Shanna Swendson's Blog, page 204
April 24, 2013
Romantic Comedy Tropes
I'm feeling slightly off-kilter today, probably because I had a disorienting night. I fell asleep quickly and slept deeply, then woke up thinking it was morning and I'd slept all night. It wasn't a well-rested and ready to hop out of bed feeling, though, more like a "please don't make me get up yet" feeling. I finally forced myself to peel an eye open and look at the clock, only to find that it was just a couple of hours after I went to sleep. Then it happened again later in the night. I had a hard time convincing myself that it really was morning when I finally woke up in the morning. Maybe I'm dreaming now. But I'd better pull myself together because today is a business-type day when I have to actually interact with other people in a professional manner.
I spent yesterday afternoon doing a kind of brainstorming retreat on the next book. One thing I like to do when starting a book is watch movies or TV shows that remind me in some way of the story -- similar setting, similar storyline, similar mood or theme, characters that remind me of mine, etc. This isn't really to steal or copy ideas but to spur my thinking. I think of it as kind of like looking at a map when planning a route. You may already know how to get where you're going, but when you look at a map, you can see other possibilities. I may play mental games like putting my characters in the story I'm watching and figuring out what they'd do and how they'd react, or I may try putting the characters from the thing I'm watching into my situation and imagining it. Or sometimes it triggers an association chain, where something I'm watching will make me think of something that reminds me of something that triggers an idea. I came up with a biggie yesterday from a combination of association and "what would my character do here?" that I think amps up my story idea considerably. Those "oooooh!" moments are so exciting.
When I was getting ready to write Kiss and Spell, my retreat took on a different purpose because I was going to be deliberately spoofing the romantic comedy genre for a kind of story-within-a-story that happens as the result of a spell. That meant I watched a lot of movies, looking for tropes. Some of those tropes I wanted to truly skewer as a way of pointing out how silly they are. Some I wanted to pay loving homage to. Some I wanted to play with as how they might feel to the people living them if they were taken literally. For instance, so much plot and character development in the worst of these movies seems to happen in montages -- we see bits of moments as set to a pop song that tells us the couple is falling in love. What would it feel like to have your life pass in a montage?
Some of the cliches are fairly recent. For instance, the infamous RomCom Dash, in which a character realizes he or she is really in love with someone and has to make the mad dash across town to tell them Right Now. Sometimes they at least throw in a reason why it has to be done at that moment, like the person is about to leave the country, though in that case I have to wonder what the person at the airport feels when someone who's been giving him/her the brushoff up to that point suddenly arrives to disrupt all the plans. If someone shows up at the airport to try to stop me from going somewhere when I've already bought a ticket, I'm probably not going to be favorably inclined. I think this trope originated with When Harry Met Sally, when Harry is alone on New Year's Eve and remembers the pledge he made the year before that if he and Sally are alone then, they should spend the time together, and then he races to reach her before midnight. The closest I can think of previously to that is in Breakfast at Tiffany's, where she races to find her cat in time. But since When Harry Met Sally, there's been all sorts of crazy driving, barrier leaping and pleading of aid from strangers in order to reach the True Love in time for the big, dramatic declaration of true feelings.
That's another thing that's become a trope, the public declaration of feelings, often in a way that's humiliating. Jennifer Crusie has said that she thinks this trope may have something to do with the fact that marriage no longer really has the same importance in society as it once had, but the public declaration of feelings works in that way because it's a public commitment in front of the community. I'm not a fan of humiliation humor, so I don't like those cringeworthy moments. That's what ruins Notting Hill for me. I'm okay up until the end, but it bothers me that he's the one who has to make a fool of himself in public when their whole story has been about her, as the person with the power in the relationship because of her fame, denying him in public. It seems like for the arc to work, she should have to be the one to make a public statement acknowledging him as the man she loves when previously she's tried to keep their relationship a secret.
One trope that goes way back is the third wheel -- the Mr./Miss Wrong. Generally, the wrong person is the one who's right for who the hero or heroine is trying or pretending to be but who's totally wrong for his/her true self. And most romantic comedies seem to have some element of a character striving to be something that isn't authentic, something they think they ought to be or ought to want but that isn't true to the inner self. The problem is that this trope is used badly, without understanding the reason for it, so you're left with the hero or heroine looking like an idiot for ever thinking this person could be the right one. Maybe they were under a spell … (Hmmmm….)
I spent yesterday afternoon doing a kind of brainstorming retreat on the next book. One thing I like to do when starting a book is watch movies or TV shows that remind me in some way of the story -- similar setting, similar storyline, similar mood or theme, characters that remind me of mine, etc. This isn't really to steal or copy ideas but to spur my thinking. I think of it as kind of like looking at a map when planning a route. You may already know how to get where you're going, but when you look at a map, you can see other possibilities. I may play mental games like putting my characters in the story I'm watching and figuring out what they'd do and how they'd react, or I may try putting the characters from the thing I'm watching into my situation and imagining it. Or sometimes it triggers an association chain, where something I'm watching will make me think of something that reminds me of something that triggers an idea. I came up with a biggie yesterday from a combination of association and "what would my character do here?" that I think amps up my story idea considerably. Those "oooooh!" moments are so exciting.
When I was getting ready to write Kiss and Spell, my retreat took on a different purpose because I was going to be deliberately spoofing the romantic comedy genre for a kind of story-within-a-story that happens as the result of a spell. That meant I watched a lot of movies, looking for tropes. Some of those tropes I wanted to truly skewer as a way of pointing out how silly they are. Some I wanted to pay loving homage to. Some I wanted to play with as how they might feel to the people living them if they were taken literally. For instance, so much plot and character development in the worst of these movies seems to happen in montages -- we see bits of moments as set to a pop song that tells us the couple is falling in love. What would it feel like to have your life pass in a montage?
Some of the cliches are fairly recent. For instance, the infamous RomCom Dash, in which a character realizes he or she is really in love with someone and has to make the mad dash across town to tell them Right Now. Sometimes they at least throw in a reason why it has to be done at that moment, like the person is about to leave the country, though in that case I have to wonder what the person at the airport feels when someone who's been giving him/her the brushoff up to that point suddenly arrives to disrupt all the plans. If someone shows up at the airport to try to stop me from going somewhere when I've already bought a ticket, I'm probably not going to be favorably inclined. I think this trope originated with When Harry Met Sally, when Harry is alone on New Year's Eve and remembers the pledge he made the year before that if he and Sally are alone then, they should spend the time together, and then he races to reach her before midnight. The closest I can think of previously to that is in Breakfast at Tiffany's, where she races to find her cat in time. But since When Harry Met Sally, there's been all sorts of crazy driving, barrier leaping and pleading of aid from strangers in order to reach the True Love in time for the big, dramatic declaration of true feelings.
That's another thing that's become a trope, the public declaration of feelings, often in a way that's humiliating. Jennifer Crusie has said that she thinks this trope may have something to do with the fact that marriage no longer really has the same importance in society as it once had, but the public declaration of feelings works in that way because it's a public commitment in front of the community. I'm not a fan of humiliation humor, so I don't like those cringeworthy moments. That's what ruins Notting Hill for me. I'm okay up until the end, but it bothers me that he's the one who has to make a fool of himself in public when their whole story has been about her, as the person with the power in the relationship because of her fame, denying him in public. It seems like for the arc to work, she should have to be the one to make a public statement acknowledging him as the man she loves when previously she's tried to keep their relationship a secret.
One trope that goes way back is the third wheel -- the Mr./Miss Wrong. Generally, the wrong person is the one who's right for who the hero or heroine is trying or pretending to be but who's totally wrong for his/her true self. And most romantic comedies seem to have some element of a character striving to be something that isn't authentic, something they think they ought to be or ought to want but that isn't true to the inner self. The problem is that this trope is used badly, without understanding the reason for it, so you're left with the hero or heroine looking like an idiot for ever thinking this person could be the right one. Maybe they were under a spell … (Hmmmm….)
April 23, 2013
Book Report: More Fantasy/Women's Fiction Type Stuff
I had planned to run errands this morning, but the cold front that was supposed to hit in the early afternoon seems to be here now, so it's cool, gray and rainy. That means it's a stay-inside day. I think today may be my "retreat" to brainstorm the next book. There are a few movies I want to watch to set the mood and jump start the creative juices.
After taking more than a week to read A Discovery of Witches, I've gone on kind of a reading binge to finish all my library books before they were due. So, on with the Book Report:
First, my final thoughts on A Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness. After figuring out that it was essentially yet another rewritten Twilight, I must admit that I had a hard time taking it seriously and was more focused on spotting the Twilight parallels than on reading the book. On the plus side, it fixed a lot of the issues with Twilight, like letting the vampire have done something with his life other than go to high school for nearly a century and giving the heroine some actual abilities and powers. On the minus side, it had a lot of the same pacing issues, with hundreds of pages of hanging out, dating, arguing about whether their relationship was too dangerous and meeting the family in between each little burst of action. It also had some of the same bothersome relationship dynamics, with him being absolutely in control and dictating what she (and everyone else) would do. That's one romantic fantasy I really don't get, but given the success of the Twilight clones, apparently it's a common one. I've read a theory that modern women who feel overwhelmed may long for someone to just step in and take over, but I still don't get that. I'm totally on my own and sometimes get overwhelmed, but what I long for is more along the lines of someone to just call the plumber and get those repairs taken care of so I don't have to deal with it, not someone to dictate how I live my life and control my daily routine. At any rate, there were some interesting concepts and characters in this book, but I think they got rather bogged down in extraneous stuff. I'm curious about what happens next, but not sure I really want to wade through it.
My next read was The Winter Witch by Paula Brackston. I'm guessing by imprint and author blurbs that this falls into the category of historical/women's fiction with paranormal elements -- more paranormal romance for people who don't think they like romance or fantasy. I found the fantasy elements a little frustrating (though I think that was intentional), but I loved the romance. In early 19th century Wales, there's a young woman considered odd by her village -- she hasn't spoken since her father's disappearance when she was a child, and bad things tend to happen to people who are mean to her. Her terminally ill mother is concerned about what will become of her, and the solution comes in a young widower from a town a day's journey away. He needs a wife to keep his position as head drover (they figure that the man responsible for taking the town's livestock to market needs to have a reason to come home) and he finds this girl intriguing. But there's a magical well on his property that a local witch wants, and his new wife is in the way. This silent girl will have to learn to use her odd abilities to protect the husband she's coming to love and the rest of the town. The lovely thing in this book is the slowly evolving relationship between the newlyweds in their marriage of convenience. Neither of them is really ready to be married, so they take their time getting to know each other and discovering the things they have in common. This is made a little more challenging by the fact that she doesn't speak, but they find their own ways of communicating. Like I said, the fantasy side of the plot was frustrating, mostly because the villain was so one-note and obvious, but it's possible that was intentional because part of the problem was that only the heroine could see her for what she was, and she was unable to communicate that to anyone else. The writing style did take a bit of getting used to because the heroine's viewpoint is in first person and her husband's viewpoint is in third person, and the whole thing is present tense. I'm used to reading first-person present because that was common in chick lit, but third-person present is more unusual.
Then there was The Bell at Sealey Head by Patricia McKillip, which is an absolutely magical little book, the kind of book that weaves a spell of its own. There's a seaside village where a mysterious bell that no one can find rings every evening at sunset. There's also something odd about the local manor house -- every so often, when you open a door, instead of finding another room you may find an enchanted storybook castle in another world. The lady of the manor is dying, and there's some concern about how her flighty socialite heir will deal with the manor. Everything changes when a mysterious scholar comes to town and starts asking questions about both the bell and the manor and when the heir arrives with her entourage. It's hard to say just why I loved this book so much other than that it really does seem to weave a spell that takes you to this place. There's a nice mixture of wonder and dread with the magic. I love the main characters, and there's a fun twist of a character who isn't what you assume (based on every other book ever written). There's also a nice romance that reminds me why I usually get my romance from fantasy rather than from the romance genre. It involves two of the main viewpoint characters, the bookworm young innkeeper who befriends the visiting scholar and the daughter of the prosperous local merchant who'd prefer to spend her days writing stories about the mystery of the bell instead of being courted by the squire's son. There are some fun misunderstandings not between the couple but involving everyone else and their perception of the situation. Anyway, I read this in practically one sitting and was utterly captivated.
I only have one more library book left, so when I return this batch, I'll have to see if I can find more. I'm not sure quite what I'm in the mood for right now. Maybe I'll put some things on my list on hold and read from the to-be-read shelves in the meantime.
After taking more than a week to read A Discovery of Witches, I've gone on kind of a reading binge to finish all my library books before they were due. So, on with the Book Report:
First, my final thoughts on A Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness. After figuring out that it was essentially yet another rewritten Twilight, I must admit that I had a hard time taking it seriously and was more focused on spotting the Twilight parallels than on reading the book. On the plus side, it fixed a lot of the issues with Twilight, like letting the vampire have done something with his life other than go to high school for nearly a century and giving the heroine some actual abilities and powers. On the minus side, it had a lot of the same pacing issues, with hundreds of pages of hanging out, dating, arguing about whether their relationship was too dangerous and meeting the family in between each little burst of action. It also had some of the same bothersome relationship dynamics, with him being absolutely in control and dictating what she (and everyone else) would do. That's one romantic fantasy I really don't get, but given the success of the Twilight clones, apparently it's a common one. I've read a theory that modern women who feel overwhelmed may long for someone to just step in and take over, but I still don't get that. I'm totally on my own and sometimes get overwhelmed, but what I long for is more along the lines of someone to just call the plumber and get those repairs taken care of so I don't have to deal with it, not someone to dictate how I live my life and control my daily routine. At any rate, there were some interesting concepts and characters in this book, but I think they got rather bogged down in extraneous stuff. I'm curious about what happens next, but not sure I really want to wade through it.
My next read was The Winter Witch by Paula Brackston. I'm guessing by imprint and author blurbs that this falls into the category of historical/women's fiction with paranormal elements -- more paranormal romance for people who don't think they like romance or fantasy. I found the fantasy elements a little frustrating (though I think that was intentional), but I loved the romance. In early 19th century Wales, there's a young woman considered odd by her village -- she hasn't spoken since her father's disappearance when she was a child, and bad things tend to happen to people who are mean to her. Her terminally ill mother is concerned about what will become of her, and the solution comes in a young widower from a town a day's journey away. He needs a wife to keep his position as head drover (they figure that the man responsible for taking the town's livestock to market needs to have a reason to come home) and he finds this girl intriguing. But there's a magical well on his property that a local witch wants, and his new wife is in the way. This silent girl will have to learn to use her odd abilities to protect the husband she's coming to love and the rest of the town. The lovely thing in this book is the slowly evolving relationship between the newlyweds in their marriage of convenience. Neither of them is really ready to be married, so they take their time getting to know each other and discovering the things they have in common. This is made a little more challenging by the fact that she doesn't speak, but they find their own ways of communicating. Like I said, the fantasy side of the plot was frustrating, mostly because the villain was so one-note and obvious, but it's possible that was intentional because part of the problem was that only the heroine could see her for what she was, and she was unable to communicate that to anyone else. The writing style did take a bit of getting used to because the heroine's viewpoint is in first person and her husband's viewpoint is in third person, and the whole thing is present tense. I'm used to reading first-person present because that was common in chick lit, but third-person present is more unusual.
Then there was The Bell at Sealey Head by Patricia McKillip, which is an absolutely magical little book, the kind of book that weaves a spell of its own. There's a seaside village where a mysterious bell that no one can find rings every evening at sunset. There's also something odd about the local manor house -- every so often, when you open a door, instead of finding another room you may find an enchanted storybook castle in another world. The lady of the manor is dying, and there's some concern about how her flighty socialite heir will deal with the manor. Everything changes when a mysterious scholar comes to town and starts asking questions about both the bell and the manor and when the heir arrives with her entourage. It's hard to say just why I loved this book so much other than that it really does seem to weave a spell that takes you to this place. There's a nice mixture of wonder and dread with the magic. I love the main characters, and there's a fun twist of a character who isn't what you assume (based on every other book ever written). There's also a nice romance that reminds me why I usually get my romance from fantasy rather than from the romance genre. It involves two of the main viewpoint characters, the bookworm young innkeeper who befriends the visiting scholar and the daughter of the prosperous local merchant who'd prefer to spend her days writing stories about the mystery of the bell instead of being courted by the squire's son. There are some fun misunderstandings not between the couple but involving everyone else and their perception of the situation. Anyway, I read this in practically one sitting and was utterly captivated.
I only have one more library book left, so when I return this batch, I'll have to see if I can find more. I'm not sure quite what I'm in the mood for right now. Maybe I'll put some things on my list on hold and read from the to-be-read shelves in the meantime.
April 22, 2013
Catching Breath
I think today will be all about gearing up to face the next week. It's not really work busy, just activity busy. And then I looked at my calendar and realized that my next few weekends are also busy, and then there's lots of work stuff coming up. So, yeah, feeling a little overwhelmed at the moment, so I may take part of today to catch my breath. After taking the weekend to catch my breath. Apparently, I'm going to need a lot of breath.
It didn't help that there was a major television apocalypse on Sunday night, in a good way. There were four hours of PBS programming -- they're rerunning Larkrise to Candleford, which I didn't see the first time around, at 6, then there's Call the Midwife, then Mr. Selfridge on Masterpiece, and then they started a new series in which some of the Bletchley Park codebreakers use their codebreaking skills to solve mysteries after the war. And then there was Once Upon a Time and Game of Thrones. To make things even more fun, they were really late getting the new Doctor Who up OnDemand, so I didn't get that until Sunday night. I still have PBS recordings to watch tonight. I prioritized viewing based on what was most likely to be discussed on the Internet today. It's going to be even worse next week when I'm out on Sunday night.
I got a full test of my ability to sing a capella on Sunday. I was leading the preschool Sunday school singing, and we didn't have a piano player, so I just picked a note to start with and did it unaccompanied. It's a good thing I have good relative pitch -- I can't do the thing where I can name a note or just perfectly sing a particular note without any guide, but once I have a starting point, I can find all the relative pitches to sing a song without help. I didn't realize that not everyone could do this until recently. It became rather obvious on Sunday morning that even with me as a guide, not everyone could follow along without the piano (or maybe they don't even do it with the piano, but the piano is loud enough to drown it out). And then the choir did an a capella piece, an old Sacred Harp style arrangement that got really complex and that was utterly thrilling to do.
So, for this week, lots and lots of singing, some reading and business stuff. Then collapse next Monday.
It didn't help that there was a major television apocalypse on Sunday night, in a good way. There were four hours of PBS programming -- they're rerunning Larkrise to Candleford, which I didn't see the first time around, at 6, then there's Call the Midwife, then Mr. Selfridge on Masterpiece, and then they started a new series in which some of the Bletchley Park codebreakers use their codebreaking skills to solve mysteries after the war. And then there was Once Upon a Time and Game of Thrones. To make things even more fun, they were really late getting the new Doctor Who up OnDemand, so I didn't get that until Sunday night. I still have PBS recordings to watch tonight. I prioritized viewing based on what was most likely to be discussed on the Internet today. It's going to be even worse next week when I'm out on Sunday night.
I got a full test of my ability to sing a capella on Sunday. I was leading the preschool Sunday school singing, and we didn't have a piano player, so I just picked a note to start with and did it unaccompanied. It's a good thing I have good relative pitch -- I can't do the thing where I can name a note or just perfectly sing a particular note without any guide, but once I have a starting point, I can find all the relative pitches to sing a song without help. I didn't realize that not everyone could do this until recently. It became rather obvious on Sunday morning that even with me as a guide, not everyone could follow along without the piano (or maybe they don't even do it with the piano, but the piano is loud enough to drown it out). And then the choir did an a capella piece, an old Sacred Harp style arrangement that got really complex and that was utterly thrilling to do.
So, for this week, lots and lots of singing, some reading and business stuff. Then collapse next Monday.
April 19, 2013
Expendable Sopranos
The bad thing about being a soprano in a choir is that you're usually pretty expendable. There are plenty more, and one won't be missed. You're slightly more valuable if you're a true soprano and not just in that section because it usually involves singing the melody or at least the highest note, so it's easy to follow along even if you don't read music. You're even more valuable if you can read music and harmonize enough to sing second soprano. And you're a little more valuable if you can switch-hit between first and second soprano, with the range to hit the high notes but the harmonizing ability to sing second. You're still more valuable if you have the low range to fill in on alto as needed. Which means that I'm about as valuable as you get for a soprano in a choir, since I'm a true soprano who can read music well enough to sing second but who has the range to sing first, and I also have the low range to sing first alto in a pinch. Even so, in most cases and especially in larger choirs, I wouldn't be missed because there are several more like me. That made it really hard for me to drag myself all the way across the metro area at rush hour for a rehearsal last night. I thought during the day that it wouldn't be so bad to just not do this, since I seem to be the only one in my choir who is. With a 200-voice choir, one soprano won't make a difference.
But then when I was listening to the recording yesterday afternoon, I remembered how much I love this music, and when I got to the rehearsal, I really enjoyed myself. The challenge is that most of these groups are rehearsing this in their own choirs, but I'm more or less on my own. There were a few others talking about doing it, but it fell by the wayside, so there's no point in having extra rehearsals. This was the first time I really looked at this music since the last group rehearsal. I'll have to do a little practicing this week, since there are only two more rehearsals before the performance. I have most of it down, but there are some really tricky parts that just require familiarity because they go by too fast to really read the music.
Next week's going to be busy, with my usual dance and choir, a conference call Wednesday, a rehearsal Thursday night, a party Friday night (a former client turned friend), a rehearsal Saturday morning, a concert Saturday night (not the Mozart, something my choir is doing) and the Requiem Sunday night. So this weekend will be devoted to relaxing. I'm going hiking this afternoon, since this may be our last cool day until fall, and then this weekend I'm going to chill out and rest up and maybe practice the Mozart.
But then when I was listening to the recording yesterday afternoon, I remembered how much I love this music, and when I got to the rehearsal, I really enjoyed myself. The challenge is that most of these groups are rehearsing this in their own choirs, but I'm more or less on my own. There were a few others talking about doing it, but it fell by the wayside, so there's no point in having extra rehearsals. This was the first time I really looked at this music since the last group rehearsal. I'll have to do a little practicing this week, since there are only two more rehearsals before the performance. I have most of it down, but there are some really tricky parts that just require familiarity because they go by too fast to really read the music.
Next week's going to be busy, with my usual dance and choir, a conference call Wednesday, a rehearsal Thursday night, a party Friday night (a former client turned friend), a rehearsal Saturday morning, a concert Saturday night (not the Mozart, something my choir is doing) and the Requiem Sunday night. So this weekend will be devoted to relaxing. I'm going hiking this afternoon, since this may be our last cool day until fall, and then this weekend I'm going to chill out and rest up and maybe practice the Mozart.
April 18, 2013
The Clever Plan
I stayed up way too late last night watching the news out of West, Texas (not to be confused with West Texas -- this is a town, not a region, and to make things more confusing, West, Texas is not in West Texas). I turned on the TV to see the late news so I could get an update on the storms that were supposed to be heading our way, and instead found myself transfixed for a couple of hours by reports of a small town that's been mostly flattened. West is pretty much a mandatory stop on road trips between Dallas and Austin. It's a mostly Czech community, and the roadside gas stations are also kolache bakeries. I think their Dairy Queen is now closed, but it used to have a very Old World style to it, complete with lace curtains. It wasn't until midway through the news coverage that I realized this was probably why the lady in the choir who's a nurse in the major regional burn unit abruptly left the rehearsal. I bet she got called in as soon as word of the explosion got out.
Appropriately, I will likely be spending much of the day listening to the Mozart Requiem, as it's been a while since I looked at it and there's a rehearsal tonight for the performance next weekend. For those in the North Texas area, the concert will be next Sunday night at 6:30 and proceeds benefit the Genesis Women's Shelter. Here's more info.
Meanwhile, I sent the book off to my agent yesterday, and now it's time to start brainstorming the sequel. I figure if it sells, it'll be nice to have the sequel ready to go, and if it doesn't, I'm planning to self-publish, and then having the sequel ready will be good.
We came up with a clever plan for dealing with the kids in choir, and it seems to have worked. The older kids do rotations among singing, instruments, guitar and art, so we're doing mini rotations and switching the kids between the preschool and kindergarten teachers for activities. The other teachers did handbells last night and we did a craft. Then the children's music director got interested and we did a singing rotation with her. There was so much coming and going that the kids barely had a chance to get crazy. I did have one moment of triumph/vindication, though. There's one girl who's been a bit of a behavior problem all year. She keeps doing things that she knows she's not supposed to do. For instance, there are stacks of chairs along the wall, and the kids are told every week to stay away from them, but she likes to crawl under them. Near the end of class, she was crawling under them, and I told her to stop that and get out. She laughed and stayed there, not knowing that her mother had arrived and was standing beside me. Busted! I resisted the urge to cackle with glee.
Appropriately, I will likely be spending much of the day listening to the Mozart Requiem, as it's been a while since I looked at it and there's a rehearsal tonight for the performance next weekend. For those in the North Texas area, the concert will be next Sunday night at 6:30 and proceeds benefit the Genesis Women's Shelter. Here's more info.
Meanwhile, I sent the book off to my agent yesterday, and now it's time to start brainstorming the sequel. I figure if it sells, it'll be nice to have the sequel ready to go, and if it doesn't, I'm planning to self-publish, and then having the sequel ready will be good.
We came up with a clever plan for dealing with the kids in choir, and it seems to have worked. The older kids do rotations among singing, instruments, guitar and art, so we're doing mini rotations and switching the kids between the preschool and kindergarten teachers for activities. The other teachers did handbells last night and we did a craft. Then the children's music director got interested and we did a singing rotation with her. There was so much coming and going that the kids barely had a chance to get crazy. I did have one moment of triumph/vindication, though. There's one girl who's been a bit of a behavior problem all year. She keeps doing things that she knows she's not supposed to do. For instance, there are stacks of chairs along the wall, and the kids are told every week to stay away from them, but she likes to crawl under them. Near the end of class, she was crawling under them, and I told her to stop that and get out. She laughed and stayed there, not knowing that her mother had arrived and was standing beside me. Busted! I resisted the urge to cackle with glee.
April 17, 2013
The Not-So-Dreaded Synopsis
In case you read yesterday's post before I corrected it, the season premiere of Warehouse 13 is April 29, not the 19th. I taught myself to touch type and never got around to learning how to do the numbers, so it inevitably fails when I attempt to touch type numbers. Sorry!
I should have the current book done and off to my agent today. Hooray! I only have about 20 pages to go, and I could have probably done it yesterday, but that's the section with the most intense rewriting and I was starting to zone out and get distracted, so I figured it was better to save the final stretch for today.
Now, for a writing post! When I read blogs on writing and publishing, I've noticed that the standard adjective used when writers talk about the synopsis is "dreaded." There's something about the synopsis that strikes fear and dread into the hearts of many a writer, and this is a problem because the synopsis is one of the main selling tools for your book, and if you write it with a sense of dread, that's bound to come through in the synopsis, so it's not likely to make anyone get very excited about your book. The synopsis is an advertisement for your book. Editors and agents read it to decide if it's worth reading the whole manuscript. Editors may use it to drum up enthusiasm among the editorial committee to encourage them to okay buying the book. Even after a book sells, the synopsis is often what's used by the art department to come up with a cover, the marketing department to position the book and develop the cover text, and the sales department to inform the sales team about the book. No pressure! No wonder we stress over writing this. As I often say, it took me 100,000 words to write the story. And now you want me to tell the story in five pages?
In the submission process, the synopsis helps an editor or agent know if the plot works. The query letter tells whether or not the premise is interesting and the first few pages of the book tell whether the writing is competent and engaging. The synopsis gives a sense of how the story unfolds, if the plot moves logically and leads to a satisfying conclusion. It doesn't need to contain every detail, but it does need to describe the major events and what their consequences are that lead to more events.
To change your mindset about writing a synopsis, think about a time when you read a book, saw a movie or watched a TV show that got you really jazzed, so that you were dying to talk about it with someone, but no one you knew had read or seen it, so in order to explain why you were so excited, you had to find a captive audience and describe the whole thing. Or, if you didn't yet have a captive audience, you may have rehearsed in your head what you'd say when you got a chance to tell someone about it. That's essentially a synopsis. What would you tell your captive audience about this amazing story you'd just read or seen? You'd talk about the main characters and what you found so fascinating. You'd talk about the major steps along the way, and you might highlight a couple of the big scenes. If you weren't worried about spoiling it, you'd describe the big plot twists with great relish.
I'd hope that you're as excited about your own book as you would be about something else you've read or seen, so put yourself in that mindset and recap it that way. I did have something of an advantage in this area because I worked in marketing communications, so my job was writing marketing brochures and sales material, but I think where writing a synopsis really clicked for me was when I had an Internet friend in England before the days when home broadband was a thing and before there were ways to access TV shows online. After each X-Files episode, I'd write a recap for her so she could follow the story without waiting for the series to get to England. I realized that I was essentially writing a synopsis -- I was making sure all the plot developments made sense while highlighting the most cool things about each episode. I tried to keep the same mindset when writing about my own books.
It does become more challenging when you reach the point in your career where you're writing a synopsis for a book you haven't written yet, but then that's a plotting issue, not a synopsis issue. Editors realize that things are bound to change when the book gets written. I find that my proposal synopses tend to be heavy on up-front detail and more vague as I get to the end. On the other hand, you may have a lot more enthusiasm for a book that still exists mostly in the idea phase and that you haven't spent months slogging through, and that should reflect in your synopsis.
So, start thinking "advertisement" instead of "dreaded synopsis" and see if that makes a difference.
I should have the current book done and off to my agent today. Hooray! I only have about 20 pages to go, and I could have probably done it yesterday, but that's the section with the most intense rewriting and I was starting to zone out and get distracted, so I figured it was better to save the final stretch for today.
Now, for a writing post! When I read blogs on writing and publishing, I've noticed that the standard adjective used when writers talk about the synopsis is "dreaded." There's something about the synopsis that strikes fear and dread into the hearts of many a writer, and this is a problem because the synopsis is one of the main selling tools for your book, and if you write it with a sense of dread, that's bound to come through in the synopsis, so it's not likely to make anyone get very excited about your book. The synopsis is an advertisement for your book. Editors and agents read it to decide if it's worth reading the whole manuscript. Editors may use it to drum up enthusiasm among the editorial committee to encourage them to okay buying the book. Even after a book sells, the synopsis is often what's used by the art department to come up with a cover, the marketing department to position the book and develop the cover text, and the sales department to inform the sales team about the book. No pressure! No wonder we stress over writing this. As I often say, it took me 100,000 words to write the story. And now you want me to tell the story in five pages?
In the submission process, the synopsis helps an editor or agent know if the plot works. The query letter tells whether or not the premise is interesting and the first few pages of the book tell whether the writing is competent and engaging. The synopsis gives a sense of how the story unfolds, if the plot moves logically and leads to a satisfying conclusion. It doesn't need to contain every detail, but it does need to describe the major events and what their consequences are that lead to more events.
To change your mindset about writing a synopsis, think about a time when you read a book, saw a movie or watched a TV show that got you really jazzed, so that you were dying to talk about it with someone, but no one you knew had read or seen it, so in order to explain why you were so excited, you had to find a captive audience and describe the whole thing. Or, if you didn't yet have a captive audience, you may have rehearsed in your head what you'd say when you got a chance to tell someone about it. That's essentially a synopsis. What would you tell your captive audience about this amazing story you'd just read or seen? You'd talk about the main characters and what you found so fascinating. You'd talk about the major steps along the way, and you might highlight a couple of the big scenes. If you weren't worried about spoiling it, you'd describe the big plot twists with great relish.
I'd hope that you're as excited about your own book as you would be about something else you've read or seen, so put yourself in that mindset and recap it that way. I did have something of an advantage in this area because I worked in marketing communications, so my job was writing marketing brochures and sales material, but I think where writing a synopsis really clicked for me was when I had an Internet friend in England before the days when home broadband was a thing and before there were ways to access TV shows online. After each X-Files episode, I'd write a recap for her so she could follow the story without waiting for the series to get to England. I realized that I was essentially writing a synopsis -- I was making sure all the plot developments made sense while highlighting the most cool things about each episode. I tried to keep the same mindset when writing about my own books.
It does become more challenging when you reach the point in your career where you're writing a synopsis for a book you haven't written yet, but then that's a plotting issue, not a synopsis issue. Editors realize that things are bound to change when the book gets written. I find that my proposal synopses tend to be heavy on up-front detail and more vague as I get to the end. On the other hand, you may have a lot more enthusiasm for a book that still exists mostly in the idea phase and that you haven't spent months slogging through, and that should reflect in your synopsis.
So, start thinking "advertisement" instead of "dreaded synopsis" and see if that makes a difference.
April 16, 2013
Defiance
I got to put the new blanket to use last night because it was a warm evening, and it did just what I wanted it to do. It was just enough weight to feel covered, but the open mesh kept me from getting hot and allowed the breeze from the ceiling fan to get through. I did have to pull up another blanket sometime during the night when it got cooler, but it's nice to already be getting some payoff for the effort.
Now some TV news. First, Warehouse 13 is coming back April 29, but the season premiere (the resolution of last season's cliffhanger) is currently available online via the SyFy web site and OnDemand (depending on your cable company). I watched that last night, but I may have to rewatch the older episodes they've also put OnDemand because I'd forgotten a lot.
I also watched the series premiere of Defiant, the new SyFy show. I'll definitely watch it again, but I'm not in love with it yet. I've found that the shows I get really into have some character or some question (or some question about a character) that makes me eager to see what happens next, not so much for the plot but because I can see that the mix of character and situation is going to be interesting. A lot of it comes from a sense of surprise. For instance, one of the things that got me intrigued about Firefly when I saw the first episode that was aired ("The Train Job") was the revelation that on this ship full of criminals pulling off heists, the one who was wanted by the Feds was the prim and proper doctor. I remember that sense of "Oh, now this could be interesting." So far, there's none of that in Defiance. I don't dislike it, but there was nothing that had me really curious about how things would work out.
From what I could tell of the backstory, there was an alien invasion by an alliance of races that planned to terraform earth to be a new home for them, but they weren't prepared for earth already being inhabited. There was war, until the soldiers decided not to fight anymore, and now there's a tenuous peace in a weird postapocalyptic landscape. Our Hero is a Mal Reynolds/Han Solo type, a former soldier who's an embittered veteran of a famous battle who's now something of a mercenary/scavenger, and he travels with his adopted alien daughter, a war orphan he took in and raised as his own. They get robbed by a roving gang and then are rescued and taken to the town of Defiance, formerly known as St. Louis, and if you've ever seen any movie or TV series ever, you pretty much know everything that will happen after that.
It has a bit of a Firefly vibe, with the Western tropes in a science fiction situation, and there's a dash or two of Mad Max in there, as well. I find a few of the characters interesting, though not all that intriguing (there's no real mystery to any of them, nothing I'm dying to find out). I'm a little worried about the teen Romeo and Juliet plot because the kiss of death for most of the recent science fiction series (V, Terra Nova, Revolution) has been the annoying teens put front and center. But my main problem with the pilot was that there were no surprises whatsoever. Starting about five minutes into the show, I had outlined pretty much what would happen. A lot of these tropes are right out of famous movies, down to the scenes and even some of the lines. Even the big "shocker" in the episode's tag was a bit of a "well, duh!" Granted, I'm hard to surprise because I know too much about story structure, but it would be nice to have one or two developments that I didn't see coming or that didn't seem so horribly telegraphed. I feel like I can even see how the series is likely to progress, so I hope they throw in a few monkey wrenches along the way to shake things up. Maybe the obvious triangle won't happen or the obvious budding relationship between the currently at-odds younger people won't come about, but I won't hold my breath. Still, it's science fiction on television. There are spaceships and aliens, and so far the teens aren't too prominent, so I'll be watching unless something else gets in the way.
Now some TV news. First, Warehouse 13 is coming back April 29, but the season premiere (the resolution of last season's cliffhanger) is currently available online via the SyFy web site and OnDemand (depending on your cable company). I watched that last night, but I may have to rewatch the older episodes they've also put OnDemand because I'd forgotten a lot.
I also watched the series premiere of Defiant, the new SyFy show. I'll definitely watch it again, but I'm not in love with it yet. I've found that the shows I get really into have some character or some question (or some question about a character) that makes me eager to see what happens next, not so much for the plot but because I can see that the mix of character and situation is going to be interesting. A lot of it comes from a sense of surprise. For instance, one of the things that got me intrigued about Firefly when I saw the first episode that was aired ("The Train Job") was the revelation that on this ship full of criminals pulling off heists, the one who was wanted by the Feds was the prim and proper doctor. I remember that sense of "Oh, now this could be interesting." So far, there's none of that in Defiance. I don't dislike it, but there was nothing that had me really curious about how things would work out.
From what I could tell of the backstory, there was an alien invasion by an alliance of races that planned to terraform earth to be a new home for them, but they weren't prepared for earth already being inhabited. There was war, until the soldiers decided not to fight anymore, and now there's a tenuous peace in a weird postapocalyptic landscape. Our Hero is a Mal Reynolds/Han Solo type, a former soldier who's an embittered veteran of a famous battle who's now something of a mercenary/scavenger, and he travels with his adopted alien daughter, a war orphan he took in and raised as his own. They get robbed by a roving gang and then are rescued and taken to the town of Defiance, formerly known as St. Louis, and if you've ever seen any movie or TV series ever, you pretty much know everything that will happen after that.
It has a bit of a Firefly vibe, with the Western tropes in a science fiction situation, and there's a dash or two of Mad Max in there, as well. I find a few of the characters interesting, though not all that intriguing (there's no real mystery to any of them, nothing I'm dying to find out). I'm a little worried about the teen Romeo and Juliet plot because the kiss of death for most of the recent science fiction series (V, Terra Nova, Revolution) has been the annoying teens put front and center. But my main problem with the pilot was that there were no surprises whatsoever. Starting about five minutes into the show, I had outlined pretty much what would happen. A lot of these tropes are right out of famous movies, down to the scenes and even some of the lines. Even the big "shocker" in the episode's tag was a bit of a "well, duh!" Granted, I'm hard to surprise because I know too much about story structure, but it would be nice to have one or two developments that I didn't see coming or that didn't seem so horribly telegraphed. I feel like I can even see how the series is likely to progress, so I hope they throw in a few monkey wrenches along the way to shake things up. Maybe the obvious triangle won't happen or the obvious budding relationship between the currently at-odds younger people won't come about, but I won't hold my breath. Still, it's science fiction on television. There are spaceships and aliens, and so far the teens aren't too prominent, so I'll be watching unless something else gets in the way.
April 15, 2013
You Sank My Battleship!
I thought that I might have been going on my summer schedule early when I woke up rather early yesterday without my alarm. Since the choir was off this week, that meant I could go to the early service at church, and I'd done some grocery shopping on my way home, had dinner in the crock pot and was reading the newspaper and drinking tea by the time I normally would have been heading to church. But today I was back to my usual waking schedule, so maybe that was a fluke.
Today's major task is dropping my tax return off at the post office (it's done and scanned) and then picking up some tea at the Indian market across from the post office. Then I'm back to reviewing the book that I hope to send to my agent this week.
My big movie viewing of the weekend was Battleship, watched OnDemand on HBO. I didn't want to pay to see it in the theater, but I was curious because it struck me as so very snarkworthy. And oh, but it was. Actually, the action parts weren't too bad (though probably rather implausible). It was the human side of the story that failed miserably, which is ironic because I suspect they included that part to attempt to transcend the action movie. This was one case where the SyFy "mockbuster" may have been a better movie. If they'd made that script with the production values and budget of this one, they might have had something.
I think the real problem was that the screenwriter must have read one of those "how to write a screenplay" books and taken the advice about establishing the hero's motivation and giving us a reason to root for him to heart. That resulted in 45 minutes (I was checking the time) of backstory on this guy that ended up making me really want the aliens to show up and making me cheer for the aliens. And it was all unnecessary. What more do you need for a goal and motivation than an alien invasion? What more reason do we need to cheer for this guy than that he's the one who has to stop the alien invasion? We really don't need to know about his love life, his family, his career issues. We just need to know that something bad is happening and he has to stop it. Instead, we got 45 minutes of seeing what a screw-up he was and how his Academy grad Naval officer brother forced him to join the Navy to get his life together. Then in the biggest mystery of the movie (beyond even where the aliens come from and what they want), five years later he's an officer, and I spent a lot of time dwelling on how that's possible. If you get your butt dragged to the recruiting office because the Navy is a last-ditch effort for making a man out of you, you don't become an officer. Even as an officer, he's still a screw-up and is on the verge of being dishonorably discharged when the attack happens, so it's not a case of an enlisted man being plucked from the ranks after demonstrating leadership ability. If he was Academy or ROTC, he should already be serving. Oh, and he's dating the admiral's daughter but the admiral is wise (and Liam Neeson), so he doesn't approve. And all this makes me so much want him to end up as alien chow because I like every other crew member on his ship more than I like him (there's Landry from Friday Night Lights!).
And, of course, this screw-up ends up in command of the only ship left to fight the alien invaders, thanks to a force-field dome thing and an attack that strikes the bridge of his ship. They'd have had a better movie if they'd cut those first 45 minutes and just gone with the junior officer suddenly being in charge of a massively huge situation that no one is prepared for. Then I'd have cheered for him and wanted him to succeed instead of thinking that they're all better off if someone just frags him and blames the aliens. But no, this is Hollywood thinking that only mavericks can do the kind of creative thinking that saves the day. If you're actually a good officer, you're just toast.
They did do some fun callbacks to the game, like them creating a grid using the tsunami buoys when the radar quits working and using the data from the buoys to estimate where the alien ships are and to aim attacks, or with the alien missiles shaped suspiciously like the pegs from the game boards.
I think the bottom line is that if you're writing an action movie based on a board game, you shouldn't read any screenwriting books. Those books are meant for real movies. Instead, start big and stay there and forget about providing more motivation than "save the world from alien invasion." Because if you're saving the world from alien invasion because maybe that will make the admiral approve of you marrying his daughter, you deserve to be blown up repeatedly by alien missiles shaped like game pieces.
Today's major task is dropping my tax return off at the post office (it's done and scanned) and then picking up some tea at the Indian market across from the post office. Then I'm back to reviewing the book that I hope to send to my agent this week.
My big movie viewing of the weekend was Battleship, watched OnDemand on HBO. I didn't want to pay to see it in the theater, but I was curious because it struck me as so very snarkworthy. And oh, but it was. Actually, the action parts weren't too bad (though probably rather implausible). It was the human side of the story that failed miserably, which is ironic because I suspect they included that part to attempt to transcend the action movie. This was one case where the SyFy "mockbuster" may have been a better movie. If they'd made that script with the production values and budget of this one, they might have had something.
I think the real problem was that the screenwriter must have read one of those "how to write a screenplay" books and taken the advice about establishing the hero's motivation and giving us a reason to root for him to heart. That resulted in 45 minutes (I was checking the time) of backstory on this guy that ended up making me really want the aliens to show up and making me cheer for the aliens. And it was all unnecessary. What more do you need for a goal and motivation than an alien invasion? What more reason do we need to cheer for this guy than that he's the one who has to stop the alien invasion? We really don't need to know about his love life, his family, his career issues. We just need to know that something bad is happening and he has to stop it. Instead, we got 45 minutes of seeing what a screw-up he was and how his Academy grad Naval officer brother forced him to join the Navy to get his life together. Then in the biggest mystery of the movie (beyond even where the aliens come from and what they want), five years later he's an officer, and I spent a lot of time dwelling on how that's possible. If you get your butt dragged to the recruiting office because the Navy is a last-ditch effort for making a man out of you, you don't become an officer. Even as an officer, he's still a screw-up and is on the verge of being dishonorably discharged when the attack happens, so it's not a case of an enlisted man being plucked from the ranks after demonstrating leadership ability. If he was Academy or ROTC, he should already be serving. Oh, and he's dating the admiral's daughter but the admiral is wise (and Liam Neeson), so he doesn't approve. And all this makes me so much want him to end up as alien chow because I like every other crew member on his ship more than I like him (there's Landry from Friday Night Lights!).
And, of course, this screw-up ends up in command of the only ship left to fight the alien invaders, thanks to a force-field dome thing and an attack that strikes the bridge of his ship. They'd have had a better movie if they'd cut those first 45 minutes and just gone with the junior officer suddenly being in charge of a massively huge situation that no one is prepared for. Then I'd have cheered for him and wanted him to succeed instead of thinking that they're all better off if someone just frags him and blames the aliens. But no, this is Hollywood thinking that only mavericks can do the kind of creative thinking that saves the day. If you're actually a good officer, you're just toast.
They did do some fun callbacks to the game, like them creating a grid using the tsunami buoys when the radar quits working and using the data from the buoys to estimate where the alien ships are and to aim attacks, or with the alien missiles shaped suspiciously like the pegs from the game boards.
I think the bottom line is that if you're writing an action movie based on a board game, you shouldn't read any screenwriting books. Those books are meant for real movies. Instead, start big and stay there and forget about providing more motivation than "save the world from alien invasion." Because if you're saving the world from alien invasion because maybe that will make the admiral approve of you marrying his daughter, you deserve to be blown up repeatedly by alien missiles shaped like game pieces.
April 12, 2013
The Mama Complex
After posting about that "Mama" situation, I had it happen yet again yesterday in Target. That kid sounded so distressed as she reached her hands in my direction and screamed "Mama!" that I was afraid someone would stop that woman and accuse her of trying to kidnap my child. I thought at first that maybe she was just demanding her mother's attention because there was something in my general direction that she wanted, but I was in the cleaning products aisle, so unless the kid is a budding neat freak, I don't think she was having a Target temper tantrum meltdown about wanting bathroom cleaner.
Meanwhile, there was a sale on yarn at Michael's. This is potentially dangerous. I got some darker blue to make a throw for the living room. I'd wanted a burgundy red, but all they had was more of a clear red that was gorgeous but that wouldn't have quite worked. In my house, when all else fails, go with blue, even though the sofa is green (I couldn't find a blue one, and the idea was that it would go with an Oriental rug that had green, blue and red in it, but I still don't have the rug).
The real exciting news for the day was an announcement from the HOA that they've renegotiated our cable contract, so now we get the HD converter as part of our deal and we get an extended range of channels that includes BBC America. I wasn't getting that other than OnDemand, so now I should theoretically be able to see Doctor Who when it airs. I say theoretically because when I checked after getting the e-mail, I didn't have it, but I've re-set the converter box since then. I'm not sure about getting the HD box because the current TV only has one HDMI input, so I'd have to unplug the cable to watch a Blu Ray. I have plans to get a larger TV, but considering how long it's taking to finalize the book contract, I'm not spending that money until it's in my hot little hands. I'm also concerned about whether the HD converter box would have a coaxial output (or maybe AV) because I do still use my VCR, I don't have a DVR, and this deal doesn't include the converter box with a DVR. So, swapping out converter boxes isn't a high priority at the moment, but is something I may consider when I get the money from this latest book deal.
Now for a day of treasure hunting.
Meanwhile, there was a sale on yarn at Michael's. This is potentially dangerous. I got some darker blue to make a throw for the living room. I'd wanted a burgundy red, but all they had was more of a clear red that was gorgeous but that wouldn't have quite worked. In my house, when all else fails, go with blue, even though the sofa is green (I couldn't find a blue one, and the idea was that it would go with an Oriental rug that had green, blue and red in it, but I still don't have the rug).
The real exciting news for the day was an announcement from the HOA that they've renegotiated our cable contract, so now we get the HD converter as part of our deal and we get an extended range of channels that includes BBC America. I wasn't getting that other than OnDemand, so now I should theoretically be able to see Doctor Who when it airs. I say theoretically because when I checked after getting the e-mail, I didn't have it, but I've re-set the converter box since then. I'm not sure about getting the HD box because the current TV only has one HDMI input, so I'd have to unplug the cable to watch a Blu Ray. I have plans to get a larger TV, but considering how long it's taking to finalize the book contract, I'm not spending that money until it's in my hot little hands. I'm also concerned about whether the HD converter box would have a coaxial output (or maybe AV) because I do still use my VCR, I don't have a DVR, and this deal doesn't include the converter box with a DVR. So, swapping out converter boxes isn't a high priority at the moment, but is something I may consider when I get the money from this latest book deal.
Now for a day of treasure hunting.
April 11, 2013
My First Blanket
I was up way too late last night, but I finished the blanket! I was so close to being done that I just kept going until it was finished. I may have been a bit too tense on the binding off, and I even used a larger needle, but I suspect there was some "I'm almost done!" excitement happening. Here's the result, spread out across the bed:
Now I'm trying to decide what to make next. I suspect I'll get twitchy without something to do while I watch TV. I may make one in a color that coordinates with the living room to use on the sofa in the summer when the fan's necessary to keep the room from being stuffy but when the fan blowing on me can be a bit chilly. The open pattern gives just enough coverage while still allowing air circulation. I suppose this assumes that I get around to replacing the living room ceiling fan this year. I may also make some kind of shawl or wrap for indoor use in overly air conditioned locations. I have this huge pashmina type thing, but it's a bit unwieldy. I need something that's just big enough to throw over my shoulders.
We discovered one solution to the crazy kids last night: we switched kids. The preschool teachers took my kids for a while and I took theirs, and both of us later were talking about how the other kids were so good and well-behaved. I couldn't believe that this was the same group I'd snapped at when they insisted on crawling on the floor and doing everything as though they were animals. The teenager who helps in the other group is in the drum line at school, and he'd brought his practice drums to teach about percussion, so we swapped groups out to let my kids do it, too. I may propose we do something similar for the next few weeks so we don't go insane. The preschoolers are awfully cute. The kids usually call me "Miss Shanna" or "teacher," but one little preschool boy calls me "lady," and not in the "Yo, lady!" sense. He sounds very chivalrous as he looks up at me and sweetly says, "Hi, lady!" I'll have to think of something we can rotate on, but mixing things up seemed to have some kind of magic powers. We just have four classes left, and then the sharing program for the parents. I may survive without harming any small children, but it may be a close call.
Though I did have a mildly creepy/cute moment. When I was getting in my car afterward (the adult choir didn't rehearse last night, so I was leaving at the same time as the kids), a mom was putting a toddler -- I'd guess somewhere between one and two, still very baby-like, but talking -- in the car seat. The baby pointed at me and said, "Mama!" She got very excited and kept repeating it, even though her mother was right next to her. It was like something you'd see in a horror movie, where innocent-looking children suddenly start saying things that turn out to be true even though they couldn't possibly know that. Not that there is any danger whatsoever that I'm actually a mother. But the weird thing is, this happens to me often, where small children who are total strangers will call out to me as "Mama" or "Mommy." For instance, there's a preschool/day care center along the walking path that goes to the library, and the playground is beside the path. More than once, as I've walked by, a child will run to the fence and call out "Mommy!" as I pass and then start crying. In that case, I figure I may bear a slight resemblance to their mothers that makes them think when I approach that their moms are coming to get them. I don't know what set off the kid last night, since she was with her mother while she was rather frantically calling me "Mama." If I were Stephen King, I'd get a book out of this.
Now I'm trying to decide what to make next. I suspect I'll get twitchy without something to do while I watch TV. I may make one in a color that coordinates with the living room to use on the sofa in the summer when the fan's necessary to keep the room from being stuffy but when the fan blowing on me can be a bit chilly. The open pattern gives just enough coverage while still allowing air circulation. I suppose this assumes that I get around to replacing the living room ceiling fan this year. I may also make some kind of shawl or wrap for indoor use in overly air conditioned locations. I have this huge pashmina type thing, but it's a bit unwieldy. I need something that's just big enough to throw over my shoulders.
We discovered one solution to the crazy kids last night: we switched kids. The preschool teachers took my kids for a while and I took theirs, and both of us later were talking about how the other kids were so good and well-behaved. I couldn't believe that this was the same group I'd snapped at when they insisted on crawling on the floor and doing everything as though they were animals. The teenager who helps in the other group is in the drum line at school, and he'd brought his practice drums to teach about percussion, so we swapped groups out to let my kids do it, too. I may propose we do something similar for the next few weeks so we don't go insane. The preschoolers are awfully cute. The kids usually call me "Miss Shanna" or "teacher," but one little preschool boy calls me "lady," and not in the "Yo, lady!" sense. He sounds very chivalrous as he looks up at me and sweetly says, "Hi, lady!" I'll have to think of something we can rotate on, but mixing things up seemed to have some kind of magic powers. We just have four classes left, and then the sharing program for the parents. I may survive without harming any small children, but it may be a close call.
Though I did have a mildly creepy/cute moment. When I was getting in my car afterward (the adult choir didn't rehearse last night, so I was leaving at the same time as the kids), a mom was putting a toddler -- I'd guess somewhere between one and two, still very baby-like, but talking -- in the car seat. The baby pointed at me and said, "Mama!" She got very excited and kept repeating it, even though her mother was right next to her. It was like something you'd see in a horror movie, where innocent-looking children suddenly start saying things that turn out to be true even though they couldn't possibly know that. Not that there is any danger whatsoever that I'm actually a mother. But the weird thing is, this happens to me often, where small children who are total strangers will call out to me as "Mama" or "Mommy." For instance, there's a preschool/day care center along the walking path that goes to the library, and the playground is beside the path. More than once, as I've walked by, a child will run to the fence and call out "Mommy!" as I pass and then start crying. In that case, I figure I may bear a slight resemblance to their mothers that makes them think when I approach that their moms are coming to get them. I don't know what set off the kid last night, since she was with her mother while she was rather frantically calling me "Mama." If I were Stephen King, I'd get a book out of this.
