I decided I'm going to start, appropriately in January. I know, I know . . . all those books that no longer count. But it will be a lot easier to track this way. And I even have a spreadsheet!

So far:

1. The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. LeGuin

I loved this book. It was a slow read, but definitely worth it. I particularly liked the first person POV shift between Genly Ai and Estraven. I'm glad I'm not the only one who does that!

2. In the Woods by Tana French

God. Another heart-wrencher mystery. It was very different in pain from Special Topics in Calamity Physics, but similar in that there's definitely a central mystery plot along with the part that is depressing. The main difference is that the major incident of pain in In the Woods happens earlier, and progresses into a heavy depression, while in Special Topics in Calamity Physics, you have a building depression that's followed by a knife to the gut. Anyway, the book was exquisite. I just don't want to ever read it again, because I'm not that much of a masochist.

3. Fool Moon by Jim Butcher

In the Woods was a hard crime novel at times, and I wanted to keep that atmosphere, so I went with Dresden and the strange urban fantasy noir effect I get from it. Very fast paced with lots of good humor. I'm already looking for the next one, which seems to have mysteriously disappeared from all bookstore shelves.

No idea what next, but I'm craving something. Give me books!

Writing:
Well, as usual, the writing is going well. I haven't had motivation problems with first drafts in a long time. Plundering Freedom is sitting at 64,477 words after a writing marathon at Forward Motion this week-end.

The problem is the revision. I spent 30 minutes on it on last Monday. That's all I've done for the entire time that I've been off school (last day was December 14). I'd sign up for Edit Marathons at Forward Motion, and not actually do anything. I know it's partly because I'm on a tedious part (noting every single change that occurs to a character or place throughout the entire novel), but I think there's something larger, more psychological going on as well. Even though I keep telling myself to think of it in terms of smaller steps, I think I'm still overwhelmed at the thought that, somehow, I have to turn this mess with brilliant parts into something actually good. And that, when I'm done with that, I'm going to have to share it with people.

Part of the problem is that the idea behind the story is still amazing to me, and it seems like it will be impossible to live up to it. No matter what I write, no matter how I fix it, it feels to me that the idea itself will be better than the finished product. I think there's a part of me going, "Why bother trying to improve it, when it will never be good enough?" It might sell, it might be praised, but will *I* ever be happy with it? And if I'm not -- is it worth all this work?

At the same time, someone else at Forward Motion was complaining about having troubles dealing with rejections. I haven't posted on her thread because I'm insanely jealous. I wish I had something that I could submit, that I could gather rejections on. I wish I felt good enough about my own novel that I could feel bad about rejections. And it's not that it's bad. As first drafts go, it's amazingly clean. It's just . . . mediocre. And the only way to lift it from mediocre to great is revision.

I feel like I'm going in circles in this entry. I know revision is the key to making it more, to getting it closer to my original vision. But I'm still disappointed that it won't ever *match* my original vision. And it won't, because reality never matches ideals. The best we can do is come as close as we can. I'm having troubles over the fact that the best I can do will have to be good enough.

***

As for books, I just finished reading The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. LeGuin. Excellent book. Just amazing. But tell me -- why do all my favorite characters have to die?

As I promised, here is a review of Special Topics in Calamity Physics by Marisha Pessl. This book is amazing. The comments by other writers in the front of the book mostly consider it a cross between Catcher in the Rye and Nabokov, but as I've never read Catcher in the Rye, I really cannot say anything about that. It's far more emotional than anything by Nabokov, though it does have the same linguistic fluency and a slight bit of the insanity (though not nearly as extreme).

The format is a course description. Each chapter is the name of a work of literature, and the epilogue is a Final Exam. There is also an introduction, that sets up the rest of the book and is necessary to read. Two things are mentioned in the introduction: first, that Blue (the narrator - first person) felt the need to write this as a life story of how her life unraveled; and second, that she found someone named Hannah Schneider dead, hung from a tree. The fact is that there are actually two novels hidden here, not just one.

The first read is breathless and amazing. While there is a lot going on in Blue's life, the main focus is centered around the mystery that seems to surround a teacher, Hannah Schneider, and a group of students she cultivates. It is a whodunnit in the classic sense, and it comes to a satisfying conclusion . . .

Which shows that the book was not really what it seemed to be in the first place. Suddenly, everything takes on new meaning, and the second novel comes to the forefront. This is a life story, not a whodunnit, at its very core, and her life really did completely unravel in the course of the story. It is emotionally visceral and extremely painful. I was not expecting things to turn out as they did. It hurt so much I had to ignore the book for a week, despite having a paper due on it, in order to regroup, and when I tried to start again, I hardly got into it before tears were streaming down my face all over again.

The book is an intellectual challenge, a literary game, and a delight for anyone who likes linguistic play and puzzle-solving. It is also a heart-breaker. It is exquisitely painful and brutal in its conclusion. The reader at the end is raw, bleeding, and wondering what just happened -- and left with a Final Exam full of questions of the deepest complexity.

Read it.

Well, I won NaNo with 52,946 words, but the novel is not finished yet. Probably have another 50k or so to go.

I also wanted to update the books I've read. As of June 5, 2008, I had 19 books since starting the 50 Books a Year thing. I have to say, I haven't done so well. I haven't really read any books for pleasure since starting school (although I enjoyed most of the books I did read for school). Here we are:

Storm Front by Jim Butcher

Amazonia by James Rollins

Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens

Lady Audley's Secret by Mary Elizabeth Braddon

The Story of an African Farm by Olive Schreiner

The Beetle by Richard Marsh

The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde

Four Saints in Three Acts (opera) by Gertrude Stein

Special Topics in Calamity Physics by Marisha Pessl

The Deluxe Transitive Vampire by Karen Elizabeth Gordon

So, we are to 29 books this year. I'm planning to review a couple of these, particularly Special Topics in Calamity Physics and The Deluxe Transitive Vampire both of which I loved.

This week has been hard on the writing front. First, I had a lot due this week for school: test on Tuesday, presentation Thursday, and 2 papers due Friday. Thankfully, one of the Friday papers has an extension, so I'm finishing it up tonight.

Second, I got sick. Again. Back in mid-September, I had an attack of Traveler's e. coli. This is not the dangerous kind, but apparently my system is particularly sensitive to it -- to the point that a CT Scan of my small intestine made everyone concerned about Crohn's Disease. Thankfully, a blood test showed that it is NOT Crohn's, but unfortunately, I didn't entirely heal. After two weeks of feeling miserable, I was fine for about two more weeks. Then, I had some greasy hamburgers and it all came back around the beginning of October. Things were fine again for about a month, but on Tuesday night, I ended up having some greasy pizza and WHAM! Sick again. So, no greasy food for me! I was in bed all day Wednesday (when I wasn't in the bathroom), and very tired on Thursday. I did manage to get caught up on all my homework, but NaNo was out of the question.

I did 5,657 words before Monday, but due to the election and then sickness . . . and then homework -- it stayed there until Friday night. I got some more words in before bed Friday, and then went crazy this week-end:

Friday night: 6,622
Saturday: 11,106
Today: 13,423

Now, it's off for more homework and then maybe some more writing! Thankfully, I've never been one to have a Week Two slump -- if any week is my slump week, it's usually Week One. So, I should be able to catch up without too many problems, especially since my parents will be out of town Wednesday through Friday.

I got inspired by a blog entry by David Bridger, and felt a need to post something myself.

For those who don't know (although I'm fairly certain there are few if any of you), November is coming up, and November means NaNoWriMo - National Novel Writing Month.

I've been spending most of my non-scheduled hours poking around the forums and getting back into my writing. There's just something amazing about the enthusiasm permeating the entire project.

This year, I don't quite know why I signed up (well, I do, but I'll get to that). I'm living at home with family responsibilities, working two part time jobs, and going to school full time. Granted, one of my part time jobs is really just sitting there doing what I want to do, but it's still scheduled time. Despite my success in the past (2005: 89,000, 2006: 117,000, 2007: 80,000), I do not actually intend to make it to 50,000 words this November, and if I do, it may be a bad thing rather than a good thing.

I've been writing off and on for as long as I can remember. I found a little picture book I made up when I was in kindergarten about a unicorn (I was a very, very girly girl when I was young) not too long ago. By 6th grade, I was writing bad mystery stories that focused more on the dresses of my main characters than any sort of plot. I tried writing a mystery novel with my dad, which ended because, instead of helping me fix my parts, he made fun of them in his parts... which made me decide that working with others really wasn't the right way to go about the whole writing thing.

I started a fantasy novel sometime in high school. I know this because I found other writers, and we critiqued each other's writing. I had at least two chapters by that point. I fiddled with that story over the years at college, and wrote another shortish-longish fantasy story my senior year.

Throughout this period, I had other ideas, which I would start and write some of, usually stalling out around chapter 8. I did finish one dystopia/fantasy in 2001 (I know it was 2001 since I wrote it in August, and my original idea was along the lines of having someone destroy a building that represented capitalism in a city similar to New York). It was serialized in very short "episodes", and probably more akin to magical realism than anything, now that I look back at it.

In general though, the Unfinished Novel was the bane of my writing existence. I got to chapter 8 and stopped. Then started a new story several months later.

In 2004, I was a grad student and teaching assistant of Russian. My students had daily homework that I was bad at grading (as in, I procrastinated). Despite having papers that were sitting there since September, when I found out about NaNoWriMo on October 27, I decided to give it a shot. No go. I made a couple of mistakes:

1. I didn't really care about my story, and had no idea where it was going.

2. I underestimated the urgency of needing to grade the papers.

3. I posted the novel on my livejournal as I went, which would have been fine, except that I allowed constructive criticism, figuring I could ignore it until it was time to revise.

These were all mistakes for a first-time NaNo attempt. I've since learned the following:

1. Caring about the story is essential. So is knowing the end. I don't *need* any more planning than that, but I do need to know the end.

2. Mutiny needed to be prevented. I think the last 2 weeks of November were spent *breathing* that homework left over since September. Now, I don't let things go that long in September, since I know November is coming.

3. Posting is okay, but constructive criticism *has* to wait.

I'm getting on a tangent here, but I'm feeling nostalgic, so bear with me. Another important point of 2004 is that I didn't just post all of my not-finished novel on my live journal - live journal was my only conduit between my writing and that of others. I was completely oblivious to the forums, and spent no time there at all.

Leap to 2005. 2005 found me unemployed, and thus, I had a far greater amount of time to spend on NaNo. I'm not sure when I signed up, but I know it was not October 1, because the Coffee House was 20-some odd pages long, and I ended up reading through all of them. I still don't know what sort of insanity possessed me, other than the depression of being unemployed and the delirium of wanting to write. That year I sort of planned. My plan looked like this:

Week 1: Lydia
Week 2: Thomas
Week 3: Aaron
Week 4: Lydia

It was a supernatural mystery, and I also planned out who committed the crime, who the police's main suspect was, who I wanted to frame as the main suspect for the reader, and everything about how and why the crime was committed. I had a few other events planned out, but that was about it. I posted that novel on live journal (friends' locked) as well. I was also way more active on the NaNo boards, particularly frequenting the Coffee House and the Nanoisms thread. As a result of the latter, there are some extremely ridiculous parts to the novel, but it was a blast to write. I don't know that I've had so much *fun* with any other writing project in my life. I finished with 89,000 words on something like the 25th of November.

When things got tough, I just ploughed through them with a heightened sense of humor directed mainly at myself. I had conquered the Unfinished Novel.

2006 found me working a full time job in the real world. I was certain I would not be able to make the 50,000 goal, because I wouldn't be able to stay up as late. I forgot that I wouldn't have any homework, and that week-ends and holidays are wonderful for writing when you live alone. I was far more obsessed in 2006 than any other year, and my project (a fan fiction) grew to 117,000 by the end of the month. I finished it at 11:30 p.m. on November 30, mostly because at 9:00, I had a sudden new idea I had to at least get down on paper.

That new idea became the basis for a class on Forward Motion taught by Zette - the 2 Year Novel class. I spent the beginning and middle of 2007 fleshing it out and preparing it in great detail. Around August, I was caught up to the class (which had already started the first draft) in terms of pre-work. I had some fleshing out to do, mainly in terms of research and world building, and fleshed out the outline as well. Then, I waited for November and wrote it then. At that point, I was living here, with my parents, but I only was working 30 hours a week.

Although it had not nearly as much excitement or delirium as my first two attempts, it went much more smoothly, and is by far, the cleanest first draft I have yet produced.

Now, I'm heading into 2008. I'm way behind on research, but have what I think is the most solid plot I've ever started with (though less detailed than last year's). This year, I'm going to school and working two part time jobs, so I do have homework. I'm also living at home, and that makes it difficult to write as much as I'd like. Once more, I find myself lowering my goal to 30,000. But this time, I know for sure that I have conquered the Unfinished Novel.

The new bane of my writing existence is the Unrevised First Draft. Maybe I'll have to check out NaNoEdMo this March.

[cross-posted to shadowthorne]

My muse gave me a wonderful birthday present today, in the form of a plot!

In researching the time period I'm interested in, from the points of view I'm interested in (slavery, voodoo, piracy), I ran across, on two occasions (the voodoo and slavery parts) the first successful slave rebellion which made Haiti an independent country. The rebellion was started by a voodoo ritual.

The dates are uncertain, but I've decided to make this the climax of my novel - my main character is going to be the priestess involved, and she is working for revenge and to free her brother, who is still a slave there.

Not sure if that will work out, or if I'll have to make her more of a secondary character, since she would be a stranger to all but her brother, and I don't know if the only people at the ritual were slaves or not. I suppose it could probably be tweaked, depending on how many people were present, and whether they would recognize a stranger or not, or more importantly, if all the written accounts are from whites, whether *they* would recognize a stranger.

I also need more research on the slavery aspect. I know that families were often separated, but did that happen in Africa or in the New World? And if in Africa, where? Would she and her brother have been together until they made it to the French slave trading port? Or would they have been separated before that, so she wouldn't know where he ended up?

I also need to know which loa was responsible for the rebellion, so that, if she can be the priestess in question, I can make her be linked closely with that loa.

Anyway, I'm very excited, and I think this may be the best birthday present I've ever received from the universe or anyone else :)

[cross-posted to shadowthorne]

Questions I need answers to:

Do I want a rich European on board? If so, how did she get there? Is she pregnant?

I think I do, if it is plausible. I think I want her to be pregnant, and die in childbirth, leaving a baby boy for the pirates to deal with.

What happens to the people running the slave ship?

How do these particular pirates feel about slavery - needs research - which pirate era am I doing?

Do I want to involve vampires? No.

When would this have occurred?

How does the French slave trade match up to piracy?

What sort of pirates would be most active at that time?

How would anyone not involved in the slave trade end up either on the slave ship attacked by the pirates, or on the pirate ship?

Would normal (i.e. not religiously oppressed or other wise *sent* there) Europeans visit the colonies?

What about the religious question?

What is the central conflict?

Where is the main character originally from?

What is the main character’s motivation?

Do I want a villain?

Was Anne Bonny or any other known female pirates active at the time of the novel? If so, remember to make allusions to her.

I have 4 beginning scenes, but no idea where to go from there, mostly because I don’t know the main character’s motivation, nor the main central conflict. They are:

1. On board the slave ship
2. Capture!
3. Calming the seas, gradually win respect.
4. Midwife to pregnant woman - protect the child

[Crossposted to shadowthorne]

Well, I'm getting back into writing a bit, and may give a stab to NaNoWriMo this year again. I don't plan on overdoing it, though. In the past, novels have tended to overrun my life during November, and I can't afford that this year.

However, I have a shiny new pirate idea I want to play with, and so I'm going to probably use it during November. My word count goal is only going to be 30,000, though. If I do more, great, but most of my time these days is spent doing work for school, and that can't suffer. I figure 1,000 words a day is doable.

Here's the idea (needs to be researched, though, to make sure the chronology fits):

African woman, who is a voodoo priestess, is captured by other Africans and sold to the French. The French transport her, via the Middle Passage, to Haiti. On the way, she asks les invisibles for help. A storm comes up, and the ship is attacked by pirates. All the Europeans (except perhaps for a rich girl kept for ransom - if I can make that plausible) are killed, but the Africans are kept to be resold by the pirates.

First problem: Not sure if pirates actually attacked slave ships.
Second problem: Although both practices were going on at the same time, most of the research I found focused on the English, not the French.

While this doesn't seem like much of an improvement, the voodoo powers of the main character become apparent to the pirates, who decide she'd be better off as an adviser than sold, so she rises in status. The success of her spell/prayer means that she owes les invisibles a debt.

Not sure exactly how it comes about, but I'm anticipating her falling in love, and the debt she owes is going to involve sacrificing her love: either by letting him fall to death or by encouraging him to marry someone else.

So, those are my thoughts so far.

Well, let's see.

I'm trying to keep a record of what I've read, to see if I can do the 50 books a year thing. Since I last posted, though, what have I read?

I had to go back and look, since it's been so long that I've posted about the books I'm reading. Anyway, here goes:

I still haven't finished World Without End. It's a very, very LARGE hardcover, which makes it less comfortable to read, despite the quality.

I did read the next Kelley Armstrong novel, in the bookstore, but I don't remember what it was called.

After that, I read The Color of Magic by Terry Pratchett. It was a fun read, and I could see myself reading more of his, but it wasn't as compelling as the other series. Maybe I'll change my mind if/when I read more.

Then, based on a recommendation by Erin at the Forward Motion board, I started reading Scott Westerfeld's Uglies series, and read the following:

Uglies

Pretties

Specials

Extras

I loved this series. The main characters (Tally in the first three, Aya in the fourth) are very, very flawed, and it's great to read about them. This is my second or third foray into science fiction, too, and I'm finding I really like it. I may have to try out more science fiction in the future.

And most recently, I've been interested in the Pellinor series by Alison Croggon. The first book, The Naming, was a little irritating in its attitudes (despite men and women being equal in this world, the main character (a female) is considered an adult when she's seen wearing a glamorous dress - not when she fights off monsters, and not when she grows up emotionally) and the usual Dark=Evil.

However, the second book, The Riddle... It was amazing. Much better than the first, in my opinion, and heart breaking. I spent Sunday night/Monday morning in tears over this book, and I could not be consoled until I got to the last page. It was exquisitely done and full of good darkness (and also came closer to the idea that Darkness is a part of the Balance).

I have just purchased the third book, The Crow, and look forward to reading it this week-end (but not tonight, as I need to get up early, and can't be crying all night, should it end up like the second).

There is a fourth scheduled to be released in the U.S. in September 2008.

Between The Riddle and now, I've been reading Lake Wobegon Days by Garrison Keilor. It's a very humorous book. I'm not sure I'll finish it, but I hope I will. I usually do finish books I start, but I have The Crow now, and also World Without End

So, that puts me at 17 books since March 10, when I started.

Future plans:

As mentioned before, I do want to read The Alchemist by Paolo Coelho.
Also:
Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov

And from a workshop I just participated in:
Auralia's Colours by Jeffrey Overstreet
Moby Dick by Herman Melville
Blade Dancer by S. L. Viehl
Last Girl Dancing by Holly Lisle

Hmm... I'm sure I'm missing some. And yes, it's true: although I've read four Nabokov novels, I have yet to read Lolita, and somehow, Moby Dick was not one of the books I read in high school or college.

I'm very excited! I finally managed to do a shimmy (shimmi?) tonight in our belly dance class. And strangely, it is one that happens over foot movement (forgot what the name of the move is: something ATS). It's not the best shimmy in the world, but noticeable enough that it was, well, noticeable (even though it *felt* like only my feet were moving).

That makes me very happy!

This is going to sound strange. I've always known I was a writer. Maybe I'll never be a published author, but I am a writer. However, I have this tendency of starting things and never finishing them. I don't even know how many first drafts of novels I have that are stopped at chapter 8. November 2005 changed all that. I completed my first rough draft of a novel, at around 89,000 words, for NaNoWriMo 2005.

Since then, I've been able to finish and polish short stories and finish rough drafts of novels, provided I can get it done in 1 month.

I still haven't been real good about the staying power, though. I can maintain fierce devotion to my writing, for the period of 28-31 days (depending on the month, though so far, we're only talking about November and March), and then it dissipates. I get drug into other story idea, or other fun pursuits such as belly dance or World of Warcraft.

In January of 2006, I started Lazette Gifford's 2 Year Novel course. I managed to keep up for 8 weeks, then struggled periodically to get back on track. November came and I wrote another NaNoWriMo novel, not at all connected to the class - I was still too far behind. At the end of NaNo, in fact, on the 30th, I believe, when I was still struggling to get that last 5k and finish my novel, I got a new, exciting idea.

This one felt special. There was something about it that put chills down my spine. I redid the first 8 exercises of Zette's class for the new idea as soon as December hit. I thought I could do both, and wrote to Zette about it. She said that I was just too far behind on the old story, but that she'd let me join the class for 2007 to work on the new idea.

I was really happy.

It is now May 2008, and I'm mostly still on track for that class. I did have a long 3-month break from writing, but since I did the 2 year novel idea for NaNo, I was ahead at that point, which is good. I've learned that I do write best in bits and spurts. I finished the rough draft (in November) and am still working on the edit. I'm still just as excited about that story as I was when I first started. I don't know if it will be published. All I can do is make it the best story I can, but I'm aware that it's perhaps a touch too bizarre, maybe a little too dark or ambiguous for any market. In a way, that's a relief, since it will hopefully mitigate rejections that don't have any feedback (which, I've heard, are the majority). If I know it's the best I could do, I can simply say that our culture just isn't ready for something like this, and it won't feel as bad. In other words, it might help me from taking it personally. I hope.

Not only that, but I also started writing a new novel in March. As I said above, I'm really good at sticking to ideas for about a month, and giving them my all. That's not the case with this story. I just passed the 30,000 word mark this past Thursday. This is the most I've ever written on one particular idea, aside from one-month wonders. This is the longest I've stayed committed to a single idea for a rough draft.

This is making me feel good about myself as a writer. I feel more committed and serious than I have in a long time, even if I am getting behind on the second draft.

I went to my second belly dance event of all time yesterday. This time, I went with the class I've been taking. Some of the people couldn't come, so there were 4 of us, total: the teacher, her mother (one of the students), another student, and me.

I had made it clear that I wasn't ready to perform: there are a number of body waves and shimmies in the choreography and I can't do either of them yet, at all. Strangely, I'm pretty solid on the actual choreography, although I still make mistakes on occasion. I think, in retrospect, that I should have performed and practiced the choreography more. I could have turned the body wave into a simple chest circle, and the shimmy into slower hip bumps. That hadn't occurred to me at the time: all I knew was that I'd look bad trying to do the moves I couldn't do.

In any case, they wanted to dress me up so that I would look like a performer, so I could get in for free instead of having to pay, like the general public. Wow.

I don't think I've ever looked so beautiful in my entire life. Never mind that my lipstick was old and caused a horrid burning sensation when I put it on (so I had to take it off), or that I didn't even have any blush... I happen to look fantastic in a choli, and the decorations they put on me were to die for. That, more than anything, made me want to perform (just to show off the costume!)

The event itself was a lot of fun. It was tribal-only, so unfortunately, I didn't get to see any Oriental dance. The one I liked most was done to Turkish music. There were 4 men who performed, but I only saw 3 of them. That was really fascinating! I thought it looked great (aside from the one, who didn't know how to use his arms). Some of the songs were distracting because I was trying to figure out where the Doums and tek-a-teks went, so I stopped watching the dancers.

I was left feeling very humble about my own abilities, and a great desire to improve them.

I'm having a very good day today.

Lately, I've been working on The Rebel's Assassin, and I'm about 22,000 words into it. It's going pretty well.

The 2 year novel class has also started revision, and I'm greatly looking forward to it! I also posted another snippet over there and one of the other class members said he/she (I never did bother to find out gender) would be willing to critique it. I really like this author's idea, too, so it looks like it might be a good exchange. This is for The Mirror Crack'd.

Also book-reading is going well.

I'm into the first 200 pages of World Without End, and love it at least as much as Pillars of the Earth.

I also read 2 books by Ilona Andrews: Magic Bites and Magic Burns. The first was slightly better than the second, as there is more of the type of romance that I don't like in the second, and also some unrealistic attributes of the heroine (We learn in the first book that she knows 6 power words, but in the second, we learn that sorcerers, etc. rarely learn more than 3). The romance also seems unrealistic to me. The setting, however, and the world building are really fascinating. It's set in a not really post-Apocalyptic Atlanta (no actual Apocalypse, but it has the same sort of resonance to me), and she's created a very unique version of magic, necromancers, vampires, and shape-shifters (not all wolves, so not werewolves). Not sure if I'll pick up the third when it comes out or not.

And then, I finally read The Wood Wife, by Terri Windling, which I absolutely adored and will need to read again now that I know some of the details. I have no idea how to explain it other than that it is about the desert in the same way that Pillars is about a cathedral. Just a very, very beautiful book.

And I'm being bad and reading the next Kelley Armstrong book in the bookstore, since it's a hard cover. I'll buy the paperback when it comes out, but they aren't quite good enough for me to buy a hardcover version.

Lastly, I'm going to a pagan retreat this coming week-end, and I'm very excited about it.

I should just stop posting on forums.

I end up getting into discussions, and then I end up upset about them. For no good reason other than that people aren't understanding what I'm getting at, or that they have to be right. There are a couple of forums that I'm more cautious about posting on, and I'm very glad about it because nothing like this has happened there.

I've gotten really intersted in something lately, and found a forum on it. I knew I shouldn't have posted what I did and when I did, but I did, and although the conversation went pretty well for awhile, it just ended up all negative and arrogant. And now I'm sitting here, all upset, and it's no one's fault but mine. For getting involved in the first place. For thinking I had something new to say, but not having the emotional stamina to see it through.

I give up.

I've always wanted to do the 50 book a year challenge, and I always forget to start in January. Anyway, I have just read a bunch of books, so I figured I'd start with the first book that prompted all the reading.

I'm also going to rate the books I've read based on how much I feel I liked them, along with a short commentary. I've tried doing more lengthy reviews, but then I stop posting, and just think about my thoughts.

So with no further ado:

The Pillars of the Earth, by Ken Follett
Rating: ****** 6/5
This is the best book I have ever read, and this is my 10th reading of it... give or take a few. I used to read it every summer. It's sort of about the building of a cathedral, but it's more than that, because the cathedral affects the town in which it's built. There are a couple of love stories and a lot of political intrigue. The story is set during a period of civil unrest in England, between the death of King Henry I, and the crowning of King Henry II. The characters are so human and very much flawed. There are a huge number of various different strands and threads:

The building of the cathedral
The prologue, which involves the hanging of an innocent man
A vow made to a dying earl
Revenge for slight to a family
An abandoned baby's true parentage
The civil war between Maud and Steven
A bishop's desire for power

And probably more.

It should be noted that it was also extensively researched and, while the main characters are obviously fictional, the detail in the research is right on.

Kelley Armstrong's Women of the Other World series:
I read the first 7 books:
Bitten
Stolen
Dime Store Magic
Industrial Magic
Haunted
Broken
No Humans Involved

Series Rating: 3 1/2 out of 5
As a series, it is really fascinating, because each book is from a different point of view. I really like that, especially as the books are in first person, and for the most part, the characters have a strong voice. I particularly like Elena, Eve, and Jaime. The problem is that there aren't always enough differences between the characters (Some characteristic dialogue intonations seemed to crop up among all the characters), and the romantic entanglements got extremely predictable by the end of the series.

Bitten: I loved this one, and the romance in this one was probably the romance that was done the best out of all of them, being inextricably linked with the rest of the plot, rather than being a side issue that detracted from the main plot. It also featured one of my favorite (and very uncommon) plot elements. I'll not say what it is here, since it is not my intention to give spoilers. What I will say, however, is that the female protagonist, while being quite flawed (especially in this book), is a very strong woman. She's no gothic heroine needing protection at all times.

Stolen: This was my favorite, only because most of the plot is about escaping from prison. Plus, the romantic angle is downplayed the most in this one.

Dime Store Magic: This was probably my least favorite. Paige isn't all that interesting to me, and the romance in this one made me shudder. I will say that I simply don't like genre romance. I don't think it's bad, I just don't like it. Just like I don't like deviled eggs, no matter how well they're prepared. The romantic subplot in this one was very much genre romance, in my opinion, and I'm not even sure it was good genre romance. Some of the conflicts were very good, but I just wasn't engaged that much with either the main character or the plot. That said, it was still interesting, and I still read the whole thing in a day or so.

Industrial Magic: This was slightly better, if only because the romance was mostly settled, and it was interesting watching the conflict between the love interest and his father. The focus of the plot seemed a little redundant to other books, as it seems that harm to children is always the greatest evil in all of the books. I'd prefer to see more variety in theme -- by the time I got to this one, I felt sort of like I was being bashed over the head with it.

Haunted: This one I also really liked. I loved the protagonist, as well as the worldbuilding, in this one. There was still the whole child issue, which was definitely old by then, and the romance, after having read the first 4 books, was horribly obvious and predictable, as it followed the same pattern of the other 4. Still, I really did like some of the conflicts in it, and I really liked Eve.

Broken: Back to Elena! I know I said my favorite was Stolen, but this is a very close second. Again, we weren't dealing with a new romance, so that wasn't an issue, thank heavens. Also, like Haunted, there was excellent setting detail. Victorian England meets zombies and Toronto. It seemed to be well-researched, but I'm not a Victorian scholar, so I don't really know for sure. I loved it.

No Humans Involved: This one still had the romance and child-theme problems, which made it a little frustrating to read at times, but I really loved Jaime, the new main character, especially since one of the main conflicts was that she hated needing protection so much. I've always hated that as well, so it was really neat to see it written out. There were also some really interesting twists.

All in all, I do really like the series, and will probably read the next one when it comes out (or sometime after it comes out).

This makes for 8 books total, so far, and 42 to go.

Next up:
World Without End, by Ken Follett: this is a follow-up to Pillars of the Earth that just came out this November. While not exactly a sequel, since it takes place 200 years later, it is in the same town, and sounds like it might have the same richness.

The Alchemist, by Paolo Coelho. I've had this book in Russian for several years and never read it (my Russian isn't that good), and finally got an English copy for Christmas.

After that, I don't know. I just saw the movie Stardust, as it happened to be on on a night that my dad really wanted us all to watch a movie together, so I might want to read the book. Books are always better than movies, and I love Neil Gaiman. Or, I might read The Color of Magic, by Terry Pratchett, which was gifted to me last year. I will probably wait on All the Rivers Run, since it is a realistic saga, and I'll probably want to read fantasy before another realistic novel. Or maybe, I'll just find something random in the bookstore. There are a number of books I've been wanting to read.

I did it!

That's right, this time, it's for real! All saved on computer and flash drive alike! No more accidental deletions of this novel!

It's 80,223 words, so it grew a little over 2k in the rewrite, which also makes me happy.

I scrambled it and the first part of The Spy's Apprentice (3,529) and got a Winner's Certificate for 83,759 (which, if you're doing the math, is seven extra words, and I don't know exactly where they go).

Speaking of math, my future apprentice to the spy is a math genius. That's what her magical talent is: she just knows everything about numbers. It also makes her a good Astrologer, because she can *talk* to numbers and everything in the world has a number associated with it.

So, now I have to go read up on sophisticated mathmatics. Because it is apparently going to play a part in the novel. Yikes! Ritta, where are you?

Oh, and I'm going for 100k by the end of the month.

Whoops.

I sort of forgot about this journal. It happens sometimes.

Anyway, after going crazy last week-end and getting to 70k by Sunday night, I well, um... didn't write all that much this week. I wrote about 100 words on Monday and a little over 300 on Tuesday after planning a new story at the write-in... Then, absolutely nothing on Wednesday or Thursday (but I did do more planning).

Yesterday, I wrote 5,773 words and finished the novel!

Except, erm... I put it into WordPerfect so I could print a few pages at a time (my printer can only handle 50 or so), then decided, no, I didn't want to print it, so I opened up Q10 (ostensibly to start work on the new story, but as you will see, this "reason" seemed to have escaped me at times). Q10 said "this story is being worked on in another program, so I can't open it."

Now, alarms should have started ringing at this point, since I've often had RoughDraft open at the same time as Q10 with no problems.

Anyway, so I closed WordPerfect and clicked on "no" for saving changes (it would have turned it into a .wpd file, and I wanted to keep it as .txt), closed RoughDraft, and then opened Q10.

Forgetting *why* I wanted to open Q10. Which was to work on the new story. Well, what opened in Q10 was my novel *file*: mirror.nov.txt, but with just 4 weird symbols in it.

Thinking I was in a new document, I erased the four weird symbols and sat there for a good five minutes trying to think of a beginning to my story.

During which time, Q10 auto-saved.

Yeah. Novel go bye-bye.

I saw at some point that it still said I was in document mirror.nov.txt, so I quickly closed Q10 and said "no" to saving changes. Never did look to see if there was an Undo option... And tried opening it in RoughDraft. Nope. All blank.

At which point I had a bit of a meltdown before remembering *happy sigh* that I had a flash drive and was backing it up regularly.

Granted, I didn't get back the 5,773 words I'd written on Friday, but all the rest was still there!

Hooray for flash drives! People, don't forget to back up your work!

Anyway, so I'm back to trying to finish that novel, but I was so depressed Friday night that I had to work on something else. So I started The Spy's Apprentice.

It's about a girl/woman who ends up getting involved in a major political struggle as a liaison between the good guys and a spy who appears to be a bad guy. She's not the hero of the story, but I find her story more interesting than the hero's so we're following her.

Anyway, yesterday (Black Friday), I wrote 502 words of the Spy's Apprentice, and today, I wrote another 678 on it. I also wrote two of the accidentally deleted scenes of The Mirror Crack'd, giving me the day's total (both novels) of 2,337.

That's 75,626 so far. I have three more major scenes of The Mirror Crack'd, and two more short fairy tale scenes. When I finished yesterday, I ended with just over 78,000, but I'd really like it to be closer to 80k. So, we'll see if I can remedy that!

I posted this on the NaNo forums (in the Reaching 50,000! forum), but I wanted to post it here as well:

( Read more... )

Today's word count: 57,180

I passed the Golden 50k at 2:30 a.m. Monday morning (but goodness, it felt like Sunday night).

Woohoo!

*dances*

Onward to the end of the novel! (which I'm hoping will be around 100k, but which is looking like it's going to be much less).

Or, writing appreciation, to be more accurate, since I'm mostly talking about writing here.

Pretty much everyone has an opinion, and I've been exposed to a number of different opinions about how it is we determine whether a piece of writing is "good" or not. And there are really only two ways, and even then, they kind of intersect.

Way #1: Believe other people's value judgements

Way #2: Judge for yourself.

The problem is that everyone *thinks* they're doing Way #2, but in reality, that is always shaped by Way #1. All opinions are in some way shaped by culture.

Let me go back in time for a moment. When I was in kindergarten, I went to a sleepover at a friend's house. One of the things that occurred was a dancing contest. There were three of us who were the same age, and two other girls who were older. Those two were sisters, and not twins, so one was slightly older than the other. The person having the party, Renee, was one of the girls my age. As was Julie. Susan was the younger of the two sisters, and Paula the elder. These are not really their names, but it will help avoid confusion. Susan and Paula lived next to Renee, so she already knew them.

In any case, the two sisters were competing against each other, and the three younger of us were competing against each other. Renee told us that we should all give Paula and Julie the same score to avoid hurt feelings. The three of us all agreed to do that.

Well, while we were preparing, Paula found Julie and I waiting, and explained to us that good dancing didn't use any arms, that we should just move our legs. We believed her, and although I don't remember my own performance, I do remember thinking that Paula's dancing was far better than Susan's because Susan used her arms a lot. However, I am a Libra, so I gave them both the same score. Julie, on the other hand, gave Paula a better score, so she ended up winning, and Susan got really upset.

Today, in the writing field, we use other people's opinions to decide if something is good way more often than we judge for ourselves. In fact, there are two opposing camps as to how to decide who is a good writer, and both of them have to do with culture and class.

On the one side, there are the people who decide a book is good when literary critics say it is. On the other side, a book is considered good if it sells well. The literary critic side thinks that mass market and well-published books are generally meaningless fluff for those stupid people who can't appreciate good literature. The people who go by sales think that the literary critic type books are overly pretentious and not accessible.

However, both sales and literary criticism represent, yep, Other People's Opinions. And, as I said, they are also tied to culture. We are living in a capitalist society in which money is pretty darn important. We start getting suspicious if the price for something is low. Is it low because it's not as good quality? Since we aren't sure, we pass it up for something with a higher price. Not everyone does this, of course, since it depends on the money actually available, but it affects our opinions. If we decide to buy the lower priced item, we often think we are settling for something of poorer quality. So, if a single book makes a lot of money, we take notice and think, "Wow! That must be a great book!"

Literary critics, on the other hand, appeal more to upper and more educated classes. There's an attitude of, "Well, if you don't like (x book, expensive clothing, expensive cheese, caviar, etc.), it's clearly because you are too uncultured to enjoy it." So, liking certain books because of literary criticism ends up being a social game to prove to others that you did understand it and are on *their* side of the Great Cultural Divide. Or something.

Personally, I believe a book can be good and yet not be popular, either with the masses or with the literary critics. And I think very few people base ALL their reading decisions/opinions on other people. I think it's usually a mix. So many elements that are considered "good writing" today (show not tell, avoid Mary Sue, etc.) are very cultural. Two hundred years ago, these would possibly have been seen as "bad writing". Two hundred years from now, they might very well be seen as inferior to the new "good writing". It all depends on what millions of readers are expecting and wanting to experience, and those expectations and wants are going to be informed by what others around them are saying.

Take Mary Sue. It started out as a phenomenon of fan fiction, in which an original character *outshined* the canon characters in the canon characters' specialties. Now, it's come to refer to any character who seems annoying to the reader due to an imbalance between the character's abilities and what is normal for that world. Never mind that this can be fixed by changing the setting as easily as it can be fixed by changing the character. So, a person is irritated by a character, and labels them a Mary Sue. People who think of that person as any kind of an authority of writing then *also* label that *same* character a Mary Sue.

It seems rather faddish and cliquish to me. But it's a cultural judgement that is in the making. Pretty soon, it will be as much of a rule as the show don't tell one.

If you want to sell a book, (not that I have any experience in this at all, I'm just guessing), it's good to know what these cultural expectations and rules are. But that doesn't mean that by following them, you're writing a "better" book. That would mean that all popular books in the here and now are better than any other books that have ever been written. And I find that to be a tad arrogant.

Be honest with yourself and your friends and family. A good book is one that *you* know to be good. You can't ever escape the expectations given to you by culture, entirely. But just because someone says that good dancing cannot involve the arms doesn't mean that you don't find modern dancing absolutely exquisite because of the way they move their arms. Unless, of course, you close off your own mind entirely.

And that would be sad.

I've rambled a lot in this post, but I just get tired of the same old arguments back and forth between the literary crowd and the market crowd. There are good literary books. There are good popular books. There are good popular books that are literary. There are bad books that are literary and popular. According to me, of course :). Being popular does not automatically make a book good. Having good literary criticism and awards does not make a book good. A book is good if I love it. It's *always* subjective.