May the sun be shining....
Monday, May 31, 2004Happy Memorial Day, all those who celebrate it! If you have loved ones far away, I pray that they come home safe, and if your loved ones are one of those not coming home, I grieve with you.
Permalink Cindy scribed this at 2:56 PM
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elemental
Sunday, May 30, 2004Being a magically inclined person, I came up with the thought that we all, in some way, lean towards one element or another. Some of us are earth elementals -- grounded in reality, someone that others anchor themselves to, strong, realistic. Some of us are lighty air, some passionate fire, and others...like myself, are water. None of us are spirit...I think that's what we'll eventually become.
I'm water because I love the air on my skin, because I'm horroble in the heat and I prefer misty days, I like softness and gentle curves rather than harsh edges, and I'm always drawn to bodies of water bigger than myself.
What are you? And why?
Permalink Cindy scribed this at 2:49 PM
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A long time goal?
Thursday, May 27, 2004I wtached the Super Trailer for The Lord of the Rings just a few moments ago. In case you don't know, it's a combo trailer of the three films. By the end of it I found myself weeping in horroble despair...maybe I'm just in "a mood" but I wanted so desperately to create something like these movies, something that is so beautiful and magical and deep, something that moves people immeasurably with it's lovliness, with its ability to completely immerse the watcher in a new world.
And I thought, suddenly filled with dissapointment in my own self, "Lord, lord, when will I ever be able to create something like this?"
This is one of those momernts when you answer yourself. And you either say, "never" and give up, or you say, "maybe I have, and maybe I will yet." and keep going. Just keep going.
I decided that Water's Edge isn't ready yet to be written in full. Drachen and Sorrenna need some steeping now...I've done a first draft, gotten to an end point, and now I'll leave it alone for awhile bfore I chop on it and write more. I didn't want to do this, because I need to get another book *done*, but what can you do? I've decided to start on another book, totally different, for a time. It's called The Palace of Bone, and will be in the sort of contemporary setting of Balancing Act. I think that's part of my problem...something is really wrong with Water's Edge, and I need some time to figure out what, why, and how to fix it.
Permalink Cindy scribed this at 6:16 PM
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Apathy! Thy name is writer!
Friday, May 21, 2004Yesterday this post was going to be about writer's block. Instead it'll start there and skew into me no longer having it, which I don't, even though I didn't actually write today.
For the past couple of weeks I've been working on reformatting my hard drive, and dealing with other nonsense things. (If you've tried to get through to me, and failed, tis because I'm dowloading all the files my computer needs...) I've not written, or read, much...the reviews I write feel like I'm pulling my teeth out to make them, and the very thought of even looking at Water's Edge makes me want to sink down into a pile of boneless matter and wait until I expire of boredom.
I've felt this way before, off course. And I've been reassured that the "took three hours and am sure I totally missed the whole point of the book" reviews read pretty much the same as the "20 minute, really feel a writing high because I hammered it" reviews. There are some people who claim to never feel this way. Apprently these blessed indiviuals sit down every day and write without worry, everything flowing smoothly, the planets and the stars in sinc, chi flowing in perfect rivers around them.
I'm often inclined not to beleive them, of course. Or strangle them. Forgive me if you happen to be one of them...I'm very happy for you and, sincerely, would never, ever wish you harm for one second.
I think the ones I want to strangle are actually those so smug in their craft, those people who can command words at will rather than paying their pints of sweat and blood. Those who, when I whine about not being able to write look at me and say, "Well, I always can. Just proves that you're not really a writer, doesn't it?" Perhaps they don't say it in so many words (though some have) but they imply it. As if just because sometimes you have to be drug to the keyboard rather than away from it, it means you are less dedicated, that perhaps you'd be better off selling car inshurance. This doesn't mean you don't desperately want to tell a story, or that you don't have so many voices in your head all clamouring for attention that sometimes you think you'll go mad.
It means, quite simply, that there is something wrong with what you are writing.
I'm sitting in the back of the car on another one of those drives my father takes because he can't stand to stay in the house after so many years of going to work every day. I'm writing this blogger post in my head, and then, I realize.
"OH." I say out loud.
A few moments pass. "OK. Ok, yeah, that'll work. That'll totally work."
It may be a mark of my absolute inpending fruit loop hood that my parents don't ask me what I'm talking about.
So now I'm no longer blocked. I understand what's wrong with my book, and, very shortly, I'm going to declare the several thousand words I've written the first draft, and start from the beginning, writing in new material, staggering the new information in with the old, rather than doing a straight (and boring) narrative. Boring, I say, because I lay it all out linearly....we do a lot of things, true, but we don't get to the main point of the book until 70,000 words in. That, my dear readers, is a book that is likely to suck dreadfully unless I take drastic meansures to fix it.
Permalink Cindy scribed this at 5:28 PM
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This is dedicated...
Wednesday, May 19, 2004Sorry about the post a few days back. We'll call it a...a cathartic experiment in narrative. Yeah. That's it.
Any way, I recieved my author sheet from Zumaya today. (So yes, i did sighn the contract...but figured y'all knew that...) It's about three pages long, and asks about all sorts of things...your name and contact info, who the book's going to be dedicated to, different types of jacket blurbs (There's a back of the jacket blurb, then a log-line of so many words that would be, for example, a catelog listing, an even smaller log line, a PR synopsis which is entirely different from the back jacket blurb) to discriptions of charcaters and key situations to help the artist create the cover. It'll take a lot of work...I need to come up with blurbs, read through Blue Moon in order to find an exciting excerpt to use as a teaser, (I think my years as a book reviewer, and knowing what struck me, might help there?) and figure out if/when I'm going to get my picture taken.
Also, one of the minor flaws my editor saw in my book was how I used my dragons at the end...and I explained to her why, and she say, "Aha...so maybe then..." and I actually went OOOH outloud. Working with an editor is going to be so much fun.
I remeber when Alan Natali went over my pieces for places like Flipside...he would mark the heck out of my things, but when they came back, I'd think over his suggestions, and feel my brain stretch as I worked to fix things properly while keeping what I intended. There were a lot of professors who did this for me, and it taught me that the editor is not your enemy.
I found a copy of Sense and Sensability in a used bin. Many years ago I saw (and taped) Persuasion off of PBS...this is the version starring Ciaron Hinds. It was the most lovely and romantic movie I'd ever seen. His Captain Wentworth...
There is also a love letter in this movie that totally is the lovliest thing. for weeks after I saw the movie, I'd sneak inot the Jane Austin section at the library while I was shelf reading and take a second to look it up, re-read it, sigh, then go back to work.
He was also a remarkable Rochester.
Any way, because of Persuasion's impact on me, I'd been dying to see Sense and senability for ages. Emma Thompson adapting? Hugh Grant and Alan Rickman starring? Did I mention Alan Rickman?
And then I'm going to go through my box of videos (books get the shelf space around here...) and hunt up Persuaion, and see if I still have my copy of "Truly, Madly, Deeply"....the only other Alan Rickman I can remeber seeing off hand that he wasn't playing a evil (Or evil-ish....I watched Harry Potter when it was on the other weekend, and it reminded me why I liked Alan Rickman...) character. I taped that one off PBS too...but seem to remeber thinking that I wouldn't keep it, because it beat me up so badly emotionally.
I hope I still have it. I don't think you can get it in the US.
I also hope that keeping movies you taped off of TV isn't illegal.
Permalink Cindy scribed this at 11:09 AM
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We all need mantras
Saturday, May 15, 2004I started off this post telling a very spcific, and, well, I thought, funny story...but sometims if you do that, someone ends up reading something, even though you could have sworn he would never, and there you go. You go from being righteously ticked to being a git. Just trust me: The situation I later slide past discussing was icky.
A couple of months ago, my father over heard me explaining my mantra to my mother, about stories. When I realized he over heard I was so mortified...he's so old fashioned, opionated and thinks, similataneously, that I'm three years old and a super mature adult who should be beyond all sorts of things.
"You see," I mutter to her, "You know things are really bad when I don't want to *think* about *anything*. That's why all of a sudden you get fun facts about Sean Bean or Neil Gaiman or Oded Fehr out of the blue. By the way, did you know Alan Rickman's really a blond and likes roller coasters?"
On our vacation I could be heard to whisper, "Oded Fehr played Ardeth Bay, Pete Marsele..."
"Breathe," my mother said. And I did. And I listed every one of Oded Fehr's acting credits, by date, going back to add in the plays he did. During my divorce, I believe my mother must have had my list of Neil Gaiman's works, lsited by date, then medium, in order, memorized. I certainly did.
So, anyway, more recently, someone totally icks me out and invades my personal space, after being seriously goopy all day, and I am about ready to murder...the line has been crossed. And my father takes one look at me, sees I really am about to go crazy, and says, "OK. So what movies has Sean Bean in?"
This is why I love my parents. They put up with a lot.
Permalink Cindy scribed this at 2:46 PM
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Sometimes there's no poison like a dream.
Wednesday, May 12, 2004I've always been one of those people who connects a lot of her life to music...songs are stories, to me, and when I hear a song I can often connect something to it. Lately it's been bad...I'll hear a song in my head or on the radio and it'll evoke pictures, memories, feelings, so intense that I have to stop and let my mind sort it out.
For instance, I heard "Brick" last night by Ben Folds, and all of a sudden I'm in the front seat of my car, early, early morning. I'm in the beginning of a two hour commute to work, and in that dark quiet I have the perfect clarity to think that I really don't need when I have two hours all by myself and so I shut out my thoughts by singing, loudly. I remeber "Sex and Candy" by Marcie Playground from this time, but it doesn't evoke anything...it just makes me want to sing.
Belly's Star album makes me think of summer...though I don't know why. Particularly I've been hearing "Untogether" in my head, and feel filled with summer. The lyrics that repeat themselves the most go:
"I was friendly with this girl,
Who insisted on touching my face.
She told outrageous stories.
I believed them
'til the endings were changing from endings before.
She's not touching me anymore.
Untogether, I couldn't help her I got hard.
You can try your life.
You can't save the unsavably untogether."
And the subject line ois a later line from that song.
And I think of all the people who aren't touching me, now, and some I'm thrilled about, I've washed their fingerprints off me, off my life, while some...
I guess if I had one of those mood-o-meter things in the blog, it'd say, "Cindy is Pensive"
Permalink Cindy scribed this at 4:52 PM
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Embroidery ends and summer
Monday, May 10, 2004Wow. My blog posting page looks weird. Hey! Stop changing my blog interface, dudes!
Yeah, yeah, I know. It sounds like I don't appriciate their hard work and dedication. But I liked my old interface.
Anyway, I'm here to complain about the onset of summer. Ick. I might have to put my air conditioner back in the window sooner than I'd planned...sob! I like the veiw, and I was watching a mother bird build her nest above my wondow. I see her tail feathers, and not much more, usually, but somtimes if I sit still she'll go down on the roof and dance around. A few weeks ago, when I finished my latest cross stitch pillow case, I did something silly...when I work my project, I throw everything...scissors, floss, the little ends that I snip off, into the pillow case. The little ends are meant to be thrown out, but I never have a waste basket on hand. So, I found all these different colored odds and ends of floss, and I opened my screen and scattered them, purples, blues, greens, pinks and even a few yellows and scarlets, on the porch roof in front of my window. They were all gone by evening, and it wasn't a windy day. I wonder how many nests have tiny little fragements of color in them...
The tossing out was inspired by a yellowy bird who constantly attacked the peice of string we use to tie the tarp around the tractor. It's a soft cotton string, and fairly long, and she kept plucking at it, picking it up, trying to fly away, only to be stopped abruptly by the fact it was still attached. Watching her try and make off with it was very endearing and funny...her determination would ahve gotten her on the NYT bestseller list...I wanted to go out and cut the string for her, but knew she'd fly off and not return.
Permalink Cindy scribed this at 8:09 PM
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How I Almost Died on my Summer Vacation
Friday, May 07, 2004I used that as a line for an email to one of my friends yesterday, and rather liked it. Especially since it's slightly true.
Tuesday, my parents and I left the house at the most evil hour of 5:30 am, and drove across PA. We hit Reading, where there's an airplane museum, and, after much fussing, getting lost and not having fun, we found Steamtown in Scranton, where we toured the yard. We didn't go into the museum, because it was an hour off of closing. (I thought we should go in...we've never spent more than an hour inside a museum as a group...but...) I enjoyed looking at the trains...some of them were shiny and restored, some old wooden planked cars and cabooses with peeling paint and missing peices. I took too many pictures...and realized that I loved wooden cars much less after my father told me that, when wooden cars were in their heyday, more people died from flying splinters in a train wreck than from the wreck itself.
Then we went on into the Poconoes. We found a very inexpensive resort hotel on a lake, called Ehrhardt's. We were one of two guests, I think, though the restauraunt was hopping. I loved the lake...I am a water person to the core (no, I'm not a pices. :-) ) The highpoint of my trip was walking down the boat slip, way out into the water, and seeing how it churned black and mysterious against the docks. I also watched the sun set over the water, and spent most of the night at the window, peeking out, amazed at how the water changed constantly. In the morning it was smooth as glass, and pale as snow, at night it was silvered and choppy under the moon.
The second day would have been nice, had the brakes not gone out in the car, about 10:30 in the morning. We ended up spending the day at Troy, until 4, waiting for the car to get fixed. For it to really get fixed, we'd have to wait over night for the part, but the mechanics thought we could make it home with what they did.
I wandered around Troy quite a bit. Some pretty houses, in that town, and fans of Sara Douglass' Troy Game might apprieiate that,when I walked King street, I kept wondering where the Kingman bands were....
At 4 we left, and went home quite swifty, mosly without incident, except for a deer who attempted to make itself into venison cutlets on the turnpike. My father slammed on the brakes and the deer fled back where it came.
When we took the car up to the local mechanic, we found out that the thing that stabilizes the back wheel was broken...and that the back tired can be pushed back and forth, side to side, and it wobbles like mad when you drive it. It doesn't sound bad, now, but when you lightly push a tire and see it contort in direction's it's not suppossed to, you tend to get a little freaky.
I am now on vacation from my vacation.
_______________
My take on Friends being over: If Friends had been a book, I would have skipped to the ending to find out what was going to happen a couple of seasons ago. I taped last night's finale so I could watch CSI, and clipped off the bit where they're standing in their apartment at the end, all packed. I hope I didn't miss anything. But then, that was the first eppie I wanted in a ery long time.
Permalink Cindy scribed this at 11:09 AM
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Another silly quizz.
Saturday, May 01, 2004I couldn't resist this one...I was rather hoping to get boromir, because it would have given me a cheap excuse to post a piccy of Sean Bean. Gr---rowl.
You are most like Aragorn. You have strong convictions and you stick to them. Although you are more of a recluse, you are extremely loyal to the few friends that you have. You are very serious about things, but you like having fun. Fame and fortune mean little to you, and you aren't concerned with being popular. Good for you!
_____
Well, that's actually purty nifty. I shall be all vain and hip feeling for the rest of the hour.
I would tell you how I spent my day, but it's boring, and besides, I need to go cook. :-)
Permalink Cindy scribed this at 3:36 PM
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