NaNo Dedication

Trout in the Dishwasher, by Solveig Pederson

Inspired by Pat Murphy, Susan Juby, Madeleine L’Engle,

Madeleine E. Robins and Ellen Klages

For David, who does keep me fed and almost sane, and makes life fun.

And for my mom, Diane Marie Dahlen Pederson. 1948-1990

“Anything that doesn't kill you makes you stronger. And later on you can use it in some story.”

-- Pat Murphy, The Wild Girls

I'm not going to do much with the NaNo "novel", at least not right now, but can post the dedication page, and more info than I sent in a larger group email earlier, about some background.

Last night I went to the NaNo party at Root Division .
That was quite fun as my first time - Chris Baty actually bestowed me with a sticker on my crown (yes, paper Burger-King like crowns, but they were generic, not actually from Burger King). The stickers had numbers for how many NaNos one has won. Many have 6s or 7s on their crowns by now, it's been going on for 9 years.

I was also glad I was there to hear Chris' toast because it really captured the feeling of - "wow, we've been writing every day or trying to now, as much as possible for a month, and now...we don't have to anymore...but we kinda still want to!"

He told a story about accidentally bringing his laptop with him to a concert last night (after he was done with his NaNo) and then having to sadly leave it on his bed, crying its "dell tears" in its neglect.

Then I went to Killing My Lobster's first all female show - "For the First Time" which was appropriate for the first-time NaNo person, and conveniently next door to Root Division where the NaNo party was. The link is to a SF Weekly review of the show, which is pretty spot-on - there were parts that were amazingly funny but parts that were not.
Ellen and Mad met Pat and I there. More details/thoughts to be written in my actual journal...

And here's the NaNo Dedication (see below) - I had emailed out the basic dedication but not the paragraphs below of extra background info. See I don't want to email out the novel but will talk about bits.

In addition to the major literary inspirations below, Annie Lennox was my constant companion throughout the entire month, and actually popped up at the main character's door during a North Dakota snowstorm looking for refuge.

Also, my co-workers Shannon and Peri have been thanked in person and on Facebook -- Shannon brought up the idea of cooking trout in the dishwasher, and our co-worker Amy did it and wrote about it on facebook, getting my attention.

Peri told me about the cryptography career of actress Hedy Lamarr, (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedy_Lamarr) which gave my 12-year-old main character, Anastasia, an interesting topic for her combo science/writing project, and resurrected a huge amount of word count in the middle of the month. This article is really a great summary of her career as inventor, with a lot more detail than I found on the wikipedia.
It's really fascinating about the culture clash between the military and Hedy and her co-inventor, as their patent was partially inspired by a player piano, and as soon as the military read that, it lost a lot of credibility.