I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas — or whatever holiday you may celebrate. I kind of went AWOL for a little while; I was visiting my family, with John, for 5 days and came back yesterday evening. I hate to admit it, but I’ve been catching up on sleep again! You see, Mom got me My Lovely Sam Soon, a Korean romantic comedy TV series that I stumbled upon 2 years ago by complete mistake. It’s really cute, even if it’s sappy dramatic at times, and I love the Kim Sam Soon character. Anyway, I had shared the series with Mom, but the version I had gotten — in a bit of bad luck — was a Chinese release with horrible subtitles! As a surprise, Mom got me the official American release with subtitles that actually made much more sense. So we were trying to watch the whole thing in 3 days.

I also got the Sims 2 Bon Voyage expansion pack. I’m such a Sims addict. And then I did some “retail therapy” and I’m probably going to be poor for a while now. This is why I tell John I should never let myself go free in stores, I’ll shop till I drop. But, ironically, when I came back home I found my mouse seems to be breaking — it reacts as if I clicked twice instead of once no matter what I do — and now I can’t go and buy another one. I’m going to have to dig around and see if I kept the free Dell mouse you get with computers. Oh well, this mouse has had a long, long life. It came into my possession already amply used.

ANYway, I’m glad I’m back in my own apartment again. Even if I have lots and lots of cleaning to look forward to (the stuff I put off by saying, “I’ll do it when I’m on break”). And, it’s back to the gym for me! I shudder to think how much I’ve gained due to the so very delicious Christmas Yule log I made (which was really just sponge cake with this awesome chocolate hazelnut frosting I whipped up). Ohmigod, so good. I’m probably going to have withdrawal symptoms now that it’s all gone.

OK, I’ll stop babbling now. I’ve got a work in progress to post in the “writing” section in the next few days, so keep an eye out for that.

10:12 pm | Category: Journal | | No Comments

Charlaine Harris has an interesting blog entry about something I’ve been noticing in romance too: forcible seduction. I’m sorry, but it’s not sexy. It’s not “Oh, Mr. Huntington, you’re so naughty. I just couldn’t do that! Oh!” I want to scream at these heroines — and maybe even the authors — what are you doing? Having her want it and say so is so much more sexy than this “no” means “yes” bullshit!

Yes, I’ve got strong feelings about this kind of stuff. Putting aside the obvious “forcible seduction = rape no matter how you name it” thought, why can’t a female character be in charge of her sexuality? Why do so many people want to read about a woman who not only is so virginal she has no idea how to sexually grow but that she must be forced into it? It pisses me off that there’s so many female writers out there, and even male writers, who have an opportunity to make a gorgeous, vibrant woman whose in charge of her sexuality…and there seems to be more of this “no means yes” stuff. What’s worse, I’ve been told before Himani, no one will believe your female characters. They’re more like men! Oh, EXCUSE ME. So a confident, take-action-and-no-bullshit woman who (*gasp*) likes sex can’t exist?!*

*Bah, writing about virginal women is boring. I’d much rather write about a woman who knows what she wants. That’s more interesting because I can ask “What does she want? How’s she going to get it?” More complex and colorful questions than “Why hasn’t she gotten it yet?” and “When’s she going to get it?” in my opinion.

1:18 pm | Category: Writing | | 2 Comments

Whew, I finally got some time to fix up the website a little. I updated my “Currently Reading” at the trusty right-hand side, and updated my reading list a little. But, unfortunately, I lost a lot of my emails from before December 1st. So if you emailed me and haven’t received a reply, please email me again!

OK, now that’s out of the way, I promised in the last entry that I would write more about my Nanowrimo experience, because I really do believe that this time I think I learned more about myself and my writing than ever before — which is one thing I love about Nanowrimo, and one thing that keeps me doing it, year after year. Every time I learn something new about myself. So what did I learn this year? Don’t worry, I’ll tell you.

One, sometimes you have to kill your darlings. I know, I know, this is a lesson every writer should know, but it’s one you have to keep teaching yourself because it’s annoying every time. Only recently, for “Morgan”, I finally had to admit that I’m going to have to cut out a character that I really like. In fact, in “Morgan” I had to cut out a lot of things I liked because I moved the whole story 200 years forward in the timeline! Suddenly, the whole world I was setting the story in changed, and because of that, there was no room for my character, Jace, in this new world. Don’t worry, Jace, I thought, I’ll get you in the next one… The same happened to me in “Tayce” (the working title of my Nanowrimo novel). I had this really cool scene I had planned out involving a zombie named Rachel. I had written the scene, liked it, moved on, and about 20,000 words later I realized that the scene was superfluous. I hadn’t mentioned Rachel again! So, when Nanowrimo was done (like I’d cut it out and loose 5,000+ words during Nanowrimo!) I had to delete the whole, entire thing (which means I copy and pasted it into my “Junk” folder where all the stuff that doesn’t fit and is waiting for a new home goes).

Two, if you keep yourself open to the muse, she’ll do magical things. It’s true! I’ve heard these stories of authors saying, “I’ll just be writing along and all of a sudden, BOOM!, something’ll happen that I totally didn’t expect.” That really hadn’t happened to me. Everything in my story that happened — even the surprises — had been at least semi-expected by me, but this Nanowrimo, I do believe I let myself completely go. I finally relinquished control! *gasp*, which is the lesson, let the control go! Nanowrimo is wonderful for that, you’re so busy trying to make word count goals, you don’t really notice the writing and suddenly magical things slip in direct from the Muse. So, finally, I can say that my Muse really surprised me this time around. For example, my Muse introduced a whole new character to me — Agent Henry. And an organization I had not planned to put in my world — the Department of Supernatural and Magical Beings. Which, while not being the most original concept, proved to create some interesting tension in my world. It also wrote some interesting scenes, ones I didn’t even realize I’d write until I’d put it down. I didn’t agonize, “What happens next?” and for once, the only writer’s block I had was when I was so stressed out from school that I couldn’t devote enough time to get comfortable enough to write. But it wasn’t because I didn’t know what was going to happen next (because, for once, that didn’t matter)!

Three, it’s a first draft, don’t worry how it looks. My Nanowrimo was a freaking mess, and for once I didn’t care! In the beginning, I killed off a character named Fredericka, but three chapters later I realized that Fredericka still had an important part to play in the story. So suddenly, Fredericka was alive again! I didn’t even go back and edit (scandalous!) because I wanted to save the word count. I just kept on chugging. And then, three chapters after Fredericka was brought back to life…I killed her off again! My Nanowrimo has many inconsistencies and things I’m going to have to go back and edit, but I realized I had to get it down on paper first because I wasn’t sure how things progressed (I had a general idea, a very loose outline in my head, but I wasn’t exactly sure how things were going to get from Point A to Point B all the time). Get it down, fix it later. There’s going to be a lot of red on my edits, and a lot of arrows.

Four, always, always, ALWAYS back up my work. Ohmigod, I suffered because I forgot to back up and I lost my USB key. I had 14,000 words I had written on “Tayce,” my second edit on the first chapter of “Morgan,” two mini-chapters in a novella I had begun, and my final edit of “The Corpse” (a short story) and…I lost all of it! Not to mention a bunch of homework, notes, and stuff in my Junk folder. While I can rewrite everything…who knows what kind of inspiration has really been lost? *sigh* To say the cliche: You never worry — until it happens to you! Bah. I even have a spare hard drive from an old laptop I salvaged. I just gotta get off my butt and find an enclosure for it.

Anywho, nothing in the above list probably seems like a huge epiphany, but they were for me. And I’ve noticed that recently my writing has been much less stressful and pushed out, it’s been more natural (whether that’s because of the end of Nanowrimo, who knows?).

If you’ve done Nanowrimo, did you learn anything about your writing self, your Muse, or your writing style?

4:22 pm | Category: Nanowrimo | | 2 Comments

On Friday, November 30th, I wrote 14,000 words in one day — all the word count that had been lacking due to Thanksgiving or school. It was a grueling experience and I finally stumbled across the finish line at about 10:30pm. My arms ached by then.

On Wednesday or Thursday I’m going to write more fully about my experience, including some very important lessons I learned during this NANOWRIMO, which I think was my best yet. I’ve been doing this since 2004 and I still love doing it because every year I find out something about myself and what I can do, and I also learn a little more about what it would be like to do it full time, and ways to make my writing better.

Unfortunately, disaster struck a few days later when my USB key device broke off my keychain and is now lost — probably forever. So, remember everyone, back up your information obsessive-compulsively, because I didn’t and now I’m up a creek without a paddle and about 16,000 words, on varying projects, to rewrite. I’ve read about authors who backup to such an extent that they print out their work weekly and file it away, just in case. *sigh* I’ve been quite angry at myself for loosing the USB key and forgetting to backup last week.

9:25 am | Category: Nanowrimo | | 3 Comments