Monice Mitchell Simms's Blog, page 4

A:HC Still Going Strong! – Fam, on days

A:HC Still Going Strong! – Fam,  on days like this I really love being a storyteller. You couldn't have told me when… http://ow.ly/1euDNI

A:HC Still Going Strong!

Fam,  on days like this I really love being a storyteller.

You couldn't have told me when I wrote my novel – Address: House of Corrections - that I would still be blessed to be interviewed about it nearly two years after it was first published.

Check out LaRita Shelby's story about me  –  EUR Book Look — Address: House of Corrections Author inspired by three generations of family secrets.

Thank you, LaRita, for your fantastic piece. I appreciate you, Lady!

 

Why God Gave Me Teeth

What I'm about to share has nothing to do with writing.

In fact, that is happening more and more, which is why I haven't really been posting too much here lately. To alleviate my increasing creative constipation, I plan to launch another blog in the near future. Won't give you a date, though, because I don't want you to hold me to it. LOL!

For the time being, I'm going to share something here that won't help you create better characters, pen a better tale or arrange your writing schedule…

I just finished a half-ass fast.

I call it half-ass, because I was supposed to energize my system with juice and water only. At most, I could cheat with fruit every now and then. The first day, I did fine. Grapefruit juice, water and Green Machine for breakfast, snacks and lunch. Then, dinner time rolled around and my stomach started fussing. We had some leftover Chinese food in the fridge and it would have been wrong of me to let it go to waste, right? So, I fixed a saucer and went to town. Ordinarily, I would have piled a grown man plate of food, but thanks to my stomach shrinking, the little bit I ate was just enough.

Day Two was better. With my husband by  my side – probably because he felt guilty for taking me out to IHOP the night before after he came back from a speaking engagement – we did an all out, all day fast. Juice and water. Period. Again, I started to hallucinate about clam chowder at dinner time, but he talked me off the ledge by pacifying me with a chewy granola bar. Two hours later, I returned the favor and we both went to bed, our tummies full of juice and water.

BTW, I discovered when you're fasting and your body isn't distracted with that bothersome digestion business,  you don't need much sleep. That's a bummer, because I love to sleep. And while I appreciated the extra energy, I couldn't write for crap, because I couldn't stop thinking about french fries long enough to be productive.

O.K. Where was I? Right. Day Three – Sunday. Another good day. I actually was beginning to get used to the fasting thing. This may sound crazy, but I began to notice I was losing a bit of fat in my thighs – A problem area for me. That euphoric, clarity everyone raves about, though….Nope, no Nirvana for me.  But at least my body was starting to adjust.

The only problem? My brain wasn't cooperating. All Sunday was about was planning the meals I was going to cook and eat the next week. A pot of pinto beans. Broiled salmon. Turkey spaghetti. Just to name a few.

What I was fantasizing the most about, however, was all of the restaurant food that I couldn't afford to eat. Knowing that I was jonesing hard, the television Gods had rallied against me and decided that they would run Pizza Hut, Olive Garden and Chili's commercials every ten minutes to torture me! ( I could have just turned off the t.v. and NetFlix, but then I would have had to kick my story addiction, too and that would have made me crankier than Hurricane Irene. LOL!)

After hour upon of hour of  watching the boob tube, I made my most startling realization: My husband and I had sequestered ourselves in our apartment all weekend, because we were afraid to eat. Why? Because all of our social activities center around food. For example, we head out to the movies and it's starting later than we thought, what do we do? We grab a quick bite to eat before it starts. Then, once the film starts, what happens next? We engulf a box of buttery popcorn and wash it down with sweet drinks. Popcorn makes me hungry, so of course, after the show, I want a snack…See where this is going?

Lightbulb! Maybe I did have a clarity break though! Food, for us and I suspect for most, is a social activity. If we can just adjust what, when and how we eat, hubby and I will be just fine.

A little smaller around his belly, husband, of course, wants to keep going. But I.Have.Got.To.Have.Clam Chowder.

My take away from this?  It's not natural for me to drink all of my food all of the time. God gave me teeth for a reason and I'm gonna use 'em!

books are always new…

wow! where has the summer gone?!

as i rev up for my favorite production gig of the year — our film company, flower girl productions, live streams and shoots the tavis smily foundation leadership institute every year – i'm also looking forward to appearing on the 24hrmom show tomorrow with my sister girl artists, joy demichelle moore, tangie ambrose and cheryl francis harrington.

we'll be promoting the audio series – address: house of corrections - and discussing the complicated mother-daughter relationships of not only their characters – dora, excellent and merry – but in life period!

it's gonna be a fascinating convo, fam, because luva, the show's host, never disappoints. yaw don't want to miss it!

here's the link – www.blogtalkradio.com/24hrmom . hope yaw tune and/or call in….:)

keep writing!

living by my pen,

monice

For Make Believers The V Word – by Monic

For Make Believers The V Word – by Monice Mitchell Simms O.K., today has been such a productive writing day for me,… http://ow.ly/1dM1VO

For Make Believers – The V Word

by Monice Mitchell Simms

O.K., today has been such a productive writing day for me, I thought I'd finally getting around to penning that For Make Believers blog post I've been promising for weeks.

In my last post, nearly a month ago — dag! i gotta do better — I testified about my lifer experience as an artist and pledged to share with you the new knowledge i've been picking up on my journey.

I'm going to start with the "V" word. Well, actually, it's three "V" words. I just thought the "V" word made for a more intriguing title. LOL!

Let me first give credit to the man whose wisdom I am about to steal…I mean, share. I want to personally thank screenwriter Karl Iglesias  for the "Our Craft" column he wrote for the March/April issue of Creative Screenwriting Magazine. In his eye-opening column, he broke down "The Three Emotional Vs of a Scene."

They are: Voyeurism, Vicarious and Visceral.  And every scene in your screenplay, should contain them.

How about some quick and dirty definitions:

Voyeurism is spying on people in any intimate situation, which is what storytelling, especially movies, is all about.

The second, vicarious level is that magic that happens when your audience connects so much with your character that they feel what your character is feeling.

And finally, visceral – the most challenging emotion to achieve with your audience – is the feeling your viewers or readers most want to experience while watching or reading your story.  It's important, Karl writes, for writers to distinguish between the visceral and vicarious emotions. An example — Think about how many dramas fall flat or worst yet, the audience laughs, because they're bored and not viscerally attached to your story.

Famed writer Gordon Lish once said, "It's not what happens to people on a page; it's about what happens to a reader in his mind."

Deep stuff, huh?

As a screenwriter, this knowledge was invaluable to me. But since I also write novels, poetry and am known to moonlight as a news and features reporter from time to time, I've taken this lesson and applied it to everything I pen. Now, it's your turn to give it a shot. 

Hope this helps!

living by my pen,

monice

P.S. In efforts not to completely plagiarize Karl's column, I just hit on some quick points that stood out most to me. But here's a link to subscribe to the magazine, so you can read the complete article for yourself –  http://csorders.com/store/page2.html

* For individual coaching, click below – http://addresshouseofcorrections.files.wordpress.com/2010/07/living_by_my_pen_ad.jpg

i'm a lifer. what about you? by monic -

i'm a lifer. what about you? by monic – i'm a lifer. what about you? by monice mitchell simms there really is no o… http://ow.ly/1dkGj1

i'm a lifer. what about you? – by monic

i'm a lifer. what about you? – by monice mitchell simms there really is no other explanation for it. i've been sitti… http://ow.ly/1djMK9

i’m a lifer. what about you?

by monice mitchell simms there really is no other explanation for it. i’ve been sitting here trying to make sense of it and however much it surprises me, i just gotta face facts. i am a lifelong student. at least, i need to be to progress to the next level. alright, if this were a [...]

i'm a lifer. what about you?

my sistah graduating from kindergarten. couldn't find my photo, but we looked the same @ that age, so it's all good. lol!

by monice mitchell simms

there really is no other explanation for it.

i've been sitting here trying to make sense of it and however much it surprises me, i just gotta face facts.

i am a lifelong student. at least, i need to be to progress to the next level.

alright, if this were a screenplay, that would be the opening voice over for the story of my life as an artist. then, it would flash back to 1977 when i graduated from kindergarten. my first time wearing a cap and gown with my parents and grand parents and granny snapping polaroids, i just knew I had really achieved something. life surely couldn't get any better than this, right?

cue montage. me completing the fifth grade and graduating from clara barton elementary school. me breezing through 8th grade and graduating from st. cecilia catholic school. me surviving the math, science and applied technology program, a strenuous a.p curriculum at martin luther king, jr. senior high school, and graduating from the 12th grade with honors. me, thanks to a full tuition and book scholarship,  excelling at wayne state university's journalism institute for minorities and graduating with three newspaper job offers.

anyone with sense would have signed up for one of those print gigs and became the next brenda starr, right? (to find out who she is, young bloods, click the link. lol!) but no, what did i do? i packed up my car (actually my momma's 1991 plymouth acclaim, which i still own) and drove to graduate film school. chicago columbia college to be exact. then four long years later, i packed up momma's car again  and trekked to the land of angels without even crossing the stage to receive my m.f.a. diploma.

you see, fam, by this point, i had experienced five graduations in my short lifetime. having not taken a break from education since preschool, i was sooo done with pomp and circumstance,  i swore that if i ever had to learn anything again in a classroom, i wasn't going to learn it. lol!

smash cut to me, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, gawking up at the hollywood sign. lawdamercy….

folks say the school of hard knocks is the best teacher, right? well, i can testify, because i received a hell of a post-graduate education. so much so that five years later, i found myself sitting behind tavis smiley's desk as his executive assistant. sure, i had won the showtime black filmmakers grant and produced two award-winning for the network.  and yes, despite my resistance to enter another classroom – i had completed the cosby program and had even taken a few meetings here and there for my screenplays.

anybody from the outside looking in — especially my momma and dem in detroit — could see i was making moves. but was i making progress? not so much.

i fo sho had plenty of folks to blame.  the executives who didn't buy my scripts. my boss for being so taxing. my husband for trapping me in contented marital bliss.

they were all the culprits of my stagnation!

no doubt, it felt good holding someone else responsible for the quicksand i had stopped struggling against six years ago. but here lately, now that i have published my first novel and am writing stories for the screen again, i have come to a startling realization.

i'm responsible for all of it — my successes. my failures — are directly linked to one thing – my growth as an artist.

and i don't know about you, but the only way i grow is by learning and studying. like that six-year-old girl who first graduated from kindergarten, i have to continue to challenge myself.

if that means going to yet another seminar to listen to a panel, because i might learn something or connect with someone new…or starting a writer's group with two of my cosby program alums, so that we can help push each other to the next level..or subscribing to blogs, twitter streams and writing magazines – which i haven't done in years – and reading articles about or written by folks who have chosen the same path that i have…

whatsomeever i gotta do to continue to study and improve in my craft, fam? i'm doing it.

i'm a lifer. in for the long haul. and i refuse to let grass grow under my feet again.

what about you?

living by my pen,

monice.

p.s. now that i've stepped down from my soap box and got that off my chest, in my next blog, i'll share some of the new stuff i've learned in a new for maker believers post. keep writing!