25,000 Words Written

There has been much talk of goals around me of late. I’m typically bothered by it. “You should have goals,” people at work will say – bosses, coworkers with better titles than mine (which are most of my coworkers). “It wouldn’t be a bad idea to have goals,” my mother says – and she is also a coworker with a better title than mine. “Write your goals!” says my father, who prefers a direct approach – which is either refreshing or intimidating, depending on the circumstance.

Yet, I find myself without goals in my professional life. Of course, if you count “making enough money to pay my rent and buy enough food to keep me alive” as a goal, that is mine. I do feel fulfilled by the work I do because I am helping others on a daily basis. But if I sit and think “What is the one thing I want to do?” the answer is always the same. It always has been.

Write. I want to write.

My ultimate dream is to be able to be a full-time writer. I don’t want this to be a dream that is realized because I marry a man who makes enough money for me to quit my job and write full time. I want it to be because I publish something that people want to read and have fun reading.

The problem with this is that people don’t think it is an acceptable dream. In the ever-loving and ever straightforward words of my businessman father – “Write a book? I meant a real  goal, Amber.” (I should mention here that he is always supportive of my writing, he is just terribly practical and well-versed in the difficulties life can throw at you. But you can bet that when I get published one day, he will basically be president of my fan club, carrying around my book and telling people his daughter wrote it. My mom, too. Co-president of my fan club. She is, incidentally, my current biggest fan, and she reads rough drafts of my chapters regularly.)

“So, perhaps I don’t have goals after all.” I began to think this and was disheartened. Then I ran across something kind of great.

One of my favorite YA authors, Marissa Meyer – author of the Lunar Chronicles – recently blogged about a letter she had written to herself when she was twenty-four.

She had written to encourage herself to keep writing, pretending that she was five years older and published. The letter is wonderful and reflects a lot of how I feel these days – at the same age she was when she wrote the letter to herself. It’s a difficult time, starting something that you know is going to be good but that isn’t there yet. It’s hard to keep sight of the end when you don’t know quite when that will be. It’s easy to get discouraged.

At the end of the letter, she included two lists that she made. Motivations for Writing, and Fears that Keep Me from Writing (and ways to work around them).

Using that as an inspiration, I have decided that it isn’t ridiculous to have goals as a writer. Though many might disagree, I don’t think it’s ridiculous that these are the goals that are most important to me. I love my work at my company but I am a writer first and always.

I am going to make my own lists. 25,000 words into my current project seems as good a time as any to reflect.

My Motivations for Writing

1. Telling the stories that these wonderful characters I have dreamed up want told, thereby giving them the respect they deserve by chronicling their adventures.
2. Offering readers the same escape from reality that books always have and always will offer me.
3. To entertain people of all ages with stories of magic and impossible things.
4. To give myself a world to enjoy other than my own (unmagical) one.
5. To improve as a writer and find my own voice.
6. To fulfill my university creative writing professor’s prediction that I am going to be a successful writer – don’t want to let him down!
7. To convey life, love, happiness, sorrow, and fun – and any other possible emotion – the way I see it in the hopes that it allows someone the chance to say “I feel that way, too,” and reminds them that they aren’t alone.

Fears That Keep Me from Writing (and ways to work around them)

1. Self doubt – fear that I have no original ideas or ways of saying things, that I’m just not that good. (Remember that no one is that good in the first draft. Remember that you like writing for the process – and the process includes crappy writing that can be fixed later!)
2. Comparing myself to other writers. (They’re published and you’re not, but that won’t always be the case. Remember that you have the potential to be on those shelves with them, even if you aren’t quite there yet!)
3. Revising before I’m done with the first draft. (Stop being so OCD. The best writing you do comes when you don’t over think. Remember that manic, can’t-stop-this-momentum, worry-about-the-edits-some-other-time free writing produces the most unexpected – and therefore most fun – results.

There we have it. Thank you, Marissa Meyer, and I hope to look back at this in five years when I’m almost thirty and find that some of it has come true!

First drafts are the best and the worst.

I am working on a book at the moment and I’m running into the same problem I had when I completed my first book. I hate and love first drafts.

There are times when I get really obsessed with the writing. I am in the midst of one of those times. For the past couple days, any time I sit at my computer, I am typing like a fiend. I am loving my characters and pouring myself into the writing. My main character is awesome and the supporting cast is quirky and interesting. Everyone has their back stories and everything is working.

But I know from the last time I wrote a book that this feeling is fleeting. Actually, I have been working on this current one the past three months or so and have already hit the road blocks I am about to describe.

Writer’s block

Those moments when you don’t know what’s going to happen next and aren’t quite sure that anything you’ve written up to that point is worth keeping. Maybe you should trash the whole thing?

Writer’s despair

This is a piece of crap. Who would ever pay to read this? It will be one that I print for my parents to read and pretend to like. These characters don’t seem real. This character is an idiot and I’m an idiot for creating him. What’s the point of writing this anyway?

Writer’s complete and utter confusion

I have written myself into a corner. I have to erase half of what I have already written. I can’t use these twenty five pages. I can’t believe I didn’t realize it sooner. Wait…who is this character on this page? Where did I introduce him? What does he look like? I should keep a record of this stuff…except let’s face it, I won’t. It makes me feel like I can’t be as creative if I have too much structure. But look where no structure has gotten you, weirdo. You don’t even know what the hell you’re writing anymore!

Yet I will continue to write and think about writing and act out fight scenes alone in my room like a weird 10-year-old imitating a character in a video game. (I mean…I do it so I can get the descriptions right…and also because it’s fun. Mostly it’s the description thing though.)

I will now describe my book. I have described it to zero people aside from my brother who is the best person to bounce ideas off of. He’s probably one of the few people who can hear, “And they’re from an alternate universe that is kind of on Earth but…really it isn’t on Earth.” and respond with, “Oh, okay.” as though it’s something he hears every day. Maybe he did hear things like that every day, as we lived together for almost twenty years.

My novel is told from the point of view of a girl named March Matthews (because I like alliteration and weird names) and she has a photographic memory. Her memory works kind of like picture and video files on a computer. They’re all stored in her mind and she can flip through them to access them.

There’s one problem, though. Her grandfather has supposedly passed away three years prior to the start of the book, and she has no memory of him. She’s told by family members that she and her grandfather were incredibly close. A therapist suggests that she represses the memories of him because it’s too painful for her to deal with his loss.

March decides to try to recover her memories of him and finds more than she ever expected she would. Human-like beings with extraordinary abilities. A secret organization – ACS – fighting against those beings that her grandfather was supposedly a member of. An alternate world where these beings reside.

March soon learns that she isn’t the only one searching for clues about her grandfather. She gets swept up in a conflict that pits her world against the alternate world – a conflict that may or may not have been started by her grandfather.

Her forgotten memories might be the key to resolution.

…

So, here is an excerpt from my first chapter. March has arrived at her parents’ home for dinner after a visit to a coffee shop where she saw a strange man peering through the window at her. He has followed her home and she doesn’t know why.

Disclaimer – this is really first drafty. When I finish this draft and go back to edit, I will remove the adverbs and repetitive verbs and what not. I probably overuse “look” and “watch” and “stare” and will think of more interesting ways to write sentences containing those verbs later. My main purpose in the first draft is getting the crazy mess of ideas from my brain to the page.

* * * * *

March pulled up to the curb by the mailbox and noticed an unfamiliar car parked on the other side of the street. She shuffled quickly through the memories of the neighbor’s cars and saw their SUV and their son’s Jetta but this car was different. The neighbor’s lights were off so they didn’t have a guest. March peered through her window at her parents’ home and saw four figures moving around in the dining room.

Her suspicion stemmed from the countless times during the past several years that her grandmother had taken it upon herself to invite young men to dinner to meet March. She cut the engine and drug herself to the door. Her mother opened it before she could even find the key.

“March!” she said. She gestured for March to lean toward her. Her mother was a small, slight woman. She hugged March, who had been taller than her since middle school, and released her quickly. Before she stepped back, she whispered what sounded like “Sorry.”

March stepped into the house and turned right to enter the dining room where she saw her father and grandmother seated on either side of an older gentleman who March recognized immediately.

“Dr. Carver?” she said.

“Hello, March,” he replied.

“Look who I ran into at the store today, March,” her grandmother said. Her left eyebrow raised up ever so slightly which – when checked in contrast of her store of unpleasant Grandma June memories – meant she was lying.

March took her seat across from her father and set her bag on the floor. She looked past her father’s head to the cars parked outside. She looked from Dr. Carver to his car and back at him again to be sure the memories were linked.

Her mother brought the first dish in and placed it on the center of a placemat that sat in the middle of the table parallel to two other placemats. Each of their place settings was identical – cutlery parallel to each other, plate at the center of the mat, cup at the upper right hand corner of the mat, each cup exactly three quarters full.

March’s mother shuffled to the kitchen and back again with two serving dishes that she placed at the center of the two other mats. She sat by March, surveyed the dishes, reached forward to adjust one, and then placed her hands flat on the table in front of her with an approving nod.

“The meal looks lovely, Millie,” the doctor said.

“Agreed!” March’s father chimed in.

They scooped food onto their plates silently and March noticed that her grandmother kept glancing from the doctor to her parents to March as though she were waiting for something to happen. Once they had all begun their meal, the doctor cleared his throat.

“March,” he said. “It’s been quite some time since I’ve seen you.”

“Isn’t that…good?” March said, looking to her father for support. He smiled.

“It is,” Dr. Carver continued.

“Then…why are you here?” March said.

“March Matthews!” her grandmother said as though she were a child who was about to be grounded. “That sounded rude.”

March clenched her jaw to keep from retorting.

“I just wanted to talk,” the doctor said. “Casually.”

“What would you like to talk about casually?” she asked.

“We don’t have to be defensive, March,” he said.

“We aren’t being defensive. I’m being defensive.”

“It was three years ago today that your grandfather passed away, wasn’t it?”

March stared out the window, unwilling to make eye contact with the man.

“March?” he said. “You must remember something by now.”

March kept her eyes on the window and clenched her jaw harder, so hard that her temples began to hurt.

“Maybe you all can talk after dinner,” she heard her father say.

“She’s okay,” her grandmother said, slamming one of the serving dishes onto the table. March’s mother reached over to adjust it and her grandmother slapped her hand away. “Go ahead, March. What do you remember? Tell the man.”

“I remember…going to the lake with him.”

“Okay,” the doctor said. “The lake.”

“She has a picture on her cell phone of the two of them at the lake,” her grandmother said.

March looked at her grandmother. “I guess that’s what sparked my memory.”

“Then what did we do that day at the lake?” her grandmother asked.

March didn’t answer.

“June,” her father said. “This is hardly the time for this.” Her father had a wonderful way of saying things softly but with great authority. He was the only one her grandmother couldn’t rattle. March and her mother on the other hand were far too affected by Grandma June.

Her mother was staring at the plate blankly that Grandma June hadn’t allowed her to move. Her father reached over quietly and adjusted the plate so that it lined up with the other and her mother sighed and smiled again.

“I’m concerned about her. I think she might be lying,” Grandma June said. “What did August say about me those months before the divorce? The two of you were always off together talking in hushed voices. He told you he was leaving me, didn’t he?”

With each syllable, the pitch of Grandma June’s voice had risen until she sounded almost hysterical. March stared at her, wide-eyed. The woman hadn’t ever said anything like that before. March knew – from stories her mother told her – that Grandma June and Grandpa August had gotten divorced a few months before he passed away, but her grandmother didn’t talk about it.

“Ma’am,” the doctor said. “It is quite possible that March doesn’t remember. Traumatic events can sometimes not be dealt with immediately. As all of you have told me, March was very close with her grandfather. Losing him might have been too much for her. When we can’t deal with something…some of us simply don’t.”

“I’ve heard quite enough,” Grandma June said.

“I’m sorry if I upset you,” the doctor said.

As her grandmother stood to leave the room, March noticed something behind her, through the window. Movement.

She focused on the window, and sure enough, there was someone walking up the lawn toward the house. The figure was tall and lean and she assumed male. He held a flashlight in either hand that were pointed toward the ground, casting light on the fallen leaves. He trudged right over the flower bed and through the shrubs so that he could press his nose up to the window.

March didn’t have to go back far in her memory to remember him. The man from the coffee shop.

Panic began to creep in and March’s breathing became uneven. Had he followed her? Why? Her parents were saying something, having a conversation with Dr. Carver, and they didn’t even glance at the window.

He still wore the sunglasses and the mask, but as soon as he reached the window, he removed the mask. He had a square jaw and a stubbly face. He then removed the sunglasses. He looked at his hands as if he were studying them and March followed his gaze with her own.

She wasn’t quite sure what she saw. He wasn’t holding flashlights as she had originally assumed. His palms were glowing – a soft white light. The light reminded her of street lamps or car headlights. She squinted her eyes and attempted to recall if she had ever seen anything like this before but the more she tried to access those memories, the more her head began to throb right behind her eyes. She blinked hard a few times, but the last time she shut and then opened her eyes, she and the man locked eyes.

March heard herself shriek as though she were elsewhere, outside herself. It was her but she didn’t feel attached to the voice. A white hot pain shot from the back of her skull to the front and blinded her. She jerked her body sideways in an attempt to throw her arms up and felt herself fall. She collided with whomever had been seated by her. Was it her mother? She couldn’t remember, couldn’t think. She vaguely sensed the ground beneath her and heard another shriek. She was screaming and she couldn’t get her mouth to close and she couldn’t get the pain to lessen. Her body seized up, and then she couldn’t feel anything.

* * * * *

She’s not dead. I promise.

Or is sheeeee!?

She isn’t. 🙂