Day 1

I read somewhere that it takes 66 days to form a new habit. In the interest of getting into the habit of blogging regularly, I plan to publish one post a day for the next 66 days, finishing up on October 13, 2020. Content-wise, each day's post can include anything that crosses my mind and that I hope will spark something in yours, whether poetry, prose, art, or the occasional rant. Here's to 66 days of finding something to say :)

For Day 1, an untitled poem:

 

To the boy in the blue raincoat,

Straight and tall against a greying sky—

 

I saw you through the window of the bus

And sat and let the thought pass by

That when you’re that tall

You don’t walk, you stride

With nothing to hide

 

You kept straight ahead, not looking back

And I—

I stayed in my seat on the bus

It looked like rain

 

But in that split-second—

Fleeting, going, gone—

I would have given anything

To know you would have stopped for me

If I called out your name

To be walking next to you

Wherever you were going—

I’d be struggling to keep up

But you might have slowed down

 

You didn’t turn your head to look

Till the bus turned the corner

And then you were out of sight

All too soon, out of mind

There’s a metaphor in there somewhere

For someone else to find

 

It was three seconds, maybe four

I was late for work already

I felt the first few raindrops

 And walked a little faster

 

But I’ve been staring straight ahead

For half an hour now

Not hearing the voices on the phones—

“How may I direct your call”—

I blink—

Why are the walls still standing?

 

A modern-day Eurydice

I dare you to glance back at me

And sink me in the depths where I belong

Consign me to the hell that I deserve

To castles built of sticks and stones

Where I can bind my broken bones

Where I can wonder why I cared

If you looked back for a moment—

 

One throwaway day in February

When the sky was cloudy

And it looked like rain

 

 

Till tomorrow,

Clara

Born of Ragged Perfection

My writing process has never been very systematic. Despite all the structure I impose on myself at later stages in the process, my initial thoughts tend to flow best without too many rules to hem them in.  Nowhere does this haphazardness show up more than in my first drafts of poems and songs, which can read more like lists of brain-stormed images and metaphors than anything resembling meaning.

Case in point, this first draft:

The lines read as follows (cross-outs replicated):

And this is born of ragged perfection

Edges of a glimpse of glory

Past the never-ending story

Running off the gold-dipped (gilted) pages

Into chasms down below

There's an edge and there's the fraying

Threads unraveled, never staying

Put--unraveling bit by bit as long

as motion we're in motion

Stand still and

Bit by bit the thread unwinds

Stretching out in life and time

Peaks and va

Zig-zagged edges, then the stil

winds and turns

Scarlet threads within the maze

till the waves all straighten out

Every leaving naught to chance or doubt

The scarlet cord hung down a city wall

Straightens, flattens, turns into a line

Flatlining on the heart monitor--

No mo All stands still.

 

 

So this fragment definitely has some potential. There're some phrases I really like, one of which became the title of this blog post. The extended metaphor of a fraying thread representing a human life I also appreciate. As long as we're in motion we unravel. 

 

These lines were written as the second half of a song which takes place in the second half of a musical that I started writing at fourteen and promptly forgot about as soon as freshman year of high school started rearing its ugly head. Blech, high school. Revisiting the half-finished musical years later, I found the song's lyrics predictably terrible, sounding as if they were written by an angsty fourteen-year-old, mainly because they were written by an angsty fourteen-year-old. But the lyrics weren't irredeemably terrible: they were bursting with potential. I just needed to breathe new life into them. Hence the lines above.

 

I'll be honest: I didn't end up using this fragment at all. Nada. None of it.

 

At least not the way I was expecting to.

 

None of these lines made it into the final cut of the song. Introducing a new metaphor about the unwinding thread of life so close to the end of the song turned out to be confusing and unnecessary. 

 

What, then, was the use of writing these lines?

 

Potential.

 

Potential yet to be actualized.

 

The tingly-in-the-fingertips feeling of almost-thereness that I get when I read them. The snapshots of memories that spring to mind as I scan each line--fleeting, going, gone. The reminder that not everything I write needs to see the light of day, and that I write for all the shadows in between the page and the reader. Being able to determine that these lines turned out to be useless for the project they were intended for encourages me, because I am now assured that I know my vision for the musical well enough to know what not to include--even after years not working on it!

I realize that this isn't the most helpful post for aspiring writers. Hey, guess what? Some stuff you write might be completely useless, and the lines you like the most might just be the ones you have no use for. Not exactly an encouraging message. The only advice I could give at the end of this would be that if you, like me, have piles of throwaway scribblings that you're still holding onto, even though you feel like you should get rid of them--keep them with you a little longer.  Give your words time to breathe. Look at them with fresh eyes once you've forgotten what you wrote.

All will be well. All in time.

 

 

 

Till next time,

Clara

 

After All This Time

Darlings, it has been quite the hiatus. Aside from an angsty ramble of a letter to myself that I published a few weeks ago (and I refuse to believe that garbage exists, much less that I posted it on the interwebs. Denial is a heck of a drug.)I haven't blogged for three years now. Yikes. Life, ya know.

In our time apart (and in no particular order), I have:

• graduated college (woot woot!)
• applied and been accepted to law school, which starts this fall
• Finished a 300+ page Percy Jackson fanfic
• Staunchly refused to edit said fanfic for over a year
• Started a sequel to said fanfic (not having edited it)
• Questioned some life decisions
• Wrote a bunch of mostly sad poems to distract myself
• Started writing a musical because why not
• Escaped some more problems (see above note on denial in the first paragraph. I'll wait.)

As you can see, I've been quite productive, all things considered.In addition to all the writing, my days have been spent (1)doing an absurd amount of online shopping; (2) altering so many clothes in my attempts at tailored, vintage perfection; (3)discovering indie folk bands on Spotify. Again, productivity.

Oh, and did I mention the *GLOBAL PANDEMIC* that I'm currently living through right now? 

2020, what a year. It's been surreal as a recent grad to watch the world fall apart and come together like a chaotic pulsing heart. Who knows what the other side of this will look like. It was partially to journal my impressions of this wild time that I decided to take up blogging again. One day, I'll want to look back and retrace what I was thinking when all this went down...or will I?

Going forward, this blog will look a little different. I plan to organize posts better into categories and to have pages for each of my WIPs, where I'll post chapters and "behind-the-scenes" types of posts about the writing and editing process. My little corner of the internet here did start out as a writing-focused blog, and I intend to keep it that way. The changes will focus on how to make my content more accessible to y'all and more personal to me. I want to share what my works mean to me, not just what they contain and why they were written. For someone who delays feeling her emotions till she's had time to process everything else, and who hates revealing personal things, this'll be a *fun* challenge for me. But hey, there's a first time for everything. 

Here's to new beginnings.
Here's to tweaking things that don't work.
Here's to taking ourselves with a grain of salt and never missing the comic relief in any disaster.

Thanks for sticking around for so long, my loves. And if you're new here, thanks for checking out this mess and reading this far! 
To close out this post, enjoy an assortment of photos that seemed to fit, complete with vague explanations:

Moi. Your favorite sporadic rambler.

 

From my notes app not too long ago. A whole mood.

 

Quarantine = free time that MUST be spent inside. Ergo, art.

   
And finally, a tiny video showcasing my handy-dandy mask-and-scarf-holding-contraption (new name suggestions appreciated). We're all in this crazy time together--might as well have some fun with it.

Till next time,

Clara

Dear Future Clara

Dear Future Clara,

What even is this but a motley mismanagement of words. My dear, my dear. You write without knowing where the words are going, only that it’s been too long since you’ve created anything and the overwhelming urge to vomit words on a page must be satisfied. Let there be light. Let there be madness.Let there be.

 

And you scan the paragraph you just wrote, and it strikes you how pretentious you sound, but you keep writing anyway because no one will ever read this but you and maybe two people and a super-advanced NYC subway rat on the internet, and let’s be honest—your future self could use a laugh. In the distant future when you somehow learn to stop taking yourself too seriously, you will appreciate this mindless verbiage and you will be glad you took the time to do something pointless and stupid and time-consuming. At least I hope you will.

Prose. Prose is the problem because you feel like you have to be candid and honest with yourself when you write in prose. Ambiguous fragments strung together into an indecipherable poem? The angst. The power. The presence. But prose demands substance as well as style, and it makes it harder to disguise a lack of either. So in typical you-fashion, you get around the problem of prose by hiding behind metaphors that take on a life of their own, writing in slow downward spirals that never quite hit rock-bottom. Cue self-referential example. How meta.

Were you making a point in any of this?

You will find your own voice as a writer. Eventually, you will stop having to hide behind ambiguity and purple prose. Your words will be a finely tempered steel blade, cutting to the heart of the matter with clean precision. You’ll stop dithering. You’ll stop second-guessing. You’ll stop toning yourself down on the page.You'll stop hyping yourself up on the page. Halfway between the Slump and the Mania, you will flow on the page, and your words will be made of breath and blood and bone.

But until then, you find refuge behind a wall of words, and you succumb to the need to write angsty poetry as is your birthright as a teenager because for the next almost-two-months, that’s still true.

Eyelids drooping
A slight tremor in the fingers
Betrays the weariness of nights spent awake till the early hours of the morning
A silent vigil spent reading and re-reading
Regrets already forming but realization delayed
Was it worth it all?
Of course it was, for the time being
Let tomorrow worry about itself, no need to chase it down
Sufficient for the day is its own trouble

That was terrible. You actually hate that, at least in the moment. Maybe it’ll grow on you, and maybe if it does that will simply confirm your worst suspicions about your lack of taste. Who’s to say?

But pointlessness for its own sake, though it does have its charms, tends to get old after a while. And you’re bored right now of the immense pointlessness of this first letter because you had grand fantasies of its being a profound exercise in self-reflection and instead it is a steaming pile of garbage wrapped up in pretty language. Ahahahahahahahahahahaha the idiocy of it all.

More to come later.

Much love,

Past Clara

FanFest: The Gamble of Orpheus

Hi everyone!

Thanks for keeping up with this rather sporadic poster, and for being willing to beta-read my fanfiction, The Gamble of Orpheus. So first, a few general tips and guidelines about the fanfiction:

• The Gamble of Orpheus is intended to be a full-length fanfiction of at least 50,000 words. Also, it is a sequel to a previously written work, The Son of Hestia. I will be happy to email the prequel to those of you who might be interested, but it is not necessary to read the works in order to follow the plot of either one.

• The Gamble of Orpheus contains the following additions/inconsistencies with the PJO canon:

• Children of the Big Three, though rare, are possible.

• The exception to the "Demigods can't use technology" rule is known as "godly immunity": if a half-blood is using technology to exercise a godly ability, he or she is shielded from the effects. As soon as the technology is no longer necessary to help with the godly ability, it attracts monsters again.

• The virgin goddess, Hestia, has claimed certain heroes (demigod and mortal) as her children. Together, these chosen by the goddess form a loose network of communication across the United States.

That being said, here's the blurb for The Gamble of Orpheus:

The ancient Greek myths are back, if anyone's there to watch them play out. Alex is Orpheus. Lauren is Eurydice. Kira is missing. And James is just about to lose it. Can an ending be rewritten thousands of years later? Can a teenager bargain with the Lord of the Dead? And can all four half-bloods stay alive long enough to see the end of the story? Not if the gods of Olympus have anything to say about it.

And here's the first two chapters (more to come later); enjoy! Please see the guidelines below the excerpt for feedback procedures before commenting. Thanks!

From Anna

Hullo, hullo!  As you’ve probably guessed, I’m Anna Groover, from Girl with the Binder (girlwiththebinder.blogspot.com), my blog where I write overly long posts about reading, writing, and eating pokeberries (spoiler: don’t do it).

Clara approached me in February (I think, but who knows?) with the idea of doing this blog swap, and you have no idea how excited I am to be here.  She’s always been an awesome friend to me, since years ago when she came up to me sporting a cheek-splitting grin, shook my hand enthusiastically, and said, “Hi, I’m Clara!!!”  And you know what’s even better than doing a blog swap with an awesome writer?  Doing a blog swap with an awesome friend.  Fortunately for me, she happens to be both.

My topic is officially writing and inspiration.  If you’ve read my blog, you know that I have trouble staying on one topic, and I tend to ramble, but for y’all’s sakes, I will try to keep it as trimmed and succinct as possible (ha!).

I’ll probably put in little clips of my writing whenever I feel like it, but the first, and main, piece is here; Rivenbark, one of my favorite things I’ve ever written.  I was actually unsure about using this piece, because it’s over a year old, and I have newer stuff, but in the end it came down to inspiration, and Rivenbark is a great example of inspiration.  Below you see the first two scenes of the book.

 . . . . . . . . .

Theodore was reading the morning newspaper as he did every day when his mother entered.  He had originally started doing it only to imitate his father, but it soon developed into a habit.  Mother placed a kiss on his cheek and glanced over his shoulder.  “Oh, Theodore, do you see that?  The water situation just seems to get worse and worse every day over there.” 

He folded the newspaper, following his father’s example.  “Women should not read the news.  It ruins their disposition.”  “Don’t worry, Mother.  I’m sure the drought will be over soon.”  He attempted to kiss her cheek, hit her ear instead, and focused on the wall clock behind her, a little ashamed of himself for being too distracted to give his mother proper affection.

“And how’s my son today?” Father bellowed as he stormed his way over the stairs, seeming as always as if his very presence would tear the house apart in an instant.  His grey beard was neatly trimmed, with not a hair out of place, and his suit was flat and perfectly fitted.  Theodore would never expect differently.

Still, he mused, perhaps a surprise would be welcome just once.  Perhaps Mother would neglect to put her hair up before coming downstairs, or Father would dress in a t-shirt and overalls.  At the thought, he smiled.  The image was just too ridiculous.

“I’m well, Father.”  He took a sip of his black coffee and straightened his tie.  “And yourself?”

“Grand!”

And there.  That was it.  The Norwood family had accomplished its daily morning interaction, and they were set until dinner.  Theodore returned to his newspaper, feeling a strange combination of disappointment and relief.

Father cleared his throat.  “Actually, Theodore, there’s something we’d like to discuss with you.”  He waited for his son to look up, a long pause taking place, during which Mother could be heard pouring milk into her tea, adding sugar, and stirring.  She sounded nervous, Theodore thought, listening with rapt attention, though he seemed utterly fascinated with the paper in his hands.  At last, as she sat down next to him at the table, he looked up, fully meeting both of their eyes before speaking a word.

“Oh?”

“I’m going to see a client in Norway in two weeks.  We--your mother and I--due to several complications in this case, are going to be staying there for four weeks, which means you will be staying here alone.”

They looked at him for a reaction.  Theodore didn’t give them one.  It was obvious they expected some kind of response: fear, irritation, happiness, et cetera.  However, he didn’t see how them going to Norway for four weeks would be that dramatic of a change.  He was sixteen years old and could take care of himself.  The servants would prepare food, and his time would be spent with Sebastian.  The only things he would be losing were distantly affectionate greetings in the morning and sober candle-lit dinners in the evening that never amounted to much.

“Theodore?” his mother prompted, and he responded with a smile.  The kind, charming smile he forced on his face when confronted with irritating but important strangers. 

“I wish you well on your journey and thank you for your trust in me.”  Father frowned.  Mother’s face fell.  Theodore picked up his coffee cup and took a sip, the dark liquid tasting like guilt in his mouth.

Two weeks later, he sat in that very spot right after his parents left for the airport.  He found himself looking at the clock, at its habitually swinging pendulum.  The tick tock reminded him of the passing of time, and he almost growled in frustration, but instead formed his features into a cynical smile.  Clocks were prone to habit.  How typical.  And how very depressing.

“It’s inexcusable,” Theodore announced.  “Absolutely inexcusable, Sebastian.  I find myself bored.”

Sebastian looked over at his friend, noticing the way Theodore’s eyes were narrowed in frustration, his lips pressed in a straight, firm line.  Every feature of him spoke rigidity.  Though only sixteen years old, Theodore Richard Norwood IV was more imposing a picture than most adults.

“How about a trip to Arrowood?” he suggested. 

“I have been to Arrowood,” the boy said, his voice dripping with disapproval.  “I like it.  It belongs to me.  But I have been there, and there is a whole world outside of mine that I have not explored.”

“And?”

“I want to explore it.  I’ve come to realize that there is something that appeals to me about always taking the hardest way.”  Theodore’s gaze was unreadable, his face bathed in evening light as he stared out across the river.  A face like stone, Sebastian thought.  A wall more impenetrable than any ancient civilization had ever built.  “If you’re trying to make things as difficult as possible, you’ll never be disappointed.  Life will be regretless.”  A hint of a smile cracked the stone wall.  “Of course, it’s hope that gets in the way.  It’s hard to prepare for despair when there’s a nagging expectation that something good will happen.”

            Sebastian didn’t say a word.  He knew that whatever Theodore said next, it would be important.  Really, things that his best friend said were almost always important.  But Theodore was evidently restless, and that meant anything could happen.

A bird called out as it dipped low over the water, and Theodore’s eyes followed it, he evidently lost in thought.  Sebastian tore a piece of grass apart, waiting for his companion to speak.

“Pack your bags,” Theodore said suddenly.  “We leave tomorrow.”

Sebastian was used to surprises, so he merely nodded.  “Where to?”

Theodore looked calmly over at him.  “Somewhere far away.  Somewhere very, very different.”

                          .........

 

  It’s not fantastic writing, of course.  Some would call it rubbish (by “some” I mean British authors, of course).  There are parts of it that I almost cringe at, and would if they didn’t make me laugh.  But that’s the thing about this little excerpt, that actually holds true for the entire book, in my case at least: it makes me laugh.  Why?  Because it makes me excited.  It draws me in.  And when it stumbles in places, I like it enough that I feel comfortable laughing at it and loving it still.  You know, like how I do with my friends.

Now, I said something very important back there that you may or may not have missed.  I said, “It makes me excited.”

Rule #1: Never write something that you’re not excited about.

So in case you’re wondering, yes, that “1” right there means there will be more rules.  I know, I know, this is a post about inspiration!  It’s supposed to be wild and free, unencumbered by all the rules and regs of structured life!

I’ll tell you right now, and don’t you forget this, that without rules, without structure, inspiration has no place to thrive.

Now onward!  Let’s see about applying Rule #1 to our excerpt.  I was fantastically excited about Rivenbark, because of Theodore.  What inspired Theodore was actually Anthony Lockwood from Jonathan Stroud’s Lockwood & Co.  Not Anthony himself, though he is a beautiful character, but how he was described.  Because he WASN’T.  Before Rivenbark, my character development was awful, no doubt about it.  I just didn’t know how to make a believable character.  My books have always been very character-inspired (I write for the people, through their stories), but I never actually loved my characters after I’d started writing them.  At least not with the passion with which I love Theodore, or with which I loved the characters I was reading.  I didn’t understand a fairly simple, but profound, rule of CD: more is less.

And so, when I began plotting Rivenbark in the months before NaNoWriMo, I went in with these guidelines: Theodore is mysterious.  This is good.  We do not EVER need to feel like we know him completely.  We will not even know his thoughts, except for at the beginning and end of the book.  Everything in between will be third person subjective to the people around him.  That being said, the book is about him. 

I was excited by this, excited to try out an experiment, excited to go all in writing a character that even I wouldn’t understand.  I mean, why do you think I wouldn’t write from his perspective?  I couldn’t!

Rivenbark was an experiment.  I was not expecting a masterpiece.  I was not expecting it to be publishing-worthy.  What I was expecting was to follow Rule #2:

Rule #2: Write what you want to write.

Sounds simple, right?  Sounds a little like Rule #1, yeah?  But whereas #1 was forbidding something, #2 is commanding something.  Yikes, that sounds harsh.  But here’s the deal: you aren’t inspired by something because of the something.  You’re inspired by something because of you.  Because something in you is wired to respond to that thing, whatever it is.

Do individuals change?  You bet.  I change all the time.  You change all the time, even in the smallest of ways.  Can we change which things we’re inspired by?  Because if what I said up there is true, it’s not about changing external things.  It’s something that starts here, in us.

Rule #3: To be an inspired writer, you must learn to control inspiration to a certain extent, rather than let it control you.

Some writers take to structure easily.  That’s Clara.  Then there are some who are disorganized, clutter-brained, and intent on plowing on anyway.  That’s me.  I love my life.  God is my Father.  My earthly parents are pretty awesome people.  I have seven siblings, each unique and talented in their own ways.  My whole life, I’ve lived in a really interesting area.  I call it the country-ghetto, because it’s pretty much a fusion of the two.  My childhood was full of conflict with my siblings, and I’ve still got scars from that, but I never doubt that we all love each other, and we can have the best times, we eight.

My point is, if I ask myself what I’m inspired by, all I have to do is look around me.  And somehow, when I wrote Rivenbark, I stopped trying to write something unique.  I stopped trying to be as good as everyone I read, and I wrote something I wanted to write.  I wrote it because I loved it, because it excited me, and I gave my inspiration exactly the skeleton it needed to grow right.

Look, I could write a whole book on this, but this post has gone on long enough.  I’ll try and wrap it up for you.

Those two scenes you read were messy, and filled with things I never followed up on.  And they accomplished exactly what I wanted them to.  I got excited.  Theodore remained mysterious.  Sebastian remained cool (not the right word, but whatevs, you know).  And I didn’t care one bit that it wasn’t my neatest piece of work!  It was glorious.  It was fun.  And it was exactly what I needed in order to keep plowing ahead without care.

Here’s one last thing for you to chew on until my next post, which will address this a lot more.

Rule #4: Never try to separate yourself from what you are writing.

I hope that was some sort of help.  That was a pretty shallow overview of Rivenbark and the inspiration behind it, so if you didn’t get all you wanted out of it, come back and you just might get it.

Thank you, Clara, for having me on your blog!  And thank you, readers, for reading this.  Please, feel free to ask any questions you might have, and do go on over to my blog, Girl with the Binder, where Clara has her first post up.