Keris Stainton's Blog, page 79

Any requests?

Apparently it's not the done thing to blog about how you can't think of what to blog about, but I don't care. I've been blogging since 2003! When I started, all this was fields! I can do what I flippin' want!

So. I've got nothing to blog about.

Anything you'd like me to blog about?

Anything at all?

Bueller?

WWND: What Would Nora Do

"You do get to a certain point in life where you have to realistically, I think, understand that the days are getting shorter, and you can't put things off thinking you'll get to them someday. If you really want to do them, you better do them. There are simply too many people getting sick, and sooner or later you will. So I'm very much a believer in knowing what it is that you love doing so you can do a great deal of it."

Nora Ephron

Film Director, Producer, Screenwriter, Novelist

(via Swissmiss)

I made this one day when I was feeling particularly in need of inspiration:

Watching… Heartbreaker

Lovely author Gemma Burgess (if you haven't read her books, you MUST) recommended this film on her blog (and I remember reading pretty good reviews of it when it came out) so I was delighted when it turned up from SofaCinema (along with Mrs 'Arris Goes to Paris, which David refused to watch just because of the title!).

It's French so it's subtitled, but it's just a lovely, romantic, funny film. Plus much of it's set in Monaco, which looks beautiful. It stars Vanessa Paradis who I've never seen in a film before ("She can have sex with Johnny Depp whenever she wants," said David. DAVID!) and Romain Duris, who was perfect. Also, Andrew Lincoln's in it. Or, as David said, "Why's Egg being French?" (He wasn't, he was English.) Possibly the best thing about it though was Julie Ferrier as the sister. She was hilarious and just so charismatic and watchable. I could've done without the drunk best friend, but the Dirty Dancing scene totally made up for it (swings and roundabouts, eh?). Loved it.

I ♥… The Hunchback of Neiman Marcus by Sonya Sones

I've read and loved one of Sonya Sones' YA books so when I saw she'd written an adult book, I couldn't wait to read it. And, yes, the whole thing's written in verse, but it only takes a few pages to get used to it.

Description:

My name is Holly.

This story is about me—

a writer who's way behind

on her deadline.

But, honestly,

how can I concentrate on my work

when my fiftieth birthday's

rushing at me like a freight train,

my hormones are making me feel

like a Szechuan flambé,

and my eighty-year-old mother's

biting her nurses?

Not to mention the fact that my daughter's

just begun applying to colleges

(none of which are within

a thousand-mile radius of home),

and lately my husband's been

such an irritating, finger-pointing stinker

that I've found myself dreaming of ways

to spend his insurance money . . .

My name is Holly.

This book

tells my story—

a coming-of-middle-age story.

I'm a writer, turning 40 this year, have lost both my parents and have been worrying about whether or not to have any more children, so The Hunchback of Neiman Marcus seemed like it was pretty much written for me.

I read it in a couple of hours and absolutely loved it. It was all I could do to stop myself tweeting "This book is SO GOOD!" every few pages. It made my eyes fill, it made me laugh, it made me go back and reread more than once.

But most of all it made me feel better about everything I've been going through and the decisions to come. I'm going to be recommending it to everyone.

My only criticism is the title (which is odd since it was the titles that attracted me to Sones's YA books), but something sweeter would have been better, I think.

Writing Wednesday: Swears

When I was about 13/14, I was obsessed with Rob Lowe. I got each of his films in turn from the video shop and watched them until they were almost worn out (when the screen started to flicker and the edges of the tape went frilly, it was time to give another film a turn).

Class (which also starred Andrew McCarthy) was one of my favourites (probably second to St Elmo's Fire). I don't know if you've seen Class and I don't want to spoiler it, but Rob and Andrew have a fight. It goes on for a while, in different locations, and Rob's character is mad as hell. At one point, Lowe says, "I'm going to kick your ass"*. A while later, Class was shown on TV and the line was changed to "I'm going to kick your head in" and it struck me as completely unconvincing (granted, part of the problem was that the actor who overdubbed the line had an English accent, but still).

I'm wittering on about Rob Lowe not because I'm finding myself a little bit obsessed again, thanks to this Vanity Fair cover, but because of a discussion about swearing in YA that I inadvertently started while requesting help with my line edits on Twitter. Lovely Jo has blogged about it at Once Upon a Bookcase (I love Tom Clempson's comment) and equally lovely Raimy will be posting pro-swearing at Readaraptor this weekend. I was just planning on letting the two of them duke it out, but then I thought I should probably write about it too…

You see, there was a fair amount of swearing in DELLA SAYS: OMG! When I write, I seem to write quite a lot of swears. It's not something I'd given much thought to previously – I try to write how people speak and if I think someone would say "Shit" if they, say, knew someone was reading their diary, then "shit" is the word I'd use. My line edits for DELLA included a list of the swearwords, asking me to make sure each was essential. Once I'd stopped blushing, I said I felt they were – either for realism or because there was no viable alternative – and my editor was fine with it, so they stayed in. (For info, DELLA has some sexual content that makes it more suited to older readers, swearwords notwithstanding.)

It was a bit different with JESSIE ♥ NYC. There's nothing in JESSIE that would make it unsuitable for younger readers (although obviously it is aimed at teens) and so my editor felt we had to be a bit stricter with the swearing so, once again, I went through the book changing or justifying my swears. There were a couple I just didn't want to change (because I liked them) and some more that I felt I couldn't change, again because a different word would be inauthentic.

I'll give you an example. In the book, an 18-year-old American male (I'm trying to avoid spoilers!) has had a huge row with his girlfriend. He tells his friend, "I was so pissed at her, man." Now there's no alternative to this. There's nothing an 18-year-old male would say in this context other than "pissed". He wouldn't say "cross". He wouldn't say "angry". He would say "pissed". And so, in my opinion, it has to stay. But if, say, a British character had said, "I was so pissed last night" I would have happily changed that to "drunk". I think they'd be more likely to say "pissed", yes, but it wouldn't pull me out of the story if they said "drunk" so "drunk" would be fine.

What do you think? How do you feel about swearing in novels? For adults or for teens. Do you use "bad language" in your own writing?

* Up until about a minute ago when I tried to google it, I thought the line was "I'm going to f**k your ass"** and it literally just occurred to me I may have misheard and it was actually "kick", but I'm not entirely sure. Anyway, I'm hoping the point still stands.

** Given the theme of this post, I haven't asterisked that for propriety, but to prevent dodgy searches!

That would be an ecumenical question…

Walking home from the library with Harry just now, conversation turned (as it often does with Harry) to heaven…

Me: "Some people believe in heaven, but I don't."

Harry: "I believe in it! I've seen it!"

Me: "Where have you seen it?"

Harry: "In Tom & Jerry. Tom got splatted by a piano and went up some stairs to heaven!"

Me: "Yes, but that's a cartoon, isn't it? It's not real. You've only seen drawings of heaven, haven't you."

Harry: "I believe it though. I believe everything!"

Me: "I know you do. And I think that's probably a good way to be when you're six."

Harry: "But I don't believe in shoes…"

I showed him my shoe.

Harry: "Now I do. But I don't believe in bees."

Me: "Do you know what it's called when you believe in something you haven't seen or don't know for certain is true? It's called faith."

Harry: "Faith, trust and pixie dust! That's Tinkerbell."

Indeed.

Me: "Can you think of something or somewhere you've never been or experienced for yourself, but you know is real?"

Harry, after a bit of a think: "I know! Canada!"

Me: "Exactly! Good thinking. But you know Canada is real because I've been there and Daddy's been there. Do you know anyone who's been to heaven?"

Harry: "Yes."

Me: "Who?"

Harry: "God."

O-kay…

The conversation then turned to Angry Birds and how, even though Harry knows they're not real, he can still talk to them. The remainder of the walk was given over to Harry interviewing the different Angry Birds, e.g. "You're the bomb bird – how do you do the bombs? Well, I breathe in and go red and then I breathe out and go boom! Thank you. Now, yellow bird – how do you go so fast?" etc.

He's so fab.

[The picture is a collage Harry made yesterday with minimal input from me. He chose the images himself, I just arranged them very slightly. Click to embiggen.]

Uptown Girls

I remember seeing a trailer for Uptown Girls and thinking it just looked like straight-to-DVD rubbish. I only ordered it from SofaCinema because The Ansonia – the apartment building that inspired some of Jessie – appears in it.

And I didn't have to wait long – as you can see, it's in the title shot – but after that then it didn't actually feature all that much at all. The main character Molly's apartment was in The Ansonia, but I assume the interiors were on a soundstage and not actually in a real apartment.

I watched the film anyway and was surprised to really enjoy it. It is indeed pretty cheesy and predictable, but it made me laugh and it actually made me cry quite a lot (dead parents is a theme though, so it wasn't all that surprising). It's the first Brittany Murphy film I've watched since her death. So sad to see her looking so young and vibrant (albeit not particularly healthy).

Have you seen it? What did you think of it?

Help Shoeperwoman

I got to know blogging superstar Amber when we both worked at Shiny Media and I've been so impressed at how, over the past couple of years, she's built up her own successful blogging empire.

One of her best-known sites is shoe blog, Shoeperwoman and now some unscrupulous person is trying to steal the name. They've set up their own Shoeperwoman site (which I won't link to here) and are blogging in Amber's style.

If that wasn't bad enough, they're also trying to trademark the Shoeperwoman name, which, if they're successful, would mean Amber would no longer be able to use it. Blogging is Amber's livelihood. She works extremely hard at it. I'm appalled that someone could come along and basically try to steal from her.

There are more details here. If you can help – by tweeting, blogging or promoting the issue in any way, that would be brilliant.

Obligatory Royal Wedding post…

I'm not particularly excited about the Royal Wedding, but I do love this. No, I do. Really.



Buy it from elc.

Writing Wednesday (on Thursday): Flail (again)

Blimey I'm rubbish at remembering to do Writing Wednesday. I think it's because I was trying to think of writerly type questions, but I can't seem to do that and, you know, write at the same time. So instead I'm just going to write about what I'm writing about. Or if I'm writing. Or avoiding writing. I'm hoping it will be useful and it will also keep me honest…

So this week I've been doing something I find myself doing a LOT… and yet it always takes me a while to notice that I always do it. It's flailing. If you follow me on Twitter, you may have noticed that I do have a tendency to flail when overwhelmed. This week it was because I have a deadline for an article and I'm also trying to get 10,000 words of the next book together to send to my agent.

What happens – and this seems to be the same for fiction or non fiction – is I get an idea. I make some notes, do a bit of research, maybe even a shitty first draft… and then I decide I can't do it. I just can't do it. Everything I've written so far is rubbish and none of it can be saved. I flail.

I consider emailing my editor/agent/whoever and saying "I'm really sorry, I thought I could do it, but it turns out I can't." More flailing. Every now and then I'll open the document, maybe halfheartedly add a note or head to google for a bit of research, but then it's back to the flailing. This goes on for an indeterminate length of time. It could take me right up to the deadline or I might just get sick of myself. At which point I open the document, read it, type frenziedly in the manner of a film author in a deadline montage and then start to think, huh, it's not that bad. I can probably do this after all. And then I do it.

Now because I've been doing this for a while, at some point in the above proceedings, I'll think "You ALWAYS do this! And you know it'll be okay in the end!" And then I'll think, "No, this is different. This time I can't actually do it." Flail.