This year, I forgot to make resolutions. They are not in my blog archives, or my journals, or the box of scrap writing I have. They simply, don’t exist. Which really is a shame because this year, I think I might have done really well resolution wise.

I read 62 books. I moved into my first apartment and decorated it well. I avoided the freshman 15. I became more active. I did not buy a puppy. I ate healthier. I finished my novel-and it’s readable.

The lessons I learned this year were forceful. Despite my artistic past, I am not a visual learner. I do not learn from pictures or sound or reading. I learn by experience, and this year I experienced plenty.

I learned to be disciplined. This summer I was a full-fledged writer. I created my own schedule, worked my own hours, and fought my own battles. I wrote every day, and I wrote well. I learned to work even when I didn’t want to.

I learned to use wisdom even when it hurts. I made decisions this year that were not easy to make. I hurt feelings, I changed my mind, and I discovered aspects of my personality that were hard to reconcile. This year, I learned to be confrontational with reality, and to make decisions in wisdom, and not in convenience, ease, or emotion.

I learned to be rejected. Which hurt, and sucked, and grew bitterness and frustration in me. I know i haven’t fully learned this lesson, but I’m getting there.

Most of all, I learned to stop placing my identity in milestones. In 2011, the biggest lesson I learned was to be satisfied with myself no matter how little tactile substance comes with that. Sometimes, I will not get the A I think I deserve, or a full request on my novel, or the perfect plan. I am learning, slowly and painfully, to be happy with where I am, and to be proud of myself no matter the response from others: be those people literary agents, or professors, or friends.

2011 has been a hard year, and one that I would rather not have had, but progress doesn’t come from easily accomplished goals and lack of trial. Progress comes from struggle, and heartbreak, and stacks of rejection letters.

Toodles 2011.

2011 has been a great year of reading for me. Totals will come in tomorrow’s post, but overall I read just over a “zillion” books. Now, as someone who takes book recommendations very seriously, I’ve reduced my top-ten list to five for this year. Anyone can read five books in a year, why not make them great ones?

5.All The Living by C.E. Morgan. All the Living is C.E. Morgan’s debut novel. It is a short, meandering account of Aloma’s decision to move to an isolated tobacco farm with her young lover. This is a story about loneliness in intimacy, desperation in love, and man’s constant battle with the earth.

4.Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell. I read Gone With the Wind in the two weeks after I finished my novel. Cassie Jo recommended this to me, and as an avid reader you know I can’t deny a good recommendation. Mitchell’s story of heartbreak, brokenness, and the ever famous Scarlett is well worth the 600 pages you have to leaf through.

3. History of Love by Nicole Krauss. When I finished History of Love I laid on the floor of my apartment for twenty good minutes. I felt the emotional equivalent of the two hours after Thanksgiving dinner. This novel is so packed with emotion, so overwhelming in its beauty and character development, that Krauss cannot help but leave her readers as full as her plot.

2. Beloved by Toni Morrison. Morrison is gripping. From her first line “124 is spiteful” to her crushing prose and heartbreaking story, Morrison breaks her readers hearts again and again. I will quote this book for the rest of my life. “You your best thing Sethe, you are.” I will read this book again in 2012.

1.Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson. My English professor this semester, whom I came to greatly admire, recommended this book to me. Despite Robinson’s pulitzer winning second novel Gilead (which I am currently reading), I had never heard of her. Housekeeping is a carefully penned and beautifully structured novel that tracks the abandonment of two young girls in a small idaho town. I read Robinson’s sentences out loud to my unwilling roommates. I gasped for breath at her descriptions of even the mundane. Housekeeping is the only book that I have ever read cover to cover-in the sense that that the second I finished it, I flipped back to the beginning and started again.

I’m not a huge Christmas person. My mother claims that this makes me a “scrooge” but it’s not really that I hate Christmas, or that I make an active decision to acquire distaste for everyone’s favorite holiday. I simply don’t feel the mushy excitement that everyone else seems to have this time of year. I am frustrated by the excessive purchases. I am unenthused by the decorations and the music. Generally, I just don’t feel the Christmas spirit. I am not my sister who, despite her age, is up at the crack of dawn bubbling with excitement to open presents every year.

The only part of the Christmas hulabaloo that I genuinely look forward to is snowflake making. I love to cut my printer paper into snowflakes. Even more, I love to do it on the internet where I don’t have to pick up tiny pieces of white paper for weeks. I like it because it is easy and anyone can do it. I like it because I can transform something bland and boring into something beautiful. I don’t add anything. I don’t glue glitter onto my snowflakes, and I don’t go crazy with colored paper. I only cut.

This has been a year of cutting in my life.

Not to say that I have been doing any of the cutting, but simply that it has been happening. My pride, my ability, and my confidence have all been cut. 2011 has not been an easy year for me by any means, and as I approach the holiday season it is easier and easier to look back and see the cuts.

I see the rejection letters darted to the wall.
I see the years of hard work that have yet to pan out.
I see the long hours with little rest.
I see the endless days, and the constant work.
I see the writer’s block that I have created.
I see the times where I have been a jerk for no reason.
I see the ways I’ve failed and the areas I’ve struggled.
I see my pride.
I see my impatience.
I see my lack of generosity.
I see my lack of grace.

But I’m starting to step back from my microscopic, daily evaluations and look at 2011 from a broader perspective, and from far back, this year doesn’t look so bad.

It is easy for me to get caught up in my failures and missteps. Even easier for me to dwell in them. Stepping back shows that those cuts and failures are not without purpose: that this period of waiting–this period of rejection– is creating beauty.

All those cuts are making me into a pretty okay snowflake.

Today begins (begins? it’s noon!) my third day at the McKinney house in Flower Mound. My bed here is not as comfortable as my twin, and the TVs are driving me up the wall a little bit. Here the walls are painted, and the house is full of crap that only accumulates in a house well-lived in. There are four Christmas trees and various nutcrackers and ornaments. There are four people and one dog.

I spent all of summer break in this house, and it was one of the best summers of my life. I learned what it looked like to be a real writer, and how to work even when eight hours produced nothing of substance. I learned to love the written word in this house. I learned to be a writer here.

This winter break, I am learning to rest in this house. It is a much harder lesson for me to learn. Yesterday, I wrote for an hour. It was a big deal because I hadn’t written in so long. Are my eight handwritten pages complete crap? Damn right they are. But I wrote them, and I felt accomplished. Okay, so I spent an hour yesterday writing. Besides that I read, watched 3 episodes of 30Rock and lounged.

I am not a good lounger. I’m a good worker-bee. I’m a good student. I’m a decent writer. But I’m not good at relaxation. I want to fill up every moment with work, and that’s impossible because I have no story direction and I have no agenda.

But today, I will write for another hour. I will dance in the kitchen to the satellite radio and brew coffee to warm myself up and then I will write. I will write because I need to. And I will write so that I can justify the rest of the hours I am awake. Which, let’s face it, will probably only be 14.

For the past few years my Novembers have been smothered with word counts. I have been an active participant in NaNoWriMo (national novel writer’s month) for five years. The goal is to reach 50,000 words in 30 days. That’s 1,667 words per day. For the past three years, I have reached that goal.

Last year I cheated, but the result of that was a finished first draft of what is now a query-ready manuscript. So, I am satisfied with my decision, however immoral it may be perceived.

NaNoWriMo taught me more things than I could contain in this blog post. It taught me time management. It taught me an appreciation for literature. It taught me how to lose sleep, drink black coffee, and estimate the amount of words on a page. NaNoWriMo taught me that normal people can create substantial things. It taught me how to plan for a major project, and to succeed in following that dream to completion. It taught me that sometimes hard work results in really bad writing. It taught me how to type with good form.

Overall, NaNoWriMo taught me something that nothing else could have: that I have not only the ability but the drive and the passion to write novels.

Today is the first day of November. My word count is over three thousand, and not one of those words is for NaNoWriMo. They are in journals, planners, and class assignments. They are in word documents with cryptic titles and on sticky notes.

Today is the first November since 2005 that I will not be writing 50,000 words of fiction in the month of November.

I am sad because my Twitter feed is covered in NaNo junk. I am sad because I miss working so badly that it hurts sometimes. This pain, of course, comes in the form of a twinge inside my wrists from not being worked enough, or a phantom cramp in my right hand from a lacking hefty pen grip.

My saddness, though, is outweighed by the knowledge that I am growing as a writer. These months are hard. It is hard to be rejected. It is hard to learn broad ideas about literature. It’s hard to know that I have so much to learn and not be able to learn it any more quickly.

The hardest thing though is the knowledge that I am already a better writer than I was this morning, or yesterday, or when I finished my novel.

But I guess that’s also the most beautiful thing.

I finished my novel over ten weeks ago.

Every second since I made that last edit has been twice as long. I should have taken the time to mourn the end of a process and celebrate the beginning of another. I didn’t. I threw myself into querying. I threw myself into rejection.

I moved into my apartment and kicked my life into high gear and tried not to look back. I tried to push into my schedule so hard that I could ignore all of the pain, and suffering, and trial. I did not want to face rejection. I did not want to face reality. I did not want to trust a bigger plan, or rely on what I know to be truth.

Until Friday, I had cried every day for the last ten weeks.

I worked hard on my novel. It made me crazy, frantic, and deliberate. It made me feel productive. Nothing has ever made me feel more purposeful; I’m not sure that anything else could. I know that I am built to write, and it was hard for that process to end so abruptly.

Of course it did not help that the end of my fulfilling process was met from every angle with rejection.

This weekend, as my rejection toll passed a road mark, I sat down with my novel to reevaluate. Maybe it wasn’t as good as I had thought. Maybe I wasn’t built for this. Maybe my first chapter wasn’t captivating, or interesting, or decent. I felt miserable pulling my drafts back out knowing that I wouldn’t be able to work on this novel forever.

But in-between reading Chapters 4 and 5, something hit me. My novel was good. Sure, I had reordered a few sentences for clarity/something to do, but the story itself really is good. I put my book down. I went back to reading Nicole Krauss’s Great House. One of her characters was a writer. Now, I can’t find the quote, but the character mentioned having written a book, being rejected, and writing another book, and it hit me.

My book will be rejected. Hell, my book is BEING rejected. But all books are rejected. They are rejected by agents, editors, publishers, reviewers, and readers. I thought about how many books I have picked up and put down. I thought about how many CLASSICS I have hated (cough: Frankenstein) and how many pieces of the modern literary canon I haven’t enjoyed (cough: Invisible Man).

I revised my query letter.
I sent another query.

And then, instead of going back to finding flaw in my finished novel, I spent an hour brainstorming for my next novel.

Because I’m an author, no matter the rejection…

and that is what authors do.

Today  is my birthday eve.

For my birthday eve eve (really, my missional community, but whatever), I let myself bake yesterday morning instead of stressing out over my preparatzione di italiano.

I’ve never been a huge “birthday person”. I don’t like to have all of the attention on me and I especially do not like to be doted on.

But this birthday I think will be great.

The University of Texas is hosting the first game of the season tomorrow. So the UT body will obviously be celebrating a massive win against Rice.

I honestly don’t see how a weekend that starts (sort of, it was a Thursday) with DOUBLE CHOCOLATE BANANA BREAD could possible end badly.

RECIPE:

2 cups all-purpose flour

1 cup unsweetened cocoa powder

1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/4 teaspoon baking soda

1 stick  unsalted butter, at room temperature

3/4 cup sugar

1/2 cup  light brown sugar

2 large eggs

2 ripe browning bananas

3/4 cup buttermilk

1/2 bag of Ghiradelli 60% cocoa chocolate chips.

INSTRUCTIONS:

oven at 350 degrees

Sift: flour, baking soda, baking powder,salt and cocoa powder in a medium bowl.

Beat butter in separate bowl for a minute. Add sugars. Beat for another minute. Add eggs, one at a time.

Add mashed bananas. Mix.

Add buttermilk. Mix until completely folded in.

Dump in chocolate chips.

Bake on two baking sheets. (to keep the bottom of the bread from burning) for 30 minutes. Place tinfoil on top of the bread to keep it from burning.

Bake for 45 minutes (unless your oven is slow like mine and then for 55) or until a knife inserted into the center comes out clean.

Let cool until you remember to take out of bread pan (for me 3 hours, for you probably 20 minutes)

EAT!

Happy Birthday weekend!

My life has restarted. For the last few weeks of summer, I begged for this. After I completed my novel, I wanted nothing more than to have something–anything really–to do to distract me from the baby queries I had just sent out into the world.

Now, life has started, and I’m struggling.

Most of my classes make me feel semi-incompetent. Not incompetent in a way that makes me feel as if I will not do well, but incompetent in a way that I feel unnatural. I do not understand easily, and that is still a new experience for me.

I am slowly, but often, receiving rejection letters from some of the nations most prominent literary agents, and there is nothing easy about that.

On top of all of this, I have moved in with three other people.

My roommates are great. They are beautiful girls who live life to the fullest and push for what they want. They are so intelligent and funny and capable.

But after a summer all by myself, feeling in the zone and like I was built for what I was doing, this is quite the adjustment.

When writing my novel, I found my niche. I knew it was where I belonged, and even the days I struggled were beautiful. I had the time to evaluate my thoughts, reactions, and mindsets. I poured every ounce of myself into a creation that I came out feeling incredibly proud of. Behind the clacking keys of my word document, I was confident, and powerful, and in my place.

But now?

Now I’m just not.

I am adjusting to having no alone time, and having to study for classes I do not understand, and not having a novel. I am adjusting to this overwhelming feeling of incompetency. I am not adjusting to rejection. That, I am only crying over.

Two days ago I went to a coffee shop with my boyfriend to study. I was supposed to be reading a supplementary packet for my English class about banned books, but it was written by Toni Morrison who played a huge role in the way I wrote some of the most influential moments of FROM THE GULF, and I was distracted.

As I sat there, staring into space instead of reading, I had an idea.

I wrote it down.

That piece of paper, with that confusing, chicken-scrawled sentence, is the first idea for a novel I have had since I finished FROM THE GULF.

Did that idea give me confidence, and excitement? Absolutely not. I know how long and strenuous the road is between here and the chapter outlines. I know because I have walked it before. I have tripped and fallen on that road, and I have broken bones. But I have also found beauty, and confidence, and assurance on that road.

Even though I’m not anywhere close to expanding those ideas, or creating a new novel, or even a short story,

Baby, that road is a sight for sore eyes.