The dancing turtle from yesterday's post was cute, but look at what I had originally wanted to use:
My hair never curled like that, but those are pretty much my dance moves.
These are drawn by the talented Maria Mercado, whose website I found as I searched for a picture for yesterday's post. I hadn't heard back from her with regards to having her permission to use the images and I was impatient to share my good news, which is why I chose the dancing turtle. But now that I've heard back from her, I have to show them to you.
Check out her blog for more wonderful doodles. Someone who can draw like that even when she's sick is definitely living and breathing her art.
Hope you're having a happy dance sort of a day.
I have long been a fan of The Literary Lab and so was doubly excited to find out I won the top prize in their Variations on a Theme contest!
These folks not only organized and judged the contest, they also put up their own money for the winners. It's clear that they love fiction and are doing their part to spread their love.
This anthology, their third, will be available in March. In the mean time, I hope you'll support their effort to promote good writing by checking out the first two.
You know what else is cool? That when I look at the names of the other authors whose work will be included, I recognize quite a few from having interacted with them at the Lit Lab blog. And let me tell ya, the comments section is half the fun over there. Davin, Scott, and Michelle chime in often, and do a great job in creating a fun and welcoming place to discuss and ask questions. It's no wonder they have a loyal following.
So, while you enjoy reading the diverse works from these anthologies, I will go resume my happy dance!
Nobody writes insecure and neurotic people as well as Nick Hornby. Okay, there's Woody Allen. But Allen lacks the uniquely-British calm facade that pretends everything is fine; splendid, in fact. I'm not British , but as I was reading this book, I was impressed by how, just from having grown up in an ex-British colony, I have absorbed a lot of that into my psyche. I completely bought into how each of his main characters over-thinks and second-guesses their own actions and how the spoken dialogue is but a fraction of the one that goes on inside the character's head.
The story is about Annie and Duncan, a couple, and Tucker Crowe, the singer-songwriter who is the object if Duncan's obsession. After Annie splits up with Duncan, she makes the acquaintance of Tucker and ends up having him (and his young son) stay at her house.
An absurd story line, really. But who says absurdity is bad? Especially when the absurdity carries truth in it, such as the way Duncan justifies in his mind to himself that he is superior to the young man who, like him, is standing outside the house of Tucker's old girlfriend; and the way Annie uses algebra to calculate how much of her 15 wasted years with Duncan has caused her.
It was a delicious read for the most part, and a slightly uncomfortable one as well, when I recognized my own neuroses and insecurities. I have to say, though, about three quarters of the way through, I needed a break from all those wounded and fragile egos. Luckily (cunningly?) Nick Hornby inserts a laugh-out-loud scene using a common and totally benign greeting when two of the characters meet. That scene is priceless. Had the novel ended there, several threads would have been left hanging, but it would have worked for me.
Last year in November, my writing group decided to do our own version of the popular NaNoWriMo. Every one of us was in the middle of a novel and we decided we would use November and December to push for the end.
The experiment was an interesting one for me. (I was forbidden to say I failed. Don't hit me. T.)
You see, I'd never done NaNoWriMo before, and have always been a slow writer who edits (obsessively) as I go. During those two months, I did have a few days when I just wrote without worrying about how well I was writing or how the current chapter fitted in the entire novel. Those days were awesome, awesome, awesome.
Then there were those (many) other days that found me stalled and hesitant and semi-paralyzed or just plain busy. (Yes, we decided afterwards that it was silly to try this during the most holiday-heavy time of the year.)
Now it's a new year and new years tend to fill me with hope again. Call me naive. So here I am, resuming my intention for my novel, which is to move forward so that I have a finished draft to slash, I mean rework.
And I'm finding that it's just as hard in January as it has been in November and December.
Just when I am fidgeting and the butt glue is coming loose, I get an email from my writing friend. And it's about how we need to give up grandiose ideas about ourselves and our writing, and then we can write what we need to write.
I have grandiose and less grandiose ideas about my writing. I have doubts and fears. I have a repertoire of craft principles gleaned from writing professionals. I have the lasting impressions and memories of millions of sentences that have passed through my mind.
But none of it, whether it is a wish to touch someone with my book or a fear that it will not be good enough for anyone or the recognition of brilliant sentence or an assurance I have portrayed a character honestly, is helpful at this writing stage.
What I need is to clear my head of anything extraneous to the story I'm writing.
Easier said than done, obviously, but an excellent reminder for when I'm lamenting my cliche-heavy prose and confusing dialogues and wooden characters and meaningless plot twists and the over-abundance of interiority.
To just keep writing. Humbly and with great conviction that it needs to be written.
Irene Latham is going to be fierce this year.
My one word to define the new year?
Bounce
To be more bouncy and less stodgy
To bounce back after discouragement
To let everything negative bounce off
What's yours?
You've been a year of
contemplation and reevaluation
new experiences, welcomed or otherwise
a few not-quites and maybe-laters
letting-go and hanging on, and waiting to see the wisdom of each
surprising new undertakings
growth and stumbles and more growth
unexpected joys.
Thanks.
Now send in 2012, will you?
