Precious & Red

I'm never quite sure which part of social media to dedicate myself to. When I have an idea I usually stick it on Twitter if it's minor and stupid and fleeting but if it's long and complicated and artsy I'll put it here. Not really sure how to present myself on Tumblr other than through reblogs, but recently I've started following a lot of fellow Mormons who are also of a leftist nature and it's been reassuring.

All of this is just to say I might indulge in some cross-posting of ideas. Not word for word, but tailored for each medium.

I read a quote recently about taking the "preciousness" out of writing if you're going to make a business out of it; like stop thinking the magic can only happen if you're writing in your favorite cafe, listening to your specific playlist, using Word as opposed to Google Docs. Turn writing into something you can do anywhere, anytime, for the sake of your deadlines and productivity. Write at night, write in the morning, write in between classes, write to noise, write to silence, write in the middle of reading, write during a film, etc, etc. I'm slowly working on it, and though the beast within me grinds against the settings so opposed to my usual, my mind is slowly evolving to the comfort of it. Being able to just write the way we're able to just eat. Wherever, whenever.

Once, while driving by myself through Utah, someone ahead of me dropped a bouquet of roses from their passenger side. We were going around 70 mph, and the result was bizarre little red explosions all over the highway, smattering in a wave from that window all the way up to my windshield. It looked so violent, like a car crash without the car, blood everywhere, bloody little petals. The image scared me, unnerving me for several minutes. I was driving back from Seve's brother's play in SLC to our hotel in Provo. I wasn't enjoying the trip very much because we had to coordinate seeing Ben's play around who-could-watch-the-kids-when, and Graham was only a month old, and Utah isn't my favorite place. The image seemed like some bad omen. Until suddenly it wasn't, it was just a beautiful thing I'd just seen, a highway baptism awash in red roses to get me to just be in a better mood already.

I try and remember that whenever I think of Utah, being frustrated, or the color red.

Human Again

Attempts at a profile pic that descended into hairy madness.

Time for some reflection on this year's NaNoWriMo.

Seve hosted a race-to-the-finish party at his classroom where I wasn't able to get wifi, so I verified my word count early, pulling the extra 8K I needed from a previous story. This resulted in a final word count of 55,285, which I was sure couldn't have been right . . . where did that extra 5K come from? Did I really only need 3K? Nevertheless, that night at the party I finished with fifteen minutes to spare having written the full 8K in a mere three hours. My hands were shaking by the time it was over, and I'm pretty sure those last four pages descended into complete and utter gibberish.

But I did it! So on top of the initial 20K I wrote for the story back in China, I now have a fully completed 70K manuscript. In heavy need of revisions, of course, but I'll tackle that come January. I don't think I even want to look at the thing until January.

Seve also completed his NaNo on the dot at midnight after an equally frenzied writing session. Cowabunga, dude!

Tackling the NaNo this year wasn't like past NaNos . . . for once I knew the entire story from front to back, nothing was a mystery. I always thought that would help me write better, but it didn't. The writing and pace remained as it always had any time I sat down to write. Rather than dishearten me it gave me hope; that the other stories I have logged away and unsolved will reveal themselves to me in time, as long as I keep writing.

In fact, on days where I procrastinated my word count I kept returning to my 2010 NaNo. I hadn't bothered to read it since writing it three years ago, thinking it was awful and an eyesore. But I loved reading it! The 1950s werewolf story? I vaguely remember blogging about it at the time. I was sorely tempted to abandon my NaNo and just finish that werewolf effort. It's a full 50K after all, and only needs maybe 30K or so to wrap up the story. But then I remembered that's how this year's effort was brought about . . . a resurrection of 2007's NaNo, realizing it wasn't as bad as I thought, a sudden desire to finish it . . . so I pressed on, and finally made it to the finish line.

How did your NaNo go? Did you finish? Are you enjoying JustSleepAndEatDecember? Me too.

The Big Leap

Today has been wild, so I'll leave you with this.

Lame reference to David Bowie's Ch-Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes

I feel like I've been meaning to add this PS to the bottom of every blog post I've written recently, but maybe it would be better to just give it its own post.

HEY! So I went on a blog hiatus for a long time and some of you did, too! Did you move your blog elsewhere or move on to greener pastures of social media? Did we lose track of each other during the demise of Google Reader? (I now use Feedly, btw) If we used to comment on each other's posts all the time and you're hanging out somewhere else now, let me know. I'd love to catch up.

As for me, if you haven't noticed yet, this blog is now simply "julesisaacs.com" instead of "goodghost.blogspot.com." For reasons, because professionalism.

k thnx bai

Hong Kong Garden

Some point-and-shoot shots from my time in Hong Kong. The last one is of me sitting at the entrance to the LDS Hong Kong temple.

A strange confession about this year's NaNoWriMo experience: it's made me cry a lot.

Well, twice, but that was quite enough for me. And I wasn't crying because the writing process was daunting or agonizing, and the tears weren't tears of frustration. I cried during the research for my novel, which was in two parts: the research of location and technicalities, and the research of my own personal experience. Rereading journals, etc.

Because my novel is set in Hong Kong, and much of it is based on my experience when I taught English over there for a semester. Remembering everything made me miss it so much, I reduced myself to tears. Just looking at pictures of egg tarts and moon pies makes me tear up, not to mention my old students.

We were warned that me might experience culture shock when we arrived, but I never did. I loved, loved, loved it there. For whatever reason, I felt so ridiculously happy and free. That's sounds silly and cliché, I know, but I really don't know how else to put it. I had just come out of a serious relationship, had just returned to college after a semester away, had just been to my sister's wedding . . . a lot of stuff had been building up at that point, and I let it all to go in China. Like, the minute I stepped off the plane. And it was perfect. (I guess you could say things have been great ever since, because I met Seve a few weeks after returning to the States).

I've never been a very good journal writer. This blog is my journal, I suppose. But for several years, stories were what I wrote down instead of personal experiences. And it's strange, I can reread my old short stories and they bring back all the memories that surround the time period of when I wrote them. So, I even cried a little while rereading the bits I already had for Easy Beauty. Because, in the midst of reading about the way my characters hold hands, I'm suddenly on the HK metro again, or when my protagonist is describing his childhood in Texas, all I can think of is how I wrote that scene after eating at that restaurant with the giant bust of Chairman Mao.

Seve was able to give me a tour of his mission in Ukraine when we were done teaching in Russia, but one day I'd like to take him and my pups to Hong Kong and relive some of my favorite experiences there. But for the time being, that's what finishing Easy Beauty is doing for me.

Easy Beauty

Perhaps it goes without saying that I'm doing NaNoWriMo this year. I do it practically every year. But this year it's a bit more fun, because I'm participating with Seve's class. Seve not only teaches theatre, but creative writing, and every semester his classes participate in National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo in November, and Camp NaNaWriMo in April).

Even though I often "win" NaNo every time I participate, I never necessarily love the product I end up with. 2010's effort just didn't turn out how I wanted . . . I'm usually an advocate for not taking a NaNo too seriously while writing it; it'll make it too hard to reach your word count each day. Some days you really do just end up writing a bunch of crap, and it can dishearten the effort more than if you just hadn't written anything at all.

But this year I'm breaking a few rules. Breaking my own rule of not taking myself too seriously, and breaking the usual NaNo rule of "starting fresh:" I'm finishing a NaNo I started back in 2007. This was the year I taught English abroad in China, and I convinced my entire volunteer group to participate in NaNo too. My roommate and I threw ourselves into the process and managed to get our manuscripts up to 30,000--pretty good considering we were busy teaching English/exploring China everyday. Another girl wrote a funny retelling of all the adventures we shared in China, and another wrote a hilarious retelling of Twilight substituting all of our names for the original characters (I was Alice).

The pictures above are of some literary magazines I picked up in China, called "Top Novel." I've never been able to read them, obviously, but my native coordinator informed me they were full of short stories, serials, and poetry. She translated a few for me. They're also filled with beautiful artwork and comics. Anyway, it was from these that I drafted my 2007 NaNo idea. The illustrations were just so beautiful, so I invented a story of what I thought they could be about.

It's six years since I bothered to read that story, but in February of this year I finally pulled it up. And I  . . . loved it? It's an embarrassing teen romance, really quirky and magical realism-ish, but whatever, I love it. I've decided I owe it to myself to finish it.

Anyway, this month, as a way to pep myself up to finish, I'll be blogging about my time in China and various topics related to Easy Beauty.

Participating in NaNo this month? Become my writing buddy here. If you're struggling with your own NaNo, Nathan Bransford (my favorite ex-literary agent blogger) wrote a great book with some relevant-for-trying-to-write-and-publish-a-novel-in-2013 tips here. And when you're done checking that out, watch this video because I really like it.

Don't make no deals with the devil

Some shots from Seve's production of Tales of Terror from the Tragic Valley. The annual show contains several vignettes all centered on a theme, this year's being The Twilight Zone. These particular shots are from a scene about a man unsuccessfully trying to kill himself after receiving immortality from the devil. He had tried to throw himself off a building, and when his wife tried to stop him, threw her instead. Thus, you know, jail.

K let's play GUESS WHO.

Guess who went to the wrong address for her new visiting teach-ee? Guess who walked up the driveway to find a man passed out in the yard? Guess who called out "Sir? Sir?" and when she didn't receive a response went up the rest of the way to ring the doorbell in case the man was just the teach-ee's wayward son? Guess who encountered a very unhappy Saint Bernard on her way back to the car when no one answered the door? Guess who called her VT partner in a panic over the whole situation once safely to her car? Guess whose VT partner was confused at her worry because she was picturing this girl trembling in fear at the actual dog of their teach-ee, a Pomeranian? GUESS WHO

Guess who ended up hating his Thomas the Tank Engine costume even though it's his favorite show? Even though he picked it out at the store, even though he's foregoed all titles such as "Mama" and "Dada" and instead simply refers to everyone as "Thomas?" Guess who's mother will now be going as a train for Halloween because she lost the receipt and can't return the costume and doesn't want it to go to waste? GUESS WHO

Guess who ate nothing but pizza and caramel popcorn today because it's my life why not? Guess who now feels like they want to die and throw up all over the living room and kitchen and bathroom and did I mention die? GUESS WHOOOOO

Well, that was a fun game.

ps HAPPY HALLOWEEN

The Mummy's Claw

Promotional photo I took for Twin Falls High School's production of The Mummy's Claw. Seve and I saw it this last Friday and it was fantastic. It was a live radio show performance and James (their director) transformed the stage into an intimate blackbox theatre as though we were inside a radio station, complete with students performing with scripts into microphones and clopping shoes on tables to make the sound effects of footsteps, rotating stone slabs for the sound of the mummy's tomb opening, etc.

This weekend I also took Simon and Graham to Barnes & Noble to pick up some Halloween books. The second we were inside, I saw a local author sitting at a table, hosting a book signing. She was by herself, the table was small, and no one was in line yet. Seeing her made me think of my mother and the time she sat at a Barnes & Noble hosting a book signing, and how hard it was for her. Really good of course, but hard because it was awkward. Writing and authorship is reclusive by nature. It's an act you do alone, but if anyone's going to buy your opus you have to put yourself out there. I decided then and there that, whether it was the next Hunger Games or a book about potatoes, I'd buy this author's book.

Luckily it was right up my alley. A contemporary realistic YA novel about two black kids dealing with darned white kids in the south. That's putting it crudely, but it's really a great read. You can check it out here. Hush Puppy by Lisa T. Cresswell.

I was tempted to tell her that I'm an aspiring author too! and yadda yadda blah blah blah but until I actually have a book out there I'm not eager to really share that with anyone. No one cares if you're writing a book unless it's the sequel to something they've already read.

Taylor Swift Deserves Better

Oh look, me n' baby Graham!

A few years ago I wrote a post on hating teenagers, or maybe just making fun of them, but I'd like to redact that statement.

First of all, I went to a writer's league meeting this weekend and it was strange because:

(a) I'm pretty sure I was the youngest one in the room. By 20 years, minimum.
(b) I was the only one with a laptop, which made me feel rude???
(c) The entire conversation was geared towards a non-tech approach, i.e. carrying a notebook for ideas rather than an app on your smart phone, and submissions via snail mail rather than email (I know places still do this but . . . not the kind I'd bother submitting to)

Immediately after this I went to go meet Seve at the high school where he's holding rehearsals for the annual Halloween show (Tales of Terror from the Tragic Valley, haha) where, naturally, we're the only ones older than 17. And it was . . . awesome? I love his students. I love teenagers! Also, it made me realize that that feeling I had that I was getting old (at the ripe age of 28) isn't really true yet. I met old this weekend, and yeah . . . definitely not there yet. The writer's league meeting wasn't awful by any means, just . . . an experience.

A lot of ellipses in this post.

I write all this to say that I have some quotes from an essay I'd like to share on teenagers, specifically teenage girls, that I really agree with. Teenage girls get a reputation for being ridiculous and eye-roll worthy, but why? Because they unabashedly express their love for things? Because they've been unfairly dealt the role of the face of superficiality? Because they're, heaven forbid, girls?

There's this idea that a novel/film/song about a girl (Pride and Prejudice), for a girl (Twilight), or written by a girl (Taylor Swift) is silly frolicsome fluff, but if it's by a male, it's commentary on the human condition. Yeah, okay.

Below are a few of my favorite excerpts from the essay, and if you have the time, it's really worth the read. Has some language in it, though, so fair warning.

"One of the most popular ways people like to hate teenage girls is to complain about their “insane” crushes on boy band members. Now, let me tell you something: those big dumb crushes are what helps a teenage girl develop her sexuality in a safe environment that she can control. In her world, she can listen to One Direction and hear all these songs about how great she is, and how much these cute non-threatening boys want to make her feel special. Why is this so important? Because no one is pushing them. There’s no fourteen year old boy shoving his clammy hands down your shirt without your consent. These fantasy boys are not convincing a girl to send naked pictures, only to show all their friends and call her a slut. In the fantasy land of boy bands, the girl has all the power. And we need to stop judging them for wanting to escape into that."

At twelve, most girls understand real sadness. Twelve, though it seems so young to us now, felt really old at the time. By this point, you’ve already been told how to be, and realized that you’re not measuring up. By twelve, your skin is already shit, and your body is too flabby or your breasts haven’t come in yet. Worst of all, when you’re a girl, by twelve you’ve probably already been in a situation that made you feel threatened sexually. Let that sink in. From the top of my head, I can think of four moments in my life, before the age of twelve, when someone crossed a line with me. Four. This is not abnormal."

---Read more at "Why I F*cking Love Teenage Girls (A Personal Essay from an Almost Adult)" by Meg

p.s. I now feel inspired to write a post on my favorite media featuring the girls n' ladies, so look for "Taylor Swift Deserves Better Pt 2," coming soon to a blog near you.

Summer Session's Over

Some shots of Seve's students from the production of Cartoon.

I've kept this blog quiet for a long time, but I think all my close online friends eventually wandered away from their blogs too, save a few. About a year ago I wrote a post on loneliness, and how it was kind of consuming me ever since we made the move to Twin Falls. But the truth is loneliness has always been a constant companion in my life, an ugly shoulder-angel that I'd ignore until it was the only thing I could see.

I've never taken medication for anxiety or depression because I've been afraid to, and I've only sought counseling once. It didn't go well. I showed up 20 minutes early to an empty office where the receptionist finally popped her head in 5 minutes past my scheduled time; while I was filling out paperwork the counselor came out, angry that I was "late" and kind of took it out on me during our session. I'd made her late for dinner, apparently.

I'm not one to put myself out there. As mentioned in an earlier post, I made a great friend but she moved away. We now have some cool neighbors across the hall, but I still feel life a goof in my attempts to relate to them. 

So this past year I turned to writing, and made my book characters my friends. Writing helps to turn my depression off, though I know it's not the permanent answer. But writing is something I can do well and feel comfortable in. I've had short stories published in the past and I've read at art festivals and literary conferences (though getting up in front of all those people made me want to throw up all over said people). I'm currently submitting to writing competitions and more publications in an attempt to make a name for myself, and one day get an agent for my novels.

Thus the revamping of my site, and return to blogging. I could simply have a cold, distant professional website for all this, but I'd rather have an open blog where I attempt to relate to people and hopefully they can relate to me. That's why I write, anyway. To find like-minded folks. 

Anyone's ghost

Had an awesome trip to Oregon a few weeks ago. Can't believe summer is already gone! Ah well, like any relevant blogger fall is my favorite season, so I'm not terribly bummed by summer's passing. But man, was it fast.

I'm quite sad because one of the good friends I made since moving here is moving away tomorrow. The news of which she only found out about two days ago. We were just to that point in our friendship where you share all your weirds with each other and bond over all the mutual weird. We were sharing books, our kids were pushing each other over, and she and her husband were about to move into our ward (or away for a job change . . . turns out they're going the job change route). We're having a pizza party tonight as our little fare-thee-well but all the pepperoni pizza in the world won't keep these sads at bay. Who am I gonna build ramps for now?

And then there were two

He arrived a few days early and his hair is already coming in blonde at the roots. Simon pats his head and calls him "baby." Birth story to come soon, maybe? I don't mind sharing it. I've left this blog quiet for far too long and want to get back to writing in it frequently. In fact, the day I went into labor I wrote a 5+ paragraph post that I contemplated hitting "publish" on until, well, suddenly I was having a baby and more pressing matters were at hand.

So here he is, my little Graham. My circle of love, complete.

All your gold

Here's a picture of my budding belly for the family that's been asking. And in case you missed it: we're having a boy, due June 8th! And I've been calling him Graham, though we're not final on a name yet. Seve likes Griffen, though I worry that's too Game of Thrones-ish. Or Harry Potter-ish. Especially if we made his middle name "dor."

Again: a poem

"After months of feeling like
the tiniest person in the world
I soon came to realize that
the tiniest person in the world
was growing inside of me.

And that would most certainly account for all of the
emotional upheaval
food upheaval
and oversleeping.

---

Looks like I'll be taking a few months off from the internet while my belly blooms again."

I wrote the above post/poem thing about 2-3 months ago and . . . never posted it? Sorry. I want to thank everyone who took the time to reach out to me when my online absence was noticed. And I apologize for having no idea what the rest of you have been up to. During Simon's pregnancy I was required to be online to complete work for Star Moose and I still managed to read blogs, but this time around I had no online obligations so I let it all go to dust. Only recently did I revisit my Twitter and ages-old Tumblr.

Which got me thinking: I really appreciate the likes of Tumblr. It's a form of social media based around interests, not necessarily who I am. Blogger/Blogspot culture kind of demands photos of yourself, personal details, and frequent updates. Tumblr culture is more about fangirling over books/shows/art rather than revealing who you are, and that's the kind of blogging I started out with when I was 12 or whatever, and it's the kind of blogging I'm more interested in participating in right now.

So this is my announcement to say:
[1] Yeah, I'm pregnant.
[2] My blogging will be a lot less frequent now. I don't want Simon to grow up with his whole life documented online - thanks to my hand - before he's old enough to set up his own Facebook.
[3] My online presence will be focused more on Twitter/Tumblr, if anyone cares.

AND

[4] During my absence I've focused a lot more on my band of tiny horses, i.e. photo project tender mustangs, and I have unique Tumblr for them that's queued to update daily. Again, if anyone cares.