Accepted.
May 5th, 2011 § 2 Comments
“Rebekah:
I like this and I will accept it. I did have reservations. It approaches on the border of being treacly[...]
I will email you when it is posted and a check for $50 will follow[...]
Thank you for thinking of Metropolis.”
So reads my first official letter of acceptance for publication. I had to look up the word “treacly,” and my tender writer’s ego was bruised by its definition, but I’ll pay for publication with a bruised ego any day.
After four years of working on a degree, two years of attempts to write for hire, and a lifetime spent honing my craft, I’m getting my first legitimate credits. It’s the most exhilarating feeling in the world.
Number 4 is 1/3 of the way completed.
10 Days Till 25
March 15th, 2011 § 2 Comments
“Once upon a time, there lived two rabbits. They were happy and they loved gardening. One day, they wanted to grow the biggest carrot ever. So they planted a carrot and it grew really big and juicy. Then one day, they decided to eat it. And so they did. The End.”
The above is a reproduction of the first story I ever typed on a computer, as best as my memory can recall. The original manuscript is lost and the Word file buried with the old Gateway computer, residing somewhere in the stratosphere of corrupted data afterlife, or wherever forgotten files go when they die. While my finite memory cannot reproduce the precise wording of that first printed masterpiece, it can recall that giddy feeling of seeing words I had written in print. A giddiness that was promptly replaced with horror at a dire copyediting oversight: My ending was redundant. Unacceptable.
I distinctly remember whisking the freshly printed page out of the printer tray, grabbing the nearest pencil, and scribbling all over the offending “and so they did” atrocity as if the lead could eradicate it from existence forever. There. That was better. And this was a step up from the handcrafted paperbacks I’d toiled over before computers changed the 90s forever.
I had publishing credits long before that first computer changed everything. I was the most popular kid at recess in first grade on days when it was too cold or rainy to play outside. I’d take sheets of drawing paper and staple them together (with help from Mrs. Allen, my publisher’s assistant), crafting pages into illustrated fairytales of self-assured princesses who were too cool for charming princes and fables of bears who had picnics with cats on the arches of talking, emoting rainbows. I worked furiously, words and images pouring out of my brain faster than my tiny hands could scribble them down. If I finished before recess ended, Mrs. Allen would let me read my stories to the class.
Some of my trend-following peers thought they had the chops to compete in the market I cornered. But I was the only first grader who got invited to read my stories to Mrs. Trulin’s second grade class during their afternoon snacks. After a few weeks, the kids were lining up in the hallway to hear my latest release.
I learned early on that putting words on a page made me cool. Putting words on a page gave me power. I didn’t get along with people sometimes. I was the awkward kid in hand-me-downs from my cousin who grew out of them in the early 80s. I was the social stereotype of “you’re adopted” jokes, and in my case it was actually true. But I always got along with words.
I have my mom to thank for the start of my getting along with the English language and literature. She read to me from the earliest days I can remember. We read everything together at every time of day and night. Picture books, A Little Princess, Charles Dickens, Bible stories, E.B. White. I ate words for bedtime snacks. Our most ambitious undertaking was David Copperfield when I was about 12 years old, which we read through about 75% of the way until we realized we had both lost track of the plot somewhere around the 200th page.
I was raised on my fair share of Disney princess movies, but it was the heroines in books who really inspired me. The Laura Ingallses and Jo Marches and Sara Crewes and Anne Shirleys and Caddie Woodlawns and Ramona Quimbys and other independent thinkers and dreamers who didn’t quite fit in with popular convention like I didn’t quite fit in with my grade school peers. They rarely felt inferior and even when they did, they imagined or wrote or survived their way out of it in a way that made me feel that I could be courageous like that, too. After all, I had my words, and words gave me power. I could say whatever I wanted when I arranged them the right way on a page. I found my voice through print.
And so I’ve continued to write and use words and learn words and live words and find courage in words. It may not be lucrative yet, but the benefits reach far beyond financial wealth. Through words, I understand myself and interact with the world around me. Words in any form give me the courage to be and believe.
20 Days Till 25
March 5th, 2011 § 3 Comments
Early Morning, March 5
Twenty days until I turn 25. It’s 3 a.m. and I’m sitting on the couch with my computer, still wide awake. The Boy is passed out next to me, cuddling a blanket.
Meanwhile I’m still awake doing the same thing I have since college, and since I quit CVS to move to the city, and since I quit that day job where that office manager yelled at me every day of every week for three months until I decided I valued my sanity and self-esteem more than a paycheck, and since I was “let go” from that other job that wasn’t necessarily my dream job but was a damn sight closer to writing for a living than any other attempt at employment I’ve tried on since graduation. I’m practicing my self-induced insomnia that creeps up on me when I’m bored or indecisive or trying not to think about bills and how much 300-word scholck I’ll have to write tomorrow – on a Saturday – to be able to pay them. I write about payday loans for $8.50 an article so that I can rent my apartment in the city without needing to borrow one myself. The only “easy cash, wired fast!” that will hit my bank account is the weekly payout from a few douchebags in Philly who hired me as their in-house writer and then decided that programmers deserved office space and health benefits more than the person who translates their search engine marketing into readable English that makes Google list their sites first. To quote my favorite line from an Andy Samberg SNL Digital Short, “Welcome to the real world, jackass.”
So this is me at 24-almost-25. Still awake surfing the Internet at 3 a.m. just like I was at 18-almost-19 in college. The setting has changed, but my feelings towards adulthood and my preparedness for it haven’t.
3:24 a.m. Time to close the computer and go to bed. Turn off the kitchen light, rouse The Boy from his sofa slumber.
“Honey…” I stand in front of him, poking his knee.
Sleep grunt. He hides it under the blanket.
“Honey, come to bed.” I shake his other leg.
“Mmm, I mmnammnammm…” His words aren’t working right now.
“Honey…” I curl up on top of him, which is hard because even though I’m tiny, he’s pretty tightly wound. I give a pleading look to his closed eyes. “Get up and come to bed.”
He wakes up with all 100 pounds of me on him. “…Halp.”
Sliding my feet to the floor, I stand, taking his hand to pull him up. He sits on the edge of the cushion for a moment, head dozing forward until I lift his chin and coax him back to bed.
As he stumbles off, I reach up to turn off the light on the bookcase, stroking Kenzy on the nose a few times as I do and wishing him goodnight (he’s been sleeping up there all night, his favorite perch in the apartment). I turn 25 in 20 days, and this cat is the only life form I feel comfortable being responsible for right now.
I’m not old enough to be almost-25. Tomorrow I’m going to clean the apartment like an adult.
Learning Love
March 3rd, 2011 § 2 Comments
My parents made friends with a toll taker on the Betsy Ross bridge. The relationship began in 2007, when I was in college and my mother was in the hospital with a lesion on her lung the week before Thanksgiving. That November was the scariest month of my life. I spent a week worrying that my mom had cancer and what would happen if she didn’t wake up from surgery. (The answer was graduating from college and moving home to work full-time supporting my dad.) I spent a day relieved to hear that no, it wasn’t cancer. Then I spent another week worried that they had to operate anyway to heal the lesion caused by my mother’s decades of smoking. She was in her early 60s, and when you’re a 20-something in college and your parents are in their 60s, you can’t help but devote a few hours a week to wondering what might happen if their vices or genetics get the best of them before they watch you graduate with a college degree. My mom’s surgery day was the worst, especially when my dad didn’t call like he promised to tell me that everything was all right.
What I didn’t know was that my dad was even more scared than me. I’ve seen my dad scared before: When he was diagnosed with agoraphobia in my high school years, I saw him spiral into sweating, hyperventilating panics at the mention of piano recitals, family reunions, and going to work. But I never remember seeing him flinch in the face of health, finances, or creepy-crawly insects — the kinds of things that scare me. His eternal motto is that God provides for His children and faith is bigger than fear. But this time, the threat to my mom’s health scared him so much that he asked for prayer from a toll collector who wished him a “God bless,” as he collected the $4 toll.
My dad had met this man before, on one of his many trips to pick me up from college for a weekend at home. My dad might be agoraphobic, but you’d never know it when you watch him talk to strangers. He loves strangers, but more importantly he seems to love connecting. Connecting in a way that makes strangers feel heard, appreciated, accepted. Connecting, perhaps, in a way he imagines Jesus would. And not the Republican-voting, welfare-hating, white-upper-middle-class-loving Jesus, but the Jesus who touched dirty contagious lepers, talked to skanky prostitutes, and ate and drank with skeevy, hated tax collectors who were just doing their jobs to make ends meet and didn’t deserve all the hate. That’s what I’ve watched both my parents embody for the 25 years I’ve been alive.
So my dad connected with this man four years ago on his way to drive me home from college. Their first exchange happened in October the weekend of Fall Break. On the ride home, my dad told me how happy this guy was and how he wished him God’s blessings as my dad drove off from the toll booth. The next time he drove across the bridge to get me, he made a point of driving through that same toll booth to see his new friend Robert. Over the following weekends, he learned how Robert should have been retired but couldn’t afford to stop working, how much he loves his wife and family, how he wants his toll booth on the Betsy Ross Bridge to be his mission field of showing God’s love to everyone who drives through. And that weekend before Thanksgiving after my mom’s surgery went well but my dad was still scared, he asked his new friend for prayer. And Robert looked at my dad and said, “I believe that God is going to heal your wife. I’ll pray, but I already know that she’s going to be all right.” My parents returned the favor a few months ago when they saw him at the toll booth again (this time on their way to visit my apartment in Philly) and he was concerned for his own wife’s health. He also told them he’d be retiring in a few weeks.
I had the chance to meet Robert in January, the week before he retired. My parents had taken me to lunch that afternoon and pulled through his toll booth when they drove me back to the city. I listened while my dad asked him about his wife and thanked him again for his prayers four years ago. He introduced me and I waved from the back seat. He asked Robert about his retirement plans and didn’t care that a line of cars started to build behind us while they chatted. Connected. They promised to visit next week the day before his last shift.
They visited, all right. They drove to the Delaware River Port Authority with a retirement cake and a letter for an old man they had only interacted with from behind an open car window. As it turns out, someone else was covering Robert’s shift that day, but the manager assured them he’d see that the cake and kind words reached their friend. Robert called a few days later and left a message to thank my parents for their kindness in the last four years, a message they still have saved on their answering machine two months later.
This is just one example of how my parents care for strangers and inspire me to do the same. Sometimes I feel embarrassed by the lengths they take to connect with people who others might not think to interact so deeply with, but then I feel refreshed and inspired. My parents love, and they love everyone. I hope some day I have the courage to love the same.
Sometimes I Write Poetry…
April 22nd, 2009 § Leave a Comment
How It Started and What It Was Like For Me
Toes curled around
your toes wrapped around
my ankle
while your arms wish
for someone else
to share a thick October sky.
Face framed by blanket,
hair hiding eyes,
"You’re beautiful like that,"
as though your words could hide
how your eyes replace her face
over mine.
"It would be so easy."
And action soon replaces words
under blankets on grass
while I become your experience
and she remains your dream.
And just like the shadows that swallowed us
while our bodies swallowed each other
The idea of her shades my idea
of how you really feel
about the one you’re holding
versus the one you’re holding out for.
National Novel Writing Month 2008
November 10th, 2008 § Leave a Comment
After a week of procrastinating while trying to make up my mind, I’ve finally decided to participate in NaNoWriMo again this year. I’m cheating a little by using a story I started three or four years ago and abandoned after the third chapter. Now that I’m no longer overwhelmed with classes and assignments, I figured this is the perfect time to pick it up again, and hopefully NaNo will give me the push I need to finish it this time. Wish me luck!
