World Book Night 2012!

World Book Night 2012 was yesterday!

If you haven't heard of it, WBN is a way of spreading the joy of reading, and especially of encouraging people who don't read much (or at all) to pick up a book and experience the particular joy that comes with immersing yourself in a story.

How it works

Here in the UK, twenty-five titles are chosen by a panel and printed in special World Book Night editions—one million of them in total. By February, 20,000 World Book Night "givers" are chosen by application, and assigned either their first, second, or third choice book. In mid-April, each giver collects his or her 24 books from a designated collection point (usually a library or book shop). Just before collection time, each giver is sent a list of unique identification numbers to write on the bookplate at the front of each book, along with the name of the giver and the location where they picked up the book—this allows readers to track a book's journey via bookcrossing.com as it passes from reader to reader. At noon on April 23rd (a date chosen for its literary significance—it is Shakespeare's birthday and also his deathday), givers begin their giveaway. This can be out on the street, in schools, in parks—anywhere the giver thinks they can reach the most non-readers. The books are absolutely free, no strings attached, though readers are urged to pass the books on when they finish them.

The remaining 620,000 copies that aren't distributed to givers are given directly to prisons, hospitals, homeless shelters, and similar places where there are a lot of hard-to-reach potential readers.

Isn't that an awesome idea?

Photo from worldbooknight.org

My experience

Last Thursday I printed out my World Book Night email and took it to my collection point—a Waterstone's bookstore near the college where I work. As I was on evening shift that night, I arrived (with aching arms—the box was heavy) at the library and eagerly filled in the bookplate in each of my 24 copies of The Time Traveler's Wife as I sat at the desk. 

I'm having technical issues uploading my photos of the books, but this is what my title looked like (photo from http://www.nwhc.ac.uk/library/blog/2012/04/world-book-night/)

On Friday, my fellow library assistants and I put up WBN posters, signs, and information all around the library, including a big display board with blurbs of all the titles we were to give away (we had eight givers at the college who participated in our event).

Finally, Monday arrived! A lady from the college's events team came down to the library with an intern, and they set up a big table in front of our display for all of the books. Nearby, they laid out several beanbag chairs to allow for comfortable reading. As 12pm approached, they organized the books in neat rows on the table. Finally, noon struck and World Book Night began!

My turn at the table lasted about an hour, during which time students trickled past in ones and twos, leafing through our packets of novel synopses, asking questions, and talking about books. The Time Traveler's Wife went pretty quickly, as did Stephen King's Misery and Paul Coelho's The Alchemist. Also popular were I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith and How I Live Now by Meg Rosoff.

After I'd been at the table for half an hour, the fire alarm went off, prompting the evacuation of the entire building, after which we stood down the road for 30 minutes while the fire brigade cleared the college. Having been too tired/lazy to iron after returning from a weekend in Belfast, I was wearing my go-to lazy outfit: a thin polyester dress that requires no ironing but probably shouldn't be worn in five degree weather. It was cold.

Aside from this minor setback, my whole experience of being a World Book Night giver was a positive one. We were able to reach at least a couple of kids who I know aren't normally readers, but who seemed happy enough to give a free book a try. I got to spend a day talking about books, which is one of my favorite things to do after reading them, and now I get to look forward to tracking the books and seeing where in the world they end up.

For more information on World Book Night, including how to be a giver next year, visit:

www.worldbooknight.org for the UK

or

www.us.worldbooknight.org for the USA

If you were lucky enough to receive a World Book Night book, or were giving them away yesterday, please tell me about it in the comments!

Breaking the routine

There is a lot to be said for having a daily routine—especially for people who write. Finding (or making) a good time to write is essential, and so is coming up with a routine that allows you to meet all of your responsibilities.

But sometimes you need a refresher; sometimes a break in routine can be beneficial both creatively and emotionally. Shakespeare examined this idea a lot, particularly in his comedies—a group of characters steps away from their everyday roles and responsibilities and spends a few days in the woods or in the country, ignoring society and its rules as they experiment with different ways of living. Shakespeare scholars call this phenomenon "festival time," which almost always occurs in a "green world"—usually somewhere in nature. For me, modern day traveling is very much like this. It is stepping away from your job, your Twitter account, your comfort zone and even—yes—your art, all in order to experience something that is "other."

I went to Wales and Liverpool with family recently, followed by a two-day sojourn to Bruges, Belgium with my aunt who was visiting from California. But a vacation need not involve traveling to another country or state, or even leaving the town where you live. A vacation can be a state of mind in which you decide to go places you normally wouldn't, try foods you aren't used to, get to know people whose lives are different from your own.

That being said, traveling, if you are able to do it, certainly can be a great way to experience new things. And the memories your travels create not only stay with you forever, but can help to feed your imagination and, in turn, your art.

A short anecdote: I don't normally like scones and wouldn't ever choose to eat them, but at a little cafe near the bottom of Mount Snowdon, on a very cold day, served with jam and clotted cream, accompanied by rich hot chocolate, and eaten beside a roaring fire and with the owner's ancient dog padding about, looking hopeful, scones became a perfect twenty minutes. The owner of the cafe, as a bonus, was a character with a demeanor and manner of speaking that I could never invent—not in a million years.

My aunt, husband, and in-laws enjoying scones with tea and hot chocolate.

I don't usually get the opportunity to climb trees, or ride in giant, terrifying Ferris wheels, or climb 366 steps to the top of a bell tower, or spend half a day in an art gallery and the other half in a 13th century castle—which is why such things have such power to capture my imagination. There are so many ways of life you can see and imagine when you break your routine—this vacation alone had me imagining the prehistoric people who built Stonehenge, the Welsh quarry workers who have mined slate in Snowdonia over the centuries, King Edward I of England, the Beatles, the nuns of the monastery in Bruges, and the list goes on.

Horse-drawn carriage in Bruges. So Brontë-esque.

Aside from all that, traveling takes you away from your physical comfort zone, completely removing you from your everyday life—in short it forces you to notice the world around you more than you normally would. Instead of taking your surroundings for granted, you actually look at them, and in turn think about the things around you. You are engaging rather than just gliding through.

When in Wales, climb trees.

I return from vacations tired, but with hundreds of little seedling ideas stored away—things I can use in my WIP and things I may want to turn into future WIPs. And that makes my imagination very, very happy.

Back from holiday!

Wow, what a crazy couple of weeks it's been. A few highlights:

Abbey Road, London.

Stonehenge, Wiltshire.

Caernarfon Castle (1280), Snowdonia, North Wales

My aunt and me on the (actually very terrifying) Wheel of Liverpool

Eleanor Rigby, Stanley Street, Liverpool.

The belfry of Bruges, Belgium. Yes, I had fries with mayo. And yes, I had Belgian chocolates. Nom.

How has everyone else's Easter holidays/spring break been? Did I miss anything major while I was away? Tell me in the comments!

Thoughts about traveling and creativity coming at ya...soon :)

Dispatches from Mount Snowdon

Hi! This is a scheduled post, as I'm still on vacation. If all is going according to plan, right now I'm high atop Mount Snowdon, the loftiest mountain in Wales. *waves*

Since I haven't been writing, I don't have an update on my WIP today, so I thought I would direct you to one of my new favorite Internet pastimes: John and Hank Green's Crashcourse videos on YouTube. They're fun! And educational! And contain words like "swoodilypooping!"

Have a fun week, DFTBA, and see you next Wednesday!

Secret notes!

I've been meaning to do a post about things I find in books for a while. As a library assistant in a college (UK equivalent of 11th and 12th grade, though my college has some degree students and adult learners too), I've found a few interesting things in books during my day-to-day shelving and sectioning (putting sections in order). You get the usual sticky notes with frantic scribbling: social stratification, dependence v autonomy, misogyny!, and then you get funny things used as bookmarks: a bank statement, a brochure for a sexual health clinic, a collectible card for a character called Mr Pricklepants (I looked that one up; it's from Toy Story).

A few months back, sticking out of a social science book, I found a note informing me of the following:

You will die in seven days! Sorry! :)

Needless to say, this information was incorrect, but it did provide a source of amusement during an otherwise mundane (and annoyingly dusty) task.

On Wednesday I began reading An Abundance of Katherines by John Green. The first thing I saw on opening the book—which has been sitting in my massive TBR stack since Christmas—was this:

Fans of John Green may recognize the acronym: Don't forget to be awesome (as they say in my hometown).

I opened it up, and:

A note from someone else who just happens to really like this author and (and his actually pretty cool online community—see http://nerdfighters.ning.com/). How awesome is that?

It's sort of made me think of doing something similar. I've often thought of leaving notes in places students will find them. Things along the lines of subvert the patriarchy, don't let media control you, you're beautiful the way you are, etc. I thought I could leave them on Post-Its on stall doors in the restrooms, or something similar. But why not leave notes like this in books by authors I love, or in books about topics that are important to me? After all, reading creates communities—communities of people who love Shakespeare, or John Green, or Judy Blume; people who love 20th century art or genetics or the work of Friedrich Nietzsche. So why don't we try to connect a little more over the things we love?

So my question for you today, Dear Readers: have you ever discovered a secret note? Have you ever left one to be found? How did it make you feel? Let me know in the comments!

WIP Wednesday

This week, what was going to be a minor subplot blossomed somewhat out of control into a major multi-chapter event. Meanwhile, I've still got a whole other mini-adventure that character group B has to undertake before the climax of the novel. All of this together means that Dyllan and Abigail is going to be considerably longer than my originally projected 100,000 words. Also, this draft is not going to be finished by my spring break (which started yesterday). I can only hope that I can cut out a lot of stuff in my first round of revisions—which, given the shifting focus of the book, I'm optimistic about. Yup.

This week: a continuation of last week's Daring Rescue, which turned out to be much more complex than I originally thought. 

Still to come: a complicated situation involving a group of changelings, a sojourn from Abernwyth to Earth, and (this being a child-friendly book) heroin addiction.

Random quote:  

“I—I was just going for a walk.” She licked her dry lips. “I was going for a walk and I saw the fire, so I came to see if you needed help putting it out,” she invented.

Ellena chuckled. “No, child. We must burn back the poisonweed before it reaches the circle. Enchanted fire is the only way to kill it.” As if to demonstrate, Ellena waved her tiny hand, directing the fire toward another clump of pale green tendrils dotted with white flowers.

Total word count:  84,003

 *Photo source: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bandera_china.png

WIP Wednesday

I'm still on a first draft writing high with Dyllan and Abigail. Things keep surprising me, but in a good way. This week it's been all about a (somewhat) wicked enchantress, who has been impeding my MCs' progress. It's been a good chance for me to have my young protagonist, Abby, test her skills and bravery ahead of the book's final showdown. These scenes have been relatively easy to write, and they've been helping me discover way more about the magic in my magical world.

This week's word count: 4,101

Total word count: 82,839

Random quote:

...there was a stupendous crack, a gust of acrid smoke, and Lady Charmain strode through the twisted trees, dusting her palms. Away from the hamlet, the elfin smile plastered across her face was more like a leer, and the bones in her arms protruded even farther, casting shadows on her sour-milk skin. She walked like a marionette.

Abby leapt backward. Or at least, she tried to. While her mind commanded her body to move, it merely swayed a little, like a curtain in a breeze. Fathian swayed beside her, a high-pitched whine escaping his lips.

Hope everyone else's WIP is going swimmingly this week.

Happy writing!