Something NaNo this way comes
02 Oct 2009 4 Comments
in Books, Cinema, Seasonal Tags: Bruce McCullough, Kids In The Hall, NaNoWriMo, NaNoWriMo '09, stay down, youtube
Well, gentle readers, it’s that time again. With thirty days left in the month of October, I have once again signed up for the infamous National Novel Writing Month challenge. This will be my fourth year participating, and (we can always hope) the year that I actually reach the goal of writing 50,000 words in thirty days.
It’s funny, really. Every year I surprise myself with how excited I get about this silly little challenge. I made sure that my user name was still active two months ago. When I saw that they would be starting fresh for this season’s NaNoWriMo today, I found myself checking the website every 15 minutes so that I could get a glimpse of the brand new badges (like the one to your right). I even know what I’m going to write about, and I really have to restrain myself from starting to write right now. It’s sad, I know, but it just proves that I’m not doing a bad thing by participating.
I have a bad reputation for starting NaNoWriMo with high hopes and well thought-out plans, and for letting the whole thing flush unceremoniously down the commode. With that said, there really isn’t a good reason to think that I’ll miraculously earn the coveted “winner” badge to display proudly wherever images are proudly displayed.
I’ll tell you what, though, gentle readers, after three consecutive years of not winning, I’m more determined than ever to meet the challenge. Despite my bad track record, some things have changed from years past that might give me a snowball’s chance in hell:
Years past: My state’s music teachers association’s state conference sucked up a huge portion of my precious time.
This year: I have resigned my post as Conference Registrar, meaning that I will actually have a life in the month of November. Let some other schmuck do it.
Years past: Editing my state’s music teachers association’s annual yearbook, the biggest and most important publication of the year, required more of my attention than I was willing to give.
This year: As with the position of Conference Registrar, I have sort of resigned my post as Yearbook Editor. I say “sort of” because I have agreed to temporarily remain on call as Co-Editor, but this title is mainly given out of respect for my willingness to help my replacement not completely screw everything up. Either way, I expect to have a lot more free time.
Years past: Thanksgiving was spent in a house that was so lovely it makes my heart ache not to be in it, but that was over six hours away. Driving that distance takes a lot of time and energy away from writing.
This year: Thanksgiving will be spent either here or at my parents house, which is only an hour away. Also, since I took on most of the Thanksgiving feast preparations last year (believe me, I am in no way complaining), I now know what exactly is involved and can be even more time and energy efficient so as to maximize my holiday writing.
Years past: Pulling creative bits of fiction from my brain, despite extensive planning, proved to be much more difficult than I had expected. I ended up writing myself into a corner, not knowing where to go next.
This year: I have decided to take a semi-autobiographical route. Since I have a wealth of memories built up over the last almost-thirty years, I don’t expect to have as much of a problem thinking of things to write about.
Years past: I did not have an iPod Touch.
This year: I do have an iPod Touch. That doesn’t really make a difference in the grand scheme of novel writing, but I thought I should mention it.
Over the past three years of participating in NaNoWriMo, I may have broken the 50,000-word barrier collectively. I know I passed 31,000 words last year. The years before weren’t so great; I may have averaged 15,000 words the two years before that. Given that the trend is on the upswing, the odds are in my favor that I may come close enough to my goal to push through to the end.
Of course, there is a part of me that feels like Bruce McCullough’s shrimpy little Napoleonic fighter that picks a fight with the tough guy twice his size, who (no matter how many times he is punched out, and despite pleas from his girlfriend, the crowd gathered around him and even the monster he is fighting) won’t admit that he’s bitten off more than he can chew and just will not stay down.
The Witching Hour
13 May 2009 3 Comments
in Books, Childlike Tags: insomnia, overactive imagination, Roald Dahl, sleeplessness, The BFG, witching hour
Gentle readers, insomnia has struck again. In honor of the occasion, I thought it would be nice to share a bedtime story.
Tonight’s chapter comes from one of my all-time favorites books, The BFG, by my all-time favorite author, Roald Dahl. The man could spin a tale like no one else, sucking me into his stories and making be believe that I was in fact the child hero. Although The BFG is a children’s book, I still pull it out every now and again to reread it, which I may have done hundreds of times by now.
I always think of this passage on nights like tonight, when the wee hours of the morning are creeping along and sleep still eludes me, and my imagination, already quite overactive, starts working overtime, making monsters out of the shadows in the moonlight that cuts through the miniblinds.
Sophie couldn’t sleep.
A brilliant moonbeam was slanting through a gap in the curtains. It was shining right on to her pillow.
The other children in the dormitory had been asleep for hours.
Sophie closed her eyes and lay quite still. She tried very hard to doze off.
It was no good. The moonbeam was like a silver blade slicing through the room on to her face.
The house was absolutely silent. No voices came up from downstairs. There were no footsteps on the floor above either.
The window behind the curtain was wide open, but nobody was walking on the pavement outside. No cars went by on the street. Not the tiniest sound could be heard anywhere. Sophie had never known such a silence.
Perhaps, she told herself, this is what they called the witching hour.
The witching hour, somebody had once whispered to her, was a special moment in the middle of the night when every child and every grown-up was in a deep deep sleep, and all the dark things came out from hiding and had the world to themselves.
* * * * *
The moonbeam was brighter than ever on Sophie’s pillow. She decided to get out of bed and close the gap in the curtains.
You got punished if you were caught out of bed after lights-out. Even if you said you had to go to the lavatory, that was not accepted as an excuse and they punished you just the same. But there was no one about now, Sophie was sure of that.
She reached out for her glasses that lay on the chair beside her bed. They had steel rims and very thick lenses, and she could hardly see a thing without them. She put them on, then she slipped out of bed and tip-toed over to the window.
* * * * *
When she reached the curtains, Sophie hesitated. She longed to duck underneath them and lean out of the window to see what the world looked like now that the witching hour was at hand.
She listened again. Everywhere it was deathly still.
The longing to look out became so strong she couldn’t resist it. Quickly, she ducked under the curtains and leaned out of the window.
In the silvery moonlight, the village street she knew so well seemed completely different. The houses looked bent and crooked, like houses in a fairy tale. Everything was pale and ghostly and milky-white.
Across the road, she could see Mrs Rance’s shop, where you bought buttons and wool and bits of elastic. It didn’t look real. There was something dim and misty about that too.
Sophie allowed her eye to travel further and further down the street.
Suddenly she froze. There was something coming up the street on the opposite side
It was something black…
Something tall and black…
Something very tall and very black and very thin.1
1Dahl, Roald. The BFG (New York: Puffin Books, 1982), 9-11.
Norwegian Cream Cake
30 Apr 2009 8 Comments
in Books, Food, Photos Tags: baking, birthday cake, brown sugar, cake, cake from scratch, Epcot, mackerel, Norway, Norwegian Cream Cake, walnuts, Walt Disney World
For my grandfather’s birthday a couple weekends ago I was entrusted with the most important job of all: making his birthday cake.
Grandpa is a straightforward kind of guy, so I didn’t think an overly sweet boxed cake with lots of colorful sprinkles would be appropriate. So, I pulled out an old recipe for my wonderfully dense, moist, just-sweet-enough Norwegian Cream Cake.
I found this recipe in a teeny little cookbook that I bought from the Norway pavilion in Epcot at Walt Disney World about fifteen years ago. (In all that time, I haven’t yet tried any of the other recipes. Most of them involve mackerel.) It is one of the few cakes that I am comfortable making from scratch.
Don’t be afraid if the batter is a little thick, almost the consistency of cookie dough. I have doubled the recipe for the frosting; there never seems to be enough when I follow the directions in the book.
Norwegian Cream Cake
1-1/2 cups butter, softened- 2 cups sugar
- 3 eggs
- 1-1/2 cups sour cream
- 1-1/2 teaspoon vanilla
- 3 cups all-purpose flour
- 2-1/4 teaspoons baking powder
- 3/4 teaspoon baking soda
- 3/8 teaspoon salt
- 2 cups heavy cream
- 2/3 cup brown sugar, packed
- 1 teaspoon vanilla
- 1/2 cup chopped walnuts
- sifted brown sugar
- walnut halves
In a large mixing bowl, cream butter and sugar. Add eggs one at a time, beating until mixture is light and fluffy. Beat in sour cream and 1-1/2 teaspoon vanilla.
In a medium bowl, sift together flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt. Gradually add to creamed mixture, beating just until blended thoroughly. The batter will be thick.
Divide batter among three greased 9″ round cake pans. Bake at 350ºF for about 45 minutes, or until cake pulls away from sides of pan and a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Allow cake layers to cool in pan for a few minutes, then turn out on wire racks to cool completely.
Whip heavy cream with 2/3 cup brown sugar and 1 teaspoon vanilla until stiff.
To assemble:
Place one layer on platter. Spread top completely to edges with whipped cream. Sprinkle with half of the chopped walnuts. Top with another cake layer; repeat with spreading of cream and nuts. Top with third layer. Spread remainder of whipped cream over top and sides of cake. Sprinkle with sifted brown sugar and decorate with walnut halves.
Elusive sleep
16 Apr 2009 3 Comments
in Books, Childlike Tags: back rub, Charlotte's Web, E. B. White, insomnia, sleep, Wilbur
The night seemed long.
Wilbur’s stomach was empty and his mind was full.
And when your stomach is empty and your mind is full,
it’s always hard to sleep.
E.B. White, Charlotte’s Web
Well, gentle readers, here we are. It’s after two o’clock in the morning and I am wide awake. Mentally, that is. Physically, I’m exhausted. I’ve been up since six o’clock yesterday morning, and my body has run out of steam. Otherwise, I would probably be cleaning the apartment right now, rather than playing on the internets while lying in bed. My body is ready for a few Zs.
It’s this razzle-frazzle brain that just won’t shut up! It is constantly buzzing with thought, reviewing the events of the day, planning practice time for tomorrow, inventing clever retorts to the snide remark to which I should have responded nearly twelve hours ago, freaking myself out by overanalyzing the strange nighttime sounds of the apartment building. The more I try to quiet it, the louder the buzzing becomes.
So, I find myself like Wilbur, except that my stomach isn’t particularly empty.
Since I’m no stranger to insomnia, I have a long list of sleep aides in my bag of tricks, few of which actually work. (I’m talking natural sleep aides; I have yet to take an actual sleeping pill and I do not intend to begin any time soon.) From tea to hot baths to NyQuil to Werner Herzog, I have tried everything I can think of, and more often than not I find myself more awake than ever.
I’ve considered the possibility that the anticipation of sleep is what’s keeping me up, but thinking about it only complicates the problem further.
When I was a little kid, my dad would rub my back and tell me stories until I fell asleep. What I wouldn’t give for one of those back rubs right now… It’s times like these when it really sucks sleeping alone.
Does sleep ever elude you? What do you do when it does?
NaNoWriMo Day 30: Not gonna happen
30 Nov 2008 4 Comments
in Books, Seasonal Tags: NaNoWriMo, NaNoWriMo '08, word count
With only about twelve and a half hours left in NaNoWriMo ’08, and only just over 31,000 words written, I think it’s safe to say that I’m not going to finish this year. I am a little disappointed, since a couple weeks ago I honestly thought I might have a shot at it. Unfortunately, I had to prioritize this month, and I just couldn’t put my novel ahead of some other things I had to do. Also, for the first time, I feel like my age (which is not yet that far advanced) is beginning to catch up with me. I can no longer pull all-nighters by surviving on sugar and caffeine the way I could in college. Well, I could, but my brain wouldn’t function well enough to produce anything coherent, so the effort would be moot.
That said, however, there are a few things about this year’s NaNoWriMo with which I am extremely happy:
- I got much farther into my novel this year than I did the last time I attempted NaNoWriMo; last time I didn’t even make it halfway.
- I do feel like there were a few writing sessions this month in which I truly kicked my inner editor in the head and got a ton written, something I usually have a terrible time doing.
- I was much better prepared this year than I was last time around, so now I know what I need to do to prepare for next year.
- I feel like I had a really good story this year. So good, in fact, that I plan to actually finish writing it at my own, unhurried pace.
I am sorry that I didn’t get the nifty little badge to post on the sidebar of this page, but I have a little more pride and honesty than resorting to major cheating in order to get it. That would defeat the spirit of the whole challenge.
(On a side note, I noticed while perusing the forums on NaNoWriMo’s site that there were several people who reached 50,000 words by the fourth day. I don’t know about you, but that doesn’t seem physically possible to me. Surely, these people must have written their novels beforehand. That’s a level of cheating to which I am not yet willing to sink, thank you very much.)
But I’m not sorry that I did NaNoWriMo this year. This past month I feel like I’ve learned a lot about myself and the writing process. It was a good feeling to write again. Perhaps, if I’m lucky, I’ll maintain my resolve and keep it up. Here’s hoping…
NaNoWriMo Day 18: Unexpected plot twists
18 Nov 2008 Leave a Comment
in Books, Seasonal Tags: blog entries, cheating, NaNoWriMo, NaNoWriMo '08, not cheating, spiders, word count
I did get some writing in last night, but I literally pushed myself to the point of exhaustion, both physically and mentally. I actually fell asleep sitting up at the desk. It was a shame, because in my exhausted state, I was feeling quite brilliant and came up with a few more ideas about how to develop the upcoming scenes, but I unfortunately was too tired to remember to write them down.
I realize that the point of this exercise is to dump everything in your mind onto paper, and not to use pre-written material from yourself or anyone else. However, I don’t think that using one’s own previously written materials in a way that is not just cutting and pasting is cheating. At least, it’s no more cheating than using song lyrics. Anyway, sometimes getting an easy boost in the total word count gives me the motivation to keep writing on my own.
I had been developing the other, not so main character, but realized last night that the true main character, about whom the story is supposed to be about, is rather shallow, and needed some depth injected into him. With that in mind, I delved into this very blog for inspiration to help develop my main character’s personality. What easier way to do that than to make him as afraid of spiders as I am? So, I took material from the very first post I ever made and adapted it into my story. I thought it fitting, since my main character is a military man, and I felt rather militant and strategic when writing it.
Again, I don’t feel as if I was cheating when I made the choice to adapt my own blog materials, since I did more than cut and paste. Besides, introducing spiders onto a space ship that was supposed to be completely clean and critter-free at the launch opens up a whole new possibility of plot twists that I had previously not thought of. So, you see, it was a rather smart move, if I do say so myself.
NaNoWriMo Day 16: Hope & Half Birthdays
16 Nov 2008 2 Comments
in Books, Seasonal Tags: half birthday, hope, NaNoWriMo, NaNoWriMo '08, word count
I just realized that today is my half birthday. Half birthdays are always great because you don’t remember them until they’re here, so it’s like a surprise party for yourself. Granted, it isn’t a major milestone, but there is nothing wrong with celebrating passing the halfway mark until your next birthday.
Speaking of halfway marks, November is halfway over, meaning that I only have 14 more days to finish NaNoWriMo. I was supposed to reach 25,000 words yesterday, but that didn’t exactly happen. I am still over 3,600 words behind schedule and have some serious catching up to do if I want to have any chance of finishing this thing. However, I take solace in the fact that at 23,024 words, I am much farther along than I was before I gave up last time. In fact, the last time I did NaNoWriMo, I had given up by now. So, there is hope.
NaNoWriMo Day 9: Billy Joel is my lifesaver
09 Nov 2008 4 Comments
in Books, Music, Seasonal Tags: Alice's Restaurant, Arlo Guthrie, Billy Joel, lyrics, NaNoWriMo, NaNoWriMo '08, Scenes from an Italian Restaurant, word count
It’s been a pretty good writing day so far. I was a little worried when I struggled to complete a transitional scene in the novel; I knew what was going to happen next, but I was stuck on how to get there. Eventually, I just made up something stupid and completely nonsensical, but at least it got me to where I needed to go. I’m sure I’ll have a chance to fix it in the editing stage.
In between writing sessions, I take a break to check my email, play with the cat, read a bit of news, stalk friends on Facebook, and check the featured forums on the NaNoWriMo website. Normally, I just scan the first few posts, then return to the agony of wondering how to get to my next scene. But today, my friends, I struck gold.
One of the featured posts today was Dirty Ways to 50k, a wealth of helpful hints from Nanos new and seasoned. Some of them were familiar: do not ever use contractions, describe everything in glorious detail, use lots of creamy, finicky adjectives, and have plenty of dream sequences or flashbacks. One that I had not yet thought of, though, was having a scene (or two, or seven) in which a character is singing out loud to the radio. Song lyrics are great padders!
As a result, I chose to insert a scene where one of the characters is singing and dancing while cooking dinner, something I do all the time. So, for no other reason than the fact that I was listening to it at the time I was reading through this thread, my character just sang and danced to all of Billy Joel’s Scenes from an Italian Restaurant without realizing that he was being watched. It made my day knowing that adding song lyrics to something that probably would have been a maximum of three sentences bumped up my word count by about 530 with the lyrics alone.
Thanks to some strategically placed lyrics, I am now only behind by about 1,000 words, rather than the 3,000 I was this morning. So, this character is now a music lover, and will probably break out in random songs in the shower, or who knows where else during the course of the novel. The question now is, what shall he sing? I’m sifting through my iTunes at the moment, looking for particularly long and wordy songs. R.E.M.’s It’s the End of the World As We Know It comes to mind. Any other suggestions?
EDIT: Oh. My. God. I totally just had the best idea in the world, ever. I just figured out a way to work Arlo Guthrie’s Alice’s Restaurant (a whopping 2,526 words) into my novel. And the best part is, it isn’t just some random insertion. It actually has something to do with the story! 50,000 words, here I come!!
say what?