A lot of you ask me all the time when I post Facebook statuses about writing if it's still the same book that I've been working on forever. It is not. The fact is, I have a number of projects going right now. I figured a blog entry would help me gain some clarity about where I'm at with each of them, and give any of you who are interested a little glimpse into my writing brain. It's a frightening place, full of melodrama and plot holes. But it makes for a fun ride.
Less Than Perfect: This is my first finished novel, the story of Katie, who falls in love with a football player after her first husband passes away of cancer. This is the one I started writing for NaNoWriMo in 2010 and finished a first draft on by the end of the following summer. It went through 6 drafts before I felt it was finished, this past February. And since then, I have been in the process of querying agents with an eye toward publication. I have not had any feedback as of yet and am considering further edits of the manuscript. I fear my word count is holding me back.
Untitled Sequel: This is a sequel to Less Than Perfect. It takes place 5 years after the first one. I actually started messing with it before I had finished writing LTP. There were things with the characters of Katie and Sam that cropped up during drafting the first book that I wanted to explore and I just couldn't quite let them go when LTP was finished, so I decided to go ahead and do a sequel. I just finished the first draft today, in fact. It's going to need some work. A lot of work.
Brian and Iris: This is the working title for a spinoff of the LTP sequel. A bunch of my friends fell in love with the character of Brian when they were helping me with edits on LTP and kept saying, "If you're doing a sequel it should be about Brian." And Brian is a favorite character of mine, too, kind of a tribute to all the amazing gay men I've ever had the privilege to call my friends, with a little more of one of those friends than all the rest. And so I started by just doing a couple of scenes to see how they would turn out, and I loved them, and I have about 50% of this spinoff written. It keeps getting set aside as I work on the other two, because its major plot point won't make any sense without the LTP sequel being finished first. But I think it's going to be really good when it's finished.
Jess and Aaron: This is not a working title, just the name of the two main characters. After finishing an entire draft of an entire novel and making good starts on two sequels, I was feeling better about my writing than I had in years, and I took out my original, unfinished novel that I struggled with from my late 20s into my early 30s and finally gave up on, and wondered if there was anything I could do with it. Around the same time I was working on that, I also had a bunch of scenes about a character named Jess who I kind of love, because she's crazy -- she makes every wrong move that I never made in my own life. And I decided that I could tell her story as a sister or cousin of the main character in that original unfinished novel, and it's working out great. I worked on it for one of the NaNo challenges last year, a summer camp one, I think, and have about 90% of a first draft done.
The problem is that I've now reached a point where I want to edit as I go, which is a fast trip to nowhere-near-finishing in my personal experience. So I have to force myself to keep going forward. What this means is that sometimes, and in this particular story's case, I don't quite find my ending as quickly as I'd like. But then, when I go back through to edit, I realize that I haven't, in fact, found my true beginning. This one is going to take a ton of work. While at its core is a love story, it deals with some very heavy subject matter and it would be wrong to not do proper justice to it.
Breathing Room: This was my NaNoWriMo 2012 project. It was one of those last minute changes of plans -- I had an outline going for something else, and then October 31st rolled around and I started spewing this out two hours before midnight instead. This is about a young woman whose older sister dies (I like to write about death a lot). In some ways, it is a thinly veiled semi-autobiographical account of me dealing with my own sister's death. But this is a very different family than mine, and the way everyone copes is also very different. This one will probably not see the light of day for a very long time. Sensitive subject matter and all that. It was weirdly easy to write, though. (Or not weird at all.)
Some Nights: This was going to wait for NaNo Camp for April but the idea came to me at the beginning of March, I was tired of LTP, and I really needed to immerse myself in a different world, so I started in March and had half of it done by the time April rolled around. This is the story of a woman who cheats on her husband -- with one of his best friends, no less. It's a difficult subject to tackle, not least because I would never do what she does myself, so it's hard to get into the mindset of someone who would without just hating her. But because of that challenge, it was actually super fun to write, and I have a whole first draft (though the ending is a bit sketchy) ready to be tinkered with. I'm really excited about this one too.
So those are my ongoing projects. I am cooking up a great one for my next new thing. But for right now, my plan is to continue to work on querying Less Than Perfect and begin edits on the sequel. Writing is hard, but I can't quit.
Sunday, May 19, 2013
Sunday, February 24, 2013
Best Picture Fest 2013
So it's time once again for my annual Best Picture nominee post. And it occurs to me that I've totally made up my own name for this thing that AMC Theatres does -- it's really called Best Picture Showcase (and I thank AMC for doing this every year, because Evil Rob and I both love going). But "fest" sounds so much more... festive.
I digress. Herewith, my thoughts both pithy and deep on the Best Picture nominated films:
Amour: An Austrian filmmaker's French film about an aging couple living in Paris; the wife suffers some strokes and begins to deteriorate; the husband insists that he will care for her himself, at home, with little outside assistance. There is a grown daughter who lives in London with a husband that no one likes and she keeps coming to visit, to tell her father that he can't continue the way he is; he in turn tells her that the only other option is to put his wife in a hospital and he won't have it. It's an interesting film, I'll give it that. It's bleak and entirely unsentimental. There are things I like about it: the way that it looks like the husband and wife are engaged in a dance every time he helps her move from her wheelchair to a chair or to bed. That the husband only ever lost his patience with her one time. That it is entirely unsentimental. But in the end, it just left me so emotionally drained, I can't say I liked it. And the movie theatre was filled with old people and I just have to wonder how it made them feel -- like, "This is it?"
And of course every tiny ache or pain I have now, I'm convinced I'm dying.
Les Miserables: I went to see this with two of my best girlfriends a few weeks ago and within 45 seconds all three of us were doing the ugly cry -- well, they were, but I am always pretty when I cry. Ha. Anyway, it was like that for the entire movie, save for the four minutes of comedy during "Master of the House". And we loved it. We loved every second of it. Caveat: we are all three huge fans of the Les Miserables musical (and musicals in general) to begin with. And I would never recommend it to anyone who isn't a fan of musicals or even this specific musical. The bulk of the cast was so amazing that we were able to forgive the presence of Russell Crowe, who cannot sing; I didn't mind the coldness with which he played the role of Javert as it felt true to the book to me, but my friends would have preferred him to be a little more tortured. Anne Hathaway was fucking amazing and any awards she's won for her role as Fantine are very well deserved. It's a good movie, if you're into that sort of thing.
Argo: Ben Affleck directed himself in this tale of the rescue of 6 US Embassy employees from Iran in 1979, during the hostage crisis. These employees escaped the embassy as it fell and hid in the house of the Canadian ambassador to Iran for several months before the US attempted a rescue plan. Affleck stars as Tony Mendez, the CIA operative chosen to extract them. For what is billed as a "political thriller", it is a delightfully low-key movie and entertaining as hell, especially the humorous bits with Alan Arkin and John Goodman as the Hollywood director and producer Affleck's character turns to for help with his plan: disguise the 6 fugitives as a Hollywood film crew scouting locations for a fictitious sci-fi film called Argo. It's just crazy enough to work. This is a movie that could have been marred by a lot of fake added unnecessary drama (and they did add a little, but come on -- it's still a movie), but instead Affleck trusted in the actors to just get it done -- and that's what I think I liked most about this one. Even the bit parts are well-acted. Definitely high on my list of faves.
Django Unchained: Evil Rob and I delighted in this hyper-violent Quentin Tarantino film about a freed slave named Django who is hired by a German bounty hunter to help him find a certain slave overseer who has evaded a murder charge; in exchange, he agrees to help Django find and free his wife, who has been sold to a ruthless plantation owner (played frighteningly well by Leonardo DiCaprio). This movie is so much more than the trademark Tarantino violence: It's a story of an unlikely friendship between the two men at its core. It's a depiction of how grisly and violent the American slave-owning past was. And it's a love story. There has been a lot of talk about this movie -- complaints that it is too violent, complaints that it is racist. And I find in general that this kind of talk comes from liberal white people who are deep down uncomfortable with confronting this part of our past, and deep down uncomfortable with a love story between Django and his wife Broomhilda. Uncomfortable with the depiction of Broomhilda, a black woman, as the most beautiful woman in the crazy, fucked up world the movie depicts. And yes, I really, truly believe that if the knee-jerk haters ("Oh, it's just so violent") really examined what it is that they didn't like, it would be that it's a bunch of white people getting their just desserts for oppressing and enslaving and brutalizing an entire race of humans.
It's a travesty that this movie hasn't been nominated for more acting awards and that Tarantino has been left out of the Best Director category. So much b.s. surrounding this movie. Whatever. It's an awesome movie.
Beasts of the Southern Wild: I had high expectations for this movie and am happy to report that I was not even remotely disappointed. It's a beautiful depiction of a little girl called Hushpuppy and her father living in "The Bath Tub," a bit of swampy island below the levees in Louisiana. Their entire way of life is like nothing you've ever seen before; they are scrappy people who just live off the water. We would call them "poor"; they would call themselves wealthy. Hushpuppy has a big imagination and is always holding animals and other bits of nature up to her ear to listen to their heartbeats. Her father is the only parent she has; he's a bit of an alcoholic mess and he's dying of blood poisoning. A hurricane comes along and floods The Bath Tub. Hushpuppy and her father survive and eventually band together with a number of other Bath Tub residents who have also weathered the storm; these people become family to one another through the course of the film. They keep waiting for the water to go down so they can return to their homes but the levees up north prevent the water from going down, and everything is starting to die. Eventually Hushpuppy's dad and his friends take matters into their own hands and go blow a breach in the levee. The water goes down but their homes are still uninhabitable. And then the government comes and forces them all to a shelter, which is their worst nightmare -- the loss of freedom they get from their lifestyle.
So many things that are beautiful about this movie: Hushpuppy herself. The relationship between her and her father -- I think some people might see it as brutal but I love that he's teaching her to be strong, to be "The King of the Bath Tub". The familial relationship between the storm survivors. The teacher who says, "You've got to learn to be kinder to the ones who are smaller and sweeter than ourselves." (That might be a misquote but it's close.) And the beautiful moment near the end with Hushpuppy and a woman who may or may not be her long-disappeared mother. Evil Rob and I were both weeping.
My only beef with this movie is that shaky camerawork literally made me seasick; I was wishing I had a dramamine by the end. It might not be as bad on a smaller screen.
Life of Pi: Proof that a movie can be the most beautiful thing you've ever looked at and still be completely devoid of any substance. Things I liked: the use of 3D (and I don't say that lightly -- 3D makes me ill). The young actor who played Pi on the boat. Pi's religious seeking in his early life -- it felt real, the way some children can be truly curious about the sometimes fascinating trappings of unfamiliar religions. Things I didn't like: how heavy handed the faith message was -- would a little subtlety, a little trust in the filmgoer, be such a bad thing? Apparently. The older Pi talking to the writer -- these two characters are both lame. The second version of the story that Pi gave to the investigators -- this was making women in the theatre weep and I was just scowling, wondering what the hell is wrong with people. In general, this is a pretty and expensive lame movie. But I would kind of like my son to see it because I think that's what it really is -- a movie for kids exploring faith.
Lincoln: Oh this movie. It would have been fantastic were it not for Sally Field playing Mary Todd Lincoln as Forrest Gump's mother. I wanted less family, more political intrigue. Evil Rob wanted to punch the kid playing younger son Tad right in the face. Steven Spielberg loves an annoying kid, though, doesn't he? This one -- take it or leave it. I don't hate it, I don't love it, I will never watch it again.
Silver Linings Playbook: I think this one is my favorite?? It's wonderful. So well done. It could have just been a silly romantic comedy in the hands of a different director, but instead, we get the first truly brilliant performance out of Bradley Cooper and another tour de force performance from Jennifer Lawrence (who I kind of wish was my best friend in real life), combining to make a great movie about love and mental illness and family and football and ballroom dancing. I love Jennifer Lawrence enough in anything that I can't tear my eyes away from her when she's onscreen, and this was no exception. I didn't want it to end. LOVE. IT.
Zero Dark Thirty: This one is my other favorite. But again, I love political/espionage thrillers, especially when they are as well done as this or Argo. Obviously this is a little more brutal, what with the depictions of torture and terrorism and the final sequence depicting the Navy SEAL operation to take out Osama Bin Laden. Jessica Chastain is wonderful as the young CIA operative working as a finder assigned to locate members of Al Qaeda, Bin Laden included. She's a quiet badass. My favorite line of hers is "I'm the motherfucker who found this place," to Leon Panetta. And again, it's a movie where every single bit part is well-acted -- and it was kind of fun to play "Spot the guy from..." especially towards the last third. What I also think is really well done is how Kathryn Bigelow has risen above any sort of political statement one way or the other and has just told the story she wanted to tell. Sure, people will watch it with their own political agendas and read into it what they want to read into, but let's be real -- it's a fucking movie, based on facts but dramatized to make a good movie. I think it's hilarious how people are cool with a dramatization of facts (Argo) as long as it doesn't make them too uncomfortable, but as soon as it makes them squirm, they're flipping the fuck out. Get real. And watch this movie. It's awesome.
______
And so here's how I would fill out my Oscar ballot for Best Picture if I were an Oscar voter (you're supposed to rank them with 1 being your favorite, 9 being your least; you can abstain from doing a full ranking as well if you don't think all the movies are worthy of the award):
1 - Silver Linings Playbook
2 - Zero Dark Thirty
3 - Beasts of the Southern Wild
4 - Argo
5 - Django Unchained
6 - Les Miserables
7 - Life of Pi
8 - Lincoln (interestingly, I had this ranked above Life of Pi last night, but now that I've thought about it, I disliked the things I disliked about this movie more than I disliked the things I hated about Life of Pi)
9 - Amour.
Evil Rob's ranking would go like this:
1 - Django Unchained
2 - Silver Linings Playbook
3 - Beasts of the Southern Wild
4 - Zero Dark Thirty
5 - Argo
6 - Lincoln
7 - Life of Pi
8 - Amour (he didn't see this one)
9 - Les Miserables (he refused to see this one).
It's very, very close between my top five, and then there is a precipitous drop off between 6 and 7. I would be super disappointed if any of my bottom 3 were to win.
Okay? Now go watch some good movies!
I digress. Herewith, my thoughts both pithy and deep on the Best Picture nominated films:
Amour: An Austrian filmmaker's French film about an aging couple living in Paris; the wife suffers some strokes and begins to deteriorate; the husband insists that he will care for her himself, at home, with little outside assistance. There is a grown daughter who lives in London with a husband that no one likes and she keeps coming to visit, to tell her father that he can't continue the way he is; he in turn tells her that the only other option is to put his wife in a hospital and he won't have it. It's an interesting film, I'll give it that. It's bleak and entirely unsentimental. There are things I like about it: the way that it looks like the husband and wife are engaged in a dance every time he helps her move from her wheelchair to a chair or to bed. That the husband only ever lost his patience with her one time. That it is entirely unsentimental. But in the end, it just left me so emotionally drained, I can't say I liked it. And the movie theatre was filled with old people and I just have to wonder how it made them feel -- like, "This is it?"
And of course every tiny ache or pain I have now, I'm convinced I'm dying.
Les Miserables: I went to see this with two of my best girlfriends a few weeks ago and within 45 seconds all three of us were doing the ugly cry -- well, they were, but I am always pretty when I cry. Ha. Anyway, it was like that for the entire movie, save for the four minutes of comedy during "Master of the House". And we loved it. We loved every second of it. Caveat: we are all three huge fans of the Les Miserables musical (and musicals in general) to begin with. And I would never recommend it to anyone who isn't a fan of musicals or even this specific musical. The bulk of the cast was so amazing that we were able to forgive the presence of Russell Crowe, who cannot sing; I didn't mind the coldness with which he played the role of Javert as it felt true to the book to me, but my friends would have preferred him to be a little more tortured. Anne Hathaway was fucking amazing and any awards she's won for her role as Fantine are very well deserved. It's a good movie, if you're into that sort of thing.
Argo: Ben Affleck directed himself in this tale of the rescue of 6 US Embassy employees from Iran in 1979, during the hostage crisis. These employees escaped the embassy as it fell and hid in the house of the Canadian ambassador to Iran for several months before the US attempted a rescue plan. Affleck stars as Tony Mendez, the CIA operative chosen to extract them. For what is billed as a "political thriller", it is a delightfully low-key movie and entertaining as hell, especially the humorous bits with Alan Arkin and John Goodman as the Hollywood director and producer Affleck's character turns to for help with his plan: disguise the 6 fugitives as a Hollywood film crew scouting locations for a fictitious sci-fi film called Argo. It's just crazy enough to work. This is a movie that could have been marred by a lot of fake added unnecessary drama (and they did add a little, but come on -- it's still a movie), but instead Affleck trusted in the actors to just get it done -- and that's what I think I liked most about this one. Even the bit parts are well-acted. Definitely high on my list of faves.
Django Unchained: Evil Rob and I delighted in this hyper-violent Quentin Tarantino film about a freed slave named Django who is hired by a German bounty hunter to help him find a certain slave overseer who has evaded a murder charge; in exchange, he agrees to help Django find and free his wife, who has been sold to a ruthless plantation owner (played frighteningly well by Leonardo DiCaprio). This movie is so much more than the trademark Tarantino violence: It's a story of an unlikely friendship between the two men at its core. It's a depiction of how grisly and violent the American slave-owning past was. And it's a love story. There has been a lot of talk about this movie -- complaints that it is too violent, complaints that it is racist. And I find in general that this kind of talk comes from liberal white people who are deep down uncomfortable with confronting this part of our past, and deep down uncomfortable with a love story between Django and his wife Broomhilda. Uncomfortable with the depiction of Broomhilda, a black woman, as the most beautiful woman in the crazy, fucked up world the movie depicts. And yes, I really, truly believe that if the knee-jerk haters ("Oh, it's just so violent") really examined what it is that they didn't like, it would be that it's a bunch of white people getting their just desserts for oppressing and enslaving and brutalizing an entire race of humans.
It's a travesty that this movie hasn't been nominated for more acting awards and that Tarantino has been left out of the Best Director category. So much b.s. surrounding this movie. Whatever. It's an awesome movie.
Beasts of the Southern Wild: I had high expectations for this movie and am happy to report that I was not even remotely disappointed. It's a beautiful depiction of a little girl called Hushpuppy and her father living in "The Bath Tub," a bit of swampy island below the levees in Louisiana. Their entire way of life is like nothing you've ever seen before; they are scrappy people who just live off the water. We would call them "poor"; they would call themselves wealthy. Hushpuppy has a big imagination and is always holding animals and other bits of nature up to her ear to listen to their heartbeats. Her father is the only parent she has; he's a bit of an alcoholic mess and he's dying of blood poisoning. A hurricane comes along and floods The Bath Tub. Hushpuppy and her father survive and eventually band together with a number of other Bath Tub residents who have also weathered the storm; these people become family to one another through the course of the film. They keep waiting for the water to go down so they can return to their homes but the levees up north prevent the water from going down, and everything is starting to die. Eventually Hushpuppy's dad and his friends take matters into their own hands and go blow a breach in the levee. The water goes down but their homes are still uninhabitable. And then the government comes and forces them all to a shelter, which is their worst nightmare -- the loss of freedom they get from their lifestyle.
So many things that are beautiful about this movie: Hushpuppy herself. The relationship between her and her father -- I think some people might see it as brutal but I love that he's teaching her to be strong, to be "The King of the Bath Tub". The familial relationship between the storm survivors. The teacher who says, "You've got to learn to be kinder to the ones who are smaller and sweeter than ourselves." (That might be a misquote but it's close.) And the beautiful moment near the end with Hushpuppy and a woman who may or may not be her long-disappeared mother. Evil Rob and I were both weeping.
My only beef with this movie is that shaky camerawork literally made me seasick; I was wishing I had a dramamine by the end. It might not be as bad on a smaller screen.
Life of Pi: Proof that a movie can be the most beautiful thing you've ever looked at and still be completely devoid of any substance. Things I liked: the use of 3D (and I don't say that lightly -- 3D makes me ill). The young actor who played Pi on the boat. Pi's religious seeking in his early life -- it felt real, the way some children can be truly curious about the sometimes fascinating trappings of unfamiliar religions. Things I didn't like: how heavy handed the faith message was -- would a little subtlety, a little trust in the filmgoer, be such a bad thing? Apparently. The older Pi talking to the writer -- these two characters are both lame. The second version of the story that Pi gave to the investigators -- this was making women in the theatre weep and I was just scowling, wondering what the hell is wrong with people. In general, this is a pretty and expensive lame movie. But I would kind of like my son to see it because I think that's what it really is -- a movie for kids exploring faith.
Lincoln: Oh this movie. It would have been fantastic were it not for Sally Field playing Mary Todd Lincoln as Forrest Gump's mother. I wanted less family, more political intrigue. Evil Rob wanted to punch the kid playing younger son Tad right in the face. Steven Spielberg loves an annoying kid, though, doesn't he? This one -- take it or leave it. I don't hate it, I don't love it, I will never watch it again.
Silver Linings Playbook: I think this one is my favorite?? It's wonderful. So well done. It could have just been a silly romantic comedy in the hands of a different director, but instead, we get the first truly brilliant performance out of Bradley Cooper and another tour de force performance from Jennifer Lawrence (who I kind of wish was my best friend in real life), combining to make a great movie about love and mental illness and family and football and ballroom dancing. I love Jennifer Lawrence enough in anything that I can't tear my eyes away from her when she's onscreen, and this was no exception. I didn't want it to end. LOVE. IT.
Zero Dark Thirty: This one is my other favorite. But again, I love political/espionage thrillers, especially when they are as well done as this or Argo. Obviously this is a little more brutal, what with the depictions of torture and terrorism and the final sequence depicting the Navy SEAL operation to take out Osama Bin Laden. Jessica Chastain is wonderful as the young CIA operative working as a finder assigned to locate members of Al Qaeda, Bin Laden included. She's a quiet badass. My favorite line of hers is "I'm the motherfucker who found this place," to Leon Panetta. And again, it's a movie where every single bit part is well-acted -- and it was kind of fun to play "Spot the guy from..." especially towards the last third. What I also think is really well done is how Kathryn Bigelow has risen above any sort of political statement one way or the other and has just told the story she wanted to tell. Sure, people will watch it with their own political agendas and read into it what they want to read into, but let's be real -- it's a fucking movie, based on facts but dramatized to make a good movie. I think it's hilarious how people are cool with a dramatization of facts (Argo) as long as it doesn't make them too uncomfortable, but as soon as it makes them squirm, they're flipping the fuck out. Get real. And watch this movie. It's awesome.
______
And so here's how I would fill out my Oscar ballot for Best Picture if I were an Oscar voter (you're supposed to rank them with 1 being your favorite, 9 being your least; you can abstain from doing a full ranking as well if you don't think all the movies are worthy of the award):
1 - Silver Linings Playbook
2 - Zero Dark Thirty
3 - Beasts of the Southern Wild
4 - Argo
5 - Django Unchained
6 - Les Miserables
7 - Life of Pi
8 - Lincoln (interestingly, I had this ranked above Life of Pi last night, but now that I've thought about it, I disliked the things I disliked about this movie more than I disliked the things I hated about Life of Pi)
9 - Amour.
Evil Rob's ranking would go like this:
1 - Django Unchained
2 - Silver Linings Playbook
3 - Beasts of the Southern Wild
4 - Zero Dark Thirty
5 - Argo
6 - Lincoln
7 - Life of Pi
8 - Amour (he didn't see this one)
9 - Les Miserables (he refused to see this one).
It's very, very close between my top five, and then there is a precipitous drop off between 6 and 7. I would be super disappointed if any of my bottom 3 were to win.
Okay? Now go watch some good movies!
Monday, December 24, 2012
Christmas Eve Bolognese
(12/21/2014 I've updated this post to include a list of ingredients -- it's at the end! Happy cooking!)
So every year on Christmas Eve I make this wonderful traditional bolognese sauce for dinner and every year everyone asks me for the recipe. And every year I think I should share the recipe, but the problem is, there isn't really a recipe -- there is more a cooking procedure. So yesterday, while I was putting it together, I actually had the presence of mind to take photos so that I could post step by step instructions! And instead of the ten million rants about various subjects I have brewing inside my head that I could have written here, I'm posting about making bolognese sauce. And then you guys can all make it next year. Or on a special occasion. Because it is for sure a special occasion sauce -- the cooking time alone isn't for the faint of heart. And there is nothing low fat or healthy about it. And really if you're not a fan of pork and bacon-y things, this is NOT the sauce for you. To leave those out would make just a boring old meat sauce.
(Bear in mind that this ain't no food blog, so the photos that follow might not be particularly pretty.)
Step 1: Make a battuto of carrots, celery, and sweet onion (4-6 regular sized carrots, about 6-8 celery stalks including leaves, which add flavor, and 2 small sweet onions or 1 large). This means dice them all really, really small -- I pulse mine in the food processor. Saute in olive oil on medium high in a large pot -- mine is a 7-quart, I believe (you're going to cook the entire thing in this one pot). Let it cook till it's good and fragrant. And then add 4-6 decent sized cloves of garlic (more if you're really into garlic, but not less than 4), smushed in a garlic press.
Step 2: Add meat! First, 1 pound of diced prosciutto. Decent American grocery stores sell pre-diced prosciutto in their department with the fancy deli meat and bacon and sausage. If you can't get prosciutto, I would say that the only acceptable substitute is a really nice regular bacon. But not some cheapo Oscar Meyer crap -- get some good stuff. I wouldn't sub pancetta -- it's too sweet. Let the prosciutto cook for a few minutes, till it smells really nice.
Step 3: Keep adding meat! Next, one pound of ground pork. I did use lean this time but only because that's all the store had; normally I wouldn't have cared.
Cook till the pork is no longer pink.
Step 4: More meat! Add two pounds of ground beef. I used one pound that was 93% lean and one that was just 85% and that seems to have worked out really well; less lean and you'll just have more natural broth to work with, which is fine! (If you are a super daring traditionalist, it's after this step that you'll want to add about half a pound of chicken livers. I think chicken livers are disgusting, so I would never.)
Step 5: Add peeled tomatoes! You'll want two large (28 oz) cans; I like Muir Glen because they are actually peeled instead of half-assed peeled. Cut into quarters and dump into the pot. Pour in the extra tomato juice too.
Mmm!
Step 6: Add some spices. I use about a teaspoon each of dried thyme and dried oregano.
And nutmeg! Besides prosciutto, nutmeg is a key ingredient. When I researched how to make this a few years back, the most intriguing suggestion I found was to use WHOLE nutmeg instead of ground (mostly because I am a lazy ass cook who doesn't want to spend time grating nutmeg): just drop in four whole cloves of nutmeg, and let them cook down in the sauce. They impart a gorgeous flavor without being overwhelming. Don't skip nutmeg! But make sure to warn people to look out for the cloves when they're eating. Or try to find them before you serve.
Step 7: At this point, if you are not allergic to red wine like I am, you would want to deglaze with about 1 cup of red wine. I skip the wine always and have never had a flavor issue, though.
Step 8: Add broth! You don't want your sauce to be super soupy, nor do you want it to be super thick (unless you're into that). So start with about two cups of beef broth. And yes, it has to be beef broth. Other broths would make it taste weird. As it brews, you can decide later whether or not to use more; I almost always wind up using an entire box (4 cups).
Step 9: Add a small can of tomato paste. You might add a second one later, if you add more broth.
Step 10: Stir in a few dried or fresh bay leaves. I prefer the fresh ones from the herb section of the store but they were out this time so I just used dried.
Step 11: Let it brew! Three hours at minimum, on medium low heat. It should simmer, but not boil. I always cook mine for at least six hours. Usually I get up first thing Christmas Eve morning and put it together, and pretty much just let it cook all day.
Step 12: Cook some noodles! You want a thick noodle that can hold the heaviness of this sauce. Tagliatelle is traditional, but we also love rigatoni noodles when eating leftovers.
Step 13: Right before serving, grind up some fresh basil and stir it into the sauce.
Step 14: Eat! Share it with your family. They will love you, and beg you to make this all the time. You will hold it over their heads all year, reminding them how hard it is and how long it takes to cook it, only busting it out on holidays and birthdays. I eat mine without cheese because I can't have milk, but a little sprinkling of parmesan is nice on it too. We also like to have bread. My friend Russ swears that this type of sauce is only for dipping bread into and noodles are unnecessary; I think he has an excellent point.
Enjoy! And merry Christmas!
Ingredients List:
6-8 celery stalks including leaves, finely diced
4-6 large carrots, peeled and finely diced (I use a 1/2 lb bag of baby carrots because I am lazy)
1 large sweet onion, finely diced (or 2 small)
1 lb diced prosciutto (see notes in Step 2)
1 lb lean or regular ground pork
2 lbs ground beef (can be extra lean if you want)
2 large (28 oz) cans Muir Glen whole peeled tomatoes (any brand is fine, but this one I can count on actually being peeled when I open the can), cut into quarters, and juice from the can
1 tsp dried thyme
1 tsp dried oregano
Whole nutmeg - 4 cloves (try to remove before serving)
(Optional) 1 cup red wine
2-4 cups of beef broth
4-6 dried or fresh bay leaves (try to remove before serving)
wide noodles such as Tagliatelle (rigatoni also works)
fresh basil, ground
grated parmesan for serving
Tuesday, November 06, 2012
It's that time of year again...
Ah yes, November. The month where everything gets darker for longer. The month where we now have something called Movember and people wear fake mustaches in their various social media profile pictures, seemingly just to annoy me. I even heard something, maybe two somethings, or something, about an election, or something.
It's also National Novel Writing Month! Or NaNo as the lazy like to call it. And I am for sure one of the lazy.
But I am not too lazy to commit to writing 50,000 words in November. It's 6 days in and I'm a little over 17,000. Not bad. Not bad at all. Of course I'm quickly running out of material so let's talk again when I hit the halfway mark and start sobbing over my Mac keyboard with a Red Vine hanging out of my mouth (I'd Instagram that shit but my husband still won't let me get a iPhone).
So for the unitiated, NaNo is an actual Thing, with a nonprofit educational foundation and a young writer's program and a giant website with forums and a place to track your progress and everything. It's pretty cool. And last year I made a bunch of awesome new friends in the Chick Lit forum, and we have our own little Facebook group and help each other with our writing year round. And sometimes some of the other forum areas have been helpful in the past as well.
But.
But.
This year? I think maybe I've completely outgrown this sort of internet-based interaction. And I came to this conclusion this afternoon:
I think maybe most of these people are just posting in the forums to get attention, and aren't really wanting help or wanting to have discussions.
I know!
I know, it's totally crazy.
And yet, there's the woman trolling the Chick Lit forums who keeps saying insulting things about Chick Lit nearly every day, trying to get us to rebut, but she has yet to write a single word. (I know what you're going to say, NaNo Cheerleaders: Maybe she just doesn't know how to update her Word Count. Sure. Maybe that's true. And maybe I'm going to write a fucking sci fi novel next year. Maybe that's true too.)
And then there's the girl who posted a thread asking for help coming up with a career for her main character. And everything everyone's posted in response, she's argued with. And in one case even said, "Politics is scary." Which -- yes. Politics are scary. But not for the reasons you think they are scary.
And then there are the people who kind of want you to just, you know, write their novel for them. "What should my characters say in this situation?" "What should happen next?" "Does anyone have any ideas about what I should write?"
(Answers: What did you say when that happened to you in real life?; Someone should die next. Someone should always die.; and Words. You should write words.)
And then there are the people who want advice on how to be funny when they write. Um, sweetie, you're either funny or you aren't. No one can help you now.
Oh, yes, and there are the first time writers who want someone to read their stuff. I promise: I would rather get a root canal than read the tripe of a person who has never written before. Please just spew your word vomit, crow about your word count, and chalk the whole thing up as practice for next time.
God. It is so damn hard to be so fucking perfect.
But yes. I think I might be done with this whole "visting the NaNo forums" thing. I think I might just, you know --- write my novel.
I'll let you know how this works out for me.
It's also National Novel Writing Month! Or NaNo as the lazy like to call it. And I am for sure one of the lazy.
But I am not too lazy to commit to writing 50,000 words in November. It's 6 days in and I'm a little over 17,000. Not bad. Not bad at all. Of course I'm quickly running out of material so let's talk again when I hit the halfway mark and start sobbing over my Mac keyboard with a Red Vine hanging out of my mouth (I'd Instagram that shit but my husband still won't let me get a iPhone).
So for the unitiated, NaNo is an actual Thing, with a nonprofit educational foundation and a young writer's program and a giant website with forums and a place to track your progress and everything. It's pretty cool. And last year I made a bunch of awesome new friends in the Chick Lit forum, and we have our own little Facebook group and help each other with our writing year round. And sometimes some of the other forum areas have been helpful in the past as well.
But.
But.
This year? I think maybe I've completely outgrown this sort of internet-based interaction. And I came to this conclusion this afternoon:
I think maybe most of these people are just posting in the forums to get attention, and aren't really wanting help or wanting to have discussions.
I know!
I know, it's totally crazy.
And yet, there's the woman trolling the Chick Lit forums who keeps saying insulting things about Chick Lit nearly every day, trying to get us to rebut, but she has yet to write a single word. (I know what you're going to say, NaNo Cheerleaders: Maybe she just doesn't know how to update her Word Count. Sure. Maybe that's true. And maybe I'm going to write a fucking sci fi novel next year. Maybe that's true too.)
And then there's the girl who posted a thread asking for help coming up with a career for her main character. And everything everyone's posted in response, she's argued with. And in one case even said, "Politics is scary." Which -- yes. Politics are scary. But not for the reasons you think they are scary.
And then there are the people who kind of want you to just, you know, write their novel for them. "What should my characters say in this situation?" "What should happen next?" "Does anyone have any ideas about what I should write?"
(Answers: What did you say when that happened to you in real life?; Someone should die next. Someone should always die.; and Words. You should write words.)
And then there are the people who want advice on how to be funny when they write. Um, sweetie, you're either funny or you aren't. No one can help you now.
Oh, yes, and there are the first time writers who want someone to read their stuff. I promise: I would rather get a root canal than read the tripe of a person who has never written before. Please just spew your word vomit, crow about your word count, and chalk the whole thing up as practice for next time.
God. It is so damn hard to be so fucking perfect.
But yes. I think I might be done with this whole "visting the NaNo forums" thing. I think I might just, you know --- write my novel.
I'll let you know how this works out for me.
Friday, July 27, 2012
Fear of Something
So it's time. My fucking novel's done and now I have to sell it. Which -- the plan right now is to go the traditional route: find an agent, sell to a traditional publisher. That's the plan. And so now that I can't sit here and tinker around (much) with the actual book any longer, I have to get cracking on the next step -- the agent query letter.
Obviously this involves doing a lot of research about agents and agencies and figuring out which ones I think might be a good fit for my novel, and then actually sending them a letter introducing myself and giving the briefest of summaries (about two sentences) of my novel, and then a bit of resume-like stuff to conclude. It's just more writing, right? Yeah, my novel is decidedly longer than two sentences, but writing -- this is what I do. I should be able to whip this shit out in a day or two of hard work. And then I'll send out a shit ton of letters and wait, and follow up on my shit ton of letters, and wait some more.
But let me tell you, this process sends me into a blind panic. No -- not even a blind panic. It sends me into my own personal version of fight-or-flight hell: stomach pain, joint pain, a headache at the base of my skull, flushed skin, elevated temperature. It's ridiculous. It's a reaction not just similar but IDENTICAL TO my physical response to the worst traumas I've ever suffered through. And there've been a few. I mean, I had some shit go down in college. I had a verbally abusive boyfriend in my late twenties -- terrifying shit that I never knew when it might turn into something else. Some seriously painful stuff -- some I put myself through, some that other people put me through. Stuff I don't talk about, because I've worked through it and past it and it's not something that defines me anymore.
Shit, my sister died -- fucking DIED -- last year, and this feels the same.
Does this make me a horrible person?
Maybe.
But here's why: I have this lifelong fear of success. I mean, it terrifies me. Keeps me awake nights.
Normal people, maybe most people, fear failure. This makes sense: you work hard, you don't want your hard work to be for naught.
Fear of success is weirder than that, and (duh) very hard to describe. But it goes something like this: I've never really failed at anything before (maybe a few algebra tests here and there back in high school), but I've never really shone at anything before either. I'm a good singer, but I've never been the best singer. I was a good skater back when I skated, but I was never the best skater. I was a good speller, but I always came in third place in the biggest spelling bees. All through school I was a good student, but I wasn't the best student. In college I studied Creative Writing. I was good writer but I wasn't necessarily the best writer. It continues into adulthood: I'm a good daughter, but I'm not the best daughter. I'm a good sister, but I'm not the best sister. I'm a good wife but I know some of our friends are way better at it than me. I'm a good mom but I guarantee you I'm not the best mom (that'd be my younger sister). I'm really good at my job but I'm not the best at my job. I'm super funny, but I'm not even the funniest person I know.
So I have all these things that I'm good at but nothing that I am the best at. And I know some of you would argue some of these points with me and I thank you for it (especially the part where you're saying "You ARE the funniest person I know!" -- that's my favorite part). But it's not just a self-esteem issue -- it's all grounded in the truth about who I really am. I am a person who has always been willing to do what's required to meet the expectations others have of me -- my parents, my sisters, my husband, my kid, my friends, my teachers, my employers -- and not really much more than that.
And why? Because I know how to cope with those expectations. I know how to behave in the face of those expectations having been met.
Here's what I don't know how to cope with: being the best at anything. Or having a bunch of people acknowledge that I'm really good at something. And success? Oh dear lord.
Succeeding would change my entire life. Probably, hopefully, for the better.
Some people might think that's a good thing, a great thing -- who doesn't want their life changed for the better?
And it's not that I don't. It's that when I think about it, I can imagine it so well that I can almost taste it. And the thought of NOT getting there... it kills me. It terrifies me. It eats away at my soul.
And so this panic, this terror -- it's perhaps uncalled for. But it's there. I can't make it go away. It reared its head when I was about halfway through the first revision of my novel. And I had to just keep going even in the face of it. And that's all I can do now. I know this is all what Steven Pressfield calls "Resistance".
But I wish I wasn't like this.
Obviously this involves doing a lot of research about agents and agencies and figuring out which ones I think might be a good fit for my novel, and then actually sending them a letter introducing myself and giving the briefest of summaries (about two sentences) of my novel, and then a bit of resume-like stuff to conclude. It's just more writing, right? Yeah, my novel is decidedly longer than two sentences, but writing -- this is what I do. I should be able to whip this shit out in a day or two of hard work. And then I'll send out a shit ton of letters and wait, and follow up on my shit ton of letters, and wait some more.
But let me tell you, this process sends me into a blind panic. No -- not even a blind panic. It sends me into my own personal version of fight-or-flight hell: stomach pain, joint pain, a headache at the base of my skull, flushed skin, elevated temperature. It's ridiculous. It's a reaction not just similar but IDENTICAL TO my physical response to the worst traumas I've ever suffered through. And there've been a few. I mean, I had some shit go down in college. I had a verbally abusive boyfriend in my late twenties -- terrifying shit that I never knew when it might turn into something else. Some seriously painful stuff -- some I put myself through, some that other people put me through. Stuff I don't talk about, because I've worked through it and past it and it's not something that defines me anymore.
Shit, my sister died -- fucking DIED -- last year, and this feels the same.
Does this make me a horrible person?
Maybe.
But here's why: I have this lifelong fear of success. I mean, it terrifies me. Keeps me awake nights.
Normal people, maybe most people, fear failure. This makes sense: you work hard, you don't want your hard work to be for naught.
Fear of success is weirder than that, and (duh) very hard to describe. But it goes something like this: I've never really failed at anything before (maybe a few algebra tests here and there back in high school), but I've never really shone at anything before either. I'm a good singer, but I've never been the best singer. I was a good skater back when I skated, but I was never the best skater. I was a good speller, but I always came in third place in the biggest spelling bees. All through school I was a good student, but I wasn't the best student. In college I studied Creative Writing. I was good writer but I wasn't necessarily the best writer. It continues into adulthood: I'm a good daughter, but I'm not the best daughter. I'm a good sister, but I'm not the best sister. I'm a good wife but I know some of our friends are way better at it than me. I'm a good mom but I guarantee you I'm not the best mom (that'd be my younger sister). I'm really good at my job but I'm not the best at my job. I'm super funny, but I'm not even the funniest person I know.
So I have all these things that I'm good at but nothing that I am the best at. And I know some of you would argue some of these points with me and I thank you for it (especially the part where you're saying "You ARE the funniest person I know!" -- that's my favorite part). But it's not just a self-esteem issue -- it's all grounded in the truth about who I really am. I am a person who has always been willing to do what's required to meet the expectations others have of me -- my parents, my sisters, my husband, my kid, my friends, my teachers, my employers -- and not really much more than that.
And why? Because I know how to cope with those expectations. I know how to behave in the face of those expectations having been met.
Here's what I don't know how to cope with: being the best at anything. Or having a bunch of people acknowledge that I'm really good at something. And success? Oh dear lord.
Succeeding would change my entire life. Probably, hopefully, for the better.
Some people might think that's a good thing, a great thing -- who doesn't want their life changed for the better?
And it's not that I don't. It's that when I think about it, I can imagine it so well that I can almost taste it. And the thought of NOT getting there... it kills me. It terrifies me. It eats away at my soul.
And so this panic, this terror -- it's perhaps uncalled for. But it's there. I can't make it go away. It reared its head when I was about halfway through the first revision of my novel. And I had to just keep going even in the face of it. And that's all I can do now. I know this is all what Steven Pressfield calls "Resistance".
But I wish I wasn't like this.
Sunday, March 25, 2012
Music I'm obsessing over right now
And just because I like to fuck with people...
Sunday, February 26, 2012
Best Picture Fest Reviews - Spoilers Galore!
Rob and I made our annual trek (do you like how I make it sound like we climbed Mt. Kilimanjaro or something?) to Best Picture Fest at the theatre down the road the last two Saturdays in a row, and as always, I have a few opinions. It's a weird field for Best Picture this year -- someone I don't like called it a "weak" field, and since I don't like him, I hate to agree... but it's kind of true.
Herewith, in the order the movies were screened:
War Horse: (Full disclosure: I am not a fan of horses. I do not give a crap about horses, nor have I ever given a crap about horses.) Steven Spielberg makes a family movie about a horse. What this means for you, the filmgoer: about 35 minutes of horse porn (and by horse porn, I mean gently caressing scenes of a boy caring for a very special horse, not actual porn -- that's a whole different blog) followed by an hour and a half of Mr. Horse Goes to War. Spielberg does certain things really well in this movie: emotional manipulation? Check. Showing the horror of war (in this case, World War I)? Check... and well done.
But even as I wept my way through the entire film, I was scowling at the screen thinking, "Really, Steven?" (In my dreams, Steven Spielberg and I are on a first-names basis.) I hate knowing when I'm being manipulated. Particularly bad was what I would term a "bromance" between the main horse Joey and a black horse he meets during training leading up to the first battle. They are thrown together over and over throughout the movie and we're clearly meant to believe these two horses are best friends. Umm... they're horses. And since I don't really give a crap about horses, maybe this is just something I'm ignorant about -- maybe horses have besties all the time. But it was a pretty big stretch to believe the scene where our main horse Joey is cognizant enough to realize the danger his friend is in when the German army is about to put him into a lineup of horses pulling artillery to the front and steps up to do it for him, knowing his friend isn't strong enough. Come on. They're horses. Seriously, be a little more subtle with the manipulation, you know? And when his buddy dies, we're clearly meant to believe our main horse is sad. Which... okay, fine.
But then I had to step back and remind myself that he wanted this to be a movie that you could take your (older, obviously) children to with you -- and I really did appreciate the obvious gestures he made in that direction. For example, there was a scene where two young German soldiers are executed for desertion, and the scene is filmed from above a windmill, and the arm of the windmill comes across the shot as the guns are fired. During battle scenes, there is a lot of noise and activity but the cameras cut away from the gore of death and then come back to show bodies strewn across the field of battle instead. And I think knowing this -- that it's a family movie -- makes the movie easier to forgive. But do I really want to have to forgive my Best Picture nominees for anything?? Not really.
Moneyball: We saw this when it first came out. Brad Pitt stars as Billy Beane, the general manager of the Oakland A's baseball team. He's trying to build a team on limited funds and comes to believe in the "moneyball" concept, which is that you need to use the money you have to put people on base, not to purchase super stars. This movie also stars Jonah Hill as a young stats geek who introduces Billy Beane to the concept. Lots of snappy dialogue and fun discussion of trades. Baseball fans should like it, but it's not baseball porn -- there aren't the usual loving shots of the ball game and players who are changed by the game or any mystical baseball shit like that. It's mostly about what it's like to run a major league team on less money than all the other major league teams. It was even better the second time around, not trying to wrap my head around what the movie was trying to do. It's high on my list of favorites for the year.
Tree of Life: Oh god, where to begin? Okay: this is for sure the most pretentious movie I've ever seen. It screams from the rafters, "Look at me, look at me, I'm ART! I AM ART!! Do not ignore me -- I AM ART!" And it's a fucked up movie. It's bizarre. No one knows what it's about. There are all these articles and reviews online that say it's about the birth of everything and where we fit in it - but these people who wrote these articles and reviews sure as shit didn't get that by watching the movie.
So, there's about 15 minutes of confusion at the beginning, flipping back and forth between this family in the 1950s and the parents finding out one of their sons has died in a nonspecified manner sometime in the 1960s and then Sean Penn in the present day in an unnamed city (which drove me INSANE -- I want to know where things take place); we're to know he's one of the three brothers all grown up but we never really know for sure which one he is -- probably the oldest of the three since the bulk of the movie focuses on the oldest brother... and since the movie's promo materials also claim he is the oldest brother. Then, after these fifteen minutes of not really setting anything up that we can grasp onto to care about any of these people, Malick (the director) treats us to a 30-minute National Geographic special on evolution, beginning with the Big Bang. There is even a scene with a dying (?) dinosaur, and a velociraptor comes out of the forest and pokes around a bit and then WALKS. AWAY. Meanwhile, the entire theatre crowd is practically screaming, "EAT IT! RIP ITS THROAT OUT!"
Because by this time in a crowded theatre, the groaning and the whining and the exclamations of "What the fuck??" are audible. The tension is palpable. And this is a theatre crowded with film buffs. Not the usual bunch of lazy assholes you usually end up in a theatre with, who can't handle a thick accent or anything too challenging and just want to see some shit blow up -- the people who commit to sitting through Best Picture Fest are pretty hardcore about their movies. This is about when people started getting up and walking out, figuring they'd take a long dinner break. Oh, and there are all these quotes from the book of Job being narrated by the woman who plays the mother over this stretch. Super annoying.
We stuck it out, and there was the center part of the movie, which told the story of this family in the 1950s, mainly focusing on the three young boys, and mainly from the perspective of the oldest brother. It's kind of a coming of age and coming to terms with faith and its place at the table of your life tale. The father is a dickwad -- and Brad Pitt as the father does the most annoying thing I've ever seen with his lower lip, so congrats on getting me to think you're super ugly, Brad Pitt. This center part of the movie IS the real movie, and should have been the entire thing.
But instead, Terence Malick had to be a pretentious douchebag and add 15 minutes in the end of Sean Penn wandering around on a beach with everyone from his childhood, including the dead brother and his childhood self. I assumed they were all dead and in some sort of heaven-type place, and there was a visually powerful scene in which the mother embraces Sean Penn that actually made me cry. But apparently, he's just having some kind of hallucination or daydream or whatever. And then eventually the movie just ends, and the entire theatre erupted in booing and people shouting obscenities. NO LIE.
I could talk about how annoying this movie was for hours. Did I like it? No. Did anyone like it? No. I would LOVE to hear from someone who likes this movie and understands what it's about and can explain it all to me, and why Malick made the choices he did in its direction. Seriously.
At the same time, I can't tell you I hated it, either. It challenged me and I'm not sure I want my movies to challenge me quite that much. This is the same argument I get into with my books all the time.
Anyway, moving along...
The Descendants: A story about a family (who happen to live in Hawaii) waiting for their mother to die. She's been injured in a boating accident and is in an irreversible coma, so her life support has been turned off and the father (played by George Clooney) has to help his two daughters cope. In the midst of this he learns that his wife was cheating on him leading up to the accident and has to deal with his anger about that in addition to the loss. It's a really well-done piece of story telling. All the acting is superb. My family kind of lived something very similar with my older sister last summer, so I can relate, and I really appreciate that the filmmakers made it that story about family and how you have to cope and live on -- how in some ways, this totally earth-shattering horrible thing really isn't all that earth-shattering in the end because the world keeps going, everyone else keeps going, and those who are left behind have to keep going too. Rob and I both loved this one.
Hugo: I didn't know what to expect from this at all. It was marketed -- poorly -- as a kid's movie. It's really not a kid's movie -- it's more what I think of as a movie for everyone. Based on the book The Invention of Hugo Cabret, it's about a young orphaned boy who lives in the Paris train station and keeps the clocks running (he was an apprentice to a drunkard uncle who has disappeared -- later he turns up dead). He's got this automaton (an early robot, essentially) that he and his father were trying to repair together before his father died, and he figures if he can get it working, it will have some kind of message for him from his father. Meanwhile, the man who runs the toy shop in the station has tired of this young boy stealing from his shop and takes away a journal the boy has of his father's plans and sketches, which show the automaton. In the end it turns out this toy shop man built the automaton many years before. But what the movie is really about is movies and how movies shape dreams or express dreams or make us believe in magic. It's basically Martin Scorsese's love letter to movies.
It's beautiful, absolutely gorgeous -- we did see it in 3D, which put the viewer right in the thick of the action -- and it's very well acted, especially by the young boy and the young girl. A truly magical movie experience. Really worthy of its nomination. Loved it from start to finish.
The Help: I really enjoyed this book so I wanted to like the movie -- and the movie IS likeable enough. But it's almost too likeable, given the subject matter. I felt like it should have been darker, like everything was given a Chris Columbus-style veneer (still haven't forgiven him for the first two Harry Potter movies, never will, don't even get me started) -- his hands as producer were clearly all over everything. The way the white women treated their housekeepers was played too much for laughs; they were forgiven for too much (the book doesn't let them off this easily). The men were nonexistent and mostly buffoons; they were controlling racist assholes in the book. The worst part was that the movie didn't truly convey how dangerous it was for these maids to share their stories; it didn't convey at all their constant fears and worries for their families. In so doing, the film belittles them and makes them secondary. And thus it IS racist. Disappointing and racist.
Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close: It's hard to make a serious movie that centers around a kid. You have to get the viewers to care about the kid almost immediately, or nothing works from that point forward. And the kid in this movie has the most annoying, grating voice I've ever heard in my life, and thus... nothing. Nothing for me to grasp onto or care about. I was bored to the point that I drifted off once or twice, and almost got up and walked out just to get away from how boring it was. Tom Hanks was also super-annoying as the dad; he's supposed to be this paragon of the perfect dad, but in reality, he's basically played an elaborate prank on his child so that kind of makes him a douchecanoe in my book. And really, OF COURSE The Renter is the long-missing grandfather. Come on. Who didn't see that one coming?
I felt really bad because I could tell Rob and our friend Kama who came with us were both really into it. I apologize for being annoying. I just got NOTHING from this movie.
And also it's an example of lazy filmmaking -- I don't mind when a director has a certain style or things they do particularly well, but this is the same guy who directed Billy Elliot, and you could totally tell he was trying to make this kid look quirky in the exact same ways with a number of different shots. Ridiculous, is what it was.
The Artist: I love Jean Dujardin. And I had so many friends just rave about how great this movie is that I started to get worried -- on the surface, it sounded awesome and I should love it and Jean Dujardin is in it too, but what if it wound up being too pretentious and I hated it? But those concerns were for nothing -- it is as fantastic as everyone's telling you it is. Berenice Bejo is an absolute delight as Peppy Miller; I just want to bring her home with me and have her sit in my living room looking all delightful and pretty. And Jean Dujardin's skills with facial expression are superb. And his eyes! Dude, Jean, you're killing me with those eyes. Here -- check him out. I'll wait. Tell me he's not nice to look at it.
Yeah, it's in black and white. Yeah, it's a silent film (it has a score). Get over it. It's awesome.
Midnight In Paris: I love Woody Allen. I can think of maybe two Woody Allen movies that I don't like... maybe only one. So of course I liked this movie. It's a love letter to Paris and to Paris in the 1920s in particular. It's got Hemingway and Scot and Zelda Fitzgerald, and Kathy Bates as Gertrude Stein and a recurring appearance from the First Lady of France as a hottie tour guide (if I were French I would dress so much better and be so much prettier). It's fun and funny. I'm not totally down with Owen Wilson as the lead, acting as stand-in for Woody Allen himself. I'd have preferred someone a little less mellow. But whatever. It's a good movie. I'd have liked it a lot better from my couch at the end of a work week, and not as a Best Picture nominee. But no one ever asks me to vote.
___
So for sure, it's an off year after the last five years of Best Picture nominees being for the most part amazing (the only exception for me was Black Swan last year -- still my worst movie ever).
I think for now I'll rank them as follows (1 being my fave, 9 being my least fave): 1 - Hugo; 2 - The Artist; 3 - The Descendants; 4 - Moneyball; 5 - Midnight in Paris; 6 - War Horse; 7 - The Help; 8 - Tree of Life; 9 - Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. It's a tough call between 8 and 9 but ultimately I had to choose as the worst the movie that didn't affect me at all. I'd rather be challenged and angry than bored to death.
I think The Artist will win. The acting awards are too tough to make a call. Or I'm just tired and lazy. You pick.
Herewith, in the order the movies were screened:
War Horse: (Full disclosure: I am not a fan of horses. I do not give a crap about horses, nor have I ever given a crap about horses.) Steven Spielberg makes a family movie about a horse. What this means for you, the filmgoer: about 35 minutes of horse porn (and by horse porn, I mean gently caressing scenes of a boy caring for a very special horse, not actual porn -- that's a whole different blog) followed by an hour and a half of Mr. Horse Goes to War. Spielberg does certain things really well in this movie: emotional manipulation? Check. Showing the horror of war (in this case, World War I)? Check... and well done.
But even as I wept my way through the entire film, I was scowling at the screen thinking, "Really, Steven?" (In my dreams, Steven Spielberg and I are on a first-names basis.) I hate knowing when I'm being manipulated. Particularly bad was what I would term a "bromance" between the main horse Joey and a black horse he meets during training leading up to the first battle. They are thrown together over and over throughout the movie and we're clearly meant to believe these two horses are best friends. Umm... they're horses. And since I don't really give a crap about horses, maybe this is just something I'm ignorant about -- maybe horses have besties all the time. But it was a pretty big stretch to believe the scene where our main horse Joey is cognizant enough to realize the danger his friend is in when the German army is about to put him into a lineup of horses pulling artillery to the front and steps up to do it for him, knowing his friend isn't strong enough. Come on. They're horses. Seriously, be a little more subtle with the manipulation, you know? And when his buddy dies, we're clearly meant to believe our main horse is sad. Which... okay, fine.
But then I had to step back and remind myself that he wanted this to be a movie that you could take your (older, obviously) children to with you -- and I really did appreciate the obvious gestures he made in that direction. For example, there was a scene where two young German soldiers are executed for desertion, and the scene is filmed from above a windmill, and the arm of the windmill comes across the shot as the guns are fired. During battle scenes, there is a lot of noise and activity but the cameras cut away from the gore of death and then come back to show bodies strewn across the field of battle instead. And I think knowing this -- that it's a family movie -- makes the movie easier to forgive. But do I really want to have to forgive my Best Picture nominees for anything?? Not really.
Moneyball: We saw this when it first came out. Brad Pitt stars as Billy Beane, the general manager of the Oakland A's baseball team. He's trying to build a team on limited funds and comes to believe in the "moneyball" concept, which is that you need to use the money you have to put people on base, not to purchase super stars. This movie also stars Jonah Hill as a young stats geek who introduces Billy Beane to the concept. Lots of snappy dialogue and fun discussion of trades. Baseball fans should like it, but it's not baseball porn -- there aren't the usual loving shots of the ball game and players who are changed by the game or any mystical baseball shit like that. It's mostly about what it's like to run a major league team on less money than all the other major league teams. It was even better the second time around, not trying to wrap my head around what the movie was trying to do. It's high on my list of favorites for the year.
Tree of Life: Oh god, where to begin? Okay: this is for sure the most pretentious movie I've ever seen. It screams from the rafters, "Look at me, look at me, I'm ART! I AM ART!! Do not ignore me -- I AM ART!" And it's a fucked up movie. It's bizarre. No one knows what it's about. There are all these articles and reviews online that say it's about the birth of everything and where we fit in it - but these people who wrote these articles and reviews sure as shit didn't get that by watching the movie.
So, there's about 15 minutes of confusion at the beginning, flipping back and forth between this family in the 1950s and the parents finding out one of their sons has died in a nonspecified manner sometime in the 1960s and then Sean Penn in the present day in an unnamed city (which drove me INSANE -- I want to know where things take place); we're to know he's one of the three brothers all grown up but we never really know for sure which one he is -- probably the oldest of the three since the bulk of the movie focuses on the oldest brother... and since the movie's promo materials also claim he is the oldest brother. Then, after these fifteen minutes of not really setting anything up that we can grasp onto to care about any of these people, Malick (the director) treats us to a 30-minute National Geographic special on evolution, beginning with the Big Bang. There is even a scene with a dying (?) dinosaur, and a velociraptor comes out of the forest and pokes around a bit and then WALKS. AWAY. Meanwhile, the entire theatre crowd is practically screaming, "EAT IT! RIP ITS THROAT OUT!"
Because by this time in a crowded theatre, the groaning and the whining and the exclamations of "What the fuck??" are audible. The tension is palpable. And this is a theatre crowded with film buffs. Not the usual bunch of lazy assholes you usually end up in a theatre with, who can't handle a thick accent or anything too challenging and just want to see some shit blow up -- the people who commit to sitting through Best Picture Fest are pretty hardcore about their movies. This is about when people started getting up and walking out, figuring they'd take a long dinner break. Oh, and there are all these quotes from the book of Job being narrated by the woman who plays the mother over this stretch. Super annoying.
We stuck it out, and there was the center part of the movie, which told the story of this family in the 1950s, mainly focusing on the three young boys, and mainly from the perspective of the oldest brother. It's kind of a coming of age and coming to terms with faith and its place at the table of your life tale. The father is a dickwad -- and Brad Pitt as the father does the most annoying thing I've ever seen with his lower lip, so congrats on getting me to think you're super ugly, Brad Pitt. This center part of the movie IS the real movie, and should have been the entire thing.
But instead, Terence Malick had to be a pretentious douchebag and add 15 minutes in the end of Sean Penn wandering around on a beach with everyone from his childhood, including the dead brother and his childhood self. I assumed they were all dead and in some sort of heaven-type place, and there was a visually powerful scene in which the mother embraces Sean Penn that actually made me cry. But apparently, he's just having some kind of hallucination or daydream or whatever. And then eventually the movie just ends, and the entire theatre erupted in booing and people shouting obscenities. NO LIE.
I could talk about how annoying this movie was for hours. Did I like it? No. Did anyone like it? No. I would LOVE to hear from someone who likes this movie and understands what it's about and can explain it all to me, and why Malick made the choices he did in its direction. Seriously.
At the same time, I can't tell you I hated it, either. It challenged me and I'm not sure I want my movies to challenge me quite that much. This is the same argument I get into with my books all the time.
Anyway, moving along...
The Descendants: A story about a family (who happen to live in Hawaii) waiting for their mother to die. She's been injured in a boating accident and is in an irreversible coma, so her life support has been turned off and the father (played by George Clooney) has to help his two daughters cope. In the midst of this he learns that his wife was cheating on him leading up to the accident and has to deal with his anger about that in addition to the loss. It's a really well-done piece of story telling. All the acting is superb. My family kind of lived something very similar with my older sister last summer, so I can relate, and I really appreciate that the filmmakers made it that story about family and how you have to cope and live on -- how in some ways, this totally earth-shattering horrible thing really isn't all that earth-shattering in the end because the world keeps going, everyone else keeps going, and those who are left behind have to keep going too. Rob and I both loved this one.
Hugo: I didn't know what to expect from this at all. It was marketed -- poorly -- as a kid's movie. It's really not a kid's movie -- it's more what I think of as a movie for everyone. Based on the book The Invention of Hugo Cabret, it's about a young orphaned boy who lives in the Paris train station and keeps the clocks running (he was an apprentice to a drunkard uncle who has disappeared -- later he turns up dead). He's got this automaton (an early robot, essentially) that he and his father were trying to repair together before his father died, and he figures if he can get it working, it will have some kind of message for him from his father. Meanwhile, the man who runs the toy shop in the station has tired of this young boy stealing from his shop and takes away a journal the boy has of his father's plans and sketches, which show the automaton. In the end it turns out this toy shop man built the automaton many years before. But what the movie is really about is movies and how movies shape dreams or express dreams or make us believe in magic. It's basically Martin Scorsese's love letter to movies.
It's beautiful, absolutely gorgeous -- we did see it in 3D, which put the viewer right in the thick of the action -- and it's very well acted, especially by the young boy and the young girl. A truly magical movie experience. Really worthy of its nomination. Loved it from start to finish.
The Help: I really enjoyed this book so I wanted to like the movie -- and the movie IS likeable enough. But it's almost too likeable, given the subject matter. I felt like it should have been darker, like everything was given a Chris Columbus-style veneer (still haven't forgiven him for the first two Harry Potter movies, never will, don't even get me started) -- his hands as producer were clearly all over everything. The way the white women treated their housekeepers was played too much for laughs; they were forgiven for too much (the book doesn't let them off this easily). The men were nonexistent and mostly buffoons; they were controlling racist assholes in the book. The worst part was that the movie didn't truly convey how dangerous it was for these maids to share their stories; it didn't convey at all their constant fears and worries for their families. In so doing, the film belittles them and makes them secondary. And thus it IS racist. Disappointing and racist.
Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close: It's hard to make a serious movie that centers around a kid. You have to get the viewers to care about the kid almost immediately, or nothing works from that point forward. And the kid in this movie has the most annoying, grating voice I've ever heard in my life, and thus... nothing. Nothing for me to grasp onto or care about. I was bored to the point that I drifted off once or twice, and almost got up and walked out just to get away from how boring it was. Tom Hanks was also super-annoying as the dad; he's supposed to be this paragon of the perfect dad, but in reality, he's basically played an elaborate prank on his child so that kind of makes him a douchecanoe in my book. And really, OF COURSE The Renter is the long-missing grandfather. Come on. Who didn't see that one coming?
I felt really bad because I could tell Rob and our friend Kama who came with us were both really into it. I apologize for being annoying. I just got NOTHING from this movie.
And also it's an example of lazy filmmaking -- I don't mind when a director has a certain style or things they do particularly well, but this is the same guy who directed Billy Elliot, and you could totally tell he was trying to make this kid look quirky in the exact same ways with a number of different shots. Ridiculous, is what it was.
The Artist: I love Jean Dujardin. And I had so many friends just rave about how great this movie is that I started to get worried -- on the surface, it sounded awesome and I should love it and Jean Dujardin is in it too, but what if it wound up being too pretentious and I hated it? But those concerns were for nothing -- it is as fantastic as everyone's telling you it is. Berenice Bejo is an absolute delight as Peppy Miller; I just want to bring her home with me and have her sit in my living room looking all delightful and pretty. And Jean Dujardin's skills with facial expression are superb. And his eyes! Dude, Jean, you're killing me with those eyes. Here -- check him out. I'll wait. Tell me he's not nice to look at it.
Yeah, it's in black and white. Yeah, it's a silent film (it has a score). Get over it. It's awesome.
Midnight In Paris: I love Woody Allen. I can think of maybe two Woody Allen movies that I don't like... maybe only one. So of course I liked this movie. It's a love letter to Paris and to Paris in the 1920s in particular. It's got Hemingway and Scot and Zelda Fitzgerald, and Kathy Bates as Gertrude Stein and a recurring appearance from the First Lady of France as a hottie tour guide (if I were French I would dress so much better and be so much prettier). It's fun and funny. I'm not totally down with Owen Wilson as the lead, acting as stand-in for Woody Allen himself. I'd have preferred someone a little less mellow. But whatever. It's a good movie. I'd have liked it a lot better from my couch at the end of a work week, and not as a Best Picture nominee. But no one ever asks me to vote.
___
So for sure, it's an off year after the last five years of Best Picture nominees being for the most part amazing (the only exception for me was Black Swan last year -- still my worst movie ever).
I think for now I'll rank them as follows (1 being my fave, 9 being my least fave): 1 - Hugo; 2 - The Artist; 3 - The Descendants; 4 - Moneyball; 5 - Midnight in Paris; 6 - War Horse; 7 - The Help; 8 - Tree of Life; 9 - Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. It's a tough call between 8 and 9 but ultimately I had to choose as the worst the movie that didn't affect me at all. I'd rather be challenged and angry than bored to death.
I think The Artist will win. The acting awards are too tough to make a call. Or I'm just tired and lazy. You pick.
Wednesday, February 08, 2012
Affirmation
So I've finished a good draft two of Less Than Perfect - my novel, for those of you not in the loop. And I'm happy with it. It was a victory -- a hard fought victory. It took me well longer than I had planned or expected. And yes, like I've said before, life got in the way, but still -- it was frustrating to not feel it come together faster.
Maybe it's crazy, but I swear to you it was my new MacBook Pro that turned the tide in my favor. Because within a week of owning it, I finished the second draft.
All thanks to my broken ankle.
Anyway. I know I have something good. I know people are going to love it. I know this. But when you write, really seriously write, you spend a good deal of time second-guessing and doubting yourself. You know for a fact that some of what you do is crap, garbage, tripe. It might actually be the majority of what you do.
And so it's always nice to get some affirmation -- that you know what the hell you're doing, you know what you're about. And tonight, in the midst of my ginormous household organization process, I got my affirmation. In this pile of junk, papers and magazines and whatnot, I found a printout of a very early draft of Less Than Perfect. The very first draft, in fact. This was back when it was still called "Untitled NaNoWriMo Project 2010" and only about 37 pages long. And I sat down to read it.
And let me tell you: It was stupid. It was horrible. It was horribly stupid. Reading it was almost as embarrassing as reading over the short stories I wrote in college and my early twenties... an exercise I engaged in just the other night. Excruciating. It was so bad I can't believe I kept going. I can't believe I found anything in there to hold on to.
But I did. I fell in love with my two main characters, and their families and friends, and I couldn't let them go. And somehow, it got better. And then even better. And then good.
And so reading this early draft -- and this so close on the heels of looking over a lot of my old writing -- affirmed for me that OH MY GOD, I do know what the fuck I'm doing after all when it comes to the craft of writing. All the years of working at it, figuring it out, have actually paid off -- I make good, even great, decisions about the narrative, what to leave in, what to cut, what to say, what to leave unsaid. I'm not perfect -- I don't think anyone who writes can really be objective about their own work and will always need some trusted advisors to look it over and offer real perspective. But in general, I know what the hell I'm doing.
It's a good feeling. I majored in Creative Writing in college. It was one of those majors where you could ace all your coursework as long as you put in the effort, even if the outcome of your effort was mediocre. My fiction writing teachers in college hated my work. They hated that it drifted into cliche more often than not; they hated that it always involved some sort of romantic relationship between a female and a male character; they hated that I used too many details instead of the spare language befitting short fiction. They seemed to like me as a person, save one professor my final semester, so I tried not to let it bother me. But it ingrained in me so much self doubt. I lacked so much confidence, and I didn't get any of it back until the workshops I took in my late twenties and into my early thirties. I got confidence in spades there, and looking over it now, the work I was doing then was amazing, in terms of skill and content. It's just that I never quite knew where it was going. But it was beautiful, and I remember loving the journey.
And then I allowed a person in my life take all that away from me in one ugly moment of betrayed trust, and it took 7 years -- 7 long and sort of lost and depressing years -- before I found it again, and reminded myself how much I love to write. I love to write so much I want to do it every single day, over and above almost everything else. Part of it is the journey. Part of it is that I can see the destination now.
And I love being back here. This is who I am. As much as my family probably hates how divided my attention for them is, I don't ever want to go back to being less than me, that sad lost person who wasn't doing what she was supposed to be doing. I'll figure out a balance at some point, I know I will.
And in the meantime, I have a killer draft of a really good novel.
Maybe it's crazy, but I swear to you it was my new MacBook Pro that turned the tide in my favor. Because within a week of owning it, I finished the second draft.
All thanks to my broken ankle.
Anyway. I know I have something good. I know people are going to love it. I know this. But when you write, really seriously write, you spend a good deal of time second-guessing and doubting yourself. You know for a fact that some of what you do is crap, garbage, tripe. It might actually be the majority of what you do.
And so it's always nice to get some affirmation -- that you know what the hell you're doing, you know what you're about. And tonight, in the midst of my ginormous household organization process, I got my affirmation. In this pile of junk, papers and magazines and whatnot, I found a printout of a very early draft of Less Than Perfect. The very first draft, in fact. This was back when it was still called "Untitled NaNoWriMo Project 2010" and only about 37 pages long. And I sat down to read it.
And let me tell you: It was stupid. It was horrible. It was horribly stupid. Reading it was almost as embarrassing as reading over the short stories I wrote in college and my early twenties... an exercise I engaged in just the other night. Excruciating. It was so bad I can't believe I kept going. I can't believe I found anything in there to hold on to.
But I did. I fell in love with my two main characters, and their families and friends, and I couldn't let them go. And somehow, it got better. And then even better. And then good.
And so reading this early draft -- and this so close on the heels of looking over a lot of my old writing -- affirmed for me that OH MY GOD, I do know what the fuck I'm doing after all when it comes to the craft of writing. All the years of working at it, figuring it out, have actually paid off -- I make good, even great, decisions about the narrative, what to leave in, what to cut, what to say, what to leave unsaid. I'm not perfect -- I don't think anyone who writes can really be objective about their own work and will always need some trusted advisors to look it over and offer real perspective. But in general, I know what the hell I'm doing.
It's a good feeling. I majored in Creative Writing in college. It was one of those majors where you could ace all your coursework as long as you put in the effort, even if the outcome of your effort was mediocre. My fiction writing teachers in college hated my work. They hated that it drifted into cliche more often than not; they hated that it always involved some sort of romantic relationship between a female and a male character; they hated that I used too many details instead of the spare language befitting short fiction. They seemed to like me as a person, save one professor my final semester, so I tried not to let it bother me. But it ingrained in me so much self doubt. I lacked so much confidence, and I didn't get any of it back until the workshops I took in my late twenties and into my early thirties. I got confidence in spades there, and looking over it now, the work I was doing then was amazing, in terms of skill and content. It's just that I never quite knew where it was going. But it was beautiful, and I remember loving the journey.
And then I allowed a person in my life take all that away from me in one ugly moment of betrayed trust, and it took 7 years -- 7 long and sort of lost and depressing years -- before I found it again, and reminded myself how much I love to write. I love to write so much I want to do it every single day, over and above almost everything else. Part of it is the journey. Part of it is that I can see the destination now.
And I love being back here. This is who I am. As much as my family probably hates how divided my attention for them is, I don't ever want to go back to being less than me, that sad lost person who wasn't doing what she was supposed to be doing. I'll figure out a balance at some point, I know I will.
And in the meantime, I have a killer draft of a really good novel.
Thursday, December 29, 2011
I don't even...
Truthfully, I've got nothing to say. Really. I just got tired of looking at that last post, and never quite got around to doing a music post (but I keep promising myself that I will!). So here's a random post to get rid of that last one.
Let's talk about NaNoWriMo for a minute, since we're here. I did it, and I won, and I did it quickly, that's how good my outline was. As in, I was finished by November 15th. And it was actually kind of a bummer because it took away from the experience for me -- part of the fun is the struggle and the bonding with other participants to see if you can get it done or not. And instead, I felt like one of the assholes in the Overachievers thread who has to set their word count goal to like 150,000 (pfffft!) because they are so prolific they can't possibly settle for a mere 50k. So I kept it on the downlow and kept posting in the Chick Lit thread and getting to know the women who started the Chick Lit NaNo Cheerleaders group (they are all awesome, by the way, and by "awesome" I mean "super fucking cool and awesome"). But I felt sort of fraudster-y and whatever, and then later I felt dumb for being embarrassed by finishing so quickly. Why be embarrassed about something like that? It's only because I had a really detailed outline. It's never going to happen again, let me just say that!
And doing NaNo did totally screw with my head and mess up what I had going on with Less Than Perfect (novel #1). I lost my mojo for a while there. But I think I have it back. I just have this huge chunk of the book that needs to get fixed and taken down to about a third of its length -- this huge chunk called "the beginning". Which is like whatever, no problem, right? Also I feel like it's all lost focus a little bit. But I think my readers will give me fresh glimpses into where the focus needs to be. Let's just hope that my five readers don't come with five totally different opinions...
So also, I just want to say that Christmas was lame. It was lame, because my sister wasn't there. Maybe it will be better next year, but this year, it made me feel stressed out and a little bit melancholy and there was drama with getting a new tree (I was allergic. To a plastic tree. We had to take it back. Even the store clerk laughed at me.) so we didn't end up having a tree and that didn't help, and we didn't plan well financially, so that made it hard to buy gifts, and -- it was lame, like I said. I mean, it was nice to be with the family, and see the kids having a good time. But there was the underlying unspoken sadness over who was missing and honestly, I was just glad when it was over and we had gotten through it.
Our traditional Christmas morning breakfast at the Waffle House was delightful, though!
Also, I didn't hit my goal for 2011 of reading 100 books, and I counted comic books. Comic books. Okay, they were trades, but still -- I still couldn't get it done. I blame my sister dying. I'll do it in 2012 for sure.
Let's talk about NaNoWriMo for a minute, since we're here. I did it, and I won, and I did it quickly, that's how good my outline was. As in, I was finished by November 15th. And it was actually kind of a bummer because it took away from the experience for me -- part of the fun is the struggle and the bonding with other participants to see if you can get it done or not. And instead, I felt like one of the assholes in the Overachievers thread who has to set their word count goal to like 150,000 (pfffft!) because they are so prolific they can't possibly settle for a mere 50k. So I kept it on the downlow and kept posting in the Chick Lit thread and getting to know the women who started the Chick Lit NaNo Cheerleaders group (they are all awesome, by the way, and by "awesome" I mean "super fucking cool and awesome"). But I felt sort of fraudster-y and whatever, and then later I felt dumb for being embarrassed by finishing so quickly. Why be embarrassed about something like that? It's only because I had a really detailed outline. It's never going to happen again, let me just say that!
And doing NaNo did totally screw with my head and mess up what I had going on with Less Than Perfect (novel #1). I lost my mojo for a while there. But I think I have it back. I just have this huge chunk of the book that needs to get fixed and taken down to about a third of its length -- this huge chunk called "the beginning". Which is like whatever, no problem, right? Also I feel like it's all lost focus a little bit. But I think my readers will give me fresh glimpses into where the focus needs to be. Let's just hope that my five readers don't come with five totally different opinions...
So also, I just want to say that Christmas was lame. It was lame, because my sister wasn't there. Maybe it will be better next year, but this year, it made me feel stressed out and a little bit melancholy and there was drama with getting a new tree (I was allergic. To a plastic tree. We had to take it back. Even the store clerk laughed at me.) so we didn't end up having a tree and that didn't help, and we didn't plan well financially, so that made it hard to buy gifts, and -- it was lame, like I said. I mean, it was nice to be with the family, and see the kids having a good time. But there was the underlying unspoken sadness over who was missing and honestly, I was just glad when it was over and we had gotten through it.
Our traditional Christmas morning breakfast at the Waffle House was delightful, though!
Also, I didn't hit my goal for 2011 of reading 100 books, and I counted comic books. Comic books. Okay, they were trades, but still -- I still couldn't get it done. I blame my sister dying. I'll do it in 2012 for sure.
Monday, October 31, 2011
It SEEMS like a good idea, but it might not be.
So I'm planning, as of right now, to do NaNoWriMo again this year. It starts tomorrow. I have an extensive outline of a sequel to the novel I've been working on since last year at this same time, and my plan is to put that in actual readable format (if I can read my own writing -- it's getting sketchier by the day, and smaller).
The thing is, I haven't finished that novel from last year. As I've mentioned over and over ad nauseum (if you're my Facebook friend), I'm still finishing up the second draft. And my original plan was to be all the way to a third, really polished draft by this point, so I wouldn't feel bad about working so hard on something new. But that didn't quite work out, as you can see by my two prior entries.
So here's the plan: I'm just going to do it anyway. I'm going to chalk not being where I wanted to be with Less Than Perfect up to life, which I'm sure all writers must experience more often than not, and I'm going to go ahead and do NaNoWriMo. I'm going to get as far as I can in revision by the end of this week, and then send it out to my readers. And while I'm doing that, I'll just strive for 2-4 pages per day on the new thing for NaNo. And then once it's sent out, I'm going to set it aside for the rest of November while I hit the new thing hard, and get back to it with fresh eyes and mind on December 1.
Oh my god. My heart just started racing as I typed that last sentence. Set it aside?? What am I thinking? It's sort of like sending The Pook over to his dad's house for an entire month.
On the other hand, I'm to the point where there are parts of it I can't even stand to look at right now. So I think a break is necessary.
So it SEEMS like a good idea, but it might not be.
The thing is, I haven't finished that novel from last year. As I've mentioned over and over ad nauseum (if you're my Facebook friend), I'm still finishing up the second draft. And my original plan was to be all the way to a third, really polished draft by this point, so I wouldn't feel bad about working so hard on something new. But that didn't quite work out, as you can see by my two prior entries.
So here's the plan: I'm just going to do it anyway. I'm going to chalk not being where I wanted to be with Less Than Perfect up to life, which I'm sure all writers must experience more often than not, and I'm going to go ahead and do NaNoWriMo. I'm going to get as far as I can in revision by the end of this week, and then send it out to my readers. And while I'm doing that, I'll just strive for 2-4 pages per day on the new thing for NaNo. And then once it's sent out, I'm going to set it aside for the rest of November while I hit the new thing hard, and get back to it with fresh eyes and mind on December 1.
Oh my god. My heart just started racing as I typed that last sentence. Set it aside?? What am I thinking? It's sort of like sending The Pook over to his dad's house for an entire month.
On the other hand, I'm to the point where there are parts of it I can't even stand to look at right now. So I think a break is necessary.
So it SEEMS like a good idea, but it might not be.
Wednesday, October 26, 2011
So That Happened.
Seriously, I can't believe it's almost Halloween.
Obviously, the last couple of months have been a little... well... stressful, for me. My sister passed away and it was horrible and it's still horrible, and I miss her every single day. But then to top it all off, about two weeks after her memorial service, I was innocently wandering through my favorite grocery store, and slipped in a huge puddle of something and broke my ankle. So I've been in this boot-cast stupid thing for almost a month now, and have about two more weeks with it, and it's generally been the biggest pain in the motherfucking ass EVER. Because first of all, it's my left foot and I'm left handed and left footed. And second of all, we live on the third floor of a building with no elevators. So good times have been had.
Yeah.
Anyway. I'm trying to finish the second, hopefully way more polished, draft of my novel. It is so much harder than I thought it would be. It goes like this: you sit there and you know what has to be done, but you can't figure out HOW to do it, so you just stare and stare until the page becomes blurry, and then you get up and wander around the house and eat some chocolate and take a shower and while you're in the shower you have a revelation and figure out HOW to do it, and then you go do it, and then you move on to the next thing that needs to be fixed, and you sit there and you know what has to be done, but you can't figure out HOW...
Yeah.
And there's this voice that lives inside my head that tells me all the time how I could totally get this done faster AND better if I didn't have to work full time, if I didn't have to take care of my child, if I didn't have to ever speak to my husband again. And sometimes part of me believes that voice and I become very crabby and out of sorts and bent out of shape with my real life. Other times I manage to just suck it up and get the writing in when I can like I always have. Early mornings. Late at night. Lunch hours.
Today it's snowing, the first big snowfall of the season. I feel like I should be allowed to stay home and write if the weather sucks, but that didn't happen -- the amount of snow fell far short of the predictions. So much for that idea.
Revising mostly feels like taking one step up and two steps back. I'll be all excited over a breakthrough, and then I'm suddenly crushed because something else isn't working, or because a part I've fixed creates problems elsewhere, 100 pages down the road.
But it's getting there.
It's definitely better than it was when I finished the first draft in July. It's changed, a lot. It's a thousand times better than what it was when I started pounding it out for NaNoWriMo last year.
I just wish I could make it get there faster, without sacrificing the writing.
But it's getting there.
Obviously, the last couple of months have been a little... well... stressful, for me. My sister passed away and it was horrible and it's still horrible, and I miss her every single day. But then to top it all off, about two weeks after her memorial service, I was innocently wandering through my favorite grocery store, and slipped in a huge puddle of something and broke my ankle. So I've been in this boot-cast stupid thing for almost a month now, and have about two more weeks with it, and it's generally been the biggest pain in the motherfucking ass EVER. Because first of all, it's my left foot and I'm left handed and left footed. And second of all, we live on the third floor of a building with no elevators. So good times have been had.
Yeah.
Anyway. I'm trying to finish the second, hopefully way more polished, draft of my novel. It is so much harder than I thought it would be. It goes like this: you sit there and you know what has to be done, but you can't figure out HOW to do it, so you just stare and stare until the page becomes blurry, and then you get up and wander around the house and eat some chocolate and take a shower and while you're in the shower you have a revelation and figure out HOW to do it, and then you go do it, and then you move on to the next thing that needs to be fixed, and you sit there and you know what has to be done, but you can't figure out HOW...
Yeah.
And there's this voice that lives inside my head that tells me all the time how I could totally get this done faster AND better if I didn't have to work full time, if I didn't have to take care of my child, if I didn't have to ever speak to my husband again. And sometimes part of me believes that voice and I become very crabby and out of sorts and bent out of shape with my real life. Other times I manage to just suck it up and get the writing in when I can like I always have. Early mornings. Late at night. Lunch hours.
Today it's snowing, the first big snowfall of the season. I feel like I should be allowed to stay home and write if the weather sucks, but that didn't happen -- the amount of snow fell far short of the predictions. So much for that idea.
Revising mostly feels like taking one step up and two steps back. I'll be all excited over a breakthrough, and then I'm suddenly crushed because something else isn't working, or because a part I've fixed creates problems elsewhere, 100 pages down the road.
But it's getting there.
It's definitely better than it was when I finished the first draft in July. It's changed, a lot. It's a thousand times better than what it was when I started pounding it out for NaNoWriMo last year.
I just wish I could make it get there faster, without sacrificing the writing.
But it's getting there.
Wednesday, September 14, 2011
I Miss My Sister
This is the eulogy I wrote for my sister Lianne's memorial today...
So there was this misunderstanding about a pair of shoes.
And please – don’t stop me if you’ve heard this one before. I know Lianne tells it better, but I’m going to give it a shot.
Anyway. It was a pair of red high top Converse sneakers. Very, very 1985. Lianne owned these fabulous shoes, and I coveted them greatly. So apparently I may have borrowed them without really asking if it was okay first, and she got a little mad. Okay – a lot mad. And a fight ensued – we had been left unsupervised after school, always a big mistake – and I was terrified. Because make no mistake: the girl could kick my ass. She had this move she called “The Windmill,” where she’d just come at you, arms flailing like… well, like a windmill, and you better run or get torn to shreds. So I did what any self-preserving 7th grader would do in the same situation: I hid in my room, back to the door, bracing it shut by putting my feet against the wall.
And she was pretty enraged when she couldn’t get in. So she got the bright idea to go out her window, crawl across the roof overhang to mine, and bust into my room that way and give me a beat down. And I could hear the commotion at her window, and the warning issued by Stacey, who was probably five or six at the time, and watching our PMS-fueled antics with glee. “She’s coming across the roof!” And really, I was still terrified.
But then! Suddenly I heard a sound like fingers scrabbling across wood shake shingles, and Lianne’s voice saying “Oh shit!” And then a yell that faded away as she fell.
Yes, ladies and gentlemen: She slid on a wet spot on the roof and fell, onto the front lawn. She apparently grasped onto a “branch” from the giant tree gracing our front yard, but sadly, that tree was some sort of willow, and didn’t really have branches so much as thin little vines. And the next thing I heard was a “THUD” as she hit the lawn. And then we were all silent for a moment, and Stacey and I ran to the window to see if we could see her, if she’d been hurt at all.
But no. She got up, dusted off the butt of her jeans, laughing hysterically, and said, “I have to go tell Suzanne!” And headed off down the street to tell Suzanne, giggling the whole way.
And I guess I tell you this for two reasons: One, because it’s our all time favorite Lianne story. I mean, the way she tells it is epic, and she’s probably up there telling it to my Grandma McEwen right now, shaking her head and rolling her eyes and going, “Shannon doesn’t tell it right.” But two, because that was so Lianne: just picking herself up, dusting herself off, and laughing about it.
She was always laughing. These last few weeks, as people sent us well wishes, the common thread was always her laugh, her smile. And that’s what we’ll always treasure the most about her too – our memories of her laughing and smiling. And she was funnier than me. The way she told a joke. The way she saw humor in every situation. The types of things that made her laugh. I can hear her voice right now quoting funny lines from “Airplane!” and “Fast Times at Ridgemont High” and “Better Off Dead.” No one can do “I want my two dollars!” better than Lianne could. Or “Sorry I blew up your mom, Ricky.” Classic.
In a sister, you pretty much want three things: a playmate, a confidante, and a cheerleader. Lianne was all three, and then some. I was lucky because Lianne was not quite two when I was born, and I had a ready-made best friend from day one. Every memory I have of my early childhood includes Lianne, right there beside me – endless days filled with Barbies and hide and seek and silly stories; the nights we were allowed to stay up late to watch The Partridge Family; our mutual love for trips to Stanley Park in Vancouver, and plane trips, and visits to our grandparents. Lianne was always braver than me, and learned to be a good swimmer while I sat on the sidelines and watched, and struck out and made more friends than I did – it might surprise you, as reserved as she’d been in recent years, to hear that she would always be the one to make easy friends wherever she went, while I’d rather stay inside and read a book. But she was just like that – always ready with a laugh and a smile and up for nearly anything, all those things you look for in a friend.
It was different for Stacey, who came along when Lianne was ten and I was eight. We spent the next twenty years tugging her in two different directions, competing, thinking she had to like one of us best. Eventually we realized it wasn’t a competition after all and the three of us settled into a grown-up relationship of three sisters, but Lianne had won anyway. How are you not the winner when you’re the sister who allowed your toddler-aged youngest sister to spend every night in your bed because she’s afraid of the dark or the thunder or had a bad dream and doesn’t want to sleep alone? That’s what Lianne did for Stacey.
And you could tell her anything and not have it get back to Mom or Dad. Not that we would dare keep any secrets from Mom or Dad. HAH. She might offer up some advice or be a little judgmental about whatever it was you were telling her, but that was her right as your sister, and still, it never got repeated. We were thick as thieves, as the saying goes – she would launch these spy operations around Christmas time where one of us would hide and spy on our parents at night after we were supposed to be in bed, to see if either of them slipped up and mentioned one of our Christmas gifts. We also had an elaborate series of knocks on the wall between our rooms, codes for “Are you awake?” and “Goodnight” and “ Come over.” The most important, of course, was three knocks, for “I love you.”
She was a practical joker and loved to tease, and loved to laugh and make us laugh. Ask Stacey about the clown mask. She taught us to love comedy – movies, tv shows, comedians. We never would have been interested in any of it were it not for Lianne. And music – she taught me, and Stacey by extension, to love rock music with wild abandon. Early on it was Andy Gibb, Shaun Cassidy, the Bee Gees, the Bay City Rollers. Eventually she moved on to Van Halen. Def Leppard. Sammy Hagar. Bon Jovi. She never met a Canadian rock band she didn’t like. She was the first person we knew who watched endless hours of MTV, and Dad would threaten to throw the tv into the pond behind our house because he thought it was rotting our brains. Which – it probably was. I mean, she would make Stacey walk up and kiss the tv any time David Lee Roth appeared. And she’s the one who introduced me to Guns N Roses, and to hip hop – she had a thing for Too Short, Run DMC, and 2 Live Crew.
Other things you should know about Lianne: She taught us to appreciate a cute boy and later a good-looking man. But she also taught us the value of looking inside a person, and seeing what was in their heart and soul rather than just seeing the outside. She was fiercely protective of us, especially of Stacey, the baby, and she was a fierce defender of people she saw as needing a leg up. I have some good friends from high school who were – let’s face it – a bit nerdy in junior high and high school, and the popular kids used to make fun of them. Until Lianne stepped in and befriended them, and questioned the popular kids for treating them poorly. When these friends of mine heard last week that Lianne had passed away, they all wrote to me and told me how Lianne had once made their lives a little brighter, just by being their friend, and that they’ve never forgotten her.
You’ll see in the slideshow Stacey and I put together that Lianne tended, in more recent years, to step back in the group photos, and push the rest of us forward. And that’s probably the biggest gift she’s given to the two of us over the years – she was our biggest supporter, our biggest cheerleader. She was always so proud of Stacey’s painting, and she never let me forget that I’m supposed to be a writer, not an insurance salesperson. We won’t let her down, because we know she’ll come back to haunt us if we do. Oh, and Daniel – you know she expects you to earn that black belt someday, and become an Oscar-winning director. Ben, you’re gonna have to become a champion race car driver and really work on those guitar chops. Aspen, she expects you to cure cancer someday, but no pressure. Owen? President of the United States. She always had our backs, and I know from now on she’ll be perched on our shoulders, ready to give us all a nudge in the right direction.
But what you also have to know is that we were proud of Lianne too. She was a success in her career by anyone’s definition, and she married Sam, the best brother in law a girl could ask for – with apologies to Nate and Rob. She was a good person, a kind person, and the type of person you just wanted to be around. She didn’t always want us around – in fact her last words to me were something along the lines of “Get out of my room,” and trust me, I’ve heard that line from her many times in my life. But we always wanted to be around her.
My friend John and I joke all the time that we were one another’s first friend – we’ve known each other since we were one and two years old. But really my first friend was Lianne –my friend, my Hot Dog Head, my partner in crime, my sister. The world’s a little brighter because she shared with it her lovely eyes and sweet smile and that crazy machine-gun laugh. We love you, Yannee Banners, and we’ll miss you every single day.
Saturday, August 06, 2011
The Edge of Glory
I hated Lady Gaga at first. I think I just didn't get it. She seemed like maybe she was trying too hard. But then "Bad Romance" came out and I could no longer fight it. That shit will suck you in no matter who you are. Even Evil Rob loves "Bad Romance."
But now the backlash is beginning, with her newest album. Critics like it or even love it, but the more casual fans are all, "What the hell is this crap?" and the hardcore fans seem a little confused. So allow me to break it down for you: It's an exploration of and tribute to her musical influences. Also, Gaga loves hard rock a little more than you might have cared to admit.
"The Edge of Glory" is a kick ass song.
No, it really is. It totally sounds like something Lita Ford might have come out with if she'd just stuck with it and not given up. And that Clarence Clemons saxophone solo is sublime. It conjures up every single outstanding 1980s sax solo all in one simple 30-second riff. Mostly it reminds me of a combination of the sax solo in Glenn Frey's "You Belong to the City" and George Michael's "Careless Whisper" and Rod Stewart's "Downtown Train." Only it's better, because it's not in one of those shitty songs and stuck in the 1980s, it's in a Lady Gaga song from 2011. It's cool, and it doesn't sound like anything else on the radio right now.
I think that's where people get confused: they want everything to sound the same. Bland and predictable. And Lady Gaga was getting overplayed for two years and then she did something a little different, mixed things up a bit, and people don't know what to think because it doesn't fit in with fucking OneRepublic and Train and Bruno Mars and the newest made to order hits by Katy Perry and Britney Spears (who, don't get me wrong -- you know I loves me some Britney but her newest song is such a snoozefest!). This is a summer without a jam and it's been really depressing.
"The Edge of Glory" though -- it perks things up a bit. The other thing that's cool about it is that she doesn't do ANYthing in the video. She just prances around a fire escape in a weird outfit and up and down a rainsoaked street showing off her ass. Which -- there are worse things in life than 5 minutes of looking at Lady Gaga's ass. Here:
Yeah. I'm a little put out by that part where she kisses the pavement because that's really unsanitary and conjures up images of a real New York City sidewalk covered in old chewing gum and black dirt from cars and the bacteria left behind by a million pairs of shoes. But whatever. Also, I bet Clarence Clemons totally loved seeing as much Gaga ass as he did, filming that video. And the part where she's all snuggled up next to him -- she's like a little pocket Gaga next to The Big Man.
I dunno. I dig it.
But now the backlash is beginning, with her newest album. Critics like it or even love it, but the more casual fans are all, "What the hell is this crap?" and the hardcore fans seem a little confused. So allow me to break it down for you: It's an exploration of and tribute to her musical influences. Also, Gaga loves hard rock a little more than you might have cared to admit.
"The Edge of Glory" is a kick ass song.
No, it really is. It totally sounds like something Lita Ford might have come out with if she'd just stuck with it and not given up. And that Clarence Clemons saxophone solo is sublime. It conjures up every single outstanding 1980s sax solo all in one simple 30-second riff. Mostly it reminds me of a combination of the sax solo in Glenn Frey's "You Belong to the City" and George Michael's "Careless Whisper" and Rod Stewart's "Downtown Train." Only it's better, because it's not in one of those shitty songs and stuck in the 1980s, it's in a Lady Gaga song from 2011. It's cool, and it doesn't sound like anything else on the radio right now.
I think that's where people get confused: they want everything to sound the same. Bland and predictable. And Lady Gaga was getting overplayed for two years and then she did something a little different, mixed things up a bit, and people don't know what to think because it doesn't fit in with fucking OneRepublic and Train and Bruno Mars and the newest made to order hits by Katy Perry and Britney Spears (who, don't get me wrong -- you know I loves me some Britney but her newest song is such a snoozefest!). This is a summer without a jam and it's been really depressing.
"The Edge of Glory" though -- it perks things up a bit. The other thing that's cool about it is that she doesn't do ANYthing in the video. She just prances around a fire escape in a weird outfit and up and down a rainsoaked street showing off her ass. Which -- there are worse things in life than 5 minutes of looking at Lady Gaga's ass. Here:
Yeah. I'm a little put out by that part where she kisses the pavement because that's really unsanitary and conjures up images of a real New York City sidewalk covered in old chewing gum and black dirt from cars and the bacteria left behind by a million pairs of shoes. But whatever. Also, I bet Clarence Clemons totally loved seeing as much Gaga ass as he did, filming that video. And the part where she's all snuggled up next to him -- she's like a little pocket Gaga next to The Big Man.
I dunno. I dig it.
Wednesday, July 13, 2011
Yeah, I wrote a book.
Something strange happened to me over the weekend: I actually finished something.
Even stranger: It was something I wrote.
I've been a non-finisher my entire life. Honestly, it took every ounce of strength I had to finish college -- and that required an extra semester. After that, I spent many, many years not finishing things. Relationships. Books I was reading. Leases. Goals. Scrapbooks. You name it, I did not finish it. In 1999, I got my insurance license and it was huge. HUGE. Huger than it should have been, because it was an actual accomplishment for me -- something I had finished instead of walked away from. But don't worry -- that was the last thing I finished for a long while. I wasn't in any danger of becoming some sort of goal driven overachiever.
Sure, I had dreams. But they were just dreams. Dreams of having a book published, and dreams of writing something for the screen -- movie or television, I wasn't choosy. This was supposed to somehow make me rich, so I could travel the world and rub elbows with rock stars and movie stars. My dream self didn't get the memo that rock stars and movie stars don't hang out with the JK Rowlings of the world.
I've been writing my whole life. I mean, since I was old enough to actually write. So I've always thought of myself as a writer -- even when I was a nanny or a student and well into my years as an insurance agent, I never let go of thinking of myself as a writer. But I could never really finish anything. I wrote two novels in junior high -- horrible, terrible melodramas about figure skaters. Lots of teenagers making out and poorly written competition scenes, going on for hundreds of handwritten pages. I couldn't stop because I liked the act of writing them so much. My best friend wrote one too, and we would pass our pages back and forth to entertain one another. Neither of us ever came up with an ending. I'm not sure there was actually even a plot in either of mine.
I started another book my freshman year of college, about a cocaine addicted high school girl. It was based loosely on someone I knew. It never really went anywhere. I think I let my little sister read it, and she never forgave me for not finishing it. As a creative writing major, I had to write short stories all through school, and mine always ended up being the basis for what I hoped would turn into book length works. But I could never quite get there. And then my senior year, I finally turned in a story that wound up being a pivotal chapter in a novel that I worked on for years, through three major versions. I took seriously beginning around the age of 27 and worked on it till I was about 33, at which time I was too busy single parenting to continue struggling with it. It wasn't going anywhere. I had about half a book, and no end or character growth in sight.
And I didn't write for years. And I missed it all the time. So last November I decided to do NaNoWriMo. And I finished -- a little more than the qualifying 50,000 words. And I realized that I really liked the novel that I had begun, and decided to keep working on it.
And something crazy happened: I started to take it seriously. I started to think that maybe, just maybe, I could finish this time. And maybe something would come of it, though that wasn't at the forefront of my mind. I woke early every morning and put in at least an hour before work; I wrote on my lunch hours; I wrote well into the night more nights than not. I set some goals for myself: I wanted a first draft by the end of May, and I wanted a revision by the end of July.
I didn't quite meet those goals.
But I finished my first draft. This past Saturday, very quietly, around 2:15pm. I was exhausted, and went to take a nap without even telling my husband I was done. I had been certain that when I finished, I was going to just put my head down and weep. And I probably would have if I hadn't been so tired that day.
And Sunday night, I sent it out to a handful of friends who'd volunteered to read and critique for me. And that's when it actually hit me, what I'd done: I wrote a book. A BOOK. A whole book.
I mean, yes, it was just a first draft. A very rough one at that. But it was a book. Almost 300 pages, with a beginning, a middle and an end. And I was flipping out. In a good way. As soon as I hit "send" on the email, my heart started pounding and I thought, "Oh shit, what did I just do?" But then within twenty minutes, I had a reply from one friend saying she'd read a few pages and was hooked, and that made me feel better.
And the next morning, as I went into work, I felt so amazing. Like I could do anything. Because I'd written a book. A BOOK.
No one at work was impressed. Well, that's not entirely true -- two people were very impressed. Everyone else was like, "Umm, okay, you have a phone call..." It took me down a notch or two. But I wrote a book. A BOOK. And they can't take that away from me. No matter what.
Even if nothing else happens, it's really amazing to know I wrote a book. To know I finished something. At last.
Even stranger: It was something I wrote.
I've been a non-finisher my entire life. Honestly, it took every ounce of strength I had to finish college -- and that required an extra semester. After that, I spent many, many years not finishing things. Relationships. Books I was reading. Leases. Goals. Scrapbooks. You name it, I did not finish it. In 1999, I got my insurance license and it was huge. HUGE. Huger than it should have been, because it was an actual accomplishment for me -- something I had finished instead of walked away from. But don't worry -- that was the last thing I finished for a long while. I wasn't in any danger of becoming some sort of goal driven overachiever.
Sure, I had dreams. But they were just dreams. Dreams of having a book published, and dreams of writing something for the screen -- movie or television, I wasn't choosy. This was supposed to somehow make me rich, so I could travel the world and rub elbows with rock stars and movie stars. My dream self didn't get the memo that rock stars and movie stars don't hang out with the JK Rowlings of the world.
I've been writing my whole life. I mean, since I was old enough to actually write. So I've always thought of myself as a writer -- even when I was a nanny or a student and well into my years as an insurance agent, I never let go of thinking of myself as a writer. But I could never really finish anything. I wrote two novels in junior high -- horrible, terrible melodramas about figure skaters. Lots of teenagers making out and poorly written competition scenes, going on for hundreds of handwritten pages. I couldn't stop because I liked the act of writing them so much. My best friend wrote one too, and we would pass our pages back and forth to entertain one another. Neither of us ever came up with an ending. I'm not sure there was actually even a plot in either of mine.
I started another book my freshman year of college, about a cocaine addicted high school girl. It was based loosely on someone I knew. It never really went anywhere. I think I let my little sister read it, and she never forgave me for not finishing it. As a creative writing major, I had to write short stories all through school, and mine always ended up being the basis for what I hoped would turn into book length works. But I could never quite get there. And then my senior year, I finally turned in a story that wound up being a pivotal chapter in a novel that I worked on for years, through three major versions. I took seriously beginning around the age of 27 and worked on it till I was about 33, at which time I was too busy single parenting to continue struggling with it. It wasn't going anywhere. I had about half a book, and no end or character growth in sight.
And I didn't write for years. And I missed it all the time. So last November I decided to do NaNoWriMo. And I finished -- a little more than the qualifying 50,000 words. And I realized that I really liked the novel that I had begun, and decided to keep working on it.
And something crazy happened: I started to take it seriously. I started to think that maybe, just maybe, I could finish this time. And maybe something would come of it, though that wasn't at the forefront of my mind. I woke early every morning and put in at least an hour before work; I wrote on my lunch hours; I wrote well into the night more nights than not. I set some goals for myself: I wanted a first draft by the end of May, and I wanted a revision by the end of July.
I didn't quite meet those goals.
But I finished my first draft. This past Saturday, very quietly, around 2:15pm. I was exhausted, and went to take a nap without even telling my husband I was done. I had been certain that when I finished, I was going to just put my head down and weep. And I probably would have if I hadn't been so tired that day.
And Sunday night, I sent it out to a handful of friends who'd volunteered to read and critique for me. And that's when it actually hit me, what I'd done: I wrote a book. A BOOK. A whole book.
I mean, yes, it was just a first draft. A very rough one at that. But it was a book. Almost 300 pages, with a beginning, a middle and an end. And I was flipping out. In a good way. As soon as I hit "send" on the email, my heart started pounding and I thought, "Oh shit, what did I just do?" But then within twenty minutes, I had a reply from one friend saying she'd read a few pages and was hooked, and that made me feel better.
And the next morning, as I went into work, I felt so amazing. Like I could do anything. Because I'd written a book. A BOOK.
No one at work was impressed. Well, that's not entirely true -- two people were very impressed. Everyone else was like, "Umm, okay, you have a phone call..." It took me down a notch or two. But I wrote a book. A BOOK. And they can't take that away from me. No matter what.
Even if nothing else happens, it's really amazing to know I wrote a book. To know I finished something. At last.
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