The First Post

Photo by @finfrock.photography

Photo by @finfrock.photography

The first blog post! I figured a good place to start is talk about how I got into writing in the first place, and just what it is about pirates. . .

Dance has always been a huge part of my life, since I was five years old. The training, the stage, the competitions, the traveling, the rehearsals, the classes, the recitals, the choreographing, the teaching— even through the hard times and the bad, I’ve loved it all. I get to say “I love my job” on a regular basis. But through all that time, I had a wild imagination that could get me so distracted from the real world that it was almost getting me into trouble.

My earliest blame for wild imagination goes to Barbie, Lego, and Hotwheels. The absolute smack that went down between Barbie and Ken when I was a kid. . . don’t even get me started. I also blame my brothers and my early childhood friends for always relying on me to be the creative one to come up with new games to play in the pool or around our yards.

I also blame The Sims. Far too many hours of my life have been lost to Sims 1, 2, 3, and 4. Barbie and Ken's drama was just playground drama compared to the absolute HELL my Sims have gone through.

Anyway, a more substantial moment of blame was in my senior year of high school. We read Dante Alighieri's Inferno, and we got an assignment in which we had to write our own version of either the tenth circle of Hell, Purgatory, or of Paradise (Heaven). Our teacher Tom R. (we called our teachers by their first names at Walden) thought it was funny that every year when he gave the assignment the vast majority of students chose to write about Hell. . . and our class was no different. My best friend, I remember, was the only one to write about Paradise, and I, along with the rest of the class, did exactly what the teacher predicted, and wrote about Hell. Something about teenagers being (not so) secret sadists and finding enjoyment in writing about human torture, I guess.

This was for AP English, which TO THIS DAY was one of the hardest classes I have ever taken in my life. I was struggling in that class, not because I wasn’t doing my work or anything like that, but because it was a teacher with very high standards. But, looking back at it, they were standards every single student had the capability of reaching. I was always an A/B student, but I teetered on Cs in that class (Yes, I had high standards, too). When this assignment of Dante’s Inferno rolled around, I don’t know what it was, it was the one assignment that really clicked for me in that class. I aced that assignment with flying colors. I remember seeing Tom R.'s handwriting in pen on the top of it when he gave it back, he wrote “Good”.

Let me tell you. . . he NEVER wrote anything like that unless he meant it.

I remember bits of pieces of what I wrote about, and I remember that I wasn’t writing about Hell because I was a teenage sadist, but it was because I liked the idea of writing about the “light at the end of the tunnel”. I wrote a whole story about Dante working through the literal depths of Hell, but coming out of it because he earned his way out of it. If you know anything about Dante’s Divine Comedy, you’d know that Dante puts himself in the story and works his way through Inferno (Hell), then Purgatorio (Purgatory), and then Paradiso (Heaven) so that he can be with his wife again. I ended my short story with Dante getting out of Hell because he deserved to get out of Hell, and he learned his lesson. I realized I wrote a sort of “heroic story”, just like the stories I already enjoyed reading about, or watched in movies or TV shows. That's probably why I enjoyed the assignment so much, I wrote a story in the veins of stories I loved.

Okay, so now that I talked about this big paper, I suddenly remembered another big paper that I wrote two years prior. It was a paper every Walden Walnut sophomore had to write.

The Journey Paper.

If you went to Walden III Middle/High School and had Tom Feeney for World History, you’ll know EXACTLY what I’m talking about. He assigned it to every sophomore he ever had.

For this assignment, Feeney (we just called him Feeney because there were four teachers named Tom at the time. We had a different name for each Tom) would set a certain time and place in history, and then describe a mission that needed to be accomplished. There were certain cities to visit, certain people to see or recruit, certain historic events to describe, certain supplies to be packed on the trip, and stuff like that. He didn’t care how you wrote this paper, if you wrote it more like a research paper or more like a creative short story, all requirements just needed to be fulfilled and it needed to be at least 12 pages long. He’d assign it right before winter break, and we’d have to have it done, along with drawn-out maps of the journey, as soon as we got back in the New Year. Each of his classes had a different time and place in history to write about, but I remember my class had to write about ancient Rome, and that the main character’s name was Rufus (because Feeney thought he was sooooo funny making us write about a dude named Rufus). Rufus was tasked by the Roman army to go out and find the Eagle Standards, the sort of pride and joy of the army, a symbol of the greatness of Rome. I don’t remember what I wrote about exactly, but I do remember one thing: I had the longest paper out of every class, out of every student that wrote the Journey Paper that year.

Mine was 36 pages long.

I got made fun of for it, but in good fun. But, honestly, for how much stuff we needed to jampack into it, I have no idea how anybody could get it all into 12 pages. I think most people were closer to 20 pages. I remember that Feeney had to put this one big paper in as four separate assignments for the grading to work or something like that, and I had two As and two Bs. I remember being bummed it wasn't all As, but, I know I probably deserved the grades he gave me. I know that my Journey Paper was nowhere near where my Dante’s Inferno paper was, but I do remember one thing: I had fun writing it. I remember saying that to my friends and they all thought I was completely psychotic.

So, moving onward I graduated from Walden and went to University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee. I actually initially went in as an undecided major, but quickly learned that I had to declare myself a dance major in order to get into all the dance classes that I wanted. I went into college wanting to keep options open, but let’s be honest here, dance was always in my heart. I stuck with the dance major, but for general education credits and other extra-curricular kind of credits to help fulfill my degree, I was exploring other classes that seemed intriguing to me. Without even realizing it at first, I was taking classes that worked towards a creative writing degree, too. I then declared creative writing as a minor, and that’s when I got into the writing workshops. I think every writer can understand what I mean how it feels to be in a writing workshop. Other students start reading your work and critique on it, and then a whole day in class it's dedicated to discussing the story you wrote. I think those workshop classes were game changers for me (even though some of them were terrible, in all sorts of ways). For me, my eyes were opened to the idea that I could express and discuss my creative work in writing in much the same way I had my whole life with dance. I found another outlet in creativity and imagination, in an intellectual, informative, and educational way. So, I kept rolling with the classes and credits, and after five and half years of undergrad (I was commuting and working three or four jobs at a time through all of it), I graduated as a double-major in dance and creative writing.

As soon as I got out of UWM, I got into performing as a tap dancer in Chicago, booking shows and gigs, and eventually becoming a full-fledged member of a company. I was also finding opportunities to teach dance at studios everywhere in the Milwaukee and Chicago areas. Little by little, writing was slipping away, and I let it because in absolute reality, my writing was still kinda. . . awful. Dante’s Inferno may have felt like a crowning achievement as a 17-year-old, and I may have written some killer short stories through my time as an undergrad, but I never felt like I got any better, I never felt “official” like a writer, and I knew there were still too many things I struggled with to make strong stories that could last beyond a classroom. Dance was most certainly a safe spot for me (it still is), I spent my whole life in it, so the four years of my life right out of college I shied away from writing. I tried doing some online things, some random posts on Wattpad and Booksie, even attempted a blog before, but I could never keep up with it because I felt like I didn’t deserve to call myself a writer. I had never gotten anything published, never knew what I was doing, and did not make any long-lasting connections with anybody at UWM that could get me into publishing or opportunities for jobs in writing.

So, it was kind of on a whim, or perhaps it was because I was at a point that I didn't want to completely lose the enthusiasm I once had for writing, I decided I wanted to go back to school to get better at writing. I didn’t really have the intention of trying to get a job out of it or anything, I just wanted to get better at writing. I think my competitive dance mentality was breaking through— that practice makes perfect. If there’s something you’re not getting, get your butt back in class and condition yourself to get it. When I graduated from UWM I never in a million years thought I would ever go back to school, though my mom, from the start, knew at some point I would.

She lovvvvvvvveeeessss saying “told you so” to me on a regular basis. Just listen to your mom, people, she's usually right.

So I applied to Roosevelt University’s creative writing master’s program. It was a school I was considering for undergrad, so it was an option still in the back of my mind. Everything I researched about it looked super appealing to me, and it’s in the heart of downtown Chicago. I’m in Chicago all the time for dance gigs, so it just made sense to try and go to school there, too. I love being in the city, I was excited to find another excuse to spend time there. Roosevelt is the ONLY graduate school I applied for, too.

And I made it in.

It’s a super small program, and they keep it that way on purpose. Smaller program means for more concentrated focus on each student. From the very first class I felt like I was where I needed to be. Every professor I ever had in the program was freaking brilliant, and I could sit and listen to them talk about writing and stories for hours and hours. I found myself enjoying every single minute of class, and I even enjoyed doing the homework and the assignments. Undergrad, honestly, felt like such a chore in comparison to grad school. There were so many things I felt like I was trudging myself through, but in grad school, I genuinely wanted to do everything. Don’t get me wrong, grad school was stressful as hell, there were times I thought I was going to lose my mind, I had a few scary panic attacks, and many times I believed that there wasn’t one creative or smartness bone in my body. And then to top it all off everything went virtual for a pandemic, and I spent half my time in the program sitting at my own desk at home looking at the Brady Bunch in Zoom. But, going through all that only shows how much I cared about it, and how high the standards were for the program.

Another huge factor that got me through the program was that I had phenomenal classmates through it all, too. I think it’s safe to say that we all loved writing workshops the most, because that was the time we could read each other’s work and critique it, give feedback on it, and help each other out on it. I appreciated every writing workshop I had at Roosevelt. How lucky I was to have great professors and great classmates that were so open to everything, so engaged in the work, so informative, and so dedicated to coming up with great writing for everyone. Even now after graduating from the program, my classmates and I still keep in contact with each other and are still passing work to each other, and giving each other feedback. I also know that I could still go to my professors for advice any time I need to, too.

Alright so now, through all of this educational mumbo jumbo, I have held onto one main idea of a story. It's the story that inadvertently kept me motivated to keep writing all these years.

I have this one particular memory in my mind of me sitting with my best friend in the cafeteria at Walden. We were talking about all the books that were popular at the time; as the last few Harry Potter books were releasing and the movies were coming out, Hunger Games books were huge, the Twilight Saga books were first releasing, and my most favorite books of all time were also releasing: Percy Jackson and the Olympians. I actually think our conversation was about how we were tired of certain tropes in stories (we were pretty exhausted with vampires, to be specific. EVERYBODY and their mom read about vampires at the time). I don’t remember how the conversation turned, but just for the hell of it we were trying to come up with new ideas for fantasy or sci-fi settings that we weren’t seeing anymore. And, somehow, I said something about Pirates of the Caribbean (since the original trilogy was releasing at the time, too), and my best friend said: “those movies are cool, but you know, there really aren’t good pirate books out there, except for the really old ones.” And for whatever reason, that idea stuck with me. I wanted to be the person to write a good pirate book.

Thus my pirate boy Tetch was born.

For the longest time I couldn’t pinpoint when this conversation with my best friend happened (she’s still my best friend, by the way). I went to Walden for middle and high school, so all the years sort of blend together. But, just before I graduated from Roosevelt back in December, I was cleaning out my desk at home and came across a notebook with every single inch of paper covered in my younger self’s handwriting. It's all in pencil, too. It took me a second to understand what it was, but after looking at the first page, I had a minor heart attack.

It was the first draft I had ever written of what is now my graduate thesis, the big chunk of a thing I'm currently querying to agents to get published.

I had completely forgotten about the notebook. I looked through it and came across a gods-awful and BEYOND CRINGEY doodle of Sora and Kairi from my favorite videogame Kingdom Hearts II at the back of the book. I can only assume I drew that when the game released. . . in 2005. So, that dates the notebook.

The notebook is from 2005.

My thesis has been an idea since 2005.

SINCE 2005! Dude. . . wtf.

My thesis has been an idea since I was thirteen years old. I don’t know if that’s obsessive or impressive.

Probably both.

Anyway, a lot has changed since 2005 and there are other pirate stories out there, but I'm still proud of the one I have. Of course a lot of things in the story have changed since 2005, but my main character Tetch’s personality has always stayed the same, he’s always been the rock. He’s based on all the best parts of my siblings (there’s a lot of best parts), who are my most favorite people on the planet. Tetch also has hints of all of my most favorite characters from books, movies, TV shows, comics, and yes, even video games. Tetch’s older brother Johnny was also always a constant, he's in the pages of that notebook, too. Being an older sibling has always been an important role for me in real life, so having a character like that in a story is a must. And then there’s always been a best friend to the two of them, he was originally named Roberto, but now his name is Fernando.

Yes, all of the names have meanings, but I’ll get into that later.

This notebook also tells me that even though the Journey Paper my sophomore year of high school and the Dante's Inferno paper my senior year of high school were stories that meant a lot to me as a writer, they weren't the stories that got me into writing.

Tetch proves that the writing was always there.

The imagination was always there.

So, long-winded first blog post coming to a close, I feel like a writer now, that’s for sure. Roosevelt gave me the push I needed to trust myself, and to not give up. I've always had confidence issues with everything I've ever done, even in dance. Especially in dance. I’m still not a published writer, but now I know how I can be. It really has just been a matter of trusting myself, and believing in myself. Anything in the creative world, you will deal with TONS of rejection, which will of course burn anybody’s self-esteem. I grew up as a competition dancer, so I get it. It took me a while to get it, but with age and experience, I get it. Rejection is quite literally part of the job. Now, I just need to translate that same idea into writing. I want—need— to get my beloved graduate thesis published. Tetch has been a nuisance in my mind for FAR too long.

As of right this second, as I write this, I have had 26 rejections from literary agents, but 24 queries out still waiting for responses. I'll be sending some more out this week.

Both of the professors that I worked with closely at Roosevelt have told me they each got over 100 rejections before they finally got their agents. Just about every writer with an agent deals with MULTIPLE rejections before getting one yes.

It only takes one yes.

And every rejection I’ve gotten is because of a preference thing. An agent has to feel just as passionate about the story as the writer does. Not every person enjoys the same cup of tea. I just need to find someone that drinks as much jasmine green tea as I do. (I drink a lot of tea, so it seems only fitting to mess around with this idiom).

So, onward. I am obsessive by nature, ask me about any of my geeky fandoms and you’ll immediately see how obsessive I can be. I’ll just use that obsessive behavior to obsessively work on getting Tetch out to the world.

Thirteen-year-old me would probably really like that.

Oh, and before you ask, NO. That old notebook will NEVER be seen by any eyes but mine. Nobody needs to know just how cringe I can be.

And one last special thank you to all the amazing teachers I've had in my life that helped get me here:

THANK YOU. Couldn't have done it without you.

May no seas fare smooth.

—Andi May