erin – Page 9 – erin morgenstern

books

winter wonders

I’ve been hibernating. January went and vanished on me, but I think it almost always does, in the coldness and the snow. The February snow currently falling outside the windows looks like an aggressively shaken snow globe. New York in the snow is cold and magical.

I’ve been writing and then re-writing and then going back to blank slate and writing all over again. Someday I will make it out of word soup phase. Someday. But for now I am snuggling up in my imagination and trying to sort story-stuff into proper sentences.

I’ve been cooking a lot. We’re close to perfecting our whole chicken in the crock pot technique. While we were playing Dragon Age Inquisition instead of watching the Superbowl I made honey bourbon amaretto sours. Tonight I am making potato leek soup.

Tomorrow is February 3rd and that means Kelly Link‘s new short story collection Get in Trouble comes out. I had the pleasure of reading it last year and it is absolutely fantastic, in the most fantastical of ways. The lovely thing about Kelly Link stories is that while they are each so inventive and unique they are also distinctly hers. Had this collection arrived without an author name I still would have known they were Kelly Link stories. No one else writes such weird wonderfulness quite the same way. If you have never read her stories I highly recommend them, and you can read one of the stories from this collection right over here.

By erin, 9 years ago

miscellany

2014 thoughts & favorites

I am trying not to say things like “this year flew by” or “where did 2014 go?” but I am thinking them, very hard.

I was sick a lot this year. I had my wisdom teeth removed. In a lot of ways this year was about taking better care of myself and I’m not sure how well I did so hopefully that will be a continuing theme for 2015.

I had a comparatively quiet year but it was filled with a lot of things. I have a new niece. I learned to play croquet. I met Tori Amos. I turned 36. I saw Macbeth & King Lear. I redesigned my website. I celebrated Margaret Atwood’s birthday with some of my favorite writer people. I got to be Quentin Coldwater. My go-to Manhattan bar closed. I went to Vermont and Toronto and I’m typing this in Florida. I wrote a lot but not as much as I would have liked. It’s not book-shaped. That’s okay.

Most importantly in 2014, I got married.

I’m looking forward to 2015. I’m not big on resolutions but I really like Chuck Wendig’s 2015 Resolution for Writers.

2014 Favorites

Books.

I had a low volume reading year. There are so many books I accumulated this year but didn’t get to. I read less when I’m writing & I didn’t read much when I was sick and when I sorted through what I did read the list of books I really loved was particularly short. Though I think that’s partially because they are books I really, really loved. (The short list pictured with new favorite bookends, holiday gift from my darling editor.)

The Magician’s Land by Lev Grossman

This is the Story of a Happy Marriage by Ann Patchett

Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel

Stoner by John Williams

(Honorary not pictured mentions to The Enchanted by Rene Denfeld because it came out this year (I read it last year) and Get in Trouble by Kelly Link which I read this year but is not out until next year.)

Music.

Favorite new (or new-to-me) albums this year:

Lana Del Rey‘s Ultraviolence, Taylor Swift‘s 1989, Agnes Obel‘s Aventine, London Grammar‘s If You Wait, & Birdy‘s Fire Within.

Thought a lot about song of the year. Was tempted to go with Taylor’s “Shake It Off” for fun but went personal instead. (Someday, when I finish this book, this choice will make more sense.)

Movies/TV.

I didn’t see enough movies to warrant a movie section. I’m including it to make myself feel guilty and hopefully I’ll see more movies next year.

The only tv show we keep up with anymore week-to-week is Game of Thrones, which I am conflicted about but will probably watch week-to-week next season anyway. We also started watching all of Fringe which I never saw when it was on but is far more enjoyable than I’d expected, we have about a season and a half left. Also looking forward to more Orphan Black.

Games.

Of the video variety: I feel silly saying my favorite game of the year is Dragon Age: Inquisition because we literally only started playing it less than a month ago but I’m a little bit obsessed.

Of the tabletop variety: We started getting into tabletop games this year and by far my favorite is Pandemic.

Other media.

I am late on the Serial bandwagon but we binge-listened to the whole thing the other day and it is absolutely fascinating both on an investigation level and as a narrative.

(A minor resolution for next year: keep better track of books & such for end-of-year favorite list.)

By erin, 9 years ago

miscellany

happy birthday margaret atwood, the slightly belated event

Last night this happened.

Me, Chuck Wendig, Lev Grossman & a surprise Neil Gaiman celebrated Margaret Atwood‘s 75 birthday at the 92nd St Y and it was magical and amazing and I think I managed not to appear quite as nervous as I felt.

For the occasion I composed 75 Imaginary Birthday Cakes. I only read about 50 of them, but all 75 were hand written on cards and placed in a little box and given to Margaret Atwood.

Here’s a sneak peek:

(The box smells like cake, scented with BPAL’s Eat Me: three white cakes, vanilla, and red and black currants.)

Someday I’ll share the whole list but for the moment I’ll let them remain mysterious.

Still can’t really believe I got to be a part of this marvelous event with such fantastic people. Grateful & inspired & delighted.

By erin, 9 years ago

writing

nanowrimo 2014

I’ve been doing pseudo-NaNoWriMo this month, adding 50,000 words to the project I’ve been working on. (Calling it a project and not a novel sounds much more appropriate, it is, unsurprisingly, still not novel-shaped. I will probably not consent to calling it novel-shaped until I have to actually let it go out into the world and be a grown-up book.)

I hit the 50k mark yesterday, mostly because I wrote 7k yesterday. I’m not sure how I managed that and also today my brain is tired.

Here is my NaNoWriMo 2014 word count graph:

(I believe the orange days are when I hit 5k, 10k, 25k & 50k. I had a busy first weekend.)

I make a point to not re-read anything I write during NaNo so I’m really not certain how much work it needs but some of it was redrafting older bits, so it might not be completely terrible. I’m guessing it’s 35-40% terrible. I am going to go back over all of it soon to rectify some of the terribleness. (I over-use the word “slightly” like it’s my job.) But there’s stuff that works in there, and stuff that I probably wouldn’t have come up with if I hadn’t been digging deeper in odd corners of backstory to make that little graph go up. I am, as always, a sucker for progress in graph form.

I’m delighted that I managed to get to 50k now with so much of November left. I have several other things on the to-do list that I’ve been putting off that I now have time for.

To those of you still NaNo-ing I wave little flags of encouragement for you. You can do it! There’s still a lot of days left!

At the moment, though, I might need to take a nap.

By erin, 9 years ago

miscellany

happy birthday margaret atwood!

Today is Margaret Atwood‘s 75th birthday but on Wednesday, December 3rd I will be at the 92nd Street Y with a number of other lovely people to help celebrate this illustrious occasion.

I have been locked away in my writing cave and declining event invitations but I said yes to this one because Margaret Atwood. I am delighted to be a part of it. And also my friends Lev Grossman & Chuck Wendig will be there, so it is bound to be a fantastic evening.

By erin, 9 years ago

miscellany

happy hallowe’en

Happy Hallowe’en, Blessed Samhain & a Merry NaNoWriMo Eve!

I am taking a somewhat Twitter-specific internet hiatus for the rest of the year, though I won’t be around much elsewhere, either. I will blog if there are blog-worthy things and I will do an end of the year post in December.

I am sort of doing NaNoWriMo myself. I’m going to attempt to add 50k to the draft I have. It’s probably going to involve word count math to get my progress bar to work properly. There are links to NaNo-related things in my post from last year. To those about to NaNo, I salute you.

I cut off most of my hair yesterday, shorter than it’s been in awhile. My head feels lighter. Maybe it will make it easier to fit more ideas in there.

I realize that this is likely not that dramatic because most of the pictures of me on the internet involve equally short hair but it really is much shorter than it was yesterday. (Owl talon moon by bloodmilk, of course.)

So tonight I am going to have bourbon and mini Butterfingers and watch Hitchcock films and tomorrow I am going to retreat into my lighter-feeling head for a good long while so I can sort out what’s in there and figure out how to translate it into words.

By erin, 10 years ago