Is it...Is it a SIGHTING?

Hello blog friends!

Woah, what a week it has been. Actually, I take that back. It's been a pretty bumpy ride since November 1st. Not that any of you can tell by the absence of the Nano ticker on the sideboard of my blog due to the absence of any activity whatsoever on this blog (for which I do truly apologize) that I am not - I repeat - AM NOT participating this year.

Twas a sad, sad day on October 31st (judge if you want - I will freely admit that I just looked at the calendar to make sure October and not November has 31 days...). I hadn't even noticed the date and was absolutely intending to go through November in a halfway normal fashion this year (as opposed to last year in which I holed myself up like a hermit and wore out my brain, fingers, keyboard and anything else I once had that might help. Oh, and sanity. Yeah, probably that too... Still haven't found it all either, for that matter.). I didn't have an inspiration or (like last year) even a first line that was promising enough to build on and brought along enough adrenaline and excitement to set up housekeeping.

And then out of the clear blue, the first line came and I panicked.

I looked at the calendar and something inside me screamed "TOMORROW IS NOVEMBER FIRST!! WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO??"

"Umm...I'm not really sure," I replied. Last year I prepared for Nano weeks in advance. I had chocolate, tea, character outlines, plot points...I had signed up and familiarized myself with the website. I had alerted my family of my soon-to-be-reclusive lifestyle. I was pumped and nervous. I was Suzy-on-top-of-it. Could I dive in like this: fifteen hour's notice, nothing prepared, no one notified, armed with only a first line and a hazy idea of where to go?

For a wild, delirious half hour, I thought I could.

I sought wisdom - accidentally texting my cynical older brother instead of my Nano-veteran friend - and got mixed replies.

Yes! Nano is all about crazy and stupid!  Go for it! 

Do you want to enjoy November?? You can't put your life on hold like that again! 

Perhaps I should have given that response more thought before I sent it...

Don't listen to the devil on your shoulder! 

With a sigh, I gave up my Nano dream.

Thankfully, after several hours of brainstorming, I found that my "inspiration" for the year fit very nicely into one of the novels I hope to finish sometime in the near millennium.

So yes, I bitter-sweetly see the Facebook posts of wordcounts and Nano obsessions, but I wish all of you the best of luck and bountiful words as you pursue the number 50,000.

I will be chasing 15,000 on a novel I'm supposed to be finishing and trying to avoid the ever-mounting premonition that I'm destroying it by inches.
 
May all the forces that produce literature (whether good, bad or mediocre) be with you.

Till next time!

Book Trailer

As far as video trailers for books are concerned, my opinions tend towards the "is this really necessary?" side. I mean, come on, it's a book, not a film and for heaven's sake what is the back cover for if not to tell you why you should read the book?

From what I've seen, these "book trailers" seem to consist mostly of a walloping soundtrack, segmented bits of the back-cover blurb and uninspiring pictures of rooms and the book cover with perhaps a tree or something thrown in. (No, I'm not an authority; I don't generally make a point of watching them). But this one that I recently clicked on because the book itself looked interesting, caught me by surprise because I...liked it.

An Unmarked Grave by Charles Todd

Maybe it's the intense piano/flute/violin piece playing in the background or maybe it's just because the video itself is so dreary and depressing and mysterious, or maybe it's because I actually was interested in the book, but I found this "book trailer" to be quite excellent indeed. 

I'm hesitant to encourage anyone to read this book, actually, because - though it's made my to-read list - I'm not familiar with the author and I know he's not Christian, so I'm unsure of the content. All I know is that it's a mystery and probably depressing. Anyway, I just thought I'd share a tidbit of interest today. Enjoy - or not... 

Till next time!

Break Out The Spoons!

Seeing as it's been a week since my last post (and that thinking about a post doesn't exactly get it down on paper...Blast!), I guess I should buckle down and type something out. Seems like I've been "just typing something out" for ages... Be ye comforted, though. You're getting more attention than my journal is. And that's for posterity! (Though I cringe at the thought of future generations reading it)

I suppose I can do my usual (these days) posts where I just dump all the information from the week in and give it a good stir or I could try to categorize.

Hmm...

Break out the spoons!

School has been going incredibly well. We're whizzing through everything and I feel like I'm in a blender. At least, my brain does... I'm getting to know my teammates really well and we love to joke around and goof off during skills. :) We also have a great time telling each other how nervous we are and how overwhelming everything is. Miss Patty, our instructor, has been incredibly encouraging to me lately and just this morning I opened up my school email to find a note from her that was absolutely unexpected and (forgive me for repeating myself) incredibly encouraging.

I also made the disconcerting discovery that it's not really fear about passing that's plaguing me about this course, but instead my own rampant laziness. What I had been thinking was fear was actually just my brain saying "this takes too much time! How are you ever going to be able to do anything fun with all this studying?" And my fear and uncertainty about actually doing this for a living was also stemming from the same onerous sin.

Yeah...

Not exactly the most inspiring discovery - or the most comfortable either.

I'm not saying that this is what I want to do with my life, but it's starting to look a lot better now that I've actually taken to heart that verse in Colossians: Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for men. 


We'll see what comes of all this now.

Other than that, I'm going on vacation Friday, Saturday and Sunday. It's an annual get-together with a bunch of other families at a state park where we stay in cabins and play frisbee all day and play games all night and have hymn sings and devotions and delicious meals and towel fights in the kitchen. It's awesome. :)

I'm reading Agatha Christie right now (nothing like a good murder mystery to relax you!) and I've just bought a million more books at Goodwill on scratch-off day which I have no room for. Right now they're sitting in bags next to my desk, waiting for...something.

I have been doing a little writing lately, but mostly I'm working on editing (sporadically, of course) my only completed novel: a 94,563 word tome which is in desperate need of polishing. It's so frustrating to go through all the work of writing it and then going back over it and find a million more things that need to be added, changed, rewritten, ect.

*sigh*

And I still haven't decided what my main character's brother is going to look like... I keep telling myself I need to figure that out, but I can't seem to make up my mind about it. Writing can be so scarily permanent at times.

What do you care about that anyway?

Good grief...

As a side note: I can't believe I have twelve followers! Thanks so much to all of you for joining and reading! I always write better when I have an audience. (No wisecracks please)

Well, it's time to sign off and gather more material from life for the next post!

'Till next time!

Not Your Ordinary Post (thank heavens!)

To avoid the horror of letting this blog become a lame repetition of fill-in-the-blanks, I suppose I should come up with a post before I lose all my readers.
Unfortunately, since I don't really have anything really deep to share right now or even something rather trivial that I want to delve up...I must force myself to stop emptying my recycle bin for fun and crack down on getting something readable out here.

What can I talk about?

There's always the weather to fall back on. The polite, dinner-conversation opener. But it's raining (which I adore) and that's about all I can report on that subject. In fact, I'm not even sure if the sky has gotten up the guts to rain yet. It's probably just gray and moist.

New topic?

I think yes.

What have I been doing lately? Now that is a multi-faceted question. Whenever people ask me what I've been doing I always say "nothing much" for fear that I might actually have to come up with something I have been doing that would be even remotely interesting to them.

Remotely interesting or not, I might as well spill the details. It can't be much worse than no post at all.

I hope.

I guess the most exciting thing that's been happening to me lately is that after eighteen years of frustration I'm finally falling in love with God. (It actually hasn't really been eighteen years, but ever since I realized that there was something missing between us I've been struggling to find out what) It's been an amazing experience, one I sometimes thought that I would never have.

My college course starts in two weeks (there, I've written it!). Orientation on October 3. I am still not even the slightest bit excited, but as the inevitable comes closer I become more resigned to the fact that I can't stop it from coming. I assume that I'm either in Anne Shirley's calm "depths of despair" or that I'm beginning to realize that there's really not that much to be afraid of. I suppose thinking up escape plans is not going to help either. One has to face the music when one has already paid the piper tuition.

My dad recently had surgery on his foot to remove a broken sewing needle. With three daughters who sew in the house, we aren't running DNA tests to see whose fault it is, but I'm pretty sure it wasn't mine.

I'm currently reading a book called Blue Night by Cindy McCormick Martinusen. Apparently, it's part of a series (fancy that!). I stumbled across it while I was wandering aimlessly with the intention of looking for a Liz Curtis Higgs book. (It's amazing what you can find when you get your sense of alphabetical order turned around and end up in the wrong row!) It's a sort of strange book about Nazi treasure, kidnappings, WW2 resistance groups, kidnapped husbands and blue tiles and it's set in the 2000's. I'm still trying to make sense of it.

Holly & Ivy is almost finished but Jamie can't find the last piece she wrote... And now that she's hit the end of it, she says she has a new idea which she might start work on if she can get rid of an annoying case of writer's avoidance. It has a very lame title right now, so she's going to hold off announcing it until she comes up with a better one. I don't have much faith in her abilities to do this.

Other than that, I'm doing things pretty much as normally as the next person. And I'm boring myself with my recounting. So, with such an inspiring post, I shall take my leave and go finish my book. :)

'Till next time (which will hopefully be more worthwhile than this...)

After 20 days, I attempt to catch up...

Well, now that I have lost all the followers I might have amassed by my unpardonable laxness on the posting end, I will now try to worm my way back into their lives with a post. Haha. In my defense, eight-hour work days Monday through Friday and a weeklong vacation does not a regular posting schedule make.
Anyway, this is what's been happening in my life lately:
- I work at a highschool close to my house doing summer cleaning of the facility. I am an expert at cleaning desks, windows and chalkboards along with the other smorgasbord that somehow collects dust and dirt during the winter months. I am still amazed at some of the things that have to be cleaned. Oh well. It's a job and it pays well enough for me to stay and not go out looking for accommodations more suitable to my tastes. I would love to work in a Christian bookstore or be a professional novelist. Sadly, I am not aware of any openings yet - most likely because I have not been looking for them.
- I went camping with my family, my mom's parents and my mom's sister and her family from June 19 to the 24th. It was cold and rained almost constantly every day but Monday and Wednesday and we, along with our games and paper towels, got rather soggy. To my chagrin, I had expected better weather and packed only one sweatshirt and no socks. Thankfully, I could borrow the latter from my brother and the former (with some careful handling) managed to make its way through the trip without getting majorly wet or dirty. On the upside, I did get better at softball and volleyball, which are sport staples on our trips, I won a mile-long round of Phase-10, I knocked off three or four chapters of Our Mutual Friend, and I learned how to play Big-2 (a Chinese card game).
- My summer reading resolution is tanking. I am stuck on page 161 out of 822 in Our Mutual Friend and progress further than that does not seem to be readily forthcoming. I did recently gulp down a book that is completely unrelated to any book-reading resolution I have made and was read because it happened to catch my interest and be within easy reach on my sister's desk. A Northern Light it was called and I would recommend it with emphatic reservations. Read here as to why.
- I forgot to bring Joyfully At Home with me last week and so my dear friend who lent it to me is going to have to wait a little longer to get it back. Truth be told, I completely forgot I had it until yesterday when I remembered.
- Yesterday, I took four orphaned baby birds to the humane society. If you have ever, ever driven a car with four squeaking baby birds in the passenger seat, you'll know how loud it actually is. Thankfully, they liked the talk radio host I had on or I would have gone stir crazy.
- I'm going strawberry picking in five minutes, which means that I must now end this delightful ramble and let you get back to whatever more constructive thing you were doing before you started reading it.

'Till next time,
Jamie

A Summer of Classics

I, nobly and resolutely, have decided that instead of "wasting" my summer reading time reading the books I normally read, I will instead nurture my mind with classics. Dickens, Austen, Collins, Shakespeare, Doyle, and the like. I shall immerse myself in the overload of description, the hallowed run-on sentences, the drama, the mystery, the suspense, the humor. Oh yes, the humor.

Seriously, though. I'm going to do it -- this time. Of course, I probably won't subsist wholly on them (I mean, one must have a light, quick read once in a while, mustn't one?) but I intend to make it as far through my list as possible and come out of the next three and a half months a better and more educated person (and a person able to proudly say, "Yes, I have read that book, and you?"). Anyway, this is my list thus far: 

- Our Mutual Friend

- Oliver Twist 

- Pride and Prejudice (don't choke on your tea, ladies. I have read this one before.)

- The Moonstone

- Emma or Persuasion (I haven't decided yet between the two, so I am willing to take votes of advocacy)

- The Hound of the Baskervilles

- Hamlet

It doesn't look like much, but keep in mind that this is a girl who usually avoids classics like the seven plagues (whatever they are) and these are all rather long books in and of themselves. Also, I might be keeping last summer's resolution of reading the Lord of the Rings series, and I have made a tentative promise to myself that I will finish writing and revising one of my novels this summer, so we'll see how much of this actually gets done.

'Till next time, 

Jamie