To set the scene – because there’s no such thing as too much exposition, of course – I entered my Friday night writing session with just a shade over 40,000 words’ worth of novel-in-progress.  It felt like just yesterday that I had reached the 10K mark and thought to myself that I could actually do this, so to suddenly be “only” 10,000 words away from the finish line provided me with a massive & sustained adrenaline kick.  It also helped that I had an entire weekend ahead of me – seriously prime writing time for the frantic novelist.  I had been happy to coast along at a rate of 2,500-ish words a day or so but kicked it up a fairly serious notch.  I was determined to reach 50,000 words by the end of Sunday, not out of any necessity but largely just to prove to myself that I could.

On Saturday, I wrote 4,144 words.  This came shy of the storied “5K Day” and certainly didn’t hold a candle to my 10K Day from NaNoWriMo 2006 (but that is an anecdote for another time), but it was my best writing day of the month so far.  This took me to almost 47,000 words, putting me in good striking distance of my goal.

And, yesterday, I waited until after my afternoon plans and dinner had elapsed before sitting down at my laptop.  I pulled out all the stops to keep my writing muse engaged and inspired: I wrote by candlelight, hosted a very loud one-person karaoke to this positively bitchin' remix of Ellie Goulding's "This Love (Will Be Your Downfall)," and listened to Beethoven’s Ninth.  Twice.  You know the one:

♪ Ludwig van Beethoven – Symphony No. 9 in D minor, Op. 125 (“Choral”): Presto - Allegro ma non troppo ODE TO JOY, WOT WOT

A little bit past midnight on Monday, while the above was playing, I happened to take note of my word count.

I kind of felt like this.

(And this, just because I never get tired of it.  Suck it, Novak.)

(Or if Roger Federer isn’t your thing…)

I updated my spreadsheet of doom and provided some totally gratuitous commentary.

I put on some Phoenix and danced in my chair.  Because I’m cool like that, you know?

So, yes!  Although I cannot verify my word count on the NaNoWriMo website until the 25th, I have unofficially triumphed in this most absurd and unhinged of literary challenges.  Of course, the story – both figurative and literal – isn’t over yet.  I have another nine days to shoot for an even higher target (70,000 or 75,000?  I haven’t decided yet) and, in any case, have an incomplete manuscript on my hands.  I will write until it is done and am fairly confident that I can tie up the plot before the end of November. 

At least I hope I can, because I really miss sleeping…

(And, now, back to my blogging hiatus.  Which I realise I haven’t been keeping very well, but I can’t keep all of my promises, can I?)

Taking a break from writing about, um, whatever it is I’m writing about for NaNoWriMo to recap a concert I attended before it becomes even more embarrassingly out of date…

Because I don’t go to concerts too regularly, I try to make each one of them count.  The four artists I’ve seen live so far (Imogen Heap, Patrick Wolf, Ingrid Michaelson, and Ellie Goulding), I had already adored them for quite some time, so I went into those gigs being already more or less familiar with their songs.  This was not the case with Ra Ra Riot, an indie pop outfit similar in sound to Vampire Weekend but with less irony and pretentiousness.  They were a group that I enjoyed including in my music rotation every now and then but not one that inspired fanatic fangirl-ish behaviour.  But I’m still very glad that I decided to catch them at the 9:30 Club for reasons detailed below.

Growing up as I did in the heyday of the Backstreet Boys/N’SYNC/Britney Spears/Like, Whatever Era, I was long under the impression that all concerts were large-scale affairs in which you paid $70 a head to sit in the nosebleed section of a basketball stadium, peer at the blurry figures on the stage below, and assume that among them was the pop god(dess) that one idolised from afar.  I still remember being sixteen years old and shocked – shocked, I say! – when I showed up at the Theatre of Living Arts in Philly to see Imogen Heap and discovered that not all music venues were Coliseum-esque edifices.  Six years later, and the novelty of that still hasn’t completely worn off.

I don’t believe that Ra Ra Riot managed to sell out the 9:30 Club for their gig, and this, combined with my insistence on arriving to these things freakishly early, meant that I was able stake out a place directly in front of the stage.  Purely on principle alone, I thought that this was a really cool experience, and it also meant that I got to see things of which I normally don’t have a good view, such as the set list –

– the occasional toy piano lost among a tangle of cords and wires –

– and, of greatest interest to me, the curious set of knobs & pedals that the guitarist uses to distort, amplify, or otherwise alter the sound of his instrument.  As you can see, I was literally standing next to this for the entire evening.

Before Ra Ra Riot took the stage, we were treated two not one but two opening acts.  First up were Yellow Ostrich, whose frontman Alex Schaaf uses vocal loops to give his band’s music a very sunny feel to it. 

Their debut album, The Mistress, is definitely worth checking out.  For now, allow me to offer a song for your listening pleasure –

♪ Yellow Ostrich – WHALE

— and the obligatory set list:

1. Elephant King
2. Hold On
3. Campaign
4. Marathon Runner
5. WHALE
6. The Shakedown
7. Mary

Following Yellow Ostrich were a five-man act called Delicate Steve.  They’re the only band I’ve seen to date who insisted on setting up their own lighting equipment.  The stage was completely dark except for two lights placed on either side of it, which were turned on/modified with various colour filters as needed.  (If anybody was at all curious, they were also responsible for the toy piano mentioned earlier in this post.)  They apparently specialise in fairly loopy-sounding, incredibly frenetic instrumental pieces – not exactly my cup of tea, I think, but good in small doses.

As for Ra Ra Riot, they were, quite simply, a band with great stage presence and energy. Their records can come off as a touch cerebral and distant, so it was great to witness the sheer passion that went into their music making.  They were the most guitar-heavy act I’d seen live, the openers that had just proceeded them notwithstanding.  I’ve seen vocalists tango with their microphone stands all the time, but I got a serious kick out watching the guitarist and bassist rather lose themselves in their performances too.

I must, of course, also comment on the fact that Ra Ra Riot’s instrumental line-up features both a cello and a violin.   Their presence was easily what drew me to the band in the first place, and, together, they give the music just right dash of sentimentality and warmth.  The cello is also used to great effect to embellish the bass line (see: the track below).

♪ Ra Ra Riot – Ghost Under Rocks

Ra Ra Riot have released a bunch of EPs and two full-length albums, The Rhumb Line and The Orchard.  I have much love for the former, while the latter meanders a bit too much for me to find it as compelling.  “Ghost Under Rocks” is a favourite of mine, but, lately, I’ve been listening to “Can You Tell” on repeat quite a bit.  “Dying Is Fine” probably takes the cake, though, for its sweetly sad instrumental bridge and the e.e. cummings-inspired chorus (“Oh baby, you know that dying is fine, but maybe / I wouldn’t like death if death were good / not even if death were good”). 

♪ Ra Ra Riot – Can You Tell

♪ Ra Ra Riot – Dying Is Fine

Set list:

1. Too Too Too Fast
2. Shadowcasting
3. Too Dramatic
4. Oh, La
5. Do You Remember
6. Each Year
7. You And I Know
8. Can You Tell
9. Foolish
10. Ghost
11. Kansai
12. St. Peter’s Day
13. Run My Mouth
14. Boy
15. Winter ‘05 (Encore)
16. Valerie (Cover) (Encore)
17. Dying Is Fine (Encore)

On a final, shallow note, I never understood the whole “girls being attracted to men who happen to know how to strum a few I-IV-V chords on a really much too ubiquitous string instrument” phenomenon, but, after staring at Ra Ra Riot’s guitarist Milo Bonacci for the better part of the evening, I think I get it now.

There was a time – not too long ago, in fact – when I barely knew how to use the “SUM” function in Excel (hint to younger self: it adds stuff), but no longer.  Behold:

I also used spreadsheet back in 2006 to keep track of my NaNoWriMo progress, but it was little more than a glorified tally.  This time around, I have outfitted an Excel file with plenty of basic arithmetic formulas, conditional operators, summary statistics, and a bar chart with trendline.  Can you believe that I’m on track to hit 65,000 words?  Yeah, neither can I.

And, of course, there are columns with much useful information: the number of words written each day, the total number of words written to date, the number of words I need to be writing in order to hit the 50,000-word target, and my net operating balance of words, as it were.

So, in sum, novel writing is going well.  And I need a life.  Not that the two are at all related or anything.

Some time ago, I found myself with a sudden craving for Jaffa cakes, which, along with salt & vinegar crisps and more cups of tea than I care to count, were a life-sustaining potable for me during Oxford essay crises.  What are Jaffa cakes, you may be asking?  To this, I answer, “Why, they are only the most divine kind of biscuit to ever be introduced to the digestive system of Homo sapiens.”  The Wikipedia article on Jaffa cakes is rather hilariously serious and manages to leave out the best part about them: when dipped in tea, the chocolate gets deliciously melty, the cake softens just the right amount, and the only way I can properly describe the orange stuff in the middle is “OM NOM NOM.”

The next day, I went to my local Giant to see if they, by any chance, stocked them in their international foods aisle.  Although I sadly could not find the proper McVities brand of Jaffa cakes, I did stumble across a kind of biscuit called Pim’s (heh) whose box promised “tangy orange flavored [sic] filling, soft sweet biscuit and smooth European chocolaty topping.”  Apparently the biscuits are of Belgian provenance, which I am sure would make Middle England cringe, but what is a Yank to do?  I took a box home with me anyway.

They look a lot like the Jaffa cakes I had in England, and, most importantly, they passed the Tea Dipping Test.  Perhaps this means I have been away from the UK for too long, but these imitation biscuits tasted just as good as I remember the originals being.  Yum.

Pim’s will therefore suffice while I continue my search for proper Jaffa cakes.  If anyone has any tips on how they may be obtained short of (1) ordering them from England or (2) going to the other side of the pond to just buy a suitcase’s worth, they would be most appreciated!

This Month in Blogging

This month, I shared a mix inspired by Garden State, expounded upon my love for both Beatrix Potter and Franz Liszt, did a bit of cultural branching out, committed myself to doing NaNoWriMo, mulled over the death of Muammar el-Qaddafi & other related matters, attended my first Georgetown homecoming as an alumna, and played interior decorator.

Mind

October continued to be quite a busy month for me at work, and I am glad to have gotten through it without too many late nights.  I finally splurged on a space heater for my office, so my workday, from a purely homeostatic perspective, has undergone a dramatic improvement.

My attempts at financial prudence rather failed this month, but it turns out that buying furnishings and organisational things for one’s flat is expensive!  And I’m sure a trip to the outlets in Williamsburg, VA did not help.  My budget is hoping for a less taxing (hah) November, but there’s a holiday season somewhere in the near future, right?

Body

I more or less continued last month’s progress vis-à-vis trips to the gym.  I also made good on my promise to start practising yoga.  It was almost miserably debilitating at first: I could barely walk after my first beginner’s class, as it was not at all relaxing like the classes I had done at Oxford!  Post-yoga soreness has definitely lessened over the course of the month, which I take to be a sign that I am getting better at this whole fitness thing.

Heart

Last month, I reiterated my long-standing (indeed, lifelong) pledge to not lapse into misanthropy so much.  This month was, in fact, a very good one for socialising: seeing my friend Amanda twice, hosting Katherine and Janice at my place during homecoming, homecoming in general, guest staffing at NCSC, going to concerts, and general catching up with distant friends.  It was altogether very lovely!

Soul

There was a lot of  media consumption this month in the form of TV (Downton Abbey, Sherlock, and, most recently, The Big Bang Theory) and music (ballet at the Kennedy Center and, on less highbrow note, Ra Ra Riot at the 9:30 club – recap of the latter is still forthcoming!).  Much of the month, though, was devoted to daydreaming about and planning for NaNoWriMo.

And, speaking of which:

Given that I will be spending this month trying to churn out at least 1,667 words daily, I expect I won’t have too much time for blogging in this space (though I will be running a few posts – unless, of course, I just give up on the silly novel project altogether).  It has been so long since I have written anything other than an academic assignment, e-mail, or blog post that I fear I have forgotten how to write creatively, but I do look forward to the challenge.  As a certain fictional theoretical physicist once said:

(And, yes, I am bothered by the absence of a comma in that declaration.  I’m sure Sheldon would be too.)