I can’t do NaNoWriMo this year. Not only is there too much going on to devote 3-4 hours a day almost every day, but I’m not sure what the point is anymore. Not the point of NaNoWriMo in general, just for me. Last year when murmur had a podcast that featured the fest, the question of what to do with a NaNoNovel after it’s been written came up. I have two NaNoNovels, but no answer to the question. It’s been plaguing me and I don’t feel like adding to that stack is a step forward. So I’m not doing it.

I feel like the daily drabbles I’m doing over at the studio are doing a great job of recharging my creative juices, so I’m not looking for a second writing challenge right now. What I do need a kick in the pants for is novel reading. I’ve read an embarrassingly few novels this year and with a twitter list full of booksellers and book fans, I’ve become extremely frustrated at my “inability” to keep up. I could make the time to read, it’s sitting right there at the end of most of my week days when I’m reading the same silly stories on the internet or watching the same silly TV shows.

To that end, I’m declaring November as National Novel Reading Month or NaNoReMo for short. My goal is to read 50 hours of novels (works of fiction) this month. This boils down to 1 hour and 40 minutes a day. I considered doing X number of novels/pages, but so much depends on the style of the author that would be much harder to quantify.

I’m planning to layering prose novels with graphic novels. I’m not sure yet if that extends to comic trades, but I think it might. It will all depend on what stands out when I finish up the previous book. Why layer? The one thing I’ve always disliked about NaNoWriMo is that by the time I’m done, I don’t want to have anything to do with writing for at least a month. I don’t want that to happen with reading (I’m not convinced it could), but the graphic novels should serve as a palate cleanser between courses.

Speaking of courses, I’m starting with The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay which i should have read months ago for the murmur book club but have barely started. My next novel will be Howl, which was gifted/awarded to me by Josh, the purveyor of Brews and Books and one of those bookseller friends I mentioned earlier.

After that, who knows? There are physical and mental stacks galore that are just begging to be taken out. I can’t wait.

So now what?

I’m not buying another Kindle. This experience has left me with a bad taste in my mouth for the Kindle device. I’m 98% certain that reason my device is busted is that I let it go so long without charging that it didn’t have enough juice left to kick itself back on once it was dry. It goes beyond a battery that won’t hold a charge. It doesn’t even work when it’s plugged in. So very frustrating. On top of that, that “Critical Battery” message is never going to come off that screen. I understand that’s the nature of the eInk technology and not the Kindle mocking me, but it’s really hard to not think that when I see it. I want to cause it great harm.

I’m not giving up on e-readers. Despite my unfortunate luck with a bum Kindle, I’m an eReader convert. I like the convenience of the slim device. I like having oodles of books at my fingertips. I like not building up a physical library once I’m “done” with a book, but still having it, which I couldn’t get with a library card. I’m not going back to physical books any time soon.

I’m not buying a different eReader. If I was reading half as much as I wished I was, I would be deciding between buying another (cheaper) Kindle which (hopefully) doesn’t have the same problem, or looking into a Nook or something different. As it stands, I just don’t read enough currently to spend much money on and eReader. Plus, I really don’t like the idea of committing to a device with a proprietary format. Even when it lets you use other formats, it still has a preferred one that’s going to work best. What I “need” is a device that lets me access any number of different eReader libraries. It also needs to do a bunch of other fun stuff to justify its price since, as I said, I’m not reading enough.

I’m not buying and iPad…yet I live in a house where we get to play with one for a week or so at a time and everything besides eReading that the iPad brings to the table (internet at your fingertips, crazy-pretty casual games, child-distracting visualizations, etc) is well-used. It’s not difficult to imagine having a “family” iPad that I can use as an eReader. With an iPad, I won’t have to worry about choosing a specific format or library since Kindle and many other producers have an app to access their content. It has its own drawbacks, though. Until it gets a tiny bit smaller and considerably lighter it’s not practical for “on the go” eReading. However, it’s easier to justify the $600 for an iPad, given how much we use it, than a $150 eReader. I would also need $600, and I’m not interested in buying a first-generation iProduct ever. They should have a new version up and running by the time I can save up enough money though.

Until then, my unread stack of paper books will keep me plenty occupied.

heroes: the show barely survived a 3 hour marathon catch-up. it’s sticking around only because the idea of the story is interesting enough to keep watching. we will have to be diligent to make sure we don’t let episodes stack up. there are so many holes, so many obvious solutions that the super-power set chooses to ignore. it’s frustrating.

it’s basically a time-killer on weekends when the baby-thing is napping. she seems to do better with a bit of ambient noise in the background, but so much that she’ll wake up (like vacuuming . see also: my name is earl, fringe

the ex list: rolling stone says no.

valentine: i blame watching this right after i forced myself to finish the first episode of the ex list. 10 minutes in, i noticed that i was wandering around doing chores instead of watching. so i turned it off and unsubscribed.

terminator: after the 4th unwatched episode showed up last night (for a total of *all* episodes unwatched) it got cut. even though there is plenty of space on the DVR, i cannot abide the clutter.

life: starting to pile up as well, and like the terminator, we missed the first episode. this is being captured largely for ryan (i’m not a big fan, personally), so unless we have a few more sleepy afternoons, soon, this will probably drop off, too.

lost in austen: something else i found. it’s a bbc series (4 episodes long-does that make it a miniseries?) about a modern english woman who stumbles into the story of Pride & Prejudice, breaks everything and then has to repair it. i know, i know, it sounds awful. i only picked it up because it was recommended on a few random blogs i read. also, it’s p&p, which, i confess is starting to replace s&s as my favorite austen novel. …some day i’ll actually read it.

anyway, back to the show. it could be awful. it should be awful. if a mormon housewife from arizona wrote it in her spare time, it would be awful. but it’s from the bbc and they, quite frankly, do not do awful when it comes to english period dramas, and thusly, lost in austen is so much better than it has any right to be. in the first 25 minutes i went from “yawn, could you *be* more mary sue?” to “omg! i want to write this story my way only i don’t need to because this is made of awesome!”.

…i finished it while this post languished in draft-land. it’s got some serious holes (besides the whole “the book is real” thing) and was a bit frustrating, but was worthy enough if you’re enough like me. be warned, if you’re anything remotely close to an austen scholar, you’ll likely throw things at the teevee.

eleventh hour: speaking of things that happened while this post languished. i don’t get this show. maybe it’s because it didn’t grab me enough to pay attention well enough. i thought it was going to be mystical in some fashion, but in a season full of shows about quirky main (male) characters who have some sort of gift that makes them special and their potentially equally quirky (female) sidekicks, this one make me yaaaaawn. i gave it a second chance, but then killed it. see also: my own worst enemy, the mentalist, chuck (although that was last season and just didn’t get re-tivoed this season).

one theme i forgot: the gross-out factor: perhaps it’s just that the majority of shows i watch are crime/hospital related (then again, most are anyway), but it seems like more and more of a tv show’s budget is going towards special effects that are largely intended to make the audience squirm. whether it’s the cg zoom in shots in house, bones and crime shows that demonstrate how an illness or a weapon attacked the body, blood and guts of a surgery patient, or in the absolutely tasteless extreme of private practice’s baby born at 27 weeks being resuscitated, these are things we shouldn’t need to see. yes, i’m sure the zoom in helps quickly explain technical concepts, but it’s gone too far. it reminds me of when candy went through this stage. gummy bugs, fingers you could chew the “flesh” from, sugary blood that squirted out of heads (okay, i maybe made that up, but i know there was “blood” at one point). i guess the kids that bought that have all grown up and started watching/creating television shows.

okay…maybe not grown up exactly.

this will likely be the last tv pass until something new comes out, or i just start posting about individual shows. hrm…maybe a weekly wrap-up? you don’t care. you didn’t even read this far ;)

while i’ve stayed away from the relationship shows (even i have limits), the rest of it has been rotting my brain out on a regular basis. even the mid-season replacement shows that were intentional are really, truly awful stuff. Cashmere Mafia, which i had some relatively high hopes for (like gossip girl for grownups), has officially lasted 3 episodes before getting pulled from the tivo.

fortunately for me, charlotte’s colic is fading and we can spend more time apart and together. when she’s calm enough and not interested in playing (a time that used to be spent screaming), she’s become quite content sitting in my lap listening to me read aloud until she falls asleep.

i just might meet that “one book a month” goal i’ve got this year. thanks tv!

ah, who am i kidding? with everything else that’s going on right now, i won’t have time to read any of the books, much less 6 of them.

maybe if i just read the 6th one….

go fug yoursef

the women (the fuggirls) who run the site post pictures of celebrities making horribly, awful choices in terms of fashion and then write very entertaining words about what’s wrong with them. to be fair, when they find something well done (especially if it’s someone they’ve recently bashed), they will also comment. and it is again, very funny. i could never in my wildest dreams hope to accomplish the level of cattiness mixed with just the right amount of not-so-bitchy to make it palatable. it is to the point that when i find something disastrous on a different site, i wonder what they’re going to say about it and hope they find it. usually i’m not disappointed.

the posts waiting in my rss reader today were no exception and were so “classic” that i felt the need to post about them:

randy jackson’s coat
sharon stone managing not to look batshit (see? they’re nice sometimes)
gwen stefani making a bad choice on american idol last night
two crazy-assed model people looking faker than a fake thing (i think this might be my favorite commentary format). other key examples are: here and here

and yes, it’s mean and it’s awful and we could all be doing better things with our time than writing and reading about celebrities, but seriously, this is chocolate covered popcorn for my brain.

• drink less soda (maybe 1 a day?)
• drink way more water (some in the form of tea)
• wean myself mostly off of caffeine by march-ish
• exercise regularly (once week by march, adding a “once” every week every quarter)
• read one book a month (pitiful goal, i know, but considering i read about 3 all 2006, it’s not an unrealistic one)
• write (at least 6 hours a week)
• eat better (one “take out” meal a day, healthier choices in general)
• take my vitamins
• finish ryan’s scarf before spring

oh yeah, i know that it takes a few weeks to get a single habit ingrained, and that trying to do all of this at once means i’m probably doomed to fail and all, but ya gotta have dreams, right? speaking of dreams…

loftier “things i’d like to do/have/etc but can’t necessarily do on my own and/or have no real control over” goals:

• sell the house
• move into the loft
• get pregnant
• find a cure for various forms of cancer
• take a really-real vacation (or two, or three, or more)
• buy some shiny new apple things (won’t be able to help myself)
• earn lots of money to support all these goals ;)

also, the official motto of 2007 is “fuck that!”

coolest part: i’d forgotten my password.

second to least coolest part: they give you a dropdown menu of reasons for quitting. when you select an option, you get a customized “we’re sorry you’re quitting” message. the addiction reads as such:

We are proud that we were able to make a sucessful, enjoyable game. And as much as we’d like you to keep playing, we understand that there are certain cirumcstances which may prevent continuous game play. Currently, we have no plans to delete World of Warcraft accounts regardless of their activity history. Provided that the characters do not get deleted by the account holder, we will retain all character information on our servers indefinitely.

no other option has a comment that even comes close to this. they’re all “we’re sorry you don’t like X, but you know it’s always changing,” or “we’re sorry you don’t think you can play because you’re too busy doing X, but have you considered that it might still be worth it for reason Y?”

least coolest part: under the personalized message (even when your option is addiction) is this:

The peon is full-on weeping now. We hope you’re happy.

accompanied by a few very sad character animations. such bad taste. i mean, i know they’ll get in trouble big time if the give an inch on the whole “we didn’t intentionally try to make it addictive” issue, but still. poor taste if someone’s got enough will power left to cut themselves off.

(and i totally linked to my quitting post in my detailed comment)