brimaresh

I finished enough with NaNoWriMo that I feel like I can settle back into serious writing. I feel silly saying it like that, but for me, NaNo is the fun part--the unexplored first draft.

I have two workable first drafts and a third that is so garbled it may very well not be workable in the end--they're incoherent, they don't follow from point A to Z, and reading them you'd have to wonder how much coffee I'd ingested.

I didn't write them in order, and I didn't bother to indicate what order they should go in, either. I break the fourth wall. I meander into rants about how stupid characters are. I throw in back story all in one dump, in a melodramatic soliloquy.

In short, the writing is very bad.

There is also very little white space.

But the bones are all there. I just need to re-assemble them so they look more like a book than a troll, and then add the muscles, meat, skin, and make-up, and possibly a designer jacket with these awesome green Ciao Bella flats...

Anyway.

Today, at my write-in, that is my goal: not to get more words for my region, but to do some serious writing--the not-as-fun part, which is probably my favorite part, anyway, if I'm honest. Second draft, you know what you have to work with, and you know where you want to go. You aren't wandering in the darkness.

You have a map.

A map as accurate as the ones drawn in the early 1800s, probably, but most of the big pieces are there.

The water at my house tastes vaguely disgusting. Okay, I lie. It's vile. People who used to visit when I was younger would bring jugs of their own water so they didn't have to drink mine. Nothing is wrong with it--it's perfectly drinkable--it just has a funny taste because of the minerals in it. Being as my family has a negative reaction to milk in any significant amount (be it ice cream or cereal, pizza or nachos), we've coped by drinking juice, soda, and other sugary beverages.

Wanting to get healthier, and on something of a whim, I bought a 24-case of bottled water. I figured I'd have maybe one a day, since that's about how much soda I normally drink, and it'd last 24 days.

I'm not sure it'll last the week, and I'm sure that's a good thing.

-Bri

PS Hydrated Bri has more energy, and is way more hyper, and does way more DDR. I think I have just found the perfect weight loss supplement: a healthy (as in: recommended daily dose) of water!

Not so sure it's good for my ability to think, though.

I have a slightly notorious love for fandom. Not for any particular fandom, but for fans in general--be they Harry Potter, Anime, J-Pop, or otherwise. There's something about a story, image, or persona so powerful it sucks people in that I find altogether heartwarming and completely entrancing. I love the people who are willing to do things like the recent #deadfisheyes project on Twitter. For more information on that, go here: http://community.livejournal.com/asianpopaddict/8723.html

Recently, I found a new sort of fandom, one I had been aware of but never understood: Johnny’s (JE) fandom. For more information on Johnny’s, go here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnny%27s_Entertainment I found the Johnny’s fandom the same way I’ve found all others: accidentally. I was looking up information on Hana Yori Dango, a jdrama I’m only a little obsessed with. One feature of HYD is Matsumoto Jun. He's a member of the group ARASHi--a group celebrating their tenth anniversary this year.

I feel like I've found the Backstreet Boys ten years too late (as I was quick to inform everyone on Twitter). It’s a boy band, but the songs are catchy, and even more importantly, the fans have no shame. The ARASHI fans kept talking about other JE members, and hints of #deadfisheyes were shared. I decided #deadfisheyes was going to be a crazy fan thing, and I couldn’t resist. I started re-watching things with Yamapi in them, and listening to NEWS.

I wasn’t the only JE fan from another band’s fandom coming in to show JE fandom solidarity. It’s just really inspiring to see so many people united on a positive. I hear they’re cooking up something #eggplant related in the near future, and I’m sure fans will roll out the same way.

Today, I was geeky.

• I woke up this morning to ARASHI playing on my iPod.
• I ate a dinosaur-shaped Apple butter sandwich for breakfast.
• I went to school to study post-modernist texts and enjoyed it.
• I came home listening to geeky music on the radio (Code Monkey, Slaughter Your World, songs from Mulan...)
• I used Twitter, Livejournal, Facebook, Gmail, did some moderating on a forum, and played with Google Wave.
• I discussed bento boxes, ordering j-pop, and NaNoWriMo.
• I updated my Wii.
• I played DDR.
• I watched Doctor Who

I feel pretty good about today.

My friend Mace recently commented about the one hour she'd do again, if she could relive any hour. Her answer was much like mine would be--reading for Amelia with the online writing group around. Experiencing that, realizing that writing didn't have to be a lonely and isolating experience, it changed my life.

So what hour would I re-do, if I could have any hour over? I've never been one to dwell for myself on regret (mostly because I've yet to do anything really truly unfixably bad yet), but it struck me as a great way to characterize my, well, characters.

So I sat down and started writing, ignoring the fact that it's NaNoWriMo and the words don't count for anything since they're on a different story. I haven't written a story in this world in a long while--I wanted to query it but it's just not there yet--but I'm having the best time writing it right now, so I don't care at all. I don't know if this will be a short story, a novel, or a novella. But I know it's going to be interesting.

Today, a girl asked if anyone spoke French. I didn't say anything, because I don't. Then she asked if they pronounce the J.

...curiosity piqued, I had to go investigate. I don't speak French, but I read it fairly well. Spanish, too. Turns out, I knew enough to translate.

I think I've done my good deed for the day.Now, to NaNo in class, or not to NaNo in class?

"If it pleased me, I might buy the Eiffel Tower for you." - Meteor Garden

I love a strong female lead, the characters that can turn down a charming man bent on buying affection, the ones that see a problem and try and puzzle out how to solve it themselves. I'm a sucker for a lead character like early-series Anita Blake, and Seanan McGuire's October Daye. I think my goal with my next WIP is to tap into that same sort of character, the ones that are strong and capable, and don't need to rely on a supporting cast of problem solvers. Supporting cast members are every bit as dangerous as the bad guy, and just as likely to cause problems, and when they help, it's impossible not to doubt or question their motives.

I don't generally write weak female characters, per se, but I do tend to have strong supporting casts who are capable of helping my main character get to the point where she needs to stand on her own. I've always let them have that safety net, or build one as we progress.

I'm interested in seeing how things unfold if they don't have that. What will my mind cook up to push things along? What sort of support characters will be there to cause problems for my main character?

It reminds me a bit of trying to do The Whistler without the safety net that is Jack. It had never occurred to me before that by cutting out all the safety nets I could do anything beyond creating an angst-ridden, isolated character trying to find Someone Who Understands. I don't know if I'll fail or succeed, but I do know I'll be trying something new, and I'll be having a good time of it.

EDIT: Oh, news on my sister's fiance--another PET scan in three months. This one showed elevated metabolic activity, whatever that means, but that could be influenced by his exposure to the flu.

I'm an older sibling--I have no older sisters, they're all younger.

I can bake a pumpkin pie, do a french braid, and fix a torn skirt.

Coincidence? I think not.

I keep reading about how a novel needs to start with something at stake and just keep upping the stakes.  The first time I really got that was when reading Rachel Caine's Ill Winds.  Some of the subsequent books aced that, others not so much, but none of them hit it that heavily.

Today, I started reading Cape Storm.  Hits the nail right on the head--sucks me in, pulls me along, and 50 pages later I'm left blinking, wondering how time passed so quickly and how everything is going to work itself out.  I can't decide if there is magic in the way she links sentences--her main character is to the point as it gets--or if it's just that she piles that much on the plate as they go.  If it's the second, she does a good job of not ending up in an "everything and the kitchen sink" situation, where it seems like everything is thrown at them, and the kitchen sink.  Realistically insurmountable trouble to be resolved, and it comes across as believable.

It's very different from Rosemary and Rue, which does the same thing in a softer way, but that's the thing about both books that I love best--the characters (who we come to like) face something awful, and it just keeps getting worse, and then at the end it's as bad as it gets and... well, you know.

Way back in the day, the kid next door had a dirt bike. We had a huge muddy field surrounded by blackberry bushes, potentially home to snakes.  I was a girl, and from Alaska, and how uncool is that? but the field was mine, and I was willing to share if he was.

A lot of bruises, mud, and arguments later, I moved back to Alaska.  Other than a minor obsession with motorcycles of the fast and lethal variety, I've pretty much forgotten all about that whole experience.

Watching Disney's Motocrossed sort of brings it all back (and trust me, it wasn't very pretty).  I have no idea what happened to any of the kids who I knew back then (except one kid from my geektastic excellerated math clas, who now does something with cars, is a total genius, but has a good time of it), but I know we did some crazy stuff.  It was 8th grade, though. Rollerblading down the steepest paved hill in town at midnight, sneaking through the cow pasture under the electric fences, and walking home from the school dance without shoes just sound like good ideas when you're in 8th grade.

There may or may not have been an inordinate amount of drama, largely due to relationships so tangled they go beyond traingles and venture nearer to buckeyballs, too.  Oh yeah, and a lot of Savage Garden, Semisonic, Matchbox20, Eve6, Weird Al, and Backstreet Boys. Because N'Sync? Totally my little sister's favorite band, and we were way too cool for that.

Funny how just a random TV show can remind you of something huge that you'd completely forgotten about.  Why is it that when it's a character suddenly remembering, it's unrealistic and  impossible to believe?

It's been a while since I did a nice, thorough meeting report.  So today, I took notes!

Attendance: Summer, Christina, Heather, Brittany, Bridget, Tracy, Jean,

MSVWA Notes:
- Ideal respawn point for soda
- Wicked Lovely and why it's going to be wicked
- SPAM following you--on Twitter, and then a literal conversion to a can of spam folllowing you down the street.
- Food descriptions in books (how many MCs are clearly starving) (doing it deliberately with a hungry MC)
- "Why do you always write that sort of story?/Why do you write 'that stuff" conversation
- "Can we quit getting Coredlia pregnant with the demon babies? I mean, it happens alot. She keeps getting pregnant with the demon babies. What the heck. Stupid demon babies. They ruin everything."
- What does a NaNo novel look like?
- NaNo scheduling

A la @Leeaverday: YA fans!! SUPER CONTEST http://leeaverday.blogspot.com tons of awesome prizes incl. a signed ARC of DA ..

...it's a cool contest, MSVWA and others. And The Hollows was a fun book--and my sister likes it, too, and she's practically illiterate, save Twilight and Harry Potter.

I updated my webpage with another small rant about Japan/Korea's dramas (aka jdramas and kdramas), and a certain character type I haven't seen in an American drama in a long time, but I know really well from books (and stories I write, myself, too).

For more information: http://www.brittanymaresh.com or http://www.cityofexiles.com

I've been thinking a lot about the role of chance or fortune in fiction. In the story I'm writing, there is nothing coincidental. I have too much magic to let fortune play a role. It's a sort of re-telling of Sleeping Beauty, except with a twist that negates the whole sleeping thing.  I don't know how well it'll turn out, but I do know that if I have even one apparently random coincidence, it'll make the whole thing look a lot less genuine.  It will fall apart.

How often in a book has a fantastic coincidence jarred you out of the story?  For me, it's something of a pet peeve. If the whole plot survives only because of random chance--not foreshadowed, carefully hinted at chance--I'm likely to hate it entirely.  Those kind of books, I throw them aside and never finish them.  And I definitely don't buy the sequel.

I'm more willing to buy coincidence in non-fantastic fiction. If there's no magic, it doesn't seem less ingenuous to me. I can't say why this is, but it's true.

Right now, I'm struggling to get around a particular piece of fiction without throwing in a chance meeting. It might not be horribly unrealistic, but I know if I read it, I'd be setting the book aside wondering if there was a better way for things to pan out.  As a writer, it's something I'm struggling with. Either to make it believable, or to cut it entirely.

Maybe I'll go back, hint at it, and make it believable--hint that it's to come?  

I suppose it's time to go back to work. I'm going to try my best to make it work, and if I can't, I'll just cut it (even if I don't want to).

I say I never watch television, but that's a lie.  I watch a lot of foreign television, even if it does cost me a whole lot more. 

I love dramas like Hana Yori Dango, Coffee Prince, Romantic Princess, and Hana Kimi. They are full of conflict and this strange upbeat mindset--they are so different than the television I find when I turn on the T.V. here. There isn't loads of swearing, drunk girls flashing the camera, or a serious drug-and-party side theme.  Also, the actors actually act.

It delights me to watch these basically sweet characters go through so much, to achieve their goals. They really fight, even when it seems like they have no chance, because it's the right thing to do, or because they're too proud to ask for help, or because they don't want to be a burden.  The characters aren't always the best developed, but they're the sort that are fun to cheer for.

And then there are the shows on the BBC--Doctor Who, Torchwood, and so on. They too have this tenacity in their characters.  They don't spend three episodes sulking before their best friend talks them into trying harder--at most, it's five minutes after which they get told to get over themselves. 

Maybe it's the collective nature of the socieites. Here in America, we are so independent. We all want to think that we matter as individuals--we do, yes, but I like to think we matter more as a group than as individuals. On television, what we see are a group of individuals fighting to stand out the most.  And recently, with the rise of reality television, they're people we meet on the streets in stupid circumstances that make no sense. It's awkward, and nothing in it hearkens to my own needs for escapism.

My Five Most Recent Book Purchases:
1. Rampant (Diana Peterfreund) (YA Urban Fantasy)--it was mentioned on a blog I follow, a fellow writer was excited about it, and it has killer unicorns. Plus, it was tempting on the book shelf, all nice and pre-release date available.
2. Rosemary and Rue (Seanan McGuire) (Urban Fantasy)--A Seanan McGuire did Doctor Who fanfiction and it wasn't bad, I searched the name and found an awesome blog. And then it turned into a website. And then it had a BOOK!  ...it, too, was out on the shelf at the same store pre-release date, which pushed me ovver the edge.
3. Palace of Mirrors(Margaret Haddix) (YA Fantasy)--Someone mentioned in their blog that they were excited about it, and it mentioned princesses.  Didn't take any arm-twisted for me to rush out and try and get a copy.
4.Once Dead, Twice Shy (Kim Harrison) (YA Urban Fantasy)-- Heard about it on a blog, and I love Kim Harrison in general, so I had to read it.
5. The Hollow (Jessica Verday)(YA Urban Fantasy)-- Okay, this one I haven't recieved yet. I just read about it on a blog today and went to order it, I was so excited about the idea of it.

Five Books I Intend to Obtain Despite Not Having Read Anything By The Author:
1. A Posse of Princesses by Sherwood Smith
2.Once A Witch by  Carolyn MacCullough
3. Ruined: A Novel by Paula Morris
4. Princess of the Midnight Ball by Jessica Day George
5. Prophecy of the Sisters by Michelle Zink

Five books I'm buying because of the author:
1. Liar by Justine Larbalestier
2. Token of Darkness by Amelia Atwater Rhodes
3. Shiver by Maggie Stiefvater
4. The Spy Who Haunted Me by Simon Green
5. Cape Storm by Rachel Caine

Curious to look at, all lined up like that.

I love the fall--from the start of the fair through the end of November is my favorite time of year.  I'm lucky that my friends are similarly minded, because otherwise NaNoWriMo wouldn't be as fun.  I was glad to see the new participant badges go up early.  I'll be participating again this year, and I'm changing my goal a little.

I'm tired of beating Sri Lanka, trying to out-write Anchorage, and writing like a mad woman.  I don't get to enjoy the story that way, I just vomit it up on the page.  This year, I want to write 80,000 words instead of 200,000 or 300,000.  I don't want to look back on the manuscript and only have a hazy idea of what writing it felt like.  In Stephen King's On Writing he laments that he cannot remember writing... Cujo, I think it was.  Not remembering writing a whole book?  That kills me.

This year, I already know what I'm going to write.  I'm excited about this story, and I can't wait to delve into the main character's world.  It's third close, I think (though it may end up first, for sloppy first draft). 

This is everything I know about this year's upcoming NaNo:

North has read minds as long as she can remember, but she didn't start using her power to make money until she met her soul mate.  Dex is a thief, a con, and the only one who can help her when her latest money-making scheme goes over her head. Dex is also the only other person she's ever met with supernatural abilities. North agrees to get rid of a demon in exchange for a massive pay-out. However, while she may not believe in ghosts and demons, that doesn't mean they aren't there.

It's not much, but I can't wait to get started.  And I'm going to take my time this November. I'll take long walks out in the fallen leaves, crunch over frozen grass, and maybe build a snowman out in th early piles of snow.  I'll enjoy it, instead of rushing through it. 

And no taunting on the part of Sri Lanka, Hawaii, or Anchorage can change my mind.

-Brittany Maresh

EDIT: Cross-posted to http://www.brittanymaresh.com

I rented Push today, more for the actresses and the premise than because of it actually looking good with the way it's put together.  I was slightly curious because of something I write, and thankfully the movie wasn't together enough to do much more than inspire jealousy at the grittiness.  New Rochester has never quite managed gritty. I just don't think I have enough dark and dreary music in my.  I probably didn't get a good enough dose of grit as a child.

Personally, I've always been sad that they never put the pop-grit TV I loved as a kid out on DVD.  Some of my favorite shows when I was  younger are only available as grainy youtube videos, and I'd love a chance to watch them again.

Grainy Youtube videos just aren't good enough!

Here are a few shows I miss, and would buy on DVD even though one of them only has like ten episodes in the whole series:
-So Weird
-Are You Afraid of the Dark
-In A Heartbeat
-Higher Ground

Mostly, they're shows I watched with my family.  Disney channel type shows that my teacher-mother loved, and every now and again asks me to find on DVD. Well, except So Weird.  That one, she didn't care for very much.

Even though I know it'll never happen, I do check up on it every now and again.

For her sake, really.

Today I critiqued a young author's work--or what I thought was a young author.  For a young kid, it was rough, and I told her she had time to grow up and nail her grammar, and to ask her teachers for advice on how to get her tenses straight.  I also gave her some links to helpful places for that online.  She's actually a year older than me, and she's graduated from college.  Her degree? English.

She told me that I was an idiot, and that I don't know anything about writing, and that I don't have any talent or I'd be published.  She furthered to tell me I wasn't good enough to be a professional, and my work was probably a derivation of someone else's work anyway. 

...and it used to be that I was insulted by things like this. Once upon a time, it would have hurt my feelings, I'm sure. 

Now, however, I just realize that people like that are everywhere--that people who believe that if you don't like their work, you must not be good.

I've been considering taking down what I'll critique to just things encountered in my writing group or through professional contacts.  It's been coming for a long while, I suppose.

I think I'm done, for a while.

Off to re-read Green to cheer myself up.  There's nothing like identity struggles to eliminate personal irritation.

PS Good news just came in--my sister's fiance is now cancer-free.   Those of you with things still up in the air, you can have our extra share of good thoughts and positive thinking for the month.

PPS NaNoWriMo website just gave me a huge change in perspective.  Someone thanked me for a query critique that wasn't exactly glowing with praise.  It wasn't unkind, either, mind.  Cheered me up a bit, however. 

I love a lot of adult books but outside of New Rochester, my Horror Series, and a few side projects, I write predominantly write Y.A.   I know I read a lot of Y.A., too.   Next to me in a stack is a huge pile of Y.A., in fact.  I think it's just that I read a lot, not that I read any one genre more than the other, or even write, necessarily.

But let's face it, I can do three Y.A. books (reading, beyond the monsters like Brisingr or that last Twilight book, OR writing, outside of fantasy) in the amount of time it takes me to do one ault book.

I'm going to pretend that's the reason that more than half the novels in my writing folder are what I would classify as geared towards a Y.A. audience, and not that I'm a Y.A. writer, per se.

Though, I wouldn't mind it if I were. Let's face it, some of the coolest people I know (cough Nyeusi cough) come from Y.A. writing and fandom.