Writing Dreams

رو به سردي

The weather here has been absolutely gross for three days. I’m glad today, though it looks cloudy, at least doesn’t look like rain. I have been wanting to get out and take a walk with my husband, but I don’t really even want to go outside in this weather.

I had a strange writing dream last night. I haven’t been doing much work on my NaNoWriMo novel since December started, and one reason for that is that I have a major plot hole that introduces implausibility. It sounds really strange to say that in a novel in which Shakespeare and Jane Austen are brought forward into the current time that I can’t figure out how to get them identification and passports without having them resort to shady fake documents (and how do they even know people who can make fake documents that fool authorities? or how do they even have money to pay for them?). It’s really bugging me. Man, in historical fiction, you can move people around so easily. They can stowaway on a ship or even book passage legally, and no one glares at their ID for five minutes to determine whether they might be carrying fake identification and could be a terrorist.

At any rate, last night I had a writer dream. I was at NCTE. I saw lots of my friends there, but I was also being followed by some shadowy folks like a bad spy movie. English teachers are classical spies, right? Anyway, out of the blue, Stephen King and Joe Hill (who is Stephen King’s son) showed up at my hotel room with printed copies of my NaNo book covered in blue ink. I have no idea how they got my ms, but they had clearly spent some time critiquing it well. Joe Hill told me it was pretty good, but about 1/3 of it was crap (which is pretty much my own estimate). Stephen King nodded vigorously to indicate he agreed with his son’s assessment. I was thrilled that Joe Hill thought 2/3 of my novel was something I could work with, and I couldn’t wait to read their suggestions on how to fix the 1/3 that wasn’t. They were like my perfect deus ex machinas or something like that. I wish a real writer would jump in solve my ms problems instead of dream Stephen King (who was hard of hearing in my dream) and dream Joe Hill. I was so shocked and happy that they had come to help me with my book.

I think my brain picked them because even though I haven’t read a lot of their work, I think highly of them as writers because I know a lot about their process. Of course, I learned about King’s through [amazon_link id=”1439156816″ target=”_blank” ]On Writing[/amazon_link], and Joe Hill has discussed his on his blog. Plus Joe Hill is very opinionated on Twitter, and if he thinks something’s crap, he calls it out as crap—precisely why I felt his assessment of my book was actually high praise. In real life? I’m not sure either of them would like my book. It doesn’t seem like their thing. But they were both as nice as they could be in my dream.

photo credit: seyed mostafa zamani

Kindle TBR Pile

Most avid readers I know have a TBR (to be read) pile. I mostly keep my TBR pile on Goodreads. I sometimes remember to put these books on my Amazon Wishlist. I have recently acquired a Kindle, and my department at school gave me an Amazon gift card in honor of my being selected as the Georgia Council of Teachers of English (GCTE) Secondary Teacher of the Year.

Since purchasing my Kindle, I have downloaded several books, all now in my TBR pile.

HornsContested Will

Medieval LivesThe Dream of Perpetual Motion

I really added Horns at Steve’s request, as he has been wanting to read it, but it has received good reviews, and I think I’ll eventually check it out, too.

I think I first heard about Contested Will via Twitter, but I’m not sure if it was @shakespearetav or @madshakespeare. I’m reading A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare: 1599 by James Shapiro, the author of Contested Will, and I’m thoroughly enjoying it. I see the anti-Stratfordians have begun panning Contested Will in Amazon reviews.

I have long enjoyed Terry Jones’s take on medieval history. Many people don’t know it, but Jones is a medieval scholar with a degree in English from Oxford. He has a gift for bringing history alive with humor, and I always enjoy whatever he does. Medieval Lives has been on my Amazon Wishlist for ages, so I finally purchased it.

I found out about The Dream of Perpetual Motion via Mad Shakespeare, which is a clever blog that you should be reading if you are a Shakespeare fan. This novel is a steampunk version of Shakespeare’s late romance The Tempest. I have never tried steampunk before, but I have tried books with elements of steampunk, such as Stardust. I was dithering about whether to download this book when @paulwhankins, who created a wonderful introduction to steampunk using LiveBinders, said it was good. That was enough for me.

I also found a good deal on three novels from the Brontë sisters on Kindle for $0.99. I haven’t read anything by Anne Brontë, and this collection affords me the opportunity not only to add an additional Brontë novelist to my TBR pile, but also to have my favorite novel (Wuthering Heights) and Jane Eyre at my fingertips wherever I go. The collection comes with Wuthering Heights, Jane Eyre, and Agnes Grey. If I can, as we say down here in the South, “get off the stick” and read it, I might finish it in time to include it as part of the All About the Brontës Challenge.

R.I.P. Update

R.I.P. ChallengeI am putting Joe Hill’s short story collection 20th Century Ghosts aside. It’s not that I don’t like it; I just want to read a novel. This decision means I have to select a book to replace it in the R.I.P. Challenge. I took three books off the shelves and couldn’t decide, so I had Maggie choose for me again, and she thinks I should read Shirley Jackson’s We Have Always Lived in the Castle. The cover is really cute, and I know she’s a good writer, so I will go with Maggie’s choice. Of course, she may have picked it because the cat on the cover looks just like our Bella.