Dear Dad,

I know you're never going to read this. I know you're never going to read this, because you don't read the things I write. You've never seen this blog, you aren't friends with me on Facebook, and you haven't cracked open any published book that has my writing inside of it. In fact, you'd be mortified if you knew I was writing a public letter to you, because you are such a private person.

Today, we had a surprise party for you. It was at your favorite restaurant. We wrapped your presents in Christmas paper and made hand-drawn cards. We've done this for years.

The boys got you things you could understand. Manly things, things that fit what you enjoy. I got you a meal at the restaurant, but at the last minute, I decided to give you something else as well.

I forgot you wouldn't understand the significance of the present, since you don't read my writing. You don't know my weaknesses, you don't know my strengths, my rhythms, my imaginary worlds that spark up inside of me and sometimes don't hold their own on the pages, because I'm still learning my way.

The present was a character playlist I'd made for my favorite character in my thesis project. The character is a father-type figure. He is wise, he's kind, he's protective, and he's the reason why I've kept writing this conflabbit series. He's been a guiding light for Alex and me, even though he's fictional. When Alex and I go through hard times, we look to his guidance, just like we look to your guidance. He's been a great source of introspection and intimate exploration of what it means to be a parent, to have a parent, and to grow up and realize even the happiest and greatest of fathers can be sad sometimes. 

This doesn't make any sense to you, I know, you're not a writer. When I got my first car, I put a picture of this character on my keychain so he could keep me safe when you couldn't be there driving with me. You rolled your eyes, not because you thought it was stupid, but because you didn't get it.

When I wrapped this present, I forgot all the times I tried to share my inner world of "writer" with you and it went awry. A few years ago, I asked you to listen to my prologue to the book I was working on at the time. You fell asleep a few paragraphs in. I was in a rage of fury, crying, stomping my feet, leaving the room. You tried to explain, "I don't really get into fiction. I read nonfiction."

"So when I publish a book, you won't read it?"

"Probably not," you said. "But I'll buy it. And I'll love it."

When I did publish my first book, you were first in line at the release party. You bought a ton of copies. You bragged about it to anyone who would listen. You set my book ... and the subsequent books ... on the bookshelf facing outwards, masking your nonfiction because it was as precious as one of my trophies you used to display.

But like I said, you've never read any of them.

So when you opened the present, my first reaction was disappointment in your own disappointment. I tried to explain to you why I'd given you a mix CD of music you might not like. I said, "That's our father character in the book." I tried to tell you that it's because you are my father, you are who he is for my character. I wanted to say that in all of my stories, there have been fathers and daughters dancing together, marching side by side into battle, trying to find ways to communicate the immense love they have for each other.

I said, "The first song is 'Suddenly' from Les Mis," and your eyes bugged and you snorted. Les Mis is not your speed. But Hugh Jackman singing about Cosette is what I think of when I think of the fear of becoming a father. I wanted to share it with you.

We don't speak the same language. And while I felt a tinge of frustration, of anxiety, when you confusedly read my track list, I can't be mad anymore.

You might not read my stories. You might not be able to connect with my characters and my plots and gain a deeper understanding of who I am, of who you are to me. But then again, I never took up martial arts and connected with you. I came to all of your tournaments, saw how big the trophies got, clapped when you broke boards. But I never dug in deeper than that.

And maybe, now that I'm an adult, I can comprehend that just because we don't speak the same language, we can understand we love each other. We can receive the bond we give one another today.

"Thanks for dinner," you say.

"No problem," I say.

"What a surprise!"

I can send you a picture via text of the two of us, standing outside Grandma's house, you holding me, looking at nothing but me, and me laughing and waving my arms around, safe and happy in your arms.

You can write back, "That's us! I love you."

I will keep listening to your stories about tae-kwon-do and Irish culture. You keep collecting my stories and putting them on your bookshelf. We're going to be okay.

With all my love,
your daughter

So this was my first week back at work. About two minutes after I stepped into the building, I started a conversation with a co-worker and mentioned my writing room.

"Oh, are you still writing that series?" she asked.

"Yes?" I said.

Then she gave the look. If you're a writer with a day job, you know what look I'm talking about. It's the look that reminds you how your dreams are silly little things.

It's difficult to be in an environment where no one knows how serious you're taking this, how hard you work to keep both the day job and the night job going, or who you really are and where you're going.

I once said to a friend that there is a fine line between the deluded and the successful when it comes to art.

So it's important to remember, fellow dayjobbers, that our coworkers do not define us. Our daily chores do not make us failures. And if we want it bad enough, we need to remember that there are a hundred thousand people who did it before us. If we want this for ourselves, then we need to stick to it and stand on our own and make it a priority in our lives.

So here, I'm making rules for us:

1. If you have time to write, then write. One author shared his story of writing seven hours straight on the days he had off. You don't get a day off if this is what you want.
2. Don't worry about how others define you. Remember, everyone has a job and no one's life is completely encompassed in their job.
3. Don't feel guilty for taking time to make your writing a priority. You cannot always live for other people.
4. No one has a for-sure success in the future. Everyone, even J.K. Rowling and Margaret Atwood, has at some point felt like a loser and wondered if it was worth it. So make it worth it (and by the way, Rowling was on welfare/worked as a teacher before that, and Atwood was a coffee shop barista).
5. Set deadlines for yourself and do not allow yourself to waver or come up short. Give it your best shot so you won't regret anything.
6. Ask those around you in your personal life to support you. If they love you, they will support you.
7. Make friends in your writing community, even if it's just online. In 2014, I don't think it's "just online," I think it's a huge resource.
8. Give yourself a writing space or a place to go write. Turn off the internet. Focus. If you can't write, then read. Blog. Network. But for God's sake, do not Buzzfeed.
9. Believe in yourself. Advocate for yourself. Love yourself.
10. Finally, submit. Nothing will come of you just sitting there type type typin'. Even if you get a rejection, you're having a conversation with the external writing world.

Have a great year, everyone. And if you need a day job writer friend, you know where to find me.

The happiest day of my life was the day I realized I would never have to live in my hometown again. With my belongings moved into an apartment in Chicago's Lincoln Park neighborhood, my twin bed siphoned off from my two roommates' beds, and my nineteenth birthday party taking place in my new dining room with my new friends around a German chocolate cake purchased at the two-level grocery store on the corner, I knew that all of my hard adolescent work had paid off.

I now would be free. My greatest fear of withering away at home would not come to pass.

The saddest day of my life was the day I moved from Chicago back to my hometown.

There are a lot of reasons why this happened. For starters, money. For other starters, external pressure. Heartbreak was another reason. But soon I found myself back on familiar streets living an ordinary life in a place where the extraordinary refused to surface.

We have no oceans in my hometown. We have a river, and it's filthy.

Many people feel this hopeless giving up, although I doubt many of them feel it as early as twenty-three. I did good work here, and I continue to do good work, but something was missing. The glimmer that happened when I wrote far off worlds, the echo of my voice when I sang. "Why don't you sing anymore?" someone asked me ... no, a lot of people asked me.

There was no point, I could have answered. It will just remind me of what I could have been, would have been another good one. But usually I just answered, "Oh, I'm busy. And things. And life. And no one wants to hear it, anyway."

It had to stop.

Ray Bradbury writes in his book, Zen in the Art of Writing, that in order to live, in order to "stay alive," we have to keep writing. We have to come up with those crazy worlds no one else can see. We must believe in magic, or "Buck Rogers," as he puts it.

So Alex, my fiance, found Mur Lafferty's podcast and in turn found Stonecoast. For months, the two of us schemed to get me into the MFA program. And then one day, Nancy Holder called and told me the good news.

As you know, I went to my first residency last week. And I am about to tell you why you should stop not singing, start staying alive, and find your own Stonecoast.

The night before, I was afraid. I told Alex that he needed me, that my dead friend needed me, that the dishes in the sink needed me. "It's too far away, I'm too scared, I can't make friends, everyone will hate me, I'm not good enough." But stalwart Alex lugged my 49.5 pound checked bag all the way to his car, and then all the way into the airport.

In my book, Abigail is a young girl who is trapped in Boston and damned to walk the earth after her airship is taken from her. There is a scene where she escapes, bursting into the sky and seeing the sun strike the white clouds from above. And when that plane pierced the rainstorm and breathed out into the air, I felt like something new was about to happen.

For the first time in a long time, I had a chance.

Maine is a different sort of place. I say different because it's not like anywhere I've lived. Even my hometown is loud with this incessant noise from the interstate and the planes from the airforce base. But Portland is silent. As soon as I got rid of the jet engines in my ears, I realized how quiet the airport was. And then I recognized silence in the parking lot, the road, the highway, and finally Bowdoin College Campus.

And for the first time in five years, I was welcomed by people who understood what I wanted to do with my life.

It was like coming home.

Stone House sits on a peninsula (which I loudly remarked in our coach bus upon seeing it: "WE ARE ON A PENINSULA!"), and it is beautiful. If you look through the trees in the front yard, you see sailboats and the ocean. Mist hangs in the trees, mud flats magically transform into roaring seas in a matter of hours. At night, I walked around the park with my friend as trails dissipated into the fog. This was the land of Stephen King, Herman Melville, Jules Verne, and my own imagination.

"You are not an aspiring writer," the director of the program told us. "This is the point in which you become a writer. Virginia Woolf had a moment where she became Virginina Woolf. And this is yours."

I ran back to my temporary dorm room and I typed, typed, typed on my story. My teachers knew my heroes, my teachers were my heroes, and I'd read them all my life. This was a place where students published their work and won Campbell Awards.

Stonecoast was a place where people did the things other people talked about maybe someday doing. Stonecoast was a place full of people who said, "I understand. I hurt, too. It's okay. We'll write about it together." Stonecoast was where the Muggle borns came together for ten days every six months to build their armor, give out six months' worth of hugs, and write as fast as our hands could go.

I watched the graduation of the class of 2014, and I saw that this program did not just change my life, but had changed their lives.

I'm back home now, reading Bradbury and finishing up Verne. Tomorrow, I lock myself up in a hotel room and revise the beginning of my manuscript for my mentor. And although I know this year is going to be a long one, I know that I'm not alone. I know I have a goal.

I know Maine exists.

Please do not wrap yourself up in a blanket of malaise. Please go out and do what you love to do. Find people who also love to do that thing. And be happy for it.

It's not too late. Go be happy. Find your magic place where the fog comes in and the sailboats can get all the way out to the ocean.

This Friday, I embark on a magical journey to a faraway land called Maine. And if my current binge-watching of Once Upon a Time is any indication, Maine is a kingdom far away with ruthless pawn store owners and little regard for any actual law.


That worry aside, I'm getting my supplies ready and my homework in order to make this trek, and I would like to share my deep-seated neuroses about beginning this journey.

This week, I had the horrific experience of writing my first post for the MFA blog, The MFA Years. I am a contributor, and this is one of those amazing experiences that just sort of fell into my lap because I happened to be on MFA Draft '14 at the right place at the right time.

So obviously I didn't want to screw it up.

We were supposed to introduce ourselves, give the audience a taste as to who we were and what we were about. It was an open-ended question that could lead us into talking about applications, writing history, or our pet cats. Seeing as I don't have cats and the application process is an awful nightmarish blur, I opted for the story I thought was most important to my growth as a writer.

How I learned to stop worrying and enjoy science fiction writing.

This piece can be found here. I added pictures from my own personal life, I talked about a personal conversation I had with my professor, I opened up about my grandmother and my weird quirks as a child. I even touched on my elitism in college. While none of this stuff was that hardcore and shouldn't have given me a panic attack, I stayed up until about 3 a.m. reading it and re-reading it, picking over every photograph to make sure my real name wasn't in there, that I didn't say anything bad about anyone, and trying not to anger the entire literary fiction world.

The piece was not controversial. I'm just a sissy.

I guess this is why I cannot write autobiographical things. I tried, for a class entitled Autobiography. I wrote all about my time in the big city and the different people I'd met, but I never published it. I never showed it to anyone who wasn't my professor, and I tried to distance myself from it.

I know other people have this anxiety. We live in an age that anything written on the internet or in a magazine can easily be found by anyone for the next however many hundreds of years that internet exists. This means that some stupid Facebook rant I wrote in 2006 is still very much visible to me and anyone who is interested enough in my Facebook to spelunk  through eight years of selfies to find that on December 2, I was very angry at "You Know Who You Are" for disagreeing with "Whatever Stupid Politics I was Into At the Time!"

So a lot of us have become a little skittish about sharing with the class.

I've read so much memoir lately, and they're all about women who overcame these gigantic odds through different difficult situations, and I just think, "I know everything about you, and I've never met you." What great courage that they stand up and are sometimes the first to say, "This thing that we aren't talking about? It's happening. It's happening to a lot of us."

I don't think I'll ever be that brave.

I watched John Leguizamo the other night, and he discusses his father's lawsuit against him for his autobiographical one-man show. I just thought about my own dad, tearing up because of me sharing something that was between me and him, and I just can't do that. I think about my mom, my ex-best friend, my ex-boyfriends, my old teachers, my college roommates, my professors, that one guy on the bus ... they're all with me and peering over my shoulder when I write about them. I even worry about my grandma, who is now dead and gone. I put her picture up on my blog a few months ago and told her story. I really battled about doing that. Who was I to talk about her? Who was I to tell her story when I hadn't been there or when I just had one perspective?

Like I said, memoir takes a lot of courage. Any one of us can sit down and make up stories and share them with each other. There's a blanket of comfort that we are not those people, we did not make those decisions, we did not lose real friends or betray them or make other people hurt. We made no mistakes. Because those people are fiction, and we just made them up.

But memoir?

I salute the memoirists. You stand up and shout out into the void your secrets and your truths, and other people shout back. You share your most valuable stories and most loved family and friends so we may learn something or so we don't feel so alone. While we all huddle in our own little caves, protected from scrutiny and judgment, you stand out in the storm and take it, just so we know there's someone out there for us.

So thank you. Please keep writing. And maybe someday I'll learn from you how to stand out in the rain.