Not-So-Haunted Tales of Boston

Hubs and I did our kind-of-annual trip up to Beantown this past weekend. Which normally brings us immense enjoyment. Not so much this time.

First of all, it rained most of the trip. Including during the Saturday afternoon game at Fenway, which we had awesome seats for. But around the fifth inning when I was soaked to the bone and the score was 12-2 (not really a nail biter, no matter which team you're rooting for), we decided to call it quits.

Most disappointing, however, was the hotel.

We decided to switch it up this time. Normally we go for the modern luxury of the Westin Copley. This time I decided I wanted a more historical, New England feel. So we booked the Omni Parker House, the oldest running hotel in the country. And the Kennedys used to stay there!

A week before the trip, Hubs laughingly informs me the hotel is haunted, sending me a link. I think he thought this would upset me, because I'm a total weenie when it comes to horror movies and the idea of things lurking around in the dark.

To his surprise, I was psyched. Perfect! I thought. This will be great research for my WIP--the main character grew up in a family of ghost hunters. What better way to come up with material than to investigate the supernatural, first-hand?

Among factoids about the hotel were these promising nuggets:

• Elevators are always called to the third floor (the floor Charles Dickens--CHARLES DICKENS OMG OMG!--occupied) without a button being pushed or a guest waiting for the elevator.
• In a room on the 10th floor, guests have reported the sound of a rocking chair that kept them up all night. There are no rocking chairs in the hotel.
• Bellman have reported bright "orbs" of light floating down the corridor on the 10th floor then disappearing

Alas--whether it's because we were put on the plebeian 5th floor, away from all the supernatural action, or the ghosts were simply feeling not up to snuff that evening, the only unlexplained mysteries we were faced with were:

• How a 4-star hotel could have such tiny, dingy rooms.
• How a hotel in BOSTON could not include NESN in their TV channel listings (that is the Boston Red Sox channel, for all of you non-New England folk. We were trying to catch Friday's night game on TV after we got back from a hearty, sleep-inducing pasta dinner in the North End)
• And finally, if the lobby manager's name was actually Seamus for real, or if that was just another one of the hotel's tall tales they propagate to make visitors feel like they are getting the full Boston experience. And if he was really that jolly of an Irishman. Or even actually Irish.

So sorry, no ghostly insights to report. Although I did squeeze a few pages in, as you'll see in my updated word count on the sidebar.

Writing=Happiness?

I used to enjoy my day job, to a degree. Meaning I was satisfied with it. Somewhere during the past couple of years, that changed.

It took me a while to put my finger on it. It was a little over 2 years ago I was promoted to a Manager-level position as an editor. I was bright-eyed and enthusiastic, ready to throw myself into the position and learn everything I possibly could to be a great manager.

This winter, I resigned. I just didn't care anymore. I was tired of looking for errors in other people's writing, tired of always seeing the negative. I wanted to create. So they convinced me to stay by offering me a copywriting position. Perfect! I thought. I already write creatively, so now I can get paid to do it 45 hours/week.

Yeah, not so much. There was still something missing. And then I figured it out. This decline in job satisfaction began right around the same time I started to seriously pursue my creative writing and publication. If you were plotting my happiness on a graph, you would see 2 inverse lines veering away from each other: as my progress with my creative writing grows, my satisfaction with my current career plummets.

Yesterday I had one of those awful moments of self-doubt when I was talking to a friend who was going back to school to change careers. Do something she actually wanted to do. And then I was seized by a moment of panic. There isn't anything I actually want to do, except write novels. And be paid for them. Paid well. I don't have another back-up plan. My current job IS my back-up plan, and every day I grow more and more unhappy with it. And it's writing's fault. Because it makes me so happy that it makes every other option seem miserable in comparison.

So that leaves just one solution. I have to become published. It can't just be a dream or a goal anymore. It is a future reality that I just have to find a way to make happen.

I remember a while back I read about the drummer of Blink 182 saying he covered himself in tattoos b/c he wanted to make it impossible to get a normal job. That way he was ensuring that he had to find a way to be successful with his music.

I think he was onto something...

Two Parts Urban, One Part Fantasy

Last week I was discussing my new WIP over the phone with my mother (that
alone should give you an idea how excited I am about this project, b/c I
usually keep things pretty close to the chest when it comes to my writing),
and she commented that I seem to have a thing for paranormal themes.

Don't we all? Judging by YA book sale trends, I'm far from alone.

So what's so enrapturing about this idea of integrating the fantastical with
the ordinary? First of all, it may be a current trend, but it's hardly a new
idea. I've always loved the idea of magic lurking around the corner, the
idea that one moment you can be living an average life and then something
fantastical happens. This probably started for me when I was five years old,
and my sister and I decided to merge the world of My Little Ponies with
Barbie dolls. Who says that, somewhere in between Barbie going to work and
meeting Ken for a date, magical talking horses can't exist?

This theme was strengthened for me when 4 children discovered a wardrobe
that transported them to a world called Narnia. And when a clever spider
saved a pig from being turned into bacon. And when a girl named Meg went on
a journey through space and time to find her missing scientist father.

Life can be beautiful and joyful, or it can fill you with pain. It's full of
surprises, both good and bad. And for all of these reasons, it's rarely
dull. But it is ordinary. And sometimes we all need a little escape. And
maybe, deep down, we all still believe a little bit in magic.

Query Update

I apologize to the 1-2 readers (I'm being optimistic about my readership here) for absence for the past week or so. Unfortunately this is a blog about my life as a writer on top of having a demanding full-time job. I know, I know--so inconvenient! :) Believe me I know that better than anyone. It's cool that I spend all day writing and get paid for it, I just wish it was a very different type of writing I was getting paid for.

But just wanted to update to say I was picking back up on the query process for Charm Bracelet. I hit the pause button on that process a few weeks ago for a variety of reasons, and looking forward to getting a fresh batch out! In the meantime, still have an iron in the fire from my last round of queries, so hopefully good news will ensue.

Ciao!

Recycling: Good for the Environment, Bad for Your Manuscript

Once upon a time (a year ago) I wrote a book that I ended up shelving. It just wasn't coming out like I'd hoped. But there were still some great scenes in there, scenes I didn't want to let go of.

So I was working on my new WIP last weekend and thought, "hey, wouldn't that scene from [shelved book] work GREAT here?" And at first it seemed to. I dropped it in, rewrote bits to tailor it to my current WIP. The easiest 2K words ever. Woo hoo, I was on a roll.

Except that's where the roll stopped. For some reason, I couldn't figure out where I wanted to take the story next. All the momentum I'd been building up until that point was completely squashed. I went to bed that night trying to convince myself the story was moving in a good direction, but by the time I woke up the next morning, I knew I was kidding myself. That scene stuck out like a sore thumb. The characters' motives and personalities didn't quite align. Even though both characters are 16-year-old girls, where they were at in their heads at the time was very, very different for each of them. And it showed.

It's hard, letting go. Letting go of a scene you love dearly because the book it is written into didn't succeed. It seems like such a waste. But all of those hundreds of pages nobody will ever lay eyes on? There's a reason for it. It's called perfecting your craft. And there's nothing wasteful about that.

Sidebar

There has been some stuff going on in recent weeks in this country that I find troubling. Unless you live under a rock, you know what's going on in Arizona and you heard about the attempted car bomb in Times Square a couple weekends back.

I'm not going to comment specifically on any of this, because I don't intend for this blog to be a political forum. But I will say this:

I can see the Statue of Liberty from our bedroom window. Every morning I get up and there she is, one of the most stunning and inspirational backdrops you could imagine. Today it's mostly cloudy, so she's raising her arm against the dull, gray sky--and that doesn't make it anything less than spectacular.

Maybe I'm luckier than most that I have this daily reminder. But it doesn't give anyone else the excuse to forget--even if they're halfway across the country--what she stands for.

Writer-Specific ADHD

I think I've discovered a new behavioral disorder. I'm calling it Writer-Specific ADHD. Do you suffer from this? Major symptoms include:
1) Desire to start a new project as soon as the old one is finished, if not before
2) Always coming up with a "better" idea, therefore eclipsing the excitement you had for your previous project.

And, if you have an extreme case, like I do:
3) Putting the query process on hold because you think your current project now pales in the light of bright, new shiny idea, even though your full manuscript has been requested and is floating around in the ether of literary agents.

I'm thinking about trying to get this included in the next version of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. It's about time they came out with an update.