cindale

Stolen from platyg

1. Name a movie that you have seen more than 10 times.
Star Wars

2. Name a movie that you’ve seen multiple times in the theater.
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

3. Name an actor that would make you more inclined to see a movie.
( read more )

Happy NaNoWriMo to everyone!

I'm not participating this year. I don't know if November will ever work for me as long as my kids are still at home (November birthday) and I still work in retail. The last two months of my year usually pass in about ten days.

Instead, I'll be finishing my continuing education for the year, working 39.5 hours/week, having at least two birthday parties, travelling for Thanksgiving, and keeping up with the social schedules of two teenagers who can't drive yet (two more years!).

But I definitely wish good luck to all participating, and hope to at least get a few words written this month. But definitely not 50,000.

My reaction to this book was very interesting. I was so repulsed by the subject matter I considered putting it down after a few chapters. But I kept reading because both my kids raved about it. This is significant from my son because he reads so much, and significant from my daughter because she almost never reads if she's not forced.

Anyway, the subject matter is 24 teenagers chosen by lottery who are all forced to fight to the death--only one wins. This annual event is sponsored by the government and all citizens (including families of the teenagers) are forced to watch--it's televised live. Yes, I'm a mother of teenagers, which probably didn't help my perception of it, but I think many (most?) people would be a little disturbed by the concept. I couldn't help being a little uncomfortable that my kids had read it, but then again, maybe it's good for them to read something like that and think about why it's so wrong? The story takes place in a future America, so in that way it sort of has a 1984 feel to it--that maybe the creation of a concept that is repulsive to us might help ensure it doesn't turn out to be a prophecy?

It's a YA novel, published by Scholastic, and despite the subject matter the author did a really good job of minimizing the gore without making it seem like it was glossed over. Even though the world the characters live in is so far removed from what American Teenagers are used to, the reader can easily relate to many typical teenage emotions, and can imagine the terror in the games.

In the end, I kept reading because of the characters. Every one of them has complexities that make them interesting. The main character, Katniss, evolves and learns and grows in her emotions, in some ways losing part of who she is and in some ways learning to think differently. And then, I HAD to see how the story would resolve itself. How could Katniss possibly keep her innocence and still win a game in which all other contestants have to die?

The Hunger Games is the first book in a trilogy. The second book (Catching Fire) is in the hands of my daughter and I can't read it until she's finished.

And I actually want to. The Hunger Games ends at the end of the games, but I'm hoping to see the government punished for it's brutal treatment of children (and families, actually).

You know, it's interesting how the Capitol citizens in the book are so completely narcissistic and so obsessed with their ultimate "reality show." It makes me uncomfortable how it may not be too far removed from today's United States. Again, 1984--maybe we won't go that far.

I like it.

So far it's a series of three, and it's supposed to eventually be five.

Eighth Grades Bites
Ninth Grade Slays
Tenth Grade Bleeds
(by Heather Brewer)

The first book starts with a fairly simple plot, but with enough surprises to make it interesting. It was a little too simple for my tastes, but I liked the story enough to want to give the second book a try.

The second book was even better, and the third better still. The plot gets more complicated, with more twists and surprises, and you can feel the teenage boy maturing and growing more conflicted with his double life (he's a vampire living as a human). I'm really looking forward to seeing how high school turns out for Vlad.

Of course, there's the "chosen one" thing (though it's called something else), which seems to be a common theme in fantasy series' I've read. And it's another vampire story. But there's enough uniqueness in this story to keep me intrigued. One thing I like is that I can almost feel his pain at some of the choices he's forced to make and some of the grief he has to live through.

One downside--it seemed to me in reading "Tenth Grade Bites" that some of the story threads weren't finished out or were dropped prematurely (and picked up later) and sometimes things almost seemed out of order, if that makes sense. It made me wonder a little about the editing. There were several times I was jarred out of the story and I was thinking, "Wait! What happened with _____??" It wasn't like cliffhangers at all--it was more like things didn't reach a logical conclusion before moving on, like some vital details were skipped.

However, it wasn't enough for me to quit reading, and I'm obviously not too annoyed since I want to finish the series. But I hope the next two books flow a little better.

(And I'm willing to acknowledge that I was heavily drugged yesterday* when I was reading and it's possible I just missed something, but it did happen several times.)

Anyway, I recommend it. I don't generally like vampire stories, but I'm enjoying myself here.

Apparently "Eleventh Grade Burns" comes out in February and there's no release date on "Twelfth Grade Kills" as of yet.

*Prescription drugs, because of a probable stomach virus. Long story.

My new socks say, "No nonsense" across the top of the toe. This might show with some of my shoes because it is pretty low--actually right over where my toes join my foot.

So it IS nonsense if I buy socks I can't wear because of where the brand writing is positioned.

Fail!

I'm reading a book right now (I'm not going to say what) that I'm really enjoying for the most part. The story is very intriguing and at this point I really want to follow it through to the conclusion.

But.

Occasionally I run across some writing that pulls me out of the story and makes me think about the writing instead of the story. Has anyone else had this experience?

There are a few areas of dialog that didn't seem natural to me, and there have been a few parts that seemed "clunky." I'm not sure how else to describe it.

When I'm reading a book, I want to get absorbed in the story. I don't want to be trying to follow the story or thinking about how something doesn't make sense or doesn't seem plausible.

I've read two other books recently that I really enjoyed and got fully absorbed in the story without thinking about the writing. They were "Canticle" by R. A. Salvatore and "Eighth Grade Bites (The Chronicles of Vladimir Tod)" by Heather Brewer. I enjoyed them enough that I immediately ordered the rest of the series in both cases.

Anyway, I guess my point is that I've been thinking about the concept that the goal of writing fiction is to convey the story, not to showcase your writing. To me, at least, writing, if truly flawless, will disappear and not be noticed. Which seems to be an oxymoron.

It's a bit intimidating. I don't want people to be thinking about my writing when they read my stuff. If I ever get published, I hope I have an excellent editor who cleans up all my "clunky" writing, and I hope I listen to him/her.

Boy, I've been quiet lately!

My life goes on with kids who have increasingly busy social calendars, cleaning out my house and having a garage sale, youth activities, and of course, work. Work is heading into busy season since it's retail.

And I've been cheating on my first manuscript with the second, shinier one. My spirit really needs to write, but for practical purposes I need to revise and try to shop the first one. Blah.

And I think I got my son hooked on Munchos. :)

Hey... my feeds aren't working! I have several that are daily, and I noticed none of them posted today, and then I investigated and found out that the daily ones DID post today, but the feed hasn't been checked since 9/12/09. Has anyone heard anything about feeds/syndication not working??

I know I have a lot of writers on my friend list. Writing for fun, writing for money, writing hoping to eventually get money--it doesn't matter.

I'm home from work today because my daughter isn't feeling well. Great time to work on my manuscript revisions, right?

Wrong, apparantly. So far I haven't managed to touch it.

Granted, some of the other stuff I've been doing is good, like fixing my child lunch and rearranging the dining room.

But I've also been watching TV and surfing the internet.

My question is: What do you do instead of writing? I'm not talking about your day job or sleeping--I mean when you've set aside time to write and it takes you awhile to get started.

Maybe some of you don't have this problem? I doubt I'm the only one, though.

Follow up question, maybe even more important: Have you found any techniques to get you refocused when you find yourself following the shiny instead of writing?

Feel free to answer in comments. Come on--you know you want to!

The first time I saw the movie I hated the beginning and the end--the train station scene and the scene where Ron is just sitting.

But this time as I watched Harry and Hermione talk, with Ron just sitting and not participating, I had just read Book Seven, and that scene reminded me of ( spoiler )

Then it occurred to me this morning that the train scene at the beginning, when Harry says something about liking the train station, makes me think of ( spoiler )

So... foreshadowing? Or are the movie makers really that clever?

I saw HP-HBP for only my second time tonight, this time with Hubby, who hadn't seen it.

I saw a really cool clue to the conclusion of the seventh book/movie that I missed the first time. When Harry is in Dumbledore's office, right after they've seen the true memory of ( Slughorn and Riddle )

I went to see Julia and Julie (or is it Julie and Julia?) last week. It was a fun experience because it followed lunch out with my mom, and we sneaked our dessert into the theatre because we ran out of time to finish it at the restaurant.

As for the movie itself, it was a decent way to spend two hours, but I'm not going to go out and tell anyone they HAVE to see it. I liked learning more about Julia Childs' life because I remember her cooking shows on PBS.

I also really liked the idea about cooking every single recipe in a cookbook and blogging about it. Why didn't I think of that? I could do it now, but it's been done, so why bother? But man, I can't help thinking how fun that would have been to do, and maybe I'd find with some new good recipes, too.

What recipe book would work, though? I have one by Paula Dean--that would probably be a really good choice since she's a celebrity and the recipes are probably really good. I have a Jello cookbook--yes, every recipe involves geletin or pudding--but I would get fat(ter) if I did that one.

But no, regardless of how fun it would be to do, it's already been done. Besides, since that book and movie have come out, I'm sure there are many other people who have done it. And then there's the fact that I don't need another project right now.

Speaking of projects, I need to blog about my remodeling at some point. Not today, though.

And completely randomly--
Coldplay's Viva la Vida?
Best. Album. Ever!
*loves*

I just finished my re-read of the Harry Potter books. It hit me again how clever JKR is, what a great storyteller. Yes, I loved fanfiction, but I always left it up to JKR to be god of her universe, and overall I loved the way she resolved her story.

I hadn't read DH since it first came out, and there were many little things I had forgotten. It hit me this time that one of the major themes is death--avoiding or accepting it, attitudes toward it, etc. Not morbid, but practical, actually. Most of the time we pretend it doesn't exist, but it does for all of us, and at some point we'll have to deal with it, whether we've thought about it ahead of time or not.

Anyway, I came out of reading these books also with an idea for a story where Petunia sneaks by herself into Harry and Ginny's wedding and thinks Ginny looks something like Lily and maybe thinks about how things are somewhat being set "right" by this marriage. I hadn't decided whether Petunia talks to Harry after the wedding--she might sneak out. However, I'm not going to write it. I can't. If I start writing fanfiction again I'll never finish my novel.

I also started thinking about Harry and Ginny's first encounter after Voldemort's death, and how that played out. I'm sure there's 343,427,856 fanfictions on that already, though, since I've been out of it for a couple of years, and there's no need for me to write another one. Or read one, really.

Yes, I just need to shut my imagination down about that and open it up about Jack and Amy and their unique marriage...

Yesterday it was so hot that by the time I got home from the grocery store my eggs were hard-boiled.

Today there's an Excessive Heat Advisory.

Yesterday I went back to work. My boss asked me if it was hot last week at camp. I said, "No, not really." He raised an eyebrow at me, but it really wasn't! We had a little bit of rain, but other than that the weather was pretty nice--probably highs in the 80's.

Camp was good. One thing I'm realizing (I noticed this on the mission trip in June, too) is that I can so completely throw myself into what I'm doing that I almost forget I have a job, a house that I'm working on, a refinance in progress, etc. I think these youth trips are teaching me how to live completely in the moment.

This was brought home to me, as things often are, by contrast. Late Wednesday afternoon I got a phone call about an issue with my homeowners insurance. After much time on the phone with multiple people and reassurances, I got over being angry about the mistake made by the insurance people, yet my anger remained for awhile. Why? Because I had been pulled out of my current reality and forced to deal with something in my bigger reality. The distraction from working with the kids angered me.

I was tempted to hide in my room and cry, but thankfully I realized the quickest way to get over it was to rejoin the activities, and that quickly pulled me out of the sullens.

I love working with teenagers. At the same time, I wonder if I'll ever escape my self-doubts about it.

The best thing about camp is that 12 kids (if you count the one who waited until Sunday) gave their lives to Christ! :)

Now I'm still having trouble adjusting back to the real world, just like I did when I was a kid who had been to camp. Hopefully today I can really get myself back in gear.

(My first line is not true. My second line is true.)

Well, I can't really say the subject of this post is camp, since I don't exactly know what camp will entail. I'm leaving today, there's over 100 teenagers going (maybe closer to 150), and I think I'm going to be the assistant nurse for the second year running. Maybe when I get back I'll post with a subject of "camp" and it will actually be about camp.

I've been in a remodelling haze and haven't been reading LJ much. I think my bedroom and bathroom are done (except I'm going to have to paint around the shower because I don't have enough wallpaper to patch it). When I get back from camp I have to finish the front bathroom, which means figuring out how to fix the ceiling, finishing the paint job, and replacing the vinyl on the floor. Then I can have the appraisal ordered, and hopefully close quickly on our refinance so we can pay for all this!

I never dreamed we would have our bedroom redone. It's always the last place in the house anyone looks--we keep it closed off when we have guests. We were forced into it because we had to replace the shower, and then the carpet, and I decided I might as well paint and replace the vinyl... Now that it's done, sitting here in my chair looking around makes me feel serene. The carpet and walls are just a neutral toupe, nothing exciting, and the furniture is basically in the same place, but it's nice. I guess it's nice to know it's new (and it doesn't have dog pee in it) and it's satisfying to know I did some of it myself (the painting and the vinyl).

I'm going at Midnight with my two favorite fans--my kids! This is the first time I've gone at Midnight with my kids. Hubby didn't want to go, so we're going with my BFF and my daughter's BFF, who are mother and daughter, and a few other teenagers. My daughter and her BFF made T-shirts last night.

When I got to the end of yesterday I actually wondered for a moment if it was Tuesday night. It just seemed like a long day. I spent a lot of time at work, then I ran errands, then I worked on the floor in my bathroom. I promised Son I'd watch OotP with him yesterday, and we ended up doing it at 9PM! So at 11PM I was putting a quick coat of primer on a section of my floor before bed.

Today will be longer, but fun. Work this morning, vinyl flooring this afternoon, Bunko tonight, and then the movie at Midnight. It makes me tired to think about it.

This morning Hubby woke me up at 6:30. I kindly suggested that he not do that tomorrow morning.

Yesterday I tore up my bathroom. It was sort of gratifying, which is sort of scary.

Anyway, I didn't tear up the whole thing, just the floor. I cut the carpet away where I'm going to put vinyl. It cut very easily and the pad below practically fell apart for me. This shows me what crap low quality stuff they used to build my house. I'm getting used to it by now.

Anyway, Hubby had to help me with pulling up the finishing strip since it was nailed into the concrete, but I actually pulled up vinyl and pulled off the baseboards all by myself! I realized, though, that we're going to have to move the toilet out of the way. I told Hubby I thought I could do a toilet and he just looked at me like I was crazy. I've seen it done a couple of times and I've read about it on the internet. I might not be able to move it by myself, but I think I can disconnect and reconnect it.

Anyway, I know you were dying to hear about my remodeling, so I thought I'd enlighten you.

I couldn't manage to finish the HP books before the movie, so I thought about watching the movies this weekend. But there's five of those things... FIVE! Did you realize that?? I don't have time for that! I have things to tear up!

I was trying to read the HP books before the movie comes out. I'm in the middle of GoF. Thanks to my handy dandy calculator, I figured out that I'll have to read NINE chapters per day to finish through HBP by Tuesday night.

That is so much NOT going to happen.

I'm hoping to have carpet installed in about two weeks (I've paid for it, but they haven't set up the installation date yet). I have a ton of other remodeling stuff to get done before they can install the carpet, including painting a room, installing some vinyl tile, and patching wallpaper, not to mention moving the stuff out of the rooms. I'm starting to work on what will probably be a big project for the youth group at church, and I'm feeling driven to get the editing done on my manuscript. And, oh yeah, I have a job and two kids!

So the HP reading will have to go. I'll probably still read them, but I won't have them finished by the HBP movie. Not tragic, I know!

With all that's going on over the next couple of weeks, the manuscript will probably get shuffled to the side a lot. To get it done, I probably need to think of it as a job and work on it every day, but on the other hand I find it hard to think of it as a job since I don't know if I'll ever get paid for it.

Right now, though, I'm going to sleep. Night!

(Over text messaging)

Boy who apparently has a crush on my daughter: Hey baby.

Daughter: Quack

Boy: What?

Daughter: Quack

Boy: What are you doing?

Daughter: Moo

Boy: Okay bye!

(So did he get rejected by a duck or a cow?)

And randomly, apparently my PJ pants scare youth interns...

I went. I'm still alive.

Actually, it was a really good experience.

It was this: http://win-acfw.com/web/win-conference-june-26-27-2009/

It's for writers of inspirational books, and so far my fiction writing is all mainstream, but I figured the topics would be general enough to apply to me. I'm a Christian who writes, even if I don't write Christian books. :)

My biggest fear was that I'd have to talk to people. I hate mingling at parties, wondering who to talk to, afraid of interrupting. So I get there, and the first 30 minutes is mingling. Ack!

It was fine, though. No, I didn't get to disappear into a corner like I wanted--people came up and talked to ME! It was a little hard for me to talk about my writing, but I made myself. I don't talk about my writing much to my friends, and I thought strangers might be easier, but it wasn't.

My clothes were fine. I dressed up just a little (for me)--I wore slacks and a nice top. About half the people were dressed like me. The other half were more casual. I'm going more casual today, mainly because the temperature here has been over 100.

There was every age there, too (no kids). I saw some girls and a guy who looked like late teens or early 20's, and I saw a few women who looked like they were at least 70, and everything in between.

The speakers are a good mix--two very different authors (different genders and different genres), an agent, and a publicity person. There was also a pastor who gave a short, encouraging talk at the beginning.

I'm going back today. It's all day with lunch. I know part of the purpose of this is networking, but I'm still nervous about it. I think it will be okay, though. Last night it seemed like people actually wanted to talk to me, even after they found out I wasn't anyone important, (and even after I spilled my tea twice) and that put me at ease.

I know going to writer's conferences is good for me. But instead of taking it like medicine, I'm actually starting to feel a little guilty about the time away from home because the conference is fun!