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Okay, panic mildly abated. We went shopping last night and I narrowed down gift-giving options and bought a Christmas tree. But I’m still going to be talking about it all here… and possibly giving Renee mouth-to-mouth resucitation, poor girl.
In other news, I’ve got a new poll up, as some of you have noticed. This one, I would like you, when you vote, to comment on your reasoning behind your choice at the bottom of this thread. (If you’ve already voted, you can comment retroactively.) As many of you know, I’m giving that workshop on “Career Planning” in February at the STAR Conference — Hint: Go! — and I’m collecting information to use in my lecture.
So let’s get some debate started!
Hey, all!
So I stayed off the computer all weekend, which you THINK would give me all sort of extra time to be able to get shit done… but you woudln’t be thinking very hard, now would you? In honor of yet another weekend of not getting shit done, I’m holding a contest of unpreparedness.
Here’s how you play:
I’m going to tell you what I have NOT done yet, and if you can beat that, you win the contest. What do you win? Um, if you think I’ve planned that, then you aren’t paying attention, here. Okay, let’s start!
1. I have NOT put up a Christmas tree.
2. I have NOT decided on presents for any of my immediate family members, nor the person with whom I’m living. (Sorry, Sailor Boy).
3. I have NOT shipped out the presents for people whose presents I HAVE bought.
4. I have NOT winterized my boots.
5. My house is utterly devoid of Christmas decorations, wrappings, cookies, and scents.
6. I have not finished my outline for SSG2. Okay, but that one is due in February, not in five days.
7. I have not sent out the pile of dry cleaning that’s been sitting in my bedroom for a week.
Man, what have I been doing with my time? Aside from the several Christmas parties I went to this weekend? And the one three hour movie about a 25-foot monkey? And the… actually no, that’s it, I’m out. And since i”m due at work in about 6 hours, I should really be like, OUT out, you know?
Catch you all on the flip side. Expect a lot of blog quizzes this week, that’s all I have to say. 
Now go ahead and let it out here — how unprepared are you?
Okay, I’m mildly nervous that the intensity of my last post scared everyone off. So today I will not be discussing in-depth craft issues or POV or whatever. Today we will be oohing and ahhing over people’s new book covers.
Gena appears to be a little obsessed with this cover at present, with good reason. It’s gorgeous… a real departure for a paranormal romance cover, but one I’m sure is going to leap off the shelves (and over tall buildings) and right into readers’ hands. Course, her name should be bigger. Right, Julie?
Gena, is this book taking place in the near-future? There’s this kind of X Men/Aeon Flux element to the cover. Either way, it’s totally awesome. I love the look on the heroine’s face. She’s so kickass. Oooh. Ahhh.
And here we have the cover for the next Scott Westerfeld book, the conclusion of his “Uglies” Trilogy. This one’s coming out in hardback folks. I adore it. How gorgeous! Of course, if you have read UGLIES and especially if you have read PRETTIES, you realize how appropriate this is. Oooh. Ahhhh.
The series must be doing very well for Simon and Schuster to make the leap into hardcover halfway through. Go, Scott! Also, he was quoted in the New York Times last week in an interview about that face-transplant woman. I love it, novelists being consulted as experts in plastic surgery. I am ready for my Secret Society articles any time, New York Times…
Speaking of, in case we haven’t got enough of it… look at my cover! Ooooh. Ahhhh. Hey, did you hear that this book is available for pre-order on Amazon? Ooooh. Ahhhh.
I’ve been a bit distracted lately, which means, for Diana’s Diversions, that I’ve actually been focused on my work. Have been working on the outline for SOCIETY2, which sucks up all loose blogging energy and… well, ideally converts it to plotting capabilities of the first water. However, if you were to look at the current outline, you’d wonder if perhaps all of my loose blogging energy weren’t being converted into plotting capabilities of a brackish drowned estuary. (See, you can’t keep the geologist in me down!)
Okay, it’s not that bad. It is, however, the first sequel I’ve ever written, so there are arguments to be made for the concept of a learning curve. This is why I have started early. This puppy ain’t due ’til February. The main challenges I see in plotting this book are:
1. Making it stand on its own for readers who have no had the honor of experiencing SOCIETY1.
2. Not repeating myself or doing retreads for readers who have had that honor.
3. Doing justice to ongoing story arcs and character development.
4. Doing the above while also presenting a straightforward and exciting plot throughline.
I don’t think I do a lot of subplots in my books, or if I do, they are subplots that feed DIRECTLY into my main plot. Things like “they fall in love while vanquishing the bad guy.” So perhaps not subplots so much as MacGuffins.
**Start digression**MacGuffin, for the uninitatiated, was a term coined by Hitchcock to refer to the driving element of the story — what the characters are in search of — which is nevertheless not what the story is actually ABOUT. For instance, in my favorite Hitchcock film, Notorious, Ingrid Bergman and Cary Grant are spies searching for uranium dust hidden in wine bottles (I know, I know), but that’s just the excuse to get them together and put them in a situation to fall in love and for her to betray him and for him to betray her and for them to both feel hurt about it and eventually redeem themselves. Also an excuse for More Claude Rains (MCR). MCR, in my mind, is not entirely unlike my theory of Alan Rickman Makes Everything Better (ARMEB). (See? Hitchcock has his jargon and I have mine.) In North By Northwest, the MacGuffin is “Kaplan’s” stolen microfilm. And if you just thought to yourself “What microfilm? All I remember is the train and the plane and the Mt. Rushmore thing and Eva Marie Saint seducing Cary Grant,” then you are doing exactly what Hitchcock wants you to when he establishes a MacGuffin. You’re focusing on what the movie is really about rather than whatever “thing” the characters are supposedly chasing. Of course, the ultimate MacGuffin is the Maltese Falcon, which is in true Hollywood meta-fashion is revealed in the end to be not worth all the attention paid to it. **End digression**
As I was saying… A lot of writers do this thing in editing where they go back and start combining scenes and characters and cutting them because they don’t serve more than one purpose in the story. I’ve never had to do that — knock wood. Because I don’t have a lot of subplots. When I have an “outside” scene, it usually directly relates to soemthing very complex about the characters’ main storyline.
There’s definitely a challenge inherent in this technique when you’ve got a situation like in SOCIETY, where there is a harsh delineation between “inside” and “outside” worlds; you’re trying to make sure that the outside scenes don’t have NOTHING to do with the society scenes and vice versa. In fact, the argument could be made that this is what my story is really about — the line where your society ends and the rest of your life begins, and what happens when they bleed over onto each other, and whether that’s okay or even desireable or not.
Hmmm, food for thought. Perhaps attacking each scene that way will help me make sure they all have the relevence they need to be included in the book. (It’s nice to be able to work this out on paper, though I know that half of what I’m saying here will probably only resonate for the three or four readers of this blog who have actually READ the book at this point…)
However, I have all of these gorgeous ideas of what I want my characters’ lives to contain in this novel, and all these scintillating little set pieces, and I have to make sure that they ALL refocus back into the throughline. Somehow.
One of the things I was most proud of with the last novel (I hope I still feel this way when reviews come out) was the complexity of the interpersonal relationships. Great piece of writing advice from Orson Scott Card: If you have three characters in a novel, you have four relationships: A’s with B, B’s with C, A’s with C, and A, B, and C together. It gets even bigger every time you add a character. You have to add D with all of them individually, D with each pair of them, and all four together. See how complicated it can get? Every time you’ve got a group of people, they are not all going to relate to each other in the same way, and they might act differently with only one person around than they would when they were with the whole group. You might have two people who hate each other but each like a third person, so put on a happy face whenever they are all together. You might have someone who wears a mask until he gets you alone, then drops his guard. And you’ve got to get this all come out without sacrificing the reader’s concept of that character as a character. They have to be both inside the box and out of it. Of course, some or all of this can be organic, but every time you run into a snag, you have to step back and think about it. (I’d love to talk about where I had to think about it and where it just came out. Remind me to do so when the book comes out and I’m not spoiling anything).
So I’ve got all of these complex interpersonal relationships going on in this novel that I have to develop even further in the next novel. I could write a book just about that, I think. The drama of college networks and relationships and romance. But that’s not all the Secret Society Girl books are. There’s also the suspense element (says so write in my contract: “romantic comedy and suspense). There’s also the conspiracy theories. I love my idea for the conspiracy in SOCIETY2, and I think I’ve almost hit upon the way to tie them altogether, but it’s going to take more digging.
So that will keep me busy. (Have I lost you all yet?)
I just learned that the moniker they use in-house at Bantam Dell to refer to my project is SOCIETY. I love it. Are you working on SOCIETY? How many ARCs are we getting of SOCIETY? I did the interior design for SOCIETY. Diana Peterfreund? Yeah, that’s the SOCIETY author. SOCIETY SOCIETY SOCIETY. I’ve been shortening it to SSG in emails to friends, CPs, agents… on this blog. But I think I’m going to have to fall in line with Bantam Dell and start calling it SOCIETY.
Actually, without realizing it, they have done exactly the same thing that we did at Yale in reference to these organizations.
“Want to do something tonight?” asks the unsuspecting senior on Thursday night.
Her friend blushes, ducks head. “Can’t. Society stuff.”
SOCIETY stuff.
My current SOCIETY stuff is all about working on the outline for SOCIETY2. I’m about a quarter of the way through, in that I’ve done about 3/4 of the first draft. You do the math. Also, going to look at my book on Amazon. The cover’s up and everything. So excited.
We seem to have lost a few readers recently — my stats are way down. I’m going to assume it’s because you’re all super-busy for the holidays and not that you’re mad at me. 
The conversation about POV is still going strong in the following post. I’d love to get a real debate going on this issue so speak up! Don’t be afraid! Even you, various anonymi…
Finally, agent Nadia Cornier or Firebrand Lit is trying to spread the word blogly about TEACH ME, by R.A. Nelson. I’ve read this work, and found it to be totally worth spreading the word about (personally disappointed by the ending, but still enjoyed the whole), so here I am, spreading. She calls it The Great Blog Experiment. (She is *not* Nelson’s agent. Just thought I’d point that out. She’s also not mine.)
Speaking of agent’s, my agent, the legendary Deidre Knight, has a book coming out in a few months, and has just unveiled her mind blowing series tie-in website, The Parallel Experience. Wowsa.
Okay. I’m off. I hope to see lots of talking ere I return…
Well, this was enlightening, letting you all pick only one. (Note: I didn’t vote in this one, since I don’t have a least favorite, just as I do not have a favorite.) Okay. Here’s we go:
A whopping 14, or 48% of you, came down against first person present tense POV. Y’all are the ones that like stories told as if they HAVE happened, who like a little bit of temporal distance between the narrator and the events related.
A much smaller minority (6 people, or 21%) disliked this new trend of mixing it up, having one character tell the story in first person with a few side trips into another character’s third person perspective. I admit that this technique seemed a bit fishy to me at first as well, but Cathy Yardley pulled it off in a tremendous fashion in her recent book, Couch World. I was actually considering trying it in an upcoming project since one character speaks to me very strongly in first person, but I need scenes from another character’s perspective. Maybe I should rethink that. Moving on…
I can’t think of any other explanation for our next big loser other than a couple of bitter first person present lovers coming down against that classic old standby, that “Homer used me so it must be all right” POV of multiple third person. But 4 voters (14%) said that it was their least favorite. I have to say that this is the statistic that surprises me the most.
One lone voter hated single perspective third person, which is another classic, used by such literary giants as Austen and Rowling.
And then there are the two voters apiece who disliked first person past and multiple first person pasts. Of course, together, this doesn’t even put a dent in those who dislike first person present. My first book (and its sequel) will be written in first person past tense. I have to admit, that if I were going to pick a least favorite, it would be multiple first person POV, Faulkner be damned, because it’s so rare that a writer is able to keep each voice distinct enough to make the technique worth while for me. But I have read well done versions of this (one I judged in the recent Stiletto contest, and I thought it was fab. Didn’t final though. Sucks). However, I think another danger witht his technique is that you have characters with stronger voices drowning out hte others, whereas I think with the more traditional mix of third person POVs there is a delinieated main character and then secondaries that come in here and there to give their take. With first person, it’s hard to see the character as anything but a main character.
Though, having said that, wasn’t the “first person narrator of another’s story” a classic conceit in 19th century fiction? No one thinks the story is actually about Ishmael in Moby Dick. Much of the novel’s history was shrouded beneath this veil of “let me tell you a story about a friend of mine” or a “found” diary or some other device. You needed that “minor character narrator” to give these outrageous events a veneer of truth. (Actually, this reminds me a lot of the way that nowadays, you have to make musical numbers a figment of the character’s imagination, or due to a demon enchantment, or other kind of nonsense, because the audience simply won’t buy people bursting into song and dance. Old novel readers wouldn’t buy made up stories.)
The mix of first and third, though I’ve seen it welld one, seems like a very writerly device to me. If the idea in a first person story is that someone is telling you what happened to them, what does the mix of third add? The idea that the reader is then not trusting the main narrator and is off finding out the truth for themselves by following other narrators around? The multiple first persons is as if the reader is trying to find the truth of the matter from a variety of narrators, Rashomon-style, which can make for a very interesting story, though, as previously noted, tough to do, and even toughter if you are trying to claim any one character as your protagonist. Better for ensemble pieces, I think.
I’d like to hear other people defend or argue their votes here. Do you think my take on the different styles suitable to each POV is appropriate? What do you think about each?
Still feeling icky, so still in the mood to rant on other industry blog posts.
For instance, observe this gem gleaned from the entertaining Miss Snark’s email inbox:
Dear Miss Snark I’m hesitant about submitting my new novel for publication because I do not want to see it remaindered. There are so many great works of literature in my local bookstore, all at knock down prices (my God, you can even get The Bible for a couple of bucks) and I don’t want the same to happen to my
magnum opus. I have a large opus. My question is, how can I be assured that my
genius will run and run?
Miss Snark rightly asks, “Is this a joke?” I suspect it must be, and the individual was curious to know how snarky the agent in question might get with her response. “I don’t want my book published because I’m afraid of it being remaindered.” That must be an attempt at humor. Talk about putting the cart before the horse. Before it was remaindered (i.e., sold at vastly reduced discounts after the publisher has decided that it’s made all the money it can off the title), it was bought by a publisher who paid you an advance, published, released, and did sit on the shelves where it was hopefully bought and enjoyed by a certain number of readers. Books go out of print. It happens.
However, it touches on an actual issue, one that I have decided to call Submitphobia. There are many authors out there who are actively afraid to submit their projects. Some fear rejection. Others fear what their family and friends will think of them should they get published. Many fear the stings of critics and bad Amazon reviews. And of course, there’s the fear of success, which is really the same thing as the fear of failure. (It really is the same thing. What you fear when you fear success is that the success will stop and you will fail again. It’s much worse to fall from a higher place than from the ground floor.)
This kind of thing often PARALYZES writers, sometimes for years. They refuse to submit their books, they tinker endlessly until the industry and the world changes around them and their work is no longer viable on the market, or (and this is a new one) they eschew finding the best market for their book and instead self-publish or submit only to the “easy As” houses that will give them the quickest and most easily-attainable “yes,” even if that means sacrificing career, money, and chances that readers will actually get their hands on the work. (Nothing against
these houses, mind you. This is a problem with writerly motivation, not with the existence or operations of these publishers. Everyone has got their own path to publication. Some people want to self-publish or be with start-up presses for issues of creative control, or anti-establishment, or support the small business, or what have you, or they are writing something that for whatever reason is not palatable to large houses at this moment. Fine. I’m all for that. Yay, those people! But I also know some people who are afraid to submit anywhere where they might get a “no.” That’s the part that concerns me. End disclaimer.)
Taken to the extreme, this is “I don’t want my book published because I’m afraid to see it remaindered.” And here’s the part where Sailor Boy laughs, because he knows I’m the biggest pessimist ever. You have to take that chance. You have to send that book out and risk it being rejected and/or ignored. You have to steel yourself for the terrible things that are going to be said about it. If you want to be published, you can’t fear the remainder bin, or the “big envelope” full of your rejected manuscript. You can’t fear the Amazon review.
Actually, you can. You can fear all of those things, but do it anyway. It’s part of the rules of the game.
I’m sick in bed with some sort of food-poisoning, or perhaps sudden-onset lactose intolerance, but that doesn’t mean that *you* should be deprived of my luscious blogging.
Ooh, the other fun thing I’ve been up to this weekend is taxes. Taxes for writers are a very complex situation. I’ve previously blogged about how horrific I find it, and that was back when I was doing freelance journalism and getting a check every week. I think they might be even more horrific when it’s a book and I’m getting a check every six months or so. Writers all over the web are aksing about how to handle this or that. I did some searching and came up with some helpful places to start. Of course, I’m not an accountant, but this did clarify for me how much I need one, and explained some concepts that I’m glad to understand:
http://tarakharper.com/k_tax.htm
Tax Aspects for Writers
http://www.absolutewrite.com/freelance_writing/tax_tips.htm
http://www.forwriters.com/taxes.html
http://mzbworks.home.att.net/deathtax.htm
http://www.hackman-adams.com/articles/taxes.htm
In other news, SFWA’s fabulous scam sleuths now have their own blog: Writer Beware Blog. I was recently reading a post there that made my hair stand on end. In it, a writer signed with an agent who not only charged her $350 bucks to read her manuscript, but also hit her up for an $8,500 “retainer” on top of covering all the agent’s office expenses (telephone, Xeroxing, postage, etc.) and a 20% commission. All of this was spelled out in the contract, which the author signed anyway. The “agent” then proceeded to send the manuscript out to inappropriate publishers, including that old standby, PublishAmerica. (Of course, what is 20% of what you have to pay them?)
Writer Beware sleuth Victoria Strauss posits:
Some of you may be thinking, “How ignorant was this writer?” or “Only idiots give their money away.” But this writer wasn’t ignorant or stupid. She’d done her research, and knew that fee-charging wasn’t kosher. She’d also spent nearly two years submitting her ms. to established agents without success, and had decided that “it was impossible for a new author to get an agent” (her words). This is what desperation will do to you, folks. Think it can’t happen to you? Think again.
Actually, yeah, I do think it can’t happen to me. Because there’s desperation that causes bad decisions and then there’s desperation that causes really, really bad decisions. And I’d like to think that however, desperate I got, I wouldn’t pay someone almost 9k when I knew that there was nothing they could do for me. If I had an extra 9k, I’d think of what it could do for me. Maybe I could take a class in craft or something. Local community colleges have excellent classes in writing and they are usually a few hundred dollars or less. I’d go to a workshop or twenty. I’d buy out the “writing” how-to section of my local Barnes & Noble. I woudln’t pay someone I knew going in was scamming me. That’s not just ignorance. That’s willful ignorance.
And yes, I think that particular writer was acting idiotically. New writers get agents all the time. Most of my writing friends are or were “new” (read: unpublished) writers when they first got their agents. I was, Colleen was, Jana was, Shannon was, Marianne was, Marley is, Cheryl is… the list goes on and on. If she’s not getting an agent, the answer isn’t paying someone several thousand dollars for a thin veneer of “legitimacy.” It’s to write a better book.
Is that “easy for me to say?” Yeah, actually it’s very easy for me to say that you should never, ever, ever, ever pay $9,000 upfront to an agent. It’s easy for me to say now and it’s been easy for me to say ever since I found out how a literary agent works, a good four years ago. The agent doesn’t get paid until you do, and then it’s a percentage of that payment. That’s it, that’s all, finito.
I know what it’s like, the first time an editor or agent says “contract.” It’s magical. It’s intoxicating. It’s writerly heroin. Even if it’s not the best contract, even if it’s not what you wanted for a career, it’s total temptation. But is it worth $9,000? Not if you know, from your two years of experience, that it’s not going to give you anything more than a word.
I’m a huge advocate of getting an agent. If you see me around the web, you know that my usual mantra is “get an agent, get an agent, get an agent.” I really think that a good agent will completely change your career. The absolute best thing you can do for your career is to write a good, marketable book. The second best thing you can do is get a good agent. Everything, but everything else, comes in behind those two, as far as I’m concerned.
But not just any agent will do. And no agent that operates like the one described above could POSSIBLY be a good agent. They are making their money from you upfront. Why should they bother to sell your book?
Okay, back to imagining a life without cheese…
Addendum: Julie has posted the chat transcript on Yahoo Groups Knight Agency File page. If you aren’t a member of the Knight Agency Group, click here to join.
Thank you all so much for coming to my chat last night! I’m sure Julie Ramsey of TKA (who is also a skilled actress, we all discovered, currently playing Mina in a production of Dracula) will soon be posting a transcript for those who missed it. It was ablast, Lots of great info about my upcoming release, plans for the future, how I sold this book and my cover modeling career.
I must admit that I was surprised how quickly the conversation devolved into speculations about Sailor Boy. He, of course, is quite shocked that you all are so curious. I have managed to convince him to allow me to post a picture of him on this blog so you can all see for yourself how hot he is.
Here it is:
Sailor Boy would like it to be known that this picture was taken in the Badlands, which I suppose makes him a Sailor Bad Boy. He would also like to point out that the sun was very strong that day (as you can see) which of course, made him hot; hence he is very hot in this picture.
Diana would like to point out that this picture was taken by a person named Brandon, who may or may not make an appearance in Secret Society Girl.
A teaser from TKA blog…
 Don’t forget (not that I can imagine that you would, of course) that TKA Chats will be starring
Diana Peterfreund tonight (Thursday) from 9-10PM EST
on the TKA chat space (Not Yahoo!) which is linked to our homepage (www.knightagency.net)
So I asked Diana a few questions to get us started… you really don’t want to miss this chat! Oh and BTW: click on the book to preorder it
1. Fav books you’ve read this year? Why?
If you check out my blog (http://dianapeterfreund.blogspot.com/) you’ll see a list of books I’ve read this year. I have three favorites on that list. The first is THE COMPANION, by Susan Squires. Squires has a truly unique romance voice, and this is a re-introduction into fresh and unusual vampire vision. I loved this book because it was full of high seas adventure, and because of a sense of *genuineness* that permeated the novel. The heroine was a genuinely spunky archaeologist. The hero was a genuinely tortured soul (and I mean it. The torture scenes were…graphic). The love story was a genuinely romantic and passionate one. I couldn’t put it down.
The second is UGLIES, by Scott Westerfeld. Scott is a well-known writer of YA and science fiction, and he blends the two perfectly in this first book in a trilogy about a future dystopia where everyone becomes beautiful on their 16th birthday. It was a perfectly realized bit of worldbuilding with an fascinating examination of the current culture of what is considered “beautiful”. Plus the heroine was pretty kickass. I went out and got every Scott Westerfeld book I could get my hands on after reading this.
The third is VALIANT, by Holly Black. Though Black is best known for her Spiderwick Chronicles series for young readers, this dark urban “faery tale” is clearly targeting older teens. It’s the story of a young girl who runs away from home and ends up living in the sewers of New York City with a bunch of other runaways who work as drug runners… for a troll… who lives under a bridge. I love the way Black managed to incorporate the legends and dark, dangerous aspects of old-school (not Disneyfied) fairy tales into the modern urban landscape. This story is extremely edgy, but once again, you’ve got a very strong heroine in Val.
Ooh, can I pick a fourth? (You’ll have me here all day talking about books I love!) I read my first Koontz this year. ODD THOMAS. It was fabulous. I love the voice, and Odd… man, who didn’t fall in love with him?
2. What are you currently reading?
JANE MILLIONAIRE, by Janice Lynn. I just started, so don’t tell me what happens!
3. Pantzer or plotter?
Plotter, and I’m gonna come right out and say that the term “pantzer” is nails on a chalk board to me. I wish there were a better term for it. It reminds me of that thing that the boys in elementary school used to do, go up behind you and try to pull your shorts down. We called it “pantzing.” But I digress. Anyway, I’m a very dedicated plotter. I write a detailed outline of my book before I sit down and write it, often a scene-by-scene outline, complete with snippets and dialogue and everything. It’s fabulous for brainstorming. And no, I don’t ever feel as if “I’ve written the story already” when I’m done. I think it’s like having a map for a roadtrip. With my map, I feel free to go off on side roads and see where they lead, knowing that I never find myself in a tangle, because there’s always that map there, showing me where I have to pick up the road again. Also, I write my synopsis first. I love synopses. And I honestly think this method was why I felt okay selling on proposal. I knew where I was going, and my editor was not disappointed.
4. Favorite college memory?
That’s like asking me to pick a favorite book! There are way too many, but I was actually just thinking of one last night, because we’ve had our first snow here in D.C. Freshman year, all the frosh live on “Old Campus” which is a big green quad ringed with gorgeous stone buildings.
Yale is separated into residential “colleges,” kind of like the different houses at Hogwarts. The students in my college, Morse, lived in a building at one end of the quad. The symbol for Morse is a big red axe. On the first snowfall, my freshman counselor (like an R.A., but just for frosh) set up this huge spotlight with a slide and projected a GIANT RED AXE like the Bat Symbol or something on the snow in the quad and all the Morsel frosh went out and ran around it in a ring while they blasted “Thus Spake Zarathrustra” from a stereo. It was so awesome. Of course it turned into a snowfight with the other colleges! Just a small thing, and completely innocent, but so in keeping with the sort of school spirit and sense of fun, and also utter embrace of things, not because they are cool or uncool, but because they are interesting or inspired.
5. Describe your Yale experience in 3 words?
BEST TIME EVER
6. If you could travel anywhere in the world, where would you go and why?
Back to New Zealand, because I don’t think I’ve ever seen a more heavenly country. I spent two months there in 2004, and it was gorgeous.
And, um, back to Rome. It’s my favorite city.
7. If you could speak another language, what would it be and why?
Probably Spanish, because it would come in handy. Also, once I knew Spanish, Italian would be a snap!
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