Shanna Swendson's Blog, page 225
June 22, 2012
Copy Edits and Crowdsourcing
My air conditioner is now in good working order. All I need to be really ready to face summer is to replace the living room ceiling fan. Buying one isn't the problem. They're not that expensive. Getting it installed on my high ceiling is the real problem and will probably cost more than the fan itself. Which is why I've been using an oscillating fan on a stand in the living room for the past two years. I really need that book contract and good sales on the digital books.
I'm about halfway through the copy edits on book 5. Mostly, it's style stuff, where my instinctive Associated Press style from journalism school clashes with publishing style. I tend to hyphenate or use two separate words when publishing style crams them into one word. The thing I most often have to change is "non-magical," which is the way I write it, to "nonmagical" which looks wrong to me but which is consistent with the other books that were done in Random House style. She did catch me in one inconsistency for the name of something from earlier in the series, and there was one big oopsie, where it seems a line of dialogue disappeared somewhere between versions. I had to go back two versions to find what was supposed to be there to make the scene make sense. I don't know if it was overzealous editing or overzealous highlighting and deleting (Word sometimes takes matters into its own hands and decides that if deleting one word is good, deleting an entire paragraph is even better), but I can't believe I hadn't noticed that, as many times as I've read this book -- and even read it out loud, in character voices.
Dealing with copy edits is where having two computers comes in handy. I have the copy-edited document on one computer and the manuscript on the other. I suppose it would be easier to just accept or reject changes, but I'm a little paranoid about that because I've seen too many cases where the comments and edits never actually go away and pop up again at inconvenient moments (like when a client gets the document with snarky commentary reappearing), and this document is going to be published electronically. So, I work on a clean copy and insert the changes. That means spreading out on my bed, which is the one place I have that kind of open work space (the copyeditor would change that to "workspace," I'm sure). Plus, it's comfortable, and that's the coolest room in the house.
Meanwhile, I'm starting to do some world-building research on my next project. I like taking aspects from reality to work into my fictional worlds to make them more realistic. Conveniently, the same research will apply to another book I have planned. They're totally different kinds of books, different worlds, and different stories, but they both draw on aspects of the same kinds of real-world situations. And that brings me to some crowdsourcing because this is turning out to be more difficult than I thought to put into Amazon or library search engines. I'm looking for firsthand accounts of living under a totalitarian regime, like Stalinist Russia or Nazi-occupied Europe. I'm not really looking for people who are actively persecuted, like Jews in Nazi Europe (besides, that's easy to find and I have tons of resources there), but more like resistance or dissidents who have to at least put up the front of living a normal life while knowing they might be watched or informed upon. What I'm trying to capture is what living like that really feels like, as well as what they might have had to do to keep their activities a secret. I've got a couple of books that look promising on the French resistance and the Danish resistance during WWII on hold at the library, but I'd appreciate any recommendations if anyone knows of a good book on the subject.
I went back to ballet last night, and for the summer they just have one adult class, so all the people who are normally in the intermediate/advanced class, most of whom have danced all their lives or even danced professionally, are also in the class. I was feeling really outclassed, especially since I'm a bit rusty. My teacher will be taking on the intermediate class in the fall (it used to be the scary ballet master) and she wants me and others who've been there a while to move to that class so the beginner class can be for real beginners, but I'm a little intimidated by that. It will be a blow to my ego to go from being one of the best in the class to one of the worst (if not the worst). Then again, that will certainly push me to try to improve, and I have to remind myself that I'm doing this for fun and fitness. It's not a competitive sport and I'm not going anywhere with it. I'm just improving my strength, posture and balance.
I'm about halfway through the copy edits on book 5. Mostly, it's style stuff, where my instinctive Associated Press style from journalism school clashes with publishing style. I tend to hyphenate or use two separate words when publishing style crams them into one word. The thing I most often have to change is "non-magical," which is the way I write it, to "nonmagical" which looks wrong to me but which is consistent with the other books that were done in Random House style. She did catch me in one inconsistency for the name of something from earlier in the series, and there was one big oopsie, where it seems a line of dialogue disappeared somewhere between versions. I had to go back two versions to find what was supposed to be there to make the scene make sense. I don't know if it was overzealous editing or overzealous highlighting and deleting (Word sometimes takes matters into its own hands and decides that if deleting one word is good, deleting an entire paragraph is even better), but I can't believe I hadn't noticed that, as many times as I've read this book -- and even read it out loud, in character voices.
Dealing with copy edits is where having two computers comes in handy. I have the copy-edited document on one computer and the manuscript on the other. I suppose it would be easier to just accept or reject changes, but I'm a little paranoid about that because I've seen too many cases where the comments and edits never actually go away and pop up again at inconvenient moments (like when a client gets the document with snarky commentary reappearing), and this document is going to be published electronically. So, I work on a clean copy and insert the changes. That means spreading out on my bed, which is the one place I have that kind of open work space (the copyeditor would change that to "workspace," I'm sure). Plus, it's comfortable, and that's the coolest room in the house.
Meanwhile, I'm starting to do some world-building research on my next project. I like taking aspects from reality to work into my fictional worlds to make them more realistic. Conveniently, the same research will apply to another book I have planned. They're totally different kinds of books, different worlds, and different stories, but they both draw on aspects of the same kinds of real-world situations. And that brings me to some crowdsourcing because this is turning out to be more difficult than I thought to put into Amazon or library search engines. I'm looking for firsthand accounts of living under a totalitarian regime, like Stalinist Russia or Nazi-occupied Europe. I'm not really looking for people who are actively persecuted, like Jews in Nazi Europe (besides, that's easy to find and I have tons of resources there), but more like resistance or dissidents who have to at least put up the front of living a normal life while knowing they might be watched or informed upon. What I'm trying to capture is what living like that really feels like, as well as what they might have had to do to keep their activities a secret. I've got a couple of books that look promising on the French resistance and the Danish resistance during WWII on hold at the library, but I'd appreciate any recommendations if anyone knows of a good book on the subject.
I went back to ballet last night, and for the summer they just have one adult class, so all the people who are normally in the intermediate/advanced class, most of whom have danced all their lives or even danced professionally, are also in the class. I was feeling really outclassed, especially since I'm a bit rusty. My teacher will be taking on the intermediate class in the fall (it used to be the scary ballet master) and she wants me and others who've been there a while to move to that class so the beginner class can be for real beginners, but I'm a little intimidated by that. It will be a blow to my ego to go from being one of the best in the class to one of the worst (if not the worst). Then again, that will certainly push me to try to improve, and I have to remind myself that I'm doing this for fun and fitness. It's not a competitive sport and I'm not going anywhere with it. I'm just improving my strength, posture and balance.
June 21, 2012
Waiting
I'm looking forward to a fun day of waiting for the air conditioner repairman to call me back. Not that I was planning to go anywhere because I have work to do and am feeling very antisocial, but still, waiting is irritating. The AC isn't exactly broken, but it doesn't seem to be working as efficiently. For a while, I thought it was just a perception, since I'd been in a cooler climate and in situations where others controlled the AC, which meant it was cooler than I was used to, so naturally I'd feel warmer at home with my usual settings. But yesterday it really seemed like it was cooler without the AC than with it, and the air coming out of the vents was just coolish, so I figured it's been at least seven years since it was worked on and I might as well get a check-up. The last company I dealt with irked me by acting like doing any work on it was pointless since it would fail completely very soon, and I should just buy a whole new system from them, and thus the not dealing with them (and it's still plugging away). After an Internet search, I found a locally owned mom-and-pop operation that got outstanding customer reviews on all the various customer-review sites, and they all seemed to say the kind of things I did about previous companies -- got tired of them barely doing any repair work because they were too busy trying to sell a new system -- but these guys are supposedly a lot easier to deal with and are more honest. We'll see. I just hope they can squeeze me in before we hit 100-degree temperatures next week. If it's running non-stop to maintain my 80-degree indoor temperature on a 92-degree day, 100 degrees will kill it.
And if waiting for the repairman to set an appointment isn't enough, I've just entered the nailbiting phase of a project. The first book of a potential new series went out on submission this week. It's a young adult steampunk fantasy, and I really, really love it, so I want it to find a good home. If you've heard me do readings at conventions in the past couple of years, you may have heard the opening to this book. Say a prayer, cross your fingers, light a candle, do a ritual dance or whatever it is you do to invoke good fortune for others. The submission phase can be draining because it seems like even with a successful project, you start being hammered by rejection after rejection, each one wearing away at your self-confidence. By the time someone makes an offer (and making an offer takes more time than rejection because it usually has to go through layers of bureaucracy), it's more relief than joy. That's kind of the down side of having an agent make submissions. On your own, you're really only supposed to submit to one publisher at a time, so it's submit, wait, get rejected, then submit, wait, get rejected. With an agent doing multiple submissions, you can get rejected nearly every day for weeks. Whee! But apparently my agent got a great response from talking about this book to editors, and I think it's a wonderful book and have had enthusiastic responses to my readings from it, so I'm optimistic.
Having copy edits to review/input for book 5 will help distract me for a while. There's a lot to do to get that book ready for publication, and we're heading into the final stretch. I had some attention span issues yesterday, to the point I timed my attention span at about seven minutes, but I think most of it was dread of starting. There's something about getting copy edits that makes me not want to look. It's like getting a school paper you slaved over handed back to you, and you dread seeing the red marks all over it. Then I reminded myself that it's my book, the copy editor works for me, and if I don't like her feedback, I don't have to take it. And then I looked at the edits, and so far they've been really minor. This is the same editor who's done my other books, and she's a fan of the series, so she gets my voice and my style and doesn't try to "fix" it, like some editors are prone to doing. The rest of it should go pretty quickly. That is, if the AC gets tuned up before it gets too terribly hot.
And if waiting for the repairman to set an appointment isn't enough, I've just entered the nailbiting phase of a project. The first book of a potential new series went out on submission this week. It's a young adult steampunk fantasy, and I really, really love it, so I want it to find a good home. If you've heard me do readings at conventions in the past couple of years, you may have heard the opening to this book. Say a prayer, cross your fingers, light a candle, do a ritual dance or whatever it is you do to invoke good fortune for others. The submission phase can be draining because it seems like even with a successful project, you start being hammered by rejection after rejection, each one wearing away at your self-confidence. By the time someone makes an offer (and making an offer takes more time than rejection because it usually has to go through layers of bureaucracy), it's more relief than joy. That's kind of the down side of having an agent make submissions. On your own, you're really only supposed to submit to one publisher at a time, so it's submit, wait, get rejected, then submit, wait, get rejected. With an agent doing multiple submissions, you can get rejected nearly every day for weeks. Whee! But apparently my agent got a great response from talking about this book to editors, and I think it's a wonderful book and have had enthusiastic responses to my readings from it, so I'm optimistic.
Having copy edits to review/input for book 5 will help distract me for a while. There's a lot to do to get that book ready for publication, and we're heading into the final stretch. I had some attention span issues yesterday, to the point I timed my attention span at about seven minutes, but I think most of it was dread of starting. There's something about getting copy edits that makes me not want to look. It's like getting a school paper you slaved over handed back to you, and you dread seeing the red marks all over it. Then I reminded myself that it's my book, the copy editor works for me, and if I don't like her feedback, I don't have to take it. And then I looked at the edits, and so far they've been really minor. This is the same editor who's done my other books, and she's a fan of the series, so she gets my voice and my style and doesn't try to "fix" it, like some editors are prone to doing. The rest of it should go pretty quickly. That is, if the AC gets tuned up before it gets too terribly hot.
June 20, 2012
Frequently Asked Writer Questions
I think I'm mostly back to normal now. Instead of sleeping late, I woke up around my usual time, and I no longer feel like I'm in a moving tour bus. That means I have to get down to work. I've got a lot to do to get book 5 ready to go. I have to fine-tune the cover copy and review the copy edits. And then I have a couple of projects lined up after that (more details when they're ready). I should be pretty busy for the next few months, so it's good I had a little vacation. Not that it was a restful vacation, but it was definitely a change of pace, and that helps recharge the mind.
For this week's writing post, I've got a fun topic suggested by a friend: things people say to you when they find out you're a writer. Some of these apply whether you've just decided to try writing a book or you've hit the bestseller list, while others apply more to published authors.
I think the number one thing all writers, published or otherwise, hear from others is "I've always wanted to write a book." Whether or not this is irritating depends on the attitude in which it's said. Most people are just making conversation or expressing admiration that you're actually doing something they've only thought about doing. Then there are those who think writing must be easy, that anyone can do it because we all know how to write, and that churning out a book is a good get-rich-quick scheme. Or there are those who seem to think they've reinvented the wheel, that they know a way to write a book that will somehow be better and more successful than what those idiots doing it now are doing, and as soon as they find the time, they'll have instant success. And there are the "I don't really read much, but how hard can writing be? When I retire, I'll write a bestseller" people. They sometimes get my snarky "I think I'm going to take up brain surgery on weekends after reading a how-to book" response, though the best response to most of these people is to smile and nod and look for an escape route. If I'm feeling particularly nasty, I'll ask the next time I see them how the book's going, since most people who say they're going to write a book never even start, and most of the people who actually start never finish once they start and realize how difficult it really is.
The next most frequent thing said to writers is along the lines of "I have a great idea for a book. I could give it to you, you could write it, and then we'll split the profits." Most of the time, the great idea is some variation on their life story, where something has happened to them that they think would make a great book. Oddly, the people who really have had something book-worthy happen to them never say this. It's always the people who've had some minor personal trauma that's not that unique who think no one has ever experienced anything like that, so the world must know of their pain and triumph. That's another "smile and nod" situation, or else I say I have a backlog of ideas of my own to write, enough to keep me busy for years, and along the way I'll probably come up with even more ideas. I then encourage them to write their own story, because no one else can tell it like they can (that's me being diplomatic).
Another one both aspiring and published writers hear a lot is along the lines of "Am I in it?" or "Can I be in it?" I've found that a lot of the people in my life have a tendency to read my books with a fine-toothed comb and try to find themselves in them or figure out which characters respond to real-life people I know. Or else I get a lot of "You should base a character on me!" Sometimes when I meet people they'll ask if they're going to end up in a book. I even had a lawyer ask me that when I was on jury duty. I do occasionally steal traits from real people and put them in characters, and sometimes people close to me who know those real people will recognize those traits, but then I also get fan letters from people I've never met who claim they know people just like that. I generally tell people that I write fiction, and while I may use details and traits, I never just put a real person into a book because I create the characters I need to tell a story. If I'm feeling snarky, I may say something like, "Well, first you'd have to do something heroic." I forgot what I said to the lawyer, but it was along those lines. I may have asked if he had magic powers, and if not, he wouldn't make it into one of my books. As I recall, that was one of the rare times when I didn't get put on the jury.
Then once you have a book published, you get the questions like "Can I have a copy?" or "Can I have an autographed copy?" or "How can I get a copy?" Most of the time, that means, "Give me a free copy." Unless they come right out and demand that I give a copy, I play dumb and assume they're asking me how they can obtain a copy, and then I'll say they can buy one at a bookstore or online, and then I'd be happy to autograph it for them, or I'll tell them when I'm having a booksigning. I guess I'll have to think of a different answer now that I'm digitally publishing the next book. If they do ask outright for a free copy, it's usually with the (mistaken) idea that I have an unlimited supply of free copies. Then I go into lecture mode. I only get about 24 copies for free. I give some of those to family members (who also insist on buying copies to support me -- if my mom buys a copy of my book, you can too) or to people who helped me with research or who did beta reads. The rest I usually end up sending to my agent, who needs them to send to film agents or foreign rights agents to try to get additional contracts. In fact, I usually end up buying more books for that purpose. Any left over are used for promotional purposes -- contest giveaways, to go in conference gift baskets or goody bags, charity auctions -- or for contest entries. Most contests require from three to five copies, with additional copies required if the book makes the final round. And then I explain that I get paid a percentage of each copy sold. That's how I earn my living, and the publisher bases decisions of whether to publish more books on how well the other books have sold. Asking me for a free book is like me asking them to do their job for free. I've been known to chirp, "Sure, and you can do my taxes for me!" or whatever it is they do for a living. Guilt also works -- if I can't count on my friends to support me and buy my books, then who can I count on?
Most people aren't so rude as to ask specific questions about money, but there are veiled remarks hinting at it, usually with the assumption that all authors make JK Rowling/Stephen King/Nora Roberts money and live lifestyles of the rich and famous. Once I stop laughing, I may attempt a little education, or I may just remark that I make less money as an author than I made working at a PR agency, but I'm much happier and I'm willing to make sacrifices in order to live my dream.
For this week's writing post, I've got a fun topic suggested by a friend: things people say to you when they find out you're a writer. Some of these apply whether you've just decided to try writing a book or you've hit the bestseller list, while others apply more to published authors.
I think the number one thing all writers, published or otherwise, hear from others is "I've always wanted to write a book." Whether or not this is irritating depends on the attitude in which it's said. Most people are just making conversation or expressing admiration that you're actually doing something they've only thought about doing. Then there are those who think writing must be easy, that anyone can do it because we all know how to write, and that churning out a book is a good get-rich-quick scheme. Or there are those who seem to think they've reinvented the wheel, that they know a way to write a book that will somehow be better and more successful than what those idiots doing it now are doing, and as soon as they find the time, they'll have instant success. And there are the "I don't really read much, but how hard can writing be? When I retire, I'll write a bestseller" people. They sometimes get my snarky "I think I'm going to take up brain surgery on weekends after reading a how-to book" response, though the best response to most of these people is to smile and nod and look for an escape route. If I'm feeling particularly nasty, I'll ask the next time I see them how the book's going, since most people who say they're going to write a book never even start, and most of the people who actually start never finish once they start and realize how difficult it really is.
The next most frequent thing said to writers is along the lines of "I have a great idea for a book. I could give it to you, you could write it, and then we'll split the profits." Most of the time, the great idea is some variation on their life story, where something has happened to them that they think would make a great book. Oddly, the people who really have had something book-worthy happen to them never say this. It's always the people who've had some minor personal trauma that's not that unique who think no one has ever experienced anything like that, so the world must know of their pain and triumph. That's another "smile and nod" situation, or else I say I have a backlog of ideas of my own to write, enough to keep me busy for years, and along the way I'll probably come up with even more ideas. I then encourage them to write their own story, because no one else can tell it like they can (that's me being diplomatic).
Another one both aspiring and published writers hear a lot is along the lines of "Am I in it?" or "Can I be in it?" I've found that a lot of the people in my life have a tendency to read my books with a fine-toothed comb and try to find themselves in them or figure out which characters respond to real-life people I know. Or else I get a lot of "You should base a character on me!" Sometimes when I meet people they'll ask if they're going to end up in a book. I even had a lawyer ask me that when I was on jury duty. I do occasionally steal traits from real people and put them in characters, and sometimes people close to me who know those real people will recognize those traits, but then I also get fan letters from people I've never met who claim they know people just like that. I generally tell people that I write fiction, and while I may use details and traits, I never just put a real person into a book because I create the characters I need to tell a story. If I'm feeling snarky, I may say something like, "Well, first you'd have to do something heroic." I forgot what I said to the lawyer, but it was along those lines. I may have asked if he had magic powers, and if not, he wouldn't make it into one of my books. As I recall, that was one of the rare times when I didn't get put on the jury.
Then once you have a book published, you get the questions like "Can I have a copy?" or "Can I have an autographed copy?" or "How can I get a copy?" Most of the time, that means, "Give me a free copy." Unless they come right out and demand that I give a copy, I play dumb and assume they're asking me how they can obtain a copy, and then I'll say they can buy one at a bookstore or online, and then I'd be happy to autograph it for them, or I'll tell them when I'm having a booksigning. I guess I'll have to think of a different answer now that I'm digitally publishing the next book. If they do ask outright for a free copy, it's usually with the (mistaken) idea that I have an unlimited supply of free copies. Then I go into lecture mode. I only get about 24 copies for free. I give some of those to family members (who also insist on buying copies to support me -- if my mom buys a copy of my book, you can too) or to people who helped me with research or who did beta reads. The rest I usually end up sending to my agent, who needs them to send to film agents or foreign rights agents to try to get additional contracts. In fact, I usually end up buying more books for that purpose. Any left over are used for promotional purposes -- contest giveaways, to go in conference gift baskets or goody bags, charity auctions -- or for contest entries. Most contests require from three to five copies, with additional copies required if the book makes the final round. And then I explain that I get paid a percentage of each copy sold. That's how I earn my living, and the publisher bases decisions of whether to publish more books on how well the other books have sold. Asking me for a free book is like me asking them to do their job for free. I've been known to chirp, "Sure, and you can do my taxes for me!" or whatever it is they do for a living. Guilt also works -- if I can't count on my friends to support me and buy my books, then who can I count on?
Most people aren't so rude as to ask specific questions about money, but there are veiled remarks hinting at it, usually with the assumption that all authors make JK Rowling/Stephen King/Nora Roberts money and live lifestyles of the rich and famous. Once I stop laughing, I may attempt a little education, or I may just remark that I make less money as an author than I made working at a PR agency, but I'm much happier and I'm willing to make sacrifices in order to live my dream.
June 19, 2012
The Rest of the Adventure
I'm continuing to recover from the trip. I still feel a little like I'm in a moving bus, but I'm catching up on sleep. I think I was averaging about 5-6 hours a night all week, and normally you don't want to be anywhere near me if I haven't had at least 8 hours of sleep. I have no idea how I managed to be as chipper as I was all week. I am seeing that while I didn't have a togetherness freakout, the week of togetherness has totally drained me. I'll likely be pretty antisocial for a while, and I'd like to avoid being in a moving vehicle for a while. I'll need to get groceries tomorrow (since there are some things the Indian market doesn't have), and I have choir practice tomorrow night and ballet Thursday. Otherwise, I'll probably remain locked in my cave for about a week.
So, part two of my tale. Tuesday through Friday were our work days, with a bit of fun mixed on. We spent all day Tuesday at a ministry that serves the poor and homeless. On Tuesday nights, they set up under a bridge in downtown Nashville, serve a hot meal, have a worship service and then pass out groceries, toiletries and clothing. We spent the day in their warehouse sorting items to hand out that night, and then we were part of the army of volunteers that manages the service at night, then we sang as part of the service. The whole thing was a real eye-opener for me, and surely for these kids, who are pretty much growing up in a bubble. They live in a very affluent small suburban town, so they aren't likely to see much poverty. A lot of our kids were working with the children's church at the event, and they were awed by how happy these kids were with what little they had. My job was handing out the cutlery as the people went through the food line, so I had a little personal interaction with each of them, and that forced me to see them as individuals instead of as an amorphous mass of generic "homeless." I was singing with the youth choir as kind of a ringer so they'd have someone on the second soprano part, and I have to say that singing under a downtown overpass was one of my more interesting performing experiences. Although the service as a whole wasn't the sort I'd want to go to every week (I'm rather high church, and this was very Pentecostal), it was a very moving service. One of the coolest things was when they were singing old gospel songs and the lead singer gave the microphone to some of the attendees -- and then they turned out to be professional-quality singers. Or better than professional, since these days "professional" seems to mean good body, great hair, and then Autotune their voices to cover the fact that they can't carry a tune in a bucket. It was awesome to see the kind of people you might find shuffling along a downtown street singing with such soul and passion.
The rest of the week we rotated among three different job sites, with rest and/or fun in the afternoon. One day I went with the group that was tending to trees planted by an environmental group, which was nice because it was outdoors in a historic neighborhood with gorgeous old houses. I may have possibly gone into lecture mode to convince the girls I was working with that history was not boring, no matter how badly they teach it in school. Then we spent a morning at Soles 4 Souls, which distributes donated shoes. We sorted donations in their warehouse. They have a neat organization that gives the new and like-new shoes to people in need, especially after disasters, but then they have a microenterprise program where they give the shoes that need some repair to people in third-world countries so they can go into business for themselves repairing and then selling the shoes. Through that, they can earn enough money to support their families. We went away from that planning to hold a shoe drive at our church. It was kind of embarrassing realizing that the shoes I was wearing would have gone into the "recycle" pile, though that was actually a plan that I'll get to later. And then the other work site was at a food bank, where we sorted the food donated by grocery stores.
Wednesday night, the church where we were staying invited us to their potluck dinner, and we sang during the dinner. If you've never been to a potluck at a Southern church, you're missing out on some seriously good food. I think the last few events like that I've been to have been funeral meals, so it was nice to be at one for a happy occasion. Then we went to a park for some play time. That was another odd little eye opener for these kids, who didn't seem to have realized that they could have fun without a lot of expensive stuff, just maybe a Frisbee or a ball. One group was playing a game called Ninja, where they seemed to be moving into poses that would allow them to tag each other. I never quite figured out the rules, but I got some good photos because my name for the game was "Compromising Positions." Thursday night we went to a minor-league baseball game, where I was chastised by the mascot for checking e-mail on my phone. I'm not sure why I was singled out for the one time I looked at my phone when I was surrounded by texting teenagers, but it's hard to compose an e-mail to your agent when a person in a cat costume with a giant head is leaning over your shoulder.
Friday after we finished our work, we drove down to the Ocoee River, which is near Chattanooga. We stayed at the lodge for our whitewater rafting excursion, with two cabins of girls and one of boys. We were supposed to unload our stuff into the cabins and then get back on the bus and go to dinner. It turned out that all the adult women headed to the same cabin, with all of us trying to avoid the Crazies. The last adult then went over to the Crazies' cabin, but they rebelled. They decided they wanted me, so they picked up her stuff, carried it to the other cabin with many war whoops and while chanting my name, picked up my stuff and carried it back to their cabin. Except they got the wrong stuff, so back they went to get my stuff, still whooping and chanting. Unfortunately, I wasn't there to see this, but it must have been a sight with these whooping, chanting girls trooping back and forth with suitcases and sleeping bags. I was just informed later that I'd been kidnapped. After dinner when we were getting ready for bed, they discovered that the cabin was rather infested with spiderwebs, and then the screaming started. One of the girls was seriously arachnophobic and had a bit of a meltdown because there were live spiders in those webs. So I, as the resident adult, got to go around the room with a packet of wipes and clean up all the spiderwebs and kill the spiders. If I hadn't already been popular with them (for reasons I don't really understand), that seemed to make me the queen of the Crazies. Once I finally convinced all of them that it was okay to get in bed, there was some chattering for a while, and then I put in my earplugs and pulled my sleeping bag up over my head. They chattered and giggled for a while longer, and then I heard, "Shhh, Shanna's trying to sleep." And then a miracle occurred: they went totally silent for perhaps the first time in the entire trip.
The next day was rafting, and it was one of the most awesome things I've ever done. You're in groups of six with a guide on rubber rafts going down the rapids, and part of the river was the whitewater events venue for the Atlanta Olympics, so there are a lot of class 4 and class 5 rapids (here are some photos and technical descriptions). It was exhilarating and fun and maybe a bit scary. On the big rapids, I'd have about half a second of scream before it turned into a laugh of sheer glee. I don't like roller coasters or amusement parks, but this was a thrill. We did the upper part of the river, then stopped for a lunch that had been set up on the riverbank, then did the middle part of the river, which was a little less intense. The scenery was gorgeous, with tree-covered mountains to either side of the water, and in places, there was no sign of human civilization. Our guide had a sticker on his helmet that said "I hear banjo music, paddle faster!" I did get the cute guide, according to the Crazies. Every time one of their boats got near mine, they started shouting to me, chanting my name, trying to splash me with a paddle, etc. I would have felt very popular, except I knew they were mostly showing off so my guide would notice them. I ended up with an interesting sunburn from that day. I'd worn capri pants, so I didn't get burned on the tops of my thighs, and I had on a long-sleeved shirt, so my arms didn't burn, but the backs of my hands burned. I'd put on sunblock that was supposedly waterproof, but I guess it wasn't whitewater-proof, and all the pounding from the water washed it off. There wasn't really a chance to reapply while paddling down a river, and I didn't have a way to carry extra. The burn fits the way I was holding my paddle when we weren't actively rowing. On one hand, it's just the back of my hand, from knuckles to wristbone. On the other, where I was holding the t-bar at the end of the paddle, it's my thumb and that side of my hand. Because of the sharp cut-off where my shirt ended, it looks like I'm wearing red gloves.
After we got into dry clothes (and I threw away my ratty wet shoes -- see, it was a plan to wear shoes I could toss after rafting), we then drove to Vicksburg, Mississippi, where we spent the night on the floor in a church gym. We served as the choir for that church's service Sunday morning, and then we drove back home. Those two 8-hour driving days are probably why I still feel like I'm in a moving bus.
I must say that I absolutely loved the area around Chattanooga. I once did one of those Internet quizzes that was supposed to help you find the ideal place for you to live, based on the kind of house you want, what you like to do, what weather you like, etc., and my result was that my ideal place to live would be Chattanooga. I didn't get to see much of the city because the freeway doesn't tend to go through the nicer areas, but I did like the nearby terrain, and I could totally get into that whitewater stuff, plus my guide said there was good hiking. I'm not going to pull up my stakes and head there, but I may have to go back without the 35 teenagers. There's a science fiction convention held there, and maybe I can get onto programming next year and possibly convince some friends to come along and make it a road trip so I'll have someone to hike with.
So, part two of my tale. Tuesday through Friday were our work days, with a bit of fun mixed on. We spent all day Tuesday at a ministry that serves the poor and homeless. On Tuesday nights, they set up under a bridge in downtown Nashville, serve a hot meal, have a worship service and then pass out groceries, toiletries and clothing. We spent the day in their warehouse sorting items to hand out that night, and then we were part of the army of volunteers that manages the service at night, then we sang as part of the service. The whole thing was a real eye-opener for me, and surely for these kids, who are pretty much growing up in a bubble. They live in a very affluent small suburban town, so they aren't likely to see much poverty. A lot of our kids were working with the children's church at the event, and they were awed by how happy these kids were with what little they had. My job was handing out the cutlery as the people went through the food line, so I had a little personal interaction with each of them, and that forced me to see them as individuals instead of as an amorphous mass of generic "homeless." I was singing with the youth choir as kind of a ringer so they'd have someone on the second soprano part, and I have to say that singing under a downtown overpass was one of my more interesting performing experiences. Although the service as a whole wasn't the sort I'd want to go to every week (I'm rather high church, and this was very Pentecostal), it was a very moving service. One of the coolest things was when they were singing old gospel songs and the lead singer gave the microphone to some of the attendees -- and then they turned out to be professional-quality singers. Or better than professional, since these days "professional" seems to mean good body, great hair, and then Autotune their voices to cover the fact that they can't carry a tune in a bucket. It was awesome to see the kind of people you might find shuffling along a downtown street singing with such soul and passion.
The rest of the week we rotated among three different job sites, with rest and/or fun in the afternoon. One day I went with the group that was tending to trees planted by an environmental group, which was nice because it was outdoors in a historic neighborhood with gorgeous old houses. I may have possibly gone into lecture mode to convince the girls I was working with that history was not boring, no matter how badly they teach it in school. Then we spent a morning at Soles 4 Souls, which distributes donated shoes. We sorted donations in their warehouse. They have a neat organization that gives the new and like-new shoes to people in need, especially after disasters, but then they have a microenterprise program where they give the shoes that need some repair to people in third-world countries so they can go into business for themselves repairing and then selling the shoes. Through that, they can earn enough money to support their families. We went away from that planning to hold a shoe drive at our church. It was kind of embarrassing realizing that the shoes I was wearing would have gone into the "recycle" pile, though that was actually a plan that I'll get to later. And then the other work site was at a food bank, where we sorted the food donated by grocery stores.
Wednesday night, the church where we were staying invited us to their potluck dinner, and we sang during the dinner. If you've never been to a potluck at a Southern church, you're missing out on some seriously good food. I think the last few events like that I've been to have been funeral meals, so it was nice to be at one for a happy occasion. Then we went to a park for some play time. That was another odd little eye opener for these kids, who didn't seem to have realized that they could have fun without a lot of expensive stuff, just maybe a Frisbee or a ball. One group was playing a game called Ninja, where they seemed to be moving into poses that would allow them to tag each other. I never quite figured out the rules, but I got some good photos because my name for the game was "Compromising Positions." Thursday night we went to a minor-league baseball game, where I was chastised by the mascot for checking e-mail on my phone. I'm not sure why I was singled out for the one time I looked at my phone when I was surrounded by texting teenagers, but it's hard to compose an e-mail to your agent when a person in a cat costume with a giant head is leaning over your shoulder.
Friday after we finished our work, we drove down to the Ocoee River, which is near Chattanooga. We stayed at the lodge for our whitewater rafting excursion, with two cabins of girls and one of boys. We were supposed to unload our stuff into the cabins and then get back on the bus and go to dinner. It turned out that all the adult women headed to the same cabin, with all of us trying to avoid the Crazies. The last adult then went over to the Crazies' cabin, but they rebelled. They decided they wanted me, so they picked up her stuff, carried it to the other cabin with many war whoops and while chanting my name, picked up my stuff and carried it back to their cabin. Except they got the wrong stuff, so back they went to get my stuff, still whooping and chanting. Unfortunately, I wasn't there to see this, but it must have been a sight with these whooping, chanting girls trooping back and forth with suitcases and sleeping bags. I was just informed later that I'd been kidnapped. After dinner when we were getting ready for bed, they discovered that the cabin was rather infested with spiderwebs, and then the screaming started. One of the girls was seriously arachnophobic and had a bit of a meltdown because there were live spiders in those webs. So I, as the resident adult, got to go around the room with a packet of wipes and clean up all the spiderwebs and kill the spiders. If I hadn't already been popular with them (for reasons I don't really understand), that seemed to make me the queen of the Crazies. Once I finally convinced all of them that it was okay to get in bed, there was some chattering for a while, and then I put in my earplugs and pulled my sleeping bag up over my head. They chattered and giggled for a while longer, and then I heard, "Shhh, Shanna's trying to sleep." And then a miracle occurred: they went totally silent for perhaps the first time in the entire trip.
The next day was rafting, and it was one of the most awesome things I've ever done. You're in groups of six with a guide on rubber rafts going down the rapids, and part of the river was the whitewater events venue for the Atlanta Olympics, so there are a lot of class 4 and class 5 rapids (here are some photos and technical descriptions). It was exhilarating and fun and maybe a bit scary. On the big rapids, I'd have about half a second of scream before it turned into a laugh of sheer glee. I don't like roller coasters or amusement parks, but this was a thrill. We did the upper part of the river, then stopped for a lunch that had been set up on the riverbank, then did the middle part of the river, which was a little less intense. The scenery was gorgeous, with tree-covered mountains to either side of the water, and in places, there was no sign of human civilization. Our guide had a sticker on his helmet that said "I hear banjo music, paddle faster!" I did get the cute guide, according to the Crazies. Every time one of their boats got near mine, they started shouting to me, chanting my name, trying to splash me with a paddle, etc. I would have felt very popular, except I knew they were mostly showing off so my guide would notice them. I ended up with an interesting sunburn from that day. I'd worn capri pants, so I didn't get burned on the tops of my thighs, and I had on a long-sleeved shirt, so my arms didn't burn, but the backs of my hands burned. I'd put on sunblock that was supposedly waterproof, but I guess it wasn't whitewater-proof, and all the pounding from the water washed it off. There wasn't really a chance to reapply while paddling down a river, and I didn't have a way to carry extra. The burn fits the way I was holding my paddle when we weren't actively rowing. On one hand, it's just the back of my hand, from knuckles to wristbone. On the other, where I was holding the t-bar at the end of the paddle, it's my thumb and that side of my hand. Because of the sharp cut-off where my shirt ended, it looks like I'm wearing red gloves.
After we got into dry clothes (and I threw away my ratty wet shoes -- see, it was a plan to wear shoes I could toss after rafting), we then drove to Vicksburg, Mississippi, where we spent the night on the floor in a church gym. We served as the choir for that church's service Sunday morning, and then we drove back home. Those two 8-hour driving days are probably why I still feel like I'm in a moving bus.
I must say that I absolutely loved the area around Chattanooga. I once did one of those Internet quizzes that was supposed to help you find the ideal place for you to live, based on the kind of house you want, what you like to do, what weather you like, etc., and my result was that my ideal place to live would be Chattanooga. I didn't get to see much of the city because the freeway doesn't tend to go through the nicer areas, but I did like the nearby terrain, and I could totally get into that whitewater stuff, plus my guide said there was good hiking. I'm not going to pull up my stakes and head there, but I may have to go back without the 35 teenagers. There's a science fiction convention held there, and maybe I can get onto programming next year and possibly convince some friends to come along and make it a road trip so I'll have someone to hike with.
June 18, 2012
The Traveler Returns
I have survived my week of traveling with the teenagers. I may have to break this travelogue up into multiple posts, so look forward to a week of tales from the trip (however, I do need a Wednesday writing post, so I need questions to answer, as my brain is not currently capable of coming up with something by itself).
To set the stage, we had a motor coach type tour bus with a charmingly surly driver. There were 35 kids, ranging from just completed sixth grade to just graduated high school, with the exception of three college kids who were sort of "camp counselors" who helped with supervision and making things work but who weren't officially chaperones. And there there five adults: the youth director, the choir director, two moms with kids on the trip, and me, the single, childless person who was still the third-oldest person on the trip, after the bus driver and one of the moms. Twenty of the kids were girls, and most of them seemed to be in the high school freshman range. The thing I was most worried about, my extreme need for solitude, turned out to not be as big a problem in a large group as it is in smaller groups. When I travel with one or two other people, I tend to freak out from the constant togetherness, but in a group this size, I can be alone within the group because the others aren't entirely dependent on me for company. On the bus, the adults had seats to themselves instead of a seatmate, and the college students sat in the back with the kids, with the adults at the front providing a buffer zone for the driver. That meant I was mostly alone during the long bus rides. I also turned into an early riser during this trip, so I would get up, make a cup of tea (or, as I called it, Homicide Prevention Juice) and sit quietly for a while in the morning. So, while I am now thoroughly enjoying the quiet in my house, I never reached a freakout point where I couldn't deal with people anymore. Physically, I mostly just have an interesting sunburn (story to come), a few broken nails and a collection of aches and bruises.
Day one involved a bus ride from just northwest of Dallas, Texas, to Memphis. We left right after church on Sunday and arrived in Memphis at about 9 that night. The bus had Wi-Fi, so that kept the kids glued to their iPhones. It also had a DVD player, and I now know why I get along so well with our new choir director. He chose the "in-flight" movies, and we watched Finding Nemo, Monsters vs. Aliens and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (part 1 -- part 2 came the next day). I didn't realize it until after the movie ended, but I was snacking on goldfish crackers while watching Finding Nemo, which is pretty warped. We slept on the floor in a church gym that night, and that was when I realized that I was way outclassed. When they said to bring a sleeping bag and air mattress, I brought the sleeping bag and air mattress I had from a camping trip my family took in junior high. Air mattress technology has improved since then. A lot of these kids brought Aerobeds -- the kind that are nearly the height of a normal bed, and some of them were even double bed-sized. There was one guy who had a pool float, but that turned out to be a tradition. Apparently, when he first went on one of these trips, his mom said she got an air mattress for him, and he didn't realize until the morning they were leaving that what she had bought was a pool float, with the packaging calling it a pool float/air mattress. Since then, he's always brought that one as a kind of joke and out of sheer stubbornness. If I do this sort of thing again, I may have to invest in a better air mattress because sleeping was my one problem. My best sleeping position is rather sprawled out, and you can't do that in a sleeping bag on a narrow air mattress. That sprawling turns out to be what keeps my hips from hurting, as I guess I'm stretching my hip flexor muscles in my sleep. Without doing that, I'm in serious pain. Sleeping in my own bed last night was sheer bliss, and I already hurt a lot less.
Anyway, we got up the next morning and headed to downtown Memphis to tour the Gibson guitar factory. That was really interesting, seeing all the steps that go into making a guitar. There's some automation, but most of it is done by hand, and a lot of that is freehand. After a walk down Beale Street and some lunch, we headed to Graceland. There, I started to feel old. These kids were actually interested and thought Elvis was pretty cool, but they considered all of it to be ancient history. I was pretty young when Elvis died, but I do remember his death, and I remember some of the events in the later part of his life. Graceland itself is interesting in that by today's standards, it really isn't what you expect of the home of one of the biggest rock stars in the world. The home isn't that big, probably smaller than a lot of the suburban McMansions around here (and probably smaller than where some of these kids live). The decor is extremely tacky, but the current decor is from the early 70s, so it was relatively tasteful for that era. It just looks tacky now. It's not what I'd consider all that self-indulgent, especially not compared to the way a lot of today's stars live. I loved the house itself and the grounds, but I was itching to redecorate it. The true tackiness, however, didn't come from anything Elvis himself did. It's the way the place has been turned into a kind of overcommercialized Disneyland/shrine. Once we finally got all the kids out of the shopping mall of gift shops and on the bus, we headed to Nashville.
Then we had the one part of the trip where I fully felt the weight of the "responsible adult" role. We ran into some nasty weather -- a really obvious wall cloud heading for us -- and started to get nervous about being in a bus full of kids after having seen the 18-wheelers tossed around by a tornado a couple of months ago. The driver was fighting the wheel against crosswinds. The moms had the radar up on their iPads to track the storm, and we made the kids put on their seatbelts. After a brief conference among the adults and the driver, we pulled up at the next truck stop we found -- which amounted to a small metal building with a diner inside and a few gas pumps outside. We waited out the worst of it with the bus parked with its tail into the wind, and we were ready to get the kids off the bus and into the building if we needed to. When the obvious line of the storm had passed and the wind settled down a bit, we got back on the road and watched more Harry Potter, with a few strategically timed lightning strikes to enhance the movie's special effects.
I got a nice moment of solitude when we stopped for dinner at a strip of restaurants near Vanderbilt University, and I headed off to a Panera to eat in peace, until the Crazies showed up, though at least they didn't try to join me. I should explain the Crazies, as the rest of us dubbed them (I got credit for it, but I don't recall being the one to coin the term). This was a group of girls, most of them going into their freshman or sophomore years, who are all best buddies. It's the kind of group that made (or possibly bought) tie-dyed shirts to wear on the trip so they'd all match, and they even planned their outfits so they'd all wear the same colors every day. And they never shut up, ever, until near the end of the trip (full story later). They giggled and jabbered non-stop, and they were extremely boy crazy. Oddly, they didn't seem to be interested in any of our boys, which made chaperoning easier. I think they're mostly at the stage where they love the idea of boys, so they have celebrity crushes and swoon over boys they can't expect to have relationships with, like boys from the church group from another state, minor league ballplayers or river rafting guides, but in spite of all their talk about wanting boyfriends, they don't actually want to deal with a real boy right now. They arrived as I was finishing my dinner (I have no idea where they were before), then I took a walk around the Vanderbilt campus before we got back on the bus.
For the rest of the week, until Friday, we stayed at a church in Nashville where they had a kind of bunkhouse their scout troops use. It had bunk beds and showers, and the girls stayed there. The boys slept on the floor in the youth Sunday school rooms. There were three rooms in the bunkhouse, with two smaller rooms and one large common room the other rooms opened from. The adults stayed in the outer room and we were able to lock the Crazies in their own room. Even so, with the door shut and with my ear plugs in, I could hear their conversations. There were a lot of "y'all shut up and sleep!" moments, and we eventually got them down to a dull roar, but I still don't think they really shut up and slept the whole week.
The next day, we got down to the work part of the trip. I think I'll address that tomorrow, as I still feel like I'm riding in a bus and am barely keeping my eyes open. I have a lot of work to get done this week, but it's work best done in full consciousness, so I should probably take today off to recover. I've walked to the Indian market for tea and some fresh vegetables (after a week of eating food that appeals to teens, I'm craving green stuff) and now it's time for a nap.
To set the stage, we had a motor coach type tour bus with a charmingly surly driver. There were 35 kids, ranging from just completed sixth grade to just graduated high school, with the exception of three college kids who were sort of "camp counselors" who helped with supervision and making things work but who weren't officially chaperones. And there there five adults: the youth director, the choir director, two moms with kids on the trip, and me, the single, childless person who was still the third-oldest person on the trip, after the bus driver and one of the moms. Twenty of the kids were girls, and most of them seemed to be in the high school freshman range. The thing I was most worried about, my extreme need for solitude, turned out to not be as big a problem in a large group as it is in smaller groups. When I travel with one or two other people, I tend to freak out from the constant togetherness, but in a group this size, I can be alone within the group because the others aren't entirely dependent on me for company. On the bus, the adults had seats to themselves instead of a seatmate, and the college students sat in the back with the kids, with the adults at the front providing a buffer zone for the driver. That meant I was mostly alone during the long bus rides. I also turned into an early riser during this trip, so I would get up, make a cup of tea (or, as I called it, Homicide Prevention Juice) and sit quietly for a while in the morning. So, while I am now thoroughly enjoying the quiet in my house, I never reached a freakout point where I couldn't deal with people anymore. Physically, I mostly just have an interesting sunburn (story to come), a few broken nails and a collection of aches and bruises.
Day one involved a bus ride from just northwest of Dallas, Texas, to Memphis. We left right after church on Sunday and arrived in Memphis at about 9 that night. The bus had Wi-Fi, so that kept the kids glued to their iPhones. It also had a DVD player, and I now know why I get along so well with our new choir director. He chose the "in-flight" movies, and we watched Finding Nemo, Monsters vs. Aliens and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (part 1 -- part 2 came the next day). I didn't realize it until after the movie ended, but I was snacking on goldfish crackers while watching Finding Nemo, which is pretty warped. We slept on the floor in a church gym that night, and that was when I realized that I was way outclassed. When they said to bring a sleeping bag and air mattress, I brought the sleeping bag and air mattress I had from a camping trip my family took in junior high. Air mattress technology has improved since then. A lot of these kids brought Aerobeds -- the kind that are nearly the height of a normal bed, and some of them were even double bed-sized. There was one guy who had a pool float, but that turned out to be a tradition. Apparently, when he first went on one of these trips, his mom said she got an air mattress for him, and he didn't realize until the morning they were leaving that what she had bought was a pool float, with the packaging calling it a pool float/air mattress. Since then, he's always brought that one as a kind of joke and out of sheer stubbornness. If I do this sort of thing again, I may have to invest in a better air mattress because sleeping was my one problem. My best sleeping position is rather sprawled out, and you can't do that in a sleeping bag on a narrow air mattress. That sprawling turns out to be what keeps my hips from hurting, as I guess I'm stretching my hip flexor muscles in my sleep. Without doing that, I'm in serious pain. Sleeping in my own bed last night was sheer bliss, and I already hurt a lot less.
Anyway, we got up the next morning and headed to downtown Memphis to tour the Gibson guitar factory. That was really interesting, seeing all the steps that go into making a guitar. There's some automation, but most of it is done by hand, and a lot of that is freehand. After a walk down Beale Street and some lunch, we headed to Graceland. There, I started to feel old. These kids were actually interested and thought Elvis was pretty cool, but they considered all of it to be ancient history. I was pretty young when Elvis died, but I do remember his death, and I remember some of the events in the later part of his life. Graceland itself is interesting in that by today's standards, it really isn't what you expect of the home of one of the biggest rock stars in the world. The home isn't that big, probably smaller than a lot of the suburban McMansions around here (and probably smaller than where some of these kids live). The decor is extremely tacky, but the current decor is from the early 70s, so it was relatively tasteful for that era. It just looks tacky now. It's not what I'd consider all that self-indulgent, especially not compared to the way a lot of today's stars live. I loved the house itself and the grounds, but I was itching to redecorate it. The true tackiness, however, didn't come from anything Elvis himself did. It's the way the place has been turned into a kind of overcommercialized Disneyland/shrine. Once we finally got all the kids out of the shopping mall of gift shops and on the bus, we headed to Nashville.
Then we had the one part of the trip where I fully felt the weight of the "responsible adult" role. We ran into some nasty weather -- a really obvious wall cloud heading for us -- and started to get nervous about being in a bus full of kids after having seen the 18-wheelers tossed around by a tornado a couple of months ago. The driver was fighting the wheel against crosswinds. The moms had the radar up on their iPads to track the storm, and we made the kids put on their seatbelts. After a brief conference among the adults and the driver, we pulled up at the next truck stop we found -- which amounted to a small metal building with a diner inside and a few gas pumps outside. We waited out the worst of it with the bus parked with its tail into the wind, and we were ready to get the kids off the bus and into the building if we needed to. When the obvious line of the storm had passed and the wind settled down a bit, we got back on the road and watched more Harry Potter, with a few strategically timed lightning strikes to enhance the movie's special effects.
I got a nice moment of solitude when we stopped for dinner at a strip of restaurants near Vanderbilt University, and I headed off to a Panera to eat in peace, until the Crazies showed up, though at least they didn't try to join me. I should explain the Crazies, as the rest of us dubbed them (I got credit for it, but I don't recall being the one to coin the term). This was a group of girls, most of them going into their freshman or sophomore years, who are all best buddies. It's the kind of group that made (or possibly bought) tie-dyed shirts to wear on the trip so they'd all match, and they even planned their outfits so they'd all wear the same colors every day. And they never shut up, ever, until near the end of the trip (full story later). They giggled and jabbered non-stop, and they were extremely boy crazy. Oddly, they didn't seem to be interested in any of our boys, which made chaperoning easier. I think they're mostly at the stage where they love the idea of boys, so they have celebrity crushes and swoon over boys they can't expect to have relationships with, like boys from the church group from another state, minor league ballplayers or river rafting guides, but in spite of all their talk about wanting boyfriends, they don't actually want to deal with a real boy right now. They arrived as I was finishing my dinner (I have no idea where they were before), then I took a walk around the Vanderbilt campus before we got back on the bus.
For the rest of the week, until Friday, we stayed at a church in Nashville where they had a kind of bunkhouse their scout troops use. It had bunk beds and showers, and the girls stayed there. The boys slept on the floor in the youth Sunday school rooms. There were three rooms in the bunkhouse, with two smaller rooms and one large common room the other rooms opened from. The adults stayed in the outer room and we were able to lock the Crazies in their own room. Even so, with the door shut and with my ear plugs in, I could hear their conversations. There were a lot of "y'all shut up and sleep!" moments, and we eventually got them down to a dull roar, but I still don't think they really shut up and slept the whole week.
The next day, we got down to the work part of the trip. I think I'll address that tomorrow, as I still feel like I'm riding in a bus and am barely keeping my eyes open. I have a lot of work to get done this week, but it's work best done in full consciousness, so I should probably take today off to recover. I've walked to the Indian market for tea and some fresh vegetables (after a week of eating food that appeals to teens, I'm craving green stuff) and now it's time for a nap.
June 8, 2012
Countdown to Adventure! (or insanity)
Although I still have a long list of stuff to get done, this morning I had a crucial errand. It was the annual Friends of the Library book sale, and while I resisted last year, I couldn't stop myself from going this year. It is a good source for reference books. I was pretty restrained, mostly because there wasn't adequate parking and I wasn't entirely certain just how legal the parking space I found was, so I just did a quick skim. I found a good batch of folklore and mythology books, one fantasy paperback and a couple of chick lit books (since I feel a chick lit binge coming on later this summer, and used book sales are about the only way to find it these days). My big score was a keeper copy of a book I've been checking out of the library repeatedly -- and knowing my library, the copy I bought may have been the one I've been checking out, so I'd have lost "my" copy if I hadn't bought it. It sort of diminishes my ability to use the library as my book warehouse to save my own shelf space if they persist in selling off the books they're keeping for me.
And now I have to settle down to the serious work of preparing for next week's adventure. I've put a lot of work into developing an irrigation system for my plants. I suppose I could have just taken them over to my green-thumbed neighbor who's already watching my house for me and asked if she'd mind watering them while I'm gone, but I do have that stubbornly independent streak. Why do something as simple as ask for help when I can research and rig an elaborate system? I'm going with the simplest for now, which involves using strips of cloth to wick water from a reservoir into the soil, but I've seen some slightly more elaborate options that I may have to try someday. I will have to decide whether to leave the outside plants outside. Normally, they don't dry out as quickly when they're inside, but there's a chance of rain in the forecast, which would provide natural irrigation. I guess I'll see how the seven-day forecast looks on Saturday evening.
The other thing I'm worried about with this trip is my capacity for being around people. I'm rather solitary by nature, an extreme introvert in the sense of needing alone time to recharge the batteries. I've lived alone for more than twenty years (and even in college I had mostly absentee roommates), and I've worked at home for about twelve years, since even before I lost my last "real" job I was telecommuting. I spend maybe four hours a week around other people unless there's some extra social occasion. Even spending an afternoon with friends will leave me so drained that I have to go to bed early. And now I'm going to be spending an entire week with almost zero alone time, not even at night, since we have dorm-style accommodations. There may be some scraps of go-to-separate-corners quiet time, but the point of the trip is togetherness, and my reason for being there is to provide adult supervision, so I likely won't have too many chances to shut myself off in a room by myself and recharge. High-energy people and extroverts (who get energy from being around other people) are particularly draining, and I'll be dealing with teenagers. I'm honestly not sure how I'll react to it. I can only sustain my perky public mode for so long. By the end of the week, they may need to bring in a Grimm to deal with me when the beast within me comes out, or we'll find out I'm Troubled when the power of my brain demolishes things in a way that creates a private room for me. When being trapped in a cave-in sounds good because it means you're alone and no one else can reach you, you may have problems.
So, blogging silence for the next week while I have a Tennessee adventure. I hope I live to tell the tale.
And now I have to settle down to the serious work of preparing for next week's adventure. I've put a lot of work into developing an irrigation system for my plants. I suppose I could have just taken them over to my green-thumbed neighbor who's already watching my house for me and asked if she'd mind watering them while I'm gone, but I do have that stubbornly independent streak. Why do something as simple as ask for help when I can research and rig an elaborate system? I'm going with the simplest for now, which involves using strips of cloth to wick water from a reservoir into the soil, but I've seen some slightly more elaborate options that I may have to try someday. I will have to decide whether to leave the outside plants outside. Normally, they don't dry out as quickly when they're inside, but there's a chance of rain in the forecast, which would provide natural irrigation. I guess I'll see how the seven-day forecast looks on Saturday evening.
The other thing I'm worried about with this trip is my capacity for being around people. I'm rather solitary by nature, an extreme introvert in the sense of needing alone time to recharge the batteries. I've lived alone for more than twenty years (and even in college I had mostly absentee roommates), and I've worked at home for about twelve years, since even before I lost my last "real" job I was telecommuting. I spend maybe four hours a week around other people unless there's some extra social occasion. Even spending an afternoon with friends will leave me so drained that I have to go to bed early. And now I'm going to be spending an entire week with almost zero alone time, not even at night, since we have dorm-style accommodations. There may be some scraps of go-to-separate-corners quiet time, but the point of the trip is togetherness, and my reason for being there is to provide adult supervision, so I likely won't have too many chances to shut myself off in a room by myself and recharge. High-energy people and extroverts (who get energy from being around other people) are particularly draining, and I'll be dealing with teenagers. I'm honestly not sure how I'll react to it. I can only sustain my perky public mode for so long. By the end of the week, they may need to bring in a Grimm to deal with me when the beast within me comes out, or we'll find out I'm Troubled when the power of my brain demolishes things in a way that creates a private room for me. When being trapped in a cave-in sounds good because it means you're alone and no one else can reach you, you may have problems.
So, blogging silence for the next week while I have a Tennessee adventure. I hope I live to tell the tale.
June 7, 2012
Remembering Ray Bradbury
I've had a terribly unproductive week so far. I have a lot of stuff to get done, but I had a crippling case of the don't wannas. I made up for it today, though. I just did a massive Target excursion to get everything I'll need for next week's trip, and I've already taken care of some business stuff. Now I just need to catch up on housework, do a lot of laundry, do some baking and pack.
Of course, wouldn't you know it, right before I leave town for a week, I get word on a few projects so that I now have work stuff to do. I got copy edits back on book 5, and it's looking like I'll have to write a book based on a proposal I did earlier this year (more details later on that when it becomes official). The copy edits will wait until I'm home, and I can spend transit time next week (since there will be a lot of bus time) doing some brainstorming and outlining so I can have the book ready to go in my head once I get home. June and July will be writing time for me.
Yesterday's sad news was the death of Ray Bradbury. His work was a big part of my high school years. One of my main activities in school was the speech club, and the speech teacher insisted that I do prose interpretation -- where you read short stories or novel excerpts out loud. At the time, I planned to be either a lawyer (freshman year) or a serious journalist (sophomore year and later) and I wanted to do debate or extemporaneous speaking (where they give you a current events topic and you have a short amount of time to come up with a speech on it). But the teacher was probably right because when I finally got my way and he let me enter in extemporaneous speaking, I didn't like it and didn't do well, while I was rather successful in prose interpretation. To do the prose event, you had to find short stories to read, and that's where I discovered Ray Bradbury, since he wrote brilliant short stories that lent themselves to dramatic interpretation and that usually had a huge emotional impact, so the stories themselves were enough to leave an audience floored if you read them even somewhat competently (without stumbling over the words and without a monotone).
My signature piece that won me a lot of medals and ribbons was "All Summer in a Day," which is about a colony on Venus, where the sun only comes out for one day every seven years. Most of the kids in the colony have no idea what the sun is because they don't remember seeing it, but one girl has moved there recently and knows what she's missing. The other kids lock her in a closet on the summer day, and then only after they see the sun for themselves do they realize what a cruel prank it was. I still have the opening memorized: "It had been raining for seven years." (and I can go on a bit from there). All the kids gave me a chance to do different voices for the characters, and the ending is goosebump inducing. I loved reading that story because I could feel the audience in the palm of my hand.
I didn't realize it at the time, but that activity is probably the one thing I did in high school that has helped prepare me for my current career, since I think all those prose interpretation contests are why I do a better-than-average job of doing author readings.
I also successfully campaigned for us to read Fahrenheit 451 as our novel for American literature in my junior year, thus saving my class from The Scarlet Letter. I loved it, but I don't know if my classmates appreciated the favor I'd done them.
Now I want to find those old short story books and re-read some favorites. I haven't even thought of those stories in years.
Of course, wouldn't you know it, right before I leave town for a week, I get word on a few projects so that I now have work stuff to do. I got copy edits back on book 5, and it's looking like I'll have to write a book based on a proposal I did earlier this year (more details later on that when it becomes official). The copy edits will wait until I'm home, and I can spend transit time next week (since there will be a lot of bus time) doing some brainstorming and outlining so I can have the book ready to go in my head once I get home. June and July will be writing time for me.
Yesterday's sad news was the death of Ray Bradbury. His work was a big part of my high school years. One of my main activities in school was the speech club, and the speech teacher insisted that I do prose interpretation -- where you read short stories or novel excerpts out loud. At the time, I planned to be either a lawyer (freshman year) or a serious journalist (sophomore year and later) and I wanted to do debate or extemporaneous speaking (where they give you a current events topic and you have a short amount of time to come up with a speech on it). But the teacher was probably right because when I finally got my way and he let me enter in extemporaneous speaking, I didn't like it and didn't do well, while I was rather successful in prose interpretation. To do the prose event, you had to find short stories to read, and that's where I discovered Ray Bradbury, since he wrote brilliant short stories that lent themselves to dramatic interpretation and that usually had a huge emotional impact, so the stories themselves were enough to leave an audience floored if you read them even somewhat competently (without stumbling over the words and without a monotone).
My signature piece that won me a lot of medals and ribbons was "All Summer in a Day," which is about a colony on Venus, where the sun only comes out for one day every seven years. Most of the kids in the colony have no idea what the sun is because they don't remember seeing it, but one girl has moved there recently and knows what she's missing. The other kids lock her in a closet on the summer day, and then only after they see the sun for themselves do they realize what a cruel prank it was. I still have the opening memorized: "It had been raining for seven years." (and I can go on a bit from there). All the kids gave me a chance to do different voices for the characters, and the ending is goosebump inducing. I loved reading that story because I could feel the audience in the palm of my hand.
I didn't realize it at the time, but that activity is probably the one thing I did in high school that has helped prepare me for my current career, since I think all those prose interpretation contests are why I do a better-than-average job of doing author readings.
I also successfully campaigned for us to read Fahrenheit 451 as our novel for American literature in my junior year, thus saving my class from The Scarlet Letter. I loved it, but I don't know if my classmates appreciated the favor I'd done them.
Now I want to find those old short story books and re-read some favorites. I haven't even thought of those stories in years.
June 6, 2012
Coming up with Titles
I stayed up way too late last night watching the end of the Transit of Venus on NASA TV online. By the end, the scientists were getting a bit punchy, and they sounded like a gathering of my friends. The Star Wars and Star Trek references were flying furiously. And then I learned that being in an astronomical mindset and not having my glasses on can be dangerous. I was leaving my office, glanced out the office window and thought the moon looked particularly bright and close, almost like I could touch it. And then I realized what I was looking at was the streetlamp on the corner behind my house. Not close enough to touch, but definitely not as far away as the moon. Without my glasses, it was hard to tell.
I skipped the writing post last week because I was in transit that day, and this should get me on a schedule that keeps me from having to skip again due to travel until maybe the end of the summer.
I had a reader question about how to come up with titles. That's a difficult subject for a how-to piece because titles ultimately aren't something the author controls. Odds are, the publisher will change the title of your book for publication. They may want something more marketable that has key words their marketing department says will sell better. They may have another book with a similar title on the schedule, or they may know of another book from another publisher with a similar title. On the other hand, having a good title on your manuscript can really help in the submission process if it makes agents or editors eager to read your book. Then again, if the title is brilliant, expectations for the manuscript will be really high and editors or agents are more likely to be disappointed, while they may be pleasantly surprised by the book if the title is so-so, and they're not going to reject on the basis of a lame title because they know how easily it can be changed.
See why this is tricky?
Here are a few title tips I've gleaned from my time in the business:
Short and pithy is good -- it's easier to remember and they can put it in larger print on the cover
Song titles are great foundations for titles -- A title isn't protected by copyright, so it's fair game to use. I learned this from an editor, who said she kept a book of the Billboard top 100 list going back to the beginning on her desk to use for coming up with book titles. This publisher had learned from their sales reps talking to booksellers that when a book had a title from a popular song or based on a popular song title, but with a twist, customers were likely to be humming the song to themselves as they bought the book. They found their sales went up when they started using song titles on their books. People would see the book, it would trigger a memory of the song, the song would stick in their heads, and next time they saw the book, it would stand out and they'd be more likely to pick it up and buy it. Movie titles and famous quotations also work, but they don't have the earworm power of music.
The danger of using popular song titles is that most of the good ones have been used. It's a good idea to run all your title ideas through the Amazon search engine to see how many books come up with that same title or very similar titles. Your title doesn't have to be totally unique. One or two books more than a couple of years ago is no problem, unless one of those books was a massive bestseller that's still in the spotlight. For instance, before about 2007, Twilight was a very popular book title. It popped up on a variety of books, from thrillers to romances. It's both evocative and generic. Now, though, even if it fits your book perfectly, it's a bad idea for a title because you'll probably end up on about page five of the search results, behind all the various editions of the Twilight Saga books, the books about the series, the books about the stars of the series, the books about the movies, etc. You want your book to stand out so that people don't think they've read it already since the title's familiar, and you want your book to come up on the first page of Amazon searches for that title.
I find that my best titles often come to me while I'm writing the book. Something will just suddenly hit me. When I'm stuck for a title, I'll make a list of key words I associate with the story. Then I may do a quotation search, a search of song titles and a search of movie titles for those key words. I may also look for rhymes for those key words and search for those and see if I can replace the rhymes with my key words to make a fun twist on a familiar phrase. For instance, I started with the common phrase "damsel in distress" and found that it kind of sounded like "damsel under stress" when I said it out loud, and that fit my book, so that became the title of the third book in my series.
Alliteration (a lot of the words starting with the same letter or sound) and rhymes are good for titles because they make the title memorable. But you still want it to be pronounceable so people can talk about your book. If they can't say it without it being a tongue-twister, it's hard to get word of mouth or for editors to discuss the book in meetings. Just imagine the acquisition meeting where the editor can't talk about the book she wants to acquire without stumbling over the words or spraying her colleagues while trying to pronounce some of the more challenging consonants. Say your title out loud, maybe three times fast, and see how it feels in your mouth.
Look at your book for ideas. A character may have a line that seems to sum up the story or the main conflict. A good example is A Game of Thrones, where that's something one of the characters talks about, playing the game of thrones.
Make sure your title fits the style and mood of your book. You probably don't want to use a title inspired by a bouncy pop song on a dark and gritty medieval fantasy novel. And you might not want to use words like "blood" and "doom" in the title of a romantic comedy.
I keep a notebook of title ideas that come to me. Sometimes they inspire a story, and sometimes one will fit an idea I'm working on. Otherwise, when I need a book title, I take a lot of showers. That's where all my best ideas seem to hit me.
I skipped the writing post last week because I was in transit that day, and this should get me on a schedule that keeps me from having to skip again due to travel until maybe the end of the summer.
I had a reader question about how to come up with titles. That's a difficult subject for a how-to piece because titles ultimately aren't something the author controls. Odds are, the publisher will change the title of your book for publication. They may want something more marketable that has key words their marketing department says will sell better. They may have another book with a similar title on the schedule, or they may know of another book from another publisher with a similar title. On the other hand, having a good title on your manuscript can really help in the submission process if it makes agents or editors eager to read your book. Then again, if the title is brilliant, expectations for the manuscript will be really high and editors or agents are more likely to be disappointed, while they may be pleasantly surprised by the book if the title is so-so, and they're not going to reject on the basis of a lame title because they know how easily it can be changed.
See why this is tricky?
Here are a few title tips I've gleaned from my time in the business:
Short and pithy is good -- it's easier to remember and they can put it in larger print on the cover
Song titles are great foundations for titles -- A title isn't protected by copyright, so it's fair game to use. I learned this from an editor, who said she kept a book of the Billboard top 100 list going back to the beginning on her desk to use for coming up with book titles. This publisher had learned from their sales reps talking to booksellers that when a book had a title from a popular song or based on a popular song title, but with a twist, customers were likely to be humming the song to themselves as they bought the book. They found their sales went up when they started using song titles on their books. People would see the book, it would trigger a memory of the song, the song would stick in their heads, and next time they saw the book, it would stand out and they'd be more likely to pick it up and buy it. Movie titles and famous quotations also work, but they don't have the earworm power of music.
The danger of using popular song titles is that most of the good ones have been used. It's a good idea to run all your title ideas through the Amazon search engine to see how many books come up with that same title or very similar titles. Your title doesn't have to be totally unique. One or two books more than a couple of years ago is no problem, unless one of those books was a massive bestseller that's still in the spotlight. For instance, before about 2007, Twilight was a very popular book title. It popped up on a variety of books, from thrillers to romances. It's both evocative and generic. Now, though, even if it fits your book perfectly, it's a bad idea for a title because you'll probably end up on about page five of the search results, behind all the various editions of the Twilight Saga books, the books about the series, the books about the stars of the series, the books about the movies, etc. You want your book to stand out so that people don't think they've read it already since the title's familiar, and you want your book to come up on the first page of Amazon searches for that title.
I find that my best titles often come to me while I'm writing the book. Something will just suddenly hit me. When I'm stuck for a title, I'll make a list of key words I associate with the story. Then I may do a quotation search, a search of song titles and a search of movie titles for those key words. I may also look for rhymes for those key words and search for those and see if I can replace the rhymes with my key words to make a fun twist on a familiar phrase. For instance, I started with the common phrase "damsel in distress" and found that it kind of sounded like "damsel under stress" when I said it out loud, and that fit my book, so that became the title of the third book in my series.
Alliteration (a lot of the words starting with the same letter or sound) and rhymes are good for titles because they make the title memorable. But you still want it to be pronounceable so people can talk about your book. If they can't say it without it being a tongue-twister, it's hard to get word of mouth or for editors to discuss the book in meetings. Just imagine the acquisition meeting where the editor can't talk about the book she wants to acquire without stumbling over the words or spraying her colleagues while trying to pronounce some of the more challenging consonants. Say your title out loud, maybe three times fast, and see how it feels in your mouth.
Look at your book for ideas. A character may have a line that seems to sum up the story or the main conflict. A good example is A Game of Thrones, where that's something one of the characters talks about, playing the game of thrones.
Make sure your title fits the style and mood of your book. You probably don't want to use a title inspired by a bouncy pop song on a dark and gritty medieval fantasy novel. And you might not want to use words like "blood" and "doom" in the title of a romantic comedy.
I keep a notebook of title ideas that come to me. Sometimes they inspire a story, and sometimes one will fit an idea I'm working on. Otherwise, when I need a book title, I take a lot of showers. That's where all my best ideas seem to hit me.
June 5, 2012
Book Report: Fun Fantasy/Adventure
I didn't get that nap yesterday, but I did spend the late afternoon lying on the sofa and catching up on the end of the season of A Game of Thrones. I finally got around to reading the books because of the first season of the series, but now after having read the books, I like the series less. The first season was a fairly faithful adaptation, but they're making some pretty senseless changes to the plot in the second season. They seem to be condensing things by making them even more complicated in places, and because I have book knowledge, the changes bug me more.
But I finally transitioned into reading something else. I had the new KE Mills Rogue Agent book, so I re-read the last one and then delved into the new one. And now I have to wait for the next one. Bummer. I really love this series because it has all the elements I like in a book and in the (mostly) right proportions. It can be really funny in a screwball comedy kind of way at times, but then it goes really psychologically dark. The hero is a true good guy. There's a fun cast of "found family" characters, and there's a hint of romance. The gist of the series is that Gerald, Our Hero, thinks he's just a third-rate wizard good only for bureaucracy, but it turns out that it's just that the aptitude tests aren't capable of measuring what he is, and he goes through some experiences that really bring out his true powers. That makes him the ideal candidate to become a kind of magical secret agent. He has to keep acting the third-rate wizard just getting by as his cover while he goes on all kinds of secret missions, often with the help of his friends, who include his best friend, a too-brilliant-for-his-own-good experimental wizard; his friend's younger sister, who's equally brilliant, beautiful and daring and extremely frustrated that being female keeps her from really getting to use her abilities; a talking bird who's actually an ancient enchanted sorceress queen who has more or less adopted Gerald; and an unconventional princess from another country who just wants to live a normal life. It's all in a sort of Victorian/Edwardian magical steampunk setting -- alternate world, but with that kind of society.
In the newest book, Wizard Undercover, there's a possibility of nefarious doings at a royal wedding that will unite the heirs of two squabbling kingdoms, so they have to use the princess's position to get Gerald in place. He has to pose as the princess's personal secretary as she attends the wedding festivities, and since a princess wouldn't travel alone with a man, the sister gets to go along as a lady's maid. Things are complicated by the fact that Gerald is rather madly in love with his best friend's sister, but his friend has warned him away because his job is so dangerous, and she's rather crazy about Gerald but irked that he hasn't made a move, and now they're stuck together in close quarters. There's a touch of Downton Abbey flavor, as our main characters are put into those servant cover roles and have to navigate that kind of society amid all the preparations for a royal wedding. It's all great fun until it gets deadly serious.
Now I can't wait for the next one. More like that, please! This is the kind of fantasy I want to read, and it's way too rare.
But I finally transitioned into reading something else. I had the new KE Mills Rogue Agent book, so I re-read the last one and then delved into the new one. And now I have to wait for the next one. Bummer. I really love this series because it has all the elements I like in a book and in the (mostly) right proportions. It can be really funny in a screwball comedy kind of way at times, but then it goes really psychologically dark. The hero is a true good guy. There's a fun cast of "found family" characters, and there's a hint of romance. The gist of the series is that Gerald, Our Hero, thinks he's just a third-rate wizard good only for bureaucracy, but it turns out that it's just that the aptitude tests aren't capable of measuring what he is, and he goes through some experiences that really bring out his true powers. That makes him the ideal candidate to become a kind of magical secret agent. He has to keep acting the third-rate wizard just getting by as his cover while he goes on all kinds of secret missions, often with the help of his friends, who include his best friend, a too-brilliant-for-his-own-good experimental wizard; his friend's younger sister, who's equally brilliant, beautiful and daring and extremely frustrated that being female keeps her from really getting to use her abilities; a talking bird who's actually an ancient enchanted sorceress queen who has more or less adopted Gerald; and an unconventional princess from another country who just wants to live a normal life. It's all in a sort of Victorian/Edwardian magical steampunk setting -- alternate world, but with that kind of society.
In the newest book, Wizard Undercover, there's a possibility of nefarious doings at a royal wedding that will unite the heirs of two squabbling kingdoms, so they have to use the princess's position to get Gerald in place. He has to pose as the princess's personal secretary as she attends the wedding festivities, and since a princess wouldn't travel alone with a man, the sister gets to go along as a lady's maid. Things are complicated by the fact that Gerald is rather madly in love with his best friend's sister, but his friend has warned him away because his job is so dangerous, and she's rather crazy about Gerald but irked that he hasn't made a move, and now they're stuck together in close quarters. There's a touch of Downton Abbey flavor, as our main characters are put into those servant cover roles and have to navigate that kind of society amid all the preparations for a royal wedding. It's all great fun until it gets deadly serious.
Now I can't wait for the next one. More like that, please! This is the kind of fantasy I want to read, and it's way too rare.
June 4, 2012
Monday Movies: Book Adaptations
I suspect this is going to be one of those days when I have to resist napping with every fiber of my being and force myself to get stuff done. That's rather a challenge when there's no immediate crisis in the stuff that needs to get done and when I can rationalize that I need to be well-rested before next week, when I'll be spending a week traveling with teenagers. We had the pre-trip meeting yesterday afternoon, and after seeing the packing list, it looks like I have some shopping to do. I can see why they were twisting my arm to get me to come on the trip because there were only two chaperones other than the choir director and the youth director. They needed another adult. Fortunately, one of the other chaperones is a doctor and there will also be a few college students coming along to serve as helpers/"camp counselors." I won't be taking my computer, but I will see if I can get Facebook to work on my phone and maybe post some updates along the way (I'm easy enough to find on Facebook and I make just about everything I post public, so even if I don't get around to accepting friends requests while I'm on the road, you can still track me and see my pleas for rescue).
I didn't get around to posting about movies last Monday because it was a holiday, so here's a delayed Movie Monday post. The previous weekend, I finally saw the recent Alice in Wonderland, and I'm glad I didn't see it in a theater because it was kind of boring. I read through a lot of it. Sometimes I want to tell Tim Burton and Johnny Depp that they might be more effective if they dialed it back a notch. Weird stuff has more of an impact when you can contrast it against the "normal." When everything is so over-the-top weird, it loses the weirdness. I also think Johnny Depp needs to step away from the white pancake makeup. It's becoming cliched. There were some stunning visuals and some lovely moments, but in general, that movie was a bit of a mess. In good Tim Burton movies, I find myself thinking, "I'll have what he's having." In this one, I was thinking, "Maybe he should have a little less of what he's having."
Then I finally saw the most recent remake of Jane Eyre, and again, I'm glad I didn't see this at the theater. There was a lot that was right about it. The settings and casting were excellent and the performances were also wonderful. I loved Judi Dench as the housekeeper. That role is usually a non-entity or made ominous, but she radiated a goodhearted warmth. However, the script was something of a hot mess. I have to admit that I'm the kind of person who loves that book enough that nothing other than a miniseries is going to satisfy me because a two-hour movie will require cutting elements that I think are important. To me, the "definitive" version is the most recent BBC/Masterpiece Theatre miniseries, which I was able to watch soon after re-reading the book and still not hate. But this one made some really questionable choices.
For one thing, it starts at one of the least interesting parts of the book and tells the rest of the story in flashback. I've never been a fan of the interlude where Jane has fled Thornfield and is hiding out with the Rivers family, and that's where this movie focuses, with the rest of the story up to that point told in flashback while she's there. Her childhood and time at school are shown only in very brief flashes of fever dream, and then we get into her taking on the school in that village before she recalls going to Thornfield and meeting Rochester. The movie mostly stops jumping around at that point, but it still seems to cut out most of the relationship development between Jane and Rochester, with him jumping very quickly to confessing his love for her. Then when the flashbacks catch up to where the movie started, we see the same scenes all over again.
In all the ways I've imagined how to make a movie from that book, I never would have considered grounding it in the time when she's hiding out in the village and teaching at the village school after running away from the discovery of the mad wife in the attic. That's the part I tend to skim over. If it were a less familiar story, then I could see starting with something that's going to make viewers wonder why she's on the run, but I doubt there are many people going to see this kind of movie who aren't familiar with the story. Plus, TV has really burned me on the structure of starting with an exciting moment from near the story's climax and then flashing back to some time earlier to show how they got to that point. It's become something of a cliche that to me is starting to read like shorthand for "we couldn't think of an exciting opening scene, so we'll just start with this really cool scene from later in the story and then go back."
No movies this weekend, since I've been marathoning the entire season of Grimm from start to finish while they still have all the episodes available OnDemand. I'm about halfway through.
I didn't get around to posting about movies last Monday because it was a holiday, so here's a delayed Movie Monday post. The previous weekend, I finally saw the recent Alice in Wonderland, and I'm glad I didn't see it in a theater because it was kind of boring. I read through a lot of it. Sometimes I want to tell Tim Burton and Johnny Depp that they might be more effective if they dialed it back a notch. Weird stuff has more of an impact when you can contrast it against the "normal." When everything is so over-the-top weird, it loses the weirdness. I also think Johnny Depp needs to step away from the white pancake makeup. It's becoming cliched. There were some stunning visuals and some lovely moments, but in general, that movie was a bit of a mess. In good Tim Burton movies, I find myself thinking, "I'll have what he's having." In this one, I was thinking, "Maybe he should have a little less of what he's having."
Then I finally saw the most recent remake of Jane Eyre, and again, I'm glad I didn't see this at the theater. There was a lot that was right about it. The settings and casting were excellent and the performances were also wonderful. I loved Judi Dench as the housekeeper. That role is usually a non-entity or made ominous, but she radiated a goodhearted warmth. However, the script was something of a hot mess. I have to admit that I'm the kind of person who loves that book enough that nothing other than a miniseries is going to satisfy me because a two-hour movie will require cutting elements that I think are important. To me, the "definitive" version is the most recent BBC/Masterpiece Theatre miniseries, which I was able to watch soon after re-reading the book and still not hate. But this one made some really questionable choices.
For one thing, it starts at one of the least interesting parts of the book and tells the rest of the story in flashback. I've never been a fan of the interlude where Jane has fled Thornfield and is hiding out with the Rivers family, and that's where this movie focuses, with the rest of the story up to that point told in flashback while she's there. Her childhood and time at school are shown only in very brief flashes of fever dream, and then we get into her taking on the school in that village before she recalls going to Thornfield and meeting Rochester. The movie mostly stops jumping around at that point, but it still seems to cut out most of the relationship development between Jane and Rochester, with him jumping very quickly to confessing his love for her. Then when the flashbacks catch up to where the movie started, we see the same scenes all over again.
In all the ways I've imagined how to make a movie from that book, I never would have considered grounding it in the time when she's hiding out in the village and teaching at the village school after running away from the discovery of the mad wife in the attic. That's the part I tend to skim over. If it were a less familiar story, then I could see starting with something that's going to make viewers wonder why she's on the run, but I doubt there are many people going to see this kind of movie who aren't familiar with the story. Plus, TV has really burned me on the structure of starting with an exciting moment from near the story's climax and then flashing back to some time earlier to show how they got to that point. It's become something of a cliche that to me is starting to read like shorthand for "we couldn't think of an exciting opening scene, so we'll just start with this really cool scene from later in the story and then go back."
No movies this weekend, since I've been marathoning the entire season of Grimm from start to finish while they still have all the episodes available OnDemand. I'm about halfway through.
