Perceptions and Pivoting

Around this time last year, I met a friend for coffee. And I remember telling that friend about how deflated I felt. I listed off all of the things I’d applied for. All of the opportunities I’d tried to get and failed to even secure an interview for.

I’d shot for the moon but had very much not landed among the stars.

Between now and then, so many bigger life changes have happened. Mental health breakdowns, friends leaving, a death in the family. Shit to put creative setbacks in perspective.

At this point, I can’t even remember what most of last year’s setbacks even were. But I do remember how they felt, especially now, as I’m in the midst of a fresh batch of rejection emails.

It’s so easy to feel defeated. To want to give up. I have cried literal tears on more than a few occasions. But I’m still glad I applied for the things I didn’t get. That I tried.

It’s so hard to get an outside perspective on yourself, but I’ve had people tell me that I come across as successful. As thriving. My writing and art flourishing.

They see the social media posts about the acceptances. The publications. The events.

Unless you’re also trying to ‘make it’, you have no idea that for everything that falls into place, there are five things that fall flat. And even if you are also in the same boat, it’s easy to think you’re alone there, because hardly anybody talks about the shit days.

The key is to keep pivoting. When something fails, you adjust your plan and make a new attempt. Then do it again, and again, and again, and––and someday, you hope to get where you’ve been aiming for the entire time. Or maybe a new place, that’s even better. But until then, as someone told me recently, it’s so important to remember why you got started in the first place.

You pick up a paintbrush, or a pen, or a camera not for possible awards, or gallery shows, or publishing deals. You do it because you need to express yourself. Need to feel the peace that comes only when you have let that expression happen.

This is a note to my future self, to not quit.

To listen to the friends who see your success and want to cheer you on. Friends who will listen to you moan and whine and complain on coffee dates. Friends who remind you of the important things. Because they are the important things.

Perspective Shift

Sometimes my brain gets tripped up on an idea, and it takes years to undo the sprawling mess of nonsense thoughts that result from that one, core nonsense idea.

What I want to talk about today is a prime example.

This is probably going to sound unhinged for a bit––probably because it is unhinged––but here’s how I used to think:

I used to get annoyed every time I had a new idea. Because I was getting ideas faster than I could do anything with them, and they were forming a backlog that was only ever getting bigger and, someday, was likely to overtake and/or crush me. Then I was going to be dead having left a bunch of unfinished stories and projects and it would be such a waste.

I used to wish the ideas would stop for a bit. Or at least slow down so that I was getting them at a much slower rate than I was writing, and therefore I wouldn’t constantly feel torn between all of my various works in progress. If I only had one short story idea per year, for example, I could write that and then still have plenty of time to get all of the words for my novels done. Or vice versa. Ideally, I’d have a ‘one in, one out’ method of working. But only once the backlog was cleared

I genuinely used to stress myself to near sickness over this.

But here’s how I’m coming at it now: it’s a reframing issue. Continue reading

The Point

These days, I’m less convinced about the existence of an afterlife than I used to be. What I have come to understand, however, is that eventually––some five billion years from now––our sun will destroy Earth.

Cheery stuff, which has got me wondering… what’s the point, if there even is one at all?

If you don’t believe in eternal life, but do know that not just your current life, but some day all life as we know it, will end then I think you could be forgiven for concluding that––ultimately––so much just… doesn’t matter.

And in a similar vein, albeit on a more personal, and incredibly smaller and less important scale: if no one is really buying your life’s work now, and your words don’t stand much chance of continuing to reach people after you’re dead, is there really any point in wasting your time?

Well.

As I said, I’ve been thinking about this. And good news, I’m not just writing this post to depress you, because I actually have a conclusion. It’s perhaps not a conclusion that will suit everyone, but I personally find it comforting.

But let’s back up a second while I tell you about this show Angel––I promise it’s on topic, just bear with me here. Continue reading

2022 Wrap Up/2023 Goals

I do not want to get into how 2022 went for me. It might be tied with 2010 for my Worst Year Ever TM, and the less said about that, the better. I will bust out a few stats, however, because you know I love stats. So…

  • Total Words Written: 157,000
  • Five Poems Published
  • Two Short Stories Published
  • Thirty-Two Books Read

So many of my plans and projects didn’t pan out, BUT I was in an anthology, I produced an art zine, I had my photography in a gallery show, and I had a mini-exhibition for my paintings.

My two main personal goals for 2023 are to:

  1. Stop being horrible to myself
  2. Eat three meals a day.

2023 Goodreads Reading Goal: 20 Books

Professional Goals:

  • Pass the one-million-word mark on the NaNoWriMo website (where I track everything I write, all year ’round, not just during the events). Context: I’m currently at 936,000 words.
  • I want to have posted 200 stories to the Elysian Fields fanfic archive by my ten-year anniversary (at the end of July). Context: I’m currently at 186.
  • Publish my short story collection
  • Publish part two in my YA trilogy
  • Illustrate and publish my children’s picture book
  • Do more art events and craft fairs

Feeling Reflective

I feel in a bit of a weird headspace right now. Life has been… interesting, as always. Many exciting projects. Many things falling apart. Much stress and exhaustion––you know, the usual.

I used to use this blog to get into the nitty-gritty of all of that. The exact specifics of what I was working on, the struggles I encountered along the way, and how I was feeling about all of it.

I miss that, and would like to get back to blogging a bit more. But, at the same time, I’m hesitant to address the harder stuff I’ve encountered this year as a bunch of it still feels too raw. I feel like I need the distance of time before I can talk about it, so I don’t feel quite so vulnerable. But also, I’m very aware that the things I want, and probably need, to talk about don’t just affect me, and that makes me nervous.

Earlier this year I wrote a blog post that was about my own personal growth and journey, that just mentioned someone else in passing, and that person––whom I love deeply––was hurt by my mention. And although it was a complete misunderstanding, my intentions don’t matter much. If they’re hurt then they’re hurt, and I’m sorry.

I’ve been fairly gun-shy on getting too personal ever since, and now I feel a little in limbo. Not sure what to do.

Dear reader, shall I begin again?

2022 Take Two

I know most things never go completely to plan, what with life getting in the way at every turn, but my gosh has the first half of 2022 been the opposite of what I hoped for. Thinking on it as a whole, I’m left feeling disappointed for opportunities I reached for and didn’t get, and frustrated for projects I didn’t complete. Looking part that into the details, however, I can see there were good points, too.

In the first half of this year I:

  • Wrote 65,000 words––considerably less than I usually pen in six months, but still sixty-five thousand words!
  • Attempted Veganuary for the first time (and did better than I expected)
  • Got the third Belfast Writers’ Group Anthology out into the world (FINALLY!)
  • Published the first Perilla Magilla book for CL Scott
  • Became a moderator of Elysian Fields, an online fan fiction archive of almost 25,000 members

I also lost pretty much the entirety of my June to COVID––but I was fully vaccinated and I’m still here to tell my story, so I have that to be thankful for.

My Goodreads Goal is on track (11 books read off my total of 20 for the year), and I have been working on my art, as planned.

I’ve had art mentoring sessions via Zoom that were really helpful, completed a bunch of Skillshare classes that were also really good, and attended some in-person art classes that were… let’s just say not up to the standard of the Zoom and Skillshare lessons.

So a mixed bag! Maybe not even too bad, considering. You might be wondering why I’m feeling so down about the year so far, all considered, and to answer that, I point you at the three things still currently in the pipeline for 2022:

  • Life Lessons: Book Two in my YA Trilogy
  • Girl Imperilled: My Short Story Collection
  • An Art Zine

I had planned to have all three of these published by now, and if things had worked out, I’d currently be writing book three of my trilogy, but that’s been pushed to next year.

Which is frustrating, as I’ve said, but I’m also trying to be gentler with myself this year. One of my goals was to actually chill more, and I think I’m maybe a little better on that front. Either way, we’re now in July, having crossed over into the second half of the year, and I’m considering it a fresh start.

Let’s go onward from here!

Reflecting on Buffy, Spike, and ‘That’ Scene

Recently, I became a moderator of Elysian Fields, a fan fiction archive that focuses on the relationship between Buffy and Spike (aka Spuffy) and has around 25,000 members at the time of writing this. Not long after that, the mod team were asked if we wanted to be interviewed as part of an article for Polygon. A few of us said yes and that article is now live, which can be read here.

I hadn’t wanted to do the interview via Zoom but instead wrote to the author of the article, Katie. Below is what I said in full.

I’ve been very public about writing and enjoying fan fiction, to help counteract the taboo some people feel about it. As with many other taboos, I never really ‘got’ why people felt shame about it. But that’s perhaps off-topic.
What draws me to fanfic, in general, is satisfaction. Either I’ve seen a really great movie or read a great book and want more, or I’ve been left frustrated by something and feel the need to fix it somehow. I’m a massive control freak, so fixing things that others wouldn’t consider broken is kind of my jam haha. Outside of fan fiction, I write novels and poetry and short stories set in my own worlds, so words are very much how I relate to everything.
In 2019/2020 I did an English Literature course that required me to read A Streetcar Named Desire, and the ending left me so upset I went home and wrote an epilogue that offered a grain of hope for at least a couple of the characters. I’ve done that in a few different fandoms, but for the most part, my heart is with Buffy. As to why, I’ll need to give a little background.
I was fourteen when the show ended in 2003––such a pivotal and transformative time in a lot of people’s lives. I was navigating what it meant to be a teenager in the modern age while living with parents who considered so much of society evil, from the music on the radio to the shows on TV. That included Buffy––and even tamer things, like Sabrina the Teenage Witch and the first Harry Potter films. I wasn’t allowed to watch any of it. But, given the effects of a, frankly, negligent and emotionally abusive upbringing, I did not have a whole lot of other options for what to do with myself. I didn’t really have friends. I didn’t go out. I was terribly depressed, sometimes even suicidal.
My brother would sometimes watch Buffy (the rules never seemed to apply to him), and so sometimes I was able to catch it, too. And it grabbed me. I became obsessed. Here was a show that dealt with real-life traumas (death and heartbreak and betrayal), albeit via the medium of puns and a fresh twist on vampire lore.
The character of Spike drew me in most of all. The complexity of his character––how he could be furious and honest and seductive all at the same time. And he cried! It was revolutionary to me to see a man, no less one seen as ‘cool’, to show his feelings. Being able to feel things alongside him and the other characters helped me process things in my own life. It was a lifeline, getting me through some of the hardest years I’ve had so far.
And I don’t think I’m alone in that. I think that’s why people stuck with the show, and why it’s still finding fans even now. I don’t have the hard statistics for how the number of fics and members of the community have changed over time, but I feel confident in saying we’ve stayed strong, and our archive in particular is still growing.
With regards to Seeing Red, I have a lot of feelings, and some of them contradictory. On the one hand, I think the topic was an important one to tackle and, as I was saying about taboos, earlier, not left in a place of silent shame. However, I find ‘the bathroom scene’ incredibly hard to watch, and I don’t think the show handled it well at all. We never got to see Buffy and Spike properly address it on screen, and that’s a huge disservice to both the characters and the fans. I feel like the showrunners actively hurt a lot of people with where they look the arc of Spuffy’s sexual relationship, not because it got dark, but because they left it mostly unresolved in that dark place.
I don’t mind reading or writing difficult topics. A lot of the time that’s exactly what needs to be done, and leaning into the raw, difficult aspects of a situation makes the writing stronger. But you can’t half-ass it. The resolution doesn’t need to be all sunshine and rainbows, but it does need to feel resolved. To go through this huge thing as a character and an audience and then almost never talk about it again is bad writing at the very least.
And that’s where the fans have stepped in and written their own endings. Their own resolutions. The beauty of fan fiction is that it gives those most invested in the narrative the power to control it. I’ve read dozens of stories that either change things before Seeing Red, so the bathroom scene never happens, or ones that go through the motions of having the characters fully deal with the aftermath. I’ve written both myself, and I’m not done exploring the topic. It’s that important. It means that much to me. The show saved my life, and it almost feels like, in some small way, I can return the favor.
It is my firm belief that fan fiction is not plagiarism or in a moral grey area, because it only ever adds to the source material. Say you write fanfic in some circles and you’ll be laughed at, but those same circles will fall over themselves for the latest ‘retelling’ of a classic work. The double standard would be laughable if it wasn’t so infuriating.
I think a big part of it is actually that fan fiction is popular with women, and looked down upon (either consciously or subconsciously) for that reason. I could rant about it all day, but I’ll spare you.
Let me know if you want anything clarified or expanded upon.

Confidence Tips for the Painfully Shy

Given the extreme amount of societal pressure on women to look good, in a world where the definition of ‘good’ is ever-changing, and often contradictory––where beauty standards demand you look attractive, but not too attractive, lest you bring any negative attention you might receive down on your own head (because you had to be “asking for it, looking like that!”)… Given all that? It’s fair to say even looking at yourself in the mirror each morning can be a minefield.

What, then, is one to do when you’ve chosen to follow a career path in which an online presence is expected? One where you’re expected to be on at least three different social media platforms, to post semi-regularly on each, and create some kind of consistent ‘brand’ across them?

Specifically, what do you do when you hate how you look, you hate people looking at you, and find yourself in need of professional headshots?

This, folks, is the dilemma I recently faced. Continue reading

March Check In

I have two partially written blog posts saved to my drafts folder titled ‘How I Stay Organised’ and ‘How I Stay Motivated.’ They’ve been there since at least December, which maybe seems ironic on the surface––someone professing to be organised and motivated leaving something unfinished for three months, but I don’t actually think those things are incompatible at all.

It’s actually because I’ve been organised and motivated, albeit in different areas, that those posts so far haven’t been finished. Because the truth is that even the most organised and motivated person in the world (which I am most certainly not) can’t do all of the things––the things they want to do, the things they need to do, plus all the things everyone else wants and needs from them. It’s too much. Compromises must be made. Sacrifices simply have to happen.

And so, this blog has fallen a little by the wayside as other things have popped up and taken priority.

I really enjoy blogging when I’m in the flow of it, and it’s definitely something I’m going to come back to––both in general, and those posts in particular. When that will be, though, I’m not sure right now. But thank you, if you’re still reading this; following along and keeping up with me. I appreciate it, and I hope you’re well.

Getting Real

The Beach in Dundrum

I’ve long considered myself an ‘ideas person.’ I make lists and hatch plans at least every other day, but it’s not always big things. Sometimes it’s small. A lot of the time it’s maybe silly stuff. I once made a list of super long walks to go on, for example. Like Bangor to Belfast, and Belfast to Lisburn, and who even knows where from there? The world? Maybe.

Or, uh… maybe not.

I’m coming to terms with the fact that a lot of my ideas won’t pan out. Even the ones I embark on rarely go to plan, but that can be okay. Crazy misadventures are how memories are made. But also… being real? There’s honestly a lot to be said for staying wrapped in a blanket and drinking a cuppa tea. I know, I know. I sound so old and boring, but fuck it, let’s go for full honesty: life is hard, often exhausting, and so very expensive. You have to find joy in the little things. I know I’m not alone in learning that during our collective two years spent inside.

You know who didn’t really learn that, and I love her for it? My cousin.

In a lot of ways, my cousin is like me but turned up to eleven. She has more wacky ideas, more adventures, and by extension, more mishaps. Sometimes she invites me on her wild road trips and unplanned hikes. (Get in loser, we’re getting LOST!) Sometimes it’s not remotely practical to say yes to driving all the way to Galway at a moment’s notice, but sometimes… sometimes I do say yes.

“Let’s go to Dundrum,” she said to me recently. And I went, thinking all the while, “What the fuck is in Dundrum?”

Turns out, sand dunes. Lots and lots of sand dunes, in which we’d get lost and I’d get injured and, at several points, legitimately fear for my life as my dyspraxic ass tried to scale almost vertical slope after almost vertical slope as the ground shifted under my feet. It probably would have made an excellent, if ridiculous, YouTube video, if capturing the event wasn’t an extra level of stress on top of experiencing it first-hand––which it so would have been.

I love watching such videos. Sometimes I daydream about making them. Yes, they’d look great… assuming I did them right. But doing them right is actual legit hard work, and here we are back at my point about things being exhausting.

I’m not fifteen anymore. I’m not even twenty-five anymore. I can quite happily sit at home and listen to my cousin tell me of her latest near-death experience, or live vicariously through other people’s stunning videography.

So many things I’ve romanticised over the years: people and places and objects and experiences. But how much of it actually matters? That maybe sounds depressing, or defeatist. I’m not saying I’ve stopped wanting to do things. Not at all. But some things? Yes. I actually think that letting go of some dreams is freeing me up for other, better things.

Coming to peace with something isn’t about resignation, it’s about actual peace. Contentment.

Maybe at almost thirty-three, I’m finally learning to chill out.

I guess at this point in the post I should say what I’m actually saying and stop talking around the issue.

So.

I have let go of a dream. Not given up, as such, just realised that I was holding tight to this idea that I’d go back to college. To university. That I’d complete a bachelors degree, and a masters degree, and that I’d finally feel validated in my skills and education and life choices. Lord knows I’ve spoken of this deep desire to return to formal education several times on this blog over several years, but every time I read through syllabuses or yet another online prospectus I’m left with this sense of frustration. Restlessness. Dissatisfaction. This is almost what I want, I would think, but not quite. Over time, that ‘not quite’ mutated into ‘I don’t want this at all.’ Until I’ve finally landed in this place of knowing that I was in love with the idea of studying. Of sitting in visually impressive, grand old buildings, and graduating without a sense of impostor syndrome. Of feeling like I’d finally “fixed” the three years of my life that I so royally fucked up a decade ago.

And people have pointed out to me for almost as long that life doesn’t quite work like that. And I knew that, intellectually, but it didn’t make the feeling go away. Maybe it just had to happen naturally. Gradually. Whatever it was, I’m there now––the other side of the ridge, wondering why the hell I spent so long fantasising about something that was, at the end of the day, exactly that. A fantasy. Life isn’t a movie. Going back to uni wouldn’t be funny montages of goofing around the library at 3am, and drinking so much coffee my eyes pop out of my head, and coming out of all of it with straight A’s, or whatever. I don’t even like coffee.

And when it comes down to it, I don’t really want any of that stuff. Not the reality of it.

My current reality is that I have a husband, and a housemate, and a tiny dog, a job I love, a lot of dear friends, and many opportunities still ahead of me.

So, I’m leaving the sense of regret behind. It was kinda cramping my style, anyway.