Sharp Words

It’s that time of year again. The nights are drawing in, and November is getting ever closer. Time to start (continue) writing!

I’m actually pretty well organised for National Novel Writing Month this year. I have a plot and character details all typed up already; I’m well into the Municipal Liaison-related organisation; I even have an idea of where might be good for Belfast meet-ups.

If anyone’s unfamiliar with NaNoWriMo, the idea is to write 50,000 words of a novel during the 30 days of November. It sounds like quite an undertaking, and frankly, it is. But it’s also very good fun, and I love the buzz and the sense of achievement I’ve got each time I’ve done it – this is my 6th year, and I’ve completed my 50K for the past 3 years running.

Maybe this year I might even finish the damn novel…

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A very appropriate Sunday Scribblings topic for me this week, seeing as it’s a mere 16 days since my own wedding. I seem to like doing my Sunday Scribblings as poems, too – I’m not sure why. But it doesn’t really matter. And this isn’t a very good poem, but I don’t especially care about that either.   I just wanted to write something.

Ringing the Changes
“With this ring I thee wed…”

I can’t be the only woman to have a wedding ring
Forced onto her finger;
Not because of any last-minute reluctance,
But because of swollen joints and sweaty palms.

I grit my teeth and keep smiling
- Such a happy bride! -
As the cold metal grinds over my knuckle
And I surreptitiously ease it into place with my thumb.

If only we’d practised the exchange of rings
As keenly as we practised our kisses…

© 2008 C Sharp

[Sunday Scribblings]

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6 out of 10

Kathleen Kent is a descendant of Martha Carrier, one of the women accused of witchcraft during the Salem trials of the 1690s; this is her first novel, and it’s the story of Martha from the point of view of her daughter Sarah, who was aged about eleven at the time of the trials. Sarah and her older brothers were also accused and imprisoned, although eventually freed; their mother however was tried and hanged as a witch.

It’s an interesting story, written well in the first person. I didn’t find it the easiest of reads though, and it took me a while to get into it. Although I don’t normally notice stylistic issues (since I favour content over style when reading fiction), the print on my copy was pretty big, which made for paragraphs which seemed to take up half a page and made concentration a bit difficult at times.

As with The River, By Moonlight, I got a real sense of time-and-place from this novel; I found fascinating its descriptions of the daily trials of the colonists. However, as a non-American reader, I felt that Kathleen Kent made too many assumptions about what the reader would know about the Salem witch trials. There was no real background given to them, even in a fore- or afterword… and since I knew next-to-nothing (and still know very little) about the trials (apart from having watched the film of The Crucible years ago), I was left feeling rather confused about what on earth was happening. On the other hand, that does give a connection with the novel’s protagonist, Sarah, who also has very little idea of what’s going on and why.

If you’re someone who has an interest in the witch trials (or even if I’d done some research myself – although I prefer not to do so before reading a novel for the first time), this would definitely be a worthwhile read. And I did develop a certain amount of empathy for the characters and a deep interest in their story.  But though, as the second of my Blog Stop Book Tours reviews for September, this was the book I was most interested to read; in the end, the one I hadn’t been that bothered about (The River, By Moonlight) was my favourite of the two.

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8 out of 10

The River, By Moonlight, by New Yorker Camille Marchetta, is my latest novel to review for Blog Stop Book Tours. It’s superficially the story of Lily Canning, a privileged young woman from the state of New York, who drowns in the Hudson River one evening in 1917. But in fact, it’s really Lily’s story according to her family and friends, and it’s the story of the effect her death has on them.

I’d personally describe this novel as a domestic mystery, and I’ll admit that it isn’t something I’d generally read. (It’s more my mum’s sort of thing, and I’ll probably pass my copy on to her.) But there were an awful lot of things about it that I really liked, which is why it’s got an 8 out of 10 from me.

Chief among its appealing elements is the sense of time and place – to me, it feels like it’s very definitely set in 1917 New York and couldn’t be set anywhere else without the story being affected. The era is one of both great advancement – in the freedoms of women, for example – and great events such as the entry of the US into World War I, which provides a backdrop to everything that happens even though it’s not strictly relevant to Lily’s tale.

Although the mystery of Lily’s death was more about the why than the how, I enjoyed the little bit of mystery that ran through the book, with the wonderings of her friends and family. There are plenty of hints as to what might have happened, but it’s not until a sort of flashback at the end, which tells things from Lily’s point of view, that it’s really explained.

I also really liked the spread of characters, each with their own motivations, opinions, and feelings for Lily and about her death. Each section of the novel is entitled with a character’s name, and that whole section is written from their point of view, with none really repeated – something I found to be an excellent narrative device for the plot of this novel.

This is an easy read, with no great highs or lows, but it’s a very satisfying one nonetheless. And I’m not passing it on till I’ve read it again!

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Got a couple more to add (thanks Dawn for #3!)- please do contribute!

You know you’re a technical writer…

… when you feel emotional and/or physical pain at the sight of an out-of-place apostrophe.

… if, when faced with an engineer asking you questions about a product you document, you say in a tired or exasperated tone: “RTFM!”

… when you can’t stop deleting those (invisible to everyone else) spaces after the full-stop at the end of sentences.

… when you consider taking a new electrical iron back to the shop after having your eyes assaulted by the flagrant misuse of its and it’s in the manual (even though you’re probably one of the few people to actually read the manual).

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Technical Writing Tuesdays: index of posts

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And thanks to Susan, in fact, for the very concept of a blogship.

I’ve certainly abandoned the good ship Sharp Words for quite some time; longer than I intended, in fact. Did you miss me? I do have the excellent excuse that I got married on Friday September 12th, and my life both before and since has been more hectic than I expected.

I’m not quite sure when I’ll be returning to my regularly scheduled blogging (such as Technical Writing Tuesdays), but I have two book reviews due this week, and we’re almost into October – aka preparation for National Novel Writing Month. I suspect there will be quite a lot of blogging happening as that gets closer. And closer. And scarily, even closer.

So watch this space…

(Oh, and Entrecarders? I’m going to try and get back to regular dropping tomorrow. Thank you to everyone who’s kept on stopping by during my absence.)

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