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.

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.

The Tea

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

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 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 wrenches one’s guts. 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.

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.

John Keats (1795–1821).
 
La Belle Dame Sans Merci

I.

O what can ail thee, knight-at-arms,     
  Alone and palely loitering?
The sedge has wither’d from the lake, 
  And no birds sing. 

II.

O what can ail thee, knight-at-arms!     
  So haggard and so woe-begone? 
The squirrel’s granary is full, 
  And the harvest’s done. 

III.
I see a lily on thy brow 
  With anguish moist and fever dew,      
And on thy cheeks a fading rose 
  Fast withereth too. 
 
IV.
I met a lady in the meads, 
  Full beautiful—a faery’s child, 
Her hair was long, her foot was light,      
  And her eyes were wild. 
 
V.
I made a garland for her head, 
  And bracelets too, and fragrant zone; 
She look’d at me as she did love, 
  And made sweet moan.        
 
VI.
I set her on my pacing steed, 
  And nothing else saw all day long, 
For sidelong would she bend, and sing 
  A faery’s song. 
 
VII.
She found me roots of relish sweet,       
  And honey wild, and manna dew, 
And sure in language strange she said— 
  “I love thee true.” 
 
VIII.
She took me to her elfin grot, 
  And there she wept, and sigh’d fill sore,       
And there I shut her wild wild eyes 
  With kisses four. 
 
IX.
And there she lulled me asleep, 
  And there I dream’d—Ah! woe betide! 
The latest dream I ever dream’d      
  On the cold hill’s side. 
 
X.
I saw pale kings and princes too, 
  Pale warriors, death-pale were they all; 
They cried—“La Belle Dame sans Merci 
  Hath thee in thrall!”        
 
XI.
I saw their starved lips in the gloam, 
  With horrid warning gaped wide, 
And I awoke and found me here, 
  On the cold hill’s side. 
 
XII.
And this is why I sojourn here,        
  Alone and palely loitering, 
Though the sedge is wither’d from the lake, 
  And no birds sing.

There are plenty of spooky or creepy poems that give you goosebumps, Edgar Allan Poe, of course. But here is a more unusual one that you may not have heard before:

Night Crow

Theodore Roethke

When I saw that clumsy crow
Flap from a wasted tree
A shape in the mind rose up:
Over the gulfs of dream
Flew a tremendous bird
Further and further away
Into a moonless black,
Deep in the brain, far back.

I do love this poem! I am always having one character or another say, “I am a-weary, weary.”  For some reason, that is the way I hear it in my head. Probably because the syllables come out iambic that way.

Back in the olden days, when I first read this poem, I assumed that “he” did not come because he had died. Her grief, and her haunted-sounding surroundings, all seemed to me to point to death. Now, to me, it seems more likely that he does not come because he has dumped her. The reader wants to say, “Get over it already!” But it is always easy to tell others to get over their griefs.

Tidbit: if the first line sounds eerily familiar, you may have heard it in My Fair Lady; Professor Higgins gives this to Eliza to read after filling her mouth with marbles.

Mariana in the moated grange

Alfred, Lord Tennyson

WITH blackest moss the flower-plots
    Were thickly crusted, one and all:
The rusted nails fell from the knots
    That held the pear to the gable-wall.
The broken sheds look’d sad and strange:
    Unlifted was the clinking latch;
    Weeded and worn the ancient thatch
Upon the lonely moated grange.
        She only said, ‘My life is dreary,
            He cometh not,’ she said;
        She said, ‘I am aweary, aweary,
            I would that I were dead!’

Her tears fell with the dews at even;
    Her tears fell ere the dews were dried;
She could not look on the sweet heaven,
    Either at morn or eventide.
After the flitting of the bats,
    When thickest dark did trance the sky,
    She drew her casement-curtain by,
And glanced athwart the glooming flats.
        She only said, ‘The night is dreary,
            He cometh not,’ she said;
        She said, ‘I am aweary, aweary,
            I would that I were dead!’

Upon the middle of the night,
    Waking she heard the night-fowl crow:
The cock sung out an hour ere light:
    From the dark fen the oxen’s low
Came to her: without hope of change,
    In sleep she seem’d to walk forlorn,
    Till cold winds woke the gray-eyed morn
About the lonely moated grange.
        She only said, ‘The day is dreary,
            He cometh not,’ she said;
        She said, ‘I am aweary, aweary,
            I would that I were dead!’

About a stone-cast from the wall
    A sluice with blacken’d waters slept,
And o’er it many, round and small,
    The cluster’d marish-mosses crept.
Hard by a poplar shook alway,
    All silver-green with gnarled bark:
    For leagues no other tree did mark
The level waste, the rounding gray.
        She only said, ‘My life is dreary,
            He cometh not,’ she said;
        She said, ‘I am aweary, aweary,
            I would that I were dead!’

And ever when the moon was low,
    And the shrill winds were up and away,
In the white curtain, to and fro,
    She saw the gusty shadow sway.
But when the moon was very low,
    And wild winds bound within their cell,
    The shadow of the poplar fell
Upon her bed, across her brow.
        She only said, ‘The night is dreary,
            He cometh not,’ she said;
        She said, ‘I am aweary, aweary,
            I would that I were dead!’

All day within the dreamy house,
    The doors upon their hinges creak’d;
The blue fly sung in the pane; the mouse
    Behind the mouldering wainscot shriek’d,
Or from the crevice peer’d about.
    Old faces glimmer’d thro’ the doors,
    Old footsteps trod the upper floors,
Old voices call’d her from without.
        She only said, ‘My life is dreary,
            He cometh not,’ she said;
        She said, ‘I am aweary, aweary,’
            I would that I were dead!’

The sparrow’s chirrup on the roof,
    The slow clock ticking, and the sound
Which to the wooing wind aloof
    The poplar made, did all confound
Her sense; but most she loathed the hour
    When the thick-moted sunbeam lay
    Athwart the chambers, and the day
Was sloping toward his western bower.
        Then, said she, ‘I am very dreary,
            He will not come,’ she said;
        She wept, ‘I am aweary, aweary,
            O God, that I were dead!’