What's in a name? or why I'm changing mine...

When I get married next month, I'll be changing my name. Most of you won't notice because publicly I'll remain Stephanie Kuehnert. But y'know on my driver's license it will say something else and to the people in my private life I'll be named something else.

And I have terrible feminist guilt about this. My mother, the initial person responsible for my feminist beliefs long before I discovered riot grrrl or any of the other things that shaped me politically, kept her maiden name. She did so despite the confusion that it caused when signing permission slips and whatnot for school. (My parents didn't hypenate our names. Thankfully. I mean, seriously, do you really want to make Kuehnert more complicated!) She always had to put (mom) at the end, to the point that I sometimes wonder if she accidentally signed receipts with (mom) tacked onto her signature. It was that important to her to hold on to her identity, her name. Maybe because she was of a family of all daughters and no one would carry it on. Maybe because, seriously, who wants to take on Kuehnert? But mostly because that was her belief.

It makes sense to me. Women have lost their identities through marriage in so, so many ways for so many years. There was a long time that I never thought I'd get married because I had so many issues with women's role in the institution of marriage. I mean the pledge to "obey"? The symbolism of the dad giving the daughter over to the husband? Yeah. Yuck.

But then I fell in love. Hard. And it's that kind of love that just feels so sacred, like it deserves a ritual or a ceremony. I am a ritual/ceremony person. I like to declare permanence when something is really important (hence the huge tattoo with best friend). I want to celebrate and shout outloud how much I love this wonderful guy. So that's why I'm getting married.

But it's not why I'm changing my name.

Okay so it plays a role but just a small one. I do want to share a name with him. Share a bed, share a house, share a name. I like that, it feels right. But we could share either of our names or combine our names. So that brings us back slightly more specifically to the reason why I am changing my name to his name.

1. I fucking hate my name. Yes, a hate so strong I had to invoke the f-word. Ugh. I've spent 30 years saddled with this name that no one can spell, no one can pronounce. I hate it, hate it, hate it. I've wanted to get rid of it for as long as I can remember. I've asked my mom on many occasions, why she couldn't have take the feminist thing a bit farther and gifted me with much simpler last name of Napp. It gets missppelled at times (Knapp), but other than that, it's very nice and I like the sound of it. At one point in my late teens when I was ermm highly displeased with my father, I talked about changing my name to Napp, but I just never got around to it and eventually I reconciled with my dad and that seemed sort of mean.

Strangely, with the exception of the evil abusive one, every guy I've dated has had an incredibly easy last name. So I'd always thought, well if I end up with him, it would sure be convenient. Now, I've ended up with someone who has a name that you'd have to completely illiterate to misread, misspell or mispronounce. It's even easier than Napp. So I'm going with it.

2. This is about identity. Now Stephanie Kuehnert will become my professional name/pen name/public name. But my new name, that will just be me, privately. I put a lot of myself out there in public. It's just in my nature, like part of coming from writing zines I guess, but it will be nice to have that boundary because I'm sure at some point I'll need it. I'm also sure it will cause some headache... like with finances and paperwork and that sort of thing. But like it was worth it for my mom to sign everything (mom) so that she could stay true to herself, it's worth it to me to create a private side for myself, where I can just be who I am when I'm out with friends or at home with my kitties and especially my boy. There are really few people in this world (um like basically my mom and bff Katie) who know me as well as he does. So there it is. I guess it all comes back to love after all.

So I'm going to try to ditch the feminist guilt. I don't need to keep a name I've never liked just to make a statement. I can choose one that I like, one that has meaning to me because choosing your own identity is very feminist.

Anyway, names are very important to me, that's why I wanted to blog about this. I think out the names for my characters intently, searching for the right meaning, etc, but usually what it comes down to is what feels right for the character. This new name just feels right.

And I have to say now that I write this, part of me wishes I published under Stephanie Napp. But maybe having this strange, awkward, hard to pronounce name speaks to the kind of stuff I write somehow.

Well, now I'm off to write about a character I named Bender after graffiti I saw in a bathroom. Seriously. It was just right.

Women Who Rock Wednesday- New Format?

Welcome to Women Who Rock Wednesday. The guest I had scheduled, Kathy Charles had to postpone, so we'll hear from her sometime in the future and if you are in Australia, I highly advise you to look for her brand new book, Hollywood Ending.

This means that I'm continuing the contest for last week's guest, filmmaker April Mosqus until next Wednesday. So if you haven't read the interview about her film, Before We Get To Seattle and entered the contest, do so here.

This little lapse also gives me a chance to propose a new format of sorts for Women Who Rock Wednesdays. As much as I like bringing you new interviews every week, umm, it gets really crazy time consuming, tracking people down, interviewing, formatting. So I'm thinking of going to every other week with the interviews. There will be exceptions of course like when I get a bunch of cool people or certain dates that work for certain people.

On the off weeks, I want to take the time to talk about the women who have inspired me who I may not be able to interview for some reason or other, like maybe they are way too famous or dead (if I hadn't experienced some utterly terrifying Ouija Board incidents when younger, maybe I'd try interviewing that way, but...) or they are fictional characters. Or I'll talk about stuff in the news related to women. That kind of thing.

I hope that will still be interesting. And I hope you'll still come and visit me even if there aren't always contests. If the contests are a big reason you come, please do say so and I'll try to figure something out, but yeah.... That's what I'm thinking right now.

So I guess now it is time to give an example of what I'll be doing on non-interview Wednesdays.

Today I thought it would be fun to talk about a fictional character that influenced me, and I thought I'd actually share what I wrote about this particular fictional character when I was 16. So here is an excerpt from an article called "Growing Up Feminist: Influences in the Pre-Bikini Kill Days" which I published in one of my 'zines back in the day. I'll even leave the crazy spelling and punctuation intact.

Time to flashback to me in 1996 flashing back to the late eighties... ready?

My generation has been called the TV babies, so I have to admit that the idiot box has influenced me also. I remember liking She-Ra and Jem. I guess She-Ra was rather scantily glad, but you have to admit, that girl was powerful. And Jem, she was the eighties' girl rocker, and "truly outrageous". Actually I watched a lot of PBS as a kid, the one show the influenced me most in my entire life was on PBS, Degrassi High/Jr High. It taught me about all the issues: AIDS, teen pregnancy, abortion; pretty controversial for the eighties. It shaped my views on animal rights and many other subjects. My main role model on the show was Christine, known mostly by her nickname, Spike, after her hair. I've wanted my hair to be like her's since I was 8, I just plain wanted to be her. Spike wasn't the perfect role model though, she had a kid at 14. I guess that should rule her out as a role model, right? Wrong. Spike portrayed real life, she dealth with a lot of problems and never gave up. The school made her take special classes away from the other kids because she was a "bad influence" and then she had to do with raising her baby, Emma. She didn't drop out of school, but she made sacrifices like missing school dances and concerts. She dealt with getting child support and trying to find a job which was difficult because she was jurdged by her appearance. I was pretty disappointed when I found out high skool wasn't like Degrassi, maybe it's only like that in Canada. I still tape Degrassi from Showtime and I still relate to it. Before I grew up and found out who I wanted to be, I had these influences, who knows what I'd be without them.

Okay, back to the present day...

I've since learned to use a semi-colon correctly, that periods go inside the quotation marks and I have stopped intentionally misspelling things like skool, but to quote one of my favorite bands from back then, Skankin' Pickle, "I'm still in love with a girl named Spike."

I still stand by all that I said about her and as I was retyping this, I thought, wow, back then Spike influenced me as a person, now she has also influenced me as a writer. I think I've gone on to write about girls like Emily and Kara, who are flawed and in tough situations because I loved watching characters like Spike be a survivor.

So yeah, that is the tribute of the day. And I do actually have a prize (can you tell I just feel guilty about not giving you guys the opportunity to win prizes!)... I have a copy of the last issue of Kill Supermodels, the zine that I did with my friends in high school (please note it was about killing the idea that we all had to look like supermodels, we did not condone violence against actual supermodels or any women!). It was our best issue, IMHO, but I will throw in some additional articles that were pretty good including the one I excerpted from today.

As usual to enter the contest, just leave a comment. Let me know if you are cool with the new WWRW format idea (I hope you are cuz man I just can't keep up with the interview pace!). Or tell me about the ladies from TV who influenced you. And as usual, you get an extra entry for tweeting or blogging about this post. Go ahead and note that extra entry in your comment along with your email address so I can easily find you if you win.

I will announce this winner and April's winner next week when I do have a guest, Lauren Baratz-Logsted, who will talk about her book Crazy Beautiful which I am really really looking foward to, I don't know about you....

Oh and if you want another contest to enter, YA Book Central is giving away 5 copies of Ballads of Suburbia this month, go here to enter!

Wedding Shower pics and a plea for creative suggestions

Yay, a wedding blog, like I promised! Though I also wrote a blog for MTV Books over here about what I loved about my teen years (ummm, next to nothing, until I examined it in retrospect), so please visit it and show me some love there too.

We got all kinds of wonderful goodies at our bridal shower last Sunday. New stuff to replace mismatched/old ghetto stuff like sheets, glasses, and silverware. Fun new appliances and cooking tools like an Iced Tea Maker (which has already been put to use), crock pot (never used one, imagine it will be quite useful for chili), and just arrived today because they were out of stock at the store, a coffee press (for Scott) and special pot to brew loose tea (for both of us, but mostly me). A pirate doormat, which you know I love. BFF Katie got us our wedding champagne. (I adore the Veuve Demi-Sec and can never find it, but she did!) Oh and there is much much more currently covering the dining room. The cats are quite excited by the chaos. I'm working on thank you cards whenever I have a free moment. (THANK YOU to everyone who was there who happens to be reading this!)

Another think I'm pondering in my spare time is the gifts I need to get other people, ie our bridal party, which consists of my best friend and Scott's sister as bridesmaids and my brother and Scott's best friend on his side, plus I'm including my dear friend Tai who will be our officiant. Geez and we should probably get our mothers gifts for all they've done, huh? Hmmm anyway. We don't want to go the usual flask or inscribed whatever route. We want creative. And I've already used up creative on all the other wedding details so.... SUGGESTIONS????

Okay, now back to the bridal shower.

Some details: our moms, Scott's sister Kelly and Scott's aunt Lenora did the bulk of the work on the shower and we are super, super grateful. Lenora hosted it at her house. A few people brought some delicious food. My mom makes the best black bean dip on earth. Kelly makes awesome sangria and crazy good vegan coconut cupcakes. My bff Katie put together this amazing organic fruit salad which I wish she would supply me with on a daily basis. And Scott's mom makes the best vegan pasta salad on earth and she went out of her way to order special sandwiches for me.

I don't have all the pics yet and Scott's cousin Eileena probably captured a bunch of great moments, so I will do a part two to this blog when I get them from her. But for now here are some cute shots. The posed photos with the moms, Kelly took. The action shots with the presents, my friend Amber took.

Oh and my dress is vintage. I bought it when I was in Seattle and my excuse for buying it when I already have a closet full of vintage dresses I don't wear enough was the shower. Really it could have been my wedding dress...

Now pics (Click to make bigger):

With Scott's mom

With my mom

Sangria is good.

Yes, we are ready for presents!

Scott was assigned the presents with ribbons in hopes that if he broke them that old wives tale of it equaling children being born wouldn't apply. Fortunately neither of us broke ribbons.

The biggest present! (A special pet hair vacuum, you need that with three cats!)

Kelly offers wrapping paper assistance, Moms look on

Guests

Bff Katie, official gift recorder and more guests

Jenny, Katie C and Amber decide to play with my camera photobooth style

Scott models our shower favors, reusable shopping bags. (We forgot to give these out to the end so if you missed yours, I have it for you!) Green was the theme. The invites Kelly picked out were plantable paper with wildflower seeds in it!

Lars likes it when Mom and Dad get presents, it means wrapping to play with!

A tattoo for and with my best friend

Just a quickie photo blog to show off the new tattoo bc everyone wants to see it and um, in deadline chaos so no time to for long blog. Photos=good.

The backstory:

When I was seventeen, I got a tattoo in honor of my best friend Katie. I got a shooting star because she was my shooting star. It was a cheesy, simple design I came up with and drew out prolly in study hall or something. I put the letters spelling her name around the five points of the star. The person who tattooed me wasn't very good, my design was so simple it looked ghetto and no one could ever seem to figure out how to read the letters that went around the star. Sigh. So I love the tattoo for about a year or two and soon after that, I was like really, I should have done better for Katie. Also much as I love her, name tattoos just don't seem wise unless it's your kid. Katie is also a tattoo fiend and we've gone to get tattoos together on many an occasion, but we've been talking about getting matching tattoos for years. I told her that when we got one, I'd like to cover up the other tattoo for her and she was totally fine with it since it just looks crappy and I'd let it fade since I couldn't figure out how to fix it.

We'd been trying to figure out what best represented us as a friends, something that would make reference to the girls we were in high school, the tough times we had that sealed us for life. I believe it was Katie who came up with the idea of the boot print. That she thought of both of us in our combat boots. That's who we were, girls who tried to look tough as hell on the outside to hide our inner vulnerablities (sound familiar from my writing? Yeah, I definitely borrowed some of me and Katie's friendship/attitude for the friendship of Emily and Regan in IWBYJR).

So we had boot print, but we wanted more. We wanted words. Not names. Words. We started to think about songs that were significant to us. "Rebel Girl" by Bikini Kill was our theme song for each other back in school, but we felt it had been outgrown by both of us. The band that really bonded us back in high school, that we both adored most back in high school and still adore to this day was Rancid. Their album ...And Out Come The Wolves was our soundtrack for my junior/her sophomore year and the summers preceding and following it. The song we always related to the most was "Olympia, WA" because it had this sense of longing for some place better, for the getting the fuck out of where you currently were, a place you were both bored and hateful of. That whole album really had that feeling about it. So many songs about getting out: "I'm checking out, I'm never coming back again..." That sort of thing. And that's how we felt. That was the year we talked about running away almost daily. But we didn't. We stuck around. We helped each other survive.

Ultimately the song we both kept coming back to was "Journey to the End of the East Bay" which I know is about Tim Armstrong's experience in Operation Ivy, but to us it was about the way you watch your scene (or group of friends in high school) evolve and change and fall apart and get put back together again and there are certain people that stick it out and stick together through all the hard times. That was me and Katie. The lyric, "To the end, to the end, I'll journey to the end" embodied our friendship. And it was Rancid. It was us. It was big, black boots that walked a long hard way, that stumbled a lot. But we made the journey because we were always there to pick each other back up.

So here's the ink. I think if you click on the pictures they will enlarge, but um, if you do that, pls ignore my stubble. Can't really shave around or over the fresh ink ;)

The old tattoo

Old tat close up (super faded! It's 13 years old!)

New tat, full length and close-ups (you can barely see that it's a cover up unless you look close!)

So the lesson here, kids is choose your art and your artist wisely. I mull designs over for a really long time now (umm mostly, firefly was kinda a snap decision) and I've found an artist I love (Darryl at Meridian Line in Oak Park and the other guy at that shop Bob is awesome too. He does Katie's ink.)

Oh and Katie got hers on her forearm. She has flowers on one arm and boots on the other, which is just so Katie.

Umm and this was supposed to be wedding related blog week.... I will try to get to those posts later this week depending on finishing this book proposal... But this is sorta wedding related because I wanted this done before my wedding, so all my tats would look good in the pictures. And yes, the giant boots will be very visible in my knee-length wedding dress. That's me, deal with it :)

A Writer's Mindset

Progress is slow on the new book proposal. I was stuck on one scene that turned out to be a mere three pages long for a week, but after that I plowed through the rest of chapter one.

Frustrating as this, I am at least out of the questioning myself phase. I still indeed can write. Will this be the big breakthrough novel with the huge brilliant concept? Not so sure about that. I have two other concepts that I think are probably more likely to do that, but they aren't fully formed yet. This is. I believe this is the book I need to write right now. But I'm trying not to focus on that too much or I will trip myself up on thoughts of market and what will my agent think.

The important thing is that I'm in the writer's mindset again. I know this because I am seeing story absolutely everywhere. It started last night. I was listening to one of my regulars, a retired woman who I used to chat with quite a bit when I worked during the day, but usually she and her husband are leaving when I start my shift. Last night they stuck around a bit, long enough for her to relate to me this story about a tree that had been standing in front of their condo building. She felt like it was her tree because its branches hung over her balcony. It shielded her living room from the world to the degree that they didn't need drapes. The tree was half dead though. The half that faced her was living, the other half dead. But it had been like that for at least four years and it was fine. Apparently on Tuesday one of her busybody neighbors decided it was not fine. Even though this busybody woman always called to alert my regular whenever something was happening in the neighborhood like, "People put their trash in our dumpster. What should we do?" She did not call to consult about the tree. She saw village cutting down a tree down the street and went over to tell them about the half dead tree. When my regulars arrived home from lunch, their tree, their piece of nature, their shield was gone. "I'm just sick over it," my regular kept repeating.

I was sick over it for her too. But I also felt like, wow this is a story, wow this is a big metaphor for something, wow wow wow there are just so many moments like this in life and I'm glad I am here to observe them.

I also took note later when one of my other regulars invented a new elaborate system of ordering drinks that involved using the number that corresponded with the first letter of the words he was abbreviating. Round of Shots became "We need a 18 14 19 over here." I think it amused him because it sounded like police codes or something. It mystified me completely, but I was amazed that he could figure it all out after several 18-14-19s. It'll go in the bartender book...

Then this evening on my way to writer's group I noticed that someone had left a heart shaped refrigerator photo magnet out in the rain on a ledge near the steps to the parking lot. There was a picture of a woman in her 40s with bad sort of 80s spiky hair in the magnet. I didn't recognize her as one of my neighbors. I wondered who she was and who had left her out in the rain and whether it meant something or if it was an accident.

So yeah, I'm seeing stories everywhere so hopefully over the weekend, I can really nail mine.

And as long as I'm not in total deadline chaos next week (ideally proposal should be to agent on Tuesday, but it must be in by Friday because after that my life gets crazy), I'll stop boring you with all this writerly stuff and do a week of wedding blogging. Because umm it's a month away and I really should be focused on it more...

A few exciting things to check out...

Keeping my head down in order to try to get some writing done today, but there were a few things I wanted to share with you.

You may have heard about Kay Cassidy, Tera Lynn Child, Becca Fitzpatrick, and Alyson Noel's new site, Living Your Five that just launched this week, but if you haven't you should know about it. Here is the mission statement of sorts:

Living Your Five is an online community dedicated to changing our world one person at a time. You don't have to cure the world of cancer or banish world hunger in a single day. It's about working together, each of us taking one more step every day. It's about knowing what you care about--what you're passionate about!--and stepping away from the sidelines of your life to make your mark on the world..

You can find out more about it here. Since it is launch week, they have daily contests going on as well as a big huge MEGA contest. Don't miss out, join in and celebrate this fabulous new community!

Another cool site I wanted to tell you about is The Reading List, a new site that is posting audio clips of authors reading excerpts from their books. If you go to the featured writers page, you'll find me listed along with a recording of me reading the beginning of Ballads of Suburbia. I'm not doing as many readings outside of Chicago this time around, so hopefully this gives those of you who wanted to hear me read a taste.

Lastly, last week I wrote a column for my local newspaper, The Forest Park Review about being inspired by local setttings in my fiction, so check it out if you are interested.

Now, back to my manuscript.

Return to Civilization

So I have returned to civilization (from blurry middle of nowhere, blackberry is not a good camera). Um, I missed my boy and my cats, but other than that I really wish I was still away. I've never had the experience of going away to write at the beginning of the writing process and um, it didn't go as smoothly. The last time I just remember pounding away for hours upon hours, coming home with a completed draft (it was half written when I left). So this time I thought, sure I can throw together two, rough 50 page proposals. HA! *hums to self "we had the greatest expectations"*

I didn't even finish the one proposal. I hope to finish it this week, but we'll see. I forget that this whole figuring out the shape of the novel thing is the hardest part. Also I'm still filled with all these worries and doubts about if I've chosen the "right" story. I've chosen the one that is the most fleshed out in my mind (but it's still not fleshed out enough... well actually I think it's mainly a structure thing I'm struggling with. I've gotten to know the characters pretty well, but unfolding the story at the beginning is difficult, like incorporating the back story, god that is always so hard for me.) but I'm not sure it is good enough. And is it the right book to follow Ballads? I have all these quirky characters in it and my main character has kind of a sarcastic sense of humor to cope. I don't know I've been watching a lot of Veronica Mars and Weeds and thinking about movies like Juno and Garden State and using humor/quirkiness (not really sure how to describe it because it's not ha-ha funny, it's just interesting types of characters) and I think it's coming through. The book of course deals with darker issues, but in such a completely different way than Ballads. Which feels like what I need (nervous breakdowns triggered by the subject matter of every book is probably not a good idea), but will it still be powerful?

Anyway that book is currently called Anarchists, Soap Stars, and Regulars. It's the road trip and bartender book (you probably got the bartender thing from the regulars bit in the title). That's really all I'm comfortable saying about it for now because I feel like I cursed the Persephone book by talking about it so much in such early phases. Right now that one is on hold til I figure it out, though I have this other idea that may or may not connect...

The second to last day of the retreat we went for a walk. We chose our path using a game I liked to play in my car when I was in high school wherein I would ask my passengers which way to go and we would go that way. So I kept asking Jenny which direction she thought we should go in and we went the way she said and eventually we came upon a little lake. I'd just been saying that morning that I needed water for inspiration. I'm a water sign (Cancer) and seem to have quite the connection to water. I needed water terribly badly that day and then there it was! We couldn't tell if the water was part of someone's property because there was also corn and farm type buildings, but there were no fences, so off we went toward the water. And we followed it to a little waterfall! (Again, excuse blurry phone pic, it was all I had.) From there we found a stream we could dangle toes in and follow further and then it was clearly a park so we were definitely allowed there. But the waterfall, it sparked a memory.

Glen Helen, Antioch College where I went for a year when I was 18. There was a waterfall there. It was hard to find, but I always managed to find it even though I didn't know precisely where it was. (Okay maybe it wasn't really hard to find because I did find several pictures of it online like the one to the right. Maybe it just seemed hard to find because of me being drunk so often.) The Glen was on ley lines basically meaning it was a place that resonated a lot of interesting energy. I used to have these visions at the waterfall... like story visions, not the drugged out kind. I forgot about them until then. I need to write a ravine story. I have ideas, but they are not fully formulated yet.

Same with the story based on the crazy dream I had that I mentioned last week. Not fully formulated. I'm impatient for both ideas as I feel they will be big.

But for now I have what I have and I really hope it will be good enough.

So yeah, more churning of ideas than churning out of pages at my retreat. Also a lot of Veronica Mars was watching in the evenings and then I would read. I finished The Forest of Hands and Teeth by Carrie Ryan which I adored, but I really, really don't recommend reading it in an unfamiliar, spooky feeling house out in the middle of nowhere late at night. This resulted in much lost sleep. I followed it up with Just Listen by Sarah Dessen, which I'm still reading and loving. It's my first Sarah Dessen experience. Any recommendations of which of her books to get next? (Not necessarily read next bc there is a huge stack that needs addressing, but I will get it and incorporate into the stack.)

Enjoyed the reading routine and hope I created a good writing routine for myself. I guess we shall see. I'm behind on absolutely everything; reintroduction into civilization is moving slowly for me and right now I just wanna write. Even though it is hard to do, I want to do it and that is definitely a good thing.

I'll close out with this link about first draft blues, that I think others of you who are stuck on first drafts like me might enjoy. It relieved me to see that so many others struggle the way I do at the beginning. Right now I'm so braindead from trying to figure out the first draft, I can't even come up with a fun metaphor for what a first draft is like...

But I'm off to get my feet wet:

Actually those are Jenny's feet and mine is just the one foot with the black toenails in the corner because the water was really cold and I was skittish about putting them in. Now it is time to take the plunge!