Ashley Newell
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A Curious Poll

12/28/2014

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As we are merely minutes away from the finale of our 2014 season of Curious Endeavourances, I noticed that some very important awards from last year did not get distributed this season. So here's your chance to take a look back at our 2014 season and think about the books that really made your year!

    Cast Your Votes!

    What awards would you distribute? Remember, you can always join us on GoodReads forums to post your nominations and comments before we go live! Why not give it a try in 2015? See you on the forums!
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Remember, if you want to create some awards of your own in 2015, just join us on GoodReads and leave your nominations and comments in the forums. We also love to read your comments on youtube, Google+, and Twitter! 

Want to join us live in 2015? It's easy! Just contact one of our Curious Hosts for more details.

Want us to read your favourite book? You can leave a comment and we'll see if we can make room for it, otherwise, join us for a full three back-to-back reads to be eligible for your own spot in the host rotation! 

Be curious, my fine reading friends, and join us for 12 new books in 2015!
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Because Terry Brooks Said It Best

11/2/2014

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So for Curious Endeavourances November 2014 pick, we are reading Sometimes the Magic Works by Terry Brooks. 4 pages into it I knew I that I needed to do some serious quote preserving. I'm feeling quite validated, actually. To be honest, this post isn't really for all of you, I mean, I'm happy to share it, but it's more for me. So this started as my own personal reminders that I'm not crazy, not clinically anyways, just creative, but somewhere along the way I started speaking back to Brooks, or at least, using his words as an invitation to reflect on my own process and identity. Perhaps this has become more confessional that I had hoped it would be, but I don't keep a diary so it's not very often that I get to be alone with myself like this. Maybe some close family and friends will stumble upon this and understand me a little bit better, too.

 p. 5 In which Brooks describes the only life I have ever known:
Writers are not all here, because a part of them is always "over there" - "over there" being whatever world they are writing about at present. Writers live in two worlds - the real world of friends and family and the imaginary world of their writing. [...] Each is compelling in its own way and each makes its demands on a writer's time. But a writer can't leave either for very long [...]
p. 6 Writers need their writing; they need their imaginary worlds in order to find peace in, or make sense of, the real world.
This = me. This is also why I can never remember where I put my phone. Living in multiple worlds makes it really hard to keep track of minor details, however important they may be in the long-run.

p. 66 In which Brooks explores where his ideas come from:
It isn't thinking so much as it is dreaming. But all things begin with dreaming.
In this section, he goes on to explain how the advice he received from Lester del Rey was to spend time dreaming about an idea for a good long while before ever writing anything down. 
Compared to other writers I know who chart and list and graph, I must seem like a pretty spontaneous (or "pantser" as WriMo folk say) writer. But I won't commit a word to even a scrap piece of paper until I've walked through the emotional journey of my characters. I do a lot of laps around the house when I'm alone, I natter, I cry, I'll get angry at no one at all. Nothing frightens my husband more than catching me going through an emotional whirlwind of someone else's pain - especially when I can't put into words what's wrong, because really, nothing is, I'm fine. In fact, I've made my connection with my character, so even though I'm hyperventilating, things are going great!

p. 90 In which Brooks explains his methods for planning:
If an idea doesn't stick with me for more than twenty-four hours, it probably wasn't all that hot in the first place.
Oh, the debates I've had over this very notion! I cringe when folks tell me about their "idea books" that they keep updating, or the 3-10 first drafts that they're simultaneously working on. My rule is far greater than 24 hours. Usually it has to wait until my current project is done, which pushes it away for at least a month, or I have a priority list in my head of ideas that have become back-logged, and I'm very weary of line jumpers. Freakhouse scared me because it shouted at me so loudly that it was budging to the front of the line. I believe it was Confessions of a Devil that was supposed to be written for that NaNo event, but Freakhouse was practically assembling its own pieces throughout the summer, so by November, I let it through. Ethereal is not such a success story. My first dream-based story, so I had a few strong emotions attached to it, and since I wasn't sure if I was doing Camp NaNoWriMo, I figured I had nothing to lose jumping in last minute with a last minute story idea. Waste of everyone's time! Confessions of a Devil I plan to salvage. Ethereal, well, it needs some serious patches to its foundations, or just to be demolished entirely to make room for something else. I like the title. Gas-based alien lovers? Yeah, not so much.

And then I just got so absorbed that I couldn't stop to consider how to break down the content in a quotable format without just scanning the pages and pasting them here. So here I will put some of my other connections and reflections.


Beginning and Endings: Brooks talks about how invaluable is it to solidify these two major components of any story. Well, I chalk this back up to planning and dreaming. As I mentioned earlier, I don't write a single shred of a note until I've made a very personal connection with the characters. I couldn't even if I tried. You see, there's a very strange shared space of "invention" and "listening". Clearly I must be responsible for some of the invention somewhere since I'm the one who chooses the words to put on the page. But I never really believe that I "make up" stories. 

I meet characters, sometimes I need to meet them for the first time in several intervals, making small-talk that may or may not get anywhere. I don't feel it is always me assessing them, rather than it is me being the one assessed. If I am chosen as worthy enough to hear what the character has to say, we begin a phase of mutual possession. They walk with me through my life as I walk with them through theirs. Again, as Brooks stated in his book, real world and dream world go hand-in-hand, often simultaneous and seamless. I open up my vulnerability to them and sometimes they return the favour. This is probably why I can have such strong reactions, the emotions of two complete people are inhabiting the same body, the same mental space, neither one trying to control the other, simply sharing space, sharing experience, memories, hopes, dreams, everything. When I know who is important in their lives, for better or worse, I sometimes get to meet those people too, and then I get to see the complexities of being human and the limitations of perspective. 

For example, from Freakhouse, I could see how Dotan perseved Jos and Blue, but those understandings he had were, of course, not always the whole picture when I got to walk through the same world with a new host. Jos had the whole outside world to bring in with him, all of his expectations of how things would play out, and his reactions to his reality were strong, even if he kept them hidden from Dotan. Blue observed far more than Dotan ever gave him credit for, and  his true feelings, though also rarely exposed, ran so deep. Walking through the lives of these characters, not to mention Bear, Froggy, Marlene, was painful because of all of the hurt they lived through every day. Without this, without feeling like I, too, was falling apart, I never would have written it. This is what I meant when I said that it budged in line. I thought in my head that Confessions of a Devil deserved to be written next; it had come first, after all. But the weight of all of those feelings would not leave. Dotan and his friends had dumped those raw emotions down on me and they weren't going anywhere until I had somewhere to put them. That's when I started the physical planning. The notes. The lists. But the story was already there. I had already walked through it. My job in the physical planning is exactly what Terry Brooks said: the Beginning and the End. Knowing that I was telling Dotan's story, it was easy to locate where the best place to begin would be, and where it needed to go. In my opinion, it fit the narrative well, even if Dotan thought otherwise. 


The Rest of the Story: Brooks doesn't use this phrase exactly, but he did make mention of how important it is to plan so that you know more about the characters than what you could (or should) possibly put into one book. I feel my Dreaming is this extensive. I won't write without an ending, without knowing how it goes. 


Freakhouse was a different experience for me because while I was shown how the book would end, Dotan became very silent about the events that followed, and of course, I was very curious, especially since I had begun writing and didn't comfortable not knowing for myself what happened next, even if I was happy to leave the story on the note that I did. I've talked about this in other posts, so I won't go into great detail here, but the point it that Dotan and I had to get into a whole new level of vulnerable in order to walk through the rest of the story. I was trying to take too much control. I had my book ending and, in my mind, everything was rooted. I believe it was my inflexibility at that time that made Dotan shut down. I had left him at his lowest low, and while I sympathized, I was too absorbed into writing to really listen. Perhaps I betrayed our mutual agreement by getting angry at him for not hosting me the rest of the way, as if he owed me because, damn it, I'm writing your story! This does not make for great diplomacy. 


I spent weeks shouting at him for being so immature about it. It wasn't until I gave in and started offering what I thought to be implausible hypothetical solutions that I stumbled upon something I had considered before, but immediately dismissed. I gave it another look. Just giving it that second glance brought Dotan back to me. It was like he was peeking over my shoulder as I discovered the fine print hidden in an old record book. He didn't say anything, he just waited with bated breath for my light bulb to finally turn on. It did. For the first time in a long while, we stopped fighting. He smiled at me and said, "Now you're getting it." And I did, though I was still in shock that it actually might work. Nevertheless, Dotan let me back in and we walked through the rest of it. None of these events are seen in Freakhouse, but I couldn't have reached the book's ending without seeing what lay beyond.

Okay, maybe this is even a little too crazy for Terry Brooks, but so far our destinations seem to be the same, even if our paths are a little different.


"You Can See The Whole World" As I described above, I believe that I can. I believe that I have no business writing if I don't. The thought that this can get lost along the way scares me. Yes, my head might get a little less crowded, but I don't mind. I'm happy to sit in silence and just listen to the stories around me and walk down paths that don't exist in my world. Brooks describes his grandson's observation as being the much-needed reminder about what it means to be a writer. Back to the initial comment about authors being people who publish, and writers being storytellers, I do wonder what I, personally, am ready for. I may not be a lawyer, but I, too have secured by practical job, because for me, stability is something I need more than anything. If I can't take care of myself, I don't trust that anyone else, even sheer dumb luck, will save me. But as I see myself sacrificing more of what I love for what I know is the right thing to do, I am wondering, at this point, where I have shed my title of "youth" and enter the gates of "all grown up", if this really is an all or nothing gig. What will I regret more? What am I willing to lose? Why can't I "see the whole world" on these spontaneous imaginary adventures and live my real-life dreams, too? The older I get, the more I see dreams cast aside, or I look on with a mix of envy and pity for those who have cast everything else away to live their dreams and are now trying to find a way into adulthood to catch-up with everyone else. 

I look at all I have accomplished with my life, and I have to say that I've done everything right. And yet, I also feel like I'm shutting these doors to the other world. "Come back later when I have time to deal with you."

p.6 The muse whispers to you when she chooses, and you can't tell her to come back later, because you quickly learn in this business that she might not come back at all. I fear you more than any specter I have seen. I understand what Brooks means when he says that writing is breathing. It's like there's not enough air if I don't have both doors to both worlds open at the same time. It's November now, it's the time that I allow myself to write. And yet last year I slammed the other door shut because I just couldn't take it anymore. What does that make me if I'm a writer who can't write? What kind of life does that leave me if I can't breathe  in it?




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While I Wait

5/3/2014

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Another month, another Curious Endeavourances hangout. While I wait for my event to start, I thought I'd go ahead and update things. The Curious Endeavouances page is now current, and while I'm not entirely happy with the set up of the main page of my site, I did want to make room for Doctor Ood. There are currently no episodes up yet. After Comic Expo, Matt got excited about the series all over again, and so did I, but since we've been talking about this for about 3 years now and have very little to show for it, Matt came up with an idea that will help keep him motivated: commission. Yes, Matt of @TheMattCave, the one I'm married to, has asked for me to pay for his illustrations. I agreed and negotiated an amount. I'm up for anything as long as this webseries gets off of the ground. 

...No, there isn't a single panel done... or started... and I've sent him 6 episodes. The same six that I wrote way back when we first came up with the idea. I'll keep you posted if anything turns up.

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The End is Nigh...

9/28/2013

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...well maybe not THE end, but my goal setting for my 2013 resolutions are now running out of months in which to be completed in. Of course, the goals I'm referring to are my writing goals - my education, career, and personal goals are doing quite well so that's a plus, and really, a pretty awesome win if you think about it. Before NaNoWriMo 2013, my intention was to having finished my first full draft of Knightsbridge, and have revised Parish to see if Freakhouse really did have a releasable sequel or not. Neither of these things have taken place, and I have only one month left before November! 

On the plus side, I think I know what my NaNo will be for this year. I've been toying with some ideas but I'm going to take one off of my shelf of ideas, wipe the dust off of it, and see if it has any of the potential I thought it did several years ago when it first came to me. I'm pretty much going for it because I know all of my key milestones so that's a plus. Freakhouse was the first project I started without having a solid ending in mind, and while it was an interesting experience exploring Dotan's world (and having him give me the silent treatment in all of his frustration), I'm still hesitant to NaNo by the seat of my pants. On the other hand, the thing that I swore I would never do again - write in first person - might be on the table again for this year. That is, if I still feel like this is the novel to write by the time I hit the midnight countdown. And who knows, I might try to do another CampNaNoWriMo this year (and cross my fingers that it goes over better than the last one). 

...and for something completely different: I just realized that as we reach the end of 2013, Curious Endeavourances will be officially one year old in the new year! We'll have read 12 full novels (at least, because I think we're going to be NaNo focused this November, yet we had a month with 2 novels so really it all evens out), and will hopefully keep going for a second season for another 12! Our little membership on GoodReads has grown, and the feedback we've received (for the majority of our posts) has been very positive and empowering. If we don't do it as a video special at the end of the year, I will personally write a "Best Of Curious Endeavourances" post or even do my own video because I believe that we've had some really great moments and some really great viewer interaction. 

And don't forget that we actually have another live hangout scheduled for tonight. The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman. I posted my reviews all over the place, on this blog, on the Curious blog, and GoodReads. If you've read it, join the discussion through twitter, youtube, or the GoodReads group page. If you haven't, give it a watch anyways (if you don't mind the spoilers) and then give the novel a read. I highly recommend it, personally, and I think from talking to the others that they do too. 

After this session, it's back to one of my picks - don't worry, this time it's a good one! Lexicon was a FirstReads win for me, I went in without very high expectations and really enjoyed the fast-paced action and clever development. Sex, foul language, and a secret school where it isn't magic, it's the pure power of linguistic knowledge - a great combination for English majors like us Curious girls! So it is my first non-blind pick, but I will go back to blind picks for the most part afterwards - I just really needed someone else to read this book because I had so much I wanted to talk about after reading it; hopefully I feel as strongly about it on my second read; or maybe the suspense will be lost; who knows? 

...that was a frightening amount of semi-colons all in a row...
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A Little Inspiration from Neil Gaiman

9/21/2013

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Thank goodness for good books! This month's Curious Endeavourance is like a breath of fresh air! While it wasn't a novel that I kept thinking "This is brilliant" as I read each word, the moment I had reached the final period I felt like my whole being had just been rebooted. I was in a strange emotional state, wanting to cry because it beautiful, because it was sad, and because it was over, and yet overcome with a sense of joy, a sense of "I can take this world on!", a sense of purpose, and as I discovered throughout the rest of my day, inspiration. Apparently this was the book I needed to read at this very point in time.  Despite my clear emotional connection (See? That which provokes emotion = art!), I had a long debate with myself (and others) as to whether or not I was going to give it 4 or 5 stars. You see, I reserve my 5 stars for books that I can't wait to read again, and I didn't, and still do not yet, feel the necessity to read this again very soon. Yet, thinking on other books that I've enjoyed and given 4's to, I know that The Ocean at the End of the Lane has stuck to me stronger than that. Like the book burrowed its own little worm through my finger-tips and into my heart as I flipped the pages. I finally concluded that it deserved the 5 stars, because even though I don't particularly feel the need to jump right back into its pages, I feel comfort in knowing that it will be there on my bookshelf, just in case I'm ever in need of it again one day, like my own personal shelf-dwelling Hempstocks that I can come crying to when the world stops making sense. This book I recommend, especially on bad day when the evils of your world seem as real to you as fleas, hunger birds, and parents you couldn't possibly trust again... It's not a happy ending, but at least you know that it's okay to not feel grown-up on the inside, at least for today.

My Review on GoodReads

The Ocean at the End of the LaneThe Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is a beautiful poetic narrative that captures the world of a seven-year-old boy living in a big world, even though his house is in a small community filled with farm land and meadows, experiencing the harsh reality of "it's not fair" from having a sister, the cruel pang of a father's shouting that stings worse than beatings, and the safe house of the Old Grandmother who always knows how to make things better even when it seems like the world could never be a happy place again. The child's acceptance of a magical realm where good is ever-powerful, and where evil beings hit right at the core of you, ripping you from your family, digging into your heart, and tears at you with that inescapable sensation that "Yes, it is all your fault!", and yet, how the magic and the horrors of childhood get hazy, how they fade and you re-understand things from the adult world as you grow-up, not that it makes your adult memories any more true.

It is an inspiring tale, and the wonderful thing about Neil Gaiman is that when he is the most immersed in the realm of fantasy, he is at the heart of it, bringing to his audience that which is most real, not just frightening magical monsters and garden-grown cats, but what it means to be faced with the ups and downs of our journey through life. There were a number of wonderful moments, but if there is one thought that I know I will carry with me until the end of my days, it is this: There are no real grown-ups, not on the inside. Amazing how this little novel-that-was-not-supposed-to-be about a seven-year-old boy in rural England who faces monsters from another world has made my world that much clearer to me. Thank you, Mr. Gaiman. This was indeed a happy accident!

View all my reviews
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Update on Current Events

9/20/2013

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While the actions taken by the book club do not reflect my personal opinions or decisions I would have made, I respect the decisions made by my companions and support their actions for the sake of their health, safety, and peace of mind. I have asked to be omitted from any further address of the issue, and I have every intention of continuing my contribution to Curious Endeavourances with the same honesty of my personal reading experiences with every text we encounter, as I would appreciate any reader of my own work to do as well. 
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Unsatisfied Customer

9/18/2013

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Have I dropped off the face of the Earth? Pretty much. No puppy in this house because life just got crazy again. So much so that I haven't even touched Knightsbridge and I'm barely keeping up with book club.

But I needed to take a couple of minutes just to vent about book club. We admittedly had a tough session last time, and unfortunately we got personally striking hate mail out of it as well as pointedly low ratings for each of our works. As a writer, I understand that anything negative said about a work is heartbreaking and hard to not take personally, but as a paying customer purchasing a product, I believe that I have the right to warn other potential customers about my personal experience with the product. Some people are loyal to their brands and one person's poor experience won't (nor should) have any impact on those people. On the other hand, if you are selling a product to any paying member of the general public, there is an expectation that the customer will be satisfied with the product, and when he/she is not, what use is there in the company harassing the customer? 
Did you find the product satisfactory? "No." 
What were your concerns with the product? "*insert lengthy list here.*
What could company do to remedy these concerns or make your experience more pleasant? "*insert lengthy list here*". 
Would you recommend this product/company? "Not this product, but I'm willing to see how the other models fair before saying "no" entirely"

****insert angry messages targeting our organization, our medium of communication, our personal blogs, our education, and randomly assigning 1 star ratings to our novels without commentary or justification**** 

"On second thought, I'd like to change my answer... I understand feeling upset about our point-by-point assessments, which we interpreted as justifying our rating of the product since knowing "why" is so much more helpful than just a number, but claiming us to be unprofessional for a free medium that, by company's own words, does not receive much interaction from the general public, then what exactly is the threat, especially when you have self-proclaimed hundreds of fans and followers?"

Apparently author attacks are a very common thing in online book clubs and marketing sites. Authors tag-team their friends into slandering anything that isn't flattering. And I do understand that reviewers can be cruel. In the author blogs and forums I have been reading lately, many authors deal with the cruelty of low reviewers who tag-team against an author with clearly no evidence of having read the work. This is my issue. Clearly we read the work since we discussed it point-by-point. Unjustified? Unjustified because we had too many specific issues with it? Or unjustified since it was aired as a public video? I said the same basic details in my written review which did not get reported or flagged, and yet on the video where we have the freedom to pull out exact pages and references to where we took issue, this was crossing the line. 


This is an unprofessional medium for book reviews! 
How is a spoken-word review less becoming than a written one? If anything, more people will read the blurb on the actual book site than random people stumbling onto the video, plus, yes, the videos are 2 hours long, not because we want to slam down books, but because we believe that any book chosen for book club, for better or worse, deserves the same care and attention to detail as any other, thus every book club session is 2 hours on average. A little long? Sure. So now we've even lessened the audience-ship since who is going to invest in a 2 hour long vlog? And as for the video medium being "high-school", tell that to the actual professionals who mass thousands of followers for doing the exact same thing we do. Just type in "book review" and you will get scores upon scores of individuals and groups doing the same thing. 

Why air it if you're only going to embarrass and degrade authors?
I prefer to pick my monthly reads blind, which means that I take a recommendation from someone else, or find a cover that looks interesting to me, and tell the book club that this is my pick without having ever read it before. I look forward to finding hidden treasures and exploring uncharted territory. Unfortunately, in doing this you don't always find those diamonds in the rough... sometimes it's just the rough. But we've set out to read the book, our viewers and followers (who don't always leave public comments but who let us know when they've enjoyed our insight/entertainment) deserve to see how it plays out. We don't always have the same opinion on the books - a couple months ago, we had completely opposing views to the books - so we go though it for the first time, all together, on the live feed. We won't love every book, we won't even like every book, and no selling author should hold that expectation. Add on top of that a book filled with typos and grammatical errors with narrative inconsistency, we won't love it, and if you have hundreds of people who can get over that in a book and still love it, great, but if I pay for your book, I don't care how established you are, I'm holding you to the same standard that I would any other author, and if I don't feel like that standard has been met, is it really me who is embarrassing you? You might get 1000 "likes" for every one of me, but if you are in the business to sell, those unsatisfied mes are going to crop up. You'll have to face it one day. At least you got our money out it. It wasn't spontaneous slandering, it was explaining exactly what it is I got for my money.

On a more positive note, I thought I would share one of the articles that I stumbled upon. As both a writer and a reviewer, I found it encouraging to know that this is a common problem. http://www.becomeasuccessfulauthor.com/2012/01/attack-of-the-author-bad-review-reaction/ It was well written with helpful commentary that by other book club reviewers that made our issue seem less personal. It's a product. Yes, you poured your heart into it, but someone also once poured their heart into that crap can-opener you hate or the clothes you only use for painting in. As a famous author once expressed, you can linger on the negative people, or you can focus on your supporters. Was I in the negative category? Without a doubt and I have no regrets about that; I feel strongly about my opinions. But why does your world have to stop because of it? Shouldn't your world be bigger than that? Shouldn't you be, too?

ETA:
The novel reviews have since been taken off of my book and my fellow book clubbers. I was willing to accept the judgement but am thankful that you have since changed your mind about your retaliation. Rest assured, we will not be using your work again in the future. Best of luck to you and your supporters. 


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Bad Reviews

8/18/2013

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I'm not a professional editor. I'm an avid reader who knows what she likes and what's not to her taste. I'm also a writer. As a writer I know that the aim is not to try to please everyone and therefore someone is bound to not be a fan. Since we begun Curious Endeavourances back in January of this year, I've read books that I haven't fully cared for, but there has been enjoyment in the process, in determining what it is that doesn't suit my taste, what structures or narrative styles put me off. As a teacher, I'm also aware that there are numerous kinds of readers, and trying to get 30 students to read and enjoy the same thing is just as hopeless as trying to get 30 million readers to read and enjoy the same thing. Books I wouldn't care for are loved and coveted by the right reader, and it warms my heart to anyone find joy in reading. 

But what happens when all of your heart-on-your-sleeve open-mindedness seems all used up? When you just can't find a nice way of saying "Better luck next time!" It's one thing when it's a rough work. A student essay, for example, you know is a work-in-progress, you know that they will (or at least should) improve with every attempt. Even fictional works in the draft stage always has that glimmer of hope that surrounds it that if they just fixed their typos, just thought a little more as to what's motivating this character to proceed, or adjusted the level of description, that the out-come could one day be a good book. It doesn't have to aspire to be a masterpiece; so long as it's true to the story, a reader-to-be is out there waiting to be united with the book that will change their life forever. Of course, this isn't the reaction that all writers get. We may all dream of it, but most of us will get a pretty even patterning of yay's and nay's. 

I can even appreciate a book that I hate, or a something I've written provoking hatred in someone else. In my opinion, the purpose of art is to bring out an emotional response from us. Even if it's negative, it's a response, the work has served its purpose and all is well in the world. What scares me most is the work that is received without reaction. The work that earns a few blinks of the eye, a shrug and a sigh, and then is forgotten about as if it had never been at all. I fear writing an empty work far more than I fear writing a bad one, as I'm sure the majority of writers do as well. So when I come across an empty work, my emotion doesn't pour from the reaction of the piece, but more so in empathy of the receipt of my numbness. 

Unlike the work-in-progress, the kind that can be revised and released, that aura of hope around it, ready to make it the "right" book for the "right" reader, the published work has a not-so-invisible sign draped over it that says, "I'm ready world! Take me or leave me!" And when my reaction to this book is, "No, you're not ready yet" and yet here I am faced with the fact that someone must have believed that it was, and here is it, ready to be taken or ...le..leaven? left? there must be a better way to conjugate that saying... I'm afraid that I'm left with a feeling that I've come too late. Not that I believe published authors could be saved from mistakes by my counsel, or even that they'd listen to it; nevertheless, I feel horrible, not as a reader because I purchased the book with the intention of enjoying it, that's my purpose as a reader, and when I do not feel fulfilled, like any other customer, it is in my right to express so, yet, to keep this very awkward run-on sentence going, as a writer, it hits me right in the feels. Again, a writer will always have to face a negative review, but the true pain comes from the unfeeling review. So what do I do? As a writer, I also know that silence from a reader is just as painful. I would rather hear that my readers hated my work than for it to just disappear into the ether. But is an unfeeling review much better? Knowing that once this review has reached its final period, the last full-stop, that the work the reader has read and reviewed will disappear into the ether. This book I have read will do just that. I will think on it only long enough to endure the Curious Endeavourances hangout and then those few fragments that I struggled to keep alive will be dissolved. 

How do I know it will be truly dissolved and not just a belief that I won't think about it again, much like I claimed Emily Schultz's Heaven is Small would be like only to discover that I can't get Gordon Small out of my head or stop re-playing the horrible purgatory that is Heaven? Because I was numb to each turning page, much like when you glaze over a textbook that you have to read but an hour later you have no idea what was even on those 3 chapters you forced yourself to get through. How I can hold onto something later that I couldn't even taste. Not unhappy. Not even underwhelmed. Just numb. Just unfeeling. Now how do you say that to an author who might have poured their soul into this work? And even more frightening, how do I as an author pull myself through it when someone says the same to me?
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Reluctant Fundamentalist

6/28/2013

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So I'm a bit behind...
Last week Curious Endeavourances met once again to discuss another monthly read. 
My GoodReads review:
The Reluctant Fundamentalist is a eloquently delivered monologue-style narrative that is framed as a single-sided conversation between a Pakistani man named Changez and an unnamed American man he meets in Anarkali. The book is a smooth quick read yet feels more and more intimate with every page, as if the reader is eavesdropping on a personal conversation, and I don't mean purely in regards to the framing of the narration since it felt to me that the pauses to address the nameless American shattered the illusion of this world rather than invite me in. The direct addressing and restating of what the American man supposedly says at times feels too forced, not only in its unnaturally eloquent delivery which rarely occurs in conversation, especially a prolonged conversation that is supposed to pass over several hours; but upon accepting that, it also feels too convenient, knowing that there is a pattern to beginning and ending a chapter with acknowledging the framed conversation and how the topic must then jump back to the lengthy life-story being delivered by Changez. At the same time, once the narrator is deep within the storytelling, I am completely enthralled as an audience. It is a story of identity, of finding one's self, of the twists, turns, questions and revelations of establishing personal values as life changes and grows, leading you to decide who you are and who you want to be. 

I read this novel as a bookclub selection, and while I did not dislike it, I do not feel it has become a part of me as other books do. It feels like a first year university assigned reading, one that is supposed to shock you and provoke discussion since it's the first time you've ever been asked to have your own opinion on something and are out of practice, and given that the back of the book is riddled with discussion topics, I imagine that that is what it was intended for. But I never felt shocked by the narration. Perhaps it's because I'm not American and thus the impact of revealing mixed feelings about American identity is hardly surprising to me. A touchy subject like 9/11 I am readily willing accept alternative perspectives on and may even have a few of my own. It's not an anti-American book by any means, but it definitely examines the metaphorical pedestal that all major super-powers have occupied at one time or another and how it effects those on the outside of it, whether that be in politics, business, academia, or even love. 
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Frivolus Cake - A Poetic Remix of CuriousEndeavourances' Titus Groan

6/10/2013

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Picture
The Poetic Remix of – Curious Endeavourances: Titus Groan

I've been to the press that their recorded mustang interior aronson a

cloud

Where we meet everything

Anything we don't actually caravans are where

hammered act

And keeping Perry and had felt the pinch from the

couple Ackerman tactics

First in an apple actually knew a little bit carrieon may next club

meeting

Standing

Date

I'm actually i'm at competitive na blair

and agnostic e at the book redid saying in a book called lick it

fredericks, off that I know we are all, and let nature is a from lake that's in

university, university of british columbia

Yeah that works and that we are no longer in the same boat case,

and I have now a new Albert in the email account Gary Hankins, too

and went back down, everything died confidant, stereotype, August Alberta

anti-western scroll and the fishermen has brought about by fishermen's fare

really anything that's leaking actions,

attic

uh... and then and the undecideds

 and it cat fight started

I have a very comfortable life

and they're going to happen, to have you, got to raise an aspiring author at the

Hilton Hotel, wait a little bit,

Equity progress,

Shailendra yet

And, and easily just graduated from visit

there's going to be elected degree in English literature, so right now actually

that's going to be pleasing,

Look at the time!

and is added but rather as the rest of the Zambia

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