10.31.11

Here we are on the brink of another NaNoWriMo.  You can find me on the site, if you like.  I've talked (well, written) about how valuable I think NaNoWriMo is - the idea of making writing accessible to everyone, even if you were told as a kid that writing is a waste of time or that there's no point doing it if you can't be a bestseller, the value of doing something without setting lofty expectations of yourself.  Now that I don't need it to get past crushing perfectionism anymore, NaNo is just fun.  To me, the start of NaNo feels like one of those glorious fall days when you step outside and your feet bounce a little and before you know it you're bounding down the sidewalk feeling like you'll never get tired, because it's cold and the sun is shining and why on earth wouldn't you keep running forever?

This will be my seventh year, albeit the first one in which I don't stay up to begin my novel at the crack of midnight.  I guess this is what adulthood feels like?  I'm going to bed at a reasonable hour tonight so I can wake up early and write for at least an hour before I go to work.  I think most of my noveling time will be carved out of those early hours.

Like last year, my novel's been rattling around in my brain for a while now - probably since this summer?  I know the characters very well, the setting intimately, and the plot not at all.  It's how I write most things.  I don't quite have a playlist set up yet, but when I'm really focused on writing I barely notice what's playing.  Most notably, last year I listened to Cascada's "Everytime We Touch"[sic] approximately 200 times because I turned it on while working on a single scene and then failed to realize that it was on repeat.  My brain tends to translate it back into noise.

Good luck to all the other NaNo folk out there.  It should be a fantastic month!

Preparing for NaNoWriMo, Part One

If you've read Chris Baty's No Plot? No Problem! (the guide to NaNoWriMo, written by the creator of said event), you probably remember his suggestion that would-be novelists draft a noveling "Magna Carta", a list of all the components they appreciate in a novel, as well as a second list of all the components they dislike in novels.  I know I've done this in the past, but a cursory look through the October blog archives doesn't turn anything up (I wanted to see how my tastes have changed).  However, here's part one of my list - some of the qualities I particularly enjoy in novels.  Coming sometime this week, part two!

- magical realism.  Hints of the uncanny, Das Unheimliche, people with inexplicable knacks or talents, strange events or occurrences that everyone accepts or intuitively understands -all without the burden of strict scientific, magical, or religious explanations.

- places so strongly characterized they're almost alive, whether buildings, neighborhoods, tracts of land, small towns, or even a beloved city.  Extra points if that place is somewhere in Oregon or Iowa.

- families that don't quite work, for whatever reason.  Preferably not because of a situation in which one parent is the villain (i.e. outright abuse); I prefer it when everyone is trying, at least to some extent, and the family dynamic just won't work anyway.

- characters with their own moral code to which they adhere firmly.  Whether it's "I won't kill", "I won't use guns", "I don't hurt animals", "I only kill criminals"...you get the idea.

- romantic plotlines in which one or both characters are firmly convinced that the other doesn't share his/her feelings and probably doesn't even like him/her.  See North & South for a shining example.

- characters trying to live normal lives with mental or physical illness.  Does not count if the illness is just a symptom of magical powers.

- families that are constructed through friendship or circumstance, rather than grown organically through blood ties.

- unshaken love, in a non-stalkery way; the quiet fact of one person caring for another, no matters what happens, without demanding anything in return.  You've read Sonnet 116, right? "Love is not love/which alters when it alteration finds,/Or bends with the remover to remove/Oh no! It is an ever-fixed mark/That looks on tempests and is never shaken."  That Shakespeare guy knew what he was talking about.

- faithful enemies, as described in The Giaour: "Friends meet to part; love laughs at faith;/True foes, once met, are joined 'til death!"

- stoic characters.  Characters out of touch with their own feelings, whether by necessity or by choice.

- mentor figures.  Particularly in the absence of good parental figures

Sirens, Female Protagonists, and Other Stuff

I've been putting off a conference write-up of Sirens, because it was so big and amazing that it's hard for me to condense it into a few hundreds words.  As best I can describe it, it was a lot like being at college, if every class were about discussing your favorite books and all of your classmates were really excited instead of being half-asleep and texting under the table.

The presentations are incredible, the guests of honor are friendly and strangely accessible for being immensely talented people (Laini Taylor! Justine Larbalestier! Nnedi Okorafor! surprise appearance by Sarah Rees Brennan!), and the general atmosphere is one of sheer glee at getting to spend a long weekend discussing women in fantasy literature.  I'm already signed up for next year's conference - conveniently located at Skamania Lodge, right near my hometown of Portland.  Unless you a) hate women or b) hate books, you should probably go too.

In related news, I've read a few books lately - young adult, I guess what you'd call fantasy or paranormal romance - that came highly recommended.  I'm afraid I didn't much like them, and I think I can identify why: the protagonist.

Look, I understand that we do dumb, not-entirely-rational stuff as teenagers.  Believe me, it's only been a few years since I was a teenager.  I know that crushes, in particular, are totally irrational.  But I have now read multiple books in which the female protagonist's thought process seems to be as follows:

"He's hot!  But he might be evil!  He's soooooo sexy!  But he's hurting people I care about!  BUT I WANT TO MAKE OUT UNDER THE BLEACHERS SO SCREW EVERYONE ELSE."

Conflict is compelling, it's true.  Conflict is less compelling when no person who actually cared about her family/friends/dog/whatever would be conflicted.  There's nothing wrong with a romantic interest whose motives are questionable (and I don't mean in the "what are your intentions towards my daughter" sense), and I'm happy to see characters change their minds like human beings instead of locking onto a course of action and pursuing it Terminator-style.  I just wish that authors would make their female protagonists look a little more closely at how they're justifying drooling over a dude who takes pleasure in hurting people (if you want to see this done well, read The Demon's Lexicon trilogy by the aforementioned Sarah Rees Brennan).  I keep reading this massive logic gap, where a girl thinks "That dude [kills people/keeps luring me into abandoned rooms where no one would find my body/is horrible to my mother/whatever].  I am in love with that dude" and sees no logical flaw.  Ugh.

Anyway.  Not really making a point, just expressing a desire to see more complex thought processes in teenage girl protagonists.  This is what happens, you go to Sirens and you start expecting all female characters to be three-dimensional and human.

Birthday (and work) tomorrow, so I'm off to bed.  Stop reading this post and go to the semi-secret link to sign up for Sirens 2012!

October: Best Month of the Year, or Best Month EVER?

I've long thought that October is the best month of the year.  I'm not a warm-weather person, and though I'm tired of the rain by mid-November, it's always fresh and new and exciting in October, and the sky still seems bright grey instead of awful and dull.  And it's nice to walk outside with rain sprinkling on your face (not pouring like it does elsewhere).

Also, of course, there's my BIRTHDAY, followed closely by HALLOWEEN.  Plus, it's the month preceding National Novel Writing Month, which means there's a delightful rush of novel-planning and preparation.  In election years, October is the month of madness and 20-hour days of phone-banking and door-knocking.

This October, I've got Sirens with the inimitable Shayda Bakhshi.  I haven't nearly figured out what to write for NaNoWriMo, and (in non-writing-related news), I have my own office at work!


Otherwise, in a shocking twist of events, I continue to revise my novel.  Someday this thing will actually be up to my standards.