After realizing that my MC had no name, or personality so to speak of, and admitting that having no plot actually was a problem, tagline of the event be damned, I suffered massive writer's block. Not because I couldn't, if pressed, write another few thousand words, but because it all seemed so pointless, so futile.

The year I won NaNo I knew my characters. Granted, they changed a lot over the course of the story, but I had a basic idea of who they were, what they liked and didn't like, blah blah blah whatever. This year? Not so much.

I also am in desperate need of an outline. A conflict. Something. I'm slowly manufacturing one, but I'm over 5000 words in and don't have a bloody clue where I'm going or who my main players are...

Remedial writing 101 called.

Anyway. The main point of this, other than to dispair, is to say that the website Write or Die: Putting the "prod" in productivity is an amazing thing and really gets you writing, even if you don't know what the heck you're saying. Try it out, play with it. It's awesome.

The second thing is that I have a job interview tomorrow. I was depressed and frustrated and I took not one, but two naps today. Needless to say, I am now wide awake. It's a morning interview.

Fail.

I decided that this year, for NaNo, to better procrastinate and track my progress for a lot of different reasons, I would journal about the writing process.

Since it's 3:40am here in the Great White North I guess it's actually day three of this project, but since I haven't been to bed yet, I'm mentally tallying all this blah blah blah as the product of day two.

Oh, yeah, NaNoWriMo. So I haven't written anything original in months. Between the moving and the total collapse of my mental health which is now greatly improved, ta for asking, I just...stopped. Which, as I'm sure you can imagine, only added to my overall sense of frustration.

This year I spend day one marathoning CSI episodes with a blank document open in front of me. I couldn't decide on tone. I didn't really have a main character. Or a plot. I couldn't, I couldn't I couldn't.

But I had a blank doc open for the first time in what I think might actually have been months.

Day two I started writing. Not good writing. Not even slightly. But 2000 words are on the page and that's better than none. So maybe 300 of them are about a chair (I wish I was joking) and for some unexplainable reason vomiting has come up about 8 thousand times but hey, this is NaNoWriMo, right?

I've been doing a lot of blog reading these past few weeks. Mostly feminist musings and the musings of PoC. My own thoughts on what I've read are irrelevent to this post. Suffice it to say that I've found it all very interesting and thought-provoking.

I do have one complaint.

Women.
Woman.
Girl.
Female.

That is how these words are spelt. DO NOT SCREW WITH THAT. Do not change the spelling to grrrl or wimmin, or whatever the heck else pops into your head. These are not words.

I don't care that 'woman' has the word 'man' in it. That is how it is spelt. That is how it has grown from the Old English. That is just the way it is. Also, 'wimmin' doesn't mean anything. In the same tone, 'History' is not "his story" and if I see the word "herstory" I will be very angry. Do we understand each other?

I know and you know that the status is not quo but that is no excuse for poor grammar and spelling. Etymology is very close to my heart. I love the English language like a child. If you start screwing around with my child the metatphor will extend to me attacking you over its honour like an animal protecting its young.

Also, I cannot take the most serious of arguements seriously if just looking at your writing makes me want to break out a red pen.

That is all.

You know that old story about how all your favourite authors, or not your favourite authors, but really sucessful ones, how they all struggled before someone noticed their genius?

I may or may not have been bearing that in mind during the querying process that hatofhornigold and I are going through.

Here's new info just come to light, taken from the blog of Miss Snark (her italics, quoting someone else)

One good example would be the first Harry Potter book, rejected by so many publishers. "so many"...about 10 I think. And she got an agent very quickly--two queries.

But I could also mention authors like John Grisham,
15 queries, 3 yeses from agents.

End quoting.

Can I just say: "Ouch."

Ah well, we soldier on.

On top of feeling unwell today, I just got word that I did not get the job at the comic book store. They decided to hire someone with extensive knowledge instead, which I guess is fair enough, but I haven't heard back from anyone else and I had been kind of counting on this to come through. It would have saved my ass with homeland security.

On top of that, I am very lonely. I'm trying to keep a brave face on, but it's been kind of hard these past few days. My goals for the coming week were to drink more water and stay positive. I hate drinking water, so it should say something that I'm failing more at the latter than I am at the former.

So this morning I woke up, happy and ready to restart the waiting game, and thinking about SGA (which I am now compulsively watching) and if I was going to have yogurt and honey for brunch when I heard a faint scratching noise.

A few moments later, I saw a little wee face poke out from behind my bureau, followed by a wee little body as a mouse decided to run in front of my bureau.

I'm not scared of mice, but this startled me and I beleive the noise I made was "Woah!" and the wee little mouse ran away.

He's poked his head out again, but the sound of my typing is keeping him away.

Leopold, this town ain't big enough for the both of us...

So, uh...how do I get rid of him without hurting him?

Seriously, who thought it was a good idea for me to pack up my stuff and move to a city I've never been to before with nothing but the illegitimate daughter of a plan's third cousin?

I've had better ideas.

Today I am in Canada in the city home of the parental unit.

Tuesday (23rd Sept.)my father and I are driving up to the lake home to pack up some of my stuff and then promptly turning around and driving back to the city.

Wednesday (24th) I am going blonde. More of a white, actually, but still more job-friendly than the blue is.

Monday (29th) I am getting on a 12 o'clock (noon) plane to El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora la Reina de los Ángeles de la Porciúncula. Also known as L.A. I will be going with my father, who will leave again on the 2nd of October.

I am going there with no job and no flat. In two days I need to find a place to live, and hopefully a job in a bookstore or something.

It sounds like the premise for a bad reality T.V. show.

In other news, I'm putting an add on Craigslist so if you know how much I ought to be willing to pay for a furnished room in the Silverlake/Echo park area, please let me know. Every room I've seen so far has a flatmate with a cat and I'm, as you can tell, running out of time.

I recently finished reading "The Chicago World's Fair of 1893: a photographic record with text by Stanley Appelbaum." The pictures are fantastic and give a really good sense of the sheer temporary magnificence of the event. Not to mention, the whole business featured a lot of wonderful things- engines, trains, acrobatic performers - to oogle at (and several of the pictures are of crowd scenes for those interested, though they're not too great for anything other then wondering at why humanity doesn't wear more hats these days).

Under the cut are a few factoids from the book that I found interesting.

( Cut for length )

On a lighter note (well, not if you're Native American) here are some resources regarding the frontier of the colonies American West, for those of you more into the Western, frontier aestetic.

Adventures of Buffalo Bill from Boyhood to Manhood
Source Information: Adventures of Buffalo Bill from Boyhood to Manhood. Deeds of Daring, Scenes of Thrilling, Peril, and Romantic Incidents In the Early Life of W. F. Cody, the Monarch of Bordermen. Colonel Prentiss Ingraham (Beadle's Boy's Library of Sport, Story and Adventure, Vol. 1, No. 1) New York: [Beadle and Adams], [1882?]

The aboive is an incredibly pulpy children's dime novel about Buffalo Bill. The last chapter is actually a transcribed interview with him about his transition from frontiersman to stage performer. Easy to read, quick to read, fun for those who enjoy the frontier part of the era.

More Stephen Crane short stories, these two about the death of the frontier: The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky and The Blue Hotel which is laugh out loud funny in parts.

If you have not read the book "How the Other Half Lives" by Jacob Riis, 1890, you are missing half the fun of steampunk. This historical photographic and written account of the slums of New York is amazing and worth every moment spent poring over it.

The original book was not, however published with the photographs, but with drawings as mass-producing photographs was a few years off still, not many, but enough that this book only saw text and photos together in modern times. If you can spare the money, I would suggest a copy, it's fascinating. While many of his pictures were posed, the people were very real and so was their background.

Here is a link to the free hypertext edition online. Thank you Yale. It is here. It has the drawings, not the pictures. While interesting in terms of historical literary comparison, the photographs are what really make the text impact properly.

( Read more... )

The Coming of Modernism

William James (1842-1910), who, according to the Britannica Online was an "American philosopher and psychologist, a leader of the philosophical movement of Pragmatism and of the psychological movement of functionalism."

This is a site that has pretty much everything you could ever want to read by him inculding essays such as Talks to Students on Some of Life's Ideals (1899) and Principles of Psychology (1890).

Stephen Crane (1871-1900) not only wrote the poem The Black Riders which is a personal favourite of mine, but also The Open Boat and The Red Badge of Courage (which I am told every American is made to read in highschool).
This site, the Stephen Crane Society has most of his short stories archived to read as well as having various biographical information and links.

William Dean Howells was the leading figure in American realism. He wrote A Hazard of New Fortunes, which was published in 1890. While he did write a number of other things, including some cultural commentary (which I have a post about here) this is considered his most exceptional literary accomplishment. In A Hazard of New Fortunes he writes about urbanization, social mobility, and class conflict, set against the background of contemporary New York, at a time when urban life was increasingly becoming, in many observers' opinions, the standard of social reality.

(Also, he hung out with Mark Twain. Which makes him 9 more interesting.)

( A vague plot outline, no spoilers )

The William Dean Howells Society
A wonderful site that contains a biography and html copies of his written works.

( Excerpts from William Dean Howells, Criticism and Fiction (1891) )

Reccomended Reading

On the Lower East Side: Observations of Life in Lower Manhattan at the Turn of the Century
Compiled and edited by William Crozier, Clarke Chambers, Patrick Costello, Chad Gaffield, Beverly Stadium. The HTML version of this document was edited by Wes Miller and Chad Massey.

What this delightful document is, is several essays on (oddly enough) life in lower Manhattan at the turn of the century. With essayists such as Jacob Riis and William Dean Howells addressing topics relating to the tennements of the area. The residents are most often described as "inmates" and conditions are both appalling and fascinating. Well worth a read if you are interested in the underbellies of major cities.