musical fiction story

So this is Sparknotes 2nd fiction contest. You should enter it too! I had a great response from my last entry, which sparked my other blog Zac Serves It Right otherwise known as Lunch is Served. I love contests like this because they're short and sweet and focused, which makes me more motivated and encouraged to enter and actually FINISH lol.

RULES

Entry period: March 1 — March 31

Story length: 2,000 words max

What to send:
1) Your username
2) Your story, pasted into the body of an email
3) The title of your story
4) The name of the song on which your story is based

Where to send your entry: missmarm@sparknotes.com

bitter love story

"Remember writing doesn't love you. It doesn't care. Nevertheless, it can behave with remarkable generosity. Speak well of it, encourage others, pass it on."

Dear Journal,


I hope you enjoy your travels with me on the lightrail. That means you mean enough to me that I don't leave you behind in exchange for a novel, because that would be so much easier for me to deal with. You're tough, stubborn and don't listen, but when things go well, I'm incredibly happy and thankful you're there with me. 


Sorry for the yogurt or tea stains on you. I eat breakfast on the go.


Love,


Your dutiful attending writer

The Genius Stops By

It's been a looong time since I've posted. Why? I haven't felt inspired...haven't had time...felt lazy-- a whole number of reasons. Since NaNo, my creative fuel has altogether vanished, but once listening to the amazing Elizabeth Gilbert speak at the TED conference, I realized that I was approaching my writing process the entirely wrong way. It's not exactly my fault if I'm not writing brilliance, but it's my fault if I don't " show up to work" ready to be assisted by my writing genius. Check out her speech to see what I'm mean.



I'm off to sit my butt in a chair, grab my journal and pen and begin writing, whether I like it or not.  I might add some dancing around every few minutes with some chants of Allah and Ole:)
I'm going to finish this first draft before school ends, I swear.

Writing Advice from Junot Diaz

So Junot Diaz, author of The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, wrote about the difficulties of writing on oprah.com, and I thought it was fitting to read his thoughts, since I'm in the horrible third week of NaNo and I'm really really behind in my story. Here are two parts of his article that I really liked.


"It wasn't that I couldn't write. I wrote every day. I actually worked really hard at writing. At my desk by 7 A.M., would work a full eight and more. Scribbled at the dinner table, in bed, on the toilet, on the No. 6 train, at Shea Stadium. I did everything I could. But none of it worked. My novel, which I had started with such hope shortly after publishing my first book of stories, wouldn't budge past the 75-page mark. Nothing I wrote past page 75 made any kind of sense. Nothing. Which would have been fine if the first 75 pages hadn't been pretty damn cool. But they were cool, showed a lot of promise. Would also have been fine if I could have just jumped to something else. But I couldn't. All the other novels I tried sucked worse than the stalled one, and even more disturbing, I seemed to have lost the ability to write short stories. It was like I had somehow slipped into a No-Writing Twilight Zone and I couldn't find an exit. Like I'd been chained to the sinking ship of those 75 pages and there was no key and no patching the hole in the hull. I wrote and I wrote and I wrote, but nothing I produced was worth a damn."


"Because, in truth, I didn't become a writer the first time I put pen to paper or when I finished my first book (easy) or my second one (hard). You see, in my view a writer is a writer not because she writes well and easily, because she has amazing talent, because everything she does is golden. In my view a writer is a writer because even when there is no hope, even when nothing you do shows any sign of promise, you keep writing anyway. Wasn't until that night when I was faced with all those lousy pages that I realized, really realized, what it was exactly that I am. "

More Snicket! More NaNo!

So I'm taking a break from writing to pass on a great piece of news from the New York Times. Lemony Snicket (Daniel Handler) is writing more books!

Lemony Snicket, the notorious pseudonym of Daniel Handler and the author of the bestselling “Series of Unfortunate Events” sequence, has agreed to sell the North American rights to publish a new four-part series to Little, Brown &Co., moving from HarperCollins. The first volume in the new series is scheduled to be published by Little, Brown Books for Young Readers in 2012. In a press release, Megan Tingley, publisher of Little, Brown’s Children’s division, said the new books would be a series of “highly inventive and entertaining works that will enthrall Lemony Snicket’s legions of fans.”Mr. Handler has also signed a deal with Little, Brown Books for Young Readers to publish his first young adult novel. The book, as yet untitled, will be illustrated by Maira Kalman, who composes an occasional visual blog for the New York Times Op-Ed page. That novel will be published in 2011.As part of the deal, Mr. Handler’s longtime editor, Susan Rich, will join Little, Brown as an editor-at-large in the Young Readers group.The “Series of Unfortunate Events” books, which have sold 60 million copies worldwide and apparently ended in 2006, were published in North America by HarperCollins Children’s Books.

I love the "apparently" added. It did not "apparently" end. It did. The last book was called "The End," in fact. Lol.

As for NaNo, I'm at 12,094 words right now, which is horribly behind what I should be at, roughly 18,000, but I'm aiming for 15k by the end of the night. I've been writing each day, but the problem is I'm not writing enough to keep up sadly. But the story is moving along now, so it should get easier, I hope.

Until later!

NaNoWriMo is almost here!

" Oh, would that my mind could let fall its dead ideas, as the tree does its withered leaves!"  -Andre Gide

pic copyright Adrian Pingstone

I'm soooo excited for NaNoWriMo. I feel like I have this secret purpose in my life outside of homework now. I have my novel idea and rough characters, but I haven't looked at my notes in ages, so I'm going to do that to get back into the groove. I am really concerned with getting stuck and losing steam early on, because it's been so long since I've been involved in my story. But I think the momentum of the NaNo events and the letters of encouragement they send should help me.


 I have to be very very very focused. 1,666 words per day. I'm setting an alarm to go off each day to make sure I have a habitual writing time. I also have 2 essays for school to work one, one which is due next Friday, so it's going to be stressful for the first week or so. But  we'll see. It just means I need to work harder, sleep less, no YouTube time, no Facebook, no Hulu, no long lunch and dinner chats with friends. It's going to be a lonely, but productive month.


But the weather is also AMAZING. Autumn puts me in such a good mood. It's chilly and I can have tea or apple cider while typing furiously on my laptop. The cold will keep me from socializing and going outside:)


My Zac blog will be taking a break so I can actually get this novel done, but I'll be back with him in December hopefully. So far I have 5 dishes and 7 subscribers yayyyy. I'm so proud of myself for doing that blog. It's a strange, unconcious story that's continuing and I have no idea where that project is going. But it's there and that's what matters. 


I hope some of you do NaNoWriMo too. It'll be nice to have some company. I've joined the East Valley group and the Phoenix group, so I can meet up with them and discuss our novel troubles throughout the month. This is going to be real change of pace, but I think it should be a good one. Good luck and happy writing!

Vooks are Not Vivacious Books

"Do not say a little in many words but a great deal in few."

- Pythagoras

pic copyright: manipulateddreams (deviantart)

So I read this interesting article in the NY Times about this new thing called a "vook." It's basically a virtual book, with text interspersed with digital elements like videos. It's the future of books! Or is it?

I like the fact that people are trying to shake up the literary world and expand the horizons of what a story is, but what worries me is that it's trying to avoid being a book. What's wrong with just reading a book with words? You read a book, because it's a book and if there's a movie adaptation, you might go see that to see how it looks, but both together? I don't know, it's weird to me.

Lots of books these days are now connecting to websites and adding a virtual world for the characters. Readers can go on and influence or discuss the storylines like in The 39 Clues, which is a huge hit in children's fiction. I think it's great that there are enthusiastic readers who want to continue the story outside the pages the author wrote. Especially since most kids won't talk about a book outside of class, but they'll be more than willing to go on discussion boards and talk about who Blair and Serena should end up with or who should have gone home on American Idol.

It's an interesting idea, but I don't want it to be an excuse for people to not actually read words anymore. All that flashes is not a good story. Words paint pictures and emotions that can't be physically reproduced in my opinion. I work hard to be able to capture an image and bring a character to life and to have a video replaces parts of that text would make it all seem pointless...But we'll see whether this catches on or not.

To read the article, check it out here:http://tinyurl.com/ydmfkk5