In which I am long and rambly about things that I tried not to be

I have a profile when you google me -- something I didn't realize until yesterday when I was googling Meng's name because she had been in a car accident and she didn't pop up right away. My name, especially because of the spelling ('e-y' as I always tell people and then they go ahead and spell it 'Rosy' or 'Rosie' which always looks a little strange to me, like when you wake up and you can't move your arm because its gone to sleep and now it's someone else's arm), makes me easy to find. Also, I have quite a bit on the internet -- websites designed, blogs, e-mail, picasa and linkedin -- unlike the other Rosey Waters, who works for a theater company in Colorado, who managed to snap up the twitter account roseywaters, or the drag queen Rosey Waters, who I only saw one hit from on the first page.

Anyways, the point is, I have a google profile, and currently it doesn't say anything useful. There is a section in which you can 'tell people about yourself' and I was trying to be clever -- making a statement that I am about to graduate from college and therefore must question everything that I do. Unfortunately, this didn't work very well, but it got me back to something I've been thinking about a lot recently.

Have you ever read the Loorie Moore story How to Become a Writer? If you haven't, I suggest you do. I read it in high school with DePeter, and it turns out I forgot quite a bit of it -- indeed the line that I thought was in it, seems to have come from my imagination: 'Try to be a psychologist. Try to be anything but a writer'. Perhaps not in the story, but the idea comes through in the prose. In The Forest for the Trees by Betsy Lerner discusses the fact that if you're a writer, you write -- it doesn't matter if you're told you are the worst author on the planet, if you never get published, or if you end up on the New York Times Best Seller List -- if you're a writer, you can't help but write. And these sentiments have been making me think.

When I was a sophomore in high school I saw Grey's Anatomy for the first time and took lifeguarding as my gym class -- so you say? Well, this was the year I decided I wanted to become a doctor. I started researching the profession -- because no one can say they want to be a doctor just because they like Grey's Anatomy and were fascinated by the way the human body works from their lifeguarding class -- and found the more I looked into it, the more interesting it seemed. Before this, I had never thought of myself as a science person -- 'I'm a humanities person' I would say with casual confidence as I sailed through History and English -- but after finding out what it would take to become a doctor, I actually did become interested in science. The labs were the best -- especially chemistry labs. I loved playing with chemicals and looking at cells through microscopes and learning.

Now, if you'll recall, I wrote a post about my history with writing. It was during this time that I was doing my whole RPG thing -- and you can't get paid to RP (unfortunately, I would have made a killing from those years if I could have been). It came up every now and then -- the desire to write professionally -- but as I was finding, you could write and still do other things (not have a life or study properly, but you could learn about biology and pretend to study... I was not as good a student in high school as my grades would suggest), so I decided that I would become a doctor and write on the side -- you know, in all that spare time I would have in med school and during my internship.

But I found out that you can't really give yourself completely to something, unless you give up something else you care about. The kind of grades you need for med school require a certain amount of sacrifice -- and as I said, I'm not the best student ever (in fact I didn't understand how to study until junior year of college) so I would have had to give up a lot. The semester I spent working on biology, chemistry, physics and calculus was the most strenuous semester I've had in college, and probably the second most unhappy time of my life (the first being the next semester for various reasons).

And this was the time when I was trying not to be a writer.

The end of the awful semester came and with it came the knowledge that I couldn't be a doctor. I would have to sacrifice so much more then my writing to do what I needed to do in order to become a doctor, and writing was the one thing I could not, and would not, sacrifice because it was the only thing that made me happy (at the time). Writing was among the host of reasons I decided against medical school, but it was, I will admit with a little cringe, the most important.

Armed with this knowledge, I was faced with a new problem -- did this mean I wanted to write professionally? Should I change my major and do literature instead of psychology?

Whenever I think about how I want to write professionally, its always as a side job -- the sort of thing I do because I have to, not because it will make me money. Because, lets be honest, if I wanted to write professionally and do nothing else, I wouldn't have come to college (it would have been a huge waste of money and time). So that kind of decided me. I would stay in school, get a degree, work when I left school and write on the side.

I had tried not to be a writer, and for better or worse, the world -- well myself -- wouldn't let me.

Of course, the world is never fair and as soon as I decided I didn't want to a be a doctor, and took other classes, I found that really... I did. Maybe not a doctor -- though the ache exists still, and when people say things like 'And then you'll got to med school' and I go 'What?' I always want to say 'Really? You think I would be a good doctor?' -- but something in medicine.

Now it turned out that I had been trying not to be a writer, but I was also trying not to be a biology person. And in both cases I failed. Turns out I want to be both. And no, I can't combine them and write about biology -- for one thing, who says I don't already? And for another -- I want to go to grad school and study immunology... or neurotransmitters... or viruses. I want to be Dr. Rosey Waters, PhD.

So back to the initial thought -- does trying not to be something -- like a writer, or a research scientist -- and failing, mean you should do it? The failure to not do something seems to indicate a love for it, and while loving something does not always translate into being good at it, it does translate into wanting to be good at it and therefore harder work to make it happen.

I suppose, in the end, both are kind of moot -- I have to pay bills in September so I'm going to have to get some sort of job.

Anyone hiring?

amlit

As I explained in my last post -- got accepted to my schools lit mag, and won best in show. Yay. Anyways, here's the link to the online version of the magazine. My stuff is on page 13.

for dreams and wishes

Writing is a very secret thing for me. I am more willing to let strangers read my work then I am to let people in my life know about my writing -- weird? Yes. I don't know if it comes from my time RPing when it was embarassing to admit to spending most of my life waiting for someone to post, or if its just that I really don't want to force people to read my writing and respond to it, or if I know they won't respond the way I want them to (as in, to tell me what's wrong in a writerly way), but I don't share my writing with my friends.

Kat will attest to how annoying this is.

Anyways. This is why I haven't told anyone that I sent in a piece to my schools literary magazine. I didn't want to deal with the fact that I have been rejected from this magazine twice and what people would say if I failed. But it makes it hard then, to tell people 'Hey I have a piece that's getting published in our schools magazine!'

It makes it even harder that I won best in show for the piece and can't seem to tell anyone about it.

So this is me telling people: I wrote something and it won something. Sure its a school lit magazine, but I have never been recognized for my writing, and this is kind of a big deal for me.

The magazine gets posted on line this week (and was out in print last week), so once that happens I'll post a link. If anyone is interested.

Reading List

In the past two to four weeks I have gone through more fiction then I think I have in my entire time at AU. This both upsets me (for the lack of reading) and makes me happy.

Lets see. It started with The Hunger Games which was brilliant -- fast paced, with a society and world that was built well. I actually appriciated the way Suzanne Collin's treated the end, and thought that there was a lot to be said for structure, characterization, and sheer creative power. Pacing, as every cropped up as an excellent point.

Once I got my Kindle, the reading really picked up the pace though. Last weekend I went through The Looking Glass Wars by Frank Beddor (interesting take on Alice in Wonderland, and great ideas for the plot, and a sense of good characters, unfortunately condensed in a way that left much wanting from the narrative. I liked it though, and plan on going on with the second book Seeing Redd soon).

Then I read Leviathan by Scott Westerfeld, which was so good!!! Kat informed me while I was half way through that her interest in the book came from a comment a friend of hers who said that it was like Song of the Lioness except Jon and Alanna work out -- and the secondary comment of "Well more like Jon and George if George was the cross dresser." BRB LAUGHING FOREVER. I found this hilarious. Of course, now I have to wait for Kat to read it, or someone else I know, but somehow most of my friends have moved away from "young adult fantasy" as it were. SAD. Anyways, if you've read it and want to talk about it, hit me up.

Having finished Leviathan I wanted to go on to the second book Behemoth, but knowing that the next book doesn't come out till September, made me hesitate to dive into the next book so I started Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo... and I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith. Then I got kind of impatient and went back and read Behemoth. Waiting for books is always exciting -- remember how it was with Harry Potter? I love that feeling. ANYWAYS, loved Behemoth. It was funnier then the first book, and I kept doing little anticipation dances. I think its a much stronger book then Leviathan, but can't talk much about it yet.

Anyways, moving on from that, I started The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. I haven't finished it yet, and don't find it as riveting as many other people probably do. I think part of it is that while I find it easy to pick up on fantasy worlds, the real world is much harder for me to acclimatize to in novels. I think I'll get into it. Apparently the main female protagonist is awesome and I haven't yet met her (yes that is how far I got), so I'm excited to see where it goes.

I Capture the Castle is interesting to read. I haven't gotten that far into it either (for similar reasons to tGwtDT), but I think I will really like it. I have a thing for stories about writers. I am a tad annoyed with the amount of 'telling' going on the first pages, but the characters are going to be charming enough to carry me through my initial uncomfortableness.

Now, Percy Jackson. My supervisor wanted me to read it because he's older (not yet 30, but still, not young enough for these books) and so has never had the chance to talk about it I actually am thoroughly impressed with Percy Jackson. The plot moves at quite a clip, so I find myself most of the way through one of the books in a few hours and feel surprise that I'm at the end. I read The Lightning Theif in one day, and finished both Sea of Monsters and The Titan's Curse yesterday. I'll probably get through Battle of the Labyrinth and The Last Olympian in the next couple of days (have to slow down and do work or something). The characters are all good -- and despite the fact that he's the hero and very hero like (not my usual kind) -- I really enjoy Percy and think he's great. There are moments of Mary-Sueism, but for the most part I like him.

Hm. Anyways. I read Things White People Like, and have reread most of The Harperhall Trilogy by Anne McCaffery (okay, the first two books, when you get too far away from Menolly, much as I love Pimur, I start to get annoyed with the characters. Seriously Pimur, you're cute and all, but you are not supposed to be the hero of a story...). I also started to reread The Book of Night With Moon which I read ages ago, and am finding it much more entertaining now I'm older. I liked it originally, but now I can really get some of the stuff that happens in it. Also Diane Duane, you are a god of science fiction writing, I want to be you when I grow up.

I'm excited. I'm graduating soon, and in terms of time to read, this will be the best. I have started compiling lists for reading. My current reading list (as in books I have on my Kindle that I want to read, going to condense series behind the first book):

1. Brightly Woven by Alexandra Bracken
2. Incarceron by Catherine Fisher
3. The Ill-Made Mute by Cecilia Dart-Thornton
4. Boneshaker by Cherie Priest
5. Inkspell by Cornelia Funke
6. Reckless by Cornelia Funke
7. A Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness
8. The False Princess by Eilis O'Neal
9. A Game of Thrones by George R. R. Martin (I have technically started this, but everyone keeps talking about it and I really should attempt it again when I start to have free time again. Maybe I'll like it the second time around).
10. Wicked Gentlemen by Ginn Hale
11. One for the Money by Janet Evanovich (for some fluff)
12. Hidden Empire by Kevin Anderson
13. Magic Study by Maria V. Snyder
14. The Library of Shadows by Mikkel Birkegaard
15. Anansi Boys by Niel Gaiman
16. Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman
17. Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Prachett
18. Idlewild by Nick Sagan
19. Ill Wind by Rachel Caine
20. Assassin's Apprentice by Robin Hobb
21. The Stand by Stephen King

I still need suggestions for reading. I'm a fantasy/sci-fi girl, as you may have noticed, and actually prefer young adult novels. Recently I've gotten into steampunk -- just for the sheer creativity that comes from this vien. If there's anything wants to suggest for me to read, let me know.

The Writer

Having re-read my novel after giving it a rest, I feel pretty good about it. Unfortunately, in the interlude I have once again started up again with tBoG which is actually going along swimmingly, now I've sorted a few things out about it. Yes, tBoG is a twelve book series, but I really am enjoying just writing the first book.

Speaking of enjoying things: I love my kindle dearly. I was reading Things White People Like and something that keeps coming up is that every 'white person' (meaning, middle class, with a college degree) wants to write a novel. Now, I have always been of the opinion that anyone can write -- fiction that is -- but for some reason, this comment about how so many people want to write a novel, or have one kicking around in their head, upsets me. Analyzing it, I know I am upset for selfish reasons (mostly), but it doesn't stop me from being upset.

Here's how the logic works:

I have had many conversations with people about the books they want to write. I love these conversations -- they are the times when I am happiest, getting to expound upon the meaning and structure of novels is one of the great joys of my life -- and I want to have them... oh all the time.

Now this is the part that depresses me -- nothing comes of these conversations for the other people. No one goes home, sits down and bangs out a novel. Oh they get a few thousand words in, determine that they've written enough and never go back to it. They don't go through the fanatical high that is the end of a book, or flounder through the middle, trying to figure out if they are boring themselves, let alone the reader.

Why does this upset me? Part of it, I will admit, is liking the idea of helping people -- but the majority of it is about the fact that I want people who have experienced this in my life. I want to be able to talk about what it means to end a book. I want to find people who know what I mean when I talk about characters going off and doing things that I never expected -- you can't get that in the first five thousand words (mostly).

I suppose what I mean is, I want to start a writers group for novelists, but I don't know how to differentiate between the people who think like me (not in everything, but have the same intensity towards writing as myself) and those that are merely tossing around an idea that they will never complete. And a writer's group is only good for people who are committed, sure and ready to work with one another to produce the best work possible. I just wish there was a litmus test for this...