Reflections, Accomplishments & Hopes for a New Year

It's that time of year when we take a hard look at what we've done and assess how we want to improve and move forward. This is something I'm doing constantly, but it does seem important to take a moment to write it all down, especially since I feel like I have learned a lot about myself this year, and especially this past month or two.

I started out 2012 miserable and full of self-doubt. It was a long-time coming. These feelings had been building for a couple of years, so I declared 2012, the year of re-evaluation. I had to figure out what made me happy. More specifically, I had to figure out if writing still made me happy or if I was done, ready for a complete change of career and life focus.

I went back and forth, up and down about this. I'd spend a month deeply in love with storytelling and then three months hating every word I wrote or hating myself for writing. I felt like I'd finally gotten on the right track again in September and then had an absolute breakdown, my biggest crisis of faith yet in November, which I documented in this piece for Rookie--possibly the best, most honest, real and in-the-moment piece I've written for Rookie.

In July, I decided to go back to therapy for the first time in roughly nine or ten years. I was deeply depressed and anxious, especially about writing, and I couldn't do the re-evaluation thing on my own. It was one of the best decisions I've ever made. Not only did I benefit personally, I figured out a lot about my own writing. I put all the writing tips I gleaned from my therapist in this YA Outside the Lines post.

Perhaps the most important of those tips was be grateful for and recognize my accomplishments, big and small. So here's what I've done in 2012

• Knitted one hat and one scarf for my mother, and one hooded baby blanket for my friend's first child. Started my first knitting project for myself, a skirt.



• Taught 16 students in a Young Adult Fiction class at Columbia College and read well over 1000 pages of their work.
• Grew lettuce, strawberries, tomatoes, green beans, many varieties of peppers, many types of herbs, quite a few flowers.



• Made countless vegan meals, tried and even invented several new recipes.
• Got my eleventh tattoo. (It's Latin for "breathe.")

• Joined my local library board.
• Tended bar three nights a week and briefly made a tumblr about my adventures.
• Visited my favorite place on earth, Seattle.



• Saw (and met!) Mark Lanegan (whose music inspires my writing big-time), as well Garbage, Social Distortion, and several amazing bands (and legends like Iggy Pop!) at Riot Fest.
• Hosted a college friend for about half the year and went on adventures with her like to my first Renaissance Faire.



• Visited with several other friends from out of town, reconnected with my childhood best friend/sister after she moved back, spent as much time as I could with my amazing teenage niece who is my heroine, and made the ultimate birthday package for my BFF to celebrate eighteen years of friendship.
• Went to my first Comic Con where I met people like the stars of one of my all-time favorite shows, Twin Peaks.



• Went to my first RT convention, participated in a panel about boundaries in YA and in Teen Day. Met Francine Pascal, author of the Sweet Valley series that ruled my childhood.





• Watched the last five seasons of Buffy for the first time, all five seasons of Angel for the first time, and most recently, watched all of the first season of Game of Thrones in 3 days.
• Turned old t-shirts into new shirts, and in one case, a dress.



• Celebrated my third wedding anniversary in Portland, Oregon. We also visited the gorgeous Oregon coast and met up with one of my best writing buds, Tara Kelly, who took this photo of us.

• Nursed my elderly cat/best friend of 17 years, Sid, for several months and then said a sad but beautiful farewell to him the weekend after Thanksgiving and wrote him a tribute.
  
• Wrote 17 columns for my local newspaper, the Forest Park Review.
• Wrote 20 essays, some deeply personal, others pure fun, for Rookie as well as countless reviews of books, movies, TV shows, music, hot chocolate, candy, and electronic items that do and should exist.
• Wrote my first essay for Ms. Fit Magazine, a real world feminist fitness magazine that will debut in January of 2013.
• Made zines with my niece and her BFF at a Rookie Road Trip event.

• Took part in an amazing reading to celebrate the release of ROOKIE YEARBOOK ONE.
• Did a vlog to celebrate the release of the DEAR TEEN ME anthology, which features my letter to my teenage self about an abusive relationship.
• Researched (both by visiting the library and sneaking into a cemetery after hours) and wrote my first short story in umm... eight years? It's a ghost story--my personal twist on a local urban legend about a hitchhiking phantom flapper--which will come out next October in an anthology called VERY SUPERSTITIOUS published by Month9Books.
• Went on a writing retreat in Arizona.



• Wrote about 50,000 words of one YA novel (ie. the Modern Myth YA)
• Wrote about 60,000 words of another YA novel (ie. the Contemporary YA)

Yeah, looking back, even though I often beat myself up for not doing enough... that's a lot of stuff! Sure, I wish that total of 110,000 words could have been on one novel so I could feel like I finished a big project this year. And of course what I really wish is that "sold a book" could be one of the bullet points, but I worked hard and I have to be proud of what I have accomplished and the difficulties like losing Sid that I got through.

I guess the biggest question is what came of my self/life evaluation in the year of evaluation?

Ultimately, I've decided that while writing doesn't always make me happy and the current state of my career (or more specifically the way I've had to cobble together way too much work that pays way too little to support my writing habit), writing will always be a part of my life. I'm hoping that 2013 will bring adjustments and changes that will make me happier. The biggest one is that my husband and I are hoping...or at this point PLANNING to move to Seattle in summer of 2013. I need a fresh start in a place that I actually like. I grew up in Chicago and came back for school, but then got stuck here. It's not where I feel like I belong. I'm hoping that going where I feel like I do belong will shake things up a bit. It will definitely mean a job change. Bartending has its moments and it did inspire an entire (though as of yet unsold) book, but like all service industry jobs it can be really draining and demeaning. I have discovered a love of teaching this year and especially a love of writing for and connecting with teenage girls via Rookie. I'm hoping to find a job that incorporate both of those things--maybe some sort of after school arts program for young people that I can teach in. I'm not sure what is out there, but I'nm hoping to find something, and it may be a full-time something meaning novel writing will have to fit in other places in my life. I want to have nights to read and spend time with my husband, weekends to go on adventures with him. That will be the priority once we move out west. 

Writing for Rookie is my other big priority. It doesn't pay much, but every piece I craft for them, I put my heart and soul into the same as I have my novels. I'm able to write incredibly personal things and I feel like I'm a part of the type of publication I'd been dreaming of since I was thirteen years old. Rookie readers are my audience, always have been, and I'm so grateful to have the opportunity to share my words and stories with them.

As for my fictional stories, my novels, my career as Stephanie Kuehnert, YA author (or just author in general), I still hope and dream and work my ass off in hopes that 2013 will be the year it relaunches. (13 is my lucky number after all.) I'm taking much needed time off until after the New Year, but then I will get back back the Contemporary YA and I hope to finish it in a month or three. After that, I will return to and reevaluate the Modern Myth YA. Maybe I'll press on with it as it is, maybe I'll re-write it again, or maybe I'll decided it needs a different form--a TV pilot instead of a book, perhaps. 

I'm not setting deadlines or making specific goals. I just want to keep doing what I've been doing--finding the faith and the drive to keep writing and enjoy writing each day that I sit down to do it. To treasure life's sweet moments, to find something to be grateful for every day.

Oh and I think I might sign up for a spinning class....

What about you? What were your accomplishments big and small in 2012 and what are you hoping to do in 2013?

A Vlog! An Excerpt! A Contest!--Celebrating the Release of DEAR TEEN ME!

This Tuesday marked the release of DEAR TEEN ME: Authors Write Letters to Their Teen Selves, an anthology edited by E. Kristin Anderson and Miranda Kenneally.

It was born from this website, which I wrote a letter for back in 2011. I was honored when I was asked to write a new letter for the anthology, which includes a bunch of extremely cool, interesting, and talented YA authors, who have had a variety of teenage experiences.

Here's the official description of the book:

Dear Teen Me includes advice from over 70 YA authors (including Lauren Oliver, Ellen Hopkins, and Nancy Holder, to name a few) to their teenage selves. The letters cover a wide range of topics, including physical abuse, body issues, bullying, friendship, love, and enough insecurities to fill an auditorium. So pick a page, and find out which of your favorite authors had a really bad first kiss? Who found true love at 18? Who wishes he’d had more fun in high school instead of studying so hard? Some authors write diary entries, some write letters, and a few graphic novelists turn their stories into visual art. And whether you hang out with the theater kids, the band geeks, the bad boys, the loners, the class presidents, the delinquents, the jocks, or the nerds, you’ll find friends--and a lot of familiar faces--in the course of Dear Teen Me.

The Vlog: 

To celebrating the release, I put together a vlog--now, mind you, "put together" is a very loose term. Basically I used to crappy webcam and the Windows Movie Maker software on my computer, so please don't judge me too harshly. In it I talk briefly about why I participated in this project/why I write for teens in general and I share a short excerpt from my letter.



The Contest: 
It's not a party without presents!!! So I'm going to giveaway a copy of DEAR TEEN ME to one lucky winner. It will be signed by 4 to 5 Dear Teen Me contributors and come with bookmarks and postcards!

To enter all you have to do is leave a comment with your email address (so I can contact you if you win).

Want extra entries?
+1 for every time you tweet or share something on facebook about Dear Teen Me, could be my video, a link to this blog entry, a link to one of the other blogs on the Dear Teen Me blog tour, could just be your own thoughts on how awesome Dear Teen Me is.

Note your extra entries in your comment and enter as many times as you want before Friday, November 9th when I will be drawing my winner. This contest IS open internationally!

New Releases, New Projects, New Tumblrs (Oh and Comic Con pix)

Hey lovely blog readers, sorry it's been awhile since I've posted properly. I've been prepping for my crazy fall and hang out with these cool people:

Yeah, that would be Norman Reedus. Or you may know him as Daryl from The Walking Dead or Murphy MacManus from Boondock Saints. I know him as that guy who my friend Lindsay and I became insanely obsessed with in like 2002 and watched all his movies over and over. And he touched me. And called me babe and sweetheart several times.

Those lovely ladies would be Sherilyn Fenn and Sheryl Lee or Audrey and Laura from Twin Peaks or the women who collectively changed my life when I was eleven and my mom decided that yeah it would be cool to let me watch her favorite show with her. They are also incredibly sweet and both complimented me on my flower crown. When I told Sheryl Lee about writing for Rookie and the next gen of teen girls inspired by Twin Peaks, she got so genuinely excited it made my day.

And these people, that dude, who looks like he's about to get all bumpy-faced and bite my best friend (in the awesome unicorn shirt)'s next, that of course would be James Marsters AKA Spike from Buffy and his partner in crime on the far left is Juliet Landau AKA Drusilla.

Yes, I spent the first part of August totally geeking out and going to my very first Comic Con, Wizard World Chicago as well as my very first Ren Faire in Bristol, WI, where I met this adorable little guy:

From now on my husband and friends judge the level of my happiness/excitement by whether or not I'm making "bunny face." (Note: that Norman Reedus definitely got "bunnyface"... which sounds wrong. Especially since my husband was mentioned a sentence ago.)

Now on to that preparing for a busy fall thing, but here are a couple of things that also bring on bunnyface for me.... NEW RELEASES!!!!!!

Sorry to disappoint, but these are not solo ventures, ie. new books just written by me. They are both anthologies/collections of sorts, but that's what makes them so bunnyface worthy. They are a million times better than if they were written by just me.

First up...
THE ROOKIE YEARBOOK!!!

Actually I believe the official title is Rookie Yearbook One because there will be more and I hope way way way more than four yearbooks I have from high school. Of course they will definitely be way way way better than high school yearbooks, chock full of the best Rookie photos, art, and articles of the year. I'm not actually sure what if any of my pieces are in there, but I do know my school photo from senior year will be!

This releases on September 4th, next Tuesday, which also marks the one year anniversary of Rookie, when I wrote this highly excited post about. I'm still just as thrilled and honored to be a part of Rookie, especially now that I see the incredible INCREDIBLE content that has been produced and the community that has grown from it. This summer during the Rookie Road Trip, I even got to take my niece and one of her BFFs to a zine making party. Rookie is probably the thing I am most proud of, even more so than my books, so if you haven't yet, I urge you to check it out. These two pieces in particular mean a lot to me, my most recent article about grief and losing my friend Marcel, and my piece on my history with self-injury. And for those of you wondering about the advice I'd give teen writers, you will find it all here at Rookie.

I will also be talking about something very close to my heart in the other new release...

Dear Teen Me: Authors Write Letters to Their Teen Selves comes out on October 30th.

I will be in AMAZING company with people like Ellen Hopkins, Lauren Oliver, Tara Kelly, and more. I wrote about the emotionally and sexually abusive relationship I was in as a fifteen year-old. I can't wait to read all of the other letters, which I imagine will range from heartbreaking to hilarious.

Fall, for me, is also a time for New Projects.

Okay, one new project. I've decided after much soul-searching, stress, and conversing with my agent that while the partial of the Modern Myth YA is being shopped, I can't keep writing it. I just get too freaked out. This doesn't mean I've given up on it. I hope/believe that my agent will call me any day now with an offer and then I will dive write back in. I explained a bit more in depth about why I felt this way/made this decision and gave some hints (in playlist form of course) about the project I've switched over to working to on YA Outside the Lines last week. As I mentioned there, the new project is a Contemporary Realistic YA (which for right now I will call quite creatively the Contemporary YA even though I have a working title that I adore for it, yanno, superstitions.) That doesn't completely do it justice those because I'm pondering some ghostly/magical realism twists to it.

It's about a girl who is grieving--a few characters actually are grieving, but my main character is not only grieving for her older brother, she has also fallen into an emotionally abusive relationship.

Yeah, I know, I mentioned both grief and abusive relationships above as my own experiences. As usual, I am drawing from those things, emotionally, creatively, cathartically, but not directly. I pondered writing a memoir, but for now I've decided against it, so my real life stuff will be found at Rookie and in anthologies like Dear Teen Me.

Something else that Ballads of Suburbia fans will enjoy is that Cass makes a cameo appearance in this one, as a grown up. As you will see in this scene that I've decided to be daring enough to share with you even though I wrote most of it while hungover last week.

Cass swiveled her head to the right, dreadlocks spilling over her left shoulder. She mimicked Kat’s posture and as she crossed her arms, the sleeve of her gray t-shirt rose to reveal her birdcage tattoo. The cage was open and empty with a ribbon hanging down from it. Loopy handwritten script on the ribbon read, “Secrets lead to sickness.”

“First day back and you’re ready?” Cass deadpanned.

Kat matched her dry tone. “Maybe that’s why I’m back.”

Maybe there was a grief group therapy certificate and Kat wanted it.

Cass flicked her chin upward, indicating that Kat should spill.

Kat’s face faltered momentarily like a kid at Six Flags who’d spent their whole time in line bragging about what a piece of cake a certain roller coaster was and then almost chickened out when it was her turn to step into the first car. But then she blinked and her expression hardened once again.

“Two years ago yesterday, I was hanging out with my brother Stevie at Denny’s like usual. Our sister Corin worked there, so we could just sit around and drink coffee for hours without getting hassled. Corin usually comped most of our food, too, but that night Stevie insisted on actually buying me a slice of pie because he’d only had to fix a couple of sentences in my final English paper, which he said was like a record. I always had him proofread my stuff even though it meant listening to him gloat about being the twin that got all the brains. It was this ongoing thing we had. I’d be like, ‘I’m older,’ and he’d be like, ‘Well, I hung out in the womb longer so my brain could get bigger.’” Kat half-laughed before saying, “Whatever, it’s one of those stupid things that’s probably only funny to us. Anyway, it wasn’t about him being smarter. Even Corin had him proof her college essays. She’s the musician, I’m the artist, I guess, and Stevie’s the writer….”

Kat swallowed and tugged on the colorful jelly bracelets on her left wrist. “Stevie was the writer. And fine, fuck it, he was smarter than me, too. Except for that night. He was so fucking stupid that night.”

She rolled her eyes heavenward and blinked rapidly. Cass started to say something, but Kat stomped her foot. “No, I can do this,” she insisted.

Taking a deep breath, she stared out into the center of the circle, focusing on a scuff on the tile that I usually spent group studying. It was the perfect arch, like a gray rainbow. “We should have gone home with Corin’s best friend Stella,” Kat continued. “Corin had to work ‘til midnight and Stella offered to give use a ride. We were in the parking lot with her when Stevie’s friends rolled up. Well, they weren’t really all his friends. Riley, he’d been one Stevie’s best friends since grade school. The two other guys, Murph and Jared, were a couple years older than us. Riley met them in woodworking class and thought they were cool because they had a car and did stupid shit like steal lawn ornaments and rearrange letters on signs and act like they were movie stunt guys.”

Kat rolled her eyes again, but this time she looked pissed rather than on the verge of tears. “I thought they were cool, too. I tried to impress them just like Stevie and his friends did. Especially Murph, I thought he was so cute. It was pathetic. That’s why we didn’t ride home with Stella. I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to ride shotgun in Murph’s shitty Ford Explorer. Stella even asked, ‘Are you sure?’ And right when she did, there were sirens. I remember that. An ambulance, a cop car, a couple fire trucks. It was really loud. Definitely a warning, but did I take it? No. I just waved Stella off.”

I glanced over at Cass, wondering if she was going to interject. She was always telling us not to blame ourselves or take on the burden of regrets that didn’t belong to us. She frowned sadly, but kept her mouth shut. She was probably saving the hindsight is twenty-twenty lecture for after Kat was done. Getting us to confess about that day was always her biggest priority.

“Part of me wishes we’d gone with Stella, but another part of me wishes she hadn’t been there at all because seeing her probably gave Stevie his idiotic idea.” Kat bit her lip and shook her head. “Like I said, Murph and Jared were into doing these idiotic stunts and one of them was car surfing. We’d do it in parking lots when they were empty at night. You’d climb up on the roof of the Explorer and Murph would drive. Not super fast, maybe twenty miles an hour. Riley actually did it down our street one time at closer to thirty. Stevie had never tried it, though, which everyone teased him about, especially since you know, I had,” she pointed to herself. “His sister.

“When the guys started giving him crap that night, he was like, ‘Okay, I’ll surf,’ and then he turns to me and smiles and says, ‘In fact, I’ll surf the dark spot.’ And I was like, ‘Bad ass! Shotgun!’ because of course I was way more concerned about sitting next to Murph than how fucking idiotic it was to car surf through the dark spot, which is this winding stretch of road through the forest preserve about a mile from Denny’s. Corin discovered it when Stella got her license. Stella’s kind of a daredevil, so she would turn off her headlights and go around that curve blind and crazy fast because right afterward there’s a set of train tracks and you can catch some pretty good air when you hit them.

“So we’re, like, explaining this as we’re directing Murph there and he actually got a little freaked by the idea. He said he’d do it with no headlights because Stevie really wanted to surf in the darkness and he’d go around the curve, but he wasn’t going to go that fast and he wasn’t going to go over the tracks. Not that it mattered because we never even got to the curve…” Kat’s voice cracked and she ran a finger under her eye before a renegade tear could smear her black eyeliner.

She’d been speaking at an incredible clip, her words gaining momentum like when the roller coaster goes down that first big dip. When she paused to catch her breath, the ten of us listening seemed to take a collective inhale with her. Plastic chairs creaked as kids pressed against them, trying to escape what came next in Kat’s story, what came next in all of our stories: that ugly moment that changed everything.

Yep, I'm gonna leave you hanging there. Also, worth noting, Kat is not the main character. Meredith, the girl listening to her, is, but I haven't written her recollection of her own brother's death yet. I know it. I know a fair bit about this story, but not everything. I'm writing by the seat of my pants now and just trying to fall in love with telling a story again, not worrying about an audience or who might or might not buy it, just writing what I need to write. And so far it has been working. Yesterday I wrote nearly 3,500 words. More than I've written in one day all summer, possibly all year. Here's hoping the momentum keeps going.

Because I'm trying to sink back into a solid fiction writing schedule on top of my freelance work, my bartending job, and once again I'll be teaching a YA Fiction Course at Columbia College Chicago this fall, I don't know how well I'll keep up with this blog. I'll try my best, but to fill the void, I also have this...

My new bartending tumblr.
Adventures in Bartending/The Bartending Diaries can be found here. I still don't post as regularly as most tumblrers, but I do what I can, namely posting funny bar related photos and videos and accounts of my experiences at work, which I can do LIVE FROM MY PHONE so I find that convenient and exciting. I'm also doing it because even though it hasn't sold yet, my agent and I still have high hopes that we will find a home for my bartender book and you'll get to read it.

That's all from me. Hope you guys had fabulously fun summers and exciting fall projects planned too!