NaNoFail: Repent Ye Nonwinners

November is just over halfway done, and I’m sure you’ve noticed the lack of promised humiliating NaNoWriMo sample posts.   it’s time for me to admit defeat.  In the nineteen days since NaNoWriMo kicked off, I’ve written maybe a thousand words.  General Custer didn’t even manage to fail this hard.  I could chastise myself and reflect on all the ways in which I’ve let myself down, or I could let the internets do it.  Let’s face it, I criticize myself enough, and it’s time for me to stop Bogarting all the degrading, defeatist comments.  It’s someone else’s turn to rain fiery rhetoric down upon my miserable, unworthy carcass.  I must prostrate myself before the throngs (ha!) of disappointed followers and accept my just and due punishments, but before I do so, allow me a moment to offer some manner of explanation for my egregious dereliction of duty.

As I mentioned before, Honey Badger and I had a trip planned for the first full week of November.  I knew this going into NaNoWriMo, and foolishly thought I could juggle it all, nevermind that I have the hand-eye coordination of a roofie’d quadruple amputee.  As it turned out, I worked a total of fourteen hours a day on November 1st and 2nd preparing for my departure, got three hours of sleep before my morning flight on the 3rd, spent the 4th-7th traveling every square inch of Wisconsin in a frigid rental car meeting a whole herd of Honey Badger’s relations, and finally wound up in Milwaukee on the 8th-11th for a rehearsal dinner and wedding. I proceeded to get fabulously and ludicrously hammered at the reception, much to Honey Badger’s delight, and spent the whole of the 11th nursing a well-earned hangover through two four-hour flights.

“Bloody Mary, full of vodka, blessed are you among cocktails.”

Long story short, I made it back to Anchorage in one piece, only to be confronted by all the cleaning I failed to get done while I was working overtime the week before I left.  You know how it’s hard to tell what your house really smells like until you go away for a few days, and then you walk in the door and go “So, that’s what I smell like?”  Yeah, well, apparently I smell like musty upholstery and wet dog.  The 13th I returned to work and discovered that one of my backups didn’t do anything while I was gone, and the other screwed things up on a level that would certainly earn a gold medal if “F#$%ing Up” were an Olympic event.  I barely managed to crank out a post Friday, in “honor” of the new Twilight movie, and only because I’d written it previously for another (failed) blog.  Sometimes it’s nice to have previous screw-ups to fall back on.

I’d be lying if I said the Wisconsin trip was the only thing that set me back, though.  I mentioned before that “things have been getting real around here.”  You see, Honey Badger and I recently found out we will be relocating to the lower 48.  After nearly a decade in Alaska, I’m finally moving to a part of the country that will allow me to drive home (or anywhere, really), where I can actually get stuff delivered to me, and where I can finally wear shorts again.  For that last one, I apologize in advance.  The problem, of course, is that I haven’t had to apply to a new job in over seven years.  I’m like a divorcé getting back in the dating game, praying that teased hair and shoulder pads are still fashionable.  The last month and a half has been a scramble to make plans and figure out what I’ll be doing in order to, you know, not starve.  So, even though I had fun on the trip, and it would have otherwise been a welcome break, NaNoWriMo isn’t the only thing it got in the way of.  We did get a pretty bad-ass caricature drawn at the reception, though.

Yes, our relative head sizes are to scale.

When I moved to Anchorage, it was fairly simple.  My mom and I packed my few worldly possessions in the car and drove up the ALCAN.  To say that I have a few more possessions now than I did then is to say that the sun is a tad bright.  I also have a rather large dog to contend with, and she does not travel well.  Driving the ALCAN in winter is not going to happen, so unless we wait until spring, my only options for transporting Fluffzilla are the plane and the ferry.  Aside from the simple logistical concerns of moving, I’ve also been distracted with updating all my application materials and applying for new jobs.  While a big part of me is terrified about the prospect of leaving my nice, cozy, familiar job and my health insurance, another part of me sees this as the impetus I need to alter my current, utterly depressing career path.  The problem is, I doubt if any company will bother looking at my resume once they see that Alaska address at the top.  Perhaps if I had some major, specialized skill, but I’m just another administrative monkey.  When my friend Kelly moved to Anchorage, she didn’t get any call-backs on her job applications until I told her to start using my address and phone number.  Much as I try to look on the bright side and welcome the change, I’m deeply uncomfortable with not having a job lined up prior to my move.

So, there you have it, ladies and gentleman of the jury.  I have presented my version of the events in response to the charges laid against me.  I am very disappointed that I have failed myself in this endeavor, but even more so that I have failed you.  I promised you a month-long display of hastily hammered out, shameful writing, and in failing to deliver I have deprived you of the joys inherent in mocking bad prose.  It’s always good to feel better than someone else (case in point: Honey Boo Boo), and I fell short of my promise to be your zero.  So, here I kneel before this just and vengeful court of public opinion, begging you to show mercy.  While I am guilty of the factual charges, I will only remind you that I was operating under psychological duress.  Also, given what you now know about upheaval in my life, I think we can all agree that I must have been suffering from an acute case of temporary insanity to think for a second that NaNoWriMo was an achievable goal this particular November.  So, if the foreman will please read the verdict and impose my sentence, I am ready.  Shoot straight, you bastards.

Twilight Episode 5: Attack of the Glitter

The 21st Century has brought upon us many hardships: two wars, a recession, natural disasters on every continent, the Bush presidency, and toys masquerading as legitimate excuses to pay $100 a month for phone service.  However, one of the more insidious plagues of our century is the Twilight phenomenon. Normally, I wouldn’t compare teen culture to life-changing social and environmental woes no matter how much I wish Miley Cyrus and the Jonas Brothers would go the way of Buddy Holly and Patsy Cline.  Right now, I’m going to make an exception.  You see, Breaking Dawn Part II, the “final chapter” of the Twilight saga, hits movie theaters on Friday.  I have to say few things chap my ass more than die-hard Twilight fans.  Maybe people who get on my case about getting a Smartphone.

$90? A month? They better shit gold bricks.

This whole Twilight mess started as the brain child (where’s a wire coat hanger when you need one?) of Stephanie Meyer. I couldn’t give half a damn about Stephanie Meyer one way or the other. All she did was write a manuscript and I applaud her for completing such an arduous task. That she convinced a publishing company, arguably the least reliable judge of quality literature, into printing her manuscript is an enviable accomplishment. Stephanie Meyer is merely banking off a rather impressive turd, we have the publisher to thank for polishing and then selling it. That’s capitalism. The fact remains that it took people buying these books and recommending them to their friends to make this whole Twilight mistake a headline.  I have a friend, an otherwise intelligent, self-sufficient, literary-minded twenty-something friend, who said to me once that she was in love with Edward Cullen and that she wished she could find a man like that in real life. I was intrigued. Not being a tween who spends my after-school hours hanging out on a mall bench outside Hot Topic, my first question was “Who the hell is Edward Cullen?”

In all honesty, I have had my own literary crushes, the first of which being Mr. Darcy and the most recent being Jamie Fraser.  My friend was horrified to learn that I had not heard of Twilight and quickly informed me that Edward was “the perfect man.” I didn’t laugh as hard as you might think. After all, perfection is possible in art, unlike reality, and the only flaw with depicting perfection is that it tends to be boring. I thought I’d give it a shot, keeping in mind it was written for teens. I enjoyed Harry Potter immensely so I felt confident that I could enjoy the book in its intended context. Perhaps that was what ruined it for me initially. I expected decent writing, fleshed-out characters, and an engaging plot. Comparing Twilight to Harry Potter was like comparing a bald, three-legged donkey to Man o’ War. The only positive aspect of reading that grueling slog of a book was the fact that I checked it out from the library. So, unlike some people I wasn’t duped out of $23.

My complaint, in a nutshell, is that the book tries to do two things and fails miserably at both. It’s a supernatural teen romance that is neither particularly exciting nor genuinely romantic. It’s about “vampires” who don’t drink human blood, don’t have menacingly large canines, are possessed of infinite life, super-human strength, agility, speed, and unnatural beauty. Wait, vampires? No, those are elves. They are Tolkien’s elves doused in glitter, and don’t try to tell me otherwise. To add insult to injury, Stephanie decided she didn’t want any kind of darkness associated with her vampires. So, naturally, the whole “sunlight destroys them” thing had to go. Only icky, nasty, evil things are vanquished by the sun, but she needed an excuse for the myths, for why vampires would avoid sunlight.  Sparkling was the only natural solution, obviously. Why do vampires avoid sunlight? Because it makes them even more gorgeous. Of course. Of-F#$%ing-course.

Glitter babies.  That explains it.

I’m also sad to report that Twilight is about as romantic as Botox, and half as genuine. We are told that Bella and Edward are intended for each other; that they are madly in love with each other. We are told this by the narrator, Bella, a passably pretty, mild-mannered teen who is instantly adored upon moving to a new school and possesses only a minor token flaw: she’s clumsy.  Stephanie presents us with a female lead who is little more than a placeholder for the reader to impose their own thoughts, feelings, and personality on to.  Edward, on the other hand, has the personality of “that neighbor with the oversized freezer.” His behavior is initially rude, then erratic, then unnaturally possessive. When combined, these two characters have boring, shallow, painfully awkward interactions that display absolutely no chemistry.  None.  That’s true love: when you’re seven.

But why do I care? Why does this failure of modern literature evoke in me the level of rage usually reserved for traffic jams and AutoCorrect? Because of the screaming masses who proclaim its status as a masterpiece. Because of teenage girls who now want nothing more than to be like Bella, the stereotypical, passive, damsel in distress. Who think that a boring, mercurial, possessive boyfriend is desirable. Because of grown-ass women who, obviously unhappy with their own love lives, are glorifying the single most immature depiction of love I’ve ever read. This probably explains why the single ones are single and the married ones are so dissatisfied with their marriages that they’re forced to lose themselves in fantasy. I’ve been there, too. Smutty romance novels were my crutch. Then I learned from my relationship mistakes and poor choice of partners, and moved the hell on.

NaNoWriMo 2012 Part I: Let The Terror Begin

Note: My word count hasn’t changed since my last update (yes, yes, I’ve been a bad little girl indeed).  Project Rebel is currently at 14,384 words.  Therefore, the ultimate goal is 64,384.  I’ve been working 12 hour days all week (that’s why this post is so late) and haven’t written a single thing today.  I leave Saturday to attend a wedding down south.  This… is going to be a big, fiery train wreck.  For now, here’s the opening few paragraphs of Project Rebel.  I’ve decribed it a little better here.

I saw my home burn at the age of six.  I wish I remembered more about the estate itself; it’s lands and tenants, but I clearly recall watching it be consumed by the flames of the Ligeian invaders who’d marched into Labhras from the coast.  My childhood before that day is little more than a collection of vague, fleeting memories built on a shifting foundation of feeling and instinct. I couldn’t tell you now what my father looked like except to say “fatherly,” nor what my mother sang me to sleep with, only that I’d know it if I heard it.  Not until Emperor Phaedrus’s troops landed on Eibhir’s shores and advanced like a pack of wolves through an untended flock did I form my first clear and unmistakable memory.

The estate, named Gwrtheryn in the old tongue, was a modest settlement near the Labhrasian border with Boadicea.  The forests were lush and green and the fields were fertile, or must have been for I don’t recall going hungry. The tenant farmers seemed content with my parents’ stewardship, for what little I knew of such matters, and I played often with many of their children.  My family was among the minor nobility of Labhras, and the roughly built timber and earthen keep had been in my father’s family for seven generations.  I had a twin sister, Eimhin, and elder brother, Eadaoin.  Their fates remain unknown to me, and I pray I might see them again when all is done.

What I do remember is a day of endless blue skies and the budding oak trees of early spring.  That morning was crisp with an underlying promise of warmth, and the air smelled clean and new.  Like all children past toddling age, my morning was consumed with hastily completed chores I’ve long forgotten.  I was eager to get out of the keep and rendezvous with my cohorts, but even before that could happen, Mannix, the stableman’s son found me and chased me around the chicken coop with a large barking toad in hand.  I squealed with equal parts disgust and delight and dodged the older boy at every step before running out of breath.  I stopped in the middle of the pig yard and turned around and gave Mannix a shove.  His own momentum, more than my meager push, landed him on his ass and he dropped the amphibian which leapt away as we laughed.

The fields outside the keep were a sea of freshly turned black earth, and soon enough we’d be tasked with sowing the seeds that would ensure our survival through the long and bitter winter.  Until then, we took to running barefoot in the soft, cool soil and giving chase to our shrieking friends.  Come autumn, those games of chase would be wound through acres of sun-warmed wheat grown high above our heads.  Our energy wouldn’t be spent until after the long, tiring harvest was completed and the languid days of the fire feasts fell upon the whole of the kingdom.  Until then, we ran wild and remained inexhaustible.  We worked hard, yes, but the concerns of adulthood were not yet upon us. Our lives were not without ease or joy.

Sometime just before noon, we paused to fetch a drink from the well in Gwrtheyrn’s courtyard, and it was my sister, Eimhin, who first spotted the smudge of gray creeping into an otherwise cloudless sky.  I knew, of course, that smoke meant fire, but nothing in my limited life experience suggested to me that it may be an indicator of impending danger.  We’d all heard grand and glorious tales growing up of the wars between Eibhir’s ancient tribes and, more recently, it’s rival kingdoms, but the last battles had happened well before our birth.  It fascinated us, for a time, but nothing in those days held our attention for long.

It wasn’t until a few hours later when the ominous ashen cloud spread and our parents began to show concern that we took any real interest in what was transpiring to the South.  Gwrtheyrn’s position near the border bestowed upon our estate the responsibility of warning our countrymen of approaching danger.  A decade or more of peace, however, had made our men complacent, and were it not for my brother Eadaoin’s close observation and our father’s inclination to listen to his only son we would have been even less prepared than we were.  A number of the tenant farmers whispered among themselves that the Volden had returned to our lands after more than a generation of absence.

The Volden had invaded from the north with their great bear skin clad warriors and their mighty axes with an eye to settle our lands and conquer the disjointed tribes of Eibhir.  It was in those far off decades that chieftains now remembered only in song had consolidated their power and banded together after centuries of inter-tribal raids and battles over territory.  It had taken generations, during which the numerous timber keeps and earthen fortifications were built, before our ancestors had pushed the usurpers back to the their territory and expelled them from our land.  Rumor had long been that those wild-men had been building great long ships, intent on finding new lands to conquer.  No one was certain why no Volden had returned to gain a foothold in the south.