No Other Option

I met with a new writer's group for the first time last week. We drank wine, ate cheese, told stories, and read out loud. After just one meeting, I feel it is a wonderful thing. The three other women in the group are vibrant, funny, and wickedly smart. I feel lucky we met and I look forward to what the group will become, if it becomes anything at all.

As we introduced ourselves to one another and talked about our work and our goals, I was interested to learn how we all fit writing into our lives. Of course, it was different for each of us because we all had different commitments to writing. Some had projects they were very committed to and others were still exploring what they wanted to work on.

It came out that I work full time and write fiction on weeknights and weekends. Everyone asked how I did that. I just said, 'If I don't write it, it will never get written. And that's not an option.'

Most of them said they were not at that point yet. They asked me how I got there. And I couldn't answer them.

I say this, not to rub it in or make it sound like I'm some amazing workhorse (in fact, I don't think I work hard enough) but because I can't really describe how I reached that point.

I can tell you when. I know it to the day because it was my birthday. October 20, 2008. I walked into a novel-writing workshop and I just thought, I'm going to write a novel and it's not an option to fail. And when I was finished with that one, I told myself, 'I'm going to write another one'. And when people ask me what I am going to do after the second one, I say, 'I'm going to write another one.'

So far, that's just how it's going to go. Who knows. Maybe that will change. Maybe I'll hang up the towel. But right now, it's a point of no return. I don't know how I got here. I don't know if it's good, bad, crazy or all three. I just don't see any other option.

Do you feel you've reached that point in your writing or is it more complicated than that?

Gold

Listening to Linda Eder makes me sublimely happy so I thought I would post this video today.

The song is Gold, from a musical I would give my right arm to see: Camille Claudel.

Unfortunately, the musical is this elusive thing, that existed for three weeks and there are currently no plans for it to run again. It's about Camille Claudel, who was Rodin's lover, muse, and a sculptor herself. I search for scattered pieces of this musical wherever I can find them.

I love this song because of Linda Eder's incredible voice but, also, because of the lyrics (written by Nan Knighton) I feel it captures a lot of themes I want to explore when I write and read and live. It came up on my IPod once and I cried in the middle of a crowded subway car, it was so lovely. (Let's not count how many times Melissa has cried on a subway car while listening to a random mp3 because that would be embarrassing.) I'm also slightly obsessed with Linda's purple dress.

Summer In the City

I began the week shaken, having fallen off of my bicycle on 13th Street and University Place bright and early Monday morning. I was on my way to work and my bike took off ahead of me, the tires skidding on a wet surface I didn't see. I rose up from the ground with unsteady legs, my right side bloody and skinned and swelling.

As soon as I realized I was in the middle of the street, I was sent into a panic. Instead of lifting my bike and dusting myself off, I took off running to the sidewalk, dragging my bicycle behind me like it was a tantruming child, by the handlebars, with the pedals and spokes scraping across the grey concrete.

I knew that the city would not stop for me, even if strangers were on hand to see if I was okay, my only response to nod incoherently while my heart pounded inside my chest-- because the streets are relentless that way. Nothing stops moving. Cars and food carts and delivery trucks barrelled behind me and they did not stop. And I still had to get to work. Later still, I would have to get all the way back home.

I found myself in all kinds of minor predicaments throughout the week. Trying to place my bandaged arm and my black and blue thigh in just the right position while I slept, sitting in an air conditionless room in the 90 degree heat attempting to write something that made any kind of sense, even carrying an 8 foot wooden beam through crowded streets that did not want to make room for me.

I love this city. I really do. I see it as a my playground. My home. But sometimes I forget that it is bigger than me.

(Almost) Wordless Wednesday: Little Miss M

Here is Little Miss M in the big city, sporting her tired face, knowing, at only three months old, that chicks do indeed rock. We wait for her to laugh, to roll over, to get to where she needs to go. And she does need to get somewhere because we watch her on her little mat, huffing and puffing and squirming with all the determination in the world. And we know, like Dr. Suess does, that, oh, there are places she'll go.

"You realize she's yours, right?" I tell Lynn, who it seems just yesterday sat in Professor Shanahan's communications class with me, who lived in Eco house, who drank whole pints, and dated the DJ. The girl whose name was always uttered in conjunction with mine. And, ironically, forever will be because I am (quite literally) Melissa Lynn.

Bringing the Funny

A few weeks ago I attended a live chat at WriteOnCon with literary agents Michelle Andelman and Joanna Volpe and YA editor Molly O'Neill. The chat was fun and informative and there was a point when they talked about the things they were not seeing in their inboxes. It seems there is an extreme lack of 'funny' when it comes to young adult literature.

At BEA, I talked to several school librarians and asked them what their students were looking for when they went to the library. All of them said that many teens, especially boys, look for funny books. They often have to refer them to middle grade or adult books because, again, there is a lack of humor in the young adult world.

That got me thinking.

I think funny is hard. It requires a very specific reaction: laughter. And if you can't elicit it, you are explicitly NOT FUNNY. I feel like I know a lot of funny people and I admire their quick comebacks and their wit. But they don't do funny for a living. They don't do it full time.

There are a lot of ways you can fail as a writer, but there's something different about trying to be funny in a public forum and failing. I mean, it's flat out unacceptable.

So I can see why there might be a lack of humor out there. But for those of you who do funny, the consensus in my unscientific study is: bring it.

Have you read a humorous young adult book lately? I'd really like to and I don't know where to begin.

Reliable

When I was fifteen years old, I had an unhealthy obsession with The X-Files.

I wanted to marry Fox Mulder and I imagined an entire forty-five minute episode in which I played Agent Dana Scully's pregnant teenage sister. I was an artist who painted canvases inspired by the devil and I was carrying his demon baby. I'm sure this had nothing to do with obsessively watching Rosemary's Baby at that time in my life. Nothing at all.

In any case, things did not end well for me in this fake episode. There were sleepless nights of creative frenzy in which I destroyed the walls in my home with gruesome paintings (all intercut with scenes of Scully struggling with her Christian faith and her love of science.) And, despite countless exorcisms, I didn't make it, because carrying a demon baby can really take a toll.

I tell you this, not so you can go running from this blog begging for mercy (though if you must, I understand), but so you know how deep the obsession for X-Files really went.

I used to tape X-Files episodes on VHS tape on the basement television because I had a very intense TV schedule at that time in my life and this was before DVR and Tivo.

One fateful night, the night of the season finale to be exact, the episode did not tape. Do you hear what I am saying? The season finale of The X-Files did not tape.

Well. You can imagine what ensued. I went into absolute hysterics, shouting expletives no one would have ever imagined could come from the nerd girl who barely spoke, and I physically hurled a VHS tape across the room. My parents stood back wondering, My God, where did we go wrong?

I told Tyler this story the other night in case he wanted to reconsider his future with me and his first thought was not about my insanity but about the VCR malfunctioning.

He's practical that way.

We began talking about the ways in which all the tech in our lives have malfunctioned over the years and then Tyler said, 'That's what is so great about books. They are reliable.'

That was a lightbulb moment for me. Unless you physically set fire to a book, you're guaranteed a story. For a lifetime. What other products can boast that?

It's even more reliable than the story of the devil paintings and the demon baby. Which, fortunately, exists only in my mind.

I'm A Poemer

This post is to bring some sunshine to the famous Lenny Lee who always spreads sunshine wherever he goes.

Honestly, the idea of writing a poem gives me hives. Over the years I've been assigned poems to write in various classes. I've cried writing villanelles. I've had anxiety attacks while laboring over a cinquain. I don't understand how to write poetry. I am a terrible poet.

However, my friend Krista and I coined the term poemer. A poemer is a person who writes poems. And, while I would never in a million years call myself a poet, I have no problem calling myself a poemer.

I went into the Melissa Files to find some poem-y things I had written for little preschool kids. They are meant to be sung. There may or may not be recordings of me singing them. I can neither confirm or deny that.

I thought I would share them with Lenny because they are fun and silly (and pretty bad). But they make me feel all warm and fuzzy inside and that's what being a poemer is all about.

Friendship Song

Friendship is magic
That’s what I think
Friendship’s amazing
And that’s what I’ll sing
Great things can happen
When you’re with a friend
All kinds of magic
Again and again
I’m feeling happy
So much I can fly
Because when you have a friend
Magic can’t pass you by

Rhyming Song

Lumpity Dumpkin

Boppity Bumpkin

I love to rhyme all the time

Put words together

And hear how they sound

That's what I call a great rhyme

Lumpity Dumpkin

Boppity Bumpkin

Doesn't make sense all the time

Put words together

And hear how they sound

That's what I call a great rhyme

You rock Lenny!

Are you a poet? If not, are you a poemer?