The Big Leap

Today has been wild, so I'll leave you with this.

Lame reference to David Bowie's Ch-Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes

I feel like I've been meaning to add this PS to the bottom of every blog post I've written recently, but maybe it would be better to just give it its own post.

HEY! So I went on a blog hiatus for a long time and some of you did, too! Did you move your blog elsewhere or move on to greener pastures of social media? Did we lose track of each other during the demise of Google Reader? (I now use Feedly, btw) If we used to comment on each other's posts all the time and you're hanging out somewhere else now, let me know. I'd love to catch up.

As for me, if you haven't noticed yet, this blog is now simply "julesisaacs.com" instead of "goodghost.blogspot.com." For reasons, because professionalism.

k thnx bai

Hong Kong Garden

Some point-and-shoot shots from my time in Hong Kong. The last one is of me sitting at the entrance to the LDS Hong Kong temple.

A strange confession about this year's NaNoWriMo experience: it's made me cry a lot.

Well, twice, but that was quite enough for me. And I wasn't crying because the writing process was daunting or agonizing, and the tears weren't tears of frustration. I cried during the research for my novel, which was in two parts: the research of location and technicalities, and the research of my own personal experience. Rereading journals, etc.

Because my novel is set in Hong Kong, and much of it is based on my experience when I taught English over there for a semester. Remembering everything made me miss it so much, I reduced myself to tears. Just looking at pictures of egg tarts and moon pies makes me tear up, not to mention my old students.

We were warned that me might experience culture shock when we arrived, but I never did. I loved, loved, loved it there. For whatever reason, I felt so ridiculously happy and free. That's sounds silly and cliché, I know, but I really don't know how else to put it. I had just come out of a serious relationship, had just returned to college after a semester away, had just been to my sister's wedding . . . a lot of stuff had been building up at that point, and I let it all to go in China. Like, the minute I stepped off the plane. And it was perfect. (I guess you could say things have been great ever since, because I met Seve a few weeks after returning to the States).

I've never been a very good journal writer. This blog is my journal, I suppose. But for several years, stories were what I wrote down instead of personal experiences. And it's strange, I can reread my old short stories and they bring back all the memories that surround the time period of when I wrote them. So, I even cried a little while rereading the bits I already had for Easy Beauty. Because, in the midst of reading about the way my characters hold hands, I'm suddenly on the HK metro again, or when my protagonist is describing his childhood in Texas, all I can think of is how I wrote that scene after eating at that restaurant with the giant bust of Chairman Mao.

Seve was able to give me a tour of his mission in Ukraine when we were done teaching in Russia, but one day I'd like to take him and my pups to Hong Kong and relive some of my favorite experiences there. But for the time being, that's what finishing Easy Beauty is doing for me.

Easy Beauty

Perhaps it goes without saying that I'm doing NaNoWriMo this year. I do it practically every year. But this year it's a bit more fun, because I'm participating with Seve's class. Seve not only teaches theatre, but creative writing, and every semester his classes participate in National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo in November, and Camp NaNaWriMo in April).

Even though I often "win" NaNo every time I participate, I never necessarily love the product I end up with. 2010's effort just didn't turn out how I wanted . . . I'm usually an advocate for not taking a NaNo too seriously while writing it; it'll make it too hard to reach your word count each day. Some days you really do just end up writing a bunch of crap, and it can dishearten the effort more than if you just hadn't written anything at all.

But this year I'm breaking a few rules. Breaking my own rule of not taking myself too seriously, and breaking the usual NaNo rule of "starting fresh:" I'm finishing a NaNo I started back in 2007. This was the year I taught English abroad in China, and I convinced my entire volunteer group to participate in NaNo too. My roommate and I threw ourselves into the process and managed to get our manuscripts up to 30,000--pretty good considering we were busy teaching English/exploring China everyday. Another girl wrote a funny retelling of all the adventures we shared in China, and another wrote a hilarious retelling of Twilight substituting all of our names for the original characters (I was Alice).

The pictures above are of some literary magazines I picked up in China, called "Top Novel." I've never been able to read them, obviously, but my native coordinator informed me they were full of short stories, serials, and poetry. She translated a few for me. They're also filled with beautiful artwork and comics. Anyway, it was from these that I drafted my 2007 NaNo idea. The illustrations were just so beautiful, so I invented a story of what I thought they could be about.

It's six years since I bothered to read that story, but in February of this year I finally pulled it up. And I  . . . loved it? It's an embarrassing teen romance, really quirky and magical realism-ish, but whatever, I love it. I've decided I owe it to myself to finish it.

Anyway, this month, as a way to pep myself up to finish, I'll be blogging about my time in China and various topics related to Easy Beauty.

Participating in NaNo this month? Become my writing buddy here. If you're struggling with your own NaNo, Nathan Bransford (my favorite ex-literary agent blogger) wrote a great book with some relevant-for-trying-to-write-and-publish-a-novel-in-2013 tips here. And when you're done checking that out, watch this video because I really like it.