setterby

a skull made of eggshells & artwork

2011-11-28T18:48:00.001-05:00

This is Miranda.

Miranda is the main character from mywork-in-progress, SEASCAPE, which is a book about love, art, a ghost(maybe), and six Great Danes named after the English Romantic Poets.

Miranda looks a little bit like me, Ithink, in the sense that she is vaguely ethnic, just like I am. She'shalf Puerto Rican and half English; and I'm half Armenian and half...whatever. (Yes... like Gonzo). She's easy to draw for that reason; Iused some photographs of various celebrities for inspiration, but Ican also use a mirror to fill in the blanks.

And yet, even though I started thisdrawing of Miranda almost six months ago, I just finished coloring inher hair yesterday. I haven't been drawing or blogging much the pastyear (I used to blog a lot more, on Livejournal,before the Russian gentlemen enlargement spam became peculiarlyoverwhelming), in part because I've been distracted by tellingMiranda's story in SEASCAPE. (There was also the new job and threeweddings, one of which was my own.)

Then, about a month ago, I wasrear-ended while stopped at a stop sign. I hit my right temple on thesteering wheel of my beautiful, brand-new-to-me VW GTI. I hit theback of my head, too, on our lovely leather head rest.

I was diagnosed with a concussion andwhiplash, and told to rest. Which I did. Not that I had much say overthe matter: I don't think I've ever slept so much or so unwillingly.

Unfortunately I'm still not better, amonth later. My brain is just not... back. For lack of a betterway to explain this, it feels as if I got into my car after theaccident and drove across the street to my husband's office(thinking, quite wrongly, that I was totally fine and just a bitdazed)... only to leave part of my brain in the street where theaccident happened. The creative, energetic, focused part of my braindidn't come back.

At least, it hasn't yet.

A lot of pieces go into making up ahuman being. I'm a wife, a daughter, a lawyer, a gym rat, a Britishcomedy enthusiast. I love bad movies, peanut butter cups, cities, andthe wilderness. In my heart, though, or rather, in that small,slippery, ineffable part of me that makes me me, wherever it livesin the body, I'm a writer.

I'm a writer who can't write.

At least, not yet.

For the first two weeks after myaccident, I couldn't create any mental pictures whatsoever. Myability to visualize scenes, as if I were watching a movie, wasjust... gone. It was strange. I kept trying to do it anyway, sort ofsubconsciously. It's an old instinct of mine. Since I was a littlekid, I have fallen asleep, distracted myself when I was bored, andsoothed myself when I was upset by escaping through a mental portholeinto my written worlds. Miranda's world is the most current, but it'snot the only one.

That wasn't the only mental functionthat vanished, but it was the one that bothered me the most.

I can picture Miranda again, now, and,for some reason, I can draw her. It helps that I already know whatshe looks like. I can't picture the next scene, though. I can't workthrough the plot of the novel, expand the setting, or further developa character. When I try, it's... blank. As if there is a big emptyspot where those skills used to hang out in my brain. The more I tryto force it, the more my brain starts to feel like a stalling engine.

I think this is just a result of thepersistent and often crippling mental fatigue from the concussion(should I admit how many hours it took for me to write this post?no... I don't think so.)

I think my ability to write – with acapital W, as in write my fiction, the only writing that trulymatters to me – will come back. Probably pretty soon. I'll lookback on this post and feel embarrassed that I made it into such a bigdeal.

Honestly, I'm alreadyembarrassed. I had no idea concussions could last so long or be so...well... is devastating too strong a word? It's just a concussion;athletes get them all the time. You get over it in a few days, right?

Well, yes... or no. It could be days.It could be a year. My neurologist told me that he only has onepatient who took longer than a year to heal. He smiled when he saidit, as if this would make me feel better.

We don't know anywhere near as muchabout the human brain as I'd expected.

We do know that concussions arecumulative. I had a very minor one six or seven years ago, and that'sprobably partly why I'm struggling so much with this one. It's likethe old legal doctrine, “the eggshell-skull plaintiff,” whichsays that you're legally responsible for what injuring somebody elsethrough your own negligence or wrongdoing, even if that person isunusually, or even freakishly, vulnerable.... In other words, even ifthey have a skull made of something as soft and fragile as eggshells.

That's me, the eggshell-skullplaintiff. Not that I'm suing anybody. (At least, not yet....)

Since there's no cure or treatment forconcussions, except rest, I don't have a lot of say over what happensnext. While my eggshell skull mends itself, I'll wait, and drawpictures of familiar faces.

diversity in YA summer reading challenge

2011-06-25T23:11:00.001-04:00

I had the chance to go to the Diversity in YA book tour a while back. It was such a great experience! I love listening to authors talk about their work and inspiration, but especially so when they share my interest in (mild obsessiveness about) diversity. Diversity in this context means main characters who are LGBT, people of color, disabled, or are otherwise in some way different from, as Sarah Rees Brennan puts it, the "White Dude with Some Issues" character that stars in so many of our books and movies.*

The book tour has since ended, but the Diversity in YA crew has once again managed to make me very happy. This time, instead of a book tour, they have set up the Diversify Your Reading summer challenge, a kickass contest for librarians, book bloggers, and anyone else who feels like reading some cool books this summer. The deets are here, but, in a nutshell, the challenge is to read some books with diverse protagonists, write about your experience reading these books, and then let DiYA know about it. You could win like a gazillion books as a prize! Isn't that awesome?

So, what do you think? Are you going to participate in the Diversify Your Reading summer challenge? Where you look for books featuring diverse characters? DiYA does compile monthly lists of new releases. But if you have any recs, I'd love to hear them!

*Perhaps you are wondering, what's wrong with White Dudes with Some Issues? Why, nothing at all. I like white dudes (with or without issues) just as much as I like everyone else. I married a white dude, in fact, though he is, thankfully, relatively free of issues. But I believe in diversity—that all people do and should have a voice, which means fiction should reflect that reality, true reality, not just the societal view of white male as the norm, the speaking voice of our culture(s).

I also get BORED—crazily disastrously bored—of reading the same damn thing over and over.

declaring your love for your writing

2011-05-30T22:51:00.001-04:00

This time last May, I was graduating from law school and starting my seemingly interminable bar exam prep course. Much to my amazement, three or four months after I took the bar, I got a letter in the mail that read: Congratulations!

Towards Christmas, I was sworn into the bar as a brand new attorney. It was hard to believe it was finally happening. I waited outside a historic building downtown, trying to make small talk with my peers, but mostly, trying not to break a heel on the cobblestones. They let our families and friends file inside first; my then-fiance and my mom went inside and found places on a balcony overlooking the new lawyers' seats. We were next.

We shuffled into our seats. I stared up at my fiance snapping pictures of an alarmingly large eagle statue on the wall and tried not to be nervous. What was there to be nervous about? I had passed the bar. I was surrounded by my peers and accompanied by my loved ones. The hard part was behind me. Now was a time for celebration... right?

Well, yes. But it was also a time for solemnity, for thinking and most of all commitment. The clerk of court (who was dressed fabulously in a morning coat, incidentally) led us through no less than three different oaths. We swore to uphold the federal and state constitutions; we swore to speak no falsehoods, and to never act out of malice or greed. Despite the lawyer jokes that immediately sprang to mind, it felt right to say the words aloud. It made me want to be a lawyer more than law school ever could.

Several months later, I, as you might expect, married my then-fiance! We had our dream wedding, thanks to our very, very wonderful and supportive family and friends. As one part of our dream wedding, we wrote up our own ceremony, and as part of that, we wrote our own vows. Writing my vows was one of the most nervewracking parts of planning the wedding. I'm not great at telling people how I feel. Also, I am nervous a lot, as you have probably noticed. :)

I spent ages reading different sample vows online, wrote a couple of drafts, rewrote them, threw them out, started over, fretted, and, finally, finished. My vows were my big chance to tell Dan how much I love him, have always loved him, in front of everyone. And I did!

After the wedding, I thought for a while about wedding vows and my swearing-in ceremony. It seemed to me that I had recommitted myself to two very important aspects of my life--Dan, most of all, of course, and also my legal career.

What, I thought to myself, about my writing?

It's not that I haven't written anything this year. I started a new novel last fall, a gothic romance of sorts, and tinkered it with happily when I could snatch time away from lawyering and wedding planning.

And that's okay--life gets busy. We scribble a few words down here and there--during our lunch breaks, or just before bed. There's nothing wrong with that, as long as we're writing and enjoying our craft. Sometimes, though, the writing seems to stall out. We're lonely, we're frustrated, we can never find enough time to really work through the ideas that jump around inside our skulls.

We work hard at our writing, sometimes to be rewarded and sometimes not. We love our writing, for better or worse, when it's brilliant and when it sucks.

It's part of us, intrinsically, and so doesn't it deserve--don't we, our writer selves, deserve--a declaration of love and commitment every now and then?

What do you love most about your writing or about being a writer? If you were going to make a public declaration of your commitment to your writing, what would you say?