Reinvention: NESCBWI16

This past weekend was NESCBWI's 2016 conference. A lot of wonderful things happened there, including getting to meet writers I've only ever connected with over the web, and getting to reunite with old critique partners who have moved out of state (and other writerly friends who I rarely get to see in real life!). However, what struck me most was the theme:

Reinvention.

I am in the process of personal reinvention. Last year I got a new job and my first ever book deal. I have been going through a rapid change in my life, and I can tell a new person is growing out of it. A super cool person. *puts on sunglasses*

However, it is important to note that metamorphosis isn't easy. From the outside perspective, the caterpillar goes into the chrysalis and comes out as a butterfly. In reality, it's much messier.

Science time.

Just give me a minute, guys.

When the caterpillar enters its chrysalis (which it first has to build itself, for the record), its enzymes begin to literally digest its tissues. After that, several sets of cells begin to multiply, much like what happens to an embryo, and new body parts grow. This forms the butterfly that we all know and love.

These special cells that grow into butterfly parts are actually there all along, but they can't begin to change and grow until that caterpillar turns its own body into sloppy goo. Let that sink in. Apply it to your life. Cringe a little at the imagery. Go ahead, I'll wait.

Anyway, to top it off, when the butterfly does emerge, it's in no condition to fly away. I was just in my museum's butterfly garden a few days ago, and got to witness a butterfly break free of its chrysalis. That thing was exhausted. It was still all wet, its wings were all crumpled, and it very obviously took all of its energy just to move to one side of its chrysalis where it could rest.

I stared at it, shaking my head and thinking: Dude. I identify so hard right now. 

Reinvention is powerful, but it has a price. The end result is worth it, but getting there can be a struggle.

I took a walk today around my local pond. All the spring imagery was really hammering home the reinvention theme all over the place, but one image in particular stood out to me:

This family of ducks. It's a dreary day of drizzle and 50 degree weather, with no sun in sight. When I approached these ducklings, they were scattered all over. Upon seeing me, Mom and Dad began regrouping them in a tired flurry. They have their work cut out for them, keeping track of all eight. I could tell they had already had a "day". One of the ducklings was a good dozen feet away when I walked up, and I could hear the exasperation in Mom's quacking.

New life is beautiful. New transformations are beautiful. But gosh darnit, those things take a lot of work. Too often, we only see or think about the happy results. Cute ducklings, following their mother in a neat line. A butterfly soaring to its next flower. Debut novels on shelves, new presentations wowing audiences...

Ahem.

Reinvention. It's great, important, sometimes even necessary...but it is a BEAST to accomplish.

My advice, and the advice echoed by tons of speakers this weekend?

Do it anyway.

My 2015

Last day of 2015. This year can only be described as a rollercoaster.

January 1st, 2015, no one had any idea there was 9 feet of snow on the horizon for Boston. And I had no idea what was on my personal horizon, either. I started the year at a low point, with only one hope--that even though my book wasn't selling, the new one I was writing would. That was what I clung to as the snow piled up, burying all of us Bostonians in our own trapped worlds for months on end.

At work, life was taken over by the new program I was lead developer on. We scrambled to make up snow cancellations, and I scrambled to pull together a new workshop in a third of the usual development time.

When the snow finally melted and we could venture back outside, I got severely poisoned by my food allergy and spent over a month in misery, occasionally passing out--once so badly that I broke my finger upon falling.

Still, I pressed on. The book had to get finished. The program had to get out the door. I refused to fail any of my commitments.

July arrived. I was walking on the thinnest of wires between health (and sanity) and complete immune breakdown. I knew it--and that was the saddest part of all. I knew it, and pushed myself on anyway. My book was drafted and sent to my agent, but the program wasn't done yet for work. That had to get done. It had to!

Mere days before its premiere, my immune system finally gave up on me and my single-minded obsession to GET EVERYTHING DONE. I woke up with a fever of 102, went to work ANYWAY, and then that night had to be rushed to the ER by a couple of very loyal friends as I spiked to almost 104.

I'd failed.

I had never felt more shame.

The 104 degree fever stayed. For a full week. The fever stayed, I was diagnosed with pneumonia, and I ended up having such a severe cough that I fractured at least one rib. My program did end up going out the door on time, but I wasn't there to see it off.

People had to babysit me. Feed me. Feed my cats. I barely remember most of those days. I wasn't me. I wasn't human.

It's hard to put into words how it feels to have your autonomy completely taken away by an illness. Meanwhile, around me, life went on. My program went on without me. Everything I worked for...and in the end, I wasn't needed. Or at least, that is how it felt.

The fever broke, and I turned to what I'd clung to at the beginning of the year--my new novel. I had gotten revision notes back from my agent, and slowly began chipping away at those.

I'd learned a valuable lesson--I'd learned how hard was too hard to push myself. But I'd also learned where the line was (much to the chagrin of my friends), and now knew how to safely toe it. Hah!

I was broken, depressed, and barely had a shred of energy to give, but I wasn't going to give up on my dream of being published.

And that's when I got the phone call that changed everything.

I'd been offered a book deal by HarperCollins. Not for the new book--no, that one still wasn't out there in the world. For the old book. The one I'd assumed we would have to shelve.

I was going to be PUBLISHED! AHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!

Arguably the biggest dream of my entire life. I still wake up in disbelief, months later.

And thus, 2015 flipped. My ribs healed. I finished revising the new novel.

...I interviewed for and got a new job at the museum.

My writing life and my work life both drastically changed as I went into the fall. I rushed to keep up, but the year had already taken its toll. I was exhausted--physically, mentally, emotionally.

And then, I had to go and hurt my right knee (for those not in the know, that's my GOOD knee--my left was broken years ago). I was put in a brace, had activities restricted once again...and then learned that this will likely be a lifelong affliction. That I will have to live with bum knees forever, and that there is very little to be done to change that.

As I said at the beginning, 2015 was a rollercoaster.

The year wrapped up with me flailing around at work, saying goodbye to six years in one department and trying to get a grasp on my new job, while simultaneously getting my first revision notes from my publisher. The need to DO EVERYTHING and BE THE BEST I CAN BE rose up again and I had to smack it down on repeat, since I know what that need drives me to and never again want to experience illness like I did over the summer.

A true emotional rollercoaster, from start to finish. One that I never could have seen coming.

Beyond the rollercoaster, though, I learned a lot in 2015. I learned my limits, and I also learned just how much I can accomplish before tipping over the edge. And this morning when I asked myself what I was most proud of in 2015, I surprised myself with my answer.

It's not surviving pneumonia or the numerous other health issues. It wasn't creating a new (highly successful!) program for work. It wasn't getting promoted, or even getting my book deal. It wasn't finishing my first ever revision for my HarperCollins editor or signing my contract.

It was finishing that book that I set out to finish last January.

I don't know if it's because that book was the most complex I've ever written, and has tormented me for years trying to get it onto paper, or if it's because I kept pushing on with it despite all the obstacles the rest of my life threw at me along the way. But whatever it is, that new novel is unquestionably the accomplishment I'm the most proud of in 2015. I wrote it. I did it. Despite everything, I did it.

As for 2016...well, I'll write another book. After all, that's what my publisher wants.

Signing off on 2015, a very tired but exceptionally proud,

Katie Slivensky

Before The Force Awakens

Before The Force Awakens, a 9 year-old girl watched A New Hope...and had her entire life change in two short hours.

Before The Force Awakens, that girl rewatched that rented library VHS every day of the week. Then she begged for the next two, and repeated the process with Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi before her parents caved and just bought her the full set.

Before The Force Awakens, there was a girl who wanted to be Han Solo. She took an old black vest and masking-taped a cut-out pocket inside of it, as her secret smuggler's pouch.

Before The Force Awakens, there was a girl who threw all "age appropriate" books out the window and read nothing but Star Wars novels from age 9 on out.

Before The Force Awakens, there was a girl who built a life size version of the cockpit of the Millennium Falcon out of tinker toys in her basement.

Before The Force Awakens, there was a girl who spent as much time as possible with friends who grew to love Star Wars just as much as she did. Action figures and computer games (with joysticks for the ultimate X-wing experience) were staples for years of "hangout time" to come.

Before The Force Awakens, there was a girl who had every Star Wars encyclopedia and guide book memorized to the tiniest detail.

These 1st two photos are care of SWBFF Carolyn Nishon.

Before The Force Awakens, there was a girl who unknowingly wrote her first piece of (alas, uncompleted) fanfiction. (Crossover fanfiction, I might add, entitled Jurassic Jedi. The Falcon goes through a wormhole and crashes straight into Isla Nublar.)

Before The Force Awakens, there was a girl who subscribed to the Star Wars Insider--a monthly (and later, bimonthly) magazine for fans. She especially loved Anthony Daniels' hilarious column, and sometimes would allow herself to skip ahead just to read it. Of course, she would go back to read the rest of the magazine multiple times over to make up for it.

Before The Force Awakens, there was a girl who gave herself a Star Wars name and invented an entire alien species, language, and culture to match. (Katla Srivon, Kalokian X-Wing Squad pilot, at your service.)

Before The Force Awakens, there was a girl following every shred of news she could find--pre-internet!--about The Phantom Menace. Who got spoiled about Qui-Gon's death because she bought the CD before the movie hit (a track is literally called "Qui-Gon's Funeral"). Who then saw the film 9 times in theaters, and was puzzled why everyone at school started to treat it like it was a joke.

Before The Force Awakens, there was a girl who tried to remain loyal as a fan while everything she loved got mocked around her.

Before The Force Awakens, there was a girl who clung to her Star Wars novels as a place to hide away from the bitterness that slowly began surrounding her obsession.

Before The Force Awakens, there was a girl who stood fast and went to the midnight show of Attack of the Clones. And cheered loudly with the entire audience when Yoda drew his lightsaber.

Before The Force Awakens, there was a girl who entered what she thought would be her last "new" Star Wars viewing ever at a midnight in 2005. Dressed as a Jedi, two stormtroopers in the theater immediately "attacked" upon her entry, and she got to pretend to battle their blasts off with her lightsaber. Her 9 year-old self would have passed out in excitement to learn where she was and what she was doing a decade after her obsession began.

Before The Force Awakens, there was a girl who loved Star Wars. Who lived it, breathed it, to such an extreme level she was convinced somehow it had to be real. It just had to be. Somehow. Please. Please.

Before The Force Awakens, that girl became an adult.

Star Wars became a thing of the past to her. Her old self. The child she once was and often misses being. The fantasy world she lived in to cope with adolescence.

Ruby.

Before The Force Awakens, that girl decided to write her own stories to reach kids at that magical age Star Wars reached her. Maybe even about space. And robots.

Before The Force Awakens, that girl learned there would be new Star Wars movies. OH MY GOSH YAY!!! ...And then she learned that these movies would destroy the entire canon knowledge she had memorized in her bones from the books beyond Return of the Jedi.

...Her childhood gone. Like Alderaan. In one horrific moment.

Before The Force Awakens, that girl felt crushed that they would do this to her. That they would take away something she cherished so deeply. That they would pull this on their fans! The ones who had stayed by them, even through the roughest of times!!! It wasn't fair!

Before The Force Awakens, that girl had to come to terms with a lot of things. That the world didn't know Star Wars like she did, save for a select few who weren't anywhere near making up a majority of movie-goers. That her childhood might be over, but that wasn't a bad thing. That she was now in a position to create stories of her own for new generations. That her 9 year-old self would, once again, pass out in excitement to see where she was, and what she was doing.

Before The Force Awakens, that girl had to remind herself that in order to be excited about the future, a person can't cling to the past. That it was finally time to grow up...

...And give herself the chance to be a kid again.

------------------------------------

This Thursday, I'll be sitting in a theater full of fans, music blasting me to a galaxy far, far away.

And finally, I'm happy to report, I am very, very excited about it.

After all, you never know how 2 hours can change your entire life.

The Legend of Iguanodon

As a little girl, I watched a particular TV special about dinosaurs that I loved so much, my parents had to tape it for me so I could watch it on repeat. I wore that tape out watching it over and over, and today, I can't even recall the name of it.

I probably stopped watching it around late elementary school. As an adult, not only have I forgotten its name, I can barely remember what even happened in it--except for one thing.

Some of the teeth Mary may have found.

There was a reenactment of a woman named Mary Mantell finding the first dinosaur.

Mary was the wife of a scientist. She was walking down a road one day on one of the many trips her husband took, and picked up a strange looking rock that turned out to be the teeth of Iguanodon. And it's only this scene that I can still picture clear as day out of the multi-hour special that I watched on repeat for years of my life.

Why that one scene?

In hindsight, it's obvious. Mary was a woman.

In every TV dinosaur special I watched as a kid--this one and otherwise--all the experts and interviewees were men. Always. It's just how it was at that time. I've written before about how seeing men in the leading roles in fiction skewed my life towards hating my own gender, but there was also the matter of seeing men in the roles of reality. The profession I wanted to be didn't seem to have anyone in it that looked like me. And so I held on ferociously tight to this one image.

I remember reenacting Mary's scene as a child. I'd walk down the driveway, pick something up (a rock or a woodchip), and dash off with it to my imaginary male counterpart who would proclaim what a wonderful discovery I'd made.

Later in life, I discovered the legend of how the first iguanodont teeth were found may just be a myth. Mary's husband, Gideon Mantell (a name, by the way, my young mind did NOT lock and load, since I just had to look it up), later on explained that Mary didn't really accompany him on his trips out, and that he was the one to find the teeth.

There's debate about what really happened. But I've realized that I don't care, because at the most impressionable time of my youth, I got to see someone of my own gender be the first to discover dinosaurs. Even if none of the scientists were women, I could subconsciously cling to that one image of the awesome lady who'd discovered my favorite thing on the planet.

The point of this blog post isn't that we need to fact check which Mantell really found those teeth, but rather that a single image of one woman made it possible for a young girl to see herself in what was otherwise a TOTALLY male-dominated profession.

This is exactly why representation matters. People of different genders, races, religions, sexualities, EVERYTHING, should be shown to young children doing all sorts of things. Let kids see folks that look like them doing the type of work they're passionate about. You never know who is watching, and who will be inspired.

Paleontology Dr. Ellen Curano recently wrote a wonderful article about this very topic and the challenges women face in the field of paleontology. I can't recommend reading it enough. Dr. Curano is a blogger who highlights women in geosciences, precisely for the above explained reasons. Check out her site! And check out the Bearded Lady Project she runs, while you're at it.

As far as Mary Mantell goes...I'm certain that regardless of whether she was the first to pick up those dinosaur teeth, she contributed to her husband's work in ways that history has long forgotten. So in honor of International Women's Day, I honor Mary. Thank you for your curiosity, and your inspiration.

Moving Past What's Expected

I haven't blogged in a while. I was wrapped up in a major novel revision throughout January and the first half of February, and I thought when I came out the other side of it I would be thrilled to get back to blogging.

But I wasn't. I also found I couldn't figure out what creative writing project to focus on next. Beyond this still, I've been wrestling with bigger "what am I really doing with my life?" questions. It's been an introspective few weeks, to say the least. Probably brought on by how much time I spent trapped indoors and alone due to the hundred inches of snow Boston got this winter.

I've been in a confused, upset place trying to figure out where to go next. I'd open up my blog, and feel like I couldn't post anything because I couldn't find a science story I really wanted to talk about. I'd open up a new word document, but find I couldn't start a project because I couldn't decide which project would make the most sense to focus on next. I'd go to work, and fret about personal finances and whether or not I'd be able to secure a future and support a family with the career path I am currently on.

Nothing in my life was working. And just in these past couple of days, I've started to understand why.

I was focusing on what was expected of me. What others expected of me, and what I expected of myself. I've fallen into this trap before.

But today I put on my Let It Go bracelet my friend Marie gave me, and really started to take that song to heart once again. (I'm sorry for those of you sick of Frozen, but Elsa is my soul sister.)

Anyway, I realized that first of all, this is MY blog. I can post about whatever I want. Or not post at all. This space isn't meant to be stressful, it's meant to be fun, and if I'm letting it stress me out, then I've got to take one big step back.

Same goes for my writing. I love writing. But I've been panicking lately about writing the right thing next, and this is making me run in tinier and tinier circles in my head and I'm sure I'm on my way to imploding. So rather than try to come up with the perfect story, I've decided to let myself write whatever moves me. Right now, that's a trilogy I've been poking at for years. The first book is drafted, the second two outlined, and it speaks to my heart. I don't need to try and logically pick apart how marketable it is, because if I love it I will write it well. That's most of the marketing battle right there.

And heck. If I start working on it and decide it's not for me after all, I can move onto something else. That is okay.

As far as my job goes...well...I love my job. I'm really awesome at it. I like where I work, I enjoy what I do, and I feel fulfilled by it. I can't control everything in life, so I will just have to trust in fate a little bit more that I will eventually figure out a way to financially support a family by myself. I don't have a significant other, and I don't want that to hold me back from being a mother some day, so this is pretty much a constant concern. It's scary trying to plan for this alone! But I can't let that fear take control of my life.

That's really the take-away point for me. Not letting fear control me. (Elsa. Soul sister. See?)

I set up these strict deadlines and goals and convince myself that the world expects certain things from me. I don't want to fail the world. I don't to fail myself. But all these expectations do is trap me in a box of anxiety. I have to be free to do things that feel good, that feel right--even if my life isn't lining up as perfectly as I'd hoped at the moment. I'll figure it out. There's no way I can see the whole picture from this one place and time. Who knows what opportunities are on the horizon? All I know is that I work very hard, and I've set myself up in the perfect position to grab opportunity if it should ever finally grace me.

So as far as my blog goes...for my own sanity, there isn't going to be a blog schedule. I'll post when I want to, I'll write about what I want to (let's be honest, that will continue to be either science or kidlit, because those are my worlds), and I'll enjoy this space again.

I need to stop thinking in terms of expectations, and start listening to my gut. I need to pursue what makes me happy.

And I need to reread this post probably every day going forward to remind myself of that.

New Novel Update #2: First Draft COMPLETE

A couple of weeks ago, I finally finished the first draft of my work in progress, "DW". Cue party noises and bad dancing:

Yeah, that's right. I am AWESOME.

 

YEAH! FIRST DRAFT!

 YEAH! YEAH! --Okay, I'll stop.

 Ahem. Anyway.

I'd started drafting DW in 2012, then tried again in 2013, but didn't have a clear sense of where it was going until I did a pile of plotting work this past January. So the bulk of what ended up in the first completed draft happened in 2014, even though the idea has been in my head for far longer.

As it (always) turns out, I have a much better sense of my characters now that the story is on the page. So I've begun Draft 2, tearing things apart line by line. I'm fixing major plot holes and rewriting dialogue for basically everyone in the beginning. I'm combining scenes, switching segments around, hacking out extraneous blabbering, etc. All the typical things you do in the second go-around.

For once, I'm actually not overwhelmed at the revisions that need to be done re: the plot (seriously, my revisions usually involve MASSIVE plot overhauls). This time, in a bizarre twist, I'm feeling pressure because of what this story became thematically. It has a heart to it that I desperately don't want to screw up.

If you'd told me a year ago that my main concern about DW would be the theme and the character growth, I would've laughed in your face. The complex plot was all I could think about in 2014, and now that the bulk of that is sorted out, I have fallen in love with my characters and can only think about doing them justice in future drafts. Funny how that happens.

And now, for a pretty lame attempt at cleverness: DW is a complex beast, and Draft 1 is just the bare bones of this story. The skeleton, essentially. I hope Draft 2 will bring it to life.

(...Maybe someday, when this story is published, people will read the end of this old blog post and smile. Or maybe they'll just wonder how I managed to get published with lines like those.)

I hated being a girl.

This might be my most personal blog post ever, but I want to talk about why I've made the choice to have girls as the protagonists of my novels.

Growing up, I loved adventure stories. I was obsessed with Star Wars, could recite Jurassic Park front to back, plowed through every fantasy book series I could get my hands on, and daydreamed about the day I'd get to go on my own epic quest. I listened to John Williams soundtracks on repeat, and when Harry Potter hit, I dived into that with wild abandon.

The stories that meant the most to me all had male leads. Girls had varying degrees of prominence, but were almost always there to supply a romantic interest for one of the main male characters. None of them were ever the focus of the adventure. They were never the "chosen one". Never the central character who everyone rallied around. They just weren't. 

As I was internalizing the female role of being a sidenote to the male, I was barreling through my teenage years, being told I needed to start wearing makeup and sexier clothes because getting a boy's attention was of top priority. My nerdy side was not attractive, and as I was reminded over and over, I needed to hide what I was really interested in if I ever wanted a date.

But I didn't want a date, I wanted an adventure! The combination of societal pressures and the fictional worlds I practically lived in told me that I was supposed to want romance. Duh, I was female, that's our entire focus, right? But this just confused the hell out of me. I couldn't bring myself to care about any of the things I was meant to care about, and no amount of faking it could hide the real me.

On top of not caring that much about boys, I hated shopping, I hated smelly fragrances, I hated dresses, and I hated gossip. And I decided girls who DID like these things were the problem. Because of them, I had the entire world telling me I was supposed to be someone I just wasn't.

I put girls in a box. All of them. "Girl" became a label that meant something flighty, stupid, and shallow. I was furious when someone would try to label me as one. It got to the point in college that I refused to call myself a girl. Flat out refused. Being a girl was the most insulting thing I could think of to be. It disgusted me. Girls were the root of all of my problems. I wished they didn't exist.

I literally wanted to erase my sex from the planet.

When I began to seriously consider what this meant for me, I realized that while I claimed to wish I'd been born a boy, I wasn't interested in actually being a boy. I didn't feel like I was male deep down. This isn't a story about a trans discovery. What I was deep down was female, it felt female, it just wasn't what I'd internalized "female" to mean. I was better than "female".

And when I hit upon that realization, I felt sicker than ever.

What's wrong with being female? What? Why did it have such a negative connotation to me? Why was so I nauseated by my own sex?

It's still a work in progress, but from that moment on, I've begun to reclaim that identity. I am female. I'm a girl. I'm a woman. And I'm a pretty awesome person. Those shouldn't be exclusive!

No, girls never got to be the action heroes (unless they knew five martial arts, slept with a million guys and broke all their hearts, and wore skin-tight black catsuits--none of which remotely described me). Girls were scarcely in adventure stories at all, except for the token few there to provide a romantic side story. But WHY NOT?

I grew up learning that unless it was a romance story, main characters were boys. What did that say about me--the main character of my OWN life? As someone who wasn't that interested in romance, I identified with the action heroes who were always male. And this fed into my twisted view of girls, and caused a lot of self-loathing through my teens and early twenties.

That's not okay.

ANYONE should be able to see themselves of the hero of the story, without having to change a basic aspect of their identity. When I started writing seriously, I focused on the fictional girls who drove this point home. Hermione. Polgara. Mara Jade. But even they were only there as side characters.

So I made the choice to make my main characters girls. Sometimes people tell me that my writing is more of a classic "boy adventure" mold, and I should consider that in my protagonist choice.

...Trust me. I have.

That's pretty much the entire point.

Nowadays, we are getting more True Adventures starring girls, which is great. But we've got a long, long way to go. We've barely made a dent in the male-dominated hero world. Until things are 50/50, it's not good enough.

If I can save any other young girl from the deep self-hatred I felt, I feel like I owe it to her. I wish I could go back in time and tell myself that being a girl is just as cool as being a boy, but I can't.

This is why my protagonists are girls. And this is why I'm not backing down from that.

The world needs science. Not just scientists.

My decision to leave Academia has come up in several places in my life recently. With less than a month before I head to the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology's Annual Meeting, I decided it was time for another blog post on the subject.

I'm a firm believer that science can tremendously help the world, has tremendously helped the world, and frankly, is the only way to save our planet short of humans going extinct. We need scientists to accomplish this. But we also need a society that accepts science--scratch that, not just accepts science, but embraces science.

I originally started my career as a scientist. I was a grad student, a functional morphologist, researching locomotion in Miocene apes. But I quickly learned that what mattered most to me, deep down, wasn't when primates made the transition from quadrupedal motion to brachiation, but that only .000000000002% of the population seemed to care about when that may have happened.

People, for the most part, didn't care about what I was doing. They didn't care about what anyone in my field was doing. Or other fields. In fact, many people actively aimed to contradict science in general. 

Illustrations from my Masters thesis.

I'd worked in science education before going to grad school, so it wasn't a leap to realize I could have an education career rather than a research career--to realize I could personally do something to improve the public understanding of the cool discoveries science was making. What was difficult was realizing this meant I would no longer be the one making the discoveries.

That really was hard to swallow. I was in research for a reason--I had questions I wanted answers to, and if I left, I would have to rely on others to someday pursue those questions. But in the end, I weighed what meant the most to me, and education won.

For me it came down to the fact that all the science discoveries in the world won't matter if society doesn't let us use them to improve life on Earth. We desperately need scientists and engineers, but we also desperately need people to translate these fields to the greater public.

My goal is not to explain every small detail of science to every person alive. What I do with my career is create positive associations between people and science. I win people over. I convince them this stuff really is important, really is interesting, and isn't as inaccessible as they've been raised to believe. When I talk to a group of people, I honestly don't care if they remember the facts I tell them. Sure, it'd be nice to know a couple things stick, but much more critical to me is that people leave the encounter feeling more confident about their own ability to understand science.

Science is intimidating. Scientists are often times terrible at explaining what they do to laypeople. I'm sorry, but it's true. There are some stellar examples of scientists who are great communicators, but there are many more examples of scientists who aren't, or scientists who don't even bother trying. And that is okay! Scientists already have an incredibly important job to do. They are discovering all there is to factually know about our universe. But that's why people in science communication fields are so critical. It's our job to get that information out there, and encourage the public to accept it. Even if John Doe would never be able to comprehend the high-end research papers surrounding climate change, he can trust that its happening if he's had positive, confident past experiences with science.

Again: to improve the world, we need scientists and we need people to communicate science. Both roles are important, and very few people have the skill (or, to be honest, the time) to tackle both.

I write about this, because it's been five years since I left my PhD program, and often find scientists dismiss me for that. Every year at SVP, I get questioned about what I'm actually doing there.

Here's what I'm doing:

• I'm taking what I learn from your discoveries, and bringing back packets of notes to an entire museum of science communication specialists.


• I'm using your latest finds to excite the public about an awesome field of science.


• I'm making positive connections between science research and the average person's mental picture of what's important and cool in the world.


• I'm translating your latest debates into bite-sized pieces that a child can internalize, thereby helping them to gain an impression as to what actually happens in scientific debates.

And through all of this, society changes. A handful of more people are out there, voting in favor of science. A few more parents find the confidence to help their children with their science homework. A little girl sees a female role-model and gets encouraged to pursue a field that our culture pushes on boys.

And somewhere, someone makes the realization that they're related to everything around them, and maybe should treat this planet with a bit more respect.

To a scientist, science needs to be about facts and research. But to the public, science needs to be about something else. It needs to reflect how they interact with the world.

There's a knee-jerk reaction among scientists to make sure every single person gets every fact right. In science education, it's more important that the playful child imagining that they've invented the first spaceship to land on Jupiter feels proud of what they've done and interested in making it a reality, rather than telling them to sit down and stop making up stupid ideas about landing on a gas planet and oh, here, read these journal articles on why their idea is wrong. No, there are no pictures.

The world isn't made up of PhD level researchers, but it is filled with people who have the potential to appreciate science if it is presented to them well.

That's what I do. And I'm damn good at it.

Ode to the Gastrolith

I'm falling behind on my novel writing goals, so instead of a Weekly Science Roundup, you get this!

"Ode to the Gastrolith" is a piece I did back in college for the one and only creative writing class I ever took. My instructor was an...interesting fellow. To put it nicely, he had a lot of quirks and weird rules for writing that I didn't entirely agree with. So by the end of the semester, I just submitted things that I knew would mess with him.

I wrote this based on the biggest gastrolith I'd ever found.

The prompt was to write a short poetic reflection on an object that most people would overlook. As the class's only science nerd, I decided to write about something appropriately nerdy...something my instructor wouldn't know what to do with...GASTROLITHS.

Gastroliths are rocks that dinos swallowed, likely to help mush and digest their food since they didn't really do a lot of chewing. Modern day dinosaurs do this, too. Gastroliths fit my instructor's prompt perfectly. They're often overlooked, since they really do just look like rocks (because they are).

Anyway, I got a lot of question marks on this from my instructor, so mission accomplished. Up until a couple of days ago, I had forgotten all about this, until I stumbled upon it when I was looking for a different file from my college years. When I reread it, I knew I had to put it on my blog.

This is from college and was written to taunt my instructor, so it's obviously pretty terrible. But I have no shame and I'm posting it anyway.

Ode to the Gastrolith 

Like a lumpy chicken egg, you sit in the dirt.
You are no egg, though. Inorganic and inedible, you’ve seen more than any hatchling could ever dream of seeing.

Forced underground by the planet’s sinking crust, incinerating heat and pressure from the world on top of you strained your minerals to a swirl. You only resurfaced after getting scraped upwards for millions of years, when you then broke off from your formation and were carried long distances by rushing water, freezing glaciers, and the ever present force of gravity.

And then a pause.

But not forever.

Your rest, interrupted. A Sauropod swallowed you. Down the long neck, the long gullet, smashed alongside others from across the world, shredding soggy dead plants, attacked by bile all before being shoved through the winding pathways of the intestines; it could have been years before you were ejected from this massive body.

Post defecation, polished smooth, you waited by yourself, as contrasting jagged rocks broke apart into shattered piles around your resting place. Alone and different, you waited until now, unaffected and patient.

This is your story of survival. Survival on your own.
Alone,
colored green and purple by metamorphosis, rounded and beautified by dark biotic chambers and churning acid, you were sentenced to weather the past 80 million years at the mercy of a drying environment.

Find solace in your lifelessness, Gastrolith,
and in the aged wisdom
of your dense ignorance.

New Novel Update #1: It's Complicated.

This is why I'm not an illustrator.

Let's call this one "DW" for now.

It's been a busy month of cracking down on my Work In Progress. While there haven't been a ton of pages added to the total manuscript length, I've sorted through many of the over-arching issues that have been holding me back, and for that, I'm pretty dang proud.

DW has the most pieces involved of anything I've ever attempted to write before. It's layered with mysteries, and keeping straight who knows what when has seriously stressed me out. So I decided enough was enough, and a couple weeks back I went to town on several in-depth outlines. I did one for every major character/character group. The story is told in first person, but there's a lot going on under the surface to keep track of, so I have to know who's doing what (even if my main character doesn't).

On top of outlining the entire novel over ten different times in different ways, I did character maps, 3 Act breakdowns, and a ton of scribblings on "surprises" and "key scenes". And in the past week, this has finally allowed me to get back into writing this story. 

Phew.

For those curious, it's another Middle Grade speculative-fiction-esque adventure, like all my stories tend to be. But this one is by far the most challenging, complicated tale I've ever committed to telling.

I'm hoping that will translate it to being the best tale I've ever committed to telling, but I suppose we'll just have to wait and see about that.

For now, enjoy the current theme song for DW, and have fun speculating what in the world I could be writing about!

AGENT

Blogging has been slow the past couple of weeks, because some big stuff has been happening in my writing life. I'm not going to be coy and dance around this, so here goes...

I am thrilled to announce that I am now officially represented by Ammi-Joan Paquette of the Erin Murphy Literary Agency!

Relevant gif is relevant, for many, many reasons.

It's happened! I have a literary agent, and I couldn't be more excited about it. Joan is fabulous. I know she's going to do a fantastic job representing me and my manuscript in the big scary world of children's book publishing.

For those that don't know what exactly all this means, you can think of this as the first professional step on the road to becoming published. Nowadays, it is extremely difficult to be a published author if you don't have an agent (unless you self-publish). An agent is the link between authors and publishing houses. Now that I have one, I get to move onto the next phase of my career--submitting to publishers to see if anyone wants to take on my book!

I will likely do a longer post in the future detailing how I "got my agent", because that story really deserves its own post. What I will say now, is that I had three agents read my full manuscript, and got offers from all three of them.

It was simultaneously awesome and terrifying. As you might imagine, choosing amongst them was not easy. But in the end, I went with Joan, because I felt like she was the best fit for where I wanted to take my writing career. She's extremely easy to get along with, she has an incredible success rate in the business, and she is a sci-fi author herself. Plus, she connected with my book in such a positive way, that I knew she would strive to see it succeed. Joan was the full package, and I'm still flabbergasted that she saw enough of something in my writing to offer representation.

I feel so lucky and honored to be joining the EMLA family, and can't wait to get to know everyone associated with them. If anyone is reading this and wants to follow me on twitter, my twitter handle is "@paleopaws". I will follow you back! I'm cool like that, I swear.

So that's my big news! Heading into 2014, I'll be an agented writer, getting ready to tackle editor submissions. Thank you so much to everyone who's supported me during all of this. To my friends, family, and critique partners for believing in me and in this manuscript. You were right. Apparently it was an awesome story. Next step: make it even more awesome.

Okay, 2014. Publishing houses. Editors. Let's do this.

NaNoWriMo: The Best Thing Ever

In a slight deviation from my usual posts, I'm going to discuss something dear to my heart: NaNoWriMo.

For those who somehow have never heard this term before, NaNoWriMo stands for "National Novel Writing Month". The challenge: in one month (specifically, November), write 50,000 words of a new, original novel.

Now, the rules are often bent, and that's just fine. I think officially it's morphed a bit through the years and isn't as strict as it once was. But as a stickler for rules, I always followed them to the letter. I would plan, outline, and character sketch, but I wouldn't begin penning a word of my new story until November 1st hit. 

I have done NaNoWriMo for the past four years. I have won NaNoWriMo for the past four years (which means each year I hit 50K before November 30th). But I will not be doing NaNoWriMo this year.

Why am I making this decision? The answer is simple: I don't feel like NaNoWriMo can help me any more than it already has.

As an aspiring author, I started NaNo in 2009, hoping to get a full story down on the page so I could begin to seriously pursue my dream. I did that. It was such a successful and fulfilling way to write a novel, that I wrote a sequel to my NaNo novel in 60 days in Spring 2010. And I wrote the third in the series during NaNoWriMo 2010.

And then I paused. I had a lot of material. I had joined a writing group, and was getting into the nitty-gritty of revisions. I didn't really need more material.

So during 2011, I stopped writing and instead revised the heck out of my first NaNo novel. But the siren call of NaNoWriMo caught me by surprise that November, and I found myself writing a brand new story even though I had no real reason to do so. This time, it was completely unrelated to the trilogy of stories I'd already typed up. It was new, and fun, and different.

In fact, the "newness" of the story got me so excited, that I started another new story in Winter 2012... which I then abandoned in Spring 2012 when I found my real new story (aka, the one I've now polished to awesomeness and am currently agent-hunting with).

And even though I had found my Awesome Story earlier in 2012, I still couldn't resist NaNo and the allure of writing yet another new story. So in November 2012, I wrote sixth novel.

It was like an addiction. A wonderful one.

But it needs to stop. Six novels in four years is fabulous. But I don't need to turn that into seven by November 30th, 2013.

I'm working towards traditional publication, and NaNoWriMo is no longer useful in the way it once was. Back when I started, NaNoWriMo was exactly what I needed. A way to prove I could write an entire novel. A way to get over my finickiness and just get words down. A way to blow through a story from start to finish, and train my mind to think as a plotter in a pantser world.

NaNoWriMo taught me just how far I could push myself. (Record: 12K in one day.) NaNoWriMo taught me how to produce material under intense deadlines. NaNoWriMo became the model after which I did everything writing-related. It works for me.

...A terrifying deadline. A seemingly impossible goal. Go.

It's the perfect motivator for me. But I never would've known that if I hadn't taken up the challenge back in 2009, and I never would've known the satisfaction of creating an entire tale in a short stretch of time, either.

But now I know what I can do, and I've discovered that I can get just as much done when I establish my own personal deadlines as I do during November. So this year, I'm not doing NaNoWriMo. It won't give me what I need anymore. Right now, I need to shop my Awesome Story to agents. I also need to revise a NaNo from 2012. And I need to draft a particular novel that I've been promising my critique group I'd write for over a year now.

On that note, that's something else NaNo has taught me: not every book is right to draft in thirty days. Some work great. Others do not. The particular novel that I want to do next needs to be crafted into first draft-dom, and not vomited out like my others. It will be a new challenge, and it won't be possible to do in thirty days.

So, to sum up, NaNoWriMo is awesome and I encourage all aspiring writers to do it at least once. But as for me, I think I've reached the natural conclusion of my personal NaNo character-arc.

Some closing advice for anyone doing NaNo:

1. You can do it, even if you're doing other things with your life...to an extent. I worked full time each year I won. That said...

2. You will need to shut out most socialization. You need your evenings and weekends. You need those days off. Trust me. Just clear your calendar now.

3. Write during weird hours. Wake up earlier than normal. Or stay up later than normal. Get yourself something caffeinated, sit down at an odd time, and write. Because of the oddness, you won't immediately get yourself distracted with habitual Facebook checking, etc.

4. Prepare as much as you can beforehand, but don't be afraid to abandon your outline halfway through the month if you find your story going down a different road. Your characters will tell you where to go.

5. Do word sprints. If you're on Twitter, you can connect with others doing these. Or on the NaNo forums. 15 minutes can turn into 1000 words if you're racing someone else.

6. Don't worry if things aren't making sense. They won't. Your draft is going to S.U.C.K. and be riddled with plot holes. And that's fine, because no one will read that draft. You can revise it before showing anyone, if you ever chose to show people it at all.

7. When that unplanned character shows up at 25K? Let him in!

8. The first 10K are fun. The second 10K are difficult. The third 10K drag painfully, but keep pushing. The fourth 10K is where you'll start to feel like a writing robot. The fifth 10K...that's where it gets exhilarating.

9. Join the official NaNo site and enter your word count each day. It's so much fun to watch that little personal word graph climb! It's one of the only sources of satisfaction you will get for 30 days. Take it.

10. Never look back. If you stop to edit or revise, you lose precious time. Don't look back, don't delete. Just keep going. Revisions are what the other 11 months of the year are for.

Best of luck to anyone embarking on this adventure! And thank you, NaNoWriMo, for giving me the confidence to chase my dream.

Novel Update #5: Ready

Image Credit: NASA

It's always satisfying when I punch through and finish a draft. But I have to say, there's nothing quite like finishing the draft where I get to say, "I'd let an agent read this."

I've only ever gotten to say that once before. Today, I get to say it again.

I have an agent-ready draft. Is it perfect? No. Of course not. But it's ready.

I know it is, because the thought of an industry professional reading it in its current state doesn't send me into physical tremors of terror. Instead, I feel comfortable. Excited, even. I think agents and editors would enjoy this draft.

Hopefully one of them will enjoy it enough to represent it.

How did I get here? 15 months ago, I hadn't even conceived of this story. But the concept captured me so much last June, I couldn't rest until the story was told. And not just told, but properly told. I would get up early before work every day, stay up after dinner, sit indoors every weekend... I poured countless hours into this novel over the past year, revising draft after draft after draft. My writer's group says I'm a machine, but the truth is, I just don't know how to tackle a writing project any other way. I have to throw myself into it to the point it consumes my life.

The last thing I did for this novel was read it through from start to finish in one sitting, to make sure the pacing truly felt right. There isn't any magic formula for pacing (which I'm pretty sure would really irritate my main character). Pacing is a feeling. And with just a few small edits during that read-through today, I can now say that I'm satisfied with how it feels.

And so, here I am. I've got a polished draft of what I believe to be a pretty kickass futuristic sci-fi thriller, and now I need to find an agent for it.

I think I will. Maybe that sounds overly optimistic, but that's what the "finished draft" high does to me.

Querying, here I come.

Novel Update #4: So Close Now!

This picture is very relevant to this post, I promise.

This is it. I can feel it.

Based on the suggestions of my critique group after their full read-through, I've now finished several sweeping revisions to my current WIP. In addition, I've tightened up every single scene (and cut many others) so that I'm down over 16,000 words from my previous draft's final word count. That's right. I've hacked 16,000 words from this baby. While adding in new scenes.

That being said, it's not done yet. I'm in the midst of polishing draft 3.6 (yes, my drafts get decimal designations). I'd like to chop an additional 2,000 words still, if I can. I want to do my read-aloud. There are still line edits to do.

But I am close. After spending years developing my professional writing skills, participating in critique group discussion, and watching my partners become agented and published, I have a much better grasp on what is "query ready" than I did before. And this novel is very nearly there. It just needs one last spit 'n shine.

I can't describe how exciting it is, knowing that after fourteen months of work, within a matter of a week or two this manuscript will be in a solid enough place for agents to read.

...I'm not going to lie, this is also rather terrifying. See, I've got a bit of a scarred psyche from my first querying experience, as many authors do. After a year of many nibbles, but no bites, I had to shelve my first beloved novel at the end of 2012.

This new story, though... something in it just tells me it is the one. My first novel was well written with great characters (so several professionals told me), but it was a rookie novel. It wasn't going to work on the current market. That's a mistake I've worked tirelessly to avoid this time around.

So I'm just about ready to take the plunge yet again. If anyone reading this blog knows of any agents looking for an upper middle grade sci-fi thriller with solid science and a smart female protagonist, please let me know! I've got a running list going, and would love to add more names.

I'll end this post with my main character's instrumental theme song. Yes, I know it's a My Little Pony fan-written piano piece, but it's gorgeous and it's perfect.

GOLDEN BOY

Tomorrow, Tara Sullivan's debut novel GOLDEN BOY hits stores.

I've been a fan of it ever since I joined Tara's writing group in 2010. Back then, GOLDEN BOY was just a partial first draft, and my first contribution to the project was messing with one of Tara's beautiful metaphors by pointing out that howler monkeys don't live in Africa. Sorry, Tara.

The project's obviously come a long way since then. In honor of Tara's exciting debut, I was going to do some science-y tie-in about one of the book's plot elements, such as albinism, poaching, or genetics. But as I sat down to start my blog post, I found I couldn't do it. It just felt too kitschy. And GOLDEN BOY deserved better.

Here's what readers of this blog really need to know about this debut novel:

GOLDEN BOY is a beautifully written tale of self worth and true bravery. GOLDEN BOY doesn't shy away from the horrors of its real-life inspiration (namely, albino-hunting in Tanzania), but never does it feel too gruesome to read (the violence is kept below the PG-13 level). GOLDEN BOY takes what could have been a lecture on human rights, and instead does what every human rights story should do--it makes its hero a person, instead of a symbol.

And that's really what GOLDEN BOY is all about. Finding the person beneath the stigma. Habo is a real person. At least he is to me, and he will be to you, if you give this book a chance.

I had the honor of getting to know Habo as he grew. It all started in Porter Square Books in September, 2010. From there, I spent months, then years, working with Tara and Habo alike, participating in and cheering on the development of this amazing book (which is already getting starred reviews). Tomorrow night, I'll be back in Porter Square Books, wearing my GOLDEN BOY t-shirt and celebrating with Tara at her launch party. It comes full circle, and I can't stop smiling about that.

If you're in the Boston area, the party starts at 7pm. If you can't make it, do yourself a favor and pick up a copy of GOLDEN BOY anyway. Trust me, you want to read this book.

I'm so excited for this debut, and so incredibly proud of Tara and her journey to publication. This is just the beginning for this impressively talented young author, and I look forward to many more Tara Sullivan launch parties down the road.

Congratulations, Tara. You've earned this!

Post-Conference: NESCBWI 2013

Another NESCBWI, come and gone! And, in what is now tradition, I'm here to give my thoughts on the conference two days after returning from Springfield.

Before I dive into what I learned about my fiction writing, I need to discuss two major realizations that hit me on Sunday:

A travel mug I clearly need.

1. I've been so scared of dabbling in nonfiction, but thanks to Catherine Reef's nonfiction intensive Sunday, I now understand that I've been "writing" children's science nonfiction for years. I've just been doing it verbally. Several times a week, I go into schools and spend fifty minutes introducing a science topic to kids, experimenting with it, and giving them takeaway conclusions/inspiration. Oh, and I'm AWESOME at it.

2. Speaking of what I do for a living, after Kellie Celia's intensive on school and library outreach, I've come to understand that I possess an incredible knowledge bank and skill set that few authors have.  I am a professional outreach educator. I shine in front of audiences of all ages and sizes, and can entertain and teach even the dreaded "middle schoolers". This session showed me how little the average author knows about speaking to kids at schools--something I just take for granted as common knowledge, because of the nature of my job. NESCBWI 2013 taught me that I really should find a way to help other authors learn the ins and outs of outreach and presenting to children. (2014 session anyone?)

So yes. Two surprising revelations that taught me that I'm cooler than I thought I was. But what about my Work In Progress manuscript? Did I learn anything about that?

Of course! I challenge anyone to go to an NESCBWI conference and not leave armed with some great ideas.

First, I've confirmed that I need to make my manuscript 20% shorter. I knew it deep down, but it was helpful to have that told to my face.

Second, Kate Messner's great revision workshop helped me identify the true heart of my manuscript, which will make cutting 20% of it much, much easier. (Thank you again, Kate.)

Finally, and this is going to sound cliché, but I learned that the world really does need my book. I won't go into details, but I have more conviction than ever that a science-driven novel (with a female lead) needs to get out there in the hands of kids.

So thank you, NESCBWI 2013. It was another fantastic conference, and I got a chance to help spread the word about my critique partner's debut novel, GOLDEN BOY by Tara Sullivan, coming out June 27th!

Yes, we were the group with the shirts!

Pre-Conference: NESCBWI 2013

Going to NESCBWI is a lot like attending high school. At least, if high school was a heck of a lot friendlier.

I came to this odd realization a couple days ago, as I thought back on how I've progressed and matured as a writer through the past three years. Let me explain.

My Freshman year of NESCBWI (2011) I was innocent, excited, and had zero idea of what I was actually in for. I knew a few people from my critique group...sort of. I didn't know much about agents or editors or the publishing process. I just knew I wanted to experience it all. I was overwhelmed that year, but nevertheless learned a ton and became much closer with my fellow writers.

My Sophomore year (2012) I knew what to expect. I took it up a notch. I attended sessions aimed at authors further along in their careers, and I hung with my critique group "clique" most of the weekend. We even initiated a new member that Sunday. However, I was still finding my way in some regards during that conference. I didn't know it, but I still had a bit of "frosh-writer" innocence left.

...That innocence got crushed after the conference, as I spent the rest of 2012 and the beginning of 2013 querying a manuscript that received little interest. But you live, you learn, and I'm coming in hot this year with something newer, stronger, and shinier.

2013 will be my Junior year. I may not be agented yet, but many in my critique group now are. People with agents and book deals are like the Big Men On Campus at NESCBWI...they're basically demi-gods to the rest of us. And if you've got a book published already? You're in a whole 'nother tier. You're like a COLLEGE student. Whoa, man.

Anyway, this year I'm a Junior with Senior friends, and that gives me a bit of extra pride heading into the conference. I'm not at Senior level yet, but I'm the next best thing, and I'm not going to lie--I'm a little cocky about it. They're all so talented and badass, I feel awesome just by association. You'll understand after you read the works of my agented friends (debuts coming out over the next couple years, including Tara Sullivan's June 27th, 2013 debut: GOLDEN BOY).

I'm hoping the trend continues. With any luck, next year I'll be a Senior. But for now, just like I did last year, I'm going to set out some more humble goals for this coming conference:

1. Learn techniques to continue to improve my writing. This should go without saying, but I am particularly excited to embrace this year's "Art of Craft" theme.

2. Continue to explore the mysterious waters of nonfiction. I love writing fiction, but with my science background, I really shouldn't shun the idea of writing nonfiction just because it scares me.

3. Increase my professionalism. Make new connections and learn from everyone I meet.

4. Get useful feedback on my query letter and first 10 pages of my new manuscript. If I'm going to put it out there later this year, professional advice now will be of tremendous help.

5. Enjoy bonding time with my awesome writer friends. :)

So, what high-school year do you see yourself as? And what are your goals for the conference? Answer or link to your own NESCBWI 2013 blog post in the comments! Looking forward to seeing everyone this weekend!

Novel Update #3: The Pieces Are In Place!

My brain, deciding on which plot ideas to use in one single manuscript.

I've successfully finished Draft 2 of my Work In Progress! Draft 2 was a serious overhaul, concentrating on getting all the plot points in order and fleshed out, as well as adding in a brand new ending. In all, I chopped over 60 pages of material, wrote nearly 150 new pages of material, and as a result, actually have a legitimate draft of this novel completed.

But it's still got a long way to go.

I'll be handing it off to my critique group soon for a full read-through (they've only seen bits and pieces so far). Before then, I'd like to chop at least 25-30 pages out of this version through some tough-love editing. I also need to thread the finer points of the plot through in a more consistent way (now that I finally know what those points are) and have to fiddle with many technical details, as this is a sci-fi story.

Right now it sits at a whopping 88K words (!!!), which is enormous for a Middle Grade novel, even if this is technically "upper" MG. I'm hoping my critique group will have some helpful ideas for how to tighten the entire manuscript up, but I'm also coming to terms with the fact that this book is just bigger than any other story I've ever done. Both in terms of length, and in terms of depth/scope. If I can eventually get this under 70K, it will be a miracle. It might not happen, honestly. Should make querying this sucker interesting, to say the least.

I may have bitten off more than I can chew with this story. I just have to hope that my critique group will help me focus in on the relevant pieces of this tale, as they've done for me before. Connecting the story dots in this thing has been nightmarishly difficult, just because there are so many of them. I've never taken on a project this huge before, and I still don't know what others will think of it.

The one thing I do know is that I have fallen in love with my main cast and I finally have all the plot events in an order that feels real to me. Also, as I've begun to read-through this second draft, I find myself looking forward to certain scenes and getting caught-up so much in reading that I forget that I'm meant to be editing. These are good signs, right? I can hope, at least.

Onwards, to constructing Draft 2.5!

A Week Forever Burnt Into Memory

AP Photo/Julio Cortez

Monday feels like an entire lifetime ago. I think you could ask anyone in the metro-Boston area, and they would agree.

"It doesn't feel real."

"It feels like the past few days don't exist."

These are the types of things people are saying. It's not that we aren't aware of the past few days' existence (trust me, we're painfully aware). It's that they were so surreal, that I and many others keep expecting to wake up and have it be Marathon Monday again. Like, this week was just a nightmare, that all this time hasn't actually passed, that this past week was just so horrifyingly removed from reality, that reality must've actually gone on hold, and time will pick back up where it came crashing to a halt last Monday.

But it won't. Somehow, we all need to accept that all this did happen. It wasn't a nightmare. That we need to somehow learn to move forward after experiencing horror close-up.

I consider myself amazingly, superbly lucky in all this. No one I knew was hurt or killed. I was home safe. I didn't have to witness the carnage on Monday in person. I wasn't trapped in Watertown yesterday.

But to say I wasn't affected by any of this would be a flat-out lie.
 

Happy morning, preparing for the runners to come by.

I was at the Boston Marathon on Monday. I wrote about that day here, back when I was barely coherent enough to string sentences together. I was handing out water at Mile 3 with many of my friends and coworkers. I left after the runners finished passing by. I went home. Many of my friends and coworkers did not.

Many of them were down near the finish line when the bombs hit.

I spent Monday afternoon and evening watching the news and obsessively checking texts and emails. Some friends checked in sooner than others. Some took hours. Painful, scary hours, as at that time there were no official names or numbers for the dead and injured. And all we could do was wait to hear from those we cared about. Boston waited to hear. Massachusetts waited to hear. Let's be honest, this is an international event...the world waited to hear.

Tuesday. I went to work. People I knew were okay. That much was a relief. But what wasn't a relief was learning some of the names and faces of the victims, or heading back into the city, knowing the danger was still out there. I was able to speak to some of the people who were there on Monday. There was hugging. I wore the BAA pin that they hand out to all the Marathon volunteers. I wore that every day this week.

Wednesday came and things felt no more resolved. I was beginning to become more determined not to be intimidated by the events, though, and managed to get more work done in the office than I had on Tuesday (which, lets face it, was not the most productive day). Press conferences were canceled, postponed, then canceled again. It was a day of turmoil and zero answers. All I could do was hope that the lack of answers meant someone, somewhere, was getting close to solving this thing and had to keep it under wraps.

Thursday. A service was held in Boston to remember the victims. Many Important People were there. Traffic was awful. Life continued on in its new, foggy-brained way. Still no answers, and many began to worry that it was too late for answers. That surely, the person or people responsible had escaped already.

Thursday evening, we saw their faces. A long-awaited press conference showed a video clip of two people suspected to be the Marathon Bombers. The FBI requested the public help identify them and locate them, but to by no means approach them.

As I'd done every night that week, I turned off the news and crawled into bed early with a book (I've been rereading THE ADVENTURES OF TOM SAWYER). I read for a while--long-enough, I'd hoped, to keep the nightmares at bay.

My 6 am alarm went off. I immediately checked my phone for the latest in the news, as I'd been doing every morning. I expected nothing. I expected the news to be much the same as it'd been every other day since the attack...that there were leads, but nothing major.

Instead, I saw "ONE SUSPECT DEAD. OTHER AT LARGE IN THE CITY OF WATERTOWN."

And I flew out of bed. My knee is broken, and I still have no memory of how I got into the living room with the news on and my computer booting up so quickly. I have friends in Watertown. Many friends.

I watched in horror as they showed video from the night before of a firefight with explosions in this quiet suburb. I could only stare, numbly repeating, "Holy shit. This isn't happening. Holy shit. This isn't happening."

The scene down the street from my friends' apartment.

I soon got confirmation that all my friends were okay. None of them were being held hostage or anything. That gave me some relief. But then, as the morning progressed, I watched the SWAT teams move through the neighborhoods, and then converge around one particular area and one house...which happened to be around the block from the home of two of my good friends and coworkers, Karen and Donna.

And the police were reporting that the man that had died had a suicide vest on him. That the one in hiding may blow himself up, or blow other things up, or shoot other people like they did to that poor officer (who I later learned is from my town, continuing to make this whole situation far too personal). There was a terrorist bomber hiding somewhere absurdly close to my friends.

I couldn't turn the news off. I couldn't.

In continuing surrealism, sirens in my neighborhood were constant. I was confused as to why...after all, technically our town wasn't on the "shelter in place" list, though looking out my window it was clear we were all opting to "shelter in place" anyway. Not a soul was out.

Then I learned, first through Twitter, then eventually through the news, that police had converged on the apartment that the terrorist brothers lived in. Some Google mapping confirmed what I'd thought: this apartment was 1.5 miles away from my own.

Now, I wasn't worried about it being rigged and blowing me up...after all, I was over a mile away and that'd have to be one impressive bomb. Rather, knowing that the police were clearing everyone out of that area and moving in with bomb squads had me on edge for those who were close enough to be hurt. And I also worried that the bomber or perhaps accomplices might try to get back to the apartment, or escape from it, or who knows what.

Outside Karen and Donna's apartment. That is Karen's car.

So while helicopters flew over my street and cops drove by all day securing the terrorists' apartment, I kept one eye out the window and the other on Facebook, keeping tabs on my friends who were inside their Watertown apartment, doors locked, waiting for the bomber to be caught or killed.

When 6 pm came, officials stated that they were lifting the lockdown, and I could barely believe it. I mean, they hadn't caught the guy. Sure, they couldn't keep the city on lockdown forever, but the terrorist was still out there. 

I gave up at that point. Twelve straight hours of news, twelve straight hours of levels of stress I can't ever remember being in before in my life, except for five days earlier...I had to just turn it off. They weren't getting anywhere. They'd lost him. I made plans for a weekend of staying indoors, door bolted shut. If they'd lost him, by that point it wasn't inconceivable that he'd made his way out of Watertown to one of the surrounding areas, after all.

And then, about forty-five minutes later, a tweet from a friend caught my eye. Shots being fired in Watertown.

Oh God.

It was just like that morning. I threw the news back on, fear clutching me. My friends had JUST posted about possibly leaving their apartment now that they'd gotten the "all clear".

But they were okay. They reported in quickly that they were okay (though they were out in the street when it happened and heard the gunfire).

Just as I got that news from them, it became clear over Twitter and local channel I was on that the police had him cornered. They had the remaining bomber. They just needed to get him out of a boat parked in a backyard without him blowing anything else up.

The stress wasn't over. I wanted this kid taken in alive. We need to know why they did what they did. We need him alive. And I still had fear that he had bombs somewhere he could set to explode.

So when it finally happened...when I watched on TV as the cops all relaxed in unison and began applauding...I physically shuddered in relief.

It was over. They had him. Nothing else was blowing up. No one else was getting shot. My friends were safe. Everyone was safe.

I don't know how to put into words the emotion I went through last week. I tried to give a run-through of the events here, but it doesn't do it justice. Nothing will. I hit a level of emotion and stress I didn't know was humanly possible, and I wasn't even directly involved. I can't imagine what it must have been like to be at the bombing on Monday. To be a first responder. To be in Watertown yesterday. All these levels of involvement further than my own.

So I guess that's my message to everyone who wasn't here at all. I don't think it's possible for most Americans outside the situation to begin fathoming what life has been like here in Boston this past week. Everyone is enormously grateful of your support, but just know that many of us aren't ready to look at these events in any "bigger context" yet. We're recovering. We're celebrating our newly regained freedom. We're grieving for those hurt and killed. We're pulling ourselves back together.

We'll let the rest of the country and the media debate things like motives, political implications, etc. But for us here in Boston, we're all just remembering how to breathe.

Thank you again to everyone who reached out in concern for me this week. Knowing you cared has been one of the few positive things I could cling to through this all. And I want to send a special thanks to all the law enforcement officials who made our city safe again this week, and to the first responders who saved so many lives after the attack. Gratitude doesn't begin to describe what I feel. Thank you.



*Photo Credits: AP Photo/Julio Cortez, Karen Powers, and myself.