Last Day of the Month

Where I live (taken on 19th November 2011) .

On the whole, November was a good month in terms of productivity. I'm pleased that I completed NaNoWriMo, and am looking forward to start working on a second draft of my novel in the coming weeks. I've also read a lot, and enjoyed almost all of it. Clarissa was the largest of the reading products, and I was proud to have completed it, however I really did love it, and finishing a book you love so much is a little bittersweet! Also, with my cat dying less than a week ago, November is tinged with great sadness, despite the successes on the way.

November has been full of preparations for reading challenges in 2012, and I'm really very excited for the new year, however, there are still a few hours left of November, and I don't want to wish December away, so I'm going to focus on the month ahead, as well as these remaining hours!

Firstly, by the end of the day, I want to have finished Night and Day (Virginia Woolf) and one more Shakespeare play. My Shakespeare Challenge, in which I hoped to have finished the plays by the end of the year, took a massive knock with NaNoWriMo, so I don't have any expectations right now as to when I'll finish, though I think with Allie's challenge in January, it could be by 31st January. By tonight, I'll have read 15, so perhaps by the end of December I can get it up to 30. I can't say I'm completely enjoying it, however there are a few plays that I have loved. I read The Two Gentlemen of Verona last night, and liked it very much, particularly Speed and the exchange between Speed and Valentine in Act II Scene 1. Anthony and Cleopatra, Timon of Athens, and Julius Caesar are other favourites. 

I think through December I would like to focus on Virginia Woolf. I have a list of sixteen of her major works, of which I've completed nine (ten by tonight), so I would like to complete the remaining six in December. I like the idea of working through an author's major works, so for the new year I would like to get another list for a new author together to work on through 2012, however I've not decided yet. And, if I am able to finish Shakespeare by the end of the year, my next focus will be the collected poems of Ted Hughes. I'm going to put up a page later, and aim to start it on 1st January (I'm going against what I said before about focusing on December - can't help it!).

Back to December: I've signed up for two of Allie's Reads - Sense and Sensibility, and Paradiso - the final cantica of The Divine Comedy. I need some incentive to read Sense and Sensibility, having never managed to get passed the first two chapters, and I've read Inferno and Purgatorio with her in October and November. Here is a good opportunity for me to say I'm grateful to her for these read-alongs for giving me the incentive to read The Divine Comedy. I loved Inferno very much, though I didn't much care for Purgatorio. I didn't hate it, I just wasn't into it as much as I thought I would have been. But I am very much looking forward to starting Paradiso.

I feel I can be fairly ambitious when it comes to reading this month because, firstly, Dead White Guys has a readathon on Saturday - (I'll pick my books either tomorrow or the next day), and secondly I'll have a lot of time to myself (Big C is a singer, so December is beyond hectic, and I won't be going to all of the gigs with him). So, aside from the above mentioned books, I would also like to keep on going with my Bible Challenge, as well as read one more title from my 100 Greatest Books. I would like one of those books to be Moby Dick, and am hoping to read along with a friend. Finally, I have signed up to read Middlemarch as it was published. The details are here, and it starts tomorrow.

So, to recap December plans:

• The Voyage Out, Virginia Woolf
• The Years, Virginia Woolf
• Between the Acts, Virginia Woolf
• The Common Reader 2nd Series, Virginia Woolf
• Three Guineas, Virginia Woolf
• A Haunted House: The Complete Shorter Fiction, Virginia Woolf
• Moby Dick, Herman Melville
• Sense and Sensibility, Jane Austen
• Paradiso, Dante
• Fifteen Shakespeare plays
• 'Miss Brooke' (first book of Middlemarch, George Eliot)
• Judges (Bible Challenge)

As for the remaining hours of today: Big C and I have been kicking around for days chilling out together before he starts his December madness (he's a singer, so he will be working a lot), and we've, once again, got the house a mess. I'm loathe to start a new month in a mess, so I'm going to get on with some housework! And then, as I say, read one Shakespeare play and finish Night and Day. Lots to do....

Fifty

I'm now at the half-way point of my 100 Greatest Books Challenge, which seems to be a good point to say some words on it!

I can't say why I decided to do this, other than I thought maybe it would be a good thing to do: there was no real thought behind it. Again, I was confronted by a list and thought, "Challenge accepted". I think when I started in July, when I started this blog, too, I had read around twenty books. Now, as I say, I've read fifty, and can say I'm a marginally better person for it.

Of course, some of it has been dreadful. The Wasp Factory is probably the most offensive book I've ever read, for example (and yes, I get berated for this, but I stand by it: I loathed it). Anna Karenina, too, was a disappointment, and others feel that it is the best book ever written and I'm a moron for "not getting it". And I did "get it", I just didn't "get into it": there's a big difference. The Magic Faraway Tree Collection wasn't exactly gripping either, but given that I am at least twenty years older than the target audience, I don't think that's anyone's fault! And Dune was yet another example of an epic failure, those who is accountable for that failure I wouldn't like to say.

But that is the bad stuff, and I can honestly say the good outweighed the bad in epic proportions. Charles Dickens is, far and away, the biggest success out of this. At the end of August, I wrote this about Mr. Dickens, and good God, I wish this was not my most popular post (and oh, it is by far my most popular post, it's marching ahead of the second top by about four hundred hits). I take it back, I take it all back, and how. The 100 Greatest Books Challenge has six Dickens books, and in July I had only read A Christmas Carol. I had tried and failed to get into Oliver Twist many times, but this challenge forced me to do it, and for that I truly am grateful. I still have some way to go before I feel that I can call myself a Dickens fan: although I have gone on to read Tale of Two Cities (which I didn't like as much as Oliver Twist, but I did still enjoy it), and I have bought Our Mutual Friend and The Pickwick Papers, I still need to read Great Expectations, Bleak House and David Copperfield to complete the Dickens on that list, as well as a few others perhaps before I feel I can judge his major works. But I am more than happy to do so: Dickens is no longer a chore. From what I have read, I thoroughly enjoy Charles Dickens. 

So that was a success, and what else? Well, I think another breakthrough was for me to come at least some way in dropping my book snob attitude. I don't like being a book snob, it's not something I claim with pride. I think it shows, in me at least, a certain lack of confidence. I thought, when I said to one of my friends that I resented paying even £1 for The Da Vinci Code, that was quite a witty thing to say, but really it wasn't. I mean, great it is not, but I did enjoy it. And, furthermore, I think it's important to at least have some grip on the zeitgeist, so it was a good one to read. And, in that spirit, I was happier to read a few more that I looked down on. Memoirs of a Geisha, for example, is another one I could not put down, and I'm looking forward to seeing the film at some point.

The final success in all of this is I've got over my dislike of 'ridiculous plots'. The Time Traveller's Wife is the best example I can think of: I picked it up in a bookshop not long after the film, read the back and thought, "How silly" and that was the end of that until September, when I finally bought it in Alnwick. As you can see, the book didn't exactly inspire a review, but it inspired something in me. It was very beautiful, and I'm glad to have read it. And The Alchemist - again, I have no inspiration to mention it in its own post (which is ironic, I was promised by the publisher that it would change my life), but at the same time I was happy to read it. 

So far, this challenge has been, as you can see, very good. Looking through what's left, I have high hopes for Moby Dick (which I have started, but got distracted; I was enjoying it, though), Les Misérables (which I shall be reading next year with Laura), as well as the rest of the Dickens titles, and a few others. I can't say I'm looking forward to The Lord of the Rings trilogy, but such is life. This is, at number 50, a very good challenge for me.

Book Buying Banning, or What I've been doing for the past 12 years

I shouldn't buy anymore books. Hell, I have cut down (but not by choice). I am one of the millions: I have more books than I have read. Many more. More than I care to say. I have a lot of books I need to get through before I have, well, got through them. So I should ban myself from buying books.

There have been times in my life where I have not been able to read as I have done these past six months, and indeed there have been times where I have, but all through my adult life I've loved reading. And even when I couldn't read, through illness mainly, or working really hard, I have still bought books. Many books.

But I'm not sorry, and long may it continue. So long as I have a little cash, even just a smidgen of cash that isn't owed, then I will buy books. I pledge to keep going: to haunt the charity shops and other second hand places, and dream of, occasionally treating myself to a brand new book from Waterstones. I pledge to have no less than one hundred books on my 'to be read' pile. 

Jeanette Winterson said, "You never regret the books you buy, but you regret the ones you don't" and I am still kicking myself for not buying The Complete Yeats and you know what? I have no interest in Yeats.

But one day, I might. A few days ago, at a loose end, I was wandering around this room, picking up books, putting them back or putting them by my armchair, looking for something. Something that I would find even half as enjoyable as Clarissa, and I knew (and I was right) that there was something in this room somewhere. And, thankfully, I found it: Night and Day by Virginia Woolf. I've had it at least six years, and of course I'm wondering why the hell it took me so long to read it, because I absolutely adore it. You can expect a post when I've finished reading it.

Because I always have something. If I want to read something because I ought to have done by now, it's there. If I want to read for comfort, it's there. If I want to be completely engaged, it's there. I am not short of books. You will not find me at midnight with nothing to read and no bookshops open, and you never will. There are so many books in here that I will adore, and yes, some that I will hate. But I am never caught short.

So I will not ban myself from buying books, and I accept that one day I will die with a few hundred left over having never been read. But they'll get left to someone, they will be read. And perhaps one day, when I'm eighty, I will say, "You know, I have had this book fifty years and I have never read it!". I hope so, too. I have a lot of good books. And I'm glad that even when I couldn't read them, I kept on buying them, hoping that one day I would.

Power Cut.

There is no power at home, no internet connection, or mobile phone reception. When we left this morning, the winds were still very high and the rain was lashing, so no reason to suppose it will be back on by the time we get back tonight.

This is one of the reasons why I love reading: all I need was light, which I had either by sitting very close to the coal fire in the living room or the log burner in the kitchen, or some candles, which I eventually found under the sink. I managed to read a good chunk of Night and Day by Virginia Woolf last night by balancing the glass lamp on my knee and holding the book above it. So, really, nothing's different for me.

But, of course, it is. I can't shower, for a start, and I came down to my mum's to do just that, but discovered I had neither the will nor the inclination. I'll either get washed in cold water when I have some energy, or until then hope the electricity comes back on. The fires are keeping the house warm, so at least cold isn't a problem. Feeling sad is really the biggest thing I have to contend with right now.

Another little cat.

Another little cat, another one of my little cats: a kitten, sixteen years ago, from a village about a mile away from my own. A kitten I played with when I was starting high school: a vicious kitten with needle claws and razor teeth, a kitten we nurtured. A kitten who we watched grow into a junior, always eating, always wanting to go out, always chasing birds, who loved the sun and hated the rain, who collected snow and ice balls on his stomach in the winter. A cat who never grew old, not in our eyes at least. A cat who had snacks as often as he could, a cat who invented the meal between breakfast and brunch. Soft, grey fur that people admired; a very clean cat. A cat that couldn't be picked up without a fight, a cat that lay on the coffee table or the kitchen bench and loved to be stroked and fussed over, but only for a minute or so. A cat amongst four other cats, then three, then two, the cat who seemed so young, the youngest cat, a cat who suddenly appeared old in a matter of days. The sixteen year old kitten. Funny, energetic, and very odd, with a ridge of fur above his eyes so he looked permanently angry.

Another cat, another one of my cats, my silly, strange, fluffy grey kitten, who died in my arms this afternoon. Another one of my cats, with his own personality, like the rest, covered up and carried out in an orange towel by the vet. His fur is still on my cardigan as I write this, and of course I'm crying like my heart is breaking. My little cat.

Unable to settle.

Having finished Clarissa and NaNoWriMo (look on the left, I got my little "winner" button!), I'm still at a bit of a loose end. I have all my challenges lined up for 2012, and I've finished the largest projects of this year, and although I have a few far from complete challenges to see me out of 2011 (and beyond!), I'm still kind of wandering without focus. Last night I read The Alchemist from my 100 Greatest Books (taken from GoodReads, I didn't make it up) and I did enjoy it, and I do want to write a little more in detail about this list later, but nevertheless, I just feel a little aimless.

I think what I'm going to do is pledge to complete my Virginia Woolf challenge before the year is out, I think perhaps that will give me a little more focus. I have seven books left on the list, and Dead White Guys have a readathon on the 3rd December (which you should totally sign up for!) so I have no excuses. I shall start today, because I hate this feeling of aimlessness! I keep picking shorter books so I can read them and feel a sense of accomplishment, however I wonder if I would be better off picking another great big one, say, Hunchback. I'm not sure, but for now, I'm going to work on Woolf.

The Bible: Part I

Michelangelo's 'The Fall'

I should start with a disclaimer: People think that, being as I am a Religious Studies graduate, I ought to be very familiar with the Bible. Fact is, however, my studies were largely directed towards other areas. At the time, I was more interested in anthropology and sociology, so I looked at new religious movements and their place within our society, as well as the theory and methods of modern anthropology and sociology, with a good look at Shamanism thrown in. This, in case you're wondering, is why I am not familiar with the Bible! But, in August, I decided to rectify this and work my way through the King James Version of the Bible and, where I felt necessary, share my thoughts and what I have learned. As I say on the challenge page, I am reading this as from a literary point of view, and not as a historical or theological document.

Last night, I finished Deuteronomy, which means I have completed the first section of the Old Testament, so it's a good time to do an update. In the Jewish tradition, this is referred to as the five books of law, instruction, or the five books of Moses, and in the Greek tradition it is referred to as the Pentateuch (Πεντάτευχος: penta meaning "five" and τεῦχος: teuchos meaning book) and they relate to the creation, the origins of Israel, the laws, and the covenant between God and the Hebrew patriarchs: Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. They are divided thus:

1. Genesis (Bereshith, בראשית)
2. Exodus (Shemot, שמות)
3. Leviticus (Vayikra, ויקרא)
4. Numbers (Bamidbar, במדבר)
5. Deuteronomy (Devarim, דברים)

Now, because I am reading the Bible as literature, I'm not going to lie: the first five books were pretty painful with the exception of the creation story. Nevertheless, it's a good point to take stock, do a little bit of research, and have a think. Generally, it must be said, I have done more thinking than reading around, confining most reading to the end notes of my KJV Bible and The Oxford Companion to the Bible. I suppose it's no good pretending I didn't consult Wikipedia with the very blatant cutting and pasting of the Greek letters there! But I like Greek letters, so I used them.

What has been the most interesting is reading the root of many stories we have come to accept. The most glaringly obvious example to me is Norah's Ark. We were taught at school, in went the animals "two by two", there's even a little ditty for school children about it. Turns out not so: in went the unclean animals two by two, but the clean ones went in in seven pairs - Genesis 7: 2 - "Of every clean beast thou shalt take to thee by sevens, the male and his female: and of beasts that are not clean by two, the male and his female." And, if you think it would be impossible to keep afloat, in 1668 John Wilkins, dean of Ripon, would beg to differ: he drew up plans to prove (to himself, at least), that is was perfectly possible.

'The Scapegoat', Holman Hunt, 1854.
From Leviticus 16: 20 - 22. "... And Aron shall lay both his hands upon the head of the live goat, and confess all over him the iniquities of the children of Israel, and all their transgressions in all their sins, putting them upon the head of the goat, and shall send him away by the hand of a fit man into the wilderness."

One of the problems I have is, being as I am at best agnostic, I keep a sharp eye out for inaccuracies, like I'm on my own personal mission to disprove the Bible. I like reading that the Creation Story has root in Near Eastern mythology, that Noah's Ark was similar to Mesopotamian and Hurrian mythology, and the story of baby Moses was not unlike a story by King Sargon around one thousand years before. I also have a hundred examples of Old Testament God being an absolute and utter git. But this isn't the point why I'm reading it: looking for inaccuracies or reasons for (or against) God being a git would be to read it as a historical or theological document, and I'm not doing that. I want to read and enjoy the stories, the fables, the myths, and understand how it inspired so much art and so many literary works. It is very exciting to 'read the root' as it were and identify some of the stories or paintings you are already familiar with. I'm sure as I continue to read, post-Pentateuc, that this will happen more and more.

That said, I'm still at the "Dude, there are giants in the Old Testament!" phase, but I'm sure when I grow up a little bit I'll move past that (but there ARE giants!).

'The Prophet Balaam and his Ass', Rembrandt, 1626

So then. Favourite bits? Despite bemoaning Numbers in one of my comments, I did like the Balaam the Seer fable (Numbers 22), where despite claiming to be able to see into the future, Balaam cannot see the dangers in the road ahead. His donkey, however, can:

And the ass said unto Balaam, Am not I thine ass, upon which thou hast ridden ever since I was thine unto this day? And he said, Nay.
Then the Lord opened the eyes of Balaam, and he saw the angel of the Lord standing in the way: and he bowed down his head, and fell flat on his face. (Numbers 22: 30 - 31)

Initially, I have to say I was surprised that there was a talking donkey in the Bible, as well as giants, but if there's a talking snake, why shouldn't there be a talking donkey? And speaking of that talking snake: the Creation Story was, far and away, the part I enjoyed the most. I was interested to see the snake was not represented as the Devil, as it is in Paradise Lost, which is accountable for a lot of our understanding on creation. A popular myth today is that the serpent was Satan, however in the Bible this is not so: the serpent is the cleverest creature God had made: Genesis 3:1, "Now the serpent was more subtil than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made".

'Tree of Knowledge', Dana Marie

Milton, however, has the snake down as the Devil, in keeping of course with the attitude of "knowing" is a punishable offense! It seemed to me, too, that today, where we strive towards a democratic society (or even flatter ourselves that some of us have achieved it), eating the fruit from the tree of knowledge and being cast out of paradise seemed terrible to me. In Genesis 2: 17, God says, "But of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die", and in Genesis 3: 5, the serpent says, "For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil". It's astonishing to me, today, to read this, when wanting to know things, whether it's simply for the sake of knowing them, or in the spirit of "Scientia potentia est" ("knowledge is power, atributed most commonly to Francis Bacon, however there is no known record of him saying that, and Thomas Hobbes a more likely source. Personally, I thought Foucault said it, but clearly I was wrong). We're encouraged today to learn, go to school, university, to keep our eyes open, "look closer" (American Beauty), and yet in the Creation Story, this instinct caused the fall of man.

And so it goes on. I've read now, in total, 21 books of the bible, so am approximately a third of the way through. It's going fine, as I say I'm enjoying it, but I think as I'm now past the five books of Moses, it will pick up even more. So far, I'm most interested in learning more about the Story of Creation, so am most looking forward to reading Paradise Lost to start with.

Where I read.

For fun :)

What I'm reading tonight: Numbers for my Bible Challenge. Not so much fun!

And, because my Shakespeare Challenge took such a bashing from NaNoWriMo and Clarissa, I've signed up for Allie's Shakespeare Reading Month in January 2012 - see details here.

A lost day.

Today was good, but strange. I say it was "a lost day", but it wasn't really - I just felt a little lost without Clarissa and NaNoWriMo. But it's been a good day - pottered about for the afternoon after writing my post on Clarissa, went for a walk and took lots of pictures (I like taking pictures of mist, trees, and odd light, so today was heaven, but I'm no photographer!). Then, this evening, I have been reading Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathon Safran Foer, which I'm enjoying well enough but I can't see me posting about it.

It's funny, the bittersweet feeling of finishing a big project. I'm not sad, but I did walk around my study tonight for a while wondering what next in a kind of confused manner. I picked Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close for the same reason I bought it - it just jumped out at me, and I've said here and there I will get round to reading it, so I made a start. It is good, I do like it. I don't think anything will really thrill me for a while, I get like that after a book I have loved so much. I didn't read for two months after Jane Eyre, but I hope I won't allow myself to get that bad!

I think for the rest of the night and tomorrow, I'll just be slobbing about a bit reading that. On Monday I will be picking up my other, neglected challenges again. And, I've found a new one for 2012 which I am very excited about - it's from Laura at Owl Tell You About It - read Les Misérables in a year starting 1st January 2012 and finishing 31st December 2012. As I said to her in a comment, I am very much signing up for that! The break down for the challenge is here, and I will be reading my Vintage edition, translated by Julie Rose (1194 pages).

As for now, back to my armchair...

Clarissa, by Samuel Richardson

My now tatty but much loved copy of Clarissa.

On the 30th September 2011, a month and a half ago, I bought Clarissa from a bookshop in Newcastle. I began reading it sitting outside a bank on Grey Street, whilst my pal did whatever he was doing in there. 

"So how are you going to read it?" I think he asked when he came back out.

"Five letters a day? Two letters a day? Not sure." We looked through it, and the length of it is intimidating. At around one million words, it is one of the longest novels in the English language. Even the full title of Clarissa is slightly off-puttingly long:

Clarissa 

or the 

History 

of a 

Young Lady: 

Comprehending 

The Most Important Concerns 

of Private Life, 

And particularly showing 

The distress that may attend the

Misconduct both of parents and children,

In relation to Marriage

Richardson himself was worried about the length, however refused to cut it down, using devices such as clusters of italics to draw the reader's eye to a particular passage and to emphasise certain parts, refusing to allow the reader to skim over or skip anything of importance.

Reading the first letter, from Clarissa's best friend Anne Howe, and hearing from some that this book was particularly dry, I decided to read just two letters a day. Then, I wasn't so familiar with the difference in language, and in the past I have struggled with 18th Century Literature. I think this might be one of the first pre-19th Century texts I have chosen to read, and now I can say I am officially 'broken in' and wonder why on earth it was that I struggled in the first place!

So, I read the first letter on the afternoon of the 30th September on Grey Street, one of England's most beautiful streets, and finished last night, here on the Scottish Borders, in my armchair at around eleven o' clock. For a few days, less than a week certainly, I did stick to the "two a day" plan, and worked out that it would take me until July 2012 to finish. But it wasn't that I was impatient to finish it, that isn't the reason why Clarissa quickly became my 'bedtime book', it was because, frankly, it is astonishingly good. The preconceptions I had - dry, too long, difficult to understand - were entirely unfounded. There is a very good reason why some say it is one of "the greatest of all European novels" (Angus Ross) - it is one of the greatest of all European novels.

I never expected to like it, let alone love it. I decided to read it not as a "duty read", or even a "victory read", though looking at it, twice as long as War and Peace, which is long enough, and hearing that so many people have not read it despite best effort, I was slightly motivated in knowing I would be able to say, "Yes, I have read this." I read it, in fact, because I wanted to see why it was one of the great European classics, and why so few had got to the end. When it was first published, in 1747-48, this was not the case. It was very successful indeed, and translated into French and German, but in the 21st Century, it is massively under-read. F. R. Leavis wrote that whilst it was "impressive, it's no use pretending that Richardson can ever be made a current classic again." Perhaps he's right, but isn't it up to us to decide what a classic is, and not scholars? If everyone was to read it and love it, and not allow themselves to be put off by the length, which is absurd if you think about it, then it would be a current classic. There is no reason for it not to be. It's, in my mind, incrediblely complex, the writing has great depth and brevity, though it is entirely readable: it is, as with 18th Century literature, plot-driven, it is not written to confuse you or play tricks on you. It is what it says it is, it is entirely readable and enjoyable, intensely gripping so hard to put it down even if you wanted to. There is no reason whatsoever that this book should not or cannot be read. It is in English. You can read English, if you are reading this, so read it.

There almost seems to be a kind of mythology around it. It is argued to be one of the first novels, and to the modern reader for reasons stated, it remains a bit of a mystery. The subject matter is important, if you want to understand the place of women in the 18th Century, or learn about the history of marriage, the place of women within marriage, then this is essential. It is not just a novel, therefore, but a historical document. It is epistilatory, and the characters develop in their own words and terms. Lovelace hangs himself (not literally, I'm not going to give out spoilers) with his own rope, for example. The characters who are referred to but do not write their own letters are described by the main letter writers, and the lack of their own words adds to the drama. Clarissa's father, for example, rages "off set" as it were, largely, and adds to the confusion. Why did it get this far? you might ask, why did her family allow this to happen? but you will get no satisfactory answer from the patriarch, just the various interpretation of his words. And Anne Howe, her advice is on occassions dreadful, but there is no doubt of the closeness and attachment between her and Clarissa. Their friendship is inspirational. You see in Clarissa the development of another character, Lovelace's closest friend Belford transforms, and it done realistically, subtlely, in his own words: this is the genius of it. In this sense, Richardson doesn't tell you things, the characters stand alone, they show you themselves of their change in psychology, morals, or simply circumstance. You are left entirely alone with them.

As for Clarissa herself: I think you would have to be a cold-hearted soul to be irritated with her, but perhaps I'm wrong, perhaps some people will find her irritating. She is virtuous - that is the word that sums her up. And she stays true to herself, her faith, and her morals. She draws her strength from them. I cannot understand how anyone could dislike her, but reading Angus Ross's introduction and Sebastian Faulks;s short essay on Lovelace, I gather it has been known.

I don't think there is a book from which I have got so much satisfaction. Yes, the obvious, the, "Yes, I have read this" accompishment I mentioned before. And the time I spent on it: I know many have spent a much longer time on, say, War and Peace, but I loved this book so much it came everywhere with me. It's been all over the North East of England, down to the Midlands twice, and a little further than that. It's sat on my knee in the car, on the dashboard, on the floor once because it kept falling off. It's been in the kitchen (and has an oil stain on it as a result), Little G the parrot ripped a bit of it in the living room trying to get my attention, Effy rested her paws on it once. It's been to my friends' house so they could wonder at the length, it's been in the bath, it's had an ashtray sit on it by the side of my bed, and it's been in the garden when I enjoyed the final warm day of the year. As you can see, it's tatty now. Big C wrote in the front, "Read by the little o, November 2011". It is so loved, and for the past month and a half it's been a part of me. People have texted me asking me how far I was with it, and I texted others, telling them where I was at. Until five days ago, I couldn't imagine finishing, but then suddenly the end was near and the pages to go were less and less. I had to prop it up with a cushion to read because the weight of it meant I might have ripped the final pages away. And, oh God, it was so good. I will certainly re-read it, and soon I should think, in the next few years, if not the next year. It is unlike anything you will read. And I love it, the writing, the genius of it, and I love my now battered, torn copy. This black Penguin Classic is my most precious book. If it wasn't so expensive, I would buy another one and do a 'give away'. If I ever have some cash to spare, I will do just that.

Finished!

I did it - I completed NaNoWriMo! I can't verify it until the 25th, but it's there, it's done: fifty thousand words of finished novel! I cannot wait to verify it!

I feel at this point I should say something reflective, or at least a tiny bit intelligent, but I've just written 5 000 words today, so I'm a little tired! I am happy, very happy, and this, if it is ever to become something, needs radical re-structuring and oh so much work, but the bones are there for me to build on, and I'm so pleased with that. 

And now, how dull, I am going to make the tea, chill out with Big C, then read some more of Clarissa. By strange coincidence, it is likely I will finish that tonight. I could never have planned finishing two massive projects on the same day, but there it is. I will, of course, write straight away with my thoughts on Clarissa.

Lord above.

I have written slightly less than ten thousand words for NaNoWriMo today (and if you click that link, you'll see it says I wrote nearly fourteen thousand, and I assure you, I did not). So, my word count is now 45 00, which I was hoping for, and I think I have given yet another definition of "insane". And I can't write clearly, nor have I the powers to amuse, so I will keep this brief!

I'm writing, mainly, to wind down a little bit and to share with you who have not seen the latest Read-a-Thon, this time from Dead White Guys. It starts 7 a.m. EST on Saturday, December 3rd, and runs until 7 a.m. EST Sunday, December 4th. Amanda writes that you can start at what time you want, so rather than start at noon GMT, which would be the same starting point as those in EST, I'm thinking I'll start a little earlier perhaps. For Dewey's Read-a-Thon, I found myself bored all through the morning before it started then dying a death in the early hours of the following morning. I'll still be tired, I have no doubt, but not that tired I hope! I'm really excited about this one because NaNoWriMo has made my reading suffer a great deal, and I cannot think of a nicer way to spend a December day. I hope it's cold, and that we're buried under twenty feet of snow! What poor grammar, but guys, I've been writing all day.

I'll plan what I want to read further ahead, but I imagine Shakespeare, Virginia Woolf, Sense and Sensibility, and Paradiso will feature. It looks like I may have finished Clarissa by then, which will be sad for me, but I am looking forward to getting into reading lots and lots of books again, not just writing my crappy novel, then reading one, single novel, as much as I love it.

So, I hope some of you can join me and sign up to the readathon. And for now, I am done with the laptop! I'm off to bed, going to read for ten minutes and then let sleep soothe my hot, racing brain!

Mark my words.

The past seven days have been more busy than usual, but tomorrow Big C is out until early evening, the house is already tidy, and I'm slightly more chilled out than the "I have read nothing!" grump that I was in a few days ago. So, tomorrow, I will do an insane amount of NaNoWriMo.

Insane (/inˈsān/) adj: Writing more than 5 000 words in an afternoon.

See, that's what insane means. Look it up. Mark my words, I will write an insane amount. I like to think that, with a lot of work, it may be possible to finish NaNo by Sunday evening. Don't mark those particular words, though, just the words of the first paragraph, do go ahead and mark those. I will be on 35 000 plus by tomorrow evening, preferrably early evening.

Other news: yes, another challenge! This is Howling Frog Books's Greek Classics Challenge 2012, and I'm signing up for Level 1: Sophocles: read 1-4 works. I'm going for -

1. The Republic by Plato
2. The Ethics of Aristotle
3. Sapho
4. Symposium by Plato

It may come to pass that by the end of 2011, I won't have finished The Odyssey, so I'll add that to this list and go for Level Hesiod (read 5-7 works). This challenge is exciting and a little daunting: I've read very little of the Greek classics, and as you know, The Iliad was disastrous. It's a fantasic challenge, and I'm certainly going to go for it. And four books to read in twelve months - it would be ridiculous not to try, especially as this seems to be quite a popular 2012 challenge!

The Aspern Papers, by Henry James

The Aspern Papers came at exactly the right time for me, and completely by chance. Big C and I were on our way home, and we had got to talking about biographies, first editions, and celebrity memorabilia, and how strange it was that so many people would yearn for a personal item of their favourite author, musician, or celebrity, yet how much we understood it. One of my prized possessions is a signed copy of Written on the Body by Jeanette Winterson, and he used to own an autograph of John Lennon. We also know someone who has leaves from Elvis Presley's grave. We were talking about possession and intimacy, and he referred to a letter that was sold for thousands by a friend of John Lennon's, who cut the letter short by saying, "I have to go, John's just walked in". And we were asking why: I mean, if I had Virginia Woolf's pen - well, it's just a pen, right? But it's not, is it? It's more than that. The pen becomes this mystical, revered object. There's a kind of intimacy. And Big C once sat in Charles Dickens's chair, and we both knew just how important it was. A shared connection. Dickens wrote I don't know what sitting in that chair, and this proverbial pen I'm on about - if Virginia Woolf wrote Orlando, To The Lighthouse, or Mrs. Dalloway - imagine holding the pen that produced those works. It's not an object anymore, it's the damn Holy Grail almost.

We arrived home around midnight, and I thought it was too late to do any NaNoWriMo (I'm still on track, ahead actually, but slacking) and I thought it would be good to read a whole book that night. My reading is all over the place with NaNo, so I decided to pick something fairly short. On my top shelf, I have some Henry James (why I have so many, I don't know) and I thought, "Well, The Aspern Papers looks short enough, I'll read that" (I know that's a bad way to choose reading material, but it is something I have been known to do on many occasions). As I walked to the bedroom, I read the back of it:

In an elegant and crumbling palazzo old Miss Bordereau lives on with her niece, closely guarding her most precious treasure, a hoard of letters written to her in her youth by the great American love poet Jeffrey Aspern. Adopting a nom de guerre the tale's narrator, a literary researcher, arrives at the palazzo and inveigles the two ladies into taking him in as their lodger. There he watches and waits for the moment to pounce. For he is determined to gain possession of the Aspern papers and willing to pay almost any price.

James's tale - in part a warning to over-zealous historians and biographers - grips the reader with steadily mounting suspense and is regarded by many as the most brilliant of all his stories.

What a perfect follow-up to the conversation Big C and I had!

I often say, the mark of a good book for me is seeking out Big C and reading bits to him. Because, after only about twenty pages, I had gone looking for him twice, and we ended up having an hour long discussion about just a sentence, I didn't finish the novella that night, but I did finish it last night.

It's perfect for someone who loves books. As you can see by the quote, it's about an unnamed man who is absolutely hell-bent on getting these Aspern papers. Some of the passages many of us may identify with:

Every one of Aspern's contemporaries had, according to our belief, passed away; we had not been able to look into a single pair of eyes into which his had looked or to feel a transmitted contact in any aged hand that his had touched.

And, later,

... I was really face to face with Juliana of some of Aspern's most equisite and renowned lyrics... Her presence seemed somehow to contain and express his own, and I felt nearer to him at that first moment of seeing her than I ever had been before or ever have been since.

The narrator objectifies these women, Miss Bordereau (Juliana) and her niece, Miss Tina. These papers are precious, they are his Holy Grail, and he goes to great lengths to get past their gate keeper, Miss Bordereau. I won't spoil this for you by telling you what happens, and I don't need to - the point of it is this desire to be 'close' to an idol. Jeanette Winterson wrote that "the intersection between a writer's life and a writer's work is irrelevant to the reader" (I've written about this here in a sort of review of Art Objects), but I think this approach goes completely against human nature.

It's absurd, in a way. Look at Sylvia Plath, look at what she produced, not the quality, not how important you may or may not find her, just look at the number of words she produced (guess, as I have done, I don't know the number). Two slim volumes of poetry, The Bell Jar and Johnny Panic and the Bible of Dreams. Then consider what has been written about her. The ratio of what she wrote to what has been written about her is staggeringly disproportionate. And does it matter? Does it matter what Virginia Woolf thought of her servants, does it matter than Sylvia Plath killed herself, does it matter if the pen on my desk belonged to Virginia Woolf?

Yes.

Aside from the obvious fact that knowledge of an author can shed new light on what they produced, is it not natural to want to know more? Is it not natural to want to share something - holding then pen, sitting in the chair, looking into the eyes of a muse?

Aspern's biographer, as I said, objectified Juliana, and he went to great lengths in his quest to see or own these papers. But what is alarming, whilst I would not go to this man's lengths, was empathising with him. I should have thought less of him, I suppose James's point was for you to think less of the biographer. "Ah, you publishing scoundrel!" Juliana shouts in her fury. Their privacy was a mere obstacle to the biographer, he was morally reprehensible. And yet I got it. I understood him and his obsession, his need for the connection, and even intimacy with Aspern, the pleasure he got from looking into Juliana's eyes - would you not think twice, shaking the hand of a woman who had inspired your favourite author? Why else do we buy biographies? Why else would I be sat with 75 or so books by or about Virginia Woolf? It's not simply an "interest", sometimes it's a need, a need to know.

Perhaps I should be worried that I wasn't utterly disgusted by Aspern's biographer's actions....

These past few days.

These past few days have mostly been spent being poorly, not doing NaNoWriMo, catching up with Clarissa, and signing up for far too many 2012 challenges! I am much better now, have made a dent in Clarissa, and, thankfully, got back on track with NaNoWriMo. I was pleased to see that, if I was to do 999 words each day, I would finish on time. I am struggling and, once again, feel directionless, but still determined to finish it by the 30th and be able to 'do something' with it. What, I don't know, but I'm a little more hopeful than I was.

As I say, I've signed up to quite a lot of challenges in my excitement for 2012. I've listed them here and will use this page to keep track.

As for everything else, well, as I say, I've not been well so a lot of time has been spent sleeping and not doing what I wanted to do. I'm pleased to have picked up Clarissa again after a week of neglect, but, a brief observation: I can imagine many people might be tempted to give up at the point where I am now. Without wanting to give too much away, it is necessary for the plot to, well, do something, and that something is intensely boring, and somewhat dragged out. But, it will get better so I'm going to stick with it. I'm on about page 920, of about 1 500, so it would be foolish to stop now.

And with that, I'm going to bed. I'm hoping after (another) good sleep I'll be completely back to normal tomorrow.

The List.

The past few days have surprised me; I've been busy, and very tired, and for three days I've said I was going to have a day off from NaNoWriMo, but it has never happened. I don't know if this is down to amazing discipline on my part, or obsessions with word counts, but I'm still going and hit 27, 500 an hour ago. Again, I'm at the stage where I'm wondering where it is going, and what on earth to do next. But I will keep going, and hit that 50k! I've told my first person what it is about - my mother - but, being as it is after 1am here, she is asleep and won't be responding to my message tonight. I'm looking forward to seeing her tomorrow, to talk about it, relax a bit, and play with my little Effy, who badly needs a good grooming (I hate grooming her, because she hates it so deeply, but she needs it). So that is my plan for tomorrow, that, and also going to my neighbour's: it's nearly the middle of November now, and this is the time we make our Christmas cakes together. It's a relatively new tradition, and I'm looking forward to it very much!

Sorting the logs, which are done now, and buying ingredients for the Christmas cake and other winter planning has got me already looking forward to Christmas and the new year. People are thinking about their reading challenges already, and for the past few weeks I've been thinking of putting my own list together, which I'll share with you now. I don't know what to call it, but it is a list of books I want to read, some of which, a lot of which to be honest, are what Sandy would call "duty" reads, but I hope most of them I will enjoy reading, and the ones I don't I hope I'll at least get some satisfaction out of completing them, even if I do dislike them. This is more than a "to be read" pile, it's a "I really ought to have read this by now" pile.

You may look at this list and wonder why on earth I feel I "ought to" have read a certain book, so I'll clarify "ought" by saying that it is a book I have wanted to read for some time. On the other hand, a lot of the "oughts" are the "duty reads", the ones I feel I should, as a great lover of books, have read by this point. Some I will be embarrassed to say I have not read, and if you would like to leave a comment asking why I have left your favourite book off, then do and I'll look into it! I'm not necessarily going to save starting this challenge til 2012, however that is when I will really focus on it. I see that Bev of My Reader's Block has a wonderful challenge, the 'Mount TBR Challenge', and I'd like to work through my list in conjunction with this. I aiming for 'Mt. Ararat', which will mean reading 40 books from my list (this challenge I will start in 2012).

I've put a page up with my list on at the top of my blog so you can see my progress, should you wish to! But now, without further ado, here is my "I really ought to have read this by now" list (that I will no doubt add to from time to time):

A necessary quote.

I usually just put quotes on my Tumblr, but this is something I really needed last night, so I thought I would share it on here:

When I was writing, it was necessary for me to read after I had written. If you kept thinking about it, you would lose the thing that you were writing before you could go on with it the next day. It was necessary to get exercise, to be tired in the body, and it was very good to make love with whom you loved. That was better than anything. But afterwards, when you were empty, it was necessary to read in order not to think or worry about your work until you could do it again. I had learned already never to empty the well of my writing, but always to stop when there was still something there in the deep part of the well, and let it refill at night from the springs that fed it.

          - Ernest Hemingway, A Moveable Feast.

More Challenges for 2012

As I've just said in a comment to Jillian, I'm so excited about planning reading challenges for 2012. I have my own challenge (my own that I made up, I mean) but it will possibly take a little time to put together and I do need to focus on NaNoWriMo, so I'll leave that for a while. For now, the latest, from November's Autumn: Read seven works of Classic Literature in 2012. Only three of the seven may be re-reads (click the link for full details).

My seven will be:

1. He Knew He Was Right by Anthony Trollope.
2. Swann's Way by Marcel Proust. 
3. Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas 
4. Dr. Zhivago by Boris Pasternak.
5. Vanity Fair by William Thackery.
6. Cousin Bette by Honoré de Balzac.
7. Germinal by Emile Zola.

Right now, I'm very eager to put together my own challenge, but I must get on with NaNoWriMo. I'm out all this evening at a gig so I only have a few hours this afternoon. I would dearly love to get to 25 000 words by Monday evening, so I suppose I'd better press on!

Back to the Classics Challenge 2012

I need some time soon to start planning what I want to read in 2012, and I'm almost looking forward to the planning as much as the reading! I've seen some great plans for 2012 from others, particularly from ProSe and Reading Charles Dickens. While I focus on NaNoWriMo, my plans are very much in the air, but for now, here is something to get me started from Sarah Reads Too Much - the Back to the Classics Challenge 2012. In 2012, read:

1. Any 19th Century Classic
2. Any 20th Century Classic
3. Reread a classic of your choice
4. A Classic Play
5. Classic Mystery/Horror/Crime Fiction
6. Classic Romance
7. Read a Classic that has been translated from its original language to your languange   - To clarify, if your native language is NOT English, you may read any classic originally written in English that has been translated into your native language.  
8. Classic Award Winner  - To clarify, the book should be a classic which has won any established literary award.  
9. Read a Classic set in a Country that you (realistically speaking) will not visit during your lifetime  - To Clarify, this does not have to be a country that you hope to visit either.  Countries that no longer exist or have never existed count.

My plans right now are a little hesitant, but for now:

1. Tess of the d'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy.
2. The Rainbow by D. H. Lawrence.
3. Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë.
4. Ghosts, Henrik Ibsen.
5. Collected Ghost Stories by M. R. James.
6. Persuasion, Jane Austen.
7. Les Miserables by Victor Hugo.
8. Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis (winner of Somerset Maugham Award, 1955).
9. Tales of Angria by Charlotte Brontë.

Random motes of the mind.

It should come as no surprise that, on the end of Day Three of NaNoWriMo, with my word count at 14 500, everything else, and I do mean everything, is a mess. Big C is rehearsing for an important gig this weekend, so both of us are completely occupied in working, we're eating absolute rubbish (which I am not happy about, and resolve, again, to stop doing that and get back on track to get to my goal weight), and we're living in mess. I haven't replied to a single email since the beginning of this, two of which are very important and I'm being horribly rude in letting them just sit there. And the house... I'm at breaking point with the house, today is the day it gets tidied.

But reading: that's the worst. Since the beginning of November, I have read Leviticus, but only because I started it before I started my novel, and one and a half letters of Clarissa. I read a chapter of Northanger Abbey and was surprised that I liked it so much, and I managed a few pages of something else, what I don't know.

So today needs to be spent holding back a tiny bit. Of course, I will be thrilled if I manage to finish NaNoWriMo, but I'll be greatly less thrilled if I am a stone heavier with a frightening pile of laundry, angy emails, and an inch of dust. I'm ashamed to say Little G stole a sausage off my plate yesterday, and not only did I let him, but I have yet to pick up the remains from the rug. That is the mere tip of the iceberg.

I'm thinking in order for this to be a true success, in my mind, it is not only getting 50 000 words out at any cost, but also keeping together some general order of life. Of course my reading is going to be affected, but not this much. It's depressing me, actually. I'm sad, even though this is only lunchtime of day four, I feel horribly off balance.

Plans, then, for today: 

• Split a few logs
• Get the house in order (which, theoretically, could take me to teatime)
• Get up to 17 500 words for NaNoWriMo (writing 2 500 words in a day is less than 5 000 after all)
• Spend sometime online working out the Back to the Classics Challenge to right my muddled brain (working out reading challenges is one of my favourite ways to relax)
• Reply to those emails
• Be in bed at a reasonable hour with a good book. And, I have to say, this book will have to be easy because I'm telling you, my brain is mush.

So today is catching up and sorting messes out. I don't want to be in a position where, at the end of the month, I can't be happy about completing the challenge because everything else has fallen by the wayside. And, if I list my plans like this, I am more likely to do them!

(And if you're not doing NaNoWriMo and have a minute to spare, do a girl a favour and check out the books I own and tell me what to read to soothe my sore little brain! Edited: Going to stick with Northanger Abbey so that, at least, is sorted!)

Did Sebastian Faulks ever ruin your life, too?

Astonishinly, I'm on 7 885 words for NaNoWriMo, and I'm thinking it might be vaguely possible to get to 10 000 before I go to bed. Don't get any wrong ideas, these are not good words. Subtle, they ain't, but I have an idea that I I am pleased with, and post-November I'll be in a better position to sort something out. What is even more shocking is that I managed to do that on top of managing to get all the logs moved with Big C today. Over six hours it took, and we're both aching now. But it's done. Once they're spilt, we'll be ready for winter.

For now, Sebastian Faulks, the King of Spoilers. 

As you know, I'm reading Clarissa. The point of reading it, initially, was for the challenge. I would feel good if I read Clarissa. I never expected I would feel good while I read Clarissa. I never actually thought, no, it did not cross my mind that I would enjoy it. But I am, I love it. I think at the end of it, it will rank as one of my favouite books of all time (not that I could tell anyone that because they would think I was showing off). And, what was glorious for me, was I hadn't a clue what happened. The only plot detail I knew (which I will not share, because I'm not an utter bastard like Faulks) wasn't entirely unexpected. I wouldn't have necessarily guessed it would happen from the start, but, half-way through, it's pretty clear that it's coming. It does, not did it, do me any harm to know this plot detail.

But what Faulks gave away was pretty unforgiveable. I know how it ends. I don't know how it gets to the stage it gets to (and if anyone tells me in this comment thread I will do awful things with your IP address, and do not think for a second that I won't), but yes, I know how it ends. Any doubts, questions, or hopes I have along the way of the final half have been answered prematurely by the smuggness pictured above.

Did anyone used to watch Friends? Do you remember the one where Joey reads Little Women? Here's a reminder:

RACHEL: Beth dies.
JOEY: Beth, Beth dies?
RACHEL: Um-hmm.
JOEY: Is that true? If I keep reading is Beth gonna die?
CHANDLER: No, Beth doesn't die, she doesn't die. Does she Rachel?
RACHEL: What?!
ROSS: Joey's asking if you've just ruined the first book he's ever loved that didn't star Jack Nicholson?
RACHEL: No. She doesn't die.
JOEY: Then why would you say that?!
RACHEL: Because, I wanted to hurt you.

Well, Faulks there has hurt me, and joking aside, I think ruining plots is pretty damn unforgiveable. And it's not like I went looking for it: I was reading Faulks on Fiction and when I saw there was a chapter on Robert Lovelace I knew to avoid it. Little did I know he would randomly mention Clarissa in another chapter (actually, I should have known, it was a chapter on Tom Jones, but, ok, I didn't: I didn't know. Shoot me.)

So, right now, Faulks is in my mind worse than Lovelace for ruining lovely things. Sometimes, it is unavoidable: it's not just Faulks out to ruin your reading experience, there are a whole host of others (the academics being the worst of them) who seem more intent on letting you know they've read it and know what's happened. That is why I never read introductions before I read the actual novel. Of course, sometimes it's not a specific someone who spoils the end, most of the time it's just common knowledge. I mean, you'd have to be... I don't know what you have to be to not know what happens in Romeo and Juliet, for example. When you read the classics, a lot of the time you know at least one of the major plot details, if not the ending. It is one of those things. But Clarissa isn't Romeo and Juliet, and whilst a lot of you might already knows how it ends without having read it (or having read it), I didn't and I am the one reading it, and I'm amazed that I would at random stumble upon the end.

And I get it: I get Faulks on Fiction is not about ruining your life, he didn't set out to spoil people's books. But honestly, how annoying that he did. And of all the books, it had to be this one.

You should never spoil anyone's book, people. Not even if you hate them.

The Old Fashioned Way

What a mild day for the 1st of November! I've been up since about 9, had a few coffees, a shower, and then I sorted the logs. At this time of year here, the logs get delivered and are all piled up in the glade at the front of everyone's houses, and, since half nine, the chainsaws have not stopped. They're sawing the logs to smaller sizes and making their own great piles, and every time I look out the window, there's at least two men standing talking to each other and showing each other some peculiarity of their chainsaw.

My task has been, or rather is, because a new pile is forming, to collect the logs in a wheel barrow and bringing them around to the back of the house and stacking them in the corner of Little G's aviary. Then, Big C will split them and they'll be stored in the woodshed and hopefully last all winter (though the speed at which they burn makes me doubt this somewhat!). Finally, in dribs and drabs, they'll be moved again to stand next to the fire.

And that's this morning. This afternoon, well - I'm in a slightly awkward position. I haven't mentioned this before because I didn't think it would be an issue, but I have no word processor right now! We've needed a new laptop with Word and the like on it for a while, and ordered it at the end of last week. It should have arrived yesterday, but didn't, however we were sure it would arrive today. It seems, unfortunately, our confidence in the GPO was slightly misplaced. There's an outside chance it may arrive if it is coming with another courier, however as I was shifting the logs I saw two different couriers arrive, neither with my laptop. 

So novel writing will be done the old fashioned way today! I remember when I was taking my A' Levels, I spent one hour of a three hour exam planning. Mostly, I was just thinking, jotting down a few notes and the like, and after the exam a few people asked me if I was alright and couldn't believe I'd "wasted an hour". As it happens, I came out of that exam with an A. So, as scary as it is, a day, one day, of planning with no real amount of words if any isn't going to screw anything up. In fact, it may be more beneficial. Obviously, I'd really rather have the laptop and get started, but I don't so I need to keep up productivity in another way. I can also write whatever I can write on either here or Gmail or something and keep track of the word count with an online tool and then transfer it when my laptop does arrive. It is, I'll be honest, a little frustrating, but it can't be helped.

Whatever the case, you can see my first morning of November has been productive, and I'll just have to be slightly more inventive to continue this for NaNoWriMo!