So after five weeks in Rome, I’m back and blogging again.

I feel ridiculous, honestly. I wanted to blog WEEKLY while there. But, as it turns out, completing a novel, traveling around the world and filming a documentary had burnt me out. I have been back in Washington for three weeks and I am just *now* beginning to get back into the swing of things. 

I did write while in Rome, but it was nothing that I wanted to show anyone. Selfish as that may seem, I felt like I’d get a better glimpse of the city if I ignored any potential “reader” and wrote Rome down as it hit me and only me. The things I wrote while there were sketches of the city, random prose and bits of poetry that hit me in key locations. I knew that I needed to give myself the grace to be burnt out after the last year, especially after the last few, hectic months of finishing the book. While my best intentions were to blog about Rome while IN the city itself, my vivid memory and my notebook will have to be fuel enough for the following posts. This first one is just about the wonderful problem of being in Rome to begin with.

Being in Rome was tough. The city is gilded and graffittied, filled with travertine and tour buses.  It takes a great deal of determination to move past the circus of Rome and find something unique. Souvenir stands and street grifters stand in front of all the famous monuments, screaming for your attention. And if they aren’t enough to put you out, the advertisements that sometimes drape over a monument will. Don’t get me wrong, Rome is beautiful. But it can’t be really known if you’re a tourbus tourist: there for a weekend whirl through the five most famous sites. Believe me though, it is worth fighting to get to know.

As difficult a city as Rome usually is, for Vasant and I, this difficulty was increased tenfold. Our flat was not the most comfortable place in Rome. I was still editing my novel (which is finally completed after seven years of effort), we were getting our documentary script ready and scouting filming locations with not a single day to waste. Hardships cropped up amongst the busy schedule: my dog (of 15 years) died back in Seattle, we got sick (twice) and my ankle, which I’d sprained earlier that year, along with my Achille’s tendon, gave out on me again. Our shower in our apartment was broken, giving us only mist instead of an actual jet of water. Our bed was nothing more than metal rods with a blanket over it. By the end of our second week, we were exhausted, feverish, burnt out and grieving for our dog. We felt like we didn’t know anything more about Rome than what a postcard could tell us. We were upset that creating art within the city seemed so out of reach. 

One Saturday, around midnight, we left our apartment in frustration and walked to the Colosseum, 4 km away, ranting about these very things. When we arrived, we sat on the grass in the moonlight and looked at the archways, talking about our trip. Eventually we stopped talking and just stared. The Colosseum at night has a way of quieting you. It shuts you up. Its endurance in the face of commercialism, traffic, pollution and obviously, the harsh march of time, made us feel small. Our problems felt invisible. 

Then, out of the silence, we both were reminded of Goethe’s trip to the Colosseum centuries ago. Vasant pulled his copy of Italian Journeys from his bag (he carried it with him everywhere while in Rome) and turned to that page. 

I loved the way the Colosseum was lit the first time I saw it. The amber glow in the archways reminded me of Goethe’s discovery of it at night, lit up with fires from the vagrants who lived within its arches. He watched it, musing on its endurance within the city, after having been exhausted by a Roman festival.  

That night a challenge was thrown down before us as we read Goethe on the grass beneath the towering structure. Goethe wrote, (though he was actually quoting someone else’s Roman travelogue which were inspiring him) “I believe that Rome is the school for the whole world and I, too, have been purged and tested here”. We realized that we could either sit and complain about the city, the schedule and various hardships, or be artists and use those things to find art. Art, not in spite of the distractions and disturbances, but in the distractions and disturbances themselves. So that’s what we did. And I really feel like, following Goethe’s words, the city and what we personally faced while living there, did test and purge us as artists.

We created a ten minute documentary while there- a teaser, if you will. We filmed enough for a full-length documentary to be edited over the next year, as work allows. I continued to edit my book while Vasant wrote extensively about the process of creating art when it demands to be hunted for. We were sweaty and sore, covered in dust and determination, as we trudged up hills and ran down twisting medieval alleys. 

A few posts will probably follow this about my favorite sights in Rome and the process of creating the documentary (which for perfectionist purposes, won’t be posted online until we have more time to work on it after we graduate this December).  For now, I think it’s best that my first post back be about the most important aspect of my trip:

Art is hard to find and harder to create. Rome is a city full of art and yet, it will fight you off as much as it will beckon you. Being in it and trying to create art there was one of the most rewarding experiences I’ve had in years and I can see now why, for centuries, artists go and sit among the ruins and come home with great things growing in their hearts.

Every time I say “my first novel” it sounds more like a children’s craft kit that I could buy for my three year old goddaughter rather than the achievement that it actually is. I keep picturing a printed copy of my book, with a title page etched in bright crayon, hanging on my mother’s fridge.

But even with the desire to downplay what I’ve done, I am sensible enough to realize this is a big moment. It’s a moment I may never get back, because it “My Very First Novel” and as silly as it makes me feel to prize that distinction, I’m going to. Tuesday morning, at 3:09 am, I finished my seventh draft of The Ashes.

The Ashes is the story of 23 year old Chloe Wright who follows her mother to the small town of Monarch to fix their broken relationship. Her mother grew up in Monarch and has come back after decades of absence to take care of her aging and death-obsessed mother, Anne. Anne was, at one time, the most influential woman in town, and her house where she lived with her husband Peter, was the most important house in town. Once there, Chloe forges deep relationships with the outcasts of the town and discovers deep hurts and rumors from her grandparents’ past that continue to affect the town and her family. Her struggle between figuring herself out and living up to a newly-discovered legacy pushes her family and the town to confront its own divisions. But the pull of tradition and past legacies may prove to be too much.

It’s a novel about community, building it not just for the sake of the desire to be social, but because alone, we as people whither away. It’s about fighting the poison of bitterness and bigotry. The Ashes explores relationships between the generations, authority, individuality and the consequences of expressing hallowed traditions in new ways. And all throughout the town and the story, The Ashes is about love that never leaves a person, for better or worse, as the years go on, no matter the gender, the age or circumstance of departure. Love is both the pulse and the scar tissue in the heart of this community.

I first came up with the idea in May 2003. I am still shocked that it’s done, that a final grammar and spell check are all that’s left on the horizon. This story has been worked on while submerged under the glassy surface of lakes, on trains in Northern England, in the countryside around my house in Washington, in the Cascade mountains, driving at dawn with my husband, and of course, at my desk. It almost never happened for a hundred reasons, most of them health, school, stress and work related. But my husband Vasant was amazing throughout it the entire journey. The book would’ve never materialized without him. I am, somehow, less ADD and tempestuous with him around. He’s a stabilizing force in my mind. His attention, his care, his encouragement and creative input give me a focus and a confidence I’ve never had in my life.

My parents and sisters have also been incredible. Their constant encouragement, whether it was reading the latest draft or coming by our place with flowers, food or back rubs, got me through the last tough year as I pushed to finally finish this. My parents were the ones who started my love of reading and story telling, who first encouraged me to write books when I was a kid. My sisters were willing participants in all the plays and imaginary games I staged, even the ones with over-the-top dramatic twists at the end. Throughout the years, my family has supported me as a storyteller and that’s no less true this last year. I have only had a handful of weekends off for the last year and a half. My nights, my mornings, every free second has gone into a push to get this novel finally into concrete existence. It is now out of my head and into the hands of my family, and soon, hopefully, will be in the hands of many more. I’ve appreciated my husband, my parents, my sisters and the friends who have stuck by me through thick and thin in this last year. I’ve loved the interaction with other writers and readers on Twitter and Tumblr, and I cannot wait to share this book with the larger world. Thank you to all the wonderfuls who have believe in me and more importantly, who told me emphatically that I could not give up on this book. That it needed TO BE. Thank you to all who never let me entertain the thoughts of giving up. This book exists because of all of us. I appreciate and love you all.

“The World is a book, and those who do not travel read only one page.” - St. Augustine

I’m heading to Rome this fall and I don’t just want to visit or sightsee. I want to wander and let the experience change me. I’m looking for things to read, thinking about what lies ahead, what Rome is, how it works and who built it. And if you’re here, I either begged you to read this or you googled a “Rome reading list”.

Traveling, whether it’s thirty minutes away from your house or thirty hours away, can be a transformative experience if that’s what you’re looking to have. I think the secret is giving yourself time to wander and reflect. For me, writing, reading, wandering around getting lost and seeing things you haven’t read about yet is the key to transformative travel.

For example, my first time in London was a whirlwind four day trip. I saw the city, but I didn’t get to know it. How could I? By the time I’d adjusted from jetlag, I was back at the airport, boarding my return flight.

My second and third trips to London, however, were nice and long. My husband and I took time to get ourselves lost in the city and towns we visited. We wandered foggy streets, read the works of artists who’d created there, visited spots that are hallowed to writers and book geeks like me, contemplating the history and culture of the place. Sometimes, this was done all from leaning against a bridge rail, staring at the Thames, thinking about Joseph Conrad’s reflection in Heart of Darkness: “We looked at that venerable stream not in the vivid flush of a short day that comes and departs forever but in the august light of abiding memories.” Other times it was done by wandering into a pub not listed in any guidebook, or wandering through an ancient graveyard. Giving ourselves time to reflect, wander and get lost, London became as much a part of us as our backyard.

So this fall, my husband and I head to Rome for 5 weeks to film a documentary for our cinema studies major, as well as several scenes of our first film. I want to have as much of an experience, and really, much more so, as I had in London. I was struck by the title of an early travelogue by 14th century Moroccan Muslim scholar, Ibn Battuta, whose book is literally entitled, “A Gift to Those Who Contemplate the Wonders of Cities and the Marvels of Traveling”. I thought, This is exactly what I want my trip in Rome to be. A gift to me for contemplating the wonder of cities and the marvels of traveling. I don’t just want to see Rome. I want to contemplate it and the act of traveling through it. I want to become a part of it and leave with a bit of it stuck in my soul. So, to that affect, I’ve been compiling a reading list before I head over, a Literary Journey before my actual one.

So it has become a focus as I prepare for this trip and will most likely affect the subject of the documentary: How traveling affects the city traveled in and the traveler within it. Specifically in Rome, tourism saved the city. The European Grand Tour became a revitalizing breath for a city that had been largely buried under debris and forgotten. While cities like London and Paris made it through hard times and retained their importance, Rome’s grandeur faded as the political and religious powers moved away from the city. But when the Romantic artists went a’wandering, poets and playwrights resurrected Rome’s ancient ghosts and captivated the imaginations of the Continent. Soon many of the great writers that we know and love today had visited or lived in Rome and created art there. The list of expat artists in Rome is exciting (or exhausting, if you’re not into this and just reading this post because I begged you to): Percy & Mary Shelley, Lord Byron, John Keats, Charles Dickens, Sir Walter Scott, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Louisa May Alcott, Mark Twain, Goethe, Eliot, the Brownings, Coleridge, Joyce, Wilde, Wharton and so many others.

The Keats-Shelley House, located in the Piazza di Spagna, has a lovely map showing where several of these writers lived while in Rome. The act of looking and contemplating how civilization at the time was indebted to Rome, recalling its greatness and taking moral cues from its decline, influenced some of the most important art of the time. Even Thomas Jefferson visited Rome on the Grand Tour, and mused on its laws and philosophy when creating our own government. The Grand Tour and the attention drawn to Rome by the artists who illuminated it in their works gave a new life to the city. It was cleaned up, excavated (its still being excavated) and it’s old glory was polished up for the world to view once again. Traveling doesn’t seem to be as important today as it once was, but when one looks at Rome, one can’t help but see that traveling and “contemplating the wonder of cities” influenced the Romantic age and brought Rome back to a place of prominence. I’m not advocating Puerto Vallarta-type American tourism here.

The artists I’m pondering immersed themselves into the area, let it soak into them and their art, considered themselves and their sense of themselves in that place, and gave the world a piece of that experience. So, to write my essays and make the documentary about pondering Rome and travel as a necessity for the soul, I’m reading up on all the poets and playwrights who have traveled to the city before me, and trying to listen to what they have to say so I can a) figure out how Rome has been literarily framed before and b) NOT SAY THE SAME THING. Here is a list (SO FAR) of works crafted in Rome, after having traveled in Italy or travel literature written by those I consider literary geniuses, as well as links to these books, should you want to purchase them, via this Literary Rome list on Indiebound (love their list feature!):

Since list’s like the above are a little rare on the internet, I’d like help flushing it out. If you know of a book that should be added to this list (again, no Dan Brown or historical romance novels, please) then leave the title and description in the comments. I, and the rest of the literary nerds who travel the world, would be incredibly grateful. * And again, if you’re in the mood to buy any of these books, here’s a link to the list at IndieBound:

“So much of what I see reminds me of something I read in a book, when shouldn’t it be the other way around?” ~ Norah Ephron (via Kathleen Kelly), You’ve Got Mail

One of the most annoying things I’ve ever been told is that I’m not a writer if I’m not writing every day. This gem of wisdom was handed to me, around six years ago, by a guy who used to come in and work on his writing when I worked as a barista at my local Starbucks. Years later, as I finish up my first novel, I began pondering his pronouncement and realized how ridiculously wrong that kind of statement is.

I was in community college at the time, part-time, working at the coffee shop, and traveling. He asked me what I wanted to do one day, and I said I was a writer, and that I was working on my first novel. I confessed that, if all went well, I’d like that to be my vocation.

He immediately, and sharply, asked how many hours a day I spent writing. I replied that it was zero at the moment, but that the book was being worked on in different ways. Mentally turned over, again and again, hit from different angles when I was out hiking, driving, working or exercising. He shook his head, as most people several decades older than you, who spend their days in a Starbucks, are want to do, and said, “Sarah, Sarah, Sarah. You’re not a writer. Writers write. If you’re not filling up notebooks everyday with stories and essays, then you’re not a writer. You won’t be one until you do that.”

I told him I had a blog that I wrote on everyday. I carried a quotebook around with me everywhere I went and wrote down observations and poetry and prose… whatever crept into my head and pounced on my synapses as I was out and about. He shook his head again. Told me that I needed to be doing writer’s exercises and writing stories and working for at least five hours a day and then, and only then, would I be able to one day write my book. I countered, inbetween making beverages for customers, that I’d been writing since I was 12. I’d written two books (neither of them anything to brag about) by fifteen and thousands of poems and short stories. But at that moment, in 2004, it was the time to casually write. I was focusing on living.

The older gentleman shook his head again and looked at me sadly, and pronounced his judgment, “You’re not a writer then. A writer never stops writing. A writer can’t. We’re addicted. And if we don’t write, we’re reading. If you can live your life without doing either, then writing is just not in you.”

To that, six years later, as I finish the novel that I’ve been working on for seven years, I have a hearty, well-thought out reply:

Bullshit.

Yes. Some writers do live by the creed the man in the coffee shop tried to foist on me (him, as well as countless others I’ve met). But that’s not for me. A storyteller has to go out and live life. Reading and writing (a lot) are necessary to write well. But a great writer isn’t just a wordsmith. A great writer is also a storyteller, and the only way to find stories to tell is to live. Now, coffee shop writer was right about what a good writer does. A good writer writes all the time. Every day, every week, every month and every year. When they aren’t writing, they’re reading. And they have a great grasp of prose, an excellent handle on grammar and man, do they ever know what narrative forms are “in” at the moment. But what do they have to say?

If one stays in doors, writing and reading every single day, then what do they know of life? Good literature is full of universals that connect humanity. Literary fiction is composed of truths that dig at the soul of the reader. I don’t know how someone who isn’t out there in the real world LIVING claims to get these things on an instinctive-enough level to be able to make their readers feel it. My only guess is that they’re copying what other authors have had to say on love, life, loss, death, greed, failure, etc. Because if you’re not out there, risking your heart, getting it broken, traveling the world, getting in fights, getting knocked down and bouncing back, then what is there to say?

I’ve been hard at work on my book The Ashes for the last year. It’s been in development for a full 7 years, but come on. Don’t tell me I haven’t been working on it for the better part of a decade because it’s only been 13 months that I’ve spent chained to my laptop. The characters, the setting, the plot and many other details were all things I wrestled with fiercely on treadmills, forest paths, trains in England, classrooms and yes, behind the counter at the local Starbucks. And they changed as I did. Things happened to me in my life that affected the plot, the characters and the overall meaning of this book. Being out in the world NOT WRITING has made this book as emotionally-charged and powerful as I, and the several who have read it thus far, think that it is.

Ernest Hemingway, by the by, agrees with this particular line of thought:

“In going where you have to go, and doing what you have to do, and seeing what you have to see, you dull and blunt the instrument you write with. But I would rather have it bent and dull and know i had to put it to the grindstone again and hammer it into shape and put a whetstone to it, and know that I had something to write about, than to have it bright and shining and nothing to say, or smooth and well-oiled in the closet, but unused.” (Preface to The Short Stories, Scribner Classics)

I am the FIRST to admit that I don’t have the greatest grasp on grammar. I can work hard at it, sharpen my prose and edit like crazy though. I know that there are thousands of better writers out there in the world. But here’s the thing that Hemingway and I are getting at: it’s better to be a good storyteller, to have stories to tell from actual experience, than to be a first-rate writer. A storyteller can finesse his experience and his story into something. I was a great storyteller before I could write (ie child who makes stuff up). I learned, over the years, to be a good writer. But being a gifted storyteller and writer doesn’t matter at all if my ideas, my convictions, and my world-view are untested. Being talented has nothing to do with writing something that will matter to someone else. If you’re not living, you have nothing original to say and that is not who I want to be. If that works for coffee shop writer guy, than glory be to him. But there are a lot of people propagating this myth that if you want to be a writer, than you should write, every minute of every day and if you’re not doing that, then read.

And of course, I am ardent lover of both writing and reading. I read like crazy and have always defined myself by being a bookworm. But that’s not all I do. Not every year. Sure I’m a bibliophile. And many books not only shaped me as I grew up, but often as a child, were my only trustworthy friends. I’d even go so far as to say that the stories I read in the classics saved my life and gave me the courage to be a writer. I wouldn’t be a writer without having first been a reader. But reading and writing wouldn’t matter a damn to me at all unless I was out living life, willing to occasionally put down the pen and the paper and see what is out there.

This last year has been a heavy writing and reading season for me. If you’d like, you can read through a sampling of the books I’ve read over the last couple years while finishing my novel, here on indiebound.com’s list feature. But this period of writing and reading was preceded by more than a decade of weird, crazy, heartbreaking and amazing experiences that inform who I am, and what and why I write. I’ve lived out of a van. I faced down a grizzly bear on a cliff face in Tahoe. I’ve run beneath emerald green funnel clouds. I’ve made idiotic decisions, heroic stands and gotten the shit kicked out of me for good intentions. I think every experience like that has shaped me as a writer and a reader, even though, in order to have those experiences, I wasn’t writing or reading all the time.

So to the coffee shop writer guy, and anyone else out there who feels they need to tell people who they are and how to approach what they are passionate about: Suck it. The only truth worth passing around is that we all only have ONE LIFE to live. Whether you’re an artist or a plumber or a politician, making sure that life is well-spent and lived in full, outside your claimed profession, will always make you better at what you do during the day.

Go on road trips. Have adventures. Get to know people even if it scares you to do so. Love people even when the person you love doesn’t deserve it. Learn things, not the hard way, but the honest, in-your-face way. And if you happen to be an artist, like me, you’ll create better art that’s closer to the raw real life and understand great works like you never had before.

*

I am so excited to break this news finally: Vasant and I are going to Rome to study Italian cinema, film a documentary and our first *serious* film.

We were accepted into a program our major was offering for Cinema Studies students to live in Rome, study Italian cinema and produce a documentary while there. We’ve been attempting to get this worked out for the last four months with not only the acceptance part of the program, but also funding, grants, scholarships, etc. We haven’t wanted to jinx this by talking about it, because even now, having been accepted and all, going to Rome to film still seems surreal.

Surreal or not, however, yesterday we received the funds, finalized our travel plans and therefore can officially announce that we’re headed to Rome. We’re being put up in apartments overlooking Rome’s famous open-air market, the Campo de’ Fiori and studying films in the nearby Palazzo Pio. We’ll be there for five weeks from the end of August through the end of September, right before (a day before) starting our final quarter at the University back here in Seattle. The program will be part study of Italian cinema, part production course, and a whole lot of walking every day through the city, examining Rome and how filmmakers frame it within Italian cinema and how we as filmmakers think about framing space within narrative.

On our downtime, Vasant and I will be filming part of our first serious film. I say serious, because Vasant and I try to knock out one or two short films between the two of us a month, to practice all the elements of our craft that we can. But those films aren’t anything but practice and experimentation. This film that we’ll be shooting in Rome is our first serious film. It’s in pre-production right now, and it won’t actually be wrapped until next March or April when we shoot the final scenes, which, for script reasons, can’t be shot until next Spring. I am so excited to announce details for that, but for right now, I can’t. I can just say that it’s coming down the pipe, and to be thinking good thoughts for us. We’ll have part of the script in place for the Rome sequence by the end of August, which we plan to shoot at the end of September once we’ve found the right locations in the city.

Words cannot describe how excited and TERRIFIED I am. We take our Italian final for summer quarter on the 21st of August and get on a plane two days later, land in Rome, start schooling, filming a documentary and our film, and that action pretty much doesn’t stop until the course is over on the 24th of September. Then we fly home on the 27th, after we’ve checked out of our apartments, and start our final quarter at the UW on the 29th. It’s going to be intense.

The jet-lag, the culture shock and the immense work we have to do while soaking in the grandeur of the Eternal City is daunting. Of course, it is also thrilling. When Vasant and I got married, we did not have a college education, just a few paltry credits from the local community college taken out of a state of academic ennui. But after we began dating, we realized we wanted to make movies together. Once we got married, we realized the only way that we, personally, could do this and not feel like we were risking our futures to pursue this dream was to get an education. First an undergrad, then move onto a grad school that would position us to get into the industry. If it doesn’t work out, our educations will allow us to fall back on teaching, which both of us would love to do anyway, whether we find success in our fields or not. However, if I didn’t think we were going to be successful, we wouldn’t be pursuing this. I am always pragmatic though, and becoming filmmakers via great educations is, for us together and as individuals, the smartest thing we can do.

What’s incredible is that five years ago this summer we were getting married, with only a foggy sense of what we wanted to accomplish together. We knew we wanted to tell stories together but we had no idea what that would look like or how it would happen. In the last five years, we’ve gotten through four years of college, we’re two and a half quarters away from both of us receiving our double majors, Vasant’s built a place for us with my father, I’ve almost finished my first novel and we’re in pre-production on our first film. And trust me, I don’t say any of this to brag. It’s emotionally healthy for me to take the time, as I write a post about Rome, to write this out for myself.

There have been plenty of people who, throughout the last four years, have been kind enough to point out how stupid they think two married people in their mid to late twenties going back for an undergrad is. Apparently (wonder why we weren’t told this in marital counseling) once you get married, you are stuck in whatever career you’re in when you get married, with room for the occasional climb to the next ladder rung. You have to buy a house and get pregnant within your first five years and if you don’t, you’re obviously not doing “marriage” right. I find this hilarious. Right now. You know, at this particular moment while I write this post out to Michael Giacchino’s excellent Star Trek soundtrack.

I haven’t always found it hilarious when people think they’re being subtle but they really aren’t, telling us that they don’t respect what we’re doing, how we’re doing it, where we’re headed, where we’re living and so on. In fact, it’s been really difficult to discover just how unsupportive people have been because we’re not living the traditional suburban married life. At times, even though we have a good plan, and it’s right for us, it’s been really hard to believe in ourselves when so many people have laughed at two married people going back to get a four year education, living with my parents while Vasant finished our apartment, and well, pursuing storytelling.

Trust me, as a pragmatic, I’m all too aware of the supposedly dying publishing industry and the myriad of people who want to make movies and the terrifyingly high percentage of people who never realize that dream. So when I say going to Rome is surreal, it’s not just because I’ve never been there before. When I list all the things Vasant and I have been doing for the last five years in a positive light, I’m not showing off. It’s surreal to both of us to articulate just how much we’ve accomplished together in five years because, sadly, we get to hear from so many people, way more often than we would like, that we’re not doing anything worthwhile.

But it’s just not true.

Again, maybe the Star Trek soundtrack is giving me the courage to write this. Maybe it’s because I finally bought the tickets to Rome last night. Maybe it’s because writing all these accomplishments out in this post reinforces the positive truth that’s so hard to swallow: Despite the many aspects of our non-traditional life (according to married suburban norms), Vasant and I have accomplished so much together in the first five years of our marriage. We’re not just “excellent roommates” as Steve Carrell put it in his most recent movie, Date Night. We are adventurers together. We’re writing partners. Study buddies. Collaborators in a grand dream. And forgive me if this post seems emotionally indulgent, but I realized halfway down as the nice things became harder to write, that I needed to articulate just how much I love what we’re doing.

I believe in what we’re doing and dammit, we’re going to be successful. Going to Rome the year I finish my novel, we start our film AND graduate from University just seems to be a fitting and an amazing way to commemorate what we’ve done so far together and with the support of our family and friends (the ones who have chosen to stick by us on our non-conformist journey). It is surreal and it’s an amazing opportunity. But I guess at the heart of this new development, it’s simply and most importantly, affirmation.

* An aside for people like us:

For anyone out there who’s dreaming, who’s doing something non-conformist, or merely entertaining the idea- don’t let other people’s censure get you down. Affirmation moments may come everyday for some people, or for us, it’s coming five years into our journey. But it doesn’t negate how right something is. And “rightness” doesn’t negate how hard something may be.

The thing you may be meant for may be the hardest thing you’ve ever committed to in your life, and there will be plenty of months, if not years, when it doesn’t seem possible, when it seems like nothing is working out. The harder it feels, the more momentous it will be when you get to those moments of affirmation.

This moment of affirmation may only be a pit stop for us, but I’m going to savor it. It’s going to be years more before we even get a toehold, let alone a firm footing in what we want to do. But we love telling stories. Our hearts, our minds, our bodies ache to tell stories. It consumes every hour of every day.

If anyone out there who is reading this loves something like that, find the wisest way of securing a means of doing it. Be pragmatic, and yet boundless in your imagination, and let pragmatism and idealism duke it out until there’s a middle ground. But once you find that path, which may take a while to find, commit to it. No matter how hard it may be. Surround yourself with people who get you and if there is no one around you like that… watch a Pixar documentary on any of their movies, but most especially, The Pixar Story on the Wall*E bonus features. Even if you don’t want to make movies, like we do. I kid you not. Watching the story about how many rejections were dealt to the gang at Pixar early on- specifically following their story from its roots in the seventies until it coalesces as the animation studio we know today in the mid-nineties, you’ll feel uplifted.

I know this addendum to my post may seem silly, but if there is anything we’re looking forward to as we get more successful, it’s encouraging other people to dream. We need that encouragement, and when we get it, it feels like a responsibility to turn around and do the same for others. I am aware, or rather the cynic in me is aware, of how painfully mushy this part of the post is, but really - it’s hard to take hold of an intangible. It takes planning, commitment, encouragement and endurance. And all of those things can be hard to find.

Just know, if anyone who is reading this feeling akin to what I’m describing: hold on through the rough seasons. Moments of affirmation may feel like they’re far off, but if you hold on, and stay positive, focus on what you love no matter how hard it is to pursue, you’ll get there. Until one day, hopefully, those moments of affirmation give way to realizations of the dream. And that… that is what we working hard to take hold of.