So this year my sister said to me, “I’m not even gonna pretend I’m gonna do NaNoWriMo.”

Well, I started my NaNo on Nov 2, and I have yet to break 10,000 words - but the 8500 or so I’ve written is more fiction than I normally write in ANY month.

And that is why, even though I’ve never made it to 50,000 words and don’t know if I ever will, I try every year. Because the 2000, 8000, 10000 or 20000 words I actually get through are more than I do any other time of year. And I feel like each time I do it, even though my word count has actually gotten lower in recent years, I get closer to something, some intangible place wherein I am a writer.

From Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast:

“As a reminder, our 7 Kicks posts are the weekly meeting ground for taking some time to reflect on Seven(ish) Exceptionally Fabulous, Beautiful, Interesting, Hilarious, or Otherwise Positive Noteworthy Things from the past week—whether book-related or not—that happened to you.”

Please, please, please go to their post and look at the beautiful illustrations by Jackie Morris. I adore the Story Dragon and the picture from The Guardian.

1. This week I have been doing a lot of reading about how to be a better blogger, and it has really revitalized my attitude towards blogging and I hope within the next month or two will revitalize my actual blogging, too. I have at this point 5 blogs, 4 of which I’m going to treat as more personal journals and 1 of which I’m hoping to treat a bit more like a public forum.

2. I have come up with an idea for a sixth blog that is really exciting to me.

3. As a result of researching for that blog, I have discovered a local speaker/author/consultant who is exactly where I want to be when I am at his point in life. I’m working up the courage to drop him an email.

4. The universe has been sending me the message that I need to stop waiting for things to be right before beginning anything new - that I should allow myself to be messy and to fail.

5. My friend Sonja is a one woman tribute to the power of the internet, which is very exciting. She is a published romance writer thanks to the internet and also recently got a job by combining 15 second pitch and Twitter into a monster networking hybrid of Frankensteinian proportions. (Ok, there was maybe some hyperbole there.)

6. This is not from this week - it’s actually a few months old - but I never mentioned it here at lectitans - back in August my boyfriend of 10 years asked me to marry him. It was pretty exciting, and I had to step away from wedding planning for a few weeks to get my head on straight, but I’m back into it now and thanks to our extreme low key style I think it is going to be a lot of fun.

7. I love to make fruity quick breads, and this past week I made two loaves of pumpkin apple spice bread which were a big hit both at work and at home.

Don’t forget to post your own kicks!

via Lifehacker:

What a Lovely Name is a new website that lets you select multiple tags for personality traits associated with a name, as well as a gender if you wish, and it will suggest names for you. I selected romantic, creative, wise with no gender and got 12 names, the most boring of which was Jacqueline. Highly recommended if you’re looking for character names and don’t want to do lots of searching of baby name sites by meaning.

Looking at my list of books read and unreviewed, I find both The Golden Compass and Twilight.

I think it’s of interest that each of these is the first of a trilogy I haven’t finished, and each has a movie adaptation. I bought Nick & Norah’s Infinite Playlist when the movie came out and haven’t read it yet.

When I was reading The Lord of the Rings, I was careful to read each book not too long before the movie came out, so that I would have the book fresh in my mind when I saw the movie. I’m not a big re-reader; I have re-read only a few novels in my life (The Incarnations of Immortality series and the Harry Potter books). So it’s important to read a book-to-movie source close to the movie release.

It’s been a year since I read Twilight, which I enjoyed at the time but found flawed later. (I maintain that it is a good time, though, if you are looking for sickly sweet romance.) I donated my copy to a thrift shop. I hope it made someone very happy.

So the question is, do I go on and read the others now, or do I wait until New Moon the Movie is close to release, and so on? For His Dark Materials I will clearly have to go on and read them without waiting for more movies, because they aren’t happening. (Quick review of The Golden Compass movie: It was a very good book trailer.)

What do you do with big deal or popular books that are bound to be adapted to movies? Do you read them in the height of their popularity? Do you wait? Are you such a contrarian that you don’t read them at all?

From slayground -

Today’s WBBT schedule: Mayra Lazara Dole at Chasing Ray Francis O’Roark Dowell at Fuse #8 J. Patrick Lewis at Writing and Ruminating Wendy Mass at HipWriterMama Lisa Ann Sandell at Bildungsroman Caroline Hickey and Sara Lewis Holmes at MotherReader A.S. King at Bookshelves of Doom Emily Wing Smith at Interactive Reader

Today’s WBBT interviews: Martin Millar at Chasing Ray John Green at Writing and Ruminating Beth Kephart at HipWriterMama Emily Ecton at Bildungsroman John David Anderson at Finding Wonderland Brandon Mull at The YA YA YAs Lisa Papademetriou at MotherReader

Thanks as always to slayground for the code!

Today's WBBT schedule:
Ellen Klages at Fuse #8
Emily Jenkins at Writing and Ruminating
Ally Carter at Miss Erin
Mark Peter Hughes at HipWriterMama
Sarah Darer Littman at Bildungsroman
M.T. Anderson at Finding Wonderland
Mitali Perkins at MotherReader

In case you missed them, here are yesterday’s interviews - thanks again to slayground for the code!

Tuesday’s WBBT schedule:
Ellen Datlow at Chasing Ray
Tony DiTerlizzi at Miss Erin
Melissa Walker at HipWriterMama
Luisa Plaja at Bildungsroman
DM Cornish at Finding Wonderland
L.J. Smith at The YA YA YAs
Kathleen Duey at Bookshelves of Doom

Check out this year’s full schedule.

Due to the recent intensity of work, I’m not interviewing anyone this time around, but you can find today’s interviews here:

Read all of today’s WBBT interviews:
Lewis Buzbee at Chasing Ray
Louis Sachar at Fuse #8
Laurel Snyder at Miss Erin
Courtney Summers at Bildungsroman
Elizabeth Wein at Finding Wonderland
Susan Kuklin at The YA YA YAs

Thanks to slayground for the code!