The English Geek

2011 Books & Music

I put this list together for a project at work, but I thought I'd share it here, too. The list of my favorite 2011 releases, by genre:

My Favorite Released-in-2011 Grown-Up Fiction

1. The Dovekeepers by Alice Hoffman (which, OK: I haven't finished yet, but only because I am savoring it slowly)
2. Sister by Rosamund Lupton
3. I Think I Love You by Allison Pearson
4. To Be Sung Underwater by Tom McNeal
5. The Lover's Dictionary by David Levithan

(Side note: the 2011 new releases I want to read but haven't yet: State of Wonderby Ann Patchett; The Marriage Plotby Jeffrey Eugenides; The Stranger's Childby Alan Hollingshead; The Night Circusby Erin Morgenstern, The Cat's Tableby Michael Ondaatje, 11/22/63 by Stephen King, and 1q84by Haruki Murakami)

My Favorite Released-in-2011 Teen Fiction
(I am completely unsure as to why I didn't write about any teen fiction this year.)

1. A Monster Calls  by Patrick Ness. A combination of Siobbhan Dowd and Patrick Ness? With illustrations that powerfully capture the emotion in the story? Oh, my. I can't tell you how much I loved this book. Enough that I haven't brought myself to write about it yet.
2. Divergentby Veronica Roth. One of the better of the new crop of dystopian novels.
3. How to Save a Lifeby Sara Zarr. Told in alternating chapters, this is the story of two teenagers: on who's pregnant and might want to give her baby up for adoption, one who's trying to deal with the grief from her dad's death.
4. Chime by Frannie Billingsly. Another dystopian novel, this one is so well written it's like jewelry, somehow.
5. Between Shades of Greyby Ruta Sepetyas. A historical novel about Stalin's rule in Russia. I don't think this topic in history is very well known, and this isn't a happy book. But beautiful, still.

(The 2011 new teen releases that I'm still waiting to get to the top of the waiting list: Ashfall by Mike Mullin; The Scorpio Racesby Maggie Stiefvater; Blood Red Road by Moira Young; Legend by Marie Lu; The Unbecoming of Mara Dyerby Michelle Hodkin)

My Favorite Released-in-2011 Nonfiction

1. Just my Type by Simon Garfield. Have I ever blogged about my affection for fonts and typography? I don't believe I have. I should, one day. Suffice it to say: this book has an entire chapter about Comic Sans. No font nerd could resist it.
2. In Other Worlds: Science Fiction and the Human Imaginationby Margaret Atwood. Hello...my favorite writer. Her words about science fiction that began as a response to Ursula K. Le Guin's review of Year of the Flood. What isn't there to love for me?
3. A Journey with Two Maps: Becoming a Woman Poet by Eavan Boland. Just her name, with its Irish connotations, gives me shivers. Even better, this is exactly the sort of book I love to read, with its mishmash of writing and the writing life and poetics and poems and thinking and discussing.
4. Blue Nightsby Joan Didion. I loved her The Year of Magical Thinking, which is about the year after her husband's death. Blue Nights, equally as powerful, details the time after her daughter died.
5. A Widow's Storyby Joyce Carol Oates. I'm not sure why the details of someone else's grief are compelling to me. But this one---the story of Oates' dealing with the death of her husband---just works for me.

 My Favorite Released-in-2011 CDs
(I only am listing three because I only discovered three. I'm trying to broaden my musical horizons but so far I'm not being very successful.)

1. 21 by Adele. Although I ran with these songs as company many times during my marathon training, they evoke for me the first long autumn run I did. "Turning Tables" is perhaps my favorite song on the album—nearly a soundtrack for some autumn moments—perhaps because of the lyric "next time I'll be braver, I'll be my own savior." I don't often manage, like I used to, to find exactly the wisdom I need in a song. But I needed that line. I still need it.
2. Ceremonials by Florence + the Machine. In real life, I think Florence might bug me a little bit—too dramatic. But in music, gah. I love her work. I am approaching this CD like I used to approach CDs: learning all the songs by heart.
3. Ahk-toong BAY-bi by a whole bunch of musicians. This is a CD that was released in England to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the U2 CD Achtung Baby. It's a cover album---lots of different musicians covering each song from the original. It's got Depeche Mode on it, singing "So Cruel," which is just about all I need, but, hello: The Fray singing "Trying to Throw your Arms Around the World"? and Patti Smith doing "Until the End of the World"? oh, and Damien Rice's version of "One"! and Snow Patrol on "Mysterious Ways"! This has been on nearly-non-stop rotation on my playlist. I love it. So. Much.

Did you have any 2011-new-release favorites?

on being a Book Expert

Today at work, I helped a dad and his daughter find a book she was looking for. They'd searched the shelf where it was supposed to be but hadn't found it. When I came over, I found it right away. This happens all the time at the library—and it's not even a sixth sense like some people think. It's just that we know the idiosyncrasies of the Dewey Decimal System and where things are likely to be "hiding." Still, it made me smile when, as I walked away, I overheard the dad say "See, that's why she's the Book Expert and we aren't." (I totally heard it capitalized!)

Of course, I'm far from the Book Expert. I still have to fumble a little when patrons ask me for a title suggestion. Sometimes the fumble comes because I'm drawing a blank—I know what book I wantto recommend but the title won't come to my tongue. (Sometimes I can walk to the shelf and find the book faster than I can remember the title or author, as is always the case with, gah, what's his name...Tony Hillerman!, a writer I find readers of all tastes seem to enjoy.) Other times it's because the genre is my weakness. Time traveling romances? Well, there's Diana Gabaldan...and that's as far as my knowledge goes. Luckily we have databases for that sort of thing, but still: I fumble. I'm not yet one of those expert librarians I've seen at work, who can dash off suggestions as fast as you want them for any genre you can name.

And just to keep me from taking that "Book Expert" comment to heart, not a half hour later one of my colleagues was checking out my staff picks shelf (we each have a shelf where we put books we love). "You usually have good stuff on your shelf," he said, "but tonight it's just sort of, ehhhh." (Smilla's Sense of Snow, The Gravedigger's Daughter, and Memoirs of a Geisha were among my offerings.) As "ehhhh" isn't the goal of the staff picks shelf, this response was not my favorite.

You'd think that working in a library would help me feel like the world is made up of readers. Sometimes it does, like on Saturday when I walked up the stairs behind a twelve-ish-year-old girl who was clutching a copy of The Giver and telling her mom how she couldn't wait to read it again. Or tonight, when a different twelve-ish-year-old walked by my desk with a pile of books, telling her mom she'd been simply starving for something good to read. More often than not, though, the library helps to reinforce what the world seems to be telling me: even though they are important to me, books don't matter a whole lot in the world.

I felt this same sort of discouragement when I was teaching. I imagined that if I just pushed the right buttons (shared the best sort of writing), I'd uncover every. single. student's love of reading, even the ones who thought they didn't love reading. Of course, it didn't happen that way—most of them continued on thinking reading is a waste of time just like they did before they started my class, except they'd had more poetry and essays and Ursula Le Guin shoved down their throats.

If I listen hard enough, it feels like the entire universe is, in fact, sending me a message that the things I love most—namely books, and reading them, and the writing of them, and language well-used—are not important. Publishing's budget shrinks and shrinks. As do libraries'. The amount of people reading on a regular basis grows smaller and smaller. The demand for real books declines as that for ebooks rises. Newspapers close up shop, magazines vanish, the demise of the little literary magazine is upon us. Movies and video games and TV and Facebook are where people like to put their energies.

I get discouraged.

Because, honestly. I do check Facebook from time to time, and I watch TV. I've been known to see a movie. But none of those things makes me as happy as I am when I'm curled up somewhere comfy with a book (and perhaps a beverage). It's even better when the house is empty and I've somehow convinced myself to ignore my other responsibilities and simply read without feeling guilty. (That, along with thighs that didn't touch, is one of the things I miss most about childhood, that opportunity to read all day without feeling one titch of guilt.) Reading makes me happier than almost anything else. And I don't understand why other people—seemingly the majority of the human population—don't enjoy it.

But then, sometimes the universe says otherwise. Like the other night, when I watched Rick Harrison—the dude from Pawn Stars—on David Letterman. Letterman asked him how he got so smart and knows so much about history, and his response astounded me. He explained that he'd been sick a lot as a kid, and so he got in the habit of reading. He learned to love to read, and that love helped him learn and led him to his career.

I loved hearing that. Especially since all day my kids and husband had been teasing me with a line from some kids' TV show: "She likes to read. I like to have fun." The world telling you that what you love is pointless and lame is one thing. Your family teasing you with the same idea is something different. I needed that little reminder that it really isn't the entire universe that thinks that.

And, you know? I'm also not the world's best Book Expert. But I do have some skills. On the off chance that you need some recommendations for good poetry to read? I'm totally your librarian. Or dystopian novels. Or even essays. Plus, I did manage to grow up and become something that, when people friend me on Facebook, completely fits their perception of me. I've loved books all my life, and that I found a way to make a career (of sorts) out of that love is a lucky, happy thing. Most of the known universe might think that books are dumb or lame or a waste of time and resources. But there are some of us still out here, reading away, and those are the kindred spirits I'm glad to have around me.

2011: the {hair} year in review

I had big plans in 2011. I had dozens of blog posts—that never made it out of my brain.

I wanted to blog about my hair, for example. But, you know? Blogging about your hair generally should also involve a few photographs. And I’m way more about the words than the pictures when I’m blogging. I know. Blogs with lots of photos are way more appeal. I just hate the whole process. There. I said it. I’m proficient but only barely with Photoshop, and it always, always gives me a headache. And then once you’ve survived the Photoshopping, there’s the uploading and the tweaking and yeah:

I never wrote the blog about my hair.

So instead I’m using "hair" as my 2011 year-in-review theme. (Please. Forgive the fact that we are 1/4 the way through January. I’m slow. I had to open Photoshop.)

the Winter months

My hair in January was pretty blah:

(from Jake’s 13^th birthday party)

In January, Kendell went to Mexico for work. (This meant that, a few weeks ago in December, he couldn’t donate blood.) Nathan did his science fair project on bananas. And I wore a heart monitor.

You see, I’d been having chest pains. Random, unpredictable, but still fairly scary (especially since "open heart surgery," "heart murmur," and "bicuspid aortic valve" are fairly regular discussions at our house). I kept ignoring it, thinking it was, like, sympathetic heart pains. You know. Like a sympathetic pregnancy some husbands have. Anyway. I ignored it and ignored it and ignored it and then, at the end of December 2009, I went to a blood drive at our church. You have to know: donating blood doesn’t freak me out. Needles, while not my friends, don’t freak me out. I don’t get anxious or uptight about it. Generally I just sit in the blue sling chair and feel like donating blood is a fairly easy way to help out humanity. But that day? For some reason, I totally passed out. Just as the phlebotomist was sliding the needle out of my vein (meaning, none of my blood was wasted in the making of this story), I was out. I was in a dark, dark, black place for about four minutes.

And then I woke up wondering why in the hell I was asleep in the church gym.

That passing-out thing freaked me out. So I finally went to the doctor, and he set me up with a cardiogram, an EKG, and a Holter monitor. The monitor is like a cell phone, only it’s also got four wires that connect to four leads that connect to specific parts of your torso. You wear it, and then every time you feel a pain or an irregularity in your heartbeat, you push a button. I wore this for two weeks—I was wearing it under my sweater in that photo, in fact.

I still have scars from the leads.

And the results? Nothing is wrong with me. My doctor thought that possibly the pains happened because my thyroid levels were wonky. A year later, I still have them. My theory is that they are little anxiety attacks, only delayed. I started getting obsessive about it for awhile, tracking the chest pains in relation to stressful events. I started seeing connections. Then I decided that since I can’t change the stressful events, and all the 21^st century’s advanced medical technology can’t see anything wrong with my heart, and because I ran a marathon and my heart never hurts when I run—I’m not going to worry about it.

I’m not sure what that has to do with hair, but it was a big thing in 2011 for me.

Throughout the winter, my hair grew. It grew and it grew and it grew. I went to Haley’s choir concert in February, where she sang show tunes and sounded amazing. Everyone got 4.0's and we went to Krispy Kreme to celebrate. Kaleb lost his first tooth, we got lots of snow. In March I started working on my mixed media quilt, which is still unfinished. My hair got longer and I started wearing it like this sometimes:

which I don’t like to do because I feel like a cocker spaniel.

the Spring months

April came, I turned 39 (to celebrate, I ate a breakfast sandwich from Gandolfo’s in the car by myself, and then I bought myself the sunglasses I'd been wanting for months), Haley turned 16 and went to prom. We celebrated Easter on Saturday at my sister’s house—in a snow/slush/rainstorm. My hair got to the length that Kendell likes but that starts making me insane:

(apparently I also ran out of make up?)

Spring arrived but the rain didn’t stop. The rain! It rained so much this spring that even *I*, Amy Sorensen, lover of rain and of all gloomy weather, wished for sunshine. We did get a lovely Mother’s Day Saturday:

and my hair was really, really starting to bug me. Why do I let it get long? It never looks good. It makes me crazy. My scalp itches. But I can put it in a ponytail at least! Anyway. I left it. I left it through June, when I braided it for Ragnar:

the Summer months

and into July, when Haley insisted on straightening it, just because it was so. long. I totally thought she took a picture of me with my straight hair but I guess not.

Anyway.

The sizzle of the straight iron was enough to finally convince me: get a freaking hair cut! Plus, I needed to record some videos that everyone who took my 2011 Write Now! class would see. I didn’t want to be all sloppy and unkempt. So, I cut it. And I did something I haven’t done in years. Decades, even: I went blonde.

Well, blonde-ish:

I went with the blonde because I knew my favorite hair colors—red and brown—would take a beating in the sun, as I was training for the marathon and outside a lot. At first, I loved it. Then I felt like I was pretending. I debuted my brand new blonde hair on our trip to the Tetons, which included Kendell’s dad’s funeral service. One of my sisters-in-law and one of my nieces does hair, and my other sisters-in-law always look gorgeous and perfectly-done, hair wise. (Make-up too, but this isn't a make-up story.) The hairdressers always make me uncomfortable about my hair, but no one seemed to notice it was any different. Even though I fit in more—everyone, save me, on the Sorensen side of the family is blonde—I felt a little bit off. Not quite right. I went ahead and blamed it on the blonde.

I loved the length, though. And the cut. The only thing that was hard? It was too short for a ponytail, so sometimes it bugged me while I was running. I finally bought myself some Bondi bands and have been in running-headband heaven ever since.

In August, I was starting to have dark roots already for Dad’s funeral

(With my friend Chris) but there was no way I was doing anything with my hair until after the marathon. So I just kept running. I ran a lot. Throughout summer and into

the Fall months,

when we spent a night in a hotel while our wood floor was refinished, purchased a new stove and fridge because our old ones were, well, old, and got everyone started back in school. Kendell and I started going on afternoon hikes together, in theory to get ready to hike Timp, even though we never did. Doesn't matter because I learned that adults-only hikes are a good way to reconnect with your husband. Kaleb had his annual heart check up and, despite my anxiety (and yes, a chest-pain flair-up on my part, two days after the appointment), passed without any complications. 

My blonde hair got rootier and rootier.

And, actually, it wasn’t until after Halloween and after Haley colored her hair red and I ran my marathon and a half marathon with Becky (that I still want to blog about) and I made one of my favoritest-ever baby quilts for friends at work and I taught my Textuality class and I hiked to the top of Y and I had my annual November cold that I finally got my hair done again:

I went back to dark and it makes me happy. Some of the blonde peeks through still, but not enough to bring back that not-quite-me feeling. Since then, Nathan turned 12, Jake turned 14, we had one of the most peacefully-perfect Thanksgivings we've ever had and a Christmas that was wonderful and amazing but also not-so-peaceful in some ways. I got the stomach flu. Nathan lost four teeth in two weeks (one of which he swallowed), I read four novels, one poetry book, and part of an essay collection, and I got a new cell phone.

But, I’m not loving it right now. It’s in that dull-hair-color phase, but I don’t know exactly what I want to do with it. Perhaps continue praying for the magic hair fairy to pay me a visit and bestow some heavy, healthy hair upon me? Or maybe I will get brave and do something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately: cut it short. Because, looking at my mom and at her cousin Pat this summer at my dad’s funeral, I realized something: I don’t have a great hair heritage to fall back upon. Women of my mother’s line tend to get thinner and thinner hair as we age. Pat (who Becky and I call Fake Aunt Pat because we always thought she was our aunt until we found out no: she’s our mother’s cousin which makes her...vaguely related to us) has taken care of this by practically buzzing her head. And, you know, it suits her.

Maybe 2012 will be the year I follow suit? Probably not. Instead I’m going to try to be grateful for the hair that I do have. It could be worse, right? At least it’s not completely grey...yet:

(at my mom's house on Christmas day)

(After writing this, I'm certain it was ill-advised.It feels a little too self-centered and look-at-me, look-at-me. I should have just written a 2011 {books} year in review instead. So don't think this will stay up too long. On the other hand, I'm still going to post it. Because I totally photoshopped all those photos and the headache has to be worth something.)

2012 Solutions

I'm not fond of setting New Year's resolutions. Not because I'm not a fan of change—I am. But because I know myself. I tend to pick resolutions that are either too grandiose or too vague, and then I fail, and then I feel guilty for failing. And as I don't need yet another thing to feel needlessly guilty about, I decided a couple of years ago to just skip the resolutions thing and move forward with life.

I've been thinking about resolutions, though, quite a bit lately. Ever since I made this layout:

for the WCS January gallery. (You can read all the journaling HERE if you want.) I don't know if it's contemporary or pathetic of me to have a Costco-inspired ah-ha moment, but that's really how it worked out. I had my Christmas cards printed at Costco, and they throw in a handful of those calendars. Plus I ordered a few extra. They ended up on the messy pile that was my scrapbooking table after Christmas, and when I conquered that mess I was left with the little stack of calendars. It became an image I kept coming back to, all day, in my imagination. Looking at them in that format—all the days to fill with something during 2012—sparked something in me. A desire to not let time simply pass while I whine about not yet doing what I want to do with my life. But to be decisive and determined and to find that surety I used to have about myself—to stop letting my fears get in my way. Avoiding resolutions because I know I will fail and then beat myself up over the failures? It does show me that I know myself well. But it also tells me that I am, simply, afraid.

And I'm too old to be afraid!

Still. This year, I'm not looking at my goals as resolutions. Instead, they are solutions. And the overarching thing I'm trying to solve isn't losing ten pounds or being a better mom or pushing my writing career. Instead it's about overcoming fear and conquering my tendency for self flagellation. And it's about putting into shape all the nebulous hopes and desires bumping around in my heart.

So! Here they are, my 2012 solutions, grouped into topics because of that non-nebulous aspiration thing:

Relationships

• Don't skip, postpone, or otherwise miss any monthly special nights with the kids. (I sucked at this last year.)
• Spend more one-on-one time with each of them (this is purposefully vague as some of my children do read my blog, and I want some things to be a surprise)
• Plan one date night per month with Kendell (I tend to wait around for him to plan them and then get annoyed when he doesn't)
• Two family nights per month (one of my biggest LDS fails: just how rarely I actually manage family night. If I decided to do it every week I'd get overwhelmed and continue doing them on a spotty basis; twice a month feels like a good baby step)
• Reach out to my friends, my sisters, and my mom more often (translation: try to ask for help more, or call up just to talk, or share something that is bothering me instead of staying closed up tight)
• Send a card, photos, note, or little thinking-of-you kind of gift twice a month to someone (this could also be classified in the "help the Post Office survive" category!)

Spiritual

• Only read religion-based books on Sundays
• Fast on every fast Sunday
• Start writing in my scripture journal again

Writing

• Write every day in some form.
• Finish one story and/or essay per month
• Finish three poems per month
• Submit the previous month's finished work at least three times
• Renew my Writer's Digest and Poets and Writers subscriptions
• Start the novel. Just start it.
• Find a writing group.
• Follow up on my blog ideas with more regularity

Exercise:

• Through spring, my weekly goals: go to Spin classes with Haley three times, run twice, and attend the sculpting classes at the gym twice
• Prepare for Ragnar starting in March.
• Summer: one half-marathon in July, August, September, and October. One 16-18 mile run per month.
• Run 500 miles this year.

Service to Others:

• Donate blood once every quarter
• Coordinate some secret service project with my kids once a quarter

Creativity

• Scrapbooking: buy less, make more. (I will write about this more.) Try to figure out how to fit it into my life without letting it consume all of my creative energy. (also another blog post.)
• Quilting: finish Kaleb's dinosaur quilt; finish my pink table cloth; make a table runner and two table toppers for the downstairs furniture; make a new table runner to go under my little Christmas tree
• Photography: Jump on the 12 on the 12th bandwagon; take a monthly family photo
• Reading: spend less time putzing around on the Internet and more time reading actual books; write about them with more frequency but perhaps less detail

My last goal is to hold myself accountable, which means I'm going to check in on my solutions once a month to see how I'm doing. Feel free to skip those blog posts!

January Blue

There's a part in Barbara Kingsolver's book Animal, Vegetable, Miracle where she talks about people seeming to bring about a change in the weather simply by willing it. As if via our collective unconsciousness we are able to swing weeks upon weeks of dry, warm weather. Even when it's not the best thing for the world.

I've been thinking about that idea for the past month or so, as the calendar has rolled into winter---but the weather has decidedly not. Take today. Right now, it's 45 degrees outside. Sunny. And the slight breeze has a hopeful feel to it, like spring is coming soon.

Spring.

On January 4th.

And it's not like it's just a little break in the winter weather. Winter has never arrived. Even the mountains are barely white. Actually, they're mostly brown. If I look up the ten day forecast, it looks like this:

And seriously: don't let Saturday the 7th fool you. The chance for snow on that day? Thirty percent. Why even bother with the stormy icon when there's a 70% chance of no water falling from the sky?

But what's making me cranky are all the people wandering around enjoying the weather. If one more person says something like "isn't this weather gorgeous?" I might just lose my mind. Because, yeah, OK, it is gorgeous. If this were March I'd be singing a happy song. But it's January! Weather like this in January isn't gorgeous. It's unnatural. It's wrong and messed up and deeply disturbing.

In Utah, we always have a handful of days like this scattered throughout our winters. But six weeks of spring-like weather is not a good thing. The trees will start budding if it doesn't change soon. And then, one of two things will happen. It will continue on, and spring will be hot, and summer will be hotter, and people will want to do things like, you know, water their grass and their trees and their vegetable gardens. Problematic without any snow in the winter. Or, it won't continue on. It will just start late. And spring snows---the ones that persist into May---are just as unnatural as a snow-less January. The trees will get damaged, the fruit blossoms will be destroyed.

But the optimists---and even the normally-grouchies---just keep wandering around, praising the weather. Can't anyone see that this is wrong? is not how it's supposed to be? and it is proof for all the global-warming-is-a-myth doubters? Evidence that our world is seriously screwed up and that we're all going to hell in a hand basket. And sure, I suppose, in theory, the weather-lovers have a point: it's not like my lack-of-snow-induced anxiety is going to make it snow. I just don't know how they manage to enjoy it. 

I'm starting to think that Barbara Kingsolver was right. I'm thinking that the power of all that bright-sunny-weather-induced happiness and goodwill is working to keep the snow away. To which I say: enough of the cheeriness! Enough with the gorgeous-weather appreciation! Maybe if we all start grumbling and complaining, the world will return to its rightful January state: snowy, windy, and bleak.

Just exactly how it's supposed to be.

What do You Want to Make?

The contrast in the room was marked: new carpet, new paint, that lingering smell of cut wood and carpenter’s glue. The dark and dated wood paneling replaced by bright neutrals, the musty drapes pulled down to let in simple light. A new, fresh room. But filled with old things: bulging black garbage sacks, water-stained cardboard boxes, damaged furniture.

This was my mother’s downstairs family room, where my sister Becky and I stood, not exactly sure how to start but certain we needed to accomplish our goal: get the room clean before Christmas day.

This spring, my mom’s basement flooded. She was away on a trip when this happened, so she came home to a puddled basement and some very damp possessions. Most of this was put into the black garbage bags, to be sifted through and sorted at a later date. When the restoration was finished, the construction men just moved all the stuff out of her garage and back into her basement, where it waited until that Saturday, the one just 8 days before Christmas, when Becky and I and our mother all took deep breaths and got started.

The stuff in the bags and boxes and drawers was a portion of the accumulation of a lifetime. Much of it was my mother’s sewing projects, lengths of quilting cotton and flannels waiting to be sewn into quilts. There were boxes of old patterns—one, which I’ve giggled over at odd moments since, was a girls’ nightgown pattern, sized "smalls and chubbies"—and old clothes. Boxes of my dad’s things, also, gun powder and empty bullet casings from the days when he liked to reload bullets; a few remnant wooden ducks from the decorative-duck company he started. A handful of watercolor paintings he made.

As we worked we got down to surfaces, the end tables and bookshelves that’ve been in that room since my childhood. We sorted: keep, donate, throw away. We put together two entire boxes of UFOs (unfinished objects, all of the quilting variety). We made fun of clothing and fabric choices. We laughed and sneezed and needed water. We argued gently with each other over the wisdom of keeping certain things. And, when we were nearly done, we found a journal of my dad’s. This empty book was giving to him on Christmas in 1989 by Becky—we know because we read it. In it, he’d written three or four paragraphs about his early life and memories. He managed to move his voice from the air onto the page in those few sentences, and for an instant I was 17 again, sitting by the fire on Christmas night, reading my new book while my dad wrote in his journal next to me.

Reading that one, solitary journal entry, surrounded by the flotsam of my father’s unfinished objects—and my mother’s—was like falling from a scarp into rough waves. Like drowning in irrelevance. We arrive in our lives, we find the things we care about, the things we love to do, and then we leave them behind. All of the time, energy, and money we invest in our hobbies—what do they amount to in the end? What do you want to make? My heart kept asking me. What do you want to leave behind? If I died tomorrow, how many unfinished objects would I leave behind? Three quilts, dozens of scrapbook layouts, hundreds of essays and poems and stories never written. I don’t want to come to the end of my life, whenever that might be, and leave only unfinished things. I want to make things that last.

What do you want to make?

I worked for as long as I could, that question in my heart, but I had to leave by 1:00. There was a book signing at our library and I had two books I wanted to have signed as Christmas gifts. I arrived with only ten minutes to spare, still in my dusty clothes, clutching my copies of Crossed and Beyonders, and waited in line to have Ally Condie and Brandon Mull (respectively) sign them. As I waited, I looked at them. Successful writers (along with Dan Wells, Robinson Wells, and Bree Despain). But also simply people. People who were determined and passionate enough to make something lasting. People who tried their craft even if they were scared. (Or maybe they weren’t scared—maybe it’s just me completely bound by fear?) Here is the answer to the question pounding at the door of my heart: what do you want to make? I want to make a life like that. I want to be the person on the other side of the book-signing table. I want to be the one delving into words and story. I want to overcome the fear that is strangling me, and do it anyway.

That is what I want to make.

What do you?