I guess I'm doing this?

My long-neglected critique partner reminded me that April is a Camp NaNoWriMo month.  Given how little I've been writing lately, I went "Welp, okay!" and signed up on March 31.

As of today (day 3), I've written 1324 words.  But I wrote them all today, and they're halfway decent words, and it felt nice to be writing again.

(I mean, I write a LOT at work.  But that's legal writing, and is very very different from this kind of writing)

Day 24: 36,665 words (so far)

I am the worst blogger ever.  I have been so easily distracted this NaNoWriMo - but at least I have a hope of finishing this year.  Last presidential election, I barely managed 30 pages before I wimped out.

Time to buckle down for the long slog to the finish line.  Which will not be the end of the book, because this thing looks like it'll end up around at least 80,000 words.  YOU GUYS, WHY DO I DO THIS TO MYSELF.

Find me on Twitter for whining and updates.

Day 1: 2706 words (so far)

I didn't plan to start NaNoWriMo 2012 sick, but that's what happened - stuck home from work, and not even feeling well enough to write much of my novel.  Maybe I'll get more done today, but at least I made the daily goal.

Writing a novel using characters I've already written feels a little strange - it takes me a little time to get back into their heads, especially if I've been writing very different characters immediately prior.  Still, I'm optimistic based on the first 2700 words!

I'll be running my first NaNoWordSprint of the season tomorrow from 7-8 AM Pacific time - feel free to join in!

Here we go again...

Until yesteday, I had no idea what I was going to write for NaNoWriMo 2012.  Sure, I had vague plotty thoughts, as one does, but I wasn't very excited about any of them.  I kept pre-writing and thinking "This doesn't quite feel right."

And then, yesterday, I realized.  Much as it pains me to admit it, I will be writing a sequelish novel, following the characters of The Brothers & Sisters of Interesting People, my 2010 NaNoWriMo novel, about a year after the events of that novel.  Is this incredibly self-indulgent because I haven't done as much editing of that novel as I meant to?  Yes.  On the other hand, I'm already more excited about this project than I was about any of the others, so I'm taking that as a sign.

Wish I could've made it to the Portland NaNoWriMo kickoff party, but I am determined that I will attend at least one write-in this year.  That should be doable.

Allons-y!

Dispatch

Let's see, it's been about four months since I last posted.  What's happened in the interim?

- I took the LSAT
- I wrote my tailored personal statements
- I filled out and submitted four out of five law school applications
- I experimented with, and then lost interest in, Pinterest
- Summer
- I started bicycling to and from work, which is incredibly fun and also helps work out any frustration or rage at injustice

What's on the horizon?  I'll submit the last of my law school applications on October 1, and then start waiting to hear back.  I will be trying very very hard to distract myself during that time, so maybe I'll even post more frequently?

This may be my last year participating in NaNoWriMo for a little while (we'll see how busy I am with law school next year), so in theory I should start planning what I'll be writing.  First, though, I have to bang out the rest of the first draft of this novel I've been working on for ages.  I'm probably half to two-thirds done with it, but that last third has been really tough.  In 2010 I was able to use the approach of NaNoWriMo to really kick myself into high gear rewriting a novel, so maybe this year I'll be able to do the same thing.  I have no idea what I'll be writing for NaNoWriMo itself, though.  Something fun, maybe fantasy - I haven't done that in a really long time.

Anyone else out there starting to think about NaNoWriMo?  Remember, the site re-launches at the beginning of October!

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?