At the End of the Year

Hello all! It's been quite a while since I blogged, thanks largely to the fact that I took the month of December off from serious writing and just kind of chilled out for a month. It was good and I enjoyed it; now I'm ready to get back to blogging, editing, and the general craziness that is the life I'm still trying to figure out.

Today is December 31, 2014. We are on the very last page of the year, and tomorrow we start a new book that is 2015. Today I've been taking time to look back on this past year and several things stuck out to me about what I have done and what I have learned.

• I learned what it means to be "in one's element".

A dear friend of mine had a party back in October for her birthday. It was a murder mystery party, where everyone played a character and we all tried to figure out who the murderer was and why they had committed the crime. The character I played was a woman named Finn Burgundy, the obnoxious, insufferable manager of the Moonshadow Playhouse. I enjoyed playing Finn immensely, and found myself losing some of the inhibitions I so often carry. I was loud and I was prideful and I was having a wonderful time. We broke character to eat and I just enjoyed myself. The people around me seemed to enjoy me, too. I met so many amazing people that night, and everything just seemed to come easy. I felt like I was home, making people smile and laughing until my stomach hurt. I have a hard time remembering another night where I felt so complete. Whatever it was, something made that party, that night, feel like home to me. I want to find that feeling again. I wasn't worried about what anyone thought or if I was too loud, or anything. I was just being myself and I felt like that was enough. I want to trap that feeling and hold it forever.

• I learned about my tendency toward jealousy.

I went to a camp in the summer where God really worked in my heart. However, during that time I had to battle jealousy that threatened one of my dearest friendships. It's a long story, but let's just say there was a boy who was very kind to both my friend and I, which we later realized was simply because he liked my friend. I was hurt, honestly, and I was very jealous. God also had me deal with that, and I apologized to my friend for my actions and attitudes, which she was amazing about because she's a wonderful, understanding person. Earlier on in the year, I struggled with jealousy which set a prejudice against an acquaintance of mine to the point of making me slightly hostile towards her, which she did not deserve at all. This year has proven that I am an extremely jealous person.

• I learned the reason behind my jealousy.

In all honesty, the two situations mentioned above were strikingly similar. Both involved boys. At first, I thought that I was simply desperate for love, but only today have I seen the underlying reason. It's my self-esteem. I automatically jump to the conclusion, if I feel rejected, that it is because I am not good enough and that someone else is better than me. I used to think it was harmless, but this past year it has caused hostility toward an innocent acquaintance, and me to harbor bad feelings against a friend. It was certainly not victimless. My self-esteem problems drove a rift between me and others, which I will not allow. I hope to learn to love myself better in the future, and thus prevent anyone else from being hurt.

• I did things this year I did not believe possible.

This was the year of impossible things for me. I stretched myself beyond what I thought was possible for me and with good results. Some were little things. I had my first dance. Some were big things. I finished not one, but two novel drafts.

• I faced my fears this year.

I faced heights, crowds, strangers, rivers, angry friends, and most of all myself. Thanks to God, I overcame, just like He promised.

At the end of the year, I like to look back and draw a bottom line. I look at what I've done and what I've learned and I wait for a sentence to come to mind. One little, perfect sentence to sum up the past year of my life, something I can think of and remember.

This year, as I thought, only one sentence came to mind.

This year, I was very, very brave.

As I look back and think about those words, I am almost proud of myself. Brave is never a word I would use to describe myself, but when I think of this year it's the only word that fits. I was brave. I am brave. I faced the unknown and I fought well.

I'm very nearly proud. Of course I failed this year. Of course there are things I should have done that I didn't, or things I did that I shouldn't have. There are always those things, and I aim to do better in 2015.

As far as 2014 goes, I was brave.

Dark and Light (Balance Beam)

When one looks into the greatest stories of our time, there is always a balance between the darkness and the light. There's good and there's evil, there's serious and funny, there's death and life. It's always a delicate balance that's surprisingly difficult to achieve.

As some of you know, I've taken the month off from my main story (The Fate Machine) and been dabbling in fanfiction. Fanfiction, if you don't know, is great for stretching writing techniques and trying new things. There's less pressure to write perfectly and you get to play around in someone else's world, and use their characters. It's a low pressure thing I use to relieve stress and explore new ideas.

Currently I'm writing Les Miserables fanfiction. If you're curious, you can follow my Tumblr blog. Currently I've been planning to start on January 1st of this new year, so I have been drowning in paper for the past few weeks as I try and get some of these fics written ahead of time. I've also been plotting out some of the things that are going to happen, and it got me thinking.

Empty chairs at empty tables

If you've ever read Les Mis, seen the movie, or watched the musical, you know it is a very, very, very dark story. The ending is downright depressing. Spoiler alert: everyone dies.
In the words of Flynn Rider, it's "a bit of a downer". In fact, the whole story is just rather downbeat. It's sad. First you have to deal with the oppression of the poor and convicted, then just when things start looking up the people that were supposed to change everything are abandoned to die in the street (which they most certainly do). Then, to cap it all off, there is no happy ending. Yes, two characters get married, but then another one dies and that's where we end (in the Brick, at least. In the musical, we get a happy epilogue that makes everyone cry).

Anyway, it's a sad story. But still, there is some humor. Now, in the Brick, there's not as much, but in the move musical we get some characters that we like to call "comic relief".

Enter the Thenardiers.

This husband-and-wife duo are innkeepers when we first meet them, taking care of one of the leads when she was a child. They actually play a vital role in the story, inbetween all their sleight of hand tricks and mispronunciations of "Cosette". They're meant to be the lightness, even though they're villains. From all the other characters, we only get a little bit of comic relief (Grantaire's poking fun at Marius, some sassy dialogue from Valjean, Javert's hat). The Thenardiers are well placed as a bit of lightness in all of the darkness of the storyline.

Consequentially, they survive and deliver the heavy line that is, "Clear away the barricades, and we're still there!" (Expect a separate blog post on that soon.)

Anyway, I struggle with comic relief. I am a rather humorous person, thanks to my constant melodrama and occasional witty remark, but I struggle to get that across in my writing. I am a serious, flowery writer of prose, and struggle with clever dialogue. In short, I rather fail when I write humor. I'm slowly finding my niche as far as making my writing more fun to read is concerned (blogging has helped a decent bit).

Now, one of the things I forgot when I set out to write Les Miserables fanfiction was that the story is very, very dark and very, very emotional. It is easy to get carried away.

As a writer, I like writing gut wrenching, emotional scenes. I enjoy that. It's how I pass the time when I'm bored.

As a reader, I enjoy reading those scenes, but I also want something lighter. I get tired of reading when it's just bad thing after bad thing after bad thing. It gets predictable. 

Now, one can add fluff to their story, which is fun to write and fun to read, but it gets to be too much.

My preferred method of adding humor is to drop in a subplot that's just really ridiculous. I mean, inside the plot it should make sense, but give said subplot to some really funny characters and watch how they take care of it.

Incidentally, I have been gifted with the perfect character (thanks Victor Hugo!)

Ultra awkward? Check.

Daydreamer? Check.

In love? Triple check.

I've been writing out a subplot dealing with Marius's search for the beautiful girl he happened to see, and it's really been coming along nicely. It's still an important part of the story, but it's also really humorous, largely thanks to some of the other Les Amis's reactions to the various stunts he pulls trying to find the girl again/get her attention. I'm hoping this experience with fanfiction will help me bring some more humor to my other books/endeavors.

It's a really hard balance to reach, where your novel is both serious and entertaining, but in time I hope I'll be able to get there.