Imaginary Girls, by Nova Ren Suma

I've mentioned author Nova Ren Suma quite a few times on this blog already, and believe it or not, I hadn't even read one of her books until now. She's just a great blogger, with an amazing blog for writers and readers, and is worth mentioning regardless of whether you've read her books, in my opinion. So, with my handy dandy Amazon gift certificates, I purchased her much talked about Imaginary Girls.

 Here's the synopsis from Amazon.com, because I'm no good at summarzing:

Chloe's older sister, Ruby, is the girl everyone looks to and longs for, who can't be captured or caged. When a night with Ruby's friends goes horribly wrong and Chloe discovers the dead body of her classmate London Hayes left floating in the reservoir, Chloe is sent away from town and away from Ruby.

But Ruby will do anything to get her sister back, and when Chloe returns to town two years later, deadly surprises await. As Chloe flirts with the truth that Ruby has hidden deeply away, the fragile line between life and death is redrawn by the complex bonds of sisterhood.

Okay, so. I read this summary over and over again  before buying this book, because I've seen reviews of this book everywhere, but no matter how many times I read it, I never could grasp what was actually going on in the book - and frankly, for most of the story, I STILL couldn't grasp what was going on. However, this didn't turn out to be a bad thing. At first, I was confused. Then, I was annoyed. Finally, in the last third of the book, I was enlightened - we were all enlightened as to what Ruby did and what it meant for Chloe and everyone else in the town. 

Really, this is a book about sisters. That fact won't get lost on anyone. However, it was a relationship that I was incapable of understanding. One sister idolizes the other... partly because she's..magical? It's hard to say, even up to the end. The truth was, I didn't like either of the characters. I hated Ruby - so full of herself, so sure that she could use and manipulate anyone she wanted - she's probably the biggest narcissist I've ever encountered in a book. Then, Chloe, the doting little sister. I wanted to grab her and shake her and say "You have to see through Ruby, you have to see that something is wrong with her and this isn't the way people should be!" And I was shocked that that was never a revelation that Chloe came to. 

Hm. It's going to be hard to write about this book without giving anything away. I don't know what I am trying to say at all, really, other than - despite me hating the characters, I loved this book and I loved this story, but most of all, I loved Nova's writing. It makes me want to ask her, "Did you read a lot of Alice Hoffman before writing this?" Because there is nothing else I can compare it to. 

Nova's writing GLOWS. It's beautiful, and lyrical, it's like poetry squished into prose, and as annoyed I was by the characters and what they chose to do and say to each other, I was thrown down the rabbit hole into Ruby's mystery and I didn't want the story to end - in fact, it took me damn near two weeks to read this, because I didn't binge it, I just kept sipping away little by little until I got to the epilogue, which is when I put the book down for two whole days, knowing I only had a chapter left, because I didn't want it to end. Not that I didn't want the story to end - it was done, I knew I'd be glad to be rid of Ruby, I knew that if she were my sister I would have rebelled against her and told her "You aren't so special," but I didn't want to stop reading the words that fit so beautifully together on the page. 

Nova's a good storyteller. The story kept me confused and guessing and intrigued, which is what good story tellers do with mysteries, and I suppose this was a mystery more than anything else, part paranormal, mostly contemporary, and sort of horrifying. So yeah, she's a good storyteller. But she's a BRILLIANT WRITER. She puts words together, ordinary words, and they sing like extraordinary songs.

Characters be damned - Ruby sure will be. The writing is where it's at, and Nova Ren Suma is definitely one to watch and follow, because she's going to be an even bigger name than she already is if she keeps it up to this level. 

Mac Freedom

For the last few months, every since the end of November really, I haven't written much, not as much as I have wanted to. I guess you could say I got distracted by any number of things, and it would be true, and I hate to admit that I know full well that the biggest thing keeping me from writing is Netflix Instant - I just can't seem to stop watching TV shows online. It makes me a little sick and embarrassed for myself. 

Nova Ren Suma, one of the authors whose blog I follow, because it is just amazing, had mentioned something called Mac Freedom a few times, and I decided to check it out. It's a program that will shut off internet access to your computer for a period of time that you determine - it will basically just block you from connecting to the internet - the writer's worst distraction of all time.

I read a lot of the comments about this program before spending the $10 bucks to get it, and momentarily questioned my motives and sanity. 

"It's pretty sad that someone doesn't have the self control to just stay off the internet, so they have to buy a program to do it for them. Oh, the humanity!" 

And I thought, yeah, it's true, it's pretty sad that I don't have that self control. But what would be sadder is if I bought this program and then actually restarted my computer just so I could check Facebook or Twitter or watch a YouTube video. THAT would be sad. 

Anyway, I downloaded it, I set it for an hour, and I wrote. And wrote and wrote and wrote. And now I do this for at least an hour a day, and Mac Freedom has changed the way I write and how I've been living life this week - basically, it's awesome.

Writers - you might not think you need this, but let's face it, you probably do. 

Shifting

Something remarkable happened today. I was given the opportunity to be honest with my boss without the fear of retaliation, and I told him that I was unsatisfied here at my job, mostly due to not being paid what I feel I deserve, and I told him that the best thing he could do for me at this point is give me a stellar job recommendation. And he will. 

I've been wanting to leave my current job for a while. It's not something I've blogged about since I don't want to get Dooced, but the job has really been one of the biggest dark clouds hanging over my life in the past few (six to eight) months, and now that I know I can take my time finding a new, better job with a great recommendation from my current boss, it's like a weight has been lifted off of my shoulders. I feel liberated, free, and easy. Really, it feels like I've been walking around with a ton of bricks on my shoulders and I've just finally been able to set them down.

I'm still nervous about job searching, but nowhere near as nervous as I would be if I didn't know that I was going with my bosses' blessing, and certainly not as nervous as I would be if I were currently unemployed. I get to take my time now and find something that is right for me, and figure out what I am going to do to navigate the next part of my life. 

***

Lots of bloggers pick 'words to live by' at the end of the year, and Shmutzie, one of my favorite writers, has picked Shift for her 2012 guiding word. I was thinking of doing this myself this year, and need to come to a decision soon. Shift isn't quite it for me, though. I want to shift, yes. I want to shift out of my current job and into a new one, out of my current home and into a new one - but I want to settle as well. I want to be comfortable and rested no matter where I am in my life or any of it's stages, but I haven't gotten there yet. I'll figure out this word eventually, just like I will eventually write about Christmas and reflect on Elise's birthday. I just feel like so much has been going on lately, I've hardly been able to do anything CREATIVE.

***

I have been following a writer named Nova Ren Suma for some time now. I adore her blog, she has one of the best writing/book blogs I've ever come across in my life, and I was waiting not so patiently for my anticipated Christmas gift of Amazon gift certificates so I could get some books I have been dying to read. So tonight, Nova's book Imaginary Girls arrived in the mail, along with a few others. I started this one right away, mostly because not only did I anticipate it, but I sort of feel like a tool talking to this author on Facebook and on her blog and not having read her novel. Well, here I am up late, I could barely put it down and will pick it up again after I finish this quick blog, because, wow. I'm being blown away by her writing. It's WAY BETTER than I ever thought it could be. See, I am usually into urban fantasy and paranormal YA books, I have not found many regular "literary" YA books that I've enjoyed, and this... I am not sure yet what genre this book will eventually fall into, other than the genre of AWESOME. 

I Miss Brave

I finished crocheting a scarf that I am going to give my mom for Christmas. It only took two days to do, and so tonight, as I was watching Bag of Bones, I started a new one. I am not sure who I am going to give this one to yet, but hopefully they will like the light blues and greens and grays that make up the yarn. I also read a lot today, and I am almost through with the first Vampire Diaries book, the one that contains The Awakening and The Struggle. I am pretty sure that I read these books when I was younger, I was pretty sure that I had read everything that L.J. Smith ever wrote, but so far I am sorry to say that I like the show better than the books - that hardly ever happens. 

Why am I recounting all of these daily banal activities? Because I am still not writing. Today, I lay in bed with my laptop for hours, looking at (probably literally) hundreds of books on Amazon, trying to figure out how it is possible that so many people have already done what I want to do so badly, and to think furthermore that I could probably do it better than some, if not a lot of them. 

I guess, maybe, not finishing my NaNoWriMo story is hitting me harder than I had originally let on. I told so many people about it this year, I feel like I let so many people down, but really, I let myself down. Lately I've been all about doing and finishing things that I say I want to do, and this is one of the things that I totally bombed at, and it was one that was important to me. It's going to take some time, I think, for me to get my groove back. For me to get the confidence back to begin something new and not question myself too much about things.

I have to close my door. I have to close my door.

There's this author, Nova Ren Suma, who has a wonderful blog on writing, and last month she did a blog series on "What Inspires You" and a bunch of other writers share their thoughts on writing and inspiration, and on what keeps them going when they feel like giving up - all those things that "aspiring" writers like myself just eat the hell up. Veronica Roth, who wrote Divergent, one of the best books I've read this year HANDS DOWN, added her two cents, and she said something at the end of her post that I couldn't stop thinking about, so I just had to go and look it up again to share it here.

Writing isn’t everything—a life is much more than that. But for me it’s a little microcosm. It’s a safe place to try to make life better, to gather up my strength for the times when I step away from the computer. And sometimes, when I do, I’m a little braver than before.

She gets it. This is ME. I feel like people who are writers and bloggers live completely different lives than everyone else in the world. We make our own worlds, and additionally we are part of this other, bigger world of the blogosphere where people read our words and know our names and think of us as friends or aquaintances even though we've never met. People who don't have that - people who don't have Twitter followers that ask how we are and care about what we're doing - they don't get it, and it's hard explaining it. 

I feel like I have two lives, two completely separate lives - one of them I live in the world - I go to work, I have dinner with friends, I spend time with family.. And then, in the other life, I write, and I think, and I create, and I am constantly shocked and thrilled when I see that people actually give a shit about what I have to say. It's amazing, and it's something that is SO HARD to share with others, the way it makes me feel. 

But see, without writing, I am just this lost thing, that's how I feel right now. I'm just puttering about in my little virtual world without a ground to stand on, without characters to keep me company, without adventure to find. I need to start writing again, something big and significant and GOOD, to be able to be brave again, to be able to get out of bed in the morning with a smile on my face instead of weeping as my feet hit the floor.