Saturday morning, I went to my parents’ house with one of my best friends, her husband, and her three kids for gift exchanging. We had bagels with cream cheese, muffins, coffee, and juice.
Monday afternoon I went to my parents’ house for Christmas eve with my parents, my girlfriend Rachel, my aunt and uncle, my cousin, her husband, my godson, and two family friends. We had 9 different kinds of fish, pasta, rice balls, potato croquettes, broccoli, bread, and lots of dessert.
Tuesday morning we drove to Morristown, NJ, where Rachel’s parents live. We spent Christmas days with her parents, her brother, his fiance, their grandmother, three aunts, two uncles, and four cousins. We ate turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, cranberry mousse, green bean casserole, salad, squash, and a bunch of other foods that I can’t remember. And there was dessert.
On Wednesday evening we, yet again, went to my parents house for Chinese food and gift exchange with our family friends of many years. In addition to me, Rachel, and my parents, there was the mom, Carol, her husband, Dan, Carol’s three daughters, two of their husbands, and three little kids. We had Chinese food. Too much to list.
Tomorrow I will meet a friend for breakfast and give him his gift. Then I will rest.
On Friday, my parents, Rachel, and I will drive to Norristown, PA, to spend the weekend and exchange gifts with my brother, his wife, her sister, her sister’s husband, and their new baby. There will be three dogs and two cats. The menu is yet to be determined. We will leave on Sunday.
Monday, we will have gifts and dinner with Rachel’s best friend, her husband, and their two children. I have no idea what we will be eating.
I love the holidays, but I am so tired. And so, so full.
Tomorrow the world is going to end. I am so excited. I’ve got bills due that I’d rather not pay, and also, now I won’t have to strain a muscle while losing the five pounds I planned on adopting during the holidays. . .
Many of us are afraid, afraid of what has happened in recent days and of what might happen tomorrow (any tomorrow).
Fear is a fugly disease. It is so because it paralyzes the soul, which is bad because within the soul reside the energizing foods of our existence, like creativity, love, and charity. We are all of us afraid, everyday of something, and living beyond fear is a choice we make, not once but always, like choosing to be faithful to a spouse.
But fear is contagious.
Misery loves company, so too do people bound by fear long for companions. They wish to see others be afraid to walk out the door, to send their kids to school, to wake up tomorrow morning. Nothing but a colossal sledgehammer, or, say, a meteor, could better break our world apart than the wilful sharing of fear.
Gandhi said, “I will not let anyone walk through my mind with their dirty feet.”
Nor should any of us. Because when life does require us to be brave, to stand up for what is right, God forbid our souls be paralyzed by fear.
Today, tomorrow, and the day after tomorrow, combat fear and its fallout with what is just and kind.
And enjoy (because as bleak as the days may seem, we are still allowed to do this) – life.
Every year, I pride myself on the fact that all of my holiday shopping is done by the first week in December.
I have a meticulous checklist that gets updated every year so that I don’t forget anyone or repeat gifts. Seriously. Sometimes a gift idea is so good, I think it up again the next year only to realize it was the brilliant idea I had the year before. I’m obsessed with giving people gifts. There’s nothing like giving someone a present. If I could afford it, I would buy everyone presents frequently. But I can’t, so I wait for holidays.
And so the shopping gets done. And I tell people, “My shopping is done.”
But the problem is that it’s the beginning of December, and there are mega sales in stores, and daily deals on the internet, and cute little boutiques I pass while walking around the neighborhood. I get more brilliant ideas, and I get so caught up in the spirit of the season that I just want to keep buying things for people even though they already have numerous gifts from me under various trees. I see the perfect gift even though I already bought the perfect gift. And then I see the perfect gift again.
I’m pretty sure this is an illness. It’s an illness that costs me at least twice as much as I should be spending on gifts. Last year I told myself that I wasn’t going to do any shopping until December of this year in order to avoid this, but November came, and I started to panic. I couldn’t possibly wait until after Thanksgiving to start shopping. And now it’s December, and I’m done, but I’m still shopping.
I’m almost done wrapping, and I’ve decided that once the wrapping is done, I can no longer buy anything else.
Unless, of course, I see the perfect gift for someone I’ve already bought the perfect gift for.
Around this time last year, I set two writing-related goals for myself. Not New Year’s Resolutions—those are pie-in-the-sky, no-way-in-hell, I’ll-do-this-for-two-weeks-then-quit type of goals. What I set was old-fashioned, challenging yet obtainable goals. They were:
1) Blog once a month
2) Complete a polished and “submittable” novel
I missed the first one by a mile—in retrospect, that was probably one of those pie-in-the-sky type resolutions. However, I completed Goal 2—I finished Jackson Green in the summer, and it sold soon thereafter. Of course, looking at the amount of work left to do on the manuscript, it clearly wasn’t as “polished” as I thought it was.
Now that 2012 is coming to a close, it’s time to come up with more goals. And as I do every year around this time, I look back on the year and use that as a way to gauge the future.
More this year than any other, I’ve realized that I’m not the same person I was 17 years ago, when I was a nineteen-year-old college kid scribbling away on a yellow notepad in a shabby little apartment (BTW—that novel never got published). I’m not even the same person I was 8 years ago, when my first novel was published. The 35-year-old me has a full-time day job that demands a lot of my time. I have a wife and a daughter that need and deserve my attention. Added to all that is all the “author” stuff. Emails. Copyedits. Invoices. This year in particular, I did an insane amount of speaking and teaching engagements—each which took prep time. And I still tried to write in the middle of the night.
Guess which activity pretty much got the shaft.
So in 2013, Varian the author is taking a break so that Varian the writer can get back to work. And with that, my goal is nice and simple:
So there it is. I said it. Typed it. Etched it in blood (okay, so maybe that’s stretching it a little). 1500 words a week. And now that it’s out there, I’m going to try my best to meet that goal. I’m going to keep track. And at the end of the year, we’ll see how I did.
2011 S3Q2 retreat. Linden & Ginger in the bottom row
I asked some of the other Q&Q posters if they’d like to share and declare their goals for the year. Linden’s plan is to write four hours a week (which, knowing her schedule, is Herculean). Ginger plans to revise two manuscripts AND participate in NaNoWriMo. (NaNoWriMo = insane). But she did it this year. No reason she can’t again, right? And Larissa’s goal is to complete a first new draft—no small feat when you’re the mother of two little ones.
Anyway, those are our goals for the year. And while I won’t be blogging once a month, I will come back in a year and will report on how we did.
You could say that Saturday was my Christmas. For months, I tore links off of the imaginary paper chain in my head. I made a list. I checked it twice. I woke up before dawn, giddy with excitement.
Saturday was my local, bi-annual Scholastic Warehouse Book Sale. The whole warehouse was open. Thousands of titles were 50-80% off of cover price. I walked the aisles for hours, selectively filling my shopping cart with good reads.
While I took MUCH enjoyment from my morning in the warehouse, I was there for the benefit of my students. I already possess an abundant love for literature. I read book after book, closing one only to immediately open another. I find myself uncomfortable without a book. The miserable state of being “worldless” (without a fictional world in which to live) motivates me to seek out new books. I like to hold books. I even like to smell them.
My students make fun of me for that, but that’s okay. (I’ve caught a few of them doing the same.)
I shopped on Saturday so that my students may find a book and fall in love. I shopped so that my students may read that book and find another. I shopped so that they won’t have to know a “worldless” life.
You could say that Saturday was my Christmas. Isn’t giving the best part?
Well, friends, it seems as if a future in pig-farming is not imminent, thank goodness. I am beyond thrilled to report that NaNoWriMo was a success for me. Of course, it helped that there were no falling Christmas trees, no snowstorms, no power outages. There were no major illnesses, and only one trip to Urgent Care during the month of November.
At the end of 30 days, I had a complete first draft: a beginning, middle, and end, not to mention characters who spoke to me. In fact, they often wouldn’t shut up.
So what did I learn from the experience?
1. I can start and finish a project quickly.
As I said in my last post, I’ve always considered myself a slow writer. Signing up for NaNoWriMo eliminated any prior conceptions or misconceptions I had about my writing speed. One caveat, though: some serious preparation was key. Before the month started, I designated a composition notebook for this project and brainstormed characters, settings, plot lines, and ideas.
2. I can use an outline.
Who knew? OK, I didn’t really have a true outline, more like a road map, but I pretty much always knew where I needed to go. I did muck around a bit when I got to the middle, but I always went back to my notebook to see what I had planned, or even just to see what possibilities existed.
3. Working five days a week (taking Saturday and Sunday off) really helped me.
The fact is that I have a family and a house as well as other responsibilities. I cannot go into my writing cave for 30 days and come out at the end without some serious consequences. I needed that weekend down time. Come Fridays, my brain was exhausted. Having those few days off gave me time to recharge my batteries, and regroup my characters and plot.
4. I work best first thing in the morning.
When I’m wearing my “mom” hat, my mind has to balance a zillion things at any given time (for example, this week I’ve got to remember band days, piano and cello lessons, two family birthdays, volunteer time at the school library, blogging assignments for two blogs, after-school Latin/chess club/bridge club/library pick-up, cub scouts, a meeting, my husband’s days at his office vs. days at home, third-grade spelling words, an immigration assignment, when the new sofa is being delivered, three Christmas parties, Christmas cards, a Nutcracker performance, a new ballet class I’ll be taking, ski club fitting, and a partridge in a pear tree.)
Do you feel overwhelmed? I do, too, on an hourly basis. Consequently, if I let my day “begin” before getting my words in, I’d never have the focus to get any writing accomplished. So I wrote when I first woke up, before anything else had a chance to rear its needy head. It was much easier to get my words done, and I was frequently done by noon. The rest of the day I felt like I’d accomplished something. I didn’t have that monkey sitting on my back prodding at my guilt gland all the time.
4. I can use other methods of tuning out the world.
On those days when I couldn’t write immediately, or when I didn’t finish by the time the school bus rolled around, I found another way to help my brain focus.
Don’t laugh. Don’t judge. Seriously.
I put on the Pandora new-age music station. I don’t normally write to music; it interferes too much. I start choreographing in my head. Too many memories, too many lyrics, too much sensory input in general.
But since I don’t listen to new-age music, there was nothing to spark a memory. There were no lyrics to give me cause for pause, and so it allowed me to tune-out all the other daily chatter that goes on, both internally and externally, and the words came easier. Strange, but it worked.
5. Quantity eventually leads to quality, and fluency helps get you there.
While writing five days a week helped me balance my other responsibilities, it did mean that I had to increase my word count from 1667/day to 2250/day. At the back of my notebook, I kept a chart of my daily numbers, with date, starting point, goal, and ending point, as well as the final daily word count to keep track. It got easier to write those words each day.
You’ll notice I wrote at the top, “I refuse to be derailed by migraine, monster, mandate, or muppet.” That was my way of saying no excuses. During the month of November, all of those things tried to claim my attention. I refused to let them. Even the Muppets — and that was really hard, because they were singing the Banana Boat song with Harry Belafonte.
6. Challenging myself and completing a goal is empowering.
I suffer from the imposter syndrome, but really? An imposter writing a novel in 30 days? No chance. This experience made me feel like a real writer. That’s not to say you can’t be a real writer if you don’t write a novel in 30 days. It just validated me in a way other things have not, even with an MFA from VCFA. I can’t say I’m an imposter anymore. I’m a writer. Of course, it helped that when I finished and verified my word count at the NaNoWriMo web site, I was sent a video of the people at the Office of Lights and Letters cheering for me.
7. The writing community is incredibly supportive. (Even though I already knew this)
While it might have been annoying to lots of people, I posted my daily word count on Facebook. I went public, which is something the NaNoWriMo organizers suggest. It did help, too, to see comments from friends cheering me on. Thanks.
8. My own circle is incredibly supportive.
I recognize that I’m extremely lucky in being able to have a large block of time daily to write. I know many writers hold down other employment, in addition to writing and taking care of family, and I stand in awe of all that they do (I’m looking at you, Annemarie O’Brien, Linden McNeilly, and Varian Johnson). I couldn’t do what I do without the support of my gingerbread man, and the understanding of my gingerbread boys, each of whom lends an ear and keeps me going.
So would I do it again?
Perhaps. If the timing was right…and I start feeling like a pig farmer.
This past summer I got an unusual question from the UC Berkeley Continuing Studies Department.
“Poem Kim just completed 8th grade and is interested in taking your Writing the Young Adult Novel course with her father. Would you mind if she enrolls?”
Poem Kim, co-founder of DullPencil
Although my class is geared for adults, my response was: “Absolutely! I’d love to have her in my class and welcome her with happy arms.”
Most of my UC Berkeley students range in age from college students to retired seniors. Although they come from a wide range of educational and professional backgrounds, a “little kid” tends to exist in all of them. What most of us lack as we write and revise our stories for children and young adults is unbiased feedback from our targeted audience. So I thought this would be a great opportunity for my students to test their writing on Poem Kim—a real live young adult reader.
Poem Kim did not disappoint. Not only did she provide valuable feedback for my students, but she also had the kind of insight on the craft of writing that I experienced among MFA level writing students at Vermont College. And yes, I was blown away! Her critiques were spot-on and delivered in a poetic style. Poem Kim clearly lives up to her name.
Poem Kim and Christabel Abbott, friends and co-founders of DullPencil
That’s why I’m not surprised that she and her clever friends, Christabel Abbott, Shaoyie Soh, Stella Tharp, and Isabelle Yar, recently launched DullPencil, a web page aimed at becoming a meaningful resource for young adult (YA) writers.
DullPencil will publish essays and short fiction anthologies written for the YA audience twice a year in paperback and e-book. Contents for the anthology are selected through an on-line voting process by you, its readers, as well as by the DullPencil editors and advisors.
The first DullPencil anthology will be a compilation of the first 150 words of your story, if selected. Not only will you get published, but you will get feedback from your targeted audience and can revise and improve upon your submission as many times as you’d like. It’s free to enter, you don’t have to be a teen to submit, and you own the copyright to your work.
What do you have to lose? Nothing.
So sharpen your dull pencil, revise your first 150 words, and submit now!
Click here to learn more and please spread the word.
Best of luck to you, Poem Kim! And kudos to your father, Jake Kim, for nurturing such a gem of talent.
