Don't Be Afraid to Grow Up, Young or Old

No longer being a teenager teaches you important things. For starters, there is no such thing as completely attaining maturity. And that's okay.

Second, everyone grows up, despite the Peter Pan myth and the notion of living forever. No one wants to grow old or stop loving the things they love now; think of all the people who have mid-life crises, for example, and buy Harleys. In Florida we have college Quidditch teams and recommendations for the next Game of Thrones book.

Then we have toddlers wearing high heels and posing as Julia Roberts; parents have a reason to be concerned. As noted, we can't stop getting older, but we can certainly not try to speed up the process. Maturity and actual growing will only happen if you stop and let it happen.

Some days I get frustrated because a part of me likes to slow down in the morning and read the latest library book, even when I want to beat the morning traffic and be efficient. That same part of me is the part of me that remains young, the part that allows me to make fun of myself. I can put that laziness (or appreciation for the fine arts, if we put positive spin on this habit) into my stories and create vivid, realistic characters with similar flaws. I can also use it to bond with other people who may have similar habits.

These same people share a mutual love for the same movies and music, even if these movies aren't aimed at our demographic. For example, I have memorized every song in the Little Mermaid, and I'm not ashamed of it. At the same time, I've grown out of shows like Teamo Supremo and Barney; some nostalgia doesn't last. These loves and dislikes balance out so that I will watch Wishbone and Aladdin on Youtube.

Another part of me likes career planning and being on time for school, if not for class. The two are quite different: being on time to school means finding a parking space in the closest lot, while being on time for class means beating the large grandfather clock. I admit that this is the adult side of me, because now I no longer care if I'm on time for my first class and have to relearn it with the fervency of a middle-school student. Again, I can put that in my books because I know kids who used to show up to college classes in pajamas.

Maturity happens when you have to be proactive. When I started to study marketing and aspects of business, I learned that to get any job you have to check application deadlines and meet them as early as possible. I was earlier proactive as a writer after getting disqualified from a writing contest due to a format error. (Yeah, that was not fun.) Now I revise cover letters and resumes ahead of time, much like how I revise query letters and short stories. On some level it means acknowledging that my dream of being a full-time writer may not happen for a long time, but it also means that I'm ready to rough out these years of rejection until one acceptance leads to another. I'm ready to take risks , but I'm also ready for if the risks bail on me.

I'm a young adult. People tell me I'm still young while I worry about my future, and the "adult" part of me reminds me why I should worry. Like my shoulder angel and devil, these parts of me can come into conflict. Part of the fun, however, is the bickering between them; although I may be getting older, parts of my personality will not change no matter what cynical influences appear in my life.

It's more than okay; it makes living an adventure with good and evil on your side. You get to be arbitrary about it until the odd day that maturity wins. And like all things that win, maturity will lose on the even day, but it won't give up.

Neither will you.

Getting a Glimpse of Graphic Design: Doing a Lifebushido Internship

This summer, I applied for internships, learning belatedly that you have to apply six months in advance to secure a position. I finally acquired an online one with Lifebushido; Lifebushido asks students around the world to work on social entrepreneurship businesses.

When I applied, I asked to be on a skills team since I couldn't decide on a particular project. I was assigned to work with Ashutosh Singh's team; his websites help small business owners gain a marketing presence online. These two websites were Ice Cream Cloud and Bizness Brandy; I proofread the sites and designed logos for both of them. Above is the rough logo I did for Bizness brandy; the one for Ice Cream Cloud is still being modified since I'm working with one of the team's illustrations. Once again, you did a great job Julio.

Working on these websites gave me insight into what graphic designers did as a living. Ashutosh pushed me to keep modifying the logos, changing little details to make the sum of the whole better. Writers have to do the same thing for editors, and it can take several hours to get a satisfactory prototype done. The Ice Cream Cloud one has definitely been the most difficult, mainly with creating a circular logo on Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator, but I've been getting better at using Adobe Illustrator to create logos.

Thank you, Ashutosh, for making me part of your project; I hope we can work together sometimes in the future.

Two Months Later

School has started; I'm trying a semester without creative writing classes and with more violin practice. I've learned that parking next to a lake means circumnavigating around it and figuring out which location is ideal.

In my novel, I've written a "why don't you just shoot her" scenario. The scene comes from an immortal exchange between the Joker and his girlfriend, Harley Quinn:

Harley Quinn: Why don't you just shoot him [Batman]?
Joker: "Just shoot him?" Know this, my sweet: the death of Batman must be nothing less than a masterpiece! The triumph of my sheer comic genius over his ridiculous mask and gadgets!

Although the Joker is not the picturesque picture of a sympathetic villain, he has a point. In a novel where the author wants the hero to win, the villain cannot simply kill the protagonist. There has to be a cat and mouse game, a chance for the hero to fight back, and time to hold the story for a long time. In Harry Potter, for example, Voldemort has many times to kill Harry outright but gives him a chance to join him (Book One), fight back (Two and Four), or face his minions (Books Five and Seven, oh so much).

Even if the villain is utilitarian, he cannot kill the protagonist with one gunshot. I don't believe in divinity, but when you control the novel, you are its god. You control what's going on, so you have to manipulate the controls so that a fatal gunshot becomes a flesh wound, or even a swarm of bubbles. In my case, my hero's wound from being shot allows her to escape, just making the "just shoot him" scenario a "nice job fixing it, villain," since the villains are at the tether end of their sanity.

Think about this trope and use it wisely. Wizards in Harry Potter didn't have guns, after all, but they could still be dangerous.

Birthday Post: What it Means to No Longer be a Teenager

Today I'm 20. I am no longer a teenager, I have published two short stories and one gory poem since I turned fourteen.

I've learned a lot of things this year while writing. For starters, I learned that writers are constantly getting better as they keep writing and revising their work; that was an important lesson as well as a vote of confidence. I've learned that telling a story can be tiring when you treat it like a job, especially when you dedicate your time to several stories. No matter how many times you get

I'm also optimistic, however; while cleaning up my room yesterday, I found a pile of short stories that I've meant to revise. These include a titular "Ferry" with a modern twist on Greek mythology, an semi-autobiographical foray into summer driving lessons, and a novellette where a crazy Anglo-Saxon warrior chases two teenagers in the middle of Central Florida. Friends have told me how to get better and when they approve of changes. I've gained an ideal reader who can also write well, and family members who will suffer a comic strip or a short story.

I am 20 years old, but I still feel like a teenager. That's the best feeling of all.

What Diana Wynne Jones Meant to Me

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If you want to be a good writer, you have to be a good reader. You may have even wanted to write because of the books you read and enjoyed; this happened to me after reading Harriet the Spy, but I digress.

I deeply regret that I did not discover Diana Wynne Jones until middle school, when I found a copy of Seeing is Believing in the library and picked it up for its title. When you have stories where a girl with mumps creates a story with a bloodthirsty heroine that comes to life, a writer who finds success after getting a computer (and the customary typos), and the story of a cat who helps a stupid magician's servant, you have no choice but to find the rest of the authors' books. I discovered A Charmed Life, Dogsbody, The Homeward Bounders, and proceeded to read every book by her in both the school and public library.

Diana Wynne Jones taught me that anything can be magical, whether it's the green flakes in a chemistry kit or a Friendly Cow. She also taught me Murphy's Law for fantasy novels: anything that can go wrong with magic will, and the disasters will make you laugh. Wizards do not always appreciate people cleaning their houses for that, and they are not necessarily elderly, well-behaved gentlemen; sometimes they are angry fathers pretending to be evil magicians. Heroes won't always know who's in trouble, or how to correct their spells; sometimes you might break your neck twice and still live. Use every implement that you introduce, since golden bricks may be useful to drop on the villain's toes.

Villains can be hidden in plain sight; your parents may not be the villains, but they are certainly no help when push comes to shove. Kids have to rely on their own magical objects and abilities, even if they didn't know that they have abilities. Don't underestimate a pit of orange juice or a cocoon of bookcases if your college roommate is targeted by assassins. Also don't underestimate the insults that brothers can exchange after one decides to attend university.

Most of all, there are no formulas to follow. Jones admired Tolkien's work, but she came to mock the sword and sorcery fantasy that succeeded Lord of the Rings; that fact made me admire her the most. For the record, I tried reading Lord of the Rings twice, and I learned that there is such a thing as too much description. Not all villains are pure evil, and you shouldn't have to travel alone. There is more than one way to solve a problem, especially if you are creative; there is no need to slay dragons with swords when a hot chili pepper will do.

Rest in peace, Diana, and thank you for your writing.

Reverence for Fairy Tales

To get psyched for revising the last three chapters of this fantasy novel that is a tribute to fairy tales and Daphne du Maurier, I read Grimm’s Fairy Tales from cover to cover. The edition also came with a helpful list of footnotes denoting the different version of each tale, as well as possible sources, but my real point when reading was something that every adult realizes when reading fifty to sixty short stories meant for children’s bedtime:

Most are completely ridiculous!

As mentioned in my last entry, Sarah Beth Durst has written several blog posts going through certain stories line by line and commenting on how good, bad, or horrific they were. Ms. Durst read these stories for her novel Into the Wild, in which real people have to act out fairy tales for centuries if they get caught in the titular plant growth. When the Wild gets loose, Rapunzel’s daughter Julie has to work fast to tame it before it takes over her hometown. When it gets loose again in Out of the Wild, Julie has to worry about the same problem while traveling across the US on a broomstick.

Popular culture has also caught onto the trend of mocking the Brothers Grimm, Charles Perrault, and Hans Christen Andersen; Dreamworks gave us the Shrek movies, while Disney attempted a self-parody with Enchanted. Even Gail Carson Levine, whose novel Ella Enchanted was critically acclaimed and heart rendering, wrote several short novellas that parodied “Cinderella,” “Sleeping Beauty,” and “The Princess and the Pea.”

On the other side of the spectrum, Ms. Durst wrote Ice, a gorgeous retelling of “The Sun, the Moon, and the North Wind” set in the Arctic Circle with polar bears, shamans, and creepy deities. Juliet Marillier gave us Wildwood Dancing, which makes “The Twelve Dancing Princesses” look sugary sweet in comparison; I would not have read it if my friend Margaret had not recommended Ms. Marillier. (Thanks, Margaret!) Walt Disney Corporation managed to infuse some of the most ridiculous tales like “Sleeping Beauty” and “Cinderella” with lovable characters, monstrous villains, humor, and princess protagonists that did not annoy the viewer in the least.

There is a reason, however, why we feel drawn to fairy tales, whether or not we parody them or depict them in a somber light; I feel drawn to them because fairy tales were my security blanket. Azar Nafisi admitted the same thing in her book Reading Lolita in Tehran: fairy tales may have happy endings, but they also have pretty monstrous obstacles. Such a structure is reflected in the best stories, whether they are complex novels or simple cartoon shorts; readers like conflict, and they like giant monsters that can be defeated.

“Cinderella,” for example, has a stepmother and two stepsisters who will do anything to keep their ash girl from being normal; the Disney version takes that dynamic to the extreme. The two girls blame Cinderella for things that go wrong, load her with work so she can’t get ready for the king’s ball, and finally rip up her handmade ball gown. The stepmother then proceeds to sabotage Cinderella’s chance of trying on the glass slipper by locking her in her room and making the slipper shatter just as she’s about to try it on. It doesn’t help that she has the scariest voice in history, and she’s pretty much what every teenage girl would not want to have: an unloving authority figure who will never give you power. On top of that, Cinderella’s father died when she was just a little girl; that is traumatic for any child, especially when the surviving parent is not sympathetic.

Most fairy tales thus, in addition to providing such an obstacle like a deal with the Devil or a toady innkeeper who keeps stealing his customers’ magical tools, add a happy ending and helpful friends to deal with the monstrous quality. Sometimes this can play for dark humor; about three or four Grimm’s fairy tales involve the hero causing an apocalypse that leaves him the sole ruler of a kingdom (seriously). Others involve the Devil getting cheated, but the hero is not allowed to enter heaven either, so they wander between heaven and hell as a restless ghost. Please note that this happens when the hero is a guy, not a girl; the girl usually marries a prince who rescues her from burning at the stake or an unhappy life with her stepsisters. The king in these stories tends to execute the stepmother and stepsisters in violent manners, so the blood and gore is still presented.

The other reverence for fairy tales that we find is that they can be easily retold, as I’ve shown with the above examples, while keeping the monstrous obstacles and happy ending. We can take out the parts we don’t like, such as Cinderella’s fairy godmother (please stop making fairy godmothers evil), and modify it to suit our needs, as Disney has done. That Grimm’s Fairytales still exists is living proof that even if we don’t like princes who kill everyone to become happy, we do like it when characters receive happy endings after traumatic experiences. We simply change the rules as we go along.

Why Your Dearest Reader is Important

Fiction workshop classes are very interesting if you read more than one story by a particular classmate. I tend to have high standards for fiction, but I've also learned to be nice to other writers in class. For starters, negative comments can induce writer's block, tears, and that paralyzing fear to put words to the page. Teachers also do not appreciate cutting remarks; my first creative writing teacher gave me a blunt lecture about two negative critiques I had written, and it was the best advice I had ever been given after making me cry for the rest of class. (I still love this teacher to death, and I highly recommend her if you ever take Creative Writing.)

If you want to be a good writer, you have to be a good reader. Good readers will have a perspective when reading others' comments on their writing as well as seeing what works and doesn't work with fiction. Few ideas are original; so are few techniques. You'd be surprised with how far long sentences can go when reading aloud.

Tam Lin provides the best visual example of your relationship to a fellow writer as a reader: Sarah Beth Durst has a wonderful response to the ballad, but only peruse if you need context.

In a nutshell, Janet the pregnant heroine has to hold onto Tam Lin as he changes from monster to monster; it's the only way to free him from the clutches of a murderous faerie queen.

In real life, you have to be Janet when you read someone else's story for critique. Do you have to be harsh? Sometimes, but remember that at some point your story will be the monster and may be slain quite brutally by that other person. Therefore, you also have to find some redeeming value in the story so as not to crush the writer's spirit. Someone else may crush your spirit, creating an Evil Golden Rule that you want to avoid.

One point to note: always ask to read the next draft. Your friend will appreciate it, probably read your work as it progresses from draft to draft, and improve their story for your pleasure. I have read improved second drafts because I asked for them, and I've learned what writers can do when they're given a chance to improve themselves. You can do the same if someone else gives you the chance.