In 2007, I woke up in a fancy furnished bedroom in a rich family's house in Irvine, California.
In 2008, I woke up in a cramped travel trailer parked outside Yellowstone Lake.
In 2012, I woke up on a Thermarest in a nylon tent beneath a blue tarp in the cloud forest of northwestern Honduras.
Later in 2012, I woke up in a hotel in downtown Queretaro, Queretaro, Mexico, about to begin my 27 months of Peace Corps service.
For me, waking up in a new place for the first time is the worst feeling in the world.
There are so many unknowns. Will I like this job? Will I like this town? Will I make friends? Will my landlords turn out to be douchebags, or will I find cockroaches coming out of the drains in the bathroom, or will I finally get eaten by a critter with sharp teeth? Will I be able to make ends meet? Will I meet a guy here?
Will I stay here forever?
I've talked before about how many times I've moved. New jobs, new places, new life. The longest I've ever stayed somewhere since high school was 23 months in graduate school, followed by this past 16 months in Texas. You'd think by now I'd be used to moving, to facing these unknowns. You'd think they wouldn't haunt me so much. Sure, I've hardened myself to be able to take pretty much anything these changes can throw at me, but it doesn't mean I don't still get that sick feeling in the pit of my stomach on that very first morning.
Perhaps it's an odd thing, to think of something so "tame" as that as the worst feeling in the world. I suppose childbirth is probably worse. Or heartbreak. (I'd say waking up for the first time after a heartbreak might be worse, come to think about it.) In my last post I mind-barfed about how scared I was of getting the Montana job. Well, I got it. I accepted it. And that fear is gone now.
All that's left is the dread of that first morning.
I feel like, in the past, if I could get through that, the rest was pie. Getting there isn't the problem; getting there is a task, a concrete thing, a job to do, with planning and complications and problems that you face and then they're done. But after that? What is there? Nothing, but waiting, waiting to see how things are going to turn out.
And it's a clean slate.
Better not screw this up.
And it's worse this time, because Montana...this could be it. Permanent. Life. Forever.
Better not screw this up.
My eyes open. I am on the bed, but which way is it facing? The window's all wrong; it should be on the other side. It's too small. This room is too small. The sounds outside are different, wrong. Oh, yes: I am in Montana. I am not in Texas.
With my glasses lying on the bedside table, I can't see a thing, just fuzzy shadows, light filtering through the blinds. I stare up at the ceiling and choke back the dread. Today I will go to work for the first time. What will I wear? That doesn't matter. What will my coworkers think of me? What will I do? Will I make stupid jokes, embarrass myself, have to explain for the thousandth time what my backstory is? What will I do when I get home? Where will I go? Will I go for a hike? Will I watch TV? Is this going to be the first day of a routine that is repeated over and over again, thousands of times?
Better make it count, then. Today is the day. This day will define all the rest.
Warning: mind barfing. I am not going to attempt to turn this into a cohesive blog entry; it's more what's going through my head right now.
Stockholm Syndrome is the psychological phenomenon that occurs when victims (of, say, kidnapping for example) develop feelings of empathy toward their captors. A quick skim through Wikipedia will tell you that the response is perhaps the brain's way of dealing with trauma; if one can empathize with his/her enemies, he/she may view them as less of a threat. For people undergoing trauma day after day, it makes sense.
I'm thinking of this because, since I got back from a job interview for my dream job in Montana, I have been overwhelmed by the most ridiculous feeling: I don't want to leave Fort Stockton.
This is, of course, completely ridiculous. I hate this town. I hate how hot it is, how the only place to shop is a crappy Wal-Mart, how I have to listen to truck traffic all day, how the only thing that makes a wave in this town is when they build a new truck stop. I hate the high cost of living and the lack of public land to go hiking/biking/jogging on. But I don't want to leave. I feel like it's my own personal form of Stockholm Syndrome.
I used to love moving. I used to love packing up my crap, driving across the country, and settling in for another six-month adventure in a new part of the world. It was a good thing I loved it, because I sure did it a lot.
Since graduating from high school, I've had 33 roommates; I have moved 13 times (not counting any short-term projects that lasted less than 3 months, of which there were at least 4); and I have lived in 7 states and 3 countries.
So if given the opportunity to take a (better paying and probably much more exciting) job in Missoula, Montana, why the hell would I ever turn it down?
I don't know. But I'm sure thinking about it.
I don't understand what the problem is. I've made friends, lost friends, loved jobs, hated jobs, moved, stayed, wanted to move but couldn't, didn't want to move but moved anyway, and none of it ever bothered me. Water off a duck's back. Shattered friendships, lost acquaintances, no big deal. I was used to it. Makes me sound callous, I know, but come on; how else could I stay sane with so much change?
Coming to Fort Stockton was hard - I knew it would be a tough place to live, that it would be difficult to find friends. But maybe the key thing is the promise I made to myself: that if I couldn't stand it after 6 months (which later became a year), I would move again.
And I didn't.
It was my first ever permanent job, so I did things like buy actual furniture and turn my apartment, however crappy it is, into the best "home" I could manage. Maybe that's part of my problem; like it or not, I have invested myself, however little, into this town, and perhaps that makes it harder to think about leaving.
Granted, I never really had anywhere else to go. But I settled into a routine in Fort Stockton that involved a lot of Netflix, a repetitive but functional exercise routine, and the development of a very important facet of my life: writing. I found ways to fill the time, got used to being a little more lazy, got used to my job being pretty boring.
So am I afraid of going back to normal? Of having to re-teach myself how to live like a normal person? To have a life, to date, to go shopping? Is that it?
Or is some subconscious fear that this job - this potential move to Missoula - would be the last one? That I would settle there? That that is where I will stay?
Maybe I'm not afraid of moving. I'm afraid of staying. In my mind, Fort Stockton = temporary. It's safe. It was never really meant to be permanent - I never even considered the notion that I would stay here forever - and if I stay here for now, there's never any pressure to put down any roots. But I won't have an excuse if I go to Montana. It would be the culmination of a dream, the crowning achievement of my wildlife career, to be able to live in a beautiful place and study wildlife species I actually like. Plus, it pays 30% more.
But I would have to stay. For the first time in my life, it wouldn't be temporary.
I would have to buy Montana license plates. Get a Montana driver's license (I have had TX plates and a TX license since I got my car/license, despite all my moves). I would buy a Montana house.
I would become a Montanan.
I have never, ever, felt like I belonged to a place. When people ask me where I'm from, I honestly don't have an answer for them. I am not a Texan, though I live in Texas. I am not an Arizonan, though I grew up there. I am not an Idahoan, though I went to college there. I am not a Missourian, though I spent three years there. Lack of identity was my identity.
Well, that would change.
I am a nomad. That is my identity. I am so freaking scared of having to create a new one.
And part of me is hoping they don't offer the job.
Of course, of course I would take it if they offered it to me. Of course. But if that happens, I know it would be the scariest thing I've ever done. And I've done some pretty scary things.
The human brain is so messed up.
Thinking about this a little more, I'm wondering now if this is just the normal reaction to moving and change. I suppose most people are scared. But I never have been before; change has always been so easy and, in some cases, preferable to stasis. Something's different now. Furniture. True friends, perhaps. A team of coworkers I actually like. Damn it; I got attached to a place I hate. How did I let that happen?
Once upon a time, I posted my query and some writing samples from the Front Range in the Absolute Write Forum for some feedback. I'll admit I didn't handle it very well; my query got ripped to shreds, for good reason, and since I was an ultra-green n00bs, I got a little defensive. I'm not proud of that, and I left the forum with my head hung in shame.
However, there were a few side effects of that visit that have proven somewhat educational. One of these was an underlying sentiment that the plot in my fantasy was just too "unbelievable". I'm not talking fantasy world/flying cats/mysterious portals unbelievable. This had to do with the real, modern world, and a possible conflict that, apparently, most people don't think could ever happen:
The possibility that we will exterminate mountain lions (again).
I have a sneaky suspicion (based on some mentor Twitter clues) that this could be the reason my manuscript wasn't picked for PitchWars. It could also be the reason I'm not getting an agent.** Maybe the reason isn't so much the unlikelihood of such an event, but the controversy of it - if so, that's more understandable, since controversial/message-y fiction is risky to publish in this market. But if it is the "unlikelihood", then, well, that pisses me off a lot.
I even had someone on the forum tell me straight-up that I must not have done my research.
So, excuse the brief own-horn-tooting, but let me be clear: I am a professional wildlife biologist. In ten years in this field (five of which were focused on North American mammalian predators), I have studied current wildlife populations, historical case studies, the works of conservationists like Aldo Leopold, John Muir, and Teddy Roosevelt (who were among the first to realize that something horrible was happening to our ecosystems), and the impacts of current human population trends on North American wildlife habitats. I have worked in the field with over a dozen species of mammals, birds, and amphibians. I got into this career because of a childhood love of wolves which, I hope I don't need to remind anyone, were completely extirpated from the western United States shortly after the arrival of Europeans. Oh, and we almost did the same thing to cougars. Bounties governments placed on their heads caused such a decline that until about the 1970s, hardly any were left in Colorado. And when they came back, they had a whole lot more people to deal with.
And in 2010, I worked with mountain lions in the exact setting in which my novel takes place.
My fictional story begins with the killing of a mountain lion by a Division of Wildlife biologist. This happened because the lion, dubbed "Mister Rogers", was killing deer in a heavily-populated Boulder neighborhood, posing a risk to residents (who didn't want to give up the aesthetic appeal of herds of deer wandering around). The name Mister Rogers was actually taken from a bobcat project I worked on, and a male bobcat who was given the nickname because he hung out almost exclusively in a Southern California neighborhood.
But Mister Rogers the Cougar was actually based on this female:
That's me after her capture. We didn't have to kill her - it was her first offense (and the lions are typically given three). But basically everything in that scene in the novel was taken from this experience. You can't tell from the picture, but that cat and I are sitting in the backyard of a lovely house just outside of town, in a neighborhood full of one-acre ranchettes and mansions. This cat actually killed a deer in the front yard, dragged it through the garage, and down into the backyard. She was so bold, all my boss had to do to capture her was walk up to her with a dart gun.
Then there was this cat:
He was just a yearling, again captured in somebody's backyard near Lookout Mountain (just outside Golden/Denver). Unfortunately, this cat was hit by a car on I-70 a week after his capture.
Then the story of Flizzy (another star of my novel) was based on real events as well, which I documented here on my other blog. Basically, this was a female who came into Golden all the time to kill people's house cats. She usually left right afterward, until one day a homeowner filmed this lion and her two kittens in the backyard - and this was Golden, where backyards are small, fenced, and close together like you might expect in any suburban neighborhood in the U.S. We captured the whole family (and my boss actually did dart the mother cat in a small culvert off a hike-and-bike trail, just like in the novel) and relocated them outside of town. Unfortunately, she came back, and we had to do it all over again, and I got to watch this mother cat leaping over backyard fences from my vantage point on the hike-and-bike trail. It was an unforgettable experience.
Fortunately, no tragedies like those which occur in the novel actually happened during my time on the project (about 7 months). But all one need do is read The Beast in the Gardenby David Baron for a thorough background on the cougars vs. humans conflict in Colorado. In 1991 an 18-year-old athlete was killed and partially eaten by a lion near his high school in Idaho Springs. Other attacks have been documented in Colorado since then, though I believe none were fatal. However, elsewhere in the United States, especially in California, mountain lions are occasionally responsible for the deaths of both adults and children.
Lions are predators. They are dangerous. They've evolved to look for and prey upon vulnerable, easy prey - like suburban deer, dogs and cats, and unsupervised children. It's not really their fault. It's how they've survived for eons. And when their world is being overrun by homes and streets and apartment buildings, and all the good habitats deeper in the wilderness are already occupied by other cats, well, what choice do they have?
After decades of absence from their former geographic range, lions are making a comeback all over the country. When I worked in Missouri, I got a chance to help the Department of Conservation confirm mountain lion sightings by genotyping hair and fecal samples collected at the scene. Yes, there are lions there now. Recently lions have been sighted as far east as Connecticut. Some people think this is a good thing, while others consider it the return of a predator that no longer has a place in the human-dominated landscape.
My novel is built around the idea that, out of concern for public safety, Colorado will again exterminate the species, leaving them to exist solely in places like Yellowstone and Canada and Alaska where there aren't enough people to be threatened by them. It also discusses the idea that smart living in Colorado - like keeping pets indoors, dissuading deer from coming into suburban neighborhoods, and keeping an eye on young children in the wilderness - can prevent unfortunate human-lion interactions. If you go live in the wilderness - or along its boundary - you have to realize that the wilderness is not, nor is it ever supposed to be, "safe". And that's part of why so many people love it.
I believe relative peace can be found - and for the moment, Colorado does, too. But how many naive people will it take - how many attacks, how many pets killed, how many deer dragged through yards and garages - until we revoke the lions' right to coexist with us?
Is it really so hard to believe?
Here are a few facts to leave you with:
Wolves used to live all over the western United States, and so far, we have only allowed them to return to a tiny fraction of their former range. They used to live in Colorado, too, but the general consensus from the public and the feds is that there is no longer enough unfragmented habitat for them to safely exist there. Until a few years ago, any wolves which dispersed from Idaho (where they were reintroduced) into neighboring Oregon were captured and removed. Incidentally, of all the United States' predators, wolves are probably the least likely to kill you. I could get into the centuries-old, deep-seated hatred humans feel toward wolves, but I won't.
Grizzly bears, too, used to live in Colorado (and Arizona, California, and New Mexico...in fact, they're California's official state mammal, and appear on their state flag). You think we'll ever let them come back? Highly unlikely.
And then there are the Mexican wolves. Fewer than 100 remain in the wild after more than a decade of reintroduction efforts. And the citizens of Catron County, New Mexico built bus stop shelters for their children out of fear they will be brutally killed by Mexican wolves (which weigh, on average, about 70 pounds).
We are currently living through one of the largest mass extinctions of flora and fauna this planet has ever known. Some argue that more species have gone extinct due to human activity than the number that died out in the event that killed the dinosaurs.
I hate to leave you with a big, sappy cliche, but the persistence of wildlife species on this planet depends on you. And yes, my novel deals with the conflict (though I've tried to keep it subtle and more character-focused, and the bigger plot in my story has almost nothing to do with cougars). I've done this because it's a topic near and dear to my heart. I fear every day that, by the time I am old, there will be no predators left in this country.
And that's not a future I want to see.
**And maybe I'm not getting an agent because the book/my writing is no good. That is also a possibility. :-)
I've heard hundreds of accounts of well-known authors whose first novels have never been published.
I figure they wrote that first story because they felt it was just too important not to write, or because the characters kept bothering them, gnawing at them, needing to be put on paper (or the computer screen). Awesome: a new writer is born. But eventually that first manuscript, over which they'd toiled and cried and offered blood sacrifices, was eventually and quietly abandoned. Maybe their idea was too out-there for the current market, the writing wasn't quite up to par, or the structure just didn't work.
And then, they wrote another one. And it was this second story that ended up being the one that launched their careers.
Why does it seem to work this way? I'm beginning to understand.
The first novel I ever wrote on purpose, The Front Range, is done.
The first draft is completely unrecognizable from what it is today (it even has a different title), and while I like it, it was sure a pain in the patooty to get it there. I still don't understand what the hell I was thinking when I wrote some parts of it; some really should-be-dramatic parts were not very dramatic, my characters occasionally acted completely out of character, and some of the language was just plain flat and boring. It's come a long way since then. And now it's "done" (in quotes, because, well, if it's not published, it ain't done). Yay!
So I started another one.
As a new author, I'm almost as intrigued by this whole process of writing as I am by the stories themselves (after all, we write because we have intriguing stories to tell, right?). After I "finished" The Front Range, I started about a half dozen other little WIPs that I got excited about for maybe a day, which usually involved typing a million words per minute into my favorite muse (Notepad). Settings, plots, character profiles - you name it, I wrote it down, and then plunged ahead into the actual story while the fire was still blazing.
And, inevitably, that fire burned out.
So I'd go back into The Front Range, do a little tweaking, a little querying, a little changing, a little sequel-working.
Then I'd get another awesome idea and start the thinking-Notepadding-brainstorming-firestoking process over again, hoping this next one would stick.
And then, one day, one of them did. And it's completely different. The Front Range is a fantasy/adventure, and this new one is a romantic thriller.
no no no, not that kind of thriller
I enjoy thrillers, sure, but honestly, the idea of doing all the necessary research into police procedure, types of weapons, and the intricacies of criminal enterprises never really appealed to me. But for some reason, I couldn't get this idea out of my head. I started writing. Granted, the fire did burn low like I expected it to, but I plunged through the doldrums and came out stronger on the other end.
And MAN is it different. I'm taking risks with style, voice, and flashbacks that I never dreamed of when I wrote The Front Range (the quality of which I still stand by; narrative complexity isn't a prerequisite for a good book, after all). Perhaps the most interesting part is that, because this is a thriller, there are multiple subplots, mysteries, and plot twists I'm planning, and putting them all together in such a way as to keep the reader guessing while providing the proper hints in the proper places is entertaining as hell. It almost feels like the story is a great big fluffy blanket and I'm hiding stuff in its folds, making sure every little hidden item is evenly spaced, adequately concealed, and then revealed in the plot at just the right time so that when you shake the whole thing out, nothing falls and shatters on the floor.
The point is, I've come into it with a better plan this time and, more importantly, with experience.
I must admit part of me is still stubbornly holding onto The Front Range, but I can understand the aforementioned phenomenon a little better now, and I won't be so heartbroken if this story is never published. I'm still grateful it exists in the first place, for it taught me so much.
It taught me what works for me and what doesn't when it comes to plotting and writing a story.
It taught me how to be comfortable with my writing, helping me find a pattern, language style, and voice that is uniquely me.
(An interesting side note: since I began writing, I've discovered I am better able to communicate orally, with clients and coworkers, almost as if I had unlocked a source of language in my brain that I had never accessed before. I find I am wittier, quicker, and more comprehensible than I was before. Anyone else had this happen?)
And, of course, it taught me the basics of revising, pitching, querying, and publishing. (I still kick myself thinking of all the awesome agents I missed out on simply because I didn't know how to query yet.)
I have high hopes for this second novel. I'm about 16,000 words in and can't wait to finish it, and I already feel like it's a stronger piece than The Front Range. I'm not saying that, if you're a new author, you should give up on your first piece. By all means, try your damnedest to get it out there; even if it doesn't work out, the process is extremely valuable. But don't let it hold you back, either.
They say that, just like anything else, writing takes practice. Maybe some people get lucky. Maybe some people are naturals.
Miles and miles and miles of road stretching between a handful of tiny towns in the Chihuahuan Desert.
On the busier roads, like US 67 between Alpine and Fort Stockton, maybe you'll pass two dozen other cars on the one-hour drive.
And on the less busy ones, like US 385 from Marathon to Big Bend National Park, you might drive the entire thing and never see a soul.
I am the county biologist for the second largest county in Texas, which is larger than the state of Delaware and only slightly smaller than Connecticut. It's almost 100 miles from east to west on I-10, slightly shorter from north to south on the US highways.
central Pecos County
As a member of the District 1 team, I'm often asked to help with my coworkers' tasks too, ranging from El Paso in the west, Midland in the north, Sanderson in the east, and Alpine (where our district office is) in the south. It's a big district; the entire West Texas region is roughly the size of Maine.
Thus, I drive. A lot. We all do.
the road to Alpine
Somewhere in a previous blog post I wrote about how I've begun treasuring these long hours on the road.
my chariot
There are only a few radio stations, and my truck, with which I have a love/hate relationship, doesn't have a CD player or auxiliary jack and only picks up the radio stations when it feels so inclined. The truck itself is also loud, with shot suspension and doors that don't close properly, so when I do listen to the radio, I have to turn it up so high my ears are often bleeding when I arrive at my destination.
Thus, most of the time I leave it off, and I drive 75-80 miles per hour (yes, these are the actual speed limits) on the deserted desert roads, sometimes late at night after spotlight surveys, sometimes early in the morning to catch the plane or the helicopter for aerial surveys, and I think about my novels.
There's an actual shift that takes place in my head when I set out, a switch I can almost feel, turning my brain from real life to imagination. Sometimes my real-life worries are too great or I'm too tired, and it's frustrating then, like I can't quite reach that switch no matter how hard I try. But when I can reach it, it's magic.
Yucca, ocatillo, rattlesnakes, and mesquite fly by, and maybe another car or two (to which my fingers automatically lift from the steering wheel to offer a friendly salute, like the fingers of all good West Texans), and I barely notice. I'm thinking about my scenes. I'm thinking about that awkward moment when my two main characters meet, the build-up of romantic tension as they travel through Europe, that climactic moment when they first kiss. I'm thinking of enemies, attacks, close calls, and tragic ends. I'm thinking of witty remarks to impertinent questions, lies told to mask emotion, declarations of love and loyalty that are neither cheesy nor understated. Winks, nods, shrugs, frowns. Plot twists, hidden agendas, secret ambitions, driving forces. I put it all together.
I even keep a little notebook in my center console so I can jot particularly good ideas down. Not while driving, of course. Sure, there's never any traffic, but you never know what might jump out in front of you on these roads, like a deer or an aoudad...
...or something else.
black-tailed rattlesnake in Pecos County
I feel lucky that I get to have these moments, these hours of faraway thought, this valuable time for imagining and plotting and fine-tuning. As someone who's sort of ADHD, I have a hard time sitting still at home trying to come up with ideas. I can't even do it while hiking, one of my favorite things to do, because I'm so stimulated by everything around me.
Driving is it. Driving is key. Driving is crucial. I'm not sure why.
I have always loved driving, probably for this very reason. Sure, I'm useless in places of unending beauty (and road-happy wildlife) like Colorado or Montana, or places with heavy traffic, or places I've never been, but I now know the roads of West Texas so well, each twist and turn, each blind corner, each patch of cedars where I know the elk are lurking, that I can do it on autopilot. Don't get me wrong - I'm still aware of what's happening. I can still spot the eyeshine of a deer coming up on the shoulder and press my foot to the brake, or watch an approaching oil truck to make sure he stays in his lane. I have damn good driving instincts and I'm not ashamed to brag. Maybe this is why I love it - because I can do two things at once, a perfect, guilt-free combination of work and pleasure.
Maybe I love it because it keeps me sane. Because I'd go nuts with all this driving if my brain didn't have a way to amuse itself.
Except #PitchWars is going on, and I've already submitted, and no matter how much I try to stay away from the Twitter feed, it beckons like a siren - like the Starbucks siren - until resistance is futile.
Time for my round in the Blog Hop! I've never done one of these before (though I used to do art memes all the time; I forgot how much fun these things are!).
I was tagged by Tracie Martin, who can be found blogging here and tweeting here. I met her recently through a Twitter contest and can't wait to read her stuff; from what I've seen on her blog and in personal communication, she's a pretty damned good writer.
OK, without further ado...
1. What I'm working on
I've got a novel I've been querying out to agents called The Front Range, but it's beginning to feel like an albatross, in all honesty. It's an adult fantasy/adventure about a biologist, a hidden world, and a mythical spirit that exists in Nature but has been forgotten by pretty much everyone. I may never get it published but it's been a joy to write and has, hopefully, made me a better writer.
one of my TLK fanarts
I also have started three other WIPs that are much different (more contemporary). I tend to like writing Adult fiction rather than YA or MG, though I've toyed with the idea of making a picture book since I love to draw wildlife (especially cartoony wildlife).
2. How does my work differ from others in the genre?
I'm really not sure I know how to answer this question, partly because I'm not sure what my genre is (at least for The Front Range). In general, I feel like there's not as much just plain Adventure writing out there for adults anymore - it all has to be either contemporary, or fantasy, or science fiction, or romance - but I like all of these things rolled up into one, and that's what I tried to do. The novel is very much based on real life, with real-life characters, real-life settings, and real-life problems, but with a secret, grand, almost fantastic mythology rooted in old legends and theologies.
Maybe another thing that's different is that I like to incorporate my own life experiences, which, in my case, might be considered unique. I'm a scientist (wildlife biology as well as genetics) with a passion for wildlife conservation, and I want to instill a love for animals and the outdoors in my readers. One of my current WIPs stars a girl (like me) who's a nerdy geneticist (like me), and while genetics ends up playing a minor role in the plot, I love the chances I have to take something as complicated as DNA and PCRs and make it interesting for laymen (without losing them in the process - it's a fine line, and a great challenge).
3. Why do I write what I do?
a little non-TLK art
Like I said, I've got a passion for wildlife/wilderness. When I was little I was always writing stories about talking animals (usually either wolves or, after 1994, The Lion King fan-fiction). I drew (and still draw) wildlife all the time. Watership Down is one of my favorite books of all time; unfortunately talking-animal stories aren't really marketable anymore, or so I'm led to believe, at least not for adults.
me with a bat I caught in TX
However, I ended up becoming a wildlife biologist, and I've come to believe that the human dimension is often the most interesting facet of conservation - the conflicts between predators and ranchers (I have worked with both), the problem of exurban development into wildlife habitat, etc. It's still amazing to me how clueless people often are to these very real problems. My greatest fear is that I'll wake up one morning to a world where the animals and wildernesses I love no longer exist and it's all because people just have no idea this is going on. I think that drive to instill an appreciation for our natural world is what inspired The Front Range.
For my other WIPs, that inspiration is still there, but to a lesser degree. A side effect of writing the Front Range was learning that I like to write characters (usually NA-aged) who learn and grow from adversity in life, or who think they're happy living in a sheltered bubble only to discover things are so much more interesting on the outside. I've had many experiences to help me with this!
4. How does my writing process work?
It started off with me taking a cute little notebook to Starbucks on my time off (I was working at a different Starbucks at the time) and just writing things down for hours. Then I built a vague outline on my laptop and started writing (still at Starbucks).
arg this makes me want a latte every time I look at it
Things are a little more structured now, I guess. Instead of a notebook I prefer Notebook - I can type really quickly and for some reason, the simplicity of Notebook is just perfect for brainstorming. Then I may or may not come up with an outline, but more often than not I just write down the main plot points so I don't forget them, and start writing in Microsoft Word.
I do have a full-time job as a wildlife biologist, so it really limits how much time I have to write. I hate my current situation right now - I love writing in coffee shops and there AREN'T ANY where I live. So I basically just sit down in my chair and write whenever I feel like it, mostly on weekend mornings when I can do it right when I wake up.
A few little things, though:
-I write things as I feel like it, not necessarily in order. I wrote the climax of the Front Range's sequel when I was only 1/3 or so done with it because I just couldn't get it out of my head.
-I can't listen to music when I write. I love music, but I pay too much attention to it to be able to write simultaneously.
-I don't revise very systematically. I should probably change this.
-I like to spend a lot of time driving/walking so I can daydream my books and flesh things out in my head.
As someone who's moved from place to place almost more times than I can count, I'm always on the lookout for regional slang/dialect. I thought I'd share some of the new vocabulary words I've learned now that I've been in West Texas for a year.
Ditch chicken. This one made me laugh uncontrollably. Picture below. You might know it as a ring-necked pheasant in more normal parts of the country.
Speedgoat. Pronghorn. It's not a goat (or an antelope) but it's pretty dang fast - the fastest land mammal in North America, able to reach speeds of up to 55 mph.
Three pronghorn does. Photo taken from a plane during 2014 pronghorn surveys
Norther. Cold front. They always come from the north.
Bull bat. Common nighthawk, a bird in the order Caprimulgiformes that comes out in the evenings, has weird gangly wings that make a funny sound when the bird dive-bombs bugs, and is nearly impossible not to hit when driving down the highway at night.
Turdfloater. Heavy rain, heavy enough to pool in the roads and pastures and, well, move the cow turds around.
Vinegaroon. This horrifying creature:
not my photo, not my man-hands
...which is apparently some kind of arachnid related to scorpions. Also known as whipscorpions, vinegaroons are not venomous, fortunately (though they're still horrifying and I hope I never actually see one).
Summer. March - November.
Breeze. Any wind speed less than 30 mph.
Hurricane. Glorious, wonderful source of rain. Wait, they're bad for some people?
It's been a rough couple of days. Not only did I find out I wasn't selected for an interview for a dream wildlife biology job in Washington...
wrong Washington, though the pic seemed appropriate
...but I also received two rejections from agents I queried.
I still can't figure out why Washington doesn't want me, since I feel like I'm a pretty objectively good wildlife biologist. As for the agent thing, though, anyone will tell you that getting lots of rejection is pretty standard.
But it's still hard.
And the worst part is it makes me not excited about writing anymore. Every time.
I've had quite a few sleepless nights thinking about those writers who struck it big with best-selling debut titles and movie deals and all that jazz. I think that, to date, these moments have been my biggest battles with Envy - especially when the authors were young, just plain lucky, and/or wrote books that I didn't find particularly good. Dammit, my book is good. Why doesn't anyone want it?
At the moment, I don't feel much like writing. My characters are beckoning, my unfinished scenes are playing out in a neverending filmstrip in my mind with all the possible permutations and twists and turns and dialogue, and will continue to do so until I write them down.
But I don't feel like it.
The problem with this is the logic. I started writing not because I wanted to sell a book. I started writing because I loved it.
I've been doing it since I was 5, took a break in high school, and finally returned to it at age 28. I've sat for hours with my eyes glued to the computer screen, goosebumps on my arms, because I love where my story is going or just finished writing a particularly exciting/moving/compelling scene. (This is a big thing for me - I have a hard time sitting still for any extended period of time. For any other reason.) I've experienced the joy of feeling like the book is writing itself, like when I come across a potential plot hole, and realize I unwittingly solved it months ago with a scene to which, at the time, I didn't give much thought. I treasure the hours and hours of driving I have to do for my job, because I get to get paid for sitting and thinking about my novel. I thought up some of my best stuff on these drives.
And I'm so glad the timing has worked out the way it has. If I didn't have writing, I'm convinced I'd go insane in this tiny town where the only things to do are meth and bowling.
Anyway, the point of this post is that, sometimes, I have to remind myself of this. It's easy to get discouraged when all you're getting are rejections (or even if you do get the occasional request for the full MS). It's easy to forget why I started doing this in the first place.
Sometimes, you just need to back away for a while. Publishing is not the means to an end. It's an end, and should be the least enjoyable part of the process - a process that we voluntarily began, because we love it. We must not forget that.
We're writers. Writers write. We write because we can't not.
I live in West Texas, in a town I like to call the Worst Place in America. I won't name names. Really, though, there aren't a whole lot of towns out here, so you can probably guess.
It was hard to move here, I'll admit. I lived in a crappy hotel for a week before I found my apartment, a place where dead cockroaches and the stale scent of old carpet greeted me when I walked in, and the door doesn't fit on the hinge properly and lets all manner of creepy-crawlies invade. But there was nowhere else to go. The booming oil and gas industry claimed all the housing (and then made it so I pay twice what I should in rent).
Plastic bags and other trash clings to everything and flutters when the wind blows (which is all the time). The number of gas stations per capita is absurdly high because my town is the only thing on the Interstate for miles and miles in either direction. The sound of the tractor-trailers roars all day long. As for a social scene for 20-somethings, or the prospect of meeting the Man of My Dreams, well, neither of those things exist.
As they like to say of Alaska, the odds are good but the goods are odd.
Why didn't I just hop back into my moving van and drive straight back to Austin, you ask? Well, because all that was waiting for me there was my old job as a barista at Starbucks, making minimum wage (with a Master's degree under my belt, I might add).
I came here for my career. I promised myself I'd stay a year.
And now I have. (Which, incidentally, makes it the longest I've stayed at the same job if you don't count graduate school, which took 23 months.)
I made sacrifices, sure. I got used to things I thought I'd never get used to.
Big Bend National Park
I used to think I had to live near water; now I no longer shake my fist in anger when the storm that's been building on the horizon all day, growing ever closer hour by hour and wafting the scent of rain and the sound of thunder into town, magically disappears on the edge as if repelled by the Worst Place in the World-ness of this city. Even God doesn't want to touch this place, I always think, with bitterness. But I've gotten used to it.
I got used to the cockroaches. I cut a water bottle in half and keep it on the table to scoop up the dead ones in the summer. I plug the sinks at night. I can't stand the crunch when I squish the live ones, so I've perfected my aim for throwing heavy things at them.
I got used to the spider living under my pantry. He might be highly venomous; I have no idea. He eats flies and mosquitoes and for that I'm grateful. I even wrote a story about him (or her).
I got used to the way everything out here wants to kill me. To pulling mesquite and goatshead thorns out of my foam sandals every thirty seconds. To watching the ground before my feet when I jog so I don't step on a rattlesnake. To becoming crepuscular in my outdoor habits so the summer heat doesn't scald me. And for watching my back when I'm near the border.
I even got used to the seclusion. I got used to spending all my free time watching Netflix, writing, and playing my guitar. I got in touch with my inner introvert, channeling all the bitterness and self-loathing I fear from loneliness into my fingers, and purging all of it in my rare moments of socialization with coworkers, so that they never even suspect it.
I got used to the desert.
Funny thing is, I grew up in it: Mesa, Arizona, suburb of Phoenix, in the middle of the Sonoran Desert with its endemic saguaro cacti. I never remembered hating it. Why would I? I had nothing to compare it to. It was only when I went off to college in the Northwest, and worked jobs in Colorado and Yellowstone and later the Ozark hills of Missouri, that I realized what I was missing.
Rain. Snow. Creeks. Trees. Shade.
I vowed I could never again live without them. Like Tolkien's lost Elves who have never seen the sea, but feel it in their blood, the forest was in mine. It always had been. And once I saw it, I knew I could never go back. It was a cruel fate that found me hopping from job to job for the next twelve years, only to land right back in the ecosystem I had vowed never to return to, with its heat and thorns and fangs and venom.
And the funny thing is, I kind of like it. Took me a year to realize it.
I may have traded Sonora for Chihuahua, saguaro for lechugilla, but it's much the same. There's something magical about a place that's so hostile that everything in it will kill to protect its niche, the niche it worked so hard to find. There's something magical about the way the red rocks glow after the sun sets, and every living creature awakens and moves where before you would swear there was nothing. There's magic in the smell of the rain because it is so scarce, magic that no one who has not suffered through drought could ever appreciate.
All the pictures on this blog post were taken by me, on and off the job right here in the Trans-Pecos. Once you get past the dryness, the heat, and the cockroaches, it's a pretty amazing place.
The way we look at the world around us is, I think, what sets writers apart from non-writers - or, I should say, what sets creative people apart from non-creative people.
I'm a wildlife biologist, so I have to do a lot of wildlife biology things. This week, it's been dove banding - catching white-winged and mourning doves in wire traps and sticking unique metal bands around their legs, so that if they're hunted during dove season, we can (hopefully) retrieve those bands and learn more about where the doves go.
paths of mourning doves
from banding to retrieval sites
I set my traps in a blasted, dusty parcel of land about ten miles outside of town. It's overrun with feral swine and invader brush species, and looks nothing like the rippling grassland of yore, the beautiful habitat West Texas used to have before naive ranchers showed up with their sheep and goats and ruined it.
Every morning I drive to the sites, flip over the wire traps, bait them, and then sit around for 30-60 minutes waiting for the doves to get caught. Lately, I've been combining this waiting-around time with exercise time - I love to jog, and there's nowhere to jog in my town except a little park with a 1-mile loop that, frankly, gets boring very quickly.
So I put on my running shoes, sunscreen, and sunglasses, and take off down the dusty desert road.
In the morning, before the blazing sun reaches its full potential, or when it gets lost in the banks of clouds that usually hover on the horizon, jogging in the desert is glorious. Even in such an "ugly" habitat. Giant tarantulas bask in the middle of the road, roadrunners and jackrabbits dart across my path, and dung beetles roll their putrid prizes through the ruts, cleaning up after the Mexican fighting cattle that I hope not to run into.
And as I jog past, appreciating them, my mind starts to swirl with language so I can get home and write it all down.
I wonder if I would feel this level of appreciation if I weren't a writer.
And if I would feel the same sense of futility about expressing how I feel about what I see - like seeing a beautiful sunset and trying to paint it, knowing the painting will never be able to communicate what I want it to.
I've had a long-standing theory that this is the reason musicians, writers, and actors have a tendency to descend into drug and alcohol problems. There's a certain amount of "mental risk" that's part of being a creative person. Creative people think differently - they allow themselves to wonder "what if", allow themselves to sink into other worlds, and to feel things about their own world that non-creative people have no patience for.
On the one hand, that kind of sensual experience is bound to screw with our brains; spending so much time in a wonderful, exciting, adventure-filled world of our creation, and then having to go back to reality, can eat a person alive. Falling so deep into imagination can affect our real relationships and instill a sense of dissatisfaction that infiltrates every aspect of daily life. And like the artist trying to paint that beautiful sunset, we face the judgment, the uncertainty, the terror, that we'll fail in our task of communicating what we think is of the utmost importance.
But on the other hand, the joy and satisfaction we feel when we're painting, or writing, or whaling on that guitar - entrenched in those worlds, in our imaginations - can be well worth it.
Take music, for example. I love being able to hear a song and let it just fill me with something indescribable, even if it leaves me, on the other side, emotionally wrecked. Why did it leave me emotionally wrecked? I don't know...that violin part at the end, or the crescendo guitar riff in the instrumental break or the...melody thing at 3:27.
But talk about going from sky-high to rock-bottom in the space of a single song. It's a dangerous line to toe.
Yet I think I am extremely fortunate to be able to experience that kind of emotional depth. I always feel sorry for people who don't "get" music; they're probably happier but damn, at what a cost! It's the same feeling I get when I read certain books or watch certain movies. I'm never able to pinpoint exactly what part messed me up so much. I like to think it's because that's what art is supposed to do - communicate something of the world, or of the artist, in a deeper way than language ever can. Expose a piece of a human being's soul that you can't see in any other way, a piece they're desperate to show you.
I want to be able to communicate my awe when I jog in the desert. In my short story Ten Toes (which I'm currently trying to publish), I want to communicate the destructive effects of violence in a way that sticks with you. In The Great Divide, I want you to see my love for the wilderness and understand the fear that keeps me up at night that it's going to disappear. I want to show you. I need to.
Creating art leaves bits of the soul behind, sure. And all that soul-leaving can't be good for a person. But thank God creative people risk their sanities to do these things.
When I first started it, I was working as a genetics tech in Missouri and thought it would be fun to write little blurbs about Life when it intrigued me - like the big ol' dog who lived next door.
But it turned out that place I lived was WEIRD and my landlord was NUTSO and I'm not too fond of remembering it. Then the funding dried up for that job and I ended up going to Honduras and Mexico and getting pneumonia and living in a jungle (not necessarily in that order) and I sort of forgot about this blog.
Anyway, I'll try to update this thing more as writer-y things happen or I have writer-y thoughts and whatnot.
I love the word whatnot.
In the meantime, check out my new "Stories" and "About Me" pages. And have a pretty picture of a pronghorn I saw on the job last year.
Did you know pronghorn are not actually antelope, are the only member of the taxonomic family Antilocapridae (which sounds infuriatingly like "antelope" - damn you, taxonomists), and are endemic to North America? That means they live here and nowhere else!
