(I did see Christmas decorations at Duane Reade, though, so I do suppose it’s also that time of year, but the NaNo time of year is far more important.)

This morning I am at 18,955 words. I sprinted through the first few days and now I am in the midst of a tough scene, which has me stalled. Must push through! Several factors have helped me with my word count thus far: the first is that I conceived this story in its current form in 2007 and haven’t had the excuse, chance, or energy to do more than outline it in all that time. I’m working off of an outline but I’ve also held scenes in all of their vivid, visual clarity in my head for far longer than I really ought to have. I have a strangely visual memory when it comes to imaginary things. (Like, when I recount the plot of a novel to someone, I actually imagine the strings of images my brain put together and rebuild the story from those images.) I’m a weird duck.

The next factor is I was diagnosed with a case of bronchitis last Friday, October 30th, so by the time midnight between October 31st and November 1st rolled around, I was at home coughing up a lung and bored. So I started writing. (Getting two thousand words before bed was… exhilarating.) I spent all of Sunday writing (my friend and I even attempted to squeeze in at the Manhattan Write-in but it was stuffed full of people, so we went to an adorable little tea shop instead with the laptops.) Monday I took off from work and sat around, hacking and writing in tandem. Tuesday I was in the midst of an incredible scene. Then another, then another. Thus… 18,955 words. I had told myself I’d hit 20,000 yesterday but the Yankees decided they were going to absolutely kill the Phillies and I was torn the whole time between writing and rooting for the Phillies — yes I am a New Yorker but sometimes it’s no fun to root for the winning team! — and so I sort of stalled. That and I found I was prematurely digging into the meat of the story that I really need to wait on, so I actually need to backtrack and rewrite a little, then resume the forward momentum. That can be the hardest part of NaNoWriMo for me: I write fastest and best when I write compelling, exciting, integral scenes, and while I try to always write that way, it doesn’t happen like that in a first draft. No matter how well I outline there are still boring little bits (to me) that I slog through. I’m also a perfectionist, so first drafts drive me a little crazy there, too. I hesitate over a sentence if it’s not, well, good enough. But NaNo at least gives me the freedom to say, “Yes, it’s not good enough, just keep going and get it all out!” There’s really literary abandon in that, and I love it.

It’s exciting times, November. Can’t wait to get back to it.

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• Vanished by Kat Richardson
• Bad Moon Rising by Sherrilyn Kenyon
• Naamah’s Kiss by Jacqueline Carey
• Big Bad Wolf by Christine Warren
• Demon’s Kiss by Maggie Shayne

I’ve also started reading a collection of Sherlock Holmes stories by Arthur Conan Doyle. Never read any of them until now, and I love them. Love.

Writing Accomplishments

A few thousand words in my WIP. Tons of editing and polishing work. Completely and entirely reworked whole chapters and plot points. It feels good.

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You have quite a devoted following. As you write, do you consider what your fans will think? Is that a consideration?

It’s a consideration, but it’s not the first one. The first one is ‘What’s cool?’ If I think something is cool, then other people will too, because I’m a fan. Something that makes me go ‘Ohh, tingly,’ that’s something that other people will share. I am the audience. When you’re thinking about the fans, you’re more thinking about ‘What do we not have enough of?’ and ‘Where do we need to be next, emotionally?’ But beyond that, you’re thinking ‘What makes me excited, what’s wrong with me, and how cool is that?’ It’s a playground.

What an energizing way to think of writing! As a playground. Obviously the medium of television is different from novels (or films, etc), but all writing reaches some kind of audience. But how conscious are all writers about that audience? How does that perception of the audience change as it grows from something vague (for a new writer) to a vocal group of devoted fans (for someone like Whedon)? I know some writers have added material, gone in new directions, or spurned input from fans when it comes to very popular media with devoted fan followings (e.g. the inclusion of fan-favorite details in the new trilogy of the Star Wars films). I like Whedon’s reaction: he’s not going to shape plots exclusively based on fan reaction, but at the same time, he’s a fan, too…

I’ve been told a few times that as long as you’re writing something that gets you excited and you’re having fun writing it, that eagerness and enthusiasm for the material will come through to your audience. It’s something I notice starkly with my non-fiction (especially in school): when I’m enthusiastic about the subject matter, the manner of voice and tone I adopt to write about it changes drastically from when I am ambivalent or apathetic on the topic. With fiction, the line is finer, and can sometimes vary from scene to scene, chapter to chapter. If one chapter’s writing is sharper, snappier, more exact than another’s, that’s a clear marker for me for revision. Every scene needs to matter to be in the book, but for it to qualify, it really needs to matter on a visceral level.

The bit I quoted struck me mostly because I’m always concerned about my audience — I’m incapable of writing anything without imagining even an amorphous audience. Often I find myself imagining my[precocious know-it-all of a twelve-year-old]self as my audience, but just as often I think of any number of people I know, or have known, reading it and responding to it differently. I’ve heard [a few] writers say they don’t care about what others think about their writing. To some degree, I write for myself, but I don’t only write for myself. I write for the girl I used to be, wanting a book like this to read. I write for the teenager I was, desperate for an enthralling fantasy. I write for every writing teacher I’ve ever had (and yes, I can almost hear their commentary as I edit, recalling what each of them taught me in their own ways). I write for librarians, I write for parents. I write for my family, for their reactions when they finally get the hands on the books I’ve been puttering around in for years. I write for people I’ve never met and may never meet, but who may one day pick up my book and be struck by it. I’m not really even conscious of this…but at the same time, I’m entirely conscious of it.

So what are your thoughts on this? How conscious are you about audience as you write? Does it change depending on your genre or specific project?

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Last year was tough because I hadn’t really sat down with the discipline of writing an entire novel that quickly before (I’d done a chapter here and a chapter there for ages). It was crucial, though, because it taught me the limits of my discipline in a very organized, documented way. I understood under which circumstances the words flowed for me, and under which I struggled. (Knowing that now helps me with my current project. When I get stuck, I use the tricks I taught myself during last NaNo.)

Strangely enough, this last January was more or less JaNoWriMo for me (ha). I started a project vaguely between January 6-10 and had more than 50,000 words by January’s end. That furious pace continued until I had to set aside it for wedding stuff by March. Since then, I’d say I’ve also been writing a lot more in 2009 than I did in both 2008 and 2007 — it’s amazing, really, what I’ve actually written this year — so I’m eager to see what kind of pace I can maintain this November. Past success doesn’t guarantee anything, though. I still need an idea (starting with nothing on November 1st isn’t going to go over well!) and I’d had one by this time last year. If I don’t have one by October 1st, I’ll start worrying. By November 1st, though, it’s kamikaze novel writing time.

The other problem is this — what if I’m still up to my eyeballs in my current draft? Could there be any way for me to work on more than one that month? Probably not. If Things of Importance start happening with my current project, NaNo may have to fall by the wayside. In which case… gah. It’d be both a good and sad thing. Primarily good, though, because Things of Importance are really more important to me.

I tried NaNo first in 2002 and then again in 2007. Both times I gave up by the first week. The two unchangeable problems of November for me are my birthday and Thanksgiving; both occasions usually drag me away from my computer for some time. Ideally in NaNoWriMo you need to stay on pace (”pace” is at least 1,667 words a day — which isn’t asking too much, to be honest) in order to comfortably hit 50,000 words. Last year I had some days of 600 words then days of 6,000 words, which was somewhat absurd, but then again, I have days like that as a regular writer, even when I’m not trying to go for a goal as pointed as 50,000 in a month. I’m also an admitted procrastinator. That also influenced the way my month went. (For the image I posted: Red indicates “under pace”; green indicates “over pace”; and gray indicates “on pace”. Note: It says “30 days left” because it’s not yet November 2009 and the images I snagged from last year are a bit wonky, as they’re half updated; I snagged a bunch last year but I forgot where I saved them. Brilliant…)

I’m a writer but not everyone who participates in NaNoWriMo is, or at least is for their day-job. Anyone can do it. Anyone who reads has a good idea of how to start writing. A bunch of people I know personally are planning to attempt NaNoWriMo this year. Kamikaze novel writing with a collective group of people who’ve chosen to do this — there’s nothing like it. If you’ve never done it before, you really ought to consider signing up on the website (you can do that today!) and getting ready for the insanity to begin at 12am November 1st. Or 9am, or 5pm, really — the whole idea of NaNoWriMo is to set the goal for yourself, monitor yourself, and report your own word count on the honor system. So it’s entirely up to you.

Are you planning to do it? (Say yes!) Have you already been thinking about it, or are you considering it now? I bet you’ll have fun if you do it… Shameless non-profit promotion? Who, me?

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I have to post today, if for no other reason than to electronically shout, “September 9, 2009 — 09/09/09!?” and giggle. When the year 2000 came upon me, it was something of an amusing idea that the next twelve years would be filled with one day a year of “02/02/02″ and other such dates of default awesome. Once we have 12/12/12, though, that’s it for a century. I used to think that meant I was living in special, auspicious times. Perhaps numerically, that’s still true.

Today was another significant day around the neighborhood, though it mostly passed me by. Dozens of school children were on the neighborhood streets today. It was the first day today for most of them, which always makes me feel old now a days. I get nostalgic, too; I actually glanced at kids’ sneakers and backpacks today and yes, they were all brilliantly un-scuffed and hardly worn. As a kid, that was always my favorite aspect of going back to school — the new stuff. New clothes, new shoes. For years I’d had to get a new pair of school sneakers (had to have them for gym class) every year and retire the old ones, which always struck me as both a fun rite of passage but also something of a sad one. I have fond memories of some of those shoes. One pair I’d worn mostly to pieces; years later I found sand and grit still embedded in the blue canvas fiber, leftover from all the times I’d gone sloshing in summer mud with them.

In other update-type news, I’ve been busy. I’ve been rereading some stuff and writing — writing a lot and often — which has been both successful and marvelous, but I do admit, part of me wishes I had both the time and the inclination to read as many new books as I did months ago. In 2007 and 2008, for instance, I devoured book after book on a weekly, if not occasionally daily, basis. But I think my college-starved voracity has stabilized.

(I didn’t read for pleasure in college — at all — until some time during my senior year, which left me feeling quite vaguely bereft until I got my New York Public Library card and its attendant addictive benefits. Studying abroad was probably what ignited the passion for reading once more; turns out when you don’t have a TV in your dorm room in a country where the TV is also not in your native language, but you discover their bookstores carry English language books… well. The rest is chronicled in back entries of this blog.)

I’ve actually been buying books lately, too. For a writer, I don’t really own as many books as I’ve read, which has always struck me as practical (I love my library and my library card!) but also a bit strange. I actually started acquiring new additions to my permanent collection for the simple reason that I wanted to reread them and well, that’s usually my only criteria for a bookstore run. If I’m going to read a book more than once, I will own it, otherwise it’s wasted shelf space. I suppose this means my permanent collection is very well-distilled, by default — only what I consider “good” or those books I’ve gotten as gifts usually end up there. The bookshelf it’s currently piled on (a Billy bookshelf from IKEA, a classic) has shelves stacked two rows deep. We should probably invest in a second bookshelf — well, technically the collection has spilled onto other shelves, but I’m not going to count those — but meh. I know where all of my books are, even if the 800+ page ones are stuffed in the back behind the 300 page ones. (Spine-reading efficiency, you understand; my entire bookshelf is categorized by sizes and shapes, then author and genre. Aesthetics come first on the bookshelf.)

September is probably my month of nostalgia. I do feel it, a little, in May and December (May for school, December for holidays and the new year), but in September that feeling is compounded by my love of learning. I do miss school, the regimented feel of it, the focus and definition it gave me, though strangely I really have no particular desire to go back there now. I just miss the first day of eighth grade. The first day of second grade. Those first days when the binders were too new to have broken rings, when you could make promises to yourself you’d end up breaking  (”I’ll do my homework this year the moment I get home. I won’t procrastinate.”) and you could at least try to reinvent yourself. I have no desire for any of those things now a days, not really, but there’s no real “first day” for me anymore, not in the same way. January 1st is just cold. I think I’m finally starting to understand why parents make such a big deal out of the first day of school for their kids. Maybe the importance of the ritual, the time of year, the newness and excitement of it all isn’t just for their kids.

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I plunged back into my most recent draft with a renewed fervor. I’ve been rewriting it and it’s been going very well! The rewrite has taken it in a few slightly altered directions but it’s all for the best, I think. The world is very vivid this time around, and it’s much easier for me to dig into it. I think I needed the bit of mental break I’d taken when I worked on another document for a while. Coming back to this one now feels great.

Reading Accomplishments

• Santa Olivia by Jacqueline Carey
• Destined for an Early Grave by Jeaniene Frost

I also listened to Carrie Vaughn’s Kitty and the Midnight Hour and Kitty Goes to Washington on audiobook, prompting me to continue reading the series over again (I’m on Kitty and the Silver Bullet now).

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I’ve been switching between several different drafts. I’ve started fresh rewrites of two of them, and I’m working on deepening the backstory and streamlining the history of the linked stories. It’s a lot of work but not as much actual word count progress as I’d like, but I am still proud of what I’ve been getting done.

Reading Accomplishments

• Dead and Gone by Charlaine Harris (Sookie Stackhouse #9)
• Innocent Mage by Karen Miller
• Awakened Mage by Karen Miller

I also listened to Kushiel’s Dart and Kushiel’s Chosen on audiobook.

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I’m now approximately halfway through my re-write of my current draft. It’s been going slowly the last week or so because of a ton of life issues that have cropped up all of a sudden but I have hopes that things will get back on track this week.

Reading Accomplishments

Firstly, I’ve gotten Bryan to read a lot of books this month via audiobook and even via regular book. Our honeymoon cruise mid-month helped with that, I think. Otherwise my main reading accomplishment were the first three several-hundred-page epic volumes of Jacqueline Carey’s Kushiel’s Legacy series, which were excellent and highly recommended:

• Kushiel’s Dart
• Kushiel’s Chosen
• Kushiel’s Avatar

Plus I listened to a few books I’ve already read on audiobook:

• Acheron by Sherrilyn Kenyon
• Night Pleasures by Sherrilyn Kenyon

June will be a good month. I’m looking forward to True Blood’s return to HBO and the start of my part-time job as well as the lovely calm that will now (hopefully) descend as a result of our endless wedding celebrations finally being over.

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Writing Accomplishments

Lots of editing & some new writing! I’ve started rewriting the book’s backstory and outline, bigtime, changing the motivations/history aspects of the plot, though the main story idea is still the same (but now with deeper and more logical connections between the characters and the backstory/present action)! Woohoo!

Yes! I am back on track!

Reading Accomplishments

• Iron Kissed by Patricia Briggs
• Magic Strikes by Ilona Andrews
• Curse the Dawn by Karen Chance
• Living with the Dead by Kelley Armstrong

I listened to the audiobooks of two books I’ve read before: Magic Bites & Magic Burns, by Ilona Andrews, as well as the audiobook of Rhapsody by Elizabeth Haydon, which I’ve read a few times.

I’m also about halfway through Kushiel’s Dart by Jacqueline Carey.

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I was declared “Proficient” in the French language in 8^th grade, when I was thirteen. By fifteen, New York State’s Board of Regents declared me almost perfect on their exam with a score of 98 out of 100. So by high school academic standards, I was pretty good at listening, speaking, reading, and writing French. One of the best experiences I’d had in high school French was the speaking part of the Regents Exam. The teacher read a card with a scenario/question and I had to respond and have a mini conversation. The scenario was, in French, that aliens had landed on Earth and I had to go back to the Important People and describe the aliens to them, to answer their questions regarding the aliens — the descriptions of which I had to pull out of my head. Creatively describe aliens in French? It was an awesome exam question and I was utterly thrilled with myself afterward.

Yes, I got excited regarding an exam. Yes, I have been and am a very large nerd.

College French class, however, was a kick to the teeth. I realized then any sort of fluency I’d pretended to was really my own bloated ego’s desire to be seen as having accomplished such a thing as “fluency”, but it was far from the reality. Fluency means you can carry on a conversation. French sputtered and died on my tongue. Fluency means you can write sentences… without halting every two words and skimming through the grayed recesses of dusty memories for that verb tense or that noun. Really, I was barely fluent.

But the difference, by the end of that semester of intermediate — yes, intermediate — French was astounding… when it came to two things: reading comprehension and writing. I am a grammar whiz, and foreign language grammar is no different. Teach me a rule, its corresponding logic in English, and I’ve got the rule down. Teach me a word, however, and I’ll forget it within a day unless it’s repeated with driven intensity into my skull through a song or repeated phrase. (“Un, deux, trios, pretty mama… quatre, cinq, six, I miss you!” or so sings Bryan on occasion; I’ve no idea where it’s from, but it sticks, even to him, the boy to whom no languages stick.)

Reading comprehension was little different from grammar for me; I’d make a lot of educated assumptions based on context and verbs and grammar rules and, provided some key vocabulary was not above my ability, I’d generally get the idea enough to turn around and argue it in an essay. We read Tocqueville and I read Tocqueville and understood it. I thought I’d finally accomplished something with language learning.

Speaking, however, was and is a different matter.

Forget for a moment that I have bouts of anxiety-driven “stage fright.” (I shook with anxiety through every speech I’ve ever given.) Speaking French was hard for me mainly because I am a visual learner and there is nothing visual in my brain about speaking. Call me crazy but I need to see a word spelled out on the page before I can comprehend it if it’s a new word or a homonym or attempted homonyms.The problem with listening and speaking French is that half the entire language, it seems, can be silent at one point or another, or sound like something completely different than what it is. Les pommes rouges, les jeunes filles — you don’t hear the plural except for the pronunciation of “les” (“lay”) thus without catching the signifying article, you can easily mistake a plural for a singular. That was the absolute least of my issues, but it was a big enough one that when I took the AP Exam in French, I knew it was a doomed endeavor. (Before I was sitting in the room I’d managed to convince myself it wasn’t doomed. Let alone the fact that our teacher for it was more or less a buffoon who toyed around with yahoo.fr instead of actually teaching us…)

So any gains I’d made with my French were always hopelessly torn asunder, in my mind, by my inability to be a well-rounded student. Forever doomed to reading and writing it — and what good, I kept thinking, would that do in France?

A lot, let me tell you.

Traveling to France made me feel a lot better and prouder of my ability with French because I realized that being able to read signs, maps, menus, instructions, and the like is half the tourist battle. The other half is having the gumption to follow through, meaning once you read the menu and understand what’s on it, you have to have the courage to attempt to order it from the waiter. Which naturally does involve some speaking and listening, but hey, it’s contextual after that. Thus I spent a few days in Paris alone, learning at least as much as I had in a year of high school French just by reading everything constantly. Even today, I navigated to Yahoo.fr (which apparently comes http://fr.yahoo.com) and I could read and understand the stories on the main page. If not every single word, enough from context, grammar, and photo to get the article. (Thank goodness, too, for cognates, words that look enough like their English counterparts as to help with vocab — like “célèbre”, “musique”, etc.) Heck, one of the headlines on the entertainment French Yahoo page was “La dé-li-rante parodie de “Twilight”… avec un cheeseburger dans le rôle de Bella ! Regardez !!!” Naturally my interest was piqued and I found this video, which was well worth the time spent browsing. Oh, how I enjoy especially the article, which says,

Avec un gros zeste d’humour, un soupçon de moyens et un plaisir sans borne, l’histoire d’amour entre le vampire Edward (Robert Pattinson) et l’humaine Bella (Kristen Stewart) se transforme en une folle attirance entre un jeune homme gourmand montant aux arbres et un délicieux… cheeseburger !

Which is so much more enjoyable in French than it would be in English. If you can’t read French, it doesn’t matter — the only important part of that whole paragraph is the last bit, how the satire is the story of a young gourmand who climbs trees and “un délicieux… cheeseburger!” Yes, Bella as a delicious cheeseburger. (Twilight now makes sense! Bella was a cheeseburger all along! Who could resist sitting next to that in biology without having a visceral reaction?!)

So in essence, I can’t speak French, but I can read and certainly enjoy it. A victory? Perhaps. Am I fluent? I still wouldn’t claim to be but I suppose I can be satisfied. 

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