Alisa M. Libby's Blog, page 23

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:

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...