The Beginning of More Writing

Yay blogging.

I honestly can say I'm a horrible blogger.  I never could keep a diary as a kid and I don't think the years have changed me in that regard.  I am, however, constantly writing something.

Right now, I'm in grad school, pursuing a PhD in theatrical type things, one of them being playwriting.  So while I have papers and reviews and journals to write, I'm also working on plays.  Sound like a lot?  It is... so why not write a novel as well, eh?

www.nanowrimo.org

I'm participating for a second year in NaNoWriMo.  What's that you ask?  Well, some of us crazy writers like a writing challenge, especially if we have no time to do it.  November is National Novel Writing Month and I'm sure they picked this month because of the NO part because the timing is probably the worst possible month to write... then again, Christmas is distracting and the summer months are out because writing tends to be an indoor sport... that leaves a variety of months also during the school year that are probably equally as bad, but the point of all this rambling is that I'm crazy to do it once more.

I started last year - with much more free time - thinking that it would be a fun challenge.  I picked the wrong topic; as fun as a steampunk novel is, it involves way too much research for a person like me who likes to build complicated worlds. It was YA too, why not right?  So my teenage girl from today is whisked away through mirrors ala Alice's Looking Glass to a slightly altered version of our history exactly 150 years ago.  Because I'm into torturing myself I added in a mix of vampires and Lord of the Rings style fantasy in yet another dimension, sprinkled it with bits of Narnia and voila!  A complicated world fun for a select group.  What did I get hung up on?  Underwear.

That's right, What goes on under a lady's skirt in the 1870s is not as fun as you would think.  And as my character uses the loo just like me and you, she had to learn all the pieces.  Which meant I had to learn all the pieces.  Okay, so there's that... then on top of everything, I had to ask the enevitable question: how did they go potty?  Fun fact:  You did not discuss such things in these days so you likewise did not write them down.  I spent a week researching bathroom habits and undergarments of ladies when I should have been writing. (I found my answer: ladies went in the morning and tried really hard, despite being squeezed into a corset, to not have to go again all day... "making water" was okay but the other was downright scandalous anytime after you were dressed.)  

When I finally got down to business I sped through the chapters, up until my first ever attack of bronchitus which wiped me out for a full week... the last week of NaNoWriMo.  I tried by my brain was feverish and mush.  I pushed hard and still came up under 5,000 words short of my 50,000 word goal.  Darn you pantaloons!

This time I have no time so I'm sticking with something super easy to write.  This past summer I adapted and directed Much Ado for our teens at the theatre and for extra fun, and probably to bring in a non-Shakespeare-friendly audience, I added zombies.  That's right, Much Ado About Nothing During a Zombie Apocalypse was born and was a huge hit.  My novel will be a similiar adaptation from Beatrice's POV... I'm also constricting myself to only allowing the words spoken to be Shakespeare's (though I will translate that into modern English for my friend who requested absolutely no Shakespeare in my Shakespeare adaptation).

With my plays being written and this new project, I'm being asked by a few people to let them see it.  This seems like an easier way to post my writings.  In the meantime I may post a few other pieces and maybe even some research papers.  Pretty much everything I write.

Enjoy.