The Demon's Lexi-Yawn

[Please forgive the horrid, horrid pun.]

So, I tend to avoid book reviews, mostly because I always feel awkward writing them, but since it's not like I have any great nuggets of wisdom about writing to share, and since my life is about as exciting as watching slime mold grow (no offense, George), I figured I might as well try my hand at the reviewing thing again.

So.

The Demon's Lexicon, by Sarah Rees Brennan, is a book with what I thought was a fantastic premise--teenage brothers living with their erratic mother and being hunted by evil magicians, the older brother gets a demon's mark that is basically a death sentence, suddenly it turns out there are a whole lot of secrets the younger brother doesn't know. I'm not the best summarizer, and I didn't actually finish the book (which I'll explain in a minute), but that's the basic gist.

I discovered this book through a bad review. Sadly, I don't remember who reviewed it or where, but I recall the book being described as "badly disguised Harry Potter fanfic with a Supernatural bent" or something of the like. (Incidentally, this same review finally pushed me into watching the show Supernatural, and I love it to bits.) But, this reviewer also described the book's premise in an extremely intriguing way, and so I thought--might as well give it a try, right? So, off to the library website to put it on hold.

Fast forward to a week or so later, and a much-anticipated reading.

Let me say something: at this point, I had already seen, I think, the entire first season of Supernatural. Like I said, I loved it. I like urban fantasy. But, this book kind of crystallized something for me: I freaking HATE swords in urban fantasy. Hate them. Loathe them. Despise them with the fiery passion of a billion frozen stars, or some other somewhat mixed metaphor thing. (With the much-deserved exception of the Kate Daniels series by Ilona Andrews, which is pure awesomeness distilled into book format, but the magic in that world isn't a hidden thing, and it makes sense to carry a sword, 'cause you can use a sword even when the magic makes your opponent's gun unusable...)

So, when the book opened with,

"The pipe under the sink was leaking again. It wouldn't have been so bad, except Nick kept his favorite sword under the sink,"

I was immediately put off. Swords are tacky, I think, in urban fantasy. They just are. They totally don't fit with the modern world. Some worlds, they're acceptable; for me, in most urban fantasy I've seen, they're just... y'know... tacky.

So, already unimpressed, I read on. And discover: this kid is a freaking jerk. That's the only way I can describe him. Nick in a word: a jerk. A big, fat, completely self-centered jerk. Oh, I'm so depressed, my life sucks because I'm chased by magicians, everyone else is a stupid idiot if they think they have occult problems because I have REAL occult problems. The brat has no empathy for other people. He doesn't care. Completely egocentric and misanthropic and--I think I got almost 100 pages in before deciding I wasn't going to keep spending time with this kid. No way. I get enough of jerks in real life; I don't want them in the books I read, too.

To be fair, he's a teenager. And he kind of does have a point. It's the attitude, though. You can tell, this is a guy who really doesn't give a crap about other people, except maybe his brother. I find it hard to sympathize with someone who hates people. (Somewhat ironic, considering who's talking here, but my I-hate-people phases are always short-lived and always directed strictly at jerks and mean idiots and mean idiotic jerks, so I'm going to pretend I'm not actually being a hypocrite here.) One of the things I love most about Supernatural is, the main characters care about people. They want to help. That's what sells it, for me (that, and the, y'know, paranormal craziness that is the selling point of the show, but that is completely beside the point).

So, I'm not sure if I can technically call this a book review, considering this is one of the few books I've never finished. (Actually, I find that as I get older, I'm more inclined to just stop reading a book if it bores or angers me in some way. Case in point.) I'm not saying the book itself is bad, because I didn't read enough of it to tell. (Although, a kid going up against a flock of murderous birds with a sword is a little dumb in my opinion, but considering my bias against swords...) Definitely, Brennan's got a great handle on Nick's voice. All jerk, all the time. Probably perfectly realistic, too (re: teenager). Which is exactly why I couldn't handle reading further.

I put up a valiant fight, too. Kept telling myself, just one more page. One more page of jerkface. One... more... and then the exciting part of the plot will pop up and it won't matter how much of a jerk the POV character is, because PLOT! And SECRETS! But... obviously, did not work out.

Conclusion: The Demon's Lexicon, by Sarah Rees Brennan. A potentially awesome book that simply didn't work for me.

Le Updatery

And in case anyone was wondering, Firefox apparently does not do its spellcheck thing in the title box. Because "updatery" is totally not a word.

Soo, despite life, I am currently on day 33 of 100 words a day or bust. And it's awesome. Last night was possibly the worst night of the semester, what with family and emotional issues and I had an essay to write that I really shouldn't have put off so long but of course did, but I got 753 words in anyway. Pretty good words, too. Probably not great ones, but they're words, so I'm totally not complaining. Which brings the currently untitled fantasy to a grand total of... wait for it... 20,957 words! Epic! (I'm probably totally hitting 21k tonight. Yay!) So that's exciting. And I'm still sort of working on my NaNo Redux, though I'm not actively writing on it at the moment, for various plot-related reasons (namely, the lack thereof...).

So. George.

George is the name of my pet slime mold. I know I mentioned him before, though I don't remember if I'd named him yet. I really like George. He is the closest thing I can get to having a pet in the dorms. No, he's not fuzzy, and he's not cuddly, and I don't really want to touch him because that would be kind of gross... but if I can't have a rat, or my kitties, or a dog, I'd rather have a slime mold than nothing, you know?

Sadly, George is having some "behavioral" issues. Really, they're not his fault at all, because it's his nature to grow. That's the problem: growth. He continues to grow beyond the bounds of his petri dish a lot faster than I can feed him and hopefully convince him to go after the inside food. So, right now, he's sitting in a Ziploc bag, and his little yellow masses of tendrils are spreading all over the place. I really, really don't want to ever get rid of George. Ever. I love George. He is awesome. (And, yes, I'm emotionally attached to him, a bit, which is really, really weird, but I'm having a hard time adjusting to the whole transition to adult life thing so I think it's understandable.) But that will be difficult if he continues to do this growing-unchecked thing.

Sigh. Life is hard.

Slime Molds and Updates and Bears, Oh My

...okay, going to warn you ahead of time: there will probably be no actual mention of bears. Except for right then. So there kind of was. Hah! I'm awesome. (Not really.)

But seriously, folks...

So, today was a lot better than Tuesday, when I had a panic attack and literally no way to get in contact with anyone to talk me out of my panic because I have no way to pay my phone bill because it's paid online and so my phone service has been cut off. Yeah, that sucked. Today was much better. And now I have a pet slime mold.

What's a slime mold? It's slimy. It's moldy. And it magically transforms from DEMON BLOB FROM SPACE to a spore-producing not-so-slimy thing and back again for random reasons I wasn't quite able to make out from the fungus demonstration where I got my pet slime mold. (Slime molds are not technically in the fungus kingdom, but they're still included in mycology, apparently. Fun!) Actually, I like fungi. And learning about them. They're quite fascinating in a strange way. Part of my interest stems from the (not so productive when looking at my original goals) research I did for my NaNo novel, which involved material-based magic. I was not able to find much on medicinal or other popular and historical uses for mushrooms, but I did learn random interesting facts which I've totally forgotten by now and also saw many pictures of rather fascinating non-plant things. Which somehow resulted in me taking this introductory plant pathology course focused on mushrooms.

It's actually a really fun class. The professor's freaking hilarious.

Anyway, speaking of my NaNovel (if you remember from way back when thirty bajillion words ago, because, y'know, I'm awful wordy), I am re-doing it. I'm calling it the NaNo 2011 Redux, or Redux for short, because it still has no title. And some things are sort of different about it.

And one thing, or rather, one person is very, very different.

So, first draft, the draft I was "writing" during NaNo (the one that sucked beyond all description, except maybe for a couple of places, but surely this time I'm not just ragging on it because I wrote it...) has this character named Del. Del is very quiet. Reserved. Has, like, three lines in 32,000 words, despite being a main character (to be fair, he actually only shows up in like two scenes, but still... wow, kind of non-present for a main character, wasn't he...). He just. Doesn't. Talk.

Cut to this new version, with mostly everything the same except better and there's this dude, right? He's a fed, or pretending to be one, and manages to involve himself in FMC Lyssa's life. Earlier today, I wrote a 455-word scene snippet where this guy and Lyssa exchange some pretty awesome banter-at-gunpoint.

You can tell where I'm going with this, right? I'm not exactly being as subtle as I think I'm being. ...or something like that.

Yeah, that dude? Del. Del is now a chatty federal-agent-imposter-person. Of course, the important part is still the same--he's still a "demon," which is short for "I don't have a better term for these guys so I'm just going to call them demons even though that word has the wrong connotations for what I'm looking for."

Anyway, did I mention the 100-words-a-day thing? Probably. I think I did. Anyway, that's still working out great. I think my writing's improved already (*stance of happy*). But, for now it's changed a bit--it's now 200 words a day. 100 on the project I've been working on these past two-ish weeks, 100 on Redux.

I'm kind of worried that I'm losing momentum on the first project, but I am NOT dropping this one without a fight. I will drop it when I literally have to pay for each tortuous new word with sweat of blood, and not a day earlier! Rawr.

...geez, I'm a freak.

Unintended SRS BIZNESS? Head For the Hills!

So, since my last post, I've written... oh, bugger. Excuse me while I go write the last 59 words required to make it a round 3k.

*sounds of anal-retentive typing*

Ahem. So, since my last post, I've written exactly 3,013 words. This means, basically, that this last week has been my single most productive week since I graduated from high school, not including NaNo, and not including the Sekrit Santa short story that I totally didn't put off writing until the last minute so I totally don't know what you're talking about. >.<

Anyway, this is a supremely exciting thing for me. I love writing. It's been a long time since I could let myself love writing. I got some of that through NaNo and the short story, true, but it's been a long time since I've been able to write without feeling the pressure of holy-crap-I-have-no-idea-how-this-is-going-to-turn-out-it'll-never-be-publishable-holy-crap. Because, y'know, I'm one of those very foolish people who worry about publication before they've even gotten into the meat of a novel, much less finished one.

...wow. Confessing that actually makes me feel a little better.

I do give the self-righteous answers: I don't write with an eye towards publication, I write strictly for the joy of it! Half of that's true. I write for the joy of writing. Three guesses as to which part's false, and the first two don't count unless they involve cookies. (What? I like cookies.)

I'm going to be honest: my greatest goal in life is to make a living off of my writing. Improbable? Yes. Impossible until I actually start finishing things? Oh, heck yes. This is what contributes the most to my stress about writing, and possibly prevents me from investing in a project after I hit the first bump. I get a problem, freak out because this obviously means I'll never finish the plot in a thousand bajillion years, and then latch on to the first shiny new idea to cross my brain (average elapsed time: 3 seconds) in the hopes that this is the one, this is the project that will get me across that distant finish line and onto the road of editing that leads to the shiny city of publication in the distance (so my metaphors suck, what else is new?).

I can't imagine myself doing anything other than writing with my life, and not just because I love writing with all the passion of a thousand bajillion icy stars. No, it's also because I can't imagine myself being able to function in any other job. I can't function as an adult--this becomes painfully more clear with every day that passes here at college. I can barely handle doing my laundry; I can barely handle showering more than once a week; phoning anyone other than my mother, including close friends and siblings, freaks me out way too much to be healthy. Writing is the one thing I'm confident I can do. Or, I am when I'm looking at it objectively, which I don't do all that much.

So, every time I drop a project, another little part of me becomes convinced I'll never be able to make it in the world. I'll starve to death because I can't hold a job, because I can't handle people. Or something.

...I really think I had a point going into this, but it's gotten lost in the sea of angst. Urgh.

I guess what I'm saying is, this nice, consistent at-least-100-words-a-day (I'm finding somewhere around 350 has been my average so far) thing is really kind of helping me with the writing-related stress. I still have loads of it, but... some very small part of the confidence I once had that I could get published one day, that I might even--gasp!--be able to make a living off of the words I pull out of my head, is returning, or at least sending letters and sounding out the situation at home to decide if returning is really in its best interest. And, at this point in my life, when I'm this very close to getting my first real-person job and freaking out about time management and dealing with other people, that little bit of (potential) confidence is definitely making a difference. A small difference, but it's there, and I really appreciate it.

...okay, I swear this just started out as an update post, not a touchy-feely admitting-I-fail-at-being-a-real-person post.

And, like, what's with all the crappy metaphors?

Aaaand... Quick Update

'Cause I know the whole Internet's just waiting with bated breath to hear the latest in my ongoing non-exploits. *crickets*

Ahem. Anyway.

Yesterday, I wrote 154 words. All world-building. None horrible, none too great. Some which can't possibly be correct because of certain world-building details, but I honestly haven't done any in-advance world-building on this project yet so that and more is kind of to be expected.

Bottom line, I got the first (non-badly-written in Japanese) words on this or any project for the first time since the twentieth of December, and I'm feeling pretty good about it. I love writing. I'm just also absolutely freaking terrified of it. Why? No idea. Maybe the act of writing itself worries me--I do tend to get pretty wrung-out, emotionally, just from writing, even the not-tense-at-all scenes. Maybe I'm scared of failure. I mean, failure's scary. I know I'm scared of commitment, and I believe I may have a problem with getting close to my characters--emotional intimacy issues rearing their ugly heads. Again.

And, there's this fancy little thing called Club 100. I don't know much about it beyond what I've read on AW, though what I do know involves writing 100 words a day, every day. I think that's a good philosophy to adopt. So, I'm going to try that. How well will that work out? We'll see, but I'm hoping I can achieve some sort of consistency with this. Maybe. I'd love to be able to say I'm a consistent writer, and not claim to be a writer and then have to admit the sight of a blank page scares me so much I don't actually write anything.

Sometime soon I want to investigate the actual "rules" of this Club 100, but for now I'm just settling for my own personal goal of 100 words before I can sleep at night. Period. Sheesh, at this point I'd even settle just for typing out the numbers one to one hundred... okay, maybe not that desperate for wordage, but I'm definitely getting there.

I wonder if there's any irony in the fact I can blather on and on and on in a casual email or a blog post, and yet I can barely manage to write, and when I do, it's all minimalist description. (Which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but sometimes I worry about my average exposition-to-dialogue ratio...)

よっしゃ！がんばるぞ！(Translation: Bravado, I Haz Eet)

Yo, people!

...

...

...

Yeah, remember when I said I'd either finish November with 50,000 words or die trying? Well, apparently, I'm writing this from beyond the grave. (World's first ghostly blogger? Is there an award for that? 'Cause that would be AWESOME.)

Anyway. I want to say I have new resolve, y'know, new year and all that, but... quite frankly, I'm the same old me, with the same old bad habits. Which probably will result in the same old lame writing productivity.

That doesn't mean, though, that I'm giving up. I'm still alive, still stubbornly insisting I'll be a real, professional writer someday, and most importantly, I'm still insane. So--I'm going to give it my all again, this year. Even though my "all" isn't all that different from my "this looks like half-baked but I assure you I tried".

Ay, me.

You Know You're Excited for NaNo...

...when you dream about it and you're only halfway through October.

Last night, I dreamt of NaNoWriMo. Also, random family feuds and demonic butlers. But the important thing about all that is NaNo.

I am the most psyched for NaNo this year that I've ever been for any NaNo ever. Including my first one. (Incidentally, I totally don't remember my first NaNo--not what I wrote for it, not how far I got, and not even what year it was. But I'm pretty sure I wasn't this excited.)

I have a story I love. I have a ton of elements in this story. I even have a subplot! (Sort of. Maybe. Kind of. Okay, maybe not. Kind of hard to tell at this point.)

I'd originally vowed not to think about this story at all until November, in the hope that I'd be able to keep up my enthusiasm without overthinking things. Well, that didn't exactly work out. But now I'm more psyched than ever. And I freaking want NaNo to start NOW. I just want to write.

Of course, having another half a month to do some nice planning and research, that's pretty nice.

But I still wish I could start writing now.