Knitting and NaNoWriMo

Hello, everyone! Happy Day-After-St.Patrick's Day! It's nice to think about spring coming soon- though I'll admit I was none too pleased when I woke up this morning to see snow on the ground! Hopefully the weather will start getting more springy very, very soon, because I want to be able to read and write outside in the sun, go biking, and wear short sleeves.

Most of my free time lately has been spent in knitting and reading. In addition to the projects I've already told you about, I've made a second pair of wristers, which I'm wearing now, and a pair of yoga socks. Yoga socks, if you didn't know, are socks that don't have heels or toes, so they're basically the equivalent of fingerless gloves for your feet, except that I typically wear them over normal socks. Go figure. Right now I'm working on a shawl for my sister. It's going well, and I'm almost a fifth of the way done. There's one row in the pattern that drives me nuts until I start making strange noises of aggravation, but otherwise, it's quite easy.

Book-wise, I've recently been reading the rest of Jessica Day George's books. For those of you who didn't know, Jessica Day George is the author of several remade fairy tales, including Princess of the Midnight Ball, one of my three favorite books by her, and one of the books that inspired my Camp NaNoWriMo novel last year. I also read The Fairest Beauty, the latest book by Melanie Dickerson. I very much enjoyed it, though The Merchant's Daughter is still my favorite Dickerson book.

Speaking of Camp NaNoWriMo (we were talking about it, briefly at least), this year it's in two months: April and July. I plan to do it with the official site this year, which is exciting. I'm thinking that I'll go for my usual goal of 50,000 words in April, and that I'll write the sequel to last year's Camp NaNoWriMo novel (which I've named Danger in the Tower). This year's novel will be called Monster in the Castle, and it's going to be a remake of "Beauty and the Beast" combined with "East of the Sun; West of the Moon". Here's the summary I wrote for the Camp NaNoWriMo site (WARNING: contains spoilers for Danger in the Tower):

King du Karel is dead. The once-missing girls have been returned to their families, except for Poppy, who travels with Ivy and Jacob Serlend in search of Ivy's family. All should be well, especially for Pansy (last name undecided). After all, not only has she been reunited with her father, but she's also learned to control the voices she hears. But Pansy's sisters resent her, and her father is in deep debt because of the money he spent searching for her. When a beast offers Pansy's father riches if one of his daughters will come live in a castle with him (the beast), Pansy feels that she has no choice but to volunteer. But she will discover that all is not as it seems at the beast's grand castle, and the beast himself might not be a villain, but a victim of the same beings that once held her captive.

Sounds cool, no? I'm very much looking forward to writing it, especially since Pansy is one of my favorite characters from Danger in the Tower. I can hardly wait to write a book that's (almost) all about her!

As for the July session, I'm not sure if I'll do it or not. If I do, it'll be with a lower wordcount goal, since I have several other plans for July as well. These include the possibility of a summer writing class and helping a friend with something. (Details to come later.) Possibilities for July's novel include a rewrite of My Father's Daughter, which I started almost a year ago and have yet to finish, or another novel which I haven't named yet, but which will involve aliens, people stabbing bad guys with knitting needles (and actually accomplishing something other than making the bad guy mad), and possibly superheros. I will confess that this novel might've possibly come from my desire to write something in which someone gets stabbed with a knitting needle. (And that desire came mostly from Jessica Day George. Thank you very much, Mrs. George.)

I haven't been doing much current writing, however. I have written one or two short stories, and I wrote a poem yesterday, but that's about all. Procrastination, unfortunately, seems to have mostly beaten me when it comes to writing. I'll have to make sure to send him packing in time for NaNoWriMo, though.

Well, that's about all. Thanks for stopping by!
Calo anor na ven!*
- Sarah

*May the sun shine upon your road!