Toxic Mother’s Day

Emily Penrose

When I was nine, I schemed a secret initiative I called ‘Operation Eggdrop’–breakfast in bed for my mother, planned, paid, and cooked by yours truly. It went off without a hitch–asparagus omelette, juice, and a fruit parfait. She had no idea how I pulled it off without any help and it was the best Mother’s Day ever.

I no longer celebrate Mother’s Day. My mother was physically and emotionally abusive. It’s a difficult and painful time when the ads start in earnest. The ones I find hardest to tolerate are the genetic ancestry kits targeting familial ties and obligations. I love my family and have a strong interest in family history, so the ads play often and cut deep.

When I cut my mother (who I refer to by her first name, not her undeserved title) out of my life, I naively thought it’d be like throwing out the trash. Alas, like actual trash, there are more processing steps than I’d thought. There are other family relationships to navigate, trauma to digest, and traditions to redefine. It’s an ongoing process that has meant different things to me at different times. Now that things have settled, I use my writing to share the journey and what it means to me now.

I’m gratified when other survivors have their stories featured around this time. “Mother” means very different things to some of us. For me “mother” makes me uncomfortable. The best example of this that comes to mind is the secrets shared by Postsecret. Non-traditional families and relationships are the bread and butter of Postsecret and the thing that makes me look forward to the Postsecret Mother’s Day post most of all. I look there for secrets that resonate with my experience and share the best ones with my siblings. This was my first Mother’s Day tradition, post-Mother.

A few years after renouncing my mother, I sought to honor mother-figures rather than having the day be a reminder of what I should have had and what I actually had. I bought my Grandma a box of chocolates and spent the day with her. Another new tradition.

My sister who also cut contact with our mother started a tradition called “Meether’s Day” where the day is about treating yourself, the person who really defines who we are to this day. The day consists of self-care and whatever you want with whoever you want. I’ve celebrated it a few times.

As the years go on, Mother’s Day retains its sting but fades from relevance to my experience. I look out for gifts for my Mother-in-Law but more and more it’s become a day where I worry about getting the laundry done. There’s always a bit of me that remembers Operation Eggdrop, though. The way it ought to have been. The way it was. Like it or not, it’s part of who I am now. For that reason, Mother’s Day is also an early Memorial Day for the pain and tragedy my family endured (and some continue to endure). This last piece I have yet to find a way to commemorate, as is the case with difficult truths.

Maybe I’ll listen to “Mother’s Talk” by Tears for Fears and throw away my wire hangers.

Keep Going

Keep Going

Emily Penrose

I’m going to be honest here, I just finished a different blog post which was then lost when my program crashed. The autosave wasn’t working. And I’m fighting a breakdown.

It’s not been a good day. My day job has been slowly eroding my enthusiasm and breaking down my resolve. Things keep going wrong. I’m sitting in the library with a haze of angst just out of arms reach, threatening to overtake me. Maybe it’s the fluorescent lighting or the other folks placidly tapping away on their keyboards, but I feel better for setting aside the lost writing and getting back to why I’m doing this in the first place–for the writing.

Just writing those last two paragraphs has given me more strength. I’m using my favorite stress techniques and thinking about the positive future I hope for. You never know what good things you’ll miss when you’re having a panic.

I often wish I had better advice for myself or anyone struggling to overcome panic and stress. I dislike oversimplifying complicated negative emotions, especially ones that can constitute disorders. I do not presume to have solutions for anyone, let alone myself. All I can do is share this post which I wrote while trying to ease my anxiety. It seems to have worked for a change. Perhaps the public forum is an aide for once? Darkness can’t stand up to daylight. Similarly, doing what you love (despite the panic and depression) might hijack your brain into a better space. I don’t know and that’s okay for now. Maybe I’ll handle the next hurdle better than this one–and someday I’ll rewrite that blog post.

Writing a Marathon: Slow and Steady Kills the Burnout

Writing a Marathon: Slow and Steady Kills the Burnout

Emily Penrose

Fingers hit keys like sneakers on asphalt. The words race from your fingertips. The blank white page of death is no more. All the training and preparation is paying off! Before long, you have a few thousand words logged away. Nothing can stop you now.

So what happened? Three weeks ago the project wrote itself. You were meeting every checkpoint on schedule. Now your peers pass you by the minute. You keep plodding along but you’re tired. Is it this hard for everyone?

Finishing projects, especially long creative projects, pushes against the void of the status quo. To quote John Mulaney, “Percentage wise, it is 100% easier not to do things than to do them, and so much fun not to do them—especially when you were supposed to do them. In terms of instant relief, canceling plans is like heroin.” Adult life calls more often than not, procrastination feels better than working (in the short term), and the energy you had at the beginning is a distant memory. Even on your best days, someone’s liable to pop in for a chat or invite you to dinner. It’s just this once, right?

As writers, the “no, I must exercise restraint” muscle must be honed. Cheat days be damned, the work must continue! Here is a short list of how I aim to finish the marathon.

  1. Positive Consistency – Try using a simple reward everyday you achieve your goal. I use a set of cute stamps on a calendar to commemorate a good day. This encourages me to never miss a day and doesn’t make me feel like I’ve over-rewarded myself on days where I wasn’t able to get much done, despite my best efforts.
  2. Protect your creative side – You’ve got your grocery shopping, work projects, the button popped off your shirt, and the sink at home is scary enough to inspire folklore. Instead of going over your to-do list in your head, try keeping it written down. Keep your mind unburdened while cleaning by working without music or podcasts. Try using the time as a meditation for your future. Allow yourself to dream, even during the mundane.
  3. Make your schedule self-reinforcing – I get invested in projects. A lot. It’s a lot of energy to maintain over the course of years which is discouraging. Instead of front-loading the project by binging on one task, set a wide variety of tasks in your routine. Include time everyday for creatively rejuvenating tasks like reading or working on a one-off project. Instead of zoning-out watching Netflix, play a video game with an engrossing story to keep your mind active. Listen to writing podcasts (preferably some with some humor). You can also set aside time for more critical work like planning and researching. By pacing yourself and varying your tasks from the get-go, you can maintain a healthy pace that won’t leave you wracked with guilt when you miss a day. And if you don’t have a fixed schedule, try thinking instead of necessary events in your day that you can use as reminders or “triggers” for your tasks. If you take public transit, use your daily commute as a “trigger” for your research time. If you know you’ll always be alone at home from 9 to 11, use that as your sign for dedicated writing.
  4. Less than 5 minutes? Do it! Don’t get bogged down by size of a to-do list–set aside some time to knock out quick tasks all at once for a boost of energy and a more manageable day. So often we stress about how much time we think something will take, we paralyze ourselves into wasting the amount of time it would have taken to do it straight away. You have permission to take 5 minutes to get it off your plate.
  5. Limit your portions – If you’re like me, you always bite off more than you can chew. You think, “that won’t take long!” but soon it’s 1 AM and you have a meeting at 7 AM tomorrow and you can’t live with less than 8 hours of sleep. Instead of bolting out from the starting gate, set yourself the goal of achieving the minimum viable product each day rather than the full release. For me, this meant breaking myself of the revise-by-chapter method in favor of the revise-by-scene method. This allows me to take smaller chunks of time during the day to get some work done rather than waiting so I can work for hours all at once.
  6. Go with the flow – If you’re not feeling your scheduled goal, don’t force it! If you’re feeling inspired, let yourself go where you are called. You’ll be happier for it.
  7. Own yourself – “A writer writes.” If you can claim the task of writing, you are a writer. You don’t have anything to prove to anyone but yourself. If you are writing–no asterisk, no caveat, no gatekeeping–you are a writer. Write it down where you can see it (I have it in my Twitter bio) and believe yourself. You’ve got this.

Historical Romance: Or, Kissing is Gross

Historical Romance: Or, Kissing is Gross

Emily Penrose

Sweaty brows. Heaving chests. Lusty looks. Bodices testing the patience of the local seamstress. Not my bag, but I can’t blame anyone for liking what calls to them.

For as far back as I can remember, Historical Fiction has been my favorite everything (movie, books, et cetera). Historical? I’m there. Not historical? What is it then, some kind of art piece? It’ll never catch on. Even now when I read a contemporary piece I tend to place the setting and characters in the 1950s. That counts, right?

But Historical Romance never caught on with me. Only in adulthood have I realized how much of this genre focuses on romance, to the point of being synonymous in some crowds. I grew up in a conservative home in suburban Utah (I’ll let you fill in the blanks), but every summer I visited my aunt in Las Vegas who is an avid, voracious, insatiable reader of romance novels. She had an entire room of bookshelves brimming with busty ladies and polished abs. My family treated these novels like a shameful family secret, though. My dad called them “smut novels” and we were told never to open their pages or look at the beautiful, glossy covers. While these books (like all books) tantalized me, I followed my religious upbringing and never looked inside, thus perpetuating the shame and derision lobbied on these novels.

Now I’m a very grown-up adult woman of twenty-eight years and, after moving away to the big, sinful city (Salt Lake City), I objectively recognize the value these novels have. Female pleasure and desire is something to be praised and embraced, not ridiculed and mocked. Romance novels serve a needy market, desperate for content.

So why do I find them so boring and repulsive?

I find myself torn over the fate of my beloved genre. There is so much demand for romance, the market for any other historical novel seems niche. I can barely put a kissing scene in my writing, let alone a love scene. As I write, I navigate the baggage from my past telling me any degree of “heat” in a novel makes it sinful and should not be read under any circumstances; yet I recognize there is a constant demand for more kissing. Are my motivations grounded in personal taste or am I reflecting the “smut” ideology of my childhood?

A few months ago, I checked out an audiobook from the local library. A romance audiobook (gasp!) intended for a road trip. It was Georgian (check), about a deaf woman (check), and had lengthy descriptions of every character’s clothes (double check). I turned it off shortly after the prologue due to the gross historical inaccuracies, which were so upsetting they almost caused me to swerve into traffic. The only kissing scene I listened to was not “hot” by any definition–in fact, I found it viscerally disgusting. No, romance is not the genre for me, regardless of my background. Until the romance market balances the “heat” with the history, I cannot be a fan.*

That said, I admire anyone who can read as many novels as my aunt does. Countless numbers of books purchased, read, and stored with gorgeous covers to excite me for their potential, rather than their content.

*Note: If you are aware of a historically accurate (within reason) romance novel, send me a message on Twitter! I’d love to read something that proves me wrong here.

A Defense of Cursive Writing

Emily Penrose

“Oh no, you write in cursive!”

“What does that say?”

“Can you even read that?”

“I always print, who needs cursive?”

“You know it’s not faster than printing, right?”

 

The public extols the death of cursive. News outlets like Vox tout cursive education as an example of outdated educational standards and wasteful spending. Young Adults recall their antiquated youth where spindly teachers taught success hinged upon effective cursive—a future that was not to be. And, for the most part, these criticisms have a point. Educational standards and techniques are outdated. Printing is more intuitive and is just as pragmatic as cursive.

But I refuse to surrender my beloved cursive script to the wastes of time like the French Revolutionary Calendar–a failed experiment forced upon the masses by an educated elite. The much-maligned cursive is so much more than that.

Cursive handwriting means more to me than just ink on paper. As a child, I viewed cursive as a rite of passage, a way to know I was an adult. It was like learning to spell words and shattering your parents’ last hold over you. Reading and writing cursive meant you could hold your own with the adults. I knew my printing was terrible (it still is) so I told myself, this is how I’ll write until I die. I threw myself into cursive and, unless I’m filling out a form which restricts me, my writing flows in the same loopy letters I learned at seven years old. I challenge myself every time I sit down to write a journal entry or take notes in a meeting to improve my form and clarity. In my historical research, I learn new techniques from writers long dead. I marvel at the studied artistry of even a novice hand. The pen lines flow from thick to thin, sentences laid out as straight as a plumb line. Every writing session is more than banal mechanics; it’s tied to the artistry of a word well executed or a lesson in control, and so on.

Unlike people in the past, I did not spend my youth perfecting the art in the hopes of gaining a lucrative clerical job (no one has time for all that rote practice anyhow). In a world where handwriting alternatives abound, how can cursive hope to compete? We have awkward touch keyboards and photographs to convey meaning. Better yet, a mechanical keyboard (because who doesn’t want to push 100 WPM?) In the age of computers, who needs cursive?

I take this question one step further–in the age of computers, who needs handwriting at all? After school and college, there isn’t much need for most Americans to handwrite outside of niche opportunities or enthusiasts. You take a picture on your phone rather than describe or type your shopping list on your memo app. Modern convenience aside, I submit the human condition needs that connection to the physical page. Cursive’s inherent artistry and difficulty is what I find so enjoyable. Print script from a word processor fills the pragmatic writing applications—why not use cursive for flowing ink and wrinkled page?

I worry about the future students who look at cursive script and think “that’s too complicated to understand so I won’t bother.” Cursive is the pure joy of writing in the everyday. The feel of crisp paper in a newly-bound notebook and using your hand to craft something tactile and ephemeral elevates the simplest activity. You can do it every day and elevate the mundane to something satisfying. I still remember some of the best cursive letters and words I’ve ever written (I once cut a beautiful ‘l’ from my math notes in high school). How many of us can say that about a tapped-out note?

I’m sure some enjoy their printed letters as much as I enjoy my cursive. As I type this into a word processor, I cannot deny the pragmatism of clear, digital text. I only hope my cursive is respected, remembered, and allowed a stay of execution.

Forgotten Founders

Forgotten Founders

Emily Penrose

Students and fluent speakers of ASL are well acquainted with the origins of ASL–it’s as ubiquitous as George Washington and that damned apocryphal apple tree. But how often do we think of those early students who laid the foundations of Deaf culture?

For the uninitiated, Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet, reverend and resident of Hartford, Connecticut, met his neighbor’s young daughter Alice Cogswell while she played. She had lost her hearing at a tender age and her tutoring had been less than successful. Gallaudet sat with Alice and taught her to write the word “hat” in the dirt.

Alice was an intelligent young lady who only needed the opportunity to learn in her native language. After a lengthy fundraising campaign, a very long stay in Europe, and with the invaluable help of a brilliant deaf Frenchman (future blog post topic), Gallaudet opened the Connecticut Asylum for the Deaf and Dumb (later the American School for the Deaf) in 1817.

In researching Cacophony, I read through hundreds of ASD student names and, even more humbling, their original compositions. Alice Cogswell may have been the first enrolled and the most famous of those early students, but each name rang true to me. I saw them enroll and graduate, I read the accounts of who paid for their schooling and their own words. They wrote on topics from the mundane to the fantastic, current events and history. As I read, I found myself highlighting half the page and calling my partner over to share their charming submissions.

The mystery of these students’ lives compelled me to write a novel about the average students at this extraordinary school at this exciting time in Deaf History—before the Oralists and their ilk took over, when a deaf person could exist as an individual worthy of respect, albeit far from equal.

I traveled to Hartford in September 2017 to continue my research. In practice, it was a pilgrimage to the people and places who inspire me most. In the Old North Cemetery of Hartford, Connecticut I stood before Alice’s impressive white marble headstone. Standing there on that hallowed ground, my awe was tempered by disappointment. Alice’s grave stands, a testament to a woman who died young after inspiring a revolution in education. But I had come to Old North Cemetery in search of a different young woman named Caroline Bedford, a girl of sixteen from New York who was the first student to pass away at ASD in 1824. After searching for hours, I concluded her grave had been lost to time (likely in the last century). Her classmates wrote of her funeral and the school mourned her loss. Reading their accounts, I could not help envisioning what it must have been like for Caroline and her classmates.

Approximate location of Caroline Bedford's grave
Approximate location of Caroline Bedford’s grave

Caroline and the other students of ASD are just as important as Alice. They laid the groundwork for the Deaf Culture we know today, despite being almost (some entirely) lost to history. Their perseverance and spirit live on in the fabric of American Sign Language and Deaf History. Their experiences, while not the famous trans-Atlantic journey of Gallaudet and Clerc or the tender moment between Alice and Gallaudet, deserve the same degree of focus and importance. Yet Caroline’s burial place is now a blank field in the cemetery and every student of ASL knows the name Alice Cogswell.

I seek to honor every student at ASD through my writing. While Cacophony touches many facets, my inspiration will always be found in the lists of real people who lived at ASD and those who never left.

“Look! A man wearing a dress!” – Father’s Day story

Emily Penrose

When I was about 5 years old, my dad told the greatest dad joke. He’d be driving the family through our neighborhood and would say “Look! A man wearing a dress!” My siblings and I would look around and laugh with my dad. We loved when he would say this (it was like an absurd scavenger hunt) but my mother absolutely hated it. “Where? What are you talking about Tom?!” She actually got angry since she couldn’t see the man wearing a dress either. Since he would do this on a semi-regular basis to make us laugh, it became a problem with my mom and she ended up getting so angry as to forbid him saying it ever again.

I never really understood what was going on since I was so young, but I really missed the man wearing a dress joke. At one point, I thought the joke referenced a nearby business with a kilted man for a mascot. A few years ago, I asked my dad what the joke was.

“Oh! It wasn’t the sign,” he told me. “We had a family in the neighborhood with the last name ‘Manwaring’. When we would drive by their house, I’d point at their mailbox and say ‘Look, a Manwaring address!’”

I was too young to read at the time so it took 20 years to be in on his brilliant pun.

5 Camp NaNoWriMo Stress Techniques

5 Camp NaNoWriMo Stress Techniques

Emily Penrose

If you’re like me, you’ve been feeling the pinch of Camp NaNoWriMo. Yes, it’s not necessarily a 50,000 word manuscript in 30 days, and yes, it is a goal set by yourself. But is there a better way to practice writing? Setting an achievable, quantifiable goal with a hard deadline and outlining the project in definite terms? What a great way to get your foot in the door!

But if you’re like me, you don’t know when to reign it in. I usually set a crazy goal, stress out when any problems arise, and despair when I can’t achieve what I wanted to. While setting a crazy goal is a topic for another day, everyone can benefit from some proper stress techniques (myself most of all).

1. Notice Your Stress

Sorry to go there, but here we are. You can’t fix what you don’t realize is broken! If you can’t tell when you’re stressed, try thinking back on a time that was very stressful. Everyone handles stress differently so really think about yourself. How did your body react? Did you feel nauseous or tense? Emotionally numb? What was your brain doing? Running a mile a minute, in a circle around your head? Nothing at all? Did you feel compelled to do something you don’t normally do, like binge on junk food or react inappropriately to a loved one? Were you unable to make regular progress on projects you thought you could handle? Pay attention to these responses when they pop up in the future. It takes practice, but it’s worth it!

It’s incredibly difficult to do, but gaining self-awareness is pivotal to your mental and physical health. Stress can be a killer in the long term-plus, who wants to live like that? It’s infinitely simpler to keep stress at bay than to diminish it once it takes over your life. Pay attention to your body and respond accordingly!

2. Set the Stage

You’re sitting down to log your daily word count. In this moment, you have the opportunity to create a successful session or waste your time spinning your wheels. This is a special time and it deserves respect.

  • Why not light a candle at your work space?
  • You can play some relaxing music. I find that finding a radio station (online or otherwise) that does not play ads or songs with lyrics helps relieve the stress of finding what to listen to next. This keeps me writing longer and helps me relax as I do so. (My favorite writing music is lo-fi YouTube radio).
  • I also like to have a glass of water nearby and some hand lotion.
  • Set up your work space to be ergonomic to reduce the chance of long-term pain. It’ll help you stay focused, too!

Your productivity and your well-being are important. When you risk a stressful activity, you can prepare beforehand and set yourself up to succeed. If you treat it like a special-ish occasion, you can avoid the buildup of stress over time.

3. BREATHE

I wish I could take credit for this next one, but this is from a stress workshop I took in 2015. It helps so much! I use this all the time.

When you are experiencing stress, you tend to have shallow, rapid breaths which reinforce your body’s stress response. How do you break the cycle? Regulate your breathing!

The 4-4-4 method resets your breathing cycle. Anytime you need to relax or calm down you can follow these steps!

  • Breathe in slowly through your nose for 4 seconds. Make sure you fill your lungs and expand your chest as you breathe.
  • Next, hold that breath for 4 seconds. Feel the muscles in your chest stretch.
  • Slowly release your breath through your nose. Make sure your belly muscles expand as you breathe out.
  • Repeat! I usually repeat 4 times–the 4-4-4-4 method!

I use this when trying to fall asleep after a busy day, during rush hour traffic, at my day job, and while writing. It’s incredibly useful!

4. Self-massage

Even if your muscles aren’t tense, you’d be surprised how much a slow touch can help your mood.

  • If you can afford it, I suggest investing in a massage cane (google it–they’re excellent for your back). If you can’t afford one, you can try using the back of a chair, desk, or a ball to relieve the tension.
  • Lightly brush your fingers along your arms and palms
  • Take a minute to firmly and gently massage your neck and shoulder muscles. If you find a very tense area, take a few minutes to focus on that area. Take it slowly and apply heat if necessary.
  • I highly recommend massaging your palms and fingers–we so often overlook them and it feels so nice!
  • Rest your hands on your waist and feel for any tension.

You don’t need to be an expert here–you’d be surprised what a little bit of attention will do. You may also be surprised how many tense areas you find! If you are interested, you can also look into acupressure and self massage techniques from the experts. There are stretches you can do without equipment, wherever you are. You can even make this part of the stage you set and do some stretches before you write.

5. Self-Care

This should go without saying, but we all need to hear it and we all need to say it. Take care of yourself! If your’e making yourself miserable, your work will suffer. What’s the point in all that work if it’s not going to turn out how you like? Investing in yourself is investing in every aspect of your life. If you are feeling overwhelmed or highly stressed, take action!

  • Take a long shower or bath. Use your fancy bath salts. Put on that face mask. Heck, use a foot bath if you need to!
  • Go for a walk or a bike ride. Physical activity will release pent-up energy and tension.
  • Think positively. No matter how dire things feel, it will work out.
  • Find someone to talk to. I don’t mean about your stress necessarily, I mean just talking. You can listen to how their day went or just chit-chat. Get outside yourself and think about something and someone else and return to your work refreshed.

We’re almost half way through Camp NaNoWriMo–let’s finish strong! But we all need to make sure this is the start of a long habit, not a one-month binge writing session. Take care of yourself and make this a sustainable opportunity where we come out better on the other end. Good luck!

A Walk Through Salt Lake City

A Walk Through Salt Lake City

Emily Penrose

I’ve always been fascinated by old homes. More recently I’ve expanded this interest to how entire neighborhoods and cities evolve. Yesterday, I took a two hour walk through Salt Lake City, where I live.

I was walking on a sidewalk on an overpass when I saw an old home from the 1800s, now used as a construction company office. The bricks were Utah-brick orange and you could see the charm of the old farmhouse through the construction equipment on the front lawn. I wondered if they had neighbors where the freeway now was. I wondered who had lived there and what they would think of the city’s progress.

Continuing on, I entered some residential neighborhoods in South Salt Lake. A street with simple ramblers from the 1940’s – 1950’s had two contrasting houses I found fascinating. One house had decades-old green paint peeling off the wood siding. The house next door had a shiny SUV in the driveway and the sparkling polish of renovation just under the 50’s-style window awnings. Their bones were so similar, they were so close in proximity, yet so different. At the end of the road I saw newly-constructed three story townhouses.

I was almost at my destination. As I walked towards the older part of town, I went back in time again, this time to the first half of the 20th century. I cut through the parking lot of a Mission style school, now a library. It looked like it belonged in San Diego but here it is. Large Craftsman style mansions lined the road, some better cared for than others. As I walked, I tried my best to peel away the numerous 2nd story additions and layout changes to see what the house had been when it was built and what the street was like back then. It must have been a much quieter street than today. I passed another very old farmhouse by another freeway. Bed sheets covered the large bay window. It was beautiful.

I must have looked odd, leering at people’s houses. I didn’t care. There’s so many stories all around us and I think more people should take the time to read them in the walls and streets where they live. I’m not sure what my takeaway from this stroll through the neighborhoods of my city. At least I can say I have a new appreciation for the amount of diversity and change in relatively small geographic area.

When is a Project “Done”?

When is a Project “Done”?

Emily Penrose

When I was in high school, I drew a portrait for an art assignment. I worked on that portrait for weeks. When I received the graded drawing, I was disappointed to see that I did not receive full points (gasp!) and should have increased the contrast for full effect. “A simple fix,” I thought. “I can do that this summer and proudly display it on my wall.” The project stayed in my to-do list for years. Thirteen years later, my wall is blank, the face is still missing an eye, and the contrast remains lacking.

This trend is nothing new for me. I’m currently re-sewing a kimono I made in 2008. I’ve even gone back and done slight edits in elementary school diary entries. For being obsessed with history and preserving documents in time, I rarely take my own advice. I like to think that I’m able to learn something from my past mistakes and am better creatively for trying to produce a product I can stand behind. Generally, if I was pleased with the product at the time it was created I let it be. But if I have regret about the outcome, nothing is sacred.

In college, I wrote a dreadful historical fiction short story for my senior thesis project. The story suffered from confused characters, non-existent themes, and shoddy research — among a host of other problems. When I thought back on every element of that short story that I wrote for my history degree, I was ashamed. I knew I could do better than that. My story deserved better than that. So after a few years I dragged it out, dusted it off and got to work again. Six years after the fact, that project became my debut novel, Cacophony.

As writers, we must look forward to the next project at some point. Progress demands new ideas, and staying mired in the same topic for decades is no way to develop your skills; however, I do find there is merit in taking things slowly and using your acquired knowledge to revive worthwhile ideas. Old projects should not be something you’re ashamed of–rather, they can be an opportunity to prove to everyone, including yourself, that you are capable of something better. If the idea is sound enough, it deserves to be presented in the best way.

In the end, if the idea moves me, I never let it truly die. It stays with me until I have the skills and ambition to do justice to the project. Sometimes, it stays a regret where I only learn from the experience… but if it needles at me long enough, I may pick it up and try to improve it. Either way, I learn from my not-quite-successes.