'm slowly killing myself. So I have to determine which pieces of information regarding food speak to me the most. And for me, it's the inhumane treatment and unethical processing of animals. It's like something from a dystopian horror flick. I won't get on that soap box right now, I'll just sum up by saying I can't get myself to support the American meat industry anymore.

So I've decided to give up meat. RIP, extra crispy KFC. Goodbye, barbecue ribs on the 4th of July. *cries*. For health reasons I'm also drastically cutting down on dairy too.

So I guess I'm vegetarian with a sprinkle of vegan?

Ugh. Just...no.

Anyway, other than one craving for pepperoni that hit me last Friday night and massive dairy withdrawals, it's going well so far! I haven't cheated even once. *knocks on wood*. Clint's embracing all of this too and preparing a lot of our meals, which makes it easier to stick with.

I'm sharing this decision here because it helps keep me grounded, but otherwise I plan to keep it on the down-low as much as possible. Mainly because I've been perpetually annoyed by vegetarians and vegans in the past who are really 'loud' about their lifestyle choice and constantly expect special accommodations made for them. There's no way I will do that. I've already been out to eat with family several times and it was easy to find meat-free options on the menu without creating a hoopla over it. 

But my other motive for being quiet about the whole thing is I come from an extended family of hearty meat-eaters that really have no use for vegetarians, so there's sort of a stigma attached to that word. Shoot, I myself own a hunting dog (well technically George is Clint's dog, but you get my point). I'm not the kind of person you would associate with vegetarianism. Eventually the people in my world will find out--it's not my intention to keep it a secret--I simply have no desire to advertise it.

Okay, I'm off to make some steamed veggies and roasted sadness for dinner.

Tumbleweed Days

So I ran a Chasing Echoes booth at our local Hesperia Tumbleweed Days this weekend! (I'm doing a great job of keeping my locations anonymous). This is my...third event now? My entire family hung out with me all day, helping me with my booth and giving me emotional support. Shannon was amazing. I think she single-handedly sold 80% of my books. My mom was pretty awesome too, pulling people in to watch the trailer. How am I this blessed? Anyway, here are a few pictures:

(This guy makes me feel tiny)

It was a great day (though by the end of it I was wiped out), and Tumbleweed Lakes is such a wonderful place to run a booth. There are so many trees that even at 95 degrees it never felt too hot. At least, not the kind of hot where you're seeing mirages out in the desert and stuff. Unlike my damn fever, where I was hallucinating that Voldemort from Harry Potter was trying to eat me in my sleep.

Okay, I need to let that whole fever thing go. But it was brutal, guys. B-R-U-T-A-L.

5 Things I Shouldn't Have to Learn but Did Anyway

I found this post (or what looked like the start of a post) in my drafts, and since I'm desperate to squeeze in an entry before the next WIP Report (I swear my blog is hanging on that one last flimsy thread for its very survival), I'm going to copy/paste it below:

Five Things I Learned in Teaching this Week

1. If you period-sub for a moderate-to-severe special ed. class, be prepared to have your hair petted for 47 minutes by kids who regard you like you're an exotic unicorn.
2. If a student says "I think I'm going to die" after running the monster mile in P.E., responding with "We have a lot to cover today...can you hold off dying until you get to Mr. C's class?" is probably not the most compassionate response.
3. ALWAYS expect your iPad to be on the wrong Pandora playlist. If you think you're getting ready to play soft, tranquil mood music during Silent Sustained Reading, fully expect Wiggle by Snoop Dog to blast instead.
4. Telling your writing enrichment class about your idea for a character who is a sadistic empath might leave them frozen, wide-eyed, and a little terrified of you.
5. If a student asks "Mrs. P., what is the definition of the word arousal?" do not attempt to answer. You will fail miserably. Let Webster handle that discussion.

~ ~ ~

I'm sure this post was going somewhere, but since it was from about six months ago, that's all I've got.

Sharp Edges and All

I've had this image sitting in my inbox for about a year. Other items get deleted or shuffled into various folders, but somehow I can't get myself to delete this one. Maybe it's because I love this little guy beyond words. I see this picture and I want to laugh and cry at the same time. Because he couldn't find what he was looking for. Yet that didn't stop him.

It's not ideal. It's not what I wanted. But it's home, and I'm going to make it work. Sharp edges and all.

That's what I imagine him thinking. It reminds me of one of my all-time favorite lines of poetry, shared to me many years ago by a dear friend:

I never saw a wild thing sorry for itself. A small bird will drop frozen dead from a bough without ever having felt sorry for itself.

The hermit crab doesn't feel sorry for himself as he searches for his perfect home and comes up empty-handed (or empty-pinchered?). He has no concept of self-pity. He simply trucks forward and stuffs himself into the closest approximation of "home" he can find, then lives out his little life as if he has lost nothing.

Someday when I grow up, I want to be as resilient and gutsy and strong as him. Forget my other New Year's Resolutions. This is the one that matters:

I vow to be a hermit crab stuffed in a broken piece of bottle. 

On an unrelated note, this song came on Pandora in my classroom the other day.

I've heard it before, but this time it sort of paralyzed me. I get to school early--about an hour before school starts--and this is going to sound weird (and probably inappropriate), but there's a certain feeling of intimacy I get when I'm in my classroom alone. Maybe it's just because the room is so crowded and bustling and overwhelming throughout the day, so to sit there in the still hours of the morning and hear the hum of the heater and the faint rustling of the building...it just feels so tranquil, that calm before the storm. I keep my doors locked, and I listen to music while I prepare for the day. If it's a fast song I'll dance like no one's watching ('cause hey, no one is). But if it's a song like this one, I freeze, and I end up leaning back against a desk or staring at the ceiling, too moved to move.

I'm such an emotional sap, damn it.

*searches for glass-bottle-shell*

Pet Names

I want to do a blog post. Really, I do. But I am so, so busy.

I was talking to an author during lunch today who subs at our school from time to time. At one point, we had the following conversation: 

Her: "So let me get this straight. You're a full time teacher here?"

Me: "Yes."

Her: "And you have two kids?"

Me: "Yes."

Her: (Long pause) "When the heck do you have time to write?"

Me: Well I'm not really a 'good' mom, per say...

At this point my fellow coworker Brad shouts across the lunch room, "Oh, come on! Every time I see your kids out on the street holding up their 'Will work for food' signs, I'm impressed by their work ethic."

Thanks for that, Brad. 

In other kid-related news, I realized that I call everyone in my household "baby." Trin will hand me my thermos of iced-coffee and I'll say "Thanks baby." Clint will come home from work and I'm all "Hey baby." And so on. The problem is when you call everyone baby, they all respond. No one is sure which "baby" is your target audience. So I told the kids tonight, "I need new pet names for you guys. What do you want me to call you?"

"Sexy Taco," Trinity blurts out. Without even batting an eye.

And this is why you don't let your kids choose their own nicknames.

The publishing mayhem is just about over, and I almost have what sort of resembles a life again! YES. I'm sighing with relief so hard that I'm getting lightheaded.

One Sheep, Two Sheep, Cow, Turtle...

I need to post something. Anything.

What to say, what to say...

So my new iPhone has a ton of emojis. I call them emoticons, but my students tell me that this term is so last year, and that they are now called emojis. I looked it up, and it turns out that emoticons are a representation of facial expressions using characters from your keyboard, such as this: ;-). Whereas emojis are a small digital image or icon used to express an idea or emotion--in other words, a tiny graphic. So the two aren't actually synonyms after all. Maybe I'm the only person in the world who didn't know this? Anyway, I have a ton of these on my phone, and it turns out that me and emojis are NOT a good mix. Like, I have this compulsion to use them ALL. From the simple happy face to the Easter Island Head (because, you know, the Easter Island Head has a ton of practical uses within a texting conversation). It's just that there are so many, and they are right there, one keystroke away, begging for me to use them. 

Take these threads, for example (gray boxes = my sis; green/blue boxes = me):

This last one doesn't have anything to do with emojis. I just wanted to point out that my twin sister with a doctorate makes up words like "Humpton."

I haven't slept in the last two days. Well, I've slept, just not a lot. The first night was simply because a demon possessed Beans--our pomeranian--and he decided to sit in the middle of the living room at 2 a.m and bark at nothing for an hour straight. It was odd because the dog almost never barks. He doesn't know how to jump, either, which makes him this broken, ground-dwelling beast, rather than the lap dog he's supposed to be.  Anyway, by the time Beans settled down, I was wired, and it took me until 5:00 a.m. before I could go back to sleep.

Last night was quiet, but I just couldn't find the off-switch on my brain, which is always a fun ride.

I actually jumped out of bed around 3 in the morning (sometime after the Macarena) and scratched down a short scene with Grayden and Audrina:

     "You don't get it. I want to hurt you. I want to drag you down my road of twisted perversity and I want you to hate it. And relish it."

     Cold sweat trickled down her neck. She already knew this. But hearing him say it aloud forced her to imagine flesh on those phantoms--to see them as real.

     "Is that what you want? You want me in pain?"

     "Yes," he said, and then paused. "But then I feel these waves rippling from you, and they're awful. They seep into my skin. And I want to change my answer to 'no'"

     "Grayden." In two steps she had his face cupped in her hands. She saw the conflict in his eyes, like clouds crashing over an uncertain sea. "I'm sorry."

     She tucked her head against his chest, and he wrapped his arms around her, too tight at first, but loosening at her gasp. She could feel his heart--his perfectly normal heart--beat against her cheek, and she relinquished herself to the realization that it was here, listening to his body's rhythm, that she felt safe.

     But something logical pulsed inside her brain. This is a faux safety, it said. This is controlled chaos. This was the way a smooth sea shone like glass right before being broken by brutal winds and rain.

     A storm is lurking, this logical thing said.

     She told it to shut up. 

So that's just GREAT. Another scene for a story that doesn't exist. 

Soggy and Me

As you [maybe, probably, most likely] know, it's my life-long dream to be an author. But...I sort of have a day job that is a bit time-consuming. And by "a bit," I mean very, VERY, VERRRRRRY time-consuming. I'm a 7th grade Language Arts teacher (which is probably not boding well for my "very" with six Rs). I love my job, but by the time I come home, I am drained. Teaching isn't physically taxing, but mentally it takes its toll. Even if you take all of the classroom management out of the equation, the sheer number of questions I am asked every day would be enough to turn anyone's brain into mush. The bell for first period rings, and it goes something like this:

Mrs. Perkins, do you have a pencil I can borrow? Can I sharpen my pencil? I forgot my homework--can I turn my homework in tomorrow? What does that word say? Can I go to the bathroom? How old are you? What page are we on? Can I have some tissue? Are we on regular schedule or upside-down schedule? Can I change seats? Can I throw this away? Why are the announcements so hard to hear today? Can I hold Muggle (the class pet)?

That brings us about five minutes into the school day. It's not the students' fault. They don't realize that their one little harmless question, combined with the bazillion other harmless questions from their classmates, would bring any sane person to their knees. Lucky for me, I'm not a sane person. I TEACH MIDDLE SCHOOL. So I handle all of these questions like a champ, rapid-firing answers back so fast that I'm not even sure what I'm saying. But by the time I come home from work, I look something like this.

I've decided to name her "Soggy." It just seems to fit.

Does Soggy LOOK like a writer to you? Does she look like she's ready to start tapping away on her keyboard in some stream of inspiration? I mean, seriously, I can't even answer the most basic questions from my family, let alone work on a book. My daughter will ask me if the dishes in the dishwasher are clean, and I'll look at her with this empty gaze, until two minutes later, I'm like, "Huh? Something about spoons?"

Sadly, my students get the best of me. My family and my writing get Soggy.

What does this mean for my future as a writer? I admit, I suffer from a massive case of Green with Envy Syndrome when I see all of my writerly friends on twitter who have chosen writing as their career. They put their hearts and souls into their dream. And once they finish writing a book, they have the time to promote it. They can do blog tours and giveaways and explore all sorts of social networking avenues to give their book a presence.

Does Soggy LOOK like she's excited to jump on Facebook and do a blog giveaway? My poor little book--Chasing Echoes--is somehow going to have to miraculously leap from the Amazon page and sell itself, because frankly I'm lucky if I have enough willpower to compose a coherent sentence at the end of the workday, let alone sell a damn book.

I guess all of this begs the question...why don't I quit teaching and pursue my dream of being a full-time writer?

Easy. I teach for the money.

Heheheheheheheheheehee...Oh, come on, that was FUNNY.

Okay, seriously. I won't quit because not only do I love my students, they inspire me. It was my students last year who encouraged me to write my book. It was my students who asked me every single day "How's your book coming along, Miss P?" and who squealed every time I read an excerpt, with cries of "Hurry up--I can't wait to read the whole thing!"

And today, it is still my students who keep me pumped up...who refuse to let me off the hook.

(And who throw pencils at my head if I start to nod off from pulling an all-nighter).

So even though Soggy doesn't always feel like writing, she still pushes through...because she has 100-and-some hopeful faces cheering her on.

Maybe someday, I will have to choose:  Be a teacher, or be a writer. But for now, I choose both. Because somehow, being a teacher motivates me to be a writer--even if it's a writer who's a wee bit soggy around the edges.

My Empathetic Sadist

Blogging friend and fellow writer Krystal Jane has mentioned more than once in her posts that she is a character-driven writer. I think this means that she creates her characters first (or they instantaneously leap into her mind and demand to be written), and then she proceeds to find or fabricate the story world that would best serve these larger than life personalities. 

I'm the complete opposite. I guess you could call me a story-driven writer. I come up with my story concept first (which usually starts with a what-if scenario--i.e. "What if there was a society in which everyone could, with a single touch, transfer their pain?") and then proceed to create the characters that would best fit my concept. In other words, unlike Krystal, I've never had a character "demand" to be written (kind of sad, actually). A story concept, yes. A character, no.

Until now.

For the first time ever, I am being stalked by a character. I am so in love with him, but sadly I have nowhere to put him. I am tentatively calling him Grayden, but that might change later. Grayden was partially inspired by Eric's E-mails to Young Damsels (I suspect Eric is also a character-driven author), and partially inspired by a flash fiction piece I wrote last year called The Apathetics. I'm going to give a quick profile about Grayden, but first I have to start by defining two key terms:

em·path noun \ˈempaTH\ (chiefly in science fiction) a person with the paranormal ability to apprehend the mental or emotional state of another individual.  

sa·dist noun \ˈsā-ˌdi-zəm, ˈsa-\: a person who derives enjoyment from being violent or cruel or from causing pain.

Okay, where am I going with this...? Well, Grayden is a sadist in love with my MC, Audrina. He is constantly visualizing the disturbing things he wants to do to her, and is very open and honest in communicating his fantasies with her in conversations similar to this:

Audrina: "Whatcha drawing?" 

Grayden: "Oh, just a little sketch of you tied to a tree and me whipping you with a switch." 

Audrina (leaning in): "Are those needles on the tip of the switch?" 

Grayden (coughing): "Uh, yes. Sorry." 

Audrina: "Oh. Okay." (pauses). "You want to go to the movies later?" 

Grayden: "Sure."

See, the catch is, Grayden is also an empath...which is why Audrina is so inordinately calm with him. He can never act on his sadistic fantasies, because his ability to apprehend the emotional state of others causes him to feel the anxiety/fear his pain is causing them. And sadly, he has no masochist tendencies. That is--while inflicting pain on others excites him, he hates enduring pain himself, so he is unable to act on his primal sadistic urges (kind of like someone who loves chocolate but can't indulge in it due to an agonizing cavity). Audrina is fully aware of Grayden's most-contrary psychosis and has remained his one true friend (though I'm not sure if her caring for him will ever translate to romantic feelings).

Okay, I wrote a whole bunch more about Grayden and Audrina (including some exposition discussing how the two met and how Audrina discovered Grayden was, well, crazy), but realized I was getting carried away ranting about two characters who I probably won't be able to accommodate into a story for another decade. So I'll just sum up by saying I love the impossible complexity of Grayden. I love the challenge of trying to translate his very disturbed character into a protagonist, along with the dynamic of the reader trying to figure out whether he's a good guy or a bad guy. Also, I'll have to decide how far to let Grayden's fantasies go or how often he "slips" (i.e. sometimes I'll push through that toothache to enjoy a piece of chocolate...will Grayden be tempted to do the same?). But his character is way too colorful to not write into a story...someday.

In other news, I'm still trudging through revisions of my MS, and I hereby take back every nice thing I have ever said about this process. I sort of hate revising with a white hot searing passion. I'm getting ready to start my fifth (or is it sixth?) rewrite of DoT's final chapter, and the good news is I think I came up with an approach for that chapter that will solve most of its problems. The bad news is I'll probably end up throwing my laptop off a balcony before I see it through.

Horror-Phobic

You guys know I hate horror, right? Blood and gore...can't do it. Which makes no sense, because I wasn't raised as some thin-skinned sissy lala. Seriously, Shan and I could wrangle spiders and hold snakes and weren't afraid to get down and dirty. We were the ones out in the desert building forts--never playing with dolls--and refusing to cry if we skinned our knees (my sister broke her entire femur bone once and never so much as shed a tear). So I'm not sure where this very 'girl-like' aversion to horror comes from. When I was little, my mom loved horror movies. Not that she was really into meaningless slasher flicks or paranormal horror (like Nightmare on Elm Street...remember that one? I still remember some chick getting eaten by her mattress), but she loved anything having to do with serial killers preying on guileless young women (seriously, this was my dear, sweet mother--what is WRONG with her?). Anytime the butcher scenes would flicker across the screen, I would dive under the blankets, clamping my eyes shut and covering my ears. Or I would run out of the room completely. My mom would playfully laugh and holler out "Come on, it's all just fake!" And I knew she was right; I knew it was fake. But such scenes didn't simply gross me out. They actually made me feel sick and miserable. And I wasn't the only one who suffered from horror-phobia as a child; Shan was the same way.

You would think as adults we would have grown out of this. You know...gain enough life experience to be able to separate fantasy from reality. But no. I might actually be worse as an adult, maybe because after years of convincing myself that I can't cope with horror, I've deepened my own psychosis. But whatever its roots, things get bad for me very fast if I happen to catch a glimpse of a grisly, gory death on television. First I get that miserable, sickened feeling, and I feel like I can't stop myself from internalizing what's happening on the screen, even though I know it's not real. I anguish over the character being hurt/tormented, and if I can't turn the channel fast enough, I'll start breathing hard, sweating, and going into some sort of panicked state of paralysis (my damn 'deer in headlight' issue). If for some God-forsaken reason I still can't change the channel (remember, I'm paralyzed now, and the kids probably hid the remote in the fridge), then I would be forced to curl into the fetal position and scream out ridiculous chants or nursery rhymes (i.e. "Cinderella-dressed-in-yella-went-upstairs-to-kiss-a-fella...") until the scene is over (or until someone goes to to get a slice of cheese and finds the remote). By this time, I'm probably shaking and feeling like I'm about to throw up.

And this is coming from the person who didn't break a sweat through a 7.4 earthquake and didn't bat an eye when she had to clean maggots out of an injured chicken's butt.

WHAT IS WRONG WITH ME?

But, I am proud to say I wouldn't be writing this post if there wasn't some hope. I did discover recently that my steadfast Just-Say-No-to-Horror rule does have an exception or two.

Exception #1: I can handle reading *some* horror if I know (as in, have socially interacted with) the author behind the spine-chilling story. Even if the story is something that would normally thrust me straight into a horror-phobic panic, somehow knowing the face behind the words takes away the threat. It's like I can suddenly "hear" what my mom kept trying to tell me all those years--"This is NOT REAL." Yes, I know now this is not real, because I can see the person who created it, and I can gasp at this hair-raising scene and yell at the author for writing such atrocities and tell him what a douche he was for making me feel petrified and have a big laugh about it. Phobia? GONE. Just like that. You can't be paralyzed by a spider in the midst of holding and playing with one. You can still be scared, but your fear can't win.

Exception #2: I can handle reading *some* horror if the writing is exceptional. The horror genre (like any genre) is flooded with bad writing. Sadly, even mediocre writing is bad writing when it comes to horror, given how easy it is for gory scenes to translate as cliche or contrived (there's only so many big-boobed blondes you can massacre before your readers start getting bored). But I discovered recently that horror in the context of beautiful writing can be intriguing as all get-out. It still leaves me unsettled, unnerved, and a whole slew of other "un--" words, I'm sure, but I can cope. And the story, for better or worse, leaves a lasting impression on me, which is what good writing should do.

The Christian in me, however, along with the person who inherently hates human torment being flaunted and trivialized, will never be okay with horror, and will never choose it as a genre. I believe evil is real, and I would no sooner dive into horror than I would sit in the middle of my tumbleweed-infested yard playing with matches. Horror reveals a side of human nature that I have no desire to explore, and once its dark fingers start reaching inside of you, I don't know how easy it is to yank them out.

But I have to admit the dark little artist in me--the same one who painted THIS--

--sees the appeal (and then gets disturbed by that fact, and runs away screaming).

That being said, I have to admit that I am massively addicted to a series being written by horror/erotica writer--and twitter friend--Eric Keys. Though he is only two installments in, he calls these posts "Emails to Young Damsels." In the series, Eric draws from his collective experience from past attractions/infatuations/loves-gone-awry to create letters (or e-mails) to someone he addresses as "Young Damsel." Even though he talks to this young damsel as if she were a singular person, she is actually a symbol of all the women (aka: 'young damsels' ) in his life who have left an imprint on him. Though these letters are not exactly horror, they are deeply unsettling, disturbing, and do touch slightly on horror elements (i.e. the first one is titled "Your Screams are Like Music"). And damn are they beautifully written. I think part of it is the shock factor. They read so much like love letters, written from an eloquent, wistful soul, until you suddenly get a fork thrust into your chest via unexpected lines that give you a glimpse into the madman behind the words. For example, the first Young Damsel letter contains this excerpt:

Not sure why your absence seems more deep, today. But it does. This past week I longed for one more conversation. I felt like all the loose threads from so long ago still dangle. How long has it been? Years? Decades? And yet it seems like just a handful of days. 

And yet, there seems an odd beauty in it all. Like the threads blowing about in the wind creates a more vital art than any tidily knitted rug would ever be. 

But I still wish you were here. Sometimes beauty is painful.

That line "Like the threads blowing about in the wind creates a more vital art...," just...wow. Frankly I find this entire excerpt to be pure poetry. Oh, but wait. It gets better. He follows it with this:

Anyway, you are out of my reach for now. Consider yourself lucky as I have dreamt up some lovely, hideous things to do to you. Oh, your screams would be like music.

Um, WHAT? Enter: Madman. It's sheer brilliance. To make you fall in love with this woebegone soul, only to blindsight you with his insanity. Some readers might even find themselves feeling a little jealous of the young damsel that incited such depth of emotion and expression from him...until those last two sentences. At that point, they're thinking "Run, Damsel, RUN."

A part of me feels guilty for loving these letters. I mean, let's face it, the narrator is a bit of a sadist with morbid fantasies about the "hideous" things he wants to do to his young damsel, and he clearly gets off on making her feel scared. But on some twisted level he deeply cares about her (them), which makes it hard to outright despise him. * In other words, he is the best villain EVER. The villain that you're not allowed to root for, but you do, secretly, anyway, hoping no one will know that you empathize with his plight.

So in my whole "Am I a terrible person for liking this stuff?" debate (this debate was with myself, so it was pretty lame as far as debates go), I came to this conclusion: It's okay for me to enjoy this series. Because writing is art. And art explores all facets of human nature. It's supposed to make us curious and disturbed and intrigued. Just like any sculpture or painting, it's okay for me to let my eyes travel over it, take it in, pull whatever meaning from it that I perceive, and walk away when I choose.

Or I'm probably a terrible person making excuses. But the above sounded pretty good, right?  ⌘


*Disclaimer: (If you decide to read the first two installments of Eric's "Emails to Young Damsels," please note that while he does draw on some real-life experiences, this series is a work of fiction. In real life Eric is a very stable, non-stalkery, unthreatening, self-proclaimed "softie").**

**(Although, no offense Eric, I still wouldn't want to run into you in a dark alley at night)