Outside the comfort zone

I finished Happenstance in the late morning yesterday and quickly drafted a review for Hippocampus. While I felt the book deviated from standard storytelling technique, in the end, the author (Robert Root) brought everything full circle and fully incorporated his title. Well done. And his message seemed much more thought provoking than I thought it would be. I try to connect with what I read and I found more of myself than I thought I would in this piece. If you want to know more, you’ll have to wait until the issue releases.

I also did something out of character for me and pitched a creative non-fiction piece to the editor of Hippocampus. It involves another writer, one I’ve known and respected for quite some time now, and I hope this gives me a chance to bridge our careers. The boldness of pitching a story idea without even knowing if the subject would say yes is, again, something out-of-character. It made me wonder if I could find something to pitch to someone every day. That is a lofty goal, but the change in thought process might prove to force me from my rut and perhaps bring progress. 

The child returned to school today and the husband to work. I don’t work until 4 p.m. It’s a wet day and all of my umbrellas are missing so after walking child to school I am enjoying a hot cup of decaf chai. I realized this morning that I only have six more months of my morning walk as next year my daughter will ride the bus. I’ve had the same routine for four years and the change may prove disorienting. 

My list of things to do is short, but it’s an unpleasant list. I already tackled the dishes and I think the laundry will wait. I need to decide what comes next. Work on my resume? Research refinancing the house? Deal with bills? Develop a long range budget? Organize the 2013 paperwork for tex season? The choices are undeniably dull. 

I could entice myself with tasks like “query an agent” or “pitch to a magazine” but my heart isn’t there either. Would writing be a valid choice or would that be neglecting more important household duties?

I have made dribs and drabs of progress on the Jacqueline/army medic story. A sentence here and a paragraph there. I think I sorted out the time frame last night. I think the story begins in early February 2003. Why 2003?

These initial novels take place in a certain historical context. My main characters have to be a product of post World War II France. My strong female character in the Fashion and Fiends trilogy Basilie d’Amille was a corporate raider in the 80s and had other business background that just wouldn’t work in the dot com and later economies. Later, my fashion model character has to come of age in the late 1980s because she’d be too curvy and athletic to be a supermodel post Kate Moss’ success.

Even their families couldn’t exist with a shift in time, the impact of various wars and international conflicts impacted these families in ways that created who they are.

But don’t worry, later stories can bring the families up to date. 

Defense of my undergraduate thesis tomorrow

My goal has been to practice my honors thesis presentation once a day for the last week. I have not hit that mark. I have missed two days. Today I'm supposed to practice it twice, since tomorrow is *the big day.* I practiced it one and a half times and recorded it via Keynote and exported it as a QuickTime iPod movie.

I also exported it as a small web movie, but the file size ended up being 500 MB vs. the 25 MB of this one. 

I only listened to the first eight minutes or so before I got distracted by the idea of how could I upload this to friends far away. It's about 32 minutes long, which means if I STICK TO WHAT'S ON THE ACTUAL SLIDE versus going off script at will, I should nail the intended time frame.

My adviser has asked for 20-30 minutes. I have broken it down into five minutes on each of my chapters, plus a few minutes to explain the introduction and the nature of the project.

Journaling again

Among other goals, I told myself I was going to journal more this year. Open my journal once a day and record something... a high, a low, wax philosophical. And so far it has worked.

When I was younger, I always had my journal open. I carried it everywhere.

Sometimes the entries are for myself. Sometimes they are therapy. Sometimes I intend them as wisdom that I wish to share. Sometimes they are merely lists of facts.  People I saw. Things I read. What I do day-to-day.

With technology changing and electronic formats taking over so much of publishing and media, what will happen to the old-fashioned notebook? Will handwriting be a marker of the ancient past?

Before the invention of recording technology, letters and journals preserved so much of everyone's lives and relationships and I feel like our conversion to electronic communication may make hand-recorded records valuable once again.

History based

My stories very much blend the history of the real world with what happens in their universe.

My first novel takes place in 2002 because of some of these elements. The characters don't work if they are removed from that time.

Etienne and Basilie must be children of post World War II. Basilie has to be a corporate raider circa 1980s. Adelaide can only rise as a supermodel in the pre-waif days and in the shadow of beauties like Cindy Crawford.

More importantly, Etienne's uncle dies in Algeria. His father probably served in Indochina. He completed his national service in a post colonial Djibouti, which means he didn't see the action his father and uncles did.

I was reading Frantz Fanon yesterday, and as a anti-colonial philosopher AND a psychiatrist, he had some interesting notes about the impact of warfare on the Algerians and the French alike during the war for Algerian independence.

I realized, reading these notes, that I had finally found my link to Uncle Gaston's service, conduct and death. This excites me.

The intricate crossing of fiction and history allows the author to comment on the actions of nations and the state of society.

I've already written a short character sketch to introduce Khadijah, who may challenge everything Etienne believes about his family, his country's "civilizing mission" of yesteryear and what it means to be "French."

It may help him do what's right in the aftermath of his own actions.

Indulge

I have not worked on my revisions to my second novel in several days. I spent Wednesday working on a paper for my Body Politics class, and then throughout Wednesday and Thursday I did allow myself to write scenes between my characters that wouldn't occur until 2018.

The first scene involved a mother, a father, a brother and a sister reacting to some unsettling news... and the fun was toying with their relationships. Mastering a father's disbelief, a mother's pragmatism, a brother's tendency to mock the situation and the narrator's teenage angst. A friend of mine comments that for an only child I tend to get many of these conversations very real, and I made a funny remark.

It's occurred to me that maybe they are real and I am imaginary.

My brain swirling with gender questions led to that conversation, and it had a very satisfactory conclusion. That gender identity and biological sex don't have to mean what we think they do. And since I have an outline for a story involving this young character that happens when she's 9, it's scary to think that there may be another in my head for "five years later." Isn't writing organic that way?

Of course, many of these ideas spurred by readings and homework never come to fruition. I haven't finished the short story about Mémère d'Amille taking in Jewish children during WWII, although I started it.

I read Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides during the last three days. Well-written, very rich in Greek culture, but the narrator glosses over his/her own situation, which leaves me wondering what the manuscript meant to achieve... I was disappointed that my questions were never answered and in a tome as thick as this, well, how do I end up so empty from the text?

What you read influences what you write. Both in style and theme. So, what do you read? Do you challenge yourself? We grow with the words, whether we write them or consume them.