Day Two of Camp NaNo and I’m on track with my “suspense” novella, even though I haven’t added any elements of suspense yet. I read The Last Flight by Julie Clark on Saturday, a great new suspense novel with a lot of twists and potential and, best of all, two strong women characters. A nice change from all the “The Girl” who what when where, blacked out, drank too much, tossed back prescription pill bottles, but knows she saw what she saw… That is, until the last fifty pages when you realize none of that was true, she was drugged/drunk/delirious the entire time, and actually this happened! The author presents the ending as if it a bright shiny gift you should be happy about – everything is all wrapped up and The End! But those endings anger me, make me feel ripped off, duped into investing in a story that was presented as X but really is Y. It’s gotten too common in suspense novels in the past several years, so I was so glad to see the strong characters in The Last Flight. It didn’t hurt that the story was well-done and realistic enough, too.

All that is to say I should be inspired. I should be twisting my own storylines in my mind, excitedly interrupting one train of thought with “but what if!”

Spoiler alert: I’m not. I have a few pages of notes for the story. I have a character, and I’ve spent a couple thousand words establishing who she is. No back story yet, but it’s not necessary. Just a few hints that I can flesh out later. Maybe by then a twist will come to me, and I can put something unsavory or unsettling in her past.

Mostly I’ve been having disturbingly real dreams about being in high school again. Signing up for a math class that is required to graduate, then hating math too much to ever attend. Getting lost in the hallways when I decide I should attend a session. I haven’t had high school dreams in several years, and I haven’t had a recurring dream since my son was born, and I was constantly weaving my way through mazes to protect him from anyone and everyone.

It seems like dreams should stay in the night time and the fog of early mornings, but they stick with me throughout the day. Sometimes I jolt like I’m forgetting to do something important, but it’s just a flashback to the missing math class. When I space out and let my mind wander, hoping it will give me an idea for my writing project, it drifts back to those dreams, and I find myself replaying them.

Maybe I’m focusing on the wrong thread here. Maybe my mind is telling me to write about that math class. Maybe my character should be young instead of old. What goes on in high school these days? (The obvious anser is not much, in the current situation.) What mystery could keep her from going to that math class? Is something wrong with the math teacher? What are her classmates getting into?

It’s only Day Two of Camp NaNo. I’m on track (a little ahead, even) with my current project. Seems like the perfect time to throw it away and scramble to start again.

Where You End by Anna Pellicioli, reviewed by Allison Renner 6/9/2015

Are You Seeing Me? by Darren Groth, reviewed by Allison Renner 8/25/2015

Best of 2015 Staff Picks, contributions by Allison Renner 11/28/2015

A Fierce and Subtle Poison by Samantha Mabry, reviewed by Allison Renner 4/27/2016

The Light Fantastic by Sarah Combs, reviewed by Allison Renner 10/18/2016

It Looks Like This by Rafi Mittlefehldt, reviewed by Allison Renner 10/26/2016

I’m re-watching Dead to Me so I can fully appreciate the second season. I remember some things about the show, but not all, and the way it’s crafted, I can really appreciate the suspense and the slow revelations. I wrote about the show before, which I previously binged during a reading slump. I’m kind of in a reading slump again now, due to the current climate, but I’m watching the show and learning a lot about storytelling and writing.

It’s interesting, because I mostly write literary fiction and nonfiction, but I appreciate cliffhangers so much. I used to love Goosebumps books because every chapter had a cliffhanger, even if the resolutions were usually pretty hokey. If I’m not reading YA or memoirs, I like to read adult suspense novels for the cliffhangers (even though, again, the resolutions are often hokey and kind of infuriate me at this point). I’ve never tried to write my own suspenseful fiction; the one overly dramatic piece I wrote was still rooted in literary fiction. It makes me wonder if I should try to write what I seem most drawn to these days. Especially with the way Dead to Me is so artfully done, with characters (even the dead ones) being so multi-faceted. There’s something intriguing about how people can be so real, yet deceitful (which arguably makes them more real). I love how they are revealed little by little, seeming like one person until you learn a fact that casts them in a totally different light…

Camp NaNoWriMo starts on July 1st. I didn’t have a project in mind, but now it seems like I’m finding my way, and I’ll be attempting to write a suspenseful novella. If you’re participating in Camp NaNoWriMo (or any other writing challenge), what are you writing?

One year of daily writing. With everything going on, it doesn’t seem important, but I still don’t want to let it pass without acknowledging it.

One year of putting down my thoughts every day, whether it was morning pages, poetry, or fiction.

One year of pen to paper, ink staining my fingers.

One year down, many more to go.

April is National Poetry Month, which I love because I love themes and “holidays” and celebrations of the literary persuasion, especially those that help me with library and creative writing lesson plans. I love a month to push myself to read more poetry, because I have a growing collection I dip in and out of, but need to dip into more.

And also, I like writing poetry, even though I fear my skill level is stuck at “emo high schooler”, despite taking (and loving – and passing) a poetry workshop in college. I have a notebook dedicated to poems, and I was writing in it fairly regularly last month, until everything kind of fell apart and my brain turned to mush.

One of our prompt for Creative Writing Club last week was inspired both by National Poetry Month and the safer at home directive: Write a poem about how you feel being stuck in your house. (It had been raining every day by this point, so we were pretty much stuck inside.) Use emotion words so we can feel what you feel. As always, I participate along with them.

Without further ado, my Safer At Home Emotion Poem, to inspire a love of National Poetry Month in you all:

No commute, no traffic,
no business casual pants, no jacket.
Not going to school today,
but I can’t stay home and play.
Gotta work from the kitchen table
and teach my kid, if I’m able.

Ten months of daily writing, and what a strange month it’s been.

As I mentioned, I decided to step up my morning pages, and in March started writing daily scenes. The first half of the month was interesting, purely on the writing front…

• I feel like writing a scene a day rather than writing about my own life opened me to thinking about stories throughout the day. It turned my imagination on in the morning so I was in that mindset more, and more easily, all day. I initially thought doing the brain dump style of writing would clear everything out of my mind so I could focus on fiction, but it seemed to just get me more into my own head.
• I started writing… poetry? Like, not as my morning pages, but after the fact. Which I think goes back to the first point, of just opening my mind to creativity, and it coming out in a different form of expression.
• I noticed that there were days I continued a theme or a character. Not enough to complete a story, yet, but they were interesting explorations that could possibly be fleshed out into character studies or test scenes.

It’s hard to stay creative when the world is rapidly changing every day, every hour. And it’s hard to write morning pages when your morning routine… isn’t a routine anymore. When you wake up and walk a ten foot commute to your desk, and work more because there’s more to do, because you need to be available, because you’re rushing to fill those gaps that had never previously been considered. So I regressed to the brain dump method for the last week and a half, and still writing seemed like a chore. I’m still doing it, even if the habit I was forming is now a “whenever” and “whatever”. And the sad (beneficial?) truth is that we can adapt to anything, so I can carve a routine out of my current situation and get myself back on track. Things look different now, and it’s a strange new normal, but my brain is still functioning, my shoulders are less tense (some days), and I’m still writing.

Back in 2008 I started a blog, Allison Writes, just to have a place to put my thoughts. I had been online journaling off and on since Diary-x was a thing, and LiveJournal still holds a major piece of my heart. I’ve made many good friends through LiveJournal and the blogs that came after, and still follow/read many of them to this day. That’s to say nothing of the “online friends” who became “real” friends.

And that’s just a tiny fragment of my thoughts on this “heyday” concept. It seems harder to really connect with people online these days, even though it is now acceptable to make friends and dates online. My first few online friends and I totally lied about how we met to others in the beginning, because everyone thought that everyone else on the internet was a murderer catfishing you (though that term became common much later) and you were crazy and pathetic to make friends online. I even told my roommates that I met a date in line at the post office (what?!) to cover that we met online. For all the good the internet brought into my life, that was definitely a weird period of time…

But I digress. I’m not talking about having to cover up making online friends – I’m talking about making them in the first place. Or, more specifically (and more selfishly), how much I used to love blogging. Everything I did and thought was a blog post. Was this because I was 20 and thought I was the most interesting person ever? Maybe. (Probably.) Was this because it was 2008 and it was fun to read random, mundane shit about people you don’t know online? Also maybe.

In 2008, I wrote at least 3 posts a week, and was scheduling them way in advance because I had so much to say. Now, I aim to write 2 a month here, and on my book blog, and often wait until the last minute to meet that goal.

In 2008, I didn’t share my last name, but I posted pictures galore – of myself, my apartments’ interiors, my beer flights, my friends. Now, my last name is in my URL, but good luck finding a “selfie” of me – even on my own phone. Again, is part of this because I was 20 and thought I was fascinating and cute? Maybe. Probably. And now I am just boring and frumpy, and my web presence reflects that.

But also! The internet isn’t what it used to be. I understand that everything was always public (except perhaps “friends-only” LiveJournals) and could be found by anyone – randomly or on purpose. But somehow it still managed to feel like a fun little club where you met cool people who liked the same things as you and commented on your blog posts and wrote things you were interested in so you could comment on theirs, too. And thus a friendship was born, and sometimes you became closer and sometimes you guest-posted and sometimes you even met in person. And when you met, you knew intimate (depending on the blog and the person) details about someone you were just now seeing in the flesh. And it was amazing and intoxicating and totally changed how you formed relationships.

Because now, the internet seems cold and corporate, and blogs seem either boring or the equivalent of glossy magazine ads. Aka either too real or not real at all. You can make friends on Instagram, or keep up with the friends who used to write blogs you loved, but it’s too easy to scroll, click a heart (or double-tap the image if you have clumsy thumbs), and move on, without reading the caption below. Some people bill Instagram as “micro-blogging”, but is it really?

I try to avoid the hassle by using Instagram for book reviews. I don’t mind scrolling and liking a photo of a book I want to add to my TBR pile, or a book I just read and loved. I don’t mind scrolling and stopping to read the caption accompanying a cover that caught my eye. And I even tried to avoid the hassle by shutting down my personal blog in 2015 and only posting on my book blog, connected to said bookstagram. That’s why it’s hard to find a selfie of me – I’d rather share book covers and my thoughts on those books, which I still post on the blog because old habits die hard and, to be honest, I don’t want to inconvenience anyone mindlessly scrolling on Instagram. Do they want to read all my thoughts and feelings on this book? Maybe not. But if they click to my blog, they’ll get what they came for.

It’s a weird attitude to have towards social media, I know. (And don’t even ask me about Facebook, where tumbleweeds blow across my account.) And I’m sure I’m viewing things from 2008-2011 through rose-colored glasses. And I’m sure that mostly, I just miss the act of sitting down at the keyboard every few days and having thoughts spew from my fingers and me thinking I’m interesting and funny, instead of criticizing every word my pen puts on paper, editing before the sentence is done.

So before you ask, it’s not you, Internet, it’s me.

I’ve been writing every day for nine months now. It’s an accomplishment, and I should be proud (and I am…), but in true me fashion, I have to analyze it to death.

See, I’ve been writing morning pages. Sure, I’m getting up before 5:30am and putting pen to paper (literally), but it’s just a brain dump, or thinking about the day, or remembering a dream.

I need to remember the habit I’m forming is important – that’s the goal. The dedication of waking up early and writing.

I might not be writing fiction every day, but I’m writing fiction more. I still miss being in writing workshops that pushed me to finish a story, to polish it until I felt comfortable (or delightfully uncomfortable) with others reading it.

I loved how stories came to me from nowhere, and stuck with me until I got them on paper. I’m getting better at this – Judy Blume recommended keeping an idea box, so you best believe I’m keeping an idea box. Story concepts don’t stick with me like they used to, with my memory now being like a sieve, and overloaded with all of the things I need to do every day to keep me and my kid afloat. Writing down random thoughts and observances helps me stay aware of the untold stories around me and inside me. I don’t have to figure out the whole story in that moment; I can jot down an idea and come back to it later. As someone who can now barely remember things I need to do day to day without a list, this box is the perfect solution. The hardest part is finding time to come back to those ideas…

But that all got me re-thinking my morning pages… that and how Judy Blume said “Don’t think BOOK, just write a scene, then another scene…” (Yes, clearly I am still doing the MasterClass I vowed to finish in December, but hey – slow and steady wins the race?) (Is anyone racing me?) Maybe instead of trudging along with daily writing being morning pages, I need to make it scenes. Then I’m writing fiction, and hopefully working towards completing something. Win-win? It seems like a nice March goal, anyway – worth a try.

I’ve been watching High Fidelity on Hulu, trying not to binge because it’s so good, I want to make it last. I read High Fidelity in high school – maybe freshman or sophomore year? When music meant everything and a book, and book character, that understood that was like my bible. I saw the movie not long after, and loved both so much that I read and re-read my paperback, and (accidentally!) stole a VHS from Blockbuster. You take your Say Anything John Cusack – my definition of him is Rob from the record shop. (That being said, Zoe Kravitz completely kills it as the new Rob.)

As someone who narrates her daily life and breaks the fourth wall (wait, is there a fourth wall in real life?), I really enjoyed (and still enjoy) seeing that reflected in fiction and film. Watching the show now, years after last reading the book or watching the movie, I still feel “seen” and understood. I am an adult female with a black heart, but this show rewinds my memories to high school and college and helps me harness those emotions more than reading young adult fiction has done for me lately. I don’t know what that says about me, but overall it’s nice to remember I did used to feel feelings and have hopes and dreams. The show itself has taken me to a place that should help me finish a work that has been… a decade? in the making. A short story collection centered around music, one playlist in particular, and if there’s anything any version of Rob understands, it’s the perfect playlist.

So here I am, slowly watching episode after episode of High Fidelity, listening to that playlist, thinking about my words and my stories and my memories, trying to get it all down and out there so… who knows what will happen to it, but at least it will be done.

See some of my thoughts on other books to tv shows or movies:
You
Bird Box
Dead to Me and Good Girls

Last semester I taught a Creative Writing club for 3rd – 7th graders. Besides learning a lot about how to teach writing, and how to encourage creativity in young kids, I learned a lot about my own writing. About how it’s one thing to write to pursue publication, but also that it’s important to have fun. You still need to write to write, create for the sake of creating, get stories on paper to get them out of your mind, even if they’re not “literary” or “marketable”.

At the end of the semester, we created a zine. I’ve wanted to make a zine since I was enchanted by Jennifer Mathieu’s Moxie. It seemed like an engaging way for the students to share their writing, so everyone made a one page spread that we compiled into a single booklet, copied, stapled, and distributed. We wanted something to show for all the hard work of the semester, but also something that was fun.

It made me remember the zine I created after finishing a semester of poetry workshop. It wasn’t that I had pushed it out of my mind, it was just that I created a single copy on a whim, and had never done anything with it. At the time, I had already taken fiction workshops and knew the importance of feedback and revision, but the practice seemed totally different for poetry. More involved. More delicate. I was proud of the work and wanted to do something with it, instead of letting the files stagnate on my hard drive.

I think that’s important for me now, too. I wrote something, and even if it’s not published, even if it’s not submitted, I can turn it into something more, something to keep, something to acknowledge. It’s an accomplishment, just getting the words out of my head, and I like having something to show for it. If the process itself is fun for me, then that’s a bonus!