Month: May 2020

This is me back in May of 2016. Almost exactly 4 years ago. Pre-COVID, Pre-Trump getting elected. Even with all of those things not having happened yet, my life was somehow still full of problems.

But that day I made a choice, after making many before it. But it a was a finalizing, equalizing, definitive choice.

Some might have seen the actions I made that day as simply an effort to leave my ex-husband, but those who know the truth, know that it was so much more than that.

If I have learned anything from my experiences in the last four years, is that when things end, everyone has their own narrative about “what happened”.

Well, here is mine.

Back in 2016 I did a few things. First, I typed “THE END” on the last page of my first draft of a finished manuscript. It was a painful haul. I was drawing much of that narrative from personal experience, including confusing and difficult friendships and relationships I endured during my adolescence. I was having conversations with people from that time and hoping to glean their perspective and narratives to keep myself honest.

I was also staying up all hours, not sleeping in my own bed, forgetting to eat, and admittedly letting go of my daily effort cling to and fix a person. I was also letting go of a relationship that just wasn’t working anymore.

Disclaimer: I recently deleted a few teary recordings of myself that I couldn’t bear to listen to until recently, recounting what I was going through and how it was all affecting me. It was eye-opening but I remembered what I was trying to do with all of that in the first place. I was learning to be honest with myself.

As ayemtea, I was writing poetic serials. I had an active following. Daily I would post these poems that you could probably consider productive procrastination while writing my novel. But I had a lot of words stuck in me that wanted to come out. During my teaching job, while a student was taking a test or reading quietly to themselves, I was writing. I was outlining my book or I was writing the poem that I would release that evening over IG.

When I wasn’t teaching, I was working retail to supplement my income…and having an awful experience. But it was how I filled my time. What was the rest of my time filled with? Church. Believe it or not I was very active in Evangelical circles. I was in that life mostly because I was pressured into it by my ex-husband and some friends I had at the time, but I will own that I walked into that life willingly.

I was convinced that I was doing my best to better myself. I was trying to give back and see the big picture and believe in something bigger than myself and all that nonsense. All the while I was decidedly losing who I really was. I was burying her under suffocating doctrine that I didn’t even fully believe in.

If this post is littered with links, it’s just in an effort to show how I have tried to explore these difficult chapters of my life through writing, which is something I have always either done wittingly or unwittingly. And I know it has helped me.

But it also pushes me. Once the word-well runs dry, it’s time to take action and that is what I did. I’ve made decisions like this before, and had long journeys, and struggles and have been in the wrong, certainly.

Like I said I will always own my part in whatever goes wrong because it always takes two. But that’s ultimately why, despite the litany of reasons I could give. I left because I was the only one doing that.

It was strange. The day I decided to leave, I no longer felt any of the things that kept me hanging on. It was if I had spent time working through all of them, literally iterating my life to somehow get it back on track, but it just refused to do so. I couldn’t go back to being the person I was before certain things happened. There was no going back.

And even now life is never easy, but one thing I learned is that I will never again pretend to be something I am not. It seems fun to think that you could mold yourself into someone that everyone finds agreeable and likable and great, but if that isn’t who you are, eventually the true colors come out. And you know what, that’s okay.

Love is about embracing those colors. And once more if you can’t then maybe it wasn’t love to begin with.

I’m not saying I’m not a good person. But that was the rub. The definition of good for some is a much higher standard than what it is for others. For some “good” is an impossible, inhuman standard that involves crushing your soul into a box that keeps getting smaller. And I refuse to do that.

For #ForwardFriday, think about your own journey. Do you have stories like this? Are they painful? Are you embarrassed to share them? I know, even talking about this, which I never really do publicly, was terrifying. But I have to be true to myself and who I am. I hope you can one day do that too.

Disclaimer: I’m doing something a bit different today. Usually I ramble on with my thought process about the post. Today I will answer it with prose.

This is what the work looked like before it ended up in its final form:

Sometimes you have to fill one blank page before you can fill another.

Evey’s Skeletons

Today I will share with you one of my nerdy obsessions:

…Frasier.

There. Phew. I said it. Okay *sigh*

Honestly, there are times when that is more difficult than saying:

I’m an alcoholic. Which I’m not…

*gulps wine at noon*

Anywho, even though I am already in a support group for it,
sometimes I get the urge to do the nerdiest thing ever …

and that is blog about Frasier.

So, heh, here we go.

*clears throat* So, I will try to only do this maybe twice a month.

If you’re lucky.

Today’s topic: Frasier Fashion

If you pay close enough attention, like I do, you’ll notice that the fashion in Frasier goes beyond fancy, expensive Hugo Boss ties and double breasted French and Italian tailored suits.

The entire show is a time capsule of memorable looks of it’s time.

For the purpose of this post we will focus on the women’s fashion on the show which when held up to the year an episode had aired was often right on the money.

Disclaimer: I am old (pushing 40), so I can speak on this subject with authority.

We will use the two women we saw the most on the show as examples:

Daphne (Jane Leeves)

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The evolution of Daphne (Jane Leeves) is interesting. From dowdy over-sized T shirts and busy pants to skintight low cut baby-doll dresses (sometimes floral, sometimes that interesting shiny poly-blend material you could only get at Hot Topic) it was both a reflection of her character but also the times.

The episode where Frasier keeps “accidentally” going into her bedroom and catches her undressing, she is wearing an early 90’s fashion staple: the leotard posing as a shirt, worn with a wrap-around skirt and a vest. Did I have these 90’s fashion staples in my wardrobe. Well, I shopped at the Limited, what do you think?

White long-sleeve leotard? Check. Wrap-around skirt? Check. Vest to cover up the slightly seethrough leotard so it would look like a shirt and not at all like weirdly inappropriate dance-wear? Check-check!

It’s very clear the day that the whole “wear a plaid skirt so you can look like a Catholic schoolgirl even though you are neither Catholic nor still in school or even a girl” fad hit, the next day Daphne starting wearing them complete with the inconspicuous leotard and tights just underneath.

A lot people Feminists rave now about the infantilization of 90’s women’s fashions but IMHO there was only one direction to go from the Andy McDowell dowdy schoolmarm in the over-sized dolphin T-shirt. Plus the 90’s brought us these fun trends:

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Friends and Seinfeld are often great examples of what was happening in 90’s hair, but it was often art and life both imitating each other. Especially the Rachel which no one seemed to want until they saw Jennifer Anniston wearing it on Friends. But just before that craze happened we had the Elaine Benes/Daphne Moon/Andie MacDowell hair craze.

The long unruly fluff that was either tied back with both a barret and a scrunchie or in Daphne’s case, tied at the bottom to make her hair look short, tied at the top to section off the hair, or worn completely down to show off the mountain of layers she had cut in. It seemed her hair changed every week. And I was there for it since the other two didn’t seem to do much with their hair until the late 90’s.

AND THEN THE CLOUDS PARTED AND DAPHNE CUT OFF ALL HER HAIR

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I remember the short-flippy (what year is this 1962?) hairstyle dropped I couldn’t wait to sport it.

Mostly because I had short hair already and this was something I could finally and easily imitate though probably not well. I was still a Junior High school kid and these were grown women with careers that I was imitating. (I still had my braces FFS!) Somehow the Rachel saved us all from death by long hair. And society righted a terrible wrong:

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Roz (Peri Gilpin)

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Roz was no nonsense from beginning to end. So basically her wardrobe was the antithesis of Daphne’s but that didn’t mean she was not there for 90’s fashion.

She was sporting the ball-busting successful business-woman look, which during the 90’s confusion of babydoll dresses and urban casualwear you better not be caught dead wearing in Junior High. (Thanks, Mom!)

But 3rd wave feminists ate it up with a spoon, which is most likely why Roz’s style didn’t change much at least for the first half of the show. She took the Elaine Benes look and said “I can do this and actually still look hot, even though I often complain about having to wear the pleated khakis that I dressed myself in today.”

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But then something cray-cray happens and everything goes whackadoodle…

in Season 5, Roz gets knocked up. And she takes 90’s maternity wear to the next level, guys.

Nevermind what she was wearing when she found out…

I’m talking about these magnificent fashion statements:

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Okay, sorry, I couldn’t resist. But I am semi-serious about this.
Whether it was the “times” or what, Roz totally loosened up her fashion sense post-baby.

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Which is kind of backwards, right? Her character was a sexpot before that but afterwards she was on her way to her side-hustle as a late 90’s Victoria Secret model, who like Bulldog obviously often left a copy lying around as she was always wearing sparkles and “this is totally a shirt and not underwear” camisoles.

Once exhausted of the late 90’s when the gaping mouth of the aughts swallowed us up post Y2K and Pre 9/11 we were having some fashion growing pains.

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But one thing was certain, we were OVER 90’s fashion and flushed it down the toilet. No, we lit it on fire and HEAVED it over the balcony.

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We walked it back though eventually to tailored cardigans, skirts, cropped pants, and structured blazers and pretended to invent the idea.

AND THEN IT WAS NEO HIPPIE PEASANT SHIRTS AND DRESSES AGAIN

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Seriously, what was going on? I guess we tried fashion for a hot second and gave up? Did we ever have style, ever? This study of the last 2 decades of fashion leads me to believe we didn’t. What do you think? Did I miss something?

Comment below if you have any thoughts on this ridiculousness or if this post gave you nostalgic nausea…

In the past I wrote a lot of women’s fiction. Okay, I’m lying I still write women’s fiction. Women’s fiction as a genre they say is “dead”. I don’t know if that’s entirely true, people are still writing it and those books are still flying off the shelf.

That isn’t to say that other genres are less valid or even more successful or that I’m not writing them.

In fact for the past almost 2 years I have been working on a Sci Fi novel called StarTribe set in 2084 when introversion is illegal. I won’t say any more but to me that in itself is an absurd premise. Or is it?

Writing Sci Fi is so fun, not just because I use it as an excuse to nerd out over sciency/tech stuff, but the world-building is so incredibly flexible.

That has been both liberating and scary. The learning curve for me of what is “acceptable”(everything) has at times given me pause and made me get in my own way.

In fact I found myself even more blocked because the options for what I could write about beyond the story in my head were limitless.

So I went to the experts.

Thankfully I have some writerly friends who have been writing Sci Fi for a while. I told one about my premise and that I needed to create a character but was stuck. I had already a line-up of misfits in my head but I couldn’t create or formulate an image in my boring old brain of a creature who could be both intimidating and cuddly. I guess the words I used sparked an idea in this writer’s head.

He said: “Why not make a half-man, half-bear hybrid?”

“Genius!” I thought, why didn’t I think of that? But then that dusty part of my brain that sees things in black and white had reservations. A half-bear, half-man hybrid? What? Who would interact with, let alone befriend such a creature and would/could this creature exist in my world? That second question is the one that I asked my friend:

“Do you think that is feasible?”

He asked me, “Why not?”

And that had me thinking even more: “Yeah, it’s my story, why not? I mean just because something that couldn’t exist supposedly in the real world doesn’t mean I can’t just make it so in MY book.”

And that is what Sci Fi is for, to allow for those absurd details that you can somehow make sense and fit into your world.

Five Doors is a fantasy novel I am writing.

I would go back and forth between calling it Fantasy and Magical Realism, because I am so so stuck on that realistic factor. She’s a real person, with real problems, in the real world but she has these powers and other people in the world have powers too. Powers to change and dictate their fate. Some might say we already have that power but in my novel that issue is addressed: Do we? Can we?

As I keep writing, those absurd details keep cropping up. Some involve dreaming, some involve time traveling through doors, some involve timepieces that are long dead suddenly coming to life.

If I didn’t think of these details the story would be boring. It would be “just women’s fiction”.

But even the women’s fiction novel I wrote has an absurd detail in it. One that I have even felt the need to sometimes justify.

Some might think writing from life could be boring too. “I’m not a celebrity; who would want to read about my life?” But think about all the insanity and absurdity you have encountered in your life. Things you might have thought didn’t exist in this boring old world. But you were surprised by them, just as your reader would be if they read a narrative about your life.

So my takeaway, which I hope is also yours, is to embrace those absurd details and use them. And if you aren’t thinking absurd enough, think harder, you’ll get there.

Never settle for ordinary in your writing.

Improv in Writing and other hilarity.

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So this past Tuesday, I sat in a Free Zoom Workshop given by the Manuscript Academy through #MSWL (phew).

It was great fun, a little intimidating but it got my heart pumping!

And the funny thing is…it was all about comedy or comedic timing but it was all about the three ways that you can use Improv to improve your writing:

Think on your feet (and don’t over-think).

This is IMPORTANT, especially if your goal is to get words on the page! The hilarious part of this is that I am usually good at coming up with clever ideas on the spot on stage, but I usually reserved my writing to take my time generating ideas where I would sit on them for a long time. But you don’t have to do that to be a good writer (apparently). Other people in the class were banging out ideas (wild ones off the top of their head) but that’s what’s great about improv, it lets you live in that crazy spot in your brain you might be afraid to live in when you are writing. In improv (and your writing) the sky is the limit.

Start in the middle of the action.

Chip gave a great example of this in his class. He said if someone came out on stage and gave you their whole backstory before they started the scene you would check out and lose interest, right? So it’s best to start out a scene when something is happening! This is advice you will get everywhere from editors, agents, and publishers too, so it’s best to listen. If you can use Improv as your framework for doing this, all the better. Even if you feel backstory is important to the scene use Improv to get the audience interested in it. Say something like: “Hey remember that time we were in this park and I tried to kill you?” That’s all the backstory you need.

Less is more.

It truly is. You don’t have the time in Improv to get bogged down by detailed description and in your writing you can always come back to it and fill that stuff in later. When you are writing and want to get words on the page, say what is necessary. Use your immediate senses. Put the reader in your head. Get your character talking and moving. That’s all you need to get things going.

My takeaways:

I need to spend less time thinking about my writing and just get in the middle of it.

I can go to any limit I want to with any character, idea, plot or setting. It’s my story, so why not?

I can get more words on the page by getting my characters to do something rather than building up the world around them.

I highly recommend checking out more of #MSWL’s events free or paid (they are affordable) I will do my best to make you aware of the free ones when they come into my inbox!

As a fun little extra I thought I might make you guys aware of a charity event that Mr. Show (an awesome collection of comedic and Improv actors you might recognize) did. The ticket is only $10 and goes towards LIFT. The money goes towards lower income families who need help during COVID.

The event is not live but the video is funny and they do some Improv in it which is a great example of what I was talking about in this post! Enjoy 😉

Answering the question: What does the future hold for you?

So, since I have tasked others in my group Fill the Blank Page to answer this prompt, I wanted to try to answer it myself.

Like most other humans on the planet I posted a list of New Years Resolutions for myself back in January.

Going into that list though; I knew what I was doing to myself.

I’ve always been a bit superstitious about predicting the future.

The universe typically laughs at my plans.

It does this by corrupting a milestone usually days before I achieve it.

Or maybe it just feels like that…either way, that’s always been an incredibly lonely feeling.

Going back over that list I can sense my own trepidation in writing it.
I knew what I was doing. I was trying to tell my readers:

Beware, don’t plan your future it’ll come back to bite you.

Make bite-sized goals you can easily fit in your mouth and chew!

Do the bare-ass-minimum so you can say you did something!

I wrote my resolutions list about how at the time I was so scattered “juggling multiple projects and making incremental progress in many different directions and it was difficult for me to pinpoint the exact progress I was making.” And how somehow that would all change for me if I just kept plugging away at my bite-sized goals. And I think I did that. I think I was able to do a little bit here and a little bit there and make at least a little bit of progress. I think. And we all know that very cool and amazingly fun thing that happened to the entire planet and not just me that changed everything and threw a monkey wrench in all of our plans.

It’s sad for me to share that feeling with other people; it is also sweetly vindicating and incredibly equalizing, I know, I’m a terrible person.

Heh…silly 5 months ago me. Thing is I’m still doing that. I have projects scattered everywhere. I have DIRECTION which is new, I guess. But still, I’m a mess:

I’m trying to write 3 novels at once. All at different stages of the writing process. Yes, I know I try to just focus on one, but then I neglect the other two and that’s just mean!

I know, Bad Amy.

I am building my platform. If you are in the group and are reading this blog that is very helpful but also very meta of you. But thanks! Obviously this is also still a work in progress.

I’m trying to reach out and build a community while simultaneously dusting off my old “Write and submit things to other people” bones.
And also find the right agents for my novel(s) and get up the nerve to actually talk to them.

I must say that having online resources to do that has helped. Instead of having to dress nice and take a train somewhere everyone shows up to the Zoom call without pants on.

Is the future going to be filled with me accomplishing all of these goals?

Maybe not. Maybe it’ll be filled with more fear and failure. It might even suck!

But you know what I’ve learned (incredibly) recently?

I’ve learned to embrace the suck and not beat myself up for it.

You know what though? I’m already kind of mad at myself. I needed to make content for my blog and here I am doing that. But I could have used this prompt and wrote a beautiful short story or an epic poem! But I didn’t. I accomplished something, it might not be what I wanted to accomplish but this is more than nothing. I still filled the blank page.

Yesterday, I watched Back to the Future through my 7 1/2 year old stepson’s fresh eyes. It was a red-letter day because he has actually started to be able to sit still through an entire movie and actually understand the plot. He’s bright and was asking all the right questions. But besides experiencing that milestone with him 🙂 I learned something about myself.

I learned that I never let myself change my mind. I learned that I put too much pressure on myself to accomplish SPECIFIC goals which is even worse than trying to accomplish pipe dreams.

At the end of the movie Marty is like “I never got a chance to tell you…” about the future. But he did. Doc was finally just not too stubborn to listen. Who knows when and where Doc was like “Eff, I better tape up that letter and read it!” but he did, he decided his life was in the balance and he needed to know what was going to happen to him.

You’re allowed to change your mind. You’re allowed to follow-through. You’re allowed to make lists of goals. You’re allowed to do nothing. You’re allowed to fail and make mistakes.

When you sit down at the page to write, you’re allowed to write the first thing that comes to mind every-time as long as it’s honest and it’s you.

I think at the very least, my future holds a lot more of me doing just that.

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Feel free to email me at amymarieayres [at] gmail [dot] com with any questions you might have about me, my content or to just have a chat!