subscribeTwo days
Tuesday December 29, 2009
I won’t make my deadline. (The deadline finish the WiP’s rewrite by January 1st.) I’ve known this for a while now and I’ve made my peace with it. The husband, too. He chuckled and said, “It was fictitious. You know you’re on a deadline, but I’m trying to remind you that the deadline isn’t ‘in the future’, it’s now.” It’s true. The fire under the butt has been lit for some time and it’s also true that I’ve made some serious progress so far this month. (That, and I devoured First Lord’s Fury by Jim Butcher over a 2 day span last week. Oh, the Codex Alera, how I love it so.) Considering November was swallowed by the Black Hole of NaNoWriMo, I am pleased that I was able to hop back into this (very different!) story and get it in snapping shape. The NaNo draft helped me amp up this one, I think, by comparison. They’re such different stories and getting back into my narrator’s head this month after being third person all over the place last month helped reassert the importance of voice, diction, and character in first person.
This month the husband (why am I calling him that now? Has he outgrown ‘the boy’?) read the entire draft in its new and happily rewritten form and he made a whole bunch of suggestions. (The first being, once he got up as far as it’s written, the comment, “Why isn’t it DONE yet?! GAHHHH!” Oh, a familiar sentiment from the Alpha Readers. [I shall call you that, ladies!]) He’s easily caught up on logical errors and always wants everything to be “Epic!” and so if a supposed action sequence dribbles on the page, he’ll call me on it. “I expected EPIC, Erin, EPIC!” Of course, I am not writing Epic Fantasy (let’s remember that is its own genre) and he knows that, but his sentiment is rather universal. Dribbling scenes are no fun for anyone.
In non-writing news, the holidays have been fun. We did Hanukkah (all eight nights of candles and presents!) and Christmas, and of course the husband’s birthday fell between the two so it was more or less non stop presents and such. We got him a PlayStation 3 (us, really) for the birthday, as well as a fun assortment of toys related to it (oh, BluRay!). I also made him a scrapbook, my first foray into the world of scrapbooking. (I cheated; I used a kit and a bunch of pre-made stickers. Is that cheating? I know people get intense about scrapbooks.) I thematically designed it around our “love” (cough, or relationship), starting with hilarious photos from 2004, through our backpacking venture in 2007, leading to the wedding and honeymoon. It was one of those sugary-cutesy things I’m only really inclined to do every few years, though the look on Bryan’s face was absolutely worth it. (If cutesy-artsy things didn’t take me forever to do — perfectionism! — I’d do them more often. The girlie 12 year old part of me enjoys it immensely. [My inner 12 year old is always the loudest of the inner children. My inner 8 year old wanted a Lego kit for Christmas -- either a Star Wars one or a castle/knights one -- and I think she's still upset about not getting one again.])
Hm. I keep making parenthetical observations in parentheses. Are there parenthetical commentary abusers anonymous meetings? Or messageboards?
Oh. Day after Christmas, we found FernGully at Target for $5. After seeing Avatar the weekend before Christmas (which was AMAZING!!!!), I realized I really needed to own a DVD version of that movie. (My 8 year old inner self was reasonably appeased by this purchase.) I sat and watched it that night with rapt attention. I’m not ashamed at all. I was Crysta for Halloween one year and had a three-year (minimum!) obsession with fairies. These are the things that (all added together) led me to writing fantasy in the first place. Kind of fascinates me, in a way, backtracking through my years of obsessions and how they’ve all influenced me. (Lock me up before I start self-psychoanalyzing all of that.)
The Christmas tree is still alive. (Fraser fir is the way to go, folks!) We’re going to take its lights and ornaments off after New Year’s and cart it to our local park where it will be recycled into mulch for the spring. (Yay recycling!) The day after Christmas I started pulling out all the decor boxes, to pack it all up, and the husband (this is his first Christmas tree) refused to let me. “Not yet!” Oh, Christmas is magic, isn’t it?
Christmas Eve
Wednesday December 24, 2008
This year marks an interesting change in my usual Christmas Eve experience. It’s the first time I’ve ever spent it without my parents. Not only that but Bryan and I aren’t really doing anything very special. We’re planning to make some baked brie (using some pizza crust that comes in a can?!) and some interesting spinach-y pinwheel things, inspired by some spinach puffs made by a pizza place we enjoy. Otherwise we’ll be watching TV and hanging out in front of our computers for a while.
I mean, should we be doing something more for Christmas Eve? I have fond memories of going to Christmas Eve church services but in recent years the service at my old church near my parents’ has been uncomfortable, mostly due to the new pastor who is a little weird. I don’t know any churches, really, in our neighborhood, nor would Bryan probably be amenable or excited by the prospect of going to church tonight. He was raised Jewish and as such doesn’t really feel comfortable being in a church, even for a service as festive and unusual as the Christmas Eve service.
It all leaves me with this strange displaced feeling. Christmas time really is here but it doesn’t really feel like it yet. Maybe I can blame it on the fact that retailers have said it’s been Christmas since Halloween, so it’s gone on so long it feels strange. To add to that, we don’t have any overtly Christmas-y things in the apartment. We really don’t have a tree (or room for a tree, though we have a tiny potted evergreen bush/tree); I put up some LED lights and I have a bunch of holly-scented candles and some fun red garland and a few ornaments decorating the apartment, but it feels a little anti-climactic. I think what I need is for something really fun and Christmas-y to be on TV tonight, or maybe I need to blast some of Josh Groban or Kristin Chenoweth’s Christmas albums (or Hanson’s…don’t judge me!) and get in the mood for tomorrow. Tomorrow will feel more “normal” Christmas — going to my parents for Christmas dinner and presents and dessert. I’m really looking forward to that.
Happy Holidays, Merry Christmas, and Happy 4th night of Hanukkah, everyone!
(Which reminds me — note to self: buy a menorah so you have it for next year…)
Winter wonderland?
Friday December 19, 2008
It’s been snowing for most of the day here in New York City and it’s mushy outside. It hardly even looked like it was snowing but for the accumulation. The Christmas tree sellers who are camped on the sidewalk outside our apartment building put a little tree on a post near their hut:
It’s probably the closest I’m going to get to seeing a snow-covered Christmas tree this Christmas, but hey, it’s New York — I could take the trek and brave the tourists down at Rockefeller Center, if I really wanted.
When New York City gets “blanketed” it’s never very pretty unless it’s the big white flake kind of snow that accumulates in quantities of at least 6 inches or a foot. Otherwise it’s grayish or mushy or icy.
When I was in high school, interning at a publishing company in Manhattan, there was a snowstorm in February that dumped almost two feet of snow on the city. Suburbs getting that much is one thing but it rarely happens in the city itself. I was up to my knees in it. What was miraculous about that storm was how silent it made the city. Cars couldn’t move; people hardly dared venture outside. None who braved the drifts (myself included) were really dressed as they should have been for stomping around in crazy snow. People in New York are certainly over-prepared for cold weather (the wind can cut between buildings with a pierching chill cold enough to rival my coldest ski mountain experiences) but the sheer quantity of that much snow left most people unprepared. Usually, though, if it’s snowing the sidewalks and streets are [pretty] clean almost immediately so usually you don’t even need snow boots, as you would in the suburbs where you probably have to trudge through your driveway to shovel it.
Anyway I bet the snow won’t stick around for long. It never really does. Hopefully I’ll get to enjoy it a little tomorrow.
I’ve been writing.
Wednesday December 19, 2007
I’d be better at posting except I’ve been writing. Not crazy amounts of volume, but it’s steady, and I’ve been doing other things to keep my head in the game. It’s going well. Very well. I’m actually trying not to be anxious about how next week will ruin this streak of productivity.
I’ll go write more now.
Also, Christmas presents are about 80% purchased. Hooray!
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