Sarah Allen's Blog, page 41

HOBBIT DAY!!!

Guys guys guys guys...ITS HERE!

I don't need to show you the trailer. I'm sure you've seen it. Clearly saying this is gonna be worth seeing is an understatement and here's why:


And this beautiful beautiful man is playing Thorin Oakenshield:
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And and and MARTIN FREEMAN'S FACE!

Guys?

I'll see you at midnight :)

Sarah Allen

A scattered, tired, here's whats happenin post

I am very tired.

A song came up on my iTunes and it made me really nostalgic for high school. I don't actually want to go back, but seriously guys, I am one lucky girl as far as what high school was for me. It's interesting how music totally puts you back. Like, that song takes me back to high school drama. And the Backstreet Boys makes me think of the old bedroom I had in California when I was twelve.

I still like Clay Aiken. I admit that freely.

Graduate school applications are all in. Well, I have to do one more post-office trip and we still need the letters of recommendation turned in (THANK YOU DRS. T, L, AND Y). I'm very glad to have that done, and now comes the wait. 50% of the schools I applied to are in the deep South. (Hello Vanderbilt and Ole Miss!). More if you include Florida and Missouri, which aren't really deep south but they're...ya know...South. Guess we'll see what happens.

I have five chapters done of Novel #2! It's coming, guys. I'm starting to get into the scary middle part, but its still looking okay. It feels mostly the same as writing The Keeper, but I guess its touching on different personal issues because this time my main character is a thirteen year old girl. Closer to me than a forty-year old man, I guess :)

Still querying Keeper to agents. As much as I want to I hesitate to put all the juicy details as it happens, because that just seems unwise, but at some point in the hopefully not-too-distant future when I have finally gotten my yes and everything is all settled you guys will get the full story.

How are your projects going? What do you want for Christmas this year?

Sarah Allen

Monday Blues?

Here are a few things to brighten your day :)

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Happy Monday!

Sarah Allen

And here we are at post #600

Six hundred? Really?
I have always felt like I have so little to offer you. I'm not a big name or anything, I'm not published, and I don't yet have much experience in the industry. Sometimes I feel self-concious about that. Like sometimes I'm pushing myself on you and that's just blech. Icky.
I'm amazed that anyone follows this blog, let alone 800 of you. Some of you even come back more then once, comment regularly. I count you as sincere friends. In fact sometimes it feels like you guys are where I can go when I really need someone who understands.
So, besides a words-never-say-as-much-as-you-mean Thank You, here's what I want to say to you:
We're just beginning.
This next year is going to be big for us, I can feel it. We're on the precipice. Up to now its all been prep, and I think its about to pay off. If you've stuck around this long, thank you, and I hope to be able to reward you for your patience and support very soon. 
Here's to another six hundred and a lot, lot more.
Sarah Allen

Why do we even need other people?

I'm not very good at the socializing thing.
Surprise surprise, right? I know you guys understand. We writers generally aren't known for being the party scene type people. 
As I'm sure you know, it makes moving away from your home town...interesting. I haven't felt this type of self-consciousness about making friends since seventh grade. I mean, its different, obviously, but I guess its just that I haven't had to try at all for a long time. I graduated from high school in a class of 21 students. Everybody was friends with everybody, there wasn't really any other option. And in college the perfectness of perfect kinda fell into my lap slash my dorm roommates. I never had new roommates after that, really.
Until now. Now my close close friends and close-ish friends and even the random acquaintances I've had pretty much my whole life up till now are gone. I have my immediate family, which I think is why I'm not in a mental institution at this point, but its been different. Imagine me saying all this in an analytical voice, not a whiny emotional voice, because that's how I feel right now. So anyway. 
I definitely see how this has been...well, I hesitate to say "good for me" because I can't tell if I am a better person because of this move, but a learning experience, as any experience is really a "learning experience." And I have thought a lot while I've been here and I think have learned things about myself and my weaknesses and what I want and hopefully that will translate into me becoming a better person in the future. So maybe in that sense, yes, it has been good for me.
Obviously I believe we need other people. Desperately, in fact. Other people are The Point Of Life, in my mind. We need them to help us learn. I read/heard somewhere recently the expression that you will never meet someone who doesn't know something you don't know. I love that. We need people to take us out of ourselves and give us perspective. We need people to help us. And to give us a chance to help them. I think we should try to be the best part of other peoples day.
But like I said, I'm not good at this socializing thing. I don't think I'm being wussy on this, because even when I put forth a serious effort, its not like I'm terribly awkward or anything (I hope?) and I mostly enjoy chatting with people, but I really just don't have the making-friends-wherever-you-go skill like my mom and sisters and a lot of other people. I am becoming okay with this, but I have a question and a worry.
My question is this: what is the correct amount of pretending? I think at the superficial/beginning levels of socialization, 99% percent of the population is pretending to be comfortable and happy, and the remaining 1% have a capital G Gift. I definitely don't think avoiding something only because its uncomfortable is the right answer, but I also don't think that the close friendships and relationships that we look for necessarily come from forcing yourself at every situation, if that makes sense. Basically, how far does "trying" actually get those special friendships, or do they always just happen how they're going to happen, regardless of any planning or conscious effort on our part?
And my worry. I did kind of follow my family to the east coast. I'm living in my own apartment and like I said, there have been some great learning things for me personally. But now I'm applying to grad schools. I know most people have probably lived far far away from family by this point in their lives, and I'm trying not to feel ashamed. I love living near my family, and I don't think there's anything necessarily wrong with that, but I'm also trying really hard to not let terror restrict me. Like I said, grad school. Its not like they're going to come to Texas or Nashville or Baton Rouge with me. (According to my grad school applications I really want to experience the South.) I wouldn't be doing this if it wasn't worth it, but the first bit is going to be the most miserable 2-4 weeks of my life and that is not an easy prospect. Worth it. I'm figuring out how I'm going to survive, that I will survive, and that I might even be okay. But still, terrifying.
Because really, there are people wherever you go. And that is a terrifying, wonderful, lonely, comforting thing.

My Hibernatory Nest

Its that time.

December is the best month. Of them all. There is Christmas and New Year and lights and snow and presents and days off and visiting family and more lights and sweaters and gloves.

This month particularly I feel like I'm caccooning myself. It's a bit frustrating and feels like a whole lot of unproductive waiting, but really its building up little by little until hopefully everything will burst forth in bright color. Yay for trite metaphors.

This past month and for the month ahead it is building up.

Writing.
Querying agents.
Applying to graduate school.
Watching Person of Interest and Twilight Zone.
Buying presents.
Playing on Pinterest.
Blogging.
Vlogging.
Working.
More writing, querying, applying, submitting.

It's all build up, and I'm trying to remind myself that's okay. It's December. Huddle up in a sweater and celebrate the cold. The writing and querying and applying and submitting is part of the process.

And it will pay off in the spring.

Sarah Allen

What Are You Reading?

To get recommendations for Christmas shopping, as well as just because and I love the library, I think its time to get some recommendations from you.

Here are some of the books I've read recently:

Swamplandia! by Karen Russell

Quirky, well-written, disturbing, occasionally frustrating, and definitely sticks with you for a long time.

Where Things Come Back, Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, Bigger than a Breadbox, The One and Only Ivan

Poignant, honest, delightful, sad, hilarious, wonderful

Ms. Hemple Chronicles

Weird, beautiful, funny, melancholy, and I will never EVER be a teacher

Right now I have checked out from the library The Night Circus and The Snow Child.

Your turn. What have you read lately, and what would you recommend?

Sarah Allen

I can't do this because...

It's scary.I'm too tired. No, I'm REALLY too tired.It's paralyzingly terrifying.Someone else could do it better.It makes me feel terrible about myself.I feel ill.It makes me want to curl up under my blanket in the fetal position and never stop.The timing doesn't work.My schedule is all complicated and wonky.I don't want to. Really, really don't want to.It's too stressful to be healthy.Did I mention I'm terrified?
I get a lot of that going on in my brain. And I'm not the only one, I'm sure.

Excuses are easy. They are one thing I totally can do. I am brilliant at finding ways not to do things.

I've never thought of myself as a cowardly person. In fact I've normally been quite a brave person. Not for the past couple years.

I do not like being this way. In so many ways I want to go back to the naively ambitious and recklessly forward moving person I was in high school and most of college.

It's not like all the excuses are bad ones, either. I mean, terror is terror. Exhaustion is exhaustion. Time is time, health is health. Not in any way things to be taken lightly.

Here's the thing though. I've known for a while that the only way to get this seriously paralyzing terror out of my system is to force myself to just do the terrifying thing. In a lot of ways this move to DC has done that. New job, new place, new people, all of that comes with all the things I'm afraid of and starts the excuse train going through my head.

But it's been almost three months now, and I'm still alive. And not "in-a-mental-institution" alive either, but actually doing well and getting well-er. It's amazing to be on the other side of doing an impossible thing.

There are still some big, terrifying things coming up in my life. That's how life goes. But I'm thinking/hoping that I've jumped the first and worst hurdle, and that the future hurdles won't kill me either. I know that they're hurdles worth jumping, and in many ways that's enough to get you over.

Sometimes the things are small, like not wanting to cook dinner or go to a staff meeting or call that person you've been meaning to call. Sometimes its big--switching jobs, going to graduate school, moving across the country. Either way, the excuses are always valid and solid as cement shoes.

And I'm done with them.

I'm not saying this will change overnight. And I'm not saying the excuses can all just be ignored, either. Some, maybe, but many need to be addressed. So I'll address it and move on. Excuses are real, but its the people who move past them that accomplish great things.

I'm terrified.

10 Books I am Thankful For

I hope you all are enjoying the start of the holidays! I'm missing out on my Utah snow, but the trees here in DC are absolutely gorgeous.

Simple post today. We all love books, right? But every once in a while there comes a book that is just so you, so exactly what you needed to read and in that way it really is life-changing. Here, in no particular order, ten of those books for me:


Jane Eyre, by Charlotte BronteGilead, by Marilynne RobinsonAll the Little Live Things, by Wallace StegnerBellwether, by Connie WillisA River Runs Through It, by Norman McleanPersuasion, by Jane AustenMiddlemarch, by George ElliotLittle Dorrit, by Charles DickensAnything by C. S. LewisLes Miserables, by Victor HugoGah, okay, that was surprisngly difficult, because I have like twenty more I want to put on the list. But this will do.
What books are YOU grateful for?
Sarah Allen

Describing Voices and Facial Expressions

Its really hard.

This is the part of writing that makes me jealous of actors. They say so much with just a flicker of the eyebrow, the teensiest change in inflection. When I try to do this in writing it comes across so much more clunky.

This particular aspect of description has been important to me lately, and here's why: I would so much rather show the emotion on someone's face and let that speak for itself than describe the emotion. It is so easy to dip into cliche when describing emotion. Emotion, particularly intense emotion, is one of those things that goes beyond words, and I'd rather just watch the scene and let the reader go on their own emotional journey. I loved Hemingway because that's what he did. Its also the reason half the class despised him.

So I've been trying to figure this out. Because describing voices and facial expressions can also get extremely cliche. And as I've been trying to pay attention to this in my reading, I've noticed that my facial expression approach is not a common one. Most writers do describe the emotion itself, and when its done well it is beautiful, poetic, and speaks to some universal human Truths. (Thank you F. Scott Fitzgerald)

But I like my faces. This is why I love good acting. The look on Niles' face when he tells Daphne he loves her. Meryl Streep's Julia Child blush or soft "That's all." Forrest Gumps broken face when he sees his son for the first time. Colin Firth King's Speech all the things.

How do you write that?

So I want to try an experiment. I'm going to give you a photo and a video clip. Distinctive ones, at least to me. How would you describe this face and this voice? What are your tactics?

[image error] And Go!

Sarah Allen