Category: Writing

This Too Shall Pass… I hope

Last week, I got involved in a conversation on Twitter about the challenges of writing while attending school. It was past midnight, so I let out a lot of feelings I normally try to keep tucked away. Now, in the light of day, I’m trying to crystalize what we were talking about into something coherent and at least a little bit constructive on the challenges of writing while you’re a student and, because this is how those challenges have manifested for me, overcoming cosmic writer’s block.

 

To be completely honest, all through college and the few years after college before I started law school, my friends considered me something of a writing wonder. I write a lot, and I write fast. And in college, I always found time to write. But at the same time, I was steeped in creativity. My friends were the same people in my writing group. We would set aside hours for quiet writing time. We were so involved with each other’s stories that we talked about them all the time, formulating theories, helping each other work out plot holes, and so on. And when we weren’t writing or talking about our projects, we were disecting books we were reading and shows and movies we were watching. It was a really great experience, and if you have a group like that in college, then I totally agree with anyone who says that college is the best time to get writing done. But I’ve also heard a lot of college students say that it’s hard to get writing done in college because of all the other things you have to balance, and while I didn’t really get it as an undergraduate, I’m definitely getting it now.

 

Since I left college and I’ve lost that constant, in-person writing support group, writing has become a struggle for me. I kept going through my first year of law school, partly because it was the only thing that was keeping me sane. But it wasn’t easy the way writing used to be easy. Just the other day, I saw a Facebook post from last year where I was saying that I was going to do Camp NaNoWriMo in April because I was tired of a paragraph feeling like a victory. And in my second year of law school, it’s only gotten worse. I was told my second year of law school would be easier than the first, but this has turned out to be a big fat lie, at least for me. The only real difference is that I chose all the things that are making me busy. Still, I managed to get some short stories written in the fall, and even about a third of a new novel during NaNoWriMo in November, at least before the work really hit, and I had to write a two hundred page paper and edit it four times with a partner in a month, and I stopped writing. And anything I’ve written since has been like pulling teeth and doesn’t even feel like a victory when it’s on the page.

 

I’m calling this cosmic writer’s block. It’s not like writer’s block as you would traditionally think of it. I’m not stuck on a specific story or a specific scene. I’ve tried switching projects, and now I just have about fifteen unfinished projects floating around, which of course just makes me feel worse about the whole thing. I’ve tried all the things the internet recommends for combatting writer’s block—taking walks, taking showers, just powering through because writer’s block isn’t real, and—but nothing helped. I remembered the distinction Anne Lamott drew in her book Bird by Bird, the distinction between blocked and empty. But even her suggestion to do things that normally inspire you, like reading books or watching movies or TV shows that inspire you to write really hasn’t made  much of a dent. I’m just exhausted, and the idea of writing right now feels more exhausting, and when I can’t write, I’m even more discouraged and exhausted. So even though I’m fully aware that I’m spiraling, I can’t stop it. I just have no desire to write, and since for so long writing has been the only thing I really want to do, this is really scary to me.

 

I don’t have any answers to this, except that maybe I just need a week-long nap. But that’s part of the point of this post. I’m not here to tell some story about how perseverance makes everything okay, because I can’t say that right now, and if you’re feeling anything like me, you don’t want to hear that. I’m talking about writing, but I could be talking about any number of things in my life in the past few months, and any time I try to talk to someone about how I’m feeling, they come up with some baloney about how your twenties suck and “this too shall pass.” If I had a nickel for every time I’ve heard those words in the past few months, I could probably pay back a big chunk of my student loans, which would be a lot more useful than that advice. Maybe it will pass. I really hope it does pass. But right now I’m in the middle of it, and it feels like it won’t ever get better, and just saying “this too shall pass” is the least helpful thing anyone can say.

 

So I don’t want to hear that this will get better. I don’t want you to present me with all the examples of other writers who have overcome this kind of block or received hundreds of rejections or who have struggled with writing as a student. What I want is to know that I’m not the only one struggling with these feelings. What I want is to have a productive conversation about these feelings and how we, the young writers and students, can deal with them. Because as far as I can tell, these conversations aren’t happening. To write about rejection and confidence issues and writer’s block and the unique challenges faced by writers who are also students, to some extent we need to talk about failure. Nobody wants to talk about their own failures. And nobody wants to come across as whiny or bitter or incapable. If you’re trying to be a professional writer, it’s not the image you want to present to the interwebs. Even I struggled with whether I wanted to write this post, but I can’t be the only one struggling with this. And if I’m not alone, then maybe writing a post about these challenges will help someone else, even if it just lets them know that others are out there dealing with the same things.

 

So here I am. I am trying to write while attending law school. At this moment, I am struggling with writer’s block on a level i have never experienced before. I’ve published a few short stories, yes, but I’ve received way more rejections, and right now my predominant feeling is that I am somehow a failure and I will never be a successful writer.

 

I hope that someday soon I will be able to write a blog post about how I’ve gotten past all this. But right now, I’m in the middle of it, and sometimes I feel like I’m not going to get past it. If there’s a magic bullet to kickstart my creative brain, I’d love to hear about it. But while I don’t have a magic bullet of my own, I do have some inkling of the roots of the problem.

 

First, I need to work on setting reasonable goals for myself. I had this crazy idea that I would write an entire novel during NaNoWriMo last November and then spend the rest of the school year editing it to perfection, all while keeping up with all my classes and clinics. This was a ridiculous goal, but it was still what I wanted to accomplish this year. And when I failed, I couldn’t pick myself up and press on.

 

As a student, you’re juggling a lot of things: classes, including homework, projects, and exams; extracurricular activities; summer internship and post-graduation job searches; having a social life; and any hobbies you want to keep up. You also have to eat and sleep. Throw consistently writing into that mix, and it’s a little mind-boggling that one person can handle so much. If goals and deadlines motivate you to accomplish things, that’s great. Set goals. But don’t set crazy goals. And when things get out of hand and you don’t accomplish your goals, you can’t beat yourself up over it.

 

Obviously, I really need to work on this. It usually works for me to set goals for myself, but when I fail to accomplish them, I beat myself up and just make the situation worse. I have realized this is a problem, and I’m working on solving it. I considered doing Camp NaNoWriMo again this month and setting a small goal for myself that I felt would be a challenge but would still be something I could accomplish. But I also recognized that I have two fifteen-page papers due this month, as well as a final play to write and perform for my french class and a final exam. I also need to get everything in order for my summer internships. And in the place where I am now, even setting myself a small writing goal would be setting myself up for failure, which wouldn’t help the situation at all.

 

This goes for goals for publication too. The publication market is so subjective, and so much of it is outside your control, that beating yourself up over success or lack-there-of is just counterproductive. The most you can do to pursue a goal of getting published is to keep writing and keep submitting. Yes, rejections suck, but remember why you are writing. For me, I’m writing for myself, because I have a story inside me that needs to be told. Beyond that, I have a close group of friends who want to know what happens next. I hope  that someone, at some time, thinks that others need to read my stories too, but if an editor thinks that’s not the case, I’m not going to let that stop me from writing, because first and foremost I’m writing for me. I’m writing because it makes me happy.

 

Finding what inspires you also helps. Generally reading inspires me to write, and in case you haven’t noticed, I’ve been reading a lot in the past few months. But this year I’ve been reading books that I haven’t read before. A couple weeks ago, I picked up The Hunger Games books and started rereading them. And for the first time in a long time, I felt like I might want to sit down and write. I first read The Hunger Games back in college, and it was a big inspiration for my memory-wiping academy novel, which I’m now editing and expanding into a series. So maybe, if you’re stuck, don’t just do things that typically inspire you. If you can pinpoint it, specifically target what drove you to write this story in the first place and revisit it. It might also help to reread what you’ve written so far and remind yourself that it isn’t complete garbage and there’s a reason you’re writing this story in the first place. Basically, find what will inspire you now, which may  not be what usually inspires you, and tap into it.

 

Remember that there’s time. Along with setting reasonable goals for yourself and not beating yourself up if you have to change those goals, remember that there’s time. Yes, it would be fantastic to write, edit, and publish a novel before you’re twenty, or twenty-five, or whatever age you pick. But you’re in school for a reason, and even if you’re studying creative writing, that reason is to learn, not to write the next Harry Potter. Also, all your experiences in school and beyond school will inspire your writing and contribute to the stories you tell. I really, really wanted to get my novel published before I graduated college, but now I’m glad I didn’t, because my experiences being on my own, separated from my family and friends, and adulting for the first time in Italy right after college really informed my characters’ struggles and decisions, and ultimately made that story stronger. So don’t freak out. There’s time.

 

And because there’s time, it’s okay to take a break to recharge. School is exhausting, and it is also constant. You are surrounded twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, with school. In a lot of ways, I feel like law school has taken away everything I love to do, one by one: reading books in Braille, playing the clarinet, drawing, and now writing, mostly because I’m just too busy and too exhausted to keep it up. I’ve clung to writing, saying oan more than one occasion that it’s the only thing keeping me sane. But now I can’t even muster that up. So if you’re just burnt out, which I’m feeling like is a large part of my writer’s block right now, it’s okay to take a break, let the creative part of your brain reboot, and get back to it when you feel ready.

 

I’m only just starting to feel the itch in my subconscious calling me back to my writing projects. Over the past few days, I’ve been thinking about my stories more than I have in a while. I haven’t really gotten to the actual writing part. So I could be completely wrong about these strategies for how to write while being a student or how to overcome writer’s block. I’m still in the middle of all of this,  and I’m hoping that it will get better and I can tell you for sure that these things worked for me. I hope that these strategies work for you, too, if you’re having a hard time, and I hope it helps to know that you’re not alone in your feelings. And I would love to hear others’ opinions on how to overcome this cosmic writing block and how to successfully manage being a student and writing.

“Polaris in the Dark” Published in the 2018 Young Explorer’s Adventure Guide

I am way late on posting about this. Finals got in the way, and then it was Christmas, and then I was working at MIT’s Office of the General Counsel in January and then the spring semester was starting up again and yikes how is it February already? But my own tardiness aside, the 2018 Young Explorer’s Adventure Guide is out (has been out for two months now), including my story “Polaris in the Dark.” This is the first science fiction story I ever wrote ever. It is also the second story I’ve written about a blind person. You can get the anthology on Amazon, or wherever you prefer to buy your books. I highly recommend the whole anthology. It’s filled with science fiction adventure stories that are all really unique and fun. I am so glad to be part of this anthology! And can I just say, it is really cool to look myself up on Amazon or Goodreads and have a book pop up. I’m not getting over that anytime soon. And always, once you’ve read the story, you can check out the story behind “Polaris in the Dark,” which talks about where I got the idea and some of the challenges I faced while writing it. I also have some interesting musings on writing realistically about disability while also maintaining a positive, empowering message in the story. I hope you find it interesting, and I hope you enjoy reading “Polaris in the Dark” as much as I enjoyed writing it.

Reading Through 2017

2017 is drawing to a close, and what a year it’s been. Personally, I survived my first year of law school, worked for the summer at the U.S. Department of Education Office for Civil Rights, and started my second year of law school. I am now halfway through law school. After exploring and discarding several possible career paths, I have decided to go into space law—as in outer space. I also published two short stories this year. “Seven Signs Your Roommate is a Vampire: With Additional Advice On Surviving Orientation If It’s More Complicated” was published in issue #68 of Andromeda Spaceways, and “Polaris in the Dark” was published in the 2018 Young Explorer’s Adventure Guide anthology. Finally, my Seeing Eye dog, Mopsy, had to retire in May. She just became too anxious to keep guiding me safely. It was heartbreaking for me to retire Mopsy, and it’s still heartbreaking, even though she is now a healthy, happy pet with my parents. I returned to the Seeing Eye in July and was match with my second Seeing Eye dog, Neutron, and we’ve been flying around Cambridge ever since.

 

I also read a lot. I set a goal to read 50 books this year. I read 77. I did a fair amount of rereading of old favorites, especially around exam times. Favorite books are like literary comfort food.  Of the new books I read, most were fine, but they were just fine. A few were downright terrible. And some were truly exemplary. Here are my favorites:

 

Heartless by Marissa Meyer: I expected a lot from this book after Marissa Meyer’s Lunar Chronicles series. This book did not live up to my very high expectations, but I really did enjoy it. It’s the story of the Queen of Hearts and how she became The Queen of Hearts. The writing was great, and the world was a lot of fun, and the ending was hearbreaking and beautiful.

 

In a Glass Grimmly and The Grimm Conclusion by Adam Gidwitz: I read the first book in this series, A Tale Dark and Grimm, in summer 2016, but didn’t get to the second or third books before the end of the year. So I finished the series this year. It was great. While the first book retold all the stories of Hansel and Gretel, the second book told new stories about Jack and Jill (the ones who go up the hill and fall down). Except Jack is also the same Jack from Jack and the Beanstock, so there are giants involved. The third book is a mash’?eaup of Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Snow White, The Juniper Tree, and The Boy Who Left Home To Find Fear (which is a great title), plus a truly amazing metafictional arc. The narrator’s voice and snark reminds me a bit of Lemony Snicket in A Series of Unfortunate Events, which made it super fun even with all the blood and guts. Seriously I was laughing out loud throughout this whole book. So if you like retold fairy stales, snark, and can tolerate a fair amount of blood and guts, you’re sure to enjoy these books.

 

Dangerous by Shannon Hale: Space camp goes wrong and teenagers get superpowers from alien techildrenlogy and then have to save the world from an alien invasion, all with a dash of evil megalomaniacs, conniving scientists, and teenage romance. The Goodreads reviews on this book were split between those who hated it with a fiery passion and those who loved it to pieces. I’ve always liked Shannon Hale’s books, so I gave it a try. I really enjoyed it, and I would say that it is a decently good book. It was fun, fast, and action-packed. There was a little too much romance for me, and the middle of the book got kind of weird. Also the protagonist is a half-Latina girl with a disability, and though some aspects of the representation of her disability were upsetting to me, by the end of the book most of my issues resolved. On the whole, I had a lot of fun with this book. There was space and science and space and geekiness and space and fun gadgets (seriously I want Maisie’s impact boots) and did I mention space? What I particularly liked about this book was that while the stakes were high with the whole save-the-world plot, there were also very high, very personal stakes that kept the story grounded. So if you like whacky science fiction adventure with space and aliens and superpowers and romance, this book might be for you.

 

Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng: I read this book for book club, and there was a lot to enjoy about it. The emotions were so raw and realistic, and I enjoyed the multiple perspectives on the same moments. It sort of reminded me of the World War II Italy novella I wrote for my senior honors thesis at Kenyon (the one that is still languishing in a drawer but I’ve been thinking about it). There was virtually no overlap in the subject matter between this book and my WWII Italy project; it just had a similar feel to me. Lydia, the favorite daughter of the mixed-race Lee family, is dead. I’m not spoiling anything; that’s how the book starts. The story is about how the different members of the family cope with her death and try to understand what happened to her. We also get Lydia’s point of view throughout the book. I do have to say I could only read this book in small bites because either the emotions were just too much or because I got kind of frustrated with the characters. There were definitely times when it felt like one of those sitcom episodes where if the characters would just sit down and talk about what happened, all the problems would get resolved and no one would be dead. We decided in our book club discussion that Everything I Never Told You was a very apt title, because no one was telling anybody anything. But by the end of the book, I was in tears. Also, sentence to sentence, word to word, the writing is beautiful, and I can be a sucker for that (as long as the rest of the book is good too).

 

Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell: This book was beautiful. It’s a new adult book, about a girl going off to college with her twin sister, but her sister wants to put some space between them, her creative writing professor is crushingly disappointed that she’s writing fanfiction, and basically she has to figure out life and friends and writing her own stories. This book hit me like a punch in the gut. A fabulous, fabulous punch in the gut. But there were definitely moments when it was too real. I can totally relate to so much of it. I don’t have a twin sister, and I never actually wrote fanfiction before college (and I’ve only started, and haven’t finished, a fanfic since I went to college). But I definitely had serious social anxiety around eating in the dining hall when I first went to college and I always felt kind of out of place in the creative writing program because I generally prefer to write young adult speculative fiction rather than literary fiction, and I felt like some professors could have an unfortunate attitude towards genre fiction in the creative writing program. Also, the ideas of growing up and Harry Potter ending and everything in this book were really relatable. Basically this book is beautiful and everyone should read it.

 

Flying Lessons & Other Stories edited by Ellen Oh: This is a middle grade short story collection produced by We Need Diverse Books, all about the impact that reading and learning has on kids. Each story featured a character from an underrepresented group in fiction. I really enjoyed all the stories—though some were a little younger than I like to read. They were fun and adorable and the message about reading and diversity is so important. I definitely recommend.

 

Miss Perregrine’s Peculiar Children series by Ransom Riggs: This whole series was a wild ride, but if you’re willing to go with it, it’s a blast. When his grandfather is killed by a monster only Jacob can see, he goes on a journey to learn about his grandfather’s past and winds up travelling through time (sort of) and battling the monsters and their masters alongside his grandfather’s childhood friends (who happen to still be children). This is the best description I can give. But it makes sense in the books I swear. This has to be one of the most bizzarre series I’ve read in a while, but it was a ton of fun and once I got into it I couldn’t put it down.

 

Anne of Green Gables, Anne of Avonlea, and Anne of the Island by L. M. Montgomery: I read Anne of Green Gables years ago when I was growing up. I have it in Braille—it’s six volumes. This summer, I reread Anne of Green Gables in preparation for watching the new Netflix show, which is quite good by the way. I really enjoyed reading about Anne’s adventures, and it all took on so much more meaning now that I’m older. And then I discovered that Anne’s adventures didn’t end with Anne of Green Gables, so I kept reading. By this point, I have actually read the first six books in the series, but in my opinion the series goes downhill after the third book. Anne of Green Gables, Anne of Avonlea, and Anne of the Island are definitely worth reading, though, whatever age you are.

 

Behold the Dreamers by Imbolo Mbue: This was another book club book. We read Behold the Dreamers  over the summer in conjunction with Lucky Boy, which I’ll talk about next. Behold the Dreamers tells the story of two families affected by the financial crisis in 2007, a family of Cameroonian immigrants struggling to get a foothold in New York and the family of the Wall Street executive they work for. The whole book is from the point of view of the immigrants, which I really love. We see the struggles of these two very different families, and even though their struggles are different, they are their struggles. This is a sad but realistic perspective on the American dream.

 

Lucky Boy by Shanthi Sekaran: This is another story about immigrants. We read Lucky Boy for book club over the summer with Behold the Dreamers. The two books actually pair really well tgr.d and I recommend reading them together. Lucky Boy also  tells the stories of two families, a young woman who immigrates to America illegally from Mexico, becomes pregnant along the way, gives birth in America, and struggles to raise her son, and a second-generation Indian couple desperate to have a child. The immigrant is detained and her child is placed in foster care with the couple, who fall in love with him and take steps to adopt him. This is an  intense look at the immigration and foster care systems in California, as well as a heartbreaking contemplation of parenthood, because there is no good ending to this story.

 

Hiroshima by John Hersey: I don’t normally read nonfiction. I do enough of that for class. But when I was at the Seeing Eye training with Neutron this summer, there was a library of hardcopy Braille books, and anyone who knows me knows that when possible, I prefer to read in hardcopy Braille. There’s nothing quite like holding an actual book in your hands. Hiroshima was one of the books in this library, and since anyone who knows me also knows I have a minor World War II obsession, one thing led to another and I read the book. I’m the first to admit that my WWII obsession is more to do with the war in Europe than the war in the Pacific, and honestly I didn’t know much about what happened at Hiroshima and Nagasaki except that an atomic bomb was dropped. I found the book Hiroshima, which chronicled the events in the city from the points of view of several people who lived through the bomb, to be rich in detail. Gruesome detail to be sure, but I think it is important to know these details, and I was glad I was able to read this book.

 

Flame in the Mist by Renee Ahdieh: I enjoyed this book a lot more than I thought I would, and this was a pleasant surprise. It takes place in a fantasy world mirroring ancient Japan. The daughter of an honored samurai is on her way to marry the prince when her convoy is attacked. Assassins have been hired to kill her. There were times when the writing was a bit telly for me, and I was underwhelmed by the romantic subplot, but the book gripped me from start to finish. The characters were really intricate, and the plot was fast-paced and full of secrets and complications. I’m really looking forward to the sequel next year.

 

The Book of Ember trilogy by Jeanne DuPrau: There are technically four books in this series, but the third is a prequel and is neither necessary to underst  the books nor worth bothering with, in my opinion. The main trilogy, The City of Ember, The People of Sparks, and the Diamond of Darkhold detail the adventures of two children from Ember, an isolated city in a world of complete darkness. The generator that powers Ember is failing, and when the kids find a half-destroyed set of instructions, they go in search of a way to leave the city. These are fun and action-packed science fiction books, with a lot of adventure and some really interesting world-building. I’ve been trying to read more science ficong books this year, and these were a great start.

 

Shades of Magic series by V.E. Schwab: I can’t believe it took me so long to discover these books. Acsually, I can because my to read list is over 500 books long. The best that can be said about my delayed discovery is that I didn’t have to wait for the conclusion. These books were just remarkable. There are four worlds, each with a city named London, each with different amounts of magic. Only a few people can travel between the worlds, but a dark magic is threatening all the worlds. I’m doing a poor job of describing these books, but they’re really fabulous. I was gripped from start to finish, and the books have stayed with me since. I would love to go back and reread them at some point, now that I’ve finished them.

 

Before We Were Yours by Lisa Wingate: This is another book club book. Half the people in book club really didn’t like this book, but I did. There are two storylines in this book: in 1939, five children are kidnapped from their family’s shantyboat on the Mississippi and taken to a brutal orphanage as part of an elaborate adoption scheme where poor children were sold to rich families from the 1920s through the 1950s; in the present day, a young lawyer comes home to care for her ill father and discovers her family’s secret connection to the past child trafficking scandal. In my opinion, the present-day story is bad, and the book would be stronger without it. But the story in the past is really gripping, and I was fascinated to learn about this episode in our own history which I had never heard of before. I would certainly recommend this book, though with the reservation that the present storyline is kind of a waste of slace.

 

Every Soul A Star by Wendy Mass: Three kids meet at a camp ground and witness a total solar eclipse. Each of the kids grows and learns and changes because of the other kids. This is a really sweet, heartwarming book which is also full of space nerdiness, so all in all, perfect.

 

Counting by 7s by Holly Goldberg Sloan: This was another heartwarming middle grade book. When her parents are killed in a car accident, a twelve-year-old genius is taken in by a friend, and her journey dealing with her grief and aclimating to life with her surogate family changes her and all the people around her.

 

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime by Mark Haddon: This book was slow to start but picked up and had me in tears by the end. When Christopher’s neighbor’s dog is killed, he sets out to solve the mystery and ends up uncovering many more secrets about his family along the way. I think this book ,s a thoughtful representation of someone with autism, though of course it should not be taken as indicative of the experiences of everyone on the spectrum. I was particularly impressed with the amount of agency Christopher had, and I loved his voice and character and was routing for him the whole way. A very good read.

 

The 2018 Young Explorer’s Adventure Guide edited by Sean Weaver and Corie Weaver: This is a collection of science fiction short stories for kids, all featuring diverse characters—girls, kids of different races, and kids with disabilities. Yes, my story “Polaris in the Dark” is in this anthology, but it’s really a great collection of stories. Aliens, robots, space, science, and kids having adventures fill all the pages. I read this whole book in one sitting, because I was having so much fun. Each story was like its own little gem, and I recommend this book to everyone, whatever age you are.

 

The Fairy-Tale Detectives by Michael Buckley: When the sisters Grimm are sent to live with the grandmother they’d believed to be dead, they discover that they are descended from the Brothers Grimm and it is their destiny to solve crimes in the community of fairytale creatures. They’ve just begun their training when their grandmother is kidnapped by a giant. This was a really fun and exciting book, and I can’t wait to get into the rest of the series.

 

The Children of the Red King books 1-5 by Jenny Nimmo: I just finished the fifth book of this series today. There are three more books, but unfortunately I won’t be able to read the next three books in the next three hours. The first book, Midnight for Charlie Bone, was another book that i own in hardcopy Braille, reread this year, and discovered there was more to the series. I have really enjoyed these books so far. They’re not perfect, certainly, but they’re a lot of fun. Charlie is one of the Children of the Red King, endowed with the ability to travel into photographs and paintings and speak to the people in the past. Because of his power, he is forced to attend Bloor’s Academy, where he discovers all sorts of sinister plots and works to make things right with his friends. I’m looking forward to diving into the rest of this series in the new year.

 

And that’s it. 2018 is just around the corner, filled with new books to read, new stories to write, and of course more law school. I’m going to try to read a hundred books next year. I need to make a dent in that to-read list, after all. I also want to get back into blogging more regularly. Neutron is nudging me with his paw because he hasn’t had a chance to say hello yet. And I want to finish the ten or so writing projects I started in 2017.

 

Happy New Year!

Back to School With a Story

My 2L classes start tomorrow, which is kind of making me want to puke. But on the bright side, and just in time for back to school season, my short story “Seven Signs Your Roommate Is a Vampire: With Additional Advice On Surviving Orientation If It’s More Complicated” was just published in Andromeda Spaceways. Unfortunately, it isn’t free to read the story online, but you can purchase the entire electronic issue of the magazine for $4.95 here. I’m pretty sure that’s in Australian dollars, so if you’re in the U.S. it’s even cheaper. Either way, I spend more money on ice cream on a daily basis (it’s a problem, I know), and you get a whole bunch of science fiction and fantasy stories besides mine for that price, so you should totally do it.

 

This story might be the funniest thing I’ve ever written, whatever that says about me. I hope you have as much fun reading it as I did writing it. Once you’ve read the story, you can check out the story behind “Seven Signs Your Roommate Is a Vampire” to find out where this story came from, the process I went through to write it, and more.

Facebook Author Party for the Young Explorers Adventure Guide

Hey everybody. I’m participating in an author party on Facebook for the 2018 Young Explorers Adventure Guide anthology, which will include my story “Polaris in the Dark.” The anthology is scheduled to be released in December, but in the meantime we have a week long event where the authors in the anthology talk about their writing and answer questions. I’m on from 3:00-6:00 PM next Wednesday, June 27. So come hang out and chat with me. The link to the Facebook event page is here.

“Polaris in the Dark” to be Published in the 2018 Young Explorer’s Adventure Guide

I’ve been sitting on this for about a month now, because there wasn’t a contract and I didn’t want to jinx it. But it’s really happening, so I am super excited to tell you all that my short story “Polaris in the Dark” will be published in the 2018 Young Explorer’s Adventure Guide anthology! It’s an anthology of science fiction stories about diverse characters aimed at middle grade readers. My story is about a blind girl indentured on the train that runs around the rings of Saturn… until she escapes. This isn’t the first story I’ve written about a blind character, but it is my first ever science fiction story, which is really cool. I had a lot of fun inventing gadgets that I actually want in the real world. Also it’s my first professional sale, so yay! If you’re interested, you can vote for the cover of the anthology here. I’ll keep you all posted as the anthology develops.

The Benefits of Reverse Zombification

This is my first post of 2017. Yes, I know, it’s April. Yes, I know, I haven’t posted since December. It’s been a long, hard semester. I’ve had weeks where I felt like I had to drag myself from one unending fifty page assignment to the next. It’s been a struggle to write fiction, let alone blog. And let’s be honest: you really don’t want to hear about my contracts class anyway.

 

But things are looking up. Boston finally seems to be considering springtime (or it was yesterday), my appellate brief is complete and I have my moot oral argument tonight, I have my final negotiation for my negotiations workshop on Saturday, and then there’s only two weeks of classes left. Two weeks where things are a little less crazy before we hit reading period and have to study nonstop for finals. I intend to use those two weeks wisely. Actually, now that I have a better sense of what law school finals are like and how to prepare for them, I’m going to use reading period wisely too. (We’ll see how this actually goes but I’m going to try.)

 

So since I never posted my goals for 2017—whatever those actually were—here’s my goal for the rest of 1L year and the summer: I don’t want to be a law student zombie anymore. I want to become a human being again. And here’s how I’m going to do it.

 

First, I’m tired of being a desk potato, so I want to get back in shape. I like feeling strong, and I miss moving. Added bonus: exercise isn’t just healthy. Whenever I actually get up in the morning and go to the gym, I feel great for the rest of the day. Yay endorphins!

 

Second, and along similar lines, I’m going to try to get myself onto a reasonable eating schedule. This means I need to stop eating dinner at 10:30 at night, even if the kitchen is busier earlier. I don’t think I need to explain why eating at a sane hour of the night is just overall better.

 

Third, I’m going to write more. Like really write, the way I was writing in college or in Italy, or as close to that as possible. I’m tired of feeling like a few paragraphs is a victory.

 

Fourth, I’m going to get back in touch with my inner extrovert and do fun things with friends. I feel like I live in my dorm room, and that just has to stop. The sun is shining. The grass is not quite green yet. We’re almost finished 1L. I have every reason to do social things.

 

I’ve already started on all of these goals. I’ve been exercising regularly and mostly eating around 8:00 at night, which is earlier but still not prime kitchen time. I’m also doing Camp NaNoWriMo this month, the full 50,000 words of it, to hopefully stretch my writing muscles and actually make some progress on revisions to my memory wiping academy novel. I’m participating in another twitter pitch slam this week for my middle grade fantasy novel, and I’m planning to take an online writing course this summer to give me some more structure. Finally, this past week I went to trivia and participated in a scavenger hunt, and had a blast at both. I have felt infinitely better this week than I have in a while, so I’m planning to keep it up. It’s something we were told over and over again during orientation, but apparently I didn’t really get it until now: self-care is really important.

 

It’s a good start, and I’m looking forward to keeping it up throughout the spring and summer. I’ll be working  in Boston this summer at the U.S. Department of education Office for Civil Rights, so this will be the perfect opportunity for me to actually get to know Boston better, and since I shouldn’t have homework outside work, I’ll be able to able to exercise and write and do fun social things and set a good routine for myself for the start of my 2L year.

And of course, all of this includes blogging more. It’s been a really hard school year, but I’m finally starting to feel like I have the hang of this and I can take the time to have a bit more fun and take care of myself.

 

So happy almost maybe spring!

Summer Writing Roundup

I’ve been at Harvard for a week and a half, and by this point summer feels like a distant, golden memory. So maybe I’m a little late with this post, but I still wanted to quickly talk about the goals I set for myself this summer and whether I actually achieved them. (Cue awkward laughter.)

 

back in June, I set out a bunch of writing goals for the summer. I wanted to outline the hypothetical sequels for my small child magician novel. I wanted to have complete first drafts of all the short stories in the story cycle in my Phoenix Song universe I’m working on. I wanted to finish the fanfiction I was writing. And finally I wanted to get back to revising my memory wiping academy novel.

 

And… I accomplished none of that.

 

Okay, that’s not fair. I finished the outline for the second small child magician novel and started work on outlining the third. I revised three of the Phoenix Song Stories I’d already written and finished a rough draft of the fourth—which I’d been struggling with since December. I made a lot of progress on the fanfiction. And I got back to the memory wiping academy novel.

 

I also did a lot of other things this summer. I attended the NFB’s national convention, which was huge for me. I learned Unified English Braille (the updated Braille code which I hope to talk about in more detail in the future). ]. I got a new BrailleNote, which is more like a Braille tablet (also hope to post about that later). Then the new BrailleNote broke—apparently it had a defective motherboard—and had to go back in for repairs right before I started here at Harvard (luckily I got it back on the first day of classes). I learned the Harvard Law School campus and the T system, which was also huge, and there’s still more to learn. Finally, I had fun. I learned to play cribbage. I biked and kayaked and swam and went to the beach. I went to the midnight release party for Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, my first HP midnight release party, and the party was the best part about that book (but the less said about that the better). I read a lot, and I wrote a lot.

 

Maybe I didn’t accomplish my writing goals as entirely as I’d intended, but the important thing I’m remembering is the goal behind the goals. I wanted to get myself to a place where I felt like I was at a different stage with each project so I could make progress on all of them without feeling like I was detracting from the others. I’ve now started my 1L year, and my writing time has been significantly cut down. In fact, my time for everything but reading and class has been significantly cut down. I’m hoping this will get better as I get used to what I’m reading for class, but in the meantime, it’s really nice to have projects at different stages so that, if I have a few minutes to squeeze in some writing (which has only happened once so far), I have choices about what kind of writing I’m doing and where in the process of the story I am. Right now, I have one project I’m outlining (the third small child magician novel), one project I’m in the first draft stage (the Phoenix Song stories), and one project I’m revising (the memory wiping academy novel). I feel like, with my crazy schedule and complete lack of free time, having the ability to choose what to write will actually work better for me, because it means I’ll be more productive rather than forcing it.

 

As I’ve already said, this summer was probably the last summer I will have entirely free. My goal, at its heart, was to make the most of it, and I definitely did that. So here’s to the summer, and here’s to a productive first year of law school to come.

Summer Writing Goals

Since I’ve finished my internship at the Disabilities Rights Center as well as my grand road trip of visiting law schools and the grand tour of the northeast with Stefania and Bruno, I’m taking summer off before law school. With the exception of a trip to Florida for the National Federation of the Blind’s annual national convention this week and the changes to the Braille code I need to learn (more on both those things later), I’m staying home, playing, and writing. After this year, I won’t have another full summer off again for who knows how long. So why not?

 

On the other hand, I don’t do well with no goals or deadlines. I just sort of flop around. In fact, writing-wise at least, I’ve been feeling like I’ve been flopping around a bit for a while. In college, I was part of a writing group that met every week and shared pages from continuing stories. There was pressure—not a ton of pressure because we were pretty laid back about it—but there was pressure to keep writing on the same project and to make progress on that project, because everyone wanted to know how things turned out. It was lots of fun, but it was also great for keeping me focused. And since college, I’ve been finding that I’m missing that focus. I’ve been having a hard time staying focused long enough to actually accomplish anything—or even to feel like I’m accomplishing anything. I feel so scattered, working on so many projects.

 

Here’s the thing. I probably have been making progress on all these projects. It just doesn’t feel like it. And it’s too easy, with so many projects, to avoid any problems I’m having with any of them, because the minute I get stuck, I can switch to something else and not actually address the reason I’m stuck.

 

I think it’s probably okay to be working on multiple projects at once, but I think I would be more productive if I was at different stages in each story—the planning stage in one and the writing stage in another, for example, or writing one and revising another. But when I have three or four things going, and I’m in the beginning of writing all of them, it’s hard to feel like I’m moving forward on any of them, even if I am.

 

Complicating all of this, I’m starting law school in the fall. Everything I’ve heard about the first year of law school is that you have no time to do anything ever. I don’t know how true this is, or how true it will be for me, because I’ve always found time for writing no matter what else I’m doing. But if I’m going to get any writing done in law school, I need to be organized about it. More than that, I need to feel like I’m moving forward, or I won’t be motivated to do anything.

 

So this summer, my goal is to clean up my writing desk—figuratively speaking. Right now, I’m in the middle of four pretty major projects. By the end of the summer, I want to be done with or at a different stage in three of them.

 

The first is a set of seven linked short stories set in my Phoenix Song universe—what I’m calling the world where “Dissonance” is set. I’ve written and revised three of these stories, and I’m partway through a draft of the fourth. By the end of the summer, I want to have a rough draft of all seven.

 

Second is a fan fiction novel I’ve been working on for fun. I’ve never written fan fiction before this. I don’t have anything against fan fiction, I just have so many story ideas of my own that I never had time for it. But I had this great idea and my friends really wanted to read it, and I was sort of blocked on everything I was writing last year, so I thought I’d give it a spin. It’s been a lot of fun, but I still have a ton of my own stories that have been taking a backseat to this, and if I have limited writing time in law school, I want to use it to work on my own original stuff. So by the end of the summer, I want to have completely finished that and gotten it off my plate.

 

Next, I came up with an idea for a sequel to my upper middle grade fantasy novel—the one I’m querying agents about. Actually, if I go ahead with the sequel idea I have, it will be a trilogy. Friends who have been published have advised me that it’s not always a good idea to write a sequel for a book that hasn’t been published, because there’s no guaranteeing that a publisher will want to publish a sequel, and you will have put a whole bunch of work into something that will go nowhere when you could have been working on something else. And again, upcoming limited writing time. My novel could definitely stand on its own, but I have an idea for a sequel that I love. So I started an outline to clarify my idea and make sure it is in fact a viable story—and assuming I get that far, I’ll need to pitch the idea to people with a reasonable amount of coherency. I don’t have any intention of writing the sequel yet, but I want to finish the outline and then outline the third book by the end of the summer.

 

This leaves my memory-wiping academy novel, which I decided earlier this year that I want to expand and split into four books. The first draft, which I finished just before I graduated college, was designed as a test to see if I could write the plot of a young adult trilogy into one book. The answer is yes, I could, but the book was one hundred sixty thousand words—which is way too long if you didn’t know that—and that’s when I glossed over a lot that I wanted to explore deeper. Plus I had a lot of extra plot I left out because I started panicking about the length. And also there were a bunch of plot holes that come from being one of my first drafts. So I started on that around Christmas but didn’t get very far (because of all the other stuff I’ve been working on). This revision will be my project in law school.

 

It’s a lot to get done this summer, but I write fast, and I’m pretty sure I can accomplish most of it. But I better stop talking about it and get writing.

What I Learned From a Twitter Pitch Slam

Last week, I participated in #DVpit, the Twitter pitch slam for diverse writers, set up by the literary agent Beth Phelan at The Bent Agency. It was one of the craziest twelve hours of my life—I literally was running the whole day on adrenaline—and it’s taken me more than a week to decompress enough to write about it coherently.

 

For those who don’t know, a Twitter pitch slam is an event where authors pitch their novel in 140 characters or less. Those 140 characters include hashtags for the name of the event (in this case #DVpit) and for the genre and category of the book. I also learned that spaces are part of that character count. Agents and editors keep an eye on the feed all day (this is why the hashtags are important: you want them to be able to find your book). If an agent or editor favorites your tweet, you’re invited to submit your project to them, with the advantage of a leg-up out of the huge pile of submissions already on their desks (the slush pile).

 

I learned all of this in the last month as I frantically attempted to write pitches for the young adult fantasy novel for which I’ve been querying agents for about two months. As can be attested by my New Year’s resolutions for the past several years, I am absolutely terrible at Twitter. Seriously, I’m the worst. But I saw an announcement for #DVpit, and I thought it couldn’t hurt to try—if nothing else it would be a crash course in how to use Twitter—and it actually went way better than I expected.

 

Before I go any further, I want to acknowledge that I had a ton of help. Huge thanks to Julie Sadler, Kristen Ciccarelli, Kayla Whaley, Mark O’Brien, and Natasha Razi for their incredible critiques of my pitches, and thanks also to all my writing group friends who cheered me on all last Tuesday. I couldn’t have done it without all your support and help.

 

I believe that it’s easier to talk about how you do something or what you learned from it with examples, rather than in the abstract. So without further ado, here are the three pitches I used throughout the day.

 

  1. 13 yo Jael’s magic gets her a new family, but only if she survives the antimagic rebellion her murdered parents started. #DVPit #YA #F

 

Though a couple writers favorited this pitch, and I’m grateful for the compliment, no agents or editors favorited it. I was honestly surprised, because I’ve heard from a few editors that the bit about Jael’s parents starting the rebellion is the most compelling and unique part of my query letter. On the other hand, this is a 140 character pitch, not a 250 word letter. I’ve crammed a lot in here, and I can see how it could be confusing, and if you’re reading it quickly, how it could come off a little like gibberish. I certainly saw several pitches scrolling through the feed that made zero sense to me but probably made lots of sense to the author. Finally, there’s always the possibility that it just got buried under all the other pitches. I swear, the rate of pitches being tweeted was like one per second, which contributed a lot to how stressed I was about the whole thing.

 

2. 13 yo Jael must face her murdered parents’ past and master her magic to save her new family from the antimagic rebellion. #DVPit #YA #F

 

An editor favorited this pitch. Yay! I think what works here is that it doesn’t try to cram everything in. We know her parents are murdered and something happened in their past that is related to the antimagic rebellion, but we don’t know exactly what, so it’s intriguing. We also know that since she has magic, she’s naturally on the wrong side of the rebellion, or the right side in terms of stopping it, depending on how you look at it. Finally, I more clearly defined the stakes of the novel, why she has to master her magic and untangle her parents’ past.

 

3. 13 yo foster home survivor Jael must learn to use her magic or she’ll be taken away from the family she’s desperate to keep. #DVPit #YA #F

 

Three agents favorited this pitch. Yay! Yay! Yay! And this actually turned out to be my favorite of the pitches I used. It comes at the story from a different angle, a more emotional angle than the first two pitches. It’s not as cluttered with information that could be confusing in such a short format. But it does clearly set up stakes and introduce us to a relatable character.

 

The important aspects of a Twitter pitch come down to as much specificity as possible, without being confusing, and a sense of the stakes of the book. I learned that it’s important to use the character’s name. In my original pitches, I just said “13 yo orphan.” But readers, editors and agents too, relate to people. If I give her a name, she becomes a person. And actually, since I say that her parents have been murdered, I don’t even need to call her an orphan, since it’s implied (you can show and not tell in a Twitter pitch too, apparently).

 

You can repeat pitches, or use multiple pitches that approach the book from different angles. It’s a full-length book, so odds are there are lots of ways to approach the book in an intriguing way. My first two pitches take the same approach, while my third takes a different. I probably could have come up with one or two other approaches to my story, but writing a 140 character pitch for a 90,000 word novel is really hard guys. So I contented myself with the pitches I had and just repeated them all.

 

It’s small, but I feel like it’s important to use as few abreviations and acronyms as possible. It makes the pitch easier to read. The only abbreviation I used is “yo” for “year old,” because “year old” is a lot of characters. Also, though you probably don’t have to include the final period, I am a strong believer in correct grammar and punctuation, even on Twitter, so I did. Finally, since it was a pitch slam specifically for diverse writers, I could have included a hashtag indicating that I’m a writer with a disability, but since I don’t have any disabled characters in this particular book, I decided it would probably just confuse the issue, so I left it out.

 

There was so much advice out there on the internet, and I read a lot of it as I prepared for DVpit. I also had lots of help with my pitches, as I’ve said. I probably did a few things wrong (in fact, I’m almost certain of it, because I’m still awful at Twitter), and after all this, I can say with confidence that I’m not a huge fan of the Twitter pitch as a format for pitching your book. There’s just too much information to cram into too little space. But I got four favorites, four people whom I can submit my book to, and that awesome feeling that my novel appeals to someone. And that was way more than I expected (when I saw how many people were participating, I was positive no one would even find my pitch, let alone like it).

 

I really enjoyed #DVpit. It was great to see so many awesome stories pitched, and it was great to be a part of all that excitement. Getting more diverse voices into fiction is very important to me: We read to discover, and we can’t discover if we’re always reading books written by people with the same point of view. I really hope I get to read some of these books someday soon.