I’ll be honest, Indianapolis is not a city I gave much thought to, growing up in Texas. But it has been strangely relevant in my world recently. Hosted the Super Bowl. Home of YA rockstar John Green. And the last place I visited on my own.

A lot of people don’t like to travel alone, but I do. There’s a freedom in going places by yourself, not having to take anyone else into account, not knowing exactly what’s on your agenda or what to expect. When I set out for Indianapolis, it was a cool but sunny autumn morning. I drove with music blaring, my window showcasing endless green fields spotted with cows. This wasn’t going to be a grand adventure like my summer in Spain, but still, it was mine.

When I arrived at the hotel I had booked, I learned that I would be staying in a separate guest house, not the main inn. The building was small, old, and charming; the room basic but clean. The door required an actual key instead of a plastic card. It was like stepping back into another time, and I almost wished for no television or internet, too. But later, when I realized I was the ONLY person staying there, I would feel grateful for the bright screens keeping me company in the cricket-filled dark.

There were plenty of restaurants nearby. First I visited a small Vietnamese noodle shop, owned and run by a brother-sister duo who had been separated as children in Saigon and reunited 20 years later in the States. Their story was as satisfying as their soup. Over the next couple days, I bought peach tea and Hershey’s bars to keep me going through the long nights. I tried a mediocre Korean restaurant, and an awful but earnest bakery. I soaked up the sun and syrup at a new café down the street from my guest house.

Though my goal was to finish my first draft, I think part of me always knew it was a longshot. Plus, it’s hard to sit still and stare at a screen for so many hours on end. So I gave myself permission to take breaks. To take advantage of the beautiful state park around me. My room came with free admission, so I took my camera on a tour of the woods. We shared the trails with hikers, bicyclists, families, and their dogs. I snapped pictures, scribbled thoughts, just sat and watched the sun play through the leaves. Like I said, there’s freedom in going places by yourself.

And sometimes there’s magic in that freedom.

Yesterday I was at Writer Unboxed, sharing some thoughts on juggling. (Sort of.) I’d love if you hopped over and gave it a read.

In the end, I couldn’t make this line fit into the post, but I wanted to share it here:

Writing is unlike many professions in many ways. But it is exactly like most professions in this one very important way: You will get better the longer and harder you try.

There is nothing weird or shameful about that.

…

As a society, we tend to give birthday cards, send holiday greetings, and mail gifts or notes when we travel. But what about the rest of the year? The little celebrations, or the unexpected times of difficulty? What about my favorite occasion: no reason at all?

In college, I constantly left random notes for people in my hall. I tried to highlight things they had done that made me smile, or tell something cheerful if I knew they were down. This was doubly true when I became an RA.

This is a bit harder to do in “real life” (i.e., after you’ve graduated). Okay, not harder, but perhaps considered weirder. Fortunately I don’t mind being a little unconventional.

To that end, Michael’s has these dollar bins that I love. There are always stationery sets (8 cards and matching envelopes) in varying designs, and I try to pick up a couple nice-looking, all-purpose ones to have on hand.

Also, a friend recently gave me a box of a hundred or so postcards, each depicting a different old book cover. (They mostly look the same.) I like to match the titles to the reason or person I’m sending them for. “Vile Bodies” as a get well card, “The Odyssey” as congratulations on a new job.

Like I said, I don’t mind being a little weird.

…

Football. I cannot believe how much I’ve come to love this game. Flag, fantasy, and pro. I’ll have to write a post/column on it sometime. For now, I’ll just say that even though the Texans lost by basically giving our opponents 17 out of their 20 points today — grumble grumble — overall it was a good football year for me and my teams. And from now until August, I’ll be running on dreams of an even bigger, brighter next year.

In this post I talked about my childhood nickname, Chatterbox, and how my dad tried to train me to tell a story succinctly.

In this post I talked about the repetitive strain injury I get in my wrists, and the dictation software (a.k.a. Dragon) that Andy bought me to help relieve/avoid the pain.

A week before Christmas, I attended a work holiday party with Andy. I was nervous for a variety of reasons. (We would be the youngest couple there, people were going to ask about my writing, etc.) But one person managed to put me completely at ease: Andy’s boss’s wife. I’ll call her C.

Only a few years older than us, C made the best first impression of anyone I’ve met in a long, long time. Born and raised in Spain, educated in America, the daughter of a pilot, and an avid reader, she was worldly, warm, and well-spoken. When I told her that I write “books for teens,” she said, “Oh, you mean Young Adult?” I think my girl crush started right then and there. We talked at length about books, culture, and travel, and by the end of the night I pretty much wanted to be C when I grew up.

(This is all related and going somewhere, I promise.)

Part of what I admired in C was her eloquence. She didn’t hurry to speak, she didn’t add unnecessary thoughts, she didn’t stumble over her words. I’m kind of the opposite. I speak before I think, my jokes and anecdotes come out all jumbled, and sometimes I even forget what I’m trying to say in the middle of saying it. Because it’s fueled by enthusiasm, sometimes it can come off as cute. But I’m 26 now and (unfortunately) only getting older. Cute won’t work forever.

Part of what my dad was trying to get me to do — besides just not annoying him — was to arrange my thoughts ahead of time. Figure out how to say what I wanted to say in an interesting and effective manner. That was probably too much to ask of someone who still played with Polly Pockets, but it’s a skill I would very much like to have — or at least develop — now.

Enter the Dragon.

Dictating e-mails, blog posts and comments, etc. isn’t so weird. I just kind of pretend that I’m talking to whoever is on the receiving end, as opposed to my shiny MacBook. But stories are, well, a different story. I don’t naturally think out loud. Or rather, when I do, my thoughts come out rather clunky and rambling. Not exactly the words you want applied to your manuscript.

But maybe this is a good thing. Maybe using my Dragon more will not only prevent my RSI, but also teach me to think before I speak. To be able to edit my words in my head as well as on the page. Maybe I too can seem as worldly, warm, and well-spoken as C.

Or maybe I’ll just look like a crazy person talking to myself. Only time will tell.

This is how I spent my holidays:

Now it’s time to ring in a new year. I might write a more detailed year-in-review post later, I might not. Bottom line: 2011 was a leap of faith, and then the freefall. In 2012 I hope to fly.

1.

The Fishbowl, we called it. It was supposed to be a study room. Just a conference table and a whiteboard, enclosed by a glass wall. Hardly anyone used it during the day, though there were always textbooks and papers strewn across the table. (Or the floor.) But at night, two, four, six, sometimes a dozen of us would jam in, mouths full of dirty jokes and vending machine snacks. Unlike the lounges, the Fishbowl had a door, so you could keep the noise in, not disturb those who had gone to bed. After all, you know how loud studying can be.

2.

I got the letter on Valentine’s Day. “Thank you for your interest, but…” I had to move. The next year, I would not be allowed to live in the dorm that I thought of as my home. Numb, I walked into my room, looked around, dropped my backpack, and left again. I couldn’t stay there. Not as a sophomore, and not for the next few hours. So I walked. Out the door. Down the icy street. Up a steep hill of broken sidewalks. For half an hour, I wandered, weeping openly, with Avril Lavigne blasting through my iPod. My nose ran. My ears turned pink from the cold. I was homeless. I was heartbroken. I was the queen of melodrama.

3.

Every Sunday night, six of us gathered from all corners of campus and met at the intersection of Morewood and Forbes. These were my closest friends, people I’d met on the first day of college, and would hug goodbye on the last. A lot of things had changed between us over the years, but this had not. This was a ritual. This was our thing.

It was a 15 minute walk down to Fuel and Fuddle for half-price food, past the museums and the Pitt gift shop. It was a 30-40 minute wait to get seated, standing outside with the frat boys and the smokers. Then it was 60 minutes of drinks and conversation, reliving the best and worst of our college careers.

After the bill was paid, it was another 15 minutes back to the dorms, 5 minutes of lingering and chatting on the street, and then 2 minutes to get upstairs to the fifth floor, where I often found my freshman residents creating their own bests and worsts. Usually I would sit with them for a while, before finally showering and going to bed. With their voices filtering through my door, I closed my eyes and fell asleep, smiling.