Lemony Snicket's NaNoWriMo 2010 pep talk.

I love Lemony Snicket. Daniel Handler. Whatever you want to call him. A Series of Unfortunate Events remains my favourite series of books, I find myself returning to them again and again, sighing and wishing I could create something as dark and beautiful and funny, really. 

Anyway. When I find it hard to write (like I am now) I read this. I don't know if this is still avaliable on NaNoWriMo.org, so I'm posting it here so you can read it and feel a little bit inspired too.


With all due respect. 
Miss Loewy.

Dear Cohort,

Struggling with your novel? Paralyzed by the fear that it's nowhere near good enough? Feeling caught in a trap of your own devising? You should probably give up.
For one thing, writing is a dying form. One reads of this every day. Every magazine and newspaper, every hardcover and paperback, every website and most walls near the freeway trumpet the news that nobody reads anymore, and everyone has read these statements and felt their powerful effects. The authors of all those articles and editorials, all those manifestos and essays, all those exclamations and eulogies - what would they say if they knew you were writing something? They would urge you, in bold-faced print, to stop.

Clearly, the future is moving us proudly and zippily away from the written word, so writing a novel is actually interfering with the natural progress of modern society. It is old-fashioned and fuddy-duddy, a relic of a time when people took artistic expression seriously and found solace in a good story told well. We are in the process of disentangling ourselves from that kind of peace of mind, so it is rude for you to hinder the world by insisting on adhering to the beloved paradigms of the past. It is like sitting in a gondola, listening to the water carry you across the water, while everyone else is zooming over you in jetpacks, belching smoke into the sky. Stop it, is what the jet-packers would say to you. Stop it this instant, you in that beautiful craft of intricately-carved wood that is giving you such a pleasant journey.

Besides, there are already plenty of novels. There is no need for a new one. One could devote one's entire life to reading the work of Henry James, for instance, and never touch another novel by any other author, and never be hungry for anything else, the way one could live on nothing but multivitamin tablets and pureed root vegetables and never find oneself craving wild mushroom soup or linguini with clam sauce or a plain roasted chicken with lemon-zested dandelion greens or strong black coffee or a perfectly ripe peach or chips and salsa or caramel ice cream on top of poppyseed cake or smoked salmon with capers or aged goat cheese or a gin gimlet or some other startling item sprung from the imagination of some unknown cook. In fact, think of the world of literature as an enormous meal, and your novel as some small piddling ingredient - the drawn butter, for example, served next to a large, boiled lobster. Who wants that? If it were brought to the table, surely most people would ask that it be removed post-haste.

Even if you insisted on finishing your novel, what for? Novels sit unpublished, or published but unsold, or sold but unread, or read but unreread, lonely on shelves and in drawers and under the legs of wobbly tables. They are like seashells on the beach. Not enough people marvel over them. They pick them up and put them down. Even your friends and associates will never appreciate your novel the way you want them to. In fact, there are likely just a handful of readers out in the world who are perfect for your book, who will take it to heart and feel its mighty ripples throughout their lives, and you will likely never meet them, at least under the proper circumstances. So who cares? Think of that secret favorite book of yours - not the one you tell people you like best, but that book so good that you refuse to share it with people because they'd never understand it. Perhaps it's not even a whole book, just a tiny portion that you'll never forget as long as you live. Nobody knows you feel this way about that tiny portion of literature, so what does it matter? The author of that small bright thing, that treasured whisper deep in your heart, never should have bothered.

Of course, it may well be that you are writing not for some perfect reader someplace, but for yourself, and that is the biggest folly of them all, because it will not work. You will not be happy all of the time. Unlike most things that most people make, your novel will not be perfect. It may well be considerably less than one-fourth perfect, and this will frustrate you and sadden you. This is why you should stop. Most people are not writing novels which is why there is so little frustration and sadness in the world, particularly as we zoom on past the novel in our smoky jet packs soon to be equipped with pureed food. The next time you find yourself in a group of people, stop and think to yourself, probably no one here is writing a novel. This is why everyone is so content, here at this bus stop or in line at the supermarket or standing around this baggage carousel or sitting around in this doctor's waiting room or in seventh grade or in Johannesburg. Give up your novel, and join the crowd. Think of all the things you could do with your time instead of participating in a noble and storied art form. There are things in your cupboards that likely need to be moved around.

In short, quit. Writing a novel is a tiny candle in a dark, swirling world. It brings light and warmth and hope to the lucky few who, against insufferable odds and despite a juggernaut of irritations, find themselves in the right place to hold it. Blow it out, so our eyes will not be drawn to its power. Extinguish it so we can get some sleep. I plan to quit writing novels myself, sometime in the next hundred years.

--Lemony Snicket

Overthinking #1: Deconstructing James Dean

"But what can I say, I like bad boys." - A conversation overheard on the 94 bus.

I spend a lot of time on the bus, at least 8 hours a week. I overhear a lot of conversation snippets. It's not that I'm nosy, or even that I care, but when you're packed in like sardines you can't help but overhear things.

This, I must say, confused me a little bit.

What constitutes a 'Bad Boy' these days? The James Dean archetype is sorely outdated; what was considered 'bad' in the 1950's seems mild by today's standards.

I've had no experience with Bad Boys. I've known people who have few redeeming qualities, rude people, cruel people, liars... but never once have I encountered a 'Bad Boy', not really.

Maybe it's just me, maybe I'm too forgiving or maybe I don't get out enough.

So I started to think about it, (I had a whole 45 minute bus ride ahead of me) what on Earth did that poor girl mean?

Is a bad boy someone who drinks?
Perhaps in the traditional sense, when 'teenager' was still a new concept and forging an identity meant not doing what mum and dad told you to. These days, though, it's hard to find someone who doesn't drink. And honestly, I'm pretty sure someone can be thoroughly terrible without swigging from a bottle of spirits.

Is a bad boy someone who does drugs?
It may be a matter of opinion, but I have no interest in what people choose to put in their bodies. They're just that, theirs. And in the same way that I don't expect anyone to tell me how to live my life, I would never tell anyone how to live theirs.

Anyway, does recreational use make someone a bad person?
Of course not, I've met plenty of drug users who are Mummy's boys.

Is a bad boy someone who uses people?
Perhaps, but then I have met people, terribly nice people, who don't have the best record. In fact they burn through girls faster than they do cigarettes. Bad experiences and casual relationships, fear of commitment and something as simple as difference in opinion, it happens.  Having a bad track record does not an awful person make.

I'm not sure I really know what makes a bad boy, or if it's a concept that ever really existed, at least not in anyway that is genuinely attractive.

James Dean as an archetype is all well and good, the desire to make them good, put an end to their renegade ways, bring them to hang up their leather jackets.

The Brooding Poet is attractive too, a soulful young man whose just had his heart broken one too many times. A bird with a broken wing, something to heal, to show him the beauty of the world again.

Still, these archetypes are the refuges of fiction. Real people are infinitely more deep and complicated, with ticks and habits, likes and dislikes beyond the facade presented to us by the media.

Those brooding boys in perfume ads, they aren't real. Real men are more complex, more intricate and so much better.

Katie x

URGENT TRANSMISSION

::INCOMING TRANSMISSION::

Transmitting to all BLI licensed channels!

Increased security warning on two female individuals. Picture attached. Cited as dangerous.

Subjects identified go by the aliases of Hyper Vengeance (left) and Cordelia Vermilion (right)

Do not approach unarmed.

Repeat: DO NOT APPROACH UNARMED.

Last spotted west on the outskirts of Zone 3 driving fast and playing music loud. Suspected to be headed east towards battery city with intent to cause maximum chaos. Be vigilant.

If spotted and correctly identified using BLI approved retinal scanning equipment exterminate on sight.

Have a better day.

::END TRANSMISSION::

Getting There

This is mostly a quick update to let everyone (Read: no one) know that NaNoWriMo is going well, I fell a day behind my target yesterday, but after some "KEYBOARD ON FIREEE!" writing I'm back to a day ahead.

I feel like a bit of a ninja if I'm honest.

The only problem I have is I'm starting to despise Miss Vincent just a little bit. Which is terrible, I know, I created her, she's my... thing that I created. Um...

Where was I?
Right. My problem is that she's got no sense of humour, she lacks fun things that normal humans have. She's too uptight. She's too Victorian. Which is sort of the point but...

Well, I have this new character, a Fabulous Killjoy her name is Cordelia Vermilion. She's what you would call badass. The more I write about Miss Vincent, the more I wish I was writing about Cordelia. DAMN.

Oh well, the Apprentice is on, I'm going to go and watch that.

-Katie xx

In which I discuss madness and the fictional people that live in my head.

So another year has rolled by and I'm faced once again with a sheer wall of words.

It's November tomorrow, by which I mean I will start work on another novel tomorrow. I don't know how many 18-year-olds (or how many people at all, for that matter) can say they've written three novels in three consecutive years, but as of 1st December, I will be one of them.

I hope.

I have a lot more responsibility this year, I'm at university, I've got a boyfriend, I've sort of got a social life, although most of my interaction still occurs via the internet or with the imaginary people in my head. Which is to say that my characters are very real to me, and not that I'm schizophrenic.

I attended my very first write-in yesterday. Well, it was the welcome meet up. It was a lot of fun, I was a little overwhelmed at first, and a bit shy since I'd rolled in on my own with no idea what to expect, but everyone was really kind and friendly. It was so nice to be able to speak to people in real life that understand the sheer, blissful, horrid, gut-wrenching madness November represents to me.

Although I'm daunted by the thought of writing a novel in a month I don't think I could go without it from now on. It's like a drug, I like to put myself under such pressure, I like to juggle every aspect of my life and let everything revolve around this novel that I'm writing.

I have a system this time, over the last two years I was at college and could get away with pushing a deadline, but now I'm at university I know that deadlines are set in stone, so I have to be more flexible with my writing hours. Here's the decision I've made: try and get at least two days ahead over the course of the first week. That way I can drop a day if I need to.

I'm also going to try and write maybe an extra 150, 200 words a night, which is a couple of paragraphs, really, nothing at all. It'll all count towards inching ahead and giving myself some leeway that I'm going to need desperately towards the end of the month. How long that well-intentioned idea will last, though, who knows?

I hope no one minds me doing this, like, at uni and stuff.

You know what? Fuck them if they do. This is my thing. I started this long before them and I'll continue for as long as I damn well please. Writing is a passion, everything beside the education I've paid for is coming second. (Except Craig. Because, y'know, he's my boyfriend. Favouritism.)

I will be at every write-in bar one this year, since I'll be at Memorabilia on that Saturday. Which will be a day where no novelling will happen, all the more reason I need to stay ahead. It's better to be ahead than to have to catch up, is what I think, because when you begin to fall behind all you become aware of is catching up, and that's not exactly something you want to be doing. So yes, those are my theories.

I'm glad to be bringing my characters back again, they're like old friends I haven't seen in a long time. I've missed them. Although I have been planning this since February and I've been editing my novel from last year in between so they never actually went away... hm...

Ok, I have a better analogy. They're my best friends in all the world, and this is the road trip we've been building towards all year. And it's going to be fantastic.

See you on the other side.

-Katie xxx

To distract from how blog-lazy I've been of late...

...A review! I wrote this last year when a girl from year 10 reviewed Twilight in the school library magazine. Being of (sort of) sound mind and decent taste in literature, I was a little infuriated by it's glowing review of a book I find utterly atrocious. This was my reply. I just found it on my hard drive and thought I'd share. A real blog post soon, I promise!

---
Twilight Book Review: A Response.

Firstly, I believe that everyone is entitled to their own opinion, if you want to believe that Twilight and it's satellites are astounding pieces of enrapturing literature then that's fine. However, then I in turn am entitled to my opinion, which is this.

Twilight is one of the worst books I've ever read.
I say 'one of' because I've read a lot of books, some of which have simply not been for me, some have been predictable and others have been aimed at a much younger demographic. Twilight, I am sad to say, is one of the select few that covers all three of those bases. Except it is the latter masqurading as something more sophisticated.

As I read through the review of it in my college magazine I was not surprised at the review written by a 16-year-old girl with delusions that real love is all sacrifice and stalking. Rather, I would've been more shocked if someone had chosen to review something worthwhile like The Gone-Away World or The Name of the Wind, then I would've been less apathetic.

She said that it was a tale of true love's struggle against impossible obsticles. It's not. It's another teen romance with housetrained 'vegetarian' vampires, where every character is impossibly attractive and if they're in any way normal looking they're shunned as geeks, or spotty or generally not worth talking to. This is something that bothers me, mainly because most people are normal looking, every teenager gets spots and, for four or so years of their life, looks... not unattractive but normal. It's normal to have faults. Crooked smiles don't count. The truly beautiful are the elite and confined to Hollywood, no one looks incredible when they wake up in the morning. Everyone has bad days. Even Megan Fox.

When reading Twilight, because I have, I nearly lost the will to live, but I did. I spent much of my time expecting something to happen. The first line alone suggests that something should happen, and yet nothing ever does, and when the time comes for the final battle, the taking on of the Boss, so to speak, Bella passes out and due to the first person narrative, we miss it. So I read 400-odd pages for nothing. It seems to me that Ms. Meyer got so caught up in the wish-fullfillment of vampire romance that she forgot that something exciting is supposed to happen in a book and so tacked on a plot three quarters of the way through.

Also, it's teeming with... not grammatical errors as such, but syntax errors, it's full of stentences that only just make sense. I'm a writer, I write a novel every November for National Novel Writing Month and I know that there is a rhythm to reading, you don't read every single word, and if something trips you up, especially at a crucial point (and those are few and far between in Twilight) having to read something again can really ruin the intended pace and tone of a scene.

To conclude, I found Twilight, whiny and boring with vaugely unsettling undertones. Which isn't to say there are no positive points about it, there are some good slices of description and what could potentially be some fullfilling, well-rounded characters. The problem I have, however, is that the former are fleeting and the latter are almost completely ignored.

If you have any sense or reason do not read this book, it's a waste of time and energy. Leave it for the delusional twelve-year-olds who believe they're going to be whisked away by a sexist creature of the night with anger management problems who's 'just doing it because he loves her.'

Katie over and out!

Piece by Piece.

I was going to write this last night but I was tired and emotional and I’m glad I didn’t now. However, after having a good night’s sleep, I am going to write about it, but hopefully in a way people can understand and in a way which doesn’t make me sound like a whining, attention-seeking child.

Last night, I saw all of my college friends in the same place for what will be the last time before we’re scattered off around the country to university. I think it’s pretty safe to say that things are never going to be the same again, there are people I will never, ever see again. People I spent the last 7 years of my life around, in some cases. Some of them I’ll miss terribly, others… well, don’t let the door hit you on the way out springs to mind.

Last night was presentation evening, which is an evening at our college, where parents, teachers, and students alike gather together in a “well, you made it through college” kind of way. We have one every year, but this was the big one because it marked the end of a long, and occasionally difficult, journey. In short, awards are given out and everyone claps a lot.

Last night, I received my BTEC Diploma in art and design, walked across the stage in front of bored students and parents, shook my course co-ordinators hand and walked off again, only to sit down and get a numb arse and hands that stung from clapping.

However, there was wine afterwards. So it wasn’t all bad.

Sitting there watching wave after wave of students climb the stage and having to clap every single one of them in turn made me realise something: Presentation Evening is just another one of those things my school/college organises in order to celebrate the achievements of their students and yet it ends up having the exact opposite effect on me. I always walk away with a bitter hatred of myself and everyone else.

Now, I should state here that I don’t usually hate myself and the rest of humanity, I’m the kind of person who likes to find the silver lining in things, smiling is better than frowning and fun is better than misery. It is just Presentation Evening that turns me into a snivelling emo child. (Although I did go there when I was much younger than I am now, but that’s a story for a different day.)

And at last, I think I’ve found the reason why it bothers me so much. It’s the inequality of the whole evening. Which isn’t to insult anyone who won an award, not least my friends who thoroughly deserved theirs, it’s just… well, I’ll use the example of one young man (who my dad commented will probably be the next David Cameron and I’m inclined to agree) won four awards last night. Two subject awards, the Extended Essay award and the Principles cup. I spoke to him after and he said he hates winning them, and I can believe it. We used to be in the same form, and every single presentation evening that I have witnessed, he’s won at least two awards. Not to mention he was Prom King, (which was chosen by the teachers, and nowhere near as a big a deal in the UK as it is in the States, but still…) and was an ambassador at the modern UN.

I think what I’m trying to say, is that with my school, you either are or you are not. My boyfriend is (he’s won the Principles Cup twice, for God’s sake!) I, apparently, am not. Mostly, I’m fine with that, I do enough, I get good grades, I got into my dream university. I’m fine with no recognition for every single other evening of the year.

But when it comes to presentation evening. It bothers me and it bothers me terribly. I want to win something, I want credit for those months and months I quietly worked my arse off. I want someone to recognise my talent, because I am talented, I know that. No, I’m condemned to the realms of those who never quite made an impression, good or bad. Those who never got into trouble, but were just never quite worthy enough to be praised.

I’m sure in a few days I’ll go back to being fine with my mediocrity, but right now, it’s eating away at me, piece by piece.

- Katie xx