Harry Potter

In September, when I was doing my long, long drives every day, I started listening to Harry Potter. I know, I know, I'm way behind the 8ball here, but whatever. Better late than never, right?

This morning, on my way to a training for work, I heard the last bit of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix and I'm liking how it's all getting dark now. Not that there haven't been dark themes throughout - something I really like about Rowling.

One of the things I like a lot, and which loads of others have liked before me, is the fun of the magical world and creatures she's created. There's plenty of fantasy that has either a world overlaid with this one, or a separate world, but Rowling is somewhere in between. That's cool.

When I get back to the library, I'm on to book six.

Writing Advice

Jenny wants to know what the best piece of writing advice I've ever received is. How do you like that for a question?

I've got loads of good advice. Things like:
Show, don't tell
Don't rush
Blind re-writes
Just write it
Look at other writers as models

All good, good stuff.

However, if I had to peg the one thing that's most important, I'd say it's, "Write for yourself first." I use it in the context of thinking that anything I write had better be good enough that I'd want to read it, and I'm a picky reader.

This advice also helps tie some other bits of advice together - especially things like using other writers as models. If I love the way someone else does an action scene, I have to ask myself what makes me like it and figure out how I can do something like it. Then, I'm in a better spot to hold myself to my high reading standards when it comes to my own work.

Who do you write for first?

NaBloPoMo

With October rolling to a close (What?! How'd I miss a whole month?!) and me being a slacker of late - uprooting my life to move and start a new job is hardly a good enough excuse - I've decided that National Blog Posting Month may be a good way to
A. Make up for my slackerness
B. Get some blog/writing momentum

Ergo, I've decided that my November goal will be NaBloPoMo. I invite all y'all to join me, too. For all of you who're nearby, I propose an end of the month meet up at my new favorite yogurt shop in Pueblo to celebrate all our blog-posty-awesomeness. Come on, you know you love frozen yogurt. Who's in?

Moving, Work and Technomology

"Somebody needs to update her blog!" Jenny said.

"Who?" I asked innocently.

Jenny narrowed her eyes and scowled at me. "You know who." This was followed by the signature Jenny finger-point.

"Dude, I have no internet at home. I have a real job now, and I just moved."

Jenny folded her arms over her chest, clearly not impressed. "I don't care," she said. "Don't be a slacker."

Can't you just feel the love?

Now that I'm actually all the way moved (Don't even ask, just know: never agree to rent a place that's not done yet. Just don't do it.) I can make arrangements to get some interweb set up at home. In the meantime, I've got a handy new library card to use at my new library.

More posts in the near future, I promise, Jenny.

Sherman Alexie, the Author Who Writes Epically Long Titles and Has Jay Leno Hair

Sherman Alexie's "The Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian" is this year's pick for All Pueblo Reads.

That means that I got to see one of my very favorite authors live, in person on Sunday when he did a library-sponsored talk. The talk was great. He's a very good speaker and his personality and sense of humor in person are very much in the same vein as in his books, which I largely adore. (With one or two exceptions, but, you know, nobody's perfect)

I brought a copy of my the first Sherman Alexie book I ever read, "The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven" and now it's got his signature in it. How awesome is that?

It was impressive, as he talked, to see just how much of the featured book was autobiographical. He talked about events and characters from the book and the events and characters they were based on, which was fun. Also cool was when he started talking about the idea of "crossing the waters," of making a journey to a new land. He was very poetic about it, describing it in terms of the human quest to go and seek out new places. To paraphrase:

"We are travelers, we humans. We started out in Africa and started walking. We've been walking ever since. Anyone who denies that journey denies the very essence of humanity."

I'm glad I picked him as one of my major writing heroes. He's very cool. And, he gets bonus points for having to apologize to one of the audience members for calling her a zombie.

Guys Who Write Gals

Two books I've listened to lately have been The Last Queen and Cold Mountain. Both books are written by men and both use a central female character's POV. Authors who write POV characters who are of the opposite sex have a challenge. Sometimes they can pull it off. Sometimes it makes you wonder how many members of the opposite sex they actually have met.

The first one I listened to caught my eye because it's a historical novel about Juana of Castile. She was Katherine of Aragon's sister, and I just watched the next-to-last season of the Tudors, so I was totally primed. Also, C. W. Gortner's area of expertise is this time period, according to the blurb on the back of the book about him.

It started off okay, though it quickly became clear that the main character was kind of a cliche. The book is in 1st person POV and Juana describes herself a lot. When a character describes themself as a free spirit, it's kind of annoying. Then, throughout, there are a lot of author-intrusive kinds of "internal thoughts" where Juana comments on a tradition or practice with a distinctly modern perspective. But, whatever, I could forgive it a bit. The part that made me groan was Juana's habit of looking herself over and talking about how gorgeous she was. Gag me. Of all the women I know, I know exactly... um, none? who like to stare at themselves in the mirror and say, "Look at what a babe I am." After the part where she discovers her husband in bed with another woman and, to paraphrase, loves him too much to be overly bothered by it because she's kind of an idiot, I stopped listening to it. Truly, I would have stopped before that point, but I was on a road trip to Denver and didn't have anything else to listen to in the car.


I watched the movie a few years ago and liked it, so I thought I'd check out the book. One of the first differences I noticed was that this one was read by the author, unlike The Last Queen which was read by a female actress. Charles Frazier's reading style is a great deal different. Instead of a dramatic reading, his voice is almost flat. He reads at a slow and steady pace, which is actually remarkably fitting with the tone & subject of the book.

I was feeling kind of neutral about the book for the first chapter in Inman's POV, but then Frazier got to Ada and I warmed up to it. Ada's in rough shape trying to get by on the already-neglected farm after her father's death. In her first chapter, there's a part where Ada crawls under a boxwood and finds she likes being hidden away from everything. Frazier writes (this is an approximate paraphrase): "Ada decided that if she could think of three reasons to leave the boxwood, then she would. However, at that moment, the only reason she could think of was that she did not especially want to die in the boxwood." I instantly liked Ada then. She's got a really dry kind of sarcasm to her and Frazier writes her like she's human, vs. like she's a daydream of what a woman's like.

One of the parts that made me really like Frazier's perspective on women, too, was toward the end of the book when Ada and Ruby (another great female character) are talking about Inman. Ruby tells Ada, "We can live on our own just fine. You don't need him."
Ada says, "I know, but I think I want him."
Ruby responds, "Well, that's alright then."
The two women have done all the heavy lifting on their own and they're at a point where neither is a damsel in distress, waiting for a man to save them. Ada's choice to be with Inman is then based completely on her attraction and affection for him, and not on the idea that him being in her life is going to make things easier for her. Cheers, Frazier.

So, two books. One pulls off female POV, one doesn't. There are plenty of male authors who can write convincing female characters, but then there are plenty who can't. I think it would be interesting to look at men who write women and women who write men and how successful each group tends to be. It makes me wonder if it's easier for a woman to write a man or if I just notice fewer problems with it since I'm not a dude.

I will end with one word of advice for guys who want to write gals. If you find yourself writing in your female character's POV and describing her body in terms of, "Oh, I'm a girl. I have boobs. Aren't boobs awesome? I'm totally hot," then you're going in the wrong direction.

Spoken Word

The past little while my new job has been my main priority. The good news is that I've gotten to the point where I feel like I've got a good grasp on the lay of the land. Now, though, comes the even more challenging part - beginning the nitty gritty of the work itself. For September, I'm also going to move to a new place.

In light of all this, and my long daily commute, I'm dubbing September in honor of audiobooks. No particular goals here, but I'll be talking about them on the blog.

Current audiobook: Cold Mountain