The word no one can say but everyone searches for

Year of Living Authentically: Finding home

So apparently its December. I'm not sure what happened. When I started typing a month ago, there were pumpkins, and when I just looked up, there are lights and evergreens everywhere. It is very disconcerting just how fast everything has happened this year.

Which is why, my lovelies, it is paramount that you live all moments authentically. As the most heroic version of yourself. If the characters in our stories have taught anything, you get nothing without blood, sweat, and tears. It's hard because it's real. Living Authentically is not for the faint of heart.


I really like this quote from Dr. Brene Brown. It speaks to me as a writer and as a mother who is constantly giving a toddler options for dinner. According to my daughter, the answer to all life's questions is cheese.

Choices test who we are, shape who we are, and prove who we are. A good writer will always give the hero a choice to be ordinary or extraordinary. A good writer will always give the villain a choice to be good or evil. The choice sets each on a path that will never be the same. There are no do-overs (except in those sci-fi's- but that might be another post for another day).

The universe is one long buffet line of choices and, man, sometimes that seven layer chocolate cake looks amazing, but we know the harder path, the better path, should have some veggies and meat. We can't eat cheese all the time. I repeat, Bean, we can't eat cheese all the time.

When you get tired, it is so much easier to take the easy way out, be nice instead of being kind, placate to  stop the insanity. We let parts of ourselves get stepped on or step on other people because we are not in a good place ourselves. And there is nothing more tiring than looking at a holiday schedule and trying to figure out how you are going to bake pies,  get family photos, and still make it to that cocktail hour for work.

In moments when I know I'm not being awesome, yes it does happen, I stop and find my happy place. Find something that reminds me of who I am. I don't think that querencia needs to be a Fortress of Solitude, but if you've got one, hey, live the dream. I think it needs to be a touchstone. Something that reminds you that life is hard, precious, and totally worth the slower path.

I hope in this multi-part rant, you have found some truth. I have grown in this past year, trying to follow my own tenants of Authenticity:

Know your balance
Tell the truth, especially to yourself and especially if its funny.
Be kind, not nice.
Find others who speak your language.
Read Well and Often.
Find your Home.
Keep calm and Live Authentically.

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Amanda Arista
Author
www.amandaarista.com

Can't Post: NaNo-ing!!

Year of living authentically: My writer brain's favorite time of year.

Its NANOWRIMO time!!!

National Novel Writing Month is an online effort to increase creativity across the world by sponsoring a challenge to write a 50,000 book in a month. Yep. 50,000 words in 30 days.

That is roughly 1700 words a day.

Depending on your writing speed that is 2-4 hours a day working on a novel. Or 12,000 words a weekend.

Its a lot of writing, but it does something to my writer brain. I love the accountability of it all. I love that I can look at my region to see how we are doing in compared to the other states and countries. That I get pep talks from other NaNoWriMo authors. I get to contact other writers in my area. I get to see there are other crazy people out there like me who love the process of creating something new (though a bit slap-dashed- NaNo is not about perfection). I get excited about the creative side of writing versus the business side of publishing that can seem like a void that makes your eyes water if you try to look at it for too long.

I've been participating in NaNoWriMo for years now. Diaries of an Urban Panther was a NaNo book. But NaNoWriMo isn't for everyone. Its intense and you will forget to eat and YOU WILL LOOSE SLEEP!! And people will think that you are now a robot when you say "Have to go NaNo!"

It works for me. The challenge jump starts my brain and gets it going again. Gets my fingers on the keyboard and my brain into that creative sweet spot where perfection and self-doubt don't exist. Reminds me that I am not alone in the quest to understand my world through story.

If you haven't heard of it before, click on the link above. If you have heard of it and think that we are crazy, we are. If you've been itching to maybe try your hand at the creative life, please do! Your story is important.

Have to go now: NaNo-ing!

To the Writers Cave-- see you in 30 days!

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Amanda Arista
Author, Diaries of an Urban Panther Series
www.amandaarista.com

A Writer's Worst Fear

In continuing with our new members theme's of what scares them, I'm going to jump on board and for my Year Of Living Authentically talk about something that scares the hell out of me: writer's block.

And we are not talking stuck in a plot hole or writing yourself into a corner with world canon.

 I'm talking about actually having nothing to say about anything.

Sam Jinks is awesome and creepy and awesome

Which I have been currently wading in knee deep for the past moth.

These are probably the first decent words that I've written in weeks. Everything else has been fluff with no real purpose. Wanderings, but not journeys.

Since I'm not on contract for anything (probably not helping the matter), I didn't realize I hadn't been writing. I only noticed when my hubby was like, "What have you been working on at night?" and the only answer I had for him was "Reorganizing my Pinterest boards and online shopping." But hey, my boards look gooooooood and I am totally ready for winter.

So I tried the normal stuff to get out of writer's block. I went to watch a movie, only to discover that everything I like to watch is totally not kid-friendly.

I tried just being outside to detox from my fluorescent-lit lifestyle, but allergies are terrible right now and I sort of like breathing through my nose and not itching all over.

And so I thought, Reading! I'll read more, only to find that nothing in my library even looked good and I have about 0 hours in the day to read and have recently discovered that audio books put me to sleep. So the normal routes to tempt my muse weren't/aren't an option right now.


So then I was like, Why don't I have anything to say? There is so much crap happening in the world right now. Why don't I have anything to say about it? (Yes, writers talk to themselves this much).

I had to go back and read a few of these posts to get the answer. Writers are hermits, but they need input so they can output. Writers are introverted souls, but they have to say YES sometimes. Writers have to experience things and I was just sitting at home, hiding from the heat and pollen.

So I'm saying YES again. I'm doing a book club tomorrow. I'm hosting parties for good causes. I'm volunteering to help my local chapter of NaNoWriMo with free lectures.

I am starting to Journey again and hopefully in the chaos of teaching and speaking engagement and the Ordeals that are the holidays, I will find something, I will see something. I will feel something that I have something to say about and have the courage to say it.

Wish me luck!

Amanda Arista

Ode to my new idol

Year of Living Authentically: How I love Felicia Day, let me count the ways.

I have a weakness for celebrity books. Tina Fey, Amy Poehler, Mindy Kaling. If you haven't read Aziz Ansari's Modern Romance, you need to now. It is the best thing I have discovered since Mary Roach's Stiff. They are short sections and funny, and when I have to put them down to start with life again, I don't have to go back to my note card with all the character names to remember what is going on.

I was BEYOND excited when I found out through the Geek and Sundry feed that Felicia Day had written a book as well. I pre-ordered my copy of You're Never Weird on the Internet (almost) that day.

If you don't know who Felicia Day is, go Google her. I'll wait. She is the Queen of the Geeks. She's a gamer, she's an actress, she's a business woman. She's sort of from Texas. She is smart and you can tell that she works really hard to make sure there is a medium for the Geek/Gamer/Girls in this world. She also got to hug Jensen Ackles on multiple occasions on Supernatural. This is only one of the many reasons that I have followed her career and wished to be more like her.

Or what I thought I knew of her. Not surprising there is a lot of stuff in the book that fans never saw on Eureka.

I wanted to write about her not just because she is awesome personified with red hair (as it should be) or that she unabashedly loves to reads the kind of books that we like to write here at Supernatural Underground,  but that in her book, she describes with complete detail what it is like to live with anxiety and depression and creative pressure and enough self doubt to fill a dump truck. Don't get me wrong, parts of this book totally read like a kid's guide to being a geek in the 90s (of which everything is painfully accurate to how I lived it). But as she describes her fight to make a niche for weird, she doesn't pussyfoot around the not fun stuff of being a human with brain chemistry that is sometimes not your friend.

Her talking about her anxiety, her putting it a book that hit the NYT bestseller list (another reason I want to follow in her footsteps), means that she isn't hiding anymore. She isn't trying to shun it away as something that is not a part of her. She has embraced it as she has embraced her weird. She is living authentically. 

Her being authentic to herself, her putting honest words down on paper helped me understand that I am not alone. Other people wrote bad fanfic when they were teenagers and they went on to write better things. Other people have had life-crippling bouts of depression that made them loose lots of weight, but they are better, happier, and completely rocking this life thing now. I hope others read her authenticity and it helps them out as I hope that me being honest about writing and motherhood will help others, or at least my daughter. Insert butterfly effect metaphor here.

But back to Felicia.  

I related to her playing a quirky girl named Vi on Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

I totally crushed on her as Codex in the web series she wrote, The Guild.

I might have wanted to kill her for getting to play Charlie Bradbury in Supernatural  and for introducing me to so many online games during her Flog.

But for being a champion of living authentically, I love her more than ever.

#alwayskeepfighting

YOLA!

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Amanda Arista
Author, Diaries of an Urban Panther
www.amandaarista.com

Alone is not Lonely

Year of Living Authentically: A writer is never alone.

I was a kid who spent a lot of time alone, but looking back, there are very few times I felt lonely. Even as early as third grade, I would choose to be writing or reading, rather than socializing and that's probably why I don't have the suave social skill of my little brother who loved to be in the crowd. I had the people in my books and the people in my head and a family who took me to the library every week. 

As I grew up and life got decidedly less fun, I would retreat into the world in my books and the people in my head. While others were boozing away their Thursday nights in collage, I was curled up with a spiral notebook creating the world that would become Diaries of an Urban Panther. I have characters in my head who have been with me longer than some friends.

I teach as part of a writing program and we are always talking about building your writing tribe and finding others who speak your language. I talk about the synergy of writing with a group of people and the relief that comes when someone else gets a 'Call to Adventure' joke. How finding others who share your passion for writing is one of the best things a writer can do.

But fundamentally, writing is an alone process. It is you and your story and maybe a cup of coffee. Writing isn't lonely. You have characters who are making you as you are making them, but the process is not a communal one. You have experiences that you crafting for others to live, but you can not share in the creation because it is creating you as you go. The writer you on page one  is not the same writer you as the one who finishes the manuscript. You have been changed. You know more about yourself than you did on page one and that change is just as important as the one on the hero went through.

Writing is an intrinsic force that almost demands you shut yourself away from the outside world to focus on the internal one. Writers are stereotyped as hermits, because hermitting is a natural reaction to the need to form a cocoon around yourself so change can happen.  I haven't met a writer yet that doesn't fantasize about cabins in the woods or cabanas on the beach where they can just "be" with their stories.  

I advocate both. Find quite time. Find a ritual that takes you to that internal world and spend lots of time there. Get your story on the page before you share it. But then, find flesh-and-blood humans you can talk to this stuff about, who you can share this process with, who understand the desire to hide under a blanket because change is hard: writing is hard. Find those who understand that a first draft is a new creation, fragile and still hardening its wings, and will respect it as they do their own. 

So when you see that girl in the coffee shop with her over-the-ear headphones typing away at something, instead of making a big show of 'why does she even come here if she's just going to take up a table on a Saturday afternoon,' give her a knowing smile, so she doesn't feel lonely, but let her be alone. She's already got a table full of friends, and maybe an enemy, and there is magic happening right before your eyes. 

Until next time, YOLA!

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Amanda Arista

Author, Diaries of an Urban Panther

www.amandaarista.com

Apology Letter to my Muse

Year of Living Authentically: Does the Muse exist and does she hate me?

First off, HAPPY FOUR YEAR ANNIVERSARY TO ME AT SUPERNATURAL UNDERGROUND! Yes, it was four years ago today that these wonderful women took me under their paranormal wings and let me blog with them. Still feel blessed for all they have taught me.


Now. Back to Business.


Dear Muse, 

First off, I know that you exist. I can feel you dancing around in my brain and pushing me to create stories that answer questions and explore feelings and bring forth goodness and safe places of escape into the world.

But about last weekend.

I know that last weekend I did something crazy and that is why you are not speaking to me now. I know that I spent three days hold-up in a writing retreat. I know that you were with me until the end, and by the end, we were both spent. There was far too much coffee and far too little sleep. There was good times and bad times, and then there was wine.

You let me marinate in the world I was creating,  just living there, the two of us. Let me figure out the questions, the who's, what's and where's. Let me dance with joy when we figured out the missing piece that locked everything into place. And then, we wrote like a zephyr to catch all that magic created between us, all the answers to those questions, all the incidents that tested our hero's limits until we were both saddle-sore and exhausted.

Current Pretty Boy Bait

And now you have gone and my brain is dry. I have nothing creative left to give and every idea seems like the wrong one without the passion you brought to the page.

So the real question is do I wait for you to come back willingly or will I have to bait you once again with pretty boys and pretty words and pretty sleep with pretty dreams.

Do I follow Maya Angelou's advice and just keep writing. Just keep working until you are tempted to join me once again, to capture the magic once again. Tempt you with the rhythm of my tapping across the keys of my computer until you are back beside me once again.

For all that writing is hard work and persistence and just looking at that sentence one more time, I miss your sly smile that makes me forget about the toil and do it for the joy. That drives my fingers a little faster and keeps me up past my bedtime.

I remain yours faithfully (but seriously now, I'm on a deadline),

Amanda Arista
www.amandaarista.com

Its hard to type on an emotional roller coaster

Year of Living Authentically: When life happens.



April was a little bit of a crap month. Something good would happen, something bad would happen. I'd hear great news from a friend, and then I'd hear terrible news from a friend. I thought I finally found a nice rhythm at work and had everything settled for a while and then my boss dumps this potentially huge thing in my lap with nothing more than a wave of his hand. I got a killer idea for a book and then discovered that something just like it was bought not a week earlier.

It was one of those months that it was impossible to even slow down enough to really ask: Am I being authentic? Is this what I really need to do? Will this take away from another part of my life and am I willing to sacrifice it?

Nope. It was pants on fire all month.

But I survived. I made it out the other side and now it is May. An opportunity to shake it off, restock my wine fridge, and hopefully take a nap.

As I was surviving the month, I was writing up a storm. I was unabashedly using my writing as a way to deal with the ups and downs and I wrote the hell out of my newest project. It reminded me of another reason that I write: escape. I can't experience everything there is to know in my life, so I seek the experiences of a million other lives to live, even for an hour or two. Or sometimes I just don't have the energy to experience my own life, so I need to borrow someone else's for a while

Especially in his fine company of writers on the blog, we create the worlds and welcome you in. We create the dragons and you help us fight them. We create the sword and you pull it from the stone with us. We are there with you, on these foreign planets or hobbit shires because we are looking for something too. And I thank you for letting us create that.

YOLA Authenticity test: Why do you read? Adventure? Escape? The thrill of first love? The passion of battle? What worlds do you escape to?

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Amanda Arista
Author, Diaries of an Urban Panther
www.amandaarista.com

The messy art of life

DON'T FORGET ABOUT THE 'NEVER HAVE I EVER' GIVEAWAY- COMMENT ON THE APRIL 1st POST TO BE ENTERED!

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Year of Living Authentically #3: What a writers life really looks like.

After last months post, I got a few comments about how self-aware I was and how put together I appeared. And I laughed. I, like my current manuscript, am a work in progress. I just happen to know where my plot lags and what my filler phrases are.

I like to look at what other writers' spaces look like, where they do their creating. Marissa Meyer talked about the 10 Things that Lived on her desk. With nice neat pictures, she told of the ten things that she needs to write, that help her get her juices flowing.

It was beautiful and I think wistfully for that kind of space. So, to face my fears and let you guys know what one writer's life really looks like, I thought I would show you where I write when I'm at home. My mother is going to kill me, but I wanted you guys to know the truth.

I do have an office with a lovely desk that I picked up on craig'slist with all these neat ideas about refurbishing it to make my office into some gothic red and black den of magic and creativity.  This is what it actually looks like, including a brief cameo by the Bean because she likes Mommy's office supplies too.








I did manage to paint a wall red and get a bookshelf of all my writing books in one place in the house, until my collection over flowed and now the rest of the pile is on my nightstand by my bed.











This is wear I actually end up writing when I'm at home, the kitchen table. Tonight, it is still cluttered from a weekend away, mail, and cookbooks from the grocery trip we just went on. But now that the Bean has gone to bed, Mommy gets to unpack what she needs to be creative: notes, a computer, a hot beverage (tonight it is honey chamomile), and some books on story structure. And my current book-o-the-moment- Blood Rites by Jim Butcher.

I'm sure that the above pictures might make some of you itch. And yes, some days I will actively use decluttering to avoid writing when my characters aren't talking to me, or I'm just about to do something horrible to them. But most nights, I just recycle what I can, put away what can be within four feet, and get on with the writing. Clutter has never killed anyone. Yet.

I believe in the notion that a first draft of a novel is figuring out what you are trying to say, and the second draft is figuring out how to say it. The first pass is heart, the second pass is head. The same is true for life. Your mess helps define what you find important and what isn't. You collect things that are important to you, and your second pass, your spring cleaning, is when you get to appreciate what happened or learn from what didn't happen.  My clutter is cookbooks because I love to cook for my family. We still haven't fully unpacked from our annual family trip to San Antonio. And there is a box of books that I need to put on a bookshelf that I haven't had time to buy yet because I love stories. Life is in this clutter.

Life is messy. Life is layers of things that can stack up next to you and make you feel small. My life has become a daily juggling act of art and motherhood and work and marriage. Some things are going to get dropped from day to day. But maybe they slide off to the pile until a moment when you can pick them up and have time to appreciate them again.

Authenticity test: When you are doing your spring cleaning, take time to think about the mess. Appreciate the mess. Let it tell you a story that you can love or learn from. And SNAP, the job's a game!

Until next time, LIVE AUTHENTICALLY!

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Amanda Arista
Author
www.amandarista.com

How I do it: Equal parts Passion, Truth, Love, and Coffee

Year of Living Authentically #2: How I do it, a quick and dirty delve into the mind of one writer and what makes her tick.

This month I thought I would talk about the question I get most often from mothers: How do you do it? How do you write and have a job and be a mom and still manage to have time for a marriage? 

I didn't have a real answer until recently. I'd joke about my blood stream being equal parts coffee and white wine, but that's just me not wanting to really figure it out, to find out the truth about what makes me tick. 

I was filling out a marriage personality test with my husband when I finally realized HOW I do everything that I do. The scores of the test suggested that I have unnatural combinations of personality traits or that I was double-masked and so distorted by my life choices I didn't know who I was. According to the world, I'm crazy. 

But the truth is: I'm an artist, and an educator, and mother, and a wife. I am The Breakfast Club personified. And here is how my brain works. 

I have a full-time job- I coordinated several student programs at a major university. It is stressful and unpredictable, and I am REALLY good at talking to people, listening to what they need, and helping them. So it increases my confidence. 


I take that confidence and I teach creative writing to adults who have stories brewing in their souls and I get to help them percolate it and I LOVE the light they get in their eyes when it clicks and their story is now out in the world connecting to others. So that increases my passion for storytelling.  

And I take that passion and I write as much as I can because writing is breathing. I have things to say and questions to ask, and pain to experience, and joy to create. I want to know the depth and breadth of love and life, so I write to explore my truth. 

And I take that truth and I express it to my daughter in any way that I can. I know when I smile at her it is out of true happiness, and when I laugh, it is real laughter. When I am with my family, I am with them 100% because I am not longing to be anywhere else but with them. Because I know the work will get done, and the chapter will get written, and it will all still be there tomorrow and who can worry about anything when a block tower must be built. 

There is my circle of life (que Lion King Theme). 

Does it get out of whack: Oh yeah. But now its easier to figure out which wheel needs to be greased. If I'm working too much, I feel it in my QT with the Bean. If I haven't written in a while, I can't concentrate on work. If i don't teach, I end up lecture my husband on Calls to Adventure. 

Does it mean I get less sleep: Oh yeah. But I am happy with my choice. My wheels are greased with coffee and white wine. I'm not denying that. Coffee is the flavor of my soul. But what fuels me is passion, and being true to myself, and family time.

So take that personality test who thinks I don't know who I am- I do. All four of me. 

Authenticity test #2: What fuels your passion? What makes you stay up late at night? When was the last time you treated yourself to it? Don't you think its about time?

Until next time YOLA!!!

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Amanda Arista

Author
www.amandaarista.com

S'more truth about sex, please!

Authentically means:  “true to one's own personality, spirit, or character.”

Year Of Living Authentically #1: The Truth about Sex

We are all grownups here and it is that time of year where hearts and flowers prevail, so I thought I’d talk about the one thing that truly peels off all the masks we wear. How’s that for starting off the YOLA!

The number three thing I get asked by non-writers is when you write about sex, are you basing it on your own experience?

First off, please don’t ask me about my private life. If I don’t talk to my mother about it, I’m not going to talk to a stranger about it.

Secondly, the truth is: I’m not the one in my books having sex, the characters are.  And contrary to popular belief, I am not my main character. However, superpowers would be cool.

I LOVE crafting the love story for my characters almost as much as I love crafting the demons they have to defeat. I look at their insecurities, their hang, ups, their flaws that have prevented them from becoming a hero already. Finding someone who loves them in spite of all this what really inspires me. And then I put them together, throw a bunch of obstacles in the way, and see what happens.

I write with the truth that love is seeing the inner, ooey-gooey marshmallow center of another person and embracing it in a graham cracker and chocolate hug. It is seeing what the other person hides from the world and accepting it. It’s knowing yourself enough to understand how you fit perfectly with another person. Add a little heat and, Voila! 

Speaking of heat, now back to the sex part.  When I’m writing this scene, it really is my main character informing the scene. How are they experiencing it? How would they sense it? What words would they use? I’m am just documenting it for other’s enjoyment. When the moment of fruition comes, I’m just as happy for them as they are, or scared for them, or exposed with them because they are their own little beings of thought and words and I want them to be happy, eventually. 

Wow. Some of that sounded really kind of dirty. But it’s the truth. I want everyone to experience this type of truth in their life. That is what romance writers are going for, informing that experience of finding love, of rekindling love. Finding all the paths, and shapes, and tastes of love to hopefully help you find one that it true to your spirit.

Authenticity test: Think about the thrill when your favorite on-screen/on-page couple FINALLY had their first kiss. Buffy and Spike? Booth and Bones? Why did it make you feel that way? Because you longed for the same kind of adventure? Because it helps you relieved some love you'd experienced before? 

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Amanda Arista

Author

Amandaarista.com