December Musings

Allow me a moment.

IT'S THE END OF THE SEMESTER.

Unbelievable. I've made it to winter break, and my days were full to the last minute. After trekking up the icy hill to my Friday morning-final (ahhh, Steubie, how I love you), I spent the next few hours gathering luggage, cleaning, and bidding farewell. It's hard to believe how the semester seems simultaneously to have flown.....

....and yet gone soooo slooooowly.

I hopped on a plane in Pittsburgh and by 7:00 was happy in the 60-degree weather of North Carolina.

Luxuriously, I took the weekend to adjust, recover from finals (that is, come down from my caffeine high), and (ahhhh!) sleep in. Then Monday arrived, and I grew restless.....

I puttered around. Made breakfast and wrestled our all-too-frisky kitten. Leafed through my class notes. Skyped with a friend. Having nothing to do felt weirder than weird.  

And at last, I found myself turning my computer on, clicking through my documents. Opening one. And writing until I had five rough chapters.

Writing for the first time in months was awesome. Words flowed, for a while. Then my old routine set in: cudgeling my brains, frowning at the computer. But even the frustration felt good. 

The piece I worked on is not one of my figment pieces; it's a novella I've had stashed away for several months. I don't know that it will be going on figment at any point. Right now, it's very personal, a foray into a new genre and a completely new style of writing that I'm not quite ready to share. However, I've also been working on my second draft of Default Sweater and wrestling a bit with Lilla and the Tower. I hit a tough spot with Lilla over the semester, where words weren't coming and the storyline felt tangled. My goal with the story was to go for a simpler writing style and short chapters, fairy tale-like, but I've found that even simple writing isn't always simple to write. Schoolwork caught up, and I took a break that stretched from days to months.

My goal for winter break (up 'til January 13) is to write at least ten chapters of Lilla. I will most likely be working on multiple things on the side--hopefully TDS will be back up soon, with some edits. I also have big plans for the sequel, as I keep promising! As of now, I have a storyline mapped out and am scribbling down ideas whenever they pop into my head. It's taking on a very fun tone and I'm dying to start. In planning, I'm amused at how much seems to be coming from the real world--real experiences, conversations, and people. With TDS, there were a few moments I included from my own life, like Erin's story of Gangster Day, or Willow House, which was inspired by my memories of Lake Messalonskee. Generally, though, I try to steer clear of "writing myself" into a story. I don't want to be writing an autobiography, and in this case, I really can't, since I'm much younger than Erin and don't quite obsess over first kisses (though she and I are fans of the same movies). Aside from a few things, Erin came purely from my imagination.

The sequel, though, seems to demand more. Because the protagonist is someone who, unlike Erin, has had a lot of experience with boys, stories, both from my own life and from others' lives, creep in. Midnight conversations with friends lead to musings about plot and character. New acquaintances contribute observations. The chivalry and kindness of boys on campus (as well as their boyish craziness) inspires me as I dive into writing another romance.

It's very fun. :)

Aside from this all, I'm missing college immensely. I know, I'm a freak. As pleasant it is not to have class.....and how fantastic it is not to be eating cafeteria food....

.....I'm missing stuff like this:



And this....

*Sigh* So I'm out. With lots and lotsa free time. Keeping my fingers crossed that it turns into lots of writing time.

Merry Christmas to all you lovely people, Happy Holidays, and have a lovely vacation. I think we all deserve it, don't you? :)

November

I am a warm-weather child.

Living in Ohio has been such a new experience for me, especially as frost sets in. The leaves have long since fallen from the trees, and the world has grown winter-quiet.

Twice a week, I have a holy hour early in the morning.

I'm pretty sure that approximately 90% of the world has no idea what a holy hour is, so I'll explain. I go to one of the Cathlockiest of Catholic universities in the country, and we have Perpetual Adoration. This means that there is a chapel in which the Eucharist is kept, 24/7, which means that someone is there praying before it at every moment of the day. Even in the middle of the night.

Which means that twice a week, I drag myself out of bed in the wee hours, pull a jacket on, and set out across campus.

At the beginning of the school year, when the weather was September-fresh and I could slip out with only a sweater, it wasn't bad. Then it got colder, and I cringed and quaked and whined like a pouty little kid at having to leave my room.

Yet every now and then, while the bitter wind swirls around me and my bones jump with shivers, I'm struck by the raw beauty of winter.

Winter has no pretense. It is bare and immediate. It calls my heart with its silence.

It's November now, and my holy hours will get more difficult. The world is turning to ice, and in those moments just before I see the lamps outside the chapel entrance, when I experience only wind and darkness, I'm afraid.

And when I enter the chapel and am so welcomed, so loved, by the soft glow of candles and the beauty of the monstrance, I know that I can trek across an icy campus in the dark, that I can sacrifice hours of sleep, that I can kneel on a stone floor, dizzy with wishing for my far-away bed, because this is worth everything.

Reasons Why I am an Enfant Terrible (plus some news)

So, I need to own up to the fact that I've been a total brat. My bratness is not completely my fault, but to be honest, well, a few things have gotten away from me.

First off, deadlines and goals I set for myself. It's been a busy year, with lots of new things that demand my focus. I'm beyond being kept on my toes, I'm en pointe.

*snickers at her own joke*

But I can't make excuses, since I've been behind all year.

First of, my adventures in audioland. In March and April I did several posts talking about my research into audio book making, promising that I would be posting my resulting audio chapters within a few weeks. Well, time got away from me, and the next thing I knew, it was September. Oops.

So will I be posting Hearthsinger chapters? I honestly don't know. I hope that eventually I'll be able to share them, because I truly enjoyed researching and creating them. The cast was so much fun to work with and it was amazing to hear my own words spoken by other people. I'm sure I'll be posting more on the subject, since I'll (hopefully!) be making more forays into audioland.

Secondly, my disastrous ambition of finishing Lilla & the Tower by the end of the summer. It's still a dream I wish I could have accomplished, if I could turn back the weeks. Unfortunately, even vacation was a whirlwind this year. Lilla will definitely be continuing, but at this point, as far as writing goes, I have no plan. Currently, I'm working a few minutes a day on the second draft of TDS, tweaking some of its kinks and cutting a whole lot of words. It's a happy and painful process. I'm hoping that some Lilla time will sneak in there somewhere.

(On a happy note, I have a new blog! You may notice it's yellow. Like corn, maybe, or sunshine, or maple leaves in the fall, or perhaps some soft Sweater wool....)

And lastly, I had vague intentions of getting the TDS sequel up on my figment page right around now. Sadly, that won't be happening for a while, either, but the synopsis will be going up on my blog this week! As soon as it does, I'll post a little more about it and why I chose my new main character.

*exhales*

Things are hectic.

But good hectic.

Thank you for reading my hectic blog.

Willkommen in Europa

Twenty days. A long route north over Nova Scotia, following the tail winds over Greenland, dipping down through France and landing at last in Stuttgart, Germany. Clammered against my seat with ear phones and a desperate desire to sleep.

Oh, what a relief to stand up and stretch your legs after nearly ten hours! It's 8:30 a.m. The sunlight and the small airplane breakfast do just enough to convince my brain, kind of, that it's actually morning. Back home, the sun won't rise for hours yet.

That's the way my trip began, three weeks ago. Up till now, my summer's been quite tame--work, college preparations, sneaking a last few days at home. Then, late in July, it was time to head back to Germany for a delicious three-week vacation.

A quick explanation: when I was sixteen, I did a foreign exchange through my school. For six months, I lived with a family in Baden-Wuerttemberg, the southwestern-most state of Germany. I went to school and took two additional private German lessons a week. It was a beautiful stolen chunk of time, where I made friends, took trips around the country, and had the amazing experience of learning a new language.

Afterwards, I came back to the States, and the real world started again. I went to school. I studied for my SATs. My life was college applications and senior classes. I started to notice how much I stumbled over words during German class.

This spring, I wrote to friends in Baden-Wuerttemberg and asked if I might stay with them over the summer. In July, I packed up a couple of gifts--two bottles of Texas hot sauce--and boarded my plane for Stuttgart.



 I can't possibly describe every day of the trip, though I'd love to. I'll just say that it was non-stop, hectic. Autobahn-quick. The first two weeks I stayed with various friends who all live in separate small villages. My favorite: Michelbach, region Schwaebisch Hall.

Gorgeous.

Other than the friends, other than spending time with beloved people whom I haven't seen in several years, there were other great highlights.

1. The food. Friends and acquaitances were shocked to hear that I eat much more sensibly in busy, fast food-famous America. And why? Because I can't resist German food. And we ate. And ate.

This is Döner, the world's most amazing food.
It's worth a trip to Germany just for lamb and yogurt sauce on pita-ish bread.

When cousins arrived, I even got treated to a lesson in how to make Spätzle, a regional noodle dish with sausage and lentils:

Ta-da!

2. One day, friends and I decided, like true former Waldorf students, to spend the afternoon felting. If you don't what felting is, it consists of taking bits of colored wool, wetting it in hot water and soap, and then rubbing it between your hands until it holds together. Kind of like making dreads. I've felted slippers before, which was interesting to say the least. Lucy and Miri and I gathered up our supplies and headed out to the garden:

After a while, the boys came out and decided to try their hand at felting, too. I think we girls hit a little closer to the mark.

After hours of felting and felting, we were just about ready to sew all our teeny tiny pieces together and make some extremely gorgeous potholders.**

**Sarcasm disclaimer. I also need to practice my felting skills a while longer before my potholders reach "gorgeous" standard.

3. A quick detour to Italy! A mutual friend of Lucy's and mine lives in Brescia. Our last week, we piled into the car. This is what the morning in Germany looked like.

Austria....

Ten hours later...ahh, Salo, Italia!

Six days in Salo with quick trips to Brescia and an accidental almost-trip to Verona after a wrong turn on the Autobahn. After fear of arrest and a sixty-euro traffic ticket, we were back on track.

We started the nine-hour drive back to Germany at 2:00 AM on Monday morning. I dozed off in the back seat and woke to the sun rising in the Alps. When I woke for the second (or possibly third) time, we were just outside of Ulm.

We had one afternoon. We grilled. I packed. We ate in the garden until there was no room left.

I arrived in Stuttgart the next morning just in time to settle in for my flight.

Now, it seems impossible that I was in Italy only four days ago. It was the roadtrip of a lifetime, and now, I'm happy to be back home. Home where everything is scheduled, regular. Where we measure things in inches and miles instead of centimeters and kilometers. Where things are safe and familiar.

Yes, it's good to be home. :)



Poking Writer's Block in the Eye

In the midst of an attack of writer's block so bad I want to throw a brick at the wall, I've stumbled across an article I wrote last semester for my school newspaper. This part made me smile:

And so, as the realization of only one final week of school blazed through, the first natural thought I had was, Free time! For writing! I love the thought of having time to sit and crank out a new chapter, and if writer's block hits, there's always chocolate, so I'm quite prepared to battle it out.

It's funny, now that I think on it. I've craved relaxation and time to lie back on my couch and stare at the ceiling, and writing definitely won't bring me this. Sitting down to write a chapter--a measly two thousand words--can turn into an entire afternoon, my neck cramping as I stare at the computer screen and choke out sentence by sentence. I get up, pace in circles, stomp until my neighbors complain, or go read Jane Eyre for the hundredth time.

Rarely, very rarely, I feel myself nod and sigh as I type a sentence, and I know that that moment is one I'll never have to change. It's really just all a muddle there in my head; it takes shaping and sweat to pull it out and polish it. Sometimes, I get up and cheer. It's silly, but I do it, and then I feel so electrified as to put on a superhero cape and save the world.


This is nice for me to look back on when I'm sweating and biting my tongue until it hurts, when everything I write turns to mush, when writing a paragraph is as painful as pulling teeth, when chocolate won't sway my creative juices, when I find I've been sitting at my computer for an hour and have done nothing but play solitaire, when I can't stand the story I used to be so excited to write, when there just isn't an available brick to throw. Remembering that nod and sigh when something flows through my cramped, unwilling fingers makes me smile, and I wonder, a little, if that one triumph isn't worth every moment of frustration.

Three Reasons I Can't Do a Blog Post

1. Because I'm rereading an old figment fave.


I'm stuck on Andronicus & Junia right now. By nature, I'm a re-reader, and once I find a favorite book, I'll read it again and again. Right now, I'm completely in love with Janelle Labelle's story about two children in a castle in Nova Scotia. Synonyms and blue soap snails and gorgeous moments abound.

Voila. Le link.


2. Because I woke up with Lilla hair.

Letting my dignity fly out the window, I woke up this morning, looked at myself in the mirror, and took a picture. Hilarity and shame ensued. Here you are:

.It's not only distracting, it's totally unprofessional.

But possibly inspiring.

3. Because I'm preparing for a late night writing session.

My new goal is to be finished with my first draft of Lilla and the Tower by September. It's a long shot, especially since I've been kicking myself to crank out a chapter a week. Right now I'm settling back, toying with the thought of tea, and getting pumped up for a midnight writing session. Everyone has their magic time. :)

So, you see.....I simply can't do a blog post. 

Aaaand.....Close!

I hope I can officially say that my utter out-of-figment-craziness-just-remembered-she-has-a-blog time is finished. For those of you who actually read my blog, and to everyone who has been following my progress on figment, you guys have been very patient! Summer break has started, and aside from work, I have nothing to do. The freedom is bewildering.

Because it has been an embarrassingly long time since my last post, there's lots of news to share!

First and most exciting, Default Sweater is finished! It's officially official, folks. I really wrestled with those last chapters, but I'm thrilled at the way things turned out. It's odd not to turn on my computer and head straight for that word doc the way I've done for the past eight and a half months.


Final count: 76,969 words. Oooh, I can't wait to start editing some of those boys out. I haven't gone back and read the whole thing yet, but I know my fingers will start jumping to fix everything up as soon as I do. Editing is like cleaning, or washing dishes....cleansing, creating order out of havoc, isn't it? ....or is it just me?


I announced this on my figment account, but I'll go ahead and give it another plug--there's going to be a sequel! I can't usually plan sequels out in detail while I'm still working on Book #1, but even while I was writing TDS, I knew I wouldn't want to let go of those characters. At this point, I won't have to, anyway, since I'll be an editing fiend with the story for a good long while yet, but having reached the end of draft one, I'm glad I decided to continue the adventures for a while. Looking back at it, I really feel that there were a few characters who didn't reach the end of their own story, even though Erin has. I'm excited to continue for their sake.


So! Right now I'm being a good girl and working on my new main project, Lilla & the Tower, which will probably carry me through summer and into early fall. I'm very excited to switch back to that girl--she waited a long time for me. Sheesh.


Sequel details: The TDS sequel will be going up on my page in the late summer/early fall! It will feature a new main character who, yes, did appear in TDS. It's in the early planning stages right now, but it's looking to be something very new. I'm very excited.

To everyone who has given me so much help over the last months of writing The Default Sweater--thank you. I've got some homemade chocolate chip cookies with your name on them.

Tea and Other Curiosities

So, I lied.

I recently looked back at my last post and realized I had promised to post Hearthsinger audio clips by early April. So I guessed that slipped past me. I have no concrete theme for today's blog post; my life has been so hectic lately, so I guess I'll just share a bit of what I've been up to with you all until I have time to sit down and write a nice fat post about the audio process with Hearthsinger.

Figment News:

Most exciting news is, Default Sweater is almost done! I can't believe it. I'm scanning my "Chapter Progression" word doc and counting remaining chapters. I'm already planning edits for the second draft and I'm just so excited. Finishing a story, even a first draft, is funny, because I'm simultaneously so excited to have this brand new story there for people to read, and sad to let it go. Writing TDS has been such an adventure, and it's taken me through more twists and turns than I ever expected. But more on that later. :)

My post-TDS plans are exciting, too. Although what's posted on my figment account right now is just a first draft, I'm feeling the need to step back from the story for a little. My plans as they stand right now are to return and keep writing Lilla & the Tower, which I'm totally excited about. It's fun to switch back to fantasy for a little while after working on TDS, which has no magic to speak of.

Well, except perhaps the magic of manly eyes. Manly eyes in droves. I'm realizing I need to go back during rewrite time and count mentions of eyes.

Also, TDS has no girls locked in towers, feuding queens, or possibly glass slippers. All things I'm hankering to write.

In the meantime, I'd like to talk about something else. Namely tea.

I like tea. I think about tea a lot. In the past year, I've read two figment works which consistently mention tea (namely Waxflower Wood, formerly Nattie & Finn, by Anande Sjöden, and Birdcage Girl, by Kimberly Karalius). The tea mentioning was not a central plot point in either of these, but I'm a tea kind of girl, so I noticed.

My family has actually given me tea for Christmas before. So my next goal, as soon as Default Sweater is finished, is naturally also tea-related. I guess it was perfect for me to write a story set in England, a place I've never actually been.

When I was little, we lived in the frigid Siberianesque state of Maine. I was seven when we left, so while we were there, I went through a merciless strengthening of my immune system....e.g., I was sick ALL THE TIME. My mom isn't a big one for medicine, unless it's cough syrup or aspirin, so often, I was left to fight through it with more natural remedies, like vegetables, chicken soup, blankets.....and tea.

I drank it like an Englishman, with milk and sugar. When I was sixteen, I lived in Fichtenberg, Germany for six months, and encountered more tea-drinking, of the milk-less and sugar-less variety. Germans have a national distrust of "flat" water--e.g., non-fizzy water, and, like typical Europeans, a love for frequent tea, coffee, and cigarette breaks. My host mother used to make a pot of tea in the morning. Whatever we didn't drink before catching the bus for school, we'd drink with dinner that night.

So I'm a big tea drinker. My father thinks I'm nuts. He's a typical southerner, so "tea" to him implies black tea, boiled with sugar, then left to cool and be drunk with breakfast. He kind of regards me as some sort of European hipster who drinks unheard-of herbal concoctions and doesn't like "real tea"--cold and sweet.

Okay, this one is coffee. But it was delicious. The cookie, too--already had a bite out of it before I took out my camera.

My tea fascination obviously comes out in Default Sweater, and my next goal is to count mentions of tea just for fun. The next chapter's going up soon. Thirty-three down, three to go. WOOT WOOT.

Off for a cup of tea and Chapter Thirty-Four. It's eighty-five degrees outside, but I defy you, stars.

Insanity

I announced last night on my figment page that audio chapters of The Hearthsinger will be up next week--I'm going to guess on Tuesday or Wednesday. As they are recordings of a point in the middle of the book, it's also a sneak peek of sorts. I'll give more details on this whole wonderful process as soon as I have a moment to breathe. For now, some pictures of what my workspace currently looks like...

Script papers scattered.....everywhere....

Editing, editing....with my dinner in the corner.

A closer look at marking speech patterns, etc., for the Narrator.

My classy attempt at showing more speech patterns/notes/markings with my oh-so-clear iPod camera (regular camera's battery is dead), allowing my shadow to loom ominously and clash somewhat with the smiley face floating above the third line.

What I'm Reading Right Now

I've spent far too much time on figment lately, but I've also had the wonderful, amazing, lovely, delicious time to read at ALL. Books! I bid Borders a sad goodbye in 2011, but there's a Barnes and Noble within fifteen minutes of my house, and the employees must be getting tired of seeing me. I'm the kind of girl who sits in the back all day with a stack of books and doesn't move till closing time. It just [insert creepy side note] smells so good in there.

1. Happy Cafe -Figment novel by Enaam Alnagger
Figment has introduced me to the wonderful world of magical realism. It's rare that an entire genre hooks me in, but I'm dying to try it for myself. In the meantime, I have scads of beautiful stories both of the paper and of the electronic form. Happy Cafe is the story of Elodie, a lonely girl who discovers a magical cafe, carried to her town with the beginning of the winter. I got hooked by the story right away. It's a really beautiful piece of work and full of characters I'm dying to learn more about. I love, love, love the name Elodie, by the way.

2. Midnight in Austenland, by Shannon Hale
This is the third time I've read the book since it came out in January. It's the sequel to Austenland, which is coming out as a movie this year, directed by Jerusha Hess! And since both books are just a big chunk of wonderful, I'm going to go ahead and tell you what they're about. Austenland is the story of Jane Hayes, a single, thirty-three-year-old New Yorker. Is there a reason she's single? Oh yes. Jane is obsessed by the idea of Mr. Darcy, particularly Mr. Darcy as played by Colin Firth in the BBC version of Pride and Prejudice. When her great-aunt discovers her secret, Jane finds herself the recipient of a prepaid, three-week vacation to a secret resort called Pembrook Park. In Pembrook Park, it's still 1816, and life is easy--full of empire dresses and Regency manners, strolling in the park and maybe, just maybe, a proposal from a certain gentlemen. Once firmly in Austenland, however, it is up to Jane to discover what is real and what is only fantasy....

Midnight in Austenland could stand on its own, but the two books together form such a scrumptious series. It takes up a new main character, Charlotte Constance Kinder. Charlotte, a successful businesswoman, loving wife, and mother of two, will never understand what drove her husband away. Cast off in favor of a mistress, Charlotte takes comfort in Austen books and soon, discovers Pembrook Park. However, this time, things take a dark turn, and Charlotte begins to suspect that a murder has taken place inside Pembrook's walls. Add that to the mystery of the brooding Mr. Mallery and Miss Gardenside's unusual illness, and Charlotte becomes a detective extraordinaire, determined to solve Pembrook's secrets...

Shannon Hale is so unbelievably original and witty. Her books have me literally laughing out loud. While Austenland obviously draws inspiration from Pride and Prejudice, Midnight in Austenland takes a Northanger Abbey turn, with murder, mystery-solving, and a fair amount of gothic romance. Both of the books are fantastic.

3. James and the Giant Peach, by Roald Dahl
Yep, you heard me. I went through a hefty Dahl phase as a child. My favorites were Matilda and James and the Giant Peach. I suppose Dahl wrote magical realism as well, though I've never categorized him into a genre before. I have to confess I'm still drawn to the children's section in bookstores. Everything is colorful, the books are creative and funny. I still pull books off the "5th-8th grade" shelf. Recently, I wandered over and found James again. Then I sat down in the cafe and read it from cover to cover. One of my favorite things about Roald Dahl aside from his fantastic imagination is his wordplay. The Big Friendly Giant still gets me laughing ("You are once again gobblefunking! Don't do it. This is a serious and snitching subject.") and it was just the same with the naughty singing Centipede on the peach trip across the Atlantic. I think I even had a Dahl cookbook when I was little that taught you how to make "hot noodles made from poodles on a slice of garden hose....."

4. Birdcage Girl -Figment novel by Kimberly Karalius

I've read pretty much everything else Kimberly has posted on figment, including her awesome novel-in-progress Boys and Bees, so it surprised me I hadn't dived into Birdcage Girl yet. Once I did, I hung over my computer for five days, reading the deliciously short chapters. Another foray into magical realism that left me with nothing but awesomeness. Birdcage Girl centers around Ashlyn, a girl kept locked in a birdcage by her overprotective mother. One of my favorites aspects of the novel (well, okay, I had a LOT of favorite aspects) was the characterization. A girl locked in a birdcage, a doctor who knows secrets of her past, a butler with metal bones, and a female cat named Jimmy.
Any time there's a cat, I'm hooked. ;)

5. The Jane Austen Handbook: Proper Life Skills from Regency England, by Margaret C. Sullivan
A birthday present from my mother, and I'm loving it. It's perfect that it came while we're in the middle of reading Midnight in Austenland (I read aloud to my mother--yes, with a bad British accent). It's amazing that Jane Austen still garners so much fascination from readers, two hundred years after the publication of her books. The book recalls some good moments from Austen's books (disastrous proposals, gossip, and a nice chunk of Miss Jane's humor), and gives information on everything from hairdressing, to what to do during a summer visit to Bath, to how to politely reject a proposal of marriage ("If all else fails, swoon.")

It's never fun during the schoolyear when I rack my brains and realize I can't remember the last time I read a book. Vacation time is good time in my book (hahahah, okay, sorry, there's a stray pun), where I can sleep in and spend the day reading (also writing, tracking down that lost camera charger, cleaning the kitchen, applying for a job, recycling the scads of scrap paper in my room, ripping the stray threads out of my new sweater.....). You get the idea. As I'm geting older and just a tad busier, I'm realizing more and more what a gift a good book is. The bookstore will never get rid of me.

Words, Writing Exercises, and Where I've Been Lurking

My excuse is always and unabashedly schoolwork. It should be slowing down any moment now....*checks watch*. In the meantime, I've been here, at my computer, writing up data on animal life in central Texas and remembering that I haven't done a blog post since early February. But now, ahhh, isn't spring break wonderful. Add that to the fact that the weather is beautifully sunny, I've made a return to being blonde, and there's leftover birthday cake, and I am rolling on a big cloud of happy.

I've recently gotten sucked into a secret project (I'll be announcing it on figment within a few weeks, and I hope it's something that makes people happy, because I'm super excited about it!), that, as awful as it is, has distracted me badly from Hearthsinger and TDS. The up side is that it has kept me writing a bit each day, when I'm too tired from school to write a 2,000-word chapter of Erin's adventures in London. I'm very excited for it, because although it is, like Default Sweater, set in a contemporary time and place (a genre I NEVER used to venture into), it's got a fair bit more whimsy. I love whimsy.

In other realms of internet snooping, I ran across a website which offers different exercises for writers. I'm not normally into intensive story webs/exercises/breakdowns/character interviews/so on and so forth, but I was hooked by this one. The challenge offered was to write the opening of a story as a film prologue in which the main character speaks directly to the audience, introducing him or herself and his dilemma. I tried it out on Default Sweater and liked it quite a lot. :) Since I'm not a big fan of first person (for my own writing, at least), I was surprised that I enjoyed it and that it seemed to flow quite well. Whereas with a few of my other projects, like Lilla and Hearthsinger, I sometimes have difficulty writing realistically, since the stories are fantasy, Default Sweater has a very real-and-touch-me feeling. It's stuff I can picture well as part of the real world, for example, as a film prologue. Cars. Annoying younger sisters. Spaghetti sauce. That sort of thing.

But I'm rambling.

Here's the exercise! This is written from Erin's point of view.

            If you’re wondering, I’m not paranoid.

            You know, about the kissing thing. Isn’t it weird that we can’t stand a love story unless it’s sealed with that perfect touch, the kiss?

            And not just any kiss. A First Kiss. That’s the touch that’s supposed to change you, isn’t it? It redefines your whole life, theoretically. Sometimes you forget and slip...mm, remember all the love stories you’ve read or watched where the hero rushes in and sweeps the heroine up to kiss her? Look at her. She just melts into his arms.

            Stop looking at me like I’m a woman who sits along at home analyzing movie kisses. It’s not like my whole life revolves around kissing. Because it doesn’t.

            I mean, it can’t, since I’ve never been kissed.

            Oops. Guess we got that out of the way. 

            I can’t talk about it, see. I can’t even admit it to myself. How much I want...that. I mean, not just that. If I was the kind of gal who just liked the gratification, I’d grab the nearest guy who reminded me of George Clooney and pin him against a tree. Or a lamp post. Or whatever.

            But that’s not how it is. I mean, look at that. With a touch like that...won’t your heart follow? If you give someone a kiss, it must mean something. Like a leap into forever maybe. But I wouldn’t know.

            I am not asking Maury.

My Secret Collection

I have a document on my computer called "Stash". Just like with candy, or my mother's odd obsession with cookbooks, or my stepmother with her grocery coupons, I have a delicious secret stash all to myself of words.

So often when I read, I get excited when I read certain things. They're the kind of phrases that make me twitch with excitement, that just hit me in exactly the right place. So much so that I have to, of course, write them down. It's the most fun when I find them in old stories I'm no longer working on; I just copy and paste the line, or phrase, or paragraph, that I like and squirrel it away for another story. More often, I find them in already published works or on figment. I'm so impressed by other authors, how beautifully they craft their words. Some of my favorite authors ever include Shannon Hale, whose lyrical descriptions capture an element of truth that always leaves me stunned, Gail Carson Levine, one of those authors who has made me fall in love with every one of her heroes, Roald Dahl, who was so witty and clever with words (albeit a tad creepy), and Chaim Potok, who does such a wonderful job of capturing characters that I name mine after his, apparently, without even thinking about it.

Recently, I submitted to peer pressure and finally read The Hunger Games. I read the first two in two sit-in sessions at an independent bookstore over the holidays, and the third one several weeks later. I had a hard time with these books. As I was reading them, I was asking myself constantly whether I wanted to read a story containing so much violence. I'm the kind of person who listens to Owl City, likes sunshine, and enjoys a good comedy. Happy stuff. I wasn't sure I wanted to read books that center around gladiatorial games. Squeamish, much? But true.

The result? I was completely swept away by Suzanne Collins' language. I read the second and third books of the trilogy twice in two weeks. Literally, I read #2, #3, then #2 again, and #3 again. The second time through, I sat with a pad of paper beside me, copying out bits and pieces I liked. Purely for my "stash". I admire other writers so much and can see in comparison how much refining my own writing needs. I love learning from people like Shannon Hale and Suzanne Collins and the hundreds of talented writers on figment and beyond.

Here are some excerpts from my "stash" of writing. Sometimes I have no idea why I like what I write down. Every now and then I can place my finger on it. Sometimes it's something as simple as, "I like this because it's so succinct, it stunned me." Sometimes I just am surprised at the chord it strikes with me. The stash is drawn from blogs, books, trashed writings of my own, songs, and from my friends and teachers. Enjoy!

Suddenly he's sitting up, eyes wide in alarm, short of breath. "Katniss!" He whips his head toward me but doesn't seem to notice my bow, my waiting arrow. "Katniss! Get out of here!"
~Mockingjay, by Suzanne Collins

There's a raw innocent purity among the trees, I can feel it.
~Adam Young

I already know he can laugh.
~An earlier draft of The Hearthsinger. My, aren't I shameless? Pulling quotes from my own book.

"I had some ham for breakfast. I do not get ham much, what with pigs such dirty beasts and not on the property." His gaze wandered.
Jane tried to think of some appropriate response to that. She came up with, "Hooray for ham!"
"Yes, lovely," said Aunt Saffronia.
~Austenland, by Shannon Hale

The children in the library, poring over yellowed textbooks on topics like flower pollenating and building proper bee boxes, looked up from their books and thought the same thing.
Hedda Sparling must be reading love letters.
~Boys and Bees, by Kimberly Karalius

You taught me language, and my profit on't is, I know how to curse.
~Caliban, The Tempest. William Shakespeare

"Natalie," he says. Quietly, like I've just handed him a delicate flower.
~Nattie and Finn, by Anande Sjoeden

I don't like that smile, so sad it's barely a smile at all.
~Ever, by Gail Carson Levine


By writing down snippets that really speak to me, I only want to be able to read them and understand what it is about it that I like, so I can learn to write what I like.

The Reasons I Love My Mother

My mother is always my first reader. I love her critiques. We bicker about them and argue about words, and before I know it, she's become my editor-in-chief, with new suggestions, opinions, and hopes for where the story is going. Of course, most of the time, she's the one who catches my mistakes.

Her comment from my most recent Default Sweater chapter?

"Erin stabs food with her fork too much."

Thanks for catching the little things, Mom. Love you.

Ramblings on Condwiramurs and Lilla

Aside from Charles, I have very few characters based off of real people I know. Most of them are a mix of other characters I've read or experienced in movies. I do, however, want to confess that my shining star from the real world is Condwiramurs the kitten, who makes her appearance in Chapter Eight of The Default Sweater. And, like a middle school kid who writes love poems about their crush and pretends they're actually about someone else, I stuck her in. Because I'm completely smitten.

Meet Senior Cat, who lives under the lockers at my school and emerges in the afternoons to twine herself around people's legs. I go to a very small school--only twenty-seven people in my graduating class--and I have to say, everyone is smitten by Senior Cat. I mean really smitten. I mean feeding-her-the-lunch-meat-out-of-sandwiches smitten. Who couldn't be? Just look at her. Aww....

*Ahem*

For any literary buffs who want to call me out on the weird name, Condwiramurs comes from a medieval German legend about a knight, Parzival, who goes searching for the Holy Grail. Condwiramurs was the queen of a kingdom called Pelrapeire and Parzival's wife.

Just a side note.

ANYWAY, on another note, today the weather did one of its delicious mid-January swoops up to eighty degrees. The sun was bright and warm, the sky looked good enough to eat, and a tiny breeze looped through it all. Heaven. I got home, seized my chance to put on a summer dress before the weather plunges to forty again, and went outside to read in the sun.

Somehow or another, I got to thinking about my new project, Lilla & the Tower, which is a retelling of the Cinderella story. I've been wanting to post a couple more chapters of it, but Default Sweater is really flowing right now, so I'll hopefully get back to it in a day or two.

But writing about a heroine trapped inside a tower, without even a window to breathe out of, made me think today. With the weather so beautiful, I couldn't help but be a little disturbed. I was thinking about all the things that Lilla has never seen, starting with sunsets and ending with trees and animals. I was most discomfited at the thought of the sky. I live in central Texas, and the sky here is never halfhearted; it is bold with its sunset colors and even with its blues. It sparkles when the sun is bright. On days like today, it pulls my attention to it and I can't look away.

I'm starting to realize that Lilla's frustration of being stuck in her tower is much more than just going a little stir-crazy. I was amazed to think about all the things she's never done. She's never snapped a pine needle in half to smell it. She's never seen light reach through trees. She never got to do a hundred kid things, like jump in piles of leaves or go swimming in the summer or splash in puddles with her church clothes on. I'm feeling twice as sorry for Lilla as I did when I started writing. I think it's terrible of her father to keep her shut up like that, without even a window to lean out of and smell the air.

Come on, Savannah, you wrote the book.

Right. Sorry. But seriously, what do you do if you can't lean out a window and smell things?

Writing Around Writer's Block

These past few months have been tough. I feel like schoolwork has punched me in the gut, tied me up, and rolled me in front of an eighteen-wheeler. Now, back from Christmas break, I have something amazing plunked right in front of me.

"'Free time'? What is this 'free time'?"

That's pretty much how I feel. The last few days, I've barely moved from my computer, which is a shame, because Texas has suddenly gotten a burst of beautifully sunny weather, and I'm missing out.

But I've been writing, which is awesome.

I finally managed to crank out Chapter Twelve in TDS. I've been really frustrated with it lately. I feel almost like it's turned into a series of events, like Alice wandering around in Wonderland. Now she meets the caterpillar. Now she goes to a random tea party and they talk about silly things. I didn't want my story to turn into a predictable romantic comedy via Valentine's Day, and I worried that that's exactly what it was doing.

As a distraction on the side, I'm challenging myself with Lilla & the Tower, which has been enormously fun to write, and very good for me, since I'm a) foraying into the whimsical and the fairy tale with a retelling of Cinderella, and b) not doing a chapter mapout. With Hearthsinger and TDS, I sat down and wrote out exactly what would happen in however many chapters. I do give myself room to move. Chapter Eight in TDS, for example, where Danny brings Erin to help with birthday celebrations, was not in my original draft, but once I started writing it, I definitely felt like there had to more than just 'Erin goes to give Danny his library card, and they wander around and talk'. That, coincidentally, was another very difficult chapter to write. Writing is kind of like gambling. It's lovely, and very rare, that I can sit down and crank out two thousand words in one sitting. More often, I have to write, check my word count, check my chapter map, encourage myself with chocolate, go running, get up to smell the Christmas tree, make a cup of tea, or take a shower. In the case of Chapter Eight, or the last two chapters I've written, Eleven and Twelve, I had to write a draft, print it out, mark it up in red ink, trash most of it, and rewrite.

Anyway. Lilla. With Lilla, I had one of those wonderful moments where I just sat down and started writing the first chapter out by hand because I didn't even make it to a keyboard. I'm having so much fun with it, because unlike any of my other projects, in which a single chapter can take me a couple days to write, each of Lilla's chapters are only about a thousand words. I'm challenging myself not to map chapters out. Stay strong, Savannah!

My chapter mapping usually looks like this:

Six:
Start with some reflections. Erin is thinking as they walk through London. The party: Erin, Jenny, Emily, Roxanne, Allison, Kathryn. It’s apparent that Allison and Roxanne don’t always see eye to eye. Erin gets separated from the others and, frustrated, sits down on a bench, wishing she had a working phone. She starts talking to Danny, and they talk so long that he finally asks, tentatively, if she would like to come have dinner with him. Erin confesses she’s actually lost, and he helps her call home and gives her money for a train. “I haven’t actually got a car. I’ve got a bicycle.”

There are both pros and cons to this. It's something that works very well for me, and helps me construct the pacing, so that I'm not dumping information on readers or rushing through an important section. It also sets some constraints on me that makes it difficult for me to stray from the original outline when need be. So Lilla is an experiment. I felt like, unlike with a really involved storyline like TDS, Lilla would do better if I just felt my way through it. At the end of each chapter, I sit and stare vaguely at my computer screen, and decide what's needed in the next chapter.

I'm guessing this is working well for me with a simpler story with shorter chapters. But we'll see. Either way, I'm having fun.

One pro, though, to doing my chapter progression, is when I'm stuck with writer's block. I've been so annoyed with TDS lately, I feel like everything I write falls flat. I think I was mostly just grumpy. Today, I went back to my chapter progression to write a note for myself, and I got to looking through the chapters coming up in parts two and three. It reminded me how excited I am to write this story, and how much fun it's going to be, and how much I like the characters and the little moments I have in mind and a lot of mushy gushy stuff that only writers understand. (Right?) I'm standing here in front a semester of nothing but college applications and half-days of school, and I have this wild hope that Default Sweater might be finished by the time summer rolls around. We'll see about that.

I should have another chapter posted tonight or tomorrow, and then I've really got to get to unpacking. Really. It's shameful that I've let myself go like this, just to sit at a computer for two days and write about a girl and her sweater. :)