life – Lena Corazon

Tag: life

ROW80: The Changes Keep A-Comin’

I gotta say, folks: every time I think I’ve got my life under control, something new crops up and I’m left scrambling, trying to readjust and attain some semblance of balance.

Change, I think, has been the theme of the last few months. Practically all of it has been good–a new relationship, new friends, tons of awesome adventures (some of which will hopefully be immortalized in a glorious series of blog posts), and now, a new job. I’m grateful for all of these new opportunities; there’s so much room for growth and development. But whew… A girl’s gotta have time to breathe, y’know?

Needless to say, there hasn’t been much writing of any sort happening since I checked in a few weeks back, but I’m starting to think of this period as my summer hiatus. I’ve lived, I’ve explored, and I’ve gotten to do things that I’ve never done before.

California, 3000 feet in the air.

Aerial scavenger hunt from a single-engine plane? Check. 1920s Downton Abbey-themed party at a historic California mansion? Check. Four-wheeling through windy dirt trails with 3 people crammed into a 2 person tractor? Check. Jazz concerts, experiments with moonshine, experiments with sangria, the worst wedding ever, countless trips to the Academy of Sciences…? Check, to all of the above.

Living, as so many of my astute writing friends have pointed out, is one of the keys to becoming a good author. Living–and reading, and watching movies, and taking time to absorb the world in which we live–is what allows us to create fictional worlds with all the vibrancy of the real thing, to construct living and breathing characters that our readers will come to love (or love to hate).

As August marches on and Autumn (slowly–soooo slowly, please, I’m not done with summer) approaches, I’ll hopefully get to a point where I find a rhythm and routine for my days. My new job runs from 12-6 pm, which means that my mornings can be for research and writing, and my evenings can be for happy hours and time with friends and family.

So cross your fingers for me, folks! I’d like to be able to have tons more progress and such to report in the weeks to come. After all, I’ve got deadlines to meet (revisions for my very first academic journal article on August 23rd, and my revised dissertation proposal by mid-September), which means I need to start hustling, and soon.

How’s the summer going for everyone else? Are you making progress, or have things slowed down?

Swing on by and wave hello to the rest of our ROWers checking in for today!

Midweek Poetry: “The Old Ways”

February 13, 2013 / Lena Corazon / 10 Comments

There is something about Ash Wednesday that always makes me nostalgic for my childhood. This shouldn’t come as a surprise–I was raised Catholic, and went to Catholic school almost all my life, from 3rd grade through college. These day my religious beliefs are best classified as “complicated.” Still, I’ve come to accept that it’s next to impossible to undo all of the beliefs and traditions instilled in me as a child, even if they don’t quite match up with the ways that I have evolved as an adult.

This poem came, rather unbidden, a few months ago. As Lent begins, and as the world grapples with Pope Benedict XVI’s historic resignation, it feels appropriate to share it with all of you today.

“Ash Wednesday” by Julian Fałat (Photo source: Wikipedia Commons)

“The Old Ways”

the ancients ordered their lives around nature
     patterns of stars, paths of planets
     movements of the moon, transitions of tides.
i order my life around the academic calendar
     and so i measure the rise and fall of time by midterms and finals,
     the too-short spring break,
     the never-long-enough summer vacation.

but there was a time when the year began
     with the lighting of the easter candle, and the swirl of incense.
     when the washing of feet
          the carrying of a cross
          meditations on death, sacrifice, loss
     preceded rebirth and transformation,
          ushered in the start of a new cycle that would be better than the last.

there was a time when the advent calendar
     with its hidden chocolate treats
     and a candlelit wreath—
          three purple candles, one rose—
     stoked my anticipation for christmas
     when we marked the birth of the babe in the manger
     with midnight mass and voices raised in song.

and there was a time when we set aside forty days
     to walk in the desert.
     oh, we giggled as kids
          gave up silly things like candy and soda and television
     but we wore our ashes with sober pride
          spoke our confessions with sincerity.

that was when school days were ordered around prayer
     when we thought the rest of the world worshipped as we did.
but i left all that behind
     turned my back in favor of practices more humane
          less corrupt
     practices that allow for love in all forms,
     preserve women’s control over their own bodies,
     protect the most innocent within the flock.

and yet…
     and yet.

i miss the old mysteries, the old stories.
i long for a whiff of that sacred incense
the glow of the ever-present flame
and i wonder if change is even possible
     if “reform from within” is more than a fairy tale
     if i have a responsibility, a duty, to try.

because mother church, no matter how i struggle against her,
     is my home
and when i try to let go, her saints, her teachings, all her beauty
     haunt me still.

Hard Truths for the New Year

January 4, 2013 / Lena Corazon / 31 Comments

It’s been pretty quiet over here at Flights of Fancy over the last few months, and for good reason. For me, 2012 was a blur of deadlines and responsibilities, punctuated by my Big Move over the summer from Santa Barbara to San Francisco, and the transition to living with my parents once again.

I finished my MA thesis and earned my long-awaited degree at the beginning of March, switched dissertation topics at the end of May and hustled like crazy to write all the papers necessary to advance to doctoral candidacy by mid-September, packed up all my worldly possessions and moved at the beginning of July, and spent the last three months of the year collecting data for my dissertation.

Oh, and I won CampNaNo back in August and NaNoWriMo in November, started working on my physical health, somehow squeezed in time to have a semblance of a social life, and rediscovered my love for writing poetry.

It’s not a bad list of accomplishments, to be honest, even if the day job did take precedence over my blogging life, and even if I still haven’t gotten around to finishing any of my WIPs. But as I look at this list, I know that the successes I made in 2012 were weighed down by the horrible encroaching monster of negativity that has been slowly taking over my life.

Tangling With the Doubt Monster
(Or, How I Am My Own Worst Enemy)

I am, as most of you are probably aware, a perfectionist. I’m a Type-A personality, and I’ve been speeding along the racetrack for academic success for as long as I can remember. My life has been one long series of coursework and papers and extracurricular activities and, these days, research and teaching. And I love this. I am good at it. But I’d be a helluva lot better at it if my head wasn’t filled with all sorts of crazy bullshit that tells me that I am an utter failure.

I used to laugh my little Doubt Monster off. Y’know, because feeling like a failure in the midst of a life filled with success and a lot of blessings seems absolutely ridiculous. But if I’m being honest with myself, I have to admit that I spent most of 2012 (and 2011, and 2010…) trapped in a horrible paralyzing world of grey, where fear and anxiety leeched away the excitement I should feel for life, leaving me with a mess of despair and a tangle of emotions.

But it is a new year, and I have decided that I’m through with living this way. I could accomplish so much more, and be so much happier, if I kicked my Doubt Monster to the curb and ditched all the crazy that has taken hold of my life.

With that in mind, I leave you with my intentions for 2013, summed up in poetic form. Here’s to a safe, healthy, and wonderfully creative new year for us all!

“Poem for a New Year”

2012 has been a painful lesson
that the way I live–
all smiles on the outside
shattered and broken on the inside–
cannot be allowed to continue.

This last year taught me
that I can’t keep living in the grey world
of can’t–
too stupid
too slow
too trite
too cliche
too untalented–
where I self-mutilitate
not with razor blade and substances
but with words weighed down with negativity
words that pollute and poison
till everything that lives in my soul is mutated, ugly–
foul-looking with missing eyes and extra limbs
savage mockeries of all that was once beautiful and clean and real.

In my brief moments of sanity
where perfectionism and the hideous monster of not-good-enough are silenced
I know my worth,
see the shadow of the woman I know I could become
if I stopped the cray,
banished the negative,
trashed my doubts,
and stepped into the light.

I want a soul free from toxic waste
returned to its former glory
all shiny and sparkly and spangled with glitter
riotous with color, suffused with the glow of a million gems–
a soul that can breathe, one that can create,
one filled with all the glorious dreams I’ve allowed
to fall by the wayside.

And so 2013 is my time
a chance to seize back my life
return to a place where prayer and creation are
second-nature
where my wings have strength to soar off on new adventures
and my fingers are able to seize hold of new opportunities.

I rejoice in this new beginning
revel in the promise of days to come.
“Strength, courage, and wisdom” is my mantra;
transformation is my goal.

ROW80: The First Week

October 8, 2011 / Lena Corazon / 56 Comments

Week 1 of ROW80, and the second full week of my fall quarter, is complete! For me, the past seven days has been a crash course in organization, scheduling, and trying my darndest to work at my various projects and responsibilities consistently. Reviewing everything that I managed to do (and those few things that fell by the wayside), I’d say that I’ve done mostly well in reaching my goals.

Writing. I pledged to spend 8-10 hours on WIP-related tasks, and judging from my count, I managed to reach 8 hours. A couple of those were spent struggling through an idea I had for a novella, and the rest with brainstorming and plotting for NaNoWriMo. I also had a chance to write a short flash fiction piece for the “Ghouls Galore” writing challenge I’ve decided to tackle for October. It’s a fun challenge — 4 creepy ghouls over 4 weeks. My first piece is “The Fourth Floor,” about a haunted mansion, one very angry poltergeist, and two high school students who are in way over their heads.

Thesis: I had a really hard time digging into the thesis this week. I originally projected that I would work on it for about 8 hours, and I think I managed to squeeze in maybe 5 or 6. My attention span has been virtually non-existent, though, and I can’t really handle more than 1 hour of work at a time. However, I think I should have the draft of this chapter finished by Sunday night. It’s far from perfect, but I really need to have feedback on it before I go any further. Cross your fingers that I can score a meeting with my advisor in the next week or so!

Exercise: I had hoped to work out 4 or 5 days this week, and I successfully got on my glider 4 times. My clothes are starting to fit better, and I’ve been able to liberate a few items out of my “too small to fit right now” pile, so this is a plus. Now I just have to maintain my momentum, and not fall by the wayside like I always seem to do.

Random things that I’ve learned:

Reading dense theory takes a sickening amount of time, especially when I’m trying to absorb material and take notes. I can speed-read an academic chapter (roughly 45-50 pages long) in two hours; I need over three hours if I want to do a good job of understanding things.
On the other hand, reading fun novels takes no time at all! In two days I have read the first two novels in Karen Marie Moning’s Fever series, and I am holding myself back from devouring the last three. I made a major library run the other day, and have Cherie Priest’s Boneshaker in queue, as well as Deborah Harkness’s A Discovery of Witches.
I seem to be evolving into a disgustingly cheerful morning person — not sure how I have managed this, but I am grateful.

So, yeah, overall I’d say that I’m off to a decent start. I’ll be recalibrating things as I go (for example, do I need to spend 8 hours each week on the thesis, or can I do what I need to do with fewer hours?), but for the moment, I think tackling time targets is working well for me.

As a side note, I just want to add that I’m really grateful that I have friends in town who force me to go out and have a social life. I’ve had my nose to the grindstone for the entire week, trying to juggle everything, and I probably would work straight through the weekend if I didn’t have people forcing me to leave the house. Tonight I was persuaded to go out for dinner, and tomorrow I’ll be back to the weekly ritual of church with one of my friends. Then I will get to spend the afternoon at the movies with another buddy of mine. We are going to see Real Steel, and I will have 2 hours to fangirl squeal over the magnificence that is Hugh Jackman. Granted, I still have a research abstract to write, and thesis edits to do, and roughly 150 pages more theory to read, but I suppose having some relaxation time is important as well. 😀

How’s the first week gone for everyone else? Any need to tweak goals yet, or are things progressing swimmingly for the moment?

ETA: I would totally love to have a ROWbuddy for this round! I have no specific requirements, but it would be grand to have someone about for general encouragement, and maybe to do some writing sprints, especially as NaNoWriMo approaches. I am in the Pacific time zone (U.S. west coast); Twitter and email are my favorite modes of communication.

The End of Summer: A Recap

September 29, 2011 / Lena Corazon / 15 Comments

I’ve survived the first week of school, and October is looming before me, cinnamon and pumpkin-scented, filled with the promise of chilly, cozy nights and the inevitable march towards winter.

I really wish leaves on trees changed color where I live. Autumn leaves are so beautiful!

I’ve been a bit remiss when it comes to blogging, responding to comments, and making the rounds through my Google reader, but with my mom in town for a week and a half, and the various challenges related to packing, moving, and doing lots of traveling and sight-seeing, I suppose I was being a little ambitious, thinking I could maintain the approximately three million things I took on over the summer.

Certain things fell by the wayside this month: the awesome Dice Games flash fiction challenge that I had planned on tackling; visiting my fellow #writecampaigners on a regular basis; editing and rewriting TELL ME NO LIES. On the other hand, I’ve had the chance to visit with friends and family, including my mom, my younger sister, and other extended family members.

At any rate, October is almost here, and with school is full swing, I’m reevaluating everything that I have on my plate. I can’t quite give anything up; I refuse to go another semester without writing, and social media and blogging is something that nourishes me in a way that nothing else can. I’ve come to depend on the community and the connections that I’ve made over the past few months, and I don’t plan on walking away from it any time soon.

Instead, what I’ll be doing is retooling the way that I approach my various responsibilities. I’m using Google calendar to create a detailed schedule for myself, setting aside time for writing and social media, time to deal with the mountain of reading I have for class, time to work on my thesis, and time to prep for the sections that I have to teach.

I’m also rethinking how I tackle blogging. While I like the themed days I’ve been trying out over the past few weeks, I think I’m going to have to scale back a bit, at least until l can build up a decent queue of posts. Right now the pace of trying to write and edit daily is way more than I can conceivably handle, so the plan for the moment will consist of ROW80 updates, and one or two extra posts in addition. We’ll see how it goes!

In the meantime, many fun things have happened in the past weeks. To recap:

Blog Awards!

My fellow ROWer, Em, over at Loves to Read, Wants to Write, as well as Miho Li (who I know from the writecampaign), both awarded me the Versatile Blogger. Sorry for taking so long to announce and link back, you two!

I won’t bore everyone with another list of 7 random things, but I will link back to my original post of randomness.

Writing Challenges

The 2nd challenge for the Writers’ Campaign was a doozy, one that asked us to use lots of obscure words that I haven’t seen since my SAT prep days, but overall, it was pretty enjoyable.

My entry is “Imago, Shattered,” and one day if I ever have the time, I am going to expand the scene. There’s much more that happens between Robert and Tessa that I couldn’t pack into 200 words.

I also entered Jenny Hansen’s “Dirty Fighting” contest, where we had to write a 150 snippet using any of the 23 Dirty Fighting Techniques she shared on More Cowbell (I encourage everyone to check out the list. It’s a fantastic resource for building tension in your writing).

My entry, along with 2 others, were chosen for an on-screen edit by none other than the Naked Editor herself, Tiffany Lawson Inman. Tiffany took my little drabble of a tale and kicked it up fifteen notches — so. darn. awesome. Check out the original top 3 entries, as well as Tiffany’s mark-ups — I learned a ton from all of her comments.

Rock the ROW!

Round 4 of A Round of Words in 80 Days begins next Wednesday, October 5th. To celebrate the general awesomeness of everyone who has been involved, will be involved, or has supported those who have participated, we are throwing a full-scale, 24 hour long Twitter party. Here are the details, via Jenny Hansen:

Theme: “Rock the Row”
However you want to work that in is great. I leave it to your outrageously creative imagination!
Date: October 5th, 12:01 AM to 11:59 PM ET in the U.S.
This also happens to be the first day of check-in so there should be a ton of ROW80 fun happening around the blogosphere.
Party will be held at the #ROW80 hashtag.
Fire up your Tweet Deck or HootSuite and let’s get jiggy with it.
Photo Competition:
You can start now…we won’t tell. Start digging for or taking photos that reflect the theme. We’ll do our best to gather them and decide on the best to spotlight in a post at the ROW80 blog. One the readers vote, the 1st place winner gets a copy of Kait Nolan’s latest book, Red, in e-book format!!
Friendly Blog Competition
We will also post a mash-up of favorite ROCK THE ROW posts at the Row80 blog.

For my writing friends who haven’t jumped onto the ROW80 bandwagon, I encourage you to do so. The folks who are apart of this community are some of the most supportive I’ve ever met, and there’s nothing better than having a built-in cheerleading squad, especially as November inches closer. I credit ROW80 with helping me break out of a very long, very painful period of writer’s block, and I can’t wait for Round 4 to start. I’ve got some goals that I’m eager to share. 😀

How’s everyone doing? Are you ready for autumn, or hanging on desperately to summer? (I’m part of that latter category, in case you hadn’t noticed. :p)

ROW80: There’s No Place Like Home

September 18, 2011 / Lena Corazon / 34 Comments

It is a strange feeling, having two homes.

My fourth year of graduate school begins on Thursday, and so I drove back to my apartment today, after spending six weeks at my parents’ house. Initially, I worried about going home to stay with my parents. I wasn’t sure if their presence would chafe, especially after being on my own for the past 3 years. However, the opposite occurred: I have realized that my parents are actually really awesome people, and I love being home with them. Leaving was incredibly difficult, and it was with a heavy heart that I drove back to school this afternoon.

There’s an odd amount of emotional work that has to be done in order to prepare for the transition: saying goodbye to my friends and family in my hometown, letting go of the coziness of my childhood bedroom, and detaching myself from the family cat. There’s also the work of adjusting to a change in roles, from daughter and sister to student and teacher, not to mention the shift in geographic location (northern to southern California; big city to small-ish town; my childhood home to my teeny but cozy studio apartment).

I spent the first couple of hours on the drive down here lamenting the end of my summer and dreading the looming specter of coursework and teaching, but once I reached my apartment, I felt the familiar longings for my school-life: the rhythm of seminars and lectures, the excitement of grad student gatherings and parties, the tranquility of my home, the beauty of the beaches.

There’s a lot for me to ponder as we reach the end of round 3 of ROW80, especially since it also marks the very end of my summer vacation. So much has happened over the past 80 days, and it will be an adventure to see how I will integrate this “writing-self” that has emerged with the “student-self” that I will become once classes begin.

And so here I am, about to begin my 4th year of grad school. This is the year when I need to complete my MA thesis, finish my last few classes, write and defend my PhD dissertation proposal, and advance to candidacy. If all goes well, this will be my last year in Santa Barbara, and I’ll be able to move back in with my parents next August, so I can write my dissertation, rent-free, in San Francisco.

“Focus” will be my middle name in the months to come, especially if I am going to accomplish all of the above, and still tackle the creative writing that I love and adore. I’ve drafted a weekly schedule that allows me time in the evenings for writing and social media stuff, as well as blocks out a couple of hours each afternoon for my research and thesis writing. We’ll see if I can adhere to it, but if I’ve learned anything this summer, it’s that I work best when I’m satisfying my left brain and my right brain. I won’t be giving up on my novel(s) any time soon. 😀

That’s all from me at the moment! I may be a little MIA over the next week or two: my mom is in town with me, and we will be busy sight-seeing, shopping, and hanging out together. However, I’ll do my best to blog-hop about in the days to come, to check in with everyone in our last few days of Round 3.

Lena Corazon

Flights of Fancy