Lately — and by lately, I mean for months now — I’ve been thinking about why I blog and wondering all over again what I ought to be blogging about.

Apparently, judging by the plethora of posts on the topic available in the blogosphere, as a writer — an unknown, as-of-yet unpublished novelist — who maintains a blog, I must ask myself some questions. Who’s my current blogging audience? Who’s my intended audience? What’s my platform? What makes me unique? What are my strengths and weaknesses? Then there’s the other advice, reminding me I ought to be publicizing myself, advertising myself, developing a brand as an author and a platform. Be active in the social networking scene! Then there are the corresponding questions — what about Twitter? How involved should I be, what should I be tweeting about?

All of that is a bit overwhelming. There’s a pressure that’s developed as a result of becoming more active in reading and responding to the community of writers out there in the world of the Internet. A pressure to add my voice to the group, to be as active, fun, and engaging as some of the stars of the YA blogosphere. I’ve spent the last few years prioritizing my novels, not keeping up with the Joneses, so now that I’m looking around… I’m not sure what to do. Where I fit in. How high school!

Then I found this post by YA author Hannah Moskowitz last week. She hit on a lot of different topics. The comments delved even more deeply. I’m fascinated by the whole discussion, all sides of it.

My take away on the whole discussion is… why am I obsessing about the blogosphere and my [nonexistent] place in it when I ought to be — as I’ve been doing the last few years — prioritizing my novels? Worrying about how often I blog, what I blog about, who I’m following and keeping up with on Twitter — these are not things that will help me write. But on the other hand, I love being a part of a community on Twitter. Writing (and publishing in general) can be a solitary profession and as Jessica of BookEnds, LLC pointed out the other day, Twitter serves as a fantastic industry watercooler. But just as a real office watercooler is a break from the monotony/reality of the “real job” at one’s desk, that’s how I regard Twitter. It’s a break and it can’t let it become a distraction.

The blog, to some degree, should be something of the same for me. When I was a teenager first starting to read YA (and the Internet was still in its relative infancy), I only looked up writers on the Internet because I wanted to read more about their books. Were there planned sequels? Were there deleted scenes or fantasy world tidbits available? Now, author sites are so much more, and so incredibly different from one author to the next. But what’s stayed the same is that what I love most about my favorite author sites: they’re quintessentially reflective of their authors’ tastes and interests.

So, that led me to thinking: what are my tastes and interests? What do I like blogging about? What’s… me?

I love telling stories. Anecdotes. Rambling. Pondering. Riffing on random subjects (like this one?). The occasional rant (which I differentiate from a riff by the level of vehemence). I love getting nerdy in a literary criticism way. I’m incapable of writing a blog entry shorter than a thousand words, which can be time-consuming. Bottom line: I like blogging when I have a topic on which I’ll happily spend a thousand words, but because of that, I can’t expect myself to blog daily, or even very frequently.

I think I may do what Jodi Meadows decided she needed to do the other day: take a break from the Internet and work. Get the next big hurdles done on the rewrite I’m in the midst of (which has only a working title that is lame, not a real title, because as you all know I am terrible with titles) and then start focusing on the next step(s) for Bound Between.

I will be maintaining the blog and updating Twitter and obsessively checking email (so don’t be shy about poking me), but it’s going to drop down on the priority ladder. My first is writing — always writing. Immersing myself in my worlds. But when I need a break, I’ll return to the virtual watercooler. With any luck I’ll find my happy medium.

What do you all think about your balance of virtual watercooler, blogging, and work? Have you found your happy medium?

My parents gifted me with my first desktop computer at age twelve. It was built from a combination of new components and older ones my father had lying around the house, and I adored it. When we first got dial-up internet, we couldn’t hook up my computer, because there was no phone jack wired in my bedroom, but I didn’t need this slow, laborious thing called the internet. I just needed a word processor and Microsoft Encarta, and I was off, writing my first attempts at novels. That computer, without a CD drive, with a 15″ CRT monitor that was as heavy as the tower, lasted me through middle school and high school, until it finally started gasping its last breaths when I was a senior in high school. I loved that computer.

After that, the computer disasters started.

For college, my parents bought me a Toshiba laptop. In October of Freshman year, it imploded. Blue Screen of Death. It was two months old. Because it was so shiny, the thought of backing up my data had never occurred to me, especially not by October. I lost all of my documents and files for the start of Freshman year. I ended up having to send in my Toshiba to be serviced (it was under a 1 year warranty) and they wiped my harddrive. “An unexpected malfunction. You couldn’t have anticipated it,” they said. Once it was back in my care, I treated it better than any possession I had ever owned, and learned all I could about these kinds of mishaps to prevent one from ever happening again. Because this was at Carnegie Mellon, I was also surrounded by a horde of talented techy folks (both employed by CMU in their computer help center and not) who were willing to take a look, offer me advice, teach me a trick or two. By Sophomore year, I had it figured out. Then, in October of Sophomore year, almost a year after the first problem, there was a second. This one was an implosion. Irreparable. The harddrive made a sound like a dying cat. It was out of warranty and there was no hope. They told me it would be almost as much to repair it as replace it. So I bought an entirely new laptop, an HP.

The HP and I had some good times. I treated it well, always on a flat, clean surface, never leaving it in standby; I kept it clean of viruses and spyware, all of that. I knew computers. I understood the principles. I was as well-versed in the basics of troubleshooting as any amateur could be. So when Blue Screen of Death reappeared Junior year, I was ready. I had weekly backups of my data, some stored on the internet, some in hard copy. I had the original boot CDs and I was able to wipe and reinstall Windows and solve the problem all by myself. I never figured out why the Blue Screen was out to get me, but it seemed to be hunting me down. This time, I was ready, and it was hardly an issue worth crying over. Boom, problem solved.

One day, nary a few weeks before the end of the (free! Included!) 1 year warranty on the HP, I couldn’t turn on the computer. I started panicking. I’d done everything right. I called HP, and they told me it was an issue covered by warranty. I sent in the laptop to them. They sent it back, fixed. Data — irrecoverable. But I’d backed up. It was okay. Not something I could fix, again a problem out of my control, but it was still okay. It was fixed.

(Are we keeping track of the disasters? That’s two Blue Screens of Death and two implosions, in two computers.)

When I graduated from college, my gift was a spiffy and souped-up HP desktop. Their customer service had been top notch, but the laptop was outdated. I needed a new machine. I started a new regimen of regular back-ups and good practices (consistent harddrive crud wipes, spyware/anti-virus cleaners, etc.) and… in the course of the first year of ownership, I had two Blue Screens of Death. Windows wouldn’t load. It wouldn’t recognize pieces of its hardware. I went to bed one night having just shut down the perfectly fine computer, then woke up the next morning to a Blue Screen of Death. Inexplicable. Random. It was out to get me.

Two. In a year. One resulted in a malfunction of a piece of hardware. Snap, no more DVR capability. Thank you, HP. The other was almost comical in how much of a non-event it was. Still forced me to wipe and re-install Windows and I lost all of my data, but I’d been backing up. It wasn’t a catastrophe. I solved it myself. That did not stop the husband (then fiancé) from looking at me askance and suggesting maybe I stay away from his computer. Or maybe let him have the new computer to play with, and I’d take his college laptop. Just in case. Because it was clear to both of us that my curse was not going away.

Flash forward to April 2009. As a wedding gift to me, the husband purchased me a Dell netbook. I hadn’t had a spiffy laptop since the HP started its downhill age decline, and I needed something to take to cafes to write on. “It comes with a year of warranty,” he said, debating whether or not we needed to invest in more. Compared to the cost of a netbook, buying the warranty was exorbitant. “Well,” the husband said, “If something implodes, it will happen in the first year.” Statistically, that has always been the case, I thought. Always. “Yep. One year is good,” I agreed. I’d dealt with having to send in both the Toshiba and the HP while they were under warranty in that first year of ownership. I had a track record. This was going to be fine.

In April 2010, two weeks after the warranty on the Dell expired, it decided it was going to make a MMRHHHHHMRHHHHHMRHHH sound one day instead of booting up. I called Dell. They told me my laptop was a goner, that if I was under warranty they might be able to do something, but it’s pretty much dead anyway. Sorry.

I turned to the husband, in tears. “I am cursed with computers. CURSED. I treat them well. I know what I am doing. I am techier than most English majors! What is wrong with me?!”

We discussed it and agreed, well, maybe it was finally the time to convert to a Mac.

I’d resisted because of the price tag but also because of my track record with computers. Something always happens. Always. But Macs have a track record, too. Their harddrives don’t implode randomly. There is no such thing as a Mac OS Blue Screen of Death. No such thing. This… overjoyed me. That, and I’d been obsessing over their product design for years, and every Mac owner I knew was immensely happy with their purchase.

We purchased the Mac in May 2010. During the checkout process, the husband says, “AppleCare protection plan. What do you think? None? One year? Three years?” I stared at him. “What do you think?” We bought a three-year plan.

Yesterday afternoon, at about 5:35pm, the six-month-old kitten was in a crazy mood, one in which she must pounce at all inanimate objects in the apartment as a point of asserting her dominance. I was in the kitchen, grabbing a drink, when I saw her pouncing on the bed. I also saw I had a flashing message on the laptop screen from the husband, at the desk just past the bed. I went over to the laptop, set my drink down, and answered the message. The kitten chose that moment to pounce, jumping across the desk — and knocking over my drink, spilling it across the MacBook Pro’s keyboard.

I stared in dumbfounded disbelief as the screen went dark and the liquid pooled on top of the keys. Then I leapt into action. I pulled the plugs, wrapped it in a hastily-grabbed towel, and submitted a request to Apple for service within three minutes. (The other desktop was on; shh, we’re techy people.) Apple called me immediately. “How are you doing today, Erin?” the service man asked cheerfully. “Five minutes ago, I was great,” I told him. “Then my cat spilled my drink across my keyboard. I’m not doing too well right now.”

He talked me through it, getting me to direct a fan at the keys, telling me not to panic, that even if the motherboard got fried, it’s totally fixable, and my harddrive is undoubtedly safe and secure. He made an appointment with a specialist at the Apple Store for this weekend, warning me to keep the fan on the keyboard for the next 24-48 hours. I giggled, with relief, and told him how happy I am that I invested in the AppleCare Protection Plan. “Oh, by the way, this isn’t covered under your AppleCare Protection Plan,” he said. “Spills, or drops, any sort of accident. We only cover hardware malfunctions.”

Blue Screen of Death, I think, where are you when I need you? Windows machines and my luck with your consistent harddrive failures, where are you?

In reality, I started crying. The Apple guy went a little quiet, talking about the weather, asking what it’s like in New York. “Warm,” I told him. “That’s nice,” he said. “So, what do you do for a living?”

“I’m a writer,” I said. There was silence on the line. I could almost feel the Apple guy connecting my profession with the gurgling MacBook Pro in the corner. He could probably hear my sniffling as I started mentally calculating the cost of fixing this, out of warranty, when all we bought the warranty for was to protect us against the unexpected — this, in a way. But we hadn’t thought we’d adopt a kitten when we bought the Mac, never dreamed we’d have an accident like this. Then the Apple guy said, “Well, um, your appointment is all set. Good luck.” We hung up.

When I stared at the laptop, filled with sticky beverage, tiny desk fan set on its frame whirring quietly, I started bawling. Crying as if I’d lost a family member. To my embarrassment, I’ve cried every time I’ve lost a computer. When the netbook died, it was like I’d lost a limb, an extension of my arm, like all of my writing went with it, despite its safety net. This time, though, was the first time with the kitten. The little, innocent perpetrator of the accident. I was bawling, standing in the kitchen, feeling completely helpless, and the kitten wandered up along the countertop and put her paws on my shoulder, sniffing at these things called tears. I realized I hadn’t yet cried in front of her. What reason would I have had? She started licking the tears off of my cheeks and it could have been scripted, it was so adorable. (Then, an hour later, she tracked poop from her litter box across the apartment floor… then across the cream-colored bed linens… necessitating a bath that neither of us wanted to endure. Yep, she’s a kitten, all right.)

I’m cursed when it comes to computers. Ever since that first laptop purchase, they’ve broken on me. In warranty, out of warranty, problem not covered under warranty. There’s no explanation to this string of bad computer luck. The husband, even techier than I am, is confounded. Our families shake their heads and remind us that so long as the data’s backed up, it’s only a tool, not the living entity I keep thinking my computers are. It’s funny. Some people are into cars, or into designer clothes, or into tasteful art — we’re into computers. And I have a black thumb when it comes to them. What luck.

I hope Apple can fix my computer this weekend. I’ll keep you updated.

But this can become complicated. It’s also led to some fascinating discussions with four, five, and six year olds. This discussion one called into question why I love Star Wars and why Inception is too complicated to be a kids’ movie. (Don’t worry, there are no spoilers.) Pretty heady for a five-minute conversation with a small child.

The six-year-old: “Monsters vs. Aliens is probably my favorite movie ever. Ever, ever. Well, maybe Cars, but that didn’t have monsters or aliens. What’s yours?”

“Star Wars.” I paused, wondering at my automatic response. Is Star Wars my favorite movie? I’ve certainly seen it enough to quote it — but by that criteria, I can also rank Raiders of the Lost Ark and Back to the Future up there with Star Wars. (All right, I admit it: the accompanying films in their respective trilogies, too, though I have Opinions about them.) What other criteria are there? A movie I would willingly watch on repeat all day long? (Under that category I can add most Disney and/or Pixar animated films; every Miyazaki film; a handful of Oscar nominated films of the last fifteen years and The Sound of Music; a handful of record-breaking blockbusters both of the critically-acclaimed and the revel-in-the-mediocrity variety.)

“Yeah,” I said, “Star Wars.”

“So why do you like Star Wars so much?” he asked. He knows exactly what movie I’m talking about although he’s never seen it. His friends have Clone Wars backpacks. He has a Star Wars: Heroes and Villains Young Reader book. He went to a birthday party where the theme was Star Wars and he brought home a lightsaber as his goody-bag prize. He knows who Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader are. He understands Jedi and Sith. But he has never seen this movie.

“Luke is a farm boy who becomes a hero by rescuing a princess, eluding Darth Vader, destroying the Death Star, and saving the galaxy.” Another pause. Not only did I just give an example of Joseph Campbell‘s hero theory in a happy nutshell, but that same plot is also that of a ton of books and movies (just substitute different nouns).

He stared at me, skeptically, as if to say, “That’s all? Lame.”

I found myself compelled to add, “It’s not just the story. The characters are memorable, the action is great, and there are spaceships, blasters, lightsaber fights, and a really awesome world. It’s got the whole package.”

As I said this, I realized that part of the entire reason I love Star Wars is because it started what became a phenomenon, spawning sequels, prequels, merchandise, books (so many books!), video games — it’s a part of culture, a nerdy subset of American media culture that has influenced a generation (or two, by now) and helped pave the way for better technologies (ILM, THX, Skywalker Sound) that have influenced the way film and media have evolved in the past three decades. Not to mention Star Wars’ pop culture influences. (Just look at the Wikipedia articles.) So it’s not simply the first movie, or the first trilogy, but the entire technological and cultural phenomenon of Star Wars that makes it something I love, something I value and appreciate. I can no longer separate Star Wars the single film from Star Wars the cultural beast. As I realized this, I also realized that while I can admit the original Star Wars isn’t stylistically or artistically the best movie I’ve ever seen (and let’s not discuss the prequels, mmkay?), I can’t separate the film from the context of its time and its place in cinema history. It’s like trying to separate Dickens from nineteenth century London, or New York from its skyscrapers. For a fan of science fiction and fantasy, it’s impossible to separate Star Wars from the consciousness of American media and culture.

I think, at this point, the six-year-old was wondering why I was looking so lost. I was having something of a revelation — Do I love Star Wars because of what it represents more than the film itself? How can I even answer that? — but of course all he saw was a blank look. I have a tendency to get lost in my head and I think by now this six-year-old understands that.

“Oh, okay,” he said. His question had been answered to his satisfaction. “So what was the last movie you saw?”

“Inception,” I said. Without really thinking. Why do I do that?

He frowned. “What does that word mean?”

“Well. In the movie, the ‘inception’ is the idea of planting an idea in someone else’s head. In their dreams.”

“Did you like that movie?”

“Yes. A lot.”

“Why isn’t that movie your favorite movie, then?”

I stalled. That’s actually a good question, I thought. Stylistically, aesthetically, in terms of the effects and the vision, it was pretty excellent. Is it too new to be in my top favorites? Is it too controversial? In the days since, I have read quite a few reviews about it. I’m still wondering what to think, how to interpret it. I kept guessing throughout the movie, throwing my theories against the inside wall of my brain only to see the plot shoot them down later in the film. In a word, though, it was brilliant. “I don’t know. I’ve only seen it once,” I said.

“So it’s about dreams,” he said, going back to what I’d said earlier — did I mention he’s a very smart kid? — “dreaming and ideas?”

“Yep.” And, because I had only just seen it that same morning and I was still itching to talk about it to someone, I added, “It’s about what happens if people can go inside other people’s dreams and change them.”

He grinned. “Oh! It’s a kids’ movie!”

“Oh. No. It’s not.”

“But it’s about going inside other people’s dreams. That’s cool. That could be a kids’ movie.”

I imagined, for a moment, Inception as a kids’ movie and had a wild notion of kids playing with dreamscapes and getting in trouble. Star Wars, I thought, is something of a kids’ movie. But not Inception. Could I explain it to him somehow? Then I recalled the time when the six-year-old, at age five, asked me to explain multiplication and division to him. He’s a math whiz, so I did. I struggled to conceptualize it in a visual way for him to understand. Explaining about dividing apples among children as my example, he understood the principle of division — but didn’t want to try it in practice. (He was five. That’s okay.) Multiplication, though. That was hard. So to explain the complexity of this film to a young audience? One would have to be terrifically gifted or terrifically crazy.

“Maybe. But this one isn’t. It’s too complicated.”

“Too complicated how? You can explain it! Come on, come on, please?”

I really wanted to find a way to level with him, that impulse of being straight and honest with all kids as much as I can. But sometimes, it’s better just to give the simple answer. “I can’t explain it. Why don’t you go set up a game to play?”

“PLEASE!”

I sighed, seeing the look. The I-won’t-give-this-up-because-I-need-to-know-PLEASE-tell-me look. “It’s not a kids’ movie because it’s a grown-up movie. Okay? That’s just what it is.” Christopher Nolan, I thought, you have just made me give a blow-off answer to a small child because of your dastardly fascinating film. Why couldn’t Inception’s plot have been as simple as Star Wars’? But then, I wondered, would I have loved Inception so much had it been simple — would anyone have loved it? Its beauty is in its complexity, as perhaps Star Wars‘ is in its simplicity.

“Aw, okay, fine,” he muttered, then went to set up Connect Four.

Kids these days, I tell you. They make my brain hurt.

This one is YA fantasy (shocker), with a lot of the elements of a swords-and-horses-and-princesses kind of fantasy, but with a couple of flip-the-genre-on-its-head unconventional twists of plot and character. (Yay for being vague!) At its heart, this is a story about mothers and daughters, fathers and sons; about questioning one’s role in one’s family and the larger world; of others’ expectations versus personal desires; of truth, deceptions, and consequences. (EVEN MORE VAGUE!) Is it better to break out of the shadow of your elders and try to be your own person, strike the consequences, or is it better to surpass your elders’ expectations of you in following the path they’ve set for you? I always find I write stories about finding one’s identity, about reconciling expectations: those of your parents, of others, and of yourself. Granted, it’s fantasy, so I’ve taken some, ahem, magical liberties shall I say, in the extrapolation of these circumstances. But like any interesting fantasy, this story resonates with me (as a writer especially) because it’s ultimately about the journeys of the characters as they try to come into their own, to prove they’re just about grown up — to everyone as well as to themselves.

Also, this story has nothing to do with “destiny” because I happen to think the “destiny” trope has been done [well and poorly] by others and I’ve no interest in exploring it. Besides, I happen to think “expectations” are a lot more annoying, harder to handle, and more interesting as a relatable concept to a reader in a non-fantastical context because we all have them, or others have them for us. Really: which is harder to live with, being destined to do great things, or being expected to do great things? The externality of the pressure of “destiny” is interesting, but it’s remote. Destiny implies a deity or other such remote being/concept with a “plan” (for one or for all), and that can get sticky — and epic. I heart epic, but this story is not epic. (And that’s another thing this all comes down to: what is right for this story.) Here I’d much rather stick to human beings and their relationships.

Like everything I write, it has no title, so I may refer to it here as a lot of things including “this story” and/or “the WiP.” I hate titling things until I must, then even afterward I squirm uncomfortably. (Even titling these blog posts feels odd, which is why so many of them seem like partial sentences or involve language reminiscent of I Can Has Cheezburger.)

Now, back to Scrivener and its loveliness!

First of all, it’s June. Where the blazes did half of 2010 go already? Secondly, there are many happenings this month so far. It’s my last month of the day job before summer vacation (sweet!) and I cannot wait until I have all of that glorious writing time. Because it will be glorious. As it is, I can’t dig into a local café (and there are tons in Williamsburg) for more than an hour before I need to get back to work/life, and one of my favorite places to write is at a café, with an iced coffee or tea sweating on the table beside me.

Then, nearly every weekend this month we have friends visiting from out of town. It’s a magical time when friends visit. It gives us an excuse to stop being homebodies and actually explore this fantastic neighborhood and the entire city, making us feel better about the money we’re spending. We’re seeing a Broadway show! There are street fairs! Museum exhibits! Good times to be had by all! If left to our own devices I will hide in a corner with my laptop and the boy wonder will play a game (or, now, play with the kitten)… or I’ll play a game (oh, Little Big Planet, you are addictive), or we’ll cook or bake… But we live, as so many people remind us, in frakking New York City! Which apparently obligates us, by virtue of the necessity of allowing others far away to live vicariously through us, to go “out” and “have fun.” We do. Just last week, we were invited to Milk & Honey, a bar that is not myth! I had two of the best cocktails I’ve ever had in my life. But we don’t do that kind of thing all the time. We strive to live sustainable lives.

The “New York City life of a twentysomething” is one stereotype I’ve never fully understood. (There’s an episode of Sex and the City that goes into this; twentysomethings here are supposed to live lives of fun, carefree frivolity involving many one-night stands and much alcohol, the kind of lives that thirtysomethings and fortysomethings regard with mild jealousy. This confuses me!) But how can a twentysomething (who isn’t one of the rare 6-figure earning twentysomethings, or who doesn’t have daddy’s credit card) actually afford to go out all of the time, especially in an economy where so many people in our age bracket are losing their jobs? Unless you love dive bars, hole-in-the-wall restaurants, or you know someone who can pull you into a “cool” place, bypassing an expensive cover, going “out” costs add up. Usually going out makes more sense than, say, having a house party — especially when a lot of people I know are either renting rooms in multi-room apartments with relative strangers, living in a “box” of a studio (which we did! We did that!), or living outside the city entirely (which makes grabbing a group together to go to their place a trek rather than a casual jaunt).

This phase is a unique one: the post-college, pre-”real life” phase of learning to be an adult, finding a grown-up identity (because, yes, that identity we discover as teenagers gets smashed by college, then that collegiate identity gets ripped apart by the “real world”…) All of that fun stuff! I’ve been told a lot, by a various folks that the twenties are “a magical time” or somesuch, that I mustn’t “squander” my time, that I need to “live life while I still have one.” Um, what? (Does that mean that one’s life ends with marriage and/or children? Really?) Do those people realize that telling me that is akin to telling a teenager that they will “get over” all of their teenage drama and hardships, that they just have to “suck it up and deal”? (Because I was told that. That being a teenager was a phase I needed to push through, like slogging through mud, and I’d get through to the other side filthy but whole. Thanks, advisors, for telling me that. Helped so much with the day to day of teenage life, knowing that I was sunk neck-deep in mud out of which I’d eventually discover how to crawl.)

I didn’t know how to deal with that well-meaning advice then, and I don’t really know how to live without “squandering” my life now. What does that even mean? Perhaps it’s because I spend part of my days with a lot of New York City moms — every conceivable (positive and negative) stereotype of them — and all sorts of babysitter/nanny-types. A lot of them ask me the usual questions, get a little picture of me, then proceed to give me life advice. Sometimes there are some pleas — “Don’t have children yet! Please! Don’t! Doooon’t!”) Sometimes there are lectures: You should do this. You should do that. (Because I’m asking for it? Like I was when I was a teenager? I am definitely the kind of person who enjoys making and learning from her own mistakes rather than getting inundated with well-meant but not applicable advice, thank you!) I heard a peer say that the twenties are for partying, the thirties for marrying, the forties for kids. That was the life plan, and she was following that perfectly. Plenty of time, later, for “important things”! Some moms have made similar comments. Why are you married so young? The twenties are a time for freedom! (Because a marriage isn’t… free? Because one can’t do what one wants to do… while also in a committed relationship?) This is not to say that one ought to be in a relationship, please don’t get me wrong, but can’t we make our own choices? Can’t we decide that being committed is just as fun as being single, simply different?

This whole sensation, this well-meant advice about how I ought to be spending my twenties, is very similar to what people said when we got engaged. That for a forward-thinking, modern, feminist woman to be engaged! Before thirty! Oh dear me! What is the world coming to? My response then was, well, wasn’t the feminist movement — isn’t it still? — ultimately about freedom of choice? The ability for a woman to make individual life choices that suit her, not ones that should suit all women or ones that used to suit most women? So why am I supposed to be living my twenties in one way? It’s almost as if there’s this implication that my example pulls down the average for all free, single-life loving twentysomething women everywhere. I’m ruining the curve, oh no!

If I lived in a different state, in a small town, would it even be weird for me to be married? Some kids I went to high school with have kids now. I read a piece in New York Magazine this week, a brief spot on 26-year-old Leelee Sobieski. About being a “young” mom, she says,

“People in the middle of America have babies at my age,” Sobieski says. Had she and Kimmel planned to be parents this early? She pauses. “We fell in love,” she finally says. Still, “I wish I had a girlfriend that had a baby. That would be so nice. I feel like I’m doing this thing that’s really weird, but I look around me and realize that everyone has babies. Look at all these people! So what?”

This is, I think, what some people who have urged me to “live life!” in my twenties are worried about happening to me. That now that I’m married, logic says BABIES! and clearly, babies will ruin my stereotypical twentysomething fun. Some mothers (especially some of the mothers I’ve met who had their first children rather “late in life”) have even expressed mild skepticism when I say we’re not planning on babies yet. (Clearly, I must be mistaken, because I am married. CLEARLY. Women who want no babies, who are married? I feel your pain. Why does society insist on it? Can’t it be up to us?) If I spend a Saturday night — or Memorial Day Weekend — at home, watching TV, cooking dinner, playing the PlayStation… why is that wrong? Someone asked me recently what I’d done over my holiday weekend. Did I go on vacation? Did I go to the beach? Did I leave the city as one ought? No, I said, we stayed in. We adopted a kitten. We made hanger steak. There was a significant pause. “Why didn’t you go out?” I paused. “Should we have?” They paused. “Well, we had fun this weekend! We went to X, we did Y…” Well, good for you. No, really — good for you; I’m not bitter. I had fun. You did, too. Yay for all!

I don’t know where this rant is going — do rants go to any sensible conclusion? But the bottom line is that I am in my twenties and I am having fun. I’m not living my life with any regrets and it bothers me that some people assume I am because I’m married, because I’m… I have no idea! Well, people will assume and I can let them. I’m happy and I’m enjoying the experience that is my life, in all of its uncertainties, new experiences, and happy days of relaxing in front of the television or cooking dinner with my husband (and kitty!). We do things, too. Maybe they’re not the things other twentysomethings do, but we’re not interested in being them. We’re interested in being us. A lot of the “grown ups” I’ve gotten to know the last year assume that there’s something wrong with my life because I’m not following the life path they followed. Some have blatantly judged me for it. To them, I say: I’m doing just fine, thanks.

Tomorrow night I have the opportunity to represent Carnegie Mellon at a college fair in Staten Island. The idea of representing CMU is exciting, but the idea of trekking an hour and a half to do it… well. I’m less enthusiastic. The boy says he will accompany me (as he’s also an alum) but he has the obligations of the office to attend to first, so he may not make it. Leaving me to brave the wiles of Staten Island and its transportation system alone. I am not afraid of the Staten Island Ferry. Nope. No sir. I’m not afraid of the Staten Island train and/or bus system. Noooope. Maybe anxious about being late. But I have optimistic hopes about my ability to navigate correctly! So long as the subways are operating and they can get me downtown in a timely manner, things will be all right. Is it weird to say I am valuing this experience as an adventure? As G. K. Chesterton said, “An adventure is merely an inconvenience rightly considered.” THUS. Adventure. In Staten Island.

In between the work I need to get done this week, I’ll have to finish packing. Friday we have the closing and other such wrap-up events, followed by our thrilling trip to IKEA Brooklyn in Red Hook (which, for those of you as almost unfamiliar with Brooklyn geography as I am: it’s far from Williamsburg). Once we buy up half the store, we’ll give it to them for delivery. Then we’ll go home, get a meager amount of sleep, then haul ourselves (with supplies) down to the brand new home and get to painting. Two rooms, one day of mayhem. I’ve painted rooms before (with help) but the boy hasn’t — not really. So it’s yet another inconvenience we must rightly consider to be an adventure. We’ve chosen the colors (yellow for the living room, blue for the bedroom — let’s call them that instead of the palette color names for them). My only sticking point with painting is that I must have a Home Depot painting hat. MUST. Even though it’s water based paint, I am paranoid. That, and a yellow glob in my hair will happen, given my nature, so I’d best be prepared.

At some point during the weekend, a fellow will arrive to measure the windows and attempt to sell us expensive window treatments. We may actually buy them from him. At another point, FreshDirect will arrive and bring us delicious groceries. See how I’m planning this? See how many ways this could all end up crazy? Or maybe you’re not like me, not looking for the possible ways everything could Murphy’s Law on us. Maybe I am, again, exaggerating.

Once we finish the weekend chores, it’s back to the rental for packing the remainders. The computers, the electronics, the clothes, the dregs. Monday morning, at the shiny hour of 8 o’clock in the morning, the moving folks will arrive and we’ll begin the day of mayhem. (I plan to wake several hours earlier, because I am a masochist, and finish the last-minute stuff then.)

That is, of course, assuming the potential doorman strike in New York City, planned to potentially start tomorrow, doesn’t happen. If it does happen — and if it continues all the way through to the weekend, we may have to cancel the move. The building may allow us to move in anyway — it’s up to management, regardless if there are building staff on premises — but I’d need to double check. So maybe if I wasn’t articulating the Murphy’s Law paranoia potential clearly enough, it’s clearer now? This whole thing is actually nerve-wracking. After all of the packing, the buying-a-condo stress… to have the strike happen, to complicate our move? Not that I am taking sides in the conflict, mind you, but I just really want some resolution so that life doesn’t get too interrupted for anyone. We can’t be the only ones moving this week. (Some buildings will not allow a move at all during a strike.) Insanity! Okay, not really, but you get what I’m saying. (See? I really have to work at overcoming my hyperbolic tendency, don’t I?)

The thing about the strike that’s been annoying me — the way it’s been handled in general by the media in New York — is this: it’s not about doormen holding open doors. That’s not really what a doorman, or building staff, is really responsible for, though it’s the most visible thing they do. They are behind-the-scenes miracle workers, really. The entirety of a building staff — and it’s not just “upscale” 5th Avenue buildings, mind you! — are involved in every aspect of making one’s life in an apartment a seamless living experience. The trash, for instance. That doesn’t get picked up by sanitation by itself. The recycling, the UPS guy, the overflowing toilet. These things get taken care of by the lovely people who work in our buildings. So when I hear people saying, “Open your own doors!” I get annoyed. I don’t live in an expensive building, nor are we moving to some posh ridiculous building. But these large buildings function much in the same way companies do, and the “little guy,” shall we say, is just as valuable in a building as he is in the corporate structure. Not to take sides, but really, I dislike when people misunderstand all the building folks do — or treat them as less than human beings (which I see happen! AHHH!). So basically I’m just saying I hope it gets resolved and everyone’s happy, because I hate to see these sorts of conflicts escalate.

So this is my week. Not too crazy by normal standards, but I’m still anxious it’s all going to work out. Not to mention the fact that I have queries and partials and fulls in the tubes, and I am worrying incessantly about them, too. But there’s nothing I can do now that my writing is in others’ hands except wait, so I may as well put my worrying energy elsewhere. Like into packing. Or reading. (Did I mention I have a ton of to-be-read books still on the bookshelf that haven’t been packed — because somehow I am convinced I might read one or two this week? Silver Borne by Patricia Briggs, Tales of the Otherworld by Kelley Armstrong, Graceling by Kristin Cashore, The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing V. II by M. T. Anderson, Senrid by Sherwood Smith… I really should pack a few of them up, huh. Not yet…

The most intriguing change, though, is our search for a house — and by “house” I mean “apartment” or more specifically “condo” — in New York City. Oh, the joys of experiencing the real estate market! Since the husband’s promotion (probably didn’t mention that, did I? Yeah… he got promoted. Smart boy!) he’s been on the hunt to buy. Buy. This is both exciting and nerve-wracking. I am not mentally adult enough to think that we belong at this point, but it’s been a year since the wedding and, well, when is one “ready” for a step like this, anyway? Disregarding my artistic contribution as stay-at-home-writing-machine (along with my occasional small-child-supervising gig) we have the ability to buy a house. (The boy is a numbers man; I believe him.) So the prospect of no longer paying rent to the rental property gods of Manhattan is actually realistic. Exciting!

As to where we may move… that’s the interesting part. We’re looking at Brooklyn, as well as other parts of Manhattan, but mostly Brooklyn. Having spent years in Pittsburgh with its small-town artsy/industrial neighborhoods, Brooklyn hits us as home in a way that surprised us. (That, and the commute for the boy is great.) I’m looking forward to the change and hoping the whole buy plus move endeavor isn’t as stressful as my mind is beginning to think it may be. Everyone I’ve talked to about buying versus renting agrees it’s a change but then, it’s not a huge change. It’s just something to which to adapt, just like any other change — right? I hope it turns out that way!

So in the next month I may find myself a soon-to-be Brooklyner. Is that the vernacular? I guess I’d better start researching on the Interwebs. In two and a half years I’ve become so much of a Manhattan girl that thinking of labeling myself as a Brooklyn girl feels a bit strange. But then, it felt weird to move to Manhattan after Pittsburgh… and so on. I think of this, this entire year ahead of us, as an adventure. I love a good adventure.

Well, not really. I’ll explain.

The breakneck pace of my NaNoWriMo project this year was due in part to a lot of factors. It was a story I first wrote, in a version absurdly different from the way I see it now, back in 2000/2001. I’ve rewritten it top-to-bottom at least three times now, and in each version markedly different things happen but it’s the same world, same basic story. The three main characters are always the same three folks. I know them absurdly well. I even transposed their odd story onto a screenplay I wrote in college, for no other reason than I couldn’t think of what else to write for my assignment and these characters are old friends. But back in 2007 I imagined a vastly different background for the characters which gives a different gravity, a weight to the story that was never there. But I never wrote more than a vague scene and some notes on this new direction. I realized that this change was so big I had to delete certain characters I’d known for a draft or two, create entirely new ones, re-imagine old ones, and utterly alter the nature of the plot’s movement. (And that was scary and a huge thing to just… start one day!) My ideas for this draft were the same but the events leading to them were different, things like that. I was afraid to actually write it at last, I think. But I needed a project for NaNo and I think NaNo is the perfect opportunity for a writer to just take something off of their already large to-do list and just do it (as opposed to the way a non-writer approaches NaNo).

So I approached this year’s NaNoWriMo as my excuse to finally write this idea down, as I said a few weeks ago here. That helped my ability to punch this story out in 20 days, certainly, but that didn’t mean I wasn’t pretty much flying by the seat of my pants every day all the same. I also devoted a good 8, sometimes 10 hours a day to the endeavor, and had a lot of output as a result of the time I put into it. (And no, my fingers can’t fly over keys for all of those hours straight. I am easily distracted.) Some fascinating things happened. I was confident in my point of view and its changes. (Point of view is usually my hardest single choice in a draft! I agonize! Not so in this one.) I seamlessly slid into the persona of these old, beloved characters, even though I threw things at them I didn’t even know I’d hidden up my subconscious sleeve. It was glorious fun.

But now that I’ve done all of that, finally written down the meat of the story (and I’ve outlined what the rest of the story will be) I am looking at December quite differently than I looked at October and November. I’m realizing that while I can probably sit and finish my NaNo novel and make it what I know it will be now, I also have an obligation to myself to finish my 2009 WiP, the very same one I started during my self-imposed JaNoWriMo last January, the one I’ve been working on in earnest rewriting and polishing since the summer. I’ve made the [rash?] promise to myself that by 2010, I will finish it. Which means… 31 days from now. It’s only about 20 or 25,000 words away from completion. That’s half of NaNoWriMo’s sheer output demand. Theoretically as I wrote 50,000 words in 20 days, this 20,000 word chunk should be… well. Shouldn’t be too onerous for a 31 day task.

Now that is a hell of a lot scarier to me than NaNoWriMo. My WiP is a rewrite. Granted, I’ve diverged [at times majorly] from my first draft in this rewrite, but I still know where I’m going and [pretty much] how I’ll get there. (Rather, I know the major things I need to hit and where it will end, but the details are foggy. I am a write-to-know details person.) But finishing denotes… finality. I think I need to do it to prove to myself that I can wrap this thing up tight. Then, once I’m content with that, I’ll go back to this year’s NaNo, revisit my other drafts set in that same world… oh, the many things I must do. Oh, yes, and begin the query process. For the first time ever. The funny thing is I’m not nervous about querying so much as nervous about what happens when (“when” because, recall, I am cheekily optimistic) it all happens. When this amorphous agent wants me as a client, when they sell my book to a publisher…. I’m nervous about being a real grown up. Not about being a writer — I’ve been a writer since I was twelve, for goodness’ sake; I have a degree in writing! — but about being a real freaking grown up. I am too old to be nervous about that! But… still. Part of me wants to go tell my story to my Barbies and call it a day, like I did when I was twelve. But I’m too old for that, too.

Oh, December… how exciting you shall be…

I have to post today, if for no other reason than to electronically shout, “September 9, 2009 — 09/09/09!?” and giggle. When the year 2000 came upon me, it was something of an amusing idea that the next twelve years would be filled with one day a year of “02/02/02″ and other such dates of default awesome. Once we have 12/12/12, though, that’s it for a century. I used to think that meant I was living in special, auspicious times. Perhaps numerically, that’s still true.

Today was another significant day around the neighborhood, though it mostly passed me by. Dozens of school children were on the neighborhood streets today. It was the first day today for most of them, which always makes me feel old now a days. I get nostalgic, too; I actually glanced at kids’ sneakers and backpacks today and yes, they were all brilliantly un-scuffed and hardly worn. As a kid, that was always my favorite aspect of going back to school — the new stuff. New clothes, new shoes. For years I’d had to get a new pair of school sneakers (had to have them for gym class) every year and retire the old ones, which always struck me as both a fun rite of passage but also something of a sad one. I have fond memories of some of those shoes. One pair I’d worn mostly to pieces; years later I found sand and grit still embedded in the blue canvas fiber, leftover from all the times I’d gone sloshing in summer mud with them.

In other update-type news, I’ve been busy. I’ve been rereading some stuff and writing — writing a lot and often — which has been both successful and marvelous, but I do admit, part of me wishes I had both the time and the inclination to read as many new books as I did months ago. In 2007 and 2008, for instance, I devoured book after book on a weekly, if not occasionally daily, basis. But I think my college-starved voracity has stabilized.

(I didn’t read for pleasure in college — at all — until some time during my senior year, which left me feeling quite vaguely bereft until I got my New York Public Library card and its attendant addictive benefits. Studying abroad was probably what ignited the passion for reading once more; turns out when you don’t have a TV in your dorm room in a country where the TV is also not in your native language, but you discover their bookstores carry English language books… well. The rest is chronicled in back entries of this blog.)

I’ve actually been buying books lately, too. For a writer, I don’t really own as many books as I’ve read, which has always struck me as practical (I love my library and my library card!) but also a bit strange. I actually started acquiring new additions to my permanent collection for the simple reason that I wanted to reread them and well, that’s usually my only criteria for a bookstore run. If I’m going to read a book more than once, I will own it, otherwise it’s wasted shelf space. I suppose this means my permanent collection is very well-distilled, by default — only what I consider “good” or those books I’ve gotten as gifts usually end up there. The bookshelf it’s currently piled on (a Billy bookshelf from IKEA, a classic) has shelves stacked two rows deep. We should probably invest in a second bookshelf — well, technically the collection has spilled onto other shelves, but I’m not going to count those — but meh. I know where all of my books are, even if the 800+ page ones are stuffed in the back behind the 300 page ones. (Spine-reading efficiency, you understand; my entire bookshelf is categorized by sizes and shapes, then author and genre. Aesthetics come first on the bookshelf.)

September is probably my month of nostalgia. I do feel it, a little, in May and December (May for school, December for holidays and the new year), but in September that feeling is compounded by my love of learning. I do miss school, the regimented feel of it, the focus and definition it gave me, though strangely I really have no particular desire to go back there now. I just miss the first day of eighth grade. The first day of second grade. Those first days when the binders were too new to have broken rings, when you could make promises to yourself you’d end up breaking  (“I’ll do my homework this year the moment I get home. I won’t procrastinate.”) and you could at least try to reinvent yourself. I have no desire for any of those things now a days, not really, but there’s no real “first day” for me anymore, not in the same way. January 1st is just cold. I think I’m finally starting to understand why parents make such a big deal out of the first day of school for their kids. Maybe the importance of the ritual, the time of year, the newness and excitement of it all isn’t just for their kids.

I was declared “Proficient” in the French language in 8^th grade, when I was thirteen. By fifteen, New York State’s Board of Regents declared me almost perfect on their exam with a score of 98 out of 100. So by high school academic standards, I was pretty good at listening, speaking, reading, and writing French. One of the best experiences I’d had in high school French was the speaking part of the Regents Exam. The teacher read a card with a scenario/question and I had to respond and have a mini conversation. The scenario was, in French, that aliens had landed on Earth and I had to go back to the Important People and describe the aliens to them, to answer their questions regarding the aliens — the descriptions of which I had to pull out of my head. Creatively describe aliens in French? It was an awesome exam question and I was utterly thrilled with myself afterward.

Yes, I got excited regarding an exam. Yes, I have been and am a very large nerd.

College French class, however, was a kick to the teeth. I realized then any sort of fluency I’d pretended to was really my own bloated ego’s desire to be seen as having accomplished such a thing as “fluency”, but it was far from the reality. Fluency means you can carry on a conversation. French sputtered and died on my tongue. Fluency means you can write sentences… without halting every two words and skimming through the grayed recesses of dusty memories for that verb tense or that noun. Really, I was barely fluent.

But the difference, by the end of that semester of intermediate — yes, intermediate — French was astounding… when it came to two things: reading comprehension and writing. I am a grammar whiz, and foreign language grammar is no different. Teach me a rule, its corresponding logic in English, and I’ve got the rule down. Teach me a word, however, and I’ll forget it within a day unless it’s repeated with driven intensity into my skull through a song or repeated phrase. (“Un, deux, trios, pretty mama… quatre, cinq, six, I miss you!” or so sings Bryan on occasion; I’ve no idea where it’s from, but it sticks, even to him, the boy to whom no languages stick.)

Reading comprehension was little different from grammar for me; I’d make a lot of educated assumptions based on context and verbs and grammar rules and, provided some key vocabulary was not above my ability, I’d generally get the idea enough to turn around and argue it in an essay. We read Tocqueville and I read Tocqueville and understood it. I thought I’d finally accomplished something with language learning.

Speaking, however, was and is a different matter.

Forget for a moment that I have bouts of anxiety-driven “stage fright.” (I shook with anxiety through every speech I’ve ever given.) Speaking French was hard for me mainly because I am a visual learner and there is nothing visual in my brain about speaking. Call me crazy but I need to see a word spelled out on the page before I can comprehend it if it’s a new word or a homonym or attempted homonyms.The problem with listening and speaking French is that half the entire language, it seems, can be silent at one point or another, or sound like something completely different than what it is. Les pommes rouges, les jeunes filles — you don’t hear the plural except for the pronunciation of “les” (“lay”) thus without catching the signifying article, you can easily mistake a plural for a singular. That was the absolute least of my issues, but it was a big enough one that when I took the AP Exam in French, I knew it was a doomed endeavor. (Before I was sitting in the room I’d managed to convince myself it wasn’t doomed. Let alone the fact that our teacher for it was more or less a buffoon who toyed around with yahoo.fr instead of actually teaching us…)

So any gains I’d made with my French were always hopelessly torn asunder, in my mind, by my inability to be a well-rounded student. Forever doomed to reading and writing it — and what good, I kept thinking, would that do in France?

A lot, let me tell you.

Traveling to France made me feel a lot better and prouder of my ability with French because I realized that being able to read signs, maps, menus, instructions, and the like is half the tourist battle. The other half is having the gumption to follow through, meaning once you read the menu and understand what’s on it, you have to have the courage to attempt to order it from the waiter. Which naturally does involve some speaking and listening, but hey, it’s contextual after that. Thus I spent a few days in Paris alone, learning at least as much as I had in a year of high school French just by reading everything constantly. Even today, I navigated to Yahoo.fr (which apparently comes http://fr.yahoo.com) and I could read and understand the stories on the main page. If not every single word, enough from context, grammar, and photo to get the article. (Thank goodness, too, for cognates, words that look enough like their English counterparts as to help with vocab — like “célèbre”, “musique”, etc.) Heck, one of the headlines on the entertainment French Yahoo page was “La dé-li-rante parodie de “Twilight”… avec un cheeseburger dans le rôle de Bella ! Regardez !!!” Naturally my interest was piqued and I found this video, which was well worth the time spent browsing. Oh, how I enjoy especially the article, which says,

Avec un gros zeste d’humour, un soupçon de moyens et un plaisir sans borne, l’histoire d’amour entre le vampire Edward (Robert Pattinson) et l’humaine Bella (Kristen Stewart) se transforme en une folle attirance entre un jeune homme gourmand montant aux arbres et un délicieux… cheeseburger !

Which is so much more enjoyable in French than it would be in English. If you can’t read French, it doesn’t matter — the only important part of that whole paragraph is the last bit, how the satire is the story of a young gourmand who climbs trees and “un délicieux… cheeseburger!” Yes, Bella as a delicious cheeseburger. (Twilight now makes sense! Bella was a cheeseburger all along! Who could resist sitting next to that in biology without having a visceral reaction?!)

So in essence, I can’t speak French, but I can read and certainly enjoy it. A victory? Perhaps. Am I fluent? I still wouldn’t claim to be but I suppose I can be satisfied.