Recommendation

I Do Not Want You To Like Me

“Don’t compromise yourself – you’re all you have.”
―John Grisham

EyeRainbow

Yes, you heard me right, Dear Reader – I do not want you to like me!

That’s not why I’m here, not why I am doing what I do. It’s not why any of us are here, really. To be liked. Don’t get me wrong – I have a need for affirmation just like anyone does. But being liked is not the important thing. Being true to myself is.

There’s little to be gained in trying to be what other people want you to be; no real reward from doing what other people think you should do. Striving to be liked will probably get us friends, some benefits, maybe even a lot of good things – but we will be empty, worn out, thin. Like butter scraped over too much bread. If we choose that path, we will leave ourselves by the wayside and arrive as less than we were to begin with. Saint Augustine, 5th century Bishop of Hippo and Christian philosopher, once said “Attract them by the way you live.” That sentence holds a lot of truth for me. People will largely ignore what we say if our words do not match our actions. The way we live acts as an example for everyone we meet, for better or for worse – the people we want to be are largely irrelevant, except as a standard and a goal for ourselves. Other people rarely care about that, though.

Instead of striving to be liked, accepted, welcomed, I feel we should strive to be better versions of ourselves. We need to take others into account, of course – a society where everyone thinks only of themselves is doomed. No one likes a selfish bastard. We only have this lifetime to build our story and our reputation in the world – when we are gone from here, our actions and personality will live on in the memories of others. Or be forgotten by them.

I’m reminded suddenly of a poem by one of my favorite poets, Lord Byron – written in 1803 when he was only fifteen:

A Fragment

When, to their airy hall, my father’s voice
Shall call my spirit, joyful in their choice;
When, poised upon the gale, my form shall ride,
Or, dark in mist, descend the mountains side;
Oh! may my shade behold no sculptured urns,
To mark the spot where earth to earth returns!
No lengthen’d scroll, no praise-encumber’d stone;
My epitaph shall be my name alone:
If that with honour fail to crown my clay,
Oh! may no other fame my deeds repay!
That, only that, shall single out the spot;
By that remember’d, or with that forgot.

I will not strive to be liked – instead, I will strive to be the best Me that I can (and probably fail by far in reaching that ideal – I’m only human, after all). I will try to let my actions and my work speak for me and give testament to the kind of person I am. Show, don’t tell, as the old writer’s adage says.

I do not want you to like me, but I hope you will. More importantly I hope you will like what I do. Or that I will at least affect you in a positive way.

Feature: Interview – Alysha Kaye

Alysha KayeMeet Alysha Kaye, author of the newly released novel The Waiting Room, and the first writer to be interviewed on my blog!

Alysha was born in San Marcos, TX, where she also received her BA in Creative Writing from Texas State University. She worked in marketing for a brief and terrible cubicle-soul-sucking time until she was accepted into Teach for America and promptly moved to Oahu. She taught 7th grade English in Aiea for two years and also received her Masters in Education from University of Hawaii. She now teaches in Austin, TX and tries to squeeze in as much writing as possible between lesson planning. She dreamt about The Waiting Room once, and offhandedly wrote her boyfriend a love poem about waiting for him after death. Somehow, that became a novel.

I found out about her through another blogger here on wordpress (theowllady), and the cover and summary were enough for me to know that I needed to read her book. So, I purchased the kindle-version and after reading a mere third of the book I contacted Alysha about taking part in her blog tour promotion of the book. Today I hope to learn a bit more about how The Waiting Room came to be and what the experience of writing, publishing and promoting the novel has been like:

waitingroomcoverRT: Now, I absolutely loved The Waiting Room, but before we talk about the book itself I want to say that I also really like the cover – how did it come to be?
Alysha: Thank you! It was a very difficult decision for me because I’d always pictured a very simple “waiting” cover–perhaps just a chair in front of a window, etc. However, I had an amazing graphic designer through Expert Subjects and she sent me about 30 different concepts. I held a vote on WordPress and Facebook and the one you see was the clear winner.

RT: For me, two things in particular really stand out: first, all the various life-and-love stories we get a glimpse of throughout the book. Where did you get the inspiration for all of these personal destinies?
Alysha: A lot of them were adapted from short stories I’d written in the past. One in particular (the one set in Ewa, Hawaii) was published last year in the Hawaii Review, while I was teaching there. I definitely think a part of myself went into each of Jude and Nina’s lives- their love represents love that I’ve had, love that I wish I had, love that I’ve seen other people have… I find inspiration everywhere.

RT: Second, I really like that everything is so open to interpretation. There’s no single faith or world view that dominates and yet I found it to be very spiritual and philosophical – is that open-mindedness a part your own beliefs?
Alysha: I’m really glad you caught that- I definitely didn’t want any reader to think that I was secretly trying to push my own viewpoints. It’s open to interpretation because that’s exactly how I feel about faith and spirituality- open! I don’t think anyone should ignore the possibility of any religion or belief.

RT: You’ve said that The Waiting Room started out as a poem based on a dream – what made you turn it into a novel?
Alysha: I couldn’t get it out of my head! I thought about it all the time. The poem turned into what I thought would just be a short story. Then I just kept writing and writing and writing…that’s the trick I guess haha just don’t stop! I need to remember that for my next project…

RT: Was it a difficult decision to choose self-publishing?
Alysha: Not at all. I didn’t want to wait years for an agent or publisher to respond to a query letter! My novel had already been collecting dust for a few years, so I wanted to act fast. Self-publishing is amazing. You have complete creative control! However, now that it is out there, I may look into traditional publishing. It feels a bit like selling out though! I really like being an “indie author”…so we’ll see.

RT: Being an English teacher and a writer I’m guessing you have read quite a lot in your life – are there any authors in particular you would say have been a strong influence for this book, or your writing in general?
Alysha: I started writing this book immediately after I’d read The Time Traveler’s Wife. Such an amazing, heart-wrenching love story. I was so captivated by her writing. [RT: the author in question being Audrey Niffenegger]

RT: You’ve done a week of this blog tour now – what has this experience been like?
Alysha: It’s been so great! I love connecting with bloggers and fellow writers. The WordPress community has been so incredibly supportive. I definitely want to do more of this! 

RT: So now that the book is out and being promoted, what are your plans for the future?
Alysha: Well, unfortunately, I think I may need to hire a PR specialist. The marketing is hard work…and the only reason I’ve had time for it is because I have all summer off. So many next steps…PR, decide if I want to try and traditionally publish it, continue writing the next novel (I have about one chapter written so far)…

RT: Lastly, is there anything about this whole experience – writing the book, publishing it, promoting it and going on this blog tour – that turned out very different from what how you imagined it?
Alysha: The social media aspect of it has been VERY surprising. I honestly didn’t think creating a Twitter, for example, would help me sell my book haha it seems very futile. But it really has helped! Having the time to keep up with it, however, is proving to be the most difficult part! #overwhelmed 😉

There you have it Dear Reader! If you are at all into books about romance, philosophy and life after death I highly suggest you give this excellent novel a chance. For me, it has been one of the most pleasant reads of the year and I know I will return to it again and again.

The Waiting Room:

Summary – Jude and Nina are the epitome of that whole raw, unflinching love thing that most people are jealous of. That is, until Jude dies and wakes up in The Waiting Room, surrounded by other souls who are all waiting to pass over into their next life. But unlike those souls, Jude’s name is never called by the mysterious “receptionist”. He waits, watching Nina out of giant windows. He’s waiting for her. What is this place? How long will he wait? And what will happen when and if Nina does join him? The Waiting Room is a story of not just love, but of faith, predestination, and philosophy, friendship and self-actualization, of waiting.

Amazon:
Kindle version:
http://amzn.to/TupzK9
Print version:
http://amzn.to/1ofMTXn

Goodreads:
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/22599064-the-waiting-room?from_search=true

Alysha Kaye on the web:

http://www.facebook.com/AuthorAlyshaKaye
alyshakaye.wordpress.com
http://alyshakaye.com/
@alyshakaye7

Never again…

“Our lives are defined by opportunities, even the ones we miss.”
—F Scott Fitzgerald

SummerSkyA friend of mine nearly lost ten days worth of writing this week when his computer crashed and took the latest back-up with it. In the end his work was saved by extracting the hard drive, but the computer was beyond rescue.

If you’ve payed attention on here you may know that I am all too familiar with that deepest circle of digital hell into which malfunctioning computers can bring us. I wasn’t as lucky as my friend. Not only was my computer beyond rescue, it took the entire back up drive with it. Over three hundred poems, thirty short stories, the first draft of a novel and several works-in-progress had been turned into unintelligible strings of random letters, symbols and numbers – the occasional recognizable word thrown in for good measure. As if to remind me of what I’d lost. To add insult to injury I then lost a notebook containing eight short story manuscripts.

I was devastated.

For years after that I did not write any prose or poetry worth mentioning. At best I managed repetitive journal-like entries, character descriptions, and snippets of story ideas. I knew I had most of the poetry and a lot of the short stories in my notebooks, at various stages of completion. It would be easy to just open the books and turn them into finished works again. But I waited.

Slowly I began writing again, jotting down first drafts in long hand and noting down story ideas and even some outlines, but I refrained from typing them into the computer. Years passed – some of what I had written was lost as notebooks disappeared or were damaged – and I starting typing again. Saving things. Completing things. Eventually I decided to make use of all the material I had left from before ‘The Tragedy’. That’s when I came face to face with the magnitude of the lie I had been telling myself.

563078_10151583411406147_91892759_nYou see, Dear Reader, what I had recalled as near-complete drafts were barely outlines, what I had thought to be finished stories turned out to be a few hundred words at most, what my memory told me were detailed story ideas often ran no more than a sentence or two. A lot of what I found didn’t even make sense anymore, and some of it was written in a hand I barely recognized now – words, sentences, pages I could only guess at interpreting. A complete outline that I knew was in one of my more recent notebooks was nowhere to be found.

I have spent the past year and a half meticulously going through all of these pages to hunt down the broken, unfinished, stillborn stories hidden within. I’ve marked where everything is, sorted through it all and made decisions on what to salvage and what to leave behind. Only the prose, mind you – I won’t even think about touching the poetry. It’s been painful and I have learned my lesson.

These days I keep between three and seven copies of everything I store digitally: one copy on the stationary computer, one on the laptop, one on a usb stick I carry with me almost everywhere. Each month I also back everything up to an external drive which remains isolated from my other systems when I don’t use it, and anything i finish also ends up in my web mail and other cloud services. Some of it even goes on the removable memory card in my phone. Never again will lose all of my work in one fell swoop.

Never again.

The ties that bind…

“I must lose myself in action lest I wither in despair.”
—Lord Tennyson

Night

So here we are again, Dear Reader – another week, another post. Once again life has kept me occupied enough to neglect the things I do not have to do. Mostly, the distracting tasks have been things like money making and friend tending, so I’m inclined to say I haven’t actually wasted much time. That does not change the fact that I haven’t accomplished what I felt I should. We are most likely to complete tasks that are expected of us – I’ve spoken before of the dual edged sword of deadlines – and so I thought it high time that I bind myself to Your expectations by outlining my goals here, in public, to You.

When I began updating this blog on a regular basis, my goal was a modest weekly post on what was going on with me and my creations. Back then, I did not really have any readers at all (nor did I really expect them). Needless to say, things have changed. To keep your interest as well as my own – and as a stepping stone to finally catching that elusive beast I call Routine – I aim to uphold a loose goal of 3 posts a week:

  • ‘Word of the Week’ – shall remain on Mondays, although I may be mixing it up occasionally and may try to make it a little more interesting.
  • My weekly ‘Life’ update, complete with quote and recommendations – I’m not sure if I will keep this on Fridays, or if I should move it. Time will tell, I guess.
  • In addition to those regular installments, my goal is to post some other content each week, be it in my ‘Portrait’ category, a presentation of a drawing or mini story, or maybe something completely different. But something, at least.

In addition to this attempt of creating some predictability and pattern to what you can expect from me on here, I will also try to maintain monthly goals for my creative endeavors. Each calendar month, I aim to write a minimum of one short story (or the equivalent for a larger project) as well as produce one piece of art (drawing, painting, sculpture or the like). Meanwhile, I will also try to make this site grow by adding more content.

So there you have it! I have now bound myself to You, Dear Reader, by my word and on my honour! Please use Your new-found power over me in a kind manner…

…I know who You are.

Independence

“The secret of change is to focus all of your energy, not on fighting the old, but on building the new.”
—Socrates

SunTree

On this 4th of July in the year of Our Lord 2014 I celebrate my own Independence Day.

Once again my home is entirely my own (for good and bad) and I am Master of my own time (also for good and bad). Given the new routines imposed upon me by sharing my home with a lodger – one of my best friends, actually – I think I have a better chance than ever of carving out a proper use of my time. I know, Dear Reader – I said ‘better’; which is not necessarily the same as ‘good’. It will still take effort and discipline to avoid falling back into my old ways, but my plan is to seize this opportunity and step up to the challenge.

I visited my favorite tree today – a massive horse-chestnut. It sits in the corner of a graveyard here in central Stockholm, thick long branches reaching high into the sky, massive roots digging deep into the earth among the graves. It has borne witness to many of the twists and turns in my life and its shade is a place of meditation and reflection for me. I can spend hours reclined on the bench beneath it, just staring up into the crown, mulling things over; gathering strength. I like to imagine that it carries the essence of those buried beneath it, its branches, leaves and flowers a noble extension of their lives. I love trees. There are few living things on this earth than can aspire to the longevity, usefulness and quiet powerful grace of a tree. So many species of tree stand for centuries – even millennia – while us humans mill about beneath them. In comparison, we are mere day-flies.

From the viewpoint of a massive oak, our lives are short and meaningless. Any change we can bring about in our brief existence passes in the shedding of a leaf. Then again, nothing ever really changes anyway, only the way we look at things. To change anything significant in our lives we must change our view of the world first. Being witness to (and part of) the beginning of independence in the life of another is both inspiring and sobering. If we can do it in our early twenties, why not later in life as well? We can all take those first steps toward something new and different that gives our lives direction and a fresh start. All it takes is the courage to build momentum and make that leap. Sure, we might fall – but maybe, just maybe, we will fly…

TreeCemetary

Godspeed

“Can miles truly separate you from friends… If you want to be with someone you love, aren’t you already there?”
―Richard Bach

Godspeed

As some of you may know I have housed a lodger for the past two months – one of my newest and dearest friends. Today marks the end of that arrangement, as she is getting the keys to her own place. The move itself will likely stretch out over several days to a week and might keep me a bit busier than usual. My aim is to try and keep up my schedule for this site and my creative pursuits, but in all honesty that schedule has already been broken. Twice. So I’ll throw all pretense to the wind and say that any updates you get the coming week should be seen as a bonus. In the midst of the usual insanity I am also recuperating from my back injury (quite nicely I might add), processing the upcoming final episode of my favorite tv series Californication, as well as saying good bye to the manager of the coffee shop I frequent – which brings me to the topic of today’s ramblings:

Transitions.

Life changes on us, constantly. I’d go so far as to say that change and death are the only two certainties of life. However, we should not view change as a series of endings and beginnings – after all, very few things ever truly end. Most of the time things change and transition into something else; something new and uncertain or something familiar and safe. If we are lucky those changes bring more good than bad. Now, I don’t know about you Dear Reader, but for me the past few years have been full of apparent endings; full of new beginnings and fresh steps taken. Yet when I try to think of them I realize that they all flow together and mix into one another: one new thing in my life would not – could not – have come into being unless the old made way for it. A lover turns into a friend; a friend to a flirt. A job opportunity turns to dust, leaving time for fresh assignments. Circumstance and chance turn a casual acquaintance into a deeply beloved friend. If we do it right, life will keep throwing these changes at us in the best of ways, granting us opportunities and wisdom in return for our short comings and failures; for our rejections and misadventures.

Everywhere we go the events of our lives morph and change and twist away from us so they can deliver new gifts, new challenges, new experiences. Without the tumultuous events of the past year and a half I would not have a lodger to say my farewells to – might not even have this friendship, even – and what a loss that would be! These months have brought with them the unexpected side effect of better routines, higher productivity and a much larger enjoyment of life. How then could I possibly view this as the end of something? While sad to see her go I am also happy and excited to have been part of this interlude in her journey to her own corner of the world and all that it entails. I’m delighted to see her off, knowing that her influence on my life will remain in ways I could never have expected when she first carried her boxes and bags over my threshold.

This post turned a lot more personal than what I had initially planned, and I hope I haven’t bored you too much with the details of my life. It is a hazard of using late nights to write about emotional subjects, I fear.

Godspeed my friend, and fare the well – may the lilies of peace line your path, and may you find a rainbow behind every turn!

The best laid plans…

”We must be willing to get rid of the life we’ve planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us.”
—Joseph Campbell

SpikeSmallLife has a tendency to happen to us while we are busy making other plans.

This past week was supposed to be a vacation from my day job and a chance to really get a boost in my creativity – to write, specifically. My goal for the week was to finalize and send off the story I wrote last month, write a brand new short story, edit an old one or two from my pile of hand written manuscripts, get at least one blog post down and do some drawing. As you might have guessed Dear Reader, that did not quite happen. Instead I have spent the week tip-toeing around excruciating pain. You see, on Monday I had an unlucky fall which caused some temporary but debilitating problems with the sciatic nerve on my left side. Now, five days later, I can walk unaided without pain but shifting in my seat or in my bed still brings severe discomfort. So instead of spending the week out and about, writing and being inspired, I’ve been a prisoner in my own body. Despite spending hours upon hours alone in front of the computer or at my desk I haven’t gotten much done at all.

Pain, lack of sleep and boredom make terrible muses, or so it seems.

That said, I have still managed to be somewhat creative: I’m halfway through editing a brief short story and I have done some minor sketching and drawing (like the little guy above – Spike – who might feature in some future endeavors I am planning).

My body is not so subtly telling me I’ve been sitting here too long, though – I shall leave you with some recommendations, and a warm welcome to those of you who just started following my insanity after last weeks post about Neil Gaiman. I am humbled by your appreciation – thank you!

 

  • Read – Ocean At the End of the Lane; Neil Gaiman
  • Watch – Mirrormask; Dave McKean & Neil Gaiman
  • Listen – My Shit’s Fucked Up; Warren Zevon

Collaboration and Recommendation

“Never forget benefits done you, no matter how small.”
—Vietnamese proverb

 

My collaborator Richard Wright has announced that he is going to publish two eBooks of stories from his project The 52. However, instead of choosing which stories to publish he will let YOU decide! From each half of the project, Richard will pick the ten stories with the most reads on his page. So if you want to see the story inspired by my drawing in a collection, please click on the link below and have a read:

The Echo of Strangers
The Echo of Strangers

 

You can read more about Richard’s plans for the project in his post Story Idol III.

Apart from this, life is keeping me busy as ever. I’m putting the final touches on a new short story, I’m wrestling with an art commission that has given me exceptional amounts of trouble and made me doubt if I’d ever draw anything decent again (people talk of writer’s block, but let me tell you – illustrator’s block is just as dispiriting!) and I’m trying to map out my writing, blogging and drawing goals for the next few months.

So far, so good.

I’ll leave you with another recommendation: this year’s winner of Norway’s Got Talent, Angelina Jordan, is well worth a listen. 8 years old, with the voice of an old soul, she does the loveliest renditions of old jazz tunes. If she can keep her love of music and cultivate her talent and voice, she’ll have a glorious career ahead of her. Check out the winning performance below: