Feline Existence

 I just realized that I've been a cat the past two weeks.  I've slept, eaten, kept myself clean, and occasionally moved objects around the apartment.  Yes, I've gone outside and interacted with the world at large, but for the most part, I've been a cat.

At least I haven't batted anything important off the desk and under the bed / refrigerator / stove / washing machine where it will never been seen or heard from again.

Summer

Today is the first day of summer in the Northern Hemisphere -- congratulations! you've made it to another summer solstice! The planets/solar system celebrated with their version of barbecue and fireworks: a scorching 90 degree day here in Michigan that may produce tordanoes and a solar storm on the sun which produced a solar flare and something they call "coronal mass ejection" which was hurled at Earth.

Don't worry about the coronal mass ejection, despite the scary and slightly lewd name, it is apparently a weak sort of ejection. And when it arrives at earth on Thursday we won't even know it. Don't you hate it when that happens? Though, in the ejection's defense, it "could trigger polar geomagnetic storms."

Oh.

I think I'll just keep an ear open for the tornado sirens.

I'm still hanging out in my own personal never-never land. I finally got a rejection from one of the PhD programs I applied to. Thanks for the official email, guys, but I figured that out six weeks ago. I'm annoyed that they waited until late June to notify me, but at this point, I would have been more outraged if they had accepted me but not told me until 10 weeks before the start date. Am I spoiled because MFA programs almost always tell you your status by April 15, or am I right in thinking a June twenty-something notification is total bullshit?

Since I assumed rejection when they wouldn't even give me a status update six weeks ago, that really doesn't changes my plans or outlook. The never-never land feeling has to do with many things other than that.

Now that I've finished my MFA project/thesis, I'm in need of accomplishing a lot of goals without external deadlines. And really would like a paycheck one day.

Some days I think I should have stuck with my computer science major.  I'm actually thinking of temping.  Ick.

Photo credit: aechempati and no, I don't own a Corgi, he was just very happy and summery looking

Finally! The real Muppet Movie Trailer!

Manamanah.

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"Green Lantern" Trailer

Camp NaNoWriMo

NaNoWriMo, yes that NaNoWriMo, is starting a summer camp. July and August 2011 will feature the first ever Camp NaNoWriMo competitions. It's like NaNo ... but in the summer. And with limited promotion and hopefully a smaller participant pool. I say hopefully because the Office of Light and Letters (the people who do all the logistics) are redoing their website(s) during that time, providing a scaled down Camp NaNo in July and ideally a fully functional Camp NaNo in August. And they're overhauling the main NaNoWriMo site at the same time. That's a lot of hoping and doing.

The actual Camp NaNo site isn't up yet as I'm writing this post.  But it is supposed to appear sometime in the latter half of June.

I have heard a few people around the internet who are all OMG!MOAR!NaNo!NOAW! But as for me . . . I don't know.  Also I have a stretch of downtime that doesn't align with the calendar-month style of NaNo, from mid-June to mid-July.

Any takers?  Anyone packing up for Camp Anawanna NaNoWriMo?

Recently Read: A Discovery of Witches

I picked up A Discovery of Witches to find out why a book that was essentially an urban fantasy -- witches and demons and vampires, oh my! -- was being marketed so heavily at the mainstream.  It had a prominent (non-urban fantasy) slot on the Barnes & Noble e-newsletter, and it is still hanging out on their front of store promotion tables.  The other thing that differentiates its marketing from that of most urban fantasy books is that there's no representations of the characters on the cover.    That might have been the biggest flag for me: what was so different about this novel that the publishers thought they didn't need to use the biggest telltale signs of the genre to get readers?

Is it different?  Yes and no.  The main character isn't a never-does-well-in-school teenage Buffy Summers, she's a 30ish woman with a PhD in Medieval alchemical texts.  But Buffy was born to be the slayer, and Dr. Diana Bishop was born a witch, a really freakin powerful witch it turns out.  Oh and they both have vampire sidekicks/boyfriends.

The biggest difference is that in A Discovery of Witches the characters are a Medieval historian and a vampire who has lived through the Middle Ages, and they're more than willing to start chatting in depth about historical this or that.  And yes, the author has done her research.  Actually I'm willing to bet that the author has a background in academia and has studied these kinds of things.  Does that make her characters more realistic? Maybe.  But as someone who's spent time in academia as well as studied genre fiction, I'm willing to say that there are many passages where it feels like the author stopped writing a novel, and started writing a paper.  Oh, an entertaining paper as far as academic research goes, but there's a definite shift there.  And maybe if you haven't spent time in academia and studying genre fic, you wouldn't catch it, but it was glaring to me.

The author also spends a lot of time on the logistics and mechanics of things which may not be particularly important to the story.  When the issue of time travel is brought up, the vampire goes out and gets the witch, Diana, a whole passel of vaccines against diseases from the time period.  Yes, these are issues that matter to scientists and historians, but it snags the narrative and drags it down -- unless she's going to get sick while time traveling, or she's dumped into the middle of a smallpox outbreak and is then worshiped as a goddess (or burned as a witch) for not not contracting the disease herself, then the procurement, injection, and discussion or the vaccines is just shoe leather, i.e. logistics that aren't necessary to the reader's experience.

But the novel was enjoyable.  And yes, it was an interesting break from sassy, butt-kicking, black-leather-wearing urban fantasy heroines.  And I did love-hate the vampire (and love-hate is almost better than love when it comes to vamp characters).  So why not read this one?  Why not. Go for it. It's not the smoothest written novel ever but it's entertaining and many of the ideas are intriguing. But I'll warn you that it's unfinished.  The ending obviously sets up the next book.  And it only seems fair that you know that going into it.

And -- I couldn't find anywhere else to add this in -- but the whole time I was reading about Medieval texts and science and medicine, I kept thinking about Elizabeth Twist.  I'd love to hear what an actual Medievalist thinks of this novel!

Recently Read: Something Borrowed by Emily Giffin

I admit that I didn't read Something Borrowed back when it came out in the hey day of chick lit because I had confused Emily Giffin with Sophie Kinsella.  And to my credit, the original covers of Something Borrowed  and Confessions of a Shopaholic were both that same sort of uber-pink chick lit design (see below).  Further confusing me was that I'd never read Confessions of a Shopaholic but a different Kinsella novel where a young, brilliant, female lawyer (same as Something Borrowed) hates her job (same as Something Borrowed) and has man/friend problems (same as Something Borrowed).

So let's just say I was throughly confused.

Then I saw the trailer for Something Borrowed at the movie theater.  It looked so cute!  Girl with longtime crush on her best friend's fiancé drunkenly lands in bed with him and everyone realizes in the nick of time who they really love and that they deserve to chase happiness not accept defeat!  Yay! (No spoilers in there, that's just what the film trailer implies.)

So I -- and every other person who'd seen the movie trailer -- went to the library and requested a copy of the actual book.  I finally got a copy a few weeks ago and settled in to read super cute chick lit fluffiness.

It was not super cute.

Chapter one introduces the characters.  Chapter two finds the main character sleeping with her best friend's fiancé and then starting an affair with him.  Um ... not okay.  Certainly not warm and fuzzy and cute.  As the book progresses many of the main relationships shift radically.  Other characters have to help the main character see this -- see who her real friends are and see who is using her.  Because basically the main character has no freaking clue at the beginning of the novel.

Okay, so I'm maybe half-way, two-thirds finished with the book before the main character and I both get the hint that the main character isn't having an affair with her best friend's fiancé, she's having an affair with the fiancé of her former best friend who is actually a shallow and kind of cruel woman.  Oh.  Still not as cute as I'd been hoping for.

Perhaps I would have found the cute factor the chick lit cover promised me if it hadn't been written in first person (I know, I know, chick lit and a first person narrator are peas in a pod but hear me out).

Because we're wrapped up in the narrator's thoughts and prejudices so tightly by the use of the first person, we aren't allowed to see characters for how they really are.  Our view of them as readers is completely shaped by the narrator's (delusional) view of them.  So we don't realize that the best friend is pretty bitchy for a long, long time.  We aren't allowed to come to that realization because the narrator tempers and makes excuses for everything the best friend does.  The bitchiness even seems to give the narrator purpose in life as the person who tempers the bitchiness -- and the character is proud of this ability! -- so as a reader, I was never given enough distance from the events to make my own judgments about the situation and therefore start rooting for the character to make realizations and changes.  Instead the narrator served as a heavy filter between me and the story.  So I got to the end and ... oh.  It's done. That was the ending? Huh.

I hope the movie Something Borrowed was as cute as the trailer promised it would be, because the book was not as cute as the trailer promised.

Ad of the Week

Character Sketch Writing Contest

If you are interested, a "mini contest" is now open at Diamonds and Toads, the sister site of the magazine Enchanted Conversation. They're looking for a 300-word character sketch of the fairy of summer -- more info.

Grab-bag: TV, non-alcoholic wine, and a real fast talker

I've never gotten into American Idol.  Never have.  But I am in love with the new singing competition show The Voice.  I've been watching for the past six weeks when they did blind auditions and duet face-offs.  Love it.  Four established singers picked teams of eight and then the eight had to face off against their own teammates to whittle the teams down to four each.  Tonight they go to live shows where I have no idea what the format will be.  But I'll get all tripped up in the stories and the sining and we'll all watch Christina Aguilera's big eyes, Blake Sheldon narrowly miss putting his foot in his mouth in that brash country-boy way of his, Cee Lo's sly smile, and Adam Levine perk up and sort of jerk around like a gopher -- a gopher with the world's most amusing range of expressions.


Of course, I'm also enamored of Covert Affairs on USA -- season two starts tonight as well.  I'm a sucker for spy flicks.  It'll be a tough night for me as I have to decide between the two.

At the grocery store the other day, I saw that they had "alcohol removed" red wine for sale.  It's less two-thirds the calories of real wine, so I figured I'd try it.

Verdict: It tastes like unsweetened grape juice.  There's a slight hint of wine-ish-ness in the aftertaste.  So if you like sweet wines and can't stand the dry or oaky types, this might be right up your alley.  I just cut it with real wine.

And finally, the real fast talker makes some interesting points in a very entertaining way:

You're basically finished with your MFA -- how do you feel?

Shell-shocked.

That's pretty much sums it up.

It's been a crazy dash to the deadline -- a self-imposed deadline nonetheless -- and it doesn't seem like it's over. Perhaps because I finished the project, lined up a cat-sitter, and madly dashed out of town for a family graduation party four hours north. There was no great sigh of relief, no celebratory beverage (unless you count the coffee with my cat-sitter), and no happy dance in the end zone.

Although there was some bouncing on the balls of my feet but that's more nervous excitement, and the giddy feeling of turning in something that you think really should have gotten one more proof reading.

All and all, it just seems unreal.

My project committee has the next three weeks to peruse my collection of stories, send back their comments and decide if they're going to sign off on the project and therefore my degree. I've listened to my advisor, so I'm not terribly worried that they won't sign off on the project -- maybe if I was worried there would be more finality to the actual finishing.

As it is, I'm off to do some errands today and on to the next project.

Anyone else feel this way at the end of their degree?

Perseverance, part one

There are many forms of perseverance needed in the writing game.  And one of them is to keep submitting our work to new editors.

I, apparently, have an unusually thick skin when it comes to submissions and rejections.  But here's what I know: C.L. Moore submitted her first short story, "Shambleau" -- the first short story she had ever written -- to Weird Tales in 1933.  It was her favorite magazine.  They accepted it, and subsequently published almost all of her early fiction.  Moore, in a candid essay in the back of a 1960s edition of her collected early stories, said that if the Weird Tales editor hadn't accepted her story on the first try, she probably would have stopped writing.

I'm not C.L. Moore.  You're not C.L. Moore.

And I don't say that meanly -- Moore's work is intriguing but there's a reason she occupies an important space in the history of science fiction and not in the literary importance of the genre.

I say I am no C.L. Moore because I have sent out one story.  And it was rejected.  And I did not stop there.  I sent it out again.  And again.  And again.  And, on at least two occasions, I'd given up on a story or poem and then had an editor contract the work.  I am no C.L. Moore because if the editor doesn't accept the story on the first try, I don't stop trying.

And that is why I encourage everyone reading this and hoping to make it as a writer to not be C.L. Moore.

Last summer, I was encouraged to make 100 submissions.  Be they short fiction or novel queries, I was to complete 100 of them.  It was suggested that 100 was a reasonable goal; that if you set your sights for 100 it was a high enough number that you would be in the mental game for the long haul while also likely to achieve some sort of publication before reaching the 100th submission.

The next day I was asked to give a goal for the upcoming year, so I said 100 submissions in a year! Meaning: I want to be published by this time next year!


That's when I made this little chart on the outside of a file folder and tacked it to the wall over my desk.  100 Submissions by July 15, 2011 it says.  The white area is a 10 x 10 grid to which I affix a star (or a hello kitty sticker) every time I send a story out on submission.

Below is a manila envelope for the rejection slips.  Seems practical.  Don't be depressed by rejection slips.  It's like being depressed by dog poop.  You own the dog.  You enjoy the dog.  You have this bond, this friendship.  It will, at some point, poop.  You can't be a practical person and a dog owner if you are depressed by poop.  Likewise, you can't be a practical person and a writer if you are depressed by rejection slips.

If you haven't already noticed, it's June and my chart has a lot of white spaces on it yet.  There are only 15 stars (save you the trouble of counting).  But I'm proud of those 15.  And there will be more before July 15.  Progress is progress -- progress is perseverance -- and I love my chart.  I also love the square that I colored in yellow in the top row.  Yellow background means the submission got published.

This chart hits several motivating factors for me: it's prominently placed so that I see it every day, it's colorful, fun, and it is interactive.  If not sparkly star stickers, what motivates you to keep going?