Divisions and Precisions

I know, I know, I've

I know, I know, I've been insanely talkative today -- today, when Blogger is just having all sorts of issues -- but I had to share this. I got email about an hour ago from a girl in Australia about "At the Ocean's Edge". She says for an assignment for her English class, she had to find a story on the internet and contact the author. I'm her English assignment! How freakin' cool is that? I loved Brand's comment: "You're literature now." I'm giddy. I emailed her back with probably far more information than she wanted.

The entry I wrote earlier

The entry I wrote earlier got me started thinking about my teachers, so I did a web search on Mrs. Rubin, my eighth grade English teacher. Ironically, I found this article about my high school choir director, Mr. Bushey, who was apparently a teacher of the week or some such. Mr. Bushey was absolutely my favorite teacher in high school or college. I had him for four years and loved every minute. Turns out Mrs. Rubin nominated him. Heh. Damn. Now I have two teachers to get in touch with.

Babel Fish is not helping.

Babel Fish is not helping. Anyone out there fairly fluent in Spanish? Email me? The Spanish I've got in this story so far is very -- er, muy -- pitiful.

Passion and Ambition

This is a very good time for me right now. I feel alive and active in a way I haven't since -- well, since finishing writing Harvest of Thorns (by the way, Dream Pod 9 has a page up for that now, and the release date is February 26th!) this past summer. It's probably no coincidence that I'm working on another book for DP9 right now. I'm turning over ideas for a third, one that I'd ideally like to write completely by myself, rather than collaborating. I guess it's a self-confidence thing, wanting to prove to myself that I can do one alone.

Then of course, school is going well too. I get this weird, glowy feeling every time I think, "I'm a junior at Eastern Michigan University." Of course, that makes it sound like I'm a lot closer to graduating than I actually am, but... it's still a good feeling.

One would think, with all the reading I'm doing for school (currently buried in Zorba the Greek for those of you playing along at home), and all the writing I'm doing, that I wouldn't start reading non-school-related things as well. It's odd, but my appetite for books and movies has risen sharply over the past couple weeks. It almost feels like the more I write, the more I need new ideas and stories to refresh the well I draw from when I write. Over the past two weeks, I've seen three movies in the theatre (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, O Brother, Where Are Thou? and Finding Forrester, which was yesterday) -- about as many as I saw in the theatre for all of 2000. Granted, 2000 was a pretty sucky year for movies, but still. I've been reading a lot more, as well as watching more movies on videotape too. And good TV -- I've been watching good TV, like Law and Order and The West Wing.

The more stories I try to tell (or at least, the more I try to tell one story), the more I crave seeing how other people tell stories. I find myself analyzing things that way as well -- trying to figure out, from a technical angle, why the writers did this, or why this was phrased a certain way, or what this plot development means. I never wanted to do that, because I always thought it would be too much like listening to a magician give away his tricks. It's not. It's like being a magician at a magician's convention, and learning new tricks. Some of them are so nifty that you file them away for safekeeping. Some of them seem so amazingly lame, but you file them away too, in case you ever need them -- or at least to know what not to do.

For the first time in my adult life, I have ambitions. I haven't figured out yet how to reach them, but I have them. They're lofty ones, the sort that you can barely even whisper to your friends, embarrassed to think that you dare to dream that high. I feel like I have finally recognized my passion, my calling. That sounds trite, to put it in words that way, but it feels true.

I have always been a person of changing passions. Even when I was younger, I would throw myself into a new interest, and go after it rabidly for a month or so, then get tired and quit. There have been two exceptions. When I was eleven years old, I decided I wanted to take voice lessons. So I called the local music store and found out who their teacher was. I went to my mom, and we decided that while my parents would drive me to and from lessons, I had to pay for them myself. I did. For a year. After that year, my mom admitted that she didn't think I'd stick with it, but now that I had, they would start paying for lessons. I changed to a new teacher in high school, then studied voice in college as well -- music was, in fact, the longest-lived of my many majors.

I wrote my first story when I was in seventh grade. Until that time, all the stories I'd told were plays written for friends, or elaborate make-believe games that lasted for months. It was a pitiful story, full of cliched characters and the most amazing coincidences. I wish I still had it. Another followed, and then another. My middle school English teachers were wonderful, reading everything I handed them, and taking the time to comment on everything. (Thank you again, Ms. Haines and Mrs. Rubin!) High school came, and with it came a flood of adolescent poetry. The stories stopped. I'm not sure why, but I have my suspicions. The poetry was... well, embarrassing, at this point. I was a theatre geek, so in addition to the usual adolescent angst, I used the theatre as a metaphor for everything. Writing dried up almost completely during my first stint in college. An occasional poem about my ex-husband-then-boyfriend, but that's all. Marriage. Severe depression. The only words I wrote were rare letters to friends.

Discovering the internet in 1994 sparked my interest in writing again, and the poems started -- not so bad, not so great. One got published in an email 'zine. Story ideas showed up, a few short works were finished. Divorce. Moving back home. More depression. New boyfriend. Writing on the back burner once more.

Then in 1998, stumbling onto the MUSHing community. Starting out slow, then meeting the folks who are some of my dearest friends in the world today, writers all: Brand, Mo, Laura, Josh. Telling stories together. Writing. And writing. And writing some more. Starting out with roleplaying character histories, then stories inspired by characters. Discovering that I was good. Everything that had been on and off the back burner for fifteen years started pouring out. I made my first professional submission in June of 1999, to Marion Zimmer Bradley just a few months before she died. She didn't bother to read past the second page, but that didn't matter. I sent it. She at least looked at it. More followed, with more editors not getting past the second page. Then last May, getting myself together at the tail end of a nasty depressive episode and sending something off to Dream Pod 9. Things have happened so fast since then, it's hard to not think of terms like "fate" and "destiny".

It's hard not to form ambitions and start believing that you've found the elusive "it".

Tired. Soooo tired. I was

Tired. Soooo tired. I was up until 11:15 or so writing and discussing various upcoming projects for Wicked Ink (heh, I just realized I've never really mentioned them here -- go check out the rest of the Blood and Sacrifice site while you're at it). Then I went to bed, only to stay awake reading Gut Symmetries until midnight. I was a little leery of the book, although it's been recommended to me by several people, because it has a very strong physics-related base, and physics has never been my strong suit. So far, I'm intrigued.