Losing Faith

If you're a writer, how many times have you felt that first-draft rush? When you've just begun a new story and the possibilities seem endless? It's a great feeling, isn't it? And it never seems to last long.

The doubts come. Your characters seem flat, stereotypical. Your plot is going nowhere. You don't feel like much of a writer, and your production slows. You run out of inspiration, and you lose faith in your work.

I bring this up because I'm currently dealing with a loss of faith in my NaNoWriMo story. The necessity to produce to reach my daily word count has helped, but I'm still in a rough patch. My plot is dull, as well as my characters. I can't figure out a love interest or the specifics of my protagonist's personality. I can't even decide her age.

Loss of faith can hit us in a number of ways. One is creatively, like with writing. Another one I've witnessed in my sister. She's applying to colleges right now, and some low subject SAT scores have caused her to lose faith in her chances (despite an otherwise glowing application.) Now she's spending time telling herself she can't succeed rather than getting to work: she's lost sight of the goal.

So what to do when we've lost in faith in our work? Even in ourselves?

I've always found this one a difficult question to answer. When it comes to writing, I usually try to take a break from a piece, for a new perspective, which isn't much of an option here. So instead, I'm trying to remember what inspired me in the first place (as discussed in this post.) But I'm also trying to simply power through - to accept that not all of my ideas are very good, but still work with them. I have to tell myself that these words aren't wasted, but that they're helping me to craft a vision for this story. And generally, when one steps back from a story after some time, those words which seemed weak and unoriginal aren't nearly as poor as they felt during the writing process.

I guess my message is that it’s necessary for a writer to believe in herself, or if not, then to still power through, and believe that eventually she can eventually reach the level of quality she’s striving for.

How do you power through a project or rough patch despite a loss of faith?

Working with Deadlines

As you probably know, this month is NaNoWriMo - National Novel Writing Month, for those of you who don't know. Every year, hundreds of thousands of insane, sleep-deprived writers (myself included) attempt to write a 50,000-word draft in just the month of November.

A very good question which might've just popped into your head is:Why? Why would someone write so much so quickly? Why put so much stress on yourself?

My answer is one which I'm sure a lot of WriMos share: NaNo is fun, sure, but I need to work with a deadline.

I'm a procrastinator by nature. I love to invent stories, but writing can be a tough task when I'm struggling with translating my ideas into words. So, when I'm drafting, I need to be able to really chart my progress - and to set strict goals for myself. Otherwise, I'll never get a job done fully, because I won't devote the necessary time and energy to the task. As fun as writing can be, I always find myself needing that extra push.

I love NaNo because it perfectly meets my needs. First, it forces me to write those 50,000 words - otherwise, I don't win the challenge. (Winning is a big incentive for me.) It lets a writer check her daily progress, too, on a line graph, and has forums so writers can give and gain advice on plots, character names, and more. Plus, each writer can select his or her region, and meet up with other WriMos in the area.

Do you find it necessary to work with deadlines? Ever tried NaNoWrimo, or want to in the future?

Comedy & Korean Cuisine: Adventures in California

This post will be a short mish-mash of updates. Maybe I ought to come up with a title for posts like this. "What's Up With Christina?" Gotta work on that...

If you follow me on Twitter, you might know that I spent this past weekend in California. My sister wanted to visit Stanford & UC Berkeley, and I was dragged along.

The campuses of both San Jose-area colleges were beautiful, and the weather was great. Our hotel was very cool (with East Asian decoration), and though I missed visiting the pumpkin patch, the stay was nice.

We arrived to California Thursday evening, and woke up bright and early on Friday to visit Stanford. We spent several hours on campus, and chose to hang around the hotel rather, driving up to Berkeley on Saturday. I lay in bed and read a little of "Crossed", the second book of Ally Condie's Matched series. I'd just devoured "Matched", the series' first installment, in about two days. Unfortunately, as is the usual case with sequels, "Crossed" wasn't quite as exciting as I'd hoped. I was also iffy about the POV, which is split between two major characters.

Out of some frustration but mostly tiredness, I dropped "Crossed" to watch the vice presidential debate with my mother and sister. While watching, my mother criticized one of the nominees, and I wondered how SNL would work with the material.

This is because, lately, I've been watching more comedy. I love SNL's polticial gags, as well as Catherine Tate's Lauren Cooper sketches. (This is my favorite - it's best if you're a Doctor Who fan familiar with Tate's other LC sketches.)

I bring this up because, in the past, I don't think I gave comedy quite enough credit. Though some shows' jokes are unoriginal and occasionally perverse, there's some great material out there. I've begun to have real respect for shows like The Office, which uses understated humor based on different personalities. Comedians need to understand characters and conflict, and I think every writer could learn a thing or two from comedy. After all, humor in writing can be a very difficult thing to achieve.

Anyway. After watching the VP debate and mulling over the pros of comedy, my family headed out for dinner. My mother had done a bit of research into restaurants in the area, and right near the hotel was a heavily-recommended Korean BBQ.

Unfortunately, the place wasn't vegetarian, a fact which my mother had misunderstood. She ordered a chicken dish and my sister a broth with tofu, but I had to special order. (It can be difficult to be a vegetarian who doesn't like tofu.) I asked for a broth with dumplings - or, rather, my mother did.

While we waited, a few dishes of potatoes, rice, and noodles were set out, all surprisingly tasty. I'd only ever gone to one Korean BBQ previously, near my house, and hated it. (Maybe because the latter is owned by a Japanese family.) Then my dumplings arrived, and I tried one... and freaked out.

The dumplings' filling tasted like meat. I split open two or three dumplings, and the contents looked like meat as well. For several minutes I sat petrified, waiting for our waitress to pass by again. My mother noticed my behavior and volunteered to try the dumpling, but only vaguely said that she couldn't tell what the filling was.

I was suspicious mainly because of previous mix-ups at Asian restaurants. I knew a mix-up was possible here, too, because of my unusual order. Thankfully, it turned out the filling was only fake meat - designed to taste and look like the real thing - but I was still happy the next day to fly home, where I could stay safe heating up my own nachos in the microwave.

Thoughts on the debate? Comedy? Korean cuisine?

The Art of Translation

September 21 was a field day at my school. Classes were fit into the first half of the day; during the second, my grade led games and teams of all varieties. I myself designed a complicated game called "Primadonna", a lip-singing / dance competition inspired by the Marina & the Diamonds song.

The funny thing about it, though, is that it didn't occur to me just how complex my plan was. In my head, everything made sense - the different positions, the point system, everything. I assumed that, the game properly set up, everything ought to work smoothly.

In hindsight...

The game definitely didn't go as expected. There were mix-ups with team members' tasks, and my friend & I had to cut out the entire relay race portion. I was dying for the first 15 minutes, yelling directions and running from spot to spot, trying to devise instant solutions.

Field Day was on Friday. But over the weekend, I began to think about just where my painstakingly-planned out game had gone wrong. The fault wasn't inherent; I probably would've understood the directions just fine if I'd explained them to myself.

Hence lies the issue. I wasn't explaining the directions to a group of clones. I was speaking to groups of kids, who didn't have the patience or strict enough attention to follow my speech. And that's what every writer has to remember, while writing anything.

You have a human audience - don't make communication confusing! After all, the primary reason why people read is for entertainment. In our modern age, the public's attention span is short, and entertainment is largely visceral. Intelligent humor and irony are great, but not all writers can afford to go Infinite Jest on their readers.

So. Next time I have a grand creative vision, I'm going to try to remember the Field Day fiasco. A writer can never underestimate the power of clear, concise prose.

Another facet of the issue? Mastering voice, Often, a strong voice is crucial to a work's success - just take young adult fiction. I've put down many a YA novel because the voice was grating, a poor imitation of teen-speak by a middle-aged author.

It's never an easy task translating a vision onto the page. But writers have to do it everyday. We have to practice focus on the most minute details, to search for just the right word to describe an action or attribute. As Franz Kafka once said, "all language is but a poor translation." But it's the job of a writer to compose her own best translation... just so it can be translated, infinitely, by her readers.