still laptopless, but it's 2013, so that shouldn't stop me from writing a blog or, like, coordinating a missile strike from my phone or whatever.

I'm trying to get back into my life, bit by bit. Bear with me, okay?

1. You might be a Pharisee if . . . 

2. This made me literally laugh out loud.

3. This, on the other hand, made me want to stand on a table and cheer. But i didn't, because i was alone in my house, so that would have been weird. Actually, on reflection, i guess that would have made it less weird. Whatever. Just read it.

4. i used to think i had arrived somewhere,
until i realized there is no shore of arriving.

5. And if you're wondering how i've been the past few weeks, read this.

one for the history books

First Wendy Davis, then DOMA, and now Prop 8. This is a good day to be an American.

lenten bucket list

This is the time of year when people use God to guilt themselves into giving up bad habits delve deep into spirituality and self-sacrifice and work on cleansing their daily lives of things that distract them from God and Bible and Prayer and Such. Some people use it as a kick-off for the rest of their lives, like quitting smoking or gluten. They figure that, for 40 days of prayer and meditation and joining in the sufferings of Christ (who actually fasted for 40 days and then was beaten and tortured and horribly killed, so totally the same as you giving up caffeine), they can get a leg up on a better life and look more holy doing it.

In years past, i've given up pizza, sweets, soda, and meat. I actually gave up meat twice; the first time, i mostly just ate lots of bread and cheese. The second time, i worked on finding vegetarian meals that i enjoyed and making more deliberate choices about what i ate, and it was a choice that i carried with me. I now identify as "flexitarian", which means that i often eat vegetarian meals, but have no health/moral objections to eating meat sometimes (one of my favorite meals: veggie burgers wrapped in bacon).

This year, i toyed with giving up meat again, but i just don't eat it often enough for it to be a real sacrifice. I also toyed with adding a positive practice instead of deleting a negative one; i thought about adding another two days to my workout routine. But recent life changes have prompted me to redo the entire routine anyway, and i have no clue how i would fit any extra days in there right now. No need to add religious guilt to my personal health guilt. And then i simultaneously forgot and decided i didn't care this year.

But i do want to make my life better. I do want to take what God has given me (talents, time, resources, etc.) and do good things with them. I do want to live a life to be proud of. I do want to accomplish things. I've already done so many incredible things (spending six months traveling around Europe, graduating from college, a missions trip to Nicaragua, spending a month on a boat in Puerto Rico, moving far away from family and friends, getting tattoos, eating snails and octopus and tofu and weird fried baby fishes and scrapple and cashew fruit, teaching myself different skills, and so on), but there is so much left to do.

This season of loss and lamentation and desperate hope encourages quiet reflection. It also encourages getting off your ass and doing something to improve your life. And this year in particular, when i have been surrounded by so much death and sickness and reminders of mortality, i've been thinking about the things i still want out of life, big and small.

So here goes:

• i want to finish this damned degree
• i want to get a full-time job teaching English in a public high school
• i want to get married
• i want to go to Greece
• i want to learn to make a souffle
• i want to be published
• i want to have kids
• i want to attend a same-sex wedding
• i want to vote for a female candidate for President of the United States
• i want there to be a female President of the United States
• i want to buy a house
• i want to buy an electric/hybrid car
• i want to plant, tend, and compost my own garden
• i want to make money from something i've written
• i want to get a chest freezer
• i want to learn to make my own preserves
• i want to take a shooting course
• i want to take an archery course
• i want to go to Venice
• i want to make my own cheese
• i want to keep bees (NB: this may prove to be an unrealistic goal, in which case i'd like to instead aspire to meet a local bee-keeper and buy all my bee products from him/her)
• i want to go to Ireland
• i want to get back to volunteering with a riding therapy group
• i want to make enough money from writing that i can be a stay-at-home mom/housewife and still contribute significant financial support to my family

Life is fluid. Goals change and move. New desires arise and old ones die out. So this list will likely (hopefully) be continuously updated over the years. But it's a good start.

saving me (time)

There is no quick fix. There is no perfect solution. There is no switch to turn the lights back on. Work as hard as you can, fight as hard as you can, but know that you will have to wait for the dawn.

why my boyfriend is a saint

You guys, i am a fucking handful.

It's not just the bouts of depression and anxiety, or the tendency to lash out in anger at the wrong people, or the habit of rambling on and on long past the point where i've said what i wanted to say, or the constant distractions of the written word, or my tumultuous relationship with my parents, or my penchant for melodramatic hyperbole, or my difficulty with expressing my negative feelings productively, or my flirtations with vegetarianism, or my bizarre affection for my cat (have i mentioned my tendency to ramble unnecessarily?).

All of that is mostly manageable, and mostly improving, and some of it is charming (as i keep trying to explain to him). Even all of it together isn't really all that bad; after all, we all have our flaws, charming or otherwise, we all carry our baggage and our scars, and anyone who gets into a relationship and isn't expecting at least some crap to be flung at their head is either extremely deluded or is in a relationship with a robot, sex doll, or other inanimate object.

But here's the thing: i can't live in the moment.

Some moments, yes. A moment that is particularly thrilling, moving, absorbing. I was completely wrapped up in Les Miserables. I was totally enthralled this morning when taking notes in a class. I am 100% focused during sex. When my brother was shot, i lived in the moment for weeks. I could barely think far enough ahead to go to work and feed myself each day. When something touches the very core of me, i will live in as many moments as it gives me.

But in every day life, i'm too eager. When things are going well, i want to run ahead and climb the next hill, because i can't wait to see how much better life will be. When things are going badly, i want to run away and over the next hill, because i can't wait for things to change. I can't just sit and let my bad feelings simmer and mellow. I can't just sit and let my good feelings deepen and expand. I have to get to the next thing.

This is especially apparent in my relationship.

John is very much about the moment. He rarely makes plans more than three weeks in advance. So when i'm trying to make plans for Valentine's day (just over three weeks away) or our anniversary (just over three months away) or Thanksgiving (hey, i told you i had a problem), his eyes are glazing over and he's saying, "It's January 23rd. How about if we make plans for the weekend?" And i'm like, "Okay, and then we can make plans for our 47th wedding anniversary!"

And that's the crux of the issue. I don't really know how to be someone's girlfriend.

I know how to be a friend. I know how to be someone's flirty friend who secretly has a crush on them and on whom they secretly have a crush. I know how to do the early stages of the relationship, where you're still a little awkward, still figuring out the rhythms of conversation and kissing, still testing your boundaries. And i know that the end game is marriage. Honestly, there has never been a point in my life where i seriously doubted whether i would ever get married. I always knew that i would some day, and i obviously knew that i would be dating the guy for a while first. But in my head, the fantasy was like, meet a guy in the library, flirt shamelessly for a few weeks, go on some coffee dates, go on some dinner dates, go to some concerts and plays, attend some events (like weddings and parties), meet the families, fall more and more in love, and then get married.

And we've done all that. We've seen plays and concerts, we've gone to a wedding, we've met the families, we're in love, we've done birthdays and Christmases and we're approaching our second anniversary. We've hit all the milestones, passed all the standards. So now my brain is telling me that the next step is to get married.

And that's true, to an extent. The next major thing that John and i do will either be to get married or break up. That's just how relationships go. But when i say "next thing", i don't necessarily mean "tomorrow" or "next week". Maybe next year, but that's still a long way away, and is by no means definite.

There are still questions i have to answer about him, and questions he has to answer about me. We've both seen things in the other person that we're not sure we want in our life partner. We've both seen a lack of things in the other person that we think we might want in our life partner. We've both seen things that are not necessarily issues or deficits, but are differences between us that may not be reconcilable. Logically, i know that we are not ready to get married yet. I need to finish my M. Ed. and get a job, he needs to get into and complete a master's program of his own, we need to find an apartment and a church, i need to get my budget under control, he needs to pick a book for Bible study . . . Logically, i know we are not ready to get married yet. I just don't know what to do right now, how to be his serious, long-term girlfriend without pressing him to move forward.

But he still puts up with me. His eyes may (definitely) glaze over when i start talking about wedding crap, but he lets me ramble. I may ask him every other day (or six times every day) what he wants to do for our anniversary, but he is still patient and gentle when he says, "I don't know. It's still three months away." He may get a little scared sometimes and give me a quick lecture on managing my expectations, but he doesn't run away. In fact, he is still excited to see me every day, still wants to snuggle me closer, still wants to make plans with me and dream dreams with me and anticipate a future with me, even if that future only extends three weeks from now. So i try to keep a tight grip on my horses and look around me a little more, because this moment i'm in right now? It's pretty damn amazing, and i want to make sure i cherish it.

words, words, words

Hello!

I know you're all DYING to know what's happening with my comic book, so here's a quick update: STUFF. STUFF is going on.

One of my roommates (the Outlaw) is also a writer, and we've both been sorely missing the regular workshops that we had when we were in school. Recently, we decided to start workshopping again, hoping to draw other people in and forming a real writing group. So far, we have two and a half people.

The Outlaw and i have met twice. The second time we met, i gave him what i had so far of my comic script, and i got some really great feedback -- helpful, constructive, informative, encouraging. I have a LOT of work ahead of me, but i'm energized about it, so it won't be too bad.

We've decided to meet every week, and to vary the format: week one, we will workshop our own individual pieces. Week two, we will work on a collaborative play/short story thing that was Outlaw's idea. This gives us time in between meetings to write and revise based on workshops, helps us keep up our momentum, and allows plenty of time for thinking and reading and re-reading.

The half person has been invited to join the workshop meetings and is excited. Hopefully, we will have our first meeting with her next week.

So i'm re-writing my prologue and expanding it, and then i'll continue with the rest of the story, editing and darkening and writing, writing, writing. I'm very excited to have other people look at my work, and to see work from other people. There is nothing more inspiring than a really good workshop.

And if you live in the Boston area and have been looking for a writing workshop, let me know! We'd love to expand the group further.

process story

I know you've all been desperate to know what it's like to write a comic book. I can tell by the way that one of my dozens of posts about comic books got one comment.

Since i'm halfway through the first chapter of my first ever comic book, i clearly have a lot of expertise to share. I did read a few pages of one of Neil Gaiman's comic scripts once, and i know he writes a pretty full script, so basically i'm ready to teach a master's course in comic book writing.

Anyway, here's what i do: I already have a manuscript of straight prose, early drafts of the stories. I also have handwritten notes, maps, appendices, extra story outlines, and so forth. So i open the Word document, find the story i'm converting into comic script format, and draw a text box. This represents one page.

I then begin writing the first panel. Each page is a little different, and i have two different writing methods. For some pages, i know exactly what will happen in terms of the story, but i need to figure out how it will look. So i get my notebook, a Christmas present from my boyfriend, and start sketching.

It is important to note here that i am a terrible artist. If i were patient, and had all day to work with pencils and erasers and colored pencils and extra paper, i could produce one comics page that would look halfway decent. But i find it very difficult to draw the same person recognizably more than once. I also don't know a lot about things like shading, and i'm not very experienced or talented. So this is really just to help me figure out the action: who will be standing and who will be sitting? Will we see characters close up or from a distance? From what angle are they being viewed? How many panels will there be for this page, and what sizes and shapes will they be? Once i have the page sketched out, i write the page.

Other times, i start by filling in the text box with smaller text boxes, to represent the panels. I already know what i want it to look like visually. I do the writing in Word, and then i start doodling just to make sure that what i wrote makes sense visually.

Since i already have the story written, the conversion process is a fairly simple one. All i am doing is transferring the existing writing into panels. I need to decide how much of the story goes into each panel, and what else is happening at the same time, but it's really just a question of breaking the story into smaller chunks. There's a little bit of editing that happens at the same time, and here and there i'll write a note to change something later on, but mostly it's adaptation.

Each time i finish a page, i play a few rounds on FreeRice and read some webcomics, or walk over to the student center for coffee or a snack. I sit at a computer all day, so it's nice to get up and move when i can. And i need to let my brain breathe for a little while before tackling the next thing.

Maybe one day i will be a famous comics author and i can auction off my old notebooks for charity. And then when i'm dead, my estate will make t-shirts, postcards, and coffee mugs out of my shitty script sketches. Or maybe they'll just end up in a box in the attic, and the cat will pee on them, and then when i'm dead my kids will open up the box and immediately throw it away. Cat pee is gross, and the smell never goes away.

Well, that took an odd turn. Man, i can't wait to send part of the script to my potential artist so i can start actually posting updates about what's happening with this thing!

question

SPOILER ALERT FOR MY COMIC BOOK

Okay.

So for this comic book i'm writing? It will span about a thousand years. I'm roughly following the timeline of human history, at least in terms of clothing styles, technology, cultural activities (jousting tournament vs. football game), and architecture. I won't be including real things like civil rights (they've always existed in this world) or WWI or II. It's not set in a real country. I won't be worrying about vocabulary, except when it's fun (S'blood! Look at that swanky tomato! Groovy!)

However, the thing about comic books is that they provide something of a shortcut. You don't have to spend pages and pages setting up the plot and explaining that this takes place two months before Martin Luther King, Jr. was killed. You don't have to give background or describe the demographics of the hometown. You can just show a couple of panels of people wearing particular clothing and having brief conversations about MLK while engaging in particular activities, and everyone knows exactly what you're talking about. You've cut to the heart of the story without wasting time.

So regardless of the actual country that my story is set in, and regardless of the actual events discussed within it, if i have men in powdered wigs and knee-breeches, or women in flapper dresses with shingle haircuts, everyone is going to feel like they already know something about the story. There will be certain feelings and expectations brought up by the visual cues, which is the whole point of having visual cues.

I know. The title of this post is "question", and so far all i've done is lecture you on comic book visuals. I'm getting there, i promise.

The last issue will take place somewhere in the 20th or 21st century. I've thought a lot about the visual cues (bell-bottom jeans vs. pencil skirts, top hats vs. backwards baseball caps), and i've thought a lot about the subtler nuances of culture conveyed by those visual cues (Civil Rights movement, suffrage for women, Great Depression, Space Race).

I have narrowed it down to three decades: the 1920s (flapper princess?! What's not to love?), 1950s (suits and cigarettes and bright red lipstick), and 2010s (a princess with skinny jeans and tattoos?). I'm asking everyone for an opinion on this, because when someone hears the bare bones of this story, there are certain feelings and thoughts evoked, and certain visuals begin to swim around their heads. Readers tend to make up their minds about certain things and to know what makes sense and what doesn't, and i'm trusting those instincts.

The overarching narrative of this whole series is two-fold: the fairy world is in conflict with the human one, and two fairies are struggling to rule one another. The two fairies are half-siblings, and the older one is of mixed race. They therefore have equal claim to the throne, and after many centuries of fighting they have decided that one of them will keep Faerie while one gets the human world. Of course, each is secretly planning to kill their sibling and take over both worlds.

In this final issue, they have decided to each marry one human, so as to gain a foothold in the human world to help jumpstart their conquest. But Rhynesh falls for the princess and kills his sister, putting an end to the plan. He then cuts all ties between the two worlds, ensuring that fairies won't be able to harass humans any longer.

So what decade? 1920s, 1950s, or 2010s? If you have an idea for another decade, feel free to make your case.

Phoenix

I said before that i didn't adapt existing fairy tales to fit the structure of my book, except when i had writer's block. And i don't really have any interest in continuing to work on these stories, to adapt and edit and turn them into comics that have a place in the narrative i have created.

But i kinda do.

It wouldn't be part of the overall narrative, probably a separate volume of bonus issues, with maybe some behind-the-scenes stuff (old drafts, scripts, etc). One of those things that doesn't really have a place on the timeline, but that nevertheless belongs to the same sort of world.

It would be great to do a few of my favorites, including some of the unfortunately overlooked ones (The Six Swans would be particularly well-suited to my world), but i'd mostly like to avoid the overdone, Disney-fied ones (like Snow White, who only manages to stop being Betty Boop in my head when she is written by Gregory Maguire or Gail Carson Levine). And Cinderella exists in every culture in the world; what's the point of rehashing that one? The gruesome roots of Sleeping Beauty might be kind of fun to explore, but i'm not sure i actually want to publish a fairy tale about rape and attempted cannibalism, especially since people are not very good at Googling and would likely assume that i made up those elements of the story. (I didn't).

So i was all set to hunt out obscure and beautiful stories that were easily adaptable. And then one day, i was out for a walk around my neighborhood, when it occurred to me that there was still something new to say about Cinderella.

My Cinderella is an agent of AVIS. (Don't worry if you have no idea what that means. I don't think you're supposed to yet.) She is one of the most powerful and talented magicians/witches/agents (haven't figured out what to call them yet) they have ever seen. And AVIS badly needs some political support and power. Cinderella (Phoenix) wants to continue her studies, train other agents, and launch an attack against Faerie. AVIS wants her to become a queen so that they can get an official militia behind them.

Eventually, she is pressured into marrying the doofus prince (what kind of man bases his decision to marry you on how tiny your feet are?), but she is angry and frustrated. She therefore uses her magic to live up to her name and escape the banality of her existence, all in one fell swoop (bonus points to whoever figures out how she does it).

Call for Artists

Guys, this is for serious. Everyone in my office is on their staff retreat right now, so i'm basically writing nonstop at my desk. This is great, because i don't have a desk at home, so it's very hard for me to write when i'm there. I've been very productive yesterday and today, and the book is really coming into focus.

And it has to be comics.

Until i started reading comics, it would never in a trillion years have occurred to me to write one. I don't write superhero stories, i can't draw, and i'm not interested in attending conventions with people dressed as Spock or Batman. I didn't know that it was possible to write comics outside of those parameters. I thought that comics necessarily equaled superheroes and loner nerds.

Sandman has proved me wrong. V for Vendetta has proved me wrong. Hell, even Batman and X-Men have proved me wrong. Suddenly, i get why people like these things, why comics have endured for generations, why kids can grow up reading comics and be no less in love with them as they approach (or even pass) middle age.

And now, the book i've been struggling to write for over seven years makes sense. It needs to be a comic.

But i still can't draw. I still need an artist.

So if anyone reading this is a comics artist, or knows someone who is a comics artist, or has a cousin whose ex-husband works with a guy whose daughter's college roommate is a comics artist, send them my way. It's going to take a while for this whole thing to be ready to roll, but with everything suddenly making so much sense in my head and on paper, i don't want to delay any more than i have to.

So, seriously. If you know anyone who might want to collaborate with a stranger on the internet who claims to have a great story for a comic book and has never been published before, send them my way. But do it discreetly, because anyone who reads that last sentence and thinks, "This sounds like a wonderful and totally legitimate business opportunity!" may not be someone i want to work with.

prologue

Remember on Monday, when i posted a long ramble about how everything i do sucks and i don't know how to do it better so i'm just going to keep doing it? Here's a draft of the prologue to the book i was whining about, written sometime in my freshman or sophomore year of college. If this is ever published, you can consider this a teaser. If, as is far more likely, it stays on my flash drive until i die, it may be less of a teaser and more of an incomprehensible ramble about fictional fairy racial conflicts. So without further ado, i present to you: AVIS.

It

 all started with Nareena. Or rather, with Rhynesh. Or perhaps it would be most accurate to say that it started with Fox. Actually, let me start over.

         

It all started with racial prejudice, which started the same way that it always does: from nothing. In this case, the two races in question were fairy races: the Kevarths and the Spencers. Like most humans, both races were an even mix of good and bad qualities and attributes, and they were totally indistinguishable from one another in every way that mattered. In fact, both races were the descendents of the same family. Yet each race seemed to feel that there were huge and irreconcilable differences between them.

The one really empirical difference is that the Kevarths had a slightly reddish tint to their skin, and the Spencers had a slightly bluish tint. But even this difference was pretty meaningless; being fairies, they were able to alter their appearances with a glamour whenever they desired.

          Eventually, there was a war. The Kevarths won, though it was a very close thing, and the Spencers were enslaved.

          Reality has a way of being shaped by perception. Over the centuries, differences between the races began to develop. The Kevarths, as the ruling class, developed a taste for power and cruelty. Eventually, every instinct for good disappeared, and the Kevarths were only able to find pleasure in the suffering of others.

          But Nature always finds a balance, and if there is no balance to be found, she creates one. As the Kevarths lost their goodness, the Spencers lost their evil. They became the first, and possibly only, purely good creatures in recorded history.

          Once in a very great while, a Kevarth would take a fancy to one of the Spencer slaves. Of course, no lasting relationship could ensue, but sometimes there were children, children who inherited an equal mix of good and bad qualities. The children would also have a purple tint to their skin, but most would adopt a permanent glamour of red or blue, depending on which race they identified with. If there had been a middle class in Masroe, it would have been composed of the mixed races; instead, most mixed fairies chose to display blue skin and ended up as slaves, albeit high class and expensive ones.

          One day, something very unusual happened. King Fox married a Spencer. The Queen, Rihana, bore him a son, and they named him Rhynesh. However, the outcry from the Kevarth population was so great that King Fox feared for his throne – and his life. Being a Kevarth and therefore devoid of any capacity for selflessness or true affection had his wife executed. Shortly after, he married again. His second wife, Addison, was pure Kevarth, and notorious for her hatred of Spencers. The king wanted to make sure that this marriage was above reproach. She, in turn, bore a child to Fox, a daughter named Nareena.

And that is where it all started.

not sure where this is going

So.

Seven years ago, i started writing a fairy tale. I had intended it to be novel length (which, according to the almighty Google, should be somewhere above 200 pages). When my little masterpiece was all neatly typed and edited in Microsoft Word, it was 25 pages. But in the meantime, i had written several more fairy tales.

The first one, begun in the back of my diary on a slow night at the Quiznos where i worked, was supposed to be a stand-alone project. Over the next few years, the stories were written in Quiznos, in church, in my bedroom, in airplanes, in German living rooms, in Spanish kitchens, in English dorm rooms, in Italian hotels, and in the great outdoors. And as i wrote, i began to see connections between my stories, places of contact where the smaller pieces could be woven into a compelling whole.

Can't you just picture cute forest
animals helping her bake a pie?

I began editing in different colors of ink, writing and rewriting by hand until there was an established shape and structure to my narrative. I filled whole notebooks with studies on races, languages, geographical features, economic structures, histories, and diplomatic relations between countries i had invented. I drew maps, illustrating shipping ports, mountains, areas of high magical concentration, types of commerce and industry, and major cities. I created charters for magical societies, drew family trees, and studied existing fairy tales and fantasy novels for clues about battle, magic, sociology, layered meanings, and how to create an original fairy tale that was recognizably a fairy tale. When i had writer's block, i found a popular fairy tale and re-wrote it to fit the history of my own stories (Cinderella, Rapunzel, and Snow White all got this treatment. I also wrote an outline of an alternate Snow White narrative where this snow-white-skin-ebony-black-hair-blood-red-lips girl was a modern Goth teenager). 


I began typing and transcribing and editing further. I re-drew my maps. I sent pieces of stories to friends for review and suggestions. I put my notebooks and flash drive away for months at a time to focus on school. I pulled them out again to do more editing and transcribing and dreaming.

A few weeks ago, the final story was transcribed. All that was left was the final editing of the overall structure and the story would be complete and ready for publication.

Except that, as i worked on these stories, i realized something important: they suck. I know: it's shocking that a fifteen-year-old writing in the back room of a Quiznos between the dinner rush and the dirtbag rush didn't come up with a literary masterpiece, but somehow this was the case.

However, there are still elements worth redeeming. But i'm not sure that short stories or novels are really my "thing". In the interest of preserving the good parts and replacing the bad parts with more good parts, i'm looking into what can be done to "save" this endeavor. And here is my thought: graphic novel. See, the parts that i suck at the most are the descriptions. I can do dialogue, and i can do exposition, and i can do romance and humor and tragedy and all that crap. But i can't show you what's happening, and we all know that the cardinal rule of writing is "show, don't tell".

As i have been reading graphic novels and comic books, i have seen that they are a really great shortcut for the "showing" part of writing. With the exception of very early comic books (X-Men, i'm looking at you), works in these genres let the images do the showing, allowing the writers to concentrate on the other parts of the writing. I've learned that writing a graphic novel is a little like writing a TV show/movie/play: what the writer produces is, in fact, called a script. It has things like dialogue and exposition, but it also has things like, "Full body shot of girl in a skimpy blue negligee. She has choppy blonde hair and is thin, but painfully so, like she's malnourished. She is facing the reader, but is gazing at nothing -- zoned out." The writer collaborates with artists, inkers, letterers, and colorists (these may not all the the technical terms) to produce a beautiful, fascinating, cohesive work of art and literature.

I want to do that, please.

Catch 1: i can't draw. Like, at all.

Catch 2: the people i know who can draw can't draw like what's in my head when i write these stories, and i don't want to do this if i can't do it right.

Catch 3: being a broke blogger/aspiring poet/grad student/administrative assistant with ZERO experience with any actual publication, any novel/short story writing, or any real publishing credits to my name, i don't have anything to convince a real comic book/graphic novel artist to work with me. For free. With no guarantee of compensation.

Catch 4: the limited Google research i did before writing this post has led me to conclude that publishers won't look at a graphic novel script. They only want to see a polished manuscript complete with artwork. If you're someone with some clout, like an employee of a comic publisher or Neil Gaiman, you can announce that you'd like to create a graphic novel and someone will probably respond. If you're me, i don't know what you do.

So.

I plan to continue editing/polishing/writing, possibly creating two copies of this book (one written as a traditional text novel and one as a script for a graphic novel). I plan to continue blogging/writing poems and being too scared to submit them anywhere/working toward my education degree/answering phones. And one day, maybe i'll meet someone who has always dreamed of creating a graphic novel of original fairy tales, but hasn't found anyone to write a script that matches the glorious images in his or her head.

And then magic will happen.

penultimate

Today is the next to last class i will have to take for my degree (i hope). I'm at work, frantically trying to finish an assessment portfolio for a unit on fairy tales. Yes, fairy tales. Don't you wish i was your teacher? (No, because i'm a tough grader and you don't want to participate in a Socratic seminar on the feminist critique of fairy tales or create a picture book detailing all the graphic violence and darkness in the original tales.)

Anyway, i have this class today and one on Monday, and then i'm done with classwork. I still have observations and student teaching, but i'm essentially done.

I don't have time or mental energy to write much more right now, because i'm still trying to finish this thing, but i just wanted to say that i'm almost done with my M.Ed. And i still don't know if that's the correct abbreviation for it.

the essential perhaps

In my junior year of college, i participated in the annual Magnetic Poetry Contest during Arts Week. And i won second place. I got a basketball t-shirt from the clearance rack of the school store. This remains my proudest poetry accomplishment to date.

Two of my professors asked me to read the poem in class the next day. It was a weird time for everyone involved.

The original version was a pretty random mish-mash of words and phrases; in other words, it was exactly what you'd expect from a magnetic poetry contest. But the one line that the contest judge kept repeating, the one line that i think won me my prize, was a line that stuck with me.

I won't share the original version here, because i do have some pride. But now, two years after my glorious victory, i have edited it almost beyond recognition. Only one line remains. There is still a lot of work to be done, but at least it's something now, instead of word salad.

there is a throbbing in my bones:
i am in reckless pursuit
of the essential perhaps
nothing is as seductive
as possibility
it is the only certain alchemy
turning disappointment to hope

Clearly I Need To Get More Tattoos

Today marks the one-year anniversary of my first ever blog post. It was a poem i wrote for class; i edited it and posted it as the introduction for who i am and why i do what i do.

The year has gone by quickly. April was when i started dating John and moved into my first real apartment, May was my college graduation, August was when i started my first grown-up job, September was when i started grad school, October was when my brother was wounded, February was my first "real" Valentine's day and my first venture into vegetarianism AND the time i met Mark Oshiro AND the day that my brother's leg was amputated, and my first year of blogging closed out with a continuation of reasons that i should live with my boyfriend, reflections on my brother, and a very strange piece of short creative non-fiction i wrote in my sophomore year of college.

I have to be honest: i'm still not totally sure what this blog is. It's probably most honest to call it a diary (or LiveJournal, if you're Benji and want to make fun of me).

My confusion is shared by my readers, as evidenced by some of my search terms. The most popular search term of all time is "never settle tattoo", which makes sense, since my most popular blog post of all time is the one where i talk about getting a tattoo that says 'never settle'. My second most popular search term is "Diana Lark", which means that i'm famous because people are actually searching for me by name. Right? Third is "awasiwi odinak", which was the title of this post about how i like nature and travel and walking and such. For those of you who may have Googled this term looking for a definition, i got the phrase from the TV show The West Wing. According to them, it means either 'beyond the village' or 'far from the things of man'. My fourth most popular term is represented by several variations of "world's happiest turtle". My favorite variation is "picture turtle eating a strawberry you'll never experience this joy". That seems awfully threatening to me. (Is threatening the word i want?) Anyway, if you want to know the kind of joy you're missing out on, the picture is at the top of this post.

As of this moment, i have gotten just over 2,000 pageviews. Total. In one year. My boyfriend keeps getting excited about my blog stats and telling me that i will be a famous blogger, and doesn't really listen when i tell him that many bloggers who are not really "famous" generally get several hundred pageviews a day. My record is 284 in one month. Furthermore, most bloggers are only famous to other bloggers. We're a weird bunch.

Anyway, i'm glad to see you all here. For those of you who are looking for more tattoos, rest assured that i am working on it. In fact, i've gotten another tattoo and just haven't written about it yet. For those looking for Diana Lark, you've come to the right place. For those looking to get away from it all, maybe start by turning off your computer and going outside? And for those looking for cute turtles eating strawberries, ME TOO. They are absurdly precious, aren't they?

Writing Retreat, Day 4

These are two poems that i've been working on for a while. I spent some time on the retreat editing and polishing them.

deployment


this is the shape of things:
the trees are naked but for their coats
of ice, bordering the highway
like hand-carved crystal.

this is the shape of things:
hard and clear, the trees
tell me that maybe
i've already said goodbye.

this is the shape of things:
you are leaving,
i have already gone.

no atheists in foxholes


her brother, the agnostic, prays
over his food, asks for a blessing.
he sends out his requests
without naming names.
no longer certain that anyone hears, he nevertheless prays
over his food.

protestant to the backbone, she
lights candles anyway.
she thinks it can't hurt,
and it might help to see
hope
keep burning. she waits and prays
far from his hospital bed.

sometimes the lines blur,
and what matters is faith.

The Other Man

When i write romantic poetry, it is often inspired by whatever guy i have been foolish enough to let into my life recently. (I promise this is not a bitter, bitchy, Vagina Monologues-style rant. In fact, i can almost guarantee that you will say "Awwww!" at least once by the end. Just keep reading.) However, my poems are never directly about that guy.

For example, in this poem, i am talking about my ex (we'll call him Casey). Most of our relationship was long distance, so we texted a lot. So that was true. And i was living through a hot, humid summer. So that part was true. But all of that beautiful, romantic crap about the text messages tethering me to reality, and feeling at home in him? Yeah. Not true about Casey.

It's never really been true about anyone. I have a highly idealized "muse" who is featured prominently in a lot of my poetry. Some of my male romantic leads are a combination of the guy i'm actually with and this "Other Man". Some of them are just him (we'll call him T.O.M. for short). In fact, i even wrote a poem where i make a sort of oblique reference to T.O.M., saying that i wrote to him because i hadn't met him yet.

Sometimes, i thought that T.O.M. was "the one", some bizzare poetic presentiment of the person i was supposed to be waiting for. Sometimes, i thought i was setting my standards too high, mooning over someone who did not and never would exist. Sometimes, i just thought i was a good writer, and had created a fully-realized male romantic lead that any girl would fall for.

I would start to write a poem about a real moment that i had actually experienced with a flesh-and-blood man who was present in my life (humid day, feeling like i'm dissolving into the atmosphere, Casey texts me, and we're off!). But then, i would begin to add or change things, thinking that the moment would have been so much better if Casey had said this, or if i had felt that, or if these particular thoughts had been in my head at the moment. I embroider reality liberally. I am a poet, after all.

I'm not saying that he's T.O.M., but my latest crush (we'll call him John) has begun to inspire poetry. And so far, i have not felt the need to embroider a single second of it. Every moment spent with John is complete as is. And while i know that there are things still unsaid and moments yet to experience, i don't feel the need to overlay reality with what could and will be.

I'm not saying that John is T.O.M. It's too early to say anything like that. I am saying that he inspires me, and that poems about and moments with him feel complete. And that's got to mean something.

thoughts in class: Progress

Progress implies drawing closer to an ultimate goal. Progress in medicine means that we are closer to discovering cures for cancer, AIDS, etc. Progress in diplomatic relations means that we are closer to granting the wishes of every beauty pageant contestant ever: world peace. But some things have no progress, like fashion. You will never hear someone say, “This sweater is perfect. No one ever needs to design another one again, and we can all throw out our old ones, because this is the perfect sweater.” It’s the same with literature, and with a lot of other things. They don’t progress. They just change.