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I’m Not Stressing

November 17, 2011 / Katie L. Carroll

I will never apologize to you, dear readers, for going long stretches of time without writing on my blog. It’s not that I don’t appreciate you…I cherish each and every one of you (really, it’s not that hard to send out a little love to five or so people!).

It’s just that when I started this blog I did it for fun. I wanted to have a place to exercise my personal literary voice and my opinions and thoughts. I said to myself, “I’m not going to stress about this whole blog thing. If I feel like posting, I will, but if I don’t feel like it or don’t have the time, so be it; I won’t stress about it.”

So when I see day after day that I haven’t posted anything since October 29th (and it was a short post about the weather of all things…with a picture that filled most of the space), I keep telling myself, “Don’t worry about it.” I’ve got plenty of good excuses as to why I haven’t posted (I just had a baby a couple of months ago!).

Still, I hate seeing that same posting every time I click on my blog page to read all those other blogs that are listed on my sidebar. It makes me feel like such a slacker. It reminds me off all those journals I started as a kid and teenager and fell short on. I would write furiously in them for a few days in a row, then a week would go by, maybe a month, maybe even years before I would write again. And still, to this day, there are more blank pages than full ones in each one of those books.

And then it spirals into a reminder of all the things I haven’t done in life, of all my shortcomings and failures. The dirty laundry in the hamper, the maternity clothes that haven’t been packed away, that manuscript that needs to be revised, that e-mail I haven’t responded to. It’s enough to drive any sane person (and I’m not claiming to be entirely sane!) mad.

Now, though, I can breathe easy for another few days because there’s a shiny, new post on my blog.

Autumn Snow

October 29, 2011 / Katie L. Carroll

Ummm…so it’s snowing, and it’s October 29th. And this is Connecticut, not freakin’ Alaska. C’mon, Mother Nature, give us a break! At least let us get through Halloween. I guess this is just another weird weather phenomenon in the year of The Boy.

No More Waiting!

October 24, 2011 / Katie L. Carroll

I’ve never thought that sitting around wishing for something to happen makes that thing happen. Not that I haven’t done my share of wishing on shooting stars, on eyelashes that have fallen out, when the digital clock reads all one number (like at 11:11, for example), on a coin thrown into a fountain, when splitting a wishbone, when blowing out birthday candles…okay, I really don’t just sit around wishing on things all day.

Oddly enough, though, a lot of writing is sitting–the old butt-in-chair as you write–is waiting–to hear back from critique partners, agents, or editors–and is wishing–because you’ve got to have something to keep the hope alive. But you also have to be active too. I need to experience life in order to be inspired while I’m sitting and writing, I need to send out my work in order to wait to hear back, and I need to actively daydream about my life as a best-selling author to fuel all those wishes (okay, that last one doesn’t really work, but you get the idea!).

So for that past year or so, I’ve been submitting my writing more actively than I have in all my previous years as a writer. Some opportunities have come up. And a strange thing happened: I found myself turning some of them down.

It wasn’t because they weren’t good opportunities or because I had so many offers pouring in that I could just shrug off the ones that didn’t give me the most gain. It was because they didn’t feel right in my gut. Not that the offers were bad; it’s more that they were not the right fit for me at the time. Every time I’ve said no, it’s been very, very hard. What if I never get another opportunity for that piece of writing? What if I never get another opportunity for any piece of writing? Did I just say no to the only chance I ever had as a writer?

The thing I’ve come to realize is that a single no or a string of noes (I originally typed “a string of nose,” which would be an entirely different thing…LOL!), whether it’s someone else telling me no or me telling someone else no, doesn’t mean the end of my writing career. My career ends when I stop sitting and writing and waiting and wishing.

It just so happens that some 3,120 days since I first conceived of the idea that, yes, I can be a writer for real (this is an estimate because I don’t remember the exact date I thought this), a pretty big opportunity has come up. One that I feel is right in my gut…one that I am going to say yes to. One that makes me want to climb to the top of my house and shout “YES!” from the rooftop (admittedly, this wouldn’t be too hard because I live in a one-story ranch).

So maybe sitting, waiting, wishing worked out okay for me after all. I think I’ll go do some more of that and maybe the next offer will be even bigger.

Making Connections

October 4, 2011 / Katie L. Carroll

When I was a freshman in high school, my older sisters’ best friend was the captain of my soccer team. She was kind enough to drive me to school, let me hang out with her in between school and practice, and drive me home from practice.

One day before practice we were driving around with some of our teammates and decided that we wanted to “make an entrance” as we drove down the small road that led to the field. We flipped through the radio, hoping to find either a rap song with a solid beat or a hard-hitting rock song to blast. The radio failed us.

So we went the complete opposite of what we had planned and blasted the lamest song we could find: Celine Dion’s It’s All Coming Back to Me Now. Let me tell you, we rocked that song like it’s never been rocked before! And we made a hell of an entrance! Even though I couldn’t stand that song before we rocked it out, I now listen to it fondly all these years later.

Then there was the time my sisters (all three of them) and I were at a wedding and Lady Marmalade (the Pink, Aguilera, Mya, and Lil’ Kim version) came on. The four of us danced and lip-synced to that song like we were shooting a music video for it. I had thought that song was pretty good, but now I love it and always listen to it with a bittersweet mixture of pure joy and pure sadness (since one of my sisters died not too long after that occasion).

The point of all this reminiscing (contrary to what it may seem, I try to have a point to all my posts…even when the point is somewhat pointless). I consider myself something of a free-thinker. I’m often stubborn (a trait it seems The Boy has inherited) and don’t like to think I’m easily swayed by others opinions. Not that I’m totally inflexible. On the rare occasion someone backs up their point with solid reasoning and proves me wrong, I’ll totally give them props for it.

Yet, when it comes to sharing moments with people and music (as is often the case) or a movie served as a catalyst to that moment, my opinions are easily changed. That song that I hated, but my hubby loved became a cherished song for both of us when we listened to it in the car together during a vacation. That TV show that always used to make me roll my eyes because it was just so dumb became one I faithfully watched with my dad and brother because we just had so much fun mocking it. And you know what, I truly ended up liking it by the time the series was over.

There’s the flip side of this too. Did you ever really like something and you mentioned it to someone and they were like, “Oh, I hated that. It was so stupid”? And then the magic of that thing was gone for you too.

I think what it comes down to is connections (and isn’t that what so many things come down to?). If you can make a connection over something, that thing becomes more special, but if that thing is a source of a disconnect, then it loses its charm. I guess I’m not as badass stubborn as I thought I was after all!

Was Einstein Wrong?

September 23, 2011 / Katie L. Carroll

BIG NEWS today regarding the very fundamentals of physics and how the universe works. This latest mind-blowing development comes not from the Large Hadron Collider, but from OPERA (Osciallation Project with Emulsion-tRacking Apparatus…yeah, I know…huh?). It turns out Einstein might have been wrong…that’s right, Einstein might have been wrong.

Scientists at the CERN physics lab just announced that subatomic particles called neutrinos were observed to be traveling faster than the speed of sound. So that whole E=mc²thing may need to be rethought because it is based on the the theory that it is impossible for any particle with mass to accelerate at or above the speed of sound. BAZINGA (as Sheldon Cooper from The Big Bang Theory would say)!

But you may want to wait a little longer before you tell that iconic Einstein poster hanging above your bed, “You just got served!” Before scientists call the measurements true (even though the 60 nanoseconds faster than the speed of sound the neutrinos traveled is above the 10 nanosecond margin of error), they want to verify with independent tests.

Tune into the CERN live webcast, which I thought was supposed to take place at 16:00:00 (Europe/Zurich) today, but I think that time has already passed and the webcast doesn’t seem to be up. I’ll keep checking back to the page for the latest.