Talk about late. My poor site has been neglected.

The holidays have come and gone, and I’m now 23 (scary thought).I also got several new books that I really want to read. If you can’t tell, I love books. The best gift anyone can get me is a book — I love buying and collecting them. I also love the smell of old books, libraries, and book stores.

So thanks to my wonderful friend Katie and a couple of gift cards, I’ve picked up The Sea of Monsters, the second Percy Jackson book by Rick Riordan, along with Graceling by Kristen Cashore, The Warrior Heir by Cinda Williams Chima, and City of Bones by Cassandra Clare. I have Jane Eyre, too. I also picked up the ultimate in Chick Lit: Jane Austen.

I love Jane Austen, but my affection for her work is fairly recent. I worked my way through Pride and Prejudice in seventh grade, and fell in love with it, but I never picked up anything else. I had an elective to blow my senior year of college, so I decided to take a Jane Austen and Ann Radcliffe class. After suffering through The Mysteries of Udolpho (unless you enjoy inflicting literary torture on yourself, I’d skip it and try Romance of the Forest or The Italian), we finally started on Austen’s works.

If you haven’t read Pride and Prejudice, or Sense and Sensibility, or Emma, you should. They’ve got all the sappy romance you can expect out of an early 19th century British novel and plenty of cattiness.

But now for something fun! I hereby present to you the Jane Austen Fight Club:

I used to think I was creative. I wrote fiction and I drew. I taught myself Photoshop. But that little spark died a long time ago. College killed whatever creativity I had. And it wasn’t that I was told I couldn’t, or shouldn’t be. It was just a matter of circumstance. For the past couple of years, I’ve been anxious and easily upset, constantly stressed and utterly terrified of the future. And when I wasn’t, it was because I was ignoring it, in a manner resembling the fool who sticks her fingers in her ears, closes her eyes and screams “LALALALALA I CAN’T HEAR YOUUUU!!!” to ignore something unpleasant. And rather than delay the inevitable, for some gods forsaken reason I chose to march straight into it. I think I may have been better off with an extra year in college. I could have taken the electives that I wanted, developed some skills in design. But I have a stubborn streak that wanted to prove I could do something that very few of my friends have done: graduate in 4 years.

I graduated feeling extremely unqualified for anything. I was reminded of that tonight, when I was drafting a list of subjects my co-workers could ask me about if they were ever unclear on something. Here’s the list I came up with:

• French (some culture, some literature, but mostly Renaissance poetry)
• Medieval European history
• Greek mythology
• Eastern religions, Catholicism, New-Age religions (if you want to call them that)
• Journalism
• Fantasy, vampire, and young adult lit
• British lit
• Rocky Horror Picture Show

I’m serious about this list, if you’re wondering.

They’re not really practical, are they? But they’re still things that interest me, and things I care about. And I’m completely fine with my list, even if it means that no one will ever want to ask me a question.

I almost feel creative tonight. I’m not going to whip up a poem or a short story or a sketch, but I feel good enough to sit down and write this.

I actually like my job, even though it’s only been two days. I wasn’t sure that I would–I was worried that I’d be shoveling content around, with not much regard to quality. It turns out, I’m shoveling about the same amount of content that I would expect in a newsroom, with the same care about quality. And as I was looking at the bios of my co-workers, I realized that they’re an accomplished bunch. Some have master’s degrees. Others are published writers. Some come from a journalism background. They’ve nearly all worked at other, more prestigious-seeming jobs. For a moment, I felt grossly unqualified. And then I realized that even if I sounded like a moron in my interview, I passed the proofreading test. I caught someone’s attention, and they gave me a job. And even if I have less experience, even if I’m straight out of college, someone thought I could do this job. And I think I can, too.

Editing is the only thing that came naturally to me. Sure, there were things I had to be taught, and some things I still have to learn. But I can take something and make it better, and I have always been able to do that. Clearly, I’m not as unqualified as I feel.

So what does all of this have to do with creativity?

The reason I haven’t felt creative is because I’ve been too busy worrying about practical things. School, work, future. And if I couldn’t deal with them anymore, I stuck my fingers in my ears and screamed until the world went away. Unfortunately, that little spark went away with it.  I can’t escape through my work.

I think I might be able to capture that little spark again. I doubt I’ll take up fiction again, but it might make the writing process easier, and I might get around to updating this thing more often, and with intersting stuff, not just my insane, inane ramblings.

I haven’t given up on my reading list, either. Next up on my list: The Drowning City, by Amanda Downum. It’s high fantasy, which I haven’t picked up in years. In fact, I really only bought it because another author I absolutely love endorsed it: Jacqueline Carey.

Reading is one of my escapes. When I’m wrapped up in a good book, nothing else exists. I don’t get hungry, thirsty, or sore, no matter how I’m sitting. If a book is really good, I’ll start biting my nail, and I’ll bite it until there’s nothing left and it starts to hurt, if I’m not careful. I think that’s one of the reasons I haven’t been able to read lately. I’ve been trying to stay focused, find a job, etc. I might cut back on stress, but I’d also be less inclined to do anything but dig into the totes and tote and boxes of books I’ve been stashing away for when I was a big girl who had time to read them.

Now that I have a job, it’s just a matter of picking a good time. I’m thinking Saturday. And maybe a new post Sunday? As long as I don’t start on the Jacqueline Carey book I’ve had for a year now.

I don’t like to talk about myself. I generally think I’m either not that interesting–I much prefer, for example, a game night with friends or a midnight movie showing than a night bar-hopping or crazy travel plans. (Not that I’m against road trips. I think they’re fun.) But when I do something exciting, it’s usually extremely geeky, which makes the friends who weren’t with me raise eyebrows or stare blankly. That tends to make it not so much fun to discuss later.

But today is a good day, and today I’ll share a little bit about why I decided journalism isn’t for me, and why I’m glad that I moved home and was unemployed for two months.

I believe in journalism. I do. I believe in its power and its importance, especially in today’s society. But I also believe that I’m not quite cut out for it. I’m an editor, but I’m no journalist. I don’t have the news sense, and I don’t have the desire to go out there and ask questions, get in people’s way and generally be nosy. When the news adviser at The Kansan told the staff at a beginning-of-semester meeting that he thought we needed to piss more people off–his words, not mine–I agreed. I just didn’t want to be the one asking the questions.

More importantly, my internship was a bust. The people were great, and I know my headline writing skills have improved, but I did very little editing. I faced a lot of people who didn’t seem to care that I was there and people who didn’t want me to make changes to the story, even if they did make it better. There were days when I did nothing until pages came out on proof, and once they were done, I did nothing for a while more. Some days I managed to scrape by with a few AP wire stories. If it was a good day, I’d get a crime story, or a column, and maybe a late story for the front of the city section.I asked for work, and was told there was none. The slot editors knew I was there, but refused to assign me stories.I’m not holding it against them, and I’m not sorry that I did it. But I wouldn’t do it again.

It wasn’t a great experience. I felt that everything I had learned in journalism school was a lie. And I know that I don’t want to be in that situation again.

One of my friends is in business. He mocks me mercilessly for wanting to be a penniless journalist, for wanting to work in a dying industry, for scowling at “management-ese,” and for having those pesky ethics. (He was joking about that last one, of course.) But he’s sent plenty of interesting articles my way, and a fair number of job postings. And one of the articles he linked me to was why business was the perfect field for journalists to work in. Business wasn’t what I was really interested in, at the time. But as my internship came to a close, I remembered the article, and started to reconsider my opinion.

I moved home, with enough money saved up to cover me probably until the end of this year. My parents are the nice sort who won’t force me to pay rent, and I’m covered under my dad’s health insurance until I’m 27. They’ll even pay for my car insurance, if I need them to. (Thankfully, I won’t need their help much longer.) But my parents aren’t rich, and I don’t want to be a burden to them, even if they are happy that I’m home.

The first thing I did when I moved home was apply at the library. I didn’t get the job–not that I really expected to. But I also refused to look for a job that I didn’t want–not my old high school job, no grocery stores, no retail. I knew it would give me spending money, and that I’d be less stressed. I’d even have something to do to get out of the house. In a more desperate moment, I did apply at Barnes and Noble (and I haven’t heard back from them). Oh, and I’m a certified paraprofessional now.

I also applied for what I thought was a call-center job. It turns out that it was a telemarketing gig. I thought I’d give it a try–It wasn’t retail, I was in an office, could wear what I want, and mostly set my own hours. I lasted 1 day of training and two shifts before I gave up. The promise of making money isn’t enough to persuade me to do something that I don’t believe in. The place I worked for gave us scripts. They helped us through the calls. They were fun, outgoing people. But I’ve worked in sales, for a company that frowns on a hard sale–this place doesn’t. I also don’t believe in misleading people, or distracting them from the truth. We couldn’t lie–but when someone asks what something is, I will tell them. I will not say “Well, actually, I’m just calling because of X” so that they won’t hang up. It goes against everything I believe in as someone who’s studied (and worked in, however briefly) journalism.

I refuse to settle for a job that doesn’t use the degrees I worked so hard to earn, the degrees I will be paying more than $100,000 for when all is said and done.  It isn’t what I want. Maybe I do have a bit of a dreamer streak in me (I’ve always thought of myself as pragmatic), but I refused to settle for something that’s “fine” or “OK.” I want great. I want a career I feel passionate about, regardless of how lucrative it is.  Yup. I wasn’t just a journalism major–I was an English major.

So I’ve been clinging to a little ray of hope and a lot of optimism whose source is still unknown to me. But my student loan payments are looming ever closer, and that scared me. It scared me enough that, at the end of September, I set a deadline for myself — If I hadn’t heard back about a job by mid-October, I would go back to my high school job. And that promise made me even more desperate to find a job.

Last week, after sending off my résumé and cover letter, I heard back from ReputationDefender.com. They sent me a proofreading test. I did a phone interview yesterday. And today, I received an e-mail offering me a full-time position as an associate editor. I’ll be editing biographies for clients, and working from home. It’s a contract position (and I feel sorry for the poor soul that files my taxes for me next year) but I think this will work. I won’t just be editing it for style–I will get to make executive decisions. I will be in contact with writers and fact-checkers, and to some extent, the clients themselves.

So I have a job. I’ve got a couple other freelance, part-time jobs I might hear back from soon.

I’ll be getting experience, and I’ll have a few more lines to add to my résumé. I’ll get experience in Chicago style, which, if I do eventually make the leap into publishing (the one field I’ve always wanted to work in), will be essential. I’m more confident in my résumé and my cover letters.

And I’ll be able to pay my bills and my student loans and buy Christmas presents for my friends and family.

I’m glad now that I didn’t settle for a temporary job to pay the bills. I start training with ReputationDefender on Tuesday. I won’t have to feel guilty about suddenly quitting to do this. I won’t have another small W-2 to worry about when I file my taxes next year (I’m already getting W-2s from 3 states). I had the time to search out these jobs, personalize my résumé, write a cover letter, and do the tests, and I know I wouldn’t have time to do that with another job.

My friend, the one in business? He was unemployed for a while. He called it “funemployment.” Maybe he was onto something there.

Or maybe he was just being sarcastic.

Since my last post I’ve only finished one book, but it’s the one I’ve been hoping to for a long time: Percy Jackson & The Olympians:  The Lightning Thief. It’s one of the best books I’ve read in a long time — not just because I enjoyed it, but because the writing is spectacular.

Yes. It’s a kid’s book — a kid’s series. The protagonist is in the 6th grade. And you should go read it right now. I’ve said it before, and I’ve said it again. The material may not be as explicit, but kids’ books still tackle difficult issues. And “The Lightning Thief” has difficult issues: abusive step-parents, deadbeat parents, violence, sacrifice and betrayal.

Rick Riordan really does know what he’s talking about. He recreates the sensations and the emotions of the main character in a way I’ve rarely seen. And even though you go into the story knowing what the main character doesn’t (that he’s the son of one of the Olympian gods), you still feel his puzzlement at the strange events surrounding him. Even though you know he’s on his way to a great adventure, you feel his anger and frustration and hopelessness when he’s expelled from school.

The beginning of the book isn’t just to get Percy where he needs to be.

It isn’t just to hook the reader with some sort of mystery, and it isn’t just to lay out the rules of Percy Jackson universe.

The beginning of the book is for the reader to get to know Percy. Some of the younger readers may empathize with him (he’s been told he has ADHD and dyslexia, has never done well in school, and like Harry Potter in “The Sorcerer’s Stone,” seems to get in trouble for strange things that aren’t his fault), but Percy isn’t just a stand-in character for every misfit kid out there wishing they were someone special. He’s got depth. He has a personality – he has quirks and he has limits, and he has issues.

Maybe Percy Jackson has some similarities to Harry Potter. A troubled young boy with a less-than-ideal home life suddenly finds out that he’s not what he thought he was, and gets dragged into a fight that he inherited without deserving.

It sounds a bit like the start of Wheel of Times series, if you exclude the less-than-ideal home life. And if we’re excluding that, it also sounds a bit like the beginning of the Sword of Truth series. And yes, even the start of the Lord of Rings.

It sounds a bit cliché. But Rick Riordan’s done his homework. He doesn’t just ask, “Hey, what if the Greek gods were still alive and kicking?” He explains why they are. He works in the myths of the past, and makes them relevant to his story without abusing them and twisting them to his own ends. He captures the spirit of the Greek myths – stories of gods who aren’t all-powerful, all-seeing and all-good. These gods were petty, vengeful and proud.

And that’s what sets “The Lightning Thief” apart. Harry, Rand in the Wheel of Time, Richard in the Sword of Truth and Frodo all get thrown into the ultimate battle of good-versus-evil. And while the world is still at stake in “The Lightning Thief,” it’s not a showdown between the forces of good and evil. It’s very personal, very petty, and very much like the old Greek myths.

But hey, if you don’t believe me,  go read it for yourself.

Go on. You won’t regret it.

I have to say, the only one I was impressed with was Butcher. A good book on its own, but it’s more impressive because it’s considerably better than his previous novels. The style of the novel is the same, and the plot is standard fare (minus one quickly revealed twist that I won’t give away here). The pacing is typical — one thing after another — but this time we actually see Harry pushed to his limits. In the past, he’s always had some last resource to tap, something no one expected. This time, though, it truly seems he’s in way over his head, and he needs help.

Kate’s novel is the typical angsty teen romance. Whereas “Twilight” has vampires, this one has fallen angels. The premise is the same, but the details are different. The main character is a bit of an improvement over Bella, but she still suffers from the same problem: She’s entranced by a boy who seems indifferent to her, who shows all the signs of being a bad boyfriend, and of course he’s so secretive that she walks into all kinds of danger without knowing it. (The book gives a reason for this, but I’m not buying it.) She also seems quite content to wait to be rescued rather than taking matters into her own hands. The book is interesting until most of it is explained to the reader, and then it’s hard to resist rolling your eyes and asking, “Really?”

The second book, “Torment,” is due out this fall. I doubt I’ll be picking it up. I certainly won’t be buying it.

Colfer’s continuation of Douglas Adams’ series is a blessing and a curse. The end of “Mostly Harmless” never sat quite right with me, and for those who of us who are unhappy about it, the new book undoes the damage “Mostly Harmless” inflicts. But it’s also no Adams book. Instead, Colfer takes all the mechanisms of the previous 5 books and reuses them. It lacks the inventiveness and randomness that marked Douglas’ writing. There’s precious little that’s truly new. It was a decent enough read, but not something I’d like to revisit.

I’ve got Rick Riordan’s first Percy Jackson book (“The Lightning Thief“) awaiting me. I’ve been wanting to read it for a long time, and I hear its good. We’ll see.

I tend to think that genre books are extremely undervalued. They’re written off as being the livelihoods of an angsty bunch of misfits (See the New York Press blog post by Allen Houston for an example, and then check out a Publisher’s Weekly blogger’s response) but having been to midnight releases and talks by Laurell K. Hamilton, it’s not always the case. There are always “weirdos,” but who’s to judge? Certainly not me. The events are informative–when I went to the Laurell K. Hamilton Bullet tour kickoff, it was a question-based event. The fans got to ask her questions about the story and about her writing process. For aspiring writers, it’s informative and encouraging. She’s also extremely funny.

For those who don’t know who Laurell K. Hamilton is, she writes paranormal (vampire) romance/crime novels. (The first book of her vampire hunter series is called Guilty Pleasures.) In the world of her novels, vampires are legal citizens, and so are shapeshifters, even if they’re still discriminated against. Anita Blake is a vampire executioner and an animator–she raises Zombies for a living, while working with the police to solve crimes by paranormal bad guys. Oh, and there’s a vampire who’s trying to persuade her to date him.

At the Bullet kickoff tour, a former marine and police officer commented on how realistically she portrays the police/military world. He thanked her for capturing the spirit of it. It’s no easy feat, and a lot of it is based on her experiences talking with cops and military folk. This isn’t some “balding goth,” but a respectable man who enjoys the books. There were teenagers–one boy asked how he could get his mother (a syndicated columnist) to write more books. Girls, boys, men, women, all lining up to ask her questions and tell her how much they appreciate her books. More than a few girls/women commented on how they love Anita for being a strong, independent woman (these aren’t your princess myth romances) and look up to her as a role model.

I follow Neil Gaiman and Laurell on Twitter. They’re funny, educated, and considerate to their audience. They acknowledge that we’re there, and they share their lives with us. They run events that don’t just involve a lecture, but actual participation. We don’t find out about their lives in TV interviews or newspaper articles.

I feel much the same way about Young Adult and children’s literature. I’ve seen students write the stuff off as being fluff.I took a Jane Austen/Ann Radcliffe class where a student suggested that Harry Potter had nothing of value to contribute to the literary community. If she hadn’t, why has Harry Potter become such a huge movement? She might not have been the first, but she was the first to make it big, and hundreds have followed in her footsteps.

Children’s books deal with serious issues, too. The Higher Power of Lucky deals with a young girl living in a poor town with her step mother. Lucky, the girl, has to confront issues about her mother’s death. She listens in on the adults’ AA meetings and wonders what the word ‘scrotum’ means. She runs away with her friend, and when he gets hurt, she has to confront more of her own issues.

Harry Potter deals with friendship and life and growing  up, and most certainly losing people you love. The Anita Blake books deal with right/wrong, friendship and love, trust — the same sort of issues any good book addresses. These books are human; they’re engaging; they’re well-written. And their authors reach out to their fans, and to charity. J.K. Rowling plans to donate the profits from her Harry Potter encyclopedia to charity. When Neil Gaiman gets  his settlement from a comic book lawsuit, he’s donating the money to comic book charities.

So maybe there’s a reason that these genre authors have such a devoted and respectful following.

READING LIST

UPDATE 6.13.10: Three books in. LKH and Green down. Dresden next, perhaps?

So here’s the list, in no order other than how I pull them out of my little crate. Feel free to add your suggestions or comments– but absolutely no spoilers, please.

Sherrilyn Kenyon: One Silent Night and Bad Moon Rising
Jacqueline Carey: Kushiel’s Mercy
Amanda Downum: The Drowning City
M.L.N. Hanover: Unclean Spirits
Robert Liparulo: House of Dark Shadows
Neil Gaiman: Coraline, Stardust
Rick Riordan: The Lightning Thief
Patti O’Shea: Through a Crimson Veil
Simon R. Green: Just Another Judgment Day
Lauren Kate: Fallen
Jim Butcher: Changes
Laurell K. Hamilton: Flirt, Bullet
Eoin Colfer: And Another Thing
George R.R. Martin: A Game of Thrones