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.

Mockingjay Review - A Satisfying But Exhausting Read

Fear not, no spoilers! This book was excellent, but it was an emotionally hard read. Collins doesn't pull any punches about the gruesomeness, loss of life, and emotional toll of war. Being inside Katniss' head the whole time puts you in the head of someone constantly struggling with what is basically Post-Traumatic-Stress-Disorder, except that she never gets to recover before the next impossibly hard thing comes up. Kat certainly felt very real, exceptionally drawn. All the characters were, and the plot, as always, was great--it hit at all the right moments. It was a satisfying, but not exactly fun read. I guess I prefer my fantasy fiction with a little more of the wishfullfillment elements and less of the pain of reality--just enough, but not too much. Either way, it's unlikely that Kat's going to get out of my head for a week or two. Had a hard time getting to sleep last night, my mind was still so enveloped in the world of the novel.

Look What I Just Picked up at the Bookstore!

I've loved dystopias ever since reading 1984 as a sophmore in high school, so I couldn't have been more thrilled when the brilliant Suzanne Collins brought dystopias into the lens of young adult literature. Love, love, loved the first two books, can't wait to sit down tonight and devour the conclusion!

Heather's Secrets to Avoiding Melancholia

Secret # 1. STAY BUSY. This is really the key to all following secrets, so let me break it down. My go-to activities: reading, painting, more reading, cleaning, organizing, basically any and all frenetic activities are welcome. Oh, and beer (I'm nothing if not classy). The most interesting of these of course is the painting. Voila, more in my graveyard statues series. Kind of macabre, I know, but that's not the point, I just find them gorgeously visually appealing. This one I painted tonight is of a pretty well known statue:

I figure I can use this week to do a couple paintings before classes start, while I'm in between everything and waiting and going crazy. My friend D sells jewelry at fairs and market days and things and keeps looking for people to share her stall, so I think I'll try to go with her and sell some of these. So I'm being productive, not just busy!

Secret #2: Reading for classes before classes start! I emailed my profs to ask for reading lists. I'm going to be knee deep in Renaissance lit and then Wordsworth for my other class, so I know it's going to be dense reading all semester, which I will surely get behind in. So I spent all day today reading Sir Sidney's Arcadia. Which is 800 pages long. I shit you not. It was written in 1593, but it's actually not as bad as I feared. It was my second day just reading all afternoon, and I'm a hundred pages in. Yeah. It's gonna take awhile.

Secret #3: More reading! Catching up on all the delightful YA books I've got from the library, and the others I've bought. I just read an Advanced Reading Copy of Nightshade by Andrea Cremer that I got off Ebay (shh!), and out of all the ARC's I've tracked down, this was the first to actually live up to the internet hype. I read it last night and it was surprisingly good. It was really smart, but still lusty, my two major criteria in my off-school-time reading material ;)

So, until school starts up again or I hear back about other projects, busy remains the watchword. Ooo, and maybe get some more done on the background of my Mucha tattoo!

Eat, Drink, and Be Merry

I realized today that I'm always the friend--when around others tempted to excess, be it food or alcohol or anything--who's like, hell yeah, have another beer! Have three more! More oreos! Another screwdriver, coming up! I think it's my antinomian streak (ok, looking that word up to double check it's the one I mean-yep, it is--first learned it back at the Bible College). It means being anti-law. Anti- doing the staid and steady thing, with all the responsibility and guilt when you transgress. Back in Bible College, of course, antinomialism was a bad thing : )

And it's not really how I live my life, in spite of the stereotype associated with my pink/purple hair and copious tattoo-age. I'm so safe in my real life rebellions. I live conservatively. I'm not particularly anti-establishment either. But what occassional excess really signifies to me is freedom. Yeah, I might choose not to go on benders every night (or okay, barely ever), but I like the possibility being there. It means that the rest of the time, I'm making a choice--not because it was written in stone that I shalt not drink. Having the choice to do so means also having the choice not to. It means not having to walk anesthetized through my life on the staid patterns of decisions I made years ago. It means the requirement that TODAY I be active in my own life, tasting and touching and deciding and partaking.

So chill out and drink up, my people! Enjoy life, don't hold back!