Nobody Here

I think I can safely predict I am not going to write/revise 18,083 words in six days, so my February goal is toast. That's okay. I am motivated by deadlines and milestones. But sometimes the liberating force of letting all that go can offer its own brand of motivation. Goals schmoals. It's just me and the story now. And my apple blossom green tea. Me, the story, and apple blossom green tea. Ooh, and I need to get to Costco, so I'm sure I'll pick up some peppermint patties. Me, the story, apple blossom green tea, and peppermint patties. Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition.

*Post title ripped off from Beck's "Loser"

I told Roy I’d post a pic of my tea cup. The astute or at least nerdy observer will recognize Jack Skellington. Tea is not the relaxing ritual for me that Roy describes in his post, partly because I often go the caffeinated route, black if I want to stay up really late, green if I just want a little boost (if I recall correctly, some of my peeps have strong feelings on this matter, so let me just be upfront on the subject and say: sometimes milk, never sugar). The other reason I get less cozy and serene than Roy probably has something to do with the cup.

Paula tagged me, even though not all of these questions are up to my usual level of silliness, and I never ignore a tag, so....

1: Black and White or Color; how do you prefer your movies?

Color.


2: What is the one single subject that bores you to near-death?

Star Trek.


3: MP3s, CDs, Tapes or Records: what is your favorite medium for prerecorded music?

MP3's I guess, even though I don't have an iPod, because I like how if I did have an iPod I could mix stuff up instead of always listening to songs in the same order, which bugs me.


4: You are handed one first class trip plane ticket to anywhere in the world and ten million dollars cash. All of this is yours provided that you leave and not tell anyone where you are going ... Ever. This includes family, friends, everyone. Would you take the money and ticket and run?

Of course not. Who says yes to this?


5: Seriously, what do you consider the world's most pressing issue now?

Abusing our environment to a crisis level.


6: How would you rectify the world's most pressing issue?

Alternative fuels, conservation, clean up, recycling, regrowth, organic farming, hire some actual scientists with a clue and do what they said.


7: You are given the chance to go back and change one thing in your life; what would that be?

No freaking way. There is no reason to expect I'd be any smarter than I was the first time, and every reason to wonder whether I'd be as lucky.


8: You are given the chance to go back and change one event in world history, what would that be?

I've read enough books and seen enough movies with this plot to wonder whether messing with history, no matter how tempting, wouldn't be a mistake.


9: A night at the opera, or a night at the Grand Ole' Opry --Which do you choose?

Opera, but I won't like it (sorry Archer).


10: What is the one great unsolved crime of all time you'd like to solve?

Jack the Ripper


11: One famous author can come to dinner with you. Who would that be, and what would you serve for the meal?

Stephen King. I'd make my husband grill something so I could hang out instead of cooking.


12: You discover that John Lennon was right, that there is no hell below us, and above us there is only sky -- what's the first immoral thing you might do to celebrate this fact?

Nothing I don't already do. My actions aren't driven by fear of punishment.

I don't usually tag, but today I'm making an exception for Looney.

I win two games of Aces and Kings between reading blogs and email until my peeps abandon me and stop posting some time around nine, and I'm forced to get down to business. I grudgingly eke out about 2,000 words. Not a great number, but not bad either considering I'm in a very whineyangsty place with writing these days, which for the purposes of this blog we will generously attribute to the relative dreariness of the season rather than any shortcomings of mine. Some of my characters are starting to show early warning signs of developing personalities, although my villains remain limp and lank, like the hair of that narrator in Rebecca, envying Rebecca's full, lustrous locks, and also her villainousness. Do you think villains ought to have good hair, as a general rule? Mine have sort of nondescript hair, which could be the problem. Yes, we'll generously blame it on their hair rather than any shortcomings of mine. Unless you think my hair could be the problem. Must get my hair done, just to be on the safe side.

A young woman, influenced by her ambitious mother, marries a titled man for his position. Once in his world, she neither understands nor is understood, is bored and lonely, and ultimately embarks on an affair. She comes to regret it and must face off with her husband’s family, particularly her domineering mother-in-law, in an attempt to win him back. Take out the extramarital sex and make the marital sex better and you’ve pretty much got Judith McNaught’s career. But Julian Fellowes’ Snobs is not a romance, largely because Fellowes, while he writes his unlikeable social-climbing heroine just engagingly enough, seems much more sympathetic to the infiltrated family and doesn’t create characters or situations that lead the reader to root for the match. Instead the book description promises a bitingly comic social satire, but although it has its moments, to this reader it isn’t quite funny or caustic enough for that, and ends up feeling like a mostly affectionate portrait of the British upper class, mellow and entertaining, but not saying anything big.

Fellowes seems to disagree. In the back-of-the-book interview he says his story is not about the aristocracy, it’s about making choices and taking responsibility for them. He has characters say something to that effect enough times in the book for me to get that’s what he’s driving at, but the plot doesn’t carry it off. There’s plenty of waffling, abdication, and pushing off responsibility on the part of characters who get what they want in the end. And without giving too much away, the heroine’s motivation for wanting her husband back is hardly dagnabbit I’ve made a commitment and we must stand behind our choices. Maybe he’s just trying to infuse a big message into a book that is, frankly, much too light to carry one, but I think that’s a mistake. I think if you’re writing something on the fluffy side, you need to embrace it without shame. The book might have been much more fun if he’d done that from the start and lightened up a little.

Not that I'm saying it's not an entertaining read. Fellowes is a skilled writer, and pulls off some hard-to-pull-off-stuff, not least of all that Nick Carraway style present but mostly uninvolved narrator that usually just annoys the crap out of me when it isn’t Fitzgerald doing it. He's an engaging storyteller and I was pulled in while reading. But I expected funnier things and in the end it struck me as a case of a writer taking himself a little too seriously (ironic I thought, given his book's title), and his story suffering for it.

I've thrown over my peppermint patties in favor of cough drops, and I don't think it's improved anything at all. I'm considering killing off one of my characters, just out of spite. Little bastards. I'm crabby, hacking, coughing, and thoroughly stuffed up, my ears hurt, and also I'm unlikely to hit my 35k February goal at this pace. On the other hand, I am listening to Def Leppard, so it's not all bad. iTunes rules.

*Post title ripped off from Def Leppard's "Rock of Ages".

I've got some catching up to do. See, there was this guy in my basement with a jackhammer. No, that's not a metaphor, there was actually this guy in my basement with a jackhammer. And I woke up with a migraine that day, and then there was all that jackhammer noise, but did you know that the noise is not the most annoying thing about having a guy in your basement with a jackhammer? It turns out that the enormous cloud of exhaust that fills your house and makes the whole place stink like gas for four days is a bigger problem. Who knew. So then I had the migraine and the horrible cloud of death and then I got a cold too, so, it took me a while to recover, and now I'm behind. Plus it took me a really long time to get into the groove until I realized that the NaNo draft was so crappy this year that I couldn't possibly make the leap to even semi-respectable within one draft, and I'd need to add another draft to my schedule. The good news is, that will make this one quicker to write, so off I go to make up some ground. No retreat baby, no surrender.

*Post title ripped off from Cake's "Short Skirt, Long Jacket". Last line ripped off from Bruce Springsteen's "No Surrender".