Getting Off the 'WriMo Fence

I’ve been riding the fence about whether to do NaNoWriMo this year. With a week to go until it starts, I think I’ve decided to go for it. Sadly, I’ll probably have to forgo the social aspects--I can either make time to write OR to hang out in the forums and go to the parties and write-ins, but not both; and since the goal is to see how many words of manuscript you can produce, not how much you can gab about it and post in the forums... I’m sure you get the idea. And so far I haven’t even had time to see what’s going on in the local forum, or to update my profile on the web site.

For those who don’t know what I’m talking about, NaNoWriMo stands for National Novel Writing Month, which is the month of November. To participate, you try to write at least 50,000 words on a brand new novel by the end of the month. I’ve been playing along every year since 2006. The only year I “won” and actually accomplished all 50,000 words was in 2007, when I hammered out the first draft of This Old Haunt. In 2008 I invoked the Zokoutu clause--which states that if you’ve won in a previous year you can go ahead and work on a story already in progress--to finish the first draft of the same novel that had also served as my 2006 entry. I won by my own standards, in that I finished the draft, but it didn’t take 50,000 words to get there, so I didn’t get the winner’s badge.

Last year I went in whole hog for the first half of the month, attending all of the local meetups and write-ins and hammering out about 20,000 words on a story about what vampires would do if a zombie apocalypse threatened to wipe out their food supply. Then I found out I was pregnant, and suddenly zombies and vampires were the last things on my mind, so I dropped out.

Since then I’ve had a pretty tumultuous year, with back-to-back miscarriages leaving me without much of a desire to write. I’ve managed to joylessly crank out several factual articles for pay, and I managed a few essays, and a couple of half-hearted attempts at a new novel. I tried to polish a third draft of that 2006/2008 manuscript, but it just wasn’t coming together and I filed it away in that proverbial drawer where first (and second and sometimes third and fourth) novels often go to die.

Now we come back around to where this bumpy year started. I’m approaching it with ambivalence--my second baby’s due date was to be November 4th, so that’s weighing on me. Plus I’m really busy with work right now. But I know that I’ll never run out of excuses to put off getting back to my fiction writing, and that if I wait for perfect timing I’ll never write fiction again.

So my goal for this November is simply to write fiction again. I’m not going to worry about word count, and I’m not going to do any pre-writing preparation. I’ve got the nugget of a plot and I’m just going to take that and write by the seat of my pants and see what comes of it. If I can get back into a regular writing habit--and more importantly, if I can discover the joy of writing fiction for myself again--I’ll consider it a win, regardless of whether or not my word count bar turns purple.

What about you, dear readers? Are any of you doing NaNo this year? If so, what are your personal goals, and what are you doing to prepare? By the way, if you want to be my NaNoWriMo buddy, you can click here to add me.

This Old Haunt Now Free

There's nothing like a ghost story to get you in the mood for Halloween. To that end, I'm making the ebook version of my paranormal romance novella, This Old Haunt, free to read and download on Scribd. You can read it there, or read it right here in this handy widget.

This Old Haunt

Review: Ghost Story

I've always felt like a bad horror fan because I'd never read this modern horror classic. So when I found Ghost Story on the "Free Books" shelves at my accountant's (who also owns Oklahoma's biggest used book store) on the day we got our taxes done, I new I'd run out of excuses. Even so, after bringing it home it sat on my bookshelf collecting dust while I read other things. Until early last week, when I finally picked it up and started reading. And I'm glad I did.

After the sudden death of one of their members, the monthly meetings of The Chowder Society took a morbid turn as each member took turns answering the question, "What's the worst thing that ever happened to me?" At first, the four elderly survivors blame their spooky stories for their nightmares, but when the line between dreams and real life seem to be getting blurred, they call in the nephew of their deceased member, horror novelist Don Wanderley, whose brother also died under mysterious circumstances, hoping he can help them get to the bottom of what's happening. And that's about all I can say about the plot without getting into spoilers.

My first impression of this book is that it's extremely well-written, but not very scary to desensitized contemporary readers. But then about half-way through, the story started to work its way into my nightmares, and I found I was as reluctant to read it before bedtime as I was to put it down. Part of the plot is a little predictable, but that's more the fault of the fact that it was written in 1979 and that particular formula has been done to death since then. Even so, it was an engaging and sufficiently creepy read, and did I mention extremely well-written? Because today's would-be authors would do well to take notes on Peter Straub's use of language and imagery, and his masterful way with voice and dialogue. I know I did.

Flash Fiction: Hollywood After Dark

I'm hunting for some notes I wrote a while back on a story idea I'd like to flesh out. So far I'm not finding them, but I did find this. It's not a flash fic so much as the beginning of something that never went anywhere.

Hollywood After Dark

From the moment Angelina outed herself as a vampire, America should have seen it coming. They were beautiful--all that selective breeding ensured that--and eternally young. Of course vampires were going to take over Hollywood. It wasn't so much that the Religious Right was up in arms over it--they never cared for Hollywood, no matter who was running it. It was the shock and awe from the rest of the country--the living majority, at any rate, although they were increasingly in danger of becoming a minority these days--that seemed a little ridiculous. It wasn't as if they didn't have time to prepare themselves.

The diet and beauty industries were the loudest voices of dissent, naturally. They no longer controlled the entertainment industry's standard of beauty, and that was killing them. You couldn't get any work as a performer these days without opening a vein for someone, and once you were turned, that was it. No more aging, no more weight gain or loss... no Jenny Craig or Botox or lipo or tanning salons or crazy fad diets, unless of course you counted being confined to the red stuff for the rest of... well, ever.

Book Review: Going In Circles

I knew that I'd previously reviewed Pamie's first novel, Why Girls Are Weird, at this blog, and after about half an hour digging through posts from 2006, I found it, buried in this post about jogging (you guys, remember when I took up jogging? And how short-lived that was? I know you do because I can hear you laughing your hinder off from clear over here). Although it's not so much a book review as it is pseudo-stalkerish gushing. Anyway...

Speaking of Going in Circles, I had kind of a weird circular moment while reading this, the third novel by renowned blogger, TV writer and former Young Americans recapper Pamela Ribon. As I sat reading this while camped out in my patio chair, where I usually sit and pine for a beach somewhere in Mexico, I came to a scene that was set on a beach somewhere in Mexico, and remembered how I read Pamie's first novel while camped out in a deck chair on a cruise ship bound for Mexico, and, you guys, I just really want to go back to Mexico.

But that's not really the point of this post, which is actually this: I really enjoyed this book, the tears of frustration it induced over the fact that I was NOT on a beach in Mexico notwithstanding.

Going In Circles appears at first glance to be a book about roller derby, but that really just serves as the back-drop for a story about human relationships and learning to cope when life lobs hardballs at you. It captures the complexity of those relationships really well -- not just romantic relationships, but adult child/parent, friendships, pseudo-friendships and co-worker relationships, too. Pamie has an easy-going writing style that makes humor look effortless, but she also captures well some really poignant moments and difficult emotions.

I read this book in a weekend, which for me is pretty fast, and I ended up neglecting a day of scheduled housecleaning in favor of hanging out with this book. Part of the reason I couldn't put it down was that she crafted well-rounded characters who are mostly the kind of people I would enjoy hanging out with in real life, and that was a real pleasure to read. I've read all three novels by Pamela Ribon, and enjoyed them all, but I think this is her best work to date.

If you'd like to order it, I'd appreciate it if you helped out this blog by using the affiliate link up there in the post; but for the Amazon- & affiliate-link-phobes among you, and so you don't think I'm just talking up this book to get my tiny commission, here are some non-Amazon, non-affiliate links to purchase Going In Circles:

• Barnes & Noble
  
• IndieBound
  
• Powell's Books