Their first touch was gentle, and in it Sumire could taste his hesitation and fear. That first kiss was a question, a request for permission, chaste and sweet and not a little shy. They broke apart for the space of a breath, noses still nuzzled against each other’s cheeks, their lips still clinging as though reaching for an answer.The Education of Sumire Min
“I…”
She captured that question before it escaped his parted mouth with her own, breathing her answer into his. He deepened the kiss, and she met his ardor with her own. For every little nudge she felt, she pressed back harder, and she felt his kisses like a wish from him, like begging, and she could only respond yes, yes, yes with her own longing. Yes, please, yes, yes, yes…
So I completely and utterly failed NaNoWriMo this year as I only managed to squeeze out about 18.5K. I don’t know how people can write more than 1000 words a day, every day. I just don’t. I burn out. On a good day I’ll get out about 1500 words, but the next day I’ll be reduced to 100 because my brain can’t function. So kudos to everyone to won this year!
But at least I managed to achieve one personal goal: which was to FINALLY write that damn makeout scene, excerpted here. So…huzzah?
As Miss Ackerley gestured grandly towards her interior decoration, Sir Corliss recalled with a start Theodora's rather unsettling habit of placing a possessively plump hand on his arm (sometimes it was other appendages) at unexpected moments. He tried to extricate himself from her grip discreetly but to no avail.From a middle-grade incarnation of my novel
Back when I first started writing ELIJAH’S CHARIOT (or whatever the hell my work-in-progress will actually be called), it was a middle grade novel. I found the old file again and got a little nostalgic. There are some stylistic differences between YA and middle grade, but what I like about my middle grade incarnation is the archness of the voice. I feel you can maintain a slightly more objective distance from characters in middle grade, as opposed to YA, which is about intense emotions. (Gaah, FEEEEEEEEEEEELINGS again!)
The themes I still wanted to explore in this incarnation of the novel were pretty much the same: imperialism and racism, parental legacy, and growing-up, but what I like about this draft was how easily magic realism comes to the voice.
That is not the excerpt. The excerpt is from another scene, but it made me laugh. What appendages, you may ask? Well, that’s for adult readers to surmise and child readers to overlook.
Another example of killing your darlings! What about you? Any darlings you’ve killed but still amuse you?
Children were forgiven and forgotten, but young ladies were fallen. She picked at the frayed cuffs on Raphael's sleeves, wondering when she had gone from forgotten to fallen, wondering if she could ever return to that prelapsarian state.Work in progress
Yeah, it’s from my novel. It’s a darling. Meaning it will probably get killed at some point.
Still, I think this might be a fun exercise. All you writers have darlings? Little snippets of writing you absolutely love and would be resistant to parting with? Post them here!
I’ve been thinking lately about the old adage write what you know, mostly because I either live with or know people with fascinating life stories who are also writers. (I’m looking at you, Russ, and you, Wicked Cool Riley. Plz to be writing your memoirs immediately and sending me the manuscripts. Kthx.) I, on the other hand, have had an almost disgustingly “nice” life: a more-than-comfortable bourgeois upbringing complete with prep school, art conservatory, country clubs, tennis lessons, dance lessons, horseback riding, fencing, exotic travel, etc. But more than that, I have been extraordinarily blessed by family.
I once facetiously told my parents that “I will never be a great writer because I didn’t have a terrible childhood.”
“Good,” they replied, “go out and get a real job.”
First things first: Wolverine Art Appreciation Month or How JJ Woke Up To Find Her Art History Degree and Her Love of Comic Books Secretly Had a Lovechild Behind Her Back.
Wolverine in the style of Salvador Dali
Secondly, I have now become that sort of person who wakes up at the crack of dawn. I mean this quite literally: as the sun comes up over the horizon, it decides to stab a blade of light in my right eye through my window, through my blinds, and through my curtains. It hurts, and it compels me to leave my bed earlier and earlier as the days get longer and longer. Is this a good thing? I don’t know.
Once again, stolen from Overheard in New York:
Eight-year-old son: Dad, I can’t even tell the Ninja Turtles apart! They all look the same, they just have different bandages and stuff.
Dad: Well, do you know their names?
Son: Uhhh… There’s the blue one… Armadillo?
Leonardo, it’s LEONARDO, kid. Come on, these mutant turtles were my first introduction into art history.
First Grade Teacher: Now kids, this is the Mona Lisa by Leonardo da Vinci. Can anyone tell me who Leonardo is?
Little JJ: A ninja turtle!
Yes, even as a six-year-old, I unabashedly geeky. I learned pretty quickly three of four ninja turtles Renaissance painters were: Leonardo (lots of non-working inventions), Michelangelo (lots of robustly naked people), and Raphael (lots of cherubic babes, both maternal and angelic), but it wasn’t until I got to middle school that I actually knew who Donatello was (a sculptor, not a painter). Maybe this is the reason I always felt sorry for the purple ninja turtle; he wasn’t famous like his brothers. Also, he was kinda the wuss of the bunch: I mean really, computers and techno-gadgets when you could be whacking bad guys with a bo staff? I know what I’d choose. And in the lineup of ninja turtles, The Technogeek almost always got shuffled to the bottom against The Leader, The Badass, and The Comic Relief.
But more on the novel later. Maybe. For the first time in over a year, I’m writing significantly. It feels good. And no, I don’t want to share with the rest of the kids at the party, thank you. Unfortunately, this creative drive has rendered me completely antisocial at a time when my extremely social roommate/best friend turns twenty-one. Alcohol is repeatedly poured down my lightweight gullet when all I want to do is retire to a comfy couch in a cozy coffeeshop (with decent and free wireless) and write, write, write.
Timing. What a bitch.
I told Lou Reed Girlfriend that the reason I loved Carl (ex-Libertines, now Dirty Pretty Things) was Carl 1) looks like Neil Gaiman, 2) is in fact, a younger, rockstar incarnation of Neil Gaiman, and 3) writes like this.
I’ve been to Bunhill Fields a few times – right near Anto’s place. It’s old and eerie, it’s where William Blake is buried so it’s got a special resonance for me, it’s an oasis of Albion in the heart of the City of London, City of Commerce, City of Suits and all that lark. The last album was written a lot more in a panic and on the run. This time we’ve got the time to walk around the town and eat sandwiches with Blake.
Le sigh. Also, who can’t love a man who ends a blog entry by saying “toodle pip?”
It is really and truly refreshing to socially geek with other people after what feels like months of being socially Greek. I have never once been seduced by the thought of rushing a sorority (okay, so that’s a lie; the thought has crossed my mind once or twice) being as I went to Sorority High School. When I used to wear my Mayfield school ring, I would get stopped in the oddest places around the country by other Holy Child alumni who would ask me excitedly, “Oh you went to a Holy Child school too?” as though I were someone just recently discovered to be a long-lost relative.
Recently I felt as though my life had turned into one long and constant frat party, especially with the constant bar-hopping. Bar-hopping is EXHAUSTING. And expensive. I also disklike most of the boys I meet when I go drinking. Being as most of them they’re frat boys or former frat boys, I can’t rely on them for stimulating intellectual or nerdy discussion about Alan Moore’s Watchmen or Lord Byron’s Manfred. (Although I can’t be too mean about them; my dad is a member of ΧΦ and he is The Greatest Dad Ever.) Instead I get sort of generic conversation about March madness or work. The corporate world is also very big with them. As I work in the corporate world from 9am to 6pm every day, when I go out, I would rather eat the sawdust off the floor in McSorley’s than talk about it.
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