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A Cup of Kindness

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Why, hello! I haven’t blogged since August!

This semester has truly been the most exhausting and hectic academic term of my life. I started off with back-to-back illnesses (food poisoning followed immediately by an interminable chest cold), then had a perfect storm of time consuming coursework and travel (a really fun Monday night Camden/Tuesday morning New Brunswick/Tuesday night Camden schedule), two conferences (one international), lots of grading, and quite a few brand new (to me) theories that took just my whole entire brain to understand. Plus, you know, the annual energy-sapping effects of the ol’ seasonal affective nonsense. I feel like I’ve been sprinting flat out since Labor Day.

I’m still really glad I’m in this program. So that’s a nice sign.

One oft-repeated truth about grad school is that it’s isolating, and that’s been especially true this term, just because I haven’t had time to do anything. This has been frustrating, because I think I’m actually becoming less of an introvert as I get older? I definitely couldn’t do Hermit Life again. But luckily the combined circumstances of next term look like they won’t be QUITE as intense as this one (please let me not have just jinxed that), so I’m looking forward to communicating with other human beings on a more regular basis. Part of that mission includes reviving this ever-neglected blog, at least throughout winter break. I’m excited to talk about some of the highs of this past term (guest lecturing! Monsters conference in Prague!), as well as more media, writing, children/childhood, and current event thoughts. I sometimes joke (“joke”) that I am 100% Strong Opinions By Volume, and I’ve accumulated a lot of pent-up opinions to share over the past few busy, somewhat lonely months. (Shout out to any of my fellow Childhood Studies colleagues reading this, especially my astonishingly wonderful cohort, for being there and keeping me functional since September. Literally don’t think I could do this if I didn’t enjoy being around you all so much.)

But first, as is traditional, for my last post of the year (and decade!), I wanted to do a little round up of media that I was grateful for over the past year, plus a little bit of my own writing. The first part of this post will be very easy; despite the dearth of posts on this blog over the last year, I did manage to review three of my favorite viewing experiences of 2019 (Schitt’s Creek, Rocketman, Hadestown). Another movie favorite from the beginning of this year was Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, which I went to see as a 30th birthday present to myself. All of these stories make me fall further in love with our messy human condition, which is all I really want a story to do; as I mentioned in my Rocketman review, I’m always after Big Emotions in fiction.

Two of my guiding principles as a writer and a person are that a) fondness may seem quiet and soft but is actually deeply profound and sustaining and b) despair is the death of creativity. Therefore, while a story can have moments where it is as dark as dark can be (see: Hadestown and also most of what I write), ultimately cynicism will never a good story make, so you always need to give characters and audiences something to care about and keep caring about. To reiterate my Hadestown review, the things and people we care about don’t necessarily fix or save our world, but that’s never what made them matter in the first place. Human connection, art, storytelling, celebration, love — they matter in their own right. To continue that thought, I think we need all those things to sustain us if we’re going to engage in the work of fixing and saving. I know I do. So I guess that’s what I was after in this last year of the decade, and what I’ll be taking into the new one: stories that remind me of the things that matter most, so I can happily continue to care, create, and contribute to the world’s well-being in whatever small ways that I can.

A small extra note about Schitt’s Creek, just because it’s the story that fully dominated my 2019: I’ve been joking (again, “joking”) that that show is responsible for a good 70% of my mental stability as a graduate student, and goddamn am I grateful for it. Anyone who hasn’t watched it yet and is dealing with literally any form of stress in your lives, do yourselves a favor and indulge in this Absolute Delight of a show. I’m so pumped for the sixth season, and yet I’ll be ridiculously distraught when it ends, even though I respect the hell out of Dan Levy for giving his story a proper ending. (I respect the hell out of all of Dan Levy’s storytelling decisions. I can only humbly pay fealty to the undisputed king of slow-burn showing-not-telling character development.) I entitled my review of that show “Disasters Learning To Love,” and I can only hope to find more stories with that most evergreen of meaningful plots in 2020.

Sadly, I don’t have much in the way of book recommendations from this year — which is not to say that I didn’t read novels that I enjoyed, but I didn’t happen on any Big New Favorites. (I did get quite a few books for Christmas, though, so watch this space.) (Also, Anna, if you’re reading this, I am going to read Gideon The Ninth over break, you don’t need to yell at me again.) I did get to write about plenty of books that I care about this year, though. The highlight was definitely talking about monstrous doubling in Noelle Stevenson’s Nimona, Patrick Ness’s Release, and Eden Robinson’s Trickster series, all of which I could not recommend highly enough. That paper, which is the one I presented in Prague, was entitled “With Love from Self to Self: Monstrous Doubling and an Ethics of Care in Adolescent Literature.” I talked about this pattern I’ve been noticing in stories with sympathetic monsters in which the trope of the monstrous body splitting, duplicating, fragmenting, or containing multiple disparate aspects is used as a means of exploring a sort of desperate (and sometimes defiant) self-care in the face of a hostile society.

It’s no accident that this concept appeals to me so much, since I’ve actually written it myself, in MISBEGOTTEN CREATURES. It was exciting to realize that multiple authors whom I really admire are playing with similar ideas and to analyze what these narratives have the potential to communicate about the needs of marginalized young people. I closed that talk out by saying, “Monstrous care from self to self is not sufficient on its own; instead, it is the beginning of the story. It is the first acknowledgement, extended from within, that marginalized, scapegoated, and unstable selves are worth caring for and caring with.” So that’s another guiding thought I’m taking with me into the new year.

Finally, re: my own writing, since this is ostensibly a writing blog: I’ve officially been Writing Seriously (i.e., trying to write novels worthy of publication in a methodical manner) for a little over a decade. If you’d told 20-year-old me that I still wouldn’t actually be published at this time, she’d have been, uhhh … really sad. A lot of things haven’t exactly gone right in my writing career, and I’ve been dealing with the frustration, jealousy, and disappointment of that for a while now. But if things had gone differently, who knows if I’d be getting my PhD right now? I might have just kept on with a day job I liked less, instead of pursuing this additional path. In that case, who knows if I’d be living in a place I really like, so close to my sister and my NEPHEW, who is the most perfect thing to happen in 2019? I can’t take a peek into those alternate universes, but I do know that I’m doing work that I really like, and I’ve learned so much in the last three semesters, and all of it’s going to make my future writing better. Plus, I want the ’20s to be a decade of prioritizing relationships, and so I’m glad to be near my family. So I’ll continue to Write Seriously and embrace all the other opportunities and connections that crop up along the way.

Meanwhile, to everyone who’s read any of my writing (creative, academic, or sporadically blogged) and enjoyed it over the past 10 years, thank you so much. It means the absolute world to me when I find out I’ve written something that’s made another person happy. And you know what? I’m good at it. I’ve worked hard enough in the 2010s to have earned the right to say that. So, beneath the cut, please enjoy a selection of some of my favorite scenes from stories I’ve written this decade. Happy New Year to all!

Continue reading A Cup of Kindness →

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Disasters Learning To Love

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What should I write my blog about this month? I asked myself when I woke up this morning and realized it was the last day of February. I answered that question with another question: Well, what’s just about the only thing you’ve thought or cared about this month aside from all the schoolwork you have to do? And the answer to that, gentle blog readers, was my new favorite sitcom of all time, Schitt’s Creek. If you have not already done so, please get thee to Netflix, where the first four seasons are waiting to delight you and also probably take up more time than you have to spend. (I have recently taken to literally unplugging my router to make myself stop rewatching favorite scenes and do my work.) (It’s open in another tab right now, god help me.)

Before you binge away, though, you can continue reading this blog, because I’m not really going to be talking about the specifics of the show’s plot. Instead, I want to discuss the reasons that stories like this one are so attractive to me. I commented in a Twitter conversation about the show that, to me, Disasters Learning To Love is the story type to which I keep returning. (Actually, what I really said was that it’s the only type of story that matters and is worth telling, because hyperbole is where I live, but also was I really being hyperbolic? Nah.) For those of you unfamiliar with the premise, Schitt’s Creek is about a filthy rich family that loses their fortune after their business manager embezzles everything away, and the one asset remaining to them is the titular rural town that they bought as a joke. Obviously, the resulting culture shock is … significant.

Basically all the major characters in this show qualify as awful babies, a term coined by my dear Anna to describe the best type of fictional character. I can’t remember if I’ve ever used this perfect turn of phrase on this blog before, so for the uninitiated (i.e., those of you who somehow haven’t heard me expound upon this in real life), awful babies are characters who are very bad at their own emotions (Anna once used the metaphor of “flailing ineffectually against the current of their feelings”) and are consequently Terrible. Not all awful babies are created equal, and plenty of different personality types can translate into awfulness. If I may be so arrogant as to use my own work as an example, I really enjoy creating characters who are very different from one another, but I exclusively write awful babies. In fact, “all your characters are assholes kathleen” (also from Anna) is one of the greatest texts I’ve ever received, and high on the list of my most prized compliments about my writing.

With all of that said, it may seem a contradiction to admit that when it comes to sitcoms, I really only like those with characters whose company I think I’d actually enjoy in real life. For example, I’ve never been a Seinfeld person, simply because I’d last about thirty seconds in a room with those characters before walking right out the door again. (I also fully understand that that was part of the point, don’t @ me.) But there’s a very important distinction between an awful baby and a just plain gross human being. The former do have the ability to experience personal growth — or, more accurately, to drag their own selves into personal growth kicking and screaming. That’s the story that makes me laugh and makes me care. After all, what can be more (often alarmingly) relatable?

My parents have the same sitcom sensibilities as I do, and after watching the first two episodes of Schitt’s Creek on my recommendation, they were unsure why I recommended it, because they mistook these incredible awful babies for gross human beings. I have been flat-out begging them to trust me, because this show has some of the best slow-burn character development I’ve seen in a long, long time. That’s also why I’ve refused to show them any of the scenes that I know would convince them that these characters are worth investing in, because they have to see them earn it. Everything is so much more satisfying when it’s that hard-won! I’ve been reading a lot of books lately that are Relevant To My Research Interests, which means I can’t just stop reading them when they fail to fully engage me. Honestly, one of my main complaints with fiction that bores me is when the main characters a) aren’t awful enough, which means that b) they don’t have to work hard enough for their victories.

Dan Levy, who is the showrunner and one of the stars of Schitt’s Creek and is now my latest creative idol, is committed to storytelling without cynicism. The many interviews I’ve been reading (those are two good ones) make this clear, but so does the work itself. And to me, being an awful baby aficionado as both a writer and a consumer of fiction is rooted in compassion and delight for people in general. We’re so dumb, bless us! We’re so bad at so many things, especially managing our own messy, scary, ridiculous lives. I love finding points of comparison between my own strand of melodramatic, vain, recalcitrant awfulness (that I hide, for the most part, relatively well (or at least I hope I do)) with fictional characters who are flailing just as wildly as I am towards something like happiness. Towards the ability to love, and love well. That’s a hard journey, but if you like people, it can also be a deeply funny journey.

I’m personally not a comedy writer. My stuff is just a wee bit too dark for that. (My newest project is about, um, death.) But that’s not to say my characters don’t make me laugh, especially when they’re at their awfullest, and I really hope that they’ll inspire the same kind of tender, indulgent fondness that I feel about the characters from Schitt’s Creek. Because you know what that does? It allows people to feel the same tender, indulgent fondness about themselves. And that’s what makes the stories worth telling.

Not Too Much To Ask; Or, Kathleen Will Never Shut Up About Les Mis

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I did not actually have any ideas for this month’s blog, so Anna suggested I write about my ideas for how I would do a Les Mis miniseries, because she has known me for 900 years and has spent 850 of them listening to me talk about Les Mis. For those of you about to check out of this post, I beg you to bear with me! Talking about Les Mis is also talking about LIFE ITSELF, so if you’re on this blog, you apparently have at least a passing interest in my thoughts on that topic. For those of you who are unfamiliar with my lifelong love affair with this story, here are the main points you need to know:

  • I saw the musical when I was 10 and understood most of it, immediately started reading the book and understood very little of it, put it aside until I was 12, still understood not a lot, but finished it and loved it anyway. I’ve read it a bunch of times since then (well, not the Waterloo tangent). My first copy literally ripped in half. I care about precisely three (3) 19th century novels, and somehow this 1400 page Romantic monstrosity is one of them.
  • Also the musical is just my whole life. I memorized the soundtrack immediately, and then my mom had to explain way more than she had intended because she had to beg me to please not sing certain lyrics in public. This was, you’ll note, entirely her fault for taking me to see it, even though somehow MPAA ratings were Law in our household. (Uh, except when I semi-conned her into letting me see Trainspotting when I was a freshman in high school.) (In hindsight, my bad.) (Look, I was really into Ewan McGregor.)
  • It is a scientific fact that, compositionally, I am 87% Les Mis opinions by volume.
  • A new BBC miniseries is being made! http://www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/latestnews/2018/les-miserables-casting

So obviously, in the background of my mind at any given time until this miniseries happens, I am running through all my hopes and dreams for this adaptation. My mom asked me who I would watch it with, and I answered, “I don’t think anyone would want to do that.” I’m an adaptation grinch by nature, but I also saw the musical movie three times in theaters (I know), so what I’m saying is that if anyone does wind up watching this miniseries with me, they should know they’re going to be in for six hours of alternating crying and yelling.

I am trying not to have preemptive opinions about the miniseries, though I do wish Davies would stop talking smack about the musical. Like, bro, I get that it’s probably annoying that people keep asking you about a different adaptation, but surely you realize that a bunch of people who care about the book got there by way of the musical, so perhaps cool it with the “shoddy farrago” remarks. But based on the cast members whose work I’m familiar with, I’m optimistic about the performances. (I am obviously obsessively checking IMDB until the full cast is on there. They have a Favourite now! That’s neat. She definitely doesn’t get to be in a whole lot of adaptations. But also where is my favorite?? RELEASE THE FULL LIST.)

But while I may not have preemptive opinions, I sure do have a wish list. Obviously, a significant part of this list is just all my favorite scenes, word for word (surely not much to ask in … six hours. Hmm.)(But listen, I’ll forgive almost anything for a phenomenal Orestes Fasting and Pylades Drunk) (RELEASE THE FULL CAAAAAAST LIIIIIST). I also have some big ticket items, as well, which are as follows:

  • First and foremost, please do not make this a Dark Muddy Colored Period Piece Of Sadness. I mean, it is a period piece of sadness — consider the title — but it’s also Romantic. Hugo went hard for symbolic light motifs, and the miniseries should, too. (Dare I mention the musical? Because, listen, nothing guts me quite like the Bright White Spotlight Of Sanctified Death. Take notes, Davies.) I want alllll kinds of light in this thing. Bright light, soft light, golden light, light like halos around specific characters’ heads at the appropriate moments, light seeming to emanate from their very faces. Don’t feel the need to be subtle; Hugo sure didn’t.
    • To whit: “God is behind everything, but everything hides God. Things are black, creatures are opaque. To love a human being is to make her transparent.”
    • And: “Brothers, whoever dies here dies in the radiance of the future, and we are entering a grave illuminated by the dawn.”
  • This probably seems contradictory following Intense Light Symbolism, but I also want the miniseries to be super relatable. Like, sure, everyone’s kinda Jesus, but also they’re people living their lives that they would prefer (but generally don’t get to) keep living. I’m going to need the props and set design to provide tomes of information about everyone, especially if we see them in intimate spaces. The progression of Fantine’s rooms as they slowly shed belongings should be devastating. What small, pretty things will disappear first? Will they look like the small, pretty things that Cosette later places in her room? (They should.) I want to see characters pause mid-sentence to smile at a cat that walks by. I want to see them yawn at nighttime and catch glasses that they’ve upset right before they spill. I want nervous tics and “you weirdo” looks and startled smiles.
    • So putting those two thoughts together, I want the viewer to be able to look at any given character and have a moment where they say, “Same.” And then when that character has a moment of being kinda Jesus, the viewer can then think, “Wait, so then am I kinda Jesus?”
      • Yes.
  • I’m going to need this miniseries to be overtly, inescapably, relevantly political. Quoth Hugo, from the introductory note of his own damn book: “so long as ignorance and misery remain on earth, there should be need for books such as this.” There’s, um, kind of a lot of that going around. I do not want anyone to be able to walk away from this miniseries and think, “Gosh, things sure were rough in 19th century France,” and have that be the end of it.
    • This is one of my issues with the movie musical, actually. The musical itself can fluctuate in how confrontational it is about its politics depending on the production, and the movie version sadly dialed it down with certain choices. Example lyric change: “And the winter is coming on fast, ready to kill” became “And the plague is coming on fast, ready to kill.” Plague theoretically could kill anyone. Winter only kills the poor.
    • Listen: one of the most important and least comfortable thesis statements of this book is that injustice on a systemic level precludes morality on a personal level. Jean Valjean must break his parole to be a better person. He can’t follow the law, because the law won’t let him be a good person under the ridiculous restrictions of his parole. He also needs cash dollars. Or, you know, semi-stolen silver. (Another infuriating lyric change from the movie musical: there, the bishop says “I have saved your soul for God” instead of “I have bought your soul for God.” No! It’s bought! It has to be bought, because his soul can’t be saved without the material means the bishop provides. That shouldn’t be true! But it is.)
      • Basically, you don’t get to care about JVJ and be okay with literally anything about our judicial system. Sorry, I don’t make the rules. I want this miniseries to make you ask, “Wait, would it be easier for released convicts to live moral lives if they break their own paroles and assume new identities, too?” And then I want it to answer, “Yep.” And then, “Do something about it.”
        • Also: Do something about how women like Fantine are chewed up and spit out, because she’s definitely kinda Jesus, didn’t you see her symbolic halo? Do something for the girls like Eponine. They’re still here; they’re called trashy. But she hums when she looks in the mirror, and so do you, and so do they. Do something for the protesters, the revolutionaries. Not just the calm ones. The desperate, furious ones. They’re illuminated by the dawn.

So that’s what I need: big soul, big themes, small dear fragile human people. Transcendent beauty, fury, and love. Time and space collapsed, no distance at all between characters and audience. But really, isn’t that what I want of all fiction, all the time? It’s certainly what I try to do, even though my fantasy stories for kids and teenagers are, to put it lightly, pretty damn different from the Brick. But scratch the surface, and it becomes obvious that I imprinted on Les Mis as an earnest preteen duckling. As I always do when I read the book or watch and listen to the musical, I want my readers to think:

They’re just like me.

They’re holy.

I’m holy.

I will help all the holy people. I will make them transparent.

 

What in me is dark illumine

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Alas, I missed my self-imposed monthly blogging deadline again! In my slight defense, I currently work from home and have completely lost track of the date? Also, it is December, a time for abandoning last year’s New Year’s resolutions and wallowing in seasonal blah. At least for me, anyway. I’m always at my lowest ebb of energy and creativity at this time of the year, which never fails to be frustrating. But instead of despondently flailing around about it (I’ve done enough of that already), I’m going to devote this belated blog post to ten things I found inspiring in 2017. I may not be happy with the quality or volume of work I’m currently producing, but that doesn’t mean I won’t be once the days start getting longer again and my brain remembers that it is not, in fact, a hibernating frog. In the meantime, I’ll use this list to help fuel the little flame I’ve still got burning against the dark.

The Six of Crows duology by Leigh Bardugo: I’m going in relative chronological order of things I experienced this year, and I received the first one of these last Christmas. Not only were they fast-paced and fun (heists! schemes!), they were also a master class in multiple POVs and un-self-aware characters, which are highly relevant to my interests. I love characters who get in their own way, especially when they do so without even realizing it. That’s not always the easiest thing to write, though! In order for the reader to understand more about the character than the actual character does, you have to walk a very fine tightrope (which, incidentally, one of the characters in these books can literally do) of revealing and withholding emotional information. Leigh Bardugo does so beautifully, and I’ll definitely be returning to those books when I need my own characters to be complete human disasters (so, like, 90% of the time).

The International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts: I attended this conference for the first time in March. There, I made the decision to apply to PhD programs. Though I won’t find out the results of that decision for a few months yet, I clearly can’t deny that the conference itself falls under the heading of “inspiring”! I loved being surrounded by enthusiastic scholarly types so much that I finally realized that I always want to be surrounded by enthusiastic scholarly types. I only spent, like, 35% of the time as a complete nervous wreck (as opposed to my usual conference rate of around 85%), because everyone I met was so encouraging and friendly. I’m super excited to be going back again in March, particularly because the theme is Frankenstein Bicentennial and I’m going to be presenting a paper about Orphan Black. Speaking of which . . .

Orphan Black, created by Graeme Manson and John Fawcett: This series ended earlier this year, and I literally wept tears of joy during the finale. I don’t think I’ve actually ever done that because of a piece of fiction? I’ve certainly cried because of fiction many, many times, but usually because a character just died or something, not because I was just so damn overwhelmed by the love shared by everyone. I don’t know about any of you, but in 2017, I really needed a triumphant conclusion to the story of a bunch of difficult, fumbling, wronged, brilliant women who love each other and therefore themselves, and Orphan Black thankfully delivered. Also, at this point it surely goes without saying, but if you enjoy the art of acting even a tiny bit, you will love Tatiana Maslany and despair.

Steven Universe, created by Rebecca Sugar: This inspiration was scattered throughout the year due to this show’s nonsense schedule, but my god am I blown away every time Cartoon Network deigns to drop another Steven bomb. This show inspires me not only as a writer but also as a person. I want to approach grief, loneliness, and fear with as much grace, compassion, and gentle good humor as Rebecca Sugar’s extraordinary story does, both in my art and in my life.

Thick as Thieves by Megan Whalen Turner: This book (and the Queen’s Thief series in general) is such a ridiculous technical achievement in point of view, world building, and never wasting a single solitary word. How?? How does she do this?? Well, part of the answer to that question is that she takes a really long time, because I waited seven years for this book, but it was so worth it. When I’m revising, I honestly should just line these books up in front of me, but then I might feel too Judged, because they really are almost supernaturally well crafted. Also, I have never been quite as personally called out by a book as I was when the narrator sheepishly admits how much he dislikes being “unappreciated” for his intellectual interests and talents. I MEAN. Seriously, Megan Whalen Turner, what did I ever do to you to warrant this attack?

My students: I taught so many great kids this year, and I am so grateful for the privilege. Highlights included sharing good-natured jokes about the absurdities of grammar with a student who struggled with the material but tried extremely hard, reading 1400 words (!) about hyenas from an 8-year-old, reading two genuinely excellent ghost stories from students of the same age, and listening to an earnest high school student yearn for tickets to Book Con for her birthday. Developing my love of teaching over the past year has made the pieces of my life feel like they are finally fitting together.

Jane Unlimited by Kristin Cashore: This is another book that blew my mind with the intricacy of its plotting. Each part of this book was so richly detailed, and I don’t know a whole lot of authors who can play with like five genres at once. Also, I was delighted to recognize a setting stolen from the Isabella Stewart Gardner museum, which was next door to the grad school that the author and I both attended. (I wrote a large portion of my Master’s thesis in that museum!) This book just felt like such a labor of love, and it reminded me of a time when I was engaged in a bunch of labors of love, so it was just an all-around wonderful reading experience.

Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, created by Rachel Bloom and Aline Brosh McKenna: This show is so smart and funny and genuinely ground-breaking. I currently have one of its songs stuck in my head. It can be difficult to allow characters to make huge mistakes and hurt people while still keeping the audience understanding and rooting for them, but this show manages to do so by maintaining such a deep well of compassion for its characters (particularly its protagonist) even (or especially) at their lowest moments. Meanwhile, it also has club songs about going to the zoo, Fosse-esque stripteases with embedded Harry Potter references about being morally unscrupulous, and big Broadway “I Want” songs about mental health diagnoses. If I ever find myself wondering “is this too weird too pull off” in a story, I’ll definitely turn to this show for inspiration to just go for it.

The Shape of Water by Guillermo del Toro and Vanessa Taylor: I saw this last week and loved it desperately. Monster love stories are the best/only love stories. Aside from just deriving inspiration from all monsters all the time, I also felt very trusted as an audience member when watching this movie. It knew I would follow where it was going, and it didn’t need to drag me there. I kind of love a story that just says, “Listen, you’re either all in or not, it’s up to you.” There’s no need to convince people to love your monsters; they either will or won’t, and if they won’t, who needs ’em? 

Cathedral of St. John the Divine, Manhattan: I visited this church for the first time last week, and I fell completely in love. It was an explicitly American cathedral (and as such, it had chapels dedicated to immigrant groups and a sign outside welcoming all regardless of documentation), and I completely connected with the intermingled artistic styles, old and new, built right into the rising, arching bones of the sprawling building. There were small things there, too: someone had left the tiniest pink flowers on many of the chapel altars, and they were as beautiful to me as the stained glass. My visit reminded me that so many of the people who share my country are striving to live out grand and sweeping ideals in a million quiet little ways. The people who want to create beauty may not always be as powerful as the ones who only want to create their own wealth or wars, but we’ll always outnumber them.

Werewolves, Anxiety, and Me

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I talk about monsters to anyone who’ll listen. I can figure out a way to introduce the topic into a truly impressive variety of conversations, and half the time it’ll even sound natural. I am nothing if not single-minded. As a result, I’ve had many people ask me what my favorite monster is, and of course it will come as no surprise that my answer is WEREWOLVES. I often follow this up with, “They’re just so versatile!” Depending on the audience, this is met with either a murmur of agreement or a really strange look.

Werewolves’ versatility is derived from their simplicity. They’re human ’til they’re not. They’re human ’til they’re beast. That’s all there is to it. As such, they embody some of the fundamentals of monstrosity, but what precisely it all means will depend entirely on the context of their story. You can explore just about any fear or hatred or taboo desire with werewolves. Consequently, there are countless werewolf stories out in the world. Some are terrible, some are great, but all are different. I can’t imagine ever growing bored with this monster.

One thing I have identified as an aspect of some werewolf stories that really speaks to me is the narrative of learning to embrace a formerly-rejected part of the self. I can get mad theoretical right here (and I’m currently revising a paper on monsters, so the temptation is strong), but suffice to say that when two (or more!) seemingly disparate points of view coexist within a single subject — and at least one of them is Wrong (for example, a giant bloodthirsty wolf) — that subject has a few options. The option that most interests me is the decision to embrace the Wrongness, to empathize with it, to take care of it, to expand with it. The werewolf (or any monster) who loves and is loved by their monstrosity is my entire jam.

Another thing that I doggedly insist about monster theory is that it has practical, real-life applications. Allow me to demonstrate with myself. I have OCD and social anxiety disorder. I talk about the former kind of a lot, so most people reading this probably already knew that. I talk about the social anxiety less, because it’s historically been less of a Thing (relatively speaking), but I can’t imagine anyone who knows me is overly surprised by this diagnosis. I consider my anxiety (of both varieties) to be mooooostly under control these days. This has certainly not always been the case, and I’m very proud of the work I’ve done to deal with my prone-to-screaming brain, especially on the OCD front.

Recently, I participated in an event that caused way more social anxiety than usual. It was an unpleasant reminder that general nervousness and disordered anxiety aren’t the same thing, and no matter how many times I’ve pushed through the former (and I have! a lot!), that doesn’t mean the latter can’t still knock me on my ass. It was a frustrating and disheartening experience, because I had been hoping to represent myself as a really interesting, thoughtful, and hard-working person. I am a really interesting, thoughtful, and hard-working person! (And clearly my self-esteem is fine!) So what the hell was going on? Why was I letting this thing — this anxiety, this invader — hide who I really am?

That’s when I started thinking about werewolves.

At first, I totally rebelled against the association. Anxiety disorders are medical conditions, not monsters. They aren’t coexisting points of view within me. They’re just chemicals and synapses and whatever. I didn’t ask for them and I certainly don’t have to let them determine who I am. I’m not all that unwanted stuff. I’m only the parts that I choose to be.

… Except substitute “curse” for “chemicals,” and you have the internal monologue of every newly minted werewolf ever.

And wasn’t my OCD the reason I did an AmeriCorps term? After all those agonizing months of obsessing over the effects of climate change, I chose to turn that pain into action and help actual victims of a natural disaster. I couldn’t fix all the suffering that our degraded environment has caused and will cause, but I did something, and it was something I wouldn’t have done without anxiety.

My anxiety has poured into my writing and made it so much stronger. I gave different parts of it to various characters (and all of it to one of them), and I also made these characters brave. Someday young anxious readers will read about these characters and see anxiety not only permitting bravery, but fueling it. I could not have done that without my own anxiety, either.

Hell, even my social anxiety is mostly focused on a fear of interrupting or inconveniencing people. It will make me uncomfortable, but it really doesn’t want anyone else to be. Both of my anxiety disorders just want everyone to be happy.

My anxiety is kind. How can I blame it? How can I hate it?

So all right. Come here, unwanted thing. Come here, chemicals, fear, monster. I got you. I am you. You love the world. So I’ll love you.

On Truth

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Sometimes I worry that I only have one story in me, and that I’m just telling that same story over and over again in different ways. It’s a worry that I imagine a lot of writers share. Impostor syndrome is a strong force in creative circles, and it’s easy to fear that someday we’ll be found out. What if, that doubting voice whispers, everyone discovers that I don’t have that much to say?

But of course all my stories are going to have some things in common. They wouldn’t be mine if they didn’t. And one thing that I’ve realized they share is a deep preoccupation with truth-telling.

This discovery was something of a comfort. Though the capital-T Truth may appear to be flat and non-negotiable, there are actually many things to say about it. As a writer, I am reassured that my stories won’t necessarily all feel exactly the same to my future readers (or my small and beloved gaggle of current readers). As a person, I am reassured that no one will ever run out of worthwhile things to say as long as we’re committed to the truth.

The types of truth-telling that interest me the most are speaking truth to power and speaking truth to the self. Neither one is easy, and both rely on the other. I don’t think it’s possible to speak truth to power until you’ve figured out what you believe in, which requires figuring out who you are and who you want to be. But I also don’t think it’s possible to truly be honest to yourself without feeling the need to speak up and speak out about the important things in life.

After all, how can you protest or make phone calls or argue or attend meetings or engage in any other means of resistance — up to and including straight up breaking unjust laws — without first admitting that you’re sad and angry and afraid? These are not easy truths. They require you to admit that you’re not in control of everything in your life, and that just opens up a whole other can of worms. Our own lack of control is everything that we hide from. When we stop hiding from it — well. It can be unpleasant.

The alternative, though, is pretending that everything is fine. As any writer will tell you, stories need conflict. There can be no growth, no change, until that conflict is acknowledged. And yeah, there are some real life conflicts I really wish had been avoided. I’m definitely not saying that all the awful things happening in the world are okay because they lead to ~personal growth or anything like that. There is an upside to admitting your own sadness and anger and fear to yourself, though. Once you acknowledge those things, you get to tell yourself another truth: that you care. And a caring person is a beautiful thing to be able to see when you look in the mirror.

So I guess that’s another running theme in the stories that I write: I write about people who are learning how to care. And if that’s the only story I have in me, then I’m okay with that. That story is beautiful, and I believe that it is true.

We’ll Meet It

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Well. It’s been quite the year, hasn’t it?

Listen, I’m not going to write a thinkpiece about the state of the country/world/human race here. I’m sure you’ve all read as many of those as I have lately, and I’m not really in the mood to read, let alone write, one more. Instead, what I’ve got at the end of this bizarre year is a list, some quotes, and some writing.

Because I’ve been a terrible blogger this year (again) (look, it’s on the New Year’s resolution list) (…again), here’s a list of some things that happened in my life this year:

  • I completed an AmeriCorps term, having spent 10 months helping families whose homes were destroyed by Hurricane Sandy finally come home.
  • I wrote two separate Strongly Worded Emails in a professional setting (one to a potential employer, one to an actual employer) about how they were Doing It Wrong (the former about mental illness, the latter about racism in children’s literature).
  • I got fired for the first time, from the actual employer in the above bullet point. I genuinely don’t know if these two things are related. Either way, no regrets.
  • I’ve spent about six months of this year getting paid to teach in some capacity, which is a major step down the life goals path.
  • I was the maid of honor at my beautiful twin’s wedding and now I have a brother-in-law! This is the best bullet point on this list.
  • I wrote the first draft of middle-grade story, several drafts of werewolf story (Misbegotten Creatures), and two academic papers.
  • I presented one of those papers at a conference.
  • I’ve dedicated at least two hours every week to political action since November 8th )(and will continue to do so from now on). I’ve also pretty much held on to my mental health since then, which given the specific nature of my intrusive thoughts is something to be damn proud of.

Which leads us to the quotes. I’ve written on this blog before about my two tattoos, which both involve flora and words. The words are “Watch me” (and though context-less on my ribs, the intended context is from Patrick Ness’s The Knife of Never Letting Go) and “with nothing on my tongue but hallelujah” from Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah.” (Clearly, this was one of the many deaths of 2016 that got to me, but at least he was actually fairly old, unlike some of the others.) I’ve been thinking a lot about both of those lines lately, about how I’ve etched determination despite all odds into my body. After all, the lines leading up to the end of the last verse of “Hallelujah” include “and even though it all went wrong,” and anyone who’s read Chaos Walking knows that like 2 of 10,000 of the things that happen in those books are actually good things. The plants, too, are about this: a branch from a willow tree, fragile yet abundant, and a Christmas cactus blossom, which blooms only in the darkest part of the year.

So all of that is who I am and who I will continue to be. I’m glad I already know that about myself. I’m glad I know I’m not one to give up.

Another quote that’s been on my mind is from Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire: “What’s comin’ will come, an’ we’ll meet it when it does.” Not much to add to that, other than this line has been a helpful mantra to me in the past, and also we should all try to be more like Hagrid in our daily lives. (I mean, within reason.)

Last quote, also from J.K. Rowling, but this time from an interview. She once said “sometimes I know what I believe because of what I have written.” This has definitely always been the case for me. I have figured out so many things that I think are important (as well as a lot of things about myself) through writing fiction. Sometimes I’ve found it’s a good idea to lean into that and allow writing to help me define my own state of mind. So I wrote a scene that takes place in between story (The Children’s War) and its as-yet-mostly-unwritten sequel that’s about all of the above quotes, as well as waiting, as well as loved ones. And some architectural theology, because why shouldn’t I have some fun with it, too? I’ve been waffling about whether I should put it on this blog, but I wanted the few of you who know these characters to be able to read it if you want. So click through if you’d like, and happy New Year to everyone. I’m glad I get to meet whatever’s coming with all of you.

Continue reading We’ll Meet It →

A Backward Glance

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Today, instead of waking up at a frankly unseemly hour of the morning and commuting directly and dangerously into the rising sun, I instead began my first week as an AmeriCorps alumna instead of an AmeriCorps member. My unexpected life detour into disaster recovery has come to an end. It was a pretty bumpy road at times, but I’m glad I took it. I was able to help some people along the way, which is really all I wanted out of this experience.

I also met some really lovely people. I keep making mental notes of topics of conversation to bring up in the office, forgetting that I don’t actually work there anymore. I mean, I’ll be back there at some point, possibly to borrow their scanner and also to return the traffic cones I inadvertently stole. Also, social media is a thing. Still, it’s always strange when you see someone every day — whether a classmate, a roommate, or a coworker — and then you suddenly don’t.

“Abrupt change” has been sort of a theme of my life the last couple of years, I guess. Like I said in my last post (which was almost two months ago — so much for New Year’s resolutions, whoops), I do have some constants, though. Writing, of course, is my greatest constant, and I’m excited that I’ll have some more time to do so now.

I also have plenty of Plans, but none of them are quite Reality yet, so that can wait for a future post. Writing is my Reality, though. It’s maybe strange that something as intangible as making up stories out of thin air can be as solid a bedrock as it is for me. I just appreciate having an area of my life that I don’t have to question. I’m not sure where my writing will take me, but I’m sure about the writing itself. I know I’m very lucky to have that.

For now, I’m going to be working fewer money-making-job hours than I had been (though I’ll be earning considerably more, because AmeriCorps), so lots of people have been asking me what I’m going to do with my “free time.” This has got me thinking about when I stopped thinking of writing as “free time” and when I started thinking of it as my job. The switch must have happened pretty gradually, because I can’t pinpoint an exact moment. But yeah — I’m not actually going to have any more free time than I ever did. I’ll just get to use more of my work time to do the job that I love the most.

And someday, I hope, I’ll be able to say the same thing about my writing as I can say about my AmeriCorps term: “I really helped some people with this.” I definitely never felt sure of myself as a disaster case manager the way I do as a writer. I actually spent a pretty large portion of my 10-month term thinking I was kind of awful at it. If I could go and tell myself one thing at the beginning of my term, it would be to try to get out of my own head occasionally. Of course, I’m fundamentally incapable of doing this literally ever, so the advice wouldn’t have done much, but I do realize that people in need don’t need the people helping them to be perfect. They just need them to keep trying. That’s something I did do, and that’s something I’m proud of.

One of the tenets of the organization I worked for was that people have an innate desire to help others. While that’s hard to fit in with some of the contractor fraud I saw (some people will literally steal tens of thousands of dollars from children and little old ladies after their houses are destroyed! So that’s a thing!), I genuinely think that’s true of most of us. I also think that if someone is anxious or prone to guilt due to personality or brain chemistry or latent childhood religion (or all three, in which case hello and welcome to the Existential Crisis Club!), then they probably worry that they don’t help enough.

At my AmeriCorps class’s graduation party (bowling! Which I actually really enjoyed — maybe I’ll follow in my mother and grandmother’s footsteps and become an Intense Bowler), my bosses and coworkers made speeches about us, which was emotionally overwhelming and embarrassing but also really gratifying. So, I guess if I were to actually arrive at a point in this meandering post, it would be that I encourage you to go and emotionally overwhelm/embarrass someone who’s helped you in your life. Tell them what they did was good and enough. Because while (good) people don’t help others for the recognition, letting them know they’re appreciated is an easy and kind way of turning it around and helping them in return.

So there’s my sappy moral. That’s the end of my free time for the morning. Now: to write.

Transitional New Year

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Once I went on a tour of a butterfly sanctuary. Jewel-bright insects of all shapes and sizes meandered through the air beneath the glass ceiling of the habitat as the tour guide explained the facts of the butterflies’ brief lives. He pointed out a chrysalis.

“Everyone knows that caterpillar makes a cocoon, and after a while, a butterfly emerges,” he said. “What most people don’t know is that, in order to become a butterfly, the caterpillar’s body LIQUEFIES.”

Here he paused for dramatic emphasis, but he really didn’t have to. My eyes were already bugging out of my head (no pun intended) as I stared at the hard and withered-looking chrysalis. I was horrified and delighted in equal measures. I spent the rest of the day repeating this fact to anyone who would listen to me. It’s still one of my favorite nature facts, just because it really doesn’t seem like it should be possible at all. Complex bodies shouldn’t be able to disintegrate and reconstitute into something else entirely, should they? Yet the evidence was all around me, wings flexing lazily, no trace of the gooey mess they had once been.

I’ve thought about the liquefied pre-butterflies a lot this year. Obviously, their behavior is driven by instinct, and I know better than to anthropomorphize bugs to the point where I project existential angst onto them. Still, the whole liquefaction deal can’t exactly be pleasant, can it? You spend all that time chowing down on leaves and either camouflaging or looking poisonous (successfully, if you’re lucky), then suddenly: bloop. Life is a weird time for caterpillars is basically what I’m saying here.

I sympathized with this weirdness in 2015. I wouldn’t go as far as saying it was a bad year. It was just kind of bizarre. I spent a lot of time feeling as muddled and discombobulated as caterpillar soup. “Quarter-life crisis” became a fixture of my vocabulary. It was the first full year of my life not spent as a student, and with that structure gone, I felt strangely diffuse. It was a year of impermanence: I started it in the middle of Hermit Life, then moved home for a month, then became an AmeriCorps member. That chapter of my life will end in two months, too. In that way, I’ve ended 2015 the same way I began it: without knowing what comes next.

A quick consultation with Google has informed me that some cells survive the liquefaction stage of metamorphosis. They’re called imaginal discs and they are the foundation on which the adult body will be built. This is almost unbearably poetic and I can’t resist running with the symbolism for a moment here. Those of us who are lucky will have some imaginal discs of our own, the constants that survive whatever unforeseen changes we’re forced to go through.

Good family and good friends are the most important constants a person can have, and I’m grateful to say I have both. Even if I’m flailing about in a sea of existential confusion, they’re never confused about who I am. I hope that they would count me among their constants, as well.

Another imaginal disc that is as hardwired into my being as a butterfly’s antennae is my writing. There have been plenty of times this year when I didn’t really feel like a real writer. I’ve been pretty isolated from the literary world, which is something I want to work on this year. I’m no longer attending degree-mandated workshops and readings. Meanwhile, in the “hurry-up-and-wait” career path of a writer, I’ve been squarely in the “wait” portion all year. Which is normal. Which I’ve always known is how things work. Which I accepted a long time ago.

Which is still hard sometimes.

However! I grew so much as a writer this year. Werewolf story and I continued wrestling one another until finally we were dancing. I tackled the challenge of being a writer with a non-writing 8-to-5 job and, even though it proved to be predictably exhausting, I got some pretty great work in during my lunch breaks, if I do say so myself. Even if my passion was invisible to most of the people around me for many months, it was still there. It was becoming something.

I’m so goddamn proud of werewolf story. I did right by my monsters. I let them become something, too.

The caterpillar-cocoon-butterfly metaphor for growth is very old and tired, but once you know the gruesome biological details, it seems even more appropriate. That in-between stage can be very disorienting. But this year, I will continue building myself around my imaginal discs, the parts of me that always were and always will be. That way, whatever emerges from my uncertainty will be a self that I will recognize and like. Anyone else who had a weird 2015, and I know a lot of you did, I believe that you can do the same!

So that’s enough navel-gazing for now. (It’s New Year’s, I’m allowed.) Another one of my resolutions is to blog more, so hopefully this dusty old page will see a lot more of me in 2016. I hope there will be some exciting things to report!

 

 

On optimism

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I have officially survived my first two weeks of my new 10-month service venture. Everyone on all the different teams in the organization seems terribly nice and I have not been nearly as shy around them as I was afraid I would be. Apparently hermit life hasn’t completely destroyed my ability to interact with others. Also, the more I learn about this organization, the more sure I am that I have made the right decision about what to do for the next 10 months. I’m even already starting to take on Responsibilities, despite the fact that the first week was orientation, so I’ve only had one week of training so far, and I also have zero experience in anything I’m doing.

As a newly minted client services coordinator, I have literally been dreaming every night about grants and insurance and loans. I expect to be completely mummified in red tape soon. Part of my job — apparently a fairly sizable part, too — will be telling people no. No, you don’t qualify. No, we can’t help you. This will suck for me but suck a whole lot worse for them. In a weird way, that’s motivating me. My frustration will be nothing compared to the people still rebuilding after a natural disaster that happened two and a half years ago. Even when I have to say no, I’m hoping I will also be able to say why. Maybe, if nothing else, I’ll be able to clear up some of the agonizing confusion.

Of course, that means I have a whole lot of learnin’ to do myself. Early in the week, I found myself falling back on grad school strategies: “Don’t just take notes on it if you still don’t know what it means,” I told myself several times. I kind of enjoy squinting at the computer screen with a skeptical eye, trying to determine if a) the text makes sense and b) I agree with it. I always did love school, but now the stakes are higher than just my own grades.

A couple of times, the topic of “rose-colored glasses” was raised — as in, make sure you’re not wearing them. I’m really not, but some people may l think that I am, because there is nothing that can stop me from being blazingly, doggedly, indefatigably optimistic about the work I’m about to do. Optimism is very often conflated with naivete, but to me, they couldn’t be more different. Rose-colored glasses are for the naive. Optimists are the people who look straight at the hard truths of a situation and say, “Yep, we can work with this.” Optimists do not deny pain. They also do not deny joy.

Writing off positivity and hope as some sort of illusion is just as unrealistic a worldview as pretending that negativity and hardship do not exist. I know because I have done both. As a child, I knew that there were some bad people and bad circumstances. I have always felt and thought deeply about the suffering of others, even before I’d lost my first baby teeth. (I was a kind of intense kid.) But I assumed that suffering was by and large a rarity. I assumed that all problems could and would be fixed by the adults of the world. I projected my parents’ goodness onto everyone, and therefore I thought that nothing could stay very bad for long. As a children’s lit person, I don’t mean to imply that all children are naive. But I was, and I’m glad I was, because it stemmed from being loved and protected and safe.

It wasn’t until I was much older that I swung the other way completely, and that was by brain chemistry, not choice. By the time this happened, I was nearing the end of college. Obviously at this point, I wasn’t as naive as I had been at age six, but I still had great faith in humanity — a faith that vanished seemingly overnight. Suddenly I thought that no disaster could be prevented, and every person on Earth was simply rushing towards a series of unavoidable catastrophes that would eventually claim them. Simply put, I found myself believing in the doctrine of “nasty, brutish, and short.” I’d pass a stroller and pity the baby for having been born. I’d sit next to a stranger on the bus and envy them their ignorance of the hellscape I was convinced was about to unfold.

You’ll often hear people say that if you expect the worst, you will be pleasantly surprised by a better outcome, but I found nothing pleasant about pessimism at all. I didn’t even feel like I was myself anymore — and, as a pessimist, I did not believe I could get myself back.

And then I proved myself wrong.

My optimism these days is not about platitudes or blind faith. My optimism is fierce and furious. I didn’t solve the problem of my own despair just to leave other people in theirs. So I will believe the best can happen because I am going to make it happen. And when I personally can’t be the one to make it happen, I will put my trust in the other optimists of the worlds, the ones who stave off helplessness and hopelessness by working as hard as they goddamn can because that’s the only way they know how to live. These are the people who, like me, would much rather be disappointed by a bad outcome than never even trying to make something good happen.

I know these people are out there. I just joined a whole organization of them. I don’t need rose-colored glasses to see that.