I think I have the flu. I have done nothing today except lay in bed and sleep, an event which was broken by intermittent bouts of coughing and blowing my nose. I didn’t do any writing today. I’m going to give it a try.
Category: NaNoWriMo
Day One
Day one of NaNoWriMo, and I feel pretty good. I have 2,390 words. I wrote the beginning and two other scenes that will come later on, but that I wanted to get down. I’m fairly pleased so far, and trying my best not to freak out and worry about whether it’s any good, although I did read it all to Steve, and he said it was good. Honestly, though, what’s he going to say?
The NaNo website is absolutely crawling today, though I suppose that’s to be expected. I uploaded a small excerpt of my book into my profile, but good luck trying to access it today. Maybe I’ll put some of it here. I’m on the fence about sharing a work in progress.
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Down to the Wire
One more day until NaNoWriMo begins. I feel pretty good about my idea, and I have some scenes sketched out in my head. You know, there might be something to waiting until November 1, even if there are ideas brewing. I don’t think it would be good if, say, the ideas started brewing around about December 1, but I started thinking about this book mid-October.
Am I wrong to be annoyed by NaNoWriMo forum posters who drop their publication credits or mention in some fake blasé way that an editor is already interested? It reminds me of namedroppers somehow. Yes, we’re excited for you. Go pretend you’re not gloating somewhere else.
I am *almost* caught up with grading. Everything that was handed in by Friday has now been graded, but I collected one-paragraph essays from 9th graders today and will collect more tomorrow. On Wednesday, I collect two sets of vocabulary cards. My 10th grade Writing class will have to turn in another essay this week. I never stay caught up for long.
Well, I retire to what feels like a well-earned session with a book.
And I Call Myself an English Teacher?
OK, time to fess up. I haven’t read Jane Eyre yet. However, I did purchase it years ago, probably when I was going through Jane Austen’s books. I remember it well. I was my first year as a teacher, a very rough year I might add, and I read both Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility with so much pleasure. I began Persuasion, but wasn’t able to finish — I know longer remember why. I purchased Emma, but haven’t read that yet, either. Actually, I think I loaned it to a student and never got it back. Never did get around to contemplating Northanger Abbey or Mansfield Park. And I call myself a Friend of Jane? Yes, I do. In fact, I’d have to say she’s one of my favorites. Anyway, I imagine I picked up a copy of Jane Eyre about that time, thinking that the Brontë sisters were close enough to Austen, if only in slightly similar time periods. Yes, I know the Brontës are much more gothic. I did enjoy Wuthering Heights in high school. I don’t remember finishing the book — not because I didn’t like it, but because I was reading so slowly and couldn’t keep up with the reading assignments in class. I still read fairly slowly, but I have come to terms with that and decided it is because I savor what I read.
Finishing The Thirteenth Tale decided it for me. I had to take that copy of Jane Eyre off the shelf (where it sat nestled between copies of Sense and Sensibility and The Turn of the Screw). It must have been in my classroom library at some point, because it has my former married name “Cooke” printed across the top of the pages in bold, black letters.
So I am about to take a sojourn to the moors, to Thornfield, to meet Jane Eyre at last. It seems to be a long book, and I don’t have much time for pleasure reading, but the end of October/beginning of November seems to me to be the perfect time to undertake this gothic classic.
Cheers to Ms. Setterfield for the inspiration.
On another note, if you are participating in NaNoWriMo, please let me know so I can make you a writing buddy. I am fairly excited about my book. I have written the opening scene in my head, but I’m being a good girl and waiting until November 1 to start.
Look What My Kid is Doing!
Sarah is participating in NaNoWriMo’s Young Writer’s Program. She’s awesome.
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Fun with Photoshop
In my excitement to begin my book, I have been doing lots of research, thinking, and planning. I created an icon for my book. It may be somewhat premature to have settled on a title, but it “feels right,” and Steve said it was good. I value his literary opinion, which may surprise those of you who don’t realize his literary tastes run beyond true crime. He’s probably more well-read when it comes to poetry than I am, but I don’t think he reads as many novels anymore as he used to. At any rate, he looked over my outline last night while I was sleeping and told me he really liked my ideas. He paid me the highest compliment he can pay me about my writing: it sounds like something he’d be interested in reading if he saw the story on a dust jacket.
Here’s an image I created for my book.
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Comfy Pair of Slippers
I had forgotton how much I enjoy creating fiction.
I have been doing research for my NaNoWriMo project, and I am excited about a direction in which I’m taking it. You can read up on the wiki if you feel like it, but I don’t advise you to if you don’t want to be spoiled. Anyway, things are kind of up in the air right now, and I’m not sure about some of the directions I plan to go. I think I’ve settled on a title, which makes me nervous. Ordinarily, I’m inclined to save that sort of speculation for much later, but I liked the ring of this. In scouting around for a title (I admit I was at least doing that much), I decided to pull one from a Victorian poem. Elizabeth Barrett Browning leapt to mind, so I checked out a few of her sonnets. I liked the first like from Sonnet VII in Sonnets from the Portuguese: “The face of all the world is changed, I think.” The sonnet is about how Barrett’s world had utterly changed now that she has found true love with Browning. The part of the line I like for my title is “The Face of All the World.” I told Steve I was speculating on a title, and he agreed with me that it was too early until I told him what I was thinking of. He sort of paused, and said it was a really good title. I told him the gist of the poem, as I have told you, but I think my interpretation will be a bit more twisted in the end, and I do plan to use the poem at the beginning of the book.
So that’s my working title anyway.
It’s been years since I really sat down and wrote like this. Well, technically I haven’t started yet, since I’m not supposed to start until November, but I have begun the process of sketching ideas in my head and even bits on the wiki (I suppose those are my notes).
I am finding the research interesting. I have always loved to read about Victorian England, whether it’s Dickens’ A Christmas Carol or Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories. I was looking at Anne Perry’s website, and she was explaining that one reason she likes to write about the Victorian era is she likes “the contrast between glamour and squalor.”
That’s a woman with a story, eh?
Anyway, I think I agree with her on this. I think there is an interesting juxtaposition of in this industrial era that is fascinating. You have such class distinctions, but at the same time, to paraphrase Barrett Browning, the face of all the world was changing. In some ways, we were losing our innocence. In others, one wonders if we ever had it to begin with.
NaNoWriMo
Well, I finally did it. After years of hearing about it (and even, I’ll admit, scoffing about it), I registered for NaNoWriMo. I first heard of this annual event from Diarylander whose diary I used to read.
Do I think I can finish a novel in a month? I don’t know. But I do know that perhaps the support of a community of other writers all trying to do the same will probably help. At any rate, I can’t say I have even started a novel since the first time I heard about NaNoWriMo about five years ago, much less finished one, so I guess joining up certainly can’t hurt.
If you are participating, and I know some of you are, please let me know what your username is so I can add you as a Writing Buddy. Here is my NaNoWriMo profile. Meanwhile, you can see this thing in progress (of a sort). On the top, you will see my navigation bar now includes a link to my NaNoWriMo Wiki. At this point it is pretty bare (as it should be, since I just started thinking today). I am not supposed to start writing until November, and I won’t, but nothing I could find said I shouldn’t start thinking and planning, so I’m doing that. When I wrote my first novel, I don’t think wikis were around. I think it will be a sort of online notebook I can use to keep my files together. I had a big, blue notebook for my last book, and I used it all the time. My last novel is currently languishing on an old computer we longer use. Some time I need to hook it up and at least retrieve the novel off it. I will fully admit I don’t know the first thing about marketing a novel, and I haven’t had the fire in my belly to search out appropriate resources. Some day, though. I keep saying that!
Why did I decide to do this? Well, this has been the first really cold morning of the fall. I can admit finally that fall is here. Fall feeds my creative juices. It is my favorite season. Fall makes me happy to be alive. I suppose there is too much of the Old Celt in me somewhere deep, and I recognize it as the New Year much more than January 1. I have been thinking about NaNoWriMo for several days. Sort of a nagging inside somewhere. I read someone else’s blog, and the writer said they had registered. Ever since, the notion wouldn’t leave. I can’t even remember where I read it now, which makes me feel really bad. This morning, I was cuddled up in under the covers with The Thirteenth Tale. I’m only a few chapters in, but this is already so obviously a book-lover’s book. The urge to create a book welled up inside, and I said, “All right! I’ll register already!”
Of course, I thought that would give me some peace, but I should have known then that the urge to get started would be too much too fight, so I did a little bit of planning.
Who was my protagonist? The name Charlotte Penny came to me out of nowhere. She sort of sat down on the edge of my bed and said “Now what?” She’s sitting there, blinking at me. She has Victorian dress and a British accent, so I suppose she must be from Victorian England. She is clutching a handkerchief. I have no idea why. She has red-gold hair like Maggie and stormy gray eyes. She might be Jewish or have a Jewish background, but if so, she is most likely crypto-Jewish and doesn’t know all the practices; this is a secret she hides.
Aside from that, I don’t know much about her, aside from the fact that her staring at me a blinking like that is making me want to figure out more.
Of course, Maggie isn’t having any of that, and I have an egregious headache brought on by my loud, stubbon, exuberant five-year-old. She is going to be my biggest obstacle to getting any writing done. I can feel it already.