Shanna Swendson's Blog, page 261

My Disorganized The Cape Review

My big plans of getting the office (and the rest of the house) organized haven't amounted to much so far. I did start cleaning out my e-mail in boxes yesterday. My goal for the week is to get both my public and my personal in boxes down to fewer than 1,000 messages each. Yes, my e-mail really is that out of control. I started with actually reading and dealing with each message, but then burned out on that and started going to random parts of the message list and deleting the things I know are clutter or which are no longer relevant. Part of my problem is that I tend to just read the messages I know I need to deal with, which leaves the clutter lying around unread. I should delete those right away. The other problem is that I've discovered that if I delete a message upon reading it, if a new message has come in while I was reading that message, it's the next message down that gets deleted. I lost some important messages that way. Instead I have to read the message, close it, then click the little box next to it and hit delete. Which means I tend to let them pile up before deleting a bunch all at once.

One of my life decluttering choices that I've made recently will help with that. I let my membership in a local writing group that I've belonged to for nearly 20 years lapse. I hadn't gone to but one or two meetings a year for the past few years and I seldom got around to reading the newsletter. I seemed to have been dropped off the invitation list for some public events that group has been associated with that involve published authors. I haven't saved a lot of money, but I have saved myself the nagging "maybe I should go to the meeting this month" guilt and I no longer have to worry about the group's e-mail lists (which had amounted mostly to announcements of other groups' online classes and "I blogged on this topic today" posts) adding to the clutter in my in box.

Next, maybe I'll develop the energy and enthusiasm to start tackling the paper clutter.

I caught the repeat of the premiere of the new series The Cape last night, and I'm firmly in the land of "so so." The main reason I watched was the presence of Keith David. I'd turn on the "Keith David Reads the Phone Book" show to use as background noise. I've watched History Channel documentaries on subjects I don't care about so I could listen to his narration. So, even if the show sucks, I wouldn't mind tuning it out other than hearing that voice, and it's a bonus to get to see him actually playing a character instead of talking about the Black Death or the Crusades. I liked the pilot episode better than the second one, and I think that's because the second one focused more on the main character than on the world building, and the world building is probably the best part of the series, while the main character is kind of dull.

The weird thing is, they've done a lot of the right things in creating this character. He had an inner drive before the story even kicked off. He now has a clear-cut goal and a strong motivation. He has values. He even has a hobby. Unfortunately, they all seem to be pretty much the same thing, which makes him very one-note. He's driven by a desire for justice and truth. He values justice and courage. His story goal is achieving justice. His hobby is training himself physically so he can seek justice. He's consistent, but not very interesting. There really should be at least one of these things that's out of whack to hint that there's more to him. Like, maybe he's into fine wines, music or flower arranging in addition to the physical training. He at least should have a quirky sense of humor, or maybe the crazy carnival gang (the absolute best part of the show -- I'd watch a series about them) could rub off on him more, or he could use his new carnival abilities for some fun instead of just seeking justice. Batman at least had the playboy billionaire alter ego to give him some depth aside from all the justice seeking.

The other weird thing is getting used to Summer Glau not being all that kickass. I suppose it's good for her to get to show off some range and play something other than an invincible killing machine, but it was disconcerting to see her losing a fight and needing to be rescued by the hero. I kept expecting her to kick the bad guy through the back wall or pick up a meat cleaver and come at him in a series of spinning and kicking moves so she could decapitate him. Her character is no wimp, but she doesn't seem to have serious fighting skills.

I'll give it at least one more episode, but if the main guy doesn't become more interesting very quickly, I may not be a regular viewer. However, the pilot did give me the best laugh of the day and deserves some credit for including the line "The raccoon acted alone." Unfortunately, that part was about the carnival crazies, not the main character.

Why Be Normal?

We had a bit of a snowy Sunday -- it started with sleet in the morning, turned to snow around 11, then snowed a few hours. We didn't get much where I live, and it had all pretty much melted in the time between the snow stopped and the temperature went below freezing. It looks like we got a little more overnight, but it's now all gone, too. I hear the roads were pretty bad this morning, which makes me very grateful that I don't have to commute, but the speedway running by my house seems to be pretty much normal now. The local PBS station obliged me by running the entire Cranford series in the afternoon, which was the perfect thing for a snowy day. I made some tea and scones and curled up on the couch to watch, with the blinds near the sofa open so I could see the snow falling. You know you're a grown-up when your idea of enjoying a snowy day involves staying indoors watching the snow fall rather than going out in it and attempting to play. When I was a kid, the moment snow started falling, I had to be out in it, right away.

I did also do some book-related research while hibernating, so today I get to figure out what really needs to happen next. I had it planned one way, but I'm not sure the research supports it. It is fiction, so I can make it up, but it has to make sense, and one way of predicting what might happen is to look at what did happen in similar circumstances in the real world.

I didn't do any movie watching over the weekend, but I have a backlog from the previous weekend, all from HBO. I finally watched The Time Traveler's Wife, and while I liked the wibbly-wobbly, timey-wiminess of the book, it came across as far creepier in the movie, where it really did look like this grown man was brainwashing a little girl into falling in love with him so she'd want to marry him when she grew up.

But that's not the movie I want to talk about. I'm going to make a rare controversial statement here: All About Steve wasn't that bad. I know it was widely hailed as one of the worst movies of that year, and Sandra Bullock won the Razzie for it -- and won major "good sport" points by actually showing up to accept the award in person -- but the problem had more to do with positioning than with the movie itself. The problem was that they treated it like a romantic comedy, and if you're thinking of it that way, it's truly icky. Not to mention an utter failure because it isn't romantic at all. There's no love story, no developing relationship, no romantic happy ending. If you're expecting that, then you'll spend the entire film cringing in dread because if the relationship in this movie were to have a romantic happy ending, it would be totally unbelievable and kind of sick. However, I suspect that if this film had been given the Little Miss Sunshine "Indie comedy about not letting other people define what normal is for you" treatment, it would have had a totally different reception.

Going even further out on a limb, I would have to say that this role was probably a more difficult acting challenge and required far more craft and talent for Sandra Bullock than the role that actually won her the Oscar. The Blind Side was total Oscar bait, full of big, dramatic speeches and heartfelt moments, and just about any actress in that role who managed to seem like a real human being instead of a cardboard cut-out saint could have won an Oscar. But Sandra Bullock's role in All About Steve required a total commitment to the character that was carried through in everything from facial expressions to vocal inflections to body language. I have known a number of people like that (though most of them are male, and they're the reason I have "rescue me" signals worked out with my friends for conventions), and she nailed that personality type completely.

In case you managed to miss hearing about this movie, Sandra Bullock plays a crossword puzzle creator who is more than a little odd but who is trying desperately to hide it. She's pretty clueless about communicating with people or dealing with the real world and she still lives with her parents, with a vague "my apartment is being fumigated" cover story, though you get the feeling that apartment has been fumigating for years, as it doesn't look like she's ever lived anywhere but that room. Her parents set her up on a blind date with a news photographer who is the son of their friends, and she does okay with him -- until she starts talking (I did like that the movie didn't pretend she didn't look like Sandra Bullock, that it was her personality that was off-putting). Then she's so weird that she freaks him out and he comes up with an excuse to end the date. She doesn't pick up on the message and instead decides to follow him around the country to various news events, and the reporter he works with sees her as the key to getting the story that will get him an anchor job, since she's got a weird knack for noticing details and is essentially a walking encyclopedia.

So, we've got two simultaneous road trips from hell and a ton of rather incisive and brilliant satires on the news media. Maybe it's just my TV news background, but I laughed myself silly at a lot of it. I was also a little disturbed by how often I gave a response a split second before Sandra Bullock's character did (I've done way too many crossword puzzles, I guess). I don't think I'm that socially clueless, but I did find myself occasionally identifying with that character.

I'm not saying it's a great movie or one that I'll buy on DVD, but I may watch it again on HBO now that I know what it's really about and can relax about anticipating how they'll ever pull off a romantic happy ending. I do think that if they'd taken that script and those actors and had deliberately done a "who gets to decide what's normal?" movie, it would have been much better and would have had a better reception.

And now I must go do today's New York Times crossword.

A Breakthrough!

I think I had a big breakthrough yesterday. I got one major scene rewritten, and now I'm up to the part where I realized while writing it that it was a major turning point scene, so what's there is essentially a placeholder until I can figure out exactly what will happen. That will require more research and a trip to the library today. However, I've passed the approximate halfway point. Yay! This part I'm working on is probably going to be the hard part of the entire book. The rest should actually be pretty easy -- unless I come up with something else that I didn't anticipate.

One weird thing that had a lot to do with spurring me on to productivity: I realized I was really missing a character. I've been wrestling with this one part of the book for weeks, and the character who is possibly my favorite isn't in this section. I found myself missing him and looking forward to getting back to him, and to do that, I have to finish this section so we can return to his part of the story. In the finished book, he won't be away for too long. It's just that it's taken me so long to deal with this one part that it's been ages since I've written him.

Meanwhile, a character I wasn't expecting turned up and came to life, and now I need to think of more things for him to do because he's a lot of fun. He should also be useful because he has an interesting skill set, and that skill set may actually bring him into some kind of interaction with another character you'd never imagine with this kind of person.

Oooh, I'm being all hinty and vague, aren't I? But I don't like to talk in specifics about works in progress and especially about works that aren't contracted. This one is still on submission. I hope someone buys it because I think it's a lot of fun.

Using the January Blahs

I think I've figured out one of the reasons for my extreme difficulty in getting out of bed at this time of year. My bedroom window faces east, and most of the year, I don't need to set an alarm because at around the time I need to get up on most days, the sun will hit that window full-on, so that a beam of sunlight sneaks past the blinds and hits me in the face. At this time of year, though, the sun must be at an angle where I don't ever get that direct light in my bedroom, and even at ten in the morning the light has a kind of pre-dawn quality about it. If I didn't have a clock, I would think it's about six in the morning instead of ten. It doesn't help that when it's cold I tend to sleep with the comforter almost entirely over my head, so even a direct blast of light might not hit me unless it bounced off the wall over my head first.

The combination of the groundskeepers and my neighbor's dog (who apparently doesn't like the groundskeepers) served to wake me up this morning, but I've still been dragging all day. The soreness from returning to ballet Tuesday night hit with a vengeance this morning, and that may not have been helped by doing kindergarden choir last night, with lots of movement activities with the kids. I do now have two boys in the group, which helps balance the pink unicorn-ness of the rest of the choir (the girls are really, really girly and, yes, one did bring her pink unicorn toy last night).

Anyway, I started putting all my research to use yesterday and was reminded that changing one thing does have a ripple effect, so I had to keep going back and forth to change everything affected by the research-driven changes. Today I may actually get to new writing. Well, new re-writing. It's another take on a scene I've already written, but at least I'm beyond the tinkering and fixing of small details. It is a challenge to get focused enough to start writing, though.

I think if I got to set my ideal working schedule, I'd plan my year to wrap up whatever I was last working on before the holidays, and then January would be a big creative retreat. I wouldn't worry about production but instead would focus on the thinking and daydreaming that are essential to creativity. Then it would be good for me to spend a lot of time lying in bed and daydreaming, or reading or watching movies. I could throw in some research, as well, and end the month with the specific plotting and outlining so that in February I'd be ready to jump into the new project. When I'm supposed to be productive with words in January, it tends to turn into an exercise in frustration because I can never do as much as I think I should be doing.

This year, though, I must produce words. Maybe next year I can adjust my schedule accordingly and see how it goes.

The Hero's Journey: The Road Back

After about five days worth of research, I'm now ready to rewrite that one scene, where maybe only a few bits of that research will actually show up. But those few bits should be key to providing the telling details that bring the scene to life.

It's a new year and time to get back to the every-other-week writing posts. I've been analyzing the various stages in the hero's journey, as Christopher Vogler interpreted the mythology work done by Joseph Campbell for modern storytellers in The Writer's Journey.

To recap what we've covered so far, we started in the Ordinary World, where we saw what the hero's normal life was like and what inner problem or need he may have had. Then there was a Call to Adventure, where the hero was faced with the fact that there was a problem in the world, and that he was the one to solve it. Next likely came a Refusal of the Call as the hero tried to resist his destiny. He may then have had a Meeting with the Mentor to get more information, some encouragement or even some tools or gifts to help him with the quest. After this, there was a Crossing of the First Threshold, in which the hero left the ordinary world and entered the special world of the story. He learned about this special world and the people in it as he met with Tests, Allies and Enemies. He entered an even more special world within the story world as he made the Approach to the Inmost Cave. Then he experienced an Ordeal in which he escaped, faced or observed death. After surviving the ordeal, he had a moment to catch his breath and regroup in the Reward.

Now we're at The Road Back, another stage I think is poorly named. To me, that name implies a homeward journey that is an ending and a decreasing of action, like coming home after a vacation. But this phase is the most important section of rising tension in a story. It's the build-up to the story's climax. In part, this name comes from that classic mythic structure, in which the goal of the quest was to obtain some object and then get it back home. The hero obtained the object in the Ordeal, and then the hard part was getting it back home in time with whoever it was who previously owned the object in hot pursuit. In the three-act screenplay format, this is the start of the third act, the final turning point in the story. It's also another threshold crossing as the hero takes the first step toward returning to the ordinary world. After this next part, his quest will be over and he'll have to figure out what to do next, whether to truly return a changed man to his former ordinary world or whether to establish a new normal in the special world where he's been working.

It does seem that journeys and travels are part of this stage in a lot of stories. The hero has to physically travel as he heads toward the final confrontation -- back home, to the bad guy's fortress, to the escape hatch. There's also some kind of ticking clock that requires the hero to do something before something bad happens. It may be when the hero reaps the real consequences of what happened in the Ordeal -- if he didn't finish off the bad guy, the bad guy may pop up again; anyone he angered in the Ordeal will be coming after him; if the Mentor died, the hero will have to put together a plan on his own. There may be some element of sacrifice if the hero has to jettison anything unnecessary in order to make his escape or hold off the bad guys. The classic example of this is when the greedy person has to drop gold or treasure to lighten the load, make room for one more person or distract pursuers. The hero may have to use, and possibly use up, his magical gifts, leaving him barehanded for the final confrontation. I suppose you could call this phase the Approach to the Moment of Truth.

In Star Wars, The Road Back comes when Luke and the gang have rescued the princess and escaped the Death Star, and now they have to get the secret Death Star plans to the rebel base so they can be analyzed for a weakness, all while the Death Star is tracking them. Will they find and exploit a weakness before the Death Star gets within firing range of the base? In Raiders of the Lost Ark, this is when Indiana Jones hitches a ride on the Nazi submarine to follow the stolen ark. Will he reach the Ark and save Marian before the Nazis use the Ark's power for themselves? In road trip stories, this is the part where they're almost there, and we know the characters are going to have to make some decision once they get there. Will she go through with marrying the guy she's been traveling toward, even after getting to know the guy she's traveling with? In buddy cop movies, this is usually where our duo, now working as a team, gears up to really go after the bad guys, putting their careers on the line. In Serenity, it was when our heroes had to get through the Alliance fleet to the satellite facility in order to send the message. In Aliens, it's when Ripley, the little girl and the surviving marines have to get across the colony with the aliens after them in order to reach the landing pad in time to catch the arriving shuttle before the reactor blows up. In a lot of romantic comedies, this is the frantic race across town or through the airport to catch the True Love before all is lost. "Can they get there in time?" is a common question in the Road Back phase.

The important thing to remember is that this is all about building tension. It's the run up to the climax of the story. The hero is approaching a do-or-die point, and his options are narrowing. He had his first chance for ultimate success in the Ordeal, but he won't get another chance after this one.

Next, finally, the moment we've all been waiting for!

Book Report: All Clear

Another slow start to the day. Tomorrow I really might set an alarm. I go back to ballet tonight, so maybe that will make me sleep better so I can then wake up more easily. Then there's an exercise class at the neighborhood rec center I've been thinking of trying on Thursday morning, and that will give me a good reason to get up. I've found that setting an alarm isn't necessarily that effective if you don't have a good reason to get up at any particular time. It's like the alarm that cried wolf.

So, as I mentioned last week, I read All Clear by Connie Willis, and I named the Blackout/All Clear duology my book of the year. Really, it's one book split into two parts because of the physical limitations of book binding and probably due to publishing business concerns, and it's best read as one book because it's so complex that it would be easy to lose track of who's who, where and when if you had a gap between the first and second parts. I've been waiting for this book for more than eight years. I first met Connie Willis in early 2002 at a writing conference, and we ended up in a nice, long conversation, since we have a lot of common interests, including WWII. She mentioned that she was working on another time travel book that would involve WWII and the Blitz. I think she was still in the concept development phase and may not even have worked out things like plot and characters. After reading the finished product, I can see why it took so long. The research alone would have been a massive undertaking, and then it's a pretty intricate plot, and it's got an epic length.

The plot, in brief, involves three young Oxford historians in 2060 who are using time travel technology to observe history. One is studying the evacuation of children from London during WWII by posing as a housemaid in a manor house where a lot of children are staying. Another is observing the behavior of civilians during the Blitz by posing as a London shopgirl who spends her nights in air raid shelters. And a third is working on a project about ordinary people who become heroes in extraordinary circumstances by visiting a variety of key events. This time around, he's observing the evacuation of Dunkirk while posing as an American reporter. But then things start going wrong with the time travel, and they may not be able to get back. Is it because they've altered history -- and could they have done something that will alter the outcome of the war?

In tone, I would say this one is closer to The Doomsday Book than To Say Nothing Like the Dog in that it's got a lot of tragedy in it, and because it has multiple points of view and covers multiple timelines. But it's a lot more complex than that because it's not really linear. It actually gets pretty wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey. Since the entire past happens simultaneously from the perspective of a person with time travel, you can spend years working on something in the "present" or in other times and still make it back to a certain point of another time within minutes, and you don't necessarily visit events in chronological order. The book bounces around between three (and a bit) stories in 1940, two in 1944, one in 1945 and a few in 2060 that lead to even more time periods. All of these eventually converge, and multiple stories converging is like catnip to me (something else to add to my literary bucket list). Toward the end, I couldn't put the book down because each chapter ends with a big cliffhanger before jumping to another timeline. I cried a few times, sometimes just from an overwhelming burst of emotion. I will have to re-read the whole thing now that I know what's going on and can relax and actually pay more attention. It's the kind of book that must be re-read because it takes on a different meaning once you know what's really going on. It also makes me want to re-read The Doomsday Book, and I'd almost recommend re-reading that one (or reading it in the first place) before tackling this one. That's not essential, but a familiarity with that book will probably intensify one of the big "wow!" moments in this one. It also does reference the events in To Say Nothing of the Dog, but that's not crucial to the plot. It's also good to revisit the short story "Firewatch." I'd read it a long time ago but didn't remember much about it, and re-reading it last week made me understand part of this book better. And I'd suggest watching the movie Mrs. Henderson Presents because a familiarity with that bit of history will help you get more of the jokes.

I would call this book bittersweet because while it is ultimately uplifting, there are also some really bad things that happen, and yet one of the really bad things is also kind of inspiring and very moving. I've always loved the "homefront" kind of war stories, not so much about the soldiers but about the people struggling with ordinary life in the midst of war, and that's really what this is about, how the civilians in England were fighting on their own front that was as harrowing as the front lines, and ordinary people had to step up and be heroes (another bit of literary catnip for me).

I could go on and on and on about this book, and I'm dying to find someone else who's read it that I could discuss it with. There's one tiny loose thread that's been bothering me a lot, and I think I have a theory about it (that's the part I found myself dreaming about the night I finished reading it), but I'm not sure.

Hibernation Season Begins

Well, I didn't exactly leap into the new year with a burst of enthusiasm. I grumpily dragged myself out of bed after sleeping way too late, and I can't even blame my iPhone because I have an Android phone and I don't set an alarm, anyway (though I probably should while I'm in hibernation season or I might not ever get out of bed). On the up side, I won't burn out by trying to overachieve on all my new year's goals and resolutions.

I had a fun New Year's Eve at a party with my friends, which involved too much food (yum), a gingerbread TARDIS, some Doctor Who, lots of bubbles (the five-year-old and I were easily amused) and a lot of strange conversations. I may have to invent the Kiss Avoidinator for next year, though. I'm not sure what form it will take, sharp and pointy or more shield-like. And I got sworn at as a new officer in our club (we don't do a swearing-in ceremony. We do a swearing-at, using Monty Python quotes).

I got called by Nielsen for a movie survey last night, and although I usually hang up the moment I realize it's some kind of poll, survey or telemarketer, I did this one, and it was interesting. Plus, you never know if it will help get more good things made. I had to say whether I'd heard of various movies that were currently out or coming out soon, how I heard about them and how interested I was in seeing them. If it was commissioned by a particular studio, they did a good job of burying the questions they were most interested in among questions about other movies because I didn't spot a pattern. The further it went, the deeper they drilled, until they got to a pretty in-depth questionnaire about Gulliver's Travels, with a list of reasons for not seeing it, to which I had to answer whether or not it applied. Included on that list was "I don't like Jack Black." Note to studios: if you're even including that as an option, maybe you should reconsider putting him in so many movies. They did not include "bastardization of classic literature" on the list, though I suggested it as a write-in, which made the poll guy laugh. I also made him laugh when he was going through the list of movies and whether or not I planned to see them, and I blurted "Oh, dear God, no!!!" on one before he gave me the response options. I also got to respond to the genres of films I'm willing to see in theaters, and I gave a big yes vote to fantasy and science fiction, as well as comedy and romance. I warned the guy up front when he was asking if I worked for a movie studio that I had a business relationship with a studio and had a book under option, but he said it only counted if I was employed by a studio, so I figured I might as well give high marks to the categories my book might fall into.

The thing that was frustrating was that there was no chance other than the Gulliver's Travels question to explain why a movie didn't interest me. I answered "Definitely not" to most of the upcoming romantic comedy movies, and I'm afraid that might be taken to mean there's no interest in romantic comedies (though I did list romance and comedy as genres I liked). Really, it has more to do with the fact that the upcoming romantic comedies seem like middle-aged male fantasies and have zero appeal to me. They also expected me to say whether or not I was likely to see even movies I hadn't heard of, just based on the title and the cast. But I very seldom make a decision to see a movie purely on the cast. An actor I really like might get me to see a movie that otherwise would be so-so but can't get me to a movie I have zero interest in. For instance, I love watching Amy Adams in movies because I'm fascinated by the way she lets her emotions show on her face, but I have no desire to see The Fighter because I'm not interested in boxing movies or in "Boston tough guy" movies. On the other hand, I saw Leap Year largely because of her even though I knew it would be a pretty lame romantic comedy. Without her, I might not have seen it, but it at least fell into a category I like. I can't think of a single actor whose name would be enough to get me into a theater without knowing anything else about the movie. However, there are a few actors I generally avoid, unless there are a lot of other things working in a movie's favor (and, usually, I'm being dragged by friends).

I've been trying to mentally create my moviegoing decision matrix, but it's not clear-cut enough for any kind of flow chart. Mostly it's a gut thing, and a lot of it depends on what else is going on in my life at the time. HBO is another big factor, since I pay for it in my homeowners' association dues, so I may as well make use of it, and so a lot of movies fall into the "wait for HBO" category.

I'm starting to feel semi-conscious, so I'd better get to work while it lasts.

My Year in Review

I figured out why I seemed to be so blocked on the scenes I'm rewriting: Lack of information! Since these things came out of nowhere, they weren't elements I'd researched, and when I tried to just make stuff up without a factual foundation, it was lifeless. Fortunately, I had some of the key references for one of the subjects among my texts for my journalism history class (thank you, Dr. Olasky! You never know what from your college coursework will end up being vital in your actual work), and those directed me to a few other things that I might be able to get via Project Gutenberg. Then I guess I'll have to make a downtown library trip next week. Oh, and I've added a book to my year in reading total, which may bring the classics up higher in the genre list and which ups my total of work-related reading.

Since I work for myself, I don't have to go through the usual annual review, but I do like to take stock of the year and set goals and plans for the coming year.

I don't feel like I have that much to show for this year, but there was some groundwork laid that may come to fruition early next year. I spent about half the year working on a book that is currently backburnered and the other half of the year working on a proposal that's currently on submission. Even without selling a new book, I think once I add up my income and subtract expenses, I may have come close to earning what I did in my old job, thanks to movie option renewal, foreign sales on old books and royalties.

My work goal is to really intensify the writing output. I don't currently need to market anything, so most of my work time should be spent on writing. I'm determined to sell something new next year, so I'll have to keep writing on new projects until I find the one they want.

Personally, this was a decent year. I spent the summer doing physical therapy on a bad shoulder, I taught Vacation Bible School for the first time, and I started co-directing a kindergarden choir. I traveled to Denver and came back by train on my first really long-distance train trip. I got to meet one of my writer idols. I really expanded my cooking repertoire and started a cooking blog that I haven't been very good about updating. I experienced eggplant for the first time and have explored the neighborhood Indian markets.

I suspect my personal goals for the year will be about the same ones I always make. I really do want to get my house, and especially my office, organized. I'm not sure how to go about it, though. I've tried all kinds of methods and organizational systems, and nothing has stuck. I did have some success with the Flylady system, where you do little bits each day, with reminder e-mails, and very gradually declutter the whole house while creating new habits and processes to keep it clean. I lasted about a year with that back in 2002-2003 and got and kept the house in pretty good shape, but I also got almost no writing done during that time, and once I did start really writing (the first draft of what became Enchanted, Inc.), it all fell apart. I also got tired of all the sappy inspirational e-mails that come with all the e-mail reminders of what tasks to do. I tried taking the Clean Sweep approach to my office, emptying it entirely into boxes and then sorting through those boxes to put everything back. Most of the stuff is still in those boxes because I got busy before I finished, but I can't just throw away the boxes because I keep having to dig through them, looking for stuff. I've tried the 43 folders approach to organizing things to deal with, since most of my mess is work or business-related paper clutter, and getting that under control would instantly improve most of my house, but that seems to languish after about a week (I forget to check the daily folder or keep moving things to future folders). I tried dividing the house into zones and tasks that could be done in a short amount of time, and that failed after about two weeks. I would say that I need a deadline, like throwing a party, but deadlines are largely why my office is in the state it's in, after everything from the rest of the house gets tossed in there to hide it. When I try to do a little each day, I get discouraged from not seeing enough progress and give up. When I try to do it all at once, it's more than I can tackle, I get overwhelmed and give up.

Mind you, we're not talking Hoarders material here, except maybe in the office, which is totally out of control and has spilled into other rooms. It's just a case of someone who's used to moving every three years spending nearly 13 years in the same house. I normally do that clean/sort/purge thing when I move and don't have the habits for doing it while in the same house. If you have any systems or ideas that you think might help, I'm open to suggestions. What I may do is try to come up with some kind of point system and related rewards for the early days, when there's not a lot of visible progress. I need to sort out and set up my filing cabinet so there will be a place to put everything else, for instance, and that's not the kind of thing you can look at with a sense of accomplishment that encourages you to keep going. Maybe I'll embarrass myself by posting photos and then use the general public to hold me accountable to finishing the project this time around. I feel like everything else will just fall into place once the house is in order. That may be overly optimistic (Mr. Right will not just appear on my doorstep once my house is the way I want it), but I do think it would save me time and make my work more productive.

There are a few other things I want to try this year, but that will all depend on what deadlines come up and what my work schedule will be. I want to be more physically active because that helps with the work, and I want to keep expanding my horizons in general because that also helps with the work. I'm giving myself permission to be a workaholic this year, but there's a lot of stuff beyond just typing that counts as "work."

Year in Review: Books

I'm going to have to force myself to focus today because I really want to rewrite the scene I've been working on, but I seem reluctant since it means totally rewriting it. I may disconnect from the Internet after a quick bank/post office trip and force myself to get started. Starting is always the hardest part.

Now that I've finished reading All Clear, and since I doubt I'll finish reading another book this year, I can do my Year in Review for books.

This year, I read 101 books, which is down from last year, when I read 116, but a lot of the books I read this year were classics that took some wading through, and I read a lot of reference books that could qualify as heavy tomes. I also did more writing this year, I think. My heaviest reading month was July, which was when I went into heavy research mode for the book I'm currently working on. Low months were August and November, both of which were heavy writing months.

Nearly half of the books I read, 50, were in some way related to work -- reference books, works in the genres I was researching, market research, writing how-to, psychology, etc. I'm not counting novels that fall within my broad genres, only books I read especially because of their specific connection to a particular project. Forty-two of these books related to the current project.

My biggest genre by far was fantasy, with mystery in second place. Young adult and non-fiction tied for third. There may be some overlap to the categories because when a book could fit in two categories, I counted it in both. So a YA fantasy would count as both YA and fantasy.

Twenty-six of the books were books I'd read before, but in some cases, I hadn't read them since childhood. I read one book, Blackout twice within the same year. As usual, Terry Pratchett shows up a lot on the list, but this year a lot of my re-reads were by Dick Francis, since I sort of went on a binge after his death.

My Book of the Year goes to Blackout/All Clear by Connie Willis, which I will discuss in more detail next week. I'm counting it for this purpose as one book because it is one story divided into two volumes, probably because otherwise it wouldn't fit into the binding and for publishing business purposes. This book was a magnificent accomplishment that blew me away and both inspired me and made me feel like a talentless hack who should just put in an application at McDonald's because obviously my writing career can't amount to much in comparison. I'm going to try to focus on the inspiration part and use it as motivation to do better. I don't think this one will top To Say Nothing of the Dog as my all-time favorite because it's a little too heavy for constant re-reading, but a future re-read will determine its place on the all-time list. My mind is still so blown from the first read that it's hard to judge.

My New Find of the Year was Rachel Aaron, whose Legend of Eli Monpress series (The Spirit Thief, The Spirit Rebellion, and The Spirit Eater) was a refreshingly fun take on magic. I think I liked the middle book best, which is unusual in a trilogy, and I'm looking forward to the next book. It was so nice to find something that was more fun than dark and that wasn't about vampires and tough chicks with tattoos.

Meanwhile, I read 15 classics this year, digging into the kinds of books you probably should be forced to read in school but which I, oddly, wasn't. Some of them I'd read before on my own (like Jane Eyre), but a lot of them I hadn't tried before. There does seem to be an alarming tendency in "classics" to have depressing endings where nothing really works out and life is meaningless. I won't be turning into a literary snob anytime soon.

The next idea churning around in my brain will require a ton of reading and research, so I imagine that's what will make up most of my reading for next year. I don't yet know of any books scheduled for next year that I'm eagerly anticipating. The publishers' web sites are incredibly unhelpful in that respect.

Year in Review: TV

I have a book hangover today. I finally gave up on trying to write until I finished reading All Clear, since all I did when I tried to write was stare into space and wonder what would happen next in the book I was reading, so I was wasting that time neither reading nor writing. I finished it at almost 1 a.m. and then had a hard time getting to sleep because my brain was buzzing so much. Then I had weird dreams about the book, so my sleep wasn't restful. But I can now move on and focus on my own writing, even though at the moment I feel rather like a talentless hack. I can also do my year in review for books, but I will save that for tomorrow because I have some data analysis to do and I need to gather my thoughts to report on All Clear.

In the meantime, I'll talk about TV this year. It wasn't a prime year for TV. I think I stopped watching almost as many shows as I started watching, which I suppose is good for uncluttering my schedule on the "add something new, remove something old" principle, but most of the new things I've added fall more into the "well, it's there" category than into the "love it!" category.

New shows for this calendar year in the "well, it's there," category include Covert Affairs and the new Hawaii 5-0. I generally watch them OnDemand later in the week, and if they disappeared entirely, I might not notice unless I got really bored one Sunday afternoon. Human Target is a step outside this category. It's not something I care that much about or am addicted to, but I do enjoy it when it's on and would probably miss it if it went away. The one addiction show for this year for me is Haven on SyFy. I wasn't planning to watch it but watched it OnDemand when I needed background noise for my physical therapy exercises and was instantly hooked. I would have missed this one if it had been cancelled, but it wasn't and I can't wait to see what happens next.

Not new, but new to me this year was Phineas and Ferb on the Disney Channel. I discovered this by accident, and now it's a major topic of conversation among my friends. This seems to be one of those cartoons that's fun for kids but really written for adults.

Doctor Who is in a special category, as it's by no means a new series, but this year was a complete re-boot with a new cast and new showrunner, and the way it is now seems to be custom-made for me. There's so much I love about this take on the Doctor.

On the down side, some former favorites fell off the schedule for me this year. I'd followed House all along, stuck with it through some questionable story arcs, the woobification of House (did we really need to make him such a victim?), the dropping of the old team, the hiring of useless people and even the relationship with Cuddy. But when they hired a third-year medical student for a postdoctoral fellowship, my suspension of disbelief snapped, and I'm done. Meanwhile, I loved the concept of Glee but came to the conclusion that I didn't like any of the characters. NCIS: Los Angeles was never a brilliant show, but it was fun in the first season. I'm not sure what happened this season or why they felt the need to tinker with success, but the last new episode crossed the threshold where it was too annoying to watch. If I hear that an episode was brilliant, I may catch it OnDemand, but it will have to be a really boring Sunday afternoon where I need to drown out the sound of my neighbor's barking dog with the sound of the television so I can work my crossword puzzles before I decide to watch new episodes of this series again. I never liked Stargate: Universe, but reached the threshold where the snark potential wasn't enough to make it worthwhile midway through the second episode after their mid-season hiatus. Now it's been cancelled.

Masterpiece Classic looks like it will have some good stuff this season, and White Collar will be back soon. Otherwise, I may get a lot of writing done.