to all my fan(s?)

today, while chatting with margarita, i was very politely berated (it wasn't really a beration, it was more of an encouragement, but she called it that, so i must respect her agency in naming her words) because i don't post on my blog enough. she is completely right. totally and completely. it's not as though i don't have time. it's not as though i don't have shit to talk about -- i must, for all the time i spend chatting with you all on various chat programs. and then there's my own blog habit. my list of bookmarked blogs is now about as long as my very large flat panel computer monitor and i check them all at least once a day. so i am READING blogs. i'm just not WRITING my blog. (by the way, i'd be totally pissed if any of my blog peeps that i regularly read didn't post for as long as i go between posts. and yes, that's a threat AND a promise.)

now, on to our soon-to-be-regularly scheduled posting...

so i just re-read the entire harry potter series. fucking fabulous. i mean, jk rowling is a genius. i appreciate this even more now that i've been writing my own novel. she is able to weave together plot elements like magic (mwhaha), and when she does the big writing no-no -- including a scene that doesn't advance the plot or reveal something about the characters -- it is always so much fun to read that you don't care if it advances the plot or not, you could read her writing about opening a can of alphagetti.

now, i've been finished with HP and friends for a couple of weeks, so in bookless desperation, i cracked open one of chris's nelson demille books, called charm school. i like him and his stuff, generally. in fact, some of his books are downright fantastic -- see the lion's game, cathedral, talbot odyssey. this one, though... not so much. for one thing, he is writing in third person, and when the character thinks something to himself, it is put in quotation marks!!! i know it's a small thing, but it's driving me nuts, cause i keep thinking.... is someone else in the room that i missed? secondly, there are these incredibly long descriptive scenes. i know, it's the pot calling the kettle black cause i've been known to enoy writing the odd descriptive scene myself, but these are like.... about antique shops in moscow and shit. makes me wonder if he's cutting and pasting from his travel journal. oh, oh. and the sex scene! ugh! i don't expect wonders from male writers when it comes to sex scenes, but this one was just... why even have it in there at all? went something like this.... little bit of foreplay, insertion, and then... and i quote, "she grabbed his buttocks as she came." new paragraph. "he came." i do not lie, and i have not omitted anything. it was so ugh, ugh, ugh, from both a writer's perspective and a romantic's perspective. but mostly from a writer's perspective.

the point of all this is not to discourage you from reading the book, but rather to explain a VERY important realization i came to while trying to force myself further into the novel before putting it down for good. this was one of demille's first books. he's come so far as a writer and a novelist since that first one. the first one is always going to be somewhat less than perfect. it will probably have parts that are messy, parts that are awkward, parts that are anti-climactic. parts that are over-descriptive, parts where the dialogue is stilted and forced. so i don't need the first one to be perfect, i just need it to a) tell the story that's rattling around in my head and b) tell it well enough to get an agent and get that first publishing credit under my belt!