book trailer!!

I think my laptop and I have NANOWRIMO hangovers. Caffeine is helping me conquer mine, but sadly by Compaq doesn’t drink tea. I’m hoping she starts feeling better, soon.

In the meantime, I got this lovely review from blogger and book reviewer Aik Chen in Malaysia. It’s amazing to think of my book reaching people all over the world, in places I’ve never visited! That Catherine Howard is quite the world traveler: http://aik-friendsnfamily.blogspot.com/2009/11/book-review-kings-rose-by-alisa-m-libby.html.

And now for some good, bloody fun: my long-overdue book trailer for The Blood Confession. Yahoo!! The background music is Mozart’s Requiem Mass, which I listened to a lot while writing the book.

“It began with the prophecy on the day of my birth: I am the girl whose days will end quickly, or whose days will have no end…”

50,039

Yay! 50,039 words of a first draft. Yay, again!

Tonight I was going through my draft and looking for places to add a word here or there, or maybe add a paragraph or two. Those last 500 words were killer. It didn’t help that I kept checking my word count. I know it sounds silly, but having that word count goal was so motivating that reaching it was really important to me.

When I finally checked my word count and saw that I had passed my goal, I gasped with excitement. Hooray!! I immediately grabbed my phone to text Tom. Then I paused: I saved my draft to my computer and to my flashdrive. Then I texted Tom.

When I looked back to my draft, my computer was frozen.

Luckily, crisis was averted. Let this be a lesson to us all – keep up your word counts, and get thee a flash drive! And always pause to save before you celebrate your accomplishments.

lots of noveling

I’ve been doing a lot of noveling lately (first drafting, to be exact) and not a lot of blogging. Or doing laundry. Or much of anything else.

Nanowrimo is an exercise in optimism, in big dreams and big plans. On the horizon of this 50,000 word project there lingers that unanswered question: will I return to this draft and revise it, try to make a novel out of this confused pile of words? I hope that I do. At the very least I’ve enjoyed this project and found it invigorating to bust through this draft without taking the time to question whether it’s good. There’s no time to question things during a first draft – especially if you’re only taking a month to write it.

Speaking of which, the motivation to get to that goal of 50,000 words has been key. My writer friend Anne challenged me that if I finish the 50,000 words by this Friday, I’ll get a prize.

I love prizes.

wolves

Yesterday my sister and I visited Wolf Hollow in Ipswich, Mass. It’s a wolf sanctuary for wolves living in captivity. They have four wolves and one wolf-dog hybrid. This gray wolf reminded me a bit of Kyzoni…though Weeble had a surprisingly sweet face.

It seems like wolves have had a bad rap for the past few hundreds years – the big bad wolf, witch’s familiars, that sort of thing – and it hasn’t done wonders for wolf populations. Maybe it’s for the best that I didn’t visit real wolves while writing The Blood Confession, as I may have felt guilty about contributing more bad press. You know, Kyzoni being connected to the devil and all.

happy birthday, Abigail Adams

November 11, 1744 was the birthday of Abigail Adams, wife of John Adams and the second “first lady” of the U.S. I’m not terribly well-versed in the history of my own country (sorry, Tudor England won me over) but Tom is a huge fan of President Adams and his amazing wife. John and Abigail kept extensive correspondence during their marriage when politics kept them separated. He frequently sought his wife’s advice on various political matters, which is remarkable, considering that women were considered unfit to be involved in politics at the time.

So, three cheers for Abigail! And if you happen to be in Quincy, Mass, you should definitely visit all of the Adams landmarks. It’s pretty cool. Plus, the Boston Public Library has John Adams’s library in their collection.

Rocking with Nano…but how do I keep it up?

This has happened before: I get all jazzed about a project. I write up my outline (generally of just the first half of the book). Then I start turning out pages, and while it’s not that what I’m creating is golden, at least I’m creating something to work with. I’m being productive.

And then and then and then…I hit a wall. A stone wall, to be exact, void of any ivy that might cushion the blow.

I fear I’m hurtling toward that very wall with my Nano book. Why? Because I’m cynical. You need a better reason? Because I’m running out of outline and I have to figure out what happens next and next and next. I have to figure out how this draft will end. And I think I still have to figure out the middle part, too.

Until then, I’ll try to keep writing. That’s all that I can do. And maybe I should trust the Nano way this time and forge ahead even when I don’t know where I’m going. I’m always very concerned about knowing what’s ahead, where the whole journey will end. Maybe this time I have to trust that it will end somewhere – hopefully somewhere around 50,000 words.

Nanowrimo begins!

Well, it’s day 4 of Nanowrimo and so far I’ve written every day – though I’ll admit that my initially impressive word count has begun to slip a little bit. My first drafts are relatively lazy and impatient creatures. I think this is because I’m working from an outline and because I am a lazy and impatient creature. The transitions are inelegant and the voice is uncertain, but I’m eagerly moving from one scene to the next, no time to stop and take care of things like rambling dialogue or description or any of that. But I think that shows I have some momentum moving me forward. All of the other details are things I usually fill in during revision.

I’m really enjoying the excitement of writing a brand new draft of a brand new thing. It’s making me think about other projects that I’ve let languish, untouched, for months – I wonder if I could turn this same bang-it-out-fast approach to them, and then have something to work with, to revise? This thought (along with having a Gogol Bordello song in my head) kept me wide awake last night. My enthusiasm for this whole first draft business will wane in a week or so, but at the moment it is invigorating.

So – how are my fellow Nanowrimo-ers out there fairing thus far?

your favorite halloween costume?

I vacillated from year to year between wanting to be pretty and wanting to be ghoulish. My Bride of Frankenstein costume (from age 12, I think) is one I would like to reprise one day – though I don’t know how my sister Susan managed to do my hair. It was amazing. Unfortunately I have no photos handy, so you get pink princess instead.

So, how are you all dressing up out there? I’m planning to scrounge around my house gathering random items which I hope, when assembled, will resemble a flapper costume. Then on Sunday, fueled by leftover Halloween candy, I plan to sit at my computer and start noveling!

Speaking of noveling…I’m tempted to get one of those little netbooks, so I can take it with me to work. My laptop is portable, but not throw-it-in-my-bag-everyday portable. And it’s getting old and needs a new battery. If you have any opinions on what netbooks I should look at, let me know. I’m sure that you’re all far more tech savvy than I am!

How I (over)prepare for Nanowrimo

I have a substantial commute to and from work every day, and I spend the time either reading or scribbling in my notebook. The scribbling often consists of lots of questions and not necessarily any answers. When I’ve got enough, I type up these scribbles so I can see if they fit together. Next I create an outline, a sort of loose map to follow, scene to scene, through the beginning of my book, inserting pertinent notes here and there.

This is what I’ve done for this nebulous new project I plan to work on for Nanowrimo. But at the moment I’m doubting my overly controlling outlining method of book-writing – at least for this first, rough draft. Now this book is a slightly more known-commodity: a list of bullet points on a formerly blank page. While usually that’s quite comforting, I worry that I’m squashing all the fun and spontaneity out of this project with my urge to make it seem book-like from the get-go, before I’ve even started writing the thing. What about just writing, allowing the characters to develop and see what happens? That sounds sort of exciting.

So I’ve quit outlining and note-taking. I think I’ll be glad of the map when I sit down and write, but there are still a lot of questions that need answering. Maybe that’s a good thing, and it will inspire something fresh and new to come out when I actually sit down to write on November 1. This Sunday!

Two more lovely blog reviews:
http://knightreader.wordpress.com/2009/10/17/the-kings-rose/
http://www.devourerofbooks.com/2009/10/the-kings-rose-book-review/

I love that the internet is filled with readers, blogging about what they’ve read!

Boston Book Festival 2009

This Saturday I attended the first annual Boston Book Festival. There were a series of events with a huge variety of authors talking about their books, as well as about writing, publishing, online promotion, and all sorts of other literature-related stuff. All of the daytime events were free of charge, and there were tents set up in Copley Square where publishers, literary journals, newspapers and local organizations (like the wonderful Grub Street Inc.) set up their wares. As if a day spent talking about books with fellow book-lovers wasn’t enough, Brigham’s was giving out free samples of Paul Revere’s Rocky Ride ice cream (yum!) and Legal Seafoods was giving away free chowder.

The day was absolutely wonderful, and I’m thrilled that Boston finally has an annual book festival – this state is so packed with writers it seems crazy not to have one. In spite of the rainy weather there still seemed to be a good turnout. My only critique is that, while the work of adult and children’s authors were celebrated throughout the day, young adult fiction was sorely overlooked. Here’s hoping they remedy this at next year’s festival.

Some of my favorite talks included a discussion with John Hodgman (otherwise known as PC from the Mac commercials) author of a book of fake trivia, The Areas of My Expertise and Tom Perotta who wrote the novels Election and Little Children, among others. These two were hilarious. I also loved hearing R. Sikoryak talk about his book, Masterpiece Comics, a compilation of his comics of literary classics. His stuff was amazing and if you like comics (or classics, for that matter) I encourage you to check it out: http://www.rsikoryak.com/index.html.

The last session I attended was “Writer Idol” for which writers were invited to submit the first 250 words of an unpublished work. The submissions were then read (anonymously) by an actress and a panel of four agents (including mine, as it happens) raised their hands to indicate when they would have stopped reading the submission. I thought the agents did a great job of being honest and helpful in their critique. Agents get inundated with so many submissions, you really have to hook them! Here were some useful ideas I picked up from their critiques (and yes, I’ve totally made at least one of these mistakes, without a doubt):

• Beware of being too stuck in your main character’s head in the opening (“I thought this…then I thought that…then I wondered…”). It can feel very claustrophobic for the reader.
• Avoid having your character look in a mirror and describe what she sees. This is too common and there are other, unique ways to share these details.
• Avoid too-vivid descriptions of bodily functions – especially in your opening.

While these sound really basic, I think they are useful. There are an awfully lot of things to keep in mind when writing a book – but it’s such a worthwhile endeavor, and the Book Festival was a great way to celebrate literature.