Mette Ivie Harrison's Blog, page 39

Why Austenland is (possibly) a better movie than a book

I loved Shannon Hale's Austenland as a book. And I know, it seems weird for an author to say she liked the movie better, but there are a few cases where a movie that is done very, very well (and usually with a lot of involvement from the author—take note, Hollywood) that the movie does things that the book couldn't. I felt that way with Holes, which is one of the best adaptations of a book ever. To Kill a Mockingbird with Gregory Peck is also a movie that adds to the understanding of the book. And I actually think some of the new Austen movies are possibly better than the books, including the 1995 A&E version. Austenland is in this august company.

Not to spoil the book or the movie if you haven't experienced them, but Austenland is about a woman, Jane Hughes, who is obsessed with all things Austen, and in particular with finding a man as wonderful as Mr. Darcy from Pride and Prejudice. She has had a miserable romantic life and is about to give up when she gives herself one last chance. She spends all her money on a vacation to “Austenland,” an English resort that promises a “true Austen” experience. Each guest will have a pseudonym and a special romantic story that is meant to unfold during the vacation. Jane ends up with two budding romances, one with a Mr. Darcy type character, and one with a Mr. Wickham type. There is a play within this movie, and a scene close to perfection in which Jane and Mr. Nobley/Mr. Darcy talk about the difference between play acting and truth. It is this scene which I think makes the movie different and better than the book.

The movie and the book both do a wonderful job of making the reader conscious of the foolishness of falling in love with a fictional character. I think this is part of the problem that so many critics have. If you haven't fallen in love with Mr. Darcy, you're going to think Jane Hughes is ridiculous. If you have, however, you sympathize with her enormously. She is foolish, but she has a heart and a mind in the center of that foolishness. She is like the many women who adored Karen Joy Fowler's book “The Jane Austen Book Club” with its constant question about romance, “What would Jane Austen do?”

But this scene in the movie is different than its counterpart in the book. In the book, the reader has to create the characters who inhabit the book. In the movie, Keri Russeel, JJ Feild

and Bret MacKenzie are playing these roles on the screen. We have actors who are pretending to be these characters, adding another layer of falseness to this story about real love and play acting. I think it complicates the situation and forces the reader to work harder at making sense of the story. It's the kind of thing that critics who are trained in post-modernism, Derrida, and critical theory in general ought to recognize. Shannon Hale is making fun of the thing that she is doing. She is drawing attention to the falseness of the story she is telling. But at the same time, she goes right on telling it. The great playwright Bertolt Brecht had actors holding signs saying “I'm an actor” to try to get the audience to stop relating to the characters. Guess what? He couldn't do it. So he worked around that, and got to his radical message a different way.

Are we supposed to uncritically accept the happy ending of Austenland? I don't know that we are. I think that the right viewer will being to ask some really interesting questions about life and love. What is authenticity? When do we play act with loved ones and when do we stop play acting? Is there ever a moment when you are truly yourself? Or do you just have different sides of yourself? How do we know what real love is? Is it because it resembles something from a book or a movie that we felt comfortable with? If what we thought was real love happened in real life, would we believe it?

These are the very kinds of questions that critics ought to want readers to ask, and yet it seems to me they can't see how deep this film is and how subversive of the standard movie culture. This isn't Star Wars, which is all about what is beautiful on the screen and has the kind of simplistic, jingoistic storyline that Americans have been fed since infancy. This is the real deal. This is looking through the mirror and seeing a face in the mirror looking back at you. But it seems that the critics can't see it because they're men and they can't accept that women have actually broken the code and are talking with the same sophisticated language, only using it for their own purposes.

And so to them I say: Gentlemen, the king has no clothes. Long live the queen!

How Walking Makes You Go Faster

At my race this weekend, one of the things I planned to do was walk through every aid station and beyond, until I felt ready to run again. This race (a half Iron) hadn't been a planned part of my schedule. I was doing it because my husband was and it was convenient, but I wasn't REALLY racing it. Strangely, I did a lot better than my real races and I think that it was partly because of my walking strategy.

First of all, walking for a little while every mile of a long run is a great way to let your body get a small rest. A change is as good as a rest, they say, and running has to be the hardest thing on the body. You have your fully body weight pounding on your feet and knees with every step. It is really hard on the joints. Walking, though you might think you are using the same muscles, is actually very different and is a lot easier on the joints. Even a little bit of walking has a physiologically beneficial effect.

Second, there is a real psychological boost in walking a little bit every mile. For me, I could tell myself that I only had to run one more mile. That is easier to hold in my head than the whole race (in this case, 13 miles). Just run to the next aid station, and you get another break. You get some calories in and give your body a short time to digest those calories before you start running again. It can be really difficult to digest calories if you're running at race pace, but a little walking gives you a chance to get the calories in. I felt a huge surge of energy at each aid station when I got my four swallows of Gatorade down. If I could, I got some water in, too. If not, I dumped the cup of water on my head. When I finished this race, I only had to drink one full water bottle (and two bottles of chocolate recovery drink) so I know I was less dehydrated than I normally am.

Third, walking can make it so that you can run faster when you start again. If there is a distinct difference in your stride while running and while walking, instead of the shuffle I sometimes fall back on when trying to run a long race distance all at once, you end up dragging your feet less and generally causing less pain. This year's race ended up with no blisters, no black/missing toenails, and no chafing spots rubbed raw. This is the first year I could say that with any race this distance. And I really sped up at the finish line, which always feels good. When I ran, I was running at a pace that felt good, but like I could keep going for a long time. Then when I saw the finish line, I sprinted and felt like a million bucks.

Utah Half 2013 Race Report

I had a great time on this race, and also PR'd (at least for the full distance, since my other two faster times had a short bike or a short swim). Last year I did 5:25. This year I did 5:16. This year I also did not have the flat I had last year that started a full year of flats in racing, which I finally solved by (duh!) getting a new tire.

Matt, my husband, was doing this race. It's his favorite, which is the main reason I did it this year. My coach didn't think it was a good idea, but I'm glad I did it. There is something about racing with a loved one that makes it the best thing in the world. You go out to dinner the night before together. You wake up early together and get ready. You can even talk for a bit before the swim start. I went over and made sure I gave Matt a kiss just seconds before he headed out. I love that I can race with him. Seriously, that has made our marriage so much better!

Because there was prize money for the winners this year, there were some heavy hitters. I knew that meant I wouldn't be placing overall, but it was really interesting to see the good women and the good men. The guys were blazing fast on the bike! The first one passed me going the other way when I was at about mile 21 (which means he was at mile 35). The elites started 15 minutes ahead of me, but yeah, fast. The top guy (my coach BJ Christensen) passed me doing his second loop of the run when I was at about mile 1. Wo! He is a fast runner. Sub 6 minute miles.

The swim was truly in disgusting water this year. It was so murky there was no visibility. We all had gray water caps on, which was the stupidest idea ever. I don't know how the kayakers would have seen if someone had a heart attack and went under. Luckily, the water was so shallow that in most places, you could just stand up if you wanted to. I enjoyed the swim tremendously because I just let myself take it easy. I figured I would be slower than usual because we had no wetsuits, but I'm a good swimmer, so I didn't worry about it. The water was cold, though! And there was a long walk in once we couldn't swim anymore. So nice to see my father-in-law cheering me on out of the swim. I wish he had told me my husband hadn't got out yet. Usually Matt beats me out of the swim, but this year he was pretty slow. I kept waiting to catch him on the bike and when I didn't, I wondered if he'd drowned and what kind of wife I was to just keep biking on the course without even knowing what had happened. I finally saw him just after the turnaround on the bike. Phew! He hadn't died, after all!

The bike course takes out of the city and up around a mountain to Lincoln Beach, if you know where that is. I was glad the race officials warned us about how crappy the road was there. Lots of pot holes and cattle guards covered with plywood. And so many awesome volunteers. There must have been 100 of them just on the bike course. They did great with the bike aid stations, handing out water bottles, gu, and gatorade in a long line to make it do we hardly had to slow down at all. Some gravely turns, but the volunteers called out to us to slow down, which I did. I am terrible with bike handling because I spend so much time biking indoors on my trainer. And also, unlike other people, I don't want to die. I'd prefer to survive the course and get back to real life with my kids.

The run course was awesome, along the Provo Parkway trail. It was interesting in that it wasn't closed to other people, so we'd occasionally have a few kids on bikes or families out on a fun run who passed us. By this point, the racers were so spread out that there was plenty of room. I so much appreciated the shady sections of the road, and cold water and sports drinks at the aid stations! Again, great volunteers really make this race better every year. I got passed by a guy on the second loop of the run who had played leapfrog with me on the bike, and he was AWESOME! Every time he saw someone (which was about every four seconds) he would call out encouragement in this loud, cheerful voice. He was only just barely faster than me, so for the next six miles, I heard him every step of the way. I wished I could have been as energetic, but at least I was smiling.

At the finish line, I had enough juice to really sprint to the end, and that always feels good. Until I stop and then feel like I'm going to puke for a few minutes. I get some calories in then and walk around a bit. I had to clean up so I could make it to a writer's group meeting that afternoon, so I found a bathroom and did an extended sponge bath routine to get off all the gross stuff from the swim. I got teased when I was on the podium by the other ladies, who said I beat them so badly I'd had time to go home and shower and come back before the medals ceremonies. Not quite.

I missed my husband coming in because he was 45 minutes earlier than expected. Yeah, he had a great race, too. So good to see him, all sticky and sweaty at the end.

Some of the great things at this year's race:

The guy who wore what appeared to be his jockey shorts (orange and purple stripes complete with a little pee pocket) for the whole race.

The girl who basically wore the same thing, with a striped bright pink and orange bra top.

Getting passed by my nemesis while I was in the portapottie.

Realizing in that portapottie that I was covered with sand and mud from the swim, which had been finished three hours before. Yuck!

Missing my husband crossing the finish line because he finished 45 minutes ahead of schedule. Go Matt!

The race director running into the lake fully clothed before the start.

Shivering at the race start for about 10 minutes because, despite the fact that wetsuits were deemed illegal because the water was too warm, this was not warm water. It had to be below 70. And I like cold water!

Prize money. Nothing like getting back the money you spent to pay for the race, or almost!

A full-sized wood-fired pizza oven at the finish line, making gourmet pizza for free for all finishers.

Chocolate recovery drink at the finish line. It really was the perfect thing after the race.

Pot holes marked during the worst section of the bike course. Thanks!

Perfectly marked race course on the bike, so that it was virtually impossible to get lost. Volunteers shouting at you at every turn and police at every potentially dangerous intersection. I have never felt so safe on a bike.

Cold, ice soaked sponges on the run. They felt so good! Though ice down my shirt is also great.

Accurately marked miles almost all the way through the 56 mile bike course and all the way through the 13 mile run course. So helpful for my OCD brain.

Seeing my husband a few times on the course and us cheering each other on.

Seeing my coach way ahead of me on the course, and hearing him tell me I looked great.

What I learned at this race:

Mental attitude really matters. I have had a bad year, in terms of times. It shouldn't be a surprise that as soon as I hire a coach and start having a goal like breaking the top 100 in my age group nationally, I get freaked out and get slower. But this race was just for fun. It was fun. It was also my best time all year.

It's important to take it easy on the swim and the bike. You go all out on the bike, and you don't have anything in the tank to race on the run. The top guy, BJ Christensen, who is also my coach, finished the bike a full 12 minutes behind the top guy. He made it all up on the run, because he is an awesome runner and he had the confidence to race within himself. I need to do this more.

Don't go all out the day before the race. I'm having problems with this this year. I keep feeling so good that the day before a race, I go out hard and have fun. Not allowed. All fun must be saved for the race. I happened to see a fellow BJ coached athlete in the pool on Friday and he reminded me to do a lot less than I wanted to. Good thing.

Let yourself walk a little and get in calories on a long course. Then you don't bonk on the second half of the run. Also, you end up feeling better and having a lot more fun. Fun is good, right?

Just because you haven't run more than 8 miles in the last year doesn't mean you can't throw down a half marathon, if you're well trained. I never would have trained myself this way. Never. I would have made myself do a lot more long runs, but BJ has really taught me something here. You can keep your cardio high by doing cycling for longer distances and then your body doesn't get that pounding from too much training and you end up not injured for racing. So smart!

Being Shakespeare

I had an English professor when I was an undergrad who liked to say that Shakespeare should have written less.

Well, let’s think about that a bit. Shakespeare should have written less. Now, I will admit that while I like Shakespeare, I am not a member of the cult of Shakespeare is the greatest genius who ever lived, the greatest writer of the human spirit in the history of the world. Shakespeare was a good writer. He was brilliant some of the time. Many writers are brilliant some of the time. And he also wrote some plays that don’t work for us anymore in the present day and age.

Imagine you are Shakespeare. Imagine trying to figure out which of the plays that you are writing will matter in a hundred years, or a thousand. How likely is it that you’re going to guess right? How likely is it instead, that you’re going to end up, not only guessing wrong, but spending a whole lot more of your time psyching yourself out from writing your best play because you’re too busy wondering if it’s good enough? Isn’t Hamlet the play about spending too much time thinking and not enough time actually doing something?

If you’re a writer and you’re busy worrying about if you’re writing something good enough, can I say that I think you are wasting your energy? Can I tell you honestly that you need to get over yourself? You may be Shakespeare or you may not be Shakespeare. In a hundred years, people may remember you or they may not. So what? That’s not your job. Your job is to write the stuff that only you can write. Figure out what that is, and get to it.

You will make mistakes. You will write books that “you shouldn’t have written” by the judgment of some English professor somewhere. So what? You will have done your work. Maybe that English professor is right and maybe he isn’t, but my point is, you can’t tell if he is or isn’t. And it isn’t your job. You’re the writer, not the critic.

So, write!

Feminism in Romance #1: Notting Hill

I was watching Notting Hill this weekend for the umpteenth time. Yeah, I know it’s fluff. Yeah, I know romantic comedy. Rich movie star girl falls for everyday guy. Hugh Grant with the floppy hair. Funny jokes from the Welshman. Not a POC in the cast, though at least they have a woman in a wheelchair.

And still, I saw some things in it I hadn’t noticed before, and was startled at the feminism in this little romance:

1. Julia Roberts is the one who comes back to Hugh Grant’s flat and kisses him. He’s been drooling all over her, but she is the one who makes the move.

2. When they go over the fence into the park after Honey’s birthday party, she kisses him again. After he’s asked her if she wants to go back to his flat and she says no. She makes the decision about where and what and how much.

3. Unlike most romances of the 70s and 80s, where it is women who are powerless, underclass, poor or prostitutes (Pretty Woman) looking to improve their social standing by dating/marrying “up,” Notting Hill is a story about role reversals. Anna Scott is rich. Sure, she tells a story about having to starve for a decade and have surgeries to look this way, but we all laugh about that. She’s still got all the power.

4. When Hugh Grant goes to her hotel room and finds her boyfriend is there, Anna tells him to leave. She’s sorry, but she isn’t ready to break up her previous relationship yet. She’s in charge of things. She may make a mess of her life, but it’s clear what she wants and that Hugh Grant does what she asks.

5. We find out that the two other people whom William has loved in his life include Bella, who is married to his best friend. Notice the power dynamic here. Bella, in a wheelchair, is utterly in charge. She’s a lawyer and she invites Will to stay over occasionally, never afraid that anything will go wrong if she does so. Because she said no, and no means no.

6. When Honey decides to get engaged and stop being interested in cruel men, she announces rather off-handedly at Tony’s restaurant closing that she has “decided” to get engaged. Will makes a small fuss about how he’s her brother and he should have known about this. But we all laugh at this. Of course, Honey is going to choose her own guy. Then she turns to Spike and says, “By the way, it’s you.” He is apparently delighted to be chosen. Again, role reversal. Honey has all the power.

7. When Anna brings William the painting by Chagall and asks him to take her back after he has been hurt so many times, she is in charge again. He tells her no, that he doesn’t want to get hurt again. But it’s obvious to the audience that he’s done the wrong thing, just like it is to Spike. He gets dumped on all over the place.

8. Will shows up at the press conference Anna is giving (after Bella saves his bacon) and humiliates himself. He admits he is a “daft prick” and is “on his hands and knees, begging” for another chance. There is this pause as she reconsiders. And then she does. Because he was who she wanted in the first place. It’s her plan. He has just acquiesced to it.

I suppose you could argue that this is an Englishman’s fantasy, to have the girl making all the moves (and an American one at that), so he just has to sit back and enjoy the ride. But I’m not sure that answers it. I’m going to do a new series of essays in the next few weeks about romance and feminism. See what you think.

Being Broken

I get uncomfortable when people ask me for my “advice” about how to deal with grief. This is because I feel that there is a cultural imperative that grief must be “dealt” with. It must be silenced. You must learn to say that you are “over it,” that you are “healed,” that you have “moved on.”

I admit that when I first was struck by grief, there was nothing I wanted more than to push it away and not experience it. I tried that for a long time. For years. And guess what? It didn’t work. The grief would bubble to the surface, coming out in unexpected and frightening ways. It demanded to be felt. It demanded to be heard.

Then I went through a phase where I felt like there was something wrong with me, that I couldn’t say that I was “getting better,” that I was “healing,” or that I was, at least, not “broken” anymore. The cultural narrative I felt pressed upon me was the one in which someone is struck by grief and grows from it, becomes stronger. There were so many instances of this all around me. People who got cancer and came back from it fighting. People who lost a limb and started training for a marathon. They were *better* from their grief because they knew how to turn grief into a heartwarming lesson. They were “examples” for us all, “inspirations” for the rest of us who couldn’t get over grief.

And now, I am strong enough that I can articulate clearly why I feel that this is so wrong and so harmful to people who are grieving and who will ALWAYS grieve. There is nothing wrong with grieving. Yes, it hurts. Yes, it changes us. Sometimes it changes us for the better. Sometimes it doesn’t. But that doesn’t mean that grief should be put away. And to me, it doesn’t mean that grief is something that one “gets over” or “puts away.”

I am broken. I am still broken. Maybe I refuse to heal. Maybe there is a willfulness in my decision not to be whole again. I don’t know. It doesn’t feel that way to me. It feels like something happened to me and I was wounded and my refusal to pretend not to be wounded is something that my culture resents. I am supposed to be whole again. I am supposed to give lessons about my experience so that other people who are grieving can see the way to go. And that isn’t the way that it works.

How do you get through grief? I don’t know. There aren’t any secrets, any shortcuts. There aren’t any easier paths. You get through it your own way, whatever that way is. You get through it crying, resentful. You get through it in bed, if you can’t get out. You get through it out running because it’s the only thing that makes you feel like yourself again, or because the pain feels right, feels deserved.

I became an obsessive triathlete. Does that mean I am an “inspiration” to other people? It makes me acutely uncomfortable when people say that. I did what I did. I am who I am. I’m not healed. I didn’t recover from grief through my training. I am still grieving. I am still broken. I think I always will be. I don’t know that I will be. I hold open the possibility that I may change, but I don’t insist on it.

And that is, I suppose, the only piece of advice I ultimately have to give to people grieving. Don’t force yourself to do what doesn’t feel right, and don’t let other people tell you how you feel. You tell them. If you are still broken, you are. If they don’t want to mourn with you, they don’t. But because they want you to tell a story of healing doesn’t mean you have to. You don’t have to become an object lesson for them or an inspiration for other people. Your grief is yours and you get to decide what it means and how it feels to you.

Monday Book Recs--Death iof a Nightingale by Lene Kaaberbol and Agnete Friis

If you are not reading this series (beginning with The Boy in the Suitcase), you are really missing out on the best female-centered crime fiction I've ever read. I liked The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, but had some seriously problems with the author's wish fulfillment fantasies about women having sex with the middle-aged male detective in the story. And also the graphic depiction of sex crimes. The Nina Borg series has some hard stuff, I will admit, but I don't think it's gratuitous, and I so love Nina as the main character. SO MUCH LOVE!

Nina Borg is a nurse who works with the illegal immigrant population of Denmark. Yup, Americans, every country in the world has to deal with this problem. And guess what? The Danes deal with it in some ways as badly as we do. Nina ends up in the middle of a bunch of deportation proceedings with the most innocent victims who don't speak Danish and struggle to get their story heard. But in the meanwhile, she messes up her own personal life. She is the person who has to save everyone and she does it, but at great cost to herself and to her own husband and kids.

In Nightingale, she ends up facing a lot of nasty consequences and she takes a good, hard look at herself, realizing that she needs to make some better choices. We as readers also get to know more of her backstory, what causes her OCD behavior about time, and why she so desperately needs to save people. It is so perfect for her character and I am trying hard not to spoil it for you readers out there.

I so loved how this is a story about women. It's about Nina and her own children, and how she tries to become a mother to Rina, a Ukrainian girl whose mother is in jail. It is the story about Rina's mother and her quest to get her daughter back. And it is also a story about two sisters back in 1935 in Ukraine, during the beginning of the Soviet Union and the twists and turns there will keep you guessing to the very end. So many tricky mother-daughter relationships, and sister-sister relationships. And the ending is perfectly crafted so that the women are the ones who are the actors, though there are also men involved.

Dark relationship and crime perfection.

That Writer Can Really Only Write One Kind of Story

Why is it that some writers seem to be able to write anything, any genre, to any age, with any voice they choose? And other writers who try to move from one genre to another fail miserably? I bet you have all read favorite authors who tried to do something else and found yourself horribly disappointed? I bet you have all thought something along the lines of, that writer really can only write one kind of story. But is it true? Are there writers who are limited or is it the readership they are writing to that it limited?

Watching the Rowling/Galbraith The Cuckoo’s Calling thing, whether or not you think that the reveal was faked or not, I still think that there is an interesting truth to be found here. Did Rowling believe that the first adult title she published was treated differently because of who she was and what she had written before? Yes. Definitely. She got a lot of attention she wouldn’t have gotten if she hadn’t been the writer of Harry Potter. That attention certainly sold books. But it also garnered her a lot of reviews that were nasty, and a lot of readers who felt like what they wanted was more Harry Potter. So she tried something different. I think she succeeded amazingly well. I think the voice is so distinct and the story utterly different than Harry Potter.

But I’ve certainly read other books where I didn’t feel like that was the case at all. As an example, I will mention vaguely an author I admire who recently wrote a young adult fantasy novel. I love this author’s adult fantasy, but I didn’t care for the YA. In fact, I felt like the author didn’t know how to do YA at all and the voice was wretched. But there are certainly other readers who seemed to feel very differently.

A lot of adult authors have tried to cross over to YA or even MG lately and some of them seem to win awards and a lot of readers, while others get labeled “opportunist” and never seem to publish another book in children’s again. Was it because they weren’t trying hard enough? They didn’t do their research? Because they can’t remember what it was like to be children? Because they didn’t get the real criticism they needed to make their story better? Or is it really because they are unable to write a different kind of story?

I puzzle over this as I contemplate my own attempt to write books outside of the genre in which I first had success, young adult fantasy. I’ve tried to write just about everything, from picture books to adult literary. Am I just born to be a young adult writer? Is that just the way my voice on the page sounds to readers? Or is that just the genre that I happened to spend the most time learning early on? If I study hard, can I learn the lessons that will help me to write completely different stories?

Ultimately, I think that many times, writers are constrained by readers more than by their own abilities to write outside of the most popular genre. I know that for me, I often love most a different book from a writer’s oeuvre than is most popular. Maybe this is just my own stubborn need to prove myself different from the masses. But I really think that we get used to expecting one thing from an author that we are not open-minded enough to read other things. So I’m going to list below some of my favorite reads from authors who are known for other kinds of stories.

Shannon Hale The Actor and the Housewife

Megan Whalen Turner Three Wishes

Robin McKinley Sunshine

Lois Bujold The Spirit Ring

Brandon Sandersen Alcatraz and the Evil LIbrarians

Gail Carson Levine Dave at Night

Megan Lindholm/Robin Hobb Wizard of the Pigeons

Margaret Peterson Haddix Leaving Fishers

Let's Get You Stronger

This was what one of my therapists said to me on my first visit. She wasn’t wrong, but I was not ready to hear what she had to say, and it was another couple of years before I tried another therapist. But I have since learned that people who used to be functional who suddenly begin to think that everything that is wrong is wrong with other people or with the world are probably in the same kind of depression that I was in. And the hardest thing about it is that you don’t want to get well.

Telling me that *I* had to get stronger to face the new, crappy stuff that the world had decided to heap on me seemed supremely unfair. After all, it wasn’t my fault that this had happened to me. I had never considered myself a weak person before this. The idea that I needed to become stronger, that I had to funnel energy into the project of improving myself was just infuriating. It wasn’t fair. I wanted to continue to be the way that I was and have the rest of the world change around me. Yeah, well, you can probably guess how that turned out.

Becoming stronger is not a particularly fun project. And strangely enough, I’m not sure that the way that I figured this out is at all intuitive. Becoming stronger from the inside may look like getting weaker or more passive from the outside, but it isn’t. One of the things that I have learned to do is (as the saying goes) stop trying to change things that can’t be changed. There are a lot of crappy things in the world. There are crappy things that happen to me and mine. Most of them I can’t change. There’s no point in trying to prepare for them or to stop them from happening.

On the other hand, letting go of the things that you can’t control gives you more power to control the things that you do control. It opens up your emotional energy and resources so that you can do what only you can do. It also allows you to pay more attention to the present. When I was depressed, so much of my emotional self was spent in worrying about what was going to happen next, as if preparing for that would somehow protect me from the pain when it actually struck. That’s not the way that real life works, I don’t think.

What happened when I stopped trying to control the future and changing the past was that I found myself more invested in the present. And that’s the only place where happiness resides. I have to believe that I am doing the right things now in order to feel happy. And in order to do the right things now, to figure out what those right things are, I have to let go of a lot of other things. To really get anything done, I suspect you have to develop a kind of hyper focus in the now. And that’s the way in which I’ve gotten stronger.

I don’t believe that this was meant to be, that this was the only way I could have learned the lessons I was meant to learn. I don’t believe that what I lost was worth what I gained (as if life is some kind of balancing contest). But I do believe that where I am now is a better place than where I was before, not because I am safe here somehow, but because I think I really do enjoy the life that happens now more acutely. I notice more. I feel more. I let myself live more.

Is that stronger? It’s something, and I’m going to say it’s good.

What you do when your book has lost its soul

Sadly, this happens all too often to us writers. We work on a book for too long and then we forget all the reasons that we liked the book in the first place. We begin to wonder if we should just move on to something else or if that will prove that we are lame and can never finish anything.

Some of my thoughts on why books lose their souls:

1. You writer have listened to too many people’s opinions on what the book needs to be fixed. A writer’s group is great, but don’t write by committee. Don’t take a book back to a group again and again. People lose their perspective and start to want to take over your book.

2. You are trying to write to the market. You’ve gone to conferences and you’ve heard editors and agents talk about what is hot, what they are looking for. And suddenly you think, hey, I can work that into my book. Bad plan. This is a recipe for confused writing and losing soul. It’s why I tell people all the time to remember that most agents and editors don’t know what they want until they see it. You’ve got to drive the market, not cater to it.

3. You have changed in the years since you first started writing this book. This isn’t a bad thing, but it’s a reality. You may simply need to move onto another project that fits who you are now. It’s one of the reasons I think it’s a good idea to get a draft written in a year or so. If you take longer than that, you may never get back to what you loved in the book.

Fine, so now the book is totally a disaster. Is there anything you can do to fix it? Possibly. My recommendations here:

1. Wait a year, possibly more before you go back to it.

2. Write another book in the meantime. See if you like this book better. You might never look back again.

3. Try outlining.

4. Read through the manuscript. Then open a completely new document and rewrite every word from scratch. If you have to retype it, you’re not going to type in anything that isn’t working. I hope.

And of course, as always, your mileage may vary.