For A Dancer

winter is leaving

Remember that you love this. That this is the thing you will always come back to, even when you try to bury it in work and social life and “research.” And remember that it’s okay to retreat. To finish that fantasy novel, though you’ve just started reading one that sounds a little too similar to yours, because why not finish it? Why not have a fantasy novel in your repertoire? 

What happens when none of those in control love your story? Will it always be a little broken? I don’t know. I’m wrestling with that, too.

But then I break out that silly beginnings of a fantasy world, I think about that fictitious college where several seniors try to pull the literary magazine together, and I know that no matter what goes on with my writing in the public way, I will still return.

I hope.

Ah,

that moment when I’m grading analytic essays and realize, “Hey, these essays aren’t that bad! THERE IS HOPE!”

And then the next essay is about being a hustler.

feels like fire

I worry sometimes that my love life hasn’t been like a YA novel. No electric touches and gasps and moans from the first kiss. Tingles and shock waves and tsunami sirens from eye contact. No cataclysmic union calling for a storm warning (unless you count the break up). 

It’s been more like hoodies and flip-flops. The easing into cool water under the moonlight, taking uncertain steps over the rocks but still moving forward. They shift under my feet. Does that count, or do I have it all wrong? Did I miss the lightning, or did it miss me?

That’s one reason why The Hunger Games resonated with me. When Katniss finally falls in love (no spoilers), there’s no explosion. It’s a quiet kindling that grows. 

Suddenly

is one of those words that you’re told not to overuse in writing, but it seems fitting for recent days. Suddenly sick. Suddenly bleeding. The sudden twist of a car in your direction, but you are calm. Your nightmares prepared you well. 

…

Recently I’ve thought that I should have read more books for pleasure during college. It would have helped with the angst for a few hours. It would have felt like company in the hours between one rush and another, and it might have filled a touch of the gap between flirting with strangers and standing at the bar, just a little too small and a little too casual to take this place seriously. 

another in a series of vague blog posts

I feel shades of that other girl coming back to me. The hyperambitious one racing from goal to goal, the one who preferred her computer to standard college life. Caught up in next next next.

This was a good lateral move, I think. The confidence of a horizontal line.

So

I dreamt that Peeta Mellark got me pregnant.

But our make-out sessions made it not so terrible.

steady, now.

Why am I all worked up about things (now, that’s a specific word!) I didn’t want until, say, six months ago? Maybe eight? I’ll give you eight.

To be more explicit in a later post.

(Not that kind of explicit.)

(I don’t think so, at least.)