Forse Trepanning, Forse Frontal Lobotomy

My brain feels like mush.  Mushy mushy mush.  I have been speaking Italian more or less, every day, often without another English speaker to assist my awkward construction and attempts to explain complicated ideas in very simple terms.  In the process of breaking down my brain to the molecular level by continuous attempts at speaking another language, I have realized two things.  The first is that I should just stick to small talk.  The second being that Italian does not quite lend itself to the elegant wording that make me so happy in English.  That isn’t to say that Italian does not have it’s own style and nicely turned phrases, but I have become frustrated because English and Italian do not work the same way!

More specifically, there are certain concepts that can be translated exactly and ideas that have no translation one way or the other.  This is, of course, the same when dealing with any two languages.  What I find frustrating, is the simple things, such as not utilizing synonyms when one feels a word or phrase has been used too much (buono/a, mi piace, che bello, etc).  In English we have a wealth of words that mean somewhat the same thing that can be substituted when one has been overused.  I like cookies, I enjoy reading, or what have you.  In Italian, as far as I understand (and perhaps this is also because I am in rural Italy) I just have to continue with “mi piace”  (I like) until I find something “non mi piace.”  If I want to use something synonymous it just gets complicated beyond my tenuous grasp of the language.  If I want to be more than “felice” (happy) to attend the New Year’s party tomorrow then “non vedo l’ora” (I can’t see the hour, meaning “I can’t wait”) thereby entering the realm of not just idiom, but conjugation.

I have been studying the grammar for some time now, so conjugation is not “una cosa che fare paura” (this actually translates to “something scary” literally “a thing that causes fear” crazy, I know) but I am starting to find myself out of a comfortable depth.  I fancy myself quite competent with the English language.  Not only am I able to present my ideas with a modicum of organization; but, I like to think I have a sense for the subtlety of nuance that many English words carry.  What am I to do when the nuance is removed from the words and posited in the construction of a phrase?  I am finding Italian word choice to be very limiting (perhaps a good thing since I don’t really know what I am saying half the time.) 

Yesterday I was speaking with an Irishman (not a man-child)* who has been living here in Italy for many years and speaks mostly Italian with his Italian wife and son.  He made the comment that to him, Italian is the language of emotion, and English is a working language.  He can only best express his feelings through Italian, and he uses English only for functional matters.  For me, I am struggling against this paradigm as I am struggling against the constraints of how Italian is less about the specific word and more about how every word in a sentence qualifies the previous.  Often, when starting a sentence one needs to know exactly what one wants to say beforehand.  Hence not having two words for “something scary” but five.  At least in this example the order of the words correlate between translations.  As my dad pointed out, Italian has not seen “the superlative inflation of adjectives” hence a lot of “mama mia” and nothing that really correlates to “awesome.”  Again, I am stumped every time in conversation with an Italian after I have said “si, si” for the eight hundredth time. 

So, after my conversation with the Irishman (again, not the man-child) I started to think about how I use English to convey emotion.  Often times, when writing about Christina’s feelings, the words feel trite.  Everyone has felt shy and out of their depth when confronted with real world problems with their first big break out of college.  It is exactly those feelings, and how we navigate those early work crises that develop our character, work ethic, and sense of professionalism.  But I wonder if they sound trite to my ears because English does not have the capacity to express emotion properly because in English, specific emotions are expressed in specific words.  Italian uses whole phrases to create meaning, why has English developed in a way that is so much more economical, and is it also less precise because of that economy?  

*I thought about putting a link here to my ex, but that would be a) childish and b) horrendously unprofessional.  When the idea came in to my head I entertained it for only a couple of seconds.  I don't like to think I am that girl.

Doing the "pretty."

Happy Holidays.  You're Welcome.

Seasons Greetings from Italy, Peru, the Internet, wherever

I know I promised to blog about all my emotional travails, but frankly I don’t really want to talk about it anymore.  All my friends, half my family, and my therapist have all heard about it and I believe I am chatted out.  For the purposes of my blog narrative, all you really need to know is that I found out I was being played by my ex and he now will have nothing to do with my life outside the occasional workday.  He tried to start a Words With Friends game that I am ignoring.  I am ignoring all of my WWF games though, there are only so many times one can play “zax” before the thrill is gone. 

The bigger anxiety has been over my brother and while I have not discussed this stress with nearly as many people, this anxiety has nothing to do with romance novels or my writing, and I just don’t like to talk about it.  I just thought it important, in the event someone makes a movie based on this blog, that I have a life beyond books, movies, tv, romance, and boyfriends. 

At least, I would like to think my life is more expansive than that, but now that I have a couple of things I actively don’t want to think about, I am having trouble remembering what I occupied my mind with before evil men started being mean to me.  (Is “evil” too strong of a word?  Hmm…)  I believe I cannot remember because I used to be bored before all of this upheaval; I just never had anything I actively did not want to think about. 

So, I took myself off to Italy for the holidays.  Well, I usually go to Italy for the holidays but this year the vacation was much needed.  Not only was this the first year that I have worked every day(ish) for the last six months, but all the stress I had been experiencing for the past three weeks or so was starting to hit untenable levels.  I really needed to get out. 

The upshot with all of this physical distance is that I have loads of raw material for my writing.  Granted, the majority of it has gone in to those long unsent letters that we all write to those who have wronged us; but, since I am never sending them I can always use that handy cut and paste option, thus using my pain for artistic purposes.  Additionally, I have discovered new “create your own” opportunities on the internets, so as soon as I take some pictures (new phone and computer, thus necessitating some “fotogroups” as my Peruvian tour guide used to say on my hike to Machu Picchu back in 2005) 

I will have a whole slew of new examples of formal creativity.  In the meantime, here is the holiday card my step-mom made.  I know it is slow, but it is totally worth the wait.

My Italian trips are usually a bit of a whirlwind with scores of social obligations.  Tonight I will be rehearsing “We Belong” in the style of Pat Benatar for a non-holiday music holiday concert in my dad’s town on the 26th.  So, now I have plenty of performance anxiety to deal with as opposed to family, travel, or romance anxiety.  I think I will take the performance anxiety any day, because the show is going to end eventually.     

Beans and Beanie

I am very clumsy and prone to accidents.  Right now I am typing this very slowly because I cut my left middle finger open on a can of pinto beans yesterday morning.  Later in the day I rolled over my foot with a A-frame dolly with about 30 pieces of 4’x10’ lauan.  I have bumps and bruises all over me.  None of this, however, is as frustrating as my sinus headaches, which are completely out of control and vary with the weather.  If it were something I was causing I could shrug it off like my finger and purple toenail, chocking it up to my lack of innate grace.  Having no control over my headaches (even drugs don’t cut the pain) just makes the pain that much more unbearable.

I told you all about the day a couple of months ago when I woke up with one of my pressure headaches but couldn’t let the day pass without working on my novel.  I had planned the whole week to spend this day working on a section where I needed Christina, my heroine, to be confronted with the poverty of not having any ambition to make it in New York.  I needed her to see what it would be to not take the opportunities when they were given, leading to a coasting and dependent existence.  Sadly, my head hurt so badly I couldn’t look at the screen of my computer.  My solution was to call my ex since we had been on friendly terms, he owed me a favor, and I couldn’t think of anyone else who would be willing to transcribe my ramblings.

You guys remember this, right?  I talked about it when I was discussing word choice.  Well, now I am going to talk about it in terms of character development.  You see, that day I created Beanie.  My ex named him, though.  Beanie is another man-child content to sloth about and mooch off of his hard working parents.  I hold a lot of disdain for him, I hate asking my parents for money, and I am constantly striving to get beyond a mean and meager existence.  I am jealous of Beanie because he doesn’t think about anything too much, and he is content to wake up on a couch that is not his own. 

I have been struggling to remember what I used to think about before family troubles and dude troubles began to hold a hostile occupation of my brain.  I secretly believe I was bored most of the time but didn’t have anything that I actively didn’t want to think about.  Today seems to have confirmed this feeling because I didn’t think so much about my life, but I also didn’t have much to think about otherwise.  I spent most of the day singing power ballads.  My point being, Beanie has a wonderful ability to float from day to day and meander from job, to activity, to napping in other people’s apartments without worrying about the bills, and rent, and the direction of his life.  On the other hand, I can’t see a very fulfilling future for this peripheral character either.     

Man Tit, I mean, Lit.

I have been saving up my blogging folks!  I didn’t have much to talk about for a while.  I was just editing, editing, nothing very interesting.   Now, however, I have headache initiated poor decision making which lead to interesting new characters, the completion of the first 25%, and a mess of emotional upheaval to chat about!  I am going to pretend that I never learned how to write a five paragraph essay and talk about the completion of the first 25%, thus leave the headaches and emotional upheaval for the future, or tomorrow, or whatever.  I am still mentally collating the feelings, events, and literary references I want to use when discussing my feelings and how I am going to use them to bare my soul on the pages of a $7.99 paperback.

So, I finished the first quarter of my book a couple of weeks ago.  I didn’t immediately jump on the blog and tell everyone because I was afraid that I would stagnate if I made a big hoopla over finishing something that I haven’t actually well, finished.  What I mean is, I have gotten the first bit in to a state that I would not be embarrassed to let a random stranger or harshly critical professor read.  It is a romance novel, so I am figuring that most critics account for generic rules and style.  If they don’t THEN I am in trouble.   As it is, though, I feel pretty good about accomplishing a base layer to the whole.  I feel like I have made something solid on which to build.  That is, of course, the definition of “base layer.”

I have also noticed that having attained this non-accomplishment I may have acquired a bit of snobbery, or perhaps it is merited disdain.  The other night at dinner with a friend in order to discuss the hinted at life drama, said friend and I met a wandering Irishman with intentions of writing “Man Lit.”  What is “Man Lit” you ask?  Well, I don’t really know.  I thought it was Nick Hornby and his ilk (see previous blog post) but apparently, since he approaches feelings through a medium (such as music, you really should check out that blog post) then he really isn’t actually exploring his feelings and it isn’t an honest expression of how men emote.  Which I think means this wandering Irishman doesn’t have a great grasp on metaphor, or sobriety.  Well, the sobriety is immaterial to the subject, but he was seriously drunk.   I thought about maybe inviting him to my place to talk about whatever his writing intentions were but the wandering put me off.   I say “wandering” because he was one of those dudes who just decided to move to America without a job or money and his first weeks were marked by couch surfing on strangers couches that he found through an internet forum actually for couch surfing.   I just ended a relationship with a 30 something man-child, so I decided I didn’t need to start hanging out with a 30 something wandering Irish man-child. 

Ageism is not actually what I am referring to when I say I have perhaps become snotty about the writing thing.  I am talking about my dismissal of this “Man Lit” person as a writer.  Granted, I asked him if he had anything written and his response was something along the lines of “nothing cohesive” (my words, he was drunk, remember, I am paraphrasing) which I took to mean he is doing a lot of journaling.  So my second question was “So, are you just doing a lot of journaling or do you actually have some notion of an overarching storytelling device?”  Which is when he said he didn’t consider himself a “writer” yet, but he really wants to express how men have feelings.  Either my snobbery is getting in the way of me being fair to this guy and not making him sound like a drunken wandering Irishman without a job, or perhaps my snobbery is just merited disdain for deluded 30 something man-children.  I have to go, the deep well of bitterness is overflowing in to my prose, and it depresses me.

Kisses!  Soon I will bring you all a manifesto about teen murder, lying cheaters, mid-Century British Female writers who retell fairytales using the word “cunt,” familial discord, and exorbitantly priced shirt-dresses.  Because really, it is a shirt…dress.

Please Don't Make Me Write an Outline

I am thisclose to finishing the first edit of the first 25% of my first draft!  I am very excited.  The editing process has lead me to fix the really terrible parts and discover ways to add some moments that I find really interesting.  I hope you will enjoy them too.  I kinda’ like my own writing sometimes.  I suppose I should like it all the time, but I have one major difficulty with writing.  The minute I have planned the whole story out I immediately get bored and quit.  Yep, once I know what is going to happen I just can’t keep going.  You see, I already know the ending and how I got there, so why do I have to write it down? 

As a book nerd, it amazes me how tightly wound literature can be.  The best books I have read are so well constructed it is impossible that the respective authors must have planned down to the small details.  The best example of such organized construction is Shirley Jackson's We Have Always Lived in the Castle.  The economy of words is impressive, and the reverberations of patterns, words, and ideas winds the story to a pitch that can only end in catastrophe (in the plot, not in the writing).  Dear god do I wish someone would make that movie. 

I do not have the same abilities.  I tried, I had this great little novel about a lost heiress, and maybe I will return to it someday, when I have forgotten my intentions.  Until then I have to figure out ways to keep my own self guessing.

Pink Cheeked and Sassy

Part of me wants to say that I have been sitting around, waiting for inspiration about the writing process that will make compelling reading.  The reality is that I just don’t have terribly much to say.  I am in the editing process, and have been for a while.  This is, of course, due in large part to not working very much on editing.  Procrastination is not quite the right word, I wouldn’t say I have been putting it off. More, that I have work, a blog, class, and other myriad personal engagements to attend.  This week my personal engagement was the Harford Road Zombie Crawl in beautiful Baltimore, MD.  Don’t I look precious?  The creepy clown is my sister.

So, because I don’t have much to talk about on the writing front, I am going to tell my two favorite times I embarrassed myself in front of a famous person. 

The first time, I was working on the construction crew for the movie “It’s Complicated.”  I was sitting at the lunch table, eating my Amy’s cheese enchilada plate and I looked up as the door swung open from Camperland outside of the stage.  A very tall, attractive man in that “boy next door” adorable way walked in to the building.   Well, I am sitting there, staring at him and trying to figure out from whence I knew him.   I was so sure that I knew him personally, but I couldn’t place him.  Did we go to college together?  No.  Did we work together once?  No.  Was he a friend’s older brother?  Nope.  Now, I was alone, and sitting at a table that was sort of in a foyer cum hallway, so I am sure I looked a bit out of place and by this point I had been staring at him for longer than was necessary or comfortable for him.  So, Mystery Man gives me a slight smile, and continues over to the stairwell that would eventually lead him to the soundstage, at which point it hits me.   “It’s that guy from ‘The Office!’” My brain said to my eyeballs.  That is the story of how I creepily made John Krasinski deeply uncomfortable for a second.

The other awkward moment happened in a restaurant in Westchester, NY.  I was working on a small movie with a lot of big stars, and it would have been awesome if I hadn’t been miserable.  I didn’t totally love some of the other crew members, and we were kinda’ undermanned so I was unhappy.  To top it off, I got food poisoning from the caterers.  So, we are undermanned already and now I am green hued and nauseous.  I do as much as I can, but I reach a point when I am forced to hang out by the potties.  Well, while I am standing by to be sick Catherine Keener drops by to, you know, freshen up.  Now, she is a super sweet lady, and was very kind to ask me if I was doing all right.  Of course I told her that I would be ok but this time my brain was silently telling Catherine Keener “I wish I wasn’t meeting you while I am all pukey.”  That was a sad day. 

When I get older my life will simply be a compendium of embarrassing moments in front of people, famous or otherwise. 

Choose Your Words Wisely

I have some thoughts on word choice I would like to share with y’all.  (I like to announce things, maybe you have noticed?)  Yesterday while riding in the crew van from location to the studio for lunch* the teamster had the Daily News or the Post, whichever one does the stupid headlines, opened to the story about the South Brooklyn rapist.  The article began by discussing a young lady who had been “brutally groped.”**  I am both appalled and amused by such a strange juxtaposition of words.  I am appalled because a young woman was groped; I am appalled and amused that it was brutal.  How is one “brutally” groped?  Can someone please explain this to me?  I understand the word “grope” to imply roughness and brutality anyway.   

Specificity in communication and writing has always been very important to me, especially in terms of word choice.  I love words, their variant meanings, and the nuances that a carefully chosen word can evoke in my mind.  I hope that when others read worlds within the words open up to them in the same way.  Evocative phrasing feels like finding treasure in a way.   Conversely, poor word choice is anathema to me.  There is nothing more grating in conversation than imprecise, convoluted, and poor wording, because in the end, if you cannot pick the right words, how can you make your point?   It is for this very reason that I am left baffled by a brutal groping. 

I started thinking about this subject again on Monday, before the newspaper article.  I say again, because words are what I love about writing.  I am more interested in the words I am using than the story I am telling.  The story is basic and can be parsed down to two sentences.  A girl meets a boy and they enter into a business relationship.  They become romantically attached and have to work through and look past their differences before living happily ever after.  That isn’t really publishable, as such.  Luckily, I get to pick all the best words I can to create a whole world around this little story. 

Now, I was thinking about all of this on Monday because I woke up with the worst sinus headache I have had in easily six months, but more probably a year.  I had the day off (thanks Columbus! Side note, the Italians probably called him “Columbo” so why do we Latinize his name?  Anyone know?) and I really needed to get some work done but I couldn’t stare at a screen so I called in a favor.  Last week I took the ex to pick up a seventies sports car he bought a while back (what?  I wanted to see the car.  It looks like this only in blue.) and so I called him up and was like “yo, type my shit.”  Not really, I texted him and was very polite, as befitting a lady.  Anyhoo, because I was not typing he would occasionally question me in my choices, which was challenging in the best way possible.  I became more careful, more concise, in a word, precise.  As the clouds rolled in and the air pressure equalized, my head started to feel better and I could think.  So I thought about words, and maybe became a little bit better at writing than I had been the day before.  Or maybe not.  Meh, I will figure it out eventually.

*Sorry for dropping you in to this crazy world of crew vans and teamsters and lunch.  Basically, they feed us at work so that they only have to give us a half hour break as opposed to an hour, and on Monday they set up lunch at the studio because the location was not big enough to accommodate a whole buffet.  The crew vans are kinda’ self explanatory with such context I hope, and teamsters drive them.

**I found it in the Post.  ”B’klyn Perv Strikes Again” By David Seifman, Rebecca Harsbarger and Larry Celona. New York Post October 11, 2011.

That Old Trick

Insert joke about an elderly prostitute here:___________________________

I don’t actually want to talk about, you know, that.  That is depressing.  The old trick I am interested in is what I like to call the “miscommunication gambit.”  Sitcoms and romance novels LOVE the miscommunication gambit to create drama or complicate the situation.  I call it a gambit because many miscommunications in popular culture seem highly unlikely and therefore a calculated construction to advance plot.  Or so I thought until Monday.

Last Friday I went to the doctor for the usual annual physical and they took a bunch of blood.  I was pretty O.K. with it too, until I realized that it was my BLOOD and not dyed corn syrup.  Anyhoo, on Monday the doctor’s nurse called and since I missed the call so she left a message.  The message was fairly straight forward, explaining that I am in overall good health EXCEPT!!!  The woman actually said “except!” Except one of the test results was not in yet.  So I spend the whole night thinking I had a disease.  The specific disease is not your business, kids.

If my life were a romance novel either I would need to contact my old flame because I need his marrow, or blood, or platelets.  Or maybe, I got pregnant and I have to figure out what I am going to do, but eventually the father, or some new dude finds out and we live blissfully together, raising some other guy’s kid. 

My life is not a novel.  I am fine.  No sickness or babies or nothin’.  I was just stuck with a really horrible night of thinking I was diseased.      

Gettin' All Meta Up in Hir

I really want to write a good, in depth post, but I have a terrible headache and my cats have broken a bunch of keys on my computer so typing is now frustrating and slightly difficult.  It was fine when it was just the “z” key and slightly bothersome when the “m” button fell off, but now that I am forced to hit weird little rubbery/plastic-y nubs for “a” and “w” too I want to throw my computer out the window.  Right before I do so though, I recall how time consuming it would be to write this on my smartphone and I pause.  Maybe I will just throw the cat out the window next time she makes a really terrible smelling poop.  Nah, I guess I will keep her, but seriously, those poops are toxic. 

So, what do I want to talk about besides my two favorite topics of cats and poop?  I mean, I think they have come up three times already, usually in the same sentence.  (Brief aside, can I just misspell words to avoid using the broken keys?  No?  Ok.) Well, I read The Help this week since I was busy and Infinite Jest is too deep for that idle fifteen minutes before sleep.   No, I don’t want to talk about the movie, because I haven’t seen it.  Nor do I want to discuss race, or being dumped twice by the same guy, or even the poop cake.  I will point out that clearly I am not the only girl who thinks books should have more poop jokes though.  

I want to talk about the act of writing, and writing about writing.

Lets start with form, since I love form.  The book inside the book has one chapter written by a maid and Skeeter, who maintains this weird role of interviewer, writer and editor.  This is a fairly straightforward organizational system.   The actual book jumps between three women’s perspectives, and even has one chapter written in the third person.  This is not so straightforward.  I understand wanting to give the individual characters control over perspective, but I don’t understand breaking that pattern for omniscience.  Especially when the one chapter that is in the third person is not the only time the three characters occupy the same space.  I also find it troublesome that only three of the characters control what the reader knows when they are clearly sympathetic characters.  Why don’t we hear the story from the nasty characters too?  Because we can imagine how racist and ignorant they are so clearly their perspectives don’t count?  Isn’t it their perspectives that created the Jim Crow South?  My point being, wouldn’t it be interesting if the reader were given the perspective of a generally good person who had this one terrible, hurtful, but socially acceptable (at the time) flaw?  “Flaw” belittles racism, I know, but I lack a better word.  Blame it on the headache. 

This leads me to what I have been working on in my own story.  I want a particular character to be likeable, but totally blind to his ego, thereby undermining his reliability as a source of information.   This is hard people.  It is difficult to tell a story by withholding information.  Well, withholding it until the time is appropriate.  How do I create a likeable character with a pretty major flaw (all though WAY less of an issue than racism, on a totally different scale really), and not drop that bomb until, like, halfway through the book?  THIS IS SO HARD!  TYPING THIS I MEAN, IT IS SUCH A PAIN IN THE PLACE WHERE MY CAT MAKES STINKY POOPS.

Goodnight.

What the Heck am I Doing?

Well, I can just tell you that the week has barely started and yet I am almost speechless with joy to have my shows back.  Today I watched the previously DVR-ed “The Biggest Loser” and I was moved to tears.  There were these military helicopters, and my favorite reality show (besides “16 and Pregnant” for the obvious train wreck possibilities) and old people.  Patriotism, excitement, and old people just create a perfect storm in my eyeballs I guess.  I still don’t entirely understand why the Marines were involved, probably to make me cry. 

So, the real bit of news is annoyingly salient.  Remember that part in the chapter I gave you when Lydia laments not seeing some of her friends and co-workers for long periods of time after finishing a job?  (You totally read it right?  You didn’t?  Well, go read it now.  Don’t worry, I will wait, it is short anyway.)

So, now that we are all back together again and recalling that little line, well, guess who decided to join the crew of the show that has become my little world since July?  That’s right, that guy who drove me to make amusing ecards about cats and LBJ.  The great thing about working freelance in the film and television industry is that when you finish a job you can often escape those you want to get away from.  The bad thing is almost anyone can turn back up in your life at ANY TIME. 

I bring this up because of course I immediately sought out my besties for emotional support, and the weird thing was, more than one of them asked me if I thought he joined the crew to work near me.  I call this weird because as a Romance writer that should have been my first thought.  Perhaps it is not surprising that my mind did not come up with that awesome plot device sooner because I am in the middle of it and not observing from the outside. The mundane nature of life and knowing his perspective relatively well obscured anything beyond the surface of the situation for me.  But as a writer IT SHOULD HAVE BEEN MY FIRST THOUGHT!  AAARRGGHH!  Am I going to be terrible at this and fail horribly?  Probably not, I am sure this is the emotional upheaval kicking up dust in my head.  BTW, I am fairly certain that he did not board the Clipper Majestic (bonus points for those of you who pick up the reference and figure out what TV show I am working on.  I hope I didn’t mention it in an earlier post…) just to hang out with me.  But if my life were an awesome Romance novel he would totally have squirreled his way on to be near me because I am awesome and have unforgettable kind of green, kind of brown, squinty eyes and cute freckles or something.   Oh, oh, even better, he didn’t want to work near me and didn’t think I would be there, but there I am, his old flame, and the flame hasn’t gone out.  I flit back and forth in front of him, and, oh wait, am I flirting?  Maybe I am flirting, and he is stricken.   I draw him, almost magnetically, with my kind of green, kind of brown, squinty eyes and cute freckles or something. 

Hey, thanks for letting me freak out about writing.  I am going to go work on chapter six now!

Hooray for Sweater Season!

I am all over the place to day so forgive me if this is not the most cohesive post.  First of all, I know it has been a while since I posted.  I took an Internet break on the 11^th; I did not feel like chatting that day, and then the week just ran off on me.  Despite it passing so quickly, this week was pretty great.  I orchestrated my first free day since May, the weather has been lovely since Thursday, and my excitement for the fall TV season has kept me going on a super fun high.   For clarification, a free day is not a sick day, a holiday, a weekend, or a lack of work.  A free day is when one has the option to work but chooses to get a manicure and go shopping instead.  I love free days.   In addition to my free day I went out with my family on Friday, and had a night on the town last night too.  Added to all of this activity, I also managed to tidy up around the apartment a bit and bake some gluten free cornbread muffins.  I just can’t stop the energy flowing, and it is all due to my love of television. 

Not only to I spend somewhere between 48 and 60 hours a week as a cog in the machine that turns out a major network show, but I am also an avid consumer of network programming.  I enjoy cable shows too, and feel particularly indebted to cable as the driving force behind a greater creativity for the networks.  I just love television.  On Saturdays I even like to watch movies on TV and cook or clean during the commercial breaks.   My buzz this week lead me to create a new ecard.  Here it is:

I think it is pretty true too.  If I had new episodes of my favorite jams (“Criminal Minds,” “Castle,” or “The Big Bang Theory” especially) I think I would have been feeling fine in like, two weeks.

Guys, you know what else has me feeling pretty good?  I feel so honored that you folks have been reading my blog!  I know that what I have to say is pretty specific to my life and my writing, but ya’ll keep coming back to see what I have to say and I thank you for that. 

So, what is going on with the writing, you ask?  Well, I have been chugging away at editing what can loosely be called the first act.  Overall, I am pleased with what I have down on the page.  I think my characters are pretty believable, and the dialogue is not terrible.  Some of my chapters are pretty great, if I do say so myself.  Here is a chapter I like, just for fun.  Luckily for you, it is the first one.

When I look at the chapters that I struggled with, I am much less enthusiastic about this whole endeavor.  I have chatted with some writers, some friends, and some writers who are friends, and I have been given a lot of different perspectives and ideas.  I chose to “just get something down on paper” but now I just want to scrap the bad stuff and start fresh on those chapters.  Maybe not go in a different direction, but certainly not allow some of the frankly terrible and clichéd drivel that I wrote continue to exist.  Readers, who I am so thrilled and lucky to have, what do you think?  Please leave a comment or two with any advice about the process, or reactions to the chapter I just gave you.  Please?  I would love a comment!  Mom, feel free to refrain from "oh honey it's great."

Some non-sequiturs that I want to share with my tiny public: I learned how to curl my hair with a straightening iron this weekend-which I find to be a thrilling oxymoron-and I have to go because I think my kitten just ate some plastic.  Also, this.

Striking a Universal Note

I apologize, dear readers (of which there are more than four, I am pleased to note) for not providing you with fodder for procrastination this week, but I was otherwise engaged. It was a busy week here in New York; Fashion Week has started which, thankfully, this year it means very little to me. I attended a Fashion’s Night Out event at my friend’s lovely Park Slope shop Eponymy and that is my entire involvement in the events of this week, praise Jesus. My friends visited from the Left Coast and last night I found myself at a rooftop bar that wanted so badly to be exclusive. I felt like I was at the bar where the rejects from The Boom Boom Room (I think this link explains all you need to know) go to make some sort of decent night pan out. Well, at least the drinks were strong and I was with good friends.

However, what really took up most of my time was reading a Romance novel. Well, first I finished the Daphne DuMaurier I was reading called Castle Dor that has a Nineteenth Century town relive the events of the Tristan and Iseult myth. I mention it because I may bring it up later on, I have not decided. So, I finished Castle Dor and then decided to read the new Julia Quinn. You see, I only read Historical Romance, which, to the uninitiated, is a subgenre of the whole. Why, then, am I writing in a contemporary setting? Because I decided to start out with writing what I know. I have to establish myself first before I write my WWI novel because I am pretty sure there isn’t much of a market for that yet.

Anyhoo, I don’t think I have read a Romance since the last Julia Quinn came out this winter. Between work, writing, and reading Brideshead Revisited I just haven’t picked one up in a while. If you are familiar with Quinn you will recall the notoriously dreadful Smythe-Smith musicales and with Just Like Heaven she finally introduces her readership to the Smythe-Smiths and their lack of musical talent and love of exhibitionism. The book’s plot is focused on two main events, but despite one of them being the musicale, music seems strangely absent. Even when the characters are supposed to be practicing they argue, and the event itself is described after the fact. In Castle Dor, the Tristan character breaks his violin when he decides to begin his affaire with the Iseult character and music becomes absent there too.

Now though, music is far more ubiquitous than in the Nineteenth Century. If we walk in to a shop music will be playing. The subway platforms and cars are often makeshift stages, and almost everyone has a mp3 player, and not everyone has the courtesy to use theirs’ with headphones. This has all been rather difficult for me this summer as I have some compulsive issues concerning music. I believe that certain types of music/songs will affect the immediate future or have particular significance. Yes, it is crazy and no, I can’t logic my way out of this one. Recently, someone was agonizing to me about being in the card store and all the songs on the radio station playing in the shop seemed to relate specifically to his life at that time. I pointed out quite logically that pop songs are generic for that very reason. The writers and performers want you to believe that that song was written for you. “Killing Me Softly” and “You’re So Vain” spell it out almost. See, I can logic it, but if I don’t hear classical music once a day (and write to it) or listen to particular bands SOMETHING WILL GO VERY, VERY WRONG.

What all this really causes me to realize (above and beyond some possible obsessive/compulsive tendencies) is how universal the big things, like love and loss, truly are. What makes Romance so appealing is the triumph of those things that people almost universally desire, such as trust, love, and being the first priority for the same person who comes first for one’s self. Pop songs function on the same level. They tap in to those feelings that are so forceful yet so common, that the expression of them creates an automatic bond between the music and the listener. I have "known" this for forever, but I am a little emotionally closed off, so it took some upheaval in my life to embrace this part of the human existence instead of rolling my eyes and seeing pop music as trite. Tonight I wallowed in this bond with a little Heart, Adele, Iron and Wine, Mumford and Sons, and Prince. Oh, feelings.

Form, Format, and My Love of Pithy Statements Combined with Somewhat Relevant Illustrations

I am a formalist. What I mean is that I love form, I think that form is as informative as word choice, plot, metaphor, and every other signifier used to create meaning, to use semiotics for a moment. I have never seen the movie "Beloved" because I believe that the book Beloved is so reliant upon it's form to convey meaning that the movie cannot be the same thing. Yes, Dear Reader, I know they are actually not the same thing. But I feel that Beloved is so deeply reliant upon form that it doesn't really translate visually.

I think I love genre so much because I love form. There are rules to form and genre, the rules can be bent, but not broken, and true creativity lies in the writer's ability to function within the rules. The natural extension of this logic is that I also love Twitter. I think I would love it if more people were creative, and when they are I have a great time browsing randomly. I, however, do not need to be greeted "good morning Tweeps" by my high school friends, @kristyamaguchi (much as I adore), or @stephenfry. Don't judge who I follow.

Having said all that, here is a new form I have embraced to help with the burning desire I have had to call that guy who dumped me and cry about how sad I am from reading too many articles about 9/11.

Go here to understand what this card means.

Who knew misery and creativity got along so well?

Penguins in Pants

Titling. I am so terrible with titles. When I was in college I turned in my first few essays without titles for two reasons. The first being I have a lot of anxiety over title writing and the second being I don’t really believe school essays need titles. Unless it is a dissertation or something you are submitting for publishing I feel that the three, five, whatever page essay’s job is to make the argument, so why do we need titles telling us the point of the essay?

I have a lot of anxiety over title writing because most essay titles sound grandiose and therefore stupid because it is a three page college essay dudes, you can get away with a single word title, probably. I really hate the compound essay title. You know what I mean. “Over Thinking It: The Metaphysical Act of Writing About Writing” or whatever minor detail your hungover and barely functional mind had decided to place an overabundance of importance upon that week. I rebelled strongly against those and only began using them my Junior year due to complaints from professors. Seriously. Not that I don’t love my professors but I smell creativity being stifled.

Now, titling my Romance novel is causing even greater anxiety because Romance titles almost demand to sound idiotic. As a being who abhors and avoids cliché I am having great difficulty feeling comfortable with my current title. The book is about an A-list actor who falls in love with his personal assistant while working on a small independent feature film. The novel is the first in what I hope to be a series of four other novels concerning characters who work in the New York film industry. I want the titles to sound like Romance titles and involve well-known filmmaking terms. I don’t want the titles to sound really stupid. The first one is currently being called:

Love and…Action!

What do you think? Please comment, please be honest, I don’t have much of an ego when it comes to my writing, and especially not my titling!

I worked 49 hours this week and it is only Thursday. This means that I am not going to write a five-page essay like I usually do.