To the uninitiated, November is National Novel Writing Month when people all over the world try to write 50,000 words in thirty days. The theory is that everyone has a novel inside them waiting to be written, but they always claim they’re too busy or there’s not enough time. Nanowrimo hands you a set deadline and forces to decide if you’ll find the time to write.

This will mark my ninth year of participating in Nanowrimo. Every year I’ve crossed the finish line with 50,000 words. Only one year did I actually have a beginning, middle, and end of a novel, but the rules are not specific on the complete point. The dread “middles” are usually my problem.

I started in 2002 when I had just moved to a new apartment and neighborhood. I signed up on a lark, thinking there was no way in heck I could do this. But I had just returned from a cool trip to Vancouver Island with this idea percolating in my brain and thought “why not?” I also found a local writer’s group to encourage me along the way. Each successive year, with 2009 off for carpeting and a sanity break, I signed up and blazed through, still figuring things out as I went along. Most books were genre or mish-mash of genres, whether time travel romance or 1940s super-heroes or straight-up epic fantasy. Each year was a different challenge, but I had the little voice in the back of my head that said, “You’ve done this before. You can do it again.”

Some years I was more organized than others. I am not by persuasion an outliner. I have yet to figure out how to outline in a way that doesn’t make me feel like I’ve written/told the story. That said, I do need some planning, whether it’s location or characters. I used to write up a series of story questions for myself and outlined briefly the first couple of chapters, so I had a starting point. Some years I get through the first week and realize that initial plan wasn’t working. I promise you, there will be those moments too.

Some years I had different goals than others. Last year I willingly admit what pushed me over the edge was the Scrivener writing software coupon. Sometimes you need little things like that. Sometimes you just need to be surrounded by other people working on their novels to spur you on. But it’s not a competition or it shouldn’t be. I like the community aspect of Nanowrimo, but only in a Three Musketeers “all for one and one for all” type way, not “I am your nemesis and I will destroy you, bwa-haha-hah”. I will cheer you on just the same if you’re 10K ahead of me or if you’re behind me. We’re all in this together.

A writer that appeared at my former writer’s group used the phrase “stealing time” when he was struggling to find time to write around his busy schedule. And the fact was you had to steal time. You had to find those spare moments in the day, wherever it could be found. I scribbled a little here and there on my commute to and from work. I’d squeeze in hours after I came home. Even when I wasn’t writing, I was thinking about that story and what needed to be written. That way when I sat down at the keyboard I knew which scene to work on.

And that I’m sorry to say is the biggest tip for Nano. There are any number of word count tricks you can find in the Nano forums, you can plot and outline to your heart’s content, you can scowl at the pretty Excel spreadsheet, but the fact remains you have to do the time. I hate the blog posts that boil down advice to “a writer writes”, but in this particular environment, it’s very very true.

I won’t kid you. It will be difficult. There are days/nights you just don’t want to open up your writing file. You will lose the plot (if you had one to start with) or you will meet some character you never expected to write. You may stumble in those opening weeks. You may even hit the Great Wall of Despair. But once you hit that 40K mark, dear god, is it a sweet roller-coaster ride down.

Don’t worry. I’ll be there too.

Until July 2011, the National Building Museum has a lovely exhibit called Designing Tomorrow: America’s World’s Fairs of the 1930s. I toured the exhibit on my lunch hour one day. The exhibit covers all the 1930s era World Fairs from Chicago through New York, showcasing everything from the architecture and art through to the science and transportation exhibits. I’ve always adored the 1939-1940 New York World’s Fair with the Trylon and Perisphere, but it was interesting to learn about the others as well. I did however have a thoroughly unexpectedly geeky moment as a comic book fan when I encountered the massive Elektro, the Westinghouse robot. In DC Comics’ “All Star Squadron”, based at the fairgrounds, they had a similar robot named Gernsback.

If you’re interested in one particular World’s Fair, you might find the exhibit frustrating, since all the Fairs are mixed and mingled together, so you learn about all the architecture together. But it’s equally fascinating to see the different styles side by side for comparison. The emphasis was architecture and interior design, but there were also sections on technology and transportation. Major industries  used the World’s Fair to show off their latest and greatest or try to predict what would come next. There seemed a heavy emphasis on speculating on the future.

I loved the aviation section. I’d known that the Graf Zeppelin had visited Chicago for the 1933 World’s Fair. The exhibit even had a cancelled mail envelope from that trip. However I hadn’t known that the Goodyear Blimp was on the fairgrounds itself. Or their massive Sky Ride, a tramway that crossed the lagoon. That would have terrified me no end. For all my interest in airships, I don’t do well with heights.

What struck me most was the scale involved and the amount of work and preparation that must have gone into each one. In the heart of the Depression, they provided much needed jobs, but I could also see someone asking “What’s the point?” The Fairs were a strange source of hope, an escape from the everyday. You could wander around them and see all the wonderful gadgets and cars and houses and forget all the problems. You could imagine living a different life in a prefabricated house with fancy new appliances.

We still don’t have flying cars or robot maids (or personal airships), but we can still dream, can’t we?

I do want to give “Sunday in the Park with George”, “A Little Night Music” and “Company” second chances. Maybe I can appreciate them now that I’m older.

Since it’s a period piece, I think “Strong Poison” has held up quite well, although I kept wondering how they’d have changed things for modern audiences. Or would they have? Would they been explicit about the effects of arsenic? I don’t recommend Strong Poison for anyone with stomach concerns. Would they have made the Bohemians more out there? By 1980s standards, the model scene seemed quite surprising. I actually don’t remember that scene at all, making me wonder if it was cut by PBS or if I was too young to “get” it.

I remembered Harriet and Peter quite well of course, but I was pleasantly surprised by the side characters, particularly the women. I expected it in Gaudy Night where it’s set at a womens’ college, but not in Strong Poison. I’m so used to these days where there’s a constant struggle to even see more one or two female roles in a show, much less interact for any length of time. Most of women involved in “Strong Poison” were either older or spinsters; even Harriet was unmarried and castigated for turning down her lover. For all that it was the Lord Peter mysteries, Miss Climpson and Miss Murchison held considerable parts in cracking the case, usually pulling the wool over their eyes of their male betters. Even the interaction between Miss Climpson and Miss Booth was conspiratorial, working together to solve a problem.

In fact, the only thing that bothered me was the attitude towards Harriet. Either Harriet was divine and everyone loved her or she was the cold hard bitch that deserved what she got. I don’t know how much of that is the screenplay or in the original book, but it was disconcerting.

I’ll try to watch the other two dvds in the set this weekend and see how they hold up. I don’t remember enjoying “Have His Carcase” nearly as much when I was younger, compared to the other two, so I’ll be curious to see if that attitude has changed at all.

An admission: I’ve tried to read Sayers’ books. I may indeed try again before this is through. Until then, she can converse with Professor Tolkein in my library. I’m sure they’ll find loads to discuss.

But that leaves me looking around at my life and my belongings and wondering how I got this way.  I didn’t enjoy packing up to move the last time around and I hated packing stuff up when I had the new carpet installed. The prospect of living out of storage for months on end scared the hell out of me, enough to send a kind of wake-up call. For some odd reason, I value my books over my furniture or my clothes.  Decluttering my life will be a necessary endeavor if I intend to move, because I haven’t found the gracious bookshelf lined manor of my dreams yet, not on my salary anyway. The apartments around here are smaller and more expensive, unless I’m prepared to live further out.

Enough navel gazing and worrying over stuff — I promise I will post about other more cheerful subjects soon.

Novels

Ally Carter, Heist Society

Richard Castle, Heat Wave

Dashiell Hammett, The Maltese Falcon

Max Allan Collins, Quarry in the Middle

Suzanne Collins, Hunger Games

Alex Archer, Rogue Angel: Gabriel’s Horn

Manga

Drunken Dream and Other Stories

Kingyo Used Books v1 & v2

Ristorante Paradiso

Fire Investigator Nanase v1 & v2

Hikaru no Go v16

Nightschool v1-4

Graphic Novels/TPBs

Batwoman: Elegy

Black Widow and the Marvel Girls

Black Widow: Sting of the Widow

Jersey Gods v1 and v2

Moving Pictures

I blame my love of football on my father. Every Sunday he listened to the radio/tv broadcasts of the Redskins. He always muted the tv commentators so he could listen to the Redskins team of Sonny Jurgensen, Sam Huff and Frank Herzog. They might be irritating sometimes, but they were our irritants, thank you very much. Now he’s stuck in a weird limbo of Jacksonsville/Miami/Tampa Bay. Not quite the seventh circle of hell or the pits of Tartarus, but close enough.

New Year’s always means bowl games and parades. It was a Big Deal to play on New Year’s Day back then. I used to watch the bowl games and not care who was playing or even who won. I remember watching Herschel Walker when he was playing for Georgia. My fondest memories are of clearing off the bar so we could have dinner and watch the Rose Bowl at the same time. My mother would traditionally fix chili. Somehow I never acquired my parents’ taste for spicy foods as I’ve discovered this year trying fajitas. I’m fine with the steak and some of the vegetables, just not the extras.

Now the bowl games are all too numerous to count. Today Alabama played Michigan State in the Capitol One Bowl. I have to admit the season after an undefeated national championship season felt like a letdown, especially having watching two of the games we lost. Last year we found ways to win. This year we expected to win, which may have been our problem. I really want that Auburn game back.

Meanwhile my Redskins continue to plumb unknown depths of the NFC East basement. We were of the best known NFL franchises. But now we’re a laughing stock of the league with all of our off field mistakes and player issues. I want to enjoy NFL football again, not dread watching every Sunday.

But it’s funny how I wound up with two such teams.  Both teams have huge stadiums. They can command some of the largest home crowds in the game, easily 90,000. I’ve been to both stadiums, although FedEx was for a Notre Dame-Navy game, before Navy returned to winning. I was so far up I could see the parking lot! Not quite the intimacy or rocking ‘n rolling of old RFK, but boy is it a fun place to be when everything’s going right.

I didn’t plan it though.

Alas most of my notes on the first two are lost to the twitter archives in the sky. I do remember liking “Dancer” a lot more than “Etoiles”. (Alas Dancer has been taken off Instant Watching, so I’d have to get the dvd to rewatch it.)

“Ballerina” was fascinating because of my reactions to the various dancers.  In figure skating, I notice the technicians with the jumps and spins. I don’t hate the ultra artistic skaters, but I sometimes feel like they’re over reliant on that aspect of their skating. With ballet, I was really noticing the actresses, the ones that became their roles. They had an immediate presence on the screen. I wanted to watch them. From the minute Diana Vishneva covered her face in “Cinderella” rehearsals, I was captivated. Evgenia Obraztsova reminded me of a slimmer dancing Christina Hendricks a little with her red hair and bubbly personality. With her age and experience, Ulyana Lopatkina was more interesting to me than Alina Somova, the young star the documentary focused so heavily on. I don’t know how much the competitive aspect of skating plays into this, especially for Olympic eligible skating.

The one side effect of watching all these ballet documentaries is I wind up wanting to watch full length ballets. Netflix has them available, but not instantly. One that intrigued me was George Balanchine’s “Jewels”.

It’s actually three ballets combined under one larger theme. It’s an abstract ballet, so there’s no strict storyline per se, but you can still see characters and interactions.  I’d recommend listening to the behind the scenes documentary – it’s a little long, but useful to understanding the different pieces. I do wish they’d included more, like rehearsals or interviews with original dancers.

Each ballet, each gem, represents a different school of ballet – French, American, and Russian. Each ballet has a different style of dress, of choreography, and music. Christian Lacroix designed the costumes and they do give the sense of opulent gorgeous style.

So Emerald is the French school of ballet, very romantic and lyrical. The costumes have flowy green skirts with lots and movements and the music is Gabriel Fauré. The focus is on two couples, one young and one maybe a little further along in their lives together. Also an odd threesome thrown in to confuse me further; fandom could have a field day figuring out shipping from ballet choreography, I’m just saying. Balanchine loved tall ballerinas with long limbs and you really notice the long arms in this choreography. There’s actually a “tall girl” soloist role in Rubies; again I’m used to petite little balletic pairs skaters.

Rubies represent the American school of ballet, very modern and sexy. The music is Igor Stravinsky and the choreography is very quirky with lots of hip action. Listening to the documentary that accompanies the dvd, I can see where the influences come from. If you know “Slaughterhouse on Tenth Avenue” or more musical comedy ballets, this may work for you. In the documentary, they kept repeating how sexy and erotic this piece was, but I didn’t get that from this performance. I don’t know if it’s the dancers or if I’m just a traditionalist.

And then finally there’s Diamonds, the Russian school of ballet in all her traditional and glittering glory. The music is Piotr Tchaikovsky and the costumes are these stiff tulle ballet dresses. It’s equally as romantic as the Emerald piece in places. I admit I love the bit where the male lead drops to one knee and kisses his partner’s hand. But Diamonds is really an ensemble piece. Think of the big scenes in Swan Lake and Sleeping Beauty with the whole cast dancing onstage. And if you’ve watched enough ballet, you can see hints of Petipa’s choreography in there.

I hope I don’t bore you too much. Comments are welcome, especially if they give me more to watch/read/etc.