NaNo Day 20, In Which I Do...Research

First, a quick update from Day 19. I did write on Day 19--about a page--but, to be honest, I spent a large part of my free time perusing the blogosphere trying to understand the sturm und drang surrounding Harlequin Enterprises announcement regarding their new vanity publishing division, Harlequin Horizons. If you're a writer, published or still aspiring, I believe it's important to be informed as to what's going on (even if you don't write in the Romance genre) and why RWA and SFWA (and potentially MWA in December) have declared Harlequin an "ineligible publisher" over this. After reading many reasoned and passionate blog posts on the subject, the most concise and straightforward information that I found was in Jackie Kessler's Blog. Specifically (so far), the following posts:

Jackie Kessler's Blog Post of 11/19/2009: Harlequin Horizons versus RWA "So you may have heard about this thing called Harlequin Horizons, and RWA’s response. But if you’re not in the publishing industry, you may not see why this is a big deal — and why RWA did the best possible thing any author organization could do."

Jackie Kessler's Blog Post of 11/20/2009: The Day After: Harlequin Blinks "Just because your book wasn’t good enough for Harlequin to pay you for it, that doesn’t mean it’s not good enough for you to pay us for it!"

Jackie Kessler's Blog Post of 11/21/2009: Answering Your Questions "By mentioning Horizons in every form rejection letter it sends out, Harlequin is encouraging authors to use Horizons. By linking to Horizons on its website, Harlequin is encouraging authors to use Horizons. Advertising Horizons in its rejection letters and its website is a huge conflict of interest."

Read them and be informed.

Back to NaNo Day 20. I gave myself permission to goof off on Day 20. You know, step away from the keyboard and go out and have a little fun? There's a new movie theater in town — one of those places that serves food and beverages to you while you watch your movie. My husband and I decided to try it out for a late lunch and matinee. The movie we chose to see? 2012.

If you've read my blog, you probably know I'm an apocalypse junkie. So you know that I was prepared to enjoy 2012 no matter how, er, lame the plot might end up being. I mean, come on, John Cusack and the End of the World as We Know It? Roland Emmerich Blowing Stuff Up? How could it miss?

John Cusack could stand in a field and read the phone book and I'd watch him do it. However...I'm eternally grateful we saw 2012 in a theater where we could order wine. A couple of glasses of Shiraz definitely made the movie easier to swallow. I can't help thinking back to other movies that we waited to rent and see at home, rather than at a theater, simply because we knew after watching the trailers that only copious amounts of alcohol would make them watchable. No longer! Even the most craptastic film (2012) can now be enjoyed in the theater, the way it was intended (well, almost).

Yet even while goofing off, NaNo wasn't far from my mind. At various points in the movie, my thoughts would stray to my story. When I thought, "Jeez, Roland, pacing!", my thoughts immediately shifted to wondering if I had enough action planned, even in the first part, to hold readers' attention. And when I admired the special effects and the sheer audacity of destroying the world, my thoughts strayed to my current opening scene and wondered if an explosion would help.

I guess I wasn't goofing off as much as I thought!


NaNo Day 20 Words:  0
Total NaNo Words:  12,746