The Memorial Rainbow

So yeah, before I get into this doozy of a blog entry, I'd like to introduce you to my book.


It's available as a free download as an .EPUB now; it's been submitted for Nook and iBookstore distribution, all free of charge. (Kindle hates me -- it's ninety nine cents up there.) The book will remain up for you to read until about mid-May or so, at which point I'll take it down to revise and get the final version. At which point I will try to forward it to the right people. And I will pray. And maybe something will happen. More than likely, it won't.

Maybe I'm just being all time-of-the-monthlike. I know I'm not scared. Okay. I lied. I'm totally scared. I want to run and never look back. I really want to go to bed right now, because I'm starting to get a headache again. I don't know how to have an actual day off. I'm always the one who keeps busy and doesn't stop. I even started working on an old book again today, and I re-edited about the first twenty five pages or so before I realized how long I had been sitting at the Secret Starbucks, freezing my butt off and pouring over my computer that refuses to move as fast as it did. (Ringo and I are in denial. I still want my new desktop.)

I don't want to go home tonight. I just want to sleep over here, to relax and be anywhere but where I've chosen to be. God, though, I realized I left my work notebook at home, and I'll probably need it in the morning. Maybe. Maybe I'll just do without it. I hope Dylan walks me part of the way home. I realized I don't have any food for lunch tomorrow, either.

I'm just tired.

My mind has been going crazy since I finished the book. It's been all, great, what next? And I've been hesitant to work on anything as far as a sequel, because I want the first one done and sold and out there before I get there. I am kind of working on a small side story, but nothing more than that (and it's more background than anything). I've been trying to think of what to work on next, and it's been taking me back to who I used to be. But more about that in a few minutes.

Last Friday morning after I woke up, I rolled over and checked my Twitter feed. Beth Revis had updated her own feed, saying she was going to NYC that night as part of a tour. And it took me a few minutes to realize that, hey, <i> I live in the most populous city in the country. </i> And I had this Friday off, and my new favorite author was going to be here, tonight.

I cried all the way down from Dylan's place to my apartment. One of my regrets is that I never got to meet Brian, and now I was getting to meet Beth. I was super-nervous, but Dylan dragged me over. She signed my copy of Across the Universe, the one I got the night I knew I wanted to be a writer. I'll never get that experience back.

But it's gotten me thinking about my writing. I don't want to stop. I want to continue writing, no matter what happens. And it makes me think about the last time I wrote like this, the last time I was so inspired to write. I thought about what I would want to write next, and it made me realize I've been running from something really important.

I've been running from a story. From characters who won't leave me alone, years and years after I dumped them. Or did I dump them? It's a bit complicated. Places come back to me. Songs remind me of times that have passed, times before my life spiraled out of control. It was a place to hide, but more than that...it was a place to flourish, to grow. A place to explore. The Underground. All of those times, when I was writing before, I wasn't running away from the 'musician' or the person I was supposed to be. I was building my craft. I was doing what I was supposed to do. All of this time that I've spent fooling around and hiding behind my blanket and making bad relationship decisions and blaming myself for every little thing -- all of that is a waste of time!

So for those of you who are going to hate what I'm going to do...because there will be you. I'm sorry. I'm really, really sorry. But I came on this journey to find myself, to rescue myself, the most important person, and I've found that. It's taken me so long to get to this point. I'm kind of a late bloomer. But I'm right where I need to be. I'm finding my way back, and when I got there, somebody unexpected was waiting for me.

A friend. Someone who reads a lot. Someone who became my muse, even for just a short time. A character of mine, who was also out of step with their surroundings, who felt alone but had parents who trusted and taught them, showed them the way. Whose destiny was bigger than themselves, who found true love, and their destiny that was so different than what they had anticipated. I don't know why, but perhaps I foretold the future with this character.

Who are they? I'll have to show you later. I have some old records to dig up. Or maybe I'll just create some new ones.

Goodnight, moon.

Hope is what I have, and what I have
But is my power near enough?
Is love enough for destiny?
And I -- what can I say of me?

I am still in love with my celery-hummus combination, and have now completely depleted one tin of tomatoes.

Today, I am going to start off my journal entry talking about how much I hate the S40 bus. I hate it. I hate it hate it hate it. It's this hatred that makes me want to move to Staten Island and get Navigator-Widget (my Yaris) back so I DON'T HAVE TO RIDE THE BUS TO WORK ANYMORE. No. Seriously. It's that bad.

Because the S40 bus sucks balls, I am left waiting for the bus and the ferry and everything else, and it is good to have something to do. On the weekends, it's Ringo as I work on Cosmic's first draft (which is coming along quite swimmingly; I'm 300 pages in). But I can't lug my poor Macbook everywhere; Ringo wouldn't want to be lugged anyway. That's where reading comes in.

I told myself that when I moved, I would not buy books unless I absolutely needed them. Manga broke that rule, as Book-Off is ridiculously cheap and it helps my Japanese -- but none of this YA stuff, right? WRONG. Across the Universe actually got recommended by a NYCNanoer named Jeremy on Twitter -- I knew the book, because I had seen it in Wal-Mart, but had resolved to go for it after it came out in paperback.

Well, the sequel's out, it came out in paperback, and after I figured out the print version was not any more expensive than the ebook, I got it at my 'local' Holy Land! Winning. (You'll remember, if you look back, that I touched on that shortly when I wrote my crying "I want to be a writer" rant a few weeks back.) Because it came so highly recommended, and because I knew about it, I had no trouble paying for it even though I'm cheap-ass broke. (Such is living in Manhattan.) I figured that if I didn't like the book, I could always donate it to a library or something.

I have the book still in my bag. That book isn't going anywhere soon. It'll probably be all bent out of shape in a while, because I am probably going to read and reread and mark in it and take out sticky notes and eff the entire thing up. And then go buy another copy. Maybe.

Needless to say that I loved it. I literally couldn't put it down. I was reading it on my lunch break, when the biggest part of the book (in my opinion) hit me. It was so much more eye-opening than I thought it could be. What I liked the best about the style was that it proved to me that alternating POVs could be done. I'd seen it done before in one of Sharon Creech's books, but never with a debut like this. To hear from both Amy and Elder was special -- and great timing, as well! It makes me confident as a writer to see this done when my own book has alternating POVs.

Although I have, like, seven narrators in my book, and we'll have to see how that shakes out. I think that's the only thing I have going against Cosmic right now. We'll just have to find someone who believes in me, nee?

But my favorite character in the book wasn't even Amy or Elder. It was Harley, the side character, Elder's 'best friend' in the book. They keep all the artistic kids cooped up in one building in the book, and Harley's always painting -- mostly koi fish. He's got paint in his hair and paint on his clothes and paint in his fingernails and God paint everywhere. He comes into the story a lot, helping Amy and Elder with their mystery (when he's not painting, of course).

I like the connection -- and I guess only I am able to make this connection -- between koi and koi. I don't know, I was thinking about it on the boat, but koi for the fish is identical in the English language to the short form of 'koibito,' which translates roughly to 'lover' in Japanese. The connection I made was less about an actual person and more about the 'koi' part, which represents the actual act of loving here. The 'ai' that so many people know of is a romantic love, but 'koi' translates to a passionate love. 'Ai' means "I love you." 'Koi' means "I'm in love with you."

And I think it accurately describes how obsessed Harley could get in his world. It reminded me of being knee-deep in synesthetic color, completely swamped out, knowing exactly which color I was going to use next to compose a piece. It's a passion, a 'koi' type of feeling. A place to go and drown yourself in, to live when life is not worth living the way it was. Painting was an escape for Harley -- or at least it became an escape after his girlfriend died (not a spoiler, she's dead at the beginning). It's that passion, that fire, that losing yourself in your art feeling that keeps him going, knowing that no matter how much he gets lost, there's an end goal -- the landing of the ship. (Yes, it all turns decidedly Emily-ish at the end. My readers know EXACTLY what I'm talking about. It's spoiler material.)

It was somewhere on the boat home that I realized that Beth, as an author, reminds me a whole lot of Brian. They're both people who love(d) writing, but most important, they're storytellers. Brian worked several bum jobs doing this and that and everything and just enjoying life and then became an author. Beth taught school for years, never giving up on her dream (but I'm sure feeling lots of doubt). Neither one of them had everything figured out at the beginning, and I think that's how life is supposed to be.

In addition, I think Harley reminds me a lot of Felldoh, my favorite of Brian's characters. Both feel an intense passion for something, but both also long desperately for freedom, and both find it in the same way. The way I think about Harley is similar to the way I thought about Felldoh as a kid, and it was in that moment, reading Martin the Warrior in sixth grade class, that I knew that this novel thing was special, and I wanted to be a part of it.

I want to hug Harley. Drag out my crayons and color with him. Even sing to him, let him know it's all right to feel anger and hatred and pain. That feeling in his eyes, in between flying and, well...that little bit of pain he felt, that reminded me of the little bit of fear I felt, the only bit of hesitance I felt when thinking about moving to New York.

But flying is so worth it.

Swim away, little koi fish. And while you're at it, can I come join you? We'll go paint in the stars.

Beth, if you are reading this, it's true that your characters are not your own. Thank you. Thank you so much.
Oh, and by the way, I'm not done with this. (runs off to get the 530)

It's 7:11PM right now. I'm sitting up in the B&N at 53rd and Lex, working on Cosmic. I'm on page 169 out of 504; I'm sure the final word count will change, among other things. I don't know how long I'll sit here without getting uncomfortable; I have to move often. Dylan is downstairs, in a public space, doing a rehearsal for a play. The dorkfaces downstairs wouldn't let me charge my laptop, so I came back up here. (I did buy books here earlier -- I have a receipt. Someone recommended Across the Universe, so I bought that, as well as Leanna Renee Hieber's latest! I was super stoked about that.)

Writing makes me cry. It makes me cry in ways that music doesn't. I cried writing in Shriver one time, just happy to cry, to feel something. I bawled my eyes out when Dylan put his copy of Spangler Gotham right up beside Brian in the bookstore we were in. (See all the Pondicherry entries I wrote. Brian Jacques is, and will always be, my favorite author. He's the one who got me started.) And I kind of teared up even sitting up here, although my left leg is about to go numb after six minutes of sitting/thumbing through my new books/crossing and uncrossing my legs. Damn this skirt. At least I have leggings on.

I love B&N not because it's B&N, but because it feels like home. It could be any bookstore, really. (Borders...teeheehee! Some of you will eventually get that Cosmic reference.) When I look at the books here, I see possibilities, endless, spreading out as a canvas in front of me. I especially like the kids section, where nothing is set in stone and everything is a discovery.

I remember being a kid and going to the huge Barnes and Noble in Easton, being awed at all of the books there. I remember being even YOUNGER than that, reading when nobody else knew what that was. From the beginning of time, I was certainly a freak; my synesthesia made reading easily (but, somehow, writing an impossibility -- I hadn't figured out how to make the colors myself on page). I was the kid who got called on in class to read notes. When I was in kindergarten, one day we did a scavenger hunt, but the teacher was absent. In the sub's notes, she put my name down as the one to read the clues.

But my ability for reading, as I mentioned before, did not translate well into writing. My first attempts at putting together words were messy; I remember trying to write a recipe for peanut butter and jelly and just writing the first letters of each word, unable to do the rest. I loved making up stories in my head, putting them to music, but could not write them down that well, if at all. My stories were first translated through drawing, and then through music, which both developed around the same time.

When I created stories as a young kid, I always assumed they would grow to become animated pictures. This was in the Disney golden age, and Don Bluth's name was still big as well. (The irony of An American Tail right now, I SWEAR!) But as I grew, two different things happened -- I was teased for my drawings, and I was renowned for my musical prowess. Both I considered as just playing -- I just had fun with it! I mean, yes, I wanted to do that someday, to have my pictures on the big screen with their respective musics.

To create with people. But I couldn't find anybody who understood, who could play with colors and pictures the way I could, who wanted to spend the rest of their life coloring. And I was alienated.

In sixth grade was when it happened -- I picked up my first book by Brian. It wasn't a place to hide, really -- I hid in my music. But I could see that worlds could be built with words. I wanted to do that -- not because it was fun, or really because it was a challenge. I wanted to create worlds like that, as well. But I also sensed that you did not need a group of people to create a novel, like you needed a group to create an animated film. You didn't have to (at least immediately) have everybody telling you how to do it, or not to do it.

So, I tried. God, how awful I was for a really REALLY fucking long time. Totally horrid. I wrote parts of books and full books for at least eight years before I was even remotely good.

Writing has never been like music for me. Music just comes to me naturally. Ever since I've been tinkering around with that eight-key piano at age six, I've been writing music. I learned, but I created. Writing music was as natural as breathing for me. By contrast, writing words was like constipation -- I had to do it, and I really wanted to do it, but it was HARD AS HELL. (Sorry for any mental images.) And I don't even remember when it started -- from the very beginning, when music took over and people took notice of me because of it, there was an expectation. It was like there was a star beside "musician" on the list of things I did, with the star reading, "You better fucking do something with this gift, or it will be a waste." Naturally, because my parents pushed me to do music, to play and to be part of performances, I assumed I had to do something with that. But I didn't. That's not what I wanted at all. What I wanted was to continue playing with music, but I didn't want to be forced into doing something with it. To this day, part of my heart still feels like a failure because I didn't become a famous pop star at sixteen. But the 98% of the rest of me knows that's ridiculous, that I never wanted that anyway.

But still...I won't lie when I said that's part of why I wanted to move to New York. I wanted opportunities, I wanted to create with people, yes. But I don't really want to write music with people. I just want to write. I mean...words. Music is easy. Novels are hard as hell. I sit down at a piano and it just happens. By contrast, I've been planning Cosmic since July, and it's January and the mofo is nowhere near done. I am not talented at writing. AT ALL. But I have worked my ass off at it, and something that's usually so solitary has become a group event (thanks to that thing I do every November).

Don't you get it? I'll probably never push myself at music. That's not a bad thing. I am horribly talented at music, because of my synesthesia and perfect pitch, but it's always been within my reach. I've never had to work for it. By contrast, the words that sit on the shelves in front of me were something I once couldn't make out.

I will never be a famous musician. But I will be a famous author.

I want to write.

I want to write.

Okay...NOW I'm crying.

When I think of Dylan and how focused he gets on what he does, I think of how I write. When we were sitting at Panera earlier in Queens, Dylan was all tunnel on his acting gig websites, answering emails and this and that and blah blah blah. I was kind of peeved -- we were supposed to be having a planning meeting about my own story -- but I eventually just went back to Cosmic. And then I realized that I could be working on some of my music instead, but I was working on Cosmic. It's not that I don't want to work on music -- I do all the time. But when I get a completed album, or a completed song, I don't get that relief, that sense of satisfaction, of "I did it!" that I get when I finish a chapter of Cosmic, forbid an entire book. (I think I cried at the last write-in when I actually completed my 110K book in a month. That or I bought myself a drink.)

Knowing that this is what I want -- to give my book to some sixth grader and to tell them that anything is possible -- that's what I want. It's what I seriously want. And God, now I'm crying like the woman in Something's Gotta Give, all over the place in front of my Mac and typing like crazy (although she was writing a play). Effing eich, why don't I have tissues.

This is what I want, more than anything. Maybe I should go back to school not for music, but for creative writing? I mean, I'll be living out of a box either way, I suppose. Perhaps I'm like the kid who just now realized what she wants to be when she grows up.

And tomorrow I'm gonna wake up and I'm gonna tell myself for the umpteenth time that I'm a musician, and that I gotta be world famous or my talents are worth nothing. Perhaps I should have set fire to the 530 instead of Brian's books in Pondicherry. I am not leaving music behind, though -- I'm just becoming more at home among these books.

Perhaps.

Or maybe I will wake up in the morning, grab my best friend, go to Starbucks, get another frapp, and edit the thing that is most important to me. More important than any song, any performance, more precious than any time I've done an audition, more difficult than any time I've put my violin to my chin or have sat down at a piano. When I play, I close my eyes, I lose myself. But when I write, I open my eyes, I find myself. Perhaps that's the difference.

Will you help me? You, the reader. The person I've written to, in one way or another, for years. For my world of music only contains me, but I write for people, even an invisible people. Not help me write, but help me be myself. Help me put my thumbs up, to Ringo, to Thunderbolt, and weave a string of words. I once wrote that I was like a spider, spinning tales, making all of the words flow together, carefully choosing which words to put into the story. Help me know not which words to choose, but when to ask for help, when to post, when to be excited, when to take a chance. But most importantly, help me be me. Not the me I never wanted to be, but the me I've been searching for all along.

That me is right here.

And that me needs a huge box of Kleenex, a huge reality check...and to work on her most precious thing.