Thursday, November 10, 2011

Another NaNo Idea - Another Unfinished Book....

Lizz,
I just realized that I never replied to your last post! I’m sorry, but my reasoning is this - remember when you hoped that I wasn’t too overworked yet…
Anyway that would have been very cruel of Ben to gaslight us. First of all I would not be in Budapest and that would make me quite sad. Secondly he would have been denying us writing days and potential brilliance and that would have been intolerable – think of all the potential NaNo ideas we could have come up with instead of wallowing in half ideas and contemplating zombies :p
Your idea sounds very good though! I’m excited to read it :) I loved your Don’t Forget the Hummingbirds short, but the idea to make it a story of two people finding themselves by running away or else running home, but nonetheless running unless I am very much mistaken, is a brilliant idea and I can't wait to read a sample as soon as possible!
Mine is yet untitled, but focuses on a young women and her rapist. At the beginning she confronts him and tells him that he stole her life and so he decides to give it back to her and they partake in a trip around the world. I have so few words I’m going to need another month to catch up! But the characters have already endeared themselves to me and so I will tell their story the best way I can having never had the need to find that kind of forgiveness…
On a happier note – well you spent your Halloween recreating Les Mis (brilliant costume, by the way!!) I spent mine in Amsterdam! Well actually I spent the weekend in Amsterdam and Halloween recovering, but that’s totally beside the point.
It’s a very beautiful city. It’s quiet and full of cyclers and nobody seems to be in a hurry and there are art museums seemingly on every corner. My favorite was the Van Gough museum because, as you know, I’m such a sucker for impressionism, but really I just enjoyed walking around it was that picturesque :) I’ll leave you with some pictures of my excursions as a nice way to procrastinate from making your word count today!






Miss you!
Ashley
PS Don’t worry about Grad School. Do something crazy! Move to Italy with Ben, open your own dog walking business, walk from publishing house to publishing house until somebody realizes how lovely Smell of Rain is and publishes it! I’m in grad school now and I still don’t know what I want to do, but I guess that’s the thing with increased life expectancy we don’t really have to for a few more years :)           

Monday, November 7, 2011

NaNo Thoughts

Dear Ashley,

A blog post, as promised! I'm still behind on my word count, but I have hopes of catching up after work today.

This year for NaNo, I've decided to combine two pieces of flash fic to make one (hopefully long enough) novel. If not, there might be zombies, or the pillow-throwing chat room bot from last night's Philly online write in.

Anywho. I've combined the Hummingbirds flash, as you saw on facebook, with the one called Je Me Souviens (probably spelled that wrong) about the man who returns to his life after three years of being gone.

I wasn't totally sure that I wanted to mess with either of them, because I really like the way they stand alone as flash, especially Hummingbirds, but I'm starting to like the novel too.

As you saw, it's now called Don't Forget the Hummingbirds and the tagline that I put on the NaNo site is:

Three years ago, Jasper walked out of his own life and disappeared. He never intended to go back, but then he found Lola's letters. As he reads of her journey, Jasper learns about his own. Can a woman from the past help him find a future?

So that's it, in a nutshell. Actually, that's it, period. It just happens to fit in a nutshell, which is why there may be zombies or robots somewhere around 35k.

I also really need to get my shit together as far as grad school. I just don't know what to do. I haven't registered for the GRE or begun to put things together, because I still don't know what I want to do. And thinking about the future makes me a little panicky and stressed and makes my head hurt, so I've been avoiding it and crocheting instead.
Probably not a good idea, I know.

It also makes this novel a little difficult, as it's one of the more personal things I've written lately.

This post needs a picture, and to not end with depressing thoughts, so...here's what else I did yesterday besides write.

LATER... Never mind. Blogger won't let me upload the picture. Anyway, I managed to cook and freeze all my pumpkins so I can use them all winter to make delicious pumpkiny things.
I was moderately productive yesterday; I need an extra hour or two every day.

-Lizz