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.