Today I learned that for my entire life, I have been spelling something incorrectly.

http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/just-deserts.html

(The website also has two excellent pictures accompanying this explanation.)

I love nerdy grammar points like this. Indeed, this one has several of my favorite elements: archaic usage ("desert" from "deserve"), homophones, and people being very eager to correct something that isn't wrong. Oh, and my most favorite element of all: proper grammar.

Of course, things like this necessitate the question of usage. After all, if I were to include the phrase "just deserts" in one of my items, I suspect that nearly every reviewer would tell me it was a spelling error. And who could blame them? I didn't know about this until tonight, and I have a massive love for words and usage.

This might make a good grammar newsletter topic. Usage versus correctness. It is certainly of interest to me...
 

         ...Pete Hautman.
         I recently finished reading Invisible, which I had mistakenly learned was Hautman's newest novel but actually came out in 2005. This is the third of Hautman's novels that I've read; the other two were Hole in the Sky and Godless. In reading those, I began to develop my Hautman opinion, but Invisible really confirmed it: every YA writer should read Hautman. Why? Because Hautman is a lesson in what it means for a book to be almost there, but not quite.
         Each of his books that I've read has been good. Not bad, but not stellar: just good. I read a lot of YA novels that I'd judge as "just good," so Hautman might not typically stand out. Like innumerable other YA novelists, Hautman is pretty good with characterization, his writing is passable, and there are no glaring plot holes or inconsistencies. What distinguishes Hautman in my mind — and what makes him required reading for YA writers — is that his books come so, so close to being awesome but aren't. He just never takes it far enough.
         This is the thing that kills me about Hautman — his novels are such good ideas! Such clever premises, such unique plotlines, such promising characters, yet they never come together to be as good as they could be. When I finished reading Godless, I was extraordinarily disappointed. This is it? I thought. You didn't do this, or this, or this, to make the book as good as it could be? It was such an inventive idea, with fantastic conflict and natural dialogue, but the book just disappointed. It was okay, but with only a few changes, it could so easily have been better. It didn't have the same punchy ending it could have had, and it didn't get across the same powerful point it could have. Instead it was just...good. It was good. But it so easily could have been awesome.
         It's a lesson for YA writers, I think, in making sure your novel doesn't do the same thing — that is, doesn't stop just a few inches short of the "awesome!" moniker.
         Invisible was the same way. Aside from the fact that I guessed the big twist within the first twenty-five pages of the book, I found the plot quite engaging. The narrator was well-developed and the sense of intrigue building to the plot twist was well-drawn. But then...nothing happened. There was nothing besides the predictable twist and the narrator's predictable behavior. Hautman spent so much time in the beginning developing other aspects of the story that never did what they could have done. The book never transcended the Gail Giles level. Instead, it just...was. And yet again, I found myself believing, wholeheartedly, that Pete Hautman could do better.
         It was good, though. Good.
 

         So I'm ten pages into my final paper — my final paper, the last thing standing between me and winter break — and I am so far from my original barebones outline that I genuinely have no idea where the paper is going. And I'm only at the halfway mark right now. Who, seriously, who leaves a 20-25 page paper to the last day and a half before it's due? And thinks she'll be able to do it at home? Ugh. I do. I am a fool.
         In my defense, I did all my research ahead of time, and I kept changing my mind about what I wanted to write about, and it saved my family $200 to come home on the 15th instead of the 17th, but oh my god, things are not going so well. I wrote three pages last night, then another seven this morning, and now I am just about to fall over from exhaustion and lack of interest. I have a perfect ten pages right now, 2800 words on the dot (not including bibliography), but a perfect ten is not enough. It has to be longer, longer, twice as long or more. And I don't even know what to say, because my paper could pretty much be summed up thus: "Uradyn Bulag thinks that Mongolians are assholes for discriminating against the ethnic Mongols in Inner Mongolia. He thinks that Chinese are assholes for their minzu policies in Inner Mongolia. He thinks Westerners are assholes for pigeonholing everybody into a single box and romanticizing the Mongolian steppe. He thinks the Soviets are assholes regardless." The end!
         E--- told me that I should just write a haiku for my paper, since I could pretty much sum it up in seventeen syllables. Something like

Title courtesy of Storm Machine

         I suppose I spoke too soon: you can find a rhyme for "Uzbekistan." Contrived, maybe, but a rhyme nonetheless. And that's all I'm really asking for. There's no way I'll ever be writing poetry about Central Asia... probably.
         Of course, Sesheta's suggested title made me think of two songs that deserve to be linked here. Think of them like mood music for reading the rest of the entry. The first: http://www.hulu.com/watch/16771/saturday-night-live-digital-short-iran-so-far
         This song has so many great lines, I don't even know which one to pick! My personal favorite would have to be, "You can deny the Holocaust all you want, but you can't deny that there's something between us." That's gold.
         Of course, you may prefer the "original": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uUjIA3Rt7gk
         To which I say, nice hair, fool.
         One day last year, when I was stuck in bed with a cold, I found myself watching a show about the best one-hit wonders of the 1980s on VH1. As I recall, the lead singer of Flock of Seagulls was on the show complaining about how in the last twenty years he'd made tons of other music, tried touring with the band and with other people, basically done everything he could to make a name for himself, but no matter where he went, where he played, the only thing people ever wanted to hear was "I Ran." No one cared about anything else he had written. Nothing ever made it big again. He was forever the man behind that song and that haircut.
         I wonder about this sometimes. What do I consider success? Not in general, but for me, for my creative pursuits. It wasn't when I got my first short story published; I said to myself, good start, more to do, not enough. Not enough! Presently I think that I'll consider myself a successful writer when I have a novel published, but what if that isn't enough, either? What if I think, no, one more, two more, until I'm always thinking that with just one more I'll be satisfied?
         This isn't to say that I won't be happy to get something published. I'll be dancing around, ecstatic, bubbling, for weeks. Probably for every step of the process. And to me, it doesn't matter if it's wildly successful or not — money isn't a big deal to me, nor prestige, nor acclaim; those aren't the reasons I write. I have no delusions of making a living by writing for the rest of my life. I want to go on book tours and meet writers and talk to people and get everyone to see what I see about the world. But even if it is wildly popular — say, "I Ran" by Flock of Seagulls popular — what does that mean? I bet it still won't be enough. I'll still be waiting for the next thing.
         One step at a time, though. What was this entry about again? Uzbekistan. Right. Anybody curious about the resurgence of Islam in Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan in the past twenty years? It's fascinating...
 

         Today's paper procrastination tool was fixing up a piece of flash fiction I wrote like ten million years ago and submitting it to a flash fiction contest at Pedestal Magazine. The deadline for submissions is tomorrow - I'm on top of things, I know. But really, this is the sort of procrastination I can get behind. You can't even feel bad about it, because hey, you're fixing the introduction to a story that might make you ten bucks. And that's a good use of time.
         Tonight E--- and I are going out to dinner, our sort of last hurrah for the semester. I head home in a couple days, and I know that tomorrow will be spent just packing and writing a paper.
         (My current ridiculous interim title is "Smoke from a Distant Fire: The Impact of Chinese Policies on Kyrgyz Islamic Revival After the Soviet Union." This is misleading, though, because that's really just a small part of the paper; most of it is me arguing that in both Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan, Islamic revival was a bottom-up rather than top-down movement. I guess "Bakiyev to the Future" still sort of applies, but again, that's only half of the paper. Too bad nothing rhymes with Uzbekistan.)
         So it's raining, again, and inordinately cold, again, because this is Providence and Providence does not make for particularly scintillating journal entries. Last night it was so cold that I couldn't even convince myself to go eat dinner, so instead I scarfed down an entire bag of almonds over the course of the evening. I was reading about Mongols in China until I fell asleep. Luckily I didn't dream about Genghis Khan.
         Also I wish that Pandora would stop telling me to like John Mayer. I just don't. I will continue to select "thumbs down" on every song of his that you put up, and I will continue to groan during ads for his new CD. He is whiny. Please stop.
 

         I'm down to the final two papers, both due this coming week. It's 35 pages I need to research and write in the next few days, but seriously, now that I am done with the week from hell (something due every single day, Monday to Saturday) I barely even care anymore.
         So this afternoon I was bored and needed something to do (something that wasn't my papers) so I found the unused bottle of dark brown hair dye I'd bought a few months before and dug up a highlighting cap, and bam, my hair's darker. I did a good job with the highlights - you can barely tell. I cut an inch off the bottom, too, mostly split ends, and now I'm ten times happier about my life. Stupid easy changes like that and I'm thrilled. I guess I should be: it's an hour that I didn't spend doing work.
         I want to take it easy (easier) tonight. I'll definitely try to do some reading and take some notes, but no writing anything for either of these papers. I've promised myself. I need some time off without looking at a screen or using semicolons or pondering how to rephrase pretentious ideas. Reading. Reading is good. I really liked what I've read so far of The New Woman in Uzbekistan.
         It's pitch black and only five o'clock. I keep forgetting that when it looks like this, it isn't already the middle of the night. Yawn.
 

         So I had this plan to write a great entry about the proliferation of main characters rewarded for their laziness in Russian fairy tales - I did my final presentation in Russian language class about that today. It was great. My presentation was called "Быть ленивым, стать царем: Образец Ивана-дурака," or "Be lazy, become the tsar: The Archetype of Ivan the Fool." Sounds great, right? I was excited to tell you my conclusions. But then last night E--- broke my nose and now I can barely think straight.
         If you're like my mother, whom I called this morning, you are probably thinking right now, "Oh my god, she's in an abusive relationship and he broke her nose." This is not true. He didn't punch me or shove me down a flight of stairs or anything. Also, my nose (probably) isn't actually broken. But that's the hook for this story, so you'll read on: if I said "my nose is sore because I accidentally banged into my boyfriend's chin," you'd all just yawn and click over to the next blog on your regular reading list.
         Seriously, though, his chin whacked into my nose at about a thousand miles an hour, and I was instantly in tears and blinding pain. This was last night, and I had too much to do - like the aforementioned Russian presentation - to let it get to me, so I took a bunch of Motrin and pushed through my work until I just passed out at three a.m. Then this morning I woke up with a massively sore nose, a thin ring of a bruise across my nose between the bridge and the nostrils, and a face so tender and swollen I could barely put my makeup on this morning.
         Lucky for me - also for E---, on whom the suspicion would fall - you can barely see it under my makeup. The swelling is hardly noticeable anymore, either. But, oh my god, I still feel like my face is going to fall off at any second.
         I called my mom this morning to ask about what to do - I maybe-broke my nose once before, when I was like eight and I ran (literally) into a closed door, but I don't really remember what happened except that we didn't do anything for it. E--- (who is sort of freaking out about how hurt I am because of him, despite the fact that it was entirely an accident) was googling constantly this morning and discovered that apparently it's bad to take ibuprofen for nose injuries. Which I did anyway, because it's all I have. But I haven't gotten a single bloody nose (or nasal septal hemotoma, hopefully) yet.
         So my nose isn't actually broken, but it's killing me, and how I'm going to write a paper by midnight and study for an exam by tomorrow morning... it's completely beyond me at this point.
 

         Oh, Providence. Two days ago, you blessed us with a record high of sixty-seven degrees. Today, it rained all day, and after the sun set (far too early, I might add) that rain turned into wintry mix and now, snow. I had had all these dreams of late snow this year, preferably after I left for home, but instead it's today. Which isn't entirely unexpected, not in New England. But...
         I think falling snow is so beautiful from the inside, when I am warm and dry and away from it. I just hate cold. I thought I would get used to it, but I never did. I'd still rather do nothing than read a book and drink some cocoa under my electric blanket.
         So I'm doing my final presentation for Russian class on Russian folk tales that idealize laziness. (I'll write an entry about this someday soon - it's quite fascinating.) It's making me lazy. It's hard to get ahead on the research for my presentation - I'm going Tuesday - when everything I read tells me that if I am lazy long enough I'll find a magic fish or steal a magic falcon feather and become the Tsar of all the land.