The Friday Reader: Week 2

I started work this week, so I only finished four books.  There are so many more out there that I want to read!

Fiction
1. Graceling, by Kristin Cashore
I'll write a blog post later this week expanding on just what makes Kristin Cashore's female characters so strong.  For now, I'll just say that in Graceling she has taken a character who sounds like the epitome of a Mary Sue and made her staggeringly sympathetic.  The word is well thought-out, and though the end feels slightly rushed, the majority of the novel moves very well.  Highly recommended for fans of fantasy with strong, compelling female characters.

2. Fire, by Kristin Cashore
I read this the night after I'd finished Graceling, and if anything, it's better.  Once again, Cashore takes a character who by rights should be massively unsympathetic and makes her absolutely human.  Fire, the book's heroine, calls herself a "human monster", a young woman with irresistible beauty that drives people to violence and the ability to control minds.  Despite these attributes (or perhaps because of them), Fire is an emotional disaster, largely because she was raised by another human monster, her father.  While one or two plot twists feel convenient, it's a terrifically well-executed book, and also highly recommended.  Both Fire and Graceling contain fairly dark content, including mentions of torture and sexual violence as a part of war, but it's never gratuitous; it only serves to illuminate realities often ignored by the writers of YA fantasy.

Nonfiction
3. United States of Arugula: How We Became a Gourmet Nation, by David Kamp
Full of tasty tidbits about America's culinary pantheon, this book chronicles the rise of food culture in America, beginning in the early twentieth century and running through today.  Written with a historian's eye (rather than any particular agenda), it includes stories both thrilling and tragic.  Recommended for lovers of food and American history alike.

4. The Tenth Parallel: Dispatches from the Fault Line Between Christianity and Islam, by Eliza Griswold
An unsettling, detailed, captivating narrative of the author's firsthand experiences traveling along the 10th parallel, where Islam and Christianity meet (often in appalling conflict).  Divided into two sections, Africa and Asia, the book takes an unflinching look at the history behind these conflicts and the disastrous effects they have on already struggling areas.  Griswold managed to get access to a number of people wanted as terrorists, and is quite balanced in her depiction of the fault on all sides.  For people unfamiliar with the basic teachings of Islam and Christianity, the book would be best augmented with further reading (perhaps Reza Aslan's No God But God).  An excellent and thorough book; highly recommended.

Of new projects and old revisions

As folks have probably gathered from my endless tweets about line-editing, I'm almost done tweaking The Novel - I finished marking up the hard copy version, and now I'm making those changes to the document (currently on page 84/222).  It's tedious and somewhat mindless work, but very necessary.  Once that's done, it'll go out to readers again, and hopefully I'll be ready to submit soon after that (if I ever get my query letter into working shape).

Now that I'm largely past the creative editing stage for The Novel, I think it's time to start a new project.  Honestly, I've been dying to do something new for a while, but didn't want to get distracted from The Novel.  Today I begin work on a different novel, a contemporary YA (fantasy is my first love, but I'm deeply infatuated with realistic fiction).  As a result, I'll be returning to my 1000 words per day approach, hammering out the first draft of this novel by March 1.  I do need a code name for the project - I have a title already, because it's an idea that's been kicking around in my brain for a very long time, but I need a way to refer to it casually.  A title makes it seem like a real book; while it's still a draft, it needs a moniker like "The Novel" (perhaps I should've saved that and called The Novel something different).

Back to work I go.  Merry Christmas to all who celebrate; as I'm Jewish, I'll mark the day by making brisket and writing.

The Friday Reader: Week 1

As part of my 100-Book Year, every Friday I'll post short reviews of books I've read over the past week.  This was a heavy reading week, with ten books finished; I suspect the number will drop in future weeks.  Without further ado, the Friday Reader!

Fiction
1. Feed, by M.T. Anderson
What a creepy novel - this has to be the ultimate dystopian YA.  Anderson throws you right into the world with the first line, "We went to the moon to have fun, but the moon turned out to completely suck."  Anderson invents a new language in this book, a language just close enough to English to terrify the reader, and it meg works.  Not a happy book, but it'll make you think.

2. Soulless (The Parasol Protectorate #1), by Gail Carriger
It's been a long time since I've read such an unabashedly fun book.  Okay, maybe this book was tailor-made for me, with werewolves and vampires in the bureaucracy of Victorian England, plus a fierce young spinster and a surprisingly hot romance.  When I finished it, I put it down and sat feeling gleeful, like when someone's just told you a fantastic secret.  I'm definitely getting the sequel.

3. Discord's Apple, by Carrie Vaughn
This book threw me for a loop, I must confess.  Vaughn sets up a compelling world, but I couldn't help feeling that the male lead was far more interesting and developed than the female protagonist.  The plot drew me in right away, with a near-future world on the brink of war, and it was only the main character who I didn't connect with..

4. The Lost Books of the Odyssey: A Novel, by Zachary Mason
As best I can describe, this is a twisty literary version of The Odyssey, with each chapter offering a different version of one of Odysseus's famous adventures.  Confusing and thought-provoking, it's also very well-written, so that every story Mason tells will feel like a plausible alternative.

5. A Great and Terrible Beauty, by Libba Bray
I confess a lingering disappointment that only the beginning of this book happened in colonial India.  That aside, I see why people love it - despite its length, I read this story of good old-fashioned British girls' school and tempting magic and the pressures on young women in a single sitting.  Bray doesn't take the easy way out with any of her characters' decisions, and has a knack for making even the most horrible girls seem sympathetic.

6. Citrus County, by John BrandonA lush, disturbing, captivating book.  Brandon’s characters are creatures driven by id, and they do and say the kinds of things that an ordinary person might daydream of doing.  Highly recommended.

7. Kissing the Witch: Old Tales in New Skins, by Emma Donoghue

This collection of interconnected short stories offers a different view of the heroines and witches from favorite fairy tales.  It’s a quick read, which each story leading into the next.  I appreciated Donoghue’s ability to lend depth to the archetypes of the fairy tale.  Not all the tales offer a satisfying resolution, but considering the source material, that’s almost a relief.

Nonfiction
8.  Writing Great Books for Young Adults, by Regina Brooks

This is an excellent primer on the basics of writing young adult fiction.  It’s written in a clear, accessible style and walks you through the entire process, from conceiving your story to contacting agents.  If you read a lot about writing, the information won’t be new to you, but it’s nice to have it gathered in one place.

9. On Writing, by Stephen King
Part memoir, part musings on writing, this book offers a look into the private life of an all-time bestselling author.  Confession: this is the first Stephen King book I've ever read.  I'm not a horror fan.  The advice he offers, though, is universally applicable, and after reading On Writing, I might just have to try reading one of his novels.

10. You're Not Fooling Anyone When You Take Your Laptop to a Coffee Shop: Scalzi on Writing, by John Scalzi
A book's worth of writing-related blog posts by John Scalzi.  He has lots of excellent advice to offer, but the collection of blog posts does tend to repeat certain things and can feel disorganized at times.  If you like Scalzi's blog, you'll enjoy the book; if not, steer clear.

An unintentional blog vacation

Home has distracted me so thoroughly that I've neglected this blog.  Endless line-edits have me questioning my technical writing ability as I discover each appalling phrase or brazen adverb abuse.  Also, I have to say, I can only spend so much time line-editing before I find myself skimming, skipping over a sentence or trying to claim that passive voice really enhances the mood there (hint: this is rarely true).

The great excitement, though, comes from the arrival of my beautiful new monitor.  Currently, my desk looks like this:

Twenty-four inches of beauty, that monitor.  The books you see in the background, from right to left: Self-Editing for Fiction Writers, Writing the Breakout Novel, Born to Kvetch, A Wizard's Dilemma (elevating the monitor), How to Write Attention-Grabbing Query and Cover Letters, and the corner of the 1988 edition of Berlitz: Russian for Travellers.  Books on my desk help me think, even if I'm not using them at the moment.  Russian for Travellers belongs in my collection of foreign-language dictionaries, but I don't know in which box I packed the others, so it's keeping my other books company for now.

Front and center, the binder containing The Novel.  I didn't buy any of those nifty highlighter tabby things, so I've been cutting strips of regular Post-It notes to mark every scene break (have I mentioned that I need to divide The Novel into chapters?  I really, really do).

Yes, that's a bottle of 5-Hour Energy in the corner.  I experimented with it today.  I like the feeling - a very smooth kind of energy.  I tend to compare caffeinated beverages to physical violence; coffee is like being shaken awake, tea more like someone sitting on your bed and rubbing your shoulders until you wake up.  Red Bull slaps you in the face and throws you out of bed.  Mmmm, Red Bull.  5-Hour Energy feels more like waking very suddenly from a dream and realizing it's time to get up anyway.  The initial taste nearly made me give it up (apparently lemon-lime is the worst flavor, which I believe), but once I got going, it was great.

With that, I have to head back to line edits.  I absolutely must finish before I start work.

Employment!

It's official - I will be starting a full-time job on Monday, December 27.  I'm also going to train myself to be a morning person, because 8 AM start time + 30-40 min travel time = wakeup of 6 AM.  Until then, I'm running around trying to finish everything possible while I have lots of free time - acquiring things like dishes for my future apartment, gathering evidence for my critical essay (part of my MFA application), and re-packing my stuff.

Today (after waking up at 6 AM and a 9 AM interview) I re-read both So You Want to be a Wizard and Deep Wizardry, finding relevant sections for my paper.  I'm so excited to write this paper, which means it will be a) glorious and b) waaaaaaaaaaay too long.

Tomorrow we're having roast duck and sweet potato latkes, and celebrating a very belated Hanukkah (i.e. giving gifts now that everyone is finally home).  I can't wait to start cooking!

Have now read two books for the 100-Book Year (not counting the ones listed above), and have many more to enjoy.  God, I love books.

Back in Portland!

Just a quick post today, since I've been on an airplane and am annoyingly travel-weary.  However, I have Dungeness crab to enjoy for dinner, and an excellent haul from the Cedar Mill Library to start the 100-Book Year:

The left-most pile is nonfiction; the other two piles are fiction.  Let the wild reading begin!

All my bags are packed

Today is my last day at the Office of Letters and Light.  It's been an absolute dream of an internship, and I'm sorry to leave...but I'm excited about all the new adventures awaiting me when I move to Portland.  I've spent a lot of time feeling like I was living somewhere temporarily (college, a bit of time in Portland, a bit of time in Berkeley), and I'm ready to start settling in, making commitments to volunteer and that sort of thing.  Not quite setting down roots, because I still want to be able to travel, but getting more comfortable in a place.

Plus, it'll be quite a place.  Starting in January, I'll be living within a mile of a library, a branch of Powell's Books, and a New Seasons market.  I'm planning to volunteer at FreeGeek and the Community Cycling Center too - I will be a very busy person.  As I mentioned, I'm applying for a low-residency MFA, so I'll be doing lots of writing.

For now, though, I'm double- and triple-checking my rented room for things I've forgotten and finding exciting new ways to stuff all of the OLL and NaNoWriMo gear I've acquired into my suitcases.  Any packing advice for me?

Why bother with an MFA?

For the longest time, I was dead-set against getting an MFA.  I don't ever plan to teach (I don't have the right temperament for it), so I didn't see the use of a degree, and I don't write literary fiction, so I assumed the workshop wouldn't be all that helpful.  Plus, I wasn't crazy about the idea of spending a year somewhere doing nothing but writing - I've always been the sort of writer who is most productive when she has scads of other things going on at the same time.

The solution? A low-residency MFA in Writing for Children and Young Adults.  The degree itself doesn't matter all that much to me (though if I'm going to do all that work, might as well end up with a degree, right?), but the program sounds amazing.  It's not just writing YA fiction, which I could find in a workshop - you spend a lot of time reading and critically analyzing YA fiction too, which (I think) is the key to improving your own writing.  Low-residency means 25 hours per week of study - I spend more than that writing now, so it should work very well for me.  I'm ridiculously excited to apply (and hopefully get in), partially because Shayda and Heather have been telling me how amazing it is.

Since this post is all about my path to happiness (er, and general fulfillment as a writer), I'll leave you with my favorite Surviving the World Lesson #628 - Happiness (now a sweet t-shirt).  Check it out, and tell me what you're doing lately to make your life better.

New blog feature coming soon!

I finally made the leap and bought www.noracoon.com at the urging of a certain person (a.k.a. Chris Baty).  This blog is now located there, so change your bookmarks!  For now it'll be my blog, but in time more content will appear.

I'm going to start a new blog feature as part of my 100-Book Year called the Friday Reader.  Every Friday I'll report on the books I've read over the previous week, including one-paragraph reviews of each book.  Why Friday?  Well, I'm starting my 100-Book Year on a Friday (that's when I'll pick up my books from the library for the first time), so it seems right.

The books I've read will be listed (and linked to their reviews) at The 100-Book Year on this blog.  I'm very excited to start - my only rule is that I can't count books that I re-read over the course of the year.  Beyond that, every book is fair game, no matter what the genre or length.  Okay, no picture books.  But everything else.

If you have a book to recommend, head over to The 100-Book Year and tell me - my reading tastes are outlined there.  And be sure to check out Friday Reader starting December 24!

Preparing for departure

This is my last weekend in Berkeley - I move back to Portland on Thursday - and I'm busy packing and trying to fit in everything left to do.  The packing, at least, will be moderately pleasant (once I've gotten rid of all the spiders currently living in my suitcases) because I'm planning to re-watch the third season of Doctor Who at the same time.  Yes, packing will take a bit longer, but I'm all right with that.  As a side note, I keep trying to choose a favorite season of Doctor Who and finding it impossible.  I can't even choose a favorite companion.  I empathize with all of them at different times.

Anyway.  I have a truly ridiculous number of holds at the Cedar Mill Library - 55 hold requests, 31 of them in - and I can't wait to start reading.  One of my "Big, Fun, Scary" goals is to read 100 books over a year (a year running from 12/17/2010-12/17/2011), and I'm raring to go.  Reading will be an excellent use of my 45-minute bus ride to and from work (I've never been able to write much on the bus).  I'm reading all the excellent YA fiction published over the last few years that I missed while I was doing silly things like college, plus a lot of nonfiction on food history and civilization and that kind of thing.  I'm also going to read the Oxford Annotated Bible, because I've never read it and so much of Western literature has biblical allusions that I really should.

I'm also working on my application for the Vermont College of Fine Arts MFA in Writing for Children and Young Adults.  I was dead set against getting an MFA until I found out about this program - writing and critically analyzing YA fiction, yes please! - and it's low-residency so I can work at the same time.  I'm crossing my fingers that I'll get in!  I have to write a 2-3 page critical essay about some aspect of young adult fiction, and at the moment I'm working really hard to narrow my interest area down - I could write a whole freakin' book on some of my favorite moments in YA literature.  I'm leaning towards writing about either Tamora Pierce or Diane Duane, but that's still a huge range of books to choose from, all of which I love.

The next few weeks hold all kinds of interesting things for me - what about you?  Now that NaNoWriMo is over, how will you spend your time in December?

Why I Read: A Bookish Manifesto

If you're on Twitter, you may have noticed #whyIread trending today.  Folks are tweeting all kinds of awesome answers, and though I posted my own, I thought I'd expand on it a bit in a blog post.

I'm not sure how old I was when I learned to read - my mother says I was 4, but of course I can't remember it.  Reading and writing have always been inextricably linked in my mind, and the first story I wrote at age 6 - a twelve-page "novel" featuring an orphan who lived in the wilderness with a herd of wild horses - bore some strong similarities to Walter Farley's Black Stallion series, my favorite at the time.  When I moved on to the Redwall books in 4th grade, I began a sprawling animal war story epic that topped out at 90,000 words.

Like many creative inwardly-focused kids out there, I was not highly social during my K-12 years.  Books were more reliable friends, especially when I was very young; I carried a book out to recess every day starting in second grade.  I've always been a fast reader, and as a result I re-read favorite books until I know them practically by heart.  When my family took a three-month trip to France, I was a ten-year-old who spoke mainly English.  I did befriend some local kids, but I also worked my way through the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy, secondhand paperback copies that are now so tattered that the bindings no longer hold.

I read widely, but my favorites as a kid were always fantasy or adventure novels.  Half Magic, The Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, Tamora Pierce, Philip Pullman - I'll never forget the day I finished reading The Amber Spyglass.  It had so captured me that I spent the next two hours wandering the house in a daze, my mind still with Lyra and Will.  That daze - that feeling that perhaps the world of the book is more real than the world I'm in, even for a few hours - is why I read.

Monogamy and infidelity

I used to think I was the kind of writer who could easily juggle multiple fiction projects at once.  I believed that having ideas spilling out my ears meant that I could and should be writing all of them at the same time.  What this really meant, though, was that I never pushed myself through the difficult part of whatever I was writing - whenever I hit the slightest snag, I jumped to another project.  I have an unbelievable number of ten-page starts to novels from that period (2000-2006, give or take a few months), and some that made it to fifty or a hundred pages before I ditched them.

I've finally realized that I am a monogamist when it comes to novels.  I think the last straw was this November, when I was visiting a NaNoWriMo class at Stanford.  I mentioned that I kept trying to call my NaNo main character by the wrong name (the name of The Novel's main character), and one of the professors nodded and said "You feel like you're cheating on your novel."  I hadn't thought of it that way before, but it's quite true.  My previous approach was akin to someone who, after his/her first argument with a significant other, goes out and starts dating someone else.  Immediately.

Beyond the unpleasant simile, I can't bring the same level of focus to a project if, in the back of my mind, I'm allowing myself to run with other ideas at the same time.  How do I avoid it?  I keep a single document (currently labeled "muddley", used to be called "bits and pieces" or "dumb stuff"), and when I get an idea, I dump it in there.  I'm allowed to elaborate up to one page's worth, and then that's it, and I close the document.  It's currently 62 pages long.  Honestly, I've never taken something out of that document.  If an idea has a strong enough grasp on my mind, it lurks there until I finish my current project, and then it demands attention.

Of course, sometimes I have to step back from a novel - say, if I've just finished a new version and need to let it sit before revising.  It does feel unfaithful, moving straight to another project, but there's no way around it.  Now that I've gotten well and truly into the habit of writing every day, I'm not about to let myself break that habit.

What about all of you out there?  Do you favor monogamy or polygamy (polyandry?) when it comes to writing, or are you more of a casual dater?  I think I've officially broken the simile.

Revising, ever revising

Revisions to The Novel have been going startlingly well.  Of course, since I expected them to be only slightly more pleasant than the removal of my wisdom teeth, that's not saying much.  What is a big deal: I have enjoyed making many of these changes.  For one thing, I've been dying to work on The Novel all of November, and it's nice to go back to a story that I know in and out.  For another, every revision improves The Novel, and seeing it change for the better is excellent incentive to keep working.  And of course the revision duel with Shayda Bakhshi keeps the pressure on.

I'm almost done with the specific revisions (things like "cut this minor character" or "explain this").  I get to add a big chunk in the middle, which makes me so happy - stuff I knew but kept out that my readers told me to put in - and then there's a section near the end that has to be judiciously trimmed.  Why?  Well, when a reader says that it "reminded me too much of Deathly Hallows", i.e. the bit when Harry & co. wander around England, it's time to start trimming and distilling those scenes down to their essential kernels.  I think that's the only section where I forgot that while novels should be realistic, they can fast-forward and summarize a day of walking in a single sentence rather than describing it in excruciating detail.

I'm trying to finish this round of revisions by Dec. 16, when I move back to Portland.  Then - when I have access to a printer - I will print out a copy and execute Holly Lisle's one-pass revision method.  Yes, this will be about the third pass, but I hadn't seen her method before now.  I think it'll be helpful to look at the novel as a whole, rather than considering individual scenes.  Once that's done (time and work willing, mid-January), it'll go out to readers again.  At which point I can begin writing something else.

Anyone else revising?  My NaNo novel is safely hidden away, but perhaps next year I'll start cutting it down.

Sirens!

First off, you may notice the blog has a slightly different look - I thought it was time for a little sprucing.

Second, and much more exciting, I've just registered to attend Sirens in October.  I have my ticket and my flight - I'm waiting to see if I can lure a few other people along before I book my lodging.  I'm thrilled to be going, and now I can start brainstorming proposal ideas.  The theme is monsters and monstrousness, and I think my real difficulty will be narrowing down my interests into a single paper proposal.  Oh boy.

Still revising The Novel (that'll probably be true for a while).  After I finish this round of revisions, I'll print it out and mark it up, scene by scene.  I think my NaNo-enforced break from The Novel was the perfect length of time, because I am back in love with this book.

Fun writing tool: 750 Words

I've finally tried out a very neat writing tool that someone told me about a while ago: 750 Words.  Basically, you write at least 750 words every day into the site.  You get points for every day you write; as far as I can tell, these points don't have any real value, but they're nice.  The key, though, is that it's a place to write anything - you can later download your writing (if you want) from the clean, simple interface.  Your writing is private, so there's none of the "whoops, forgot to lock this blog entry" that could happen.  Personally, I'm using it to contemplate the day's revisions before I get started - 750 words is just about right for me to work out my revision issues.  If I need to access it later, I can, but I'm writing for the conclusion that I reach, not the words to get there.

You can even set it to send you email reminders at a certain time each day, which I find charming.  I'd recommend it to anyone who means to write daily but forgets, and to anyone missing NaNoWriMo.  750 Words even has little badges for streaks of successful writing.  It's lower pressure (and, I think, more fun) than WriteorDie.  Check it out: 750 Words.

Back to revision

NaNoWriMo is officially over, and it's time to return to revisions.  I suppose I could take a break, but I finished my NaNo novel on November 15 - I've had enough of a break.  I have comments from three different readers to guide me through my cleanup of this new draft (it's the seventh or eighth iteration of the story, but only the second truly completed draft).  I've made a list of all the key revisions I need to complete before I send The Novel out to readers again, and it's...surprisingly not terrifying.  In fact, it's rather inspiring.  Every single revision will make my novel stronger.

The current Wordle display of The Novel's text.

Of course, one third of my critique group - Shayda Bakhshi - has challenged me to a fifteen-day revision duel.  Neither of us are entirely sure what this entails, but competition is the best way to keep me motivated, and the next fifteen days will be perfect for revision.  On the 16th day, I'll be moving to Portland! (More on that in a later post, when everything has been ironed out).  With some serious work, I could be done with all the minor revisions and one or two of the significant revisions by then.

I think my month-long break from The Novel will help me fix it even more.  Yes, I did spend the first week of NaNoWriMo repeatedly calling my NaNo main character, Abby, by The Novel main character's name, Meriwether.  However, they are very different people, and I confess I understand Meri so well at this point that I could probably write her in just about any scene - I don't think I'll have much trouble slipping into her mindset for revisions.

Finally, something on the horizon that I'd be absolutely thrilled to attend: Sirens, a conference devoted to women in fantasy literature.  Scholarly presentations on women in fantasy, plus networking and the possibility of skiing?  Yes, please.  I might even have to submit a proposal, though of course I'd have to write one first.

For now, though, life is far more mundane.  Off to find something to throw at the massive spider lurking in my shower to scare it back into hiding.