Category: Life

What I’ve Learned in Three More Months of Quarantine

Back in May, I posted a list of what I learned in the first two months of quarantine-life: things I learned to do, fun factoids I didn’t know before, things I learned about myself, and more.  This was and remains the best way I’ve found to journal about the pandemic, and some of it was pretty funny, at least to me. So I kept it going.

I meant to post this last month, so that it would be what I’ve learned in two more months of quarantine, but time is weird now, and here we are.

So here is what I’ve learned in three more months of quarantine. Enjoy.

  • What moldy garlic feels like (it’s weirdly powdery).
  • Contrary to a lot of recommendations on the internet, you can’t just use aquafaba as an egg replacement to make a non-vegan cake vegan. You need to have a vegan cake recipe. This lesson came with a cake pan full of batter that refused to solidify and yet was also somehow burning on top.
  • That you should not read a plague book in the middle of a plague. I made this mistake twice (and will probably willfully make it again whenever the third Nevermoor book comes out because I don’t care).
  • That I’ve learned Unified English Braille so well that I now have trouble reading old Braille.
  • That risotto requires a lot of stirring. And I mean a lot of stirring.
  • That I might just not like prequels to books.
  • That the book I’ve been writing is actually two books. So now I have almost complete drafts of a middle grade space adventure and a sequel. Yikes!
  • That I can type in Braille right onto the screen of my iPhone. I actually learned this in March when I got my new iPhone, but I’ve since perfected it, and it is super cool.
  • How to actually make a vegan cake. Also flax eggs are nifty.
  • I don’t understand how they work, but food processors are magical.
  • That I do better when things are scheduled for me. I reactivated my barre membership so I could take the virtual classes with the actual instructors from my studio, and actually signing up for specific time slots means I actually take the class, which was not happening when I was just trying to use videos whenever I felt like it.
  • That I have in fact, finally, fallen into a new routine. Is it a routine I like? No, not at all. But it’s a routine and that’s progress.
  • That even though the metro is opening up, I am terrified to get on it.
  • That social distancing when you’re blind means a lot of trusting other people to do the right thing, and that generally I do not trust other people to do the right thing. Sorry.
  • That I don’t do well with the unknown, and reminding myself that the people who are making the decisions don’t know what’s going on either doesn’t help. I already knew this about myself but as the unknown stretches on longer and longer it seemed important to say.
  • That I miss the headphones I left on my desk at work on March 13.
  • That I didn’t actually leave my headphones on my desk at work on March 13.
  • That I don’t know where my favorite headphones are.
  • That a certain author who wrote the Harry Potter books and shall not be named is a horrible, horrible person.
  • But on the other hand, Twilight is not as bad as I give it credit for. No it’s not great, but it’s not as bad as I’ve been making it out to be.
  • Also when it comes to Edward Cullen I am apparently still a sixteen-year-old girl. Deal with it.
  • That the Twilight movies aren’t that bad either, though definitely sometimes unintentionally hilarious.
  • How to spell misogyny. The first y gets me every time.
  • That a subscription for the New York Times cooking app is 100% worth it. Seriously I have loved everything I’ve tried so far!
  • That I use my oven way more than I thought I did.
  • How to make homemade potato gnocchi without a potato ricer and without a ton of flour.
  • That I will be continuing to telework for a long, long time, possibly until next June, and that I’ve gotten so used to telework that I no longer viscerally hate it. I don’t like it, but I don’t hate it.
  • That melatonin makes my covid dreams a whole lot weirder.
  • That friendships change, and when you find yourself saying, “That’s fine, and I understand that, but…” to everything going on, it might be time to think about whether it really is fine.
  • That scented toilet paper exists.
  • That I do not like scented toilet paper.
  • That there is nothing quite like buying a book the second it comes out and dropping everything to read it. It’s been a while since I did this, but I did it twice in August and I should do it more often because it is wonderful.

And that’s it. I’ll keep noting down things I’m learning in pandemic life, and whenever I have a good-sized list again, I’ll post that too. I hope you all are keeping healthy, safe, and sane, and maybe it’s too much to ask of 2020, but I hope things start to look up from here.

What I’ve Learned in Two Months of Quarantine

I only read one book in April, so I’m not doing a whole post on that. Instead I’ll talk about that one book along with my May books in a few weeks. In the meantime, I want to chat with you all about my quarantine life.

In case you’ve been living under a rock for the past three months, the coronavirus has taken over the world, and no plucky sixteen-year-old heroine has risen up to save us yet.

Personally, I haven’t been in to work since March 13. The last time my writing group met in person was March 14, and we realized after the fact that we probably shouldn’t have done that. The last time I went to a barre class at my local studio was March 16. Aside from walks around the neighborhood to keep up Neutron’s training, I’ve been quarantining for sixty-eight days.

I recognize that I have been incredibly lucky. I’m safe and healthy. I still have a job. I have plenty of food and toilet paper. But I’m not going to pretend it hasn’t been hard. I’ve been happier in D.C. than I’ve been in a long time, and in a little less than a week, most of the things that made me really happy were gone. I’m hopeful that most everything will come back once it’s safe, but  that doesn’t mean it isn’t hard right now.

At the start of all this, I heard a lot of people saying that you should journal about these times. I have successfully kept a journal exactly once in my life, during my year living in Italy, and even then I was pretty bad at it. But back in March, I thought I’d give journaling another try. These are, after all, extraordinary times, and I thought it would be cool to have my own record of them. But honestly I found that living March was so awful that I did not want to then write about it. I tried just writing down what I was doing each day, but even that was too much. And so, as the quarantine continued with no end in sight, I just started a list of things I was learning during this time. Things I was learning about myself, things I was learning to do, random little factoids that intrigued me.

Since we’re now two months into this, I thought it was time to share my list.

So here’s what I’ve learned in two months of quarantine:

How to make really good bread. Seriously I may never buy bread again.

  • I hated telework before all this started. I have not learned to like it. No, I still definitely hate it.

I am happier when I have something to do. Having nothing to do makes me miserable and leads to excessive napping.

Having nothing to do also does not make me more productive at things like reading, exercising, blogging, playing the clarinet, or any of the many craft projects I have lying around my apartment. Remember what I said about only reading one book in April?

Don’t aggressively wipe down pasta boxes with disinfectant.

Pasta boxes also have directions on the back, and I should read them. Also red lentil pasta is only okay.

Routines are glorious things. I miss my routine. But it’s hard to motivate myself to keep a routine when there’s nothing to hold you accountable to it.

I miss dressing up in my professional clothes and going to work. The novelty of working in my pajamas has definitely worn off. But somehow it’s now a routine. Aaaahhhh!

How to actually use track changes in Word. I think I’ve been doing it wrong for years.

Even though it has a lower fat content than American ice cream, gelato has eggs in it.

You can make vegetable broth by boiling all your vegetable scraps.

Microwaving frozen vegetables is a sure path to spontaneously crying into your plate about how bad the world has gotten. Seriously sauté them with olive oil and a lot of spices and life will be much better. Still not as good as fresh vegetables but better than microwaving them. (I actually already knew this from my time studying for the bar last summer but it bears repeating.)

I love Wegman’s. I also already knew this but it also bears repeating.

The difference between something I need and something I want. Yes I needed that ice cream machine.

That a pandemic is still better than law school in a lot of ways. That’s just sad.

How to play backgammon. Also it’s spelled backgammon, not batgammon.

That brushing harissa onto one side of tofu is not equivalent to marinating the tofu.

Networking is an excellent thing. I should do it more and maybe be less terrified of it.

I am no longer afraid of the telephone. Who am I kidding? I’m a millennial. Of course I’m still afraid of the telephone.

How to make really good homemade ice cream.

On the flipside, don’t substitute frozen berries for fresh, half-and-half for cream, and maple syrup for sugar all in one batch of ice cream. You will get a quart-and-a-half sized popsicle.

As much as I complain about the D.C. metro, I miss the D.C. metro.

When you sneeze, your snot leaves your nose at a whopping 200 miles per hour. (This is why masks are important, people, and this coming from someone who is kind of terrified of masks.)

I’m really hoping that I don’t have to write a list of what I’ve learned in two more months of quarantine, but at the same time, I don’t want to venture out into the world if it’s not safe. I’ve already had the flu this year, and my sinuses still haven’t recovered from that for some reason. As much as I want life to go back to normal, it’s not worth it if it puts me, my family and friends, my dog, or anyone else I might come into contact with at risk.

I hope you’ve found this list at least a little enjoyable to read. I’ll be back in a few weeks to talk about what I’ve been reading in quarantine. And in the meantime, as one of my coworkers likes to say: Stay healthy, stay safe, stay sane.

March Reading Roundup

Over the past several weeks, I thought about blogging more and getting this post up sooner. I meant to do it. I really did. But a solid sense of time and my motivation to do pretty much anything have gone out the window in social distancing life. But here I am now.

I hope everyone is holding up out there. I so far haven’t gotten sick or gone insane, but there’s still time. I did finish my five trillionth round of revisions on my middle grade fantasy project, and then my five trillion and first round of revisions. Now I’m back to the memory-wiping academy project. I also bought myself a television because my iPad or laptop just wasn’t enough of a screen, and I hope to have friends over for a movie night someday ever. I’ve been cooking all the time too. I’ve learned to make some really good bread thanks to a recipe my brother shared with me. I tried lentil pasta, with mixed results, and harissa marinated tofu which probably would have turned out better if I had enough harissa to actually marinate the tofu. But after that it’s been a lot of staples like couscous and frozen veggies or rice and beans or pasta. I’ve also been making homemade ice cream, and there’s no going back to the store-bought stuff now.

Basically I’m doing fine but life is upside down and I hate it so much, even though it’s definitely necessary.

I also read eight books in March. I read most of these books in the first half of March, before the lockdown set in. Oddly I haven’t been reading as much even though I’m stuck at home now. I saw a tweet about this somewhere. I can’t find it now, but the gist is we expect to be a lot more productive with life on lockdown, but we’re also spending a lot of time holding the existential dread at bay.

Collage of the eight books I read in March: A Little Taste of Poison, Archenemies, Ash Princess, Lady Smoke, Sandry's Book, Tris's Book, Babylon's Ashes, and The Drawing of the ThreeWhile I enjoyed all these books a lot, I admit that none of them really stuck out to me, and I’m having a hard time remembering them, but I think that’s more because of the world getting thoroughly messed up in the last month than the books’ fault.

I continued a lot of the series that I started last month, and I started a couple new series. I also read a variety of genres again, some middle grade and YA, some fantasy and sci fi, and a superhero story.

All the books I read were audiobooks. I’m not doing so great on my goal to read one Braille book a month. But even though I won’t be completely successful on this goal this year (unless one of you knows how to time travel), I’m going to keep trying.

Now let’s dive in and talk about these books.

First, I read the second Uncommon Magic book, A Little Taste of Poison by R. J. Anderson. I read the first book, A Pocket Full of Murder, back at the end of January, and I loved it lots. This was a great sequel. It did a great job following up on the problems left unsolved at the end of the first book, delving deeper into the world, and complicating everything further. My only complaint is there’s this epilogue at the end that, without spoiling anything, puts a new twist on everything, and it’s really sudden and fast and in my opinion makes the book and series feel incomplete. If there’s going to be a third book, I’d be okay with it, but I’m not sure there will be a third book based on my very cursory research on Goodreads. On the whole though I really loved this world and these characters, and this is a very fun middle grade fantasy series.

Next, I read the second Renegades book, Archenemies by Marissa Meyer. I don’t want to say too much in terms of plot synopsis because I don’t want to spoil the first book if you haven’t read it, and almost anything I say would be a spoiler. But we continue with the spying and the secret identities and the superhero teamwork and friends and romance and everything I loved about the first book. Archenemies took the story forward in a logical way but a different way than I expected. It also raised the stakes a lot, and it did a lot better with the issue I had with the first book that I felt like we were in the wrong character’s head during key moments for the other character. And oh my gosh I loved the twists this took for its characters and the complexities it added. I just love all the characters and I don’t know how I want this to end because I’m cheering for all of them (with a few exceptions). I’m really looking forward to diving into the third and final book soon.

Last year while I was studying for the bar, I read Ash Princess by Laura Sebastian. I really loved the book, but also had no recollection of it because I was studying for the bar. And since the third book just came out, I reread Ash Princess this month and then read the sequel, Lady Smoke. And just oh my gosh these books are amazing! Ash Princess follows Theo, the princess of a conquered country who has been kept by the conquering force as a prisoner and tortured to keep her people downtrodden. But when she is forced to do the unthinkable, Theo decides to fight back. These books go some really unexpected places, and I just love how brilliant and driven Theo is. She is willing to sacrifice everything for her goal, and she does. And while she has emotions like any other sixteen-year-old girl, she has iron control over them and she acts for her head every time. The world is also really interesting, and like I said the plot takes some really interesting twists and turns. At this point I’ve finished the third book, and while I’m not talking about this until next month, this series is one I’d love to go back and reread from the beginning knowing what’s coming. If you haven’t read these books, I highly recommend them.

After that, I read the sixth Expanse book, Babylon’s Ashes by James S. A. Corey. A lot of this book felt like fall-out from the events of the last book. There was a lot of political maneuvering and planning and then finally a big battle. We get to see Holden play the mediator again which is fun because he’s bad at it. Some pretty big important things happened in this book that I won’t spoil. But on the whole, it was just an okay book. There were honestly too many point of view characters, characters who were very minor players in previous books and rose to the level of point-of-view characters in this book. Some of them it was cool to see their viewpoint, but on the whole it felt like just too much and it became hard to follow. I’m not entirely sure I’m going to continue with this series, because I can’t get any of the rest of the books on audio from the library, and I’m not sure I care enough to either buy the audiobooks or invest in reading them in Braille. I might just switch to the TV show at this point. I don’t know. We’ll see.

When the lockdown hit and I needed some literary comfort food, I started rereading Tamora Pierce’s Circle of Magic books. In March I read the first two, Sandry’s Book and Tris’s Book. Did I momentarily forget that the fourth book in this book is a plague book, and now I’m on track to read a plague book in the middle of a pandemic? Yes. Yes I did. Will I read it anyway? Probably. These books have been all-time favorites for a while, and they held up on reread, which is fabulous. They’re just so much fun and full of such great meaningful relationships, and I love them. I also love Tamora Pierce’s Circle world way more than her Tortall world. It’s so detailed and rich. I loved rereading these books, and I’m looking forward to getting back to the series soon.

Finally, I read the second book in Stephen King’s Dark Tower series, The Drawing of the Three. I enjoyed this more than the first book. It was way more coherent, story-wise. There was also a female main character. Yay! Unfortunately, I’m not really comfortable with King’s representation of mental illness in this book, and his treatment of women still isn’t great. I’ll probably keep reading this series, but not with a ton of enthusiasm. (Spoiler alert: I’m really just in it to get to the talking pink train I remember in the third book.)

And that’s it for March. Have you read any of these books? Do you have any other reads I might want to check out during quarantine?

2020 Goals

I set some pretty ambitious goals for myself in 2019. I didn’t meet all of them, but I did pretty well on the whole. I was having trouble deciding how I wanted to challenge myself in 2020, which is why this post is so late in coming. This post is also really late in coming because I got the flu last week, which brought my entire life to a screeching halt for more than a week. The flu is a gross illness guys.

In the end, I’ve decided that my biggest goal for 2020 is to keep up the momentum I’ve built for myself in 2019. Right now, thanks to the flu, I feel like I have to start building that momentum from scratch again, but once I get everything up and running I’m sure that won’t be the case.

Last November, I challenged myself to write every day. Not only did I succeed at that, but I continued in December and January. As of today, I’ve written ninety-one days in a row. Yes, I managed to write a little bit every day when I had the flu because I refused to have to start back at day 1. It’s become a habit for me now, and I really want to keep that up in 2020. In addition, I set a goal for myself to get up early and write before I go to work on weekdays. It’s been hard to adjust my sleep schedule, but so far I’ve written every morning before work since the start of the new year, and I’m already seeing some incredible benefits, so it’s definitely a new year’s resolution to keep that going.

In particular, for writing, I’d like to try again to complete new drafts for three big projects, especially since I don’t have the bar exam to interfere with my productivity this summer. I’d also like to get back into writing and submitting more short stories, which I’ve already started this month. I’ve had a few short story projects that have been languishing on my computer thanks to the bar and novel revisions, and I’d like to get back to those as well.

I’m still going to barre classes three or four times a week, and I want to keep that up in 2020 too. I’d also like to add in evenings when I go to the gym in my apartment. I’m starting with one day a week, and I’m hoping to up that to two days a week at some point. I’m also setting a 2020 goal for myself to cook one new recipe a week. Last week I tried a coconut roasted butternut fennel bisque, which unfortunately fell into the too-much-work-to-be-really-worth-it bucket.

I also set my 2020 Goodreads reading challenge to 100 books again. I’m hoping to read more, but 100 is a nice round number, and if I surpass it I can always increase my goal. In addition to reading 100 books, I want to challenge myself to read at least one book a month in Braille, because I got out of the habit of reading books in Braille when I was in law school and I miss it and want to get back to reading like that.

And of course I have my usual goal of blogging regularly. I’d like to get back on track with a manageable blogging schedule this year.

Writing it all out definitely makes it seem like a lot, and I’m already behind on a few of these goals thanks to the flu. So I better get started.

The End of a Year, the End of a Decade

Well friends, 2019 is coming to a close, and with it a decade is ending.

For the record I fall on the side that 2020 starts a new decade rather than being the last year of this decade. It’s true that the first year of the calendar was year 1, not year 0, so the first ten year period would end after year 10 and the next would start with year 11, but culturally we’ve been grouping decades from 0 to 9 for a while now, and the idea that 1920 is not considered part of the ‘20s, or that 1940 is not considered part of the ‘40s, is ridiculous to me. So I’m calling it the end of the decade tonight, and if you disagree you can do so quietly because I also feel like this is a silly thing to argue about.

So today I want to reflect on not only this year but also this decade. I set a lot of goals for myself this year, and while I didn’t achieve all of them, so many incredible things happened that I’m totally okay with that.

For Christmas in 2009, I asked my parents for a subscription to Writers Market. I believed that the book I’d been working on all through high school was ready to be published. I cringe a little now writing this, because in 2010 I still did not understand plot,  but all publication journeys have to start somewhere, right? It took nine years, a lot of help, a lot of revisions, and a lot of rejections, but last January I signed with my awesome agent Laurel Symonds. While I’ve been working on the same book for the past ten years, more than that really if you go all the way back to the very first idea, it is an entirely different book than that terrible draft I started querying agents about back in 2010. Excuse me while I cringe some more. And this past year working on revisions with Laurel has transformed it yet again. I’ve learned so much about myself as a writer in the last ten years, and in this year in particular. I’m still revising, but I’m really happy with how things are shaping up, and I can’t wait for the day when I can finally share this project with all of you.

Also in 2010, I was entering my last semester of high school, breathlessly waiting on college application decisions, and planning to go to the Seeing Eye over the summer to train with my first guide dog. I had no idea how much I would love not only working with my Mopsy girl but also how much I would love having her with me all the time. Together we went to Kenyon for four years, lived in Italy for a year, and started law school at Harvard. Now Mopsy is living with my parents, and I get home as often as I can to see her. She’ll be twelve in June, so she enjoys more snoozles in front of the fire than she used to, but she’s still up for a trot through the snow. If she feels like it. And once Mopsy retired, I got matched with my little Neutron Star. He is very different from Mops, but just as delightful in his own way, and seven years working with Mopsy has made me a better handler when it comes to Neutron. We’ve adventured all over Boston, and now we’re working on D.C.

A lot has happened to me since 2010, and I feel like a lot of it has culminated in my accomplishments in 2019. This decade, I graduated high school; went to college; got a Fulbright and lived in Italy for a year; volunteered at the New Hampshire Disability Rights Center; went to Harvard Law; decided I didn’t want to do disability rights law and wanted to be a space lawyer instead; and interned at the U.S. Department of Education, MIT, the National Institute of Standards and Technology, and Analytical Space, and participated in the Harvard Negotiation and Mediation Clinical Program. And this year, I graduated from Harvard Law, got a job at the FCC as a space lawyer, and moved to D.C. In 2010, I started querying my book. I got rejected, got some helpful advice from the agent of a friend of a friend, revised, queried again, got rejected again, revised, revised, and revised some more. In the meantime, I attended the Alpha Young Writers Workshop, wrote a bunch of short stories, and started submitting them to magazines. I was twice a finalist in the Dell Award, and I’ve had six stories published so far, including one story published in 2019. I also have a poem coming out in an anthology this spring, which I’m really excited about. I also wrote 2.9 other books this decade: my memory-wiping musical academy novel, which I’m halfway through a third draft of; my WWII Italy novella which I wrote for my senior honors thesis back in 2014 and haven’t touched since; and my middle grade space adventure novel, which I’m so, so close to the end of a first draft of but have paused on because of other projects. I kept up this writing through college, Italy, and law school, and while I admit it’s hard to do the amount of writing that I want to be doing with a full-time job, I’m still plowing on ahead with revisions for my middle grade fantasy novel.

This decade hasn’t been all sunshine and butterflies. There was a lot of rejection letters to get where I am now, including rejections from all the MFA programs I applied to, and I’d be lying if I said that didn’t hurt. In 2013, I had to have my right eye removed because it basically exploded. My year in Italy was really hard emotionally, as was my time at Harvard. We lost my special education advocate and close family friend for many years to cancer. My grandmother also passed away, as did all but one of my great-aunts and uncles, and my sixth grade math and social studies teacher whom I was very close to. My childhood dog, Kokopelli, also died, and if you have a dog you understand how heartbreaking that is and why I’m including him here.

But here I am, at the end of the decade, looking back at who I was ten years ago and who I am now and all I have been through and accomplished, and I am really proud of myself. I have a full-time job I’m enjoying, more of a social life than I’ve had in years, an awesome writing group, some truly wonderful friends, and more adventures ahead of me.

This is not only the end of the decade, but it’s also the end of 2019. I set some pretty ambitious goals for myself, and before I sign off for the year, I want to give you a quick rundown of how I actually did. I did graduate, pass the bar, get a job, and move with as little stress as I could manage. After my series of illnesses and injuries through the summer, I joined a barre studio in D.C. and I’ve been going three or four times a week. I’d like to do better with my eating habits—I kind of fell off the wagon around the holidays—and I want to get to the gym in my apartment building and do some more aerobic exercise, but I feel stronger and fitter than I have in a while, so I’m counting this as mostly a win. I set out to read 100 books this year, and today I finished my 109th book. I’m not going to finish another book before midnight, so I’m calling it at 109. And while I didn’t get to new drafts of three distinct projects, I did do an awful lot of writing this year, and everything else was so crazy this year that I forgive myself. Oh, and I blogged more, realized I was blogging too much, and became a lot less regular about it again. I’m still working on finding that happy medium, but I’m moving in the right direction. I did pretty well with all these goals. I haven’t decided what exactly I want to shoot for next year, so I’ll get back to you on that.

So how are you feeling at the end of this year and this decade? Did you meet your 2019 goals? What are your plans for the new year?

Changing Things Up Again

A few weeks ago, I said that I was going to set a regular schedule for blog posts. I tried it for a few weeks, and I have come to the conclusion that this isn’t working for me.

Yes, last week was a crazy week. I was really sick, and then I was really stressed about imminent bar exam results, and then I passed the bar, which was great, but after all that I just crashed. But even though last week was exceptional, I was thinking that this isn’t working for me before that. Last week just served to underscore the fact that I’m exhausted.

In the last two months, I’ve discovered that working full-time is a lot. I don’t have a lot of time in the evenings and on the weekends, and so I have to set some priorities. Those priorities have to be writing and exercising. As much as I love blogging, the five, six, sometimes seven posts I’ve been doing a week has become too much. It’s turning blogging here into a chore, and that’s the last thing I want.

So I’m going to cut back a little. I’ve decided to stop doing individual, dedicated book reviews for all books I read. For one thing, I can’t keep up with myself. For another, my reviews are all starting to feel the same to me. I will continue to do my monthly reading roundup posts, where I talk about all the books I read this month. I will also do individual book reviews for books that make me think about writing, and I will tie my review of that book in with a post about the specific writing topic.

I will continue to review books on Goodreads, and I’m going to continue my posts about blindness and add regular posts about writing and revising, along with the book review/writing discussion posts. This is going to start with any book I finish after this post. I’m not going to backtrack to talk about books I just finished or didn’t do full reviews of over the summer. I understand this means I won’t get to go into detail for some books I really loved—Ash Princess, A Woman of No Importance, To Kill a Mockingbird The Martian—but the whole point of this is to set boundaries. I’m sorry if this turn of events is disappointing to you, and I hope to one day have the time to come but ack to doing full book reviews of every book I read on this blog, but it’s just not feaseable right now, and I think this solution will help me write more dynamic posts that I’m excited about sharing with you.

How to Revise a Novel While Studying for the Bar

I’ve been planning to write this post since August, but I’ve been stalling. First, because I didn’t actually finish revising my novel while studying for the bar, and I wanted to focus on that. Second, I didn’t want to end up in a situation where I talked about how to successfully revise a novel while studying for the bar and then find out that I failed the bar and have to come back here and say, “Just kidding. This obviously didn’t work. Don’t do this.” That would have been awkward.

But yes, I did pass. I found out yesterday morning, and it is the best feeling. Also, a few weeks ago, I put the finishing touches on my revisions and sent them off.

So since I can now say that I successfully revised a novel and studied for the bar this summer, let’s talk about how I did that.

To be clear, it was never my intention to be revising my book while studying for the bar. I got notes from my agent at the end of March—on the eve of a job interview, actually. I reviewed them, made decisions about revisions, and planned to complete those revisions before I graduated and had to start studying for the bar. I was moving right along through April, but two things happened. First, I underestimated the extent of the revisions in some places and did not account for the extra time I would need to work through some particularly snarly bits. Also finals. Finals happened. And despite professing all semester that I was done caring about law school, when finals hit it turned out I did care quite a lot. Then after finals I went apartment-hunting in D.C., and while I snuck in some revisions on the metro, it took me the whole week to do what I would have done in a couple uninterrupted hours at my desk. And before I knew it, graduation and bar prep was upon me, and I wasn’t done. Not even close.

Bar prep was incredibly intense and awful. I had to study eight subjects for the multiple choice section: civil procedure, constitutional law, contracts and sales, criminal law, criminal procedure, evidence, real property, and torts. I also had to study these subjects for the essay portion of the exam, along with agency, conflict of laws, corporations, family law, secured transactions, trusts, and wills and estates. I’m not even going to talk about the multistate performance tests. Keep in mind that I’d barely taken a third of these courses in law school, and most of the courses I did take were in my first year. Plus, law on the bar is different from law in law school. In law school, you learn how to figure out what the law is.  When you’re studying for the bar, you actually learn the law. (If you’re wondering what I was doing for the last three years, join the club.) The point is, I was studying ten to twelve hours a day, seven days a week. I was stressed beyond belief. I certainly didn’t think there was time to revise what still felt like a whole book.

But I also knew if I didn’t do some writing, I was going to crack up. I need writing the way most people need to breathe. (I feel like someone else said that better than me at some point.) Even if everything is going great, I need to write regularly or I get stressed and cranky. But I definitely need to write when things aren’t going great. Writing got me through losing my eye in 2013. Writing got me through my first year out of college, when I was living alone in Italy. Writing got me through 1L. Writing could get me through this.

I knew this about myself, but my bar prep course was also constantly reminding me to take time for myself. In particular, they said engaging in art helps you process the bar prep materials better because you’re switching the sides of your brain. Bar prep is a marathon, not a sprint.

So I decided to apply that to revising my book too. It was a marathon, not a sprint. It also had to be a secondary marathon to studying for the bar, too. I could take my time on these revisions, but if I failed the bar I would have to do all this studying all over again. (I don’t doubt I will have nightmares about having to retake the bar for years to come.)

The first thing I did was adjust my  expectations of myself. I was absolutely not going to revise a whole chapter every day. I wasn’t even going to try that.

So I took all the revisions I had to do, and I wrote them out in a step by step list. There were characters to cut, details and whole scenes to add, things to change and remember to adjust and keep straight later on in the book. Basically, I broke the book down by chapters, and then within each chapter, I had each task laid out in bite-sized pieces. Cutting a character from a chapter might be one bite, for example, maybe two (there was a reason we were cutting them). Changing a detail to keep things consistent with an earlier chapter would be one bite. Writing a new scene would probably be several bites, so on my list I wrote “add new scene in which X happens, then Y happens,  then Z happens.” X, Y, and Z would each be a bite. My goal would be to finish one bite every day. If I could manage more, that would be great, but it was neither necessary nor encouraged.

This process also really allowed me to free myself from doing my revisions in chronological order. I’m normally tied pretty closely to drafting in order, because I don’t really believe in skipping around to the parts you want to write and then filling in the gaps. What if I never filled in the gaps? I am a little more flexible when it comes to revisions, but this time, I was really flexible. Because I’d written out all my revisions in so much detail, I had a strong sense of the big picture of my book, so I was able to jump all over the place. What mattered to me right now was getting the revisions done and also maintaining my motivation to keep writing, because that was overall better for my mental health while I was studying for the bar. I also knew that once I was done all the revisions I had written down, I would read through it again from start to finish for a final polish before sending it off to my agent. So if one day I wanted to work on a specific scene in the climax instead of changing details to get rid of inconsistencies in my world’s climate, I did that. If the next day I wanted to go through the whole book and get rid of all references to mangoes—again the climate thing—I did that and knocked out a lot of bites while I was at it. If the next scene on my list wasn’t doing it for me that day, but I was really inspired by another scene later on, I skipped ahead. If I worked on what I was excited about working on that day, I ended up feeling more accomplished and less stressed, and I ultimately ended up doing more. This did leave me with one heck of a chapter to write after the bar, because I kept skipping it, but otherwise this system really worked for me, and after the bar I felt like I could conquer the world so this chapter didn’t take too long to finish up.

Generally, I wrote at the end of the day, after I’d completed all my bar prep tasks. Once, I tried to switch back and forth between studying and writing—complete one bar prep task, do one bite of revision, back to bar prep, back to revisions. It was great for the book, but I had a hard time focusing on the bar prep and fell behind, so I stopped that. Sometimes I would do a bite at lunchtime, when I was taking a study break anyway, and in the evening. But generally I did the bar prep stuff first, then wrote. I felt better about taking time to write if I’d finished studying for the day, and if I felt better about writing, I was more motivated, and I accomplished more. Are you noticing a pattern here?

I also wrote up my list of revision in hardcopy Braille with my Perkins Brailler. This allowed me to throw out whole pages of revision notes as soon as I finished with them, and this was so much more satisfying than deleting each bite from the list on my computer.

No, I didn’t finish all the revisions while I was studying for the bar. I think that would have been impossible. But I accomplished a ton. In between everything I had to do to move, set up my new apartment, and start my new job, I made sure to set aside large chunks of time—such a blessing—to writing. I finished up all the revisions that I’d planned by the end of August, then took my time going through and really cleaning it up and polishing everything that I could. While my bite-sized and all-over-the-place revision strategy kept me working through the bar, I won’t deny that my book had some sloppy edges. I somehow managed to write at least one scene more than once. I also overwrite, and so the new stuff I added had to be pared down significantly. A few weeks ago, I sat my butt in my chair when I got home from work, revised all weekend in a mad dash, and finished everything. it was great!

I’m not saying this is the best way to revise a novel while studying for the bar exam. I’m not even saying you need to or should revise a novel while studying for the bar exam. But if you find yourself in that position, whether because you have revisions to complete or because you have a project that could use some revising and you could use a break from studying, this is what worked for me: organize the revisions into manageable pieces, take them at your own speed and in your own order, and do whatever you need to do to keep yourself feeling both motivated and accomplished. And the whole way through, stay in touch with yourself and what you need as a writer, as a student and as a human.

I’m sure that working like this would also be helpful in other high-stress situations or at times when you have a lot going on but also want to get writing done. Next time I’m working on revisions, I’m definitely going to break everything down into individual bite-sized tasks again, though I might stick closer to the start to finish order of the book, because that pre-polish draft was a bit much.

Revising my novel obviously didn’t hurt my performance on the bar exam. It might have even helped, if that brain side switching thing applies to writing as well as visual art. I’m really happy with my revisions too, and I’m looking forward to whatever comes next in this exciting new book journey. It’s probably more revisions, but this time, there will be no bar.

Presumed Innocent Review

Cover of Presumed Innocent by Scott TurowBack in July, I read Presumed Innocent by Scott Turow. This is a legal thriller, and a few friends questioned why I was reading a legal thriller while also studying for the bar. I didn’t intend it to happen like that, certainly, but a friend recommended this book, I put it on hold at the library, and that was when it came up. So I read it.

Honestly I think Presumed Innocent really helped me understand what the heck was going on with evidence in my bar prep course. I didn’t take evidence in law school, so studying for the bar was the first time I was learning it, and it was a lot. This book gave me examples I could connect with more (because I connect better with fiction than casebooks).So whatever else I think of the book, and I have thoughts, Presumed Innocent for the win.

Also, I just found out this morning that I passed the bar, so pro tip: If you’re studying for the bar, maybe read some legal thrillers?

My brain immediately started trying to concoct a secured transactions legal thriller and now I’m horrified with myself. Let’s talk about this actual book.

Presumed Innocent is about a prosecutor who is arrested and tried for the rape and murder of his coworker. The coworker he was having an affair with. That’s about all I’ll say.

I liked this book. It took a while to get going, but once we got to the trial I was hooked. It got pretty technical with the legal stuff, but I liked that because it seemed more real to me. Bonus points because it tallied with what my professors in my bar prep course were saying about criminal law, criminal procedure, and evidence. I only took criminal law my first year of law school and didn’t take the other two classes at all so basically learned all the subjects for the bar. I wonder how it would be to read this book with just a layperson’s understanding of the law. If I didn’t know what was going on, I’d feel like the book got bogged down in specifics I found confusing, but my friend who recommended this book to me is not a lawyer, and she said she followed what was going on reasonably well and enjoyed all the specificity. I also really liked the way the book ended. It’s been months, but it’s definitely stuck with me.

This book wasn’t perfect for me, however. It was honestly a little too graphic for my taste in some places. Also, the pacing was weird. I already said it took a while to get going. Given that we know from the back cover that the main character is going to be accused of murder, the first third of the book until that actually happened dragged. Also, there’s a good quarter of the book after the trial ends, and it was basically way, way too much denouement. And I’ve written too much denouement before. I know.

This book is actually the start of a series that follow various characters from this book through other cases. The library didn’t have the second audiobook, and honestly I wasn’t invested enough to go find it somewhere else. It’s been a few months, and while I still think about this book from time to time, I honestly don’t think I’m going to continue with the series.

I did enjoy this book, however, and if you like legal thrillers this is definitely one for you. If you read it, I’d love to know what you think, and if you’ve already read it, do you agree with my opinion?

2019 Check-In the Third

We are midway through October, friends, which means we are more than three quarters of the way through 2019. So it’s time to check in on the goals I made for myself at the beginning of the year.

I set some pretty ambitious goals for myself this year, and so far I’m doing pretty well. I got a job, graduated, studied for the bar and took the bar, moved to D.C., and started that new job, and while I wasn’t totally calm throughout all that, I didn’t completely lose my head either.

Before you ask, I get my bar results in less than two weeks. I’m trying not to think about it. Thinking about it is horrible.

Last time I checked in, I talked about how I hadn’t been doing well with my goal to exercise more. It seemed like every time I tried, I either got really, really sick, or I sprained my ankle. But my ankle is pretty much better now, and I haven’t been sick in weeks (knock on wood). Since I moved down here, I joined a barre studio, and I’ve been going at least twice a week, sometimes three times a week. I really like it, and I especially like how much progress I’ve made in just a few weeks. I certainly couldn’t do some of the moves I’m doing now. I’ve also been going to the gym in my apartment building, though I admit not as regularly as I would like. There’s just so much to do between work and making food and  writing and keeping my apartment reasonably clean that it’s hard to find time. It’s easier to go to a class that I signed up for and paid for than it is to find a random half hour to go downstairs to use the elliptical. I’m still working on that. I need to treat it like a class and go straight down there after work without starting some other project. But on the whole this is a massive improvement over my zero-exercise life during law school and while studying for the bar, and I’m feeling pretty good about myself.

I fell a little behind on my reading goal in August and September. I read three books in August and two in September. But I’ve already read five books in October, so I’m confident I’ll be able to pick up the slack and finish at 100 books for 2019. So far I’ve read a grand total of 73 books this year.

On the writing front, things are definitely going well. As I’ve said a million times, and probably will not tire of saying any time soon, I signed with a literary agent in February. It took me forever (thanks bar exam), but I finally finished the revisions to my middle grade fantasy novel last weekend. I set out to complete three drafts of major projects this year. So far I’ve completed one. There isn’t that much time left, but I’m pretty close to finishing my middle grade sci fi adventure book, which will make two projects. And November is NaNoWriMo, which should give me a boost. I’m pretty sure I can meet this goal, though if I don’t, I will still have accomplished a whole lot, and I’m proud of that.

Finally, I fell off the blogging bandwagon a bit in July, August, and September (thanks again bar exam). I’ve started back up again, as you’ve no doubt noticed, and I’ve created a calendar through the rest of the year. I’ve also mapped out a regular schedule that I think will be helpful for everyone. First, I’m starting a new series of posts about blindness. I’ve been thinking about it a lot since I wrote this post about the #AbledsAreWeird hashtag last spring. I want to contribute to the conversation around blindness and how someone who isn’t blind can be helpful in a positive way. Also, October is Meet the Blind month, so now seems a good time to start. Don’t worry, we are definitely going to talk about that name. I have feelings. I’m going to put these posts up on Mondays, so look for one soon. I’m planning to post book reviews of the books I’m currently reading on Tuesdays and Thursdays. I’ll use Wednesdays for catch-up days for books I read over the summer but haven’t reviewed yet. And I’ll write about writing on Fridays. My plan is to write the week’s posts over the weekend and schedule them, because I don’t have a lot of time on weeknights. We’ll see how well this goes. I’m not planning to post anything new on the weekends, unless I need to play catchup with my schedule like I did this week.

So as we’re heading into the home stretch of 2019, I’m feeling pretty good about what I’ve accomplished and what I can accomplish in the next few months. And I’m already considering what my goals for next year should be. After this year, I honestly don’t know.

I Survived the Bar Exam… Now What?

Hello all. I’m back. And as you can surmise from the title, I survived the bar!

I apologize for the quiet in my little corner of the internet for the last few weeks. The studying and the panic got really intense in July. At the same time, I was packing up and moving out of my apartment. My lease ended at the end of the same week I was taking the bar.

I’ll give you some numbers to put it all into perspective. Studying for the bar was a nine-to-ten hour a day, seven days a week affair. Because I had a Braille test, the bar exam itself was four days, six hours a day. Now I’m a super organized person. I knew this was going to be a crazy time, so I’ve been planning since December, studying since May, and packing since June, but you still inevitably reach a point in packing and studying where your planning descends into chaos and you just start throwing things into the car at random and screaming that states should be abolished.

But all that’s over now, and huge, huge thanks to my mom for coming to stay with me this last week and helping me pull it all together so I could take the bar, get out of my apartment in Cambridge, and of course eat without completely losing my head. (No I don’t consider shouting about how states’ rights are ridiculous to be losing my head, but I’m not getting into politics here.)

So what comes next?

I’ll find out if I passed the bar at some point in October. I am not thinking about it until then. But there are plenty of other things for me to think about.

The crazy does not end now that’s August. But it’s crazy in a good way.

First, I need to turn the chaos of the last week into an organized plan of attack for moving down to D.C. at the end of August. As organized as I am, there’s still a lot I need to do. For one thing, I’ve blocked the front door with my pile of boxes and that can’t continue to be the case for long.

Also, while I’ve been writing as much as I can while studying for the bar, it’s time for me to buckle down and finish revisions on my middle grade fantasy project. I’m really excited about what’s it done and can’t wait to dive in headfirst with no law school or bar exam to worry about.

Oh wait, there is more bar exam to worry about. Well, not to worry about, per se. I have to take the state component of the bar, but that’s a fifty question, open book, untimed test, and they give me the books. I can also take it as many times as I need to. So I’m not terribly concerned. I just have to do it.

Otherwise, I’m looking forward to getting back in touch with friends I haven’t seen or spoken to in a while (thanks a lot bar exam), and finally doing some more cooking, because I’ve been living on chicken pesto meatballs and frozen vegetables for the last three months (thank you again bar exam), and believe me, that got old fast.

As for this blog, I’m going to catch up on posting book reviews for the rest of the books I read in June and July. Then I’m going to try to get myself to post on a regular schedule. I don’t know what the regular schedule will be, but once I figure it out I will let you know. I plan to continue doing book reviews, but I also want to give you more life updates. I also have ideas for posts about writing, and I want to do more posts from Neutron’s point of view. Finally, I want to start a new series about how I do things when I’m blind, inspired by this post I wrote a while back about educating able-bodied people about disabilities in a positive way. I have some ideas to get started, but if you want to know how I do specific things, let me know.

And that’s it. I’m going to stop making plans before I exhaust myself just thinking about it and go take a nap instead. Happy August everybody. And to my law school friends who took the bar last week too, we did it!