This past week, I was informed that Doctor Who was getting pulled from Netflix on February 1st. So I have not seen most of the Matt Smith episodes and none of the Capaldi years. I buckled in, called it research for my SFF writing, and went for it.

When I reached the award-winning episode entitled "Vincent and the Doctor," I was excited to see what the hub-bub was about. Everyone I know loves this episode, and I wanted to know why.

I think I know why.

For those of you who haven't seen it and don't mind major spoilers about the episode, Vincent VanGogh is a drunken artist who is suffering a real horrible mental illness. He says he is alone in the world, he says no one cares about him, that his life is a sham.

Before the Doctor and Amy leave him, they try to convince Vincent not to kill himself in a year by bringing him to the future to show him the Musee d'Orsay's special exhibit on Vincent VanGogh's work. He hears Bill Nighy tell them all about how great VanGogh was and how he may be the best artist of all time.

Vincent bawls. And so did I.

But I don't know if people who aren't artists have the same reaction we do.

I think that this scene is such a cathartic experience for those of us who don't have a certain future. Maybe other career paths can go to work every day and know that if they work hard, they will get that promotion, they will get a better job ...

But for us? There's a fine line between a person wasting their life on silly stories and someone who will do something really great that people will appreciate and read and cherish.

We all have felt a special kinship to, say, a music artist who starts off small in our hometown and then explodes into the SuchnSuches. It makes the jump realistic. It makes it something that could happen to anyone. It makes our heroes human.

And it's a little heroic to take a chance. As Chris Pratt wrote on instagram this evening, "There was no Plan B." He scraped together money for gas money on a given day. We don't know if we'll get that promotion. We don't know if it'll pay off, and we're seen as egotistical or absolutely bonkers if we think it will.

I don't know where I'll end up. I don't know which one I am. This blog could be something that's forgotten to the times with a bunch of other blogs that aspiring young writers kept before they went onto to something else or just outright fail. Or it could be something that is looked back on as part of my juvenalia, to say, "Look at this, she wrote this before she was her."

Even writing that feels stupid. Even thinking that I could be someone is egotistical and scary.

There's something else I saw this week. This old notebook:

Pretty egotistical, right? This is ridiculous.

It was also a picture taken from the Huffington Post. It was written by Octavia Butler.

All artists want to share something. That is why we make art. We make it for ourselves, but we also make it so there's some physical, tangible form of our pain and happiness.

What is wrong with wanting that to make a difference?

So here's mine. I know I'm not Octavia Butler. But I am willing to work to be J.R. Dawson. And maybe someday that will mean something.

The other day, I was asked, "What is your creative process as an artist?"

My answer immediately trip-switched into how my creative process relates back to my teaching. I brought up the fortress walls and made it a reliable answer that had to do with my students and my education and the gradual release of scaffolding.

"Well, like my teaching philosophy, I think that it needs to come from the heart," I said. "I say to my students ..." et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

I was then told that while all of that is very interesting, they wanted to know about my creative process. Not my teaching philosophy.

So here is my creative process. Teaching philosophy aside.

1. I find something that interests me. It not enough to be something that I care about or something that has a cool thing about it. It has to be both. It has to be a project that I can connect to in some way, be it theme or character or issue involved in the world, and it also has to have some sort of hook to it that will keep my interest for a year. Because that's how long you usually work on things. If it doesn't have either of these things, then I won't work on it.

2. I write a little of it. I test out the waters, try out some background music, meet the characters. It's usually about two or three pages, and I back off and decide if I see any potential. If I can find some nugget in there, I keep the idea.

3. I decide what the form is going to be. Is this better suited as a short story? A novella? A play? A graphic novel? A screenplay? A novel? Then I decide if I can do that form right now.

4. I plot out the first half of the story and some possible endings. I don't plot out the whole story.

5. I get to know my characters. I collect music. I build the playground of the world.

6. I start writing. At the end of Act I, I stop writing. I look to see what's happening. I look at my plot again. I keep writing.

7. I finish a draft. I see how it turned out. I revise it, all pointing directly to the big crux I discovered during my exploration of Act II and Act III.

8. I revise. I revise some more. I revise focusing on one element and then another. And then I revise.

9. I send it to friends and professors and anyone willing to read it. I workshop it.

10. I lock it away in a cave for two weeks.

11. I read it from beginning to end, I read my workshop notes. I write it again.

12. Eventually it is finished, and I start working on summarizing it and querying it.

I use music. I seek out newspaper articles to find interesting things that have happened. I read a lot of gory firsthand accounts of people who have almost died or have lost someone close or who have been attacked by a shark or a terrorist or a mugger or an overzealous Trump fan. I look for weird situations that people can write about, sad situations that have been documented, and horrible things that have happened in our history that people try to forget.

I listen to musicals to study form. I watch movies to study mood. I read playscripts to study dialogue. And I talk things out a lot, usually over a table at a fast food restaurant with someone who would love it if I stopped trapping them in restaurants so I can fix my book.

Sometimes I play Tsum Tsum while I think. Other times, I listen to Hamilton. And sometimes I scour Facebook for advice.

I am plugged in. I need music. I am suffering from crushing doubt and anxiety. I need to talk walks.

I write in the mornings, and I revise at night. That is, unless I write in the afternoons and I sleep at night. Sometimes I write on road trips, other times some of my worst writing is written on hotel memo pads and I pretend I wrote nothing. But I wrote well in Ireland and London. I hate writing in Omaha.

I have a desk and I barely use it. I sit on my couch or I perch in a Panera. I never write in bed. I fall asleep.

I will write for hours. Some days I won't write at all. Other weeks I write for five days straight, especially if I've heard a good song.

I should read more. I try to read a short story every day. I would be lying if I told you I succeeded in that.

But I am an artist. I do have a process. I have a world that is inside my head and I've gotten into the habit of not sharing it. I've taught myself that it's not important. I need to not do that. Because I do know what I'm doing, and I do know how to answer the question of "What's your process?"

So there it is. My process.

I gave up nights with my brothers. Instead of going upstairs and sitting in their room and watching mindless television before we all passed out together, I swung around in my computer chair, chewing on ice, typing out as much as I could muster before my mother told me to go to sleep. The payment for words was not watching SNL, Three Ninjas, TMNT, and Blue's Clues.

I gave up hijinks with friends I never had. I snuck into alcoves during recess, and at home, I spent most of my summers on my front porch with a notebook. The neighborhood kids roamed the streets, eating ice cream and throwing baseballs. I wrote about people like them. I nearly tricked myself into thinking I'd lived a childhood dappled with Sandlot-esque adventures. But then I just realized I'd watched Sandlot a lot.

I gave up secrets. Each time something happened to me, it wouldn't stay inside. I'd make a character, I'd throw it out there into the world, and a few people would read it. Then more people read it.

I gave up my home. I moved four hundred miles away, and at the fancy college, I gave up my agency to tell what was good and what was bad. I listened intently, took many notes, and my best friend and I gave up the real world to sequester ourselves in coffee shops and talk about our manuscripts and only our manuscripts. We gave up a real friendship, tied together with fictional characters we both loved. Did we love each other?

I gave up one night going out to see some movie with my friends, because I needed to write this one scene where a prison explodes. I turned off all the lights, and I put in a track from The Dark Knight, and I typed for three hours straight.

I gave up weekends. I gave up by-chance meetings in the cafeteria. I should have given more, because I still didn't write enough.

He stood in front of the class and said, "This character of yours is wrong! This script is wrong! This is all wrong!"

I gave up thinking I could do this.

I gave up and went home. I gave up the life I wanted to make money. I gave up a job to date a boy.

But then the boy said not to give up.

So I told him what I had sacrificed, what we would sacrifice. Money, time, nights out on the town, a relationship only about us. I told him how one writer told me about sitting at his uncle's death bed with a laptop on his lap so he could still make a deadline.

But the boy didn't say anything when I gave up watching television with him to type in my computer chair. He didn't say anything when we didn't go outside and we didn't make many friends. I made a friend who saw me writing and wanted to write, too, and we wrote together. I gave up my concerns and quit my job and flew halfway across the country to learn as much as I could. I gave up worrying.

Now I give up full days to writing things I will end up deleting. I give up anxiety to send out queries and submissions. And there are some days where I don't think I can do this, where I should just go back and get a real job, and things get really tense, and I can't write anything good, and everyone hates me.

But I'll never give up.

So I was almost done with this post when I realized how absolutely boring it was. It was like, "Blah I did this, blah I did that, blah blah (fart noise)."

The thing about being a part of a writer group and all of us having our own blogs is we know exactly what the residency looked like. And then we all go home and type out what it looked like from our experience. We probably just want to say the great stuff and how great we are, or maybe we try to make each other laugh, but I didn't want to do a laundry list and Lew already wrote about underwater welding, so I'm sort of up a river on how to do this blog entry.

So let's focus on a Top Ten list, because maybe that way I can actually get through this blog.

Top Ten things that happened at Residency.

10. The trees.
The stillness of a dead house. The beach at sunset. The snow packed on branches deep in the woods, catching the sun like needles pricking the light. The cold beach, the closed lobster houses silhouetted in the dull black night.
9. The workshops.
Not being able to breathe beforehand. Not knowing it actually went well, because we're not there to do well, we're there to learn. Werewolves, ghosts in the backyard, chocolate hills, faces, Snow White in the desert, flash fiction challenges full of houses that eat you alive and dollmakers that will murder you from the outside in. And that house we had our final workshop in? Who knew I wouldn't miss the Stone House.
8. Saying goodbye.
We sang "Some Things are Meant to Be." I cried for real. All of the people who were here when I came, who gave me a floor to stand on, leaving. We're on our own now.
7. Surprises.
I got the Erin Underwood Award. This was a shock. I had no idea. I thought Nancy was telling me to sit by her because she thought I looked sad and no one else would want to sit by me. Turned out it was because she needed to slip me the award. I really need to stop listening to my brain.
6. Growing Up.
I've gotten to the point where I leave residency and I actually believe I can do things. I am now armed with a short story that I can send out. I am heading into my thesis. I have a panel at ICFA. I feel like I can now write something and it will come out the way I want it to look. Now onto mastering plot ...
5. Pillow Chocolates.
I ate a couple of them. Sorry, Shawna. The others I actually smuggled back to Omaha so I can send them down to Texas. Mission nearly accomplished.
4. Friends Growing Up.
I get so excited when someone sends me something new to read and it was better than the already-great thing they wrote last. I'm serious. You are awesome. Keep writing. Keep doing your thing. I will keep reading.
3. Faculty and Guest Speakers.
What other faculty in the world will have breakfast or lunch with you? Who will stay up until one in the morning to give you advice on talking to an agent? Who cries at graduation? We have some of the best faculty in any MFA program. They believe in us, they really do. And not only that, they care about us.
2. Finally Getting Home.
I was stuck in the Newark Airport. Then they channeled me to Lincoln. Not Omaha. We ended up giving a ride home to a few other Omahans redirected to Lincoln. We had a merry little band driving through the dark along I-80 at 10 at night. We've been invited to brunch for our kindness of letting someone sit in seats that would have been empty if they hadn't hitched a ride?
1. Pants.
Alex had to mail me my pants. I forgot them. I was very grateful when they showed up and I was no longer having to get really creative with the one pair of leggings I did remember to pack.

This residency taught me a lot. Not only did I have to deal with my own crippling insecurities and learn how to be confident, but I learned so much from the seminars and the workshops about craft. I can't believe graduation is coming. I wonder if there's any way to do it all over again.

I started off my new year with this picture right here. Pizza, amazing bookage, and a nice comfy chair next to a freezing window separating me from the snow.

It ended with a cinematic experience like I've never had.

We do have a Drafthouse here in town that was one of eleven theaters in the country showing the Roadshow cut of this film. It was 35 mm, which is amazing and nostalgic, and holy God it was three hours long. I told Alex it was a fun experience like reading Thomas Hardy is a fun experience: educational, beautiful, and not fun.

But I will say this. That intermission was well-timed. Alex and I sat around for fifteen minutes discussing who the whodunnit was. And I said to him, "A good mystery has a conclusion that was obvious and inevitable, but you never ever would have guessed it."

It was exactly that.

This movie is a 101 on how to write a good mystery. It all makes sense, it all is how it had to end, but you will absolutely not see it coming from a million miles away.

With that little lesson under my belt, we dig into the new year of writing.