Studying, studying, studying

I know, it's been a while - I've been crazily busy studying for the LSAT (law school admission test), revising a novel, and working full-time.  Find me on Twitter for slightly more frequent updates!

Space Travel! (and writing)

I suppose I'm feeling more contemplative than usual.

I re-watched The Right Stuff and part of Apollo 13 last night with my roommate. I've always loved movies about space and astronauts - not sci-fi, though I do enjoy that too, but media set during the space race, when it seemed like every day we were strapping someone else atop a massive, potentially explosive device and trying to shoot them out into orbit. Both Apollo 13 and The Right Stuff address the fundamentally terrifying nature of space travel, particularly back in the 1960s and early 1970s. Basically, after seeing rocket after rocket explode on the ground (or barely make it off the ground, and then explode), astronauts climbed into a tiny, intensely claustrophobic capsule over which they had minimal control and hoped that the engineers who designed it had understood what going into space would do to such a capsule. The courage it took is mind-boggling, especially because it wasn't as though once they got one rocket to work, everything else was smooth sailing. I'm not embarrassed to admit that I actually tear up every time I watch these movies.

There's probably a fairly shallow analogy to be made about how writing a novel is like trying to go into space. I think what fascinates me about space travel is the desire that everyone in the space program seemed to share to go out there and see what was literally unexplored territory. There's still so much out there that we have no idea about, not really, and I hope we do revitalize NASA someday soon.

Needless to say, if there were ever cheap commercial space travel, even just out into orbit, I'd be right in line. Even with the terror of knowing that if your ship is faulty, there's no lifeboat, I'm still dying to go.

With that, I will stop gushing about astronauts and space travel and all that. I recommend both movies, preferably in chronological order. Also best watched as I did, with wild mushroom pizza and a glass of red wine. Go forth, watch, and be inspired.

On to March!

How did we get halfway into March already?

I've been a bit buried in the combination of writing every morning, working full-time, and studying for the LSAT at night.  I've started using 750 Words again as a kind of morning free-write, which helps jump-start my brain while my coffee is still cool enough to drink.  My inner Girl Scout is very into the badges.

The blog will be on...er, a slightly more defined hiatus until June 12, at which point I will be done with the LSAT and have free time again.  In the meantime, you can still find me on Twitter and Goodreads...

Is it February already?

I guess I'm posting monthly now.  Oops.

January has been an incredibly busy month work-wise, and writing has been confined to that hour between getting a quad latte and catching the bus.  While I still don't enjoy writing synopses, and have yet to come up with one shorter than ten pages, it turns out a synopsis is actually incredibly helpful when it comes to checking the pacing of your novel.

This Friday, I'm going on my first real vacation in a year - we'll see how I survive away from work for a full week.  I'm busy running wash, buying sunscreen, and figuring out how many pairs of cutoff jeans and tank tops one really needs in the Caribbean.  I'm always productive when I leave home, so I'm looking forward to making more progress on my current novel.

I'm also looking forward to being a bit more disconnected from the world while on vacation.  By which I mean checking email twice a day instead of fifteen times.  Horrifying, I know.

Welcome to 2012 and a look back at 2011

2011 was a year of a great deal of change - moving into a new house, starting a job, getting promoted, discovering new areas of interest, starting a routine of writing every day, and so on.  Generally, I had a great year - as the new year approached, I found myself thinking "Things are so good for me, what right do I have to be unhappy about anything?"  Obviously, things may happen that are bad, but right now, I'm pretty content with my life.

So I haven't made resolutions for 2012, not really.  I have goals, projects I want to work on, and of course there's the ongoing resolution to eat healthy, exercise, and keep my diabetes well-controlled, but those are all more about building good habits than they are about major resolutions.  When I was a kid, I made a lot of resolutions that I had no control over, things like "I'll sell a novel to a publisher this year", and now I'm trying to be a lot better about understanding what I can control and what I obviously can't.

What's coming in 2012?  Right now, I'm working on finishing this magical realism novel set in southern Oregon. I doubt anyone will ever love it as much as I do, but I'm at that glorious stage where scenes write themselves in my head whenever I let my mind wander, and I'm going to ride that as far as I can.

Eventually (i.e. sometime in 2012) I'm going to rewrite The Brothers and Sisters of Interesting People, the novel I wrote for NaNoWriMo 2010 set in Amsterdam.  I've done the preliminary work, figuring out scenes to add and subtract and necessary restructuring, but I can't marinate my brain in that novel's world until I'm done with southern Oregon magical realism (which needs a code name, because that's just unwieldy).

At some point, I'm taking a trip to Europe - can't decide between Ireland, which I've never been to, or going back to Amsterdam, which I loved.  I also have to figure out when in the year to take it, which means laying out all my upcoming work deadlines.

I have also vowed that I AM going to finish reading the Bible by the end of 2012.  I've repeatedly gotten bogged down in this project, probably because I get annoyed at all the genocide and zealotry and then there are a bunch of excellent books sitting on my shelf waiting to be read, and I read those instead - but I've started and I want to finish.

I watched some really excellent (and widely varied) media in 2011, from Generation Kill to Downton Abbey, and read some amazing books, including (in no particular order):
- The Magicians (though I admit that I didn't love The Magician King, the sequel, with quite the same fervor)
- The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet

- Red Glove (I NEED BLACK HEART IMMEDIATELY)
- All Men of Genius (love love love this take on steampunk)

- The Girl of Fire and Thorns (felt like the successor to Tamora Pierce)

- An Abundance of Katherines (my favorite John Green book)
- Speak (I know, I'm way behind in reading this, but it was fantastic)
- Crescent (which made me cry an embarrassing amount)
- Bleeding Violet and Slice of Cherry (both of which have spoiled me forever for all other dark quasi-magical YA, I can't even describe how much I loved there books)
- The Elegance of the Hedgehog (which was gorgeous up until the end)
- On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society (totally fascinating)
- Midnight Riot (possibly my favorite mystery novel at the moment)
- The Sky is Everywhere (also made me sob)
- The Replacement
- 97 Orchard: An Edible History of Five Immigrant Families in One New York Tenement- The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
- Break (I know it came out a while ago, but I was so tense by the end of this book, it sucked me in completely)
- The Tenth Parallel (fascinating history)
- Salt: A World History (I love food history)
- The House of the Spirits (mind-blowing)
- The Professor and the Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity, and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary

That list turned out a bit longer than I expected, and there are many, many more that were great but didn't stick out quite as much in my memory.  I read about 110 books in 2011, and will attempt to read as many in 2012.

Wishing everyone a happy belated new year - do you have goals/resolutions/plans for 2012?

Not dead, just busy

I fear that when I get busy, blogging is always the first thing to go.  If you were following my NaNoWriMo progress on Twitter, you probably saw that I hit 50K and then lost all motivation.  I still love my premise, but I'm going to table it and start over once it's had some time to rest.

Right now, though, I'm restarting work on my beloved weird magical realism family saga, which I set aside briefly for NaNoWriMo.  I'm also very busy with work, probably because I never really stop thinking about it (maybe I need some hobbies or something?).

We've been having an unseasonably sunny winter here in Portland, though I guess any sun is unseasonable.  I've also been reading like crazy; just burned my way through Lev Grossman's The Magicians, and then The Magician King.  I hear these books are divisive, but I thought they were brilliant.  The "kid learns that magic is real" trope is a popular one, but somehow it's so much more satisfying when that kid is someone who's always longed for magic.

I've also picked up my read-the-entire-Bible attempt (I'm using the New Oxford Annotated Bible with the Apocrypha), and am currently in the midst of Maccabees.  It's a good deal bloodier than the Hanukkah story I grew up with.  I find that I spend a lot of my reading time thinking "You guys, please stop killing each other."  I do appreciate the annotations - I wish I'd taken that 'Bible as Literature" class in high school.  It's good bedtime reading, because usually the narrative isn't strong enough for me to want to stay up and finish it, and I don't tend to be emotionally invested in what happens to the characters/people/allegorical historical figures/whatever you want to call them.

With that check-in finished, it's back to writing!

Day 9: 46574 words and a reality check

The novel has been going very well, word count-wise, and decently in terms of plot.  I've backed off my 5k-a-day pace (well, my average is still there, but we'll see what happens with that) due to a combination of excessive dentistry and last-minute projects at work.  I note that the frantic typing speed of NaNoWriMo does tend to make me type more easily when composing just about anything - though in certain situations, one must then immediately go back and fix certain phrases, like when one gets a bit carried away and tries to put phrases like "this statement is patently ridiculous" in an outline for a legal brief (that's frowned upon).

Anyhow.  My novel has somehow developed two playlists - one of which includes Johnny Cash, The Editors, Cage the Elephant, Flobots, and Blue Öyster Cult, the other of which is composed chiefly of Katy Perry, Travis McCoy, and Mike Posner - each representing a facet of its truly bizarre personality.

The wordle depiction is below, though really I think the largest word should be "said".  Followed by "nodded."  I'm also displeased with both Banks' and Gareth's names; Gareth may become Graham, and Banks could be almost any other name in the world, because honestly I only called him Banks because the Mighty Ducks movies popped into my head.  Yeah, I'm really cool.

It's a Viking helmet kind of night

Ugh.  A bit of a sloggish day, novel-wise.  Luckily, I have my going-away present from the Office of Letters and Light: a personalized NaNoWriMo Viking helmet.  With that on my head and some Blue Öyster Cult on my iPod, I will persevere:

Good luck to anyone else who's struggling with uncooperative characters and/or plot!

Day 2: 10017 words

Uh, I guess my brain has decided that my target pace should be 5k words per day?  I'm not sure how I figured that.  I don't remember exactly how last year went, just that I finished my novel in the first two weeks...but I don't want to do that this year because I'm going to the NOWD and would like to have something to work on there, at least.

ANYWAY.  Obviously I'm not complaining about being bizarrely productive.  Of course, now that I've set this pace for myself, I will have to continue at or above it until I finish the novel.  I'm most productive when I sequester myself far from all distraction, listen to a good fast-paced song on repeat so it fades into the background, and write in ten-minute timed bursts.  Keeping track of the results also helps.

As for the novel...I'm figuring out where it's headed.  A lot has happened, but I still feel like I'm filling in background, figuring it out as I write it, which means I'll probably lop off much of these first 5k when I go back and revise.  For now, though, have to get some sleep so I can wake up at 6 again tomorrow and keep writing.

Good luck to everyone else!

Day 1: 5008 words

I'm pretty happy with the way my novel has started out.  I tend to write a bit of backstory and then move into the action, and that's just what I've done in this first section.  And by "backstory" I mean "accidental murder, fake suicide, and multiple major plot complications."  Since I've been heavily in revision mode for the last...uh, eight months, it was a bit of a jolt to switch into production mode.  Things are running more smoothly now that I've gotten into the characters' voices.

I doubt I'll be this productive every day (wouldn't it be nice!), but I'm shooting for 2000 words every morning in those pre-dawn Stumptown Coffee writing sessions.  Usually I make it there with enough time for a solid 45 minutes of writing, but during November I'm getting up early enough to write for double that.

I don't have a fixed goal over 50,000, but I think this novel is probably going to end up closer to the 75,000 mark.  We'll see how it goes for the rest of the month.

Best 10-minute sprint: 610 words
Worst 10-minute sprint: 463 words

Of course, I only did four sprints, so that made it easier to keep a steady pace.  How was your first day of NaNoWriMo?