Month: December 2023

Old Thoughts on Christmas Stories

/ JD Byrne / Leave a comment

Both because I’m still hard at work on the new novel I started during NaNoWriMo and because the rigors of the holidays are starting to catch up with me, I’m going to wrap things up here for the year with a regift of a post I wrote in 2021 about what makes a Christmas story.

A confession – I’ve never seen Die Hard. I’m not really an action movie guy, so it’s not really in my wheelhouse. I was kind of surprised when it started popping up described as a “Christmas movie,” but I suppose it takes place during the holiday, so why not? Then early this week I saw an interesting push back against that argument – basically that while the movie takes place at Christmas it doesn’t actually have anything to do with Christmas or what it means. That got me thinking about what makes a Christmas story and whether you can have a Christmas story that doesn’t even have Christmas in it.

I stand by what I wrote then, which is ultimately what matters the most about whether something is a Christmas story or not is whether you think it is or want it to be. In the time since I have seen Die Hard and tend to agree that it’s more Christmas adjacent than anything else, but if that’s what lights your tree who am I to say otherwise?

Even if this is more my speed:

Regardless of how you celebrate, what you celebrate, or even if you don’t – Happy Holidays! See you in 2024.

At Least I Got This Cool Graphic

/ JD Byrne / Leave a comment

NaNoWriMo is over, which means it’s time to take stock and see whether it was all worth it. Was it? Well, I did get this spiffy graphic:

Which means, yes, I “won” again this year. I’m particularly pleased since the month included not only Thanksgiving (which my wife and I host for the family, so lots of work) but a birthday weekend jaunt to New Orleans (thanks, honey!) and I still managed to keep to task and wind up with 50k+ words in the end.

I’m really happy with them, too. There are definitely things that need to get worked out in a second draft (I have notes, of course), but this story and this main characters and taking me to some different, interesting places. Alabrie, the city-state where the story is set, is shaping up to be a character all in itself.

It’s not done, of course, not even the first draft, but I can see the end of the tunnel. More than most books I had a real idea of what the entire story was before I sat down to write it. Still, much work still left to do.