Life

It’s the advice that every young writer hears at some stage: write the book you want to read but can’t find on the shelves. In some ways I’ve followed that advice with every book I’ve written, but back when I was writing my first book, before I knew much about the industry, that was especially so. I thought I was writing a Young Adult novel, but the protagonist was 18, had moved out of home, and was starting her first post-school job. I soon learned that the novel didn’t count as Young Adult… but wasn’t quite Adult either. It was in the no-man’s land that exists between the two, which is apt, because it was about a character finding herself in a kind of no-man’s land.

To quote the ever-wise Odd Thomas: “I am twenty years old. To a world-wise adult, I am little more than a child. To any child, however, I’m old enough to be distrusted, to be excluded forever from the magical community of the short and beardless.”

When I was at university I spent a lot of time studying Post-Colonialism, about people torn between holding onto their own culture and assimilating with the imposed culture of the colonists. The subject fascinated me. I found a way to sneak it into every subject I studied: politics, media, anthropology. One of the best essays I ever wrote was on Post-Colonialism in Battlestar Galactica.

I’ve always been interested in the spaces between. Between nationalities, between cultures, between the world of the child and the world of the adult. Young Adult literature explores this well, but it has its limitations. When you’re seventeen, you’re still very much a child. You live in your parent’s house. You may be starting to make some decisions for yourself, but you are far from independent. There are so many firsts that don’t happen until you leave school and decide what you’re going to make of yourself outside of those structures.

I’m not going to talk about what New Adult is now, or its financial viability. Those things have been explored well elsewhere. I want to talk about what I hope New Adult becomes.

I want to read books about being alone for the first time. I want to read books about realising for the first time the gap that exists between your dreams and reality, between who you are and who you want to be. I want to read books that explore that period where you are no longer part of “that magical community of the short and beardless”, but you haven’t yet fully assimilated in the dominant adult culture. There’s freedom involved in this stage, yes, but there’s also the sudden, uncomfortable encroach of responsibility. There’s so much tension inherent in growing up and so many stories waiting to be told.

I want to read about these things occurring within the structure of a horror novel, of a mystery novel, of a literary novel, of a magical realism novel. I want the amazing genre diversity currently represented in the Young Adult world to expand into the world of New Adult.

I want to read about people who are changing, who are becoming, not yet there, but almost. I want to read books about people between.

Publishing is changing. The world is changing. My hope is that these changes mean more voices can be heard, more experiences can be represented in the books we read, and in the books we write. Because, as this age group is discovering, change may be difficult, but it’s also incredibly rewarding.

These are my hopes for New Adult.

I guess you could call me a perfectionist.

I’m the kind of perfectionist who starts things, realizes I’m bad at them, and then gives up.

I’m the kind of perfectionist who looks at something hard, realizes it can’t be done perfectly, and never even starts.

I’m the kind of perfectionist who once started a math exam and realized I didn’t know all the answers, so faked sick and spent the rest of the day in sick bay.

I’m the kind of perfectionist who sometimes gets so swallowed up in my own imperfections that I get lost in a sinking hole of depression and I’m looking for a light switch but there’s nothing, no hope, so I just crawl into a fetal position and give up.

This is going to be a very honest post.

I’m going to be honest, because I know there are other people like that out there. Maybe you are one. Maybe you’re married to one.

I’m going to be honest, because I’ve found the light switch, and while sometimes I lose it, I have to believe that it exists and I will find it again.

The light switch is this: I am not perfect, and that’s okay.

I am not perfect, but I still have value.

My writing isn’t quite good enough for publication, but one day it will be.

The light switch for me, after years of starting things and not finishing, after changing majors a dozen times, after deciding I wanted to be an anthropologist, and then a journalist, and then a criminologist and then a nothing because it was all too hard… the light switch was finding something I loved enough to let myself fail.

I have written two very imperfect books, and dozens of imperfect drafts. I have shared my imperfections with others, with my critique partners and with you guys, reading my blog. I have found a way to get to the finish line, to write ‘the end’, knowing I’m not quite there yet, but believing I one day will be.

I’m an impatient person. I like instant gratification. I like results. I clean the big things first, so I can see I’m making a difference. But life isn’t like that. Good things don’t come easy. My friend Lesley sent me a post from Kristen Lamb’s blog on maturity and patience. She talks about failure and hardship being the fertilizer that eventually lets you succeed.

All these books, all these drafts, they are teaching me things that will pave the way for the book to come, the book that IS good enough.

Maybe it’s about faith. Maybe it’s about your want outweighing your fear. Maybe it just takes time and experience to realize the world won’t end, people won’t stop loving you, just because you aren’t perfect. Maybe it’s about recognizing that failure is ESSENTIAL.

You HAVE to fail in order to succeed.

You guys know the stories, so I won’t tell them again. Every writer in history has written bad words. Every writer in history has been rejected. And those failures, those imperfect drafts, those rejections were ESSENTIAL to their eventual success.

I’m not perfect. And that’s okay.

I had a strange moment the other day. I was at a local bookstore and there was a man signing books there. I didn’t talk to him. I’m not so good at making small-talk with strangers. But I watched him talk to someone else for a while and it struck me: What if that’s me one day? What if that’s me, sitting at a table, making awkward small-talk and signing my name — my name — in a book that I wrote.

A second later I had another realization: Somewhere along the line, my success as a writer had changed from when to what if.

When I first started this whole writing journey, I told myself that one day I would be successful. One day I would publish a book. I was confident of this because I knew that no matter how many years and how many books it took, I was going to keep trying until it happened. I had hope.

I don’t remember when I lost that hope. I don’t know if it was in a single moment, or if my hope was slowly chipped away over time. At some point I stopped thinking it was a certainty that one day I would achieve my dreams, and started thinking of it as a matter of chance. I lost my confidence. I lost my hope. It’s a scary thing, to lose something without even realizing it.

I’ve talked about how it’s been a tough year for me in my last post, but I don’t think I realized how much the slow wear of the day-to-day — the working and working and feeling like I’m getting nowhere — has worn on me.

It all came to a head while sitting in a cafe with my husband, as these  things often do for us. He told me I’ve been miserable lately, more often than not, and I realized it was true. I was feeling burnt out. I’d lost my sense of hope. And you know what? I decided then and there to change.

I had two weeks ahead of me off work, and I was going to find my joy again. I was going to figure out where my hope went and get it back.

It’s not an overnight thing, but slowly, over the past few days, I’ve been making changes. Changes in attitude, changes in action. I’ve been resting, I’ve been reading, I’ve been Christmas-ing and I’ve written a whole lot. But more importantly, I decided to change. Sometimes that’s the most important thing, just making a decision.

Hope is north on my internal compass, but I’ve been pointing west for some time. So this Christmas I’m recalibrating, mind and soul, to get back to it.

That’s what I’m doing on my Christmas vacation. How about you?