But this time around, I didn’t want to do that. I wanted to take some time on my characters, starting with my main character and writing about them with more depth instead of just hoping they’d take shape during the writing. I wanted to feel like whatever actions they’d take were based on themselves – because character is plot – and have some secret memories that wouldn’t necessarily make it into the book.

So January was all about writing the backstory of main character. It was a great way to get to know her before just starting to write stuff down and make it up was I went along.

February was a weird month. I went on a business trip and lost almost a week of writing time, and had some other stuff going on during the rest of the month. It actually turned out for the best because I wrote up on one of my secondary characters, and I have a little more idea of where to take things.

March, hopefully, will be more about fleshing out the rest of the characters – even if it’s a few surface aspects. Maybe I might just start outlining! (I know, so exciting.)

Anyway, 2012. I’ve been saying for the past few years that my 30′s have really been a rollercoaster, and my 34th year on this planet has been, well, pretty much a rollercoaster. But with the end of the year that I’ve had, I can see it just being a set up for a great 2013.

Basically, 2012 started off terribly, was interesting in the middle, almost veered off course, and is ending awesomely.

Of course, a lot of that had to do with work: I was writing solely for Established Online at the beginning of the year, started writing for Dirty Hard Drive in March, was laid off in September, and started copywriting for a marketing company at the end of October. And here’s the thing: I’ve always tried to work in interesting places, and I have to say that writing for porn was a lot of fun, but at the same time reminded me there are a lot of fucked up things about people – and that it’s not up to me to fix or judge them. People are just trying to do what they think makes them happy, and so am I. And in all actuality, that applies to everything at this point.

So yeah, this was another year of learning about myself. I feel like I’m starting to figure things out more, but there are parts of myself that I wish I had figured out better – like how to overcome nagging body issues without it feeling like I’m being bitter or mean about myself. Maybe 2013 will be more about the ego? We’ll see.

Speaking of egos, and inspired in part by this Cracked post about hard truths, I think 2013 will be more about tooting my own horn in trying to show the world what I have to offer that makes me awesome. Some of the cool stuff I did this year included:

• Getting interviewed in CityLife
• Getting on the slam team despite blanking out at finals, and going to Charlotte for National Poetry Slam for the first time in 6 years
• The team winning a bout at Nationals for the first time ever
• Getting paid to perform poetry
• Finally finishing a revision of the novel and sending it out
• Collaborating with Roz for an art piece and the piece getting sold

Again, this was another year where I didn’t read much (I at least got in a novel a month average), but here are my micro reviews over on Delicious.

This was also the first year I went without cable, and learned to love Netflix. I have to admit, the first month was a little hard, but knowing I was saving $100 a month that I really didn’t have made it easier to deal with. With the new job, I may go back to having cable (I mean, HBO? I miss you), but I’m not in any special hurry just yet.

Speaking of this new job, I love it. Finally having a career path with my writing has taken me to some really awkward places, but mostly it’s taken me to some really cool places. And the job I have now is not only challenging, but it’s fun. And I don’t feel like I’m completely out of place. And, really, it’s nice to start eating more of what I like to eat, as well as having food for Fonzie instead of having him eat before I do. And it means I’m starting to pay off debt, and get back to having a life again. I feel like I have options now – like what do I write next?

And what is that, exactly? I’m starting on the next novel! I’m not sure if I’ll finish it this year, but I’m starting on characters and outlining for a book based around a short story I wrote for the “12 Stories/12 Months” project from 2010. The past 2 years have seen failed projects, and it’s been frustrating. So I don’t really have a goal to finish the book per se, but I at least want to have a good portion of it done by the end of the year, and post some of the updates here.

On a really (too much information) personal note, this was the first year I used the cup for my monthly visitor, and HOLY CRAP. So much better. Change it in the shower in the morning, change it at night before bed, done and done.

Here are some of the Bigger Things™ I learned this year:

Loyalty is Key (for Saving Up Your Karma Bank)
This year saw friends leaving: some of them were just friendships that had faded into some new kind of distance, some were just letting go of negative people in my life. And the Evil Chick Brigade had a reunion this year, which renewed my love for the 4 greatest girls in my life. We are a growing brood, and (mostly) happy, and the end of the year has seen us all smiling. And I couldn’t ask for more than that. Except in 2013, I’m asking for more, for me. I’ve seen friendships strengthen and grow this year, meaning I’ve had to ask friends for help when I didn’t want to, and I’ve helped friends when there was no one else there. I know what I have to offer to the world, and 2013 will be a year to keep testing that. And I know that I will pass with flying colors. (And hopefully have a flourishing relationship with a man as a result. Let’s do this.)

Speaking of men, I did have a couple of dates this year. But the biggest thing I’m learning is what I like and what I don’t like. And knowing what I have to offer may help in moving things along in the relational department next year.

Mean What You Say (aka Keep the Passive Aggressiveness to Yourself)
Going through my Facebook wall from this year, it was really weird to see that I took charge on reducing the amount of passive-aggressive behavior in my life. From inadvertently having a public beef with a person in the poetry scene to just hiding and unfriending people who think that posting quotes is going to make people change their behavior, I’m starting to turn into Murtaugh from Lethal Weapon: “I’m too old for this shit.” Seriously. Just say what you need to say and don’t make assumptions about how you think I feel about things. Tell me what you want to say, and don’t fuck with me. I have too many friends to love to focus my attention on you and your bullshit. I hate to put in those kinds of raw terms, but holy crap, people really do need to grow up.

Patience
Like I said, I went on a couple of dates through OKCupid this year, and they weren’t the most comfortable things in the world (when are they, really?), I feel better about the process. I’m open to possibilities the older I get. But another aspect of the work hunting this year had me really impatient, knowing I had a lot of skills to offer, and that I was really good at what I did. I kept busy during the off times by working on the first novel, and sending it off around the same time that I got the job offer in October, so kicking off a new year with new work is invigorating. But I had to stay patient in order for those things to happen. I feel like I’m going to be hitting 35 feeling better about the direction I’m going in, and that patience isn’t a bad thing. Not at all.

And I think one of the biggest lessons I’ve learned this year was to just let things be what they are. You put yourself where you need to be.

And here is where I am. On this little rock, floating out in a big old universe. I have a picture of a Martian sunset on my laptop. We are an amazing, fucked up race of beings, free jumping from space and find more and more cool neighbors out there. I had this video on repeat since the summer:

Music wise, it was a decent year. Two friends of mine put out albums: one that was a Kickstarter spoken word CD, the other a self-produced hip-hop album (that I ended up writing a one-sheet for). I went to a couple of shows, but because I was so up and down with work, I couldn’t really afford to go to a whole lot of events (even going to Flogging Molly this year was comped). But here are some of the tracks I blasted this year.

Needless to say, I’m very excited about 2013. I feel like it’s going to be a year that will see a lot of good surprises. Stuff that I never thought would happen. Things are gathering. And I’m going to be able to spread it around. Oh yeah.

And as always, if you are reading this, I hope that 2013 is surprising for you, too. (In a good way, of course.) Even if you’re reading this and think I don’t care just know that “Forgiveness is the release of all hope for a better past.” And I raise a glass from a moment that was still on mind most of this year, from 2011:

Ever since I attended Clarion in 2007, I’ve had this strange interconnection with being a poet who slams along with all the lessons I learned in those 6 weeks in San Diego with a group of amazing writers and instructors.

After the 2006 Slam Team, I took some time off from competing and just concentrated on organizing as well as writing on fiction. I was still writing and performing poetry, but I was also still revising my novel and wanted to write more stories in prose form – not to mention that there was some local slam drama developing, which just made me want to work on my short story game.

So with the push of writerly friends and my boyfriend at the time, I applied to Clarion in the early part of 2007 with one new story that I’d written in about a month and another that was a birthday present for a friend a year earlier.

To be honest, saying that that point in my writing life was a transition would not state how absolutely fucking lost I felt then. I essentially gave a scene I’d worked for 4 years to help build to people who were more concerned with shine than substance, running LV Slam into the ground. I felt like I had to keep re-writing my novel, and short stories? Pshaw. That’s rich. There was something in me who believed in my fiction writing, but because I’d been so focused on novels, I wasn’t sure if applying to Clarion was even going to be worth it. But I did it anyway, ’cause really, I had nothing to lose. I was so used to getting rejection letters from agents and publishers that it was going to turn into another piece of paper in the rejected pile.

Somehow, I got into Clarion. While I was there, I wondered what I was doing there. Even 5 years on, I still have no idea why they let me in. Maybe because I could complete my sentences? I don’t know.

Being in that group of people, during that time (I’d just turned 29 before I went there, so the whole “Turning Thirty With Capital Letters” was definitely on my mind), and writing so much in those 6 weeks really reinforced my love for the word, regardless if it were a breathtaking short story, a riveting novel, or a poem that made you collapse on the floor. This was what I was Good At.

Fast forward to 2009, when I was still involved in the local poetry scene but was really worried about slam and whether or not anybody wanted to be involved. I’d written a bunch of new poems at the end of 2008 into the beginning of 2009, so I was productive, but wasn’t really feeling the urge to jump slam back up again. The people who took over after I bowed out really burned the sucka to the ground (which, really, even at the time I was totally okay with – it was my first real test to see if I believed in The Tower theory of destroying to build back up). You just have to let things burn to cinders before figuring out how to make a golem with the ashes.

So I was hosting Seldom Seen Poets with Hannah, and folks were asking me if I was interested in starting another slam in Vegas, which I wasn’t sure about. Eventually, I ended up semi-retiring from hosting the weekly reading, but didn’t mind the idea of hosting a monthly slam if there was enough momentum to get it going. But I was not interested in competing then. It wasn’t that I hated slam or didn’t think I was good enough, but I just wasn’t feeling the fire to compete. You know, like we all go through our phases.

(Also, I got my first publishing credit in 2009, and it was a milestone that I felt like took forever to hit. But it was my second major milestone with fiction that I’d hit after Clarion, so slam was really the last thing on my mind.)

So when folks helped me start a season once a month at Seldom Seen in the late summer of 2010, my heart was broken – hard – from a breakup, and I needed something to focus on, so hosting and organizing a monthly slam was probably the best thing for me to do – I could get out of the house, get inspired to write my truth (even if people wouldn’t hear it), and it was something that didn’t feel like a chore to do. (Because let’s admit it – while I love my poetry family, a weekly hosting gig can take its toll on your sanity after awhile.) So I hosted the monthly slam and didn’t have any problems (other than flotsam and jetsam from the breakup).

Since then, I’ve gone through different phases depending on what I feel like writing – and oddly, depending on where I’m at in my work life (or lack thereof). There are times when I’m writing poetry and performing and that’s where my head’s at. Other times I’m working on a short story or novel because I’m just not really feeling poetry.

But there are those 6 weeks – between the end of June and the beginning of August – where I’m in both fiction and poetry realms, because I’m usually working on something for the Clarion Write-A-Thon and either coaching or practicing for the slam team. And it gives me a way to intertwine both of these kinds of writing.

One of my biggest problems in writing short stories is that I tend to write very pretty prose but that doesn’t seem to have a plot. Maybe I’m trying to write some kind of emotional plot in there, but readers tend to want action-y plots, so my stories just fall flat for folks. (And I got into Clarion how again?)

But the thing about writing performance-oriented poetry is that you’re forced to show action – whether that means using more action words, or literally making your body do actions onstage. One of the best things I was reminded of at Clarion was that when you’re describing action, try to be as specific as possible. And being able to take that to revising poems is just as important – if not more so.

You have to pick your words carefully. In everything. I even take that advice to work projects. Pick your words carefully. It’s all in your intent, and the words you choose better be the intent.

—

I used to love the water, you know.
You think I loved fish before,
but let me tell you something
about how a face looks
as it stares at you from the lake bottom,
as if waiting for you to revive him.
My cousin’s face is perfect surprise;
his hands sway in the water
as the death kicks in.
Déagol, cherished cousin,
he has my mother’s eyes,
that pale fishscale blue.
We are River-folk,
so when we fished on my birthday,
I was expecting presents
that could fill mines, or mountains,
my treasures that would make dragons jealous.
But Déagol stole the present I wanted.
When something is shown to you,
so beautiful
that even the mighty Eagles flee from it,
the thing feels like a gift,
bound in a bow of fire, forever.
It feels like you could live forever,
it feels like the fish
swim right into your belly,
filling it and filling it,
it feels like
you could command the world
in the blink of an eye.
There is a flash of fire
down in that water –
and how the fish dart around it
like stars in the night sky,
never noticing the beautiful
that must be kept.
And it must be kept.
And love is what draws the stars
to the ground.
Love is what draws our fingers,
our hands, our thumbs
to press voices into -
and then he falls
silent in the water.
And now he’s in the way
of my bait and my fish –
and the fish will not bite
unless I grab them first.
You see, fish flesh
melts in your mouth like magma food.
They squish and squirm
like worms in the dirt.
The fish are slippery, and fast,
and they dart around in the darkness
quicker than shooting stars, or fireworks.
There is a shine down there somewhere,
brighter than fish eyes
staring at me from the deep.
He won’t get it. It’s mine.
I dive into cold Autumn water
as my fishing rod goes overboard.
I will love this shine
until it becomes a part of me.
I will cover myself in this shine
so that the world reflects back on itself
and I am invisible
except for my screams of pleasure
that sound like dying,
I will –
I almost drown in the shafted light of the stinging water,
and my present shines like a polished sword,
cutting through the muck and mud.
And
I surface, almost screaming in watery delight.
I feel my fist aflame.
Where is the shore?
Where can I take this thing, this ring,
catch a brace of conies
and look at the fire inside the fire?
I must find the earth,
I must find a place amongst
the drought and the dust and the shade.
There –
the softest bank of grass against my cheek.
Who watches me now?
Whisper the power to the bugs if you must,
to the tiniest fingers grasping for
invisibility.
I don’t need the boat.
I don’t need the river.
I don’t need my cousin’s hand
waving at me from the deep.
I will disappear into a family
of ghostly shadows.
I will become more.
I will become.
I will.
I will.

So let’s start with talking about blogging. We’ll ramble and see if this goes anywhere.

The first blog I ever had was at Diaryland that I’d started back in December of 1999. December 15th, in fact, now that I go back to the old archives (old entries that I copied and hand-coded – loooong before being able to export/import)  and look. If you want an idea of what Diaryland looked like back then, check the Wayback Machine.

Oh crap! I found it (or what’s left of it)! Oh, Pickywitch. I had a lot of good times on AOL IM with that particular handle. Funny.

…Man, I can’t get caught up reading those old entries. Not right now, anyway.

Yes! I was at Diaryland for about a year and a half. I’d started writing there just to have something to do on the Web – I’d kinda had a version of a website that I’d started sometime in 2008ish on Geocities and AOL’s site building thing, and was looking for an outlet. Diaryland was great because it had a social element where you could join these rings where other people in that ring could click and read your diary. I’d made a couple of Diaryland friends, but nothing too hardcore. Glancing at the entries, other than the few moments where I talk about Mom who’d been gone 2 years in January of 2000, it was pretty basic college fodder – bitching about papers, pining over my ex, talking about playing in a band. 1999-2000 was my senior year, and so I was buckling down into my Independent Study about death as well as getting my Senior Contract in order. In between bitching about stuff, I posted entries that reflected my Independent Study, as well as talking about experiences that were happening around that time (I had a friend commit suicide as well as a close friend’s grandmother [who was like a surrogate grandma to me] pass from cancer).

The first half of 2000 was pretty intense, to say the least, now that I look back on it. I’d graduated and came back to a lot of employers telling me no to jobs even though I was fresh out of college and willing to learn. I was coming back to the poetry scene I’d been on the outside of for 4 years while I was in California for college. I was just starting to think about what I wanted to be. Jesus, I still am, now that I’m turning 34 this year.

Anyway, with the advancement of technology, being able to have an online diary was easier, and now they were being called blogs. Diaryland just wasn’t cutting it, so I copied all my old entries into a text file and decided it was time to move on and actually get real about a platform and domain. And in February of 2001, I’d started writing for Las Vegas CityLife, so having a Diaryland seemed a little… immature. So I moved over to the Blogger platform in June of 2001 after following Neil Gaiman around California during the American Gods tour.

At that point, the blog became part about writing about music, writing about my nights out in Vegas at that time (which were mostly about going to shows and drinking, mostly at the Boston), as well as Dad’s declining health. Between the move to Blogger in June of 2000 until December 2001, my writing mostly focused on those three things (as well as the occasional new poem, talking about my newish nephews, and making vague references to a local musician I was sorta-kinda involved with at the time).

About September 2003, after getting back from my first National Poetry Slam, I joined LiveJournal, since that’s where all the poets were, and it was a better social network that I’d dealt with before: all my friends’ posts were on one page, you could have private entries where you could edit your lists, and you could quietly stalk other poets that you had crushes on. That’s right, I used to do that. But the bad part with Blogger around 2003? No cross-posting. Man. I can’t begin to tell you how much that sucked. So I was on the lookout for something that would let me cross-post but was also free. It took a few years.

I tried all different kinds of things on my Blogger blog (other than moving servers, which was ulcer-inducing back in like 2004 or so): making my own audioblog, writing freestyle poems and pasting them, trying to do a photoblog. I changed the theme on whims.

2005 was the first writing gig where I got to be paid for blogging. Of course, I was writing about reality shows and gambling, so it was a little dubious, but it was kinda cool to say I was a semi-professional blogger. And writing almost daily content was a challenge, especially with the way the government was trying to change the laws as well as the whims of the online sportsbooks.

Personal blogging on Blogger just wasn’t doing it for me, and technology was catching up, so I finally moved over to WordPress in 2006, and have been with it ever since. It lets me cross-post everywhere, and I imported all my old Blogger posts, which has been weird to read.

How do I feel about blogging? Mixed, and I mean that.

In one sense, I can say I’ve been blogging for a very long time – 13 years is a long time, especially in Internet years. I feel like an old maid that way. But at the same time, it’s not like I’ve had a large following, or got any kind of recognition for being on the Internet or blogging for over a decade. It honestly feels like it sounds good to prospective employers and maybe old fogies who would know about the days of Ye Olde Internet. Even now that I’m back to being paid to write blogs and articles, it’s a blessing to be able to say that I’ve been able to get to know platforms and be able to write for that long. It’s okay to be an old fogey that way.

In another sense, it’s actually nice to be able to go back and feel like I have a sense of history about my life, even if in these little snippets that I don’t recall that often. I have somewhere to go that lets me remember, and that’s a good thing.

And I know, I know… every year I keep saying I’m going to write more. But then work gets in the way, or life gets in the way, and it’s easier to update on Facebook or Twitter… and this collects dust again. So maybe this year I’ll actually go out of my way to blog more, actually go out and search ideas to write about. We’ll see. I’m iffy on personal deadlines.

But I’ve got some writing to do.