Aaaaand....

Guess what? I'm done!
I didn't have any time to be excited last night, when I finished.
And now I am just happy to have free time (what does that phrase mean again?), or at least, a little more than I did before. I even managed to read a (very bad) book this afternoon.

Notes:
The TGIO party will be amazing.
Theatre is owning every other class in terms of "awesome".
I am going to try to keep writing and finish the story. It is nowhere near done.
I am tired. This is probably why I am writing this like a robot. When I read it over to myself it sounds very stiff. This is irritating me.
According to my English teacher, I am "very potent". (Don't ask. If pressed, I may tell the story on Saturday.)
Five random things make a post.

You know how I had 6-7k on Thursday, and 13k by the end of Friday? Yeah. I now have 25k.

That's right, I've lined up twenty five thousand words (not all different ones, but you know) in my document.

HALFWAY. It was my goal to get here today: I started the day with 18,000. I've written seven thousand words today, and, you know, if I didn't have to do some homework now I'd probably try to make that ten thousand.

But I'll be good. I'll do my homework, and hopefully it won't take very long. Because when it's done...

IT'S WRITING TIME.

Maybe some of you already know this but I have officially gone crazy.

Yesterday, actually.

You see, I started writing my NaNoWriMo novel again.

I had 6k. Now I have 13k, and I'm aiming to get 50,000 words by the end of November.

Crazy? Yes. Insane? Yes.

... yes, I know my icon says 2006. I haven't had time to find a new one yet, but maybe I will while I'm procrastinating on writing my novel.

Not that I, you know, have time for procrastination. Whatever.


edit: Okay, okay, 2007 icon. Woo! Let's all be excited!
... back to novelling.

"Yes, these YA books are relevant to the lives of the majority of young adults... but not to mine, or any of my friend's children. They aren't exploring their sexuality, having crushes, dealing with friends with substance issues... and explicit, or in some cases even implicit descriptions of these things would be harmful to them at this time."

I found this in a discussion of censorship, sex/sexuality in YA books, etc., and started laughing. The person who posted this has a daughter of age 14, and she (I'm assuming it's a she) doesn't think her daughter, er, has crushes? And quite honestly, few teens who explore their sexuality telegraph it to their parents, especially at those first few steps into what feels like thin air...

... I mean, really. This person thinks that her/his children are the most innocent, cleanest, brightest-eyed kids in the world. Of course everyone ELSE's teens are, gasp, having crushes! and exploring their sexuality! but their children are perfect little angels. Who I guess won't have any attraction to anyone (and even then of course THEIR children will be straight and never question it, won't they, because they've never been exposed to those books about people who do) until they're eighteen, or at least sixteen, and then spring fully formed into the world like Athena from the head of Zeus. With, of course, perfect judgment on What To Do in a relationship and What Kinds Of Guys (or girls) are The Right Ones.

Still I have this unstoppable urge to keep laughing hysterically. (I mean, I haven't had any more experience with relationships than this person's kids, so maybe I shouldn't be talking, but really, people.)

Makeup work assigned or given over to me:

Physics: one quiz, to be done after or before school. Will be taken tomorrow after school.
English: an oral on HOUR OF THE STAR. Done today in class.
History: a reading in a textbook she found in her classroom; questions; a test. First two items currently being completed. Test will be taken tomorow in class.
Theatre: a monologue to be written. Teeth are gnashing.
Calculus: a test and quiz to be made up. The test was taken yesterday, the quiz today. 104% on the test.


NaNoWriMo: in the process of planning. Outlined: two out of at least three parts. The first and second both have elements of last year's NaNo. The third may have no relation to it whatsoever. I'm not sure what's going to happen in that yet.

The subject of this post is a joke I have been wanting to use for days. Because I am sick.

Fever; headache; cough; earache... I threw up once and have felt like I'm going to vomit again several more times.

I have been eating primarily chicken noodle soup. I have been doing primarily nothing.

I know nothing about what is going on at school right now. I feel odd, disconnected. The world of illness is slow and easy: you spend an afternoon and evening hazing in and out of focus in front of Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (extended edition) and get up late the next morning, if at all. Meals lose their urgency, become "when I'm hungry...", just water or 7-Up, or not at all. They become toast, tasteless cereal, soup.

At school your days are defined by your peers more than anything else: your teachers, your class times, the bells, all depend on your steady cooperation. The students assign meaning to the bells, pay attention to the teachers, do the homework.

Home sick, you drift from one thing to another. Pointlessly, placidly. Your days are a slow and sloppy wave. You are only in one place at one time. The present moment absorbs you, water in a sponge, and leaves no sign you ever were.

My mother thinks I will be better tomorrow. I am not sure what school will be like. I do not know my homework--when tests and quizzes lie in wait--I do not know what change has come in one, two, three long days.

Most of the reactions I've read to JK's announcement are overwhelmingly positive. Mine... is not.

I'm considering it an example of "too little, too late", mostly because the wizarding world, as depicted in the actual books, was so heteronormative. In the epilogue (and in the interviews immediately following the last book--though they weren't precisely canon, they're an indicator of her feelings, or maybe just her feelings about her second- and third-day book sales...) all the relationships she talked about were straight.

She said she would've told everyone much sooner if she'd known they would have a positive reaction--come on! I mean, yes, maybe she's afraid that her sales will droop, or a few people would dislike her, but she's JK Rowling. She probably would be a billionaire now anyway, or pretty darn close to it, which is... more money than she'll ever need... and it would've sent a good message about being gay and normal and all that fun and happy stuff. It's not like they would have stoned her for it, or assassinated her, or taken away all her money. (So what's she complaining about?)

I know I should probably be grateful she's even done this much, but I find it difficult. Out of her twenty-odd main characters, none were Not Straight? Except for Dumbledore, and we found that out afterwards. (Despite the numerous opportunities for this to happen in the actual, you know, books, which represent canon.) Okay, that's one.

There's about one in ten, aren't there, so we're still missing one. Or more, because twenty-odd is an estimate. Maybe you could argue that one (or more?) of the characters is bisexual, and they're just in a guy-girl relationship, but... I dunno, I don't quite buy that. Especially with the focus on teen!angst and drama in some of the books, where they question approximately everything under the Wizarding sun except for sexuality. You'd think someone would've mentioned it.

And that's just the main characters, or the ones that feature prominently enough in the plot to be called main characters by me. She had hundreds of characters in the form of the Hogwarts students, and not one of them was ever even rumored to be gay? If she wanted to be an ally, or seen as a supporter, or just an awesome person who "gets it", she could've easily slipped in some line--the Yule Ball sequence, maybe.

... uh. Okay. Long!rant from Alena. Thank goodness I didn't decide to post this as a comment in either of the two places I was thinking about.

Hey, you. Yes, you--you with the big backpack, the messenger bag, the armload of books--yes. You.

Ever wanted to write a novel?

I know: you're having a hard time just keeping up with homework, you're in a play, you're at pep band every weekend, your friends would laugh at you, you've never written anything that wasn't for a school assignment before, you don't have the motivation, you don't even have a plot.

So what?

Okay, so some of these are valid problems. But the last few aren't. November is NaNoWriMo--National Novel Writing Month--and you don't need a plot, or characters, or any idea of what you're going to write beyond the first sentence. Or even the first sentence.

The goal of NaNoWriMo is to reach 50,000 words in 30 days. This may seem impossible at first. But it's only about 1,667 words to write each day, and those can be one thousand, six hundred and sixty-seven words of dialogue, bad-romance-novel descriptions, car chases, dreams about marshmallows, and ninjas. It doesn't have to make sense; it just has to be.

You see, this is the first draft. Plot, character development, logic--those are things for revisions.

Last year, over 70,000 people participated. That's a lot of people, and they're all going through the same things you are--they juggle work, children, high school, and/or college in addition to writing. Through the website, nanowrimo.org, you can find fellow novelists with whom to compete and commiserate. Annoying family home for Thanksgiving? Check. Taking the SAT? Check. (A hint: use your vocabulary words in the story.) Writing essays for classes? Check--and you can even sneak these into your novel. ("Dan walked down the road. He had a sudden urge to speak on the matter of King James' War in colonial America: its causes, practices, and effects...")

If you want it to, and have enough time, your novel can make sense, but it's not a requirement. You can use writing as procrastination for homework, and homework to procrastinate on writing.

Ask your English teacher if you can get extra credit for doing it if you finish, or even if you don't. Lock yourself in your room; tell your parents not to bother you; make yourself tea, or coffee. Sit down on a couch, or at a desk: with a computer, or with a notebook.

Are you there? Are you ready?

Here's a first line for you: "It was a dark and stormy night..."



(Please note that the SW Anchor is not responsible for any forgotten homework, failed tests, grade drops, or broken relationships that may come about as a result of attempting to write a novel in a month. Thank you.)

Tonight the wind blows through
all the worlds I have known and
through all the lives I have led.
The wind blows in the trees,
deeper into each.
The wind blows forever,
strains like something
endlessly departing.
Restless, impatient,
it races without burden.

The night wind implores me through walls,
claims me inside buildings.
The night wind is an empire
in exodus, a deliverance
beside the dark shape of trees. Oaks
that wrestle the gusty twilight
under starry skies.

The wind takes
me in its giddy rush and
gathers me into a storm of longing,
rising on wings of darkness.
There is a music in the wind.
The thrum of guy wires
of a thousand branches.
Muffled percussion
of banging doors, the
sibilous clamour of rushing leaves.

Above me the Milky Way
and leaping, striding, I am the
bloodrun of the atmosphere.
Racing with leaves and newspapers
down deserted streets,
over fields and playgrounds.

I pace the wind
through forests and beside highways.
Along oceans and rivers
the gale’s mysterious, unspoken imperative
is a joyous delirium with
nothing at its end.



A humble suggestion: read it out loud--if you care about such things, do it when nobody else is around--several times. I like standing up so I can wander around, waving my hands; your method may vary.
There are a couple of spots I always snag on, but it's wonderful.

It is too hot to do anything. I hate feeling trapped.

I just saw an albino squirrel run past my window, chased by a brown one. Now the brown squirrel is sitting on a branch grooming itself--


.. there are two albino squirrels now! And two brown ones.

We used to have a whole family of them, but then they disappeared or got eaten or something. Their attempts at blending in with tree bark are so futile. XD

Yes, this is what I do instead of summer homework.

My Harry Potter Spoiler of Doom is: Draco Malfoy discovers true love with the help of a small zombie cat Get your Harry Potter Spoiler of Doom

I wish this had really happened.



His Name Is Lancelot was even better than I had been led to believe.

Stardust is priceless.

If I want to write anything else before school starts, I'd better hurry up and start writing it, but my ideas keep wriggling away like little fish and I'm not sure that any of them were even any good in the first place.

Things I am looking forward to: NaNoWriMo, getting my license, the Nightwish concert, being awesome. I am not really looking forward to the State Fair this year because I have to work there, which is slowly beginning to seem like a bad idea. It'll probably turn out all right though.


edit to say, via Neil Gaiman's blog I have discovered there is to be a meteor shower tonight. (oooh, aah!) Now I want to go out into the wilds somewhere and lie down in a field and watch the stars with people I like. Hnngh. I wish I could get away from the city, even if just for a little while.

Guess who got their drivers' permit yesterday...!

...um. That's basically all my news.

Except that it turns out my mom WILL let me drive her car, because we coasted very slowly around a parking lot yesterday afternoon. It was still a little frightening. I don't know if I really want to learn how to drive. But I think I have to, unless I want to just bike everywhere. (Anyway, I don't want to bike everywhere, because bicycling throws off my balance for unicycling.)

Also, I was wearing this year's MITY shirt yesterday, and they took my picture for the picture permit ID thing. I don't know if you'll be able to see that that's what it is from the picture... but it is.

My mom, additionally, seems to be in favor of me getting a ball python. (Eeee!) My sister does not seem quite so sure.
"Five feet? That's about as long as I am tall, so..."
I will have to reassure her that it will not eat her.
I have started thinking of names. They are all from books.
*dork!*
So far my favorite is Angharad. I would have to make sure the python I got was female, but I like the name. (And her nickname would be Harry, so I could call her that for short, and when people asked "Harry, like Potter? So he's a boy right?" I could laugh at them.)

My sister got me a promise to take me high heels shopping for my birthday. She tells me if I do not learn to walk in high heels now, I never will. I am not quite sure if I want to or not, but I will go along with it. I think I might be a little bit scary in high heels.

I also got to walk to Uptown and use the money my relatives sent me, i.e., I bought the new TMBG CD, The Else. I have one favorite song off each disc, The Mesopotamians from The Else and I'm Your Boyfriend Now from Cast Your Pod to the Wind.

"I read your book, but then it took
a year to find your house
I was nervous at first, and then it got worse
There was no turning 'round
If you don't know by now just look
I'm right outside
You've got to admit that I'm your boyfriend now."

Which I have to say makes me a little nervous if I got a book published, but maybe if I am lucky I will find someone to protect me from scary stalker types.

Also in Uptown, I found a children's illustrated and abridged edition of an Oscar Wilde book, which made me giggle. Oscar Wilde is probably sort of inappropriate for children. (Which is probably why it was abridged.) It made me realize, though, that I have never read any of his writing. Hmmm.

I bought Le Morte d'Arthur, anyway, translated into English and prose-ified (wasn't the original a great big poem thing?). It's one of those books that you don't really want to read, but it's nice to own it. It's old and used and smells like old books and was a bargain at three dollars.

What else is there to say? I had a lovely birthday. Erin and Laura and I went up and down the stairs at the Walker and looked at all the art, my father made me a delicious cake, and for the past two days I have sat at my computer trying to write something. It is working, kind of. I will probably never show it to anyone, but it is fun to write when it is not annoying me.

An abridged list of vocabulary:

Garnituren - robes
Umhang - coat, cloak
Zauber - wizard
Hexe - witch
Verwandlungen - Transfiguration
Zauberstab - wand
Zauberkunst - Charms
Narbe - scar
Lichtung - clearing, like the ones in a forest
Zentaur - centaur
Schloss - castle
Quidditch - Quidditch

and a phrase:

"mit ihr nicht gut Kirschen essen" - she is not a good person to cross. Semi-literally "you shouldn't eat cherries with her".

Oh, those silly Germans.

Note: Not book reviews, just vague reactions.

GLINT
Mis-marketed: it looks like a fantasy book and is not. Fantasy readers will pick it up and be disappointed, lovers of family dramas (?) will not pick it up and therefore never read it. Unless someone tells them about it, I suppose.

Despite the fact that glint is the title of the book, synonyms do exist. How about "glimmered" or "shone"? "Sparkled", even. "Shimmer" if you're really desperate. But not "glint" fifteen times in the same scene, please. (An estimate. I didn't count. I doubt it's that many.)

The writing in the fantastical parts of this book is satisfactory, however. If this author (and I don't remember his/her name, and am too lazy to go look for it) writes a fantasy novel, which is actually fantasy, I will probably read it.


THE DEVIL'S TANGO
Mis-marketed as a young adult book, or maybe not. Translated from the French, put forth as YA Fantasy. The main characters are middle-aged--I think--but act a heck of a lot like YAs. Why? It is not quite apparent. They wear girdles.

Also: telepathic hedgehogs. In the middles of fake historical cities (which turn into boats?). With high-tech equipment. Oh, and The Beatles. (Some of these are probably minor spoilers. Sorry.)

Another stumbling point: this is, apparently, the second book in a trilogy. This is more a publisher's error than an authorial one, however one would expect more care from the publisher. Nowhere on the book (except for the Library of Congress listing) can one discover that it's part of a series, unless you start reading it, in which case in the first seventy-five pages there are three different footnotes directing you to the previous (first) book.

And, unfortunately, it seems to be one of those books that depend--for knowledge of the world, anyway--on having read the previous book. Maybe. I don't know.

However, I now have gotten the previous book, DANCE OF THE ASSASSINS, from the library. Oddly enough it says inside "Also by this author: The Devil's Tango". What? --I haven't read enough of it to decide if the series is worth it or not.

But on its own, I would not recommend The Devil's Tango.


IRONSIDE (Holly Black)

Okay, I have not read Tithe for years. So I had no idea what was going on for the first few chapters. Which is maybe a bad thing... but I figured it out eventually, and I thought it was interesting that she wove in some threads from wossname, her other book--Valiant.

Holly Black is still not my favorite urban fantasy writer. But this was still a pretty good book. Enjoyable. The ending... ehh. A little bit of a copout, in my opinion, but then again endings are tough.

I will note this: "an old Emma Bull novel" (psst, War for the Oaks! Great urban fantasy) and "his dog-eared copy of Swordspoint" (psst, Kushner! Everyone in the world should read this!) are both mentioned. This has made me very happy, because while Holly Black deserves, probably, a great deal of the popularity she has, Emma Bull and Ellen Kushner deserve their fair share of said publicity too. (It also fits the character to own a copy of Swordspoint, which makes me even happier.)

Speaking of the devil...

SWORDSPOINT (Kushner)

Yay. Yay yay yay. I will now have to reread The Privilege of the Sword, just to make the connections with characters from Swordspoint.

I have noticed this: Kushner (and maybe Sherman) use similar names for characters in Swordspoint and Fall of the Kings. I am not sure if this is intentional or not.


I will mention again that these are by no means conventional reviews, just things that I noticed or that stuck out to me while reading. Other people may not have the same reactions, in fact probably will not. But, you know. Stuff.

Now I am going to bed.

Instead of blather about The Dark Is Rising, awe-inspiring as the books may be and awful as the movie looks like it's going to.

It looks like I will be working at the State Fair this year--taking tickets at an entrance. If the background check goes through. (Thankfully, I think I hid my life of crime pretty well, so all should be okay.)

Other things I am doing: learning to speak with retainers, reading books. Swordspoint, The Fall of the Kings, The Privilege of the Sword. Ellen Kushner. Amazing. (There are even extra short stories in the back of Swordspoint! Eee!) Yes, these are books "illiterate Erin" should read.

I might put a couple of short book reviews here from time to time just because I read things and want to type out my responses. Regardless of whether anyone reads them or not, I guess.

Also: I have vague plans for Birthday (July 28th). When are you (two people who are still reading this, or your friends/relations if you know their schedules) in/out of town? Just so I know who I'm insulting by scheduling it Whenever.

Like Pooh, I seem to be in the habit of Capilizing Random Words.

They are making a movie out of The Dark Is Rising and I am so excited I can hardly type this. (Well, maybe that's an exaggeration but oh well. It's almost true. Sort of. Kind of. In a way.)

But. Still. The Dark Is Rising! It looks like they're modernizing and urbanizing it (which was probably inevitable) but when I realized what it was I started squealing and jumping around in my seat. No one told me to shut up, probably because they didn't care what I did during the trailers as long as I stayed quiet during the movie.

The point of realization: "From the award-winning series" and the beginning of fantasy elements in the trailer.

Alena's mind: Award-winning, then I know it. What could it be? I can't think of... OH MY GOD YES. *dies*


... oh, by the way I saw the fifth Harry Potter movie tonight. But that's immaterial. THE DARK IS RISING! A movie! They cannot possibly ruin it completely. If they do I will kill them.

I also am minus a set of braces and plus a set of retainers. And, possibly, a slight lisp.

----
Okay, here comes the edit. I have looked at IMDB and read an interview with the guy playing Merriweather and it looks... bad.

Which makes me incredibly sad. Because The Dark Is Rising is such a GOOD BOOK.

...Anyone up for an indie film project?