Shanna Swendson's Blog, page 160
March 9, 2015
Blowing Up Tom Cruise
I had a pretty good and productive weekend. Saturday I got my bedroom cleaned -- and I mean really cleaned, almost to hotel standards. There's still a little stuff visible because I live there, but there's nothing on the floor but furniture and little on top of the furniture other than the stuff that goes there. It's a room that could be photographed for a house listing with very little change. I have to give credit to the Pomodoro Method of time management -- set a timer for 25 minutes, work on the task for that time, then take a five minute break before starting another 25 minutes (the technique is named for a kitchen timer shaped like a tomato). I managed to get the room cleaned in three sessions. I think this helped because I either thought of it as overwhelming or I'd make a swipe at it and then get discouraged. It was easier to start knowing I had that time limit and knowing I had to keep at it for that long, and then I made enough progress I wanted to keep going. I've tried this before with writing and my rhythm didn't really fit with the 25 minutes, but then again it's probably good to at least get up and move every 25 minutes, so I may try it again. Like, today, since it's good rainy writing weather.
Meanwhile, I'm hardly tearing up Twitter, with only 27 people following me so far, but I have noticed that my Amazon ranking seems to jump each time I post something. I'm going to try some experiments today to test that.
I also managed to get in some entertainment this weekend. Saturday night I went to the spring production of the ballet ensemble associated with my ballet school (it's considered a "pre-professional" group -- these are the kids who stand a chance at a dance career, and I'm pretty sure that one of them is a real rising star). It was a number of shorter pieces, including a Balanchine work, but the one that I found utterly mesmerizing was a modern ballet (pointe and mostly classical technique, but in modern forms to modern music) choreographed by one of the teachers at the school.
Friday night, I watched Edge of Tomorrow on HBO OnDemand, and it was a fun science fiction war movie that you might consider Groundhog Day meets Starship Troopers/Aliens. I didn't see it at the theater because I'm allergic to Tom Cruise (and this goes back to when I was a teen and he was supposedly a teen idol -- he's pretty much my physical type, but there's always been something about him that was offputting to me, mostly that he comes across as insincere and artificial), but it ended up being pretty good and quite satisfying for people who don't like Tom Cruise because he dies hundreds of times in this movie. It's kind of awesome.
Basically, there's been an alien invasion and the humans of earth have banded together in an all-out war to fight them off. Our boy Tom is a PR officer for the military. His job is to rally the public spirit, get people to enlist in the military and to get public support behind the war. There's been one big success fighting in France, and now they plan to follow that up with an invasion of France -- sort of D-Day, round two. Then the general tells him he'll be going in embedded with the troops so he call tell the story of the invasion. His response is essentially, "I don't do danger. PR, darling, PR." When he attempts to blackmail the general by saying he can ruin his reputation and then walks out, he finds himself arrested for desertion, tased when he tries to fight, and he wakes up on base with a sergeant screaming at him. And this is the Best Movie Ever. In spite of his protests that he isn't really a soldier and all this going in with the grunts is beneath him, he finds himself as part of the invasion (in the kind of mechanized suits that should have been in the movie version of Starship Troopers). It's a bloodbath. His squadmates are being slaughtered all around him. He even sees the woman who was the hero of the previous victory die. Then he gets killed, and it's a beautiful thing. Then he wakes up on base with a sergeant screaming at him. After doing this invasion thing a few hundred times, he's starting to get good at sidestepping the dangers and sometimes even saving people. When he saves the hero by warning her of something he knows will happen, she tells him to track her down when he wakes up. He does, an iteration or so later, and it turns out she's experienced what he's going through, she knows why it's happening, and she thinks they can use him to end the war.
This is where it gets fun. There's a training montage that's highly entertaining because when he screws up, gets tired or gets hurt too badly to keep going, she shoots him so he can reboot. They test their various plans by letting him try them, see what works, and then die and reboot. We don't necessarily see all the in-between stages because on the first time we see a sequence, he's already telling her what didn't work last time.
As someone who loves the Groundhog Day do-over trope and who has Aliens in my list of all-time favorite movies, I really ended up liking this movie. I loved the woman played by Emily Blunt. I'm not all that familiar with her outside Into the Woods and her and her husband's ongoing prank war with Jimmy Kimmel, who lives across the street, but her character here is in the Ripley mode. She is kind of the "Rambo in drag" flavor of "strong female character," but it's appropriate to the situation, and we can tell how she got that way. In fact, aside from one little bit (that I thought was unnecessary), it didn't really matter to the story that she was a woman. It was a character who happened to be played by a woman, and that's pretty cool.
Aside from the fact that much of the fun of the movie involved Tom Cruise dying horribly hundreds of times, I'd have to say that he was the weak link. It was fun to watch while I was watching it, but there was something missing. I did snark early in the movie when he was being a jerk that I bet he would be learning A Valuable Lesson. The problem was, I'm not sure he did. Yeah, he was a hero, saved the day, and all that, but his character arc was established at the beginning as someone who thought he was too good for combat. He was smugly superior to the grunts. But at the end of the day, he struck me as having really learned nothing. He was just smugly superior in a different way. The script even was structured as though to show he was learning something, like when he starts using his foreknowledge to save his fellow squadmates or when he uses things he's learned about them while repeating this same day to convince them of what's going on with them. I think that was supposed to show that he was starting to care about them and see them as people, but all we got was that usual Cruise smirkiness. The smug superiority was perfect for when he was in "PR, darling, PR, but I can't get my hands dirty" mode, but unfortunately I think that's his default, and he never managed to convey that he'd become one of the guys. I guess wanting more character depth in a movie that's basically about blowing up giant bugs and Tom Cruise is rather silly, but just a little more substance to his character, a trace of humanity, would have taken this movie up a level.
Bottom line: Even if you normally don't like Tom Cruise, make some popcorn and be ready to start counting deaths because this is in the same neighborhood as Aliens. Not quite as scary, not quite as deep, but it's a bughunt that plays games with time, which is something we don't get enough of.
Meanwhile, I'm hardly tearing up Twitter, with only 27 people following me so far, but I have noticed that my Amazon ranking seems to jump each time I post something. I'm going to try some experiments today to test that.
I also managed to get in some entertainment this weekend. Saturday night I went to the spring production of the ballet ensemble associated with my ballet school (it's considered a "pre-professional" group -- these are the kids who stand a chance at a dance career, and I'm pretty sure that one of them is a real rising star). It was a number of shorter pieces, including a Balanchine work, but the one that I found utterly mesmerizing was a modern ballet (pointe and mostly classical technique, but in modern forms to modern music) choreographed by one of the teachers at the school.
Friday night, I watched Edge of Tomorrow on HBO OnDemand, and it was a fun science fiction war movie that you might consider Groundhog Day meets Starship Troopers/Aliens. I didn't see it at the theater because I'm allergic to Tom Cruise (and this goes back to when I was a teen and he was supposedly a teen idol -- he's pretty much my physical type, but there's always been something about him that was offputting to me, mostly that he comes across as insincere and artificial), but it ended up being pretty good and quite satisfying for people who don't like Tom Cruise because he dies hundreds of times in this movie. It's kind of awesome.
Basically, there's been an alien invasion and the humans of earth have banded together in an all-out war to fight them off. Our boy Tom is a PR officer for the military. His job is to rally the public spirit, get people to enlist in the military and to get public support behind the war. There's been one big success fighting in France, and now they plan to follow that up with an invasion of France -- sort of D-Day, round two. Then the general tells him he'll be going in embedded with the troops so he call tell the story of the invasion. His response is essentially, "I don't do danger. PR, darling, PR." When he attempts to blackmail the general by saying he can ruin his reputation and then walks out, he finds himself arrested for desertion, tased when he tries to fight, and he wakes up on base with a sergeant screaming at him. And this is the Best Movie Ever. In spite of his protests that he isn't really a soldier and all this going in with the grunts is beneath him, he finds himself as part of the invasion (in the kind of mechanized suits that should have been in the movie version of Starship Troopers). It's a bloodbath. His squadmates are being slaughtered all around him. He even sees the woman who was the hero of the previous victory die. Then he gets killed, and it's a beautiful thing. Then he wakes up on base with a sergeant screaming at him. After doing this invasion thing a few hundred times, he's starting to get good at sidestepping the dangers and sometimes even saving people. When he saves the hero by warning her of something he knows will happen, she tells him to track her down when he wakes up. He does, an iteration or so later, and it turns out she's experienced what he's going through, she knows why it's happening, and she thinks they can use him to end the war.
This is where it gets fun. There's a training montage that's highly entertaining because when he screws up, gets tired or gets hurt too badly to keep going, she shoots him so he can reboot. They test their various plans by letting him try them, see what works, and then die and reboot. We don't necessarily see all the in-between stages because on the first time we see a sequence, he's already telling her what didn't work last time.
As someone who loves the Groundhog Day do-over trope and who has Aliens in my list of all-time favorite movies, I really ended up liking this movie. I loved the woman played by Emily Blunt. I'm not all that familiar with her outside Into the Woods and her and her husband's ongoing prank war with Jimmy Kimmel, who lives across the street, but her character here is in the Ripley mode. She is kind of the "Rambo in drag" flavor of "strong female character," but it's appropriate to the situation, and we can tell how she got that way. In fact, aside from one little bit (that I thought was unnecessary), it didn't really matter to the story that she was a woman. It was a character who happened to be played by a woman, and that's pretty cool.
Aside from the fact that much of the fun of the movie involved Tom Cruise dying horribly hundreds of times, I'd have to say that he was the weak link. It was fun to watch while I was watching it, but there was something missing. I did snark early in the movie when he was being a jerk that I bet he would be learning A Valuable Lesson. The problem was, I'm not sure he did. Yeah, he was a hero, saved the day, and all that, but his character arc was established at the beginning as someone who thought he was too good for combat. He was smugly superior to the grunts. But at the end of the day, he struck me as having really learned nothing. He was just smugly superior in a different way. The script even was structured as though to show he was learning something, like when he starts using his foreknowledge to save his fellow squadmates or when he uses things he's learned about them while repeating this same day to convince them of what's going on with them. I think that was supposed to show that he was starting to care about them and see them as people, but all we got was that usual Cruise smirkiness. The smug superiority was perfect for when he was in "PR, darling, PR, but I can't get my hands dirty" mode, but unfortunately I think that's his default, and he never managed to convey that he'd become one of the guys. I guess wanting more character depth in a movie that's basically about blowing up giant bugs and Tom Cruise is rather silly, but just a little more substance to his character, a trace of humanity, would have taken this movie up a level.
Bottom line: Even if you normally don't like Tom Cruise, make some popcorn and be ready to start counting deaths because this is in the same neighborhood as Aliens. Not quite as scary, not quite as deep, but it's a bughunt that plays games with time, which is something we don't get enough of.
March 6, 2015
Entering the Twitterverse
The snow is mostly gone, except for the drift against the north side of the wall and the tops of the bushes in front of my house. That's one thing I like about Texas snow, when we get it. We get one day of pristine white fluffiness, then it's generally gone practically overnight. We don't get that nasty gray gunk that piles up beside roads and stays for most of the winter like they get in colder climates. Next week it's supposed to be warm and springlike, and I am totally in favor of that, even though I generally like cold, gray weather.
I'm wrapping up the house cleaning project. I'm in the odd state right now where it actually looks a bit messier in places, but that's because the hidden places are now all organized and I just have to figure out what to do with the remaining clutter. Mostly, I need to throw it away, but getting the trash out has been a challenge lately. Now that the ice and snow are gone, I can make trips to the dumpster.
I have decided that, budget permitting, when I get a new house I'll get a maid service to do a monthly deep clean. That will force me to keep clutter under control all the time, since I'm the sort of person who cleans up before the maid comes. I think it may even be cost-effective in the long run because I'm terrible at the ongoing serious maintenance type stuff, and it's cheaper to hire someone to, say, give the floors a really good cleaning every month than to replace the floors.
In other news, I have finally taken the Twitter plunge. You can find me as @ShannaSwendson (yeah, I know, creative). I don't know how active or interactive I will be because I find it all very overwhelming, and terse wit is not my strong suit. I still need to figure out stuff about how hashtags really work and who I need to be following, and getting followers, and all that. Mostly it's an experiment for now.
And you can blame Taylor Swift. Why? Well, I had a bizarre dream the other night that I ran into Taylor Swift at some event, she took a selfie of us and posted it on Twitter, and then suddenly my book sales skyrocketed. I'm not entirely sure why I would dream about her because I'm not a fan. I'm not sure I'd recognize one of her songs. I might be able to pick her out of a lineup, but possibly not if she wasn't labeled and if she was alongside other young women of that type. It may have had something to do with a story about her on the news that evening, in which she did a Facetime call with a little girl with cancer who was a big fan.
Anyway, upon waking I realized that I'm not likely to just randomly run into huge celebrities who can boost my career. I have to take more steps on my own. Facebook has gone for the money grab, so you have to pay to have anyone see posts other than through your personal account. On Twitter, you do stand a slightly larger chance of having someone with a huge following retweet you or otherwise boost you. So, we'll see how this goes. I can see it becoming a huge time sink. If it doesn't do me much good, I'm giving myself permission to abandon it.
I'm wrapping up the house cleaning project. I'm in the odd state right now where it actually looks a bit messier in places, but that's because the hidden places are now all organized and I just have to figure out what to do with the remaining clutter. Mostly, I need to throw it away, but getting the trash out has been a challenge lately. Now that the ice and snow are gone, I can make trips to the dumpster.
I have decided that, budget permitting, when I get a new house I'll get a maid service to do a monthly deep clean. That will force me to keep clutter under control all the time, since I'm the sort of person who cleans up before the maid comes. I think it may even be cost-effective in the long run because I'm terrible at the ongoing serious maintenance type stuff, and it's cheaper to hire someone to, say, give the floors a really good cleaning every month than to replace the floors.
In other news, I have finally taken the Twitter plunge. You can find me as @ShannaSwendson (yeah, I know, creative). I don't know how active or interactive I will be because I find it all very overwhelming, and terse wit is not my strong suit. I still need to figure out stuff about how hashtags really work and who I need to be following, and getting followers, and all that. Mostly it's an experiment for now.
And you can blame Taylor Swift. Why? Well, I had a bizarre dream the other night that I ran into Taylor Swift at some event, she took a selfie of us and posted it on Twitter, and then suddenly my book sales skyrocketed. I'm not entirely sure why I would dream about her because I'm not a fan. I'm not sure I'd recognize one of her songs. I might be able to pick her out of a lineup, but possibly not if she wasn't labeled and if she was alongside other young women of that type. It may have had something to do with a story about her on the news that evening, in which she did a Facetime call with a little girl with cancer who was a big fan.
Anyway, upon waking I realized that I'm not likely to just randomly run into huge celebrities who can boost my career. I have to take more steps on my own. Facebook has gone for the money grab, so you have to pay to have anyone see posts other than through your personal account. On Twitter, you do stand a slightly larger chance of having someone with a huge following retweet you or otherwise boost you. So, we'll see how this goes. I can see it becoming a huge time sink. If it doesn't do me much good, I'm giving myself permission to abandon it.
March 5, 2015
Overdoing the Snow Dance
I might have been a bit overzealous in my sleet dance, and it's possible I got my arms wrong (it happens all the time) and got a bit of snow dance in while I was at it because instead of (possibly in addition to) the 1 inch of sleet/freezing rain we were supposed to get, we got about six inches of snow. It transitioned to snow a lot earlier than they forecast, and it seemed to be falling pretty hard most of the night. A lot of the time, it was blowing horizontally from the north. My front door faces north, so I have a nice snowdrift against my front door.
Either way, I achieved my objective and they cancelled evening activities at the church. Good thing, too, because right at the time children's choir would have ended, the sleet started and there was already a glaze of ice on most surfaces. It was sleeting hard at the time adult choir would have ended. I also got a break on Mary Poppins rehearsals because even if they have a rehearsal tonight, the adults don't have to come. It sounds like the kids are going to be drilled in the scenes they're still having problems with. That means I get another evening of quality time with my sofa, which is good because unless things clear up a lot before tonight, I wouldn't have driven.
So, this is what it looked like just before I went to bed last night:
And this is my patio this morning.
Fortunately, the sun is out and it's supposed to get above freezing this afternoon, so it should be gone by tomorrow.
I didn't do as much writing as I hoped yesterday because it turns out that checking the radar and the weather conditions every five minutes is bad for your productivity (really!). I did review some parts I'd already written, and then I did some research on one thing and realized I've written myself into a bind with something already in the book that was published this week. I had Michael and his partner investigating a death in Central Park, and I'd thought that the precinct that covered that area would also include parts of the surrounding city. But the park is its own precinct, and they must be really bored there because the crime statistics are surprisingly low. It doesn't affect me too much because most of the cases I'd want to cover will be in the park, since the natural areas are where the fairy world and the human world intersect. I don't know if they'd actually have detectives assigned to that precinct, but if they did, I doubt they'd specialize in any one area. So not every case has to be a potential homicide.
Not that most crime shows or mysteries would bother about this. They generally have the hero detective investigating every crime in the city, in all five boroughs. And this is a series about fairies, so realism is already off the table. I just like to make the "real" stuff realistic. Really, all I need is for Mari, Michael's partner, to make a remark about them getting a cushy gig while he's coming back from an injury, and then they can also comment on the unusually high number of dead bodies they're coming across. Seriously, according to the crime stats, Central Park makes Mayberry look like a crime-ridden hellhole.
Now that I've cleared up that detail, maybe I'll get more work done today.
Either way, I achieved my objective and they cancelled evening activities at the church. Good thing, too, because right at the time children's choir would have ended, the sleet started and there was already a glaze of ice on most surfaces. It was sleeting hard at the time adult choir would have ended. I also got a break on Mary Poppins rehearsals because even if they have a rehearsal tonight, the adults don't have to come. It sounds like the kids are going to be drilled in the scenes they're still having problems with. That means I get another evening of quality time with my sofa, which is good because unless things clear up a lot before tonight, I wouldn't have driven.
So, this is what it looked like just before I went to bed last night:
And this is my patio this morning.
Fortunately, the sun is out and it's supposed to get above freezing this afternoon, so it should be gone by tomorrow.
I didn't do as much writing as I hoped yesterday because it turns out that checking the radar and the weather conditions every five minutes is bad for your productivity (really!). I did review some parts I'd already written, and then I did some research on one thing and realized I've written myself into a bind with something already in the book that was published this week. I had Michael and his partner investigating a death in Central Park, and I'd thought that the precinct that covered that area would also include parts of the surrounding city. But the park is its own precinct, and they must be really bored there because the crime statistics are surprisingly low. It doesn't affect me too much because most of the cases I'd want to cover will be in the park, since the natural areas are where the fairy world and the human world intersect. I don't know if they'd actually have detectives assigned to that precinct, but if they did, I doubt they'd specialize in any one area. So not every case has to be a potential homicide.
Not that most crime shows or mysteries would bother about this. They generally have the hero detective investigating every crime in the city, in all five boroughs. And this is a series about fairies, so realism is already off the table. I just like to make the "real" stuff realistic. Really, all I need is for Mari, Michael's partner, to make a remark about them getting a cushy gig while he's coming back from an injury, and then they can also comment on the unusually high number of dead bodies they're coming across. Seriously, according to the crime stats, Central Park makes Mayberry look like a crime-ridden hellhole.
Now that I've cleared up that detail, maybe I'll get more work done today.
March 4, 2015
Doing the Sleet Dance
The paperback version of To Catch a Queen should now be listed on Amazon. There's something wonky with the way they have the series listed, but I think that's an Amazon glitch that I'm not sure I can get changed. I have reported it to my digital publishing person.
Maybe it was the book release that did it. Maybe it's because it's a cool (soon to be cold), rainy day. Maybe it's because I'm sick and tired of cleaning house. But I'm really in the mood to write today. So I think I will get back to book 3. I might also be kind of crossing my fingers really hard that they have to cancel children's choir because of weather. It's supposed to start sleeting this afternoon. For one thing, I don't want to be out in questionable and worsening conditions. For another, it would be nice to have a night in after the past couple of nights. I'm remembering why I gave up on doing theater a long time ago. The rehearsal schedule is just too much for me. I can't deal with having activities every night for weeks on end. Unfortunately, unless you're doing a show with all solos and monologues, you kind of have to practice with other people. You can't just learn your part at home. Hmm, maybe I need to look for a production of "The Last Five Years" to audition for. That's all solos except for one duet.
Though it really would help matters if all the cast members would learn their parts on their own. I think half the rehearsal time seems to be spent on people not knowing what they're supposed to be doing and then messing everyone else up, so they have to start over on a part to get it all together. And then there's the social media backstage issue that's leading to the stage manager banning cell phones among the cast, since people were missing their entrance cues because they were checking Facebook. That didn't exist the last time I did theater.
On the up side, I've been getting a lot of knitting done. I'm doing newborn baby hats for the county hospital, so they're small and portable and I can generally get most of one done during a rehearsal.
Now to go do my Sleet Dance so I don't have to deal with kids tonight and can maybe get some work done.
Maybe it was the book release that did it. Maybe it's because it's a cool (soon to be cold), rainy day. Maybe it's because I'm sick and tired of cleaning house. But I'm really in the mood to write today. So I think I will get back to book 3. I might also be kind of crossing my fingers really hard that they have to cancel children's choir because of weather. It's supposed to start sleeting this afternoon. For one thing, I don't want to be out in questionable and worsening conditions. For another, it would be nice to have a night in after the past couple of nights. I'm remembering why I gave up on doing theater a long time ago. The rehearsal schedule is just too much for me. I can't deal with having activities every night for weeks on end. Unfortunately, unless you're doing a show with all solos and monologues, you kind of have to practice with other people. You can't just learn your part at home. Hmm, maybe I need to look for a production of "The Last Five Years" to audition for. That's all solos except for one duet.
Though it really would help matters if all the cast members would learn their parts on their own. I think half the rehearsal time seems to be spent on people not knowing what they're supposed to be doing and then messing everyone else up, so they have to start over on a part to get it all together. And then there's the social media backstage issue that's leading to the stage manager banning cell phones among the cast, since people were missing their entrance cues because they were checking Facebook. That didn't exist the last time I did theater.
On the up side, I've been getting a lot of knitting done. I'm doing newborn baby hats for the county hospital, so they're small and portable and I can generally get most of one done during a rehearsal.
Now to go do my Sleet Dance so I don't have to deal with kids tonight and can maybe get some work done.
March 3, 2015
Happy Book Day to Me!
It's new book day! To Catch a Queen, book 2 in the Fairy Tale series, is out today. It seems to be showing up at most of the major online outlets, in paperback, e-book and audio (well, the paperback isn't quite yet up, but it should show up soon). So go forth and read! (And blog, tweet, Facebook, Goodreads, etc.)
You know, in my listing of crazy stuff this week, that one completely slipped my mind. I really should be doing more publicity.
But instead I spent last night at a Mary Poppins rehearsal. The show is coming together, but still has a way to go. I'm still not entirely sure what part I'm singing, since it's hard to tell where they need the fill-in. It sounds to me like they're weaker on the higher notes, so I've been singing first soprano. But then the second soprano part tends to be invisible, so you only notice it when it's gone.
The cutest thing last night, though, was an adorable little scene stealer. The mom and little sister of the kid playing Michael were watching the rehearsal. The little sister is about three, has bright red hair, and was dressed in an Anna's ballgown (from Frozen) costume, with pink cowboy boots. Her mom was sitting in back, but she sat in the front row, gazing totally rapt at the stage, but then when a big dance number started she got down from her seat and did all the steps -- in some cases, she seemed to have a better grip on the dance numbers than the teenagers did. I'd be tempted to put a chimney sweep costume on her and put her on stage, but then she really would steal the show, and it would probably create a monster.
My contribution to the show may end up being having a solution for Mrs. Banks's hair. The girl playing that role has long, curly hair a lot like mine. She has a big role so isn't doubling up in the chorus, except for the "Step in Time" number, where apparently she's one of a few kids in the cast who can tap dance, so for that one number she has to become a chimney sweep. They were trying to think of a way to hide her hair and keep people from wondering why Mrs. Banks is also a chimney sweep, and I may have a solution, as an expert in long, curly hair. It depends on how she's going to wear her hair as Mrs. Banks. But I can help them with that, too, since I have a lot of ways of putting up long, curly hair.
Meanwhile, I seem to have had my first house-hunting anxiety dream. It actually wasn't that bad a dream, just a weird one. I'd had to resort to buying the one house available that's kind of close to what I want, but not exactly. It's been on the market since December, which is odd in this market where things are selling the day they go on sale, and now the listing is specifying that it needs a new roof and a new air conditioner, which explains it. In the dream, I'd already moved in, but then I kept finding these rooms I didn't know were there. It was like what you see in a really old house that's been added on to over the years, where a porch gets glassed in to become a sun room, and the garage gets finished out to be a room, with a new garage added on, etc. I discovered this whole network of rooms I hadn't known about, and they were still furnished. I learned that the house had been foreclosed and the family had to leave quickly, so they'd had to leave a lot of their stuff behind. Then they showed up and asked if they could take a few mementos, as some scrapbooks and photos had been in the stuff they had to leave. I was encouraging the kids to take their books and feeling really bad for them, but was hoping they didn't want to take the Celtic harps I'd discovered they had in one of those rooms. I'm really not sure what all this indicates about my mindset. This particular house is in my target neighborhood, but I don't like its location, and I really don't want to deal with stuff like needing a new roof. It's way overpriced if that kind of thing needs to be done to it. And I do kind of want a harp. I liked the sun room that I was planning to use as an office.
In short, buy my new book and tell people about it. This house hunting thing is going to be an adventure.
You know, in my listing of crazy stuff this week, that one completely slipped my mind. I really should be doing more publicity.
But instead I spent last night at a Mary Poppins rehearsal. The show is coming together, but still has a way to go. I'm still not entirely sure what part I'm singing, since it's hard to tell where they need the fill-in. It sounds to me like they're weaker on the higher notes, so I've been singing first soprano. But then the second soprano part tends to be invisible, so you only notice it when it's gone.
The cutest thing last night, though, was an adorable little scene stealer. The mom and little sister of the kid playing Michael were watching the rehearsal. The little sister is about three, has bright red hair, and was dressed in an Anna's ballgown (from Frozen) costume, with pink cowboy boots. Her mom was sitting in back, but she sat in the front row, gazing totally rapt at the stage, but then when a big dance number started she got down from her seat and did all the steps -- in some cases, she seemed to have a better grip on the dance numbers than the teenagers did. I'd be tempted to put a chimney sweep costume on her and put her on stage, but then she really would steal the show, and it would probably create a monster.
My contribution to the show may end up being having a solution for Mrs. Banks's hair. The girl playing that role has long, curly hair a lot like mine. She has a big role so isn't doubling up in the chorus, except for the "Step in Time" number, where apparently she's one of a few kids in the cast who can tap dance, so for that one number she has to become a chimney sweep. They were trying to think of a way to hide her hair and keep people from wondering why Mrs. Banks is also a chimney sweep, and I may have a solution, as an expert in long, curly hair. It depends on how she's going to wear her hair as Mrs. Banks. But I can help them with that, too, since I have a lot of ways of putting up long, curly hair.
Meanwhile, I seem to have had my first house-hunting anxiety dream. It actually wasn't that bad a dream, just a weird one. I'd had to resort to buying the one house available that's kind of close to what I want, but not exactly. It's been on the market since December, which is odd in this market where things are selling the day they go on sale, and now the listing is specifying that it needs a new roof and a new air conditioner, which explains it. In the dream, I'd already moved in, but then I kept finding these rooms I didn't know were there. It was like what you see in a really old house that's been added on to over the years, where a porch gets glassed in to become a sun room, and the garage gets finished out to be a room, with a new garage added on, etc. I discovered this whole network of rooms I hadn't known about, and they were still furnished. I learned that the house had been foreclosed and the family had to leave quickly, so they'd had to leave a lot of their stuff behind. Then they showed up and asked if they could take a few mementos, as some scrapbooks and photos had been in the stuff they had to leave. I was encouraging the kids to take their books and feeling really bad for them, but was hoping they didn't want to take the Celtic harps I'd discovered they had in one of those rooms. I'm really not sure what all this indicates about my mindset. This particular house is in my target neighborhood, but I don't like its location, and I really don't want to deal with stuff like needing a new roof. It's way overpriced if that kind of thing needs to be done to it. And I do kind of want a harp. I liked the sun room that I was planning to use as an office.
In short, buy my new book and tell people about it. This house hunting thing is going to be an adventure.
March 2, 2015
Really Crazy Week
A truly crazy week has begun for me, but at least I started it with a yoga class and then going out for tea with the yoga class, so maybe I'll have some balance. It's the big rehearsal week for Mary Poppins, when I have to actually attend rehearsals Monday, Tuesday and Thursday nights. Meanwhile, it's my final week to wrap up home preparations. I'm down to mostly just cleaning, other than getting a plumber in. I have my usual Wednesday night stuff, though there is sleet in the forecast, so we'll see if that gets cancelled. But next week will be light, as it's spring break, so I won't have yoga, ballet, children's choir or musical rehearsals. I might have regular choir, but I haven't heard about that yet. And my house should be already clean.
I got my office mostly clean over the weekend. I still need to tidy around my desk, but the rest of the office has open floor space instead of boxes of stuff (mostly books). It was so exciting to find the floor.
Meanwhile, I finally watched The Grand Budapest Hotel on HBO. It wasn't quite what I was expecting it to be, as most of it doesn't actually involve the hotel, but still it was a fun and quirky film. For some reason, it reminded me a lot of Raising Arizona -- probably something to do with the tone and the quirkiness. It also gave me a real nostalgia jolt in an odd way. The parts set in the late 60s, when Jude Law's character is visiting the hotel and hearing the story about the events in the 30s, reminded me so much of some vacations we took when I was a kid and we were living in Germany. In the movie, it's an opulent old hotel whose glory days ended in the 30s, and in the "present" it still has some of those bones, but has fallen on harder times and is now a little shabby. It's furnished with utilitarian mid-century furniture, and the signage is those felt boards with the little plastic letters. That reminded me so much of the hotels at the US military recreation areas in Germany. They were these old, pre-war buildings that looked like they had once been very luxurious, but the furnishings were pretty much 1960s general issue office style, almost institutional, and the signage was those felt boards with push-on plastic letters. The dining rooms always looked like a base cafeteria (and I think were run by the same organization), even if they were these grand old hotel restaurants. I remember always being a bit jolted by the disconnect between the buildings and the furnishings, and I'd try to image what these places had been like in their glory years.
At the first shot of the hotel during that era in the movie, I had this burst of familiarity, and it took me a moment or two to place it. I think they were trying to depict the hotel during the communist era, but it was just like the way the military ran hotels.
Now to get on with tackling the crazy week.
I got my office mostly clean over the weekend. I still need to tidy around my desk, but the rest of the office has open floor space instead of boxes of stuff (mostly books). It was so exciting to find the floor.
Meanwhile, I finally watched The Grand Budapest Hotel on HBO. It wasn't quite what I was expecting it to be, as most of it doesn't actually involve the hotel, but still it was a fun and quirky film. For some reason, it reminded me a lot of Raising Arizona -- probably something to do with the tone and the quirkiness. It also gave me a real nostalgia jolt in an odd way. The parts set in the late 60s, when Jude Law's character is visiting the hotel and hearing the story about the events in the 30s, reminded me so much of some vacations we took when I was a kid and we were living in Germany. In the movie, it's an opulent old hotel whose glory days ended in the 30s, and in the "present" it still has some of those bones, but has fallen on harder times and is now a little shabby. It's furnished with utilitarian mid-century furniture, and the signage is those felt boards with the little plastic letters. That reminded me so much of the hotels at the US military recreation areas in Germany. They were these old, pre-war buildings that looked like they had once been very luxurious, but the furnishings were pretty much 1960s general issue office style, almost institutional, and the signage was those felt boards with push-on plastic letters. The dining rooms always looked like a base cafeteria (and I think were run by the same organization), even if they were these grand old hotel restaurants. I remember always being a bit jolted by the disconnect between the buildings and the furnishings, and I'd try to image what these places had been like in their glory years.
At the first shot of the hotel during that era in the movie, I had this burst of familiarity, and it took me a moment or two to place it. I think they were trying to depict the hotel during the communist era, but it was just like the way the military ran hotels.
Now to get on with tackling the crazy week.
February 27, 2015
I Wanna Build a Snowman
It's snowing! It started with just a few flakes while I was eating breakfast, and it was so light that I could barely see it falling. By the time I finished breakfast, there was a coating of white on my black patio furniture. Now, though, the snow is visibly falling, and I'd say there's about an inch accumulated. I know this is nothing to northerners, but it's our first real snowfall of the year. We had a very brief rain/snow mixture earlier this week and a few flakes yesterday, but this is real snow.
I may get nothing done today because I kind of just want to stare at it falling. It's rather hypnotic. But I do have work to do to finish up the house. I got a carload of stuff out to the recycling center yesterday. I figure that in stuff I've donated, recycled or thrown away in the past few months, I've gotten rid of at least three carloads of stuff, which is that many fewer things to move when the time comes. I need to do one more pass on the closet and books. Hmm, that could be a fun snow day activity -- go through the To Be Read shelf and read first chapters. If I'm not interested, I can get rid of the book.
Yesterday I painted the kitchen and one wall of the living room. The paint color is close enough to the existing color that it doesn't show as different on adjacent walls, but it does show if a spot is missed on a wall, which means I might have a couple of touchups now that it's all dry. Today I want to clean out the painting mess and start doing an overall house cleaning. After getting rid of stuff, I have places to put things away. I may make my self-imposed deadline of having the house ready to list by spring break, and then I can get back to writing work.
But there may have to be some snowman building this afternoon.
This weekend Once Upon a Time returns, but comments by the writers in interviews leading up to the return are making me wary. The morality was already skewed, but they seem to be going off the deep end in woobifying a villain, claiming that she deserves all kinds of good things and has really had the short end of the stick because one particular thing didn't go right for her barely a year after she stopped murdering people. This is a woman who lives in a mansion, drives a Mercedes, still has a position of authority in the community, has her former victims supporting her and begging to be her friends, and whose adopted son still loves her in spite of the emotional abuse she inflicted on him (and in spite of the fact that he nearly died in one of her attempts to murder someone else). Her Grimm fairy tale counterpart was forced to dance to death in red-hot iron shoes. Somehow I doubt she'd see not being able to keep the guy she'd been dating for a couple of week as not getting a happy ending. As much as I love aspects of the show, I'm thisclose to giving up on it entirely. I'm even considering getting on Twitter just to call the writers out on their nonsense. This makes me so mad because the premise had so much potential, and yet it's a little too unique for me to find a way to scratch out the serial numbers and write it the right way.
I may get nothing done today because I kind of just want to stare at it falling. It's rather hypnotic. But I do have work to do to finish up the house. I got a carload of stuff out to the recycling center yesterday. I figure that in stuff I've donated, recycled or thrown away in the past few months, I've gotten rid of at least three carloads of stuff, which is that many fewer things to move when the time comes. I need to do one more pass on the closet and books. Hmm, that could be a fun snow day activity -- go through the To Be Read shelf and read first chapters. If I'm not interested, I can get rid of the book.
Yesterday I painted the kitchen and one wall of the living room. The paint color is close enough to the existing color that it doesn't show as different on adjacent walls, but it does show if a spot is missed on a wall, which means I might have a couple of touchups now that it's all dry. Today I want to clean out the painting mess and start doing an overall house cleaning. After getting rid of stuff, I have places to put things away. I may make my self-imposed deadline of having the house ready to list by spring break, and then I can get back to writing work.
But there may have to be some snowman building this afternoon.
This weekend Once Upon a Time returns, but comments by the writers in interviews leading up to the return are making me wary. The morality was already skewed, but they seem to be going off the deep end in woobifying a villain, claiming that she deserves all kinds of good things and has really had the short end of the stick because one particular thing didn't go right for her barely a year after she stopped murdering people. This is a woman who lives in a mansion, drives a Mercedes, still has a position of authority in the community, has her former victims supporting her and begging to be her friends, and whose adopted son still loves her in spite of the emotional abuse she inflicted on him (and in spite of the fact that he nearly died in one of her attempts to murder someone else). Her Grimm fairy tale counterpart was forced to dance to death in red-hot iron shoes. Somehow I doubt she'd see not being able to keep the guy she'd been dating for a couple of week as not getting a happy ending. As much as I love aspects of the show, I'm thisclose to giving up on it entirely. I'm even considering getting on Twitter just to call the writers out on their nonsense. This makes me so mad because the premise had so much potential, and yet it's a little too unique for me to find a way to scratch out the serial numbers and write it the right way.
February 26, 2015
The Cabinet of Past Passions
I've updated my web site ever so slightly to include info on the new book, coming on Tuesday. Eventually I may need to do a total redesign to incorporate the steampunk stuff, but that will come after I get the house stuff straightened out (I hope).
Meanwhile, I'm about to head to the recycling center to unload a whole trunk load of old videotapes -- according to the city web site, they take them. In the Dark Ages before OnDemand, I used to record my favorite shows as I watched them. It started when I lived under the flight path for the airport, and it always seemed like a plane would take off right over my head at a critical moment, so I'd miss something. So I just started recording everything as I watched it, and then I could rewatch to catch things I missed. I found that I enjoyed rewatching anyway, and would often watch that week's episode (or at least my favorite parts) during the week, then rewatch it again leading up to the new episode. I'd also have plenty of stuff on hand to watch during summer hiatus. My recordings of the first season of The X-Files got me through the summer I was in physical therapy after knee surgery. I could put on an episode and get through my at-home exercises.
Now, OnDemand means I can rewatch that week's episode without recording it, so I seldom tape anything. I can get DVD sets of an entire season that fit into the space of one videotape. The move to HD has made the tapes even less relevant. So I've been purging my videotape collection. I have entire series on tape, some of which I now have on DVD. I also had a lot of movies I seem to have recorded off HBO when I first got HBO and was excited about all those movies -- OnDemand has ended that, as well, since I don't have to watch anything on HBO's schedule anymore. I kept a couple of series that aren't available on DVD and tapes of my own appearances on the news. Otherwise, a collection that once filled a cabinet and most of a bookcase now fits on a shelf and a half of the cabinet. This has freed up valuable bookcase space and given me good places to put away other things.
This process was interesting in tracking my past passions. There are things I used to be obsessed with that I now can hardly bring myself to watch. I've caught showings of some of these series on various cable channels and cringed. But at the time, I was obsessed and would rewatch constantly. I'm sure at some point I'll look at my DVD collection the same way. The DVDs just take up a lot less space.
Meanwhile, I'm about to head to the recycling center to unload a whole trunk load of old videotapes -- according to the city web site, they take them. In the Dark Ages before OnDemand, I used to record my favorite shows as I watched them. It started when I lived under the flight path for the airport, and it always seemed like a plane would take off right over my head at a critical moment, so I'd miss something. So I just started recording everything as I watched it, and then I could rewatch to catch things I missed. I found that I enjoyed rewatching anyway, and would often watch that week's episode (or at least my favorite parts) during the week, then rewatch it again leading up to the new episode. I'd also have plenty of stuff on hand to watch during summer hiatus. My recordings of the first season of The X-Files got me through the summer I was in physical therapy after knee surgery. I could put on an episode and get through my at-home exercises.
Now, OnDemand means I can rewatch that week's episode without recording it, so I seldom tape anything. I can get DVD sets of an entire season that fit into the space of one videotape. The move to HD has made the tapes even less relevant. So I've been purging my videotape collection. I have entire series on tape, some of which I now have on DVD. I also had a lot of movies I seem to have recorded off HBO when I first got HBO and was excited about all those movies -- OnDemand has ended that, as well, since I don't have to watch anything on HBO's schedule anymore. I kept a couple of series that aren't available on DVD and tapes of my own appearances on the news. Otherwise, a collection that once filled a cabinet and most of a bookcase now fits on a shelf and a half of the cabinet. This has freed up valuable bookcase space and given me good places to put away other things.
This process was interesting in tracking my past passions. There are things I used to be obsessed with that I now can hardly bring myself to watch. I've caught showings of some of these series on various cable channels and cringed. But at the time, I was obsessed and would rewatch constantly. I'm sure at some point I'll look at my DVD collection the same way. The DVDs just take up a lot less space.
February 25, 2015
Active Goals
I've realized that I may just have to go with the fact that I function best in "all or nothing" mode and quit trying to do little bits of things at a time. Therefore, I'm devoting the next few days to cleaning/organizing/housework to have it all out of the way, and then I'll get down to writing. The story is brewing in my head, but when I sit down to write, the to-do list pops up in my brain, so I can't concentrate. I think a big flurry of activity in the next few days will get almost all the projects finished. Then it will be down to the professionals I need to call in. And then I might be able to think again.
Now, for a writing post …
As I plot out a book, I've been thinking about character goals. This is a really critical thing to drive a story and the basis of plot -- what does your hero want, why, what's he willing to do to get it, and what's getting in his way? Meanwhile, your antagonist or villain also needs a goal, and preferably one that's at cross-purposes with the hero's goal, so that the things the villain is doing to go after his goal are what's getting in the way of what the hero's doing to go after his goal, and thus we have conflict.
You tend to get a stronger story with a positive goal -- wanting something rather than not wanting something -- and with an active goal instead of a reactive goal -- having something the hero wants to achieve rather than just wanting to stop the villain. That sounds simple, but it isn't really. For one thing, there's probably going to be some element of reaction in a hero's goal in any kind of good vs. evil story because, generally, the good people just want to be living their lives. They're not out looking for adventure. They're minding their own business until the villain shows up to mess things up, and that's what stirs the heroes to take action and restore order. That means that the hero's goal comes down to something negative and reactive -- I don't want the villain to ruin everything.
But there are still ways to turn this situation into a more positive, active goal. Yeah, they want to stop the villain, but they have a specific plan in place for doing so. They're not just reacting to things the villain does. For instance, the heroes in The Lord of the Rings want to stop Sauron, but the goal is to destroy the ring. That puts them in the driver's seat and flips things around so that Sauron's minions have to have the goal of stopping them from destroying the ring. In Star Wars, yeah, the Rebels have the general goal of stopping the evil Empire, but more specifically the goal of the heroes is to get the Death Star plans to the Rebels so they can find a weakness and destroy it. The Empire then is in a position of reacting, of doing whatever they can to stop this from happening.
There's still going to be some reacting as the heroes have to deal with each thing the villain does to try to stop them, but you aren't in the position of the villain driving all the action and the heroes just running around, trying to put out fires as they arise. If the hero's only goal is to stop the villain's evil scheme, then the villain is driving the story and the hero tends to seem to just be fumbling around, reacting to each thing the villain does until finally having a reaction that stops things for good. An active hero will react to the need to stop a villain by coming up with a clear plan with its own goal and then driving toward it, regardless of what the villain is trying to do.
Now, for a writing post …
As I plot out a book, I've been thinking about character goals. This is a really critical thing to drive a story and the basis of plot -- what does your hero want, why, what's he willing to do to get it, and what's getting in his way? Meanwhile, your antagonist or villain also needs a goal, and preferably one that's at cross-purposes with the hero's goal, so that the things the villain is doing to go after his goal are what's getting in the way of what the hero's doing to go after his goal, and thus we have conflict.
You tend to get a stronger story with a positive goal -- wanting something rather than not wanting something -- and with an active goal instead of a reactive goal -- having something the hero wants to achieve rather than just wanting to stop the villain. That sounds simple, but it isn't really. For one thing, there's probably going to be some element of reaction in a hero's goal in any kind of good vs. evil story because, generally, the good people just want to be living their lives. They're not out looking for adventure. They're minding their own business until the villain shows up to mess things up, and that's what stirs the heroes to take action and restore order. That means that the hero's goal comes down to something negative and reactive -- I don't want the villain to ruin everything.
But there are still ways to turn this situation into a more positive, active goal. Yeah, they want to stop the villain, but they have a specific plan in place for doing so. They're not just reacting to things the villain does. For instance, the heroes in The Lord of the Rings want to stop Sauron, but the goal is to destroy the ring. That puts them in the driver's seat and flips things around so that Sauron's minions have to have the goal of stopping them from destroying the ring. In Star Wars, yeah, the Rebels have the general goal of stopping the evil Empire, but more specifically the goal of the heroes is to get the Death Star plans to the Rebels so they can find a weakness and destroy it. The Empire then is in a position of reacting, of doing whatever they can to stop this from happening.
There's still going to be some reacting as the heroes have to deal with each thing the villain does to try to stop them, but you aren't in the position of the villain driving all the action and the heroes just running around, trying to put out fires as they arise. If the hero's only goal is to stop the villain's evil scheme, then the villain is driving the story and the hero tends to seem to just be fumbling around, reacting to each thing the villain does until finally having a reaction that stops things for good. An active hero will react to the need to stop a villain by coming up with a clear plan with its own goal and then driving toward it, regardless of what the villain is trying to do.
February 24, 2015
Wives, Girlfriends, and Other Female Characters
It's another icy day. The roads seem pretty clear, but my front steps and driveway are still icy. The schools are closed again, but the ballet school just posted on Facebook that they'll be open tonight. I'll have to see what the driveway looks like by then and then figure out how wet it looks and what time the temperature will go back below freezing. I need the exercise and enjoy the class, but I admit that a part of me was looking forward to an evening under the blanket on the sofa, watching TV, since there are a lot of things on tonight. There's the season (and maybe series) finale of Agent Carter, and then in the late slot there's the series finale of Parks and Recreation, then new episodes of Forever and Person of Interest.
We're supposed to get snow tonight/tomorrow morning, but it's all supposed to melt by tomorrow afternoon, so I guess I need to come up with a choir lesson plan. I already know the kids are going to be stark raving insane, since they'll have been cooped up inside for days and out of school for two days. I wonder if I can get away with The Quiet Game (see who can stay quiet and still the longest).
The ice on my roof is breaking up and falling off. It's very loud on the clay tiles.
There's been a lot of talk around the writing spaces of the Internet lately about the "strong female character." I saw a link to this parody, which is kind of genius because it illustrates exactly the thing that often bugs me about the idea of a "strong female character," which is that this is generally code for "Rambo in drag." Anything traditionally feminine is seen as bad, while anything traditionally masculine is seen as a positive. This woman is cool because she uses a gun, fights with a sword, doesn't care about emotions when she has sex, drinks beer, likes sports, and hates the color pink. She's not like those icky girly girls who wear pink dresses, like to sew, fall in love, like drinks with fruit garnishes, and want to have babies.
Apparently recently, some writer -- and I'm not sure who because I've read comments about it from other authors I know but haven't seen the original post -- said that the way to have a strong female character isn't to come up with a bunch of "strong" traits, but rather to give the character a strong role in the story. And that makes sense. A woman who can fist fight and who likes beer but who ends up just standing around on the periphery of the story, never making decisions that affect the plot, never initiating action, isn't a strong character. She's set dressing. The strong character is one who takes action, makes decisions, has some agency over her life, and it doesn't matter what traits she has.
This discussion reminded me of something else I've been noticing lately, and that's what has to be the most thankless character role ever: the established wife or girlfriend of the hero. I've noticed that in any TV show in which the main male character had a wife or girlfriend when the story begins, as opposed to someone he meets and falls in love with during the course of the story, that character will be fairly universally loathed. She can't win. If her relationship with the hero is happy and comfortable, then it's bland and they have no chemistry, and he needs to break up with her. If there's any conflict, then they're wrong for each other, she's too whiny or bitchy, and he should break up with her. If she doesn't play an active role in the story, then she's useless and boring. If she has any skills whatsoever and is at all competent, she's a Mary Sue. If she ever is put in jeopardy and needs to be rescued, she's a victim and useless. If she takes care of herself, she's a Mary Sue again. And usually it's the female fans who vilify this character. I've noticed that the men don't seem to have these strong feelings. I hate to throw out the "they're just jealous" thing, but maybe it does have something to do with the existing girlfriend/wife getting in the way of any fantasies about the hero -- he's not available to be paired up with anyone else. I've been trying to think of how it goes when the genders are switched, but I can't think of any cases where there's a female main character in a genre action-type show who entered the show with a ready-made husband/boyfriend who's a regular supporting character.
It doesn't help that the wife/girlfriend character tends to be written horribly. Writers often don't seem to know what to do with the girlfriend because she's mostly an adjunct to the hero, serving to ground him or give him something to care about, so she has no agency of her own, no purpose in the story other than through him. Or then they realize they're doing this and overcompensate, so she does end up being something like a Mary Sue. She can never be too good, though, or she overshadows the hero. Then again, no matter how well she's written, a big portion of the audience is going to hate her, so why bother? Just out of sheer obnoxiousness, I try to make a point of siding with the wife/girlfriend character, though there are times when she ends up being so badly written that I just can't deal with her.
I've been struggling with this in my current series, since I gave my hero a wife. I needed him to have some stakes in the story, so I needed him to have someone he was looking for. At the same time, I was irked by the number of rejections I'd had for other books where the fantasy editors rejected the proposal and suggested I try a romance publisher because the story was "too romancey" -- and nothing romantic happened in the proposal. There was a man and a woman in a scene together, with no suggestion that they were attracted or likely to get together, but I guess because I wrote some Silhouette romances more than a decade ago, that was too much romance for the fantasy publishers to handle. So, in a fit of ire, I made this male character married. Plus, there are all sorts of mythological models for a man going into an otherworld in search of a missing wife. It's the Orpheus story.
I went back and forth with how I was going to portray the wife -- would she be an ally? A villain? I had various outlines where she was one or the other, then decided to quit treating her as "the wife" and just deal with her as a person. What would someone in her situation be like? What would she do? How would she react? This ended up being fairly central to the plot of book 2, as it's largely about trying to free her and restoring her agency. I don't expect her to be anyone's favorite character, but I hope she's not hated just for being a wife.
We're supposed to get snow tonight/tomorrow morning, but it's all supposed to melt by tomorrow afternoon, so I guess I need to come up with a choir lesson plan. I already know the kids are going to be stark raving insane, since they'll have been cooped up inside for days and out of school for two days. I wonder if I can get away with The Quiet Game (see who can stay quiet and still the longest).
The ice on my roof is breaking up and falling off. It's very loud on the clay tiles.
There's been a lot of talk around the writing spaces of the Internet lately about the "strong female character." I saw a link to this parody, which is kind of genius because it illustrates exactly the thing that often bugs me about the idea of a "strong female character," which is that this is generally code for "Rambo in drag." Anything traditionally feminine is seen as bad, while anything traditionally masculine is seen as a positive. This woman is cool because she uses a gun, fights with a sword, doesn't care about emotions when she has sex, drinks beer, likes sports, and hates the color pink. She's not like those icky girly girls who wear pink dresses, like to sew, fall in love, like drinks with fruit garnishes, and want to have babies.
Apparently recently, some writer -- and I'm not sure who because I've read comments about it from other authors I know but haven't seen the original post -- said that the way to have a strong female character isn't to come up with a bunch of "strong" traits, but rather to give the character a strong role in the story. And that makes sense. A woman who can fist fight and who likes beer but who ends up just standing around on the periphery of the story, never making decisions that affect the plot, never initiating action, isn't a strong character. She's set dressing. The strong character is one who takes action, makes decisions, has some agency over her life, and it doesn't matter what traits she has.
This discussion reminded me of something else I've been noticing lately, and that's what has to be the most thankless character role ever: the established wife or girlfriend of the hero. I've noticed that in any TV show in which the main male character had a wife or girlfriend when the story begins, as opposed to someone he meets and falls in love with during the course of the story, that character will be fairly universally loathed. She can't win. If her relationship with the hero is happy and comfortable, then it's bland and they have no chemistry, and he needs to break up with her. If there's any conflict, then they're wrong for each other, she's too whiny or bitchy, and he should break up with her. If she doesn't play an active role in the story, then she's useless and boring. If she has any skills whatsoever and is at all competent, she's a Mary Sue. If she ever is put in jeopardy and needs to be rescued, she's a victim and useless. If she takes care of herself, she's a Mary Sue again. And usually it's the female fans who vilify this character. I've noticed that the men don't seem to have these strong feelings. I hate to throw out the "they're just jealous" thing, but maybe it does have something to do with the existing girlfriend/wife getting in the way of any fantasies about the hero -- he's not available to be paired up with anyone else. I've been trying to think of how it goes when the genders are switched, but I can't think of any cases where there's a female main character in a genre action-type show who entered the show with a ready-made husband/boyfriend who's a regular supporting character.
It doesn't help that the wife/girlfriend character tends to be written horribly. Writers often don't seem to know what to do with the girlfriend because she's mostly an adjunct to the hero, serving to ground him or give him something to care about, so she has no agency of her own, no purpose in the story other than through him. Or then they realize they're doing this and overcompensate, so she does end up being something like a Mary Sue. She can never be too good, though, or she overshadows the hero. Then again, no matter how well she's written, a big portion of the audience is going to hate her, so why bother? Just out of sheer obnoxiousness, I try to make a point of siding with the wife/girlfriend character, though there are times when she ends up being so badly written that I just can't deal with her.
I've been struggling with this in my current series, since I gave my hero a wife. I needed him to have some stakes in the story, so I needed him to have someone he was looking for. At the same time, I was irked by the number of rejections I'd had for other books where the fantasy editors rejected the proposal and suggested I try a romance publisher because the story was "too romancey" -- and nothing romantic happened in the proposal. There was a man and a woman in a scene together, with no suggestion that they were attracted or likely to get together, but I guess because I wrote some Silhouette romances more than a decade ago, that was too much romance for the fantasy publishers to handle. So, in a fit of ire, I made this male character married. Plus, there are all sorts of mythological models for a man going into an otherworld in search of a missing wife. It's the Orpheus story.
I went back and forth with how I was going to portray the wife -- would she be an ally? A villain? I had various outlines where she was one or the other, then decided to quit treating her as "the wife" and just deal with her as a person. What would someone in her situation be like? What would she do? How would she react? This ended up being fairly central to the plot of book 2, as it's largely about trying to free her and restoring her agency. I don't expect her to be anyone's favorite character, but I hope she's not hated just for being a wife.
