In January, Dallas resolved to read at least 52 novels before the end of the year. In a well-intentioned-but-fallacious attempt to 'improve her mind',* she planned to read a lot of musty, canonical "masterpieces."
Around the same time, she also started seriously working on her novel, a Sci-Fi/Fantasy story for Young Adults. Her goal is to finish said novel by the end of January, 2010.
In April, someone helped her remember the name of the series of books she fell in love with as a child (The Obernewtyn Chronicles), but was too broke to order them. Instead, she decided to try and actually finish** Ulysses because:
1. it's widely hailed as THE definitive work of Modernist Literature;It took her a month to finish 110 pages, at which point she realized that:
2. Lots of authors, musicians, and films she genuinely enjoys are somehow inspired by Ulysses; and, most importantly,
3. she already owned a copy.
1. she is a college drop-out, which means that she doesn't even need to know what a literary movement is;
2. her enjoyment of things inspired by Ulysses in no way hinges upon her having actually read Ulysses; and, most importantly,
3. she fucking hates Ulysses.
Somewhere in this mess, Dallas lost the notebook with most of her novel in it, and had to try and rewrite it from memory.
This proved to be incredibly frustrating. In lieu of actually writing, and 'in the name of research,' she started reading popular YA novels written by other people--some of which were pretty good, and some of which were very, very, very bad.
Also in the name of research, she read a fair chunk of non-fiction. She read a book about how Tolkien created the exhausting mythology of Middle Earth. She read books about comets destroying the earth, about the sinking of Atlantis, about expeditions to Hollow Earth, and about the apocalypse. She read books about how to identify rocks and gems, about how the Earth's crust was formed, and about volcanoes. She accrued dozens of National Geographic magazines. She read books about alchemy, mythology, chemistry, and archery. She read ten different books about the technique of writing itself, as a sort of refresher course in the basic protocol of plot, dialogue, etc. For various reasons, most of these books aren't listed in her Reading Log, either because the book was so picture/illustration-heavy that she didn't feel like it counted as actually reading, or because she only read the parts she felt relevant to her story.
Sometime in July, her story started coming together, so she pretty much stopped blogging in an attempt to focus her energy into her novel. Unfortunately, she was caught in a vicious cycle: she would write thousands of words, then delete all of them upon rereading. The tone was inconsistent and erratic, the narration rang false, the characters were unbelievable, and the plot seemed forced.
So, she went back to reading 'kid's books'.
About a month ago, she noticed that her writing was consistently stronger when she was reading other YA Lit.
She also noticed*** that if she tries to read, say, Tom Robbins, the tone of her writing changes drastically; suddenly, her characters are alternately telling each other to fuck off and waxing philosophical about what it means to love. So she puts Robbins down, and picks up Murakami; now her characters are obliquely symbolic, constantly finding themselves in surreal, non sequitur situations, and obsessing over another character's clubbed thumb or something.
So, until she has a satisfactory first draft finished, she's only reading YA Lit. If Daniel Day Lewis can write love notes to Fergie to stay in character, Dallas suspects it's probably okay for her finish up the year exclusively reading books targeted at the age group she's writing for.†
Which works out just fine, because she only has five books to go.
And the last five books of The Obernewtyn Chronicles arrived in the mail today.
* Those were her exact words, which just goes to show that she'd already been spending too much time with the likes of Austen and Tolstoy.
** Marking her 3rd attempt to read it
So, to recap: with a month and a handful of days to complete her reading goals for 2009, and two months to finish her first draft, Dallas has
47 out of 52 books read &
27,451 out of a projected 75,000 words written.
Seeing as how this will be the first time she's ever followed through with her New Year's Resolutions, she's feeling pretty good about herself right now. She's bursting at the seams with self-satisfaction and just about ready to tell 2009 to go fuck itself.††
* Those were her exact words, which just goes to show that she'd already been spending too much time with the likes of Austen and Tolstoy.
** Marking her 3rd attempt to read it
*** Finally.
† She is in no way trying to justify a Reading List predominately composed of books targeted at tweens. She feels no shame in reading YA Lit, and therefore does not need to defend it. She's merely observing.
†† (Almost) Another year wherein she managed not to:
get diagnosed with cancer, get hit by a car, get in a car accident, go to jail, knock her teeth out while walking up or down stairs, run over a dog, spill a vat of acid on her face thereby horribly disfiguring herself and marring her soul, contract conjunctivitis, or get eaten alive by ants.†††††† And for all that, she's grateful. Happy Thanksgiving.
