The Sparkling Words

    I'm terrible with titles. Embarrassingly terrible. I'm currently writing a series of books (in the fantasy genre, of course), and you wouldn't believe how many titles I suggested for it. Each one received a small, ambivalent nod and a quiet "hmm..." from my sister, who would rather die than say, "I'm sorry, Abbie, but that's the stupidest title I've ever heard. Get it together." I'm terrible, and my sister agrees.
    When it came to choosing a title for this blog, I was, as I've come to expect, as hopeless as ever. So I chose a title which makes no sense whatsoever out of context. Sorry 'bout that, but I am going to rectify the situation. You are welcome.
    When I started writing, I was in second or third grade. I wrote a play. It was about a princess. It was roughly eight pages..., which means it was four pages of wide ruled paper, front and back. Since then, the writing hasn't stopped, though it has evolved - and hopefully improved. I wrote mostly poetry and songs in the beginning - not good ones, mind. Then, in the year of our Lord 2001, I was introduced to the mother of all fantasy stories, the story which has been forever seared into my soul, and by which, I judge all other stories...

Can you hear the majestic theme music? Can you?

    My life was changed forever by the great, nigh incomparable, J.R.R. Tolkien. That man managed to write something that has so profoundly changed me I still can't describe it. Not many stories can compete with all that courage and cowardice, light and dark. It instilled in me the incontrovertible need to tell stories; I was possessed with the desire. I started writing a story, a story that has been growing in my mind for eleven years. Yep, eleven years. I know, you're only now beginning to realize how nerdy I am, right?
    It was going to be a screenplay originally, until I realized in 2008 that I had WAY too much story for a movie. It was just going to have to be a book. BUT who was I to think I could write a novel? Novels are hard, y'all. I mean, I don't know if you've thought about it, but earth-rockingly talented and brilliant people write novels. Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, J.K. Rowling, and Victor Hugo, just to name a few. More than that, have you ever read a good book? Have you noticed that the good ones, the excellent ones, reach into your mind and dare it to consider ideas it has never before approached, and they all seem to contain some beautiful truth, some concept that, given the right momentum, could completely transform the world? It's amazing. The phenomenon bound between the covers of certain stories, not many of them, only the select few, the ones that have actually succeeded in changing the world, can be summed up, for me, in two words: They sparkle. The words glitter off the page and jump into a person. And it is glorious. 
    Don't ask me how it happens. I didn't even know how to describe it, until one night, when I finally tried to explain it to my eternally patient sister, crying, "They're words sparkle! My words don't sparkle dang it!" I can't tell you how it works. Believe me, if I knew, I never would have been afraid to write a book, but I was, and sometimes, I am. The hope remains, however, that I will muster the skill, but part of me thinks it's something a person is born with, some magic inherent in a few superhumans. Don't get me wrong, even if I wasn't born with it, I'm going to keep writing. I'm addicted to it now. Sometimes..., when I'm all alone in front of the computer, sobbing as I type, I whisper quietly to the keyboard, "I wish I could quit you..." Haha! Just kidding!
    Or am I?
    Anyway, that's the story. Hope it clears up any confusion. 

"No way to live..."

    Today I received a rejection from the Holy Grail of literary agencies. I'm going to refrain from telling you the name of this literary agency, but if you knew, oh boy, you'd be bummed for me. You might also say, "Well, I mean..., what did you expect?" Because, seriously, they're kind of a big deal. (Yes, I just referenced Anchorman. No, I will not apologize.)

    I've been rejected before. Aspiring authors get used to it. They didn't like the query letter, they didn't like the plot, they didn't like the flow, they hate you, get a life, yada, yada, yada... You have to develop this indomitable attitude. You have to convince yourself that you are talented and kind of a genius, that your story could be paradigm-shifting, that someone, somewhere is going to flip over it and you.
    I suck at all of those things, BUT I've been sticking it out. I've been taking it one agent at a time. I've been reminding myself that the emotional trauma will pay off one day. But today..., my hopes and dreams seemed to crumble before my eyes. My heart evaporated in my chest. My peace is shaken.
    I cried. I'm not much of a crier. I cry at movies and Grey's Anatomy episodes. (Yes, I watch Grey's Anatomy. No, I will not apologize.) But I had to cry today. That's the adequate response when you're questioning everything.
    I cried in front of my mother, who is hurting for me, of course - you know how moms are. And while she tried to comfort me, tried to help, tried to find the right words to say, she asked me this: Do you feel like you have a story that people need to hear?
    "I want to think that I do," I replied tearfully.
    "You know you do," she said.
    I do. I am obsessed, compelled, burdened with stories, with the need to send them out into the world. I think of Victor Hugo and Charles Dickens and J.R.R. Tolkien, and I can't help but feel the need to move the earth as they have. Stories are everything. They teach us, and shape us, and exhort us, and liberate us.
    I'm a storyteller. I've accepted this call. I'm not going to shy away from it simply because such-and-so didn't want me..., well, my story, but trust me, it feels like a rejection of me - and that's okay, as long as I don't let it tear me to shreds. I am a writer. And it is hard. And it is trying. And it is painful. And it is wonderful.
    I leave you with this Sophy Burnham quote, which perfectly sums up my feelings on the subject of storytelling:
    Not long ago, a writer friend, sunk in apathy and despair, came to visit.
    "What is it about writing?" he asked, striking his forehead with the flat of his hand. "Why is it so awful? It's no way to live! Why do we do it?"
    And then he leapt to his feet to walk unhappily around his chair. "Look at writers. I don't know a single writer who doesn't hate his work. Writers hate writing. They're always talking about how hard it is. Artist's don't hate painting. You never hear an artist talking about how much he hates his work. Sculptors don't complain all the time about how hard they find sculpting. But writers...!"
    A few weeks later I had occasion to ask an artist if she agreed. Do artists hate their work? She looked at me amused.
    "You're forgetting something," she said.
    "What?"
    "Writing is so powerful. People rarely look at a painting and weep."

Writers and Walls

    I'm not a sharer. I never have been. Don't get me wrong; I highly enjoy talking about myself, but not if that includes telling people everything. I build walls. I'm not ashamed of my walls; I built them for a reason.
    I do share some things. I share the safe stuff. I share the stuff that sounds personal but really isn't, the stuff that might touch your heart, but won't freeze my vocal cords on the way out. And every time I think I'm ready to tell someone one of the dangerous things, my voice fades away and I end up saying something else like "never mind."
    It's easier to put up walls, to surround the pain, and the fear, and the damage with stone and steel. Telling people terrifies me. Telling people makes it real, or real all over again. Telling people gives them the opportunity to downplay my suffering, or look at me like I'm a seven-foot-tall, mohawked pigeon riding a unicycle (and you are welcome for that mental image), so I have devised a way of getting it out of my head and into the world safely: I hide the wriggly, and scratchy, and scary stuff in the dialogue of my characters and in the plot lines of my stories. I know, it's not really sharing, but at least I'm putting it out there...where no one will be able to discern which aches are mine and which aches are fiction.
    All writers do this. I don't have any quotes to back that up. I don't need them. All writers do it, or all writers worth their salt do it. If a writer doesn't pour the painful pieces of her/his soul into her/his work, she/he clearly doesn't understand the gravity and intimacy of a story.

    That's the power of literature: We pick up a book, and we hold in our hands the heart of another human being, sometimes a human being who left this world centuries ago. Literature is the direct connection of one soul to another. How beautiful is that? How miraculous!
    This is the burden writers carry upon our poor shoulders. This is why writing terrifies me. I adore it, but, let's be real, it's petrifying. Through my words, through the words I have haltingly, obsessively, and lovingly tied together I am giving faceless people, who have never met me, and possibly will never meet me entry into who I am. I am giving them a sledgehammer to knock down my walls.
    When you pick up a book, if the writer has sewn her/his own soul into the pages, you'll know. You can feel it. It's a sixth sense situation. And if that is the case, if you can feel the pulsing of a heart in your hands, your hands which are so useful for crushing and grinding and wounding but which are equally good for building and comforting, try not to be too harsh. Try not to be too judge-y. Consider yourself privileged; they broke down their walls for you. They let you into their twisty brokenness in the hopes that it would help to heal yours.