Checking In

Finally, things are winding down a little bit and I'm back to reading fiction (can you hear me breathe a sigh of relief?). I expect to finish this leg of editing the new manuscript by the end of this week (though there will be more to come once I get my editorial notes) and I've got a bit more research to do, but I think in a few weeks I'll begin organizing my notes and doing some brainstorming for the upcoming book.

Reading fiction is not only one of my greatest pleasures, but it's also a way to refill the well. Even if an idea doesn't come directly from reading someone else's work, I'm constantly riffing off the things I've learned from a story or the way it's told. It's good, soulful work that has the plus of not being work at all.

I've also managed to do a couple other "feeding the well" sorts of things these last weeks. Seeing movies, for one, catching up on television shows for another, and spending time with family and friends. In that vein, I've got a couple of things to recommend:

I've joined the Downton Abbey craze late, which meant that I ended up watching all of season one in about two days, and most of season two in another two days. Though there's a melodramatic/soap operaish aspect to Downton that I sometimes find disconcerting, I'm certainly never one to turn away from a good melodrama. I've really enjoyed it--more for the atmosphere and dialogue I think than anything. I've also been watching HBO's Luck, which is starting to really grow on me. My husband is a horse-racing fanatic, and we've owned racehorses, so the milieu is familiar. Even so, it's made me look at things I thought I aways knew in a different way.

As far as movies go: I've seen The Artist, which I thought just okay, though I did think Jean DuJardin deserved his Oscar. He had a hard job and he pulled it off beautifully, with charm and charisma. In fact, I thought many of the Oscar contenders this year were just okay--I didn't see The Help, which I think probably deserved to win. My favorite movies this year were The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo--I thought both Rooney Mara and Daniel Craig were amazing in it, and The Debt, with Helen Mirren and Sam Worthington and Jessica Chastain--the present day story in that film was flawed, but the past story was just compelling and fascinating. It was a film I didn't expect to love, and yet I did.

The following two entries are for books I've read recently: I've joined Goodreads, so I'll be posting the reviews I do there over here as well. If you're on Goodreads, feel free to join me.

Now ... back to feeding the well.