writing

the problem & the cure

Ashlee

Highway road between forests

from my upcoming book, “Not a Dime a Dozen”

I effortlessly fell into the same coping patterns I always reached for, although they had never served me well. The days started feeling like running through an ocean of mud. It exerts you, but you never get anywhere. The other thing that stood out to me suddenly was the stark white walls of emptiness. It was much too silent, & while the sight of the finish line had given me something to look forward to, it was only a mirage, & it faded when night fell. This sensation grew in the moments when everything was rushed towards the redundancy of another day, & no one spoke, or at least could not be heard over the roaring cacophony of quiet.

I wondered why I always found myself at the same crossroad at night, with the familiar darkened road & the street signs impossible to make out in the darkness. The road forked off into multiple pathways, & the pressure of choosing the right one felt as random as having to pick the door the magician’s assistant is really behind. I had made choices that I thought would make things better, but the porthole door in the sky scooped me up & deposited me in the same place, week after week, & the same feelings always found me again.

It reminded me of the memory album I’d looked through a thousand times, even though each time I asked myself why I romanticized my own pain so greatly. Was there really anything beautiful about acting as the tragic figure I’d written myself to be, but never really wanted to become? I wondered what my childhood self would think of me if she’d met me now, & if she’d be pleased by the accomplishments I’d achieved, or discouraged & fearing the inevitability of often sunless days & starless nights that were ahead . I had worn these feelings like a comfortable coat, returning to them when the expanse of everything else I could do instead of this seemed too much. I resorted to it & then reveled in it, sometimes feeling as if even in the darkness, my so-called vulnerability was nothing more than another part of my facade, put on for the show of it in an attempt to control the ways others saw me.

I felt the cool waves of an infinite ocean washing up over my feet. The sun rested upon the horizon, neon-pink & hazily vibrating like a mirage. In these moments, there was no yesterday, no tomorrow, no more haunting Mondays. She told me I was getting the same way that I was the last time this had happened; what was that supposed to mean, & how was I supposed to feel about something I couldn’t help myself from feeling? At least I was trying to dig myself out from under the rubble of the fire, & didn’t that count for something?

When I saw my reflection in the mirror of her face, I reeled back. The crystal ball on the mahogany desk informed me of the shrouded sunlessness that the road I had chosen contained, & provided a glimpse of the person I would one day become if I did not turn around. The papers on the walls clearly spelled LEAVE NOW, & the flapping curtain by the open window communicated in Morse Code TURN BACK. I suddenly knew that it didn’t matter where I went or which road I chose, as long as it was different than the one I was on. I fled from the office & slammed the door behind me, vowing I would never go back.

Instead of admitting that I am afraid of courage required to step into my own self & create the kind of life I want to live, I use my own sorrow as an excuse. Wearing it & melting into its folds is easier than becoming someone new. Sometimes, I wonder what it would be like to disappear & reappear somewhere else, my slate cleaned & my future open. To do that would be the easy way out; it is not necessary for my freedom, & I do not need to wait for the bells to sound with the validation that I am allowed to liberate myself.

Palm trees under the sky

It was only on the forbidden drive to the city that I felt the shifting of soil. I felt acutely the changes blossoming & fading into existence, & the rubble on top of me finally being cleared away by my own doing. Beams of sunlight fell around me on the ground, & in the breeze with the music & the effortless swaying of trees, it was the first time in a long time that I finally felt normal. A preview of what is to come. Freedom was that essential code by which I knew I needed to live by, if I were to ever fully realize what things like happiness & hope meant. What I had been doing was the exact opposite, & I was growing tired of my old patterns & sorrows & habits. What had once been a darkness I relished & lovingly extracted every ounce of pain from now became a song I’d never liked but heard play too many times on the radio. My old standby patterns weren’t beautiful & tragic – they were just boring, & didn’t allow half enough time for me to merely exist & simply be. Too much of it was shrouded in routine & in monotonous pandering to the politics touted by over-idolized figures I wanted nothing to do with.

If I were to have more days like this, where I felt the pure, unadulterated & fluttering joy of existing in the world of my exact choosing, I would have to summon the bravery to brush myself off & keep trying until I made it. This time, I would stand at the darkened crossroads in the night & I would not be afraid. I would pick the road leading in the direction of the same breeze I’d felt on the beach & in the city, one which wordlessly murmurs of home. When I find all the good feelings I thought I’d forgotten, waiting for me somewhere along the path, I will be able to trust once more in my ability to prevail, to create this for myself, & to thrive.

Reflection Upon Five Years of Creative Courage

Ashlee

Strange Occurrences by Ashlee Craft - Cover

Five years ago, I did one of the most frightening, brilliant things I had done in my 16-year existence : hit the “publish” button on Amazon’s Kindle Publishing page, and in that moment, released my first book to the world.

The journey had started long, long before then, when I was 13 years old. I had been coming up with stories & working on a variety of books, mostly about children/teens & their pets, since I was about ten years old. I had completed several books prior to writing Strange Occurrences, each one somewhere around 50 – 70 typed pages. Strange Occurrences originally started as a screenplay I was going to write, but when I realized that to turn it into a film would be an challenging, expensive endeavor, I decided to write a book about the idea instead. My book was going to be about a young teenage girl who got sucked into another dimension, one which would allow her to see other people’s points of view, & understand how her actions fit into the grander scheme of things. This was inspired by watching the movie It’s a Wonderful Life for the first time, & being awed by the end portion of the film, where George Bailey sees what things would have been like if he’d never been born.

I remember a distinct moment from when I was 13, and walking on the treadmill stationed in my parents’ bedroom. My grandmother had died recently. I decided to incorporate this element into my story, & have the main character’s dying grandmother warn her about the “Strange Occurrences”, something the grandmother had experienced when she was the main character’s age. Originally, the main character’s name was going to be Carol, inspired by the name of Jack Ryan’s wife in the film Hunt for Red October, which I must note, I was OBSESSED with at the time, but eventually decided on Cathy. As I walked on the treadmill, I decided that Cathy would “use walking as a means of escaping from her problems” and traverse her neighborhood with her dog.

Strange Occurrences really began months later, as I sat on the bed in a cheap hotel room, holding the old Dell laptop on my lap, & leaning back on the made bed against a wall of stiff hotel pillows. We were moving to a different house & staying in the hotel while we looked for houses. I described the hotel as being “oppressive, like a dungeon”, & wanted to do something to take my mind off this fact. I remember sitting on the bed, typing the opening lines, looking over at my sister & explaining what I was writing, & my parents coming back inside from retrieving something from the car. This was where I typed those first few pages.

★★★★★

Over the next few months, even as I attended college as a dual-enrollment student, I worked on Strange Occurrences in my spare time. The story took shape, and changed multiple times. After a long, arduous editing process which spanned several months and included both me & my family (including my relatives) reading through my book several times, I finally worked up the courage to start sending off samples to a variety of big-name publishers. Eagerly, I awaited a response, & imagined the perfect-movie-moment in which I would open their letter with trembling hands, & read, “we are interested in publishing your book, and would like you to send us the rest of it”. One day, a letter arrived in the mail, & I opened it. I was both terrified & elated that after weeks of waiting, I’d finally received a response. When I opened it though, I saw the dreaded words, & my spirit temporarily fell : “unfortunately, we are not interested in your manuscript at this time.”  I was temporarily surprised and disappointed by this, but being a confident optimist, I kept thinking, “Maybe the next letter will be a ‘yes’.”. After receiving several rejection letters, I realized that the best course of action would be to take matters into my own hands.

For a long time, I hadn’t been open to the idea of self-publishing a book. This was mostly because I was in love with the fantasy of having an actual publishing house send me a letter telling me they liked what they’d written. Looking back, I was firmly set on having this because I felt like getting a deal with a big publishing house was a very prestigious thing. Furthermore, achieving this would not only prove to myself that I was indeed good at writing, but it would prove to those around me that writing was a legitimate career, & would be the thing which would make me a “real” writer.

a "real" writer

 

Thankfully, two things happened around this time. (1) My father repeatedly told me about how he thought self-publishing, especially ebooks, was a good idea, & sent me multiple articles about successful authors on Kindle. (2) I was starting to get fed up with waiting for people to give me approval about my books, & I started wondering why I was letting someone else hold me back from doing what I wanted to do. I came to the conclusion that I might as well try self-publishing, & began researching how to make this happen.

To be honest, I procrastinated publishing Strange Occurrences by endlessly editing it. “I just want it to be perfect.” I thought. I kept finding things about it that I could change or improve. “Just one more edit, then it will be done.” I kept saying that, for a few months. Eventually, I realized that I could edit it a thousand times & always find things about it that could be made better, but if I did that, my book would never get published. “You’re afraid of success.” My dad told me. So I got to work on painting the cover, & wrote the book description.

I remember sitting in a kitchen chair one afternoon, sunlight streaming in, & I sketched out the cover for Strange Occurrences on a piece of paper taken from a sketchpad of mine. Once the sketch was perfected, I filled it in with paint. I wanted my sister to photograph me painting it, “to document this moment.”, I told her. A while later, the cover was done. I painted the title words on another piece of paper & added them to the cover image in Photoshop.

After learning about how to format a book, making multiple formatting errors, & finally getting it right, then came the moment when I was on the Kindle publishing page, filling out the information about my book, & uploading my files.

April 4, 2011. It was finally time. I put my cursor over the “Publish” button, took a few deep breaths, & looked around at my family gathered there on the couch. “I’m going to publish it now.” I told them. All my hard work & all the effort I had put into this book was finally coming to life. I didn’t know where I was going by doing this, or what would happen, and even though I didn’t feel entirely ready, I knew inside that I really was. I hit the publish button. A feeling of relief, & of nervousness, filled me, but mostly, it was a feeling of accomplishment. I’d done something awesome, especially for a 16-year-old. I was really doing this. By doing this, I was saying to the world that I believed in myself & in the things I created, & in my opinion, there are few statements as powerful as that.

Shine, Success

In the five years since then, I have written more than 45 books & started a monthly zine which currently includes 10 issues, as well as a variety of albums, blogs, & videos. I’ve written a novel in three days, participated in multiple NaNoWriMo challenges, & been featured on a TV interview with Fox News. These are things that I never would have thought were possible five years ago, but by the mere fact of them happening, it proved to me that I was dedicated and confident enough to make this happen for me. To be a writer. To make my goals happen, without waiting for anyone else to tell me that I was good enough.

Here’s to the five years since then, & the next five years. Here’s to all the people who are just starting out as writers & trying to get people to read their books. Here’s to those who came before me & set the stage, & the ones that encouraged me to go farther. Here’s to the people questioning if their books, their writing, their music, their art, their dreams, are good enough. Here’s to the people tired of waiting for others to tell them it’s okay to take the next step, those who take their goals into their own hands & nurture them & turn them into absolute brilliance, even if it feels messy or amateur.

Here’s to scared, ambitious teen hitting the “Publish” button on her first book & seeing that her dream of being this was possible.

Here’s to courage, in whatever form for you it may take.

 

Mini-Essays : October 9, 2015

Ashlee

Grass Covering by Ashlee Craft
Mini-essays are going to be a new feature on my blog & I’m so excited! I came up with the idea earlier today & in this feature, I will write a small paragraph about a beautiful minutiae or moment or thing in life, or that I read about, etc.

// SURREAL SLEEP

I awoke, not yet halfway through the short sleep night that I knew I was going to have, & looked around at the darkness of my room, & the sheer lace curtains over my window, illuminated by moonlight. My blankets were too warm; I tried putting one leg in, one leg out, like I did when I was a kid, but it didn’t really help. I tried sleeping everywhere : on the end of my bed, curled into a c-shape, clutching a plush owl & laying on my “weird fish pillow”, as I call it. I thought about the sound of his voice; adrenaline coursing through the shot put athlete preparing to throw; feminism; tender moments between the two of us; pretending that he was there, brushing my hair back from my face to comfort me to sleep; funny TV shows, & the deep cloud that was hanging above me. Still, sleep would not come, & the assumed exhaustion followed.

 

// Goodbye, Tree

You were there, a steady friend of mine over many lonesome nights when I would stare out my empty window at the lake. “Goodnight, tree.”, I would say, thinking about Anne of Green Gables & how she named plants, so they could be her friends. The moon would shine down over the lake, & the water would sparkle like electricity was jolting through it, & you would be out there, a steady, sure companion of mine. & every morning, your branches outstretched to the sky, you would be greeting the day, ready to embrace it. Steady, rooted, certain. That was how I thought of you. Now you are crumpled & uprooted & lying there dead, & I can no longer say goodnight to you, but rather, farewell. “Goodbye, tree.”

 

// The Smell of Fresh Sweet Potatoes

They sat in my fruit bowl on the edge of the counter for quite a while – a white organic sweet potato, & a regular sweet potato. I used to use the fruit bowl all the time, but then the fruit in it slowly rotted, & after I washed the bowl, it got shunned to the pantry. I rediscovered it a few weeks ago, & the sweet potatoes ended up in the bowl. In an effort to rotate the fruits & veggies, I decided to cook the sweet potatoes today. It was one of those moods where I feel inspired to do everything, & make everything, & get everything done creatively & productively. I sliced them & made sweet potato chips. As I sliced off the ends, I took an appreciative sniff of raw sweet potato. I’d never actually sniffed one before & realized I didn’t know what they smelled like. It lacked much of the earthy smell of a regular potato, but had a faint hint of regular sweet potato smell. It smelled refreshing, surprisingly.

 

// Mindfulness, In a Weird Place

Three times it happened, same place, almost the same time. Lost in thought, with the soap on my hands & warm water washing it away. Lost in thoughts about where I was going, & the mere hatred of it all, & every other frustration bearing down upon me. Then, each time, caught up in what wasn’t even real yet, & probably never would be, & maybe wasn’t even important in the scheme of things, I stepped on the same broken acorn on the floor. It crunched under my foot, & the unexpected sound jolted me from my soliloquies, & suddenly I was there, fully & present. It was the alarm clock. WAKE UP. WAKE UP. WAKE UP. Then I felt the paper towels on my hands, & felt the crunch of the paper beneath my fingers. This happened two more times the same night, the exact same way.