Exceptionalism

Let's go out on a limb here and say everyone likes to feel special.

I know I do, at the very least. This has been the case with nearly every person I've interacted with. It's in varying degrees from person to person. Some are greedier about it than others. It can be an aggressive search for attention or a simple desire to be loved and appreciated by those you love and appreciate. It's one of those really bizarre conundrums, too. Look at the population of our planet, with billions of people, and one could make the blasé comment that no one is special. How can they be, with the sheer numbers so overwhelming?

And yet. And yet every person you meet is different from the next. There can be large quantities of similarities shared, but age, location, experience... The life lived and the person it builds are always different. 

I believe it was Pixar's The Incredibles that had a bitter and jaded villain who once wanted to be a superhero remark that once everyone was made super, then nobody would be. It's a quote that comes to mind when thinking about people's criticisms of marginalized individuals seeking validation or aid. "Special snowflakes." They're sarcastically disregarded. In broader senses, people who don't want to make exceptions for those who struggle more or differently than they do all have their own unique reasons. Maybe they feel like their struggles can be equated - they made it out on top after roughing it, so why should someone else have it easier? Maybe they feel like those who ask are just being lazy or too sensitive - everyone's too sensitive nowadays, or so I keep being told. Maybe they just don't care - the capacity for empathy manifests in different degrees for everyone. 

I'm personally of the opinion that if I can help make someone's life easier than mine (and I have it pretty easy in the grand scheme of things), then I will do so. But this blog entry is less about that and more a part of my reflection on recent events in my life. The above is an inevitable side effect, yet worth noting all the same. 

I have been lucky in my friendships. The closest ones have been lasting and incredible. As with anyone, I've lost or fallen out of touch with friends, too. The efforts in maintaining multiple friendships lend themselves to parsing down those you keep close, in favor of dedicating more energy and time to those who have also dedicated energy and time to you. Not from a selfish stance, but people tend to best like the people who like them back. 

Despite all of the billions of unique human beings on this planet (and some that are just off-planet too) I have found some fantastic human beings who have let me into their lives and kept me as close as I've kept them. It is with them that I have zero doubts about my value. I never get the sense that I am a frustration or an undesired demand on their time and attention, which often happens with someone I don't know as thoroughly. These are exemplary individuals in the world, and against all odds, they have found me exceptional. It is in their friendships that I am the luckiest. 

Just wanted to take a moment to appreciate that.

The Cart Before The Horse

This week has turned into one of engaging research for me. One of my priorities was to come out of this week with a step-by-step guide on how to get my written works published. That, from what I've gathered, is an arduous task. So I laid it all out in front of me (and now you) in an exercise of trying to understand what I need to do, exactly. This, of course, requires me to actually have a written piece to start following the steps below. Hence the title of this post. But eh, now I've done my research. All I have to do is get cracking!

Without further ado, here's how I (or anyone, really) go about getting published.

0.5) Research the market. A bit of a gimme, but know what to write based on what people will want to read. See: The vampire craze has mostly passed at this point - pick another cryptid to make your sexy teenage romance. This may be a bit of hubris on my part, but I'm a pretty avid reader and I'd like to think that I'd write something that I'd want to read, ergo, something with decent appeal. I include it because it's been the number one piece of advice in all of my research, so I guess there's a lot of shitty less popular book ideas out there.

1) Write something. Basically anything. Or a collection of somethings. That's the primary objective. I'm on it.

2) Find an agent. This seems to involve a few sub-steps, such as writing a query letter to send to potential agents, and even that has sub-steps of addressing specific agents and their requirements within various agencies. What the agent does (if they like the ~300 word query letter) is champion my story. 

2.5 OR 1.5) Get my piece professionally edited. I've looked at a few different places, and across the board they had conflicting opinions on getting an editor before or after an agent. Arguments for BEFORE include looking professional and polished with your work, as if you are prepared to go to any lengths to ensure the quality of your piece. Arguments for AFTER include a lot of agents have their own preferred editors for their clients, want a raw piece that can be buffed under their supervision. This only matters so far as me already having a piece to be looked at so... Cross this bridge when I come to it.

=> It should be noted that for either the editor or agent, a fiction writer will need to have the full manuscript ready for the first encounter. Apparently non-fiction writers can get away with just the first three chapters completed until they actually need to get seriously edited and published. 

3) The notes above after 'Write something' are irrelevant if I self publish. The nice thing about traditional publishing is that it controls a lot of the marketing and legwork that goes into selling a book, and more specifically the funding that makes it happen. I don't necessarily have the popularity to make self-publishing worthwhile. At least, not at this juncture. If I have something I need to write and put out there and don't need to profit off of it, then that's the ideal route. 

4) What happens after an agent accepts my manuscript? Because that's the primary question after I've written a story, written a query letter, and given that query letter to anyone who might be interested. From what I can gather, this is its own song and dance none too different from a job interview. You should have multiple agents on the line, figuring out what the deal is from each of them. If you get an offer, don't immediately accept that offer - let that agent know you want time. This can be time to consider, time to let other agents know you HAVE an offer so they have time to get back to you, and also time to research the quality of the offer. Two weeks was the general consensus on how long one should wait MAX on finalizing a decision on an offer. After that it gets pretty rude. 

5) Follow etiquette. Once a decision has been made, let ALL potential agents know (whether you heard back or not) that you have made a decision and that you now have an agent. This can trigger some eager/competitive agents to rush through your manuscript when they might have otherwise thought they had time. If they do, they like it. That's promising. 

6) This is (in theory) where the magic happens. The agent submits the manuscript to editors and publishers, or the editors then submit it to publishers. Every place I've read about this emphasizes that this will take time. Regular check-ups with agents should be once a month at most, with a phone call once every six months. The waiting game is played to various possible results. This is probably what I'd label as the Least Fun-Sounding Part, because there's minimal control - even if the manuscript goes a year without selling to a publisher, that doesn't necessarily indicate bad writing or a bad agent. And with that knowledge, you're supposed to sit. And wait some more. 

Here's where I am most concerned. Due to the nature of publishing writing, the variances between each 'standard author/agent relationship' can be pretty drastic. Each source I look into tells a slightly different story. Advice written broadly about the field gives significant chunks of time to expect, erring on the side of caution. Bits written by experienced authors can be tales of whirlwind blissful romance friendship business partnership. Or they can be the horrors of The Worst Agents Ever™ that include jumping from agent to agent with heart-wrenching struggles to find success. 

Thankfully, I've got time to figure that out, and my experience will be unique as well. And it'll help to talk to authors in the meantime to establish some reasonable expectations for an agent, or the process in general. But, uh, basically... This. This is what I've got in store.

Time to get to it!

Practical Skills Pt. 2: Survivalist

One of the first full series of books I read was the Laura Ingalls Wilder books. It was this cute light blue gingham box set where each book, from Little House in the Big Woods to The First Four Years, were a different color. I devoured the series. It was fascinating to me, how the entire life of Laura Ingalls Wilder was documented. In telling the stories of her early childhood through to marriage, Laura gave a vivid account of the lifestyle in the developing United States in the late 1800's. Most importantly to me, she gave careful details about how her family survived.

The difficulties of tilling and farming previously wild land were recounted. Various recipes using wild or minimal ingredients could be found on the pages. The meticulous ways Mary and Laura went from making their own corn husk dolls to sewing their own clothes made me consider the ease with which I obtained my own toys and clothes. Most importantly were the ways the family would settle in an area, with little to no resources, and build a home from logs, stones, and mud. I thought about the wariness of the family after they all came down with malaria, which they assumed was caused by the watermelons they ate but was actually from the mosquitoes by the river. Things like household insulation and fuel for steady heat were out of mind before reading through The Long Winter. I developed a new appreciation for maple syrup in general. Pretty sure I was seven or eight when I read them all.

This instilled in me an intense desire to read stories about characters surviving. I didn't really have words for what exactly I was looking for until I read My Side of the Mountain by Jean Craighead George. It was about a boy named Sam who up and went to live in the wilderness of the Catskills. While Sam starts off with some food and a loose idea of what to do, he quickly realizes that he needs more knowledge. He researches different types of vegetation he can eat. He makes a home out of a hollow tree, which he uses to learn exactly how to make a chimney out of natural clay. He ends up training a bird of prey. He skins a deer to make clothes and preserves the meat by smoking it. Every little detail about roughing it that was described, I drank up. Same went with the brutal conditions in Hatchet by Gary Paulsen. And the food preparation and preservation in the Redwall series by Brian Jacques. And the sanitizing of rusty pots and old utensils in the first Boxcar Children book by Gertrude Chandler Warner.

So I previously wrote about practical skills - stuff I know, stuff I've learned by living it. Now, I have never gone full wilderness. The closest I get is going camping every once and a while, and that has all of the supplies I bring with me though I do rough it more than most. Also I don't think most camp sites would be okay with me hacking down logs to build a cabin or burn out a big tree for shelter! But through my readings, not only have I learned that you can dry out and grind acorns into an edible flour, or saw dust can be used to insulate ice to prevent melting even on the hottest days, but I've also grown an appreciation of all of the survival skills I don't need to call upon regularly.

I'm pretty lucky in my suburban home where I don't need to boil and purify the water I drink and research the quality of the food I've scavenged. At the same time I've always found this sort of skill set worth knowing, just in case something terrible happens - I'll be living it up in the post-apocalyptic dystopia! Or maybe I'll just write about it. Who knows!

Writing What I Know

I'm a big believer in learning. This is funny, especially from the perspective of someone who's seen my report cards. Yeah, sure, I'll throw myself under the bus a little. Sometimes it takes time to figure out how to become a student. And I'm not talking about school, no... School's got the foundations and building blocks for a lot of things, but it is not the first place you will learn things in your life and I sincerely hope it won't be the last. 

Schools are nice from the perspective that they're built to be learning environments. It's a place you go to study, to further your knowledge and understanding. The goal is to teach logic and reasoning, critical thinking. Fundamentally, we all know that not everyone learns the same way, but it would certainly be easier if we did. It would make school a helluva lot more universally beneficial. It would probably be way less costly than it is in the United States, at least. It may even go on for longer, regardless of the field you were going into, just because if there were a neat uniform way to convey information that worked for EVERYONE, then holy cow what a breakthrough, please teach the world this way.

Today I received a piece of advice (well I received a whole lot of advice but this is the pertinent bit) - I was urged to write about what I actually learned in college. College is a place of higher education. I learned a great deal. But college is also a timeframe for learning. There's this insane learning curve for mental and emotional maturation and life lessons. The general expectation is that you leave as an adult prepared for adult world times. The reality of these expectations are pretty off base, in my humble opinion. It's a great start, but it can also veer you into a land of unreasonable expectations about the life you may lead. It all boils down to everyone's experiences being different (wow). 

I definitely learned a great deal both in classes in college, and in the life around college, and that'll be an enormous chunk of personal writing I will probably have to do some serious soul-searching on before I slap it on the internet for all to see. Regardless, what I know from those years of experience doesn't cap off my learning, and far from it. It's corny, but being a 'student of life' is an apt way to put it. I've researched a ton of seemingly useless or irrelevant topics in my life. Anytime someone wants to share details about a project they are working on, no matter what it is, I try to listen and understand what they are up to. 

Because - and here's the really neat thing - you can write about literally anything. It's all knowledge, it's all important. One of the first pieces of advice my class of first year writing peers and I were given in school was to write what we know. So why not try to know as MUCH as you possibly can? Any other way about it makes your writing narrower, limited. I may not be a computer engineer, or an alpaca herder, or a brain surgeon, or a white collar criminal, but I may want to write about people who are, and I'd hate to not do my future characters justice.

Being Genuine

Job interviews are the inevitable inbetween of the job acquiring process. Every once in a blue moon someone will look at the applicant and declare them miraculously hired. That hasn't happened to me yet, or very nearly anyone I've talked to, so we'll assume that's strictly a dream scenario.

Interviews come with their own unique sets of manners and behaviors unlike any other standard human interaction. It's as if there's an unwritten script everyone must follow to get everything right, to ask all of the correct questions, to tick off the appropriate boxes - except everyone is reading from a different play. Each turn of phrase can be taken different ways. Being personable and respectful isn't always enough. It can be how you dress, or how you talk that's the difference between favorability and dismissal. It can be how you look. And that's just assuming the interviewer doesn't hold any strong social biases which is a delicate way of saying racism, sexism, classism, etc. 

In theory you're a good person who's got the skills and aptitude for the job you're applying for. Now you have to stand out from the rest of the people who also meet these criteria. But you don't want to stick out in a bad way. Toeing the line between confident and obnoxious, or humble and bland, is probably the hardest part. What does it for the interviewer changes from person to person, and odds are you're meeting this person for the very first time on the day of the interview... On the other side of things, they know about as much about you. The resume in front of them can only tell them so much. 

The worst part, for me, is that all of the above must be kept in constant consideration, all while trying to be genuine. That's the conundrum, though - the second you have to try to be genuine, you've already lost the fight. It's a little forced, a little fake. You have your, "I play nice with others and am a valuable asset to any team," face on, which nobody ever says about themselves except at job interviews. The interviewer wants to know the real you, but there's this agreed-upon sense that neither you nor the interviewer are going to be 110% themselves during the process. Afterwards? Sure, maybe. But during, almost never.

So since it's all about the face you put on, the draw to put on a play as someone you're not is strong. I understand that urge, to be the person they want to hire rather than who you feel like you are in general. Now I don't have the answers. All I know is, I still try. Because trying to be genuine is better than faking who I am; because down the line, if I get hired, the facade won't match up with the day-to-day self. We'll see how it goes.

Mental Magic

Fantasy has always been my favorite genre in the vast majority of media I consume. When I was a kid, my parents would take turns reading The Chronicles of Narnia to me right before bed. I started on the Harry Potter series back when the first book was still only known as The Philosopher's Stone. Today, Terry Pratchett is my favorite author (GNU Terry Pratchett), with his mastery of fantasy satire and the ability to so thoroughly flesh out characters and worlds at every point on the range of human emotion. Heck, I write fantasy. It's pretty much my favorite thing. 

So I put myself to thinking on what brings fantastical elements into my life. It's not all second-hand. While my inspirations for writing and drawing definitely can be influenced by the content I take in - and how can it not? - I am still capable of original thoughts. 

I think, in this case, everyone is able to find a little bit of the fantastic in their daily lives. It feeds wonderment. It allows willing suspension of disbelief. It enables the worlds we build for ourselves, because if we cannot imagine something magnificent, we are leading stunted lives. 

I know, for me, one of those places is the beach, specifically at sunset. On the east coast this means a little less, as the sun goes down over the land rather than the water. But where I go, the beach is cleared out from the bustle of the day. The sand is cool on top with the gentle heat beat in by the sun seeped in underneath - you feel it when you dig your toes in. The fading light paints the cloudscape soft pinks and oranges layered under pillows of lavender and plum. And off to the side, the gentle shhh of the water lapping against the shore makes a tranquil soundtrack to soft thoughts and good company.

I'm going to that this weekend, and I'm very excited about it. I hope everyone else gets that opportunity to open themselves up to the fantastical places that let their minds believe in magic.

Birthdays and The Art of Wanting

Let me know if you've heard this one before...

It's your birthday! Or it's Christmas! Or it's Hanukkah! Or you just graduated! Or you're engaged or getting married or having a baby or celebrating an anniversary or you've moved into a new home or you see where I'm going with this... It's a time to be joyful and merry because heck yeah, that good thing is happening. Also, you're getting gifts. That's neat!

A person who cares about you deeply might ask, "So, what do you want for [occasion]?"

For me, this is usually my mom, who's on top of things like this that involve some planning ahead, and ensures that the gift she gets is something the person wants, rather than something she thinks they want. And I'll tell you what, for being on this planet for 25 years as of today, I have grown less and less certain about an answer for that question.

When I was a kid, I always knew exactly what I wanted. Or I had a general idea. I don't remember being distinctly dissatisfied with anything I was given. As time has gone on, either I've become a lot more laid back about the gifts I get (me? Laid back? Pshaw!) OR I've had less concrete things to ask for. I'm going to put a pin at around my 16th birthday when I started relying more on suggestions for what to do and how to celebrate my birthday. That neatly fits the timeline of having a regular part-time job beyond babysitting gigs, and having money of my own to spend on things I would otherwise have waited to be gifted to me. 

As time has gone on, I draw a lengthier blank when asked. The 'quick' answers I come up with are practical gifts, things that are a bit more costly but will last. Like kitchen supplies or hiking boots - I'm excited to get them and use them, but they aren't the standard of fun. My fallback has always been bookstore gift cards. I've always known I like surprises, because it shows the people who give me something are doing it of their own accord, with the desire to go above and beyond. In those cases, I didn't ask for anything, and that makes any surprise all the better. 

I don't think I'm good at wanting things. Well, more specifically, I'm not good at wanting physical things. Most of those things I can get on my own, given time. I more so want gestures. When I want, it's not usually a wrapped-up item. It's more abstract, like someone's time, or going to a place with friends and family. 

When my mom asked me what I wanted to do for my birthday last week so she could plan ahead, I mentally flatlined. I knew this past weekend I'd score a lovely home-cooked dinner with my parents. I knew that this upcoming weekend I'd be going to the beach with my parents, my brother, his girlfriend, and my boyfriend and for those of you who don't know, the beach is about as good as it gets for me. With all of these bigger moments, these experiences, I didn't feel any special need to make a fuss on the day of, today. I had no solid plans. I just wanted to make sure I spent time with those I care about. 

I know that down the line I can't hold those memories in my hands. Age and new experiences will trim or alter them. But they are what I want most of all, and they're both the hardest and easiest things to give. You make them together and they live on in the people around you. I find myself truly wanting for little else, and I'm pretty dang lucky to be that way.

Practical Skills

I've always taken pride in the fact that I have many practical life skills. I know my way around a toolbox. I can mount shelves and pictures using a level. I can mow a lawn. I can bake and cook with tasty results. I can do basic computer troubleshooting. I know how to sew on a button or adjust a seam. I can hook and bait a fishing pole. I can, etc...

This past weekend my dad and I rotated the tires of my car and changed the oil and filter. And all the while, my dad kept asking me if I would write a blog post about it. I laughed and said maybe, since I already had other posts planned out before that. So this post is going to give a nod to this past Sunday, where I had the time and skills to do some standard care for my car.

There are a few things I've taken to learning on my own. How to knit, how to bind books, how to remove bumper stickers from cars, and change the chains on bikes - these are in my repertoire as a result of trial and error combined with research. Most things can be learned this way. But everything listed in the first paragraph I learned at a base level from my parents, and would not have expanded the breadth of this knowledge as far as I have without their initial push. My mom the baker made sure I was comfortable in our home kitchen, encouraged me to develop my flavor palette and watched over my knife techniques. My dad the computer programmer urged me to explore the ins and outs of a computer from an early age, giving me an edge on my peers as the technology evolved. I learned sewing from both of them. And so on.

Whenever I exhibit my practical skills to another adult, someone who maybe didn't see how I was brought up or they simply don't know me very well, they would often remark about how impressive it is to see. They're floored that I have these abilities, this background of experience. They say that they don't see many of my age group, "the millennials," with the same abilities. It's not always said, but the tone that follows implies laziness on my peers' side. That they are the ones who lack the drive to learn these things, that they are a drag on society as a result. It's a tone of dismissal and disgust.

But I know I'm not the only exception to the rule. I know too many people with these abilities, these learned skills. Some of them are self-taught. Many of them learned it from parents, or authority figures. And it makes me wonder how many of my allegedly skill-less peers are just not being taught by the experienced adults in their lives. Not everyone has a drive to learn, to seek out knowledge. Not everyone knows there's this knowledge that they're missing. You can't go looking for something you don't even know about!

So I'm a "lucky one," then. But that's no excuse for the tone of dismissal and disgust. I know the things I know because someone (be it a family member, friend, teacher, or myself) saw a gap in my knowledge and decided to teach me. Don't dismiss these hypothetically ignorant individuals. Take the chance to teach, if they are willing to learn. Everyone can use some new practical skills.

The Tunes That Do It

Gotta prepare myself here, because I know with certainty that others before me and many after will write something along these lines better than I will now. I'm no great creator or curator of music. I've fumbled my way through several different instruments, all with no amount of discipline. I had a decent ear and could replicate a song roughly on the clarinet at the peak of my practice. Today I could tell you the keys of a piano, prod out Heart and Soul, wet the reed of the clarinet and squawk through the main Star Wars theme, maybe even mimic some chords on the guitar - it's not much.

I am a big consumer of music, though. And there are definitely people who are more avid than I in that regard as well. I don't follow any regular blogs or news sites that leak and advertise albums, new projects and concerts, or exciting starts for emerging artists. I don't listen to the radio if I can avoid it - too repetitive and I have no guarantee I'll hear something I like. Most music I discover fairly passively, or through the artists I've already established a liking for that I follow on social media. Even that act of following I don't do as thoroughly as I could. It's entirely more likely I have albums and artists recommended to me through other people who've heard what I listen to, and know the general sounds I lean towards.

That's where I get off most easily, I think. I may not listen deeply, but I do listen widely. The span of genres and languages found in my music library, I think, is pretty impressive. Or maybe that's mostly because some of my longer-time friends are even more secluded in their musical adventures than I am, in general. It opens me up to a lot more music, when I do go looking for it. It appeals to wider spans of taste, even if just for a few songs. I tend to be a listener to particular songs rather than artists or albums. ANYWAY!

Music is integral in my writing process. It's how I form worlds and characters in my head. When I start establishing an adventure or a person, I go through my music library and build a playlist. That playlist can have a core of about 50 songs that often grows and changes as I write. The mood shifts, the character develops, and the music reflects that. I'll have two separate types of songs within the playlist - the songs this character listens to, and the songs this character embodies. 

It's fun for me to look at. Certain types of characters will have overlaps in their list of songs. Maybe a particular song doesn't inherently give off the feeling I get from it, but I so strongly associate it with a memory or person in my life that it's lodged in my mind, evoking those emotions. That goes in the playlist with those thoughts taken into consideration. 

By having these established playlists, I can run the story, the characters, the scenarios through my head like a low-resolution movie. The scenes ticker through with a loosely assembled soundtrack, guiding the words I put on the page. To describe something in full is to feel it entirely, I think. I can let it all play out in my mind's eye. As each moment is transcribed, I slow the reel down, going frame by frame with an intense scrutiny for the way things are and the way they should be in the story. 

Even as a casual listener, I want to expand my musical catalogue, but it is even more so for my writings' sake that I want to do this. I love music. I love how it builds moments and bolsters spirits. It helps me create worlds. It's an irreplaceable resource for me.