NaNo Not

Well, I did not quite make it.

I suppose the whole family catching the flu is at least a fair excuse.

Anyway, I should reach 50 in a day or so??

Better Nate than lever.

16,765 and counting….

I’m not giving up. Even though this novel has taken several disturbing turns and is icking me out! This weekend I hope to get caught up and at the same time dig my MC out of her disgusting pit and maybe move on to more pleasant things or at least less icky things. And, oh, shouldn’t I be doing that right now instead of posting this? ((Chagrined grin))

13,488 and Counting….

This is better, no?

Still not good enough, though.

10,153 and counting….

How many words should I have?

Divide 50,000 by 30 and you get a little bit less than 1667, which should tell you that by the end of today, I OUGHT to be at 16,667 words.

Yeah, that ain’t gonna happen.

At least I have introduced the main characters, and they even have names now. A friend pointed out that my excerpt is DISTURBING,  and I was like, no it isn’t, it’s out of context. He said IT IS STILL DISTURBING.

Apparently I was in denial and my light, fluff of a novel is DISTURBINGLY WEIRD. Great. Or is it not great? I do not know. But as long as I write it. Whatever.

Winter Reading List?

Looking for a little depression to brighten your day?

AbeBooks came out with a “Top 10 Most Depressing Books” list. I’ve read almost half of them, eep (surprisingly, that one about the Irish slave girl is not included).

Here’s their list. The ones I have read are in blue:

The Road, Cormac McCarthy

The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath (I really should read this one)

Jude the Obscure, Thomas Hardy

1984, George Orwell (Augh.)

Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand (I did not find this depressing at all. I actually thought it was kind of uplifting. I did skip over about 60 pages of preaching, though.)

The Grapes of  Wrath, John Steinbeck (God, have I read this book? I truly can’t remember.)

Night, Elie Wiesel

On the Beach, Nevil Shute  (Oh, yeah. This one qualifies.)

The Bluest Eye, Toni Morrison

Lord of the Flies, William Golding (What’s so depressing? Really, what else would a group of boys do, alone on an island, but cut off a pig’s head and torture and kill each other?)

WHAT BOOKS HAVE YOU FOUND HORRIBLY DEPRESSING? I’m not talking made you cry, I’m talking DEPRESSING, like made you feel like you were carrying a fanny pack full of wet cement for the next week.

You can read more about the AbeBooks list here.

My Last Box of Tea

The Tea

I am down to the last box of my favorite tea, and this situation is causing me low level anxiety.

Another Victory for the Republicans

President Barack Obama has been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

This ruins his career, of course. His entire presidency is in jeopardy, naturally.  It only makes him look bad, don’t you know.  He can never live up to it. He will never live it down.

Republicans scoff at the award and proclaim that what Europeans think is of no consequence anyway while at the same time whining that one of their own never seems to receive it.  This is not even a true statement  (Teddy Roosevelt), but you would think it would make them think — maybe there are reasons they are passed over.

Lord forbid that the American people might take pride in their president receiving such an award.

Summer Reading List

Summer is more than officially over. I was trying to remember all the books I read this summer, before I forget. Remember before I forget, that makes sense. Ummm

Abundance, by Sena Jeter Naslund.  I read this on vacation. The language is superb. The ending, when Marie Antoinette approaches the guillotine is gut-wrenching. The French Revolution has been so romanticized that most people fail to realize how truly horrific it was.

The Film Club, by David Gilmour. A memoir. The man allows his teenage son to drop out of school if he promises to watch three films a week with his father. Every parent of teens ought to read this, not for advice, but to realize they are not alone.

Cupid and Diana, by Cristina Bartolomeo. The term “chick lit” was invented for novels like this. It was okay. I enjoyed the language while finding the characters and storyline involving but annoying.

Celibates & Other Lovers by Walter Keady. Picked this up over a year ago in a Chicago used book store. It is so very Irish! Each chapter could stand alone as a short story, and it does not end up where you think it will — that’s the Irish for you.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J. K. Rowling. Sometimes you just want to read something you’ve already read, and it was surprising how much of the book I had forgotten. I didn’t even remember what the “Deathly Hallows” were!

The Blue Zone by Andrew Gross. Terrible. When I got to the Mexican killers-for-hire, I gave up.

Testimony of an Irish Slave Girl by Kate McCafferty. This might just be the most depressing book I have ever read.

Year of Wonders by Geraldine Brooks. Set in the 17th century and during a breakout of the plague, it sounded interesting. I gave up on this one about halfway through. The characters are cardboard, annoying, erraaagh. The most interesting character is dead when the story opens. The rest of them, you kind of want to poke their eyes out. 

The Book Thief, by Markus Zusak. Who couldn’t love a book with this title? Set in Nazi Germany, you suffer along with Death, who is the narrator. The book meanders backward and forward in time, and the constant unusual metaphors got on my nerves at times, but there is no denying that this is an amazing book by an amazing writer.

The Giver, by Lois Lowry. My 12-year-old kept bugging me to read this novel,  a Newberry winner, and I finally did. I think it may have become one of my favorite books of all time. It’s a children’s book, of course, or young adult at most, but I found myself wondering, How could any child be sophisticated enough to understand this? I don’t claim to, myself. Its themes run bone deep. What a book to illustrate the beauty of simplicity in language.

Persuasion, by Jane Austen. Awww! I have a grin on my face just at the memory of reading it! My favorite of hers so far. I still have Sense & Sensibility, Mansfield Park, and Lady Susan to go.

That’s all I can recall, for now. Oh, I did start reading Much Ado About Nothing but got distracted by other things. Currently I’m reading The Lovely Bones and The God of Small Things (so far it’s weird.)

EDIT: I remembered a couple I forgot:

My Lobotomy, a memoir by Howard Dully. If you think lobotomy patients become little more than animated carrots, you are wrong. This book is chilling. You think government-run health care would be bad? Check out what this doctor got away with!

All I Want for Christmas Is a Vampire by Kerrelyn Sparks. As silly as it sounds. My mother gave it to me, so I was obligated.

EDIT again

Chasing Redbird by Sharon Creech. Another children’s book.

Something NaNo This Way Comes

Only 30 days till National Novel Writing Month. Ack.

Ideas… um… do you have any?  Er, suggestions? Advice?

I thought of writing something about witches, but that is so done. How to put a fresh spin on it? Not that I necessarily have to have a fresh spin.  Someone loaned me some books about Wicca which have so far given me absolutely nada inspiration.

For non-witchy writing, I considered writing a novel based on my grandmother’s life. She was an interesting person and would make a great character! But, yuck, this would involve reeeesearrrrrch, which I am definitely not in the mood to do.

I am leaning toward taking my Holly character and putting her through as many bad relationships as I can write in thirty days. This could be fun, possibly therapeutic, and definitely easy. Writing 50k words on this topic would not be a problem.

And, maybe, somewhere in these bad relationships, she would find love.

Orrr should I write something totally new? Last year I did, so I don’t feel that I necessarily have to this year. I owe myself something easy. Um, why? Dunno. Because life is rough and uncertain? The economy continues to worsen? My sister is not coming to visit for Halloween and First NaNo Day after all? These are my reasons.

But I will take suggestions, ideas, votes? Or feel free to tell me what a dork I am.

“I love my love”

It is still National Poetry Month, and I seem to have struck a theme, somehow or other. I present here another creepy poem.

Young Woman Combing Her Hair, Salomon de Bray

I Love My Love

~by Helen Adam 

 

There was a man who married a maid. She laughed as he led her home.

The living fleece of her long bright hair she combed with a golden comb.

He led her home through his barley fields where the saffron poppies grew.

She combed, and whispered, “I love my love.” Her voice like a plaintive coo.

Ha! Ha!

Her voice like a plaintive coo.

 

He lived alone with his chosen bride, at first their life was sweet.

Sweet was the touch of her playful hair binding his hands and feet.

When first she murmured adoring words her words did not appall.

“I love my love with a capital A. To my love I give my All.

Ah, Ha!

To my love I give my All.”

 

She circled him with the secret web she wove as her strong hair grew.

Like a golden spider she wove and sang, “My love is tender and true.”

She combed her hair with a golden comb and shackled him to a tree.

She shackled him close to the Tree of Life. “My love I’ll never set free.

No, No.

My love I’ll never set free.”

 

Whenever he broke her golden bonds he was held with bonds of gold.

“Oh! cannot a man escape from love, from Love’s hot smothering hold?”

He roared with fury. He broke her bonds. He ran in the light of the sun.

Her soft hair rippled and trapped his feet, as fast as his feet could run,

Ha! Ha!

As fast as his feet could run.

 

He dug a grave, and he dug it wide. He strangled her in her sleep.

He strangled his love with a strand of hair, and then he buried her deep.

He buried her deep when the sun was hid by a purple thunder cloud.

Her helpless hair sprawled over the corpse in a pale resplendent shroud.

Ha! Ha!

A pale resplendent shroud.

 

Morning and night of thunder rain, and then it came to pass

That the hair sprang up through the earth of the grave, and it grew like golden grass.

It grew and glittered along her grave alive in the light of the sun.

Every hair had a plaintive voice, the voice of his lovely one.

 

“I love my love with a capital T. My love is Tender and True.

I’ll love my love in the barley fields when the thunder cloud is blue.

My body crumbles beneath the ground but the hairs of my head will grow.

I’ll love my love with the hairs of my head. I’ll never, never let go.

Ha! Ha!

I’ll never, never let go.”

 

The hair sang soft, and the hair sang high, singing of loves that drown,

Till he took his scythe by the light of the moon, and he scythed that singing hair down.

Every hair laughed a lilting laugh, and shrilled as his scythe swept through.

“I love my love with a capital T. My love is Tender and True.

Ha! Ha!

Tender, Tender, and True.”

 

All through the night he wept and prayed, but before the first bird woke

Around the house in the barley fields blew the hair like billowing smoke.

Her hair blew over the barley fields where the slothful poppies gape.

All day long all its voices cooed, “My love can never escape,

No, No!

My love can never escape.”

 

“Be still, be still, you devilish hair. Glide back to the grave and sleep.

Glide back to the grave and wrap her bones down where I buried her deep.

I am the man who escaped from love, though love was my fate and doom.

Can no man ever escape from love who breaks from a woman’s womb?”

 

Over his house, when the sun stood high, her hair was a dazzling storm,

Rolling, lashing o’er walls and roof, heavy, and soft, and warm.

It thumped on the roof, it hissed and glowed over every window pane.

The smell of the hair was in the house. It smelled like a lion’s mane,

Ha! Ha!

It smelled like a lion’s mane.

 

Three times round the bed of their love, and his heart lurched with despair.

In through the keyhole, elvish bright, came creeping a single hair.

Softly, softly, it stroked his lips, on his eyelids traced a sign.

“I love my love with a capital Z. I mark him Zero and mine.

Ha! Ha!

I mark him Zero and mine.”

 

The hair rushed in. He struggled and tore, but wherever he tore a tress,

“I love my love with a capital Z,” sang the hair of the sorceress.

It swarmed upon him, it swaddled him fast, it muffled his every groan.

Like a golden monster it seized his flesh, and then it sought the bone,

Ha! Ha!

And then it sought the bone.

 

It smothered his flesh and sought the bones. Until his bones were bare

There was no sound but the joyful hiss of the sweet insatiable hair.

“I love my love,” it laughed as it ran back to the grave, its home.

Then the living fleece of her long bright hair, she combed with a golden comb.

 

 

1958