Reading, Writing, and Resolutions.

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;
2. Lots of authors, musicians, and films she genuinely enjoys are somehow inspired by Ulysses; and, most importantly,
3. she already owned a copy.

It took her a month to finish 110 pages, at which point she realized that:

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.

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.

On The Matter of Reading.

I finished a book yesterday. As in, sat down and read a book cover-to-cover. Most of this reading was done in a coffee shop adjoined to a book store, which made me feel very much like the Danielle-of-seven-or-eight-years-ago, when I would go to Barnes & Noble on a Sunday afternoon, stake out the comfiest of the couches, and (without actually purchasing it) read (in its entirety) whatever new novel the New Yorker was ranting about. If it was a particularly long novel, I would use a toothpick as a bookmark, so I could just pick up where I left off the next Sunday. Only once did the book I bookmarked ever get sold before I could finish it.

Anyway. I actually bought the book I read yesterday. But it was at a used bookstore, so I still feel like I was cheating someone out of something. Maybe like I was cheating Joe Meno, author of Hairstyles of the Damned (the book I bought/read), out of his cut from the sale of the book. Or maybe not. It was a good book, if not much too fast a read (it only took me two and a half hours to finish), but none of this is really the point.

The point is: I miss reading. I blogged a little about this over at URFCKD, but I kind of want to mention it here as well. To drive it home, maybe.

I used to be a voracious reader. It was my thing. Other people have music, and I like music (although, not as much lately), but music was never really my thing. And yeah, I watch a lot of movies, but I never considered myself a film buff; nor did I ever strive to establish myself as a film buff. I doodle, but I'm not an artist. I write (occasionally), but I'm not a writer.

I'm a reader.

I'm the kind of person who will--schedule allowing it--stay awake for three days, just to finish a novel in one sitting.

I'm the kind of person who, when imagining her dream house, has an entire floor devoted to books. My dream house has an actual library. With a card catalogue.

I'm the kind of person who falls in love with a person based on the caliber of his bookshelf. Always have been. I usually don't realize that I'm serious about a person until I start imagining our collections combined... his books, my books, the shelving it would require for such a union, which novels we'd have multiple copies of, etc. Seriously: some women imagine what her kids would look like were she to marry so-and-so; I wonder about what our library would look like.

Or, at least, I used to be that kind of person. Somewhere along the line, I stopped. Reading stopped being my thing. Maybe it had to do with school, and being forced to listen to absolute morons discuss novels I loved. Or maybe it was the fact that I had to get a job, and finding the time to scout out books I wanted to read seemed impossible. Not to mention finding the time to actually read the book once I'd decided on it. Maybe it's the fact that reading is a solitary activity; you can watch a movie and listen to music in a group, with people, but reading is really an alone-time activity. And maybe I'm afraid of alone-time... Maybe I'm now the kind of person who subconsiously needs to be with people all the time, and dreads having to spend any quantitive amount of time by herself...

Whatever the reason, movies and Nintendo and drinking are my things now (or, at least, have been for the past year.) They're just so much easier, so much less of an investment. They're cheaper (and I don't mean "cheaper" as a financial statement.)

And I feel cheaper for choosing them.

So, my New Year's resolution--and don't even get me started on how I used to be the kind of person who didn't make New Year's resolutions--will be to finish at least one book a week (unless I decide to finally finish Ulysses or something equally epic, in which case I will allow myself longer.) I'm not going to resolve to review the books once I've read them, because I won't, and I'm not going to set myself up for that failure. But I am going to resolve to start reading again. I'm going to try and be that girl who isn't afraid of spending time alone.

I used to be that girl. I can be her again.

Right?

(On a totally unrelated note, Goodwill had the most amazing selection of self-help books from the 70s and 80s yesterday. Any--or all--of them would have enhanced my collection greatly, and I was thisclose to buying them, but then... I remembered I have no place to put them, and they'd just be more crap I have to haul around until I do. Le sigh. And so, just like that, I've let a trove of precious gems slip through my fingers.)