There it is.

I've been super depressed lately.  I mean, like, woah. 

I can blame it on any number of things.  And, actually, I have been.  Just making lists in my mind and analyzing all the factors involved.  And telling everyone: OHMYGOD. IAMSODEPRESSED.  Because I felt like if I talked about it, it wouldn't get out of hand or whatever. 

One of the worst parts of this episode has been my writing, of course.  I've accomplished nothing*.   That has made me feel horrible. 

An hour ago, I was in the middle of trying to decide whether to take another shower, cry, or head downstairs to watch TV**.  Instead, I forced myself to think about Kae's story and see if I can figure out why, why, why I can't do anything with it. 

I finally figured it out.  The last time I wrote Kae, she was at a low point.  Not the lowest of the low (I'm not that far into the story), but very low nonetheless.  In fact, her mood in that scene kind of matches mine right now.  The scene wasn't right.  I wrote it three times, but I couldn't get the Kae/Sean dynamic to work.  So, my goal upon coming back from vacation was to skip that part and move forward to another scene--any other scene--in order to just get more pages written.  Big mistake.  Because the place I left Kae and Sean is so very important to all their interactions to come.  Not only that, but it's important to EVERYTHING to come.  So, I couldn't make the new scenes work either. 

Now I know.  New scenes are not in the cards for me until I get this one right.  Tomorrow I will go back to that cursed scene where I left off.  I will write it for the fourth time.  I do believe that if I can get it right, I'll be able to move on to new scenes.  And maybe, just maybe, being able to write and accomplish something tangible will pull me right out of this funk.

Here's hoping.

*Actually, I wrote a new opening scene for Seth's story.  It sucks and will not be used.  And I spent days planning a complete rewrite of my first manuscript where I will use characters and certain plot lines from before without ever going back and reading the original draft.  And I tried and failed to write three different Kae scenes which take place later in the story.  But, see?  It's like accomplishing nothing. 

**The latter of these is really weird because I don't watch TV by myself.  My husband and I have a few shows we watch together.  (Currently HEROES, ONE TREE HILL, and GRAY'S ANATOMY. (I know.))  But if I'm not watching one of those with him, I don't have the TV on.  Ever.

Everything sucks.

I've been home from vacation for almost two weeks, but I haven't gotten back into the writing groove.  A large part of it, I know, is that I did that thing I told myself I'd never do again:  I took a trip in the fall to somewhere with nice weather.   Which meant I had to come back here afterward where everything is so cold and so wet and so dismal.  I can't imagine why both sets of my grandparents moved here all those years ago, why they stayed.  Why I've stayed. 

In addition, the whole writing thing is overwhelming.  Even though I'm sure it will all turn around eventually, it feels like it will never happen.  Like I should just give up right now.

I'm having a severe case of "I don't fucking care" with the ms. I'm working on.  I want to care, but every scene I attempt to write bores me.  To regain the spark, I even tried writing a scene that I've been looking forward to since I first thought of this story.  I can't get into it, though.  It feels like I haven't earned it because I haven't written what is meant to come before.  And it feels like I've lost Kae's voice.  Like she was some character someone else was writing about once upon a time.

I still have three weeks left of my writing class.  In theory, that should be giving me great incentive to move forward.  I've already paid to work with this editor for three more weeks.  If I don't turn anything in, I will have wasted my time and money.  She can't give me feedback when I don't turn anything in.  And later, after the class has ended, I'll be very, very upset that I didn't take full advantage.  And yet, I still don't move forward.  For the first time ever, I'm tempted to blow the whole thing off.

And my ex-husband.  I guess when I really think about it, he comes into both of these things in a huge way.  See, my vacation was to Kona, Hawaii.  One of the two trips my ex and I ever took together was to Kona. (My character, Jason, was inspired by my ex, of course.) 

Going back to Kona without him and his family was a good experience for me, and part of why I'd wanted to do it.  (Also, I really like seeing the active lava.)  I had a much better time.  But it was also so strange because 10.5 years ago, I went to some of those same beaches and did some of those same things with them.  I kept having little flashes of memories.  Like how tense he was the entire trip.  How worried he was that I was going to, like, embarrass him or something.  How hard he worked to try to impress his parents for whom nothing he ever did was going to be good enough.

So, maybe that's the biggest part of the problem.  Right now, I'm having a hard time wanting to write this story.  I would have thought the memories would have made it flow even better, but they seem to have stopped everything up.

My new crush.

Two months ago, I posted this entry about crushes and such. 

I have a new crush now.  You know, in addition to the ones I mentioned before.  This one is on a guy's hands*.  Particularly his right hand.  I could watch his hands for hours.  And, in fact, I spent way too much time looking at his MySpace pictures the other day.  To see his hands.

Someday, I may write a character who gets bizarre crushes on ugly cars, certain names, and the hands of a guy she's never spoken to.  But who would believe such a girl really exists?  ;-)

*And I don't mean this in some pervy big hands/feet  =  big penis way -- I don't think his hands are necessarily large, anyway.  Nor do I mean it in a I-want-his-hands-on-me way. 

Nathan's rejection.

I've kind of been... refreshing my email a lot today, waiting for this to come through.  NB's R's for partials seem to take a week or less for everyone, so I thought today might be the day.  And it was!

This sounds like a form R to me:

Dear Mindi,

Thank you very much for sending the excerpt from THE FAKE MCCOY.  I think you're a talented writer and you have a clever premise, but I'm afraid I just didn't quite find myself connecting with the narrative enough to give me confidence that I'm the one to make this stand out in such a competitive marketplace.

Opinions vary considerably in this business, and I hope you find another who feels differently.  Thank you for the opportunity to get to know your work, and I wish you every success.

Nathan

Paper Towns

I read PAPER TOWNS by John Green last week while on my outgoing flight.  It didn't live up to my expectations.  In fact, I was left feeling rather cold afterward.

I would say I'm having bad luck with books or something, but I read THE ABSOLUTELY TRUE DIARY OF A PART-TIME INDIAN and absolutely loved it.  So, that isn't it.

After finishing PAPER TOWNS, I sat there (like you do on a plane) and just stared at the back of the seat in front of me for probably a half hour, trying to figure out what had gone wrong.  I was laughing so hard at the start of the book. I couldn't stop.  Seriously, this was John Green's humor at its finest.  And I loved, loved, loved the "cast."  There was nothing really wrong with the book that I can think of, so there was no reason for me not to love it, right?  Well, the absence of bad doesn't automatically equal greatness.

Okay.  This is weird, but I keep comparing JG's work to the music of The Killers.  HOT FUSS has a certain sound, a certain feel.  For the most part, I loved it when it came out (for the second time).  SAM'S TOWN also has a certain sound and feel to it--a very different sound and feel from HF.  But there is still a certain Killers-ness about both.  (Incidentally, I am more hooked on SAM'S TOWN than HOT FUSS.  But my favorite album of theirs at the moment is SAWDUST, which contains the B-sides from their recording sessions of both of those albums.)   

Now, what I keep hoping for is that the forthcoming album DAY & AGE will have some of what I loved about HOT FUSS and SAM'S TOWN with something new mixed in there as well.  From the "Human" single, it sounds exactly like that.  Which is awesome!  But, if the rest of the CD ends up sounding like "Smile Like You Mean It" (my least favorite Killer's song of all time), I will be disappointed in DAY & AGE despite "Human" being on there.

And I guess that's what happened with PAPER TOWNS.  Some element (that I can't quite put my finger on) which I'll call "Smile Like You Mean It" was in LOOKING FOR ALASKA, but I didn't mind it so much at the time.  Then it was largely absent in AN ABUNDANCE OF KATHERINES so I felt like JG was moving forward.  But with PAPER TOWNS, "Smile Like You Mean It" showed up all over the place.  It felt like a big step backward.

Anyhow, all this is not to say that PT is a terrible book or I don't find JG's writing enjoyable.  It just didn't move me or resonate with me in the way I'd hoped it would.  I keep reading comments from others who say it helped them open their eyes and see the people around them in a whole new light.  It's so cool to see how it is changing people's views and lives with that.  Maybe it doesn't have that effect on me because I've already made those types of revelations in my own life a long time ago?  I don't know.  The emotions and deep realizations just weren't there for me.