Official NaNoWriMo Post!

As promised, here is my Official NaNoWriMo Post! Look it even has capital letters.

Anyway, I've signed up. I am LIVE on the Nanowrimo site here: Kangaru, and in case you missed it, Alz is live here: Shizalent.

My NaNo novel is going to be about a young man trying to break the long-standing curse on his family, and it's set in some pseudo-Asian fantasy land, which hopefully I'll be able to pull off with some amount of skill and integrity. XP I'm super excited because I kind of love all of this, and there will be many shiny things like but not limited to: creepy settings, mythical beasties, hidden identities, a luck demon, and the enigmatic Midnight Sun. (I'll come up with a better summary/update my Nano profile page once I get a better handle on the plot. Heh.)

Please follow our progress and cheer (or jeer?) us on during the month of November! Friend us too if you're also participating! I am using a lot of exclamation points!

In other news, I've also decided what I'm going to be for Halloween - a Hogwarts student for one event and Alice In Wonderland for the other.

Who doesn't love Chocolate? NO ONE, that's who.

Look at me, all posting more than once a month! Anyway, I'm just popping by to point out this AWESOME POSSUM* contest that Yunaleska is having over at her blog.

She's giving away CHOCOLATE. That's Theobroma ("food of the gods") cacao chocolate. Anyone who gives away chocolate gets a Gold Star in my book because that's like putting more rainbows in the world. It really is.

So head on over to the contest at her blog: Nayu's Realm.

Good luck!

P.S. I'm signing up for NaNoWriMo. I swear I am. Just...later.

*Possums aren't actually awesome. They're actually pretty damn creepy. I know. I've seen them creeping around like creepers along my wall and in my driveway and all bloody and SCARY on the side of the road as I drive by. Uh, yeah.

Alz is LIVE on the Nanowrimo Site!

It is as the title says--as of approximately ten seconds ago, Alz is LIVE and kickin' on the Nanowrimo website! I am registered and ready to go, baby, and actually, that last part is a total lie since I'm NOT ready to go, but I swear that come November 1st, I will be writing, ready or not. In the future, my progress will be documented here.

Okay, my darling Krispy. I've registered for yet another year of madness. And I registered right now because a couple of minutes ago you said, and I quote, "I'm not making the first commitment!" and "Maybe I will do it after you do it then." Well, I've done it. Now it's your turn. Come, O Krispy, and commit. Commit. ♥

(As to everyone else out there, my words are the same: Commit. Commit!)

October is Death's favorite month

Well, she's the favorite month of one former Death god and presently still cosmic serpent, Vikenti. And only because she makes a mean pumpkin pie.

Welcome to October everyone. Yes, I know it's like halfway through the month already, but that's no reason not to be polite. October's a cool month because there's Halloween, and who doesn't like an excuse to eat candy and dress without fear of people judging you for your unusual appearance? Who, I ask? Also, it means it is almost time for National Novel Writing Month aka Nanowrimo aka OMG-isn't-this-unconstitutional-because-it's-cruel-and-usual-punishment- oh-crap-I-guess-it's-not-because-I-signed-up-for-this-madness, or OMGWTFBBQ for short. (November, by the way, happens to be the favorite month of another Death.)

All of this leads me to ask, what are you going to be for Halloween and what are you going to be up to in November? If you're doing Nanowrimo, what kind of project are you thinking of doing?

My answer to the first question is I HAVE NO IDEA. My answer to the second is I'm going to be doing Nanowrimo. There, I said it. It's out in the world, making it embarrassing if I back out last minute like a coward (which, I'm not gonna lie, I don't put past myself). I will make a full-on Nanowrimo post a little later as it will likely have proof that I have signed up and proof that Alz has also signed up. I blame my participation on her, by the way, but I've wrangled another of our friends into doing it to. Misery loves company. It really does.

The point of this post though, in prep for Nano, is to list the things I learned from last year's Nanowrimo. I meant to do a post on that earlier, but obviously that never happened. So it's happening now.

1. Wow, you can actually write a lot if your only concern is word count. I ramble a lot when I blog, but when I actually write, I tend to be more concise. My word count tends to be small, but I'm also slow. Why? I'm one of those constant revisionists. I'm wouldn't say I'm a perfectionist, but I'm one of those people who tweaks things every time I open the doc or reads back every few paragraphs. It makes for slow going but is possibly why I don't revise often/much. Don't judge me. This is how I write, period - revise-as-I-go and then a once over. It's how I wrote essays and papers throughout my academic career and I came out of that okay! However, it is slow and not conducive to getting out that first novel draft. I really didn't think I'd be able to get 50,000 words out of me in a month. I didn't, but I did get over halfway there, which was a surprise.

2. Momentum/Discipline is key. Ideally, writing every day helps, but if you can't (and let's face it, sometimes you can't), having a writing schedule helps. I did not do either of these, but I wrote way more and way more consistently than usual. When I did write for consecutive days, I got a lot done because even when I was stuck I just fought my way through. But once I stopped for more than a day, it was so much harder to get back on the wagon.

3. Characters will walk all over you if you let them. A problem with turning off the inner editor is that it's a lot easier for characters to gain control. They can and they will and it's not always a good thing. Case in point, Vikenti in last year's Nano. I love Vikenti, but his adorable sullenness and my love for cute things with the tendency to bite destroyed my ability to keep him out of the story and running every which way with the plot. Okay, he wasn't that bad, but he shouldn't even have BEEN in the story and suddenly he was and not even being a minor character about it.

4. Planning is not necessary... I went into Nano with a general idea, a very beginning, and an end. No middle to speak of. I winged it. Interesting things happened (like Vikenti). It's pretty cool to just see where things take you.

5. ...but planning helps...a lot. The coolness of not planning aside, my plot got way out of hand. In an effort to make sense of things and to make the plot more "interesting," I overly complicated it, which hobbled the entire story. I ended up with way too many characters involved and the story became more about supporting characters who I happen to like a lot than about my MCs. Also, I hate to say it, but the Nano-go-to rule of "kill someone" only works so many times and it doesn't necessarily solve anything! Needless to say, I'm going to outline this year (something I never do).

And there you have it. I'll post more if I can think of anything else, but until then I'm off to sleep. It's going to hardcore rain tomorrow, which means I have to be up and leave earlier for work because in southern California, any kind of rain causes people to forget how to drive and panic. All in all, very slow going.

Fantasy versus Fiction versus ???

Krispy's thoughtful post below has brought to light a new quandary from me: What makes a story fantasy as opposed to just plain fiction?

According to Wikipedia, "[f]antasy is a genre that uses magic and other supernatural forms as a primary element of plot, theme, and/or setting. Fantasy is generally distinguished from science fiction and horror by the expectation that it steers clear of scientific and macabre themes, respectively, though there is a great deal of overlap between the three (which are subgenres speculative fiction)".

As for fiction, Wikipedia says that it "is a branch of literature which deals, in part or in whole, with temporally contrafactual events (events that are not true at the time of writing). In contrast to this is non-fiction, which deals exclusively in factual events (e.g.: biographies, histories)".

From what Krispy has to say about the pseudo-fantasy but-really-straight-up-Japan culture in that novel, it would've fallen into the category of historical fiction if not for the pastiche of Asian names and the token oh-yeah-we-have-magic apparently tossed in at the end.

But since it is so predominantly Japan—from serenity (Zen) gardens to fried dumplings on sticks (dango) to etiquette and society—only with different names, I guess it's also like historical fantasy, only once again, since it doesn't seem set in a particular and specific time period and doesn't seem built around any significant and recognizable historical events, it fails to fit in there too.

This book defies categories. Normally I'd say that's a good thing, but the amount of bemusement, incredulity, discomfort, and WTF I've heard from my two friends has me convinced that in this particular instance, it is not a good thing. It defies categories, but not to any real purpose. It doesn't cross genres or break boundaries and it doesn't make a significant statement or commentary upon any of the abovementioned genres. If it stands out because it doesn't fit, then it should stand out for a good reason—not a bad one.

As I mentioned in a comment in the previous post, I don't think I've ever come across any instance quite like this, where a specific culture was transplanted into a fantasy world and the only thing to differentiate it from its source culture was to change a few names.

Recently in one of my classes, the professor criticized today's generation for wanting everything neatly pigeonholed and categorized. To which I say, "Your point is?" In this instance, I'm not perplexed because this book doesn't fit into a genre or category—I'm perplexed because of how it is perceived as a certain genre, fitted into said genre, and praised in reviews for its inventiveness with regards to its pseudo-Asian society—when in fact that society is just Japan.

Was it praised simply because the majority of the readership knew nothing about Japanese history, culture, and society? And a particularly prevalent problem in the US is that everything "Eastern" is lumped into one melting-pot so that "Asian" has become a blanket term for anything and everything Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Thai, Indonesian, Vietnamese, etc. Back when the pilot of the original Iron Chef USA aired (not the one shown on Food Network today—which is Iron Chef America—but the one that had William Shatner as the host), there was Iron Chef French, Iron Chef Italian, Iron Chef American, and Iron Chef Asian.

Iron Chef Asian? I remember quite clearly thinking, WTF. In the US, Panda Express might as well be authentic Chinese cuisine, all sushi consists of solely raw fish, and since it's politically incorrect, Chinese chicken salad has in most places been renamed to Asian chicken salad. "Asian" makes things exotic, and therefore different, and therefore creative. Yes, American culture is as subversive as it is expansive.

Of course, I am presuming (ethnocentrically) that those same reviewers were American—maybe they weren't. The book was written by two people, one who is Canadian but the other of whom is American. The perception of what is "fantasy" in literature is pretty widespread, though, if you take the Borders fantasy section at a glance—everything from Tolkien's traditional high fantasy to books like Ellen Kushner's Swordspoint which technically contains no magic at all but is set in an imaginary Regency-esque city, with its own society, rules, and manners.

The only fantasy book I can think of that comes close to what Krispy has described in the previous post is Kushiel's Dart by Jacqueline Carey. As I recall, there is only one distinctly "magical" part in that book, although there are hints and indications that there are other magical elements at play in the background/in the past, not to mention they have their own mythology about how the people of Terre d'Ange are descended from angels—and Terre d'Ange itself, as might be inferred from its French name (along the lines of "Land of the Angels") and references to a Hellenic Age as well as Pictish people who live across the strait, seems based on early Western Europe and the Gauls.

But the d'Angeline politics, society, and religion are very complex, it has its own unique history/mythology, and a structured class society which includes indentured servitude and extremely high-class courtesans. The book is not a story set in early-France-with-another-name, the way the book Krispy discusses seems to be a story set in Japan-with-another-name.

At any rate, this is all just a few more tidbits for thought to chew over in your mind, with regards to what the fantasy genre entails as well as how creative (or not) authors can be when sourcing materials and basing worlds/societies on existing cultures.

(On one last note: I do feel a bit bad about criticizing a book I haven't even read, but when Krispy and our mutual friend both tell me the same thing with such vehemence, I have no choice but to believe them. They could tell me that aliens have conquered the earth, Glico no longer makes Pocky, and my shoelaces are untied, and I would believe them without question. But I feel less bad since I'm also broadening the topic to include generalities about classification and genres. So there. And I will read that book, after I finish the two three forty-two other books in queue before it.)

A Matter of World-building

My dear friend and I both recently finished reading a book and had a very thoughtful, stirring, and often unintentionally hilarious discussion about it. To put it lightly, we were both rather disappointed with key aspects of the book, especially since it was by authors we adore, whose previous work we very much enjoyed.

One of the issues we had was with the world-building and in talking about it with my friend and later briefly with Alz (briefly because Alz hasn't read the book yet), I got to thinking about something. In a fantasy, when does a setting that is BASED ON a real culture/society/people/time period/etc. become just that culture/society/etc. but with a fancy foreign name? As in, when your story is set in what appears to be medieval Europe, what makes it in fact NOT medieval Europe? When does Victorian England cease to be Victorian England and become instead something else that only reminds you of that time and place while not actually BEING that time and place?

My friend and I knew before we read the book that the setting - an empire in a fictional world - was to be mainly based off feudal Japan. We were also given indications in the preceding book that this empire was Asian-based (names of places for the empire indicated something of an Asian mixed bag, with locales sounding Chinese and Korean), but we knew very little about it.

This book was supposed to enlighten us about a fictional empire.

This book told us we had walked straight into Japan.

At first, my friend and I were willing to sit back and adjust to the, in a sense, culture shock; maybe we just weren't expecting the empire to be quite so Japanese and hey, it's kind of cool that there's so much detailed cultural practices and stuff in here. However, we realized as we continued reading that while the cultural tidbits and what not were impressive in terms of giving you a sense of this empire and its people, it wasn't anything, well, different. We realized we were in Japan and we couldn't see what made this fictional empire NOT Japan.

Sure, once in a while, a Korean-sounding or Chinese-sounding named character would pop up among the mostly Japanese named ones, and perhaps this was supposed to make us feel like the setting wasn't just Japan but in fact a holistic Asian super-empire, but those names just felt out of place. Because other than the names, everything else about that empire was incredibly Japanese: the social customs, the food, the government, the weaponry (oh yeah, there were katana), the theater, etc. Faced with this, my friend and I were left to wonder if this empire was just based on feudal Japan or if it actually was feudal Japan.

Plus, we both were at least a little irked by the Asian super-empire itself because of what it implies about Asians by tossing the major East Asians together into one big empire, but I'm not going to get more into that since the Asian American Studies Minor in me will probably get waaaaay off topic (and of course, we're sure it was unintentional, though no less bothersome).

So we talked about how a lot of fantasies are based in recognizable Western time periods and cultures (e.g. medieval Europe). We thought maybe we were just so used to such Western settings in fantasy books that we didn't notice it. Maybe lots of fantasies, when read with a specific time and setting in mind, turn out to sound like THAT time and setting and not terribly like an original fantasy place at all. Maybe.

Really though, what often helps to make a fantasy world just "based on" a real place rather than "it IS" the real place is that fantastical element. This book sort of had it, but never expanded upon it enough to give it any weight. It was like "Oh, it's Japan...plus magic...except not because we barely ever talk about it."

So I guess, the question is still what makes a fantasy setting "based on" a real time/place and what makes a fantasy setting just a real time/place dressed up in Fantasy clothes?

Because seriously, it was straight up Japan.

July is Summer-like

That being said, I am a happy camper. Yes, it is hot and I do hate sweltering, but it also means not having to wear jackets, eating icy desserts (which I love), swimming, and general chillaxing (yes, I do use this word in every day speech). After June Gloom, sunny sunny July is long-overdue.

With the return of SoCal sun, our dear friend Luce returned from her year abroad. She is the friend we wrote A Story of Very Questionable Origin for, and we were finally able to put the book in her hands (literally!) last, last Saturday. She was delighted and informed me Tuesday that she had begun reading it.

Tonight, she informed Alz that she had finished the book in which nothing really happens, and I believe the quote was "nothing happening has never been so glorious." I am thrilled; Alz was thrilled; and really, nothing happens in the story except for a very long, very crazy dinner party.

Anyway, perhaps best of all is that she also told Alz that she couldn't tell our writing apart later in the novel (structure in the beginning has something to do with this telling-apart business). Yay! Being able to blend two writing styles seamlessly is, of course, important in the collaborative process. So this was good to hear, especially from Luce since she's been reading our writing since days of yore (or some might call it high school).

I intend to interrogate her ruthlessly tomorrow when I see her for lunch. Perhaps more on her experience and what that means for Alz and me as a dynamic duo at a later date. Maybe after this weekend since I am insanely going to Disneyland in predicted-to-be 100 degree weather and then hosting a birthday party for small children on Sunday. Fantastic!

I do love the summer. Peace out.