Nanowrimo update 1

Fourteen days until Nanowrimo, and my pre-Nano planning is going very well. So far I've basically figured out why my character lives forever (though I need to figure out if moon soil is actually fertile, and if so, how does it compare to earth soil?) and my plot has progressed from a simple character study to a revolutionary sci-fi tale about a reluctant leader who perhaps just created utopia without meaning to. ("Revolutionary sci-fi tale" meaning a sci-fi tale about a revolution. I doubt the story will change anyone's life except mine.)
I plan on updating as things progress, and especially as Nanowrimo itself gets into full swing. Though how I'm going to manage updating a blog when I'm supposed to be writing 2,000 words a day on top of school and work and life:other, is anybody's guess.

Procrastination

...does wonders for a blog.

I am technically supposed to be working on homework while the husband is not here to distract me, but I am instead blogging, reading other people's blogs, and listening to Peter and the Wolf narrated by none other than David Bowie! Nice, eh? I'm also wondering what I'm going to do for NaNoWriMo, and if I'm really crazy enough to actually sit down November 1st having no prior idea of what I'm to write. Which is one of the options. But I'm definitely buying the t-shirt. Actually, the t-shirt I'm buying first is technically my reward for winning last year. Then I'll need to buy a t-shirt for winning this year. You know, if I do. But I might not get around to that until next year.

Girl Genius

I have always been an ardent supporter of Agatha/Gil. Tarvek is endearing, but he just doesn't bring out Agatha's best qualities, and there is always the question of his loyalty. Admittedly Gil has more to gain from betraying Agatha (you know, once he has her trust to possibly betray), but it's been made clear time and time again that he will always choose her over his own father, whereas Tarvek clearly has yet to prove himself so solidly.

And then I read today's comic, and I began to glimpse what exactly a world with Gil and Agatha at the head of it would be like. And I admit I am afraid.

Granted they mean well (mostly). And they are brave, and have strong personalities with natural leadership abilities. But they are both sparks, mad scientists, and fiddling around with the boundaries of life and death is not only fun, it's what makes life worth living. Now that they're finally working together, they're starting to feed off each other, and it's making me nervous (in a good way, naturally). What's going to happen when they finally get married and rule the world? They'll be up all night working on their latest unholy creation, and I shudder to think what sort of children they'll have. (Wouldn't Count Wulfenbach make a great grandda?) It's almost enough to make me think she'd be better off with Tarvek, who, once he proves where his loyalties lie once and for all, would probably calm her down somewhat.

But only almost.

Yay Gil and Agatha!

P.S. I promise the men in this comic keep their shirts on most of the time. She was just bandaging him up. I promise. If you don't believe me, go back to the beginning and read the whole thing. You should probably do that anyway, to even understand what I'm talking about here. Go ahead, I'll wait.

Thinking About Books: Moon Called

My husband won't take a book I've recommended until I can convince him it has enough action to keep him interested. His movies must have at least one explosion and a fight scene, the more the merrier. Needless to say, I don't share his requirements. The only action I care about in a story is the interaction between characters. All the car-chases and explosions in the world won't do it for me if there isn't some corresponding sparks between the people driving the cars or setting off the explosions. That isn't to say I mind the excitement and thrill of watching something blow up. But without human interest, I lose interest. Both combined, though, makes for a completely irresistible tale. Patricia Briggs' book Moon Called has both in abundance.

It's got all the major supernatural creatures in it, as well as a few extras for fun: Werewolves, vampires, fae, and skinwalkers, or Native American shapechangers, which is what the main character, Mercedes Thompson, is. It's also got lots of action (nothing blows up, though). I guess part of the reason I like this book so much is because of the perfect blend of suspense, the supernatural, a hint of romance, and humor enough to keep the scary parts from going overboard. I enjoy anything done well, even something I don't normally go in for, like politics (who knew werewolf packs had politics- and that they were so interesting?). But I think the reason the action was so satisfying to me is that when you get together creatures like werewolves, vampires, and a feisty girl who can turn into a coyote, (and a father whose daughter has been kidnapped), you expect a little violence.

(It occurs to me that this is one of the reasons Twilight and its sequels were so unsatisfying. {Among many, many others.} You get a human girl who's torn between loving a werewolf and a vampire, and they never actually fight? What a rip-off. Even two human guys both interested in a girl come to blows a lot of the time. And don't even get me started on the lack of violence in the last book. Just don't.)

It's really satisfying to see so much world building, too. And I don't just mean fitting werewolves etc. into the human world. Even really good fantasy writers sometimes look a little too much like they're showing off how much work went into creating a world. (See The Rule of Cool for why this doesn't always bother me.) Here the world building looks more like character building. Every character has a rich, detailed history which also adds to the plot. It's not like those pitiful novels where you go the whole book thinking you know everything and then suddenly the main character knows exactly how to disable the bomb and then the credits roll, and you never even make it to the refrigerator. Instead, the author will teasingly mention that the main character was raised by werewolves, which explains why she knows so much about them, but then not say anything more about it for a whole chapter. Then she'll say something that explains a little more, but that brings up its own set of questions. By the end of the book the momentum you gained by wanting to know not just what happens next, but what happened fifteen years ago, launches you straight into the next book, which is what happened to me. My husband finished Moon Called, set it down, and gave me puppy dog eyes so pitiful we drove to Barnes and Nobles right then to buy Blood Bound and Iron Kissed.

Thinking About Books: Beastly

My favorite fairy tale is Beauty and the Beast. I've loved almost every version I've ever read, even the kiddy one with bad illustrations and the creepy ending where the stepsisters get turned into statues in Beauty's garden. (It helps that Beauty is often portrayed as bookish, which I very much identify with.) So of course when Beastly by Alex Flinn showed up on my desk, I read it. And loved it. But it reminded me of the most troubling aspect of the whole story, in any version, and that is the fact that Beauty and the Beast is a glorified case study in Stockholm syndrome.

Even in the best of versions, even in the Disney version, even in my most favorite version (Rose Daughter by Robin McKinley), the fact remains that Beauty falls in love with the one who kidnapped her. True he was lonely, true he lets her go see her father, true there was no other way to get her to love him without making her stay, but the fact is, he did make her stay, in some stories, for years. He may let her see her father towards the end of the story, but usually with the restriction that she must return or he'll die. That sounds like pretty manipulative behavior to me.

The reason I bring this up is that Beastly is a modern-day version, set in New York City. The beast is the spoiled son of a famous news-caster, and his castle is a five-story brownstone where his father locks him away with full use of a credit card as well as a maid, but no fatherly love (of course). The beauty-figure, having been brought there against her will, is at first afraid of what any sensible New York City girl would be afraid of- what, exactly, does he want her for? With a little earnestness and a change of heart, the beast convinces her that he is not looking for a sex-slave, but a friend, a companion: true love.

Alex Flinn makes the story work, but as someone who has read many, many different versions of the tale, saying this stuff out in the open made me wonder: how is it that a perfectly sensible girl (the Beauty figure almost always has Brains, too, and in most modern versions isn't even that Beautiful) can ever, and I mean ever, fall in love with, or even trust, the very one who is holding her captive, denying her her freedom, and not even telling her why?

I often tell people that my own personal love story with my husband reminds me a lot of Beauty and the Beast, but I can assure you that captivity had no part in it. (He's not ugly, either.) It involved my favorite aspect of the story: getting to know someone's inner self, without being swayed by a pretty face or false flattery. The central characters in the story get to know each other on the deepest level, as individuals separate and distinct from their appearance or status. But why can this not happen without making Beauty a prisoner, if only at first? Think about it: any story that claimed to be a re-telling of the fairy tale, but that did not include the captivity aspect, would be seen as being a radical departure from the original.

Perhaps even the insightful and un-shallow Beauty cannot see beyond the Beast's appearance without having a compelling reason to do so, and time to do it in. He is pretty scary-looking, after all, and usually emotionally unstable as well. In my own romance it took quite a few chance encounters from which there was no easy, socially acceptable escape, before I began to see my husband for who he really is. Perhaps sometimes even good people must be compelled in order to do good, but hard, things.

Thinking About Books: Lady Pain

I have a confession to make: When reading books I like, I skip ahead to read the ending.

I know, I know! I'm a terrible person. Everyone I've ever admitted this to has practically disowned me, and who can blame them? But I promise you that when I started Lady Pain I did not know it was the third in a trilogy. When the author made cryptic statements I thought she was just really good at foreshadowing. How was I to know that when it said on the cover "Rebecca Bradley, Author of Lady in Gil" they meant, "Go read that one first"!

I found out it was a sequel about halfway through, and by then it was too late to stop and go back. I'd been hooked since the first page, and that's pretty much how I determine whether a book is worth reading (that, or I read the end and determine if I want to find out how they got there, or if I can just figure it out on my own. cringe).

After that stunning revelation, for the rest of the book I was trying to see if the author was genuinely clever, or if I had mistaken vagueness for tasty plot bits dangled tantalizingly out of reach. I concluded that while a few of the things I'd thought were clever foreshadowing were really just a way of re-introducing people to the characters, there were still plenty of really good moments that showcased the author's ability to make a situation interesting, exciting, a bit nail-biting, and funny all at the same time. Moments that could have gotten heavy-handed were toned down with a bit of humor, without lessening the breathless page-turning-ness of the action. It was in first-person, too, which I am generally suspicious of, but this author made it sound genuine, without erring either on the side of being too much like dialog, or too eloquent and author-y, which are both faults I've seen in first person before. (If I didn't love Robin McKinley's style so much, I'd've thrown Dragonhaven across the room in frustration. That cat can ramble.)

When I reached the end, though (which, when I'd read it, had given nothing of the awesome climax away; hooray for epilogues!), I was faced with the question of whether I would go back and read the first two. On the one hand, it was really well written, and there were a few characters that I'm sure we got to know before, because they were too good to have such small parts. On the other hand, now I know how it all ends, and if I'm not mistaken, it seems the action starts twenty years or more before the conclusion. That's twenty years of knowledge about the future that I will have to pretend to myself I don't know while I read about How It All Began. And that's a little mentally exhausting (as anyone who's watched the new Star Wars can attest). So while I definitely plan to return, it may have to be a while before I do. Because while I may be totally scatterbrained and unable to find my glasses when they're on my head (true story), I can remember details I read in books for years.

Thinking About Books: The Book Whisperer

I just finished a book called The Book Whisperer written by a sixth grade teacher who is tired of school making kids hate reading. In her class, therefore, she assigns kids to read forty (40) books in the school year, which basically means they have to be reading constantly to make this requirement. They can choose whatever books they want, but she does have genre requirements to help broaden their perspective. There are kids who come into her class having read maybe one book in their entire life that wasn't forced upon them by a grown up, and most of them leave her class at least not hating reading anymore, at most having had their ideas about reading completely changed. Instead of some evil chore foisted on them by teachers who think it's "good for them," reading becomes a pleasure, something to do in one's own spare time.

Can you guess why this book caught my eye?

I would have killed for a teacher like that. Killed. I have often expressed to my friends that my husband and I are fully planning on homeschooling our kids, and my own middle school experience is one of the reasons I feel so strongly about that. In the seventh grade I had a science teacher who was a nice enough guy, not too boring or strict. The problem was that I already knew everything he was teaching. (I'm not actually sure about this, looking back. Did I already know it, or did he just go so slowly and redundantly that I could skim the textbook and, using my many years of watching Nature and The Magic School Bus, ace the tests?) In any case, the class was not structured for me, and I was bored out of my skull. I was a dutiful student, but there are limits even to the patience of someone who cares about their grade. I tried to pay attention, I really did, but it soon became clear that my brain was going to start melting and oozing out of my ears if I didn't keep myself occupied somehow. So I read a book.

This seems pretty innocent, right? I even kept it hidden so that you couldn't really see it. I was not distracting the other children or being flagrantly disrespectful. And I got good grades. But this teacher was so annoyed that I wasn't listening to him blather that he stopped his lecture (oh, great idea, derail everyone's train of thought all at once) and demanded that I hand over my book. I protested, of course, but in the end he got his way (I was a Good Kid, remember?) and he told me that I could have the book back at the end of the day. Not the end of the period. The end of the day.

I lived in a rural town. Education was not seen as valuable or important to most people around there, and their kids definitely picked up on that attitude. I had moved there a few years prior from a suburban school near a big city, populated mostly by the children of lawyers and doctors. My parents emphasized education so much that it took me years to figure out that college was optional. I had no idea. It was what you did after high school.

I was also an avid reader. (Still am.) I vacuumed up books like they were oxygen and I enjoyed learning. I had made something of a reputation for myself the year before in the sixth grade by beating, mangling and hanging up to dry the previous reading record of the school. My nickname for years was "Bookworm." (These kids were not very imaginative, either.)

For these reasons (and others, I suppose, but mostly these) I stuck out. I had a reputation among the students, but I also had one among the teachers. They knew I was serious about this school thing, and that learning mattered to me. I'm not gonna say I got special treatment- aw heck, why not? I got special treatment. My sixth grade reading teacher had a no-food policy that he conveniently forgot about when I brought a muffin to class (every day). He knew I wasn't gonna be a pig about it, and I was discreet.

I say all this not to boast (well, maybe a little), but to set the scene. When I got my book out to keep myself occupied, I was sort of counting on the teacher to understand and look the other way. Maybe my head was a little swollen by then, but I think it was more than that. I expected my teacher to understand that I valued my education enough to not let him get in the way of it. So when instead I got punished for doing something voluntarily that teachers struggled and prayed and wailed about for years to get my peers to do, I was understandably angry. I slouched down in my desk and doodled, furiously not listening to the rest of the lecture. (Which was such an improvement, right?)

This happened multiple times throughout the year. It got to the point where they got my mother involved. ('Cause I'm such a bad kid 'n all.) And at the time it instilled in me a bad attitude toward that teacher and that class, and school in general, really. (I still blame him for the fact that even today I have a problem with automatically tuning out the voice of someone lecturing. That helped with reading in his class, but it has not served me well since.) But thinking about it now, I do not see how that teacher could have demonstrated more clearly that school was for jumping through academic hoops, not genuinely learning.

My husband would like to make it clear that he thinks I am reading too much into this, and he is probably right. It was a kind of traumatic event that damaged my pride as "the special one," and the teacher was most likely simply concerned with keeping classroom discipline. But how many of you can share an experience even a little like mine, an experience that cut the wind out of your sails and made you realize that school was not a place conducive to learning about things that were important to you? I mean, how many of you came to love reading because a teacher made you read a book for an assignment? How many adults do you know who don't read, or who read trash because no one ever tried or knew how to develop their reading tastes to something more mature than "The Day My Butt Went Crazy"? (Yes, that's a real book.)

What The Book Whisperer calls for is a change in the school system to emphasize real reading, the kind of reading that people actually do. Not reading one chapter a night for six weeks, and doing activities and filling out worksheets, but devouring books one after another, gobbling up literature and letting it digest. Guiding kids through the kind of reading they're already doing, instead of trying to cookie-cutter everyone into compliance with some arbitrary standard. Letting books teach instead of teaching about books. I wish the author well in her quest to make school a friendly place for reading, but I'm more cynical (actually, she is, too). I don't believe this will ever happen until schools are made to be accountable for how they are ruining our children and producing people who can take standardized tests, but have no idea how to live.

Maybe I Should Get a Bigger Ring...

Last Saturday I was in Barnes and Noble, minding my own business, kind of checking out the relationships section, which, in this store, is right next to the sex books. This guy comes into the isle, and is a little too close to my personal space, so I scooch over a bit to give myself some more room, and (red flag! red flag!) he moves over too. I move over again, a little more this time, and he moves right with me, keeping the same distance between us. Okay, now I'm a little weirded out, but I keep studiously avoiding eye contact (I don't even know what the guy looked like, I was avoiding eye contact THAT MUCH) and think about leaving to go find my husband. Before I can, though, the guy says, "Find anything good?"

Short aside: when I'm by myself, I often imagine different dangerous scenarios, just to keep me on my toes. What if that guy walking toward me down the hall suddenly tries to grab me? I'll elbow him in the gut and kick him in the crotch. Okay, what if that guy tries something...? And so on. And just before this guy came into the isle I'd been wondering what I would do if someone said something inappropriate to me regarding those very pink books.

So, this is what was running through my head when he says, "Find anything good?" I had imagined a snappy comeback, something like, "Just who do you think you are, stupid?" or even just flashing my ring (because, to be fair, it was on the other side of me out of his sight). But in the second after he said it, while my breath was still caught in my throat, I just decided to be rude, and I walked away without saying anything, without looking at him, as though I hadn't even heard him.

Now my brain turns back on and I starting screaming to myself, "Oh my gosh, what the heck, I just got harassed in the sex isle, I think I'm gonna die, WHERE IS MY HUSBAND?" I found him soon after, and told him what happened. We escaped to the manga section and I didn't leave his side for the rest of the trip. He was outraged on my behalf, but in the end, when I'd calmed down a little, I had to admit that probably the guy was just very socially awkward, or possibly looking for a one night stand, and not actively trying to harass married women. I came to this opinion because I think that this guy (who I did not get a good look at) may have been the same guy who, right before this, rushed into the isle, slammed a book onto the shelf, and rushed away. (The book was something like "How to Make Love to a Woman" or something.) I can just image him thinking desperately of something to say, and I feel bad that this was all he could come up with.

But not bad enough to dignify him with a response.

Fear is the soul killer

I think I'm afraid of success. Afraid of climbing up too high on my potential and falling off. Afraid of being more visible and therefore more subject to laughter and scorn. Afraid of giving it my all and my all not being enough. Being anonymous is easier. It's comfortable. It's the known. When will I finally work up the courage to put my full effort behind something? To work hard and get past initial failures and succeed? When will I stop being afraid?

If you give a mouse a cookie... it will eat it and infest your house.

So the other night I saw a ballet version of Romeo and Juliet. There was this really touching scene when Romeo realizes Juliet is dead, and he takes her limp body and tries to dance with it. It was done really well (she did sort of help him a little, but it wasn’t distracting at all) and it was very moving. But of course it made me think of necrophilia (Despite the fact that I didn't want to think about necrophilia, cuz, ew). Which of course meant I had to look up the Wikipedia article on it, which of course lead me to the article on praying mantises, which of course meant that I was clicking around Wikipedia for hours, which of course meant that eventually I ended up at the article for Romeo and Juliet. Of course.

Take that Felicia Bond! Speaking of which, I’m going to go make some cookies now.

(Okay, okay, that’s not how it actually went down, but honestly, would you have been surprised if it had?)

Zzzzzzzzzz.....

Apparently I have mono, which I was pretty sure I did. The doctor didn’t think so, but when the test results came back he said, “Well, it looks like your instincts were correct.”

Sometimes I hate being right.

Please help

You may have seen the collection of links on the sidebar of this blog having to do with webcomics. I love reading webcomics, partly because I want to make one when I grow up, and partly because there is such a sense of community involved. I mention this because the person who draws Planet Karen, a young woman who lives in England, recently had her entire apartment building burn down. She has been able to salvage almost nothing. She ran out with her shoes and a coat, and that's about all she has. It seems odd, but I feel like I know Karen. Her comic is a diary comic, meaning she doesn't write about fictionalized characters, she writes about her own life. I have watched her go through learning she has diabetes, battling depression, fighting loneliness, and somehow she always manages to find witty and insightful things to say about what happens to her. But this time, she doesn't just need readership. She needs help. I am going to spare what I can and use the donation button on her webpage for the first time ever. "Donating the price of a pair of socks buys me a pair of socks," she said. "The price of a can opener buys me a can opener." I don't know how many of you who read this blog click on any of my links, but if you have a few spare minutes, please click on the link to Planet Karen. I'm not asking you to donate. I know I would feel weird giving money to a stranger, but like I said, I feel like I know her. I've read her comic every day for years. I just wanted to get the word out. It's about all I can do.

Life, the Universe, and Green Beans

Just because they tell you it's good for you doesn't make the green beans taste better.