Archive for November, 2010

A Ridiculous Leap

Author: Erika

Nov 10

I quit my job yesterday.  I’ve been mulling it over for a little while, but I gritted my teeth yesterday and tendered my resignation.

I love my job.  I love the company, my co-workers, the work, everything.  They’ve treated me so well in the almost three years Ive worked for them.  When I first started my tenure there, I was working part-time helping out with packaging orders in the shipping department.

They encouraged me to grow, however, and eventually I went on to launch their company blog, we dabbled in Twitter, I set up their Facebook page, I dipped my toes into the marketing world, did a little photo shooting, and ate a whole heaping ton of cake.  I really can’t imagine ever having more fun at a company than I did with Bottle Your Brand.

So why did I quit?  Why am I turning down what is virtually the gold standard of stay-at-home-mom positions?  To take a chance.  A gamble, really.

I’m going to try to get published.

No, I’m not crazy.  Or foolish, thinking, like Tobias Fünke of Arrested Development that I can get a pie-in-the-sky dream like becoming a published author off the ground.  Instead, I’m trying to keep my word.

Five years ago when I told my Dad I was getting married, he worried that marriage would be a distraction and that I’d drop out of college.  I assured him I wouldn’t, and went on to graduate with honors.

When I broke the news and year and a half ago that I was pregnant, he worried again.  He feared that I’d let myself become subsumed by my new role as a mother.  That I’d abandon all my goals and, as such, end up in a bad spot later in life.

I thought really hard about what he said, and decided that I needed a goal.  So I made one: I told my Dad that my goal was to get published before the age of 30.  In owning that as a goal, I implicitly declared that I would do everything in my power to make it happen.  I’m not the kind of person who relinquishes goals lightly.

This NaNoWriMo has really ignited a spark in me.  My novel is pouring out like water, and Wes assures me that it’s coming along nicely.  The only problem has been finding the time to get it written.  Things are falling by the wayside, and try as I might, I just can’t seem to cram everything into my life and make it all fit.

If I want to get serious about my writing, practicing and honing it and growing as a writer, I need time.  I’m obviously not going to let my responsibilities as a wife and mother go, which leaves my job.  Wes makes enough to support us, which gives me the freedom to take a ridiculous leap.

In a time of economic uncertainty, I’m letting go of a fantastic job to pursue my dream of someday seeing my name on a book cover.  I’m either a hero or a lunatic, and I have absolute faith that time will reveal which.  It’s possible that I may never get published.

The only certain thing, though, is that I will never get published if I don’t make space in my life to try.

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Her Son is Gay?

Author: Erika

Nov 4

So, this post, originally written by Sarah of Nerdy Apple Bottom, is blowing up all over the Internet.  It’s hit a nerve (in a good way) in a lot of people, and there’s all kinds of love and support flowing around for her.

Stupendous!  I love it when the Internets redeem themselves and throw kisses instead of rocks!

The only problem is, the post is a bit disturbing.  At least to me.  It’s called “My Son is Gay” and it’s about how her 5 year old son, who loves Scooby Doo, decided to dress up as Daphne for Halloween and how Sarah got some flack about it from three moms at her son’s school.

Regardless of how you feel about moms giving one another their opinions (which, we all know, is kind of a national mom past-time), this post is odd for a couple reasons.  First,  she declares outright in the title of the post that her son is gay.  Then goes on to equivocate that maybe he isn’t, but she doesn’t care.

I’m all for a gripping, interesting post title, but this just seems to me to be drumming up shock value for the sake of creating drama.  If, as she claims in her blog post, cross-dressing on Halloween is an innocent childhood right, then how and why does it make him gay?

Second, she’s posting her child’s face right there on the Internet in his Daphne costume with a giant headline above his face that proclaims that he’s gay.  How’s he going to feel about that when he grows up?

I’m all for supporting your kids.  But this seems soap-box-y to me more than truly supportive.  In point of fact, she’s become the person her son was dreading in that she’s labeling her son as gay because he wanted to dress up like Daphne for Halloween.  Her son expressed concern that people would make fun of him (perhaps draw conclusions from it?), and she’s gone and proclaimed his sexual preferences (he’s 5, remember) to the whole world.

This just seems like nonsense to me.  We’re applauding her for what, exactly?  Calling her son gay?  Just because you say you’re fine if he’s gay doesn’t make it ok to unequivocally declare to every single stranger in the universe that he is.

I don’t write these things to be cruel, but I have genuinely ask: what are we applauding her for doing?  Letting her son dress up like Daphne?  Equivocating Halloween cross-dressing with being gay?  Getting annoyed by other moms?

You’d have to be a fool to think she wrote that post out of anything other than love, but I’m not sure she did her son a service by writing it.

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Filed under: Opinionated much?

NaNoWriMo 2010 Status Update

Author: Erika

Nov 2

I fully admit that I was nervous about this year’s NaNoWriMo.  Working part time to write content, keeping the cobwebs off this blog, raising and loving a squirmy little baby, running a household…My plate was already full before I crammed writing a novel in between the green beans and rice.

Thankfully, though, it’s going really well so far.  I’ve written 3,777 words, and I’m not worrying about refining and perfecting as I go.  Some of my sentences are terrific, some of them are merely passable.

What I’ve learned, however, is that you can spend a lifetime editing but the creation process itself should be a simple opening of a lever to let the ideas come out.  Spending too much time fixing and tweaking stifles the ideas, and then you end up with writer’s block and an unfinished, albeit promising story.

My story this year is about two people, a sheltered female recent college graduate and Iraqi-born Oxford-educated man, who meet while climbing Petra and take a photo together.  The woman goes on to become an innocuous housewife, but the man has been a double agent for the US government for years, providing them with intelligence on the plans and machinations of Al-Qaeda.

Al-Qaeda cottons on to the fact that the guy’s a spy, and search his apartment.  They find the photo of him standing with the woman, and assume she’s involved somehow.  They kidnap her with the intention of torturing information out of her, and it’s the man’s job to rescue her.

Mistaken identity!  Suspense!  Possibly an In-N-Out burger!

The thing I truly adore most about NaNoWriMo is meeting and learning more about my characters.  I was writing my male protagonist’s back story today, and I was surprised to meet him.  He just kind of unfurled his story for me, and I was learning right alongside my female protagonist.

Ask me how I’m doing in about two weeks, when I’m mired in the doldrums of the middle pages and wondering what in the heck I’m doing with my life, but for now things are going well.

Fellow novelers: How are you doing?  How can I encourage you?  Want me to do a soft-shoe rendition of Hello, Dolly?  I so will if it’ll make you smile.

Non-fellow novelers: How’s it going in general for you?  Looking forward to Thanksgiving?  Seen any good movies lately?

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Filed under: NaNoWriMo
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