The New Woman of the 1920s appropriated all means of expressing her desires and her sensuality,using makeup as a tool to reach her (The New Woman’s New Look Series)
And so another year has gone. I can hardly believe how far my blog has gone in this year. I’ve learned so many things and I’ve met so many fantastic people. Real life might have been tough, but the blogosphere has given me a lot.
Last year at this time I had just moved to a self-hosted blog and I barely knew what I was doing. It felt quite lonely back then, now that I think about it, but I read that perseverance is the n. 1 weapon of any blogger, so I persevered. And luckily I did.
In April I took part to the AtoZChallenge, which, in addition to being a blast of an experience, allowed me to meet so many of you. I was anticipating the AtoZChallenge to be a nice experience, but I didn’t expect to gain from it all the good things I did.
The challenge also taught me that I shouldn’t be afraid of sharing what (little) I know, that’s how some of the most popular blog posts had been born. I love writing about the Twenties (guess what!) and I now love sharing what I know with all of you.
Sharing, discussing, confronting is the best part of blogging. I know I have still a long way to go, and I can’t wait to move on along it.
I have good travel companions, you know. I’m so grateful for every single person I’ve met on my journey as a writer and a blogger... and a person. You are truly what makes all of this worthwhile.
I anticipate 2016 to be another exciting year. I have plans about it.
So I want to close this year with a special gift. This is the voice of our Earth as the NASA recorded it from space. The voice of our beautiful mother.
“Don’t take them in the house, Digger. I’ll send them out.”
“Are they all together?”
“All? There’s only two here now. Hank and Jodie.”
“Slim ought to be here too,” Imabelle said in a breathless voice. Both Grave Digger and Billie turned to stare at her.
“Maybe he’s out looking for me.”
Billie looked away from her first. Grave Digger…
Mock up cover
I have to tell you: I’m having such fun with Give in to the Feeling it’s not even healthy! Why am I surprised? I don’t know! I mean, these are the same characters from the novels, and yes, I’ve always loved writing about them, but with this story there’s something different. It may…
In the dwarven city of Hammertown, far from the war between elves and the civilized world, PI Sebastion Locke has discovered a dirty little elven secret.
Last summer Lucy Flinch passed me on the 777 Challenge. I know I’ve already done one, but I really enjoyed it, and anyway, I’m working on a new story now and can sure post seven different sentences.
The 777 challenge requires you go to Page 7 of your work-in-progress, scroll down to Line 7 and…
The second week was indeed the week of the New Woman’s New Look series. And believe me, it was a busy week.
Of course I knew this series is demanding, but really, it drained me! There’s a lot of material to organize - and still I realized I don’t have enough info on a few topics and I need to research more. But I have the skeleton of the series now and I can’t begin to tell you how happy I am about it because this allows me to organize my future work. I also know now that I’ll have four more installments and more or less how long they will be. The next two installments, those about make-up, are more than just drafted. Beside, make-up was the original idea for the series and it’s where I have more info and material. It was only later on that It occurred to me that it would be interesting to explore not only make-up, but the entire evolution of the woman’s body and looks of it in the 1920s as a social statement.
Writing down what I do have at the moment, I saw that I need a lot more material on the perception of the woman’s body (both on her side and on her critiques’ side) as well as a lot more material on two very new practices of the Twenties: dieting and tanning.
I also see I have very little on bobbed hair and I’d really like to address this subject more in depth. Bobbing their hair was shocking to Twenties’ woman and their contemporaries than today’s people normally appreciate. It wasn’t a fashion thing at all, but – maybe even more that the rest of the new behaviors of women – it was a social statement, and one of the more fiercely opposed to by traditionalists.
No question I need far more material than I have on this subject.
But all in all, I think I’ll be able to post the two article about make-up in December, which will give me time enough to perfect the other two articles for January.
Stay tuned! I’ve also basically written all the challenges and tags I still have open, with the only exception of the One Day Photo Challenge in Verona. But I’m not particularly worried about that, it will be an easy writing (mhm… last famous words?).
For next week, I’m planning to revise Give in to the Feeling. Though honestly I’m not sure one week will be enough. As I typed it on my pc last weekend, I noticed there is a lot to revise and a lot to actually rewrite in order to smooth down the narration and to make characters’ motives clear. But we’ll see. I can’t wait to start that part of job! Instead I’m quite worried about the AtoZ Challenge posts. I did a part of the research before NaNo started, but I didn’t take down all the notes I need in order to write the articles. I still have to take down all the notes from The Jazz Revolution, which is the main structure of the entire series, and read through all the other resources and take down notes as I go. I really don’t know how I’ll do this. But hey, I’ll try. It is possible that this series will stretch into December, but that’s fine. What I want is having it drafted before the end of the year… and I do think I’ll be able to do that. All in all, I’ve already written most of the posts I planned to write, which is already a good thing. Maybe I’ll have a little time to sketch up a few other posts, which I really hope. But on the whole, I can’t complain.
What about you? How’s your NaNo going?
