Had to Share

So far I have been a disappointing NaNoWriMo failure, but I found this and it made me laugh. It's fake twitter tips for reaching your word count in NaNoWriMo from famous authors. (Some long dead.) I especially like Tolkein and Maya Angelou. Enjoy my jedis!

http://inkwellbookstore.blogspot.com/2009/11/famous-authors-nanowrimo-tips-as-found.html

Genius Loci

Spirit of Place


the unique, distinctive aspects or atmosphere of a place, such as those celebrated in art, stories, folk tales and festivals; originally: literally the protective spirit of a place, a creature usually depicted as a snake.

The more I travel the more I have come to sense the distinct genius loci (Latin, for those of you who aren't Cylon) of a place.  Experiencing the unique character of different places has inspired my writing directly and indirectly.

Some directly influenced pieces were poems (written in Australia and Cedar Rapids responding directly to being in each place) and The Zombie Apocalypse Plan.  As I begrudgingly drove all the way downtown for 2 months this summer, I started thinking what it would be like if there was a zombie outbreak right here.  Where would you go?  Where would you run to?  Where would you make a stand?  I can't take all the credit for this idea, since Cerasi provided me with the title and initial concept, but having the story set in downtown St. Louis is purely because I became quite familiar with the area.  The story is constructed around its demonstrative setting.

(And I am working on it; I promise more will be posted soon!)

I think understanding the genius loci has also helped me in writing stories that do not revolve solely around setting.  It has informed and improved my creation of completely fictional places (like in Chronicles of an Escape Artist)  I know that I still need to work on 'place' especially in this story.  However, since I know how I want that world to feel, what kind of spirit this place has, I think I've made some progress.  Now I just need to ensure it comes across in my writing.


Many things can inspire me, but I've found some of my most consistent inspiration comes from places.  Especially ones with a strong genius loci.  And the more I visit, the more I want to travel to experience more of them.  Maybe travel writing could be in my future?

My Grandfather

My grandpa (dad's dad) died three days ago. We're going to his funeral tomorrow. I'm reading something from Isaiah. They had three readings to give away and I thought I'd do one. The last time I saw him was when my brother started college. He's was cremated this morning so there's not even going to be a viewing. I wish that I'd gotten to see him again, but I really did try to talk to him more at the end of his life. Sometimes there's only so much you can do.

I was going to post about this earlier, but this last week has been crazy. The day I found out my grandpa died I had to work at both jobs which including closing at the cafe. Also it was the holiday parade so we were there until midnight. It really sucked.

I feel sad, but when my sister and brother came home for Thanksgiving I felt a lot better. I wish I could think of something better or more poignant to say, but I've got nothing. He was my last grandparent. My dad doesn't have any parents anymore. I feel so sad for him.

I haven't really cried for my grandpa yet. There just hasn't been a good time. Does that sound weird to say? I'm sure I'll cry for him tomorrow. He was a good man, even though I feel like I only got to see a small part of him at the end of his life. Even so, I wish he was still here.

Again Not Creative

But the next thing I post will be. I promise.

I've been kind of a stress monster lately due to a number of combing factors and it sort of all culminated in me hitting a car (non-moving and parked) while I was trying to park beside it in my humongous van. It was terrible because I didn't realized what I'd done and I somehow parked it in such a way that our two cars were crushed together and I COULD NOT get my car back out. To make things worse my office building is really these two buildings stuck together and there's no main intercom system or anything so I had to walk from office to office to find out who's car I hit and then explain that I couldn't actually get my car away from there car.

All things considered, it went really well after that. I went up to the magazine office, crying. Not just because I hit the car but because I was all ready just about to burst into tears because I've been working WAY too much. This weekend my schedule at the cafe suddenly gave me all these hours that I've never had before. So after working 1-5pm at my internship (which has been stressful anyway) I worked Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday and Tuesday. The shifts on Friday and Sunday were only like three hours (to cover the lunch rush), but I was closing the rest of the nights. And I was at the cafe until midnight on Monday because we were putting up Christmas decorations. (Which was pretty fun, but at midnight I was just about ready to murder absolutely everyone because I was so tired.)

To make things worse, the magazine has been stressful lately because we've been doing this thing where we compile all this statistical information about the area which suddenly means that I have to go rooting through the 2010 Census website which turns out to be surprisingly non-user friendly and it's been terrible. In a related note, I'm also ready to marry the local research person at the city chamber of commerce because he's the nicest most positive person on the planet and I've had extended phone conversations with him about how to find the demographic breakdown of the area. (Spoiler, it's mostly white.)

ANYWAY, back to me hitting the car. I went up to my office, crying, and one of the women from the graphic's department volunteered to go with me and help me. We walked around the building and fortunately the first office we came to had the owner of the car. The owner of the car was this extremely nice lady who wasn't mad at all and this other guy came out to help us extract the car. We ended up calling the police, just to report the accident, but that turned out to be surprisingly non horrible. The police guy was really nice and just took down our information and reported that we exchange insurance. Then the other guy got the car out and everything was fine.

The point of this long story that I really want to make is that I work with some absolutely wonderful people in my office. My assistant editor who I work with the most wasn't there, but everyone else was really nice and asked me all about what happened. Then they shared stories about the accidents they got in. The woman that helped me get in contact with the person I'd hit said that she was acting as "a replacement mother" and she was super sweet. Even the receptionist who left before I came back left me a post-it note that said, "Hang in there." The editor-in-chief who I don't usually work with even came out of the office to talk to me.

I feel so lucky to be working with this group of people. They're funny, they're hilarious irreverent and they talk about food and restaurants all the time. Seriously, they're all foodies. They also bring food into the office all the time, which I love.

The storm is passed now. I'm going to be finishing the thing for the magazine that's been causing me no end of heartache and then this weekend I'm going to my friend E's birthday party. But man oh man, it's been a long week.

I just wanted to share that with all of you because, you know, I love you and stuff. I hope you guys are doing well and not encountering horrible, stressful circumstances (which I'm sure the three of you are, all of you being in distinctly stressful situations). But if you are, hang in there.

<3

Housekeeping

.. Or rather, blogkeeping.

It is nearly halfway through this month and I don't believe any of us have written something for the Theme of the Month.  Unless I'm mistaken, we were going to write about things that inspired us.  

Also, if any of you did write something, or start something or had something in mind, for last month's theme (introducing characters) you could post that, since I think Cylon was the only one of us that did October.  (I was planning on doing more Zombie Apocalypse Plan because I need to introduce some more characters, but with Snapdragon gearing up I didn't seem to find the time.  I am working on it now, so hopefully I'll get more posted soon.) 

And (if we want to continue trying to do themes/ prompts...) we will need one for December.  Ideas?

Anansi Boys: I Want to Meet and Befriend Neil Gaiman

When I read Allya's book review, I remembered that I'd just finished a book and I was planning on reviewing it here. So here we go!

(Btw, the picture you see here is the less popular cover of the book and the one that was on my book. I didn't post the other cover because I think it's kind of ugly.)

I've been reading more lately because I take a book with me to work at the Cafe and keep it in my mail box. That way I can read during breaks. It leads to pretty short reading periods, but it's also a nice way to reading without distraction.

Anyway, I started Anansi Boys like several months ago and I was immediately taken. It's about this man named Fat Charlie (Charlie Nancy but his dad gave him the nickname and it stuck) who's living in London and about to get married. He gets word that his father has just died so he has to fly back to the states to bury him. That's when he finds out that his father was really Anansi, this spider trickster god, and that he has a brother named Spider (who is also a god). He ends up contacting Spider and chaos ensues as Spider is a lot cooler than him, magical and steals his fiance.

Neil Gaiman is an amazing storyteller. He has a really strong voice and a delicious sense of humor. My favorite part in the book is when Spider is impersonating Fat Charlie at work (because Fat Charlie is hungover and Spider can pretend to be him because, hey, people believe anything that gods say). Fat Charlie's boss has decided to fire him and he starts saying all these cliches like, "In every life a little rain must fall" but Spider keeps coming back with things like "Every cloud has a silver lining" so the two men just keep saying cliches to each other. Then Spider reveals that he knows Fat Charlie's boss is embezzling money and gets a bunch of money out of him. It's hilarious.

Another thing I appreciate about Neil Gaiman's writing is he takes a couple of pauses form the story to tell folk tales about Anansi (the trickster god). Like the time Anansi had to bury his dead grandma and managed to trick Tiger into killing his own grandmother. They feel very authentic and they don't really add anything to the plot exactly, but they're such good stories and they really help the feel of this old world magic that has perpetrated the modern day.

The reason I want to be Neil Gaiman's friend is because A. I love his sense of humor B. He' the kind of fantasy writer I really aspire to be like and C. I read the part at the end where he acknowledges all the people that help him with his book and he mentions his daughter at one point who he says was there, "When I needed a clear headed daughter to help me." It's very sweet.

I highly recommend Anansi Boys. The stroytelling is great, you really feel for the characters and his descriptive skills are awesome. Also, he's hilarious, which I sincerely appreciate in writers who weave stories that are also gruesome, violent and dramatic.

But be warned if you have phobia of spiders, there are a fair amount of them in the book.

Angelology

I finished the book Angelology by Danielle Trussoni.  It was an okay book, but I found myself getting more annoyed with it as I continued reading.  It was an interesting concept:  half angelic beings are the root of all strife and are among the ruling class of people.  Execution, though, was sometimes troubling for me.



On a basic language level, I found her writing too flowery for my taste.  But wanting to delete nearly one unnecessary word per page makes for a poor reading experience.  She did things (like overusing adverbs and saying things in a long, archaic kind of way) that any one of my writing workshops would have immediately jumped all over.  I felt like her language could use some heavy editing, though I realize this is more of my personal preference for reading and writing.

The plot was intriguing but a little clunky.  For about 100 pages (once we are already 150 in) she changes tack to follow a different character around in the past.  I found this sustained excerpt jarring, initially confusing, and at the end kind of unnecessary.  (We only needed to know the details of what happened in the last 35 pages of the section.)  To add to my dislike of this section, we were following around this annoying and semi-stupid girl.  She was naive to the point of stupidity, and since it was always brought up what a good student she was, I was annoyed by her simplicity.

Then we get back to the main character, a young pretty satisfied-with-her-life nun named Evangeline.  Umm, really?  Okay, we take that as it is.  Fine.  Then later we find out she saw an angel when she was a little girl and never demanded her dad to know what the hell he was doing with a captive angel?  REALLY?  She is also kind of simple-minded as a character.  Which I've found, as I read books with stupid characters, annoys me.

Oh, and the boy that shows up at the convent, and gets tangled into the messy web of the angelologists lives and the angels' ruthless plans, falls for the pretty nun.  And after a few tense situations, Evangeline starts to realize she IS capable of sexual feelings.  And they are directed towards the only man her age she's seen in... how many years?  at least 5.  Uh-huh.

Well, needless to say really, when two of the pivotal characters kick it at the end (in fact both are murdered)  I can't say I cared.  I didn't feel an emotional conniption to any of them (well, the boy was decent, he didn't annoy me and he had appropriate and intelligent insight sometimes).  But the rest?  Didn't really care for, wasn't rooting for them, and when the angelic lyre (which the book is spent looking for) is found and assembled I was kind of left wanting more.

I could tell you in detail about the end (which I had huge problems with) but I will hold off in case any of you want to take the dive yourselves.  I will say this:  there is a pretty big plot twist, and I was not engaged enough at the end to really care about how it affected Evangeline.

Oh, and this is only the first in a series.  I had no idea about this when I picked up the book.  Well, I doubt I'll continue reading the series.  This just goes to show you, all the wonderful and intricate fantasy in the world can't save lackluster characters.

Busy is Better

There is a world of difference between my previous shiternship and my current internship.

And the current one is so much better.  Which is a huge relief.  I would have been super pissed if it was anything similar to that last experience.  But it isn't.  I'm busy doing relevant things to their business.  So far I've gone through their entire website to make sure all the links work, and I've revised the copy and made design suggestions.  They are going to revamp it soon according to some of my suggestions.

I've also come up with the Google Analytics and Wordtracker numbers on a (super long - like 1000) list of keywords. This info will be used to determine which keywords should be added to the clients website based on the competition for the word, how much it's searched for, and how relevant it is.  Which I think is kind of cool.  I want to do something similar for my website, so that it's search engine optimized as well, but they haven't gone over with me the formula used to rank the keywords.  (I asked but the girl I was working with didn't really know since another lady does all that math stuff.)

And I also worked on link building.  So for the particular client, I searched this list of websites they gave me and I researched the contact info for each site and where we would ask them to place a link to the client's website.  This apparently also helps optimize the client's website for search engines as well.

Then, (I know this is getting boring - only one more!) I searched a list of directories to see if they listed some of our clients.  If they didn't I submitted them to be included in the directory.

Next week I'll be coming up with their plan for a direct mail campaign.  (I took a class in this, so I'm excited to work those skills and actually complete a direct mail campaign.  I've designed some, but they were never really used.)

So I've been super busy.  But it's good.  I like being this kind of busy, where I'm learning things and accomplishing a lot of work.

I have two craft shows this weekend, so hopefully those go well.  And then next weekend I'm going to Memphis to sell my jewelry at my aunt's home show.  She makes candles, and has some other people that make other stuff, and then invites a ton of people over to shop.  There's wine and hopefully people buying my jewelry, so I'm excited.

I'll keep y'all posted on how everything goes!

Everything is Good

This is a boring personal post. I actually do have part of a scene I would like to post (if I can brave the heartbreaking changes that blogger would try to make to a play . . . ugh, that will be nasty), and maybe I shall. But not now.

Just popping in to say that everything is pretty good. I'm feeling better about my cafe job, finally. Now that I'm trained on drinks everything's going a lot smoother. I hope that I can learn how to make fancy designs on lattes. I worked yesterday on Halloween and tried to make a ghost. It was more sort of a blog . . . but you've got to start somewhere, right?

(Sorry if I sound British. I just watched a British youtuber and every time I watch anyone British it's like the speech pattern gets lodged in my brain.)

My internship is good. Yesterday, I had a talk with my boss about how long it's going to last (because it was making me a little nervous, not knowing.) She basically said that I could stay as long as I wanted and that she loved having me there because I was so enthusiastic and had so many ideas (she's sweet). So I said that I'd like to stay through March for sure and then we can talk about it again then.

The intern that I have a secret competition with brought in chocolate chip bannana bread and left some for me yesterday, so now I feel bad for having a secret competition with her. I'll revise that. We're still having a secret competition (I'm winning, I post to the blog the most by far), but it's a friendly competition. I also found out she's leaving in December, which I know because the editors are taking all three interns out to lunch on December 1. I'm excited! Also, I'll get to finally meet THE OTHER intern that I've never seen.

I had a little bit of the same sadness as Allya because I wasn't doing anything crazy for Halloween. To make up for it, I just thought about last year when we all went to the Rocky Horror Picture show at Cylon dressed up as a fanciful man. Then I thought, "See, I'm an interesting dynamic twenty-something with great friends?" and then I felt better.

But I just started doing NaNoWriMo (national novel writing month), which I'm excited about because there is a group in my hometown. We had a meeting on Sunday night and there were a lot of people. Unfortunately, not many guys in my age range. I staked out all possible guys the second I walked in (I have a one track mind, so sue me) and was horrified to discover that one of them was seventeen. (AHHHH!!!) I mean, he's a senior in high school, but still. I realize that this is the first time in my life that jail bait is a real possibility. Not that I liked him or anything, I just automatically like to take stock of my options and I had hopes that maybe he was a freshman from the local college. No dice.

I spent a lot of time talking to him actually. He writes Naruto/One piece fan fiction which makes me shake my head and smile. Oh high school. Such an innocent time. Actually, MOST of the Nanowrimoers write fan fiction. The woman that leads it wrote a book about what would have happened in Harry Potter if Voldemort had one which I think is amazing. Also, she has a really neat accent. (Spanish? I'm as bad at telling accents as I am at telling ages.) They're an adorable group of people. I'ma try and make some friends.

Even better, I'm blogging about Nanowrimo this month for the magazine, which is exciting. Maybe I'll post a link for you guys to read in the draft section? If you're interested. You don't have to pretend, I'll understand.

I spent all morning putting the first blog post up for it and damn, Drupal has even more death formatting than Blogger. And then a picture I wanted to embed just wouldn't for some reason. No matter that I've embedded other pictures the exact same way in the same format. No, no. This just didn't want to. BLOGS ARE THE TOOLS OF SATAN!

Sorry, had to get that out of my system.

Anyway, I hope you're all doing well. I'm feeling good. I'm going to attempt to make some friends and try to lose some weight. It's weird to know that I'm going to be in this town for quite a while, but I'm okay with it. Hope you're all doing fabulously.