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I Am An Agented Author!!!

That’s right folks. The illusive dream has been made real, and I have my name signed on the contract to prove it. With Charlie Olsen of Inkwell Management!! And really, while this feels like the end of one journey, I know it’s really the beginning of another—the real stuff of being an author.

So allow me a bit of memory lane--I started writing prolifically in 2006, the first time I’d ever done so in my life.I hadn’t written so much as a short story since I was in high school, so needless to say, the learning curve was high. And slow. Much slower than I’d anticipated, and if I’d have known then that it would take me four novels to work out all my crappy first attempts and that I wouldn’t really get anywhere until the fifth, I don’t know if I would have had the mojo to keep going. But alas, as ignorance is bliss—I thought that first novel was going to be amazing, that I was already fabulous, that I’d be one of those amazing people who writes a kick-ass novel their first try. Yeah. Or not. J

But perseverance, willingness to take critiques to heart, continuing on try after try after try, through hundreds and hundreds of wasted pages, querying two failed novels, and figuring out what the hell they mean by voice, I’ve just signed with an agent for my novel GLITCH. Which is where we get to the part about this being a beginning.

This does not feel real yet, and maybe that’s just because I was really confident in this book, and I’d had so much interest from agents—so I can’t tell if it’s just because underneath I was confident it might happen this time, or if good things just take a really long time to click with me as real (I felt the same way about being a mom, to be honest—they handed me this squirming squishy mass with big eyes and tiny fists and I was like, oh, wow, well, this is, you know, cool, I guess). Talking with my rockin’ agent doesn’t make me feel very nervous either, it just seems all like—yeah, I was ready for this, I put in the work and it was time.

And digging into the new edits feels like a delightful vacation from the detestable grad school papers I’ve been trying to force myself to write—because this is where I want to spend my energy and brain power and creativity. I’ve been itching to get back to storytelling, and now I get to.

Fabulous Life

I just got back last night from an academic conference in Fort Worth where I presented a paper on Ursula LeGuin and Terry Pratchett. The conference went well for both me and my buddy Phillip who went with me, but more even than the conference itself, what was sweetest about the entire trip--was coming home. I've never traveled without the hubster and it was strange not to have him there with me. Coming home and spending some sweet time with him made me realize just how precious he is, how beyond ordinary he is, and how much I genuinely adore him.

And of course the kiddo is super stoked about Halloween, and wasn't as interested in me hugging the stuffing out of him when I got home, but I just wanted to hold and hold and hold him! He kept squirming away until I finally told him he owed me three hugs, one for each night I was away, and he complied--and then twisted away to show me all the candy and toys he'd gotten at a halloween festival he went to last night. He's going to be a skeleton when he goes out tonight. He's very excited about looking as scary as possible

So life is good, very, very good. There are some exciting things brewing in my professional life--more news to come on that later in the week. In the meantime, I'm trying to batten down and focus on finishing the first six cantos of The Faerie Queene for my Renaissance class tomorrow night. Not exactly my favored reading, but I'm stoked to have some great YA books coming in the mail next week--including an ARC of Ally Condie's Matched!

X-Men, Feminism, and the Idealized Body

Watching the first season X-men with my son—the 90’s cartoon, not X-men Evolution--brings up a lot of feminist considerations, probably in part due to my recent Feminist Composition class, and doing research on Twilight.X-men as a concept, is pretty damn great. I’d love to read some cultural studies scholarship on the comics and the cartoon versions. It’s such a charged metaphor of for the persecution of Others in society. Senator Kelly, with his ‘Let’s round up all the mutants!’ seems an implicit echo of Senator McCarthy and McCarthyism witch hunts.

But on a feminist level, it’s pretty great—all these girls and women are equally kicking ass alongside the dudes. Mutant powers have leveled the playing ground of physical difference and strength, so tiny Rogue is able to flip over giants three times her size. Everybody in third-wave feminism talks about Buffy, but surely these super-hero chicks were her forerunner.

At the same time, the way they are visually depicted is evidently male-gaze driven. All the women are busty, with long gams, and very developed hour-glass figures. This is only true of the super-heroes though. Other women in the series are more flat-chested and, while they have long hair and wear conventional feminine garb of the 90’s, they are not hyper-feminine. This is true for the men as well—all the X-men are super-ripped with idealized bodies, and normal dudes are well, normal. So I think that’s more what the busty women are about—all the good guys have great idealized bodies (even Beast, while blue, is strong-chested and slim-wasted).All the guys have super strong jaw lines, wide chests, ripped arm muscles.This all seems very Tarzan to me—or maybe it’s just most pop culture phenomenon and literature, started in the penny-dreadfuls and pulp fiction and continuing on through comic books and romance novels.

I don’t have any real conclusions to draw from all this. Just interesting observations. At least in our heroic asthetic, even the Others can be the beautiful people, the ones we identify with and want to emulate. Also I can see why this is so appropriate for adolescents who are attracted to texts like this. And you know, for grown ups who never seem to have gotten past adolescence ;)

Crazy Week & Good Book

This has been, wow, one hell of a nutty, busy, wonderful week. I just finished planning out and outlining the other books in what I hope can be a trilogy, and I'm emotionally exhausted after losing myself in the fiction-world and figuring out the end of everybody's story. In the last week and a half, I also finished a paper for my Renaissance lit class, finished revising and editing the Twilight paper for publication, did a big edit on the novel, finished the outlines for the two books, and today, had a birthday party for my wonderful kiddo--he just turned six!

Oh, and I had a parent-teacher conference with his kindergarten teacher yesterday and talked about all the things I already knew--he's smart, but has behavior problems, like talking back and never doing what she says the first time (apparently he's one of six boys in the class who are the bane of her existence, though she put it in nicer words than that). Leaving the meeting, all I could think was: Thank God I'm not a kindergarden teacher! I mean, my kid's not that bad when he's at home, prob because he's an only child and so doesn't have to share his toys, and we discipline and do lots of consequences and rewards for positive reinforcement. But I can't imagine being surrounded by twenty crazy-o kids. Everyday. For eight hours. I shudder just thinking about it.

Also! I finally had time to pause and enjoy some great YA lit, which I haven't had time for all semester. But the library told me the book I'd put in a hold request on was in, so I've read it this week and just finished it tonight. And damn, it was a good one, really good: Clockwork Angel (don't like the title, but do like the cover). I read Cassandra Clare's Mortal Instruments series and was like, meh, it's okay--lots of action, but I didn't feel totally connected to all the characters. But this one, zing, straight to my melodrama loving heart, mixed with great action, set in Britain in the 1890's, a bit steampunk, all done really well. Love, love, love.

Now I'm going to go shower, sleep, and wake up tomorrow and start the paper due next week on Samuel Coleridge.

Writing Your Way (into &) Out of Doom Moments

I think trying to work one's way out of problematic theoretical knots is similar to figuring out plot problems/solutions. In revising my article on Twilight for publication, an article which reads the implications of the phenomenon positively instead of negatively, I find myself navigating feminisms to work out an alternative reading from the easy and obvious--that Twilight is bad, bad, bad and gives negative examples of a passive female main character. Ok, yes in some instances it does, and it certainly reflects a conservative ideology in places, but at the same time, it taps into a female fantasy that is so well done it has become virulently popular. My question is, why? What psychological needs is it meeting? And can we provide an answer that doesn't result in saying women/girl readers are stupid/bad//wrong and should feel guilty for liking it?

Plot-wise, I just watched an episode of Stargate Universe for the first time last night, and it reminded me of the importance of constantly creating "doom moments" where it seems like there is no way out and everybody is going to die. I think really every action sequence should have a moment like this, it makes the reversal (after the author ingeniuslly writes a way out of the doom) that much more satisfying. However, creating these moments (unless you are Joss Whedon who revels in them) can be difficult as a writer, uncomfortable in much the same way tackling difficult theoretically dilemmas can be. On both fronts, I'm forcing myself into the difficult places, because the results are always worth it.

My First Dystopian Crush: 1984

So, I was reflecting this week on my long-time love of dystopias, now more popularly celebrated because of the success of the Hunger Games trilogy (and recent release of the last book). A lot of people of my generation were introduced as children to the genre with Lois Lowry's The Giver, a book I remembered liking a lot, but not one that had too lasting of an impression. My long-time love affair with dystopias didn't start until I read 1984 as a sophmore in high school. No one else seems to have loved this book as much as I did. Maybe it was just one of those books that hit at the perfect time. I'd always heard about it as one of "those classics,"--even after I'd started it, and come across the phrases and concepts I'd heard bandied around for so long "Big Brother" "thought police" etc, it was just an interesting assigned reading. It hadn't yet occurred to me that school required reading could actually be enjoyable, much less, personally momentous. It wasn't until the introduction of Julia that my interest really sparked. When she hands him the note that says "I love you," it's so unexpected, so the opposite of the last ninety pages you've just read, it was shocking. Then they embark on their most desperate rebellion--daring to love each other, daring to begin to feel again, to be wild and reckless, no matter the danger.

It's so analogous to the teenage experience--where everything feels new and overwhelming, where you are sure it's the first time you've ever felt truly alive, truly felt happiness or sadness or any emotion, because you feel everything so intensely. Life felt new and dangerous and exciting and terrifying. I wanted to grow up as quickly as possible so I could be an adult and really be free to experience and feel and do. Of course, once you actually become the adult, the fire and passion and newness gets muted or worse, smothered. It's no coincidence all the revolutions are led and fueled by students and young people. Emerson, as young man with fiery ideals, looked around him in confusion and wondered, "where are all the old transcendentalists?" not realizing then what I imagine he came to understand in old age: that it's almost impossible to maintain the energy and naïveté necessary to sustain that kind of idealism over a lifetime. And not necessarily healthy or wise.

I didn't know enough about the story, or Orwell for that matter, to know as I should have from the beginning, that this was never going to end well, so for that brief heady space I hoped with them in a giddy hope that love would triumph, that they would be able to escape. But like all dystopias, underlying the story is the message, and a happy ending wouldn't have accomplished what Orwell was trying to achieve. Don't get me wrong--I agree, this particular story had to end the way it did. And all stories have a motivation--I think I like it that the themes in dystopias are so much more surfacely apparent. A happy ending would have been a false one--this book was meant as a prophetic warning, born out of justified fear and disgust at the destructive nature of man in the new atomic age. So dear Winston and Julia don't even get the honor of being martyred, but are lobotomized and then returned as productive drones to society.

God, the ache of that stayed with me for weeks after I read it, I guess, really, years (the mark of all those really great momentous books in life). Because I had so identified with their wild joy, it had dug down deep inside, and I was just ripped apart when they lost it. I suppose a 20th century girl’s teenage angst wasn’t exactly what Mr. Orwell had in mind when he wrote it. As a good postmodernist, I don’t really care about his intent, though, now that I think about it, maybe he wouldn’t have minded after all. I’ve always thought 1984 a much more effective book than Animal Farm, but then, I would, wouldn’t, since I care much more about reader response than critical greatness or lack thereof. And what can be more affecting than taking an idea, a fearful scenario, and giving it flesh in these characters on a page, and then making you freaking care about them.

Ok, I have too many thoughts, and this post is already too long. This is freaking getting into my philosophy of writing and I haven’t even begun to talk about the characteristics of dystopias, and list off the ones I love the best (after 1984, of course). Alas, for another post, coming soon.