erin

thoughts on nanowrimo for 2010

This is, most likely, going to be the first time in eight years that I won’t be participating in National Novel Writing Month.

I might decide to be insane and do it anyway, because I have an unholy love of the word count meter, but I really shouldn’t. I’m going to have editor notes by then, I’ve already got 30k of a work-in-progress going (most of which I wrote in two weeks) and… yeah. I’m not going to have time.

I’m sad, mostly because NaNo is delicious, crazy fun when not at the omgIhatemynovel phase. And I will feel slightly guiltier about stocking up on sale-priced Hallowe’en candy come November 1st.

I do love the pressure of a deadline, but I get my own deadlines now.

And I think as much as I love the freedom to writewritewrite and revise later, I’ve grown rather fond of revising. I do still love drafting with wild abandon, most of the aforementioned WIP is driven by wild abandon and stockings with seams, but I’m trying to construct it thoughtfully at the same time.

I wrote 80k in 29 days last year. I re-read it a few months ago. A lot of it is better than I’d remembered. Some of it is worse. The structure needs adjusting, the main plot arc requires complete overhaul. I can do it, but it’ll be a lot of work. If I’d taken three months to draft it instead of 29 days, sure, it might be in better shape, but it probably wouldn’t have all of those NaNo-induced, caffeine-haze enhanced elements like the carnivorous mermaids.

I think most of you know that the circus started life as a NaNoWriMo novel. Technically, it started in a different NaNovel, as one of those caffeine-haze tangents. I wrote circus-related stuff for two years of NaNo, ending up with over 100k of rough draft.

There’s not a single page of that 100k that didn’t change during revisions. Large amounts of it were discarded entirely. But that’s where it started.

I’ve said this before, but I never planned for NaNo. I’d always go in with a handful of ideas and see where they took me. Like exploratory novelling. And I always found things that I wasn’t expecting.

But I can do that without the magical deadline now. I think I’m a better writer than I was during all those Novembers in ’05 & ’06 & ’07. I certainly know more about how I write, how I revise, and what works for me.

I’m not entirely sure I need to spend November ’10 excavating a new novel. I have a WIP that needs finishing, old NaNo drafts that need major surgery. And there’s that novel that’s actually getting published, too.

At some point I went from a November writer to a full-time writer, and that’s a good thing, even if it means I don’t have the time to run with the NaNo pack this year.

NaNoWriMo got me where I am right now. If it weren’t for the magic of the deadline and that marvelous little word count meter, I would probably still be one of those people who thinks about writing, someday, and never actually sits down to do it.

So I shall be cheering from the sidelines for all the NaNo-ers this year. And should I ever get to meet Chris Baty, I owe him a hug. And possibly some discount Hallowe’en candy.

By erin, ago

flax-golden tales: songs & sugar

songs & sugar

She was a musician.

He was a baker.

She spoke in notes and rhythm and tone.

He expressed himself in carefully measured flour and clouds of buttercream.

Everyone said they wouldn’t last. They came from different places, spoke different languages.

But that did not matter.

They found the places where their lexicons overlapped.

Ways in which they could speak together, in songs and sugar.

Delights in ears and on tongues.

About flax-golden tales. Photo by Carey Farrell. Text by Erin Morgenstern.

By erin, ago

a slightly belated happy banned books week

I was thinking of doing a post for Banned Books Week, even though a billion other people have said smarter, wiser things about book banning than I could ever manage. I was only going to babble something about how I’m one of those weird people who actually really likes The Catcher in the Rye, partially because I cannot bring myself to dislike a book that is the primary reason I got a 5 on the AP English exam in high school. (I decided no matter what the free essay topic was, I would write about Catcher. I knew that book backwards & forwards.)

And then I read this list of banned and challenged classics, and sitting right up the top with The Catcher in the Rye is another of my very favorite books to be forced upon me in high school, The Great Gatsby.

I suppose this would be a good time to say Thank You to my junior year English teacher, who taught both these books way back in the mid-90s in Catholic school. I needed parental permission to write a paper on Tennessee Williams the same year, but I was still allowed to write it.

That was a good year.

But mostly, seeing The Great Gatsby mentioned reminded me of Kate Beaton’s Great Gatsby comics from Hark, a Vagrant:

So, dear readers. Go read. Go think. Go giggle at comics. Happy Banned Books Week.

By erin, ago

regularly scheduled kittens

There’s been far too much book excitement around here, and not enough of what is truly the heart of this blog: the kittens.

So, here are the fluffmonsters in their natural habitat, cardboard boxes.

Tessa is actually sitting on even more of the crumply paper. She’s been in there for hours, though, so it must be more comfortable than it looks.

Bucket is managing to sit in the sunshine and in a cardboard box at the same time. Talented, talented kitty that she is.

By erin, ago

so what’s the book about?

I’ve had a lot of people ask me what the book is about.

I rather like the very long sentence that Publisher’s Marketplace used in the deal announcement:

Erin Morgenstern’s THE NIGHT CIRCUS, set at the turn of the 19th century, which tells the story of two young magicians, pawns in an age-old rivalry between their mercurial, illusionist fathers, and the enchanted circus where their competition (and romance) plays out, leaving the fates of everyone involved – from creators and performers to patrons – hanging in the balance.

I also applaud the use of the word mercurial, which is one of my favorite words.

By erin, ago

flax-golden tales: not that kind of letter

not that kind of letter

I wrote you a letter, on paper. It seemed more significant than an e-mail.

And this way you can’t forward it to all of your friends.

I needed to say goodbye.

You might have been content to fade away, but I needed… I don’t know, closure or something.

Even if you never read it.

I had to send it anyway.

I went to post it this afternoon, to let you go, finally.

There were hearts painted on the mailbox.

I sometimes think the universe is mocking me.

About flax-golden tales. Photo by Carey Farrell. Text by Erin Morgenstern.

By erin, ago