Tag Archives: pace

NaNoWriMo – Week 2

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NaNoWirMo is still happening!!

I am writing away as fast as I can (and can means when I find time). I am off the daily pace of 1,667 if you were to segment the process into 30 equal chunks. Who can have an equal chunk!

My current word count -as of this post – is 12,080 . If on pace, I would have just over 15,000. My mom is ahead of me by 8 WORDS!. My brother-in-law Scott has just shot over 20,000! I think his characters have long passages where they read the phone book.

My story is coming along well. Last night’s chapter went really well. I sat down to write and had a very limited idea. I sat and threw something at it and things started to happen. I was really cool when all of a sudden the whole thing looked like I had a master plan. Which I do. I have the plot in the global sense pretty worked out. But the connections to get some of those plot points together are not quite there. I am hoping more chapters like last night!

Now – back to writing (well work, I will novel later!)

Book Review: Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name by Vendela Vida

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Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name by Vendela Vida


My rating: 4 of 5 stars
After reading Jonathan Lethem, I wanted something with equally tight prose so I grabbed Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name from the shelf.

The story of Clarrisa is moving, both emotionally and pace. The story unfolds as Clarrisa’s father passes away only to discover that he was not her biological father. This opens a story identity that is, at times, overly extreme and at others surprisingly barren. Clarrisa follows her desires to find out “who she is” fully and travels to Scandinavia to try and find her biological father. The barren open land of the area known as Lapland is a great backdrop for this sense of “erasing and redrawing” on oneself.

I found Clarrisa at times an emotional wreck and at others having more fortitude than I gave her credit for. I found myself cheering her on, but at the same time finding her unlikable. I think that contrast actually worked and is hard to articulate well. Her travels and want to find her past to find herself is redeeming but ultimately she is no better than those she scorns. I found the end of the book very fast and out of pace with the initial portion. Granted, the story is about the identity crisis and not the before or after, they are there to round things out. But at the end I both felt redeemed and defeated. The author really threw an emotional curve ball.

Vendela Vida

Vendela Vida

I think Vida’s writing was as sparse as the landscape of Lapland. Though in the P.S. segment she mentions going three times to visit the area. Seems a bit extreme on the research end of things. Regardless, I found the text tight and the pace moved like a mystery novel (at times). The emotions run high and I did find myself afterwords putting the book down with a sense of wanting to be done but glad I went on the journey.

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