Month: February 2007

Warm Again, and Willing to Admit My Mistake

Nova Ren Suma

February 11, 2007

The heat’s back on, and I am relieved to admit that I was wrong—apparently such things can be fixed on a Sunday. Who knew?

It’s nice to be wrong sometimes. I’d like to be wrong about all my cautious pessimism when it comes to my writing career, too. I’d like to be wrong about work, wrong about how long it would take to move to California and what I would do with myself once we got there, wrong about never being able to pay off our student loans, wrong about winning the lottery. I always assume people think very little of me—maybe I’m wrong about that, too! This could be the start of many humbling experiences…

I won’t say anything more—I don’t want to be, you know, wrong.
Someday

Nova Ren Suma

February 10, 2007

I live for somedays, for promises kept, for dreams come true, for the resignation letter and the U-Haul truck. I believe in the windfall, the leap like a bungee jump, the how-could-it-hurt, and then after, when I fall and hit my head and it does hurt, the how-could-it-keep-hurting if I try again?

My pictures of the future have such brilliant colors—if you saw them, you’d understand.

This is cute when you are young: such idealism. When you are not-so-young it becomes alarming, pathetic. My somedays are wrapped in the shiny paper of denial, each with a big, bright bow on top. Lately, they feel out of reach—on the highest shelf of the closet and I’m way too short to get them down.

So I’m building a ladder. Up there, I know, is a world without debt, smog, or obligation. Up there, time is at a standstill. Literary agents duel for the chance to represent you. The editor who’s had your manuscript for two years finally picks up the phone and gives you a call. You weigh what you did in high school. Pigs fly.

Head in the clouds? Oh yes, it’s still true.
Cold-Induced Wisdom

Nova Ren Suma

February 10, 2007

23 degrees F this morning. Not so bad at all, not when you have a pot of boiling water at which to set your feet, a heating pad for your fingers, and the infamous Puffy Coat, which could house a family of Eskimos. If it gets bad tomorrow, we’ll burn the 500-page Hollywood Issue of Vanity Fair for warmth (after I read it first, of course).

The cold has got me thinking:

New York City is the city that never sleeps—except when the boiler’s broken and it’s almost the weekend. One reason I love living here is that something is always open, through late nights, through holidays, if I want a bean bun at 2 in the morning I can get a bean bun, not that I’ve ever wanted a bean bun at 2 in the morning, BUT this is not true when it comes to emergency repairs. Telephone broken? Sorry, it’s the weekend—no one can come look at your line till Monday. No electricity? Sorry, we’ll check it out Monday. No water? Yeah, hang tight till Monday. Strange gas leak pervading your apartment from an unknown source that might blow up the building? We’ll get back to you Monday. Yep, if you call in about an “emergency” repair anytime after Thursday, be prepared to suck it up for the weekend. In this way, living in NYC is just the same as living upstate, except for the aforementioned bean bun, which, to tell you the truth, doesn’t make a bit of difference when your toes are cold.

Having no heat inside makes going outside quite bearable. Wrapped up in my coat-fleece-hat-hood-two scarves contraption, I felt little difference between the cold air inside the badly insulated apartment and the cold air out in the street. In fact, I felt warm. It was like a spring day, the breeze on my face, the birds chirping, the ice on the sidewalk shiny and green (someone had smashed a beer bottle). Nice.

A room at the Tribeca Grand is the cost of only 2.8 space heaters. Sounds like a good deal if you put it that way. And, for only about $107 a night, we could stay at the dirtiest hotel in Manhattan. We’d get lice and may have to dodge raw sewage, but at least we’d be warm!
Too Cold

Nova Ren Suma

February 9, 2007

It is 27 degrees outside; I’m not sure how cold it is in here without heat since last night.

It is too cold to read a book.

It is too cold to wear my wedding ring.

It is too cold to walk on the floor.

It is too cold to touch my own nose.

It is too cold to type this post.

It is so cold, I might stick my head in the oven to warm up. Or at least my hands. In fact, I’m going to try that now. [EDIT: Never mind. It is too cold to get up.]
Brrrrrrrr

Nova Ren Suma

February 9, 2007

The boiler broke last night and our building has no heat. It will take a couple of days to fix. The pride and joy of our home—the heating pole in the bathroom so conveniently placed near the toilet—is dead-cold. To keep warm we will huddle under coats while wearing other coats, triple up our socks, build blanket forts, and—you guessed it—bake! I think we should have a baking extravaganza. Pie! Cake! Mac-and-cheese! Walking up the stairwell I caught an unmistakable whiff of chocolate-chip cookies, so someone else has the same idea. We will be cold through the weekend, but we will be high on sugar and stuffed. Now if only my fingers weren’t starting to feel numb I’d be giddy.
No (No. 968)

Nova Ren Suma

February 8, 2007

The spec sample I wrote over the weekend wasn’t chosen.

I don’t have much else to say beyond that except that I’m disappointed, though not horribly so, though two days have passed and I’m still trying to shrug it off. Any kind of rejection tends to sting me, even if it’s for a project I didn’t think I was right for anyway.

I may have said mere weeks ago that I was back into this freelance writing thing, but that was premature. I have a proofreading project instead, a comfort at the moment. I’m not really sure what I’m doing with my life right now.
Hello There

Nova Ren Suma

February 7, 2007

(written this morning)

I am returning to my story after only a day away. Last I left it, on Monday, I had come to the conclusion that it was at best choppy, at worse hopelessly immature. I was well aware the end had holes, so a paragraph would float aimlessly toward the last page, not anchored to anything, and yet I was unable to select it and hit delete. And to top it all off, I still wasn’t satisfied with the opening. I kept going back to the first paragraph, knowing the tone and voice was somehow different from the rest of the story, parts of which I thought were really working, because toward the middle I really had my momentum—I was unsure of how to make it match. Simply put, the first draft is far from ready.

On Monday, I walked to work through the cold after realizing all these weaknesses in the story. The wind was unbearable. My coat, under which was a hooded fleece, under which was a hat, over which were two scarves, wasn’t enough. I was so focused on walking the ten or so blocks to work, charging through the wind with tears in my eyes at times, that I couldn’t think much on what I’d written that morning. Usually, as I walk to work after my morning writing stints, I grow a little perspective and get a sense of how to fix what I’d left hanging that day. But I was too cold to think about any of that. So I left it broken. And now I am trying to pick up the pieces.

I keep stalling because I want to apply for things: awards, scholarships to writers conferences, colonies, anything I’m qualified for, really. I SHOULD apply for more things, I am telling myself, even if I’ve gotten nos before, I should give it another whirl this year. What could it hurt—except my pride? Like now, I just looked up a famous writers conference in my archives, debated asking someone for a reference, decided yes I would ask, then decided no I wouldn’t ask, because I would probably just get rejected again and end up being disappointed again. Flash-forward rejection. I’m just looking out for myself.

That took almost twenty minutes. Twenty minutes that I SHOULD have been putting toward this story. Even when I am thinking of writing, and writing-related ventures, I am often distracting myself from other distractions. My level of distraction is incalculable. I keep doing this. And each time I think of some other thing I should be doing to become the “Writer” I long to be, I come back to the same realization: the most important thing I should be doing is writing. It is that simple. I cannot call myself a “writer” (lowercase, even) if I don’t write. That is more important than winning an award to list in my bio.

So I return to my first paragraph. Hello there.

No response.

You see, it’s giving me the cold shoulder. I left it dismantled for an entire day, naked and missing its arms. I’m sorry. I’ll keep trying. Soon, soon, it should turn, and open up to me, and I’ll find my way in.