Shanna Swendson's Blog, page 140

A New Look at Old Tales

Because I use fairy tale themes so much in my work, a few (well, probably more than that by now) years ago I made a point of reading the entire collection of the Grimms' fairy tales. I wanted to make sure I was getting closer to the original versions rather than the Disney versions that have become so ingrained in our popular culture. For one thing, the Disney versions are under copyright, so they're not really fair game to play with. For another, anyone who knows the tales would recognize that you're not working with source material (it's like anyone doing a Wizard of Oz riff and having Dorothy's shoes be red -- they're clearly working from the movie rather than the book).

One glaring example is the "true love's kiss" that's become such a huge part of the fairy tale imagery, but it mostly comes from Disney. In the Snow White fairy tale, the prince doesn't revive Snow White with a kiss. He merely falls in love with her corpse in its glass coffin (which says a lot about him) and wants to bring the coffin home to have with him (which says even more about this guy). When the coffin is being moved, it dislodges the bite of poisoned apple from Snow White's throat, which revives her. While there are some versions of the Sleeping Beauty story in which the prince's kiss wakes her, there's also a version in which instead of kissing her, he rapes her unconscious body, she gets pregnant and delivers twins, and she wakes up when one of the babies sucks on her finger, which removes the sliver of enchanted spindle. In the frog prince story, in most versions the princess doesn't turn the enchanted frog back into a prince by kissing him. She throws him against a wall. Yes, very romantic.

Anyway, I've been toying with an idea that plays with some fairy tale tropes, and I recalled at least one tale that's not as well known. It starts with the familiar type of story about the unlikely commoner who completes impossible tasks and thereby wins the hand of the princess, but instead of them just living happily ever after and the story ending there, there's a part 2 to the story in which the princess and her mother are not at all happy that the king is giving her away to this lowly guy, so they scheme to kill him off by sending him off on a quest they know will be deadly. I couldn't remember all the details or the name of the story, so I decided a re-read was in order. But the library didn't have the book I read before in, but they did have a new book that's a new translation of the first edition of the Grimm stories. The Grimms went through a number of revisions after their first publication, and it's the later versions that became better known.

While there's a lot of talk about the Grimms sanitizing the stories as they went on, I didn't see much of that. The earlier version was no more bloody than the later ones, as far as I could tell. There might have been one or two cases of a mother who became a stepmother in later versions, and there might have been a little more moralizing inserted later, but there was still plenty of that here. The main difference I saw (and that was pointed out in the introduction by the translator/editor) was in writing style. This version was a lot easier to read because it's so much less florid. It's a very direct style, like a straight transcription of oral storytelling. In later editions, they tried to make the tales more literary, inserting descriptions and transitions and trying to make the tales flow better so that later twists are set up and plot threads aren't left dangling.

The results are somewhat mixed. While this version is easier to read without all the verbal ornamentation, the stories themselves can get pretty crazy, lurching from event to event as the storyteller threw things in or forgot things or circled back when telling a tale from memory. Come to think of it, some of it reads a lot like the plotting on Once Upon a Time, so maybe they're trying to be authentic. There were some stories I didn't recall reading before that must have been dropped from later editions, and there were some I recalled that didn't seem to be there in a form I recognized (including the one I was looking for, unless the part 2 I remembered was a later addition). After this first publication, they were inundated with new stories people submitted, so I guess they added some and dropped others.

If you like reading fairy tales, it's worth looking for this edition, translated and edited by Jack Zipes. Even for the old, familiar stories, the different language gives them a fresh look. This might also be a good introduction to the Grimm tales because some of the later editions can be a real slog.

Now I need to find that story I'm looking for.

Getting the Word Out

At the beginning of the year, I tend to go heavy into planning mode. I make lists of projects, come up with new time management schemes, and do hypothetical business plans. I'm trying to work on some new publicity plans, since I really need to boost my visibility and have learned that even when I'm working with a major publisher, most of it's going to come down to me. But even though this was my "real job" career for twenty years, this is something I struggle with. There's a reason I don't have that career anymore. I went through several years of almost no income (though fortunately with a savings cushion) to try to get the writing career going rather than try to find another PR job. So a lot of my publicity efforts amount to me huddling in a corner and whimpering "don't make me do that." On the other hand, it's kind of essential if I don't want to have to get another real job.

Yeah, I have crazy dreams about having a book that publishers fight over so that I get a big advance and then they actually do publicity for it and push the book, and that book then raises the profile of all my other books, so I'm making more from my backlist, and the push on the new book means that book sells well enough that they're eager for my next book. The reality has been more that only one publisher is grudgingly interested in my book and it's low on the priority list for promotion, and then in spite of good reviews and strong fan support (it seems that while not that many people have heard of my books, the people who have read them love them) the books aren't selling quite as well as they'd like, so I don't get another contract and have to start all over again.

So, I need to take a stronger role in promotion, but that world has changed since I last had that job, and most of what I know how to do is only repeatedly getting the word out to my existing fans, which helps (if everyone who'd bought Enchanted, Inc. had bought Rebel Mechanics, things would be very different right now), but there does seem to be a barrier I haven't managed to break through into some of the book venues in my genre. A lot of the things I've tried have hit with a dull thud.

Out of curiosity, what works to get your attention about books? Do you subscribe to author newsletters? Do you ever learn about books via Facebook ads or other online advertising? Do you read book blogs? Do you look at and share book videos? Are blogs still viable? Does social media really matter?

Weekend Entertainment

I had my first rehearsal with the community chorale last night. It turns out they really don't need another soprano. I think there were more sopranos than all the other parts combined. I'm also utterly drained, for some odd reason, so I'm worried about my productivity today. I may give it another week, see what the balance is and see how I react afterward. It's not as though I've really committed.

I forgot to discuss my weekend entertainment, other than the music workshop. I managed to be first on the request list at the library for Alan Dean Foster's new Star Wars novelization, and of course that became available on Friday when I was out all day. But I got home just in time to swing by the library before it closed. It seemed like this one was pretty short compared to the other novelizations, and it didn't add all that much to the movie, just a couple of what seemed to be trimmed scenes or moments and some introspection of some of the characters. One or two things became a little more clear, and although I'm no physicist, I got the feeling that the science behind one of the things made more sense the way it was described in the novel than it appeared to in the movie. It's worth a read for completion's sake, but I definitely wouldn't pay hardcover prices for it. I'm not even sure I'd buy this one as a mass market paperback, since I can't imagine re-reading it a lot in this era when we can easily rewatch the movie once it comes out on DVD.

For my movie viewing, I did my Alan Rickman tribute by watching A Little Chaos on HBO. This was one of his last film appearances, and it turned out to be even more of a tribute than I realized because he also directed it and was one of the writers. It's a nice little costume drama about the creation of the gardens at Versailles. Rickman played Louis XIV, but the main character was a female garden designer played by Kate Winslet, and the leading man was the head garden designer, played by the same guy from Far From the Madding Crowd, so I guess I've had a theme going lately. There was some conflict about the idea of order vs. the chaos of nature, but mostly it was about trying to create something beautiful and how that affects people. It was definitely a "spot the actor you know from another costume drama" kind of movie, which is always fun. It really made me want to create a garden. Maybe I should rearrange my Christmas cacti.

I've got a bunch of stuff piling up on the DVR. I went to bed early Sunday night, so I didn't manage to watch the premiere of Mercy Street, and I was at rehearsal last night, so I haven't yet watched the first episode of War and Peace. I have so much stuff going on this week and this weekend that I don't know when I'll catch up. Sunday afternoon may have to be some serious sofa time.

Talking to Myself

I spent Friday and Saturday at a church music workshop. Friday, I went to sessions about teaching young children, and I think I've found some keys to working with my crazy bunch. The teacher had some great ideas for encouraging reluctant kids to sing, which is the problem I have this year. There are all kinds of little steps you can take to gradually increase their comfort level. One big change I'll have to make is to sing to them rather than with them. I can model the song to them to teach it, but then I need to back out and let them sing it on their on. If I'm singing, they'll just listen to me or they'll think no one will notice if they don't sing, and it then sounds weird to them to sing in church when I'm not singing with them. It's so obvious, but it hadn't occurred to me.

Saturday, I went to sessions on vocal health. They had a speech pathologist who specializes in the voice presenting (from the med school where I used to work), and while a lot of it wasn't new info, I picked up some good warm ups and exercises that will be great for me as a singer, but that I think I can also introduce to the kids as games. I was sitting next to my choir director in these workshops, so we were comparing notes and sharing our findings Sunday morning.

In between, they have reading sessions where everyone sat in the chapel, and they passed out packets of music that we all then sang together. I think the main idea is to help choir directors hear music they might want to use while also getting to see how various guest conductors conduct, but for me, it's exercise in sight reading, and since you don't sit in sections, it forces you to not lean on the other people around you. It can be scary when you can't hear anyone else singing your part (and especially when you're singing soprano, so it's very exposed), and it's a little intimidating for me because most of the people in the room are choir directors and professional singers, while I'm there as someone who volunteers with children's choir. But I think I held my own pretty well.

I love this workshop so much that it's one of the reasons I keep on as a children's choir director.

Now, though, I'm back in writer mode. One thing I learned from the vocal health sessions was that, although overuse is more of a problem for most of their patients, non-use is also an issue, so I need to make a point of talking or singing during the day. My pattern of silence Monday and Tuesday, then lots of singing Wednesday, mostly silence Thursday and Friday, some talking Saturday (depending on my social schedule), and then singing Sunday isn't good for me. I need to do a little each day. Since I start Requiem rehearsals with the community chorus tonight, that will add a little more singing to the mix.

So, maybe I should do more brainstorming out loud. I have a medical recommendation to talk to myself. I suspect that talking to imaginary people is okay. I'll just need different medical help if they answer out loud.

Figuring out Plan B

This is a short work week for me because tomorrow (and Saturday) I'll be at the Choristers' Guild workshop, so I'll be spending a couple of days in choir director/singer mode. Having to get up that early (registration Friday is at 7:30, and it's at least a half-hour drive to get there) is going to be a shock to my system. I'm currently in hibernation mode, which means it's very hard to wake up in the morning.

And then to make things even more fun, I have an 8-10 a.m. service window Monday morning for my furnace checkup. I think someone believes I should be getting up earlier in the morning.

I definitely see seasonal sleeping patterns now that I'm not governed by the alarm clock. In the summer, I'm up early. In the winter, I tend to sleep very late, and all with more or less the same bedtime (though I'm probably reading later than I do in the summer). I keep seeing articles about sleep patterns from the era before electric lights, when apparently people didn't sleep straight through the night. They slept about four hours, then were awake for an hour or so and then slept another four hours. That in-between time was supposedly good for creativity, as that's when a lot of writing was done (which is one way we know about this pattern). Studies have shown that people will fall into this pattern if they're put into a similar environment without TV, electric lights, etc. People who do a lot of winter camping also notice it. Even though I'm not going to bed with the sun, I do tend to wake up for a while in the middle of the night, but I'm not really awake enough to be creative, other than daydreaming. My mind is awake, but making my body movie enough to even write down my thoughts would be impossible.

At any rate, I suspect that alarm will be really annoying in the morning. Fortunately, there's enough singing mixed in with the workshops and lectures to keep me somewhat awake throughout the day.

I think a couple of days of intense work in a different creative field will be good for me, at a time when I'm needing to do some thinking about next steps and where I go from here. As seems to be the case in my career, things never quite seem to go according to plan, so I'm going to have to come up with a plan B, which is going to create a ripple effect of changing other plans. It could work out for the best in the long run, but it's a bit disappointing (and frustrating) in the short run. It just would be nice for once to have something not be a struggle, to have the balance of power tip in my favor. I do need to find my inner soprano and be a bit more assertive about standing up for what I want and need instead of assuming that other people are doing their jobs and taking care of things. There were some things I let slide that I shouldn't have, but I just assumed that I was at the bottom of the priority list when in reality I'd actually accidentally fallen off the radar entirely and a reminder would have been welcome.

Problem Characters: The Mary Sue

Now that the new year is really up and running, it's time to get back to the Wednesday writing posts. In case you're new here, I do a how-to post about some aspect of writing -- the craft, the business, the life -- every other week, unless I have some kind of conflict. I'm open to questions or suggestions. To subscribe to these posts via e-mail, you can sign up here.

To start the year, I thought I'd talk about one of my favorite topics: characters. In particular, problem characters -- the characters who can really trip up your story. This was inspired in part by seeing a lot of misuse of the term "Mary Sue" in discussing characters, which got me started thinking about actual Mary Sue writing. I'm not going to get into much discussion about the meaning of the term here, since this is about how-to, not geek culture, other than to give my definition. The term originated in fan fiction to refer to an obvious author insert, a new character added to an existing universe who was living out all the author's fantasies. This character tends to be too good to be true, is universally liked (or sometimes is unfairly universally hated, making the character a misunderstood victim), and takes over the story. In original fiction, it's come to mean a character the writer can't be objective about, whether the character is a self-insert or a beloved pet. The character is good at everything, faces no consequences, and the story universe tends to bend itself around her.

There's nothing wrong with falling in love with your characters or basing characters on yourself. It only becomes a problem when this keeps you from writing honestly about these characters. You want to give them shiny things they haven't earned, and you want to protect them from any pain. Basically, you become a helicopter parent to your own creation. The result is a boring story, because who wants to read about someone just getting everything they want, with no struggle? How can you make sure you're not writing a Mary Sue?

First, look at the character's role. One thing that was annoying about the Mary Sue in fan fiction was that people wanted to read about the existing characters, not about some new character. This isn't such a problem in original fiction, since all the characters are new. But what you do need to do is make sure the roles in the story make sense and are consistently developed throughout the book. If you fall in love with or start identifying with a character as you write, and this character starts eclipsing other characters who started with larger roles, you might have a problem. No one wants to spend 300 pages reading about a character and watching that character's struggles, only to have someone else swoop in and take over at the end. If you find yourself fascinated by a character, that may be a sign that this character needs a bigger role, but you need to set that up earlier in the book. If you start with an ensemble, you need to maintain the relative weights of the ensemble roles throughout or give good story reasons for the roles to change -- something other than you liking one of the characters.

Second, show, don't tell. If the character is awesome, we should be able to figure it out ourselves by watching the character do awesome things. We don't need all the other characters telling us how awesome and wonderful this person is. If the character is suffering, we can see that. We don't need other people telling us how sad her suffering is. If you do tell us something, what we see needs to be even bigger than we're told. If you tell us a character is awesome, the actions need to be even more awesome than we expect to see. If you tell and then don't live up to or surpass, then readers tend not to like the character. Praise from other characters without anything to back it up is a hallmark of a Mary Sue.

Third, let reactions of other characters to this character be proportional. There should be consequences to the character's actions. If she does something to hurt or betray other characters, those other characters should be allowed to be angry at her, hold a grudge, or mistrust her without being made to look like villains. If she does something good, the positive response should be proportional. You generally know you've got a Mary Sue if she gets a parade thrown in her honor for holding a door open for someone. She should have to earn the other characters' love and loyalty.

Fourth, make sure her skills and positive attributes make sense in the story. If you plan to use a skill in the climax, you need to set it up earlier in the story to show that this character either has this skill, is working to develop this skill, or has another skill set that will transfer to those circumstances. If someone is new to the skill, she should have to struggle and maybe get a lucky break. Easily winning a sword fight the first time a person picks up a sword is a fantasy trope, but you can make it make more sense if maybe the character is a farmboy who's developed the muscles that allow him to fight (I was in pain for a week after my first fencing class -- this isn't something you just do), he's used a staff to fend off wolves from his sheep, he's somewhat awkward in fighting and uses endurance and brute force, and his enemy is tired, wounded, or overconfident. That kind of fight is so much more fun to read about than one in which a character picks up a sword and is suddenly the best swordsman ever.

Fifth, make the character struggle for what he wants. If he sets a goal, he should have to work to achieve it, and achieving it should have something to do with his work. Fiction is about conflict, and without conflict, you have a boring story. Readers want to see achievement as a result of struggle. Seeing struggle being rewarded is reassuring. Seeing wonderful gifts floating down from heaven isn't very interesting, unless it's at the beginning of the story and those gifts get the character into trouble.

Sixth, make sure the character has human flaws and failings. No one is perfect. The best hero ever has bad days and bad moods. Good people can be bossy and opinionated or rash and impulsive. Write a human being rather than a paragon. And, going back to #3 above, when the character does screw up, make sure she faces consequences for it. Let other characters be angry, make her apologize.

I think the Mary Sue is a trap many new authors fall into even when they're not consciously writing themselves into their stories because they're so eager to create a character people will love that they go overboard. They give the character all the skills and all the rewards, and they make sure other characters love this character, but the result is that you get a character no one really likes in a weak story.

Space Shows!

I've been fighting with a particular part of the current book for a while. I got enough done for a proposal and haven't felt too urgent about it since I'm waiting for feedback on it. The next scene I wrote sent things into a different direction and I had to rework my ideas around it. And then last night I came up with something new and fun that turns things into yet another direction. I'm actually excited to get to work today.

In other news, once the wave of holiday movies ended, I got caught up on non-holiday stuff on TV, which meant binge-watching the first five episodes of The Expanse so that I'm caught up for tonight's new one (I watched the first three OnDemand, but for some weird reason 4 isn't up there and was skipped when they posted 5, so I didn't get 4 until they did a marathon and I DVRd it). This is a new SyFy show that's sort of space opera meets film noir detective story. There are two parallel plot lines that seem to be converging and that turn out to be about more or less the same basic issue. In the space opera side of things, there's the crew of a ship that answers a distress call and finds something very unexpected that pretty much turns their lives upside down, so that they lurch from dangerous situation and crisis to dangerous situation and crisis. In the film noir side of things, we're on a base in the asteroid belt, where the workers who provide resources to the planets aren't too happy about not getting a share of the resources, and on these mean streets/station corridors, a jaded cop in a fedora makes a halfhearted effort to keep the peace -- until he gets an off-the-books assignment to track down a missing heiress.

I'll admit that I'm not overly keen on the very dystopian look at the future, with all the "rich people are evil and oppress poor people" (as written, produced, and performed by people who probably make more per episode than much of their audience makes in a year) and "we're all going to die of global warming" messages that seem mandatory in any vision of the future produced by current Hollywood. But it's a science fiction show taking place primarily in space, on space ships and space stations, on the SyFy channel, which is kind of exciting. They went through a phase of veering more toward paranormal, which I like, but with two summer shows (Killjoys and Dark Matter) and now this show taking place in space, they seem to have returned to their roots.

I also haven't yet really latched on to any particular character. In the first few episodes they've done a good job with the "no one is safe" concept, so it's not entirely clear who the regular cast of characters is going to end up being. That makes for a lot of shocks and surprises, but it also means I started pulling back emotionally and not wanting to get attached to anyone. They're going for gritty, which means there's no one who's entirely a truly "good guy." That means I'm mostly watching for plot because I'm curious about how all these things are coming together and what it all means. I don't think I'm going to end up really obsessed with this show, but it's interesting, and they're doing some good stuff with worldbuilding (being based on a series of novels probably helps there). The acting is pretty good. I'm just not finding any real heart to it, even as I'm eager for the next episode to find out what happens. We'll see how long that curiosity about what's going on will sustain me in the absence of any characters I actually care about.

Moody Movie Monday

It's back to work after a slightly busy, but less busy than I've been lately, weekend. I even managed to start catching up on all the stuff that's been on HBO recently, so I have movies to discuss.

Friday, I took it easy and went for the silly with the latest Night at the Museum movie. These are sort of fun guilty pleasures for me. I'd never have paid actual money to see them in the theater, but they can be entertaining for an evening at home. I enjoy seeing the various guest stars they find to play the historical figures brought to life in the museum. For the previous one, Amy Adams stole the show as Amelia Earhart, but in this one, it was Dan Stevens (best known so far for Downton Abbey) completely stealing the movie with a 100 percent all-in take on Lancelot. In fact, he was going so far into it that I had to pull up IMDB on my phone to figure out who he was. The voice was so familiar, but I couldn't place him, and I think most of it was not just the beard and longer hair but also the swagger and attitude that were the complete opposite of Matthew. We got an absolutely sublime scene in which Lancelot, who's totally unaware that he's actually a museum wax figure brought to life, heads out of the museum to find Camelot, ending up at a theater production of the musical, where he confronts Arthur, played by Hugh Jackman, who has to convince "Lancelot" that he's not really Arthur, just an actor playing the role, at which point Lancelot calls Hugh Jackman out on being a liar and a fraud for pretending to be Arthur, and Hugh Jackman goes into Wolverine mode until the actress playing Guinevere says it doesn't work as well without the metal claws and with his shirt on. And I am not making any of that up. It really happened in the movie. Meanwhile, Dan Stevens is playing it totally straight with the kind of intensity he might give to Hamlet and I think Hugh Jackman is having to bite his tongue to keep a straight face.

So, anyway, that was a lot of fun, though it was a little sad that it was Robin Williams' last on-screen appearance.

Then I was very glad to find that the new version of Far from the Madding Crowd was available on demand because I wanted to see it but didn't make it to the theater while it was showing (because it was only at a few of the art houses that are inconvenient to get to and it didn't stay long). I went through my emo, moody, dramatic teen phase in my early 20s, but instead of indulging it by reading books about brooding vampires, I read depressing Victorian literature, including a lot of Thomas Hardy. Seeing movie versions takes me back to the days of my youth, and I think this was a pretty good adaptation. Of course, it misses a lot, but I think it still gets in that sense of how vulnerable women could be and how hard it would have been for a woman to be able to maintain her power and independence if she had any at all. For those unfamiliar with the story, it's about a woman who inherits a farm, leaving her independent and not needing a husband to provide for her, so she's reluctant to marry and give up that independence, since according to the laws of that time, her husband would then own all her property. She's wooed by the shepherd who loved her before she became wealthy and who stays by her even as their fortunes reverse, the wealthy neighbor who wants to unite their farms, and a dashing rogue of a soldier. I suppose you could look at them as each representing reasons a woman might marry, for help and companionship, for economic reasons, or for passion.

But mostly, it's all about how true love runs out before a storm to cover the harvest so it won't be ruined. And lots of English countryside scenery porn. Not to mention an attractive man doing nice things and being good with animals. I may have to watch it again, for science. I'm also kind of in the mood to re-read the book.

I guess the reason I had to go through my teen moody phase in my twenties was that I completely failed at it in my teens. When I was feeling moody and retreated to my room to listen to music and sulk, I listened to ABBA, or sometimes the Sound of Music soundtrack. I think I was doing it wrong.

So-So on Shannara

I was utterly useless yesterday, and it was kind of nice. I did take care of a couple of urgent things on the to-do list, but otherwise I did some reading and watching of stuff that turned out to be beneficial.

One thing was a documentary on Stephen Sondheim that I stumbled across in the HBO OnDemand files. They went into his creative process for writing songs, spotlighting six key songs from various parts of his career. The way he approaches lyric writing could also apply to other writing. I put it on mostly to get some background music for knitting but ended up getting a lot out of it.

I've also watched the pilot for the new Shannara series, and I have to say that I'm very, very iffy. I read the first two books in high school and loved them. The Elfstones of Shannara, which is the primary basis for this series, was my favorite. I re-read it a number of times. I picked up the subsequent books when I was out of college but then lost track of the series somewhere along the way. I'd reached the point where I was caught up to what had been published and was waiting for the next book. In the previous one, the party had been split into two groups, with the story following one group and ending with a cliffhanger on that group. When the next book came out, it picked up on the other group. I couldn't even remember what had been going on with those people and gave up on the book because I needed to re-read the previous one, and I never got around to that.

However, this TV series is centered on the characters and situation from one of the books that I've read multiple times. Or I should say is centered on characters with the same names. The situation seems to be more or less the same, but I don't actually recognize the characters. A couple do look a lot like the illustrations in the edition I had, but their personalities and behaviors are rather different.

Then there's the fact that it strikes me as being too contemporary. I'm aware that this series was never about a quasi-medieval fantasy world, that it was our world in a distant postapocalyptic future, but it still read like a fantasy world, with only a few clues thrown in that it wasn't what it seemed to be (and at the time, those mostly seemed to be about "really, it's not a Tolkien retread!"). I also know that there's no real reason other than trope and convention for fantasy characters to have British-like accents. However, there's just something wrong about elves sounding like California kids hanging out in the mall. The cadence of the dialogue struck me as sounding like they'd barely managed to edit out all the "dudes." Oddly enough, the older characters do have British accents. So it strikes me as MTV being worried that the teen audience couldn't relate to characters who didn't talk like them.

I think I may have hit my point of no return when two characters come across the place where the young woman they're seeking is, and they learn that she's at the nearby waterfall. The younger man goes to the waterfall to find her, and I said to myself, "She's going to be naked and bathing when he finds her, isn't she?" And she was. Because of course. Leave no cliche unturned.

But mostly, my issue is that I loved these characters. I didn't actually care for the big-picture threat and mostly skipped the battle scenes. But I cared deeply for the main characters and sweated over each step of their quest. And these aren't the same people to me. I kind of want to re-read the book now to cleanse my brain and get the right people back into my head.

However, Terry Brooks is involved in this, and it's his story, so maybe they fit what he intended (then again, when I had an option contract, there was a clause in it that said I couldn't publicly criticize what they did with my book). Or maybe he figured it was better to let them jazz it up and get a broader audience. I think this is aimed at younger people who've never read the books and might discover them rather than at older people who loved the books as teenagers back in the 80s. I may give it one more episode to see how it gels.

A Rare Soprano Shortage

I was right that the kids would be a little crazy last night. I did a number of activities, and the moment they got rowdy or out of control with an activity, we stopped the activity, even if they still wanted to do it or were having fun.

It looks like I might get to do another Requiem. The local community chorale is doing the Faure Requiem and has invited members of our choir to participate. I suspect that their invitation mostly translates as "we need more men" (as most choirs do because, for some odd reason, boys tend to be steered away from singing and the arts). It's really, really rare for a choir to desperately need more sopranos.

Except for last night in our chamber chorale, when I was the only soprano present. And we were sight reading our new music for the spring semester. Yes, sight reading as a soloist. Fun. One song even started with just the soprano section. There was a time in my life when that would have terrified me to the point of paralysis and I just wouldn't have sung, but I got through it okay.

Come to think of it, this community chorale has asked for extra sopranos before. I've sat in as a ringer when they needed someone who could handle a really high descant for a piece. It's short-term, just one rehearsal a week, one hour of rehearsing, for a little more than a month, and it would probably be good experience.

Now I'm having one of those "never could get the hang of Thursdays" kind of days. I slept very late without even realizing how late I was sleeping, woke up frowning so hard that I had a tension headache for a while after waking until I relaxed some (and I don't know why I was frowning), and now I feel like I could just go back to sleep and sleep another hour or so. That's not conducive to good writing productivity. The trick is figuring out if I'm just being lazy and need to power through or if I really do need rest. If I really do need the rest, like if I'm fighting off something I'm not even aware of yet, taking the time now can help me be more productive later. But if I'm being lazy, it won't do me much good. I think I'll go grocery shopping and see if being out and about snaps me out of it or if I need a nap to recover.