Highlight reel of the past couple of months.

After reading my latest post, my husband mentioned wanting to go back to Opus One. I asked him what brought this on and he mentioned glancing at an old blog post of mine. His comment made me realize how much I've neglected my blog that I wondered if anyone even read it anymore. Though I hope people still do, this blog was always for me. My little corner of the universe where I catalogue the places I've been, the things I've experience, and my thoughts.

I scrolled back and the last lengthy post was about my trip to NY in July. Yowza. So here I am recapping the highlights from August up until my birthday.

AUGUST - Yakima wine trip - I planned a day trip to central Washington for a day of tasting and a wine maker dinner.

SEPTEMBER - Vancouver Celebration - My sister cam to visit for her birthday so we did a roadtrip to Vancouver, BC.

OCTOBER - TONE IT UP - My sister and I joined Tone it Up, and we've been obsessed wit the lifestyle since. For my health & fitness journey, follow my TIU instagram account @michellemanifesting_tiu.

NOVEMBER - Thanksgiving & Surprise Bachelorette Dinner - I went back to CA for thanksgiving, and my sister completely surprised me with a bachelorette dinner!

DECEMBER - Oregon wine trip part 2 - Michael and I went back to Oregon to wine taste for our Christmas present to each other. 

JANUARY - Wedding in Hawaii - I got hitched!

February - Snow & BANNERS live show - We got snowed in, but also got to see BANNERS live!

MARCH - Palm Desert - Short sunny getaway to visit the parents-in-law and escape the cold.

Now that I'm all caught up, I'm hoping to go back to blogging once a week :D

 

On not writing and figuring out where I am.

I haven't felt like myself lately. Rather, it feels as if I'm simply stumbling through life and waiting for something to happen. I wish I could say it was due to severe allergies and the constant mental fog I find myself in, but if I'm honest with myself, I'm lost.

There's a saying (I don't know who said it exactly) that in order to find yourself you need to lose yourself. Only then can you start picking out the pieces that make you you and get rid of everything else. Stripping it down to the bare essentials basically.

But if you ever met me in person or went to school with me, you know I'm a type-A planner. I cross my t's, dot my i's. I follow the rules. I like order. I make copious amounts of lists: to-do's, groceries, shopping, packing, goals, and even life maps. Yes. Life maps.

The picture below is from a life map I drew in my journal dated March 2013.

If I were to strip myself down to be the bare essentials: I'm a girl who just wants to write books for a living. Not just any books. YA. This was true in 2013, and this is still true today. The only difference between me in 2013 and me in 2017? I'm not writing.

I know what you're thinking, How can you say you want to be a YA writer when you aren't even writing?

Well, let me introduce you again to me, a type A planner, who currently feels as if she's undergoing a failed plan. Someone once told me that success is really failing a lot. Just fail better each time, learn from your mistakes, and keep at it until you don't fail. Sounds simple, right? Except, it's not simple. There's a lot of pain and heartbreak in failure. There's fatigue, self-doubt, and countless moments where I want to give up because I don't want to get hurt anymore. Moments where I can't deal with the disappointment, where I feel like I'm so jaded. Moments when I don't think I'm good enough to be deserving of my dreams. These moments add up, they become crippling, until suddenly, I can't write anymore.

I told myself that I just needed a break. I just needed some rest, and then I'd get back to it. Every time I tried to though, I would be overcome with anxiety. My throat would tighten, my chest would go still, my stomach would cramp, and then I'd just walk away from computer, the notebooks, and pens.

I'd distract myself with other things, crossing off items on the more manageable to-do lists and have a few too many glasses of wine, but in the end, I always returned to this feeling of unease and displacement. This unhappiness. So I started thinking about what other things I could do with my life (which let's face it, is me just making up a list of escape routes). No matter what I came up with though, none of the options held any passion or inspiration for me to follow it through.

So what do I do now?

I asked myself this question over and over. I talked about it in-depth with my husband. I told him how this was not where I imagined myself when it came to following my dreams. I told him how I felt like I was back at square one, that I felt as if I was going backwards instead of forward. After I ranted, he told me that people think of their life, goals, or plans as a trajectory. That there's this arc that'll propel them to where they want to go, but that's not true. There's just these different planes that they find themselves in. They don't necessarily go forward or backward, there's just this sense of 'place', or in my case, 'displacement'. What I'm going through and what I'm feeling now is just a plane. And sooner or later I'll be on another.

For some reason what he said really stuck with me. I look again at my life map from my 2013 self and wonder if I'd already known this, because this life map isn't linear. There's no trajectory. It's just all over the place with turns and twists, but it's also cyclic. There's also some parts that don't even involve writing at all. There's travel, there's 'sustain a comfortable life', and even just having job. 

I'd always known going after my dream wasn't a one way road. I may have a destination in mind, but I was bound to get lost. And when I do, the only thing I can do is figure out where I am and how to get myself into the driver's seat.

To be honest though, sometimes it feels like I'm going nowhere. Sometimes I feel like the road is endless. Sometimes I get so sick of driving that I need to pull over and stretch my legs. Or maybe I just need to abandon the car for a bit and hitch hike somewhere else for a different kind of adventure. Whatever happens though, I know who I am and what I want to do. I have an unshakeable dream for a reason, so I know I'll find myself back at the computer, typing away eventually.

So there's no point in freaking myself out, forcing myself to write, making myself anxious about it, or feeling like a failure. I just need to accept that I'm on a different plane right now, going through the motions, and that's okay. Sometimes the best thing I can do for my writing is to not write at all. 

At least for a little while.

Be yourself.

I know. This goes totally without saying, but it needs to be said, reiterated, and ingrained.

In a world that's constantly telling you who to be, being yourself can be pretty difficult. I mean, think about it. We are constantly berated by the media to look or be a certain way. We are inundated with ads telling us what we need. We live in a society where self-worth is measured by success and the money you make. You even have loved ones (who mean well) giving you life advice because they know what's best for you. But do they? Does the world? No one is supposed to know you better than yourself. But what happens when you've tried to be all these things for everyone else (a good daughter, sister, employee, etc.) that you cease to know and be who you truly are? You land in this weird limbo where you go on and try to find yourself.

Find yourself? Really, Michelle? What is this hippy dippy post? Shouldn't you blog about writing or books? Well, think about it, aren't character arcs in books the same thing? The MC is trying to figure out who they are and where they fit in their story world. They go through the ups and downs, falter, get back up, back track, then persevere. Isn't it fitting that we undergo the same thing in our lives? Heck, we go through it several times at different stages of our lives.

For me, life and writing are interconnected. How I live my life shows up in how I write my stories. It contributes to the characters I identify with, how I express myself, how willing I am to push myself and my characters.

Not so hippy dippy anymore. Am I right?

Let's be real. I'm writing this post because I've landed in this really weird limbo zone where I am trying to find myself. This post is me embracing my faults and being totally okay with it, because that's just who I am right now. And that's really cool because I'm going to just own it.

To give you some background, last year was a blur to me. I felt as if I was pulled into so many directions. Wedding planning, new job, writing and revising, trying to meet everyone's expectations by being a dutiful daughter and sister, not just with my own family, but a new family I was marrying into. I also wanted to be a good friend, a supportive fiancé. I wanted to lose weight, be the best me possible, do all these things and be this ideal version of myself as put together, having it all figured out, and super successful (Spoiler alert: No one knows what they are doing. They are just doing their best.). I was so concerned with all these roles I played for other people, I forgot that my first priority was to myself. That being, staying true to who I was and living an authentic life.  But living an authentic life does not go hand in hand with living life the way I 'think' I'm supposed to live it.

(Sounds kind of like a contemporary novel, doesn't it? Girl strives to be perfect for everyone else, but realizes it's the imperfections that make her who she is and why she's loved and admired in the first place.)

Unfortunately, I strayed from myself enough that a small part of me snapped back into place. As if this tension was too much to bear, and I returned to the essential qualities that make me me. I started to stand up for what I believed in, what I thought was best for me, doing things that made me feel good about myself and made me into a better person, not the person I thought I should be. It sounds so easy right? Acknowledge it and then just do it?

But it's not. There's so much more interlaced with it.  Some might not like the change, some see it as a step back. You open yourself to being criticized for being honest with yourself. You make mistakes, but learn from it. You wrestle with doubt. You wonder if being you is good enough.  

Spoiler alert: Yes. It is. You are enough. As long as you are doing your best and being you, you are enough. You don't need to rack accomplishments or make stacks of paper to feel worth it or to feel like you matter.

You know why? Because when you are your best self, you are giving yourself permission to be authentic. And being authentic is pretty damn special. There's over 7 billion people living on this world, but only one of you. Isn't that pretty incredible?

If you're a writer, take this thought and connect it to your characters. How can you create them to be just as special and authentic as you are? Once you figure that out, allow them to be unapologetically themselves. Own their flaws and let their world burn in fire or fill their fields with daisies. See how they take it. See them falter, see them grow, see them when all is dark, and all is light. Either way, if you yourself are authentic and honest so will your characters and your stories be.

If you can believe it, I struggled with that for over a year. Owning my work, owning my art. Owning the darkness that stews in my MC as well as in me. Owning my authenticity and essentially being myself as a woman, a writer, and a human being. I am who I am. And if I try to run away from that, then I'll find myself fatigued, out of breath, and completely lost.

But getting lost is a destination and finding your own way out can be a wonderful journey.

It goes without saying, but I needed to hear it, and I'm writing this in case you need to hear it too: be yourself and don't apologize for it. That's authenticity at its finest.

 

 

 

Bookish Feels: The Hate You Give by Angie Thomas

The Book: Sixteen-year-old Starr Carter moves between two worlds: the poor neighborhood where she lives and the fancy suburban prep school she attends. The uneasy balance between these worlds is shattered when Starr witnesses the fatal shooting of her childhood best friend Khalil at the hands of a police officer. Khalil was unarmed.

Soon afterward, his death is a national headline. Some are calling him a thug, maybe even a drug dealer and a gangbanger. Protesters are taking to the streets in Khalil's name. Some cops and the local drug lord try to intimidate Starr and her family. What everyone wants to know is: what really went down that night? And the only person alive who can answer that is Starr.

But what Starr does or does not say could upend her community. It could also endanger her life. (From Goodreads)

My Feels: I had the pleasure of reading this beauty last week, and I'm so glad I did. The best word to sum up this book: relevant. As in this is so relevant to our times I wish everyone would read it. We've heard a lot about #ownvoices and the need for it, but I don't think the urgency really clicked with me until I read this book. Once I got to the end and was able to digest this as a whole, I found myself wishing there was something like this for me as a teenager.

This made me think a lot about our current society, the connection and understanding I have with POC, but it also awakened this deep sadness within me. Why don't people see that racial comments are hurtful? Why do they see it as humorous? Has society normalized it as so? It's frustrating. Like really frustrating. Especially being a POC and deemed 'sensitive' when I bring up my concerns on this. I won't go into a further rant, but I do want to say that this is the kind of book that made me look inwards and outwards. For that, I can't recommend this enough. Pick up a copy if you haven't already.

The Golden Birthday

I turned 26th on the 26th. This year was my golden birthday, and I spent it with my husband (it's still so weird to say 'husband' 0_0). Birthdays are bittersweet. I never really like the idea of getting older, but I do appreciate a day I get to spend with loved ones! This month I celebrated all over the place with family and friends, but on the actual day of, I spent it with the love of my life.

As you know from my previous post, I've become a huge plotter. So I guess it's no surprise that I planned out my birthday. Brunch at the London Plane, then off to Pike Place market to get some fresh crab to recreate a dish my mom always made me for my birthday growing up. Also, wine! Because, um, wine!  :)

Michael surprised me with the best gift ever. The rose gold Macbook! You see, I've had the same heavy laptop since the beginning of college which is slow as hell. But it still worked, so I still wrote on it. Travel, however, proved difficult. I'd bring a roller carry-on just to hold the laptop for me or ask Michael to do so in his bag. On the latest trip to Palm Desert, I didn't even want to deal with my clunky laptop, so I left it at home. That said, it was a huge surprise to wake up with this shiny new gift! I can't wait to write all my stories on this beauty! Not to mention it's a million times faster than my old one and I can bring it anywhere! *cue the happy tears*

After breakfast, we went to the market to pick up some fresh flowers, crab, and exotic fruit for dinner and dessert. It's been rainy and gray as usual so I was happy to go home and drink some wine. 

When it came time to make dinner, I winged the recipe I'd seen my mom make year after year for me. It turned out pretty good, but my mom's crab is way better hands down. Still, it was fun to try, and it was my first time making crab at home so I consider that a win. 

All in all, it's been another great year, and I'm looking forward to another and all the books releasing this year!

Can I have my copy of STRANGE THE DREAMER now?

Why I've given up on pantsing.

The 'pantsing versus plotting' debate. I've finally decided to weigh in on this issue.

Three years ago, I considered myself a pantser. Typically, I'd get a general idea or spark for a story and dive into it blindly with awe, emotion, and a tiny outline that I followed like breadcrumbs, eager to find out what awaited me at the end. And though this method seemed to work for certain manuscripts, I quickly realized it wouldn't for all.

Certain manuscripts that hold an irresistible charm can handle this breadcrumb method, but these, I noticed, are the kind of stories that have been stewing inside you for a while. You've thought about it constantly for years, you know the characters, you've imagined the plot from start to finish so many times it's like the lyrics to your favorite song. By all means, pants this story because you already know it by heart.

Those kind of stories are special. Like truly special. They write themselves practically. But what about the ones that don't? You know, the ones that give you a feeling you can't quite describe? Yet the call of it is like a siren's and somehow you've been sucked into it, but you don't know what 'it' is?

As a pantser, you could dive into the draft and explore the idea, but you risk writing in circles and a first draft that's painful to untangle.

As a plotter, you can brainstorm and plan to your heart's content, but you risk losing that special feeling by burn out.

There's a ton more pros and cons that you can find on any blogger's website, but in this post, I'll share my personal experience.

Last spring, I got this strange idea in a car, and a character's voice in my ear soon after, almost demanding me to write her story. She sounded troubled, misunderstood, and complicated. I was drawn to her darkness, her pain, and what this could be. I never really questioned her character, all I knew was I needed to get her down before she decided to be someone else's obnoxious muse.

I know I'm probably coming off as a crazy person, but I pantsed the heck out of it. I drafted up a story for her pretty quickly, but when I read it, it was awful. Like truly awful. Sure all first drafts are a mess, but there wasn't anything remotely usable in it. But the idea, the vibe, the girl, ate away at me. I still liked the concept. I just didn't like the way I handled it.

Alright, so I roll up my sleeves and decide to tackle it again, pantsing a second draft with a lot of the changes I had in mind. Granted it was still awful when I finished, but there was still something there that I liked. But was it even usable? At this point I was too attached to the character, but also frustrated with her. Just tell me what your story is damn it!!! Ugh. Cue my pit of despair, and my amazing CP's coming to the rescue by giving me honest feedback.

There was so much wrong with it. But there was also something interesting that still held me tight.

They told me not to give up on this, so I didn't. I sat my butt in my chair and really thought about they said, and then I started planning. Like excessive planning. Excel spreadsheets, spiral notebooks. Time lines. Writing exercises. Pinterest boards. Everything. Seeing all the pieces of the story in piece meal finally allowed me to connect the dots in a way drafting from straight to finish did not. It was like puzzle pieces dumped in front of me where I could inspect the edges and see where they fit instead of laying the pieces one after the other in a row that made a straight line but lacked an image. 

This was my light bulb moment where I said to myself, Never again will I be a pantser.

With all these new tools and plans, I wrote my third draft much more efficiently and with less head banging. Sure, it's not perfect and it still has so far to go, but it's finally workable, reviseable (that's not a word, is it?), and much more enjoyable to work with.

I understand plotting isn't for everyone, but after the headache inducing drafts I went through, I'm convinced that pantsing isn't the way for me.

To address the risks that I mentioned above, if you pants you could end up like I did, writing in painful circles. But to the plotting risk of burning out, I'm starting to see that if a story is worth writing and sharing, you won't burn out. It's like an evocative smelling candle. Sure the wick may blow out once and awhile from the wind (or fatigue, in this case), but you know you'll just end up lighting it again because its scent is too hard to miss.

Anyway, that's my thoughts on the debate. Comment below with yours!

 

Paralyzed by fear.

It's been almost 4 months since I posted on my blog. It's also been four months since I took a lot of old posts down. At times, it feels like 2016 didn't even happen on my blog. I can give you many reasons on why I've disappeared: stress from planning a wedding, learning a new job, the holidays, writing something new, etc. And though those are legitimate reasons for taking a hiatus from my blog, it's not entirely true.

The truth is, I've been afraid. My life kept getting busier and busier, and I was afraid that I'd never be able to write anything of quality again. They say that comparison is the thief of happiness, and I found myself doing that a lot. While everyone seemed to be headed somewhere, I felt like I was in the same place, but with a different scenery.

When I confided in others about this fear, they all told me to slow down, take a deep breath, and then they would offer me the same excuses I gave myself. "Relax, you have a wedding to plan. That's a lot of pressure. You just started a new job, it takes a while to learn it and feel comfortable. You've written three drafts in this year alone. You've accomplished a lot."

But I didn't feel like I had. Though I was getting things scratched off my checklist, I found myself getting farther from my own personal goals and from myself. It's as if I went on auto-pilot to get things done, instead of paying attention to the things that mattered.

All of a sudden, I stopped blogging, stopped journaling, took a break from writing--things that I loved. Why was I doing that? This was the time where I needed it the most.

Because I was afraid.

I was afraid of blogging about all of this, because I didn't feel like it was important. To me or to readers. And also, I was afraid of what people would think of me.

I was afraid of journaling, because I didn't want to waste time when I could be getting things done on my checklist. Even though I know now, that journaling is never a waste of time.

I was afraid of writing, because I'd lost my voice. I didn't know what I wanted to say in my stories, and because of that, my stories suffered for it as I wrote myself into frustrating circles.

I was paralyzed by my own fear. 

Instead of facing this problem, I dusted it under the rug and let everything else, the wedding, work, etc, become my priority. But I was never happy doing only that because I felt stuck. At a standstill. Trapped.

Once the wedding was over, once I got over the learning curve of the new job and things started to slow down, I was faced with all these fears I had ignored.

A good CP of mine told me that sometimes fear can be a good thing. It let's us know that we're doing something worthwhile because we care. Instead of letting fear be a road block to where we want to go, we should climb over fear, and let it elevate our potential and our stories.

Once I embraced fear for what it was, I was able to look past it and see a solution. It took me a long while, but it was a huge weight lifted off my shoulders. It was as if I'd finally found the power-off button on the auto-pilot suit I was wearing and was able to step back into me.

So, the point of this post? Don't be afraid of your own fear. This doesn't apply to just writing, but life in general. Face your fears, and then do something about it. It's better than doing nothing at all.

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