It's the second day of residency. I am exhausted. I am so overwhelmed. I have never been so painfully aware of my age and inexperience. Honestly, I feel that I am looked down on for my age. It was actually mentioned that I write for teenagers "because I pretty much still am one." I laughed in response because, really, what do you say back to that? I didn't want to say anything about how that stung, but whatever, it's done now. She didn't know that I'm insecure about how young I am. Maybe it's a good thing that I write for teenagers so that I can really know how to connect to them. If we're like minded it should be easier, right? Small blessings.
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Well, here I am, in the last place I ever thought I'd be and it is BEAUTIFUL! I'm so excited to finally be here and to be surrounded by these brilliant people. I made a new friend, Kate, and we went exploring around the campus. The bookstore is adorable and I can't wait to buy way too many books when they open tomorrow (sorry Mom.) I'm so excited for this adventure. I had a conversation with one of the graduating students on the way here from the airport. Not only did she alleviate all of my fears (without knowing she was, mind you) she also opened my mind to new ideas. I was so set on coming in here and leaving with one complete YA novel, ready for publication. I still want to do that, my number one goal, but I want to try my hand at other genres as well. I think it takes an incredible amount of talent to write a picture book. I've tried it and had less than stellar results. I won't even tell you about the travesty that was my middle grade novel concept. The thing is, these people make me feel like I can do these things. Everyone has such different backgrounds and different goals but here we all are, learning from each other. Okay, this is all I can do for now. I have a meeting in ten minutes. The adventure is just beginning and I can't wait to report back with more fun experiences. Why does it take a new year to make us want to change ourselves? I never really considered it from that point of view before. It was always just sort of something I did because everyone else did: this year I'll be healthier, this year I'll work harder, blah blah blah. A year is a long time to make that kind of a commitment. It's a long time to forget you even made the commitment. So today I'll break that tradition. Today marks the day I will make resolutions for myself daily. I'm going to take the time to think about myself every day, not just once a year. Sometimes I hate YA novels. Okay, maybe an overstatement, but still. It's like there's an obligation to include some kind of stereotypical romance scene or love triangle in the book. Think about it, what books have you read recently where the main focus of the novel is for the main character to find "love" of some kind. Can't characters have desires other than romance? For example: I just finished reading Obsidian by Jennifer Armentrout. It was a decent book in some regards. I just couldn't get past the boring and kind of disgusting "romance" between the main characters. They HATED each other for most of the duration of the book, all the while tormenting each other like Kindergartners. Is this the basis of "love" for young adults? Is this what they have to look forward to? Men with bi-polar tendencies and immaturity levels rivaling my eleven year old nephew aren't exactly the highlight of love. I was practically tearing my hair out every time Kat made an immature comment to Daemon. Who am I to judge though? What do I know about romance? Nothing, that's what. Okay so maybe not 1,000 books exactly.... I got my "suggested reading" for VCFA today. Good LORD there are a lot of books. I've read quite a bit of them, but still. With a little over a month to go until I have to leave for residency I'm not sure how many of them I can actually accomplish. I'll do my best though. It's interesting to read through the lists and see how many of these books I've already read. It was like seeing a list of my childhood class assignments. Admittedly, I read most of the picture books while I was shelving in the children's section at work. I was merely becoming acquainted with our materials.
Sometimes I don't like blogging from work. I don't let it distract me so that's not really a problem. My only thing is that I can't post pictures to my blog from this computer. It makes me sad :(
Good news (for me) is that you actually read this! I almost never check the statistics on the main page when I log in, but I'm really glad I did this time! Almost fifty of you, wow. I can honestly say I'm honored that anyone comes on here to read my rambling nonsense. Sure, to other people fifty may not seem like that big of a deal but it's a huge deal to me. So thank you, every one of you. On the note of thankfulness, who else is ready for the holidays? I'm almost mentally prepared (but a last minute stop at the liquor store might help me make it through family time unscathed). Black Friday should be fun... said no one ever. I have no problem with the idea of Black Friday. I really don't. It helps people like me who can't afford lots of expensive things. My nieces are getting a very nice play kitchen set this year because I found it for half price in a sale ad. The only qualm I have is the fact that it is now Black Thursday. I feel terrible making these poor store employees come in on Thanksgiving night rather than be home with his or her family but if the corporations that ran the holidays would back down and return Black Friday to it's former glory then we would all be happier. So God bless all you hard workers out there, taking time out of your life to work for the benefit of others. Not many people will be grateful to you, but I am. This year I am most thankful for my friends and family. This past year has been a major struggle but I got through it thanks to you. And Justin, in the off chance that you do go on here (I highly doubt it though) please know that whatever you're mad at me for I didn't mean to do it. You're a very good friend of mine. I don't like this not speaking thing. Tell me what I did and I'll apologize. Cheers and happy Thanksgiving everyone! xoxo Two nights ago I received a voice-mail from VCFA stating, in short, that I have been accepted into the writing for children and young adults program. Seems like my second shot is always my best haha. While I am very excited about my coming semester and this new opportunity in my life I am also quite nervous. I've never been in a program like this before. I have no doubts that I can handle it but it is nerve wracking.
Sarah and I have not discussed what this means for our move to London. I really want to go with her, it was my intent to join her next August. Somehow, though, I don't foresee London in my near future. I don't know how to talk to her about this. She's my best friend and I would never do anything to intentionally hurt her. Financially, though, moving to London has always been a long shot. Now it'll be entirely out of my reach, at least until I graduate again. On a happier note: I am VERY EXCITED to have a future for my characters. Kyler and Hazen are near and dear to me after all of the thought and emotion I've poured into them. I know that you'll love them as much as the admission board did, as much as I do, maybe even more. Thank you again to Christen Orbanus for my letter of recommendation. I literally could not have done it without you. Much love, and more later Well that week flew by. I still need to upload pictures from London. Ugh. I'm also STILL waiting for a response from the Vermont College of Fine Arts (it's been two months.) That's a whole other rant. Seriously, so unprofessional. I am very disappointed. Now, back to the London action!
The next morning I woke up feeling better. The cold seemed to have passed and I was ready to explore. However, upon entering the bathroom I noticed green pus leaking from my eye. I had pink eye. "Sarah, is that what I think it is?" "I hope not, or I'm going to have to disinfect my whole flat." "It can't be. Where would I have gotten pink eye from anyway?" So we left. We took a train ride to Buckingham Palace, Trafalgar Square, saw the changing of the guards, ate some YO! sushi near the London Eye. Big Ben is a lot smaller in person than I thought it would be. The bridges were really cool, as was the needle. My biggest fangirl moment was recognizing everywhere that the Doctor had landed the TARDIS. Yep, I have problems. The biggest problems came when I saw my eye swelling more and more in every picture I took. At one point we decided to head back to Surbiton to prepare for the evening. Still, I ignored my eye. Sarah and I met up with Tricia, Sarah's classmate from Pennsylvania, and headed out to Wetherspoons for some drinks. Let me be the first to say that I love British drinks SO MUCH MORE than American ones. Purple rain, woo woo and blue lagoon are fantastic. Try them. Lucky for us in the US we can get Strongbow, the greatest cider I have ever had. It's not the same without the pubs but it is still quite good. It would have been a perfect night if not for my constantly leaking eye. Obviously I am a liar, and for this I am sorry. It has been months since I've written a thing on here, but so much has changed. I graduated from college, got another year older, woke up and realized that oh crap I'm an adult now. In March I expected to be in grad school by now, working on the next great masterpiece of my life. I expected to have a more settled life, a foreseeable future. Apart from singing along with Taylor Swift about being 22 I haven't had any sort of a predictable future. But I digress.
As an adult now I've decided to take charge of my life. I've applied to grad school yet again as well as to numerous menial jobs. I've decided to forgo the retail jobs because I a) have no retail experience whatsoever and b) would much rather put my degrees to some kind of use. So while I scour the internet looking for a writing job I've also decided to actively blog from now on. At least once a week for now. ALSO I have begun to work on a novel that I am very excited about. As of now I have two chapters completed and an almost completed character sketch. Characters are tricky, you see. You never know what they want. I'm still waiting for them to tell me. This new work, as well as more completed old work, will be posted on here as soon as I figure out how to watermark the pages (so that in the off chance that anyone would ever end up on here my work can't be stolen.) Now, about London... London was FANTASTIC! I'm extremely busy right now but as soon as I have the opportunity I am writing down everything I can possibly remember from my trip to London and including copious amounts of pictures.
Fun Fact: I TOOK A PICTURE WITH THE TARDIS AND A DALEK. |
AlexisMaster of Fine Arts from Vermont College of Fine Arts, Rowan University alumna, sister of Theta Phi Alpha, and future YA author extraordinaire. Archives
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Bear with me while I blog for the first time ever.