Toxic History at Blockbuster

One of my favorite parts of teaching is examining the strange relationship of history and popular culture. History, myth, and historical references pop up in the most unusual places. Usually these episodes make me laugh or smile, sometimes it makes me cringe.

Like today at Blockbuster.

I'm showing Terrence Malick's The New World to my classes to discuss the ways in which the myth of Pocahontas has become deeply engrained in American society - to the point where the New World claims to be historically accurate yet still portrays a romance between Pocahontas and John Smith. No, it didn't happen (if you'd like to know more - go here). But the myth has such strength that most people cling it fiercely.

Even the guy at Blockbuster.

Me: I'm looking for Terrence Malick's The New World

Blockbuster Guy: Is that the one about Pocahontas? With Colin Ferrell? That has almost no talking?

Me: *Grits teeth* Uh-huh.

BG: *punches title into computer* No offense but that movie is creepy as hell. I mean, she was like, fifteen.

Me: *trying not to groan* Yep, and that's not all. She wasn't fifteen, she was eleven and there was no relationship.

BG: *taking me to find movie* What do you mean?

Me: *really not wanting to launch into history lecture in middle of video store* Well, John Smith wrote a story to get lots of attention back in England, but the love story is made up.

BG: Are you sure? Cause I read something that said they had sex.

Me: *chokes a little* ??????

BG: Yeah, I read that. Creepy. I mean, fifteen. Creepy, man.

Me: No. They didn't have sex. It was made up. She was eleven. And yeah, that part of the movie is creepy.

BG: If it's so creepy why are you watching it?

Me: I'm teaching it. I'm teaching the way stories are made up and talked about like they're true history. Most people don't know the real story.

BG: What do you mean the real story?

Me: I mean that John Smith made up his romance with Pocahontas to get attention. She went to England and married another guy, later, when she wasn't eleven.

BG: *looks skeptical* Oh.

Me: *Sighs, leaves Blockbuster feeling rather defeated*

I'd like to say that I actually think there is a lot of worthwhile footage (historically) in The New World. It shows how awful life in Jamestown was, Malick consulted Powhatans about their cultural heritage. I like a lot of the film.

But the romance kills me. A part of me understands why popular culture clings so fiercely to Pocahontas/John Smith love story *shakes fist at Disney,* but the real story is compelling too.

So I'll do mini lectures at Blockbuster if I have to, and I'll keep trying to change the story. One video store at a time.

Fifty!

Fifty followers! Hooray (and thank you!) From my first post, I loved blogging (because hey, it's writing) but wondered whether anyone would ever read what I'd written. Thank you so much for sharing this journey with me. I sincerely hope each of you can say in the future "well, I was a follower before she was famous!" (See my last post on the danger of delusions - I'm not good at taking my own advice.)

Speaking of delusions, have just gotten news from editor Jill and publisher Michael about absolutely fabulous cover plans!! Top secret for now, but will share as soon as I'm able. Speaking of amazing, but creepy artistry check out this Wolf Parade video. Happy Wednesday!

Diagnosis: Delusion

Dreams are great - they're more than great, they're vital. However, sometimes we can let dreams morph into delusions that lull us into irresponsible procrastination (a little procastination is healthy) or steer us off a cliff into the chasm of unreasonable expectations.

My little post derives from a much bigger, and excellent, post by agent Holly Root. Holly describes a problem she sees among new writers that she calls "cart-before-the-horse-itis." First of all, big points for awesome virus name. Second, let's all take a big dose of reality check as Holly suggests.

I'm not a patient person (that's an understatement), but I'm experiencing necessary patience growing pains because writing and publishing require lots of time and patience. Without allowing for one's craft to develop, your readership to grow, your ideas to evolve and make even better books, a writer's delusions can end up a career train wreck. Writing is a way of life, not a manuscript, not a sale, not a signing. Dreaming is good, delusions get us nowhere.

From Toxic to Bliss?

There have been some interesting posts recently that discuss expectations, jealousy, and ideas about navigating the emotional rollercoaster that is the writing world.

Here's my two cents:

The ups and down of writing, revising, attempting to get an agent, get published, get reviewed, and the list goes on, inevitably produces the full range of human emotions from euphoria to rage to despondence. More often than not, this mental yuck will be directed at those of whom we're jealous or who we blame for our current dire-seeming circumstance.

Rather than hiding from these volatile feelings or pretending that we don't experience them, I think it's best to find productive ways to move through the toxic mire of envy and self-doubt to the Elysian fields of hope and confidence. To achieve this end requires conscientious, thoughtful traversing through one's own psyche.

When it comes to human relations I still don't think you can get much better than the golden rule: Do unto others as you'd have done unto you.

There's a reason this saying has been enshrined at the United Nations.

But even with the best of intentions, it's important to acknowledge and experience the emotions that come with the darker sides of writing life, namely rejection. So how can we rage without doing permanent damage?

I think I found the answer in the All-American Rejects song "Gives You Hell."

With this wickedly catchy song and what is perhaps the funniest video I've ever watched, the message is clear:
Yes you'll get angry, yes you'll be frustrated, yes you'll feel crazy, but at the end of the day it's all about walking a mile in the other person's shoes, knowing we're all in this together and that we're all human.

Daydreams and Ferry Trips

I'm blogging from the homestead, Ashland, Wisconsin - small town settled on the South Shore of Lake Superior.

I'm here because my bathroom is currently being demolished. A leak had developed beneath the floorboards and had it gone any further, I might have ended up like this:

http://kstp.com/article/stories/S506173.shtml?cat=1

Fortunately, that crisis was averted, but I'm temporarily homeless but for the grace of my wonderful parents.

I dragged a fabulous colleague into the Northwoods with me and she's been an amazing companions. In the midst of academic hell this past year we found soul sistership; she dreams of creating films the way I dream of writing novels. Needless to say, we became fast friends.

Yesterday we boarded the ferry to Madeline Island and gazed out over the velvet blue expanse of Lake Superior. It was cold and spitting rain, but we still beamed and frolicked on the island.

We also plotted. And found a promise...a promise to ourselves and each other: To have that elusive site, the artist's retreat.

Someday we'll find an island or coastal hideaway in which to be our best creative selves. That making such a place a refuge amidst the obligations of life will be a priority and will help us realize our dreams.
Turning the eyes and mind heavenward to stretch toward dreams is both comforting and essential to the survival of an artist's soul. It helps to think of the ways we might best cultivate that side of ourselves, which the world so often smothers beneath harried tasks and mundane obligations.

What are your dreams of the future? What place or event would make your creativity take flight?

Acronym Dreams

Those of you connected to the book/writing world are probably, like me, all too aware that the BEA takes place this week.

Those readers not connected to said professions just collectively went "Huh?"

BEA stands for Book Expo America. This mammoth love fest for writers, publishers, and agents takes place in New York City and features exhibitions of shiny new books, with shiny debut authors, and their shiny autograph pens.

Does my tone sound a little snarky? It is (sigh), only because I am totally, totally jealous of everyone who gets to be at BEA this week and especially of the shiny writing debutantes. I soooooo want to be one of those chosen authors who gets their two-hour signing slot at their publisher's booth.

BEA also offers a chance to snatch up ARCs. ARCs are Advanced Review Copies - books that won't be out until later this year, but if you pay $700.00 (yes, that is the correct figure I've just typed) to attend BEA you are able to purchase ARCs before they become available to the masses.

The ARCs I really want to get my hands on are Maggie Stiefvater's Shiver and Guillermo del Toro's The Strain.

Moreover BEA presents a fascinating glimpse of the book industry. Now I know any mention of the "industry" side of writing and publishing makes most writers curl up into a fetal position and I can hardly blame them, but I do harbor a (morbid?) fascination with the juggernaut of agents, editors, publishers, and distributors congregation in a single frenzied space of days to make the printing world go round.

I'd like to see it. I hope someday I will and as a participant, not just a spectator.

On another note, my neighborhood is currently subject to a strange natural phenomenon: a cotton explosion.

In front of our home grows a massive cottonwood tree and at the same time each year it sends millions of fluffy white spheres into the air.
The atmosphere is so thick with parachuting seeds a glance out the window would make you think it's snowing in May (unfortunately in Minnesota that would not be a completely unheard of occurence, but thankfully in this case that isn't what's happening).
(Many thanks to Gwyn and Rocco for posing in this photo, under normal circumstances they'd be standing only on green grass rather than a layer of what looks like a cross between snow and dense cobwebs. Go spring!)

"A hope unreasonable and highly jarring..."

As a faculty member I'm expected to attend the annual commencement ceremony at the liberal arts college where I work.

I'm a new employee, and last year I skipped it.

I have a strong aversion to highly structured, large group activities. I hated school field trips and summer camp. I'm a loner. "Organized fun" is arsenic to my soul.

So I attended this year's graduation festivities with gritted teeth laced with a healthy dose of guilt at my own selfishness about my time (I had some really wonderful seniors this year and I was happy to see their accomplishments), though I think most writers are time-hoarders like myself.

For the most part it was what I expected. Platitudes, sentiment, congratulations. The unexpected came in the words of the college chaplain, who gave the invocation to the ceremony.

She asked that students move through the world with "a hope unreasonable and highly jarring." This phrase shook me out of my own thoughts and struck me as not only raw in its truth but profound in its timeliness.

The graduating class enters a failing job market and an unstable world. The keynote speaker at the commencement, a United Nations officer whose job takes him face to face with child soldiers in Africa, described the atrocities of war and a lost generation of children. Needless to say, his address was more sobering than inspiring.

In light of these truths, hope becomes unreasonable and the act of dreaming remains highly jarring. These dual processes, essential to a thriving soul, are all to elusive in a world that is often lonely, merciless, and alienating.

Writers are hope junkies. We have to be. We strive to create against the odds of getting an agent, being published, having success, one day making enough by writing in order to quit our day jobs.

We have hope that is always unreasonable and beliefs in our ability to continue this work that are always highly jarring. Our maladies are self-doubt, depression, despondency. We tread water amid high seas with stones chained to our ankles.

I mentioned in my last post that I was about to attend a reading by Rick Riordan. His visit was in a huge space that was brimming with children and parents, standing room only. I can't describe the elation I felt at seeing so many young boys and girls, hands stretched to heaven, waiting for their questions to be answered and shrieking with delight at discussion of their favorite characters from his books.

Riordan was a middle-school teacher for 15 years and at this reading he announced two new book series he's writing and that the movie of The Lightning Thief will be out this February.

In light of such impossible twists of fate an aspiring author might despair, could decide "that will never be me." But did I?

No.

My hope unreasonable and highly jarring remains to one day stand before an audience, like Riordan, and share the love of my books.

The Derby

I was a girl who dreamt of horses.
Every Christmas and birthday that came around would find me leaving a carefully-folded sheaf of paper (or two) atop my parents' pillows. (Yes, I was destined to be a writer, without doubt.)


I held my breath and waited for them to find the letter that oh-so-pleadingly detailed the reasons I needed a horse of my own.

My parents never caved.

The gods smiled on me though and I ended up working summers on a ranch from age ten through high school. For someone who never had her own horse, I've spent more time riding than most.

I don't ride much anymore, and I always feel a bit of a loss because of it. I usually can tell when I've gone too long without spending time around horses because the dreams come back. They are always the same. I'm back at the ranch, helping saddle and bridle horses, prepping for a trek out into the forest, but obstacle after obstacle arises - each delaying our departure - and inevitably I don't ever get to ride.

On this day, each year without fail, horses fill my mind.

It's Derby Day.

That young girl who loved horses, loved everything about them. I followed the two-year-old racing circuit closely, awaiting its culmination on the first Saturday in May. And I was convinced that some divine symbol rested in the fact that the last Triple Crown Winner appeared in the year I was born. On the list I kept of things I wanted to do in life, a trip to the Kentucky Derby numbered among them.

I made it to the Derby - twice. It was not what I expected.

I'd always thought of the Kentucky Derby as something of a horse lover's Holy Grail. It's not.

The first trip I made was with a friend from Louisville. We were in our early twenties, and she took me to the infield.













For anyone not indoctrinated into the revelries associated with the Derby, the infield is something of a gathering point for the common folk. A heavily-inebriated crowd partakes in what resembles a mixture of Mardi Gras and spring break. My maiden voyage to Churchill Downs presented me with more flashed breasts than thoroughbreds.

Having recently gone through college life, I took it in stride. But the tiny horse-obsessed girl inside of me felt as though the inner sanctum of horse heaven had been violated.

The second trip I made to the Derby happened the following year. The corporate honchos I worked for had two extra tickets to the Grand Stand, and offered them to me. And I thought my redemptive Derby trip had arrived.

But lo, disappointment once again.

Instead of a drunken, hot press of half-naked bodies in the infield, I was surrounded by a drunken, hot press of starched-linen bodies topped with silly hats. And still no horses.


(I present "Kentucky Derby Barbie," and yeah, it really was kinda like that...sigh)





You wouldn't believe how hard it is to actually watch the race if you attend the Kentucky Derby.

But I did it. I made my long-envisioned pilgrimage to the Kentucky Derby, twice. Neither experience lived up to the sacred horse-worshipping experience that I had wanted to partake in.

It made me wonder about the way we create ideals as children, pin our hopes on far-reaching expeditions that will somehow make us the human beings we long to be. How often does the reality bear pale resemblance to the beauty of our dreams?

In the Before (Recession) Time, the Long, Long Ago

First: Writers' conferences rock my world. At least this one.

I've already met amazing people - agents, editors, authors and those aspiring to author-dom alike. (My deepest thanks to any shiny, new SF writers friends who are checking out my blog!)

But I'm not here for a conference blow-by-blow, with one exception. My favorite moment thus far was when, with a sweep of his hand, Donald Maass cried, "I am a story god!"

I'm not sure what to be shocked by: his self-proclaimed divinity or my instant conversion to his religion.

My other source of bemusement this weekend derives from the Mark Hopkins amenities menu. This oh-so-lovely hotel evokes an era flush with cash unknown to our current dire economy. In the moments (hours) when I'm too nervous (exhausted) to practice my pitches yet another time, I enjoy pretending I am a business don of a bygone era (the 90s) who can make use of the array of services offered.

Oh......If I were a rich man, Ya ha deedle deedle, bubba bubba deedle deedle dum I'd
1) Order the $62 breakfast
2)The $162.00 Executive Briefcase that bursts with truffles, chocolates, nuts, fruit and not one but two bottles of water
3)The $400 Champagne and Caviar (or if I want to be frugal, just the $105.00 Champagne and Strawberries, please)
4)The $450.00 Wine and Spirits Package with enough alcohol to fill my bathtub (and it's a nice bathtub, I've been luxuriating in bubbles every night. And that's where I'll be after I post this blog)

I apologize to any readers who take the finer things in life as a matter of course. I may be a dreamer, but I retain enough Midwestern/Scandinavian sense to make my father proud.

Not that I'd turn down that Executive Briefcase, should anyone be inclined to send one to my room.

Neil Gaiman at the Grocery Story

Since my last post celebrated Neil Gaiman's Newberry, I thought I'd trot out my too-frequent thoughts about a real life encounter with he-who-I-wish-was-my-mentor. These day-time musings emerged to haunt my thoughts when I learned that Gaiman lives near the Twin Cities (which automatically made me feel cooler by association, since I live in the same place that he does).

So here is the scenario of what would happen should Andrea run into Neil Gaiman at the grocery store, or Spyhouse, or the Electric Fetus, MIA, my office at Macalester (these are places that I go, I have no idea where Neil Gaiman spends his time in the Minneapolis/St. Paul region. He certainly has not shown up at my office):

I am in the produce section holding a pomegranate and thinking about Persephone. A person next to me picks up another pomegranate and turns it over in his hand. I look up and my jaw drops. Neil Gaiman, being a polite person, smiles in a civil way and takes another pomegranate. Because pomegranates are wonderful and of course having more than one is a nice idea.

I stare and wait for the floor to open up so that Neil Gaiman and I are swallowed by Twin Cities Below (is there a Twin Cities Below Mr. Gaiman?). Whenever this happens we wander through the underworld and I save Neil Gaiman from the giant mosquito or rabid loon that guards the labyrinth, which I'm certain is located beneath the Walker Art Center's sculpture garden. Mr. Gaiman returns happily to his family and, grateful for my heroics, offers to critique my writing and introduce me and my novel to his agent.

But the floor doesn't open up and I am still gaping at Neil Gaiman.
"Oh my god, you're Neil Gaiman," I say.
His smile becomes gracious. "Yes."
I am still staring. Neil Gaiman shuffles his feet.
"Oh my god, you're Neil Gaiman." I say again. I am unable to blink.
Neil Gaiman grips the pomegranate more tightly and looks at the bananas like they are an escape hatch.
The flood gates open. "My name is Andrea and Neverwhere changed my life. I write and I really want to get published, and did I mention that American Gods changed my life. I write YA urban fantasy and did I mention that the Graveyard Book changed my life. And I hope your dog feels better soon, my dog's had a hard time lately too. He's a pug so his sinuses completely freeze in the winter and he can't breathe. And did I mention how much I love Sandman and that what you write about writing helps me to write. Did I mention that I'm trying to be a writer? Congratulations on your Newberry."
I take a breath and notice that Neil Gaiman isn't standing in front of me any more, but there is a pomegranate rolling along the floor. I am devastated because Twin Cities Below must have taken him but not me.

I sigh and wander into the tea/coffee aisle. I convince myself that the conversation went very well. The next day I am served a restraining order.

Alas, alas I should not meet Neil Gaiman, lest I end up a mirror-image of that crazy fangirl from Flight of the Conchords. My writing career would surely be over before it began.

The whys and wherefores

Writing doesn't completely represent a new way of life for me. It's more of a dream revisited. My writing is nearly as old as any of my memories. I've always composed stories go to along with life - or to take me outside it.

Then graduate school happened. While pursuing a Ph.D. in American history all my energies were channeled into that endeavor, and writing and reading non-history fare pretty much fell off the map for me.

But I finished the Ph.D. and got a fantastic job. Having done all that I decided to reclaim favorite pursuits. I spent my childhood summers working on a ranch twenty minutes from Ashland, Wisconsin. I found a horse, was puffed up with pride, and then the horse jumped on my foot and shattered it.

I was on crutches for the rest of the summer. No walking, no adventures. I had a lot of time to think.

A latent desire pushed out from inside me and begged to be addressed. I needed to write again, to write in the way that I'd always written. It was like coming back to myself. So I sat down (well, I was already sitting down - broken foot, remember?) and began to write. And now I'm writing novels. Or trying.

If you're interested in giving feedback on my writing, I'd love to have it. If you're a literary agent and want to make my dreams come true, all the better.

What I post here are drafts, works in progress, warts and all. But I want to have a venue to talk about what is a really painful process, but a necessary part of who I am.

Thanks for listening (though I realize I may still be writing to myself alone). Oh well. Good exercise in solipsism.