Bitter Sweet (Or Songs I've Cried To)

I. It is March of 2017. I am in the bedroom of my on-campus apartment. It is chilly outside, and I'm longing for sunny days, for the first time I can wear dresses without tights to keep my legs warm, for freedom, and in this case: the unknown. My first summer not bookended by school. The summer of the rest of my life. Instead of the overhead I just have lamps lit so my room is full of warmth, the darkness pressing against the glass. I'm laying in bed with headphones on, trying to find something to listen to. I turn to an old favorite on a whim. Alela Diane. I liked one of her songs once but not the rest, her voice dipping away from folk, too close to country twang for my liking. I find her most recent album: Cold Moon. Hit play. The songs are otherworldly, slow. They meander, Alela's voice lifting like a white sheet on a windy day, floating, longing to break free.

The ocean is the color that you saw
The ocean is the color it will always be
with or without your hands to paint it

As I sang into the night sky
I knew that you were stopping by
to say goodbye
Goodbye, Goodbye

I listen to the album all the way through. I don't move. I am transfixed. Even for all the talk of the ocean, the album makes me think of the desert - the way sounds carry, the sky so vast you can barely see the edges. As the album progresses I begin to sense the story the lyrics tell, of loss and questioning. Of wondering what happens when we die. By the end, I want to believe in souls.

Call it God
Call it whatever you like
to believe in souls
To believe that death is someplace
where there are no eyes
where there are no faces
no hands no war no death

Is it a colorless night
shrouded in white
do we return here again?


II. I am little, sitting on my parent's bed.  Joni Mitchell's "Little Green" emanates from a tiny first-gen iPod speaker. Her words, twisting like vines around the room. Her details, so tactile you can almost taste them:

Call her Little Green
For the color when the spring is born
There'll be crocuses to bring to school tomorrow
Just a little green
like the lights when the northern lights perform
There'll be icicles and birthday clothes and sometimes
there'll be sorrow

I'm filled with childlike joy - the kind that only comes from the simplest things like stacking blocks on top of each other or painting blindly on fresh paper. Joy for the beauty of the music and the melancholy of the words, though in my child's brain it isn't melancholy, just specific: Birthday clothes. Icicles. Northern lights. Sorrow. My mother tells me the song makes her sad. When I ask why, she tells me that Joni wrote it about giving up her child for adoption. I listen to it again, and the lyrics snap into place where before they were only pretty words:

Born with the moon in cancer
choose her a name she'll answer to
Call her green and the winters cannot fade her
call her green for the children who've made her

Suddenly, I'm crying. Suddenly the world seems bigger and more unfathomable. Suddenly the simple details take on so much meaning. I know my mom feels bad, but looking back I'm glad she told me what it meant. It cracked the song, and its details, wide open.


III. It is December 2017. I'm in bed again. I can't fall asleep. Too much coffee too late in the day and my heart feels like it's trying to patter it's way out of my chest, but my eyelids are heavy and my limbs feel like they're made of lead, like at any moment I could sink into the mattress. I listen to my "Sleep" playlist. I listen to "Cold Moon." Drift in and out of sleep. Somewhere in an old playlist: Anais Mitchell. I click on an album called "Xoa", hit play. Her voice, elvish, etherial, pierces and lulls at the same time. I'm more awake now, the opposite of where I want to be, but I don't care because I just want to listen to her words. Her songs are stories, tales of sorrow of grace of beauty and light.

Come out the streets are breathing
heaving green to red to green
come with your nicotine and wine
tambourine keeping time
you come and find me in the evening
Way over yonder I'm waiting and wondering
wither your fonder heart lies

Sometimes her voice molds itself into a wail. It tapers and grows, vibrates with something sad and beautiful and little bit jagged like unpolished crystal. I listen to it on repeat. Drift in and out of sleep. When I wake up, her voice croons softly through one earbud, the other slipped away from me in the night.

She's leading you home from the heat of the bar
to lie on the levy and look at the stars
you can hold her hand
you can kiss her face
go slow if you can
cause the world is a very sad place
cause when she leaves she'll leave no trace
and the world will still be there

Halfway

In case you weren't aware, I'm writing a novel. Actually, you probably weren't aware because I've specifically not mentioned it on this blog until now. But yesterday, I hit an arbitrary milestone towards my arbitrary word count goal of 80,000 words, and it felt like time to announce: I made it to the halfway point.

Halfway. The term implies that something is in the process of becoming something else, but it's also a pause. On Dictionary.com the sample sentences for halfway are as follows: "He stopped halfway down the passage"; "She woke halfway through the night"; and "I'm incapable of doing anything even halfway decent." Besides the humor in these sentences (especially the last one), I find that the halfway point is a time for reflection. So I'm reflecting.

It's hard to know what to say about this book because for so long I've avoiding calling it what it is. I avoided saying that I was writing a novel (except to my family) because I didn't want it to fall into the ever growing category of "Projects Laura Says She's Working on But Never Finishes." Besides, the same goal has shown up on my new year's resolutions every year for probably the past ten years: "Write a book!" Always with so much enthusiasm. Always with so much hope.

I've never gotten as far with a project as I have with this one, and miraculously, it feels like I might actually finish it. But right, I'm supposed to be reflecting. I'm such a future-oriented person that I tend to see every accomplishment as a gateway to the next big thing. I need to stop doing that. I need to acknowledge all the work that went into making it happen.

So let's start from the beginning. This isn't like other things I've written, where I can pinpoint the exact moment the idea came to me. I do know when the seed of the idea appeared, though. It was the summer of 2014, and I was working at the Harris County Archives. The office was quiet, and white, and I was cataloguing the dates and contents of documents in a series of boxes, so I often listened to music and podcasts to fill up some of that quiet, empty space. I listened to two podcasts back to back: the "Wild Ones" episode of 99% Invisible and the Radiolab episode about the Galapagos Islands. I'd always had a passing interest in the Galapagos, but these two episodes filled me with curiosity. Who lives on the islands? What was it like in Darwin's time vs now? The islands loomed in my imagination: they felt untamed and magnetic and completely mysterious. I knew immediately that I had to write something set there.

I got as far as writing the first paragraph of a short story called "Mother and Daughter Go to the Sunny Galapagos," before in classic Laura fashion, I abandoned it. For a year. One day I re-opened the document, re-read the paragraph and let it grow into something larger. Something with more scope than a short story. Something that could, maybe, one day, be a novel.

I think there are a couple of factors that have made this project easier to write so far:

1. No re-reading. I hardly ever go back and re-read what I've written after writing it. That's not to say that I don't edit as I go - I can write and re-draft and tweak whatever I've written that day as much as I want. But as soon as 24-hours have passed, I don't look at what I wrote the day before unless it's just to remind myself where I am. If I did re-read whole passages with even that little bit of distance, I don't think I'd have the confidence to keep going, no matter how much I told myself "It's a first draft. It's supposed to be bad."

2. Loose structure. I think I've finally figured out an outlining technique that works for me. Basically I make a list of all the scenes I know I want to write, in somewhat chronological order. As I write, I move those scenes onto a list of existing scenes. That way I can see what I've written and what still needs to be written at a glance. I write in what is basically chronological order, but if I really get stuck, I let myself skip ahead to important scenes from my list that I really want to write.

3. Cutting myself slack. I want to finish this draft. I want to finish it so badly it hurts sometimes, because I know exactly how far I have to go, and how bad I am at writing every day. But I also know that I'm not the kind of writer who can just pound out 2,000 words a day and not care if they're bad. I like being happy with what I've written that day, even if it's only one sentence that I'm proud of. My goal is to write as quickly as I can without turning the experience into a chore. I even let myself "start over" when I thought – 25,000 words in – that the novel needed to be told from a different character's perspective. It took me 5,000 words of back-tracking to figure out that no, that wasn't the case.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that I'm really proud of how far I've gotten. I still have another 40,000 words to go, but somehow they don't feel as daunting. Because I'm halfway. And I'm pausing. And that's a good feeling.

Eight Creators to Follow in 2018

The internet is a vast source of inspiration, but with the seemingly endless access to creative people and their work, it can be difficult to find the ones who are doing the things that truly inspire you. I spent most of 2017 being inspired by other people - mostly artists and writers and youtubers - and I felt like I should honor that inspiration by writing about them. I think they're all going to do great things in 2018.

1. Fran Menses: I tend to admire people who make a ton of stuff, and Fran definitely falls into this category. The sheer amount of things she creates on a daily basis - youtube videos, drawings, zines, travel journals, stickers, you name it - is mind boggling. I love her aesthetic - all pastels all the time - but more than that I love her quiet encouragements to her followers, her love for illustration, and her relaxed sense of humor. Plus she recently debuted a planner in her online shop, and it's literally the best planner I've ever owned.

Where to follow: Youtube
Favorite Videos:
A Week in the Life
Organization
One Scary Thing Every Day
Kew Gardens
Other links:
Blog
Instagram
Shop
Patreon

2. Synchronized Swim (Jessie Epstein + Amy Bornman): I've been following this blog since its inception, and oh. my. goodness. it is wonderful! Jesse and Amy write gorgeous, tremendously thoughtful personal essays about life, books, music, and faith (among other things). They are both so observant of their emotions and what it means to be a fledgeling adult, and every post has this richness to it that's hard to describe. If you read any blog in 2018, it should be this one.

Where to follow: Blog
Favorite posts:
Green Light by Jess
The Braid by Amy
Airplanes, Revisited by Jess
Practice by Amy
Other links:
Instagram
Sync Swim Shop
Amy's Shop

3. Ariel Bissett: Ariel has enough energy and enthusiasm for twelve people. When it comes rushing out of her, usually in the form of a video, it's impossible not to feel inspired. I've been following her Youtube channel for a while, but the past year has brought a noticeable change: the the quality has gone up, and she's branched out from solely talking about books to talking about her creative endeavors as well. Since then she's created a zine, launched a podcast, and started freelancing. Ariel is the kind of person who bravely follows her curiosity wherever it leads, and I can't wait to see where it takes her next.

Where to follow: Youtube
Favorite videos:
No Longer a Student
Writing a Book
Taking a Gap Year
Deep Talks
Other links:
Website
Podcast
Patreon

4. Robin MacArthur: Surprisingly, this is the only published author to make the list. I first discovered Robin's work at the Texas Book Festival last year, when I read the first couple pages of her short story collection, Half Wild, and couldn't leave without buying it. I don't usually fall in love with short story collections, but Half Wild was different. The stories seeped under my skin and settled there. I've since learned that the author lives in a cabin she and her husband built from scratch on land that has been in her family for generations. Her first novel Heart Spring Mountain comes out this month and I can't wait to be swallowed whole by her words again. In the meantime, I'll keep myself occupied by enjoying her cozy Instagram feed.

Where to follow: Instagram
Favorite posts:
This one and
This one and
This one and
This one
Other links:
Website
Design Sponge Profile

5. Fran Cacace: Fran is amazing. She's a filmmaker, writer, and youtuber who's putting herself through school with a full-time job. On her youtube channel she talks frankly about creativity and mental illness, and doesn't sugar coat the difficult parts of creativity. I love re-watching her old nanowrimo videos, where she filmed her progress every day while working on her novel. I've honestly learned a lot of things from her, not the least of which being that it's possible to write a ton of words AND watch a lot of television, and that it's important to prioritize mental wellbeing over productivity. Also be sure to watch her awesome web-series about working in a library: it is funny and true and heartfelt.

Where to follow: Youtube
Favorite videos:
NanoWriMo Day 7
2017
I Wrote A Scene
Finishing A Book
Other links:
Blog
Web Series

6. Delita Martin: Delita is an amazing artist who makes beautiful, mixed media prints showcasing African American women. She incorporates pattern, fabric, and hand-stitching into her work in such interesting ways, and her portraits feel personal and moving in ways that floored me when I happened to discover her work in a show at the Galveston Art Center. If you can find a way to see her work in person, do it, because the scale makes them even more stunning.

Where to follow: Instagram
Favorite Pieces:
This one and
This one and
This one and
This one
Other links:
Website
Behind the Scenes

7. Ashley Mary: I love Ashley's colorful abstract paintings, but I especially love watching her instagram stories, where she shows closeups of her work. Her instagram feed makes me want to take up oil paints, if only for the amazing textures and colors she creates.

Where to follow: Instagram
Favorite Posts:
This one and
This one and
This one and
This one
Other Links:
Website
Online Shop

8. Leena Norms: Leena is another youtuber that I've been following for years, and I just can't get over her videos. My favorite series she's done is called 40 Questions with Leena, where she made an astounding 40 videos in 40 days answering questions posed by her viewers. I aspire to Leena's level of curiosity and playfulness, and I can't wait see what she does next.

Where to follow: Youtube
Favorite Videos:
Is it Bad to Age?
The Five to Nine
Congratulations, You Did Nothing
How to Get Everything Done
Other Links:
Podcast
Patreon

I encourage you to check out the work of these amazing women. I hope that you will watch their videos and read their books and appreciate their art, and if you can, support them buy buying something they made. Making it as an independent artist, wether you are freelancing or doing side projects alongside a regular job, is one of the most difficult things you can do, and it's even harder to constantly self promote. These women manage not only to make the things they love, but also to share the behind the scenes progress of almost everything they do, and to me that's what makes them so inspiring. I hope you enjoyed this list, and that it leaves you ready to take on the new year!

New Year Thoughts

So I always seem to have a lot of thoughts around the beginning of the new year: resolutions and goals and lots of wishy washy feelings around my birthday and what I want my life to look like in 2018 and all those fun existential questions. I've been working on a blog post about people who inspire me and who I think are going to do really great things in 2018, but that post just isn't going to happen yet, because I want to it to be as concise and well-written as possible (and there's a lot of people to profile!). So you're getting this instead, which I'm sorry to say is just a snapshot of my brain right now. Here goes.

1. Reading slumps. Ironically, I've been in a bad reading slump ever since I started working at a bookstore. I think it's because I've gotten so used to describing books to people that it makes me feel like I've already read them. Trying not to put too much pressure on myself and let myself fall back in love with reading when the time comes.

2. Days off. Since starting a full time job my attitude toward days off has completely changed. I used to think that I had to use my weekends to DO things - I had to be productive and go on adventures. I still want to go on adventures sometimes, but I don't feel quite as guilty for sleeping in or spending an entire afternoon reading. Today I literally wrote in my planner that I wanted to spend at least 2 hours curled up with a book. Now my days off feel like this magical, special time that's just for me to do whatever I want with. And it's a really nice feeling.

3. 2018 Bucket List. Okay, I know I just said that I feel less guilty about using my days off to actually relax, but one of my goals for 2018 is to do more activities that I love but don't get to do very often. Mostly things like kayaking, roller skating, and being outside. Some other things on my list are: become a regular at an establishment (coffee shop/library/bookstore), go rock climbing (nerve wracking because I'm not sure how I feel about heights, but it also looks really fun), and visit a museum/gallery I haven't been to yet. So yeah, I think I'll be happy if my days off are about 60% recharging, 40% putting in that little bit of extra effort in to go somewhere and do something new.

4. Writing. I had a bit of an epiphany the other day. I realized that writing itself, putting words on the page, isn't difficult. The hard part is everything that surrounds writing: the self doubt. The stress over deadlines. The wrestling with one idea over another. Every day we come to the page with all of this baggage, and every day we have to wrestle it to the ground just to even begin. It's exhausting. As soon as I embrace this fact that the physical act of writing is easy, the fear and self doubt don't have as much power over me. *Disclaimer*: That's not to say that figuring out story and character and revision isn't mentally strenuous, because it is, but in the first draft putting words on the page is so much easier if you don't have to deal with all the mental angst. I've been trying to focus on just putting one word after the other, and so far it's been working.

5. Turning 23. My birthday is the day after tomorrow, and I'm honestly surprised about how calm I feel about it. 22 was a weird birthday for me. It felt like the year I was "officially" a twenty-something, no turning back. I know there's never any turning back, but 20 and 21 still felt like a part of teenager-dom, you know? Anyway, I'm looking forward to a relaxed birthday surrounded by the people I love most in this world, and really, what more could you want?

6. This blog. I've had a lot of thoughts about where I want this blog to go in 2018. I want to post more, obviously. I want to write more about my writing process, and hopefully give some advice that might be helpful. I want to write less rambly and thought-dumpy posts and more thoughtful essay-like posts. (With obvious exceptions, because sometimes you just need to write down everything that's in your head. Case in point.) I want to share more photos of places I've been, and find more creative ways of conveying information. I want this to be a warm space, a comfortable space, a space for feeling and thinking and being curious. That's really what I want for 2018 in general.

Today was the first day in two weeks that the sun came out. Even though it was colder than most Texans would think possible, it was a beautiful, clear-eyed day. The kind of day where the sky is so bright that it doesn't look real and the air so cold that it bring tears to your eyes. The kind of day where you look at the sunset, a smear of pale yellow and rose petal pink, and can't tell if you're crying because of the cold or because of the beauty or both. Here's wishing you many more days like that in 2018. (Maybe a little warmer.)