You should go out and buy Jade Tiger by Jenn Reese. It's a wonderful, fun, romantic, butt-kicking book. I read it in manuscript some time back, while laying in a hammock (I recommend reading it that way, weather permitting), and it was one of the most thoroughly enjoyable afternoons I've ever spent by myself. Don't miss it.

Grgh. Too many deaths. Nelson Bond, Jack Williamson, Stanley Meltzoff, etc. etc. etc. This week at work has been hellish, working ten- and eleven-hour days, trying to finish by today (Friday). Our schedule was moved up because of Thanksgiving, so it was already a tight issue. Really brutal. My wrists and shoulders hurt from the constant layout changes. I haven't written a lick of my own fiction all week, and I hate that. But it's over today. May I never see its like again.

Ah, but next week. A five-day weekend (my usual Wednesday off, then the next two days for Thanksgiving). We have no plans for Thanksgiving, which is glorious. (I mean, I'll cook a small turkey for me and Heather, but no group gathering is planned.) That means I can chill out and do a lot of work on the Dream novel. I can't wait! Having that to look forward to is all that has sustained me through this hell week. (That, and having a couple of drinks every night.)

This week is having a deleterious effect on my health, too. I'm too tired to exercise in the evenings and I'm eating too much take-out for dinner and food ordered in at work for lunch (which it's nice of my boss to buy, since we don't have time for proper lunch breaks, but it's Chinese food and pizza and the like, which is the kind of food I'm mostly trying to avoid). I feel sluggish and, I shit you not, I'm getting pimples from all the grease. Sigh.

Have I mentioned how much I love the song "The President's Dead" by Okkervil River? Seriously great song, mostly because of this beautiful verse about a perfect morning. I've had mornings like that (but not this week).

Justine Larbalestier has a great blog post about rules in writing (specifically, that rules for "good" and "bad" writing tend to be woefully simplistic; mostly it's a matter of execution, not inherently inferior tecniques).

My novels have all been third-person limited, changing POVs within chapters or sections, with occasional chapters or sections in first person. But I don't think that's the best way; it's just the way I've been using. Sometimes first person is a much better choice for a story, though I've yet to write a novel entirely that way. I may do an omniscient novel at some point, because I love the possibilities in having an invisible all-knowing narrator with its own biases and agenda.

NaNoWriMo wasn't going to happen for me. Just too much going on, and anyway, I'm in the middle of a project, which violates the spirit of the thing. I kinda like creating a draft very quickly, and I've done the binge-writing thing a few times. It can be exhausting, but it's a good way for me to make a lot of headway on a book, or push to a finish. I'd like to get some momentum as I push toward the climax of the Dream novel, so I (just now) decided to institute NaNoWriHoWe (national novel writing holiday weekend). I'm going to produce, um, no set number of words next weekend. But a bunch, I hope! I realize NaNoWriHoWe may not be feasible for others (who have, like, family obligations), but it works for me, this year, and I'm looking forward to it. I'm trying not to binge on turkey and pie and such this year, so I'll binge on wordage instead.

One advantage of being too tired to write fiction for several days is that it makes me very eager to write again.