Writing

Short Attention Span

| rachelhamm

It’s funny, I’ve spent the past couple of days wishing I had time to write a blog post, and yet when I just opened up the “Add New Post” page and set my fingers on the keyboard, my mind went completely blank.  I had nothing to say.  So that’s why you are getting this little rambling to kick things off.

Let’s see, what’s been going on?

Well, I just spent the last couple of days in Marilla, New York with my dad’s parents (so for those of you who commented on my last post, I’m so sorry I haven’t responded yet, I’m going to right after I finish this post).  For those of you who don’t know western New York, Marilla is close to East Aurora which is close to Buffalo.  Marilla is such a small town that my grandparents mailing address is East Aurora.  But anyways.  Being with family you only see once every couple of years or so (if that) is always awkward, but it’s nice too.  Like seeing my dad get hammered with his brother and sisters around makes me realize how all his children got to be the smart asses they are today.

Of course, there’s always the inevitable “we’re interested in your life” conversations which lead to things like my uncle checking my hands to see if there are any engagement rings there (for the record, there aren’t) or being told by my seventeen year old cousin that I need to get married soon so he could come down and visit us again (he and his family came for my younger sister’s wedding last year and we had a blast) or being told by my grandmother that there’s always the internet to find someone or being asked by my aunt if I even have a boyfriend.  At least my grandfather told me I looked slimmer than the last time he saw me (though I’m probably not).

I did get some time on the plane ride to Buffalo to type up a few random chapters of The Death Effect that have been waiting in my notebook for a week or two.  My current word count is 37,163!  I’m about 1/2 way there.  I can’t believe how long it is taking me to write this book, but I should remember that writing Twenty-Five in a month was a real fluke, and I shouldn’t expect that from every book I attempt to write.  It got me thinking about how much I’ve written on some of my other ideas, probably not much!  So, of course, I looked.  Here it is:

Thirty-Four: 35,988

30 Dates in 30 Days: 2,598

Anita’s Dream Diary: 21,525

Aribelle: 5,328

David and Adrian: 14,551

Love or Friendship: 4,133

The First Mermaid: 1,870

Apparently the long novel is not something I’m very good at, the longest one on this list is the “sequel” to Twenty-Five!  Or at least, I don’t have the attention span for it.  My friend Ang once asked if I’d ever thought of doing a collection of short stories.  She may be on to something, since it seems I think in 5,000 words or less most of the time.  I’d love some suggestions of what to write about- what would you guys enjoy reading?

And a little thing that makes me happy: A pen that writes really really really well.

I Didn’t Win

| rachelhamm

TNBW’s 2010 Strongest Start Competition for the Romance Category.  It really doesn’t come as a surprise, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t suck.  Apparently Twenty-Five, the only book I’ve been able to actually finish, is a victim of first book syndrome.  It will never get anywhere because it just isn’t good.  I should put it in a drawer and work on other projects, but it’s so hard to get the characters out of my head.  Ben is the only character I have left who still talks to me- and that’s with 6 or 7 different projects that I’ve started.  Everyone else seems to have thrown in the towel, I think they want me to throw in the towel too.

I don’t want to.

But I’m worried I’m going to have to.

No, I won’t.

I don’t want to be a quitter. But what if this isn’t right?  What if I really do suck?  What if I’m not supposed to be a writer?

Do you enjoy it?

When I actually have time to do it, yes.

Then what makes you think you aren’t supposed to be a writer?

I suck.

Everyone sucks.

Touche.  But I mean, I suck at THIS.  I suck at writing.  I get told all the time that my stories aren’t original, no one seems to “get” what I’m trying to say.

You don’t suck.

Yes, I do.

I’m going to smack you.

You won’t be the first one who’s threatened to do that.

I’ll be the first one to follow through.

No, you won’t.  Because you are me.  And I never follow through on anything.

That’s not true!

Sure it is.  Look at me.  I graduated college Summa Cum Laude with a degree in Criminal Justice.  Have I EVER pursued a career in criminal justice?

You applied to law school.

But I didn’t go.

Do you regret that?

Sometimes.

Why?

Because then maybe I’d be doing something worth while.

You think your life isn’t worth while?

Exactly.

Why not?

Why not?  Why not?  Because I’m stuck.  I work three jobs and I still can’t afford to live on my own.  I’m tired and grumpy all the time.  No guy has ever wanted to be with me and I truly believe no guy ever will.  Nothing I do makes any difference whatsoever.  My writing is crap, I don’t even know why I try.

Isn’t it true that more people tell you they like your writing than tell you they dislike it?

Technically, I suppose.

Technically, you suppose?  You are infuriating.  Why can’t you believe in yourself more?

Because there’s nothing to believe in.

Yes, there is.

No, there isn’t.

We’ve been here before.

And we’ll be back again.

Why did you enter the contest in the first place?

I was hoping to get some validation, I suppose.  Something quantifiable.  I’ve never won a single contest I’ve entered, writing or otherwise.  I just wanted to feel like I could do something right.  That I could be a winner.  I thought maybe Twenty-Five would have a shot.  I was wrong.

It made it to the finals.

The finals isn’t winning.

It’s closer than losing.

Well, aren’t you clever?

I like to think so.

Do you really think I can ever get anywhere with this?  Is there even a chance that someone out there will ever think that my writing is great, or at least good enough?

Yes.

Really?

Sometimes.

But not all the time?

Well, of course I have doubts.  I’m you.  You’re me.  You’re having this conversation with yourself, idiot.

I AM an idiot.

And you’d be hella boring if you weren’t one.

Thanks for that.

You’re welcome.

But a little thing that made me happy today:  My friend, Ang, DID win the Strongest Start Competition in the Romance Category.  Congratulations Ang!  You’re an amazing writer and I’m happy to call you a friend!

Let’s End This

| rachelhamm

I’m not perfect

A fact I know too well

So there’s no need

For you to rub it in my face

To make me feel bad

Guilty

To antagonize me

With hateful words and accusations

And try and pretend

That I’m the one

Who needs to apologize,

Take on all the blame

Because you’re not perfect, either

Far from it, in fact

You’re mean

Rigid

Cold

And I don’t think

You even realize it

So maybe you should

Point that finger at yourself

Analyze your behavior

Acknowledge that I did my best

Tried my hardest

Gave you as much as I could

And maybe you asked for too much

I’m not a magician

And I’m not a mindreader

I can’t be expected to do everything

And I can’t be expected

To know what I haven’t been told

Get off your high horse

Accept responsibility for yourself

I’ll accept responsibility for me

And let’s call it quits

Because I’m sick of torturing myself

Of going to bed

With the words I should have said

Stuck in my mind

Haunting, taunting me

I hate hating myself

And having someone out in the world

Hating me

But you don’t hate yourself,

Do you?

You have righteous anger,

Right?

I’m so mad I want to pull my hair out

You think I should be groveling at your feet

But I won’t

Even though part of me wants to

Because there’s a part of me

That hates this feeling so much

I’d rather do whatever it takes

To make you forgive me

For something I didn’t even do wrong

Than go on feeling so shitty

All the time

It’s not fair

It’s not fair

It’s not fair

I’ve Been a Bad Blogger Lately

| rachelhamm

And I’m sorry.  I haven’t had much to say, honestly.  Life is busy and I haven’t been writing very much.  It makes me sad, but it’s also okay.  I’d love to work on The Death Effect, but the characters are being very quiet.  They don’t seem to want to speak to me.  And that’s okay, too.  Sometimes the mind just needs a bit of a break.

So I’ve been giving my brain a lot of rest.  I’ve been watching a lot of movies and just relaxing as much as possible.  It’s been very nice.  I wrote a poem a few days ago which I really liked.  I think right now my creativity is on the short-winded side, so I’m going to work my pen out with short stories and poetry.  If I write anything interesting, I’ll post it for you.

Some good news for you: my novel, Twenty-Five, is a finalist in The Next Big Writer‘s Strongest Start 2010 Competition in the Romance category!  There are six finalists in each category and there will be one winner and two runner-ups.  I’m sure I won’t win anything, but I almost didn’t enter, so being a finalist is pretty cool!

And a little thing that makes me happy: getting a random text message from one of my siblings with a quote from Mean Girls or Friends.

If You Don’t Follow Lua Yet, Start Now

| rachelhamm

Seriously.  She is wise beyond her years.  I’ve been following her blog for two, maybe three months now, and she always has the most profound, yet entertaining, posts.

This Monday’s post (which I just read today) was all about finding happiness in the little things in life.  I know that this isn’t a new concept, but it was something I really needed to see in print.  She listed all the little things in life that make her happy and since my birthday has really gotten me down, I think it’s something I should do, too.

So here you go, little things that make me happy.  I’m going to try and conclude every post with one from now on, but here’s a list to get me started:

1. The first sip of an ice-cold sunkist, straight from the bottle.

2. Geico commercials

3. Christmas traditions with my family

4. Writing my name and the date on the title page of a recently read novel

5. Seeing my freshly painted nails flying across the keyboard of my laptop

6. A perfect stranger asking me where I got my laptop because they’ve never seen a purple laptop before

7. Anyone telling me they’ve enjoyed something I’ve written

8. The minister announcing “I now pronounce you man and wife…” regardless of who’s getting married

9. Dancing with the Stars

10. Quoting lines from Friends

And to conclude this post properly, a little thing that made me happy today: A kid from the ortho’s office brought the whole staff churros from Costco because I had never had one.  And they are delicious!

The Beginning of My Twenty-Sixth Year

| rachelhamm

I’m not fishing for “Happy Birthdays,” I promise, but I just can’t seem to get over the fact that I’m a year older.  I’m on the wrong side of twenty-five.  The side that leads to thirty.  And I swear to God if one person leaves a comment saying how young I am and how I have my whole life ahead of me and how good things come to those who wait, blah blah blah, I’ll go ape-shit on their ass.

I know people out there GET IT.  I know I’m not the only person who feels like a complete and utter failure; like my life has gone a thousand miles in the wrong direction.  I totally know that.  I just don’t feel it most of the time.

You know what I mean?  I feel so all alone.  Yesterday I had a crappy day.  I woke up late so I didn’t have time to wash my hair.  Let’s just say when I don’t wash my hair I look like I dipped my head in a big tub of melted butter.  It was Monday and even though the schedule at the ortho office didn’t appear busy, I did not stop all day.  I was busy.  Crazy busy.  And I had wedding stuff to worry about on my lunch hour and when I got off of work.  And I was just tired and in a foul mood all day.  It sucked.  And I didn’t know who to call.  I wanted to call someone so badly and vent, but I didn’t know who to call.

Not knowing who to call wasn’t the worst thing though.  The worst thing was thinking about what I would say and realizing I couldn’t even really express HOW I was feeling or WHY I was feeling that way.  I’m a freaking “writer” and I can’t express myself!  And thinking about it made me realize that all of my complaints were bull shit and stupid and no one would want to hear about them.  And that made me think how I really needed a therapist.  Of course, that would just bring up the issue of not being able to express myself again.

I don’t know if this has anything to do with turning twenty-six, in fact, I’m sure it doesn’t because I’ve always been crazy like this, but I was thinking about being twenty-six yesterday as I walked out to my car and how I’ll never again WISH to be a year older.  Remember how when you were younger, you’d start saying you were 10 when you were only 9 and a half, because you wanted to be mature, adult, grown up?  You didn’t want to be seen as a kid anymore?  So you looked forward to each and every birthday.  You counted down the days and you made sure everyone knew how old you were.  It makes me incredibly sad that I won’t ever have that again.

Okay, maybe I will, when I’m like 99.  Cause it would be pretty freaking cool to tell people you were turning 100.

But anyways.  I’m twenty-six now.  Twenty-six.  I’m trying to wrap my head around that.  I’m trying to be happy about that.  I’m trying not to see it as just another year flying by without me making anything of myself.  Without anyone else seeing anything in me.

I don’t want responses, really.  I don’t want to be patted on the back and told that everything is going to be okay and that I’m awesome.  Because I know that.  I really do.  But, like I said before, knowing and feeling are two different things.  Two very different things.

A Short Story/Poem For Your Enjoyment

| rachelhamm

I haven’t had any time recently to post anything new, obviously, since I haven’t posted anything new.  And I probably won’t this week either, so here’s a short story/poem I wrote based on events that happened on my birthday.  I say short story/poem because I can’t decide which it is.

Observations in Thirty Minutes

I’m exhausted

My brain feels wiped clean

And I have an hour to kill

My fingers close around

The steel handle

I wonder how it stays cool

In this June heat

The door yields easily

And the delicious aroma of coffee

Greets me as I step inside

A quick survey reveals

Four open leather armchairs

Exactly what I need

I drop my bag

Let my body fall into the cushion

And close my eyes

Aaaaaaaaaaah

But I can’t sleep in such a public place

So I open my eyes

Tuck my bag between the chair and my legs

And I look around

Not many customers for a Saturday

The only people

Who really catch my eye

Are the barristas

One guy, one girl

He has blonde hair

A clean and pressed white button-down shirt

Khakis and a dark green visor

Matching his spotless apron

She has a long, dark ponytail

Messy strands stick out

Beneath her visor

A bottle-green polo shirt clashes

With her apron

She loudly tells her co-worker

A story about her mother’s cat

I watch them for a minute

She gestures widely

To emphasize the important parts of the tale

He stands still

Hands behind his back

Slowly scouring the small crowd

But I can tell he’s paying attention

To her uninteresting narrative

He looks in my direction

I turn my head

Embarrassed to be caught staring

But she really shouldn’t speak so loudly

I check my phone for the time

Only ten minutes have passed

I groan, but internally

Not wanting to draw any more attention to myself

When I look up

I’m conscious to keep my sight

Away from the barristas

Instead it lands on a young guy

Probably around my age

He’s wearing those old school headphones

Black, the kind with a rounded arm

That fits over your head

And large, circular, ear muff- like sound receivers

But he’s wearing a baseball hat, too

Tan, with no team name or logo

So the black band is sitting

On top of the hat

His face is scruffy

Three or four days worth of growth

It suits him

Makes him seem warm

Like the kind of guy

Who gives really great hugs

He’s writing, like me

I wonder what he’s working on

He has a laptop open

And a thick book beside him

Is he studying?  Taking notes?

Every now and then

He raises his pen to his lips

It’s silver and looks expensive

I compare it to the cheap Bic

In my hand

Mine writes well enough

But probably doesn’t look as good

Pressed to my lips

The slender cylinder smushes his pout

He rolls it side to side

I’m entranced

He’s completely in his own head

No self-conscious embarrassment

He’s not aware that I’m watching him

But the guy barrista is

I happen to glance to the counter

And see him looking at me

I turn away again

And the pen has been lowered

By headphones guy

Did he look at me

When I looked away?

Probably not

Did he look at me

When I looked down to write?

Probably not

I’m drawn to him

I want to stand and approach him

Sit down at his table

Smile, introduce myself

But I don’t

The headphones are removed

And placed on the table

He pushes his chair out

Stands, leaves his laptop and book

And walks out the door

Where is he going?

Why’d he leave his stuff?

I check my phone again

Twenty more minutes have passed

Only thirty to go

The End of My Twenty-Fifth Year

| rachelhamm

It’s June.  I can’t believe it’s June.  It’s JUNE 13TH!!!!

June used to be the month I looked forward to.  As soon as the calendar hit June 1st, I’d start the countdown to my birthday (6 days counting today and the actual Birth Day, in case you were wondering).

I loved my birthday growing up.  I loved having a day that was all about me- where I got to pick the restaurant and sit in the front seat and the cake had MY name on it.  Who doesn’t like that?

Birthdays are a lot less magical as you get older.  And I’m not saying I’m old.  In fact, I still FEEL very young.  But I can’t deny the fact that I am getting older every day.  We all are.

It’s going to be very difficult to say goodbye to my Twenty-fifth year.  As you’ve probably learned by now, I’ve built it up in my mind as the year things were supposed to change- where I was finally supposed to become something, someone.

I can’t say exactly why the age Twenty-five has such a powerful hold on me, but I’d be lying if I said it didn’t.  I actually wrote my novel when I was twenty-four, but I’ve spent my entire twenty-fifth year revising it and trying to see if I have what it takes to be a real writer and I’ll always think of my twenty-fifth year as the year I created my first book.

And it’s almost gone.

And I’m no closer to being someone special than I was a year ago.

Or am I?

I’ve grown this year.  Taller, no.  Wider, possibly.  But mostly in taking control of my life.  I write my blog- I share myself with the world.  I quit my job and found one that pays better and doesn’t make me want to kill myself at the end of the day.  It still isn’t my dream career, but it enables me to work towards my dream career a little more.  I actually went out on a couple of dates this year!  None of them led to anything, but they were still more than anything else in the past six years or so.

I can’t truthfully say that I’m happy with where I’m at in life.  But.  I can say that I’m happier than I was a year ago.

And that has to count for something, right?

The Act of Writing

| rachelhamm

I really love to write.  And I don’t mean the process of telling a story through words recorded on paper (although I do love that), but I mean the actual ACT of writing itself.  I love the feel of a pen in my hand, love moving it across a piece of paper to form letters, words, sentences, paragraphs.  I love seeing my handwriting fill up a page, making something that was once pure and clean messy and complicated, but so much more valuable.

Sometimes, before I began writing fiction and poetry, I would feel this urge to pick up a pen and just write, though often I didn’t have any purpose, so I didn’t write anything at all.  I still get those impulses now.  I’ll be sitting at work and will have a few slow moments and in my head, suddenly, the desire will strike.  I’ll wish desperately in the moment that I could pull out my notebook and form words across the page, even if I don’t say anything.

There’s something so immensely satisfying about flipping through my full notebooks, seeing my familiar writing.  No one in the world writes exactly like me.  When I write lowercase “g”s I’m often going so fast that I don’t form a complete loop at the top.  And my uppercase “I”s are often written in such a hurry they could be mistaken for “N”s if the page was turned 180 degrees.  And there are a million other things about my handwriting that when combined mean I’m the only person in the world to write like I do.

I think that is amazing.

I wonder now if my love of the Act of writing led me to write fiction.  Was that a direction I was always headed in and I didn’t know it?  Were my diligent note-taking skills in high school and college just precursors to the notebooks that would one day carry my heart and soul on their pages?  Were the urges to pick up a pen I felt for twenty-four and a half years before writing Twenty-Five trying to tell me my destiny?

That I really should be a writer?

*****************************

Lua posted an interesting exercise on her blog a few days or weeks ago, I can’t be sure exactly which.  It goes along really well with these thoughts, so here it is:

The Rules:

Write down the following, snap a picture (or scan the document), post it, and tag others.

1.Name/Blog Name.
2. Right handed, left handed or both?
3. Favorite letters to write?
4. Least favorite letters to write?
5. Write: The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.
6. Write in caps:
CRAB
HUMOR
KALEIDOSCOPE
PAJAMAS
GAZILLION
7. Favorite song lyrics?
8. Tag 7 people.
9. Any special note or drawing?

I love my handwriting, even if I'm the only person able to read it!

I wrote this down in the actual notebook I’m carrying around at the moment, where I write whenever I get a chance.  It has random chapters and short stories and pieces of poetry along with driving directions and notes from classes and seminars and meetings about weddings.  I love my notebook.

Note: I didn’t do #8- tagging people.  I’m not really sure how that works on a blog.  I mean, I know how to add tags to each post, but does it mean I should link to these people’s blogs?  And disclaimer on #7- favorite song lyrics- I actually just wrote down the lyrics playing at the moment I got to that step!  Sorry, I guess I don’t have one song or set of lyrics that sticks out enough for me to call it a favorite.