Katherine Nabity's Blog, page 192

Writerly Writing ~ Update 7

Pretty decent week in the land of rewriting-what-I-got. The toughest part was an action scene in the first half of the book. I hate action scenes. If I had my way my novels would consist of characters having skirmishes of wit over lunch. I’m down to less than 20K left, although I did realize this morning that the last 20K included a scene I wanted to reframe from a different character’s perspective. My deadline is Tuesday because…

I’m going to do camp NaNoWriMo in April with a goal of 30K words. That means, 1000 words per day starting April 1st. I’m also going to do a Round of Words in 80 Days again, starting next week when the next round begins. I’m already doing a Sunday update here and will probably start doing a quicky Wednesday update too.

You see, Eric and I had a talk this week about where we’re headed. His goals, his “where I want to be in a year,” are all based around the things he wants to finish. My goals had become entangled with notions of publishing and legitimacy and were being darkened by this shadow of disappointment. See, I’ve had it pretty easy in my life; I’m really terribly bad at dealing with setbacks, especially ones I can’t just dodge around. So, the question became: What do *I* want to get done in the next year? I’ll proclaim my solidly vague goals next week, but mostly, I just want to be a *writer* again.

Pinned: April Reading List

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Finish Rebecca by Daphne DuMaurier – Gothic Reading Challenge
Finish Magic in Theory by Peter Lamont & Richard Wiseman
Python for Informatics by Charles Severance – Programming for Everybody! class
Help for the Haunted by Tim Prasil
Who is Magic Babe Ning? by Ning Cai
River City Empire by Orville D. Menard
The Sphinx, April 1905
“The Fatalist” by Mikhail Lermontov – Week 13 DMI
“The Invisible Girl” by Mary Shelley – April Lunar Extra

Deal Me In, Week 13 ~ “You Don’t Even Feel It”

Hosted by Jay @ Bibliophilopolis

“You Don’t Even Feel It”��by Lawrence Block

Card picked: Three of Diamonds

From: Murder on the Ropes

Thoughts: Keisha’s husband Darnell is a junior middleweight champion. After being married for twelve years with three daughters, Keisha was under the impression that Darnell would retire. He intends to, but not until after another two fights. He knows he can win these fights and tie-up another two belts. He’s in good health, at least on the outside. Keisha, though, notices his forgetfulness and the way he’s started to slur his words. “Getting hit upside the head? You don’t even feel it,” Darnell assures her, which isn’t reassuring at all.

This was not a great story. Boxing is, basically, a sport where two men* do damage to each other until one man can’t take it anymore. This leads to complications for everyone involved: the boxers, the boxing industry, and boxing fans. “You Don’t Even Feel It” handles this without any complexity and in a somewhat preachy manner. It doesn’t even scratch the surface.

*And women too. It will be interesting to see if any of the stories in this anthology include women.

Thursday Rewind ~ First Lines of Favorite Books, 2003 edition

Originally posted to my LiveJournal on January 31st of 2003, this is a list of the first few lines of my ten favorite books in 2003. Not too much has changed in this list in the intervening twelve years.

�� ���� ���� ��

It was a quiet morning, the town covered over with darkness and at ease in bed.

���Dandelion Wine, Ray Bradbury

When I teach a beginning class, it is good. I have to come back to beginner���s mind, the first way I thought and felt about writing.

���Writing Down the Bones, Natalie Goldberg

Gentlemen:

Your ad in the Saturday Review of Literature says that you specialize in out-of-print books.

���84, Charing Cross Road, Helene Hanff

The most important things are the hardest to say.

������The Body���, Different Seasons, Stephen King

This is my favorite book in all the world, though I have never read it.

���The Princess Bride, William Goldman

No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream.

���The Haunting of Hill House, Shirley Jackson

The unicorn lived in a lilac wood, and she lived all alone.

���The Last Unicorn, Peter S. Beagle

This was an old man. Not an incredibly old man; obsolete, spavined; not as worn as the sway-backed stone steps ascending to the Pyramid of the Sun to an ancient temple; not yet a relic.

������Paladin of the Lost Hour���, Angry Candy, Harlan Ellison

So. The Spear-Danes in days gone by

and the kings who ruled them had courage and greatness.

���Beowulf, trans. Seamus Heaney

Who am I to be writing a book about my life as a writer?

Let���s start by saying it wasn���t my idea.

���A Writer���s Tale, Richard Laymon

Magic Monday ~ House of Mystery

I like Mondays. On Monday, I am refreshed from the weekend and exhilarated by the possibilities of the week ahead. I also like magic. I like its history, its intersection with technology, and its crafty use of human nature.�� I figured I’d combine the two and make a Monday feature that is truly me: a little bit of magic and a look at the week ahead.

House of Mystery: The Magic Science of David P. Abbott by edited by Teller and Todd Karr

A note from Teller:

This two-volume set includes Abbott’s Book of Mysteries, a collection of super-mysteries which, so far as I know, has never been surpassed. Abbott was a genius who built his work on the devious principles he learned from spirit mediums, who could not afford to get caught.

With these miracles, Abbott fooled Houdini, Kellar, Okito, Ching Ling Foo, and all the greatest minds in magic, and recorded his secrets in step-by-step detail in two of the most delightful and detailed books ever written on the art of magic.

This edition’s annotations and the newly-rediscovered articles and letters, including seven original hand-illustrated Kellar letters, make this set as essential for the history buff as it is for the professional performer.

��� Teller (via Goodreads)

I’ve been wanting to get my hands on these two books for a couple of years now. And I still do! I read a browser-based scanned edition made available by the Conjuring Arts Research Center. I’d love to own my own copy. These texts are pretty lush. They contain all of David P. Abbott’s written works, as well as introductions and asides from Teller and Todd Karr that give each work context. There are crunchy historical bits: letters, photos, stories��from contemporaries about Abbott and his performances. Included is an extended section on Joseffy in volume 2; Abbott’s The Marvelous Creations of Joseffy is given full treatment.

House of Mystery gives me further insight into the kind of man David Abbott was. His descriptions of his tricks are incredibly detailed. Almost mind-numbingly so. He was also a very peculiar skeptic. If he couldn’t find a complete explanation for phenomena, he was likely to officially say “I don’t know,” rather than to speculate publicly.

What Am I Reading?

Been a slow couple of reading weeks. I’m still working on Rebecca and Magic in Theory.

On the Blog

Took last week off from blogging, more or less. I was pretty busy and I’ve been a little slumpy as far as reviewing goes. I had intended to have Rebecca reviewed for Thursday, but I don’t think it’s going to happen. Instead, I’ll probably do a Throwback Thursday.

Writerly Writing ~ Update 6

Started a rewrite of In Need of Luck last Sunday. As of this minute, I’ve rewritten about 25% of what I had. I’m going straight through, including the scenes that I had put aside for reworking. Still, 25% isn’t that impressive.

I’m considering doing Camp NaNoWriMo in April. Camp NaNoWriMo is like the little cousin of November’s National Novel Writing Month. Instead of starting a novel and writing 50K, you can do pretty much what you want. I’m considering a 30K or finish goal. Of course, finishing this rewrite before then would be step one.

Deal Me In, Week 12 ~ “The Gentleman from San Francisco”

Hosted by Jay @ Bibliophilopolis

“The Gentleman from San Francisco” by Ivan Bunin, translation by D. H. Lawrence and S. S. Koteliansky

Card picked: Jack of Hearts

From: The Gentleman from San Francisco and Other Stories

Thoughts:

The gentleman from San Francisco–nobody either in Capri or Naples ever remembered his name…

With that, Bunin sets up this story. The Gentleman from San Francisco is an industrialist, a wealthy man who has decided to take his wife and daughter on a two-year holiday to see the world. First stop, Europe. We are given lots of details of the scheduled activities during the ocean voyage, especially as they pass Gibraltar, and the entertainments at Naples and Capri. Despite those details, we never learn the Gentleman from San Francisco’s name, his wife’s name, his daughter’s name, the name of the Asian prince who is traveling incognito… In fact, we don’t get any names until Capri when we hear of Carmela and Giuseppe, dancers at the hotel. By then though, it’s seemingly too late. The Gentleman from San Francisco dies of a heart attack and is shipped back home on the same vessel that brought him to Europe.

Throughout, there’s a definite contrast between the “haves” and “have nots.” For every description of luxury, we’re also shown the misery of the sailors and servants. Indeed, the Gentleman from San Francisco has made his riches off the backs of others:

He had worked incessantly–and the Chinamen whom he employed by the thousand in his factories knew what that meant.

There’s another contrast though that I think might be more important. Against both luxury and misery is nature. Storms seem to dog the Gentleman from San Francisco’s sea voyages and it felt to me like the grandeur of cathedrals and cemeteries in Naples was ruined, not by character indifference, but by the weather. It is, in fact, nature that does in the Gentleman from San Francisco (although it could be argued that it was his decadence that helped). It is with the weather that this cheery Russian tale leaves us:

…nor did any one know of that thing which lay deep, deep below at the very bottom of the dark hold, near the gloomy and sultry bowels of the ship that was so gravely overcoming the darkness, the ocean, the blizzard…

We may be indifferent to each other, but nature in indifferent to us, and death is indifferent to everything.

About the Author: Ivan Bunin won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1933, but he was already a two-time Pushkin Prize-winner when “The Gentleman from San Francisco” was written and published in 1915. This is my first experience with Bunin.

Writerly Writer ~ Update 5

TL,DR: I’m a putz. I need to be more like George Clooney.

I’ve still really been struggling with motivation. What makes today different than ten years ago when I’d sit down and bang out 1000+ words a day? Well, the intervening ten years, for one thing. I’m a pretty hidebound person; going the the self-publishing route has been a change that’s been difficult for me to take. There are also matters of ego. *I* want to be the writer of *all* the things with no help from Eric. Even though we put out better novels together than apart. And I’ve gotten used to better novels. There are also other things. Things that I decided to misconstrue about what’s going on which I won’t get into.

I’ll be honest, I’ve been treating In Need of Luck like it’s just necessary work. Like it’s just the ketchup variation we want to get on the shelf so we might take a little space from Heinz and maybe get noticed. And that’s unfair to the novel. It’s unfair to Eric.

Eric and I made a deal this week. When I finish In Need of Luck, we’ll give the Abbott project another shot. We’ll sit down and brainstorm, both of us. If we come up with a kernel that works, I’ll write it. If not, I go on to whatever is next in the writing queue, maybe another Luck book, maybe the something else. Who knows?

It occurs to me that I need to be more like George Clooney. If there’s a real quote, I can’t find it now, but I recall that George Clooney has said that he does one for the studio and one for himself. Basically, for every Ocean’s movie, he has the ability to do an indie project. Now, I’m not saying I deserve cake for every carrot. What I want to remind myself of is that his Ocean’s movies are still good. Okay, they vary, but you get my drift. He’s doing a good job even when he’s doing the one for the studio. He’s making the most of the opportunity. It’s a shame when I don’t.

This week: Just shy of 1500 as of the writing of this. I need to do a rewrite. I don’t finish a first draft before editing. Stories are too malleable for that. There are some scenes I need to reframe and some I need to rewrite. So, rewriting, here I come.

Deal Me In, Week 11 ~ “How Carlos Webster Changed His Name to Carl and Became a Famous Oklahoma Lawman”

Hosted by Jay @ Bibliophilopolis

“How Carlos Webster Changed His Name to Carl and Became a Famous Oklahoma Lawman” by Elmore Leonard

Card picked: Six of Clubs

From: McSweeney’s Mammoth Treasury of Thrilling Tales

Thoughts: When Carlos Huntington Webster was fifteen, he had a run-in with the notorious bank robber, Frank Miller, while Carlos was having an ice cream at the local pharmacy and five-and-dime. It’s the kind of place where Carlos is trusted enough to scoop his own cone and leave a nickle on the counter while the owner is in back taking care of a few things. Miller and one of his cronies came in for a pack of cigarettes, but decided to rob register since it was currently under the charge of a “greaser” boy. Unfortunately, things went south when Junior Harjo from the tribal police walked in on the affair and was shot for it. Some of this event, or maybe none of it, might have influenced Carlos’s decision to join the US Marshals and to later kill Miller in a shootout.

Identity and ethnicity is important in this story. Carlos points out that he is not Mexican, a “greaser” in Miller’s words. His mother, who he never, knew was Cuban. The woman who raised him was Indian (or rather, Native American) and his father might have some Cherokee on his mother’s side.�� Social standing in 1920s Oklahoma has some correlation to one’s status as a “breed.” When Carlos joins the Marshals, he’d nicknamed Carl. He doesn’t like it, but he sees the advantage since he looks like his father aside from his dark hair.

About the Author: I’ve read a few novels by Elmore Leonard, most recently Raylan back in January/February. I was a little disappointed in that novel. It seemed strained and, maybe at age 86, Leonard wasn’t doing his best work. This story has one of the the things I enjoy most in Leonard’s stories: a hero doesn’t entirely have pure motivations. There’s even a smidge of Raylan Givens in the character of Carl Webster when he tells Miller, “If I pull my weapon, I’ll shoot to kill.” Or, at least that’s the story that’s told about Marshal Carl Webster…

Is This Your Card?

Review ~ Fangirl

Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell

Cath is a Simon Snow fan.

Okay, the whole world is a Simon Snow fan…

But for Cath, being a fan is her life���and she���s really good at it. She and her twin sister, Wren, ensconced themselves in the Simon Snow series when they were just kids; it���s what got them through their mother leaving.

Reading. Rereading. Hanging out in Simon Snow forums, writing Simon Snow fan fiction, dressing up like the characters for every movie premiere.

Cath���s sister has mostly grown away from fandom, but Cath can���t let go. She doesn���t want to.

Now that they���re going to college, Wren has told Cath she doesn���t want to be roommates. Cath is on her own, completely outside of her comfort zone. She���s got a surly roommate with a charming, always-around boyfriend, a fiction-writing professor who thinks fan fiction is the end of the civilized world, a handsome classmate who only wants to talk about words… And she can���t stop worrying about her dad, who���s loving and fragile and has never really been alone.

For Cath, the question is: Can she do this? Can she make it without Wren holding her hand? Is she ready to start living her own life? Writing her own stories?

And does she even want to move on if it means leaving Simon Snow behind? (via Goodreads)

Back in February, I was looking for something lighter to read, something that wasn’t set between 1850 and 1930, where I often find myself. I decided that I’d check to see if the digital library had Rainbow Rowell’s Landline available, Landline being her more adult novel. (To recap: YA? Just generally not my bag of tea. I’m 40 and cantankerous. Young people annoy me. ;) )

Landline was all checked out, but Fangirl was available. I’d read the blurb when Fangirl came out and I…just wasn’t that interested. But then I read first couple of sentences.

There was a boy in her room.

Cath looked up at the number painted on the door, then down at the room assignment in her hand.

Pound Hall, 913.

This was definitely room 913, but maybe it wasn’t Pound Hall���all these dormitories looked alike…

And once again, Rainbow Rowell got me with the nostalgia. See, when I was a student at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, I lived in Pound Hall. I started out in Sandoz Hall, but after nearly two months I moved to Pound when I was given the opportunity to have a no roommate. I lived for the rest of that year and the next on the 5th floor and then moved down to the 3rd for my junior and senior years. I know Pound Hall. Even though I could probably figure where 913 is, I see Cath and Raegan’s where mine was on 5: at the end of the hallway by the stairwell. I see the cinder block walls and the built-in desks and bookshelves.

Floor plan of my room in Pound Hall.

There are other nostalgia things as well: Love Library’s stacks that had their own weird air currents, dashing back across campus after dark when alone (when you’re a freshman girl) because you’re certain you’ll be attacked (fairly unfound fear, shed by second semester), and the fact that starting out no one from Omaha actually knows where East Campus is. Fangirl kind of made me marvel at how *I* managed to make it through freshman year. It also made me really appreciate where I am now.

So, the story itself. The blub makes it seem more like this book going to be about writing fan fiction than it is. Sure, there’s some comment on fan fiction’s place within the realms of what is “legitimate” writing, but��Fangirl is really about the girl. It’s about Cath dealing with all those college-y things and her own brand of crazy while having this very firm backbone of Simon Snow fandom to help her stay upright. And, to make this about me again, how much did ST:TNG and X-Files help introverted me? There is a beauty to fandom; it gives people common interest, a starting point. Fangirl is a love letter to that.

Publishing info, my copy:�� St. Martin’s Press, Kindle Book, Sep 10, 2013

Acquired: Tempe Public Library OverDrive Collection

Genre: YA