Shanna Swendson's Blog, page 194

Musical Indoctrination

This morning was an errand day. I've done a Target run, bought enough groceries that I shouldn't have to go shopping next week, and I got my flu shot. Only, it wasn't a shot. They wouldn't give me the shot because of a drug allergy (that I've always had and that didn't stop anyone from giving me the shot before), so they gave me the mist. Supposedly, it contains even more strains for more protection, and it turned out that my insurance covered it the same as the shot, so I don't know why the pharmacist made a big production out of it. I was all geared up for the needle, so it was almost a letdown to just have to sniff. I'd planned this for a couple of days when I don't have to do much or be around people, before a week of constant activity. Now we'll see if this keeps me from getting sick this year.

I don't have any fun stories about the kids today because they were pretty good last night. My problem child was more sulky than hyper. He did NOT want to be there. I don't know if I'm glad that his parents are holding the line on this one thing or if I wish they'd give in and let him not come if he doesn't want to. I actually didn't make it all the way through my lesson plan last night. Normally, I seem to plan too little and have to wing it, but I thought I hadn't planned enough and then had to hurry through a couple of things. They actually seemed interested in what I was teaching. I started the musical indoctrination last night. We were talking about fast and slow music, and to them, fast music is like rock music, with a beat. So I brought out the Chopin. I played one of the "andante" etudes, then switched to the Revolutionary. They actually stayed focused on the classical music longer than I expected. They did lie down and mime sleeping during the slower piece, and we let them because they were quiet for more than 30 seconds. Next time, I'll introduce them to Beethoven with the "thunderstorm music."

Then I had a nice discussion at dinner with the choir director and some of the choir members about sociology and entertainment, veering off into talk about Battlestar Galactica and Firefly. In choir practice, I had to sing with a quintet with a microphone in front of the rest of the choir, which was unnerving, but it's probably good practice for Sunday morning. It's a really jazzy gospel-style song, so I get to use my jazz voice for it -- until the end when the soprano part goes up high. I get to wail! Fun!

Once More Into the Breach

I have to face the kindergarteners tonight, which means I need to come up with a lesson plan today. I led the singing for the preschool and kindergarten Sunday school department this week, and I got to see that the Sunday school teachers -- including one veteran school teacher -- had the same problems I have with this one kid. In just ten minutes of the group time, he tried to leave the room, and it was clearly a doing it to see if he could get away with it thing. The teacher (who's a friend from choir) suspects it's a case of a really dangerous combination of ADHD and overly permissive parenting that doesn't set or enforce limits. They'll say "stop that" but then don't do anything when he doesn't stop. He's a really smart, sweet kid, but I think he's flailing a bit because he doesn't know where the limits are. He actually responded well to me, so I wonder if that means that while he may push, he actually likes knowing that with me there are firm limits.

Meanwhile, the room where they do the music is where the 3-4 year-old class meets, so while I was getting set up and waiting for the 5-year-olds to arrive, I got to hang out with the really little ones. I had one little boy walk up to me and ask, "Am I handsome?" I assured him that he was -- he had on neatly pressed jeans and a western shirt, cowboy boots, and the kind of slicked-down hair that suggested a comb dipped in water. I got the feeling from his tone that his parents got him to sit still for the grooming by telling him it would make him handsome, and so he had to verify this with an outside source. Then we had a Linus, a kid who came in with his security blanket and who promptly threw the blanket over his head and stood against the wall. He'd carry on a conversation from under the blanket, but I'm not sure I ever saw his face. There was also a little girl who glommed onto me at first sight and stayed attached until I had to leave. She had curly hair, so maybe she saw me as someone like her, or else I was close enough to having hair like her mother that I filled the "Mom" security role.

If I survive tonight, I get a week off because there's a special event next Wednesday night. I just need 45 minutes worth of activity for tonight. And then I have to learn some music for a quintet I'm singing in this weekend.

Meanwhile, it seems that taking a couple of days to play with video editing was good for my writing. I finally saw the problem with the scene I'd been working on. I had such a clever line that I'm afraid the scene was built around. And then I realized it was totally wrong for the story. Up to that point in the story, one character had been trying to avoid the other character, while the other character was desperately trying to reach her to talk to her. In this scene, they're in a public place, he spots her and is trying to hide from her, then is taken aback when she catches him and says the witty line. I don't know how many times I've worked on this scene without catching that if he's been looking for her all this time and finally sees her, he's going to be the one going after her, and she's going to be the one trying to dodge him. I think I can still use the witty line, but it will be in a defensive posture, not an offensive one. Now I'm going to have to totally rewrite it, but at least I'm not writing myself down the wrong path.

My Scary Self

I spent most of yesterday editing video, then most of last night editing video in my sleep. It's not so much the actual editing as it is the tinkering with making the program do exactly what I want that's the challenge. I think iMovie was designed for fairly straightforward projects like putting together your vacation video into a single presentation. Also, it has an extensive sound effects library without a single good "thud." You know, the sound makes when a body hits the floor. It doesn't have to be a dead body. It could just be a faint. I suspect that's a far more useful sound effect than "sea lion bark." Which it has. But I think my project is mostly done unless I need to tinker with the sound.

Scrolling through all those sound effects gave me all sorts of other crazy ideas for things I could do, though perhaps as a podcast rather than as a movie. And I need to get my hands on some old 1880s-1890s film footage to make a book trailer for the new novel. Then the next step will be enlisting my friends into crazy projects. This way lies madness.

There is something scary about me on camera, though. When people take still photos of me, even if I'm laughing and having a good time while doing it, there's always one shot in which I look totally evil in a way that nobody noticed in real life that only showed on camera. While editing video and going frame-by-frame to catch the right edit point, I've found that something similar happens. I'll be smiling and looking genial, but then there will be one frame in which I have this "DIE!!!!" look in my eyes, and it's gone in the next frame. Apparently, I have an evil alter ego that occasionally peeks out for a split second.

Also, I'm disturbingly good at playing "so perky that it comes across as slightly deranged." Sort of the Stepford Effect.

The fall TV season really gets going this week, and I'm trying to figure out my watch live/tape to watch later in the evening/watch OnDemand the next day schedule. Having HD now makes that harder. If I wait a day, I can watch in HD rather than on tape. With some networks, that also affects the aspect ratio. NBC and Fox letterbox, but ABC and CBS just crop the frame for non-HD, which is annoying. I think I'll watch Person of Interest live after ballet, since they don't do OnDemand. Then I'll get NCIS tomorrow night after choir. Thursday in between Parks and Recreation and Elementary I can watch the finale of Broadchurch. Chicago Fire and CSI may get shifted to Sunday afternoon while I eat lunch and do crossword puzzles. Post-Broadchurch, I can move one of them to Thursdays. I could also move one to Fridays, at least until Grimm starts again. This all means I'll get a lot of knitting done, which is good because I've got several projects I need to finish in a fairly tight timeframe.

Fall!

Fall is here, and for the last few days, it actually felt like it, with cool mornings and afternoons that are just warm enough to be "warm" and not unpleasantly hot. Saturday I went with a friend to the Red Bull Flugtag that was taking place nearby, and I can certainly think of worse ways of spending an afternoon than sitting beside a lake and watching homemade "airplanes" (using the term very loosely) splashing into a lake after mostly ineffective attempts to fly (I think there were only a couple of teams who managed anything that looked more like flying than falling). In between launches, there were lots of boats on the lake to look at, as they were renting kayaks and paddleboats and giving gondola rides. We even got to see the fire department boat rescue a kayaker.

Here's the one picture I got (my camera only has an LCD screen, which isn't much use in sunlight, so taking pictures is pretty much a guessing game. That explains the tilt). It was a tribute to Big Tex burning up at the state fair last year, so it was a cowboy hat that started spewing smoke as it launched. As you can imagine, an airplane shaped like a cowboy hat pretty much just fell off the ramp instead of flying.



This morning, I walked to the Indian market to restock on tea, and since the last pound of tea I bought, that shopping center has changed. They've remodeled the grocery store and now there's also an ice cream shop in the center. I got the impression it was an Indian ice cream shop, since almost every other business in the center is Indian-related and since part of the sign on the window said something like "we'll take you back home." Is Indian ice cream different from other ice cream?

I may find out, as part of my plan for the fall is to force myself to mix work with fun. I still want to get some work done, but I also want to make time to enjoy the season. One of the things I'd like to do is explore my neighborhood by visiting these various little shops and restaurants. We've got a big variety, including Indian, Thai, Vietnamese, Italian, Mexican and Chinese. I'd have to drive to get to the Nepali restaurant, though.

Today's task is delving into iMovie for a secret FenCon project (if it succeeds, it likely will make its way to YouTube). I last did video editing when I was working on my broadcast journalism degree, and things have changed a lot since then. We didn't use computers then. We had a machine with two tape decks. One recorded and one was the source. You set your start and end points for the clip you wanted to use, and then it would record it over to the other tape. Then you'd find another clip and stick it on. If you wanted to change something, you started over. Now it looks a lot easier, but I haven't tried it yet. Once I learn, I may become a menace. I'll be making movies about everything. I may also delve into using the computer for sound editing. That I learned how to do with reel-to-reel tape, a grease pencil, a razor blade and splicing tape. Maybe I'll take up podcasting or writing "radio" dramas. Because I need more hobbies.

A Cool Autumn Knight

I think I've figured out why I don't have enough crazy/funny blog material. It's not that I don't do weird or silly things. It's that half the fun is reporting the reaction of other people to the weird/silly things, and I don't have a long-suffering husband to react when I do something like bring home a giant bear head or, say, a suit of armor. If I find something like that, I just bring it home and it makes me happy, which isn't very funny. Most of my friends are as odd as I am, so instead of reacting like, "Um, why do you have a suit of armor on the ledge over your front door?" they're more likely to say, "Cool, you have a suit of armor on the ledge over your front door! It needs LED lights behind the visor!" In my group of friends, I tend to be the "normal" one. Relatively speaking.

By the way, the suit of armor on the ledge over the front door isn't a hypothetical. I keep trying to name him, but his name keeps changing. (I'm terrible at naming things, so it's probably for the best that I didn't have kids. They'd be starting school with their legal names still being something like "Baby Boy Lastname.") My house is insane and doesn't have normal ceilings. Except in the parts of the house that have a second story above them, the ceiling is the underside of the roof. But then, for some bizarre reason, they seem to have decided that the entryway needed a ceiling, which means that there's this large shelf/ledge because the ceiling stops a few feet into the house. The plans call it a "plant ledge," but that spot gets almost no sunlight and it's nearly impossible to reach to water any plants there. It looked awfully naked, so something needed to be there. Then I saw these little (fake) suits of armor at a garden store and knew that was what I needed.

Maybe I need to find a "normal" friend or two to react to the few crazy things I do so my blog will be funnier.

It's coolish and rainy today, starting to feel like fall, so it should be a good writing day. I've been revising the first third of the book I've been working on. I figured out what I was doing wrong, went back and fixed it, and have been fixing the ripple effects after that. I'm just about done fixing the part I've written and I should start moving forward today. I think moving forward will be a lot easier now that I've fixed what I was doing wrong. Sometimes, when you're blocked the problem isn't with the next scene, it's with a scene fifty pages back.

And then the cool and rain should make for a good TV night. I've started rewatching Grimm, then there's new Phineas & Ferb (one episode, at 8:15 Central) and new Haven. I might get to actually snuggle under the lightweight, open-weave sofa throw I knit earlier this year. Ah, but I love cooler weather.

Round Two with the Kindergarteners

First, if you need a laugh, go read this now. Warning: don't drink liquids while reading. Depends may be necessary. I needed tissues because I laughed until I cried. Definitely look at the pictures. There's no real reason for me to post this, other than that it's a convenient way for me to save the link for days when I really need a laugh. Also, I think I can see why I haven't managed to become a famous blogger with a legion of followers. My life isn't nearly interesting enough and I don't do nearly enough crazy things to write about. It would never occur to me to buy a giant bear head to put in my house. I do have a suit of armor, but there's no story behind it and nothing funny or crazy associated with it (though a friend wants to put LED lights that will come on randomly behind the visor).

In other news, I read a newspaper article this week that has given me a potential retirement strategy. The article was about a woman who had realized how much a particular choir teacher she had in school had influenced her life and sent her down the path she took, and she decided to look the teacher up and thank her. It turned out that the teacher was in poor health and developing dementia. She'd never married or had kids and lived alone. The woman started checking on her regularly and helping her with things, and then when she reached a point she couldn't live alone and had no relatives, this woman and her husband took the former teacher into their home, as though she was a family member.

It's looking increasingly unlikely that I will marry or have kids, so I think I need to start working now on my choir students to have someone to look after me in my old age. I wonder if I can insert subliminal messages into the music we play in class: "I love Miss Shanna. Miss Shanna will be the biggest influence on my life. I will owe a debt of gratitude to Miss Shanna that I should one day repay when she needs me."

Things actually went a lot better last night. I had two additional teen helpers, a girl who had this group for music and art camp in the summer, so they already know and love her, and a boy who will be solely dedicated to Wild Boy. Both of them were on the choir trip I chaperoned last year, so I know them pretty well. The boy has dealt with ADHD himself, so he knows the warning signs and coping mechanisms and has a lot of empathy. I think a lot of the problem is that when there's too much stimulation, like noise and chaos, it sends him spiraling out of control, which makes the other kids crazier, which makes him crazier. Just getting him momentarily out of the room into a quieter place so he can calm down helps keep things from getting crazy. And me not having to deal with him means I can control the rest of the class better, which makes it less noisy and chaotic, which makes him less likely to lose control. It also means that I'm not in an adversarial relationship with him. I had a big "aww" moment when he came to show me his drawing. One thing that also seems to work is having quiet activities, and I passed out paper and crayons and told them to draw something they wanted to praise God for. He really got into drawing, and he'd drawn his family -- plus his new teen helper buddy -- in their secret lair. I also used the carrot approach. I had the parachute, and if they acted in a way that showed they could handle the parachute, we'd do a parachute game at the end of the session. I did have to explain that this was a toy parachute when one boy got excited about it being the thing you put on your back so you could jump out of an airplane. We got to make a thunderstorm with the parachute, which was lots of fun for everyone.

Now if I could just get them to actually sing, since this is supposed to be "choir" (though this choir program does encompass some music theory, a little theology, and music appreciation). There's one little girl who really sings earnestly, like she's trying to do it right, and there's one little boy who sings with great gusto at a level of about 11 (though not necessarily the same song the rest of us are singing). The rest just kind of mill around, maybe occasionally making a sound. I was teaching some voice technique, and we were singing the various vowel sounds. One kid put the "oo" and the "ee" together, back and forth, and I think I earned a lot of kindergarten street cred when I said that we weren't being Minions. There was a bit of impressed surprise that I knew what they were doing. Hmm, next week maybe we'll do a Minions vocal exercise.

The Flawed Hero

First, a correction on yesterday's post. The title of the book I was discussing was The Demon Lover, not The Dark Lover. That was a brain glitch on my part, since the book was RIGHT THERE IN FRONT OF ME. I wasn't doing that from memory. I was actually looking at the cover. I guess I slotted the author's name into the title. I even recall thinking as I proofread the post that the author had picked a pseudonym (the author bio says it's a pseudonym) that was a little on the nose with the title of the book. You'd think that would have been a clue.

In various online discussions I've been involved with lately, in convention panels and in articles about summer movies, the topic of heroes and what makes one has come up. I thought that would make a good writing topic, so for the next month or so I'll be addressing heroes.

The term "hero" usually applies to the protagonist, though not all protagonists are what we'd call "heroes." A real hero is a good guy, someone on the side of right who's maybe a little better than normal people -- more skilled, braver, more honest, more likely to make the right choice. That doesn't mean a hero is perfect or always does the right thing. And there are shades of grey regarding heroes. There are flawed heroes, reluctant heroes, dark heroes and antiheroes.

This week: the flawed hero

Really, this should apply to all heroes because a perfect person with no flaws is a boring character. With no flaws, there's no room for a character arc because the hero doesn't have anything to learn and doesn't need to change. You occasionally see the perfect hero in superhero stories, and then you generally need a sidekick to take on the usual heroic arc of growing and changing, or else you need to keep the story really simplistic and in short doses, like a single comic book adventure (with limited continuity between adventures). One of the complaints I've seen about the recent Superman movie (I haven't seen it) was that it went overboard in making Superman, who was one of those perfect heroes, a little too flawed, but I'm not sure how interesting a Superman movie would be for today's audiences if Superman remained perfect and pure. The Superman tellings that have made it work have used his Clark Kent persona for the character growth arcs, where Clark has lessons to learn, even as Superman has remained an ideal.

How flawed you want to make your hero depends on your story, but I think it works best if at least one of his major flaws has something to do with the plot, where that flaw is what holds him back at the dark moment when all seems lost, and then finally learning his lesson about that flaw is what allows him to prevail at the end. "Flaws" like, say, an addiction to chocolate fall more into the category of quirks. They're important to shape a character, but an otherwise perfect person who can't resist chocolate doesn't make for an interesting character arc unless you're writing a story set in Willy Wonka's factory. Interesting character flaws that lend themselves to arcs include things like a lack of self-confidence, too much self-confidence, attachment to material things or inability to trust. A flaw can also come out of the character's driving need -- someone who's driven by a need for love and belonging may have a hard time making the right choice if that need gets in the way. If he's found something that feels like a home, he'll be reluctant to leave that home or let that home come to risk, even if the greater good is at stake.

A flawed hero can make bad decisions. He needs to have something to overcome at the end, and sometimes it's more interesting if he's at least partially responsible for the things he has to overcome. He can still remain heroic if his bad decisions and screw ups are done with good motives, though if you're writing a darker hero who might be more of an antihero, then he can also screw up through more questionable motives. A hero may jump the gun and try to take on the bad guy before he's ready for it, resulting in some disaster. He may have questionable priorities, such as choosing the well-being of one person (not himself) over the greater good. He might listen to bad advice or be misled. He may ignore good advice and try to do things his own way.

One of the better examples of this is Luke Skywalker in The Empire Strikes Back, who leaves Jedi training before he's finished to directly confront Darth Vader because he believes his friends are in danger, ignoring Yoda's warnings that it's a trap and that taking on Darth Vader before he's ready could jeopardize any later chance to defeat Vader and the Empire, once and for all. It was a bad decision, since he did nothing to help his friends and nearly got himself killed, but was it a morally wrong decision? Was the desire to save his friends wrong? Would we have sympathized much with a hero who was willing to sacrifice the people he cared about for the greater good? It's a moral dilemma sympathetic enough that we can forgive Luke for screwing up because we have to admit that we might have made the same choice. That's key in letting your hero make the occasional bad choice. At least part of the audience should feel like they might have done the same thing in his shoes. There will always be people who don't agree and who can't accept failure in a hero, but if you feel like you can justify your hero's actions (and you aren't a sociopath), then you can probably convince most of your audience.

However, the real measure of the hero is how he recovers from his mistake. If he's a decent person, he's going to feel remorse for messing up. He may become depressed. He may even retreat from the cause for a while to lick his wounds. The former hero found drunk in an alley has become something of a cliche. But he eventually pulls himself together and tries again. He may need one of his sidekicks to pull him out of his despair and remind him who he is, maybe even give him a swift kick, but he will come back. He'll learn what he needs to know, listen to the right advice this time and make the tough choice that's needed for him to win. This is much of the point of the "Resurrection" stage of the hero's journey, for the hero to die to his old self by being willing to die -- literally and metaphorically -- for his cause. That's when he can leave it all behind and move forward as a new man.

And I don't know about you, but I find a story a lot more satisfying when the hero has something like that to overcome than when he never takes a wrong step along the way and all his problems are the villain's fault.

Small-Town Magic

Last night was a mix of good and bad TV. The pilot of Sleepy Hollow was a lot of fun. I like the characters and their partnership. I love the snarky, kind of twisted humor. The atmosphere is wonderful. I might be a little iffy on the mythology, though, depending on how they use it. It seldom goes well when TV writers discover a cool verse or two in Revelation without knowing anything about the context. But if that's just used as a framework and big-picture goal in something that's more of a mismatched buddy cop paranormal procedural, then I'm good.

And then there was Over the Dumb. Wow. And not in a good way. I'm from a small town, and again we seem to have TV writers who have no clue how small towns really work. You might have a guy like Big Jim in a small town, but he wouldn't have anyone really snowed. He might be able to buy, threaten and blackmail his way into influence, and there might be little that could be done against him because of that, but everyone would know pretty well what he was. A few people might buy what he's selling because it would elevate their positions to be his sycophants, but you wouldn't have the entire town happily going along with building a gallows to execute a man without a trial, just on his say-so. I am so glad this is over. I only watched because I thought it would be a limited series with an actual ending, but now it's been renewed, and there's been no resolution to anything, so I won't be wasting more time on it (although snarking about it is fun). Too bad the premise is a bit too obvious to steal and do right. There's got to be another mystical way of isolating a small town, though.

And now on to books. I've got a book to discuss this week that will require a lot of caveats. In some respects, it's as close to the kind of thing I write as I've found (and is alarmingly close in mythology to something else I've been working on). In other respects, it's very, very different from what I write, in such a way that some of my fans might not like it at all.

First, though, about the book, The Dark Lover by Juliet Dark. It's about a newly minted PhD who's an expert in folklore and whose dissertation about "demon lovers" in folklore and gothic literature became a popular book. She's been offered a faculty position at a small college in upstate New York, and although she'd hoped to find a job in the city itself, she finds herself really drawn to the town and to an old house in the town. When she learns that the house was once the home of one of her favorite gothic novelists and that it contains all the novelist's papers that are not allowed to leave the house, she accepts the job and buys the house, planning to write a book about the novelist. And then she finds that the faculty of the college are rather … unusual and that the town was founded as a refuge for various supernatural individuals -- and that she actually fits in pretty well. Then she starts having startlingly realistic dreams about a mysterious lover who visits her in the night and tells her she could make him real if she loved him -- a scenario that also shows up in the novelist's unpublished manuscripts. Is he a dangerous thing that needs to be banished, or someone who needs to be rescued?

Like my books, this has a rather "chick lit" tone. They're packaging it as "women's fiction" and seem to be trying to give it a literary slant, but I thought the writing was pretty much chick lit -- first person, some sarcasm, lots of references to shoes and designer labels. It deals with the collision between the "real" world and the magical world. In some respects, it could even be looked at as "Enchanted University." I really enjoyed all the stuff about the mythology of the place, the makeup of the town and all the various characters. If those are the things you like about my books, you might enjoy this.

On the other hand, sex is a pretty big part of the plot and there's a lot of it. I've noticed that the word "erotic" comes up a lot in reviews I've seen. However, it seemed to me that it was essentially the same sex scene over and over (because a scenario is playing out), so it's pretty easy to skip. But if one of the things you like about my books is the fact that they're "clean," then you might not enjoy this. There's also a lot less humor -- intentionally -- than in my books, as these are not meant as comedies, so this is not the place to go for a laugh.

There are two more books in the series, and I might look them up to see how they go. I like the town in the book, and I enjoy spending time there. There is a romantic element, but it's definitely not a "romance." There's a character who, if I were writing it, would be the candidate for a slow-build background relationship that comes to fruition near the end of the series, but I can't quite tell if that's the plan or if something else is going on.

Anyway, it might be good for a contemporary magic fix if you're looking for that sort of thing.

When in Doubt, Blow Stuff Up

I think this actually counted as a "relaxing" weekend. I caught up on TV shows I missed during WorldCon and afterward, I did a lot of reading and knitting. There was some baking. Now I'm energized and ready to face the week.

And it will be a busy one. FenCon is approaching, and I have PR stuff to do, as well as a few side projects that I've taken on. I need to work on choir lesson plans. I have PR stuff to do for my own books. And then there's that book I'm writing. That means I'll need to dial back on correcting people who are wrong on the Internet.

That will be hard with the fall TV season beginning. I'm looking forward to the premiere of Sleepy Hollow tonight. The previews I've seen intrigued me, and the reviews have also been good. Now watch the ratings be awful, and it'll be killed in three episodes (this is Fox we're dealing with -- no, I haven't forgiven them for killing Firefly and many other things I liked).

One thing I've been catching up on is The Doctors Revisited on BBCAmerica, in which they do a mini documentary type show on each Doctor, his companions and his major villains, then show a representative story from that Doctor. My exposure to Classic Era Doctor Who was spotty at best. I think I mostly just saw Tom Baker stuff, over and over again. It's been interesting seeing all the others. I don't think I'd ever seen the Seventh Doctor before, and that was the episode I watched yesterday afternoon while knitting. I have now finally seen the iconic moment in which Ace attacks a Dalek with a baseball bat. In that era, it seems that while they had about the same minimal budget for special effects that they had in previous years (whatever the producer found under the sofa cushions in BBC headquarters, I'm afraid), somehow they managed to score a HUGE pyrotechnics budget. They were blowing up more stuff than the Mythbusters, and it looked like practical effects rather than movie magic. Maybe they found a stash of military surplus explosives and figured that blowing lots of stuff up really well might make up for the fact that all their other effects were horribly cheap. I got a kick out of how they'd go from this massive, vivid explosion to a terribly campy shot of a spaceship. It was like, when in doubt, blow something up. (Sounds like a good life motto -- I should cross-stitch that on a throw pillow.)

Next up will be the Eighth Doctor, which is in the era I remember in a lot more detail. I watched that TV movie, and while I was disappointed at the time that it didn't spawn a series, it's probably best that it didn't because it would have been on Fox, and it probably would have been killed after a few episodes that totally mangled the mythology. And that would have stopped the franchise from being properly rebooted later by the right people.

Now to go get my work done, and if I'm really good and accomplish everything on the to-do list, I'll allow myself a little time for correcting people who are being wrong.

Lucky Friday

It's Friday the 13th, but I'm actually feeling pretty lucky today. I've been doing some bookkeeping, and I'm on track to earn about as much this year as I did in my peak earning year back in my Day Job days. Of course, that's gross, not net, so it doesn't take into consideration business expenses like my agent's commission, and it doesn't include paying for my own health insurance or self-employment taxes, but the year's not over yet and I will likely earn a bit more, and I feel like there's a substantial non-tangible benefit from not having to go to work for someone else that makes it worthwhile to earn less money. I've had a few lean years when I was starting to worry that I'd have to try to find another job, which could be challenging after more than ten years out of the ordinary workforce, so actually having money is a complete mental adjustment. I find myself still viewing spending the way I did when I was living off my savings. I don't want to totally shift mental gears because things can change (and I've had it happen -- a graph of my career would look like a roller coaster), but I can let myself loosen up a bit.

For those trying to figure out what a writer makes, here's your answer. I'm considered "solidly midlist," which means selling fairly well and steadily without being a bestselling star. In my good years, I'm earning about what I did as a middle manager in a public relations agency more than ten years ago. In my bad years, about half my living expenses have to come out of savings. I can support myself, but I doubt I could support a family. I'm probably doing better than most people who are writing professionally, but not as well as many. Those who pirate my books are not stealing from the wealthy who don't notice the loss of income. There are very, very few authors who wouldn't miss a few thousand dollars here and there.

I had plans to go out today and catch a showing of Austenland now that it's at a nearby theater, but then I slept late and didn't have time to do the things I wanted to do this morning before going, and I just plain didn't want to. I want to see the movie because I'm in the mood for a quirky romantic comedy. I read the book when it came out, but it's been long enough and I've read enough other "rabid Jane Austen fan goes on an Austen-oriented vacation" novels to be vague on the details. The reviews haven't been kind, but then I've found that reviewers tend to loathe romantic comedies in general. You have to read between the lines of reviews. I'll probably go sometime next week. Today, though, I think is going to be a Grand Day In.

I actually want to do some writing today. I've been figuring out what needs fixing, and then realizing the ripple effect the small changes will have, but then that led me to visualize a certain scene in a way that made it come to life and be a lot more vivid. When I start seeing the movie of the book in my head, I know I'm on the right track.

I've also started a new knitting project. I'm juggling two right now so that I won't get bored by either and I'll avoid repetitive stress problems. One is lace on smaller needles with fine yarn and the other is a blanket with big needles and fat yarn. When I get tired or sore from one, I switch. After working on the lace, the blanket feels enormous. It's like coloring with those fat kindergarten crayons after working with colored pencils.

Then there's new Haven and new Phineas and Ferb tonight!

But for now, I leave you with a combination of two great things: Les Miserables with lightsabers!