1. What did you do in 2011 that you’d never done before?

Wrote professionally. Obituaries, actually. For Encyclopaedia Britannica. There have been stranger internships. Also, body modification.

2. Did you keep your New Years’ resolutions, and will you make more for next year?

I didn’t make any this year! It was part of this plan to destress my life. I have a bunch for this year, though.

3. Did anyone close to you give birth?

Yes.

4. Did anyone close to you die?

Yes.

5. What countries did you visit?

I was firmly in America during 2011.

6. What would you like to have in 2012 that you lacked in 2011?

Forward motion.

7. What dates from 2011 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?

Valentine’s Day, for sadness. Also the whole week of my birthday, because it was insanely dramatic. July 4th.

8. What was your biggest achievement of the year?

I finished the second draft of Time Travel Book, so that was pretty cool. I also received an amazing internship and reevaluated my career goals.

9. What was your biggest failure?

Not being brave.

10. Did you suffer illness or injury?

I took birth control for the first time and ALMOST DIED. Also I was debilitatingly ill over my birthday week, and had to take these ridiculous pills to keep me from exploding all over the car as my mom and I raced back home from the beach… like I said, that week was dramatic.

11. What was the best thing you bought?

12. Whose behavior merited celebration?

Everyone’s, to be honest. I have amazing people in my life.

14. Where did most of your money go?

Christmas presents, clothes. All my clothes died this year. It was really sad.

15. What did you get really, really, really excited about?

My sister’s part in Aida at MoCo College. Summertime. Being accepted to STUDY ABROAD IN PARIS WHEEEEEE. All the issues of Shimmer that we put out.

16. What song will always remind you of 2011?

“Dog Days are Over” by Florence + the Machine. Too many good times with the sister to count.

17. Compared to this time last year, you are:

Happier?

In a quiet way, yeah.

Richer?

Oh God yes.

Thinner?

um.

18. What do you wish you’d done more of?

Reading books for fun. Eating good food. Lying in the sun.

19. What do you wish you’d done less of?

Worrying. Making plans that were secretly attempts at sabotage.

20. How will you be spending Christmas?

Family, as always. Wait. Was I supposed to do this thing before Christmas?? Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu

22. Did you fall in love in 2011?

Nooooot really.

24. What was your favorite TV program?

30 Rock. I watched it with Angry Roommate.

25. Do you hate anyone now that you didn’t hate this time last year?

Nope.

26. What was the best book you read?

I loved many books, including:

THE SUN ALSO RISES, Ernest Hemingway
THE ALCHEMY OF STONE, Ekaterina Sedia
IMAGINARY GIRLS, Nova Ren Suma
JUDE THE OBSCURE, Thomas Hardy

27. What was your greatest musical discovery?

SO MANY BANDS: The aforementioned Florence + the Machine, Cage the Elephant, The Strokes, Muse. Others I’m forgetting. I also bought all the Metric records I hadn’t, and omg omg omg

30. What was your favorite film of this year?

Captain America, probably. Superhero + period piece = AHMAZING. Super 8 was a close second.

31. What did you do on your birthday. And how old were you?

Beach times, followed by severe illness. I turned 20.

32. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?

A permanent cat-buddy.

33. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2011?

Classic Americana bohemian punk-rock neo-hipster.

34. What kept you sane?

The Musers, the Musers, the Musers. My amazing friends. Angry Roommate.

35. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?

I don’t remember. Possibly Carrie Mulligan?

36. What political issue stirred you the most?

Birth control rights for women.

37. Whom did you miss?

An old friend and lover. Julia, currently in kitty-heaven. Idealistic Sophie. It’s okay though. I’m going to figure out how to bring her back.

You wouldn’t. You know why? Because editing is a slog. A mechanistic, make-it-better, crank-it-out slog. All those emotions, the up and down mood swings, the brilliant flashes of creativity, the pain and dejection following a stint of really bad writing… that doesn’t happen so much, in the second draft.

The second draft is where you realize that most of what you wrote before was not so much English as it was happy fun pixie wing thoughts sprinkled around a cat turd. The second draft is not when you make the thing; it’s when you make that thing better.

Better is only subjective some of the time.

The second draft is where you have to stop telling yourself that you are an artiste. To survive the second draft, you have to have an artist’s skin. This skin is tough. It’s stained, probably, with ink from that last battle with the printer. It’s got scars from the second drafts of the past. Burns from the thirds. Chapping from all the outlines you’ve written and then tossed. It has only a few tender spots, and somehow the rejections you will inevitably get hit those spots and those spots alone.

The second draft is coffee, and tea, and hiding underneath your desk. It’s punching your manuscript in the face repeatedly until it agrees to be cooperative. It’s discovery and selective forgetfulness.

It’ll be okay. This is the hardest part – the shaping from the raw material, carving and adding. And eventually, even second drafts have to come to an end.

***
Margaret takes a drag form her joint like the world will end when it all runs out. Her breath goes long and slow. We stand underneath the bridge, with the stream going by two feet away from us. Above, suburban traffic rolls along in bursts.

“I got those scans for the history test,” she says, hugging her arms around her body. It’s April, but it’s cold enough to wear a jacket, and the occasional flame of our pocket lighters isn’t enough to keep our hands warm.

“Yeah?” I say.

“Yeah. I got them from Joey Pei, but I don’t know. It’s last year’s test.”

“I think Gatz usually uses the questions on the textbook website.” This means Margaret’s answer key espionage was entirely pointless.

I haven’t smoked. I can’t. Margaret’s face is getting glassier and glassier, and I’m stuck in sobriety because I’ve got therapy in three hours.

“You think he’s going to give us a curve?”

“Maybe.”

Margaret breathes smoke for a little while longer.

“You all right standing so close to me?”

“I’ll be fine.”

Her expression is trying to be critical. It’s like she expects me to start talking to someone she can’t see or hear. Which, you know, isn’t impossible, but usually she’s more discreet than this.

Chua argues that the main reason that “Chinese” mothers are superior mothers is because they are, in a word, relentless. She states, “What Chinese parents understand is that nothing is fun until you’re good at it. To get good at anything you have to work, and children on their own never want to work… Tenacious practice, practice, practice is crucial for excellence”.

Let’s parse this out.

“Nothing is fun until you are good at it” implies that nothing is fun until it is easy. Once you’re good at it, it gets easy. I’d like to argue that some of the most fun I’ve ever has been doing things that were incredibly difficult for me. For example, learning new alphabets. Cyrillic is a pain in the butt. Learning the letters and the sounds that corresponded to those letters was probably the most challenging thing I had done at that point in my life, and it took about two days to get it down pat, but it was still fun. That said, algebra, especially beginners algebra, is easy, and I was good at it, but it bored me to death and as a result I found it decidedly unfun. I’m sure many people can share similar stories.

“To get good at anything, you have to work.” This is certainly true, though perhaps it should be modified to “to get better at anything, you have to work.” People are born with talents, and I would argue that Chua’s children’s talents are not the sole result of her relentlessness.

“Tenacious practice, practice, practice is crucial for excellence.” I would argue the same points as I did above in response to this claim.

What becomes problematic is the fact that Chua, while positing the rather banal and trite argument that practice does indeed make perfect, and that parents have to push children to practice, also reveals that she does not allow her children to choose in what field they are going to pursue excellence. In fact, Chua lists several activities that could indeed produce excellence in her children, but they are forbidden to them. Why? She doesn’t say. She never, at any point in her article, expresses why these pursuits should be less valued than the ones she forces upon her children.

Here are a few: “be in a school play… choose their own extracurricular activities… play any instrument other than the piano or violin.”

Let’s peer deeper, shall we?

Another thing Chua’s children are expressly forbidden to do is “not be the No. 1 student in every subject except gym and drama.”

I would like to suggest that Chua doesn’t give a rat’s ass about “excellence”, as she claims to, but instead wants her children to become an acceptable level of competent in areas of knowledge and skill that she deems worthwhile. In other words, her children exist for no other reason but to fulfill the expectations she has of them. They are, effectively, denied any remnant of agency (rather like those non-Chinese persons who were dubbed “Chinese”). They are extensions of their mother’s ambitions.

LET’S READ MORE, SHALL WE?

Chinese parents believe that they know what is best for their children and therefore override all of their children’s own desires and preferences. That’s why Chinese daughters can’t have boyfriends in high school and why Chinese kids can’t go to sleepaway camp. It’s also why no Chinese kid would ever dare say to their mother, “I got a part in the school play! I’m Villager Number Six. I’ll have to stay after school for rehearsal every day from 3:00 to 7:00, and I’ll also need a ride on weekends.” God help any Chinese kid who tried that one.

This quote made me laugh. Why? Because here is where Chua really slips up and reveals that she really doesn’t care at all about excellence in anything except those areas that she has already set her narrow mind upon. Why can’t her child be Villager Number Six this time around, take some time to do some of the “tenacious practice, practice, practice” that Chua loves so much, and slowly but surely become a better actor, until she becomes an excellent actor?

Is the answer because Chua is so caught up in her preconceptions of what is “acceptable” excellence that she can’t realize that her argument is inherently flawed?

Well, perhaps Chua would point to this sentence as her response: “Chinese parents believe that they know what is best for their children and therefore override all of their children’s own desires and preferences.”

But if “Chinese” parents can’t see the hypocrisy of their own arguments, how can we be certain that they know what’s for their children? How can they? Is the reason that they can feel secure in their knowledge of what’s “best” for their children just arrogance?

I’m not saying it is. I’m just asking. In a pointed fashion.

Some people are suggesting this article is satire. If it were satire, I say, it would be funny. If Jonathan Swift can make eating babies funny, then this woman, a Yale professor, can certainly make hypocritical, power-trolling parenting funny. If she’s trying to be a satirist, I’d humbly suggest that Chua practice satire a little bit more.

I wrote a book.

I submitted a short story to seven magazines.

I declared two majors.

I dealt with the anxiety of growing a whole year older.

I got straight As. Two quarters in a row!

I gained some idea of what I want out of a career.

I learned that I can be strong by myself and with other people.

All in all, I think 2010 was a successful year. It was, of course, The Year of the Muser, but that doesn’t mean I can start slacking now. The Musers have started posting their Goals for 2011 in the Clubhouse, and that’s given me plenty of time to think about what I want to do.

Here’s a sampling.

Send out a query for a newly edited book.

Begin to pull in some thoughts about when I want to graduate.

Send out at least two new short stories to magazines.

Start learning a new language.

Eat more good food.

I also have a serious-like New Years Resolution: to take responsibility for my successes as much as I do for my failures.

And lastly, I have a neat little year-long project for 2011. But more on that later. (Probably tomorrow.)

If you’re anything like me, your reaction to a claim like that is, “Wait a second. It can’t be that simple.”

Well, if you’re anything like me, you’re probably wrong.

In my last post, I threatened that I’d talked about active creativity. Well, it turns out that I totally hadn’t, and I suck as a blogger. Here’s that post that I promised about a month ago.

“Writers write.” What does that mean? Besides, like, the ridiculously redundant elaboration I wrote previously?

“Writer” is a word composed of two things: the word “write” and then an “er” at the end, which tells us that whoever this word is referring to does the action that “write” entails. So the sentence, “Writers write” is kind of redundant, but it is a truth.

Writing, for a writer, is a kind of self-making. (Oh God, here she goes again.) In this act of writing, you’re defining yourself as a writer, but as you define yourself as a writer, you also define your writing. While you produce, you create a product that eventually defines itself. Are you a writer of fantasy, of YA, of literary fiction? Non-fiction? Poetry?

Just as writers can’t be writers unless they write, creative people can’t be creative unless they are actively pursuing that creativity. Creativity isn’t a quality that will remain constant, available to you throughout your entire life. Neuroscience disagrees – eventually, those cogs stop turning, and you get kind of boring. But the same thing goes for qualities like “good at math.” You’re not going to be good at math all your life. Eventually you’re going to hit a roadblock.

How do you overcome something like this?

I believe it’s a constant engagement with whatever pursuits you’re interested in. Creative pursuits, especially, can’t be pushed aside. You have to constantly be thinking about them, constantly moving forward, constantly engaging whatever you’re working on, so you can further define yourself, your work, and keep producing long after you’re young whippersnapper days are over.

Passive creativity is easy – it’s just waiting for the muse to strike. But the muse is never striking when we want her to be, and why should we wait for her, anyway? Active creativity comes from the self, the human, and is a challenge. Of course it is. This was never going to be easy. Where’d you get that idea? Creativity is hard work. It’s about thinking, writing, nurturing, and, eventually, producing.

Blamo. Obligatory pontification over. Since the fam and I are heading to Universal Studios for winter break, be prepared for some pictures of me in Ravenclaw gear. Also, with an owl plushie.

Maybe this is just because I haven’t done NaNoWriMo for three years, but I’m seeing a lot more negativity attached to the idea of writing novels (in a month) coming out of the internet this past week than I have, I think, ever in my life.

I honestly don’t understand the phenomenon.

So far, there have been a couple of arguments. There have also been tons of counter arguments. I’m not going to sit around and list them all, because frankly, Salon.com and The LA Times basically did that already (also, I follow Hannah Moskowitz on Twitter and she’s got most of this shit covered).

My issue with the criticism is a stodgy academic one.

Yeah. I can be a stodgy academic about NaNoWriMo.

I’ve talked before about active and passive relationships to creativity and creative pursuits. (And if I haven’t, I’ve meant to, so we’ll just pretend that I have and if I’m proven wrong I’ll just post about it later in the month.)

Very simply, in a our society, we tend to think of things in terms of producers and consumers. Producers make. Consumers take. I think this translates very rapidly in some peoples’ minds to novelists can write novels, but non-novelists should not write novels.

This is bullcrap.

First of all, “novelist” is not a definition of a person, it is merely an occupation. What does an occupation do? It occupies some time in your life. You do it. It does not define you. (I think Nathan Bransford wrote something to this effect a while ago, but of course I can’t find the exact link.)

Second of all, I don’t think anyone expects me to believe that producer and consumer are mutually exclusive. Even people who let their money work for them generally have hobbies or something to keep them busy. So let’s just imagine that everyone in the world has the capacity to produce and consume something, and that something may very well be novels.

Now: I have a question for you. What better way to acquaint yourself with the creative product of your choosing than to try to make one yourself?

In other words, even if you are just a reader, why choose a passive relationship to what you are consuming? Why not write a book? Well, there are tons of legitimate reasons to not write books. I can think of one right now. “I don’t want to.” More power to you, madam. But if you want to actively consume a novel, why not know how one comes into being?

This is where the timeframe of this whole deal becomes a problem for some people. How can you possibly write a novel in 30 days?

Well, how can you possibly learn figure drawing in a two hour session? Just because you’re a little squashed for time doesn’t mean you aren’t learning anything. And, just as there are artists who can draw a figure in two hours, there are novelists who can write a whole book in a month. (And it’ll be publishable, too. Again, I refer you to Hannah Moskowitz.)

Opinion time: In my mind, it is infinitely more rewarding to be an active consumer, to have this active relationship with art. Even though I’m rather crap at it, I do try to teach myself to draw, take art classes, learn about music, etc. I’ve even drawn a few things I’m proud of and composed a couple of songs. (One, which I wrote when I was 8, is called “Popcorn” and is about how popcorn is really pretty cool.) Even if I weren’t pursuing writing as a career, I would want to better understand writing as an art, and NaNoWriMo could be a perfect way to do that. You have community, a strict deadline, and daily goals. Plus, it’s fun.

This evening I’m going to be on a plane, headed back to Chicago. The quarter starts on the 27th, and after that I’ll be back into my routine of class, homework, and writing.

The summer has been a remarkably productive one. I didn’t do much writing, but I have the rest of my novel plotted meticulously. (This is a blatant lie. Consider this my call for help.) I took three classes, raised 6 kittens, their incredibly neglectful mother, and am beginning to make plans to fix up my leaky bathroom.

I had a job, too. Let’s not talk about it.

Sometimes, when I feel crappy about goals that I’ve set for myself, I try to remind myself that there are plenty of other things that I’ve done. It’s easy to get bogged down in things you should have done, but I do believe that there’s something to be said for spontaneity, even if it is unproductive. I try to remember that when I manage to completely ignore goals.

Of course, all that spontaneity is about to be crushed under the impending doom of a new quarter.

Why am I in college again?

However.

I was taken a little aback by their comments about my major. I’m undecided, but leaning towards anthropology. They said that they really prefer to have their interns be English majors. That’s totally fine and their prerogative. I like that they told me up front.

But I’d like, for a moment, to talk about why majoring in something other than English is a perfectly legitimate choice for someone interviewing for a publishing job, and why your major in college is a different kind of prerequisite from your internship/job experience.

The fact of the matter is, I don’t think people need to study one thing, do one thing, and be defined by one thing. I think it’s fantastic that I can go to college, study something completely unrelated, and still read slush for a magazine. I love that I can read slush for a magazine and write novels as well. I also love gardening, crocheting, cooking and eating, botany, and all sorts of other unrelated things. This doesn’t mean that I’m solely a college student, or a writer, or a slush reader, or a gardener, or whatever. And this doesn’t mean that I’m going to be jobless after I exit college.

I see myself doing three different things right now, each with different job prospects attached to them.

1. Writing. Write a novel. Edit it. Write another novel. Edit it. Write stories. Edit them. Send everything out out out. I’ve been doing this for a while and I know that I’m probably not going to make a living from it, but it’d be nice if I could, right? Writing, editing, and submitting is giving me experience in a job field that’s entirely unrelated to what I’m studying in college (note: I just realized this is a lie. I’m probably going to pick up a creative writing minor.), but it’s still giving me experience. This experience is not nullified because I’m not studying the subject in the classroom. (note: I also just remembered that creative writing minor might turn into an Italian minor.)

2. Interning. If I end up getting a desk job, I’d like it to be in publishing. I really like the editorial side of things, and most of my internship experience is related to that specifically. I’d like to think that if this ends up being a career goal of mine, that internship experience (which I’ve been accumulating since my senior year of high school), will count for something, even if my college degree is about, like, the anthropology of pastoral whatevers in Australia or something. Interning right now takes up about 5-8 hours a week, not to mention whatever PR work I may/may not pick up in the future. If I end up taking on another internship in the winter or spring, I’d add on about 16 hours a week to that schedule.

3. Colleging. I think I’m lucky to go to Chicago, where people have a lot of freedom to study whatever they like. And obviously, with today’s mentality, my BA is going to count for a lot. That’s fine with me, and I’ve definitely structured what I’m studying with an eye towards a future career. If I end up taking the anthropology/environmental studies route, I’ll probably forgo the desk job in favor of doing something hands-on, like landscape architecture.

Anyway, the point of this post is to try to take another jab at beating down the “go to college, major in something, get a job in that something” mentality that I know a lot of my peers and friends back in high school will have. Before I started to consider my major seriously, my mom mentioned that my BA would definitely help out, but what’s really important is work experience. Develop skills. Work hard. Pick up anything and everything you’re interested in, because you like it, and because it might come in handy.

Ah, I know.

You, darling reader. You are a lovely human being. I think that the Musers would very much like to meet you, as you are a lovely human being. MONDAY NIGHT AT {open} AT LONG BEACH. MUSERS WILL BE THERE. WE WERE ON GALLEYCAT SO YOU KNOW IT’S LEGIT.

Also, if you’re a fan of my magical mystical Musers, we have our own website. Drop by, check us out. Currently there’s a list of Musers on the front page, and then further down is the information about the Muser event.

What else?

Ah. Keynote speakers were lovely. I was particularly tickled by Jon Scieszka’s breakdown of what an illustrator can do for a picture book, and I did love M.T. Anderson’s rendition of the Delawarean anthem.

I also attended a panel on MG boy fiction. I thought it was interesting – a point was made that I think is somewhat valid, that we are trying to attract reluctant readers to novels and so we should try to cater to them. I think, however, that we still need to move past the boy-book girl-book thing. Which reminds me that I should probably take out the “boy-book” part of my bio on the Muser website.

Eh. I’m lazy.

Nevermind. I just asked Potato to change it.

LOOK AT ME I STICK TO MY CONVICTIONS.

Jesus I am so tired this post makes no sense BEAR WITH ME PLEASE.

I love you.

Uh yeah. Then there was this panel on what editors like or don’t like. It was pretty cool.

OH. Before that I attended a totally lovely luncheon focusing on LBGTQ fiction. I saw Hannah Moskowitz talk to Arthur A. Levine and it was a beautiful moment in my life.

And then we ditched the conference because it was my boything’s birthday (he turned 20 woooo) and we had dinner with my aunt. I ate a 16 oz prime rib and mashed potatoes and creamed corn and yorkshire pudding. And asparagus. And bread. And a salad.

And soft serve ice cream with gummy bears on it.

So much success.