One of my errands this morning was a quick stop by a second-hand bookstore, the same one I’ve been visiting twice weekly for a month or so. Unfortunately, there don’t appear to be a lot of other readers in my town, because the selection hardly ever changes. The same picked over used books that didn’t interest me last week still don’t interest me this week.

So, I wound up running by Wal-Mart where I picked up three paperbacks for a whopping $24. Yes, I probably could have gone by the local library to see if they had copies, but they only stock hardcovers and I find those a bit too heavy for bedtime reading.

Which is why Kindle, Amazon’s new electronic reader, remains the #1 item on my Christmas Wish List. Yes, it’s pricey, but I want it anyway. I figure, if Santa Claus is buying, who cares about the cost, right? (Meanwhile, I fully realize my chances of actually getting one are as realistic as the fat man in red himself.)

Of course, I’ve since found an even better reason to want one: the Kindle currently allows readers to email themselves books in PDF format and, although the support is currently experimental, they plan to enhance it rather soon. So, instead of the $9.99 that Amazon is currently charging for each book, I could also use the Kindle with other ebook sites which offer recent titles at almost half the price.

Another advantage? Since they’re in digital format, no one would know if I was reading, say, electronic romance books instead of something intellectually meaty like War and Peace.

Frankly, that just makes the Kindle even more attractive as far as I’m concerned.

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Between this past year’s movie releases and the network prime time lineups, I feel absolutely zero sympathy for the striking Writers’ Guild. Seriously, when was the last time any of the movie studios or networks managed to come out with a season full of fresh, original concepts?

Well over half of the movies we’ve seen in the last year are simply reworked versions of flicks from my childhood or sequels to movies we intentionally skipped before.

And on television? It’s one reality show after another: Surivivor, American Idol, Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares and now… American Gladiator, which both qualifies as something out of my childhood and a reality show, too.

Which kind of makes me wonder just why on earth there’s a writer’s strike in the first place. Do they even HAVE writers in Hollywood anymore?

Last year, I spent the entire month of November the same way thousands of others did throughout the world: plugging away at a novel for National Novel Writing Month (see NaNaWriMo’s site for details) in the hope of meeting my 50,000 word goal.

Well, I did it. I met the goal. Does that mean I have a novel now?

Hardly.

What I do have is 50,000+ words of a very rough, unfinished first draft that bored me to tears halfway through writing it. The hard copy printout has been gathering dust in my desk drawer ever since, the digital copy long since lost to hard drive errors. I doubt that I ever revisit that project again.

Don’t get me wrong: I’m glad for the experience. Forcing myself to sit down and write creatively every day last November regardless of my mood or whether it even came easily was a good experience for what I do online these days. I can’t remember the last time I had “writer’s block,” come to think of it. NaNoWriMo taught me that the real trick to writing is quite simple: write.

Glancing back over the blog(s) for the past year, I can see I’ve definitely mastered that trick. These days, my brain begins blogging right about the time my feet hit the floor in the morning — sometimes I even mentally compose entries while brushing my teeth.

But I still don’t have a novel, do I?

Oh, I’ve got plenty of ideas for one, though. There’s a fantasy story I’ve been writing in my head nightly for some time now, a movie of sorts that I play in my mind while I try falling asleep. (The fact that I do fall asleep while telling myself that story might be one reason I’ve yet to find the incentive to actually write the thing out.) There’s another I came up with over the summer as I sat in traffic court listening to a man’s convoluted — and ultimately unbelievable — sob story. A real “who done it”, that one.

I don’t really have time to think of writing a novel these days, now that I’m actually trying to make money writing online. (Read more about that at my latest site, Blogging for the Money.

So, I’m not sure that I’ll be participating in NaNoWriMo this year. I can’t figure out how I’d squeeze in that commitment on top of my other obligations while still earning a living… unless I could hire someone to do it for me. But, somehow, I’m pretty sure that’s against the rules.

The Wheel of Time turns, and Ages come and pass, leaving memories that become legend. Legend fades to myth, and even myth is long forgotten when the Age that gave it birth comes again.

Robert Jordan, author of the Wheel of Time series, passed away Sunday. I read the news today. Oh, boy.

I have been a long-time fan of RJ’s blog at DragonMount, having been introduced to his series years ago by De Doc (who remains Strangely Silent of late). I enjoyed the books so much that I even sank money into the somewhat disappointing video game then loved it solely because it brought me one step closer to the fictional word he created.

Jordan had been battling amyloidosis, a progressive metabolic disease which causes protein deposits within organs. Since amyloidosis is incurable, Jordan has known for many years that his death was more imminent than most, and yet he battled against it with all of the ferocity and humanity of his fictional heroes, including some explorations into “experimental” remedies.

To say that the fantasy novel genre has lost one of its heroes is an understatement. The world lost one of its heroes, too. Jordan was more than an author of some damn fun reads: he was one of the good guys, too.

Born James Oliver Rigney, Jr., he did two tours in Vietnam, and earned the Distinguished Flying Cross with bronze oak leaf cluster, the Bronze Star with “V” and bronze oak leaf cluster, and two Vietnamese Gallantry Crosses with palm. He later received a degree in physics from The Citadel and worked for the U.S. Navy as a nuclear engineer.

He was also, as I’ve mentioned, the author of some damn fine reads.

Jordan’s family has asked fans not send flowers. Instead, they would like donations sent to help fund further research into finding a cure fore amyloidosis. Donations may be sent to:

James Rigney
Mayo Clinic Department of Hematology–Amyloidosis Research
200 First Street SW
Rochester, MN 55905

And thus the Wheel of Time turns. A legend has come to pass.

For 30 years, Christopher Tolkien has been quietly piecing together fragments of his father’s last work. Now, it’s here and I can’t wait to learn more about the struggle between good and evil in Middle-earth: "Children of Hurin," by J.R.R. Tolkien.

A while back, I bought a wholesale lot of books on eBay — a few of which I’ve since listed in my own auction. Granted, as a would-be author I wrestle with the propriety of buying used books since the royalties don’t go to the author. On the other hand, many of the books I purchased are no longer stocked in most bookstores, and yet having read and enjoyed them I’ve since purchased other works by the same author. In other words, having read something that didn’t earn the author money led me to purchases that have.

Right now, I’m reading a book that I’ve ignored for the five months it’s been on my shelves. Why? Well, because Oprah recommended it and, while I’ve got nothing against Oprah (in fact, I rather adore her), I’ve previously assumed her book choices would be geared toward the mass audience: folks who want an easy read, a fast-paced story, and lots of emotional warm fuzzies. Thanks to running out of fiction to read before bed — I save non-fiction for daylight — I wound up grabbing Jewel by Bret Lott off my shelf.

Since then, I’ve been coming up with reasons to go to bed early. The story of Jewel Hilburn, a Southern woman pushing 40 and pregnant with what she knows will be her last child, speaks so poignantly of motherly love and angst. Not since Styron’s book, Sophie’s Choice, have I read such divinely crafted sentences. Some are so powerful I find myself setting the book in my lap, my eyes fixed on some distant point while I just repeat the words in my head, rolling them around like candy on my tongue.

I’m halfway through Jewel right now, and I don’t want it to end. I long for writers like this, for words so carefully written that I, the reader, know I should take care to read each and every one. I don’t need to know the end of the story to know this is a book that will stay with me — and on my shelves — for a long time to come. If not life-changing at its conclusion, well, I can say the book has changed me already: I have a new understanding of the beauty of a story unhurriedly told.

So… what book has rattled your cage lately?

Now that I’ve had a night of pure mental vegetation and at least a few hours sleep after National Novel Writing Month, the shell-shock has set in. I know you’re probably tired of reading about the whole thing, but I’m really surprised I managed to stick to it. At times it felt like every possible obstacle to the 50k mark had presented itself: losing my first two days’ work, my hands turning swollen and painful, even the six days off surrounding our trip to Minnesota over Thanksgiving.

And, frankly, I wanted to quit repeatedly but you didn’t let me. Thank you.

I figured once NaNo was over I’d set aside the unfinished manuscript for a couple of weeks, refusing to even think about the thing, much less work on it. But this morning, I woke up before the alarm clock and found myself reluctant to leave my warm bed. So my brain started wandering, and the next thing I knew I was plotting out the next couple of scenes, mentally revising some of the back storyline (condensing one character into two) and debating whether to change from first- to third-person.

Ten minutes later I was at my desk sucking down coffee and jotting down notes. Having learned how during NaNo, I’m now intent on incorporating at least one writing session into my normal routine. I doubt I’ll ever have the intensity or opportunity to spend entire days writing as I did this past month (well, at least not until next year’s NaNo), but it’s nice to discover I wasn’t only in it for the competition.

I just may be a novelist when I grow up after all!

50,183 words with 13 hours to go. I did it! I finished National Novel Writing Month, with at least a fourth of my liver intact.

Ah well, at least there’s time for a good, long nap before National Novel Finishing Month begins.

It’s down to the wire on National Novel Writing Month, and I’m 3,834 words shy of complete. Yes, I still have 27+ hours to go, but the fact is I’m in the flabby part of a novel: the midpoint, the belly, the chapter in which (since I’m writing Lit.Fic.) my character’s past story-line and her present circumstances should reach their emotional peak. Here marks the inner battle from which she’ll either emerge wounded but determined, or she’ll tuck tail and turn into someone who should have died on Page One.

Perhaps taking a week off to go do family stuff was not the best thing. I certainly wished NaNo was scheduled so as not to coincide with such things, but I knew the deal when I signed up. That doesn’t restore the momentum I lost in that week, though, nor does it refresh in my mind the intimacy I’d developed with my character until then.

I’m struggling, but I’m determined to finish. Even so, I can’t help noticing how much harder it is writing through this part of the book.

I mentioned this to VH a moment ago after he’d asked, for the third time, whether I was going to hit my 50,000 word mark tonight as I’d hoped.

“No,” I replied. “I’ll be glad if I can knock out another 500 words tonight, really. Right now, it feels like I’m ripping each one out of my head.”

He fixed me another martini and set it down carefully, always on guard against errant drops, he is. “Maybe that’s why novelists consider what they do to be work,” he said.

Damn. I hate it when my husband is right.

There are two days left in National Novel Writing Month. The goal is 50,000 words. At the time of this writing, I’ve got 4,351 words left to write in 2 days, 25 minutes and 8 seconds.

By golly, I might just make it!

Look who’s 84% of their way through their NaNoWriMo quota!

I *heart* weekends.

Are you sick of these yet? I know, I know. Somewhere in the back of my churning brain I’m vaguely aware that many of you could not possibly care less how I’m progressing in this National Novel Writing Month thing.

I feel bad for you. I do. Not merely because, after all these years together, I feel impelled to write witty things as a way to express my gratitude for the moments you take to visit my corner of the vast blogosphere. I also do it because, well, most of the time I’ve got something pressing on my mind that I just can’t wait to share with you and you. Or you. Yeah, even you.

But I’m not thinking of you right now. And, in all honesty, there’s a good chance that I won’t for the rest of this NaNo writing month. De-link me now if you will. I’ll understand.

I’m understanding quite a bit these days, I find.

After I woke up and brushed my teeth this morning, I shuffled unwashed and still half-bleary to the tiny, musty space that serves as my office. If I haven’t told you already, these cramped confines were once a closet. Back before we bought the house, the nice couple who lived here used it to shelve books on astrology and New Age healing. There’s still a nice vibe left in here, a hippy-dippy sandalwood and chakra kind of vibe only heightened by the Tuscan Sand color I chose to paint the walls.

At my request (not just to cover up the walls’ bleak whitness but also for a space to call my own), VH built shelves to hold the wholesale lots of fiction books I habitually buy on eBay. Wedged between the crowded, multi-colored spines of my book collection, and the door that does not completely latch, sits my golden oak rolltop desk: the one and only furniture splurge I’ve made since we moved here.

It’s a tiny space, but it’s all mine.

You cannot understand the significance of that word, mine, unless you have children and a spouse who takes to heart that 50-50 thing. And, honestly, even before the VH, I’m not sure I had too many private places in my life, too many things I could point to and say: “This is off-limits. This is not yours. This is ground upon which I alone can tread.”

Hell, even the diary I kept as a teenager turned out to be my mother’s best source of topics to discuss with her therapist.

But this room? This is mine, even if the Big-Eyed Boy walks through the door without knocking, he knows to apologize when he does. The VH comes in with a look upon his face that says, “Damn. I forgot. I am so, so sorry.” They get it, my family does. They understand.

Yes, sometimes their memories lapse and, because they love me so, they intrude. But they remember. They know and understand, without the need for me to raise my voice or seek the solace of an understanding but expensive therapist, that this is important to me, my space. My little room in which I am Kate, just Kate, and not someone’s wife or mother. I am me, within these walls where my keyboard erects the barrier between the woman I once believed I would become and the woman I’m glad to have turned into. In here I rebuild and re-create the woman they each need me to be.

This is the one place in our house not cluttered with The Big-Eyed Boy’s books or toys. The only real sanctuary I have from dishes and laundry and pee-drenched toilets that I alone, evidently, have the power to fix. In here, I am the Master of my domain. I am the Ultimate Authority. I set a martini down and I can guaran-freaking-tee you it will be on a coaster. This is my space, and here there is no sense of compromise, no happy medium. This is my place to do with as I will, and I protect it with a vodka-soaked defiance that, I assure you, you can’t begin to comprehend.

I’ve been in here since 11 a.m. today. Outside my closed door the sun reached it zenith and set without needing me to witness that fact. And I? I have expurgated ten lives or more in black letters against a bone white screen. I’ve wrestled with my demons. I’ve tilted at my windmills. I have grasped the child that once was me and, clenching her firmly to my heart, gave voice to the fears that no one let her speak before.

Right now, my door is closed. There is a towel wedged up tight between the narrow slit that separates the door and the carpet so badly in need of vacuuuming. My smoke-eater is going full-blast. All the better to drown out your voice, my dear, I tell VH when he suggests turning it down so I can hear him talking to the doorknob.

This is my space, and I love it. I’m guessing you’ve caught on to that by now.

Well, here’s something you may not have realized yet: in this space I have managed to go from 20,000-ish words last night to my current word-count of 29,743. And, between you and me and these four sacred Tuscan Sand-colored walls lined with some of the greatest books ever written, there are more words waiting to spill from my fingertips this night.

I didn’t know I had that many words within me. I didn’t know how good it felt to get them out, to simply let them fall as they will on the page without my ego stepping in to nudge them into something seemly, something more proper, something resembling the nice little pleated-skirt schoolgirl I’ve spent nearly 40 years thinking I ought to be.

Yes, I’m still plagued with biting, tinny voices hovering in the dark spaces of my mind long enough to say “This sucks! You suck! Why on earth did you ever thing you could write a novel?!” then darting away before I can excorcise them.

I’m realizing now, however, how very much like my mother and my junior high English teachers those voices sound. So shrill. So strident. So bent on my failure that, between you and me, I can’t wait to prove them wrong.

I’m past the halfway mark on NaNo now. And yet, somehow, I feel like I’ve only just now begun to write.

Thank you, Dana. Thank you Agent Bedhead, Kim of the Musing Mind, Rammer, Wichi Dude, and Horse and Bryan (even though I do think Hemmingway’s art was more a product of his time than any particular genius on his part) and my fellow NaNo-novice, Teresa. I’m writing my novel, and thanks to you — and the unprecedented display of support from the VH — I am loving it, no matter what I say when those other strident voices staart underminining my self-esteem. I’m writing. By God: I am writing!

Almost twenty years ago, I said this was what I wanted to do with the rest of my life. Thanks to your encouragement, I’m finding out that the rest of my life has been waiting for me. Here in this little room where the walls hug me close I am discovering that great fountain of words within me which, thanks to the fullness of the courage you’ve given me, are ready at long last to erupt.

After losing my data the first day of NaNoWriMo (and, again, many thanks to Rammer for offering me 350 of his words to appease my loss!), I got into the habit of saving my manuscript in several locations. Just in case. One of those locations is a text file, which I’ve been running through NaNo’s word count API each time I do a save. But I rarely pay attention to the actual word count.

I know I’m still in the first third of this story, and I’ve come to accept this first draft will be considerably longer than NaNo’s 50,000 word goal. Probably three times as long, actually, which is ok. By the time I edit this draft then send the second draft to a hand-picked group of first readers, then edit it again after receiving their comments… well, I expect one out of every three words to die.

I’m fine with that. Really.

(You can’t see it, but I just took a big swill of my martini to wash away the pain of having said that.)

Still, even I was surprised to find myself over 24,000 words when I did my final manuscript save for the evening. How the hell did that happen? Maybe I’m having more fun than I realized, eh?

UPDATE: Well, lucky me. Just in case I’m not done with the story at 50,000 words, there’s always NaNoFiMo next month. Heh.

What gave me the idea I could write a novel? What was I thinking?! I’m a hack. The story sucks. I have no plot. My characters are flat. My prose is purple. I have managed to create 19,000+ words of sheer, unadulterated crap. Crap, I tell you! Why would anyone want to read crap? I should quit. I’m going to quit. I’m quitting. That’s it.

::phew::

Thanks. I got it out of my system.

Back to writing.

With NaNoWriMo in its second week, I’ve put enough time in front of my computer that I can’t begin to think of quitting now. I want to finish this, as I believed I’d made clear by the signs posted on my office door.

Genius at work, says one. Quiet, Novel In Progress says another.

The rest of my family aren’t big on reading, I guess, judging by the number of times they’ve walked up and hollered at me through the door. Just moments ago, in fact, my husband walked right in. I shot him a glance that would’ve rendered another man impotent. (He knows, however, I would not dare harm that particular part of his anatomy.)

“Oh, sorry,” he said.

“Damn straight.” I turned back to the computer and tried recalling the phrase I’d just been about to type, the one I’d spent three minutes digging through my mind to uncover, the one I desperately needed to transition from one scene to the next.

“Say, while I’m here,” he continued, “I thought I’d see if you’d be up for having friends over later.”

“Friends?”

“Yeah, you know, just a couple of people,” he said. “Maybe play some cards, throw some darts?”

“Later, though, right?”

“Yeah. Probably around 9 o’clock or so, once the boy’s in bed. I haven’t called anyone yet, but I thought maybe you could use the break.”

“If it’s that much later,” I said, “and if you haven’t called anyone, why are you interrupting me now?”

“Oh, well, that’s ’cause I didn’t want to forget.”

Gonna get me a new sign:

Warning: Do not interrupt for ANY reason or I’ll name a character after you and kill it off in a slow, painful and most embarassing way.

UPDATE: That goes for the cat, too.

I love this little cartoon script from Writertopia. Right now, it says it all.

Got up at 8:30 this morning and couldn’t wait to get to the computer. I’m caught up on my word count now, but still struggling with my Inner Editor and Inner Critic. I had to start this morning’s writing session in a brand new document just to resist the temptation of going back and fixing the sloppy writing that raced across my mental teleprompter while I tried to fall asleep last night.

Meanwhile, my main character continues to throw me for a loop. Despite a rather detailed outline, the book is taking on its own direction. She has let me know in no uncertain terms that SHE is in charge and that my job is simply to type whatever she chooses to reveal, regardless of all my well-considered plans.

On my way back to the computer just now, I wound up having a conversation with my daughter that perhaps only another writer can understand:

Me: “Do we have any bourbon and oranges?”

Princess: “Why? I thought you weren’t going to drink for a month.”

Me: “Yeah, but I need to remember what an old-fashioned smells like.”

Princess: “Uh, why’s that, exactly?”

Me: “Because Corinne likes them, and I’ve forgotten how they smell.”

Princess: “Who’s Corinne?”

Me: “Oh, she’s the main character in my book. Weird, I’d had her pegged as a white wine-kinda gal but apparently she likes old-fashioneds.”

Princess: “Mom? You do know she’s just somebody you made up, right?”

UPDATE: Jeff Harrell gets me.

Let me begin this by saying that it is never a good idea to start removing bloatware from a new laptop on which one has stored the first, say, 4,000 or so pages of one’s novel. And, just in case one does something stupid like that, it’s never a good idea to pick up that new laptop and throw it against a wall in anger.

I did one of those things. I’ll let you figure out which.

Yesterday around 3 p.m. I found myself way behind on my daily word count… WAY behind… like 4,000 or so pages words short. By midnight last night, I’d managed to recoup about half of my losses, though, and by waking up extra early this morning I managed to make up a bit more.

Now my progress (and mood) look a bit more like this. (For those of you who like keeping track of such things, I’ve included that link in my sidebar under the NaNoWriMo image.)

UPDATE: This cartoon made me spit coffee.