writing

nanowrimo / writing — Comments Off
01
Nov 10

NaNoWriMo: Day 1

I’ve decided to do NaNoWriMo this year.

NaNoWriMo is National Novel Writing Month. For the month of November, you write 50,000 words, regardless if it’s a complete book. I’ve done it a few times before, but haven’t been satisfied with any of my efforts. In fact, I wondered if that speedy kind of writing actually made my writing worse.

As some of you may know, I’m self-publishing my memoir, hopefully by March 2011. I made a copy of Lulu and planned on revising it in that format. Although I’ve revised it a billion times, I still think it can be better, especially in light of some helpful feedback I got from an agent. Basically, in some places I don’t linger enough and sum up too quickly. I tell too much and don’t show enough.

So I started to think, Why not just rewrite the memoir like a novel, and use NaNoWriMo to do it? That way I’m forced to finish it by the end of November, I’ll take December to look at it once more (hopefully mostly for copyediting), maybe have one or two people look at it, enter those edits in January, and use February to put on the finishing touches.

The timing of NaNoWriMo actually works out perfectly for my memoir.

I started it on the train this morning. I won’t make any judgments so far, but I think this past year has been very good practice for my writing. I’ve practiced writing nonfiction as though it’s fiction, as well as working through different aspects of my marriage and divorce. Thinking about those different aspects through my short pieces has given me a wider perspective. I think I’ll be able to take step back and put my memoir into even better context, while at the same time providing more of a feel of a novel.

Or so I hope.

awareness / relationships / writing — Comments Off
28
Oct 10

What’s junk?

So I have a new piece over at The Frisky called “I Found Out My Engagement Ring Was Junk.”

Those of you who read my blog regularly know that I found out the ring I thought was worth at least $10,000 was actually only worth $2,500.

I’m not at all saying that $2,500 rings are junk. If it comes from the heart, it’s invaluable, regardless of the price tag. But I felt duped and betrayed because my ex and his family implied that the ring had a much heftier price tag, monetarily and otherwise. While I didn’t put stock in how much things cost, they did. So to find out that my ring was worth a quarter of what they implied made me feel they valued me even less than I thought.

I can see how people would think I’m equating a two thousand dollar ring with junk and how I might come off as shallow and materialistic. In that household it almost couldn’t be helped. My in-laws showed approval by the gifts they gave, and I wanted their approval badly. So when my brother-in-law’s fiancee – who didn’t do as much to help with my MIL but got a pass because she was Korean like them – got a bigger diamond ring from my MIL’s collection, I was really really hurt.

It wasn’t that I wanted a bigger ring. It was that I wanted me and my future SIL to be equal in my in-laws’ eyes, and clearly we weren’t.

I wish I could have just let that kind of stuff roll off my back, but I was so unhappy and felt so unappreciated, seeing that giant rock on my future SIL’s hand was just salt in the wound.

So no, I don’t think your $2,500, $50, or $500 rings are junk. And I don’t think your $10,000, $25,000, or $100,000 rings are all that either. I’ve no opinion about anyone else’s rings beyond “pretty!” But I’ve lots of opinions about mine.

Huh, this reminds me of when I say, “I hate my freckles” and other people with freckles get insulted. It’s like, Dude, I don’t hate your freckles! I couldn’t give two shits about the dots on your face. I’m talking about mine.

writing — 7 Comments
19
Oct 10

Book for sale!

I’m currently in the process of self-publishing my memoir. I tried going the traditional publishing route. I paid $200 to have my query letter polished by a professional and sent that letter to the agent who was at that $200 session. . .and heard nothing.

I revised the book and queried agents again. Out of about a dozen, a handful immediately rejected me, one sent me very thoughtful feedback, and the rest never bothered to contact me, not even via rejection letter.

I finally decided, Screw it, I’ll just do it myself.

First step: publish through Lulu and edit in book form. Yesterday I finally got it in the mail.

I’m not so visually inclined, hence the minimalist look. Still, it’s pretty cool to have my book in actual book format.

I already see formatting mistakes. The spacing should be 1.5, not double, and I shouldn’t indent before a new section or chapter. I’ve yet to get started on the real nitty gritty – the content! I’m both scared and excited to read it again. It’s been almost a year, and I’m hoping I’ll see things I missed before.

March 2011. That’s my target date. Maybe sooner.

The cover’s going to look different by the way. I’m enlisting the help of a pal who has a great eye and the same aesthetic as I do – clean and simple.

In other news, I’m trying my hand at fiction again for the first time in ages. The Creative Nonfiction journal has a fun weekly Twitter game, in which they offer a theme, and they select their favorite tweets to be published in the next issue.

Last week’s theme was SHOES, and while I didn’t post a tweet, the theme inspired me to start writing a story.

When I was four, I wanted Dorothy’s ruby slippers in the worst way. That’s what I got out of The Wizard of Oz: girl, where’d you get those shoes? I asked my mother if she could get them for me, and for some reason she said yes.

The next time she went shopping, I waited by the door, waiting in anticipation for her to come home. When she finally did, I pounced.

“Did you get the shoes?” I asked.

My mother was loading groceries in the house. “The store was sold out,” she told me.

I had never been so disappointed before. I cried and cried and cried.

I thought, I could get those shoes now but it wouldn’t be the same. Then I started to think, What if there was a woman who did get those shoes as an adult? What would happen?

So there I am. Let’s see where it takes me.

san francisco / writing — 2 Comments
03
Oct 10

One whole year

It just hit me this morning that it’s been exactly one year since I moved to San Francisco from New York. I guess it’s been too long now for me to say I “recently” moved here, but it actually still feels recent. At the same time, a lot has happened.

I was jobless for the first time in a very long time. Excluding my freshman year in college, I’ve worked every summer and school year since I was 18, at least part-time. Basically 20 years of working. Then suddenly I had all this free time. It was kind of like kids’ summer vacations, a combination of luxury, boredom, and loneliness.

I lived in a new city for the first time in over 10 years. Last time was Beijing in 1998, and before that Boston. SF is more like New York than Boston is, but it’s still very different. The lack of sidewalk traffic, the hills, the hobos. The sucky mass transit, a fewer variety of restaurants, the better weather. Speaking of which. . .

No winter, no summer. This was the first winter – well, ever – that I did not experience snow. New Jersey, Boston, Beijing, and New York all have snow. To tell the truth, I didn’t miss it. Snow is pretty at first, but it gets disgusting really fast, between the dirt and those menacingly deceptive slush puddles at curbside (you know: you think it’s a frozen sheet of ice when actually it goes up to your hip).

While there were some pretty cold days they weren’t unbearably cold, not like those days on the Lower East Side that MB and I couldn’t even walk the 10 minutes to the subway but had to take a cab there.

We did have several days of summery, almost 100 degree temperatures, but at least it wasn’t east coast humid. I took just two showers a day instead of four.

A big Thanksgiving dinner. Excluding stressful Thanksgivings with my in-laws, it was my first ever. Usually it was just my parents, brother, and me, and then just my parents and me since my bro lives in L.A. This year it was my parents, brother, me, MB, my aunt, my grandmother, my cousin, her husband, and their child. It was great fun.

But I don’t really want to do it again, at least not this year.

Christmas away from home. My first since Beijing, and it affected me more than I expected.

Getting published. All my writing and hustling the months I didn’t have an office job paid off! I entered contests like crazy, did National Novel Writing Month, and started writing for the wonderful literary site, The Nervous Breakdown. Earlier this year I pitched my first idea to The Frisky.

I didn’t realize how much of it difference it makes to write and pitch basically 24/7. When I was working full-time, I wrote continuously but rather slowly, and didn’t spend as much time pitching and hustling. That’s a different kind of energy, and it’s easy to get discouraged.

I feel like now I’ve done it so much, the rejection doesn’t get me down (at least not for very long). A new goal now is to pitch an idea to a magazine about every other week, and to submit more stories to other places to diversify my clips.

Getting vertigo. That really sucked. But at least it pushed me and I –

Got a writing job. That was another one of my goals this year – to be able to put a writing or editorial position on my resume that would lead to more writing/editorial gigs. I applied for tons of positions, some of them not even paying. I had an interview for one marketing writing job during which I said, “I got my MLS because I realized marketing wasn’t for me.” When I decided to branch out beyond SF, I finally lucked out.

Plus I decided to have fun and be honest. Fed up with getting rejected, I wrote more of an essay than a cover letter for my application. They asked lots of interesting questions, and I thought why bother repeating what they could see on my LinkedIn?

It has worked out wonderfully. The job itself, my co-workers, the part-time schedule – all of it. Plus my health insurance just got approved. Yay!

This year, in addition to pitching and submitting more stories, I want to self-publish my book. You know, THE book. I know I’ve talked about it before, but it’s for realsy this time.

Yesterday I “published” my book on Lulu and sent myself a copy. I want to see it in book format before I start editing it one last time (fingers crossed). I made a very simple cover, and am excited to see how it turned out.

writing — 4 Comments
01
Oct 10

Writing update

I haven’t figured out what my next book will be about. But I do have some published pieces this month. Here they are in case you missed them:

I Can’t Get Over the Friend Who Dumped Me, The Frisky, October 1, 2010

Word, The Nervous Breakdown, September 26, 2010

My Secret to Weight Loss? High Cholesterol! The Frisky, September 16, 2010

Remember last year when I was toying with the idea of self-publishing my memoir? Well, I’m toying with that idea again.

This year I queried maybe a dozen agents about my memoir. A few very quickly rejected me, most I never heard from, and one sent a very thoughtful message with some helpful suggestions. But the thing is I’ve edited my book so many times, I don’t know if I can do it again. So I asked a former writing teacher about recommendations for ghost editors. I knew it’d be pricey, but I thought it might be worth taking a shot.

My teacher got back to me immeidately, and I wrote the editor right away. And never heard from her. Basically, here I am offering two G’s to someone, and I hear nothing. To me that said I couldn’t even pay an editor to read my book.

Then I saw a Facebook update from Will Entrekin, a fellow Nervous Breakdown writer, about the latest in his self-publication and marketing adventure, for his novel, Meets Girl, and I thought, Fuck this shit! That’s what I should be doing!

Why bother waiting around to be discovered when I can take the bull by the horns myself? It’s not like back in the day when you’d slap down major bucks to a vanity publisher. Tools like Lulu and open source publishing programs make self-publishing cheap and easy. Plus, nowadays, it seems only the big, best-selling authors get hefty marketing budgets from their publishers. A lot of authors are arranging their own tours, embarking on their own marketing campaigns. Why not go a step further and just publish the damned thing myself?

One may question the quality of the stuff that’s out there. Sure, you get the bad with the good. But that’s the same for published works. I mean, for God’s sake, SNOOKI has a novel coming out. Fucking Snooki. ‘Nuff said.

MB just finished writing an educational book in his field, and while it’s downloadable for free, he’s also selling it on Lulu. He just ordered a copy and is having me copyedit it. That way, I can also see what a book looks like having been published by Lulu. Then I will do the same for my book, and give it one more edit.

writing — Comments Off
30
Sep 10

Where to go from here

I’m at that point in my writing where I’m not sure what to work on next. I finished up a few pieces, and have some ideas, but I don’t know where to start.

Maybe if I list my ideas and vague plans, that will help:

The hamster story. I wrote a long essay for this literary journal about the year that my childhood friend “Noah” (not his real name) got hamsters, and the hamsters had babies and ATE THEM. That same year, from what I remember, Noah’s neighbor, a young boy named Robert, was hit by a car and killed out in the highway in front of their houses.

I keep thinking this is one story but maybe it’s two. One, hamsters, and two, Robert.

The Robert story. See above.

The time I almost got a tattoo but didn’t. Included would be: the dream that made me want to get a tattoo, my ex’s affair and our divorce (of course), going as far as to visit a tattoo parlor with a drawing, putting down a downpayment, going to the Tattoo Convention, filming my parents as I asked them, “What if I got a tattoo?” Then in the end not getting one, and even forgetting, years later, that I wanted to it in the first place.

Pitches. I’m thinking about sending in a couple of pitches to this women’s magazine. One might be about how my dating prospects seemed to dry up when I turned 35, and another may be about how politeness and manners are overrated, basically a dealbreaker piece about how “lovely manners” were masking the OCD and neuroses of a guy I dated, and showed that he actually cared more about how he was perceived, rather than others’ feelings.

Lying. I want to write a story about how I constantly lie to my parents, and have since I was a kid. I tried writing something for this Asian American magazine I want to submit to, but I can’t get a handle on the angle. The story is just blah. So maybe it shouldn’t be for the AsAm mag? Dunno!

The book. What book, you may ask? Don’t know that either. I feel like I should be working on my next book, but I don’t know what it should be. That corporate mystery which I find so incredibly boring? Another memoir? I feel like it should be obvious, that it’ll come to me and whack me over the head. Of course this is more a long-term to do.

MB always manages to finish project after project, and people ask him how he does it. First off, we don’t watch too much TV. Sure, we’ll watch from about 8 to midnight, but never during the day. We also spend a lot of evenings and weekends just working.

But he also says just to take things one at a time, and to just do a project when the feeling strikes. Not to put it off, or jot it down and tell yourself you’ll do it later. Basically, “just do it.”

Now I have to decide what to do.

rant and/or rave / san francisco / writing — 2 Comments
05
Sep 10

4 AM

When will I ever learn?

I couldn’t sleep AGAIN last night, and not because of a crazy downstairs neighbor. I stupidly had some green tea in the late afternoon. I didn’t think it was that strong, but obviously it was.

On top of that, we have mosquitoes! What the fuck, San Francisco? I thought you had no mosquitoes. I guess it’s been the very warm, followed by the very chilly weather we’ve been having these past couple of weeks.

Last weekend MB discovered a bite on his (shaved) head, and I had one on my forehead. We thought it was from our walk out to Haight-Ashbury. But earlier this week, I’ve had more bites: on my face, hand, feet, arms, and calf.

The bites are super tiny and disappear fast, nothing like the ones I’d get in New York which would swell to the size of a half dollar and be insanely itchy. These are more just an annoyance, especially since I can’t find the little buggers. I *think* I saw them yesterday, and if that was them, they are incredibly fast and tiny. There’s no way I can hunt them down like I did back east, where the skeeters were big, slow, and stupid.

So last night not only was I wakeful because of the tea, I was paranoid about mosquitoes. Luckily the weather has cooled down, so I could blast the ceiling fan and cover most of myself with a blanket. But I was up for a long time brushing away every tickle on my face, whether lint, hair, or actual little pest.

Yesterday I worked on my writing, though not enough to my satisfaction. At least I got draft pitches down, as well as a draft of an essay, and started catching up TNB reading. Today I will probably type up/revise/focus on the essay (which is a little all over the place right now), but also want to get out of the house. Shopping! Haven’t done that in a while.

I discovered that Real Simple is having their annual essay contest now. Totally entering it! Though the deadline is coming up very soon.

The complaining comments on the page crack me up. How dare the judges give the prize to a 10th grade English teacher? Surely she has an up on everyone! Um, hello, the magazine awards the best essay, and the best essay not only has to have a great story, it has to be told well. And yes, perhaps an English teacher or professional writer will tell that story better. Them’s the breaks. What should they do, say, “If you get paid to write, teach people to write, teach English, were an English major, ever wrote something ever in your life, you’re not eligible”? That makes total sense.

Idiots.

travel / work / writing — 2 Comments
03
Sep 10

Babbling blaterhing blithering

This week I finally finished my work project. The deadline to the publisher was Wednesday 9/1, and I got manuscripts to my boss Sunday night. Yesterday we did a bit more work cleaning up, but I think that should be it, unless the publisher comes back with changes.

I’m excited to get back in the swing of things in terms of my own writing, but it’s a bit scary too. My work project was very straight-forward. My own writing less so. But I have some pitches and submissions planned. I just have to do them. Also, the Nervous Breakdown! I didn’t post at all last month, and I have tons of reading to catch up on there, The Frisky, and elsewhere on the interwebs.

This weekend MB and I don’t have any plans. We’ll just hang around the thankfully quiet city, work on our projects, take walks, see movies. After a week of chilly weather, we’re hot again, though not as hot as last time. I think it’s supposed to cool right back down tomorrow.

My folks are in L.A. now, helping out with my grandmother. MB and I fly out there late next week, and the week after off to Seattle! After that I probably won’t want to travel for some time.

Wow, this is a really boring blog post. Okay, two things:

1) If you’re my Facebook friend, you know about the disturbance in our building last week. Because my blog is public, I can’t go into too many details, but let’s just say it was Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? meets Cops at three in the morning. It was very strange and kind of scary. This same individual this week was heard hammering and drilling at again in the middle of the night.

2) This week I learned that a teacher from my high school died. Not just died: killed himself. Threw himself in front of a train.

I had one class with this teacher, and while he didn’t change my life like he did other students, it’s still incredibly sad and disturbing. He was very active in the school – a dynamic teacher, soccer coach, adviser to various clubs.

He was in his early 50s, which means he was YOUNGER THAN I AM NOW when he taught our class. That just blows my mind.

It’s especially strange because my class just had its 20 year reunion (which I obviously did not attend), though I was lucky enough to hear all the dirt, including that this teacher was still teaching at the school.

And then just a few weeks later, the terrible news.

3) I know I said “two,” but I have to end a nicer note. I went bowling yesterday with my co-workers. Wow, I suck! I’m also out of practice. But I did make a couple of strikes, including during a time they were giving away T-shirts. So I won a T-shirt! That’s bright purple. And which I’ll never wear.

san francisco / TV / what i'm reading now / what i've been watching / writing — 1 Comment
26
Aug 10

A hodgepodge, mishmash, melange, medley, jumble, gallimaufry, farrago of a blog post

Working with words all day, of course I have to say more than just “hodgepodge.”

Earlier this week, San Francisco had a mini heat wave. Three days of temps in the upper 80s and low to mid 90s. Of course here it’s not too humid, but the sun is much stronger, and walking around on Tuesday was killer. MB and I had lunch in Union Square, and there was absolutely no one sunning himself. Everyone was hiding in the shade – aside from one drunk homeless guy – and all the birds were breathing with their beaks wide open, a definite sign of hotness.

It was tough to sleep even with both ceiling fans going and MB’s ghetto A/C (the bathtub filled with cold water). Thank goodness yesterday it started to cool down. By the time I got home, it was foggy and chilly, and last night was prefectly cool and comfortable.

Carolina Baker over at GirlHabits interviewed me, and the write-up is now up. It was a lot of fun, and some of my own answers surprised me. When I thought about what I wanted to be known for, I realized I didn’t really want to be known for anything. It’s funny how others’ perception of me isn’t that big of a concern anymore. I mean, in individual situations, sure. Are people interested in something I’ve written? Am I saying something different? Am I being putting myself out there enough before calling out other people? But I’m not too concerned with how I come off, or how I’m known, apart from my writing.

The superpower question was fun too. At first I thought, Of course I’d fly or be invisible, but then I realized more than anything, I want to be Buffy the Vampire Slayer, or Echo from Dollhouse. I want to be essentially normal except that I’m very strong and fast and can kick anyone’s butt.

We just started watching The Wire. I know: two years too late. I’d always heard it mentioned and thought it was about a newspaper for some reason. But it’s not. It’s about police in Baltimore and it’s a damned good show. At first I thought it was a little boring, but now I’m completely obsessed by it. We’re finishing up season 1 tonight. No spoilers please!

My boss lent me Kathleen Norris’ Saturday’s Child, a novel written back around 1915 and set at that time in San Francisco. It’s kind of fluffy but I’m enjoying it all the same. It’s basically a romance between a young working woman and a rich flighty dude. I love all the mentions of SF, as well as what everyone is wearing and what they’re eating.

Well that’s enough of this farrago. Off to the gym and yoga!

body / work / writing — 2 Comments
05
Aug 10

Work work work

This week I started on this project at work. We sort of waited till the last minute to get started so I basically have the month of August to write four short books.

It’s not a lot of writing. It’s mostly gathering information, editing it, and putting it all together, which does take time. I was supposed to get the first 30 entries of the four books done by tomorrow, but I only got two done, with working at home on the days I wasn’t in the office. I’ll have to take the weekend to do the other two.

I love getting paid to write! And it’s actually nice to work on something that’s not about me.

Speaking of which, here’s another article about me! Specifically about the time I got into it with an obnoxious hipster douchette when I still lived in New York.

In cholesterol land, I’m finishing up week three. This week I really craved bad food but resisted. The worst are all the bad salty snacks available for free in the kitchen at work.

I decided I’m going to try to work in an hour of carido once a week. For the four times I do hard cadio, I usually do about forty minutes, whether running or on the elliptical. For one of those four times, I’ll try to run five or six miles, or 40 minutes running plus 20 minutes elliptical, or vice versa.

This past Tuesday I felt like I was at the gym forever. I ran five miles, walked for five minutes, then did an hour of yoga. I was soooo hungry afterward.

In vertigo land, I’ve decided that my allergy meds haven’t been working. In fact, I think they make me more light-headed (which is indeed a side effect) as well as incredibly parched in the morning. I read that ginkgo biloba might help with vertigo so I took some earlier this week.

That shit kept me up for two days. Well, not literally, but that night I didn’t sleep well, and last night I didn’t sleep well either! I didn’t feel jittery, but my brain felt energetic. Last night I did eventually fall asleep and for a good amount of time, but it took me a while.

I haven’t read anything online that says ginkgo biloba will keep you up, but I guess if it improves blood flow to the brain, that goes without saying.

I haven’t taken it again. Maybe I’ll take it tomorrow morning.

By the way, since I stopped taking my allergy meds, I’ve felt much less light-headed. Plus I’ve been more careful about not bending my head forward when I’m on the computer, and taking more breaks.

On that note, off the computer for the night!

Angela Tung Oversharing on the internet since 2005.