Writing Update

I've been reading a lot of (literary) agent blogs lately, as motivation and education. They do a lot of contests, and I am excited to participate. But I want to be ready with a completed novel and solid query before I start submitting anything.

This year's NaNo project, The Really Good Guy, was not my first attempt at a novel. I intend to finish that book, and I intend for it to be really good. So while I pluck away at it as the mood strikes, and I have very good notes for what I want to change and where/how I want it to grow, it's not my primary writing focus right now. I don't want to push on through a finishing/polishing/revising process when I'm not feeling passionate about the work, just to have it "done." I want it done right, which means that I need a little more practice at this whole novel-writing gig before I go back to work on The Really Good Guy full time. It's too important to me for it to be my training novel.

In the meantime, I'm back at work on an earlier attempt at a novel, Seek Ye First. Long-time blog readers might have read early chapters of an early draft of this one, before I petered out a few years ago. I had trouble finding my character's voice, and was uninspired by the mystery. (This was a real problem, in what was supposed to be a "cozy mystery" novel.)

As Paul and I were working down in our basement last week, I was moving around both my writing references and my Agatha Christie collection, when, bam! Inspiration. I've been working on parts of this book subconsciously for a while now, and have been having more success with the main character's voice. The mystery, however, is only now coming into focus and beginning to excite me. So we'll see where this goes! I'm not revising; I'm starting over from scratch. I keep telling myself that I'm not throwing all that previous hard work away; it's all there in my head somewhere, enriching this new draft. I hope.

Motivational Reading

I have always been a book addict. When I was a child and punishment proved necessary, my mother would send me to my room, but only after removing whichever books I happened to be reading at the time. Or, worse, she'd send me outside to play. Without my book. In college, I did not allow myself any non-assigned fiction during the semester, because I knew that I'd just get lost in a book and neglect my studies (which, frankly, didn't need any more neglecting).

Balance was not impossible for me, just challenging. I was, after all, successful in a career for ten years, and it wasn't the sort of career that smiled upon the reading of novels at work.

After Ellie was born, I suddenly had no time to read, and I didn't pick up a single novel for six months. I underwent a lot of major life changes during that period, including becoming a mother, having a Very Sick Child, and temporarily leaving my career, but perhaps the simple fact that I was not reading was the most damaging to me.

So when Ellie was six months old, I joined a friend's book club, and it felt like I had surfaced for air. I quickly found time to read not just the selected books, but other fiction too. Sure, I slept less, but it was worth it. Oh, so very worth it. Eventually, I started a second book club, which has a completely different feel and reads very different books. In both groups, we rotating "hosting" duties every month - though we don't always meet at our homes - and the host selects the book. Here's what my two book clubs read in 2007. Can you guess which one I joined and which one I started up from scratch?

Book Club One
A Spot of Bother by Mark Haddon
Snow Flower and the Secret Fan by Lisa See
Under the Banner of Heaven by Jon Krakauer
Nice Girls Finish First by Alesia Holliday
Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister by Gregory Maguire
Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen
The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency by Alexander McCall Smith
Random Family by Adrian Nicole LeBlanc

Book Club Two
Night by Elie Wiesel
Kindred by Octavia Butler
Birds of America: Stories by Lorrie Moore
The House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende
A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah
The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin
The Dangerous Life of Altar Boys by Chris Fuhrman
The Red Tent by Anita Diamant
Bearing Witness by Michael A. Kahn
White Teeth by Zadie Smith
Daughter of Time by Josephine Tey

I'm not giving up either book club (though I might miss a few titles here and there) but I'm thinking I might try to dial the reading back a little, in order to squeeze in more time for the sleeping and the writing, and probably the exercising, too. Alas. Perhaps Newsweek, Parents, and - gasp - television will have to feel the pruning shears.

Sorkin

First of all, thanks very much to Jessica for staying with the girls tonight so that Paul and I could go out for a movie and dinner. I originally wanted to see Juno, but we ended up seeing Charlie Wilson's War, and enjoying it very much.

I didn't think that I was interested in seeing a movie about US 1980s cold war politics in the middle east. But I like Aaron Sorkin's writing and there was a good cast, so we went.

I'd love to talk about it with any of you who've seen the movie, especially other feminists. Obviously, Wilson is a flawed character (and I liked the way that's obvious from the opening scene). But his politics were pretty sound, and he was good at working the system to accomplish things. How did you feel about the sexy female aides? How about the way he treated them in the film (flirtatiously, but with respect)? He relied upon them and trusted them to do the jobs that needed doing; they certainly weren't just eye candy. Except for the belly dancer and the Playmate.

A Few Good Men. The American President. Sports Night. The West Wing. Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip. If you write it, baby, I'll watch it. But (note that this is the tongue-in-cheek part) I wish he'd do an interview confession which projects he wrote while straight and which ones he wrote while high, so I can decide how I prefer his work. For example, Matthew Perry is often better looking while on pills (the emaciated look makes for a strong jawline) and he's got a haunted quality that is more serious actor and less class clown when he's fighting his monkey. And Stephen King admitted that he can't even remember writing Cujo. I'm as square as they come, but I do find it interesting to compare people's work while loaded versus sober.

Bucket List

No, not the movie, the St. Louis Bloggers January Carnival. My recent not-cancer freak-out threw this one into bold relief for me:

Sarahlynn's To Do Before I Die List:
1) Watch my kids grown up healthy and happy.
The End.

Since I'm trending a bit contrary, my other would-like-tos include:

• Have my whole house organized, top to bottom, with no Monica Closet. Not even a Monica Drawer. Just once, just for a few minutes, just to see what it feels like.
• Publish a good book, to good reviews and sales.
• Find a miracle cure for my feet so that I can rollerblade again.
• While I'm at it, find a miracle cure for cancer. And world hunger. And so forth.
• Have sex with Taye Diggs and his identical twin brother.

What? What?!

OK, well, I don't like New Year's Resolutions and I don't like Bucket Lists, so I don't play nicely with either. My mind just doesn't naturally think in superlatives like, what's my favorite book/movie/song/color? What do I most want to do before I die?

There's a lot of stuff I want to do before I die. There's a lot of stuff I want to do before Easter. There's a lot of stuff I want to do before bed tonight.

But last Sunday, I did "ask" my Sunday School class make some sort of New Year's Resolutions, because the lesson suggested that we do so.

We Believe that our lives are pieces of God's plan. What can we do in our immediate futures to help imagine our eternal lives in God's presence?

Ah, this exercise I like better. It's far less morbid!

• I can practice saying, "Yes."
  
• And I can stop waiting for the question, looking instead for opportunities to volunteer in ways that make a significant contribution without inspiring me to feel resentful or overwhelmed.
  
• I can continue the practice I began working so hard on last year, involving compassion and understanding.

On these, I've already begun. About these, I already feel hopeful.

And, in the end, I think they're more important and valuable both to me and to others than worrying about when I'll die, or where I'll travel, or even the state of my half-organized basement storage closet.

Big, Fun, Scary

This is a follow-up to NaNoWriMo. The challenge is to take on one big, fun, or scary goal for 2008. You know, sort of exactly like a New Year's Resolution. Which I don't do. But.

Why not?

Big: Weigh less than my (stunning if I do say so myself) Y2K weight by Christmas

Fun: Cruise the Inner Passage, go to Disney World, and spend a long, hot, child-free weekend in Mexico

Scary: swim cage-free with sharks

No, really:

Big: Limit gorging and resume regular workouts (notice how this is not a SMART goal, but I'll know and that's all that matters)

Fun: go on at least one date per month, and therapy sessions do not count

Scary: Submit at least 2 magazine articles to editors and at least 5 novel query letters to agents.

And the Girls Met Santa and All Was Good

I miss writing. I love December, but things are pretty uncreative around here if I'm not even finding the time to blog!

The silver lining is that January is usually cold and dark and depressing; the excitement of the holiday season is over and there's nothing immediate to look forward to. By "holiday season," I mean September through December, including my birthday, Ellie's birthday, Halloween, Thanksgiving, Advent, Christmas, and New Year's Eve. What's not to love?!

Wait, I forgot the lining. After all that excitement, January is a bit of a let-down. But this year I can promise myself that, amidst all the exercising I'll be doing, I will also be taking time to WRITE again, which makes me feel happy and good in ways that nothing else really touches.

So, yay for January!

In the meantime, here's a writer joke.

A linguistics professor was lecturing to his English class one day. "In English," he said, "a double negative forms a positive. In some languages, though, such as Russian, a double negative is still a negative. However, there is no language wherein a double positive can form a negative."

A voice from the back of the room piped up, "Yeah, right."

It's Time for Christmas Letters

I can't blog right now! I'm writing our family Christmas letter! This year, again, I can't bring myself to write neat paragraphs describing our year. (Sarahlynn likes to read. Paul has a new job. Ellie is cute. Ada was born! The end.) So I searched around online, and I'm trying to write a menu that describes our year, as though we're a restaurant.

For example:

Entrees
Haggis, served family style (we took a 10-day family vacation to Scotland in June)

And so forth.

Do you know that some people think that writing longer things takes more time? Unless we're talking about a novel vs. a postcard, I find the opposite to be true. It's hard, very hard for me to edit, refine, pare down, keep the meaning without all the words. Words, words, words are easy.