Scenes from my living room

K and I are watching Parenthood. Phone rings. Older sister, J: Put on TBS. Seinfeld is on, and there's a woman George is talking to who is really fair-skinned with red hair--do you have it on? She's not on the t.v. right this second, but you'll see her. Put it on.

Me: Ok, hang on.

Pausing my DVR and turning on TBS. Hey, Elaine.

J: OK, so if anyone will know this, you guys will. Wait for this red-haired woman to come on. She's from a show we used to watch where her t.v. husband tried to kill himself every episode--like, in a funny way--and always failed. What was it called?

In the background, J's husband cracks a joke. J yells "I know, it's the best premise for a show!" They're serious.

The red-headed woman comes on the screen. She is familiar!

Me (gesturing and putting J on speaker): K, what is she from?

J: I can tell you one particular episode I remember if that helps.

She tries; it sort of does. K opens up my Mac.

Me: Give K 60 seconds and we'll have an answer for you.

J (yelling to her husband): I told you they'd know!

K manuevers through IMDB. We exchange theories about Lucille Bluth and Two and a Half Men and a political sitcom from the early 90s. After a few keystrokes, success.

K: Got it.

J: Damn, that was a funny show. I'm gonna go YouTube old episodes.

And, scene.

Oh, Hitchcock

Hello! I have vertigo.* It's been exactly one week since the world started spinning for me.

I'm trying to have a joke-y tone here, but the truth is, this is a terrible feeling. It's quite debilitating; I have a few hours here and there where I feel normal, but most of the time, my body just wants me to lie very still, on my side, with my eyes closed, to help the room settle around me. My head pulses; the drums of my ears feel like that volcano in Iceland--angry, unable to find a nook in which to land, constantly alerting me to their discontent.

It's been exactly one week, but it feels like years.

*UPDATE: I actually don't have vertigo, which I discovered after my 6th doctor's appointment in two weeks. I have a virus of the inner ear, which sounds so much less glamorous but, frankly, feels a whole lot worse. (Do yourself a favor and don't Google it, because it's just depressing. Some people take months or years to recover. I am staying optimistic that that won't be the case for me.)

I don't want to get all Stephenie Meyer on anyone, but...

I had a vivid, crazy, impressive dream last night, in which I was quite literally dictating the first chapter of my current WIP. (That's work-in-progress for all you cool people who don't know. No, really, you're the cool ones for not knowing the term. Trust.) When my alarm went off, I actually looked down at my hands, half-expecting to find a notebook filled with words. Well, there wasn't one. But that's ok. I made progress on the structure last night and then, thanks to my dream, made some more this morning. #MYDREAMSARETALKINGTOMEYOUGUYS.*

*I've been tweeting so much lately (not just for me, but for work and GWN too), that I feel like I now talk in hashtags. Or like hashtags should just be something we all incorporate into our verbal communications now. As in, "I am so tired today. Hashtag, thank goodness it's Friday!" #Iwonderhowthatwouldwork #IbetsomeoneinBrooklynhasalreadytriedit

For your viewing pleasure

I am sah-lammed at work these days and entrenched in Girls Write Now work (our anthology is going to print soon!) so no posts for me lately. To make up for it, here's a video of my mentee and me at the recent CHAPTERS reading series! (I know. You must be the luckiest people on the planet. All two of you!)

Really though. You should check out all of the readings.

Celebrating poetry

Today kicks off National Poetry Month, which proves how nerdy I am, because I get excited about it. Last Friday, my mentee and I read joint villanelles at CHAPTERS, the Girls Write Now reading series (which, btw, I will be emceeing on April 23 with keynote speaker Lizzie Skurnick and NYC's best teen writers!). When I was paired up with Shira three years ago (!), I knew we'd get along swimmingly both writing-wise and life-wise, only because we immediately realized how much we love to write poetry. That first year, we did a joint cinquain project--I would write one and send it to her, and she'd write one using my last line as her first line, and so on.

Last year we upped the ante, choosing six words and each writing a sestina with them. That was a challenge--sestinas are long and highly structured--but I think our pieces turned out beautifully.

And finally, this year, our final year as an official pair (she's off to Wesleyan in the fall--sob!), we chose villanelles. (For an example of an amazing villanelle, check out Sylvia Plath's Mad Girl's Love Song and some other famous ones here.) We settled on an opening line, and each branched off into our own work.

Here's how mine turned out:

My city speaks to me in fits and starts; a still life that’s always breathing. She seeps into my skin like the bleeding lines of a wet painting.

Characters emerge on every corner, hushing me when I try to decipher the mother tongue, the fragrant voices in which my city speaks, to me and only me.

They’re a riddle, these murmurs: how did we all get here, and who will make it out alive? I hang my head, listen, and New York seeps into me, like the bleeding lines of a wet painting.

Somewhere tonight there is a rooftop party, and it hums its songs overhead, spinning into stars, through slate and stone. I listen for clues to the mysteries of this verbal city.

Somewhere tonight there is a subway stalled, people pressing ears to chipped cement walls, calling out. She’s calling, too; seeping in like the bleeding lines of a wet painting.

The languages mingle, blending into colors we haven’t yet named. We dance our dances, knock on buildings, kick up leaves, whistle at buses. My city speaks to me, to us; oil on canvas, dripping on hands. New York, she seeps into me like the bleeding lines of a wet painting.

Today, in things I can't get enough of:

Donna Tartt's The Secret History. A friend across the pond sent me Tartt's The Little Friend for Christmas last year, and by Spring of '09 I had finally gotten around to starting it (I was likely in one of those YA-or-die moods for a few months, I suspect). Well, I was obsessed with it.

But then everyone told me how The Secret History is so much better than The Little Friend, which I found completely improbable, so now here I am, a year later, testing my hypothesis.

Conclusion: I die when I pick up this book, and I die when I have to put it down.

And I am barely halfway through.

Note: I tried in vain to link to Tartt's web site - surely she must have one! - but alas, she doesn't seem to. Another web site refers to her as "vaguely reclusive." Someday, I might like to be known as "vaguely reclusive."

Note #2: I DIDN'T KNOW the college she created in The Secret History was modeled on Bennington!! This opens up a whole new world of understanding for me.

Note #3: Hollywood's been trying to make a movie of The Secret History for years! Gwyneth Paltrow would be a producer/star! (Who, Camilla, I suppose? Or Judy Poovey? LOL.)

Note #4: I'm going to keep adding notes because I knew nothing about Tartt and now I'm researching her and I can't stop and please someone help I may be becoming obsessive.

Fighting stories.

While a certain someone looks at a certain something I've been working on for over a year, it occurs to me that I am suddenly free to begin something entirely new, and entirely different. Now, when I wasn't immersed in my last writing project, I would occasionally have brainstorms about other projects--these crawly worm-like thoughts that nestle into my head and say "I am here! Write about me!" And I would, briefly--little paragraphs or notes or quotes or characters. And now that I am free--for at least a few weeks, I suspect--to try something new, I feel like I'm flooded with ideas. The problem is there are so many things I want to write, but the bigger problem is, two in particular are desperately competing against each other.

But one has slowly won out over the other, even though the loser (is it wrong to call works-in-progress "losers?") is actually completely outlined and the winner is not (and not even close), I am going with my gut and am going to jump in headfirst into this other, newer one. I think about it, and about my main characters, all the time. I am obsessed with the setting they're in, and their main obstacle; and I suspect it'll be the most biographical, in terms of characters, piece I'll ever write.

Anyway! In short, two stories were fighting to be told. Only one can make it out alive right now. And I've placed my bets. (cue dramatic music.)

Back to school.

Yesterday I took the day off work to go back to my college to sit in on two sessions of Gender in Children's Literature. I felt old. Taught by one of my favorite college professors, the class was more geared toward kid lit from the late 1800s and early 1900s, but I was there to talk about where children's lit stands now in terms of gender representations. (And for the record, I was there as a representative of myself, not as a publishing professional or someone speaking on behalf of my company.)

Sometimes I think I was much smarter in my college days than I am now, but really it's just that I've lost that academic language that permeated that time of my life. (It's likely been replaced by corporate jargon. Sorry.) There's a particular vernacular that college classrooms, especially those that study intersectionalities among race, gender, ethnicity, ability, etc, use that tends to fade if left dormant for too long. Which, since I don't tend to talk academically about gender the ways that I used to, is definitely the case for me.

Alas, my former professor asked some illuminating questions (as always) and, though I stumbled a bit, I hope I represented my points well. College students are that fantastic mix of unexpected interest and sleepy boredom, and sitting in a circle with them, talking about books and gender, was refreshing for sure.

And! I got to hang with two dear friends for a bit, and even had some time for revisions (um, because I was sitting in the campus library, unable to figure out the guest wifi login, but I can't complain. My friend eventually solved it.). All in all, a successful day.

Soap.

My love for General Hospital is not really a secret, but it's also not something I bring up in everyday conversation.

That's partly because, let's face it, it's kind of a guilty pleasure. There's a reason I watch soaps (ABC only please, thanks): I have vivid memories of my mom watching them while I'd be playing in the bedroom with my sisters; they would often gang up on me (ah, sisters) so I'd escape to the couch and curl up into my mom for some comfort. Then, in middle school, somehow All My Children became the show to watch (Tad was back, which was a big deal in the early 90s); I got into One Live to Live when Marty's rape trial started in the mid-90s (thanks, mom-mom!); but by my high school  years, it was all GH, all the time. Truly, talking about GH was a bonding routine for me and several of my friends and classmates. There was even some sort of long song/limerick that I *wish* someone had thought to keep.

I lost the thread sometime in college, when classes and clubs and life intervened; and then, working my first "real" job didn't leave any time for soaps. (Also, this was pre-Tivo, so.) But then, magically, I got back into it a few years ago. It still makes up a solid 5% of conversations with my family, since we all watch.

Anyway, for a writer, watching soap operas can be infuriating. The plot meanders--some episodes are tight and enticing, others are redundant and boring, and still others simply make no sense in the context of the show's history--and the dialogue can sometimes be so overbearing and silly. I mean, not on GH, but definitely on those other soaps ;)

But being a close watcher of soaps has helped me with my writing, I would argue. It's shown me that there are protocols any script must follow; that characterization, pacing, and plot are all equally important; and that mostly, the storylines and the sub-storylines need to fit into the larger concept of the show's theme. General Hospital, for example, because of its name, can never get rid of its hospital scenes, which means some portion of the main characters must always be either a. working doctors or nurses or b. continually getting shot, afflicted with amnesia, or undergoing psychiatric evaluations.

Sometimes GH fails, spectacularly. But at least I'm always learning from it, even if it's just what not to do.

Ode on a chocolate microfiber couch

Mary Oliver's "Spring Azures" is one of my favorite poems of all time; there's a line in it that I think of, and repeat to myself, often. Last night was one of those times. When Kel and I moved in together three (?!?!? Has it been that long since my twin sister moved to New York?) years ago, we first bought a little futon thing to tide us over until we found a cheap couch we liked. Eventually, we succumbed to an Ikea piece - black and white striped, so cute! - that was, simply put, fine. It was fine in all aspects of the word.

Fast forward to summer '09. One day the right side of the couch felt a little lower than it used to; a few days later, I sort of slumped into it and was practically sitting on the hardwood floors. When we tried to examine the damage, it was clear: the couch was broken.

But you see, we were sort of in flux - Kel was considering a move back to DC, I was considering leaving NYC altogether to go find a solitary hut on the beach - so neither of us wanted to spring for a new couch. We'd make do.

I am embarrassed to tell you how bad it got. Like, I'm 30 years old. I should have a non-broken couch in my apartment. I hated even looking in my living room, the couch was so painful. Kel and I would watch The X Files Abduction Mythology (kudos to whoever bought me that, bee tee dub) whilst sitting in contorted, ridiculous positions on that couch; I stopped Netflixing because I didn't feel like watching movies in the living room anymore. FOR SERIOUS.  So in December I sprung for a new one; it arrived in January.

Never let anyone dismiss the importance of a real, working couch in one's life, especially if one is a tv/movie watcher and book lover whose favorite activity on a snowy day is to snuggle up on said couch with a quilt hand-sewn by one's grandmother and watch the city drown in ice. NEVER underestimate the comfort a couch can bring, particularly when one had been avoiding - seriously! avoiding! - one's living room in favor of one's bedroom just to watch some television in comfort. I mean, truly, this new couch has changed the entire feel of my apartment, and my viewing and sleeping habits, for the better.

Screeching back to Mary Oliver for a moment, she says:

Sometimes the great bones of my life feel so heavy, and all the tricks my body knows — the opposable thumbs, the kneecaps, and the mind clicking and clicking —

don't seem enough to carry me through this world and I think: how I would like

to have wings — blue ones — ribbons of flame.

She goes on (and seriously, read it, it's a singular poem of importance for me), but my point about the couch is, there are moments when I feel a profound sense of gratitude for beds, floors, couches, chairs, simply for being able to withstand the pressures of people depending on them. Because I, too, have moments where the bones of my body feel too heavy, that I can't believe anything could support them. I came home very tired last night, and I sat on my beautiful new couch (did I mention it's a sectional? And it has STORAGE contained within it? Did I?), and thought: this couch is carrying me. And that is something to behold.

Books never run out of batteries, she said longingly

...but even still, I love my Kindle. I forgot to charge it last night and this morning, though, which means that I plugged it in for about 7 minutes before I ran out of the door, hoping that would be enough to stave off the dreaded warning that pops up (exclamation points!!11!). Hey, that always works on my blackberry. Only it wasn't enough; the warning persisted, I felt guilty and ill-prepared (bad Kindle owner!), so I gave up and just eyed people on the subway instead of reading. Which, in itself, is almost the same thing, non? I borrowed a charger from our Library, though, and she is now happily glurging energy as I write.(Should I name her? I should name her. Mavis? Dolores? Hazel? I feel like she's an old soul.)

Last week I was carting around Gillian Flynn's Dark Places in hardcover, since I borrowed it from Kel, who received it as a holiday gift. Amazing, addictive read, but holy goodness, I really missed the lightness of my Kindle. Books are heavy, yo!

Notable moments

Yesterday was a brilliant day.

I got to hang out with an idol of mine.

She was lovely, gracious, and humored me enough to take some pics and sign my prequel (and all this after interviewing her for OOM! I'll post that when it goes up.)

Honestly, when I was 8, 10, 12 and reading (and re-reading, and re-reading) The Baby-sitters Club books, I would have flipped out had I known I would someday get to meet Ann M Martin.

Global weirding

So, if you follow the weather news, you may know that it snowed in South Carolina on Friday night. As in, the night before the Myrtle Beach Marathon. I flew in that afternoon not realizing a "big" storm was coming; by the time we sat down to dinner that evening, big, fat snowflakes had started falling (and sticking). But whatever, right? So I was going to run in the cold. Sowhatwhocares?

The city of Myrtle Beach, that's who. Halfway through our dinner, our waiter popped over to flirt some more with my friend Val tell us that one of his other tables just received an email that the Marathon might be canceled. Sure enough, there it was on  my POS phone blackberry: an announcement would be made at 10pm.

Listen, when you may need to get up at 6am to run 26 miles, 10pm is LATE. We struggled to stay up. And of course, the announcement didn't come until about 10:45, at which point I literally ran out to the snow-covered deck and cracked open a blueberry IPA (thanks, Chelsea!).

I mean, what can you do? Val and I ran a 3-miles loop around her neighborhood on Sunday just so we could say we actually ran together. It was lovely, but entirely too short.

We tried.

There is no title cool enough for this post.

[Note: the opinions in this post are my own!]

I wasn't supposed to like The Hunger Games. Dystopian YA? So not my thing. (On the other hand, contemporary YA? So obviously my thing.)

But everyone at my job was talking about the title before it came out in September 2008, and I thought, I'll give it a go. Two years and one sequel later, I count The Hunger Games trilogy as a lesson on how to be a good reader: mute the expectations, calm the naysaying, and give the story a fighting chance.

Today on OOM we announced the title and cover of the third and final book in the HG trilogy, and now it's inescapable: fully 1/3 of my Twitter feed today was probably Mockingjay related, and even places like EW.com are talking about.

It's funny, though; Panem, the country Suzanne Collins created in The Hunger Games, is one of those worlds where I actually ache upon accessing. Like, it physically hurts me to read these books. I read an advance copy of book 2, Catching Fire, so feverishly and so quickly that I barely remember the intricacies of the plot--I just remember the emotions, and that it gripped me so tightly I almost couldn't breathe, and I get the coilings of a knot in my stomach when I think about what's in store for me with Mockingjay. Because I am telling you, a la Jennifer Hudson, that I am not going into a fictional world where Katniss doesn't survive. I fear I physically could not handle it.

I can't think of any other book or series where I flipped from not wanting to read it so assuredly to not being able to imagine living a life in which I hadn't read it, other than The Hunger Games.

This weekend in "Things I Can't Get Enough of"

I finished Atwood's The Year of the Flood.

I can't even talk about. No, seriously. (Also, oh, is that the cover? I read it on my Kindle (yesIamstillbuyingthingsfromAmazonpleasedon'thateme) so I had no idea what it looked like.) (Also? That's the blurb they wrote? Trust, the book is so much better than that blurb lets on.)

Now I am in the middle of Scarlett Fever, the sequel to Suite Scarlett by Maureen Johnson. Y'all, it is funny. We all know I'm an MJ fan girl (um, not Michael Jackson, thanks) but seriously, Scarlett Fever is fun-ny and taking me by surprise and is one of those YA titles that's just perfectly crafted.

I know I have a couple of readers, somewhere out there. What are you reading during this snowpocalypse weekend?

What I blog about when I blog about running

One week from today I will be in Myrtle Beach, getting ready to run my first marathon. Or, you know, "run" my first marathon. Running is funny, and oddly tied into writing. Of course, there are books like What I Talk About When I Talk About Running (no, I haven't read it) and blogs like Literary Legs, but mostly, what I mean is, there seem to be a lot of characters whose running is supposed to symbolize something. I'm just not often sure what.

I have done this. In my first real attempt at a manuscript, the main character picked up running when she left her city life (or rather, was forced out) to move back home in a deserted beach resort town. When I wrote those first 20K words (which is all there is), I wasn't a runner. I wanted to be, and I think I thought that I could write my way into the motivation needed. I also think that by making Sydney a runner, and better yet, a new runner, it would tell the reader a lot about her.

In my first completed manuscript, I made one of the main characters an athlete who runs on the beach every morning. But Allie's running isn't meant to signify much, except for her very real need for some breathing room from a suffocating family (and plus, Allie's kind of based on someone anyway, and that someone did run on the beach every day--an act I was always in awe of). So I think it works, but then, I'm a little biased.

I fell in like with running last spring, on a treadmill where I could play Usher's "Yeah!" on repeat and distract myself from the pain. I fell in love with running last fall, when I moved from the gym to the hard, flat path along the Hudson, where the city skyline is just a stone's throw away and the sun glints off the river and temporarily blinds me. I even sometimes run with my eyes closed; it relaxes me. But I don't kid myself; I will barely survive Myrtle Beach, and I probably won't get back to my normal running schedule until the weather warms up some more. That is, if it ever does.

Let's talk about names.

I love names. I like learning what they mean, who or what  they're inspired by, why a parent chose one moniker over another, and understanding the sociologial impact a certain name leaves in its wake. That said, damn if I don't have the hardest time coming up with character names. And clearly, other writers do, too.

I am reading a delightful new YA book right now. But it has a big problem (for me): the character names are KILLING me. 90% of them - truly, I counted - are simple, vanilla, 1-2 syllable, well-known but almost old-fashioned names. Worse yet, they are interchangeable, with the exception of the narrator.

It's so bad that I find myself mixing up the characters and having to check back in chapter 1 to see who's who. Jack* is Jim* is Bill* is Steve* and I keep forgetting whether Debbie* is the protagonist or antagonist, and whether she's friends or enemies with Mary*. And further, the book takes place in present day, in a high school. Now, I'm no expert on names, but I can almost guarantee that all the names used went out of fashion, on average, 30 years ago. Which means the characters' parents would probably not have chosen these names for their kids, who were supposedly born in the 90s.

I hate that the names are sort of ruining the book for me, but I'm finding it difficult to look past them. And that's a damn shame, because the book is adorable so far.

*not the real character names, but hopefully you get the idea.

"That's offensive to pizza, and to women!"

Earlier this week my amazing friends M and V hosted a dinner party.

After the requisite catching up (which took quite a while, as the five of us in attendance hadn't been together in months), and over many bottles of Reisling (me and M) and cab (the others), and after swooning over the amazing meal M made for us (note the cannabilized cheese tray in the second picture), somehow I got to telling stories about my grandmother, Dottie.

I'm writing a story for a local beach magazine and I needed some fodder, so one day over the holidays I interviewed Dottie. It's funny how little we actually know family members even just one generation removed; I know the basics of her life, mostly, but as she sat there one late afternoon, recounting adventures I'd never imagined, I was flummoxed at how much I didn't know about her.

I was laughing as I told some of her funny stories at the dinner party, but I was mostly proud: I come from her, in part, and now her stories are part of my stories, which in turn are now part of my friends' stories; hopefully, probably, they will remember them too, set to a backdrop of wine and organic chicken and a kitchen table in Williamsburg.

Just this morning, I told M that I was "sending Light around her," which is what the characters in Atwood's The Year of the Flood say, and I think it's so lovely and represenative of how I often do think of people I care about, even though Atwood was probably making some sort of sociological comment on the lives of those characters who used that terminology (I'm only midway through the book so I can't say for sure yet, but by the way, HOLY AMAZING BOOK, PEGGY), and I'm only saying all of this because I love M and V and the rest of the dinner party, so it seemed to fit.

*Shout-out to V for giving me the title of this blog entry. She was talking about Dominos Pizza and their new ad campaign. Relatedly, she is a pizza fanatic.

Noted.

When doing a Google image search for "vintage kitchen sinks," Don Draper will appear in the results. I'm confused, but secretly pleased.

Today in "Things I Can't Get Enough Of"

My new couch. And Some Girls Are by Courtney Summers.

You guys, seriously. I LOVED her debut, Cracked Up To Be, so obviously I was psyched for her newest book, Some Girls Are.

It did not disappoint. But be warned: sweaty palms, churning stomach, and the constant need to place your palm over the bottom half of each page (what? Am I the only one whose eyes sometimes skip down to the end of a chapter when I'm so damn eager to see what's going to happen?) all await you.

You know what? Some Girls Are is like Margaret Atwood's Cat's Eye, except updated, and wo-ow.