Surprise: I Wrote 100K In 29 Days to Beat Camp NaNo!

Yes, yes, I know I haven't been here in a while. It's been a really long time... not since about midway through February, actually. 

Though it's worth pointing out that I haven't been on Goodreads in longer... in fact, according to my GR Reading Challenge, I have only completed 3 books this year, which is somewhat embarrassingly close to the truth. (Okay, okay, so maybe it's higher than 3 by this point. But it's definitely not higher than 10, which is going to be a problem come December, considering that I had originally intended to read 60 books this year.) 

Even back in that February post on the blog, you can see pretty clearly that I'm bordering on desperate to try and scrape together some books to read, with a Readathon weekend. While I'm inevitably successful, the whole thing is tinged with this kind of icky feeling that I've been feeling in regards to one of my most long-running past times for a while now.

Part of this is simple: because I truly could not compel myself to read anything. And that totally sucks, because reading is something that I know is really, really good for me. As a kid, it was my major coping mechanism, one of the only things that helped propel me through days of school, being dragged along to my siblings' various events and extracurriculars, and spending lots and lots of time on my own. As an adult, it still serves as one of my primary means of relaxation, a kind of break from the rest of an overbearing reality. In my family, I'm the big "reader," and not reading for such an extended period of time started to wear on not just my mental health, but sense of identity. 

To give you a little more clarity as to what I'm talking about when I say "more than a Slump," here are three titles of blogposts I have seriously drafted in my absence.

The last book I really have finished was way back in March - a severely lackluster romance novel - and not only was it boring, overly simplistic, and honestly, not very good at all, but it's also the only book I actually managed to finish in that entire month. I also read a nonfiction book - about a man's memories of his family, and their food, which is usually a total ringer genre for me - and I genuinely was enjoying it, but only made it halfway through, because after returning home from vacation, I found myself totally not compelled to read it. 

So, instead of continuing to pound my head against a wall that I knew was just not going to budge, I decided to turn my attention somewhere totally different: towards writing instead. 

I was languishing in feelings of just total ineptitude and lack of motivation, sitting at my kitchen table on March 30th. Something fluttered around in my brain - like a torn sheet of paper, pinned to a corkboard above a heating vent - and I thought, "What if I decided to do Camp NaNo this year?" On impulse, I signed on, made a Project description, and even whipped up a fake book cover, which I do for all of my projects. In the end, the only way I knew I'd be really committed was if I brought someone else into it, too... so I texted my brother.

And that was it! The day before Camp started, and I was locked in. 

The reason I chose my brother as my solitary confidant, was because this particular Project also feels like it belongs to him: it's based off of a series of cooking lessons I gave him last summer, in anticipation of him moving into an off-campus apartment for the first time. He had never had to deal with his own kitchen - let alone roommates - before, and I was worried about his ability to meal plan and provide for himself all on his own... so I built out an entire eight-week curriculum, including a Midterm and Final, that incorporated all of the information I figured a total beginner needed to know.

I had subjected my brother to a total of eight cooking topics and their affiliated PowerPoint slide decks, each between 35 and 75 slides in length, allied with an accompanying eight weeks of Cooking Labs, in which he was tasked with shopping for and preparing an average of four to five recipes a week. I figured that working off of all of that material would manifest its way similarly to how I do my regular NaNo writing based off of incredibly detailed outlines.

I realized within a week, that it really, really worked: not only were all of those loosely collected documents definitely a functional foundation for this new format of writing, but I was able to utilize each of those bullet points and slides as a jumping-off point for paragraphs and paragraphs of text. Instead of feeling like I had to rake over the grooves of my brain and hope to collect enough words to arrange on a page, I felt like I was flying. 

And my brother was just the best about it. He cheered me on as I sent my updated numbers every single day - sometimes even multiple times a day - and acted appropriately flabbergasted when they started climbing by the thousands across only hours. 

I finished the 50K challenge in two weeks even. So I soon set my sights on loftier goals... and handily hit 100K words on Day 29 out of 30. 

And after I was finished, I sent a 3,000 word, gif-laden, self-aggrandizing email to my parents and all of my other siblings about it. Absolutely none of them had any idea I was working on something like this at all... not even an inkling that something was up with me. 

(Yes, this was slightly concerning, but I was so excited I was more than willing to overlook it.) 

• Shortest Days: 186 / 185 words
• Longest Day: 7039 words
• Major Life Events: all-day volunteering with various local organizations, visits with friends, seeing two different family members in their various local theater productions, having my sister come up for a weekend, driving over to the Eastside to see my brother, attending our extended family's Easter Brunch. 
• Major Distractions: changing out my Fall / Winter wardrobe for my Spring / Summer clothes, Food Network’s Tournament of Champions, Season 14 of RuPaul’s Drag Race, figuring out how to start my garden in a year where it just won’t stop hailing in Washington State.
• Average per Day: Approximately 3,336 words (about six single-spaced pages per day, for 30 days straight)

Unlike my other NaNo challenges - which you can read about elsewhere on this site, including from back in November 2020 and November 2021 - or even my recent experiences with reading, absolutely zero percent of this situation was painful. In fact, far from it: the only way I even managed to get that much written was because I was having an absolute blast the entire time. Nothing was a slog, or a drag, or a curse, or a hurdle... in fact, I don't recall any other project I've worked on in recent memory that allowed me to have quite as much fun! 

Not only am I now refueled and ready to take on new challenges, but I'm so excited to continue supporting this developing manuscript of mine. Even during the process of writing, it was pretty incredible to see how it has all been coming together - even more so than my usual process with writing out 50K - and I already find myself coming up with more exciting ideas about how to go back, revise, and make it all even better again. I keep brainstorming concepts for new subchapters and elements that could be published online, and I spend my time daydreaming about one day, being able to make this a kind of pseudo-career. At the very least, a very joyous and time-consuming hobby. 

And believe it or not, I have hopes that sometime soon, my reading problem will recover, too. I've been thinking lately about my own propensity for taking part in various Summer Reading Challenges, and while there's no way I'm up for that level just yet, it might be nice to see exactly how much I can incorporate into other parts of my schedule in the next few busy months. 

For now, though, I'm enjoying where I'm at. I'm still writing a ton, volunteering my time and attention to local groups that have my heart, going to parties and spending time in our (rare) bouts of sunshine with friends, and most vitally of all, it's gardening season, and I've got some home improvement ideas to pitch to my parents that I'm sure they'll strike down without repentance (Composting system in the backyard? Adding a screen to the door on my balcony so I can keep it open in summer? New deck furniture so I can actually spend time sitting down outside without getting splinters in my jeans?). 

And of course, I have my manuscript to work on whenever I want it. And that's pretty damn exciting to think about. 

So, that's how I totally crushed Camp NaNo! Have you ever taken part in a non-November challenge? How did it go? Let me know, in the comments below!

I Beat NaNoWriMo 2021!

Well, I did it again: I beat my writing challenge for National Novel Writing Month 2021!

Did I beat it recently? Well, no: I beat it exactly a week ago, back on November 25th, at like 12:34 in the morning. You see, my annual goal is getting it all wrapped up by Thanksgiving, and after pulling out 9,281 words in a 24 hour period, I actually did the damn thing, which - up until about a week previous to that point - I wasn't even sure was going to happen at all. 

So perhaps you can imagine why I've been putting off writing about it here so strongly. I had a convenient excuse or two... there's Thanksgiving with the family to get through, of course, and then setting up the house for Christmas in the two days following, but subsequent to those points, there was a lot less in my favor to argue for continuing to not acknowledge my tremendous victory.

Then again, that's almost 10K words - a good fifth of the overall challenge - that I wrote in one day. In just the drafting for this blogpost alone, I've misspelled the word "novel" twice already. I had to let the word gardens of my mind flower and regrow again before I made another pass over them with the absolute garbage hacking lawn mower I call my personal writing habits. 

In total, this is my seventh year participating in NaNo and winning, which honestly feels pretty damn good... and only continues to set up for the inevitable year when I am unable to meet the challenge, and all of the self-worth I've stacked on the flimsy collapsible table of "I can write a lot in a short amount of time" will someday fall down. 

But yes, I am the champion, and all that. 

For now. 

Let's continue to just ignore the fact that I'm still 11 books behind on this year's already-reduced Goodreads goal, shall we?

Anyways, here's some of the important stuff that came to mind while writing this year:

1. I acknowledge I left you on a bit of a cliff-hanger in my last blog entry, so you should know, that I ended up picking up "Ferdy Fernsby" again - my previous year's story concept, for which I wrote a 50K word outline - for pretty good reasons. You could argue that it was the right choice because it provided the strongest foundation for building a compelling story, you could say that it was the one that came with the most peer expectation driving it, you might have chosen it yourself based sheerly on the principle that it's a gem of a concept and deserved a little extra attention. 

All told the reason I chose to pick it up again was this: I reread approximately two pages of the outline, and was immediately overwhelmed by a feeling of abandonment so strong that I knew immediately that revisiting this world that I had created was of the utmost priority. I didn't want to leave my characters sitting all alone and unsupervised in some incomplete Word document.

Or, as I phrased it to my younger brother: 

2. I wrote the actual novel itself... through Chapter Three. 

This should only be half of a surprise: because my last year's Challenge was spent constructing an insanely detailed outline, it should have been easy enough to guide myself through writing elements like world-building details and character dialogue, which, if we're all being honest here, are definitely the most fun parts of writing fiction. However, things didn't shake out that way... because I kept finding myself adding more and more detail. And characters. And set pieces. And backstory. 

I may have tapped out at 51,590 words, but that's only because each of my Chapters that far had qualified practically as it's own short story, and thanks to a 25K word Chapter One, maybe even a novella. 

3. As it turns out, writing a detailed 50,000 word outline is NOT going to give you everything you need to know about the characters who fill out of the population of a whole kingdom-state. And while I have previously lauded my own ability to organically generate compelling character names - which, to again toot my own horn, I am - I certainly had a devil of a time coming up with actual people to occupy the world, deciding whether they were important enough to even get a name, and then dealing with being surprised when they inevitably come back 'round into the narrative again later. 

Honestly, NaNo can be a bit of a mind-killer when you get too bogged down with the fact that upon revising, some of those hard-won words are going to have to be taken out. It can really get into your head, and affect the flow in which you keep writing... which doesn't exactly make the Challenge easier, either. 

The frustrating part about being a writer, is that everything - both the good and the bad - is your own fault. Thanks, brain! 

Am I glad I did it? Obviously. I always am. But will I forever be perennially frustrated when the process is not as easy, charming, or enjoyable as I expect it to be? Yeah. NaNoWriMo 2021, you really sent me for a loop.

But on the flip side, you also make me want to write again on my own terms, when I'm not staring down the barrel of having to make up for a 13K word deficit when I'm only 10 days into the challenge. So maybe deconstructing negative self-guided behaviors is a win? 

Did you take part in NaNo this year? How did things go? Did any of this stream-of-consciousness-while-on-cold-medication blogpost make sense? Let me know, in the comments below!

PrepTober: Why You Should Do NaNoWriMo, and Why I'm Panicking

NaNoWriMo has now becoming a part of my regularly scheduled November programming. It's as natural to me as watching the Macy's Parade Thanksgiving morning, or pretending not to start paying attention to the Hallmark Channel's holiday lineup starting around the 15th. In fact, if you've been hanging out around these parts, you've probably seen me taking part before!

2014 / 2016 / 2017 / 2018 / 2019 / 2020

But this year has been different for me. It's not your normal PrepTober... instead, I have been living in PanicTober.

On one hand, I've been pretty busy, so it's normal that I'd get a little bogged down and distracted. I'm working on a couple different projects that keep me mentally preoccupied, and that's on top of my normal pumpkin-and-apple-and-butternut-squash October cooking marathon. I also turned 28 years old recently, so that took up a good week of time, strictly applied to celebrating and making a custom round of Jeopardy! in the hopes of stumping my family members.

(Favorite question / answer, tucked into the "Literary Before and After" category: "Demi, Wells, and Grocery Store Joe make their way through the early scenes of Genesis, hoping to score roses in the midst of the Angelic War and Adam and Eve's expulsion from Eden."

"What is Bachelor in Paradise Lost?" of course.)

Still, I've never really encountered the feelings I've been feeling before: instead of the typical skeptical anticipation, or nervous excitement, or even just general readiness to get started, I've been kind of stuck in an apathy corner. I perused more than just a few past ideas and plot bunnies I've been squirreling away for the past year or so, and yet, nothing was sparking joy.

So for the past week or so, I've given it a lot of private reflection. And when that inevitably failed, I decided to make a half-hour's worth of a PowerPoint discussion to present to both my Dad - also a writer - and my younger brother, the best little rubber ducky I've ever met.

The results were mixed.

Which, of course, didn't help overly much.

It's not so much a Writer's Block, as a Writer's Balk: I have ideas - plenty of them! - it's just that I'm having trouble committing to one in particular. And, you know, the whole concept of a nonstop month of writing thing. Essentially, what I'm facing is not a Crisis of Content, but a Crisis of Confidence... while I have an amplitude of ideas, the thing that's bogging me down, is that I don't have an abundance of faith that any of them in particular are going to be able to carry me through.

So, instead of digging myself deeper into a Panic Hole about it, I decided to tell you a couple of reasons I think you should be a part of NaNoWriMo instead, too.

1. It's a great time to get into a big project.

Chances are, you've thought about writing a book. Let's be real: you're reading a very obscure and random blog, specifically written about books, in your downtime, so chances are, you're a creative type with more than a little free time and interest in the written word. There is literally no better time to take the leap and do something impressive, if only based solely on the fact that you know there are thousands of people the whole world 'round doing the exact same thing.

Also, don't know if you've noticed, but we're still in a pandemic. America could do with more people holing up inside next to their computer.

2. You'll definitely see your writing and ideas develop across the month.

One of my favorite things about this particular developed patch of the Internet, is that because I have been writing for what is now ELEVEN years, that when I go back to early days and start to read, you can seriously chart the shift in my written voice. I've grow a lot over the past decade, and it's reflected in my syntax and diction, as well as the content I consume. NaNoWriMo is kind of like that: reading back your finished challenge, from start to finish, shows exactly how your skills changed over time, even if said time was only a month.

3. You don't have to follow the rules: there are plenty of non-traditional NaNo plans to follow, too.

So far, I've written novels, sure, but also short stories, non-fiction, and an adaptation of previously written work. I know friends who have used it as the basis for self-published material (my Dad), and those who have manuscripts that no one either than themselves have ever read (Me). No one says you have to go into things with the explicit intent of writing a novel that will someday get published. Do your own thing! 

4. It helps form a habit. (Be careful what kind of habit that is.)

Does it prompt you to start writing every day? Absolutely. After maybe, say, six completed challenges, does it kind of teach you to write every single day for about a month and do so blindly and follow it like a crazy person until you hit 50K, and then tuck it into a box in your mind and then not write fiction for any other day of the year, so that while you're in the habit for the month of November, the rest of the year is a wash?

Maybe.

5. It's a great fun fact to share at parties.

Who do you know who's written a book, and in a month, no less? (Well, because you're here, reading this blogpost... me. But that's beside the point.) It's a fun, cool thing to brag about. Not a lot of people do this sort of thing. Besides, if you don't, that idea that's been kicking around in your head for years is never gonna get written. If not you, who? And if not now, when?

If you end up taking part, I'd love to hear about it. Maybe your motivation can help spur on some of mine? And just in case you're wondering what my project ends up being - or if I even decide to end up writing at all - guess you're going to have to watch until the first week of November to find out. 

In the meantime, I'll be going over my PowerPoint again.

Are you taking part in NaNo this November? Got any ideas for how to motivate myself towards actually committing? Let me know, in the comments below!

NaNoWriMo 2020: Fantasy Names are Hard, and Never Underestimate the Power of a Great Outline

If you had asked me what my NaNoWriMo project for 2020 was going to be back in July, I would have given you nothing except a mildly panicked grimace. Whereas in past years, I have had an idea kicking not just months, but usually years in advance, this time, I knew I was short on them. Thankfully, I was not short on initiative, because in August, I hatched a plan. 

I was missing the creativity and unbridled limits that come from writing pure Fiction, something I hadn't taken up the opportunity to write for what was, essentially a couple of years. My 2019 NaNo project was a personal Memoir, while the year before that saw Fiction, yes, but in the form of an adaptation, one that came with its own set of limits. Truthfully, I hadn't written from-the-ground-up, only-mine-and-mine-alone Fiction since the previous year, 2017, when my NaNo took the form of a series of short form Horror pieces. It's been quite some time since I pondered the idea of writing a full-length Fictional novel. 

So, I spent my July embarking on a secret project: collecting as many strange and exciting writing prompts as I could find in ready access on Pinterest. I decided that in throughout the course of August, I was going to try and write a prompt a day of pure fiction. With every entry, I hoped to generate at least 500 words of text, as well as a working title and blurb for what form this hypothetical book might take. Granted, this project was doomed from the outset: I was already contending with a wedding in the extended family, the prep work for which I was eagerly involved, and at least half of the month would be spent in a completely different state with my family.

Long story short, I didn't get to my 30 fiction pieces... but I did get to 20! And instead of the simple parameters I'd given them, they ballooned up and out, to 1,000+ words for a complete scene, titles that I already found compelling, and blurbs that felt readable even then, in their bare bones format. Now, instead of stressing over an absence of ideas, I suddenly found myself grappling with a surplus. 

Thankfully, my younger brother was game to serve as a secondary sounding board. He came up with the next step: I would pick my top ten, then my top five, and after I was confident in my choices, I would send them to him to review. I was actually able to winnow my way down to four... when the unthinkable happened. 

It was in rereading my favorite choices that I began to clue in on the fact that two of them in particular might not be so different after all... in fact, they might just be a part of the same story! Crazy enough, my brother - at this point many, many miles away from me, pursuing his Musical Education degree at an in-state college on the other side of Washington - independently came to the same conclusion when reading through my entries, too. All of a sudden, the choice seemed clear: the hybrid story of the two plot lines and characters I'd charted back in August, would become the basis upon which a whole NaNo project would stand. 

Which introduced an entirely new concept to the table: this new, fun idea, was a Fantasy novel. I've never written Fantasy before. 

I make it a point of personal preference that every project I undertake is something new and exciting for me... a chance to stretch my boundaries and learn something new. I've written Thriller, Satire, YA Contemporary, Horror, and Memoir... but Fantasy was a whole other animal in comparison. 

But it also has a lot of personal significance for both me and my brother, as one of our favorite genres. Playing D&D with college friends is the closest I'd come to engaging with it directly before; the rest of my experience comes from a life of loving books, movies, and TV shows that take place in these far off, fascinating places, engage with creatures and forms of life beyond the stretches of human experience, that rely on complex systems of magic for which there are rules, and foreign diplomacy for which there must be a colorful and strange map hidden in the front endpages. 

Fantasy, as my brother and I responded to each other, was hard. 

But it was already there: the seeds of an idea germinating in my head, sending off shoots of character ideas and plot twists and the visions of a vaguely-Basquean castle towering above a bustling city marketplace, and the silent, strange woods behind a venerated school of magic. I knew I had to carry the story forward. 

Working Title: Ferdy Fernsby and the Jewel of the City 

It was the chance of a lifetime: a chance to get off of her farm, away from her overreaching stepmother, and into the wide world, where someone with money might find a use for her particular skill set. While lockpicking, stealth, and sleight of hand might not be a strong argument for employment in the boonies of farm country, they were absolutely an asset in the glittering city of Armarhia. 

If only Gemma had been the only one who had gotten the offer. An enigmatic and furtive backer had set the challenge – steal the jewel that protected the castle – to a whole network of rogues that spanned across the entire city. Now, the only group of people she’d felt included in in the past, had become her direct competition, racing to see who could reach the castle and the jewel first. 

But – unfortunately – Gemma isn’t completely on her own. For some reason, Jac has attached himself to her side, claiming an alliance that Gemma isn’t in any kind of mood to honor. However annoying having a rival rogue tagging along may be, it beats traveling alone. You never know when you’ll need to trip someone in front of a charging bear, right?

Together, Gemma and Jac have to traverse the city, find the hidden jewel, steal it, and deliver it to the hands of their secretive, unknown employer, before anyone else can… unless, of course, they kill each other on the way. But with so many others looking to take on that task themselves, they might as well work together… especially when the jewel ends up being much more trouble than any of the rogues had ever expected. 

    Ferdinand Fernsby was raised with the knowledge that he was destined for greatness. But there’s only so much magic you can learn growing the melons in your family garden, and drying out the laundry with a gust of wind… that’s why his mother bought him a placement at one of the most prestigious magic schools on the continent, far away from his own home kingdom. 

But while Ferdy has spent his days imagining endless libraries, fascinating classes, and connecting with the realm’s other most talented up-and-coming magic users, he in no way bargained for his unexpected classmate: the chaos-prone prince, Louis. While he struggles to keep up in his studies - combatting bullies and helping his accidental friend along the way - he finds out that it’s not just Louis’s own grasp of magic that’s going haywire… a malevolent force seems to be threatening Armarhia itself.  

    It’s only from an overheard conversation that he learns about the bounty on the jewel that protects their kingdom. There are plenty of forces who’d be interested in seeing those walls fall vulnerable, and Ferdy and Louis aren’t about to let that happen. 

    Now, the two boys are on a race against time to fix magic and save the kingdom… if they ever make it back to the castle at all, that is. Not only are other magicians and neighboring armies are out looking for them, but that’s not even mentioning the treacherous landscape that stretches between here and home.  

And to think, all he wanted to do was go to school!  

Usually, in my past NaNo experiences, this is where I would get to work: I'd put meat on the bones that I had grown, fleshing it out - albeit partially - into a functional outline, from which I could build into bigger and better ideas as I wrote it out throughout the project. However, like I said, there was that wedding to attend to, and September passed without so much as a backward glance; October, my birth month, similarly yielded no new ideas. By the time Halloween hit, and the end credits of The Lost Boys scrolled across our television screen downstairs, I figured I was doomed. 

So, on Day One of NaNo, I set myself an easy compromise. Just write a couple of chapter's worth of outlines, I reasoned. You can build off of them in the future. It's no use getting started without knowing where you were going. And it went well! In fact, it went so well, that the next day, instead of getting bogged down with writing an opening scene or something, I decided to continue simply writing my detailed outline instead. 

After a couple of days, I found myself encountering the same madness that had made an appearance in my August prompts: my couple of paragraphs a day, had suddenly gained enough detail and nuance to warrant three or four pages per chapter. I wasn't really writing a novel - there was no description, barest hints of dialogue - but suddenly, my work was looking more and more like I was really committing to the outline, the story flow, the escalation of the plot. By the end of the first week, I felt like I had made the right choice; by the end of the project, I felt like if there was ever a NaNo project of mine that could be a real novel, it would be this one. 

Notes from Writing: What's in a Name?

An offshoot from my brother's conversations about Fantasy Being Hard, was a more specific set of qualifiers: Fantasy Names are Hard in Particular. As someone who has no patience for lackluster insertions of high-scoring Scrabble letters into Fantasy genre names at whim - ie, Nyx, Zephyr, Veraen, etc. - I felt like I was stuck either playing to stereotype, or unable to connect characters with names that suited them appropriately. 

In this way, my biggest foible, in writing Fantasy was - at least at the start - generating names that sounded significantly "other," but also made sense. So, I began to rely on a longstanding practice of mine, which I trot out not only when I'm writing in this genre, but in general: I become a movie director, and try to "cast" someone from the real world - or a similar character from another fictional work - into my own project, someone close enough to the character I'm trying to name so that the mental image maintains its clarity.

For instance, when writing in 2016, I needed a general, everyman sort of character, who would find himself in extraordinary circumstances in a satirical world; he became "Guy," named partially for the character from Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451, and partially because he became, literally, just some Guy. Another character in the same story was a hit man, someone who would occasionally become dark and prone to introspection, someone found in suits and sunglasses, but who still carried an innately redeemable storyteller's quality; because of this - and the fact that he was, at his core, a hit man for hire - dubbed him "Cash," like Johnny. 

In a Fantasy world, this came in clutch. The names feel at home in the world I created, but aren't always what you'd expect, and find their origins in a wide and ranging myriad of media, celebrity culture, and occasionally, gardening tools. 

• One of my main characters - a disaster prone Prince - originally started life as an "Albert," as I tried to cast around for a suitably gawky, clumsy name, that still preserved a connection to royalty. However, he eventually became "Louis," which feels a little more on the pedestrian side, yet which has ties to French royal lines. The change came because, as I continued to write him, he began to remind me of elements of a character from Disney's Meet the Robinsons who goes by that name. 
• I needed a dual set of competitors to work against two of my heroes; thereby, the two most prominent members of the Rogue's Guild came to be named "Peta" and "Duwain." Peta is an athletic and calculating powerhouse, who still manages to fit in nicely with the satin skirts and delicate manners of the elite... and she's named after one of my favorite professionals from Dancing with the Stars. Duwain, a colossal, muscular, imposing menace, who isn't afraid to use his stature against his enemies, is, of course, taken from Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson. 
• For just one chapter, I needed a character who could serve as a vehicle, for information, for movement, for a sense of pushing the plot forward. So, his in-story use matched his name: because of his appearance as a dockhand and in-world experience as an expert trafficker of stolen goods, he was dubbed "Barrow." You know, like a wheelbarrow, which is used to cart stuff. 

Hold me to this next year: I've beaten NaNo six times now, but have yet to tackle that elusive mistress called "consistency and sleep." Maybe it's not so much seeing if I can do it, but seeing if I can do it while also maintaining a regular and healthy bedtime.

So, I finished a few days early... almost a week, actually. And for the first time for a NaNo project, because of its status as a general outline, I have been able to complete a full story arc, getting the whole thing, the way it progresses, down on paper. I haven't had that before... none of my other projects ever progressed to a place where I felt like it could feasibly have a completed ending by the time I finished it, even if the ideas were 60% there. But this year, it did. 

And you know what? Fantasy is hard. But it's also fun, and rewarding, and the sort of thing I love for a real reason. 

Unfortunately, as of right now, I have to put the project to the side. Because while I love and enjoy spending my time building a world and characters, writing snappy dialogue and flowery descriptions, and putting all of those particular puzzle pieces in place, I also enjoy reading some, too. And being that after this nuclear-runoff hellscape of a year, I am nearly 20 books behind on my Goodreads Challenge, that's what I'm choosing to focus my attention on, instead. 

But my story is waiting for me to come back. So are characters, waiting for me to fill their world with colors and mouths with conversation. It's just going to have to wait for January for now... which means that 2021 is already shaping up to be a pretty good year, in my book. 

(And because I just said that, it's time to knock on wood 'til my knuckles bleed.) 

Did you take part in NaNoWriMo this year? What's your favorite tool for coming up with character names? Let me know, in the comments below!

SO, THAT WAS DIFFICULT: NANOWRIMO 2019

Okay. So it took me more than nine days to get around to saying all of this, but by the time you reach the end of the post, you'll know all about why: NaNoWriMo 2019 is over, and while I beat the challenge - for the fifth time! - it left me feeling more than a little defeated.

There were a couple personal factors that affected the ways I wrote this year, that made things a little different. A little more difficult.

For starters - in keeping with my goals to change up my writing genre and style with every year - I was writing nonfiction, specifically Food Memoir. Surprisingly enough, I actually thought this would make things easier. After all, why spend so much time coming up with a believable invention, rather than your personal perspective, right?

Not exactly.

There's such a thing as writing your truth, but there's also the alternative factor of getting hung up on truth. Once I made the commitment to writing my own real stories, I felt compelled to write them as acurrately as possible... going so far as to rummage around in our kitchen cabinets, to see whether I was remembering the embroidery on a tea towel correctly.

Needless to say, this kind of behavior doesn't exactly tee you up for productive writing sessions. It will definitely cue you to second guess all of your detail work.

Plus, I also - for the first time, really - had a writing partner: after watching me complete my own challenges for nearly half a decade, I inspired my Dad to take on his own writing project too, leading to the creation of a set of Horror shorts.

Through NaNo, he was able to tackle some of the foremost ideas he had germinated over the summer, which he had compiled in a huge list, safeguarded in a binder. With every story he finished, and every morning writing session he logged, his confidence that he could complete what he had previously deemed an insurmountable project grew. While I'm super proud of my Dad for putting in so much work, and venturing so far outside of his comfort zone... it's not exactly easy to succeed on your own terms, when the other person is constantly trying to talk to you about how well they're doing themselves.

Here's another shift I'd made from recent years: I opened up the mental bookshelves this year, too, to make more space for personal reading during NaNo. Usually, I try not to read anything until I've finished my 50,000 word draft, to keep myself more focused on my own story, and my voice more authentic; however, because I was working in a top as personal as a Food Memoir, I figured I could dabble in some titles this time.

This was both a good and a bad thing.

On one hand, this regular daily reading helped me progress further towards my Goodreads goal, which is something I sorely needed. I'm more than six books behind schedule, but during NaNo, that number climbed into double digits.

It also gave me inspiration, not necessarily on voice, but on presentation: I learned what kinds of personal stories make sense in the genre, and what format I hoped to present my work in, how long chapters should be and how many recipes should be included. I know what I like and don't like, from irritating word choices when describing a dish, to leaving readers stranded in a foreign country when authors get too caught up on setting. I knew I appreciated unexpected perspectives and unique flavors. I really hated when one writer included four separate salad dressing recipes in one book, while another used the word "gulp" three chapters in a row.

However, I started to subconsciously absorb what I was reading, and it had an effect on what I was writing. In comparison to past years of taking part in the challenge, I wasn't able to write uninhibited; I was constantly second guessing myself because I was spending so much time thinking about whether things worked or didn't work. You just can't do that when writing a first draft... leave it 'til the second!

It also didn't help that - as it turns out - my mom has a lot more difficult feelings about me writing nonfiction, rather than fiction. In her eyes, writing fiction is a fun, quirky hobby; memoirs are spilling the beans about things that doing just belong to you. At one point, she point blank asked me, "Please don't write this," which, as you can imagine, made it a lot more difficult to write.

It was an unfair, selfish ask, and a very distrusting one, which made me feel compelled to self-edit even more often. I was factoring in someone else's anxieties when I was trying to mitigate my own about simply getting words on a page.

In the end - through all these factors and hurdles - I wrote over 50,000 words, but I'm only proud of about 2/3s of them. I'm excited to get back in and read them over, but I'm going to take a little more time to recover before I do that just yet.

Out of all of my NaNo projects, this feels like it's the least likely to go anywhere. When I first came up with the idea, I kicked around the concept as to whether this would inspire me to listen to a new calling, or enroll in a nearby culinary school. By the time I got to the middle of the project - trailing thousands of words behind schedule, with my mother's voice ringing in my ear - all I could think was, "Why does anyone want to listen to me, of all people, about food? What do I have to add to any of this?"

Maybe this year's project was just an exercise in futility... maybe it was just an exercise in writing something new, and different. 

• My non-zero low was 509 words in one writing day; my high was 8,793.
• I wrote a total of 50, 137 words.
• In total, I finished about four of the "chapters" - or segments - I had prospective outlines for.
• I read 3.5 books during the course of my NaNo project.
• I finished 3 days early.

Did you take part in NaNoWriMo this year? How did it go? Let me know, in the comments below! 

HELLO, NANO: NANOWRIMO 2019

To be perfectly, unerringly honest: I never even considered the idea that I wouldn't take part in NaNoWriMo this year... but as of midway through October, I had every intention of kind of phoning it in.

In the past, I've used NaNo as a means of entering into the realms of Thriller, Satire, Horror shorts, and a YA adaptation. I try to get into new genres every year, and use it as a means of not just forming good writing practices, but utilizing it as an opportunity to try out new voices and perspectives, working on unfamiliar formats and difficult subject matter.

However, this year, I was feeling fairly uninspired. I didn't have any kind of grand project idea, and was pretty much just ready to keep adding to my NaNo from last year, Fighting with the Wind. A  light and hopeful modern-day YA adaptation of Frances Hodgson Burnett's The Secret Garden wasn't exactly what I felt like focusing on right now - in the midst of life transitions, trying to find a job, and battling through some rough personal feelings - but it was all I had ready, so I felt prepared to buckle down and tackle the second half of that project, left unfinished.

Instead, I got a little help from my mom... not in any way that she intended, of course. 

We were sitting at the kitchen table, eating dinner, when I brought up that NaNoWriMo was almost upon us. My mother openly scoffed. "You're not doing that this year," she said, somewhat brazenly. "You're too busy."

"Oh really?" I replied. "Because I'm pretty sure I am, in fact, doing it."

She rolled her eyes. "What would you write about right now? It's not like you can just write a cookbook." I'd been spending most of the last week's evenings cooking dinner from the family, including a quite large one for my own 26th birthday celebration.

A lightbulb. Actually, you can totally write a cookbook for NaNo, I thought. I told her as much, and the subject passed. Little did she know, that she had planted a seed... this was now what I fully intended to do.

Really, it's something they should all have seen coming. I take it upon myself to periodically warn my family members that I - a prolific journaler since a very tender age, someone who creates scrapbooks, has filled countless notebooks and planners, and is all around, an passionate documenter - will someday write my memoirs. Whatever is published, will be backed up by years of receipts. Tread softly, lest you get written about.

While I have done absolutely nothing notable or worthy in my life to justify the writing of memoirs just yet, I keep telling myself it's better to start now, rather than wait to do so later, when my inevitable fame and acclaim will no doubt hinder their production. My perspectives on what forms such a work would take have changed around a bit in the past year, thanks to Kathleen Flinn: her book Burnt Toast Makes You Sing Good - following the culinary lineage of her grandparents and parents, and food-oriented upbringing - is honestly the genesis piece for my NaNoWriMo project this year.

I was an early adopter of M.F.K. Fisher as a kid, gaining a collection of her works in a large bound copy of The Art of Eating as a freshman in high school. Through high school and college, I would frequently pick up the books of Ruth Reichl, which my mother loved, once she had finished with them. I have collected my own set of cookbooks - especially those of Jamie Oliver - for years, and rarely went a week without flipping through one or another as a child. Food reading has always been a part of my life, for about as long as reading has as a whole, so it was honestly only a matter of time before I hit on the idea of writing a food memoir.

My Mother Hates My Soups: Bites from a Meal I'm Still Eating will follow the traditions, memories, and relationships forged in my childhood kitchen, and beyond. I'm a home chef, and not even a very good one at that - one that is still very much learning, something I'm reminded of every single time I add butter to a pan, or chop a head of broccoli - so this will probably be my most un-publish-able NaNoWriMo project ever. However, to be honest, it's one I've probably been thinking about for longer than any tackled in my past.

Food has actually managed to sneak into multiple other projects I've done for NaNo: one of the horror shorts I wrote, in a continuation of my NaNo project from 2017, was about a chef who endures a strange and unsettling trip to the grocery store, while in my 2018 project, the character of Martha was transformed from Mistlethwaite Manor's maid, into a young and ambitious local line cook. Her mother was old friends with Mrs. Medlock, giving her plenty of reasons to expose the petulant and uncertain Mary to new cuisine, frequently swinging by the brownstone "manor" with new recipes that I'd have found and pinned to my project Pinterest board.

Therefore, with all of this inspiration backing up my passion, I'm ready to get started. Granted, that start may be coming a little late in the game - so far, I've only written 5,504 words - but it's a start I'm proud of nonetheless.

Keep your eyes peeled for more future updates like this, filled with not only status reports from the blank pages of a Word document, but of all the food I've been cooking since then (which, spoiler alert, has kind of been a lot).

Are you tackling NaNoWriMo this year? What's your project about? 

Let me know, in the comments below!

NaNoWriMo Update #3: The Final Days, Last Links, and Putting the "No" in NaNo

And so did the heavens open up in joyful song, praise ringing throughout the land, with a heavenly host of angels proclaiming, "SHE'S HIT 50,000 WORDS!" 

Actually, it did not go like that, at all. After writing a total of more than 12,000 words in a 24 hour period, and waking up at 6 am to drive my brother to his high school in the rain, I stumbled over my 50,711 finish line at around 10 am on Monday. In case you're wondering why I didn't write this post immediately thereafter, it's because the contents of my brain had not re-congealed into anything remotely resembling intelligent life, until I woke up and had two cups of tea this morning.

In fact, you don't even want to know the amount of spelling and grammatical errors have already occurred in writing this post alone.

But despite my lack of victory dance - unless you follow my private Instagram account, anyways - the words are true: I won NaNoWriMo again this year. Now that I've bought my traditional tee shirt, made my traditional donation, and have actually entertained the idea of picking up a book to read for pleasure again, I can finally look back and reflect on my experience...

Namely, that this year was really not fun for me! 

But before we get into all that, let's do some other general recap sort of things that may need to be taken care of, first. If you'd like to hear about the idea, genre, and title I was writing in, check out my first post update from this year, first! If you'd like to learn more about how I pre-plan my writing outlines, fun links to NaNo posts from other fun people, or how I expertly use the library as a reality avoidance technique, check out my second. 

If you're waiting to hear about my process itself, as well as dealing with bad writing days, and how I eventually met the challenge, then you've certainly come to the right place. So, let's start with the positive stuff, first:



inspiration procrastination

Something that I've never really done for a writing project before, but have always been interested in creating, is a narrative-oriented Pinterest board. I always thought it seemed a little hokey: you're essentially making a fanpage for your own material... and the things you find might end up overly affecting the descriptions you use in your writing.

However, there are two points I use against those arguments:

• first of all, you're supposed to be your own biggest fan anyways, and if you're not writing a book you can get this excited about, then why do you bother, 
• and secondly, there are a limited amount of ways to describe things like a brownstone in Brooklyn, or the ways a rooftop garden can be organized. Don't worry about "cheating" on descriptions, because the words you use - and the ways people interpret them - will be individual, anyways. 

I used my Pinterest board to collect images of everything from Misselthwaite Manor's architecture and furnishings, to what Maria would bring to the Manor for breakfast, to the surrounding areas of Brooklyn and greater New York, to screen caps of my favorite parts of the movie adaptation.

YouTube, as always, ended up being a great help, as well. For instance, I would watch this video for inspiration of what it would be like for Mary and the other occupants of the brownstone to walk or drive around their neighborhood. Also, YouTubers like Elena Taber made it easier to imagine the vibe of a Brooklyn that my characters would conceivably occupy.



how to tell yourself "no" 

I'd won NaNoWriMo three times before, so when I say that I was coming in with a certain surplus of confidence, I'm not exaggerating. Every year, I've tried to step up my game in challenging myself, but this year, I was a little disappointed by the fact that I didn't have a whole lot else going on in my daily schedule to keep me from writing. It almost seemed too straightforward.

I've written NaNo through snowdrifts of school work and sorority life. I wrote it in double-time, after a lengthy vacation. I even wrote before and after surgery last year! But this year, the challenge that proved to be the most insurmountable... was me.

I absolutely lost my way... going days-long stretches without having opened my Word document, let alone having written anything at all, eventually falling to about 10,000 words behind schedule. Out of everything that I had planned for when it came to making sure I kept on par with my writing schedule, the one thing I didn't factor in, was how much of a roadblock your own overthinking, lack of motivation, and depressive brain days can be. 

One of the main difficulties I had to overcome, was the issue of genre and audience. My past NaNos have fallen into similar categories: thriller/satire, and horror shorts. This year was a leap of faith, with writing for a young adult, contemporary base. I kept this blogpost, from Vicky Who Reads, saved on my dash while I was writing, as a measure of being intentional, and to remember who I was writing for.

While this kind of thinking did guide some of how the narrative structure was formatted and outlined, it kept getting in the way when it came to things like writing dialogue, or description, especially with things like my character's relationships with fashion and technology. I had focused in so specifically on writing for a particular audience, that it bogged me down when it came to trying to write organically, and eventually, at all.

The mindset that cleared my path the best ended up being the most simplistic: I just had to let the self-imposed perspective-taking go. Keeping audience in mind in this way would absolutely help with guidance in editing, but it was seriously messing with my ability to just get the words out on paper. By removing those kinds of strictures from my own paradigm, it helped free up the mental space necessary to get the narrative taken care of first. Everything else can come in second drafts.




final days 

As you might imagine, by the time I was halfway through the month, I had worked myself into such a stress ball about missing out on so many writing days, that I actually thought, "I'm not going to make this deadline." It was especially painful to acknowledge to myself that this attitude was due to something as pedestrian as lack of motivation, or writer's block.

So, genre and audience wasn't the only kind of mental check that needed to be cleared away. I also had to give up this idea that every NaNoWriMo I took part in had to be some kind of huge triumph. I had already had my big wins... maybe it was time for a little one.

It was only once I let go of the perceived audience, the self-imposed expectations, and the frustrations of a rapidly approaching deadline, that I finally found myself able to write. With my head firmly back on my shoulders, I set small, but doable, frameworks in place to help get me to each new milestone, and eventually, back on track:

• first, I broke things down. If I had to write a minimum of 2,500 words a day, that doesn't mean all at once... instead, I began to write at least 500 words in one sitting, five times a day, which made the goals a lot more attainable. 
• second, I started focusing on non-word-related count goals. Instead of saying, "I'll write until I get to 500 pages," I started prompting myself to reach physical landmarks instead, like "I'll write until I reach the end of this page," or "until I have to move to the next bullet point in my outline." 
• third, I paid more attention to what ways I write best. This may sound silly, but it's the way Virginia Woolf used to do it, too: it's easiest for me when sitting in my bed, propped up on pillows, with my legs serving as a table for my laptop. (Well, maybe it's not the exact way Woolf wrote.) Once I stopped trying to be a *writer* - working at the kitchen table with my outlines scattered around me, music playing, a mug of freshly brewed coffee at my side - and just let myself start being a lazy, tired, pj-wearing writer instead, it got a lot easier to just, you know, write. 

final thoughts 

And by that, I meant writing over 12,000 words over a 24 hours period, in order to cross over the finish line five days early, as I've already mentioned. Just thinking about performing that kind of a task again makes me want to leave my house completely, or at the very least, stay far, far away from my laptop.

In some ways, achieving my NaNo word count this year really is a victory: I mean, I finished after all... something I didn't think was possible only a matter of days earlier! I banished the function of editing-while-writing, and got back into the groove of writing through my voice, versus it being mediated through any other lens. I succeeded in trying out a completely new audience and genre.

At the same time, I can't dispel those feelings of disappointment, of the idea that no matter what I ended up doing, it still wasn't the kind of win I was used to. Clicking "purchase" on that winner's tee shirt almost felt like a shallow gesture... and in a weirdly self-flagellating way, I almost wish that I hadn't ended up winning at all. I wish that the Universe had taught me a lesson or something. (Isn't that a crazy way to think?)

That's why these couple of days off have been a little necessary, and why reflection on this year's NaNo challenge resulted in such a long final update. It's been a weird ride, but I made it through... now all that's left is to try and puzzle over how things can go better next time.

Regardless, thank you to everyone who helped support me this year, and especially those - namely, my little brother - who puzzled through all of the narrative translation with me! I didn't know if I'd get it done, but your expectations never faltered, so thank you for helping me pull through to the other side.

Did you participate in NaNoWriMo this year? What was your writing experience like? Let me know, in the comments below! 

NaNoWriMo 2018, Update #2: How I Pre-planned, Fave Links, and How I've Been Using the Library

I feel like somewhere along the way, every year, I forget how hard the challenge of writing 50,000 words in a month actually is. I mean, it doesn't really help that I've won three times already, because now, it's like the expectation has been already set that I'm going to be finishing it.

That sort of attitude is exactly what gets you more than 7,000 words behind schedule at a time, by the way. Really, take it from me... and by "take it," I mean, "take away my WiFi and my library books, because I really need to concentrate on writing my NaNo novel right now."

My name is Savannah, and on this November the 15th - the day I'm writing this - I am officially more than 7,800 words away from where I really thought I would be today. 

As you might remember from my first NaNo update post this month - its author in cheerful ignorance of the absolutely ridiculously difficult time she would have in trying to motivate herself to continue - I talked about how much of a challenge this year's writing project would be, and I wasn't prepared for how accurate that statement was. Writing Young Adult is an audience I wasn't prepared to engage, and jumping back into a chapter-by-chapter basis, after living in the wonderfully brief, succinct world of short stories for the past year, has been a real doozy.

Not to mention that I kind of undersold how much the material I'm adapting means to me. I knew I was in deep trouble that first day, when I started rereading Frances Hodgson Burnett's The Secret Garden again for the first time since I was in high school: this book helped me get through some hard stuff, and its main character, Mary Lennox, is still someone who, as a 25-year-old, I still identify with very strongly. Revisiting it brings me right back into that head space where I see so much of her in myself, and honestly, identifying with a main character like that makes her pretty damn hard to write. 

I thought I had done a decent amount of pre-planning, but in actuality, I haven't been using much of it: I find it distracts me from really connecting with the narrative and literature, so I've been focusing more on the source material text itself than any summaries or outlines I drummed up myself. I prepared so heavily, that I didn't think about whether that kind of planning fit in line with how I work.

That being said, I did want to shout out some of the links that I have used in my planning for NaNoWriMo, that I thought were pretty cool and beneficial: 

• Whatever Bright Things' 2018 Word Count Calendars have not only been a lifesaver, in terms of connecting with and keeping track of my daily incremental successes, but they've made my book journal and planner just a little more colorful. I'm incredibly thankful for them, despite the fact that I haven't had as many fun news to write on them as I'd thought. 
• Soggy Musing's NaNoWriMo prep list blog post from this past year, really gave me a few good ideas that actually have helped me get into the writing mindset, even when not actually writing. For instance, making a mock-up of my novel cover has been something I've done for the past couple of years now, but creating a playlist to write to, or building a reward wish list, are things I haven't tried before this year. 
• Amy Allen Macleod's 2016 post on practical tips for survival has really stepped up my game, too. Using your phone's dictation app, to easily record and remember book notes while on the go? An absolute game changer. 

Resources that I've been relying on for NaNo, that you can't find online? My local library branch. In the fifteen days I have been taking part in NaNoWriMo, I have visited my library a total of three times, almost none of which have served a meaningful purpose in my writing process, besides providing me with a modicum of happiness, and the promise of actual social interaction over the course of my day.

The first trip, resulted in, what? Seven library books? Only a handful of which had any bearing on my project, but all of which looked so nice and shiny that I decided I really needed them on my shelves. No, I cannot read them right now -  I never let myself read during NaNo if I'm running behind schedule - but that's beside the point.

However, afterwards, I was absorbed by guilt, and on impulse, went into the online categories, and placed holds on five books that actually did have some sort of tie to The Secret Garden. I got too impatient waiting for them, and went in again, returning one book, and coming home with two that, once again, had nothing to do with it.

Then, finally, when my books actually came in, I returned to the library for the third time. In fourteen days. If you were wondering whether my local librarians know me by name, they all do now. Because when it comes to my preferred forms of productive procrastination, going to the library really ranks high up there.

SO, that's my story of woe, both as in "woe is me, the ding dong running way behind schedule," and "woah, dude, that's a lot of library books."

If you have any sort of recommendations for someone significantly lacking in motivation or output, let me know... but you might need to wait a little while for a response from me. I'm most likely not writing, and at the library.

Are you taking part in NaNoWriMo this year? Where are you at in your writing journey? Let me know, in the comments below!

NaNoWriMo 2018, Update #1: Let's Get It Started!

I've participated in NaNoWriMo several times in the past, and each has been its own individual experience. From writing while an active student, sorority member, and fashion website contributor in 2014, to completing the whole challenge in 17 days after a week-long vacation, and ensuing sickness, left me sidelined for the first half of the month, in 2016. Last year I won on Day 21, after having taken only two days off: one for a major surgery, and one for recovery from that surgery!

Each time I write for NaNo, I try to use it as an chance for something new. The best example of that was last year's challenge, which I took as an opportunity to tackle both a genre I had no experience writing in - Horror! - and a format that I wasn't familiar with - short stories! - in order to push my writing experience to the next level. By the end of the challenge, I had written three and a half horror shorts that I was justly proud of, and had accumulated such a slush pile of other soft ideas, that I ended up writing one and a half more stories on my own time throughout the rest of the year... as well as about fifteen full outlines for others.

But no matter how difficult or different I found that project, the time has come to choose a new one, and while I'm going back to the standard formatting of a novel, the genre and audience I'm writing for this time might be even more intimidating than last year's. 

Young Adult Contemporary. That's what I'm writing. A genre so completely outside my wheelhouse that my younger brother - and one of my favorite reading buddies - could not even muster it up as a guess when I prodded him into trying. A genre I don't even really read on my own time, at least since I was about in high school.

Not that that's stopped me before: the first two books I wrote for NaNo were both highly-satirical thrillers... something else I don't really read. And it's not like I seek out short form horror for the most part, either! So far, that writing advice of "write something you'd like to read" is a little wonky, in my case, and YA contemporary definitely fits that quota.

But its the idea I fell in love with first. It's something I haven't been able to evict from the residency it's taken up in my head, since I first spit-balled the idea during a random Top Ten Tuesday post from last year. The more I thought about it, the more I felt sure the idea was a good one, that could work, and was the sort of thing other people might want to read, too... until now, I am left with no other choice, than to pursue the whole thing myself!

And so this year's project is going to be an adaptation, which is new for me, too. I've never even written any meaningful fanfiction, and yet, here I am about to jump in on a novel that not only I love, I've never really felt prompted to focus in on, from a writing standpoint, all that much. Here I am in the past week, doing deep dives not only into historical and pop culture context, but major themes and motifs, authorial intent and personal life, but even a gosh-darned Tony-winning musical adaptation.

At this point, to decide not to pursue it, would be like acting against my own instinct. It would be denying the part of my brain that's prompted me to take part in these crazy writing challenges all along. The only way to keep developing my writing abilities, is to keep leaning in to the organic parts of the creative process... and I, like Mary Lennox, will "[become] stronger, by fighting with the wind."

And that, ladies and gentleman, is the book I am adapting to a YA contemporary audience: Frances Hodgson Burnett's The Secret Garden. The above quote also provided the inspiration for my working title, Fighting with the Wind. 

As of the moment I post this, I have not written a single word of it yet. I haven't even written a single word of the synopsis for my NaNoWriMo author's account yet, beyond the title. I just wanted to take the time to honor where I've come from through this yearly reflection, and how excited to find out what it's willing to teach me this year.

Happy National Novel Writing Month, everyone! I can't wait to see what we come up with this time.

Are you participating in NaNoWriMo this year? What is your story? Let me know, in the comments below!

Top Ten Tuesday: 10 Book Mashups I'd Love to See

I've got to be honest, as a child of the early '00s Disney Channel Renaissance, I couldn't help but get excited when I saw today's Top Ten Tuesday theme. I mean, mashups were the jam when I was a kid: from That's So Suite Life with Hannah Montana (which was a confluence of the three unstoppable powers that be at that time period, That's So Raven, Suite Life with Zach and Cody, and, naturally, Hannah Montana), to Nickolodeon's repeat Jimmy Neutron and Fairly Oddparents episodes, I've been practically raised on the phenomena of favorite characters invading each others' spaces.

But when it comes to mashing up books, things can get a little sticky. Sure, you can have favorites swap places, or interact with other casts, but what about when it's the settings of the books you want to intertwine? What if it's the ambience or just general theming?

Needless to say, this topic ended up being a little harder than I originally thought. Here's what I came up with:

1. Victor Hugo's Hunchback of Notre Dame + The Brothers Grimms' Rapunzel
Okay, broader connections between the two include a focus on an innocent youth trapped in a tower, and an overbearing, antagonistic force keeping them there. So, imagine: a young woman (or man) unknowingly woos a prince to the church based on the power of her (or his) voice, but she (or he) has to stay hidden, and is burdened with the knowledge that the two of them could never be together...

2. The Amazing Bronte Power Hour - aka, Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre Meets Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights Meets Anne Bronte's The Tenant of Wildfell Hall

Interactions between the Bronte sisters have been touched on before - perhaps most memorably by Hark! A Vagrant comic artist Kate Beaton - but what about their characters? Jane would have no patience for Catherine but would probably love Helen Graham, and Rochester would only goad Heathcliff into grander hysterics for the sheer drama of it all...

3. Thomas Harris' Silence of the Lambs + Julie Powell's Julie & Julia 
Hear me out, here: two famous stories involving a pretty significant attention to procedural eating. So, what if Julie wasn't cooking her way through Julia Childs' cookbook, but instead, the human anatomy?

4. Mary Shelley's Frankenstein + Peggy Parish's Amelia Bedelia
As a huge Frankenstein fan, I've been perpetually disappointed in how our monster has been portrayed throughout film history. He was never a mumbling, grunting mess, but instead, quickly picked up language from observing human interaction. Here's the thing though: what if, after so rapidly absorbing that information, the semantics and specifics got lost in translation? What might transpire are some classically disastrous Amelia Bedelia-like miscommunications... but with horrifying results.

5. Mark Twain's Tom Sawyer + Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes
There is no literary character as amply gifted as Tom Sawyer, when it comes to master manipulation. Then again, there's no literary character quite as accustomed to weeding out the truth than Sherlock Holmes. Is this my way of asking for recompense for the movie bomb that was League of Extraordinary Gentleman? Kind of.

6. Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island + Frank Herbert's Dune
Just to be very clear, I grew up as not only a fan of Treasure Island, as well as science fiction, but also the blend of the two of them together, a la one of my favorite Disney movies, Treasure Planet. What better place to send the likes of Long John Silver to dig for buried treasure, than the politically turbulent, giant-worm-infested, desperately sandy desert planet of Arrakis?

7. Jean Craighead George's My Side of the Mountain + Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle Book (+ maybe a little Gary Paulsen's Hatchet in the mix, as well?) 
Basically what I'm saying is, I would love a children's classic about a boy living amongst the animals in a climate more similar to my own... though being that Mountain is set in the Catskills of New York, then maybe leaning more towards Paulsen's central Canada location for Hatchet?

8. Frances Hodgson Burnett's The Secret Garden + Stephanie Perkins' Lola and the Boy Next Door
I've actually talked about this in my Top Ten Tuesday before, but I'd love to take the time to write a contemporary YA romance retelling of The Secret Garden, which is one of my favorite books from childhood. Maybe I'll make it my NaNo writing challenge for this year?

9. Stephanie Meyers's Twilight + Jeffrey Cranor and Joseph Fink's Welcome to Night Vale 
I just really love the idea of the absolute insane emotional dynamics and unstable personalities of YA paranormal romances, propped up against the bleakly observational and objective reporting from Welcome to Nightvale. "Hello, listeners. Local reports say that the forestry fallout from last week's thunderstorm was instead, the resulting noise from a rowdy game of undead vampire baseball..."

10. Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice + pretty much anything
Let me make this abundantly clear: I will read whatever - and I truly mean whatever - Pride and Prejudice retelling you could ever throw at me. We've already had Lizzie and Darcy meets zombies, Bollywood, and web vlogging, and I've pretty much loved all of them, so really, I'm game for anything.

What's in your Top Ten? Let me know, in the comments below! 

Summer 2018: Reading and Writing Goals

Well, after having already celebrated two graduations and a wedding shower, and gearing up for even more family events to come in the next couple of months, I think I'm pretty confident in saying that summer has finally arrived. Of course, it's not officially here until the 21st, but like every set of goals in your life, it's probably best to get them sorted out in advance.

Every summer since I was about 13, I've given myself a reading challenge over the course of my break, from completing 25 books (the standard throughout high school), to checking off library bingo cards, to last summer's podcast-inspired rereading of Twilight. Naturally, this year isn't any different... or is it?

Here are some of the challenges I've decided to undertake for Summer 2018...

ray bradbury challenge, and camp nano

Those who have been following my blog for a while might remember my NaNoWriMo project this past November: to use the course of the 50,000-words-in-a-month challenge to build out a collection of short stories, a medium I had only written for once before.

This summer, I'm trying something a little similar. Ray Bradbury was once quoted as giving this writing advice: "Write a short story every week. It's not possible to write 52 bad short stories in a row." I've decided to adopt that mantra as a form of challenge for over the course of the summer: I'm going to try and write around one short story a week, with the objective that by the end of the challenge, I'll have at least five or six complete short stories before my family goes on vacation in August.

This way, I'll continue to flex those same concise-and-consistent storytelling muscles that I started to build up back in November, in the hopes that I'll keep improving in the medium. Thankfully, Camp NaNoWriMo is almost here (for the month of July!), so I'll be including my word counts towards that particular endeavor.

And who knows? Maybe in the end, I'll come up with something really worth reading... and maybe I'll have to test that theory on other people!

reading romance: an introduction to bodice-rippage 

For almost all of my reading life, I've traversed regularly over a consistent breadth of genres. Sure, I have my set of tried-and-true favorites - Biography and Memoir, Mystery, History, Self-Help, and Fantasy - but for the most part, I cover a significant amount of library ground.

Except, that is, when it comes to Romance!

And I'm not just talking about books with an undercurrent or subplot of romances, or even YA contemporaries that make romance the whole plot... I'm talking about dime-a-dozen '80s Harlequin mass market paperbacks. I'm talking about covers full of bare torsos and flowing dresses. I'm talking about the kinds of books I'm fully prepared to rent from the library or get on my Kindle, because I can't have the physical presence of those purchases manifested in the real world.

But why am I doing this, other than to make up for an area of bookish experience that I currently lack? I've been party to enough Gender and Women's Studies discussions on the feminist origins and theming of romance novels, without having actually gotten an up-close-and-personal look at the material, and I want that to change.

Keep your eyes out for an update soon on exactly what this kind of challenge is going to look like!

playing in the pages, on the 'gram

I've been toying with the idea for a while now of starting an Instagram account separate from my own personal one, on which to post all of my reading and writing updates that would be more in keeping with what I promote on this blog.

It's not that my own Instagram doesn't provide enough real estate for that kind of thing, but that it's geared a little more towards things like my family and friends, regular hobbies, and major life events, rather than reading time. It's not something I update terribly regularly, and honestly, I'd like to save it for some of the important stuff.

Additionally, I've been looking for a means of keeping myself a little more personally accountable for my reading and writing habits, and I wanted to start taking more pictures of these things that I do so frequently.

I figured that the best way to tick all of these boxes, was to start an Instagram profile specifically for these objectives: I can post daily accounts of how my writing is going, what I'm reading, and what I've been posting on the blog, while also upping the amount of pictures I take on a regular basis, and not bugging everybody in my regular life while doing so (while also hopefully making some new friends interested in the subject, too!).

other reading goals for 2018

Library Book Bingoes in Seattle and Tacoma

Another summer to me means, of course, another set of book bingo cards courtesy of the Seattle and Tacoma Public Libraries. This year, I'm not just aiming for another set of bingoes, but also looking to take on some of the more difficult blocks on the Tacoma card, like attending a library event, or utilizing some of their non-bookish resources, like the buildings index or cd rental systems. Others, like making a recipe from a library cookbook, or taking a shelfie at the library, are things my brother and I are already looking forward to completing together!

Continuing Harry Potter Rereads

I'm halfway through Goblet of Fire right now - I know, I know, the same thing I said in my most recent "Year with Harry" recap - and am looking forward to my next Potter Party with my brother, but I have to say, I thought I'd be further along in this journey by now! I'm trying to read at least the fifth book by the beginning of August, because we've still got a ways to go on this particular adventure.

Reading books from my TBR shelves instead of the Library

Out of all of my resolutions for 2018, this one is probably off to the roughest start, because out of the over 30 books I've recorded in my Goodreads Challenge for this year so far, only about 8 of them have come courtesy of my TBR shelves, the rest having been rereads or library checkouts. Yikes! That's got to change over the summer, which makes for the perfect time to tackle those tomes that might be a little too thick, intimidating, or otherwise require more attention than your average beach read.

What are some of your reading and writing goals for the summer? What are some projects you're trying to tackle in the sunshine? Let me know, in the comments below!