I must be forgetting something...

... like, didn't I already write a blog entry this week? I didn't? Why does it feel like I have? Could it be I was thinking about what to write (Word Nerd Q, my favorite apocalyptic fiction, my oppressed left hand) and actually forgot to do the writing part?

I can't imagine how I overlooked it. Over the past week I've baked three cakes and one batch of cookies, quilted a twin-size quilt, played in a concert and practiced for another gig, wrapped presents, written the annual holiday letter (and addressed and stuffed 60 copies into envelopes), attended three parties, and hosted one of my own—all in addition to my usual duties teaching class, working at the shelter, and writing reference book entries. I'm sure I managed to fit a blog entry in there somewhere. Didn't I?

I didn't? I guess this craziness will have to do, then.

Photo of the Week--12/14/09

You can't see the pigeons here on the Charles Bridge in Prague, but believe me, they were there, even on a cold day in January. This was one of those last-minute trips; Boy had a long weekend off from school, so we looked for some place with a lot of indoor attractions that would suit a brief trip. Prague fit the bill, and we had a wonderful visit. Because we were there in low season, the tourist sites were uncrowded, and we were astonished how far the city had become a tourist haven in just over a decade since the Velvet Revolution overthrew Communist rule. (It seemed like every third building was now a money exchange or tourist shop.) Of course, the city's attractions were fascinating, and when we spotted some pigeons on this very famous bridge, Boy took off in pursuit, gargoyles and bystanders notwithstanding.

I've been Grinched!

And the Grinch didn't steal Christmas, he stole my heat! Now, I know it's supposed to be cold in Michigan in December. Even though this recent cold spell of temps in the teens (and wind chills in single digits) came on suddenly, I'm a native Michigander! I laugh at Southerners when they freak out at half an inch of snow! I snicker at Floridians shivering in 40-degree temps! Single digits is nothing!

I saw a lot of pissing and moaning on Facebook yesterday about all the cold and was getting ready to say, "Hey people! Don't be wimps! I dare you to think of the positive things about the cold weather!" I could think of plenty of positive things, of course: my cats become snugglier when it's cold; the garbage with old cat litter doesn't smell; I don't have to do any gardening, or hear neighbors mow their lawn at 8 am on a weekend morning.

That was just off the top of my head, and I'm sure I could think of more ... if my brain hadn't suddenly started freezing. Last night, although I had two quilts and two cats on top of me, I woke up in the middle of the night and noticed my feet were cold. Lately our furnace has been acting up a little, switching off unexpectedly, but we've always been able to restart it. Today? Not so much. I went to type "think positive," but my house is only 55 degrees, so my fingers wouldn't work. Instead, I say, Bah humbug! Go away, cold, and let me get some work done!

Luckily the heating guy is here and will hopefully uncover the problem and fix it soon ... if not, I'll be reduced to a shivering pile of blankets in front of the gas fireplace.

Janespotting: Sense and Sensibility and Silliness

Now that I've left my Remedial Lit project behind with summer, and managed to survive a busy busy fall filled with football games and marching band and NaNoWriMo and multiple assignments, it's time to get back to exploring Jane Austen and her myriad imitators. After all, how better to curl up and block out the cold, dark winter than with Jane and a cup of tea?

I was going to move onto Northanger Abbey, which is a favorite Austen novel and her funniest, imho, but when this book came into my library, I felt obligated to read it. After all, I found Pride and Prejudice and Zombies a quite entertaining mashup, as strange as it sounds. Zombies have always been a great metaphor for social stagnation, which would make them appropriate to mix with a novel about women who are often forced to choose between love and security. So could Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters (by Jane Austen and Ben H. Winters) provide a similarly scintillating scenario?

As you might deduce from my excruciatingly excellent example of alliteration, the answer is: not particularly. Now, I could see mashing up Persuasion with sea monsters, as the leading hero is a naval captain and the main characters make a visit to the seaside resort of Lyme, but although Sense and Sensibility takes place in Devonshire, it's not really situated on the coast. So it felt to me like the only reason to add "Sea Monsters" was for the alliteration. Turning Colonel Brandon into a fellow cursed not only by a broken heart but by a sea witch (hence the facial tentacles) is weird, not revealing. Changing the sisters' trip to London to a visit to "Sub Station Beta," an undersea colony headed for disaster? Distracting, not enhancing. Putting Barton Cottage on an island that's really located atop a Lovecraftian leviathan? Just plain strange. The whole thing was quite silly, really, and I finished it just to finish it.

I suppose the publisher thought that after the success of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (not only was it a bestseller, it's been optioned for a movie), they could cobble together any Austen novel and any monster, but in this case they ignored what made P&P&Z so much fun: it was still mainly Austen's words, around 85%. The story was just tweaked here and there, enough to amuse but not confuse. S&S&SM goes way over the top, adding too many new things and changing the characters from their essential natures. You change things too much and it's no longer a parody, just a weird pastiche that's neither familiar nor amusing. I would have preferred mixing S&S with vampires—the novel's themes of letting emotions run away with you would seem to be perfect for it—but it turns out there are already a couple of Darcy as vampire novels out there. [rolls eyes] (I'm really going to have to run out of "sequels" before I get to those...) So enough with the weirdness! Next week I'm heading back to original Austen and Northanger Abbey.

Photo of the Week--12/7/09

No pigeons in this photo ... because they are definitely not native to Finnish Lapland. However, there were plenty of reindeer on this trip, which we took a couple weeks before Christmas 1999. It was actually only a couple days before the winter solstice, and at a latitude above 68°N (and yes, that is above the Arctic Cirlce) it was dark for most of the day. This photo was taken not long after lunch, when it was very dusky out. It was a very atmospheric trip—lots of snow hanging on evergreen branches, in addition to the crepuscular light—topped off with a visit to Santa's cabin in the snow. I can't imagine why Boy was so hesitant to say hello to this reindeer; it looks so friendly, doesn't it? More awesome, in his mind, was the ambulance that took his mom away after a tobogganing accident, and the cart with the flashing light we got to ride through the airport. Ten years later, and I'm still terrified to go near a sled.

Final Lessons from NaNoWriMo

As you can see from the little icon at the top left of my blog, I am a winner! By writing over 50,000 words during the month of November, I officially "won" the National Novel Writing Month challenge. What was my prize, besides a feeling of accomplishment and a nifty certificate I have to print out myself? A feeling of accomplishment, a nifty certificate, and a load of chores and errands to catch up with. Oh, and some interesting lessons I've learned about writing. Here are some of them:

1. Any writing is better than nothing. I came back from chaperoning marching band nationals a little bit behind my target average of 1667 words a day, and the following week got really behind while I was catching up on work, craft fair signs, and other chores. Some days I only got in about 400 words, hastily typed at night while I was watching the local news, but that was better than nothing. It kept my mind in the story and my fingers in practice. Even though it was discouraging seeing my progress bar fall behind the target bar, it was still a little bit of progress.
2. You have to snatch your writing moments when you can. Sometimes it's while the rest of the family is watching TV. Sometimes it's early in the morning, after Boy is off to school but before I have class. Sometimes it's while everyone else in the family is lined up for Thanksgiving dinner (and the line is so long, you might as well keep writing). Steal those moments when you can, because any writing is better than nothing.
3. It is possible to write 5000 words (or more) in a day. By the time I got to the last four days of NaNoWriMo, I still had one-fifth of the novel to go. For you math-challenged folks, that's 10,000 words, meaning I needed 2500 words each of the last four days. And actually, since I wasn't quite 80% through the story, I actually ended up writing about 12000 words those last four days, including about 5000 on Sunday the 29th. I will admit that I might not have done it without brainstorming or outlining beforehand, but I still did it.
4. Writing is fun! It seems silly to have to say this, because if I didn't think it was fun (even the business articles) I wouldn't be doing it. But even with the pressure to find time and produce word count, I was having a lot of fun. Even though there were many places I was wincing at all the crutch words (which still count, by the way!) I was using, there were a few times I was really pleased by a certain turn of phrase I had used. And by the time I got to the end of the novel, when my button-downed protagonist finally expressed her feelings to her controlling mom and had a possibility of rekindling a romance, I was genuinely excited. I got the same emotional reaction and feeling of discovery I get when I'm reading a book and I get to those big moments—and yet I was writing it. It doesn't get much more fun than that.
5. You can find inspiration in all sorts of weird places. I had a lot of fun with my encyclopedia format, and made several trips to the dictionary and Google every day to find fun facts to include in the text. Some of them I couldn't have made up if I'd tried. I was brainstorming entries for "R" and thought I needed to get back to the animal shelter portion of the story, so I put in "Rabbit." I googled "rabbit weird facts" and discovered that you can hypnotize rabbits by putting them on their back and stroking them. (Again, couldn't have made it up if I'd tried.) More interesting, though, is how I've felt inspired by my main character. I made her take a lot of chances and change her life, in ways I hadn't planned when I started writing. And she has inspired me, in turn, to try something new. I don't want to get into a lot of detail, in case I crash and burn and give up the first week, but it involves a certain exercise I hate to do. If the inspiration sticks, I'll definitely write more about it.

So overall, I'd say NaNoWriMo was a valuable experience and I got a lot out of it. Will I do it again next year? It's going to depend on what my schedule looks like, but right now I would say no. I got the kick-start I needed to get back into writing fiction, and hopefully I won't need it again 11 months from now. Instead, I may have to join NaNoRevisMo (National Novel Revising Month) to work on structure and crutch words and all those other things I ignored while churning out the words. I'm sure I'll find just as many lessons in that!

Photo of the Week--11/30/09

... aaaand the latest in our series, "Boy chases the pigeons of Europe," features a really BIG pigeon. Actually, it's a chicken. We took a short weekend trip (made shorter by the cancellation of our flight on Friday night, making the prop-plane flight the next morning a little nerve-inducing) to Jersey, one of the Channel Islands between England and France. It's a very interesting place, as it has a lot of French influences (it's closer physically to the mainland) but a very British culture and history. It was actually occupied by the Germans during WWII, and it was interesting to see the traces left by that part of history.

Jersey is a pretty small island, though, so we had plenty of time to explore more pastoral places. This working farm attraction had plenty to observe in the fall harvest season (including a really big horse-drawn cider press), and Boy was fascinated with the chickens. Because they were big enough to fight back, we didn't let him chase them, so we had a peaceful scene to photograph this time.