I feel like I start every monthly summary with “Where did [month] go????” but…where did October go????
After a September of rest, I do feel myself feeling a bit more refreshed. Some of that was helped by travel and the gorgeous autumn weather; Bear and I went to Nashville for a wedding and we just spent Halloween weekend in Asheville. (Heh, Nashville and Asheville.) Enough to gather my regrown braincells in preparation for NaNoWriMo 2023, during which I intend to draft GUARDIANS 3.
I am also bearing witness to the horrors happening now in Palestine. I’m participating in Fox & Wit and Faecrate’s Humanitarian Aid for Gaza raffle, as well as calling my representatives in Congress for a ceasefire daily. Another thing I’ve done is purchase a few e-sims to send to the civilians in Gaza in order to give them a way to access the internet during the blackouts. I’ve linked how to do so, and you can send the purchased e-sims to gazaesims@gmail.com so they can be distributed amongst the populace. This thread also links to works by Palestinian writers to read, purchase, and educate yourself on the vibrant culture and history of the people.
In this issue
1. JJ’s magical world
2. Lexical gap
3. This creative life
4. What you might have missed
5. Ask JJ
6. What I’m reading
7. What I’m watching
lexical gap: snerdle 🧩
I can’t find the source for this particular meaning of snerdle, although Wiktionary cites a few instances of usage that approach this definition. To be honest, snerdle just seems to be what my dogs do to me whenever they want pets—burying their snoots aggressively beneath my hands for attention.
this creative life ✍🏻
This year I’m attempting NaNoWriMo again, this times for GUARDIANS 3. The last time I did NaNoWriMo was for Wintersong, which remains the only year I’ve ever won. I’ll be chronicling my process here on the NaNoWriMo tag, if any of y’all are interested in the hot mess that is my brain. Anyone else doing NaNoWriMo this year?
stuff you might have missed ✨
Sincerely weird, weirdly sincere. 60% is good enough, When it’s no longer easy
NaNoWriMo 2023. A bit of an experiment in talking to myself
Negative capability: The Wheel of Fortune, Justice, The Hanged Man, Death. For my 절친 only.
ask jj 💬
I sometimes get questions sent to me via various platforms so I’ve decided to take the time to round them up and answer them as best I could in my monthly roundups. This one came via Substack’s Chat:
How and when do you figure out tone/vibe for a story? Working on my first novel, it took me two rewrites to even start thinking about how I wanted the language to sound in my third draft. Are there ways to get a sense for it sooner?
Everyone’s writing process is different, which is something that is both frustrating and freeing. For me, I tend to settle on the tone/vibe for my stories before I even start drafting and usually during the brainstorming phase. But! For me, tone and diction—while related—are not necessarily the same thing. Tone encompasses setting, characterization, as well as language, and for me, language comes in one of the latest drafts. Or rather, I consciously edit for language in the latest drafts; I usually work to get the mood down in other ways first. For me, the first drafts are for getting the story down, to see the shape, and to get it right. All else is gravy.
what i’m reading 📖
Kushiel’s Chosen* and Kushiel’s Avatar* by Jacqueline Carey. It’s been a few years since I’ve reread these and I’ve forgotten how much these are a comfort read for me.
Sword Catcher by Cassandra Clare. I’m slowly making my way through this one because it’s a bit of a chonkster.
*reread
what i’m watching 📺
The Fall of the House of Usher. I admit I was a bit skeptical about this, not for any particular reason, only that I don’t like Succession (I know, I know) and I wasn’t really interested in a horror take on it, even though I enjoy the majority of Mike Flanagan’s oeuvre. It took a few episodes for me to get into it, but by the end I’d say it’s probably my second favorite Flanagan after The Haunting of Hill House. Hill House was an absolute gut punch of a show, and Usher doesn’t have that, but that’s also not the point. Usher is a Grand Guignol of watching terrible people suffer the consequences of their horribleness and in that way, it’s a lot of fun.
That’s all for this month!
사랑해,