{"id":4555,"date":"2018-05-25T05:00:36","date_gmt":"2018-05-25T12:00:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/?p=4555"},"modified":"2018-05-20T08:52:38","modified_gmt":"2018-05-20T15:52:38","slug":"mark-reads-on-ordeal-ronan-chapter-2-part-i","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/2018\/05\/mark-reads-on-ordeal-ronan-chapter-2-part-i\/","title":{"rendered":"Mark Reads &#8220;On Ordeal: Ronan&#8221; &#8211; Chapter 2, Part I"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In the first part of the second chapter of \u00e2\u20ac\u0153On Ordeal: Ronan,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Ronan gets lost within himself. Intrigued? Then it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s time for Mark to read <i>Young Wizards<\/i>.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><!--more--><\/p>\n<p><b>Trigger Warning: For extensive talk of anxiety<\/b>.<\/p>\n<p>Not a person is surprised that I found something to relate to in Ronan\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s journey here. NOT A SINGLE PERSON. Y\u00e2\u20ac\u2122all know I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m drawn to stories of loneliness and isolation, and that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s exactly what kind of motif that Duane drops us into here. So much of this story is deeply internalized, and it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s fascinating. We are much more <i>in<\/i> Ronan\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s head than we are in the world outside of it, but that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s necessary. Now that we know that the Lone One and the One\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Champion are ramping up their battle for Ronan, we <i>have<\/i> to get a sense for his internal disarray. And <i>lord<\/i>, is he ever a mess inside.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>What I related to most was the cascade: Ronan has a though, and the thought then spills outwards and turns into many different things. Along that path, Ronan continually latches on to the worst outcome, and then dread fills him as he begins to suspect that <i>exact<\/i> thing will actually happen. I DO NOT KNOW IF I COULD DESCRIBE MY OWN ANXIETY ANY BETTER. This is pretty much what I go through! I fixate on possibilities. That \u00e2\u20ac\u0153what if?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d moment snowballs in my mind, cascading into a perilous thread of negativity, cynicism, and doubt. It doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t matter how absurd this is, or that I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m aware I do this, or that the situation could <i>never<\/i> have ended up as I thought it would.<\/p>\n<p>You know what? Here\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a <i>great<\/i> example of this. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve told bits and pieces of this story before (mostly on Patreon!), but I had one of the worst anxiety spirals of my life last year, on the eve of the day where I got my agent, DongWon Song. After an editor had expressed interest in reading <i>Anger<\/i>, I had re-sent my newly revised draft to DongWon to get some feedback before I sent it along to this specific editor. Now, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d already made the switch to contemporary from science fiction <i>because<\/i> of DongWon, so you think my awful brain would have realized this. I LITERALLY DID WHAT HE ASKED ME TO DO. So when he emailed me late Sunday night, before I flew home from this con, to tell me that my book had made him \u00e2\u20ac\u0153ugly cry\u00e2\u20ac\u009d on the plane and that he wanted to talk to me, here\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s my thought process:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Oh, that is probably good. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a pretty sad book at times.<\/p>\n<p>I hope he liked it.<\/p>\n<p>Maybe he didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t like it.<\/p>\n<p>Maybe he <i>hated<\/i> it.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Christ, what if he hated it so much that he was going to tell me <i>not<\/i> to send it to this editor?<\/p>\n<p>What if he hated it so much that he was calling me to tell me to never send him a manuscript ever again?<\/p>\n<p>Oh, gods, he hates it, why am I doing this to myself? Why did I ever think I could write a book?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Readers, I <i>literally<\/i> did not sleep that night. At. All. That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s how bad my anxiety was, even though NO AGENT IN THE HISTORY OF AGENTS WOULD EVER DO SOMETHING LIKE THIS!!! In what fucking universe was this a believable possibility!!!!!!<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Welcome to anxiety, y\u00e2\u20ac\u2122all. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m surprised I wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t triggered reading this because Ronan\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s moments of spiraling doubt felt so <i>real<\/i> to me. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s even worse when I know the things I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m fretting over are <i>actually<\/i> bad things, and that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s definitely the case for Ronan. He\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s dealing with some heavy shit, y\u00e2\u20ac\u2122all! It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s reasonable for <i>anyone<\/i> to feel dread or terror over this sort of stuff! I actually love that that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the case because it doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t strip away the literal causes of his anxiety. Yes, you can easily read these scenes as evidence of the Lone One\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s influence, and I adore that extra layer to the story. But this anxiety is <i>also<\/i> real, and that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s important for representation purposes. Even if you wouldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t classify Ronan as having an anxiety disorder, I still found something deeply relatable about the physical toll of his worry and his isolation. Look, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not easy being alone. I do enjoy it, and I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve thrived being on my own. But I was forced into that; it wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t a choice to be a loner in junior high or high school. My circumstances necessitated it. I was living an experience that no one else could relate to.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>And isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t that something that Ronan feels, too? With his Nan\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s health, as well as the uncomfortable marital strife between his parents, hanging over his head, Ronan can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t see how he could ever share his life with other people. And I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t mean that in a romantic or platonic sense. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s like\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 how does he even begin talking to people about this? About his compulsion to talk to himself? About how isolated he is day after day?<\/p>\n<p>So he doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t. He goes on a long walk to isolate himself further, but also to <i>ground <\/i>himself. I love the feeling being out in nature, away from other humans, gives me, so I found the scene by the shore at the end of this section beautifully calming. I admit there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s also some nervousness on my part, but that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s because I <i>know<\/i> Ronan is about to go through something transformative. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s imminent, isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t he? It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s going to happen REAL soon, y\u00e2\u20ac\u2122all, and I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m looking forward to it.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>https:\/\/youtu.be\/LCSqS979mr4<\/p>\n<p><b>Mark Links Stuff<\/b><\/p>\n<p>&#8211; <strong>My YA contemporary debut, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.markoshiro.com\/blog\/2017\/9\/22\/i-am-proud-to-announce-my-ya-contemporary-debut-anger-is-a-gift\">ANGER IS A GIFT<\/a>, is now available for pre-order!\u00c2\u00a0<\/strong><strong>If you&#8217;d like to stay up-to-date on all announcements regarding my books, <a href=\"http:\/\/eepurl.com\/ey636\">sign up for my newsletter<\/a>! DO IT.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In the first part of the second chapter of \u00e2\u20ac\u0153On Ordeal: Ronan,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Ronan gets lost within himself. Intrigued? Then it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s time for Mark to read Young Wizards.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[542,510],"tags":[513,511],"class_list":["post-4555","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-interim-errantry-2","category-young-wizards","tag-diane-duane","tag-mark-reads-young-wizards"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4555","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4555"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4555\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4555"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4555"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4555"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<!-- WP Super Cache is installed but broken. 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