ALL JOKING ASIDE . . . OR NOT

I know it isn’t April 1st yet, but have you ever played a really good April Fools’ joke on someone? I did. But only once. I was in my early 30’s and told a good friend and co-worker I was pregnant. She was so happy for me, hugging me and congratulating me on finally becoming a mother. She was ecstatic. Then I said the ‘magic’ words.

She hit me.

Hard!

Luckily we were sitting down so she hit me on the leg . . . as opposed to hitting me in the face. But I think she was sorely tempted. Once my leg finally quit hurting — a couple hours later — I decided to not play any more jokes on anyone. Hey, you don’t have to hit me over the head (or leg) but one time and I’ll wise up.

Usually.

But no guarantees. LOL

I also had a friend who was pregnant with twins — not her first pregnancy, either. She was still a couple weeks away from her due date, and didn’t feel well. She wasn’t having labor pains, just didn’t feel ‘right’. To be on the safe side, she decided to check in with the doc. He took one look at her and sent her straight to the hospital. She was already dilated! Talk about a surprise. Her darling babies were born April 1st.

Now THAT’S an April Fools’ joke!!

Linda

 

 

Quirky characters

During my time of “forced vacation” (as I am now referring to the last 5 months while I was out of work) I began watching the tv show House – the one that follows Dr. House, a very irritable, yet brilliant physician, as he figures out what’s wrong with some very sick patients.

Normally, our tv is tuned into Cartoon Network or Nickelodeon. In addition, it seriously annoys me to get addicted to a show and then have to remember to tune in at the same time each week. So… we rarely ever do the main-stream shows.

Despite the fact that after watching week after week of this show (including one day-long marathon), I’m starting to get freaky paranoid about all kinds of aches and pains (I’m convinced that the last headache I had must be a sign of a brain tumor or something equally untreatable), I just love the Dr. House character. I love his cranky attitude, his pithy comments and his complete belief that everyone lies. I love that he pops pain pills like they’re candy and can still add two plus two. I love that he drives any one that gets too close to him away. And I even love that he pushes not only his staff, but even his friends, to the point of breaking. All for the sake of solving the day’s puzzle. I am in complete awe at whoever created this character. And I’m more than impressed at the life the actor breathes into him each week.

But, then again, I also love that Hallmark character, Maxine. You know, the smart-a$$, cranky, old lady??

I still haven’t figured out what it is about those characters that gets my attention and utter devotion.

Is there a favorite character or character-type that you just love? Or love to hate even?

Braggin’ time

It’s no secret that I’m extremely proud of my kids, but lately it’s been more than usual.

My daughter is the most spiritual person I know, and is so talented and beautiful, but Saturday we got a letter in the mail saying she was accepted into the National Honor Society at her school. Only a few were invited to apply and the application was bugger to fill out. I am so proud of her!! She is such a sweet and loving girl– I say girl, but she’s 13 and taller than I am, so I guess young lady would be more appropriate. She makes me so proud.

And my son, who is 11 and is known for being the most stubborn person on the planet, is doing exceptional in school. He has some A’s this year and is a Facts Master (knowing your adding, subtracting & mutiplying in a set amount of time). But more than that, he has some kids that have been bullies to him in our neighborhood and although they go out of their way to call him names and bug him, he never calls them names back and tries his best to walk away. There have been a few times when he’s stood his ground, and I can’t say as I blame him. But he’s doing his best not to stoop to their level and that makes me so proud.

This post has nothing to do with writing but I really couldn’t help myself. They are such great kids!

Ashlynn

Film Noir

According to weather forecasts for the last few days, this morning should have dawned snowy and cold here in Oklahoma. Marilyn’s brain-dead cardinal should have looked like a blue jay with a flat face (from slamming it into her window.)

So far, no snow. Lots of rain, though. And I still have my plans for today. First I’m going to write, write, write. Then this afternoon I’m watching movies.

I’m a movie-holic. LOVE to watch movies. It doesn’t matter if I’ve seen them before or if they’re brand new. If it’s got a good story (especially if it’s a love story) I’m gonna like it.

When my kids were little, one asked me if the world was black and white when I was a girl. I had a little trouble figuring out their logic until another one said, “If the movie is black and white, Mom’s gonna love it.”

I don’t love all black and white movies, but I adore my share. 

One of my absolute all-time favorites is “Laura“, starring Gene Tierney, Dana Andrews, Clifton Webb and a very young Vincent Price.

This is from Amazon: 

This silky smooth film noir pits gruff police detective Dana Andrews, stiff and blunt in his street-bred manners, against a cultured columnist and acidic wit (Clifton Webb at his prissiest) in a battle of wits during a murder investigation.

The cop is a romantic hiding under a hard-boiled exterior who falls in love with the beautiful victim through the portrait that hangs in her apartment. Gene Tierney, whose heart-shaped face mixes the exotic with the girl next door, brings the poise and calm of a model to her role as the object of every man’s gaze and the target of a killer.

What can I say? It’s a great movie and I’ll be watching it today.

Another of my favs is “Now, Voyager” with Bette Davis and Paul Henreid.  

Here’s Amazon’s blurb:

A tender love story, a taut psychological drama, an inspiring tale of physical and spiritual transformation.

Bette Davis magically plays Charlotte Vale, a spinster who defies her domineering mother (fellow Oscar nominee Gladys Cooper) to discover love, heartbreak and eventual contentment.

More magic is generated by a top-notch ensemble, Max Steiner’s Academy Award-winning score and an improvised moment by Paul Henreid that became an instant classic: he lights two cigarettes at once and hands one to Davis. For the ultimate in romantic melodrama, it?s Now Voyager now, then and forever.  

And what oldies movie lover could leave out “Mrs. Miniver”? Greer Garson,  aka Mrs. Miniver, is one of my favorite actresses (I told my DH, “If I had a daughter today, I’d name her Greer.” He answered, “Good thing that’s not going to happen.” Walter Pidgeon is Mr. Miniver. (Don’t you love him?)

I cry every time I watch those brave Englishmen take their boats (no matter how small) across the Channel to rescue the soldiers at Dunkirk. And while her DH is gone rescuing soldiers, Mrs. M finds a German soldier in her garden. He thinks he’s taken her prisoner, but she bravely grabs his gun and takes him prisoner instead.

Well, Amazon does a great job. Here it is:

A glowing Greer Garson (Best Actress) commands the screen as Mrs. Miniver, a middle-class British housewife whose strength holds her family together as World War II literally hits their home. Walter Pidgeon as her architect husband seems to be the prototype for future TV dads in this affecting portrait of love–familial and romantic–during war.

But the relationship between Mrs. Miniver’s college-age son (Richard Ney) and the upper-crust Carol (Best Supporting Actress Teresa Wright) is filled with inherent drama–as the war speeds up their young love, it also has the potential to doom it.

The 1942 film, which also won for Best Picture and Best Director, is filled with colorful characters, snappy dialogue, and sensational plot twists. Although you spend much of the movie dreading that one of the Minivers will become a casualty of war, when it finally happens, it’s not what you anticipated. Exactly what you’d expect from a legendary film that lives up to its billing. –Valerie J. Nelson 

So why am I telling you all this? Because what I love most about these films is the emotion we experience as we watch them.

Laura falls deep in love with a man deemed inappropriate by her upper crust friends, but she doesn’t care. She loves him.

Now, Voyager shows us the struggle of a young woman to get out from under a very controlling mother–and the guilt/desperation she experiences becoming her own person.

And in Mrs. Miniver we live all the emotions a woman living in a country at war goes through.

As a writer, I work hard to put emotion into my books. It’s not an easy task experience an emotion on paper, but when it’s right, it’s wonderful.

And when it’s wrong, it’s back to the computer.

Susan

The Brain-Dead Cardinal

Every time I go into or past the puppers’ room, I hear a steady thump . . . thump . . . thump. It started about a month ago, and it took me a while to figure out what the heck it was. There’s a tree right outside the windows, and a mentally-challenged cardinal lives there. He’s gorgeous but apparently dumber than dirt (which is why I think it’s a “he”). Over and over, all day long, he flies into the window glass, bounces back, takes a minute to recover, then does it again. And again.

Frankly, I figured he’d be dead after a week of it, but when I was in there a bit ago, there he was, banging that pretty head against the glass for at least the thousandth time. Just how stupid is he? I wonder. He can look through the branches and see daylight; he can see other birds flying in and out of the trees, but he just keeps hitting the window, never giving up, always dusting himself off and trying one more time.

Bet you think I”m going for an analogy here . . . how we authors are that cardinal, banging our heads against the publishers’ windows trying to get in. We know there are other, easier pursuits available; we can look through the branches and see the sky, the flowers, the trees where other birds flit, but we stay where we are, knocking ourselves silly. Okay, it didn’t work the last time, but maybe THIS time . . .

Nope. I’m just sharing with you what a putz that bird is. One of these days, with my camera handy, I’m going to open the window and the screen and see what happens when, instead of bouncing off the glass, he flies into the room. With the puppers. I bet there’ll be birdsh*t everywhere.

Come to think of it, it does remind me of the publishing biz. Sometimes you kill brain cells. Sometimes you get knocked off your feet.

And, even if you do make it through the window, sometimes all you get for your effort is sh*t.

A Batty, Motley Rose

I got one of those emails this week. You know the one from the agent, the editor, “Thanks, but no thanks.” Now don’t feel sorry for me, because I don’t. If anything, I am more determined than ever to get published. No agent of doom, no editor of woe is going to stand between me and my dreams. On the way home from my DJ, I came up with this poem and thought I’d share it with you all. It’s a little tongue in cheek.

The inspiration for this poem came from some research I have done for my current WIP. Did you know Meat Loaf once said that it felt as though they were creating record companies solely for the purpose of rejecting Bat Out of Hell? The other two iconic groups I mention in this poem suffered early critics who brutally panned their music. They persevered and today are household names…at least our house. In the case of GNR, they shifted rock music away from glam rock back to metal. But if you read the band’s biography or listen to their later interviews, that was never their intent. They just wanted to make their music, their way.

I don’t necessarily want to turn the world upside down, I just want to tell my story and have someone read it, love it.

So here’s the poem. Hope it makes you smile.

A note received one spring morn,
Damned thing should have made me mourn.
Rejected, facing desolation,
Turned to others for inspiration.

Of the agent thought, “What an oaf!”
That’s when I recalled Meat Loaf
Whose album, Bat Out Of Hell,
Deaf producers damned to hell.

Or pre Jungle Guns N Roses,
Critics warned, “Hold your noses.”
“Great hair,” they said of Motley Crue
“But their music will make you spew.”

So the agent wasn’t smitten.
Yet, another chapter I’ve written,
Still confident in my prose,
A stubborn batty, motley, rose.

L. Somerville

Overwhelmed & Whining

I love taking classes. I’ve gotten to where I am pretty good about choosing ones that involve enough work to be challenging but not so much work that my life revolves around the class.

Every now and then I mess up. Fall of 2005 I enrolled in “Contemporary British Literature”. It sounded like a fun class, it was online and there were books by authors I’d never even heard of. It turned out to be the class from hell…I took it for graduate credit and I made an A in it though. I’m not an english major and I don’t think I have ever worked as hard in any class as I did in that class. I had no life that fall. I swore I would never that again.

And I didn’t until this spring. I took two classes, Cherokee Nation Legal History and Directed Studies in Cherokee Culture.

I thought they would have good information for backstory for my WIP and the novel that will come after it. The information is interesting and will help with my WIP and the other novel. But, ladies, these two classes are eating my lunch. I’ve just finished one paper and turned it in, now I’ve got to start research for the second paper… all together there are four papers.

Last December I decided I needed to “feed my soul” so I joined a theological book study group. More reading and I just found out we are expected to answer “discussion” questions. All I have time for is work, study, research, eat, and go to bed.

So now you know why I haven’t been posting goals or commenting on the blog posts. So until the semester ends I am going to be out of pocket.

And I’d better get some good novel fodder out of these classes.

Claude Mary

I wish I wrote that…

There are so many great movie lines that are quoted years after the movie’s release. There are great lines in TV and books.  Most pithy dialog, or bantering wordplay, catches my interest.

Recently, I watched a TV episode where two former lovers met each other in a hallway of a hotel while they were each sneaking out on their current lovers. The girl realized that the loud noises she and her lover had heard were her old boyfriend and his new lady burning up the sheets next door. The old boyfriend said, “If the snuggling afterwards is the best part, then you’re doing something wrong.”

I laughed and laughed.

All of us quote great movie lines sometime, nearly everyone can name this movie or book:

“Frankly, Scarlett, I don’t give a damn.”
“I’ve got a bad feeling about this.”
“Here’s looking at you, kid.”
“Toto, I’ve got a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore.”
“You can run, but you can’t hide.”
“It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known.”

(movie quotes: http://www.afi.com/tvevents/100years/quotes.aspx, book lines: http://americanbookreview.org/PDF/100_Best_Last_Lines_from_Novels.pdf)

There are plenty of books in my keeper shelves that have post-it flags marking good passages, descriptions or dialog. When I read over these
parts, I want to remember them so I can go back and read and re-read them. In my entirely unscientific approach, I can say that the language shares simplicity, but the emotion is always stark. The believable and enjoyable quotes and passages generally happen during a scene that is fraught with emotions.  People’s tempers are hot (or other parts of them, I guess) or they are excited and bubbly. Emotions are strong and obvious to the reader or viewer.

I wonder if the dialog at such times is so memorable because most of us don’t think of those great lines when we are in the middle of a highly charged emotional scene. I’m much more likely to say, “oh yeah?” than something memorable and lasting. More to the point, I’d probably stutter and stammer before I could make any sense at all. The capacity to be glib when angered or during a time of heightened sensuality is beyond most mere mortals.

Dialog is tricky. You have to worry that each character has a unique voice. You have to make sure that the scene does the work you need it to advance
plot or characterization. You have to read it out loud and make sure that people would actually talk like that. If you are doing a period piece, you
have to worry with dialect and add enough flavor to make it realistic without wearing the reader out. And in all of that, we are milking our brains for all the great comebacks we’ve never managed to say in real life. We’re trying to be witty and make that cutting comment that we didn’t think of until four days after this happened in real life. Our stories give us a chance to *be* the person with the great lines. Or at least our characters have that chance.

Recently, I found a blog that had a very good article on dialog (http://kaylyred.wordpress.com/2007/09/20/say-what-writing-effective-dialog/). In it, the author recommended these rules to obey:
* Never use attributes other than “said” or “asked.”
* Don’t try to write in dialect unless you’re a real pro.
* Do throw in regional expressions and slang to make dialog seem real.
* Experiment with giving your character a vocal tick–some oft-repeated word or phrase that becomes his trademark.
* Don’t have your characters make small talk.
* Break up dialog with action.

Good rules for writers. All of them are reminders of what works and what doesn’t. What it doesn’t tell me is how to write that truly
great dialog that gets repeated for years and years. Or that bit of banter that has a dog eared corner or post it flag on someone’s keeper shelf.  What makes magical dialog??

–Sandee Wagner

Potpourri

First, to all of you who have blogged the past few days, I’m sorry I haven’t kept up.  I’m a pediatric nurse and those of you who know me, know that winter is our worst season.  For awhile, it looked like we were going to get off easy.  But the RSV/Rotovirus/etc. season has hit with a vengeance.  Plus, for the second year in my life, I did my own taxes.  A six-week project that gave me nightmares.  But now, my taxes are in (though I’m still not sure they’re accurate) and I NEED the blog to help me keep my sanity through the rest of the winter illnesses I deal with each day.  So for my blog today, I’m going to just free-assosciate, here.

I want to tell all the guests who’ve been joining us on our ramblings, I appreciate the way you read and comment on our blog.  To me, it’s like welcome company in the house.  Thank you.  Have some cyber-brownies and lemonade.    It’s always been a mystery to me why people would want to read a blog.  (No doubt that is why I so bad at keeping up my personal blog on my web page at www.jackiekramer.com )  Now Twitter…that I can get my brain around except for some of the inane comments people write.  After all, would you really want to hear all about me brushing my teeth?  But the challenge of writing philosophy or parody or a sly remark in such a small space intrigues me.  That I might do consistently.

Oh, and I forgot to tell you…part of the reason why I haven’t been emailing or coming to the blog so often is that my laptop died.  I bought used and don’t grieve for it, but boy, I really miss the Wi-Fi that let me sit in my recliner while doing both.  But do not despair; I’ve ordered a new Dell laptop.  I almost have my PC paid off, so figured I could afford to get new this time.  I’m getting a colored one, Midnight Blue, with a 320 GB hard drive!  Can you imagine…320 GB!!?  Dang, I remember getting excited about a 386 MGB drive.  Times are sure a’changin’!  Only trouble is they won’t have it built and shipped until the end of the month.  And I finally have to go to Microsoft Vista.  Yecch!  And I have a new computer to get used to.

Can you blame me for being distracted with all this going on in my life?  Oh, and that doesn’t even count how little writing I’m actually getting down. 

Goal Post

Goal Post — Get it? as in, I’m writing a post about goals. he he he. Sorry, I think I’m a little punchy from the MTM contest or maybe it’s all the fumes from the printer’s ink and binding glue rising from the HUGE pile of books in my dining room.

Last week, I set some goals related to my latest WIP. I didn’t meet them all, but I did work on it. This is my first attempt at a short manuscript, about 55,000 words. I’m targeting Silhouette Special Edition–for now anyway. I imagined I could finish a first draft in about 3 months, but it’s already been 2 months and I’m only on Ch 4.

Okay, maybe MTM contest stuff got in the way, but I still had time to write if I’d wanted to.  So, now I’m setting a goal for myself — To Get Serious About My Goals! I want to enter this ms in our upcoming contest for unpubbed writers: Where The Magic Begins, deadline August. And I made myself a promise: I will not enter it unless it is 3/4 finished.

That’s only 9 chapters, according to my outline, and I’m on 4 now. So how hard can it be to write 5-6 chapters in about 4 months? Especially if my original goal was a chapter a week. Pretty darn hard! But I’m going for it.

I want witnesses & consequences. If I do not have 9 chapters finished by August, I invite anyone who wants to, to kick me squarely in the ass with a pointy shoe or boot. (Susan, you can use your cane.) I’ll deserve it.

I am a serious writer. I will be published. I will complete this ms, send it out, and start another — or finish one of the single titles I have going. I am a writer. Writers write, and then they get published. That’s my new mantra from now until August 2009.