It's Friday. Huzzahs.

I’ve been somewhat sick half the week, but I’ve discovered that taking Nyquil before bed = awesomeness. What? Sleep through the night? Without my head congested and generally unbreatheable? Wake up feeling better not worse the next morning? Yeah! Why haven’t I done this before?

Because I’ve been a head full of mucus this week, I’ve use this as an excuse to be lazy. Thus no progress has been made on my anti-nano goals — I can’t, at the moment, even bring myself to open the untitled werewolf novel to even see where I’m at with it. However, I have been making some progress on a piece that will probably end up being just a little too long for flash fiction.

So that’s it in news about me.

Now I point you to this awesome post, “Black Women in Speculative Fiction: A Brief Investigation,” which increases my TBR list exponentially.

Also, here’s a meme I snatched from brigits_flame:

Book you are currently reading: The Hobbit by Tolkien, Nebula Awards Showcase 2012, and Deathless by Catherynne M. Valente
Last book you read: Buffy and the Heroine’s Journey: Vampire Slayer as Feminine Chosen One, by Valerie Estelle Frankel
Book you could read again and again and again: The Hobbit and Beloved by Toni Morrison and a handful of others.
Book you are glad you read once but will never ever read again: Most recently? Probably The Maltese Falcon, by Dashiell Hammett. (But I never really know what books I’ll read again.)
Favorite book (if it differs from a book you could read again and again…): Too many, but a novel that is my current favorite is Seraphina, by Rachel Hartman
Writer whose stories you enjoy immensely: Neil Gaiman, for one, Holly Black, Nova Ren Suma, Libba Bray, for others.
Writer whose style blows you away: Mostly poets, such as Ai, or Walt Whitman, or David Perez, or Karen Finneyfrock. Also, Toni Morrison.

[Cross posted to my livejournal.]

November: Anti-Nano and Mindful Writing

1. Anti-Nano
November is generally known as the month my family stares at me in wonder and shakes their heads as I dive into National Novel Writing Month. Generally, they think of me as a crazy person for this (except for my youngest sister, who occasionally participates, too).  I will not be participating in the official Nano this year, however, as the Untitled Werewolf Novel I began for Nano last year is still sitting in a sorry state of disrepair. I don’t think its a good idea at this juncture for me to try to jump into a new novel just because it’s shiny and new.

Instead I shall be participating in Anti-Nano, which just just like regular Nanowrimo, except that you can set whatever sort of writing goal you want, from rewrites to a series of drabbles. It’s nice in that you get to participate in the mayhem and feel the camaraderie, but at a pace and a goal that works for you. If you’re interested, you can go sign up here in the squidathon community.

The end result will be that my family will still be staring at my like I’ve drifted into madness and, hopefully, a second and less-rough looking draft of the Untitled Werewolf Novel.

.
2. Mindful Writing Day
I will also be participating in Mindful Writing Day on November 1st. The premise is simple: Write a small stone (poem or prose) by paying proper attention to one thing and writing it down. It’s a lovely little challenge that I’m happy to be a part of. Already, I’m starting to look more at the world around me, gathering ideas as to what I might write about.

Mindful Writing Day will also coincide with the anthology A Blackbird Sings: a book of small poems being offered for free on the kindle for that day — a nice little tie-in promotion.

*

Therefore, before November I have quite a few things I should do to prep. It would be nice if I could clear my palate by finishing up some edits on stories and sending them out, but what I really need to do is read through my existing Untitled Werewolf Novel drafts and begin a new set of outline and get myself in a general head space to be able to handle the workload coming my way.

[Cross-posted to my livejournal.]

popping in

I have been pretty much off the internets for a while now, barely keeping up with any of the social stuff and definitely have not been keeping up with any of my blogs (with the exception of the occasional book review). I don’t know if that’s going to change anytime soon, but in the meantime, I thought I’d pop in and point to a couple of great posts I read by Justine Larbalestier.

Please, Please, Please, Give Your Protag Friends, a Sibling, Parents

I often hear beginning writers complain that they’re not sure what happens with their protagonist next. That they’re stuck. Often part of the problem is that their book does not have enough relationships in it. They’ve left out the parents, made their protag an only child with no friends. The only other characters are the love interest and the villian. And none of the characters are coming to life because they’re only in the book for one reason: to be the Love Interest, to be the Villian, to be the Protagonist.

There has to be more. You get the more by complicating things. Let’s say the protag’s best friend is the villian’s sister. Already that gives both the protag and the villian another dimension: their relationship with their BFF/sister. Both characters suddenly became a lot more interesting.

I’m rather fond of the relationships in books myself, not just the romantic ones, but all relationships of the main character to family and friends and the world around them. It’s a part of what make them complete. It’s one of the reasons I loved The Probability of Miracles by Wendy Wunder so much. It was full of relationships, most notably for me, the relationship with her mom, because so many YA books leave parents out of the equation all together. I definitely try to think about relationships in my own stories, not just romatic ones, but the entire spectrum.

And those romantic relationships that are most interesting to me are not the first-love, getting-to-know-you variety, though I don’t mind seeing that in the beginning. I find it more interesting to see how a relationship grows past initially lust and lovey dovey feelings to something more deep and complex, the state of a relationship after the newness wears off, which is also something you don’t see much in YA especially, but also a lot of fiction in general. I would like to see a lot more variety of relationships and kinds of romatic relationships in books.

.
Racism in the Books We Write

It is almost impossible to avoid writing work that can be read as racist. If you’re writing about people, you’re writing about identity, and a huge part of identity is race.

We are all seen through the lens of race. We all see through the lens of race.1 Whether we’re conscious of it or not. If you’re a writer you really need to be conscious of it. Because if you don’t think you are writing about race, you can wind up writing things visible to your readers that are not visible to you.

Often that is a not good thing.

She goes on to explain how her own books have both helped and harmed readers regardless of her own intentions. I recommend reading the entire post.

[Cross-posted to my livejournal.]

I need to join Proctastinators Annonymous

funny-pictures-procrastination-cat Weekend number two has passed in which I have done absolutely nothing productive. This was in part to my general feeling of being burned out, and in part because my chiny new iPhone is distracting to the point where I may need to delete a few of the games I have on there, if I want to be functional in the future.

So, yeah, I need to get back to a degree of focus, and to that end I shall be heading straight to a coffee shop after work tonight in an attempt to get some more work done on my short story. I’ll get the draft done (I think) in time to submit it to my writing group, but not in time to submit it to the anthology, which is okay with me. I’m not feeling very confident about it and I can always submit it somewhere else.

I’m also still toying with the idea of starting a poetry chapbook kickstarter project. Ideally, I would have done the project in April to coincide with National Poetry Month, but I’m feeling so overwhelmed with work that I think I’m going to postpone it a wee longer (especially since I should really look into the cost of printing before I start it). If anyone has any thoughts or suggestions on this, I’d love to hear them.

[Cross-posted to my livejournal.]

I got my new business cards in!

Business Cards

I ordered them on recommendation from a friend from moo.com. I had no idea when I ordered them that they would come in multiple colors (I though I was just getting the teal), but it’s a nice surprise. ^_^

If you can’t read the card, because of the crappy cell phone pic, is says:

Andrea Blythe
Poet & Writer
of SciFi/Fantasy
———–
andreablythe@hotmail.com
———–
www.AndreaBlythe.com

Bird Collides with Window

becoming a dark
hieroglyph
on the dimpled
blank page
of the snow

originally published at a handful of stones

I feel all ready now to go to my first conference. ^_^

[Cross-posted to my livejournal.]