Guest Post: Decade of Writing (Aimee Henley)

My cousin, Beckah, kindly asked me to contribute a guest post for her blog. She’s in the midst of a Month of Writing, an idea I wholeheartedly support. I’m in the midst of a Decade of Writing, so, you know, it resonated.

To give you a little background, I write young adult novels under the pen name A.G. Henley, and I’m a psychologist. I was a psychologist first. Writing and publishing was my mid-life crisis. I know, it’s kinda pathetic. I was too practical to have a crisis that wasn’t productive.

Growing up, I thought, Hmm, I might like to write a book one day. How hard could it be? But days led to weeks led to years. If you’re over twenty, you can probably relate. I finished my degree-gathering at 29, and I didn’t start writing for seven more years.

One morning in the shower, I had an idea for a book. Later that afternoon, I sat down and wrote Chapter One in a Word doc. I spent a year and a half obsessing, writing, working on, and working over. Finally, I had a book! That I couldn’t find an agent to represent. I roll my eyes now at the conceit that my first book would be ready for an agent and a publisher.

It was tempting to feel like it was all a waste of time, but I knew it wasn’t. I’d learned so much about the craft of writing fiction and the business of publishing. I had to believe in my book, in myself, enough to take it right to the end of the road. And  that’s what it was: the end of the road for that book.

A few months later, I had an idea for another novel while visiting my extended family, including Beckah, in their home state of Louisiana. I took time to think through my ideas, build the world, imagine the characters. Two more years of obsessing, writing, working on, and working over, and in January 2012, I self-published The Scourge. A friend designed the cover for a hundred bucks. I never thought the thing would be read by anyone other than a few friends and family members. Imagine my surprise when it found an actual readership.

I went on to write three novels and two novellas in the series. They haven’t hit any major bestseller lists, won awards, or been featured by Oprah’s Book Club or People. I’m a solid mid-list author and self-published at that, making it a daily struggle to reach readers who might like my work. But, I’m incredibly proud of those five titles. They represent the culmination of a dream that started as Hmm, I might like to write a book one day.

I was almost 40, and I had two young children, when The Scourge published. A friend, who has traveled the ups and downs of my writing path with me, recently gave me this sweet memento to celebrate the release of the final book in my series.

Never give up on your dreams. A writer’s battle cry if I’ve ever heard one. And it’s not just a nice sentiment. Funny things happen when you keep putting one word after the other on the page, day after day, year after year. That first book, the one that hit the end of the road? It’s been reincarnated as a short story that will be part of an anthology published next year. It might later find new life as a revamped novel, or even the start of a series. Turns out it had only reached a turn in the road, not the end.

Beckah, I know you love to write, and you’re an excellent writer. You have things to say about your life, the world, and how the two intersect. You have a voice, and you aren’t afraid to be vulnerable to your readers. I’m envious of that quality. If you have the desire in your heart to write a novel, then don’t wait. You have the tools now. Don’t allow the days and weeks and years to slip by for too long. Go for it—and don’t ever give up.

A.G. Henley's books are available for purchase as e-books on Amazon.  Check them out HERE.

Novel November?

"Patience, grasshopper," my volleyball coach likes to say.
"Yes, sensei," I reply, snickering at our running joke.

I'm not a patient person.  I think I've said this before.  It's not that I'm rushed or short-fused on a regular basis.  In truth, I've got a much deeper store of patience than a lot of people do when it comes to dealing with other humans.  Particularly short humans of the child-variety.  But when it comes to waiting for something really exciting to happen, I'm the one who can't sleep on Christmas eve (or better yet, the night before Fuds).

Wednesday night, I couldn't fall asleep.  I didn't bother checking my phone, but I knew it was late, and I knew I was wide awake.  You see, I get these ideas, and then in my mind, the best thing to do is rush into them.  My cousin, a writer, tells me that I should write a novel, and then I'm like, Let's write a novel, people!  Get out the midnight oil!  NO ONE'S SLEEPING TONIGHT!

Of course, I'm mature and responsible enough to know that staying up all night on a school night is a terrible decision, so I didn't actively go that route.  But my brain does what it does, and I found myself wide-eyed in bed, dreaming up characters and scenarios and structures.  I cracked a '90s chick-lit paperback I'd found at the library last month to help ease my eyelids downward, but then I started deconstructing the interesting point of view choices the author was making, and I was awake all over again. (BTW, reading about someone trying out the internet on dial up is a hilarious blast from the past.  I'm actively encouraging you to find a novel or movie from the late '90s and get a good, bellowy chuckle.  Man, I wish I was still that excited about getting email.)

Eventually, the responsible and tired side of me won out, and I got just enough sleep to let me function but require me to yawn every fifteen minutes the next day.  (You're welcome, coworkers who crossed my path in the morning and were thus condemned to day-long yawning.)

I've never really considered myself a manic person, but I just have these ideas, THESE GREAT IDEAS, and I want to make them happen.  Right now.  Because they're so great.  Why would anyone wait to implement these great ideas?

Luckily, the angel on my left shoulder is stronger than the insane person on my right, so I usually force myself to wait out good ideas.  If I'm still thinking of them down the line, they're still good ideas, right?  This backfires occasionally (like when I plan on voting the morning of my plane flight and then find out the night before that the polls will open as I'm boarding...or when I decide to spend 3 weeks in Canada in the summer and almost forget to pay the deposit), but usually, it's a wise idea.  Waiting until December to talk is giving me time to flesh out my proposal to my principal about a new position for me, and waiting until next week to register is giving me time to decide if I really want to participate in something called NaNoWriMo.

Don't know what that is?  Well, neither did I until about an hour ago.  My friend Lisa sent me a message earlier today with the suggestion to check it out.  She and one of her co-workers are participating in National Novel Writing Month this November (aka in 7 days).  It's like my month of writing, but on steroids: 30 days, 50,000 words.  People all over the world are committing themselves to writing a full novel (or at least as much of a novel as 50,000 words can get you) in a single month.  Personally, that seems insane, but I guess the purpose is just to do it.  I can push off novel-writing until next summer until kingdom come, but if I've got this online tracking program and community of people keeping me accountable, well then maybe I'll actually do it before I get my first gray hair.

I'm still debating if it's something I want to do, though.  As I said, I've got an idea of what I might want that novel to look like and sound like and be about, but 50,000 words in 30 days means 1700 words a day.  For perspective, that's three times as many words as I've written so far in this post.  Which means--because I normally write incredibly slowly and potentially would have no social life if I had to write even more than I already do--that I have to make a very important and uncomfortable choice: I either have to not do it, or I have to forbid myself from editing my work until after the month is over.  Which is insane and totally out of my comfort zone.  ...Which is actually making me think I should register right now.  Because I could really stand to learn how to write without constantly editing as I go.  (I'm trying to do it with this paragraph right now, and it's killing me that I haven't already re-read and edited the thing at least once.  Because I'm insane.)

But I won't register.  Not yet.  The angel on my shoulder says I should wait.  Next month will be busy with work, and I'm hoping to get some extra volleyball time in, too.  Adding even more writing to the mix would be hard.  I should think about it.  I should seriously consider the weight of the commitment, she says.

She's right.  I know she is.  But I kind of hope the insane person on the other shoulder wins out anyway.  Because IT'S A GREAT IDEA.

My advocate for crazy

It Takes a Village

It turns out, writing isn't a solitary action at all.  Sitting down and typing out words on a page often is, but what I'm finding is that the interaction it elicits--discussions of possible endings over google docs, back-and-forth Facebook messages about content, late-night conspiratory emails with ideas about novel-writing--they're making this month of creation so much more satisfying than last September was.  It was satisfying to write for those 30 days, too, but not like this.

The last time I was part of a solid, consistent group of writers was high school.  Every Friday, my classmates and I would sit across from each other at a long, wide table in a long, narrow room at the edge of our red brick building in the Marigny, and we'd "workshop" each other's pieces.  Workshop wasn't always fun.  In fact, it was very often not fun.  People's feelings would get hurt (I cried at least once) or boredom would stall the conversation.  But every now and again, something ended up in our workshop packets that got us really excited.

I remember this girl who was in my class my senior year.  Her name was Hallie, I think.  She had this incredible voice and gift for imagery, and one time, she wrote a story in which the protagonist--a human--was molting.  As he went about his normal day, his skin was literally peeling off.  I'm sure there was more to it than that--I don't think it'd stick out so much in my memory were it a poorly executed premise--but I just remember being really jealous that she'd written the story.  It was so good.  I wanted to have written it.

Poetry was more my thing.  For my final portfolio (our "thesis"), I requested an exception to the rule that both poetry and fiction had to be present among our work.  I was (am) pretty insecure about my fiction writing, and I didn't have much in the way of options for something to include that I was really proud of.  I'd found my niche as a narrative poet, and I wanted to keep fiction out of it.

It took me a while to get to the narrative poetry thing.  When I started out in the writing program, most of my work was really long stories and really short poems.  While I'm all for detail in fiction and efficient word choice in all writing, it was just inexperience at the core of my verbosity--or lack thereof.  Over time, I started to realize that I loved to tell stories, but that my stories were better suited to the construct of a poem.  They were more like short glimpses into the lives of others.  Fiction required too much fore-thought and too much detail.  I wanted it shorter.  I wanted to reveal moments, not develop plots.

Our workshops were usually conducted by the class and one or more of the teachers, but occasionally, the staff would invite a local writer to come and lead the discussion.  And the most dreaded guest workshopper of all was a wrinkly, old professor at Tulane named Peter Cooley.  [I just googled him.  Apparently, he's been appointed Louisiana's newest poet laureate.  His pictures also make him look significantly less intimidating (or old) than I remember.]  Anyway, this guy was brutal around that long rectangular table.  He would, without fail, rip our poem to shreds every time he came.  Nothing was ever good enough.  We'd walk up to class on those days, saying "Well, get ready to be told how bad your poem is."  We admitted defeat before he ever opened his mouth.

Except one day, that changed.

One day, I submitted the following poem for workshop (in a slightly less-revised form):

Captive

Passing through these halls,

we pull our collars closer

as winter streams in

through the corner vent.

On the white walls, shadows

seem more like reflections:

park benches on either side

of the hall, grass carpet.

Fluorescent tubes in lines above us,

hung close to the ceiling, hidden

behind blue glass;

they dim with dusk.

We whisper of home, the things

outside these halls, only loud enough

for the next ear to hear,

the next person

to remember the sundial,

draped in moss, the birds

framed by windowpanes, leaves,

whistling among themselves.

We walk closer for warmth,

straighten our scarves

in the mirroring walls.

And he loved it.  I mean, loved it.  For the first time ever, he said good things about a poem.  My poem.

On break, everyone was talking about it and congratulating me.  Oh my gosh, he liked your poem!  I cannot believe it!  We were floored.  It had just never happened before.  No one expected it would ever happen.  We just assumed he was a mean old man who didn't like anything but his own poetry.

After the workshop was over, or maybe it was the next time he saw me, he gave me a signed copy of one of his books with a personal note that said something like "Your poem held me 'captive.'"  I mean, it was a big deal.  I might've slept next to that book that night.

The truth is, it's probably not even the best poem I've ever written, though I certainly found a knack for weird, slightly fantastic/science-fiction-y type poems.  Here's another one the same Peter Cooley really liked, which--again--left everyone speechless.

Fountain Of

Then I left and went to that unmarked town,

without a name or place on the torn map

in my hands, past the metropolitan archipelago,

where one small shop is always closed

and locked, blinds drawn.

At night, bands of light seep through the venetian slats,

forming lines on the sidewalk like paper,

streaking faces with age.

I went to see for myself the Spaniards’

mistake, the bands and blinds

and paint above the door: Fountain of,

faded, unfinished, or washed away.

My body slunk down as the sun slid out of sight

and the light began to burn folds in the darkness.

The streets were empty, but the rays staggered

on the pavement, company enough for me

in the chilled night.  I stopped before the windows,

my chest singed by the latitudes of light running across.

That was enough for me, enough

that the age flooded my body like a sudden

storm surge, wind whipping water up

and throwing it down.

I went there and saw it and left,

told no one but the margins of my books,

thick and old.  I took to staring

at the thin men on the morning train,

their hands sunken and wrinkled,

like my face, a mirror of sagging skin.

But my favorite poem from that writing program was penned near the end of my senior year of high school.  I had just finished a year-long independent study on Flannery O'Connor, and I wanted to write something as a nod to the time I'd spent in her figurative company.  This is the poem of which I am most proud.  Not necessarily because it's the best poem I've ever written (though these three are definitely in the top ten...considering that they are three of the only ten poems I still have a copy of).  But because it was a summation of my senior year: plane trips to colleges, home-sickness, transition, uncertainty, Flannery.

Flight Home

The plane taxis toward the runway,

red and green wing-lights blinking

against the paling sky.

This flight takes me to a place

where the pea chickens pecked away

at the fig trees and my clothes

like the goats in the backyard,

between the barn and the field,

grinding hay between their teeth;

where the house leaned to one side

and the woods filled with shrieks,

each night, of cocks and hens, perched.

Will it all be the same when I return:

the peacock feathers scattered across the lawn,

white paint peeling off the fence?

My ears pop and the stinging ring

of the dinner bell sings through my head,

pressure building up between my eyes.

I stretch out my jaw, hear its click

like the door unlocking when I last left,

the dull resounding of the gate as it closed behind me.

No one sits on either side of me, and I can’t see

the ground below, the square fields of brown

and green, cars passing one another

on the road; or the aisle to its end,

attendants leaning against the wall.

The seatbelt sign flashes off,

but I keep my belt buckled tight.

I pull it tighter.

It wasn't until I started this month of writing--complete with emails to and from some of my favorite people and writers--that I realized how much I missed the Friday afternoons I spent in that half-lit room.  It wasn't all sunshine and butterflies (none of that, actually--we were very serious teenage writers, after all), but it was community.  And everything is better with community.

Back to the Future

Do you ever have those moments when you look back on your life and think, "Damn, I wish I was 16 again.  I would have kicked life's ass if I knew then what I know now"?

No?  Maybe you didn't hate high school as much as I did, then.  (And when I say I hated it, I mean that my heart still races--in a bad way--when I walk into a high school...any high school.  The trauma's almost as bad as what the orthodontist did to me.  There is literally no one else in the world that made me cry as much in middle school as that terrible man did.)

Anyway, I have these moments where I look back and wish I'd come into my own a little sooner.  You know, more confident, more accepting of self, more of a presence around others.

I'm thinking of this because my cousin Aimee (who you will read a post from this weekend!) sent me her piece today.  In it, she talks about how long it took her to finally write a novel, and how much she wishes she'd done it sooner.  Similarly, I look back on my high school years, and I think: Why was I so quiet?  Why did I let people ignore me?  Why did I get so stressed by things that mattered so little?  Don't get me wrong, I wasn't bullied.  The closest it came to that was one time when a girl in my homeroom made fun of my pants because they were wrinkled.  (After which point I ironed every piece of clothing I wore until I got to college.  Even though I was--and continue to be--completely inept at ironing.)  I wasn't getting tons of negative attention.  I was getting little to no attention at all.

Last year, I went to my ten year high school reunion.  Needless to say, I was nervous as I walked up to the welcome desk.  I went by myself--without my best friends from that era in tow.  It was a last-minute decision, one that I was still a little unsure about as I signed in.  In the days leading up to the reunion, I had seriously considered backing out.  Who would I see there that I didn't already keep in touch with? I'd thought.  Surely, there was no point in going.

Well, eventually, curiosity (or pride) won out, and I showed up to the Republic at a time I deemed late enough to not be the first arrival in a cute black dress and obnoxiously bright pink tights.  (Probably a poor fashion choice, but whatever--I was bolder now, and I was going to show them!)  The evening started tenuously, but eventually I latched on to a few people I knew back in the day, and things took off from there.  The "cool kids," of course, stuck to their ranks, but the rest of us--the ones who represented 90%+ of the party--thoroughly enjoyed catching up.  By the end of the night, I was dancing with people I had potentially never spoken a word to in high school, chatting for half an hour with the girlfriend of a guy I took English III with, awkwardly listening to someone tell me they had a crush on me in high school (I knew; I was not interested), and throwing a line at someone else who played baseball with my brother.

"I don't remember you," he said.

"Well, I wasn't this cute in high school," I suggested.

(Yes, I am still embarrassed that I said that.  My mouth still tastes like sleaze, a year later.)

He wasn't the only one who didn't remember me.  One woman introduced herself and asked me if I'd graduated from our high school.

"Yeah, class of '03," I said.

"Oh, well, I was only at our school part-time," she proposed. "I didn't know everybody."

You knew me, I wanted to say, because I went to the other school, too.  We rode the bus there together every day for at least a year.  But eh, not worth my time.  Plus, she was probably just too intimidated by my newfound confidence and beauty and hot pink tights to admit that she remembered me.  Yeah, that's what we'll say.

It took me until my first year of college to really force myself to speak up in class and social situations, and it wasn't until I graduated from college that I really came into my own.  People now still describe me as quiet, but I don't see the quiet as imprisoning anymore.  It's more of a personal style now.  I'm not one to run at the mouth because I've found that people listen more when you talk less.  (Also, I run out of things to say and then look stupid.  But the first thing sounds wiser.)

Take for instance this afternoon.

Every day for twenty minutes, I stand next to the playground equipment and supervise the kids in that area during their recess time.  There is one specific group that runs a particularly intense and heated game of tag each day, and today was no exception.  About halfway through recess, there was a surprise attack on the equipment.  The student labeled "it" came from behind and tagged an unsuspecting player waiting by the fire pole.

"FUCK!" he shouted.

Needless to say, everyone within earshot turned and looked at me all at the same time.

And so, faced with a thankfully rare situation, I looked up at him where he stood--frozen with guilt--and silently beckoned him with my index finger.  My face was blank.  At best, disappointed.

"I said, frick," he tried to claim unconvincingly, when he got to me.

"I heard the word you said loud and clear.  Take a seat on the bench."

And he sat.  And he cried.

In fact, he was still crying when he walked up to my desk two hours later with an thick letter-size envelope in his hand that I'd left on his desk.  The kind of envelope that gets sent home when you get a detention...or worse.

"I'm so worried," he said, face red and puffy, holding up the envelope.  Terrified was more like it.

"Go on," I prompted.  I then pointed to the envelope in his hand (unbeknownst to him, a copy of his updated academic accommodations).  "Keep in mind that the envelope you're holding in your hand was given to me this morning and has nothing to do with recess."

"It's not about that," he continued, relieved for only a second before falling back into tears and intermittently pushing the hair back from his face.  "It's really bad.  Am I going to get suspended?  It was just an accident.  I really meant to say frick.  I promise."

By this time, I hadn't breathed a word of the incident to anyone.  At recess, I had planned on emailing his parents about it, but at this point, I rethought that plan.  Clearly, he'd done a number on himself all on his own.  Half a recess and two hours of intensive worrying turned out to be more bang for my buck than I'd anticipated.  So, still straight-faced, I gave him the verdict.

"I understand that it was an accident, which is why you're not getting suspended.  I won't email your parents, so long as you understand that this can never happen again, accidentally or purposefully.  I recommend avoiding the word frick as well, as it creates bad habits and puts you in danger of saying the real thing.  And if it ever does happen again, things will be bad."

"Okay," he said. "Yeah.  No.  I'll never do it again.  I promise.  Never."



...Where was that girl in high school?!

Imagine how that wrinkled pant situation would have gone...
"Your pants are wrinkled.  Don't you own an iron?"
"I do, but I have other priorities.  Thank you for your input."

How am I twenty-nine, and only just now realizing the power of not sweating the small stuff?  Of not letting people get under your skin?

When a kid rolled his eyes at me today, I didn't blink twice.
"You do realize that rolling your eyes is a form of disrespect, right?  And you also realize that I am currently asking you to redo this question on your quiz so that you can earn those points, right?  Because you're totally welcome to ignore me and lose the points.  It's no skin off my back."

Of course, there are probably people in their 30s and 40s and 50s and 60s and all the way up to the oldest human alive that are wondering how they're only just now getting a handle on something or other.  I suppose that's the way life is: you learn things, and you imagine what it would've been like if you'd learned them sooner, and then you hope to God your progeny figures it out faster.

So the question I'm left with then is this:  What shouldn't I waste my time on?  What am I going to wish--fifteen years from now--that I'd started ages before?

Aimee thinks I need to get on with writing a book already.  Maybe she's right.

Bookish

Some days, I just don't know what to write.  Admittedly, the invisible pull of my bed isn't currently helping; I just mostly want to be asleep right now.  But also, I'm sort of at a loss.  Normally, I have an idea in mind of what I want to write about, so that even when I'm short on time, I power through because I've got something to say.  Today, not so much. (Eh, we have our days, right?)

So, instead of mumbling and rambling on about my day (work, contractor estimate, volleyball, seeing a friend that moved away, etc.), I'll tell you about the highlight of my day (after the surprise of seeing said friend, of course):

BOOKS

I mean, it's not really that surprising, but yeah, books.  Two books written by two of my favorite comedic writers: Sloane Crosley and Mindy Kaling.

I'd requested their newest books on the library's website a while back, and I was expecting to wait for them for a while longer.  So when I got an email today that both books had come in, I literally yelped with joy.  And then I looked at the clock and tried to figure out a way that I could be both at the library and at home waiting for the contractor at the same time.  Sadly, no solution came to mind.

I waited until I was on my way to volleyball to stop in and pick up my requested items.  They're not the most literary-looking books (both are bright colors, and yeah, I'm a little insecure about that kind of thing), but I'M SO EXCITED ANYWAY!

Maybe you want to read them, too?  I'll let you know how they are when I finish, but here's a quick blurb on each from their respective websites to sate your appetite in the mean time.

Kezia, Nathaniel, and Victor are reunited for the extravagant wedding of a college friend. Now at the tail end of their twenties, they arrive completely absorbed in their own lives—Kezia the second-in-command to a madwoman jewelry designer in Manhattan; Nathaniel the former literary cool kid, selling his wares in Hollywood; and the Eeyore-esque Victor, just fired from a middling search engine. They soon slip back into old roles: Victor loves Kezia. Kezia loves Nathaniel. Nathaniel loves Nathaniel.

In the midst of all this semi-merriment, Victor passes out on the mother-of-the-groom’s bedroom. He wakes to her jovially slapping him across the face. Instead of a scolding, she dangles before him a story she’s never even told her son, about a valuable necklace that disappeared during the Nazi occupation of France.

And so a madcap adventure is set into motion, one that leads Kezia, Nathaniel, and Victor from Miami to New York and LA to Paris and across France until they converge at the estate of Guy de Maupassant, author of the classic short story “The Necklace.”

Heartfelt, hilarious, suspenseful, and told with Sloane Crosley’s inimitable spark and wit, The Clasp is a story of obsession and the pitfalls of modern relationships, of friends struggling to fit together now that their lives haven’t gone as planned, of how to separate the real from the fake. Such a task might be possible when it comes to precious stones, but it is far more difficult to pull off with humans.

In Why Not Me?, Kaling shares her ongoing journey to find contentment and excitement in her adult life, whether it’s falling in love at work, seeking new friendships in lonely places, attempting to be the first person in history to lose weight without any behavior modification whatsoever, or most important, believing that you have a place in Hollywood when you’re constantly reminded that no one looks like you.

Mindy turns the anxieties, the glamour, and the celebrations of her second coming-of-age into a laugh-out-loud funny collection of essays that anyone who’s ever been at a turning point in their life or career can relate to. And those who’ve never been at a turning point can skip to the parts where she talks about meeting Bradley Cooper.

Plan A, Plan B

There comes a time when you have to rethink your life plan.  Maybe not give up on Plan A, just accept that you might need a Plan B.  And that your Plan B might happen.

I have been thinking a lot lately about my desire to have kids...or to not have kids.  As I speed toward the big 3-0, I at times feel the very real possibility that I will not be a mother.  To be honest, sometimes I wonder if I wouldn't be better off that way.  That's not to say that I'd be a terrible parent, but rather, that I could have a really great life as a non-parent.  I reflect regularly on this notion of parenthood, often at odd times: on the volleyball court, in the bathroom at school, in the middle of a movie about survival on Mars.  Most of the time, I think it's fear talking.  Sometimes I think I'm just balking at the possibility of never sleeping again.  Because I really love sleep, and after not sleeping for a while due to rats and neighborhood crime stories, I don't ever want to not sleep again.

Here's the way I see it:

I have approximately ten good years of child-bearing left.  Ten years ago, I thought for sure that I'd have kids by now, so I don't want to slough it off and say, "Eh, it'll come, the whole thing: love, marriage, babies, never sleeping again."  I have lived long enough to know that things don't usually turn out the way that you expect them to.  Wanting something doesn't make it happen.

Please don't mistake my foresight as regret.  I do not regret the way that my life has played out thus far.  When I was 19, I thought I was ready to have kids (though I'd wait until I graduated college, of course; I'm no drop-out).  I thought that I'd be married in my early twenties and have at least two kids by now.  Which is horrifying to me at the present moment.  I am currently sleeping on a mattress on the floor of my childhood bedroom because I'm too afraid to sleep at my own house.  Not that moms can't be scared.  I just can't imagine being wholly responsible for another human being.  I haven't gone grocery shopping in weeks, and my bedroom looks like this:

Recently, someone suggested that I get a dog for protection, and I assured them that though one might make me feel safer, I could not handle the responsibility (and dogs are hairy and gross sometimes...imagine my bedroom with a dog!).  I'm still amazed the potted plant in my kitchen hasn't died yet.

Being without children affords me a lot of possibilities I wouldn't otherwise have.  This summer, I can go to Quebec for three weeks and speak French and spend however much money I want because it's just me.  Next weekend, I can visit my brother and not worry about herding children on the plane.  I can leave my room a mess every single day (you've seen the proof) and not feel like a hypocrite.  I can write this post and then pass out next to my saltines, gatorade, and various partially-opened medicine boxes without a care in the world.

Do I want that forever?  Honestly, it seems a little lonely.  It's seems kind of wasteful, too, considering how badass of a mom I would be.  Still, I'd prefer to do things in a certain order, and getting knocked up by somebody I don't know well doesn't really seem like a wise long-term solution.  My first impressions of men aren't always great, and I've seen the way divorce can pan out.  I would like to do what I can to avoid putting my kid in that situation.  Choosing a partner I actually like and with whom I have similar values and parenting ideas seems like a good first step.  And if I can't do that in time to have kids, I guess I don't want to have kids.  Simple as that.

The natural response to this necessary sequence of events would seem to be a committed effort to finding a viable partner.  And I have tried.  I have tried traditional methods (college, hobbies, friends of friends).  I have tried untraditional methods (online dating).  I have even allowed myself to be set up on a date once or twice by someone who--it turns out--didn't actually know me that well.  Yesterday, I uninstalled Tinder from my phone because I'd had enough of it.  So, I'm kind of at a loss.

Earlier today, as I was scrolling through my Facebook feed, I found a TED talk by a woman who basically math-ed her way into marriage.  She created an algorithm and scoring method for online dating, and she found, to use a phrase I've come to despise, "Mr Right."  Now she's got a husband and a kid, and she's feeling pretty good about things.  But that won't work for me.  I'm not that detail-oriented, and I can't bring myself to sit down and map things out the way she did.  I wish I could, but that's not me.

However, like her, I'm trying to rethink my approach thus far.  Part of the problem is numbers--there just aren't that many men out there that I'm attracted to, that can hold an intelligent conversation, that have some Christian belief system, that aren't already married, and that like me back.  The other part of the problem is access--the men who might fit that description, where do I meet them?  As a jack of most trades and master of few, I have met a lot of people in my numerous and varied activities: improv, dancing, volleyball, writing, church, school, you name it.  Not a single one of those activities has produced anything resembling potential.  Tinder got me closest, but these days, the only people on Tinder are tourists, rednecks, and douchebags.  No thanks.

I'd like to say that I'm not worried about it.  To a certain extent, that's true.  I've sort of reconciled myself to the possibility that lack of sleep in my future might be a result of old age and not children, and I'm okay with that.  Looking at the flip side, I'm extremely grateful not to be a 29-year-old mother.  There's nothing wrong with 29-year-old mothers; I just don't want to be one (and physically can't, unless I get pregnant tomorrow and my child miraculously grows four times as fast as the average human baby...thirty is right around the corner, after all).

I think the key moving forward is being open and grateful.  Open to possibilities that might arise, and grateful for the place I'm in now.  Things might not have worked out the way I thought they would when I graduated from college, or even two years ago, but they're good, and I'm happy.  I've got a great job, wonderful friends and family, fun things to do, and a firm sense of self.  What more could I ask for?

Haiku

So, my school is an arts integration school.  Or at least, it's one in theory.  We've been told a lot of things about AI, and we've been to a lot of meetings about it, but there has been very little in the way of specific, helpful training that really makes me feel comfortable with integrating art effectively.

Because of that, I have a tendency to fall back on the only art form that I know well: writing.  Maybe that's not what they're looking for, and maybe the kids don't want to write, but it's the thing I know best.  So, suck it up, kids.

Last month, we wrote children's books about cells.  They learned about basic organelles and then analyzed kindergarten-level books, studying the form and patterns of that genre.  As a bonus, they got a little experience with technology and rubric-reading in the process.

This week, we studied eco-interference and haikus.

Personally, I've never much appreciated the haiku form.  It seems to be overused in classrooms, and it often results in a jumble of words chosen precisely for syllabic quantity and not for any kind of cohesive meaning.  Basically, they're a bunch of semi-related words and phrases split into three lines.

Case in point, this haiku I found in a quick google search:

Leaves changing color
Pumpkin pie, apple cider
Visions of autumn

What kind of bullshit nonsense is that?  I'll tell you what: the kind of bullshit nonsense you write when you just need to get 17 syllables on a page because somebody made you.

But the beauty of teaching writing and science simultaneously is that I'm getting content knowledge from students, and I'm exposing them to this art form that I love and know a lot about.  One student walked up to me the other day when I was reading their poems and giving them suggestions, and she said: "Here's my haiku, but it's bad.  I'm not very good at poetry."  I looked at her and laughed, "I studied poetry for three years straight, and I'm not that good at it, either.  But the great thing about being bad at poetry is that you can only get better!"

Several other students echoed the same self-doubt.  When I told the class today that we'd keep revising our haikus, one student blurted out, "Aww, man!  Haikus are hard!" At which point, I felt like I'd really done my job.  Because nobody ever says haikus are hard.  When done wrong, they're easier than bad rhyming poetry.  But done right, they're nuanced.  The syllabic format of 5/7/5 becomes challenging, and the additional parameters of the traditional haiku (a moment in time, usually a single sentence or thought; includes a metaphorical or syntactic break/shift between two of the lines), those parameters require you to really think about what you're writing.  They require you to show not tell (as my writing teachers always liked to say).

Now, let me step off this pedestal I've created for my haiku instruction to admit that I didn't do the art form and its history nearly the justice it probably deserves.  I got most of my information from a single, unverified website, and even that gave more instructions than I put on the kids.  For example, a traditional haiku usually references the season in some way (for example, mentioning a kind of plant to denote a specific season).  But hey, one step at a time, right?

We're not done with our haikus yet, but the poems have actually turned out pretty well.  Poetry that started off pretty dependent on the "tell" ended up closer to "show," and many students figured out that they could create a poem worth displaying fairly easily.  They weren't always great at accepting criticism--a few looked surprised that I didn't automatically tell them that their poem was perfect--but that's part of learning to write, as well.

I wish I had taken pictures of the original poems some of them had written.  Here's an original that I've tried my best to recreate from memory:

Noise Pollution

Don't honk your car horns.
Avoid using leaf blowers.
Increasing heart rate.


It read like a textbook.  Or likes notes on content from a textbook.  So I made two suggestions.  Suggestion 1: No more than one sentence.  Suggestion 2: Paint me a picture.  The result?

So, the girl's no Emily Dickinson, but it's a lot closer to haiku poetry than where she started.

Other poems used the form more faithfully and stuck closer to that "moment in time" idea.  Here are a few that students wrote this week:

Again, I wish I'd taken pictures of the rough drafts, so you could compare.

More than anything, these poems make me want to write a little poetry of my own.  When I was at NOCCA--the creative arts high school I attended--we spent a few weeks on poetic forms.  I wasn't ever very good at it (on the whole preferring the safety and forgiveness of free verse), but I liked the idea of the different forms.  They were like a challenge puzzle: Could I say what I needed to say, upside down with one arm tied behind my back?

Recently, I've been considering how to step up my writing.  I read this great piece by a friend's sister about the importance of daily commitment to the craft, and it made me especially proud of this month of writing...and especially confused about my purpose and goal as a writer.  Sure, some people like to read this blog for the random thoughts I vocalize therein, but most everybody just hopes I date someone new so that they can hear stories about me being ridiculous with men (myself included).  Do I have a vision?  Should I try fiction?  Should I pick an informational or sociological topic for each post?  Is my writing more about self-care than product?  The truth is, I don't know, nor am I sure how to figure that out.

Until then, I guess I'll keep writing.