Ah Monday...

Good morning Monday. I mean, good late morning... I have been up since before the sun today... attempting the creative life... struggling to stay awake while scribbling morning pages out into the universe... reading my creative inspirational readings... and visiting the Subaru dealership to get the car serviced. Ah Monday. You sure do know how to mix together aspects of life that I wouldn't ordinarily let associate. What better way to spend an hour and a half, though? If I had to wait for the car, at least I wasn't wasting my time... not really. Ok, maybe a little. They have a TV there! (we don't have TV at home) So naturally I was a little distracted by Matt Lauer and crew... and all those commercials!

I have never been more thankful that we don't have TV (we do have A tv, but not TV, get it?) than I am at this current stage in my life. I am so easily distracted by the computer, much less the ever babbling world of modern media. If I had a conduit to that flow, I would slip into a stupor of inaction that I know I would never recover from. Sometimes I miss not knowing the pop-culture answers at pub trivia (we woulda won the other week if we only watched TV). But on the whole, I feel less anxiety... I can breathe more, better, find time to do things... or at least have one less major excuse for not doing things that I want to do.

I'm working on myself recently. Working on figuring out what my hangups are with just getting my creative projects done. It's not as if I don't have time. But something keeps holding me back from allowing myself to play and in the process be successful and creative. I think I'm getting closer to the source. The monsters have been rumbling more and I haven't been able to sleep very well. Weird dreams about werewolves and Neil Gaiman and Harry Potter...

So I have to check in with myself and ... just ... breathe ...

How do you tap into the flow of your creativity? Any hangups you would like to share?

This beautiful owl lives at the nature center
a friend of mine runs in NJ.

Insecure Writer's Support Group

I've been lurking around others' sites long enough looking at this monthly blog group. It's time to self-identify. I am an insecure writer. There's no two ways around that. So, the idea of this support group is to post once a month with this tag and talk about my insecurities (and hopefully about victories over my insecurities)... and then go around to other writers' blogs and comment/show support for them. I can get behind that. Especially because one of my main insecurities is that no one is actually listening to (reading) me. Oh, but thank you SO much to my good friends who consistently comment, even if it's just to say hello.

Isn't that just every writer's fear, somewhere deep inside? That no matter how targeted, how sculpted, how well written your work, no one will connect with it. You'll meet with the sound of crickets... if you're lucky... instead of the sound of interaction. Because... even negative interaction is something... even if people disagree with you, at least you know that they heard you...

Sigh... so that's my insecure writer's post, my first one. Now I'm off to say hi to some other writers out there, to comment, to play, to interact.

Books I read last year and reading goals for this year

• The Little Prince - Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
• Anthropology of an American Girl - Hilary Thayer Hamann
• Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
• Bottlenose Dolphins: Biology and Conservation - Reynolds, Wells, Eide
• The Wizard of Oz - L. Frank Baum
• Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass - Lewis Carroll
• A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
• Interview with the Vampire - Anne Rice
• Anansi's Boys - Neil Gaiman
• Not in Kansas Anymore: A curious tale of how magic is transforming America - Christine Wicker
• The Crystal Cave - Mary Stewart
• The Hollow Hills - Mary Stewart
• The Tiger in the Well - Phillip Pullman
• Smoke and Mirrors - Neil Gaiman
• The Book of Dead Days - Marcus Sedgewick
• Wicked - Gregory Maguire
• Hunger Games - Suzanne Collins
• Catching Fire - Suzanne Collins
• Mockingjay - Suzanne Collins
• Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone - J.K. Rowling
• Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets - J.K. Rowling
• Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban - J.K. Rowling
• Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire - J.K. Rowling
• Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix - JK Rowling
• Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince - J.K. Rowling
• Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - J.K. Rowling
• The Forest of Hands and Teeth - Carrie Ryan
• The Dead-Tossed Waves - Carrie Ryan
• The Dark and Hollow Places - Carrie Ryan
• Going Bovine - Libba Bray
• Melting Stones - Tamora Pierce
• The Will of the Empress - Tamora Pierce
• The Good Earth - Pearl S. Buck
• The Game of Thrones - George R. R. Martin
• A Clash of Kings - George R.R. Martin
• A Storm of Swords - George R.R. Martin
• A Feast for Crows - George R.R. Martin
• Mountain Spirit: The Sheepeater Indians of Yellowstone - Lawrence L. Loendorf & Nancy Medaris Stone
• Watership Down - Richard Adams
• Wildwood - Colin Meloy
• Feng Shui Step By Step by T. Raphael Simons
• Howl's Moving Castle - Diana Wynn Jones

I read a lot last year. I have so much more to read, too. This year I'm hoping to read a lot more new books... I have stacks at home and goals... one of them is to read more non-fiction. I have a couple books by feminist authors on tap, a book about the history of Kauai, a book about the politics of the conservation of wolves, and a couple of liberal political books (George Carlin and Michael Moore) that I'm hoping to get through. I also want to read Atlas Shrugged... and Ulysses. We'll see if I can manage those...  I'm planning to keep a running list again, at home on my kitchen cabinet and here on the blog for others to see :)

Resolutions

Hmmm... aren't resolutions just wonderful? They're the pinnacle of the race, the epitome of potential, and it's all down-hill from here. The New Year is fast approaching, and I'm pondering resolutions and why we make them... or why we love to break them. Because most resolutions will never be kept. It's part of our human nature, I guess. We love to dream big, to have hope for a bright future full of all the things we wish we could do with our lives, and we love to believe we will accomplish all our goals! And let's face it... if you make a list of resolutions this New Year's Eve and you manage to keep all of them, did you really dream big enough?

Here's the thing, somehow, this past year, I did manage to keep all my resolutions. Ha! I only made three... and there's something satisfying and yet so small about that. While I know I learned something and grew from the process, I can't help but wonder what else I could have done if I had just decided that I wanted to reach for a higher goal?

This year I want to dream big and fail big. It's no fun, really, failing... but the journey counts more than the destination, right? So I'm going to make some wacky big resolutions and then take the leap! Won't you join me?

Anime and writing

I seriously cannot
get enough Who!

I've been considering story structure and character development for the past few weeks now... partially in a poorly disguised attempt to avoid editing my NaNovel. Sigh... anyhow, I am currently reading "The Plot Whisperer" by Martha Alderson... the book that Awesome Bess gave me for "winning" a blog contest that she hosted. It's a great book! I love Alderson's thoughts on the Universal Story, and on character development being personal as well as fictional... the character on the page can and will reveal a lot about your own strengths and weaknesses. Reading about that, though, I realize that I have a lot of work to do to get this story to a happy place. But the Plot Whisperer is helping me to be less afraid of the work that needs to be done, so I guess that's something.

Belle  and Sebastian (circa 1981)

In a slightly related way, I've been considering the plot and characters in the anime series "Princess Tutu". I stumbled upon this little gem when I started working on my quilt the other week. I needed something to distract me from the drone of the sewing machine, so first I watched Season 2 of Doctor Who (just after the Doctor regenerates from Christopher Eccleston to David Tennant... Oh man I love Doctor Who!)... and then, just as I was getting ready to begin Season 3, Princess Tutu caught my eye. I've always loved anime, everything I've seen, at least. That's not much, when you think about it... but Belle and Sebastian is what started it all. I recently watched (and read) Howl's Moving Castle, as well, and really enjoyed that fanciful story.

Princess Tutu

Princess Tutu is whimsical, rollicking, a bit overly-dramatic (but hey, it's anime) and has the added benefit (for me) of an exterior narrator or two and plot sketches between episodes. I liked the structure and the themes, mostly... I was a little at a loss as to why some of the whimsy existed... I mean, I know, by nature whimsy is not supposed to have a reason, but... this was a little overboard... but, nevertheless, I could not stop watching! It was captivating (again, for me... Noah thought I was crazy). The ending kind of threw me a little, so if any of you out there have seen it and can offer me some insight, I would be grateful!

Howl's Moving Castle

Still, it gave me lots to think about with regard to my characters and their growth into full fledged characters... ones that people will connect with and root for... or despise... I want my characters to incite emotion, but right now I think that they are dull, lifeless... I have a rewrite to do... and I have to stop putting it off!

My mother will be here for a few days starting Friday... but the new goal is to, as soon as she leaves, really dive into the process of transforming the copy that I have into the story that I want to tell.

Stuck

Well, stuck can be a good thing, too, I guess. I finished my NaNo goals and then took a good long break... but now I'm afraid to get back to working on the project. I know I need to, I know I can do it...

but I had found something else to distract me. A quilt. I am in the process of making my first quilt! It's really cool... I'm using a pattern and have been sewing madly for days now. It's been fun and I'm coming up with ideas for new quilt patterns... and I'm hoping that my mom will help me finish this quilt off when she comes to visit next week for Christmas.

But then my sewing machine stopped working today. It's stuck. I've taken off the cover and oiled as many parts as I can reach, and it's still stuck... I'm 4 strips away from being finished with the quilt! Sigh. Hopefully Noah can help me when he gets home, but I was really hoping to wrap that up today!

The thing is, having a stuck sewing machine may force me to get down to editing. I need that push back towards my novel, so that I can refine it... make it into something worth showing to someone else.

50,000 words does not a novel make

So, it's December 5th... I haven't posted in over a week. To be honest, I think I just needed a break from forcing words out of my fingertips and into being. And so I took it. I wish I could tell you that during the last week I read more books and began creative projects... but really I spent most of my time staring out into cyberspace, trying to make sense of the whole last month by reading what others are saying about their experience of NaNoWriMo.

And so now I'm here, a few days into December... and what do I have to show for it? I have more than 200 pages of text and a strong idea... but it's not a manuscript yet. I know what needs to come next. I know I need to sit down with Scrivener and put these scenes into some kind of logical order... and then I know I need to go through the draft with a discerning eye, re-writing portions, cutting portions, adding transitions and/or filler...

I think I'm just still in shock that I actually got this far with it. Ha. That the baby idea I had... years... ago now has become something much bigger than I expected.

Truth is I love the editing process. I just need to gather my wits about me and dive in! And so that's what this next month will be about. I have many fun things to do on the weekends and my mother is coming up for the holiday at the end of the month, but in between then I promise you that I'm going to knuckle down and make something out of this jumbled heap of ideas. As Erin Morgenstern, NaNo participant and author of The Night Circus put it "There's a spinning-straw-into-gold analogy here, in which NaNoWriMo is about filling the room with straw. The spinning would be revising. Had I more time to compose this, I would work that analogy in better, but the I think clumsiness illustrates my point." (from The Marvels and Messes of a Month of Writing).

I'm off to yoga now for some wit gathering... and then I'll be here... spinning my straw into gold.