Robynettely

So this year's Nano project is "Pampelmouse", what I refer to in my own head as "Watership Down of parrots", though I'm nervous about saying that outloud. It sounds sort of pompous. I have 11,693 words at this very minute, with another 577 to go for my morning target. (Yes, apparently blogging is what I do with my breaks?!?) After a week, I am loving the fact that I can't explain my jokes, because a parrot doesn't have words to explain its jokes. The joke either works, or it gets missed. And also, it is thus far impossible for my characters to sit around talking about what they're going to do, especially while eating. I do have some boring eating scenes like I always do, but at least they can't pretend to progress the plot. There's a lot more action than I normally write. Also, I'm making my main character suffer horribly.

Any book that has a blurb on the back saying "Probably the best sheep detective novel you'll read all year!" can't take itself too seriously. I read a review of this one near the start of the summer, maybe on www.salon.com . I think it was part of a "beach reads" article. I requested it through interlibrary loan, and got it 3.5 weeks ago. It was very fun. I wanted to read it because I want to write a "Watership down of (insert name of animal here)" kind of book, and the idea of limited thought processes, skills and abilities in a mystery appealed to me. The sheep can understand human speech (English but not Gaelic), but we can't understand them. They have lots of sheepy limitations -- they don't like to be alone, they eat all the time, they know they are edible, they generally (except Mopple the Whale) have poor memories. They have many sheepy advantages -- they can tell if a person is lying because they can smell it; no one is very conce...