Feed by Mira Grant parts 1 and 2 - readalong

Text reads, "To Alice & Josh" and "Rise up while you can."

I read Feed when it first came out in the summer of 2010. When the group started talking about horror for a February readalong, though, the idea of a reread held a lot of appeal. After all, I had appreciated the book when it first came out. But, having read another book in the trilogy, and with the anticipation of the third coming out in June, I wanted to refresh my memory and see if anything changed the second time around.

It did, indeed. However, I will be avoiding discussion of the early foreshadowing I'm noticing, for the sake of not spoiling anything for the rest of the readalong crew.

I do want to discuss the pacing of the book. I didn't remember it starting off slow, but, now that I'm rereading it, I do notice that the building of tension is subtle, and what's meant to grab the reader initially is the concept rather than the plot or characters. Georgia Mason (George), the narrator, keeps her sense of humor limited to wry observations about the world. She's writing for posterity, so everything she writes is cited by historical context, much like those found in newspaper stories or online news sites.

In retrospect, I do remember saying that it felt like the first two-thirds of the book were like being cranked up to the top of a roller coaster.

I'm much better able to appreciate the pop culture references throughout the text now, having read several interviews which confirmed my suspicions. In addition to the obvious George Romero references (and the director's fate, after passing along peacefully in his sleep), we have characters named after Buffy the Vampire Slayer, as well as the title character in Shaun of the Dead. I know Shaun isn't described as anything like that Shaun, but I still picture Simon Pegg in the role.

I didn't catch the reference to Steve Irwin (of "Crocodile Hunter") fame until someone pointed it out to me, though I did know that Stewarts, the Newsies who put a humorous spin on the facts, were an homage to The Daily Show. George also skewers several modern political and pop culture artifacts (or rather, things that are artifacts to her), including reality shows, the death penalty, and partisanship which suggests you're one the zombies' side if you don't take ridiculous measures to get rid of them.

What I'm really appreciating in my second read-through, though, is the allegory. This is a story about a world driven by fear. Just because people are right to fear zombies doesn't mean the hypervigilance has created a better society. People are afraid to gather in groups or leave the house. Meanwhile, the political landscape had changed, because it makes no sense to let people starve to death when they'll reanimate to munch on their neighbors. What separates the haves from the have-nots is how much security they can afford to fend off the zombies.

The worldbuilding and crunchiness of the science is even more impressive the second time around. I'm glad I'm getting the chance to explore this post-zombie world all over again.

More readalong posts:
Grace at Feeding My Book Addiction
Jennifer at Book Den
Britt at Self-Styled Bibliophile

Part 2 of the readalong is here.

Writing Romance and Sex

I am not a romance writer, but several of the others in the writing group are. We have two romance writers, and one who writes literary erotica. All of them talk about the difficulty of writing sex scenes.

This used to confuse me, because, for the longest time, I had an easy time of it. I looked forward to it, in fact. It was the idea of other people reading my sex scenes that gave me pause.

I even wrote a NaNoWriMo novel that was an erotica. That was the year I hit 100,000 words in one month. I didn't realize how easy I was making it for myself, though. In my story, my main character encountered each partner only once, learned something about herself, and moved on.

That kind of sex is easy to write. What's less easy is the kind that most readers want to read. It's hot, it's sexy, but it also advances the plot or the relationship in some way. Much in the same way gun shootouts are the culmination of an action movie's buildup, sex scenes should be the culmination of tension and emotions between two characters. And that's harder to capture.

Even harder is when one has written a few dozen romance or erotica novels. The process doesn't change much from one sexual encounter to another, so writers have to find new ways of describing the action without sounding clinical about it. They have to avoid purple prose, or cliché terms and phrases. And they have to tie it into the relationship and plot in some way. Generally, the appeal of sex scenes in romance novels isn't that they're there, but that they're emotionally satisfying, to the characters as well as the reader.

It's a lot of work, and I discovered for myself just how much in my current project when it came time for two characters who'd been dancing around one another for a book and a half to voice their desires. It was a tough balance. I needed to make sure they were acting the way they'd act, not the way I wanted them to. (Just because I was sick of the will-they-won't-they didn't mean the time was right, necessarily.) I had to describe things in terms that were neither too purple nor too clinical. I had to portray enjoyment without falling back on tired language about swelling seas or earthquakes. And I needed to depict subtleties about their personalities and their relationship without interrupting the action. I've gone back to edit that section three times already, and I suspect I'll be picking at it through several more edits.

I haven't read a lot of bad sex, to my recollection, though anything overly flowery or metaphorical is unlikely to catch my attention. I've read sex scenes that have taken place over a paragraph, and others that have gone on for pages, and I can't say which I prefer. I think some aspects are better left to the imagination, but my romance writer friends may disagree.

I can say that, if the sex serves a narrative purpose, it should probably be written. If it adds nothing to the story, it should probably be implied through a fade-to-black. Beyond that, I wouldn't suggest any rules. It's not my area of expertise. All I know is, it's not as easy to write as you may think.

Perpetual tiredness and the creativity machine

Josh bears my attempts to embarrass him patiently.

I recently came across some research which suggests that people are more creative when they're tired. As I used to describe myself as, "always tired," this was relevant to my interests.

I was recently diagnosed with sleep apnea, for which I've been undergoing treatment. That goes a long way toward explaining my tiredness. What it doesn't explain, though, is why I still stay up until all hours of the night, working on my writing. You'd think I'd want to be tired, or something.

I've mentioned it before, but I used to spend entire summer vacations writing all night. I would often tell my parents I'd be in bed soon, only to tap away until dawn, or close to it. Most of it was that I didn't want to go through the entire scary house in the dark, but it was also that I was writing far more productively than I did in the daylight hours.

This doesn't work with other jobs. I've worked overnight shifts, and wound up so perpetually exhausted and groggy that I ruled it out as a long-term solution to my night owl ways. Apparently it's just writing.

I've joked with other writers about it. We agree that the wee hours are the best times to shut up the inner critic, though many of them find that the inner critic serves an important function. Rereading the high-output pieces fills them with dismay: it wasn't the brilliance they thought it was.

It's the ultimate in pantsterdom, really. Typing along with no plan, no frame, no idea of where you're going to end up, is about as seat-of-the-pants as you get. That would explain why some people in the writing group find it less useful than others.

Still, I can't go through life perpetually tired. That way lies madness. There are other ways to tap into this, to use it to my advantage. I can, for instance, try to get most of my writing done when I first get up on weekends, rather than after the coffee has kicked in. I can acknowledge that I'm more tired during the week, and so push myself to write more after a long day, instead of allowing myself a break. I can simply be mindful of my state of mind, and have the discipline and mental fortitude to push myself when I only want to take a nap.

And I can do all that while ending the cycle of perpetual tiredness. It's a luxury many (parents, full-time students, professional writers) don't have, and so I'm best off learning to tap it when I have time on my side. Lord knows, if I'm working under deadline, I won't be able to wait for inspiration to strike.

Odd that I should be talking about the luxury of being tired. It is nice to know, though, that my self-sabotage of my sleep schedule was serving a purpose.

Review: Heroes at Odds

Heroes at Odds by Moira J. Moore

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



I love this series, and I was saddened to learn that book #7 wasn't going to be out in paperback. Moira Moore is still writing it so that the series gets its proper ending, but the publisher has dropped the series.

Harumph.

As for this book, I didn't enjoy it quite as much as I did the earlier books. We do get a lot of fun characters and amusing interactions and a deeper look at a fascinating world, but I felt like there was something missing. Lee and Taro's relationship lacked the tension of earlier books; I felt like they were reluctantly going through the motions. That may have been the point.

In this book, Lee and Taro's relationship is tested when Lee's family shows up to tell her about a marriage contract made before she became a Shield. The contract is null and void because of her obligations, but that doesn't make the other side of the contract any less tenacious in seeking to force Lee to honor it. To that end, Taro challenges Marcus Pride, Lee's would-be husband, to a set of three challenges. Meanwhile, Flown Raven is threatened by outside forces in a bid to take Fiona out of power, Lee joins this world's equivalent of a coven, and Taro's mother tries, ineffectually, to get between Taro and Lee.

Where the narrative felt like it was missing something was in the three trials. Lee complains bitterly that her future is up to these stupid tests, but I never felt like she was invested in the outcome. During the final test, it comes down to a nail-biting finish, and yet I never felt the tension in Lee, nor did I feel it was terribly important to Taro that he win.

The rest of the story was good, and a lot of the things that happened in earlier books are tied in. This book does an excellent job of starting to bring things to a head for book 7.

Which is why it's so frustrating that I'm not going to be able to hold a paper copy in my hands to read the seventh installment. It promises to be a good one, and I'm sure I'll enjoy reading it online, but I'd much rather be able to pick it up off store shelves, and pay the author for all the world-building and work she's put into this story.



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Always improving

When I write these blog entries, my hope is that writers who are even more new than I am to the process of writing and publication are stumbling across my entries and finding this useful. I don't have a lot of information that would be useful for seasoned veterans, and some of my advice may even seem naive or wrong-headed. I don't know; I'm still on the outside looking in.

I do know that new writers have an advantage more experienced writers don't: you're still learning. From where you're sitting, I'm sure that doesn't feel great. It feels like you still have so much to do, and isn't it enough that you're getting the words down on the page?

I'm sorry to say, no, it's not, and you're going to stumble and regress and make mistakes and get frustrated, and that's how it goes. But, believe it or not, where you are, that's an advantage. You're well aware you don't know everything, and so you're free to play around to see what works. You know you're not perfect, so you're still reading what other people tell you about how to write well, and you get to try it for yourself to see how it works. You're not locked into your bad habits. You can still change.

The thing is, no matter how good you are at what you do, there are always ways you can improve. When I was new at my current day job, I was in a meeting and a manager was talking about signing up for trainings. A co-worker spoke up to say she'd been working there for years, and didn't need any more training. The manager replied that she'd been in the field for 25 years, and was still learning new things. It clicked for me then, that education isn't something you passively absorb for the first chunk of your life, then go out and put into practice. Education is something you go through so you can find out how to best learn throughout your life.

That applies to writing, as well. Trends change, and interests shift, and the writers who are still producing bestsellers aren't the ones who write the same way they did when they first started. Sometimes it's a shift in writing style or approach to storytelling. Other times, it's an entire rehaul of the way the author tells a story, often winding up with an entirely different narrative from what that author was writing before.

Even authors who don't need to adapt or who started out being able to write well have room for improvement, though it's often harder to see. No one is so perfect that there isn't room to tell a tale better.

But, if what you're doing is working, there isn't much incentive to change, and one can stagnate that way. Authors who don't continue to adapt and learn may burn out, or they may face a market that's moved on without them. Readers may grow disillusioned with an author whose books are all the same, and move onto new narratives.

And so, future author, you have an advantage over established authors. You can set a habit now of lifelong learning. You have the opportunity, right now, to acknowledge that you'll never be complacent, that you'll always strive to improve and learn and adapt as you need to.

If you can accept right now that you're not perfect, and will always fall just short of perfection, you're well ahead of the game.

Make them suffer

After last week's write-in, Tara and I joked on Twitter about how we were too lazy to be serial killers, which was why we'd become writers. (I had just linked this shirt, for context.) We channel our daily frustration into hurting fictional people, because it's socially unacceptable to threaten people with weapons for minor infractions.

It's not that I'm one incident of being cut off in traffic from going on a rampage, or anything. I keep my violent thoughts quite hidden in my daily life, because I'm saving them up for my characters.

And not just the bad ones, either, though I do take great satisfaction in giving characters the endings they deserve. Mostly, the saved-up violence, the harmless fantasies, and the brutal deaths I read on news sites are visited upon my protagonists. I beat them up emotionally and physically.

It's not because they exist as a proxy of the people I hate. I like my characters. It's because I like them so much that I stack the deck so heavily against them. If I don't let them shine against tremendous odds, if I don't give them a chance to show off, I'm doing them, and any potential reader, a disservice.

When I was starting out, I hated to see my characters suffer. I wanted them to be happy, and I was gentle and kind to them. But my stories lacked tension, and I was telling, rather than showing, far too much. My reader only had my word for it that my characters were strong and capable, because I never tested them.

I also read a lot of published works that never ramped up the tension, never really challenged the characters. It seemed like their victories were handed to them, and I felt cheated of a real story.

What I like about spending time with other writers is that I don't have to explain or justify the above. They understand, because they've been there, and visited the same on their own characters. I'd say it doesn't make me a violent person, but that would be a lie. I've just found a socially acceptable way of letting it out where no one real gets hurt.

Review: The Year of the Flood

The Year of the Flood by Margaret Atwood

My rating: 5 of 5 stars



I "read" Oryx and Crake on audio a couple of years ago, but I hadn't realized this was a follow-up novel, or how much time elapsed between their being written. I'm not sure if that would've made me more or less apt to read The Year of the Flood, but I am glad I gave this book a listen. It greatly enriched my enjoyment of both books.

The story begins in the year 25, "the year of the flood," according to the calendar the Gardeners keep. We follow the stories of Ren, a woman locked in the biological containment zone of a high-class brothel, and Toby, an older woman making her way in a luxury spa. They both belonged to the religious sect who called themselves God's Gardeners, who predicted and prepared for the "waterless flood," a mass near-extinction of humanity. Toby hides out among the Gardeners, eventually joining their ranks, while Ren is raised with their dogma.

While the world in The Year of the Flood is exactly the same as Oryx and Crake, with many of the same characters, and the narrative is told in a similar frame, this is entirely different. Year of the Flood is told through the perspective of two women who were in the weird religious sect that inspired Crake's impact on the world. The satire and that Atwood was depicting a world that deserved to be wiped out was much clearer to me in this book than in Oryx and Crake. Jimmy regards things far more dispassionately than Ren and Toby do. They have a lot more to lose by a misstep in a world that considers female bodily autonomy a pesky question solved by putting a monetary value on it.

I'm sure the opinion that putting corporations in control of the world is a bad idea was depicted in Oryx and Crake, but it was far more frequently vocalized in Year of the Flood, often by the God's Gardeners. We spend far more time in the pleeb lands, the dystopian future's version of ghettos. Anyone unlucky enough to not be owned by a corporation makes their way through extreme violence, theft, scrounging and scraping, and selling whatever people will buy. The only glimmer of hope is with the aforementioned God's Gardeners or a similar religious sect, which vacillates between being ignored by the corporate-owned military, and persecution.

The plot, itself, covers much of the same period of time as Oryx and Crake. It extends that story by precisely two scenes. While it doesn't expand the timeline much, it broadens the story immensely. It has a similarly open end, but is a satisfying conclusion, nonetheless.

I would be remiss if I didn't warn you there is rape and sexual violence in this book. However, the brutality of the rape is depicted in the most sensitive way, with the least sexualization of it, I've ever read. The rape is never described, and the reader is spared experiencing it with the victim. And yet, the violence of it is depicted thoroughly.

There are also some gross scenes. Bugs are ingested for their protein, and maggots are used for medicinal purposes. The violence is often horrifying, though rarely dwelled upon.

A note about the audio book: this contained the Gardener's hymns performed by Orville Stoeber. It sometimes made for a strange juxtaposition, especially with how commercial the music sounded, with such bizarre lyrics. I liked it. I thought it was used to good effect. There's more information about the music here.

The audio book also had three separate readers for each of the narrators. The third is Adam One of God's Gardeners, and his sections always prefaced the singing of a hymn. I recognized Toby's reader as having narrated American Rose, but I didn't recognize the other two. All I can say is that they did the narrative justice.



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The perfect tools

Tonight, Josh and I noticed our tax refund had cleared. We've needed a printer for a while, so we were off to the office supply store to pick one up. We'd done our research ahead of time, went straight to the laser printers, looked at what models they had, and picked one out within the first two minutes.

We didn't leave for another forty minutes. We had to pick up paper, and then he wanted to look at something, and, while he looked for a new mouse, well, I might as well look at pens, right?

We don't need pens. We have a ton of pens we don't use. A pen in our house is more likely to dry up from disuse than it is to be used up. And yet, every time I'm in an office supply store, I'm staring hungrily at the writing utensils aisle, wondering if one of the implements before me will be the instrument from which my genius will pour.

I have a similar problem with journals, but I've managed to keep myself from buying more. I have five that haven't been used, and four with just the first few pages filled in. The trouble there is a lot easier to put my finger on: when I'm blogging regularly and writing up my thoughts in my livejournal or on Twitter or randomly texting my friends, there isn't much left that I'd want marring the pristine pages of my pretty journals. If I outlined or plotted anything out in advance, I'd at least have that to put down on paper.

I sometimes wonder if I don't have a hoarding problem that I turned into writing ambition for lack of anything better to do with all the books, office supplies, and weird observations I collect in my brain. It comforts me to know my writer friends, and some social media-savvy authors, also admit to a strange fascination with office supplies. Josh collects notebooks like a squirrel burying acorns, and pointing out the stack of looseleaf in our office supply box rarely deters him from buying more. At our write-ins, the writing group frequently talks about our latest acquisitions in tools, and we trade merits or make recommendations.

I won't get into the time my office put me in charge of buying the supplies. Suffice it to say that we never ran out of anything with me in charge.

The thing is, the tools don't matter. Some great works have been penned with a leaky quill on cheap parchment, and others were scribbled on the back of bar napkins. The writers I know are too resourceful to let a lack of just the right pen stop them from getting the story down. I don't even have a burning need for pens, because I do most of my writing on my laptop. Its 8-hour battery life is all the tool I need.

So, why the obsession? I don't know, but I chalk mine up to superstition. So long as I'm searching for the perfect conduit for my ideas, I'm still striving to improve, never settling for what I have.

I don't think I'll ever be the perfect writer. I think I'll always have room to improve. And so, the hunt shall go on.

Plagiarism, originality, and the fuzzy truth

Sometimes when I'm browsing online, I come across a blog post on a topic upon which I have Opinions, and I use it as a jumping-off point for my own post. Other times, as today, I notice that someone else posted something I already posted about. Do I feel like my idea was stolen? Am I stealing an idea if I'm starting from the same point, but writing my own post about it?

No. Sometimes, for whatever reason, a lot of different bloggers think about a topic at the same time. Sometimes people have a different take on the same topic, and they have something to add. Complaining about a popular blogger posting about something I blogged about last week would be akin to stomping my feet and whining that someone else reviewed the same book I did, or that someone in the readalong wrote about the same thing I did. (None of them did; we had a refreshing gamut of opinions.)

The same goes for fiction releases. You may have noticed a lot of books being released with similar descriptions, or whose ideas seem remarkably similar. Sometimes, these books aren't based on a trend that's currently popular, and yet they come out within a week or two of one another. Who copied who, there?

Probably neither. There's a handy German word, zeitgeist, which I learned in my psychology background. It means, literally, "spirit of the times," and it refers to the cultural climate, and also to the knowledge and arts that have contributed to create that climate. I find it's a useful term when I'm talking about literary trends that spring up seemingly overnight, without any obvious trigger. Some trends come from the popularity of one book or series, but most of them appear in clusters. That's not a publishing house conspiracy; it's zeitgeist. Several different people grew up consuming the same media, observing the same events on the news, ingesting information the same way. This generation's writers shared a lot of the same environments and experiences growing up, and so they're able to process things in a way that's familiar to this generation of readers. People writing epic fantasy in its early years may have been copying Tolkien, or they might have read up on their Joseph Campbell.

There's more that goes into it, too. At the very core of stories, you have three basic plots: person vs. person, person vs. nature, person vs. self. My high school freshman English teacher taught us this, and, for the rest of the year, referred back to it by asking us which of the basic plots came into play. Some of the better stories were some mixture of all three elements, but those plots were still there. It taught me early on that originality is a myth. Every story is derivative of another, and boils down to one of the basic plots. If we distract ourselves with how similar plots are, we miss out on the parts of it that are fresh and new.

I've found that plots that strive to be unexpected and new end up either nonsensical or jarring, and neither is a positive reading experience. There's plenty of room for surprising readers while sticking to a formula, exciting readers while presenting a predictable plot, or amusing readers despite the low-key language. I've seen each performed masterfully, and I've seen people try for fresh and new who had terrible execution.

That said, there is such a thing as plagiarism in the writing community. People do steal passages, or entire books with the character names switched around, or stories off the web. Be wary of ebooks whose authors you're unfamiliar with, for that very reason. But blatant plagiarism and what people call plagiarism when a book happens to share elements with another are entirely different.

Personally, I like playing with cliché elements and turning them on their heads, but that's a trope all its own. (Potential time sink warning — that site can suck you in for hours.) I'm not trying for originality. All I want out of the stories I tell is that they say something the way I want to say it. Sometimes, that will mean saying something someone else already has. All that matters to me is that it resonates better with someone than the old way of saying it.

Ratings scale

I've already written about my standards for reviewing, but I realized my ratings scale of one to five stars makes absolutely no sense without some idea of why I rate things the way I do. And so, what I'm looking for when I mark books the rating I do:

Five Stars—I want everyone I know to read this book so we can talk about how awesome it is. Reading this book changed my life. I thought about it when I wasn't reading it, and I see myself reading it again.

Four Stars—I greatly enjoyed it, and would recommend it to people who like that kind of thing. There were minor flaws and a few things I didn't like, but they didn't detract from my overall enjoyment.

Three Stars—I liked it, but I'm not going to be singing its praises from the rooftops. I can understand why people who do love it feel the way they do, but it's not for me. There were a number of faults, but not enough that I wouldn't recommend it.

Two Stars—I didn't like this book. I could barely get through it. I'm sorry I didn't listen to my gut, and discard this after the 100 pages I give a book to convince me I should finish it. There were more flaws than good points.

One Star—I couldn't finish it, or I'm sorry I did.. The themes were noxious, the characters unlikable, and I don't understand what people find appealing about it. I cannot strongly warn you enough not to read this book.

Review: Girl with the Silver Eyes

Girl with the Silver Eyes by Willo Davis Roberts

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



I read this book when I was younger, and I remember liking it very much, but I couldn't remember why.

Katie Welker is an unusual girl. She creeps people out, because of her flat expression and silver-colored eyes. That's even before they know that she can move small objects with her mind, call up breezes that can slam doors and scatter papers, and she can communicate with animals. When her grandmother, who's been taking care of her most of her life, passes away unexpectedly, she goes to live with her mother. Soon after, a man shows up asking odd questions about her, and she finds out she's not alone in what makes her different from so many others.

It's like the book was written for a young me. Young Katie is never happier than when she's curled up reading an excellent book. Her classmates don't like her and make fun of her, but she has ways of deterring bullies, though the bullies don't entirely realize what she can do. And her happy ending is finding other kids just like her.

But this could just as easily be an allegory for autism. While kids on the spectrum don't move things with their mind, they do tend to be shunned by their peers and have a sense of not fitting in, and there's been a debate, as at the end of this book, about whether they're better off sheltered from the general population or integrated into society. (We're moving more toward a model of integration, which is why I'm glad the book didn't end up with Katie and her newfound friends being shuttled off to an institution. The ending leaves it open to interpretation.)

Overall, while the writing style doesn't hold up to what I remembered, I did enjoy refreshing my memory about this book. The story held up well, and it told me a lot about my younger self, who loved this book to pieces.



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Progress post: Book 2, draft 3 (SWANoWriMo edition)

Image obtained from a Public Domain site

I started out the month with about 38800 words on "Reincarnation," which is the tentative title for the second book in my trilogy. I'd set it on the back burner while I did edits, because there are only so many hours in the day, but I spent a little time pecking at it to get back into the groove of writing in time for SWANoWriMo.

When I finished up my writing for the night last night, I had 42829. I haven't done any writing yet today, but 4000 words is a good start on a month where I'm hoping to make it to 50,000. I don't think a full NaNo-count is realistic, but we shall see. When I have momentum, I can really churn out a word count.

And, initially, I did have quite a bit of momentum. My conflict was coming together, my characters were motivated to find out what was going on, and the tension was perfect. I was patting myself on the back for getting over that initial stumbling-block I'm always dealing with when the execution doesn't match the awesome ideas I've been churning over.

But then I had to scrap about half a (single-spaced) page, and the momentum fizzled. I realized I was revealing too much, too soon, and that these characters would step more carefully. I liked the scene that resulted from taking out all of those words and being more mindful of the characters' motivations, but it slowed me down.

I'm almost done with a really long manuscript I'd been editing, so I'm hoping that, when I finish that monster, I'll have more focus to spend on my own novel. We shall see. I may have been able to do a double-NaNo the last time I participated, but I had a lot less going on that month.

Not that having things going on is bad. I have so much to look forward to, and I'm so excited about my February 28 post!

The not-writing jar

Before I explain the not-writing jar, as I promised I would in last night's post, I have some administrative details to get out of the way.

First: to the individuals googling whether "let it be" is bad grammar or not, and who stumbled across my blog without getting an answer, it's perfectly correct, and I don't know why it wouldn't be. It's only incorrect if you use "it" to denote a "her," "him," or "them."

Second: I'm looking forward to my post on Tuesday, February 28th, and I'm not telling you why. You'll just have to wait and find out. I think you'll like it.

Third: if you've been thinking about reading Mira Grant's Feed, this is a good month to do it, because then you can join the readalong. I know I already posted about it, but I wanted to make sure you know that you're welcome to join in, whether you have your own blog or not.

Onto the tale of the not-writing jar.

It was my husband's inspiration. He brought it to the first SWAG write-in (SWAG being our writing group). If people needed an incentive to be writing rather than browsing the free wifi or chatting with all the other writers, the not-writing jar was there to ask for pocket change if you strayed. It's on the honor system; only you know if you're writing when you're supposed to be, or if you've failed. It's there as a way of reminding us that, while write-ins are a good way of making writing a social activity, we're still there to be productive.

And, up until last night's write-in, it was not mandatory. For this month, it is, because we're all trying to succeed at our SWANoWriMo goals.

I can't speak for the rest of the giggly crew, but it helped me. I may have taken some time to type up last night's blog post, and I lost my focus a few times, but I still added over 2300 words to my novel during the write-in. The jar took in $16.83 from six writers, and I personally contributed $3.00.

We don't have the money earmarked for anything, but I'm sure we can figure out something fun.

SWANoWriMo

Back during NaNoWriMo, a lot of the members of the writing group bemoaned that it took place in November. Most of us had family visiting, dinners to cook, shopping to start, and houses to scrub down. The timing was just awful, and those of us who participated dropped out fairly quickly.

We bounced that around the writing group, and found that we all had the same thought: that it took place during the wrong month. Now, granted, if you wait to have time, you'll never write. But we are nothing if not a flexible and practical group.

The always-clever Catt suggested that we instead hold it in February. We poked at the idea, looking for weak points, and realized that a cold, dreary winter month in upstate NY had lots of room for staying under a blanket and tapping away at a computer keyboard. We're adapting it to our own uses, of course; my goal is simply to write for at least 15 minutes a day and during at least 2 hours of any write-in I attend. What I would really like to do is use this month to finish this draft of my novel.

SWANoWriMo, by the way, stands for SWAG Novel Writing Month. SWAG is the acronym for our writing group, the Social Writing Assistance Group.

The group has already made me pay into the not-writing jar for writing up a blog post instead of writing, so I'll sign off here. I'll tell you all about the purpose of the not-writing jar some other time.

Review: Daily Life in Medieval Europe

Daily Life in Medieval Europe by Jeffrey L. Singman

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



It turns out that I'd already read this a few years ago. The reread did a lot to refresh my memory, though, so it was a wise move.

The Daily Life in History series was once recommended as a resource for getting into the texture and details of a time period in order to write about it. These books focus on what life looked like to the people living it, rather than famous people or events or architecture. Those details certainly appear, but as context for the rest of daily life rather than the focus of the book.

As a cover-to-cover read, this book is rather dry. Some of the details are interesting enough, but it's better formatted as a reference book to find details as one needs them. Of course, for mining story ideas or inspiration, one might read chapters at a time, but it's best kept on hand and notes taken from.

There are a lot of fascinating details within the text. There's an appendix of medieval recipes, and another of games people played during the time period in question. The book contains floor plans of several styles of residence and a lot of illustrations of costumes and people. There are also dozens of resources listed to dig deeper into particular details.

This book is incredibly useful for anyone who wants to write a story set between the years 1100 and 1300, or for someone who wants to write a fantasy setting based on the time period. It's not the best read as a narrative, but, as a reference to consult as needed, it's excellent.



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