Happy Birthday, Jane

I couldn't let Jane Austen's birthday pass unnoted. Here's some info on the lovely genius herself, courtesy of The Writer's Almanac:

It's the birthday of Jane Austen, born in Hampshire, England (1775). She published her books anonymously; the byline stated that the book was by "a Lady." Not many people read her books while she was alive, though among her small devoted readership, her novels were highly esteemed. She died in 1817. Five decades later, in 1869, her nephew published A Memoir of Jane Austen, and his book spawned widespread interest in Austen, which led to the reprinting of her novels. It also touched off a sort of mania for Austen in the 1880s, known as "Austenolatry." It wasn't until the 1940s — more than 100 years after she had died — that Austen's work became the focus of large volumes of academic scholarship.

Fess up, what's your favorite Austen novel? Mine is P&P - of course. Least favorite is Mansfield Park because Fanny is such a ninny. I plan to read Northanger Abbey as soon as I finish reading Jane Eyre for the 100th time. Austen is amazing but Charlotte Bronte is just...perfect.

There are Two Kinds of People in the World

One night last week, JB and I went to Barnes&Noble after dinner. I had a B&N gift card burning a hole in my purse, and he's always up for a trip to the bookstore.

We walked inside and immediately - and simultaneously - detoured to the right instead of making a beeline for the front display tables as usual. This is not because we wanted coffee or magazines (enough of those at home, thanks). No, it's because we spotted an Annoying Person From The Past.

We both knew this particular APFTP from college and had no desire to speak to said person. We loitered in the nearby map aisle, hoping APFTP would go away. No luck. And of course APFTP was in the Fic & Lit section - precisely where I wanted to be. Plus, APFTP was blocking JB's route to the sci-fi/fantasy section so he was none too happy either.

I know. We could have just sucked it up and said hi. Reminisced about old times for a few minutes and then parted ways.

But there are two kinds of people in the world: Avoiders and Greeters. We are the former. I like to think of myself as a friendly person, but honestly, if I see someone I kind-of-know - OK, anyone who isn't a good friend or blood relative - out in public, I'm going to pretend I didn't see them and move on quickly. Maybe it's the interovert in me. But even if you're an avowed member of the Greeter camp, you've got to admit that you've done it too, at one time or other.

What if APFTP wasn't planning to leave soon? We'd eventually wind down our chat awkwardly, "well, uh, i guess I'll see you...um...later?..." and then head off to neighboring aisles where we (or at least I) would pretend we didn't see each other. Then we'd keep accidentally bumping into each other the rest of the time in the bookstore, and I'd feel obligated to either say something or to listen to APFTP describe some boring incident from his/her life and smile politely and...the whole bookstore trip would be ruined!

This is selfish, I know. And immature. But I'm all about honesty here and, well, that's just me. There are times I resist the urge to avoid, but in this particular case, I loathed the thought of striking up what I knew would be a long and boring conversation.

After a few more minutes, JB and I realized APFTP wasn't leaving, so we...left. Yes, friends, we are Master Avoiders. We headed to Target in the same shopping center, killed some time in there (who doesn't love killing time in Target) and then went back to B&N, so dedicated were we to having our book-browsing time.

APFTP was still there. With a coffee. Seated in a squishy chair, reading, with all appearances of not planning to move for a very long time. Hmpf.

So we skulked around the bookstore until we'd found books we wanted. We scooted to the checkout and got the heck out of there, back to the hermit-like safety of our home. We'd live to avoid people another day.

...

On another note, I have a ton of blog catchup reading to do. The entire publishing industry could have crashed in the past couple of weeks and I wouldn't know it. If you've had majorly aweseome happenings in your life, congratulations! I will read about them, er, very soon.

Lame.

I know, I'm lame for not posting a while. My lame (but true) excuse is that I'm snowed under at work...though not actually "snowed" since I live in Alabama and, well, if we had one centimeter of snow here, it'd be labeled Blizzard 2009 and everything would be closed so I'd have a lot more time to blog. If the power didn't cut off, that is. One centimeter of snow can really do a number on the power around here.

Also lame is that I came nowhere near finishing NaNoWriMo this year. Sigh. If you did, I'd love to hear how you finished. And also if you have snow now or are expecting any kind of White Christmas. I think we had our last snowy Christmas when I was 6. Since that was 20 years ago, I'd say it's about time for another.

A new genre just for me

I'm Crazy Excited about "New Adult" lit. I don't want to jump on the "OMG It's the Next Big Thing" bandwagon just yet, but...OMG. I think I've found my Mothership.

You can read more about what New Adult lit is here. (Basically it's just what it sounds like: books for late teens and early 20s). And see a Twitter chat discussing it here (scroll to Nov. 11, around 9 p.m.). An even better interview with the New Adult guru editorial assistant JJ is here. Then Michael at Upstart Crow Literary discusses it here (but he's not a fan).

When I queried my previous manuscript earlier this year, a mystery with a college sophomore as the heroine, I got more than one response from an agent saying she (usually it's a she) liked the writing but wouldn't know where to place it. My heroine was too old for YA and too young for adult fiction.

Well, crap. Where does that leave me?

My writing voice right now, for good or bad, leans more YA (and, shudder, a little bit Chick Lit though I really hate to call it that) but - and this has plagued me for months - if I'm being honest with myself, I'm not drawn to teenage characters and I don't care about high school. There, I said it. I thought maybe the YA genre was for me, but it's just not.

I first mentioned my problem here. I like writing about girls in their early 20s, the ones who are little more mature but certainly not adults yet. Also, I hate writing love interests who are high school boys. High school boys are lame; everyone knows this. High school itself can be kind of lame sometimes, and I think most people start to truly discover who they are in the years after high school. If you read through the Twitter link above it's obvious at least a few other writers out there feel the same way.

The whole idea of a "New Adult" category of fiction seems like such an obvious choice for a new niche because:

1. Lots of people around my age (26) and a few years younger have postponed - whether purposefully or not - what's generally considered "adulthood." I have many friends who've moved back in with their parents post-college and/or are struggling to decide what exactly they want to be when they grow up. They're not (that) spoiled and they're not whiny. It's an honest and genuine problem for this generation. If you don't believe it, ask yourself why Judd Apatow comedies are so popular.

2. There have been lots of great YA books out for a few years now. Those readers expect good lit geared just to them. Now they're getting a bit older and they're going to keep expecting that. Like @EdgmontGal said in the twitter convo above, "like suddenly those kids would want to read about people in their 30s w/jobs and families"?

3. College and early 20s is an intense time of life, filled with major changes and upheaval. It's ripe for literary exploration, but books about college-aged MCs are hard to find (Diana Peterfreund's Secret Society Girl books and Donna Tartt's The Secret History are the only ones that come to mind). It's even rarer to find them written about a college-age protagonist for college-age readers.

I've been worried for months about my WIP, the Southern Gothic piece, thinking I'm shooting myself in the foot again because the MC is 19. She's an adult, and yet not an adult. But I can't help it; she's the kind of character I want to write. Plus, and this is awesome: JJ, the editorial assistant at St. Martin's who is looking for New Adult, said in the Twitter chat, and I quote: "Yes, du Maurier's REBECCA could be New Adult. Same with Bronte's JANE EYRE".

SWEET MOTHER that is exactly what I want to write...well, updated, of course. Those two books are the main inspiration for my Southern Gothic. Heck yes. Things are looking rosy.

I'm so, so over high school. Long live New Adults.

Delete key is on hiatus

(Barbara Stanwyck and Fred MacMurray in Double Indemnity, 1944)

NaNoWriMo has been a complete experiment this year. I took a break from agonizing over my latest WIP to write a ridiculous, cliched mystery caper set in 1937 Chicago. I'm not allowing myself to edit as I write (much). I'm not planning to ever shop this thing to agents, see it published or otherwise bring it into the light of day. Talk about relieving the pressure.

I think some of us, particularly writing-world bloggers, can get too caught up in all the publishing talk out there. I love agent and publisher blogs as much as the next person (maybe more) but at some point, it's time to take a breather and just concentrate on the writing. Nothing else. Not my audience, or where it will go on the bookshelves, or which agents might be interested, or what's going on with that lovely blogger over there who just got a major publishing contract and holy crap she's younger than me, and I'd better hurry up and get published while I'm still young and attractive enough to have a pretty book-jacket author photo, and the YA readers will still think I'm marginally cool, and...

This month of NaNo is all about working through my writing neuroses: the constant need to edit as I go, the paralyzing fear that everything I'm writing is crap, the compulsive need to get it "right" the first time.

I've been writing fluffy, cliched and poorly-planned scenes for the past few weeks and completely enjoyed it. I have no idea where the plot is going, but...who cares? This is for fun, not for publication.

More importantly, I've learned lessons writing this WIP that seem so obvious, but have been hard to accept. They're making me a better writer. The lessons can fall under one main tenet:

It's OK if a first draft is crap.

Obvious I know. But so, so hard to put into practice. Then, the following:

1. It's OK if I don't sit for five minutes thinking of the perfect phrase or word to go in a particular sentence. Use what's most obvious or cliched and move on. I get boundless joy from editing, so it'll get fixed later.

2. I don't have to wait until I know exactly what happens next before I sit down to write another scene.

3. And a sneaky tip: don't look at the screen while you write. I've found I get a whole lot more words on the page if I'm not looking at them while I type. If I don't look at them, I can't see bad writing and stop what I'm doing to fix it.

So now for the status report.

Novel Update

Word count: 13,063

Number of times heroine has been followed by someone creepy: 3

Noir films watched as "research": 1. Double Indemnity. Awesome. Movie. Barbara Stanwyck is so, so cool.

Pages of notes taken during Double Indemnity even though I'm not writing noir: 2

Number of my characters described as "shadowy:" 3

Number of people in heroine's bedroom when she awakens in the middle of the night: 1. That she can see. Mwah ha ha ha.

Number of mice I saw this week in person: 1. (Not related to the novel, but ew. Just ew.)

It's a toss up between Five-Face and The Prince of Evil

I just returned from visiting my sister in Charleston and have some awesome photos of a preserved-not-restored (yay!) antebellum mansion that I'll try to post soon. It was great research for my "real" novel--you know, the one on hiatus until I exorcise my writing demons with NaNoWriMo.

Of course it was good to see my little sis this week, too. Lucky for me (and my novel) that she's getting a master's degree in historic preservation, given the deep-South setting of the "real" novel and my penchant for dilapidated buildings.

But on to the novel at hand, my 1930s mystery caper for NaNoWriMo. Here's the progress so far:

Novel Update
Word count: 11,622
Number of disguises: 4
Number of eggrolls: 5
Number of chase scenes: 2
Number of large women: 3 (if you count the man dressed as a woman)
Number of randomly connected things I looked up last night on Wikipedia in the name of research: 3. The Shadow, autogyros and Edward Bulwer-Lytton.
Number of cool and/or awesomely bad villain names I might steal from The Shadow radio series: 5. The Red Blot, Five-Face, The Death Giver, Gray Fist and The Prince of Evil.

Great Aunt Ollie & Peanut

Remember how I mentioned my MC for the crazy bad NaNo novel I'm writing has a pet squirrel? And that I didn't just invent that because I had a great aunt somewhere who owned a pet squirrel?

I now have corroboration. My mom e-mailed me the details about dear Great Aunt Ollie, who was married to my maternal grandmother's brother. Here's what she had to say:

Yes, your great Aunt Ollie Sauls (married to Maw-Maw’s brother, Norman—who had alligators) had a pet squirrel named Peanut. She kept it in her house in a bird cage, but Peanut ran around in the house wherever and whenever he wanted most of the time.

Aunt Ollie was a chain smoker, a little eccentric and loved that squirrel. Peanut would eat out of her hand. I don’t remember how Peanut died, or even how Peanut came to be her pet, but I know she was crazy about him. I was always afraid of him.

I picture Peanut, the devious squirrel, staring down my mom as a little girl, a malicious glint in his eye. Probably daring her to make one move...

I never knew Aunt Ollie, but I did meet Norman a couple of times when I was little. He kept alligators in a trough on his property. I'm not sure what's up with that, except that my mom's mom's side of the family was always considered the "artsy" side (genteel Southern code for strange and eccentric).

It's generally accepted that my mom, my sister and I all get our creative bents (Mom is a musician, sis is an artist, I write) from that side. My maternal grandmother was an artist, too. My great-grandmother (mom's mom's mom)...well, she did keep peacocks, which is less creepy than alligators and a lot nicer to look at.

Elevators, mobsters, and poisoned booze

Day 2 of NaNoWriMo. I can't express my utter relief at writing something with absolutely no view to eventually shop it to agents, or consideration of what kind of reader would want to read it, where it would fit into today's book market, how an editor would handle it, whether it's derivative or bland, what kind of rewrites it will need, whether the characters are sufficiently tortured, or even if everything is historically accurate.

Bascially, none of the worries plaguing me into a state of writerly panic on my beloved Southern Gothic manuscript.

This is vacation. A much-needed writing vacation.

I've gone with Option B and I'm happier for it. I envision returning to writing my "real" novel in December, with fresh eyes and far less angst.

Option B is morphing into a 1930s mystery caper. Or a 1920s caper. Or we could be looking at late 1940s. Meh. Who knows? I've got a dead body on page 4; all is right with the world.

To avoid those long, boring this-is-what's-happening-in-my-novel posts, I'm reinstating the Novel Update.

Novel Update, Day 2

Words: 2,154

Number of decades in which I've considered placing the story: 3

Dead bodies: 1 (poisoned booze)

Google/Wikipedia searches on poison: 4 (There's an entire List of People Who Have Been Poisoned and How. Holy moly that is SO COOL.)

Love interests: 1

Scenes in an elevator: 1

Suspicious persons: 2 and counting

Hours spent looking up 20s and 1930s fashion: 1.5 (this site was particularly helpful)