So, a while back, Joe's birthday present to me came in the mail.
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| A fact: I love Joe's handwriting a lot |
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| Another fact: I love the covers of each of these books |
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| My pinky is partially blocking the little smiley face that follows "Trust yourself!" |
I may have cried a little bit. Okay: I did. I cried a little bit. I'm a very emotional sort of girl. All of the comparisons to victims of demon possession and fictional serial killers? I don't know where people get those from. People who argue that whole, "you're vicious but also totally pretty so don't stress" thing? Weirdos, all of 'em.
Ignoring the slightly tragic state of my manicure (which is of course gone now, since this was taken on the day the book arrived) and focusing on the book itself, you'll notice that A) It's written by Kristin Cashore and B) Kristin Cashore has signed the inside, advising me to "trust myself." What you might NOT realize upon first glance is that A) Kristin Cashore is a perfect angel of YA Literature and a source of inspiration for me personally and B) This message hit me right in the heartstrings, and the reverberations shook the tears right out of me.
"Hope! Shouldn't you trust yourself without needing to be told? Why would that message resonate with you?"
A surprise: I don't always do the things I know I should.
Not a surprise: I finished the book within two days (actually took me rather a long time, really, but I guess I was a bit out of the habit and it was 539 pages long) and it was completely and utterly fabulous.
Recently I had a minor identity crisis that involved me questioning whether I was really meant to be a writer and whether I would ever truly be able to manage anything and if I wasn't a writer then what WAS I, and who was I, and why, if I wasn't meant to write, did I feel so horribly lost and sad when I left off doing it for a long time and why did it hurt me so much to say that I hadn't read anything new in such a long time? Because I am a writer, and I can write something if I just sit down and force myself to take the time and do the work, and I am allowed to do that and be that and anything else I choose, because I have a right to happiness and my own singular truth, and I might not be the most brilliant or capable person but that does not mean I am stupid or incapable, and a whole lot of other things that this book and Kristin Cashore's reminder--whether designed for me personally or signed into every single book handed to her that day, seeing as to how it fits well into the theme of Bitterblue--reminded me of.
That, and the whole story got me thinking in terms of stories and my own and how it differed and how it might be similar and what I wanted to be able to say to people with my writing and how very much I simply wanted a plot that made sense, and how if I wanted that I was going to have to be precise enough and diligent enough to produce an actual map of the world that my characters lived in.
And of course it reminded me that Kristin Cashore had a blog and that I could follow it and read up on any advice or personal experience she had to offer. And it made me incredibly grateful for the gift that her and Joe had given me, and reminded my that however different or similar my mom and I might be that I was grateful also for her anger and her advice and her desperation and sadness and every other thing that makes her my beautiful, ridiculous, adoring and inspirational mother.
Anyway, I should stop writing now before this entire blog post devolves into on long run-on sentence and William Faulker rolls over in his grave in agony over my bastardization of his art form or whatever.
Not a surprise: I finished the book within two days (actually took me rather a long time, really, but I guess I was a bit out of the habit and it was 539 pages long) and it was completely and utterly fabulous.
Recently I had a minor identity crisis that involved me questioning whether I was really meant to be a writer and whether I would ever truly be able to manage anything and if I wasn't a writer then what WAS I, and who was I, and why, if I wasn't meant to write, did I feel so horribly lost and sad when I left off doing it for a long time and why did it hurt me so much to say that I hadn't read anything new in such a long time? Because I am a writer, and I can write something if I just sit down and force myself to take the time and do the work, and I am allowed to do that and be that and anything else I choose, because I have a right to happiness and my own singular truth, and I might not be the most brilliant or capable person but that does not mean I am stupid or incapable, and a whole lot of other things that this book and Kristin Cashore's reminder--whether designed for me personally or signed into every single book handed to her that day, seeing as to how it fits well into the theme of Bitterblue--reminded me of.
That, and the whole story got me thinking in terms of stories and my own and how it differed and how it might be similar and what I wanted to be able to say to people with my writing and how very much I simply wanted a plot that made sense, and how if I wanted that I was going to have to be precise enough and diligent enough to produce an actual map of the world that my characters lived in.
And of course it reminded me that Kristin Cashore had a blog and that I could follow it and read up on any advice or personal experience she had to offer. And it made me incredibly grateful for the gift that her and Joe had given me, and reminded my that however different or similar my mom and I might be that I was grateful also for her anger and her advice and her desperation and sadness and every other thing that makes her my beautiful, ridiculous, adoring and inspirational mother.
Anyway, I should stop writing now before this entire blog post devolves into on long run-on sentence and William Faulker rolls over in his grave in agony over my bastardization of his art form or whatever.
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