Top Ten of 2009

Since the woman in the upstairs apartment is blaring her TV and stomping around like it isn't 11 at night, I'm going to take the time to post my Top Ten of 2009. Though it's a tad premature, I'm confident it's complete, as I'm using these last weeks to finish up Lolita and possibly Raven. Sometime during the WEEK I HAVE OFF BETWEEN CHRISTMAS AND NEW YEARS (working in publishing is so great) I'll post a full list of the books I've read this year with their ratings.

This list only includes books I've read for the first time. So, Pride and Prejudice has a much higher rating than Mansfield Park and is on my reading list for the year, I've already read it about a thousand times and it doesn't count.

Drum roll. Please.

Top Ten of 2009!

10. American Psycho - Brett Easton Ellis
9. The Beach - Alex Garland
8. Mansfield Park - Jane Austen
7. V for Vendetta - Alan Moore, David Lloyd
6. Song of Ice and Fire - George R.R. Martin
5. The Likeness - Tana French
4. Wintergirls - Laurie Halse Andersen
3. Stitches - David Small
2. Watchmen - Alan Moore, Dave Gibbons
1. The Shining - Stephen King

Reading and Writing

I'm attempting to write 1000 words per day. It isn't quite as cumbersome as NaNoWriMo's 1667 words per day. I can easily fit 1000 into my 3 hour evenings, and I might even have some extra time to finally use my Rosetta Stone and teach myself Russian. (Leo Tolstoy here I come!)

So far, I have about 1500 words. My cousins will be here in about a half an hour to make Christmas snowflakes, so that gives me just enough time for 500 more words - unless I allow Battlestar Galactica to completely distract me. I write better with noise! But Starbuck is pretty much my best friend, and it's the episode where she crash lands on that moon! The next few episodes are some of my favorites. She reconfigures that Cylon and makes it fly for her! Everyone thinks she's dead, but she isn't!

Anyway.

Someone passed along this e-mail at work. I guess a bunch of authors and editors are partaking in this big Twitter hashtag - Santa's Book Bag - where they'll choose one book for each day from December 1 to December 24. It can be one of their own or a colleagues. It's a way to promote their books and to remind people that books make good presents too! (Although if you were at Christmas in my house about 13 years ago, the time my brother took one look at the packaging, exclaimed 'stinking book' and threw it, you wouldn't think so. He's a book friend now though.)

Anyway. Again.

I think I'm going to do that. I'm not promoting anything except reading for the greater good. I might even start before December 1. Depends.

Couple Things

Well, one thing that NaNoWriMo did was make me want to write, even if I ended up not wanting to write what I was writing in the time allotted.

And one thing depression did was give my brain an idea, and I think it's a pretty good one!

So! Not all things are bad!

Also - it's completely original and does not rely on anyone's or pieces of anyone's life to tell it.

0 Words

If you haven't already guessed, I've completely abandoned NaNoWriMo. Because I'm weak, I guess.

1,110 Words, 8,557 Total

I've been so tired lately. I went to bed at 10 last night, slept the night through, and still slept on the train. On the way in and on the way home.

I may have picked up a writing buddy. She's 13 and her enthusiasm for NaNoWriMo reminds me of my enthusiasm for writing when I was her age. I should attempt to resurrect some of those old half finished "manuscripts" of mine. Trouble was, back then I thought I was the next R.L. Stine and only wrote about troubled girls who put their fluffy white cats through meat grinders and made delicious hamburgers and stole their mother's boyfriends. Damn, that story was so good.

400 Words, 7,467 Total

7:30 - Ack! I believe the NaNoWriMo website is down! The horror!

Another, Ack! My grammar! It's atrocious. Not editing is killing me, but I guess it keeps me moving forward instead of focusing on the behind parts.

8:09 - I'm procrastinating like a mother. Still haven't written anything yet. MUST WRITE.

8:16 - Plugged in and ready to go. I really wish that my keyboard keys glew (glew? glowed?) in the dark.

9:04 - 394 words and I'm fading fast. Going to take a short break, drink some water. Take a shower and then start Chapter Two.

9:35 - I can't think how to begin the second chapter. What do I want to happen? I have this chapter and perhaps one more before Mark leaves everything behind. I wanted to make it at least to the first week's goal of words before I switched gears and sent Mark on his way. That would be about 12,000 words in.

So what to do? So far, his father's come home (to live) and Mark's mother never told him. It's been over a year since the day his father was kicked out, but Mark still isn't talking to him, so this is a pretty huge deal. Mark's mother tries to rationalize his decision in a terrible "make up" conversation with her son and Mark leaves, waking up at 4am in his car at the beach and in trouble with the security guards.

What happens next? I thought about starting the chapter at the therapist. Or do I have him staying at his aunt's house? Or do I have him at home, not really talking to his mom, nor his dad and ... this sounds terrible. I think I'm going to start the chapter at the therapist. With a combination of that last one.

The most fun bits to write so far have been the description of the LIRR and my description Ocean Parkway. I'm sure this will never get published, but I think it's important. To capture things as they are. Paint the place you live as it is so it's never forgotten.

I have to put this down for the night.

2,855 Words, 7,067 Total

I got some serious writing done at the boyfriend's this afternoon. Posted a new excerpt on the NaNoWriMo site:

For the first time since beginning to take the train in and out of the city, I prayed for a track condition or the striking of an unauthorized person on the track. Anything to delay the train, spend two, three, maybe four hours on the train instead of one. Everyone would grumble and curse and yell that they needed to pick up their kids or they needed to get home to dinner or they spent 3,000 dollars a year on this bullshit! And I would smile knowingly at them, shake my head as though I shared their pain. We would be united in our unification, our hatred of the LIRR, except inside I’d have erupted in tumultuous applause for the worn track or the unauthorized person who died just so I wouldn’t have to get home on time.

As always, the Long Island Railroad proved to be completely unreliable and pulled into Deer Park station at exactly 6:55. Walking to my car, I started to panic. Full blown panic. I am normally a runner – one of the people that gets up at Wyandanch and stands at the door, impatiently tapping my leg, waiting for the train to pull into the Deer Park station and the doors to open so that I can burst forth, entering the race of the other 5 or 6 runners that throw themselves down the platform stairs and across the parking lot to their cars. But I couldn’t run. I couldn’t even get out of my seat and nearly missed the Deer Park stop.

I walked slowly to the car and got in. And sat there. Part of me wanted to run home and defend her. Tell him to get the fuck out. Maybe I would push him. But another part, the part that kept the hand that held my keys frozen to my side instead of inserting them, igniting them and peeling away – that part wanted to never go home again. That part wanted to go to sleep and just forget about it.

Just reviewing The Beach on Shelfari and adding Raven. Then, back to writing for at least the next half hour.