Why You Should Love Being "Of a Certain Age"

Last night I stopped at Trader Joe's on the way home to pick up some chocolate-covered chocolate dinner and happened to overhear a conversation between a sullen customer and a teenage cashier. Said customer (who was actually kind of good-looking, and no, I had not been stalking him since the produce section) hung his head and bemoaned the fact that he was 28. "Almost 30," he groaned, just in case the young cashier hadn't clued in on how very ancient he was. "Dude, play sports while you can," Mr. Glum advised the TJ employee. "At my age, I can barely play basketball without busting a hamstring." I can only imagine how this guy will spend his 30th birthday - likely holed up in a windowless room, gently rocking himself to a looped shuffle of the Top Hits of 1997.

The guy's depression got me thinking. Like our dear Mr.Glum, I am 28 years of age, and I have begun to get some grief about not being a "spring chicken" (ironically, always from friends and family older than me). Last week my friend Jacob snorted when I said something about still being young. My grandmother seems to think all of my ova have already shriveled up and died.

I may be so old that I remember when moustaches were mainstream and not just for hipsters and old Polish guys, but y'know what? I'm not upset about being in the twilight of my twenties. Here are five reasons I don't mind the fact that my cells have started the decaying process:

1. I love being a grown-up because I get to make my own choices in life.
Pro: Now you can get that pack of miniature chinchillas you always wanted. 
Con: Now you have to pay the bills AND pick up chinchilla poop.

2. Yay! I can eat whatever I want, whenever I want!
Pro: You can stay up till 3 am gorging yourself on M&Ms and cheezy poofs with no consequences (except maybe type 2 diabetes and monster thighs).
Con: You may discover you like cauliflower, after all. Which just means you're old.

3. I am older and wiser.
Pro: You have perfected the subtle "very-busy-must-cross-the-street" move for when you sense the proximity of a suspicious individual, homeless person or non-profit fundraiser.
Con: You have to live knowing that Santa Claus and The Bachelor aren't real.

4. My immune system has never been stronger.
Pro: You don't have to worry about catching a runny nose at school every week.
Con: You get to worry about STDs and cancer!

5. I don't get acne anymore.
Actually, that's a total lie. No fair! I was TOLD it would be gone by now!


So no need to break out the black balloons and over-the-hill napkins. But on my 30th please stop by and make sure I'm not sitting alone at home, clutching My Little Ponies for dear life, eating Kids Cuisine and watching reruns of Nickelodeon game shows.

The People are the Story

The other day I finished The Leftovers by Tom Perrotta. I haven't read a purely character-driven novel in a good while, and the introspection this book offered into the lives of everyday people in a post-crisis Suburbia was pretty interesting. It's amazing how Perrotta took very ordinary people and made their simple lives so addictive to follow.

The last in-depth character study I read was A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan. The concept of the book is very different from Leftovers, but the characters were studied in a similar bleak light. What struck me about the two books was how Perrotta required very little fodder to create memorable people, whereas Egan's plot was driven by the complexities of unbelievably quirky characters.

The lesson I took from Leftovers is this: if your writing is compelling enough, you don't need to embellish your characters. Let your plot's circumstances bring out the best and worst in normal people, and you will have a more convincing story.

The Family Shtick

Are you familiar with the family reunion blues? Everyone has a reason to dread intimate family gatherings. My mother, for instance, just crosses her fingers and prays my drunken grandfather and uncle don't decide to pull out a shotgun and start aiming at raccoons. My personal elephant in the room is the topic of my job.

I admit I've been a little all over the place when it comes to my career (That's the understatement of the year, my smart-ass 12-year old self would have smirked). I bounce around different projects, all the while trying to find the one that will grab my attention and keep it permanently.

Most people don't get this philosophy of trying things out to see how they fit. To my family, a "career" is a tenure-track position you get straight out of college, preferably at a mega-corporation that offers great benefits. My 90-year old (paternal) grandfather, a former engineer for Lockheed Martin, recently sat me down and very seriously told me that I need to look for a position as "a secretary for some executive at a company that does international business and all that." I'm choosing not to take the secretary suggestion personally.

I will admit I haven't been the most diligent in my job search for the past few weeks. Ok, so I've applied to two jobs in a month. Don't judge me. Through the holidays and the multiple birthday party month of January, my magazine editor shtick has eroded. My response to the dreaded question - "So Brooke, what are you doing with yourself these days?" - now pretty much comes out as a tiny little ant-sized squeak.

Thanksgiving: "I'm interning at a magazine. Loving every minute! Productive! Busy busy!" Accompanied by song, dance, shining eyes, big band.

Christmas: "Well, the internship is over. I will totally find an editor position soon. After the holidays. For sure."

Mid-January birthday bash: "Um, yeah, totally looking for a job. Wow, this cheese dip is faaaaabulous!"

Well-meaning relatives have so many suggestions. "So you want to be an editor now?" (Did I imagine that hint of an eye roll, or am I just paranoid?) "Where are you looking? Have you tried National Geographic?" 

Yes, actually, National Geographic and Vogue and Time are all banging down my door, begging for me to please accept the lowly chore of being their new editor-in-chief. I had to turn them down to accept the position of Dean of Harvard. Before I run for president.

Perhaps I should be encouraged by my family's faith in me. So why am I hiding out, pretending to be out of the country for the next decade?

Dear Addled Prose

Maintaining my various blogs and writing projects has been tough lately. I wish I had a good excuse. Really, I'm not ignoring you. I've just been busy, baby.

I've just finished an internship with a prominent magazine (yay!). My job was to support the editorial team - pretty much working on the projects they didn't have time for. And... I LOVED  every minute of it! My colleagues were hip, relaxed and hilarious. Working with a group of women my age was great. In fact, even though it was all-female and one-third pregnant, we suffered zero moodiness or snippiness... unlike my previously all-male office. Take THAT, gender stereotype!

The writing and editing work was fun and challenging. Finding ways to relay serious health and lifestyle information with a conversational tone and a splash of witty flair was a great exercise in creativity. The best part was finding endless euphemisms for words like "breast," "constipation" and "swollen."

Oh, and I will actually have a published byline in the May 2012 issue!

And now I'm putting the fiction on the back burner and turning to print and digital media. In a way it feels like coming out of a snail shell, from a thoughtful, pondering, Ent-like process to a go-go-go, information-dumping, extroverted industry. Pretty exciting, and more than a little daunting.

Once I get home from a short West Coast book signing tour (kidding... I've spent my vacation wandering aimlessly, stuffing my face with baked goods and java), I will give you my full attention. I promise. That's not just pillow talk.

Love,

Brooke

Subduing the Procrastination Demons

Arriba! Arriba! Epa! Let's get started!

After falling off the horse for a few weeks, I have started writing again. Temporary distraction in the form of frustration at work left me edgy and paralyzed by writer's block for pretty much the whole month of March. As it turns out, the happy result of the turmoil is that I am now free and open to focus on the writing.

Soooo now I need to stop getting in my own way by filling up my time with clutter projects. You know the ones I'm referring to; the activities we make up for ourselves that cause us less stress than doing what truly needs to be done. My favorite example: scrubbing the shower tiles instead of studying. I admit it, I deeply dislike cleaning. But damn, did my apartment sparkle during finals! We all play these mind games with ourselves. Some of us more than others. Ahem.

I am reading a little supplement magazine to the February edition of The Writer called Get Organized, Get Writing. It has several very helpful articles about getting yourself organized to better fight the demons that sabotage self-discipline. The little tips and tricks the authors encourage are great for motivating yourself. However, I've noticed that time management always comes down to a few steps:

• Realize you do have time. Think of how many hours you actually spend on time fillers like TV, Facebook, grooming the dogs, staring into space dreaming up what you would do if you won the Megamillions... All things that should not come between you and your goals.
• Set small blocks of time to write, only write, do nothing but write.
• Make these blocks of time during your peak energy hours and/or at points in the day when you are less likely to be interrupted. Feed and burp your family members and walk the dogs before you start.
• Commit yourself. Do it 5-7 days a week and make it part of your routine.

Another tip that stood out in this leaflet is to keep a log of your work. Author Gregory Martin swears by this tactic. In "A Way to Hold Off Your Evasion Strategies," he breaks the process down into small, but significant elements: every time you write, track the date and time, how long you will work and what you plan to work on, followed by an honest assessment of how it went and a plan for the next day. Personally, I tend to have great intentions with these logs, but never seem to follow up (like when I briefly tried a calorie-tracker food diary - ugh, boring!). But if you stick with it, I'm sure it's a great tool to keep yourself accountable.

Finally, I leave you with a quote @advicetowriters tweeted last week that sums up the rest of my problems:

Work on a computer that is disconnected from the Internet. - ZADIE SMITH

You Are Your Own Sensei

Need help figuring out what to do with the rest of your life? Looking for someone to enlighten you?

You can go to your family. After all, they want what's best for you, right? Well, they want what they perceive as being best for you, which may not be good for you at all. (I'm pretty sure I would have hated being a dermatologist.)

You can ask your friends. But really, do they know any more about life than you do?

You can even pay for advice. But if you had a pot o' gold sitting around, I bet you wouldn't need a career counselor.

Inevitably, your search will come back to you.



Only you can choose your path, grasshopper.

A couple of years ago I decided I needed professional career help. I scoured a list of local psychologists and counselors who might suit my needs (and slim budget). When I finally decided on one, a middle-aged counselor with "career counseling" on her list of "specializations," I took a deep breath and gave her a call.

"Hi there, I'm interested in career counseling and found your name in a local database - "

"That's great. I can do that. What is your Myers Briggs personality type?" Whoa, dude, slow your roll. This woman didn't even know my name, and she was already trying to squeeze me into a box?

"INFP," I replied. "I mean, that's what the results of that test were, but - "

"Hmm, as an INFP, your profile is yadda yadda recitingtextbookjargon blah blah. Sure, I think I can help you."

"I don't think this is for me," I said, and bid her adieu.

That conversation taught me something crucial. I realized that what I had been yearning for was a wise man, a cunning sensei to guide me on the path to glory. A quick and easy answer to all my problems.

That day, I discovered that no one can tell me who I am.

No one can give me the advice I want to hear. Not Myers or Briggs. Not my mother, not my friends, not my cousin's-uncle's-girlfriend's-roommate. None of them has shed tears over self-help books or begged Google for answers with me at 2 a.m. No one is inside my head or my heart to know what I want out of life. No one knows me as well as I do.

You have all the answers. The hard part is sifting through the garbage of other people's opinions and boxes to find them.

Exploiting Your Dreams

I've been applying some dream elements to my story ideas lately. When I give myself some time in the morning to lounge in bed, dipping in and out of consciousness, I have the most vivid dreams and remember them well enough to jot a few notes down, if I feel they make any sense.

I remember reading a quote by Neil Gaiman on turning dreams into stories. His take is that dreams make very poor stories, because they only make sense to the dreamer. It's obviously very difficult to describe a dream to someone because the most absurd things happen in very mystical ways. You know how it goes: "So, I was in a car with my friend, and we fell off a bridge, and then we died, and then we were in a submarine house with no doors, trying to get out, and that's when Seth Green showed up..." Usually the reaction I get when I try to tell a dream is a raised eyebrow and a series of "alrighty thens." But, guys, some of them are wacky and action-packed and totally bestseller material! Like the one where I was caught on an urban battlefield, trying to escape the war between humans and robot-Nazis. I'm thinking of pitching that one to Steven Spielberg.

Seriously, though, I think dreams are great idea generators. Why not take dream elements and play with them to see how they could work in a story? Stephenie Meyer has said she got her inspiration for Twilight from a dream image of two lovers deep in conversation in a forest glade. (I know, this is the second time I bring Mrs. Meyer up in my posts. The truth is, I can rip on her as much as I want, but her books have, after all, made her a gazillionaire. She's clearly doing something right.)

You just have to be careful that the way you write the story makes sense. Unless you're the reincarnation of Lewis Carroll, avoid writing your story like a dream. It seems people don't like to suspend disbelief for novels as much as they do for movies. (Note: I like Steven James' comments on making your narrative world believable in this article.) We are used to the modern writing of commercial novels based on a certain formula, and anything outside the norm is considered "experimental." Sadly, I'm learning that if your goal is to be published, you've got to stick to what sells.


Related reading:


When I was a teenager, I was very interested in metaphysical art and the occult in writing. On a whim I picked up a copy of Aleister Crowley's Moonchild, written in 1917. As I found out later, the book is possibly his most well-known work and is a must-read for anyone studying all things "magick." And it is quite a mindfuck. Though I approached it with an open mind, the book really turned me off with its disjointed storyline and an anticlimactic ending. I remember wondering if it was based on a dream, or if Crowley was on drugs (most likely), or if I was missing some hidden meanings behind the metaphysical musings (most definitely). I have talked myself out of more than one nonsensical story idea, remembering Crowley's demented writing. I wonder if I would be able to see it more for what it was meant now, as an adult. I have the feeling I wouldn't have the patience to get through it these days.


Another unconventional novel I've read that centers on dreams is The Blue Flowers (Les fleurs bleues) by French novelist Raymond Queneau, written in 1965. Even though it was assigned reading for French class in high school, I loved reading this amusing, gentle tale. The Blue Flowers  is the story of two protagonists, one from modern times and the other from the Middle Ages, and how they dream of one another. At least, it appears they do - we cannot be sure they aren't the same person, or that either is actually "real" at all. Queneau's inspiration for the story was the Chinese saying: "I dream that I am a butterfly and pray there is a butterfly dreaming of me." Lovely food for thought.

What's In a Name?

...A lot, when you read a book.

In real life, the name your parents give you means about as much as your zodiac sign (unless you cite the Freakonomics study of race and names, but I won't go there). Let's take mine, for instance. When I think of an archetypal Brooke, I imagine an all-American blonde, upper-middle class child of the 80s who plays soccer and loves her sorority sisters. Which is about as me as a hairy-nosed wombat.

Of course, names are subjective. We usually associate them with people we've known for a long time, or with people who have made an impact on our lives. Brooke could evoke a totally different type of person for you. We've all known dozens of Michaels who each have very distinct personalities from the others. My point: a birth name doesn't make a person.

In fiction, however, characters are exaggerated. Everything about them is meticulously architected by the author, including their names. The meaningful choice of name is an obvious manipulation tactic, but it is one the reader expects.

In my opinion, the best and most obvious example of an author using names to enhance storytelling is J.K. Rowling (duh!). I love that her choices are unusual and diverse, but what's most interesting is how she plays with sounds. Most noticeably, her use of alliteration, especially with double letters, creates fantastic characters and adds to the stories' subtle splashes of humor. Quirinus Quirrel is a brilliant example. My personal favorite sound plays include the letters f and g, such as Helga Hufflepuff or Wilhelmina Grubbly-Plank. Can you really keep yourself from smiling at those creative gems? Using hilarious names such as these along with other humorous details, Rowling adds light to an otherwise very serious plot.



Peter Pettigrew was picked on by his peers.
What a pernicious person he was!


As I mentioned in my previous post, I usually build my stories around characters. Whether this is recommended, I'm not sure (given how much trouble I have with plot resolution, perhaps it is not the best method), but that's just my natural tendency. Characters and their personalities, and thus their names, are crucial. If this element in a novel is weak, how can you get into the story?

Anyway, my question is this: if names make a persona, should you look for a name first, and then follow with crafting the character? Or will this result in two-dimensional stereotypes instead of original characters? I wonder if there is a "best" formula for assigning names and personalities. I suppose it is really up to the individual to add the magic dust that gives life to memorable characters.

There is so much material here that full dissertations could be written (and probably have been) on character names in fiction. In fact, maybe I should do a little more research on the topic. Today I spent way too much time thinking about names and trying them on like hats. I should probably focus on putting the pieces of my story together to make a cohesive whole, instead of letting loose ideas float around in my various notes.

Or I could sit around and dream up pen names.